» Thu Sep 01, 2011 3:54 pm Everyone knows the story of the war. Over two centuries ago that fateful Saturday obliterated the majority of the Earth’s landmass, and forever rewrote man’s history with a fiery pen. Advanced civilisations were brought crumbling down in a brief two hours of suicidal vengeance and nuclear rage. A war which, despite its absurd brevity, caused more death and destruction than every war that preceded it combined. The first and last of its kind – the Great War.
But what few people know, and far fewer remember, is the tragic series of events that led mankind to its fall. In the years before the Great War, the leading nations of the world were driven to each others’ throats by a global energy crisis. In the mid 21st century it had become clear that man’s ambition had caused him to overstretch. As the vast oil fields of the world were consumed by the engines of modern life, relationships between the countries of the world grew strained. As the Resource Wars brewed, nations began to take liberties and carry out actions their governments would never condone in times of peace.
These conflicts have been long lost in the crisped pages of history, overshadowed by Sino-American war which directly followed, but the subtle yet catalytic conflicts of the Resource Wars give far greater insight into the reasons behind mankind’s near destruction than the crescendo of insults the two superpowers exchanged in the years that followed.
It began in 2051 with the Commonwealth of America’s destabilisation and later invasion of Mexico, an act of aggression justified by Mexico’s “pollution problem”. This flimsy justification was to be the first of many, with the European Commonwealth likewise declaring a war of its own on several Middle Eastern states within the year. The technological advantage of the Commonwealth proved extreme even in the foreign deserts, and it was clear that the targeted oil fields of the Middle East would be obtained by force in few years time. Fearing for its future, the Kingdom of New Iran secretly sent its hashishin, elite soldiers of a millennium-old warrior caste, out into the West in an attempt to bring the advancing beast to a halt from the inside. Needless to say it was in vain. While hashishin managed to infiltrate both the American Commonwealth and its European counterpart, New Iran fell all the same. The hashishin, now effectively left without any country to return home to or any king left to serve, abandoned their clandestine missions and attempted to discretely blend into their new surroundings. Secretive refugees with a dark history, seeking asylum in a country they had come to with an even darker intent.
Relentlessly pursued by members of the shadow government, the entity which would later come to be known as the Enclave, the hashishin struggled to find a place to settle. Of the thousand or more which had initially come to America, their numbers were reduced to just several hundred as the government quietly dispatched bounty hunters to track them down. The irony of having to deal with ‘assassins’ was not lost on the hashishin. In the years immediately preceding the Great War, the remaining members gave up any hope of settling down for a peaceful life while the current government ruled, and instead took to the caves and mountains in the more remote areas of the country in a desperate effort to preserve themselves. The hashishin were well practised in hand to hand combat and with smaller firearms and pistols. They were masters of stealth and were trained to operate alone or in small bands, but lacked the military knowhow and technical operation to succeed in open combat over range. As such, they were able to defend their caves and mountain retreats excellently. This was the type of terrain they were accustomed to, the type of terrain they had relentlessly trained in in their youth. By applying their guerrilla tactics and never staying in any one place for long, the surviving hashishin were able to evade the clutches of their pursuers like smoke.
Then the bombs fell, and wiped the slate clean.
The near-obliteration of humanity was kinder on the surviving hashishin than most. Hidden away in their mountain dwellings, they avoided the worst of the nuclear holocaust and fallout. One small band survived in the remote Sierra Nevada mountain range. They had originally been sent to the American Southwest with the task of infiltrating the West Tek Research Facility, but had been forced to flee into the mountains for their own safety just like the majority of other hashishin. There they continued to dwell and survive several years after the bombs fell, living a nomadic and uncertain life amid the dangers of immediately post-apocalyptic America. Once the dust settled, they observed that the old government of America was for all appearances dead and buried. The band felt this was finally their chance to come out of isolation and move down into the Mojave plains.
While they were decently equipped to fight many of the terrors of the new land, such as radscorpions and bloodthirsty raider tribes, what they were neither prepared for nor had the means to detect were the deadly pockets of radiation which still persisted in many areas down from the mountains. Radiation sickness and lack of food in the nuclear winter claimed many of their number, and the band of hashishin was reduced to just several dozen. Realising they had little hope of surviving the dangers of the wastes in such a large group, the hashishin took the decision to break up their band and each go their own way. Some ventured to what remained of West Tek and were lost to the Glow, never heard from again. Others continued to wander the wastes and eventually met up with other surviving tribes, among them the Great Khans. They found a familiarity in the tribe’s culture and after some time joined forces with them. And a handful of the hashishin yet continued to wander the Mojave and eventually stumbled upon burgeoning new communities, into which they assimilated and finally achieved their goals of settling down for a more peaceful life. And thus, the descendents and last remnants of the once mighty Persian empire scattered to the winds amid the ruins of the Old World.
