RABIES | Infection Furry RPG

I. THE WORLD AT A GLANCE

Verdis is a single-continent world framed by three oceans: the Palemother to the west, the Salt-Tongue to the east, and the Black Coral to the south. The northern pole is a frozen sheet called the Hush, and the southern pole is a wind-scoured archipelago known as the Kettle. The continent spans roughly 8,400 kilometers from north to south and 5,200 at its widest point east to west. It is home to roughly 412 million sentient inhabitants — mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and a small but politically significant population of anthropomorphic insects. Technology is equivalent to a slightly accelerated modern Earth: smartphones, antibiotics, highway networks, satellite television, drone delivery in major cities. There is no magic. There is no extraterrestrial contact. The horror of Verdis is biological, not supernatural.

The dominant linguistic franca is Verdish, a trade-rooted tongue with regional dialects. Currency is the Cascal mark (₡), issued from the central bank in High Cascal. Religiously, the continent is split between the Quiet Path (a nature-reverent philosophy dominant in rural and forest regions) and the Lit Way (an organized liturgical faith dominant in cities). A small but vocal minority practices Hexapelity, an insect-origin faith centered on communal labor and ancestor-tribute. Politics operate through the Continental Accord, a parliament of city-representatives with no single head of state — a fact that would prove catastrophic when a coordinated response to the outbreak became necessary.

What follows is a tour of the principal settlements, then the timeline, then the science.

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II. TOWNS AND CITIES

1. HIGH CASCAL — The Glass Capital

Population: 8.9 million. Demographics: heavily mixed, with a mammalian majority (cats, dogs, foxes, deer, wolves) and substantial avian and insect professional classes. Built across three converging rivers, High Cascal is the seat of the Continental Accord and the financial heart of the continent. Its skyline is a forest of glass-and-steel towers anchored by the Spire of Quills, the parliament building, whose facade is decorated with thousands of bronze-cast feathers and mandible-shapes donated by every member city. Beneath the city runs the Underline, a network of subway tunnels so vast that an entire secondary economy — soup kitchens, fight clubs, black-market pharmacies — operates without ever surfacing. High Cascal is the first city that panicked when the second wave hit, and the first city to seal its gates. The wealthy fled north to Aurelia's Grace; the poor were left inside with the infected.

2. AURELIA'S GRACE — The Walled Garden

Population: 320,000 (pre-outbreak); estimated 410,000 (post-refugee-influx). A gated mountain city built into the foothills of the Copper Range, accessible only by a single switchback highway and a private funicular. Aurelia's Grace was originally a retreat for the continental elite — old-money families, retired Accord ministers, inherited-wealth industrialists. Its architecture is white stone, red slate, and tall narrow windows. After the outbreak, the city declared itself a Closed Sanctuary: only those with proof of assets above ₡2,000,000, or a sponsor already inside, were admitted. The streets are immaculate. The residents are terrified. Behind closed doors, rationing has begun, and the city's council of elders has begun quietly debating which residents to expel when supplies run low.

3. MURKFEN — City of Reeds

Population: 1.4 million. A swamp-city built on stilts and pontoon platforms across the Mirelake, a vast wetland in the continent's southeast. The population is overwhelmingly reptilian and amphibian: gators, newts, salamanders, monitor lizards, tree frogs, and a substantial community of anthropomorphic snapping turtles who operate the city's famed ferry network. Buildings are constructed from treated reed, salvaged timber, and rusted metal sheeting. The air smells of peat and fish oil. Murkfen has always been semi-autonomous — its people follow the Wet Law, a customary code that predates the Continental Accord — and when the rabies reached the swamp, the city's response was brutal and efficient: any outsider showing symptoms was weighed down with stones and dropped into the deep mire. The body count is unknown. The mire keeps its secrets.

4. SOLENE — The Painted Coast

Population: 2.1 million. A Mediterranean-climate coastal city known for its artists, vineyards, and the famous Saltlight Festival held every autumn. Solene's inhabitants are predominantly avian and warm-climate mammals: parrots, herons, peafowl, otters, servals, fruit bats. The architecture is pastel stucco, terracotta roofs, and cobblestone streets too narrow for cars. Solene was the second city hit by the outbreak, after a fruit-bat merchant returned from a trading run to High Cascal with what she thought was a bad cold. Within eleven days, a quarter of the Old Quarter was infected. The surviving artists — those who could still hold a brush — began painting murals on the boarded-up shopfronts. Many of those murals depict saints with their hands over their mouths.

