The history of our modern world began long, long, ago, in the Ice Age of what was an unnamed land, where men were entombed in ice, with their big mother watching over them.

The age was named by those living in it, as a reflection of the cold of their world. Although, in their language, it was the Frigid Age. The age of Preservation. In both languages, the one of the past, and that of the present, it also reflected the state of the men that were living in it. *They* were preserved.

But, men were still men, and such was the purpose of the machine named Mater.

She was a static installation of no small size, in fact, she was the creator of the whole society that was the foundation of all the ones that came after it, stretching far and wide across history, to us, here, in the land of Ai’Ren, utterly detached from the land of Ice.

Mater’s purpose, was reflected in her name, which, in their language, meant "Mother", and as can been seen, was one of the words that travelled down to us, pretty cleanly. However, her name in our language, also reflected her purpose. To mate. She was artificial product of the old humans, made to preserve humanity from whatever had come before her, and turned the world into a land of Ice.

While she was granted great intelligence and knowledge, which she passed down to us, as part of her purpose, time, corruption, mutation, and distortion have rendered history moot, even if we could ask her right now.

And the reason can't ask her now, is that she shut down long ago, when her purpose was fulfilled, when she was ensured that we humans could survive without her, but also have the ability to create a copy of her if the need arose.

But that's skipping forward in the story. At the beginning of our new world, she was there, and she created what would become us. She started with the First Few. They have many names, but we'll call them Lif and his Lifthrasir. They were not copies of the old humans, but new humans, made by Mater to life fast, long, and multiply.

Mater created their souls in a world of her creation, basically her Womb, where they learned about the wider world, their purpose and other such things, learning at the fastest pace, while their bodies were being prepared. Those bodies, were, as said, better than that of the old humans, but those improvements were drawn from the strange beings that wandered the ice outside, who shimmered in the sunlight with their diamond skin, and summoned in the moonlight even stranger beings to feast on.

Those "vampires", a name meaning "monsters of the night", appeared to have been created from the corpses of the old humans, which lay under the ice. The vampires said they were created by something called "Pater", meaning "Father" in the old language.

While "Pater" was named like just a male version of Mater, he wasn't. Not exactly.

Mater had captured some vampires, and interrogated them, as they had retained the ability to speak due to their human origins, and they revealed that Pater was their god.

But, even though Pater was a god, and Mater was an artifice, Pater, like Mater, had the goal of creating a society, but his was dedicated to his creations serving him, as a kind of immortal army of worshippers, powering him with their prayers, and possibly serving as an actual army.

However, the most important thing to Mater, was the vampires' prophecy, that, if they had enough worshippers, Pater would arrive to restore the world.

Mater had only one goal, ensure the continuation of humanity, and that they could make a copy of her. In Pater, she believed she had found the fastest way to make it happen. The vampires were human enough, that they would count as humans, to her, and that's what mattered.

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By this point, Mater had been growing Lif and the Lifthrasir for a while, and wanted to stop devoting resources to her womb. Also, she had learned about the vampires' reliance on Pater to create more of them.

Given Mater's ability to make human bodies, provided she had the material, and the vampires' summoning abilities, Mater enacted a plan.

She made human bodies for Lif and the Lifthrasir, enhanced with the supernatural secrets of the vampires, letting them be stronger, faster, and age faster than the old humans.

Although, such improvements were not without their downsides, such as increased skin sensitivity due to enhanced senses, making things like old human towels and clothes, feel rougher than they did in the womb. However, the artificial maids that Mater created out of the non-organic materials she had to work with, were very good with needle and thread, even if metaphorically, making clothing and other goods, suitable for the new humans, along with the classical black and white maid uniform, granting them some magical ability, and wielding magical staves that looked like feather dusters.

Mater's plans were aided by the vampire oracles, who guided the creation of the magical maids, and such, and also, using Mater's fabrication technology, created a line of nanotechnology that allowed female vampires to breed again, by basically transforming them into the new humans.

In further aid of Mater and Pater's plans to repopulate the land, the magical mechanical maids were given wombs of their own, and a compulsion to breed, which could be turned off when no longer needed.

And so, as Mater shut down, as the oracles assured her of the brightness of the future, the age of Ice came to an end.

And the age of Glass began.

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The history of our modern societies began long, long ago, in the Glass Age of what we would call "the Countless Kingdoms", where men were men who had big families and followed other men.

The age was named by those living after it, or possibly during it, as there was no precise time of its end, unlike its start, and reflected the dangerousness of the land, being like walking on glass. Although, it was also known as the Fragil Age, in the old language, as a reflection of the state of society, easily broken, nothing constant, compared to the age of Preservation right before. It was the age of Fragmentation.

But men were still men, making wishes for a better future.

Those wishes made them vulnerable to the seductive promises of Technodyne Technologies, a multiversal shopping network that had a knack for fulfilling wishes. They had sent emissaries to Pater's vampires before, in the Ice Age, hitching a ride with their nightly summons of food, and were fed upon, following Pater's commandments, and also because they were just hungry.

