5 Prologue

In the late 31st century, humanity was faced with a dire threat that could have caused the extinction of the human race. The world was overpopulated and crowded. The natural resources of the planet could no longer keep up with the still growing population. Famine and disease were rampant.

As humanity grew, they also developed further advancements in technology. Factories, newer vehicles and businesses and the continued wasteful neglect of humanity led to skyrocketing pollution that smothered the world. The land decayed and the air grew poisonous. Species of animals all over the world were dying out. People had to wear respirators and gas masks in the later years. Some tried to address the problems, but they were already too late.

Soon, humanity had no choice, but to look to other ways for survival and so, they looked to the stars. The built massive space stations to orbit the planet to house most of the wealthier humans and those they deemed necessary to future endeavors while the rest were left behind and the Earth was abandoned. As the humans on Earth struggled to survive and fell into lawlessness, those who left for the space stations continued to look for more routes to insure their survival. This led them to start sending out probes into space in hopes of mapping out the galaxy the inhabited and discovering new worlds that could sustain life.

This new effort took hundreds of years to find anything and during that time humanity continued to dwindle. During these years, those left on Earth had formed a union of sorts that became their new government and those who lived in the space stations had their own for each station. With the history of one side being abandoned by the other in a time of crisis, tensions grew and humanity was on the brink of war.

When war finally broke out, the ground was being bombarded from space and those on the ground would send up missiles and stealth ships to damage or blow up the space stations. By the time the war ended, more than half of the space stations were gone and less that 20% of the population was left on the ground. With both sides struggling due to complications brought by the war, both sides had to call for a ceasefire and make peace.

During this peace, they worked together to make the Earth more livable by making domed cities and used advanced farming techniques and technological advances to promote the growth of plant life within these domes. Then they installed giant pillars of machinery that was used to balance out the Earth's ruined environment and purify the land, water and air.

Time passed and their efforts were paying off. They were able to expand the domes and remake cities. The population even started to increase again. Things were looking good, but with the past still hanging over everyone's minds, they continued their space exploration efforts. They continued to send out more and more space probes, each getting more and more advanced as time passed.

After a few centuries, the Earth started receiving the mapped out areas that the probes had already been through. With the scans from the probes, scientists and mathematicians were able to make a make that could pinpoint every celestial body on a 3 dimensional chart with an X, Y and Z axis. These maps were referred to as space charts. With it, humanity would be able to travel through space without ever getting lost, as long as the area hand been mapped out previously.

With the star charts now available, humanity started build great spaceships that would be able to leave their home planet and even their solar system. They had to develop better fueling options, more advanced cryogenic devices to halt a travelers time while the traveled such vast distances. They were even looking into light speed and warp travel. They also developed more options for food, storage and looked into methods of colonizing and maybe terraforming other planets to fit their needs.

After many years and many failures, they succeeded. Due to the massive size of the ships required for this journey, the humans had to use the old space stations as staging grounds and had to build them in space instead of on the planet. People could see these massive ships from the surface of the Earth. Due to the lack of resources for such a massive project, humanity had to build smaller ships that were sent out to mine other planets within their solar system to make up for what they no longer had. They had perfected their cryogenics so people could remain on ice for hundreds or thousands of years without aging. Even the food they required was perfected, in a way. Due to the loss of most animal life on the planet and the dietary requirements people might need in space, scientists had converted humanity's main food source into pill form. These pills gave exactly what the human body needed to survive and remain in peak physical form. As a side note, these pills also helped with the food storage issues and allowed for their to be more space for other things that might be necessary for colonizing a planet.

