If you are a player in this game your should not be reading this. If you do read this, I will find out. I will eviscerate your character slowly in front of the others. So there. The history begins below. This is your last chance to get out before the hounds close in. :)
Here we go.
Real History
The world is the Earth, over 3,000 years into the future. There have been a few changes.
The Time of the Gods
In the 21st century, interplanetary space flight is common. There are colonies on Mars, the Moon, one of the moons of Jupiter, and Under Mercury, and orbiting stations at Venus and Saturn.
The advent of interstellar travel in the early 22nd century causes a base to be built outside the solar system at the edge of the Oort Cloud. Also way stations are built in orbit of the remaining planets. The method of Star Travel is at first STL inertialess drives, that were used with colony ships to colonize the nearby star systems. Then came the discovery of Flux Portal Spawning in the 23rd century. STL starships were sent to the nearby stars to build portals. The first system went on-line in 2216, and allowed near instantaneous transport to the nearest colonies. The next step was to use this as a stepping stone to the outer colonies and thus explore the galaxy at speeds near the speed of light, At first this seemed an incredible boost for the spread of humanity, but then, in the year 2227 the shit hit the fan. Humanity had successfully colonized 12 star systems, and were sending out robot Portal Manufacture robots that traveled near the speed of light and laid robots in far systems to build new portals. The primary transport system went off-line, and required greater and greater energy to initiate. A second and third Flux Portal were established at equidistant points around the system to allow more rapid transport. They too began to require greater and greater amounts of energy to establish their portals. The companies contracted to build the Portals ignored the environmental scientists statements that this was a very bad thing, and kept the portals operational with bigger and bigger reactors. Abruptly, a bunch of alien spacecraft arrived in system, blinking in from somewhere else to begin ruthlessly slaughtering human colonies. Messages for help were sent out to the nearby colonies which rapidly converted their colony and supply ships into ships of war and used the portals to transport these back to Earth. These warships used nuclear and photon weapons, but were for the large part unshielded against massive attack.
The war in the heavens was terrible. Thermonuclear and more terrible explosions rocked the system. It had gone one for about three days in system as more and more ships transported in, when the humans noticed that the aliens did not target their weapons at the Portal Spawners, and tried to move conflict away from them. One group of humans moved their ships into close proximity to a Portal as it was opening to allow reinforcements through, and used it as a shield against attack. Unfortunately for all concerned, a stray cluster missile was close to the opening portal as it initiated, and detonated.
The resulting energy tore open the flux portal and caused the First Age of Darkness. The energies radiating from the portal were so alien that they altered the space / time continuum as they radiated from it. All starships in the vicinity were obliterated, and all the other portals resonated and fluxed in the same manner. They became micro suns, the primary having the greatest radiant energy, and the Secondary and Tertiary resonating and fluxing with their own differing frequencies. This new energy form acted in strange ways upon the universe (magic). The energy is spreading like a wall across the galaxy at the speed of light. The aliens that know about this (i.e. the ones with FTL hyperspace travel) are attempting to do things about this, but cannot yet.
This alteration to reality as we know it scarred and blasted the planets in system. Needless to say, most life on Earth either ceased to exist, or was altered forever. Those protected from this Flux overload (shielded by spacecraft or by rock), were blasted into unconsciousness and their higher thought functions altered forever. This flux was radiant, and gathered and radiated from sources that were originally radioactive. It mutated living organisms (making those that survived into the creatures of chaos) and changed the structure of materials. There came upon the earth system and the nearby colonies with flux portals the time of darkness.
The First Age of Darkness and the Vampire Kingdoms (to AD 2489)
Human society had striated to some degree. Genetic engineering, made possible after the human experimentation of the Fourth Reich, had reached a point where humans could be engineered for differing jobs. In this brave new world, at least in the first world portions of it, very few were dissatisfied with their lot. Humans ruled, becoming the management caste, and there were Workers (Deltas; stronger build, low intelligence), Scientists and Technicians (Betas; small stature, stocky, high intelligence), Servants (Gammas, small stature, thin build, low intelligence), and Warriors (Alphas, tall, strong, able to induce high metabolic states and repair minor damage to the self). In the vast third world there were only humans, but in many places the same structures began to apply. Due to the level of toxification of the world, large numbers of humans moved underground into massive robot constructed cities. The Humans on the surface were hit worst by the Flux Overload. The few that survived the process became Ghouls and Ghasts: Living from the dead in order to survive, and losing most of their higher brain functions.
