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Black Talons: PART ONE
ONE: THE EMPIRE
The rain hammered down from a slate grey abyss, pummeling the streets and back alleys of the same colourless heugh as the sky above. Dancing litter, gnarled from the uncaring shoes of passers by twisted and spun in a maelstrom of sludgy plastic waste;
this seemed to be the biggest and only product of modern human kind at the moment, which everybody did a whole lot of complaining, whining and ranting about to the council. Only when they realised that it was they who dropped the litter, not the council, did they understand why the arguement didn't have a leg to stand on, let alone two.
Headlights, cold and blinding as interrogation lamps, threw clinically clean splashes of light down the gullets of back streets, the sulking convenience stores drinking it in like elixer. Long since locked up for the night, they bask in the dull second hand glow of an array of lamps.
Although uncommon in this part of the slumbering city, death at the hands of some poor desperate gutter rat was still plausible, and the cashier employees knew it. Walls of stern and weathered metal grating barred any intruders way in, serving only as a truly false sense of security--whatever that meant to anybody anymore.
This damned place of restless unease, this rabbits warren of distrust and caution, was of course...
Foxmoor
Abandoned by hope of better days, riddled with poison minded people and everyone with their own dark and daring agenda, the citizens of this city not so much lived, but filled in the available spaces of various careers. Existing frugally, feeding of a system revolving around giving scraps to a dog as a miniscule reward.
They weren't safe, even from their own leaders. So-called over opinionated thinkers were erased from what the glorious leaders thought to be a Utopia: some sort of paradise completely filled with ungrateful lying conniving atrocious toxic greedy paranoid irritating rebellious subjects who sometimes asked one too many questions, and needed to be silenced.
"Totalitarian minds think alike" as the saying went.
As it had been hundreds of years beforegand, the Feudal System was still firmly in place, though now it was known as The Divine System of Social Darwinism. In 1956, the current government overthrew what was remembered as an evil, reckless party of people called "Liberals";
these were labelled as savages who set their sights on permeating the pure blood of the rich with mixing their rights with the poor, robbing the rightous slavers of their own property and wanting to "accept" strange humanoids from other lands into what was their country and should've always been their country.
Fortunately, all of the Liberals had fled to the ends of the earth (as well as being savage encouragers of racial mixing, they also tried to go against God's Truth by claiming that the world was round) to rouse up their evil in the 4th Continent, Arcazion. Rumors of rebel fleets based in Eastern countries, mainly Xina and Pacstonian, circulated with the locals and many attempted to join them. As a result the traitors where executed when caught.
But the populace was changing. Miners, Weaponsmiths and even the lowest Beggars began to question the very basis of the current government: the Natzes. According to them, God didn't intend for "impure" people to be eradicated, they were a test to see if the children he created had souls worthy of love, empathetic minds worthy of acceptance. What bollocks, the Natzes retorted, God demands perfection in humanity!
After that came the Saxond riots. Ten thousand civilians worked together to destroy the foundation of the government's twisted sense of justice. The Christyouth of Saxond. Despite their best efforts, the armed forces were sent in and wiped them out with a single bombardment of Mustard Gas.
That was eight years ago. 2026 began with the anniversary of the Saxond Riots, and yet it still felt empty, no mourning, no celebration; the government had banned it for the lower classes. So whilst they lived it up in intricate villas and pompouse mansions, eighty-fice percent of the city of Saxond were stuck in misery.
Foxmoor wasn't much better; the following celebrations came with the unwelcome sight of more litter. With the litter came rats, scampering around the back alleys and getting to the already slimy produce of grotty inconviently placed convenience stores. Inconvinient how? Inconvinient because if you don't watch yourself, you'll go in too deep. Inconvinient because if you go in too deep, you'll never come out.
The poor sallarys and expensive food led to increased amounts of muggers and criminal gangs, (not that the rich cared much, apparently it kept the poor "in check"). Surprisingly enough, this meant the Foxmoor Police Department was the best in the Birchaon Empire. Probably because the armament of each officer was enough to kill a man ten times over: One Gotch 12 semi automatic pistol which came with one hundred nine millimetre rounds, one Burleh MkII Pump shotgun which came with two hundred and fifty buckshot shells.
That was just for the average copper. Higher up members of the FPD were practically invincible, or at least felt so. Detectives denied the stereotype of a single revolver (namely the Cetch) by carrying whatever suited their taste in firearms. Sallaries differentiated in the force depending on how many criminals you caught a week. Bounties were put on the unfortunate heads of major criminals in the city: rebels, trouble makers, the sorts of people who could end the glorious Empire with words alone.
But things were changing. People wee changing, attitudes morphing, the hands of the universe shaping the future like clay between their digets. A storm was brewing.
