Dragon Knights - Historical Background

Although it's now known that humans had earlier encounters with dragons, the first story, Trial of Humanity naturally starts in the summer of 2159, shortly before the appearance of "The Harbinger". For those of you who are hazy on this period of history, here's a summery of the key events which preceded it.

2001-2025AD - Muslims attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. George Bush responds by declaring war on terrorism. Muslim terrorists (possibly with state sponsorship) unleash a genetically engineered virus that selectively kills people with a Y chromosome DNA sequence characteristic of descendants of the Jewish priesthood. In a heated UN debate, the Philipene ambassador says that the only way to prevent terrorists from using weapons of mass destruction is for everybody to convert to Islam. There is general agreement from the representatives of Muslim countries while those from a number of other nations claim that this is gross violation of freedom of religion and conclude that the only way to end such attacks, or worse, is to wipe out Islam. The war against terrorism escalates almost over night into the Muslim war, a very bloody conflict where neighbors and even relatives often found themselves on different sides. This was also to see the first use of medical nanotechnology as both weapons and treatment.

2031-2054 - Lambda I colonization ships sent to other solar systems. Program stopped due to increasing public skepticism, economic problems and work to improve the Lambda drive (a project which took much longer than expected). Many of the colonists had been mutated and/or modded as a result of the Muslim war, with the result that they were considered second class citizens on Earth.

2131 - Signals of apparent intelligent origin are detected from the Centauri system (a mere 4.25 light years from Earth). The development of the American and European Lambda II exploration ships are hurried to investigate.

2132 - The American Lambda II ship, the Mayflower, is dispatched to Centauri. Before the European Santa Maria can follow, China declares dominion over space and launches its own Lambda II ship, the Tianamen Square. Naturally the other nations don't agree with China and a horrific war ensues which destroys most space hardware.

2134 - The China war ends with a nuclear holocaust that triggers an ice age. The Santa Maria leaves for Centauri.

2136 - The Mayflower and Tianamen Square arrive at Centauri.

2137 - A spatial anomaly is detected near Earth, outside the planetary plane. 37 huge objects, apparently space craft, appear and fly past Earth. The Omega space station (the only substantial bit of space hardware remaining) is destroyed by a huge nuclear explosion. The Planetary Defence Agency (PDA) is established to investigate the issue and try to prevent or fight off alien attacks in the future.

2138 - The Santa Maria arrives at Centauri and finds wreckage of the Mayflower and the Tianamen Square along with some from unknown space craft. One module of the Tianamen Square is fairly intact and this is retrieved. It contains two occupied cryogenic chambers containing a man and a woman. Upon revival, the man is found to be a low-ranking technician who was never revived since leaving Earth. The woman is the widow of the Tianamen Square's captain. She claims that upon deactivating the Lambda drive, they found the Mayflower engaged in a battle with huge monsters, resembling the dragons of legend. The captain decided to go to the Mayflower's assistance and had his wife put in suspended animation for her own safety.

2140 - Santa Maria departs Centauri, after retrieving samples of the dragons.

2144 - Santa Maria returns to Earth. Its crew (and the survivors from the Tianamen Square), quickly drop out of the limelight, leading to rumors of a cover up. The PDA starts demanding an increased budget and rumors start circulating that they are developing a super-weapon known as Excalibur, based on information brought back by the Santa Maria.

2159 - By the time our story starts, we are well into what is often called "The Cambrian Explosion of Nanotechnology" during which most the mod categories we've come to know (and some that rapidly disappeared due to insurmountable problems) made their appearance. While those who'd become modded (usually due to medical necessity) during the Muslim War were looked down upon (and many became Lambda I colonists), mods are now fashionable, if still somewhat controversial. It must be remembered that man had never encountered anything quiet like this before. Like drugs, body piercing and tattoos, mods appealed to those with thrill seeking personalities. Unlike drugs but like body piercing and tattoos, they were more or less permanent (many even being hereditary - although one category, Temps, ware off after a short time or when the target experiences certain conditions) and it was unwise to have too many. Like computer hacking, they appealed to "nerds". They could potentially be extremely dangerous (and not just to those who chose to be modded) - and this respect made mind altering drugs look trivial. However they could also be extremely useful and most, at least in theory, prolonged the target's life. To complicate matter's farther, most humans by this time were technically mods, although mostly what have become known as "naturals"; of normal human appearance but with health-improving nanites and genetic modifications. To try to reconcile this, a somewhat artificial distinction is often made between "medical mods" and "recreational mods". There is much debate about whether "medical mods" include categories like giants and eugenics. Advocates of mods, say that the more exotic human mods (there's less controversy about non-human mods), like Angels, Vampiers, Grays and Mechs, aren't recreational as they serve genuine functions.

The PDA's budget has been repeatedly cut as there is an increasing feeling that the dragon attack was a one-off fluke. They are also criticized for having spent most their budget on Excalibur and their obsessive secrecy (they claim that they don't know the dragons don't have spies on Earth). Of course Earth is about to be menaced by aliens again and Excalibur still isn't ready.

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