At the end of the 21st century, the continuing exhaustion of Earth’s resources sparked a furious struggle for dominance, ultimately leading to all-out conflict. Billions perished as the Final Wars raged across the globe.
As nations crumbled and civil society was in its death throes, one of the super nations that actually started the conflict devised a plan to win the war by simply outliving its rivals. The leaders of the nation created The Continoma Project – a massive, self-sufficient mind database capable of storing the memories and thoughts of humanity. The leaders ensured their entry within the Continoma Project database and brought with them the seeds of what they believed a thriving community of docile and loyal citizens.
Humanity outside the Continoma Project all but destroyed itself – the great societies that once warred between themselves were reduced to nomadic tribes and eventually regressed to primal existence or extinction, long before the irradiated and polluted world become habitable again. While life on Earth was going through its most dramatic extinction and adaptation, the Librarium – a nearly indestructible fortress tended by artificial intelligence and robots – kept the dormant sentience of humanity’s chosen safe for the future.
A few hundred years passed, and the sensors of the Librarium detected that the environment outside was clean. How the environment cleansed itself remains mysterious. The keeper of the Librarium – the Custodian AI – began re-vesseling the first survivors, called the Pioneers. Their goal was to explore the island and prepare a territory suitable to host more massive re-vesseling. Faced with mutated man-eating plants and animals, as well as aggressive descendants of the last naturally-born humans, the Pioneers were only able to carve out a living on the island of Enterra. It was here on Enterra they founded Sal Vitas, City of Salvation, where the Continoma leaders formed a new government, an engineered social and political regime of utopian proportions that promised to erase the painful memory of the past.
During the first decades, the reclamation of Enterra required a huge workforce. Facing a future of new challenges and opportunities, many of the survivors began to form groups and factions each with their own agenda and goals. Some of them revisited the darker side of the human nature, exploring the possibilities of immortality in a way that broke the moral codex devised by Continoma to bond the new society. To prevent the spreading of chaos among its ranks Continoma created a strict police force and administration that ensured no crime is left unpunished and no protest unsanctioned.
As the cluster of terraformed regions began to spread, it was clear for the resurrected humanity that the days of harsh working conditions and iron order would soon be over. The hope for new beginning and the urge for a more equitable distribution of power spread amongst the splintered society. Various factions within society slowly began questioning the actions of the government and felt themselves detached from the principles it was trying to enforce on them. At first, intellectuals and informal leaders formed a loose organization originally intended to keep Continoma in check through civil action. It was not long until the informal organization took on a new role and directly challenged Continoma, calling for open elections for new government.
Originally, Continoma tried to react in moderation, explaining that such a solution for the social crisis was unwise. Continoma feared that technologically and politically empowered villains could usurp their rule over the nascent humanity and throw it back to its darkest days. But rebellious souls drunk on dreams of freedom didn’t listen. For them, the way Continoma ensured its rule seemed tyrannical and despotic. Massive public protests paralyzed the society on Enterra.
Strongly believing in their credo, Continoma ordered the forceful return of the informal organization’s most renowned leaders into the memory databanks. This threat was hoped to cull the passion of the protesters, but it lead only to a worsening of the conflict. Organized by one of their leaders that escaped prosecution – Deacon Prost – the dissidents formed an armed resistance that directly opposed the forces of Sal Vitas Security or SVS. Invented as a mockery to official propaganda and a prominent reminder to its origins, the name Noir soon became the object of rumors and gossips amongst the population.
As Continoma was doing its best to suppress the forming resistance, the conflict quickly escalated. For Deacon and his men, the situation looked grim. Overwhelmed by the technologically stronger and more numerous SVS forces, their days as a faction opposing Continoma were soon to be over. Forced by the circumstances, Deacon created plans to strike at the very heart of the Continoma – the memory databank’s control center, situated in Sal Vitas. A key factor for his plans was the assistance of Synthia Harvington, a high-ranking Continoma Commissar that claimed to be planning a coup herself. She provided the rebels the plans and security codes for the infiltration of the city, but little did they know that she was a traitorous double agent placed by the Continoma government to disrupt the plans of the resistance and seize its leader, Deacon Prost.
On the Division Night, the Noir rebels stormed the capital of Sal Vitas only to be caught inside a trap, carefully set by Synthia. Luckily for Noir, they managed to break into the databank control center and free the personalities of many citizens. This massacre led to the creation of the Noir as an independent faction mastering its own technology of re-vesseling humans.
The crisis caused by the Division Night allowed the various dissenting segments of society to form organized groups with their own leadership and territories all over the island. Some of these organizations decided to trade portions of their liberty by reuniting with the government or the ranks of the rebels. Others set on making their own way in the harsh political reality on Enterra, forming unstable alliances with each other and always standing on their guard for potential betrayal.
Currently, Continoma and Noir continue to battle over the dominance of the Island. Their ongoing struggle weakens them considerably and even as they remain the two most powerful forces on Enterra, they depend much on the other organizations for their survival and victory.