5. NORTHREACH TUNDRA — The Iron Town

Population: 410,000. A subarctic industrial city at the edge of the Hush, built around the Oldshaft Mine, the deepest iron-and-cobalt operation on the continent. The population is heavily cold-adapted: arctic foxes, snow leopards, polar bears, snowy owls, caribou, and a hardy colony of anthropomorphic woolly moths who work the night shift because they can see in the dark and don't mind the cold. Northreach is a city of smokestacks, dormitories, and shift-whistles. The mine never closes. When the outbreak began, the mine director — a grizzled old caribou named Haltin Voss — sealed the dormitories from the inside and kept the picks swinging. Northreach is one of the few cities that has continued to export raw materials throughout the crisis. The price has been a mortality rate of 14% inside the mine, mostly from infectee attacks breaching the perimeter.

6. BRASSHOLD — The Forge City

Population: 1.8 million. An inland industrial sprawl in the continent's rust belt, Brasshold produces steel, vehicles, and ammunition. Its population is heavily mammalian working-class: badgers, boars, bulls, oxen, and a significant community of anthropomorphic rhinoceros beetles who work the foundries alongside their mammalian colleagues. The city is grey. The river running through it — the Soot — is grey. The residents' lungs, after thirty years, are also grey. Brasshold was the first city to arm its police with rifles instead of batons when the outbreak escalated. It was also the first city where police officers refused to fire on infected relatives and instead deserted, taking their weapons with them. Brasshold is now a patchwork of fortified blockhouses separated by lawless ruins.

7. VERDANT HOLLOW — The Canopy Village

Population: 28,000. A small forest settlement built entirely in the canopy of the Oldwood, a primeval forest of redwood-scale trees in the continent's temperate west. The population is overwhelmingly prey-species: rabbits, hares, deer, squirrels, and a colony of anthropomorphic leafcutter ants who maintain the canopy bridges. Buildings are suspended platforms connected by rope-and-plank walkways; the ground is left wild. Verdant Hollow has no cars, no factories, no streetlights. It does have a famously good healer's college. When the outbreak began, the Hollow sealed the single ladder that connects it to the forest floor and posted lookouts. They have not had a single case. They also have not had any new supplies in nine weeks.

8. HEXAPOD HEIGHTS — The Vertical Hive

Population: 1.1 million. A borough-cum-city in the heart of High Cascal's metropolitan sprawl, Hexapod Heights is the cultural and economic capital of Verdis's insect population. The neighborhood is vertical: fifty-story residential towers built around shared atriums, connected by sky-bridges at every fifth floor. The population is mixed insect — bees, wasps, hornets, mantises, beetles, moths, butterflies, dragonflies, and a small aristocratic class of anthropomorphic tarantula hawks who serve as the borough's judges. Hexapod Heights is the only place on the continent where insect-fashion, insect-cuisine, and insect-music are produced at scale. It is also, due to the close quarters and shared ventilation shafts, the single worst place to be during an airborne-pathogen crisis. The Heights lost 60% of its population in the first six weeks. The survivors have sealed the sky-bridges and now live one tower-cluster at a time, migrating between them like nomads.

9. SALTMERE — The Fishing Coast

Population: 690,000. A scattering of fishing villages along the eastern coastline, loosely federated under the Saltmere Compact. Population is mixed sea-going species: sea otters, seals, gulls, terns, pelicans, and a substantial community of anthropomorphic hermit crabs who operate the lobster boats. Saltmere's economy is fish, salt, and silence. When the outbreak reached the coast, the Compact voted to beach all the larger vessels and use them as barricades across the harbor mouths. The fishing stopped. The salt-pan workers kept working. Salt is, after all, one of the few things that still has value when refrigeration fails.

10. THE GORGE — The Canyon Trade Road

Population: fluctuating, approximately 45,000 permanent residents and up to 200,000 transients. A string of trading posts carved into the walls of the Redsplit Canyon, a 600-kilometer gash through the continent's central desert. The Gorge is the only viable overland route between the eastern and western halves of Verdis, and it has always been lawless. Population is whatever the caravans bring: lizards, snakes, vultures, hyenas, jackals, scorpions, and the canyon's resident population of anthropomorphic tarantulas who run the tollbooths. When the outbreak began, the Gorge became a gauntlet. Caravans that arrived infected were turned back at spear-point. Caravans that arrived clean were robbed at spear-point. The tollbooth tarantulas now control the only reliable courier route left on the continent, and they charge accordingly.

11. THE LANTERN — Not a City, a Memory

Population: 0. The Lantern was a small university town of 80,000 in the rolling hills south of High Cascal, known for its observatory and its school of veterinary medicine. It was the town where the first confirmed rabies case was treated, studied, and — disastrously — released as "cured." The Lantern is now empty. Its streets are silent. Its observatory dome is cracked. Its veterinary hospital is a charred shell; the surviving staff burned it themselves after the third relapse. Do not go to the Lantern. The infected who wander its streets are not the kind you can outrun.

