The summers had gotten hotter, every year that past after the great war. Though it was dubbed World War III, the first two wars did not compare in any way. The details are no longer important, who started it, who finished it. It no longer mattered. Survival was once again, man's only quest. The world had been devastated by nuclear explosions. The major super-powers had all launched their arsenals. The dust finally settled on a bleak and dry landscape. The great cities of the world had been laid to ruin. Though many buildings still stood, they were husks of their former glory. The remains of humanity eked out their lives in the ruins of the major cities. To those who lived there, the rumors of the ones living in the wilderness where just that, rumors. It happened every now and again, that a straggler from the wilderness would make his or her way into the cities. These strangers usually didn't last very long as the territories were controlled by rival tribes. Our story starts in the ruins of New York. Three tribes hold the power and influence in the city. The Tunnelrats control the underground, repairing and fixing the old tunnels, and sometimes building new ones. The Skylords live and hold sway over the remains of the once proud skyscrapers. They act as nobles of earlier eras, and do not see many visitors. The third tribe, the Streeters roam the ground between the other two factions. The Streeters do their best to maintain a fragile peace between the other two tribes, while trying to help those who hold no allegience. It was in the best interest of anyone who entered New York to seek out a Streeter as quickly as possible. The rest of the people were more than likely to attack you and steal whatever they could off your corpse. The level of technology in this time varies. You are as likely to run into someone with a metal pipe as you are to run into someone with high-tech polymer armor and heavy ballistics. The Tunnelers have access to electronics and petrol supplies while the Skylords have their hands in aeronautical technologies. The Streeters run guns and medical supplies as well as maintaining and refurbishing ground vehicles.
Not far ahead of our own time, the world is a shockingly different place. The remains of the world were bleak and barren. In Man's conceit, he believed that it would be by his own hand that the world would end. It was not so. Early in the cold morning of the winter solstice of the year two-thousand and eleven, the earth trembled. In a fury of tectonic activity, our planet awoke. Vulcanic activity erupted worldwide. Earthquakes shook along every fault line, toppling the great cities of man to their doom. Clouds of ash and pyroclastic elements rained across the skies. The oceans boiled as the deep vents exhumed their portion of the fiery mantle beneath the earth's crust. Life, the one thing that set the earth apart from everything else that man had known, was nearly extinguished in the terrible rage that agonized our home. In just one day, over three-fourths of the world's overall population was eradicated. The surviving species were few. Somehow, Man had survived, a testament to his spirit. Roaches, of course had survived as well, though it was no surprise to anyone. The humans who lived, fortunately had been able to keep a few pets alive here and there, along with a bit of livestock, so cats, dogs, sheep, horses and cattle had survived the wrath of the planet. It was however a short-lived victory, as the temperatures dropped, the world turned to ice. The ash clouds were thick and many years would pass before the sun filtered back down onto the planet. Man, turned to the only thing he could, the surviving animals. Though there were a few that had escaped their cruel fate, the majority that had survived the planet's wrath were killed by the hands of their saviors. A bittersweet return to animalistic savagery enveloped mankind. It was as if all was to be lost to the planets anger. However, there were those that kept going, despite all odds. Those few, unaffected by the depressing new world, made their way in it. Salvaging what could be, the remnants of man as we know him know, picked up the fragile pieces, and like a patchwork quilt, reassembled what they could of their lives. The world turned, time passed and the lives of the people who survived, altered irrevocably. The day the clouds parted and the sun looked down upon the world below, was a day that would always be remembered. During the upheaval the very face of the planet had changed. New lands existed now. The tectonic activity had destroyed over half the old world and brought with a new half to replace that which was lost. New continents, new oceans, new mountains and plains. The hint of what was before the upheaval still remained, like broken gleaming bones of the time before. As the ice receded from the light and heat of the sun, the low oceans began to fill once more. The surviving members of our species ventured out into the thawing world. Some were lost to sudden collapses in the ice that covered the new world, others swept away in torrential floods from thaw. After nearly two-hundred years the earth was finally coming out of the great winter that had descended upon it. The crust of the earth had settled and the tectonic activity of our world became less intense. Our planet had gotten older. In a geological blink, the world had aged itself. It took nearly three more centuries for the great winter to finally conclude itself and give way to the return of the seasons. In that time the remnants of our race blossomed forth once again. Man had survived, but he was not alone. In the long centuries of the great winter, those humans who reverted to their baser natures also found a way to survive. Physically larger and quicker than us, this new breed of man had the same cunning intelligence, but it was channeled, focused into the physical. They were hunters and stalked every manner of life they came across. Lacking a formal societal structure, they roam the lands in packs. Wanton in their destructive nature and murderous in their relations, these creatures are the preimminent land-bound hunters of the new world. New forms of plant life blossomed all over the world, returning it to the green place it once was. Stark and squat, new varieties of trees began to grow. Akin to the extinct varieties of ginko trees of the prehistoric world, they returned the thin amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere, causing a boom in the growth of animal life. The circle was once again complete and life struggled on to restore itself. Over the course of the next five-hundred years, life grew in numbers. New species appeared to take the place of those wiped from the planet. The dim horror of the upheaval slipped further from the minds of the people as they returned to a quasi-agrarian society. It was as if man had returned to a former glory, purified by the raging fires and ice of the planets wrath. A thousand years have passed from the day of the upheaval, One-thousand A.U. in the new lexicon, to us it would be three-thousand eleven. The world is once again a vibrant green and blue planet, a gem in the solar system.It is in this time that you live, a time where steel swords are used as often as guns and bullets. A world where there is another species of man, larger more powerful, dangerous in the extreme that lurks in the vast wilderness that has reclaimed the world. Exotic new species of animals greet the unwary at every turn, plants bringing their own surprises too. The new homes of man are few and far between, our descendants defending themselves in walled encampments. Every man, woman and child valued for their ability to contribute to the survival of the race. With luck and time, man may finally pull through this harsh test, it remain to be seen if that will happen. The world is different now, and the humans who live out their lives in this time are hardier folk. No longer soft and indolent in their racial supremacy, man is constantly tested, and thus made stronger than before. To the inhabitants of this world, death lurks everywhere and a guarded wariness is a prerequisite for any form of travel. The men and women of our race take every precaution to safeguard their lives when away from the villages. It is a harsh world that has been left for our descendants. They have adapted admirably, but the world has changed in some ways that have yet to be discovered. Beware traveller, and take care.