Mitternacht
The World as we know it is gone. Devoured in the fires of an atomic mistake. Thermonuclear Armageddon enveloped the world for reasons unclear. Returning Mankind to rock and stone. Our global and budding solar civilization withering on the vine. Humanity's spark died that day and for a long night the candle of our destiny lay unlit...till the dawn cometh again.
The year among Human scholars of the Capital is speculated to be between 10,165 and 13,182 Anno Domini. Though no one can be completely sure thanks to the meddling of the Midnight Aristocracy and their previous dominion over the Earth and Solar system for several millennia. What is known from well-kept archives in the Capital and corroborated by excavated datacrons beneath the ancient city of Rome is that in 2099, after colonizing portions of the Sol system and even learning a primitive method of FTL through experimental Alcubierre drives to reach nearby star systems within ten light years, a massive thermonuclear exchange occurred between the then super-states that dominated Earth's geopolitical arena. Earth was devastated and the superstates collapsed overnight from the exchange and resultant EMP pulses blanketing across the surface of the planet. The foundling colonies such as those on Mars and Europa were bereft of the infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities of their homeworld and accordingly many died out shortly or hung on in semi-barbaric states as the few surviving humans regressed into a techno-tribal state of existence.
It is shortly after this time, approximately a decade after the nuclear exchange is suspected to have occurred, that surviving humans on Mars unearthed a strange structure and from there the first recorded use of the term Midnight Aristocracy comes into parlance. Vampires emerged and took control of the scraps of barely surviving colonists on Mars and then moved to Earth. Swiftly dominating the few techno-barbarian tribes and wandering scavenger bands and centralizing them in few places of significance. New York, Rome, London, Paris, Hong Kong and Macau, Tokyo, Sydney, and others. The Vampires as they became known for their sustenance was clearly to drink the blood of the living shepherded mankind as their underclass. Slowly rebuilding a civilization in their image over the centuries. Rebuilding cities and then innovating rapidly with technological marvels. Various diseases were cured, genetic disorders erased, and mankind led by the Aristocracy recolonized the Sol system with better technologies and even improved on their FTL with the Shadow-Light Drive. Allowing advanced space-folding to travel across a dozen light years instantly. Mankind eventually reached beyond the abandoned dead colonies of surrounding star systems to expand further under their fanged masters. Colonizing dozens of star systems in a rough sphere one hundred light years across. The super-science of the Aristocracy Civilization did not end there and across the Earth they built many marvels. Weather control machines, self-repairing highways, teleportation chambers, levitating cities, and even artificial intelligences capable of actively predicting the course of history based on mathematical models.
But the Midnight Aristocracy themselves were flawed by eventual social stagnation and infighting. Eventually, the Midnight Aristocracy's feudal class structure broke down as younger Vampires chaffed at the immortality and immobility of their Elders. Internecine wars in which mankind ultimately suffered became increasingly common until the Great Uprising. When in the turn of the 11th or 14th millennium mankind rose up in revolt and a devastating civil war ripped across settled space. All manner of weapons were used save on the Earth itself which was thankfully spared from much of the atomic and radiological devastation far flung colonies suffered under. But that respite was replaced by bio-engineered plagues, genetically modified abominations like Werewolves, Ghouls, Dragons, and cybernetic hunter-killers, laser weapons and neutron bombardment.
Eventually, after fifty years of struggle a truce was signed by various surviving Elders and Mankind. The former voluntarily removing themselves off-Earth. The deal was simple. Earth would be dominated by Humanity in-exchange for peace. But it is a domination in-name only for Mankind had gained control of a world dangerous and wild. Now, a century has passed...
The Earth of this dark far future is a world of danger and wilderness. Humanity has proclaimed the former New York City as its Capital, with the metropolis and several other cities forming the core of Human civilization on Earth. Each one of these cities is vast and home to tens of millions. Sheltered behind great concentric walls and fortifications and shielded from above in-vase of orbital attack. While outside the world is divided into the Inner and Outer Frontier. The Inner Frontier represents regions that more or less could be considered safe enough to live and travel outside of the cities. These regions are home to quiet towns, farming communities, and walled hamlets which provide crucial foodstuffs and resources to their major metropole that they surround. Indeed, these regions are more or less suburbs and patrolled by armed forces of the cities they supply. Each city is in turn a self-governing entity, but all have representatives in The Capital and thus Mankind is politically unified in this sense.
The Outer Frontier is a vague term for basically everywhere else and are essentially vast tracts of lawless, danger ridden, and oft sparsely inhabited. Home to dank fishing villages, fortified towns wary of newcomers, and dark homesteads were a bullet instead of a greeting is equally as likely for a passerby. Indeed, inheriting a world full of such Human dangers let alone wandering chimeric beasts, mutants' bands, or fiends wrought from arcane genetic science, has led to Mankind founding the Society of Huntsmen. Based out of the Huntsmen Lodge in the mountains to North of the Capital the Society is for better or worse terms an organization of sanctioned monster-hunters. Given remit to pursue public and private contracts at risk of their own life to vanquish any and all roaming threat plaguing Humanity as it slowly reclaims a largely unrecognizable home world.