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III. SUMMARY OF THE SITUATION

A Reconstructed News Timeline, Day -10 Through Day 65

DAY -10 — A Tuesday. The Continental Accord debates a fisheries subsidy bill. The lead story on VNN is a profile of a young snow leopard violinist from Northreach who has been admitted to the Solene Conservatory. Weather: clear across most of the continent, light rain expected in Murkfen by evening. The markets close up 0.4%. A peahen in Aurelia's Grace wins the regional flower-arranging championship for the seventh consecutive year and gives a modest interview in which she credits "the light." In Hexapod Heights, a mother moth argues with her daughter about whether the daughter's new boyfriend — a dragonfly — is "serious." The daughter insists he is. The mother insists dragonflies are not serious. This is the kind of evening Verdis is having.

DAY -7 — A Friday. A freighter from the Salt-Tongue islands docks at Solene carrying mangoes and a fruit-bat merchant named Mareli Quill who is feeling unwell. She checks into a small inn in the Old Quarter, drinks tea, and goes to bed. The innkeeper — an elderly otter — brings her extra blankets. VNN's lead story is a controversial proposal to expand the Hexapod Heights sky-bridge system. The Continental Accord tabled it. Insect-rights advocates are furious. Mammalian suburbanites are relieved. The markets close down 0.2%. The weather in Solene is warm and clear.

DAY -5 — A Sunday. Mareli Quill is feeling better. She walks to the harbor, eats a fish sandwich, calls her sister in High Cascal. She has a slight cough but attributes it to the dry inn air. She visits the Saltlight Museum. She tips the docent — a young parrot — generously. In Brasshold, a steelworker named Torvin Brak (a boar) cuts his hand on a sheet of galvanized tin. He bandages it and goes back to work. He does not know that three days earlier, a coworker he shared a water bottle with — a rhinoceros beetle named Kess Venn — had been bitten by a stray dog outside the dormitory and thought nothing of it. Kess Venn is, at this moment, in Stage 2 of the infection.

DAY -2 — A Wednesday. VNN runs a feel-good piece about a Verdant Hollow rabbit who has bred a new variety of carrot. The Continental Accord passes the fisheries subsidy bill. The markets close up 0.6%. Mareli Quill returns to High Cascal on the morning train, feeling fine. She kisses her partner at the station — a fruit-bat named Pelo — and they go home together. In Brasshold, Torvin Brak calls in sick with a fever. Kess Venn is in Stage 3 and has begun having vivid dreams. He does not remember them clearly in the morning.

DAY 0 — A Friday. The First Report. A small item on page 9 of the High Cascal Morning Sentinel: a 41-year-old fruit-bat merchant named Mareli Quill has been admitted to St. Vellis Hospital with difficulty swallowing, photophobia, and agitation. She is being treated for suspected meningitis. Her partner Pelo is by her side. The lead story on VNN is the Continental Accord's debate over a continental wildlife-census bill. Weather: light rain in High Cascal. The markets close flat. Nobody is worried yet.

DAY 1 — A Saturday. Mareli Quill begins drooling. She cannot swallow. She is sedated. The hospital infectious-disease consultant — a slender grey fox named Dr. Lira Hesh — orders a viral panel. She is the first person on the continent to use the word "rabies" in connection with this case. She does so in a private lab note. In Brasshold, Torvin Brak is worse. His hands are shaking. He thinks he has the flu. His wife makes him soup. Kess Venn is in Stage 5, running a low fever in the evenings. He is irritable with his wife. He has not been to work in two days.

DAY 2 — A Sunday. False Calm. The lab results on Mareli Quill come back. Rabies. Dr. Hesh is stunned — rabies has been virtually eradicated on Verdis for forty years through mandatory pet vaccination. She calls the Continental Accord's Health Bureau. A junior clerk takes the message. The clerk does not escalate it. In Brasshold, Torvin Brak's wife calls an ambulance. By the time it arrives, Torvin has bitten her. She does not yet understand what has happened. Kess Venn is in Stage 7. He is having difficulty swallowing water.

DAY 3 — A Monday. Mareli Quill dies at 4:17 AM. Her partner Pelo is sedated after a breakdown. The hospital releases a statement attributing the death to "an aggressive viral encephalitis of undetermined origin." Dr. Hesh is furious. She begins making private calls to colleagues in other cities. In Brasshold, Torvin Brak is in Stage 9. His wife is in Stage 1. She does not know it yet. Kess Venn is in Stage 8. He is hearing phantom sounds. He has not left his apartment in four days.

DAY 4 — A Tuesday. Dr. Hesh's calls are returned. A colleague in Solene — an iguana veterinarian named Dr. Senn Tarl — mentions that a fruit-bat merchant visited Solene the previous week and was treated for a "bad cold" by a local clinic. Dr. Tarl does not yet connect this to Mareli Quill. He is treating the case as isolated. In Brasshold, the first death: Torvin Brak's wife collapses at work. She is taken to the Brasshold Foundry Hospital. The attending physician — a tired old badger — does not recognize the symptoms. He has never seen rabies.

