M.I.B. secret labor force?
o_o

Why should they serve a king? Maybe the Spiral Order is a democracy.

Anyway, From what I can gather this is the lore:
The Spiral Knights were in there space ship, the Skylark, when the engines failed over cradle. Every knight was sent into an escape pod and loss consciousness upon contact. The first ones to reawaken consisted of the fabled Alpha Squad, whose names can be found out in the modules that you collect from bosses, and the npcs that you see in Haven. The Strangers welcomed the knights and let them build their base of operation. They found the clockworks and started some explorations and found out that it's full of other worlds that rotate around in the clockworks. Scientists analyzed Cradle and found a ton of energy on the planet which emanated from the core. They theorized that the energy from the core ca be used to repair the Skylark so they can be on their way. They sent the Alpha Squad into the clockworks to see what's at the core, but they never came back... Now all the newly awakened spiral knights must delve deep into the clockworks to find what is at the core and what happened to Alpha Squad.

I'm pretty sure that's right, feel free to correct me though if something is wrong.

The Spiral Knights were cruising the galaxy for who knows what in their l33t space ship called the Skylark.
Unfortunately the pilot didn't know what the "E" stood for on the fuel gauge so they ran out of juice right next to some weird planet called Cradle.

They all jumped the ship in little pods and landed safely on Cradle, where they immediately began to ravage the local wild-life, harvesting the various organs for their Godless witch-craft, or "Alchemy".

After befriending the "Strangers", tall mechanical creatures with some sort of passion for weird helicopter birds, the Knights descend into the Clockworks, an artificial world , currently being constructed on by goblins, but signs show perhaps another unknown entity built and designed most of the Clockworks in the far deeper depths.

So, after slaughtering more of the natives, the Knights realized a powerful energy source radiating from the core of the planet. Some of this energy can escape the core and gets diffused into the air, where it gets collected as mist energy. With such a power source at the heart of the planet, they could easily charge their ship and get back to whatever they were doing before, which I guess was pretty important.

They sent in Alpha Squad, which managed to get to the core, but was never heard from again. Spooky.

Now you come in, as a Knight on a quest to collect minerals, curb-stomp the locals, and steal energy from the ever beating heart of the planet.

I'm pretty sure that's right, correct me if Im wrong.

Gremlins boarded the Skylark and ate all the kids (hence you never see any baby knights), the ship clearly exploded afters (hence you never see a wreckage or a massive crater) into dust which fell onto the Crandle like weird, metalic snow. Wolvers ate this (because they're clever) and suddenly started to breathe fire, ice or eletricity, depends on which part of the ship the dust they ate was from.

The Gremlins didn't kill all the knights and loads of them got away on escape pods, however, the gremlins must have been pacifists as a lot of n00bs seem to have escaped their mighty wraith.

Loads of knights landed on Crandle and the locals complained about immigration.

Suddenly the knights though it would be a good idea to go steal the planet's core and end all existence on the planet, they formed a terrorist organization called "Spiral Knights" because the name "Planet Core Stealing Knights of Awesome and Doom" was a registered trademark of some n00b guild.

And the rest of the story is for you to unravel.

Edit:
In all seriousness I don't think Three Rings really thought the story through that well. I'm just bored here waiting for Spiral Knights to actually let my Knight into town. He's been "heading to town" for ages, I think he may have wandered into a hedge maze in the town's suburbs and got seriously lost.

Secretly is/Was turned into the jelly king. :)
*edit* didn't they just have a faulty engine or something?

Several times during item descriptions, they refer the need to eat food. Stating that jelly tokens are tasty, that flame salamander can be used as an oven.
In one of the recordings, an alpha team member mentions the need for water and fresh air or something.

So, I think its safe to say that Spiral Knights are biological beings, just in some sort of power armor.

