Main: [[Campaign]] Next: [[The Quiet Year]] # The Collapse We couldn’t see it at the time, but the world ended in 2071. It started, as these things do, with reports of a novel illness on the rise in some far flung place, well away from home. We gathered in breweries and coffee shops, chat rooms and game lobbies, generally going about our lives with the occasional, “You see that new illness on the news? Pretty wild, eh?” ![[BarIllness 1.png]] *Image depicts a futuristic bar scene, with a distressed person whose arm is mutated while a doctor works on it with a medical instrument and others look on, aghast. Credit: [Cesár Odilon](https://www.artstation.com/oddcesar). By commission.* It didn’t stay contained for long. It has many sobriquets, but most of us just call it The Illness or The Rash. Like its relative rabies, once you were showing symptoms it was almost certainly fatal. Unlike rabies it spread in the air – no bites needed. Nearly every mammal on earth was susceptible. Concentrated populations of humans or livestock were quickly overrun. Cities fell. The first monsters appeared a few months later. ![[bear_walking.png]] *Image depicts a mutant bear, with a red, spiky, lizard-like tail and bones protruding from its back. Credit: [Cesár Odilon](https://www.artstation.com/oddcesar). By commission.* The Illness is … mutagenic. And some creatures who survived it would find their bodies changed into the stuff of nightmares. Sometimes the effects were subtle – sharpened claws, wider mouths, keen eyesight. Other times the whole body plan of the infected creature would change into a dark mockery of what the beast once was. Our community in the San Juans survived, but it cost us dearly… Next: [[The Quiet Year]]