Havoc’s Children

A Town on the Edge of Damnation

Havoc is a town north of Central Territory’s capitol, situated between The Irons and a vast desert called Damnation. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone from the big cities back east who could find the place on a map. But that doesn’t bother the folks who call Havoc their home.

The town is well-peopled, mostly by ranchers, factory workers, and the like. The law there is honest. It is a safe place, a green place, and its children prosper. But, in the year of DCLXI, when news of The Torn blight reaches the county, Havoc’s children take a stand with their brothers and sisters from around the nation to turn back the tide.

The Federated Territories of Thereafter

A nation rose out of cinders of the old world. Baptized by ages of struggle and war, eight independent states came together as one. Forward looking and democratic, The Federated Territories of Thereafter shines with promise. Coast is bound to coast by rails, roads, and teletext wire. Federal laboratories make new miracles every year. And The Preachers of Academia prophesize times of plenty ahead.

But all is not well in the FTT. Still healing from a bloody rebellion, old grudges simmer between the territories of the new west. Religious rifts and bitter arguments about the future of technology boil beneath the surface of a tenuous peace.

Thereafter is grand idea, a notion that all people have some rights and freedoms that cannot be taken away. In the spring of DCLXI, when the monstrous Torn Virus breaks out again, that idea will be put to test. Whether the virus is contained or runs rampant, whether the nation holds together or falls into civil war, everything depends on the young people chosen from around the country to serve on the front lines.

The Torn

The Old Ones left many mysteries behind them: What caused their world to fall? How did they power their massive cities? Why did they keep so few records of their lives? Of all the unanswered questions inherited by their forebearers, the most insidious is that of The Torn. For nothing in all scientific gospel can explain what causes the dead to walk.

A small bite or scratch is all it takes to rob a person of their humanity. Left untreated, a fever will wrack the body followed by chills. Memories burn like kindling; a person’s skin begins to die and fall away. The creature they become knows nothing of itself, just hunger and instinct. The Torn turns people into predators who turn people into predators and on and on. The first blight almost killed the continent.

Three times they’ve come and three times they’ve been turned back. As fearsome as the ghouls of the old world are, they are no match for the industry and resolve of Thereafter. Only the oldest of old timers have living memories of The Torn now.

But victory has its own dangers. Over years the nation’s confidence has turned to arrogance. When the new blight breaks out everyone assumes that victory will be swift, but something has changed. The Torn seem to be working together, moving strategically, hiding from their pursuers. There are rumors from the quarantine lines that they have begun to speak.