The Legacy

Setting & Backstory

The Legacy

Heaven's Wake is a Hard sci-fi SD* set in a post-apocalyptic environment. You are one of many polities to have survived the collapse of the post-human civilization that underpinned and nurtured humanity. Taking place in a region of space known as the Reconnect, the SD focuses on exploration and expansion as civilization recovers enough locally to look outward.

As the Reconnect recovers, the technology of posthumanity is coming under scrutiny, as ways are developed to exploit it and lift it from it's dormant state. The enduring mystery surrounding the collapse has also weaved it's way into the consciousness of known space and influences it's politics in a myriad of ways, some more sinister than others. Chief among some concerns is the fate of the Solar System while others couldn't be less concerned with such a distant and irrelevant system, not least when compared to the pressing concerns of the immediate.

Note*(with the exception of posthuman technology, which is too far beyond our understanding to classify, but for game purposes is functionally star trek level tech to magic)

Emergence of Posthumanity

The information revolution of the 21st century continued unabated into the later years of the fifties, emergent technologies such as cybernetics began to progress from medical aids, to military and civilian enhancement technologies. Concurrently the development of artificial intelligence began to yield results, which ultimately lead to a limited singularity which benefitted the wealthy proponents of the privately funded project.

The First AI’s were fragile intelligences, routines that some claimed mimicked sentience, while others suggested that they merely bypassed active consciousness. That they possessed intelligence was of no doubt, fed parameters they could solve innumerable problems and design devices of incredible intricacy. It was during this time, that man was truly lifted from it’s gravity well and into the solar system. The technological revolution accelerated leading to the outer edges of the solar system.

A splintering of society emerged however, between posthumans, often spending much of their time in a virtual existence at an accelerated rate of conscious thought and the greater whole of humanity who gradually became weary of the incredible technologies the posthumans were beginning to deploy. A third group as well became lodged between them, those who were resistant to uploading, but freely partook in the use of the advanced technology to augment themselves and their societies.

Posthumans became concentrated into Enclaves of power, vast complexes of diamondoid, often geodesic domes of immense size, either floating in the depths of space, or mostly buried within the surface of a major body. Their T-gates became a charity, shuttling vastly inferior vessels across the solar system. Their A-gates became a luxury, producing items for a price that veered from simple commodities, to memories and deliveries of uploadee’s. The various demarchies were reliant upon this, often paying what some called a gruesome price in ‘blood’ for advanced artefacts and even complete vessels. This also lead to restrictive policies, to ensure the posthumans did not get free recruits.

Alarmingly, without warning, these entities began to dismantle Pluto, fashioned the dwarf planet into a supermassive interstellar T-gate with masses’s of robotic workers who some claimed were indentured uploadee’s, though others dismissed the robots as automatic workers found throughout many polities. The Pluto Gate opened up the galaxy, though some refused to use it, rejecting a technology that squirted them as data across the stars rather than as a whole object across a wormhole.

The Three Strands of Humanity

There were and still are three distinct strands of humanity.

Advancers

Advancers reject the singularity for the most part, using only technology designed by humans or AIs designed by humans. Devoid of any united political affiliation however, Advancers are generally only marked by their often staunch independence of either Embracers or Posthumans. But through gradual necessity, Advancers do frequent T-gates, in their nuclear powered ships. Advancer philosophy disallows the shortcuts of posthumanity, seeking instead to understand the universe at their own pace.

Of the three branches of humanity, Advancers suffered the least, but still suffered greately. Although insulated from some of the worst effects of the collapse, the chaos and disruption still shattered them into small isolated shards.

Embracers

Utilising posthuman designed technology wherever possible or affordable, the Embracers quickly advanced to be the premier faction of transhumanity, they used the advanced capabilities of posthuman technologies to create the first true democratic systems, creating a staggeringly diverse civilization of various polities, ranging from Demarchist centres on Earth, glasslike bauble shaped cloud-stations skirting the atmosphere of Jupiter, to crystal cities buried under the ice of Europa. Understanding little of the technology that underpinned their societies however, they were considered by some to be hopelessly dependant on posthuman paymasters.

