This Is Not A Test Koyote

[Hupp n at em]

That's an awesome map!    Where did you get the original image?  I'd love to pursue a similar source for Chicago for an eventual campaign.

[Koyote]

That's an awesome map!    Where did you get the original image?  I'd love to pursue a similar source for Chicago for an eventual campaign.

Thanks.

The perspective is called a “bird’s eye view”.  This particular map was made by the Kroll Map Company in 1925.  I found it using a Google image search for maps of Seattle. I used MS Paint to modify it and add the text.

I recommend doing a search for ‘birds eye view map Chicago’.

[ecurtz]

Bravo!

Although personally I think you should swap New Innsmouth and the Knights of Machina Compound.

[Hupp n at em]

Thanks.

The perspective is called a “bird’s eye view”.  This particular map was made by the Kroll Map Company in 1925.  I found it using a Google image search for maps of Seattle. I used MS Plaint to modify it and add the text.

I recommend doing a search for ‘birds eye view map Chicago’.

Awesome, thanks!

[Koyote]

The first player faction of the campaign is the Tribals.  For them, I have created this background.

The Duwamish


When the End War came to Seattle, the Magnolia neighborhood was a quiet, fairly affluent corner of the city, whose residents enjoyed their views of Elliot Bay, Bainbridge Island, and the Ballard Locks.  Located on a small peninsula, Magnolia’s most popular attraction was Discovery Park, 500 acres of forests, trails, beaches, and wide-open green spaces.

Discovery Park wasn’t always such a welcoming space. During the first three-quarters of the 20th Century, the land that would become Discovery Park was the military base, Fort Lawton.  Originally built as an artillery battery intended to defend Seattle from naval attack, in later years the fort served as a base of operations for a regiment of America’s Buffalo soldiers, a POW camp, a major embarkation point for soldiers and materials headed to war in the Pacific Theater, and finally as radar surveillance and air defense missile base.

Magnolia’s distance from ground zero, Seattle’s hilly geography, and the direction of the prevailing winds, spared the little peninsula from the worst of the destruction and fallout caused by the low yield nuclear bomblet that vaporized most of Lake Washington.  When the rain of destruction ended, Magnolia’s survivors quickly realized that they were on their own.  Fearful of follow up attacks, the survivors unsealed Fort Lawton’s centuries old underground bunkers and fortified casemates and made these dark, secure places their new homes.

Unlike the powerful and numerous Salish tribes to the north, the people who would eventually call themselves ‘the Duwamish’ did not descend from the region’s original native peoples.  Their ancestors were overwhelmingly of European descent.  Nevertheless, rather than model their post-End War civilization on the willful ignorance and avarice of pre-End War America and Europe, they elected to live, more or less, in harmony with what was left of the natural world.

Isolationists from the beginning and fearful of the many plagues brought about by “the Enemy’s” use of biological weapons, Magnolia’s survivors banded together and spent the first few decades after the End War, mercilessly killing any outsider who set foot on their small peninsula, and using the skulls of their victims to mark the boundaries of their territory.  It is from these years of bloodshed and violence that the myth of the wild men of Mad-Nolia was born.  Today, only the very desperate or very foolhardy will knowingly venture into the territory of the Wild Men.

Despite having access to clean wells and wide swaths of relatively unpolluted green areas, life on the peninsula isn’t easy.  Even before the End War, the soil was not well suited to farming, and the Duwamish do not keep livestock, nor is there any large, wild game to be found on the peninsula. Nevertheless, between their gardens of stunted crops, the Pacific Northwest’s ubiquitous black berry bushes, harvesting seaweed and shell fish from their northern beaches, and trapping rodents, sea birds, and peculiar species of phosphorescent rabbit that the Duwamish call green-hoppers, the Duwamish have managed to survive and prosper in relative isolation.

[Koyote]

The second player faction of the campaign is the Peacekeepers.  For them, I have created this background.

