Arbelos
A world scarred by war, on the brink of new catastrophe.
Arbelos is a world in the middle days of industrial transformation. As innovations in combustion fuels explosively accelerated mechanization of industry and war, conflict spread to a global scale.
Even as the surviving powers of the Shroud War work to rebuild the world in their own image, they shamble senselessly toward the next great catastrophe.
The stories of Arbelos can be found here:
Chapter 1: The Drop
Fighting Traks
Developed from tractors and agricultural machinery, the treaded, armed vehicles called “traks” have come to be a defining element of both construction and warfare on Arbelos. After the war’s end, many Shroud War-era traks have returned to their roots, repurposed to till fields or rebuild cities shattered by the conflict.
Even as aircraft continue to usurp the position of traks from a strategic perspective, the great powers continue to pour resources into new models of bipedal “Modal Traks” (M-Traks). Some critical minds wonder if this is mere parade-ground posturing, or if there is some hidden reason for the development of these increasingly advanced, ever-more-costly battle machines.
The Shroud War
Two decades ago, the devastating Shroud War raged across the planet of Arbelos. The Astiagen Coalition and Oberect League were pushed into an uneasy truce against the brutal Herunock Dominance. Though bitter ideological enemies, the two found common cause against the Dominance’s callous doctrine of supremacy.
After years on the defensive against Herunock aggression, the sheer weight of the two great powers began to turn the war in their favor. Facing defeat in a conventional war, the Herunock Dominance unleashed experimental biophagic weapons across large swaths of contested territory. Drifting from the stacks of hundreds of reactors, these airborne and voracious microscopic agents scoured life from the world. Humanity’s flame guttered low.
But two technological breakthroughs brought things back from the brink: traks and rupture charges. Traks made missions to reach Herunock reactors possible, and rupture charges annihilated all infected matter. Armed with these tools, the Astiagen Coalition and the Oberect League pushed inexorably toward the Herunock heartland.
The human population of Arbelos was devastated by the war, and much of the planet was left devoid of life. But even amid ashes, the embers of the next great conflict smolder…
Varall & The Icano Disaster Area
The country of Varall sits atop the Icano delta, and has long been pivotal to agriculture and inland trade in the region. Prior to the war, Varall was on the cusp of an industrial revolution, a desire to modernize and become a world power pushing chafing against the traditions of past centuries.
During the Shroud War, Herunock troops occupied Varall, using it to extend the reach of its biophagic reactors into neighboring regions. And worse still, in the waning days of the conflict, as Varallen and Astiagen forces pushed the Herunock back, the region was devasted by a mysterious disaster. The once-verdant riverlands are now barren, pitted wastes.
In the years since the end of the war, Varall has struggled to recover. With its industrial and agricultural sectors both devastated and its sea ports cut off by the disaster area, Varall is reliant on the flow of external resources, and its government is ever-more beholden to external powers.
Both the Astiagen Coalition and the Oberect League have begun to expand their spheres of influence into Varall, despite its apparent strategic insignificance and paucity of resources. Rumors swirl that a secret war has begun in within what is formally dubbed the “Icano Disaster Area, but some call “the Serpent’s Teeth.”