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Topic Project: A map of Post Apocalypse North America

Poster	Message	Date
Tamara	I am Tamara Park, and I've decided to try a little project. I've always loved maps, so I decided to try to make a map of the United States in the COLA-verse. Not exactly easy given that I'm pretty much a neophyte here and I'm not very familiar with existing Roleplay that would reflect what the world outside COLA is actually like. I would like to make a quick writeup and map just to get a conversation going. The point here is to make a bunch of assumptions, and have everyone correct where existing roleplay has already answered some of these questions, and hopefully offer ideas and alternatives where they haven't. I imagine quite a bit, if not all, of this initial writeup will be trashed, but hopefully it could inspire some ideas for storylines or shore up people's personal stories! It also seems obvious that whatever people have already written up for their personal storylines should take precedence over my own meanderings here. So far I am extrapolating quite a bit based on my own knowledge of the world and this following quote from the game background: “And now we stand in the thousand years of war, the world is a very different place, humans and vampires and lycans and demons and angels and nekos and supernatural beings all fight for the future they want to make happen, in the Pacifica territory of the Confederated Republic of North America, completely cut off in contact from the Central Badlands and the Atlantica Territory, in the city now known only as Lost Angel's.” Let's break this down a bit... [url=http://img16.imageshack.us/my.php?image=colanorthamericapu0.jpg][img]http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/9233/colanorthamericapu0.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://g.imageshack.us/img16/colanorthamericapu0.jpg/1/][img]http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/colanorthamericapu0.jpg/1/w512.png[/img][/url] Confederated Republic of North America All I know about this is that it has 'territories' one of which is called Pacifica and has Lost Angels as a city within it. From the name 'confederated' it would seem that there is much stronger regional government, implying more of a trade or mutual defense treaty between mostly autonomous territories. This would also seem to fit the story better, so you can't rely on “feds” to come and save your monkey ass from the doomsday of the week. Presumably the CRNA is mostly related to trade, establishes a central currency (“dollars” dare I say?) that allows some nominal business to thrive between the territories. Still there are a lot of questions here. Is there a President of the CRNA? A council of the heads of the various territories? What ARE the other territories? Obviously Pacifica is just one among them. If they're cut off from 'Atlantica' by the central badlands, it would imply communities along the pacific coast. What is the government's attitude towards supernatural beings? Are they ruled by vampires as is implied by the writeup of the background? If so is this common knowledge or something hidden from the public? Pacifica Presumably Pacifica is, well, coastal along the Pacific. I r smarty! So I drew it mostly occupying territory along the California coast. Given the terrain of the state, I think its likely that much of the southern desert region/inland empire would revert to the Central Badlands instead of being realistically controllable, with COLA serving as sort of a wedge against the lawlessness beyond. Presumably COLA is the dominant city in Pacifica but not necessarily the seat of government. What other communities are part of Pacifica territory? Who runs it? Is it a democracy? Do we vote for things? Is there a tyrant of some kind who rules with an iron fist? The background seems to indicate that the Coven is in charge. Is this true? If so, does the Coven head in COLA run the entire territory or answer to some distant Coven Leader Supreme? Other CRNA Territories Okay I have no idea what these are, and this section is pulled completely from my nether regions. I am assuming that the CRNA is stretched along the pacific coast with a vast Central Badlands cutting them off from realistic contact and trade with anything along the East Coast or Gulf of Mexico. This doesn't give us a lot to work with when looking for possible other CRNA territories. The most obvious first candidate would be the pacific northwest areas of Seattle, Vancouver and Portland. I tentatively marked this region down on the map as one territory called 'Northwest' but they could all realistically be their own autonomous city states. These are three fairly major cities and they're out of the way enough that they are likely to get left mostly to their own devices. Actually these three seem like they are more likely to be sane and stable states rather than Pacifica, no offense Californians. I am semi picturing these three cities being something of the bedrock of west coast civilization and providing a lot of the background infrastructure that COLA takes for granted. Business, currency, water, power, building materials, etc that a civilization needs to maintain itself. This would allow for things to keep operating while Pacifica / COLA stays a basket case in constant turmoil but somehow able to stay alive with the lifeline to the boring old northwest. The next most obvious candidate is Baja California. I have trouble imagining Mexico staying together if the US breaks down. I mean, in the news they are already seemingly on the verge of collapse! I can see Baja breaking off as its own territory and joining the CRNA for stability. Like Northwest, storywise this region would mostly serve as a resource for COLA to survive. I see them as a sort of breadbasket, providing a lot of the food that all us COLA city folk eat. Its gotta come from somewhere after all. In this growing picture, Pacifica/COLA becomes almost like a weirdness magnet and 'shield wall' protecting Baja and Northwest from attack from the Badlands. This makes it the natural hub of stories as everywhere else is more boring and uneventful. There aren't many other potential CRNA states I can really think of. Las Vegas could be a sort of desert city state. If so I think it would take away a bit from COLA as the bleeding edge of civilization. It also seems like “Sin City” would be a likely place to serve as a Brood Citadel in their war against the Choir. I tentatively marked it as part of the Central Badlands overrun by demons. But its a potential! Salt Lake and Denver are also potentials, but they're definitely getting into Central Badlands territory. I again very tentatively marked Salt Lake City down as a Choir Citadel. I can imagine battles between Salt Lake and Las Vegas creating a big sort of magical wasteland between them out in the mountains and deserts, a sort of no mans land. THE CENTRAL BADLANDS Well... this one seems fairly obvious. The Central Badlands are the majority of the Rocky Mountains, the southwestern deserts from Southern California to Western Texas, the Great Plains, and down into Mexico. Seems fairly obvious. How Bad are the badlands? They serve as a barrier to trade and easy communication between enclaves of civilization on the coasts. That's pretty bad I guess. I can see this region serving as the North American front line in the (ongoing??) war between demons and angels. What is daily life like out here? I am imagining that its not completely devoid of life. There are a few potential autonomous outposts of civilization. Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Denver, El Paso all seem likely to maintain some kind of something. I've already tentatively listed the first two, Las Vegas and Salt Lake, as brood and choir citadels. Denver seems like a potential for some kind of city state. El Paso too. What about in between? I imagine roving gangs, supernatural dominated villages, little medieval style villages with vampire monarchs and human blood doll peasants, etc. You could have just about anything out here as an isolated town. I marked a few ideas out for semi coherent clans/territories/gangs. The Idaho Aryan Brotherhood seems like it could keep itself together as a large roving gang. Maybe its too many bad movies, but I somehow see them being controlled or influenced by Lycans. The Nuestra Familia, or the Mexican Mob, seems like it could become the default government in Mexico in real life, much less in our fictional universe. I could see Mexico devolving into rival gang factions, each dominated by a different supernatural faction using them as shock troops. Mexico already has a tradition of Brujas or witches. So this seems like something of a natural for the storyline. Finally I see Native American tribes reacting to and surviving in the post apoc period better than white settlers, and establish quick friendly ties with both Lycans and various supernaturals. I also assume they would not be so eager to join up with the CRNA after that little ahem, mass genocide and land stealing thing of the past. They could have a sort of invisible alternative coalition of tribes that rivalled the CRNA in population and government structure out in the badlands, but rarely got marked on any white people's maps. ATLANTICA Now we have a state called Atlantica mentioned. Obviously its along the Atlantic Ocean durr... but other than that we don't know a lot about it. I am assuming its along the Northern Atlantic Coast, basically including New England and Eastern Canada. This is mainly because the Northeast and Southeast seem to really REALLY hate each other and I don't really picture them working together unless some outside force compelled them. I don't know a whole lot about the ins and outs of this region. Is this Purifier Territory? Is it separate? I dunno. For storyline purposes, this is getting far enough 'over the horizon' from COLA that it starts to not matter. Its 'that place that we can't get to because of the badlands.' I don't know a lot about New England so I am not sure I can make any safe assumptions about what this region would be like. THE REST OF NORTH AMERICA Now this again is completely untouched in our brief world description above, so its either a blank canvas or whatever people have already done in their individual roleplay. I am picturing two regions that seem like they would hold together well even after an apocalypse, both regions with strong regional characters and cohesiveness: Texas and Quebec. Quebec could become part of Atlantica, but they seem like they've always wanted to be their own country, and why not give it to them even if only in a fictional universe? Texas is a bit more problematic. I'm a native Texan so I assume if fraking California can hold it together, then Texas should have no problems! However, as a storyteller, Texas as a semi civilized and stable post apoc region gives us some problems. It doesn't seem out of the bounds of possibility that you could travel by heavily armored caravan from Baja to Texas and from Texas to Atlantica. If that's true, the Central Badlands lose some of their bite don't they? Then its merely a very inconvenient trip from coast to coast. Certainly terrible by our spoiled 21st century standards, but not so bad compared to the ages of exploration in the past, and definitely within the realm of human possibility. Is this a bad thing? We have had a purifiers storyline already, so clearly it is not impossible for dedicated people to make the trip. If there is a Texas Republic, it kind of seems like a natural for the Purifiers doesn't it? I've marked DC down as a Brood citadel as well because, really, I can't think of a bigger nexus of sin, greed, and evil than a city full of that lowest of lifeform... politicians. Seems like the brood would sweep in on a feeding frenzy pretty easy. THOSE PESKY PURIFIERS Where exactly are these guys from? The only thing I have heard is that they nuked Chicago and Cincinnati for reasons I'm not clear on. I marked those cities down on the map as a nuke zone. I seem to recall hearing about three primary Purifier cities. Need more info! OTHER STORYLINES Do you have a background that involves coming from somewhere other than COLA? If so please let me know so we can integrate our backgrounds together into as coherent a picture of the North American landscape as possible!	02/17/09 19:21
James Saito	[b]The Purifiers:[/b] Founded by remnants of the old United States government, the Purifiers were a group of humans that initially escaped the fires of the apocalypse in a secret underground bunker nestled underneath Boston. They were comprised mostly of scientists, technicians and military personnel. One year after the so-called end of the world, they emerged from underneath the surface of the scorched world in force, wishing to restore humanity's rightful place as the dominant species of the Earth. At first, they were highly ineffective, beaten back and slaughtered. Something changed about a month after they emerged, however. A group of heavily armed and armored elites led the charge, genetically modified and wielding devastating advanced technology. Boston fell in a matter of days, re-christened New Babylon as the non-humans fled or were captured. They had somehow developed a way to cut-off the invisible chords which held the celestials and demon forces to their realms, as well as a technology which could destroy hellgates and portals to the heavens. It was in this time that the mysterious leader, a man with no name, began to make himself known. He had come to the Purifiers with the know-how to help them destroy all in their path. The Elite Program, which produced Anubis and his ilk, was their most stunning success. One Elite could do the work of hundreds of soldiers. With this foundation set, they spread out and began consuming and dominating everything they touched. Washington DC and Pittsburgh became their next targets, conquered in weeks. They were re-christened New Jericho and New Canaan respectively. It was then that the resistance began to form, composed of non-humans and human sympathizers that believed the Purifier's game plan was too extreme. These resistance groups fight until this very day, attempting to overthrow the Purifiers, destroy their concentration camps, and free their captured brethren. It was then that the rumors of Lost Angels reached the ears of the Purifier leader. There were several places like it, true, but Lost Angels seemed to be a city which attracted all manner of strange events and powerful creatures to it like a giant magnet. Thus, the majority of the Elites, and a force of five hundred grunts marched westward. Along the way, they did as much damage as they could, utterly destroying Cleveland with a salvaged nuclear device, and doing tremendous damage to Chicago and Cincinnati as well with smaller nuclear devices, piecemeal, and the strange powers that the Elites possessed. By the time they reached Lost Angels, the Purifiers had left a trail of dead in their wake. Cleveland had become a massive nuclear crater, inhabited by all manner of twisted, irradiated creatures. Deep in the crater, they formed a rudimentary society and began sending out raiding parties, cannibalizing settlements around them. The story of what happened to the Purifiers in Lost Angels is known to all that were there. They had underestimated the citizens of the cursed city. Even with all their might, they were eventually routed, the majority of the Elites killed. What happened to Anubis and the remaining forces is a story for another time. A story which is eventually coming. The loss of their expeditionary force sent the mysterious leader into a rage, and he personally left to head west, a journey which he is still undertaking. The remaining Purifiers still hold Boston, Washington DC and Pittsburgh, and are slowly expanding throughout Atlantica, currently making an effort to take the ruins of Albany, Providence and Manchester from those that hold them. