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Our Adventures in the Wasted West...
A Bit of History...
The year is 2094, but the future is not our own.
For over 200 years, a Cold War was waged between the United and Confederate States of America. The American Civil War ended in a stalemate in the late 1800s, leaving the South a free and independent nation. A long, tense peace was punctuated by brief spasms of violence and briefer moments of cooperation for a greater good.
The long Cold War came to an end on September 23, 2081, at 6:17 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
Judgment Day arrived on the wings of irradiated ghost rock bombs, leaving about six billion dead. Of the billion or so who survived, most fell victim to starvation, disease, random violence, and worse in the chaotic days following the end of the world.
In 2044, Hellstromme Industries announced a project that would change the world. And another world on top of that. The geniuses at HI built something called “the Tunnel,” which could propel a ship at fasterthan- light speeds to other star systems. Within a few years, they even found a way to a new system they dubbed “Faraway,” complete with an inhabited planet called Banshee—for its howling winds.
Banshee was home to a race of purple-skinned creatures called “anouks,” who seemed a lot like early American Indians to the first colonists who landed there. They traded with some, warred with others, and then made the discovery that would change everything. Banshee had ghost rock.
That became especially important in 2078 when a geologist named Gerhard Hauptman published the Hauptman Survey. He concluded the earth’s supply of ghost rock would be exhausted in about 20 years. Wealthier nations stocked colony ships full of miners—and soldiers—and paid Hellstromme Industries exorbitant fees to hurl them through the Tunnel to Faraway. War broke out literally hours after the first colonists arrived and the United Nations sent their first armed troops (and later starships) through to keep the peace. Of course the less-developed countries couldn’t afford colonies on Banshee, so they fought over what was left back on earth.
The War to End The World
Eventually these wars spread to the larger countries and their entangled alliances. Both the USA and CSA had treaties all over the world, and North America was hands down the continent with the richest ghost rock deposits. When the American nations called on their allies, they came running and North America soon became the focal point for World War III.
The Northern Alliance consisted of the People’s Republic of China, Deseret, France, the Latin American Alliance, South Africa, and the United States itself.
The Southern Alliance included the Confederate States, the Warsaw Pact (still a political bloc despite the dissolution of the Soviet Union nearly a century before), Great Britain, Canada, Japan, Germany, and Russia. By the end of 2080, America—along with the rest of the world—was awash in blood.
The Eye of the Storm
Just as they had in World War II, heroes rose. Some fought on the battlefield, some strove for peace, and others quietly fought
the secret horrors rising in the violence of war.
Just before Christmas of 2080, President Mary Tremane of the United States, President Jonas Sothby of the Confederacy, and their allies agreed to a cease-fire. On New Year’s Eve, the two presidents issued a joint press release declaring their intent to negotiate a more permanent peace.
Shortly after taking off from Denver on New Year’s Day, Tremane’s aircraft disappeared over the Rockies. Theories abound as to what happened to the presidential plane, ranging from a freak electrical storm to assassination by air-to air missile. Sothby immediately issued his sincere regrets, but Tremane’s successor, Andrew Bates, wasn’t hearing it. He believed the Southern Alliance had shot Air Force One out of the sky and said as much on national television. Peace talks disintegrated and Bates threatened to nuke a Confederate city every week until the Confederacy ceded Southern California as “payment” for Tremane’s assassination. It was the first time any nation had seriously threatened using the awesome power of a ghost rock bomb.
The Beginning of the End
Most folks knew “A-Bomb Andy’s” threats were the beginning of the end and they were right. Fighting broke out all over the
world within hours. Germany invaded Mexico, the heart of the Latin American Alliance, and also mixed it up with French troops guarding their embassy in Mexico City. In retaliation, French forces in Europe marched across the Rhine to invade Germany, then turned around to repulse a British invasion across the English Channel.
Fiercely cruel battles broke out in Asia, Africa, and South America. Russia and Japan invaded China. South Africa charged north, carving through the smaller nations tremendous oil fields of the Middle East were set aflame as Iran and Iraq renewed their age-old enmity. Still, no one had dropped a ghost rock bomb. A-Bomb Andy had started folks talking about it, but no one had actually yet had the nerve to do it.
