Humanity long ago shed its mortal skin and developed into beings of pure consciousness. But the Singularity is a thing of the past and the very future of human existence is being threatened. Though the post-humans wield godlike power, they find themselves at war for domination of not just the Milky Way but all galaxies with Haalee, the sentient AI, who is bent on saving the universe from post-human predation.

Pouring your human consciousness into thousands of deadly constructs, the time has come for you to join epic confrontations where countless robotic manifestations of war smash each other into scrap only to be replaced as factories convert all available matter into a steady stream of fresh war machines. In this war for ever-more intelligence, where control of matter to fuel the expansion of computing power is the only goal, the struggle will inevitably consume the galaxy...one planet at a time.

This DLC contains four new maps and a unique split-scenario where the player's choices directly affect the outcome of the campaign.

"Until Inception, choices within each scenario have been pretty linear," said Derek Paxton, VP of Stardock Entertainment. "This time, the player gets to choose which faction to play as. The dialogue, direction, and results of the scenario are different depending on whether they're the PHC or the Substrate. To get the full story, you'll need to play through once as each."

The main scenario in Inception places the player on the planet Oneiros. A mysterious entity, known as Nihilon, has corrupted the consciousnesses of all of the PHC and Substrate on the planet. Players who choose to experience the scenario as the Substrate must rescue their brethren and find out what Nihilion has done to them. Players who choose the PHC, however, only have one goal: to neutralize all of the threats on Oneiros, regardless of the source.

Inception also features four new maps of various sizes and player counts. Each map has been newly designed to accommodate many different game types such as free-for-alls, comp stomps, team matches, and more. The new maps are:

• Oneiros: 7-player map with a strong central starting position, vulnerable north and south positions with abundant resources, and four isolated corner starts.
• Bayern: 3-player Terran map with vulnerable starting locations and massive metal deposits in the center.
• Brasil: 10-player ice map with a resource-rich central valley and several defensible points around starting areas.
• Polska: 5-player desert map with strategically critical hills and passages between regions.

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation - Inception DLC is $2.99 at Stardock or on Steam (requires the base game to play).

A real-time strategy game on a scale never before seen, where even the smallest units have diverse, independent weapons systems on them and every shot fired has its own targeting solution and ballistics model, Ashes of the Singularity explores entirely new and engaging gameplay fundamentals coupled with jaw-dropping visuals. With literally thousands of units acting independently on screen at the same time, players are introduced to a familiar infrastructure of real-time strategy gameplay while focusing their attention not on small engagements between a handful of units, but instead waging large-scale wars across multiple simultaneous battlefronts.

Ashes of the Singularity offers innovative multiplayer alongside its epic single-player campaign that tells the tale of the Singularity and complications arising from humanity's evolution away from physical form. League structures, leaderboards, stats and other features will be announced as development continues, powered by Stardock's cloud-based Project Tachyon metagaming services (led by lead architect Adrian Luff, who helped build Blizzard's Battle.net).

Key Features:

• Massive numbers of units in the world that can be easily organized into armies that allow players to fight wars across several different fronts simultaneously.
• The world's first multi-core real-time AI allowing for a non-cheating AI that can beat most players.
• A story-driven, non-linear campaign that tells the story of a United Earth in the 23rd century.
• A focus on single player replayability while including a wealth of multiplayer features.
• The future-proofed Nitrous 3D engine whose 64-bit, multi-core foundation supports DirectX 11, DirectX 12 and multiple GPUs.

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation retails on Steam or through Stardock for $39.99.