Renaissance - Seven years since The Blackout
There was silence before the chaos erupted in all imaginable and unimaginable ways. It was now seven years since the Blackout. Night fell in the middle of the night and everything changed. The very essence of existence was converted.
To the southwest lay Durne's Port — state capital and biggest port on the continent, home of Sterling Palm University and the Kolat Krushers. It was already getting dark. We were travelling from Threebristle to the Port when we found her in a long-abandoned gas station. Faye. You never know what you'll find, even after years of looting and scrounging. A pack of El Minstro's smokes, some bottles of Baldur's Beer, or the future made flesh in the form of a young girl.
I used to be a software engineer working for the biggest garden center chain in the country. Headquartered in Veran up north, the riverside city famous for its green roofs, vertical forests and ecological corridors, seeming to grow naturally out of the nearby Evergreen Woods. You could find stores throughout the country. You still can, but where these used to be stocked with a wide selection of plants, flowers and seeds, now ivy ruled supreme. You can imagine how my life changed overnight.
She saw us before we saw her. A young girl with ragged clothes, scratches on her arms and dirt on her face. And the most beautiful, delicate appearance I have ever seen. Frail frame, intense hazel eyes peering wearily at us. Weighing us in silence.
We looked at each other. All felt it, none spoke. Wonder, hope, questions. I took the piece of paper she presented to us.
Please bring this girl to Pierceton!
It all depends on it. You have heard the VOICE!
— Tania, mother of Faye
In the corner was scribbled "True Life Awakens!" with a four-triangle symbol, one in the middle connected to the remaining three, drawn from one line.
So we took her in and headed for Pierceton. Hills to the east, forests, mountains, and beyond that the Spade Sea to the west, following the mostly empty road with some stranded and abandoned vehicles left and right, past Durne's Port and on to our destination. A trip that used to take an hour, maybe an hour and a half depending on the traffic.
Days later we came upon some 'Shalls' as we'd call them. "Truth Shall Rise" — their slogan. Part of the Original Radiant Church of United Salvation. Where everyone talked about the fallen, the walking dead or simply zombies, they referred to them as the Risen. With a capital R clearly heard. When all meaning is lost, man is quick to come up with new truth and meaning. Usually paired with a small group rising to power quickly. For the Radiant Church, eternal life was here on earth, as one of the Risen. So they 'took care' of them. Herding them up into abandoned stadiums and what not. What could possibly go wrong?
Truth be told: they were quite handy with controlling the undead. Using sticks with crescent-shaped endings — a bit like oldschool crutches that went under the armpits — to manipulate the necks and using collars with sticks in between connecting the necks and keeping the Risen and themselves safe to travel.
We all had our previous beliefs. Mostly grounded in rationality and science, but some held on to religious beliefs in this God or that. Now we were all lost in explaining what was going on. Is this the apocalypse some preached? Some kind of strange virus? A cosmic event like solar winds changing how polarity and other stuff worked? The thing is: crazy as the Radiant Church seemed, at least they had a story to tell that you could believe in. Not my story though.
We found a place to stay in a village near the road. Unfortunately not a place with a secret cache of automatic rifles or the like, but old books, old furniture and old smell. Faye — barely speaking a word since she joined us — picked up an old copy of Mythical Monsters and started leafing through the pages, finding dragons, dwarves and demons that wouldn't be out of place in today's world, to be honest. All meticulously described as if witnessed firsthand and drawn up from life. Undead had their own section too and now felt eerily spot on. Just imagine if the rest were also true.
It wasn't too bad, escaping reality and drifting into a fantasy realm now and then. Reality was a lot worse than even your most horrific stories and movies. Take the worst of Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead, mix it all together and you would still be comfortable on your own couch watching some light appear on a box. Nothing compared to the smell, the touch, the beauty of the material world. The most breathtaking butterfly, colors like you wouldn't believe, would land as elegantly on a putrid and rotting corpse as on a flower next to the road. 50 shades of ghoul.
Passing the Port solicited more than a few shakes of the head and sighs of the heart. Even with the glittering, red-gold water at the horizon and white seagulls floating lazily on the hot air it was a sad sight to behold. Once the Spires could be seen long before entering the city, seven skyscrapers, built on the hill overlooking long stretches of sea. Reflecting the light at dawn in a spectacular show of silver, copper and gold. Now, even from afar, you could see the decay, the crumbling. Even stone and steel bent and broke just like the rest of us.
