The Apocalypse

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The main roleplay story starts/will be based out of a farmhouse and surrounding acreage in rural Alabama, USA. There are rooms up for grabs in the main building (plus a guesthouse), with room for animals and vehicles. The farmhouse was used near the beginning of the Apocalypse by a band of survivors who turned it into a small survivalist camp; they planted gardens, dug a well, made a storm shelter, and put up a palisade wall. Although this original group left their work abandoned, for some unknown reason, it has been fixed up and made into a survivor camp again.

The world is a husk of what it used to be. Cities are rundown, quiet, full of hollowed-out buildings. The land is dotted with empty houses, camps of lean-tos hastily thrown together and just as hastily deserted, suburban towns ransacked and being slowly reclaimed by nature, highways and interstates cracked and littered with abandoned vehicles.

There is still life: survivors linger on their own or band together, striving to retain their humanity... or abandoning their morals and doing whatever it takes to keep themselves alive, even if that includes keeping hostages like human cattle to throw to the Husks and buy themselves some time.

The wildlife is bolder, the animals that were previously domesticated now roam in their own little survivor bands, relearning how to life without human influence... but still easily swayed back to an easy life if a capable person comes along. Not even the animals are safe from the virus, however, and it's not uncommon to run into an infected beast.

The Husks roam in rambling packs, never-tiring, forever hungry.

The virus had several tell-tale symptoms: a relentless fever, nausea, migraines, a decline in eyesight, itching and burning of the eyes, strange bruises from blood vessels spontaneously bursting, blood from the ears and eyes.

There were a few who fought off the fever and recovered. There were those who never fell sick at all. And there were those who caught the virus and never lost it.

These "zombies" are referred to as Husks, thanks to their dead eyes and emaciated figures. The majority of Husks shamble around with sightless eyes, either rotted in their sockets or completely fallen out. Their flesh is sickly and forever feverish, brains diseased from the inside out, relying on their sense of smell and hearing to seek out prey -- and relying on their numbers and ferocity to overwhelm their opponents.

There are a few mutations within the larger group of Husks, not all of which have been seen or studied. Some are unnatural fast, bodies mutated beyond the usual changes -- some travel alone and are unexpectedly clever, hunting with intelligence. Still others lurk, unknown and unnamed.