THE NIGHTMARE WAR (d20 System)
Setting
Excerpt from Webcast 'The World Today'
Good morning and welcome to The World Today for March 3. I’m grateful you’ve decided to spend some time with us, and I hope we can make it worth your while.
I don’t think I’m surprising anyone when I say that in recent years, the world seems to have become a more dangerous place. I’m aware, of course, that it is common for those of us in the present to have rather faulty memories about the past, and to consistently believe that we are moving toward a more chaotic, violent future. Sociologists have well documented many occasions when people believed their world was becoming more dangerous and more violent even as crime rates dropped all around them.
Today, however, I do not believe we are laboring under the burdens of such misperceptions. The high-profile incidents seem to be coming in waves—the machete massacre in Cairo, the rapid descent into insanity by Prime Minister Gerald Wollstone of Great Britain and all the disasters that came in its wake, and the recent string of violent incidents that have been connected to the Hellerman Blank corporation of New York—and these events seem to be pushing an already nervous world to the edge of disaster.
We’ll start our discussion this morning by two experts who will hopefully help us better understand these incidents and discuss how they fit into the state of the world today. First allow me to introduce Dr. Eugene Crowell, Professor of Sociology from the University of Chicago. Dr. Crowell, thank you for joining me this morning...
Letter to the editor in the Davenport Beacon, March 23, 2035
Editor:
The media really needs to stop hyping stories like the one you put on your front page last Tuesday [“Local man’s prognostications astound experts,” March 20]. Why do I need to hear about people with sideshow abilities? They are on the fringe of society and most likely in league with darker powers that God-fearing people shouldn’t have any dealings with. Please focus your coverage on people and actions that matter, not on freaks that cause nothing but trouble for good people the world over.
Homer Pilum
Davenport
… if you are suffering from any of these symptoms, please visit your physician or a hospital immediately. The sooner medical treatment to start, the better results are likely to be.
XT9: Initial symptoms include a persistent itch in the area of the chest (often accompanied by a red, splotchy rash) and a feeling of heat in the same area. The itching tends to get worse as the disease progresses. This is generally followed by shortness of breath and a rapid heartbeat. The later stages of the disease feature extreme fatigue, clammy sweat, and a resting heart rate that may be two to three times faster than normal.The McCorkle virus (also known as “the Eraser”): Patients often have trouble focusing on any particular object. The world around them starts to look muted—even in direct sunlight; objects appear as they would under dark grey clouds. Colors and vision acuity continue to fade as the disease progresses, until the patient can see nothing but a blank whiteness.
SNiT (Sudden Necrosis in Tissue) virus: Patches of skin become numb and black, dark purple, or grey in color. Patients usually experience more than one patch at a time, and the patches spread rapidly, often doubling in size in 1-3 days. The condition of the center of the patch continues to worsen as the disease works its way through the outer layers of skin, and pain may ensue. If the virus continues to work in the body, it moves beyond the skin to muscles and organs. Muscular atrophy and organ failure can result, with the exact symptoms depending on where the virus attacks.
If you believe your symptoms match those described above, get medical help immediately! The good news is that, with proper treatment, your chances of surviving any of these viruses are good—nearly seventy percent of patients survive the SNiT virus, while about three-quarters of sufferers survive XT9. The McCorkle virus, at this time, has not directly caused any fatalities
