RPGaDay 2026 Day 11: Tact

 

Now to create a female NPC for Cow Town. With the prompt being Tact, there's the temptation to recycle the society matron concept that I already used for Ureka. But Cow Town has its own needs. I think someone with a lot of Tact in Cow Town would probably be a doctor who has to give their patients increasingly bad news.

But we also want to use this round to create NPCs that are possibly antagonistic and would wind up in conflict with a prospective adventuring party. So let's make her a little cold, a little ruthless, maybe a little too eager to make the hard decisions.

Name: Dr. Kristi Hale

Appearance: Middle aged aged, thin faced white woman with her light brown hair pulled up into a messy beehive in a failing effort to keep it out of her face. She wears a clean lab coat over worn, drab clothes.

Quote: "Would you please stop! You're not doing anyone any good!"

Roleplaying: She uses the forms of politeness, but she is used to being obeyed. "Please" is an order.

Background: She took over her father's practice as the Cow Town doctor when his passing from radiation poisoning forced her to take it on. She was quite young at the time and she was not prepared for the amount of death she would oversee.

Key Info:

Dr. Hale is likely to restrict care for patients that she feels are lost causes.

Stat Block:

RPGaDay 2026 Day 10: Secret

Following the patterns that we've previously established, we are now devising a male character for Squatch-Ville.

While it would be interesting to have another sasquatch to build out more of what they're like, let's make this character human so we can see that society from their perspective. And let's see if we can make this character more antagonistic towards any interlopers, such as a potential PC party.

Another thing to touch on would be the Reckless Complacency that is affecting Squatch-Ville. There is a threat of some kind that everyone is pointedly ignoring. What could that be?

One thing that we've already established that the sasquatch are complacent about is "invisibility." Sometimes, a sasquatch experiences such extreme social anxiety that they disappear, living the invisible, solitary existence that they had before the Collapse. When they are ready to return, they are more or less welcomed back into Squatch-Ville. Any role they had before they left has likely been filled and they will have to find another if they've been gone long enough.

It only makes sense that the sasquatch would be equally open to humans under their care coming and going just as easily. There would be patrols and such to respond to violent raiders, but peaceful folks would be allowed to pass without incident.

So let's say that our character's secret is that he is a raider, infiltrating the community to undermine it and make it easier to raid. It's been a while, and even as he's passing on information to his old raider gang, he's developing attachments to the community of Squatch-Ville.

Name: Ham

Appearance: Dark skinned with black straight hair cut short. Has either a permanent 5 o'clock shadow or a light beard. Dressed in simple clothing

Quote: "You didn't hear it from me."

Roleplaying: Ham is cautious about everything. He's constantly trying to figure out who he can trust and what he can trust them with.

Background: Abandoned as a child, was adopted by a raider gang. While they did well, stealing supplies from other raider gangs as well as small farmsteads, the major prize has always been Squatch-Ville. A simple frontal assault was out of the question, so Ham volunteered to infiltrate it, gathering information and exploiting weaknesses as best he could. But he has started to "go native," making friends and connections throughout Squatch-Ville that he's not sure he wants to betray once the Enclave is taken over by his gang.

Key Info:

Ham has an understanding of Squatch-Ville's underworld
Ham often has plans to sabotage parts of the community

Stat Block:

RPGaDay 2026 Day 9: Privilege

 And now we loop back to Ureka. Even though we created a female character for yesterday, our last NPC for Ureka was male (back on Day 1), so it's another female character to keep up variety.

Going with the notion of Privilege, let's assume that she's a member of the upper class of Ureka, closely associated with Carsonism, the specific flavor of Victorian Reconstructionism that inspired the reclamation of Ureka, and/or the previously mentioned timber barons.

I have nothing against the notion of a woman being a timber baroness, but my brain is sticking on the idea of a society matron; The woman who controls the gossip mill rather than the timber mill, and wields enormous social power. Because now that I have created a potential ally back on Day 1, I am now free to create something more antagonistic.

