THE END OF THE BEGINNING

The conceit of the human race has always been its most curious aspect. It was the early part of the 21st Century, a century that had been much lauded in fiction and fantasy alike to be the next great Golden Age of humanity where all the ills of the world would be erased by technology and all of mankind would finally be working together for the greater good.

Writers though, are often idealists. The 21st Century came, and the technology came with it. But instead of saving the world, it was compartmentalized and corporatized, copyrighted, registered, trademarked and patented, and turned into the chains of the system that bound the whole world into dependence upon it. Much of the world fell under this new technology based domination without even a single protest, but some of humanity resisted, some turning to logic, others to activism, but many turned to religion.

Religion, always a major facet of human existence, came into prominence again in the late 20th and early 21st Century through the unconscious rebellion of mankind towards the vastly changing world of the new age. The old establishments of Western and Eastern theology, and the spiritual safe zones they had always represented, standing between humanity and the forces of evil, were politicized and refocused to try to stop the changes coming to the world.

Fundamentalism rose up in the world like an uncontrollable fire. Wars and propaganda, terrorism, biological attacks, political pogroms and oppression became the tools of the nations of the world. The differing idealisms fighting each other for dominance in a world that had gone far beyond the control of any of them.

The Old United States, in its pursuance of fundamentalist policy world wide, eventually overextended itself, bogged down economically under the weight of multiple wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Venezuela, it became a super power in name only. U.S. currency became worthless on the international market, triggering major economic depressions world wide. Just as the Golden Age was supposed to dawn, it seemed that humanity was truly entering the next Dark Age.

In 2032, the people of the Old United States eventually lost faith in their governments ability to recover from its entrenched warfare and economic ruin, and did the only thing that was left to them to do. Anarchy and rebellion broke out all over the country. Plunging an already dark period of the nation into even darker times. The federal government had no resources to call on to stop it, having committed nearly all its monetary resources and ninety percent of its military forces to its operations overseas, The White House put out an order to the state police forces to quell the rebellions, but met with little success as the state level law enforcement agencies had even less resources available than federal agencies had and the police on the streets knew, in the end, where their loyalties truly were and much of them sided with the rebels themselves.

It was during the revolution within the United States that odd reports began cropping up, people coming up missing, bodies being found drained of all their blood or horribly mutilated, strange cases of what appeared to be spontaneous combustion and of people apparently killed with brutal biological weapons that immolated and melted the flesh and organs from their bones. Much of this was originally written off as factions using unknown weaponry, possibly stolen from top secret federal labs, but that was not the case, the monsters of myth and legend, that had always carefully survived quietly under the surface of human society had thrown aside the cloak of secrecy that had hidden them for so long, and were now starting to openly show themselves in the new darkness that mankind had created.

Years of chaos ensued, with many pitched battles in major cities all over the country. The Battle of Seattle, the Chicago Massacres, the Battle of New York, all of them sad and dark periods in the history of a once great nation, but none of them as dark and chaotic as the Battle for Los Angeles.

It was in Los Angeles that the first vampire Coven openly rose to power among the battling factions of the city. Casting aside centuries of co-existence with humanity itself, the vampires of the city came together under the elder leadership of Suzanna Soyinka, an ancient vampire.

In the chaotic beginnings of the 21st Century, after the final deaths of several elder vampires in the pitched fighting between the rebels and the police and the military remnants and the gangs of Los Angeles, Suzanna finally rallied the Coven together to fight as its own force in the struggle for power and control of the city. The vampires were quite simply unstoppable. Human forces were not equipped to deal with them, gangs were simply torn to shreds and left hanging from the ceiling in pieces in their safe houses by vampire strike forces. Police and military forces were subverted and turned or killed, over time, the vampires began to hammer something close to a brutal and iron fisted order out of the chaos that had been tearing the city apart.

During these fights, challenges to their dominance that were not human in origin started becoming apparent. Vampires and their thralls alike were being occasionally found, mutilated and torn to shreds in a way that could only be attributed to one kind of being, the Lycans, the age old nemesis of the vampire in myth and the silver screen, were also somewhere in the city brutally asserting their physical strengths against any that got in their way.

