Ages ago, there existed an order of monks, and for a time, they were devoted to peace and tranquillity.
That was, until a foreign monk, from the lands beyond the mountains, arrived at the temple. She brought to The Order knowledge of an unexplored spiritual plane. It was not the astral plane, nor was it the realm of the dead, for the monks knew these places well.
Instead, she showed them a plane of information, a spiritual web where all of humanity’s knowledge could be accessed; a fledgling plane, a by-product of the Datasphere.
While the rest of the world could access digital information via computers. The Monks of The Order learned to manifest themselves inside this new environment as techno-spiritual avatars.
As monks devoted themselves to this new realm, their daily search for inner peace and tranquillity was abandoned for a ravenous consumption of information. As they pushed themselves past the threshold of human knowledge, into realms unknown. This new path shattered the mind, ruined the body, and broke the spirit. To survive this journey the human body and the human mind would need to be improved.
The Order began to modify themselves for the journey. Many of the monks installed circuits and processors to decode and sort new and complex information.They rewired their nervous systems to optimize physical energy use so they could last for months without food, water, or sleep. They implanted ports to connect with computers to store information in electro-spiritual clouds. Physical purity was lost to electronic corruption.
It was this insatiable search for knowledge, that led them to The Infinity Engine: a swirling mass of cosmic energies around which our reality spun. The engine was limitless power incarnate. From it emanated everything and nothing. It was the beginning and the end of all knowledge and it was this discovery that led to the Catastrophe.
The sky cracked open and a crystalline rain of reality-bending shards pierced the planet’s crust. The precursor cities collapsed, one after another, as a thousand forms of apocalypse ground civilization to dust.
The survivors of the catastrophe were scattered and broken. The world was full of new and terrifying creatures, changed by the shards that now littered the world. It seemed that everything they once knew had been replaced with some nightmarish version of itself. For years, the survivors had to fend for themselves, gathering into tribes and fighting over what resources they could still trust.
The Order survived and continued their relentless hunt for knowledge. But their eyes were now set on the shards. They believed that if they could master the shards, they could one day rebuild and control the Infinity Engine. Controlling the shards meant experimentation.
The Order began sending monks out to capture men, women, and children from the ruins of the precursor cities. The local tribes fought back, but they were no match for a monastic order of organized, trained, technologically enhanced warrior monks. It wasn’t long before they fell under the Order’s shadow.
Time passed. The monks discovered that the shards reacted strongly to certain people. Adults who came into prolonged contact with the shards would quickly lose their minds, die from exposure, or, in the worst cases, mutate into biologically impossible creatures. Children, however, were a different matter.
A child’s mind is more open to possibilities and less constrained by their perceptions of reality, and so the shards affected them less. Children survived longer- weeks, even months. Many developed new abilities or could access knowledge far beyond what the monks understood, but in the end, the power destroyed them. It seemed that humans were incapable of surviving the shard’s energies.
Tetra: a name that will never be forgotten.
She was a sacrifice from a local Undergrowth tribe. This tribe believed the monks to be unearthly creatures and brought children as sacrifices in return for blessings. The monks shared knowledge of farming and engineering with the people as a reward for continued worship. Anything for more test subjects. Anything for knowledge.
Tetra screamed out as the monks pressed shards into her flesh. The crystals began to vibrate, working their way under her skin. When the ritual was complete, Tetra felt alive in a way she had never known.
The eldest monks taught her their monastic traditions. Tetra simply observed and repeated, learning the ways of The Order in little time. It seemed that Tetra could integrate new ideas and movements into her body with little effort. As her skills grew, the light of the shards shone brighter, but her emotion seemed to drain.
Without a single implant or upgrade, it took her only a few years to master what had taken, even the most gifted of monks, a lifetime. Tetra delved into forbidden realms of thought and eventually discovered, for herself, the truth behind the shattered Infinity Engine.
Repeatedly, she told the elders that they had only scratched the surface of what the Shards of Infinity offered – and now, she needed to be upgraded.
Fearing a second catastrophe, they denied her the components necessary to achieve her goal. Tetra tried to bargain with the elders, offering them access to abilities and knowledge she’d gained from the engine. She made incredible claims: strength, speed, even immortality. Once again, the monks denied her, but word of her claims spread through The Order like a plague.
Day by day, the younger monks rallied behind her, and in secret, she trained her new disciples. It was becoming more and more obvious the power she had within The Order, and the Elders decided that if Tetra could not be controlled, then she must be destroyed.
Tetra and her new disciples fled the temple. The Elders sent their warriors to hunt them down, scouring the land for the heretical monks.
With their newfound powers, Tetra kept them moving. They collected shards, delved into the information plane, and discovered the secrets of the post-catastrophe world.
Nine years later, Tetra returned to the Temple. Tetra had molded her disciples into flawless warriors: cold, disciplined, and merciless. The monks marched into the temple and unleashed unfathomable violence upon their predecessors, carving through the ancient monks in a matter of moments.
Thus, Tetra claimed The Order for herself, and once again, set upon her quest to rebuild and control the Infinity Engine.