More world building first...
Pre-Spaceflight: 1793: The Continental Congress debates the Constitution of the United States of America. Eleven initial amendments are needed to get ratification in all 13 colonies, the final amendment ending the legal practice of culling Goblinoid children and the forced sterilization of Goblinoid males. This is the first time 'greenskins' have had rights recognized under law and the status of second class citizens since the fall of the Roman Empire.
1789-1811
In France, bread riots turn bloody as the Orcish minority unites for the first time against the imposed enslavement of their kind (Orcish Soldiers in the French Royal Army are among the most ardent revolutionists, embracing the principles of the Revolution with a zeal matched only by their human-peasant counterparts.) under the First Republic, Orcs are given full citizenship (this only lasts until Napoleon Bonaparte is exiled for the first time, and a joint european monarchist force proceeds to cull and purge Orcish ethnic settlements in France in a re-enactment of the terror, but this time, directed at the rebellious 'lower creatures') Orcs able to flee, do so, first to Haiti, and then, to North America, or east through the germanies to the Russian Empire, where they serve as mercenaries for the Czar.
1812-1815
Orcish Americans in Louisiana hold off British forces at New Orleans after the 'pure human' army routs at Washington D.C. The slavery debate is expanded to include 'the greenskin' question. numerous orcish immigrants, certain that they will be once again enslaved, culled and sterilized, flee into the wilds of North America, where they are alternately welcomed, or massacred, by native american tribes for the next sixty years.
1848: Irish humans and 'Foimor' (goblinoid/orcish natives of northern ireland and scotland) are exported to Australia and North America as refugees from the potato famine, or as convict/slave labor. unlike human convict labor, English Law does not acknowledge goblinoids as beings with 'souls', but rather, classifies them as brute animals. Many escape bondage through Canada into the growing United States, where they will at least be free to breed and have children without fearing the veteranarian's knife.
1850: The British Empire, now heavily invested in Orcish soldiery, outlaws the enslavement of 'green-skins' and offers them full citizenship status in exchange for voluntary military service. The various states of the U.S. debate similar measures, with Congress weighing in with the Missouri Compromise on slavery. Most states that choose to allow Orcs and Goblins citizenship place a burden of military or civil service as the gateway to said citizenship and with it, civil rights. Notably, this does not extend to dark-skinned humans initially, and the human-slave-trade continues until...
1860-65: with a continuing influx of greenskins from Europe and england, and continuing influx of irish immigrants fleeing the boiling chaos in the UK, both sides in the American Civil War make extensive use of Orcs and Goblins in the American Civil war. Lincoln's "emancipation proclamation" breaks the Confederacy as Slave Legions revolt and the Union Army's greenskins overwhelm the pure human forces of Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia. Dwarven and Elven minorities in Texas and Louisiana prolong the war to 1865 before being forced to surrender. The 14th Amendment is passed in 1865, giving citizenship to former slaves of all races, making the United States the third nation behind Great Britain and Haiti to grant full citizenship status to Goblinoids, including full civil rights, and the vote.
This is seen by many people as a foolish move, and efforts to roll it back beginning just after Reconstruction and into the 20th century see a see-sawing of legal status, the Jim Crow laws, the Gnasher laws, and various barriers to civil rights continuing well into the 1950s, long after Elven-Americans, Dwarven-Americans and Gnomish-Americans have gained a respected, full status in global society, the Greenskins were the one group nearly everyone, globally, looked down upon.
The stereotypes were violence, stupidity, and savagery. Despite Orcish poets winning international recognition, and artists becoming widely adored for their works, Goblinoids would see continuous subtle infringements, beginning with laws engineered to disarm them as 'dangerously unstable' and 'vicious'. Goblinoid and Orcish citizens in North America would be pushed ever further into the continental interior by a combination of harassment, economic disadvantage, and social ostracisms that only abated when the government wanted soldiers.
In Asia, goblinoid citizens had it slightly worse. In china, it remained legal under the communist regime to hunt them for sport until 1987, in Japan, Ogre-maji or "Oni" were banned from public spaces and it was legal to kill them until 1946. In Korea, Orcish troops and native goblinoids fought for the Republic against the People's Republic because their northern cousins had been purged brutally after Kim's ascension, and the Chinese, when they came across the Yalu river, took pains to kill any greenskin they could catch, including infants.
