faction:factionmodern
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+ | ====== Crimes Against History====== | ||
+ | |||
+ | =====Modern Time===== | ||
+ | The Paradox Era | ||
+ | ====203 years ago==== | ||
+ | Over the previous century or so the influx of new ideas on the Homeworld has led to the creation of a variety of new technologies, | ||
+ | |||
+ | The Houses have never been noted for their imagination. Up until this point, every generation of timeship has been identified by number, the most recent ships generally being designated 88-Forms. But the technological revolution results in several Houses attempting to graft new systems into the timeships' | ||
+ | |||
+ | It's a sign that the archons are prepared to step in to stop the new science getting out of hand. From this point on, a much closer check will be kept on the development of the timeships. | ||
+ | ====201 years ago==== | ||
+ | A new head of the Presidency is elected to lead House society. Something of a surprise choice, she promises a more open style of government and a more humanitarian approach, though it's generally thought that humanitarian is just a synonym for " | ||
+ | |||
+ | Perhaps the most telling thing, however, is the rate at which the Homeworld' | ||
+ | |||
+ | The new Presidency hardly gets off to an auspicious start. Mere months after the inauguration, | ||
+ | |||
+ | But this time things are slightly different. Although the forces in question are contained, the incident briefly sends out shockwaves which stretch as far as the Homeworld. During the crisis the head of the Presidency suffers a nervous spasm, a brief period of insanity which causes her to suffer appalling visions not unlike those of the 406th head... and then spontaneously release several hundred inmates of the prison-world. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Over two centuries after being incarcerated, | ||
+ | |||
+ | Once this has been achieved, the Grandfather simply vanishes. It's said that the founder of Faction Paradox wilfully erases all personal traces from the continuum, leaving no record of ever having existed on the Homeworld, leaving no remnants in the physical universe at all other than a carefully-selected group of followers and their relics. | ||
+ | |||
+ | (It's notable that the crisis on Earth which causes all this occurs in the late eighteenth century, at the same time that the early voodoo-cults are developing there. There does, at least aesthetically, | ||
+ | ====200 years ago==== | ||
+ | The original birth-House of Grandfather Paradox collapses, following the long-term insanity of its members. As the term House refers to both a bloodline and a physical location, the word " | ||
+ | |||
+ | Society hardly notices, the old House having long since fallen into disrepute and obscurity. Only a few members of the bloodline survive, although the House has one last legacy to leave the Homeworld: the civilisation witnesses its first natural childbirth in ten-million years when an alien biological unit, brought to the Homeworld by the House against all usual protocol, mates with one of the Homeworld' | ||
+ | |||
+ | (The survivors of the collapsed bloodline plan to build themselves a new House, though records are vague as to what happens next. It's generally believed that the survivors die out in the difficult years which follow... but their disappearance from history occurs at exactly the same time as the rise of Faction Paradox, the Grandfather' | ||
+ | ====188 years ago==== | ||
+ | The Great Houses finally begin to realise that something appalling is about to happen to the Spiral Politic. Though details are at first unclear, House agents in the field report encounters with other House agents from the future - itself a sign that the usual rules of causality are no longer in effect - a future in which the Homeworld is engaged in a desperate war with an enemy who has the ruling Houses outgunned on all fronts. The visions of the mad, suicidal 406th head are turning out to be true... at least in part. The name and nature of the enemy, however, remain unclear. The Houses begin to wonder whether one of the lesser species might be preparing to usurp the Oldest Civilisation, | ||
+ | |||
+ | The head of the Presidency instructs her people to put most of their resources into identifying this future menace, and new research is carried out into timeship technology, in the hope that better weapons can be grown into the ships' systems. This concept of " | ||
+ | ====c. 175 years ago==== | ||
+ | Faction Paradox begins to build up its influence in history, deliberately setting out to alarm and intimidate the Great Houses, recruiting members from the lesser species and scandalising the Homeworld further by granting these recruits equal status with its followers from the Houses (even giving them the archaic title for junior members of a House, Cousin). The Faction makes its first attempts to corrupt and recruit certain notable agents of the ruling Houses, and begins experimenting with biological weaponry, almost mocking the research ordered by the Presidency. The Faction also begins building a homeworld for itself, a monstrous black parody of the original Homeworld, and as ever there' | ||
