1 : an act of depressing or a state of being depressed: such as a)(i) : a state of feeling sad : DEJECTION anger, anxiety, and depression a)(ii) : a mood disorder marked especially by sadness, inactivity, difficulty in thinking and concentration , a significant increase or decrease in appetite and time spent sleeping, feelings of dejection and hopelessness , and sometimes suicidal tendencies bouts of depression suffering from clinical depression
2: a lowering of physical or mental vitality or of functional activity
3: a long and severe recession in a economy or market
Civilisation may have fallen but the American Dream lives on.
Think about it. The Great Depression didn’t wake us up. Black Monday didn’t wake us up. The 2008 housing crisis sure as hell didn’t. The Education Default didn’t, either. Did people really think that the Crash would end the markets?
The biggest trick the governments of the Recession ever pulled on the world was that the Blight led to the Crash.
We all know the Blight wasn’t the cause. It was the death knell, the straw that broke the camel’s back. Overpopulation, poverty, climate change, wars and an economic down-spiral of debts and power hungry corporate oligarchs fostered a Petri dish of instability, ripe enough for the Blight to proliferate.
We’re arriving at the sixth anniversary of the Crash and it’s a marvel at how many more euphemisms they can chalk up to cover their own sins. The mountain of bodies in the Mississippi? Human error. The nuking of our northern neighbours? Preemptive action. The harvesting and experimentation of individuals from the Loss? Scientific endeavours. Some survivors in the Loss I know act shocked but this is just the same crap they’ve been pulling on us. Only difference is that the scapegoat is the undead rather than poor people or some foreign country west of the Atlantic.
Ain’t that a fucking joke.
pg 42 of False Quarantine: A Taker’s Perspective On How Truth Became the New Disease
Dead in Depression is a forum quest that is set in the world of Red Markets and is run using Caleb Stokes proprietary Profit system.
The setting takes place in the aftermath of the Crash - a cataclysmic series of socio-economic and environmental crises bolstered by the arrival of a novel plague: The Blight.This caused the world to be divided up into quarantine zones known informally as the Recession and abandoned exclusion zones known as the Loss. The last remnants of old world governments maintain an iron-grip rule over the Recession to prevent outbreaks and protect their uninfected populace from the ravages of the Loss. On the other side of the wall lies isolated pockets of survivors - enclaves - who trade and squabble with one another over resources to survive and keep out those infected by the Blight. The new fuel of the post-Crash economy is Bounty: a form of capital that consists of identification documents from the previous citizens of America who now shamble around aimlessly in abandoned metropolises. Debit cards, doctor’s licenses, passports, job badges - if you have it, the governments of the Recession will pay you with ration cards. Thus began the creation of a new undead.
You are a Taker: a catch-all term for mercenaries and contractors in the Loss who take on contracts in exchange for payment in Bounty. Accumulate enough bounty and you can give yourself and your loved ones an all-expense guaranteed safe ride to the bowels of the Recession and life comfortably, albeit under the watch of the DHQS. It’s a risky gamble but the reward is enough to make most Takers risk it all. You’ve managed to travel all the way down towards the Crest - a community of coastal enclaves on the California coast in the hopes of securing enough Bounty to place yourself in a nice cushy position in the post-apocalypse.
Will you manage to successfully retire or take a permanent retirement in the ground? The choice is yours.
The quest is run using a version of Red Market’s propietary Profit System which will be explained piecemeal throughout the quest as we go along.
Aberrant - Catch-all term for casualty variants that exhibit unique abilities.
Bait - Term for citizens of the Recession who are believed to be casualty “Bait”.
Believer - Term for the various religious sects, philosophies and beliefs that rose up after the Crash.
Blight - A mysterious plague that defies any known scientific convention. It’s infectology consists of two phases: the Vector phase and the Casualty phase. Living Blight is extremely infectious, converting its hosts to mindless bloodthirsty Vectors in a matter of minutes and completely subsuming the host in seconds. After some time, the histology of the Blight becomes akin to a parasite, burrowing black tendrils into the putrefying corpse and puppeteering it.
Bounty - the currency between the Loss and the Recession. Bounty is provided by the DHQS for the retrieval of identity and property documentation dating before the Crash. Bounty is rewarded on delivery, based on the average value of a pre-Crash adult’s total property and financial holdings.
Casualty - A zombie; a cadaver puppeted by the parasitic nervous system characteristic of “cold” Blight. The term hails from bloodless, sanitized news reports during the early days of the Crash used to prevent panic, now used ironically by Takers. “Taking casualties” can now mean killing zombies for money or dying in the process.
Carrion Economy - generalized term for the world economy. While new goods and services are still in production, worldwide trade is largely focused on looting the corpse of the Loss to recover value and infrastructure.
