Canonical TRACEKEEPERS story — The signal from Earth

Status: narrative canon approved for pre-production. Version: 4.3 — 2 August 2026. Opening campaign: TRACEKEEPERS: BEFORE CITIES / TRACEKEEPERS: ANTES DE LAS CIUDADES. Trademark note: TRACEKEEPERS is the chosen creative direction. Final commercial use remains subject to a professional search for similar marks.

1. The story in one sentence

A beacon belonging to the Avenyth civilisation detects the space-time trace of the 1974 Arecibo message and alerts its network; Arca travels to understand the species that created it, and Veritas, Aletheia and the new Tracekeepers follow human traces through time before deciding what Arca can learn from humanity and how to answer its question.

The main brand line is:

Every age left a trace. Cada época dejó una huella.

The line that summarises cooperative play is:

No one sees the whole story. Nadie conoce toda la historia.

The game's central question is:

How did humanity learn to cooperate in ever larger groups, and why did it also learn to hide or manipulate what it knows?

2. The signal

On 16 November 1974, the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico transmitted a message towards the M13 star cluster. It was mainly a symbolic act: a demonstration that humanity could send a simple image towards the stars.

The message contained 1,679 bits: 1,679 ones and zeroes. Arranging them in 23 columns and 73 rows produces an image with numbers, elements connected with life, DNA, a human figure, the Solar System and the radio telescope itself. It did not contain the name “Earth” or a written sentence for extraterrestrials. The story summarises the hope represented by the act with a simple question:

“Is anyone out there?”

The signal travels at the speed of light and was aimed at a destination tens of thousands of light-years away. It has not travelled that distance and does not reach the Avenyth central network in the ordinary way. The Avenyth maintain an immense network of beacons across the universe. One detects the transmission's space-time trace while the signal is still travelling.

The beacons communicate with the central network through an Avenyth protocol that reduces delay to an almost imperceptible interval. This communication and the detection of a temporal trace belong to the game's science fiction. They do not mean that Arecibo's radio wave travelled faster than light. On screen, the rule is summarised as: “The signal is still travelling. A beacon has found its trace in time.”

The Avenyth can tell that the pattern was created intentionally, but one image cannot help them understand those who sent it. The Custodians decide not to answer on the basis of a first impression. They order Arca to be prepared, the trace to be followed to its origin and every finding to be saved with the evidence supporting it.

The Avenyth do not live on one planet. They form a network of habitats, stations and beacons sharing memory, discoveries and questions. Their most important principle is simple: a claim should not be separated from the traces supporting it, from the doubts that remain, or from the place it came from. That is why they send Arca to understand before replying.

3. Arca and the Atlas

Arca is a vessel for exploration and preservation. Its main system, the Atlas, can detect the space-time trace of a transmission, follow it to its source and open windows onto earlier moments connected with that origin.

The Atlas does not read every mind, store the complete wisdom of every being or create a perfect history. It works with traces:

• objects;
• buildings and places;
• remains of plants, animals and people;
• images and sounds;
• texts and records;
• preserved stories;
• visible changes in the environment.

Each trace reveals one part. Several connected traces allow a situation to be reconstructed with greater confidence. When evidence is missing, the Atlas must show the gap instead of inventing an answer.

4. The first scan of Earth

Arca follows the trace to the third planet in the Solar System. Only after studying its voices and records does it learn the local name: Earth. Space-time travel makes it possible to observe a present recognisable to the player even though the transmission began in 1974. Arca performs an incomplete scan from the planet's formation to that present and discovers a world deeply transformed by the human species: cities, networks, machines, art, science and an enormous ability to collaborate.

It also detects contradictions that a distant view cannot explain. The same species cares and destroys, shares and hoards, verifies and deceives, remembers and erases. Arca can see the results but does not yet understand the choices, needs and conflicts that led to them.

The Atlas does not detect a supposed “birth of intelligence”. Humanity had been learning, creating and cooperating for a very long time. What it finds is an increase in connected traces beginning about twelve thousand years ago: more stable settlements, shared works, storage, later cultivation and groups able to coordinate more people.

