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January 20, 2052.
President-Elect George R. Bush, grandson George W. Bush, gives his speech thanking the country for allowing him into office to continue to make America great. Mid-speech, the ground shakes, the sky goes blindingly white, the shockwave arrives, and Washington DC is reduced to a radioactive crater. Vice President-Elect Philip Richard Perry, airborne in Air Force 2, launches a retaliatory strike against Iran, Russia and North Korea as a knee-jerk reaction. Predictably the other sides launch their nuclear arsenals sending the whole world into darkness.
January 20, 157 SD (Skydark).
Across the remnants of the Blasted States of America, humanity struggles on. The days of credit card debt, rising gas prices and the SUV are gone in the blink of an eye. These things have been replaced with the basic need for shelter, food, a strong blade or a working gun. Fortress cities dot the country. Brutal road gangs roam the highways, searching for anyone unfortunate enough to be less armed then they are, killing and taking anything they can get a hold of. Heavily armed and armored caravans cross the wasteland, transporting anything of value they think someone in the next town might need. Rumors of hidden underground bunkers packed with pre-skydark food, weapons and vehicles send the scavengers back into the wasteland time and time again.
While technology has taken a major hit, it's still around. Gasoline refineries have been brought back online and vehicles are cobbled together. Weapons are cannibalized and rebuilt and ammunition is being crafted, often leaving it unreliable at best. If you manage to find a stockpile of pre-apocalypse goods, you can pretty much name your price, or maybe even set yourself up a little army and stake out your own civilization. This is the dream of the scavenger. Several folks have manged to make this dream into a reality.
Across the country, survivors have huddled together in cities that were spared by the nuclear winter. Typically, a leader emerges, good or bad, fair or corrupt, to claim these cities and fortify them against the wasteland. Many cities are a haven for honest people just attempting to get by. In trade for a safe place to live and a roof over your head, you’re assigned a job, based on your skills, ranging from manual labor to military duty.
Elsewhere, hell pits have emerged, towns full of the dregs of humanity. Not everyone wants to be a productive member of a society, so you find someone weaker than you and have your way with them. Corrupt barons tend to rule these towns, taking what they can from the locals, making slavery a common occurrence, grinding people into the ground in an endless pursuit of wealth. Drugs, prostitution and homicide are typically high on the list of leisure time activities.
Native American tribes have made a major resurgence in power, reclaiming their lands and protecting their own. The poor treatment they received after the wars ended in the late 1800s has seemingly been forgotten, as they greet outsiders and travelers with open arms. Their lands are considered quite safe compared to the vast majority of the wasteland, offering scouts and guides across the terrain in trade for payment of goods and services.
If you manage to survive dealing with your fellow man, the environment may still be fatal. Hot spots still dot the landscape, areas so radioactive that wandering too far in will prove fatal. These sites are common hotbeds of rumors of mass stockpiles of pre-apocalypse technology, so only the well equipped or foolish dare enter these sites, hoping to find that big score and strike it rich. And if the hot spots don’t get you, the acid rain will. When you see a storm coming, you better find shelter fast, as standing in the open tends to become painful, quite fast. The worst of the storms can strip a man to the bone in a less than a minute, so be prepared.
And when you’re looking for someplace to hide, be sure to check what’s living in there first. Radiation in the wastes did some terrible things to wildlife, often causing gigantism and other oddities. And the mutations didn’t stop with the animals. Many types of humanoid mutants roam the land, some more brutal than others.
The most common is the stickie, at a distance they appear to be human, but up close is another story. The stickie lacks defined facial features, usually missing hair, nose and ears. Upon closer inspection of their hands and feet, powerful suction cups are found, allowing the stickie to adhere to almost any surface, and quite often, human flesh. The best order of business with a stickie is to shoot first and shoot some more, and forget about asking questions. They have an inherent love of pyrotechnics, so any loud explosions or large fires tend to draw them out in droves. Many other mutations exist, so use caution when traveling the wastes.
So will you pitch in and do your part in a fortress-city, or will you chose the life of crime, robbing and killing to make ends meet? Or will you wander the wastes in search of striking it rich? |
