THE TERRAN / TERMIGHT EMPIRE

After the legendary Terran Emperor, Zallin, oversaw his dream of an artificial Blackhole into the harsh reality we all know, the human race used their new gateway to the stars to conquer thousands of planets, carving out what can only be described as the greatest Empire in galactic history.

After Zallins death, the empire eventually passed into the hands of Tomas de Torquemada, who turned the Empire into the most hated and feared in all the cosmos...

EARTH / TERRA / TERMIGHT

Many changes have befallen the planet Earth since the seemingly endless Volgan War. Once the war was over and the recovery operations began, the robots that had become invaluable on the battlefield, became just as invaluable in the home. They were used to make lives easier, do all those dirty jobs that no one wanted, and, as such, became nothing more than slaves to their masters. More and more mega cities were erected across the planet to cope with the population explosion, and with it came a new form of policing with the power to dispense instant, on the spot justice. An atomic war came, started by Robert L. Booth, the last president of the United States, and dessimated the planets surface, leaving only the Mega-Cities standing. Technology moved in leaps and bounds, and life on Earth went on for many more years.

And then the Earth was invaded. The surface of the planet was destroyed, forcing the people to make lives for themselves underground. However, it was here that the human race would make one of it's most amazing technological leaps.

The Emperor of the time, Zallin, oversaw Terran scientists attempts to harness the power of black and white holes to create cosmic spaceways to the stars. Through fear of being invaded again, Terran armies, The Eternal Soldiers, used these spaceways to conquer a thousand planets. Terrans believed their empire would last forever and called themselves The Eternals. Vast subterranean cities were built around the 'Blackhole Bypass' (rightly regarded as 'The Seventh Wonder of the Galaxy'): Mausoleum, Necropolis and the Eternal City, Agartha, all of them connected via Travel Tubes, and patrolled by the ruthless Tube Police.

Excess energy from the holes was discharged in complete safety through an underground maze known as The Time Wastes. However, time radiation from the black and white holes also brought unique benefits to the Terran Empire. Harnessing this bizarre power, Zallin managed to see through his two hundred year plan to build the Blackhole Bypass. This regression also allowed the Terrans themselves to become true eternals. However, these benefits were only for the select few - if the radiation was made available to the masses there would be a population explosion, and Terra would become a termites nest of seething humanity.

But like all empires, Terra's began to decay. The weak emperor Thano The Third allowed human and alien intermarrige and the 'purity' of the human race was threatened. Thano himself, however was deaf to protests; indeed, he was guilty of much the protestors were concerned about. This was followed by a dark age of even greater excesses, until the inevitable backlash enabled the head of the Termite religion, and chief of the Tube Police - Tomas De Torquemada - to sieze power in a particularly bloody coup, with his infamous slogan: Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave!

Not only had the people of this era changed, but their religions had followed suit. Above ground, the Terrans once worshipped either the fierce sun god or the dark moon goddess, but when they moved underground, they sought new symbols for eternal male and female principles. The Worm became a symbol of the cosmic mother; the black hole was venerated as the ultimate worm hole in space and time. Death was a return to the worm, conveyed by putting worms in the coffins of their loved ones. The worm's soft, flexible shape encouraged a tolerant, friendly attitude towards aliens.

The Worm co-existed with the strict, aggressive Termite religion, which saw men as mere insects, obsessed with work, while women were like the queen Termite - looked up to in theory, but in practice nothing more than submissive breeding machines. For a while, the two beliefs co-existed in balance. The emporer of the time, Zallin, belonged to both - to be on the safe side.

Until Torquemada's era.

The Worm - gentle, earth-loving and androgynous - came to be regarded as suspect, and the Termites persecuted the cult; followers of the worm were called alien-lovers and witches and burnt at the stake. Eventually, Torquemada declared himself head of the Church of Termite, unifying church and state, and renamed the mighty Terran Empire 'Termight'.

During the rise of The Terminators (Torquemada's armies), science as well as alien life, was blamed for all the disasters that had befallen earth. Books were burnt, laboratories and computers smashed and thousands of boffins were butchered in the Anti-Scientist Riots. Terra had entered its darkest age yet.

Under Torquemada's iron rule, Terra was renamed Termight, and the downfall of science began. It was soon replaced by a new age of ignorance and superstition, from which came a Holy Crusade. Torquemada's followers set out to purify the galaxy and cleanse it of all alien life. The evil nature of his regime soon became apparent and many looked to his greatest enemy - a mysterious alien named Nemesis - for deliverance.

Before Torquemada's rise, however, The Eternal City, Agartha, was destroyed during a series of time quakes. A group of ageing war robots were blamed and hunted across the galaxy, but never caught. The destruction left only Masoleum and Necropolis for the self-proclaimed Grand Master to rule; the former site of Agartha, where the two remaining cities met, became known as The Central Abyss. The cities were coated with a substance known as magma, a strong magnetic adhesive, which allowed Termites (or Terrans) to walk at any angle on any surface of the labyrinthine world, through use of special boots and gloves. These coatings allowed the Tube Navvies to, not only dig out the underground tubes, but to also develop a martial art that became known as Traffkicking.

