Mother Queen Jasper

Beyond the Horizon

Tickets for our February Event "BEYOND THE HORIZON" go on sale on MONDAY, JANUARY 17th at 1PM! We hope you’ve enjoyed your Long Night!

The ambitious merchant culture espoused by the Junkerpunk population, a ragtag group of smugglers, tradesfolk and priveteers, has always been a dynamic beat in the overture of the Greater Lonestar. But now, armed with their temporary position on the San Saba Board and the backing of Holy Mother Queen Jasper of the Tribes Disparate, this grinning group of sellswords and sword sellers have decided to strike out and do what New Bravado proved could be done; build a town for themselves. 

The infant settlement of Drywater, just a few hours walk to the West of New Bravado’s extended territory, has begun to erect its first permanent structures and acquire its first permanent citizens. Queen Jasper, the sickly but politically powerful matriarch of the Antler clan, has come to New Bravado to oversee the perilous and brave process of sculpting a homeland from irradiated dirt. With the help of the Longberths, a faction of the Tribes Disparate who have historically butted heads with the smaller merchant faction, the scrap of land will become a dry port of call only rivaled by Waking Prime. 

With glory on the horizon for the honest folk of the Muddy Water Accord, all seems well in the wet thaw after the Long Night. But the waves of Lake Bravo stir uneasily as something shifts beneath its surface, and the sound of distant foghorns echo balefully from the direction of The Clutch. Only time will tell what lurks in the deep waters of that ancient wound.

Looking to get more hype for the February event?

Reminder about our february Weekend Itinerary and policies

We wanted to take a second to go over the weekend itinerary so there is less confusion during check in:

Coming on Site

Unless you have special permission from staff or are part of our designated Setup Crew for that weekend, the time when you can come onto the site from the parking lot is 3pm on Friday. This applies to Guides as well. At 4pm players who pre-registered can pick up their character sheets and check-in at the Post Office. At 5pm players who did not pre-register can check-in. Read the full Weekend Itinerary here.

Driving on Site

Likewise, you can only drive on site if you have explicit staff permission. Everyone else needs to park in the parking lot and use a cart to bring their items on to and off of site.

Medical and new player sleeping accommodations

Wigwam Cabin is our primary Med Sleep location. Wikiup is our primary New Player cabin. Last game we were overcrowded in these spaces. We do not want to have to start restricting who can sleep there further, or requiring medical notes, so please consider sleeping elsewhere if you are not a new player or require medical sleep accommodations.

Kiva is climate controlled and open to anyone. There are also many open-air cabins available in Hopi and Zuni, the platform tents in Tewa, and tent-space is available for those who want to bring their own tent. Some people choose to stay in hotels and air bnb’s off-site as well. If you just would like a Med Sleep note on your character sheet to sleep in a different location without interruption, we can accommodate that. Please email info@dystopiarisingtx.com.

Map of Camp Kachina

and now for more exciting things…

Girl Scout Cookies are Coming!

The Girl Scouts of Central Texas will be present before and after our February event to sell their cookies, so bring your cash! I know I won’t need to twist your arm, but proceeds stay local to GSCTX, who own Camp Kachina and allow us to use it for our silly zombie LARP. The Girl Scout Cookie Program prepares girls with the business smarts they need to prepare for adventure, and we love that for them.

Camp Kachina Work Day is coming up!

Patching up Bravado is an event is to help the town OOC. This event is designed for completing projects and site improvements. There is no cost to attend, this is an event to support our local site and put some love back into it! Those who participate will earn 200 CAPS a Work Day. If you are interested in this event. Please fill out the Volunteer sign-up form. This will allow us to assign you to the ideal project.

Volunteer Signup Form

Gates will be open Friday the 21st of January at Noon. The Gates will close on Sunday the 23rd at 3pm.

Shifts will be divided up mainly between AM and PM.

Upon Arrival, on Friday we encourage you to designate your sleeping area and settle in. Projects will start at 2pm (Please see Rafiki/ Kaytlyn the Camp Director)

During the weekend, Joscelyn Benoit and Heather Boemler will be your logistical points of contact for the event.

