Post by Coffinstuffer on Sept 13, 2009 12:39:42 GMT -5
Thought I'd try my hand at starting a roleplay, since I'm the new guy.
EDIT; The thread has started, click here.
Quod sic venit terminus di totus res - And so came the end of all that was.
~Cormac McCarthy – The Road
The year is 2018, though such information must have long since lost relevance.
The earth lays cold; barren and virtually bereft of life as it tumbles through an endless orbit, her children upon her as doomed a race as she a world.
Preceded by years of economic combat and widespread, high-level espionage conducted mercilessly by both sides, the United States of America and the People's Republic of China went to war in the year 2010. Two years later, for reasons as lost to time as those of the war's initial causes, the war then escalated - Vast tactical nuclear strikes against each nation's strategic airfields started it all, and the continent-wide chemical drops, performed in mutual retaliation, most certainly ended it.
For though the war ended as suddenly as it began, it was clear to all whom remained that the damage had been already been dealt - and that damage was both terrible and irreversible - Our planet was doomed.
Genetically-engineered superviruses, developed and deployed during the war, spread with clearly weaponized effectiveness through the crowded refugee colonies and hospitals. Clouds of radioactive fallout encircled the globe, killing millions and, over the course of a few months, destroying virtually all agricultural prosperity the world over.
Perhaps the worst among the many calamities which plagued those dying years was the endless sprinkling of ash – the disintegrated remains of millions of human bodies, the clothes they wore and the cities they lived in; razed to the ground in a single moment of nuclear incineration and thrown then to the highest reaches of our atmosphere, doomed only to descend once more to this barren earth, choking those who dare still to draw breath, taking to the vicious winds like a host of mournful spirits in search of dismal, suffocating revenge.
In a mere five years, almost 90% of the Earth’s population dies.
From the furthest reaches of Alaska to the southernmost tip of the Mexican gulf, it is widely speculated that less than a thousand people are still alive in all of North America – Mainland Asia being in a largely similar state.
Amid the collapse of all world governments, small communes of ragged survivors arise, led by former law enforcement officers, military personnel, or anyone else with firearms and the energy to use them. These communes, for all their variations, have but one goal in mind - survival.
To this end, the communes brutally slaughter one another over control of the dwindling resources - food warehouses, manufacturing plants and supermarkets become walled cities for these armed mobs, who govern themselves in whichever manner their leaders deem fit, forming and breaking alliances with other communes in the tried and true feudalistic ways of antiquity.
Amidst all this, the tattered and starving remnants of the Byelorusan Army mobilize. Easily the strongest unified force left in the world, the remaining Byelorusans, with thousands of slaves in tow, leave the Motherland in the face of an oncoming nuclear winter and head Westward, conquering the tiny communes they encounter with ease; butchering, conscripting or enslaving the surviving men and forcing the women to serve as concubines for the Kalashnikov-toting barbarians.
Rumor has it that should the inhabitants have no food with which to supply the starving horde, the victors seem not to be above cannibalism in times of desperation; gutted cadavers and boiled bones often litter the sordid scenes which have become typical of the wake of a Byelorus invasion. With a massive arsenal of Soviet-bloc assault rifles, machineguns, chemical suits and gas masks - and an army of starving, desperate men behind them – none can hope to stand in the path of the Byelorusan horde – and live.
With radiation stripping all nutrients from the soil, vast expanses of the earth’s surface have become a desolate, grey wasteland – and much of whatever is not outright desert is now a radioactive swamp, wherein constant acid rain turns the ash and sand into sinkholes and marshes known to swallow men up alive. The few safely traversable areas of this wasteland are littered with abandoned vehicles and clean-picked bones – victims of the rancorous gangs of bandits who prey upon they who would be brave (or desperate) enough to travel them unarmed.
The few cities left standing have been stripped of all colour by the chemical downpour – the ones that still dwell within them are only the blackest of bandits, whose lives resemble those of trap-door spiders.
