St. Mary's Virus

History
1987, Adrian Veidt detonated bombs across the world in a misguided attempt to achieve world peace by framing Dr. Manhattan for the foul deed. One of these bombs detonated at St. Mary's College in London. The resulting crater was flooded by the Thames and soon filled with foul water, debris, and corpses. The locals call this crater "St. Mary's Lake." Crime in the area is rampant.

A nasty virus formed in St. Mary's Lake caused by the radiation, corpses, and sheer amount of death concentrated in that small area. St. Mary's virus festered in this lake and it spread, ravaging the survivors of the blast in the following months and killing a hundred thousand more in the first six months alone. London fell into chaos and where London went, the rest of the country followed. Many saw the writing on the wall and fled, but others saw opportunity.

The Under-Secretary of Defense Adam Sutler used this crisis to rally the nation behind him. His first attempts at catapulting himself to higher office fizzled out when the virus was contained and the death toll kept in check, but Sutler was not alone in his hunger for power.

Enter an ultraconservative intelligence officer, a charismatic heir to a pharmaceutical company, a doctor drowning in debt from student loans, and a priest with a dark secret. The intelligence officer, Peter Creedy, bought into Sutler's hate-filled rhetoric and had even joined Sutler's Norsefire Party when it was still under a hundred members. Creedy approached Sutler with a proposition. Sutler would continue to cry the dangers of St. Mary's and Creedy would make sure the virus would not be forgotten.

Creedy enlisted Lewis Prothero's aid by convincing him it would be profitable to use his father's pharmaceutical company to secretly develop a weaponized strain of St. Mary's and a cure alongside it. In order to test their weapon and its cure, Creedy and Prothero convinced Dr. Delia Surridge to allow them to test their new "gene therapy" injections on the 48 patients at the Larkhill Sanitarium where she worked as a physician.

When patients began to die of symptoms he recognized as St. Mary's and new patients who showed little signs of mental illness were rapidly brought in to replace them, the staff chaplain, Anthony Lilliman began to suspect something was amiss. However, Prothero made some charitable donations to an offshore account and kept Lilliman out of confession.

Only V|one patient survived all five exposures to the St. Mary's deadly strain and all five batches of potential cure administered. This man was the patient in cell five, a schizophrenic individual. When the true cure was extracted from his blood and proper antivirals made, Creedy ordered Prothero to dispose of all evidence at Larkhill. Prothero burned the place down, leaving only Surridge and Lilliman as the survivors of the Larkhill of 1997... or so they thought.

Later that year, Veidt's ruse was exposed. London and much of the rest of the world was outraged. Sutler ordered Creedy and Prothero to release the new St. Mary's virus, targeting neighborhoods near the lake and also Sutler's political rivals and neighborhoods with demographics not likely to vote for his party (ie: non-white, non-Christian, non-conservative). The virus killed three times what it previously did in just two months. This pandemic gripped people in fear as Sutler campaigned for power. When Prothero has his father released the cure, the price was outrageous but Sutler demanded a lower price for the people and Lewis Prothero ousted his own father from the company's board of directors after the public backlash, seizing control of the company and the billions this cure generated.

Using these funds and the new political fervor, Sutler took power in a landslide victory. The coup was successful and by 2016, Sutler is High Chancellor for life. Creedy is the head of his secret police, the Fingermen and also second-in-command of the Norsefire Party. Prothero is the Voice of England, the master of propaganda for Sutler's state ran media: BTN. Tolliman is a depraved bishop now and Surridge has more or less chosen to avoid public scrutiny, now working as a humble coroner.

Trivia and Notes
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