+ | |||
+ | On the Homeworld, the increasing War anxiety is the perfect breeding-ground for the Faction' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Meanwhile, the notion of natural childbirth becomes increasingly acceptable on the Homeworld itself. The first generation of natural births arrives, the head of the Presidency tactfully failing to mention that these increased numbers are largely necessary because of the coming War. Words like " | ||
+ | ====146 years ago==== | ||
+ | On the Homeworld, certain other moves have been made in anticipation of the new War in Heaven. Eight colony worlds have been crypto-formed into cloneworlds of the Homeworld, as decoys as well as bolt-holes, the notion presumably being that each of the Nine Homeworlds can be transported to a different location in order to distract the enemy. Nobody points out that the mad 406th head of the Presidency planned exactly the same thing. In addition, various once-outlawed weapons are assembled and readied on the current head's orders. | ||
+ | |||
+ | What's notable about the cloneworlds is that according to the final orders of the current Presidency, they' | ||
+ | |||
+ | The head of the Presidency retires from service at this point, her final fate unknown. It's suggested in some quarters that she may have become the head of the Presidency on one of the other Homeworlds, presumably to complete the illusion that her world is the original. Other rumours suggest that even she might not realise she's been moved to a fake. Without her the Homeworld is thrown into some confusion, as various political factions debate the future of civilised society. Though some wish to follow the old Presidency' | ||
+ | |||
+ | For now, it's the nay-sayers who win out. The new head of the Presidency is nondescript and obstructionist, | ||
+ | ====126 years ago==== | ||
+ | One of the original renegades from the broken generation of the Houses (born c. 1,076 years previously) unexpectedly returns to the Homeworld, having spent much of the intervening time consorting with the lesser species across the Spiral Politic. His return is particularly surprising given the number of crimes for which he's wanted. However, he claims to bring with him the first solid evidence of the future enemy, an enemy which - as he explains to a closed session of the ruling Houses - even the interventionists don't have a hope of neutralising. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Most of the House elite are convinced. The Presidency itself isn't, and from this point on becomes more obstructionist than ever, almost as if it's terrified of facing the facts. To accept the evidence as true would, after all, be an acknowledgement that the entire Presidency is built on a faulty premise. The Homeworld is not eternal. | ||
+ | ====c. 100 years ago==== | ||
+ | One of the many worlds on which Faction Paradox attempts to spread its influence is Dronid, ancient home of the (failed) rival Presidency. Dronid is a perfect site for the Faction: its culture is already littered with time-active relics of the Great Houses, and the natives have become partly dependent on the salvaged technology. Safeguards left behind by the Houses ensure that the locals are unable to abuse this technology to too great a degree, but working covertly the Faction manages to build itself a powerbase on the world, not so much a cult as an underground criminal organisation. (Dronid is a magnet for unsavoury technology-hungry species, and as a result the planet' | ||
+ | ====Eighty-six years ago==== | ||
+ | In a desperate, last-ditch effort to prove that the future War is a myth and that no enemy can possibly exist, the head of the Presidency himself leaves the security of the Homeworld as part of an expedition designed to colonise the stretch of the Spiral Politic which (according to the returning renegade' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Nor is the project a success. The expedition never returns. The remains of the Homeworld' | ||
+ | |||
+ | It becomes painfully clear that War is a probability, | ||
+ | |||
+ | So begins the final Pre-War Presidency, with the renegade acting as adviser to an increasingly panicked House elite. | ||
+ | ====c. Seventy years ago==== | ||
+ | The interventionists know full well what the prospect of War means. They understand that in a cross-dimensional conflict, a defeat for the Homeworld won't just mean their own demise but their complete eradication from history. For a culture which is a form of history, the thought is appalling. The interventionists, | ||
+ | They intentionally remove themselves from the timeline, but under controlled circumstances, | ||
+ | |||
+ | From this point on they begin to see themselves as the new gods, as intangible, ineffable powers for whom history is a mere spectacle. Now purely conceptual in form, their only true intervention in the Spiral Politic is the acquisition of followers from among the lesser species: like all gods, without followers they have no mass and no meaning. To the rest of the universe, however, they' | ||
+ | |||
+ | (Naturally, the date of the interventionists' | ||
