.....in the course of the Twenty-First century, events conspired to
bring about World War Three, or, as it is now known, the Last War.
The end of that century saw the end of four great empires, the end of the
world as it was then known, the death of over a billion people, and the
contamination of large areas with radiation, toxins, and tailored viruses.....
.....and of course, there remained the one threat man seemed unable
to control most of all.....
.....the OGRES.....
.....great cybernetically controlled engines of war, bristling with
micro nuke firing weapons, sheathed in meters of BPC armor, they could
field the firepower of a Twentieth Century armor company in a single unit.
The earliest machines used very sophisticated AI routines, the ultimate
game of DOOM as it were. Then, sometime in 2087, something happened.....
.....some believed the machine's software had mutated under the sleet
of hard radiation and energetic particles. Others thought it was
merely inevitable. Some of the OGREs began to act, well, alive, aware
of themselves and their place in the world. And some of them rebelled.
More than one general staff refused to believe what their techs were telling
them, and more than one field commander died along with his men because
of it. It was not long, though, before armies took advantage of this,
placing the great machines in the chain of command, and most if not all
were from then on fitted (or re-fitted) with the altered software.....
.....ultimately, as with all wars, the fighting ground the opposing
sides down, until they fell under their own weight, like exhausted knights
of old. As the fighting ground to a bloody halt, a new power rose
from the ashes. The auto factories, producing the products and materiel
of both peace and war, had been upgraded to use the new self aware AIs
as well. With the end of the Twenty-First century, the era of the
Factory States began, with populations growing up around the factories
still left, like feudal towns around ancient castles. Those factories
that could produce weapons soon became the liege lords of surrounding factory
states, and brush fire wars, quick and deadly, flared time and again between
these new super powers. One thing differed from the past century.
One thing only could truly challenge the power of the auto factories, deep
in their concrete bunkers, OGREs. So it came, that not a single OGRE
was built by the Factory States.....
....until the end of the Twenty-Second century.....
.....when a new enemy appeared, and thus begins the era of.....