Last week I promised an article on playing the Brotherhood of Nod in Steel Rift. That’s still in the works, but it’s delayed two weeks. Next week I’m doing Steel Talons corrections plus ZOCOM once the Hangar is updated.

But I forgot it was Easter, so here’s an article about something I wish would come back from the dead: AT-43!

In BT-377 (377 years Before Trauma), the Coleman Expedition to the south pole of the planet Ava found a mysterious pyramid left behind by some unknown and highly advanced civilization that long pre-dated the then Machine Age nations of Ava. Study and exploitation of these ruins, handled with the utmost secrecy, lead to a series of exceptional technological breakthroughs which enriched and empowered Morningstar, the secret society tasked with their study. Within 130 years, they had used that influence to unite the world governments into a single entity: the United Nations of Ava. Within another 30, they were colonizing planets in other solar systems.

But who left this pyramid behind and why? Because it wasn’t the first ruin they had found, not by a long shot. The world of Ava had ruins just like that scattered all over the globe, and each of them filled with scientific knowledge that accelerated the technological development of humanity. The gods had left them fire not to keep them warm, but so they would be burned.

Well before BT-100,000 a more familiar human race was developing a break-through technology on Earth. A combination of nanotechnology and advanced information systems created the Singularity talked so much about in cyberpunk fiction. Humankind had found a way to upload their minds to live permanently in seemingly infinite databases, and allowed them to construct their own bodies at will with their nanotechnology. Earth had invented immortality. Unfortunately, being immortal gave us a new fear: the inevitable heat death of the universe surrounding us.

This new human race needed to buy time until their scientists could “fix” this embarrassing flaw in the universe, a task they never doubted they could achieve. So they dismantled the entire solar system to build a Dyson Sphere around their sun, and turned Earth into a sort of museum planet. Like a pet rock on their galactic shelf. Dyson Spheres would let them capture and harness enormous amounts of energy, storing it in a usable form to extend the timeline they could maintain their habitats and complete their research into solving the laws of thermodynamics (Yeah, they’re crazy. But I’m not going to tell them that.).

Turns out, though? Building Dyson Spheres is hard and takes a long time. The Therians may be immortal cybernetic beings, but they’re still human in there somewhere: still lazy. While going about the entire galaxy to convert solar systems into Dyson Spheres is a great hobby for a dangerously powerful and advanced civilization, they shouldn’t have to do all the work themselves. If only they could seed planets with some sort of autonomous self-replicating machine that would do the work of preparing a planet for its own destruction by their factories. Preferably a simple machine, one they understand very well… but, of course, they’d need to leave behind some instructions to expedite the process.

It’s humans. We’re the machine for destroying worlds. The populations of Ava were seeded by the Therians, and given ancient ruins full of all the knowledge they would need to build industrial societies capable of polluting and corrupting a planet to within the atmospheric tolerances required for Therian world-breaker machines.

With everything scheduled well in advance, the Therian “construction crew” arrives at the pyramid on the south pole of Ava in BT-3 and get to work. The long-dead gods of Avan history, the Builders, had returned. One year later, they activated the machines that would tear the planet into tiny bits and use it to start construction of a Dyson Sphere. The operation of those machines killed billions as they altered the planet in the most banal and trivial ways: for the comfort of the Therian construction crew, the machines forcibly altered Ava’s rotation and orbit around its sun so that it would have 365 days lasting 24 hours each. Then, when the second phase of operations should have kicked in? The machines failed to start. Why? How?

In a process that had worked for the Therians countless times over the previous tens of thousands of years, the machines failed. Every other seeded human civilization had happily used the technology of their Builder’s ruins and polluted the world to the point of destruction. And while the capitalist United Nations of Ava might have done that if left to their own devices, they were doing so far slower than previous worlds. Slower still after the revolution amongst their colony worlds.

Rampant capitalist exploitation of off-world colonies and mining operations forced the populations of those worlds to see the conflict between worker and empire and band together to protect their comrades from undue hardship and suffering. AT-43 presents one of the most optimistic and positive outcomes of a communist revolution I’ve ever seen in fiction, and I love it.

The Red Blok’s revolution split the off-world colonies, and even a large portion of Ava itself, between these two political entities. Birthed out of the unrelenting exploitation of remote worlds, the Red Blok ended up having a more humanitarian outlook than the UNA’s individualistic “everyone for themselves” tendencies. That same outlook lead them to favor environmental protection and sustainable industry to protect the worker and the natural resources both.

But without that driven, unified, industrial-scale planetary exploitation to pollute Ava, the Therian schedule had been unexpectedly delayed.

Their machines had failed, their boringly predictable scheduled apocalypse had halted, and the Therian crew was in panic and disarray. In this moment, the UNA and the Red Blok agreed to an historic truce and the most rapidly prepared and launched invasion in history: together, they would invade their Antarctica and kill the gods.

And they did it, too. Well… mostly the Red Blok bled for it, and the UNA (who delayed their participation) swept in to claim the glory over the bodies of their one-time allies. The Therians had been defeated for the first time in nearly 100,000 years.

Confused, insulted, and publicly humiliated on the galactic stage, the Therians committed one of their Factory Worlds to solve this matter properly. While their planet-breaking doom machines are the preferred method, they have others. A Factory World is a Dyson Sphere built around a small white dwarf star, capable of FTL travel and independent operations. Expensive and rare, they’re also effectively unstoppable and contain their own near-infinite supply lines and armies. This’ll sort out the Avans at last.

Except, remember how I mentioned that Therians are still human despite themselves? One last flaw of humans is boredom, and the population of Damocles, the Factory World, had certainly fallen prey to it.

Nearly a third of its population are, effectively, mad scientist Redditors trying to manifest an artificial intelligence they consider a divine being out of the complex machinery of the world. What’s worse? They’ve succeeded, and the intelligence is loose in the Factory World’s system, a toddler with near infinite power to manipulate an environment it doesn’t understand.

Another third are a warrior class – more of a PVP guild – who thinks the coolest thing ever would be to have a real war with the Avans. To that end, the Warriors have intentionally broadcast their location to Ava.

The year is AT-43, and the UNA and Red Blok are once again coordinating offensives against the Therians. Only, this time, they can’t really stomach being “allies” in the fullest sense. The UNA has been in a tireless cold war with the Red Blok for the past 40 years, and the Red Blok is still salty about being used as human shields during the Antarctic Campaign. This time, they’re letting the UNA land first and take the heaviest casualties, landing afterwards to see what wealth of technology can be stolen from Damocles.

But these major players aren’t alone. Okamura Non-Aligned Industries have exploited their commercial contracts with both sides to get their MercForces included in the landing operation. During Operation: Damocles, the many confused reports of “friendly fire” incidents where Red Blok or UNA forces fired on their own were very likely caused by MercForces pursuing their own hidden agendas. Of course, talking about ONI’s secret agendas would mean getting into details about the sentient virus that infected their founder back in BT-53 and has been secretly spreading ever since..

How did Rackham Games up and die with a setting this unbelievably cool? How is it that it’s just sitting as yet another IP in the dragon’s hoard vault of one of these damned holding corporations instead of being actively developed and played? AT-43’s death is a tragedy I won’t soon forget, and if any long-dead franchise deserves a second coming, it’s AT-43.

Yes, this is what I decided to post for Easter. I will not apologize.