Underground, the human enclaves that survived the Flux were altered by it, and lost the capacity to understand their own technology. They became tribal societies, isolated and inbred, living in the dark. Many of them died out, but some survived in this isolated underworld. The Humans became later known as Orcs, Gammas as Goblins, Deltas as Ogres, Betas as Gnomes, and Alphas as Trolls. The Flux field has mutated them, especially since many of them come from places where nuclear facilities exist, and have built up massive Flux charges. There are many tribes of each and also many tribes with integrated structure. Each underground tribe is in part based upon their country of origin, and each have their own version of how they came to be. They were not uncovered until the end of the Golden Age.
The races on the surface were the greatest affected by the Flux. They mutated in order to survive a state that others would call death. The large proportion of these remained as ghouls and lived in horribly tribal fashion. In one surface enclave of the first world, a symbiotic nanotech virus in the intestine and blood mutated. This mutation caused near death it its host after a period of sickness and acclimatization. The mutant virus has various strains, many of which are sterile. In the already genetically altered Androids, the bacteria had differing results, and underwent differing mutations in order to survive the differing host. It created Vampirism in its varying forms.
The Vampire kingdoms that resulted were quite powerful, but also quite chaotic. The Vampires discovered magic and began the first experimentation with the Flux field. They had lost all technology, and build a religion on blood. Their legends relate their origins from one struck down in the dawn of time by the god of the Primary star.
The War of The Gods and Outer Space (AD 2489)
This all began to end when a spacecraft reentered the atmosphere, and landed. It was a STL craft send from one of the far colonies that survived the Flux Overload. Most of the near colonies were annihilated or altered in a similar fashion in the overload, since their flux portals had erupted at the same time as the Primary had, but there were several distant colonies that had weathered the advancing wall of Flux. On many of the colonies, humans continued to rule, but many things had to be relearned, and only a few survived the devolution. One colony in particular managed to survive all the bad things due to the fact that the planet it was on was highly hospitable, but had highly dangerous elements, so the colony had been shielded, but when the dome went down, they were able to live on the surface. This colony became what in later times would be known as the High Orcs. They interbred with the androids (save the Gammas who remained servants and menials) and became mixed blood and strong.
But the ship that came to earth was not from them. The high Orcs lost most technology, much as the earth did. No, the ship was sent from a dying colony. They cryogenically suspended all their remaining personnel, and sent them in a star ship home to earth, after the Overload hit and nearly destroyed their station.
These humans awoke to a nightmare world from their cryogenic suspension. The mutant life of Earth was harmful to most of them, and within a few days of their return most were sick. The Vampire Lord who was investigating their arrive perceived them as a threat, and sent his armies to kill and capture them. The colonists fought back with their weaponry, much of which seemed to do little to slow the horde. They held them back with lasers finally, and broke into an nearly functional underground facility, and holed up there.
The colonists restarted most of the equipment on the base, and held out against the Vampire onslaught. They restarted the nuclear reactor that powered the base, and began to try to inoculate themselves against the diseases of the world. They restarted the android making machines, and in order to facilitate their research, built technicians (Betas). But, just as they were nearing completion of the first few Betas, the Vampire lords assaulted in unison. They were beaten back, but several more colonists were infected by the nanotech virus. One in particular, was not taken to the medical facility, and went through the Change. This man, now vampire, was driven mostly mad by the change and the blood desire, and caused much havoc among the remaining colonists before he was driven off and nearly killed. The remaining five colonists isolated themselves in the power generator and research area of the base, and spent their last days trying to find a cure for the nanotech virus and the other diseases. But, in the end, the last scientist was dying, and so she brought out the first of the Androids to completion, altering the code completely to make it as resistant to disease and infection, and enduring as possible. It was as near to a perfect human as she could engineer given the equipment at hand. She gave it its rudimentary instructions on how to complete the others and how to operate the learning equipment, named it Faye, then died.
The Elven Venging War (to AD 2750)
Faye manufactured others of her kind, all the while learning what she could from the old computers. They were quite badly damaged, but she was quite smart. She read the history of humanity, and began the religion of the elves as the first created of the Gods. Faye and her fellows studied all they could, and made more and more of their kind. They learned about magic in their studies, and began to incorporate it into their technology. Their own reactor had become a powerful repository of magical energy, and they utilized this to made bright and terrible things. They trained themselves and prepared, then, after 100 years of preparation, came out from their hiding into the world. The Vampire lords were threatened, responded in force. But the High Elves (as they became known) were more organized, possessed higher technology, and were determined to pay back the ones who had driven the Gods from the Earth.
