Snow-Wooded Grand Rapids
City: Grand Rapids, Michigan
Population: 30,000/150,000
Controls: a small portion of central Michigan
Government: Democratic
Problem: Monsters
Heroic Opportunity: Trade goods / Bounty
City Aspect: Mercantile.
Continue reading Snow-Wooded Grand Rapids. [The Day After Ragnarok]
Motorless City
City: Detroit, Michigan
Population: 100,000/600,000
Controls: Wayne County and parts of the Great Lakes
Government: Machine
Problem: Factions/Fuel Shortage
Heroic Opportunity: Trade Goods
City Aspect: Divided
The New Concord
City: Concord, NH
Population: 8,100/73,000
Controls: arguably, New Hampshire
Government: Democratic
Problem: Monsters
Heroic Opportunity: Bounty
City Aspect: Fortified.
New Hampshire actually weathered the Serprentfall remarkably well. Manchester and Nashua were wrecked by the tidal wave, but the state capital of Concord was above the floodline, and new Governor Charles Dale was in town and able to coordinate relief efforts effectively. The last few years have been incredibly hard, but Governor Dale can still truthfully claim that he is the legitimate and legal governor of New Hampshire. Dale was re-elected in an honest election in 1946, and will likely be re-elected again in 1948; interestingly, New Hampshire also plans to vote for a US President in the same election, despite the fact that the entire Poisoned Lands stretch between them and what’s left of the USA.
Incense-Drunk Cleveland – Google Docs
Incense-Drunk Cleveland
City: Cleveland, Ohio
Population: 80,000/420,000
Controls: Parts of Lake Erie and northern Ohio
Government: Despotism
Problem: Hostile Cities (most of the rest of Ohio)
Heroic Opportunity: Mercenary Work
City Aspect: Militaristic and Religious
Continue reading Incense-Drunk Cleveland [The Day After Ragnarok].
Mortar Geckos
(strophurus igenti amicae)
Imagine a gecko with a golden spine and grey-black mottled scales. OK? Now make it as big as a horse, and give it the ability to shoot sticky mucus from its tail. And there you have it: the mortar gecko. All Mortar Geckos are descended from zoo specimens in North America and Europe; the various parent species are all from Australia, and are resolutely free from mutation. Oddly, while the species was clearly mutated by the Serpentfall, it shows none of the usual signs of Serpent taint.
Fort Avalon
The island of Santa Catalina, California had already been taken over wholesale by the US war effort prior to the Serpentfall; and it was summarily ignored in the confusion, chaos, and wholesale devastation that shattered the United States. It took the US Coordinating Committee a year to even formally realize that the facilities on Santa Catalina were still in operation, and by then it was… perhaps ‘too late’ is the wrong term. The various groups there still all recognize the authority and legitimacy of the Warren administration. Provided that President Warren doesn’t push too hard on that.
Poisoned Portland – Google Docs
Poisoned Portland
City: Portland, Maine
Population: 700
Controls: The USS Denebola
Government: Squatters
Problem: Food Shortages
Heroic Opportunity: Technology
City Aspect: Desperate.
The original population of Portland, Maine was wiped out by the Serpentfall. There were no more than a couple hundred survivors, mostly (thanks to a fluke in the tsunami) from the all-woman Westbrook College in Deering. These survivors were still in a very bad way indeed until help arrived from the USS Denebola. The Denebola was a destroyer tender assigned temporarily to Casco Bay, Maine that survived the tsunami through a combination of sheer luck and inspired sailing; however, ‘surviving’ in this case left the ship too damaged to move effectively.
Swaggering Eagles of Sicily – Google Docs
The Swaggering Eagles of Sicily
When the Serpentfall smashed Europe, what was left of the US military on that continent ended up in Sicily. The geography helped a good deal; in particular, the angle of the falling World Serpent spared Palermo, which rapidly became the rallying point for American troops in the Mediterranean. US Navy and Marine forces quickly also established full control over Sardinia, and helped cement ‘understandings’ with both British Malta and Free French Corsica. Today, the remaining American forces in Sicily are the ones who managed to avoid being reassigned somewhere else; there is a general opinion that the region has many possibilities for an ambitious man.
Continue reading The Swaggering Eagles of Sicily [The Day After Ragnarok]
Fire Ant Corsairs of Mobile – Google Docs
The Fire Ant Corsairs of Mobile
City: Mobile, Alabama
Population: 3,000
Controls: Mobile, and some of the coastal waters
Government: Squatters (various corsair groups)
Problem: Unrest
Heroic Opportunity: Mercenary Work
City Aspect: Lawless and Murderous
Continue reading The Fire Ant Corsairs of Mobile [The Day After Ragnarok]
Polaris
The general assumption in the post-Serpentfall world is that everyone in Greenland is dead. The population was never very large (perhaps 21,000 in early 1945, not counting American troops) and temperatures in the Arctic since the Serpentfall have dropped to the point where seventy degrees Fahrenheit below zero is not unheard of. If it gets much colder up there, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the pole will start freezing, and how that will affect the global climate is anybody’s guess.
