Five centuries had bled into the history of Terra 2.
In that time, the Terra Republic had ceased to be a mere landing party and had become a continental titan. Occupying a staggering expanse of the once-unclaimed North, it was officially the largest nation on the planet. Its borders were not marked by stone walls or wooden palisades, but by an invisible perimeter of electronic silence and automated defense systems. Behind this curtain of technology, the Republic flourished in total isolation. Its cities were glittering spires of glass and carbon-fiber, connected by magnetic-levitation rails that cut through mountains once thought impassable. From the western docks to the eastern refineries, the Republic was a world of high-speed networks and fusion power, yet it remained a ghost to the rest of the globe.
To the deep south, the rest of the world remained locked in a medieval cycle of blood and steel. Neither the Terrans nor the southern kingdoms had ever noticed each other; the mountains were too high, the North too "monster-infested," and the Republic too focused on its own internal perfection.
In the Northern Realms, the air grew thick with the smell of burning pyres. The rivalry between the feudal kings was fierce, and the Empire of Nilfgaard moved its pieces like a shadow, planning a total war to swallow the world. Within the human kingdoms, the pogroms against non-humans reached a breaking point. In the gutters of Vizima and the back alleys of Novigrad, the Aen Seidhe elves were hunted, their culture systematically erased.
Fed up with the slaughter, a large group of elves made a desperate choice: they would migrate to the "Unclaimed North." To the humans of the south, this was a suicide mission; the North was a wasteland of ice and lethal monsters. But to the elves, the cold was better than the noose.
There was another reason for their flight—a prophecy made by an Aen Saevherne, an Elven Sage. He spoke of a vision that had haunted his meditations: "When the world drowns in shadow, seek the Light in the North. Where the stars walk upon the earth, the Iron Cradle waits."
The elves did not understand the meaning of "the light" or "the stars walking upon the earth," but they believed the extreme North was the only hope for their race. They chose to move, carrying their children and their history through jagged passes where even the hardiest of the Northern kings dared not venture. They moved through valleys that the humans claimed were infested with necrophages, guided only by the Sage's insistence.
As they crossed the final, frost-shattered ridge, the elves halted in stunned silence.
Ahead of them, the purple twilight of the polar night was pierced by a glow that defied nature. It wasn't the flickering orange of a campfire or the pale shimmer of the moon. It was a steady, brilliant white—a line of artificial stars that stretched across the horizon for miles. They heard a sound they could not name: the low, rhythmic thrum of distant fusion turbines and the hum of a high-voltage power grid.
The Aen Seidhe had reached the outer perimeter of the Republic. They did not know they were stepping into a grid monitored by Shredder Turrets and thermal sensors. They did not know that, to the occupants of that glowing world, they were not "The Elder Race," but simply unidentified biological signatures entering a restricted zone.
The elves had found their hope, but they were about to discover a new world in the extreme North—one built of a steel they could not comprehend.
******
In the Sector 9 Monitoring Hub, the silent rhythm of the night shift was broken by a high-frequency acoustic alert. The Automated Defense displays, usually flickering with the erratic movements of local fauna, now pulsed with a synchronized pattern. Thousands of heat signatures were descending the ridge—organized, bipedal, and moving with a deliberate pace that no beast possessed.
The Shredder Turrets hummed as they tracked the movement, their barrels swivelling in perfect synchronicity, but they did not fire. The system had not flagged these targets as "Hostile Lifeforms" or "Abnormalities." Instead, the logic-gates of the perimeter grid remained in a state of high alert, the red targeting lasers painting a line in the snow but refusing to engage. The machine-brain of the Republic had recognized the signatures as unidentified intelligent beings.
Sergeant Oliver Silverback stared at the high-resolution thermal feed, his brow furrowed as he watched the monitor. "Computer, run a physiological match. Are these escaped laborers from the southern mines?"
"Negative, Sergeant," the synthesized voice replied. "Skeletal structure matches human baselines by ninety-eight percent. However, cranial scans indicate a consistent elongation of the pinna—pointy ears. No match in the Republic citizen database."
Silverback leaned back, his hand resting on the hilt of his combat knife. "Pointy ears? Like the old fairy tales my grandmother used to tell? Elves?" He snorted, a sharp, cynical sound. "We don't believe in fairy tales. If they breathe and walk in formation, they're just another intelligent species native to this world. Likely a sub-strain of humanity that evolved in isolation."
He stood up, his magnetic-seal boots clicking on the metal floor. "Activate the Border Security Force. The turrets didn't engage because they aren't monsters, but I want a First Contact team on the ground immediately. Power suits only—I don't want anyone taking a stray arrow through a gap in their fatigues while we figure out who they are."
Down on the frost-bitten plains, the Aen Seidhe halted. From the shimmering curtain of the white city lights, a group of figures emerged. They did not walk like men; they moved with a heavy, hydraulic hiss, their bodies encased in matte-gray Power Suits that made them look like faceless golems. Their helmets were smooth, featureless visors that reflected the terrified, exhausted faces of the elves.
The soldiers stopped ten yards away, their magnetic firearms held at a neutral "low-ready" position. Inside his helmet, Silverback and his squad were discussing how to even begin. "How do we start?" a private muttered over the squad comms. "Do we use the universal pictograms or the light signals?"
The tension was a physical weight until a young elven woman stepped toward the metal giants. Her voice was trembling, but clear in the frozen air.
"Who... who are you?" she asked.
The squad comms erupted in a collective sigh of relief. Sergeant Silverback deactivated his external loudspeaker's distortion. "They speak our language? It's a dialect of Common. Thank the stars for that."
Silverback took a step forward, the servomotors in his suit whining softly. He reached up and engaged the seal-release. With a hiss of pressurized air, his helmet retracted into the collar of his suit, revealing a rugged, scarred face and short-cropped hair. He looked entirely human, yet his eyes were sharp with the discipline of a modern soldier.
"I am Sergeant Oliver Silverback of the Border Security Force," he said, his voice echoing across the snow. "You are standing at the perimeter of the Sovereign Nation of Terra. You have bypassed our automated warnings and entered a high-security industrial zone."
He looked past the girl at the thousands of weary, starving elves behind her. His expression remained professional and firm.
"Identify yourselves," Silverback commanded. "State your intent and your purpose for crossing into Republic territory. We recognize you as an intelligent species, but you are currently in breach of our borders. Speak quickly."