Primer: Introduction, part 2
Recorded human history on Altaerra generally picks up from the second generation after the Sacrifice. The first generation of the survivors and their immediate offspring were too busy fighting for their very survival to have the time or inclination to record much. The Primer, like the scholarly works from Altaerra that it draws upon as its major sources, contains very little detail about these years. What it does contain is a copy of the writings of Zane Archibald.
Zane was the grandson of Jonas Archibald, one of the original survivors of the crashed GASA mission. Bedridden due to a disease that gradually weakened his limbs and eventually killed him, Zane spent weeks recording his life story and his remembrances of his grandfather’s tales of Earth and the years immediately following the Sacrifice. Zane’s writings, preserved at the library in Chaycia, are the sole surviving record of the earliest days of humanity’s existence on Altaerra and the only written records of Earth that the humans on Altaerra were able to maintain.
