BOT WAR - UNIVERSE
Creator Notes – Bot War Lore
Sep
I thought I would use this blog post to write a quick overview of the BotWar lore as it stands now. I will try to be as brief as possible, as always time is a rare commodity these days. Here we go –
Preface
First off the Bot War universe is not set in our reality, it is set in an alternative reality. There are many close similarities with our reality but not all. Many similar things are called different names for example. So assuming this reality is automatically in the Bot War universe may not work from a lore perspective.
It helps to understand that “The Bot War” is actually not one war. It is the meeting point of a few conflicts that have been millennia in the making. These conflicts intertwine and overlap making it sometimes difficult to know which came from where.
The Story So Far…
The conflict that started the BotWar is referred to in BotWar lore as the first Atlantican war. This war was instigated by the current ruler of Atlantica, the megalomaniacal King Gills. The war was predominantly a surprise attack on most coastal human cities on the globe but the main part of the attack was at The Democracy (BotWar equivalent to a 1980s USA). Being a complete surprise attack from the sea by creatures humanity didn’t even know existed meant that The Democracy lost almost every battle and retreated further and further inland. Many of these victories were aided by the corrupt leadership in place. This leadership was actually part of a global cult that had been around for thousands of years going right back to the elemental wars. On the eve of The Democracy’s final defeat, an event heralded the doom of King Gills, just like many thousands of years before. A burning spaceship crashed into the Democracy lines and giant beings known as Valiants emerged. The Valiants made an alliance with the humans and both pushed back King Gills into the sea. They then uncovered the shadowy organisation known as COILS and its widely distributed snake cult and purged them from Democracy society. Many COILS agents fled south across the border as COILS had grown into a huge global company with holdings and embassies on nearly every country on Earth. To this current day, agents from both The Democracy and Valiants forces hunt down COILS activities in and around the Democracy.
It turns out that COILS was aware of the incoming Atlantican invasion and had tried to manipulate King Gills instead of preparing defences. This is because ultimately COILS has been consorting with entities not of Earth. Entities that have promised that humanity can be their own gods. This had been communicated to via the portal research facility deep in the Democracy desert. And of course the entity is none other than Galaxy, leader of the Deceivers. The Deceivers were former Valiants that rebelled against the One and made war in the spiritual realm. Galaxy wished to replace the One as the ultimate power in the universe. A third of the Valiants flocked to his banner. The rebellion, in its pride and arrogance was defeated quickly by Valiant forces led by Ducal, mightiest of the One’s generals. The rebels were imprisoned in a dimensional prison and sent to the out reaches of the spirit realm for eternity. But somewhere something went wrong and the prison crashed into the physical realm. That something was an experimental laser fired from the Democracy’s enemies called the Red Star Nation. This laser temporarily ripped through the barrier between real space and spiritual space allowing the prison to pass through. A rescue mission was assembled by Ducal to return the prison to spiritual space but the rescue mission and the prison collided and both crashed to Earth. The Valiants ship was split into parts with the main part arriving to make the aforementioned alliance.
The Deceivers prison remained intact and crashed deep in the inhospitable forest regions of the Democracy. Two research parties quickly were sent to the crash site. The first to arrive was William Starr and his team, the billionaire scientist was an advanced technology expert. The other team to arrive was one from COILS labs, led by William Starrs ex research partner nicknamed Dr Mindtwist. What happened in the forest is unknown because of the Atlantican War, but William Starr and his team never returned from the forest and the prison was shipped in secrecy to a secret COILS lab location.
This led to a nightmare scenario in which COILS scientists allowed an imprisoned Deceiver called Malicon to escape. Malicon killed every living human in the facility except one and managed to free the remain Deceiver codes into the Ether. The one human that escaped was a girl named Candy who only escaped because she was dressed in a bear suit which confused Malicon’s sensors. Candy went on to join Special Branch, an elite team of humans in powerful battle vehicles. The Team is led by William Starr’s son, Max Starr and operates alongside the Democracy forces. In the Ether, the Deceivers were able to sap the morale of the human defenders in the Atlantican war which contributed to Atlantica’s victories. However, the Deceivers also found that they were not alone in the Ether and were attacked and consumed by the 3 elemental gods imprisoned their thousands of years before. This smorgasbord of codes empowered the elemental gods and they split parts of their own code to live like a parasite on select Deceivers. These Deceivers could then join together to form a body just powerful enough to receive the consciousness of the elemental for short periods of time allowing them to be physical once again. Malicon constructed a factory from the now empty COILS lab and began downloading Deceivers into new physical bodies.
