🦠 What do everyday people know about the infection?

Everyone knows the pathogen was called SiB-6 and is a parasite. Zombies did (and do) exist in media so you can call them that. Medical/Government types still call them Infected generally.

If you get bit, you have to cut off the limb otherwise you're definitely going to die. ⭐
If you get bit somewhere you can't cut off, you're definitely going to die. ⭐
There’s no easy test you can grab off a pharmacy shelf to check if you're infected. Even if you're lucky enough to have a pharmacy.
Unless you're working with an advanced laboratory, most checks are visually looking for bites and signs of illness, as well as temperature checks.
Every now and then, people talk about SiB-6 getting into the water, the air, the food, the soil or spreading from scratches but so far, nothing solid's ever come of it.

If you are playing a character who was in a previous chapter, you retain your knowledge you learned about zombies.

🦌 Infected Animals

Everyday people will also be in the know, no matter where they're from, about infected Animals. With the advent of the Merchant Island strain created by Professor Blunder, animals can now become infected and spread the infection. It is cross species and being bitten by an infected animal will infect you.

Infected Animals are hostile to both living humans and infected human zombies.
Infected human zombies are hostile to both living humans and infected animals.

👶‎ ‎ The Child Connection

Trigger Warning: Child death mentioned.

One of the main reasons SiB-6 caused so much panic early on, and why officials were willing to resort to nuclear strikes, was the belief that it was completely fatal to children and that kids could become infected just from scratches. It was seen as a true extinction-level threat to humanity.

These days, people may know that's not the case depending on their experience. Still, there is something about children and the dead. In areas with heavy Infected activity, people have noticed a pattern. Wherever children gather, hordes are not far behind.

If a child is tucked away at the back of a room and a zombie catches their scent, it will ignore every other target and head straight for the child. More Infected will follow soon after, and it does not take long before you are facing a full-blown horde.

Your character may know this information and may have taken steps to protect their own children. Or perhaps their parents took such steps to protect them. The best protection for a child is to keep them far away from any Infected. Place as many barriers as possible between the child and danger. Walled cities and fortified settlements tend to fare the best, but more than one has fallen after believing they were safe. Because of this, the birth rate is extremely low in heavily dangerous areas. Some settlements may even deny entry to anyone traveling with a child, or in harsher cases, eliminate the child to remove the threat.

This is common knowledge in North America. If your character wasn't above the age of 18 before the last vestige of countries in North America fell you must explain how they survived, increasingly so the younger they were during the fall. If the character was born outside of civilized areas like the Inter-City Contract, you must explain how they survived.

💉 The C-Cure

⭐ In the months after Merchant Island was liberated from the Runic's grasp in 2022, word began to spread that the PAU had developed a cure for those bitten by a human infected with the SiB-6 parasite. Others said it came from researchers from Merchant Island. Those in the know called it the Travers-Clarke Bio-Surgical Method (T-CBSM), while most called it the C-Cure. Some debated whether that "C" stood for Caravan or Crow, or maybe that it was just so expensive you’d need a boatload of crow coins just to afford it.

For the first time since the outbreak, a bite from a human infected with the SiB-6 parasite, no longer meant an automatic death sentence. The secret to the cure was tightly held inside the PAU for the first few months, but eventually rumors spread of the cure's horrific requirements.

Its production reportedly required two essential ingredients: extracts from Crow Root (Crowbexillium stipulatum), a rare plant only found within the Deadlands and on Merchant Island, and biological material. To be specific, the freshly removed thymus of a child. Children had always been vulnerable in the apocalypse. Their unusual ability to attract the undead had made them a target and liability. The emergence of the C-Cure made it even harder to survive. Though the cure was imperfect and steeped in controversy, it represented humanity's first victory in its battle against the undead. Inspired by this breakthrough the PAU committed great amount of resources towards developing an alternative, one that would not rely upon sacrificing the health of children. Progress however was slow, Crow Root remained exceedingly rare and the fall of the West PAU in 2027/28 brought an end to the project.

As rumors of the C-Cure spread, so too did desperation. All across North America, doctors, herbalists, professors, scavengers, bandits, tradesmen and ordinary survivors sought to recreate the cure. Some in the hope of saving their loved ones, others to save the world and some because they wanted to get rich. Because of this, children suffered the most. As the rumor about the cure's ingredients spread, some started to see children not as lives to protect, but as a means to an end.

Unluckily for the infected people, this cure stopped being effective once the new Merchant Island strain appeared to destroy North America more than it was already.

