Post by Manah on Jul 14, 2014 12:10:30 GMT -5
The World After The End
Post-apocalypse Adventures in a destroyed world full of menaces,
madness, monsters and unexpected heroes
(Music for atmosphere)
Post-apocalypse Adventures in a destroyed world full of menaces,
madness, monsters and unexpected heroes
(Music for atmosphere)
The End, as we came to call it, began a bit over four-hundred years ago, in our World which we believed safe from horrors and abominations but threatened by our very selves, as many thought Humankind would cause its own destruction. Little did we know back then, and in fact, little do most know even today, that the path to our destruction would be walked both by ourselves, and by those very horrors and abominations we suspected of being mere fairy tales.
The date is unclear, but we believe it began sometime around 2018. Four beings manifest themselves into our World, the 'Dark Ones' as scholars know them nowadays, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as we knew them back then, although it is unclear whether they really had anything to do with the agents supposed to bring about Judgment or merely supernatural fiends bent on destruction for its own sake. At any rate, each of them went to one of the strongest Nuclear superpowers/countries in the world and began manipulating governments and the leaders of said countries via deception, charisma and fear, creating a growing feeling of unrest and fear from neighbors that eventually culminated in conflicts from across the Globe. In addition, each of the Dark Ones used their abilities to further raise chaos and encourage destruction.
Pestilence (and not 'Conquest', as the Holy Bible had erroneously labeled it) unleashed horrible diseases upon Europe and Western Asia, causing the affected countries to beg for aid from their neighbors. However, with the unrest having already grown and resources being jealously held back in case of all-out conflict, not mentioning the visible, terrifying effects of the supernatural plague, surrounding countries closed their borders and refused to lend a helping hand, and even farther away allies were shy to use their limited resources in a high infection risk scenario and only provided limited support.
Famine hit Russia hard, killing crops and rotting food reserves grown, produced or acquired within the country's own borders, and even given by allies, but not what was taken by force from outside sources. The Russian government was hard-pressed to admit its people had to feed, and was ill-equipped and weakened to restrain its citizens from banding together, sometimes even with their military, to attack surrounding countries for actually edible food.
War worsened the already present and immemorial conflicts present in Asia and Eastern Europe, causing the first exchange of Nuclear attacks and millions of deaths, and of course causing a wildfire of chaos and fear across the World as all countries held their breath, preparing for the imminent World War III.
Death, the Pale Rider, would be the one to trigger it for good. The supernatural being murdered several key figures in America, and caused several explosions and catastrophes it disguised as terrorist attacks from various important countries, and eventually, as a flat-out attack from three different countries apparently working together. Diplomacy and negotiations soon failed, and due to the chaos and unrest, as well as the terrible events happening all over the world, war broke out all across the World on May 15th, 2027.
The beginning of the End.
Nuclear weapons were fired at various predetermined targets nearly simultaneously, causing the deaths of over three billion people in a matter of minutes, and countless more in the following hours. Obviously, the Nuclear onslaught destroyed most of the modern world's technology and knowledge in a incredibly bright flash that would bring about a near impenetrable darkness for centuries to come. Civilization committed suicide in mere days as the survivors of the initial onslaught panicked and fought for their own survival and what remained of viable resources. In Europe and Eastern Asia, the radioactive fallout merged with the supernatural plague and diseases slowly consuming and infecting the land, mutating it in unexpected ways and causing the dead to rise into an unstoppable army of mutated, radioactive undead, which spread itself and infected others as it slowly advanced beyond their original borders, killing all in their way and bringing them into their ranks. Animals from across the World which survived the initial destruction were heavily mutated as well, becoming larger, either dumber or smarter, and in some cases, far more dangerous. Worse still, the presence of the Dark Ones within our World in the last years of Humankind had corrupted the land with their supernatural presence, both bringing magic into our plane of existence and opening one-way portals from other planes, from which nightmarish horrors and monsters entered our dimension, joining in the already unbelievable scale of devastation and despair which was already wiping us out.
In the following decades, a couple more billions died from the aftereffects of the End. Whether it was from radiation, at the clawed hands of one eldritch abomination or another, killed and assimilated by the innumerable mutated zombie hordes, murdered for supplies and resources, frozen to death by the nuclear winter that followed in most countries, or ended by one of the terrible diseases that had initially taken so many, our numbers dwelt, and our whole species was threatened with extinction.
