The Prologue is the first stage of Sine Mora. The stage serves as an introduction to the game's basic controls, its power up system and the time capsule mechanics.
Completing the prologue without taking damage and destroying every single enemy (this requires taking the "For Advanced Pilots" route when prompted) earns the player the Sine Mora award. Failing the prologue grants the Stercus Accidit award.
Introduction
Original
| When you're born with the ability to travel through time, the first thing you must learn is that you cannot be in more than one place at the same point in time. Special though you may be, you are not immortal. You must give due consideration not only to when and where you do things, but also what you do while there. The second thing to bear in mind is that your gift, like rage, is meaningless without power. Yet all power on Seol lies in the hands of the Layil Empire. The Enkies have disregarded both principles. They labeled their rebellion an Eternal War, though their resistance certainly failed to live up to that title. It all ended with the fall of Mirage Mountain. |
Alternative
| None of us were there when it happened. The Empire's history books called the bombs a means to quickly end the war. In this way they say the lives of millions of soldiers were spared. Duplicity. Or perhaps it's the morals that have changed, or the sense of decency. Man has faced man in the name of decency before. True decency does not allow the slaughter of innocent women and children by one man in the name of forcing another man to his knees. But decency is subject to the ideas of the time. And we live in indecent times. |
Synopsis
The game begins in the skies above Mirage Mountain, the capital of the Enkies. The air fleet of the Layil Empire is engaged in heavy fighting with the Enkie forces during the final assault on the city. One of the Imperial bombers, the Cobalt King, successfully makes it past the Enkie resistance and prepares to drop its bomb. Another of the bombers, the Lord Granite, drops its bomb and engulfs Mirage Mountain in a gigantic explosion.
However, only three of the four bombers drop their bombs on Mirage Mountain - the Collaborationist pilot of the Cobalt King, Argus Pytel, reportedly ignores his orders and is subsequently executed by co-pilot Zach Gully. Pytel's father, Ronotra Koss, swears to take his revenge on the surviving members of the Cobalt King.
Epilogue
Original
| The Fourth Unity... three bombs killed 664,000 Enkies that day, to the elated cries of nearly two billion citizens of the Empire. But this is also where I lost my son. He was the pilot of the Cobalt King, the bomber that carried the fourth bomb, the one that never dropped. He did the unthinkable; unprecedented in the history of military aviation. He ignored his orders. According to the news, the co-pilot buried a bullet in my son's brain that very instant. An Imperial father would have been shattered to hear of this treason, and struck dumb with shame. Me, I'm just a Collaborationist father, a secondary citizen, who resembles an Imperial father only in grief. I have not torn my clothes from my body in mourning. I have not apologized for the actions of my progeny. I have sworn revenge. |
Alternative
| Fire and ashes. Black hell-rain. The bombing literally erased the Enkies' capital... razed it to the ground. As a final blow, the Empire built its own divine capital upon this very same ground. The city of Tira. In this manner, the Empire planted its roots on Enkie soil, fueled by Enkie culture. They had conquered the Enkies utterly, and this is why the destruction on Siriad offended the Empire so greatly. They desperately sought a way to avoid the loss of their prize. They were in need of this technology, and for that they were in need of their Enkie slaves. Without the Enkies, they were unable to change history. They became dependent upon the Collaborationists. And intelligence. That is to say, they became dependent upon me. This was my chance. |