Now, the two cities thrive like termite nests. Citizens live in gigantic towerblocks called Stalscrapers, that rise out of the ground like stalagmites; Termites have been known to go insane by simply looking out of their window onto the nightmare world beyond. But for others, life goes on, pushing and shoving their way through the never ending People Pipes; night clubs and restaurants litter the cities, each with their own selective groups and patrons. Television Broadcasts are still made throughout the cities, incorporating the regular bouts of news and soap operas.

For those Termites who sinned (or aliens unlucky enough to be stranded on the planet) there were special punishments, the most widely known of which is the Vapourisation Vats; public burnings were still used, especially for crimes of heresy, but Torquemada himself could usually come up with something suitably hideous, and make sure he administered it personally. Following the words of the Grand Master, the Thought Police were set up to patrol and monitor dreams; anyone having anti-government thoughts were immediately taken by the Thought Police and never seen again, proving that sleep was indeed no refuge for impure thoughts. For the criminally insane, there was Stalag 17, situated across a lava moat and holding several dark secrets of its own. And as for the Terminators themselves, they set up their headquarters in The Temple of Terminus.

In the years after Torquemada's death, Termites' love and appreciation for the Grand Master was unquenchable, and giant conventions were held in his honour, selling Torquemada merchandise (such as 'Walkie-Torqueys' and Candida wigs). During this time, Grand Master Krassan rose to power, but only as a front for Grand Dragon Mazarin. Between them, they introduced a more lax attitudes toward aliens, and made efforts to cement relations with other races. Realising that Termites needed fear to unite them, Mazarin and Krassan appointed the Arch-Bigot of Necropolis, Broeder Kruger, to bring about a new era of hatred, aimed at anyone but aliens.

However, Torquemada made a triumphant return from the dead (again) and, after eventually seizing power again, threw everything back to the way it used to be. Although this time, the termites knew exactly what to expect...

However, Torquemada's power was slowly beginning to slip away from him, and Nemesis covered the planet in a psychic sheath that would re-direct the fear and hatred of the Termites back at Torquemada himself. Remarkably, the Grand Master's reign was eventually overthrown and a new alien-friendly regime was introduced by President Purity Brown. Horrified by this unthinkable turn of events, Torquemada managed to steal Nemesis' Blitzspear and head for the Hypogeum to find a final solution, with Nemesis in pursuit. No one but the Grand Master and the Arch Deviant is really sure what happened during their final confrontation, but now, and forever, a ghostly ship drives through the tube for all eternity, through the Black Hole Bypass, into the galaxy beyond, then loops back to Earth again and again and again.

As for the ravaged surface of the planet, Overland, little is known. Some leakage from the Time Wastes has plagued the surface by disasterously warping time. Even in the face of this, several thousand humans have managed to grub out an existence for themselves, but they live in fear of the Gooney Birds, bizarre creatures who make their nests in The Petrified City. Whether they are the results of the Time Waste leakage, thousands of years of machine evolution, or the results of Terminator experiments gone disasterously wrong, no one is really sure.

Termight was rightly regarded as one of the most terrifying places in the galaxy, but with the new leadership of President Brown things have changed...

THE TIME WASTES

During the two hundred and fifty year reign of the Emperor Zallin, Terran scientists attempted to harness the power of black and white holes to create cosmic spaceways to the stars. The Terran armies, The Eternal Soldiers, used them to conquer a thousand planets. Vast cities were built around the 'Blackhole Bypass': Mausoleum, Necropolis and the Eternal City, Agartha.

Excess energy from the holes was discharged in complete safety through an underground maze known as The Time Wastes, while the automatic control designed to operate for all eternity was buried deep within the Time Wastes - inside the tomb of Emperor Zallin - and guarded and maintained by robots known as The Mekaniks, believed to be the most advanced droids ever built.

The maze itself lead to all points in time and space, and with careful navigation, any place can be visited in any era, from the beginning of time to its very end. However, very few possess the knowledge to successfully traverse the nightmarish regions within. Many have lost their lives to it in the attempts, while others still have lost their sanity at the sights and horrors that confronted them there.

It was here that Thoth managed to de-stabalize the black and white holes on either side of Termight, and escape the clutches of his father (along with his pet Satanus). It was also here that The Warriors fought and defeated The Monad, and became targets for The Eternal Soldiers.

Discharge from the Time Wastes has raged across Termight's surface, Overland, warping time with disasterous results.

