Afterblight Chronicles
4 total works
For years after the Cull, we strove – we rose up against the slavers and exploiters, we fought back the crazies, we broke the soil again and farmed like our ancestors. Could it ever be enough? With history broken, the old orders and certainties have lost their hold. But the bad and the cruel will always seek to rise, and disaster is always one mistake away. Chaos wants to return.
Journal of the Plague Year brought you three tales from the first days of the Cull; now End of the End revisits old friends from School’s Out Forever, Hooded Man, The Culled and Kill or Cure, years after the adventures you know, as they still struggle to shout their defiance against the growing darkness.
Enemies On All Sides!
Robert, the Hooded Man, leads the Rangers, who keep the peace in the ravaged wasteland of Britain, foiling the ambitions of the warlords and petty tyrants who would take the country for themselves. Even the spirits of his beloved Sherwood Forest aid him, sending him dreams to guide his path.
But now Robert's dreams are threatening and strange – a dragon rising over Wales, a spider crouching over Edinburgh – and new foes are rising against him in his own homeland. Overseas, the Russian Tsar is readying himself for a second confrontation with Britain's protector, even as an army is converging at the Reichstag in Berlin. A confrontation is coming that may decide the future of the nation...
As the world dies screaming a legend is reborn!
In the years following The Cull England has reverted back to the Middle Ages, ripe for invasion by the Frenchman De Falaise and his group of mercenaries. They enter through the Channel Tunnel and work their way up the country.
Ex-policeman Robert Stokes lost everything to the virus that ravaged these isles. Along with his wife and his son, it took Robert's whole reason for living. Retreating into the woods and forests near Nottingham, he has become a hunter, living off the land and avoiding any form of human contact – until now.
Pockets of survivors are attempting to build up small communities in the region, bartering at makeshift markets and forming tentative connections. But when De Falaise arrives at Nottingham – proclaiming himself the new 'Sheriff' – Robert finds himself drawn reluctantly into the fight, using the famous legend of a Hooded Man as his guide!
A Legend Reborn In The Flames Of War!
More than a year has passed since Robert Stokes defeated De Falaise, the self-styled Sheriff of Nottingham. In that time, The Hooded Man has been training a new force to police the area: The Sherwood Rangers.
But cracks are beginning to appear in this fledgling system – the men are overstretched and a new threat has appeared in the shape of a dangerous Satanic cult. Meanwhile, an old enemy has persuaded 'The Tsar', the Emperor-like ruler of Russia, to move against Robert. Soon The Tsar's armies are landing on these shores, determined to wipe out The Hooded Man and his band for good.
And there are also more personal aspects at stake: Robert and Mary's relationship, for one, placed under threat by a beautiful newcomer – as Robert himself struggles with his living legend status.
Can The Hooded Man and his friends survive all of this, or will everything be broken for good?