Silk-Haunted Paterson – Google Docs
Silk-Haunted Paterson
City: Paterson, NJ
Population: 6,000
Controls: Paterson itself, on a good day
Government: Squatters
Problem: Monsters
Heroic Opportunity: Trade Goods
City Aspect: Mercantile
Note: the Serpent Taint level of Paterson itself is 3, but the area around it is ST 4.
Most of the city died in the Serpentfall, of course; but the angle of the strike, coupled with New York City itself taking a large part of the blast, ensured that enough people survived to eventually fortify the old Guenther silk mill and surroundings. There’s barely enough arable land left to feed the population, and the local government consists of about forty or fifty squabbling extended families/clans. The local monsters are particularly threatening: most of Paterson remains a no-go area, but the population still does what it can to keep the trade route to Allentown open.
Why? Because Paterson is the closest functional settlement to the NYC necropolis. The inhabitants make a precarious, but decent, living supplying the fools going into New York to loot its fallen, cyclopean skyscrapers. It’s rumored that the more unsavory Paterson families are not above sometimes killing and looting the salvage teams that actually make it out of the City of Stone Death alive, but that’s just a rumor. Just keep your weapons at hand at all times and you’ll be fine. Or as fine as you can be, in the Drowned Lands.