TL;DR Summary:
- Post Apocalyptic setting, the year 2029. (No Zombies)
- Civilization worldwide was decimated by the super-flu pandemic of 2012, which killed off 95% of the human population.
- What remains is very Mad Max, lots of bandits, raiding and very little civilization. People have to make do generally without power and all that it entails, and even those who cobble together power have to find ways to reduce strain on their power systems for essential items.
- The characters are part of a community centered around the Calvert University (fictional) Library on Maryland's Eastern Shore, where there is farming and fishing enough to sustain people, while staying well away from population centers, like Baltimore or Washington DC (the Bay Bridge was blown with explosives in 2014.)
- The mission of the community is to preserve the past; information in the form of documents as well as data storage.
- Standards - We're aiming for a couple paragraphs or more if you want, but we generally want to keep the interaction high and the pace going. You don't need to feel pressured to write a novel so long as you can write a couple of good paragraph.
- Characters will be part of this community, which doesn't merely include librarians. It's also farmers, mechanics and so forth. Ten years have passed since the pandemic.
- Character approval in most cases is me upchecking anything you put down that's reasonable with one huge exception -- ex-military characters will be carefully scrutinized and details will be paid close attention to. By contrast, most characters are familiar with guns and are part of a local militia.
In Character Info:
The old world died in 2012. The super-flu pandemic killed 95% of humanity off and much of that surviving 5% died through misadventure, ignorance or accident -- the world is pretty unforgiving without power, antibiotics and the comforts we became accustomed to. Indeed, civilization reverted to a more fundamental mode, as according to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs; survival became the only concern for many.
Not everyone thought in terms of simply physical survival; Linda Dimtrios, the head librarian of Calvert University's library realized what was coming...and she took the opportunity to start abusing her position, particularly when she became the interim president, to gather the supplies and equipment necessary for Calvert University to become a survival community; she knew that the accountants wouldn't survive or care when the whole thing was over.
She gathered people, experts and their families, to the campus as it emptied out of students and others, and quietly fortified Calvert University against the initial onslaught of desperation by a dying world, as well as the subsequent onslaughts of survivors that would plunder the community. Calvert was in the middle of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, with abundant farmland and seafood to be found, along with little in the way of a population. In 2014, she had the Bay Bridge blown up, severing the link between Baltimore and the Eastern Shore and securing Calvert University from onslaughts by the barbarian survivors of that place.
The plan, miraculously enough, worked, and while the standards of living changed drastically as Calvert became concerned with preserving themselves. Calvert was an old university, one of the oldest, with buildings like the library built in the 19th century. With the addition of stout walls, resembling a curtain in the medieval days, Calvert University became Calvert Castle, with a community of peasants that tilled the land and fished the seas and spun the wool that was a necessity of everyday survival. Calvert reverted, but not as badly as other places reverted, thanks to the efforts of Dimitrios, who passed away in 2018.
But they also had a library, databases, archives and people who could teach skills. In the years to come, rumors swirled throughout the country of a Great Library that survived the worst, that still functioned and held promise for the future. Some react with skepticism, others with hope...and some particularly the assorted warlords of ragged bands, who prefer to be referred to as "King" or "Lord" see a prize they must have...
Out of Character Info:
This is post-apocalyptic, and I think most of the rules have been covered; characters will be part of the survivors, young or older, possibly with some memory of the good old days, though these people are aging in a time when life expectancies have been cut brutally short. I decided to make the setting seventeen years after the pandemic so as to allow people a choice; to play one of the original experts, probably not in the best of shape even if they were 20something in 2012, or to play a young offspring of that first survival generation, imbued with the sense of mission in preserving the past, trained as apprentices in those crafts.
Of course, it's not just librarians and intellectuals; even such people have to eat, and everyone probably has to farm, hunt, fish, butcher, pickle, repair and build. The players would have these skills. They'd also be part of a militia that exists of all able-bodied people who could fight or otherwise support the fighting, a necessity in dark times to fend off bandits, raiders and worse.
It's still a crude existence; they have power, computers, books, light, heat and the such, but these things are fragile and carefully preserved, guarded jealously as the seeds to replant civilization with. In a way, the characters are medieval monks, preserving the written word even as the vikings pillage their churches for riches.
Incidentally, sure, we're in Advanced, but I want to keep the pace up. We can write a few paragraphs and keep the post sizes down a bit in order to facilitate interaction, but still be Advanced standard. Something to consider.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Commander Kalic
