During the Shutdown War between the alien species known as the Arweli, and the Robot collective known as Groupthink, massive planetwide bombardments occurred.
Arweli industrial planets were targeted particularly as a means of slowing their war effort. Several times, Groupthink suicide ships equipped with a preciously irreplaceable drive crystals would jump deep behind the battle lines and into Arweli territory to unleash a planet wide barrage of atomic weaponry faster than the defenses of the planets could react. The resulting devastation of industrial facilities on the surface of these planets released unimaginable amounts of toxic byproducts into the environments.
After the war, many species including humans would make expeditions to these dead worlds in pursuit of resources, but would find mutated and degraded offshots of the Arweli species clinging to existence in the ruins.
(Sorry this is a repost, Beehaw defederated and apparently the original post I made disappeared)
Well, I suppose it’s not just that the characters had things taken away, but that they are actively working to get their lives back. It isn’t just mopey depression. That is just the start. Like screenwriting says: Characters should start stories in a place where they need to change. I’ve always had a trio in mind. The woman who was a pilot for an independent colony militia during the war. Her dream was to be a pilot. In the war she was shot down and lost her arm and leg. She ended up with subpar prosthetics which didn’t have good fine motor control, and her colony was destroyed so she ended up like many colonists becoming a refugee to a corporate run area. She became a low skill worker among a crowd of people scraping by.
Second would be an arweli former commando. He was a full patriot and his entire government crumbled and at the same time he watched a lot of cowadice and hypocrisy among the political class as it happened. He ended up being hired muscle for a semi-legal trading outpost run by a Lando Calrissian type. Starts the post war era not believing in causes any more, or at least trying very hard not to.
The last would be a former human corporate soldier who ended up contracting a fatal disease from where he was deployed in the war, and underwent an illicit experimental surgery to transfer his conciousness into the robot shell, which would of course leave him questioning if he was really even himself anymore and all that.
These would be the three that end up together and as the group that is the window into the world. While it isn’t an exact parallel I think about The Wizard Of Oz, of all things a lot when I think of them, even though they don’t have 1-for-1 motivation lineups with those characters.
Here’s a link of post-it note and random paper sketches and drawings. Consider these like non-canon concept art. Quality will be all over the place as a lot of these were just made for me and done in one pass. A window to what I’m thinking, but subject to changes.