1000 years into the void
The records of the invasion are spotty at best. Humankind spent a hundred generations and more in the void, fleeing the unfathomable. When we try and piece together what happened, to understand the cataclysm of our homeworld the best we can do is fragments. Sometime in the 21st century as measured by old earth time, humanity was thriving but also ever at odds with itself. We see records or wars, and skirmishes, conflicts and assassinations that seem to have been happening in concert with some of humanities greatest achievements. At the same time that Earthers were inventing AI and curing diseases through advanced medical science they were also bombing innocents and arguing over imaginary borders. We in the Forge are no strangers to the ideas of factions but Earth had more than anyone could count, and each one of them seemed to be splintered as well. They were very invested in labeling themselves and picking sides from what we have saved or recovered. All of that changed for a time when the Deep Horrors came to their solar system. Records of this time are spotty but it seems like when faced with unimaginable horror, destructive forces larger than the planet itself that Earthlings still couldn’t set aside their petty squabbles, their tribal allegiances, their wars. We see a turning point though when one of their neighboring planets was consumed, destroyed utterly by one of the Deep Horrors. Mankind had been fighting over how to best handle this threat, who would lead the charge, what sort of weaponry they would use and how. In the face of that power and with the losses they had inflicted upon themselves already everything changed. What was left of humanity at that point created the Vaultships. Five massive vessels that carried some, but not all of humanity away from the destruction looming on the horizon. We see there was a massive conflict over those allowed on the Vaultships, that the organization was spotty at best. Somewhere around a third of the population was left behind to die. Some because they chose ideological beliefs over science, some because they could not set aside their long cultivated hatred of their fellow humans. Some poor souls simply fell through the cracks or happened to be from places less developed. It was a time of atrocity and terror that humanity will carry the scars from for all time. But in the end the five Vaultships launched from Earth and set course for the Forge, a distant galaxy that the scientists of old had discovered. The time on the Voidships did nothing to stem humankinds habit of forming allegiances and rivalries. The ships themselves traveled in a convoy to the Forge but they were sovereign entities, each of which had a number of factions inside of it. By the time we made it to the Forge the Vaultships had changed alongside their inhabitants, no longer Earthlings but the remnants of Humanity. We have factions still but they are not based on skin color, or an imaginary border drawn on a planet none of us have ever seen. We still fight and bicker amongst ourselves but the harshness of the forge keeps us in check. A new home among the stars, we can only hope that the cosmic terror that befell our ancestral home doesn’t follow us here.
