The Compound (M for F character, gritty world building within)

[Denivar]

Of course you remember the day of the Outbreak. It had been a lazy afternoon in your High School Math class. The teacher had already been through the coursework for the year, so he was letting the class goof off for the most part. Everyone had their plans. Some of your class mates had Summer jobs lined up. Others were going on family vacations. Yet others would simply while away the Summer days sunbathing or swimming or inside playing video games.

You looked around at your class mates. Jenny Carlson, whose mother was a successful lawyer was going on a family trip to Europe. Liz Hays was a bit of a surfer girl and would doubtless work hard on her tan all Summer. Jonathon Hughes would probably be geeking out with endless video games. Then there was Daniel James. You had figured he'd be working hard at his Summer job, saving up for his dream car. Out of these four, Daniel would survive the longest, dying a week later on the road out of town.

The many possibilities of an idyllic Summer were brutally shattered though, with the blaring of the PA system. The Principal announcing a school lock down. Looks of uncertainty and fear on the faces of your class mate. Something about this was serious. Was there a shooter lose in the school? There had been no sounds of gunfire.

As it turned out, the virus people had been talking about on TV the night before was far, far worse than anyone had imagined. It could turn people mad within hours, and it spread with unbelievable ferocity.

The school lock down lasted three days, and ended not with restoration of order, but with a complete collapse of the authority structure of the school as the virus breached its walls. Of course, you did the one thing any sane person could do. You ran.

By the time you got home, your house had been destroyed. Your family gone. Dead, most likely. Yet somehow, in the chaos you survived. You made your way out of town.

Things looked pretty bleak for a while. Having to dodge past the infected. To find water. You didn't find much food. You ran from the infected. Hid from them. Looking at their crazed eyes furtively from the relative safety of some shrubbery. By this stage you were figuring it was only a matter of time before you became one yourself.

And then, like a miracle, you found it. The Compound. It had been a Church. A big Church of several thousand. Huge parking lots. The tithes of the congregants building a lavish facility, The Cathedral of Light it had been called. Now it was simply The Compound -- after a hastily erected barricade that was patrolled had been built around it, along with a few of the nearest houses. Now it housed a few hundred people. People who were learning to survive in this new world.

Of course, a Church like this was home to some people who were pretty religious before this event. Now their religion had gone off the scales. This entire blight was a punishment from God, of course. And God had ordained their minister as his Prophet to see people through the calamity. Most of the men had been killed -- you later pieced together that there had been a fairly bitter "disagreement" (the people of the Church are fond of euphemisms) resulting in a fight where many men were killed or exiled. This led an excess of women. But the Prophet says that women are needed. Needed to repopulate the Earth.

So of course, you are very welcome at the compound. The question is, will you end up wishing you had been mercifully taken as one of the Infected in the early days after the Outbreak? Time will tell.

---

This will be a fairly harsh, gritty game, exploring the politics of a paranoid religious group after a calamity of apocalyptic proportions. There will be elements of intrigue, danger, sexual abuse, Stockholm Syndrome, corrupt religious power, etc.

I am rather sadistic, so there will likely be elements of pain and torture, though this will be mixed in with lots of storyline, character development, world building, and intrigue. Message me if interested!