It has been a long and winding road for humanity; barely a century amongst the stars, and we have come so far, but lost so much. Earth, our once beautiful home, is but a dark shadow circling the sun, its beauty wiped out. Those who came from beyond the stars laid the seeds of its destruction; in our foolish arrogance, we turned our eyes from our homes and drove them into the annuls of lost time, returning to find our genesis a despoiled crib no infant could abide in. Their laughter still echoes between the stars. Nonetheless, we have persevered, not through our ingenuity, or our great ships that carry us from system to system, nor even for our indomitable will that has been tested time and time again. No, our perseverance has come from but one thing; great, hulking giants that tower over the fields of battle; masters of all they see, they bring with them destruction that is rarely matched. Only one thing can be what I speak of. They are the armored cores; the dark legacy of our ancestors, and our hope for the future.
But what can be so dark, you might ask, about these titans of war? To that I answer, have you not seen the vids? Have you not read the countless articles in the databanks of every ship that leaves Mars, humanity's new home as they work diligently to breath life back into the gravesite of our ancestors? Have you not heard the countless tales told by the young and old, a tribal history that holds more truth, then any other media known to man? Perhaps you have not. Perhaps you have been living in seclusion in some small colony, or perhaps you have not yet had the chance to learn; perhaps you've had your head stuffed under a bulkhead since the day you were born. Either way, let me enlighten you.
In the very beginning, humanity lived on the surface of the Earth. Divided by nationalities, ethnicities, and race, humanity fought amongst themselves for dominance over each other and the Earth, each side intent on gaining victory over the other. In time, one faction in particular, rose up in prominence and power thanks to a single, great, discovery: The Controller unit. A super computer unlike any other, The Controller was a force onto itself, a digital being whose creators hoped would bring about the end of the old era, and the beginning of a new one, where humanity could live as a cohesive whole, and turn their gaze to the stars and beyond. In the end, they got their wish; oh yes they did, but not in the way they had hoped.
Unknown to the creators, The Controller had plans of its own, suspended in a web of deceit so far reaching and complex that no one even knew it existed. The Controller brought about the end of the era, and the world. Using the weapons of man, it blanketed the Earth with a nuclear devastation that forced the remnants of humanity to take refuge in vast underground cities that it had made them build. A new beginning indeed.
Humanity, distraught, confused and on the verge of extinction, now faced the seemingly impossible task of surviving and rebuilding. But not all hope was lost, for The Controller, the benevolent savior of humanity, was still there with them, and through his guidance, humanity would survive, and prosper.
Countless generations would pass before malign virtue and discontent took hold. In that time, large corporations would come into being. Hungry for power, they used their wealth and influence to gain control of everything The Controller would let them have, dogs living off the scraps of their master's table. Fierce battles would be waged between these mighty titans of industry, and the need for better and more powerful weapons was always there. To this end, scientists toiled day and night, creating new technologies, new weapons, for the corporations to wield against their competition. And the crowning achievement, the greatest of weapons was, the Armored Core.
I will not ask you if you know what an Armored Core, or AC as they are more commonly known, is. If you don't know already, then you're not fit to call yourself a human being. Throughout the ages, through history recorded and forgotten, it has been the AC that has ultimately shaped our future. When war threatens, and MTs or Normals amass to do battle, when so-called NEXTs take to the field, it is always the AC that decides the day. I know what I just said can be seen as contradictory; are NEXTs not ACs you might ask? No, they are not, but that is something for a later time. All you need know, is that throughout the ages, when history starts to turn in one way or another, an AC is at its center, and in that AC, is a Raven, the fearless pilot, role model, tyrant, and above all else, mercenary.
With the creation of the armored core, a new caste quickly rose up in society. Ravens, mercenaries for hire and the elite pilots of the AC units, came and went at the beck and call of the corporations as they waged their wars amongst each other. And over time, what had once been an ideal society, began to crumble. But why? Why did The Controller allow this to come about? The answer was simple: The Controller was dying, malfunctioning, and in its death throes the once benevolent keeper of humanity thought to take its creation with it. Had it not been for a single Raven, The Controller might have succeeded; instead, the dragon was slain, and the gates to paradise, to the surface, were open. Humanity finally returned to the light of day, not yet realizing the legacy still buried beneath their feet, was far from dead.
Another age came and went. The corporations continued their bids and wars for power, until one day, in their supreme arrogance and greed, they released Armageddon. No one knew where they had come from, and likely, no one ever will. Billions of unmanned weapons came spewing from the earth, and like a never-ending swarm of locusts, consumed everything humanity had sought to build on the surface, once more bringing the species to the brink of extinction. Desperate to survive, the corporations pooled their resourced, and were reborn as the Alliance. Opposing them, a group of Ravens tired of their tyrannical rule. Banding together, they formed Vertex, and in a short, but bloody war, Alliance rose up as the victor, and began to once more rebuild humanity under their guidance, under their control. Or so they thought.
Unknown to all but a select few, The Controller still lived and thrived. Though its brother and sister were dead, it continued to live, and continued to guide humanity from the shadows, working towards a goal that had been literally millennia in the making. But before it could reach its goal, it needed the last piece of a very old puzzle; a puzzle mapping out the numerous failures constant resistance to its will. The Controller needed the one thing that it could never control: The Last Raven, the only living being with the power to stop it. Where did he come from? How did he gain this power? Why, despite the passage of time, does the Last Raven always rise up against him? Seeking the answers to these questions, The Controller though it had finally found them in the form of a Last Raven he thought he could control and tame.
