The Unmooring

The Unmooring is the historical designation for the tumultuous, multi-generational period in the final centuries of Old Earth that precipitated the Great Decline and ultimately led to the launch of the Six Expeditions. The term refers to humanity’s collective psyche becoming “unmoored” from the foundational anchors of religion, biology, and philosophy that had defined the species for millennia.

This era was characterized by violent ideological conflict, widespread social collapse, and profound scientific breakthroughs, culminating in the schism that fractured humanity and set its course for the stars.

The definitive start of The Unmooring was the scientifically verified emergence of true telepathy in two separate, unrelated individuals, now known in Accord historical texts as the First Progenitors (often referred to in apocryphal, pre-Accord texts as “Adam” and “Eve”).

The existence of these individuals was not a miracle; it was a biological fact that shattered the bedrock of human understanding.

• Religious Collapse: Established global religions were thrown into chaos. Some sects decried the telepaths as demonic entities (leading to the pejorative term “Children of Apollyon”), while others attempted to incorporate them as prophets or divine messengers, leading to violent internal schisms. For many, the material proof of this next evolutionary step simply rendered their faith obsolete, leading to mass crises of belief.
• Scientific Revolution: The Progenitors became the focal point of a massive scientific renaissance. By allowing their minds to be studied and linked with advanced computational systems, they unlocked new realms of theoretical physics, leading directly to the development of the first stable Quantum Drives and the science of Life-Span Extension.

The Emergence irrevocably split the remaining global powers into two primary, warring factions:

1. The Ascendants: A global coalition of scientists, futurists, and secular governments who saw the Progenitors as the key to humanity’s future. They championed the new technologies of life extension, genetic engineering, and interstellar travel as the only logical path forward for a species on a dying planet. This faction would form the intellectual and philosophical core of the future Unity Accord.
2. The Traditionalists: A loose but massive alliance of religious fundamentalists, anti-transhumanist movements, and conservative states who saw the Ascendants’ work as an abomination. They believed that altering the “sacred” human form and lifespan was a sin against nature and god. Their resistance was not just philosophical; it was violent, often targeting universities, data centers, and research labs in an attempt to halt the advance of the new science.

After decades of brutal, low-grade ideological warfare that eroded Earth’s remaining social structures, the Ascendants came to a stark conclusion: Old Earth was a lost cause. The planet was too mired in its own fractured beliefs to ever be truly unified.

The final act of The Unmooring was therefore not a military victory, but a great Exodus. The Ascendants pooled their resources, constructed the great “Petal” Arks, and launched the Six Expeditions. They chose to abandon their home world and the wars of their past to build a new civilization in the sterile, logical certainty of deep space, founded on the principle that such chaotic, belief-based conflict must never be allowed to threaten humanity’s survival again.