Well, the humans on Auriga doesn't really have to come from '' Success" survivors. El artbook says that Broken Lords' ancestors weekend devolved Concrete Endless. Not to mention the possibility that they were created by the Endless as an experiment. 

Where can I find the comics? I love the lore and would like to know more.

Okay so first, I'm gonna put up some links here that discuss the exact same things you're asking.

1. Lore: Clarification, The Vaulters and Opbot's Origins ? [Spoilers]

2. Sister of Mercy Origins 

3. Lore: Timeline, Raians and the United Empire 

4. Some Questions about Timelife (Vaulters DLC Spoilers)

5. Lore: Clarification, Horatio's Origins [Spoilers] 

6. Lore Question Lifespans 

7. What is the Difference Between the Mezari and the Vaulters ?

I ordered them from Newest (top) to Oldest (bottom), and they're all good reads if you want to brush up on your Endless Lore. 

Aight, now back to your questions. 

There is no 'set' canonical timeline as of yet. Slowhands (Jeff Spock) says they are working on somewhat of a more streamlined lore to the game, but, it is important to note that the Endless Universe is technically a multiverse, with each game simultaneously interacting and not interacting at the same time (hence why Endless Space 1 and Endless Space 2, are roughly difference copies of one another). This explanation is also used so that each players interactions/experiences in the game are technically canonical. This is important to remember when reading anything lore related. 

As for timelines go. It's roughly this. 

Long after the Endless civilization tears itself apart during the Dust Wars, the Mezari Empire rises as the predominant 'human' civilization in the Endless Galaxy. They had a vast, and technologically advanced empire that colonized vast sections of the Endless Galaxy, until, Mezan (the Mezari homeworld) experienced some sort of cataclysm that left the planet uninhabitable. On top of this, human colonies didn't always last (as can be seen in the Tikanan minor civilization lore). Some colonies, however, would become successful, and one of those colonies, Raia, would eventually become the United Empire. This colony was originally founded by a fleet of Mezari colonization starships, and decades (or centuries, as the timeline isn't quite clear on exact numbers) would find itself at the Space-Age technological stage (Just read the UE, Endless Space 2 Wiki, since I don't wanna reiterate what they say there here). 

2 thousand years before the UE became a notable player in the galaxy (AKA the start of ES2), Horatio, a Mezari Trillionaire, led a colonization mission to the Endless Biological Planet-Laboratory called Auriga. The colony would (officially) be a penal colony, however, unbeknownst to the colonists, Horatio was actually just using them to gain access to the vast Endless Technology on the planet. The mission would ultimately fail, with the colony ship, the Success being shot down by once dormant Auriga Planetary Defense systems, and the various prisoners landing upon the planet (AKA DoTE). They would form the beginning of the Vaulters people. Soon after, a second expedition led by members of the Zolya clan would crash land on Auriga (I think this one is the Argosy but I can't remember right now, that's why I put the links). Now give or take a thousand years and the Vaulter civilization would have been born and surviving on Auriga, made up of remnants of both expeditions. This is where EL comes in. During th EL timeline, a third Mezari expedition crashlands on Auriga and intermingles with the Vaulter expedition. Now during the timeline of EL, as well as the Vaulter comic, a small portion of the Vaulters escape Auriga, roughly a thousand years before the events of ES2. They float around in space for a thousand years, the Aurigan Vaulters left behind, eventually escaping the planet and the Endless Winter ravaging Auriga, using Endless Technology (both lines of the Vaulters Main Quest). 

Now the Vaulters always had records of their Mezari forebearers. However, two thousand years of living in underground cities causing their technology to fail, and eventually the facts surrounding their spacefaring past passed on into legend. They do eventually rediscover the Mezari homeworld of Mezan during the ES2 Vaulter main quest. 

(It's important to note that the Success and the Argosy colonists were all Mezari, however, it was the Argosy's colonists that truly started the Vaulter civilization, as their were too little Success survivors to do so, even accounting for all those that made it out of the Endless Labrotory. 

The EL timeline spans roughly a few decades. Zolya Ilona, the leader of the Vaulters, is quite young at the beginning of EL (probably in her 20s), but by the end of EL,  so the time of the Argosy's departure (the Vaulter Comic) she is in her 40s-50s, and that event occurred a year or two after the Vaulter Main Quest ending/The same time as the Grey Owl lifting off, as they Grey Owl's explosion interrupts the Argosy's navigational course. 

As I stated at the beginning of this lol, ES1 and ES2 are multiverse versions of one another, so they simultaneously coexist and don't exist at the same time. So like, they're both canon. Same goes for all the other ES1/ES2 factions. 

The game timeline is: DoTE -> EL - ES1/ES2 

Mitxe wrote:

Where can I find the comics? I love the lore and would like to know more.

You can find the comics here   

It's on the Wiki Endless Space 2, Comics, page. 

NauticalSoup wrote:

A lot of what Xen0n said was accurate before the Vaulters DLC came out, but we now know the Vaulters descended from Mezari colonists on Auriga, not from the survivors of the "Success" crash.  At least, that's what appears to be the case.  The evidence for this is their strong ties to their Mezari ancestry (the Success survivors don't appear thematically similar to either Vaulters or the Mezari), the Mezari faction in Endless Legend being the visually thematic version of the Vaulters before their long exile underground (similar colours, iconography and style, but with a much more 'spacey' feel), and the fact that the Argosy was not built by the Vaulters - it is their ancient Mezari colony ship that originally brought them to Auriga.

