“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science”
- Albert Einstein
Progress, it’s a lot like a steam train heading up a hill.
The further it goes the easier it gets, all hills have to level out at some point and eventually you’ll reach the highest you can ever go. But what if the fire that stokes the engine goes cold, you could pull the brakes to save what you can but you will never reach the top.
What happens to a planet stuck in its own ways? A planet like Terra, the world of smoke and iron. For hundreds of years its citizens have been using steam to power their trains, their light, their weapons and even their homes. There has never been a call for change just billowing clouds of smoke to mark the territories of man and the whistle of steam ringing in each of their ears.
Don’t get me wrong, the people of Terra don’t need a change. Without electricity the world has produced great marvels with steam, trackless vehicles that travel twice as fast as any creature, great towers built to house people in their thousands, boats which can circumnavigate the world in days and various unique feats of engineering pulled off by the worlds greatest minds.
Just seven hundred years ago the world was very different, the only steam came out of crock pots and much of the world's civilisations hugged the shoreline to benefit from the unfathomable bounties of the seas. But the powers that be had a different idea, when the whole world was shaken by The Big Boom.
A massive explosion in the middle of the Harbenera sea caused 15,000 feet of the world's ocean to evaporate on the spot in a supernatural phenomenon recognised as the great evaporation. Only the deepest oceans survived with the entirety of the Harbenera ocean being lost as ground zero for the explosion.
People who spent all their lives as fishermen were now living at the tops of mountains and for the next two hundred years Terra was plunged into a dark age. The villages of the world began forming into alliances and then into empires. Over the years the earth began to heal, the mountains dried to rock and the new land sprouted grass and trees, the dependence of the ocean faded as man learnt to farm. Bountiful harvests help to strengthen empires into great empires and from that came a new hope.
The man who brought about the end of the dark age was Samuel Fynn, The Britannica Alliance's beloved inventor, a man obsessed with the great evaporation. His mastery of steam power turned The Alliance into an unstoppable force, sparking the creation of steam powered weaponry and ships. They would spend the next hundred years fighting Terra’s remaining empires and from the bloodshed would emerge as The World Empire.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
But what do you do when you already own every country in existence?
You make more.
The former ocean of Harbenera was unlike any other landmass on the planet. Enveloped in sand it was made up almost entirely of desert. Voyagers would say that when they entered the waters of Harbenera it was almost as if the water was sloping downwards, like the land was below sea level but rejecting the water.
Before steam travel no vessel had ever made it to Harbenera and back, stories from before the evaporation pegged the Harbenera sea as uniquely dangerous. Even back then crews wouldn’t dare go near the place through fears of the horrific monsters that lurk beneath the depths.
From the time of the great evaporation new creatures were popping up everywhere and no one wanted to know about anything that could spawn from that cursed continent and they were right to be afraid.
From the first set of empire voyagers only half returned. They spoke of gigantic serpentine beasts emerging from the sands to swallow entire teams of people. Lizards that mimicked plants laced in thorns and an 8 foot human like demon who stalked the camp at night and cackled like an old lady.
Of course despite this information life finds a way, not a month later around twenty Empire ships landed on the eastern shore of Harbenera with an aim to build a paradise. Now the aptly named Capital City stands as a jewel in the gilded crown of the empire, a city built in an age of prosperity with technology collected from across the globe.
Huge towers stood to house the masses of travellers looking for a better life, commerce writhe on the streets and the ports with luxuries and amenities from all over the world. Cities began popping up everywhere over the east and west coasts of Harbenera, the continent's reputation changing drastically over the span of a single generation.
This reputation wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, the poorest people in The Empire were beginning to bet what fortunes they had on living a better life in Harbenera.
Before long the streets of Capital City were littered with poverty, failed merchants, peasants from other colonies and one Ricky Goldbrooke. A long with a small group of those in similar situations he walked out into the great sand dunes of Harbenera, hoping the grass would be greener on the other side. His journey to the east proved that people could survive the desert and little by little the poor began moving inland, learning to live alongside the beasts of Harbenera.
Small towns began popping up all over the desert, each with their own ways to survive its harsh landscape and providing travellers with much needed rest over their journeys. It was around this time that things took a turn for the peculiar.
The people of Harbenera, especially the ones living in the desert started noticing differences in their children, bringing the term everybody has a gift to an entirely new ballpark. Little Timmy from the stix started chewing on rocks, and the little bastard started breaking them. Ronny from the canyons was burning ants under the sun, but he did it with the reflection of his hand.
The mysteries of the baby continent, the ground zero for The Big Boom and the catalyst of The Great Evaporation were only growing as time went on.