In Vietnam, the Orcs fought beside the Montagnards against French occupiers, and then against the Vietminh and Vietcong for similar reasons-in South Vietnam, they at least had SOME right to live, unlike the communist north.
The fall of Saigon saw a lot of greenskins fleeing with others, first to the phillipines, and then to North America.
The formation of the Terran Alliance saw a return to 'unpersonhood' for millions of orcs, goblins, and Oni, volunteer formations from orcish communities in the Americas and Australia fought tooth and nail to keep Israel from falling, because they knew what was coming for that exclusively-human group known as Israel.
They lost. Most were never heard from again, until the Great Raid of the late 22nd Century, which freed thousands of victims of Sinai work-camps.
the final uprising occurred shortly before Seven colony ships were stolen from the Luna Yards, taking the refugees from Earth, out into the black 'way the hell away from the people who put us in chains'.
In secret, this was partially organized by a group of Elven-descent spacers and members of The Guild. The Navigator who set the final destination for this group, was a pure strain human named Ngo, a Pathfinder Project pilot of Vietnamese/Montagnard descent born in a mixed-ethnic community in Western Montana.
Kowloon was meant to be so far away, and so hard to reach, that they would, at last, be free.
well, that's not something that lasts.
After nearly two centuries of freedom, in the late 25th century, a Human Supremacist state, the Rim Worlds Republic, found them, and invaded. The initial invasion was to provide fresh stock for the slave markets, and was partially bankrolled by Terran Corporate interests fronting for the Hegemony.
Kowloon lost that war, and began the insurgency, they did so, because if there is one thing Humans, Orcs, and Goblins can agree on, it is that being a slave is bad.
'No peace with slavery' is perhaps the single unifying sentiment in the Kowloon system, and so for the next few centuries, they would fight, and fight, and fight a guerilla war and insurgency to throw the yoke off.
SLDF General Paul Chivington was awarded a medal for the destruction of Dinh Diep, Kowloon's founding city, in 2729. This was not something that the Kowloonese people would forget, or forgive.
in 2768, they took their chance again, with a concerted push and the use of kinetic bombardments, to break the slaver's chains-and this time, they succeeded. When SLDF General Aaron Dechevalier arrived in Kowloon orbit, he found a world free, and enraged. It wasn't difficult for him to persuade the half-orc Warlord Tranh Truk Ngo to rally a horde to punish House Amaris.
It was slightly more difficult to convince them to stop long enough to be given field uniforms and obsolete weapons first.
For the following decade, the 171st Volunteers (Kowloon) were the monsters used as shock troops against the human forces of House Amaris, and by all accounts, they were right terrors, willing to do things pure-human units wouldn't, to win objectives and destroy their hated foes.
This was expected. what was not expected, was how the greenskins of the 171st reacted to the atrocity sites at Elbar. the violence was in keeping with their reputation, the gentle tenderness they expressed to the human victims on Elbar was not.
Nobody expected it when the 171st ran through their medical rations to save the victims of the death camps, nor did anyone realize that up to that point, they'd been holding back. the slaughter of Rim Worlds troops on Elbar was horrifying to the mostly-human-pure SLDF, and General Kerensky had to rein them in for excesses multiple times, all the way back to Earth itself, whereupon he sent them home before planning Operation: Exodus, because while there were other units with greenskins, the 171st were barbaric after Elbar, merciless to the Rim Worlds forces to a degree that sickened many officers in the General's forces.
Kowloon would remain independent for five years after Kerensky left, finally bending the knee to the Lyran Alliance on strict terms guaranteeing citizenship regardless of ancestry, solid guarantees, and a promise that the Lyran Alliance would never permit an atrocity like Elbar to happen again in their space.
The Warlord was made a Duke of the Realm as part of that guarantee of equality with pure-strain humans and other demihuman communities. Rights would be guaranteed.
Needless to say, Kowloonese participated heavily in the succession wars, most often as infantry, but also as aerospace pilots and armor crew. The rarity of Kowloonese mechwarriors comes from the fact that neurohelmet pickups just don't penetrate goblinoid/orcish skulls very well without surgical assistance, and while Kowloon is a majority human world, even the majority population tend to have a little green mixed with the pink.
