Golden Age

Template:Timeline The Golden Age was a centuries-long era in history when the human race had achieved a very prosperous existence, having colonized the entire Solar System. Looking through various sources on the beginning of the Dark Age - which directly succeeded the Golden Age - as well as comments made by Ghost throughout most of the campaign missions, it can be assumed that the Golden Age lasted for at least three centuries.

Overview

The Golden Age was sparked by the arrival of the Traveler during the late 21st Century. When it arrived in the Solar System and began terraforming the different planets, humanity reached out to the Traveler on Mars and made first contact. It taught humanity new powers and mystical technologies that led to this age. Now that most of the system could support human life, and armed with the incredible new technology to reach beyond Earth, colonization of these worlds began. Many corporations and research groups existed during the Golden Age, such as Clovis Bray or the Ishtar Collective. The Exos were created during the period, and the Ahamkara appeared.

Most of the new discoveries humanity made were geared towards the colonization of the system and other vital technologies such as AI or medicine. Other technologies, and Earth itself, developed more slowly. The technology of the Golden Age has not only attracted the attention of human survivors, but also the alien races who now occupy the system. The Fallen seek to loot Venus' grand Archives, the Hive sought to use Rasputin on Earth for their own purposes, and the Cabal intended to claim the Dust Palace on Mars for themselves.

The Golden Age came to an end with the arrival of the Darkness, which began to attack humanity, and drove it back to planet Earth. The Traveler defended what was left of the human race, and through some means sacrificed itself to save humanity. The survivors of the conflict banded together and built a city underneath where the Traveler hung over the Earth. Humanity had been saved, but its golden age was over. Approximately seven hundred years from the present day, enough time has passed since the Traveler's final stand that many details about the Golden Age and how it ended, such as what, or whom, attacked and exactly how the Traveler saved humanity have been forgotten or have passed into legend.

Events

21st Century

• Earth becomes overcrowded.

• Present Day—Humanity detects and tracks the Traveler as it enters the Solar System and terraforms Mercury, Venus, and the moons of Jupiter. When it reaches Mars, the multinational Ares One mission is launched to make contact with it.

• The Traveler promises humanity the universe and imparts its vast knowledge to the species, spurring the colonization of the Solar System.

• The Golden Age, a centuries-long era of widespread prosperity and technological miracles, begins.

Early Golden Age

• Fifty years after the Traveler's discovery, at the age of ninety, Commander Jacob Hardy records his experiences from the Ares One mission in his diary and explains how the Traveler's dramatic impact on human well-being and civilization changed everything while in the midst of studying the properties of Light-influenced terraforming.

• The Cloud Walkers lead the first Exodus.

• The first off-Earth colony is established in the Ocean of Storms on the Moon and an exobotany laboratory is built in Mare Cognitum.

• The city of Freehold is founded on Mars with the support of Clovis Bray. It becomes known as one of humanity's greatest achievements.

• During the initial exploration of Venus, ancient Vex ruins are discovered. Early Vex research outposts like Campus 9 attract Earth's brightest minds, leading to a colonization rush on the planet. The researchers found the Ishtar Collective and the Ishtar Academy.

• A copper box with a red lid is discovered, its lid dented, one hinge shattered. Inside is a small quantity of the finest, driest powder, more brown than gray, more blue than green. The powder is weighed by the grain, studied close. One hundred billion bits reside inside, all of them tiny and nearly spherical, and etched with the outlines of continents and islands and icecaps. Each sphere represents a planet. One is found of Earth, Mars, and Venus. Many studying presume that the box is a message of how minuscule all of creation is, and some wonder who delivered this message, and why.

• A father on Venus shows his son a representation of what their world used to look like before the Traveler arrived.

Mid-Golden Age

• Clovis Bray begins developing technologies geared toward the colonization of the Solar System in the form of SIVA and Transmission. After going through several prototypes, SIVA is approved for deployment.

• Site 6 is constructed.

• The Asteroid Belt becomes a treasure trove of industry.

• Jupiter and its many moons become a cornerstone of civilization. Cities are buried deep in ice shelves and within subaqueous oceans.

• A Warmind is sent to build humanity's cities and ships with SIVA on unknown worlds nine billion miles away.

• Dr. Willa Bray develops the first engram matter-encryption techniques based on relic crystals' unique datastatic properties. Glimmer is presumably developed as a byproduct and used as a source of power.

Late Golden Age

• The Ishtar Collective captures a live Vex specimen and nearly go mad until a Warmind intervenes. They send a group of two hundred twenty seven proxies into the Vex ruins to explore the Vex network.

• The Future War Cult is founded by members of the Ishtar Collective at Lhasa after experimenting with Vex technology. However the group disbands after many members either go insane, commit suicide, or leave out of ethical concerns.

• The first Exo are built to aid and protect humans based off of experimental technology developed from studying the Vex.

• Members of the First Light colony investigate the tunnels beneath the Moon. They discover the Worms and the Hive nesting deep within, but do not survive to tell the tale.

The Collapse

• The Warmind Rasputin detects the sudden arrival and rapid approach of an unidentified entity outside the Solar System. Recognizing the entity as a threat, Rasputin assumes control of humanity's Planetary Defense Network.

• A pilot designated SABER GREEN piloting the ship Secure ISIS communicates with ICE MINARET. Civilian launches are not scrubbed, threatening fleeing civilians, to preserve secrecy. They are carrying an antimatter payload of one annihilation-pumped caedometric weapon codenamed RIGOR, and two other unknown devices codenamed SKYSHOCK and APEX. ICE MINARET remarks that they both know where the order came from.

• Rasputin attempts to defeat the Darkness using all available weapons, but to no avail. In a last ditch attempt to stop the impending doom, Rasputin enacts ABHORRENT IMPERATIVE, and prepares to fire upon the Traveler with his most powerful weapons, thereby coercing it into a "pseudoaltrusitic" defensive action, should it attempt to leave. The Traveler, for reasons unknown, chooses to stay and fight.

• As all countermeasures fail to affect the entity and defeat becomes a certainty, Rasputin decides to enact YUGA SUNDOWN, and shuts down to protect itself, leaving billions of people to perish.

• On Mercury, Venus, and Mars, dormant Vex units reacting to the Collapse reactivate and begin terraforming several worlds. While Mercury is turned into a machine in days the Vex spread is temporarily stalled by the Traveler.

• A massive spacecraft bearing a sigil of Golden Age Earth on its prow crashes on an unidentified battle-scarred world where over two dozen Exo soldiers fight a titanic battle with the Vex.

• The Collapse—the Darkness, the ancient enemy of the Traveler, arrives in the Solar System, precipitating the Collapse and the abrupt end of the Golden Age. Earth's defenders are steadily beaten back until humanity is threatened with extinction. Humanity is saved only through the intervention of the Traveler, which sacrifices itself to stop the Darkness. With its last breath, the Traveler creates the Ghosts, to seek out those who can wield its Light as a weapon.

• At some point during the Collapse, some humans seeking refuge from the Darkness flee into deep space.

• First Fleet or quite possibly what comes to be known as the Cassini, is lost around the orbit of Saturn.

• The Cabal, encountering no meaningful resistance from human defenses, establish a beachhead on Phobos for initiating the invasion of Mars. On the planet however, the Cabal become engaged in a massive campaign of attrition with a native Vex programming called the Virgo Prohibition, who desperately attempts to protect the entrance to the Black Garden from an ever-expanding Exclusion Zone. This war will continue throughout the Dark Age and well into the City Age with little outside interference.