The Hollow World: Prologue

The Hollow World

"Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself." -Antione de Saint- Exupery

Prologue

           This is the Year of Beginnings. Earth is all but gone. A nuclear war destroyed

every country and continent, returning the earth to a Pangeatic state. We saw no

end to war; so saw fit to end it once and for all. Few survived. But that few smiled

upon Earth's demise and sought new life. They took all they could and hid away for

eighteen years in underground shelters. A few children were spared from early death,

whisked away by a mysterious group called the Rodias. They were a reclusive but

powerful contingent of anarchists who preached of a new life and a new world without

war and without poverty. When the destruction slowly escalated, the Rodias took

action. Each team assembled supplies and as many orphaned children as possible.

No one knew what would become of the children or of the agents themselves. 

The revolutionaries had prophesized the Earth's destruction, and their predictions

were made clear as the entire Middle East and the URR (United Reformed Russia)

secretly constructed the most powerful nuclear weapons to date. Before their launch,

they broadcasted the world's fate to the human race. Each leader spoke of the need

to cleanse the world of all hate and deterioration. Two days later, the world was no

more. And the Rodias were ready. They were safe with all their captive children...

and they retreated into their shelters and waited.
         
      Twelve years later, several attempts to break Earth's surface were made,

unsuccessfully. The whole Russian team perished on March 5, 2116.  Most of the

captured children were entering young adulthood, and the Rodias decided that

"bioware" testing would begin. Brooding geniuses within the group would design and

implant synthetic organs or hardware into a developing child to see if their bodies

would accept something alien. These children acted as lab rats to the agents.  They

were deemed “Fallers.  Some of the Fallers rejected the parts that were implanted

and died within days.  Others survived, some even obtaining various new skills. But

these survivors were deeply flawed, both physically and emotionally.
         
    As the surface was successfully broken six years later, less than three hundred

Fallers emerged from the invincible vaults they had called home for eighteen years. 

They had collected and sheltered about fifteen hundred at the beginning of the war. 

The children of this time dubbed the waiting period Purgatory. The Post Destruction

Administration was created and warrants for regions were requested. They named

the large chunk of land they arrived on Utoneria, and the body of water surrounding

them the Erelian Sea. Their world grew into six regions and one large area of

unexplored land, the Exodus Cretch.
         
    One Faller in particular intrigued the Post Destruction Administration. She was a

stubborn survivor of bioware testing and a notorious illegal weapons trader. She

would restore stores of old firearms and implant them with lethal, chemically altered

bullets that were popular among rebellious Fallers during Purgatory. Coss was the

name she gave herself in her early years of life. The obligatory memory wipe after the

revamping of her nervous system left her no memories, no past, and nothing to hope

for. Her mind had been an empty canvas, painted with the hate of the Rodias and the

companionship of the other Fallers.
         
    Coss left the largest city of Rodia Tivace two years after she was released from

the agency's care. Since then, she had visited a great deal of the world to find

another Faller child. She had had no success. Most had died after exposure to the

light that fills the New World, or had simply given up and thrown themselves into the

Erelian Sea. She decided long ago that this would not be her fate. Coss was

rumored to be located near the newest area, Croyt, which was a rural region

dedicated to exploring the sea. She had almost given up hope in her search... but

the whispers of an ageless traveler circulated through the regions. All hope was not

yet lost.


Welcome to the Hollow World.