Many horrors and crimes had occurred throughout history, but few matched the desperate and violent acts that nations would commit in the name of all they could claim for themselves. Some optimistic souls thought that wars over these resources would be the turning point for humanity, the crucible that would forge a future of peace. After all, how could things get any worse?
They were wrong.
The end of the world came about almost as we had predicted: too many humans, not enough space or resources for everyone. The details are trivial and useless, the reasons, as always, were purely human.
In the year 2077, after millennia of armed conflict, man's destructive nature had run its course. In just 2 hours, the Earth was almost clean of life... Not only human, for this great cleansing affected all life on the planet, an atomic spark struck by human hands that quickly spun out of control. Spears of nuclear energy rained down from the skies and the world was plunged into an abyss of fire and nuclear radiation. Continents were swallowed up in flames and fell beneath the boiling oceans. Humanity was almost extinct, their spirits part of the background radiation that covered the Earth.
But despite what many predicted, it was not the end of the world. The apocalypse was merely the prologue to another bloody chapter in the history of mankind.
For man had succeeded in destroying the world, but war? War never changes.
The US capital, Washington DC, was before the war a shining example of society. But in the early hours of the Great War, it was reduced to a hollow, radioactive shell of its former self. The Earth was saturated by the fallout from countless nuclear bombs, poisoning its soil and waters. Monuments of the greatest and most inspiring moments in the history of that ancient country were lost or scarred forever. The seat of the U.S. government was almost completely annihilated, and for two centuries the ruins of DC lay abandoned, bleached by the sun and covered in ashes.
For the people of what is now the Capital Wasteland, life is pure suffering. Raiders, mutants and wild animals pick off those who stray from the safe regions of the few civilizations that have risen from the ashes. Food and clean water are commodities that people struggle and die every day trying to find throughout the Capital Wasteland. A race of monstrous, greenish-skinned beings, the Supermutants, feed on humans relentlessly, capturing them and taking them to places unknown. Few are able to combat this great threat.
The Brotherhood of Steel, led by the sympathetic and noble Elder Owyn Lyons, has fought to protect the people of Yermo Capital for over 20 years. These knights and paladins, clad in power armor, and wielding technologically advanced weapons, attack the Supermutant menace from their command center: the Citadel, located within the ruins of the Pentagon.
But their efforts, though noble, have met with little success. A portion of their own kind, dissatisfied with Elder Lyons' choices, broke away from the Brotherhood, choosing instead to focus on the Brotherhood's original goals in the region: the acquisition of advanced pre-war technology. These Outcasts soldiers, (As soldiers loyal to Lyons labeled them) have set up shop at Fort Independence. Ferociously searching the ruins of DC for technology, disregarding anything (AND anyone) as a waste of time.
The brutal Supermutants, of unknown origin and number, have posed a constant threat to all who inhabit the Capital Wasteland. For years, they have been the nightmares of those who hunt, and have also invaded the ruins of DC. These large, unintelligent Meta-Humans, accompanied by their mutated abominations have waged a never-ending war for control over the Capital Wasteland.
They have not succeeded... Yet.
