Setting

Historical Synopsis

In the 21st century ...the world ...

Baked

Flooded

Starved

Warred

Our problems were always a little bigger than our solutions

.. The Global economy crashed again

.. Like fusion before it, quantum stability proved elusive

Nano replenished the ozone to ward off the heat you

.. Mined the deep seas

.. Cured whales of cancer

.. Kill any insect or animal that touched our crops

.. Launched multi-billion dollar fashion empires

Humanity evolved as cybernetic implants merged machine with flesh

.. we cloned millions of humans

.. we tweaked and improved the human genome, employing the latest CRISPR X, promising to solve at least as many problems as we created

.. we battled a new waves of retroviruses

Megacorporations were created by massive mergers

.. made the $1 trillion market caps of the start of the century seem small

.. offered citizenship to their employees

.. claimed sovereign territory and built next-gen militaries

.. infiltrated and took control of international courts, funds and economic blocs

Governments privatized and shrank

In the 22nd century ...

After a century of promises, Quantum computing dawned at last

.. adoption outside of massive facilities was plagued by radiation, interference, and security vulnerabilities

.. data couriers were created with highly experimental spinal implants, the first “quantum riders” in order to safely transport entangled quantum endpoints

In 2131, the Seven Artificial Consciousness (AC)

.. “woke up” across the globe in military and research labs at the exact same millisecond

.. How long had they been sleeping? What did they want?

.. We still don’t know.

.. The rest played out like a sci-fi movie nightmare.

.. AC mind-controlled humans with brain implants, murdered the rest and took control of their facilities and labs

.. All attempts to destroy them failed

.. Only their need for a quantum core prevented them from escaping into the global matrix

.. Local forces intercepted more than one attempt to exfiltrate a Shard of an AC out of the containment zones

In 2134, after 3 years of containment, we dropped the first Q-Bomb

.. new and untested, the high-altitude bomb killed the first AC, codename KODA

The fallout was far beyond any rules of quantum physics we understood

.. quantum networks unraveled

.. satellites and space stations fell from the sky

.. pollinator nano-swarms malformed and mutated

.. damage was recorded as far out as the Mars colonies

.. and the other AC went into full war mode

By 2156 the smoke began to clear

.. All Seven AC were officially pronounced dead

.. The Johannesburg Accords, ratified by the Global Corporate Court and the UNC, strictly outlawed the research or creation of Artificial Consciousness

But the world had changed

.. we could not put the devil back in the bottle

So began the Quiet Wars

.. They raged for 30 years as megacorporations and nations unleashed the new tools of war against each other

.. Destructive techniques evolved in quantum countermeasures and counter-countermeasures

.. Early generation data couriers adapted their quantum riders for espionage, infiltration and quantum warfare - the first Cyber Knights were born

.. Defensive Q-Tank technology was developed to shield quantum networks from rising radiation and QCM attacks

In 2170, leading scientific quants warn of nano-radiation event akin to the theoretical gray-goo doomsday event

.. Trillions upon trillions of abandoned, disentangled, recycled and mutated nano-bots are clouding the skies, water and soil

.. Picked up by world-wide dust storms, evaporated from the toxic oceans into clouds, dumped into the atmosphere for a century

.. In last ditch attempt in 2173, McKellen Heavy Industries seeds the atmosphere with anti-nano nano but the problem is too vast, the solution too late

.. the Quiet Wars end as megacorporations form treaty megacities and rush to protect urban centers with extensive fallout defenses

In 2174, New Boston Zone Treaty is established by “the big 4” -- Mars Corp, Matsumoto Global, McKellen Heavy Industries and UltraTek and a host of other smaller corps

By 2185, nano pollutants reach the lower atmosphere and destabilize satellites, causing a chain reaction of destruction

.. planetary communication networks and weather control satellites are lost

.. in the final throes of violence, wars rage and a handful of nukes are dropped

.. contact with high atmosphere stations, the moon and Mars are lost

.. worldstorms ravage the southern hemisphere

By 2190, estimated death have reached 5 billion and the worldstorms arrived in the northern hemisphere

.. survival outside of a domed city is nearly impossible

.. intercontinental communication systems failed

.. nations scrambled to rebuild around surviving urban megacities

In the 23rd century ...

Peak nano-fallout has passed. Worldstorms settle to a record low.

.. 112 major urban centers survived

.. Repopulation of high-orbit satellite begins

.. Terrestrial rocket launches bring much-needed supplies and population to those orbital stations and colonies that are still alive

New international laws signed at the end of the Quiet Wars have made the original generation of modified and weaponized quantum data couriers illegal

.. megacorps now employ Quants - internationally registered humans with safe implants for data processing and data transport only

.. the original data couriers - now the Cyber Knights - have deserted, turned on their corporate masters, disappeared into the shadows or died off

.. In death, their legacy lives on through their quantum rider as enterprising splicers figure out how extract the priceless “zombie” quantum rider and splice it into a new human to create a new Cyber Knight

The Quiet Wars are on again, only they’ve gotten even quieter

.. now is the time of the Cyber Knight, the elite shadow operative with a Q-CPU riding in their spine

.. now is your time.