Long after humanity turned its final invention against itself, you seek to retrace their path, fighting various guardian bosses representing milestones in the plight of their kind's desire to destroy each other, to perhaps one day recover the weapon they once used to wipe themselves out. 

TALOS: Classical Antiquity

A colossal bronze automaton, armored in the fashion of a Roman centurion, its legs long since broken away like those of a marble statue. Inspired by the bronze guardian of Greek myth of the same name, said to have circled the shores of Crete hurling boulders at any ship that tried to land. Now all it's going to hurl is YOU!!

 Its Roman appearence references the empire that turned conquest and war itself into its legacy.

It's pandora's box can be found in suspicious gravel. Defeat it and use it's key on its box to obtain the Misery of Conquest.

APOPHIS: Industrial Revolution

A serpent boss that alternates between burrowing underground and flying while choking the sky out with a spreading volumetric smog.

Historically inspired by the Egyptian serpent of chaos and eternal enemy of the sun god Ra, who attempts to swallow the sun every night. The industrial-era temporal placement can be linked to the 19th-century Egyptian revival, dubbed "Egyptomania," following Napoleon's campaign and the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone.

But more so, we saw symbolic parallels between Apophis and the industrial revolution. The same skies that Ra fought to keep clear every night were the skies that European and American cities lost during this period, with their coal smoke sitting over industrial centers so constantly that blackened buildings and midday darkness were a part of daily life. 

It's pandora's box can be found in ancient city chests. Defeat it and use it's key on its box to obtain the Misery of Industry.

TRINITY: Nuclear Weaponry

The last boss, a ball of volumetric explosion and smoke. The encounter is a bullet hell survival gauntlet, designed to be braved with elytra. Every fourth of its health lost sets off an nuclear explosion that you need to avoid by getting to cover on the edges of the arena on time. We decided that there's kind of no way to actually fight a nuclear explosion, so really the best you can do is just survive.

Named after the codename of the first nuclear test in history, and visually inspired by photographs of the nuclear explosion taken by Rapatronic high speed cameras in the 20th century. It's projectiles and attacks are inspired by the spikes and lines that expand from the fireball of nuclear explosions, dubbed the "rope trick effect" by American nuclear physicist John Malik.

Summon it by combining the miseries you have found so far and bringing it to Ground Zero.

Maybe if you defeat it, you'll gain the power to reduce civilization to ashes yet again...

The Nuclear Island

Found deep in the outer End, with the first instances being about 8-10k blocks away from the origin. It's made of three zones,  two of which based on real historical proposals by architect and environmental designer Micheal Brill for a big problem: how do you warn people 10,000 years from now to stay away, without assuming they'll share you symbols, speak your language, or that either of those things will even still exist. 

Note: may be difficult to locate any of these biomes with /locate from the main end island, as they generate very far from the origin. Try a world preview mod, or teleporting out 7-10k blocks in each direction before running the command.

The Landscape of Thorns

A field of massive stone spikes, scaled up well past anything that could be claimed as natural. Based on an actual 1993 proposal from the U.S. Human Interference Task Force, whose job was designing nuclear waste markers that could communicate danger and hostility through physical architecture without relying on assumptions on spoken or written languages or symbols. A fully custom soundtrack plays here, which we named "This place is a message," a quote from the proposal.

The Forbidding Blocks

A maze of black oversized stone monoliths, with streets that are too cramped for living, farming, or anything that could support life, with black masonry that absorbs heat, making the interior uncomfortably hot. Also a real proposal from the task force. 

The Containment Array

The ruined containment structure at the center of the site. Real nuclear containment vessels exist to hold radioactive material and contain the pressure and heat of a reactor accident so nothing escapes into the surrounding environment. This one didn't quite do its job, and the structure sitting broken open at the center of the island is the result. I hope it doesn't fail again.

Inside it stands the summoning structure for Trinity, the "Crucible of Calamity." Its design is based on the 100-foot steel tower used to hold the device during the 1945 Trinity test, the first nuclear detonation in history. That tower was officially designated "Zero," and the ground at its base is where the term "Ground Zero" comes from.