The Arkanauts: Lowdown and Lore

Dive into the lore underpinning Project Ark’s forthcoming Arkanauts generative art NFT drop…

The Arkanauts are 10,000 Terramarians who care so deeply about their planet that they’re willing to risk life and limb to visit alien worlds in search of solutions to save it. These Arkanauts come from two societies that have taken decidedly different developmental paths: Talius and Khandro.

Khandro, keepers of community and ancient Terramar tradition, take care of one another and the natural world surrounding them. They don masks fashioned to show devotion to the Eternal Mother, the spiritual ideology that directs Khandro’s people. Khandro’s most populated village-commune, Novali, is home to tens of thousands of Khandrians and the Novali Democratic Council, a 15-member council elected monthly to facilitate village decision-making and communication with the other Khandrian communes. Their connection to nature has instilled a deep-seated respect for the flora and fauna of Terramar and fosters a community built on cooperation and mutual aid and administration.

Talius, the technical titans of Terramar, value progress and growth, and will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. Their budding yet overbuilt empire and submerged yet booming capital city are monuments to the Taliusian people and their drive. No place embodies Talius’ spirit of industry and expansion better than their capital city of Talis. The ever-modern, always-under-construction, underwater, urban heart of Talius is home to the imperial republic’s national government. Talius instills in its citizens a strong sense of individualism and encourages them to work hard at whatever they find themselves drawn toward. They’ve eliminated racial, gender, and other identity barriers to develop a true meritocracy.

Every day, air quality and extreme weather events worsened, escalating the existential threat to both factions as Talius extracted more and more planetfuel from the ground and burned it to generate energy and grow their society. The Khandrians also consume planetfuel in their long-standing traditional rituals, and had to increase the frequency and intensity of extraction planetfuel as their typical yield began to drop precipitously and the perceived need for ritual connection to the Eternal Mother became more and more desperate.

One day, a giant, 40-kilometer fissure tore through the heart of each of the two factions, destroying lives, homes, and infrastructure and ripping habitable areas in half. In addition, this gaping fault released toxic gas, taking their air quality situation from bad to worse. The Great Fissure that tore through Terramar and took the lives of thousands was what finally closed the divide between the peoples of Khandro and Talius and led to the formation of the Arkanauts project.

Severely crippled on Terramar but with the ability to travel off-planet, and with a growing awareness that their actions played a prominent part in their predicament, Taliusian officials crafted a proposal that the two factions join together to canvass the universe in search of revolutionary solutions to the intensifying climate disasters and destructive tremors threatening to carve out the next Great Fissure.

The youth of Talius and Khandro took their destinies in their own hands and began to collaborate on the ARK 2.0 Initiative to seek novel solutions to their seemingly insurmountable problems. They co-created the Arkanauts, an elite group of 10,000 interplanetary explorers and emissaries who left Terramar in search of a revolutionary solution to close the Great Fissure and reimagine how their societies generate and interact with energy.