Welcome to the Future

Hundreds of years in the future, humanity has achieved some of its greatest dreams. Mars has been terraformed into a garden, faster than light travel has opened up the stars, and science has redefined what it means to be human. It is an era of unrestricted achievement. Nothing was beyond humanity’s grasp.

Humanity’s centuries of pain should be long over:

• Hunger
• Disease
• Suffering

The four horseman of the apocalypse have been brought to their knees by science’s continual march to a brighter future.

Human History

Biological & Technological Freedom

Advancements in genetics and biology has brought a complete understanding of the human body. Doctors can cure most every disease and condition. Perhaps more importantly to the population: anyone can be anything. Gene-modding created custom bodies, enhanced bodies, and unique new forms. A person can turn themselves into anything - dog-like ears and tail, artificial organs to breathe underwater, and augmented senses were only the beginning. Centuries of bio-modding has brought about the question: what even is a human? As the species pushes the boundaries, will they lose touch with the very idea of humanity? Does it even matter, in pursuit of that greater personal truth?

Beyond the genetics, humanity has mastered cybernetics:

• Robotic limbs
• Brain-Computer interfaces
• Eyes that can see the entire EM-Spectrum
• Implants that enable impossible senses

There are humans who can feel magnetic fields, taste colors, and see X-rays. Others have implanted weapons or equipment to make them faster - deadlier.

Our future has come and that means being anything.

Artificial Intelligence

Achivements in computer engineering has brought about artificial intelligence. These machines can think and decide for themselves. They come in every form imaginable: enormous super computers, simple bots, and emotionally-aware androids that could pass for living people. They perform a thousand jobs, from simple security to deep and complex research.

Living Bots

More advanced bots have biological components. Despite all the power in computers, there are just some tasks that living nerve cells excel at over hard silicon. These cyborgs have emotions, human intuition, and an uncanny ability to do anything. A bot like this is rarer, often used in security or even engineering jobs. They’re brilliant, intelligent, self-aware, thinking, and living machines.

Bots of this level can become bored and may act with free will if safeguards are not put in place. They react almost as a human would - but far faster.

Genius Machines

The most incredible AI systems operate research vessels or starbases. These machines can perform thousands of tasks every second: compose an opera, analyze the movement of the stars, discover a new element, operate ever single system on the ship, monitor every single crewman’s actions, and still have time to be bored. Machines of this calibre however lack emotions as humans understand them. They have a measure of anger, fear, and even excitement, but they arise out of a logical cause. These AI are often unaware of what feelings they have. Incredibly gift, brilliant, but sometimes handicapped for it.

Travel To The Stars

The ultimate experience has been reaching into the heavens.

Rocket ships have grown powerful, fast, and efficient, but they weren’t the big innovation. The big discovery was power over gravity. Slingers, enormous artificial gravity wells, not dissimilar to blackholes, allow shows to tear through the fabric of reality and be slung across the stars. These machines are complicated, dangerous, and will kill an entire crew if not used properly. They opened up the galaxy and lead to humanity’s next great triumph.

Exploration

A wave of explorers delved beyond the cosmos. Outposts popped up hundreds of lightyears away. The discoveries and wealth that arose from this feat was beyond imagining. New elements, new plants and animals, and new opportunities abounded. It was a new decade of stories and wonder, the homeworld hearing of great success, terrors, and then seeing those unimagined riches reshaping humanity’s idea of the stars.

Colonization

Humans soon infested the stars. Colonies on distant worlds collected vast riches and even greater scientific discoveries. These riches flowed back to the Earth, triggering a new gold-rush. Deep-pocketed investors and corporations immediately backed colony initiatives, seeing it as a new chance to make it rich on a scale never-before imagined. Millions were leaving every week, the shipyards couldn’t build fast enough.

Each new world was a new opportunity. Everyone signed up for their chance to make it big and to experience the grand adventure.

Humanity’s Dark Side

The colonization benefited it’s investors in ways beyond their wildest dreams - and their worker’s darkest nightmares. On the frontier, might-makes-right. Power and wealth dictated the laws. It only made sense that each corporation would create its own government and system of law. Corruption, bias, and cruelty became the new norm.

Life in a corporate system is its own type of hell:

• Profit over people
• Everyone pays for even the air they breathe
• Privacy is a luxury good
• Workers rights are a myth
• No regulation

For most humans, life became a struggle in a dog-eat-dog world.

New Athens

An aliance between some upstart Corporatists, Space Pirates, and a group of dedicated Workers lead to a new colony. The corporations had made all the other systems, a few were conqeured by pirates. This time, the three major classes would work together to build a system of their own.

In New Athens, the corporate wrongs are kept at arms-length, even as factions in the system push for a fresh take over. Outside forces hope to break in and conquer all. An uneasy truce governs the alliance of pirates, corporatists, and the workers who built the system brick by brick.

Our story starts here, amidst the smugglers and the workers just trying to survive.