We encourage you to bring your kit. As there will be opportunities for field portraits in your kit during breaks. We are very grateful for your interest and participation in the event and cant wait to see you there!

See the Facebook Event here.

See you Beyond the Horizon!

March Update 2.0

Good Thursday, Survivors! 

This post comes to you in two parts. We’re going to get the unfun stuff out of the way first - so stay tuned for PLOT. We are staying up to date on information with Covid-19. We are still holding our March event and we do not have plans to suspend or cancel future events yet.

Large events do represent an increased risk for community spread. We are all watching events, schools, and conferences canceled which host many thousands of people. While we might be large for a larp, we are still quite small in the scheme of event-planning. In some respects we are closer to a small conference or symposium in terms of population, duration, and human contact. We are looking at those rather than comparing ourselves to SXSW for instance. If social distancing measures increase then we will seriously consider altering or canceling events. We are not there yet. If the situation warrants, then we will go there.

All that being said, there are things we can all do to mitigate the risk of infection. If you are sick, please stay home. You have heard a hundred reminders to wash your hands. Please wash your hands. Additionally…

1.      If you see that a bathroom has run out of paper towels or soap please tell us so we can get more.

2.      Please use make-up wedges/applicators ONCE if dipping in a communal container. That means coat the wedge, put it on your face, then throw it away. Don’t double dip. We will also have a number of tiny paper cups you can use to put a reasonable amount of makeup in to apply to your own face. 

3.      Please help us to keep high contact surfaces clean. Kitchen counters, work stations, etc. If you can't find a cleaner and think a surface needs cleaning, ask staff or a guide to help you find some. 

4.      If you need a break from shambles, please please please help us clean. Clean make-up, wiping down surfaces, wiping down brawler handles, and doing laundry will help keep everyone healthy.

5.      Get enough sleep! Lack of sleep will tank your immune system. Take a nap if you need one, go to bed when you’re tired, sleep in if your body needs it.

6.      Do not skip meals! And please consider eating healthy meals instead of surviving on pocket cheese and cupcakes.

Okay! That’s the stuff we MUST say to feel good about having done our due-diligence to keep our pals healthy. You’re grownups, all of you. So let’s make grownup calls about our health. Secondly! Game is tomorrow - Hell yeah! 

To that end here’s some juicy new lore it’d be good to know for the weekend upcoming. This month the Tribes Disparate will be coming together for their yearly summit - hosted by the RRC itself. Thirteen tribes coming from across the wastes to discuss and plan and...who knows what else. “But!” You might exclaim, “Shan! We haven’t been TOLD what the thirteen tribes are. We only know NINE of them!” 

To which I reply “Until now, bucky-fuckos.” Check out this link to the Tribes Disparate page and take a peek at the newly revealed players in this month’s plot. You’ll have lots of mobility to address their standing inside the Tribes Disparate, their relationship with the Township Bravado and what our intertwining story looks like going forward. So study up, kids. Spring is upon us, time of growth and change. Let’s tell a cool story about it.

——

She is our Holy Mother Queen, 

Bearer of the Antler’d Crown. 

Who warred for peace and always sought, 

The chance to put her scepter down. 

The Cervaxi held her up on high, 

While the Torchlight shone from down Below, 

The Longberths bore her on their boats, 

Mighty row by mighty row. 

The Rabbits begged for peace and trade, 

And so Ox Killers did make it so, 

While the Sweetwaters turned that great big Wheel, 

All the way to Cali*Co. 

The Ja Cintos ranged and found ripe land, 

That Scadians thought good as their own, 

Which The Local 727,

Did render a new and lasting home. 

The Cloudskippers took the Queen above, 

To the skies above her brow, 

So that the Curators could record wisely, 

That none before and none do now, 

Rival Jasper in her rule, 

In her merit, measure or might, 

May she live forever always, 

Holy Mother dressed in White.



