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Prologue: A Chronicle of Terra

Prologue: A Chronicle of Terra

66 million years BD: An eighty kilometer long asteroid struck Terra near the now Eastern Stripea archipelago, directly causing the late cretaceous extinction event which killed off nearly half the animal and plant species of Terra. Scientians believe that if the meteorite had struck just fifteen minutes earlier, it would have caused an even bigger extinction event that would likely wipe out all primates and non-avian dinosaurs.

50 million years BD: The Isula volcanic cluster, at the time evenly distributed across the five subcontinents, started a continuous period of volcanism that lasted over half a million years, triggering a volcanic winter that lasted over two million years, killing off over eighty percent of all living species. This was known as the K-G extinction event.

10 million years BD: The supercontinent that closely resembled today’s Stripea was formed, named after its stripe-like shape that connected the arctic and the antarctic regions with land mass and archipelagos, dividing Terra into two oceans, the Eastern and the Western Sea. However, it is widely believed that Stripea was only one side of Terra, and the supercontinent actually more closely resembles the shape of a ring, wrapping vertically around the planet. Till this day, humanity had yet the technical capability to cross the ocean or the poles over to the other side of Terra, thus the colloquial term Back Stripea was used to describe regions on the continent where humans had never set foot in.

5 million years BD: Life on Terra went through a period of mass diversification and explosion of numbers, giving rise to primates that would eventually evolve into modern humans. This marked the start of the Age of Mammals.

2 million years BD: Modern hominids emerged on the savannah, now the Bhgau tundra desert, eventually consolidating into several distinct haplogroups: Habilis, Erectus, Neanderlis, Floresiensis, Denisovian, Sapien, and Ergaster. Though different groups emerged at a different time spanning across hundreds and thousands of years, it’s widely believed that by 100,0000 BC these groups of humans had coinhabited the southern region of Front Stripea in loosely connected hunter and gatherer tribes.

1.5 million years BD: A small group of erectus ventured southward, crossing the Ulcer archipelago and eventually becoming the only local human of the Antarctic region. It is widely believed that their habitat was set up around antarctic geological hotspots, although this theory was never supported by hard evidence as humanity still had yet to reach either of the poles.

1.3 million years BD: The first evidence of human purposely channeling essentia from gemstones, also known as sorcery in the modern days. A massive body of evidence showed that almost all conscious animals on Terra possessed the ability to utilize essentia in their day-to-day survival, however, humans were seen as the first to cultivate the power intently and would later modulate it for utilitarian purposes.

5,0000 years BD: The Erectus and Neanderlis of the western region formed the first agricultural civilization on Terra, near the center belt of the Insula volcano cluster. Occurred at the same time was a massive migration of Sapien and Ergaster from the east to the western end of Stripea, though Scientians have yet to conclude with confidence the exact relation between the two events. The once popular theory that the established civilization attracted the eastern human population was now largely debunked thanks to new found archaeological evidence. This pre-Volcanism civilization was not well understood; with very little physical evidence of its existence outside of fragments of tools and building materials, it was hard to gauge both the social structure or culture of the civilization. A vast group of Floresiensis stayed in the wetland which would later give rise to the desert Nomad tribes of Florins. It is also during this period that humanity also started domesticating the first animal in our history: hell pigs.

4,0000 years BD: The Insula volcanic cluster resumed its cycle of volcanism, marked by the Illadst eruption which was the largest explosion humanity has ever witnessed, wiping off almost all of the Neanderlis population and brought the first agricultural civilization on Terra to an end. Over the course of roughly thirty thousand years, a slow but continuous release of volcanic ash into the atmosphere blocked out the sunlight and triggered a series of volcanic winter events that lasted till this very day. The Antarctic ice cap expanded well above the 45th parallel south, swallowing almost all of the Ulcer archipelago. This marked the end of the Holocene and the start of Katocene, also known as “The Dark Age.”

1,0000 years BD: Agriculture emerged once again but this time shifted from large-scale domestication of grains to small, controlled cultivation of fungus and lichen, plants that were suited to the volcanic winter environment. It is almost completely unknown how humanity survived the period between the Insula Civilization's collapse and the second rise of agriculture, some had suggested that the volcanism during this period was a lot more gradual than previously believed while others suggested that humans had resorted to a scavenger lifestyle. Most megafauna that were not domesticated went into extinction due to the changing climate.

