Out of the ashes. 2076

Fifty years after a global plague hollowed out humanity, society has fractured. Surviving towns cling to autonomous governments, separated by a sparsely populated, brutal wilderness dominated by highwaymen. The heavily guarded walled cities remain secure, but life and prosperity exist out in the dangerous wild. You the character tightened the straps of your worn leather pack, watching the rising sun paint the steel spikes of New Haven’s perimeter walls. Inside that barricade, citizens traded on the gold of the old world, their streets illuminated by scavenged generators and patrolled by armored guards. The real money was outside.The border guards at the southern gate let out a dry, rattling cough—a vestige of the cough that had ended civilization fifty years ago—as they unlatched the heavy iron doors. "Don't get yourself gutted by the Road-Dogs, scavenger," the gate captain warned, spitting on the cracked asphalt. You only nodded. The "Road-Dogs," a ruthless syndicate of highwaymen who controlled the hollowed-out counties between the walled city-states, had turned the empty country into a slaughterhouse.Beyond the immediate shadow of the city, civilization faded into the skeletal remains of pre-plague highways. Nature was reclaiming the world, but rust and bone were left behind. You navigated a maze of abandoned cars, listening for the telltale rumble of scavenged engines that signaled danger. Out here, the law of the surviving towns mean nothing. The sparsely populated wilderness belonged to the bandits, who ambushed lone travelers and raided supply lines between the heavily guarded settlements.Moving beneath the canopy of a collapsed overpass, your instincts flared. You have caught the glint of chrome and the foul stench of men.