Living on a gas planet with literal millions of floating islands

300 BC (before crash): Starliner Havanis launches from earth.

240 BC: Civil war among the passengers severely damages the living spaces of the ship, destroying much of the information that was sent in memory banks.

100 BC: Earth has become a distant deity, with the general idea that he protected humanity until something killed him and humanity was forces to escape in his child, the ship. Only about half the colonists believe this.

0 AC (after crash): Starliner Havanis crashlands on an unnamed island on the planet Thern, a gas giant that was one of humanity's first choices for colonization.

20 AC: Without their ship to aid them, the survivors quickly regress to sustenance living and spread out to other islands as they bump into each other. Some technology from the ship remains, namely matter fabricators that use energy from the crystals on the planet in order to create raw materials or duplicate themselves.

40 AC: Matter fabricators have low level AI, and the more they duplicate the more off the AI becomes. Over time, they become more and more animalistic until it starts to be dangerous to be near them without 'food' - crystals. They are moved further away from the settlements and the job of fabricator is given to only a few people.

50 AC: In order to move them still further from the settlements, they are coupled with gaseous plant pods and transformed into their own tiny islands.

55 AC: Several fabricator islands break free of their tethers and drift.

60 AC: The latest generation hasn't learned enough about how they came to be there to know what the fabricators are, relegating them to 'metal animals' rather than former tools.

70 AC: Most fabricators have broken free due to storms or collisions with other islands. Those who are brave enough to go near them use balloon pods and simple air pressure motors, facilitated as much by natural flora as by technology.

81 AC: Georgious Havis is born as the first human to be able to manipulate fabricated elements through a connection to the planet's energy.

90 AC: The floating fabricators AI develops over time into a creature capable of defending itself and reproducing, and keeps up to 15% of the energy given to it in order to create more of itself. Still unpredictable as different islands have different levels of hostility towards humans, and all islands fight back against being tethered in any way. Become colloquially known as 'whales'.

100 AC: 'Fabricator' becomes a title reserved for those with the genetic ability, while those who are able to interact with the floating fabricator creatures are generally called 'peddlers' or 'material keepers', or less commonly, 'whale handlers'.

130 AC: Fabricators become more common and begin to show two distinct skill sets

Builders simply shape the raw materials physically, making them invaluable to islanders as they can easily create tools and buildings out of raw materials.

Breakers can transform the materials back into crystal, which can then be given to the Whales to be transformed into something else.

150 AC: Along with the two common fabricator skill sets, a third begins to appear. Called Wakers, they can use crystals to 'awaken' transformed material, making it draw from a human's life force to behave like living cells, and makeing it so that only that person can control it. They are generally disliked, as their abilities are the only ones that are seen as 'magic'. Many Wakers find themselves thrown out of their homes.