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Before the Crash: Backstories

You know what I used to love the most about RimWorld back when I still had traces of childhood fascination? Modding the game and making factions interact with each other. It was wild watching Chicken Plucker's UAC go up against Jecrell’s Star Wars Empire—and then having some unexpected third-party chaos thrown into the mix.

Let me get this clear: this is one of the few (personally, I’d say the only) games, or even places, where different universes are allowed to interact without it turning into some Fortnite-style battle royale. That’s the spirit I want to capture with this mod.

If you check the descriptions, you’ll see that a lot of them are original stories I wrote from scratch, grounded in the RimWorld universe (or when that wasn’t enough, in a similarly sci-fi setting) But whenever I can, I’ll always include a well-written description I remember, whether it’s from Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator or the aforementioned Star Wars. I'm not aiming for anything less than a “kitchen sink” of stories—challenging myself to make each one fit into this world. It’s a quantity project, yes, but even more than that, it’s about QUALITY.

Imagine Black Mirror or Love, Death & Robots but in Rimworld backstories, without any fear of copyright.



Finally, Ancients have their own unique backstories! As someone who always plays Ancient starts, it always felt like a shame they shared generic vanilla stories despite all that deep lore and mystery surrounding them. This mod fixes that—I’ve added roughly 40 new backstories focused on their lives in the vaults (and a bit before that too).

The goal was to preserve their eerie, cryptic vibe while fleshing out their history. These stories hint at their struggles, experiments, and the slow collapse of their society. And, since the Vanilla Expanded series sets Ancients as permanent enemies of the Empire, I leaned into that for my headcanon:

The Lore:
The Ancients lost their ancient war against the Empire’s precursors. Why? Psychic dominance. Outgunned, they desperately rushed a Super Soldier program during total war, but it wasn’t enough. Now, survivors wake up centuries later to a world where their civilization is gone, their enemies won, and all that’s left are crumbling vaults.


- 33+ new backstories focused on vault life, genetic experiments, and wartime trauma.

- No spoon-fed lore—just eerie hints of propaganda, failed tech, and paranoia from a dying society.

- Backstories for every role: disillusioned supersoldiers, vault engineers, exiled leaders, and more.



- 141 Adulthood Imperial, Pirate, Outlander and Offworld (colonists) new backstories.
- 15 Childhood Imperial, Pirate, Outlander and Offworld (colonists) new backstories.
- 5 Medieval exclusive backstories.

I plan to add new ones periodically



- 33 Ancient exclusive backstories.
- 3 Obsidia Expansion exclusive backstories. You'll see that I invented some terms and refer to them as the "Ascendancy." It's part of the extended lore I created during my playthroughs. I designed an ideology for them inspired by the "Chiss Ascendancy" from SW Legends.

- And more planned! Check out last screenshots!

The backstories were carefully designed and balanced checking vanilla standards, but atmosphere and realism were the main focus. Some backstories are stronger than others—certain ones lean harder into flaws than benefits, but there should be no game breaking balance content.



You can safely add it midgame, so it is SAVEGAME COMPATIBLE. (I don't think you can remove it without consecuences tho) UPDATES WILL NOT BREAK SAVEGAMES.
Special thanks to @Ravinglegend for sharing some of his backstories! I included content of his mod with little changes in the writing, balance and some than other trait modification. You can see his original work here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2977649532

YOU NO LONGER NEED VFE - ANCIENTS for it to work, now it searches for it. thanks to @Smxrez, previously needed a separated version.
also, you now can safely use it without Vanilla Traits Expanded, built in compatibility thanks to @Halicade (see suggestions)
Designed with compatibility in mind, it shouldn't conflict with other mods, even if they add backstories.
Changes are ony by one listed in "Change Notes", up right below file size.