Prologue  

For countless generations the Midlands were  quiet and unassuming, each local area having its own quaint customs and rituals, acknowledged and tolerated even when not embraced. But as the population grew and commerce made the lands more prosperous, so did the problems of lawlessness and outlawry until, inevitably, someone decided that what was needed was a central government.  Few records of that distant time remain, but the legends and folktales that remain hint of armed conflict, conquering armies, and widespread death and destruction.

And so it happened that the lands were consolidated into one vast country, with all the attendant rules, regulations, taxes, and armies.  The lands were divided into Zones, for bureaucratic reasons only.  The center of the government was, of course, the Central Zone, and there was an Industrial Zone, an Agricultural Zone, a Trade Zone, and other predictable Zones.  The defensive perimeter, know as the Outer Zone, included the mountainous region between the Midlands and the lands to the east. 

The mountains of the Outer, or O-Zone (as it came to be known), were not a safe place for government representatives, and the inhabitants never really played well with outsiders.  Time passed, and the central government fell, as such entities are prone to do.  Soon the various Zone designations fell into disuse.  But the O-Zone mountains retained their name, and were known as the home of a strange breed of fiercely independent people, the Ozone Rangers.