A/N: Hello people of Fanfiction.net, I'm back! Been a while huh? You guys miss me? Oh who am I kidding...nobody on this site probably noticed I was gone anyway...whatever, I guess I'll just have to make sure to write stories that are so awesome that people will have no choice but to get worried when I don't update them! Like this one will hopefully be! Yeah, little history lesson on this story folks, I was actually intending on writing either another chapter for one of my Naruto fanfiction stories, or getting around to writing my first Rosario + Vampire fanfic, but I decided that to hell with that, I needed to get this out of my system first before I could get around to writing one of those things. So what is it I'm writing here exactly? Well, it isn't necessarily what most people would term a first chapter, more like a true example of what people would call a prologue with the actual story to come sometime hopefully within the next two weeks. So what's it about? Well as you can tell from the stories title and my past writing history, this is my very first Harry Potter fic, but to be more exact it's another crossover fic which is the first of its kind. This time it's a crossover between Harry Potter and a roleplaying game called GURPS: Technomancer by Steve Jackson Games. GURPS is an acronym which stands for: Generic Universal Roleplaying System and the various books using GURPS cover a wide variety of worlds and topics including this unique premise of their self-created Technomancer setting. Now don't worry my friends, I'm well aware of the fact there's few if any GURPS based fanfics on the site (hence why the site dosen't seem to have a category for GURPS fanfics), so it's a good guess that many of you might not know anything about the Technomancer setting. Hence why I've written this little prologue to help get you in to the setting (with necessary changes to make everything in my story fit properly) and to help set the stage for the unique premise of this fanfic. Oh and if anyone is wondering, I don't know what if any pairings will be in the story but it probably won't be the canon HP ones. Also this story will include what I hope will be seen as a more serious Harry and while there will definitely be a manipulative Dumbledore in this story, at this point I'm still on the fence about whether he should be evil or just incredibly out of touch and misguided with his whole greater good spiel. Anyway, as always please review so I know whether or not to really focus on this story or if I should just abandon it and work on my other stories. Oh and one last thing, I only own my own original ideas, characters, and premises. Everything else in this story belongs to their respective owners and I'm simply writing this story for fun and not profit.

Now with that said let the story begin...


Prologue: The World (Almost) Set Free:

Magic, a force with immense and innumerable uses and abilities. It is an otherworldly force, not native in fact to the material reality humans and other mortal beings inhabit and throughout the course of human history its levels throughout this universe and others has waxed and waned in a natural cyclical cycle. During especially high periods of ambient magical energy such as the era of ancient egypt, rome, or greece it was possible for nearly anyone with proper training to wield it thus causing it to be seen as natural phenomenon and in the hands of especially strong wielders it was even considered a gift from the gods. During those periods of low ambient magical energy when its use had been limited to a select few with a genetic adaptation to absorb magic in large quantities (known simply as wizards for males and witches for females), magic became a mysterious unknowable force with opinions of it and its users becoming split between one extreme or another.

It was during one such period of waning around the dawn of what scientists term the little ice age (roughly 1350 C.E) that the tides began to turn against those who possessed said gift for using magic. Crop failures caused by the cooling weather combined with the outbreak of plagues like the black death led many people to seek a scapegoats for their troubles in the form of outsiders and minorities, including the magically adept populations of the Europe and the like. Many magic users, unsure as to which muggles (what magic folk in most of the world call non-magic users) could be trusted and who would sell them out to the rising tides of anti-magic bigots decided that it was decided that discretion was the better part of valor and thus they decided to fade away from the public eye altogether.

While it may seem difficult for an entire section of the Earth's population to simply vanish from public view, given the era in which this happened it was not as hard as people imagine. The world was still a large and mysterious place made even larger by the rediscovery of the Americas around this time. Add in the numerous conflicts and plagues allowing for plenty of opportunities to easily fake one's death plus the versatility of magic, and it was fairly simple for someone to fake their death and then slip away to far off realms like the far east or the backwoods of the newly discovered Americas in an attempt to start afresh (though how well this plan worked out varied from person to person). Now admittedly not everyone took this route, some refused to hide what they were and decided to try and whether the storm of anti-magical sentiment in full public view. However many of those individuals in this group soon found themselves running afoul of organizations such as the Inquisition and the occasional king who when he found out he couldn't be taught magic decided it was time to lop off some heads which further served to dissuade magic users from appearing in public.

