Urban Apocalypse - Satirical ultra-violence in the bleak near-future.

[Guest]

"This is just satiating human nature with a daily dose of reality TV misery-- someone else's misery." - Andrew Malleus, CEO of Malleus Entertainment.

Basically, the setting is one big urban apocalypse for TV entertainment purposes where the contestants battle each other for the 'prize.' 'Prize' to be determined if people are interested. Basically, the setup is that the characters are dropped into a bombed out, blasted out urban wasteland and have to fight it out with whatever weapons they can scavenge there. Yes, there are guns all over the place. It's Baltimore, after all.

Characters are bound to be either the world's worst criminals, brought in to liven things up and to keep the "Lord of the Flies" spirit alive and well, or hapless residents who are unable to move out of Baltimore for one reason or another as the place is turned into a warzone. But hey, they were warned, right?

This RP is definitely toward the straight, constant combat side of things, with little philosophy involved; it's supposed to be over the top, much like a bad 1980's action movie (like "The Running Man.") I haven't decided if PC's should be pitted against each other or whether or not to throw a bunch of crazy NPC's at people à la "Running Man." So I'll decide that if there's any interest. If nothing else, this one is intended to really be a couple paragraphs per post and fairly fast-paced; a post every three days or so from everyone involved. It doesn't have to be long or fancy, the plot just has to keep moving.

--

It's 2017, and corporations run the world. Granted extra-territorial rights by international law, megacorporations own outright entire small countries and parts of larger ones.

Enter Baltimore, a black hole of development project money, and eternally a nightmare of crime. Brighter Future, a real estate development corporation that was primarily concerned with trying to redevelop Baltimore into something better than it was, recently sold the whole of Baltimore City, lock stock and barrel, in an effort to raise money to pay off its creditors. The buyer, Malleus Entertainment Inc., known for its cutting edge, reality-based "TV that people want but are too afraid to ask for" saw potential in Baltimore's bleak urban landscape.

Malleus Entertainment's previous offerings included such shows as "Faroe Islands Jihad" where militants from Central Asia and North Africa, formerly held in extra-legal limbo upon capture or incarcerated for life, were bought up from their privately-run prison corporations, brought into the idyllic Scandinavian paradise nation (also bought at a bankruptcy firesale) and left to their own devices, resulting in a brutish war between the various factions and natives who became decidedly more militant. The subsequent season, "Faroe Islands Fascism" was also a smash mega-hit, with millions of viewers glued to the carnage. Its MMORPG spinoffs and seasonal DVD releases were also highly popular. Another of Malleus Entertainment's early successes was to apply the 'reality TV' paradigm in "Weekend Warrior for Hire," a show that followed the exploits and adventures of a group of average, middle to upper class Americans and Europeans as they immersed themselves in the Congolese warfare experience as freelance mercenaries, which won the "BEST ON TV AWARD" from Soldier of Fortune magazine and got all the contestants indicted for crimes against humanity in the Hague.

Malleus entertainment promptly announced their intentions to start a new reality show called "Urban Warzone" in Baltimore and bought out the local government contracts and ceased to provide service. So many homes went on sale in the area as to cause the values to plummet, which in turn forced many people to stay, as they could not sell for enough to pay off their mortgages. Those who were left became the unwilling participants in the newest gameshow as the country's prisons gleefully sold off their inmates to Malleus Inc. Malleus, in turn, gleefully dropped the inmates into Baltimore City and sealed off the city using the police force (County and City) that they'd just recently bought and kept loyal through allowing them an extremely generous home buyout plan.

To make things more interesting, Malleus Entertainment intends to drop in supplies to those that hold randomly selected territories of the city, a new one every day. As a result, no one is safe or able to hold down a territory long.

A much smaller test run of the concept was done in a nice suburb in the Midwest, and the sample viewership was wild. Malleus intends to make lots of money off this. The advertisers are salivating, recording artists are pimping their songs on it, and and the viewers are pumped thanks to the marketing blitz. A few intellectual eggheads are moaning about 'bread and circus' but who cares about all that French shit anyway?


--

So people are wondering, "How does the entertainment company get around home owners?"

Easy. They own the government. They stop providing services, criminals run free and things go to hell in an handbasket quickly. Like the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Somalia or Burma, the company is considered a sovereign entity. Rights groups plead, no one listens.

Homeowners stick it out, because they can't actually sell their homes for anywhere near the invested worth. Meanwhile, the cameras are rolling. This serves a use to other companies; when this program rolls, it will be an advertisement for why you don't want Malleus Media to buy your community, and why it might be a good idea to start paying installments to keep the company that DOES own your local government happy.

