The world is nearly colorless, remaining entirely covered by many shades of off-white and grayed sludge and crust. Every landscape looks identical in texture and hue, differing only by shape and size. Earth is perpetually in a state of seminal winter that continues to perplex and horrify the remaining human residents of the planet. Survival is the only thing people work for, and the struggle to maintain it is all they know.
Thirty-one years after Doomsday the earth has begun to return to familiar rotational velocity, the rotational period it knew before the apocalypse. Though the mass of crusted and murky, sludgy cum has remained constant on earth, much water has left the planet due to a failure in the hydrologic cycle, in effect reducing the earth to its original mass– its mass before Doomsday. The planet’s rotational velocity increases, sun breaks through the thickened clouds of DNA haze in the sky, and a return to regular weather patterns is seen by man. For thirty-one years, earthquakes and volcanoes were the extent of nature’s destructive muscle. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and violent thunderstorms have returned. While they pale in comparison to the destructive power seen on Doomsday, they create ample sources of devastation in a world still weak, scattered, and unsophisticated. Many die every time nature lashes out.
Each continent has seen the formation of hundreds of tribes of survivors, many coming together to form supertribes, large clans, even minor civilizations in the shadows of ruins and death. The earth has changed, most humans have not. The desire for comradery exists, but the organization of survivors follows from different needs than were seen by mankind less than a third of a century ago. No longer do clans or tribes exist to provide comfort or status or lifestyle choices. They exist for security and survival, obeying basic human needs. Governments still remain an unpopular force, as virtually impotent constructs of failed bands of power-hungry raiders, tribes, or bright-eyed politically minded individuals with delusional ideas for changing the state of the world. After the dawn of supertribes and emergent civilizations, humans begin vying for territory. Violence is something humans have known longer than the desire for community. It’s in their blood, and shines through in vibrant colors – manifested in all possible ways. Wars cover Earth’s surface.
Production facilities and all industries across the world are dead relics of the past, but their lifeless monuments still stand like giants watching over their microscopic gods who have abandoned them. Bands of people, families, small communities, from time to time, work together to dig through the cum crust plates that have frozen the world for thirty-one years, to reach the riches of the industrial age and computer age that breath quietly below. This is how weaponry is found for wars, and how computers are obtained. Electricity is hard to come by, but many have been able to create it with generators they’ve recovered from scavenging expeditions. Resources that can be salvaged are used for war or survival. Nothing else. Guns and gun powder are in limited supply. Production of firearms ceased on the day everything changed. Gunpowder became scarce less than five years after Doomsday. Today it is even harder to come by.
War has existed among tribes and standing civilizations for close to thirty years. Weaker tribes, those that have lost wars, or have been pushed from their lands, begin to migrate to new parts of the world. When migrating tribes meet other migrating tribes, there are two possible outcomes – peace and unification, which is the path toward the creation of a supertribe, or war and the eventual destruction of one of the tribes. Surviving members of tribes that fall by the hands of other tribes will be taken as slaves, food, or for reproductive purposes. Some, who are able bodied, will be forced to fight for the dominating tribe.
Jack and Noel are twin Doomsday children. Thirty-one years of age. They are a part of a North American supertribe known as Solitudinem ad Aquilonem, acting as leaders.
The tribe was formed in the ruins of Toronto, Ontario, six months after Doomsday. Eighteen survivors composed the original tribe, and fortified a section of land outside of Toronto, where they existed and grew peacefully for the next eight years. Jack and Noel’s mother was an original member of the tribe, at the age of nineteen, who died giving birth. Jack and Noel were raised within the tribe, the only Doomsday children born into the tribe. As other tribes formed around Quebec, Solitudinem ad Aquilonem was forced to fight for their land and either destroy enemy tribes, or call for peace between tribes to combine and grow.
Solitudinem ad Aquilonem had grown to include over six hundred people in fifteen years. It was the result of joining with other tribes, kidnapping survivors of opposing tribes, and the rare instance of reproduction that did not end in miscarriage or death of the mother. They had become the dominating supertribe of the land. In addition to their might, they were a prevailing source of academic intellect as well as artistic and scientific talent.
