Divine Universe

Spoiler warning! This article contains major spoilers for all of the Divine Cycle. Tread carefully!

The Divine Universe is the informal name for the setting first created for COUNTER/Weight, and expanded with Twilight Mirage, PARTIZAN, and the upcoming PALISADE. The stories which take place in the Divine Universe are referred to as the Divine Cycle.

The Divine Universe takes place in the Milky Way, unknown thousands of years after humanity's expansion to the stars.

Places

A Partizan era map from the Divine Principality.

Major Regions

• Golden Branch
  • Apostolos
  • Counterweight
  • Kesh

• Twilight Mirage
  • Quire system
  • Palisade

• The Divine Principality
  • Stel Nideo
  • Stel Kesh
    • Partizan (moon)
  • Stel Apostolos
  • Stel Orion
  • Stel Columnar

• Galactic core
  • Earth

• Scutum-Centaurus Arm
  • Girandole

Other

• The 10th Coronet
• Artemisios

• Collier
• Crown
• Leraphon IV
• Leraphon V
• Iraleph

History

Earth

See: Rigour for more details

Rigour

The known history of the Divine Cycle begins with Rigour, a tool created by Dr. Irene Klipsch-Dove to aid in planetary colonization efforts by the Orion Conservation Conglomerate. As its power and influence grows, Rigour takes over huge parts of humanity, turning them into its workforce in its non-stop push for productivity. Dr. Klipsch-Dove flees to a forested planet and develops Liberty and Discovery, as well as Righteousness, in an attempt to stop Rigour, with Liberty and Discovery finding and rejecting the Orion worker Chital as their first pilot.

The First Stellar Combustor

While Rigour pushes forward from Earth, many flee from its influence, led by Righteousness. They drop stellar combustors in their wake to destroy the star systems between them and Rigour. While this damages Rigour and kills many of its workers, it is not enough to kill the Divine, only slow it down. In the wake of Rigour, a great deal of technology, history and knowledge from the Sol system is lost, leading to a gap in the historical record of unknown length.

The Second Stellar Combustor

At least sixty thousand years later, Rigour finally catches up to what is now the Autonomous Diaspora, and this time it launches a war against them. The first Diasporan Divines are created, Independence, Truth, and Equality, to engage with the threat. The Diaspora again uses a half dozen stellar combustors with the intent to try and destroy Rigour, which are delivered on a one way mission by a vessel piloted by rebels from Rigour's control, the Wayfarer True. While this does not succeed, it does propel Rigour through space, and it eventually lands on Ionias in the Golden Branch, going dormant. Rigour's old forces, now no longer thralls, go on to form the People's Conglomerate of Orion.

In the Golden Branch, Rigour's body is inhabited by other former thralls who are now impossibly far from the worlds they knew, the only familiarity their dormant Divine. These people would split into two groups. One would eventually form into the Apostolosian Empire, building the Apokine, a mech that would connect psychically with the collective will of their people, in a reflection of Rigour itself. The other would use and study pieces of Rigour, eventually rallying under Chess Kesh to form the Principality of Kesh. This civilization's technological level would eventually collapse; from then on it would be controlled from the shadows by the Rapid Evening, a group of highly advanced spies and saboteurs dedicated to preventing the use of Rigour's technology.

The Golden Era

See COUNTER/Weight for more details.

The Golden War

OriCon and the Diaspora continue their expansion through the Milky Way, finally reaching the site of their long-forgotten foe in the Golden Branch star system. Here they come into contact with the Apostolosian Empire, now far diverged from their roots with Rigour and with advancements in technology that allow them to travel though dark space. Apostolos soon begins its own war of expansion against them. OriCon and the Diaspora ally themselves to fight off Apostolos despite their historical rivalry.

This culminates in a joint mission including not only OriCon and the Diaspora, but also the Rapid Evening and defecting Apostolosians who come together to stop the Apostolosian Empire from deploying a super weapon. While they are successful, the planet Counterweight is devastated at the same time that an idyllic sister planet known as Weight is created. After losing the war, the Apostolosian Empire begins to decline and within a decade would be overthrown in a coup to and become the Golden Demarchy. The rest of the Golden Branch sector is occupied primarily by OriCon and the Diaspora, along with a handful of planets fighting to stay independent from the rule of the three great powers.