The wars were terrible. The Elves rained down death from the sky upon the Vampires and Ghouls, cleansing the world as best they could. They invented the Vampire Bane weapons, capable of killing the nanotech virus with even the smallest wounds, and manufactured as many as they could.
In the end, the Elves won, and the Vampires and their minions were driven underground or into hiding. There are still one or two nations in the distant lands, far on the opposite side of the Earth, but most are gone.
The Golden Age and the Continuing War Against Darkness (to AD 4000)
The Elves established great kingdoms and technocracies, and began to unravel other secrets of the Ancient Ones. They have a low reproduction rate, and so at first relied upon the Devices of the Ancient Ones to make more of their Species. They deciphered the means to make other helpers, and used the programming of the machines to create the Alphas, Betas, Gammas and Deltas again. The first they made were the Betas, in order to aid their research. These became the Dwarves, divided into the scientist (high) and technician (low) castes. Then the Elves made the Alphas, in order to have them follow up the war on the Vampire Lords. These became the Armies of the Elves, and more will be said about them later. Next, the elves created the Gammas as servants for them to reduce their need to perform menial tasks. These became the little people, the Halflings. And last, as laborers and workers, the Deltas, who became the Humans of the new world. They altered the orginial Delta programming, to make them less stupid and thuggish.
These races coexisted peacefully for a thousand years, slowly expanding out again across the world, uncovering cashes of old technology, and learning. In peace, that is, except the Army, which continued to fight against the Vampire plague wherever it arose among the lesser races. The lesser races out produced the Elves, and began to form small nations of their own, like staying with like. The Elves encouraged this, since they had quite liberated ideas about most things excepting the Vampires, who they saw as banishers of the Gods.
There were a few problems, in particular to do with the Armies. At first this was because the Alphas of the old world were ill equipped to deal with the Vampires of the new, and secondly because the old genetic programming gave them only a ten year life span. The Elves discovered a way to introduce their own genetic resistance to the vampiric nanotech virus into their Alphas, and further to remove the genetic blocks on survival from the Alphas original programming. They made a second generation breed. The first generation they retired, and they died out in ten years. The Elves involved in the original creation of the Alphas were considered terrible failures, and became outcasts from the remainder of Elven society. More about these guys later.
This second generation of Alphas were pretty powerful. They sought out the homes and forts of the Vampire Lords and slaughtered many of them. Then one Vampire Lord, in the panic of being hunted, fled deep into the earth and came across a sealed portal. He forced it open, and discovered an ancient underearth city, filled with orc, ogres, trolls, goblins and gnomes. He enlisted their aid, transforming their leaders into Vampires, and they waited for the first of the Elven warriors to discover them.
The resulting ambush wiped out many of the second generation Alphas of the Elves, and many more were captured and subjected to torture and experimentation. This Undercity had some remnants of nanotech technology, but not much. From the captured Alphas the Dark Lords became aware of the outcast elves, and decided to see if they could find any of them. They did, and an alliance was formed between the Outcast elves (later known as the drow) and the Dark Lords.
These elves sought to learn all they could about the Nanotech virus, and realized that those infected were still human, and not inhuman monsters as the elves sought to believe. The outcasts, aided by the gnomes of the Dark Lords learned about nanotech technology, and sought to find a way to alter the virus. They used the captured Alphas as guinea pigs, an felt able to do so since they were the evidence of their previous failures. And they met with some successes, before the Elves responded to the loss of so many of their Alphas, and sent a strong army to clean out this strange new force.
The resulting war was short, and marked by surprises for the Elves. At first there was the spontaneous existence of new races arrayed against them, then the realization that elves were aiding Vampires, and finally the existence of a new Hybrid organism; Zoanthropes: Amalgams of the Second generation Alphas and the altered nanotech virus. This race did not take part, but were discovered.
The Elves cleansed the entire area. However, in the confusion, most of the leaders of all the new groups escaped down into the earth. The new Zoanthropes escaped both there and onto the surface world.
Subjugation of the Underworld and the Zoanthrope Revolution (to AD 4500)
The escaped Drow and Vampires fled into the earth and met with other tribes, recruiting as they went. They formed alliances and discovered old technology, and subjugated many devolved human enclaves. After about five hundred years, the underworld of the Elven homeland and the nearby continent were all under the command of the drow and vampires.
On the surface, things were not so happy either. The underworld races that escaped onto the surface became raiders at the edge of civilization, a constant barbarian bother. The gnomes became civilized, but the others remained a problem. Then there came the real big worry for the Elves.
