The Time After the Storm

The Reshaping and the Year 2305

With the onset of the great storm, the idea of recording history became a pointless. Life became about fighting to survive, in a world that would not tolerate living presence. Accounts of the storm are pretty much non existent, but a few things have developed into legend.

The people of Aftershock collectively name the period between the beginning and end of the storms as the ''Time of Reshaping'' or simply The Reshaping''. During this period, that would last twenty years, the entire globe was covered in rolling, unnatural lightning storms. Early on it is said that the strikes could and did take whole chunks out of buildings and in some of the more densely populated areas of the world, the storm split great fissures in the Earth. These fissures are important and in the wider world are known as Ground Zero points, but we will talk about them later.

However it is known that the ruined world we see today is a product of missing the maintenance of man. Buildings are decaying due to lack of use, rather than being destroyed by the storms, but keep in mind, the early storms did have the power to damage buildings. Not only did the man made world suffer, but of course many millions died early on.

The ones whom were instantly vaporised were lucky, as many more would die after them as a result of lacking medical treatment, or lack of medicines. Even illnesses as mundane as the common cold could be deadly, there was no physical way for people to receive the medicine they needed.

It is common belief that those whom did survive managed to get underground. Even in the world today, it forgotten subway stations, wanderers can see the last remnants of small makeshift settlements.

After the Reshaping, humanity resurfaced to find a scorched wasteland. They would go on to do the only thing that they could do in the situation...

Start again.

Many of the makeshift communities moved above ground and re-settled in places with easier access and better fortifications. Over the next eighty-odd years, settlements grew, populations expanded and a wasteland culture, similar to that of the romanised old west was formed. Groups came together, mercenary bands, Raider gangs, even remnants of government and military initiatives have been recently trying to pull together the tattered remains of their lost empires.

This is the world that leads up to 2305, this is the world that you now inhabit. Live well and aim to die old...