Triannia, if you're imaginative like its schoolchildren, are is roughly a reverse triangle. The broad and placid farming West, the terrifically hillly, coastal, island strewn Upper West dotted with mines and farming villages, and the Near East with small hills and creeks which led to the Craftsman Revolution.
Eventually corporations came to this world, but later than in others, and in more limited form so that most industry is family business.
The Kings Overseas, a varied group, had planted colonies on Tritonsland, the continent, and the logic of union had soon become apparent. This drove wars and peace councils until it was finally achieved, and the last of the Kings Overseas were thrown off not much later.
The parliamentary democracy with a figurehead king expanded, not always peacefully.
Currently, it uses light rail, and busses for most transport, and its moving rapidly over to telecommuting.
But not all things are well, and a good part of it is the Wainchester family.
Kenneth Wainchester provided rotgut to a local tribe which weakened them economically, made them riotous and troublesome, and in his broadsheet, the Wislington Tribune, he called for their extermination. He became rich and noted, and the tribe got wiped out.
His son, Wainchester the II, started a war with a neighbouring country by inflaming uninformed passions with half-truths, and out of context realities, and dangling the prospect of wealth in front of the young and disenfranchised (made so by the economic system he supported with its Cliques.)
His son, Wainchester the III, pretended to sweet reason, and like his father, made and broke parliamentarians for amusement. In the Long War with Regulander, a militaristic, expansionist power dedicated to overthrowing the natural order of things, he published the schematics for the Great Towers, defensive fortifications at the entrance to the harbors of the Upper West.
Most scholars think this extended the Long War by five years, and led to the Regulander invasion of Dnu-Rian-Salo. This invasion led to the deaths of three million Saloo by starvation as deliberate governmental policy out of ten million. However, on the plus side, it confirmed that the Tribune-Gazette empire of papers was more powerful than the military and security forces of Triannia.
His son, Wainchester the IVth, brings us to the present of this remarkably newspaper family. IVth ain't that bright or clever like the First, or charismatic like the Second, or smooth like the Third. But he does have a grand viciousness that exceeds them all.
His enemies gather as the Web spread information cheaper than he can. His family always had enemies. Some are mere competitors. Others hate him for what he is. There are rumors of an ancient native curse by the last shaman of a dying tribe. His position is weakening quarter by quarter. Fewer and fewer are those who subscribe, and the High Minister of Justice is beginning to make noises about checking his accounting. Lions begin to seek him out, and the jackals circle.
The greatest newspaper empire in the history of the world is going down. It may take a decade, at most two, or it might be next year. But the facts are inexorable.
Time to change the facts.
An invesitigative reporter on his staff found a scientist working with the government on a project for the military since abandoned when the military observed how dangerous it was. He already knew how useful subliminal messaging could be (it was dangerous because if caught, it was mandatory jail time.)
Combine these two facts, and ....
Zombies.
Not real zombies, but the chemical inspired a savage anger and depression with serotonin in the brains of the unaffected the only relief. The drug made people slow, superstrong, untouched by pain or shock. The subliminal message gave them a target.
Anyone who did not smell of the drug.
That is, anyone who primarily got their news from the Web.
The drug is supposed to wear off in a week. Its uncertain if it will.
And the fact that the fourth line in the shaman's curse is ...
"And before the end of the wicked, the dead will walk." is pure coincidence....
Wainchester the IVth hopes to wipe out the Web readers, and then use his newspaper power to ban the Web afterwards by blaming the insanity on the Web ('too much computer screen energy waves provokes insanity in those near them').
