Timeline of Galactic History

• The universe begins and the bastards arrive.
• The bastards schism into countless factions as the universe expands. Multiple factions stake claim to each of the dust and gas super structures that will form into galaxies. Our galaxy is claimed by 3 groups that will come to be known as the floozies, the Obelisk Dreamers, and the gnomics
• The early period is a time of cold warfare with occasional nova flashes. The factions hide in the cosmic dust and search for their rivals while keeping themselves concealed.
• As suns begin to form, they break cover and claim as many stars as they can.
• After the first generation of stars dies, the heavy elements they leave behind begin to form planets.
• The bastards unleash von neumann probes to claim and colonize these planets
• After hundreds of thousands of years of slow burning territorial disputes, most planets have been claimed by at least one faction. Many are disputed. The conflict heats up
• Bastard civilization reaches its peak as the galaxy devolves into warfare. This period is sometimes referred to as the golden age of bastards
• The war reaches its highest pitch. Automated war machines and ontological weapons proliferate. The highest bastard sciences are harnessed to terrible effect.
• At some point the bastards die out, leaving their war machines behind. The war will continue on for several thousand years after the first combatants disappear. 
• The war gutters out as the combatants destroy each other. The planets of the galaxy are mostly home to ash and low, vicious battles. This last desperate stage marks the start of the first galactic dark age.
• After thousands of years, various civilizations arise. They use scavenged bastard tech to build galactic empires. This period is known as the first crop.
• The Ger creators start seeding their planets with the Ger, the carbon based self replicating infra-structure.
• A galaxy spanning human polity is formed. Its name is lost to history, but modern human supremacists call it the First Empire. More moderate historians call it the Terran Dominion 
•  As the successor civilizations expand, conflicts arise. The horrors of the bastard war are still apparent, so alternative solutions are sought, leading to the establishment of the Galactic counsel.
• Trade and cultural exchange lead to a golden age. The first crop attains a level of technology that rivals that of the original bastards, but they still fall short.
• Multiple pathogenic memeplexes arise. It is believed at the time that they were released deliberately by an unknown party, leading to paranoia and blind reprisals.
• The memeplexes spread as open warfare breaks out. New memeplexes evolve or are created. They are joined by bioweapons and reactivated bastard war machines.
• Galactic civilization collapses, leading to the second galactic dark age, also known as the plague aeon
• Suborned elements from various civilizations build fusion candles into gas giants and set them on escape trajectories out of the bottom of the galactic plane. This splinter formation will become known as the under sphere.
• The Ger creators die out, but not before sending out a shut down code. Most Ger growths enter into  hibernation.
• The Psychic Storm ignites.  A loose coalition of powerful psychics driven mad by infectious memes, they rampaged through space towards galactic west.
• The Terran Dominion is sundered by a rebellion of the canineforms, a genetically engineered servant race. They  were previously kept in check by an inbred loyalty instinct, but a religion centered around an abstract god "the Voice of Authority"  allowed them independence.
• In many ways, the societies of the first crop are more obscure than the bastards. Large sections of history and culture are infected by dangerous memes and have to be forgotten.
• Once again civilization begins to rebuild itself, beginning the second crop.
• The history of the Republic of Sea Serpents begins. They existed before this point but destroyed all previous records for unknown reasons, possibly related to memetic pathogens
• The galactic counsel once again rose to prominence, and implemented a new conflict resolution system.
• The Second Human Empire arises, otherwise known as the Empire of Dirt, named after the human homeworld of Dirt.
• The Canineforms start their own empire, the theocratic Domain of the Voice.
• Far off in the Galactic West the Psychic Storm suffers a coup and is rebranded as the Empire of Friends
• Disputes would be settled by fights between champions, with no weight classes. This system spurred the development of weaponized kaiju.
• Some kaiju escape into wild space and go feral. Loose kaiju begin to pose a threat to galactic civilization.
• Most societies react by increasing funding for kaiju programs to create counter-kaiju kaiju.
• Secret societies and cults dedicated to kaiju grow in power.
• An important kaiju duel between the Domain of the Voice and the Empire of Dirt is interrupted by feral kaiju supported by armed fanatics.  Both sides blame the other, and resort to conventional warfare while also using their kaiju.
• The war quickly grows in scope as the two combatants release wild space born kaiju. Soon, most of the galaxy is pulled into the kaiju war.
• Angels of the Last Machine being to appear. These strange beings claim to have arrived from the far future. They empower certain machine intelligences, turning them into saints. This is the bringing of the Sophonic Advent.
• The devastation of the war ends the second crop and begins the third galactic dark age. Kaiju continue to rampage throughout the galaxy.
• The age of the Technocratic Kings begins on the Planet Dirt. These tyrants keep technical knowledge to themselves to rule over the hidden arcologies.
• Only in the past hundred years have powers arisen that can face the feral kaiju. This is the beginning of the third crop, and the modern period.
• Twenty years ago the great prophet Apple overthrew the Technocratic kings and began the Seeder Initiative, an attempt to rebuild the human Empire

C R A W L

If you seek to earn riches while you Slumber, Venture forth to C R A W L. 



C R A W L is a billion twisted dreams from the plague Aeon. At its boiling heart it is said there is an obelisk corrupted with strange astral life. Where once the obelisk dreamed of a lost paradise, now it dreams its own diseased hell. Everything in C R A W L dreams, and those dreams teem with their own dreamers. All these dreamers and dreams form a twisted knot of loops and spirals, an infinite closed expanse of parasitism.

