User:Ford Prefect
Okay blah blah blah it's Frod Prefect from essbee blah blah blah
Most of everything which follows is still largely in development.
PROJECTA F1
The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power. — William Shakespeare
He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. — Friedrich Nietzsche
He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man. — Samuel Johnson
The Fimbulwinter, the terrifying world of our future! In a world gripped by endless cold, national governments and international law have been usurped by the Commonwealth: a bicameral parliamentary democracy that encompasses all the world and dwarfs the empires of Alexander and Cesar. Supported by the Four Heavenly Kings, the aristocratic financial cliques that control the economic destinies of the people and provide the cutting edge technological foundations of their very lives, the Commonwealth has asserted itself as the inevitable future. It is vast, but it is also efficient, relying on the most advanced information technologies and the most comprehensive knowledge of sociomemetic and biopolitical theory. Within this vastness and this efficiency lies something ominous: as time goes by unnoticed, the Commonwealth becomes more streamlined, less reliant on politicians and civil servants. Decisions seem increasingly as though they are not made by people, but rather by the system, with those decisions merely carried out by people. In some academic circles, they warn of 'the World System', when the Commonwealth's democratic system becomes self-aware and self-replicating, something of a collective intelligence created by legislation and doctrine and convention.
The World System is an idea, and one that is usually discredited on the rare occasions that it arises into the public sphere. There are some, however, who have considered that idea and accepted it. One of these groups are the entities known as Daeva.
In the years prior to the Fimbulwinter, the asteroid 99942 Apophis struck the Earth against all probability. It brought with it the self-replicating crystalline metallic bacteria that modern science came to call 'psycholith'. Defying all compositional analysis, psycholith soon came to deny all common sense: it was a material which turned intent into reality. With sufficient strength of will and a piece of psycholith, a person could harness almost magical psychic force. The 99942 Apophis impact spread particles of psycholith all over the world, to be breathed in by an unsuspecting species. Over time, a burgeoning class of persons emerged who were best suited to unlocking the mysterious powers of the psycholith, a class of person to be exploited by national governments. But it wasn't just people: by chance or design, a symbiosis between early computer intelligence and psycholith was created, and with time that early system evolved into the network of intelligences called Daevas. They are powerful, but inscrutable and vague, their ability to manipulate the real world limited. To eliminate this weakness, they exerted a considerable effort to form a cell of human operatives that would become known as the Order of the Southern Cross.
Part paramilitary mercenary orgnisation, part experiment in evolution, the Southern Cross has sought to push the boundaries what is means to be 'human', to create a 'complete individual' that is not bound by the circle of the world. In pursuit of this nebulous philosophical ideal, the Southern Cross has co-opted the most advanced technologies available. It started with physical conditioning and meditation. It moved to the pharmacological, and as genetic engineering, mechanical implants, molecular modification and nanotechnology became available the southern Cross rapidly assimilated it for their purposes. In the Fimbulwinter, the outcome is the Asura: specially selected humans with the highest aptitude for both cybernetic augmentation and psychic power, modified with technology on the farthest end of the spectrum.