Epic story

The world as we know it is populated by tribes. Some of them are people. Some of them are animals. Some are in-between. This is how the world has always been, according to its inhabitants. Yet a long time ago, further down memory lane than anyone can remember, the world was a different place altogether. There were gigantic culminations of civilisation, empires were built and cities rose to the skies. Then it all vanished over night. From the ashes of the first empires, a new power rose. The new rulers built cities and empires. And they touched for the skies. But again they failed, faltered, left only ruins behind. There is no one to tell how often the cycle repeated. Rise and fall. Like the tides of an ocean. After the fall, a phase of equilibrium is reached. But it only takes the will and the curiosity of one single individual to turn the tides. And a new empire will rise built from the relics and the wreckage of those that were before it. And with time, it will fall, too.

The first culture was a culture of machines. They built towers of stone, strengthened with iron and wood. They erected intricate contraptions of unknown purpose. To drive them they needed energy. Their ingenious engineers experimented with dozens of ways of harvesting energy from nature. From the trees they gathered the sap of life. They funnelled the electricity of lightning bolts into their fabulous devices. The gusts of the wind and the flow of the streams powered other machines of the first civilisation. Yet over time, nature, having been a constant source of free energy for ages, was sucked dry by the ever increasing demand for power. And it turned against the first culture. No one remembers how the conflict happened, yet the outcome will forever be a part of the landscape.

The second culture was a culture of transition. Man is part of nature. Living at one with its surroundings, humans made grounds fertile and used machines to harvest in a sustainable way. Untouched forests gave way to cultivated patches of land. Only the most rough areas were completely left to wildlife. The rest of the land was put to use, for the civilizations of that time were huge and rich in population. And they continued growing. The more people, the more conflicts erupted between them. In the end, it was those conflicts that brought down the second culture.

The third culture was a culture of nature. In a rugged environment, it adapted itself to its surroundings. Round shapes and warm hearths, it borrowed its looks and functionality from the living world. Animals formed an important part of daily life. Life was not about scavenging from nature. It was about constructing a second nature in a world that had grown continually more uninhabitable. Bio-domes and habitats, oases of life in harsh areas, the third culture was determined to make life sustainable against all odds. Artificial intelligence has taken up a life on its own though, and the wilderness is home to new breeds of life: robotic wolves, nano-swarms and automatic trees populate the world on the top of the mountain.