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.

Based on Consortium research, it is believed that nearly all of the GASA ship’s electronic records were lost in the sacrifice. As a result, the survivors were left to reconstruct from their memories any knowledge and history they could. It is unsurprising that, faced with a battle simply to survive, only things of a very practical bent were immediately recorded. Most of the rest was quickly lost. It didn’t help that technology of most sorts – especially the complex, miniaturized electronics that modern man relies so heavily on – failed fast in the chaos inducing fey of Altaerra.

Stories and legends of the ship, and earth survived for the first few generations but after that were soon the province of only the most learned and of fairy tales. Still, the legacy of Earth thought and pricinples can be
seen in much of the human society on Altaerra. Perhaps that’s why it feels so familiar to most actors and why they find it easy to fit in.

The Altaerran Consortium carefully trains all actors it sends to Altaerra so that they fit seamlessly into whatever Altaerran society or culture has been chosen for their background. This training includes a crash course on human history on Altaerra dating from the time of the initial human arrival on the planet. This history has been gleaned from the records put down by the descendants of the survivors themselves as discovered and researched by various actors in the Consortium’s employ and recorded in what actors commonly refer to as the “primer”.   All actors who successfully navigate the Consortium’s education center and end up on Altaerra are intimately familiar with all of the information in the Primer.