Preface: Greetings everyone. This is a story that's based on the Dariusburst series, which is pretty much the period mark of the Darius franchise. Since I am writing this in my wee hours when my usual things are still being worked on, I have to apologize in advance that this won't be updated in a very high speed. And because some of the progressions and plot lines happen rather seperately from one another, some of the chapters will be rather short as a result. However, I do hope that anyone who reads this will have a good time getting introduced to the premise, with or without having prior knowledge of the series. Constructive or affectionate feedback is welcomed, though I can also take criticisms point blank.
Disclaimer : This is a work of fiction based on a digital property of Taito Corporation. The author does not monetize from the writings below and the story is compliant with the clause of Fair Use. Any characters, locations, events which are contained within are entirely fictional and merely coincidental if happened in real life under any form.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...
Or so one would think. We people of Darian descent are fortunate and unfortunate both, in that we were kept alive by a cherished yet forbidden power. With the passage of time, us human brings suffer an increasing risk of being unable to fully comprehend our grave history with our oldest enemies. Our natural predators in the universe - the Belser, are always lying in wait before striking at us in a force so overwhelming that descendants of survivors would feel fear ingrained within their genes.
I am a historian and thus I know the importance of my writings here. It took years for me to fully study the Darian libraries for the most accurate archivings of the past available, and even from just mere texts, I could feel as if there's a Belser fleet in hiding, right above the skies. Thousands of years ago in the age of myths, stood a great kingdom of Amnelia. No physical evidence of its existence remained, though from oral accounts, passed down from one descendant to another and to this very day, it was said to be an empire that achieved a near Utopian state of development.
But such an empire was not without its enemies. If there were none within, then there would be ones without. The king during the time of the great apocalyptic war dubbed the enemies 'Thiima', which were said to be much more dangerous than the Belser we dealt with. I immediately shuddered at the graphic and violent retellings of the strength these 'Thiima' displayed, but I kept my own wits throughout the accounts. Before the king passed away, he managed to produce a crucial system that turned the tide of the entire war: ALL-NOTHING Drive.
And thus, the first pair of Silverhawks were born. Christened by royal blood, prayed upon by Amnelian people, crafted by the empire's greatest minds, and flown by pilots incapable of shouldering the burden of reconstruction, the spacecrafts proceeded to fight back the swarms of 'Thiima' in a strength never possible before. But it was a double edged sword, for the A.N Drive in question was a risky product in itself with outcomes not yet known in its creation. As the name suggests, the A.N Drive tapped into dimensional energies existing between existing matter and non-existing matter, or anti-matter. This herculean task, handled as a mere engine for the Silverhawks, was a reckless move in all respects. One could even say that they were embodiments of a literal all or nothing gamble.
Regardless of the details, the Silverhawks had won the great war and the Amnelia Empire prevailed, but at the cost of Silverhawks themselves and the lives of the pilots in tow. It was said that their last battle was against the flagship of 'Thiima' on its retreating course, and their last known location was where planet Darius would later come to be named. In other words, our ancestors came to settle on a planet they did not even know, and just after the valiant pilots of the first Silverhawks found it. Ever since then, the 'Thiima' were never to be seen again, but in their place, the Belser would attack us later.
Planet Darius was not without its mysteries. It was civilized before the forementioned pilots located it, and there was almost no life. As for what happened to those Silverhawks and the pilots themselves, the widely agreed theory regarding them suggested that the A.N Drive was overworked after a series of battles against the 'Thiima', and as a result, the spacecrafts imploded. A tragic end that would never be repeated by our Darian ancestors in their fight against the Belser and their creation of the next generation of Silverhawks a couple of millenia later.
Their fight against the Belser was so fierce that the once fertile state of the planet was gone. Deemed too barren to support life, they migrated to planets Orga and Vadis later, and our ancestors spreaded out to other star systems on their own. At some points, some of them returned to Darius once it became fertile again, and planet Earth, which was home to the mythical Amnelia Empire whose scientifical progress was ahead of its time. While our most recent battle against the Belser happened only 90 years earlier at planet Earth's system on a relatively smaller scale compared to recorded history, we cannot afford to let down our guard.
We are now cosmic inhabitants of around 3000 star systems and in an age of great prosperity, but we must not forget that each and every time we fought back against the Belser, we would come too close to the verge of extinction. The Belser are not merely gigantic mechanical marine life, created for the sake of appearances. Underneath their armor and firepower lie something living like biological organs, or at the very least, cybernetical equivalents thereof. If our universe is not big enough for both us and Belser, and the Amnelian Empire could not hold them back with their science without significant losses, then we must do our best to keep our youths educated and up to speed regarding science, physics and cosmic aptitude.
I'm wrote this to you, old friend, so that you can understand the significance of the compilations attached to this letter.
Excerpt of Professor Callaway Dinsmark, First Vadis University, written to his friend Professor Eustace Palefoid, Year 1903, 1st of May.