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Into Infinity
Into Infinity
Niya Liu Ma Legion Storm
Introduction
Into Infinity, a Space Opera inspired by the works of Peter F. Hamilton, Kim Stanley Robinson, Patrick Rothfuss, J. R. R. Tolkein, combines High Fantasy and Far-Future Science Fiction in the Galaxy of the 12th Age of Asterion to tell the stories of a disparate cast of characters on both sides of The Syrinx Gap, as well as those of the mysterious Silven.
Set over 2,000,000 years in the future, and after numerous apocalyptic events, humanity has made contact with a species remarkably similar to themselves but far beyond the borders of its own territories. Unbeknownst to them, humanity has reunited with their distant cousins, long lost on a desperate voyage following the apocalyptic aftermath of the ARMA Wars.
In echoes of history forgotten by all but a few, the Two Tribes of Humanity descend once more into a total war of supremacy, awakening in their fighting a dormant malignance known only as The Maw. As The Maw devours the universe, leaving in its wake naked singularities whose presence corrupts the very fabric of reality, humanity must overcome their differences, conquer impossible challenges, and dive headfirst into infinity to silence The Maw before all is lost to it.
Setting Overview
The Way
Humanity in the Galaxy of the 12th Age can be understood from the perspectives of its two distinct regions and the tribes of humanity who inhabit them. The first Tribe is the Terranborn whose domain is known as The Way. The Way, for all its splendour and expanse, pales in size, glory, and wealth to that of the Luneans whose domain is known as The Divide.
The Way occupies most of the primary arm of the Milky Way within which Terra—or Earth—and the Sol System is located. It is separated into three discrete zones. The first is not referred to by any specific terminology, but is the region of the galaxy that has been fully explored, mapped, and hosts its primary factions—or empires—and can be referred to as the Central Zone or CZ.
Beyond the Central Zone is the Outer Zone—a region of colonial expansion where the average population density begins to drop off as it approaches the borders of the Deep Zone. This region of The Way is often referred to as “The Galactic Rim”. While less dangerous to travel in than the Deep Zone, The Outer Zone is less well developed and mapped than the Central Zone, making any ventures into it a risky affair. The OZ expands as Deep Zone Explorers map new areas of The Way.
The Deep Zone, lying beyond the outskirts of the Outer Zone, is the frontier of human exploration. Colonies, way stations, and refuelling depots are almost nonexistent in this region of The Way. Travel here is fraught with risk and exploratory missions are only undertaken by the bravest and most well-prepared, or the most foolhardy and desperate. Most who enter the DZ do not return.
Cathedral of the Maiden, Ofh Amariril
Matuln City, Matuln (Daughters of Matrioshka)
Monument to Paradise Lost & City of Nufondon, Tsen Jili (Sit Tsen)
The Divide
Across The Gap of Syrinx, The Luneans, represented by their Five Houses, have aggressively colonised their pocket of the galaxy, referred to as The Divide by the Terranborn and The Expanse until the arrival of The Syrinx on its Penitent Odyssey in the system of Tsen Jili. (Upon recognising the Terranborn as their long-lost cousins, the Luneans included The Way into The Expanse.)
The Divide dwarfs The Way by a factor of ten, expanding at a steady rate of three times that of The Way due to vastly superior technology, though the Four Houses who claim territory expand at slightly different rates.
The Divide is largely separated into four “domains”, following the lines of expansion of its Four Territorial Houses—Sit Tsen, ArXv, Daughters of Matrioshka, and The Altered States (the Fifth House is an Herbalist analogue faction known as The Loom). Of the Four, Sit Tsen is the First Rank, and makes up the majority of both population and territorial claims, accounting for 62% of Lunean territory and 68% of its population, expanding at four times the rate of the next rank. The Second Rank is occupied by The Altered States, claiming 23% of Lunean territory but only 11% of its population. Daughters of Matrioshka are the Third Rank, claiming all but the last .2% of territory, and 0.08% of population. ArXv is the Fourth Rank, claiming only a handful of worlds as well as Star Lotus Station—the Lunean’s Centre of Arts, Culture, and Governance.
Collectively, The Way and The Divide occupy roughly 1/4 of The Milky Way, as well as small parts of the Andromeda Galaxy and are referred to as The Quarter, The Domain, or The Expanse—depending on which side of The Divide and The Trifecta is speaking.
Aluvi Umon, Dashin Kokubo (Daughters of Matrioshka)
Lucent Plains of Aurol, Aurol (ArXv)
Falgrm District, Izdr, Gvoz Thâim (Altered States)
Treader-Class Transit Superliner (Sit Tsen)
Whispering Hills, Sonder (Altered States)
Serenity, Argentmarth (ArXv)
Tortuga GF8084 XL Atlas-Class Cargo Ship, Orion Shipwrights (Provincial Grey)
Fernwalker Sanctuary, Siffinyil (Cloud-Forest)
The Glitch
One central feature of the universe of Into Infinity is a creeping corruption of the laws of nature known simply as "the Glitch". Manifested through ill-understood phenomena called Temponovae, the Glitch can be harnessed to bend the laws of physics, suspend natural order, and even, among those called Relicborn, channel the glitch as conduits of the supercausal.