DAY 5 — A Wednesday. A second case is reported in Brasshold. Then a third. Then a fourth. All from the same dormitory. All steelworkers. The Brasshold Foundry Hospital begins to fill. VNN runs a brief segment on "a cluster of unusual encephalitis cases in Brasshold." The anchor — a polished red fox — sounds mildly concerned but not alarmed. In Solene, Dr. Tarl hears the segment. The blood drains from his face. He calls Dr. Hesh. They compare notes for ninety minutes. They hang up. They are both very quiet for a long time.

DAY 6 — A Thursday. The Second Wave Begins. Cases appear in Solene, Murkfen, and the outskirts of High Cascal. The Continental Accord Health Bureau finally convenes an emergency session. The session lasts eleven hours. The outcome is a non-binding recommendation that "cities monitor unusual encephalitis cases." VNN leads with the story. The anchor's voice has changed. She is no longer mildly concerned. The markets close down 3.1%.

DAY 7 — A Friday. Twenty-eight confirmed cases continent-wide. Four deaths. Dr. Hesh publishes her preliminary findings in the Continental Journal of Infectious Disease. She names the pathogen RV-7. She warns that it does not behave like classical rabies. The journal's editorial board — spooked — delays publication for forty-eight hours to "verify methodology." Those forty-eight hours will be debated for years.

DAY 8 — A Saturday. Cases in Hexapod Heights. The shared ventilation systems of the residential towers mean that by the time the first case is identified, there are already sixty. VNN runs a panel discussion. One of the panelists — a peacock epidemiologist — says, on air, "We are not yet at the point of alarm." He will regret this sentence for the rest of his life, which will be approximately nineteen more days.

DAY 9 — A Sunday. Cases in Northreach, Saltmere, the Gorge. The first infected caribou is identified at the Oldshaft Mine. Director Haltin Voss seals the dormitories. He does not announce this publicly. In Aurelia's Grace, the council of elders quietly closes the funicular. In Verdant Hollow, the healers' college begins stockpiling yarrow and willow bark. They do not yet know that herbs will not help.

DAY 10 — A Monday. The first Stage 11 patient — a young hare in Solene — attacks a nurse in the Solene General Hospital. The nurse, a heron, is bitten on the arm. She will enter Stage 1 within forty-eight hours. VNN's anchor — the same red fox — begins her broadcast with the words: "Good evening. The situation has changed." The markets close down 11.4%.

DAY 11 — A Tuesday. Cases: 340. Deaths: 71. The Continental Accord declares a Continental Health Emergency. The declaration is non-binding. Each city is left to manage its own response. High Cascal seals its gates. Brasshold's police begin deserting. Solene's Old Quarter is placed under quarantine — too late. Murkfen begins its drownings. Hexapod Heights loses Tower Seven.

DAY 12 — A Wednesday. The journal finally publishes Dr. Hesh's paper. It is read by every physician on the continent within hours. Dr. Hesh, by this point, has not slept in four days. She is in a basement lab at St. Vellis Hospital, sequencing the virus. She has identified the mutation that distinguishes RV-7 from classical rabies. She names it the Verdis Shift. She does not yet know that the Shift will, itself, shift again within two months.

DAY 13 — A Thursday. Cases: 1,100. Deaths: 280. The first confirmed case in Aurelia's Grace — a peahen who slipped in before the funicular closed. She is quietly euthanized by the council of elders and buried in the orchard. Her family is told she died of a heart attack.

DAY 14 — A Friday. Two Weeks In. Cases: 3,400. Deaths: 910. The first Stage 15 patient is documented — a monitor lizard in Murkfen who has begun walking on his toes, crouching, his pupils asymmetrical. The photograph Dr. Tarl takes of this patient becomes the most reproduced image of the early outbreak. It is on the cover of every newspaper on the continent by Saturday morning. VNN's anchor — the red fox — does not appear on air. She has been infected.

DAYS 15 — 30. The Acceleration. Cases climb from 3,400 to 89,000. Deaths climb from 910 to 24,000. Hexapod Heights loses Towers Twelve, Eighteen, and Twenty-Three. Brasshold fractures into competing blockhouses. Solene's artists paint the saints-with-hands-over-mouths murals. Northreach's mine director Voss executes three infected workers by pickaxe and is hailed as a hero by his surviving crew. Murkfen's mire is, by informal estimate, holding approximately 2,200 bodies. The Gorge closes its tollbooths to all but gold-paying caravans. Verdant Hollow posts lookouts. Aurelia's Grace begins rationing.

