This is just an idea I had for an AtB story or game that I wrote down on a napkin two or three years ago while I was at a local pizza joint (behold the power of napkins!). Let me know if you think this is an idea worth expanding upon.
Proteus [Pro·te·us]
- (noun) Classical Mythology. a sea god, son of Oceanus and Tethys, noted for his ability to assume different forms and to prophesy.
- (adj.) a person or thing that readily changes appearance, character, principles, etc.
PRELUDE (208x - Pre-Crash)
- A female scientist and her assistant (a mutant chimpanzee) are hard at work trying to find a way to stop the mystery plague that is killing off the human race. The scientist's child, a young boy or girl dieing of the mystery plague, is placed in cryogenic pod until she can find the cure.
CURRENT DAY (After the Bomb)
- A battle between a group of mutant animals and a detachment of Human Empire soldiers rages outside the ruins of an Pre-Death building.
- After the human soldiers retreat, the mutant animals move into the building. It turns out to be a cryogenic hospice, a place where human from before the Crash would inter the terminally ill.
- Amazingly enough, power is still being supplied to a few of the cryogenic pods. The mutant animals find all but one of the occupants are dead - the victims of rotted seals. The remaining pod is that of the child from the prelude. However, the child is now a teenager, it's aging only slowed while in the cryogenic pod.
- The pod, the human child still inside, is delivered to a Cardanian medical facility in Cambridge where they attempt to reawaken the human inside.
- Soon after he/she is awakened, the child is frightened by mutant animal doctors and runs away.
- The human child hides in the old city ruins on the outskirts of Cambridge for a couple days until being attacked by a pack of street urchins (a mix mutant animals). The child is saved when another human (actually a pleasure bunny) comes to the rescue.
- The bunny takes the child to her home, an old but luxurious cabin hidden in the nearby woods. There she tells the child what has happened to change the world and admits that she is in fact also a mutant animal. After a while, she convinces the child to return with her to the medical facility.
- Back at the medical facility, the doctors run tests on the child and discover that the child does not carry the strain of the disease that killed humans, but a variation of the disease called Proteus - the strain that gave birth to the anthropomorphic animals. However, this variation would not affect animals, instead this strain would cause a "Proteus Transformation" in humans.
- Fearful of what he/she may turn into, how the transformation may affect him/her, and whether or not he/she will survive the transformation, the child accepts his/her fate. Monitored by the medical staff during the transformation, and watched over by the bunny, the child slowly begins his/her transformation into a .
- When the child is revived, he/she discovers that the transformation has also awoken new psionic powers, including the ability to telepathically listen to other peoples thoughts.
- Soon after, the child telepathically overhears a doctor plotting to use the new Proteus strain on other surviving humans and tells the bunny. The doctor discovers that the two know about the plot and the two must escape before they are captured by security.
- Back at the cabin the two start packing to escape Cambridge, but a group of canine mercenaries hired by the doctor tracks down the two at the cabin before they can leave and a battle ensues. The two escape down a bolt hole just as the cabin is destroyed in a fiery explosion.
- Content that nothing could have survived such a blast and musing that the only cure of the Protean strain would have been contained in the child's DNA (a fact that is overheard by the bunny), the doctor returns to the medical facility to work on his scheme.
- Safely outside Cambridge, the bunny reveals that she was once a member of a group of adventurers and suggests that they might go to them for some help.
SIDE NOTES
- As the story would have progressed, it would have been found that the child's mutation was unstable and would revert (like a lycanthrope) between mutant animal and human form. He/she would also discover new psionic abilities as well, including precognition.
- The mutant doctor's ultimate goal would be to use the Protean virus against the Empire of Humanity, rationalizing that once they had all been mutated into animals they would stop warring with the rest of the animal nations.
- At some point it would be revealed that the mutant chimpanzee that assisted the child's mother is still alive and possibly a member of the bunnies adventuring group. The chimpanzee would then reveal that the child's mother had almost finished the cure when she was taken away by soldiers to work at some survivors colony. The chimp was not allowed to accompany her and never heard of her again, assuming that she died along with the rest.
- Who else may be involved in the plot to infect the humans with the Proteus virus? What will the Empire do if/when they find out about the Proteus? Could the child's mother have survived? Could she have created the cure? What did she do with the cure?
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