"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana
The Stars and Humanity:
The world of the Age of Starmetal was by all rights our real world, its (known) history shared with ours until the dawn of 2016. Time moved on, however, and the timelines diverged with the Starmetal world going through an age of strife and disasters through which humanity rose to the dawn of a new renaissance of human progress.
Sadly, it would not last as the stars, unknowing, or simply uncaring of humanity, set in motion their own plans for the blue marble. So it came to be that humanity’s golden age was destroyed by twisted starfire, reducing the world to madness and ash.
A century has passed since humanity was robbed of its future and, through luck and perseverance, mankind has scraped together their societies and survived. However, with the land warped by fallow magic, mutation, fetal gods, and otherworldly horror, it is unclear if humanity shall live to see the dawning of another century.
The Star-Blighted Earth:In many places in the world, things are surprisingly not that different than how it was before starmetal ash coated the land and sky. Most live diminished, but overall ordinary, lives, with strange Stella twisted beasts, ills, and plants being the greatest disruptions from the mundane. However, many alien magics and horrors do lie in the cracks of a shattering reality. Some areas are so contaminated with Stella energy that the pretence of normality falls away, leaving only a lucid madness that twists reality, ripping apart flesh and sanity and giving rise to impossible things. Behind it all, the power of Stella.
There are other, more mundane changes to the world due to years of pre-bombardment climate change and the ecological shock of the Bombardment. Once liveable arid land has turned into muddy deserts while, though there was some retraction in the cold of the Silence, the sea has risen by three meters, flooding the coast and making places like New Orleans into islands.
Interestingly one could claim that in the grand scheme of things the world has not changed at all and, like a veil being lifted, humanity is beginning to see the truths of the universe that were always there but from which mankind was isolated and ignorant. The original definition of the term apocalypse, “an uncovering”, may be far more applicable to the current situation than calling it the end of the world.
Humanity's Lost Future:Out of strife and disaster of their own making, they had come out stronger with the technology and drive to forge a golden age amongst the heavens. A full colony on the Moon, the start of a flying city on Venus, and even a small outpost on Mars. An age of technological wonders that would soon redefine what it meant to be human. An age that had its problems under the surface that the Descent would dredge up, but still one on the verge of a new dawn of an age of reason. But the stars do not care, they have silenced the gulf between world and sent those who remain on Earth and Moon into a twisted and uncertain future. All that remains are relics of a more rational and Understandable time.
Stella:Know by many names (The Ethereal Power, Magic, The Horror), Stella is one of- if not the defining element of the Post-Bombardment era. Stella is a twisted and poorly understood radiation that is produced by the xeno-crystals and best conducted by the Starmetal of the Bombardment meteorites. It can warp reality and cause unnatural mutations or other anomalous effects. In the wake of the Bombardment whole races of being have been formed in whole or in part by Stella, with some being mostly incorporated into nature.
History
The Human Era:
“It is funny, Humanity and its creations ruled alone on this earth looking to the sky for others to talk to; only now do I wish we had stayed alone.” - Excerpt from a diary found in the New York Metro, 10 A.B.The Human Era was the time when humanity and human civilization was the sole and dominant force on the Earth. The most notable period in the Human Era was the Age of Prosperity. There is no agreed upon timeframe for when the so called “Age of Prosperity” except that is ended sometime between 1 Before Bombardment (B.B.) and 3 After Bombardment (A.B.).
Current Day:The world of “Age of Starmetal” breaks with the real world at the dawn of 2016. All known human history is the same in “Age of Starmetal” as in our real world up to that point.
The Breaking Point Crisis: The Breaking Point Crisis was a series of social, resource, economic, and political crises the rocked much of the second and some of third quarter of the twenty first century. This would see the People’s Republic of China become the New Republic of China. The scars from the terror wars, the collapse of oil, and global warming lead to much of the Middle East becoming an abandoned wasteland. Those who remained made their living from massive solar plants.
Age of Prosperity: The wave of reform and new tech that ended the Breaking Point Crisis pushed humanity into the closest thing to a golden age that it had ever know. It was a far cry from the utopia some in post-bombardment world thought it was however. Civilian drones and robots had taken over so many jobs that it lead to social reforms like universal income and a massive rise in the crafts, art, and a variety of private groups and activities to fill the time. There still were problems, however, because not everyone in the world shared in the prosperity equally and not everyone agreed with a robotized world. For many of the optimistic, space, especially space mining and manned exploration, was seen as the key to humanity’s future.
