Prologue: The Crew in DFW

Feb 21, 2026

Welcome to the Sixth World, Chummer

It’s 2086. Take a deep breath of that smoggy, neon-tinged air, because you’re living on borrowed time in a world that’s been running on a double-espresso of chaos and magic for over seventy-five years. Since the Awakening slammed into reality in 2011, the rules of physics, politics, and rights have been rewritten. Maybe you’ve got old family credsticks with vids of a world without elves and trolls, without corporate-owned police forces, and without the constant, buzzing threat of a dragon holding a controlling interest in your life. That world is gone, and the one we’re in now is hungry.

Dallas-Fort Worth: The Battle-Scarred Crossroads

You’re standing on hallowed ground, chummer. Literally. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the capital of the Confederation of American States (CAS), and its history is a bloody knot of war, betrayal, and profit.

For forty years, this slice of Texas has been passed around like a cheap data chip. It was yanked into the CAS, then seized by the warmongering Aztlan nation a year later. For three decades, the streets you walk were occupied territory, under the iron fist of Aztlan’s blood and honor regime.

It only changed twelve years ago, when Aztlan, facing a resource-intensive war with Amazonia, was too worried about fighting on multiple fronts. They sold Dallas-Fort Worth back to the CAS. They called it a “peaceful transfer.” Everyone else called it a desperate corporate sale.

Now, DFW is a CAS border capital; a glittering, paranoid jewel caught between the Texas prairie and the looming threat of its southern neighbor. The air here is thick with military contractors, CAS patriots, Aztlan sympathizers, and the kind of corporate types who treat a megabyte of data like a sovereign nation. It’s a boomtown for shadows, and that’s why you’re here.

The Crew

You’re a team, not a choir. You’ve gotten through at least two runs together. Maybe a smash-and-grab to pay the rent, a messy data extraction, or a desperate fight in a grimy back alley. You know each other’s tells, how they’d handle a firefight, and whether or not they ditch the evidence. That kind of trust is rarer than a legit CAS ballot.

Locals

You know the hidden tunnels beneath the old highways, the best places to fence hot hardware, and which corp-sec patrols to avoid. You’ve got roots in this city’s messy history.

Outsiders