Chapter 00 - 2: Prologue Part 2

Life is currently very different from back then. Humans are now led by a group of people who are called the Gifted. The Gifted are more advanced humans - they have been singled out for extrarodinary abilities. Among these extraordinary abilities is wisdom, which led to the Gifted being favoured as leaders over normal people. Of course, few people in the lower ranks understood this. There was a rebellion once against the Gifted - with one problem. They couldn't claim that they could do their jobs any better than the Gifted. Their place was sealed among the reigning top of the companies by the most logical argument - meritocracy. While they were detected and traced via ancestry, their abilities were unquestionably above all the rest. Most people are under the employment of one of the large corporations. If they are not, then they are probably working with a smaller corporation whose purpose is probably to serve one of these corporations. Pirates are rare, and if any, are probably working for one of the larger corporations in secret, stealing technology and shipments from other pirates in the Alliance systems. Each corporation has immense military strength, and has roughly several hundred thousand military vessels in active service at any time. Civilian-owned vessels are few, since most corporation work is done on planets or on larger motherships, through which there is usually a corporation shuttle class ship to borrow.

Research is the current focus of each corporation. The main focus of their research is weaponry and biology. Most computers have been reduced to mainframe systems, but personal computers now come in all shapes and sizes. Military computer systems are largely unlinked, but civilian carriers do have networked systems. Biotechnology is currently the matter of the most interest, but not the furthest along.

The most advanced technology made by Terrans so far is a method to harness zero point energy. This technology is by far the most coveted in the universe - but its existence has been kept secret by the TRi and GMTi for many decades. It's discovery has been erased from Earth's records. While the scientists who played an important part in its discovery were heralded as revolutionaries, their discoveries have been changed and modified to hide the existence of this technology.

Recently, technology to create artificial wormholes has been discovered. This is hoped to one day end the Terrans reliance on the Arlt Alliance hyperspace trade gate network. However, the technology has been unsuccessful at transporting living matter for some unknown reason. As of current, the technology is being harnessed for faster-than-light communication systems. Experiments with hyperspace are still in progress - it will be needed to plug the Terran vulnerability to attack.

- to be continued -

Chapter 00 - 1: Prologue Part 1

The year is now 3021 AD. The structure of the Terran race society is deceivingly simple. Two major corporations control the entire Terra System and all Terran ventures. Behind these two major corporations are the majority of the Terran population descended from a planet in a solar system in the Milky Way Galaxy called Earth. The two corporations are well known by their acronyms: GMTi and TRi. They together control more than several thousand space stations scattered along the galaxy, and control the largest military forces among the small alliances that it has formed with other races from different regions of space. Terran advancement in technology was accelerated by thousand fold when a small expedition leaving the Solar System found a traversable wormhole. Further expedition through the wormhole yielded communication with other races, mostly more advanced races which had been connected by travel gates.

These more advanced races were part of a group called the Arlt Alliance. After several months, the Arlt Alliance agreed to build a travel gate closer to Earth in order to facilitate trade between Terran and Alliance worlds. While the trade arrangements had been beneficial to Earth, the Alliance had declined to divulge any technology to Earth. This eventually resulted in Earth forming a phantom corporation to acquire technology from the black markets within the Arlt Alliance. This venture succeeded and led to the creation of several smaller corporations to continue research and development of such technologies.

However, all did not go well for Terrans as Earth eventually became far to dangerous to live on. A major move to new planets in the Terra system was made. This became known as the Terran Exodus of 2753AD. This sparked a major revolution as the entire multiple nation system of Earth crashed and each colony started its own small corporation to manage the colony and trade on behalf of the colony. As time passed, a few colonies merged their corporations into larger ones to form the GMTi. Not long after that, the TRi was formed. Eventually, these two corporations took over every other Terran colony. The only ones that remained independent were those who refused to work to their capabilites. These people joined rogue foundations started by the GMTi and TRi to fuel mercenary operations in the underground of the Arlt Alliance. The phantom corporation which handled this eventually became a superpower also, monopolising the information and communication networks of the Terrans.

This third corporation, however was small and had little power compared the two major ones. In 3020AD, it was agreed that it would also control the transportation networks between Terran worlds. GMTi and TRi has acquired technology to build travel gates in order to speed up the advancement of all Terrans. This corporation would come to be known as the Terran Meganetwork Corporation. The corporation had been given more responsibilities over the past decade, as tension has risen around the GMTi and TRi.

Most employees of the two corporations are already preparing for an onslaught as conflicts over trade territory rise as the number of contracts with worlds within the Arlt Alliance and other worlds discovered during exploration diminish. Uncertainty and doubt rule the colonies, but one thing is certain - dark times are coming.

- to be continued -

Examinations Start Monday

My hiatus seems to be dragging along for a long long time. No meaningful post. I'm going to actually start working on Sword Fantasy when my exams are over. I'll be rethinking the classes, and hopefully I won't be creating characters that are far too powerful or far too weak. My exams start this coming Monday, and end on Friday. After that, I believe I'll be going full force with developing formulas for Sword Fantasy mechanics, and hopefully they'll make sense to some degree - so that I can move along.

What kind of formulas might we be seeing? Simple ones at first. Will we be seeing a game? You just might see a game - sometime in December or January, if you are lucky. The game might be for PC, or it might actually be for the Windows Mobile platform - depending on my mood. I believe that writing and debugging this game might the most fun thing I've done for months.

What about my Magic craze? It ain't over. It'll slow down depending on what happens, but I haven't decided on whether I'll be going to the Ravnica prerelease. It'll depend on the preview cards. Of course, I'm eyeing the Boros Guildmage. To me, that Guildmage rocks.