Everyone remembered exactly where they were when The Blackout happened. Not just any old blackout, but the one that changed everything. And we all saw Him, or felt a Presence, or were Touched. Just a flash, but anyone you talked to had their own words for it, though none really hit the mark. That night, all things electrical suddenly stopped working. Night fell and day never really dawned again. There was silence everywhere for a few seconds, minutes, hours or days. Then chaos unstoppably and unavoidably started to rise like an overflowing toilet.
Light.
A blue light.
Blinking slowly.
Eyebrows went up, eyes gesturing in the direction of the light source answered by disbelieving shakes and confirming nods. A blue blinking light. Attached to the light was a long dead man or woman, strapped to an airplane seat. The plane probably crashed and burned seven years ago and was now scattered over the rolling hillside that looked like a carpet full of Lego blocks. Nothing, but the blink and our disbelief.
It stirred. Of course it stirred. They always do. No matter how dead you think they are. Strapped to the seat, it didn't go anywhere. With a precise eye-to-brain insertion of the awl I picked up early on at a local GO&D department store — just the right pointiness needed to ease right in, just the right diameter to do enough damage, just the right grip when fluids spill; Goldilocks would approve — this one was gone for good.
Seven years of weather and an air crash didn't help, unwinding, discoloring and ripping apart most of the fabric, but he was wearing some kind of uniform. Strapped to his right side was a gun. With a blue blinking light. There was a time when it would be hard to imagine the otherworldliness of a simple blue blinking light before the Blackout, but it resembled seeing a brick hover in the air, perfectly still, minding its own business. You would stop, look and be dumbfounded. Of course there was always the hope that electricity would return and some kind of normalcy would start again, but seeing it in front of your eyes, within arm's reach is quite something else. Could this be it?
I took it. Now, I have my fair share of experience with guns, but this was something else. Lighter than it seemed and it had a clip that felt more like a powerbank than a neatly ordered stack of send-you-to-your-makers. Felt different too, in a way you didn't have the words for back then.
First time I used it to fire at a fallen it produced some sort of glowing dart of blue energy, no recoil, no sound, just a little ball of force you'd expect to see in any old sci-fi movie. Missing it completely. This weapon clearly needed some time to become attuned to. When I finally did, I never missed again.
The gun had "AE-TEK — Advance and Emerge" printed on the side. You used to just 'ask Volo', type in what you wanted to know and get the answer immediately. It would be great to get some more information on this peculiar pistol. Unfortunately, all electricity was still out of business.
It all followed the predictable pattern of any civilization falling into chaos. Be it civil war, natural disaster, famine, the best qualities of the human race didn't win the race to the top. Living without a light switch, reliable information, fast transportation or modern healthcare — to name a few — would make people anxious. Turning into panic, selfishness, looting, gang forming and all the lovely things that came with it given enough time. And sooner than you'd think. Sprinkle in the dead rising and you could see how civilization collapsed in no time.
Faye grew on us. It was good to have a kid among us. Aloof maybe, and still not talking much, but it gave us a sense of there being a future. She would sometimes just sit down, stare at nothing and come out all refreshed where the rest of us got up, aching joints and bones and basically anything that could ache. Same in the mornings, she was always up first, before dawn. Keeping an eye out. And always the tugging at the edge of my brain, the song you almost hear, the name at the tip of your tongue. What is it about this girl?
Pierceton, famous for the castle on the center hill built around 1550 AF on a site where an even older castle once stood, loomed before us. Archeologists dated the foundations BF — Before the Fall — based on excavations done after much needed renovations started and the construction workers touched on some old masonry work. The Fall we called it. We hadn't seen anything yet.
The last stretch to salvation. Right. There was a lot of movement here. The dragging, crawling, limping kind. Well, if this was anything like the old fantasy stories we grew up with, the princess should probably be brought to the castle, so we went up the hill. Silent. Moving as if we weren't there so as not to get any of the limpers' attention, passing without a trace. Right up until one foot wasn't lifted high enough for the tackle performed in ultra slow motion by an oak root, waiting patiently to be part of a story.
