Backstory of the Forgotten Place World

The history of Forgotten Place does not cover or include events from recent real-world history and is a free interpretation by the author.

2004

Astrophysicists record strange black flashes on the Sun. Such solar activity had no noticeable direct effect on Earth, but it caused a stir among astronomers. No one could give an exact origin for the inexplicable black bursts. The flashes appeared as pinpoint black rays that quickly decayed and dissipated under the solar wind. Study was hindered by the fact that the trail of particles from the decaying black flashes disabled satellite sensor arrays.

2011

The black flashes begin to noticeably affect the Earth. British scientists from the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy, led by Jones Davis Wibb, established a clear link between the activity of the strongest black flashes and natural disasters occurring on Earth during the same periods. However, they were unable to get any closer to understanding the nature of the phenomenon. The intensified black flashes, through the trails of particles left after their decay, affected specific bands of longitude. Among the other negative effects identified were:

  • Headaches among people living in areas most exposed to the unknown particles;
  • Malfunctioning electronics;
  • Increased aggression in certain fauna; under especially strong exposure, some species did not survive and died — dissections of toads proved particularly telling, revealing cellular changes incompatible with life, with the brain suffering most severely;
  • Aggressive plant growth in some areas struck by the black flashes.

Meanwhile, the frequency of massive black flashes increased significantly. The particles that made up the black flashes came to be called "phoenix particles."

2012–2016

The flashes begin to cause man-made disasters. On April 14, 2012, the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant fails. 3 of its 6 reactor units begin an uncontrolled power surge. Emergency shutdown systems were disabled, and there was so little time to react that disaster became inevitable. Just 15 minutes after the accident began, a series of deafening explosions occurred, knocking out the remaining reactor units. This became the largest man-made disaster since the Chernobyl incident. The radioactive cloud spread as far as Eastern Europe and the Scandinavian countries; the death toll, ecological damage, and scale of the tragedy were so great that every country rushed to offer aid to Russia.

Soon a clear correlation was found between the activity of the strongest solar flash on record and the timing of the accident. The impossibility of predicting such solar attacks forced humanity to abandon nuclear power almost entirely in the following years. Oil, gas, and coal became increasingly dominant as fuel sources.

By 2015, major powers like the United States had no qualms about subjugating weaker neighbors whose territories were rich in resources that could be used as fuel. Small local wars, cloaked in various justifications, became the new normal. Natural disasters — the extinction of species especially sensitive to phoenix particles, the seizure of entire regions by aggressively spreading fauna — became yet another global problem for humanity.

2017–2023

The exclusion zone directly around the former Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant remained practically inaccessible to any kind of study for a very long time. The black flash that struck this area unexpectedly made things worse. Its power turned out to be so great that, combined with the terrible disaster, it produced inexplicable anomalies that defied physical law. A council of the world's largest nations drew up a plan to seal the plant inside a sarcophagus. In the early years after the accident, such an operation was simply physically impossible, given a scale of disaster far greater than Chernobyl's. But the consequences of inaction threatened an even greater catastrophe. On May 21, 2017, during Operation Coffin, humanity encountered phoenix-particle anomalies for the first time. Zones of unstable physical phenomena destroyed or disabled most of the equipment that attempted to enter the dead zone around the plant. Operation Coffin failed after years of preparation.

In 2019, rumors began surfacing more and more often that mutated animals had been spotted in areas close to the disaster zone. Creatures that were twisted parodies of themselves remained beyond the grasp of the scientific community. Such mutants were only ever caught on camera traps. Scientists begin attempting to study the exclusion zone, finding — alongside mutated life forms — anomalous formations born from unstable anomaly zones. Some of these turn out to be usable as energy sources.

By 2023, humanity was being devoured by multiple crises: dwindling resources, the repeated flaring of local wars, and a rise in both man-made and natural disasters. On September 18, 2022, the cities of the Japanese islands were nearly wiped out entirely, swept away by the strongest tsunami in human history, preceded by anomalous earthquakes.

2027

A fateful year for human civilization, brought to its knees by sheer stupid chance. The world sank into the peak of the stagnation and crisis that had begun back in the 2010s. The political climate had come to resemble outright chaos, with clashes now breaking out between major nations and their coalitions. But it was a matter of chance that became the catalyst for the apocalypse. On December 27, 2027, an unintended launch of nuclear warheads occurs on Chinese territory, triggered by a new, unprecedentedly powerful black flash on the Sun. Its scale was such that the strike hit the entire planet, ignoring the rule of longitude that had previously spared most of humanity. Systems and electronics failed everywhere without exception, and China's disaster was interpreted by the rest of the world as nuclear escalation. This triggered inevitable retaliatory strikes.

2057

30 years since the global catastrophe that erased civilization as it was known. The surroundings of the small town of Chernovodsk, a minor settlement in the Leningrad region on the Luga River, became a refuge for the many people who managed to survive the nuclear apocalypse. The Sun, once humanity's destroyer, had by some miracle now saved people here, with phoenix particles neutralizing the terrible radiation background and concentrating it in specific locations. Rampant vegetation helped as well — an impassable wall of forest that let almost no one in or out. Almost no one.

The Society of Dawn, made up of remnants of the regular armies of the CIS states, unexpectedly appeared in the vicinity of Chernovodsk. But it was quickly cut off due to the activity of a black flash — by then a rarity, taking the form of a surface-level burst. Anomalies and the Forest cut off the Dawn soldiers, who had taken over an old army depot. They came face to face with the locals — factions vying for power or simply trying to survive, and loners who occasionally banded together and came to be called the Lost. This place is cut off from the rest of the world more thoroughly than any other. Lost, abandoned, forgotten…