PREMISE
In the year 2018, humanity made first contact. Rather, they made contact with us in a manner far from peaceful. Their technology was beyond anything we'd ever seen, and their ruthlessness far surpassed anything we were prepared to handle. Humanity was subjugated in a matter of months; those who fought were slain. Those who complied were taken for processing. The remainder of humanity lives in rural areas on the outskirts of civilization. Collectively, they began to refer to themselves as the Judge - a conquering race that goes from life-bearing planet to life-bearing planet, weighing their crimes against their benefits and deciding whether or not they're worthy to keep the life they've been given. When a civilization fails that test (as Earth unsurprisingly did), the Judge takes up residence and begins to strip it of all of its precious materials. Metal, natural gas, mineral deposits, anything that can be harvested and used to enrich their war fleet is salvaged.

This process can take years, and requires a lot of manual labor. Because they consider themselves a righteous, benevolent race they don't slaughter indiscriminately. Humans who submit are given two options - manual labor in a work camp, or voluntary suicide via what's been colloquially coined a suicide bus. Very few people know what that entails, as anyone who boards a bus isn't ever seen or heard from again. The Judge and its forces are drawn to areas rich in metal; they can detect anything larger than a sedan and systematically hunt it down. Unsurprisingly, larger cities are conquered first.

Those who survive in freedom do so in wooded areas, clustered in groups making due with what they can. Farming, looting, surviving, and if you're particularly brave, mounting a resistance to free the taken from the work camps they've been forcibly taken to. The resistance works as a sort of underground railroad, with chain links of safe houses for miles in between survivor groups and people working on the inside of the encampments themselves. They work to smuggle people out bit by bit without drawing the attention of the soldiers.

There's always a risk. The Judge give special favor to humans who appear to align with their goals. More rations, better quarters, a higher quality of life for anyone who helps manage the human population and, of course, uncovers any resistant forces subverting the new laws of the land. Be careful who you trust, it's possible your fellow man will sell you out to help themselves or their own families.

IMPRESSIONS / VIBES
• The Walking Dead, but with aliens - primarily focused on the west coast / pnw
• No happy endings - this story will not end with the world being saved, bleak & grim
• This is a minimal supernatural changes world based heavily in science; any "powers" should come from alien tech and should be as scaled-down as possible so as to not devalue the struggle to survive