The history of the Disruptors
It is now known that the
Disruptors were the remnants of FireFrost's creators. Their
full history is lost; there was only one amongst them who
knew the whole truth. The following has been evaluated by
W.O.T.A.N. as being on the order of 95.7 (+/-1.2)% correct.
When FireFrost was originally activated the psychic,
humanoid race responsible for its construction had taken
the best measures it could to protect itself (or rather its
ruling elite) from the Entropy Effect. The government was
secretly moved to intergalactic space, the vessels
containing it joining with the small fleet of scientific
craft stationed there to observe the mother galaxy. The
scientists were of the opinion that FireFrost would cause
Entropic Chaos across their galaxy and its parallels, but
that this would have a finite limit when a certain
percentage of the "psi-matrix" was in flux. When this point
was reached, they believed, FireFrost would split and the
galaxy would stabilise. All they had to do then was begin
the task of rebuilding. They were wrong.
Once the terrible truth emerged there was chaos aboard the
vessels. The crew of several military craft mutinied and
attacked the government and scientific vessels; many simply
committed suicide or went insane. Eventually, the surviving
Elite and scientists regained control. They decided to
follow FireFrost: the remaining debris of their mother
galaxy could not sustain them. Its psi-matrix had been so
damaged by FireFrost that to remain would have meant the
slow decay of their minds and will, and finally death.
The damaged fleet was clustered together and linked into a
single, massive ark. Suspension chambers were cannibalised
from other equipment, or constructed from scratch using
makeshift tools. The various ships' drives and power
sources were integrated into one. Of the thousands still
living, hundreds died in this labour. At length the ark was
ready. The crew went down into a sleep of aeons, and the
vessel's computers guided it along FireFrost's Magnospheric
trail.
It was a voyage and a dreaming many would not awaken from.
For as they entered the galaxy into which FireFrost had
been spewed, its psi-matrix, so alien to the one they had
known, intruded on their minds. Hundreds had nightmares so
terrible they died. Wild telekinetic forces generated by
the nightmares wreaked havoc with the ark's systems. The
sensitive array tracking FireFrost was destroyed, and a
sudden convulsion of power wrenched the ark through the
parallels. Brought out of hibernation by the vessel's
emergency programs, the surviving aliens, now numbering
less than a thousand, retook control. Sufficient data had
been retained by the computers to predict the star system
into which FireFrost had fallen, even to predict the planet
onto which it had plummeted at the end of its long voyage.
They reached Earth an aeon after FireFrost. Their chase had
been a long one; the ark could not match the preternatural
velocity of the galaxy destroyer. They hoped to find a
primitive planet on their arrival, a young world to shape
into an oasis of peace in a hostile galaxy. Instead, they
found a hell. THe planet seemed incredibly alike to their
home world, yet it was violently psychically hostile to
them. Worse, they could find no trace of FireFrost.
The latter problem they soon solved, when they surrounded
the surrounding psi-matrix: the ark had been shifted to
another parallel. The former they realised was FireFrost's
doing. Created to destroy their galaxy of origin FireFrost
had, on breaking in two on its arrival, released a ripple
of psychic energy that had fundamentally altered this
galaxy's structure and that of its parallels; an alteration
with its focus on the planet where FireFrost had landed and
its parallels. This ripple had been imprinted with the
psychic resonance of FireFrost's mother galaxy.
Consequently it had twisted the atoms of the primordial
soup into configurations from which had arisen lifeforms
mockingly similar to those the voyagers had known; both
plant and animal.
Most of the remaining voyagers went insane as the
psi-matrix of the new world overwhelmed them, destroying or
possessing them. For a time they became as gods, roaming
Earth and its parallels in terrible shapes. Before they
fled from their kin they came close to destroying the ark,
wrenching it through the parallels once more.
Only the greatest minds among the aliens could shield
themselves from the ravages of the psi-matrix. These were
the strongest psychics of their race, the scientific elite,
FireFrost's creators. Eventually they formulated a
solution. A machine must be made, similar to the one in
which they passed the long voyage. A cryogenic chamber in
which they would lie dreaming, and into their dreams would
pass a controlled trickle of the reality beyond; of the
galaxy and its parallels in which they would have to live
when they returned to waking life. Given the proper
suggestions and fed the correct diet of drugs, their minds
and bodies would adapt.