The first sufficiently stable window on this route leads to the hills of Anatolia and Sarımğara Çakmaktepe around 9600 BCE. An experienced hunter-gatherer community there is taking early steps towards a more settled life. Göbekli Tepe lies roughly 30 km away, about eight hours on foot in the narrative scale, and becomes a later destination on the same regional route. Çakmaktepe is not the origin of every community, the first civilisation or the history of all humanity. It is the best entry point for this particular route.

5. Veritas, Aletheia and the players

Veritas and Aletheia are Arca's first Tracekeepers and the two main faces of the story.

• Veritas often begins: “What can we verify?”
• Aletheia often begins: “Which voice or context are we missing?”

Both observe evidence and listen to people. They do not represent reason against emotion, and neither always has the correct answer.

Each player enters Arca as a new Tracekeeper and uses a personal avatar. Before the first window opens, the game chooses Veritas or Aletheia as field guide. One always travels with the player in both solo and cooperative play, and does not occupy a player place.

A solo player decides. In cooperative play the team makes a visible choice; the person who created the room breaks a tie. The choice is saved for the campaign and may be changed only aboard Arca between missions. The protagonist not selected remains aboard Arca and appears in the prologue, returns, cinematics and endings.

The chosen guide accompanies the group, recalls the objective, may indicate the next action when asked and helps organise what has already been observed. The guide does not collect objects, carry an inventory, vote, provide exclusive evidence or solve a puzzle. Their purpose is to prevent the player becoming lost without taking away the discovery.

A Tracekeeper:

1. observes before making a claim;
2. listens to people and their situation;
3. compares more than one sign;
4. separates established evidence from possibility;
5. acknowledges what cannot yet be known;
6. saves questions for a later age;
7. does not give future knowledge to a person in the past.

6. Entering the past

Before the mission, the Custodians prepare Veritas and Aletheia for contact. Both adopt a human field appearance so that people on Earth can recognise their gestures, look them in the eye and speak without being paralysed by an unknown form.

The appearance does not copy the body or mind of a real person, and it does not allow either Tracekeeper to impersonate anyone. They keep their Avenyth identity and appear unarmed. On Arca they wear a continuous graphite one-piece suit with no visible seams. When entering a period, the threshold completely replaces it with clothing suited to that place, leaving no visible future object or technology. At Çakmaktepe, the adaptation uses only hide and leather; plant fibres appear as cords or ties, never as cloth. The selected protagonist keeps this form during the mission; the other remains connected from Arca.

Temporal windows show moments that already happened. Tracekeepers can walk, listen, collect and deliver objects, help with tasks and take part in local decisions because their presence is already part of the window opened by the Atlas. They cannot rewrite a major historical event or bring a later solution.

The rule is presented simply:

We can enter, observe and help. We cannot change what already happened.

A mission can follow different routes, conversations and team decisions. These differences change what players understand, the relationships they build and the questions they save. Fixed historical events keep their known outcome.

If a scene must represent something that is not documented — Kael's personal life, for example — it is marked as a plausible reconstruction. The game never presents that fictional conversation as a real recording.

7. People in the past and free conversation

Characters are not encyclopaedias. They know their place, time, work, memories and observations.

They relate to the player in three ways:

1. Invite: show their world and ask what draws the visitor's attention.
2. Request: ask someone to find, carry, compare or deliver something genuinely needed.
3. Ask for help: when a new problem appears or they cannot follow several signs at once, work with the team to move forward.

At prepared moments, the camera may move closer and open a free text or voice conversation. The character answers in plain language and only within their knowledge. If the player asks about something later, the character answers honestly and the Atlas saves the question.

When a future character can continue the subject, the Atlas recalls:

• what the earlier character explained;
• where they had to stop;
• which question remained open;
• which new tool, experience or evidence now allows progress.

Learning therefore grows naturally without presenting an ancient person as ignorant or making them know the future.

8. The Obscurantists

The Obscurantists emerged from a split within Avenyth civilisation. They believe that one simple, controlled story is more useful than an archive full of doubts, voices and evidence that anyone can review. They argue that preserving so many sources and disagreements makes the Archive slow and decisions difficult.

Not every criticism of the Archive makes someone an Obscurantist. The split begins when one faction decides to erase the origins of evidence and prevent others from reviewing its version.

They reached the information layer before Arca; they did not precede Arca in human history. They intercept copies, sever connections, remove levels of uncertainty and combine real evidence with a manipulated conclusion. Their aim is for Arca to answer an opaque version of humanity whose construction no one can inspect.

