The Ascendance is the mass extinction event that took place due to the Saweyan church' experimentation with the HVI strain. It grew beyond their control as a bio-weapon, mutating into a wild growth. Ultimately, during what most Tsumi describe as the Grief Battle, they were forced to retreat to whatever spaceships were ready. Mithrandis, her following, and a large section of the population fled to a Cathedral Ship, the Stalwart Monarch, a large starship originally built to begin colonizing other planets in their system. Fitting around 4 to 5 million people, the Tsumi ship has poor weapons and defensive measures, relying on the remainder of the Nomad Fleet to defend the flagship.

The Grief Battle was the massive surge in wild growths and the Tsumi's answer to those. Their purge troops couldn't keep up as the flesh began to mutate faster than they could destroy it. The evacuation order was called, every spaceworthy vessel carrying as many people as possible out into the cosmos. However, the HVI Strain covered up the twin suns, as well as the strain causing an EMP pulse that knocked out most of the ships as well as any electrical measures on planet. As a result, only a handful of ships managed to break into space, some recalled by Mithrandis to have been bitten in half by the mutated strain.

The strain, creating a sort of hive mind intelligence, began mutating after them, causing the Stalwart Monarch to lock in random coordinates for hyperlight travel and hoped for the best. Ever since that day, the Tsumi have been searching for a new homeworld.

“I saw the maws, I saw death. I saw Danmadan, beckoning us closer. It was either flee into hyperspace or have the Stalwart Monarch be bitten in two. It haunts me in my dreams to this day. This is part of my penance.” - Mithrandis Ustarra, the Iron Sovereign, recollecting the events just after fleeing the Grief Battle.

Formerly known as Teryan, which roughly translates to 'cradle' from Tsumi language, the Plaguestar is the HVI strain having infected and mutated the entire planet, creating what can only be described and defined as a 'plaguestar.' This plague caused the Tsumi population of over 3 billion down to 20 million, fleeing the dying planet. Even then, more losses ensued as several ships were infected and either self-destructed to be enraptured in Saweya's holy light, or shot down and embraced by Danmadan, since they valued their fleeting moments more than the survival of their entire race, causing the modern Tsumi population to equal around 15 million.

The Plaguestar now grows much more slowly, due to there being little to no material for it to consume and reproduce beyond the planet it resides on, though Tsumi scientists have theorized the scourge would eventually take the entire system and start expanding even further than that. The strain is highly adaptable and has developed spacefaring hosts to begin growing more Plaguestars. These hosts vary in size; some have the size of a small personal cruiser, others can easily swallow flagships whole, although the bigger ones remain close to the original Plaguestar.

IQ created this article on 2018/08/21 15:16.

🚧 This article is a work-in-progress. Is it not currently approved.