DAYS 31 — 50. The Mutation. The Verdis Shift mutates again. Dr. Hesh — increasingly hoarse, increasingly isolated in her basement lab — identifies the second mutation on Day 37. She names it RV-7b. RV-7b extends the late-stage lifespan of infectees from days to weeks. Patients who would have died at Stage 22 now survive to Stage 24, 25, and beyond. They wander. They hunt. They do not die. The continental death toll passes 200,000. The "wandering infected" — colloquially called the Hollows — become the dominant fact of life outside the fortified cities.

DAYS 51 — 65. The New Normal. Cases pass 1.2 million. Confirmed deaths pass 410,000. Unconfirmed deaths are estimated at twice that. The Continental Accord has not convened in three weeks; most of its members are dead, missing, or sealed in their home cities. Dr. Hesh's last published communication, dated Day 58, reads: "The virus has stabilized. It will not get worse. It will also not get better. We are now living in the world it has made." She has not been heard from since.

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IV. CURE METHODS

There is no single cure for RV-7 / RV-7b. There are, instead, four tiers of intervention, each effective only within a specific stage-window. The continental medical community — what remains of it — uses the Hesh Protocol, named for Dr. Lira Hesh, who designed it under battlefield conditions in the basement of St. Vellis Hospital.

TIER 1 — Standard Hesh Serum (Stages 1 — 10)

Composition: A recombinant monoclonal antibody cocktail, derived from the blood of survivors of classical rabies, synthesized with a viral-vector delivery system. Administered via intravenous drip over four hours. Effectiveness: Approximately 92% when administered at Stages 1 — 5. Drops to roughly 78% at Stages 6 — 8, and to 54% at Stages 9 — 10. The earlier the administration, the better the outcome. Side Effects: Fever, joint pain, nausea, mild hallucinations during the second hour of the drip (patients often report "seeing feathers"). These resolve within 24 hours. Availability: Was widely stocked in urban hospitals pre-outbreak. By Day 30, supplies in most cities were exhausted. By Day 50, the serum was being manufactured in three surviving facilities — one in Northreach (under mine director Voss's protection), one in Verdant Hollow (in the healers' college basement, now converted to a proper lab), and one in Aurelia's Grace (restricted to residents only). Black-market vials circulate in the Gorge and in Brasshold; their purity is unpredictable. Failure Mode: If administered at Stage 10 or later, the serum may slow the disease but cannot reverse neurological damage already incurred. The patient survives but with permanent personality alterations — typically increased aggression, decreased empathy, and a lifelong craving for raw meat. These patients are colloquially called the Sour.

TIER 2 — Aggressive Hesh Protocol (Stages 11 — 15)

Composition: The Standard Serum, plus a high-dose neural stabilizer cocktail (barbiturates, anticonvulsants, experimental glutamate-modulators), administered over 72 hours in an induced coma. The patient is, in effect, shut down while the serum works. Effectiveness: Approximately 41% at Stages 11 — 12. Drops to 22% at Stages 13 — 15. The procedure is brutal on the body; even successful patients often wake with memory gaps, motor-control deficits, and chronic pain. Side Effects: Significant risk of stroke, kidney failure, and permanent coma. Approximately 14% of patients do not wake up. Of those who do, roughly a third develop "the Sour" personality alterations (see above, more pronounced). Availability: Requires a functioning intensive-care unit, a ventilator, and a physician trained in the protocol. By Day 30, only three cities on the continent still had the capacity: High Cascal (declining — the ICUs were overwhelmed), Northreach (functional, under mine director Voss's rationing), and Aurelia's Grace (restricted to residents). Failure Mode: If the patient wakes and the disease has nonetheless progressed past Stage 15, the protocol is considered failed. The patient will progress to Stage 16 within days. Tier 2 cannot be re-administered — the patient's body will not survive a second coma.

TIER 3 — Experimental Voss-Hesh Protocol (Stages 16 — 20)

Composition: Named jointly for Dr. Hesh (who designed it) and Director Voss (whose Northreach facility is the only place with the resources to manufacture it). This protocol involves deliberate induction of a near-death state — body temperature dropped to 28°C, heartbeat reduced to 22 BPM — for six hours, during which a high-concentration viral-vector serum is injected directly into the cerebrospinal fluid via lumbar puncture. The theory is that the virus, replication-slowed by the hypothermia, can be outpaced by the antibody load. Effectiveness: Approximately 18% at Stages 16 — 17. Drops to 6% at Stages 18 — 19. At Stage 20, the protocol is no longer attempted — effectiveness is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Side Effects: The procedure itself kills approximately 31% of patients on the table. Survivors uniformly suffer severe neurological damage: partial paralysis, speech impairment, memory loss, and a permanent "fog" that never lifts. Approximately half of survivors develop the Hollow Stare — a flat, affectless gaze that, while not infectious, is deeply unnerving to those around them. Availability: Northreach only. Director Voss rationed the procedure strictly: mine workers and their families first, then Northreach residents, then — if supplies allow — outsiders who can pay in raw cobalt. Failure Mode: If the patient survives the procedure but the disease nonetheless progresses, the patient enters Stage 21 in significantly worsened physical condition — often with broken bones from convulsions during the hypothermia phase. These patients are particularly dangerous as infectees, as the bone damage often heals in feral-altered ways, producing claw-like calcifications.

