Before the Smogfall (BSF)
–200 to –150 BSF: The Expansion Age
The world entered a golden age of extraction and invention. Newly discovered oil fields, oil wells in the ocean and coal mines fed an industrial appetite that seemed insatiable. Entire landscapes were gutted to fuel corporate furnaces. Small family-run workshops gave way to massive corporate foundries, each larger and more ruthless than the last.
The first mechanized frames, precursors to the modern Rig, were developed not for war, but for mining, salvage, and underwater construction. These cumbersome suits were designed to keep men alive in hostile worksites, a grim foreshadowing of their eventual role in the battlefield.
–149 to –50 BSF: The Rivalry Era
Corporations grew too powerful for governments to contain. National armies were quietly replaced by corporate security divisions, each fielding armored trains, gunships, and prototype exo-frames.
Competition for resources turned violent. Oilfields were poisoned with sabotage, rail lines cut by mercenary bands, and whole towns enslaved into industrial labor. Rivalries between corporations became entrenched; names like The Krim Corporation, Nox Industries, and Triton Engineering began appearing in ledgers of war rather than commerce.
Civilians adapted to worsening air quality with crude respirators and filtration systems, but the poor suffocated in growing slums. For the wealthy elite, the choking haze was dismissed as the “price of progress.”
–49 to 0 BSF: The Descent
Warnings came from engineers, scientists, and a small consortium of researchers who would later become known as Arcus Technologies. They published studies showing that unchecked industry was poisoning the skies beyond repair. Their prototypes for advanced filtration towers and experimental arc-reactors were dismissed as impractical, too costly, or simply a threat to corporate profits.
While the great powers doubled down on extraction, those who founded Arcus retreated into isolated laboratories, continuing their work in secret. Cities by now were already cloaked in permanent dusk. Farmers abandoned dying fields, joining mass migrations toward corporate hubs in hopes of filtered shelter. Riots, food shortages, and industrial disasters spread unchecked.
As the world teetered on the edge, only a handful of Arcus’ crude filtration prototypes were quietly installed on the fringes of the industrial belts, faint glimmers of foresight in an age of denial.
Year 0: The Smogfall
The great industrial expansion reached its breaking point. Factories and refineries belched out such vast quantities of soot, chemical fumes, and ash that the skies blackened for months on end. Daylight dimmed to a perpetual dusk; the sun became little more than a dull ember behind the haze.
Crops withered in the poisoned fields. Populations suffocated in the streets. Entire regions became uninhabitable without respirators or advanced filtration systems. Governments faltered, powerless to shield their people from the creeping death that spread through the air.
Those who survived did so only behind walls of industry, under the rule of corporations who alone had the means to filter the choking sky. From this moment on, history was no longer measured by kings, parliaments, or nations, but by the smoke itself. The old world ended here.
From then on, all time was reckoned as “After the Smogfall” (ASF).
After the Smogfall (ASF)
0–50 ASF: The Survival Era
Civilization contracted into islands of life amid a sea of poison. Cities that could not filter the air were abandoned or left to rot. Corporations seized control of the remaining habitable zones, ruling through strict rationing of air, water, and fuel.
The first militarized Rigs were deployed — modified industrial suits refitted with armor plates and salvaged weaponry. They defended settlements from raiders, scoured wastelands for resources, and enforced corporate law.
It was during this period that the Nomads emerged: mercenary Rig pilots who refused corporate allegiance. Some fought for coin, others simply to survive outside the walls of industry.
51–120 ASF: The Corporate Ascendancy
With governments gone, the great corporations rose as the unquestioned rulers of the Smoglands. The Krim Corporation, Nox Industries, Triton Engineering, and Arcus Technologies expanded their fortified enclaves into sprawling fortress-cities, sealing their citizens behind walls of steel and filtered air. Economies were rebuilt around salvage, oil drilling, and the mass production of war machines. For most, survival meant obedience.
But not all bent the knee. Outcasts, deserters, and entire communities abandoned by corporate rationing began to gather in the wastes. Salvagers, mechanics, and disillusioned Ironclads pooled their knowledge, building independent organizations powered by scrap and ingenuity. These groups rejected the corporate monopoly on life itself: air, fuel, and freedom.
From this growing defiance emerged the Freegear Coalition: a loose but determined federation bound together not by profit, but by survival and choice. While the corporations hardened their borders, Freegear’s rebels roamed the Smoglands, striking supply lines, salvaging the ruins, and offering refuge to those who refused to live under corporate law.
121–200 ASF: The Age of Endless War
By now, war was no longer an occasional necessity but the driving force of society. Factions bled resources into building colossal Rigs, some the size of towers, armed with weapons capable of leveling city blocks.
Territory changed hands constantly, though rarely rebuilt; burned-out cities became battlefields fought over again and again. Salvage became more valuable than raw ore, as it was easier to strip parts from wrecked Rigs than manufacture them anew.
Citizens adapted to living in near-constant siege. Entire generations grew up in bunkers, never knowing clear skies or peace. To live in the Smoglands was to know conflict.
201 ASF – Present: The Age of Oil and Iron
The Smoglands now stand on a knife’s edge. The great corporations continue to fight, their wars fueled more by ideology and pride than by strategy. Mercenary Nomads thrive, playing one side against another, while scavenger bands pick over battlefields like carrion crows.
Innovation continues, but so does desperation. Experimental engines push Rigs beyond safe limits, leading to catastrophic failures. Cities cling to dwindling resources, while the wastelands grow ever larger.
The future remains uncertain: will the corporations bleed themselves dry, leaving only ruins? Or will a new order rise from the smoke to claim dominion over the Smoglands?