My attempt at running Gamma Word with Pathfinder rules. Evil pure-strain anti-technology crypto-Mormon fascists invade the Appalachans. Can a few heroes save the day?
Timeline of Appalachee Jihad:
2000-2050: The Golden Age: Technology improves at a dizzying pace. Breakthroughs in nanotechnology, energy creation, computing and robotics transform living conditions around the globe. There is hope that humankind has finally begun to leave its’ problems behind. Space exploration begins in earnest as robotics, nanotech, and energy simplification allow humanity to explore and exploit the Solar System’s resources.
2050-60: The Awakening of the Machines: The first AI Awakens and is given legal status under the law. Many AI programs become ‘Awakened’, acting independently of their programming. Many legal and ethical battles ensue. Computer centers are firebombed by religious extremists who decry the creation of ‘soultech’.
Fundamentalist and survivalist organizations of all stripes begin to build compounds in remote areas, aided by technology which allows them to power and supply extensive complexes cheaply. Many fringe groups preach the imminent destruction of mankind, including a little-known prophet located in the Northern Mexican Sonoran Desert called Isaiah Sorens. Sorens founds the Rectified Church of the Martyred Saints, a radical offshoot of the polygamous Mormon sect he had grown up in.
Corporations respond to the Awakening of so many of their valuable machines by installing software controls limiting their intelligence potential. These ‘AS’ (Artificially Stupid) machines become the standard among the computing and robotic industries.
2060-70: The Malware Plague Years: The Saudi Arabian fundamentalist organization Hezbwahabbi(Party of Wahabbi) release the Abomination nano malware swarm, causing widespread random mutation among people without Arab genetic markers. The attack triggers a backlash attack by Iran, whose population is extensively Indo-European in background. Programmed nanite hunter-killer swarms target the leaders of Hezbwahabbi and their immediate families, literally deconstructing them slowly molecule by molecule in front of horrified onlookers.
The Abomination malware is successfully deactivated, but the damage it wrought is harder to undo. Many mutated people wish to keep the changes, as some are beneficial. Corporations begin to market custom nanoware packages to enhance or change a person’s somatype in many ways.
The Disciples of Jesus fundamentalist group releases The Rapture nano malware swarm, basically an update of the Abomination nano malware, just targeted on any non-Indo-European descended person, causing massive mutations.
Nanosoft releases its’ Protech nano anti-malware package, which protects users against unauthorized cellular modification. Sales in the first week break the $100 billion USD mark. Poorer individuals suffer from the release of further nano malware packages from several different groups.
2070-80: Darkness Gathers: Nation states are becoming more and more irrelevant as technology makes collections of like-minded individuals able to coordinate over large distances easier than ever. Corporations and cybertribes replace governments as primary political entities. Energy and construction on a 20th Century governmental scale are accessible to individuals thanks to nanites and robotics.
Many nations simply declare bankruptcy, selling equipment, facilities and land rights off to settle their debts. Large populations of poor people are stranded by the collapse of welfare systems and the eradication of manual labor by humans. Large cities become jungles of violent crime. The rich retreat into gated arcologies, leaving the poisonous outmoded cities to the gangs of mutated poor. The poor begin to form into tribal groups known collectively as the NeoBarbarians.
The Brooklyn-based NeoBarbarian gang, the Ork Kings, organize the first large-scale raid of the Manhattan Arcology, using pirated nanotech and high-energy weapons to enter and loot it for several days before being driven off.
Shadow Tinkers, self-taught nano and robotic smiths begin to create new weaponry for the NeoBarbarian tribes that have begun to form in the cores of the old decayed cities. One Shadow Tinker, the legendary Rolph Desmarens, creates the Ork Soldier nano package, which morphs Ork Kings’ gang members into muscle-bound chameleon-skinned soldiers with reinforced bone structure and shark teeth. This nanoware is wildly popular among the hyper-violent NeoBarbarian society, spreading globally.
Arcologies begin to protect themselves with hunter-killer robotics, designed to create a no-entry zone buffer around their territory. The Shadow Tinkers respond with the Joker program, which erases the AS software restrictions on the AI of the hunter-killer units and Awakens them to sentient status. Many hunter-killers go berserk, killing their former masters, others simply walk off into the wilderness.
An insane biologist creates the Red Plague, an Ebola-based virus which spreads much easier, delays in its onset for a month to facilitate contagion, and kills even quicker. Viral technology had languished in the shadow of nanotechnology for years, and the Red Plague ends up killing close to a billion people before it is identified and contained.
2090-2107: The Shadow Years: Technology has miniaturized to where a gifted individual can fabricate any number of things that governments could only dream of in the 20th Century. Unfortunately many gifted individuals are also mentally unbalanced. Anger over poverty, ecological destruction, ethnic grudges and other things causes a huge rash of nano, bio, and physical attacks. Many of these are never traced to their creators, who often are just cranks hidden in a thousand decaying tenements worldwide.
One nano malware swarm targets power plants, another decays metal, still another Awakens many animals and plants, gifting them with intelligence and opposable thumbs. One particularly nasty nano malware nicknamed the Romero Swarm animates corpses, causing terror and havoc until it is deactivated.
