Earth Prime

The third planet from the fun, and the oldest of the Three Sisters, Earth Prime is the original home of the human race. Before the new calendar, human life on Earth Prime became dominated by lifestyles augmented with technology, after a boom in the energy industry with the discovery of compacting technology that could speed the conversion of biomass into hydrocarbon fuels. The product and other hydrocarbon reserves, a resource collectively called Rock, became the predominate means of powering the world. When the naturally-occurring rocks seemed near to running out, the market took the direction of developing means to explore the nearby planets, which were rich in new, unexplored resources; more biomass, more carbon. Other participants in the market aimed development at means of capturing ambient and renewable energy; an emphasis on cells rather than rocks. But they were the minority. Quite suddenly, an energy war devastated the planet. The Rock in the ground ran out, and new Rock wasn’t being made fast enough. Grids went down, and human’s entire ways of life came crashing down with them. Those off the grid could not stay that way for long: everything was stolen from them by the scrambling coal elite. But these thieves could do little other than dry up the cells, as the resource industry needed to create more cells collapsed along with the coal grid. The world was left in the dark. And what’s more, all the information was lost along with the power. Technological society had advanced to such a stage that knowledge had become almost entirely digitized, when the objective of the timber industry shifted from paper to fuel. Banks of data became inaccessible without power. The blueprints to renewable energy possibilities were lost. History and culture was lost. Humanity was left to scramble for ways to turn the world back on, but infighting and greed kept progress to a minimum for centuries. The minimal amount of usable energy cycling through the world took a strange and inefficient turn: vegetation was the key. Either you could feed workers, have them power treadmills, and generate power, or you could cut and compress the biomass into Rock. But since there were more machines left behind powered by Rock than by cells, the cut-and-compress route was usually taken, and carbon dioxide emissions began to far outweigh solid-phase carbon. Food was burned to make Rock, while people starved and choked on the air. But something eventually did change. A comet burst through the atmosphere, landed, and its strange power caused a luscious biome to burst into life. The people living, by strange coincidence, had access to both the compressor, but also an old abandoned treadmill farm. They took advantage. They compressed some of the forest to produce the coal needed to start the farm, but then shifted to powering cells through the treadmill cycle. They maintained the forest for food, and hand-powered their community. A thief snuck in, stole a cell, and carried it away to the old-world data banks where the secrets to old technology were kept. They led a militant force against the treadmillers, took over their camp, and set to work. They recorded enough information to jumpstart the space race once again. They built solar panels, charged batteries, and built ships. The new-found technology was a jealously guarded resource, to the point that old records were destroyed. This new power was at last able to reach the new world: Cassiopeia, fourth planet from the sun. The new world that greeted them was strange; the explorers had to grow their ranks to begin to understand it. Using raw resources as the basis for a currency to pay their workforce, the means of power returned to Earth. The flight of the first interplanetary ship marked the first year of the new calendar; and age ruled by the mysteries of the worlds beyond, and governed by those with the power to brave it.

Alternative Name(s)

Earth, Home

Type

Planet