The Fading Suns
A Futuristic Passion Play
Once the suns shone brightly, beacons in the vast night of space, calling humanity ever onward to greatness. Once people looked to the stars with hope and longing in their eyes.
Then the suns — and the hope — began to fade.
It is the beginning of the sixth millennium after Christ and history has come to an end. Humanity’s greatest civilisation has fallen, leaving ignorance and fear scattered among the ruins of many worlds. A new Dark Age is upon humanity and few believe in renewal and progress anymore. Now there is only waiting. Waiting for a slow death as the age-old stars fade to cinders and the souls of the sinful are called to Final Judgment.
But not all are resigned to this destiny. A hero has arisen, sworn to unite the worlds of Human Space together again under one banner. To ignite hope once more in people’s hearts. It is a monumental task, for most people have already despaired of their lot improving as they til in their lords' fields and factories. What is hope to them now but a falsehood which leads to pain?
There are enemies everywhere: vain nobles ruling far-flung worlds full of abject serfs; power-hungry priests preaching utter dominion over the very souls of their faithful; greedy merchants growing rich from hungry exploitation of their markets. And they are not alone. Others are out there among the darkening stars: alien races angry with humankind for age-old insults. Rival human nations who deny the emperor, deny his church, and deny humanity's need unite as the suns fade.
There are also hungry demons born of ancient technological hubris and the chill darkness between the stars, whispering to the little darknesses in every soul, lusting to devour the remaining light and kill humanity's soul forever.
In the Known Worlds, only a few brave soul out of every thousand dare take their destinies in their own hands and travel between the stars. And only a few among these ever rise to meet their true mark, to be accounted heroes.
The Known Worlds
Once upon a time humanity's greatest nation, the Second Republic, controlled twice a hundred worlds all linked through space by jump-gates. The tides of history and the failure of reason as the stars began to fade swept the Second Republic away. The jump-gates were shut and their keys lost; some through malice, some as a response to war, some purely by bitter chance. In the shattered core of the former republic only a few dozen worlds remained in contact with each other. And after a millenium of strife and misery, a single rule has been re-established, a pale shadow of what once was. Emperor Alexius Hawkwood rules this broken state from Byzantium Secundus.
Those who rule
The Known Worlds are largely run as feudal fiefs by the nobles. By the Church's Doctrine of Martyrs they are permitted to use technology to defend their people and estates. Despite this, most are little more sophisticated than their subjects, and prefer swordplay to guns. The five most powerful dynasties each have large estates across a number of worlds. They are:
- The Hawkwoods — proudly honourable and dutiful, as hard on their serfs as they are on themselves
- The Decados — decadent, hedonistic, treacherous but mostly pragmatic monsters
- The Li Halan — strongly pious and fond of an ordered society under Heaven
- The Al Malik — graceful and enigmatic, the heirs to the Second Republic's riches
- The Hazat — martially proud and somewhat touchy of honour
Those who pray
The Universal Church is acknowledged as the only source of salvation across the Known Worlds. Although based on the simple words of the humble Prophet Zebulon and his eight saintly disciples, it has largely become a juggernaut of cathedrals, church estates and richly garbed priests arguing doctrine rather than saving souls. The five most powerful orders within the Church are:
- The Urth Orthodoxy — the broad mainstream of the Church
- The Sanctuary Aeon — the Sanctuary's Amaltheans are healers, carers and compassionate martyrs
- The Eskatonic Order — mystics and magicians seeking answers to the Pancreator's enigmas everywhere
- The Brothers Battle — warrior-priests, among the best-trained and best-equipped soldiers in the Known Worlds
- The Temple Avesti — fanatical scourges of sin and darkness
Those who trade
Although the Church forbids technology and trade as darkening the reflectivity of the soul, the economy of the Known Worlds requires hardy persons to take these burdens upon themselves for the good of all. The inheritors of the great corporations and zaibatsus of the fallen Second Republic, the traders belong to guilds — each controlling a profession or technology. The five most powerful guilds are:
- The Charioteers — masters of starships and the keys to the jump-gates that unite the Known Worlds
- The Engineers — builders and investigators of machines and the keepers of what science still remains
- The Reeves — administrators and jurists
- The Muster — a labour cartel, the Muster can supply people for any job... whether they want it or not
- The Scravers — criminals, gamblers and treasure hunters
A rabble
The vast majority of people among the Known Worlds are not nobles, nor churchmen, nor the fortunate members of guilds. They are commoners, serfs, peasants, labourers, the proletariat. Their lives range from hard to brutal. To the nobles, churchmen and guildsmen they are scum, pure and simple. They have few rights under law. They exist only to serve.
Aliens, mutants and other filth
Only the humanity of the Known Worlds has been saved by the Church. Humans living in the Kurgan Worlds, and others, are heretics and even demon-worshippers and are to be hated and feared. Aliens, such as the mystical Ur-Obun and treacherous Ur-Ukar, are lesser beings and even if they profess to follow the Church, they are at best to be pitied, at worst to be hated and feared. And then there are the blighted offspring of mad science or environmental pollution: genetically twisted mutations, parodies of the pure human form. They are feared and hated — what if they are contagious?
Pandemonium
Pandemonium is a star system controlled by House Decados. At the edge of the Known Worlds, it has been a waypoint for the alien and heretical seeping in from the Beyond, and is a haven for pirates.