Their limits are fixed:

• they do not cause human wars, religions, inventions or decisions;
• they do not control historical figures;
• they do not turn every mistake into a conspiracy;
• they do not change the past;
• they are not the explanation for human lies, fear or conflict.

Humanity is already complex by itself. The Obscurantists exploit gaps, simplifications and contradictions that they find. At first they are perceived only as Interference; their intent is revealed gradually.

9. The first campaign: Before Cities

The arrival mission and the ten main Prehistory adventures investigate one simple question:

What does a group need in order to live, work and decide together before cities exist?

Kael and the other members of the group do not receive “civilisation” from the players. They teach players to read their own environment. They ask for help when fire, cold, food, risk, materials, signs or disagreement require several observations to be combined.

Çakmaktepe preserves homes and circular special spaces cut into bedrock, some reaching 16 m in diameter. The reconstruction uses wooden posts, not T-shaped pillars, and may bring work, shared food and ritual action together. Deliberately placed aurochs and sheep skulls and small ritual-art objects support symbolic intent but do not explain its meaning. Torches, rhythmic voices, percussion, movement and a feast are marked as possible or reconstructed when direct evidence is absent.

Grinding and pounding tools support the gathering and preparation of wild plants. Stone beads and other ornaments show time and skill devoted to more than obtaining food. The fictional group keeps stories about ancestors across many generations, but the game does not claim that one tribe can be traced archaeologically over millennia. Nor does it claim that professional priests or a tribute system existed. An offering, a person guiding a rite, the meaning of each skull or support for craft workers are possible reconstructions of this fictional group.

The missions form four acts:

At the end, the Atlas creates the First Record of Earth with four visible layers:

• established;
• possible;
• disputed;
• reconstructed for the game.

The campaign ends with questions that other ages may expand: fired vessels, organised crops, records, sharing resources and agreements among larger groups. Sumer remains locked until produced and reviewed.

10. Complete arc

Prologue — The question

In 1974, Arecibo sends the message. Much later, the Atlas detects its temporal trace while the signal is still travelling. The Avenyth Custodians reject a hasty reply and send Arca. Veritas and Aletheia reach Earth, observe its present, find contradictions and discover the first Interference. The Atlas opens the Çakmaktepe route, with Göbekli Tepe as a later regional destination, and receives the new Tracekeepers.

Campaigns — The chain of traces

Each age answers one part and opens another question. A later character takes up the earlier limit because different tools, problems or records are now available. The route does not present a ladder from inferior to superior peoples: it compares different ways of organising life and transmitting knowledge.

As the Archive grows, the Obscurantists try to erase sources and turn possibilities into certainties. The Tracekeepers discover that protecting truth does not mean imposing one final sentence. It means preserving evidence, context, disagreement and limits so that others can review them.

Ending — Arca's answer

After completing the route, Arca understands that humanity cannot be reduced to one virtue or one fault. The final decision does not ask whether the species “deserves” to exist. It asks what human experience can contribute to Arca's Archive and how to reply without pretending that its whole history is already known.

The Tracekeepers distribute the Archive with its sources and questions so that no faction controls the only copy. Arca then answers the signal:

Earth, we have heard your question. You are not alone.

The Atlas reveals other isolated human traces in different regions of the world. The ending does not say “we now know humanity”. It says:

Every age left a trace. Many more remain to be followed.

11. What winning means

Winning does not mean collecting every object or finding an answer marked as correct.

A mission is complete when the team can:

• explain what it decided;
• show which signs support that decision;
• acknowledge a cost or an absent voice;
• state how confident it is;
• save an honest question.

The first campaign is complete when its arrival mission and ten main adventures form a coherent record. The full game ends when Arca can answer the signal with an archive that can be reviewed, distributed and opened to new routes.

