Where the world ends... (Defiant Starting zone lore)

Trion Worlds really hit a home run with the starting area for both races. Today I'm talking about the Defiant starting zone, Terminus. I start life in the appropriately named Life Factory. A really good description of how I came to be was featured on ZAM here:

Account of Acyala Nicolo, Ascended Defiant:

I have no memory of my time in the Soulstream, nor sense of how long I drifted through it. But I do recall with clarity the moment my time there ended. The moment of my Ascension; no miracle of the gods, but a flash of ingenuity in the world’s dying moments. My soul was wrapped in a strange sort of energy, and then tugged at, invited to steal away from complacent dead. This energy drew me back down toward Telara and into the belly of a great machine.

For just a moment, my essence hovered, free floating, and then tendrils of pure Source seeped from the walls of the machine, mapping themselves into the grid of a figure bearing a likeness that was all too familiar. This woman had once borne great power, with the bearing of a High Priestess among the Kelari. I recognized her as the woman I had once been.

Then the pain began. The gridlines began to harden to a physical form; first bones, and then coarse ropes of sinew, and then organs took root and exploded into shape until finally a sheaf of flesh spread to cover the whole of it. Every step hurt beyond description, but I did not cut myself loose from it. I embraced the agony of what I would later know to be my rebirth.

Finally, life returned with a final electric current. Cold breath struck my lungs, my eyes flew open, and a voice said, “Welcome back, friend."

That welcoming voice belonged to Sylver Valis, thought the welcome is a cold one - you've come back to mortal life at the literal outpost at the end of the world.

The concept of scientifically creating Ascended was lost at me at first, until the concept of Ascended struck home - The Defiant have scratched out a meager existence in this reality lorded over by the Guardian ascended. Never able to fully resist, they didn't have the strength to resist Regulos when the Guardian's Gods abandoned them, and the world fell.

They're plan to save the world is to strengthen their side with their own Ascended, sent back in time with the Failsafe. The lore here is great - the current time leader Orphiel created the device as a one way time machine, returning anyone who enters it to the moment of its creation. Imagine Orphiel, triumphant with his new creation, and the look on his face when a half million lab grown ascendant march through it immediately, bringing tales of the end of the world.

That's the world you find yourself in as you leave the starter instance, and its thematically brilliant.