The first to be downloaded was Megatyrant. Megatyrant was a general in the Valiant war and upon entering the physical realm claimed leadership over all Deceivers because Galaxy remained imprisoned in a special more powerful prison that could not be opened without a special key. Megatyrant claimed to search for the key but had no intention of doing so. It was during Megatyrant’s reign that the Deceivers discovered the full price of their rebellion. Without the One’s cleansing influence on their codes, small impurities started to manifest themselves. Soon, more and more Deceivers started manifesting errors. These errors robbed the Deceiver of freewill and turned them into mindless beasts. In an attempt to research this, Megatyrant chose one of his most capable generals and tortured her repeatedly until she lost her mind and became something not Deceiver and yet not mindless beast. She became the Queen of the Infesters, a new force to be reckoned with. The Queen was able to somehow control the beasts and give them purpose, making the Infesters both a terrible force and a terrible fate.
As the Deceivers numbers grew, Malicon also downloaded Electroshock, an ambitious Deceiver who tried to usurp Megatyrant’s leadership. Electroshock failed although still was elevated to tyrant status. Fleeing to Earth’s Moon, Electrotyrant and his small band tried to establish a base where Electrotyrant could perfect his drone technology. This base was eventually attacked and destroyed by the Seven Sins. The Seven Sins are an inner circle of Deceivers that served Galaxy. Kind of like a Deceiver secret police. Utterly loyal to Galaxy they are rumoured to each possess a tiny part of Galaxy’s own code. With the Moonbase destroyed and Megatyrant also brought to heal the Deceivers enjoyed a brief period of united purpose under Narcitron the head Sin. Narcitron was the only Deceiver permitted to communicate with Galaxy and the Deceivers searched for the key relentlessly. Megatyrant had established various bases and commanders and these were used to widen the search. But true to form as the war grew Narcitron’s grip loosened and Electrotyrant once again rebelled and allying himself with a human called Professor Skew, he perfected his drone soldiers. Manufacturing so many quickly with the human’s help Electrotyrant became much riskier to attack from the Sins. Professor Skew was of course a robotics expert and assistant to Dr Mindtwist and is currently working in a secret COILS lab under Motor City in the Democracy. In truth Professor Skew was ordered to help Electrotyrant as a way of keeping the Deceivers distracted from their search for the key.
————
The Elemental war was an event 6000 years in the Earths past when giant beings made of the very elements declared themselves gods and divided the world up into 5 pieces. These gods made for themselves their own minions in their own image but also enslaved humanity and ruled over them. two of these gods were benign, almost kind but 3 were cruel. For the 3, having a fifth of the planet was not enough and eventually they warred with each other. The benign gods fled, being weaker than an alliance of the other 3. After the 2 fled, the 3 then warred upon each other, none really getting the upper hand in the conflict. Humanity was in danger of being snuffed out and many called out to whomever would listen. Then 100 Beastlords arrived to do battle with the 3 gods. The Beastlords were messengers of the One. An infinite being of mystery that resides outside of physical reality. The Beastlords only just managed to defeat all 3 gods and banish them to the Ether. The Ether being a dimension between physical and spiritual reality. In the Ether the gods were unable to take physical form nor have any influence on physical reality. The remaining 7 Beastlords separated and went into hiding. During this time the Beastlords became concerned that their low numbers would not prevail should the elemental gods return and set about a plan to create their own children to aid them for the future. However, many of these children went bad, leading to the dark ages of mankind. Which led to the Beastlords repenting of their creation and destroying many of them. Only a few remained loyal to the Beastlords and these were called the Beastnobles. Others fled and hid and others were destroyed. Some committed blasphemy and made pacts with the elemental gods. One such Beastnoble was Darkstone. Darkstone was created by the Beastlord Brontous and rebelled against his creator and worshipped The Destroyer, the elemental god of rock and stone. Darkstone set up a realm in parody of Destroyer’s ancient realm, enslaving the human populace who worshipped him as a god. Brontous attacked and defeated Darkstone, throwing him through a mountaintop to the caves below and crushing him beneath tonnes of rock. Darkstone was rescued by another Beastnoble Spineroc the mother of gators who was neutral. She loved Darkstone and repaired him as much as she could. Within the caves Darkstone found and tapped into one of the Destroyer’s ancient power veins that ran to the core of the planet and this made him grow in stature and power. This forbidden energy also allowed him to call forth Destroyer’s ancient minions the Stonelords. Thus Darkstone high priest of the Destroyer was born.
Continued –
Ok where was I, oh yes the arrival of reinforcements.
