Created and edited by Dominick Mattero

Written by James LaFond & Dominick Mattero

-Dominick & James, May 15, 2013

Five-hundred years into an extreme global warming cycle, Planet Earth supports fewer than a million human inhabitants.

Genetically engineered communities hold out in habitation domes.

Arabic nomads roam the expanded and volatile seas in solar-powered clan barges.

Feral tribes have reverted to a Mesolithic lifeway, wandering the overgrown ruin that was once North America.

Regressive communities have isolated themselves in cooler uplands and live according to reactionary traditions.

Across this world stalk horrors spawned by the frantic sustainability efforts of a lost civilization. These include the Hemavores, sufferers of a form of genetic mutation that causes cyclic vampirism; leviathans, the result of genetic-engineering attempts to farm the dying oceans; and squibs the feral result of efforts to develop the ideal domestic pet.

Not everything has been lost. The Chinese colonization of Luna, in the face of their homeland’s nuclear death, has resulted in a small yet sophisticated Lunar population, organized along military lines. The Lunar Celestial Federation launches periodic culling and exploratory operations into Terra Space. In the year 2572 what LCF Terra Jumpers encounter Terra Side has shocked the High Command into action. The LCF’s top Terra Jumper is dispatched Terra Side with a crack pioneer squad to investigate.

Phenyl is an Enforcement Class Sibling of Habitat Syra. Her reoccurring nightmares have come to the attention of Management via her sleep station’s psyche filter. She has been called in for a screening. Such an invasive examination would bring to light her reproductive crimes and most likely bring a longevity depletion sentence. Unwilling to have her time among the living reduced Phenyl decides to breach the dome and make a run for it into the ruined world she has been shielded from since birth.

Mishar operates a scout skiff off of Clan Barge Lahab. The fishing over the Manhattan Banks has been good, and the skiffers have suffered fewer losses from leviathan encounters this season than is usual. While scouting for an anchorage at the head of the Hudson Fiord Mishar witnesses a meteor shower that is something more, something supernatural…

Josiah Chowning has lived his entire life within sight of Samara, the fortified village of his elders. Fathered sinfully and born a sickly child to a mother who passed with his birth, he has ever been the outcast. Cursed by the sin that drove his father into anonymity and caused the Angel of The Lord to banish his mother to Damnation at his birth, Josiah has been a boy for seventeen harvests. Finally, on one winter night, Josiah reaches manhood. Had he known the price he and his adopted parents would pay for his coming-of-age, he would have prayed to remain a child forever.

Bailey is an out-runner of Pack Coyote. The Pack has reached the Big Clean Water on their annual migration. But something is wrong. There is a metallic taste to the water and Pack Leader Roger has gone missing. Bailey is sent out toward the Pink Squib Nest on a scout. What he finds has no place in Pack Lore, and puts him at odds with something he simply cannot explain.

Dong Shen Yin is an officer of the all female Chang’e Contact Division of the Lunar Celestial Federation who can trace her ancestry back to 20th Century natives of Guangdong Province. Most Celestials dread Terra Space, and only engage in Terra Jumps to hunt leviathans or investigate Terra Side mutations. Dong Shen Yin yearns to rediscover any remnants of Old Earth and has a deep desire to visit her ancestral home, burned out cinder though it may be.