TEXT: The Ofﬁ cial Twilight: 2000
  TM 3.0
  Shall Not Perish
  
  Shall Not Perish is written for the 
  Twilight: 2013 RPG
  
  Credits
   
  G-1 (AdministrAtion)
   
  Design: Keith Taylor
   
  G-2 (intelliGenCe)
  Copyright © 2008 by 93 Games Studio. 
   Except for the purposes of reviews, reproduction without the written permission of 93 Games Studio is expressly forbidden. No 
  part of this publication may be reproduced, by any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of 93 Games Studio. 
  Character sheets and other game aids contained in this book may be reproduced for personal use. All characters, names, places and 
  text herein are copyright by 93 Games Studio.
  Twilight: 2013 is based on Twilight: 2000 by Game Designers’ Workshop, and is published under license. The mention of or 
  reference to any company or product in this product is not a challenge to any trademark or copyright concerned.
   
  G-3 (operAtions)
  Written By: Clayton Oliver
   
  G-4 (loGistiCs)
  Production Director: Keith Taylor
   
  Editrix: Candy Hall Brunk
   
  Layout & Typesetting: Keith Taylor
   
  G-6 (CommuniCAtion)
  Additional downloads can be found at the 93 Games Studio website
  http://www.93gamesstudio.com
  
  2
  The satellite races over the horizon at a speed 
  that, by any terrestrial standard, would be blistering. 
  It’s in a fast, low orbit, covering ground hungrily as 
  it speeds toward a rendezvous with destiny.  The 
  satellite’s journey began eighteen hours ago when 
  a scratch crew of technicians scavenged it from an 
  assembly facility, mated it to the last remaining air-
  launched booster, and rolled it into the back of a 
  hastily-converted former transport.  
  This is its fourth lap around the planet and will 
  be its last.  The orbital environment is a dangerous 
  neighborhood these days.  Two automated hunters are 
  silently closing in, trading altitude for velocity as they 
  burn hard toward self-immolation.  Relics of the last 
  war that never happened, they’re more than adequate 
  to ﬁ nish the ﬁ nal space action of the current one.  It’s 
  all right; orbital mechanics are in the satellite’s favor, 
  and it will fulﬁ ll its purpose several minutes before a 
  collision with a cloud of ball bearings tears it into an 
  equally small cloud of nascent meteors.
  The coastline snakes along beneath the satellite, 
  scattered pinpricks of light showing the few isolated 
  communities that enjoy electricity this evening.  No 
  view of the night side from orbit has been so dark 
  since man ﬁ rst looked down upon his world from 
  above.  The satellite, eyeless and unaware, cocks an 
  antenna ear to listen for the voice of its masters.  
  Several hundred kilometers below, a ground 
  station’s own dish aligns.  Technicians in a shadowed 
  operations center report signal acquisition.  Studio 
  lights ﬂ are, and cameras come alive.  Uplink begins. 
  The satellite faithfully rebroadcasts every data packet, 
  burning through its batteries at a prodigious rate to 
  scream an electronic dirge.
  The alert tone is hauntingly, terrifyingly familiar, 
  dancing along frayed nerves and bringing people 
  leaping to their feet across a war-torn continent.  But 
  instead of the stylized eagle and shield of the agency 
  normally responsible for broadcasting fell tidings, 
  a similar but much more venerable symbol ﬂ ickers 
  from the few thousand surviving and powered 
  television screens.  Millions more listeners, with only 
  battery-driven or hand-cranked radios, miss this ﬁ rst 
  indication that the announcement is something other 
  than another drumbeat in an inexorable rhythm of 
  disasters.
  The tone holds steady for an eternal ﬁ fteen 
  seconds, and then abruptly falls silent.  Static 
  crackles, and the seal ﬁ lls screens for a full minute 
  as nightly tasks slither to a halt and crowds gather. 
  The image ﬂ ickers, going black just long enough to 
  pull hearts into throats before it resolves into a man 
  in a blue suit, seated behind a wooden desk.  The 
  ofﬁ ce is familiar, as is the expanse of green outside 
  the window behind the man, but the too-crisp lines of 
  real-time computer-generated imagery can’t conceal 
  the lie.  That ofﬁ ce, its contents and surroundings 
  are now so much bubbled glass and unrecognizable 
  debris, smashed ﬂ at nine months ago beneath an 
  incandescent hammer of preemptive vengeance. 
  Those who know of emergency contingencies and 
  continuity of government plans have their own beliefs 
  about the man’s actual location: perhaps airborne over 
  the relatively unscathed mountain states, maybe deep 
  beneath a mountain in Colorado or West Virginia, 
  possibly aboard the rumored surviving super carrier 
  somewhere in the Atlantic.  Ultimately, it doesn’t 
  much matter.  What matters is what he will say now, 
  and ninety million survivors tense in anticipation.
  “My fellow Americans,” begins the President of 
  the United States.
  “This evening, on the two hundred and thirty-
  seventh anniversary of our country’s founding, 
  I come before you with a message of apology and 
  farewell.  When you chose me ﬁ ve years ago to lead 
  this great nation, you did so because of your belief 
  in my promises of renewed peace and prosperity.  I 
  promised to restore to this ofﬁ ce the integrity that 
  it once held, to prove it worthy of your trust once 
  more.  I promised to restore to America the fortune 
  and certainty that we all enjoyed in happier times. 
  Your government – no, I personally have failed to 
  uphold those promises.  And I am sorry.
  “This past year brought you face to face with 
  the greatest crisis our nation has ever known.  You 
  endured unimaginable losses and hardships not 
  experienced since the ﬁ rst days of our republic.  And 
  through it all, you persevered, responding with 
  magniﬁ cent spirit that has always deﬁ ned America. 
  I have never been prouder to be an American than 
  I have been in this, the Last Year.”  A sigh rustles 
  Executive Order 13999
  July 4th, 2013
  
