Also please note that this IS a very long description, I know! But if you want you can skip many of the paragraphs by starting to read where a put *. K? (Although I DO suggest you read the stuff in front of it... it IS interesting...)
Ah, welcome young one. My name is Katelyn Conner, and I am one of the members of the GHC. I will give you a general overview of what is going on here...
It is now the year 2570, a time of reckoning for the galaxy. The galaxy's past so far has been very grim, at best. In 1961 (Correct me if wrong... don't know my dates that well) John F. Kennedy and the rest of the world was engulfed in a race to dicover how to inhibit intellegence into animals. The Cold War, the space race, it was all a farce. We had visited the moon with the crashed alien ship at Roswell, New Mexico already, and the Cold War never really happened. It was all a delicate act to distract the human populous from the REAL race. A race to make a bi-pedal, bazooka-toting animal that could, in theory, know the sides of the war and nothing else (in other words be like a pre-programmed robot). They were using a combination of cloning, gene splicing, and super-advanced bio-engineering from a recovered and secret alien relic at Roswell to accomplish this. This race suceeded, but the animals became all too smart, causing right's activists in the high commands of all countries to object. And so the intelligent animals were kicked off the planet without anyone but the leaders of the nations ever knowing about it. The animals were launched off into space in the worlds only captured Faster-Than-Light capable alien craft; they were destined for a system called Lylat...
In 1962 the "intelligent and bipedal" animals (named IBA Troops by the humans) arrived in Lylat and, having learned the ships controls in that year of travel, landed on a planet they named "Corneria." This planet became the animals' new world, which they could call their own. In 2007 the old term IBA that the animals used for themselves was gone, now replaced with the universal term, "Cornerian."
The Cornerians began building immediately, scavenging their transport for technology and information on their makers' past. Unfortunantly the ships FTL tech was lossed in the crash landing that occured because of the ship running out of fuel on it's way to Corneria. However most other techs were recovered and the alien ship's computers were programmed in all Earth languages so the Cornerians understood easily what information was on it. It just so happened that the ship had massive amounts of information on the humans, and that within ten years all information pertaining to the humans was written and documented in textbooks and computer documents throughout Corneria. The alien craft also had other histories on it, and many of Earth's television broadcasts. The transport, named the "Savior" by the Cornerians, due to the fact that without the ship their race would be dead, made the ship into a protected historical site of sorts. After the ship's dissapearance later on, many earther stereotypes, TV shows, and the Earth Languages remained, only because the Cornerians had made their own versions of the shows from Earth and other things.
The Cornerians quickly established outposts throughout the system, but refused to colonize any worlds since their populations remained too low to colonize any other worlds effectively. The Cornerians quickly established their own government, a feudal, British-desent controlled, tribal government based around war and honor, known as the "Great Cornerian Empire." For decades the empire prospered throughout small battles, oversaw (refereed if you will) by the most powerful tribe... The Grand Imperial Forces. Between the breakout of the Cornerians' first major world war in 2005 and the time of their landing in December of 1962, the population grew from a mere one hundred thousand that originally occupied the transport that had brought them to Lylat, to one billion people.
In 2005 war erupted on Corneria, as a large rebel group wished to defect to colonize Katina. This group wanted to populize the other nearby habitible planets in the system, namely Katina, but the Cornerian High Council (the alliance of tribes) thought it best to stay on Corneria and build a strong and unbesiegable empire. The expansionists wished to spread the already thin population thinner across the system. After a long and bloody war that ended in 2017 with victory for the Expansionists Colonist Army, the empire began to rebuild.
Between 2017-2250 Lylat slowly split into two separate and powerful nations. The splitting of nations began when the populized world of Katina wished to break off from the royal government of Corneria, and become and independant nation. Time seemed to repeat itself in a different place as the Katinan's battled for their independance. The Independence War (as it was called by the Cornerians) broke out in June of 2103. Finally, in 2132, Katina broke it's last ties to it's mother country, and became an independant nation. Macbeth, another colonized world in Lylat, remained under Cornerian control, as well as Fortuna. However the lush world of Zoness lay like a jewel ready to be scooped up. Also in the year 2053 the "Savior" alien ship took off from the surface of Corneria on it's own, apparently fixing it's broken FTL drive over time, causing great fear among the populous. Due to the fact that Cornerian's could not transfer files directly from the ship to their incompatible earth-like computers, within three generations the stories of the Cornerian's true predecessors dissapeared.
