With a nod to W.B. Yeats of course.
Publication day approaches, and my need to blog increases. Having listened to my previous two randomly assigned recordings it occurs to me that now would be a good time to explain the basics of the Ice Age in Scarlet setting as otherwise the random entries make very little sense.
So lets begin. With the middle.
In 2035 there is a enormous, artificially triggered volcanic even that throws a California’s worth of dust into the sky and causes major changes to the Pacific Rim coastline. In practical terms this alone would have knocked out modern civilization but it is soon followed by monsters appearing in the clouds, wars breaking out across much of the remaining world’s surface and a variety of diseases caused by a combination of large groups of undernourished people being forced out into a world where the mean temperature has dropped around fifteen degrees.
There are icebergs in the English Channel and the Vampires fight the Russians across Eurasia. Magic clashes with technology and the UK in the form of the Union keeps its head down whilst America locks itself away and rebuilds itself.
By the end of the first stage of the Catastrophe all that’s left is the Union, an alliance of the military, church, civil service and the arcane investigations agency, the witches in their cozy little world-woods, and the United States who knocked their own equivalent of the AIA on the head when it got… difficult.
Oh, and the man who did this.
The prequels address how the world got to this state, showing how the great powers of the world, most of which are not human, are distracted from the looming threat (you don’t make California drop into the sea without a little preparation) by a variety of underhanded means. By the end and through the machinations of the initiator of our little extinction level event they barely even notice what has happened as they are too busy assuming their enemies are the cause and that they need to launch their militaries into the fray and put in place a variety of contingency plans that are a little… experimental.
That the world is not dead is due to a few characters who you will follow in the prequels who, if they were not successful in stopping the Catastrophe, at least knocked it a little askew which allowed the survivors to survive, unknowing that they were saved.
The main series follows a variety of characters, Agents, Witches, Vampires and Humans, over the thirty years following the Catastrophe, up to the point where the surviving powers have identified who did this to them, and join together to launch an attack on a, once again active perpetrator of calamity who may have awoken to finish them off.
It shows how they survived the initial blotting out of the sun, the monsters that fell upon them from above, and how they eventually adapted and thrived. It also shows how the limited magical powers of humanity at the start of the Catastrophe, burgeon, and what this actually means.
Funnily enough having a great deal of power available at your fingertips (there’s no gate keeping if there’s power to be manipulated) is not an entirely uplifting experience for most of those engaged in it.
The key question for the series is whether you should try and repair what was lost, live with what you’ve got, or push your way forward and glory in a world where you can fly through space on ethereal wings and leave behind your humanity.
We’re at t-minus Ten Days till the release of Master in his Tomb.
Buy it – links on the front page of the Ice Age in Scarlet site.
Ice Age in Scarlet 