Friendly Counsel

“...and we will have enough fuel to help the Sweetwaters move the equipment to Waking, but we will need to prepare for refueling costs there.”

Everyone was listening, she supposed, even if their body language said otherwise.  She smiled to herself, and continued. It was late, and even Shale was disinterested.  But it was the duty of the matriarch to lead by example, so Momma Rabbit paused for a moment to let the others realize their minds had been drifting.  It was subtle, but as a skilled fishmonger drove their fish to the net, so she rounded up their attention once more.

Children would be children. And children indeed were the royal attendees of this summit.  Lessons passed down from mother to mother in the Rabbit family always seemed to become useful in surprising ways, she mused. 

The rest of the regents were gathered around the map of The Lands Bravado, listening with at least half an ear to her update on current events.  It was challenging enough getting the regency of the Tribes Disparate in the same room for quorum, much less keeping their attention throughout.  They would have to wait until the Summit to get the entirety of the thirteen regents in one place. For the handful she had here today, this was a necessary meeting.  An army marches on its stomach, her mother always said. “The DJs needed fuel to continue playing their part in all this.” Momma Rabbit pressed now.

At the mention of this, Shale looked up.  It was the one thing the Queen didn’t seem to understand, but Shale was in his element in this moment.  He was the most interested in these council meetings, where strength of arms did not matter as much as strength of will.  Let the Queen pursue her wars, but Shale would lead from the council chambers. Momma Rabbit smiled to herself and at him.

“We can get the RRC to fund the expedition. The Antlers have been protecting the Ox’s move south, and they can’t afford us to redirect our forces somewhere else.”  she answered in response to Shale’s unspoken question. The regent of the Ox Killers glared at her mention, but stayed quiet for now.

The Texican regent put his boots up on the table and offered a different suggestion. Her kindly eyes darkened at this willful display of bad manners.

“Maybe the Conglomerate can make an offer too.” Sam said with a drawl. “The Ja Cintos have enough connections there.  The Minister don’t like dealing with the Railroad any more than necessary. We’re all here for the Queen first, not the Commission.”  The regent of the Ja Cinto Militia surely meant well, but Momma Rabbit sighed internally at his aggressive tone.

“Sam, you know as well as I do the contracts we’ve signed.” Momma Rabbit countered. She tsked at him and brushed his feet off the table.  He sheepishly apologized, as she wiped the dirt off the map. He was a good lad, if he could only remember his manners.

“Fuck the contracts.”  The Torchlight regent’s gravely voice was barely a whisper, but when they spoke, the primitive filter on their mask made it impossible to sense any real emotion.  The Lascarian could be expected to provoke the fight further.

Another argument. This night was not getting any closer to being finished. 

The other regents acted predictably. The Ox Killers had a grudge, and their regent banged his fist on the table in support of the Torchlight’s suggestion.  The Ja Cintos would eventually back her if she could make her case, and maybe the Long Berths. The DJs of the Sweetwaters needed the work to keep the clan happy, so they would be on board when it came time for a vote.

“We trusted the sun-dwellers’ promises before. It cost us everything. Why should we continue to support them?”  the Lightbearer, for someone with such a name, spent so much of his time focused on the darkness of the past. It was frustrating. She smoothed her skirts as the others chimed in. The Torchlight regent was unnerving, but they are family too, she reminded herself.

“I say just let them deal with the Firebrands on their own. We have our own issues to solve. The storm always passes.” The Long Berth captain spoke.  They had their own problems with the Junkerpunks, to be sure.

“The Great Wheel will turn our way again, my friends. Sometimes we lead, sometimes we follow.” Words of wisdom spoke from the greasy road captain, younger than his wisdom suggested. The DJ could be counted to come to her support. Momma Rabbit smiled fondly at the Sweetwater regent. They understood the need for allies in these times.  And he was always so careful to avoid leaving the coat of dust and grime, that perpetually seemed to follow him, on her nice table.

“This was the Queen’s will, long may she reign.” she reminded them. “Her vision is what brought us all together.”

