Alas Poor World (A dystopia/post-apocalypse RP idea.)

(ALright, this is based on the plot of a play that I co-wrote a few years ago, and I thought it'd make a rather fun RP. I thought I'd put the idea down, and if anyone is interested, please let me know, as I tihnk it could be rather interesting. It's all rather long, but then this was all developed over about a year. Hope it's not too rambling.

The paly was called Alas Poor World, and was made to be an enviromental play for a Shakespeare Festival, with a twist.)


2210

The year is 2210, and the sun rises in a foggy, greenish sky over a bare landscape. There are no living trees, only some blackened, eroded trunks sticking up out from the ridges. There are no animals, just a few bleached bones half eaten away. The air irritates the throat. The sluggish water is black and noxious...no-one could drink such a thing. Even the soil itself burns away the skin at the touch. This is Earth...a world where pollution has gone mad.

Looming up against the smoggy sky stands an enormous structure, a towering dome of steel and concrete, with four enormous black chimneys, ejecting columns of dark smoke. Painted onto the wall in huge letters, the design beginning to peel and shed is 'MK-2'. This is the last city on earth.



MK-2

MK-2 contains some of the remaining survivors after the events that left the world nearly uninhabitable. The place is safe compared to much of the outside....but it's not a good place to live. The place runs under an oppressive dictatorial regime under Citizen Leader. The place is a gloomy maze of passages, large and small, with leaking pipes and the buzz of outdated electrical lighting. The food is developed synthetically, and it highly unpleasant to the taste. The water is recycled time and time again, becoming progressively more cloudy and stagnant than before. Supplies are constantly low, and people live in fear. There is no culture in MK-2. Books and artwork are destroyed, music does not exist. They are all considered useless distractions from more practical matters. Everythign is fuctional about MK-2, nothing is beautiful.


The Classes of MK-2


Citizen

One of the regular people of MK-2. All are assigned jobs, most of which are dull and mundane. They sleep in small, individual rooms, forbidden to interact after curfew, and have the rather unpleasant food shared out to them at mealtimes. Citizens are mostly unaltered, though they have the many rules of the city drummed into them with the 'Citizenship Classes' held every week, and the constant fear of the Guardians and Protectors. Citizens are forbidden to use weapons. Each has a six digit number code that they are referred to officially, but most adopt informal names that they can be referred to as in conversation.


Guardian

Guardians form the ordinary police force of MK-2, the Guardians were raised separately to the Citizens, and given supplements to increase thier strength. On the other hand they were also trained to obey orders without question, and to follow commands to the letter, which can make them rather inflexible. They tend to be armed with batons or knives.


Protector

Protectors are the secret police, intelligence, and Citizen Leader's bodyguards combined. Twenty-four in all, each named after a letter of the greek alphabet, dressed in black uniforms, the Protectors are almost universally feared. They were altered at a very young age to be faster, smarter, and more perceptive than an ordinary human being, with reflexes that outmatch any ordinary person. They were also altered neurologically, with a mechanism that prevents them from harming Citizen Leader. They're highly trained, almost emotionless, and utterly ruthless in thier techniques. Blackmail, torture, brainwashing, "deleting" difficult individuals...the Protectors will go to any lengths to keep order in MK-2.


Citizen Leader
Citizen Leader is the head of MK-2, she has been for as long as anyone can remember. Advanced treatments seem to have slowed her aging enormously. She is an unrepentant tyrant who sees it as her job to preserve the city at all costs. Rather than make any attempt to advance, she wants to keep things static and unchanging. She is highly intelligent, and a gifted public speaker....but utterly heartless and ruthless.

Savages

Savages are a City Dweller's only view of those on the Outside. They're the offspring of exiled criminals or those left outside, managing to cling to life by living on the mountains of garbage jettisoned from MK-2, or scavenging in the old city. They tied plastic and other remnants to thier feet to try and avoid burning them, and hide in the waste-piles to agvoid the acid rain..though this lifestyle takes its toll. They are generally agressive, primitive, low in intelligence and covered in dirt and chemical burns. Most are cannibals. Occasionally one manages to break into MK-2...and once in they become very dangerous.


Prospero's Rebellion

A few years before the RP takes place, a disturbance knows as 'Prospero's Rebellion' took place. A citizen, a young man came across a book when he was supposed to be disposing of waste in the furnaces. He managed to slip it out, and began to read it. The book was 'The Complete Works of William Shakespeare'. It spoke of things they had never told him of before. Of roses and trees, snow and rain, music and art, love and romance. It also came with a message scrawled inside, it could have been the claims of a madman, but it presented hope. It said there was a land to the west where the grass was still green and the trees still grew.

The young man began sharing it with other citizens, people he trusted. In order to protect themselves, they took the names of characters from the book and aliases, so they couldn't be tracked so easily. He took the name Prospero. As Prospero and his book gained more influence, Citizen Leader caught wind of this. Eventually, the Protectors tracked Prospero down, took his book, and had him tortured and executed in the name of Citizen Leader. They tried thier best to round up the rest of the rebels, but some managed to avoid capture, and continued to spread the message, by graffiti and and messages yelled at Citizenship Classes. Despite the efforts to get rid of it, many slogans of 'Propero Lives!' or 'Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?' can be found on the walls of the city. Things have become tense...and are waiting to explode.

Sounds alright i know i would be up for it. Always been a fan of these types of Role plays.

I'd be totally interested :)