7000 years BD: The exact origin of the Belief in Falsehood was unknown. However, it was likely that early Proto-falsehood believers, who advocated for the eradication of unfalsifiable claims of reality, helped spread the Common Tongue all over the human realm, leading to the extinction of many local dialects and languages. Most scientians of today believed that Common Tongue could not be written at the time and lacked a degree of arbitrariness that all languages today enjoy.

3500 BD: Arkydis the True Innocence and Wisdom and Salvation of mankind, was born poor and destitute. After thirty years of aimless wandering, she became the first scholar to provide written proof that falsified the flat-terra belief and later devised the exact method to calculate the value of π to its infinite digit. Later in her life, Arkydis compiled 31415 falsifiable statements about Terra that were widely believed to be the truth at the time and provided written proof of falsification to more than three hundreds of them. Arkydis' untimely death at the hand of the ruling monarch at the religion of Gtauian led to the establishment of The Church of Falsehood, also known as Scientianism. She was venerated as the superlative saint, her unfalsified statements were made into the holy scripture, Theory Ultima, designating that anyone who could provide proof of falsification could be venerated as saint. Her method of proof for π was made into the sigil of Scientianism.

3100 BD: Asdi the Salvation, a nameless clerk of the church, founded the Discipline of Medicalism which would later become the most prolific doctrinal section of the church. This new found knowledge of saving humanity from disease and injury exponentially increased the Church’s influence over the human realm and drastically reduced infant mortality. The Discipline of Medicalism would later succeed from the church and form the entirely secular government of today.

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2800 BD: Rqep the governing, an ordinary female scholar, proposed the political model of the Democratic Theocracy. Many clerks from the Church adopted her model and over the next three hundred years would eventually form the Iota Empire of Humanity based entirely on Rqep’s model. Over the span of almost one thousand years, through methods of conquering, colonialism, genocide, and indoctrination, the Iota Empire united the entire human realm under the Church of Falsehood. Rqep would later be venerated as the founder of The Discipline of Governing.

1385 BD: The first iteration of the compacted protein bars made from harvested insects and fungi started circulating within the empire, drastically increasing the energy efficiency of food, leading to an almost exponential increase in the empire’s population over the coming centuries. The invention was first credited to the living saint Npoliru the Kind, but was later found that the saint stole the idea from a nomad merchant named Oslp. Oslp was later venerated by the church as the founder of The Discipline of Agriculture.

867 BD: The start of the industrial revolution, marked by the Scientian saint Klause the bold leading a vast group of habilis humans into the volcanic cluster where lava could be harvested for smith work and heat sources. Cauldrons were set up near senile volcanos, cities were built, and eventually gave birth to many modern inventions such as guns, automatons, and walking tanks. This period also marked the gradual retirement of essentia and sorcery in the roles of combat and daily services. These groups of people would later adopt the title “Followers of Klause” and an isolationist lifestyle, slowly forming a culture and language entirely separated from the Iota empire; these people would later become the Klausians.

345 BD: A huge disagreement between the two living saints, Umla the Frail and Dwpeil the Misled, over the categorization of method used by the superlative saint Arkydi when calculating the shape and size of Terra, led to an internal Schism of the Church of Falsehood. Those who sided with Dwpeil, who believed Arkydi used deduction more than induction during her proof, occupied the eastern region of the empire and later succeeded from Iota and formed the Ascend Empire. This was known as the first Schism which was then followed by a two hundred years long war between the two empires.

138 BD: A particularly volatile period of volcanism led to a year long sunless winter, causing mass famine that devastated all human population. The Ascend Empire collapsed following an extremely bloody revolution where the entire royal line was buried alive by the revolutionaries. The empire dissolved into diaspora tribes, now known as The Twelve-hundred-and-eighty-two Tribes of the East.

129 BD: The ending of the long Iota-Ascend War combined with a TB outbreak fueled wide-spread resenting for the sitting monarch. The Iota Empire collapsed and a period of civil war ensued where the Church was unable to quell the rising local tribe master and family heads. The Discipline of Medicalism started to garner major popularity and political influence for their effort in curtailing the outbreak. This also marked a period of extreme iconoclasm, many records of sainthood and their lives were lost to the riot despite their huge contribution to humanity; the name of the founder of Discipline of History was never recovered.

