I’ve written here before about Crusader Kings II. The After the End mod, which I discovered a few months ago, is set in North America and begins in July 2666, approximately 600 years after an ambiguous Event which brought about the end of what we would recognize as “modern” society (and supposedly took place at some point between 1945 and 2077). The mod is still very much a work in progress, but for the most part it’s playable, provided you want to play somewhere between the Atlantic Ocean, California/Oregon/Washington State/Nevada, southern Canada, and Central America (Costa Rica, approximately).

In America of the mid-27th century, there are several major religions- Catholicism in the Midwest (the Pope resides in St. Louis), Protestantism in the South (based out of the Holy Columbian Confederacy which rules the Carolinas), the Rust Cult of the country between Chicago and Pittsburgh, the Occultists of Appalachia and New England, the Revelationists of the Midwest and South, Voodoo in Louisiana, and, if I remember correctly, Rastafarianism and Santeria in the Caribbean and various syncretic religions in Mexico and Central America. I just realized I had almost forgotten the Norse, which is followed by most of the “Northlanders” of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and northern Michigan. There’s also the Americanists, who exist in various places across the former United States and, if I remember correctly, worship Washington and various other figures from American history as gods. The Consumerists, who tend to rise some time in the 2660s or 2670s but don’t exist in 2666, believe that the Old World collapsed because they failed to properly venerate the Almighty Dollar, and seek to avert the apocalypse by spending as much as possible.

Sometime I’ll have to write a better introduction, and maybe even make a map, but I had started to type the rough draft of a “history” I started writing early this morning when I realized an introduction to the mod might be helpful.