The Glitch is hardly a miracle, though. Glitch Fields (GQFs) when weak, create phase suspensions at the core of technologies essential for interstellar colonisation. GQFs serve critical functions in everything from interstellar transit engines (ITEs) to the manufacturing of metamaterials necessary for modern construction and shipbuilding.
However, when GQFs reach a critical strength, they will start to cause breakdowns in the fabric of reality with exponentially increasing severity as the field strength increases. Spaciotemporal distortions, glitched matter, and even manifestations of entities, objects, or whole spaces can occur as a GQF intensifies. Geometries inside of a GQF can heavily distort, leading to non-Euclidean paths, pocket spaces, and a phenomenon known as proximity-dependent spacetime echoing.
Without proper shielding, training, and protection, non-Darklings can suffer from Acute Glitch Corruption, manifest benevolent and/or malevolent Dreamborn entities through entanglement with residual entropic imprints (aka entropic echoes) of the 136k-AF TDE Collapse.
The first recorded detection of a GQF field was after the Hawking Incident of 2580 at Denali National Laboratory's ExPLORE Facility. Best research suggests that the Glitch's effect does not so much "break reality" as it causes fundamental laws of nature to enter flux states with well-defined values at strengths of 5.5 and below.
Dreamcaster Totem Flask
Sorcerer's Scepter (Head)
Terran History:
2601 CE to 136,000 AF
Apoch Freeze
The few survivors of ARMA and the Apoch-Freeze, a small population of humans from Stronghold: Gibraltat and the Coldblood Sapiens reseeded and repopulated the earth. During this time, the Alaska-Yukon Radiation Zone, home of the residual after-effects of the Hawking Incident at Denali National Labs, underwent massive changes through interactions with metastable Glitch Fields (GQF/s) left behind.
By the year 135,905 AF, Alaska-Yukon Radiation Zone--known now as the Dark Lands--is ground zero for a territory war between fledgling nuclear empires. In the year 136,000 AF, nuclear bombs are dropped over the ruins of DNL with enough energy to push the residual GQFs out of metastability.
As the DNL Metastable Field Cluster collapsed it created a persistent Glitch Field epicentered in a newly manifested sister-satellite known as Dark Sister. This event, known as the 136k-AF TDE Collapse, disabled all electronic systems, and the new stable GQF's corruption hampered any attempts to produce any form of advanced technology.
Immediately following the 136k-AF TDE Collapse, a climatological crisis ensued, caused both by the Collapse as well as the influence of the new planet chasing Earth in its orbit from 500,000km away. Dark Sister's highly variable gravitational influence on Earth (between .24 Lunar G and 3.41 Lunar G) caused severe tidal events, leading to ecological catastrophes and the first devastating "Legion Storms".
The rise of the Dreamborn-Mythics from humanity's collective mythos and the Relicborn Awakening occurring at the same time made a perfect storm of apocalyptic crises and plunged humanity into a dark age known as the Era of Forgetting.
Pale Lake Scrapwork Station, Ya Kui Nation.
circa 18,204 AF
Painting of Ruins of Imperial Spire in Legion Storm, Evergreen Stronghold.
circa 12,000 GS
0 GS to 420,000 GS
Era of Forgetting
The Era of Forgetting, separated into Six Ages, is almost entirely devoid of any recorded history. The few extant artefacts and archaeological remains tell a story of humanity on the brink, with sedentary farming villages becoming exceedingly rare due to a variety of factors ranging from climatological conditions to conflicts with Dreamborn populations.
Most artefacts from the first 320,000 years of this period come from a 15,000 year period which saw Earth's climate to settle enough to humans to form agrarian societies again. Human settlements inevitable ran into conflict with Dreamborn Mythics, leading to escalating conflicts until a Third Age of Technology arose and was destroyed in a matter of a century following an all-out war of dominion between humanity and the Dreamborn Mythics.
After a third complete collapse of human society, humanity and the Dreamborn Mythics signed the First Mythic Treaty--one provision of which gave the Dreamborn Mythics five millennia of absolute dominion over humanity. This era, known as the Age of Mythos, saw the rebuilding and rediscovery of a great deal of lost technology and history. This, as well as a number of other factors, led to a prolonged period of peace, stability, and progress leading to the end of the Era of Forgetting at the close of the Age of the Long March in the year 420,000 GS.
1 A1 EI to Present
The Ages of Asterion
A1
At midnight, on the last day of the year 420,000 GS, the distant descendants of Homo sapien sapien switched on The First Gate--a sustained wormhole--bridging Earth and Mars for the first time in over 500,000 years, declaring the momentuous occasion a Hinge of the Ages, and the beginning of the Age of the Stars. This was to be known as the First Age of Asterion.
This Age saw humanity terraform Mars, and then the entire Solar System in the Epoch of the First Gate, the Epoch of Mars, and the Epochs of Sol.