“For now.”  The Ox Killer regent spoke softly, but everyone heard his words.

She gasped. The Ox Killers could be so obstinate, but the challenge was clear.  His eyes glared at Shale, and she could see the Torchlight leader nodding too.

“The Queen is with us eternally, and especially right now. Whether you like it or not. Long live the Queen.” she replied.

The Ox Killer smiled viciously. His teeth were filthy. 

“Long. Live. The. Queen.” he said with a smirk, drawing out each syllable in a mocking, frustrating way

Momma Rabbit puffed up, and struggled to maintain her composure.  She readied her best stern glare and prepared to rebuke the man.

Shale broke the tie before the argument could escalate.

“I understand your hesitation, but this helps the Tribes in the future.  The Queen has seen fit to choose each of you.” He looked pointedly at the Ox Killer regent, and continued. “But it appears that I am the deciding vote.”

Shale stood up, wearily, and pointed to the map in front of them.

“The further the RRC depends on the might of the Antler tribe and all of our combined strengths of the Tribes Disparate, the more prepared we are for our eventual rise. The world is changing, and we must be prepared for that new future. Let them build their railways. Let them focus on the ruins in the Bravado camp.  We have always been about our people, the common folk, and those that have been forgotten. It is through our differences we succeed, but it is through our Queen we triumph. Long may she reign.”

Prince Shale cast his gaze around the room, and each of the regents realized the truth of his words, one by one.  Even the Torchlights and the Ox Killers. No challenge would be accepted now.

Mother Rabbit beamed at Shale.  Another argument settled. The Tribes might fight, but they each meant well.

“Long live the queen!” The regents echoed, some more readily than others.

It was enough. United for now, their voices rang into the evening, and into a new future.

A Tribes Disparate Vignette by J. Loyd

Read more about the Houses of the Tribes Disparate here.

Concerning the Hiway War and her Lasting Effects (Final)

It was in the third year following the Bomb over Bravo that the Lonestar entered its proper Industrial Age. Like the common cactus plant, which grows upwards and triumphant upon the dross and rot of its older self, the workcamps of New Bravado stretched outwards and upwards towards the sun. 

Progress is exponential, theory dictates, and given the time, space and safety in which to grow, a population may reobtain and surpass their previous technological eschalon by degrees. In the relative peace of the 03’ PHW (Post-Hiway War), the people of New Bravado were given this opportunity in spades. 

Ramshackle tents and shacks were replaced piecemeal by proper frames, walls and roofs. The land was tilled and tamed by the same kind of stubborn folk that have always made these rocky scrublands their home. Bit by bit the landscape took upon the shape of a settlement, and progressively a town. Isolated, on the edges of sand and fire, New Bravado became nonetheless a destination on the minds of the brave, entrepreneurial, and desperate. 

The Ox was completed in the first four months of that year, thanks to the efforts of two Doctor O. Sam-Manual Sung and Doctor B. Squire but its maiden trek between the town of Essex and New Bravado was not until some two months later. A pilgrimage, the train was attacked by a band of Tainted, Natural Ones and Lascarians and nearly derailed. The Ox Killers, a new identity ostensibly under the power of Holy Mother Queen Jasper, claimed the effort - nearly provoking a war between the Railroad Commission and the Tribes Disparate in the weeks following. 

Felicity Redfield, CEO to the Railroad Commission, genius inventor and investor, saw opportunity where others saw conflict and negotiated a contract with the Tribes Disparate that served them both. Holy Mother Queen Jasper would keep the Ox Killers at bay, using her own soldiers as railjacks to defend the Ox as it makes its way across the Blastlands - and in return her nation state reserves the right to ship wares up and down the line between New Bravado and Essex without surcharge and to gather yearly in the boomtown for the purposes of political summit. Shale, brother and right hand to the High Mother, negotiated the bulk of this contract and it is his ambassadors that reside in New Bravado to this day. 