Mildred Dolbeer is the wife of reconstructed timber baron Lavinia Dolbeer (the last name is borrowed from historical Humboldt timber baron John Dolbeer). While Lavinia oversees the business operation, Mildred organizes their social calendar, planning luncheons and soirees, making sure that the right people are invited and the wrong people are kept out. She's also not above organizing whispering campaigns to steer opinions.

Her primary goal is to protect the reputation of her wife Lavinia. Unfortunately, by preventing her from experiencing blowback from bad, unpopular and harmful business actions, Lavinia has developed a casual callousness that makes future damage control constantly necessary.

Name: Mildred Dolbeer

Appearance: An imperious, heavyset woman in her early 40's in elaborately tailored dresses. Her pale blonde hair is wrapped like a crown around her head.

Quote: "I will not have that sort of thing happening here!"

Roleplaying: Mildred is saccharine and obsequious among the upper crust, and disdainful of those of the lower classes.

Background: Mildred was always an aggressive social climber. Her attachment, and later marriage, to Lavinia, was merely the latest step.

Key Info:

Mildred will protect Lavinia Dolbeer at all costs
Mildred has extensive connections and can open or close any social avenue to the party that she chooses.

Stat Block:

RPGaDay 2026 Day 8: Resolve

Today gives us a look at our final Ruin through a female NPC. And since that last Ruin is Hupa, that puts me in a bit of a bind. Touching on Native American topics comes with real consequences for Doing It Wrong, which I really want to avoid.

The best defense is research. The second best defense is going so hard into the land of Make-Em-Up that everyone knows that you're not talking about something real. A solid backup is to avoid narratives about exploitation and give potential marginalized groups the power to determine their own fate.

As I was rolling this up, that last item was one of the things that I decided to lean into. The idea of this sort of Area 51 location seemed cool, but to place it in what is now a reservation had a lot of potential for exploitation. Some outside government used this area as a dumping ground for whatever weird weapons research or other unethical and bizarre things they were doing. Not very cool.

The idea that the Indigenous people living there made the choice to build that on their own is actually kinda cool. It becomes a mad rush for poorly considered power. It may have been stupid, but they would have the self-determination to make that stupid decision.

But because it is more or less lost, that also gives me a bit of of an out in terms of Native American representation. The "face" of the area doesn't have to be one of the people that lived there previously.

Let's say that, while nobody really remembers what Hupa became for a brief moment during the Collapse, it did leave a legacy. Spooky happenings make people think that the area is haunted. So a raider gang has decided to exploit that by using the area as a safehouse.

The leader of this gang is Raider Queen Sia.

Name: Raider Queen Sia

Appearance: A tall, athletic Asian woman. Her black hair is cut short on the sides, with the rest of it just long enough to jut out from her head in a chaotic spikey mess. She wears cobbled together armor made of leather and whatever metal bits she can find (scrap mail).

Quote: "Try and stop me!"

Roleplaying: Sia is arrogant, but tough enough that it's got some backing. She knows she is attractive and will use that to her advantage whenever possible.

Background: Sia grew up in a raider camp deep in the redwoods. As an adult, she struck out on her own and formed a roving raider gang. They found some success raiding caravans along the route of the old Highway 299, between Squatch-Ville and Yreka. Increased patrols along that route have forced her to be more cautious.

Key Info:

She has connections to other raider groups in the area.
She is losing the iron-fisted control over her gang because of strange occurrences (and even a few deaths) at their new camp.

Stat Block:

RPGaDay 2026 Day 7: Mercy

 Now to come up with a male character from one of the remaining 2 Ruins. Mercy feels like something that McKinleyville sorely needs.

