Sept 19 2023 edit : Fixed wording, punctuation, grammar

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The end of the Age of Sails came slowly at first, a creeping end that some could see, but did not want to admit was coming. In 1873 HMS Devastation, a Battleship of metal and without sails, marked the official end of the age; though it had been on a decline and dead for many years before hand as Ironclads skirted the water and piracy was cracked down upon.

For many, the end of the age of sails marked the end of the Golden Age of Piracy as well, though historians tell of it having ended many decades before in the mid 1700's, while for others it was a slow and painful crawl into a time without the romance of discovery. Without the adventure of discovering what was new around them.

This would be a pattern that would last for many, many years as humanity began to grow. Burning coal engines replaced sails, oil and gas replaced coal. Coffins of steel replaced elegant ships of wood and craftsmanship, with the engines of steel being reclaimed to be taken and replaced by boats of shaped plastic and other materials just as heartless. Compounds of chemical replaced simple black powder, and in the place of beautifully handmade pistols and artisan rifles came automatic weapons of war that took nothing to kill with, ending swathes of lives without work or effort.

An age of discovery and exploration with a golden age of piracy within it, and those within the glorious age of sails, lost to history and taken by the age of steel, the age of cowboys and Indians, an age of seemingly never-ending wars of politics and hatred, and then a war of information and subterfuge. And then finally, an age where humanity propelled themselves to the stars by strapping explosives to their backsides and soaring barely controlled skywards.

Some saw the space race as a chance for humanity to reclaim its adventure, to find again the mystery and mystique of uncovering what was never yet known, but even it too faltered like the ages before it that came after the age of sails. Humanity faltered, slowed, and stagnated once again. Some would claim otherwise, that technology kept moving forward brining things such a solar power, phones, and computers into existence, that they would improve humanity. To some extent they did, but humanities stagnation was seen only by a fair small few. Without something to truly strive for, only the imagination was left, and with only the imagination, and no way to claim what was imagined, stagnation took hold.

At least until the year 2147, nearly 500 years after the Golden age of Piracy and 400 years since the end of the age of sails, when humans upon the small scientific mars research station discovered what none had expected, but everyone had hoped.

The ruins of a civilization not human. Aliens.

The ruins were old, hundreds of thousands, if not possibly millions of years old, and their discovery sparked interest in nearly all of humanity. Research was called for, mission was drafted, and hundreds of people from every nation, every state upon the earth moved as one to work together to find the truth, to plumb the ruins depths.

It took months to excavate them upon the barren and unlivable rocks of mars, and once done the small ruins showed only a map of the red planet, revealing other locations of interest that were then split up and found in short order. And over the next years they were slowly but surely unearthed, and on the fourth year, the largest of the marked points was finally broken into and within it real answers were finally found.

It held three things of note to humanity. The first was a story, a tale of the alien races existence, their lives, and that their end was brought about by an unknown foe from beyond their realms. The second was the discovery of an element that could, when used properly, effect how things were affected by gravity, and could even increase or lower somethings mass. The information on how to utilize this element was also given, as was a modest amount of the resource itself. The third thing was a claim of words and warning. It said that using only this element gave the aliens, now called Protheans, a weakness that the unknown assailants used to destroy them. It went on to explain that, perhaps if their own race has not fully integrated to the technology left behind to them, that they could have learned of other technologies, could have had a chance to survive on their own terms instead of those of bringers of death from beyond.

And with that warning, was yet another set of coordinates upon mars, far in the depths of the Valles Marineris, a huge canyon larger than any on earth.

The scientists hunted for these new coordinates, not yet sending the information back to earth, worried about the warning left by a race that had seemed to watch them in their early life as sentient beings. And as another year passed, they found the coordinates within the valley, and what was awaiting them. A pyramid of metal buried beneath stone, holding a single computer like archive.

The Archive offered an alternative to the technology the alien's birthed their civilization with. Radiograms, energy scans, Scientifics theorems, all pointing to a technology, states of being that did not exist as humans had known it.

Instead of using this new element, dubbed Element Zero by the aliens that came before, to manipulate mass or gravity, this archive held the potential to instead harness the flow of the energy of the universe itself that flowed and moved through the galaxy as it was.

Polarons, Antimatter, solar winds, celestial currents, lists of matters and forces yet not understood and so foreign, yet so similar to humanities past.

They brought the information back to the world, and it became clear as both technologies, as both veins of discovery were looked into, that one could not exist beside the other.

Humanity had to make a choice.

The technology accepted by those that came before them and who died to an unknown threat, or a technology even the aliens of old did not understand.

Element Zero or the Celestial Currents.

Biotics, or Polarons and Antimatter.

FTL powered by reduction of mass and great alien gateways, or by sailing the Solar winds.

That which was already understood by others, or that which was utterly unknown.

Humanity had to make a choice that would forever shape their futures, and humanity, most of whom had forgotten what adventure and discovery really were, chose the option that could give them a chance at survival in the far flung future.

For adventure was calling, and who were they to deny it.

It took almost another thirteen years before the new technology truly could be used and called somewhat safe, and another two years later, humanity was pushing further and further out from their home of earth with sails of light and iridescence at their sides.

And at the front of this sudden influx of adventure stood one man, who in the depths of space stood upon the bow of his first ship in centuries, looking as perfectly at home as a bird in a tree, and smiled as he spoke.

"Now, it may be unseen, but bring me that Horizon!"