Welcome, Survivor, to the Drylands
Hidden in the white-hot wasteland of the far post-apocalypse lies the tiny and infant settlement of Oasis. Named for the water that collects naturally in the ancient, labyrinthian aquifer located beneath it, Oasis represents a return of civility to the Drylands following the complete destruction of its morgue system three years ago in the cataclysmic Upheaval.
The people of the Greater Wastes pilgrimage to Oasis. To buy water, to ply trade, and to bathe and to drink. But the darkness of the desert presses in from around and underneath, and the sands are ever-shifting. The oldest dead rumble beneath the sun-cracked soil of the Dune Sea, bidden to wakefulness by the engine of progress, and turn all together in their ancient and terrible graves.
So, welcome and congratulations! Your Survivor is preparing to arrive in Oasis. Here are some fundamental concepts that your character understands implicitly as a denizen of the Greater Wastes. If you know these, you’re ahead of the curve.
Death Isn’t The End: in our world when you die your body is absorbed by a terrible and powerful entity known as the Mortis Amaranthine, a kind of churning bioengine of death and rebirth that spins us up new bodies when we die in infernal exchange for our own sanity. You’ll come back when your character dies a number of times equal to your Infection value. But, once you’ve run through all your lives - your character won't have enough of themselves left to claw their way out of the Mortis, and instead will return as a shambling and shuffling undead monster.
The Apocalypse Was a Long Time Ago: The Old World fell generations ago. There isn’t a person alive in the Greater Wastes who remembers the towering skyscrapers of New York or the concept of an email, or the notion of a governmental body larger than a town council. In many ways, the world has regressed to something simpler in the wake of incredible loss. While there are still some scholars who seek to know more about what was, often at great personal cost, most citizens of the Greater Wastes could care less about what came before, being much more focused on the present and ongoing threats of the post-post-post apocalypse.
Humanity Doesn’t Exist Anymore: Once upon a time, simple and delicate creatures roamed the earth in numbers so large that we cannot fathom them meaningfully in our minds. Those were humans and that was before The Fall. Something happened during that distant apocalypse that fundamentally changed the biological superstructures of our DNA - killing off humans as they were and replacing them with hardier, more specialized Strains of humanity. There are something like twenty known and understood Strains, all of whom nominally work together as equals, though more have been discovered in recent years as we expand our understanding of the Greater Wastes and its denizens.
If you’d like to know more about what your character might know as a resident of Oasis or one of the surrounding settlements, go here to learn more.