As a stone rolls, the town and its reputation gained inertia; the ruins below lent New Bravado the sheen of opportunity as again and again delvers dragged up artifacts and rarities that made them not humble spelunkers panning for gold, but wealthy gentlemen and women whose reputation was only outstripped by their wealth. 

It was the stories of these first delvers that drew the attention of the wastes. Three hard years stole the hope in the tired eyes of Braves and those affected by the Hiway War. Three hard years made meanness comfortable in the hearts of itinerants and refugees. But three hard years were the fallow fields in which hope would again take root because as cyclic as human wickedness is, so too is the goodness of man and the belief that better times are yet before him. 

And so the Lonestar arrived; in wagons, or flatbed trucks, on foot, or in the greasy cabins of the Ox, and by sea. The second Indulgence came and went, taking with it lives and contracts but affirming its place as a Bravado Tradition. The Punkerport grew, as did the Junkerpunk’s general resentment towards the Railroad Commission - a kind of offhand rebellion that did more to legitimize the RRC as the ultimate power and the Junkerpunks as their anti-establishment counterpoint. 

The town grew at pace in the later months of that third year, developed a haphazard culture, a half dozen work crews, infrastructure to support the delving population and the kind of halfway houses that their occupants never really leave. Private contractors sold their finds out of The Maw or liquidated them for brass to be sold up the line in Essex. 

The town developed a kind of comfortable cadence of capitalism that lasted all of two months. In the summer of that third year disaster struck in the form of western raiders that descended upon the muddy, radioactive caldera That-Was-Bravo in the first year post-bomb; Firebrands.

Festooned with bullet-casings, blast-glass and all the same bravado the town touted, the Firebrands blew up a section of track halfway between the burgeoning boomtown and Essex, rendering the rails unusable and the Ox’s goods forfeit for scavenging. Their motivations are largely unknown, though their penchant for explosions is common knowledge. 

Now, some two months following, the track’s re-completion looms. The alleys and streets of New Bravado are temporarily dark. With no way to ship down the line, the town has become isolated. Little information enters or leaves as the only mechanism by which a layperson may easily migrate is currently decommissioned at the empty rail station just south of Essex. There are whispers of strangeness, of the Mortis and her servants, and of returned persons who have no business among the living. As a scientist I am hesitant to record these claims lest I give them credence. But as a scientist I must also acknowledge that there is no more uncommon dirt than that tread by the Braves.

An old adage rings in my mind as I pen these final sentences that bring us to the contemporary state of the Town Bravado and Her Outlying Territories. This is a place that bends but does not break. That endures and endures and endures again. A roughshod and rowdy testament to the hubris of man that waxes and wanes as surely as the moon. For never in the history of the Lonestar have I known a place to render its people so stubborn or staunch. Nor have I known a scrap of land so dearly loved and returned to. 

So go west, you young and yawning; you beleaguered and bastards. Go make the world your children will live in. Go find your fortune in the sharp angled hills and dusty wells of the Worlds Before and Below.

This author lost their home when the Hiway war began in earnest. The world we live in now is not my own nor do I have the energy left in my tired bones to reclaim it. Instead I will pen your triumphs for those who follow after. Go forth and succeed knowing your victory is immortal. 

Stay Brave. 

Dr. Pernathius Goodfellow 

August 03’ PHW

Concerning the Hiway War and her Lasting Effects (cont.)

If the first year following the exodus out of the Lands Bravado was a period of reset, during which the bones of the old burned in hellfire and the culture of a people died with their constituents, then the second year was a rebirth.

Like ashes scattered over a fallow field, riotous growth followed after. The discovery of grand mystery under the old town swept us up and along like a demagogue her flock. 

At first it was a trickle - a few dedicated Delvers disappeared into the mud to find the roots of that perfect obelisk of white stone springing up and out of the caldera. Within days they returned, eyes brighter than the treasures they found and adventure on their lips.

