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Erik Rutins -> RE: DW : Shadows - notes as an Empire in the Age of Shadows (5/20/2013 1:17:49 AM)
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Here's some background from the manual:
SPOILERS BELOW
Background Information: Pirates and the Age of Shadows
The original Distant Worlds and the first two expansions, Return of the Shakturi and Legends, told a story that was set in roughly the same time period, with Return of the Shakturi intended to continue where Distant Worlds ended and Legends overlaying both previous storylines.
If you have not yet played through all the Distant Worlds storylines, this section will contain some spoilers, so be warned, but they also help explain the setting of Shadows.
Distant Worlds: Shadows, however, is intended to take place before the original Distant Worlds game and the events told in that and the following storylines. The Age of Shadows is the time period after the cataclysm that befell the galaxy at the end of the first Great War against the Shakturi but before the previous planetary empires recovered enough to return to space and rediscover their history.
After the first Great War between the Freedom Alliance and the Shakturi, the remaining fragments of civilization in the galaxy collapsed and those who remained found themselves engaged in a desperate struggle for survival that at times looked certain to fail. As they realized the terrible fate that had been unleashed on them, the Shakturi went on a final rampage that was halted only as the last of them perished to the virus. The Xaraktor virus itself was still actively spread through its genetically engineered carriers for many years after the Shakturi themselves were eradicated from the galaxy.
The planets themselves were the worst affected. Multiple waves of plague swept over them through decades, as the Kaltors continued their grim work. Along with the terrible casualties, most of what was previously known was lost.
Only in space did some knowledge survive. Here the few remnants of the fleets of the Freedom Alliance and the Shaktur Axis initially continued to fight each other as well as the Kaltors. They recognized that the planets, where the plague was still active, held no future for them. Attempts to recolonize or restore civilization during this time all failed. They realized that to survive, they needed to remain in space, to remain mobile and evade the Kaltors until the planets themselves were either free of plague or devoid of population.
Over generations, these nomadic survivors scavenged, built and re-built their ships and bases many times. Many perished, but more survived and while they were unable to maintain the level of technology that had once been, they still knew how to travel faster than light, how to exist in space, to mine for the resources the needed and how to build fast and powerful ships that could protect them from the Kaltors and other menaces.
Over time they also lost their common identity and separated into smaller factions, each with different goals. Some, following blindly in the footsteps of their Freedom Alliance ancestors, foresaw a future where they would be able to once again establish a more orderly galaxy, with colonized planets, trade and an organized military. Others, either because of the trials they had been through or because of their origins with the Shaktur Axis, were more concerned with raiding, pillaging and destroying what was left, until they would sit alone as the final survivors of a dying galaxy. These then, are the “pirates” of the Age of Shadows.
On the planets, over many generations the virus finally went dormant, allowing civilization a chance to re-establish itself. The Kaltors themselves became more rare, largely because of the actions of the survivors in space, but also bred and mutated across generations until they also no longer carried the virus. The planetary survivors multiplied and with the help of a few remaining stories and the ruins of their ancestors, rebuilt a basic level of technology and began to repopulate their worlds.
The space-based survivors were busy enough surviving and fighting each other that at first the recovery that was taking place on the few remaining inhabited worlds went unnoticed, but eventually the exploration ships of the pirates discovered that the worlds they previously thought to be tombs now had the beginnings of new civilizations, already with population in numbers that far exceeded the survivors in space, but with technology that was much more primitive. The response of the pirates to these newly discovered planets varied, and in some cases they simply ignored them while they dealt with their own problems. For the most part though, they made contact, in some cases peaceful to trade for resources and food, in others hostile to pillage and take what they would in goods and slaves.
This is where the Age of Shadows in the game begins. The planetary civilizations have regained enough technology to return to space, but only within their systems. The pirates have better technology and knowledge of the galaxy. Two futures are possible. The first is one where the planetary civilizations expand into space and regain a measure of their former glory, following along the original storyline. The second though, is a very different future, where the pirate factions are able to manage the rise of the planetary civilizations, control them, exploit them and eventually conquer them to establish an entirely different kind of galactic order, depending on which type or pirate emerges triumphant.
The Age of Shadows, in short, is a struggle for survival and an ongoing battle to determine the future of the galaxy. Will it be a strong, united and advanced galaxy that the Shaktur find on their eventual return, or simply smouldering ashes?
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