This is very much raw, unfiltered ideas about a possible setting I've been playing around with for the past year. It's somewhat of a fusion of multiple genres; very much like Shadow Run but not as advanced. Here's the lowdown.
Touched: Afterscape
All life on the surface of the planet had been told it's expiration date. We were going to die.
Some deep space sensors had managed to detect an incoming asteroid the size of Alaska. It would hit the east coast of what was the United States and unleash a massive shock-wave that would decimate the entire planet. It was surmised that it would likely create a tsunami that would flood most of the land, cause massive volcanic activity, and block out the sun with the resulting debris that would plunge the surface of the planet into another ice age.
People started making plans within the three months that it would take for oblivion to arrive. The International Space Agency was given every material, every worker, every consideration in order to find a way to survive. The ISA worked together with governments around the globe to create a ship that could deliver a nuclear payload and an international team of astronauts trained to drill into the asteroid and plant the payload. They would not be able to return.
As the team piloted the ship named 'Salvator' toward the asteroid many of the people on the ground, those of us normal and unable to assist with the Herculean effort, tried to live our lives. It took a week for the Salvator to get visual of the asteroid and many of us huddled around our televisions and radios and listened as the International Space Agency spoke with the astronauts on board.
As the Salvator neared the asteroid, most of the astronauts began to feel ill. As they set up the drills, an American man from somewhere in Florida threw up in his suit and made his way back to the shuttle. As he neared the door he fell over and stopped responding. Thirty minutes later another, a woman from Tokyo, Japan, complained about her visor fogging up and numbness. She simply stopped moving and floated away. At this point, the ISA told the astronauts to cease waiting for orders unless they needed help and to proceed as quickly as possible. Something was wrong.
By the time the nuclear payload was planted, almost five agonizing hours later, only two astronauts were still alive, a Russian man from Moscow and an American woman from New York City. As they sat in the shuttle and reflected on their work, a council of the astronaut's families and world leaders thanked them for everything they did, for what they had saved their home from. As both astronauts slowly faded, the ISA sent the order for detonation. The astronauts fell silent as they and the asteroid were subjected to a combined nuclear payload of over one thousand kilotons of explosive force.
As the light from the nuclear blast faded and most of the dust drifted away, the ISA was delighted to discover that the resulting pieces of the asteroid were now drifting apart. Celebrations erupted the world over. What we called the 'impact generation' was conceived that night, products of elation of good will.
The next day came news nobody wanted to hear. While most of the asteroid had dispersed, many of the resulting pieces were still on a crash course with the Earth. Two months later the remaining pieces of the asteroid crashed into the earth's surface, spread out and causing destruction and mayhem across the globe.
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While it was true that the resulting physical damage from the impact was lessened, there was an unforeseen side effect resulting from the physical makeup of the asteroid itself. It was nothing we as a civilization could have ever expected, but strangely something we've written about for centuries, millenniums even.
It contained crystals, emitting high doses of a strange radiation, what we've come to know as M-Radiation. What creatures didn't die from the impact, earth quakes, tsunamis, or extreme winters also had to contend with the M-Radiation ripping apart their nervous systems. I've estimated that about eighty percent of the humanity, if not most of life on earth's surface, died from the asteroids impact itself. A further fifteen percent then died from the M-Radiation. In short, of the approximately eight billion people on earth, only four-hundred million survived.
About a decade afterward, those who survived it all started to notice something. We became stronger and faster. We had mutated, re-written by the strange forces released by our oblivion. And those of us who would later investigate the remains of the asteroid came to understand them as the source of this strange radiation.
Many called it a miracle, some called it a conciliation prize. Some claimed it was given to us by their gods, others that some alien race had predicted what we would do and sent it to us to make us pure enough to interact with. After many years of trying to survive the savage environment around us, we noticed something else that was beyond odd. Some of us had stopped aging. For every one-million people, one of us never visibly went beyond the age of thirty. I was one of them.
Can you imagine that? Immortality. To be chosen by fate, luck, or the whim of some celestial being, and stop aging. All that time, all that possibility. It became a nightmare in the first few decades. Many were killed out of jealousy, bigotry, paranoia, exile, and guilt. Of course for every 'Touched' killed, there were twenty trusted with oral histories, teaching children of the past, operating Pre-Sunder Machinery. And it didn't stop with the generations left over from the old world, the children also were under the effect of the one in a million lottery.
After many years of Touched being exiled, one defended himself from a mob by throwing fire. Fire! With his bare hands! He was the worlds first wizard. I managed to talk with him after hearing about it and he had no idea what he was doing, he just managed to will a ball of force and heat into existence. He had lived long enough to have subconsciously learned to create a spell and use it. The practice spread like wildfire. At first it was only the Touched, but as they learned more they were able to pass on the teachings to the mortals and they too could perform what we thought to be Magic.
Life became much more interesting. Civilization exploded as 'Wizards' began to lean how to manipulate the strange energy known as M-Radiation and use it to stop rivers, plow fields, lift boulders, and quell fires. Nomads turned into villagers, villages turned into towns, towns turned into cities. Of course we couldn't stay peaceful, could we? The wars were destructive beyond compare. Imagine the destructive power of a cannon. Now imagine dropping pieces of a nearby mountain onto a cities defenses and tell me with one is more effective.
Of course the 'Wizards' pushed themselves to hard during the initial skirmishes. Those who were mortal simply died as their nervous systems became fried and the organs shut down. Those who were Touched suffered a much worse fate. They became deranged and savage, monsters in the skin of man with eyes black as pitch. We don't know exactly what happens, but whatever forces were keeping us from aging supported our bodies but not our minds. While the poor bastard's gray matters cooked their bodies became weapons without masters and struck out at everyone, save for other deranged.
There were less people throwing mountains at each other after that happened a few times, but it didn't stop the eternal war machine. Some people discovered what came to be called 'Sorcery' and the world became much more dangerous.
They were able to take people's souls, or what we called souls. More appropriately, it was the electrical energy generated by the human mind and, somehow, the consciousness of that human. And not just people, animals too. They could use this energy to imbue objects with arcane effects, ensnare the senses of the living, and even create armies of hypnotized warriors.
The fools, a world covered in mutated life and mostly unfit for humanity and all they could think about was making sure they had more than everyone else.
It's been almost two centuries since 'The Fall.' My life has taken me along a path that has been both dangerous and peaceful, destructive and productive. Today peace is the way of the world, but I have come to know of a plot that threatens that peace. Something is coming, I don't know what. I just hope that I and the people of the Afterscape are ready for it.
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