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.
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.
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.
Continue reading Tower of the Galvanized Serpent [The Day After Ragnarok]
Deadly Snows of Kenosha – Google Docs
The Deadly Snows of Kenosha
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 – Google Docs
Smoke-Clouded Transylvania
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.
Continue reading Smoke-Clouded Transylvania [The Day After Ragnarok]
Pollocobras
Cygnus columbianus malumultra
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.
