Sera was once a beautiful world. Across its many immense continents arose colorful wild forests,
rich boundless plains, deep jungles, fierce mountains and verdant plateaus. Surrounding
them all was a vast expanse of ocean, azure and majestic, in which innumerable island chains were
scattered. Yet in the aftermath of the greatest conflict humanity has ever known, a frenzied war
against extinction, Sera is today a scorched and barren wasteland, it’s scarred landscapes
marked by the decaying remains of old battlefields and the ruins of its once proud and busy cities.
The spread of humanity across the planet is remembered as the “Age of Armageddon”.
Petty rivalries between neighboring tribes turned into wars between competing kingdoms and empires.
For a thousand years, humanity failed to rise above its base instincts,
until finally, with the rapid spread of industry and agriculture, the greatest nations were able
to abandon their destructive ways and the desire for conquest and conflict that had defined them.
No nation of Sera was a perfect one, each had to contend in their own way with the
omnipresent forces of poverty, crime, political instability and social unrest.
But in the absence of any large scale military conflicts, the entire planet embraced the
sciences and the arts, accomplishing new feats of commerce and industry. The triumphs of this
age of uninterrupted peace however, intensified the demands for energy which neither petroleum
or nuclear power could fully satisfy. The discovery of Imulsion would change everything.
Through a process known as Lightmass, this naturally occurring substance could be refined
into a powerful fuel source, one with the potential to end the global energy crisis.
Yet the development of cheap energy shattered the global economy
and threw the balance of power into chaos. Imulsion reserves were not spread equally
across the nations of Sera and while some enjoyed an economic boom, others languished.
The Pendulum Wars were the natural consequence of this inequality. As nations began invading
their neighbors and rivals to secure Imulsion for themselves, the escalating conflicts saw the
establishment of two rival power blocs. For 79 years the Union of Independent Republics
and the Coalition of Ordered Governments fought for control of Sera’s Imulsion reserves,
nearly destroying themselves and the planet in the process. Conventional armies could transform
prosperous territories into bleak, colorless wastelands through years of fighting, but with
the development of weapons of mass destruction came the power to do the same in an instant.
The greatest of these weapons was the Hammer of Dawn, an orbital, satellite-based laser
system first developed by the Union only to be stolen and completed under the Coalition.
Its use against the Union of Independent Republics forced their near complete capitulation,
bringing the Pendulum Wars to a costly end. The Coalition of Ordered Governments would
preside over Sera as the planet’s sole hyperpower for only six weeks.
Humanity had known for millennia of the existence of a vast subterranean
labyrinth of tunnels and caverns known colloquially as “The Hollow”.
This network was the lasting impact of the Riftworms, enormous creatures up to 10 miles
long that in ancient times had burrowed their way all across the crust of Sera. In the modern era,
the Hollow had been heavily mined or used as a dumping ground for dangerous materials.
Yet unbeknownst to all the nations of Sera, even their deepest efforts had only penetrated
into the outermost layers of The Hollow, the network went far deeper than any had suspected.
Within its twisting depths, a mutated race of humanity had formed during the Pendulum Wars.
Their creation was the result of genetic experimentation, mutated
by both exposure to raw Imulsion and the DNA of the strange creatures indigenous to the Hollow.
Nearly a quarter of all human life perished on Emergence Day, when the creatures that would
become known as the Locust Horde flooded out of the Hollow onto the streets of every major city.
Just weeks after its victory over the Union, the Coalition was on the verge of total annihilation.
Without options and faced with a constant assault from beneath its own nations, the
Coalition retreated to a few key fortified areas and proceeded to scorch the planet’s surface.
Through atomic and chemical weaponry, as well as the Hammer of Dawn,
Sera was devastated. Cataclysmic environmental damage bombarded the planet with enormous
firestorms, clogged the atmosphere with debris and ash and created new wastelands strewn with human
and Locust remains. This was hardly the immediate triumph over the Horde that the
Coalition had hoped for, instead only the first in a long series of counter-attacks.
For nearly two decades the Coalition and Locust Horde would assail themselves
upon the other, bringing devastation to what little remained of Sera.
The Hollow would be bombed, flooded, and bombed again. The Imulsion would be ignited and Locusts
destroyed. But there could be no victory for either side. Sera is a dead or dying world,
beset by terrible new phenomena unleashed by the destruction of its natural environment. What few
human survivors that today remain, must live in the shadow of their destroyed civilization.
Above them, are the towering ruins of their lost glories and accomplishments, while beneath
them… lies the Hollow and whatever terrible threats that as of yet, remain undisturbed.