From the beginning of time, humans have gone to war over the pettiest of differences, as well as the most fundamental. Countries have been ravaged and civilizations lost because of the inherent human fear of the unknown. Racism and homophobia have taken the lives of many an innocent at the hands of the bigoted and the afraid. This is the way it has always been, how it surely was always going to be.

But what if those that were oppressed rose up? Not in a single, focused revolution that could be stricken down, nor even in a gradual movement that sought to integrate them into 'normal' society, but in a massive tidal wave. What if those in hiding out of fear could no longer hide because fate had thrust them into the spotlight? What if mankind could no longer turn a blind eye to who and what their species has become?

Such a day has come.

In the summer of 2041, treasure hunters discovered something in North Africa, buried under the Saharan sands. It was a massive temple, dedicated to some god long since forgotten, completely submerged under the desert. Over the next few years, many a team went down to explore it, but none ever returned. Something in the air disrupted the electronic equipment, making surveillance impossible, and eventually it was deemed too dangerous for further exploration.

In the winter of 2069, a man became a sensation in the news and the internet overnight. He had, he claimed, gone down into the depths of the temple and returned alive, and he wanted to tell his story. He spoke to anyone he would listen about halls lined with strange writing, and torches that burnt forever, giding his path. But he spoke most about what he had retrieved from the temple; a stone tablet, covered in inscriptions. He had found it, he said, inside a coffin that had already been opened, sitting there with no body.

Most dismissed the man as insane, or planning a very elaborate hoax, but analysis of the tablet vindicated him. It was indeed emanating the same strange energy that had disrupted the equipment of the searchers, as evidenced when the entire lab it was brought to for study short-circuited as soon as it was touched with a current. Whatever the markings were, no linguist could recognize them as any language they knew, or even anything similar. Humanity was at a loss.

Then greed took over. Word of the tablet's ability to disrupt electronics spread quickly, and it was not long before it was stolen away from the research laboratories to serve the evil purposes of some crook. The tablet has been lost to history since being originally stolen, but the fact that it was never actually used as a weapon against technology perhaps speaks to the fact that it was much more than it seemed.

Humanity, however, had graver concerns. Word from Egyptian archaeologists, eager to follow in the original man's footsteps, was that there was something going on within the temple. Even from the entrance, they could hear movement; something was alive inside, perhaps one of their predecessors. A new search team was hastily organized, and the now famous Tablet Man, as he had taken to calling himself, was recruited to lead the expedition. Months went by with no word, and the collective mood went from eager anticipation to despair. Whatever lay within the temple had evidently gotten the best of even the man who had survived it. Humanity slowly became prepared to lock the temple away once more.

Then the temple rose to the surface.

There was no warning. One day, the earth simply trembled, rocking the north of Africa with a massive quake as the temple simply rose up out of the sand on its own. It moved slowly, taking hours, ever climbing upward, revealing more and more floors with seemingly no end. By the next day, many small villages had been destroyed by the constant violent shaking, but the temple at last had ceased. More than five times the height of the tallest pyramid in Egypt, it towered over the landscape, a massive structure of stone, worn down by the sand but still standing firm.

Media and civilians alike flocked to the scene, and more than a thousand cameras were on hand when the great doors on the ground opened. There, leading a massive band of forgotten scientists, was the Tablet Man. Now, he held another, smaller, stone relic in his hand, and so too did every member of his army. As one, and without a word, they raised them high into the air, bringing them crashing down onto the ground. The stones split on contact, and a massive surge of energy issued forth, obliterating all that stood in its path.

At the end of it, only the Tablet Man stood standing tall in the wreckage while all around him lay dead. Raising his eyes to the sky, he looked with satisfaction at the energy he could see arcing through the air, invisible to the eyes of ordinary man. Well, ordinary man would soon be ordinary no longer.



It is now 2201. The Tablet Man vanished after emerging from the temple but the traces of his actions seeped into the world. The air, the water, the land all became permeated with the strange and mystical energy he had released, and within one generation, humans began to see changes. Those that had merely been said to have glowing personalities before now began to actually glow, and those who turned a cold shoulder found ice crystals collecting on their hands. Within fifty years, finding a 'normal' human was nearly impossible.

As was inevitable, in 2154, war arose, but it was not a war of race or religion or geography. It was a war purely of fear. There could be no hiding anymore; the deviancies of the world were now on display, and humanity reacted to it the only way they knew how; trying to wipe it out.

The dust has only recently settled. The war ended in 2184, leaving the world scarred and tattered, and the population decimated to less than half a billion people. Tired and broken, the human race was ripe for the picking, and in the spring of 2185, the Tablet Man re-emerged from his hiding place. He brought with him a promise of unity, of peace, of order, and people, leaderless, flocked to him. He laid the new rules of the land down and people followed, dividing themselves up, not by race or religion, but by ability.

There were those, however, who disputed his rule. Rumours of the original tablet being found began to circulate, and an underground cult began to develop. Now, those in the know hear whispers of a large underground organization led by twelve powerful people, people who had been around from the beginning, kept alive by their powers all these years. An uprising is coming, they say; controlling the free world is too much power for one man.

Now the Tablet Man, Caspian Ashlord, rules what was once North America. He sits in his tower in the newly rebuilt Detroit, waiting for the day when he is next to act. After all, he has a mission now, and all the time in the world to complete it. He only needs one more thing; his original gift to the world, the Infinity Tablet.

This world is where you will live. This world is where you will die. You will fight on through the hatred and the violence, because this is truth. This is life. This...is Who We Are.