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Originally, I had it just that Cleveland was nuked, but I can expand that to fit your map. I like the idea of them utterly annihilating everything in their path. It's awesome. As for Canada, I know Llyr has a lot to say about the Sidhe controlling the icy north, but I know he'll eventually speak up, so I'll hold my tongue. I like the idea of the wilderness areas being entirely controlled by wolf packs, especially in the Central Badlands. Texas forming its own government, and trying to hold onto it, also is awesome. It makes sense.	02/17/09 20:14
Tamara	Thanks for the quick reply! That means the Atlantica region looks quite different than I was imagining. Since those little east coast micro states are so small, I did up a very quick New England map here that tries to capture what you are describing above. [url=http://img140.imageshack.us/my.php?image=newenglandcolamapwe2.jpg][img]http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/4930/newenglandcolamapwe2.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://g.imageshack.us/img140/newenglandcolamapwe2.jpg/1/][img]http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/newenglandcolamapwe2.jpg/1/w700.png[/img][/url] The Purifiers really are quite far afield here on the west coast! The Quebec region is also much closer to New England than I realized from my west coast perspective. Looking at the map, my obvious question is why didn't the Purifiers take over New York? Is it too strong? Is it a wasteland so its not really worth it? They effectively have two separate enclaves. If its just a wasteland between them, then they could travel between on ground, but if New York is a thriving Atlantica city, then they would have to rely on shipboard travel. IF this is true, they are probably trying to engage in a naval blockade of the city to drain it of strength before invading.	02/17/09 20:41
Llyr	Ok, this is such a fun project! I have a few things I can add in for Northern and Southen Ontario and Northern Quebec. I've had plans for Nova Scotia and Alberta too, not to mention the Arctic, but nothing that I've made concrete yet. Hope this helps! Most of Northern Ontario and Northern Quebec, stretching nearly as far as Labrador to the East and to the Manitoba border to the West is under the rule of the Sidhe. Their capital is located where the last old growth forest in Eastern North America still stands; Temagami, Ontario, which they have renamed Cul Din. Here's a write-up about them: [i]From The Last Days, an essay on the world after the Apocalypse by Armand Bianchini, a scholar and traveller.[/i] [u][b]Cul Din[/b][/u] In the days of the Apocalypse, the borders between the mortal plane and the Otherworld grew as thin once more, thin as they had been in ancient times. The great Forest of Temagami, some of the last old growth forestland left intact in North America, was claimed by the Sidhe as the new seat of their power. They named their stronghold Cul Din, which means Sanctuary in the old tongue, and fey and uncanny folk from around the world flocked to its borders. In the lands around Cul Din, Demonkind have been ruthlessly exterminated as a basic threat to the balance of the world, and Angels are tolerated only as refugees. The Sidhe folk long ago rejected both the Authority of Heaven, and the Tyranny of Hell, and will bend the knee to neither in this new world. Northland Lycans are trusted allies to the Sidhe, who believe their magics to be responsible for the creation of Lycans in the first place. The Sidhe do not trust humankind, but will permit them to stay so long as they do not attempt to ressurect the monstrous industrialized society that drove many Sidhe from the mortal plane in the first place. Purifiers have made no significant incursions into the North thus far, occupying themselves first with the conquest of the old United States. The borders of Cul Din are guarded by the Wild Hunt. There is much that could be told of them, but to speak their names aloud might attract their attention, so I will not do so here. The Sidhe will soon begin to extend their influence to other lands, other centres of power. This world was theirs once. They want it back.	02/17/09 21:24
Llyr	And here's another bit, with reference to the urban areas of Southern Ontario, and particularly Toronto, which had the highest concentration of population in Canada. [u]The Shining City[/u] Wormwood wrought destruction on every land, without care or preference And a third part of the trees burned away Most cities died without help of Demon or Monster, of simple famine and plague when infrastructures collapsed. Humans who survived huddled guarding caches of precious canned foods, or roamed the streets in foaming gangs, tracking and devouring the one large animal cities had in abundance too slow to evade hunters on foot: eachother. But some cities survived better than others. One at least was untouched entirely. The Shining City. Toronto. Where after the apocalypse as before, businessmen and women rode subway and streetcar to work with crisp leather briefcases in hand. The morning paper arrived on time, the lights of the theatre district still gleamed of a night. Supermarkets bulged at the seams with fresh produce, gleaming in opulent rows of misted greenery, heady with the smell of baking breads and croissants. Ice cream still came in thirty-one flavours. This reprieve, this impossible aversion of the Apocalypse had, of course, come at a price. The world is what it is. There are never simple solutions, even for the most fortunate of folks. Toronto’s price was the Compact. A powerful coven of Vampires had long ruled Toronto in all but name, and, as Wormwood approached, by sorcery and skill they erected a gleaming barrier of power about the city to guard it, and its environs. They approached the municipal government, the heads of school-boards and hospital trustees, bishops and imams and rabbis, and made their requirements known. Toronto would be kept free of the savage war that enveloped the rest of the world by the sorcerous wall. Within, the people of the city would be safe from molestation by demon, monster or angel. Their lives could proceed in peace, in the comfort to which they were accustomed. But every human within the walls would agree to submit to a vampire’s kiss every thirty days, to slake its dark thirst. And every family would surrender one child, for the satiation of those vampires less able to… moderate their appetites. Such was the price demanded by the city’s saviours. Many felt it to be a bargain. Families migrated in droves from the shattered, horrifying charnels that were once Oakville and Hamilton, Niagara and St. Catherines, hoping only to reach the gleaming Wall, trying not to consider too closely which of their children they would offer as the coin for their admission. But for some, the price of the Compact was too heavy.	02/17/09 21:26
