Prologue
In 2045, 20 years after the start of the 3rd world war, most of the world lies in shambles. The approximately 1 billion people that survived the war, which saw the large-scale use of atomic, biological, and chemical weapons, lived, and still live in rural areas around the globe. A major part of the landmass is still uninhabitable due to high radiation or poisonous air and water. All major cities and urban areas are completely razed. 5 years after the war began, new nations and empires started to be formed, the most formidable and feared one was called The Union, ruled by “The two”, twin brothers who had been physically “merged” during one of the sick experiments conducted in the beginning of the 3rd world war. The Union was a tribalistic military dictatorship which seemed to thrive on chaos and pain. By 2045 it ruled a big part of Europe, Asia and Africa and was rapidly expanding, even incorporating uninhabitable places into their territory for which they created genetically enhanced creatures and humans, so they could “conquer” those places. Other nations were The United States of America (which had survived the 3rd world war, although it too had seen the destruction of all its great cities like LA, New York, Chicago, Houston and many more). The Empire of China, reborn from the people’s republic of China but reduced to half its size due to a lot of its landmass being poisoned. And next to those a handful of smaller states and nations across the world.
Most of the nations mentioned here above had either no contact with each other or were officially at war. You could say that the 3rd world war never really ended. Living standards in all countries (with one exception, which wasn’t rediscovered until the year 2057) had been reduced to medieval standards, with people having to find their own food and with a median age that had dropped to no more than 45. The future of the world and humanity was looking bleak, with no direct improvement visible at the horizon, except for the fact that a small but rapidly expanding nation, which called itself the “Federation of the United World” might have a been a beacon of light, had it not been for its total secrecy. For the moment, the outside world does not know a lot about this nation, except that it seems to have been founded somewhere in what was formerly Flanders (in the former Kingdom of Belgium) and that by the time people started to notice its existence, the territories of what once was Belgium and The Netherlands had been incorporated into the federation. The reason why nothing really was known about this nation, was the border shield; a blue, translucent energy curtain at its border that went up into space and down into the soil, it was impenetrable by anything or anyone. When a person touched the curtain, they were asked if they wanted to enter, with the warning that it would be impossible for that person to ever come back out. Those who accepted were let through and seemed to fall either unconscious or dead when they were let through, within a couple of minutes their bodies were collected by people dressed in a cloak and taken away, never to be heard from again. Those that refused, were just not let in by the curtain and were left unharmed.