Then Pakistan launched a single tac-nuke against India and the nuclear genie was out of the bottle.
The Big Bang
The Pakistani nuke was the shot heard round the world. The unspoken rule had been broken and ghost rock bombs were
now fair game. A few weeks later, Great Britain tossed a nuke at France’s coastal defenses to pave the way for a new amphibious invasion, planned to coincide with a German counterattack against France. Russia came to France’s aid and all of Europe erupted in flame.
In North America, the Canadians anted up with nukes of their own, directed against Union border defenses in Washington and New England. Within a couple days, the Canadians took Boston and proceeded south to rendezvous with a Confederate
division for an attack on Washington, DC.
Suddenly, A-Bomb Andy was up against the wall. Worse, he turned out to have a case of the deep-down crazies. Some think
he had a psychotic break thanks to the stress he’d been under since the death of Mary Tremane, but others now wonder if a more nefarious force had pushed him along to destroy the world. Whatever the case, he lived up to his name and turned to his last resort: scorched earth. Scorched planet Earth.
The first Union bombs fell at 6:17 p.m. EST, September 23, 2081. The firestorm swept the globe. Andy launched the entire US arsenal, and CSA Strategic Command retaliated in kind. About half of the nations’ nukes were aimed at each other and the rest were fired off at cities around the world. Most every important target on Earth was hit.
Ghost Busters
Most of the bombs that fell on Judgment Day were city busters, sometimes called “ghost busters” because of the ghost rock inside. These weapons were designed to kill everyone in a city without completely destroying its strategic value. Of course, that ignored the thousands of screaming souls unleashed on the earth and the damage they did in the resulting “ghost storm.” From ground zero to about five miles out, all but the biggest, toughest buildings were reduced to rubble, and pretty much everyone was flash-fried by ghost rock-fueled radiation. Around this area formed a solid wall of screaming souls—a ghost storm.
From the ten-foot thick walls of the maelstrom out to another 30 miles, the blast didn’t do much to the landscape, but killed about half the population. Even a bomb shelter wouldn’t save you, as what killed most folks outside of ground zero were the damned souls released by the bomb’s ghost rock core. Those who weren’t killed by this demonic whirlwind were warped or mutated by the supernatural and radioactive energy.
After everyone was done dying and mutating, the maelstroms remained. The spirits still swirl about the perimeter, but they no longer instantly kill or mutate anyone who passes through.
The Deadlands
The worst part of the land around a blast site—usually confined by the maelstrom— becomes a Deadland. Plants die, creatures mutate into monsters, and horrors plucked right out of humanity’s worst nightmares come to life. Few believed in the existence of magic and monsters before the war, but there was certainly no denying it afterward. All together, the detonations occurring within the space of a week created thousands of Deadlands. Those closest together—the ones that fell in areas with high population densities like Europe, China, and the eastern areas of the USA and CSA—linked together, turning the Earth into one great big pit of fear. This was the terrible outcome the Reckoners had been working toward all those long years.
Come the Horsemen
Shortly after the dust settled, the Reckoners themselves appeared on Earth, straight out of the Book of Revelations. The four entities of destruction first appeared in the American West, where the fighting prior to Judgment Day was at its worst.
War showed up in Kansas, raised an army of the dead, and then stomped his way through the Dakotas.
Famine popped up in California, knocked what was left of the City of Lost Angels flat, and headed East with a trail of starvation behind her.
Pestilence was a late starter, only appearing in Texas a couple weeks later. He quickly made up for lost time and led his army of plague zombies on a rampage through Texas, Louisiana, and points East.
Death rose in Death Valley, leaving a trail of corpses all the way to the Mississippi.
The Reckoners spent fifteen years on a murderous world tour, leaving millions dead
in their wake.
After Judgment Day, it didn’t take long for folks to start building a new world from the ashes of the old. People are pretty resilient, and they quickly gathered in communities and groups of various sizes. Unfortunately, it’s as likely as not these communities are dedicated to stomping on other communities and taking their stuff.
It’s a hard world out there.
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