The Awakened

Prologue / Chapter 1

Prologue

In a world that has reached the Age of the Awakened, the Ethereal Realm has encompassed the world in its domain and saturated the world with metaphysical energy to become available to the inhabitants of the world. Some inhabitants of the world would gain special skills that use the metaphysical energy to fight for survival, peace or domination. These individuals who have enhanced physical bodies and specials skills were called Awakened.

The Awakened skills are generated and granted from the Ethereal Realm System. The interface between the Ethereal Realm System and Awakened's world is called the World System.

The World System manages the granting of the skills to the Awakened. Each world has its own version of World System that evolve from the alpha stage to the stable stage during the early years of the Age of the Awakened.

When an individual becomes an Awakened, an Awakened System is installed to the Awakened to interact with the World System and as an interface to manage the Awakened's skills and resources. The Awakened System has a core module that comes from the Ethereal Realm System that the corresponding World System added functions to interact with its equivalent of Awakened System.

Most Awakened have enhanced physical attributes and are referred as Enhanced. While others have above average physical attributes with paranormal skills akin to magical skills and are referred as Mages. There are rare Awakened who have enhanced physical attributes and magical skills and are referred as Battle Mages.

Awakened are initially granted with two skills and can have a maximum of three skills. Awakened skills are either passive or active skills.

Chapter 1 – Potentially Hazardous Objects

Earth October 1986, an asteroid was discovered to be in synchronized orbital resonance with Earth and was closely monitored by astrologists and the world's leading in military weapons. It has a diameter of about 9 kilometers and was estimated to be in close approach with Earth on 1994. The discovery was made public after research and calculations and was named Cruthine.

The world powers United States of America and Union of Soviet Socialist Republic who were in cold war turned their attention to a possible annihilation of Earth by asteroid. A few months that followed after the 1986 discovery, Cruthine was confirmed to be indeed a potentially hazardous object to Earth.

USA and USSR began secret discussions to focus on the survival of Earth from possible extinction. June 1987, USSR made economic reforms to redirect resources from costly Cold War commitments and focus on civilian sector instead. The reform was a propaganda to divert the attention of the rest world while USSR began hoarding their military resources.

Then on December 1987, a signing of Intermediary-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty or INF was signed between USA and USSR. The world gave recognition that the two world powers were finally committed to ending the Cold War. All the while, both USA and USSR were secretly hoarding to restructure their nuclear resources for space defense and space habitats.

In 1988, massive nuclear space rockets were secretly launched from hidden side of the moon to intercept the incoming asteroid. During that year of 1988, a massive economic drain became apparent that USSR attributed the cause to the oil and gas subsidies, along with the cost of maintaining massive troop levels.

In 1989, the nuclear space rockets collided with Cruthine only to split the asteroid into three parts. The smallest part was diverted from its trajectory to Earth estimated to be about 400 meters in diameter, while the second smaller part estimated to be about 3 kilometers was also diverted out of its collision course to Earth, while the larger part of about 7 kilometers was only slightly diverted and has taken on a partial collision course instead of the direct collision with Earth when it was still a single large asteroid. Several scattered debris accompany the larger body of the split asteroids.