MotF 124: On the Shoulders of Giants

The world was devastated by a limited nuclear exchange between NATO and CSTO in the 2020s. Now the world is depleted of resources, electricity and trade; thus pre-industrial society has returned. With most nations states in the Northern Hemisphere breaking apart into total anarchy, the states of the Southern Hemisphere suffered a seperate fate. Without the economy of the world behind it, Australia was a broken nation. And without oil everything went a bit Mad Max, before people started to even attempt rebuilding. Even now in the late 22nd century there is little anyone from Australia has done to remake the nation. Foreigners see the nation as a desert wasteland, it's coal and uranium mines long abandoned. The Eastern coast may seem safe, but disease and famine turns men into tyrants.

Welcome to the land of endless desert and little hope...

The technological and social state of North America, circa 2700 OC (650 AE)

Yellow - hunter-gatherers
Purple - nomadic pastoralists
Green - simple farming societies/chiefdoms
Orange - complex farming societies/warlords
Blue - true state societies
White - uninhabited

Inspired by this.

A simple clash between NATO and PEA troops triggered nuclear strikes on both side. On North America, the missiles targeted capitals, big ports, important infrastructure and defense related site. The eastern coast was ravaged, cleanse with nuclear fire. But men is a resistant specie. Those who believed that the surface of the earth would be scorched were wrong, only ten years after the apocalypse, societies were already rebuilding. Certain particular important area that suffered direct hit of the biggest bomb are still irradiated, but most of the land is filling back again with life.

Canada was mostly spared but only thanks to the USA anti-missile defence system. Indirectly. As the system destroyed missiles that targeted American soil, the PEA were forced to reroute most of the missiles that aimed Canada to overwhelm the defence and hit the much more important American targets. This mostly explain why the Canadian confederation and the Quebec republics were the first to emerge after the post-apocalypse chaos. But the American peoples that survived the bombing are rebuilding, although not in a national level. Small groups are banding together and are creating new governments to suit themselves first.

The United Nations, formed with countries that were spared the horror, are sending some people to scout what happen in the ''Stroked Area'' in order to follow the development of the situation and coordinate the international help, under the banner of the new Post-war committee.

After the Great War of 2056, survivors of all countries of the European continent banded together and migrated in western France, one of the less damaged area. Here, they founded Renaissance, dedicated to Mankind's new start.

The League of the Peoples, as they now call themselves, slowly reclaimed the country for the next decades. Explorers and pioneers face the many dangers of the Deadlands for still usable pieces of technology, resources, and above all, the precious omnibots: canisters of programmables nano-machines able to cleanse the contaminated land and make it liveable again.

1) Iron Horde
2) The City of the Queen in Red
3) The Ziggurat Cities of Hi
4) Gorgossos
5) And it’s Slave Cities
6) The Land of the Cotton Kings
7) The Mountain Clans
8) The Kingdom of Laurel
10) The City of the Masked Kings
11) The Green Tribes
12) The Saintly City
13) The First Men
14) The Sledwalkers
15) The Tibimen
16) The Kwa Rodom d’Bec
18) The Rust Islands
19) The Kwa Rodom D’ilnor
20) The Kwa Rodom D’ilsu
21) Millermen
22) The Islands of Hooz
23) The Lakemen
24) The Aurelai League



Consider, then, the fall of the Sorcerer Kings of Ancient Times.

The men of yore were a great people, standing proud above the world. With their noble sorceries, they raised great cities of Iron and glass from the earth, chained the demons of the earth and forests with their great black chains, many of which still crisscross the land, and even conversed with the stars themselves, learning of the Elder wisdoms. Every man and child enjoyed lives akin to that of kins.

Jealously did the vile serpent Petro, he of smoke and poison, lust after the works of man, but in its vile cunning it knew that they were beyond his clawing grasp. And so the demon approached the Black King, the king of all men. Never before had a more noble man, a wiser man, ruled. Thrice, the serpent came, promising riches, knowledge, and power, and thrice the Black King sent him away.

And so the serpent slipped into the King's White Gleaming Palace, darting from shadow to shadow, before coming to the oval room of the Black King's daughters. Rearing over them, he breathed a portion of his noxious self out. The foul miasma coiled, like an oily black smoke, slipping into the lungs of the two girls.

