Lore Compendium 3 - The Rise and Fall of the Twilight Shroud (Patreon)

The Twilight Shroud is a hemispherical solar energy collector covering Earth’s northern hemisphere, down to the equator. It is held twenty kilometres above the surface by eighty pylons, each of which have an average diameter of four hundred metres.

Inception: The Twilight Shroud was built around the year 34600AD by recently neural flared primates. Initially, the shroud’s purpose was to power weapons intended to halt the attack of Adverse humans whose ships were decelerating in space upon detecting flare usage on Earth. The shroud took ten weeks to build and came online in time to deter humans from interfering with the development of primate civilisation. Mankind’s ships returned to hypertime with history doomed to repeat itself. Falling to the same self-destructive end that had claimed humanity, the primates, two years later, built life-support modules into the shroud pylons and entered them to continue their existences in virtual reality. While the shroud still powered the weapons that fended off humanity, it also now supported the primates and their computers, as well as the stasis-locked clone factories in Madagascar which were intended to reintroduce the less-evolved species back into the world when the Shroud failed. The regenerating nature of the Twilight Shroud, enabled by its near-limitless power production and access to surrounding materials, was estimated to give it and its comatose occupants a lifespan of twenty thousand years.

In the year 51348AD, Emperor Schorl’s neural flare knowledge allowed him to take control of the Twilight Shroud and its systems. He immediately diverted power away from the primates, who were still alive within the shroud structure, killing them instantly.  He used the shroud defensive weaponry to decimate the military capability of the forces opposing the rats in the Rat Civil War, spelling an inevitable end to that conflict. Twilight Shroud nanomachines were also used to create Schorl’s first stryders, shortly after which he lost the ability to manipulate the shroud at an empirical level. Schorl then adapted the inner pylon structures to funnel almost all their energy down to Earth for use by the developing megawarrens. Most of the weapons intended to keep humanity at bay were left inert as a result, but, as Schorl’s damaged flare had not alerted the space faring humans of its use, they were not returning to Earth to stop him. For the next forty-two years, the Twilight Shroud was used to power the forty-eight megawarrens, allowing over one hundred billion creatures to live comfortably under it.

Construction and features: The Twilight Shroud is composed mainly of silicon compounds and carbon fibre. It is made up of, was constructed using, and is maintained by, quintillions of semi-automatous and self-replicating nanomachines. The material for the Shroud’s construction came from the enormous deserts that were left behind after human climate control machines failed, and from the vast fields of simple vegetation that had been slowly reclaiming the planet after humanity’s fall.

The Shroud dome is a translucent solar panel with an outer area of two hundred and eighty million square kilometres. It produces on average one hundred and ninety-eight quintillion joules of energy per hour. The shroud pylons are similar in design to the trunk of a tree, with a solid defensive outer structure protecting and supporting an array of internal tubes that transport energy, materials, nanomachines, and waste between the ground’s surface and the Twilight Shroud dome.

A portion of the power produced by the Twilight Shroud is used to maintain the energy forcefield that covers its entire surface. This field, the intensity of which is controlled by Shroud defence computers, has the power to resist any physical terrestrial attack, leading to the common belief that the Shroud is indestructible. Some weapons, however, such as dimensional shifters, can ignore the energy-based shield entirely, and the pylons can be destroyed from within by conventional weaponry, or Shroud energy overload. A physical attack of greater power than the Shroud can produce would also destroy it.

Environmetal effects: Even though the Shroud itself is not completely opaque, it blocks eighty percent of solar radiation from reaching the Earth’s surface. This has resulted in significant ambient temperature reduction. This reduction is counteracted by the vast amount of waste energy produced in the megawarrens; nearly all solar energy that would normally hit the Earth’s surface is eventually converted to heat, resulting in very little net temperature change. There is a large temperature differential between city areas and high-altitude areas and between megawarrens, however, and this results in increased wind strength as temperatures find balance. Due to this internal equilibrium, the air currents of the southern hemisphere are barely affected by the presence of the Shroud. Outside the megawarrens, high wind speeds, low temperatures and low light levels make living conditions difficult for plants and animals alike. Regardless, many plant species that hitherto only thrived in high altitude or high latitude conditions have spread throughout the landmasses of the northern hemisphere, as have many non-sentient animal species that traditionally subsisted on these plants; large herbivores such as moose and caribou dominate landscapes filled with pine forests and hardy grasses. Although less oxygen is produced under the Shroud due to reduced potential for photosynthesis, much of the carbon dioxide in the air is removed by the megawarrens for use in construction, and the oxygen deficit is countered by southern-hemisphere oxygen naturally flowing in to form a global equilibrium.

