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Description
*H-hey! It's me, the messy, disorganized artist who forgets about this website for weeks at a time (i'm sorry for that but I've been busy lately).*
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As I've said some time ago, I'm working on a novel and trying to make illustrations for it, too. Well, this is one. (NOTE: this is not canon for the novel. Probably. The song in the image is "Wir sind des Geyers schwarzer Haufen", because I though it has a apocalyptic tone that fits here).
******************************************************************
By 2026, in a different timeline than ours, decades of worldwide scarcity, economic disasters and politic confrontation have sparked the dreaded Beta uprising, which quickly degenerated into a full-blown international war between several blocks and alliances with varied goals and objetives. The original "Beta males VS Normies" became just one of the things resistance groups and armies all over the world had to face at the same time.

An example of this is Luis Haroz. At the time the war started (December 12, 2022) he was just a high-school boy living in Madrid (Spain), with absolutely no training nor intention to go to battle. As the European Federation Army was overwhelmed by the Chinese and the American armies, besides several terrorist attacks and assaults every day, Luis was drafted against his will at the age of 13. His older sister, Amelia (age 20 at the time), was also forced to take a rifle and fight, but dissapeared when a helicopter bombed her trench during the Great Valencia Landing of winter 2024, never to be seen again. His best and quite only friend, Sergio, was also drafted and also dissapeared when the train carrying him to Lisboa was hit with a tactical mini-nuke of unnamed origin. His body was not found, so it is possible that both Amelia and Sergio are alive but at unknown locations.

Luis' platoon was tasked to defending the walled city of Gades, Southern Europe's crown jewel, and the neigbouring city of Cádiz, both being strategically located in the coast of the Gibraltar Strait. By the tenth month they had spent in the city, most of the platoon's members were already dead. Not like this terrible fate was only the soldier's one. As if the bombs and the hunger were not enough, people were suffering of mysterious, spontaneous death. Spain's pupulation of 40,2 million in 2020 was 15,2 million in 2026, and going down. Bigger countries suffered even greater losses, such as the US, UK, China and India. And nobody knew why was that happening, or if it had a cure.

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As another day slowly passed by, Luis knew it. There were 47°C, just like the past several weeks. The heat was suffocating. there were little fresh, non-contaminated water. Little food. No electricity. Just another day. That was why he knew it. He knew that there would not be any reinforcements. If they were to be, they would have come at the end of the first year. But they never appeared. His platoon was abandoned a long time ago. They were no longer part of the military, just a resistance group stuck in a ruined city, surrounded by bandits, pirates and rogue army units 24 hours a day. The few civilians left were something to be protected and shielded, so Luis and the remaining three soldiers of the 33th Vicálvaro Assault Platoon moved along with two families and six random citizens from building to building, scavenging for food and ammunitions. When they arrived at the city, each of the soldiers were given a machine gun, grenades and ammo, but most of them were lost by the fifth month. Luis lost his weapon and took a hunting bolt-action rifle instead, that he now carries at the back.

Luis is the youngest of the "trained" soldiers escorting the civilians, and was in fact drafted for the sole purpose of being strong enough to lift and hold a rifle. He lacks real strenght to fist-fight somebody, have a relatively low weight and in top of all of that, his height doesn't help either. In fact, he's been trapped and kidnapped a couple of times, but always managed to escape -either by crawling through sewers, distracting his kidnappers throwing sand at their eyes or luring them into using his body and then backstabbing them. And when in the relative security of the group, things don't go smoothly either. The new second-in-command, a 30-something man, have allegedly punished Luis disproportionately, for example burning the boy with cigarettes for tripping and dropping a box of bullets. He tried to fight back, but was overpowered everytime, not having even a safe place to flee on his own to.
And at this point of his life, having being beaten countless times, having lost both his best friend and older sister (his most loved one, and the only girl that would never, ever abandom him no matter what), Luis is little more than a shell-shocked, instinct-driven, broken version of a teenage boy who used to be just a bit shy.

Tuesday 21, August 2026. Southern Spanish front, in what's left of the European Federation.