It does mean that I'm going to have to make some decisions about what happened there. There was a community there. It might have been a continuation of the current community that occupies the location or a community attempting to re-occupy the old site. Back in February, I suggested that it might be part of the story of the migration from Squatch-Ville to Ureka, but I'm not sure that makes sense with the development that Ureka has received since.

McKinleyville is home to the Eureka-Arcata Airport, which is the only significant airport in the area. Without significant air travel, it's very easy to imagine the community shrinking to insignificance. So our Failed Community tag comes from an attempted re-settlement at some point after the apocalypse.

And since we're thinking about NPCs, let's think about the person who might be the "face" of this Ruin. Not an original inhabitant, but someone new. Perhaps an archeologist or anthropologist of some sort. Since we are talking about a town with the largest airport, let's say that he came from the air. Perhaps the failed community also came from the air. They came from another surviving Enclave with an airport and our new "face" isn't just cataloging them for curiosity, but for closure.

They had come to resettle and rebuild the air travel networks that crisscrossed the country before the Collapse, but fell to some disease or other complication. So Delmos Jones (a name borrowed from a real Black anthropologist to make sure that my names and characters stay interesting and diverse) comes back a generation or two later to check up and finds everyone dead.

Name: Delmos Jones

Appearance: An older, solidly built Black man, balding with short tightly curled grey hair circling his head and a neat grey beard. His clothing is rugged, but neat and well-maintained.

Quote: "Let's see what we have here."

Roleplaying: His demeanor is serious, and more than a little sad. He is very empathetic, seeing each body as a person and seeking to understand their story through the evidence left behind. While no one is a stranger to violence in the post-apocalypse, this empathy causes him to prefer peaceful resolutions and to mourn anyone he is forced to kill.

Background: Delmos grew up in The ReDD (formerly Redding Regional Airport) and looked at the travel maps and brochures with awe. He has flown to other airports and communities throughout the state, learning everything he could. His flight to this airport should have been another renewed connection, but led to him discovering the site of a tragedy.

Key Info:

He is one of the few people from outside the area who live here.
He does have access to a small airplane and can provide aerial recon, supply drops and possibly transport.

Stat Block:

RPGaDay 2026 Day 6: Reach

 Now we come to a female character and a Ruin that has previously been unexplored.

The prompt of Reach makes me think of the psychic overlords of Crescent City and their ability to project their minds over the city. But that mind is so diluted by controlling so many people that the populace is reduced to a zombie-like existence.

There is a temptation to put a face on one of the psychic overlords that dominate the minds of the populace, whether that's the overlord themselves or some sort of remote-controlled proxy. But that would require them to want to have some peaceable interaction with the outside world, which is not what Ruins do.

So perhaps an enemy of the overlords that might request assistance from an adventuring party, enabling missions into the Ruin.

Rebecca is a former zombie. As two overlords dueled over her consciousness, she broke free from both and regained her own faculties. She was likely born in Crescent City and may have had no conscious thought of her own for nearly her entire life. As soon as she could walk, she would shamble along with her mentally dominated parents.

Being freed meant that she had to figure out how to survive on her own without guidance or protection from an overlord. She stole from the supplies that the overlords use to keep their slaves fed. She hid in schools and libraries, since the overlords had no use for either. That's where she learned to read and chose her name.

She doesn't know if she is now immune to the control of the overlords or if they have simply forgotten about her. In either case, her goal is to stay off their radar as much as possible. If the overlords realize that their control can be broken, they will send wave after wave of mindless zombies after her.

Having spent many years reading to stave off her loneliness, Rebecca will take advantage of the opportunity to interact with other people and perhaps even seek romance. She is already smitten with someone within the Ruin, but I'm not sure if it's a zombie that she hopes to separate from their overlord, or perhaps a fellow freed zombie that she can only have remote interactions with while remaining out of the overlords' perceptions.

Name: Rebecca

Appearance: An unkempt young woman with stringy blonde hair. Her eyes are wide and move rapidly, taking in as much of her surroundings as possible.

