The Judgement

The Judgement was a conflict that happened two hundred years before the After Judgement timeline. During this period, the humans of the West fought against its own artificially intelligent robotic weapons, the Deities, with humanity managing to win after destroying or deactivating every single one of the latter.

In the centuries before, the West's development of artificial intelligence had advanced so much, that machines could independently make decisions to complete pre-programmed objectives. However, with a burgeoning human population, war for resources was raging all over the current world. One unknown nation, in their pursuit of military dominance, used the latest AI technology to develop a new weapon: artificially intelligent robotic weapons called Deities. Three models were mass-produced: the aquatic-use Typhon, the ground-use Sekhmet and sky-use Surtur.

But once the Deities were deployed on the battlefield, they massacred not just the enemy force, but also their own. There had been a mistake in their programming that instructed the Deities to kill any human in sight, not just those targeted by their handlers. Because of this, the Deities would ravage the Western continent for three years, killing any human in sight. As their manufacturer had refined their machine learning capabilities to the limit, almost no current military tactics or weapons could even scratch them.

With no other choice, the surviving humans gathered, pooling their knowledge and resources to develop a new weapon that would finally defeat the Deities. They realized that they could no longer rely on autonomous robots, as any knowledge on how to recreate the Deities' AI was now lost. So it was decided that the new weapon's core principle would be the complete opposite of the Deities': humans would directly fight. From this decision, Visors were born.

Visors were full-body suits of armor containing miniature hydraulics that made the wearer five times faster, stronger and more agile than the average human. They were powered by long-life batteries that could supply power to the armor for up to a week. The user's hand-held weaponry consisted of high-heat vibrating blades and firearms that utlized miniaturized tank shells, capable of dealing the required damage to the immense structure of a Deity.

The project was a success. In only nine days, every single Deity had been destroyed or shut down via energy deprivation. The surviving civilians then began restructuring the ruined West into four nations: Prometha, Glauca, Zepha and Ceresa. The twelve Visor users, later known as the Saints, used their heroic reputation to establish the international military organization Phoebus, which would keep the West's inhabitants safe from crime and terrorism for the next two hundred years. The anniversary of the final day of the Judgement became the international holiday "Saint's Day", named after those twelve warriors.