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« on: 1 October 2008, 00:31:49 »
This is the current backstory for my mod, sorta done in the style of a campaign intro.
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Thousands of years ago, the people of this world numbered perhaps in the billions. Buildings of metal and glass dominated the cities and reached up into the clouds. Wagons like giant metal serpents carried passengers across entire continents in a matter of days and great metal towers breathed out black clouds into the sky. The people were prosperous and happy. That is, until the fuel for their machines started to run out. For hundreds of years, the nations had built giant wells that would drain the ground of its lifeblood, which they refined and used to feed their machines. Without this fuel, which the ancients called "oil", life as they knew it would stop. As the oil got more and more scarce, the nations became more desperate for it, and turned hostile towards each other. The smoke-breathing towers, which had already started to poison the very air the people breathed, began to burn more fiercely as the nations churned out countless machines of war.
As the smoke got worse, the spirits of the world became angry. The rain declared "as you have poisoned me with smoke, so shall I poison the very water you drink!" The rain that had fallen from the sky since the beginning of time became as acid, corroding flesh and iron alike. "Long have I protected you from the fury of the sun, but no longer," said the sky. The sun, having no children of her own, had always been jealous of the children of the earth and sky who dwealt in the world. The sky no longer protected the children that had scorned him and no one could leave the protection of their homes without their skin becoming scorched and charred. Even the sea released its anger upon the people, churning more furiously than ever and creating great floods and cyclones to destroy those who had poisoned it. The fish that had fed the people were long gone, and nothing but destruction came from the waters.
Despite all this, the people continued to drain the earth's blood and as it became more and more scarce. Unwilling to give up their way of life, the nations with no oil left waged war upon those that still had it in relative plenty. Warriors fought and died by the millions as the very ground around them erupted. Great catapults launched death from miles away, causing foul clouds that would dissolve the flesh of their enemies. The nation of the south, which had suffered countless losses, created a plan to destroy their enemies by sending machines out beyond the sky to rain death upon their rivals. As millions more died from these attacks and the very world itself became as poison, the nations formulated techniques for escaping the demise of their brethren.
Some burrowed deep into the ground to hide from the destruction, and we now know these people as the Vaultar, while others built great fortresses that not even the air could penetrate, and we called these people the Pija. Others still found that they could escape this world entirely. Using the ideas and constructs of the southern nation's attacks, the people who would become known as the Amraeg made metal ships that could soar beyond the sky. They used these ships to escape this world and start their lives anew on the surface of the moon above. The Amraeg found the moon to be an inhospitable place and began the greatest endeavor ever known. Over centuries, they changed the climate and surface of their new home through a now long-forgotten process they called "terraforming".
As the Amgraeg began to prosper and multiply, the caves to which the Vaultar had retreated began to collapse until only a handful of survivors were left. The fortresses of the Pija didn't last long either. Before long, they had developed cracks and the toxic air began to seep in. In a few years, they had to be abandoned entirely. The Pija who had numbered in the millions dwindled to the hundreds within a decade, but those who remained were resilient and strong. Their skin eventually turned dark to protect them from the burning light of the sun and they captured wild horses and cattle to survive. Forced into a nomadic lifestyle, they scrounged the desert as scavengers.
By the time the Vaultar emerged from their burrows, centuries had passed. The world they now saw had changed drastically. The forests had already started to regrow and the animals were returning. The spirits of the world had grown calm. The sun no longer scorched the flesh and the sky no longer rained acid upon the ground. Assuming themselves to be the only survivors of the apocalypse, the Vaultar set out to rebuild the lives their ancestors once had.
Meawhile, the Amraeg were numerous and happy, dwelling far above the turmoil below. However, this would not last forever. No one knows what cataclysm befell the Amraeg, whether it was their failure to learn from history's mistakes, a great natural disaster, or perhaps even invaders from beyond the stars. The one thing that is known for certain is that it was something that would have spelled their doom. Escaping their new home much the same way they had come to it, they set out for the world their ancestors had abandoned long ago. Their ships sailed into the sky by the hundreds, but only a few survived the journey. Many of the survivors banded together under General Niandra, who had been the leader of the Amraeg's military for years, and would be known as the Lanto. Her followers stayed near the landing site of their ships in order to make use of the resources left behind in the wreckage. Others followed a man named Maxith as he traveled out of the scorched desert in search of a more hospitable land, eventually founding the nation of Rinarn.
