LHIAM HUD The mighty capital was lying in the middle of the alpine landscape like a sleeping spider. The city was called Lhiam Hud, before the war it was one of the big, old trading metropolises. The governmental palace was enthroned in the center of the city, surrounded by dozens of high towers and houses. The style and surface of the buildings were the same, but yet none was similar to the other, each one had a different shape and size. Huge domes were hovering on the buildings and made them look like over-dimensional mushrooms. Those domes protected the houses from the radioactive dust. The governmental palace was protected by such a dome as well, ten times as big as the other domes. Huge proton-cannons were resting on the walls like sleeping monsters, and every autumn they reacted to the big migrations of birds passing by on their way south.
  
 
 
 
 

TORN LEV The city consisted only of ruins and stretched over the entire valley. Solely single structures on the ground reminded of a former civilization.
At one time Torn Lev was a flourish center of economy, a political and industrial symbol. Big armament plants like Nuktek or Sonor III had their main locations here, a fact that was the city's doom during the war. In four battles, lying apart one decade from each other, the nuclear thunderstorm was sweeping heavier and heavier over the area. People believed that the city was cursed, its name was removed from the maps, the area was named "Hopbog - Joffha", a combination of words from the Nomad's language which means something like "butcher's ground". Nevertheless the name "Torn Lev" could never be erased from the memory of war.

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
KEI'S APARTMENT Kei had built her nest inside a big, empty factory.
The concrete-base on which the housing space was located was surrounded by a water basin, a small footwalls led into the inner of the beaver's lodge. The protective function of the construction allowed Kei a peaceful life. The hall was bridged with mighty concrete-girders, and from the girders big webs of cloth stretched over the living space and weaved it into a huge, shining, pastel-colored cocoon, looking like an alien element inside the desolate factory-ruin. From all sides bright daylight was flowing inside through the destroyed walls, flooding through the clothes, and on a sunny day the entire apartment was shimmering in comfortably warm, soft colors. A kitchen-garden was growing inside her living room, where Kei was cultivating corn, beans and Cojp, a nourishing mutation-plant. Kei's nest appears like a small fairyland. A magical, irrational island in the middle of a devastated world.
  
 
 
 
  LAKAR HUD The massive of the Highlands of Torn was stretching over the entire latitude of the horizon, like a wedge that has been breaking out of the landscape. In front of it Lakar Hud looked like a small heap of stones fallen down from the mountain range.
Lakar Hud was a lost industrial area that covered a huge expanse. Giant factories rose at unequal distances high into the sky, thousands of concrete-silos were standing like ancient memorials in the landscape. Not a living soul was visible. The wind was howling strange melodies through the ghost-city, as if the former workers and inhabitants told the others about the arrival of all alien intruders.
    
         
    HIGHLANDS OF TURIAKON Even in the evening the light on the highlands' horizon was not refracted. The brightness decreased slowly and without changing the colors of the sky and the mountains. All around the peaks of the 5000ers rose into the sky. A big, longish lake spread between the mountains, it was deeply blue, the wind shacked waves on its surface, clapping quietly against the shore without disturbing the peace of the place.
A promontory was reaching into the lake, connecting the shore with a small island. On the peak of the island a small, strange building was standing. It had the shape of a snail-shell, with a bright metal roof, shiningly reflecting the sun. A small path was leading over the promontory to the shore.		  
         
  UNDER TORN LEV The steep tunnel was leading into the mountain in serpentine lines. Water was running from the walls, the ground was wet and sticky. After a few hundred meters the tunnel led into a narrow, subterranean crevice that reached up high into the darkness and continued the way into the belly of the mountain. Chattering noises fell down into the crevice from the unseen above. Strange shadows appeared, projected by small daylights finding their way down from the world above. Then the subterranean lake began, leading through in a vast, dark cave-maze. At some spots the water level was so high that Nok's boat had hardly enough space to swim though under the cave's ceiling. It seemed as if the light of the boat was illuminating the entire cave and was hovering slowly through the grotto like a ghost.    
         
    CONTAMINATED HIGHLANDS OF TORN The Highlands of Torn were a class-A-radiation area. There were only five other areas with such a high level of contamination. Torn was the smallest of these areas, and still it stretched over several hundred kilometers through the mountains. Typical for this area was its shape, longish but at the same time very narrow at some spots. The longish shape had its origin in the former frontline of the Tuk-wars, which was leading directly through the mountains here. Before the lines were overrun, they had been weakened for months by intensive bombardments.
The radiation kills slowly. It holds you tight and stuns you like a spider, to suck you out later on. The Quon-nomads say, a soul that dies in the radiation is captured in hell forever and can never be delivered.
  