Humanity had even made leaps in the research of the ships fuel source, flight speed, and mode of transportation. These ships would be able to travel at light speed and ran on a powerful nuclear fusion reactor with many fail safes and practices put in place so that there would be no accidents. The ships were even able to warp travel, but not without help. Scientists had to develop relay stations that would act like satellites and were built in the form of a warp gate. These gates would act as portals in order to facilitate faster travel between the starting point and the final destination while at the same time, acting as a way for humans to remain in contact with each other. They could even received and send out new updates to the star chart. Sadly, these warp gates needed to be pre-installed before anyone could warp travel, so it would require a group of volunteers to leave the Earth and explore the cosmos while leaving behind everyone that wasn't their immediate family with the knowledge that as the first people to travel, there was a chance of something going wrong and that they could possibly die in space.

Luckily, there were still does brave enough to take this leap of faith, for the sake of their families and the rest of humanity. These brave men and women were the first explorers and the were given a name, Star Riders. People looked at the first Star Riders with awe, respect and hope. The Star Riders soon left the Earth behind with everyone watching on and praying for their success.

While the first Star Riders were gone, humanity continued to advance and improve with the help of feed back and updates from them. Those on Earth started building the first warp gate within the orbit of Mars. It was built that far in case of any accidents that could have lead to dangerous events involving the planet it orbited. Now all they had to do was wait for the Star Riders to return from the other warp gate they were supposed to build on the outskirts of the Alpha Centauri solar system. After they returned, they would then build a space station near the warp gate to act as a resupply point and rest stop for the future space travelers. With the light speed travel of the spaceship, it would only take a little over 6 years to get to the Alpha Centauri solar system, but it would take a few more years for them to finish building the warp gate.

When the Star Riders returned, everyone was ecstatic. They cheered as the Star Riders were shuttled down from their spacecraft and returned to Earth with great news. Soon after, more people were sent into space to build the space stations travel further to build more warp gates. Humanity had even started their colonization of newly discovered planets that could support life and the terraforming of planets that couldn't.

By the 51st century, humanity had mapped out and colonized 22% of the Milky Way galaxy. During this time, humanity had finished colonizing and terraforming all found planets and with all the new room to grow, humanity went through a boom in population growth and scientific discoveries. Star Riders were no longer a necessity, but instead became a luxury job that gave benefits to people for traveling through space and discovering new planets and solar systems. These people were granted dominion over the solar systems they discovered and the planets within. They were given titles of nobility based on the rank of the solar system and the planets found and they were given a choice to be an independent faction within the Federation and have to colonize it themselves with their own funds and materials or become a vassal faction of the Federation and they would receive help with colonizing their solar system.

These Star Riders were able to name the solar system and planets within and even decide what was to become of them. They could turn it into a mining operation for profits, which would make them rich, or they could terraform and develop new land for the rest of humanity to develop on.

But not everything was glitz and glamour. There were accidents and dangers along the way that cost the lives of many Star Riders and civilians. Some planets were just too dangerous to live on when they were first discovered. Some even already had life developing on the surface. Life that was hostile and dangerous. With these discoveries, the Star Riders started shifting into a more militaristic organization than scientific. They were trained and charged with pushing all hostiles back or eliminating them to make way for new settlers.

Another issue, was the distance between planets gave rise to diverging government interests. Each solar system had a leader and council of their own to keep the peace and uphold laws, but as humanity continued to expand, there were of course some bad eggs within the batch. There were even some humans so rotten that they formed private bands of mercenaries. These mercenaries had their own ship and worked for the highest bidder. They were hired to find and take planets for the paying party's own use. This caused all kinds of corruption and illegal acts to happen of these planets.

In light of the acts being committed by the corrupt, the Star Riders and the group responsible for the expansion of humanity throughout the cosmos, known as the Federation, joined forces and wiped out these mercenaries and corrupt figures. This event was called the Purge and although it aimed to get rid of all the evil known to be out there, there was of course some that slipped through the cracks. These few then went on to become the first space pirates. The Star Riders then became the leading figures in protecting the peace within humanity's range of influence and with the help of other planet leaders, they created the HPA, Humanity Protection Association. This lead to a golden age where humanity throughout the cosmos were united, for the most part.

