The Fall

The Fall, short for the Fall of the Farcasters, is a reference to the destruction of the farcaster network, and subsequent end of the farcaster-dependent WorldWeb. The apparent destruction of the TechnoCore-supported farcaster network was ordered by Meina Gladstone in advance of the massive waves of allegedly Ouster attacks upon multiple Hegemony worlds, following the events surrounding the opening of the Time Tombs on the planet Hyperion. As a consequence of the Fall, humanity could no longer depend on the extensive use of farcasters to maintain its interstellar society, and most of interplanetary commerce and tourism came to a halt for decades until a robust interstellar Hawking-drive travel network was established. Worlds without agriculture of their own, such as Tau Ceti Center, suffered great famines. Upheaval took hold on most of the worlds connected by the Web, with families being torn apart by tens or hundreds of light-years of distance. As a further result, multi-world structures such as the River Tethys and the Grand Concourse ceased to exist as they once had.

The Fall marks the end of the Web Era and of the Hegemony of Man; and the beginning of the Pax Era. Use of the term became common during the time of the Pax as the beginning of the rise of the New Catholic Church.