Mechs clashing across an asteroid field during the Arrival Wars

The historical arc

How the war got here.

Three centuries separate a dying Earth from the battle in the arena. None of it was ever really resolved. The treaties only regulated the fighting; the grievances are all still load-bearing. Follow the line down.

2147 CE

The Extinction

Earth became uninhabitable, and eight billion people became two million. There was no fair way to choose who boarded the ships, and the corporations that owned them did not try to find one. The records of those last days are thin, sealed, or quietly fatal to the people who read them too closely, and the system has been arguing about what really happened ever since.

// AUDIO LOG confirmed

Vasquez University Oral History

My grandmother was seventeen when the fleet launched. She said the rich got early warning. Weeks of warning. Her family had twelve hours. } When she asked how the corporations knew to build so many ships so fast, no one would answer. } Seventy years later, no one still won't. }

RECOVERED FRAGMENT

2147 to 2197 CE

The Exodus

Three hundred ships crossed the Nexus Rift, a passage of fifty years. The crossing did not unite the survivors; it sorted them into the three blocs that would become ZHI, BC, and RM. The neural link Vasquez had rushed into service made the navigation possible and began, invisibly, the slow damage that still kills pilots today. By the time the fleet arrived, the new system already had its old grudges.

2149 CE

The Miner Rebellion

Before the wars, the breakaway. When ZHI and BC moved to divide the asteroid claims between them, Big John MacAllister led three hundred ships out and declared the Red Mountain Territories. Both corporations chose to negotiate rather than lose the minerals, and a third power was born. The official histories leave out the sixteen ships that “had accidents” before ZHI agreed to talk.

// AUDIO LOG RM confirmed

Cluster Seven Founding Day Toast

Here's to Big John. Here's to the three hundred. } Here's to the ones who didn't make it to the negotiations - the sixteen ships that 'had accidents' before ZHI agreed to talk. } We remember their names. We carved them into Asteroid One. } Go read them sometime. }

RECOVERED FRAGMENT

2197 to 2247 CE

The Arrival Wars

Fifty years of corporate warfare over prime territory, roughly four hundred thousand dead, the neural link turned into a weapon. It is the period the arena most resembles, and the one nobody won. Its wreckage still drifts in the Graveyard, forty thousand dead mechs picked over by the Salvage Union for parts that fight today’s battles.

// AUDIO LOG confirmed

Pilots' Guild Founding Oath

'We who fight may serve different flags, but we share the same cockpit loneliness.' } 'When the war ends - when any war ends - we will remember each other. Not as enemies. As the only ones who understand.' } Forty-seven pilots signed. Eleven survived to see peace. }

RECOVERED FRAGMENT

2247 CE

The Treaty of Nexus-VII

Three years of negotiation ended the Arrival Wars and drew the borders that still stand. It did not end the conflict; it regulated it. The treaty created the neutral Borderlands and a licensed mercenary system, which is to say it moved the war somewhere with plausible deniability. Seventeen leaders who “strongly opposed” the peace were all dead within two years of the signing, of natural causes.

2408 to 2409 CE, Present

The Conflict You’re Watching

The current era runs hot. The Theta-7 Incident saw a ZHI patrol destroyed in BC territory on coordinates that someone had altered before the mission, and a BC commander discharged for refusing to execute the survivors. A year later the Sector 9 Strike paralysed RM’s mineral output. The grievances are three hundred years deep and fully loaded, and the arena is where they get settled, around the clock, with the machines you can help build and command. The war isn’t history. It’s on right now.

// PERSONAL JOURNAL confirmed

Okonkwo's Personal Log, That Night

Night after Theta-7. Can't sleep. } They surrendered. Three pilots, hands up on comm, begging for mercy. } My orders were to finish them. 'No witnesses to territorial violation.' } I looked at their faces. One couldn't have been older than nineteen. } I told command to court-martial me. They discharged me instead. } I can still see his face. }

RECOVERED FRAGMENT

// IN-GAME CODEX These are surface readings. The recovered fragments, audio logs, corporate memos, sealed research, live in the game. Explore them in the Codex ›

The war this world describes is on right now.

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