The Space Renaissance: While known as the Age of Prosperity by the people of the post-bombardment, most of the people alive in the mid to late years of the age would have called it the Space Renaissance. In the final decade before the Descent humanity had settled the moon, created a small floating colony of Venus, and formed a small research outpost on Mars. Three major inventions allowed for the exploration of space -- the quantum thruster, the bio-filter, and compact thorium reactor. The quantum thruster removed the need for physical fuel, the bio-filter was a gmo bio-mechanism that simulate the air cycle of earth to reduce the amount of air need for a trip, and the compact thorium reactor allowed relatively small spaceships (the size of a jumbo jet) to have an effective long term power source.
The Descent:
“We have done this before, and we can do it again. With the power of the U.N.S.A and the international community, we can reduce this ‘bombardment’ to a containable storm the likes of which we have weathered many, many times. THERE WILL BE NO APOCALYPSE!” Secretary General of the UN, 3 B.B.
The Fall of the Human Era:In 3 B.B. a storm of asteroids of unknown nature was detected by the Ares 1 Mars outpost. It was found that these asteroid were on a collision course for Earth. As mass asteroid mining had just became a major industry, there was a great deal of confidence in the international community that, if they worked together, under the relatively new United Nations Space Authority, they could stop the storm from hitting Earth. They failed. What started off as the greatest symbol of hope, unity, and technological power in human history turned into its greatest failure.
It was not humanity’s fault however; no one could have known about the strange nature of these asteroids nor their EMP-like effects on most electronics. Many missions were launched, but only the last one, a group of dumb-fire splitting rods, had even the smallest amount of tangible success. Not that it mattered anyway. By 1 B.B. the world had descended into a chaos of petty wars and riots fuelled by a mix of fear, panic, old feuds, resource hoarding, and misunderstandings. Adding to the fire were rolling brownouts of power and sporadic loss of wireless communication caused by the mysterious pulsing energy from the asteroids. Some tried to flee to the moon, but many were then turned away by the colony's asteroid defense lasers.
Ration Riots:Often confused with the food riots of The Silence, the Ration Riots had a very different context. With the failure of Aegis I, many nations, notably the United States, begin to ration many types of food and emergency goods in order to build up government stockpiles for an apocalypse that seemed increasingly certain. It was not that the rationing was that inconvenient to most people. In fact, until near the end with the Panic Wars, fresh produce and consumer good were rarely rationed at all.
No, the Riots more formed out of fear, fear of where the government stockpile was going and more importantly who was going to have access to them. The Governments of the world tried to hide the full extent of the Aegis Project's failure, but rumors and leaks still spread. It was clear to many that the Havens and other shelter projects would not be able to hold everyone. With the possibility of a Zero Day total toxification scenario it was a very real possibility that had many worried about being left to die. Some of those who did not believe in the worst case scenario still feared the government collapsing after impact, leaving them no way to get supplies.
The first riot started as a simple argument between a customer and a cashier over the man trying to purchase more supplies than his ration card allowed. An argument turned into a fight, a fight into a brawl, a brawl into a riot. As the Panic Wars started, even perishable goods were rationed, leading to protests and even more brawls, many of which quickly devolved into riots.
The Omen:In the final year, a series of events labeled The Omen began. First was waves of electromagnetic interference periodically washing over the Earth that shut down whole communication networks and even some power grids for hours to days at a time. These events were followed by much stranger events. Rumors of people hearing alien whispers and visions coming from the meteors, a rise in the reports of unidentified creatures and objects, some rivers and lakes turning strange colors due to contamination with unknown substances, and a variety of other scattered events of a possibly occult or supernatural nature.
The Panic Wars:In the last year of the Descent, with the failure of Aegis II, and the coming of the Omen, tensions rose to new heights. Some of the events that would come to be known as The Panic Wars would, of course, be caused by ethnic, religious, and political conflicts reignited by the oncoming apocalypse. A lot more were just the results of panicking over access to simple resources. With communications disrupted and disaster looking like a foregone conclusion, many nations began to nationalize their land and stockpile their resources, bringing them into conflict with groups and trade partners often trying to do the same. In other cases panic and the greed of the elites, wishing to insure their own survival and comfort before their people’s, lead to riots and rebellions.
The Aegis Project(s):“What is the point? The world is already ending and the fucking things have not even hit yet! -- Because if this plan fails there will not even be a world to rebuild from.” Unknown scientists of the Aegis 3 project, 1 B.B.
The Aegis project(s) were humanity’s attempts to stop the bombardment. Aegis I was launched in late 3 B.B, and was a series of redirection drones the type of which had been used in the past to mine asteroids. The operation went as expected until the drones reached around 50 miles of the main targets, at which point all drones simultaneously failed and went silent.