------------------------------
The setting is a refugee commune, somewhere in the Balkan mountain range, in what was, in the past, known as the nation of Bulgaria. This commune is centered around a relatively small grainery – the dwellings are slumlike, comprised of cheap wood and rusted, corrugated steel. The population is less than a hundred, but no official census has been made. The bulk of these people are elderly Slavs and Eastern-European types, but a good portion are English-speaking refugees from a variety of origins. Said Anglophones will be our characters (I think this is best for plot purposes).
In the absence of international trade, legal currency has become worthless. Goods are bartered for services or other goods of approximately equal value. Consequently, ripoffs are common.
You may post your character profiles as replies to this thread, but when making them, please keep these criteria in mind, as I will not allow a character who does not adhere to them;
**They cannot be heavily or unreasonably armed. This means they can possess no weapons of an... ‘exotic’ nature. Where would you get a katana in Bulgaria? How could you keep the metal sharp and free from rusting? How would you keep a man-portable rotary-barrel antitank gatling cannon maintained and supplied with ammunition years and years after the factories shut down? Wouldn’t you have run out of ammo for that underbarrel grenade launcher? Etc. Try to keep it to things like machetes, improvised spears and hatchets, discarded bayonets, utility knives and maybe some small arms (rifles, shotguns, handguns, etc.)
For weapons considerations; most road bandits encountered in this roleplay will be equipped with improvised clubs and cutlery, maybe an old shotgun and some machetes.
**Any firearms your character /does/ have should be used only sparingly – ammo would be pretty scarce by now. Try to avoid using advanced NATO special forces weaponry.. how you would find such things and keep their finnicky inner workings operational is beyond me.
******They cannot be genetically modified/mutated/superpowered. This roleplay is going to strive for realism wherever and whenever possible. Your character is more likely to develop terminal brain tumours and horrific skin-eating diseases than superpowers in these conditions. Also, no cyborgs, telepaths, half-demon angel warriors.. etc.
***When writing your (preferably brief) history, make sure to outline how it is that they came to this camp, how long they’ve been there, etc.
When designing your character, keep in mind that whatever they own, they must be physically capable of carrying with them. While being as prudent as possible for your character’s survival, also keep in mind that not everybody knew that a nuclear war was around the corner, so think of how exactly it was that they acquired those 600 lighters.
Also note that five years have passed, and most survival foods and things of that nature would have long been exhausted. Be as realistic as possible – Extra points go to those who make an inventory of everything the character owns when they write their biography. Think of things /you/ would have/need to survive in these conditions.
Once it’s posted, it doesn’t have to be set in stone – but for plot purposes I’d prefer if the only way you could get new things would be by attempting to barter/steal/loot things from other characters or NPCs you will interact with.
****Do not just post about how you killed a platoon of NPC Russian soldiers with a letter opener and horded their AK-101s for yourself or how you whipped a magic water filter out of nowhere halfway into the roleplay. REALISM, people, realism.
I’d prefer if not everyone was a former Navy SEAL stranded in Europe at the time of the war, stockpiled with Army-issue chemical warfare suits with gas masks.. although by all means, if you have a well-written enough backstory, I may allow such things. More than anything, I'd REALLY prefer if the characters were kept as HUMAN as possible.. please keep the brooding special forces captains to a minimum (unless they're really well done).
Also, remember what I said about the ash – it is extremely toxic to inhale, and it is almost perpetually falling – just about the only time when it isn’t is when it is acid-raining or snowing. Make sure your character has a piece of cloth or an old paint respirator or something of that nature to stop them from inhaling said particulate. Goggles or shop glasses would be nice things to try and acquire/start off with to prevent acid rain from burning your character’s eyes.
Gasoline and diesel reserves are almost completely expired, so there are virtually no functional vehicles left in the world. The Byelorusan horde is completely on foot, for example – no need to worry about tanks and armoured vehicles if our group runs into them.