Description
*H-hey! It's me, the messy, disorganized artist who forgets about this website for weeks at a time (i'm sorry for that but I've been busy lately).*
******************************************************************
As I've said some time ago, I'm working on a novel and trying to make illustrations for it, too. Well, this is one. (NOTE: this is not canon for the novel. Probably. The song in the image is "Wir sind des Geyers schwarzer Haufen", because I though it has a apocalyptic tone that fits here).
******************************************************************
By 2026, in a different timeline than ours, decades of worldwide scarcity, economic disasters and politic confrontation have sparked the dreaded Beta uprising, which quickly degenerated into a full-blown international war between several blocks and alliances with varied goals and objetives. The original "Beta males VS Normies" became just one of the things resistance groups and armies all over the world had to face at the same time.

An example of this is Luis Haroz. At the time the war started (December 12, 2022) he was just a high-school boy living in Madrid (Spain), with absolutely no training nor intention to go to battle. As the European Federation Army was overwhelmed by the Chinese and the American armies, besides several terrorist attacks and assaults every day, Luis was drafted against his will at the age of 13. His older sister, Amelia (age 20 at the time), was also forced to take a rifle and fight, but dissapeared when a helicopter bombed her trench during the Great Valencia Landing of winter 2024, never to be seen again. His best and quite only friend, Sergio, was also drafted and also dissapeared when the train carrying him to Lisboa was hit with a tactical mini-nuke of unnamed origin. His body was not found, so it is possible that both Amelia and Sergio are alive but at unknown locations.

Luis' platoon was tasked to defending the walled city of Gades, Southern Europe's crown jewel, and the neigbouring city of Cádiz, both being strategically located in the coast of the Gibraltar Strait. By the tenth month they had spent in the city, most of the platoon's members were already dead. Not like this terrible fate was only the soldier's one. As if the bombs and the hunger were not enough, people were suffering of mysterious, spontaneous death. Spain's pupulation of 40,2 million in 2020 was 15,2 million in 2026, and going down. Bigger countries suffered even greater losses, such as the US, UK, China and India. And nobody knew why was that happening, or if it had a cure.

***************************************************************************
As another day slowly passed by, Luis knew it. There were 47°C, just like the past several weeks. The heat was suffocating. there were little fresh, non-contaminated water. Little food. No electricity. Just another day. That was why he knew it. He knew that there would not be any reinforcements. If they were to be, they would have come at the end of the first year. But they never appeared. His platoon was abandoned a long time ago. They were no longer part of the military, just a resistance group stuck in a ruined city, surrounded by bandits, pirates and rogue army units 24 hours a day. The few civilians left were something to be protected and shielded, so Luis and the remaining three soldiers of the 33th Vicálvaro Assault Platoon moved along with two families and six random citizens from building to building, scavenging for food and ammunitions. When they arrived at the city, each of the soldiers were given a machine gun, grenades and ammo, but most of them were lost by the fifth month. Luis lost his weapon and took a hunting bolt-action rifle instead, that he now carries at the back.

Luis is the youngest of the "trained" soldiers escorting the civilians, and was in fact drafted for the sole purpose of being strong enough to lift and hold a rifle. He lacks real strenght to fist-fight somebody, have a relatively low weight and in top of all of that, his height doesn't help either. In fact, he's been trapped and kidnapped a couple of times, but always managed to escape -either by crawling through sewers, distracting his kidnappers throwing sand at their eyes or luring them into using his body and then backstabbing them. And when in the relative security of the group, things don't go smoothly either. The new second-in-command, a 30-something man, have allegedly punished Luis disproportionately, for example burning the boy with cigarettes for tripping and dropping a box of bullets. He tried to fight back, but was overpowered everytime, not having even a safe place to flee on his own to.
And at this point of his life, having being beaten countless times, having lost both his best friend and older sister (his most loved one, and the only girl that would never, ever abandom him no matter what), Luis is little more than a shell-shocked, instinct-driven, broken version of a teenage boy who used to be just a bit shy.

Tuesday 21, August 2026. Southern Spanish front, in what's left of the European Federation.