Antecedent Legacy is an ongoing world building project continuously updated since 2015. Many of the ideas made all the way back then have permeated into the modern day. Over 100 people have contributed to the various stages of this project.
Borealis Universe
2015 - 2020
The first scope technically speaking. The Borealis Universe is based on the game Space Engine. The premise of the project was to find a planet, star, or whatever in space engine and write about it. Soon, articles about the peoples and histories of these worlds became common. It took place in 100,000 CE.
Universe 6E
2020 - 2021
A short-lived version of the Borealis Universe in which users explored the far future, 200,000 CE. These civilizations expanded into nearby universes and harnessed the power of each one.
Local Universe
2021 - 2023
The Local Universe moved away from the far future to 100,000 CE. While it carried over many ideas from the previous iterations of the universe, it became fully fictional. The Local Universe takes place in a local-group-sized volume of space.
Cosmoria
2023 - Present
Cosmoria takes place in a titular fictional galaxy. With only 100 stars, its scale is far smaller than the Local Universe, but it shares many concepts and even characters with the Local Universe. It is currently the most active antecedent scope.
Lore
All of these distinct universes are snapshots of the history of the community, but have since branched off into their own projects. Since they now all coexist, there is a common through line between them.
Origin
In the beginning, all that existed was potential, an infinite quantity of it, and nothing else. Before time began, change was all-pervasive, forming a sort of chaos in which no large structure could form before being swept away by chaos. Potential, the capacity for nothingness to change into something, constantly changed forms, "concurrently" as this was before something like time could exist.
It was the origin of a single vision of how things should change that molded this potential into something coherent. Thus, the big bang; this potential was violently compressed into order. The resulting universe, infinite in size, was the Borealis Universe, named for the "Borealis Cluster" in which most recorded history took place. By 100,000, galaxy-spanning empires filled most of the universe with hardly a single galaxy devoid of advanced civilization.
The exponential growth of technology being what it is, by 200,000 CE, civilization was fundamentally different. Over half of the "observable universe," centered on Earth, was now occupied. The growing problem of running out of space and matter became apparent. Thus, all denizens of the universe, united under the Confederacy of Humanity regardless of their species, transcended normal space and time. They moved to conquer the multiverse, bringing them into conflict with dozens of other universes. This is when they had become Transcendental and unlocked the ability to change the "vision" of the potential, beyond access to mere infinite energy, but the range of possibilities of potential.
It turns out, multiple civilizations had access to such transcendental power. Their wars tore apart all remaining matter and energy, reducing them to mere concepts engaged in battle unbound by space, time, or even thought. Moving beyond constraints such as "existence" became the final hurdle in their wars for omnipotence. As they continued to reach ever greater heights, they bled together into a slurry of nonexistence, far beyond normal ideas such as "distinction" or even the laws of logic.
All that was left was an ontological crumb, only a fraction of potential remaining. It was the last whisper of existence, a much smaller universe than the previous realities. About the size of the real life local group, the so-called Local Universe underwent its usual life span, but there was something else involved in the Local Universe. It was a force that predated even the primordial chaos from which the first Big Bang emerged.
This far more fundamental concept, the act of creation, superseded even the potential that existed. It was called Imagindarium, authorship itself. For there to be an empty page for an author to write on, there must first be an author.
Imagindarium created Amaranth, its will made manifest. This force permeated into the Local Universe, mimicking Imagindarium's Creation within it. As Imagindarium ended the story it sought to tell, it left behind the previously mentioned, the potential of another story being told.
Elsewhere, somewhere different, far smaller than even the local universe was a single quantum particle, The Monad. Moving back and forth through time, it played the role of every particle in "the universe." With the last echoes of the Local Universe fading, its metaphysical nature was similar enough to nudge The Monad's path, to make it reflect the Local Universe. Thus, The Monad inherited similar traits from all previous universes to create Cosmoria.