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I have the first 2 books of Mercy of the Icons and the core book, but don't have the 3rd yet. Outside of the basic lore of the game things get fuzy for me and while the campaign books are good for setting up the adventures they don't concisely spell out the facts of the lore in a concise way. Looking for someone to give me some lore break downs/correct me if I am wrong.

Here is what I understand, please fill in the blanks.

-Humanity sends out generation ships.
-Humanity finds the portals. Colonizes the first horizon.
-Finds the second horizon. Colonizes that.
-Finds the 3rd horizon. Colonizes that.
-Portal Wars. 3rd Horizon gets cut off.
-1 Generation ship arrives in the 3rd horizon other is missing. Politics between the Zenethians and First Come. Generation ship becomes Coriolis station.
-Emissaries show up.

-Emissaries are revealed to be denizens of the second horizon that are psychically taking over bodies and communicating with the 3rd Horizon to prepare a defense against the first horizon. They claim to be the Icons. Or the Icons are just psionic impressions from 2nd Horizon people.
-The first horizon denizens weaponized the energy that is the Dark Between The Stars and are in some capacity corrupted by it (please expand on this in any way if possible).
...
profit.

So what am I missing? Any additional details or facts especially about the nature of the Icons/Dark Between the Stars and the denizens of the first 2 horizons would be much appreciated.

-Humanity sends out generation ships.
-Humanity finds the portals. Colonizes the first horizon.
-Finds the second horizon. Colonizes that.

Second Horizon (2H) does very well, First Horizon (1H) wants more control over 2H. War between the two erupts.

-Finds the 3rd horizon. Colonizes that.

As i remember, it was found just prior to the war and some of it spilled over to the Third Horizon (3H), mostly in the Odacon system.

-Portal Wars. 3rd Horizon gets cut off.

3H lesser factions, of which i believe only the Order of the Pariah survived in its entirety, work together to annihilate the 1H and 2H armada at Odacon mostly because of the Order of the Pariah's strength. They also destroy the only (known) portals to 1H and 2H in Taoan and Odacon, respectively.

-1 Generation ship arrives in the 3rd horizon other is missing. Politics between the Zenethians and First Come. Generation ship becomes Coriolis station.
-Emissaries show up.
-Emissaries are revealed to be denizens of the second horizon that are psychically taking over bodies and communicating with the 3rd Horizon to prepare a defense against the first horizon. They claim to be the Icons. Or the Icons are just psionic impressions from 2nd Horizon people.

Emissaries claim to be the emissaries of the icons, basically living embodiments of them until (i believe?) at the end of Mercy of the Icons 1 (MotI) when the group finds out they are Symmetry mystics from the 2H out to influence 3H in their favor.
The Icons themselves, the actual icons, are ascended aliens.

-The first horizon denizens weaponized the energy that is the Dark Between The Stars and are in some capacity corrupted by it (please expand on this in any way if possible).

I havent read the 2nd and 3rd books of MotI yet, but i have read that they did this. I know 2H are very very Dark Between the Stars-averse and do not want any direct contact with 1H forces at all, thats why theyre using 3H to (hopefully) fight 1H.

Some minor spoilers for Mercy of the Icons below, so fair warning. I haven't finished fully reading Wake of The Icons yet, but....Combining/compressing your list above and adding stuff:

PAST HISTORY
-Thousand years ago, humanity sends out colony ships, most are lost/never heard from again.
- Two of these ships are the Zenith and the Nadir, headed for Aldebaran
- Some point after the Zenith and Nadir leave, around 900 years ago, colony ships find Portals in systems near Sol.
- Humanity explores and colonizes the cluster that will become the First Horizon
- Portals to the Second and Third Horizon are discovered.
- The Second Horizon is colonised, an effort led by mystics who would eventually become The Symmetry
- Colonisation of the Third Horizon begins, with the Order of the Martyr being a major guiding force for THAT effort.
- The Second Horizon secedes from Imperial rule, resulting in War with the First
- The War is pretty devastating and causes rebellion and unrest in the First
- The First Horizon starts experimenting with The Dark Between The Stars to help win the war, and inevitably becomes corrupted by it
- Neither the First nor Second Horizon can afford to fight a war on two fronts, so they begin manipulating the Third Horizon - the First through the Sacrifice Of Nazareem, the Second through the Circle of Seekers (to a lesser extent).
- This whole period of warfare lasts nearly three centuries but results in the battles spilling over into the Third Horizon, during which many Portals are destroyed. After around two decades of conflict, everything comes to a head at Odacron and the Portals connecting the Third Horizon to the others are forcibly closed. The Order of The Martyr lead the destruction of the enemy fleet and purge the Sacrifice of Nazareem, apparently ending First Horizon influence.
- The closing of the Portals isolates the Third Horizon, resulting in a period of collapse known as the Long Dark. The Portals fall mostly into disuse. Planets become insular and higher technologies and knowledge are lost. This lasts for almost a century until the Zenith suddenly arrives at the star now called Dabaran. The Nadir has disappeared.
- The Zenith crew are shocked to find a human civilisation already present, and that a Portal network has replaced the "sleeper ship" efforts. After exploring the Horizon and anchoring at Kua, the crew are divided on what to do next. As the debate rages, a mutinous faction awakens all the sleeping colonists, forcing the issue. The Zenith is abandoned as the officers and their followers set up home in and around the Monolith, becoming the Zenithian Hegemony, while others head out to found their own colonies, while still keeping in contact with one another and founding the Consortium. Some remain aboard the Zenith and repurpose it as a centre of trade and commerce - Coriolis Station. The Zenithian factions begin to restore contact between the worlds and reawaken the Horizon.
- The mutineers head out into the Horizon, exploring dark and sinister places and discovering lost lore, eventually becoming the Draconites. (I don't think this is common knowledge).
- The modern factions form as the Zenithians and Firstcomers try to find a way to get along.

BEGINNING THE MERCY OF THE ICONS CAMPAIGN
- The First Horizon, fully fallen to darkness and corruption, begins attempts to regain access to the Third Horizon via their Butterfly Ships and Vestals.
- The Second Horizon, seeking to thwart the First, make their own desperate attempts to access the Third Horizon using Nodes - remnants of a technology that may or may not be from the Portal Builders, but allow Mystics to project themselves mentally across stellar distances.
- Both succeed to some degree - the First resulting in the attack on the Taoan system and the events of "Last Voyage Of The Ghazali" adventure. Agents of the First Horizon make contact with the remnants of the Sacrifice of Nazareem, who survived the purge and have been working in the shadows. The Second manage to get a few mystics into the Third Horizon, occupying the bodies of hapless Foundation Scientists and presenting themselves as The Emissaries. Their arrival also sees a massive surge in mystic powers, formerly quite rare, manifesting in people across the Third Horizon.

THE ICONS
- We don't get a huge amount about the true nature of the Icons. The Faithful believe they exist as deities guiding humanity (although they have darker aspects worshipped by those closer in belief to the First Horizon). The Zenithians didn't know anything about the Icons when they arrived, but their worship is believed to have started in the First Horizon. The Foundation either consider them not real or else, just unknowable alien intelligences.
- To further confuse the issue - the Emissaries call themselves Icons, and after the events of the Last Cyclade, one of them sort of IS.

THE DARK BETWEEN THE STARS (EDITED 15/08 16:52)
- I think its kinda like Chaos in Warhammer 40K. You can draw on it, but it corrupts you. The First Horizon have mastered it, but many are utterly corrupted by it. I don't think it is sentient, as such, it is a corrosive energy source. The First Horizon butterfly ship wings work like solar-sails, using the Dark to drive them. The Portal Builders took great efforts to create a means of purging that corruption (and that is a bit of a big spoiler so I won't expand on it). I think the implication is that spirits and sarcofagi are native to the Dark, but can manifest in the physical world, while darkmorphs are physical entities corrupted by the Dark. (The Hounds of Tirides, this game's version of the Hounds of Tindalos, may be a sort of hybrid of the two).

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE HORIZONS
- So, others may have mentioned this, but if you've seen Babylon 5 - the Second Horizon are kinda like The Vorlons, even to the point of using telepaths (Mystics) as weapons in the coming war. We even get a Kosh in Wake Of The Icons...

The First Horizon are kinda like the Shadows, even to the point of augmenting agents and soldiers with sinister technology (the Tenth Icon adventure in Wake Of The Icons has a good example of this...)

Both prefer working through agents until the eventual, inevitable direct conflict. And the Third Horizon doesn't really want to be siding with either of them....(like Babylon 5 in Season 4....)
I kept this in mind when I was prepping the whole campaign, but the players have all seen Babylon 5 and are going to be drawing those same parallels...