The Seven Colonies

"The Seven Colonies" is a war story, a tale of passion and friendship, a horror novel, and an unmistakable blend of action and adventure. It's a story set between two distinct worlds with inseparable destinies and futures. Joshua and Mariya are two young teenagers, two blood brothers whom fate ironically chose as candidates for the altar of martyrs of a people oppressed by greed and thirst for power. A simple amulet inherited in haste will change their destinies forever.

Arzgon is a distant planet, foreign to our galaxy. A faraway and inhabited place, a corrupt and blackened land, a corner on the brink of natural and social collapse. Zarzgon is a neighboring planetoid, inhospitable and pure, a virgin land and a synonym for hope and continuity, a dream of the future and a vision of the present.

In a time unlike our own, Arzgon is living through a period similar to the one we witness with impunity on this beloved sphere of ours, which we once called Earth; a time marked by an uncontrolled and obsessive industrial revolution. There, as here, natural resources are being depleted to exhaustion, destroying the native and the beautiful, replacing them with the artificial and the conveniently practical. At the time this narrative takes place, most of the primeval forests that resisted the greedy destruction of Arzgonian man have watched with sorrow as a significant portion of their animal and plant life has almost completely disappeared. In these places, now seemingly inhospitable places, a new batch of residents genetically altered by years of excessive pollution has appeared in place of the original inhabitants. Dangerous and mysterious mutant creatures now inhabit these dark and forsaken corners.

As in the wild, life in large cities is anything but pleasant. Two-thirds of the Arzgonian population lives in sheer misery, in inhumane conditions. Diseases spread at a dizzying pace, as fast as the wind that carries the stench of a rotten society with no faith in itself. Years of over-reliance on technology, the excessive consumption and burning of fossil fuels, the sharp decline in ethical and moral values, financial scandals, poor agricultural years, and natural disasters, among many other factors, have led to a state bordering on camouflaged anarchy, leaving a regime so weakened and ashamed of itself that it feels the need to reemerge from the nightmare at all costs.

Riots between factions of the population have become a constant feature of daily life. But it is above all the clashes between citizens and the military that cause the greatest outrage and consternation. The local government has reached the so-called point of no return and is forced to consider a drastic solution, a way out of a situation that grows more unbearable with each passing day, and which threatens the extinction of the species itself within decades. The greatest and most capable minds on the planet gathered for months in search of a glimmer of hope. The solution emerged. It was not easy to achieve, nor would it generate consensus among the population, but it was the only minimally viable and feasible alternative. Of the two evils, the lesser of all: advanced technology would allow it! - Zarzgon would be colonized !

Lothar, the capital of Arzgon , had as its highest authority the Council of Elders of Arzgon , a sort of parliament similar to what we know from our democratic systems. It was composed primarily of the oldest members, and hence some of the most respected members of the nation. It was within this district and near this city that an important archaeological and scientific discovery was made, a find more or less contemporaneous with the uproar sparked by the colonization process. A blessing in disguise, or a blessing in disguise—it's certainly difficult to find a compromise on this issue...

Somewhere in the place known as the Black Forest , a testament to the past was unearthed, an archaeological treasure trove featuring seven pieces: seven medallions. Curiously, as many as the number chosen for the original colonies of Zarzgon. The discovery sparked countless rumors and speculations within the nation. For some reason, mining operations ceased permanently, with the government banning all access to the land in question, without any conclusions or explanations regarding the mysterious find being made public. And as is well known, it is in times of crisis that people tend to speculate most, fueling the fire of myths and legends. And these were not long in emerging...

The first years of colonization passed without major upheaval, and a few decades of relative calm and prosperity interspersed the revolutionary period of greatest turmoil with the birth of Joshua and Mariya. The two were little more than teenagers when a new period of exaltation swept through the inhabited lands of Zarzgon . Rumors long buried and forgotten resurfaced, and interest in amulets rose from the ashes like a Phoenix that had never gone much beyond its waking state. Much speculation had always surrounded these artifacts, regarding their alleged supernatural characteristics, occult powers, metaphysical possibilities, origins, and true meaning. Legend or not, the truth is that these objects became a veritable obsession for some, and among them Kondar, son of Zabret, governor of the Norvelite colony, stood out.

The few who know him say of this disturbed genius that he is not a human creature, that he is more ghostly and demonic than human. His malevolent reputation clung, like a thirsty leech, to the saliva of the mouths that uttered his name. His tenebrous army of destruction, like a creature of darkness, was nicknamed Drombie. Very little is known about its origins, except that its soldiers resemble creatures without willpower, and ultimately, without life of their own, as if they were masks of skin and bone made to adorn a carcass of flesh devoid of feelings or emotions, an empty shell.

Kondar and his astronomically large army embarked on a campaign of conquest, spreading chaos and destruction across the four corners of Zarzgon . While their intent was initially unclear, what was certain was that with their heavy, resolute pace, they managed to burn and engulf colonies to the frantic rhythm of the drone of their powerful firearms. Tarein, the birthplace of Joshua and Mariya, once ruled by their grandfather, is one of the next obstacles in the path of Kondar and his Drombies . Their lives will never be the same again. Not theirs, nor anyone else's!