<span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 8pt;">STANDARD ISSUE THEREDFEAR GM DISCLAIMER: I suck as a GM. I really do. I don't like GMing. I kinda loathe it in fact. Every game i've ever tried to GM has spectacularly imploded(Or Quietly fizzled...same diff). But making the attempt is the only way I get to play...however breifly...the stories I really want to play. Those of you who like this idea and really wanna see it flourish would be wise to volunteer to GM in my stead. I'll happily relenquish the reigns. Or Co-GM at least. </span><br/><br/>"<strong>No. It wasn't some big evil scary corporate experiment. Why does everybody always assume it was the big evil scary corporation? Newsflash kiddies. The corporations never gave a rat's ass about you and me except insofar as we were willing and able to pay for their products. So devastating their own consumer base...Not a good business model, wouldn't you agree? This wasn't about Greed. At the end of the day, you can trust greed to at least do what's in it's own best interests, if nobody elses. And this? This was in nobody's best interests. <br/><br/>No, this was about Power. This came from the people who get a rush out of telling everyone else what they can and can't do. This was our own beloved government who bent us over the barrel and stuffed their tiny little cocks up our collective ass. This came courtesy of the same Brain Trusts who decided they could ban table salt in our restaurants, or dictate the size of our sodas. The people who decided we couldn't be trusted with the means to defend ourselves when some whackjob shows up and starts tossing homemade pipebombs all over the place. No...we just had to somehow survive for the 5-10 minutes it'd take for <em>them</em> to send in the guys with uniforms and guns. And hope they don't make a wrong turn along the way... <br/><br/>And what about the folks who couldn't survive that long? They were the glorified Martyrs. The 'Heroes' of our tragic tale, who's fates just proved the need to surrender <em>more</em> of our independance to the man behind the curtain. '<em>Just give us more power. Give us more control, and we'll protect you</em>.' That's what they were really saying behind their empty platitudes and the moments of silence that only ever happened when the microphones were on. <br/><br/>And simpering, weak-minded little fools that we are, we beleived them. We slopped it up like pigs at the trough. They wore their patriotism and compassion like a cheap whore wears expensive fur and we just looked 'em in the eye and asked for the going price of a rimjob. <br/><br/>My guards are dead. Or worse. The locks on the studio doors are about to buckle. And even now, some of you out there are asking '<em>How did it come to this Wolfman? Who do we blame Wolfman</em>?' Well before the ol' Woofie eats his very last bullet he'll tell ya...<br/><br/>Who do you blame? Look in the goddamned mirror. No...don't blame <em>them</em> people. We don't get to blame them for being egotistical self-righteous power-hungry little pricks. Not when you n' me kept on rewarding their behavior. They may have been scumbags, but by george people they were OUR scumbags. We chose them. Over and over, term after term we kept choosing them. The same old suspects, over and over again. Did any of you really make a serious effort to stop them? Where you out there with the crackpots waving your 'Don't Tread On Me' signs? Or were you planted in front of your computer jacking off to Maria Ozawa?  <br/><br/>We gave them every little slice of our souls that they asked for. We deserve what they gave us in return. We earned it. Look outside your windows now folks...those of you who still have one. Everything you see out there? That belongs to us.  That's ours now.<br/><br/>We were supposed to be the final obstacle people. We were the last checkpoint that our idiot politicians had to get past. That's the brilliant little system our founders left for us. Naive, foolish old bastards that they were for thinking we were responsible enough to do it. We fell asleep on the job. So to all of 'Them' and to all of 'Us', who've managed to survive this long and are listening to this broadcast right now...Fuck. You. <br/><br/>You suck. <br/><br/>This is the Wolfman, signing off. God have mercy on us all</strong>."<br/><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 8pt;">Wolfman Bob, the Last Voice of Reason - Final Broadcast, 2 Years after the Fall</span><br/><br/>It was marketed as a cure for pedophilia. That's how they got people to go along with it in the beginning. A new and improved form of chemical castration that was cheap, quick, humane, and 100% effective. Well, 99.99%...Close enough. They called it Pacis. A man-made supervirus that targeted and geneticly modified testosterone production to manipulate sex drive, adrenal glands, and so on. The Pharmaceutical Company who pioneered the technology wanted to wait until they'd had time to study the longterm side effects before taking it public. But facing a tight re-election campaign, the Party in power saw a golden oppurtunity to bolster their own base and steal a little support from the opposition base to boot.