Every prison needs a creation myth. A bedtime story to tell the inmates so they don’t ask too many questions about the bars on the windows. This is the one they tell about The Bastion. This is the official history, the sanitized version they pump into the school terminals and broadcast on the corporate Interlink. Learn it. Know it. Just don’t ever make the mistake of believing it.
The Great Collapse
The story begins not with a bang, but a choke. The old world, the one from before the freeze, drowned in its own ambition. They’ll tell you it was a catastrophic ecological collapse; a slow, suffocating death from a thousand cuts. Resource wars bled nations dry, pollution turned the skies to rust, and the planet’s climate spiraled into chaos. While petty governments squabbled over the scraps, the great megacorporations — the architects of that gilded age — saw the writing on the wall. They knew humanity couldn’t save itself.
The Corporate Exodus
As the world crumbled, the Corpos became its saviors. This was the era of the “brave corporate-led exodus,” a heroic, monumental effort to lift the best and brightest of humanity from their dying cradle. Each of the great corporations played a vital part.
- Aurora Industries, the industrial titan, built the great Ark Ships and the sprawling orbital stations that would become humanity’s home for centuries: The Drifts. They were the architects of survival, the ones who forged the lifeboats that would carry humanity through the long dark.
- Zenith Biotech, the gene-merchants, were the guardians of the human flame. They developed the gene therapies and stasis technologies that allowed humanity to endure the ravages of life in zero-g and recycled air. They promised a future free from the weaknesses of the flesh — a future of Purity.
- Dynamic Evolution, the pathfinders, embodied Progress. While the others built the shelters, DE pushed the boundaries. Their role was to look forward, to send scout ships and probes into the void, charting the empty ocean of space and ensuring that the exodus was not an end, but a new beginning .
The Centuries of Silence
For generations, humanity drifted. Life in the orbital stations was safe, stable, and stagnant under the watchful eyes of Aurora and Zenith. But Dynamic Evolution refused to let the pioneering spirit of humanity die. They spent centuries running deep-space probe missions, terraforming test projects, and ceaselessly exploring, always searching for a path forward, always working to fulfill their slogan: “Humanity, Realized”.
The Terran Opportunity
It was this relentless drive for progress that positioned Dynamic Evolution to lead humanity’s next chapter. The culmination of their centuries-long exploration initiative confirmed the impossible: Earth was healing. Their probes reported that the planet’s catastrophic ecological state had entered a stable, frozen remission; the toxins of the past were buried under miles of ice. Dynamic Evolution declared it was time for the “Terran Opportunity Initiative,” the heroic expedition to reclaim our birthright, framing it not just as a return, but as the ultimate fulfillment of their promise to realize humanity’s future.
The Founding of The Bastion
Once Dynamic started luring humanity back to their origins, it let to the rise of another visionary who made survival possible. That hero was Silas Vance, the celebrated founder of Aurora Industries. He discovered the massive geothermal vents that could power a city indefinitely. It was his iron will and foresight that established The Bastion, and his company, Aurora, that built the massive Warmth Grid to harness the planet’s own lifeblood, creating a beacon of stability in the endless winter . He saved the last remnants of our species, giving us the gilded cage we now call home.
It’s a clean, inspiring, well-packaged lie. A story of corporate heroism and human resilience. It’s a good story. Just don’t go looking for the truth in it. The truth isn’t in the history books. It’s in the static, in the corrupted data-shards the Corpos have been trying to erase for centuries.
And that’s the story we’ll tell you next.