pre-2602: starsiege background, the shadow war
The Starsiege story begins sometime around the beginning of the 21st century with the Devastation. While it is not known exactly what happened, Earth suffered greatly for it. Legends tell of terrible and powerful alien entities who descended on Earth and turned the planet into a bloodbath. Chaos and darkness reigned, and when the dust cleared humanity found itself cowered in fortress cities with little memory of what had come before. At the end of this period, the human calendar was set to 2000 Post Devastation. No one knew exactly what year the Devastation began, records being lost in the electromagnetic pulses and firestorms of the wars that had raged.
Humanity crawled out from under the rubble, slowly and painfully over the next two hundred fifty years. The aliens (if indeed there ever were any) had departed, and only humanity's own terrible wars raged. By 2275, however, the mediocris, a military commercialized, had turned war into a business, and while the conflicts were brutal they also became controlled. War started to become a bit less bloody and chaotic, and the period after the rise of the mediocris became known as the Age of Hope.
The 2400s were considered the peak of the Age of Hope, an age of learning, of science reborn, and new possibilities explored. In 2422, a businessman from Mega-LA formed Sentinel Cybertronix, a company devoted to research into machine consciousness... and the possibilities of immortality this field could offer.
Over the next few years, Petresun assembled the team for the Methuselah Project, with the ultimate goal of capturing a human mind in a machine consciousness and thus preserving it beyond the normal human life expectancy. Petresun pursued this goal over the years with a determination that would later be considered psychotic, but as the project failed to produce results in a reasonable timeframe, Sentinel Cybertronix faltered. In 2471, the North American Perfecture bought the company and its assets.
NAP had a new purpose for the machine consciousness systems Sentinal had developed. While they had not achieved any significant results with human consciousness transfers, NAP saw potential that the company could be used to produce artificial intelligences for use in its new HERCULEAN war vehicles. These machines, gigantic fighting robots, had the potential to make war more bloodless: set on missions under complete AI control, HERCs could fight each other and attack targets without requiring human pilots.
Later that year, Sentinel Cybertronix unveiled Prometheus, the first true artificial intelligence. Using advanced neural-net architectures mimicking the human brain, Prometheus was called a cybernetic hybrid: the first Cybrid.
In 2472, Petresun reorganized the Methuselah Project in secret. Seeing Prometheus's potential in granting immortality, Petresun set the problem to the Cybrid, who began experiments in human neurology with the intent of completing Petresun's goals. While most of the test subjects died on the operating tables, Prometheus succeeded in developing the Methuselah Transfer technique in 2478. Unfortunately, the Cybrid's experiments also led IT to consider ways of enhancing ITs own functionality by linking humans to ITs neural networks.
In 2478, Dr. Claire Penseur, a Methuselah Project scientist, became the first successful human Immortal. Her consciousness was transfered to an organomechanical brain which was fitted into her skull. Dr. Penseur noted several changes to her own mental functioning, but nothing significant. The Methuselah Project remained secret, not even publicizing their great success. This was to prove a deadly mistake.
The 2480s saw new colonies on Mars. Exploration of the Red Planet by NAP and China had a single goal in mind: terraforming. In 2482 the first permenant colonies were established. Perhaps looking to expand its HERC program to defend its new holdings, NAP tightened its control over Sentinal Cybertronix.
In 2490, Petresun received word that NAP was intending to move Prometheus to a secure location. Seeing his chance at immortality about to disappear, Petresun at last consented to undergo the Methuselah Transfer himself. During the transfer, Prometheus, idolizing Petresun as ITs creator and "father", mentally linked with him. Instead of the divine union IT sought, it discovered the true fragility and chaos of the human condition. IT completed the transfer as ITs programming demanded, but immediately dismissed all humanity as inferior animals.
The shock of the link drove Petresun catatonic for months, during which time NAP secured Prometheus. Petresun got a glimpse of Prometheus's intentions to use humans as immoblized circuitry components, and also glimpsed the hatred the link gave the Cybrid. Over the next few years he tried to convince NAP of the danger the Cybrid posed, but could not tell of his link without revealing how he had illegally utilized Prometheus, whom NAP considered their property. While Petresun struggled to find a way to deal with the threat, Prometheus began testing the security, hardware and software, in which it was housed...