+ | ====Sixty-nine years ago==== | ||
+ | The Presidency finally sanctions research into the feasibility of an organic/ | ||
+ | |||
+ | The 101-Form is not a success. The details of the experiment are quickly concealed by the ruling Houses, but it's rumoured that the construction is such a monstrosity that it barely qualifies as a timeship at all, and that it's utterly beyond the control of its creators. As the ship's existence is officially denied, its ultimate fate remains unknown. Logic dictates that it should have been destroyed, although some claims maintain that the 101-Form was too difficult to kill and instead imprisoned at a secret location, while others hold that it simply escaped into the outside universe. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Whatever the truth, the Houses are clearly a long way from being able to engineer a sentient timeship from scratch. With the War now visible on the temporal horizon, the Presidency has to ask itself whether the new time-technology can really be perfected before the cataclysm. In the meantime, ordinary timeships are equipped for warfare, and another rubicon is crossed when the Presidency gives orders to specially engineer and mass-produce timeships for the purposes of battle. Thus the 90-Form military vessels come into service." | ||
+ | Even in the prehistoric war with the Yssgaroth, timeships were never used in combat, at least not in open conflict. The Houses' | ||
+ | ====Sixty-two years ago==== | ||
+ | By this point Faction Paradox is itself becoming corrupt, turning into a purely political organisation dedicated to the acquisition of power, mainly through criminal means. Many in the group, particularly the younger members, are far more brutal and far less philosophical than the Grandfather' | ||
+ | |||
+ | On Dronid, the Faction Paradox contingent is typical of the corrupted order. The Faction' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Meanwhile, on its own makeshift homeworld, Faction Paradox' | ||
+ | ====Sixty years ago==== | ||
+ | The Faction is by now involved in drug deals, slave deals, and sundry sordid underworld arrangements across the Spiral Politic. They also begin peddling time-technology to the lesser species, with little regard for the consequences. Such is the Faction' | ||
+ | |||
+ | They aren' | ||
+ | |||
+ | This time, when the Faction begins infiltrating other worlds it's careful to ensure that the Great Houses aren't alerted. It learns to plant itself in the cultures of other species, rather than flooding worlds with its own agents and technology. More and more emphasis is put on ceremony instead of weaponry. This policy has an effect on the Homeworld, too, as over the next few years a number of officially-outlawed cults spring up among the younger members of the Houses. Many of these cults believe themselves to be doing the will of the Grandfather, | ||
+ | |||
+ | Nonetheless, | ||
+ | ====Fifty-six years ago==== | ||
+ | The end of the last Pre-War Presidency, and the end of the last true Presidency to date. The former-renegade-cum-adviser, | ||
+ | |||
+ | It's the War King who paves the way for a genuine House Military, gradually replacing the old, inadequate ceremonial guard, though there' | ||
+ | ====Fifty-five years ago==== | ||
+ | Of course, there have always been other time-aware societies in the Spiral Politic: many of the lesser species have acquired a limited form of temporal engineering, | ||
+ | |||
+ | The suggestion comes about simply because it's already beginning to happen, without the Homeworld' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Whatever the truth, several posthuman groups are beginning to scavenge time-technology from the higher powers, a reason for concern in itself. Agreements, if not formal treaties, become the order of the day. And at the same time, the Homeworld begins to realise that there are some areas of the Spiral Politic which it simply can't monitor, almost as if the history there isn't " | ||
+ | ====Fifty-two years ago==== | ||
+ | Once again, agents of the Great Houses find themselves caught up in their own futures. As the War King continues to make preparations across the span of the Spiral Politic, a rare combination of factors sees one of the Houses' | ||
+ | |||
+ | (What the Houses don't at first realise is that the timeship in question has used a combination of technologies to perform this cross-breeding operation. Some of the methods involved actually have their roots in the procedures of Faction Paradox, while other elements have been taken from the future, from an era after the beginning of the War. The cross-breeding is therefore something of a paradox in itself.) | ||
+ | |||
+ | Back on Dronid the forces of the Faction have fallen into disarray, with the Incorporate gaining complete dominance and the Eleven-Day Empire unable to assist. A series of half-insane Faction leaders doesn' | ||
+ | |||
+ | As the Homeworld begins to understand this, an agent of the Houses is planted on Dronid, and local politics is manipulated so that he becomes the Faction' | ||
+ | |||
faction/factionmodern.txt · Last modified: 2013/03/13 18:19 by 127.0.0.1