Below us, they said, there are steel doors that guard something precious. They spoke of blinking lights that still function. Live munitions that click and whirl like analog machines. Long stretches of corridor bored out by ancient machinations that turn the stone smooth for miles and miles. Nothing like the Lascarian Tunnels of Old Bravo - twisting things chiseled by time and circumstance - but something deliberate and terrifying in its implications.

More delvers followed. Irons and Retrogrades, mutants and evolved for whom the residual radiation was merely an inconvenience, dove into the Ruins like Saltwise into brine and came up again and again with ancient metals, defunct computing devices, niceties of a fallen world and, very occasionally, the delicate pages of notes held together by little more than the careful handling of their discoverers. 

And the Lonestar heeded them. 

What happened next was a complex two-step of bureaucracy and belligerence. A paperwork whirlwind that, when the cyclone died, created a powerhouse capable of producing a dynasty.

What was previously the Road Commission laid the first tracks near Essex, the first city on what would become The Bravado Line. The newly christened Railroad Commission contracted out evolved and mutant strains to carry and lay corrugated steel and heavy wooden beams along the old trade routes between the two settlements, while Warden Tabitha St Mercy of Prudence Penitentiary employed her penitent work crews to begin the same process on the Bravado end.

Using notes safeguarded for generations, the Conglomerate, a collection of Digitarian houses who possess a great and shrouded interest in the Ruins below New Bravado, began the process of constructing the first high-powered locomotive in the Lonestar. The Ox, at that time a skeleton of iron, steel and super-plastics, would eventually become a gestalt amalgamation of construction equipment, a half dozen derelict trains and the engine of a single downed jet plane. Contracted and funded by the Railroad Commission the Conglomerate employed the great and surviving minds of scientists and psionists alike in their research centers in the town of Waking to provoke the monolithic iron horse into motion. 

But all great movements cause waves, and the process of rebirth is often as bloody as it is brilliant. For all the steel and will of its warden, Prudence Penitentiary for the Peregrine and Penalized buckled under the weight of work crews, its guardship, and the compressed conditions of its cell blocks. Riots ensued and the sickness of man was put on morbid display. In the far displaced land of New Bravado, with no larger authority to appeal to, Warden Tabitha St. Mercy closed the doors of her prison and let Wrath determine the outcome.

Colloquially we now refer to the Penitentiary as Killhouse Prison in reference to this massacre, for when the doors were opened there were little more than corpses on concrete. The survivors begged for the Warden to again resume control. Amidst her Wrath there was Pride in her work and so the Warden struck a deal with her prisoners and the tradition of the Indulgence was born. No prisoner would be made to serve more than a year in the Prison, if they were smart. For once a year all prisoner contracts would unilaterally expire, rendering them free people. Twenty-four hours later the contracts would be reinstated, the doors would close and Warden Tabitha St. Mercy would sic the Law Dogs upon the retreating backs of any prisoner who loitered in her city.

And so, with the tradition instituted and upheld, Prudence Penitentiary resumed its work on the railroad with gusto, outstripping the paid workers of the Railroad Commission by several weeks. The uptick in bodies begged a question, however. The Killhouse Massacre was the most devastatingly fatal event since the Bomb that decimated Old Bravo. Without a proper morgue, many of those first prisoners escaped, we assume. Perhaps they retreated to the Dune Sea or fled east towards the Clutch.

Both the Railroad Commission and the Prison found themselves at a loss. Without a way to control the flow of bodies, a prisoner could simply commit an infection to the cause of their escape. Without a mechanism by which to enforce order in New Bravado the system would fail, and without voluntary work crews seeking to shorten their sentences the railroad’s production would be brought to a grinding, painful halt.

The Grave Council, a collection of Undead strains lead by the powerful Takheeta Firstborn, stepped in as the solution.

Through ritual and rite the Council of Grave Decisions determined the location of each morgue-to-be. They dispatched Graverobbers and Grave Touched to these sites, and committed their own bodies to the creation of these morgues and, in a brilliant exchange of power, negotiated total ownership of these sites and the right to tax anyone who used them. 

