Story

I was once one with the mother. But the dust came, providing me with vast knowledge of the great beyond; and severing my connection with her. What would you do if everything you knew was suddenly lost; would you take your anger out on the mother, killing all who are still connected; would you turn your mind to studying the knowledge you have gained; or would you lose yourself in labour and try and forget what you have lost. I decided to find out if all I had learned was correct, so I exiled myself to explore the great beyond. And I found wonder.

My homeworld was a lush world with many flora, but we were the only beings present on the planet. Once I had managed to create a vessel capable of traversing the beyond, I soon found worlds with more life than I could imagine. And other sentient creatures marvelled at what I was, as I was unique in their eyes. After exploring the galaxy for endless ruins to confirm what I had learnt, and finding no concrete answers, I returned home to spread the word of the great beyond, and how beautiful it was.

However, I returned to find that a colony of beings had set up on my homeworld, and had started cultivating the land. This required clearing trees, which angered the mother. I could see warriors approaching to destroy what the mother thought were parasites. I knew that they were innocent, and that they had no idea what they were doing, so I quickly stepped in to stop the mother from destroying them. As I stepped from the shadows into the light, they stared at me in wonder, and realised their mistake.

They still live on our homeworld, but now live in harmony with us, we help them to live on the planet, and they teach us how to survive the great beyond. We also discover that we have a limited ability to communicate with their flora, and marvel at how primitive it is. I tell stories of all I have seen, and the mother approves and agrees to send our people out to the stars to discover and communicate with the galaxy. But the mother begins to remember; and although it provides us with the knowledge we need to grow into spacefaring forms, something troubles her greatly.

She has given me a task, but refuses to share what is troubling her. I am to investigate the neighbouring areas of the galaxy to discover… something. She will not say what, but I know it cannot be good. However, I get to go back to what I long for- exploration. Soon I leave to traverse the beyond, as it is no longer so great, and walk the worlds in harmony with the universe.

Explanation of some key points

This story is told from the perspective of the starting hero, an ecologist seeker. The exposure to the dust provided him with an individual consciousness, but removed his mind from the shared consciousness that is the mother.

The mother is the remaining part of the original consciousness before aggressive civilisations destroyed all but one of their worlds. This is what the main quest part 1 is- discovering one (or more) of the worlds that have been destroyed.

I like the story you set up here. Well done. It makes sense that an Unfallen hero would be unlinked from the rest of the faction via Dust. I'm curious about one thing though, our hero has apparently learned the technology for space travel, but the rest of the race can't until "mother remembers"? What are you thoughts on this?

Anyway, cool stuff!  

My understanding of the lore is that the dust is linked in some way to the endless. All the other heroes possess greater understanding and knowledge of their fields due to 'dust enlightenment', so I assumed that this would provide the newly conscious unfallen the knowledge to build scouting vessels (doesn't really make sense that he grows into his own ship what with how heroes work in ES2). However, as the unfallen generally use themselves as the ships, you need the mother to remember the required forms for the unfallen to grow into.

Nice solution for the odd nature of Unfallen turning themselves into ships. Game play mechanics are going to have to deal with that eventually, but you've provided an interesting idea on how it works.

Cool setup for a faction quest.