Galactic Crucibles:About

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Welcome to Galactic Crucibles, a science fiction universe rich with a deep history of galactic civilizations. The primary setting includes the Crucible Galaxy and its satellite galaxies in its own self-contained universe known as Omni 01 which is completely distinct with its own history separate from our world. Throughout the history of the Crucible Galaxy, civilizations have risen and fallen while leaving behind artifacts for their successors to make use of.

Genre overview

Galactic Crucibles leans into hard science fiction though it takes liberties to allow for some large-scale, hypertheoretical storytelling. A fictional method of faster-than-light travel known as ygsium is commonly used by various species of the galaxy. Some highly advanced species also possess the means of travelling to other universes and throughout time, but these are technologies that are not in the common possession of most civilizations.

Additionally, the Crucible Galaxy is much denser with biological life than what current real-world projections estimate. This is justified in-universe as a result of an ancient civilization seeding various solar systems with life via artificial panspermia. Although humans do not exist in Galactic Crucibles, some species have human-like anatomy due to convergent evolution. That's not to say that some species resemble even stranger life forms that are unlike anything that may have ever lived on planet Earth. The Omni 01 universe features a diverse variety of unique species. Though Galactic Crucibles primarily focuses on xenofiction, some human-relatable elements exist as a means of better acclimatizing readers to the setting.

Eras

Galactic Crucibles is divided into several distinct eras which take place anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand to even a million years apart. It is recommended to explore the Timeline of Omni 01 to get an idea of a list of major events that occurred throughout the universe's history. These eras have different thematic moods to them.

  • Empire of Arckas Era - Bordering on science fantasy, the Empire of Arckas was the time of large scale worldbuilding civilizations that operated at Type III on the Kardashev scale. They laid the foundation for life in the Crucible Galaxy to come with the use of exotic technologies such as god machines and interuniversal travel.
  • Omni Empire Era - The Omni Empire was the largest known empire since the fall of the Empire of Arckas. They ruled over millions of star systems in the Crucible Galaxy with ambitions to expand further until their leader Emperor Haraxa had questioned the future of his people.
  • First Galactic Senate Era - An alliance of species comes together to repel the Buyuk Empire - ancient invaders who were responsible for destroying the Omni Empire thousands of years prior. They reached an uneasy stalemate, but internal political turmoil would lead to the fall of civilization once more.
  • Buyuk Wars Era - A period of overwhelming conflict where the Buyuk waged war on multiple fronts, seeking to reinforce their claim on the galaxy.
  • Second Galactic Senate Era - The Buyuk Empire is defeated seemingly for good as an alliance of different species rise up against their oppressors. It is a time of peace and prosperity until an ancient entity awakens.
  • Post-Anathema Era - A universe-destroying threat is defeated, but the Second Galactic Senate is no more. Although all of galactic civilization has almost completely collapsed, it is a fresh start for everyone to begin anew.

Website history

Earliest days (2009-2012)

Galactic Crucibles was once part a multi-wiki group known as the Omniverse Nexus. However, it wasn't always called that. The earliest origin of the Omniverse Nexus is in March 2009, the 'Spore birthday'. A community would develop around a shared fandom of the 2008 video game Spore.

In March of 2010, Karl "Krayfishkarl" Ast and Grant "Suppy" Kirkland had their first RP using their Spore characters, starting a long tradition of collaborative writing.

Wikia era (2012-2015)

The original ideas that would eventually become part of the Omniverse Nexus were cultivated on the Spore Fan Fiction Wiki hosted by the Wikia network. When the massive interstellar empires of their design grew beyond the scope of the game, Krayfishkarl and Suppy, along with colleagues Nra 'Vadumee, Panthean and IceBite (later known as Kamen Rider Nexus), decided to transfer these creations to a new site. As a result, Omniverse: Galactic Conquest Wiki (or GC for short) was founded on 14 March 2012.

After its 200th article was created, GC was featured on Wikia Spotlight, attracting a plethora of new users, and growth of the database accelerated.

Problems began to arise in the latter half of 2012 when users began to favour more scientifically grounded explanations for concepts and phenomena. In September, discussion on the Wiki Forums began on the establishment of a sister site, leading to the creation of Omniverse: Erudite Chronicles Wiki on 30 September, with Nra 'Vadumee at the helm. It was renamed two days later, becoming Erudite Tales Wiki. On 5 April, Omniverse: Galactic Conquest was similarly renamed to Galactic Crucibles, dropping the Omniverse title.

On 10 May 2013, ideas for a second sister project began to surface when TheTimMan proposed the creation of a site revolving around historical fiction and alternative history. These came to fruition on 14 May, when Infinite Histories Wiki was founded.

MediaWiki era (2016-2020)

After months of discussion and debate, it was decided in 2015 that the Nexus community had outgrown Wikia (now rebranded as Fandom), as by that time the latter had shifted its focus to fandoms rather than original content. To facilitate complete control over the creations on the Nexus sites, the three Wikis were merged under a new, unified network now known as the Omniverse Nexus. At first, WordPress was used to host the site, but in May 2016 MediaWiki was adopted and thus Omniverse Nexus evolved into its current form with Krayfishkarl as domain host. Early efforts focused on moving written material from the old wikias into the new Omniverse Nexus website. During the first year, the Omniverse Nexus hosted most of the wikias' original content with their original articles verbatim.