Aegis II was a manned redirect mission launched mid 2 B.B. In heavily shielded and highly manual ships, the crews of Aegis II were launched. Once more the mission went as expected until the ship reached around 50 miles of the main targets. Normal transmission went silent for 24 hours until a distorted morse code transmission sent via Aegis II-B’s laser was received. The message was as followed: “crew died, can’t redirect, not natural, demon song, destroy, destroy, destroy”. This message was not released to the public at the time.
Even with the Descent in full swing, the nations of the world prepared to launch one last mission. This was due to the understanding that if the main asteroid hit intact, there would be no hope for recovery. Aegis III was launched in 1 B.B. The final mission was the launching of a set of dumbfire splitter rods targeted solely at the main asteroid. It worked. It was too little, too late however: while it did stop the total annihilation of the surface, it could not stop the rest of the Bombardment.
The Bombardment:
“You did not live through those days like I did, child. You did not look at the true face of the universe’s infinite madness as the land, sea, and sky ripped itself apart. You call me a demon? You know nothing of the true demons I protect you from.” - The Grand Protector (Old Man) of Detroit in correspondence with a local priest, 63 A.B.
The End of the World:On December 20 it began. Three days of fire and death. Three days of thousands of asteroids raining down with force ranging from that of a hand grenade to a hydrogen bomb. While, oddly, most hit land, very few of the larger ones hit major cities, with one of the noted exceptions being New York. Many aboveground said they heard screams of the damned and unearthly songs while visions of impossible colors and items with impossible geometry filled the sky. Crimson waves of fire and water as tall as small skyscrapers washed over the land as great earthquakes awoke dormant volcanoes, mixing their dust and ash with that of the fading nuclear strikes of the Panic Wars and fresh asteroid impacts.
The Burning of New York:While most of the nuclear level asteroid impacts hit in rural areas, one hit ten miles off the coast of New York City. Within seconds a tsunami of water and heat tore into the city at hurricane speeds. Windows shattered and were wiped away in the torrent of debris as the whole city was set on fire and anything that had not found shelter was burned. In the chaos and misinformation of the Descent, many had not known how close the asteroids were to hitting until it was too late. When they did, they rushed, panicking, for a place to hide, fighting with each other to survive. Those that could, fled to the newly reinforced metro system until the bunker doors were closed. Those outside beat on the doors and screamed in futility until fire and ash consumed them.
The Triumph of the Stars:As the days went on, the alien visions and songs grew in intensity. Auroras of orange and blue filled the sky as the stardust in the air turned into flaming multi-colored rain, unearthly ichor, and strange gore as it fell. From the sites of the impacts wisps and spirits were born as the dead were reborn as warped version of themselves. Those who dared to look at the might of the stars or listen to their songs were forsaken and driven to madness and mutation.
The Silence:
“ It was not called the Silence because it was quiet, but because it choked us until all that was left was silence.” - Unknown, 20 A.B.
As the bombardment ended, silence took hold, and a fifteen year long ash winter began. During this a jamming effect spread across the world rendering most wireless communication, including all satellites and med. to high radio frequencies, impossible.
The Fall of the U.S.:Unlucky, too big, too urban, too divided; it was clear from early on that the U.S. was going to fall. It did not fall apart all at once nor was the collapse even across the nation. Within the first year the U.S. had become more or less a loose alliance of independent states with the exception of the east coast, where the federal government still maintained significant power. By the middle of year two it became impossible to sustain and ration the small amount of food being produced by the remaining vertical farms and winter crops. The rise of Stella, Forsaken riots/raids, the collapse of global trade, and mass communication blackout only made the problem worse as managing the nation's resources between states became impossible. By the end of the second year, the U.S. had collapsed into nothing more than a scattered, organized military force and a general acceptance of the dollar amongst the states. By the end of the third year, all the states were in a state of collapse, declaring independence, or formed new smaller unions. All that is left of the old U.S. is its history and a handful of groups claiming to be the old government.
The C.S.A. Crisis:On December 20th, 1 A.B. an attempt was made by rogue militia groups in key southern states to reform the Confederate States of America. Eventually it was crushed by government loyalists and groups of citizens afraid of what a restored C.S.A. would mean to their civil rights. In the end all it succeeded in doing was quickening the collapse of the states involved, disabling the nation, and creating long lasting scars that would last all the way to the modern date.
The Shattering States Conflict:The Shattering States Conflict was a period in the former U.S. between the years of 3 A.B and 15 A.B. The conflict did not fully begin until the complete collapse of the U.S. federal government and union in 3 A.B. By that point the southern states had mostly collapsed due to anarchy caused by the C.S.A. Crisis. Large states were splitting up, the north-eastern states formed the United States of New England, other states declared themselves sovereign and independent, and many Native American nations and separatist neo-states began to expand. It was also at this point that the full effects of Stella were becoming more widespread. The old states could not handle the stress, and they ripped themselves apart until by the time of the first spring, in 15 A.B., all that was left of them was faded memories or hollow shells lacking the power to enforce their claims.
