Vaguely poking at an alternate history type project where the USA fractured into multiple warring states in a multisided modern civil war.
Since I can’t help but inject some kind of weird horror elements I added “The Ohio Exclusion Zone”, an area roughly bordering Ohio that has been completely walled off. The wall is patrolled and watched. Whatever is beyond it is so serious that the warring states all agree the wall is off limits of the war.
I don’t know what is beyond it though. My first thought was skinwalkers. Shapeshifting weird spirits seems pretty ominous. Maybe instead f them, just a giant black orb hovering in Ohio and doing, something…
I don’t know. What weird paranormal thing would make the military patrol a border and is such a threat that enemies of that military agree the border is off limits in war.
(Yes I’m asking people to be creative for me…)
play into the weird horror.
Ohio is a wasteland of eldritch horror, the likes of which drives those exposed to a state of insanity.
those guarding the border are administered anterograde amnesia drugs before every patrol, preventing formation of long term memories and preventing them from going mad.
I like this, or at least I like the headspace it’s in. I still want for myself at least to know what’s in Ohio, even if the presentation makes it obtuse.
For guards getting memory wipes makes me think of giving them interviews after patrols and administering them if there is anything out of the ordinary. I want at least what’s along the wall to be for the most part very boring and ordinary with only occasional hints of weird about what is further in.
I kind of thought about if guards were given polygraph tests during interviews. No as a means of verifying honesty, but as a subtle way of making sure they were human. A thing impersonating a human presumably wouldn’t know what its biometrics should look like on a polygraph.