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Inspired by the survival-horror genre, and the nightmarish creatures of Resident Evil in particular, this setting is one of post-apocalyptic survival.

Some time in the near future, scientists operating out of a research facility in the New Mexico desert created a device. What this device was meant to do was top-secret, and it is still very much in question of whether it worked or not. But there is no question that the device did function, and disaster was a result. The instant of its activation, two thirds of the earth's population simply died. Of the remaining third, it is estimated that 90% were changed.

These new life forms were horrors, monsters formed from what is left of the living as they absorb the bodies of those that died. Stitch beasts with too many limbs or multiple jaws.

The most common form of the creatures is what has come to be called pigs, both for their bloated form and for the squealing noises they use to approximate communication. Slow and stupid, but incredibly strong and durable, they will flee threats if alone, but will return with others, intent on drowning their prey with at least 3:1 odds.

Second are the wolves. A more advanced form of the infected, made from a pair of bodies fused into a single form, they are agile and fast, but incredibly frail. Pack hunters, they prefer to use the advantages of height and stealth to take down their prey.

One of the most dangerous foes in this new world are what the survivors have taken to calling tigers. Viscious, cunning, solitary hunters, with bodies made of several or even dozens of melded bodies, these leviathans come in innumerable shapes and forms, and every one of them is a terrible threat to anything who crosses their paths. Many Marshals make their living accepting bounties that crop up on tigers, eliminating them on behalf of belagured towns and cities at great personal risk.

More interesting for the people who are still alive are the changes the infection has brought about in them. For just 10% of the remaining population, the event did not cause death or breakdown into a form of nightmare, but has instead enhanced them. In the years since, they have become stronger, faster, smarter, and more attractive, seemingly without the weaknesses of aging, and a new-found immunity to disease. The rise of the Marshals has seen these gifts find use, and indeed the Marshals who risk the most are becoming something more than human, with strength and reflexes beginning to border on supernatural.