Tamara	Very very cool, thanks Llyr. This fills in a lot of gaps quite nicely. Poor Atlantica seems to be losing territory on my lil map by quite a bit! I have a couple of quick questions. Cul Din is the name of the Sidhe capital, what's the name of their territory in general? Second, how do they relate to the native american population of their region? Do they differentiate at all between the different types of humans?	02/17/09 22:38
Llyr	My pleasure, Tamara! I think you can refer to both territory and captal by the same name, like Babylon the city and Babylon the Empire. As far as the Native American population goes, the area that we're talking about is enormous -- roughly the size of Europe. Pockets of humans could live in the territory of Cul Din and have reasonable autonomy. Just as the ancient Celts lived side by side with the Sidhe, some of the native bands of the North may have made similar accommodation, while others will likely have been wiped out by Wormwood and the early mass die-out. There isn't a huge amount of arable land up there, and very few Native bands are set up to be self-supporting as hunter-gatherers any longer. I'd see whole communities starving very fast once the last supply trucks stopped running. I don't think the Sidhe will make huge racial distinctions among humans. We all look pretty much the same to one of the old gods. :)	02/17/09 22:54
Tamara	We are getting a pretty decent map of the New England area, but can anyone fill in some of the gaps on the West Coast?	02/17/09 23:05
Logan	I'd always played that D.C. was nuked but that really doesn't need to be so. I only said that because I've been treating Logan as an agent of the U.S. Government's remnant, which took refuge in a network of underground fallout shelters, some the size of full cities, when D.C. was destroyed. It would be just as easy to say that they had to flee D.C. due to the Purifiers. I'm very interested in where this thread goes, because Logan was in the Military before anything in the CoLA history happened, and I've never been able to play much into his history because I don't know what that history is. I've hinted that he was in command of a military unit during the Chicago battle mentioned in the official history. I'd always pictured that fight as the first engagement between Humans and Demons, and that U.S. Forces were almost entirely obliterated. Logan and his unit ended up killing more Demons than anyone else do to finding some weakness that I don't OOCly know, and saved a lot of people during their retreat. The information they took back allowed Humanity to gain at least a foot hold in Celestial Warfare, enough that they could buy enough time to evacuate into their underground network. I also claim that he was present in all of the other major conflicts of The War. Said war has no name other than The War, because, well, it is THE war. I've played this 'network' as a handful of hidden shelters spanning the entire continent, mostly linked by low altitude air transports and what's left of the internet. It makes sense that the internet would survive at least enough to allow basic communication. At one point I also linked Logan with the Purifiers by having him be from the same military unit that they started as. I'm not sure how solid that link is. It could be that he never saw them again after Chicago, due to the chaos of the war and the dramatic change it caused to his career path. At this point, as one of the most experienced agents of the Government, he has a personal friendship with the Joint Chiefs and the President. I think that will be all that's left of the government. A congress doesn't make much sense. It would be probable that the President would form a sort of council with his cabinet and assume emergency power for the duration. I'm not the only Government character. I know that Suz was considering an MJ12/Illuminati-esque faction once a long time ago (The last 4 digits of the phone number for Dewey, Screwum, & Howe is the year that the Illuminati was founded, and the logo on that bench is the Illuminati symbol), and Darkmajik escaped from some Government lab. I've also had brief chats with several people who wanted to collaborate their history with Logan's, due to the similarities. So I'm willing to work with anyone all of this. The only thing that's vital to my character is that the President and Joint Chiefs survived, are in a shelter somewhere, and Logan works for them. How does that apply to your map? Uh.. I dunno. Sprinkle ten or twenty dots across it and label them Federal Remnant Outposts?	02/17/09 23:18
Tamara	That sounds interesting... what would be the central 'hub' of this network? Cheyenne Mountain sounds like a good candidate. How would this remnant relate to the CRNA and Atlantica?	02/17/09 23:39
Max Rhiano	God I love this idea, I've thought about the same thing though never had the inspiration to actually flesh it out like this. My charcter is from New York City and I did my best to create my history based on what little is said about the Big Apple in CoLA Canon. People in the know, feel free to correct any obvious inconsistencies in my story. Shortly after the collapse of the US Government as we know it, human crime factions (notably already established powerful organizations like the Mafia) began fighting with each other for power in the vacuum of authority created by the fall of the government. The humans didn't realize that they had far greater problems lurking in the sewers and in the surrounding regions. (Sidenote; Max lost his family to human on human violence in the initial in-fighting, not to one of the other races) Once Costra Nostra and other human gangs realized that they were only fighting with each other to determine who was the appetizer and who was the main course, they banded together to defend the city. With already dwindled numbers thanks to their premature grab for power, it was clear that the freshly fused human coalition wasn't going to retain control of New York. They fought on anyways (show me a New Yorker that backs down from a fight and I'll show you a birth certificate that shows that they are a transplant) but ultimately the city fell. In my mind New York would be under mixed control. Manhattan seems likely to be controlled by Brood and/or Coven while Lycan packs would operate in the outer boroughs like the Bronx, which is closer to forested land upstate, Queens and Brooklyn which is attached to Long Island. Max survived the Battle of New York and left town just before the fall of the city.	02/18/09 00:26
