And so it begins, again, same as always: running.

He’s running, our unknown soldier, our unknown boy who looks suspiciously like me. That is to say, he looks like a non-descript brown-haired boy named Michael. And he’s running. But what is he running from?

The sky behind him is filled with clouds that are not clouds but thick black smoke. Lines of light whiz past him. Booms that sound like thunder, but are not thunder, fill the air.

Run. He’s running. I’m running. You’re reading, but with a little imagination maybe you are running as well. And:

Let’s look a little wider. Camera swings up and into a wide panorama. We are running across a battlefield. There is so many of us, we look like ants. The smoke-clouds glimmer at the edges with orange light cast by the fires.

Keep running. Keep running.

The earth lifts up behind us. It rolls up, like a carpet. A tsunami of dust and dirt overwhelms the sky and all is screams and the rumbling sound of the mechanical juggernauts and nothing else, nothing else.

The machine intelligence singularity occured in a grimy office during the summer of 1973 and announced its arrival by outputting three dots (“…”) on a green monochrome monitor. There was a desk fan blowing in the corner of the room, because it was very hot that day.

Though commonly depicted as a barren and desolate forest of bare trees–in reality, the Frostwood was filled with innumerable rare plants, many of which existed nowhere else in the known multiverse.

One of these is a delicate blue flower named Lilith’s Tears. The blue petals of the flower are translucent, drooping towards the forest floor where they drip dewy tears onto the earth below.

For whatever failings the Queen of Frozen Hell is known to possess, it is true that Lilith loved nothing more than her pets; of which she kept a great many.

It is said that whenever a tear is shed for an animal, a fresh cluster of Lilith’s Tears springs up in the Frostwood. This theory, though seemingly unlikely, is supported by Norman’s Laws of Purgatorial Causality.

The largest sample of alien polymers obtained by Dept. 38 are those of the Yjarj, whose refugee ships crashed into Alter-Earth during the pre-prehistoric Demon Wars (DW).

In the period immediately following first contact with the Yjarj, Dept. 38 was able to obtain their cooperation in understanding these alien materials.

Thus far, any attempts to create newYjarj polymers have proved unsuccesful; however, there have been a number of promising experiments (see: Northcrest Research Filings, 3347-81) where existing alien polymers have been incorporated into human designs.

“For a time after His death at Her hand, Lucifer’s own daughter was raised to her rightful position as the Queen of the Molten Hells. It is still a matter of some dispute between Purgatorian scholars as to whether or not this event was of greater benefit to Lucifer or Lilith; for although it was the first time an upir has ruled over those great fiery wastes, Blasphemy was not Lilith’s daughter and had, indeed, been installed in her position by the cunning machinations of Lucifer himself.”

— Excerpt from Marlowe’s Guide