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Blood Briar
Super-Earth
- Joined
- May 1, 2025
E a r t h, 2 1 3 3
"Do you think they had any inkling,
when they stepped off those gleaming ramps,
what horrors those welcoming hands could visit upon them
just a few years hence?"
"Do you think they had any inkling,
when they stepped off those gleaming ramps,
what horrors those welcoming hands could visit upon them
just a few years hence?"
The future seemed a fraught thing. Humanity's labors had cascaded into irrevocable changes to the world they called home while the never ending cycles of greed and violence continued to churn endless lives into suffering and death. 'Balance' and 'Peace' were old words, bitterly forgotten by the old and no longer learned by the young. Whole regions were becoming as passively lethal as the warzones that devastated others. Progress marched on with empty promises of a less bleak tomorrow, technology the only hope for what technology had inflicted in its evolution.
First Contact upended the state of things. Not only was life really out there, it was far more abundant than most expected, and a thriving galactic community existed out among the stars. Though they would not simply uplift humanity out of its own self-inflicted miseries straight to a turbocharged sci-fi paradise, the offer was given to help shepherd them through their time of crisis. Of course those in charge accepted.
Human greed, unfortunately, can devour any hope of redemption from the inside out.
The primary mistake made in contact was the alien belief in a leading world power, the consequences of which would not be fully realized until decades later. As alien immigrants and the influx of advanced, benevolent technology trickled, streamed, then flooded into Earth, the advancement of humanity into a member of galactic civilization looked like a certain thing - but the avenues by which such miracles came down were tightly controlled. Government gripped their own channels tightly while Megacorps fought over the rest, and even though the poorest benefited dramatically, they saw just a fraction of the potential of the stars.
Glutted on short-term motivations and scarcity mindsets, an escalating shadow war between the commercial powers eventually triggered a diplomatic doomsday for the planet: through a series of blackmail, misunderstandings, and sabotage, Earth's agreement with the galaxy was nullified as a policy of independence and exclusionism was announced. The outcry was breathtaking, but the protests did not last long, as the event precipitated the Third World War. Nations and Megacorps alike participated in an all-out grab for power over the planet now that the promise of peace - and the threat of outside influence - had come to an end. Whoever won could become the true ruler of the world for the first time in history and seize the reins of a future dictated by only a single body.
Unfortunately, everyone lost. Cataclysmic devastation unfolded between updated weapons of the past and retrofitted gifts of the future. Most of the planet was damaged or decimated, leaving entire cultures and histories dead or dying. Many ecosystems fell apart; networks of trade and influence disintegrated; towers of innovation and warfare crumbled. It was only partially accurate to say the planet was blasted back to a previous age, but systems and infrastructure were ruined in the outcome, and the vast majority of alien gifts were now atomized.
It would take half a century's passage to reclaim any semblance of where the world had been before. Even then, all knew the profound loss humanity had suffered, and how far they had fallen from the stars.
In many ways, the setting resembles 'Cyberpunk 2077 with aliens'. But history lies altered, technologies are stranger, and the rot goes deeper. Slavery returned, then was outlawed again, yet prejudices against any non-human persist. Illegal activity in every dominion of territory is largely owned and run by lords associated into a criminal Syndicate spanning the planet. Governments are weak, fragile things, and law enforcement punishes the poor even harder while protecting the wealthy. Megacorps, far more prepared for the Third World War and its fallout, dominate what areas of the world are worth owning. The symbiotic relationship between the Syndicate and Megacorps ensures no possible structure of rival power will ever come into being to challenge them. While humanity recovers some of its neon glory from the salvaged ruins of a lost future, the natural world only slides deeper into a state that will be inimical to human existence sooner than later.
Hope is a lie only gonks believe in, and the struggle to eke out one more day and one more joy is the rhythm most live by. But some choose defiance, and even if they're a far cry from the heroes promised in vids past, they hold the best chance to tipping the status quo into something less bleak. The promise of the stars still lies above no matter how dark the polluted skies become.
(Joi's Bar)
