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RPGs / Re: Red Markets Inspiration
« on: October 30, 2015, 03:57:39 PM »
I started creating an Enclave for the Cape and Islands region as well as some of Eastern Massachusetts. It’s nowhere near complete, but any critiques are welcome. It’s not exactly Lovecraft Country but it’s weird and isolated enough to leave a mark on anyone who live here, for better or for worse.
THE CAPE
Nobody in the Massachusetts enclaves like to go to Cape Cod. Anyone can tell you that if you ask them, and they always have a good reason, from shit loot to bad weather. The stories and reports are never promising, and nobody who tried to build an outpost there lasts more than few months before going giving up or dying. It’s empty, they say, just lonely beaches and abandoned towns, and if you know what’s good for you you’ll stay away from the place, understand? Just don’t ask them who keeps the lighthouses running into the night, don’t ask where the clams in you chowder come from, and don’t ask who the silent men watching from the dunes are or how they actually built that ship you bought up north. You won’t like the answer.
Location
Jutting into the Atlantic from Southeastern Massachusetts, Cape Cod is a small artificial island separated from the mainland by a large canal. It has quite a few islands surrounding, all of with were populated before the Crash and often privately owned.
Defenses
The Cape is protected from the mainland by a steep and rocky canal with notoriously choppy waters, and most of the coast is inaccessible by sea due to the incredibly dangerous shoals surrounding it. When nature isn’t enough, the locals apparently built rudimentary fortifications out of old beached boats and a wide variety of guns, from civilian arms to honest-to-god cannons scavenged from the multitude of naval museums in the areas. People who make it farther inland note that many of the buildings are very solidly built brick and lumber and sturdy stone walls have been put up around some of the larger towns, built with what appear to be historic methods. The poor bastards who try and swim anywhere find out the locals somehow filled the area with sharks from Martha’s Vineyard. Oddly, very few reports of these fortifications actually being used are rare, as nobody can ever recall anyone actually wanting to invade the Cape.
History
People used to love Cape Cod. It had everything that a tourist could ever want: Smiling faces, lovely beaches, great food, and enough history to mean something to enough people that the population quadrupled every summer. The Cape was rustic, quaint, and rural. Yes, time had left it behind, but things were modernizing slowly, and people were happy. The Crash changed that. Most of population died quickly, leaving the towns abandoned and the ships rotting at the docks, but those who survived were the other majority of people on the Cape. They had stayed on their boats and in their lighthouses, waiting for the fires to die down. These people were hard and grizzled, the salt of the ocean flowed through their veins and the crafts of the old world lived through them: Clamming, shipbuilding, fishing, hunting, the forgotten arts of New England the world forgot it needed. These older folks, some approaching seventy, took in the younger and the uninformed and allowed the Cape to survive. Now, a majority of the Cape has been reclaimed but not settled, with a majority of the population living in well-hidden communes or isolated shelters.
Top Exports
Specialty Food— Fruit is very hard to grow in Massachusetts, so the Cape Cod art of the cranberry bog has allowed the Cape to produce large amounts of an easily stored and transported food item at any price they care to name. Scurvy isn’t something people want to come back. Clams are also valued, but they require heavy refrigeration to transport and are often only sold to the major Enclaves in Massachusetts like Beantown. The massive surplus of alcohol due to the tourist trade tends to pad out transactions nicely.
Old Knowledge/Items — Find someone who can build a signal cannon or clean wood with sand and rope. Exactly. The elders who lived on the Cape have large amount of knowledge sealed in their heads, as do the unusual amount of museums and libraries in the area. Selling their knowledge has allowed some of the less well-off Enclaves survive with a much lower level of technology than expected.
Science: The Cape is somewhat of a paradox. Old world can mix with high tech bizarrely easily depending on where you end up, and a few settlements in the Cape know exactly how make it. If the Cape and Massachusetts were a country, it would have the third best education in the world, after all. Wood’s Hole is home to WHOI, and several ecological foundations including IFAW are based there.
Top Imports
Advanced Weapons and Ammunition: Other than the supplies stolen from Otis AFB, any sort of military production is nonexistent. The people of the Cape will gladly trade for weapons and armor so they can travel safely from town to town.