However the event which finally drove the magical community into what seemed like it would be permanent hiding was an event known even to those from which the magic users hid. The Salem witch trials, a horrifying event which led to the deaths of over a dozen innocent individuals at the hands of townspeople affected under the whims of a bout of mass hysteria. Though ironically no actual witches were killed by the town folks (due to discrete and careful use of magical protections and spells by the actual magic users which allowed them to fake their deaths), this act so horrified the magical community that any notion of coexistence between magical and non-magical groups was effectively killed for the time being. And so in response to this and similarly heinous actions, the magical population decided the best course of action was to cut themselves off from the majority of the muggle population by secluding themselves in magically protected communities. Furthermore to help ensure the separation between the two groups the the international statute of wizarding secrecy was founded. This act which (with the exception of one additional clause added in the 1750 to assist in its enforcement) has remained unchanged since its creation had effectively served to enforce the barrier between the magical and mundane for the most part via threats of legal action and punishments.

Now admittedly no system is perfect, this one included. In this case one not only had to deal with both magical children being born to muggle parents (thus necessitating the involvement of the muggle parents and immediate relatives), but also in order to ensure the enforceability of this act some degree of communication with the muggle government had to occur thus making complete separation of the two groups impossible. However these exceptions aside magic and mundane have remained quite distinctive and separate from one another...or at least that's how it use to be...

Given what was just written whomever is reading this might assume that this world being written about was a familiar and much better known one involving a young english boy with a lightning bolt scar caught up in a prophecy. Well, those caught up in that assumption would be both right and wrong. For you see, though that child is the focus of our story this world is wildly different from the one most people are familiar with.

The change can be traced to a single event which while significant to the muggle part of the population, would have had little bearing on the lives of the wizarding community had things played out as they should have. The story at first glance is a familiar one and begins as the British would put it over the pond in the United States. More specifically in the state of New Mexico. Picture this, it's July 1945 and the civilian populations of the Allied powers are still running on the euphoric high resulting from the defeat of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in the past couple of months. However as wonderful as this may be, the fact remains that the military and scientific community knows there is still one enemy left to fight in the form of Imperial Japan. And so in the early morning hours of July 16, 1945 at a spot in New Mexico that would come to be known as the Trinity Test site, the sum total of the multi-billion dollar Manhattan project, a weapon with the capability of ending the war, was finally tested. At 5:29 AM and 45 seconds the world's first atomic weapon, the implosion type plutonium fueled atomic device codenamed "the gadget" detonated with the force somewhere between 18-20 kilotons of TNT. In response to the awe invoked by this historic event a researcher on the project one Dr. Julius Robert Oppenheimer, uttered a phrase which would have become famous in the burgeoning atomic age to come, "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." And then...things took a turn no one anticipated...

In a thousand different variant versions of earth it is interesting to note that what followed has only been observed on a select few versions of earth where this event played out. What ties these versions of earth together is confusingly both known and unknown. It is known, that the key to this event lies in the phrase uttered by Dr. Oppenheimer. When the good doctor uttered said phrase he thought he was uttering the translation of a verse from the ancient hindu holy book known as the Bhagavad Gita. In truth he was completely wrong on that account, the full true translation of the phrase he meant is in fact: "Doom am I, full-ripe, dealing death to the worlds, engaged in devouring mankind. Even without slaying them not one of the warriors, ranged for battle against thee, shall survive". Unknown to Dr. Oppenheimer while what he said was completely wrong translation wise, it was unknown to most folks the key phrase of a very old and very ancient magic ritual. One that required a very large amount of energy to function like say either a mass sacrifice of enormous proportions...or in this case the detonation of multi-kiloton atomic weapon. And here is where the previously mentioned unknown comes in. On nearly every version of the trinity test site throughout the multiverse Oppenheimer said this quote and yet only in a few versions of Earth did the ritual actually function. So why was that?

Well, nobody knows for certain however the best guess on why it did work was due to a slight difference in timing. Magic rituals are notoriously sensitive to differences to timing and on most versions of Earth it has been hypothesized (by those few scientists in the know nowadays) that Oppenheimer said the phrase either too soon, or too late for the ritual to work and give the proper result.

And what a result it was...