A few months prior in January 2016, the video game Dreamwalkers: Sleep Descent (then known as Project: Light World) was announced to help stir interest among Nexus users after a long period of inactivity. The game continued a long cycle of planning and writing before eventually getting canceled in December 2017. However, the game's plot and setting served as the basis for the Dreamwalkers setting which grew beyond the original scope of the game.

The Omniverse Nexus Discord server, founded by Suppy was, along with the Dreamwalkers game, intended to bring the separated community back together and recruit new users. In this aim, the Discord server was successful, making it far easier and more convenient for members to communicate and collaborate.

In June 2017, an internal error occurred on the MediaWiki site that caused all site content and user data to be lost. Thankfully, the majority of articles were preserved in the form of an XML backup, but the entire site had to otherwise be rebuilt from scratch. For most articles, edit history before 10 June 2017 was lost. In addition, all users on the site were asked to recreate their accounts. As this event happened to coincide with the desire to reboot the continuity anyway, future plans remained unaffected by this event. Since then, better measures have been taken to ensure such an error does not occur again. The lost version of the website would later be recovered, but by then, the new wiki was up and running.

From May 2018, the focus shifted into creating new material for the Omniverse Nexus instead of continuing to move old material from the wikias. Around this time, TheTimMan spearheaded major changes to the website design, particularly the main page, towards a unique look.

On the 17th of March 2018, Suppy founded the Omniverse Nexus Discord server; Krayfishkarl made the first message on the server the same day, saying 'Hello!'. This changed how discussions around new material and change to the website were done. The Discord server has made it significantly easier for contributers to communicate ideas and helped to revitalise the Nexus.

Later in 2018, the Omniverse Nexus received a graphic redesign to the main logo and the Dreamwalkers logo. Work was also undertaken to regularize and update old templates and articles and to remove old material.

Chromogar's blog Chromographia became incorporated into the Nexus as a platform for Dreamwalkers (and later Smog Hollows) stories.

In October 2018, Avetzan resurfaced the ideas of Hallows Maleficent, a cancelled horror-based setting of the Omniverse Nexus that Dreamwalkers borrowed elements from. During the process of discussion with several interested users, the new premise and goals of a new horror setting for the Omniverse Nexus were established. It was then that the name Smog Hollows was created for this setting.

However, it was not until 21 April 2019 that the fifth Nexus setting, Smog Hollows was officially launched with Avetzan and Chromogar as the setting's loremasters.

In March 2019, the idea of an Omniverse Nexus magazine, or Zine, was first proposed and discussed. By September, plans became more serious for the Zine to become a quarterly issue and for the first issue to come out in December 2019.

First suggested by Kingliman, the Zine project quickly gathered the support of Avetzan, Chromogar, Krayfishkarl, Robdolf and Suppy. With their combined efforts, the Omniverse Nexus produced a 40-page, A4 magazine. In this edition, the launch of the Heroic Ages setting was first teased as well as an as-yet-unrevealed yellow-themed project. Two more zines would be released in March 2020 and June 2020.

Closure of the Omniverse Nexus (2020)

On the 13th of November of 2020, it was officially announced that the Omniverse Nexus would be closed down. This was due to a variety of reasons from scheduling conflicts to creative differences. However, the most significant reason was that it was deemed that the individual settings of the Omniverse Nexus would flourish more strongly on their own. And thus, after more than ten years of storytelling and worldbuilding, the Omniverse Nexus was discontinued, and the community went their separate ways.

The Infinite Histories and Smog Hollows settings were officially retired. However, several settings would continue to evolve in their own ways.

  • Galactic Crucibles - Galactic Crucibles became its own wiki which you are currently viewing. While migrating articles from the old website, an opportunity was taken to retcon some story elements to better refocus on the xenofiction aspect.
  • Erudite Tales - Erudite Tales has its own revitalization in the works as well as its own website which can be viewed here here. It is currently in the process of being revitalized as its authors review the older articles to make the lore more consistent.
  • Dreamwalkers - Dreamwalkers was split into two separate settings with only loose connections between them. There's Chromogar's Sagamaya saga and Krayfishkarl's Dreamwalkers section of Krayfishkarl's Krayverse.
  • Heroic Ages - Heroic Ages was rebooted to focus on the story arc taking place in the MIM solar system. It can be found here as its own section of Krayfishkarl's Krayverse.

The new Galactic Crucibles era (2020 - present)

With the discontinuation of the old website, a massive undertaking to migrate the articles to a new website had begun. While articles were imported, retcons were being introduced along the way to account for the new tonal shift of the setting. This is not to say that the new wiki is a carbon copy of the old site. New story elements were added - most notably, expansions to the mythos surrounding the origins of the Empire of Arckas.

The migration progress took approximately three years. Over one thousand articles were sorted by hand and had their fates determined. On 15 August 2023, the Omniverse Nexus website was shut down for good. However, the stories themselves still survive, and many more await to be told!