Survival

People have never been good at cooperating. Unless there's a common enemy, we have a near perfect record of infighting, hatred, and petty politics.

The people of Land started well. After a few hundred thousand years of travel, their generation ship had landed on a huge hollow planet around a nice old star. It spread robots and customized plant life far and wide, and after a time, decided it was time to wake the passengers. Embryos were printed, DNA was written, and artificial wombs produced the first generation of Landers.

A small problem. The ship's memory and mind had degraded during the trip. The digital minds of the original colonists: gone. The broken and ancient vessel had chosen a planet that would never  normally make the cut - the size of a gas giant, near the galactic core. There was no chance of terraforming more than a fraction of such a world. Luck alone had landed them in a crater deep and wide enough to support an atmosphere and a civilisation.
 

Without even the most basic knowledge of why they were there or how to use tools, the first generations reverted to a primitive existence. No help came from the ship, which soon turned to buried ruins and ancient relics - forgotten, yet functional. As is common to humans everywhere, they quickly learned the art of war.

They developed language, politics, art. They bickered over philosophy and religion. They fought wars for land, for love, for fun and for freedom. And as happens with so many societies, they spread across the world as many different peoples.

Some travelled down to the humid, weightless depths inside the shell. There they found floating forests and behemoth creatures. Others retreating into dim continent scale caverns. Still others went up, building on the heavy, airless plains above.

And yet, before any reunion, something would awake.