The Unseen Player
Welcome, Traveller. Before you step into the world of Civitas, you must first ask yourself a question: What if simulation theory was correct? What if the universe we know is merely one layer in a grand cosmic game, and the dimensions below ours are all, technically, massively multiplayer online role-playing games? How would a world of pixelated beings react if they discovered us, the players, and how would that discovery manifest in their reality and our own? This is the central, unsettling premise of The Civitas Universe, a rich, dark, and bizarre timeline of existential dread, transhumanist ambition, and radical societal change.
A World Polluted by Youth: The Seeds of a Revolution
The road to the year 2230 began not with a bang, but with a selfie. The mass adoption of social media in the early 21st century created a global society obsessed with digital self-portraits. This constant documentation of fleeting beauty fostered a pathological fear of aging, or gerascophobia, on an unimaginable scale. Humanity became trapped in a narcissistic time bomb. An “eternal youth mission” took hold, pushing a popular theory that even rearing children caused accelerated aging, leading to a mass exodus from parenthood and a rapid decline in global populations.
Society was primed for a savior who promised a cure. For a time, that hope rested on legendary scientists like Aubrey De Grey, who rallied for the UN to adopt anti-aging therapies and defeat death. Yet, year after year, these therapies never materialized, pushing the world into a state of global depression and birthing radical anti-death movements.
This desperation set the stage for three revolutionary forces that would shatter the old world order.
Pillar I: The Transhumanist Messiah
The transhumanist movement found its messiah in a man from the past: FM-2030, a 20th-century author who had been placed in cryonic suspension. In 2078, anti-death protestors, labeling themselves terrorists in the eyes of the UN, raided a highly secretive compound off the coast of Iceland and took the newly-reawakened FM-2030 captive.
Almost overnight, the terrorists morphed into a peaceful political party: The Transhumanist Movement Party (TMP). Led by the charismatic FM-2030, their goal was singular: to achieve A-mortality by merging biology with technology, syncing the human nervous system to quantum systems. This ambition, however, came with a voracious appetite for power. Their advanced tissue-to-silicone technology required unimaginable amounts of energy, resources the world was rapidly running out of.
Pillar II: The Whisper from Another Dimension
In 2096, the Danish scientist Dr. Anders Pihl Kofoed made an impossible discovery: a fourth dimension he named
Profundum. Using a simple photonic pulse code, he established that he was observing a different universe. Soon, photons began arriving from Profundum using the very same code.
By 2118, with the help of the brilliant Italian linguist Dr. Lorenzo Gentile, communication was established with an entity trapped between dimensions: a scientist named Ettore Majorana. Majorana claimed to have been pulled into a “prison of light” where he could manipulate particles with his consciousness. The scientific community was ecstatic; he was a potential key to understanding the very fabric of reality.
But like the transhumanists, communicating with Ettore cost billions in energy resources. With the world deep in an energy crisis by 2124, public interest dried up, and the UN abruptly cut all funding to the Majorana programme. This act of “switching off the light” created a fanatical backlash. Dr. Gentile and his followers from the Duronic School of Scientific Advancement began raiding energy facilities to gather the power needed to save Ettore. In 2125, their luck ran out. UN forces killed the entire group during a raid on the same Icelandic compound the transhumanists had targeted decades earlier.
This martyrdom gave rise to a new, shadowy cult. In 2130, in honor of their fallen brothers, the
Duronic Brotherhood was born. Deemed a dangerous, energy-thieving cult by the authorities, they were driven underground with a single, unwavering agenda: collect enough power to save Ettore and see the unimaginable universe of Profundum for themselves, at any cost. This quest would later evolve into a mission to establish their own city-state, a haven for their beliefs to be known as Civitas Theodore.
Pillar III: The Shared Hallucination
The third pillar was not a movement, but a drug. Around the year 2121, a mysterious designer substance called
Glee exploded onto the scene. For most, its effects were mild, like a combination of caffeine and micro-dosed LSD that enhanced productivity and social connection. But for a select few, roughly 1 in 2000 users, the experience was radically different.
These users reported synchronized hallucinations, experiencing the exact same visions independently of one another. They called this shared journey “The Count Down from Idea to Creation,” a five-stage trip that they believed revealed the true nature of reality, showing them blueprints for a new universe and holding them before a being they called “God”. These “Glee Heads” dyed their hair purple to recognize each other and grew into a formidable global community.
The Architect of a New World: Wilfred Talon
With the world fractured by these competing, energy-starved factions, a new figure emerged. Wilfred Talon, born in 2025, was the founder of the Civitas Idea. In 2130, he published his seminal work,
I Am Neo-Human, arguing that a new evolution of humanity, the brilliant “Neo-Human”, lived among the masses, stifled by archaic nation-states.
In his book, Talon announced a discovery that would change everything: the
IonCharge. He claimed his teams had discovered that moon rock, when charged with a negative ion current, could store gigantic amounts of energy. He held this secret close. In 2133, he presented his solution to the world’s problems:
The Civitas Idea, a global system of corporate-run city-states. He promised to release the secrets of the IonCharge only upon the global adoption of his new world order.
Backed by the powerful Transhumanist Movement, his idea was irresistible. A massive coup erupted around the globe. In 2134, the United Nations was disbanded, the Civitas Idea was implemented, and the world’s energy crisis was solved overnight with the mass adoption of the IonCharge.
The World of 2230: The Days of Decay
Our story continues in the year 2230. Nearly a century has passed since the great change.
Civitas Nihilium, the first and largest city-state founded by Talon himself, is now in a period of decline known as “The Days of Decay”. Its people are leaving in droves, and this has left the door wide open for competitors to rise and claim dominance in
The League of Patriots, the corporate framework that now governs the planet.
You enter this world as a President, a leader of one of these great factions, each with its own agenda:
- Civitas Tal: The aggressive transhumans, led by the immortal FM-2030, still relentlessly pursuing A-mortality.
- Civitas McMurdo: The analytical synthetics, a new force of artificial beings rising from the ashes of Nihilium’s neglect.
- Civitas Theodore: The shadowy cultists of the Duronic Brotherhood, who have finally stepped out of the shadows to build their own society dedicated to the mysteries of Profundum.
- Civitas Nihilium: The struggling superpower, clinging to its monopoly on Ion and fighting to survive.
This is the world you inherit, a world of warring corporate states, ancient scientists, interdimensional beings, and strange new evolutions of humanity. The alliances are fragile, the politics are brutal, and the fight for the future has only just begun. Welcome to the game.
Click the image below to download the latest version of the Extended Lore document ‘The World of the Civitas‘. Featuring a timeline to the Civitas Idea and an extensive look into the many factions at play within The Civitas Universe.
