Category:Story

Humans have ruined the surface of the world through rapidly advancing technology and a general disregard for their environment. To escape the the toxic planet surface, they have harnessed steam, diesel, and electric power to create a life in the sky on artificial floating cities. However, after decades of living in the sky the humans are running low on resources and realize that they must re-colonize the surface if they wish to survive.

The humans begin to piece together a large reclamation machine out of any materials that are not critical for the survival of their floating cities. These include scraps of old materials and even machines and electronics that are decades old. The hope is that this machine will be able to clean up the rubble from the old civilizations down below that currently make the surface hazardous. Underground buildings are collapsing, oil is leaking all over the streets, fires smolder, and pollution is widespread. Along with the reclamation machine the humans sent down twenty-six Steam Powered Automatons to assist it throughout its mission since no Human would survive long on the surface. However something goes terribly wrong during deployment and the Reclamation machine and its companion droids crash into the surface and become unresponsive. The project is marked a failure.

Unbeknownst to the humans, one of these lone automatons crashed through the surface into the undercities and survives. Although its landing is softer than the others, the little robot still received much damage, causing his mission directives to be scrambled. Steam Powered Automaton Zeta, or SPAZ, wakes up in the underground lost and without purpose. He must explore the underground ruins, solve puzzles, upgrade and rebuild his chassis, and move upward to the surface to figure out what is going on. In doing so he will accidentally begin activating the main Reclamation machine and will eventually emerge from the underground as a hero to the humans.