The Year is 3476…

My name is Marcus Cassius, archeologist and Minister of Histories at the University of Seleucia on Venus. For five decades it has been my life’s obsession to sift through remnants from a period commonly referred to as the Martian Golden Age. Many a sleepless night have I spent studying damaged data cores, trying to piece together the lives of those who lived over a millennia ago.

It has been 800 years since the collapse of the Martian Principate, the fall of which sent the system into a dark age that spanned nearly seven centuries. And though I could never hope to recapture the fullness and spirit of the Empire at the peak of its glory, it is my wish to breathe some life into those who inhabited it. If nothing else, it is my sincerest wish that the accounts contained within will help paint a picture of the people of the age, the lives they led, and the world they came to call home.