Electronics and Chemicals: Again, no real industry existed on the Cape before the Crash, so there is no choice but to fill the gap through trade. WHOI and the other scientific enclaves will pay through the nose for the chance to maintain their gadgets and projects.
Competition
The general attitude about the Cape is to pretend it doesn’t exist until you need something from it. People just tend to find the place so unnerving that they ignore it. Trade is mostly on an Enclave-to-Enclave level and diplomacy is never face-to-face.
The Armory: When the Crash came, people need guns. Lots of them. So, a group of machinists reclaimed the famed Springfield Armory and got it churning out enough M14s and 1911s to arm the entire city of Springfield with a few hundred to spare. They quickly absorbed some of the weaker Enclaves and began trading their weapons to other areas, with trade routes stretching as far as Maine. Now a military power rivalling Beantown itself, the Warlords of the Armory have turned the city of Springfield into a trap-infested, gun-filled citadel of fire and lead. The often hire the people of the Cape as guides or transport along the East Coast. They don’t attempt to invade the Cape because they honestly have nothing of value to them.
The Whalers: New Bedford had an important place in the Era of Wooden Ships and Iron Men, and the Crash gave it a chance to revitalize that image. The great naval power of New New Bedford (as some call it) now makes its living hunting the rebounding whale population of New England and selling the parts for profit. Having updated their ships from wood to metal (although some of the more eccentric captains repurposed the historic ships kept at the wharf), they provide the vast majority of oil and meat to the Eastern Massachusetts region. Occasional scuffles over naval transport and fishing rites crop up occasionally between the Cape and the Whalers, but they tend to be resolved amicably.
Beantown: Boston reborn. To say this Enclave is powerful can’t be understated. They’ve got power, plumbing, an actual military, and enough industrial production to have a very high standard of living. Very few people actually make it past the walls, and even fewer get to report on what it is like inside. Boston doesn’t accept outsiders, you see.
Social Structure
Cape Cod has very decentralized system of rule, with each small settlement ruling itself, from the anarchic artist-leaders of P-town to the Plutocracy of Nantucket Sound. Each leader has to attend meetings at Barnstable, the de facto capital of all of the Cape to discuss serious matters such as war. The vast majority of the Cape, however, is a loose collection of family clans with social ties to everyone in the immediate vicinity. Everyone knows everybody on the Cape, after all.
Neighborhoods
WHOI: The technocracy of WHOI is very hesitant to share anything about themselves, but everyone knows they have the best tech of anyone on the island. Wood’s Hole is their sovereign territory, and anyone invading can expect liberal usage of chemical and electroshock weapons.
P-Town: The mad bohemian paradise of P-Town can literally drive people insane. From makeshift Sake bars to parades espousing the wonders of every fetish under the sun, P-Town is going down in a blaze of sex, narcotics, and modern art. An LGBT haven before the Crash, people seeking asylum there for social reasons will almost always be given it and treated nicely.
Martha’s Vineyard: Sharks. So many goddamn sharks. Nobody knows how they got so many goddamn sharks in the goddamn water but nobody ever tries to go there because fuck sharks.
Nantuckett: A peaceful and pristine island community. Go there for safety, supplies, and lodging. One of the ferries there still works but the lines are long, so most people just take their own boats, if possible.
The Gardens: Heritage Gardens was a wonderful tourist spot back in the day. A massive botanical garden and museum, it supplies a huge amount of lumber, seeds, and fine art. You can’t get them to admit it, but they drive the vintage cars they keep there whenever possible. Also, ziplines.
The Compound: The Kennedy Compound fortified and incorporating all of the other coastal mansions in the neighborhood. People are pretty sure an actual Kennedy runs it but nobody on the inside is talking. All people know is it’s well-guarded, well-off, and they buy as much as they can with as much as they can.
The Lighthouses: A network of mini-citadels that guard the coastlines, often manned by grizzled older folks who just want to be left alone.
The Sag: Sagamore Bridge, now literally sagging due to it being ridiculously old and unmaintained. Specifically built high to accommodate warships, one of which is underneath it and stopping the bridge from collapsing. A large battleship apparently recommissioned out of desperation, it suffered a hull breach directly under the bridge. Nobody knows the name of it, since most of it was actually stripped off, including any readily accessible identification. The original crew was long gone but it is now settled by about 100 people, who have to deal with the fact the ship was never meant to actually work again. Leaks and system failures happen with unfortunate regularity. The cannons still work, but absolutely nobody aboard is willing to fire one.