The Zoanthropes at first returned to the fold, as war wounded Alphas. But, over time, the virus spread to all Alphas, and either they died or transformed into the Zoanthropes. The virus was non specific enough that it was capable of infecting Deltas (humans) as well, but with slightly more limited results. The Elf Lords knew something was going on, and concentrated research upon this new phenomenon. Because of the Elven prejudice against Vampires, though, they had no viable samples of the original nanotech virus and had little research into nanotechnology at all. They had to learn everything from scratch. They discovered one factor that would stop the infection from spreading once a person is infected, but that is all (wolvesbane).
The Zoanthropes began to learn how to master shape shifting. The greatest of the masters learned to assume Elven form, and became a journeyman to the Elven researchers, learning all that they did about the affliction, and also learning magic and technology. When she had learned enough, she faked her own death, and went among the Alphas, teaching all who would listen.
The Zoanthropes gathered together, and decided they no longer wanted to be the warriors of the Elves and doing the Elven dirty work. They got in touch with many other surface races, and stirred up rebellious feeling among them towards the Elves, some overtly and some covertly in the forms of the race they infiltrated.
A little prematurely, under attack from an ogre group, several dwarfish tribes formally informed the Elvish Lords. that they were no longer going to rely upon Elven protection, and were going to form Armies of their own. They joined with the Zoanthropes, and eliminated the threat of the Ogres.
The Elvish Lords were divided in their opinions about this, and some few decided to go in with an iron hand and restore the order. They were slaughtered by the Zoanthropes in the form of dwarves, who were waiting for just this to happen. The elves who survived reported back to command, and the Elves sent in the flying craft of destruction, and wiped out the tribe they believed responsible.
Abruptly, the shit hit the fan everywhere. There were rebellions everywhere, in numerous places led by Zoanthrope technomancers against the Elves. The Elves responded with vicious technology, and forcibly put the rebellion down.
The Zoanthropes were killed or cast out, and the other races migrated away from the Elves. The Elves vowed never to create life again using the Devices of the Ancient Ones.
Peace resumed for a while. The Elves recouped from their losses, and began to concentrate upon the other technologies of the Ancient Ones. They discovered a space port and began to unravel the secrets of star travel. A peculiar religion developed among the Elves, about traveling Oversea (space) to where the Ancient Ones still dwelled, and prepared a place for the Elves.
But then, the shit hit the fan again, in a big way.
The Elf Orc War and the Final Solution (to AD 4559)
The Underlords decided the time was ripe, and rose to the surface again. The resulting conflict caused the Elves, Humans and Dwarves to lay aside their differences, and band together against the powers that rose from the depths. The war was great and terrible, lasting many years, and raging across much of the earth. Zoanthropes sided with the dark forces. The little people found ways of hiding. Great and terrible weapons were constructed on both sides, and many were used with impunity.
In the end, the elves were loosing. The dwarves and humans were isolated in their forts and caves, and the Elven sky ships were all forced from the air by weapons of darkness. The Space Port was besieged, and the defenders were filled with fanatical zeal. They believed that if the port were lost, then all hope for the Elves to join the Ancient Ones would be lost. They had deciphered the method for arming a thermonuclear device, and were ready to use it as the last line of defense. Unfortunately for all concerned, this one was functional, and furthermore had been so since the time of the Flux Overload, and had built up a horrendous Flux Charge.
The Space Port was overrun. The Device was triggered. All Hell Broke Loose.
Literally.
The Second Age of Darkness, and the Time of Demons (to AD 4900)
This explosion causes all flux charged thermonuclear devices still functional on the planet to detonate. The explosion was so bright that it was seen on the High Orc Colony in the year AD 4575 (26 light years distant), and chosen by them as the time of beginning of their calendar. The flux surge tore apart much of space time in the vicinity of Earth, and ripped open weaknesses in the continuum. Flux gathered in living beings, and many died from the spontaneous mutations and chaos surging through them. The blast radii of the explosions were dimension shifted, becoming zones on the planet where magic and order conflict and are hazy. The creatures living in these places are often shifted out of time, losing synchronization with the rest of the world.
Attracted by the explosion, the Aliens that survived the original Flux Overload, came to the Earth. The first had taken over the base on the moon of Jupiter and several orbital stations in the outer solar system. They had adapted to the change in universal field and developed powerful technomancy items. Their technology is biological, and they are a self augmented race. In the old understanding they were the Grays. Now they are called the Demons. They have lost contact with their original home world due to the non existence of hyperspace inside the Flux Wavewall, and have evolved a while on their own.
