Category: Day After Ragnarok

Tower of the Galvanized Serpent [The Day After Ragnarok]

Tower of the Galvanized Serpent – Google Docs

Tower of the Galvanized Serpent
(Schenectady, NY)
[The Day After Ragnarok]

City: Schenectady, New York
Population: 400
Controls: Schenectady
Government: Despotism
Problem: Serpent Cultists
Heroic Opportunity: Technology
City Aspect: Conspiratorial

To the outside world, Schenectady is a pitiful shadow of what it once was: most of the town was destroyed (including, apparently, the General Electric plant there), and the few survivors eke out a perilous living with what crops they can raise.  The ruins are not a place that is good for trade: the remaining locals are openly suspicious of outsiders, and just unpleasant to do business with. And every so often, people in the area disappear. There is nothing about the disappearances that could ever be linked to Schenectady, but it’s best to stay away. There’s nothing there worth it, anyway.

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The Deadly Snows of Kenosha [The Day After Ragnarok].

Deadly Snows of Kenosha – Google Docs

The Deadly Snows of Kenosha

[The Day After Ragnarok]

City: Kenosha, Wisconsin
Population: 50 (est.), plus ghouls
Controls: Nothing
Government: Ruins
Problem: Monsters
Heroic Opportunity: Legendary Treasure
City Aspect: Dangerous

Kenosha, Wisconsin did not survive the Serpentfall. The city got hit with a one-two punch of a nasty plague and a tainted water supply; what disease and venom didn’t kill, the sudden cold did.  The population crashed fast, too. By October of 1945 most of the survivors fled to Milwaukee, where they’ve mostly either ended up on the collectivized farms, or fodder for the mercenary gangs. Continue reading The Deadly Snows of Kenosha [The Day After Ragnarok].

Smoke-Clouded Transylvania [The Day After Ragnarok]

Smoke-Clouded Transylvania – Google Docs

Smoke-Clouded Transylvania

[The Day After Ragnarok]

In theory, the portions of Kentucky that were on the far side of the Appalachian mountain range should have come through the Serpentfall reasonably well, at least by post-apocalyptic standards.  And, as far as anybody remembers, for the first three months or so people in Kentucky seemed to be more or less surviving about as well as anybody else. Then again, people weren’t actually surviving that well in the Poisoned Lands; so it took a while for others to really notice that cities in Kentucky were disappearing from the radio waves, and that neither raiders nor traders were coming out of either the coalfields or the bluegrass. It took even longer for enough of the local Mayoralities to recover to the point where they could afford to pay for adventuring parties willing to survey the area.

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Pollocobras [The Day After Ragnarok].

Pollocobras – Google Docs

Pollocobras

Cygnus columbianus malumultra

[The Day After Ragnarok]

 

This monstrosity from northern Mexico used to be the humble tundra swan, until venom from the Serpentfall turned it into a rapacious flying nightmare with the instincts of a locust. While pollocobras are still herbivores, a flock of them can clean out a field of grain within hours — and they spit gobs of poisonous mucus at anyone who interferes with them. Or otherwise annoys pollocobras, which can include simply being in the same county with one.  

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The Horse-Eaters of Rockford [The Day After Ragnarok].

Horse-Eaters of Rockford – Google Docs

The Horse-Eaters of Rockford

[The Day After Ragnarok]

 

City: Rockford, Illinois

Population: 20,000/100,000

Controls: parts of northern Illinois

Government: Despot

Problem: Hostile City: Chicago

Heroic Opportunity: Mercenary Work

City Aspect: Tense.

 

Rockford’s elected mayor was assassinated about one month after the Serpentfall by would-be Marxist revolutionaries; they might have succeeded in actually taking over the city, except that factionalism immediately turned bloody among the revolutionaries.  When the dust settled, the city found itself to have been instead taken over by Sgt. Frank Hammer, a soldier from the local Camp Grant who was in the right place at the right time. Hammer had two advantages: the first was the enthusiastic help of selected ‘rehabilitated’ World War II POWs at Camp Grant; and the second was his seizure of the Ken-L Ration factory, and its supply of canned foodstuffs.  Horse meat might have been fit only for dogs in America, but by the winter of 1945 Americans were ready to eat dogs if that’s what it took.

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Grand Vizier Bartholomew Morraine [The Day After Ragnarok]

Grand Vizier Bartholomew Morraine – Google Docs

Grand Vizier Bartholomew Morraine

[The Day After Ragnarok]

 

Bartholomew Morraine is the very model of a classic grand vizier: he is tall, saturnine, sports a goatee, wears silken robes whenever he can get away with it, and never goes anywhere without his blackwood staff.  He is currently more or less in charge of whatever North American petty-kingdom the players next encounter, and it is widely (and accurately) whispered that Morraine is a sorcerer of no little skill. Certainly he has no trouble with binding others to Morraine’s service, and probably his will as well.  Ah… the King’s (or Premier’s, or President’s, or Mayor’s) service, of course.  There’s always a figurehead in place, while Morraine rules from the shadows. He prefers it that way.

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Roomans [The Day After Ragnarok].

Roomans – Google Docs

Roomans

[The Day After Ragnarok]

 

For some reason, the English had been always peculiarly interested in kangaroos and wallabies, to the point of importing them to British soil.  Most of these creatures died in the Serpentfall, of course; the few survivors were horribly mutated and poisoned by the Serpent’s venom. Reports for those parts of the British Isles not under the Serpent increasingly tell of the presence of tall, furry, fully carnivorous monsters with a powerful punch, even more powerful kick, and an unceasing hunger for human flesh. Individually, they’re somewhat nasty but not invulnerable; unfortunately, Roomans run in packs of about six to ten.

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Melvin and the Maniacs [The Day After Ragnarok]

Melvin and the Maniacs

[The Day After Ragnarok]

 

Melvin Kaminsky is very possibly the best ghoul hunter that the French have, and his team of Maniacs certainly has an exceptionally dramatic track record when it comes to keeping ghouls out of French North Africa. He’s technically a corporal in the U.S. Army: his unit of combat engineers was east of the Serpentfall in Europe, which would have normally meant that they would have been quietly swept up and stuck in a Siberian work camp for, well, ever.  Melvin managed to avoid that fate by successfully convincing the Soviets that he was Jewish (true), that his entire unit was also Jewish (not true), and that they were all eager to go to the People’s Jewish Republic and be good Communist soldiers (not true, either). Melvin is good at talking.

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Billy the Barbourian and the Witch of Yazoo [The Day After Ragnarok]

Billy the Barbourian and the Witch of Yazoo – Google Docs

Billy the Barbourian and the Witch of Yazoo

[The Day After Ragnarok]

 

City: Yazoo City, Mississippi

Population: 4,000

Controls: Yazoo City

Government: Strongman

Problem: Monsters

Heroic Opportunity: Trade Goods

City Aspect: Militaristic.

 

Yazoo City got through the Serpentfall itself well enough, but the collapse of order and civilization in Mississippi was particularly dramatic. The town only survived because of the leadership of the Barbour family, who adapted to the new conditions with remarkable speed.  Within two years, what was once a family full of lawyers and politicians had transformed itself into a sprawling clan of fighters and scouts of ever-increasing thews. Today, Judge Jeptha Barbour reigns over the Clan of Barbourians, but practical day-to-day leadership seems to be falling upon his brother Billy, who runs scouts and sorties throughout the Delta.

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