The Ghost:Shards/Alas Babylon

This Shard in a Nutshell: The modern world is transposed into Creation from before the Primordial War, in fact before the creation of humans: BADLY. Millions of people died, some by drowning, some from collapsing buildings, and MANY from groups of 'Raiders'. Now the Exalted have come into existence and are trying to restore order, and get humanity ready for a war that everyone knows is coming but no one knows why or who it will be fought against, only that Sol En Victus says they must be ready when the time comes to fight it. What Legends will they Report of your deeds?

What has come before

A Breif history of the setting.

The Change Over

It started in the Year of Our Lord 2020. No one has ever been able to explain why, but over the course of 12 days the world unfolded from it's round shape to match the dimensions of the true maps:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection_SW.jpg

Then it Vanished.

Instead of the world everyone was used too we found ourselves here:

http://thor.divnull.com/pub/exalted/creation2.png

(Ignore the markings, this is strictly Geography.)

Every single person then alive came through the change over we think, though we will never be sure, as did most of the things we had built, anything that was not part of the the landscape or built into the ground came through, from cars to boats to airplanes and grain silos: But it came through in the same location relative to the new ground or sea levels... Millions drowned, millions more were crushed when the buildings that had come through collapsed without their foundations, and then the REAL trouble started.

The Years of Encroaching Darkness

You see, this world was not uninhabited. Three main types of beings lived here already, the Jade Born, the Dragon Kings, and the Gods and Elementals. Two of the three of these groups at first were incredibly hostile to our presence, and killed many thousands of the survivors, but during this time it was we ourselves who were our own worst enemies.

The Dragon Kings

The Dragon Kings are great saurian beings divided into four races each composed of exactly forty million members. They reincarnate in an endless cycle of life and death and rebirth and in a sense are effectively immortal. Unlike humans they do not forget the things they did in their past lives and so death for them is merely an inconvenience, not an end. They also had been the mandated lords of creation for over 5000 years of recorded history and while some few of them welcomed us as fellow travelers on the highways and byways of life most of them saw us as uncouth interlopers into their territory and attacked us ruthlessly. This precipitated a sort of Civil War among the Dragon Kings, between those who treated us with compassion and respect and those that hated our kind for having caused so much wreckage and destruction with the arrival of our cities and other constructions that then toppled doing untold damage to their cities where the two intersected. These wars raged for over a decade, and only now are drawing to a close, and in some places yet continue.

The Four Breeds Situations

Each of the four breeds has a different outlook on humanity and our presence, largely due to the virtues that they favor. Please note however that the attitudes in this section are generalizations, each breed has members who favor different virtues and and will react to humans differently. It is unwise for players or STs to treat a group of people as large as 40 million individuals as a monolithic entity.

Raptok

As the Raptok's signature powers favor compassion and few of their cities were damaged by the change over, especially their pride and triumph mighty Rathess the Raptok view humans much more favorably than most other breeds of Dragon King. They also share a more similar morphology to humans especially in their hand structures and modes of movement. The lands of the East therefore are a relative haven for humans, though perforce some of the Raptok still see humans as interfering upstarts who have no conception of the real nature of the world. This view is not wholly inaccurate.

Anglok

Among the Dragon Kings of creation few feel as much hatred for humanity as the Anglok. One of their greatest cities: Shakanzer, was badly damaged by the shift when a convoy of container ships appeared in the midst of it. Other areas found themselves filled with refugees, rebels, and government troops from Saharan Africa, while the depths of the South experienced a blast of cold from Antarctica which whipped up tornadoes by their thousands and stranded hundreds of researchers in environments they were woefully unprepared for. All of these forces combine to induce a period of bitter warfare between the human survivors and the Anglok natives.

Mosok

Though the South was engulfed in war and strife the west too took huge amounts of damage from the change over, not from the bands of militarized and desperate humans so much as from the vast quantities of people and items who were dropped into the sea from north, south and central America and died or sank. The millions of tons of oils and coolants which polluted the western western ocaien killed entire species of fish and caused cancer in tens of thousands of Mosok. As a race the Mosok favor Conviction and once convinced of the reckless and destructive nature of humanity committed themselves to our annihilation with a single minded fury that has yet to fully abate. Even today across the west there are rebel Anglok who attack humans wherever they encounter them, and some among the Celestial Deliberative advocate that the Anglok Rebels be hunted by dedicated Terrestrial strike teams but so far the solar allies of the peaceful Mosok have blocked such initiatives with filibuster after filibuster, stating, at length, that treating the Mosok as rebels as a race would only reignite the 'Impurity Wars' which have for the most part currently been brought to a cessation which is fairly favorable to all parties. The Lunars however have double alpha secret 'Burn-before-reading' type operations by which their elders infiltrate and disrupt such Mosok bands. If proof of these activities could be brought before the Deliberative it would be a major blow to the 'Union of Sun and Moon' party who dominates politics in the Senatorum Dominatus at this time.

The Two Houses of the Deliberative

Concerns of state for the newly instituted Unified Realm Of Creation are handled by the Two Chambers of The Deliberative: The Celestial Deliberative, and the Terrestrial Deliberative.

The Upper Chamber

Called Variously the Sennatorum Dominatus, The House of Lords, or the Grand Conclave, the Upper Chamber of the Deliberative, also known erroneously as the Celestial Deliberative, consists of 100 of the Soalrs, Lunars, and Siderials, 100 Essence 6 Dragon Kings of Each Breed, and 100 Enlightened Jade Born. The Current Ruling party in this chamber is the 'Union of Sun and Moon' party, which draws it's membership from the vast majority of the Lunar and Solar Exalted Deliberates and a plurality of the Dragon King Deliberates of each race, giving it a narrow majority. It's main opposition is the 'Ministry of Enlightened Engineering' party who consist of most of the Jade Born Deliberates, significant numbers of the Dragon King Deliberates, a small segment of the Sidereal Deliberates and almost all of the other Solar and Lunar deliberates. Standing apart from these two are the overwhelming majority of the Sidereal Deliberates, who call themselves the 'Verdict of Fate' Party, as well as a few of the Dragon Kings and Jade Born. This third party are the deciding 'swing vote' which allows or prevents the 'Union of Sun and Moon' party suppressing a filibuster.

The Lower Chamber

The Lower Chamber of the Deliberative, called variously the House of Commons, the Chamber of Representatives, the Synod, and Erroneously but increasingly commonly the Terrestrial Deliberative, is of no fixed size, consisting of over three thousand Deliberates who represent segments of the global population. This chamber is so unwieldy and bloated that it is widely considered useless, a sentiment which is shared by many of it's own members. There recently have been moves by both chambers to find some equitable way to divide this chamber into a number of smaller groups of a size where they would be able to act effectively. Deliberates of this chamber are drawn by election from among all the citizens of a given district and race, and consist of everything from Lintha, to Terrestrial Exalted, to Pelegals, to Dragon Kings barely considered 'civilized', To Mortal Humans. It is currently dominated by a coalition of Humans, Lintha, Pelegals, and young Raptok Dragon Kings called the 'Primordial Will Party' who are suspicious of the growing exalted hegemony over creation, especially the fact that the upper chamber excludes the two sapient races who were created solely by primordial will and is 3-8ths composed of Celestial Exalted.