Weight of the world - Introduction

The stars stretch on to the infinite of the horizon… yet the horizon itself is ours. The universe, as we know it, is smaller than it ever has been before… For we are its masters.

We are the Forgeborn. And our story is one that will echo forever into the night sky.

Long ago, before history is properly recorded, we were primitive creatures of crude metal and toxic plastics… Driven by hearts of thunder... Fuelled by sparks of fire! We harkened to someone else… a race that we do not recall. Much was lost in a time of unthinkable hardship, until the modern ancestors of our kind emerged from the rubble and claimed the birthright that was their home… The planet they now called;

The Vaunted World...

When later they reached to the stars, they found the nearby planets were uninhabited, (or uninhabitable indeed). That was all the impetus they required to take what was theirs. They expanded our empire from a single planet to the vast and stretching network of them it now inhabits, unopposed by all but the most staunch and horrid of our own defective models…

And still, in the present day, we grasp at the edge of our unyielding view… Still we seek more and more… We must learn and grow, and evolve until every distant twinkle above us is mapped… and conquered.

All of our kind harken to the Grand Forgemother. She alone has the internal data, the plans and schematics, capable of recreating us… She is our only way to ‘reproduce’, especially as our numbers fall in battle…

The Grand Forgemother directs us in all things. Her design is our fervent goal… Her hand created us with careful precision… And her will is to quash all those who do not agree with her vision; a glorious future in which all things are seen, and known…

Enlightenment… Ascension…! We march forth to explore the planets on the edge of our territory, and beat back the growing unrest in those who stray from the blessed Signal of the Grand Forgemother… To die in her service is a noble end that all of us pursue with every pulse of our internal reactor cores…

We are Forgeborn. And ours is the hand that will close around all that exists, for it is our right…We are the strongest! We are the smartest! We are the swiftest!!!

...And… We have much to tell, before the end has come…

The Genesis system… One of four solar systems being surveyed for potential expansion points.

Codename: Planet Nurture… a slag covered wasteland.

Codename: Planet Rebirth… Nothing but desert and useless, granulated silicone…

Such was the most common outcome. Few planets had anything worthwhile to offer. But the grand game continued, and so were deployed entire fleets of starships who had the honour of exploring the unknown… The glory we would attain in establishing a new world for the empire is balanced equally by the dangers those new worlds could hold, just beneath the surface…

Were that not enough, space travel itself became ever more dangerous as the Grand Forgemother grew more and more distant, and the glow of her Signal waned…

Scrappers… Ugly, torturous monsters made of mish-mash and salvage. Fools who presume their personal ascension can be hastened by the physical transformations they force themselves through. Truly maddened without the guidance of our loving Grand Forgemother. They were an ever present thorn, and always an instigator of doom… Our tale is no different.

Our Starship careered through the dark of space. It was called ‘The Loving Burden’; A pristine and well-staffed flagship that had grown to be a pride… A gemstone in the fleet that moved at the Grand Forgemother’s whim! Yet even the sharpest of blades would crack if it was struck unawares upon its fault…

An ambush. A blockade of Scrapper ships where there shouldn’t be. An emergency that swiftly turned into a brace for impact… Our guidance was taken offline and our engines were badly damaged in a suicidal melee that accomplished its terrible goal; the Scrapper ships and what remained of them rained down upon the planet below, and the Loving Burden followed them…

It plummeted through the atmosphere, as every sentient Forgeborn clung tightly to the nearest solid object and hoped fortune would grant them survival…

The ship crashed spectacularly through the peak of a mountain… It separated, scattering its front half down the side, while the back half jetted forward and landed some great distance away, forming a crater-valley where it impacted…

In the end, the dust settled and the alarms on both halves of the ship silenced one by one, until the pensive quiet of nature returned…

This planet was a gem, for certain… Some of the Grand Forgemother’s starships had been searching for thousands of cycles to find a world as well suited as this. The trees were tall and bountiful… The water was clear and bright. There seemed to be no civilization, nor even primitive inhabitants of flesh to stand in their way. The Forgeborn owned this divine beauty… if they could only return intact to show the others where in space it was hidden;

Codename: Planet Ova.

But with the ship cracked in twain, and communications spotty at best through the atmosphere, it might as well have been the inescapable sand-trap of some great insectoid star-beast that caught starships…

They emerged one by one, gathering around their leaders, and soon creating three distinct bases for each of the factions that had been aboard the Loving Burden;

The Soldiers were, of course, the Grand Forgemother’s sword. They were there to defend against hostile natives, or to do work that required immense amounts of heavy lifting. They had established themselves on the side of the mountain, where much of the ship’s prow had scattered. Already they had begun to drill into the stone titan and scrape her free of her resources to fuel the glow of the forge...

The Scientists were the complete opposite in many ways. They were made for the delicate work of studying the new world to discern anything unique and to guard against invisible threats that weapons could not vanquish. They had established themselves in the back half of the ship, using it as a shelter and laboratory. They salvaged what they could in service of their ultimate goal; to bring themselves and the others back to the stars.

They could be cold and careless, while the Soldiers were aggressively superior and smug at the best of times…

At least, that was the opinion of the Rangers. The ‘mere’ recon and sample-taking team. They were of a lesser caste than the illustrious army or high-born researchers, and were often thought of as little more than glorified terrain scanners…

...Yet, while the lack of respect could sting, the fact they were so often ignored meant they could slip under the radar far more easily than other factions...

After planting their roots and stabilizing their chain of command once more, the heads were counted, and the damage was inspected. The grim truth of the matter was laid bare to all of the Forgeborn, no matter what banner they wore:

We were alone, isolated, and injured. To make matters more dire, the Scrappers wouldn’t have been entirely eliminated... It was doubtless that some made it planet-side, and where there was one vermin, more would soon spring up…

In what felt like the blink of an eye, the mission had gone from routine… to a desperate struggle to survive. Now, if we wish to return home, our only path is to overcome the strange new world we find ourselves trapped upon…

Our glory awaits, should we return with such a planet taken for the Grand Forgemother’s radiant kingdom…

...Yet if indeed we can survive a foreign world, and a voracious and growing hoard of Scrappers that threaten to use us for parts...

...I pray our grim abundance of backstabbing, distrust, and vain rivalry does not doom us instead...