Earth Blade

Blade Trilogy Book 1

By Philip Bourque, aka Artificer Urza

This story is fictitious in nature, thus any events in this story resembling real-life events are merely used for plot setup. Any characters resembling real people either living or dead is purely coincidental. If at anytime this story gives offence to anyone I apologize for such was not my intent.

Prologue

The year is 2132 and things have changed. In the early twenty-first century, in what was once the province of Quebec of the country of Canada, there was a great political upheaval. The political party in power, called the Party Quebecquois, those who desired for Quebec to become an independent country, suffered a major political loss. Their leader at the time fell ill of a mysterious, incurable and fatal disease; the party believed that with the loss of their charismatic leader the party would fall and their ideals with it. Then a figure arose from obscurity; a young man of wealth and power stepped forward and took the reins of power of the PQ. With his wealth he increased the standard of living for Quebecquers of all walks of life and language and he began to research and create new companies devoted to technological research; chief among those, unbeknownst to anyone, was weapons research.

At around the same time, disaster struck the United States as terrorists made themselves known, destroying major economic points, threatening to bring the American economy to its knees. The American government swore to its people that it would not let terrorists threaten its people, though in private they swore revenge. Thus began a 'war on terrorism' campaign by the Americans, who seemed to become increasingly paranoid and over-protective about their borders. In their campaign, the American president began to target a despotic dictator of a third world country in the east he had longed to utterly destroy for reasons of greed and vengeance. Against the desires of the U.N. and of many people around the world the American government sent their people to war.

This blatant disregard for the U.N. and the desires of the people caused many conflicts with the American troops and soldiers of other countries in the east and soon all the world was involved in war. It was war like no other; no real sides or alliances, no real 'good' or 'evil', it was a massive free-for all each country saying that it was fighting for it's own protection and thus there were no victors and no end in site.

With death, destruction and war all around them, the PQ threw forth another referendum, a vote to decide if Quebec would separate from Canada. Against all expectations, the vote for separation succeeded and Quebec began negotiations with the Canadian federal government to become their own independent country. Many people believed that the charisma of the PQ leader and the fact that he had used the argument that in times of war the Quebec people could only rely on themselves, that the referendum was a success.

When Quebec became it's own country, unemployment vanished as all available people were inducted into the military. This military became powerful, armed with advanced weapons and it was the most popular vocation to be a soldier because of all the benefits. Quebec became a militaristic country and yet did not neglect other facets of life and so became powerful and feared by other countries.

This power and its military might lead Quebec to conquer France, who was trying to escape an agreement they had with Quebec. To the world they made it appear as if they were entering into a partnership, but not all believed it. Though they were in the thick of several wars, the Americans saw it as their duty to liberate France. The American government to liberate France dispatched a medium sized fleet. However, out of the many ships that had been sent, only one returned, most of its crew gone mad from terror. The only understandable thing the crew of that one ship said was about a dark swarm of immense insects coming down from the sky to destroy them; it was regarded as nonsense.

This loss prompted the country that the Americans had originally fought against to attempt one last desperate attack and they set off a nuclear explosion in their capital city. Whether coincidence or not, at the same time multiple nuclear explosions occurred around the world at major cities, including the neighboring islands of Montreal and Laval in Quebec. Major earthquakes around the world followed these explosions and people feared it was the end of the world.

After the earthquakes stopped, the wars stopped as well; the governments of the world no longer had the will to fight after these disasters. The earthquakes also had many effects, besides changing the geological appearance of the world; from the cracks in the earth, strange crystal formations were found. These crystals, called crystalis, were found to produce immense amounts of usable energy, if one could harness this energy. These crystals also had another effect: prolonged exposure could change either the DNA of the exposed being or, in greater quantities, the climate of the surrounding area. Many lands were changed, as desert became jungle, jungle became mountain; mountain became wasteland, as well as the people and animals changed with their new surroundings.

During these changes, old forgotten races resurfaced, taking their place among humans: the tall, thin, long-eared elves, the short, powerful, enterprising dwarves and the secretive, nocturnal gargoyles. With them they brought magics: the power to control the elements, for the faithful religious people to heal with and for the builders now skills and abilities to build with.

People the world over shunned and accepted these new races, some working with them to build a new future, others casting them out or killing them on site because of fear. One of the countries to capitalize on the return of these races was Quebec, who created many new magic/technology sciences. The most world renown was the technomagic, a special order of magicians that used technology to enhance their magic casting abilities. This order was independent from any one government, but used their powers to aid any country that sought their help, in exchange for money and recruits for their order.

The second technomagic science developed was the Lazarus technology, whereby a ‘soul’ or ‘consciousness’, if you were an atheist, could be extracted from a dying body and placed within a receptacle so said receptacle could be used as the brain of a machine, thus effectively bringing a person back to life.

The Quebec government used technology to cover and dominate its land and to control its people, crafting laws forbidding the use of any language other than french, making translators to 'help' the people and many other technologies which they sold to the world. No one within or without ever felt like the Quebec government was oppressing its people and the dominance the government had been never questioned.

The year is 2132, the country of Quebec and things have changed.