#ttbt2

It all begins with Yggdrasil. You see, though The Ratatosk Express was Odin's magnum opus, it was hardly the only technological advancement that her reign saw.

The Aesir's appetite for colonization could not be sated by Yggdrasil alone. So, they turned their eyes to their nearest system, Avalon. None of the planets orbiting Avalon could support life. Rather than attempting to terrform and create an atmosphere on any of the planets, the Aesir decided to build a giant space station there, one they named Galfridian

Of course, when Yggdrasil fell to The Bifrost, Galfridian lost all contact. Nothing could make it in or out of the old system. Lacking any assistance from its mother system, Galfridian fell to disrepair, violence, and eventually into Avalon itself.

But not all of Galfridian fell. As the station burned, one man was sent far, far away. He would come to a new planet, where his son's prophecy of "The Once and Future King" would prove true.

It was a difficult adjust at first. There were new cultures, new languages. A misunderstanding led to him being given a new name. But the man once known as Arthur didn't mind much. The old one still hurt to hear.

Even without his lovers, he was a natural leader. He rose through the ranks, until he was crowned king. He was able to unite the various factions of his new planet. And then the many planets of his new system, becoming the king of them all. And he was a good king, a wise king. It was even said of him that he was merry.

But, just as he had once nearly killed his lovers for power, the man now known as King Cole was reluctant to loosen his hold over his new galaxy. Even death seemed but a threat to his power. He began looking for ways to extend his life, and once he had succeeded at that, ways to expand his empire.

The longer he lived, the more cruel he became, the more systems he conquered. Much has been said of Snow's rebellion, but she was far from the first to oppose King Cole. Many planets and system fought back against the conquest of this new empire.

Once such rebellion took place not on a planet, but an asteroid belt. An exiled noble by the name of Hereward fought back against the tyrants who had taken over his former planet.

Another was a Confederation of planets, who staged a long war against the invading Imperium. While the two were bitter enemies, they did occasionally unite on the battlefield. Particularly when someone had stolen from them both, as in the case of The Odette and her captain, Siegfried.

Of course, both of these rebellions were unsuccessful. King Cole's empire continued to expand. Up until General White's opposition led to his ultimate defea.

In the wake of the empire, galaxies were left trying to rebuild. Planets had spent millenia under one rule. Without that, ruling factions once again competed for power. Govements battled corporations battled mobs. Well, if you can even call those three different things. But more on that later.

The reign of King Cole, as long as it was, had seen plenty of advancements in technology. Particularly in the field of biomechanics, as pioneered by Gepetto and the doctors Hansel and Gretel. It was these advancements that would inspire Victoria Frankenstien to build her doomed AI. But she was not the only one to be inspired.

Rather than try to make a computer think like a human, other scientists simply put a human brain into a computer itself. At first this was an act of love. A woman by the name of Isis attempted to preserve her husband, Osiris, in digital form.

Isis expanded the technology, allowing for other people to be preserved. She even went further with her experiments, uploading people into new bodies if they wanted to do things like, say, change their gender. Or if they were injured badly enough to need to be moved into a robotic body. As Isis was the inventor of this technology, she was also its arbiter. Often her deals came at a high cost. Those who took them were often looked down upon, shunned by their family, friends, and even their lovers.

Even so, her technology spread. Soon most of the world was stored in bioarchives and digital graves. On one planet, a old artifact, a lute, was found to have a strange interaction with these. It could restore people to life. A man by the name of Octavian ran an institute to study this object. He intended to use it for exploitation, to create a labor force of the dead. He never saw his dream realized, he was stopped by a woman named Aria.

However, his ideas had laid a foundation. A workforce of the dead would be quite useful. With mobs and companies and rulers all still vying for power, there was no shortage of death. And it only made sense really, to put all of that stored data, all those archived minds to use.

And so the Acheron was born.

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I think my history major is showing in this one.

I don't actually headcannon most of this. I kinda prefer the albums to all be their own stories, separated by time and space. But this was so much fun to write, and I think potential connections are very fun to think about. It was definetly the hardest figured how to work in the standalone songs in Tales to Be Told. If you didn't catch it, the part about Isis swapping peoples bodies and putting them in robot ones were connecting to Iphis and Stranger, respectively.

Obviously I did not include any of the Mechanisms' backstory songs. It's fairly well established how those link to the albums. Same reason I didn't include Alice.