Event Archive
Project Ascendancy
Humanity created six new peoples. Then became the minority.
Uplift Era · 4280–4310 AD"We were made. We chose to become."
— Alpha Luminus (Prometheus), First Words of the Canine Constitution
The Essential
In the mountains of post-cataclysm Earth, humanity reached into the minds of animals and switched on the lights. Project Ascendancy was the desperate gambit of a species fighting for survival—and it worked too well. The creatures they uplifted didn't just gain intelligence. They gained ambition, culture, and the will to build civilizations of their own.
On March 7, 4280 AD, a Border Collie named Prometheus spoke his first complete sentence. Hours later, a Siamese cat called Bastet did the same at a facility thousands of kilometers away. Within thirty years, six species had crossed the threshold into sapience: Canines, Felines, Primates, Cetaceans, Cephalopods, and Swine.
For every mind that awakened, eleven others died on the threshold—consciousness flickering on like a candle in a storm before guttering out forever.
The 8% success rate haunts every ethics seminar in Concordat space. But those who survived didn't merely live—they escaped. Prometheus led 78 Canines through 847 kilometers of hostile wilderness to found the first free settlement. Bastet's Felines stole the uplift data itself, enabling their own kind to continue the work. By 7799 AD, uplifted species comprised 92% of Earth's population. Humanity had created their successors.
The wars that followed—six centuries of intermittent conflict called the Great Uplift Wars—would reshape territorial control across the planet. But so would the alliances. Canines and Felines, predator instincts notwithstanding, discovered their survival depended on cooperation. The marine species forged pacts in frequencies humans couldn't hear. And when the dust settled, something unprecedented emerged: a world where seven peoples shared a single origin story, and none could claim primacy over the others.
Event Data
In the Stories
"Aristotle" follows the final uplift of Project Ascendancy—a swine who reaches the edge of his artificial world and discovers he is not alone. When words fail, he finds another way to speak. Set April 17, 4310 AD, at the moment the thirty-year program concludes.