RPG CAMPAIGN TOUR CHALLENGE 2026 Day 5-Can you tell us about the campaign's history?

 In the real world and within the universe.

This is a place that really exists. At least up to the present day, it has the exact same history as the real place. Inhabited by indigenous Americans, then Europeans as they traveled north up the coast in the early 1800's. The major industry was redwood logging for a long period of time.

Bigfoot has been part of the mythology of the area for some time. One of the most famous pieces of Bigfoot evidence was a film shot in this area back in the 1960's. When the redwoods stood in for the forest moon of Endor in Return of the Jedi, they had to be careful that Chewbacca actor Peter Mayhew was not mistaken for a Bigfoot by passersby.

At some point during the collapse, as the country fractured, indigenous peoples began fortifying their reservations and territories against usurpation by outside forces.

After the collapse, the Sasquatch have come out of the woodwork, taking in refugees from ruined cities into their forest home. They guided humans and established a prosperous community that I have currently named Squatch-ville.

Some people bristled at the idea of being ruled over by Sasquatch and headed out on their own. After some false starts (the less said about McKinleyville the better), they arrived in Ureka. The city had been given over to mutated rats since the the collapse, but this splinter group carved out a territory along the coast, pushing the ratfolk to the outer reaches of the old city.

For much of this time, the people of Cow Town kept to themselves, continuing the farming traditions of the community. Before the collapse, they were dairy farmers. After the collapse, the tanker trucks stopped coming to be filled with milk, so the people diversified. They tilled fertile soil to grow a variety of crops that allowed them to survive and even thrive on their own. But within the last generation or so, the health of the soil collapsed. Also, the people began falling ill. The current theory is that they acquired materials from the abandoned nuclear power plant from a scavenger, and the radioactive and irradiated materials found their way into nearly everything. (I really like this, but I'm in the process of considering other options.)