Chapter One
A Brief History of the Extermination War
On November 21st 2013, the angel invasion began. Lower angels claimed possession of unwilling human bodies, then launched a war to wipe out all of humanity. The attack was invisible, insidious, terrifying and sudden.
Historians have dubbed the devastation and bloodshed that followed “The Extermination War.”
Over the next seventeen years, more than six billion lives were lost and many of the great cities were either reduced to rubble or deserted. In the Battle of Shanghi alone, 200 million lives were lost. The 2018 Assault on the Eastern Seaboard wiped out every metropolitan center between Boston and Charleston. Communications with Europe were lost in 2022, Russia and the rest of Asia the year after.
On the brink of extermination, humankind rallied in what was once the upper northeast United States. All able-bodied survivors were organized under the leadership of General Edward Riesen. Seeing his chance, the archangel Gabriel, leader of the angel armies, massed the remaining possessed and set out to end mankind.
After almost two decades of war like this world had never seen, fighting devolved into a series of violent land battles. Following a long Fabian retreat into southwest deserts, General Riesen executed a stunning envelopment of the massed angel army at The Battle of Hoover Dam. Human losses were severe, but Riesen had ended Gabriel’s ability to wage large scale war.
