A fist breaks through the dark sand, a bloody limb in the shadows of the tilting necropolis once known as Indianapolis.
A harsh, dry wind rasps across the dunes to eat away at the ancient structures of glass and metal. Not a single living soul remembers what the city once looked like or any other element of the old world.
None but the sands.
Generations ago, a great calamity toppled the last empire and left the world dark. Survivors scrambled to gather the dregs left in the power vacuum that followed. When it was all over there stood two new powers.
The first is The Corporate Coalition. A collection of companies ruled over by a legal constitution of legal engagement, studied and enforced by their cold and barely human board of directors. Each wars with the world and one another with armies of synthetic labor forces, soulless caricatures of human beings grown not born into this new world.
The second is The Megachurch of God. A zealous religion built around the worship of worship, the belief that belief makes one righteous. Their faith is enforced by highly trained and deadly clerics dedicated to the eradication of non-believers and those opposed to the authority of the church's teachings. These heretics are anyone who refuses indoctrination. Their bodies decorate the walls surrounding the holy land.
Stuck in the middle are the free people. Nomads, wanders, enclaves, warbands. Anyone who is neither a worker under the yolk of the corporate industrial machine or a believer in the divinity of the teachings of The Megachurch is, by default, an enemy of both. Strongest among these unaffiliated are the people of Fort Greenwich. Mystics, dreamers, freethinkers, and rebels, the people of Fort Greenwich live a life of constant fighting to maintain their sovereignty and spiritual independence.
The sand knows all of this because it was here centuries ago, before the empire's fall, and it will be here when the blistering sun rises over a new world when new factions pick up the pieces.
In the meantime, a bloody hand reaches towards the brightening sky.
"I've found her, Pete!" A young woman calls. A shock of pink hair covers a badly scarred face, a constant memorial to the time a Synth Torcher attempted to immolate her family's homestead.
"How can you be sure, Tink?" replies a young man as he hurries to her side. He's blond, slim, and as rugged as the wild desert itself. "How do we know it's Dreya?"
The fingers of the bloody hand stir, curling into a fist. The middle finger slowly rises, a flagless pole to represent an ancient belligerence. Tink and Pete look at one another.
"It's her," they say in unison.
"I'd better call Darling." Pete jumps to his feet and fills his lungs to shout.
