SECOND ATTEMPT
MATURE WRITERS/CHARACTERS ONLY





PLOT (Skip to below for the short version)


2012. The world is terrified by some now unknown localized weather event, prompting increased efforts to preserve nature by reducing man's impact on the environment.


2019. Mankind perfects clean fuel technologies that have promise to replace all prior harmful fuels.

2021. New legislation significantly increases implementation of the clean fuel technologies worldwide.


2022. Scientists measure a significant global drop in temperature anomalies. Glaciers demonstrate an annual average increase in size.

2024. By this date, clean fuel has become the new international standard. Innovative projects begin to reverse the harmful effects of industrialization on the Earth.

2029. Satellites numerous spot unknown objects within the solar system. Later that year, humans make first contact with intelligent extra terrestrial (ET) lifeforms. The encounter is fatal. By the end of the year, Earth is under new management.

2030s. The alien invaders ransack the planet. Natural resources are sapped. The industrialized ETs pollute the world with strange chemicals. The destruction of the biosphere takes a matter of months. Human population is estimated to have dropped from 9.5 billion to less than 500 million, a significant portion of which are enslaved.

Earth today. Year unknown to them. Population unknown. ETs have abandoned the planet. Their occupation of Earth left the once green world torn and barren. The skies are consistently grey; the atmosphere has been imbued with ash and poisonous fumes. The average human lifespan has been reduced by at least one fourth. Most of humanity's history has been lost and forgotten.

But perhaps the most terrifying of the blights brought by the ETs is the infection. Their work initiated the outbreak of something horrific: a disease of madness, corruption, and rot. Humans, ETs, and other organisms were prone to carrying the infection. Transmitted by blood, it could even be carried by insects. The ETs sprayed the air, slaughtered livestock and wildlife, all in hopes of controlling the disease. But their efforts failed, and when there own kind were being turned into mindless zombies by the thousands, they evacuated Earth completely.

What remains of mankind is forced to scavenge what little water and nourishment they can - always wary of the ruthless zombies that plague the dark world. Society has receded into a few small, scattered communities. Farming is virtually impossible in the dead world, and while people manage to survive on foods preserved from mankind's former glory days, the supplies grow thin, forcing many to leave their villages in search of better lives. Those that live alone in their own homes have turned welcome mats into fortresses, unable to trust their fellow humans out of fear of being robbed.

Armed bandits, too, carry out raids in search of supplies - some have even turned to cannibalism, just like their zombie counterparts.

As the uncounted years drag on, hanging on to life only becomes more difficult. Children are born into this desolate world, but they have little hope of living long lives. It is difficult to track their ages, as the days, nights, and months all seem to blend together. All that is known is that the air seems to get colder as time goes by. Soon, only a scarce few are left alive that remember the days of the green Earth. They pass their nostalgic stories on to the youth, and the young ones grab hold of this hope: hope that there is some way to reclaim the once beautiful world that was lost.

Perhaps there is a sanctuary out there - safe from the destruction and madness. Maybe a better place can be found. With the conditions getting worse, groups begin to form in the communities that move to find preserved lands. They gather weapons, food, and water, and set out into the deadly world, littered with the remnants of cities, the skeletons of forests, and the rotting monsters that are...

The Infected.

TL;DR
Mankind invented clean technology, seeming to save the world from pollution. However, the world was then invaded by an alien (ET) force which drained the Earth's natural resources. The ETs either caused or brought with them a disease that turns any infected animal into a zombie of its former self. This includes insects; the ETs began wiping out insects, further ruined the planet, and eventually decided that Earth was too costly to keep occupying because of the infection. The ETs abandoned Earth, which is now barren and nearly lifeless. What few humans remain now live in small communities, but since the weather keeps getting colder and supplies are running low (farming is not really possible), groups of adventurers are now going out in search of preserved pieces of the old world so that they can have better lives. However, they will likely face zombies (ET, human, and other animals), bandits, and possibly human cannibals in their travels.