The Society of Huntsmen
The Society of Huntsmen was first organized and convened in the wake of the truce between Mankind and the Midnight Aristocracy's surviving leadership. Their task and remit to pursue everything from rogue vampires to mutants to beasts. As such every Huntsman carries a rosary bearing a conjoined golden sun and silver moon. A badge and symbol of their membership. The Huntsmen operate as a collective of agents and eschew a hierarchical structure. Instead, each Huntsmen acts either as a team member or on their own in completion of their contracts. The lodge itself is rather opulent and was once the site of a Vampire's summer retreat before being taken over and claimed by the initial members of the Lodge. As such it is a structure built in the distinct gothic style favored by the Vampires during their reign over Mankind.
Humanity & Mutants
Humanity has managed to recover some population figures over the previous century with about a billion Humans living on Earth. Primarily clustered in the mega-cities and surrounding Inner Frontier zones. But there are still millions scattered across the surface of the Earth in various desperate Outer Frontier regions. While baseline Humanity has laid claim to Earth once more there are still a host of Mutants that dwell in the Outer Frontier. Outcasts and forsaken tribes from previous ages that have adapted to the harsh realities of the world they now reside in. Many retain the intellect of baseline Humanity but have mutated physiological or anatomically. The Salu of India have mutated a third eye that sees in the dark. While the Vallejos of the American Wasteland have adapted auditory organs in their throat to induce a variety of high-pitched screams and calls for communications over long distances. While the Wendigo of the American West has managed to adapt a photo-reactive skin and elongated limbs to survive in the vast mountainous forests. Others have devolved into near bestial savagery: cannibal clans, savage raiders and enslavers alike.
Vampires
The Midnight Aristocracy, though that sobriquet is best reserved for those who embody the at least superficial virtues of noblesse and haut couture. The Vampires emerged from Mars and were the undisputed masters of Earth and settled space for millennia before their own civilization stagnated and began to decline. A species which while capable of partaking in human food and drink required blood to sustain themselves. Their physical feats varied from vampire to vampire but generally were at least as strong as three men and swifter than the eye could track when striking their prey. Capable of echo location and seeing in even pitch blackness. The Vampire was very much a creature of the night, and the Sun was intolerable to them. To stand in direct Sunlight was to soon feel their very cells breakdown and their body alight in fire. The exact reasoning for this is poorly understood even by the Vampires themselves who tried various methods to remove this weakness but to no avail. While being awake during daylight hours is most uncomfortable to them. Further, many have an innate fear of running water and while a stake to the heart may grievously wound them the only way to be completely sure a Vampire will not regenerate from even decapitation strikes is to burn their remains. Vampires while biologically immortal can bear children, though it is a rare event, and thus one's station in vampiric society is often determined by whether one was born a vampire or turned. Vampires can also breed with Humans and produce Dhampirs who can operate in sunlight.
Werewolves & Shapechangers
Werewolves and other Shapeshifters were initially experiments by the Vampires to produce their own shock troops and spies capable of freely operating among Human society. Since the truce many Werewolves and other Shapechangers were left behind on Earth and their children and grandchildren now prowl the periphery of Human civilization.
Beasts and Creatures
Many beasts such as basilisks, dragons, yetis, giant spiders, and so forth were experiments of the Vampire civilization and largely left to their own devices after or before the truce with Mankind. As such they are a common threat to many Outer Frontier settlements.
Zombies
Hijacked, reanimated, corpses by the Ziccara Fungal Virus. An organism of unclear origin but embodying both fungal and viral qualities when it erupted out of central Africa at least a thousand years before the present. The Ziccara Fungal Virus is noted to spread through spores or by bite from an infected individual. The virus gradually destroying and reforming parts of the hosts brain not in a dissimilar fashion to Rabies. Eventually, after a few weeks, the host perishes in agony, but the disease does not end there. The Fungal Virus will then take over the nerve centers of the host and infect the muscle tissues. Puppeting the hosts recently deceased body for several weeks, even staving off most decay, until it either infects another humanoid creature or burns itself out. A Ziccaran outbreak is extremely dangerous in areas with a clustered population due to the fact the virus seems to operate on a pheromone-based hive-mind when around other infected individuals. Allowing infected hosts to coordinate their efforts in spreading the infection.
The RP
Players will work as part of a team of Huntsmen traveling around the world and fulfilling various contracts. Thematically, the world is very much a mixture of American westerns, Victorian gothic literature, and various global folklore interwoven with science fiction technologies like body shields, laser weaponry, cybernetic horses, and space travel. So various archetypes like a gunslinger, swordsman, technical expert, or even spiritual like a priest fit the mold.