I am not 100% sure what happened with the Grey Owl in the new continuity, that's the Hissho starship that is discovered in the Endless Legend colony-ship quest and which appears leaving Auriga in the original teaser for Endless Space 2.  Originally we were led to believe that the Vaulters would find and use this to escape the planet in the canon ending, but that seems to no longer be the case and that it instead possibly exploded creating the 'dust burst' shown in a lot of the trailers.  Which might also be the cause of the Rift that is destroying Coroz?

There's a lot of ambiguity and you have to piece it together from hints and incomplete information across several games.  I might have said some things that are not 100% accurate, but this seems to be the gist of the current lore.

Edit: Oh also if I recall correctly in the new Vaulter questline the dust explosion I referenced above is blamed for knocking the Argosy off course or somesuch.

Edit 2: There ALSO aren't that many Success survivors, and we now know canonically that Original Horatio (From the Horatio comic.  It's probably my least favourite, but it's a thing) was responsible for three of the 'main' characters being killed by monsters in the Dungeon of the Endless/Husk.  If any of their descendants survived, possibly they could be linked to one of the other human factions on Auriga, since Auriga seems to actually have had a pretty large amount of human stock which at least in recent memory have little historical relationship to one another.  Also did you know Horatio was a Mezari and that he was on Auriga when the Success was shot down?  What a bizarre coincidence...

Okay so the Grey Owl has unknown inhabitants since the DEVs thought it would be crummy to play the entire game, as let's say the Wild Walkers, only to find out that the Endless Winter kills you and the Vaulter survive on the Grey Owl. But the ship did explode, due to one of the Lost entities using the Dust Crystal as a way to spread dust around the universe (he's the narrator in the video), which is why the explosion is visible across a large radius of the universe. The explosion did knock the Argosy off course, while simultaneously being the reason why the rift opened up in Coroz, and began spreading the 'blight' throughout the Riftborn universe. 

DoTE isn't the same as Husk (the Cravers homeworld), but yeah Horatio (aka you when you play DoTE, he is the main character in that game after all), does manage to kill off a sizable portion of the Success survivors in his quest to find Endless tech on Auriga. The Success survivors are implied to have been the forebearers to many of the human factions on Auriga, like the leaders/founding members of the sort. This includes, but isn't limited to, the Vaulters (hence the Vaulter symbol appearing when you clear the Dungeon), the Sisters of Mercy, The Cultistss (the Cultists are primarily made up of humans who worship the Eternal Queen and the Nameless thing), the Delvers, the Roving Clans, minor humans seen in the Quests, etc. The large human stock comes from the other Mezari expeditions, albeit more successful, even though they all crashlanded, as well as possible Endless experiments (though Spock wasn't clear on that in a previous thread; I'm assuming b/c they're leaving it open to interpretation). 

Horatio actually organized the expedition as a cover for him to get to Auriga, and as a way to have fresh bodies fight off the monsters leftover on Auriga while he looked for Endless Tech necessary to the creation of his eventual empire. He's the guy who writes the journal in DoTE.

Wow, thank you. Super helpful!

Such great storytelling. And great account of it, Suis3i, I've been down this road before in the forums, but it's still impressive to hear it summarized. Are there any other games that cover this breadth/scale across such differing game types within a single studio's inventory? None that I'm aware of.

mrbiggs007 wrote:

Are there any other games that cover this breadth/scale across such differing game types within a single studio's inventory? None that I'm aware of.

Blizzard's Warcraft series uses the Azeroth setting and lore for three successful strategy games, one hugely successful MMO, one very bad Hollywood movie, and a digital card game spin0ff. In pure scale, that's probably the largest example. 

Amplitude gets credit though, for the sheer originality of their faction design and lore. There are a few things that seem borrowed from traditional space or fantasy books and movies, like the somewhat Tolkein-sh Wild Walkers in EL, or the United Empire in ES1/ES2, which is sort of a Starship Trooper fascist empire clone. But most of the faction designs and lore in the Amplitude games have an original flavor. In contrast, Blizzard just recycles tired fantasy tropes. They're very good at designing games to exploit the lore, but there's nothing terribly original in the Warcraft universe and lore. Starcraft is a little more original, but it hasn't been exploited to the same extent as Warcraft.

Good point! I agree with pretty much everything you said! But Blizzard hasn't tied together their 3 main franchises at all, have they? (Diablo/Warcraft/Starcraft) I was referring mostly to the fact that Amplitude's story (because in essence, all their games cover one inclusive multiverse story) ties together fantasy and sci-fi even though the fantasy element kind of still falls within a scifi backdrop (which is part of it's originality/charm imho). I just don't know of anyone who's attempt to achieve that scale of interconnectedness over such a huge span of time. It really makes each game I play so much more meaningful considering that I'm provided eons of history/lore to back up my game session.

Mitxe wrote:

Wow, thank you. Super helpful!

yuuupppp, they're also doing an overall of the website so there may be more information on it in the next few weeks or months