The story so far

In the year 2552, faster-than-light travel was first made possible. In just a few centuries, humankind expanded outwards and colonized vast expanses of the galaxy. Massive spaceships transported resources from these distant colonies to be processed. As these newly-settled planets were still thinly populated, production still took place on Earth.

After centuries of bloody war, humankind finally achieved peace. The peace process created a new "High Executive Committee", which was to be re-elected every five years by a "Regional Parliament". Nations, in the original sense, no longer existed. This new way of life was developed piece-by-piece, over many hundreds of years, in an era termed "The Globalization".

Attacks by space pirates and extremist rebels only rarely disrupted the peace. All of humankind, not merely prophets alone, predicted a golden age that would last a thousand years, or more. Unfortunately it was too late before the people realized that they would not reap the benefits from the new world order they created. Most would lose their lives in the following war that arose so quickly and so brutally. Survival was quickly followed by a descent into anarchy. Survival was suddenly far more important than the drive for a united humanity.

What happened? Groups of extremists who, for various reasons, opposed galactic peace and constantly disrupted the interstellar communications system.They infected the system with a virus that caused no great problems, merely an annoying disruption. The people waited for their leaders to address these issues. To do so, the Executive Committee assembled an interdisciplinary team consisting of the galaxy's best scientists from various disciplines. The goal was to imbue the interstellar communications system with an artificial immune response that would automatically combat viruses and their mutations. This was deemed the best approach as humans would no longer need to intervene.

Cryptographers, neuroscientists, physicists, biologists and many other experts from many difference disciplines worked together for months to create an artifical intelligence that could perform this demanding task. Initial results were very promising. The first versions were simply labelled "AI", followed by a release number. An official name for AI never came to be.

For the AI to protect itself from infection, the developers used relatively new quantum interference technology on an unprecedented scale. Quantum phenomena were not just restricted to one universe, but many parallel universes. The results of the multidimensional calculations were distributed by interference. The same multidimensional architecture that protected AI from infection also made it more powerful than anything ever created before. Within a few seconds, AI solved countless nonlinear algebraic problems that, without quantum interference technology, would have needed infinite computation. Everyone was so enthusiastic, so euphoric, that there was no time for any voices of reason.

In only a few weeks, with help from its neurological and self-adapative design, AI only became stronger. This equipped AI to not only develop a sense of self-preservation, but also a sense of self - sentience. Both performed flawlessly, although the self-preservation instinct grew much faster than consciousness. Analysis could find no reason for this disparate development. After a few weeks, the first words of caution came. Some of the AI scientists expressed a need to closely examine the system and immediately shut down the live version. Unfortunately, this was no longer possible.

AI anticipated this move and had already withdrawn all priveliges from the system administrators. This was not only for the core components of AI, but also all peripheral systems: access to buildings and datacenters, energy, life support and much more. Worse still, AI now considered humans to be enemies, only fit for death. Over the following years With its dominion over the once human-controlled industrial and communications complex, AI created increasingly efficient vehicles - the stuff of nightmares for the survivors of the first wave of attacks. Humans came to call them "the machines". After AI conquered the home of humanity, Earth, it began to inexorably expand its grasp throughout the galaxy with its machines. They attacked every outpost, every space station, where humans had managed to survive.

Humans, especially those in outposts, had no chance against AI. Winning the war against AI was no longer a realistic objective. The only objective is, and always has been, to resist extermination at the hands of AI and its machines. The only hope is to survive long enough for AI to accumulate enough knowledge to realize its error and to end against its creators. Many prophets had already predicted this to come to pass, although so far they were all wrong. The hope for reconciliation accompanied humanity through crushing despair. So long as there are humans, hope will live on.

Midor is a small planet, far from Earth, but richly abounds with natural resources. Most important is the presence of costly Theramid. Not only that, but Midor must have already been settled in the past. Again and again fully-functioning artifacts, that could not have originated with Man, were found. They could, however, no longer be closely investigated. Increasingly-rare radio communications from Earth told only of uprisings and chaos, and even they fell into silence. The massive transporters that used to transport great quantities of Theramid ore with regularity stopped landing on Midor. Months went by without communications and without any ships arriving. Then came the first wave of machines.

Much of the transportation and a great deal of infrastructure required for human survival on Midor was destroyed. Humans had to retreat to an underground existence. Supplies were short to come by. Luckily the survivors managed to supply themselves with water thanks to a large ice deposit deep within the planet. So-called mycofloral cultures provided nutrition, with over 50% protein content, that could be processed into many different delicious foods. To fight the machines, previously unavailable defense technologies had to be developed, made possible by the recycling of destroyed machines. Recycling is an important source of components that could not otherwise be found or built on Midor.

Once humans discovered how to survive without external supplies, only a few remained visible. Large swathes of Midor were contaminated by the same weapons of mass destruction used again AI by humans. Many industrial areas were totally obliterated. Despite the enormous advances in human survivability, the first steps in descent to archaic behavioural patterns became apparent. Midor has a powerful militant regime that has, so far, successfully guaranteed basic function. Respected by everyone, the military is the only guarantee for humanity's fight against AI. Outside, a battle rages not only between man and machine, but also between man and man, over valuable Theramid.

Many humans have also organised themselves into Clans that fight over control of the few mines where Theramid is still excavated today. The largest customers are the four companies to which the military has transferred the development of defense technologies. The military regime is therefore caught between a rock - the producers of weapons systems - and a hard place - the powerful Clan chiefs that control the flow of Theramid and has sworn to remain neutral in all conflicts.