Ascension Space V.3

Ascension Space is our solar system in the distant future, though it is a very different place to what we know today.

The basic premise of the setting is that humanity spread outward from Earth, colonizing the solar system and then beyond in great Ark Ships. Many years later one of those Ark Ships, the Ascension, returns to find it a chaotic and savage place overrun with warring fiefdoms. The leader of the Ascension, a mysterious psychic called Gabriel, declares a crusade to bring order to the solar system. His people, known as the Ascendants, wield highly advanced technology and the crusade that follows pits them against numerous warlords and nightmares spawned from dark sciences and other more esoteric sources.

In time the Ascendants are triumphant and the solar system is brought to heel, the horrors of the past consigned to extinction or pushed to the fringes. Gabriel becomes the Emperor-Ascendant and his Empire begins the long process of rebuilding that which was lost.

The primary story within this setting is the Ascension War. This is set five centuries after the foundation of the Empire during which time it fell apart following the disappearance of the Emperor-Ascendant. The Ascension War follows a group of rogues and misfits reluctantly dragged into events to avert an impending war between superpowers and the greater though more insidious threat of sinister forces working to bring about an apocalyptic end game.

The Ascension War is a dark space fantasy. I intend to play fast and loose with what is possible in regards to technology; thus there will be anti-gravity tech (because I don't particularly like spinning habitats), extensive terraforming on worlds and moons (including the moving of certain worlds to more hospitable orbits around the sun), psychic powers, magic (for want of a better world), other dimensions or realities etc. There are no aliens (at first). Instead there will be numerous human-animal hybrids, uplifted animals, cyborgs, sapient AI and far stranger human-descended strains and genetically engineered creatures to fill that niche. There will be no Faster than Light travel, though methods of propulsion exist that allow traversal of the solar system in weeks as opposed to mere moments or months. Though the setting is confined to our solar system I intend to fill it with numerous space habitats as well as the planetary bodies to create a much larger more dense world.