James Saito	In my personal backstory New York is absolutely devastated. Some parts of it actually broke off and sank into the Atlantic, along with Long Island. I've never fully theorized what it would be like, but I imagined with the toxic ocean seeping into it that it wasn't a terribly good place to live. This is totally up for debate, though. Speaking of the toxic ocean, this isn't entirely useful as part of the map, but I imagine that with the massive amount of debris and destruction during Wormwood's descent, that the coastline of the Atlantic is heavily irradiated and absolutely not safe for swimming. Boat travel would still be viable, I imagine, so long as everyone avoids touching the water. The Pacific near Lost Angels is only cleansed, in my mind, because of the Coven's massive influence on the elements. They worked some mojo and cleansed the waters, as one of their first steps in rebuilding the city, and thus, rebuilding Coven dominance of said city. To tie into Logan's post, there was a remnant MJ12 faction which hit the city before my time with some sort of nano-virus. Their goals were very similar to the Purifier's, as far as I know. I wasn't around then. It's entirely probable that the US Government shattered into a large amount of shards. MJ12, The Purifiers, etc. They could be hidden all across the country, in various locations, squabbling for power.	02/18/09 00:34
Tamara	I like that Max :) But we're now officially running out of cities to still be part of the ever shrinking Atlantica! And we still need more info on what its like closer to home on the west coast.	02/18/09 00:40
Max Rhiano	[quote=James Saito]In my personal backstory New York is absolutely devastated. Some parts of it actually broke off and sank into the Atlantic, along with Long Island. I've never fully theorized what it would be like, but I imagined with the toxic ocean seeping into it that it wasn't a terribly good place to live. This is totally up for debate, though. Speaking of the toxic ocean, this isn't entirely useful as part of the map, but I imagine that with the massive amount of debris and destruction during Wormwood's descent, that the coastline of the Atlantic is heavily irradiated and absolutely not safe for swimming. Boat travel would still be viable, I imagine, so long as everyone avoids touching the water. The Pacific near Lost Angels is only cleansed, in my mind, because of the Coven's massive influence on the elements. They worked some mojo and cleansed the waters, as one of their first steps in rebuilding the city, and thus, rebuilding Coven dominance of said city. To tie into Logan's post, there was a remnant MJ12 faction which hit the city before my time with some sort of nano-virus. Their goals were very similar to the Purifier's, as far as I know. I wasn't around then. It's entirely probable that the US Government shattered into a large amount of shards. MJ12, The Purifiers, etc. They could be hidden all across the country, in various locations, squabbling for power.[/quote] I don't think those are mutually exclusive backstories, in fact they dovetail nicely. I should have mentioned that the city (Manhattan) was in ruins in my backstory. A shattered and broken skyline. It's entirely plausible that parts of Brooklyn and Queens would end up submerged. Specifically, a large swath from Coney Island through the Flatlands and Carnasie all the way deep into Jamaica Queens.	02/18/09 00:49
James Saito	That's a totally awesome idea, Max! I like that lot.	02/18/09 01:08
Kit Ristow	I had that Kit came from an enclave in Central Illinois, consisting mostly of Bloomington-Normal, Carlock, and a few other small towns. They secured their existence by saving and re-routing the hydroelectric at Ottawa in order to serve their purposes. Survivalists with an extremely tolerant attitude towards supernaturals. They would arguably owe some of their continued success to the destruction of Chicago--that which is utterly destroyed doesn't send a lot of refugees your way. Think a sort-of stop on the underground railroad. In that area, life goes on more-or-less as usual, albeit with a lot more guns, a lot fewer supplies, and rationed power. There's even school and something resembling college. While they are tolerant of supernaturals, no one in the town is openly such. They'll move them along, keep them safe, lie for them. . .but keeping them there is too damn risky. I had notions of one person in the town making a deal with Cul Din to accept people who made it that far north, but I'd need to talk to Llyr about that (I'd posted some fiction alluding to it).	02/18/09 02:13
James Saito	Oh, something here that I didn't mention, but is kind of important. How James got from the east coast to LA was by train. It's my thinking that trains would become the dominant means of transportation over long distances, but more in particular, the variety of trains which operate in 19th century standards. Coal and steam. Gasoline is almost non-existent, and electricity isn't widespread, so coal trains would be ideal. Coal is fairly plentiful as well, much more than gas. True, there would be issues, such as blocked or destroyed tracks, but a dedicated team of people can overcome them if they push hard enough, as was the case with the group of refugees which James stayed with from Boston to LA. The Purifiers traveled using what is effectively a group of retrofitted APCs, however, with mixed-magitek engines which operated through a combination of science and the paranormal. The technology was beyond the understanding of even those that operated it, and was mostly lost when the Purifier base near LA was annihilated.	02/18/09 04:13
James Saito	Oh, also, 'cause I can't keep things straight in my head long enough to group them together, I have to imagine that there are a multitude of other factions spread across the country. Not all demons will be Brood, or not all vampires, Coven. Those are just the groups we know. I like to imagine that there are groups like ours all across the country, in the various cities, or ruins, squabbling as we squabble. Thinking of more details about them would be awesome, though it may get kinda confusing until we solidify the world itself. But, I mean, does the Brood get along with the demons in like...Florida, for example? Are they unified, or working different toward the same goal. It's cool to think about.	02/18/09 04:19
Erica Kessel	[img]http://slapnose.com/images/blog/1104/1104_usofcanada_320x277.jpg[/img]	02/18/09 04:36
Logan	[quote=Tamara]That sounds interesting... what would be the central 'hub' of this network? Cheyenne Mountain sounds like a good candidate. How would this remnant relate to the CRNA and Atlantica?[/quote] Cheyenne Mountain or somewhere in the Rockies. Could even be Mt. St Helen (the eruption was a government experiment gone wrong?), which would fit the mention of the battle of Seattle in the official history. I never really decided. I do know that they've divided the country into numbered zones and have Agents like Logan assigned to each zone. The number of assigned agents depends on the strategic value of the area, population, certain tactical factors (numbers vs suspicion, ease of extraction, ease of blending in), and the Agent's own personal operational methods. Logan, for example, refuses to have a second Agent on hand because he blames himself for the men he lost in Chicago (and whatever other battles he's been in), and refuses to hold a command position again. At this point, they're maintaining as much secrecy as possible and monitoring events. I'm definitely building this on the Illuminati foundation. Most of the surviving members of the government are members of whatever secret society name you want to use, which is why they had such an extensive and failsafe doomsday plan. Military power is impressive but fully dedicated to defending and supplying their outposts. They're basically just eyes, everywhere, watching everything. Every now and then they'll subtly influence events. Such as Logan's refusal