Summary: In an antique land at the border of the Apocalypse, Emiya journeys to seek the Sword of Beginnings. The vectors toward the Land of Steel align, and the stage for a final confrontation is set. A 'crossover' of FSN and the general Type-Moon setting, with use of the short novel, Notes. An addendum to Ol'Velsper's Eureka.
Fragments
o: Prologue - Khoros <-- (This Post)
I: Coins for the Ferryman
4: By the Root of the Blessing
6: Agartha et Duat
8: Whitechapel, 1888
Io: Prometheus Unbound
I2: In the Court of the Cups
I5: Jormungandr
I6: Cutting and Binding
I7: Epilogue I of 2 - Diamonds & Clubs
Concordance
I: Notes & Timeline
2: Alchemy & Thaumaturgy
3: Geography & the End of Days
4: The Things That Remain After the End
5: Magic & the Nature of Reality
O // Khoros
(age of steel common) ref Y.000000@2955
It was in the abeyance of the planet's conceptual defenses that the desolation truly began.
The immediate cause was the appearance of the atmospheric toxin known as 'grain' -- a class of miniscule particles bearing substantial mass, but no discernible molecular or atomic identity. Though chemically inert, their very presence in an environment propagated structural damage to the cells of living organisms by mechanical action.
Deprived of a unifying consciousness, the ecosphere managed to persist for a time -- but as the average air saturation at sea level rose to exceed 1,999 units per cubic meter, a practical means of halting the onslaught of desertification ceased to exist. Topsoil biomatter was by the poison from the skies reduced to so much dust, and viable farmland gradually degraded past the point of salvage.
This was the setting in which the Great War was fought.
The conflict was, in essence, one of selection: Liberated from enforced servitude by their archetype and leader, the post-human slave races consolidated in alignment against humanity, vying for the extermination of their former masters in a zero-sum competition to secure access to dwindling resources.
Their advantage lay ultimately not in their superior survivability; nor in the fact that humanity could match their innate functional endowments only by aid of technology -- it lay in their capacity to synchronize autoevolution across members of a given genotype, rendering obsolete the traditional advance of a species by death and procreation and genetic diversity.
In the first place, it was not a war that 'humanity' could have won. The folk of the era strived by every means to see their progeny to the future, but absent of the supplies and stability to safely relocate off the planet, the only course was to fight -- and the passage of time came to demonstrate that light-based weaponry and other conventional military armaments simply weren't enough. Any advances in technology could be outmatched in a number of weeks, and the post-humans were more than capable of producing their own innovations.
Faced with the near-certainty of extinction, the scientists of the late twenty-ninth century turned to the possibility of breaking the oldest taboo of genetic engineering -- supplanting the human genome with an artificial creation.
The time for baseless pride was over, they argued. Mimicking the biological shifts that had permitted life to survive the Oxygen Catastrophe of the Precambrian era, 'grain' could be nullified as a toxin with relatively few genetic modifications; and physiologically inherent combat capabilities on par with the post-humans weren't beyond imagination. Given a choice between death and genomic eradication, the latter would at least grant the children of humanity a chance at survival. This was the only remaining salvation that the scientists could envision.
The leaders of men considered the proposition at length, and by their grudging agreement, the race of the Liners were eventually allowed to come into existence -- forging by their feats the turn of the tide of war, and the dawn of what came to be called the Age of Steel. Such was the empirical reality that concluded the twilight of man, lived and cast by generations of bloodshed and objective certainty; a 'historical truth.'
Behind the stage of the known histories, however, a very different story could be told:
Somewhere in the deserts at the cradle of civilization, a murder was committed. A sacrifice was made to the oldest existing demiurgos.
Always, the bones would remember.
Fragments
o: Prologue - Khoros <-- (This Post)
I: Coins for the Ferryman
4: By the Root of the Blessing
6: Agartha et Duat
8: Whitechapel, 1888
Io: Prometheus Unbound
I2: In the Court of the Cups
I5: Jormungandr
I6: Cutting and Binding
I7: Epilogue I of 2 - Diamonds & Clubs
Concordance
I: Notes & Timeline
2: Alchemy & Thaumaturgy
3: Geography & the End of Days
4: The Things That Remain After the End
5: Magic & the Nature of Reality
O // Khoros
(age of steel common) ref Y.000000@2955
It was in the abeyance of the planet's conceptual defenses that the desolation truly began.
The immediate cause was the appearance of the atmospheric toxin known as 'grain' -- a class of miniscule particles bearing substantial mass, but no discernible molecular or atomic identity. Though chemically inert, their very presence in an environment propagated structural damage to the cells of living organisms by mechanical action.
Deprived of a unifying consciousness, the ecosphere managed to persist for a time -- but as the average air saturation at sea level rose to exceed 1,999 units per cubic meter, a practical means of halting the onslaught of desertification ceased to exist. Topsoil biomatter was by the poison from the skies reduced to so much dust, and viable farmland gradually degraded past the point of salvage.
This was the setting in which the Great War was fought.
The conflict was, in essence, one of selection: Liberated from enforced servitude by their archetype and leader, the post-human slave races consolidated in alignment against humanity, vying for the extermination of their former masters in a zero-sum competition to secure access to dwindling resources.
Their advantage lay ultimately not in their superior survivability; nor in the fact that humanity could match their innate functional endowments only by aid of technology -- it lay in their capacity to synchronize autoevolution across members of a given genotype, rendering obsolete the traditional advance of a species by death and procreation and genetic diversity.
In the first place, it was not a war that 'humanity' could have won. The folk of the era strived by every means to see their progeny to the future, but absent of the supplies and stability to safely relocate off the planet, the only course was to fight -- and the passage of time came to demonstrate that light-based weaponry and other conventional military armaments simply weren't enough. Any advances in technology could be outmatched in a number of weeks, and the post-humans were more than capable of producing their own innovations.
Faced with the near-certainty of extinction, the scientists of the late twenty-ninth century turned to the possibility of breaking the oldest taboo of genetic engineering -- supplanting the human genome with an artificial creation.
The time for baseless pride was over, they argued. Mimicking the biological shifts that had permitted life to survive the Oxygen Catastrophe of the Precambrian era, 'grain' could be nullified as a toxin with relatively few genetic modifications; and physiologically inherent combat capabilities on par with the post-humans weren't beyond imagination. Given a choice between death and genomic eradication, the latter would at least grant the children of humanity a chance at survival. This was the only remaining salvation that the scientists could envision.
The leaders of men considered the proposition at length, and by their grudging agreement, the race of the Liners were eventually allowed to come into existence -- forging by their feats the turn of the tide of war, and the dawn of what came to be called the Age of Steel. Such was the empirical reality that concluded the twilight of man, lived and cast by generations of bloodshed and objective certainty; a 'historical truth.'
Behind the stage of the known histories, however, a very different story could be told:
Somewhere in the deserts at the cradle of civilization, a murder was committed. A sacrifice was made to the oldest existing demiurgos.
Always, the bones would remember.