Freedom's Progress
From FABT
| Star, position: |
Yarra, II |
| Location: | |
| Satellite(s): | |
| Gravity: |
0.8 G |
| Diameter: |
9,253 km |
| Day length: |
18.6 Earth Hours |
| Year length: |
0.9 Earth Years |
| Atmosphere: |
1.0 atm |
| Temperature: |
- 35 °C (pre-Fall of Malantor) |
| Adjective: |
Malantorian (to protheans) |
| Population: |
56.4 billion (prothean era) |
| Species: |
Prothean (prothean era) |
| Societal approximation: |
Imperial monarchy (prothean era) |
| Affiliation: |
Bastion Confederate (Inusannon era) |
| Technological tier: | |
| Capital: | |
- "An ordinary colony, really...until the disappearance. Completely unremarkable."
- — Miranda Lawson describing Freedom's Progress.
Freedom's Progress (known as Malantor to the protheans) is the second planet in the Yarra system of the Voyager cluster, and the former homeworld of the prothean species. During the inusannon cycle, the Bastion Confederate discovered Malantor during their expansion, setting up observation posts and even a small city in the Greten Mountains on the Tortus Freve continent, where the inusannon actively mingled with the primitive protheans and croteans who were native to the planet, becoming god-like to the inhabitants. The Inusannon preferred to interact with the protheans, largely leaving the croteans alone, and this led to the protheans believing they were special in the eyes of their deities. When the Reapers invaded during their cycle, the Inusannon abandoned their facilities in the hopes of sparing the protheans and croteans, but the planet was largely left alone anyway, as the Reapers did not harvest pre-spaceflight species. After the Inusannon left, their installations were left to the passage of time, with Observer's Keep later rediscovered by the protheans who proceeded to live within its walls, using it for the basis for one of the first prothean civilizations, the Greten Triarchy, and later developing and expanding their own city beyond its walls, with the Keep as its palace, building the city known as The Colossus. As time went on, the croteans discovered more Inusannon technology and began catching up to the protheans, who were already incredibly advanced by the time the croteans built their first organized settlement: both species rapidly populated across Malantor, building ships to cross the seas and conquer undiscovered lands and new peoples, who were subsequently either crushed or subjugated. Urbanization took place across Malantor, and despite tensions between the two rivals, peace endured across the planet, largely as a result of mutual trade deals and non-aggression pacts. By 77300 BCE, much of prothean society had adopted the scientific principle of the Cosmic Imperative, derived from a mistranslation and understanding of the writings of an Inusannon scientist who had died of starvation in the Keep since before the protheans rediscovered it, and as time went on, the protheans began to believe in a destiny where the protheans were the fittest and deserved to subjugate the croteans. By 77100 BCE, all major prothean nations had united under a single banner known as the Prothean Republic, a mighty empire that controlled 45% of Malantor's total landmass, the rest falling under the control of dozens of smaller crotean nations, with the Cosmic Imperative as the dominant state religion. In 76917 BCE the Prothean Republic finally declared war on the entire crotean species, and after 86 years of war, the Prothean Republic ended the war in global control over Malantor, reforming themselves into the Prothean Empire and beginning its expansion into the stars, with Malantor as its capital.