A supertribe from the vicinity of Montreal, known as Clan Nivis, soon made its way into the Toronto territory of Solitudinem ad Aquilonem. Clan Nivis was an ultraviolent supertribe led by Doomsday children and elder, barbaric sadists who had mastered war tactics, and had amassed a size of almost a thousand tribal members since Doomsday. After a war that lasted the better part of a month, Solitudinem ad Aquilonem was forced to leave their home territory or face eradication. They had fallen in numbers from over six hundred to just under three hundred. They left Toronto’s ruins, traveling south, and then far west.
Thirty-one years after Doomsday, Jack and Noel’s clan has remained nomadic, stopping only for months at a time in the ruins of smaller towns, growing slowly in number over the years. They are now in what was California, unable to head west for much longer. The tribe has close to one thousand members, finding little opposition in the deserts of the west.
Doomsday children are rare these days, for more than one reason. The DNA of DC’s, barely studied by science, possesses peculiar traits that make them not only unusually violent and unpredictable, but often lead them to suicide or total self destruction by their late 20’s. It is a phenomenon not at all understood. The rarity of Doomsday children in North America, especially in the west, is also the subject of folklore that has been spread among tribes and small towns over the past decade or more. The few DCs Solitudinem ad Aquilonem encounter tell of a mad man, a psychotic Doomsday child who, up until fourteen years earlier, hunted down every other DC he could find and murdered them, decapitated them, and stored their faces in his home to study what he called the face of god. Everyone who tells the story insists it is true, some saying they witnessed the DC known as Edgar murder other DCs right in front of them, others saying they barely escaped his attacks, and fewer yet detailing encounters with him in which they managed to defeat him and nearly kill him. It is unknown what has become of Edgar or his studies, but many are eager to find out. DCs continue to live in fear of the legendary figure, the god-hunter.
Jack and Noel have a strong interest in the legends of Edgar the god-hunter, the wild Doomsday child. They follow the stories told by survivors until arriving in the white ruins of San Francisco. After crossing the still-standing Golden Gate Bridge, the first impression of the supertribe is that San Francisco is devoid of life, finding the population density to have become virtually nothing as they enter the city limits. The near-thousand population of Solitudinem ad Aquilonem makes them loud and imposing wherever the supertribe goes. It is no different in the ruins of San Francisco.
As Solitudinem ad Aquilonem makes a camp in the southern remnants of San Mateo one night, a small band of renegades attack a building housing a number of the tribal families. The attack is quickly deflected, and the surviving renegades are brought before Jack and Noel the next morning. After an interrogation, the renegades inform the supertribe leaders of the presence of what they say is the most feared supertribe in the west, Cultus Sinus. They are based in the Bay Area, and have destroyed or assimilated every other tribe they’ve ever encountered. Having developed a way to metabolize sustenance from the semen which covers the world, the people of Cultus Sinus have consumed the world-ending seed for most of their lives – effectively breeding into their culture a deeply woven genetic propensity for hyperviolence. They cling to superstition and worship the deity known as the Father, the destroyer of the past and creator of the present world – the very man whose seed it is they devour. It is discovered that this Father is the same figure who is believed to be the father of the Doomsday children. When all the information on Cultus Sinus is flushed from the surviving renegades, Jack and Noel give them the option of joining Solitudinem ad Aquilonem, or being put to death. The renegades choose death, and are executed immediately.
The supertribe continues to move south, until reaching the devastated campus of Stanford University, where human corpses are on display as a warning to all trespassers. Some are hung by nooses, some are impaled on sharpened wooden posts, some are burnt to skeletal remains, many removed heads decorate the white crusted sidewalks. Collections of arms and legs, removed long ago from their bodies, are stuck together in peculiar formations and strange shapes. Signs of warning stand tall, alerting wanderers that they have stumbled into territory ruled by Cultus Sinus. Jack and Noel know they are on the right path.