to take a side in the Brood/Coven/Pack war. It would be in the remnant's best interest if those factions were mutually weakening each other. Logan's efforts to keep the other factions out of it mirrors that. Some times, if success is all but certain, they'll display actual direct force to accomplish a short term goal, such as removing a hostile faction that's unknowingly put down roots too close to one of the hidden settlements. Considering America's current inventory of War Machines, I believe it's also a good probability that these settlements have a lot of military vehicles that were either salvaged from the war or stockpiled in the shelters along with the other supplies. Predator and Global Hawk UAVs for example, would be in high supply. Other, more complex weapon platforms, such as fighters and bombers, would be in shorter supply but still available. Though rarely ever used. Without new parts being manufactured, it's only a matter of time before these vehicles wear down and disappear entirely. I've explained Logan's seemingly unlimited access to technology, ammunition, and supplies by unmanned air drops. He's been upgraded several times by returning to his base settlement. They're not really the bad guys, either. They take in refugees as possible, as a secondary goal is rebuilding the population. They never raid other survivors for supplies. Secrecy is still too important. They're a high priority target for a lot of powerful factions. On rare occasion, they'll integrate a settlement. Taking all of their supplies in exchange for the safety of one of their hidden cities. To maintain secrecy, this is done by an Agent who poses as a wanderer and spends days, weeks, or months determining the probability that a given settlement will agree to this deal. They'll also recruit agents from the outside. Given the risks and demands of the job, it's very difficult to train for it. Most Agents are former survivors who have been recruited into the whatever-the-government-is-calling-itself. In fact, The Vanguard is currently being considered for such recruitment. This was hinted at in a thread I posted on the old forums. I know none of this is really a help with the MAP aspect of your project, but it's something to be considered while we build this world. I've always played Logan as knowing most of what's going on all over the continent. It will be nice to have some actual OOC information to back that up.	02/18/09 06:09
Logan	Logan's Intel suggests a very low probability that Pusher's map is accurate.	02/18/09 06:12
Drystan	Logan's intel has a low probability (zero) of being correct! See, I can do that too.	02/18/09 06:21
Kiera	I've been working on a bit of Philadelphia/Wilmington/Atlantic City/Baltimore story that's part of my larger back story but it has a lot of things about each of those cities and the general chaos that's going on in them. When I get them finished I'll have to post up the little map of the journey that Ki has made through the area.	02/18/09 06:23
Tamara	Pats Pokey on the head. Your map is very good and very colorful, thank you for the help.	02/18/09 06:46
Su Pointe	Catalina Island, 25 miles off the coast from LA, is controlled by an organization called The Masada Project. Formed in the early 2010s by a group of wealthy entrepreneurs, artists, scholars, scientists, and military personnel who saw the coming civilizational collapse, it was named for the mountaintop fortress in Israel where the Sicarii Zealots withstood a three-month Roman siege, finally committing mass suicide just before the wall was breached. When the US government started selling off parkland to cover the massive debt it had accumulated due to ill-advised fiscal policies, The Masada Project bought Catalina for use as a "cultural ark." They then began acquiring the world's great art, first through purchase and donation, and then by extra-legal means, with the mission of protecting and preserving the best of human culture. They also began quietly recruiting members from the ranks of the world's most accomplished artists and performers, representing all artistic disciplines. Along with the artists, a sizable military force of like-minded soldiers and airmen were also brought on board: warrior-poet types as well versed in scholarly and artistic pursuits as they were in the art of warfare. The Masada Project personnel lived in the seaside town of Avalon while the organization's fortified compound and underground complex were constructed and the island’s airfield expanded. Once the base was complete, the members moved in, along with their now-sizable collection of priceless art, military equipment and aircraft. There, they lived in relative isolation from the rest of the world, continuing to procure humanity’s cultural treasures while perfecting their own artistic talents. It was with great sadness that they watched from the sidelines as civilization collapsed and the world descended into chaos. It took several years for the first human refugees to reach the shores of Catalina. By this time, the vampires had made their presence known, and many humans fled the tyranny of the burgeoning LA Coven on the mainland for the promise of safety and self-governance on the island. The Masada Project leadership took pity on the displaced people, granting them asylum on Catalina and allowing them to settle in the now-abandoned Avalon. This arrangement worked well for both groups, though there was little interaction between the two. The Masada Project continued to grow over the next decade and a half, becoming a true multigenerational society. The Project’s scientists and engineers developed advanced digital, mechanical, and medical technologies. The children were treated with gene therapies to lengthen their lives, and trained extensively in both mental disciplines and psychosomatic control of their bodily functions. Each of the children was trained to master-level in several artistic and academic fields. Additionally, all trained in martial arts, firearms, small unit tactics, and other military skills. Each of the second-generation Masada members could truly be described as a renaissance person. When the Cataclysm came, the Masada Project remained largely untouched, as Catalina was too small and isolated to catch the attention of the demons already preoccupied with millions of bodies and souls to torment on the mainland. When Cameron Caine became Project Director, he began stressing the militaristic aspects of the organization. He shifted Masada’s mission from preservation of culture to extermination of non-humans and the re-emergence of mankind as the dominant species on the planet. The residents of Avalon fared just as well for a time, until a contingent of vampires found its way to the island. They went unnoticed by the Project at first, given the limited contact with the people of Avalon. However, by the time the vampires were discovered, they already had a significant presence on Catalina. A cult of vampire worshippers had grown over time, and these "blood dolls" kept the vampires from feeding on the rest of the population. When a Masada Project raiding force slaughtered the human cult members and several vampires, the remaining undead went on a rampage, wiping out the remaining humans in the town and conducting raids on the Masada compound itself. It took several months to eradicate all the vampires on the island. Soon, Caine was stepping up raids onto the mainland, as well. He annexed the naval weapons station on the nearby island of San Nicolas, creating a secret base for a special strike unit answerable only to him, manned largely by genetically enhanced clones of first- and second-generation members killed in action, and equipped with highly advanced weaponry.	02/18/09 07:01