TWO: KAT
COMING SOON
The rain hammered down from a slate grey abyss, pummeling the streets and back alleys of the same colourless heugh as the sky above. Dancing litter, gnarled from the uncaring shoes of passers by twisted and spun in a maelstrom of sludgy plastic waste;
this seemed to be the biggest and only product of modern human kind at the moment, which everybody did a whole lot of complaining, whining and ranting about to the council. Only when they realised that it was they who dropped the litter, not the council, did they understand why the arguement didn't have a leg to stand on, let alone two.
Headlights, cold and blinding as interrogation lamps, threw clinically clean splashes of light down the gullets of back streets, the sulking convenience stores drinking it in like elixer. Long since locked up for the night, they bask in the dull second hand glow of an array of lamps.
Although uncommon in this part of the slumbering city, death at the hands of some poor desperate gutter rat was still plausible, and the cashier employees knew it. Walls of stern and weathered metal grating barred any intruders way in, serving only as a truly false sense of security--whatever that meant to anybody anymore.
This damned place of restless unease, this rabbits warren of distrust and caution, was of course...
Foxmoor
Abandoned by hope of better days, riddled with poison minded people and everyone with their own dark and daring agenda, the citizens of this city not so much lived, but filled in the available spaces of various careers. Existing frugally, feeding of a system revolving around giving scraps to a dog as a miniscule reward.
They weren't safe, even from their own leaders. So-called over opinionated thinkers were erased from what the glorious leaders thought to be a Utopia: some sort of paradise completely filled with ungrateful lying conniving atrocious toxic greedy paranoid irritating rebellious subjects who sometimes asked one too many questions, and needed to be silenced.
"Totalitarian minds think alike" as the saying went.
As it had been hundreds of years beforegand, the Feudal System was still firmly in place, though now it was known as The Divine System of Social Darwinism. In 1956, the current government overthrew what was remembered as an evil, reckless party of people called "Liberals";
these were labelled as savages who set their sights on permeating the pure blood of the rich with mixing their rights with the poor, robbing the rightous slavers of their own property and wanting to "accept" strange humanoids from other lands into what was their country and should've always been their country.
Fortunately, all of the Liberals had fled to the ends of the earth (as well as being savage encouragers of racial mixing, they also tried to go against God's Truth by claiming that the world was round) to rouse up their evil in the 4th Continent, Arcazion. Rumors of rebel fleets based in Eastern countries, mainly Xina and Pacstonian, circulated with the locals and many attempted to join them. As a result the traitors where executed when caught.
But the populace was changing. Miners, Weaponsmiths and even the lowest Beggars began to question the very basis of the current government: the Natzes. According to them, God didn't intend for "impure" people to be eradicated, they were a test to see if the children he created had souls worthy of love, empathetic minds worthy of acceptance. What bollocks, the Natzes retorted, God demands perfection in humanity!
After that came the Saxond riots. Ten thousand civilians worked together to destroy the foundation of the government's twisted sense of justice. The Christyouth of Saxond. Despite their best efforts, the armed forces were sent in and wiped them out with a single bombardment of Mustard Gas.
That was eight years ago. 2026 began with the anniversary of the Saxond Riots, and yet it still felt empty, no mourning, no celebration; the government had banned it for the lower classes. So whilst they lived it up in intricate villas and pompouse mansions, eighty-fice percent of the city of Saxond were stuck in misery.
Foxmoor wasn't much better; the following celebrations came with the unwelcome sight of more litter. With the litter came rats, scampering around the back alleys and getting to the already slimy produce of grotty inconviently placed convenience stores. Inconvinient how? Inconvinient because if you don't watch yourself, you'll go in too deep. Inconvinient because if you go in too deep, you'll never come out.
The poor sallarys and expensive food led to increased amounts of muggers and criminal gangs, (not that the rich cared much, apparently it kept the poor "in check"). Surprisingly enough, this meant the Foxmoor Police Department was the best in the Birchaon Empire. Probably because the armament of each officer was enough to kill a man ten times over: One Gotch 12 semi automatic pistol which came with one hundred nine millimetre rounds, one Burleh MkII Pump shotgun which came with two hundred and fifty buckshot shells.
That was just for the average copper. Higher up members of the FPD were practically invincible, or at least felt so. Detectives denied the stereotype of a single revolver (namely the Cetch) by carrying whatever suited their taste in firearms. Sallaries differentiated in the force depending on how many criminals you caught a week. Bounties were put on the unfortunate heads of major criminals in the city: rebels, trouble makers, the sorts of people who could end the glorious Empire with words alone.
But things were changing. People wee changing, attitudes morphing, the hands of the universe shaping the future like clay between their digets. A storm was brewing.
TWO: KAT
COMING SOON