Where before there had been two girls full of life and joy and beauty now lay two girls wasting away, sickly and pale. No ball could bring more than a thin, wispy smile to their face, no song could move their feet for more than a few steps. The Black King despaired, calling for doctors from all over the globe, but none could lift the curse upon the two girls.

Finally, the Serpent returned, offering to lift the curse if only the King would takehis counsel. Despairing, the king accepted, and his daughters were returned to their lovely selves, and the seeds of the downfall of man were laid.

From then on, all the works of man were tainted by the foul magics of the Serpent, and slowly it eroded the chains that man had put on the demons of the world. As man grew more and more powerful upon the back of the forbidden knowledge they now knew, so to did evil forces of the world prepare to take them down.

Many of the City-Weavers were corrupted by the subtle whispers of demons, and they worked against their brothers in secret, weaving enchantments that would free Petro's mother, the greatest of the Primeval Serpents, from it's icy prison. Of the men unwittingly sworn to Serpent was the Black King, who, with his greatest mastery of the arcane secrets, was named the Witch King. From his steely throne, he turned the magics of mankind against itself.

And so were the works of Mankind undone, in a single day and a single night, she broke her chains, and with Petro and his kin disease and famine and war at her side, consumed the flesh of the cities of man in a great wave. When the waters receded, not one man in a million remained alive.

But as great evil rose, so did a great good. The Witch King, who was once the wisest of all men, had born daughters, and they had born sons. Taking up the ancient weapons of their line, they found and brought heroes from all around the earth. Expending the last magics of the earth, they slew Petro and his Mother, and cut Disease and Famine into pieces so that alone they could not threaten mankind again. Together, they stood against the Witch King, and together they tore down his White Palace, and together they slew him. As the last of the magics of this earth faded, so did the heroes, laying down their swords and passing into the beyond, till such time as they are needed again.

- Excerpt from Lessons in Sin, Book Of The Years.




…Of Foul Gorgossos and its slave cities Alar, Hala, and Deme, the less said the better, though every man should know of the dangers of those waters. Any taken alive is brought to teeming slave pits where cruel masters take the vilest of pleasures upon the unwilling. The luckiest, it is said, are brought to the mines or sold to the Cotton Kings, where they are worked to death, for the fate of those who remain in the cities is too horrid to countenance.

Gorgossos, it is said, is the only place that some of the sorceries of the ancients still exist, brought there by the Necromancers who served the Witch King after his fall, and it is within its blood soaked halls that the darkest empire known to man was created. Seven Hundred years ago the triremes of Gorgossos set forth, bearing in their hold wailing slave armies, and by sword and fire and arcane trickery brought the lands of dukusuh and the Mississippi to it's knees, and made the Ziggurat cities of Hi their clients.

Of that bloody empire, only the slave cities and Gorgossos itself still remain. Five hundred years ago, the weight of the Gorgossan Joug grew too heavy and the enslaved rose up in the Aurelei League, and pushed back the bloody wave back to the sea. Only the Cities of Alar, Hala, and Deme, cities who had for so long been slaves, remained to feed the gaping maw that is Gorgossos.

This legacy, this history, is one that is never far from the minds of the Triarchs of Gorgossos, and it is whispered that the foulest of evils are performed on the slaves on the forbidden island in an attempt to create an army that will never revolt. Should that ever happen, the world had best beware.

The City of the Queen in Red, once the Crown Jewel of Gorgossos's domains holds a fraction of the secrets of Gorgossos, but should it's Necromancer Queen turn her gaze outwards, her zealot armies would bath the world in an orgy of slaughter unseen since the fall of the Black King.

I advise any man who intends to sail those seas to carry with them....

-Excerpt from Clouds of Blood, or, a traveler’s guide to the far south.


Of the Mountain Clans, there are the Chia Men, the Red Necks, and the Crowfeet. There are the Tenisy, the Bama, and the Smoke Men. The Eagle walkers and the Scorpions and the Pabs, the Knotted Hairs, the Blackmen, and the Stonemen. All different, and all very proud of their differences. They fight and kill each other over this difference, but will unite against the Cotton Kings should they dare to look to them.

- Of the Mountain Men, Scout Henris Targaris

...Gaze upon the mighty ziggurats of Hi
revel in your filth and look upon us as the sky
Turn with your sails a wing
and weep with the sight of our iron blades....

-War cry of the City of Hi, Circa 573 A.G.