VIPs
(I’m still working on this)
THE CAPE
Nobody in the Massachusetts enclaves like to go to Cape Cod. Anyone can tell you that if you ask them, and they always have a good reason, from shit loot to bad weather. The stories and reports are never promising, and nobody who tried to build an outpost there lasts more than few months before going giving up or dying. It’s empty, they say, just lonely beaches and abandoned towns, and if you know what’s good for you you’ll stay away from the place, understand? Just don’t ask them who keeps the lighthouses running into the night, don’t ask where the clams in you chowder come from, and don’t ask who the silent men watching from the dunes are or how they actually built that ship you bought up north. You won’t like the answer.
Location
Jutting into the Atlantic from Southeastern Massachusetts, Cape Cod is a small artificial island separated from the mainland by a large canal. It has quite a few islands surrounding, all of with were populated before the Crash and often privately owned.
Defenses
The Cape is protected from the mainland by a steep and rocky canal with notoriously choppy waters, and most of the coast is inaccessible by sea due to the incredibly dangerous shoals surrounding it. When nature isn’t enough, the locals apparently built rudimentary fortifications out of old beached boats and a wide variety of guns, from civilian arms to honest-to-god cannons scavenged from the multitude of naval museums in the areas. People who make it farther inland note that many of the buildings are very solidly built brick and lumber and sturdy stone walls have been put up around some of the larger towns, built with what appear to be historic methods. The poor bastards who try and swim anywhere find out the locals somehow filled the area with sharks from Martha’s Vineyard. Oddly, very few reports of these fortifications actually being used are rare, as nobody can ever recall anyone actually wanting to invade the Cape.
History
People used to love Cape Cod. It had everything that a tourist could ever want: Smiling faces, lovely beaches, great food, and enough history to mean something to enough people that the population quadrupled every summer. The Cape was rustic, quaint, and rural. Yes, time had left it behind, but things were modernizing slowly, and people were happy. The Crash changed that. Most of population died quickly, leaving the towns abandoned and the ships rotting at the docks, but those who survived were the other majority of people on the Cape. They had stayed on their boats and in their lighthouses, waiting for the fires to die down. These people were hard and grizzled, the salt of the ocean flowed through their veins and the crafts of the old world lived through them: Clamming, shipbuilding, fishing, hunting, the forgotten arts of New England the world forgot it needed. These older folks, some approaching seventy, took in the younger and the uninformed and allowed the Cape to survive. Now, a majority of the Cape has been reclaimed but not settled, with a majority of the population living in well-hidden communes or isolated shelters.
Top Exports
Specialty Food— Fruit is very hard to grow in Massachusetts, so the Cape Cod art of the cranberry bog has allowed the Cape to produce large amounts of an easily stored and transported food item at any price they care to name. Scurvy isn’t something people want to come back. Clams are also valued, but they require heavy refrigeration to transport and are often only sold to the major Enclaves in Massachusetts like Beantown. The massive surplus of alcohol due to the tourist trade tends to pad out transactions nicely.
Old Knowledge/Items — Find someone who can build a signal cannon or clean wood with sand and rope. Exactly. The elders who lived on the Cape have large amount of knowledge sealed in their heads, as do the unusual amount of museums and libraries in the area. Selling their knowledge has allowed some of the less well-off Enclaves survive with a much lower level of technology than expected.
Science: The Cape is somewhat of a paradox. Old world can mix with high tech bizarrely easily depending on where you end up, and a few settlements in the Cape know exactly how make it. If the Cape and Massachusetts were a country, it would have the third best education in the world, after all. Wood’s Hole is home to WHOI, and several ecological foundations including IFAW are based there.
Top Imports
Advanced Weapons and Ammunition: Other than the supplies stolen from Otis AFB, any sort of military production is nonexistent. The people of the Cape will gladly trade for weapons and armor so they can travel safely from town to town.
Electronics and Chemicals: Again, no real industry existed on the Cape before the Crash, so there is no choice but to fill the gap through trade. WHOI and the other scientific enclaves will pay through the nose for the chance to maintain their gadgets and projects.
