In my last post, where I announced Starmourns new designation as a Legacy game, I also referenced a post explaining some links between Starmourn and Achaea. I had hoped we could organically introduce these ideas over time, but thats not going to happen now, so here we go. If you dont know much about Achaea, this may not have much significant to you, be warned!

Starmourn is set in the extremely far future of Achaea, which means that Earth is also in the same universe as Achaea.

Remember the Empyreals? (https://www.starmourn.com/what-is-kith/) Note how it says that the Empyreal Omega, who was the most powerful of them all, fought off four other would-be usurpers over the aeons, and that it disappeared after the defeat of the fourth attacker?

Well, the Empyreals are as follows, and as named in the Nanoseer class abilities:

* Omega (also called the Architect in the Nanoseer class abilities) is Ayar/Sarapis (my character on Achaea)

* The Sunderer represents both Entropy and Discord - two beings that attacked Ayar and which, after their defeat, led him to become Sarapis.

* The Conquerer is Varian, who challenged Sarapis, causing Sarapis to get rid of him by throwing him into a mirror universe - that universe is, of course, Aetolia.

* The Traveler is Balmet, the fourth challenger mentioned to Sarapis power, after the defeat of whom Sarapis went away to spend aeons fixing the Fire Behind the Flame, which had been damaged badly by Balmets unprecedented assault, resulting in many Gods dying and one of the original Achaea cities (Shallam) sinking beneath the water. Sarapis remains away to this day in Achaea (the Balmet event happened in 2012 fwiw).

* The 5th Empyreal in the Nanoseer class is the Progenitor, who represents Maya, the mother of humanity.

You also notice that when the Omega (Sarapis) was eventually attacked and slain or driven off 14 million years ago, Wild Kith ceased to exist. That Wild Kith is what wed call magic. What was left - kith - was supposed to be less universally adaptable to any task, and more constrained. Whether it feels to you like it played out that way in Starmourn is a different question, but that was the intention.

The Bushraki are the Tsolaa from Achaea. Obviously, things did not go well for their race. You can see the hints I dropped in the Bushraki link here: https://starmourn.com/npc-races/

The Bushraki were no longer what they were. They had been a contemplative race preferring to dwell in or near forests

The strong physical resemblance between the old, unaltered Bushraki and Humans have prompted much speculation in the geneticist community in Starmourn sector, and markers on their genetic material produces results that are either patently false, or which must cause us to reconsider our conceptions of the origins of life in our galaxy.

The most fascinating part of this mystery is not whether the science is wrong  and it may be  but whether these analyses of the Bushraki truly indicates that their races age is as incalculably old as it appears to be. The limited analyses theyve allowed to be performed have concluded that they are either older than the oldest-known Elder Races, including those of the Wild Kith empires that preceded the Worldbreaking, or are almost genetically unique.


That latter theory is more widely accepted when it comes to the Humans, who are from across the galaxy, far from Starmourn sector. Its more difficult to accept that theory as regards the Bushraki though, whose homeworld is within Starmourn sector, if on the outskirts. Genetic dating relies on looking at tiny imperfections in a races genes, and comparing them to other races. Commonalities are identified and once you can establish one races age definitively, you have a basis for taking an educated guess about the others.

Neither the Bushraki nor the Humans claim to have any cultural memory that would indicate their races are so ancient, and this also prompts multiple theories on the part of those who accept the idea that their genes do establish their approximate age.

Of course, none of this explains why these two races, only relatively recently evolved to the point of spaceflight, appear to originate so incredibly long ago, and are so physically similar, in the case of unaltered Bushraki.

Its likely well never establish the truth, for entropy, riding on the back of the arrow of time, inevitably decays and obscures evidence of the distant past. But, and this is an important but, the very fact that these two races are such apparent outliers tells us there is much we do not know about our galaxys past.
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How Humans got to Earth and how Tsolaa got to the Bushraki homeworld from Achaea isnt a story I ever really finalized in detail, but the idea in both cases was that they were both very advanced races by the time of the Worldbreaking, and had colonized those worlds by crossing the galaxy using Wild Kith. Then Wild Kith was destroyed, and the races nearly went extinct in the same way as humans would if all forms of power we use disappeared tomorrow. They had to develop back up from caveman status, effectively, and all memory of what came before was lost, leading they, and others, to believe their homeworlds were Earth and Dikamazi, respectively.

Achaea, the planet, was still going to be out there, and I had hoped wed unveil it someday as a planet that had eventually taken on an intelligence of its own, though a very alien one.