Zero Day

At a glance: Starblight prologue / flashback mode · first-contact last stand in orbit and atmosphere · the night we lost the sky — you do not win, you buy minutes and witness the fall · pre-schism humanity · the origin / anchor event of the Timeline and the loss that breaks humanity into The-Pyre vs The-Wardens (CANON §3).

The night we lost the sky. Zero Day is no longer a separate public game in the roster. It is the first battle Starblight carries inside it: a black-box memory of humanity’s first contact with the Scourge, fought in orbit and atmosphere before anyone knows what a breach costs. You do not win. You keep the guns hot, clear a few evacuation lanes, watch the orbital defense fold, and then the world learns the shape of after.

Canon role

The anchor event of the Timeline and the Premise: the Scourge arrives from the void, humanity is not ready and too many, the orbital and sky defense collapses, and the breaches root groundside. After Zero Day there is no “before” — every other title is the Resistance era. (See CANON §3.) Starblight is what humanity builds from the wreckage: the Skyhook, the interceptor corps, and the nightly work of keeping the same sky from falling again.

Starblight relationship

Product-wise, Zero Day is a mode / prologue / flashback sequence inside Starblight, not a competing arcade space shooter. The clean sentence is:

Zero Day is when the sky fell. Starblight is what remains of humanity trying to keep it from falling again every night.

Use Zero Day when the run should feel historical, doomed, and pre-schism: no Pyre, no Wardens, no clean doctrine yet. Use Starblight for the playable Resistance-era front: named pilots, Skyhook infrastructure, Pyre/Warden loadouts, and orbital interdiction of new arrivals.

The hook: the unwinnable battle

The drama is the loss. Waves escalate past any sustainable defense; the player buys minutes, saves some evacuations, witnesses the fall. The fantasy is heroism inside doom — the seed of the whole studio’s tone: brutal, fast, gallows-humor, we lost the sky but we’re still shooting.

Hooks

• Shared horde / rules / look with every title: Scourge, Cosmology, Style-Bible.
• Sets up the Choir and its repeaters (see CANON §5–6): first appearance of the orbital relays that Starblight later hunts through the Skyhook.
• Pre-schism: this is before The-Pyre and The-Wardens split — the loss is what breaks humanity into “burn the source” vs “hold the line.”

TODO

• Name the holdout/evac sites and the fleet.
• Lock the Starblight implementation: fixed prologue, challenge mode, or memory-run modifier.