MARS

When the red planet was terraformed and colonised, it's troubles began tenfold. From day one it had been tearing itself apart - everyone on Mars was at war with everyone else. Greedy food corporations owned huge chunks of the surface and constantly attacked each other; the quality of life on Mars meant nothing to them, only making a quick profit. Garganteks (giant robots used to help terraform the planet) were allowed to wander at will, destroying everything in their path. In Viking City, young 'hoolies' on bikes roar up the sides of peoples houses, robbing and terrorising.

The Free Mars organization sent Colonel Lash to Earth to find seven battle hardened robots to rid the planet of it's evils. Seven ABC Warriors, afraid of nothing and no one.

Many things on Mars were significantly different than on Earth, something which new settlers, and The Warriors, had to accept and adapt to early on. Some of the earliest human settlers, however, had taken that advice a little too far - Humpies, as they were now known, carried oxygen in humps on their backs and heads. To assist new settlers with the thin atmosphere 'O-Asis' oxygen assistance centres were set up at various points on the planet surface. Humans, however, weren't the only things to mutate: other animals and plant life had also been forced to adapt strangely to life on Mars.

Food came in the form of the corporations, independant farmers or soya bean ranchers, who reared robotic soya bean cows (which ate soya and turned it into flesh that grew on metallic bones); the The Super Soya Corporation also happened to burn down farms who tried to rear real cattle, something which was conveniently never mentioned in their TV commercials. Gigantic Cybo-Whales swam under the sand oceans, ferrying synthi-food from city to city, but most were savagely attacked by other corporations in a bid to stop the deliveries.

Humans (mutated or otherwise) and robots weren't the only settlers on Mars. A race of intelligent apes called Cyboons were imported from Earth to help colonise the planet and had been given a reservation where they could live in peace, only for it to be shattered with the arrival of the Super Soya Corporation, who decided to massacre the Cyboons and take their land to raise more cattle.

A place of note was Damnation Island, Mars' playground for the idle rich. It was surrounded by a sand sea and only accessible from the mainland by The Bridge of Screams. Here the bored jet set, with time on their hands, enjoy the most terrifying hunt of all - Man Hunt! Using tame tyrannosaurs to track down and kill anyone from office clerks to kitchen staff, anyone that wouldn't be missed.

And finally there was the capital of Mars, Viking City. Built on the site of the Viking 1 landing (the first Earth ship to land on the surface), the pyramid buildings were specially designed to protect citizens from the harsh Martian weather. Unfortunately, it also spawned a new craze: Pyramania. Lunatic bike gangs had taken to riding the pyramids - riding up the sides of the buildings (thanks to low Martian gravity) and jumping from their peaks.

Bizarrely, a band of cannabilistic zombies popped up in Cydonia, killing innocent people and taking them to lunch. It was this that prompted The ABC Warriors to return to the Devil Planet once more, although not necessarily for the same reasons.

After many centuries of peaceful co-existence with the Martian natives - The Trimorphs - the human colonists decided to terraform Mars even further, and make it like exactly Earth. Unknown to all but the Martians was the fact that the planet itself had a consciousness, named Medusa by all her inhabitants. With the humans desire to change their new home even more, Medusa rose up against her adopted children, sending sent storms and earthquakes in a bid to stop the humans. The Gargantek robots were destroyed for the crime of terraforming, while Trimorph terrorists aided her cause by bombing human buildings, which resulted in Mars President Cobb ordering bio-hazard troops into the Martian ghettos to take the natives to detention camps. For one small frontier town, named Redemption, Medusa used her biomass to make clones programmed with the task of destroying all the humans present. Then, drawing on the collective unconscious of the human settlers, she turned H.G. Wells' 'War of the Worlds' on its head and used the tripod war machines described in the book to unleash a savage attack on Viking City, before unleashing a deadly Mars born virus to exterminate the population. Not even the legendary ABC Warriors could stop her.

Medusa's attacks continued, employing everything from EMPs to native Martian animals, such as Redhawks and Trihimoths. However, The ABC Warriors managed to strike a deal with their former comrade, Steelhorn (now the voice of Medusa, and leader of the attacks). Humans would never accept a Martian leader, and Martians would never accept a human leader, so a balance had to be struck.

Thanks to The Warriors (and a surgical operation), Mars President Cobb became the first human-martian hybrid. Medusa was appeased and things returned to normal for a time, but Cobb's 'transformation' has since sparked a civil war between the Confederation of Maritian Industries and The Union of Martian Free States, that is threatening to tear the planet apart...

THE TERRAN EMPIRE | THE GOTHIC EMPIRE | THE NETHER WORLDS | THE FRINGE WORLDS

Hammerstein | Joe Pineapples | Deadlock | Blackblood | Mongrol | Ro-Jaws

Mek-Quake | Steelhorn | Nemesis the Warlock | Tomas de Torquemada

In Memorium | Supporting Cast | Fields of Battle | The Armoury

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