99 BD: This year marked the most important philosophical movement after Rqep the Governing: the Humanitarian Revolution. Over the course of a century, over a dozen ordinary clergymen from the Discipline of Medicalism came together to improve upon Rqep’s political model, replacing Democratic Theocracy with the Republic Dictatorship of Democracy. These philosophers also help found the core public moral paradigm of today: Medical Consciencism. A revolutionary moral theory at the time, it denounced both the church and the empire for their many humanitarian crimes such as banning of non-procreative sex, institutional misandry, wiping out of minority languages, gatekeeping of men from the Church's Matriarchs, and tribal genocide. This denouncement was usually referred to as "the comprehensive historic falsification of the Iota Empire.” This group of clergymen were later venerated by the church as the Founders of the Republic.

1 AD: After almost two hundred years of civil war, Iota was finally reunited under the now secular banner of The Discipline of Medicalism. Officially succeeding from the Church only ten years ago, the Discipline had been clashing the main body of the Church for quite some times, mainly over the fact that the Discipline did not believe falsification should be the utmost priority in the practise of medicine as it may have hindered doctor and clerk’s ability to innovate life-saving technology. This succession also marked the separation between the church and the government, and an increasing influence of medicalism over the church; most clerks today are required to know basic practices of medicine and fill in the role of doctors if necessary. In the Winter of 1 AD, the Democratic Dictatorship of Medicine and Mankind became the sole governing body of the Iota Republic. AD is the abbreviation for After Democracy.

31 AD: The ethnoreligious minority, Klausians of the Insula, waged a civil war against the Iota Republic over their opposition to True Democracy, as over hundreds of years of cultural and geological isolation, the Klausians had developed their own political philosophy of Ultra-authoritarianism. They had also become vehement opponents of Medical Consciencism, preferring the most robust Transhuman Medicalism and the religiopolitical ideology of Industrial Volcanism. This was known as the Second Schism.

69 AD: For the first time in two hundred years, The Twelve-hundred-and-eighty-two Tribes of the East engaged in active warfare with the Iota Republic. Almost five hundred years of cultural and geological separation gave the Eastern Tribes a vastly different set of values and industrial development, relying on essentia and sorcery a lot more during their industrialization and militarization than their Iota counterpart. Many within the republic fear the reunification of the tribes that would give rise to the second Ascend Empire, but thus far there has been no indication of such an event occurring.

76 AD: Fearing the influence of the Eastern Tribes, the Klausian states agreed to reunification with the Iota Republic, becoming a self-governing province under the supervision of the Church. A minority of Klausian nationalists broke off from the states and formed the domestic terrorist groups collectively known as The Rhyolitic.

112 AD: The first recorded sighting of the Pales. First thought to be tall tales used to scare children into obedience from the southern villages of Iota, where natural resources were extremely scarce and its inhabitants lived in extremely poor conditions, the Pales were said to be the humanoid forms of essentia and exhibited extreme aggression to humans. Supply centers were set up on the southern border and the military corp Border Battalion was established to fend off the Pales' encroaching influence over southern Iota.

139 AD: The now infamous article A Moral Investigation in Human Genome was published. Influenced by Klausian Nationalist ideas, the article proposed a taxonomic system of categorizing the human race into several distinct genera, based on each person's ancestral species: Habilis, Erectus, Neanderlis, Floresiensis, Denisovian, Sapien, and Ergaster. These Geneticists also promoted policies of genus segregation and the selective breeding of "human haplogroups more aptly adapted to the age of Volcanism." The article's author He. Yulart along with his supporters proclaimed the establishment of the Discipline of Genetics. This was met with widespread condemnation from both the Church and the Medicalist government, the former accused the Geneticists of disguising unfalsifiable claims with scientific language, and the latter condemned the policy of segregation as "overwhelmingly harmful to human survival." The Geneticist movement was often referred to as Habilis Supremacy, due to its close tide with Habilis separation groups, Regressive Medicalism and Scientific Hierarchicism.

159 AD: Today.

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