It does not matter what we called ourselves. Who we once were is no longer important. There is nothing in our history that knowing would save you. What matters is only this: that we considered ourselves a powerful people. We were gifted in magic. We were explorers, artisans, and natural philosophers. We understood the limits of our world and knew to tame its dangers. There was a danger that came from without our world. This is a warning. Heed the signs. It began when our green sky turned orange. Day and night vanished, replaced by a dim twilight. The air began to grow dryer. Plants withered under the glow of a pale light incapable of sustaining them. Our rivers grew brackish and oceans turned still. Mold survived us all, in the end. Our livestock grew lethargic, then blighted. They perished. We joined them ere long. Our lives ended, but we did not cease. At first there was chaos. We were mobs within mobs as we adapted to our new state. Somehow, we began to move forward as one. We grew to understand one another more instinctively. We found words went unsaid more and more. Soon our civilization no longer required sounds. At last we believed ourselves to have weathered the worst. We began to move forward. We had grown complacent. Gradually a voice emerged. One that stirred our masses, one that corralled us into new shapes. At first, each among many thought we recognized that voice. At first, each among many thought that voice was his own. Gradually, we came to know the will that chained us as our Death's Head, as our first tyrant. There was rebellion, a spark of resistance born of those few of us who could not be battered into submission. Pledging new allegiance to a strange alien god, they reclaimed our ancestral magic. Beneath the light of the dim orange sky, their blood began to warm, and soon they drew breath again. They broke free, and tore away as many of us from the great will of the dead as they could. We returned, living and dead, to the crumbling ruin of our long fallen cities. We began to build anew, to defend ourselves against the unruly dead at our borders. At the direction of the living, we built great pyramids, not as shrines to death, but to the life that once was. Far beneath the stone walls and safe from the orange sky, plants began to sprout and flourish for the first time, and animals not seen in centuries of unlife were bred again from dust. The dead among us soon began to hope that they too would live again. Far too many of us would. The surface of our world had become a desolate place. As we dug deeper, the earth shook in response. Moats of molten rock began to flow, keeping the enslaved dead at bay. Generations were born below. Few would live, and none would perish, and of those who lived longest, the first declared himself our Sun King. And always we continued to dig, deeper, and deeper. Rebellion stirred again, among the youngest generations of the living. They came into their own the masters of long forgotten knowledge, machining weapons and armaments from the distant past. Under their command, we who could still be reached took up arms against the magic of the living, and the unceasing will of the dead. And so we marched, deeper, and deeper, underground until the earth seemed to shake itself apart. Each of us always at the behest of one man, one will. [b] THIS IS A WARNING STOP THE DANGER EXISTED LONG BEFORE OUR TIME STOP THE DANGER ENDURES IN YOURS STOP[/b] 01010100 01001000 01000101 0100000 01000100 01000001 01001110 01000111 01000101 01010010 0100000 01001001 01010011 0100000 01000111 01010010 01000101 01000001 01010100 0101110 0100000 01001001 01010100 0100000 01001001 01010011 0100000 01000001 0100000 01000100 01000001 01001110 01000111 01000101 01010010 0100000 01010100 01001000 01000001 01010100 0100000 01000011 01001111 01001101 01000101 01010011 0100000 01000110 01010010 01001111 01001101 0100000 01010111 01001001 01010100 01001000 01001001 01001110 0100000 01010100 01001000 01000101 0100000 01010011 01010101 01001110 0101110 0100000 01010100 01001000 01000101 0100000 01000100 01000001 01001110 01000111 01000101 01010010 0100000 01001001 01010011 0100000 01001110 01000001 01001101 01000101 01000100 0100000 01010111 01010010 01010010 01011001 01001100 0101110 0100000 01010100 01001000 01001001 01010011 0100000 01001001 01010011 0100000 01000001 0100000 01010111 01000001 01010010 01001110 01001001 01001110 01000111 0101110 0100000 01001100 01001001 01010011 01010100 01000101 01001110 - There was a dim yellow star, faintly visible directly overhead Solaria during the winter solstice. After a journey of one-thousand twenty three years, a radio transmission reached Orst. It passed unheard. And then, the yellow star grew dark. It was not the first star to vanish from that corner of the night sky.