History of The Sealed Kingdoms

Lufhaus-1b, one of the first skyphoforms, is 'born' when the arcopel scientist his neuroelectronics were based upon activates him. Lufthaus will go on to become the 'father' to a lineage of somewhat free-minded skyphoforms known as The Defected.

Seeking to quell human rebellion against chitiquish control and improve worker efficiency, the consortium decides to implant thee 'alpha' of the humans' 'hive' with an artificial intelligence core and various other enhancements which will raise his intelligence while also subverting his will. Because the chitiquish do not regard humans as fully sentient at this time, however, they implement insufficient control features into these implants, allowing the very angry Wurth Harkin to eventually regain control of his own faculties and start planning towards a newer, more comprehensive slave uprising.

Wurth Harkin, Shank, and the other human slaves return to Evermorn with stolen technology and knowledge borne from their long exodus through the void of space. They and their descendants spend the next several hundred years uplifting their fellow Evermornans and stabilizing the geopolitical situation, leaving only the Cinnibar Hegemony and Obsidian Republic unincorporated into their new governing system. This is the foundation of the Cobalt Protectorate, then known as the Cobalt Tribal Federation.

The implantation technology of the chitiquish consortium provides Wurth Harkin and his fellow Evermornan former slaves with the knowledge requried to artificially extend their lifespans at the expense of shedding their organic parts as they age. These are the first human cyborgs and, with time, the first HLAI. Chitiquish manufacturing and robotics techniques allow this original party to appear in humanoid artificial bodies - the first HLAI platforms - and continue their efforts without fear of decrepitude.   Now presented with all the time in the world, these ancestors pursue their own interests, occasionally returning to Evermorn to provide another dose of knowledge to the developing human societies there and ensuring that relative peace between human factions is maintained.

Wurth Harkin, disgusted with the continued slave-taking and human sacrifice of the Magocracy of Lepidos, takes sides with a monotheistic splinter faction on Lepidos. Wurth, the Cobalt Knights, and the rebels use atomic weapons to topple the regime, but leave the planet scarred and polluted in the aftermath.   Horrified by the moral implications of this action, Wurth foreswears such violent interventions in the future and directs his efforts to discovering, conserving, and uplifting any further near-human civilizations he might find. The League of Lepidosian City-States rises in the aftermath of the Midnight with the assistance of Wurth's cadre of Knights, becoming one of the first near-human member states of the Cobalt Protectorate.

Xymeria Ice & Mineral is a corporate entity owned and operated by a HLAI named Windwise, who is also the shipboard artificial intelligence for an itinerant mining platform named the ECV XIM Windwise. En route to retrieve an asteroid from Alpha Xymeria for processing, Windwise's long-range sensors detect a planet in Beta Xymeria which showed new signs of orbital infrastructure.   Windwise launches a probe in the direction of Beta Xymeria with one of his daughter HLAIs aboard. This daughter found that the planet Cornelius possessed a human-like civilization with city-sized mechanical computers and petroleum- and induction-powered industry in lieu of electronics. Due to difficulties stemming from the intense electromagnettic tides of the gas giant Cornelius orbits, it took the daughter HLAI three years to formally make contact with this civilization. Windwise forwarded these findings to the Cobalt Protectorate for future conservation efforts.