Enkindling

The history of the Arkverse begins with, of all things, a truckers' strike in Nuevo York in 1980. The strike lasted for about three months, causing massive hunger not just in NYC itself but across the whole state. Nuevo Yorkers being Nuevo Yorkers, this resulted in massive rioting. One particularly inspired group of rioters attacked a truck belonging to House Corp, believing that it was full of food. Predictably, it was actually full of infectious medical waste, and the corporate security assigned to the truck ended up gunning down 200-something civilians to save Staten Island from getting plagued. The RUS Supreme Court vindicates the actions of the House employees, choosing to concentrate on the whole "saved thousands of lives" part rather than the "ended hundreds" one. This, combined with an attack on a Corporation-owned nuclear power plant, set the stage for corporate extraterritoriality, a principle which essentially turned corporations into their own sovereign states and made corporate land untouchable by national laws. This is why mega corporations can tie you up in the basement and forget you exist without invoking the wrath of your government.

A few years go by, and the Messiah disappears after averting a nuclear disaster in Europe, Nuevo York gets hit by an earthquake, and Japan gets into a war with Korea. Things are then quiet for roughly ten minutes before a disease called VITAS takes the top quarter off of the Earth's population. While everyone's still reeling from losing one out of every four people they ever knew, the craziest shit on record happens. People start giving birth to the first metahumans, and the backlash is substantial. Finally, on December 24th, 2031, it all goes to hell in a handbasket. Dragons are recorded flying over Japan, ley lines in Britain and Ireland start flickering on, and an activist named Coyote leads a now apparently bulletproof group of Native Americans right out the front gate of one of the reservations and into a sandstorm. In an interview with the media, one of the more talkative dragons reveals that the enkindling has come, consequently triggering the Apocalypse War, Magic is back- or more precisely, it had never left in the first place. In reality, countless beings that had lived in the world had been in hiding through much of human history. After the world tore itself apart in the war, many of the hidden species of Eard resurfaced now that the humans were no longer the majority,

The final phase of the Great Enkindling is set in motion, and lines are being redrawn all over the map. Subsequent race riots cost a lot of very confused people their lives, although plenty of folks stepped in on the side of the mutants, resulting in large numbers of casualties on all sides and breeding a lot of bitterness. Within time, many old faiths splintered into warring sects or radically restructured themselves, with various forms of paganism becoming the dominant faiths of the world.

Fast forward a bit: the internet is destroyed by a super-virus, and a bunch of cyber-commandos kill it in virtual reality combat. In true computer fashion, their VR tech goes from room-sized to book-sized within ten years. The VR Matrix replaces the Internet. National governments lose more and more of their power in the face of corporate influence until the Corporate Court replaces the United Nations as the great global political alliance and national governments are little more than figureheads. People are identified in corporate and national databases by their System Identification Numbers (SINs), but an increasingly large number of the poor, referred to as SINless lack one and the basic human rights that come with it yet at the same time are free from the constant surveillance that being a SINner entails. People are increasingly born with an inherent gift for manipulating magic, and magic becomes as much a part of everyday life as electricity.

You may be wondering where the players fit into all this madness. Well, ever since that truckers' strike in 1980 an underclass of criminals has slowly been gaining influence and importance. Often SINless, they are untraceable ghosts in the machinery of the world, simultaneously free and enslaved. They are deniable assets used by corporations, nations, and even wealthy private citizens to snipe at each other without sparking off feuds or wars. They steal, they hack databases, they weave magical illusions, and often they kill. They are called Street Ronin, and your character is one of them. And through it all, Street Ronin have not only held onto their power, but have achieved a sort of collective celebrity, becoming permanently ingrained on global culture.