Now that their lives and afterlives were solidly controlled under comfortable capitalism, the survivors resettling the area found a great darkness lifting - literally. A land that had been burning with hellfire now burned with the lights of hundreds of new homesteads. In the spaces between powers, the voids of civilization, new stars were lit aflame. Had these people always been here? Or were they deposited on the shores of this disaster like flotsam on the beach after a storm?

Wherever they came from, they brought with them the salt of the earth, these settlers of the lowlands and hollers. They were the early risers, once more planting the seeds of hope into the soot-streaked soil. New quiet folk for a new settlement. Keepers of the land and Tenders of the hearth. Quick with a witty comment and slow to judgement. A magnet for a network of community bonds across the region - the Lovelace Family began to be used as a surname and identity of these landsmen, hundreds of families finding kinship under their good name. Thousands of strings of stories and lives tied together in hope for a beautiful agricultural future.

And among these quiet neighbors, there remained institutions of charity and well-being. Now that the immediate harm of the Great Disaster was healing, the Widows of the Lonestar turned their eyes to where else their kindly influence could improve the lives of others. They took a keen interest in the work of the Grave Council, and lent their weight into helping to prepare places of sanctuary and rest for those weary from work, sickness, and disease. Anyone seeking a meal, bed, or safety at their door was never turned away - including a large number of those who managed to escape the tall walls of Killhouse Prison. Above all, they sought to protect a populace that had, for too long, been victimized. 

To the north the Tribes Disparate under Holy Mother Queen Jasper thrived. Maintaining a friendly rapport with the Braves that saved their people, Jasper committed workers to the cause of re-building the city of Bravado even as she kept an iron grip on the thirteen tribes that writhed and strove beneath her. Houses formed, with figureheads who swear fealty to the Holy Mother in a feudal framework that benefits both the Lady and those who report to her. The individual tribes vie for her attention and favor, some committed by blood and sword - others by convenience.

The Junkerpunks, a loose coalition of seafaring folk, begin to earn the name alluded to in the first chapter of this long-form essay. Among their ragtag ranks a leader emerged, a Saltwise of dangerous charisma and wit, Sinker Swim captains the flagship of the Junkerpunk flotilla. 

The nature of their separation from the naysayers of the Clutch encouraged in the Junkerpunks an  underdog mentality that never truly left their culture. Seeking out the downtrodden, desperate, and dangerous to swell their ranks the Junkerpunks quickly became known as pirates, bandits - but also coy merchants in an era where few ships navigated the inland seas of the Spoiled Coast.

It was this mercantile mindset, this author believes, that lead the Junkerpunks to build a modern-day Tortuga in the middle of the lake that was Old Bravo. The marina, cheekily called the Punkerport by locals, trucks in undocumented finds from the Ruins as much as it does raw imports of food and supplies for the delve-camps there.

The Junkerpunks, in the second year of their watery pilgrimages, found an accord with the Spiderhause Redstar who have, in recent years, taken up residence in Essex and its surrounding plane-space. Both underdogged, both committed to uplifting those who otherwise do not have the means to achieve their own strength, the members of Spiderhause left the land that had treated them poorly to try again on the open sea. What the Junkerpunks lack in organizational skills and raw, coordinated strength, the Redstars of Spiderhause make up for in spades.

In the second year following the Bomb that destroyed Old Bravo, the world began again to turn. The hole in the sky closed up, mostly. The water in the lake might never be drinkable in our lifetime but the fish seem to like it just fine. The riotous growth-post-nuclear burned in the summer and regrew again in the following spring, just as it always has. These events in isolation beget no particular question. But in aggregate, in the context of the bomb and its thereafter effects, this author wonders aloud what arcane circumstances render this land livable again after only two years. And if the truth of this place is merely old, or truly ancient.

It is said around these parts that things are happening that have happened before. But it is this author’s humble opinion that previous trends do not indicate future behavior. And that just because something has happened before, does not mean it will always happen.

-  “Concerning the Hiway War and Her Lasting Effects”

By: Dr. Perenthius Goodfellow