'The Old War'
A nearly 200 year conflict was waged for Albion's independence, known as 'the old war'. In its early days, Albion and Aleph served as a factory system for the extraction of sheoul for the manufacture of weapons and battleships.
At this time it should be noted, Aleph was already being contested by frequent Polygons, particularly type_iv_roam probes which would frequently deep-invade the territory of Aleph and strike its core planets.
To expedite the production of weapons, the conditions of peoples on Lennox and Banquo fell into slavery and Thunderhead was bombed to break up its sheoul reserves, resulting in massive losses of the local populations on the surrounding planets. These of course, meant nothing to the Greater Cluster whom at the time posessed Aleph.
Beginning in Albion, the people of Aleph rebelled and soon took advantage of polygon invasion to gain control of the factories and resources in secret - fighting the war themselves as a military funded by the Greater Cluster (known as the Rangers) before then cutting off their ties making Aleph inaccessible to them.