Pax Malio

History

Sometime circa 2011 I began running an XD20 Campaign (an alternative rpg to Dungeons & Dragons) for a group of friends. After it was decided that I would run the campaign I sat down and began pondering what the campaign would be about. In the midst of asking different players what type of stories they would like to play my friend David one day suggested that I should just do something ridiculous like zombies in space. The idea stuck with me and soon I had a space station with a serious infestation problem. The benefit to this was that I had the characters thinking zombies, so it allowed me to manipulate things in the space station and work against their expectations.

The story ended towards the end of 2011 and went into the second part of the campaign (Season 2) at the beginning of 2012. Halfway through the second campaign I thought it would be beneficial to compile the events of Season 1 into a novel format. This would allow for a reminder of events that happened in Season 1 that would help carry the players through Season 3, the final season of the campaign.

Synopsis

The space station Pax Malio orbits the planet Asora. There humans, moritani, and hutani, their crossbred children, coexist. However, the coexistence is far from peaceful and many believe the crossbreeding of the species to be a sin. As if to echo this sentiment all the hutani are struck by a mysterious illness that renders them comatose and on the edge of death. The station is immediately quarantined. However, that quarantine proves detrimental when communications fail and the hutani begin to waken from their comas with a taste for blood. Now a small group of survivors try are forced to decide between death or escape and spread the unknown malady.

Progress

84 pages; 26,118 words. I don't have a target goal for this work. However, I am approximately halfway through the original story. I'm putting an estimate of 50,000 words on the finished project. That puts me slightly above 50%.

2013 Goals

1. Finish first draft of the manuscript by the end of the year.

2. Complete a chapter every two weeks.

3. E-mail completed chapter to gaming group every other Friday. Next chapter should be delivered in two weeks: August 2nd.

I don't really see this as a publishable project. However, revising the manuscript will be good practice and I would like to be able to bundle it all together, along with the novelizations of seasons 2 & 3 as a gift for my friends when we are finished. If I am satisfied with the results after the revision I might try and self-publish the book as some fluff fiction.

Excerpt



All hell broke loose around John. A panicked mob came streaming counterclockwise through the ring. Screaming moritani and humans ran past. He pushed his food away and looked down the ring to see what could be causing the commotion. As the mob ended John could still hear screams coming from around the bend of the ring. These were not the panicked screams of the mob, but tortured screams of people in pain.
            A morbid curiosity had him drifting towards the screams. A few steps and he turned back to the food counter where the cashier was leaning over the counter and staring.
            "You might want to close up shop." John said.
            He didn't stop to see what the cashier would do, but was partially relieved to hear the sound of the shop gate being pulled closed. A few stragglers passed John as they continued running. The looks on their faces should have been enough to warn John to turn back, but his desire to know pushed him forward.
            He walked 100 feet until the curve of the station revealed movement. He slowed then and moved closer to the wall. He crept forward until he saw movement again. John paused and leaned out. Spread out through this section of the ring was a large mass of hutani.
            His first thought was relief that the hutani had recovered from whatever illness had plagued them. However, before that happy feeling could take hold John comprehended the scene in front of him. The hutani were covered in blood. Around them were littered the dead bodies of moritani and humans. Some hutani were savagely battering at the few survivors of the massacre, finishing them off. Others had their faces buried in the corpses, noisily eating the flesh. One particular hutani was eating a dismembered arm as if it were a chicken wing.
            John wanted to be sick.
            The hutani with the arm looked up from his meal. He looked directly at John and their eyes met. He growled and John feared that he would soon be a meal. Then the hutani continued to eat, but he kept his eyes on John. John decided that he had pushed his luck fair enough. He slowly began to back away. He lowered his eyes hoping that appearing submissive would placate the hutani watching him. As soon as he was out of sight he turned and ran.
            He would go home, hole himself away, and do something that he promised his mother he would never do. He would get blindingly drunk. Maybe by the time he sobered up he would not remember what he had just seen. And maybe the nightmare would be over.


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