Dust

In the year 1938, the scientific ship Schwabenland, its German flag flapping in the fierce, cold wind, approached the remote Arctic Circle on a secret mission. Even today, no one knows exactly what its original assignment was, but what it discovered dazed the entire world.

Returning to its homeland, the Schwabenland brought back the relics of an alien starship and a member of its crew… still alive! While the world continued to fall down its chasm of global conflict, a select team of scientists covertly studied the potential military applications of the Antarctic discovery, but their secret would not last long.

An underground war, parallel to the war in the open, was soon underway. Spies launched undercover operations, fighting to steal control and understanding of the alien technology. The brightest minds in the world pursued the new science, setting aside the research that might have led to atomic weapons.

Before long, occultists and experts in ancient religions joined the scientists in their inquiries. These fringe thinkers came to believe that the new discoveries were somehow linked to the ancient tale of the "Vrill Kultur." This mythic, supposedly an advanced civilization, had disappeared into the ancient past as nimbly as a deer in the woods.

The alien traveler soon shed more light on the theorists' studies. Vrill Kulture, they came to understand, was not a civilization, but a massively powerful energy source. "VK," which could be mined only at certain locations around the globe, was so rare and precious that the alien had braved interstellar travel to claim it.

By the time the locations of the VK deposits were discovered, and mining had begun, scientists had devised a multitude of ways to put it to use on the battlefield. The geographical distribution of the VK mines turned existing alliances and coalitions on their heads. The geopolitical balance of the entire planet stood on a knife edge.

History has been re-written. Now, it's the dawn of a new era, with new strategies, new weapons, new armies.

It's the dawn of Dust.