Autumn Eternal (Small RP)

Backstory

(Note: I'm making up my own town names and such because I won't be bothered doing extensive research on a place. All the towns are fairly new anyway, the old ones being over run with the dead. The country is westernized.)

People thought that construction work on the major power house in Harkeness was the cause of the black out. A minor blip that'd be over in a few days. Well, a few days turned into a week, and a week turned into a few months and still no power. No communications, no media, no power to homes across the whole country.

Communities banded together even tighter during this tense period of dark unknown. Some people left altogether, some towns closed everyone else out, and some banded together to share even more resources. Authorities, stretched far and wide, tried to keep order over the panic and uncertainty that this country wide (later learned world wide) black out brought along with it. Some people predicted the future, or some other devastating event, while others tried to keep them quiet.

While everyone was fretting over the power out, no one thought to worry about the unusual storms that had been happening. Day after day, rain and wind and lightning, some times dry, some times flooding. Cars and other transport soon rusted, their internal computers useless anyway. This soon lead to a tetanus outbreak from all the rusted metal. Vaccines and medicine ran thinly with the amount of sick and injured due to storm damage.

The storms must have something across the land because the rising number of dead was something to talk about. Funeral pyres and mass graves became a norm. Medicine production couldn't keep up with the rising level of sick and the detriment of less than basic equipment.

As the dead started rising, bullets became the new cure, the next life saver. They rotted and decomposed as they walked in search of their next victim. People that displayed early symptoms such as fatigue, bursts of unusual anger, insomnia, weight loss, and increased appetite to name a few were contained immediately. Some towns waited until the person had died before burning them in controlled conditions. Others executed the infected immediately, believing it to be the most humane choice. 

  Towns with weak defenses became easy targets for hoards. People fled to more covered locations away from the industrial settings that they had known all their lives in favor of the more hidden forests and less accessible mountains. Townships were created, most of the residents ready for mobility if another shambling hoard fell upon them. Most settlements are ready for battle.

With the threat of the dead, another player had entered the game. The Militia, coming from the township of Artemis, the politically corrupted constrictive regime that seeks to establish it's rule over the civilian population. The Militia while cruel and unfair, a dictatorship really, still holds the major trading routes between the zones and stations. The Militia offers protection from the hoards of undead, if a township chooses to take it, thus surrendering, and supplies to the loyals that have chosen to work with them. If a town refuses the Militia then they must fend for themselves against bandits, thieves, the undead, mercenaries, and bounty hunters.

But there is a rumored Haven among all this, an elusive concept of safety and hope that no one has managed to find. A place with high walls to keep the undead out, a cure for the virus, a self sustaining zone with supplies for all, a fair place to start over.

The Haven rumor is where our little band comes in. A journal was found, penned by an unknown author, describing what could be Haven. Chapter by chapter, you navigate through the journals scrawled gibberish to follow the map to what you hope to be salvation.

This is Autumns Eternal.