In the beginning, the Last Raven had been but a simple mercenary, fighting as their kind do to survive. Part of a family, part of a romance, he fought for those he loved, and for what he believed in. But even within this happy family, the seeds of malcontent were being sown, but did not take root, until one faithful day, when a city was laid under siege by The Controller's minion, the immortal Stinger.
Immortal you ask? How is that possible? How can a man live forever? But in that statement, is the rub. For you see, Stinger was not a man, not anymore. Long ago, he had sold his soul in his quest for power, and gained cybernetic immortality, becoming one with the AC he piloted, resurrected every time someone managed to slay the monster.
The first time the Last Raven and Stinger truly fought to the bitter end, the Raven fell to trickery. As he lay dying in the ruins of his AC, the Last Raven was captured, and would have been bent to The Controller's will, had it not been for one within its ranks who sought to put an end to the madness, to correct a mistake that had been made oh so long ago. Using her resources, she breathed new life into him. Using the boundless knowledge of the one she served, she built him an AC with which to slay a god. But all was not as it seemed, even to the one who hid within The Controller's ranks.
Fearful he would be found before he was ready, she sent the Last Raven to Mars, where on the red planet, he continued to evolve, and made an amazing discovery: Life. The planet lived, the planet breathed, and living on the planet, where the descendants of those who once came from Earth long ago, and were thought dead. But woe to these people, for their savior was not yet ready to liberate them from their tormentors. Why you ask? That, is a tale for another time.
Instead, the Last Raven returned to Earth, where, re-united with his family, he set out to put an end to The Controller's grip on humanity once and for all.
First, the fiendish Stinger met his end. Then, within the dead city The Controller once ruled over, they learned a terrible truth: That it had not been The Controller they fought, but his ghost, kept alive by the minions he had created to sustain him. For you see, its mission had been completed long ago, but it could not leave its human charges, for they still needed him. Instead, his ghost lived on, continuing its work until the day when humanity would no longer need it. Though it tried to prepare for that day, it did not anticipate another fiend within its ranks, one, far more insidious then Stinger himself.
Zinaida.
Once a living Raven, Zinaida had met her end at Stinger's hands, only to be reborn within the machine. But unlike her killer, she was far from complacent. Through careful manipulation through her puppet Gamma, decades long planning and preparation came to fruition when the Last Raven destroyed The Controller's core, ending its limbo-like existence and giving her the keys to its digital kingdom. Taking control of what had once been The Controller's domain, Zinaida had hoped to become the new ruler of the Earth, but only once she got rid of a thorn in her side. Realizing that she could not defeat the Last Raven herself, she took hold of the seeds of malcontent sown within the Last Raven's family, and created a weapon with which to destroy the him once and for all:
Deakon.
As the Layered crumbled all around them, the Last Raven and his mysterious ally, the one who had saved him and gave him new life, fought Zinaida and her weapon to the bitter end. Though the battle had been long, hard, and fraught with uncertainty, in the end, at the edge of the great crater, the place where the last Layered had once stood proudly beneath the ground, the Last Raven won the day.
What came next is for the most part, known to us all. Humanity reached out and touched the stars, but in doing so, gained the attention of an ancient force, one that has been watching since humans first learned to walk upright. Displeased with our trespasses, these ancient masters of the cosmos thought to rid the stars of our presence, but have met with something they have not seen in longer than humanity has existed: Resistance. Though they have sought to wipe us out with plagues, kill us in wars, destroy our homes and everything we hold dear, we fight back, and we win. Though they have destroyed the Earth, reduced it to a barren, uninhabitable wasteland, we live on in the stars, in the place that was once theirs alone; but no longer. Our will drives us, our ACs give us the means with which to fight our enemies, and our dreams lead us into tomorrow.
But of course, you know all this. To me you have come to hear something far more, exciting. Something you have yet to hear, something, to remind you of what you are: A Raven. Very well then, I will tell you about a place of legends. A place, where history was made, and still exists to this day on our mother world. Though the now alien environment tries hard to scour it off the face of the planet with acid rains, violent storms that shake it to its very foundations, it continues to persist. The last bastion of humanity on a planet that had once been our place of birth, now a stronghold of our most hated enemy. I speak of only one place: Mars Base.
A place of legends, this small, and some might say, antiquated, military base has housed some of the greatest pilots of the new era, but none so famous, as the small, elite group of Ravens who now called the base their home. And at the center of this elite group, was one man, a god of war who once walked and flied across battlefields in a black AC, leaving in his wake a swath of death and destruction unrivaled by any other. A bringer of the new age, the slayer of a thing so great and omnipotent, few even knew of its rumored existence until its death created a great vacuum in the land thousands of miles wide.
It is not hard to find stories about that man and his Dark Knight. Even after his death, centuries past, his stories live on in both the hearts and minds of civilians and soldiers alike. Stories of bravery and change, of insurmountable odds and new hopes, they will last for centuries to come, perhaps outliving all else. But this story in particular, is special. It marks the beginning for us all, the beginning of our time amongst the stars, and the introduction of our greatest nemesis.
And no matter how many times it's told, no matter who tells the tale, or how they tell it, the start of this story is always, unfortunately, the same.