Citizen - pejorative term for a person living safely in the Recession or one of its settlements.
Crash - the initial emergence of the Blight and the resulting panic, chaos, and death.
Crew - the collective noun form of Takers. Crews assemble to bid on jobs and brand their services.
DHQS - the Department of Homeland Quarantine and Stewardship, the new agency in charge of maintaining the United State’s borders and eventually reclaiming the Loss. They are responsible for the bounty system and the inept enforcement of the underground economy resulting from it.
Enclaves - pockets of surviving civilization not officially recognized by any of the surviving state powers, but large enough to have some economic impact. Allowed to survive because they draw casualties away from the borders of safe zones or maintain vital infrastructure points.
Free Parking - derogatory term for the shantytowns that developed in the wake of the evacuation, so named because of the numerous derelict cars that make up their dwellings.
Homo Sacer - Latin for “the accursed man,” the term refers to a person banned from civilized society and not afforded protection under the law. Anyone outside the Recession’s borders without expressed federal consent is considered Homo Sacer.
Immune - a rare person that, for reasons unknown, is completely immune to Blight infection. They are subject to “conscription into medical service” (read: kidnapping, medical torture, and bone marrow harvesting) in the Recession and its settlements, in order to produce Suppressin K-7864 from their bone marrow. Takers and certain enclaves often attempt to kidnap the Immune for a sizable reward.
Latent - a carrier of the Blight that somehow remains free of cannibalistic urges. It occurs when the virus infects a host but transfers too quickly into its undead state. Necrotic Blight sinews wind painfully through the victim’s tissues (making Latents instantly identifiable), but the dead strain cannot affect living brain tissue. Latency can be natural or achieved by injecting Supressin K-7864 shortly after infection. Those infected by a Latent become Vectors as if bitten by a casualty, as the Blight reanimates itself without the intervention of drugs. Due to this danger, enclaves, settlements, and nations often shoot Latents on sight or detain them in isolated camps.
Lifelines - the secured forum launched by Gnat to coordinate evacuation and survival for civilians during the Crash. It’s now an invite-only community for Takers and other inhabitants of the Loss.
The Loss - as in “written off as a Loss.” Everything outside a safe zone surrendered to the dead
The Recession - If someone is “from the Recession,” they live in a safe zone marked by geographical fortification and run by a surviving national government. Early government communications used this term exclusively to refer to symptoms of the Crash because everything except economic news was being censored to avoid panic. It stuck due to its ironic inadequacy after the American government abandoned many of its citizens and “receded” to the East coast.
The Red Markets - the underground economy exploiting the Loss as a resource and trading between enclaves and the Recession. The market is “red” because it is not legal, but as nearly everyone participating is considered legally dead already, the trade isn’t technically illegal either.
Supressin K-7864 - a drug cocktail derived from the bone marrow of an Immune human, extremely powerful antibiotics, and dangerously caustic antiseptics. Though it cannot kill infection, injection within a few minutes after a bite can cause the Blight to enter its dormant state and reduce a Vector into a Latent human. Supressin is the single most valuable substance in the Loss.
T-mins Never - slang for the day of reclamation, generalized to mean false hope or foolish wishes. Derives from the fact that DHQS has claimed reclamation would begin in 20 years from the date of announcement... for five years running.
Takers - name for the outcasts, smugglers, and survivors that work the Red Markets. Simultaneously references “undertakers” and a reputation for theft.
UBIQ - massive internet start-up responsible for the free global wi-fi network exploited by the Moths and the only reliable from of communication the global economy can rely on. Ubiq servers both enabled and sabotaged the Recession by providing a stable communications network during the Crash.
Vector - a recently infected human unhindered by decay or rigor mortis. They are fast, infectious, and deadly.
[X] - “ Come on, bud. Don’t you remember reading one of my op editorials on the Lifelines about the Mid-West StopLoss sites last March? It was a hit all over UbiqNet!”
[X] - “Dios mios, what I would do to finish the last season of Indomitable if I had those glasses of yours. ”
Small(ish), goes bam, overall a good choice I think.
[X] - You just didn’t manage to salvage your priceless UbiqSpec Slivers. You have over a terabyte of articles and databases stored on these hard drives and you weren’t going to leave it for the spooks to take.
A good journalist needs good data.
[X] - Your landlord can tone the price down a little. Can’t he? [Persuasion Check]
We gotta use our charm.
[X] - A snoring old man lazing on a broken down massage chair. He’s currently holding his M1 Garand as if it’s a teddy bear with his prosthetic arm
[X] - A dog and a mousy looking girl currently wrestling with one another for dominance. The dog eventually ends up winning, covering his opponent in a mass of black fur and drool.