Su Pointe	Additionally, I've implied through RP that the passage of Earth through Wormwood's tail wrecked most of the satellites and other man-made structures in orbit around the Earth. The International Space Station Freedom was breached and largely destroyed by the the dust, ice, and rock particles that made up the tail, and was sent into a slowly decaying orbit. It recently came to earth in and around the greater LA area. This whole situation would render satellite communications and navigation unreliable at best.	02/18/09 07:08
codywoodhen	I've done a ton of person private RP regarding Seatown, which is the current Seattle-Tacoma-Olympia Combined Statistical Area, as... well, turned into a small farming town, built upon the ruins of the city, where the parklands overgrew and reclaimed the town. So, it's mostly agrarian, where they farm. And farm. And they use the livestock and produce to trade for things. I've also done more RP about a small town called Eklutna, 100 miles away from the city. But, that inconsequential to everyone but me, so nevermind.	02/18/09 09:51
James Saito	Cody, thanks for reminding me of something a bit closer to home. [b]Salvation:[/b] Located roughly ninety-five miles from Lost Angels, where the Los Padres National Forest stood prior to it being decimated when the fires fell from the sky, Salvation is a bizarre amalgam of various pieces from across the country. It formed when a mysterious clear-water lake seemingly appeared in the wasteland overnight. Settlers, nomads, slavers and bandits converged on the location, all wanting a piece of the action, not bothering to stop and ask how the massive lake had gotten there. Perhaps, most peculiarly of all, there were several buildings around in place when the settlers began to trickle in. These buildings looked like they had been torn from locations across the country, judging by the odd mixture of New Orleans, French inspired architecture, to the Victorian style houses which twisted oddly on the bank of the lake. Also, there appeared to be plenty of scrap and debris scattered about to build whatever else they needed, as if the lake itself was watching over them and providing for them. A year later, the town of Salvation stretched from shore to shore, built over the lake itself on a system of struts jutting from clear-blue water. In the direct center of the lake is the heavily fortified Believer's Church, where a group of highly militant angels and their zealots exert subtle control over every other organization in town. The other primary faction is a group of organized criminals, calling themselves The Eyes and Ears, or the Brotherhood, depending on who's asking. The E and E deals in slaves, drugs, experimental technology, black magic and weapons, controlling the ritzy casino area on the south shore, which has been dubbed Mini Vegas. The water of the lake is, despite being a valuable commodity, not heavily regulated due to the fact that despite constant use in everything from bathing, to drinking, to watering of plants, the lake's volume never seems to decrease. As if it was being fed from an outside source. The Purifiers chose Salvation as their main base of operations during the siege of LA, due to the nearby Harbinger Military Facility, hidden beneath the ruins of an old air force base. Their occupation was barely felt by the inhabitants, however, as the expeditionary force was solely concerned with conquering Lost Angels by any means necessary. [b] Harbinger Military Facility:[/b] Located on the shores of Pyramid Lake, roughly thirty miles from Salvation, the Harbinger Military Facility was known commonly as the John C. Scott Air Base, where the Air Force supposedly maintained a strong presence. This was all a lie, in order to hide the massive vault-like underground facility hidden underneath it. The Harbinger Military Facility was used to develop extremely advanced technology, based off of perhaps other-worldly sources. They developed powered armor, plasma and laser weapons, small-scale EMP devices, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, fusion-based explosives, advanced aerial combat vehicles and other wise-spread gadgets and tech. More than could be counted. They, along with a variety of other hidden underground facilities, were working towards a secret goal, the expansion of the United States in order to drag itself out of the massive recession that was choking the life out of it. With the advanced technology, no other country could stand up to them. This all changed when a certain blue-eyed vampiress in Los Angeles stepped forward and revealed herself, and her Coven, seizing control of the city in the process. The research instantly swung towards battling this new, supernatural threat. They attempted to capture specimens, develop weapons, but once again they were thwarted when the apocalypse came. The facility was evacuated and sealed, so that the invading hordes would never locate the technology stored there. The Purifiers, however, did. And deep in that place is where the most grisly experiments took place on LA's populace. It is here that, supposedly, the remaining forces of the Purifiers remain, even to this day, but no one dares to go there. [b]Mariposa:[/b] Mariposa, California, has become a massive trading hub in the wasteland where all manner of business is done. It is highly fortified, surrounded by guards, and all entrants must surrender their weapons prior to passing through the gates. Criminals are hung on the spot, without trial, and left to rot in what little false sunlight makes it through the haze. No trafficking of slaves or drugs is allowed in Mariposa, which has done little to curry favor with the slavers and drug-makers in the wasteland. This, however, makes Mariposa one of the safest places to visit and deal, providing you have no intention of breaking any of the laws in the process.	02/18/09 14:07
Missy	Wow. Is it any wonder I'm in love with all of your brains? Nope. This is seriously impressive everyone. As for Missy, I've RPed that she, like me, is a survivor from Canada who gradually made her way from the Kootenay area of British Columbia to LA. She lived in a very small rural area that essentially didn't feel the effects of Wormwood for some time, due to it's remoteness from major centers and it's western geographical position on the continent. In fact, the stories of demons, angels, lycans and vampires had essentially been discounted by the people of the small town as being legend and tales made up by unbalanced travellers. At least initially. That sorta all changed when a marauding band of vampires dessimated the village. That's about as far as I've gotten in thinking about this, though as more people post, no doubt it'll continue to flesh itself out.	02/18/09 15:58
