Journal:Preasure
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The below description of Preasure is an out of character perspective designed to give the best possible interpretation of the character history. Only the journal entries are written from an RP perspective
Preasure began the game as my first character. Originally, I decided to take him to Yagoton, where my forum was building a group together. Unfortunately, Preasure was cut down several times and was unable to progress. Preasure was left to grow idle as a corpse. My second character, Ultimatewebster did make it, and now leads the WSFFG.
After a week or so forgotten, I stood Preasure up again, and set about finding him a group. A chance encounter in a hospital where I was scrounging for XP led to Preasure joining Salvation, a small group comprised mainly of scientists. This took Preasure to Dulston, this back in the days when zombie, survivor and PK'er groups battled for control of the suburb. Preasure stayed on the outsides, gradually leveling by healing the battered survivors who had retreated to safer Rhodenbank. By the time Preasure was at a level where combat became a viable option, Ultimatewebster was at level 10, a prominant member in his group, mainly thanks to the First Siege of Caiger Mall. The parallel existance of the two characters shows the dificulty in leveling as a scientist character compared to a civilian. Getting started and beginning to level took a much longer time, though experience rates between the characters have now sabilised at about the same rate.
Then Mall Tour '06 arrived at Treweeke Mall, and Preasure entered Dulston to help fight them. He was killed by the horde on the same night the mall fell. After a swift revival, Preasure returned to find the mall largely back under survivor control, the hordes having left for the next target and only a few ferals remaining. This act seems to have cleaned up the suburb, which is now almost completely safe. However the group Salvation had been gradually falling out of activity. While not severing group ties, I decided to do other things with Preasure. Nothing has been heard from the group for several weeks.
Preasure spent some time scouting the NE area, ammending the reports of the suburbs to give a more accurate idea of their safety on the wiki. He surveyed most of the suburbs in the NE corner over a period of about a month. He formed the Institute of Independant Studies for this purpose. Because this deals with Urban Dead as a game, it is not mentioned in the journal, which in the RP perspective, as if Malton was a real city. Preasure is now back in Dulston, and more or less permenantly resides in Treweeke Mall.
Journal
20th March
Woke early this morning, stumbled into Millen Hills while it was still dark. A few zombies around, managed to find a NecroTech building to scan from. Too bad the generator is empty, nothing works round here. No energy to find fuel right now, the zombies are attacking the police department next door, we could be next. You'd think I'd get used to groaning and gunfire, living in Malton. It'll be a long night...
21st March
The zombies are gone, but something tells me not to stick around. All my ammunition is gone now, and a large group is gathering somewhere in the east. I stumbled south for a while, lost in the fog, until a large building reared up in front of me through the mist. Upon closer inspection it proved to be Stickling Mall, DARIS graffiti fading on the high windows. The place seems to lack any zombies at all, I'll take a few days off to recoup supplies. It almost seems peaceful here sometimes.
29th March
Waved goodbye at stickling and walked off back to my target under a clear blue sky. The winter is waning, certainly felt it as I walked up into Lamport Hills. There's more zombies here, and lots of empty buildings. I stuck my head inside a few, I dont really like wandering into buildings, especially ones with that many stains on the walls. Found a few groups of survivors who pointed me to the west, warmed myself up by sinking some of the large ammo stockpile into a few zombies. Shut a few doors and piled up some junk, that'll confuse them. Made my way over to Southall Mansion, got a good nights sleep on the pool table. A few days around here, and the zombies in lamport might have calmed down. I'll head over to Chancelwood, I feel like a few games of baseball...
2nd April
After a few days at the rather empty stadium, returned home to the Treweeke Mall I've grown to love. It's like I never left, apart from there were no zombies back then. Time to let off some of the hard found shells and break out the syringes, this is one suburb they're not coming back to.
I've heard a few things on my travels, and there's nothing like a mall for rumour and speculation. Got talking to a scientist who had returned from Caiger. He said that zombie numbers are rising, more places are becoming unsafe. The undead seem to be clawing back the lead we've worked so hard for this last year. Every day they become more resistant to the syringes, every day more of the city fall down and never gets up again. They listen, those bodies that litter the once fine streets of our city. I've seen them twitch, grey faces flicker as they sniff the air, waiting...
Waiting for the new smells they desire, the smells and cries of the new Malton which one day must emerge from this wasteland, a new malton of life or death, none of the grey area we now call home. All I can wonder is when shall the changes begin, what lowely block shall herald the beginnings of a great and terrible revolution, and which way will the tide flow. And I'm not alone. As the cries of the undead drift through the boarded windows, I see the citizens of this dying city hunched over their guns, turning their plight over and over, waiting for the next thump on the doors, for the chance of death, or just for a gunshot second, to feel alive again.
Yes, Treweeke is home, but tonight it is a home in a mirror, darkly.
16th April
Spring is coming. Every moring I smell the flowers blooming in the cracked streets, see the bubs breaking through after so long, they too depresed by the plight of our city. It fills me with a burning hope, and all around me I see the small wonders of life overcome the death that has shrouded Malton. It does me good to hear birdsong amongst the gunfire. My fellows too are dragging themselves from the dark pits of despair we occupied through winter, shrugging off the stained coats and dozing in the sunbeams through the broken windows of Dulston. The zombies of Dulston are being pushed back, the people returning to what was once their homes.
Yet daily I see people wander past the border flags, their clothes torn and their guns empty. Much of the city is still dangerous, I feel it pulling me to leave the safety of my suburb. I hear stories of heroism and despair, of mighty hordes and massive sieges. This morning crates fell from the helicopters that passed over the sleeping town. At once the streets were alive with survivors, I joined them hunting. Finding nothing, many ran from the suburb, heading off for a new chance of glory and supplies. Few have returned, but those that do make me even keener to leave. But not just yet. Just five more minuites in this small oasis of peace...
25th April
There are times in life when things change forever, when parts of you change forever. That happened to me, the first time I saw a zombie horde. I fled and ran with the others, as science, the military, all the safeguards built up to protect humanity from its demons, fell behind me. I ran as the primal fear that gripped my ancestors as they huddlesd in the cave, watching the shapes in the fire, the fear that drove warriors to glory, the fear that lurks in every human soul, broke me before it and smashed me upon the bare rocks of my mind. I ran. I ran until the fear drove me to take the gun from the cold hands of some forgotten man, to unleash the instinct within me that cries for blood, for blood of another to save my own. And I stopped running away, and started running back.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had carried on. Would I have been one who ran through the cordons as the army closed the city in? Would I have gone too far in, and never seen the face of the scientist emerging from the murky consciousness of death, syringe in hand? But for these past months I have survived. And the fear has fallen away within me, as the barricades keep me safe in the night. That was why I travelled. The horde I ran from in the morning would not be the horde kept at bay during the night. In dulston, there was no horde. There was no fear.
This morning I saw the crowds of zombies at the suburb edge. I felt the fear rise in me again. I felt it fill me with anger once more. I searched for guns, for ammo, searched until I fell and slept in the dusty debris of the mall floor. Tomorrow I will rise and fight, fight for the freedom that has been denied to me for so long, fight for the fear in my heart.
Fight because I have always fought.
31st May
Many weeks have passed. It seems like a lifetime.
Every minuite I am searching, scrabbling around the mall in the generator half-light for supplies. If I'm not doing that, then I'm using them, firing on the zombies that have invaded the corner of our suburb. Then when they are fallen and the shells lie at my feet, I find myself staring at the barricade surrounding us, the wall of concrete that marks the end of our malton, the wall that is visible from any place in the suburb. From where I stand I could reach out and touch it, yet I cannot. Behind that barrier the soldiers patrol, with their weapons unfired and their boots shining. Behind that barrier is another life, people, safety, places where doors can be left open to the street.
Or is there? Has the vile plauge that took our city spread behind this collosus of stone, destroyed the world beyond it, and left us here, an island of chaos in a boiling sea? As I look upon it I sit for hours in the twilight, waiting and listening for a sound, talking, footsteps, anything to tell me that there are people there. Perhaps it is better to hear nothing. I scream and shout at that immovable wall, throw stones in the hope it will hit something, just so the shiver of glass will bring memories of happier times. If there are people there, watching us from behind it, seeing how we fight and fall and die every day, I wonder how they sleep at night.
I know how I do. With the hope of the dawn gone from my heart, and a gun in my hand.
15th June
Quiet. Feel the quiet.
Feel the quiet. Feel the quiet before the dawn. The quiet that is a mall of summer. A mall where birds nest in the ceilings, where animals play on the overgrown lawns, where people rest among the amiacable weeds of the forecourt. A mall safer.
Feel the quiet. Feel the quiet of anticipation, of the barricades creaking, of the whispers. Feel the quiet of the silenced guns by our sides, of the axes honed to sharpness, of the precious life ensnared within the glass walls of the syringes. A mall alone. A mall waiting.
Feel the quiet. Feel the quiet of the preperation, of the people who need say nothing, of the grim faces over the braziers, of the animals gone, of the sun falling. Feel the quiet of the empty streets, yawning as if longing for a crowd, the quiet of the shells clicking on our belts, the quiet of the scared footsteps out a back door, the quiet of the stormclouds gathering, the quiet of doom, the quiet of night, the quiet of the end. A mall locked. A mall prepared. A mall ready.
Feel the quiet before the storm. They are coming.
3rd July
One year ago. It sems like yesterday, that the zombies rose from the ground and the horror started. It's more than a year, to be exact, for months the military ran campaigns, futile charges, convoys in and out. Then I woke up in the smashed railway station where I had hidden, waiting for a train to whisk me away from the horrors, to find the skies still and the army gone. They had left us, left thousands without purpose or hope behing the barricades. And so one year ago, as the confinement of our city began, I left the suburb that had been my home and headed north, to find any hope I could. It was a painful journey. I could not fight, I could not defend myself against the undead. For days fear walked with me, until I became one of them, became disgusted with what I had become, embraced the death of the firemans axe as he stood over my body.
But all things strive for life, and as I lay so did I. Again I stood, sought out those that understood my cries, until I was alive again. I have never looked back. Never cared that all I saw of my intended destination was a glimpse, a night and a morning in Bale Mall. Dulston calls to me, even though the ones that called me it have long ago walked from its boundaries and never returned. It is here I shall defend, and when this horror ends, it is here I will meet them as they reclaim us back to society. Will we ever be able to return? This place has changed us forever, I know this as once again I watch the people look for the helicopters in the sky. once they fired upon the hordes, I watched as they tore down those that could not fight them back. Today they give us guns, supplies, a hope to men. But not to me. I stand in the place in the mall I call my own and see what they really mean. It is us who must end this, and if that is how it shall end, I will not search for it.
