This is all fanmade lore but feel free to enjoy it understand the story behind this series of my maps . The maps in the series of ascendence all have a distinct play style and thematic value. All made of floating islands in the sky that form free-flowing gameplay and test the extent of core maps. But this is not a place where I am going to discuss the theory of the maps, no this is a place where I am going to discuss their backstory, where they came from, and why everything is the way it is. Now granted some things in these maps have no lore explanation but thematically are there to assist the map accomplishes its theme. These things are as follows: The Skybox Color (makes the world feel warmer and less like earth) The portal size (budget constraint on original concept (located in limbo and ascendence) Everything else has a backstory, some born from halo concepts some that are not. Let us begin: Long ago when the forerunners built the halo rings, and these rings were small worlds almost that had a profound technological infrastructure. Each ring could jettison parts of themselves if it were deemed infected. When this protocol was performed the segment typically slices the line with hard light, and free’s the segment from its other parts. However, it wasn’t always like this. To prototype, this a small ringworld was built, called Installation 00.1. (currently monitored by a monitor known as 758 Guided). This installation could not fire like its larger brothers but was used to prototype all functions of the rings, including the jettison capability. This prototype had a lot of flaws. One of which was hard light splicers were not used to separate the large chunks of land. Bits of the landmass would crumble away from the structure and would either fall back to the surface or float forever in space. Some forerunner tech that was hidden in these rocks was to be exposed and would cause bright glowing lights encased in rocks. They would illuminate some sectors of these islands and others would remain forever unexposed. These bits of landmass are where the maps take place, on a series of islands that float far above the surface of halo, on the edge of the ring world's atmosphere in almost perfect 0 gravity. The only reason they don't fall back to the ring is that they are stuck in an inverse orbit to the rotation of the ring. The ring rotates gently in one direction, and they are pulled around the edge of the gravitational field of the halo, causing them to hover almost majestically in the sky. Once 758 Guided found out about these he ran some tests to see how stable they were, being they were a bunch of islands that had no control over one another and tended to pack tightly together as they orbit. 758 Guided led to small structures being added to them like small rope bridges. Because 758 Guided was not left with any constructors to assist him on his installation, unlike his fellow monitors. He was forced to use gravity manipulation and what resources he had available (Vines, Ore, Wood, and Exposed bits of forerunner tech) to construct the bridges. They connect the larger islands of Ascendence and the smaller one of the section known as Divinity. Ascendence, however, had a little different from many of the other islands. Because of the way the split had occurred small outcroppings of rocks with bits and pieces of forerunner machinery began to crop up. These then would accidentally grow together and form a rift in spacetime, opening the path to an alternate reality known as Limbo. Limbo was not like the other islands, it was diseased and shows a dimension where the covenant had found this installation before the jettison tests were even performed, and it ended up with their body parts slowly being buried upon this dimensions grass and rock. The temporal portals, however, remained in this realm, however, were too distant from the play space known as Limbo for a player to experience it first hand. [Feel free to ask questions I will be adding to this as time goes on]