Prion (sci-fi, fantasy, post apocalyptic, light survival.)

Maddeline

I am become death, destroyer of worlds
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Sci-fi, war, action, modern, mystery, kaiju, mecha, spiritual
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Hoping to get a group together (obviously)



Setting : forests around the Great Lakes region, October 9th, 2203. Winter is setting in, heavy snowfall, no crop yields, and human desperation at an all time high.

Plot, short: Civilization has long since crumbled, a side effect because it thrived. You are just trying your best to survive in a harsh world.

Plot, very long:
Human science in the fields of artificial biology and medicine have hit their apex, and to test their shiny new syringes, project ANKH spearheaded by DARPA funding set out to create super soldiers. The side effects were almost not worth the price, with cut corners and design flaws highly apparent due to a massive budget consumption and the limits of intellectual expansion into new scientific fields. The project was an extreme success, with each soldier recieving a tailor made injection of engineered virus and viroid agents that implemented the various stages of body modification to be carried out by the individuals own bodily processes.
The result?
Human beings with carbon nanotube muscles, making them almost as strong as elephants, with more bodily durability and flexibility than their respective bones and cartilidge. 1/4 carbon nanotube Reinforced cartridge, to allow wider range of motion, agility and most importantly, durability. Extremely heightened regeneration, allowing fatal wounds to be healed in a week or two as long as excess calories are provided. Reflexes that were increased so fast that reaction times reached the biological limit of 0.13 seconds across the board for visual, auditory and touch stimuli. Age was no longer an issue thanks to the regenerative Synthetic proteins and tailor made viral agents containing a perfect replica of the subjects DNA the day the first blood samples were taken. Disease struggled to infect the somewhat biological cell make up of the test subjects.
Where did it go wrong?
While the side effects like increased calorie count, intense tiredness after a day without sleep despite requiring only eight hour of sleep per week for peak physical fitness, an inability to reproduce between subjects and the inability to reproduce non-clones when subjects attempted procreating with normal human beings and worst of all the inability to vent the excess body heat released by the artificial enhancements in an efficient way (severely limiting potential output not for lack of ability but entirely because of the likelihood of sudden passing out due to heat exhaustion) were all horrible and made the enhancements barely worth it, the real problem was Michael Somare. His parents were born in Papua New Guinea, and he secretly had the Kuru prison disease in his system. The prion, altered by his artificial augmentations, became a global disease that spread like a virus and could cause death within ten years, leaving its afflicted the last years of their life in extreme dementia and Alzheimer’s like states, rambling and mumbling to themselves before their brains ceased to function.

Project ANKH survivors were used briefly to prevent global disaster following the large human population die off, shutting down nuclear power plants world wide or welding sewer exit ports, before one day...they never heard back from command.

From the decades and then centuries that followed, societies arose following borderline insane and infectious people. The number of infected people’s is now incredibly low, and human population has dipped down so low that there aren’t even enough people to find out how many people are left. The social contract has long since regressed.

It is said that to the east of North America, there the old world builds an army spearheaded by a warrior king. It is whispered that he is in fact also an Unkillable or Sage, some of the terms attributed by tribals to surviving Project ANKH test subjects. For most however none of that matters, as surviving in this far post apocalyptic world is hard enough thanks to a random technology gradient, lack of social trade, extremely varrying languages and cultural identities, the harsh climate of an almost ice age and the even more harsh artificial animals which litter the landscape.
Some such as the Torvosornis Utahmimis and Torvosornis Tyrannomimis are trainable beasts of war and burden while still a nightmare to encounter in the wild, while others are completely useless or untamable. This world is extremely harsh to humans, and it will take everything you have to survive.

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Interested.
I apologize for taking so long to see this, I have email notifications turned on but I’m guessing my email just didn’t feel like notifying me.

Glad to have you on board ^_^
 
So have project ANKH survivors just woken up?

No, they’ve been alive this whole time. Well, some of them anyway. A bullet to the head or any of the artificial monstrosities roaming the land have really lowered the total population of the super soldiers, but the more skilled individuals have survived the entire almost ten centuries that have passed since the world went to shit. Most have developed minor to moderate mental illnesses due to the amount of time they have been alive. Whether that be from so many memories colliding together or just the total accumulated trauma they’ve experienced.