<br/><br/>The usual voices came forward to speak out against government over-reach and abuse of power. And as usual, all but a handful of the  Mainstream media outlets used every ounce of their influence to marginalize those voices as racist, flag-waving, gun-toting, close-minded religious zealots who loved only one thing more than they loved the pedophiles they were defending: Eating Puppies and drinking Kittens. You know, the usual tactics the media resorted to when John Q. Shmuck was standing in the way of 'Progress' or 'Economic Justice', or whatever expression was testing high with college focus groups.<br/><br/>Within five years a modified version of Pacis was approved for use on violent re-offenders in prisons everywhere. Then for the dangerously psychotic. Then for the regular psychotics. Then for those suffering from "severe" emotionally debilitating conditions like depression, and...stress. Then for the...well, you get the idea. Fifteen years after the first introduction of Pacis, almost a third of the American, Canadian, and European Union populations had some version of Pacis or another in their system and the few remaining voices who still spoke out against it were laughed at and dismissed as conspiratorial crackpots.<br/><br/>Nobody knows exactly what the first domino to fall was. Did the virus mutate on it's own? Did terrorists find a way to alter it? Perhaps something went wrong with the newest Pacis variant being introduced to Soldiers to amplify their abilities in combat? Or was it the first generation of children being born with the virus inside them that somehow set things in motion? Reports started to roll in of people displaying hyper sexual aggression. In lay-men's terms, they were violently assaulting and raping everything in sight. Men, women, animals. Young and old. Beloved relatives and indifferent strangers. Anything with a pulse. And a few things without one.<br/><br/>And down the line it went. Everyone who had some variant of the Pacis inside them began to succumb to extreme and voltatile side effects. Mass suicides. Mass rape. Mass arson. Mass murder. Local and Federal governments alike were quickly overwhelmed. As it became progressively more clear that the the government was completely incapable of dealing with the spreading hysteria, the men and women of the military began to desert en-masse. Not out of cowardice, but out of the desire of individual soldiers to reach and protect their own families before it was too late.<br/><br/>People began to flee the effected regions, resulting in an ironic mass migration of American and Canadian refugeess fleeing south into Mexico. Many such refugees were turned away or gunned down in a futile effort to stop the spread of Pacis which was now beginning to show up even in people who'd never been treated. It was too little, too late. The virus was now a full blown global pandemic.<br/><br/>It was the big evil scary corporations who eventually came to the rescue...insofar as there was anything left to rescue. They hired their own private militaries. They spirited away the best trained soldiers and most brilliant minds they could get to along with their families and flew them out to remote regions. Everyone was rigorously tested to ensure none of the Contaminated made it in. And so a few small slivers of civilization survived while the rest of man's creations and accomplishments burned.<br/><br/>It's been ten years now since the civilized world devoured itself. Most of the guns are broken and bullets have been fired. But people still kill each other. They just keep it old school now. Swords. Spears. Crossbows. Guns that still work are almost as rare as cars that still work. Most of what passes for civilization in the remains of the once great nations come down to local warlords who hold onto power with ruthless determination, fighting each other almost as often as they fight off the Pacis infected degenerates...or "Pacs"(Prounced Pax)...who still prowl the ruins of the cities in savage nomadic tribes, vastly outnumbering their marginally more civilized neighbors.<br/><br/>It's a new world order, but for those who've grown up in it, it's home. But halfway across the world, those who fled are ready to come back and reclaim their homeland. And re-civilize those they left behind. Or kill them. Whatever it takes. And what they lack in numbers, they make up in bullets and deisel.