🚸 Harvested Children

Children who have become the victim of thymus removal became known as Harvested Children. They can be identified by:

A chest scar approximately eight inches in length, directly over the location of the thymus.
A crow tattoo placed somewhere upon the body.
A lifetime of weakened health
No longer attract the undead at the same extent as other children.

Among some settlements across America, Harvested Children are viewed as cursed, or bringers of ill fortune. Many live on the fringes of society.

If your character is a Harvested child, please include that in your character app. We will have a trait for it as well called “Harvest Child”.

Unfortunately, the C-Cure does not work against the animal infection strain. All attempts to adjust it to work against the highly mutative Merchant Island animal strain have failed.

The market for children's thymuses is inherently small due to the following reasons:

Children are an incredibly rare sight in the Splinters and Deadlands, so the ones that attempt to take their thymus or succeed at it do it in a one-off instance.
Attempts to recreate the cure seem to fail more often than not, and groups that attempts to make a profit off of it or do research tend to fall apart, considering that another needed ingredient -the crow root- is also rare to the point of it being almost impossible to recreate the C-Cure.
The C-Cure does not work on the animal/Merchant Island strain.

Most Harvested Children will have their origin in the pre-fall PAU from 2022-2028.

🧟‎ Simple Infection Timeline for Adults

Day 1: Person is infected through a zombie bite, which often becomes inflamed and bleeding may be difficult to stop.

Day 2: Pain increases at the bite wound over time as the tissue around it begins to turn purple.

Day 3: Rash appears near the bite site and spreads to the torso and limbs. The face head remains clear. The bite remains the same.

Day 4: The bite frequently heals at this stage, leaving marks on the skin which the patient is likely to hide due to increasing paranoia and irritability. The nearby area continues to have a rash which itches.

Day 5: Patient develops flu like symptoms including a fever with increasingly vivid hallucinations.

Day 6: The fever intensifies and patient becomes sluggish. Most infected people will find a place to rest and remain there.

Day 7: The body dies. The parasite reanimates the corpse within an hour.

⚰️ Dying from Zombies
If a person dies from massive trauma from the Infected (such as often occurred when cities and settlements were overrun), it takes only minutes for the corpse to reanimate.

🧟‍♀️ The Child Infection Timeline

Children have not been known to reanimate.

Day 1: Child infected through bite which often becomes inflamed and bleeding may be difficult to stop. They quickly develop a rash in the same day at the site of infection.

Day 2: Child develops irritability and the rash becomes itchy. They develop flu-like symptoms with an extremely high fever. Child usually slips into a coma as the fever persists.

Day 3: When the child expires, they do not reanimate.

🪚‎ ‎ How to Survive The Infection

Common knowledge is you gotta cut the limb off, but infection, gangrene and blood loss are just as sure killers if you don't have someone skilled to handle it.
If your character has been around those who've been through it, you may know that amputation Day 3 or later in the infection is almost always too late.
Rumor has circulated about an experimental surgery to remove the parasite without amputation and some rare expensive ingredients, but many folks consider this to be a scam or just wishful thinking from doctors.
The ruthless, the rich and the extremely lucky may have survived a bite from a human infected with the use of the C-Cure. Having done so requires staff approval in background.

⚔️‎ ‎ Fighting the Dead

What works...

Headshots
Mass trauma
Being sneaky
- Many zombies lose track of their prey if they lose line of sight or may be distracted by another target.
- Some rumors circulate of zombies that never give up though and keep banging on doors for a very long time.
- They do have either good hearing or a good sense of smell.
Fighting them in the daytime as most seem to be slower during the day.
They seem to be slower or weaker in the extreme cold.
Large bodies of water and large mountains both seem to be natural barriers for them.

What doesn't work...

Injections
Radiation
Gas
Poisoned meat
Very warm weather
Trying to pit zombies against other zombies (They seem to ignore each other generally.)
Outrunning the fast ones that are more common at night.

🪦‎ ‎ What to do with the Dead

Some groups may have developed their own rules for dealing with the bodies of their loved ones and/or deceased infected. We give the following so you know what would happen:

If a person dies of natural causes with no bites and no nearby Infected, they remain dead. (Rare exceptions are whispered about.)
If a person dies of mass trauma from infected, they rise within minutes as zombies.
If a person dies after a bite at any time before the end of Day 7 (say a mercy injection), they generally reanimate within minutes. The method of death may alter this.
If a person dies of the parasite as it runs its 'natural' course, they rise within an hour.

The Parasite