From Last Light to First Spark
Welcome to the Verkalium Project. This is humanity’s second wind: a living storyworld, a growing game, and a frontier where your choices matter.

Sitrep: Earth, Final Century
Food systems staggered. Mineral demand soared. Borders hardened around empty wells and tired soil. In the chaos, a coalition formed—engineers, artists, farmers, and AIs bound by a single vow: carry the best of us forward without dragging the worst along. They called it the Human Reunion. Its mandate funded Industrial Cinq, a blueprint for making almost anything almost anywhere—habitats, tools, even culture itself—so long as we could reach a new shore. The clock ran out. We launched.

The Crossing: Nexia Prime
Our ark was Nexia Prime—a modular, generation-capable vessel with detachable foundries and teaching decks. Children learned ship lore alongside craft skills; adults rotated through “Watches” that kept engines steady and stories alive. AI navigators plotted quiet lanes through deep space, while humans held the veto on values. We called the approach Soft-Boot First: scout, secure food, then scale industry. No planetary strip-start. No repeating history.

We arrived hungry for landfall and ready for restraint.

First Light: The Colony at Verkalium
The planet we found is rich where Earth had grown poor, and poor where Earth had once been kind. Gems and rare alloys are plentiful; calories are hard-won. A hot volcano crowns the north, an icy one breathes at the south, and along the equator a restless rift grinds crystal into the light. Jet streams bend strangely as if the hemispheres keep different time. Beauty, danger—profit, if we’re careful.

We touched down at Nexia Yard, set up bio-domes and seed-foundries, and mapped the Rift with kites and drones. From need, five civil-industrial orders took shape:

Humankind found the planet of Verkalium to be rich and diverse in both minerals and organic life. Crystals and gems of all varieties were found in mines, riverbeds and underwater caverns, and wildlife of all forms grew in abundance. There were “smartplants” that could sense threatening vibrations from people and anuimals, and emit hazardous odors, flying birds and flesh-eating insects, and sea creatures as long as locomatives and vicious as lions.

Before long, humans adapted to life on their new homeworld, taming jungles, exploring ocean depths and learning how to make good use of the abundant minerals Verkalium had to offer. Hostile plant and animal life could be managed; hazardous seas could be navigated. Happiness and hope was everywhere, until…

A child ran back to its caregiver, crying with a story of a dark face it had seen staring out from behind some crates. The adults had paid it no reall attention: just the normal make-believe of children. It was only once a few adults reported similar events that an emergency council meeting declared the discovery of a new threat:

Another sentient race was already here!!