BASIC OVERVIEW

When the soldiers of 1st Recon arrive stateside after a long tour in Iraq, they expect to be greeted by family, by girlfriends and boyfriends, or at least by fellow soldiers. Instead, there's nothing. Silence. Everything is abandoned.

Most soldiers would probably immediately begin to wonder about those rumors they'd been hearing: the flu scare hitting the US, the next in a line of bird and swine-related illnesses. This kind of news usually ends up being fourth and fifth-hand in the field, so they might not have paid much attention, or put too much stock in any gory details. The piles of burned bodies at nearly every military base probably changed their mind.

In the days that followed their return, it would have become obvious that this epidemic was more than just a particularly vicious strain of influenza--getting the flu doesn't bring you back to life after you die, reanimated as a walking, hungry corpse. It doesn't make you impervious to anything but a headshot or incineration. It isn't transmitted via nothing but a bite from the infected.

Like it or not, the men of 1st Recon are now in the middle of another war, one in which they are already vastly outnumbered by the enemy. Only their combat training, field experience, and possibly the grooming standard, will get them through this alive.

One thing they may find helpful is the experience of the survivors--the lucky few who haven't been turned into mindless stacks of meat. These are the people who have been brave enough to face their nightmares and come out alive on the other side. One group like that is headed by Rick Grimes and Shane Walsh, and has been quartered at the Greene farm a few states away until just recently.

Shortly before the 1st Recon Marines return to the US, tensions have reached a boiling point at the farm, and when Shane and Rick's people are told they're no longer welcome there, the group finally decides to go their separate ways. Their familiarity with the zombies doesn't make it any easier to survive on their own--but if they manage to bump into any recently-returned Marines and pool their resources, they might have a fighting chance.

GAME DETAILS

Universe: The verse is the same one found in the show The Walking Dead and is populated by those characters and the characters from Generation Kill. Most of America has rapidly depopulated, either killed by the zombie horde, or turned into a part of it. Areas like cities, that once held dense populations of people, are the ones with the highest zombie infestation rate--but along the freeways clogged with abandoned cars, packs of zombies gravitate away from the vehicles they once tried to escape in, to the countryside, albeit in much fewer numbers.


Canon Points: The canon point for Generation Kill is post-series, and the canon point for The Walking Dead is the mid-season break for Season Two (up to 2x07).


Allowed Characters: All characters from either Generation Kill or The Walking Dead are fair game.


Starting Point: All GK characters arrived in the US via naval vessels, as air travel was suspended shortly into the pandemic's outbreak. They may have docked at the Naval Base San Diego (the closest to their home base of Camp Pendleton), but there is also the possibility their ship was diverted to another port. That's up to you! After docking, your character would have found the naval base they were at abandoned (as is the case with most military bases in the country) and a large portion of the vessel's crew would have dispersed to find loved ones, join the fight, etc.

Spots were found for 1st Recon aboard a number of ships heading back home, so fellow members of your character's platoon are not necessarily with them when they land. Where your character goes after they set foot on American soil again is your decision (if they're lucky, it'll be in the direction of fellow Marines who landed earlier, but the point here is to leave it up to you if you want to give them a bit of backstory).

The start point for TWD characters is more open-ended. You'll need to specify in your app where they've gone and what they've been up to since leaving the farm and striking out on their own (in the case of Rick, Lori, and Carl, applicants for any of these characters can assume that they set out together but were separated at some point).


Zombie Type: Again, this is TWD's world, so the zombies are the same kind as the ones found on that show. They are slow-moving creatures, devoid of anything but the most basic animal instinct to feed, and they decompose at a very slow rate. Death from starvation may be possible, but it has yet to be seen. The zombie virus is transmitted via blood-borne pathogens, which means that a bite in which saliva is transmitted into the victim's bloodstream will infect them. The living are also vulnerable to any infected blood spraying into their mouth/eyes/open wounds. Infection first manifests as a fever, which grows progressively worse over a period of several days, and finally culminates in death and reanimation as a zombie.


Death: Death/zombie-ification of your character is possible, but discouraged. There is no "reboot" in Gen Z. Once a zombie, always a zombie. And the Marines probably won't hesitate to shoot you in the head.

(That being said, there is always a tiny percentage of people who are able to overcome the virus on their own--if you want to incorporate this into your character's storyline, just discuss it with a mod first.)