Death and Chaos

Things were really cooking now. We had a virtual alphabet soup going on: VITAS , UGE , NAN and so forth. Between the epidemics and the resurgence of magic in the world, there were many who thought that the Apocalypse  was on its way and that we ought to be kissing our collective backsides goodbye. It wasn’t the end, but it sure was a whole lot of change – and it wasn’t quiet.

### VITAS

Virally Induced Toxic Allergy Syndrome (VITAS ) first appeared in New Delhi, India  about the same time as the Native Americans were being sent to the camps in North America . Bad year for anyone called “Indian”. It spread terrifyingly fast, striking down approximately 25 percent of the world’s population. Among the areas worst hit were China , India , many African nations , some third world cities, and outlying areas due to inadequate or nonexistent medical care and vaccines.

Still, no one was safe and a lot of fear and paranoia followed in the epidemic’s wake. In Mexico City (That’s Tenochtitlan  for those of you have trouble remembering last week) for example, the locals called it ‘Terror Time’, and as the dead piled up in the streets, Citizens’ Action Committees (otherwise known as organized mobs) burned whole sections of the city. It should come as no surprise, then, that by January of the next year the Mexican  government had dissolved, sending thousands of refugees across the border into Texas . This would have significant repercussions later on.

## The Awakening

As a prelude of things to come, all around the world a percentage of children were suddenly born “deformed”. Many

   people called these babies ‘mutants’; others called them ‘elves’ and ‘dwarfs’, for that was exactly what they resembled. The scientists, however, called the phenomenon Unexplained Genetic Expression (UGE ). Though we have better ideas these days about what may have triggered it (magic , of course), we’re not much closer to an in-depth explanation than we were before. Now all of you Elves  and Dwarfs  out there know where you came from. We’re just as mystified as you are.

The real kicked happened December 24th of that year. What was previously known as the Year of Chaos became the Awakening as simultaneous events spectacularly ushered in what the Mayans called the Sixth World : the appearance of the Great Dragon Ryumyo  over Mount Fuji , witnessed by hundreds of Japanese passengers on a bullet train and the Native American prophet Daniel Howling Coyote leading his followers  out of the Abilene Re-Education Center. Camp guards swore that no shot fired at Howling Coyote touched him; some sort of “glow” stopped them. Ignoring their captors, the Native Americans walked through the gates and out into the storm surrounding the camp, with no trace found the next morning to mark their passage.

Elsewhere, weather patterns were changing, as were geographic features – some to catastrophic effect. Australia  experienced the first of many violent “mana storms”, which swept through the Outback , killing hundreds. Western forests in Ireland  began growing rapidly and the long-forgotten ‘slighe roads ’ returned along with peat bogs and cairn lines. Stone circles and standing stones erupted along knownley lines  in Britain. The Netherlands , Belgium , Germany  and Denmark  experienced a flood that left toxic sludge in its wake when the poisoned North Sea pushed into the mouth of the Elbe River, destroying many dikes and dams. Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and more (un)natural disasters followed all over the world.

### Dunkelzahn Explains it All

   While many were preparing for a religious Apocalypse and others were simply learning how to deal with the enormous chaos and uncertainty, a certain dragon decided to take matters into his own talons. On January 27, a little over a month after the Awakening, the Great Dragon Dunkelzahn  made his first appearance at Cherry Creek Lake in Denver. It was a media frenzy. Reporters fought for exclusives while the military tried to seal the area off. In the end, however, Dunkelzahn granted oneHolly Brighton the exclusive interview that made history: twelve house and sixteen minutes of questions about Dunkelzahn and the turmoil happening to us that was dubbed the “Awakening” for the first time. For whatever reason (some say to help us out), the Great Dragon explained it all in that marathon interview.

In simple terms, magic had returned to the world with vengeance. You can imagine how simultaneously scary, exhilarating and disappointing that was for many people; it certainly blow my twelve-year-old mind. Scientists had a really difficult time coming to grips with magic, not knowing how to classify it (if they were even to accept its existence at all). Out of the blue, some people were now able to incinerate others with a thought (even if it knocked them on their keisters afterward). That could be scary for someone who didn’t want the ability, scary for those who couldn’t didn’t want to understand how it could happen, exhilarating for those who did want the ability and disappointing for every loon who’d pretended to be a great magician and who was now revealed as a complete fraud.

### Nation Building

The death of the USA and the birth of the North American crazy quilt we all know and love began soon after that.

The Native American Nations formed in 2018 with the Treaty of Denver – a conciliatory gesture by the United States and Canada following a protracted guerrilla war with Native American forces led by Daniel Howling Coyote (remember him? C’mon, kids, don’t make me hotlink this..). The US -Canadian  forces tried to carry out the Resolution Act that would have exterminated all the Amerindian tribes for good, but needless to say, the Natives were having none of that. The war culminated in the Great Ghost Dance , a massive magical ritual that Howling Coyote and his followers used to shake up the North American landscape by blowing the tops off several volcanoes (Redondo Peak in New Mexico along with Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood, Mt. Rainier and Mount St. Helens in the Pacific Northwest), not to mention causing freaky weather and other disturbances at military bases and supply dumps connected with the Resolution Act.

The Treaty of Denver, among other things, recognized the sovereignty of the Native American Nations and ceded most of the western portion of North American to them, while allowing the United States to retain most of California  and maintain Seattle  as an extraterritorial extension. (Now you know why the Seattle Metroplex is more or less a screwed-up frontier town). The NAN, governed by a Sovereign Tribal Council, included: The Salish-Shidhe Council , the Sioux Nation , the Pueblo Corporate Council , the Ute Nation , the Algonkian-Manitou Council , the Athabaskan Council , the Trans-Polar Aleut nation and the Tsimshian Nation .

The Treaty of Denver also divided up the that city between its original signatory members: Aztlan  (more on them in a moment), neighboring members of the new NAN (Sioux, Pueblo and Ute) and the United States. Since no militaries were allowed for fear of annulling the treaty and bringing about a repeat of the Great Ghost Dance, Denver  became a smuggler’s dream.

Remember that part about the dissolution of the Mexican government? After three or four years of chaos, Aztlan was born, the first inhabitant of the newly restored Mexican presidency (a lackey of ORO , the company that grew out of the South American drug cartels and that later reinvented itself as Aztechnology) renamed his country after the legendary homeland of the Aztecs . He also exhorted all Hispanic peoples to “join in reclaiming our glorious cultural heritage”. It think if anyone had told them that this reclamation would include a forceful return to the bloodiest days of Aztec history, many people would have laughed… but they wouldn’t be laughing now.

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