Far in the future, mankind trembles on the brink of extinction. As the ice caps melt and sea level rises, famine and disease spread and vicious competition for available land and resources leads to worldwide conflict. As civilization descends into chaos, religious zealots and brutal warlords, some with thermonuclear capabilities, prepared to take by force what the failing earth can no longer produce.
In a final bid to save the human race, a consortium of the best scientific minds on the planet labors desperately on a space program – massive mother ships, designed to carry thousands of passengers, frozen in cryogenic sleep, into the depths of space, in search of a new home. On arrival at a suitable world, each passenger would be ferried to the surface of the planet in a one-man escape pod, which would locate a suitable spot, land, and awaken its precious human cargo. The survivors could then cannibalize the orbiting mother ships for all the necessary supplies to found a new society.
Unfortunately, before the mother ships are ready to launch, doomsday bioterrorists strike, unleashing a series of plagues which cause worldwide epidemics that sicken and kill millions. Genetic mutagens deliberately targeted at the food supply cause terrifying mutations in livestock and wildlife. Time is running out: in order to survive, humanity must abandon earth at once.
While the mother ships have not been finished, hundreds of thousands of cryogenic escape pods have been completed and are sitting in warehouses. Though they were designed only as landing capsules, they have enough stored power to run almost indefinitely. The scientists plot a new trajectory for them – a great curving arc, taking them far beyond the orbit of tiny frozen Pluto, out into the darkness of space. With the pitiful remnant of humanity sleeping soundly inside, the entire flock of tiny vessels is launched into the void, carrying with them the hopes and dreams of an entire world.
Untold centuries pass. Finally, after their long voyage through the cold depths of space, the escape pods land on an unknown world. One by one, they come to rest here and there on the planet – some in the forests, some in the deserts, some in the frozen wastes or by the great oceans. One by one, the battered little pods pop open and gently awaken their precious human cargo to face the challenges of an alien world, filled with unimaginable dangers.
The planet on which these pods have landed is an ancient one, the former home of a long-vanished race of humanoids who have left behind ruins of unimaginable antiquity and unfathomable purpose. Among the shattered labyrinths and crumbling pyramids, the sacred pools and hidden caverns, lie secret pathways and sphinxian riddles that, for the proper seeker, can open the gates to the mysterious, interlinked worlds of the Anachron.
You are a refugee from old earth, and your pod has just landed on Anachron Prime. You are cold and hungry, still fighting off the effects of cryosleep. You have only the clothes on your back and your wits to assist you. You are entirely without supplies, and no form of rescue is coming for you – not now, not ever. You need food and water, shelter and weapons, and you need to find other survivors. In time, you must find and conquer the gates that lead from this world to the many other worlds of the Anachron. The future of humanity rests on your shoulders – you must not fail!
