The Back Story
Prologue
During a time of floods, earthquakes, storms, droughts, volcanic eruptions, and other assorted natural disasters, Panem rose from the ashes of a country whose people were terrified and unsure. A government arose that brought stability and assurance to its citizens. The government was in the center of the nation and was ringed by thirteen districts. Districts that felt that the cost for stability and assurance was too high.
The rebellion was unplanned. It was sloppy. The aftermath was required penance. It brought about a kind of panem et circenses that would be in all conversations of the Capitol. It brought about the Hunger Games, a pageant of strength and courage. This pageant was a contest in which two tributes from each district, one boy and one girl, between the ages of twelve and eighteen would be chosen at random at a public Reaping. Then all twenty four 'tributes' would participate in a fight to the death in an arena that could contain anything from a frozen, unrelenting wasteland to a parched desert with nothing but dry, brittle weeds to find shelter in.
After the first Quarter Quell, the Hunger Games held every twenty five years, the outlying districts were becoming restless. They knew something the Capitol, and mostly President Snow, wanted the districts to know nothing about. They knew District Thirteen was alive and well beneath the ashes of their district. They knew that Thirteen was planning something, something big.
