Prologue

[Restricted Access] Report on the Origin of the Hero-Damsel System. [Restricted Access]

Based on information found in the archives of the Cassandra Ministry of Population, the Crossroads computer system (original), from restricted government archives, interviews with heroes and companions from Earth, and other sources.

Cassandra, Chaos and Earth are far from other inhabited star systems. Shortly after they were discovered they found themselves on the fringe of a semi-galactic battlefield, and are free today because of the outcome of those wars.

An expansionist race of aliens, originally from the Mitlari System, found Cassandra lacking sentient beings and chose to exploit if for its resources. The closest source of slave labor was Earth. Sources suggest that Earth was too far away, too populous, disease ridden, and too technologically undeveloped to bother conquering outright at that time. The Mitlari preferred to farm their slaves under more controlled conditions. At least at the outskirts of its empire.

They seeded Cassandra with humans from population centers all over Earth, possibly thinking that because the inhabitants varied greatly in skin color they were adapted to different climates.

Based on discussion of Earth history and comparison with our earliest records this possibly occurred during the existence of the library at Alexandria on Earth, 2043-2343 before the present date or some five hundred years later during the golden age of medieval Muslim scholars. The latter fits more closely with the dates the Mitlari were working on Chaos

Cassandrians resisted the Mitlarians, who were also falling ill to disease. That slowed the Mitlarian progress, and finally pressure from other races (unknown but presumably some members of the later alliance) forced the Mitlari to abandon Cassandra.

Chaos was a planet that had been stripped of life after an impact with a comet, or some similar event or events. It was still in Mitlari controlled space and their next best option as an outpost.

Based on level of advancement and architecture it appears that circa 1200-1300 CE Earth time, 700-800 before present Cassandra time. Human's from Earth's region of Europe were seeded onto the planet. There is some question about that because the primitive nature of their technology differs little from that found hundreds of years earlier on Earth, but their numbering system and some other clues such as sword design, if not the result of introduction by heroes, points to that time period. It should be noted that Hero Roland has introduced technologies that post date the presumed date of colonization of Chaos. In most cases these technologies were known on Earth at that time, but not in Europe. Some were developed shortly after the period in question, but were not major leaps forward, so they were allowed. Little is known about what other heroes have done.

It appears that the mind wiping techniques used by the Mitlarians do not remove knowledge from the human brain, just memories, and our earliest records indicate knowledge of fairly advanced military principles, as well as mathematics, architecture, philosophy, etc. To avoid the problems encountered on Cassandra, it appears that the Mitlarians chose rural, uneducated humans, and may have altered them somewhat, but evidence for that is inconclusive.

At some earlier date the Mitlarians seeded Chaos with plant and animal life from Earth's Europe. Possible reasons are that they only harvested from Europe are two fold; the continents of Chaos are all more or less in temperate latitudes, and according to sources that prefer to remain anonymous, the type of ship needed to make such massive collections needs to be in geosynchronous orbit to do so efficiently.

The almost complete lack of advancement on Chaos is hypothesized to be the result of an uneducated people, who did not have access to the accumulated scientific, philosophical, and religious knowledge from the great civilizations that preceded their time of abduction. Advancement is also hindered by the location of mineral resources on Chaos that makes it difficult to bring together the large amounts ore, fuel, and limestone needed for an advanced iron industry. Both Earth and Chaos have or had important mineral deposits close to water transport routes. Additionally, little of the type/quality of coal needed to make suitable coke for iron smelting has been discovered on Chaos, so smelting relies on charcoal.

As infrastructure, the Mitlarians built a base on one of Chaos' moons to enable them to teleport nonliving matter up from the planet for easier loading onto space freighters.

On the planet, they built a series of portal stations that could transfer living matter back to the base, and non living matter from station to station. This would enable them to move about without the expense of shuttles. It is probable that they may have used them much as we do in their modified form, as safe deposit boxes.

Before Chaos went into full scale operation, other space faring races including the K'rling, Jrkopy, Mewor, and Glorvians formed an alliance and pushed the Mitlarians out of this region of the galaxy. That left the three planets in a region of space under shared jurisdiction, but still isolated. The alliance agreed on a noninterference pact that prohibits exploitation of resources on planets with non spacefaring civilizations.

During the last great war on Cassandra the Mewor broke this pact (they say it was unintentional) when a trading ship entered orbit around Cassandra. Both warring sides thought that the ship was a secret weapon intent on destroying them and put into effect doomsday protocols which included nuclear and biogenic weapons. The resultant fallout and viral epidemics permanently damaged the reproductive abilities of Cassandrians. It also affected many of the domesticated animals, but to a lesser extent.

The alliance of races stepped in to try and help the devastated Cassandrians. They formed a medical committee - referred to as 'The Committee' in reports - to help with the reproductive problem. The placed the responsibility of the cleanup on the Mewors. They also took it upon themselves to disarm Cassandra and reorganize the government. This was done without showing their true forms to any but a few key individuals, so it is absent from our official histories.

This aid was not completely altruistic. Cassandra had/has resources in abundance that the space faring races need. The alliance agreed to help Cassandra with its problem in return for natural resources, most importantly, an element that occurs in small concentrations in Cassandra's sea water.

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