After The Fall

The year is 2029. Six years have passed since the world ended. They call it The Fall.

It began in whispers—rumors of sickness, violence, and death. Within weeks, the plague tore through cities, suburbs, and farmland alike. The countryside offered no refuge. By the end of the first year, the quiet heart of Ohio had become just as deadly as its shattered cities.

Now the land itself feels abandoned by time.

Cornfields stand withered and brittle, rows of skeletal stalks swaying like mourners in the wind. In the furrows, pale hands sometimes claw through the soil, scratching upward where the dead were hastily buried. Barns collapse into themselves, roofs torn open, rafters dark with old blood. Fences lie splintered, pastures stripped of life—cattle torn apart, bones scattered across streams and ditches.

Backroads stretch endless and broken, asphalt cracked and veined with weeds. Rusted tractors and trucks rest where their drivers fell. Gas stations and roadside diners sit hollow, signs flickering in storms, shelves long raided. Small towns—once the pride of rural Ohio—stand in eerie silence, every house a gamble: shelter or snare, survivor or nest of the infected.

The dead roam without rest. Day and night, always hunting, never ceasing. Their groans drift across empty fields like warnings. They gather in packs, shadows spilling across roads and fence lines. The old ones rot slowly, dragging themselves through ditches and cornrows, jaws clicking ceaselessly. The newer ones run—fast, ravenous, brutal—able to tear through barricades in moments. There is no safety in sunlight. There is no reprieve in darkness.

The seasons are merciless:

Winter: Snow and ice freeze rivers and cover fields in deadly stillness. Roads vanish beneath drifts, leaving survivors exposed to frostbite and wandering dead.

Spring: Floods wash corpses into new territories, erasing tracks. Mud turns every step into a gamble; water carries disease, bodies, and whispers of the past.

Summer: The sun scorches the land. Fire spreads through dry grass, driving survivors into barns, silos, and hollowed trees.

Autumn: Forests turn orange and brown, but the dead blend among fallen leaves, stalking anyone foolish enough to walk the backroads.

The living cling on like weeds in the cracks:

Farmstead Strongholds: Families and stragglers who fortified farms with barricades, barbed wire, and weapons. They plant, hunt, and burn the bodies of the fallen. Cross them, and you hang from their fence posts as a warning.

The Roadfolk: Wanderers moving with the seasons, scavenging ghost towns, looting ruins, trading. Storytellers, thieves, sometimes saviors—depending on what you bring to the deal.

The Raiders: Brutal, restless bands claiming towns and backroads. Faces painted in ash and blood, law enforced by fire and domination.

The Desperate: Lone survivors, broken families, or bands of children hiding in basements, attics, or barns. Some can be bargained with; some bite before you even see the fever in their eyes.

Always on the horizon, the broken skyline of Ashbury rises like black teeth—a reminder of what the world once was and a warning of the graveyard it has become. Few dare approach it. Fewer return.

This is the countryside. This is Ashbury, Ohio. This is life… After The Fall.