The Question
Eternal
The human condition never changes. In 2017, the 44th President of the United States of America was due to step aside for his successor. He refused. In the uproar that followed, the Congress initiated measures to have him removed from office. He responded with measures of his own.
Martial law descended. National Guardsman met United States soldier, brother met brother, over gun barrel and through sniper scope. Rural ranches and suburban neighborhoods became killing fields. Homes and places of business became abattoirs. It would be called the Last Great War.
At the end of its not insignificant pool of resources, outnumbered and losing soldiers to defection by the day, the United States government played its last card. Its trump card. A people besieged looked up in confusion at explosions high in the skies over their cities. The electrical grid vanished in a wink and a fizzle. The sickness and death took hold days later.
Tens of millions died. Only some 30 per cent were immune. To them fell the task of reorganizing. Rebuilding. Reforming.
The year is 2097; a pre-war populace could be forgiven if they mistook it for 1897. Electricity has returned. Some of the great technologies of the pre-war society have survived, but with a continental infrastructure suffering from decay and disrepair, there is no life of ease for the majority of the citizens of the Texas Republic and its protectorates Arizona and Nevada, the Confederate States of America, the New England Coalition, and the states of the Central Corridor.
Man is an animal unlike any other. Man preys upon man. Where the salvager, the farmer and the lawman thrive, so too does the blackmailer, the thief, the murderer. Where there is power, there is corruption. And where there is avarice, there are sharp knives on the scout for soft throats. It’s the way of man in this new frontier as it was before the war, as it’s been throughout our long and bloody history.
Because the human condition never changes.
Martial law descended. National Guardsman met United States soldier, brother met brother, over gun barrel and through sniper scope. Rural ranches and suburban neighborhoods became killing fields. Homes and places of business became abattoirs. It would be called the Last Great War.
At the end of its not insignificant pool of resources, outnumbered and losing soldiers to defection by the day, the United States government played its last card. Its trump card. A people besieged looked up in confusion at explosions high in the skies over their cities. The electrical grid vanished in a wink and a fizzle. The sickness and death took hold days later.
Tens of millions died. Only some 30 per cent were immune. To them fell the task of reorganizing. Rebuilding. Reforming.
The year is 2097; a pre-war populace could be forgiven if they mistook it for 1897. Electricity has returned. Some of the great technologies of the pre-war society have survived, but with a continental infrastructure suffering from decay and disrepair, there is no life of ease for the majority of the citizens of the Texas Republic and its protectorates Arizona and Nevada, the Confederate States of America, the New England Coalition, and the states of the Central Corridor.
Man is an animal unlike any other. Man preys upon man. Where the salvager, the farmer and the lawman thrive, so too does the blackmailer, the thief, the murderer. Where there is power, there is corruption. And where there is avarice, there are sharp knives on the scout for soft throats. It’s the way of man in this new frontier as it was before the war, as it’s been throughout our long and bloody history.
Because the human condition never changes.