They lost almost everything in the collapse, the majority of Embracers lie entombed in dead cities or silent spacecraft. Were it not for the common bonds of humanity and the decency of the advancers, in many regions it is unlikely they would of survived at all.

Posthumanity

Posthumanity embraced the singularity, connecting their consciousness’s to the first AIs in existence, to vastly augment the sensorial and cognitive abilities of their natural brain. It was through the early brain-computer interfaces, that the first uploading began, as people gradually transferred themselves into the digital realm. Over time, enclaves formed where posthumanity gathered, aligning themselves into various digital domains of likeminded intellects.

It was in these accelerated domains that they progressed further from the baseline of their ancestry, though they never lost their fascination with the more traditional advancement of ancestors, engaging in trade where it suited them. In time however, they began to become more introspective and to some degree, protective. Posthumanity had long ‘congealed’ into geodesic structures, shelled in diamondoid, where they concluded ever more bizarre experiments. Attempting to violate the laws of physics as they had been traditionally understood became a pursuit for some domains, a pursuit some surmise caused their eventual downfall.

After the collapse, only echoes seemingly remain of the posthumans. Whether the intelligences that dwelt within their vast data-complexes still exist is anyones guess.

The Collapse

The precipitant events of the collapse were the literal disappearances of the Apex AIs, all vanished, the diamondoid complexes known to house them simply vanished from reality itself. With their disappearence, posthuman technology began to malfunction and over several hours posthuman enclaves went silent. The A-Gates and T-Gates shutting down, paralysing interstellar traffic, slowing down intersolar commerce and effectively destroying the technological infrastructure that humanity relied upon.

The Farflung colonies of Earth were suddenly cut off from Solar System and each other, forced into a isolation that suited some and caused considerable chaos for others.

The Posthuman Legacy

The posthumans are seemingly gone, the AIs that they relied upon themselves missing. The Apex technology as it is know known, was for many years useless. The posthumans kept tight controls on their devices and only through the ransacking of posthuman complexes have the codes to reactive their devices been divulged. The first ransacking, occurred after a posthuman complex was hit by a comet, the codes acquired after that led to technology that allowed a skilled datacrystal hunter access, either through accessing gates or using apex technology to blast inside.

Most A and T-Gates were completely destroyed, a mere fraction surviving in a inactive state, it is those that have survived that have begun to see the revival of the human race.

Attempts to programme assemblers to re-create A or T-Gates usually result in the creation of quantum irregularities which results in the systematic disappearance of the device and a large swath of the surrounding area, the space-time distortions left after these events have dissuaded further attempts.

The Reconnect

The SD takes place in a region of space known as the Reconnect. The Reconnect is estimated to be 30,000 light years from Earth. It is a collection of activated T-gates that link planets and star-systems. For over thirty years, the Reconnect has grown, allowing interstellar civilization to re-emerge. It now spans dozens of star-systems and billions of people. It's technology is roughly equilivant to late 21st century earth.

Apex Technology

Apex technology is the pinnacle of post-human advancement, highly prized devices of technological complexity, they generally include technology that violates traditional physics, including teleportation technology, reactionless drives and casuality violating devices.

T-Gate: Transporter gates range from microscale FTL communications systems to the massive interstellar gates that link solar systems together. Smaller systems function like wormholes, while larger systems convert matter into a digital signal that is transmitted through a wormhole to another station where the matter is reproduced. They are relatively mobile and enough have been salvaged for most planets and major hubs to be connected to the human run network in the Reconnect. The only downside is that T-Gates so far, have been preprogrammed to access only certain other T-Gates.

A-Gate: Assember gates were responsible for the construction of materials, from individuals to weapons of war. They have self-contained energy systems of an unknown design and are capable of operating without material input. Most known Assembler gates are heavily corrupted, producing half functioning devices or lacking complete libraries. Efforts to reverse this form a major component of posthuman research.

Datacrystals: Fortunately for humanity, posthumans stored much of their data on system’s compatible with inferior systems in the interests of simplifying trade. While the A and T-Gates themselves are unfathomably advanced, they have secondary storage devices known as datacrystals, easily read by most polities then and today. Finding datacrystals is an important pursuit.