The height of the Twilight Shroud is sufficient to allow rain clouds to form under its dome. Due to the large differential in temperature between locations, increased water evaporation around shroud pylons, and the respiration of billions of life-forms, water condenses into cloud consistently, and rainfall under the Shroud is common. This rainfall usually occurs away from the megawarrens due to the relatively stable temperatures around them but sustains natural life over the rest of the hemisphere. Fresh water finds its way to the cities eventually, given their almost universal locations on the sites of ancient human river settlements.

Shroudfall: In the year 51390AD, the Twilight Shroud was destroyed by Brianna and Emperor Schorl. This ended the transmission of the fear signal affecting rats and the submission signal affecting all other races. It also ended energy production in the megawarrens, but due to the vast amount of power stored in batteries, the consequences of this would not be immediately felt. Although the signals had ended, it would be several days before their effects wore off completely, thus the day of Shroudfall was one of hemisphere-wide extermination of non-rat species; a terrified rat population feared the revenge of the other species after they regained their full capabilities. All rat weapons and stryders were employed in the systematic hunting and eliminating of sixty-seven percent of non-rat citizens before they could flee to safety. With the fading of the fear and submission signals two days later, non-rats staged a savage counterattack with their remaining machines. Although outnumbered, the larger and more determined non-rat species reaped a devastating toll, killing billions of rats. The situation turned further against the technology-dependant rats as energy supplies, heedlessly drained during the desperate fighting, began to run out. After five days of battle across the megawarrens, few stryders remained operational, with dwindling energy instead powering the smaller suits and guns of infantry forces. At this time, many groups of animals with the education to do so began recovering shards of the Twilight Shroud to be jury rigged into solar power sources, but these were inefficient and incapable of bringing many stryders to full power. Complete reliance on anti-gravity technology in the Rat Empire had left its populace without any means of long-range locomotion, warfare, or escape, ensuring that fighting was quickly reduced to constant, desperate skirmish in the tunnel networks of the cities.

Although effort had been made to keep food factories running under the power of Twilight Shroud shards, the constant struggle for control of these facilities eventually destroyed them, with only the most heavily fortified remaining in operation for more than a few days. Similarly, but with more success, the remains of several Twilight Shroud pylons were brought online, providing a power base for groups of animals who quickly became dominant entities and the foundation of new nations to come. After two weeks, ninety percent of the northern hemisphere’s population had perished due to warfare, starvation or exposure, with rats suffering the greatest casualty rate by far. Most stryders were derelict hulks among the equally dormant buildings of the megawarrens, few of which had avoided the fallout of fierce battle. Although several closed communities were stabilising within the small, powered hubs surrounding reclaimed Shroud pylons, most animals were exiled to the barren megawarren ruins, with little chance for anything other than a slow death. Single species groups became the norm in all areas to ensure safety and the highest chance of continued propagation. Many carnivorous and omnivorous animals resorted to eating other megawarren citizens to survive. Those few with the means to do so fled their cities and made a rustic life in the vast wildernesses now blooming with new life with the return of full sun intensity. Some journeyed to other megawarrens in the hope of finding one that had survived Shroudfall unscathed. This period of utter despair and decline spanned two more weeks and was known as the Schorl Nadir.

In the weeks and months that followed, Shroud pylon communities grew in strength and power, slowly bringing back online more facilities to provide for a recovering population. New settlements were founded in the bright wildernesses of the northern hemisphere, and these communities began to uncover pre-schorl machinery left behind forty-two years earlier. These artefacts were repaired and researched, and eventually new ones were built and traded, reuniting most species with the technology they had used before the arrival of Emperor Schorl. Animals from the southern hemisphere, particularly lemurs, began to arrive and lend aid. Although animosity and conflict between animal species and communities remained a constant prospect in this time of scarcity, after a year of struggle and development, the northern hemisphere once again had stable and thriving civilisations. The entire population had been reduced to five hundred million from its previous hundred billion, but was increasing. The only technology commonly in use from the previous Rat Empire was that found in gauntlet computers, as these were very efficient and plentiful. Electric wheeled vehicles became the dominant form of locomotion. Homes, built from the remains of megawarren structures, were also powered electrically by roof-mounted Shroud fragments or pylon power. War machines were now blackleaf slug powered jets, tanks and bipedal power armours. Weapons were projectile and chemical in nature.

The present day: In the year 51397, Marble rebuilt the Twilight Shroud. The full repercussions of this are yet to be seen, but with power restored to the megawarrens, many of its machines brought back online, and the environment outside them returned to its cold and dark state, it is only a matter of time before civilisation becomes entirely dependent on the shroud once again.