Slowly at first and the with a steadily increasing rate, the mushroom shaped cloud caused by "the gadget's" successful atomic reaction began to rotate in an unnatural tornado-like fashion. That oddity and the subsequent malfunctioning of every radio in 20 miles was more than a little weird and unsettling...the fact more than one person reportedly saw ghostly images in the vortex just before said tornado suddenly began shooting out blood red lightning was downright terrifying.

Needless to say, when the vortex refused to dissipate even after several day it became apparent that perhaps using another of these weapons was not a good idea. Fortunately through bluff, bluster, the lessening of terms of surrender and the guarantee that the emperor would not be dethroned America was able to convince the Japanese to stand down without the need of using another atomic weapon. With that done the American forces turned to their attention to trying to understand the phenomenon which had altered national weather patterns for a time and which still continued to rage in New Mexico even as the days turned into weeks and then months. It would be some time before anyone realized precisely what this event signified for the world. What was known was that following the creation of a second even more massive Soviet made event of this nature in 1949 Antarctica even without the utterance of the key phrase, it was clear that nuclear weapons technology was off the table. It was especially clear this was the right course of action once scientific reports highlighting the potential damage another of these events might cause to the global environment came out. And all the while as these debates and inquiries were being done, the strange and unnatural things which caused these discussions raged. So horrifying and otherworldly were these events which so defied all known logical rhyme or reason, that the only name which seemed appropriate for these things were the one crafted by the more god fearing of those who saw them when they first appeared...Hellstorms.

And yet this was only the beginning of strange events. For quite some time people failed to realize that these events were more than just strange and unnatural weather patterns. No in truth the reality of the situation was far, far, worse. The truth of this matter was that the inadvertently completed ritual at the Trinity Test Site which created the first Hellstorm had actually weakened the barriers between earth and another parallel world, so much so in fact that when the Soviets tested their own weapon just the energy it released alone was enough to rip another even more massive hole between the realms. The destination these raging vortexes lead to is still a mystery as no one has ever survived a trip into the heart of a Hellstorm and lived. What was known was that wherever the storms led, that realm had an inordinate amount of what scientists later termed Oz particles. The very same particles which the first Hellstrom dumped over a 2,000 mile stretch of the U.S, Mexico, and parts of Canada later to be known as Trinity's shadow and which the second Hellstorm would deposit in smaller amounts world wide via the ocean currents which surrounded Antarctica. The very same particles that scientists later determined were the true power source behind all magic...

As magic levels hit record highs those places that now found themselves blessed with an abundance of magic were unsure what to do with it especially given the strange phenomenon it was causing. Most notably amongst the strange phenomenon was the sudden appearance of large numbers of magically adept children, strange half-human half-animal chimera children born to humans, and an even more horrifying series of reports that showed appearance of the undead in some parts of the nations afflicted by these particles. However after some hesitation and the realization that these things weren't going away anytime soon, the U.S government decided to see what this newly found force could do. The results of scientific experimentation into the use of magic was better than anyone could have imagined and served to alter U.S history in many, many ways by beginning what scientist now call the third industrial (or as some called it the Technomancer) revolution.

You would think these events raging in what was one of the most powerful nations on earth would have been big news to the secluded magical communities, especially given that they had to deal with muggle born witches and wizards who must have seen this sort of supernatural stuff occurring more frequently than any other time in recent world history...a very logical train of thought...and yet for some reason one which is completely wrong...

For some strange reason, within the confines of the magical communities it was as though nothing had changed, as though the Trinity and Antarctic events and those events that followed in their wake never happened. Things simply went on as they had in the past as though everyone had seen what had occurred and decided it should just be ignored. And it probably would have stayed that way...that is until one long series of events, one over a decade in motion finally came to fruition in a way that could not be ignored. A series of events which began on Halloween night, 1981 in a small cottage near a town predominantly occupied by magic wielders in Southwestern England named Godric's Hollow...


So there you have it, the prologue to Harry Potter: The Hellstorm chronicles. I hope you've enjoyed it and if so, please do me a favor by reviewing it. Oh and if anyone is curious, the title of the prologue is an homage to the story "The World Set Free" by H.G Wells, a 1914 story which predicted the creation of atomic weapons over a decade before the neutron had been discovered by scientists. As for why I altered the title...well you'll just have to read the rest of the story to realize why...

Until then my friends I wish you all the best and I hope you will enjoy what is to come. Take care!