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Warhammer 2K

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Here it is. Warhammer 2K! If you are unfamiliar with some of the references, the source material for these are Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40K settings. 

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It is the 21st Century. For more than a hundred years the Vozhd has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Washington. He is the Master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of three continents by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Third Industrial Revolution. He is the Carrion Lord of the Dominium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Vozhd continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested waters of the seas, the only route between distant continents, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Vozhd's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted battlefields. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the revolutionary vanguard, the Dominium Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Dominium Army and countless regional militias, the ever vigilant Cheka and the tech-priests of the Church of Ford to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from foreigners, heretics, mutants - and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of another present there is only war. There is no peace throughout the world, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

The current state of the planet arose from what was once called the Second World War. With the Germans victorious over the Allies in Europe by 1943, an uneasy "sitzkrieg" emerged between the Germans and the Allies. The Germans could not destroy the Allies, who still threatened the continent through the continued independence of the United Kingdom, but neither could the Allies attack Fortress Europa. Both powers instead developed new and terrible weapons to use against one another, but then grew too afraid to use them. Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons were developed and mounted on ICBMs, while the most terrible weapons, too bulky for all but the shortest-range weapons, were being developed to replace them. These were Warp weapons, bombs designed to tear holes in reality and expose an area to a dimension of pure chaos.

Research into the Warp revealed the existence of "psykers," human beings connected to the Warp in such a way as to give them the ability to manipulate the world around them. While initially weak, modifications to a psyker's brain could give them even more control of the world around them, at the risk of causing madness. 

The death of the world began in 1950, when Germany began to need more oil for its eternal war against Soviet partisans. Using the new "greenskin" plague, a maddening disease which turned those it infected into hyper-violent maniacs, the Germans moved in on the neutral states of the Middle East. The Germans believed that the Allies would not intervene, as it would mean the destruction of the world. But the Allies did, and events spun out of control to the point that both sides were launching weapons of mass destruction against one another. 

London and Berlin were hit with the most Warp weapons, creating in Britain what is now called the Eye of Terror, a permanent breach in space-time. Psykers around the world went mad, as the boundaries between the Warp and the material universe were weakened and they were overwhelmed with Warp energy. Some became gateways for daemons. These breaches and the deaths of billions garnered the attention of the Chaos gods, four malevolent entities fueled by human thought and emotions. Using blasphemous whispers, the Chaos gods managed to take hold throughout the blasted remnants of continental Europe, and soon the German Reich was overthrown and replaced by the mad fiefdoms of Chaos champions. Their advance was halted only by the greenskin hordes and the heroic efforts of the remnants of the Soviet Union. 

The Earth is dominated by the Dominium of Man, a totalitarian state which arose from the "Unified Allied Provisional Government" based in Washington, DC. This government was made up of the American government and the Soviet government-in-exile, hiding from the terror wrought upon them by German wonder-weapons. It was transformed into the Dominum by the Vozhd, Joseph Stalin. Stalin manipulated his way into becoming the dominant force in the Provisional Government's leadership, despite being an exiled leader, and became the Vozhd of the Dominium when German nuclear weapons ravaged the East Coast. He was greatly aided by his psychic powers, more powerful than those of any other living human, and which allowed him to challenge even the Chaos gods through his will alone. 

In the aftermath of the Third World War, the Vozhd united the rest of mankind under his banner, either by the force of his will or the force of his weapons. However, a Chaos-backed coup against him left him mortally wounded. This was something the Vozhd had planned for in advance: knowing that his body was failing him, Stalin commissioned the creation of the Golden Throne, a life support system from which he could rule his Dominium for the rest of eternity. Unfortunately, the Vozhd's wounds left the man in a comatose state, and while he remains alive, he cannot rule directly. Still, his mind serves as a beacon for all Dominium ships on Earth, who need his guidance in order to navigate the monster-infested seas of the planet. 