Incident - 2030
Present day - 2075 (unknown to the world)

__________ && __________



r u l e s ;;

&& No god-modding. Keep in mind that characters need food, water, and lack the medicine we have today. No one can be immune to the infection. You have limited ammunition.

&& You can have a pet, just don't be stupid and have something like a wolf or a tiger. House pets.

&& Be respectful to other RPers (you can disrespect the zombies all you want, the soulless bastards).

&& Romance is perfectly fine. Hope and humanity may be dead, but love is not.

&& I know this RP seems pretty dismal, but humour is definitely welcome xD

&& There is a three paragraph minimum, and that sort of length for a post is more then fine. Don't feel you have to write an epic post out each time. Just so long as your spelling and grammar is fine, and there is something to read.

&& Nothing anime/emo/scene please.

&& Be sort of realistic with your characters, no 17 year old kick-ass types.

&& The plot, basically what we're doing is trying to find a better life by venturing out into the world beyond our homes. So we will need military types, scientists etc.

&& Don't go silly with your characters skills and such. I had someone try to join before with all these swords and such. Just no, okay? They are in a world that is broken and ravaged, there was not time to collect family hand-me-downs and stuff like that. Most weapons are hand made, or from the military. Keep in mind, that if your character is just your average everyday person, why would they have a gun?

&& I will not accept any bad-ass, I hate everyone but everyone loves me types of characters. These characters are adults, they have jobs, they live to a regime. Make them believable please. Also, for some reason this recruits female characters with seriously bad attitudes and are intimidating and everyone respects and fears them, blah blah blah. Just no, alright?

&& Variety is the spice of life! Mix it up, please don't all be 5A's.

&& It will start with them in the same community. I will allow a few outsiders who have just arrived, but for the most part we are all in the same place. I will be playing the medic.

c h a r a c t e r s h e e t ;;

Appearance: (Nothing anime or cartoon, must have a real picture. A description can be added as well, but a picture is needed)
Name: (Be realistic, nothing Japanese or 'Rain' or crap like that)
Weapon: (also just quickly tell us how you got the weapon. Only the military have heavy duty guns and such, most weapons are home made. NO SWORDS)
Estimated Age: (the loss time tracking makes true age difficult to ascertain - keep in mind that any character under the approximate age of 45 is not old enough to remember the world as it was before the arrival of the ETs. The year is 2075, but the world doesn't know that. Should help you if you want your character to remember the ETs, they would have to be over 48 years old to remember them though)
Personality: (Contain the good and the bad, not interested in perfect characters)
Brief Background: (Did they grow up in a community? In a house with just their parents? Parents alive/dead? Why, if they have, have they decided to leave their community? The community they are in is called Barrowside)
Misc: (Anything that was not asked above. What does your character do job wise? Security, military, medic, teacher etc.)
Level and category:
m o r e i n f o r m a t i o n ;;

Barrowside This is the community where we will start this role play, and where all characters need to start. It is a large, barren stretch of land. Guarded by high walls and deep trenches that run the perimeter both inside and out. The population is the highest of record, sat at 1200. Everyone is put to work, there is no such thing as unemployment. There is also no such thing as money. Everyone lives on monthly rations, with tokens being handed over as a wage. The housing is a series of concrete cabins, and they differ depending on status and rank. There aren't any shops, however there is a trading market once a week. Mostly people will exchange a piece of carpentry for perhaps a book or more rations.

The System The System is most described as like the Military. They control and run the Barrowside community, they are both security and law. The System hold and own all forms of Gun, ammunition and any form of heavy duty weapon.

Standard issue weapons
All system personal are issued with a Beretta M92.
System security and Enforcers are issued with an M16a4 assault rifle (although the use is restricted to reserve ammo) crossbows, and solid truncheons.

Housing This all depends on your rank or position within Barrowside, and also your professional and Marital status, whether you have children (which is limited to two).
Level 1 The highest rank (Senior System personal)
Level 2 Scientists, Engineers - Any skilled profession that is deemed important
Level 3 System Security, Enforcers (police) - Any form of muscle or security
Level 4 Medical, Any other System employees,
Level 5 Carpenters, Blacksmiths, Construction, Teachers, Trainers, Mechanics, anything deemed low priority skill

A - Unmarried/Single without children
B - Unmarried/Single/In a relationship with children
C - Married with or without children

[Level 1] All personal of a Level 1 ranking are given their own private, and well catered accommodation.