With the Bot War expanding new forces arrived from the One. Swordana, current guardian of the spirit gate arrived on Earth with additional Valiant reinforcements. With Swordana came the sword of the gate which incidentally, alongside the portal facility, is the key to Galaxy’s release. Although the Deceivers do not know this yet, only guess. Swordana’s mission is to defend humanity against the non Deceiver threats in the BotWar in order to free up Ducal and his Valiants for the primary mission of recapturing the Deceivers. However it seems that Swordana’s arrival has only aggravated the conflict.
During the Atlantican war the Red Star Nations (1980s USSR/China) were relatively untouched and were contented to see their decades long enemies cease to be a power thinking new alliances may be made with King Gills instead. However, after the Valiant arrival the Red Star went into panic mode. They had nothing that could match the power of the Valiants. As the leadership scrambled to counter this new threat another arrival from space heralded doom for the Red Star. The alien being Gorg had arrived. Gorg is from a species called the Overlords, a gambling race of giant brain like creatures that are masters of mutation. Young Overlords travel the universe looking for genetic material to create the ultimate gladiator and then pit their creations against each other for supremacy. Gorg’s timely arrival on Earth was not the first time. However the second time he returned he landed near the Red Star capital and unleashed his ultimate creation the Squidlorr. A gigantic uncontrollable squid like being of immense power. Squidlorr cut a swathe through Red Star to the sea and disappeared, but in its wake huge shark and lizard kaiju destroyed the Red Star forces. In desperation Red Star commandos stole onto Gorg’s ship and discovered the source of the Kaiju, returning alive with a cannister of Green Ooze. Green Ooze is a potent naturally occurring substance on the Overlords home world, it has a few properties, one of which are being able to seamlessly fuse flesh and metal. Using this green ooze Red Star scientists created the first Cyborg Legionnaires from defeated Red Star soldiers. The new Cyborg Legion halted the Kaiju attack, but the capital remained in Kaiju claws. However further experimentation on dinosaur DNA brought forth the Red Star Dinoborgs. Horrific ancient beasts augmented by cyborg parts. The Dinoborgs pushed back the Kaiju, impressing Gorg. Now Gorg wants the secret of the Dinoborgs for the gladiatorial arena. With their military seriously depleted, the Red Star Nation Cyborg Legions and Dinoborg battalions protect the nation, even pushing back against the long disputed Baronial States.
The Baronial States on the borders of Red Star have no specific faction in the BotWar, but they play a part in a few various factions. The Baronial States are one of COILS largest weapons clients and the location sees a lot of black market bot tech traffic. Also, at a time it attracted Deceiver mercenaries fighting for energy payment. Mercenaries are only possible in a singularity event like that of which an Infester is created. A factory error basically in which the code had not deteriorated so much. Of these the most famous is Blackwheel, a mercenary that had been captured by Gorg for the fighting pits and who escaped. Now the Mercs are hidden somewhere in Motor City.
The Summer Campaign Story
As all these threads come together the summer campaign was a story moving event, in a way. It was during the arrival of Swordana and the schism of Electrotyrant that these events took place. It was discovered that COILS had never left the portal facility and were in fact there in strength. During the battles COILS was never harried from the Portal and have a garrison their too. The DVIA was formed, an investigation team located in Motor City (Some of this narrative is continued in Beat Em Up). The Eagles Veterans, the official Democracy military has been partially rebuilt and is now the primary defence force for the Democracy. The campaign yielded no real change of borders with COILS only losing a little of previous gains in the south and a couple of coastal Democracy cities being liberated from Deceivers. The biggest change was the change to the Valiants force organistion. Seeing Swordana’s White Knights ability to quickly react to multiple threats, Ducal has reorganised the Valiants into 4 specialised battlegroups. The Red Cannoneers specialising in short range firefights, The Green Spectres specialising in covert operations, The Golden Lions being the Valiant priest hood and the Blue Speedsters being the fast response group. Whilst the Valiants still operate across their specialised battlegroups, they are much more effective within their chosen teams.Additionally the summer campaign saw an increase in the frequency of Infester creation amongst the Deceivers and with this, the arrival of the Infester Hivelords. The Hivelords are guessed to be long forgotten Beastnobles who somehow have the ability to attract the minor Infesters to themselves.
I think this is a reasonable summary of the story so far in BotWar. The Faction guides offer a lot more detail for each chosen faction if you wish to really delve into the BotWar lore. The Faction guides are the primary source of lore for the game. They are available HERE
I hope you enjoyed this summary.
Happy Gaming!