12. Limits of the canon

• AVENYTH is the canonical name of the civilisation that built Arca; commercial use remains subject to legal review.
• The Arecibo message of 16 November 1974 is the real historical trigger; its content and structure are not altered to pretend that it said more than it did.
• No exact year is set for the Avenyth detection or for the playable present.
• The signal does not reach the Avenyth in the ordinary way. The Atlas detects its space-time trace while it is still travelling.
• An Avenyth beacon detects the trace and uses fictional near-delayless communication to alert the central network; the human wave does not exceed the speed of light.
• “Is anyone out there?” summarises human intent; it is not presented as a sentence encoded in the 1,679 bits.
• The Avenyth do not learn the name “Earth” from the message. The Atlas finds it while studying the planet of origin.
• Arca preserves traces and explanations; it does not copy the complete mind of any being.
• Earth is transformed by humanity, not “conquered by a race”.
• There is no sudden peak of intelligence twelve thousand years ago.
• Sarımğara Çakmaktepe is the first stable window on this route; the cave, tribe and continuity over millennia are narrative reconstructions, not demonstrated archaeological facts.
• Göbekli Tepe remains a later destination, approximately eight hours on foot; the figure communicates journey scale rather than a proved route from 9600 BCE.
• Players do not invent advances before their time.
• Historical or reconstructed characters do not know the future.
• AI conversation cannot change the canon, deliver an unwritten critical clue or exceed a character's knowledge limit.
• One field guide chosen from Veritas and Aletheia always travels; the guide helps with direction but does not replace any human action or decision.
• Veritas and Aletheia adopt a human field appearance without copying or impersonating a real person.
• Feasts have archaeological support; particular chants, drums, torches and dances are plausible reconstructions.
• Deliberately placed aurochs and sheep skulls show an intentional act but do not by themselves prove a particular cult.
• Priests, tribute and the meaning of the skulls or ritual objects are not presented as proved facts about Çakmaktepe.
• Upton Lovell G2a belongs to the British Bronze Age, approximately 1850–1700 BCE; it is never mixed with the Çakmaktepe group of 9600 BCE or presented as a grave inside Stonehenge.
• “The so-called Upton Lovell shaman” keeps the historical nickname as a research subject. Female sex is supported by DNA announced in 2026 and goldworking by the tools; the role of shaman remains an interpretation.
• Egyptian funerary pieces are called “gold tongues” or “tongue-shaped amulets”. They appear only in a dated Ptolemaic or Roman window and are not made into a custom of all Egypt.
• The Obscurantists manipulate archives and connections; they do not cause human history.
• The first route does not represent all humanity.

13. Closed and pending decisions

Closed for pre-production:

• the real 1974 Arecibo message as the trigger;
• detection of its space-time trace, not ordinary reception of a wave that has already crossed thousands of light-years;
• the Avenyth beacon network and its fictional near-instant communication protocol with the central network;
• AVENYTH as the name, culture and visual direction of Arca's civilisation;
• Arca as a vessel for temporal exploration and preservation;
• Veritas and Aletheia as the first Tracekeepers and main faces;
• a field guide chosen from Veritas and Aletheia in every solo or cooperative game;
• the human field appearance of Veritas and Aletheia for relating to people on Earth;
• the incomplete scan of human history;
• the increase in connected traces without an “intelligence peak”;
• the Atlas rules and the impossibility of changing the past;
• the function and limits of the Obscurantists;
• the Obscurantists as an internal split within Avenyth civilisation;
• the opening at Sarımğara Çakmaktepe and later access to Göbekli Tepe;
• the First Record of Earth;
• the ending with the reply to the signal;
• free conversation limited by character and age;
• the hybrid representation: a 3D character in the world and an optional AI-video close-up, with 3D and written fallback;
• a photorealistic visual target and PC and console planning from production onward.

Still awaiting a creative or production decision:

• final appearance of Veritas, Aletheia and player avatars;
• final voice and appearance of the Avenyth Custodians;
• a visible figure or internal structure for the Obscurantists;
• legal review of TRACEKEEPERS and Before Cities.

14. Side windows under research

The main route keeps its nine volumes and begins at Çakmaktepe. Göbekli Tepe belongs to the same opening route as a later destination. The Atlas may later open side windows when a trace brings a question that the main route cannot answer without forcing chronology.

The first documented reserve is Upton Lovell G2a, near Stonehenge. Its narrative purpose is to show that historical knowledge changes when new analysis appears. It is not produced, does not belong to the opening ten missions and does not yet increase the promotional figure of 100 characters.

In Egypt, gold funerary tongues are an approved subject for study in a Ptolemaic or Roman window. They are treated as an object and belief from particular contexts, never as a universal Egyptian custom.