At this point, the government is a feeble memory of authority that no longer has any bearing on things; it's the raw form free market, baby! Heck, a restriction of corporate rights would mean the military provider corporations that fight the wars would turn on the government.

This background stuff isn't meant to really explain the entire setting, it's just there to provide the framework for why this setting exists as it is. There are no details on the way congress and so forth, not to mention the UN, sold everyone down the river for campaign donations and so forth, because frankly, the details are mind numbling banal...which is why there was little to no citizen outcry when it started.

So yes, this is a dystopian mirror image of a world that probably won't be, but it makes for a heck of a setting.

Characters will be all walks of life, the only criteria is that they live in Baltimore. They can be as crazily armed as you want, because some people have probably been stockpiling up for years ever since the City started turning into a bombed out ghetto since the 1970's.

So yeah, armor plate your trucks, grab your flamethrowers and get ready to be on TV!

[Guest]

I'm interested in this If you can get in a few more people, I will make a character for it. I just don't want to make one and get excited and have it go nowhere...

The only thing that would make it better would be zombies...but, well, I guess that's not the point of this RP...

[Guest]

You never know what the evil corporations are working on in R&D and when they might decide to test it.

I agree. I don't like starting an RP until I have several people ready to post up. Because we tend to lose people along the way for various reasons. I tend to post these interest checks and the OOC's and sit on the topic for a while, waiting for all the ducks to get in a row.

[Guest]

*gets enormous grin and rubs hands together*

[Guest]

I really intend to go for broke on the mad science. After all, it's a world where people are fundamentally bought and sold through a little legalese and a signed document. It's not hard to round up experimental subjects for grotesque medical research/weapons development.

It really is a dystopian parallel universe that we're talking about here.

[Ragter the junior greeter]

Hmm...sounds quite interesting Heyseu, quite interesting indeed.

You can count me in for this

[Guest]

Hmm...sounds quite interesting Heyseu, quite interesting indeed.

You can count me in for this

Good. Heh, I really want to run this and I have an awful lot of (bad) ideas for this. It's going to be carnage, buy almost comic, over the top carnage.

[Ragter the junior greeter]

Carnage eh? Sounds fine with me.

[Guest]

Carnage eh? Sounds fine with me.

Carnage. Military/medical/genetic experimentation. A viewing audience howling for blood on their TV's, an entire city to blow the everloving living shit out of.

What more can a red blooded American fellow ask for, besides a ribeye and a bucket of beer on ice served up by a scantily clad woman?

And as it turns out, there are restaurants with this show on every screen that cater to just that need.

[Ragter the junior greeter]

God this sounds so awesome.

[Guest]

God this sounds so awesome.

Yeah man, I kind of want to take it right over the top. This is meant to be mindlessly amusing, in a violent way. Just like an 80's action flick where the roid-rager action star has muscles on top of his muscles and a freakishly big mullet.

[Guest]

Old-style LOST commercial

For some reason, this really reminds me of your RP.

[Resurrection Vic]

*quack*quack*....looking for this row I'm supposed to be in....


In other words, sane words, I'm interested

[Guest]

Just now saw this. I love it! Its like Jennifer Government meets Unreal Tournament! Sign me up and give me a shitty home and sawed-off shotgun! <----not the gun I was hoping for, but it will do....

[Ferrous Miles]

I'm also interested. New to the site, but some may know me from RpG, and those who do know I'm a high end Casual writer. So, if this is still gonna happen, I'd like to be a part of it.

[Regicidal]

I'm sold!

Now the only problem being that I'm leaving on a ten day vacation on Friday.

But I guarantee you that when I get back a profile will be shortly following my arrival, assuming this gets off of the ground of course.

This concept sounds like Death Race without the cars. Awesome.

[Guest]

I'll set up an OOC later today with a character sheet.

Bear in mind that you can go pretty wild, because people have had lots of time in Baltimore to prepare for the gameshow. There's also a lot of criminals that have gotten their pick of the gear to help perk the game up a bit.

[Regicidal]

Roof-mounted mini-gun on an armor plated pickup truck with steel spikes and barbed wire on all of the exterior grip-points!

[Klikxx]

Reminds me of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. A post apacolyptic meat grinder where fuel was the most valuable commodity.

Sign me up! I could use a source to vent my aggressions.

[Guest]

Okay, the OOC is ready to go.

Da OOC

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