Competition
The general attitude about the Cape is to pretend it doesn’t exist until you need something from it. People just tend to find the place so unnerving that they ignore it. Trade is mostly on an Enclave-to-Enclave level and diplomacy is never face-to-face.
The Armory: When the Crash came, people need guns. Lots of them. So, a group of machinists reclaimed the famed Springfield Armory and got it churning out enough M14s and 1911s to arm the entire city of Springfield with a few hundred to spare. They quickly absorbed some of the weaker Enclaves and began trading their weapons to other areas, with trade routes stretching as far as Maine. Now a military power rivalling Beantown itself, the Warlords of the Armory have turned the city of Springfield into a trap-infested, gun-filled citadel of fire and lead. The often hire the people of the Cape as guides or transport along the East Coast. They don’t attempt to invade the Cape because they honestly have nothing of value to them.
The Whalers: New Bedford had an important place in the Era of Wooden Ships and Iron Men, and the Crash gave it a chance to revitalize that image. The great naval power of New New Bedford (as some call it) now makes its living hunting the rebounding whale population of New England and selling the parts for profit. Having updated their ships from wood to metal (although some of the more eccentric captains repurposed the historic ships kept at the wharf), they provide the vast majority of oil and meat to the Eastern Massachusetts region. Occasional scuffles over naval transport and fishing rites crop up occasionally between the Cape and the Whalers, but they tend to be resolved amicably.
Beantown: Boston reborn. To say this Enclave is powerful can’t be understated. They’ve got power, plumbing, an actual military, and enough industrial production to have a very high standard of living. Very few people actually make it past the walls, and even fewer get to report on what it is like inside. Boston doesn’t accept outsiders, you see.
Social Structure
Cape Cod has very decentralized system of rule, with each small settlement ruling itself, from the anarchic artist-leaders of P-town to the Plutocracy of Nantucket Sound. Each leader has to attend meetings at Barnstable, the de facto capital of all of the Cape to discuss serious matters such as war. The vast majority of the Cape, however, is a loose collection of family clans with social ties to everyone in the immediate vicinity. Everyone knows everybody on the Cape, after all.
Neighborhoods
WHOI: The technocracy of WHOI is very hesitant to share anything about themselves, but everyone knows they have the best tech of anyone on the island. Wood’s Hole is their sovereign territory, and anyone invading can expect liberal usage of chemical and electroshock weapons.
P-Town: The mad bohemian paradise of P-Town can literally drive people insane. From makeshift Sake bars to parades espousing the wonders of every fetish under the sun, P-Town is going down in a blaze of sex, narcotics, and modern art. An LGBT haven before the Crash, people seeking asylum there for social reasons will almost always be given it and treated nicely.
Martha’s Vineyard: Sharks. So many goddamn sharks. Nobody knows how they got so many goddamn sharks in the goddamn water but nobody ever tries to go there because fuck sharks.
Nantuckett: A peaceful and pristine island community. Go there for safety, supplies, and lodging. One of the ferries there still works but the lines are long, so most people just take their own boats, if possible.
The Gardens: Heritage Gardens was a wonderful tourist spot back in the day. A massive botanical garden and museum, it supplies a huge amount of lumber, seeds, and fine art. You can’t get them to admit it, but they drive the vintage cars they keep there whenever possible. Also, ziplines.
The Compound: The Kennedy Compound fortified and incorporating all of the other coastal mansions in the neighborhood. People are pretty sure an actual Kennedy runs it but nobody on the inside is talking. All people know is it’s well-guarded, well-off, and they buy as much as they can with as much as they can.
The Lighthouses: A network of mini-citadels that guard the coastlines, often manned by grizzled older folks who just want to be left alone.
The Sag: Sagamore Bridge, now literally sagging due to it being ridiculously old and unmaintained. Specifically built high to accommodate warships, one of which is underneath it and stopping the bridge from collapsing. A large battleship apparently recommissioned out of desperation, it suffered a hull breach directly under the bridge. Nobody knows the name of it, since most of it was actually stripped off, including any readily accessible identification. The original crew was long gone but it is now settled by about 100 people, who have to deal with the fact the ship was never meant to actually work again. Leaks and system failures happen with unfortunate regularity. The cannons still work, but absolutely nobody aboard is willing to fire one.
VIPs
(I’m still working on this)