In 2298, right before the turn of the 24th century, a great and bloody war broke out on Zoness. The peaceful and serene world turned into a bloody warzone, as both the Cornerian Armies and Katinan Freedom Brigade battled over the world on the ground. Neither nation had yet made any substancial space technologies despite their early exposal to alien relicship tech. Troop transport after troop transport landed on Zoness, as the casualty list rose to nearly half a billion. Finally in 2300 the short but bloody war ended, with victory for the DKW (Democratic Katinan Worlds). However the DKW still remained a minor power compared to the Cornerians...
Things began to change after that war, with the two nations and many smaller nations (Papetoon, etc.) allying into one alliance, called the Cornerian Alliance. Things began to look up for the Cornerians at that point, making their "first" alien contact in 2432 with a race called the Canids. Although the Cornerians already had Canids in their society, these canids were different in the fact that they had evolved independantly on a separate planet (although they didn't know this at this time), that Lupis System (the origin of the Canids) only had Canids (Fox's, Wolves, and Dogs) and that they lived much longer lives consisting of many, many Cornerian lifespans. (The lifespan for Cornerian's at this point was 80-100, the same as humans during this time). The Cornerians also dicovered the FTL drive three years before meeting the Lupus Canid's, and the two races' first encounter was in deep space, right outside of the nearby system, Arctures.
Meanwhile on Earth the humans, now having become an inter-steller, FTL-capable nation, began to plot it's revenge in it's little unoccupied corner of the Galaxy. The humans had been through much, and now had a communistic government called the PHR (Peoples' Human Republic). Although the PHR did have enemies, they did not have many. Actually only one internal group remained their true enemy, the United States of Earth (USE), a descendant of the USA (duh... I wonder what that stands for? :) ). The USE wanted no revenge, while the PHR wanted not only revenge, but to enslave the Cornerian people. The USE had done a similar thing in it's past, and knew the PHR was making a serious mistake. A second Cold War had already been in the process during this time, and the Cornerian Issue was the straw that broke the camel's back, creating open hostilities between the nations after the Balmorra Engagement in 2550, when the PHR was ready to start it's surprise invasion. The war delayed the attempted invasion of the nations of Lylat for three years, as the recently renamed UT (United Terrans) tried to stifle out the also recently renamed UW (United Worlds). After kicking the UW off of Earth the UT thought the UW would give them no more trouble, but they thought falsly. United Worldlens were not ones to give up, as was their history, and they fought vicously to protect Lylat through secret blockades. This whole time Lylat knew nothing of the war occuring over them by the humans, and they knew nothing of the humans from Earth at all (although they knew of the Rebel Alliance's and Galactic Empire's humans). They did not even know the Terrans existed, as did no one else in the galaxy, except maybe a very advanced alien race.
Meanwhile Corneria was at war. In 2535, Fox McCloud was born to Vixy and James McCloud, a young Cornerian couple hopeful for a bright future. Right before Fox's birth the genius Andross began his research into biological weapons. Andross insisted that they could be used to protect Corneria and her allies, but the now pacifistic nation refused to use any of these weapons, and funding was cut off for the genius... not a good idea. Andross went mad, deciding that if the Cornerians would not use his inventions for defense, then he would use them for offense... against Corneria.
In 2542, when Fox was only 7, his mother was killed in a car bomb meant for his father. James and Andross had bad blood running between them, and Andross had meant for the bomb to kill James. Some speculate that Andross himself loved Vixy, and that this was the source of his hate for James. If so it is no wonder that Andross finally went completely mad after this incident. Andross unleashed his biological forces against the unprepaired Cornerians with near-impunity, destroying city after city. Billions perished in the attack, and many more would have died if it weren't for the complex Cornerian rock and cave system that helped to give it's people cover from attacks. Eventually Andross was captured, his evil creations destroyed, and banished to the cold, forsaken, and poisonous world of Venom. And now he was on Venom, plotting his revenge against the nation he once loved.
