Preface
Preface
The war changed the world. Wars have a tendency of doing so, but this one in particular changed everything. Before the start of the second world war, the Nazis exiled the Jews, leading most countries to do the same. They were given the option to either leave or spend what little of their lives would be left in concentration camps. The Reich even built one, in Auschwitz, to show that they meant business. And so the Jews fled and integrated with the Palestinians, who renamed their country Shalom. But the Jews weren’t allowed time to settle, for war broke out between the powers of the German Chancellor and the Japanese Emperor, and those of the rest of Europe and Asia. Some tried to stay out of it, but most were sucked in like a helpless paper boat into a storm drain. America signed a non-aggression treaty with the Nazis and went to work, sending spies to operate towards destabilizing Great Britain, both at home and in the colonies. Japan, not knowing about the agreement, attacks Pearl Harbor, causing America to team up with China to stomp the Japanese under their heel.
China then joined forces with the Reich, turning the tide further away from Britain and her allies. The American spies finally succeeded in turning the British people against their leaders and forced the Crown to pull out of the war, as well as all of her colonies. In the power vacuum left behind, many of those colonies tried for independence, only for most of them to be flattened under the might of the Reich. Through all of this, Russia’s royal family was quietly spreading their borders, and Russian spies in the Reich were busily keeping the Chancellor focused on the European front. The Reich finally noticed when Russia reached Warsaw and boosted their efforts to keep the Russians from moving any further, while at the same time spreading their power through Africa and South America. Russia and the Reich fought to a stalemate and agreed to a ceasefire. With the war all but decided, save for a few holdouts, America saw their opportunity to strike. Tired Canadian troops were no match for them, and within days of the Russo-German ceasefire, Canada was annexed by the United States. And then President Callaghan set his sights southward, to Mexico.
While President Callaghan’s troops were marching their way south, the City of Dallas had decided that they’d had enough. They wanted no part in an Empire. Bolstered by the success of the Warsaw uprising, where three years of back and forth between Russia, the Reich, and the people of Poland was enough for Warsaw to be proclaimed an independent city-state, the people of Dallas rebelled and prepared for a siege.
Five years later, the City of Dallas was granted independent city-statehood. Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Britain, Ireland, Scotland, and Nepal managed to stay independent of the new Empires, while Columbia and Venezuela banded together to keep the Reich out, as did Eritrea, Abyssinia, Somalia, and Kenya.
The German Empire claimed the rest of Africa and South America, and held Europe in its grasp, with the border between Germany and China running through the middle of Iran. The American Empire held all of North America, discounting the city of Dallas. China had turned Japan into a slave state and stretched their borders all the way south to Papua New Guinea.
The independent city-states were contracted by their bordering Empires to host the Arenas, the prisons of the new world.