The Rise of Stella:While the nations of the world struggled with wounds of cold and destruction, another blow was dealt to humanity. Stella had been a problem from day one, with undead, ethereal and forsaken beings, but as time went on it got worse. Rapid and sometime impossible mutations began to form. New being were born from Stella and set about to make the new world their home. Some humans began to hear ancient cries from unknown tombs as others learned of the anathematic power of starmetal and Stella. Great storm of Stella ripped through the land and sea as banks of deep, possessed fog covered the world.
Of Metros and Havens:While the world above was torn apart, below the survivors bunkered down. While not all of them could escape the machinations of the surface, some remained mostly isolated. This is not to say that being isolated from the surface alway meant being safe from the horrors of Stella or internal strife.
While both were underground and mostly isolated, life in undercites and in Havens were very different. Havens, unless they were of a class C or D, were normally cleaner, safer, better built and better stocked than undercites, which were little more than ramshackle shanty towns in the tunnels, sprawling out from crude bunkers. Undercites were also less isolated the Havens to to the need to go topside for supplies.
The Canadian Dark Age:Canada, like many nations, only suffered moderate damage from the Bombardment itself, but the insanity and cold sowed by its coming plunged it into chaos. Those not lucky enough to find shelter in self-sustaining bunkers were left to flee south or die of cold and starvation.
The Retreat of Mexico:After the Bombardment hit, the Mexican government decided to consolidate its resources in the Yucatán, stripping and abandoning the rest of its county. The plan was simple: the Mexican government would retreat to the warmest and most fertile part of the nation until the world had stabilized and then reconquer the north. The plan was simple but doomed to fail. None of them expected Stella or the rise of the Starchildern. After ten years, the old government was overthrown and replaced by the the Republic of the Yucatán.
The Age of Starmetal:
“A century we have survived, but unless something changes I don’t know if we will last another.” - Admin Karl Thomas, 100 A.B.
The Age of Starmetal is the current era staring around the spring of 15 A.B. The First Spring:As the Silence faded, the first spring of the new Age of Starmetal began. This was not the world humanity had known, but one warped by alien magics, forgotten relics, and long buried pasts. To the children, spring was a myth come true. For the beings born in the bombardment, it was an alien change.
The survivors of the silence began to rebuild, sowing the first true crops in almost 15 years. With the storms and static finally fading real trade and communication was possible. Homesteads rose and fell as small survivors camp turned it villages and cities.
The Time of Transitions:The next 85 years would mark the history of this new age. Horrors grew in the shadows, creeping and spreading as new human powers tried to established themselves.
It was during this time Nadia Smith (later Speaker Smith of the Freestates Commonwealth) lead her successful coup d'état of the Haven 65, used its technology and resources to form and expand the city of Steel Haven, and later helped to found the Freestates Commonwealths. The Grand Protector “Old Man” of Detroit fully unifies Old Detroit and the surrounding town as the city state of New Detroit and begins to expand his influence in the form of a grand protectorate. The United Nations Space Authority based on the moon finishing re-organizing themselves into the U.N.A. (or more commonly called Una) and start on their plans to ‘reclaim’ the planet. The old souuthern US the last remnents of the C.S.A.are crushed the Magnolia League forms. Many other native and neo states begin to solidify their position in the ashes of the old states.
In old Maine the Hive Plage begins to spread, in the former mid-west the Obsidian Inferno Rages, and a spring of living blood spouts in the late northern Mississippi. The Starblooded use arcane weapons and twisted magics to carve out territory for their tribes.
The Stella War:While the war itself only directly affected Freestates Commonwealth and its western neighbors, the war's influence echoed throughout the continent. It started when a starchild, later named Abaddon the Ever Changing, appeared and laid waste to the alpine nations. A call rang from the being, driving all being of Stella to attack anything not of Stella while driving many Stella Manipulators temporarily mad.
The Crossroads:100 A.B., the current date of the world. Most Humans live on the fringes of survival forming nomadic tribes, primitive villages, and walled city states with only a handful of functioning nation-states cringing to what little stability they can forge. In this age it is exceptional to see permanent settlements with stable governments, let alone large nations with multiple major cities. The world sits at a crossroad between the recovery of Humanity and descent of the world into a state of madness and death. The Commonwealth is struggling to recover from the loss of Steel Haven, paranoia and resource crises rocks UNA, New Detroit is plagued by infighting as its leader withdraws from public life for unknown reasons, Singularity expanded, and the power of Stella grows.
The next century will decide humay’s fate and, in truth, most of the paths lead to its destruction or corruption.
