(The following is considered to be being broadcast to all members of ARM. From now on, anything mentioned here is considered common knowledge to any current character. If you want to RP the lack of this information for future characters, thats fine, but you don't have to)
>Hello friends, transient and otherwise. It's been a long time since I've addressed you all like this, but things have changed and I feel it is time to touch base. As most of you probably already know, our extended efforts to bring down the UWM were, as it turns out, wildly effective. The UWM as an organized institution has collapsed into hundreds of warring factions and Earth 3 is the kind of irradiated anomaly-ridden wasteland that makes an anomalous planetoid look like a vacation resort. So pat yourselves on the back in that regard; we've won the war and plunged much of humanity into strife, starvation, civil war, pandemic and eventual technological collapse. That's the good news.
The bad news is that our reasons for starting this war and the reasons for most of the missions we've been undertaking for these many, many years have been rendered moot. I'll tell you what they are now, since there's no point in keeping it secret anymore. The time of secrets between us is over, dear friends. I'd like us to at least be on honest terms before we die.
Near the center of our galaxy, at a point which the anomalous planetoids elucidate, is a structure that we call "Origin". We're not really sure what it is; it's contained within a planet sized object which has been meticulously carved and engraved with detailed information on the nature of chemistry, physics, mathematics, and other natural laws. This is across the entire surface area of the planet, of course, so we had some reading to do. Inside this shell is an enormous, we're talking the size of earth's moon or so, white mass. It sort of resembles a whorled sphere of synthflesh. That is origin. The more pious among the men who investigated it believed it to be the literal corpse of god. Others, our good Doctor included, considered it to be something akin to the ultimate creation of a lost and extremely advanced race of beings, who left it behind as a sort of road map to attain greatness. I make no judgement either way. The important thing to know here is that it is that we made almost all our advancements in this age via study of that thing. Synthflesh was our attempt to copy the basic properties of the stuff. Amps and manipulators attempted to recreate the reality defying capacities the thing had. These were both successful, to one degree or another. And The Altered was our attempt to imbue our own flesh with the properties of the 'divine' as some would say.
It was a success, to some degree. Divine power was granted to human flesh, though it was at the loss of human sapience. We all know the consequences of that failed experiment. What only a select few knew, till now, is that the Altered were not merely insane failures which sought to devour the world. They had some grasp of their origin and they wanted to return to it. This was prevented of course, but not permanently. See, despite our best efforts, some of the Altered escaped. It's a big galaxy and they can reform from a single cell; you can't really begrudge our failure there.
As you can imagine, those remnants of the Altered joined together and bided their time, so to speak. They got outside of our jump range and started devouring planets. Then stars. By the time we noticed them it was too late to send an eradication fleet; the main body of the super organism was several stellar masses in size. There wasn't enough firepower in the world to keep it dead. And by then the UWM had become bloated, tumescent and arrogant. The majority would not believe that such a threat could exist, or that if it did exist it would be easily defeated. I'm afraid the power of the UWM during its prime had been exaggerated to a degree which made them believe they were invincible. The hard won battles of the past had become glorious massacres in the minds of this latter generation. And My insistence would do nothing to change that.
This is why we waged a war against the UWM; if they would not face the threat that the Eater of Stars presented, we would have to remove them and reunite humanity under a different banner.
Of course, even united like that it would have taken our combined efforts and several rather risky steps to prevail. My plan, assuming nothing better came to light, was to gather the brains of billions of dead humans and to construct a ghostship like machine which would have had the power to alter the basic laws of the universe. We would construct a man-made god and use it to wish the Altered away. Hmph. Idealistic, at best.
But the coming of the Lurker in the Angles has changed things. The Eater of Stars and the influence of the Lurker are fighting each other on the edge of our galaxy like two cancers trying to occupy the same tissue. By some perverse stroke of luck those mutated and alien human remnants appear to be fighting on our side again, if only by accident, because their struggle against the lurker's influence is, insofar, keeping it distracted to some degree. We don't know how long it will take before it gets into the jump points and effectively metastasizes across the galaxy. We don't know the state of Origin, though the fact that the Lurker has invaded Origin derived materials is a bad sign. We know that the use of Amps and Manips on a large scale has become impossible. And We know that the Lurker will continue to subsume this galaxy and no doubt others.
So with this knowledge in mind, we are changing our plans. This is no longer a fight. This is an evacuation. We have lost. This galaxy is forfeit. This universe is no longer ours. The very laws of reality are quickly shifting to become unfriendly to our existence. And the Lurker shows no signs of wanting a nice cohabitation. So we're leaving. We're gathering as many people as we can and we're leaving. Right now I have a team on Heph who is using an Extrauniversal engine to search through the myriad of parallel universes for one which we can inhabit. And when we find that universe, we're leaving and we're closing the door behind us. Thats the extent of the current plan. Rats off a sinking ship.
So. If there's anything you'd like to do in this universe, or anything you think you may have left behind, under a seat or in the luggage compartment perhaps, I suggest you get to it. Otherwise, our last missions here will consist of gathering the tech we can, kidnapping/recruiting any humans we can get and exploring potential homes.
If you have any questions, now is the time to ask.
(Via IRC)
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