NationStates Jolt Archive

452 years before the present day, On the eve of the great cataclysm that shaped this world into what it is today.

For as long as anyone could remember, the people of this world had never concerned themselves with technological advancement insofar as they had never achieved anything beyond steam power, or true powered flight. Nonetheless there were were a few factions among the proto-Zirith that desired high technology, but they all lacked the political or economic power to direct the populations efforts, until now.

With science in practical form being almost-but-not-quite banned, and shunned by the the saner elements of society, it fell to the less stable and more...adventurous parts of those factions that had a technological bent to pursue those dangerous and decidedly unsafe avenues of advancement. This leads us to the apocalyptic events of this day, when one of aforementioned scientists unleashed upon the world a discovery that would spread across the surface of this planet, and turn it to ice. The few survivors of this day would be some of the very people that had caused this cataclysm, the scientists maintaining small domes on the sea floor, and the people crewing their tiny, and low tech submarine fleet.

Life as they knew it was destroyed that day, and through their enourmous struggles to merely survive, their history, and culture was forgotten as the majority died of starvation, and infighting before they could adapt to life thousands of metres underwater. It would take them hundreds of years to reach anything resembling civilization again, but they would be forever changed and ...different from those that lived before...

OOC: Intro post #1, more to follow.

With the survivors having conquered the native beasts enough to make the area around their domes livable at their current level of technical achievement, they soon spread through the seas like a flame, and consumed every natural resource in sight, only limited by their rapidly advancing technology. A fierce symbol of this outgrowth of life was Bubble One, the centre of this expansionist almost barbarian in scope civilization. Bubble one was built on one of the more resource rich sites in that part of the sea, but inevitably, it, and the nation itself fractured into many sects after a time, each vying for a piece of this primitive empire. The two powers that emerged from this chaos were the Naris, an aggressive, and fanatical psuedo-facist empire with a view to either annihilating or enslaving the other, smaller factions, and the relatively peaceful, but somewhat poor Zirith, that styled themselves after the more...positive elements of the society that their ancestors created.


The present day, Hrakert Rift station,

This part of the story begins at Hrakert rift station, the major port and recharging centre for the Zirith fleet, mere days after but one of their crushing defeats at the hands of the Naris. In the office of Captain Zieg Evanson, the admiral of the fleet informs him of a new submarine that has recently passed into service, an odd thing for the commander of the fleet...
The admiral twirls a cigar in his fingers, rigidly impatient for a response from this so far lowly captain.
The captain, possibly sensing a promotion in the works, snaps to attention.
"A new submarine, sir? And what possible use could I be for such a project?"
"To put it bluntly, captain, to be the commander of a 'meatshield' submarine. You likely wont survive against the frankly far superior fleet of our enemy, but it will give us time to flank them in the coming battle.. I'll be sure to personally inform your wife of your heroic death."
"..Great. Yessir!"
The admiral dismissed the captain with a wave of his hand, and said captain left the building to stare at the vast ocean from the safety of the stations walkways.
Hrmph. That was rather short and contempt filled for the admiral. Somethings up in the brass, and I'm glad I wont live to see it's resolution...