ENRUIN Story​

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PRE - RECKONING

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• Starting in the mid 21st century, population continued to trend downwards, the economy was leaking jobs, and resources became continuously automated. This created a period of time, for at least a few decades, where resources were completely automated, but were still bound by scarcity. The industrial labor model was failing in the United States, leading to unrest and division.

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• The American Research Institute of Agricultural Systems (ARIAS) is an industrial research organization and market hegemon. With several trillions of dollars in automation investments and with a majority share of agricultural land in the mainland US. In addition, they were often labor market monopolists in several rural communities and agrarian states, providing wages to much of the formerly union-represented farmers of America.

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• ARIAS presented the Cannizarro administration, which was under overwhelming pressure from constituents representing dying industries and poverty-states, with full-scale economic proposal that would bring food to millions of starving Americans. This would come at the cost of allowing ARIAS to shed market regulations, to place members on the Council of Economic Advisors, to correspond on nominations to the Federal Reserve, and to maintain representatives in the Department of Defense. The latter-most addition to the deal, while controversial at first, was spear-headed by Martha Armstrong, who detailed how much of ARIAS foreign capital would be at risk if there were a conflict with Europe.

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• The deal between ARIAS and its collaborators in Congress was made behind closed doors, and their bipartisan committee would have to work deceptively in order to accomplish these goals. This included ARIAS winning an auction for the rights of collecting and supplying military intel by lending its satellites and cameras to military intelligence. Armstrong and other ARIAS executives worked closely with their congressional contacts to manipulate intelligence reports to incite fears of European mobilization.

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• Caldera meltdown: Yellowstone super volcano suffers unforeseen explosion in its caldera, spewing ash into the atmosphere, causing mass evacuations and destroying arable land. ARIAS received a multi-trillion dollar bailout from the government to compensate for lost land. ARIAS begins to pursue the "Adam Project" to automate new sources of food. The explosion was caused by the collapse of an ARIAS geothermal energy plant beneath the volcano, which is unknown to the public.

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• The war room is gathered in the Pentagon, while Europe considers war. Intelligence officers representing the EC gathered leaked reports from ARIAS that the US has been silently mobilizing resources for its defense division and has been creating new military contracts over the last year. This is the final breaking point between the US and the EC, prompting a European blockade through the Atlantic, barring all trade finally between the two superpowers. Armstrong accompanies the President, and informs him silently that while the war advisors convened, Congress finally approved the economic plan, granting ARIAS total labor market monopolistic power.

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• A week later, a bug in the ARIAS nuclear protocol detects a warhead from Europe. The cause of the bug is unknown, but the consequences of the dependency on a company that profited from isolating the country and by feeding it false intelligence became very clear very quickly. The US launched its first warhead, although the president never signed off on the order. Something went wrong. Warheads were exchanged, and the vulnerable populations on the East Coast who fled the meltdown earlier that year perished to the reckoning. The entire Eastern seaboard of the United States was annihilated, and the country fell quickly.

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POST - RECKONING

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• Carrie Ridley escapes from her cult with the help of Celine, killing Saint Clemens Belman and fleeing into the jungle

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• Mateus Lazelai is expelled from his village as they curse and blame him for not fighting against invading monsters. They did not heed his warnings, and unwilling to face their failures, they projected them onto him. Before he leaves, he warns them of the coming eclipse, and begs them to listen.

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• Reginald awakes from the Reckoning, and embarks on his journey towards the city. He found the final resting place of his family, and felt sorrow as he realized that what he built to protect them became their tomb.

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• He runs into Scottie, who takes Reginald with him deeper into the jungle, offering him protection and knowledge of the new world.

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• Scottie and Reginald encounter Carrie. Scottie slyly convinces her to join them, depending on her for protection, as she's a much more avid fighter than Scottie is.

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• After a month of traveling, Scottie and Reginald are trapped by Mateus, who fled North from what was Mexico, and he's hunted down by Carrie as he tries to escape with their food. Scottie and Reginald catch him first, mostly by getting lucky, and warn him to give up their supplies or else Carrie will kill him when she finds him. He doesn't listen, and Reginald stops Carrie from striking him. They keep him detained, and free him after his warning of the eclipse comes true.