History

Below, you'll find a short summary of what happened in Tyrrhenia's history to bring it to this point. It is written to be very short and easy to digest, so it doesn't necessarily go too much into detail, but it is good to know, as most characters will have at least some vague idea of how this is said to have gone.

The Start of the End

None now truly know the real causes of the End. What is known, is that the End was a catastrophe, triggered by a nuclear reaction plant that had gone ignored for too long. The initial wave of destruction wiped out a good deal of what was around the plant, leaving much to be desired as to the exact causes. The damage was done — whether because of negligence on the Tyrrhenians' side, or just fate spinning its tapestry of disaster, it spread.

All across Tyrrhenia, the weather had gone insanely chaotic, causing massive natural disasters, well beyond the scope of what Tyrrhenia was prepared to handle. Ecosystems were collapsing, Tyrrhenians dying off in scores, and soon, enough ash was released into the atmosphere to trigger anti-greenhouse effects. This cooled the surface temperature by quite a large amount, destroying a large number of flora and fauna. Food steadily rose in price, and the price of everything else soon followed suit. Many died of starvation, and as businesses were forced to shut down all over the region, and many more died.

It was not a sudden collapse, no. It was a gradual decline, an unending string of misfortune.

The Final Fallout

As the End reached all corners of Tyrrhenia, and more and more Tyrrhenians died off from the fallout and resulting economic collapse, boundaries and government began to crumble. The people were terrified, and rightly so. Order was difficult to maintain, and chaos eventually overtook the streets. Some governments attempted to implement martial law, but it wasn't enough by then. As more jobs collapsed, more people died, food continued to skyrocket in price, and finally, the Internet crashed, the people soon turned on their governments and police forces, tore both down, and then turned on one another.

Home

Not all was lost, however. A smaller group of Tyrrhenians decided to flee the chaos, leaving their shattered cities and broken nations behind. These people, like a certain other group of humans, dug tunnels out of the earth, and built a series of underground nuclear shelters called Homes. Fully equipped with stores, greenery, water features, and housing sectors, the Homes were more than ready to keep humans alive, and see them to the end of this.

The humans on the surface, however… well, no one ever heard from them again. It is assumed they eventually killed one another, died off, or both.

The United Republic

After many generations of sheltering underground, the Tyrrhenians that survived the End and its catastrophic effects soon began to yearn for sunlight and fresh air again. The Homes had loose overseers, more just intended to keep the Homes running and its inhabitants alive and cared for, but many different small groups attempted to govern all the Homes and establish themselves as the new Tyrrhenian government in the vacuum their fallen former governments had left behind. None of these groups prospered, or grew very large — they were more like small troublesome gangs that were a nuisance than anything else.

However, one of these groups never did fade away. As the United Republic gathered together and solidified their presence, they came up with several different ideas that might just allow Tyrrhenians to return to the planet's surface, where they belonged. They designed, and later began building, a massive dome, constructed of solid supports and strong shields. The dome was designed to be a climate-controlled area, protecting from natural disasters, crazy weather patterns, and the sun's now harsh rays. Even better, strange creatures had appeared on the planet's surface in the Tyrrhenians' absence, creatures the first humans to see them called Demons — it stuck.

It wasn't long after the start of the Dome's construction that the Republic designed and built the first Daeni. Initially very clunky in design, and not very bright, the Dae were simplistic labour workers, that could easier withstand the region's chaotic patterns, so that they could continue the Dome's construction in what became known as the Outlands, paving the way for Tyrrhenians to return to their true home.

As the Dome neared completion, the Daeni remained useful. They were very knowledgeable of the particulars of the Dome's mechanics, and eventually, were given new Artificial Intelligence programmes, making them suitable for other roles as well. Humanity returned to the surface. As the Dome flourished and proved one heck of a success, the other Homes' inhabitants began to move into it. The livestock were eventually cloned, creating a control-group population that were not plagued with mutations or defections. Plant-life was later revitalised as well. Finally, the people had a safe-haven, a real home, after hundreds of years of chaos and uncertainty.

