Ashes Part 4

It's just a skeleton of a setting, but that's fine. The flesh of it can come as we play and create scenarios.

Now we need to decide which of the campaign structures that the game provides are we going to use.

 

The two options are Exploration and Crisis.

 

Exploration is very much in the mode of the Fallout games. The characters wander the wasteland and see what new hope or horror lay over the next hill.

 

Crisis is closer to something like the Walking Dead. Things are actively happening and coming for the players, who are likely attached to a community of some sort.

 

To help make up my mind, I used the Starting Adventure Generator tables for each structure and went with the adventure prompt that seemed the most promising.

 

Exploration
A Friend is being threatened by a Complication, with the source somewhere out there at a Place
Friend: Wandering Peddler
Complication: The zone of interest has been contaminated by a recent disaster
Place: Toxic waste disposal site

Crisis
A cunning Enemy is responsible for provoking a Complication in order to harm a Friend
Enemy: Aggressive refugee leader
Complication: Flooding has trapped a Friend or the PCs for the immediate present
Friend: Harried medical worker

 

I wound up going with Crisis because the idea of flooding hooked me. Knowing a bit of local history, I knew about the flooding of the Eel River and other waterways back in 1964. Since this is a location that's between two of my Enclave locations, Eureka and Ferndale, it felt like an opportunity.

 

It also gave me a chance to incorporate something else. As I've been musing about this post-apocalyptic version of my hometown, one thing I thought of was mutated versions of local creatures. One thing that the region is notable for is salmon. Make a salmon bigger and more dangerous, and you've got a slamon, capable of overturning boats. A flooded river with immense slamon swimming upstream could make for a fun encounter.

 

The idea of a harried medical worker also played into this being about Ferndale, since we know there's some sort of illness plaguing the town. And this is actually the point where I decided that the plague was radiation.

 

So a refugee has come to Eureka seeking medical help for the plague afflicting them, but things didn't go to plan, so they are now planning to get revenge on the medical professional who treated them, flooding the Eel River to prevent rescue.

A little more thought and the backstory started to come to me: The refugee had actually come from Ferndale with a family member to get radiation treatment in Eureka. The family member was too far gone and didn't survive the treatment. In grief, the survivor kidnapped the doctor and took him to Ferndale to be afflicted by the radiation and die of radiation sickness.

 

In order to make sure that the doctor gets the strongest dose possible, I decided that there was probably a location that was particularly radioactive. If I had gone with mutant cowpox or something, this location might have been a hospital. Since it's radiation, I thought there might be a place with a significant concentration of radioactive materials.

 

So I came up with the Death House. Built with the materials traded from scavengers who looted the old nuclear power plant, the people of Ferndale built a house as a wedding gift for a newlywed couple. But all of the radiation from the building materials meant that the couple didn't live long after their wedding. Once they realized what was going on, the house became a method of imprisonment/execution for the community's criminals. 

The interesting thing is that the thrust of the adventure is a rescue operation, so a confrontation with the main villain is not guaranteed. They may not stick around, since they have been treated for radiation and would only pick up more the longer they stayed. The Death House is operated by the Ferndale town watch, who were told that their prisoner was a raider who had murdered the family member, so the villain doesn't have to stay to ensure the execution.

The possibility of a continuing or recurring villain could definitely be interesting.

Going too much farther along the plot line is getting ahead of myself, since this is supposed to be run in a sandbox style, with the players making choices and taking action on their own.

Ashes Part 3

 Now that I've got my Enclaves in place, it's time to roll up some Tags for the Ruins.

 Arcata

Tags: Political Gulag, Highshine Concentration

The Highshine Concentration is actually a bit serendipitous. While "Highshine" is specific to the sample setting, which we may or may not be using, it refers to a high potential for mutation and weirdness. Which lines up with my thoughts about weird science going on at the University that's there. The Political Gulag is something that I didn't expect. One of the other Enclaves (Eureka is closest) is using it as a sort of exile prison.

Crescent City

Tags: Zombie Swarm, Psychic Stronghold

Both of these tags are about things that I haven't ruled out, but also haven't really engaged with previously. It suggests to me that there is a population of psychics who have mental control over a larger population that is largely passive, but not actually undead.

Eureka (Ruin)

Tags: Disguised Purpose, Beastmen Lair

Another thing that I didn't really delve into is the idea of mutant beastfolk, like mutant ninja turtles and such. The Disguised Purpose is interesting as well. It could mean that the beastfolk are more civilized than they present themselves as and have some advanced resource that you wouldn't think that they could use.

Hoopa

Tags: Black Site, Hidden Site

On the one hand, this is kinda cool, like Humboldt County got it's own Area 51. On the other hand, this site was going to be an excuse to go inland, since everything else is along the coast, so having it too dark and hidden would be no fun. Another thing to keep in mind is that this is a reservation today. Making it a government or corporate site might make it another example of exploitation of Native Americans.

It's probably best to assume that the Native American communities there built it up. Maybe the lead up to the apocalypse included a fragmented United States, so you not only get states seceding (and maybe further fracturing), but also Native American nations and communities asserting themselves. Whether Hoopa tried to make a go of it as an independent micro-nation or was a member of a confederation of Native American states is undetermined at this moment, but they clearly took every effort to keep what power and independence they could.

McKinleyville

Tags: Failed Community, Mass Grave

This is freaking dark. Something terrible clearly happened here. Something to think about.

Ashes Part 2

 Now that I have my Enclaves chosen, it's time to roll up some Enclave Tags and see how that informs the setting.

Eureka

Tags:  Splinter Group, Evangelists

The idea of them being evangelists of some stripe does open the door to post-apocalyptic religions and the potential for ironic humor. People picking through the ruins of the Before Times and misinterpreting the relics left behind.

Ferndale

Tags: Miasmatic Zone, Hunger

This threw me for a loop. I had envisioned Ferndale continuing as a breadbasket community. A lot of the land in that area is being used for dairy farming now, so I assumed that it would continue to be farmland.

After a good bit of thought, I decided that the area is irradiated, killing the people and the soil at the same time. There is a decommissioned nuclear power plant not far from there. With no one to keep them away or tell them what they had found, it's possible that some post-apocalyptic scavengers loaded up on irradiated and nuclear materials that were being stored there. By the time they realized what they had, the materials had been used all over town. Radioactive metals had been worked into tools. Homes had been built with irradiated materials.

Squatch-Ville

Tags: Reckless Complacency, Nobility

I think making Sasquatch the nobility would make this fun. They were living secretly in the redwood forests until everything collapsed. The fall of Crescent City pushed so many people inland that there was no way the Sasquatch could hide any longer.  So they shared their knowledge and resources with the humans, who elevated them from saviors and guides to rulers as they built Squatch-ville. 

But now that they've grown accustomed to the adulation of their human subjects, they are determined to keep it. I haven't decided exactly what trouble is on the horizon in Squatch-ville but the Sasquatch are determined to keep it quiet.

(One possibility for Eureka is that the Splinter Group splintered from Squatch-ville, trying to tell the people there of the coming danger, but were exiled. Will anyone in Eureka listen?)