#zaumbies

[techmomma]

A continuation from this.

In case it’s hard to tell, he’s boiling the dressings he found to sterilize them.

[mana-burst]

When it happened

Appalachian Escapee She was 13 when it happened.. the mist had taken so much, and her family had hid away in the family's cabin high in the mountains of Appalachia, things went well at first, though the mist uncomfortably lingered just out of reach, like a sea of sweeping death in the valleys below. Grandfather fell first, one day... something just seemed to call to him, and he wandered away in the morning sun, down into the shadows and never to be seen again.. at least that was the hope, Grandmother went shortly after, lost without him and losing the will to even rise from her bed.

It was months later when the young one of the family was heard yelling, waving frantically down the path.. "Grandpa! you're back!" the words sent a chill down the spine of his parents and sister... and then they were silent as the family rushed from their chores. The mist had risen higher than ever before.. and the battered.. rotting figure of the family patriarch stood, the silent form in his arm un-moving as blood pooled beneath them. And more came behind him.. slow and staggering but encroaching on the house.

This night was long.. and the morning brought no reprieve, nor the next... and then it happened on a Sunday.. mother watched, battered shovel in hand and candle in the other, for father to return from the barn.. and then the soft glow of the candle vanished through the barn doors.. and a cry caused her to forget herself. Mahbu watched from the window of her bedroom, clutching a candle in her hand as she watched her mother's soft glow move across the yard and to the barn... and then she screamed when she saw that light vanish just as her father's had.

It was another day, hiding in the bedroom, dressers pushed across the door and almost burning the house down more than a few times as she fought sleep with a candle in her hand before the mist receded. Her body finally gave and she fell into a deep sleep once the terror left her, and that afternoon after she woke she ventured out. No cows.. no chickens.. no family remained but blood and bile and a barn that looked like a scene from a horror movie brought to life as her eyes widen in shock.. and then seemed to fade, as if something inside her shut off.

A slow week crawled on with the mist drawing back down the mountainside as the young survivor labored, at first going through the motions of their life.. setting a table for six.. feeding animals that no longer existed.. but on the fifth day she cried, and for almost a day she didn't leave that table. On the sixth day, with a tear stained face she left the house, a tattered pink backpack on her back stuffed full of every bit of trail-worthy food she could scavenge, a bandolier of candles draped across her chest no longer having shells to fill it's voids, a battered old lantern covered in blood stains hanging from her pack housing the soft flames of a candle and a wood-cutters axe in hand as she started down the mountain.. to find something, to find someone... to leave behind the ghosts in the mountains.

She was 13 when it happened...

[techmomma]

A man, a mutt, and a mule.

Ed likes to call his 308 bolt-action his “no arguments” rifle, because folks tend to quit bickerin’ when they can hear the thing go off about five miles away. He only rarely uses it for hunting; he far more often uses his flatbow, and keeps his rifle on hand for emergencies, mostly. Ammunition these days is hard to find, and he prefers not to fritter ammo away. 

His chaps protect his legs when riding through underbrush and branches, and add more friction to keep him more secure on Nena.

[techmomma]

Rise

It started on a hunter’s moon, 18 years ago.

The moon, deep copper, sat low in the sky as a deep mist, wrong in every way, crept over the East Coast and worked its way west. Every sound died. For an uncountable age, nothing moved, people and persons standing still, watching bewildered. 

And then someone screamed. Thousands screamed. 

They rose in the hospitals and morgues first. The recently dead climbed from gurneys and steel tables, attacking the living, dragging them out of sight. The newest dead moved quickest, leaving blood stained floors and walls behind as they escaped into the fog. 

The dead in freezers and the dead in caskets sitting in freshly turned earth rose next. They pulled themselves, bodies stiff, creaking with rigor mortis, after the living as well. Cemeteries became pock-marked with open graves, and the dead joined the growing march.

Animals too, began to rise. Some bodies, decades old but with flesh still clinging to bones, rattled in their worm-eaten coffins and rose, too, out of the earth, out of shallow water. They lumbered, slowly, but unceasingly, in the mist. Some took strange, terrible forms. 

Some... even seemed intelligent.

And when the sun broke through the mist at sunrise, the world was not the same. 

Those who survived the First Night found quickly that there would be no going back. The number of the living dwindled quickly in the chaos of the first night. Any who died in the mist rose again, corpses left behind when the mist crawled in rose again. Some lucky few, fleeing or fighting for their lives, or still as the grave until the mist passed, survived. Some banded together for strength; some abandoned their fellows, desperate to survive. Some survived in pure luck. 

In a domino effect across continents, power grids, as their maintenance crews died or fled, began to fail. Each failure put more pressure on the surrounding grids until the remaining grids couldn’t handle the demands and failed rapidly one after the other. The failing grids could not support power plants and chemical facilities, leaking and poisoning the area around them. Heroic crews shut down many nuclear plants but some plants, too old to withstand this unforeseen apocalypse, melted down, creating hazardous and impassable areas where yet more died. 

Worse still, in some places... the mist never rose. It clings to some cities, permanently crawling with the dead, even now, 18 years past the initial outbreak. All major cities remain shrouded, now wastelands of the dead where frightening apparitions lurk. The seas too are subject to the Mist, where perhaps even more frightening monsters lurk beneath the sea. 

Life yet grows though. The wheels of change turn onward, and even humans are subject to it, some changed in ways hard to see. Communities arose and fell, some thriving, some fallen. And some in a careful balance between the two.

Perhaps you got lucky after the outbreak and found your way to safe harbor; perhaps you’ve lived in the wastelands since the Beginning. Perhaps you man one of the Stations, or perhaps you were an unlucky survivor of a failed colony.

Let’s find out.

General Worldbuilding:

Character Roster

Ideas for settlements

Non-zombie threats

People - Wilderlings

People - Watchers and Witches

People: Wildflower Wanderers

Monsters - Ghouls, zombies, lurkers

Monsters - Hidebehinds

Monsters - Banshees

Places - Stormport

Places - Fort Dawn

Places - Layovers

Things - Candles

Things - Witchcandles

Things - The Mist

Things - (illness) Mistchill

Resources: Stormport

Stormport references

Ideas for Stormport Residents

Doctors and nurses

The Salvage Team

Chandlers

Corpse control

[techmomma]

Sunflowers

As mentioned in the previous post, there are hazardous areas where nuclear plants melted down, irradiating the area. 

Some brave, self-sacrificing persons, usually much older wilderlings and travellers, have formed small communities called Wildflower Wanderers. These people have taken up the mantle of travelling to irradiated areas and spending time planting sunflowers (and, to a lesser extent, field mustard, amaranthus, and cockscomb) to absorb the radiation. They do this not for themselves but for future generations, in the hopes of making these areas safe, one day. They are known for carrying bundles of flowers on their person at all times, and are highly respected in all Layovers and settlements. Giving them food and supplies is considered good luck and almost mandatory (though cautiously given, as these people do still travel irradiated areas and can bring radiation with them; most shower or bathe to decontaminate themselves before approaching other humans though). 

It is not uncommon to stumble upon a body in a patch of sunflowers near an old power plant. These are highly revered dead, for it is understood that they gave their lives in an attempt to make the future a little brighter and a little safer. 

[techmomma]

I think we all know a post-apocalyptic cowboy’s gotta have his travelin’ buddy.

[techmomma]

How I picture a (any) first meeting with TB.

Meanwhile, Ains vision, courtesy of Kaj:

[techmomma]

A continuation from here. 

Ains is totally fine, for the record. He probably did something stupid like cut himself while whittling or cutting down a tree and it wasn’t until TB screamed that he noticed he was bleeding everywhere.