Moe Lane

Ectoplalm – Google Docs

Ectoplalm

[The Day After Ragnarok]

This stuff replaces regular napalm for the flamethrower (use the stats for the weapon found on page 37 of The Day After Ragnarok). It does considerably less damage (2d6) to normal targets, but it is pure death on Serpent-Tainted objects and monsters (3d10).  Bizarrely, Ectoplalm acts as an extinguishing agent on ophiline (refined Serpent oil).  If used on the countryside, a full tank of Ectoplalm can reduce the Serpent Taint of a quarter acre of land by 1.  This is of course done by burning everything down to the grassroots, but it works.

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City_ Dayton, Ohio – Google Docs

Savage Sell-Blades of Dayton

[The Day After Ragnarok]

City: Dayton, Ohio

Population: 30,000/180,000

Controls: Montgomery County

Government: Democratic, for the moment

Problem: Hostile City

Heroic Opportunity: Mercenary Work

City Aspect: Militaristic and Mercantile  

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Silk-Haunted Paterson – Google Docs

Silk-Haunted Paterson

[The Day After Ragnarok]

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.

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Whipraffes – Google Docs

Whipraffes

[The Day After Ragnarok]

The southern coil of the Serpent slammed down right in the middle of giraffe territories in Africa.  The miasmic poisons still rising off of the Serpent’s dead hide reliably mutates giraffes into vicious carnivores with snake-like necks; they use their heads as living clubs, stunning prey before the whipraffe eats it alive with razor-sharp teeth. Fortunately, Whipraffes are not poisonous; unfortunately, they hunt in packs (1d4+1).

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Church of the Brazen Serpent – Google Docs

Church of the Brazen Serpent

[The Day After Ragnarok]

Three years ago it was just another snake cult — actually, three years ago it was just a pair of minor medical Greek organizations at the University of Kansas. Then the Serpentfall happened, and the brothers at the local chapter of Phi Delta Epsilon soon discovered that certain of their rituals seemed to have rather more real-world medical relevance than they had had before.  Meanwhile, the sisters of Sigma Theta Tau discovered something similar, only in the field of prophecy and divination. Fortunately for them, in the chaos that gripped Kansas City — along with the rest of the Poisoned Lands — anyone with demonstrable medical skill could be forgiven minor foibles, such as ‘honoring’ the brazen serpent of the Old Testament and favorably mentioning the Witch of Endor in sermons. After all, it really was all in the Bible.  

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These things write themselves. They well and truly do.

Phenix, City of Thieves – Google Docs

Phenix, City of Thieves

[The Day After Ragnarok]

City: Phenix City, Alabama

Population: 10,000

Controls: Phenix City

Government: Machine

Problem: Gangs

Heroic Opportunity: Mercenary Work

City Aspect: Corrupt

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Lewiston, Idaho – Google Docs

Lewiston, Idaho

Gateway to the Poisoned Lands

[The Day After Ragnarok]

It’s not the safest gateway, of course.  But with the Utahns taxing the best roads, and what with both the Canadians’ and the Texans’ obtrusive oversight over their own paths to the Poisoned Lands, the caravan route from Lewiston to Minneapolis is the best way to get across the High Plains without official notice being taken. It also helps that Lewiston is at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers, and much more that seismic aftereffects from the Serpentfall created a series of natural dams that made the city accessible by sea, with a little help from engineers.

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Not-coincidentally, I was in the vicinity of Altoona last weekend.

Haunters of Altoona – Google Docs

The Haunters of Altoona

[The Day After Ragnarok]

City: Altoona, Pennsylvania

Population: 20,000

Controls: Altoona Works, portion of Pennsylvania Railroad

Government: Strongman

Problem: Serpent Cultists

Heroic Opportunity:Technology

City Aspect: Tense and Foreboding

Altoona is a company city.  It became the effective headquarters of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) after the Serpentfall, and PRR President Martin Clement is the ruler of not only Altoona, but all of Blair County and the railway from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg, although Pittsburgh increasingly disputes this (there aren’t enough people left in Harrisburg to meaningfully dispute anything). The massive rail manufacturing complex of Altoona Works still operates, salvaging, maintaining, and converting train locomotives to burn whatever the engineers can get their hands on; the city itself is a haven for mechanics and engineers, including the ones willing to experiment with Ophi-tech.

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I wish that this game line would come back.  There’s a lot of fun to be had in WWII meets Conan.

Santo (Location) – Google Docs

Santo (Location)

[The Day After Ragnarok]

Santo – more properly, ‘Espiritu Santo’ is an island in the New Hebrides archipelago which was the site of a truly massive American military buildup during World War II.  Engineering teams built camps, Marine and Navy bases, airfields, hospitals, and artificial harbors and drydocks capable of repairing battleships. By post-Serpentfall standards, the island is an endless treasure trove of valuable, and possibly irreplaceable, military loot.

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Santo – Google Docs

Santo

[The Day After Ragnarok]

The masked folk hero Santo (b. 1917; real name Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta, but nobody knows this) had just begun what would have been a long and illustrious career as a luchador when the Serpentfall hit.  Santo rapidly fell afoul of the Almazan regime, once it overthrew the Mexican government: he has spent the last few years throwing the Sinarquistas out of southern Mexico, one fascist at a time.  He is loved by the common folk.  He is feared by every corrupt official from Tijuana to Tapachula.  The Sinarquistas are torn between hating him for his defiance, and desiring to convert him to their cause.

He is Santo.

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Soiled Doves – Google Docs

Soiled Doves [The Day After Ragnarok]

Well… they were various types of birds native to the American Southwest, before the Serpent Taint got into their bloodstreams and started reverting them back into four-winged, feathered microraptors (with what appears to be perpetually oil-stained plumage).  The relatively few paleontologists still alive in the post-Serpentfall world are baffled about the idea of feathered dinosaurs, and there isn’t an actual evolutionary descent from microraptors to birds anyway, but there they still are.  Unfortunately, Soiled Doves are mean-tempered, carnivorous, and spit poison (stats for a Venomous Snake with the fly and bolt powers).

But, yes, they can be tamed.  Maybe not domesticated, but tamed.  Just keep a lot of meat around.  And keep Soiled Doves away from others of its kind. When one of them swarms, the rest of them do, too.

Needed to practice my Savage Worlds crunchy bit writeup skills a bit.

Forjas Taurus “Arpão” Deck-Mounted Mechanical-Action Ballista – Google Docs

Forjas Taurus “Arpão” Deck-Mounted Mechanical-Action Ballista

[The Day After Ragnarok]

The Brazilian firearms company Forjas Taurus has been working on these monster-killers since just after 1945, thanks to a series of what turned out be prescient dreams suffered by the board of directors.  The Arpão is a fairly ingenious weapon: it’s basically a ship-mounted ballista that uses a small diesel motor to cock the swing arm that fires its forearm-thick bolts.  Interestingly, the Arpão is also designed to be cocked by hand – well, by using a hydraulic jack.  It’s obviously much slower to reload that way, but an experienced crew can still put out a decent rate of fire.

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