he year is 2012, and but for a few exceptions, the world’s population is gathered in one of 5 massive Sanctuary Cities. The sudden and explosive onset of the global conflict the year previous had stunned the people into a stupor with its ferocity and death toll. Already, many were calling this conflict the greatest bloodbath in human history, with some of the more radical groups calling it World War III or even Armageddon.

Secure behind the massive shields of their Sanctuaries, it was business as usual for the people. Like any city that is crowded and overflowing with people, law and order was barely existent in the majority of sectors, and crime, varying from petty theft to murder, was commonplace. The poorest of the sectors were known simply as “The Slums”, and the people there raved about seeing skeletons wreathed in lightning dragging people away. Most of these were dismissed and discarded by the rest of the population as the ravings of madmen and lunatics, or worse, attempts by the crime lords in the Slums to draw police forces away from crucial duties in a wild goose chase.

Numbed to the exponential rising death toll of their armies, no one gave more than a moment’s notice to the reports of disappearances amongst the Sanctuaries’ slums, even when whole sectors became isolated or abandoned. In time, communications with one of the Sanctuaries faltered and Sanctuary 1 – Europe went dark. But still, the people of the other Sanctuaries put it from their minds, unable or unwilling to imagine that a Sanctuary could vanish overnight. Eventually, unmanned probes were sent to investigate and the aerial surveillance footage showed that Sanctuary 1’s shield was still perfectly functional, and thus many people, in acts of self-gratification, settled in the belief that the loss of contact was simply a malfunction of the communication systems. Thus, the arrival of the Trinigons went unnoticed and unchecked until…