The dreams of C R A W L are slick fluid and flesh scapes, endless expanses of astral life swirling and melting forever. Each dream is home to millions of crawling and squirming things, and each one dreams one of the dreams of C R A W L. When a creature in a dream dreams, its astral body becomes a luminous portal. Any creature touching it is sucked into the new dream. No one knows how many dreams there are in C R A W L

The closer to the lost obelisk, the denser the dreams become. At the center, the cancerous energies bleed out into real space. Though it looks like a real sun, it is a hole in space through which dread energies can enter the world. They call it the Crawl Star.

Around the Crawl Star, there are five celestial bodies. It is thought that they were once dead planets but through the unwholesome green light of that cursed star they were transfigured into living beings. They are the Children of C R A W L .

The first child is Olhambve, the Mournful Ooze. It is a desolate world of stone and lichen, dotted with temples to dead gods. In the gutters and cisterns lurks the ooze, a single  predatory ocean. Those devoured by it find themselves in a pocket of C R A W L where they are dissolved for a subjective eternity. Somewhere on this forsaken world there is the hidden lair of the Lune-man pirate Ax Feber. With his ship, the corvette Darkshine he preys on those that come to C R A W L. Exposure to the light of the Crawl Star has warped his mind. He seeks to marry Olhambve and birth a new race of monsters. In his lair he has a thousand precious jewels, and he is always looking for more, so that he may win the favor of his beloved.

The second child is Frantolous, The Soft Expanse. It is a world of soft pink flesh, a perfect globe marred by city sized ticks. On the back of one of these titian parasites that Father Corp has made their outpost. Father Corp is a voracious corporate god that feeds on Dreams though out the galaxy. They have come to C R A W L to harvest its diseased riches. Here is where you can earn your fortune. Those who sleep in the light of the Crawl Star find themselves pulled into C R A W L itself. As they wander its recursive dreamscapes they become infested by all manner of dream creatures. If they can survive and return to the material universe, they can sell their unwelcome passengers to Father Corp. On their outpost on they have extraction jars that create tremendous negative psychic pressure to suck out any errant dream creatures. Most of these poor creatures are doomed to be ground into their component emotions and sensations, but the most symbiotic are instead given to Father Corps breeding programs. The servants of Father Corp, the Prime Strain, use shiny beetles to adorn their pallid bodies. The most prized adornments come from C R A W L. There is a fortune to made by one who finds a new fashion.

Here also is the only place where Father Corp may brew one of its drugs, paracosm. Those who imbibe this pale orange ichor have visions of their own private universe where they are the demiurge. There are many who use this to escape their lives as they sleep. However, do not use it while you sleep near the Crawl Star. This new dream will merge with C R A W L and you will be subsumed into the cycle. It is derived from the venom of the dream giver beetle. They use it to create living astral nests for their larva.

The third child is Xyzxy, the Cryptic Garden. It is a tangled orchard of vines and dark swollen fruit. Within each pome is a writhing mass of worms and beetles and strange plastic things. The woods are deep and trackless and haunted by the masked ones, terrible and strange primitives. Each one is a walking hive of parasitic minions. They are hostile to all who trespass on C R A W L and the children. 

The Fourth child is Olark the Writhing World. It is a ball of worms and beetles the size of a planet. Father Corp has laid its covetous eyes upon it, and has created a fleet of fishing ships that trawl the living ocean for cheap and easy protein, though they may soon abandon the venture. The squirming catch is often treacherous, and something is eating the boats. They say Father Corp is really searching for some lost bastard relic lost beneath the wriggling tide.

The Fifth and finale child is Peivlard the Watchful Myriad. It is a cluster of eyes of all different shapes and colors, always focused on the same point. It can view any point in C R A W L and the children. It is a sick voyeur that wishes to see violence and depravity. It speaks in a voice like ocular jelly dripping from a corpse. It speaks poisonous truths it has seen, so that it may reveal in the chaos it causes. When its eyes are upon you, you can feel ten thousands cold stares boring into you. It is said that Peivlard knows where every treasure of C R A W L is buried and it will tell you, but for a terrible cost.



Editor's note



Here we have another delightful entry from my friend the cloaked figure. It's a nice account of 
C R A W L, though its clearly not a first hand one. That's okay, even preferable. All the first hand accounts tend to be … unhinged, for some strange reason.

First, a quick note about biology. Spooky-pants here describes the dream flora and fauna in terms of strict parasitism, and while there's a lot of that going around, parasitism exists on a gradient with mutualism. Not every symbiont in C R A W L has a parasitic relationship with its host. This is clear from the number of dream pet linages that have come from there. One of my aunts has a blue spiraled sivganzer, a type of astral serpent native to C R A W L bred to protect its hosts from nightmares. It begs food qualia from strangers and is afraid of loud noises.

Moving on, I can't believe I have to say this, but don't try to rob pirates that live on the outskirts of gross dimensional rifts. I don't even know how creepo knows all this junk, so acting on this information is not recommended. On a similar note, while collecting dream bugs for a soulless all-devouring corporation probably pays well, there are easier ways to make money. Saner ways, in any case.

And finally, a note on those "terrible and strange primitives", they are referring to the Maskforms. They are a human subspecies adapted to living in dreamscapes, and they are closely related to Riddleforms. As a Riddleform myself I most object to this characterization. While Maskforms lack the sophistication of digital lifeforms such as myself, I wouldn't say they're primitive. Also, they are only sort of strange and occasionally terrible. Neither the less, their crusade against the predations of Father Corp can only be seen as noble. After Father Corp is preying on Maskform colonies across the galaxy. Its only fair that they take out the occasional Father Corp freelancer.

As always, we at the Galactic Gazetteer can not be held liable for any fool thing you do after reading our fine publication. The legal department has been sharpening its claws against the side of its cage, so please, feel free to occupy its attention.