We finished our intermediary enclave/character creation session last night, and the next time we meet the Takers will choose their first job of the campaign! They decided to set the game in Nevada, partly because they wanted something with a bit of Mad Max flavor and mostly because of their choice of location for their enclave:
HOOVERVILLE.
Hilarious ... I had a similar concept ... though more focused on Lake Mead itself ... specifically the Lake Mead Marina and Las Vegas Boat Marina combined to make a floating enclave in Boulder Basin (right behind Hoover Dam). The enclave is rechristened "Basin City". The population is a mix of ex-Middle Class/professional boat owners, Latino casino workers, some heavies from Las Vegas and a handful of national gaurdsmen from nearby Boulder City.
http://www.riverlakes.com/las_vegas_to_boulder_basin.htmToday Lake Mead is low because of over-consumption of water by industry, agriculture and civilisation in general .... post-crash this is no longer a problem ... quite the reverse, and maintaining the level of Lake Mead is a critical concern for the neighbouring enclave of Hooverville (maintained by the Lecky-Crew).
Now that the lake has risen to higher levels, Boulder Beach is underwater creating an area of muddy shallows ... one of the Latino members of "Basin", calling back to his youth in Mexico city, has begun working the shallows into a series of Chinampas (so-called floating islands)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinampa ... to create secure, canal accessible areas to grow fresh food. This (and fish) will be Basins main source of trade (trading food for power with Hooverville, etc). Canoes and gondolas (liberated from a famous Vegas casino) are used to move around the Chinampas.
Power within Basin is divided between (and struggled over by) the boat owners (where still alive), the fishermen, the farmers, and the soldiers .... the former heavies are a fifth power, squeezing the weaker members of the other factions and attempting to live as high on the hog as possible.
There are four neighbourhoods ... V (Formerly Las Vegas Marina), Middletown (formerly lake mead marina), the Shallows (closer to the shore, refers to the Chinampas themselves) and The Boulders (some small rocky islands North East of the marinas on which a series of shanty huts have been built.
There are at least two other marinas on Lake Mead and so these are trade opportunities, but also the source of friction ... at least one turning predator and become lake pirates with cannibalistic tendencies.
Two key resouces initially required are new seed stock (possibly accessed from farms North of Las Vegas ... avoiding Las Vegas as much as possible is a great idea because it is a real mess) and fertilizer. Specifically in the case of fertilizer, there is a cave upriver along the cliff face of the Colorado river filled with bat shit .... it was once mined by the American Guano Corporation (the cave used to be accessible by a cable and bucket from a place called Guano point on the opposite side of the canyon - it was featured in the finale of the movie Edge of Eternity -
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Point).
I suspect there may be some infected stranded along the river, perhaps a very primitive enclave that has gone somewhat bestial in their isolation.
Nevada gives some other interesting locations ... not least of which is area 51 ... so paranoid enclave members might well be interested in cracking that one open.
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