Through the apocalyptic badlands
Most people don't know what happened. It was late in 2025, somewhere around Halloween, when the broadcasts went out. Emergency services implored people to go to the nearest shelters, but never said why. Some listened, gathering their most precious and rushed out of their homes. Local authorities were on the streets guiding the citizenry to someplace safer - or so they believed. In some places, military forces took control of streets, preparing for something but couldn't say what. Many didn't even know.
Within an hour, the ground rocked and there were flashes in the sky. There was no way to distinguish between the thunder and the explosions. The few who survived being outside could only report that Hell had come to Earth.
The decade since had seen the wrath of the horsemen. Plague and famine ravaged humanity as warring factions battled for control of dwindling resources. The strong killed the strong and the weakest became commodities to be used, bought and sold. In the face of such dearth, famine swept through the land. Rumors emerged of towns where the desperation saw the horror of darker practices. Places where the dead sustained the living, and some, it was said, didn't bother waiting that long.
In the decade that followed, things got worse before they got better. The population plummeted, but with the decline came something approaching stability. Old skills were remembered, homesteads began to emerge, and people rebuilt communities. Basic subsistence farming bolstered by scavenging staved off annihilation and those born in the aftermath knew nothing of what was lost.
But the world is not what it once was. Authority is limited to pockets of habitation, distrust remains rampant, and the roads between settlements are fraught with peril. Stories abound of monstrosities, both human and not, that tear travelers off the trails. What's left is scarce, peace is fragile, and home is only as safe as you can make it.
But hope beckons from afar. A rumor has begun, a whisper of a city on the other side of the landmass where where human civilization thrives, where resources abound and there is room for all who can brave the path. It has many names in different tellings, but one has stuck.
The year is 2035. Humanity has stumbled and fallen, but there is a light in the darkness, a beacon at the end of a dusty road, the place called Nirvana.
This game is an ADULT free-form game with small aspects of homebrew rules to allow for some randomness within the plot and conflict resolution. The aim is to tell a story about humanity in extremis, and the drama, intrigue, conflict and relationships that this breeds.
This message was last edited by the user at 14:39, Fri 26 May 2023.
