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jasonh [Development]
+++ start [2022/04/27 18:37] (current)
jasonh [Development]
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-====== Welcome Pilot! ======
+====== Welcome Commander! ======
-GAT is a single-player tactical game with story-driven RPG elements, currently under development.
+Argon-88 is a single-player tactical game with story-driven RPG elements, currently under development.
-====== Development ======
+====== Development Diary ======
-{{:renders:juno_walk.gif |}}
+Find the [[Blog:April2022]] entry here.
+====== Story History ======
+In 1879 a Swedish merchant ship spotted what appeared to be a solitary stationary cloud high above the North Atlantic seas. Closer investigation revealed this to some kind of large levitating structure.  Believing it to be a floating city they named it [[Glossary:Anglarnas Stad]], “City of Angels”. Upon arrival at port their story was mostly dismissed as madness or lies. However American journalist [[Glossary:Thomas Coleridge]] was impressed by the sincerity of the crew and decided to find and photograph this floating mystery. Over the next 18 months Coleridge and his sister [[Glossary:Judith Coleridge|Judith]] made numerous trips across the Atlantic until, in spring of 1881, Anglarnas Stad was spotted and he convinced the captain to sail close enough for a picture to be taken.
+Anglarnas Stad quickly became world news. Renowned British scientist and explorer [[Glossary:Lord Aldous Hill]] announced his intention to mount an expedition to set foot on the floating city. In 1882 Hill's team use an ingenious high-altitude hot-air balloon to board the city, around two hundred miles west of Iceland. The first five people to set foot in Anglarnas Stad include Hill and the Coleridges.
+They find that whilst Anglarnas Stad has buildings designed as accommodation it is clearly not a city. The explorers theorised it was some kind of port, with warehouse areas (all empty) and docks for what they assumed would be flying ships (long gone). They also determined that Anglarnas Stad was abandoned long ago. Whoever lived and worked there had departed decades if not centuries ago. For Coleridge every question answered raised at least two more. Who had built it, what happened to them, what purpose did it serve, why had it never been seen before? In her private journal Judith wrote “if our mission here is to discover the fate of these miraculous architects then I fear we will fail”.
+Whilst the history of Anglarnas Stad remained shrouded Hill made many scientific and technological discoveries, the foremost being a crystalline material he called Anglarnite.  Anglarnite apparently lit the structure and, he theorised, produced the levitation that kept it aloft. He also discovered a part dismantled sky-ship, an incredible find which began to explain the workings of Anglarnite. Over the period of ten days the expedition removed items Hill believed to be critical to an understanding of these fantastic devices. With these they returned to England.
+Lord Hill’s interest in Anglarnas Stad was spent. His entire focus was now upon Anglarnite and he retired to his family's estate in the north of England to continue his experiments. Meanwhile the rest of the expedition became celebrities, their names recognisable globally. The Great Powers of the time viewed the flying city as the greatest scientific discovery of the modern age and each sent sizeable fleets to the Atlantic to stop it being annexed by the other. Over the next few years each sent balloon expeditions but little new was discovered.
+Lord Hill's work revolutionised Victorian science over the next decade. Mechanical and electrical systems all took a giant leap forward and fabrication pits revolutionised construction. Within a few years the first sky ships were built and they quickly began to displace stream trains and ships as the primary commercial transport. Lord Hill, a veteran who had never forgotten the horrors of the Arrow War, believed these advances would eliminate the need for armed conflict. He ensured all nations of the world shared in this knowledge, to ensure a peaceful future for mankind. Ironically it is this very technology that almost destroyed mankind. Because the military application of the sky ship became evident when the Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarck invested massively in the development of Luftkanones, sky ships with naval guns and armoured hulls. The first Luktkanone, the L-1, was launched in the summer of 1889. The English speaking world referred to these ships as Lufts.
+The major nations of the time continued their policies of imperialism. As tensions grew these nations aligned into power blocs; the Central Powers (led by Germany and Austria-Hungary) and the Entente Powers (led by UK, France and Russia). The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 was the spark that ignited the Great War. It quickly became evident that whomever ruled the sky would dominate the ground; protracted aerial battles took place over the fields and cities of Europe and later Asia and the Americas over the next four years. Terrible weapons that could be easily assembled destroyed the land, poisoning the earth for decades. Both sides were evenly matched and no true victory could be secured. Over the course of the war 50 million soldiers and civilians died; the male population was greatly reduced forcing women into those roles historically held by men. Even so the lack of trained fighting personnel became the limiting factor in the last months of the war. Eventually the ecological impact forced the powers to agree to a ceasefire in 1918. The Treaty of Louvre (1919) saw a formal end to all hostilities.
+In the same peace conference in Paris the League of Nations was formed. This organisation has one goal - to ensure the continued survival of the human race. The damage done by the Great War was more than just lost lives and destroyed cities; uncontrollable crystal growths were sprouting in all of the major battle sites, killing plant and animal life. Private estimations by the League gave the grim view that the Earth would be uninhabitable within twenty years. The first Secretary General of the League was Alexandre Friedel, a shrewd French politician who believed that the technology of Anglarnas Stad would be the only thing to say the planet.
+Under Friedel's direction the League renewed the scientific investigation of the flying city. In 1920 Polish physicist Jonlanta Ecker theorized that the central feature of the city was a transportation portal, a machine that could "translate" matter from this location to another location. Ecker believed this location would be another planet, the home of the angels who built the city. Her initial experiments appeared to support this theory, with small objects being translated to another unknown location. Later that year her theory was (mainly) proven when the first of the Nephilim arrive through the portal.
+The Nephilim's name (and that for the Seraphim) was proposed by Ecker as a way to help explain the visitors to the peoples of the world; the Nephilim never claimed to be divinely created and certainly never claimed their creators were angels. What they did claim was the Seraphim were beings that live in another universe, an echo of this that can be reached through the portal. The Seraphim had spent centuries exploring the echoes and had detected Ecker's experiments with the portal. However the Seraphim were "alien in thought and nature" and would not be able to interact directly with humanity. As such they created the Nephilim, an amalgam of human and Seraphim; whilst outwardly human the Nephilim possessed unnatural skin colors and abilities that, to the uninformed, would appear magical. The Nephilim had come to Earth with one purpose; the Seraphim had commanded they save humanity.
-====== Story ======
-A [[Backstory:Timeline]] of the game's backstory is now available.

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