Yet to build this machine, their City of Dreams, was too
great a task for them alone. They needed servants to toil
for them, so they shaped them from the shambling forms that
aped their own and were already struggling towards
intelligence. Out of the picanthrepan clay the aliens
moulded Humanity after their own image.
A work of centuries began. When it was done there were less
than a hundred of the aliens left. As they made ready for
their second sleep they debated what to do with their
servants. Some urged that they be destroyed, their
usefulness over. Others spoke against this, counselling
that on awakening, they would have need of servants again.
So Humanity was scattered across the parallels, seeded for
the aliens' future needs.
The voyagers entered their city and laid themselves down to
sleep. As they dreamt, the machines tended them, feeding a
steadily growing ration of psychic reality into their
minds. A handful broke, died. Outside the city, massive
robot tenders roamed the continents and oceans, guiding the
tectonic plates, nursing the still young world to
geological calmness, moulding the weather so that no storm
ever troubled the air above the city.
In Earth orbit and from the Moon, machines kept vigil over
the heavens, destroying any approaching fragments of space
debris. Then came the Leviathan; a comet of huge size
trailed by a host of smaller bodies. When the defences had
done their best there remained one great spinning fragment
that fell to Earth far from the city. It was enough,
though: the planet tenders could not contain the following
earthquakes and the Earth's crust began to break apart. The
emergency programs came into effect and the city broke
loose from the ruined Earth to float alone in orbit around
the sun. Though it had survived, the city was damaged in a
vital place, and the Dreamers would sleep for far longer
than they had planned.
As their sleep lengthened into millenia, Humanity was
changing. Abandoned by its creators, bereft of their
guidance, they were found by the Changelings; those aliens
which had surrendered to the psi-matrix. Together they made
the Age of Wonder, a time of happenings that have come down
across the millenia as legends of gods and heroes. Their
minds unfettered, Humanity developed psychic powers, aided
or thwarted by the Changelings at it took their
unfathomable fancy.
Eventually, the Age came to an end. The Changelings could
not sustain themselves forever against the erosion of the
hostile psychic environment. They dwindled and perished,
their passing hastened by the venting across the parallels
of psychic waste from the City of Dreams. Humanity
inherited the continua: the barbarians took up residence in
the courts of the old lords. On the parallel of FireFrost's
arrival the psychic priest-kings of the Egyptian Kingdom
discovered the Opal. Terrified of it, they sought the
advice of Gilgamesh, the greatest psychic of the age. After
long deliberation, FireFrost was sealed beneath the Great
Pyramid.
At last the Sleepers awoke, ending their millenia-long
dream with a burst of psychic energy that sent a shockwave
across the parallels. It came upon the psychic adepts of
Humanity as a consuming fire in which they perished like
moths in a candle's flame. It was a reflex on the aliens'
part; a psychic hammerblow to shatter those native minds
attuned to the psi-matrix and working in harmony with it.
The existence of such minds was anathema to them,
engendering a psychic malaise that would kill them: their
wholesale slaughter took the Disruptors no more thought
than one would use to kill a wasp.
Now the aliens desperately journeyed across the parallels,
searching with blind instinct for FireFrost. As they
travelled, they changed the parallels they touched. Their
ancient works they found ruined or buried, beyond salvage.
Their was despair, confusion, and finally a murderous civil
war amongst the remaining hundred, from which there emerged
a single victor: the scientist who had conceived of
FireFrost, in a time so long ago that it seemed, even to
him, almost a dream.
During the second sleep, he had been inspired; to him alone
had revelation been granted. As FireFrost had altered this
galaxy, this Earth, and their parallels to a twisted
doppelganger of its galaxy of origin, it could also be used
to tear apart the fabric of this galaxy and weave it anew
into a true recreation of the mother galaxy. To achieve
this, the psi-matrix of the parallels would have to be
manipulated into a particular configuration, then at a
critical moment FireFrost would have to be activated to
alter the configuration, to rearrange reality. To warp,
twist, and hammer the raw ore of psychic energy there was
only one tool available. Humanity. The surviving alien, who
now called himself the "Bringer of Light", would have to
play Humanity like a vast musical instrument across the
parallels of Earth, until the day FireFrost could be used
to strike the final chord.