Both groups being unaccustomed to living off of the land, the Lanto and the Rinarn quickly became rivals and competed over resources, much as their predecessors had done centuries ago. Rather than face destruction at the hands of Niandra's forces, the Rinarn retreated farther into the hills, where they now reside. The Lanto quickly multiplied and expanded, creating a vast empire from the remains of the world's decimated cities.
This is how we came to where we are today. For long we have had peace, but our nations stand on the brink of war yet again. Wise though I may be, even I cannot see the future. My generation has come and past and it will not be long before I join them in death. Thus, the fate of our world is in the hands of you and your brethren. Our survival or destruction will be your doing, and yours alone.
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The premise here is that the planet, not Earth but an Earth-like fantasy world, was developing to about the point that Earth was at around the late 1800s and then suddenly experienced a population explosion around the World War One era. The population and numerous manufacturing plants had been pumping sulphuric gases into the atmosphere for a long time, but the sudden growth in population put an increased strain on the environment and the resources of the world. As the fossil fuels were getting used up, tensions between the nations began to mount and eventually resulted in an all-out world war, the likes of which would make Earth's world wars look almost pleasant. Mass genocides, napalm, and chemical warfare were in widespread use. Tens of millions of soldiers and the populations of entire countries were mercilessly slaughtered.
The "great nation of the south", its name long lost to history, launched an ambitious space program with the goal of creating a system of missile satellites to deliver massive chemical payloads and turn the tide of war in their favor. The Hellfire Project, as they called it, was a great success in that they managed to wipe out vast numbers of enemy soldiers and civilians alike. The problem arose when the toxic chemicals leaked into the air and the groundwater, both of which were already partially toxic from industrial pollution. Before long, the air was almost unbreathable and the ozone layer was practically gone. It became readily apparent that life as it was could not continue on the surface of the world. Seeing the current state of things, the nations of the world began what would become some of the greatest and most ambitious projects ever imagined.
The nation of Pija isolated itself in colossal containment structures on the surface and the Vault Dwellers, or Vaultar, made subterranean cities in which to hide. While the Pija's project ultimately failed entirely, a few of the Vaultar's dwellings stayed intact. The Pija then became a nomadic tribal culture, reduced from millions of people to a few hundred within a decade.
The people who would later be called the Amraeg had stolen plans for the Hellfire Project and adapted them, creating a fleet of rockets to escape to the world's moon. The members of the first successful mission were surprised to find the moon completely incapable of sustaining life, so the Amraeg's brighest scientists, still on the planet's surface, set out to develop techniques for transforming the moon's thin atmosphere and even the surface itself. Having gathered all their knowledge and resources, the remaining Amraeg set out to migrate to the moon and terraformed it into a vastly different place. The air and water were cleaner than anyone had experienced planet-side in centuries and the soil was more than capable of supporting vegetation. The Amraeg soon became a thriving population. Living on a new world completely devoid of fossil fuels, they quickly implimented wind power and the solar panel technology they had stolen from the Hellfire Project's satellites.
Things continued in this way for hundreds of years, the nomadic Pija, the isolated Vaultar, and the prosperous utopia of the Amraeg. The most likely cause of the Amraeg's second exodus is thought to be either an alien invasion, environmental cataclysm, or an internal rebellion. When they returned to the planet's surface, the Vaultar had already emerged and the Pija had grown into an entire nation of tribes. The world's ecosystem had mostly re-established itself and the air and water were clean again. The two main groups of surviving Amraeg --most had died from either the disaster on the moon or the journey, perhaps both-- became the Lanto and the Rinarn, founding their respective nations. The militaristic Lanto, under the command of General Niandra and equipped with advanced technology, quickly began to expand their borders, causing the people of the Pija and Vaultar to scatter and flee. Many were not fortunate enough to escape and others joined willingly, allowing the Lanto to become a strong, populous, and multi-cultural empire. Niandra quickly declared herself queen and began to try to rebuild the life she had known among the Amraeg.
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