The Dome

Life in the Dome has always been peaceful. Sometimes, it is a little too peaceful. The people are left mostly to their own devices. As long as it does not interfere with the general well-being and best interests of the Dome's populace, or the Dome itself, the Republic does not much mind what people do. There are a few necessary exceptions, however, given the state of Tyrrhenia and the startlingly low number of their population.

Surnames have become extremely important, as family lines have become even more necessary to track to prevent in-breeding. Spousal pairings that did not contribute to the growth of the Tyrrhenian population have become even more heavily frowned on. Those that happen to be of a different sexuality than heterosexual tend to be rather persecuted, but not always directly. Transwomen tend to be better treated than transmen — there's a shockingly low number of women in the Dome, and there are operations now that can create child-bearing individuals out of transwomen, making them very useful to society. Children are precious. They are an extremely invaluable resource, and child abuse and neglect have extreme consequences. The Republic will also go to extreme lengths to care for children whose parents cannot or will not — if you're a parentless child, you've likely actually got it rather good.

Those that are sick, severely injured, or born with defects, can be given a second chance at life through the Demonicas. While the Dome is afraid of them, even hate and consider them to be subhuman, stripped of their surname, and treated as little more than tools, the Dome also recognises their necessity. Demonicas are, like Dae, capable of withstanding the Outlands longer than a Tyrrhenian, making them invaluable in finding resources, and fighting off Outlander raids. Many will turn to the Psion Project, after which Psionics are named, a group of Tyrrhenians that mutated in the wake of the End, to save their children or other family members, if they have exhausted all other options. It is an honour, of a form, to be able to contribute to the Dome's protection in this way — and the nice sum of money one's family gains in return also kind of helps.

Being more a group of scientists with a military off-shoot, and not much of a government body, the Republic implemented the Registration system. This system essentially tracks all of their Dome citizens; or at least, those wealthy enough to be able to afford registering. It is thought the Republic believed the registration system would encourage the lazy, drug-addict poor, to try harder and contribute to society, thereby earning enough money to register. Registering afforded them common public services, such as medical care, a right to education, open bank accounts, take out loans, and the ability to own property and land — all services that were necessary things to make a living.

However, all it did was widen the gap between wealthy and impoverished, between majority and minority, between fortunate and unfortunate. It is rather normal, now, for cities and towns in the Dome to have a Registered side, and an Unregistered side, and the difference is like night and day. The Pyxis Fighting Rings, an underground fighting arena operation, arose from this widened gap — unregistered citizens can, if they have no other option, fight others to the death, for a chance at enough Caps to put food on the table for a while. Ironically, rather than fix this, the Republic copied the Pyxis rings with the Outlier Trials, a series of arenas across the Outlands, in which often too-young unregistered Dome inhabitants were pit to the death. Only one of the participants could potentially survive it.

On the bright side, that one participant was paid rather well.

The Outlanders

There have always been those that were not quite interested in behaving. Those people that would seek to shake up the Republic's apparent utopia, if only by a little. The Republic, of course, finds it necessary to keep the peace, that humans can continue on in relative ease. The end result was, several Tyrrhenians have been forcibly made a part of the Psion Project, turned into organic Dae, or ejected from the Dome outright, left to fend for themselves in the Outlands. There were, also, already a small number of Tyrrhenians in the Outlands that didn't want to live in the Dome, and chose to remain outside it. Those Tyrrhenians, and the ones removed from the Dome out of hand, have built settlements in the Outlands. These people became known as the Outlanders, though they're starting to favour the term Outliers, which can encompass anyone that has been oppressed, offended, or disgusted by the Dome and its apparent utopic way of existing.

The people of the Dome consider the Outlanders to be the greatest threat to the Dome ever known, second perhaps only to the Psionics and their nation of Andasca. They grow up on stories of how horrible the Outlanders are, bloodthirsty barbarians with no regard for life — the truth is different, but, most Dome citizens wouldn't know it. The Outlanders, on the other hand, consider the Dome full of senseless tools, unable to think for themselves, sheeple being herded with minimal effort.

The Outlanders and the Dome may never get along. They both need one another — but neither can they get along with each other.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License