Precinct 13


The day the bombs fell was slated to be the grand opening of Seattle’s newest and most technologically advanced multi-purpose police station, Precinct 13.  Built a good distance away from the city’s core and on high ground, with a good view of the surrounding city in three directions, Precinct 13 was also designed to serve as the headquarters and communication hub of Seattle’s Office of Emergency Management. Due to its planned role in future natural and man-made disasters, Precinct 13 was built to withstand earthquakes, wild fires, hurricane winds, and light weapons.  Its elevation above sea level safeguarded it against flood and tsunami events.  The structure housed an armory, limited food stores, and state-of-the-art air and water filtration systems.  Radiation shielding was built into its reinforced walls, to protect its occupant from the effects of a dirty bomb.

What Precinct 13 wasn’t designed to protect against were the low yield, tactical nuclear weapons and conventional munitions that targeted Seattle during the End War, so when the bombs stopped falling, all that remained of the multi-story Precinct 13 building was its ground floor and its underground bunker, armory, and storage vaults.

In the days and weeks that followed Seattle’s destruction, Precinct 13’s surviving officers did their best to restore order and lend aid to Seattle’s survivors, but the scale of the destruction was too great and their man power and resources were too few.  Eventually, Precinct 13’s commander directed her remaining officers to bring their surviving family members into the station and ordered that the doors and storm shutters be sealed.

Three months later, with their food stores running low, Precinct 13’s eleven surviving officers and their families had no choice but to unseal the doors and send out scouting and foraging parties.  The world they found was both better and worse than they expected.  Conventional, nuclear, and biological weapons had rapidly depopulated city, leaving behind enough food stores to feed Precinct 13’s families, for years, but the city was in ruins.  Clean water was in short supply, as were pharmaceuticals, and petrochemical fuel.  Fearless packs of wild dogs and swarms of enormous rats that had become accustomed to feeding on human carrion, roamed the broken streets and infested most every structure.  Life wouldn’t be easy for the surviving officers and their families, but thanks to Precinct 13’s reinforced walls, armory, and functioning air and water purifiers, the officers and their families would survive.

When people began to return to parts of the city, they brought with them the violence, strife, and struggle that has plagued mankind since time immemorial.  Dismayed but not surprised by the surviving Seattleites willingness to kill, rape, and rob one another, the officers recognized the depravity as an opportunity to ply their trade and perhaps do a bit of good.  It was from this chaos and turmoil that Precinct 13’s officers and their decedents remade their future, as Peacekeepers.

[Corporal Chaos]

Both are very well thought out and very believable. Good job.

[Koyote]

Both are very well thought out and very believable. Good job.

Thanks.

To the best of my knowledge, the history that I used for Fort Lawton is true. 

In 1909, 900 men of the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry Regiment (Buffalo Soldiers) were transferred to Fort Lawton from the Philippines. I haven't dug much deeper into their history, but my guess is that while they were Philippines, they were part of the post-Spanish American war occupation force. 

During WW2 Fort Lawton was the second busiest embarkation point on the west coast for men and supplies headed to the Pacific.  More than a million men pass through Fort Lawton in this way.

The POW camp house about 1000 Germans POWs and several thousand more Italian POWs passed through Fort Lawton en route to other locations.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Fort Lawton's arsenal included Nike anti-aircraft missiles.

Interesting stuff.

[Muzfish4]

Terrific stuff - really well written and well thought out.

I look forward to following this mini campaign with great interest.

[Corporal Chaos]

It is really neat to be able to put a touch of reality into our fictional worlds. The fact you did research is a good indicator of how much you put into your games. Again good job.

[syrinx0]

This is shaping up to be a great looking campaign.  Impressive work!

[Koyote]

The third player faction of the campaign is the Renegade Reclaimers.  It's a bit longer than I had originally planned, but it covers the backstory of both the Preservers and Renegade Reclaimers, so the length seems appropriate.  And since this story is not a commercial product, I did away with Horowitz and used the saint's true name.