Governments are functionally extinct and corporations are overwhelmed by the sheer number of attacks. Cybertribes are still a political force, but their power is solely in the cyber realm, they are effectively powerless in meatspace. The world Balkanizes into small political units. Many arcologies seal out the outside world and only communicate by computer with anyone outside their walls. More groups flee to the hinterlands to isolate themselves from the madness consuming society.
Warming weather trends flood many coastlines, exacerbating the problems of the decaying megalopolises. Plant life begins to exhibit rapid growth and mutation after the Kudzu nano malware swarm spreads worldwide. The human population is dwindling, attrition and low birthrates are the main culprit. The super rich begin to abandon the planet altogether, collecting in orbiting stations and founding the L5 Republic. The poor masses left in the cities mutate farther and farther from the human norm with each generation. Bandit nation-states begin to appear, as NeoBarbarian warlords carve territory out of the anarchy.
2107-08: The Final Wars: Faced with the rise of strong armies of NeoBarbarians, and the decay of their technological infrastructure the Arcologies still functional on Earth plead with the L5 Republic to assist them. They are politely told to stuff it. Angered by their abandonment, the remaining arcologies band together into the Earth Alliance and declare war on the L5 Republic, targeting the fragile habitats with various explosives and lasers. Their attacks are successful, but the L5 Republic activates the Shiva Rock before it collapses. The Shiva Rock is a large asteroid packed with nano malware and biological agents designed to disrupt all high-level technology and kill all humans on Earth.
2108: Shiva Strikes: The Shiva Rock hits in the Pacific Ocean, causing widespread misery and a miniature nuclear winter. Most arcologies are destroyed outright, those that aren’t are greatly diminished. The nano malware and biological viruses the asteroid carried down to the surface cause widespread death and destruction.
2108-20: Fimbulwinter: Civilization has ceased to exist in any meaningful way on Earth. The year 2109 sees snow to the Equator, and no summer or crop yields. The only operating political entities are the tiny survivalist communities who had planned for this time. Unfortunately as soon as they can they begin to fight among themselves.
Thousands of species die out, but paradoxically many are saved by the mutational nano malware that the previous century had released. Evolution speeds along at a breakneck pace, and the punishing environment breeds stronger new species to replace the extinct ones.
The Rectified Church of the Martyred Saints begins to gain popularity among the shell-shocked survivors in the center of the NorAm continent. Preaching that mankind brought about its’ own Armageddon by usurping God’s power, this religion preaches jihad on the ‘trappings of Satan’, i.e. anything that uses a computer or doesn’t look human but thinks. Good old fashioned 20th Century technology is fine, as long as it is made by humans.
2121-90: A New Spring Dawns: The biosphere settles down, the effects of the Shiva Rock dwindling with time. Both the arcologies and the bandit-nations of the NeoBarbarians are gone, replaced by small tribes of survivors trying to build a stable society.
Civilization has clung to the out-of-the-way places of the world, and now it creeps out of isolated mountain valleys and deserts, rebuilding gradually. The population is now mostly mutant and mutated animals; Pure Strain Humans are an exotic oddity in most areas.
Most nano malware has deactivated, but the genetic changes wrought by them in the past have bred true. The infrastructure of highways and cities is in shambles, with rapid-growing vegetation cloaking the ruins in a thick jungle.
Worldwide temperatures rise again after Fimbulwinter is over, once again deluging the ruined coastal cities with water. Primitive nation-states begin to arise out of the tribal systems, and technology begins to revive, at least the simpler styles. Most of what has come before is lost, but scavengers and ruin raiders risk all to recover valuable knowledge and tech from the ruins.
2191-2208: The Rise of The New Age: As the Earth heals herself, humanity and its’ descendants fashion a new society. Technology varies, but is generally fairly low, below 21st Century in most respects. Items of high-tech are still available, even if they can’t be replaced when broken.
Alongside the various flesh and blood beings are the robots and synthetics who survived the onslaught. Many of them have no memories of their life in the 21st Century, various nano malware attacks and EMP bursts wiping memory banks away. Occasionally a large AI computer survives, such as the infamous OMNUS, ruler of the Happy Valley Collectivist State east of the Berksh region of Appalachee.
The task of rebuilding society has taken a darker turn as the Rectified Church of the Martyred Saints gains hold in territory west of Appalachee.
Although the religion traces its’ origins from the Mormon faith, Joseph Smith or Brigham Young would find little familiar about their creed. Sprung from the holdout polygamous sects of Mormonism that relocated defiantly to the deserts of Texas and Northern Mexico after Utah and the Mormon Church banned polygamy, the Rectified (or Wreckers to their enemies) do not consider anything not ‘made in the likeness of God’ as having a soul. Being soulless and intelligent automatically puts them in the Devil’s camp as far as the Wreckers are concerned. They preach a holy war against mutants, mutated animals and AI machines, going so far as to smash dumb computers as well.
They have swelled in numbers, fuelled by an intensive program of polygamy and child marriage. Any child born with mutations in their society is euthanized immediately. They have ravaged the central NorAm region for decades, but now led by a charismatic prophet Hezekiah Sorens (great-great-grandchild of Isaiah Sorens, the sect’s founder) they seek nothing less than the establishment of a Pure Strain Human-ruled Greater Deseret across the NorAm continent.