Emergence of Rigour

See the September Incident for more details.

Many years after OriCon's arrival in the Golden Branch, one of their subsidiaries, Snowtrak, uncovers Rigour from the ice of Ionias. Rigour quietly takes over Snowtrak and the media company EarthHome, spreading its influence until it hears the call of Voice from September. Not only Rigour, but Liberty and Discovery and Detachment converge on September. Forces on September are able to deal some damage to Rigour, but Rigour attempts to gain control of the newly uncovered Apokine or Voice to use their abilities to further spread itself through the system. Fearing its victory is inevitable if the fight continues, Detachment, Liberty, and Discovery open a one-way portal that would trap Rigour, as well as Voice, Detachment, Liberty and Discovery, and the entire population of Mode City, inside. With Rigour contained for now, the few survivors of the September Incident flee the planet which, its orbit disturbed, is now slowly falling towards the sun.

The Defeat of Rigour

Four and a half years after the September Incident, survivors begin seeing warning signs that Rigour will return. Inside the pocket dimension Voice and all of Mode City is taken over by Rigour. Meanwhile, after long years of Discovery and their pilot trying to keep Liberty in check, Liberty finally gives in to the strain of its confinement, opening a portal out to flee the pocket and unleashing Rigour on the Golden Branch once again. In the intervening years there have been many proposals on how to defeat Rigour, with some working to create a bomb to outmatch the earlier stellar combustors and others working to weaponize the Gnosis Virus to merge mechanical and organic elements and wipe Rigour out. However, in the end, there is no single solution to Rigour, and even with many historical enemies coming together, Rigour causes devastating losses in a drawn-out war. The day is eventually won with sacrifice across the sector, and the Apokine and its pilot pin Rigour to the planet of September as they slowly drift into the sun to their deaths.

In the aftermath the system slowly recovers - the Rapid Evening dedicate themselves to wiping out any remaining Rigour technology to prevent it from ever returning, and many of the independent planets band together to improve their material conditions, folding in planets of the Autonomous Diaspora after their many losses in the war. The Golden Branch sector lives on with a newly ecologically-restored Counterweight at its heart.

Interstitial period

The Formation of the Divine Fleet

See Divine Fleet for more details.

In the millennia that followed the defeat of Rigour, there was much debate about the places of Divines in society and the relationship between Divines and humans. It's during this time that the artist Kamala Cadence comes to the conclusion that if there was a war between humans and Divines, the Divines would in time be wiped out, a conclusion she found horrific due to the uniqueness of Divines. Kamala synthesizes a number of philosophical positions in the Resonant Orbit in the hopes of creating a society which would affirm all types of life. She partners with the ancient Divine Independence, becoming the first Excerpt of the new Divine Fleet.

However, there is eventually a schism between Kamala and Independence, as Kamala refuses to include a Divine's right to die in the core tenets, believing they are too special to be lost. Independence leaves, and as Kamala's stance on Divines hardens, she eventually leaves the Divine Fleet as well.

Outside the Fleet

See New Earth Hegemony and Rapid Evening (intelligence agency) for more details.

While the Divine Fleet flourished, back on Earth it was a time of strife and civil conflict due to the arrival of Independence. At some point during its reign on earth Independence was instrumental in moving earth to the galactic core. An uprising against Independence led to him being sent out of the core and on a trajectory to be destroyed in the star of the Benthos system.

Independence's trajectory as it exited Earth was tracked by another organization, the Rapid Evening, who had grown significantly since their days in the Golden Branch. Their primary advancement was the creation of Crystal Palace, a surveillance machine so advanced it gained the ability to tell the future. In Kesh, the centre of the Rapid Evening's power, people begin to live in predetermined cycles, with those seeking a way out joining the Rapid Evening's ranks.

Quire

See Quire for more details.

Thousands of years before Independence was ousted, the sentient planet of Quire was host to the Qui Err, who struggled against the "the Soil without Memory", which was just as likely to save them as to kill them. However, an Apostolosian smuggling vessel crash landed on the planet, carrying a sample of the Gnosis Virus. This infected the planet of Quire, gave it the ability to understand its people in a way it could not previously, and allowed them all to enter a golden age.

