Sometimes, I'm blown away by small plot devices and sudden realizations. It doesn't help that I've been simmering in early-summer heat all day, and drinking caffeinated soda. I'm a little shaky, and I think it helps.
A good friend of mine was GMing. It was the typical end-of-times fare: Oil is gone, large fissures are dividing the surface of the Earth, and asteroid strikes are a common sighting.
Our characters were: An auto mechanic in California, a Kuwaiti globetrotter with an appreciation for martial arts and spirituality (that's me), and a UN diplomat.
The plot was mainly escaping from natural disasters. California was flooding (thus taking the auto mechanic, Phillip, Eastwards), Kuwait was about to get fissure'd (thus prompting my flight to Geneva), and the UN diplomat was nice and snug in (guess where?) Geneva, Switzerland.
There was an interesting Act 1, even though I don't think it was intended that way. Act 1 was us abandoning hope, and making for higher ground. Philip, the mechanic, started to head east before California flooded. My flight was supposed to get to New York, but I decided Geneva was much more friendly towards people of middle-eastern descent. James (The UN Diplomat) had to work on some paperwork for a large pow-wow to decide the fate of the world, in the only character arc not motivated by self-preservation.
Act 2 (even though the GM doesn't know about the three-act story) was about aliens. Yes, aliens. James had one knock on his door at 4 in the morning, and found out it was a shape-shifter named "He." They talked a bit, then James went to bed.
I met up with them a bit later, as I was walking by his house. He (To tell the name from the pronoun) had taken to looking identical to James, so I was rather confused, but they eventually convinced me to come along and see what the madness was about.
Philip was caught at a road-side barricade in Nevada, and taken to a FEMA camp. 24 hours later, everyone else was killed horribly. The bodies were stripped of flesh, organs, and skin, but were "posed" like they were at the moment of death. He touched a soldier's uniform, and the whole assembly came crumbling down. He scavenged some weapons and supplies, then hit the road again. In his rear-view mirror, he saw something large, bony, and insectoid glaring at him. He waved and drove off.
The end of Act 2 took place at the UN meeting. James and I decided our best bet was to let He tell his side of the story: There was something else, commonly called "The Ravager," but called She in their native language. Simply put, She will eat everything and move on. So, the only way to survive is to hide underground for 300 years (3600 lunar cycles) while She starves to death.
James and I utilized He's abilities as a shape-shifter to get past security, and into the main chamber. James was called upon to give a report, and saw this as his time to put He on a pedestal for the whole world to see.
~
Now, this is where something very interesting happened. The GM had us play the part of various foreign leaders to get He's full situation report. We spent about ten minutes getting familiar with his plan, and this whole part worked out really well. It's definitely something I'll want to use in the future.
The end of this debate was He showing his true form. He's ten feet tall, and bright silver. Security (and the snipers) panicked, and shot him. He is not bulletproof.
Then we realized something. In order to prove that he is an extra-terrestrial organism, he would've revealed his true form at the beginning of the speech, not the end. Thus, we thought, he would've been gunned down before he could bend down to speak into the microphone. Thusly, his speech and plan would never have been delivered. So, James and I were left as the only two people who knew how to survive She.
~
Act 3 is the story of She almost wiping out the entire human race. Unlike He, She has very few physical restrictions. She is nearly indestructible, can teleport, is highly intelligent, and very perceptive (except for finding things underground. Blind spot!). Also, for every kill it makes, it can reproduce.
We started with Philip, who met up with a cousin, and sought refuge in an Army bunker. She had already killed everyone inside and left, so they buried the bodies, closed the hatches, and spent the next two years scarfing down MREs and listening to the radio. It was really sobering, listening to the process of America dying. First, reports come in of aliens, cult killings, and bigfoot sightings. Then the radio stations start going dark, fleeing an "unseen epidemic." In two months, America is silent. In two years, the North American continent is desolate. In two and a half years, they run out of MREs, and can see nothing outside the armored doors. She missed them. Barely.
James and I had a different end. Realizing our chance to shephard humanity into life-saving bunkers was kaput, we left for the mountains of Europe and lived off the land. We had the same result- two months until Scandinavia was empty, two and a half years until the radio couldn't pick up anything.
Our days are spent hunting, trapping, and recording our lives on cave walls with charcoal. We thought about using books for journals, but the paper would erode too quickly.
While on a deer hunt, we noticed the game was spooked by something. We waited to make sure it wasn't a bear, and found nothing. Once we went to skin the game, we were ambushed by a couple of Shes. Instead of killing us outright, however, they grinned as much as their mandibles allowed, then left. Mocking our frail existence, as well as our race.
And, that's where it ended. I later found out it tied into another RP we've been cooking up (basically a Reign of Fire/Mechwarrior mashup), and fit perfectly. But, that's not my main focus.
~
We were all expecting a "good" ending. Either, He delivers a speech to the UN on how to kill these things, or at least coordinates a mass-migration to below the Earth's surface to survive the She-pocalypse. But neither happened. He died, and we were left to survive on our own and watch our planet die away. It was very moving, and shocking on a severe level. No happy endings, just three people who won't see the planet recover. And yet, it was fulfilling. We did it. We stuck it out until the end, and our writings on walls might be remembered and upheld by future generations (what few there will be). Or, they'll be ignored and slandered. At least we tried.
~
He mentioned that every male on their planet is called He. No individuality to speak of. I'm not sure if this is the same She that they reproduce with, or if they just don't know how to classify it. I didn't probe that deeply. What matters is, it was weird, and different enough to portray an alien as something uncomfortable and dissimilar to what we call "human." It actually caught on after a while.
Now, I must retire to bed, and have some really groovy nightmares. Until later.
-Nosnamreh
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