Iron Empire

Prologue: Righteousness' Sake

The Third World War began on August fifteenth, 2030. It only lasted three days. It was a war that ended with twenty-thousand nuclear warheads and a burning Earth.

With over one billion fatalities, the Third World War was labelled the largest global catastrophe since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Another hundred million more died soon after, victims of the swift and deadly killer that was radiation sickness. Worldwide infrastructure failed in less than a day-everything from microchips to national power grids were fried by the blasts.

It was an atrocity of the highest order. The ultimate crime against humanity.

But this story is not about that war.

This story is about what happened next after the bombs had dropped.

Before we knew it, the scarred remnants of the world were once again united against a common threat. The nuclear fallout we had created would soon wipe us all from existence. Functioning technology was scarce, so countries began to collaborate once more. Without any other option, humanity began working together to solve the apocalyptic problem we had created.

Over the course of eight years of research, nuclear radiation became curable, as easily treatable as the common cold. Humanity healed slowly, rebuilding and salvaging the remains of the old world. With the concept of nuclear deterrence in the past, warheads, the weapons that had driven us apart, were deemed obsolete.

With other methods of generating electricity rendered useless, nuclear power became commonplace-less expensive to produce than any other source of energy on the planet. By 2038, almost every building in North America ran on atomic power.

Humanity had engineered its destruction, yet had not only survived it but had thrived in the ashes.

The years that followed were ones of healing. While it was impossible to bring back the world that had existed before the bombs, some degree of normalcy returned.

Countries rebuilt both infrastructure and connections, re-establishing ties that had long since been broken by war. With much of the technology that had existed before the war rendered useless, many returned to a simpler life, while others worked tirelessly to bring back what we had once possessed.

With many broken or redundant systems swept away by nuclear fire, things were slowly rebuilt in a way we believed was better. Technology, medicine, even the government was remade in the fallout of an unthinkable crime.

For one moment it seemed like the world had reached a golden age, a time of peace and progress.

If it all sounds too good to be true, that's because it was.

On a late January afternoon, twelve years after the Third World War, something massive fell from the sky in Washington D.C, levelling a city block on impact.

A machine of unstoppable size emerged from the crater.

The police couldn't slow the machine down. The army couldn't even make a dent in its armour. The walking machine punched through the Lincoln Memorial like it was made of sandstone, marched past the Washington Monument and detonated on the steps of the Capitol Building. Within ten minutes of landing on United States soil, the walking machine had wiped out the entirety of Congress.

Hysteria swept across the globe. In the weeks following the event that would come to be known as the Washington Massacre, hysteria quickly turned to anger. Tensions between America and Russia had been high ever since the fragile truce that ended the Third World War, and the attack on Washington was enough for them to begin accusing each other once again.