Human Expansion

At the end of the 20th century, the unification of scientific and esoteric knowledge, which had long been separate and antagonistic, occurred. This was initiated by certain human Spirits who achieved transcendental contact with powers resembling an Infinite Mind. The Infinite Mind had long been foretold and anticipated by some, but its existence was denied by others.

The time was right, and the information gained from the contact-the theoretical principles of which were completely unknown-could be used successfully in real life.

The technology that had the most dramatic impact on human evolution was the permanent tunneling of space: the creation of so-called Passages which enabled travel to alien worlds. Humanity's age-old dream of traveling to the stars became reality.

A cosmogonical model of the universe, with its planets, stars and galaxies, became unnecessary. The Passages opened ways into zones whose formation was completely unrelated to the scientific concept of metagalaxy. Building and activating a Passage required enormous amounts of energy, and the Passage's destination point was impossible to predict. After activation, a Passage became virtually autonomous, connecting two worlds.

Humankind rushed headlong to the new worlds, exploring and colonizing, unthinking and heedless of any consequences. While the finest minds assimilated knowledge from the new worlds, others bent on conquest rushed forth with vehicles of mass destruction.

These explorers were uncaring of the philosophical aspects of contact with other civilizations. Secure in the confidence of their superior intellect, humans expanded and conquered new worlds for a hundred years. The entire human culture was significantly distorted by the impact of the rapidly growing Chain of Worlds. Without even completing the reconnaissance and development of one world, the explorers would start building a new Passage to the next. Fortunately, only a minority of the new worlds became part of the Chain, since the environment on many of them was extremely hostile to humans.

Inevitably, the explorers' disregard and conceit reaped their just rewards.

First Contact

The Cryspo were entirely unfamiliar; nothing like the ugly little humanoids flying UFOs of 20th century imagery. The collective mind of a Cryspo colony was totally unintelligible to the humans with their individual psyches. The colony's flawless mechanism closely resembled earthly nests of insects. The appearance of the explorers from the Passage was initially overlooked by the colony, preoccupied as it was with its primary function of territorial control. Conversely, the advance guard of explorers immediately started slaying these strange beasts, as they had done in similar circumstances so many times before.

The consequences of this slaughter were catastrophic.

By the time people realized their technological inferiority to the new enemy, the Cryspo had managed to enter the Passage and had discovered the new, unclaimed territories. Initially they ignored the human settlers, although they did exterminate anyone foolish enough to get in their way. Disunited and defenseless, the settlers managed to seal off major cities, leaving the rest of the world to the Cryspo. Events progressed rapidly, and the Passage to Earth was destroyed, leaving millions of the Softie (as they were later known, owing to their physical helplessness) isolated with the Cryspo. Soon, the Cryspo sprang a new surprise: the human body served extremely well as biomass for their larvae.

The Clash

The rapidly decreasing Softie population attempted a last counter-attack inspired by the Infinite Mind: genetic intrusion. This successfully drove the Cryspo back and, since the epidemic threatened to harm their colony's queen, the Passage to the Cryspo home world, Cry, was blocked.

The genetic intrusion unleashed during the clash between the Softie and the Cryspo resulted in a combined genetic structure. In the following generations, biomolecular chaos erased all the original Softie and Cryspo and formed the sinister Creature Soup. The majority of them had no chance of survival, but after a while three basic varieties of species, the bios, began to form from the diversity of mutant Lostie. They were all characterized by a similar metabolism and psychobiological uniformity.

The Cryspo anatomy proved to be more advanced and better suited for the local habitat; the Softie's complex nervous system proved to have superior versatility. The Lostie inherited these characteristics from their ancestors. The four basic worlds of the Chain are now inhabited by the three bios, whose diversity traces back to the functional divisions of a Cryspo colony.

The Cryspo

The Cryspo colony encountered by the Softie pioneers appeared to be a highly organized collective mind of insectoid organisms. However, all was not how it seemed. Only one division of the Cryspo manifested intelligence, and the Softie remained ignorant of their existence. It was the subterranean Larvae creatures, incapable of fast movement and relatively weak, who ran the colony. A complicated system of scents was used to control the other divisions of the colony.

These worm-like bearers of intelligence were at the top of the colony hierarchy, with the Queen at their head. The Queen did not possess her own consciousness or identity; she merely integrated the mental primitives of the Larvae. Human individualism was alien to her intrinsically collective mind.

The territorial expansion of the Cryspo was highly organized and began with the invasion of the Queen's satellites - the Larvae - into the area to be occupied. The Larvae controlled the Cryspo combat troops from deep underground by generating pheromones. The Larvae consisted of a simple biological structure with a slow metabolism, which resulted in its having a life span lasting eons.

All the creatures in the universe live by their inherent nature. The Softie possessed a restlessness of mind and spirit that urged them to ceaselessly search for their raison d'etre. Cryspo were free from such high matters: their leading strength lay in the integration of diverse beings by the queen into a complicated but well-organized biological system.

The Clash extracted these drives from both the Cryspo and the Softie. The few bios produced during the Bouillon of Spawn which were capable of physical survival inherited a combination of racial instincts producing obscure urges which had lost any meaning.

The Lostie

During the Clash, while defending themselves from the ferocious Cryspo, the last generation of the Softie built underground enclave cities called escaves which became homes for their descendents, the Lostie. Although the Lostie inherited their brains from the Softie, their subconscious integrated many weird psychic features of their Cryspo ancestors, which emerged as somewhat bizarre behavior in the mutants. It is the influence of these instincts that has resulted in the bios existing in urban communities called bunches. They endlessly practice cult rituals, the only reason they have for their existence. The bunches have survived only by strict adherence to the conservation laws that developed over time.

A bunch cycle consists of several stages, each of which is closely connected to the physiology of one of the bios. The completion of each such function depends on the scent of a particular Larva which serves as a catalyst. The complicated Cryspo mechanism of controlling the colony through a system of scents evolved into a sophisticated cult followed by the Lostie. It involved great reverence of and addiction to the scents of the now hidden and unfathomable Larvae who still slowly crawl around underground, disunited without their connection to the queen, who was lost long ago when the Passage to Cry was sealed.

Present

It is now a thousand years after the Clash. The Lostie have stabilized and formed aberrant tribes of inbred creatures. Living on the rubble of powerful and ancient civilizations, they practice endless cult cycles in an attempt to establish a rationale for their existence.

The player belongs to the clan of Vangers, a clan of explorers, warriors, traders and pirates in a world that is only just beginning to wake up from its oblivion. The strange Worlds of the Lost Chain emerge as time passes. They are full of mystery, weird inhabitants and dangerous competitors. Eventually, it will be revealed that the Clash between the Softie and the Cryspo was not coincidental: the weird history of the Creature Soup had been planned by the Infinite Mind specifically to develop a new type of warrior: the Vanger...