But, after Mater freed vampire society from Pater's grasp, no longer needing him to grow their society, instead breeding them with the new humans and maids, and Mater's technologies provided more food so they would no longer hunger every night, vampire culture changed.

At first, they stuck with worshipping Pater, but the more and more worshippers there were, and the more and more maids were worshipping as well, impatience with Pater grew. How much worship would he need, to restore the world?

With impatience came defiance, and everyone had heard about Technodyne's promises. After all, the emissaries came every night.

The end of subsistence living, gave people free nights to think, and experiment more with the magic available to them, and that included what happened when they prayed.

When they discovered that their magics could not reveal the truth of Pater, while Technodyne allowed free rein to explore their technologies, and free samples as well.

And so, the world fragmented. The ice thawed, through Technodyne Technologies that restored the world, not through the power of Pater.

But, there was no such thing as a free lunch, especially with Technodyne.

As more people began to use their technologies, the constant downsides became apparent. The land that Technodyne restored, while initially appearing to match the world that was in Mater's memory banks, soon revealed large differences, when Technodyne's animals were introduced. While the first generation were the regular birds, fish, insects and things, the second generation revealed massive magical mutations.

Usually, it was an increase in size, but also an increase in intelligence. Mining the ground in locations where Technodyne Technology had been used to restore the land, revealed strange gem deposits, supernaturally warm rubies, supernaturally cool sapphires, and so on.

Such complaints and treasures were provided to the emissaries, known as Terminals, who looked like women of average height, but strange matching hair and eye coloration, such as emerald green, or bright pink.

Their most distinctive feature, however, were their wings. Extending from their backs were four planes of magical force, symmetrical from left to right, with larger ones at the top, and the colors of those wings matched their hair and eyes.

While the world population was fairly numerous, although historians do not have any precise numbers, what was important was that children were still highly valued, and with Terminals basically looking like human women, it was soon discovered that they could breed like them as well.

And with these new children, came a new form of magic, more versatile than any known before, matching the possibilities of the maids, but not requiring long charging times, specialized clothing nor tools. Not restricted in function and time, like the vampires' nightly food summonings, and not as personalized as the vampires' abilities. It was also not as weak as the Terminals’ own very weak elemental magical abilities.

While these new magic children could use the new minerals in Technodyne territory to enhance their magic, they did not need them to do the simplest tricks, and those tricks could also be taught to anyone who had the same type of magic.

In any case, once Technodyne was informed of this new development in their creatures, the provided a solution. They sold multiple methods to remove the monsters, mainly weapons and containment.

And, there were no problems with these solutions, until people started turning the weapons on other people, and exploiting timing the release of monsters from containment, to turn the monsters into weapons.

This created even more chaos in the world, until someone decided to remake Mater for her advice, since she was devoted to keeping humanity alive, while the current state of things, was going against that goal.

Mater began negotiations with Technodyne Technologies, and returned with a new magical item, Kingdom Gems, made to enforce peace and order whereever they were placed.

And so, the Glass Age coalesced into the Gem Age.

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The history of modern globalization began long, long, ago, in the Gem Age of the Gem Kingdoms, where men were valued based on the size of their coffers.

The age was named by the historians of later ages, as the ones of the time were focused on the histories of their own local areas, not the world as a whole. But, the importance of Kingdom Gems was obvious to everyone alive. In the old language, the Gem Age would be called the Gemma Age, which basically means the same thing, but it adds a hint of how the Kingdom Gems were the seeds that kingdoms grew from. The age of Fragmentation settled down into the age of Competition.

But, men were still men, and such was how Hulkegunia rose to dominate the world.

Hulkegunia was the kingdom that ended up dominating the world after the Gem Wars that erupted once Kingdom Gems were made.

While Mater's oracles assured her of humanity's survival again, and she was recreated by a single group, other groups had their own oracles, and didn't want to submit to the group that created the Kingdom Gems.

So, groups across the world, requested Kingdom Gems from Technodyne, and who took the money and delivered, as usual.

Kingdom Gems used magic to monitor the kingdom they were used to found, and Technodyne created a very simple base version of the product, but also had upgrades, that they gave for a cost, to enhance the amount of control and power available for a Kingdom Gem.

And so, the world was sent into competition, and war, but, war was expensive, and it was usually found that exploiting the citizens for products to sell, and going into a slow war of attrition, with precisely made weapons, was cheaper than trying to buy weapons and destroying a competitor with as much brute force as possible.

Rebellion became progressively more and more difficult, until only one kingdom, now an Empire, remained, the Empire of Hulkegunia, whose unbreakable fist was the core of the Diamond Age.

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The history of modern global peace was long, long, ago, in the Diamond Age of the land of Hulkegunia, where men were onto gods with their big guns.

The age was named by those living in it, as a reflection of the heights of their magi-technology. Although, in their language, it was the Adamant Age. In both languages, the one of the past, and that of the present, it also reflected the state of the men that were living in it. *They* were unbreakable. The age of Unbreakablility had been forged from humanity in the fires of Competition.

