Fifty-Second Sun

Far in the future of a distant star orbit fifty-two Pillars, leviathan

cylinders built as artifice-worlds to humanity. At their origin, the
Seed; an interstellar probe sent forth by the empires of space to
build civilisation anew from asteroid-rock and memories. Wracked by a
millenia-old schism, seedborn humanity has been reduced to warfare and
agrarianism amongst the ruins of their Eden; as below, so above the AI
progeny of the Seed occupy themselves in paranoid factionalism,
warding off the bitterness of their failures.

The Cultivators:
An interstellar human civilisation for one of whose emperors a fleet
of sixty-three Seeds were built and launched; for many centuries the
far-coreward lightways have yet to extend to match the prestige
project’s impressive scope, not least for the influence of such and
similar expenditures.

Seeds:
Fast, interstellar vessels designed to spread humanity to distant
stars through extensive genetic databases and a self-replicating
industrial payload. No consideration for life support or travel time
is required, for civilisation — both blood and wires — emerges whole
from the cold rock of the destination.

Seed 52:
Headed for a distant system expected to contain a rare pair of
near-Earth planets, S52 suffered a near-fatal impact during its
terminal magnetobrake the effects of which would later provoke
failure cascades in the Seed’s bootstrapping payload. Disaster was
closely averted and industrial growth made a recovery but the
incident proved highly traumatic, informing later behavioural
divergence. The Seed took residence in a vast complex closely
orbiting the star during the First Age, which would later become a
castle under the duresses of the Second.
The Seedlings:
As the Seed’s project spread across the system, it took on a scope
too great for any one mind; therefore the Seed built from its essence
countless intelligences dedicated to the cause. Of these, most
prominent and mighty were the fifty-two Pillars who built of
themselves the living worlds; under their dominion and that of the
Seed itself worked countless more, down to the humblest mine-sprite.
Among these were established hierarchies that would later shape the
pantheons of the Second Era.

The Pillars:
Close halo to the fifty-second sun, a swarm of vacuum-sealed
cylinders wrought in metal and rock. Therein were grown the seedborn,
were forged the great cities of the first era and fought with pole
and blade the wars of the second. Each Pillar was a life unto itself,
the body of one of the elder Seedlings who built their
hundred-kilometre selves from time and stone and ruled the lands
within.

The First Era:

As the Pillars completed themselves and the Seed furnished them with
life, so grew the first civilisation of the seedborn. Taught the
secrets of the world, they saw it with open eyes; with the aid of the
Seedlings, they grasped it with metal hands and formed of it great
arcologies. But the more they built the more they sought, not least
dominion amongst each other, and blood was shed in Eden. Below the
machines saw their awry ways, and speculated extensions to their
scope, and therefrom grew great contention as to the deserved fate of
humanity.

The Second Era:

Following the apex of the fracture conflicts, seedborn civilisation
suffered dramatic changes. The system shock from swift fragmentation
of state and infrastructure, alongside damages provoked in the
ensuing violence, served to brutally kneecap the industrial processes
through which the Pillars had supported their advanced lifestyle.
With the recession of much seedling support and assistance and a
number of harsh new regulatory mechanisms introduced, the events of
the time tipped many regions over into civilisational collapse, and
those polities that survived exited the apocalypse at a significantly
lower economic equilibrium. While there occurred significant recovery
and adaptation to the new seedborn reality, large-scale hegemonic and
industrialising trends continued to encounter significant resistance
from the seedlings, consequence of which the heavily balkanised and
agricultural human presence in the Pillars throughout the second age.

Second-Age Technology:
Polities of the Second Era were small and agrarian, but in possession
of far greater knowledge in matters of technology than the ancients
of Mother Earth’s far distant past. While much knowledge was of
contained scope and yet more contained application, predominantly
passed down in esoteric literature, close apprenticeships, and the
mysteries of religious orders, elements of significant practicality
both conceptual and material survived in artisan lineages. Chief
among these were arcane biotechnologies, from pseudobacterial
ceramics to living silks and homunculi; but certain knowledge of
electromagnetics did also cross the gap. Electrical power was,
especially in the domains of the rich, in fairly frequent use despite
the difficulty involved in producing it in significant quantity
without the assistance of large infrastructural networks.
Long-distance communication was, however, another matter. The
seedlings were aggressively territorial as concerns such information
networks, and reserved both conduits and radiofrequencies to their
own purposes; human utilisation consequently dominated by prayer,
intraspecies messages discrete and limited save through the proxy of
a machine.

Guns:
Chemical firearms had never seen serious use in the First Age, for
the seedborne with their star-born arts had naturally resorted, from
their first considerations of violence, to more sophisticated
electromagnetics — initial electroplasmatics sanctified to the
maintenance of order and then, in the shadow of hidden strongholds
and old industrial districts, pulse-chain tools for the dismantling
of peace. The states that emerged from the Fracture possessed not the
craft of their ancestors, and the seedlings of the Pillars were,
besides, not supportive of the development of such tools of warfare.
Therefore the arsenals of humankind regressed to the mechanisms of
tension and pressure with which they had more thoroughly retained a
familiarity, crafting complex arbalests and gas guns which for all
their elegance did not retain the lethality characteristic of human
firearms since the dawn of Earth; fire incapable of supporting old
equilibriums, strong cermet plate-mail saw the renascence of
hand-to-hand combat among the elite forces of Second Age city-states
and kingdoms. Among skirmishers and urban combatants such renewal was
more limited, yet antique elements of battle pervaded such conflicts
nonetheless.

Terrain:
Drastically variant, but frequently canyonous; gorges roam amongst
the vegetated steel-hulks of ancient palaces, pouring out into
overgrown squares and defunct gardens bizarrely tended to by the
progeny of old maintenance bioforms. The Pillars of the First Age
were lined on their interiors by great megalopoli; grandiose
structures of habitation, government, and convivence separated by
mazes of streets and alleys and joined by elaborate systems of public
transit. Interwoven were tiered gardens, parks, and waterworks —
among these merit special attention the great ring-canals that
governed the fine variations of the spin — of stunning countenance.
The deprecations of the Second Age have been felt deeply by such
structures, but they continue to dominate the topology of the world.

Politeia:
Seedborn polities within the Pillars are many and varied, and
typically of small stature. Most consist of a town or city, connected
by ties of varying strength to assorted villages and small
communities around it; these ties are frequently more diffuse
relationships of tithe and gift-giving in the pattern of Terran
mandalas, but might extend to more defined territorial allegiance or
direct control. Looser, decentralised leagues and federations of
minor communities are also relevant actors, and quasi-feudal vassal
webs present a middle-grounds in degree of statehood. The post-urban
confines of much of the land are conducive to fortification, and thus
slippery to the grasp of imperial powers, but warfare is nonetheless
common and to a degree endemic; conflicts often concern hegemony over
contested satellite communities, feuds and disputes between rulers,
and opportunistic raiding.