But in time, as our gathered History reveals, we got better. Humans, as a whole species, are harder to kill than cockroaches, even by their own means.
...And what doesn't kill us... makes us stronger.
Starting from around a hundred years ago, the descendants of the original survivors stabilized naturally. These relatively normal Humans became immune to the horrible diseases that had destroyed one third of the world, and to all but the heaviest levels of radiation, allowing them to walk the planet's grounds nearly unaffected, and in some cases even enhanced by it (those individuals were nicknamed 'Radicals' by others due to their ability to use radiation to power themselves up, and were the most common 'inhumans' - human-like members of the survivors who had superhuman or inhuman abilities - within the new, forming communities). Humans banded together for strength in numbers against the still present threats of the undead hordes, chaos-loving raiders and barbarians, wilderness beasts and otherworldly monsters.
Back when the End had begun, a large group of scientists, wealthy contributors and geniuses banded together in underground, heavily protected facilities where they worked on advancing and maintaining technology for when it'd be safe to return to the surface, in order to guide Humankind into a new age. Technarchs, as they would be later known, were as such equipped with surprisingly advanced technologies and gadgets with which to face the post-apocalyptic world they entered when their vaults' sensors revealed it was statistically safe to leave them, and they soon became a force to be reckoned with. However, their initial ideals had changed overtime for the majority of them, and they preferred to live sheltered in their fortresses and become more powerful by trading what old tech they had to other survivors in order to improve their own resources and technologies, 'ruling' over the destroyed world by simply surviving better in it (while in fact, they were mostly just hiding away behind their metallic walls).
In centuries, some Humans had begun showing an affinity for gathering the mystical energies brought into the World by the Dark Ones' original presence, learning to master it in time in the form of strange, powerful spells. These Mages were but an insignificant percentage of the survivors, but they still numbered among its most powerful members, and many a community or group thrived under the leadership or with the support of one of the Magi. A different sort of magic user, Saints are humans whose purity and goodness of heart somehow shielded them from the horrors unleashed by the unholy Dark Ones and their creations. Their descendants, affected by the mystical energies permeating the land, became able to wield a mysterious force known as 'Aura', allowing them to perform various miracles such as healing wounds, curing disease, repelling abominations and disrupting the all-devouring darkness of the undead hordes.
Another minority among the survivors, Mutants had their DNA altered and changed significantly from their original species, rendering them capable of unusual feats and powers, but also often altering their appearance in at least some way, some of them even indistinguishable from the eldritch horrors that sometimes walked the lands, and often feared and hated as such. Others were more normal-looking and were loved members of their own communities for the support they gave other survivors. Others still lived on their own and refused to bad together with 'weakling humans', dissociating themselves from their former kin as they relished their newly found powers.
Finally, the least frequently seen (and often highly-feared) survivors, Cryptids were created from the unholy union of some of the horrors walking the World for centuries and the hapless humans who fell victim to their monstrous urges. The results, those who survived anyway, were immortal half-humans, half-abominations of many different types. Almost no two Cryptids are identical, their power vary intensely but are usually on the incredibly dangerous end of the spectrum... and most of them border on madness and insanity, if they're not downright crazy already. Cryptids' agendas vary greatly, and although most of them hardly like humans any more than humans like them, they thoroughly hate the eldritch abominations that spawned them. And as they say, the enemy of my enemy...
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In a Post-Apocalyptic world struggling to get itself back on its feet after most of all living beings were wiped out or turned into monsters, survivors fight a day to day battle to live on and live better, while either trying to help one another or steal from the weak. Civilization has begun reforming in several more-or-less moral or immoral organizations. Humans band together with the few Inhumans that wish to support their former kin, forming communities and groups that strive better than they would as individuals. And in the meantime, the undead hordes, mutated abominations and wilderness beasts still roam, killing and destroying all in their paths, until survivors band up together to wipe them up from the surface of the Earth. And beyond all this, the Dark Ones still watch, wondering whether this is the really the End for Humankind...
...or merely the Beginning.
Now the question remains... in this World slowly rising up and gathering hope in the darkness, who will YOU be?
INTEREST CHECK!!!
I'm not looking for anything except for interest just yet.
Your thoughts, people?
NOTE: My players in my former Maid the RPG game (One Maid for All, and All for the Master!) have priority for joining this one, as long as they can come up with good concepts. That being said, I seek interest, and I'm looking for 5 players, which is more than I had in Maid. So feel free to state said interest if you have it.
