Ironically, it was the ultimate victory, the victory over death itself, that brought about the downfall of its
 Paradise and started the war that would decimate a million worlds. The process, which was called
 "patterning," involved the electronic duplication of brain matrices and allowed the transfer of
 consciousness into durable machines. Effectively it meant immortality, and the Core decreed the process
 mandatory for all citizens in order to ensure their safety.

There were many who were unwilling to toss aside their
 bodies so casually, many indeed who regarded patterning
 as an atrocity. They fled to the outer edges of the galaxy,
 where they banded together to form a resistance that
 became known as the Arm. War began, though it was
 never officially declared by either side.

 The Arm developed high-power combat suits for its
 armies, while the Core transferred the minds of its soldiers
 directly into similarly deadly machines. The Core
 duplicated its finest warriors thousands of times over. The
 Arm countered using cloning. The war raged on for more
 than 4,000 years, consuming the resources of an entire galaxy
and leaving it a scorched wasteland.

 Both sides lay in ruins. Their civilizations had long since vanished, their once vast military complexes
 were smashed. Their armies were reduced to a few scattered remnants that continued to battle on
 ravaged worlds. Their hatred fueled by Millennia of conflict, they would fight to the death. For each, the