THE ASCENDED

Day 17 on Earth. Of my unit, only I remain. This world... it defies all our training simulations. The mud isn't just terrain - it's alive, hungry. We lost warriors to kraken and ponds of caustic acid. The air burns our lungs despite filtration. The sun feels wrong against our skin. Everything here wants us dead.

We encountered scavengers that moved through the toxic mists without protection, their bodies adapted to this poisonous world. Our superior training couldn't compensate for their numbers and desperation. 

We abandoned our armour and disguised ourselves in scavenger rags. The mission briefings described Earth as a broken planet waiting to be conquered. This is a catastrophic misunderstanding. The Ascension AI doesn't realise what evolution has wrought here. Earth hasn't weakened since the Great Collapse - it has transformed. Its people haven't surrendered to desolation - they've become it.

If anyone from Ascension ever finds this log: Recalculate everything. This isn't a conquest; it's a suicide mission. Earth doesn't need saving. Earth doesn't need ruling. Earth needs to be left alone."

• Final log of unknown Ascended Warrior, recovered from an abandoned hideout,
  Day 8 of The Thaw, 125 AP

The Ascended are the chosen elite of the Ascension AI. They are cloned in the city of Ascension, for the sole purpose of exploring - and perhaps one day conquering - the old Earth.

The Ascension AI knows she has limited time left before the Omnimorph reserves in the lunar cities are exhausted. She is therefore working to assemble a force strong enough to one day invade earth and conquer a cloning facility - maybe even Prime itself. Every few months a small scouting expedition of Ascended warriors is launched to explore earth, gather intel and set up an outpost. To this day, none of these expeditions have ever managed to report back to Ascension after landing in the desolated lands of old mother Earth...

As the drop ship lifts off to return to the Lunar base, the Ascended begin to push deeper into the swamp.

The arrival of the Ascended does not go unnoticed by the local scavengers.

Confronted with the difficult muddy terrain and having lived on the moon for all of their lives, the Ascended quickly begin to suffer from the pull of a gravity that they have never before experienced.

As the days drags on, the expedition members shed more and more of their heavy equipment. Their heavy combat armour in particular, which is usually no burden on the moon, wears them down here and they shed all but the most essential pieces.

The members of the expedition have never encountered wildlife before. Many of the Ascended  are lost to the deadly creatures lurking in the mud - kraken lying hidden in pools of water, giant flesh-eating spiders, rogue automatons from the wars of the Great Collapse - there are countless ways to die in the mud lands!

After a few days, the expedition halts. They have lost many of their sisters to the swamp and the survivors are completely exhausted.

Throughout their ordeal, the Ascended have been tracked by scavenger scouts.

As night falls, the exhausted Ascended make camp. They don't realise, that they are being surrounded...

Warriors from the Antler clan take up positions all around the Ascended...

The scavengers begin their attack by silently killing the Ascended sentries.

The Ascended quickly organise themselves to fight back - this what they have been trained for!

Scores of scavengers are mowed down when the Ascended accurately return fire.

Before long, the Ascended break through the lines of scavengers and outflank them. The battle turns into a massacre.

As dawn breaks, the scavengers abandon their attack and retreat, leaving behind their dead and wounded.

The handful of surviving Ascended begin to police the battlefield.

The battlefield is littered with fallen warriors.

The mercy of a quick death is given to any wounded that the Ascended find...

...including their own sisters...

A handful of prisoners are lined up to be executed, but when the Ascended realise that most of them are clones like themselves, they decide to break the cycle of killing.

The survivors say a final good bye to the fallen they leave behind. Then they gather what equipment they can and take some of the scavenger's cloaks to disguise themselves.

Setting off into the seemingly endless mud land once more, they now need to find a safe retreat, set up an outpost and find a way to contact Ascension, so that the sacrifice of their sisters may not have been in vain.