Your character’s clothes by this point should be either a; torn to shreds, b; worn out, or c; improvised from leather/tanned hides/things of that nature. In order to survive, your character’s attire will have to be utilitarian. I don’t want to see any gaudy princess dresses or powdered suits.
Now, more about the setting. The camp is in the Balkan mountains, (use wiki if you’re curious; they look like the Alps,) as I previously mentioned, in the former Bulgaria. We aren’t at an incredible altitude, but the highest out of any commune in the region. There are other communes nearby – the largest of which is a relatively amiable, police-run one at the foot of the mountain, centered around a goods warehouse. There are other, smaller ones of varying usefulness and friendliness, located near our own.
Nuclear winter is setting in. This means that there is going to be a vast temperature drop in a few months and a veritable ice age a short time later. It is up to the group to decide whether to stay in the mountain commune or to try and get closer to the equator.
A traveling small-arms merchant has spread word among the communes that the Horde is headed their way – however his stories, some speculate, are merely fabrications designed to encourage the sale of his firearms.
There is not going to be a set ‘path’ or story arc along which this roleplay will travel – rather, the group’s decisions will influence how the story progresses. I guess as founder, I will act as the ‘fate’ of this universe, and certain events will unfold regardless of where the group is at that time. Whether they affect our characters or whether we even hear about them is completely up to us.
The roleplay will begin in another thread, once the character profiles are completed.
New players are welcome to join in late, provided that they meet the same criteria and write up a respectable profile in this thread before posting.
And finally, an amusing image to lighten things up;
That is all.
(btw, note that in addition to a chemical suit, the soldier depicted above is holding an AK-47 or 'Kalashnikov' assault rifle, which I made mention to earlier. This is what the typical Byelorus hordesman will look like, if you are at all curious.)
EDIT; The thread has started, click here.
Quod sic venit terminus di totus res - And so came the end of all that was.
'The cold and the silence.
The ashes of the late world carried
on the bleak and temporal winds
to and fro in the void.
Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again -
Everything uncoupled from its shoring, unsupported in the ashen air.
Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief;
If only my heart
were stone.'
The ashes of the late world carried
on the bleak and temporal winds
to and fro in the void.
Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again -
Everything uncoupled from its shoring, unsupported in the ashen air.
Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief;
If only my heart
were stone.'
~Cormac McCarthy – The Road
The year is 2018, though such information must have long since lost relevance.
The earth lays cold; barren and virtually bereft of life as it tumbles through an endless orbit, her children upon her as doomed a race as she a world.
Preceded by years of economic combat and widespread, high-level espionage conducted mercilessly by both sides, the United States of America and the People's Republic of China went to war in the year 2010. Two years later, for reasons as lost to time as those of the war's initial causes, the war then escalated - Vast tactical nuclear strikes against each nation's strategic airfields started it all, and the continent-wide chemical drops, performed in mutual retaliation, most certainly ended it.
For though the war ended as suddenly as it began, it was clear to all whom remained that the damage had been already been dealt - and that damage was both terrible and irreversible - Our planet was doomed.
Genetically-engineered superviruses, developed and deployed during the war, spread with clearly weaponized effectiveness through the crowded refugee colonies and hospitals. Clouds of radioactive fallout encircled the globe, killing millions and, over the course of a few months, destroying virtually all agricultural prosperity the world over.
Perhaps the worst among the many calamities which plagued those dying years was the endless sprinkling of ash – the disintegrated remains of millions of human bodies, the clothes they wore and the cities they lived in; razed to the ground in a single moment of nuclear incineration and thrown then to the highest reaches of our atmosphere, doomed only to descend once more to this barren earth, choking those who dare still to draw breath, taking to the vicious winds like a host of mournful spirits in search of dismal, suffocating revenge.
In a mere five years, almost 90% of the Earth’s population dies.
