The world is full of suffering… pain and sorrow reign supreme as the world crumbles beneath the weight of 20 billion people… the Angel of Death has disappeared, leading to people living longer than 150 years… supposedly by the miracles of modern medicine, before their body gives out. Still they linger on and no attempt to kill works… and then an idea forms in the minds of some of the poorest of the poor… eat them… As food and water becomes scarcer some revert to cannibalism and discover something… in the absence of Death… they are absorbing not only nutrients from the bodies they consume, but the life essence of the dead as well. They become stronger, faster, and considerably smarter than they once were. Some that conceive bear children with hideous growths, wings, protruding from their backs… other children have highly developed senses. Still more have the ability to morph into different beasts and some are born with a horrible blood mutation that requires blood to survive, becoming, in essence, vampires though they are still basically human. The majority, though, die at birth or before.
This birthing goes on for 50 years… and now it is the children who survive… all of their parents gone… nobody over the age of 30 survives… in fifty years the world has diminished itself from 20 billion to 20,000 scattered throughout the world… And now the Angel of Death has returned… and is faced with the daunting task of destroying the remaining twenty thousand. This would not seem so daunting but that, for his extended absence, Death himself has been descended to mortality. He still retains his abilities… but he must find a way to destroy all traces of life so that the world can be remade… but not all of the demonic “superhumans” are demonic at all… some are quite benign, and even friendly… willing to help him hunt those who search for greater power in exchange for their own clemency…
