The Premise of Into The Smog Deep

It is the year of our Lord, nineteen-hundred and five. It has been four years since the Smog descended on the British Isles. Over two cold wintery weeks, starting on the ancient night of Samhain, Nineteen-hundred and one, our once-prosperous nation was veiled in a thick swath of bitter fog, spreading south from the Highlands and swallowing up city after city. Many of those who fled before it told of the dead rising and monstrous creatures lurking in every corner. By mid November, the Smog had covered over half the country, before halting its inexorable advance just as suddenly and mysteriously as it had begun.

From their halls of power in Westminster, His Majesty the King’s Government holds together the fractured fragments of the Empire upon which the sun has finally set. The King himself has little head for government and leads a play-boy lifestyle, splitting his time between his London Hotels and his country estates, growing fat and old on the dwindling remnants of the royal fortune. The elites hold tightly to their rituals of power - Royal Ascot, the Boat Race, the Trooping of the Colour - and it is a rare and unlucky aristocrat indeed who feels more than a pinch of going without. Many of their number have fled to their possessions in India or Africa to live like feudal lords, or else left poor Albion completely for the lights and glamour of America.

For the poor of England, life could not be more different. Refugees from the northern industrial towns fled south to the capital in droves, clogging the roads and cramming themselves into whatever shelter they could find. Many of these ragged survivors are still living in the same shanty towns they constructed for themselves those years ago. Food is scarce, and what food there is is shared among way too many. Various beneficent societies do what they can to provide for the poor, running soup kitchens and bunkhouses, but even with the best will in the world, life is still tough. For those of a physical bent, the Army and the Constabulary offer routes out of poverty, though the harsh discipline and violent wars in the colonies mean that death and deprivation are just as likely to find a man in uniform. Many enlisted men desert their posts, returning to their homes as armed and dangerous thugs who take the law and their provision into their own hands. Gangs of these men rule the depths of the shanties, and even the Constabulary have abandoned certain areas to their control.

Hanging above it all like a shroud is the Smog. Less than fifty miles from metropolitan London, the Smog cuts from the Bristol Channel to the Wash like a wall, casting a pall over the north. Lines of trenches follow the path of the Smog, where the Army stand ready to repel the horrors that come from within. Close to the border, practitioners of the esoteric arts find their abilities growing, and riflemen stand shoulder to shoulder with charmers and occultists, all gazing north with thousand-yard stares. Few ever venture within, and even fewer return. Those hardy survivors tell of whole towns and cities left abandoned, their doors and secrets unbarred and unguarded but for the unfathomable will of the Smog and it's denizens; twisted beasts of shadow and bone, deranged cultists who howl in tongues unknown, and ever the constant shuffling step of the walking dead.

To brave this land of horrors and monsters in search of answers, an organisation of the brave, the learned, and the foolhardy was founded - the Royal Esoteric Society. Its members encompass veteran soldiers, academics, explorers and occultists, all bent to the same goal - to venture within and wrest its secrets from the shadows. They wear no uniform and carry no insignia, each bearing the tools of their craft as they see fit. Heading into the Smog for months at a time, they range forth from hidden redoubts to investigate this once-familiar land, now veiled and shadowed beyond recognition. When they pass through the checkpoints that pierce the tangle of trenches, soldiers stand in sombre rows, bowing their heads for the brave souls who are about to pass out of sight, swallowed - maybe forever - by the Smog.