[Level 2] All single personal will share a small apartment with another of the same sex.
[Level 2] Married or unmarried with or without children will be given their own apartment.

[Level 3] All unmarried and single level 3 personal live in a dorm within the System HQ.
[Level 3] Married level 3 (or cohabiting) live in a family cabin.

[Level 4/5] If you are unmarried and have no children, you live in dorm like cabins with multiple bunks and occupants.
[Level 4/5] If you are unmarried and have children, you will be granted a very small, cramped cabin or shared cabin with another family.
[Level 4/5] If you are married with children, you are given your own cabin.



The Infected They are called The Infected, The Plague, Zombie-Cunts, Walking Dead, basically anything, but are officially called The Greys. Their skin goes grey and their eyes red and black in colour. They are slow but can only be killed by decapitation, bullet/arrow to the brain, basically any sever form of head injury. One bite is fatal.

I think I have covered it all there. So if you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

I'm interested in this. These kind of RPs tend to always last longer than the other kinds. Going to kindly reserve making a character sheet until more interest is shown, though, since this is an interest check.

I'm pretty much going to port over my character from the last RP; almost word-for-word the same character sheet. Please tell me if something needs tweaking.

Appearance:


Name: John 'Exile' Rourke.

Weapon: Hand-crafted AK-105 which he built himself and keeps hidden from those who work for The System, though he would never use it unless he were to leave Barrowside for any reason. He also has a hand-crafted survival knife made from paracord and metal from one of his scrapped AK builds, along with a much smaller, but similarly made, shiv which he keeps on him at all times. He stays in shape, but he only has limited hand-to-hand combat knowledge, thus he prefers to fight with a weapon, or not at all.

Estimated Age: Between 27 and 29.

Personality: John has always been a cautious optimist with a heart of gold, though his mannerisms can come off as strange or eccentric to others. His general mood tends to be anywhere between relaxed and content, though he can also be unpredictable in certain situations. He has been known to talk to himself on occasion, which causes others to put his sanity into question. Some suspect it has something to do with his life before coming to Barrowside. Even if he is insane, it's only mild, and he has never hurt anybody while in one of his more odd states of mind, so people tend to roll with it. In most cases, he tends to muse aloud about the human condition, good vs. bad, morality, government, things like that. Some people refer to him as something of a philosopher because of it. One way or the other, he is a friendly person who is easy to talk to, most of the time, and you can usually look to him to cheer things up.

Brief Background: As far as anyone knows, John was born in a community similar to Barrowside and raised to be an intelligent man with several marketable skills. That's the gist of his story, though if he wanted to go deeper, he would tell you about how Rockwell was run by people who didn't want anyone to get too smart, to help keep any sort of organized revolution from starting. He says that Barrowside is ruled under more reasonable conditions, but it's still imperfect. He says that Rockwell kept people in check by setting up a church and coaxing people to look to a higher power for answers, with government-appointed pastors. "It was an... effective form of control... and the greatest reason that I consider myself to be an atheist."

His parents were revolutionaries, in a way, who saw the oppressive nature of their government and wanted to replace it with a more democratic system. They always thought that knowledge was the answer, and this rubbed off on John to a great extent. He became an avid bookworm, and studied every piece of nonfictional writing he could get his hands on. Through his studies and self-teaching, he gained a broad array of basic and intermediate knowledge on several subjects, not the least of which was English. He began writing at an early age, and he often drew a crowd of people who listened to his stories. He always wrote about someplace where nothing could hurt you, where there was plenty of food and water, no disease, no zombies; a place where everything was peaceful and you didn't have to worry or care about anything.