From the furthest reaches of Alaska to the southernmost tip of the Mexican gulf, it is widely speculated that less than a thousand people are still alive in all of North America – Mainland Asia being in a largely similar state.
Amid the collapse of all world governments, small communes of ragged survivors arise, led by former law enforcement officers, military personnel, or anyone else with firearms and the energy to use them. These communes, for all their variations, have but one goal in mind - survival.
To this end, the communes brutally slaughter one another over control of the dwindling resources - food warehouses, manufacturing plants and supermarkets become walled cities for these armed mobs, who govern themselves in whichever manner their leaders deem fit, forming and breaking alliances with other communes in the tried and true feudalistic ways of antiquity.
Amidst all this, the tattered and starving remnants of the Byelorusan Army mobilize. Easily the strongest unified force left in the world, the remaining Byelorusans, with thousands of slaves in tow, leave the Motherland in the face of an oncoming nuclear winter and head Westward, conquering the tiny communes they encounter with ease; butchering, conscripting or enslaving the surviving men and forcing the women to serve as concubines for the Kalashnikov-toting barbarians.
Rumor has it that should the inhabitants have no food with which to supply the starving horde, the victors seem not to be above cannibalism in times of desperation; gutted cadavers and boiled bones often litter the sordid scenes which have become typical of the wake of a Byelorus invasion. With a massive arsenal of Soviet-bloc assault rifles, machineguns, chemical suits and gas masks - and an army of starving, desperate men behind them – none can hope to stand in the path of the Byelorusan horde – and live.
With radiation stripping all nutrients from the soil, vast expanses of the earth’s surface have become a desolate, grey wasteland – and much of whatever is not outright desert is now a radioactive swamp, wherein constant acid rain turns the ash and sand into sinkholes and marshes known to swallow men up alive. The few safely traversable areas of this wasteland are littered with abandoned vehicles and clean-picked bones – victims of the rancorous gangs of bandits who prey upon they who would be brave (or desperate) enough to travel them unarmed.
The few cities left standing have been stripped of all colour by the chemical downpour – the ones that still dwell within them are only the blackest of bandits, whose lives resemble those of trap-door spiders.
------------------------------
The setting is a refugee commune, somewhere in the Balkan mountain range, in what was, in the past, known as the nation of Bulgaria. This commune is centered around a relatively small grainery – the dwellings are slumlike, comprised of cheap wood and rusted, corrugated steel. The population is less than a hundred, but no official census has been made. The bulk of these people are elderly Slavs and Eastern-European types, but a good portion are English-speaking refugees from a variety of origins. Said Anglophones will be our characters (I think this is best for plot purposes).
In the absence of international trade, legal currency has become worthless. Goods are bartered for services or other goods of approximately equal value. Consequently, ripoffs are common.
You may post your character profiles as replies to this thread, but when making them, please keep these criteria in mind, as I will not allow a character who does not adhere to them;
**They cannot be heavily or unreasonably armed. This means they can possess no weapons of an... ‘exotic’ nature. Where would you get a katana in Bulgaria? How could you keep the metal sharp and free from rusting? How would you keep a man-portable rotary-barrel antitank gatling cannon maintained and supplied with ammunition years and years after the factories shut down? Wouldn’t you have run out of ammo for that underbarrel grenade launcher? Etc. Try to keep it to things like machetes, improvised spears and hatchets, discarded bayonets, utility knives and maybe some small arms (rifles, shotguns, handguns, etc.)
For weapons considerations; most road bandits encountered in this roleplay will be equipped with improvised clubs and cutlery, maybe an old shotgun and some machetes.
**Any firearms your character /does/ have should be used only sparingly – ammo would be pretty scarce by now. Try to avoid using advanced NATO special forces weaponry.. how you would find such things and keep their finnicky inner workings operational is beyond me.