TIER 4 — Palliative / Euthanasia (Stages 21 — 25)

There is no cure. There has never been a documented case of recovery past Stage 20. The medical consensus — what is left of it — is that Stage 21+ patients are no longer the person they were; the brain has been too thoroughly rewritten by the virus. Palliative care focuses on sedation and pain management, where possible. In practice, most Stage 21+ patients are killed on sight by survivors, or — in cities that still have functioning authorities — are euthanized by lethal injection after a brief assessment.

The Continental Accord's Health Bureau issued a non-binding directive on Day 28 authorizing "compassionate termination" of Stage 21+ patients. The directive is non-binding. Each city interprets it differently. Murkfen interprets it as "drown them." Brasshold interprets it as "shoot them." Aurelia's Grace interprets it as "inject them in the orchard at midnight." Northreach interprets it as "send them into the deep mine and seal the shaft."

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V. THE 25 STAGES OF RV-7 / RV-7b

Symptoms and Transition Times

The following table is the canonical staging used by the surviving medical community. Times listed are typical transition times to the next stage under RV-7b (the post-mutation strain). Pre-mutation RV-7 progressed roughly 30% faster through the late stages. Individual variation is significant: stress, malnutrition, and concurrent illness can accelerate progression by up to 40%. Strong constitution, youth, and certain species (notably reptiles and amphibians) can slow progression by 10 — 20%. Insects appear to be entirely immune — a fact that has not improved mammalian-insect relations.

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STAGE 1 — Silent Incubation

Duration to next stage: 3 — 5 days. Symptoms: None. The virus is replicating in the muscle tissue at the bite site, then migrating along peripheral nerves toward the spinal cord. The patient is fully asymptomatic and fully infectious — saliva already contains viral load, though transmission requires direct mucosal contact. Body aches, if noticed, are dismissed as fatigue or minor strain.

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STAGE 2 — Tingle at the Site

Duration to next stage: 2 — 3 days. Symptoms: A persistent itch, ache, or tingling sensation at the original bite location. Often the bite has long since healed and the patient has forgotten it; the sensation is attributed to weather, sleeping position, or "a pinch." Some patients report a faint warmth at the site. No fever. No behavioral changes. The virus has reached the dorsal root ganglion and is beginning to ascend.

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STAGE 3 — Restless Sleep

Duration to next stage: 2 — 3 days. Symptoms: Vivid, often disturbing dreams — chase dreams, teeth dreams, dreams of being hunted or hunting. Insomnia begins as a low-grade inability to fall back asleep after waking at 3 — 4 AM. Patients feel "off" but attribute it to stress or the dreams. Mild irritability. No physical symptoms yet detectable by examination.

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STAGE 4 — Hydro-Sensitivity

Duration to next stage: 2 days. Symptoms: The first classical rabies sign, attenuated. The patient does not yet fear water, but they begin to find the sound of running water — taps, rivers, rain — unpleasant. Throat feels persistently dry. Drinking requires a slight conscious effort. Patients drink less without noticing. A physician specifically testing for hydrophobia would catch it here; few do.

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STAGE 5 — Temperature Fluctuation

Duration to next stage: 2 days. Symptoms: Low fever (37.8 — 38.3°C) appearing in late afternoon and resolving by morning. Cold sweats at night. Mild mood swings — abrupt sadness, abrupt irritation, abrupt giddiness — that the patient recognizes as uncharacteristic. Appetite becomes inconsistent; some patients eat compulsively, others lose interest in food.

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STAGE 6 — Photophobia Onset

Duration to next stage: 2 days. Symptoms: Bright light causes a dull headache behind the eyes. Patients begin closing curtains, avoiding windows, preferring dim interiors. Sunglasses become constant. The pupils are slow to constrict in bright light — a subtle sign a careful physician could catch. Sleep becomes more broken; the dreams grow more vivid and more violent.

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STAGE 7 — The First Thirst

Duration to next stage: 2 days. Symptoms: Swallowing becomes actively difficult. Water feels "thick" or "stuck" in the throat. The patient drinks less and less, often switching to soft foods or refusing liquids entirely without consciously deciding to. Saliva production begins to increase; the patient may notice they are drooling slightly at night. Mild dehydration begins. Headaches intensify.

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STAGE 8 — Phantom Sounds

Duration to next stage: 2 days. Symptoms: Auditory hallucinations begin: a persistent low buzzing, fragments of whispering, occasional sharp sounds like a snapped twig or a struck bell that no one else hears. The patient becomes irritable and startles easily. They may accuse others of speaking about them. Sleep is now severely disrupted; the patient is exhausted and increasingly paranoid.

