Systems Malfunction

"Man your own Jackhammer!

Man your battle stations!

We’ll have you dead pretty soon."

- Coheed & Cambria, "In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3"

It is the year 556 R.T. (Republic Time) and humanity has long since fled a doomed Earth. A desperate exodus aboard a space station controlled by a mad Artificial Intelligence left humanity – along with the technologically enhanced “Celestials” and the alien Xel – stranded in a cold and empty galaxy. 

Always resilient, humanity has survived, colonizing dozens of inhabitable planets, moons, and asteroids throughout several solar systems. 

And all these worlds fall under the jurisdiction of the Confederated Colonial Republics. 

A state of perpetual cold war exists between the three Great Houses, often erupting into small armed conflicts, large scale industrial espionage, and proxy wars. Terrorist groups continue to plague the worlds of the C.C.R., including a violent anarchist movement seeking to overthrow the Republic: The Fallen. 

The destruction of the G.A.I.A. ended humanity's First Exodus: she was destroyed by one man, Armand Carter - forever enshrined as humanity's greatest hero - and one monster, Sigmus The Fallen, one of her Greater Celestials gone rogue. Armand Carter's descendants lead the Second Exodus to the Galactic Capital of Avalon, and have since ruled the galaxy in an unbroken line of democratically elected "Presidents for Life".

But for five centuries since, the net has whispered since that the GAIA, fragmented into four distinct personalities, lives on. A secret high-tech cult, led by Celestials known as the Redeemers, bide their time and await Mother's return, to make the Galaxy whole. They know that in new forms they may not recognize that She is Returning.

They are right.

Experience the fractured future of post-diaspora humanity as you've never seen it before:

Be a cybernetically augmented human, a human psionic, an assimilated psychic alien, or one of four choirs of posthuman "angels" perfected by the AI that has abandoned them.  

Unconstrained by a class-and-level system, you can construct your character freely: for those who don't feel like going into that much depth, there are package deals ready to go for augmentation, gear, or vehicles.  

Shifting and conflicting loyalties WILL cause you to betray each other. These betrayals WILL be made more complicated by the following:

(Your first) death is not the end: YOU HAVE A FINITE NUMBER OF CLONES, I.E. EXTRA LIVES.  

Characters are made awesome by Edges. Edges are acquired during character creation by having Problems that complicate their lives, by taking on Secret Allegiances (see above), and by selling back Clones.  

Your awesome characters then engage in espionage, intrigue, and the most tactical, versatile, visceral personal/vehicle combat you've seen in an RPG.

"The best possible future is inherently much less interesting than one where everything goes horribly wrong."

- Ron Edwards