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Solar Strife A Chance To Suffer:

Part three in the Solar Strife AU series requested by HeliosMegistos. This scenario is also a full-on crossover (by HeliosMegistos' request) with the Psychoverse, or parts of it anyway.

It is currently 2541 and the world is sick. The slow death of the world began in 2347 when the Goering, the first experimental faster than light spaceship developed by the Weltraum Reich returned to the solar system after disappearing. Ignoring all attempts to be hailed, the ship headed for earth, bypassed all of the world's orbital weapons instalments (it helped that these were all pointed at the surface rather than out into orbit) and crashed into the Bavarian Alps.

Out of the wreckage flooded a vast wave of vaguely human creatures and inhuman monsters. A rippling rift in the fabric of reality slowly emanated from the ruined ship, tearing it apart and engulfing it while more and more creatures marched out.

The world was completely unprepared for the onslaught. As bizarre energies washed over the world from the rift and other ones opened by the monsters, especially powerful individuals, bedecked in extravagantly flamboyant outfits (and in a few cases armour), stepped through and unleashed devastating power. The nations in Europe were thrown back, their weapons subverted as portals and rifts allowed their unnatural enemies to bypass their defences. As the invaders advanced they chased after the survivors that had encountered them. India was targeted, their own internal issues making them vulnerable, followed by the Italians, the British and (to everyone's surprise) the Brazilians.

Portals were opened elsewhere but these fronts were not as successful. The Empire of the New World, the Japanese Empire and the southern and eastern portions of the Commonwealth were able to rally against the invaders. Telepaths proved to be the most effective means of combating the power of the invader's elite, who had revealed themselves to be Witches. The Witches, having learnt of the weapons Earth had at their disposal from the long dead crew of the Goering actively worked to neutralise them as much as possible.

In a matter of two years the Witches had torn apart so many of their enemies. India and Brazil were completely defeated and the surviving powers were left on the defensive. Now that they had conquered so much, the Witches returned to working against one another, the various Dynasties carving out their own domains and dragging the Great Game into the physical world.

Ever since the Goering tore a hole in reality, the state of the world has deteriorated and the only survivors are those ruthless enough to survive in this new world.

Straddling the world is the profane leviathan known as the Empire of A Million Years. The Witches have not only managed to build their empire but keep it as well. Fighting in an alien dimension, they have adapted their tactics in order to contend with the indigenous forces. Witches canny enough to find a means of doing so, developed means of conducting more and more viable energies to feed their own powers and combat their enemies.

The Empire of A Million Years is a bizarre nation of contradictions. The advanced technology that existed before the Witches invasion' exists alongside feudal hierarchies and massive slave complexes. The Witches have enslaved the human population of their territories, forcing them to serve their own desires and provide them with whatever resources they need for their own ends. Those who do not slave to provide resources or serve as soldiers will often end up as sacrifices who's deaths empower whatever rituals the Witches are performing. A few lucky ones will manifest the powers necessary to harness the energies of the Arcane, the Witches native plane of existence. These individuals will, if they're unlucky enough, be taken as apprentices. Those few who survive can even become Witches themselves.

Despite its name the Empire is in fact a collection of petty fiefdoms, each Witch technically ruling independently of one another. Of course their Dynasties still have to answer to the Coven which represents some basic unity but for the most part the Witches work alone. This tends to change when the Empire is attacked since, though they hate one another with a passion, the Witches are loathe to sacrifice land to their other enemies.

Since the Witches arrival, disturbing new creatures now walk the earth. An endless diversity of animalistic Familiars now stalk the land. Coming any and every shape and size, these beasts are disturbingly intelligent and happily toy with the human slave population. Homunculi, whilst not as intelligent, are much more stable and often supplement a Witch's forces. They are even being combined with modern technology, with some being stitched into power-armour or having powerful weapons grafted to their bodies. Lyrium, predatory humanoids with lithe, stretched bodies, continue to hunt as they always have with blade and bolt but have since adapted their tactics as their contracted masters demand of them. Finally there is a great variety of empowered servitors that work within the Coven directly. Who they were and why they perform their duties so fanatically is irrelevant, all that is acknowledged is that when they go to war the Coven is almost unstoppable.

Alongside these abominations are the modified fruits of humanity's labour. The Witches and their favoured slaves live in beautiful and garish palaces, built like the fortified arcologies of the rest of the world. Here in the multi-tiered edifices of their own hedonism and tyranny they live lives of luxury. The rest of the Empire's population live lives of varying precariousness. Their individual ruler's predilections and temperaments often decide how long they live and how difficult it is. Of course the Witches do work hard to encourage their slaves to breed as they constantly need to replace them. A Witches individual insignia and thematic aesthetics will also permeate everything in their personal fiefdoms, features that often also decorate the inhabitants as well.

Technology has gone down some strange paths since the arrival of the Witches. Whilst not averse to modern technology, the Witches prefer form over function when it comes to their tools. There are Witches who value their own brands of engineering and scientific development but they too are affected by their aesthetic demands, often making the devices they produce seem garish and ostentatious when compared to those of other nations. Magitech, the combination of sorcery and technological principles is still non-existent outside of the Empire of A Million Years. This has allowed the Witches to craft magical mecha the size of buildings that do not sink into the ground, to construct flying castles that outclass any other vessel in terms of size and even bizarre devices that are part living being, part cybernetic device and part energy being/spirit that confound any categorisation. It is only due to their empire's own internal instability that the Witches are not able to unleash such devastating weapons that often.

Rivalling it is the equally disturbing and insane Empire of the New World. The empire that Persephone Eosopoulou built has slowly turned into a land as insane as it's rivals, just as its ruler has also turned into something as alien as the Witches.

Since the arrival of the Witches, the New World has transformed into a disturbing edifice to their empress' increasingly inhuman monster. Bizarre neo-Classical structures now dot the landscapes and the old cities have been torn down by an enslaved populace and rebuilt in a fashion Persephone finds more appealing. Her arcologies are as much works of classicist art as they are fortified metropolises and statues of the empress are everywhere. Though she herself is now hailed as a living god, Persephone has also forcibly converted her subjects to worshipping a diverse pantheon of deities, demigods and creatures derived from the empress' interpretations of Classical Greek myths.

Persephone has warped over the centuries into a disturbing creature. As her mind shifted and changed, her physical body began to shift as well. Now she is shimmering shape sat upon the throne she built centuries ago. Her body is incredibly unstable as the swirling telepathic energy she has contained within herself disassembled her component atoms and restructured them to survive. Now her body is perfectly adapted to the conditions her own powers submit her to. Her own mind itself, now an intangible concept, is almost incomprehensible to humans. Only her ego seems to be something a human being could relate to and understand. She continues to pursue the Classicalist ideas and images she loved as a human but now regards herself as a god amongst the beings she once forced others to worship. Even now, as the rift far away spills alien energies out into the solar system, she is warping and transforming again as she adapts once again.

As the Witches began to focus their attention on her empire, Persephone responded with her own new weapons. With Persephone exerting so much telepathic power and bizarre and esoteric energies flooding out of the rift, bizarre entities, tied to Persephone, have emerged and manifested.

These beings are intangible except whenever Persephone or one of the Empire's telepaths manifests them. They appear like shining demigods from Classical mythology with perfect figures and gold-bronze skin. They are faceless, the moulded armour and enclosed helmets that make up their forms, melded to the 'skin' of their bodies. There are two categories of entity, a common type of weaker power and a more rare but also more powerful class of being. The Machai, are the lesser beings, appearing like the legendary Myrmidon, the Machai are armed with fiery swords that set alight anything they touch and shining javelins of eldritch fire that can cut through energy shields. The Eupheme, the greater caste, are almost unstoppable, their bodies made of esoteric fire and lightning that burns anything that gets too close. Their bodies are their weapons and their fiery wings allow them to carry their giant bodies anywhere on the battlefield.

Between these two inhuman empires, the final remnants of free and pure humanity huddle. The Free Commonwealth is vast but it is also the weakest of the powers and spread far and thin. It is only desperate measures and the fact that the two inhuman empires despise one another the most that has spared them.

Though they suffered horribly, the majority of the Commonwealth's territory had been out of the way of the Witches' rampage. A rapid alliance was eventually sealed with the Japanese, who had also suffered the least, and together the two surviving human empires formed a union that would stand the test of time against both the Coven and Persephone. Slowly the union formalised until, a century later, the Free Commonwealth was formed. This new superstate began as a an alliance of convenience but has slowly centralised into a more proper union.

As the Commonwealth centralised the cultures of its components mixed. Now, instead of being overtly multi-cultural, an increasingly standardised monoculture is emerging that blends features of British and Japanese society together. Despite their differences, the Japanese Imperial Family and the British Royal Family married together to cement the union of their two empires as well. However, society in general is also incredibly authoritarian and repressive. In order to support the militarism necessary to hold off both inhuman empires, the Commonwealth has been forced to adopt increasingly oppressive policies. The entire population is devoted in some way to supporting the war effort, even if it is in a temporary fashion. What's more the constant threat of infiltration, telepathic manipulation or Coven corruption has left the people of the Commonwealth very paranoid.

Most of the government is made up of telepaths by this point with even the royal family now exhibiting powers of their own as well. As well as serving as the ruling class, Commonwealth telepaths are also used to observe and monitor the mental states of the population. Mental manipulation is used to keep the population docile to their rule and motivated towards the government's goal. There are also specialised groups dedicated to hunting down infiltrators from their enemies. All telepaths are required to register in the military and be available for service as they are the best weapon against the supernatural forces of their enemies.

On top of the traditional mental manipulation the telepathic class imposes on the population, the Commonwealth has begun to implement a new method of control and motivation. The Commonwealth began to implement official identification chips to the entire population, first as a means of making access to technology easier, then as a control mechanism. The Universal Transferred Organic Processing Interface Architecture, a complex computer interfacing network, exists to monitor every individual's chip. As well as coordinate the technology that allows the new interface system to function, UTOPIA also helps in keeping the population docile. The chips are able to interfere and manipulate the nervous system of an individual and the government often uses UTOPIA to adjust the disposition of the population. Unfortunately this method is still experimental and has had some unfortunate side-effects including inducing rage, insanity and paranoia amongst hundreds of people. Those who are immune to the system and therefore aware of what's going on also tend to rebel against a government that is willing to literally pick their brains.

The Commonwealth tries to keep a presence in space but unfortunately the Weltraum Reich has practically destroyed their off-world presence. As it is there is a desperate battle to preserve their orbital assets from destruction. What were once satellites are now flying fortresses, built from a patchwork of upgrades and modules as the Commonwealth continuously expands and fortifies them. Anti-gravity technology now allows the navy to essentially operate as a terrestrial, aerial and orbital organisation and it is common for fleets to be ordered into space to reinforce the Commonwealth's presence or deter attacks by the Reich.

As the nation responsible for the invasion of the Witches, the Weltraum Reich were very aggressive in their attempt to counteract them.

Few in number when compared to the other powers and lacking telepaths as well, the Weltraum Reich went to disturbing lengths to assemble their own arsenal against the esoteric forces they had accidentally unleashed. The few telepaths they did have in their population were rounded up and submitted to breeding programs, cloning techniques, chemical and genetic stimulations and other experiments to increase either their powers or their numbers. In a matter of decades there were new pod grown children exhibiting telepathic abilities but it wasn't enough.

Whatever the Reich did to their new population of psychics isn't really known but they managed to harness their collective abilities and feed it into the Weltraumfuhrer and combine it with the bizarre energies leaking from the rift as well as the unconscious ideological belief that the Reich's population exhibited. From this was born a terrible entity. It was vast, huge and vaguely humanoid with pitch black skin and an unearthly presence that cowed anything that looked at it. Its own abilities, which eclipsed any human telepath by several orders of magnitude, were almost impossible to understand and at the head of the Weltraum Reich's expanded military the new Gotterfuhrer descended upon the earth.

The Weltraum Reich now has a complex network of settlements, bases (despite losing the old ones) and surface to orbit instalments on Earth. Above it is another complex of satellites, bases and connecting structures that come together to form an orbital base and city that the Reich sends forces down from. Here is where the Gotterfuhrer rules.

Though their orbital presence is heavily entrenched, their forces on Earth are a lot weaker. In order to maintain their hold on the few positions they have, they have developed a disturbing arsenal. The old cloning projects have produced a strain of vat-grown soldier, their lobotomised minds supplemented by cybernetic programming to make them more pliant and controllable. Genetic engineering has also allowed the Reich to develop specialised variants of these soldiers that seem barely human. Weapons that harness the bizarre energies spilling from the rift are now used by these expendable soldiers. Orbit to surface craft ship extra troops to battle and have practically replaced tanks and mechanised infantry in most of the Reich's armies. Several machines have also been developed that exploit the energies that now saturate the solar system and unleash them in devastating bursts of concentrated power.

What was China is now an anarchic mess. Caught between the Witches, the Reich and the Commonwealth, the already unstable government collapsed violently. Existing revolutionary movements made great gains but were slowly wiped out or subverted by Witch cults and Commonwealth agents and the survivors became even more radicalised. Now all that is left are spheres of influence in a ravaged land that is fought over by greater powers.

Shortly after the Witches arrive, a desperate experiment was conducted. Using new genetic modification technology, countless soldiers were enhanced with greater physical capabilities, mental endurance and even vestigial telekinetic abilities. However, as the war dragged on more modifications were made. Eventually the altered genetic codes became unstable and countless soldiers suffered horrendous side-effects, many of them dying or spontaneously deforming.

When the government finally cracked down on the program the enhanced soldiers were ordered to be submitted to euthanasia. They retaliated and broke free from their control. Hunted by Commonwealth forces, the enhanced soldiers fled, harassed constantly as they stole whatever they needed to survive. The enhanced now rule over, Utopia, a turbulent state in the chaos of China. Through their own enhanced brains, they have learnt to sustain themselves and even improve on their modifications. However, many of them still suffer from physical deterioration and other major problems. As things become more anarchic in China the enhanced of Utopia are best by greater and greater threats.

The Kriechen Tod has also been expanding. Without the concentrated efforts that were being made to contain it, the grotesque bioweapon has expanded beyond the old quarantine zone. Living up to its name, the wall of writhing flesh has grown along the ocean floor, the crushing pressure of the ocean the only thing slowing it down. It is slowly making its way north and is closing in on the southern tips of Patagonia and New Zealand, ships that come into waters infected by the Kriechen Tod will find towers of flesh and bone the size of small islands thrust up from beneath the waves. These foul constructs will reach out to them, crushing them completely if they catch them. What's more many have felt a disturbing mental sensation in the South Pole and the areas the Kriechen Tod has grown over, as if the bioweapon has developed a psychic presence of its own.

Throughout the world, strange individuals have been spotted. There has been a strange new presence felt by the more sensitive individuals on the planet. Telepaths, Witches and others have begun to detect something vast and terrifying. New cults, unaffiliated with any of the existing powers, have emerged and begun to cause trouble around the world. Still too small to warrant prioritisation, these cults have spread and proliferated, thriving wherever conflicts make it difficult to hunt them down. Those who are caught and interrogated simply gibber unintelligibly about the coming of a new and great god, an ancient being that will usher in an end to the world as it is now.

In New Athena the Empress Persephone feels things are wrong. Unfortunately her conscious mind is distracted. Several years prior her daughters Adrasteia and Amaltheia went missing, stolen when they were barely older than infants. Born to reinforce her dynasty, these god-children had always been different from what she planned, the energies of the rift to the Arcane affecting their development. The search for them has turned up nothing and the actions she takes to recover them are becoming more aggressive. Meanwhile, in the Coven of the Silver Court, the High Mistress Superbis Dominium Imperatus moulds her new asset. The god-children she stole from the empress of the New World are turning into powerful acolytes and may be the key to purging this world of the Coven's enemies.

Meanwhile, beneath the deserts of Utah, a massive and foul monstrosity begins to stir. Woken by the rise in telepaths and the saturation of the world by powers leaking from the rift, the alien mind of the Elder One begins to awaken.

Description

Solar Strife A Chance To Suffer:

Part three in the Solar Strife AU series requested by HeliosMegistos. This scenario is also a full-on crossover (by HeliosMegistos' request) with the Psychoverse, or parts of it anyway.

It is currently 2541 and the world is sick. The slow death of the world began in 2347 when the Goering, the first experimental faster than light spaceship developed by the Weltraum Reich returned to the solar system after disappearing. Ignoring all attempts to be hailed, the ship headed for earth, bypassed all of the world's orbital weapons instalments (it helped that these were all pointed at the surface rather than out into orbit) and crashed into the Bavarian Alps.

Out of the wreckage flooded a vast wave of vaguely human creatures and inhuman monsters. A rippling rift in the fabric of reality slowly emanated from the ruined ship, tearing it apart and engulfing it while more and more creatures marched out.

The world was completely unprepared for the onslaught. As bizarre energies washed over the world from the rift and other ones opened by the monsters, especially powerful individuals, bedecked in extravagantly flamboyant outfits (and in a few cases armour), stepped through and unleashed devastating power. The nations in Europe were thrown back, their weapons subverted as portals and rifts allowed their unnatural enemies to bypass their defences. As the invaders advanced they chased after the survivors that had encountered them. India was targeted, their own internal issues making them vulnerable, followed by the Italians, the British and (to everyone's surprise) the Brazilians.

Portals were opened elsewhere but these fronts were not as successful. The Empire of the New World, the Japanese Empire and the southern and eastern portions of the Commonwealth were able to rally against the invaders. Telepaths proved to be the most effective means of combating the power of the invader's elite, who had revealed themselves to be Witches. The Witches, having learnt of the weapons Earth had at their disposal from the long dead crew of the Goering actively worked to neutralise them as much as possible.

In a matter of two years the Witches had torn apart so many of their enemies. India and Brazil were completely defeated and the surviving powers were left on the defensive. Now that they had conquered so much, the Witches returned to working against one another, the various Dynasties carving out their own domains and dragging the Great Game into the physical world.

Ever since the Goering tore a hole in reality, the state of the world has deteriorated and the only survivors are those ruthless enough to survive in this new world.

Straddling the world is the profane leviathan known as the Empire of A Million Years. The Witches have not only managed to build their empire but keep it as well. Fighting in an alien dimension, they have adapted their tactics in order to contend with the indigenous forces. Witches canny enough to find a means of doing so, developed means of conducting more and more viable energies to feed their own powers and combat their enemies.

The Empire of A Million Years is a bizarre nation of contradictions. The advanced technology that existed before the Witches invasion' exists alongside feudal hierarchies and massive slave complexes. The Witches have enslaved the human population of their territories, forcing them to serve their own desires and provide them with whatever resources they need for their own ends. Those who do not slave to provide resources or serve as soldiers will often end up as sacrifices who's deaths empower whatever rituals the Witches are performing. A few lucky ones will manifest the powers necessary to harness the energies of the Arcane, the Witches native plane of existence. These individuals will, if they're unlucky enough, be taken as apprentices. Those few who survive can even become Witches themselves.

Despite its name the Empire is in fact a collection of petty fiefdoms, each Witch technically ruling independently of one another. Of course their Dynasties still have to answer to the Coven which represents some basic unity but for the most part the Witches work alone. This tends to change when the Empire is attacked since, though they hate one another with a passion, the Witches are loathe to sacrifice land to their other enemies.

Since the Witches arrival, disturbing new creatures now walk the earth. An endless diversity of animalistic Familiars now stalk the land. Coming any and every shape and size, these beasts are disturbingly intelligent and happily toy with the human slave population. Homunculi, whilst not as intelligent, are much more stable and often supplement a Witch's forces. They are even being combined with modern technology, with some being stitched into power-armour or having powerful weapons grafted to their bodies. Lyrium, predatory humanoids with lithe, stretched bodies, continue to hunt as they always have with blade and bolt but have since adapted their tactics as their contracted masters demand of them. Finally there is a great variety of empowered servitors that work within the Coven directly. Who they were and why they perform their duties so fanatically is irrelevant, all that is acknowledged is that when they go to war the Coven is almost unstoppable.

Alongside these abominations are the modified fruits of humanity's labour. The Witches and their favoured slaves live in beautiful and garish palaces, built like the fortified arcologies of the rest of the world. Here in the multi-tiered edifices of their own hedonism and tyranny they live lives of luxury. The rest of the Empire's population live lives of varying precariousness. Their individual ruler's predilections and temperaments often decide how long they live and how difficult it is. Of course the Witches do work hard to encourage their slaves to breed as they constantly need to replace them. A Witches individual insignia and thematic aesthetics will also permeate everything in their personal fiefdoms, features that often also decorate the inhabitants as well.

Technology has gone down some strange paths since the arrival of the Witches. Whilst not averse to modern technology, the Witches prefer form over function when it comes to their tools. There are Witches who value their own brands of engineering and scientific development but they too are affected by their aesthetic demands, often making the devices they produce seem garish and ostentatious when compared to those of other nations. Magitech, the combination of sorcery and technological principles is still non-existent outside of the Empire of A Million Years. This has allowed the Witches to craft magical mecha the size of buildings that do not sink into the ground, to construct flying castles that outclass any other vessel in terms of size and even bizarre devices that are part living being, part cybernetic device and part energy being/spirit that confound any categorisation. It is only due to their empire's own internal instability that the Witches are not able to unleash such devastating weapons that often.

Rivalling it is the equally disturbing and insane Empire of the New World. The empire that Persephone Eosopoulou built has slowly turned into a land as insane as it's rivals, just as its ruler has also turned into something as alien as the Witches.

Since the arrival of the Witches, the New World has transformed into a disturbing edifice to their empress' increasingly inhuman monster. Bizarre neo-Classical structures now dot the landscapes and the old cities have been torn down by an enslaved populace and rebuilt in a fashion Persephone finds more appealing. Her arcologies are as much works of classicist art as they are fortified metropolises and statues of the empress are everywhere. Though she herself is now hailed as a living god, Persephone has also forcibly converted her subjects to worshipping a diverse pantheon of deities, demigods and creatures derived from the empress' interpretations of Classical Greek myths.

Persephone has warped over the centuries into a disturbing creature. As her mind shifted and changed, her physical body began to shift as well. Now she is shimmering shape sat upon the throne she built centuries ago. Her body is incredibly unstable as the swirling telepathic energy she has contained within herself disassembled her component atoms and restructured them to survive. Now her body is perfectly adapted to the conditions her own powers submit her to. Her own mind itself, now an intangible concept, is almost incomprehensible to humans. Only her ego seems to be something a human being could relate to and understand. She continues to pursue the Classicalist ideas and images she loved as a human but now regards herself as a god amongst the beings she once forced others to worship. Even now, as the rift far away spills alien energies out into the solar system, she is warping and transforming again as she adapts once again.

As the Witches began to focus their attention on her empire, Persephone responded with her own new weapons. With Persephone exerting so much telepathic power and bizarre and esoteric energies flooding out of the rift, bizarre entities, tied to Persephone, have emerged and manifested.

These beings are intangible except whenever Persephone or one of the Empire's telepaths manifests them. They appear like shining demigods from Classical mythology with perfect figures and gold-bronze skin. They are faceless, the moulded armour and enclosed helmets that make up their forms, melded to the 'skin' of their bodies. There are two categories of entity, a common type of weaker power and a more rare but also more powerful class of being. The Machai, are the lesser beings, appearing like the legendary Myrmidon, the Machai are armed with fiery swords that set alight anything they touch and shining javelins of eldritch fire that can cut through energy shields. The Eupheme, the greater caste, are almost unstoppable, their bodies made of esoteric fire and lightning that burns anything that gets too close. Their bodies are their weapons and their fiery wings allow them to carry their giant bodies anywhere on the battlefield.

Between these two inhuman empires, the final remnants of free and pure humanity huddle. The Free Commonwealth is vast but it is also the weakest of the powers and spread far and thin. It is only desperate measures and the fact that the two inhuman empires despise one another the most that has spared them.

Though they suffered horribly, the majority of the Commonwealth's territory had been out of the way of the Witches' rampage. A rapid alliance was eventually sealed with the Japanese, who had also suffered the least, and together the two surviving human empires formed a union that would stand the test of time against both the Coven and Persephone. Slowly the union formalised until, a century later, the Free Commonwealth was formed. This new superstate began as a an alliance of convenience but has slowly centralised into a more proper union.

As the Commonwealth centralised the cultures of its components mixed. Now, instead of being overtly multi-cultural, an increasingly standardised monoculture is emerging that blends features of British and Japanese society together. Despite their differences, the Japanese Imperial Family and the British Royal Family married together to cement the union of their two empires as well. However, society in general is also incredibly authoritarian and repressive. In order to support the militarism necessary to hold off both inhuman empires, the Commonwealth has been forced to adopt increasingly oppressive policies. The entire population is devoted in some way to supporting the war effort, even if it is in a temporary fashion. What's more the constant threat of infiltration, telepathic manipulation or Coven corruption has left the people of the Commonwealth very paranoid.

Most of the government is made up of telepaths by this point with even the royal family now exhibiting powers of their own as well. As well as serving as the ruling class, Commonwealth telepaths are also used to observe and monitor the mental states of the population. Mental manipulation is used to keep the population docile to their rule and motivated towards the government's goal. There are also specialised groups dedicated to hunting down infiltrators from their enemies. All telepaths are required to register in the military and be available for service as they are the best weapon against the supernatural forces of their enemies.

On top of the traditional mental manipulation the telepathic class imposes on the population, the Commonwealth has begun to implement a new method of control and motivation. The Commonwealth began to implement official identification chips to the entire population, first as a means of making access to technology easier, then as a control mechanism. The Universal Transferred Organic Processing Interface Architecture, a complex computer interfacing network, exists to monitor every individual's chip. As well as coordinate the technology that allows the new interface system to function, UTOPIA also helps in keeping the population docile. The chips are able to interfere and manipulate the nervous system of an individual and the government often uses UTOPIA to adjust the disposition of the population. Unfortunately this method is still experimental and has had some unfortunate side-effects including inducing rage, insanity and paranoia amongst hundreds of people. Those who are immune to the system and therefore aware of what's going on also tend to rebel against a government that is willing to literally pick their brains.

The Commonwealth tries to keep a presence in space but unfortunately the Weltraum Reich has practically destroyed their off-world presence. As it is there is a desperate battle to preserve their orbital assets from destruction. What were once satellites are now flying fortresses, built from a patchwork of upgrades and modules as the Commonwealth continuously expands and fortifies them. Anti-gravity technology now allows the navy to essentially operate as a terrestrial, aerial and orbital organisation and it is common for fleets to be ordered into space to reinforce the Commonwealth's presence or deter attacks by the Reich.

As the nation responsible for the invasion of the Witches, the Weltraum Reich were very aggressive in their attempt to counteract them.

Few in number when compared to the other powers and lacking telepaths as well, the Weltraum Reich went to disturbing lengths to assemble their own arsenal against the esoteric forces they had accidentally unleashed. The few telepaths they did have in their population were rounded up and submitted to breeding programs, cloning techniques, chemical and genetic stimulations and other experiments to increase either their powers or their numbers. In a matter of decades there were new pod grown children exhibiting telepathic abilities but it wasn't enough.

Whatever the Reich did to their new population of psychics isn't really known but they managed to harness their collective abilities and feed it into the Weltraumfuhrer and combine it with the bizarre energies leaking from the rift as well as the unconscious ideological belief that the Reich's population exhibited. From this was born a terrible entity. It was vast, huge and vaguely humanoid with pitch black skin and an unearthly presence that cowed anything that looked at it. Its own abilities, which eclipsed any human telepath by several orders of magnitude, were almost impossible to understand and at the head of the Weltraum Reich's expanded military the new Gotterfuhrer descended upon the earth.

The Weltraum Reich now has a complex network of settlements, bases (despite losing the old ones) and surface to orbit instalments on Earth. Above it is another complex of satellites, bases and connecting structures that come together to form an orbital base and city that the Reich sends forces down from. Here is where the Gotterfuhrer rules.

Though their orbital presence is heavily entrenched, their forces on Earth are a lot weaker. In order to maintain their hold on the few positions they have, they have developed a disturbing arsenal. The old cloning projects have produced a strain of vat-grown soldier, their lobotomised minds supplemented by cybernetic programming to make them more pliant and controllable. Genetic engineering has also allowed the Reich to develop specialised variants of these soldiers that seem barely human. Weapons that harness the bizarre energies spilling from the rift are now used by these expendable soldiers. Orbit to surface craft ship extra troops to battle and have practically replaced tanks and mechanised infantry in most of the Reich's armies. Several machines have also been developed that exploit the energies that now saturate the solar system and unleash them in devastating bursts of concentrated power.

What was China is now an anarchic mess. Caught between the Witches, the Reich and the Commonwealth, the already unstable government collapsed violently. Existing revolutionary movements made great gains but were slowly wiped out or subverted by Witch cults and Commonwealth agents and the survivors became even more radicalised. Now all that is left are spheres of influence in a ravaged land that is fought over by greater powers.

Shortly after the Witches arrive, a desperate experiment was conducted. Using new genetic modification technology, countless soldiers were enhanced with greater physical capabilities, mental endurance and even vestigial telekinetic abilities. However, as the war dragged on more modifications were made. Eventually the altered genetic codes became unstable and countless soldiers suffered horrendous side-effects, many of them dying or spontaneously deforming.

When the government finally cracked down on the program the enhanced soldiers were ordered to be submitted to euthanasia. They retaliated and broke free from their control. Hunted by Commonwealth forces, the enhanced soldiers fled, harassed constantly as they stole whatever they needed to survive. The enhanced now rule over, Utopia, a turbulent state in the chaos of China. Through their own enhanced brains, they have learnt to sustain themselves and even improve on their modifications. However, many of them still suffer from physical deterioration and other major problems. As things become more anarchic in China the enhanced of Utopia are best by greater and greater threats.

The Kriechen Tod has also been expanding. Without the concentrated efforts that were being made to contain it, the grotesque bioweapon has expanded beyond the old quarantine zone. Living up to its name, the wall of writhing flesh has grown along the ocean floor, the crushing pressure of the ocean the only thing slowing it down. It is slowly making its way north and is closing in on the southern tips of Patagonia and New Zealand, ships that come into waters infected by the Kriechen Tod will find towers of flesh and bone the size of small islands thrust up from beneath the waves. These foul constructs will reach out to them, crushing them completely if they catch them. What's more many have felt a disturbing mental sensation in the South Pole and the areas the Kriechen Tod has grown over, as if the bioweapon has developed a psychic presence of its own.

Throughout the world, strange individuals have been spotted. There has been a strange new presence felt by the more sensitive individuals on the planet. Telepaths, Witches and others have begun to detect something vast and terrifying. New cults, unaffiliated with any of the existing powers, have emerged and begun to cause trouble around the world. Still too small to warrant prioritisation, these cults have spread and proliferated, thriving wherever conflicts make it difficult to hunt them down. Those who are caught and interrogated simply gibber unintelligibly about the coming of a new and great god, an ancient being that will usher in an end to the world as it is now.

In New Athena the Empress Persephone feels things are wrong. Unfortunately her conscious mind is distracted. Several years prior her daughters Adrasteia and Amaltheia went missing, stolen when they were barely older than infants. Born to reinforce her dynasty, these god-children had always been different from what she planned, the energies of the rift to the Arcane affecting their development. The search for them has turned up nothing and the actions she takes to recover them are becoming more aggressive. Meanwhile, in the Coven of the Silver Court, the High Mistress Superbis Dominium Imperatus moulds her new asset. The god-children she stole from the empress of the New World are turning into powerful acolytes and may be the key to purging this world of the Coven's enemies.

Meanwhile, beneath the deserts of Utah, a massive and foul monstrosity begins to stir. Woken by the rise in telepaths and the saturation of the world by powers leaking from the rift, the alien mind of the Elder One begins to awaken.