Before The Fall (origins)

Dreams

Thomas Kane was not a happy man to begin with.  He wasn't born into a particularly rich family.  He wasn't born with any particularly useful skills.  He wasn't even particularly born.

In the capital city of Tuyrn, where kings and queens ruled over the entire planet, the children were grown.  Accelerated growth patterns induced by metabolic drugs were commonplace in every birth facility across the city.  Normal birth just wasn't gags and efficient enough for war.  For the city of Tuyrn was not much a city than a fortress.  Beneath the streets of the business district and the market place were signs, digits and wards placed there since time immemorial to guard the vast halls of the underground city where the true players lived.  A fortress city run form the underground by shady kings and unscrupulous deviants.  That was the birthplace of Thomas Kane.

When he was born, he was appraised.  The mages found he had no particular skills, no affinity for anything.  Except that he had a will of iron.  Spirit born from being in the weakest class of humanity not out of choice, but out of necessity.  This man could walk through flame and poison and still achieve his goals.

Leadership came naturally after he was placed in the Academy, where the commanders of this military-governed world were bred to become strategists of the highest calibre.  Where an old flame was being rekindled.

It was three years into his advanced classes of the Academy that Thomas discovered the existence of a splinter group, more a cult than a club.  Jäger.  And with this knowledge came the knowledge of a community of people that lived in the edges of the world.  The Deviants.  Castaways.  Men that had abandoned the use of birth facilities and lived like the old ancestors.  Savages.  That's how thy described them in the texts.

But these savages were not stupid.  They had left for a reason.  They protected a secret of high importance.  A secret that could tip the scales of power in favor of anyone who knew it.  Jäger dogma called it the Harvester.  A primal force that gained sentience and had power that predated the Gods.  Exactly what Jäger needed to achieve their goals.

So Thomas Kane was sent through flame and poison, to track down and locate the Harvester by being expelled from Tuyrn.

The problem was, not even he knew what the true goals of Jäger were.  And nature abhors a vacuum.  The chinks in the armouur of his mind were starting to show.  And this was before he clawed his way out of an endless void.

He paused to stare at the stone circle that held the entrance chamber to the room he had been looking for all his life.  Two deep breaths, ragged from the lung damage.  Then he limped through the unlocked door.  This ended here, whether that fool the Asura liked it or not.