There are two warring factions among the demons. The first wishes to annihilate humanity for what they have done, and have a pathological hatred of all mortals. They are hierarchical on a system of strength, and since it is biomancy that grants them strength, they accord much privilege to the researchers.
The second faction seek to subjugate all mortals and other races in order to better use them to understand the new universe. They are also hierarchical, but have a system of merit according to success.
This race has developed psitech and incorporated it into their biotech to the point where they can manipulate the spirit plane. The first faction are the Devourers, increasing their strength by destroying the souls of others. The second faction are the Harvesters, gathering armies of spirits and psitorturing them to follow the orders of the overminds.
These races put transporter beacons in Halfway stations in earth orbit and began to transport down to earth to gather the souls of the races there.
The remaining Elf Lords not driven insane or killed or shifted between, went into hiding. They used whatever power they had left and fled into the blast zones, using magic to navigate them paths. Many ancient secrets were lost, and survival once more became the concern. Those who remained behind joined other communities or hid away in forests. All the other races began to live in the age of terror, with demons wandering willy nilly around the planet, opposed only sometimes.
The Underlords struck bargains with the Harvester Demons, and provided souls for them on a regular basis for protection. Then began the Demon wars, when demon fought demon for possession of mortals, with many of the living siding with the Harvesters to drive away the Devourers. And so the Harvesters won, and set up several underworld kingdoms and many overworld slave nations.
As aside, a group of reptilian aliens, who had discovered hyperspace travel before the Flux Overload, sent an expeditionary force to Earth at the time of the explosion to find out what had happened. Unfortunately, when it crossed the Wall of Flux, it was flung out of hyperspace, warped by the energies of the explosion. Since Hyperspace is altered to become the Ether, the craft had to continue its mission STL. It arrived in system, and proceeded to the third planet: the source of the second explosion. The reptilians had suffered a great deal of mutation since they were in hyperspace when hit by the Flux, and generated eggs and put them into stasis before dying. The computers managed to reenter the atmosphere, but crashed. The eggs hatched and out grew the Dragons and Dragon Kin. They populated and dominated a continent, and kept the demons off it. Some flew to other lands and began kingdoms and fought Demons there.
Then a new force came on the scene.
The Angels and the War of Heaven (to AD 5000)
A third group of aliens became involved. These are the Nordics. They have been out of the picture since the start of the flux overload, but now their home world at Sirius has been overrun by the Wavewall, and they have weathered the storm. They have been altered by the experience, and now are effectively the Angels. They are highly psionic, and now also highly magical. But there are few of them, and many are devoted to the interstellar war between themselves and the Grays. Only a few made the journey to Earth. They have many purposes, in particular, stopping the Grays, finding out what in hell happened to cause the flux explosion, and aiding humans in their now myriad forms to reach their potential. They set up a massive star base orbiting the earth, calling it Haven, and start expanding it by mining the asteroid belt. They get in contact with humans, and begin to fight the Demons. A great war happens in the sky, and the demons are finally beaten back, and their transport beacon ships destroyed. The demons on earth go into hiding, and those in space start working on other ways to get at mortals.
The Present and Recent History (to AD 5500)
Angels have ceased to walk the Earth. The nations of the Earth have regrouped and regrown. Dragons have gained in power, the underworld is involved in schemes to bring back the demons, the Elves remain in hiding, keeping their secrets to themselves, and now a new technology is being developed, one that has everything beginning to fall toward chaos once more.
Warp magic and Gate forming have started.
The Human, Dwarven, and remaining Elvish lands in the vecinity of the game banded together in the Second Time of darkness and faught a successful battle against a Harvester Demon Lord. The date system of the region is based upon the day when the angel / gods first appeared (0 AN- After Nordics, which occured in the year 4916 AD, not that they know it). After the War in Heaven, in which the Hegemony succeded moderately and drove the demons from the surface of the land, there was peace for about one hundred years. The Hegemony became weaker, each of the Kings and Lords sending lesser emmisaries to the Nonesday conferences. None would accept an overlord, and so the situation began to deteriate. The Hegemony consisted of the human nations of Malia, Valcorn, Nisitia and Airie, the Dwarven Nations of Trogorth and Petrath, and the Elven Lands of Serentia. There are a few lordlings of halflings and gnomes that also take part.
The land that the characters are on is Africa, or rather, what is left of that continent. The poles have swapped, so what they consider north is in fact south.
Hope you find this interesting! If so, lemme know... Evan