Other Roads to Hell

Other worlds have suffered a wide
variety of more unusual disasters:
Drexler: “Gray goo” nanomachines
devoured civilization (and the first
scout).
Leviathan: Humanity is fighting a
losing battle against an undersea civi-
lization.
Steel: Mankind developed sapient
machines in the 2010s. These rose up
and exterminated most of humanity.
Now it is 2026: a war-ravaged, post-
apocalyptic Earth is divided into sev-
eral Zones, ruled by rival artificial
intelligences . . . the Zone Minds. Only
a few pockets of human resistance
remain. Worse, the arms race between
rival Zones is spurring rapid techno-
logical development (they’re now
TL9). Centrum and Infinity both fear
that at least one AI is researching
parachronic technology, and are (sep-
arately) debating whether to secretly
assist the human resistance forces.