In 2552 General Pepper, the leader of the Cornerian Air Force, sent the Mercenary Team Star Fox in to investigate "suspicious and threatening signals coming from the 5th planet, Venom." The squad, consisting of James McCloud, the leader, and Peppy Hare, and Pigma Dengar, his two trusted wingman, headed for Venom at their best possible speed, not looking behind them for enemy fleets that would close in and seal their fates later on. On arrival to Venom Pigma betrayed the Star Fox team, and James McCloud and Peppy Hare were captured, James McCloud dying in the prison cells of Venom. Peppy escaped to tell of Fox's father's death, the new Venomian threat, and of Pigma's treachery. Fleets were brought together immediately, but it was too late...
In 2553 Corneria was all but defeated, it's last military HQ's under attack on Katina and Corneria. The two nations began to fall, each of their militaries losing it's hub. But quick acting by Fox McCloud, the new leader of the Star Fox team now comprised of Peppy Hare, Falco Lombardi, and Slippy Toad, saved the day. Fox not only fought the Venomians back to Venom but he also destroyed Andross himself... or did he?
*Start Reading for the Short Version Now*
In 2553, later that year, Avia Flyr was accepted onto the team, but could not stay long and was quickly sent on a long-term diplomatic envoy with Fana McCloud to gather support for the Lylatian Cause. Meanwhile the UT initiated a secret attack on Corneria, but this assault failed with the intervention of Talon Team, an elite military unit led by then, Captain John Robertson.
John Robertson, commander of this station and our fleets, was born on January 4th, 2537, and joined the military when he was young, after Leon, a low-life mercenary, slaughtered his parents for being Cornerian Supporters. Now on a mission to kill Andross, John fled to Corneria and joined it's fleets as an enlisted officer. He was stationed to the CAS "Bastion" where he illegaly flew a fighter without the captains permission. Apparently their were no more pilots, but one fighter left on the Flight Deck, and John, seeing an enemy bomber group approaching the core to destroy the ship, took initiative seeing that his sides' fighters would not get their in time to save the "Bastion". John succeeded in destroying the entire 6-ship wing of bombers with 4 fighters as escort single-handedly, and was offered a 1-year all-expense-paid trip to the academy. He would graduate in one year due to his marvelous flying abilities, and he did in 2550, with honors at that, being number 5 in his class for dogfighting, and number 1 in his class for strategic and starship-command operations (hence his admiralship and leadership capabilities now).
John is now the leader of the Neutraltic Alliance, often called the "Peacekeepers." The NA is an alliance of worlds, and traitors against worlds, that believe in protecting peace with an iron fist. The NA is currently the 3rd side in Galactic War I (GW1). They are acting as a policing group between the two mega-allies, the UW Alliance (UWA), and the UT Alliance (UTA). However the NA has yet to be very sucessful against taming it's enemies, and is currently just fighting to stay alive, nevertheless even TRYING to "police" the two nations!
As a footnote I would also like to add the Nefaral into this picture. I'm sure you've heard of this ultra-advanced, non-corporeal (of pure energy), almost angelic (or demonic) race by now. The Nefaral were discovered in 2563 when John Robertson discovered them and was "split" into two halves by their InterDimensional-WarpGate (IDWG). It is currently unknown the wearabouts in Dimensional Space/Time of the John Robertson that left this dimension, but it is estimated wherever he is he has the appearance of a 16-year-old, even though being 26-years-old at his time of going through, due to the lifespan rejuvenating affects of the WarpGate. *Personal Note: Take a look at Avia's Star Fox Sim inside Avia's site to see what "the other John" is doing. That's basically John in the normal Star Fox universe (well modified but still normal). Also Avia's sim is really good! I suggest you join!
Well I had best show you out back to the bridge now... for more information of how we got where we are between now and when Andross was supposedly defeated by Fox, take a visit to the Nefaralum Galactic History Commitee. They have more information. However this information does ruin some of the surprises in John's (Chris S.'s) books, so beware.