Moe Lane

Poisoned Springfield

[The Day After Ragnarok]

City: Springfield, Illinois
Population: 20,000/135,000
Controls: Sangamon County and surroundings
Government: Despotism
Problem: Serpent Cultists
Heroic Opportunity: Arcana
City Aspect: Militaristic and Cultist

Kings of the Road

[The Day After Ragnarok]

City: Rolla, Missouri

Population: 2,100/12,000

Controls: Rolla, plus a decent portion of the Frisco Line

Government: Machine

Problem: Gangs (New Konfederacy)

Heroic Opportunity: Trade Goods

City Aspect: Dangerous.  

Rice Mineralogical Survey of 1948 – Google Docs

Rice Mineralogical Survey of 1948

[The Day After Ragnarok]

The Rice Mineralogical Survey of 1948 has every resource that Vancouver can throw at it, which admittedly isn’t much; but what’s left of the Canadian government takes the Survey very seriously.  It’s easy enough to issue a decree to get the Albertan oil fields running again; but to do that, the drillers will need (among many other things) metals of all sorts. Steel, copper, titanium, nickel, chromium — and stockpiles are low, after a decade of war and Armageddon.  Worse, global trade isn’t remotely what it used to be. Fortunately, Canada has a wealth of mineral resources; unfortunately, at a minimum known Canadian titanium and nickel deposits are too far away from civilization to exploit properly.

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This one is slightly obscure, sure.

Scotty Bushell – Google Docs

Scotty Bushell

[The Day After Ragnarok]

Attributes: Agility d10, Smarts d8, Spirit d8, Strength d6, Vigor d6

Skills: Driving d4, Fighting d6, Guts d4, Knowledge d6 (Folklore), Knowledge d6 (The Ebony Tarn of Alberta), Notice d6, Persuasion d6, Repair d6, Riding d4, Shooting d4, Stealth d4, Survival d10, Swimming d4, Throwing d4, Tracking d8

Charisma: +4 Pace: 6 Parry: 5 Toughness: 5

Hindrances: Heroic, Loyal, Vow (Minor) (research the scary stuff in the woods)

Edges: Attractive, Beast Master, Charismatic, Command, Woodsman

R Lee Bushell was from Nova Scotia, when there was a Nova Scotia. Most of the island more or less got through the first tsunami, but the island just flat-out froze, pretty quick.  Bushell still got himself and his wife out, and as far as Calgary before things went permanently bad for Canada east of the Rockies. But Calgary’s walls are tall, he and his wife have a decent place inside of them, and there’s work out there in the Ebony Tarn for a man who knows the woods.

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Basically:

1. Pelgrane Press is doing a call for playtesting their sword-and-sorcery GUMSHOE game Swords of the Serpentine. Any of you folks interested?
2. I’m giving serious consideration to running a session of The Day After Ragnarok at WashingCon.  I’d be using my one-shot Song of the Siren for it, but will need to check to see if it works as a four-hour.  Anybody interested in playtesting that?

…but you weren’t sure if it’d sell?  I got one of those, for the Day After Ragnarok RPG: I have this idea, and it fascinates me.  And I think that it’d work as a impetus for campaigns (heh).  But I don’t know if I can sell it.  I’d like to decide that, quick, because the campaign idea keeps making me take notes for it when I could be working on stuff that people might buy.

Yeah, yeah, that might be diagnostic, but then there hasn’t been any new Day After Ragnarok stuff lately anyway.  Which is a shame.  It’s real easy to create material for that game world.

Moe Lane

PS: I’m not mentioning the idea for a reason.  Trying to keep it as undeveloped in public as possible.

Condor Studios – Google Docs

Condor Studios

[The Day After Ragnarok]

It all started when Kirk Douglas ran into Ronald Reagan in late 1945. Douglas was on the beach twice; first from getting medically invalided out of the Navy, then secondly when the abrupt end of the Pacific War after the Serpentfall made any hope of rejoining the military futile.  On the other hand, Reagan was now head of the Screen Actors Guild, thanks to the Macarthur regime (and later, the Warren administration): Douglas was interested in acting, and hoped to get in on the civilian-military heroic propaganda industry.

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Kahawa ya Nyoka – Google Docs

Kahawa ya Nyoka

[The Day After Ragnarok]

Kahawa ya Nyoka means ‘Coffee of the Snake’ in Swahili, and it’s exactly what you’d expect: coffee grown in areas heavily contaminated by the remains of the Serpent.  Most Kahawa ya Nyoka comes from Uganda and Kenya, although virtually identical strains are also cultivated in Abyssinia. It tastes like… coffee, with a distinctly more acidic flavor, and an aroma that is almost sharp.

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Sea-Jeweled Providence – Google Docs

Sea-Jeweled Providence

[The Day After Ragnarok]

City: Providence, Rhode Island

Population: 6,000/18,000

Controls: A remarkable hunk of Rhode Island

Government: Machine

Problem: Monsters

Heroic Opportunity: Trade Goods

City Aspect: Surviving and Secretive

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Today, apparently, is World Wombat Day.

Wom-Bats – Google Docs

Wom-Bats

Vombatus vampiricus ursulae

[The Day After Ragnarok]

Australia, thanks to its location in the post-Serpentfall world, still manages to remain mostly free of Serpent Taint; this includes the ongoing Tainting of seawater by the decomposing corpse of the World-Serpent still found in the north Atlantic and western Indian oceans.  Prevailing currents push that venom-Tainted water deep under the sea’s surface when it passes by Australia’s southern coast; and the warm current that rises up in the north Pacific and flows through Indonesia on its way back to the Atlantic is generally clean of the most obvious venomous taint at that point.  All of this suggests that a lot of Serpent venom is building up on the bottom of the ocean, which is likely going to end up being a literally monstrous problem; but in the meantime Australia mostly avoids having its already bizarre ecology drastically mutated further.

Mostly.

Vombatus vampiricus ursulae is a variant of the common wombat (vombatus ursinus): differences include the addition of thin scales between the forepaws and body that allow the Wom-Bat to glide and swoop; the addition of envenomed fangs that can knock smaller prey out, and make a human woozy; and a new, carnivorous / hematophagous diet.  A single Wom-Bat is usually not overly dangerous to a human-sized animal, but the creatures hunt in packs of at least twelve. And they are not particularly docile, either. (more…)