******They cannot be genetically modified/mutated/superpowered. This roleplay is going to strive for realism wherever and whenever possible. Your character is more likely to develop terminal brain tumours and horrific skin-eating diseases than superpowers in these conditions. Also, no cyborgs, telepaths, half-demon angel warriors.. etc.
***When writing your (preferably brief) history, make sure to outline how it is that they came to this camp, how long they’ve been there, etc.
When designing your character, keep in mind that whatever they own, they must be physically capable of carrying with them. While being as prudent as possible for your character’s survival, also keep in mind that not everybody knew that a nuclear war was around the corner, so think of how exactly it was that they acquired those 600 lighters.
Also note that five years have passed, and most survival foods and things of that nature would have long been exhausted. Be as realistic as possible – Extra points go to those who make an inventory of everything the character owns when they write their biography. Think of things /you/ would have/need to survive in these conditions.
Once it’s posted, it doesn’t have to be set in stone – but for plot purposes I’d prefer if the only way you could get new things would be by attempting to barter/steal/loot things from other characters or NPCs you will interact with.
****Do not just post about how you killed a platoon of NPC Russian soldiers with a letter opener and horded their AK-101s for yourself or how you whipped a magic water filter out of nowhere halfway into the roleplay. REALISM, people, realism.
I’d prefer if not everyone was a former Navy SEAL stranded in Europe at the time of the war, stockpiled with Army-issue chemical warfare suits with gas masks.. although by all means, if you have a well-written enough backstory, I may allow such things. More than anything, I'd REALLY prefer if the characters were kept as HUMAN as possible.. please keep the brooding special forces captains to a minimum (unless they're really well done).
Also, remember what I said about the ash – it is extremely toxic to inhale, and it is almost perpetually falling – just about the only time when it isn’t is when it is acid-raining or snowing. Make sure your character has a piece of cloth or an old paint respirator or something of that nature to stop them from inhaling said particulate. Goggles or shop glasses would be nice things to try and acquire/start off with to prevent acid rain from burning your character’s eyes.
Gasoline and diesel reserves are almost completely expired, so there are virtually no functional vehicles left in the world. The Byelorusan horde is completely on foot, for example – no need to worry about tanks and armoured vehicles if our group runs into them.
Your character’s clothes by this point should be either a; torn to shreds, b; worn out, or c; improvised from leather/tanned hides/things of that nature. In order to survive, your character’s attire will have to be utilitarian. I don’t want to see any gaudy princess dresses or powdered suits.
Now, more about the setting. The camp is in the Balkan mountains, (use wiki if you’re curious; they look like the Alps,) as I previously mentioned, in the former Bulgaria. We aren’t at an incredible altitude, but the highest out of any commune in the region. There are other communes nearby – the largest of which is a relatively amiable, police-run one at the foot of the mountain, centered around a goods warehouse. There are other, smaller ones of varying usefulness and friendliness, located near our own.
Nuclear winter is setting in. This means that there is going to be a vast temperature drop in a few months and a veritable ice age a short time later. It is up to the group to decide whether to stay in the mountain commune or to try and get closer to the equator.
A traveling small-arms merchant has spread word among the communes that the Horde is headed their way – however his stories, some speculate, are merely fabrications designed to encourage the sale of his firearms.
There is not going to be a set ‘path’ or story arc along which this roleplay will travel – rather, the group’s decisions will influence how the story progresses. I guess as founder, I will act as the ‘fate’ of this universe, and certain events will unfold regardless of where the group is at that time. Whether they affect our characters or whether we even hear about them is completely up to us.
The roleplay will begin in another thread, once the character profiles are completed.
New players are welcome to join in late, provided that they meet the same criteria and write up a respectable profile in this thread before posting.
And finally, an amusing image to lighten things up;
That is all.
(btw, note that in addition to a chemical suit, the soldier depicted above is holding an AK-47 or 'Kalashnikov' assault rifle, which I made mention to earlier. This is what the typical Byelorus hordesman will look like, if you are at all curious.)