  3
  across a country at the implicit capitalization, as the 
  President speaks the two words that have grown to 
  symbolize the death of everything that came before.
  “Tragically, I must now speak of failure.  The 
  past half-century has seen a diminishing of that 
  spirit, and I have no choice but to accept the blame 
  for this most terrible of losses lies squarely at the feet 
  of myself and my predecessors.  My countrymen, 
  for two generations your government betrayed you 
  – not through treachery or oppression, but through 
  sweet seduction, by shouldering your burdens in a 
  misguided attempt to buy your loyalty and silent 
  consent with luxury and security.  The events of 
  the Last Year challenged us and found us wanting, 
  and we all paid the price for this assumption of 
  responsibility as your government failed to honor 
  its obligations to you, its citizens.  The most basic 
  guarantee of a government to its people, of peace 
  and safety, was a lie.
  “My compatriots, I now call upon you one last 
  time to rally, to march to the sound of the guns, to 
  light the watch ﬁ res in this twilight of an age and 
  to hold back the darkness that threatens to engulf 
  all mankind.  I call upon you to rekindle the spirit of 
  explorers and colonists, tradesmen and statesmen, 
  pioneers and citizen-soldiers who forged the United 
  States of America upon the anvil of adversity.  I call 
  upon you to dream again the dreams that made 
  our nation great and raised it to dazzling heights: 
  dreams of liberty, equality, and justice.”
  The President bows his head over clasped hands 
  for a moment, as if praying for guidance – or pausing 
  to regain his composure.  When he again looks into 
  the camera, his face is lined with an internal struggle, 
  showing the legacy of every sleepless night that 
  he endured while cities burned.  A nation holds its 
  breath.
  “There are times when it is necessary to tear 
  down the ruins of the old before building anew.  I 
  spent the past weeks consulting with every one of 
  your elected leaders who could be reached, and, with 
  deepest regret, the consensus we reached is that this 
  is such a time.  The United States yet lives, and will 
  so long as a single American heart beats, but it is 
  deeply wounded, clothed in sackcloth and ashes.  Any 
  attempt to continue blindly in a single, centrally-
  determined direction would be doomed to failure. 
  You could not and should not trust our guidance 
  now when we have so gravely erred before.
  “Therefore, my ﬁ nal executive order as President 
  of the United States, duly authorized by the surviving 
  members of Congress and the Supreme Court, is 
  that the federal government and all agencies thereof 
  are disbanded, effective as of this date, the fourth 
  of July, two thousand thirteen.  All former federal 
  employees, both civil and military, who now stand 
  on American soil are requested to place themselves 
  and the assets they control at the disposal of the local 
  governor or equivalent interim authority.  All such 
  personnel outside American territory are requested 
  to return here as best they may, and may whatever 
  God you pray to keep and protect each of you as you 
  walk that long road home.
  “Many years ago, in another time when this 
  country was torn apart by strife, it was led by a 
  better man than I.  He called then, as I call now, upon 
  his citizens to dedicate themselves to the unﬁ nished 
  work of their fallen brethren, to bring about a new 
  birth of freedom, that government of the people, by 
  the people, and for the people should not perish from 
  the earth.  In my last moments as your President, I 
  call upon you to dedicate yourselves to the rebirth of 
  this nation, to shelter and cherish our shared ideals 
  until a time when America has the strength to raise 
  itself up again on the hands of men and women who 
  dare to dream.  
  “But this time must not be prematurely forced 
  upon history by men who seek to maintain their 
  own power because they know nothing else, nor by 
  those who are guided not by reason but blind and 
  misplaced faith in their own infallibility.  It must 
  be brought about by you and your children, by 
  common consensus, through common wisdom, for 
  common good, at a time when you as a people have 
  healed the wounds of our betrayal and are ready to 
  choose new leaders who will not repeat our crimes. 
  Until that time, you must trust in yourselves ﬁ rst, 
  remembering that America has always been made 
  great by individual, exceptional, men and women.
  “Good night, my fellow Americans... and good 
  luck.  You’re on your own.
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Twilight 2000/Twilight 2013/Twilight 2013 - Shall Not Perish {93GS1031}.pdf