The Knights Machina


The Preservation Movement came to Seattle in rough-spun cassocks and mounted on two ill-tempered donkeys.  Brothers Francis and Gerard were monks of the Order of Saint Leibowitz.  They had made the 850-mile journey from Diocese of Salt Lake to Seattle to plant the seeds of the Preservation Movement and recover the lost wonders created by the Pre-Fall tech giants that once called Western Washington home.

The Leibowitzians’ hopes of recovering artifacts from Microsoft’s headquarters were shattered when the two monks arrived at the edge of a series of massive overlapping craters where the 8 million square foot campus once stood.  Recovered security footage from nearby facilities later revealed that ‘The Enemy’ had targeted Microsoft’s Redmond campus with successive waves of conventional and incendiary munitions.  Some members of the Order speculate that ‘The Enemy’ razed Microsoft because it feared its technological might, while others posit that Windows’ endless updates and its universally hated blue screen of death were to blame. 

Undaunted by this early setback, the pair of monks forged ahead.  Equipped with only a plasma rifle (Brother Francis was an expert marksman) and a data pad containing the Order’s tenets and terabytes of information describing the function, maintenance, and repair of many of the Last Americans’ technological wonders, the Leibowitzian monks would eventually establish two Preserver enclaves west of the Cascade Mountains.  The first enclave was created on the site of the Nintendo campus (later shortened to the “Tendo Campus”).  Twelve years later, Brother Francis led a well-armed expedition across the blasted basin of Lake Washington and into the ruins of Seattle where he established a second Preserver enclave in the miraculously intact, cathedral-like Suzzallo Library, located on the grounds of the University of Washington.

Brothers Francis and Gerard continued their good work many years, before dying of natural causes in their late fifties (truly old in Post-Fall America).  After their passing a rift developed between the two Preserver enclaves.  Some lay the blame for the rift at the feet of the enclaves’ founders, who were notorious for their incessant bickering with one another.  Others say that the enmity was sparked by the dispute over who would assume leadership of the University enclave after the passing of brother Francis.  Regardless of its source, the animosity between the Preserver groups deepened with every passing year, until the two camps found themselves on the brink of war. 

The end of the University enclave came as its members were preparing to celebrate the 90^th anniversary of the enclave’s founding.  Betrayed from within by an indentured laborer who disabled the compound’s early warning sensor perimeter, the University enclave was infiltrated in the dead of night by a Tendo strike force. The ensuing battle was entirely one sided.  The Tendo Reclaimers secured the Suzzallo armory and eliminated most of the University’s leadership before the University's Reclaimers fired their first shot.

Nineteen University Reclaimers, savants, and servants, led by Reclaimer Captain Maximus, used a secret tunnel and sally point to escape the compound, but not before Maximus himself set the timer on the University’s doomsday device.  When triggered, five lead lined cannisters connected to the compound’s ventilation system flooded Suzzallo and the adjoining buildings with poisonous radiological gas, killing everyone inside the compound and irradiating the buildings and their contents, thus forever denying the Tendo enclave the use of the University’s armory and technological artifacts.

Fearful that the gas may spread beyond University compound, Maximus and his followers fled in the direction of prevailing wind, only stopping when they reached the cliffs overlooking the Salish Sea. 

Labeled ‘renegades’ by the sole remaining Preserver enclave west of the Cascades, Maximus knew that the survival of his Renegade Reclaimers depended upon prioritizing security and the martial arts over the Preserver’s precepts of scholarship, science, and preserving the great works of the Pre-Fall world.  With this in mind, Maximus modeled the Renegade Reclaimers new enclave after feudal kingdoms of the far distant past.  Maximus assumed the mantle of the enclave’s lord and his remaining Reclaimers would be his knights and bannermen.  The enclaves' savants and indentured laborers would be the kingdom’s peasant class, who in exchange for their lord’s protection, would give Maximus and his knights homage, labor, and a share of the food they harvested or foraged.  And thus, the Knights Machina were formed.

