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The night sky always draws our eyes. People look up with a question, or in wonder, and sometimes with a dream: to venture forth among the stars.
From Earth, the first space-farers spied tiny jewels shining with the light of distant suns, far away but so clear. To reach out and grasp one would only cost a lifetime. Cheap at the price.
[fadein gfx/intro/first_steps_into_space.png]
So men and women locked their sleeping bodies into hulking metal boxes. They hurled themselves out into the void. On arrival, they decanted and woke to find new stars staring coldly down from stranger skies.
[fadein gfx/intro/faster_than_light.png]
The first wave of explorers crept from star to star at sublight speeds, until the invention of the hyperspace drive spurred a second growth. Then civilisation spread, as it always has, with exponential enthusiasm -- ripples in the dark sea of space.
However, the heroic age of discovery lasted only as long as human curiosity outpaced greed. Too soon, conflict erupted on the colonies. Land, fuel, food, and distrust sowed the seeds of discord. Once begun, the fever of war spread from world to world and became a holocaust.
[fadein gfx/intro/reign_of_daedris.png]
After a hundred years of interstellar conflict, on the ashes that remained, at last a new order built its foundations.
A man named Daedris asserted dominion over the exhausted worlds. He founded a Galactic Empire and named himself its ruler. Under the iron fist of his military, relations between planets resumed; abandoned trade routes saw traffic for the first time in living memory.
Scholars call it the zenith: technology leapt forward, culture flourished, irradiated rock was cleansed and dead planets brought back to life. Peace reigned in an imperial golden age.
After Daedris, under his successors, the light of the empire waned. Civil strife and religious division weakened social bonds. The great projects of the imperium went awry. In some regions, administration fell into the hands of other powers. The Great Houses now policed the space lanes.
Rise and fall, the rhythm of history.
But the march of history stumbled over the unknown, over the Incident.
It tore the heart out of the Empire.
From Earth, a cataclysmic explosion ripped through space, annihilating stars, vaporising worlds. Billions died. Dozens of systems disappeared into the mysterious nebula left behind. Now the great, galaxy-spanning civilisation survives as a shadow of its former glory.
[fadein gfx/intro/questions.png]
What else remains? Questions.
Ten Standard Cycles have passed in a universe ruled by the shards of a decaying empire. After the Incident, corruption and piracy run rampant, but where there is chaos, there is also opportunity.
Welcome to the universe of Naev...
[fadeout]
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