This comes to an end when, due to an unexpected solar flare, the Divine Independence's course is altered, and he crash lands on Quire. This led directly to mass conflict, and the annihilation of most of the Qui Err people in battles for and against Independence. They did manage to defeat the Divine, however, and scattered its pieces across the planet. Most of the survivors fled to the Sky Reflected in Mirrors in hopes of preserving their people; a few were brought into the Divine Fleet by Curiosity, becoming the Independents. In its last moments, Independence built the Iconoclasts from the living material of Quire and sent them after the Divine Fleet, where they began to plan the creation of Volition.

The End of the Divine Fleet

See Twilight Mirage for more details.

The Decline of the Fleet

The Divine Fleet is a utopia in decline, facing possible extinction. At its peak, it contained three hundred Divines, but that number started to decline as Divines fell under attack from the New Earth Hegemony as well as the followers of the lost Divine Independence, the Iconoclasts. Also contributing to that decline is the Pleroma Hypothesis, which plagues the minds of Divines until they simply leave the fleet, or choose to stop existing altogether.

The fleet is housed within the Twilight Mirage, a twilight colored cloud that protects the Divine Fleet and distorts time within it, which was originally created by the Divine Empyrean, now the last remaining Divine of the Fleet.

The people of the Divine Fleet send a scouting party to the nearby planet of Quire to ascertain if it is suitable for refugees and to spread the Mirage across the planet. They encounter its existing residents, many of whom are former members of the Divine Fleet who departed generations ago. A dominant city on the planet commissions a new body for the fabled Divine Independence from a member of the scouting party, though shortly after, the planet of Quire sends out a warning recounting how Independence devastated its original inhabitants, the Qui Err. However, with plans already decades in motion, Independence is revived.

The Miracle of the Mirage

See the Miracle of the Mirage for details.

The Divine Fleet is brought to a breaking point by combined attacks from the Divine Independence, the Iconoclasts, and a New Earth Hegemony-funded coup attempt. While the fleet is able to thwart the coup and bring down Independence, in the aftermath the Divine Fleet is forced to break apart and make emergency landings to the planet of Quire below, calling into question the leadership of the current Cadent and the future of the Divine Fleet as a society. These events trigger the Miracle of the Mirage, where in an attempt to avoid further conflict, the living planet Quire splits itself into eight separate planets, where the last remaining of the Divine Fleet are able to crash-land. In its final act, the planet of Quire revives its lost people, the Qui Err, based on its memories from before their encounter with Independence.

In the aftermath of the Miracle, the people of the Twilight Mirage are increasingly split into factions with competing ideologies and goals for Quire. These include the remains of the Divine Fleet; a coalition of the Qui Err in opposition to their increasing conservatism; the upstart “Waking Cadent”, who seeks to create a new Divine Fleet with Divines under her control, and waves of arriving colonists from Earth. Some are even being swept into fascism by the Advent Group.

The Argosy, Spliced, a fleet from Earth, eventually arrives, blocking the system from the view of the Rapid Evening's Crystal Palace with the Profit's Star. The Rapid Evening responds to increasing disruption of their control by sending Crystal Palace to Quire.

Threatening them all is Volition, a factory created by the followers of independence which produces Axioms, post-Divines that do not require a pilot and embody a single idea rather than an ideal.

Futura Free

As the factional conflict comes to a head, Volition is calmed by taking one of its own former Axioms as an Excerpt and the Rapid Evening is pushed into retreat after Crystal Palace is effectively nullified by the creation of the Divine Arbit. Meanwhile the splintered Divine Free States, led by Aram Nideo, choose to leave the system, the consequences of which weigh heavily on later generations of the Mirage.

Inside the Mirage, the Waking Cadent’s fleet remains intact; at the same time, the former New Earth Hegemony fleet the Argosy, Spliced offers access to the utopic digital network of the Splice, overseen by the Divine Anticipation and their Excerpt. The Qui Err Assembly retain their home system and right to self-govern and rebuild their society, with many former members of both the Divine Fleet and former Earth colonists choosing to stay within the Qui Err System under their leadership.

Divine Principality

See: History of the Divine Principality.

The Divine Principality rises from the union of the Divine Free States and the Rapid Evening. Over the course of a few thousand years, this empire becomes a galactic superpower, as it violently subsumes almost all other civilizations in the Milky Way within itself. The few cultures that remain are the Branched, the Twilight Mirage, and those beings living in the so-called no man's sky of the Scutum-Centaurus Arm.