World Overview

Thanks to James Jaspers, the world, simply put, is not what it once was. The Jaspers' Warp swept over the planet, rewriting everything it came in contact with - the landscape, the buildings, even the people. Nothing was lost, per se - but few things remained the same.

The new world is characterized by diverse cultures and eras inexplicably living side by side. One might feature high technology (in some cases far in advance of anything previously seen on Earth, while its neighbor might have a society based on magic or steampower. Some areas look as if they've never been visited by humans, whereas others harbor the residual warp energy, transforming anything that enters them in unpredictable ways. Some small areas are a hybrid product of their neighbors, featuring random combinations of magic and/or variant eras of technology.

Its even stranger that the people in these areas were also reoriented to "fit" their environment. Someone living in Sentinel Containment Zone 1981, for example, will believe that their country has never been other than a technologically-oriented zone where mutants are kept in camps and where sentinels patrol the streets; the residents of Yorktown will similarly assume that magic has always been dominant. That's not to say that people can't build on their roots - if someone from Yorktown travelled to a neighboring area, they'd be exposed to the new culture and be able to learn it. But they wouldn't "remember" it.

There's no going back, only forward.