I haven't gotten very much work done on Loreshaper Games projects recently because of freelancing stuff, and because I've been in something of a rut.

Right now I'm at a point with Genship Exiles where I need a breakthrough. I've gotten it to a point where it's stalled out because I haven't come up with a satisfying and novel system to handle the group dynamics as I want it to.

Jupiter Sovereign is also temporarily tabled because I want to expand its scope, and don't have the resources to do so right now.

So we're left with a situation where I've got some stuff left to do.

I've been going back to an old setting I was working on called The Legacy of Eight.

It was originally conceived for Open Legend, and it almost wound up being an official setting for Open Legend. However, that didn't pan out and it's been languishing ever since.

I think I might try to revise it for Hammercalled and get some more progress done on Hammercalled again.

I've been kind of skeptical about Hammercalled's own setting since the very beginning. It never connected with me, and though it was fun it had something of an identity problem. Too much of a kitchen-sink setting and not enough of a core concept. It also just... didn't have oomph.

The Legacy of Eight, on the other hand, is a space opera setting from its very conception, and one I can vividly conceive of scenes and characters from.

The idea of The Legacy of Eight is that it's set in a very distant future, one in which humanity has triumphed over entropy. The Creation Matrix serves as a layer over existence, allowing people to manipulate reality. However, it's also not utopian: it may be post-scarcity, but the chaos and danger of the universe still persists.

# Intro to The Legacy of Eight

The Immortal Empire governed the universe, ruled by an immortal philosopher-king. Following the Eight Precepts, the Empire had a laissez-faire approach to government; so long as human rights were respected, they granted broad autonomy to their subjects, permitting culture and civilization to blossom. In theory, life should have been a paradise, endless exploration, colonization, and growth.

This was not how it panned out.

The bureaucracy of the Empire grew more and more oppressive, and sector governors abandoned their original charter, the preservation of human freedom, and instead lined their coffers with tribute. The Imperial military was deployed to end internecine squabbles in favor of the highest bidder, not justice.

Splinter factions who desired freedom from the few rules that the Empire imposed on individuals waged wars against the Empire even as the Empire was drawn into pointless conflict. Increasingly, these splinter groups became more and more legitimate, fighting against a central bureaucracy that had become too removed from its own subjects.

The Empire was humbled. The Archons were founded by a coalition of disparate factions as an organization that oversaw the Empire and held it accountable to its own rules. By investing chosen individuals who had proven their integrity with powers beyond even those of the greatest magicians, turning them into super-soldiers and agents of intrigue who were held accountable to an internal committee, the Archons managed to serve humanity as a whole better than the centralized force of the Empire had. The Empire's boundaries were fixed, and outside their borders humanity was freed once again to pursue its own course.

And in secret, the Empire began work on a secret program, the Scion project. A response to the Archons' increasing oversight into Imperial affairs, the Scions were supposed to be an answer, a secret weapon to use when the Archons grew too powerful or too corrupt.

The program was a success in the most dreadful way. The first Scions were born in test-tubes and ritual chambers, imbued with something beyond humanity. They were powerful, but their lack of limitations made them arrogant and proud. They fulfilled their original purpose too well: the Scions betrayed both the Empire and Archons, leading to a war that spanned generations and whole sectors.

As humanity fought back against their own creations, partly with the help of Scions who saw the depravity of their fellows, a new crisis arose.

The origins of the Soulscourge are lost to scholars, but all are in agreement that it was the result of the Creation Matrix. While it continued functioning as a tool of power, it lashed out against the universe. Instead of enabling humanity to become immortal and eternal, whole sectors of space were wiped clean of life, or simply removed from existence. Magicians, as users of the Creation Matrix had come to be called within the Empire, went mad or ruled as tyrants with nobody to stop them. The old ways of technological back-up had failed and resurrection magic could not save those who had vanished: for the first time in centuries billions of human lives were lost irreversibly.

Human weakness and a catastrophe beyond even the powers of transhumanity changed the outlook of the universe.