[Koyote]

My mutant cultist warband will serve as one of the main antagonists in the campaign. I don't have enough rank-and-file cultist models painted for what I have planned, so I've assembled two more.




As part of my effort to break up all the grey on my TNT board, I'm going to add Western Washington's ubiquitous Himalayan blackberry bushes to my collection of TNT terrain.  Classified here in Washington as a noxious weed, this fast growing, thorny shrub is not native to our region.  If left uncontrolled it creates impenetrable thickets of thorny vines that out-competes all native understory vegetation.  Its berries are tasty, but because its very hard to kill and spreads quickly, it's essentially the cockroach of plant world. If any shrub is going to survive the apocalypse, it will be the Himalayan blackberry.

My tabletop version of these bushes are easy to make, and since I'm not making them from flock or moss, they are very durable and won't shed little bits everywhere.

The scour pads are roughly an inch thick, so to make the bush pictured below I cut one pad in half and stacked the two pieces on top of one another. By pressing them together and and twisting the two halves in different directions, the bristles will interlock well enough that you can use a pair of scissors shape the bush.  Once satisfied with the shape, you can pull the two pieces apart, apply a generous amount of white glue to the bottom of the top half and then put them back together again, using the same twisting technique.

I mounted the bush on a styrene base and used white glue and Woodland Scenic's medium ballast to added texture to the base.  Once dry I primered it with Army Painter's Leather Brown spray primer and then painted the bush green using inexpensive acrylic paints that I buy in 8 ounce bottles from a local craft store.  I started with a dark green.  Once that was dry, I brushed on areas of lighter green to add a bit of highlighting. 

I painted the base and added tufts to match the my existing TNT terrain and models.






I have eleven more ready for texture and paint.

[FreakyFenton]

My mutant cultist warband will serve as one of the main antagonists in the campaign. I don't have enough rank-and-file cultist models painted for what I have planned, so I've assembled two more.




As part of my effort to break up all the grey on my TNT board, I'm going to add Western Washington's ubiquitous Himalayan blackberry bushes to my collection of TNT terrain.  Classified here in Washington as a noxious weed, this fast growing, thorny shrub is not native to our region.  If left uncontrolled it creates impenetrable thickets of thorny vines that out-competes all native understory vegetation.  Its berries are tasty, but because its very hard to kill and spreads quickly, it's essentially the cockroach of plant world. If any shrub is going to survive the apocalypse, it will be the Himalayan blackberry.

My tabletop version of these bushes are easy to make, and since I'm not making them from flock or moss, they are very durable and won't shed little bits everywhere.

The scour pads are roughly an inch thick, so to make the bush pictured below I cut one pad in half and stacked the two pieces on top of one another. By pressing them together and and twisting the two halves in different directions, the bristles will interlock well enough that you can use a pair of scissors shape the bush.  Once satisfied with the shape, you can pull the two pieces apart, apply a generous amount of white glue to the bottom of the top half and then put them back together again, using the same twisting technique.

I mounted the bush on a styrene base and used white glue and Woodland Scenic's medium ballast to added texture to the base.  Once dry I primered it with Army Painter's Leather Brown spray primer and then painted the bush green using inexpensive acrylic paints that I buy in 8 ounce bottles from a local craft store.  I started with a dark green.  Once that was dry, I brushed on areas of lighter green to add a bit of highlighting. 

I painted the base and added tufts to match the my existing TNT terrain and models.






I have eleven more ready for texture and paint.

They are vicious, those blackberries. Eat up whole greenhouses if not cut back. Somehow mooch their way back into society through fruit/jam dealings.

[Hupp n at em]

Going to sound like a broken record but man, you really don't know how to post anything that's not top notch do you?   
Love that your renegade reclaimers have a (at least initially) sympathetic background - being essentially the victims of the (in my mind) more aggressive prototypical RR faction, like the Brotherhood Outcasts from Fallout 3.
Those thornberry bushes turned out great as well and seem like wonderfully cheap and low-effort but great-looking LOS-blockers/scatter terrain. Great stuff!