IC: The Winds of Change (Free-form, post decline of humanity
15 February, 2013
A meteor explodes over Chelyabinsk Oblast, in the Ural region of Russia. While nearly 2000 people were injured when the meteor exploded, there were no deaths, and only some minor damage to buildings in the region from the shock wave.
While a shocking event in that early morning, it was mostly quickly forgotten in the 24-hour news cycle and life went on. What no one knew was that the blast wave had ruptured an underground holding tank, long forgotten since the Stalin era of the Cold War, releasing a deadly viral weapon on an unsuspecting world.
The virus had been developed by Soviet scientists as a means of causing gruesome deaths on a mass scale, while quickly dying out after causing casualties. The weapon was so brutal, that when Stalin got wind of the project, he ordered its research halted and the scientists purged to prevent the weapon from being unleashed. Unbeknownst to everyone, a large vat of the weapon had been developed and placed in a hidden storage tank, and quickly lost to time.
As the weapon sat in the storage tank, it began mutating rapidly and wildly, waiting for a chance to be unleashed. When the meteor blew up, the tank ruptured and the pressure built up inside sent the weapon into the atmosphere. Quickly whisked away by prevailing winds, within 72 hours the virus has spread around the northern hemisphere. With in two weeks, the entirety of the globe was touched by the virus.
The first reported illness came from Tampa Bay, Florida, when an elderly gentleman fell victim to the virus. At first it manifested as a flu-like illness, but was rapidly followed by the degradation his skeletal system, quickly causing a dissolution of the bone structure, leaving a corpse that was appeared to be a human shaped bag of flesh. It was a painful and horrifying death, and one that awaited everyone in the world. It struck without warning and seemingly at random, killing young, old, healthy, sick, and indiscriminate of race or creed.
WHO and UN projections pointed at a 98% world mortality rate, with no cure able to be produced that would stem the tide of this virus.
It has now been 6 weeks since the outbreak. The sirens outside your homes and hideaways have slowly begun to fade, the riots that had gripped the worlds cities have slowly died off. Now, the world is quiet, will you do what you can to try to rebuild society, or will you simply give in to your base nature and spread anarchy among the survivors.
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I've taken my inspirations for this game from 'Tom Clancy's: The Division,' and Stephen King's 'The Stand.' I can say right off that there won't be any monsters or zombies or anything of that sort. This would be a straight up survival game, driven by the players actions with GM guidance.
