first famine

As depletion of food stores quickly outpaced progress on agricultural terraforming, early settlers of the archipelago relied heavily on their limited numbers of molecular printers for food production. Using the printers for food production naturally lowered their capacity to support terraforming, further slowing progress and marking the start of a “graveyard spiral” open_in_new of food resources that would eventually kill hundreds and result in a massive technological backslide.

Constant use with what were likely poorly optimized and/or non-standard food schematics began to take a toll on the delicate machinery. Lacking the resources to appropriately maintain the printers and unable to dedicate critical print time to manufacturing replacement parts, the early settlers began cannibalizing other printers to keep a smaller and smaller subset limping along. Eventually, strict food rationing was implemented and access to the printers became tightly controlled, measures which slowed terraforming progress even further as the population verged on starvation. Tensions rose along with the death toll, with intergroup conflict churning to often-violent crescendos as splintered factions struggled over access to the remaining printers. The shared vision of an agricultural future seemed forgotten.

Driven by desperation, some ventured into the unknown expanse of the tidelands in search of a supply drop that was believed to have missed its target when the islands were first being seeded. Through often-deadly trial and error they learned to navigate the inhospitable environment and forage its resources. This first generation of tidal nomads forged an alliance between two progressive factions and combined were able to wrest control of one of the molecular printers. By leveraging the resources of the tidelands, they were able to prioritize using the printer to reinvigorate the agricultural terraforming process in the hopes of creating a sustainable long-term solution.

Though this marked the beginning of a long, difficult, and winding road to stability, much had been lost. A huge amount of institutional knowledge vanished with the death of specialized workers. Non-essential technologies had been repurposed to support more critical needs or had decayed due to lack on maintenance, especially methods of digital information access. In response, what knowledge and information did survive was increasingly preserved through oral tradition or exported to physical mediums, including the book of the cadent world and the earliest concepts for what would become the long road.