The thing about the “old world waking up,” is a reference to the central antagonist finally growing his people into a small but powerful civilization that is rapidly and forcefully expanding outward to try and rebuild the United States. On paper and in his mind, it’s not just a worthy cause but it’s his orders. He doesn’t see any difference between the first generation survivors making communities in old towns and cities to survive and try to rebuild and the people that are here now who have their own unique religions, derivative languages, and some tribes even have started developing unique ethnicities. In his mind they are all citizens to a country they have never heard of and would struggle to comprehend. His very charismatic personality and extreme intelligence makes him irresistible to some- with glorious promises that he can actually make good on and a powerful army to enforce his word- but for those who refuse, he’s an indomitable foe who at best will “tax” them of everything they have to support his government...or on a bad day, will just have some of them executed and forcefully integrated into his society.


This is actually a book I’m writing and to assist with defeating writers block, I decided to try and make the events that are set in stone into a role play and see how it develops from there.
My character has direct ties to the antagonist; the antagonist was part of his squad when everything went to hell- he also helped found the very walled community that is now the antagonists capital city. After a falling out, my character chose a much more difficult and humble nomadic lifestyle. My character is named August, and despite being the protagonist, he’s an awful person. He’s unlikable, ruthless, and quite disconcerting to be around until he warms up to you. He is however, smarter than the antagonist (named Alexander.) August would do anything to succeed, no matter the cost. When he thinks something is wrong, he is willing to do something ten times as awful just to take out the trash. Alexander on the other hand only does things he views as necessary evils- and in large is actually a good person who has become extremely misguided as multiple and almost Innocuous mental disorders have popped up within him like the other Ankh survivors. Major problem being his intelligence and charisma is so infectious that he started to get a narcissistic view of what he did since he could justify his reasonings to anyone, including himself...except August.

August knows he is unhinged, is self aware of the mounting problems in his mind and tries to counteract them if he notices himself slipping, but most importantly heard the rumors of hostile assimilation and borderline genocide and pretty well decides to go on a fucking war path- recruiting anyone who seems like a decent person or who is a skilled fighter or highly intelligent like himself (or Alex for that matter.)

They’re both very grey characters, and are total equals while being narratively the exact opposite. August is doing what he sees as the right thing for the wrong reasons and will literally do anything to get it done, no matter how fucked up it may be. Alexander is doing the wrong thing for the right reasons and even when having people wiped off the map is rather human compared to other world leaders in Earth’s History.

ANKH Super Soldiers, while incredibly rare afternoon all this time, mostly find themselves allied with Alexander. Some buy into all the bullshit about restoring their home, but most just see that regardless of intent, Alexander made a safe and comfortable place to live that reminds them of a more civilized time- it reminds them of their home.

August and one or two other ANKH survivors group up because they see the evil there and the bias of Alexander’s supporters (after all, how would the tribals be making any cultural advances at all if it was so horrible everywhere? Alexander’s followers are either suffering from nostalgia, buying into exorbitant promises and drinking the Kool Aid, or are being forced to uphold his vision or face death.) Most of August’s group in the book and the role play I have on another site are regular people because it helps him blend in and he knows the company will help stabilize his sanity.

There’s a significant trade off to having one of the super soldiers- yes they are incredibly bright minded, incalculable wisdom from their centuries and decades of life, nigh invulnerable to disease, don’t age, have incredibly strong and fast reacting muscles that are harder than steel, bones that have more durability and strength than industrial grade titanium and the ability to heal much faster than a normal person BUT...they also are now mentally unstable in any number of ways with carrying severity, they have to eat about as much as a Kodiak Bear just to stay alive, can pass out if they use their full strength for longer than a couple of seconds because their brains and bodies would overheat, are typically borderline uncaring sociopaths after all they’ve been through, can tire easily even though they rarely have to actually sleep and can’t even donate blood to a non-super soldier without risking that they may kill them, cause the recipient to contract cancer as part of their body is converted into the super soldier body of different person, or if they’re lucky, just end up changing the eye color, hair color and some of the recipients personality.
The ANKH Survivors are amazing planners, combatants and so amazing at educating that many tribes see them as minor or even major gods walking among them to uplift mankind. But, they require a lot of resources and most are severely dysfunctional with non ANKH survivors.