Quote: "Let us not worry about the my-newt-ya."

Roleplaying: She is well read, but has had no one to really talk to. She is comfortable using large words, but is prone to mispronouncing them. Her manners are either nonexistent or grandiloquent, or some mix of both.

Background: She escaped from mental bondage by accident and has had to learn how to live her own life based on vague memories of her life under domination and books that she taught herself to read.

Key Info:

Rebecca knows Crescent City better than anyone and can guide you anywhere you need to go.
Rebecca wants human connection and will want to keep the party close to her.
Rebecca desires a person in the Ruin and will request help communicating with them (if a fellow former zombie) or freeing them (if a current zombie)

Stat Block:

RPGaDay 2026 Day 5: Burden

 Now to go someplace that we've never been before.

To create some sort of sequence for these, let's go by distance for Ureka, since that's more or less the focus of the campaign. The closest Ruin would be Calpoly, the former site of Arcata and California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt (though back when I lived in the area, it was Humboldt State University).

There are a couple of interesting tags that we rolled up for this one and I haven't really addressed them. The first is "Highshine Concentration." In the default setting of Ashes Without Number, Highshine is the secret sauce that means that radiation will give you cool mutations rather than just radiation sickness and cancer. While I'm not really using an established larger setting, it does let us have those Gamma World vibes even if everyplace else is a bit more Fallout.

The other tag is one that I haven't really addressed, but probably should. "Political Gulag." Someone is using the town as a prison. Since Ureka is the nearest Enclave, that suggests that they're the ones sending poor souls here, presumably to get eaten by the wild mutant plants and animals that roam the area.

With our prompt being Burden and the location being a place where mutations are common, let's assume that he has a mutation that makes him a burden. It's a bit extreme, but let's say that he has no arms and no legs. He can move and get around, and we could probably have fun by setting up encounters with him turning up in unlikely places, but I think the most common form of interaction would be him requesting a lift somewhere.

I do also want him to have some sort of attack power. This is partly to create a justification for how he's able to survive in such a dangerous environment with a distinct disability and partly to discourage players from being dicks and dismissing him outright or being overly ableist. It's a bit crude, but players are going to have more respect for anything that can cost them hit points, regardless of form.

He should also be connected to the Political Gulag Tag. He's was not born there, but exiled for some crime against Ureka, The easy one would be sympathy for Ratfolk, but we can also explore other aspects of Ureka by supposing that he was an opponent to some aspect of the Victorian Reconstructionism embraced by the rest of the community. A fun mirror to modern times might have him be an environmental activist against reconstructed timber barons.

That also suggests our name: Hillard Hurwitz. "Hillard" as a nod to Julia "Butterfly" Hill, an activist who spent a year in a tree. Hurwitz is for Charles Hurwitz, owner of Maxxam, the private equity company that bled Pacific Lumber Company dry. The idea of a descendant trying to make right has a certain appeal.

Name: Hillard "Stumpy" Hurwitz

Appearance: A man with no arms and no legs, clean shaven (somehow) but with long, lanky, dark hair.

Quote: "How about a lift?"

Roleplaying: Stumpy is a stereotypical hippy in many ways. He is very "go with the flow" and sympathetic to the balance of nature. He is casually optimistic and avoids getting overly bummed out if possible. He's spent a long time learning about the strange ecology that has developed around Calpoly and has a deep respect for it.

Background: After staging protests over excessive logging by the Timber Barons of Ureka, Hillard was exiled to Calpoly. While there, he suffered significant injuries to his arms and legs. The mutating elements in the environment granted him a healing power that closed the wounds quickly, but did not restore the limbs. It also granted him thermokinesis which he can use to defend himself.

Key Info:

He is surprisingly capable and well adapted to his current status.
He will often be found requesting a lift to a destination
He understands the ecology of the monsters roaming Calpoly, but it opposed to their casual destruction or exploitation.

Stat Block: