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No Gods, No Kings
The cycle and life and death, was supposed to end in the Old World.
A golden age, filled with wonder and mystique for our weary, weary souls, brought to reality and shattered by a cataclysmic world that tore it asunder and destroyed the old order. Cities razed, billions killed, the ecosystem devestated... and yet life persisted. Life and death, dark and light, intertwined with each other, never existing without the other, and always existing as they are, are still with us. We are still here. A new dawn and a new age has been forged ahead of us, and we must make our stand here and forge the path to victory that we can right now.
The Old World has fallen. The long interim of the dark ages and the interregnum that occurred gave birth to the Nomad Empires as they were, filled with bloodthirsty hatred and destruction that gave rise to the endless wars of their era. So great was their quest for greed, glory, and destruction, that they tore each other apart, but not before tearing the terrain and landscape apart, and giving rise to the horrible abomination that are Stalkers, who now slumber in endless sleep due to the destruction of their masters. Life still persisted, against all odds and all vestiges of extermination that tried to end it, and now it has given rise to some of the most impressive things of all. The age of the Traction Cities has started, my friends; the great city of London has become unshackled from the hills and terrain of what was once it's static home, and has ripped itself free to prowl the hunting grounds. More and more have followed; Paris, Rome, Panzerstadt-Berlin, Moscow, Irkutsk, and many, many more. Towns, cities, metropoli, all move and bring the ground to a quaking, thundering vibration under their wheels and tracks as they prowl.
But this is not their stories.
No; this is the stories of the other cities that could prosper and galvanize themselves into action. With one key component.
No gods. No kings. Only the principal of Municipal Darwinism.
Good luck.
The Great Hunting Ground
Eurasia to the Middle East
The womb of the Great Hunting Ground was the first place to catalyze the creation of the Traction Era, with the new cities darting along and snapping up the ones that could not convert themselves fast enough to be wheeled like their former brothers. Others have arisen, chased, hunted, or have become the hunters and the deadly strikers that roll in, kill what they can, and devour it before slinking back off into the mists of the Great Hunting Ground.
In former Europa, the conurbation of Minsk led by the fascist monarchy that saw it through the Nomad Empires and their era, has risen to prominence along the frigid Ice Wastes. Playing host to a harsh pantheon of cruel weather gods that bring forth storms and clouds on a whim, Minsk has made a name for itself with it's short range heavy howitzers, smashing and killing what it can, maiming some of it's prey to let them limp off as it lazily pursues them. Whatever they cannot kill and devour themselves, they scavenge and devour from the carnage of former cities split open by their enemies before being abandoned. As ugly and mishappen as she is, Minsk is a force to be reckoned with, and there are rumors the smaller towns and cities along the Ice Wastes are preparing to form a confederacy to stop the city before more of their kind are devoured and cracked open.
In Brittany, Cadiz has set itself up as a brand new city, forged from the former fires of war and such that claimed others in the Iberian conflicts that the Nomad Empires held. Ruled by princes, Cadiz has had a long history in Brittany, circling the coastline lazily as it builds up supplies and power, and having amassed a huge amount of Old Tech, among them, Stalkers and other such things. The Sheildwall city proudly claims itself a defender of the people, having broken others that have dashed their cities to pieces against it's great shield wall, and it's Parliament is one of the few vestiges of democracy in the barrens of the Great Hunting Ground. The power of the princes though is slipping, as Parliament strives for more power and the people mutter dark words in the streets of the city.
Off of the coast lines of the Canary Islands, the city of Carthage plows through the waves in it's never ending cruise. The city, escaping from North Africa after Tunisia fell under rule of a theocratic and insane leadership, has recently crafted itself up as one of the primary cities among the islands, and has been working hard, gathering food and being vigilant on the lookout for other cities as well. Howitzer batteries that dot the city's decks are not a bad thing at all either, and after smashing back both Nice and Lisbon, Carthage has been left relatively alone compared to others. Having a distinct hatred of tyrannical rule, Carthage has played peace broker for a lot of cities and is currently gathering a trading cluster around it as it tends it's crops and such, giving some opportunities for trade here if possible.
In what was once the Arabia Peninsula, Stoke-On-Teeth is a new force on the block amongst the Mamluk cities that have walled themselves up and set themselves rolling across the dunes. A reaver that rides into the local area, shelling indiscriminately, Stoke-On-Teeth is a horrible city that others do not dare to go near. Even the famous cities of Riyadh, Mecca, and Jerusalem do not dare go near Stoke-On-Teeth, as it's penchant for violent slavery, pillaging, and reaving has left dozens of others broken and wounded if not in the gut of the small, fast moving city. Stoke-On-Teeth, fierce and unbroken, will not go silently into the night, and has promised others that unless they can deliver the gods of their religion to them, they will devour them. However, bad news seems to be in the future for Stoke-On-Teeth, as the forces of the Sidatha Coalition (made up of many of the cities and towns Stoke-On-Teeth has wronged) are amassing and giving chase. They are only a few weeks away from the city, which will be forced to cut it's way out if it does not plan ahead.
While Stoke-On-Teeth is being harrangued for being a bastion of bastardy, a very interesting has crawled it's way out of the atomic marshes. Radiation has had time to dissipate, but it would surprise no one if R'lyeh was a mutant from the murky swamps created when slow bombs and thermonuclear warheads smashed the Sinai to bits. The mists of the Ghost Marshes has given way to a brand new force that prowls out, middling sized and yet strange, seemingly trying to recreate and reverse engineer the sciences and technology of the Old World, while wielding strange batteries of short ranged artillery that are seemingly made to cripple cities before R'leyh snaps it's jaws down on the crippled behemoth and drags it screaming into the swamps. None that have been taken by R'leyh live to tell the tale, and airships have remarked that once R'leyh finds it's way into the marshes... no one can find
it. In response to this, several cities have made it their goal to pursue R'leyh and find out what is doing, calling themselves the Sardatha Pact.
While R'leyh and the others slink on the ground, the Free Merchant Republic of Lübeck has made a name for itself as being the first flying city of it's kind. Albeit slower than a wounded albatross on sedatives, the city flies and bargains across the Great Hunting Ground in it's nomadic wanders. Amassing fortunes of gold and taxes that it pulls from trading clusters that it floats to, Lübeck has made a name for itself and many are marveling at this technology. Yet, others that see the flying city have grown greedy for the Old Tech that could energize and enliven their city, or give them a powerful edge over their competitors. Lübeck has been targeted by the city of Panzerstadt-Hamburg and Panzerstadt-Nuremburg and Shieldwall-Kolbe in order to try and glean the technology and sell it for a high price, if not take it for themselves.
The Orient:
Except for most of mainland China, the Orient/Far East suffered very little in contrast to it's far flung neighbors in the West, having sustained relatively minor damages. However, plague from the bioweapons and chemical gases deployed killed millions that were not killed by the radioactive fallout, leaving the region more destitute in population than the Great Hunting Ground. But now, cities are on the move once more, and the wheels of progress, industry, and power are at work.
Prowling in the Corean Peninsula, the predator city of Canberra prowls the great woods slowly and easily, tracing in tracks that it has already made, and tracks that it's prey has made. Originally starting in the Australian continent, Canberra quite easily killed off Sydney and several other cities before putting great swathes of the population to the sword; chased out of Australia, they prowled from the New Guinea areas to Indonesia and into the southeastern Orient, where they slaughtered their way northward before being hemmed into a peninsula and walled off from the outside world by cities unfriendly to it. The dictatorship that rules the city does not seem to mind though; more prey prowls Corea, and with the walls around them on all sides, they will not be able to escape Canberra as it pursues a juicy target; Seoul, rumored to have the secrets to the location of a valuable piece of Old Tech that could turn Canberra into a murderous monster.
Tokyo on the other hand has been more peaceful in it's neighborhood. Being a science and resource driven city, Tokyo has settled itself into harvesting minerals from the Earth to expand itself, as well as developing new energy farming techniques that have not been seen since the Old World. It's great farms are tended carefully and easily, and have produced bountiful arrays of crops for the city, and the democratic republic of Tokyo has seen splendid prosperity in the recent decades, growing and expanding. However, tragedy has struck; half of their crops have become diseased with rot of the root and such, and are threatening to die off, while Tokyo has taken on two contracts for mineral acquisition. Tokyo must make the choice of either banking on rationing food and possibly upsetting the populace, or sending out a risky expedition to recover more crops to replace the ones that they have so far lost to the horrid rot.
Zuellni Academy City is one of the other Honshu cities to have survived the interregnums that have occurred, and has prospered under the technocratic theocracy, ruled by a slightly malfunctioning Artificial Intelligence known as the God Emperor. The Zuellni Academy City has reverse engineered large portions of Old Tech and is said to be on the path to cures in the pediatric, geriatric, and neurological medical fields as well as on the verge of movements in energy farming and agricultural developments. Nothing has plagued the city so far, but the God Emperor has become erratic in recent years, and is threatening to break down if they cannot find the parts to manufacture or maintain him.
And finally, central Tibet and such has seen the rise of Shan Guo, the first large Anti-Traction static city that has risen from the muck and ruin of the Old World. Blossoming and ready to grow, Shan Guo is threatening to create incursions of it's troops into hunting grounds in Central Asia should others upset the sleeping giant that occupies the Himalayas.
Frozen Antarctica
New Christchurch had an interesting buildup to say the least, and was crafted and cobbled together after the Sixty Minute War claimed Christchurch in what was once New Zealand. After the slow bombs and atomic warheads destroyed most of the island chain and Christchurch itself, it's people fled to Antarctica to create a new home. Now, the council of Christchurch (presided over by a Lord Mayor), has quickly risen to promis in drilling the Antarctica wastes for oil, while sustaining itself however it can. While the penguin population is at a record low, the price of oil has risen dramatically with more and more traction cities surging to promise, but the young upstart of New Christchurch has angered the Coalition of Oil Drilling Societies (CODS), which has demanded that Christchurch hand over a sizable portion of their incomes from the oil trade or face their ire. Others have taken the side of New Christchurch and it seems that conflict is brewing on the horizon.
