Dawn of Infinity is a massively multiplayer space simulation and role playing game that takes place in a dynamic, persistent universe. In the game you fly a spaceship belonging to one of several governments. You travel across the galaxy by jumping across hundreds of stellar systems. Most systems contain one or more planets, moons, or stations, which you can land on. When landed you can buy ship modifications, or even a new spaceship, buy and sell goods, fraternize in the bar, or sign up for missions that various people and groups need done. A 1-system arena-style mode to be used in LAN environments may eventually be implemented. Overall, the gameplay will be similar to the Escape Velocity series by Ambrosia Software, just with a few major changes. Dawn of Infinity is a work-in-progress.
In a dark time, the universe is in chaos. Earth long ago blossomed and spilled its many peoples to the stars. Those peoples, human, machine, and uplifted, left the cradle to establish new homes in the Great Wilderness out among the heavens.
As we spread out, contact with other beings finally came to pass. Contact led to both peace and war… and extinction. Those who could not adapt to the Children of Earth or were no strong enough to resist fell to the wayside. A few locked with the newcomers in stalemates that still grind on, neither side overmatched by the other.
Vast stellar empires came to be, spanning the light years. With the empires came stability, and the Galaxy finally achieved a majority peace.
Researchers, sponsored by the nearly unlimited bankrolls of the empires, were keenly searching for the answer to unlock the key to an ultimate power source. They believed this lied in the fabric of space and time itself. In a deep space laboratory near the edge of the colonized territories, one group of scientists stumbled on the answer. Using arcane, deeply secret technologies, they fractured space-time, gaining access to the limitless energies of reality itself.
The forces that became unleashed thundered out of the gash they had formed. Though such a rent in reality would have naturally sealed itself, the technologies of the empires forced it open too long. After the installation was destroyed by the tremendous forces flooding out of the un-natural tear, the energies were enough to force the hole to continue growing.
As it grew, the Rift shook the fabric of space all across the Galaxy. Millions died as the warp roads between systems were wrecked. Habitats and ships were flung into their worlds, and orbiting inhabited moons were flung away into the chill depths of space. Worst of all, some stars themselves, already barely stable, went nova, destroying entire star systems and the civilizations that orbited them.
In the vanguard, some of the empires had taken utmost precautions in the event the experiment went awry. They had built ships using technologies based on the same research, these meant to suppress any spacial disruptions instead. These mighty ships rushed forward, using their special abilities to keep the warp roads stable enough to reach the periphery of the Rift. Though many ships were lost, they were able finally to set up reductors, vast suppressor arrays, around the instability, using the energy of the Rift itself to stabilize its growth. This prevented the worst of the galaxy-wide disruptions of space, but not totally, for the size of the Rift was beyond the ability of anyone to close completely.
To decide the fate of their mission, the captains of the great ships met together in a grand council aboard the flagship of their fleet, just beyond the writhing, suppressed boundaries of the Rift. They could clearly see that from the destruction across all of civilized space, none of their empires would have the strength to defend the reductors against attacks by those wishing to sabotage the fragile balance keeping the Rift in check. In a nearly unanimous decision, the council decided that the warp roads leading to the Rift must be forever severed, dooming the crews of the ships to be forever separated from the rest of galactic civilization. In this way alone could the safety of the galaxy be protected. Those few captains and their chiefs that went against the will of the council were, ceremoniously, fed to the energetic vortex of the Rift to end opposition to the will of the council.
As life resumed throughout all the worlds, chaos followed in the wake of the resumption of interstellar travel. The great empires that had long been able to hold disparate worlds together crumbled as the inhabitants of those worlds threw off the shackles of their long-time rulers. Lacking the military resources of the past, the stellar kingdoms shrank back to a few handfuls of systems, others collapsing completely into civil war. Small bands of ex-military ships became warlords and pirates in systems too weak to resist them and frequently raided those that could. Though most lost greatly as a result of the Rift, a few merchants became founders of great trade clans that filled the void of interstellar mercantilism when the empires' trade regimes vanished.
Throughout the Galaxy now, stability exists in some parts, chaos and greed in others. Travel through the stars is a test of wills, as the Rift still disrupts the warp roads from time to time, leading to the permanent loss of some areas of space and the discovery of totally new ones. Most ships are now equipped with PING detectors, devices that detect coming disruptions and pilot ships to safe areas of space till they pass, making the loss of ships due to the disruptions much more rare than in the past.
The Galaxy is a place now of unlimited opportunity and equally unlimited danger. All the roads lie open before those willing to brave them. Grit your teeth, hold on hard, and hit the roads to the stars. Welcome to Dawn of Infinity.