User:UnabashedlyRose/drafts

For working on pages

The story of Twilight Mirage centers around the Divine Fleet, a utopia in decline and facing possible extinction. At its peak, it contained three hundred Divines, but about a thousand years ago that number started to dive as Divines either died or left the fleet as a result of attacks by the New Earth Hegemony and the Iconoclasts, as well as the influence of the Pleroma Hypothesis. The original creator of the Twilight Mirage, the Divine Empyrean, is 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 powerful artist-city, the Crown of Glass, commissions a new body for the Divine Independence from a designer from the Divine Fleet. The planet of Quire sends out a warning recounting how the Divine Independence devastated its original inhabitants, the Qui Err, but with plans already decades in motion, it is too late, and Independence is revived.

The Divine Fleet is brought to a breaking point by combined attacks from the Divine Independence with its followers the Iconoclasts and Axioms, and the New Earth Hegemony-funded Sui Juris. They are 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, though they are able to defeat Independence. During the Miracle of the Mirage, in an attempt to avoid further conflict, the planet Quire splits itself into eight separate planets, where the last remaining City-Ships 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.

After the Miracle

In the aftermath of the Miracle, the people of the Twilight Mirage are largely split between:

• The Advent Group, a group of “treasure hunters” (tomb raiders) and “business leaders” (fascists) seeking to exploit the magic of the Quire system.
• The Divine Free States, The remains of the Divine Fleet holding onto their old principals and beliefs even as their civilization comes to an end, becoming more bureaucratic and authoritarian in the process.
• A group led a competing Waking Cadent tied to Earth and the Argosy, Spliced who are primarily colonists seeking to settle on the new resource-rich planets
• The Qui Err Assembly, A coalition of the Qui Err, other residents of Quire, and many former Divine Fleet members who reject both the Advent Group and the Divine Free State’s authorities.
• Senechal’s Brace, which exists as an uneasy coalition between the Cadent and the New Earth Hegemony, as represented by Declan’s Corrective.
• The Rapid Evening who have infiltrated the Quire System and its factions and are empowered by the all knowing Crystal Palace, a machine so advanced in its surveillance and processing it can tell the future.

All of these groups are under threat from Volition, which continues to produce new Axioms even without Independence’s guidance.

The season ends with the Waking Cadent’s fleet intact and continuing to offer access to the digital network of the Splice, and the splintered Divine Free States choosing to leave the Qui Err system. In addition The Crystal Palace is effectively destroyed by the invention of the Divine Arbit, putting the Rapid Evening in retreat, and many leaders of The Advent Group are killed, forcing them to leave the Mirage with their last remaining leader Aram Nideo.

Inside the Mirage 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.