Post by Castoro Chiaro on Jul 15, 2012 18:28:40 GMT -5
This is the world as we know it today.
The sky is never the right color -- it is always a sickly grey, as though the vitality has been drained from it. But even that sight is more welcome than that of a tear, like the very fabric of reality torn asunder, and the suffering that follows. And it was only a short time ago. Twenty-five years. That was when it first happened. Nobody knew what to think. Many fancied it some sort of elaborate hoax or some strange astral phenomenon that would make a nice place in some magazine most people wouldn't read and life would continue on uninterrupted.
And then people started getting sick.
Nobody knew what was wrong -- only that seemingly healthy people would suddenly catch terrible fevers, would lose the strength in their limbs, would be reduced to the most pitiful, agonizing state...and they would die. And, worse, those terrible, unexplainable cracks would appear on their bodies, overtaking them piece by piece until nothing was left.
And not only the people. The animals were crazed, fleeing their masters, would seemingly go rabid, and they too would be gone. Plants wilted in the fields. The very soil itself went dry. Our technology began to fail and satellites plummeted. It seemed that this was Armageddon, that the end times had finally come for mankind and life on the planet as we knew it. Madness overtook many, and hopelessness drove them to horrible atrocities that were never recorded and will never again be spoken of.
And then.
The miracle.
There were those that were immune, people, animals, even some plants that seemed to flourish. They were gathered together, preserved. The best minds among those that were kept safe worked, isolated this curious property that made it so these few survived. They found what they hoped to be a cure. When it was used upon a boy in the early stages of the sickness, it retreated to a single part of his body. And even more curious than that, the boy found he could understand the language of the sows they kept. And that they kept insisting there must be better things to eat around than the rubbish they were being fed.
But he was never fully rid of it, nor were the others that were given the treatment. It was contained to one location depending on the nature of their illness, kept at a safe level where it would not spread. But it would resurface over a period of time, and the "cure" had to be adjusted in some ways depending on who it was administered to. And, strangely...the people who had it were changed in another way.
The illness is not what we had known it to be. Those that still live, that still carry it, in its now stabilized form...they have been given strange abilities we never knew were possible; some can summon fire from the air, others can make themselves tremendously powerful, and still others can speak with the dead. We now think it is less akin to radiation, as we once believed, and more mystical in nature. Those dedicated to this new form of treatment, the Doctors, now work tirelessly to keep these people alive and functioning. It is a difficult task, as so much is still yet unknown to us and it's never the same treating one patient to the next. Many Doctors find themselves bound to a single patient, and that bond only grows deeper over time.
As the "cure" spreads among those that can reach it -- and this process itself is painfully slow...many areas of the world have gone entirely dark -- the last remnants of humanity are coming back together again. Those unaffected and those in treatment. Their abilities grow stranger, and the polarization between the two groups grows deeper.
The sky is still broken in some places of the world, these "storms" creating dead zones where no man dares to tread. But for now, we are working to rebuild. To heal.
The sky is never the right color -- it is always a sickly grey, as though the vitality has been drained from it. But even that sight is more welcome than that of a tear, like the very fabric of reality torn asunder, and the suffering that follows. And it was only a short time ago. Twenty-five years. That was when it first happened. Nobody knew what to think. Many fancied it some sort of elaborate hoax or some strange astral phenomenon that would make a nice place in some magazine most people wouldn't read and life would continue on uninterrupted.
And then people started getting sick.
Nobody knew what was wrong -- only that seemingly healthy people would suddenly catch terrible fevers, would lose the strength in their limbs, would be reduced to the most pitiful, agonizing state...and they would die. And, worse, those terrible, unexplainable cracks would appear on their bodies, overtaking them piece by piece until nothing was left.
And not only the people. The animals were crazed, fleeing their masters, would seemingly go rabid, and they too would be gone. Plants wilted in the fields. The very soil itself went dry. Our technology began to fail and satellites plummeted. It seemed that this was Armageddon, that the end times had finally come for mankind and life on the planet as we knew it. Madness overtook many, and hopelessness drove them to horrible atrocities that were never recorded and will never again be spoken of.
And then.
The miracle.
There were those that were immune, people, animals, even some plants that seemed to flourish. They were gathered together, preserved. The best minds among those that were kept safe worked, isolated this curious property that made it so these few survived. They found what they hoped to be a cure. When it was used upon a boy in the early stages of the sickness, it retreated to a single part of his body. And even more curious than that, the boy found he could understand the language of the sows they kept. And that they kept insisting there must be better things to eat around than the rubbish they were being fed.
But he was never fully rid of it, nor were the others that were given the treatment. It was contained to one location depending on the nature of their illness, kept at a safe level where it would not spread. But it would resurface over a period of time, and the "cure" had to be adjusted in some ways depending on who it was administered to. And, strangely...the people who had it were changed in another way.
The illness is not what we had known it to be. Those that still live, that still carry it, in its now stabilized form...they have been given strange abilities we never knew were possible; some can summon fire from the air, others can make themselves tremendously powerful, and still others can speak with the dead. We now think it is less akin to radiation, as we once believed, and more mystical in nature. Those dedicated to this new form of treatment, the Doctors, now work tirelessly to keep these people alive and functioning. It is a difficult task, as so much is still yet unknown to us and it's never the same treating one patient to the next. Many Doctors find themselves bound to a single patient, and that bond only grows deeper over time.
As the "cure" spreads among those that can reach it -- and this process itself is painfully slow...many areas of the world have gone entirely dark -- the last remnants of humanity are coming back together again. Those unaffected and those in treatment. Their abilities grow stranger, and the polarization between the two groups grows deeper.
The sky is still broken in some places of the world, these "storms" creating dead zones where no man dares to tread. But for now, we are working to rebuild. To heal.