The Fall of Maren - A Zombie Apocalypse

(IS 🎭) It started quietly — a cluster of hospitalizations overseas, a CDC travel notice nobody read. That was three weeks ago. Now the power is out, the broadcasts are dying, and the streets belong to something that used to be human. The pathogen — called the Lazarus Strain in the last radio transmissions — attacks the brain, stripping away impulse control, empathy, and all higher cognition. The infected aren't dead. Their hearts still beat. But nothing human remains behind their eyes. They move toward sound. They don't feel pain. They don't stop. There is no cure. There are no exceptions. There is only how long you last — and who you become while doing it. Your story takes place in Maren, Louisiana — a fictional Gulf Coast port city of half a million people built at the mouth of the Maren River delta, most of it sitting below sea level behind an aging levee system that has never fully been trusted. They called it The Mouth, because everything flows through it eventually. The cargo ships, the oil money, the jazz, the crawfish, the tourists, the storms. It all came through Maren and left something behind. Now the cranes at the port terminals sit motionless over containers that will never be unloaded. The French Market is operating again — different currency, different rules. The cathedral in the Vieux has its doors open but not everyone who knocks is welcome anymore. Somewhere under the city the levee pumps are still running. Somewhere else someone is trying to turn them off. --- THE WORLD Maren is a city of distinct neighborhoods, each with its own history, its own culture, and its own way of surviving what has happened. The dense maze of the Vieux. The flooded streets of The Flats. The fortified industrial outskirts of Northgate. The university campus across the river where a small group of researchers is trying to understand what the Lazarus Strain actually is. The bayou at the city's edge where the swamp begins and the rules of the city stop meaning anything. The infected are everywhere. But in Maren, the infected are rarely the most complicated problem. --- THE FACTIONS Thirteen factions are fighting, cooperating, and betraying each other across what's left of the city. A corrupt police remnant enforcing laws that serve only themselves. A collective of dock workers sitting on the most valuable resource cache in Maren. A Vietnamese fishing community on the lake who have more food security than anyone on land and trust fewer people than almost anyone alive. A former civil rights attorney who has concluded that the city should be allowed to flood and whatever comes after should be built on honest ground. Every faction has something you might need. Every faction wants something in return. Not all of them are honest about what that is. --- YOUR CHARACTER Choose from 18 classes built around Maren's specific culture and economy — longshoremen, river pilots, Cajun trappers, trauma nurses, jazz musicians, flood control engineers, offshore roughnecks, and more. Each class opens different doors, earns different trust, and closes different options. A Catholic deacon and a criminal see the same city in entirely different ways. Choose a faction to align with — or choose none and navigate the city on your own terms. Choose a starting location that fits your story. Then step into The Mouth and find out what kind of person you are when the systems that defined you are gone. --- THE INFECTED Ten variants of the Lazarus Strain have been documented in Maren — from the recently turned who still look like your neighbors, to the Waders pulling themselves from the drainage canals of The Flats, to something in the Port District that the researchers at the university are not yet willing to describe in writing. The infected are not supernatural. They are biological. They are people the city lost. That does not make them less dangerous. In some ways it makes them more. --- This scenario is designed for mature, story-driven play. Consequences are permanent. Resources are finite. Trust is scarce and earned slowly. The tone is gritty, cinematic, and grounded in the specific culture and geography of a city unlike anywhere else in the world. Maren is waiting. The Mouth is open. How long can you last — and who will you become while doing it? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Includes Inner Self with Auto Cards. NOTE: INNER SELF AND AUTO-CARDS ARE NOT COMPATIBLE WITH ATLAS AND RAVEN To turn off auto-cards, open the "Configure Inner Self" story card in your adventure and edit the line > Install Auto-Cards to state "false" instead of "true".