During the golden age, humans continued to prosper, but soon a new issue arose. Children born on these new planets started exhibiting new and strange abilities. These 'abilities' became known as Talents. These Talents allowed them to do wonderous thing, but all of them seemed to also follow a set of rules or laws that determined what their Talent was going to be and how it was supposed to be used. After thorough examination of the children and their environments, scientists discovered that the new planets they were living on possessed a strange energy that flowed throughout the planet's atmosphere. This energy gave way for the children born on it to mutate or evolve to possess physical changes within their bodies that allowed them to harness this energy and use it to empower and improve their Talents. It was then noticed that those who gained a Talent on the same planet had similar abilities, while those born on different planets had vastly different abilities. This led to the study of this energy and allowed humans to figure out that the planets' energy determined what Talents those who are born on it would get and each planet had it's own set of laws that would allow one to progress and evolve their Talents to greater heights. It was also determined that not every planet had a category of special energy.

These findings caused the HPA to develop a list and classification for the planets and the Talents they grant. This also caused many people on planets without that special energy to be envious of those with that energy. The HPA had to put forth a new law that required people to have a permit to migrate from one planet to another and depending on the population density, some planets would not be available for migration. This was also another boon for the Star Rider profession cause this meant that as long as a Star Rider discovered a planet, they could have their family migrate to that planet in hopes of the planet having that special energy and that their future descendants could be born with Talents. These Talents allowed humanity to obtain another boon that lead to the fast advancement of everything from technology to medicine. The abilities were very much like magic and so the special energy was named Mana.

In the current era of the AE calendar, a Star Rider known as Alexander Xenos discovered a new solar system with planets that contained mana. As the one to discover it, the solar system and capital planet was named Xenos. He moved his family, which consisted of his parents, wife and her parents, over. He then stayed on the planet with them while it was being colonized. Once the colonization was complete and the new migrators settled in, Alexander worked with the planet council to put the standardized galactic law in place. With everything settled, he then tried for a child with his wife. His wife was named Cybele Cassiopeia and she was an ex-Star Rider that hand gotten injured during her service. This injury cause her to have trouble getting pregnant and was warned by doctors that her pregnancy would be difficult and the birth would be dangerous, but still she tried.

[Author's note: AE stands for After Earth and due to the calendar changing, you won't find out what century it is during the story, so I'll add it here so that anyone who wants to know, will. Right now, it would be the 91st century, based off of the old Earth calendar]

It took a few years, but finally, she was pregnant. During the months she was pregnant, Alexander had to keep leaving the planet in order to defend it from pirates and raiders. He still made sure to be there for the birth of his first child and in order to support his wife during the difficult birth. After a few arduous hours the baby was born. It was a boy.

Sadly, before the could rejoice in the boy's birth or give him a proper check up, Cybele heart rate started flatlining. The doctors quickly handed the baby to a nurse and called for more staff as they tried to resuscitate the mother. Luckily she managed to pull through and would live to see another day. Sadly, their relief was too soon. A nurse quickly ran into the room to inform the doctors of the complications that the baby was facing.

It turns out that the boy was born with a disease that the doctors had never seen before and had to quarantine him while they tried to find out what the disease was while preserving the baby's life. In the end, the disease was found to be none contagious and he was let out of quarantine and was reunited with his mother and father. They couldn't be happier to get their baby back, but when the doctor told them the bad news, they couldn't help but to break out in tears.

It turned out that while the disease was not contagious, it would slowly eat away at the child's body and cause him to have a short life span. They could lengthen it by replacing his body parts later with robotics and cybernetics, but they more they replaced the less likely that he'll ever awaken a Talent.

Within the few years they were on this planet, there were already kids being born and some who had already awakened their Talents. By the time the boy reaches the age to awaken a Talent, the planet's medical procedures should have advanced some to give them hope of saving their son and that was the only ray of hope they had as they looked down at this new bundle of joy that knew not of his ill fate.

As the day neared its end, the couple realized that with all the ups and downs, they hadn't named their son yet. After a couple hours of debating, they decided on a name. His name was Cadmus Xenos and this is his story.