It’s been two years since the Event. A brief, green-yellow flare appeared in the sky over the city’s industrial outskirts. Most people in the city were never seen again. Some were found in the weeks following, wandering around outside the city with no memory of the intervening time or how they got there. Anyone close enough to have seen the flare but far enough away to be spared its effects suffered extreme disorientation and dissociation in its aftermath. The government quickly erected a perimeter and deployed search and rescue teams. All of them lost radio contact. None returned. The government stopped sending teams in, and declared the entire region inside the perimeter an exclusion zone. Locals now just call it the Zone.
Naturally, rumors cloud the Zone. Stories about what caused the event, what remains inside the perimeter, what the government is actually doing, what happened to everyone lost in the event, everything. Partially driven by these rumors, partially by curiosity or desperation, a handful of people try to cross the perimeter to explore the Zone. Hardly anyone who goes in alone ever comes back out. Of the few who do, most become highly sought-after guides, using their experience to escort small groups of seekers in. Groups led by a skilled guide stand a better, but still not a perfect, chance of getting back out.