Humanity lost hope entirely. After nearly three decades of war, rebellion, and now monsters among them all. They fell back into a primitive, almost tribal state amongst the buildings and cities of their dominance in the world. Gangs and syndicates formed. Crime families and mafias took what territory they could and worked to attempt to bring the humans under their own control to attempt to survive in this brutal new world. The world of man was bleak and hopeless, a shadow of its former greatness, still in possession of much of its previous technology but unable to fully reproduce any of it, mankind, through religion, once again looked to heaven for release, and learned the harsh meaning of why its said "Be careful what you wish for."

In the summer of 2037, after it already seemed the human race was in its darkest hour, the Armageddon of religious prophecy began. The Earth itself, passing through the tail of a massive comet named Wormwood, was enshrouded in several months of near total darkness and burning hydrocarbon fire and huge cometary fragments cascaded through the sky, blasting the cities and the landscapes of the world and setting the them afire again. In the chaos that ensued, the first gates from Hell opened and the demons poured through ravenously, killing humans and immortals without care or preference, and the wars began again with all the factions fighting each other and the demons on all sides.

During the onslaught of the Demons the skies caught aflame from horizon to horizon, and down from heaven came the Angels of Heaven, bearing the flaming swords of justice and riding into battle...flying through the skies with holy vengeance, they fell upon the demons, fighting them in a timeless battle between good and evil on the very streets of Earth itself.

Humanity raised its hands in supplication, crying out to be saved by the angels, taken up to heaven and saved by the Rapture, but the Angels just passed them by, the fight between Heaven and Hell having absolutely nothing to do with humans after all.

 

It was then, during the Battle of The Rapture, that the Regent cannibalized the eldest of her coven to consume their power, and having done so, transcended mere vampirism to become, for a brief period, a bloody goddess of death. She came forth to the battle of Armageddon, and with force of will, closed every portal to Hell and the Gates of Heaven in one massive powerful outburst of dark blood magic. Collapsing the singularities around the dimension of Earth, and trapping the demons and angels on this plane of reality, with no hope of return. And in that very moment, the Prime Urge, God themselves, reached through the veil of reality, and destroyed The Regent with a mere word, unheard, perhaps by any being but the Regent herself.

 

"Go..." the whisper susurrated through her entire body as she collapsed instantly, body draining to dark grey in an instant as a desperate gasp of dark blood magic exploded from her and dissipated almost instantly, a quiet exhalation the only sound as it warped out of reality before the eyes of those that witnessed it.

 

After the Battle of Armageddon, the factions of the city then began to immediately vie for power and control once more. The Coven and the Pack, the Tribe and the Syndicate, the Collective and the Archaic Redemption, The Brood and The Host, The Asylum and more, all struggling amongst themselves to come out on top of a world in chaos, and make a new order, for themselves.  This led to the First and Second Great Faction War's, and an innumerable amount of alliances and betrayals and struggles beyond them.

 

In 2049, 12 years in to the bloody battles of the factions of Lost Angels, the Island of Maui exploded in a huge 9.6 Richter scale earthquake, the sound reaching the Pacifica Coast mere minutes after, due to the magnitude and force of the explosion. The sky was covered in ash and immediately scryers and augers of all factions rang up the cry, the sea was coming! And 16 hours later the flood covered the land, scattering the factions and survivors of CoLA inland and up into the high mountains and upper deserts of the Wastelands, shattering their power and burying the city they all fought to control under dark roiling waters fifty meters deep.

The year is now 2052, and the waters have receded with wars and small skirmishes fought for greater dominance and control over the Pacifica and Wasteland Territories between factions and gangs, large and small, begun anew.

The City of Lost Angels rests at the heart of this struggle, it's residents all vying to carve out an existence in an ever-changing reality. Some are bent on seeking greater glory and control over the populace while others simply wish to co-exist and find their identity in this brave new world.

The question you should ask is: Which are you?