Some time during the Second Age, humans living on Ymir figured out how to use adonium to create their own automatons to assist in mining adonium. Rather than running on electricity, these automatons ran on the magic of adonium itself. Every automaton has an adonium core, which acts as the seat of its consciousness. However, not every automaton has free will or total consciousness. Many simply behave as their makers programmed them to behave.

Some have suggested to me that The Third Genesis is an entirely new genre altogether. The funny thing is, I can actually think of a series of stories that have all of the elements I’ve listed above: the JRPG genre. Granted, that’s a video game genre, not a book genre, but bear with me. A JRPG, for those who don’t know, is a Japanese Role-Playing Game. Basically, these are video games that are heavy in story elements, usually send the main characters on an epic quest, and aren’t shy about borrowing themes from various religions and mythologies (including the Bible).

Noblebright is a genre that has been gaining popularity recently. It is very much the opposite of Grimdark, in that it is full of hope, shows good overcoming evil, and has sincere main characters. That’s not to say that the main characters are perfect, or even that they never make mistakes or do wrong things, but rather there is a general movement toward greater goodness in the setting.

Of all the species living on Ymir that the false gods of Empyrean created, the fiends have had it the hardest. Though Dr. Nebo created them using genetic engineering, just like he created the archons and the Ymirian humans, the mythology spread around was that they had been created by Sygin, the goddess of darkness. The false gods teach that the fiends are born evil, and for a long time even fiends believed this to be the case. Many still do.

Axtin Seth, who had long been a judge in the Empyrean Corporation’s courts, became the “God of Justice” over the world of Ymir at the start of the Genesis II project. Despite Seth’s personal spiritual beliefs, his friend Dr. Nebo convinced him that doing so would allow him to guide the people of Ymir to a bright future. “Just think of what you could do with so many minds to mold! You know what justice is. To them, you truly will be as a higher being imparting your knowledge to them. Would you not call that divine?”

The archons are those creatures genetically engineered to act as servants, messengers, and warriors of the false gods. By those loyal to Empyrean, they are considered above humans but below the gods in the hierarchy. Each of the false gods has a High Archon or a Grand Archon who leads the others.