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The universe depicted in The Urchin, The Artist and The Abomination is an alternative depiction of the Victorian era, with heavy steampunk and dieselpunk vibes.

In this reality, space travel was ace race, and colonising planets and moons around the Earth. This, of course, led to a war, and from the ashes rose the Great Empire, with London as its capitol, and all of the universe as its plaything.

Humanity spread far beyond their core colonies, establishing over one hundred colonies in their quest for dominion of the stars. Starships became faster, able to travel further, and more deadly over time, and the Great Empire was able to put down any resistant colonies to the their rule with relative ease, creating an air of complacency among the aristocracy and well-off communities. Naturally, the poor did not get to see many of these advantages, and the wealth gap became a chasm, with workhouses and child labour as prevalent in this world as they were in our own.

While the starship was greatly admired, it was not the only game-changing technology to emerge. Created in the German States, the MindLink neurochip took Earth and the core colonies by storm. A tiny microchip installed into the recipient’s skull allowed them to interact with all manner of things with a mere wink – everything from kitchen appliances to pedestrian crossing signals and mechanical doors. Some would call this the pinnacle of human ingenuity, while others would call it the beginning of the end.

The Day of the Fall happened with such suddenness, and such savagery, that nobody could have predicted it. Earth and the core colonies fell silent in a second, and any starships sent from neighbouring colonies met the same fate. The greatest minds in the remains of the Great Empire tried to work out what had happened, but never had the chance, as the Artificer soon made himself known, sending mysterious “dead” ships in their droves outward from the dead core.

The dead ships arrived above colonies, sweeping away their naval defences and raining down dead bodies animated by grisly mechanical parts onto the surface. These creatures, known to the dwindling horde of humanity as abominations, murdered citizens in their masses, providing more bodies to join the Artificer’s legions, and as such his evil forces spread across the galaxy like a plague, chasing mankind to the shadows at the edge of civilisation.

We join the citizens of humanity’s final colony on the eve of the invasion, the dead ships hurtling through space toward them, and bring death in their wake.