As the Empire expanded, Malantor remained the epicenter of a vast prothean dominion, its cities continually expanding until enormous, sprawling megapolises covered the surface, artificial land bridges linking entire continents and space elevators allowing seamless, ship-less transport between the surface and the planet's many space stations and moons. Malantor was home to many technological marvels, the Imperial palace centered at the Colossus where the head-of-state, the Ethnarch, resided. It wasn't until the latter stages of the Crusade that the protheans discovered and captured a massive space station called the Citadel from the Synril Alliance and, marveling at its splendor and impregnable shell, transferred their government to the station and made the Citadel the primary government of the Empire, with Malantor serving as a backup and secondary capital instead. This did not diminish Malantor's importance however, and it remained a vital part of a bustling imperium, which by the end of the Crusade spanned the four corners of the Milky Way Galaxy. After the Crusade, Malantor was made the official capital of the Gelanium Realm and of the Xiones Empyrean, with the former Imperial palace given to the empyrite. In the early days of the Reaper invasion of the prothean cycle, Malantor was the first among many targets the Reapers prioritized after they captured the Citadel, arriving over the planet in force and engaging in a siege that would last 12 years, and one that would end with the protheans being forced to surrender the planet, but not before saturating the planet's surface with antimatter and nuclear detonations, obliterating billions of Reaper ground forces in the process and destroying a handful of Reaper ships, but also rendering the entire surface of the planet completely uninhabitable, destroying the eco system and sealing the fate of billions of protheans still on the surface when the bombs dropped. The Reapers did not bother to occupy the planet after that, as the planet had already been surrendered and anything of value left planetside was either dead or would die as the planet's ecology rapidly failed: after the war, the Reapers returned to remove any remaining prothean technology and to strip their ruins clean, leaving the planet devoid of any evidence of the prothean's existence before leaving.
Fifty thousand years later in the asari cycle, the planet's nuclear winter had become permanent, although radiation levels had all but disappeared except for small areas. Regardless, the planet was drastically different from what it had been, its oceans reduced by 82%, temperatures having dropped significantly, snow cover prevalent across most continents, and many of the former landscapes flattened or unrecognizable. Despite needing millions more years to fully recover, the planet was once again habitable, with the Systems Alliance establishing their first colony on the planet in 2173 CE named Little Rock: Alliance explorers subsequently named the planet "Freedom's Progress", with the entire galaxy unaware of the planet's true history, although some scientists had deduced that the planet's temperatures and radioactive zones were a result of a violent cataclysm that happened thousands of years before. The Little Rock colony, combined with the four other colonies spread across the planet's surface, would maintain a modest, combined population of 15,000 leading up to the Eden Prime War in 2183 CE, where colonist enrollment dropped sharply as a result of the geth attacks that hit Eden Prime and Feros. Little Rock's population would grow slightly to reach 25,000 by 2185 CE, but this was brought to an abrupt end when Freedom's Progress, specifically the original Little Rock colony, fell victim to a Collector attack, with all eight thousand of its citizens being abducted without a trace and never seen again: however, unlike previous abductions, a team from Cerberus managed to arrive on site early and recovered surveillance footage finally proving Collector involvement. Despite this breakthrough, the colonists of the other colonies were shaken by the abduction and many left for Earth for their own safety, with a sharp decrease in Freedom's Progress population as a result, and Little Rock itself wouldn't begin to recover until long after the Reaper War.
Following the official release of Liara T'Soni's biography on the life of Javik Ple in 2204 CE, which also contained an encyclopedia of knowledge on the Prothean Empire, it was revealed to the galaxy that Freedom's Progress was in fact the lost homeworld of his species, a revelation that took the galaxy by storm and saw a massive amount of tourism flock to the planet, revitalizing interest in the otherwise forgotten world. Following the Post-Apocalyptic War, the prothean faction calling themselves the "New Prothean Empire" was granted permission by the Systems Coalition to set up a colony on the far side of Freedom's Progress, and these protheans even took to calling the planet Malantor again, although its official name to the galaxy remained Freedom's Progress. These protheans, despite the old lineage and history they lay claim to, would never again claim full hegemony over the world, and became all but hermits and recluses to the rest of the galaxy, abstaining from contact most of the time and choosing to live a life of seclusion, hoping to restore but a fraction of the glory their people once had. By 2230 CE however, Freedom's Progress had not only recovered, but grown tenfold as a result of this revelation. Little Rock, remaining the planet's capital, had significantly expanded into a small city, with a population numbering in the tens of thousands while the other colonies boasted similar numbers. The planet's population continues to grow to this day, albeit stymied by the growing interest in the "land grab" in the Andromeda Galaxy and later other galaxies as well.