...The Wildmen of the North are distinct only in the differences of their cawing languages and the weapons they bring to bear in their eternal war. The Tibimen, at least, speak the heathen tongue of the Kwa Kingdom, which is closer to the tongue of proper men than that of the Sledwalkers and the First Men...

... The Sledwalkers have an unnatural connection with their dogs, eating with them, sleeping with them, and, rumor says, whelping their pups on them...

... All the Wildmen of the North are barbarians, strong, stupid, and unworthy of anything but serving our great kings as anything but sworn guards. Exploiting their primitive code of Honor would bind them to your service.

Chikita Masala speaking to King Ohan III of the Hi City of Lews


I am High Pwezant Illum the Great, Ruler of all the lands of Mercia from sea to shining sea, ruling as the great Pwezant of old did. From the brackish seas of the west to the Eastern forest, from the cliff cities of the south to the icebound wastes of the north, all falls under the domain of the Iron Throne. Bend the Knee, and you may serve as king, resist, and watch as your cities are put to the torch and your wives and daughters made into my whores...

... The Iron Horde will stop only when there is no more land to conquer and no more men to serve me...

- Proclamation from Pwezant Illum the Great before his sack of the Lakeman city of Iwa


“...You’ve bought me a drink, I tell ya a story. That’s how it works. I aint gonna take no for an answer. I’ma tell you about the time we sailed clear up the great bay, past them big ol’ stone mountains and into the lakes of the north. Well, I call em lakes, but, truth, they’re big, like the sea.

They talk funny up there, not like you and me and civilized folks, but with some language that’s full of sounds no normal tongue should make. We set into port in the Kwa Kingdoms, but the capn’t had a string o’ bad luck, n’ nobody would take our cargo till we got to the tipymost point of the kingdoms there. City by the name of o’ Fandurbil, and some fat fuck of a merchant comes aboard and tells the cap’n he’ll buy the entire stock, and give us shit what to take home after... ifn’t only the capn’t does a thing for him.

Now, the capn’t were a good man, but not the sharpest sword in the bunch, but even he knew this seemed off, but profits were profits, and his da, who owned the ships, had made it right clear that his son had best come home with riches or not come home at all, so he listened to the fat fuck.

Turns out the fat fuck says one of his ships went aground off some hellish islands even more north, where the cold starts to get real, the Rust Islands, he says. We’s to get that cargo and brings it back. Locals told us stories of ghosts, and men who walk with them‘n the broken ruins of ancient-man’s cities, you know, from back when the world was good.

The men start to grumble, right? Sailors are a superstitious lot, but the Capn’t, he’s smelled the stench of gold, and nothing’s gonna stop him now, ‘specially not the stories of superstitious fucks.

So, he says, all we gots to do is sail for a day north, pick up some cargo, and sail back.

Seems simple, right? Well, capn’t was so sure too. We sailed our ship right up to where the fat fuck said his ship runs aground. Fog’s all around, we’re sailing as slow as we can, can’t see shit in the pea soup in the air. No wind t’at all, so we start rowin’. Weren’t long before Little Jimmy, he’s the lookout calls out “Ship ahead!”

Capn’t calls for the horns, announce us, but there’s no answer. Horn blows again, but still nothing but dead air. Jimmy calls the all clear, and we keep going, sinews all on edge. Not an hour later, Jimmy calls out “Ship ahead.” Again, Capn’t blows the horns, and again, aint no sound but our oars beating against the surf...

Then, out of the fog ahead o us soar these great big skeletons. An ancient city, rotten away till nothing but it’s Iron Bones stood up over the waves. And, at the top, high above us, something moved...”

- Story heard in a pub in the Southern City of Dunsdun.


The Men of the Green tribes are particularly friendly folk, always happy to have a traveler over for dinner, or, sometimes, FOR dinner...

... The strange gods of the Green Men are capricious, and it is said that there is a thousand gods for every man alive, each with his own goals and whims.

- Of the Green Tribes, Scout Henris Targaris


NO cities on this earth are as strange or elegant as the stately stilt cities of the Lakemen. Perched precariously out amongst the reeds and over the depths, no man may approach save by boat or by swimming, which, naturally, makes conquest of the Lakecities a hardy task.

- A guide to the Cities of the Lakes, Ansel Renols

NOTE: Problems solved; consider this the final draft.

My cover of the scenario covered in Walter M. Miller, Jr's A Canticle for Leibowitz; specifically the interquel Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman.

