<div style="text-align: center"><a class="link link--internal" href="http://bluemoonroleplaying.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=30297">The Plague: Character Profiles</a><br/>
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<i>It's December 27th, 2013.<br/>
<br/>
Yeah, that's right.<br/>
<br/>
2013.<br/>
<br/>
The world hasn't ended.<br/>
<br/>
Well, yet, anyway.<br/>
<br/>
A plague is breaking out.<br/>
<br/>
A disease that cannot be cured by normal means.<br/>
<br/>
But it's small right now.<br/>
<br/>
So small...<br/>
<br/>
But the outbreaks, while small, are numerous.<br/>
<br/>
Most aren't even noticed, but they're there.<br/>
<br/>
In the coming weeks, the disease will turn into a plague, an epidemic.<br/>
<br/>
And fear shall spread.<br/>
<br/>
Panic, turmoil, chaos.<br/>
<br/>
But it hasn't happened yet.<br/>
<br/>
But it will.<br/>
<br/>
In a week's time, the outbreak of this new plague, known only as "The Plague" as they haven't found a proper name for it, will become widespread.<br/>
<br/>
No one knows how.<br/>
<br/>
No one knows why.<br/>
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But for the citizens of New York City, the Plague will hit them the hardest.<br/>
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Dense population, compacted streets, a central location of crime and violence, it's almost perfect.<br/>
<br/>
But it is Winter in New York.<br/>
<br/>
And the Plague </i>thrives<i> in the cold.<br/>
<br/>
And it is the first to be contaminated by the Plague that shall bring down nations across the globe.<br/>
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Don't be mistaken, this isn't an apocalypse where the dead roam the streets.<br/>
<br/>
They merely pile up for the pyres.<br/>
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The United States military will quarantine the city, and mass panic will break out from both the infected and the non-infected. Soldiers will be told to fire upon them in the streets, burning the bodies to kill the Plague, adding another enemy, another variable to throw into the chaos.<br/>
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It's truly a survival situation now. Kill, or be killed. No one can be trusted.<br/>
<br/>
There is no immunity from this Plague, and the uninfected have to do anything in their power to prevent their immune system to be compromised. <br/>
<br/>
But this hasn't happened.<br/>
<br/>
But it will.<br/>
<br/>
In one week's time, the Plague will hit New York City, and it </i>shall<i> be quarantined. And panic shall raze the streets.<br/>
<br/>
This is the story of of a few survivors banding together to survive both the Military and the Plague, trying to make it out alive through a mysterious philanthropist's attempts to airlift the uninfected out of the city v.i.a. helicopter.<br/>
<br/>
After Day One, they have one week to traverse New York in an attempt for clues and leads to the ex-filtration zone.<br/>
<br/>
But not today.<br/>
<br/>
Today, they are normal.<br/>
<br/>
They are unaware of the Plague.<br/>
<br/>
And they are in a city without panic, without fear, without slaughter.<br/>
<br/>
Normal.</i><br/>
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<u>December 27th, 2013<br/>
One Week Before Day One of the Quarantine</u>​</div><br/>Michael sighed, scratching his beard as he sat at his computer. An old colleague of his - from his days in college, mostly - was a research monkey in some lab somewhere in England, and had sent him this data of a new kind of disease. The guys at his lab couldn't figure it out, so he sent it to Michael. Great. He stared at the screen. It was rather obvious, really. The disease was somewhat viral in nature, but also parasitic. It also showed elements of a stem cell, and- wait wait wait. Stem Cell?<br/><br/>Michael picked up his glasses and began to look at the cell diagram more closely.<br/><br/>He wasn’t rich, by any meaning of the word, but he had enough money saved up from his doctoring days to renovate this office. He lived in a two bedroom house, with a spacious kitchen and a decent living room. Yet he had the most tech in the office he built out of his second bedroom. It acted more as a doctor’s office, as he still took appointments for the people in his neighborhood; he had to keep his skills sharp somehow.<br/><br/>He threw the diagram over to a large touchscreen on his wall, and started to rotate it in several directions. It was fascinating. This parasitic virus had the adaptability of stem cells to give it the ability to fight off the immune system and infect blood cells at the same time. It would<i>adapt</i>to the infected individual and begin to break down the structure of someone at the cellular level.<br/><br/>Several theories could be used to how the patient could be breaking down. It could start with the muscles then move on to the skin and then the inner organs and bones, it could be the opposite, or it could just be eating away at everything at the same time. He looked at the diagram at several different angles, and his eyes narrowed as he began to realize what this was. He brought up the simulation video his colleague sent over along with the reports.<br/><br/>Michael chuckled as he looked at the simulation. It was chimeric - it had both parts synthetically lab made and naturally occurring components. Such a thing was, to his knowledge, impossible. This was some prank, or a simulation about how to combat it if the virus ever reached reality. Michael laughed as he closed the program, and heard a knock on his door. Hanging his glasses on the nook of his shirt, and walked to the front door.<br/><br/>"Real funny, John," Michael muttered to himself as he opened the door. It was one of his neighbors and her kid. He wiped his nose with his jacket sleeve and held a paper towel tight in his hand. It was red. The woman was saying that he cut himself while making a sandwich, but Michael sighed.<br/><br/>The doctor waved the two on in, getting them out of the snow-ridden streets. "Alright, come into my office. I'll take a look and stitch up your hand and prescribe you some antibiotics." Michael looked back and looked at the kid's red nose. "Maybe give you some cold medicine while I'm at it." Just another day for the neighborhood doctor.