Children of God

Chapter One: The Visitor

The stars of Andromeda twinkled like diamonds against the inky blackness of space as Xeridia, a planet eerily similar to Earth, hung suspended in their midst. The planet's surface was globe with continents and oceans, but its unique characteristics set it apart from our own; On this distant world, the Alfaran thrived - a humanoid species with the physical attributes of humans but crossed with those of mice. Their whiskers rustling in the breeze, their large furry ears protruding from their hair and a light dusting of fur along their bodies not dissimilar to a slightly fluffier form of human body hair. Upon their slightly protruding snout lays a small pink nose and their larger rounder eyes gave them an almost cartoonish look. And yet, despite their differences, they are like us in so many ways. Throughout their history the Alfaran race spread out and expanded to fill every niche and crack and crevice of their environment, like butter spread across hot toast. Just as we did, they formed tribes and communities, standing side by side as they desperately clung to the skin of their tiny speck in space. The Alfaran grew, both in the size of their tribes and in the size of their wisdom. In time, they would learn to master the elements that the Gods had provided for them; fire, water, air, earth. Their tribes would grow into towns, from towns into cities, from cities into kingdoms and, sometimes, from kingdoms into empires.

Yet, despite their ability to seemingly emulate humanity's greatest strengths, this was a double edged sword as they also emulated humanities greatest failures; greed, poverty, slavery, war... as life competes for resources, it cannibalises the lower parts of itself for food and nourishment as the stream of social-mobility flows down with those at the top scrambling to maintain their power and authority over their fellow beings by any and all means necessary and unnecessary. While gold and glitter flow like a river to the sea, there are the poorest amongst them that get swept up by the current with no life raft to come for them as the familiar world they had built is torn down and rearranged before them. And then came the miracle in the dry and dusty continent of Marlin when within the empire of Sa'alwei, also known as the Iron Empire, their so called 'great men' changed nature by moving steel with steam. This newfangled technology could do the work of a hundred men and possessed the strength of a hundred oxen, leading to many fearing for their jobs and many slaves in fear of the inevitable cull as they are simply no longer needed in such great numbers. The poor would have to learn to scrape by harder as their rich masters continued to exploit them for wealth, bleeding them of every last drop of strength as their wells of wealth brim over. Roads of steel were wound around the land for great whistling machines with large iron wheels that turn at speeds faster than the legs of the fastest beasts they had, great buildings with huge looms to make new silk suits and dresses for the rich and wealthy, great foundries with yet more machines to extract and forge yet more of the metal that gave the Iron Empire it's nickname. For the slaves who were not culled, the new world they found themselves in would be a far harsher one as the machines that create such abundance can never create enough to shatter the wants of their masters. Their living conditions become worse and more cramped, their workloads becoming unbearable and their working conditions deteriorating further as their status is downgraded from that of an animal to that of a machine.

Alas, such dominance would never be permanent as the small fish adapt to survive and maybe defeat the great sharks of the ocean. In very little time, the empire's friends, enemies, and competitors would either reverse-engineer the technology, purchase it, or come up with it all on their own. The landscapes would change with taller and taller buildings being built and more and more railroads being sewn across the continent, including the great railroad connecting the empire to her eastern enclaves. This would soon be exported across the world as the steam-powered boats begin to set sail to explore farther afield upon the ocean to explore, to conquer, to colonise. This world is changing and so are it's people, just as humanity changed in the age of industry. Yet, despite this, the smaller people still soldiered on as best they could. Along a small tributary to the continent's great river lay the River Federation; small, self-governing towns along the river who came together in an informal and largely symbolic alliance to support one another's mutual existence. They traded food and wares, smuggled goods in through the river for themselves and for export, they hunted one another's criminals in exchange for bounty, and they did all they could to ensure that their towns kept fighting on against the hostile world they found themselves in.