But the princes, putting the words of their wise men to naught, thought each to himself: If I but strike quickly enough, and in secret, I shall destroy those others in their sleep, and there will be none to fight back; the earth shall be mine.
Such was the folly of princes, and there followed the Flame Deluge.

The world ended, as many of the Ancients had expected. Man grew proud; fire and light of the Flame Deluge came and went as the earth passed into ice and the darkness of the Simplification. But be it by his own stubbornness or divine intervention, Man persisted, he survived, he rose again.

It is the Year of Our Lord Three Thousand, Two Hundred and Fifty-Four. Eighty years have passed since Hannegan II of Texark vanquished the Laredans at the Nueces, since he pacified the Jackrabbit Horde, since he seized New Rome.
Faced with a vengeful emperor the Papacy evacuated, as it had more than once in its long history, this time to Valana in the Rocky Mountains and the Cathedral of Saint John-in-Exile. Within the caring albeit mercenary embrace of Imperial Denver [1], the Church continues to elect its Popes and maintain a tenuous legitimacy over the wider Church, all the while yearning to reclaim the Throne of Saint Peter.

In what Churchspeak refers to Texarkana but is more commonly known as Texark (or more officially as Hannegan City [2]), Filpeo Harq, Hannegan VII [3], is weighing up his options. His ancestor the second Hannegan pacified the Nomads and drove them north of the Nady Ann; whether he can or indeed should seek to subjugate them further is another question. After all, from the Misspee to the Brave, from the Gulf to the Pacific, Texark stands astride the Southern Plains like a colossus. The telegraph line from Hannegan City to Danfer keeps him informed of developments within Texark’s greatest rival; his spies and emissaries keep him informed of those across the Misspee.

Developments are indeed afoot. The Holy Father Linus VII has died; the Curia must convene to elect a new Pope. As cardinals come from across the known world: Denver, Texark, California, N’Ork, even the lands of Brasil over the ocean, Elia Brownpony, the “Red Cardinal,” is weighing up his own options, such as the possibilities of navigating a candidate to the Papacy who would be amenable to declaring a holy Crusade against the Hannegan as a means to retaking New Rome.

And Brownpony may get his wish. As the sharfs [4] of the Three Nomad Hordes begin to chafe under the encroachment of Texark grasseaters [5] and the increasingly heavy boot of the Hannegan, the Kingdom of the Tenesi and the Forest People of the East are increasingly nervous of Texark ascendancy.

A learned Thon from Texark once said, almost a century ago now (when acting as emissary of his cousin the second Hannegan to the Church by way of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz), that a new age was dawning upon man. One of understanding, of knowledge, of science, a return to that which had been held responsible and punished for the Flame Deluge. He added that this would only come to pass “by violence and upheaval, by flame and by fury, for no change comes calmly over the world.” Whether he will be proven right about the reason for change is uncertain. But it will certainly be violent.

[1] Based in Valana rather than Danfer, which itself lies on the outskirts of a vast field of ruins.
[2] Texark does not lie on the site of the ancient city of Texarkana, but does lie on the same river where it was settled by refugees as a trading post sometime after the Flame Deluge.
[3] Filpeo’s full title is His Imperial Grace Filpeo Harq, By the Grace of God Mayor and Hannegan VII, Sovereign of the Texark Province, Emperor of Laredo, Defender of the Faith, Doctor of Laws, Most High Chief of the Nomads, and Vaquero Supreme of the Plains. Understandably, the name "Hannegan" (with similar connotations to "Caesar") is more commonly used.
[4] Descended from the Ancient title of “sheriff.”
[5] A derogatory term used among the Nomads for agricultural settlements or civilisations; originally applied to the Laredans and broadened to include all who grow crops.



Link to complete version.

And the map:

The World of Peter the American, 5000 years of Christ, 3224 Years of Freedom

300 Vueguanians defeated the Directorian's Grande Pacifiers saving the Estados de los Puros from the Antarctic Heathens, as recorded in Peter the American's The History Channel

Here's my entry. WWIII happens, and Europe flees to Africa. Basically, read the thing in the map.

Some credity-legal stuff:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Filereu%C3%9Fischer_Adler_(1871-1914).svg - Work of David Liuzzo
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kenya_Coat_of_Arms-detail.svg - Ashiriz - Wikimedia Commons
Many thanks to SoaringAven for making the arms for me.