August/September 2014 Lite Challenge : The Eskelon Pandemic
The Eskelon Pandemic
Storyline: In another world...
Following the end of the Savage War in 9655 W.E. (War Era), the entire world was left in ruins. In the space of nine millennia, sixty-two thousand years worth of progress by humanity was reverted back to the First Uncivil Age, resulting in an enormous technological halt. Man was now only capable of building castles, ships, carts; opposed to the portal rifts, electric stations and metropolises that used to cover it. For over eight centuries, anarchy was the way of life, leading to greater warfare, but now with only medieval weapons. After this period of time (841-1664 A.W.E), the resulting hierarchal feuds were settled, and many nations rose out of this dark age. Eventually, on the largest continent of all, eighty-two of these nations set up a great confederacy, known as Verrenis.
Verrenis soon began to collapse under its massive population that it could not support, and eventually its leadership organised the largest military operation in the history of man, to conquer and influence the world to be Verrenian, before their neighbours became powerful enough to retaliate. In After-War Era 2307 Annum, two thousand great fleets from Verrenis left its port capital, Isotreine, to conquer the rest of the world, or at least establish a trade between it and other forming nations.
This was highly successful, and Verrenis subdued most of the known world (the knowledge and maps had been lost in the Savage War) by the year 2416 A.W.E., and bound it by the Verrenis Charter to the mesocratic government of Verrenis. This meant over twenty billion souls were under thrall to Verrenis, a feat comparable to the Lozang Empire of the Before-War Era (thirty-three billion souls).
Due to Verrenis’s incredible stability, the entire known world was at peace from 2416-2502.
In 2502, the continent of Eskelon was the first to be released from the Verrenis Charter, under the condition that it would always answer to the High Council of Verrenis, among other rules. However, this was actually done by the council to remove the growing threat of Eskelon becoming more powerful than its father nation; the removal of government would leave Eskelon’s seven states (controlled by the three most powerful) broken and leaderless, i.e. no longer a problem. But the council did realise that a loophole in its release conditions meant that the Eskelon nations could create their own charter, binding them together.
This did not bear well for Verrenis, and soon relations between the super-continental federation and Eskelon became tense.
The Eskelon nations announced their intentions to conquer the rest of the remaining world, on behalf of Verrenis, but it was as a pretext as to invade it by Verrenis. From 2655-2690 A.W.E., the two charter continents invested in technological advance, into areas such as steam power, electricity and wind. The nations were soon so powerful, Verrenis considered an invasion during the meso-subcratic government period.
Just on the brink of this cold war turning into a world-shattering termination event, Eskelon suddenly lost contact with Verrenis. At first, this was taken as pre-war measures, but in 2800 Eskelon realised that something terrible had happened to its former rival, only observing small, burnt Verrenian flotsam from across the Great Ocean as signs of what had happened. By 2890, all signs that Verrenis had ever existed ceased, and soon the Eskelon countries sent scout fleets east to Verrenis to investigate its sudden silence.
Of the twenty fleets sent across, only two came back, bearing deathly news. They had investigated the entire coast, and all the cities had been ground to ruins, burning, burning. Some scouts went on inland to investigate, but many became sick and died. The ones that survived quickly left the remains of Verrenis, and hastily returned to Eskelon with evidence, such as the Broken Sceptre of Verrenis.
The entire continent had been destroyed, they said. Destroyed by some alien force; from another unknown continent, perhaps, or by the gods.
This left Eskelon in great panic. Between 2911-2918, the three nation states had secured the entire content against invasions, and braced for the worst. Already, a feeling of morbidity had crept all over Eskelon, sickness, famine and fear, despite the stability of the Charter.
By 2922, the entire population of the continent of Eskelon was dead, victim to the pandemic virus that had engulfed Verrenis and the the rest of the world, and the sixty-five thousand year long story of man ended.
Aim: So, have we guessed what killed off the entire world?
That's right, ladies and gentlemen, we have a pandemic here.
I intend to make a mostly black and white map of the content of Eskelon (i.e. the blobs/Stephen Fry drinking coffee) with all its minor towns and major cities and capitals. Then I'm going to kill everyone in the cities, and within a few maps demonstrate the spread of the virus, and its effects on the cities and why everything is on fire.
Most of the story I wrote to set a timeline I can base many other maps on in the future (heh, you know how it all end now though), but the main bits are in the last few paragraphs.
Sound cool?
(It does kind of look like him, now that I look at the thumbnail.)
