004: PASS THE POISON

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P A S S   T H E   P O I S O N

Y E A R   F O U R
DAY 1
Four long, arduous years have brought nothing but death and decay. Those of us who are still alive to tell this tale have learned to adapt to a life of daily toil, battle and hardship. Our backs, bent and broken, struggle to carry on the wretch of survival...

Disease has always been among us, lurking in the damp, decaying wood and waterways, breeding and circulating through the tanked oxygen that pumps through the dome, infecting the weakest. We have had common colds, the flue, and other such illnesses that the Keepers sought to test upon us. And like always, we adapted, we grew immune to such simple pathogens. Some died. The strong prevailed.

These illnesses were always small scale...until the first day of the fourth, godforsaken year. Today.

Some call it a plague - others, an epidemic. But we call them monsters.

These...artificial creations that the Keepers call the ARCANE STRAIN. Human viruses. Mutated from artificial DNA and grown, aged and matured inside test tubes and liquid filled chambers, these viruses are spawned by the "Elite", the very founders of the Menagerie.

They are the poison that's seeping into our lives, slowly, wound by wound - that's how they get you. The Arcane stop at nothing to fulfill their one true desire, their entire reason for existence - to infect, and to kill. They are not human; they may resemble us...but their minds, they know only one thing - to eliminate human-kind. The Arcane are viruses that take on human form, their bodies often twisted and defected with odds and ends of animal parts, sometimes horrible mutations, other times they seem almost normal. And worse of all - they can shift, just like us.

With one single touch, the poison is passed.

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