A2
The first five Epochs--known as the Five Epochs of Struggle-- saw the humans of Terra, known today as Homo terrani, send several interstellar missions to Proxima Centauri, only for each successive mission to end in failure as their crews and passengers succumbed to a sickness known as space wasting. In E3, H. terrani made the decision to engineer a more robust population of human capable of withstanding the harsh realities of interstellar space and exoplanetary colonisation. These would become Homo asteri--men of the stars.
Homo Asteri established the first extrasolar colony on a suitable exoplanet orbiting Proxima Centauri, followed quickly thereafter by five additional colonies in what would become known as the Epochs of Five Colonies.
Proximal Gate Transit Vessel leaving Martian Barrage.
circa A2 E4
View of Atlas Island Westphalla District, New Rio from 100km away.
A8 E3
Imperium Kaidan Extraction Installation, IZ_12848603, Hàkétzü Province, Kaidan DZ.
A9 E8
A3-A5 EII
The Great Expanse, The Age of Rivers, & The Incursion
The subsequent 216,000 years--now referred to as Tanno(a portmonteau of Terran anno)--saw H. asteri spread across hundreds of star systems, establishing various empires, including the greatest up to that point.
The River, an empire spanning 115 Planets at its peak, housed nearly 40% of the entire human population. Its Crown World--New Rio--was the centre of trade, learning, art, and culture. Taking on the title of Torchbearers and True Heirs of the Old Sapiens, The River grew in wealth and prestige until the middle of the 2nd Epoch of the Fifth Age, when everything changed.
The Incursion was the largest and bloodiest war humanity ever fought. Attracted by The River's expansive, terraformed worlds, a hostile species of xenosapients swept through the empire, conquering one undefended world after another until the Confederation of Rimworlds--recognising the threat at hand--stalled the Incursion inside the New Rio System at grave cost.
The nearly 10,000 Tanno that followed saw humanity constantly fighting a desperate stalemate against the Incursion. In an act of desperation, the Confederation of Rimworlds created and implemented the First-Class Corps of Republic Marines--later shortened to the First Marine Corps or First Marines.
This army of elite, highly augmented, cybernetic super soldiers quickly turned the tides of battle. With ten full field armies of First Marines bolstering the forces of humanity, the Incursion was chased deep into unexplored territory never to be seen again.
The devastation of The Incursion, and the deep scars it left on the cultural memory of those who survived it, set humanity back hundreds of thousands of years. Through both the initial impact and seven ages of near-stagnation, humanity in the 12th Age of Asterion has barely advanced at all.
A12
Winters' Dawn, The Trifacta, and The Maw
New factions emerging along the galactic rim are beginning to challenge the old orders, rekindle old rivalries, and push the Terranborn into a new era of enlightenment.
Winters Cloak, led by their Undying Empress Ljún Fhæ, have split The Way in three. With new technologies, innovations, and advancements both many ages beyond any other faction and riding so close to the line of Technathema, and an Empress of unwavering will, the Galactic Council, on a split vote, decided to expel Winters Cloak and condemn them as Harbingers of Incursion, causing the Council to split into what is known as the Trifacta.
Those that voted for expulsion are known as The Veil, those that voted against are The Cloaked, and those that abstained are known as The Faithless. Bitter rivalries have been drawn down the lines of the Trifacta, with Veiled and Faithless Crusades launched against each other and The Cloaked for much of the 12th Age.
The Confederation of Rimworlds, Republic, an isolationist empire on the rim of Laughlin's Wall has maintained total and exclusive control over the Rimworlds and surrounding Jack Fields since their split from The River in the 4th Age. Holding control over The Way's richest reserves of strategic resources, The CORR can cripple any nation or faction with the power of the almighty embargo.
The CORR's Military, the Armed Forces of the Republic (AFR), hardened by 8 ages of warfare, is a military with no equal. Better training, better equipment, the AFR's greatest strength is its unbreakable will. The AFR's solitary objective being the defense of the Rimworlds and Her Sworn Allies, it has only marched on the offensive three times in its entire history, each time following the destruction of one of its worlds and against an aggressor who refused to sue for peace. In its 800,000 years of history, the AFR has never been defeated.
The Herbalists, a faction of strange, mysterious, transhumans transformed by an incomprehensible creature known only as The Goddess, have been growing in numbers as their Sacred Forests have sprouted from a flood of World Trees sprouting across The Way. Many of the First Seeds, those whose bargain with the Goddess aboard their doomed colony ships in the 4th Age gave birth Alaþ Fasjël and the Four Branches, are called to the World Tree at Phoenix-Monikyn, the Crown Prime Cathedral of the Fifth Branch.
Beneath the boughs of their great tree, Asiyn and Lilith alongside Aisling of the Dawn Star prepare for the opening of The Maw, whose echoes grow ever louder in the Tapestry of Time.
View of Volnir City Centre & Space Elevators, Winters Cloak.
A12 E1
View of New Coldharbour, Phoenix-Monikyn, CORR. A12 E3.
Lunean History Coming Soon
Into Infinity is in very early preproduction. Expect Orbital Drophammer,Across The Way, Across The Divide, Wwostloch's Run, and Feathers of Seven Moons before Into Infinity Vol.1.
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