In the early 21st century medical science advanced at an exponential rate. Cancer, AIDS, Ebola, and a score of other aliments of the 20th century were conquered... at least for those that could afford it. The third world continued to see the plagues increase. But still time advances, as it must, and a new life was forged out in these stricken countries that were now the biggest fear of the superpowers. The superpowers isolated themselves from the third world and the corporate machine continued to engulf their lives. The world began to separate. The industrial complex of the North became intrinsically opposed to the rural life of the South. Fortunately, the United Nations and other humanitarian groups still fought the diseases and in 2179 they declared victory over disease. But the damage had been done.

The Agrarian and the Industrial were at odds again and this rift would not heal in any fashion. It would only worsen when in 2184 the first cybernetic implant gave the anti-technology aspects of the south a rallying point. An organization arose in the South around this point, the Anachronistic Union, they strove to end what they saw as an evil, but the organization was fractured and the movement was chaotic. They all agreed on the purity of the body, but little other common ground could be set. By 2192, guerilla war was being waged across countries that were known as the faded lands. These lands, consisting of lands that were used as manufacturing sites and wastes reservoirs for Corporations, were stained by the blood of Anachronists, and Corporate mercenaries.

Then in 2202, a group of Northerners calling themselves the Third Age of Mankind, or in slang the Otaku, started to gain support in the North as retaliation to the guerilla war that the Anachronists were waging in the faded lands. The Otaku believed that the flesh was the source of evils, and that only through cybernetics could a soul be freed. But in all groups intents change. The near cult-like third age was soon overcome by corporate powers seeking a tighter control of the populous. Other companies seeing the lost market shares and the opposition of the Third Age sought out new markets and a population susceptible to their influence. The eyes of the North fell now on the South. And so, the great migration of 2213 began.

Approximately 50% of the Northern companies moved south. Heavy investment and new Anarchist-friendly policies built the South into a power by 2230. But this incarnation had become a beast of its own. While technology was overt in the North, in the South it was hidden. The South tended to treat their devices as magical. And so their shapes followed suit. The faded lands were still a war zone. After 45 years of war the United Nations finally stepped in and ordered a cease-fire. The more radical factions ignored the cease-fire. But the corporations were quick to get out of the war. Negotiations were made, and the on March 12, 2238, the Treaty of the Atlantean Data-Haven was signed. The faded lands were left as no-mans land, and the two paradigms of humanity turned their thoughts inward. But the war still goes on. The radicals fight in the wastes of the faded lands; Yakuza are hired by the North, Mafia by the south; Propaganda battles and managed neighborhoods provide footholds in opposition territory. Welcome to life in 2245.