Epoch Exordium

About Epoch Exordium

An adventure RPG with resource management elements from RTS.

This tells the story of human explorers of a network of space stations that were built by automated drones at the direction of an AI.

Purpose

This mini-game is mainly for me to build up game mechanics and functionality in the engine.

Epoch Exordium leads into the world of 2099. It serves as a transitionary piece from today's world into the Earth that will fall at the start of Langenium proper.

Exordium is an element developed by humans, under WERP's instruction. It's named for being a new beginning for humanity.

The game's story is the Epoch of Exordium and the prologue for how WERP took control of the human race and brought them to Ibidan "an Epoch Exordium", introduction to the main story :)

Storyline

Prologue

In the early 21st century, the human race was in a crisis. The oil had run dry and food was scarce due to dangerous and unpredictable weather patterns.

A computer was made, unlike any other. The Web Energy Research Project (WERP) sought to create a human brain that could solve the energy crisis and ensure the survival of the human race. The brain was given a home in the sky and hidden from all humans, knowing that it's mission would keep it in check - create clean energy and ensure the human race's survival.

WERP came online in 2039 and revolutionized the fields of astrophyics, biology, chemistry, quantum physics and mathematics. It did all this by exploring and cataloging the internet and then producing models and prototypes for the humans to learn from.

By 2040, all forms of private transportation became illegal. Unrest, crime and rioting ensued, however no solution came about. WERP was put to the task, and determined that humanity must create a new element for a new age - Exordium.

Exordium would capture gamma rays in a crystalline structure and then release it in the form of electricity. It seemed perfect, unfortunately there was no way to make it.

  1. Construction drones designed and built by WERP were rocketed onto the moon. The drones harvested raw materials, surviving off cosmic radiation and trace gases they eventually began to replicate and left the moon for the asteroid belt, and beyond. The human race was completely unaware of all of this and lived on, as well as they could.

For 31 years, WERP sat in silence. As time had passed, astronomers had observed structures being built all around the solar system. There were theories - that WERP was hard at work, piloting each and every single drone remotely and thus limiting it's ability to work on anything else or even communicate.

  1. On an ordinary day, inboxes all around the world were flooded with one message - "It's ready. Come forth.". There was a lot of confusion, but some brave souls decided to head for the stars to find see if the answer could be found - somewhere out there in space.

Epoch Exordium Story

Project Humanity (PH) is founded by the UN in 2077. The organization was given the same mandate as WERP - create clean energy and protect the human race. PH was told that they would assemble teams from all around the world who would go out into space and find out what WERP had built and why.

Engineers, scientists, passionate sci-fi nerds and entrepreneurs were brought up to the delapitated International Space Station for a debriefing and deployment. It turns out that WERP had developed a form of public transportation - a network of ballistic capsule cannons and nets that would allow cargo and people to move safely between structures.

SPOILERIFIC EPIC CONCLUSION OF STORY NOTES

WERP is using the network as part of his long term plan to destroy the Earth in 23 years and relocate the humans to Ibidan.

The stations could be used to both determine the trajectory of the wormhole and a way to create the ideal conditions for it.

Ideas
  • Detonating the stations in a certain order could create some kind of gravitational disturbance that rips the Earth->Ibidan wormhole open.
    • Twin wormholes open - one between Earth and the surface of the sun and one between Earth and Ibidan
    • Wormhole is 'shifting' and in the process of stabilizing it's simply superheated plasma/exotic particles entering the Earth's atmosphere that causes the explosion
  • The stations could funnel laser/maser/kinetic energy into the Earth in a way that rips the wormhole open
    • The station is at the L3 point to Earth and the "poof" of the wormhole being established between these locations caused a massive solar flare to hit the Earth's atmosphere

Due to the player's having their brains harvested at the end of Epoch Exordium - there could be moments in Langenium MMO where this past character contacts the same players Langenium character via cryptic clues and messages. This could be in their own past and resonance with recent events or direct things like receiving a random reward from that character as an inheritance. Maybe completing different optional objectives in Epoch Exordium could create greater rewards and longer term missions that appear - maybe even discovering more about what WERP did overall, as part of your own story in both games?

Storyline

Prologue for Epoch Exordium

In 2076, the human race seems to be at a breaking point. There has been no oil for 50 years. Coal is rare. Nuclear fission ended up hitting the mainstream as a result, however an Earthquake in.Europe caused a disaster at several plants. Their only.option was to 'decontaminate' the area with special hydrogen bombs that sucked the radiation into space, however this pushes those regions.into a permanent unlivable winter. This causes extremes to occur in the Earth climate; whatever isn't frozen turns.into a harsh desert. The decision to freeze the irradiated sites was proposed by Dr Olivia Bishop and carried out by scientists from CERN, despite several military organizations objecting to their role being usurped by the intellectual elite.

Project Humanity is setup in 2077 as a UN failsafe/first response unit for any potential threats to the continued existence of the human race.

WERP is an early PH initiative in 2077 to develop accessible and abundant clean energy sources. This is in direct response to the disaster that devastated Europe.

May is a research biologist who acts as project leader. She has been trying to develop artificial biomass based machinery for power and manufacturing, as a possible alternative to metal/circuit based tech.

By 2099, the organization was largely discredited due to being blamed for the transformed weather system, embezzlement and corruption. Many corporations and governments opt to cease funding and by the time Phoenix Day hits, the organization is severely crippled by continued attacks from politicians and business leaders who accuse it of being a waste of money and having leaders who are fueled by paranoid delusions of 'doomsday prophets' of things like meteor strikes, solar flares and catastrophic climate change. Dr Olivia Bishop and her team, in particular, are the subject of a lot of outrage as their decision that saved Europe is seen as an avoidable and catastrophic mistake. Several conspiracy theorists believe it was a move to convince the public to create PH in the first place, so that "the scientist fat cats can steal our hard earned money and live it up and conduct ridiculous and expensive experiments to feed their own narcissism and do nothing to enrich the human race"

The power structure of Project Humanity is based around a mixed appointed and elected board of scientists known as the Council. Councillors are either select politicians or 'department heads' of scientific units which can then be broken down into teams. May is only a team leader.