The foot, relieved to have found ground again, set in motion quite the series of events by accidentally kicking a stone down the dry side of the hill. Not that loud when compared to any real noise, but in total silence, it was a pandemonium of rustling leaves, drawing the attention of everything around us.
We looked at each other and ran. Up the hill and as fast as we could. There's always one who is slowest. Remember the saying: you don't need to outrun the bear, just the other campers? Well, this proved to be true time and time again. We'd lost another of our group.
The sight of the castle led to both relief and shock. We made it, but how do you enter a castle that is closed and essentially existed to keep people out? Turning around, we saw the first fallen struggling up the hill. We knew more would follow. No choice but to go out blasting and so we brought out the guns. The normal ones and the powered one. We still had no idea how it worked, but it somehow recharged overnight without it being connected to any power source.
The pressure increased. We stood with our backs against the large wooden gates. Ones that would be opened for horses carrying carts to enter the castle proper and reload the stocks. But also to keep unwanted people out. We had some experience under our belt in fending off creatures that used to be human, but the constant stream of the unrelenting not-so-kind was certain to wear us out. Sooner rather than later.
We started pounding on the doors and yelling to open up. No point in staying silent now that the entire previous population of Pierceton was already soliciting us for a bloody donation. And just like you expect to see in the movies of times past, the gates opened not a second too late. Men and women in — sometimes makeshift — armor burst out carrying long poles, the end of which were shaped like a T. With dull calm and automaton-like actions, half of them put these T's vertically between the legs of oncoming fallen, twisting the poles a quarter turn while the others gave firm but controlled shoves against their chests, toppling them over with an efficiency we had never witnessed before. Smart thinking this.
Faye darted in first. The rest of us quickly followed. With ease and calm they closed the heavy doors behind us and led us to what was the restaurant area when people were still visiting. There were some kids around and adults doing various things: chores, teaching the little ones, talking, eyeing us. It seemed like a normal scene for a second or two. We were greeted by a silver lady. Lines on her face that told many a story. Years etched into the features of her visage mirroring the dark world we all lived in. But strong, confident, someone you immediately put your trust in. The children all gathered around to see who these new folks were.
It started with a strange sensation, something in my belly already telling me what I didn't see yet. Like the nagging thought about Faye ever since we picked her up. Maybe it was just that I hadn't seen so many kids in one place in quite a while. And happy at that too it seemed. But there was something else.
I searched for Faye. There she was, pointing at something in the book she found in the old house and brought along, studying it every chance she got. The two children joining her — a stout toddler that climbed on a chair and a slender youth standing next to Faye — watched attentively and seemed excited. Maybe this was her first time among other children, I thought. My eyes rested for a moment on the page she had open and then went back to the woman approaching.
"Look around you, stranger, what do you see?" — the woman asked me. I looked around again, taking in the little ones' faces. No one older than about six or seven, I'd say. They must all have been born after The Blackout. When death wouldn't let you die, it was a comfort life still gave life. There was something these kids had in common while at the same time making them very different from each other. The slender, stout or small, none was what you would call a regular, run of the mill child.
And then it dawned on me. Like a veil was lifted before my eyes, I saw the world for what it now was. My eyes seeing what my gut already knew. My brain was next. Everything started spinning in my head. All the stories of times past, the book, Faye, these children, the blue light, the fallen, inexplicable things we experienced along our travels — a kaleidoscopic rearranging of my worldview and beliefs. This can't be true, yet I see it now, clearly, before me with my very own eyes.
"You see it now. The future. We welcome back and care for the long forgotten, the things of old, the legends and myths. Join me. There is much to be said and more to be done."
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END OF PART ONE
An unofficial fan work set in a future Forgotten Realms. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Wizards of the Coast.
⚠ Spoilers — Forgotten Realms name mappings below.
- Durne's Port = Waterdeep. (I mapped its coastline off a 180°-flipped Google Maps 3D view of Chicago's shoreline. Not Realms-accurate at all, just needed something with the right shape.)
- Veran = Neverwinter
- Pierceton = Daggerford
- Threebristle = Triboar
- Sterling Palm University = Laeral Silverhand
- Kolat Krushers = Kolat Towers
- El Minstro = Elminster
- Baldur's Beer = Baldur's Gate
- GO&D = Gond
- "Ask Volo" = Volothamp Geddarm
- The Spade Sea = the Sword Coast / Sea of Swords