During his late teenage years, a point at which his parents considered him to be an adult, they organized a protest against the government of Rockwell. He doesn't say anything other than the protesters were shut down, brutally. Over a hundred arrests, his mother among them, several executions, including that of his father, and even stricter rules for the entire community. It was at that point that John grabbed what he could and left Rockwell, assuming the name "Exile" and searching for a better place to stay. He eventually stumbled upon Barrowside after travelling for roughly a year, barely surviving on ancient food stores he found along the way.

In truth, there was no rebellion. Rockwell was destroyed by an overwhelming force of raiders who killed everyone who resisted, along with some who didn't. John was lucky to be captured and taken into their ranks. He appeared to them younger than he was, so they took him in and tried to push their customs on him. He went along with it, but did not forget what his parents taught him. His knowledge allowed him to plan an escape, and he even managed to get away with a gun; a rusty old AK. He could tell it was in dire need of repair, so he took to learning how it worked, and thus his interest and talent in gunsmithing came to fruition.

Between evading the raiders' search parties and looking for food, he barely had time to work on the old rifle, and no time for reading any books he came across or writing anything else. Between the dehydration and practical starvation, he began to lose his sanity. He kept himself going though, and at one point stumbled upon a "prepper" shelter built from a shipping container. He managed to find plenty of food and water inside, and was able to take a true pause to think about what to do next. He knew the raiders would keep looking for him, and they weren't far behind, so he had to either kill them or somehow mislead them. He could only think of one surefire way of doing so, and it was going to hurt.

After taking some antibiotics and painkillers he found in the shelter, John cut his hand on a broken window at a nearby house and let it bleed as he walked in a random direction. He kept it up for about twenty minutes before he cleaned and bandaged the wound, leaving a blood trail roughly a mile long. After making sure he did a proper job of cleaning the wound, he ran off in a different direction, hoping that the pint of blood he spilled was worth it. After a few days and no more sign that the raiders were following him, he continued forth, unmolested by any further pursuit. He traveled alone for about a month before running into a caravan who happened to have some parts for the rifle. He managed to get it into working condition on the condition that he give it to the caravan. He got a pretty sturdy knife in exchange, along with information on where some other gun parts might be found. He thanked the caravan for his hospitality and left him a short story he had re-written from before the fall of Rockwell.

The information lead him to an old gun store with files of blueprints and build instructions, including one for an AK-105. He managed to scrounge together all of the parts necessary to build the carbine, and was able to do so with the help of some manually operated machines and tools, though he figured he should learn to build one without such help. He kept another complete set of parts and continued on, thinking he wouldn't start until he needed to. After a couple more weeks of travel, he found Barrowside, where his AK and knife were confiscated. He considered breaking out, valuing freedom over community, but he learned after about a month of being confined to a cell that he had lost more of his sanity than he thought.

He came around as soon as he realized this and managed to get out of the cell, though he then had to bargain for a good skill, thus where his English knowledge came in handy. He just barely managed to become an English teacher and was even allowed all of his belongings back, except for his completed weapons. He has since used the parts he had to build another AK and keep it hidden from The System, along with a pair of knives. He has since established himself as a respectable man with a kind heart and great writing skills.

Misc: In short, John is a jack of all trades, with his specialties lying in gunsmithing and his vast knowledge of the English language, though he keeps the former secret and fronts as an English teacher. John is a very intelligent and articulate person, using plenty of vocabulary which in a post-apocalyptic society would seem superfluous, unnecessary, or even archaic. He often takes his off-time to write short stories, or work on his novel, "The Oasis."

Although he's not very good at using guns, he knows several guns down to every pin, rivet, and screw, and makes a habit of trying to construct some; outside of the prying eyes of The System of course. He has a particular interest in AK-type rifles, fascinated by their relatively simple construction and high tolerances. With the lack of any precision tools, a lot of his builds end up being fancy paperweights. Some of the guns he turns out are functional, but far from perfect. He has only managed to craft exactly two shooters worthy of any true merit, and that was with a vast array of spare parts he found before coming to Barrowside.

Level and category: Level 5A.

I love the looks of this but there are a couple of things I should say: 1) This would be my first advanced RP, so apologies if I'm a bit of a nuisance at first, and 2) In about a months time you can expect my activity to drop.