Since there's not enough fanfiction for Pierce Brown's Red Rising trilogy, I'm doing what I can to rectify that. While I was working through story ideas in my head, I was struck by the idea of what Diana would be doing if she were around in that era, thinking of the lore for The Dark Revolt that was teased in the preview chapters for Iron Gold. And thus, this story was born. Just to clarify things so nobody gets confused, none of the other DC Extended Universe movies besides Wonder Woman have happened in this story. She met Batman a few times in 2016, but she didn't come out of retirement until a few years after The Conquering.
Prologue:
Kuthul
Bridge
240 P.C.E.
The woman looked out at the stars as she stood on the bridge of her ship. In the twisting corridors of the metal ship, towering giants huddled in massive staterooms as they comforted their terrified children, while out in the darkness of space, Olympic Knights led extermination squads to cull those who had dared to rebel against the rule of the Golds. Only three ships full of Obsidians had escaped the carnage. Their king, Kuthul, had been killed in a brutal surprise attack that shattered their revolt before they could gain the momentum needed to win. The king's lover Thalia managed to rally the survivors to flee beyond Pluto's orbit. After four months, they had finally made it to the safety of the Kuiper belt.
The woman known as Thalia did not celebrate, however. Tears slid down her cheeks as she mourned what she had lost, and how far humanity had fallen. After centuries of hiding, she had come out of retirement in an effort to stop this cruel regime before it could begin, but it had all been in vain. When she realized she could not prevent the Hierarchy of Color, she spent the next three centuries fermenting rebellion in the hopes that if enough people rose up in protest of this oppressive way of life, the abominable system could be defeated before it could truly take root in civilization. And even beyond mankind's reach, they were still not safe. Gold would continue hunting them to crush all resistance.
Already, she heard reports over the ship's pirated HC channels that the Sovereign had decreed that the Obsidians would be stripped of their technology and left on the poles of planets, given the religion of the Norse, and told that Golds were gods. As an actual goddes herself, she would have laughed at mankind's hubris if it wasn't such a bitter reminder that billions of humans would continue to live as slaves for generations to come. The thought broke her heart, but her resolve did not waver. Gold may have attributed the revolt to her late lover alone, but everyone on this ship knew better, recognizing her as the true power behind what news reports were calling "The Dark Revolt" even while the government painted her role as nothing more than Kuthul's consort. It had been centuries since she'd last fallen in love, but even if she had never met Kuthul, she would have organized a rebellion against Gold anyway because that was who she was.
She was Diana, Princess of Themyscira, Daughter of Hypolita, Sister of Ares, Goddess of War. She defended the innocent and fought for justice. She would not be driven into hiding just because she had lost someone she loved. Not again. The failure of her rebellion only made her realize that this hierarchy could not be defeated with swords and guns and starships. It needed to be fundamentally changed and weakened from within. So, she would find a way back to the core, and do whatever she could to alleviate the suffering this caste system created while she determined a way to undermine the power of Gold's rule.
A quick primer on the Red Rising trilogy for those who've never heard of it: In the future, humanity has colonized the entire solar system, but society has been reorganized into a color-coded caste system (The Hierarchy of Color). At the top of the social pyramid are the Golds (the ruling class). Beneath Gold comes Silver (bankers, accountants, and entrepreneurs), Whites (priests/priestesses, and judges), Coppers (lawyers, administrators, and bureaucrats), Blues (pilots, navigators, and astronomers), Yellow (doctors and scientists), Greens (programmers, IT guys, etc.), Violets (artists), Oranges (mechanics and engineers), Grays (soldiers and police officers), Browns (butlers, maids, janitors, secretaries, and other household servants), Obsidians (slave soldiers genetically engineered to be unstoppable killing machines), Pinks (prostitues, massage artists, and anyone whose job involves physical stimulation), and Reds (the worker ants). Each color has marginally more freedom than the one beneath it, but all of them are ultimately slaves to Gold.
The caste system originally began as a system of classifying labor on early space colonization voyages to make sure that no resources were wasted. But eventually, the Golds got tired of paying taxes to Earth, so they conquered humanity's birthplace and turned the labor classification system into a caste system designed to prop up Gold. The main series is begins 736 years after The Conquering, but other aspects of the series lore include The Moon Lords' rebellion, where the Golds ruling the moons of Saturn rebelled against the Sovereign, the elected monarch of humanity in the year 681 P.C.E. (Post-Conquering Era), and The Dark Revolt, where the Obsidian King Kuthul led a failed rebellion against Gold in the late 3rd Century P.C.E.
I'm going to continue this story after I finish my Voltron/Red Rising crossover, but I at least wanted to get the prologue set up.