by Justin Bacon
Symbols by Gail Frazer (Design) and Seth Bacon (Digital Finish)
Jumpweb Map by Keith Johnson
Art by Bob Hobbs and colored by Keith Johnson
The Fall
It was a golden age, humanity's finest hour, and it was coming to an end. During the time of the Second Republic all of humanity had been joined into a whole across the vastness of interstellar space; but now, under the petty manipulations and power mongering of the noble families, humanity's cohesion and greatness was pushed to its limits and then broken. The Second Republic fell.
And as the Chaos of the Fall began to spread, as darkness enveloped world after world, as the people became frightened and afraid, neighbor began to war on neighbor once more and all of human society teetered upon the edge of barbarity and obscurity. World after world sealed themselves away from neighbors who, once friendly, could now only be considered potential invaders.
These worlds were lost from Known Space -- that region around Holy Terra, the birthplace of humanity, where treacherous noble families who had engineered the Fall consolidated their power. As the universe was plunged into a new Dark Age, the wonders of the Second Republic were forgotten and lost.
Over the years some of these lost worlds have regained contact with Known Space as sealed gates reopened and forgotten jumpkeys were rediscovered. There they found a power struggle between feudal lords, merchant guilds, and an orthodoxical church all struggling to impose their will . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: January 5, 2001
Copyright © 2001 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.