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STAGE 9 — Muscle Tremors

Duration to next stage: 2 days. Symptoms: Fine tremor in the hands, visible when the patient tries to hold a cup or write. Speech becomes slightly slurred — consonants blur, the patient occasionally repeats syllables. Gait becomes marginally unsteady. The patient knows something is wrong but may attempt to hide it. Saliva production is now noticeably elevated; drooling is frequent.

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STAGE 10 — The Honest Phase

Duration to next stage: 1 — 2 days. Symptoms: A brief window of painful clarity. The patient becomes acutely aware that they are ill and that the illness is serious. They may, with startling composure, ask to be taken to a hospital, ask to be tested, ask to be sedated. This is the last stage at which Tier 1 serum has meaningful effectiveness, and the last stage at which the patient is reliably themselves. Many survivors of Tier 1 treatment at this stage describe the Honest Phase as the worst part — the moment they knew.

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STAGE 11 — Agitation Surge

Duration to next stage: 1 — 2 days. Symptoms: Sudden, unprovoked bursts of aggression. The patient may shout, shove, or strike at loved ones without intent or memory of doing so afterward. Between surges, they are often tearful and confused. Restraints become necessary in clinical settings. The first attacks on caregivers typically occur here. The patient is still lucid enough to be horrified by what they have done.

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STAGE 12 — Saliva Overproduction

Duration to next stage: 1 — 2 days. Symptoms: Drooling becomes constant and profuse. The patient can no longer swallow their own saliva; it runs freely from the mouth. Speech is severely impaired — most communication is reduced to grunts, gestures, and single words. The patient begins to refuse all solid food. Dehydration becomes clinically significant. The eyes are often wide, staring, and unblinking for long periods.

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STAGE 13 — Feral Echoes

Duration to next stage: 1 — 2 days. Symptoms: The patient begins involuntarily making animalistic vocalizations — growls, hisses, clicks, chitters — that match their species. A canine patient growls; a feline patient hisses; an avian patient clicks their beak and shrieks; an insect patient chitters and rasps their mandibles. These vocalizations are interspersed with attempts at speech, which become increasingly fragmentary. The patient may still say their own name, or the name of someone they love, in the gaps.

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STAGE 14 — Pupil Distortion

Duration to next stage: 1 — 2 days. Symptoms: The pupils become asymmetrical — one dilated, one contracted — and unresponsive to light. The "predator's gaze" emerges: a fixed, unblinking stare that tracks movement but does not register faces. The patient begins to perceive other people as either "prey," "threat," or "kin," though this perception is not yet acted upon consistently. Sleep essentially ceases; the patient is in a state of constant low arousal.

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STAGE 15 — Movement Shift

Duration to next stage: 1 — 2 days. Symptoms: Posture and gait fundamentally alter. The patient begins walking on the balls of their feet, or on their toes, or — in some cases — drops to all fours when moving quickly. Crouching becomes the default resting position. Fine motor control is gone; the hands are used only for gripping and tearing. The patient can still stand upright if forced, but prefers not to. This is the stage at which the patient is, by common consensus, no longer "the person they were," though the law has not caught up.

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STAGE 16 — Memory Fissures

Duration to next stage: 1 — 2 days. Symptoms: The patient forgets their own name, then the names of loved ones, then the existence of loved ones. Language fragmentary: isolated words, often unrelated to the present moment ("mother," "door," "blue"). The patient may still recognize photographs of family, briefly, with a flicker of confusion. By the end of Stage 16, even this is gone. The patient is, for all practical purposes, an amnesiac in their own body.

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STAGE 17 — The Hunger

Duration to next stage: 1 — 2 days. Symptoms: The patient begins to crave raw meat. Cooked food is refused, often violently. The patient will, if unrestrained, attempt to catch and eat small animals — rats, birds, household pets. In the absence of prey, they will chew on leather, wood, cloth, their own fingers. The hunger is not for sustenance — the patient's metabolism is shifting — but for the act of tearing flesh. The bite force measurably increases.

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STAGE 18 — Pack Recognition

Duration to next stage: 1 — 2 days. Symptoms: The patient begins to recognize other Stage 18+ infectees as "kin" and to seek them out. They will, if they encounter another infectee, fall into a brief greeting ritual — touching foreheads, grooming, low chittering — and then move together. Uninfected persons are now uniformly categorized as "prey." Small groups of Stage 18+ infectees begin to form, typically 3 — 7 individuals, roaming together.

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STAGE 19 — Sound Sensitivity Warp

Duration to next stage: 1 — 2 days. Symptoms: The auditory cortex has been substantially rewritten. Loud noises — shouts, gunshots, alarms — trigger immediate attack responses. Whispering, conversely, has a calming effect and can briefly immobilize an infectee. High-pitched continuous sounds (a whistling kettle, a screaming child) drive the infectee into a frenzy. Survivors quickly learn to move silently and to carry noisemakers as distractions.

