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History of The Central Discs
Apr. 24th, 2016 07:18 pmA long time ago, a group of scientists from found habitable planet in a distant part of the galaxy. The human race was continuously expanding and needed more and more room, so a group of settlers was sent to inhabit this new world. Unfortunately for them, when they got there, there was nothing but rubble.
The light from the world that had reached Earth didn't reflect its current state: utterly destroyed. What used to be a planet was now an asteroid belt.
Their salvation came in the form of a mysterious artifact called The Sands of Space-Time. Or at least, that's what they called it. The shape of it was indistinct at first, even though they arrived right near it, but it quickly began to form a familiar shape: that of an hourglass, with the hourglass surrounded by two large stone discs. Trees--impossibly from earth--grew on top of each disc. And even more impossible, considering how small the discs were, the strength of gravity was the same as it was on Earth.
There's still no unifying theory on how it was possible, but the people settled on one of the discs, not having any other options to return home to Earth. While they had enough to start farming, there wasn't enough materials to start making much of a home.
Until there suddenly was.
One night, they went to sleep with the hourglass top nearly empty of sand--and the next morning, a world had sprung up around the disc that they lived on, the sand completely reset to the top. It was sudden and it was brilliant, just as thin as the disk but it stretched on for miles, and it had everything they needed. They could mine for whatever they needed from the underneath of the world, while they could hunt, gather, and collect from the top. Periodically, the worlds would collapse into a smallish orb that they would call a "seed", and they would be sent off to other stars, presumably to do.. something.
Slowly, they were able to build a future. First one skyscraper, then another, until there were six in total with their cultural center as a gleaming mass of hope in the middle of the city. A tram system was run in all six of the points once the hourglass's movements were better understood. The other disc became their industrial center, allow the air pollution to stay away from their homes. Thus, worlds around the home disc remained lighter and the worlds around the industrial disc became dark and more barren. They went from surviving to thriving in their new home, happily exploring the worlds that it created for them. Shields that they didn't understand protected them from wayward asteroids and from things in the world coming onto the Central Discs, allowing only harmless ones through so that they'd have something to pick up off the ground for fun and inspection. They even found out, happily so, that the hourglass would revive people that died accidentally or through tragic circumstances, so that no one ever had to live a short life.
They found out the hard way that the shields their home created couldn't stop every meteor. Not the largest of them. It had come during the middle of the day, breaking through the shield and streaking across the sky. The asteroid took out the Houston Skyscraper and slammed through the ground, and into the hourglass itself. Everyone that died that day remained dead and the worlds around the disc decayed away, as the hourglass repaired itself and the hole left in the disc. The hole has still not fully closed, and debris that fell through it now orbits around the center of the hourglass in an artificial planetary ring.
It was not able to reverse the effects of time while damaged, so it did the only other thing it could: it brought in help. New people are just beginning to arrive, pulled from other times and spaces, each of them able to bring their own sliver of hope back to a city still reeling from the loss of so many.
As they bury most of their dead and clear the destruction of one of their homes, the cycle of worlds has currently paused. And it is now that your character finds themselves suddenly awake in a world that isn't their own.
The light from the world that had reached Earth didn't reflect its current state: utterly destroyed. What used to be a planet was now an asteroid belt.
Their salvation came in the form of a mysterious artifact called The Sands of Space-Time. Or at least, that's what they called it. The shape of it was indistinct at first, even though they arrived right near it, but it quickly began to form a familiar shape: that of an hourglass, with the hourglass surrounded by two large stone discs. Trees--impossibly from earth--grew on top of each disc. And even more impossible, considering how small the discs were, the strength of gravity was the same as it was on Earth.
There's still no unifying theory on how it was possible, but the people settled on one of the discs, not having any other options to return home to Earth. While they had enough to start farming, there wasn't enough materials to start making much of a home.
Until there suddenly was.
One night, they went to sleep with the hourglass top nearly empty of sand--and the next morning, a world had sprung up around the disc that they lived on, the sand completely reset to the top. It was sudden and it was brilliant, just as thin as the disk but it stretched on for miles, and it had everything they needed. They could mine for whatever they needed from the underneath of the world, while they could hunt, gather, and collect from the top. Periodically, the worlds would collapse into a smallish orb that they would call a "seed", and they would be sent off to other stars, presumably to do.. something.
Slowly, they were able to build a future. First one skyscraper, then another, until there were six in total with their cultural center as a gleaming mass of hope in the middle of the city. A tram system was run in all six of the points once the hourglass's movements were better understood. The other disc became their industrial center, allow the air pollution to stay away from their homes. Thus, worlds around the home disc remained lighter and the worlds around the industrial disc became dark and more barren. They went from surviving to thriving in their new home, happily exploring the worlds that it created for them. Shields that they didn't understand protected them from wayward asteroids and from things in the world coming onto the Central Discs, allowing only harmless ones through so that they'd have something to pick up off the ground for fun and inspection. They even found out, happily so, that the hourglass would revive people that died accidentally or through tragic circumstances, so that no one ever had to live a short life.
They found out the hard way that the shields their home created couldn't stop every meteor. Not the largest of them. It had come during the middle of the day, breaking through the shield and streaking across the sky. The asteroid took out the Houston Skyscraper and slammed through the ground, and into the hourglass itself. Everyone that died that day remained dead and the worlds around the disc decayed away, as the hourglass repaired itself and the hole left in the disc. The hole has still not fully closed, and debris that fell through it now orbits around the center of the hourglass in an artificial planetary ring.
It was not able to reverse the effects of time while damaged, so it did the only other thing it could: it brought in help. New people are just beginning to arrive, pulled from other times and spaces, each of them able to bring their own sliver of hope back to a city still reeling from the loss of so many.
As they bury most of their dead and clear the destruction of one of their homes, the cycle of worlds has currently paused. And it is now that your character finds themselves suddenly awake in a world that isn't their own.
