The History of Vaia
The city is dotted with endless conflicts, as the superstructure of the metropolis holds and sustains Forty-Two million residents of all races, creatures, and designs. Strict laws, massive controlling factions, organizations, and competing ideologies swarm the city in a relatively peaceful balance, yet, friction is an undeniable constant. From the lowest peasant, two days from death from starving in the lowest district, to the One Above All who most speculate is just some Artificial Mind. There are thousands of different stories happening every single day.
What a rich tapestry of history. War, peace, and momentous moments that define the shared heritage of our times. The unifying force of patriotism comes from our collective success and persistence against the overwhelming tide of opposition throughout our lives, and our social structures. The Metropolis of Vaia is no different. It did not come about in a day, the empire grew from the smallest seed one day at a time.
Decade of Turbulence
The arrival of Voric coincided with the greater machine of automation’s eradication of nearly all small business. The birth of the Artificial Hive Mind can be dated to the day that Voric stepped into the southernmost outpost and began his carving out of districts and eventual claim of all the lands of Vaia.
Some joke in the conspiracy is that Voric is just a robotic body, a puppet of the AHM. The conspiracy goes on to suggest that the commands heard mentally by all the people on his arrival were a mass hallucination provoked by extreme mental manipulation by the digital feeds the AHM provided to entertain and distract the masses. The clear brainwashing over the following decade separated the states of technology, flow of information and censorship by district.
During the Decade of Turbulence the Wall of Vaia was constructed, shaping out and dividing up all of the districts into their own isolated systems. Most of them completely independent thanks to the incredible logistics architecture of Ten Thousand Paths, the Automated Farms of the Nutricia Conglomerate, and the hard work of the state and privately funded factions to ensure complacency among the residents.
The first rumors of the Meta Guardians began some nine years ago, reports of children going missing, and people forgetting the lives they lived getting shushed as if those old villages and towns had never existed. As the schools, Alter Rina, popped up in every district, free education and care for the children opened up all of the adults to work on the grand spires and high rises. The rail connecting all the city and the roads above them were completed in months the same year.
The Wall of Vaia finished separating the Ninety-Three districts some two years later. Entire zones were stripped of weapons, technologies that had previously freely passed hands were forcibly taken. Replaced with lower tech equipment. The outermost districts were stripped the hardest, left with handtools, swords, axes, knives, bows, and heavy metal armors made of simple alloys. The closer to the inner cloister, the more technically advanced thrived.
No evidence was left behind. These grand nigh impossible to breach layers of technological censorship stand so strong that ignorance turned into a way of life in the outer layers. The application of see no evil, do no evil prevailed, for who wants what they do not know exists?
It was violent, the remaining years saw the strategic and forceful relocation of thousands of families, but once the dust settled, none except maybe a few of the elite, the Emperor's inner circle, and maybe a few veterans who knew how to keep their mouth shut even knew any of it happened.