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STAGE 20 — The Last Voice

Duration to next stage: 1 — 2 days. Symptoms: A final, brief lucid interval — typically lasting 2 — 6 hours — in which the patient "comes back." They speak clearly, recognize loved ones (if any are present), and often weep. They know what has happened to them. They know what is about to happen. Many use this interval to say goodbye, to ask to be killed, or simply to apologize. After the interval passes, the patient does not return. This is the last stage at which Tier 3 protocol is attempted, and the last stage at which the patient is legally considered a person under the (now largely ignored) Continental Accord's emergency statute.

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STAGE 21 — Skin Molt / Coat Shift

Duration to next stage: 2 — 3 days. Symptoms: Physical mutation begins. In furred species, the coat may lighten, darken, or develop irregular patches. In feathered species, feathers may fall out in clumps or grow in stunted and misshapen. In scaled species, scales thicken and roughen. In insects, the chitin may develop unusual ridges or color bands. The skin beneath becomes thickened and insensitive to pain. Wounds heal abnormally fast and abnormally wrong.

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STAGE 22 — Bone Realignment

Duration to next stage: 3 — 5 days. Symptoms: The skeleton shifts. In digitigrade species, the legs lengthen and the posture becomes permanently crouched. In plantigrade species, the patient may develop a hunched, knuckle-dragging gait. Claws or talons — if the species has them — elongate and sharpen. In species without claws, the fingertips may calcify into claw-like protrusions. The jaw elongates; teeth, if present, sharpen. The process is excruciating but the patient, by this stage, lacks the cognition to suffer from it consciously. They simply scream.

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STAGE 23 — Predatory Lock

Duration to next stage: 4 — 7 days. Symptoms: The last vestiges of social cognition are extinguished. The infectee no longer recognizes anyone — kin, friend, child, mate — as anything other than moving prey. They hunt actively and continuously, sleeping only in brief 20 — 40 minute intervals. They do not eat what they kill unless hungry; they kill for the act of killing. Bite force is now 3 — 5x the species baseline. Speed and aggression are similarly elevated. These are the infectees most survivors mean when they say "Hollows."

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STAGE 24 — Mutation Bloom

Duration to next stage: 7 — 14 days. Symptoms: The body stabilizes in its feral form. The mutation completes: claws set, jaw sets, coat/feathers/scales/chitin reach their final altered state. The infectee is now physically distinct from an uninfected member of their species — often startlingly so. They are faster, stronger, and more resilient than a healthy individual. They do not tire. They do not stop. They have, however, lost roughly 60% of their body fat and will, if they cannot feed, eventually starve — though starvation in Stage 24 takes weeks.

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STAGE 25 — The Hollow

Duration to next stage: Indefinite. No known terminal transition. Symptoms: The body remains. The mind is gone. The infectee wanders, hunts, infects, and — if unable to feed or sustain itself — eventually expires of starvation or accumulated injury, typically 4 — 12 weeks after entering Stage 25. Some have been documented surviving up to 7 months in environments with sufficient prey. There is no known cure. There is no known reversal. There is no documented case, in any city, of a Stage 25 infectee recovering, recognizing a loved one, or showing any sign of the person they once were.

The Hollows do not speak. They do not gesture. They do not build, craft, or plan beyond the immediate moment. They hunt alone or in small packs (typically Stage 18 — 24 infectees who have grouped together and entered the final stage together). They are attracted to sound, to movement, and — for reasons not fully understood — to light at night. A lantern in a window will draw them. A fire will draw them. A flashlight will draw them.

This is why the cities that survive have gone dark.

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VI. NOTES FOR THE GAME MASTER

• Insects are immune. This is a deliberate worldbuilding choice. It creates tension between species, opens roleplay possibilities (insect characters as carriers, scouts, or distrusted outsiders), and provides a small ray of hope in an otherwise bleak setting.
• The virus is stable. Dr. Hesh's final communication is correct: RV-7b will not mutate further. This is the world the player characters live in. There is no "Phase 3" coming.
• The cure window is narrow and brutal. A character bitten in the field has, at most, ten days to reach a functioning medical facility with Tier 1 serum. After that, the options get rapidly worse. This is intended to drive urgency in play.
• The Hollows are not zombies. They are fast, they are cunning within their reduced scope, and they retain enough predatory instinct to set simple ambushes. They do not, however, coordinate beyond the pack level, do not use tools, and do not speak. They can be evaded, distracted, and — with sufficient numbers and ammunition — killed. They cannot be reasoned with.
• The world is not over. Cities still stand. People still live. The continent's population, even after the losses, is still in the hundreds of millions. The apocalypse is regional, not total. The player characters are survivors in a wounded world, not the last of their kind.