A regular human character may not have the wisdom or intelligence or physical prowess of an ANKH super soldier, but they do have some major advantages like being able to communicate to any tribes similar to their own, a natural predisposition to surviving in this world, a more refined grasp on how to interact with the animals in this world, less attachments to extremely rare luxuries like firearms, electricity and running water, and most importantly the ability to have more than “just a bit” of humanity within them.

Hope that clears up any questions you may have had and I hope you’re still interested. I apologize for any weird sentences or spelling errors, I’m high as a kite right now because I have a tooth that has a nerve which is exposed in three places; they have me on 10mg/325mg Oxycodone/Acetaminophen three times a day (as of right now anyway.) So I’m struggling to stay both awake and lucid while also not accidentally getting alert enough to actually notice the pain beneath this warm, euphoric blanket currently wrapped around my body and coursing throughout my veins.
 
I'm actually even more interested thanks to your insightful info dump. I was thinking of making my character a Logan/Mad Max type of person who wanders the wasteland aimlessly while begrudgingly helping people he comes across. He'll be an ANKH subject that once was known as a hero throughout the wasteland. But as the centuries passed he became a more jaded and irresponsible person that just wanted to drink his life away. Haunted by his past failures and losses.

Btw I hope you feel better, I've had tooth problems in the past so I know how painful it must be for you. I once went six months with an exposed tooth and it nearly drove me insane. But I hope everything works out in the end.
 
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I'm actually even more interested thanks to your insightful info dump. I was thinking of making my character a Logan/Mad Max type of person who wanders the wasteland aimlessly while begrudgingly helping people he comes across. He'll be an ANKH subject that once was known as a hero throughout the wasteland. But as the centuries passed he became a more jaded and irresponsible person that just wanted to drink his life away. Haunted by his past failures and losses.

Btw I hope you feel better, I've had tooth problems in the past so I know how painful it must be for you. I once went six months with an exposed tooth and it nearly drove me insane. But I hope everything works out in the end.

Glad to know I’m not the only one who is driven nuts by tooth pain- I can’t eat or drink anything that isn’t luke warm. Anything with sugar or chocolate? Off the table- if it touches that nerve it feels like I’m being shocked with a cattle prod to the jaw.

Anyway, he’d get along great with August then; i’d say their biggest differences would be how August is such a micromanaging control freak of himself and those around him that whenever he is intoxicated or high, the difference is almost completely unnoticeable to everyone else...and how August tends to don a very worn military balaclava that has a hand painted skull on it that covers his face. He prefers more to be associated with an angel of death than a hero, even if he tries his best to make sure its the right people who are suffering (that being said, a good person that’s desperate and attempts to take anything of his is going to die the exact same way as if they were raider trash.)


Just so you know, the wastelands are actually heavily overgrown temperate forests for the most part- eight months of the year is now a winter. Two centuries after humans died, Yellowstone erupted and put the planet into a ten thousand year or so “nuclear” winter thanks to all the particles in the sky. More or less causing a lesser ice age.

The main reason humanity hasn’t really climbed back to the top is the artificial animals. Sure most of them can be domesticated, tamed and used for anything from battle to agriculture, but they are fertile genetic abominations that posses extreme power, speed and intelligence. The Tyrannomimis for instance is actually equal to a human in intelligence, for instance, but is also bigger than T-Rex and for more durable and powerful than the real animal could have ever hoped to be. They are avian smart, think of a raven or crow kind of way- as smart if not smarter than chimps, but in such a non human kind of way that it’s unsettling.
 
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For appearance, would you prefer a picture or description?
Also for Clothing/Gear, do I need to describe all the gear my character has?
 
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For appearance, would you prefer a picture or description?
Also for Clothing/Gear, do I need to describe all the gear my character has?

I would prefer if you would describe all the clothing/gear so that we have comprehensive knowledge of everyone’s tool/gear.



As for appearance, either or is fine. If you’re going to describe it, i’d Like enough to go off of