Ex Nihilo - Abyssal Prophecy

    At the height of technological knowledge, the universe grew tired of peace and prosperity. Civilization turned on itself, and old enemies renewed their struggles for supremacy. Conflict washed across the universe, and the Great War led to the destruction of all of the stars in the universe. Without the light, the universe became a Great Maw, and it continued devouring what was left of life.     The Earth’s worst criminals were sent to rot on the former prison colony ship Alcatraz. The ship was built without a faster-than-light drive in the darkness between the old stars, but it was equipped like a battleship so it could fight off any attempt to rescue the criminals it held.     At seventeen hundred meters, the ship had everything it needed. On the Upper Wards, there was a large city constructed for the guards and their families; the Core Ward in the center housed animals alongside hydroponic farms; and the criminals of Earth were kept locked away in the Lower Wards. The ship functioned for millennia in the dead of space. Mining ships forced prisoners to mine resources from asteroids. Prisoner labour kept the farms and animal livestock production for the ship. Despite the Alcatraz being built with low technology designed to function for a long time, the guards were well armed. Earth gave the best military gear to the wardens of her worst criminals. Power armour, magnetic rail weaponry, and the best energy weapons money could buy. No one had ever escaped the Alcatraz alive, but no one saw the Great War coming.     Stars went out one by one, and panic spread amongst the guards. In the wake of the increasing destruction of the Great War, the guards abandoned the Alcatraz and fled on the smaller ships housed in the docking bay until there wasn’t any faster-than-light ships left. The prisoners, realizing the guards had all fled, broke free and learned the truth of the Great War.     Alexander Soloman was serving ten life sentences for the crimes of serial murders, political activism, and acts of rebellion, but he had a plan. Uniting the much larger human population, he organized the group into a fighting force. There was only one threat in his mind to the stability of the Alcatraz’s survival in the abyss. He knew the alien inmates that shared the Alcatraz with the humans needed to be dealt with.     Alexander lured his enemies into a false sense of security, and, in their sleep, his army descended upon the aliens. The slaughter became known by one name by the crew. The Night of Crimson Liberation. After the slaughter, Alexander created the laws under the chain of command left behind by the guards, and with himself as supreme captain, he set to creating the clans. Religion was a powerful way to control the masses, so Alexander used that. He created a clan system to keep the people divided and assigned the menial jobs to those who worked in the old jail. Divide et impera. To keep peace on the ship, thirteen clans were divided against each other to prevent any mutiny by superior numbers.     Clan Drudge would do the menial labour of mining; Clan Epicure would provide cooks; Clan Weaver would create clothes; Clan Praetorian would keep the Lower Wards in line; and Clan Pleb would be anyone who didn’t find a place in any other clan. These Lower Ward clans would form the basis of Alexander’s disparity by design, and their anger at deprivation would keep them from unifying the more important Clans. In the Core Ward, Clan Keeper would tend the farms and animals; Clan Crat would organize all of the work; Clan Player would provide entertainment; Clan Fleshweaver provided medical treatment; and Clan Forger would keep the ship and its equipment functional. The Upper Ward’s city, with their luxurious living, would be handed to the rich and powerful. Alexander enshrined Clan Pious on one-half, Clan Executive on the other, and together, through their superiority, they kept the ship from mutiny. Alexander's Clan of Officers kept the best weapons, armour, and gear for themselves. This order kept the Alcatraz surviving in the abyss left behind after the Great War.     For almost two thousand years, the Alcatraz survived despite the odds. Scavenging, scraping, and sacrificing, the crew endured, but the aging Alcatraz began to fail. Under the latest captain, Gabriel Soloman, the ship was now dying. The only hope lay in a secret message sent by a Research Outpost at the end of the Great War. Fear of the unknown filled the crew, and they didn’t want to venture into an old star system where raiders or worse could be lurking. Despair was all the crew of the Alcatraz knew, but in the darkness beyond the metal hull of the ship, lurked the entity responsible for war. The creature was determined to fulfil an ancient prophecy, and it schemed to use the Alcatraz for that purpose.