Sine Mora/Story

Setting

The game takes place on the planet of Seol, which is much like Earth. It differs in that its crust is so unstable it often causes quakes that radically reshape its geography in a small amount of time. Albeit originally split into four great nations, by the time the plot unfolds two factions are locked in the Eternal War: the aggressive and dictatorial Layil Empire and the Atarach Kingdom of the Enkie race. Following the teachings of the great prophet Enki, the Enkie are renowned for their unique talent of manipulating time, to the point of being able to transport any item or even themselves to any point into the past or even the future. Over time, however, the Empire develops "The Project", a machine capable of manipulating time. The apparatus is capable of arbitrarily accelerating an item's or even living being's time flow to the point of literally erasing it from existence. Stored inside the floating fortress-city of Siriad, the Project uses every military vehicle of the Layil as a relay, creating a weapon that cannot be effectively disabled. This advantage has allowed the Empire to cut through Enkie defenses, culminating in a vicious (presumably) nuclear bombardment of the Atarach kingdom.

“Normal” narative

In the “normal” narrative, which encompasses the player's first playthrough, Ronotra Koss is mourning the death of his son, Argus Pytel, at the hands of his crewmates as he refused, during the flight of the bomber Cobalt King, to drop a nuclear bomb upon the Enkie capital city; embittered and vengeful, Koss mans a stolen Sine Mora school "Merenstein" plane and, with the help of a smuggled combat artificial intelligence, GARAI 74/22876, starts to systematically infiltrate Layil Empire structures and eliminate officers involved with his son's demise, all the while exacting a bloody revenge on the Empire which abandoned him after an incident left him an amputee. Finally reaching the city of Tira, capital of the Empire, he mercilessly destroys most of its military force, finally facing the colossal Domus assault fortress manned by the officer who killed Argus, managing to destroy it after maneuvering through its defenses and blowing up the power cores.

The parallel storyline involves Akyta Dryad and an ensemble of surviving Enkie resistance fighters unleashing a series of guerrilla attacks on the empire, bent on stopping the Project. Most of the locations are visited after Ronotra Koss' exploits, featuring a much more ruined look and stronger resistance by Empire forces. Resistance fighters fall one after another, either captured or killed in action, dealing a series of crippling blows to the Layil who, however, seemingly recover from each with minimal actual consequences save for structure damage. Infiltrating Siriad, the Empire's floating fortress-city, Akyta, then the sole survivor, reaches the main chamber housing the Project apparatus; there, she is horrified to find two million Enkie survivors connected to machinery, heavily drugged and genetically altered, their natural time manipulating capabilities being channeled to fuel the Empire's temporal gravitation weapons. Fighting the facility's guardian and controller, Ophan, she manages to end the threat of the weapon, leaving Layil unable to use time manipulation.

In a shocking twist however, the entire chain of events is revealed to have been engineered by none other than Argus Pytel himself: a top ranking intelligence officer and a Collaborationist, he engineered for both Resistance groups to embark on suicidal missions, confident of the Empire's chance to recover quickly from any damage via its control over the timeline. The rebel crew member aboard the Cobalt King was actually killed by Pytel and not the other way around, a fact he took advantage of to trick his father's faction into action. The plan however took yet another unexpected turn when, surprising the attacker of the Domus and shooting him down with a barrage of missiles, he was horrified to discover he had just killed his own father. Meanwhile, approximately a thousand years later, Akyta was herself met with a defeat as the Ophan, upon critically malfunctioning, activated the Project's self-destruct system, detonating the facility and killing the Enkie slaves, effectively eradicating the entire Enkie race.

“Alternate” narrative

The ”alternate” narrative is more of an alternate ending: following his father Ronotra Koss' death by his own hands, Argus starts devising a plan of his own to exact revenge on the Empire: using his knowledge of past events and the Project equipment, he traveled forward in time to before Akyta could destroy the Ophan, having her travel 4200 years into the past and saving her life before destroying the facility himself (and dying in the process). Sine Mora ends with the same opening cinematic, revealing Argus as the pilot of the King Cobalt: however, Akyta is revealed to be pregnant, and to have given birth to none other than Enki himself, thus bringing the entire story full circle.

Timeline

If I understand how time is counted on Seol, the following is how the stages should be ordered if time flew linear (in the “normal” narative).

Note that:

• circles are the Seol equivalent to years and quarters to the (four) seasons, spring equinox starts a new circle
• a day on Seol is divided into 340 nir, with the sunset marking the passing from 340^th nir of the previous day to the 1^st nir of the next one
• Imperial Nir (IN) counts time up from an, to us, uknown point in time (— check what “IN” _really_ means)
• while Enky’s Time (ET) counts time down to its prophesised cataclysm, which at that time the Enkie archon declared to have been 4200 circles away

Ronotra Koss’ story:

1. circle 1284, quarter 1, 8:216:02 IN – Stage IV.A: Argus Pytel at Cardinal Canyon, Losei
2. circle 1317, quarter 2, 22:337:95 IN – Prologue: unknown pilot, Near Moneta Point
3. circle 1317, quarter 2, 22:338:01 IN – Stage V.A: Garai 74/22876 at Mirage Mountain
4. circle 1317, quarter 2, 22:338:16 IN – Stage V.B: Myryan Magusa at Mirage Mountain
5. circle 1380, quarter 2, 5:254:96 IN – Stage II.A: Myryan Magusa at Bokumono Perimieter
6. circle 1380, quarter 2, 5:255:8 IN – Stage II.B: Ronotra Koss at Bokumono Undersea Prison Facility
7. circle 1405, quarter 2, 9:211:02 IN – Stage IV.B: Garai 74/22876 at Cardinal Canyon, Losei
8. circle 1517, quarter 1, 52:220:13 IN – Stage VI.A: Ronotra Koss in Tira, the Imperial Capital

Akyta Dryad’s story, several years (centuries?) after:

1. circle 102, quarter 3, 15:12:15 ET – Stage I.B: Akyta Dryad in Moneta Point Research Base (Note: double-check on I.A vs I.B’s time, it’s odd that they would both act out at the same place at the same time)
2. circle 102, quarter 3, 15:12:15 ET – Stage I.A: Lynthe Ytoo, Near Moneta Point
3. circle 22, quarter 2, 41:6:70 ET – Stage III.A: Durak in Losei Imperial AiBorg Factory
4. circle 22, quarter 2, 41:6:52 ET – Stage III.B: Durak in Losei Imperial AiBorg Factory
5. circle zero, quarter 1, 1:11:12 ET – Stage VI.B: Lynthe Ytoo in Tira, the Imperial Capital
6. circle zero, quarter 1, 1:1:65 ET – Stage VII: Akyta Dryad in Floating Fortress Siriad