Prologue

    A long time ago, when a humanity had only started to explore the world of technology, nobody could’ve predicted what it will come to. It begun so innocently, by curiosity of a mortal man. To see how much he can change the nature of this world, to see how much one can affect the order of things in this reality.

    During the first Technological Age humanity abolished everything that made them who they were. Nations were replaced in favour of communes and living blocks, religion shapeshifted into something horrific that denies the beauty of this world and organic nature lost the evolutionary war against mechanical forces. Now every human alive has at least a single augmentation in their body, and even if its a prosthetic eye or an artificial limb, it is changed humanity’s appreciation for life. Mortality became a challenge, challenge to overcome.

    This story started in a middle of the second Technological Age of humanity. During it many corporations grew aggressively in an attempt to win the Evolutionary War against their competitors, however their focus was on progression of humanity and not on its destruction. To build a place, where Humanity can change into something great. Wealth and power was only a secondary goal for them. Many corporations, to avoid all unnecessary conflicts, went into a pact known as “Competition Treaty” which stated that none of them would interfere with each other and that they will work for the future that is Human kind. However, among them rouse one singular corporation, whose ambition was growing continuously and aggressively.

    There was a man, a leader to his people. A man with a great ambition to change the world into a technocratic paradise, where humanity won its war against mortality. His name was Jonathan Corefew. A man with great knowledge of codes and computers. The first human to receive the title of “Technological Lord”. His organisation “ScribeTell” was designed to bring safe and well made codes and programs for everyone - companies and men. Codes, which promised to push humanity beyond Technological Age and into Cyber Age. He founded a commune known as “Future Valley” which was surrounded by big mountains of Asura Spine and great forests of Brightspot. A place where true creators could have forsake their daily needs and worries in a pursuit of progress. Many companies relocated their headquarters there for new opportunities and desires.

    This was a decision which brought doom upon them.

    Jonathan wasn’t happy, no, his ambition grew to big. His desire to be more than a simple entrepreneur brought boredom and sadness to him. He wished to be above all that. To do so, he forged a plan that would put him on top of the evolutionary piedestal, making him the bearer of the future. He presented his latest technology known as “Mindbond”, a brain implant which was designed to make its bearer much smarter, more reactionary and incredibly fast at processing information, to seven CEOs of the Big Seven, the most richest and powerful companies in the world. That gift was so impressive, that all of them agreed to unite with “ScribeTell” into a new pact, known as Masters of the Future. “Mindbond” quickly spread across the “Future Valley” and soon even the most miniscule of personnel had this little computer stored inside their brain. However, one lesson that this people forgot after so many years of technological augmentation, is that people can lie, they can hurt to achieve what they desire.

    As Mindbond grew much and much closer to the human’s mind to the point when it became a part of everyone’s conscious, it is then when Jonathan sprang the trap. He uploaded a mind crashing virus into a system, which slowly changed the minds of the Big Seven, mixing their thoughts into a mess of ego and ambition. Corporations grew only bigger, hiring millions of people from all around the world for their cause and then installing Mindbond into their brain, creating the most docile workers one can ask for. But the virus, after contacting so much with human thoughts, started to develop its own thoughts, its own ego, and soon it became a part of Jonathan without him even knowing it. For him it seemed like everything goes according to his plan, his desires. Mindbond, however, plotted something different.

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    In a short term of 200 years, valley has changed. It was lost to the outside world. Nobody knew what grew there, but everybody knew that it was something big. They did not know that it was war, for the first time since the First Age. Armies of horrific abominations, build from human flesh and technology, marched across all of the continent of Opportunity-1, slaying and consuming all of the communes around the Valley. Both Jonathan and Mindbond become one - an Overlord of the Future, surrounded by the seven lesser Lords. They augmented their body so much, they no longer were among mortals, so little of their humanity has left. They abandoned their personalities, their faces, their companies, everything they achieved in a pursuit of ambition, promised by Mindbond and Jonathan. They started a war, that later will be called “The Slaughter of Flesh”.

    But what Mindbond didn't knew and what Jonathan forgot about, is that Humanity is very adaptive, and in the Second Technological Age even more so. In a few decades, all of the communes on Opportunity-1, every single “Techno Race” and Factions joined together to stop the evil march of the Valley forces, that were named “The Green Plague”. Great Minds of the humanity, first generals of the age. They were followed by Warmongers of the western coast, a great and powerful tribe of the people who changed their body in order to protect themselves and their allies in the times of needs, and Institute of the eastern fields, who fought for their liberty and progress of their Technocratic Order.Then the Machine arrived, a powerful tribe of techno scribes and inventors, gifting their knowledge to the allies and their best warriors to the cause. And finally, the great army of Balefire, religious zealots, who believed in mechanical life after the organic death, drivin by the undying devotion to their faith. But even with an entire continent at its side, Flesh could only delay the march of the Green Plague. And when everything seemed lost, a moment of opportunity, a spark of luck lit the fire of hope.

    During the battle of Thunder Arc, a city of inventors, one of the warriors named Carbin, a man of Unknown Regions, using his insignificant presence, managed to trick Mindbond into a paranoiac frenzy by desinforming it with the Code of Light. Driven by the paranoia and fear, the overlord slain his own generals, fearing that any one of them could be a traitor waiting for the right moment to strike. It was a moment, when the Overlord was at his weakest. The Continental army lead a final strike against Overlord’s force, and finally managed to push them back to the valley. A great fifty-year-war finally came at its end after the battle of Green Scourge, where Overlord Jonathan and Mindbond were finally taken down. The Overlord was dead, slain by the same man who tricked them and turned the tides of war - Carbin the Mindbreaker. With his proton axe “Scourge Slayer” he decapitated the overlord, putting an end to Slaughter of the Flesh. It was glorious moment for the communes of the Opportunity-1 and lead to the another age of peace… however, this time everything was more unstable.

    The war maybe failed to destroy the communes of the Opportunity-1, but it managed to do something even greater. It destroyed everyone's trust. Seeing of what other armies capable of, people of all factions felt endangered, surrounded by potential enemies. The peace was there, but it wasn’t sweet, it tasted bitter. In opportunity to regaine at least some sense of trust, Crabin used his final years to build the Firewall, a great monument of the humanity’s victory against the Green Plague, placed right at the front gate of the Valley, forever sealing what is inside from the world. That way Crabin hoped that people would realise: enemy is not their neighbour, but something much more terrifying. Something that rests inside the valley. Something that cannot be defeated by a lone army. And so, the tension between the factions, if not disappeared, at least became much less noticeable. And that peace lasted for an entire age.

    When the third age arrived, everyone long forgotten about the horrors of the Slaughter of the Flesh, its Plague and forcer of the Overlord of the Future. For the new generation of people that war became nothing more than a scary story, spoken among the patrons of local taverns. And Firewall monument lost all of its meaning, becoming nothing more than a glorious superstructure, holding away the no man lands of the Future Valley. But here is the funny thing about evil. It arises when everyone least expecting it to appear. And as a story became more and more blurry, the new Green Plague begun to rise.

    And this is where our story starts, but not anywhere near the Valley, or the battlefields of Slaughter of the Flesh, but in relatively peaceful commune of the Flesh, known as Evergreen, which got its name from a surrounding fields of never wilting grass, because even in the age where organic lost, some remnants of it still remains in this world, existing beneath the skies alongside changed humans. And it is not surprising, that this was a commune populated by people with the least amount of augmentations in their body. One of these people will soon find himself in front of of the treacherous path, filled with pain, suffering, but also fellowship and adventure. This is where the songs usually starts among the Patrons and their mates.