         
 

BISCHEWANJA The Bischewanja-prison was an accumulation of several concrete-towers cocooned into a thick petrochemical haze and disappearing in the dark Siberian sky. The heavily contaminated air was crackling on the surface of the buildings, the snowfields around the outer fence were littered with hundreds of improvised graves, occasionally small groups of prisoners could be seen, burying others. The prison was a nuclear power plant, the prisoners are being forced to carry out the murderous work, most of them were victims of the degrading prisoners-of-war-program. Bischewanja had over 6500 detentions, 4800 male, 1700 female. The number kept changing consequently, the number of casualties was enormous, as well as the number of those who were deported to Bischewanja every month.

    
         
    DRONES Drones were genetically bred killers, partly organism, partly machine. Mercenaries which were rented for devastation. The drones' armament-technology was made accessible to several companies to encourage the contest of development. All drone-projects were subjected to the severe control of the governmental secret service, but were economically independent. The designs of the drones were very different and projected beyond pure expediency. The first drone-battle had a similar disastrous surprise-effect as the first poison gas - deployments in the World War I. But there were also many failures and catastrophes, caused by malfunction or insufficient rendering capabilities. An old wisdom says: "Never fight an android with an android."  
         
  KERENSKY'S APARTMENT The "Datscha" was a self-sufficient research-centre, consisting of a dozen giant, oval, dome-like buildings growing out of the hilly wood-landscape. Kerensky's apartment was located inside the main building of the complex. The entire floor belonged to the super-scientist, the apartment consisted of one single room with different levels. It was dark, the sky outside was cloudy every day. The entire front of the room was made of glass, behind the huge window a dark-green wall of trees filled the view. The interior of the apartment was totally reduced and gave a very sterile impression. The furniture was bright, modern and expensive. Kerensky liked that place. Sometimes the extremely consequent balance of this place frightened him, because he was feared to leave it and enter the disorder that awaited him outside.    
         
   

THE BUNKER The bunker was a dark place with narrow corridors and shafts, filled with a sea of exotic, sparkling green plants. The complex had originally been a military research-project, designed to enable a small group of people to live completely self-sufficiently under the earth for a longer period. 16 adults and 15 kids built the strange subterranean community. The half-rounded, shining white meditation room was the only bright room in the whole complex, a place that was entered with respect by everybody. It had the shape of a dome, with fluorescent walls to use the available light optimally. Here the Missionaries met each other for discussions, for praying and meditation.
The daily routine was strictly prescribed: education, training, meals, resting, sleeping, games, spare-time, hygiene, medical checks, praying-hours and dream-circles.

 
         
  THE SUNKEN CITY The air was stuffy and wet. Somewhere in the depth, strange, fluorescent misty-veils moved through slowly, shimmering in green and yellow neon-colors through the devastated main street of a year 2035 metropolis. The sunken city's architecture reminded of a mixture of Eastern-Asian and Indian elements combined with the misery of western metropolitan environments. Long columns of cars led like worms through the streets, most of them burned or destroyed. Water dropped down like rain from the subterranean lake above into the sunken city. Some of the buildings seemed to be intact, others were collapsed, now barring entire street blocks. Many barricades and destroyed military vehicles reminded of the horrifying final battle that had wiped out the city's last inhabitants. From all around, strange noises moaned through the dead place. A strange, new presence was perceptible.    
         
    HIGH SECURITY AREA The high security area was a huge, dark concrete-shaft. A bridge connected the entrance with a steel-platform that was hovering over the gulf. Down in the abyss the dirty walls disappeared after a hundred meters in a black nothing.
The air was heavy and cold. About 80 meters below, at the bottom of the shaft, a small circle of light was glowing. In the centre of the circle a small girl was standing motionlessly. Her arms were bound to a pole which was locked to her neck with a metal ring, her eyes were glued shut with fabric. In the bright light the figure looked like a captured angel. From a loudspeaker a female voice echoed through the room.		  
         
  MUTANTS The first forms of these genetic malformations, caused by contaminated genotype, were one of the most cruel and critical side-effects of the nuclear war. Nature couldn't withstand the contamination any more and branched off wrongly on its way of human evolution. They were animals, dangerous beasts, most of them were cannibals. The worst assault was the "Eating of Bolog". An estimated number of hundred thousand mutants assailed the refugee-metropolis Bolog simultaneously killing ten thousands of people, before they were wiped out by the biggest punctual poison-gas attack in the history of war. Those inhabitants of Bolog, who had survived the mutant's attack, died together with the monsters in the gas.    
         
    THE ORACLE An ice-cold trace of fear was hovering out of the cave like a bad breath. The way back seemed to close behind any intruder, giving one the feeling of arriving in the stomach of a black monster. The oracle was located at the deepest spot of the cave, far under the surface of earth. It consisted of a small hall, made of ice, with the shape of an onion, disappearing in the darkness above. Rattling chimes whispered through endless corridors and shafts, a low dripping of water mixed in an enchanted melody, the walls glittered and seemed to breathe. The air was cold and clear, it tasted like an eternity, reaching far into the past and the future.