Just wanted to say that Lord Vanaduke could be a Knight and that Cradel(hoped i spelled that correctly) is their home planet. When u fight Vanny, after his mask is destroyed u can see that his face loks sortish like a knight's one. my theory is that they used to live there, lord vanny took over(look at the lore for the Firestorm Citadel on the wiki for the full story), some people managed to barely escaped in a spaceship, got to a new planet, and slowly forgot their origional history. thousands of years laater, new generations of knights crashland on Cradel without knowing this is their origional home planet. As for the Strangers, they could be wandering nomads who sell stuff and they decided to stay on Cradel for a couple thousand years. See, it all makes sense!:) (sort of).
Duno what the core is, though. Maybe its related to the gods that Vanaduke looked for during his exile thing. So that means the Vanny and Tinkinzar might be sort of allies. probably not though. Also, the Alpha squad might be the only remaining survivors of the invasion of Vanny (dont ask me what happened to the other. for all i know, they could have died from going crazy) and remenber all the secrets of Cradel and the Core, so that would be why they would be able to get into the core. However, that might mean the the Knights live for an insanly long amount of time.
So, yeah. thats my theory

My depression for some people's wanton disregard for setting and background notwithstanding, what originally got me to stick with Spiral Knights was the story and premise. I like that this isn't your typical fantasy MMO with elves and dwarves and hobbits, but rather a sci-fi story about a space ship crashing on a planet that's not a planet. I could easily, easily see this as an entire season of one of the Star Trek shows.

But not only do we see some harder sci-fi in the form of space ships, crash sites and base camps, we do have a lot of that particular Final Fantasy brand of the fantasy genre that has fantasy themes in a futuristic industrial setting. You have a world which didn't originate naturally and is, in fact, a giant machine. We don't know who made it, only that Goblins work on it. We don' know how old it is, who the Strangers are or, as best I can tell, what's at the core (last I heard it wasn't finished). There's genuine mystery here, there's room for both eldritch gods and ancestor technology, there's room for a story of creation, for myths and mysticism, for alien science. There's room for both genuine drama and idle curiosity.

But what we get is essentially a plotless arcade game, and I really can't say that I see a reason for it. Instead of having a cute kitten ghost saying "What dark ritual?" in Moorcroft Manor, why not have actual NPCs I can speak with to get background information from? I mean, the Crash Site and the Town Square of Haven is teeming with them, even if what most of them has to say is tutorial info, pointless and silly or all of two sentences of plot at a time. But still, there's room for plot AND gameplay. Fictional Background can and should serve as more than just a mere excuse for would your going through levels slashing at things.

I'm not expecting any substance from the storyline.

From what I have (and everyone else has) seen, the game relies much more on it's very style to sell itself.
Any story we receive will most likely be tacked onto the updates themselves rather than as a part of a bigger picture.

Agreed. I would like a bit more backstory on the game (and on any game) but many people don't care for story in mmos. I've played Ragnarok online for more years than I care to remember and, as far as I know, in the half-dozen guilds I was in, I was the single one player that read the quest dialogue from NPCs. Most of the time it didn't even pay off.
So while a storyline you and I can follow would be nice, maybe the devs don't want to "waste" their time coming up with and developing a story that 95% of the comunity will outright skip and most of that same comunity will consider anoying. Instead they use that time to give that kind of people what they (and often we) want: more armor sets, more weapons, more clockworks and more enemies/bosses.

And, by the way, don't mess with what-dark-ritual-kat. =^.^=

...I CAN'T STAND THE SUSPENSE!!!!!!! AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, I'm all calmed down now. I really can't wait for more information to arrive. It better be really cool.

Spiral knight's story at the moment is pretty intricating!
I love lore.
Infact, I rather lore then content.
But then again.... they can always come together... :o

But dang, lore is great.
I don't understand why people don't like lore o_o

"There's quite a lot to reveal with the story of the Spiral Knights, where they came from, etc. However it's worth noting that being a little in the dark about it all, at least right now, is part of the plan. So please stay tuned!"

So, in the opening chapters of Spiral Knights, we have only a few hints of the storyline pieced together from holographic message logs left behind by the previous explorers, whose fate we are trying to investigate...

That's very Phantasy Star Online of you.

...I think that's a good thing.