Since his death, Stalin has become the object of extreme devotion in the Dominium, the culmination of his efforts in life to eradicate religion and replace it with his own cult of personality. The Cheka enforce the doctrines of the Dominium Cult strictly, executing any whom they suspect of heresy against the Vozhd. Control of the Dominium's technology has gone to the Fordists, a conglomerate of state-backed industries who have turned to worshiping technology since the Vozhd's internment on the Golden Throne. Believing that innovation is the road heresy, pointing to the development of Warp weaponry, the Fordists travel the world seeking new, safe technology for them to repurpose. 

The Dominium has a few allies in the world. The Ogre Kingdoms of Tibet, formed by once-hidden ogre tribes who took advantage of the collapse of China, occasionally fight in the Dominium Army as mercenaries. The Kingdom of France, a state formed from Free French remnants and Axis refugees, stands vigilant against Chaos, using a controlled form of Warp technology to give their soldiers supernatural protection in battle. 

The realms of Chaos remain chaotic, with warlords trying to top one another and rival gods using their followers as pawns in their "Great Game." Life in the realms of Chaos is living in a literal hell on Earth, where weakness is not tolerated and even the strongest-willed can become a daemonhost or worse. The Chaos gods, who have bigger fish to fry elsewhere in the multiverse, pay little attention to their followers in this world, although occasionally they will set aside their differences and try to organize a black crusade against the Dominium. So far, all of these black crusades have failed, normally because of Chaos' poor military organization. Isolated from the realms of the dark gods is the Kingdom of Romania, whose leaders have turned to vampirism and necromancy in order to remain "independent" of the Ruinous Powers. 

The United Kingdom was utterly ravaged by the war, and what remains of the British Empire is now a collection of ships and islands. Feeling betrayed by their allies, the British seek to reclaim their position as the dominant power on Earth, aided with high technology they developed since the end of the Third World War. This technology allows gives of their individual soldiers amazing strength in combat, but they are still outnumbered by the Dominium they seek to topple. Meanwhile, their cousins in the Eye occasionally launch raids for slaves to sacrifice to the dark gods, so they may save their own souls from being consumed. 

The greenskin infection has become the status quo in the Middle East and South Asia, but its spread has been halted. Now, the greenskins have stabilized, forming into tribes adopting warped versions of pre-war ideologies to justify their violence. But ultimately, the only thing the greenskins respect is strength, and so wars are often fought on little but pride alone. The greenskins have become surprisingly proficient in the art of war, but they are too busy fighting one another to put the rest of the world under any significant threat. 

To the east, the Japanese Empire has reemerged. Consumed by a freak Warp storm during the Third World War, it was believed that Japan was plunged permanently into darkness. However, what had happened was that Japan was temporally and spatially isolated, and so when Japan reemerged from the Warp, three hundred years had passed for them. Armed with state-of-the-art technology, the Japanese seek to liberate the world from the madness that has consumed it, but they fail to understand the magnitude of the horrors beyond their borders. 

The Third World War has awakened two ancient races from their slumber. The Slann and the Necrons, two ancient civilizations that warred against one another between the New and Old worlds, respectively, had locked themselves in stasis after their war ended in the world being consumed by the Warp. Now that the Chaos gods have returned, these ancients are awakening from the ancient temples and crypts their human worshipers built them long ago. The mechanical Necrons have managed to carve out large empires in the Old World, using their advanced technology and implacable will to dominate their divided enemies. The lizard-like Slann are less successful, having to contend with the full might of the Dominium, but their magic-like technology and swarms of less-intelligent lizardman conscripts gives them the edge in individual engagements. 

And in Oceania, a truly alien threat has emerged. The chitinous swarm known as the Perthics, after their initial landing site, overran Australia during the 2070s and are now trying to move from the continent. Motivated only by the consumption of all biomass on Earth, the Perthics are seemingly unstoppable and they are legion.

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Dominium of Man & Colonies - Imperium of Man

Kingdom of France - ???

United Kingdom-in-exile - Eldar

Greenskin Tribes - Orks

Japanese Empire - T'au

Chaos - Self-explanatory

Dark City of London - Dark Eldar

Kingdom of Romania - ???

Necrons - Self-explanatory

Perthics - Tyranids

Slann - ???

Ogres - ???