Watch your back. Shoot straight. Conserve ammo. And never, ever, cut a deal with a dragon.
-Street proverb
The world is changed, some say Awakened.
A lull in the flow of mystical energies subsided, and magic returned to the world. Elves, Dwarfs, Orks and Trolls assumed their their true form, throwing off their human guise. Creatures of the wild chamged, too, becoming of myth and legend. Modern society fights on, despite the odds, in an effort to assimilate the ways of magic into a technological world.
The decades that followed the Awakening were years of turmoil, panic, and chaos, as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse seemed to race across the Eath. Primitive cultures that had never lost touch with their mystical past began to use magic against the great nations that had suppressed them for so long. The vast, global telecommunications network collapsed under an assault by a mysterious computer virus. Nuclear missiles were launched, but failed to detonate. Dragons soared into the skies. Epidemics and famine ravaged the world's populations. Clashes between newly Awakened races and the rest of humanity became common. All central authority crumbled and the world began to spiral down into a black abyss.
But man and his kin are hearty animals. Out of the devastation and anarchy, order slowly reemerged. Cybertechnology erdicated the last vestiges of the computer virus and replaced the old telecommunications network with what became known as the Matrix. New nation-states of Amerindians, Elves, Orks and Dwarfs were formed. Metroplexes, vast city-states, sprwaled over the landscape. Central governments were replaced by megacorporations that had become a law unto themselves. People who accepted the sovereignty were protected. The outcast, dissidents, and rebels were exploited and abused, continuing a condition that has existed between the weak and the powerful since time began...
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