Earthrise (video Game) - Plot

Plot

At the end of the 21st century, the continuing exhaustion of Earth's resources sparked a furious struggle for dominance, ultimately leading to an all-out conflict. Billions perished as the Third World War raged across the globe.

As nations crumbled and civil society was in its death throes, a group of cooperative leaders and scientists began work on the "Continoma Project" - a massive, self-sufficient DNA database capable of storing the genetic information of every living thing on the Earth, including humans. Members of the Project considered themselves the world’s stewards, and began taking liberties within the database, removing the genetic code of the people responsible for the war's most heinous crimes against humanity. However, many of those war criminals exploited certain Project members' greed and bought their way into the project, guaranteeing themselves perpetual life.

Humanity outside the Continoma Project all but destroyed itself - the great societies that once warred between themselves were reduced to nomadic tribes and eventually mutated or died out, long before the irradiated world could become habitable again.

After a few hundred years passed, scientists started to clone the first wave of survivors, called the Pioneers. Faced with mutated man-eating plants and animals, as well as aggressive descendants from the last naturally-born humans, the Pioneers were only able to carve out a living on the island of Enterra. It was here that they founded Sal Vitas, City of Salvation, where the Continoma leaders formed a new government, an engineered social and political regime of utopian proportions that promised to erase the painful memory of the past.

During the first twenty years, the city's construction required a huge workforce. As more people were cloned, society divided in groups and factions, each with their own agenda and goals. Some of them revisited the darker side of the human nature, exploiting fellow citizens much the same as before the death of civilization. Continoma created a draconian police force to fight crime, which kept much of the citizenry safe but did little to eradicate the growing criminal underworld.

In the wake of Continoma's harsh reaction to the increase in crime, young intellectuals and students formed a loose organization originally intended to keep Continoma in check through civil action. It was not long until the informal organization took on a new role – armed resistance - and a new name: Noir.

The Noir resistance began with a massacre. Shortly after its conception, seven of Noir’s founding members were captured by the Continoma police force. Their DNA was pulled from the cloning database, sentencing them to a death humanity was no longer supposed to experience. The remaining six members were driven from the city. Luckily for Noir, a scientist within Continoma, a follower of the group's ideals, managed to save the founders' DNA and deliver it to those who fled Sal Vitas. The restored leadership began a guerrilla war against Continoma.

In the midst of the growing insurgency, a number of high-ranked bureaucrats within Continoma mounted a coup and seized control over the cloning technology. The new autocrats immediately began threatening Noir’s supporters within the populace with removal of their genetic code from the database.

Noir continued the fight, its numbers increased by the dictatorial new regime’s policies, but without cloning technology, defeat seemed certain. Only a counter-coup, led by Synthia Harvington, saved Noir. Harvington negotiated an agreement with Noir that exchanged cloning technology for their assistance in her counter-coup. When Harvington restored the government, Noir and Continoma found a temporary and uneasy peace.

Continoma and Noir continue to share the island of Enterra today. Continoma spreads its control across the island and boosts its industrial power by exploiting the island's natural resources. Noir exists in an underground network and works to disrupt the current regime’s plans. The ceasefire is already breaking.

Mutants still abound on the island, but most of them have gathered around and inside the Old City, the remains of a community that thrived before war. Intelligence reports on both sides of the political battle claim the mutants are growing … something … inside Old City's sewers. The zone is currently under quarantine until Continoma can make a better-informed decision about how to proceed, and Noir operatives are discouraged from entering the area.