Happiest Apocalypse on Earth Again

If you’re confused consult my previous posts

The Mouse Corporation is proud to be on the cutting edge of genetic engineering ,and has been since the sixties, but such advanced do not come without consequences.

The living “dinosaurs”, bizarre patchwork creature made with DNA fragments recovered from fossils and a whole lot of guesswork, might be a major draw, but the public has not always been as accepting of the Mouse’s bioengineered children.

The Mouse men, living replicas made in the Great Mouse’s image, were called “creepy” “off-putting” and “oh God keep it away from me”. Giant rats, no matter how friendly and gayly garbed, are not popular with the public.

The Smile Dogs were the next attempt, and the public found them even more horrifying and upsetting.

On and on it went, as the public rejected living stuffed animals, Cheshire Cats, Dinky Birds, the Hummel Angels, the Eternal Children, and Moppets, and the labs eventually ran out of room to store them. So a decision was made.

The strange creatures were put to work, and the tunnels beneath Mouse Kingdom were expanded, and a city was built down there. It was called Wonderland, and it was Wonderful. The labs were never shut down, and so more and more creatures came pouring in as project after project was declared a failure and shuttered. Eventually the city was expanded, and OZ, Neverland, Narnia, Fairie Land, LoompaLand, Snerg’s Land, Fantastica, Middle Earth, North Pole, Arcadia, Labyrinth, and Bohemia.

Work and employment was plentiful as the Great Mouse realized he could shift production of souvenirs, merchandise, and pre-packaged food down below instead of outsourcing it to China and Mexico. Eight arms mean the buggy-wuggies, hideous giant insect men meant to be cute and cuddly, could do the work of six men at once and you only had to pay them the salary of one. (The f^€k!n& union found it’s way down here in the seventies thanks to one of the scientists in Future World labs.) The city fed itself and the Park with a great array of funguses grown in the damp soil of Florida . 2d animation was streamlined as the eggheads, strange egg-shaped celophax, had both the patience, skill, and lack of imagination necessary to do in-betweening. Money flowed in, the Great Mouse finally had Eli’s and his dream of a city under their control, and everything was good. They loved the Mouse and the Mouse loved them.

But naturally things went wrong. Fifteen years ago the Mouse Corporation moved it’s more…exotic laboratories down here. Not the genetics or robotics lab. Those are still upstairs in Future World. This one studied something humans might call “magic”.

Not a happy sort of magic though. You don’t need a secret laboratory in a secret city to study the field where it’s always the perfect temperature, the happy singing puppet and his wordless hymn of joy praising God and his parents, or the pizza box that gives everyone one free slice once a day. This lab studied a darker kind.

Cursed artifacts from all over the world were brought in, and the mad dedicated scientists and occultists were determined to warp their unholy powers to good.

The trouble’s began when the labs went silent one day, and the security teams sent in to investigate never returned. Then the March of the Wooden Soldiers began.

Wooden Soldiers are crude man-sized marionettes being puppeteered by an unseen force. No one in the company knows what they really are or where they came from. They kill without purpose or mercy. They attack like zombies and are a pain to kill, but the only reason they are a threat is that an unknown intelligence is directing them. Their attacks are crude but coordinated.

The war raged on for years. Gradually the Strange creatures were driven out of the city. Production was shifted to China and Mexico, and the utility network and employee nursing station was overwhelmed with war casualties. The city was sealed off, and the strange creatures took over the old Party Company Suburb. (At this point the company is way past the point of caring and isn’t even going to pretend it’s not continuously conducting horrible genetic testing with human DNA. If the government wants to sue they’re welcome to try to clean up the mess in the city Below.) The City Below has laid vacant for the past five years except for the wooden soldiers and a handful of holdouts waging a losing fight for survival. Then, last Week, the situation went from “barely contained” to “we’re fricked”.

Reports of strange people in Mr. Mouse gas masks sabotaging things in the park have been cropping up. Occasionally an employee goes missing in the utility tunnels and several security guards have complaining about “weird puppets” attacking people. I’d recommend the players be dragged down the rabbit hole by gas mask-clad marionettes and go off to Wonderland.

The puppets have a king. He awaits you.