The Arm and the Core

Total Annihilation tells the last chapter of a war that has lasted more than 4,000 years. On one side is the Core, which moved the minds of its people into machines. On the other side is the Arm, made up of people who refused to give up their bodies.

A Galaxy Ruled by the Core

The manual describes a galaxy that was once at peace. A governing body called the Core ruled it, and its guiding principle was scientific progress.

Then science achieved its greatest success: a victory over death. A process called patterning could copy a person's mind into a machine. In practice, this meant that people could live forever. The Core made patterning compulsory for every citizen, for their own safety.

The Arm Breaks Away

Many people did not want to give up their bodies. Some saw patterning as a crime. They fled to the outer edges of the galaxy, joined together and became known as the Arm.

Neither side ever declared war, but war began. The Arm built powerful combat suits for its soldiers and later turned to cloning. The Core moved the minds of its best soldiers into war machines and copied them thousands of times.

Four Thousand Years of War

The war used up the resources of the whole galaxy and devastated a million worlds. After more than 4,000 years, both civilisations were gone and their great military industries were in ruins. Only scattered remnants of the two armies remained. They kept fighting on ruined planets, and each side would accept nothing less than the complete destruction of the other.

Commanders and Galactic Gates

Armies travel between worlds through Galactic Gates. The 2000 manual explains that a Gate needs weeks of energy to open and collapses after a couple of thousand kilograms pass through it. A whole army cannot cross, so a single Commander goes through instead.

A Commander carries an antimatter power pack, a set of blueprints and a nanolathe. The nanolathe sprays tiny machines made of metal onto a frame, where they join to form new structures and units. With it, one Commander can build a complete military base in a matter of hours. A Commander can also capture enemy machines. Help may not arrive for days or weeks, so the Commander has to take the planet alone.

The Arm Commander and the Core Commander are the most important units in the game. In many games, the loss of your Commander ends the battle.

Two Matched Armies

The manual says that neither side has a clear advantage. Every Arm unit has a Core equivalent, but there are small differences between each pair. In general, Core units are slightly more heavily armoured but slower than Arm units.

The Arm Campaign

The Arm campaign begins on Empyrrean, the Arm homeworld. Core agents have reached the planet, and they wait at the Gate where the Arm Commander must return. The Arm then pushes outwards from Gate to Gate, through Thalassean, Tergiverse IV, Barathrum and Rougpelt.

From Dump, the only moon of Core Prime, the Arm invades the Core homeworld. Core Prime is a world covered in metal. The Arm captures the Central Consciousness, which directs the Core war machine. In the last of the 25 missions, the Arm Commander must reach the top of the Core Command Dome.

The Core Campaign

The Core campaign begins on Core Prime itself. A small Arm force has found the Core Commander during maintenance and switched him off. The Core must clear the Arm from its homeworld and capture the Gate that the Arm used.

The Core then advances through Barathrum, Aqueous Minor, Rougpelt and an archipelago world. It reaches Aegus, the moon of Empyrrean, and uses it to stage the final assault. The 25th mission is the Arm's last stand in the hills of Empyrrean. The Core briefings are short, cold commands that end with the words "DO SO NOW."

After the War

The expansion The Core Contingency continues the story after the Arm victory. The Core has lost, and the galaxy is being rebuilt. But a Core Commander was hidden as part of a contingency plan, and both sides now race to find a piece of alien technology. Its bonus mission, the Krogoth Encounter, goes back to the war, when the Core built giant Krogoth Kbots to stop the Arm.

Sources

  • Total Annihilation manual (Cavedog Entertainment, 1997): "The Galactic War" and the notes on the two armies
  • Total Annihilation manual (Infogrames re-release, 2000): "The Galactic War" and the glossary entries for Commanders, Galactic Gates and nanolathing
  • Mission briefings in the game data of Total Annihilation and The Core Contingency
  • Cavedog Entertainment press release of 29 April 1998: The Core Contingency