The supertribe is quickly met by an army of eighty steel-clad warriors who identify themselves as part of Cultus Sinus. They warn Solitudinem ad Aquilonem that they will be met with war if they do not turn around and leave. Jack and Noel confront the army and request to speak to the leaders of Cultus Sinus, and explain that they are here only for information pertaining to the DC known as Edgar. In exchange, they say, they will hand over 100 gallons of purified water. The head of the army accepts their offer.
Jack and Noel are taken to Santa Clara, where the leaders of Cultus Sinus reside in the Hall of the Sun. They are met by the group of ten leaders, who grant Jack and Noel and audience to hear their questions. Requests for information on Edgar the god-hunter are made, and with the offer of 100 gallons of purified water, the leaders of Cultus Sinus agree to assist them.
“We know the location of Edgar’s home,” the leaders of Cultus Sinus explain, “where he killed his victims in the search for the face of the Father. We have had no use for his findings, but it is our hope you find something in them that is helpful.” The leaders give a sealed letter to Jack and Noel and tell them to take it to a location they will be guided to. Once there, they are to give it to the army General, still sealed, and will be allowed into the residence of Edgar to peruse his findings and take what they can back to their supertribe. As per the agreement, then, Solitudinem ad Aquilonem will then hand over 100 gallons of purified water to the army after Jack and Noel are followed back.
The sealed letter is delivered to the General in Silicon Valley, and Jack and Noel are granted access to Edgar’s home. Piles of human skulls cover the floor of the largest room, where it appears most of his work was done. Sketches cover the walls and fill up drawers and table tops. After hours, Jack and Noel collect as much as they can and take it from the home, and are escorted back to their tribe outside of Stanford University’s ruins. The drawings and notes made by Edgar are given to the scribes and scientists and artists of Solitudinem ad Aquilonem, of which there are many, and are instructed to study it until something of great worth can be found. The hundred gallons of water are handed over to the army escorts, who then return to their supertribe, miles away.
Eyes are glued to Jack and Noel’s supertribe, as Cultus Sinus studies them, and watches them from nearby, standing alert to any news of progress made by their analysis of Edgar’s work. The sealed letter to the General instructed the army to attack and destroy Solitudinem ad Aquilonem as soon as they were able to find the identity of the Father. This information is deemed most valuable to Cultus Sinus, whose worship of the great Father of destruction is at the core of their very purpose.
Months pass, and finally the artists, scribes, and scientists have determined who they believe to be the father of Doomsday children, the source of the world-ending semen storm. The findings are reported to Jack and Noel, and very shortly Cultus Sinus spies learn that the discovery has been made. The armies attack in the dead of night.
Their numbers are too great, and their violence is unmatched. Cultus Sinus easily overpowers Solitudinem ad Aquilonem, and murders every member of the tribe in swift, crushing blows. Women, men, and children are burned alive, impaled, disemboweled, dismembered, their guts and limbs strewn about the buildings and grounds of Standford’s crumbling campus. Jack and Noel are protected by their personal team of ten bodyguards, but only long enough for them to escape the onslaught. Their bodyguards are captured and methodically executed under the burning ceilings of what had served as their fortress for the past months.
Scribes, scientists, and artists are rounded up by Cultus Sinus warriors, tortured into spilling what information they can. Individually, they each know too little to give the Cultus Sinus commanders enough information of use. After they tell what they know, they are executed.
Jack and Noel have run northeast, into the mountains outside of San Francisco. They are pursued by Cultus Sinus soldiers for days before evading capture, and losing their pursuers in the hills. Now they work to survive, trying to avoid encounters with bandits or renegades. Their thirty-one years of supertribal security have come to an end. All who they have known are dead. All that they have been accustomed to is gone. It is like a new, mini-apocalypse of their tiny world. They know the identity of the Father of doomsday, and are the only holders of this information. If they are unable to find a way to preserve this knowledge, or share it with a peaceful and enlightened supertribe, or minor civilization, it will die with them. In a harsh new world that is cruel to loners and those without the strength of numbers, a young death is almost certain. They march on, armed with one rifle each, and pockets full of ammo and water. They will stop at nothing to survive.
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