Pyridian is a dark planet situated in the Andromeda Galaxy. The super-humans, known as Citizens, live above ground. A human race of Peltarcks live in the artificial world created below ground.
It was the year of the Anchor March in Pyridian. A year in which all Peltarcks gathered at Fort Erghelm to celebrate the day the first of the race arrived on Pyridian and made their claim to land, sea and air. From that day, one thousand years ago, there sprung 30 million Peltarck. The Peltarcks made their homes by building dunes from the ground up. They were an uncomplicated race. They thrived when they were working and grew restless when they were not. They were strong in stature and tall. They were loyal and peace-keeping.
The nearest planet to Pyridian was Odisiris. A planet inhabited by a race of super-humans known as Citizens.
One single event changed the lives of the Peltarcks. One day a UFO landed, opening a mammoth crater on the planet’s floor. From a distance, the object looked like a great black rock. The Peltarcks believed it was a meteorite. They cleared the area where the meteorite had landed, but day by day, month by month, the meteorite began to change its form. It disintegrated in places to reveal yellow murky orbs that gave off a dull glow.
The Peltarck government knew something was not right. Under the instruction of their Emperor, they sent their most trusted explorers up to the crater site to take samples.
The explorers feared the object in their midst. The meteorite gave off a strange smell and it leaked copious amounts of congealed mucus. The inexplicable mass made noises, and one explorer claimed they saw it move. So the explorers took a sample of the rock for their scientists to study. The scientists ascertained that the rock was from another planet, within their galaxy, called Upsilon. They sent a fleet of their best warriors out to investigate, but the fleet never returned and they heard no word from them, so they sent out another. They too did not return.
One day, a lone warrior went to the meteorite site to investigate. Why he went alone, who can say? He found the meteorite had shed its rock core and what it revealed, made his skin go cold. He saw a soft bubbly membrane filled with eggs and within the eggs, he saw something alien. One slithered out of its egg to his feet. He killed the newly hatched lifeform and took it back to the scientists who were keen to study it.
They sent a crew of Peltarcks to all that was left of the meteorite. The eggs had hatched and the aliens had gone. The Peltarck government panicked. They destroyed the alien, the empty membrane, the warrior and the scientists who had handled it because they feared contamination. They then dug almost 200 feet underground in search of the aliens.
They spent months scouring the breadth of Pyridian in search of alien life. They never found it. They knew one day the aliens would emerge once more, bigger and more terrifying than they could ever imagine. They did their best to prepare for that day, living in fear and hoping that day would never come.
The day came when the aliens reappeared. The Peltarcks had no warning. Their homes were destroyed and they had to seek refuge underground. There the aliens never came.
The aliens became like a plague in Pyridian. The Peltarcks built their homes underground where they felt the alien race could not touch them.
They pleaded for the Citizens of Odisiris to help them. The Odisirians sent a whole fleet of their best soldiers to defeat the aliens.
The alien population did not die out. They mutated.
The Peltarcks were unbroken. They embraced their new life as if they had never known any other. They forgotten about the tall cities and buildings and the blue sky they once knew, convincing themselves over the years that such a living would be torture, that to live above ground was against their culture and religion. That it was forbidden.
Several thousand Citizens moved permanently to Pyridian to act as ward against the aliens.
As the years went on, the threat lessened. The Citizens built their own city above ground; the Peltarcks kept theirs below.
But the aliens are not dead. They continue to flourish. The Peltarcks live in ignorance; the Citizens in readiness…
Level Cap: 65