The Bygone Era

The Bygone Era was an age of technological hubris, a time when humanity turned inward, retreating from space exploration to focus on exploiting the resources beneath its feet.  Powered by steam, coal, uranium, and solar collectors, it was a civilization obsessed with extraction.  Technocrats ruled, controlling vast megacities and industrial networks that stripped the planet bare of its natural wealth.

Fossil fuel extraction reached its peak, with deep-earth mining, strip-mining, and ecological exploitation ravaging the surface.  Machines built to serve mankind instead enabled their owners to become distant.  Soon they were managers-in-name-only, clinging to the power of a dying world, while the systems they created did the real work on their behalf.  Bygone cities stretched upward in massive arcologies, while below the ground, the network of resource-harvesting technologies dug ever deeper in searches for minerals that were becoming harder and more costly to find.

Auckland

The city of sails was an industrial powerhouse of the Pacific. While not as grand as New York, London, or San Francisco, Auckland ensured Aotearoa’s place as a cultural and economic power of the Bygone Era.

Sydney

Sydney was the spectacle of the south, with vibrant culture happening in Newtown and creative industry booming in Surrey Hills. An economic powerhouse in the South Pacific, people flocked to Sydney from all over the world to enjoy the lifestyle it had to offer.

New York City

The economic capital of the world, New York City boasted an abundance of everything. From the vibrant green spaces of Central Park to the skyscrapers of downtown Manhattan, New York City drew business leaders and cultural icons from just about anywhere.

Paris

Synonymous with culture, Paris was leading Eurpoe forward when most cities were still small villages. Older than New York City, Sydney, and Auckland combined, the history of Paris has always drawn people enamored with the past, who are looking toward the future.

With every expansion, the climate became less stable.  Skies darkened under industrial ash, oceans levels rose, and the ground itself began to shudder under the weight of endless extraction.  Eventually, even the technocrats couldn’t sustain output.  The world began to crack, and the inevitable collapse came not through war, but through the sheer exhaustion of the Earth itself.

The first wave of collapse happened when wealth no longer moved generationally.  Functionally immortal, the ultra-wealthy rigidly maintained old viewpoints, refusing to adapt to the changing circumstances of Earth.  Vaults, built to ensure continuity, became sites where the elite could take refuge.  Their own lives assured, they sought only to protect their means of evading death.

The process became more important than the product.  Manufacturing, once the driver of civilization, produced an excess of luxury goods that placated desire and repressed consciousness. Reality shows replaced reality, while sensationalized media spread fear and mistrust.

This was all done in the name of profit. Processes meant efficiency, and efficiency meant oversight was no longer about understanding consequence. Compliance became valued. Skills were replaced with process certifications. Education was no longer valued.

Eventually, automation systems failed as industry turned in on itself. Innovation disappeared.  There were no new solutions, and the Earth was in desperate need of some as the climate shifted. Cities crumbled under their own infrastructure, and entire regions turned to ruin.

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