The long peace was broken.
For eons the silence of space stood between worlds, the science of Slipstream technology lost as the positronic brains of the ancient AI's failed, leaving the secrets of the ages behind them in the process.
But man willed himself back into the stars, looking to look upon new and vast horizons - and make them his own. Inevitably where he went he brought his troubles with him into new places, along with his most persistent plague: his penchant for jealousy, avarice and war.
It was on the world of Newtonia, a paradise long shielded from explorers by an impenetrable barrier radioactive fire that the conflict between the Charon Empire - self proclaimed successors to the Third Imperium of Annwn - and Fortuna, sons and daughters of rebels, freethinkers and would-be revolutionaries - first turned to bloodshed. What began as a series of skirmishes soon ramped up to an interstellar war, with none the victor but the gods of death: the old patrons of man and his unquenchable ambitions.
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