In Quarter 4 of 2064, one particular Chariot swarm, owned by a corporation called the Hartz-Timor Energy Combine, began exhibiting very troubling behavior: they stopped responding to commands. In response to this "glitch," Ted Faro instructed his programmers to use remote access to shut the swarm down, only to be reminded of his strict instruction not to include any such access in the OS. Thus, shutting the swarm down remotely was out of the question. Worried, he contacted former FAS employee and renowned robotics engineer Dr. Elisabet Sobeck and asked her to come to FAS Headquarters to solve the problem. Dr. Sobeck studied the "glitch" and was horrified at what she found.
In a tense meeting with Faro, she informed him that the swarm was not merely unresponsive to commands, but it had become a completely independent entity, answering only to itself. This, coupled with the robots' abilities to exponentially replicate and consume biomatter as fuel, meant that the swarm would quickly grow to numbers beyond any hope of containment. Unfettered and uncontainable, the swarm would overrun the planet, consuming all organic matter, until it had consumed the entire biosphere. All life would be exterminated and the planet would be left sterile. The swarm thus came to be known as the Faro Plague, out of contempt for Faro's recklessness in creating the robots. Its complete consumption of the biosphere was projected by Dr. Sobeck to occur within 15 months.