The planetsider

the long version

After The Fall the scattered pockets of civilization that survived choose to live in ignorance of the past. No-one wants to know what caused the apocalypse. No-one, except Ethan. As a boy, Ethan believed in the guardians - mysterious lights in the night sky that, according to folklore, safeguard survivors from The Maddening. This horrific sickness mutated men and women into Roamers; savage nomads, stripped of their humanity. But when a Roamer attack killed his parents, Ethan's faith was shattered and replaced with a hunger to know the truth. One night Ethan watches a light grow bright in the night sky and crash to the planet's surface near a ruined city. There he finds Maria, a descendant of the pre-Fall civilization which is trapped off-world and unable to return to the poisoned planet. Maria has risked everything to find a Planetsider; a man or woman with an inborn resistance to The Maddening. She begs Ethan to help to save her people, and in return he will finally learn the truth. But the revelations come at a terrible cost and Ethan finds himself drawn into a war that has raged for generations. Who will he choose to save and can he himself be saved?