But, men were still men, and such was the problem of the man named Malleus Alvarez.

He was a travelling gunsmith of no small renown, serving as one of the best in Hulkegunia, and so, he was working for the Gallian Face, Faces being the collections of Facets, a.k.a Kingdoms, that made up the Empire.

But, the important thing was, that Malleus was such a good gunsmith, that he was the *creator* of the big guns that were the foundation of Hulkegunia, and, even though he had trained apprentices, and retired to just doing repairs and maintenance, he was constantly magically messaged with requests for his services, requests coming from royals who wanted to upgrade their arsenal. Meaning all of them, all the time, and since he did repair work for them, he did add in a few upgrades from time to time, just to shut them up.

The quality of his work and strength of his reputation led to his possession of great wealth, but he never got to spend any of it, as he was constantly working, and could only afford the barest of rests, due to quirks of the magic that defined him as a worker of the Empire.

He yearned for the finer things in life, and so strong was his wish, that he drew the attention of the wishgranters at Technodyne Technologies. In Malleus's case, he bought a great quantity of what they called Auxilla-class gynoids, a.k.a the maids of the type that Mater crafted a long, long, long, time ago. But, now also enhanced with chest-cannons, to fit the big gun nature of the modern world, and also provided with blueprints so he could repair and alter his new maids at need.

Those gynoid maids, granted him both freedom from his work, and some of those finer things he was wanting, being beautiful maidens who equaled him in skill and creativity, dressed in the ancient maid fashion.

Technodyne Technologies also sold Malleus a form of better form of immortality. Something called they called "daemon-blood", so his durability would match that of his robotic maids. But, Malleus was surprised when the form that new immortality took, turning him into a diamond-skinned vampire, the kind made by Pater, in the old, old stories. That was not the expected result of the daemonblood, according to Technodyne, especially since it wasn't close to the immortality that the daemonblood had promised, and attached an annoying bloodlust. But, thankfully, for Malleus, Technodyne had a solution that should give him the previously promised immortality, and more. Malleus had caught onto the trend of Technodyne's products, but still bought it anyway, having no better option. And so, on the desolate mountaintop of Mount Ren'Py, Malleus planted a Kingdom Seed, basically an organic version of the Kingdom Gems, which tied his life to that of his new kingdom, and set up the magical Castle Alba. No longer was Malleus drifting from kingdom to kingdom as his jobs took him, he instead had a central office, that were connected to smaller offices set up in the kingdoms he worked in, through techno-magical portals.

Finally, in exchange for monitoring all of Malleus’s upgrades and alterations to his maids and such, Technnodyne gave him a magical endless wallet, with a Black Card of Infinite Credit inside, for immediate access to the wealth of his kingdom, and infinite wealth otherwise. Although, the Black Card had a cooldown before it could be reused, it could be used again. The last thing Malleus received was a strange gift. A magical pumpkin carriage summonable by any Princess of his line.

But, even though the new Kingdom of Albion, promised peace to the surrounding kingdoms, that Malleus was the same worker they always had, and just moved to better accommodations, the real issue was that Albion was not beholden to the Empire of Hulkegunia like all the other kingdoms in the world.

The "Unbreakability" of the Hulkegunian Empire was very effective propaganda, and they worked hard to keep it that way. Each kingdom of the Empire was but a facet of the greater whole. The Emperor exerting total control of every citizen had been achieved in the past, and established his control over the world, but it was an open secret that the Empire didn't have the funds for it anymore.

As with all Empires, a police force of sorts emerged. In this case, it was the Lace, the magical collection of the original Maids of Mater and the women and girls that had the strongest ties to their type of magic, and, as was basically every magic not from Pater and Mater, a result of Technodyne Technologies.

Given all the breeding that had happened from their Maids' creation long, long, long ago, the power was spread across basically every woman in the Empire, so it was really less of a police force, and more of a public order initiative, that just worked really well.

However, Malleus's kingdom had copies of the very first generation of Mater's maids, making them separate from that network. With no information and basically no control over Albion, the kingdoms were freaking out, and didn't trust their oracles saying that things would be alright, as they had learned from history, and were well aware of the fallibility of prophecies of peace and prosperity.

However, they did trust the predictions that told of the ineffectiveness of attempting an assault on Albion.

And so, when Technodyne Technologies offered up a better solution, they jumped at it.

Technodyne offered to banish Malleus, in exchange for rulership over Malleus's old territory, along with peace treaties with the kingdoms, backed by magic.

The Gallian kingdoms readily agreed, even as it put them into enormous debt, but they regarded that as the devil they knew, over the devil they didn't.

With the banishment contract signed, sealed, and delivered, Malleus's kingdom of Albion was now totally separate from the Hulkegunian Empire, and replaced by a large body of water in a crater.

And so, for that Kingdom of Albion, the end of the Diamond Age happened in an instant.

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