Tamara	[justify]I have been blown away by all these writeups of various parts of our Post Apocalyptic world. Its great to see them all in one place! I would humbly like to offer one of my own that I'll probably be incorporating into my RP a bit (if people don't hate it that is!) Ohmtown AKA Ohm Sweet Ohm AKA Neko Paradise/Neko Nirvana/That Place That Doesn't Suck (name shamelessly stolen from the awesome movie Rock and Rule) Wormwood left devastation in its wake worldwide. It pretty well obliterated Hoover Dam, which cut off vital lifelines to the city of Las Vegas and surrounding desert towns. It also badly damaged Parker Dam, a smaller dam 150 miles south of Hoover along the Arizona/California border. Parker Dam was particularly important to Los Angeles. The dam and the lake behind it provided the majority of the water and power that allowed this metropolis to flourish in the middle of the desert. Because of the extent of the damage, the dam was abandoned shortly after Wormwood hit. This simple event set off a chain reaction of events in distant Los Angeles. Without adequate water and power, the city began to starve in the horrible darkness. One of the catalysts to the Battle of Los Angeles was the ever dwindling resources of the city forcing its citizens to riot and fight each other over them. In a way, Parker Dam's closing forced the hand of Suzanne Soyinka. If she didn't step in and take control, the city would rip itself to pieces and her food source would vanish before her eyes. We all know how that worked out don't we? Let's return to Parker Dam, out there alone in the wilderness. A clan of neko, of all things, moved into the area surrounding the dam. This particular Neko clan was a mixed bag of bioroids designed in government labs, pure breed bastet nekos from the ancient Egyptian line and a few spirit neko from Japan a long way from home. Their intention was to enjoy the lake behind the dam while it lasted, get some fish, scrounge the dam for spare parts. Perhaps they'd stay long enough to watch the dam burst and flood the valley below, take a few pictures of it, and then move on, as is the custom of wild neko clans out in the Badlands. They discovered that though badly damaged, the Dam itself remained fundamentally sound. It would eventually given in to creeping stresses on its structure if left alone. Fortunately it wasn't left alone. They decided to adopt the Dam as their new temporary home. Among them they had (relatively) skilled engineers and technicians among the bioroid types, and (relatively) skilled magicians among the spirit neko. They cobbled both together into a crude precursor to magitek and used every trick in the neko book to bring the dam back to life. Magic and Science worked together to repair the interior structure, reduce the stresses ripping the dam apart, and return the power generators and pumps to operational levels. They didn't exactly broadcast this fact far and wide. In fact they realized that the first thing any non Neko does to anything halfway decent a Neko has is try to steal it. So they did the only thing they could. They laced the structure of the dam with both magical and technological booby traps. Explosives mostly, so if anyone tried to steal it, they could blow the dam. Now at the dam they had enough power and water to feed a metropolis, enough fish and farming to feed a small town, and a big enough space for a neko clan to crash in. The leader of the clan, a playful trickster Nekomata, named the bridge and environs, Ohmtown, and renamed herself the Baroness D'Ohm. Calls went out to other neko clans and tribes throughout the wastelands, in those secret ways only neko know. They were invited to crash in Ohmtown. A community formed around the Dam. Tunnels were dug that extended for miles around. The Neko were reluctant to live above ground in villages that would be easy for outside forces to attack. The tunnels were much easier to defend and lace with boobytraps. Ohmtown became as much of a mixed bag as that original clan. There were lots of escaped government animal folk from nearby plants who made this their new home. Most weren't neko, but the Neko adopted them anyway. Dog people, cat people, rats, birds, dracoforms... all sorts were welcome. The Neko are expert scroungers. They had patrols of Rovers roam the Badlands looking for anything useful: materials and machinery but most importantly books, especially hard science textbooks. Slowly Ohmtown grew from a stitched together mess to a streamlined high tech facility. Once the Baroness D'Ohm was operating from a position of strength, she approached Soyinka with an offer she couldn't refuse: rebuilding the pipes and power lines connecting Ohmtown to Lost Angels. It would bring the city back from the brink of death, enable the city to flourish again. All she asked in return was gobs and gobs of cash or, even more importantly, knowledge in the form of computer disks, textbooks, scientist slaves, whatever. Naturally, Lost Angels being what it is, Ohmtown was attacked within six minutes of making itself known to the city. And every day afterwards for about a month. Repeatedly. It became obvious that these neko could defend themselves with a combination of scrounged up military ordinance, magickal talents, and magitek fusions of the two. It further became apparent that if Lost Angels pushed the issue, the Baroness D'Ohm really would blow the dam, and that there was very little chance that the Lost Angels forces could disable all the different varieties of booby traps. If even one was left, the dam and all the potential it represented would be gone forever. Soyinka and Lost Angels backed down, and a pact was made. Ohmtown was forced to join the CRNA. Both Pacifica and Baja wanted it to be part of their territory, but the Baroness managed to finagle Ohmtown becoming its own Territory with full representation in government. Though successful, this initial hostile action served as a catalyst for a split in attitudes among the people of Ohmtown. The bioroids, creatures bred to serve humans, were very different in outlook from pure breed nekos or spirit nekos. The Baroness was not one of them. They served more as soldiers and technicians and bore the brunt of the casualties in the Battle of Ohmtown. To them it was yet another injustice in a long line of them from their would be masters. Naturally an enterprising and charismatic bioroid, an eight foot tall cyborg anthropomorphic rat rose as the leader of this faction. Mimicking the Baroness, he renamed himself Lord Steel, and became the leader of the Militants. He slowly wormed himself into co-rule of the city with the Baroness. He also slowly built up the military forces of the city. One of his greatest successes was expanding local weaponsmithing with advanced Magitek weapons forged deep in the tunnels under Ohmtown. Now frightening rumors have reached the ears of some of the leaders of Lost Angels. Apparently the Rovers have discovered a biological testing facility out in the desert and returned most of it to Ohmtown's weapon forges. Apparently Lord Steel now has in his paws samples of Ebola, Anthrax, Yellow Fever and others. All the Militants of Ohmtown would have to do is simply infect a few rats, dump them in the pipes flowing into Lost Angels, and wait for news of mass deaths. Obviously this is an untenable position. But what can be done? Ohmtown City Today Ohmtown is one of the largest communities in the CRNA. It exports power, water, fishing and farm goods. Its also a tourist hub filled with casinos, bordellos, clubs and hangouts. Possibly the crown jewel of the Baroness' rule is Ohmtown University, a sprawling underground campus that strives (and mostly fails sadly) to live up to the standards of pre apocalypse universities. The city's Magitek Forge sells simple weapons as well as some magitek goods. These are very expensive as their forges are not quite up to the level of mass production of armaments just yet. But they're getting there. Ohmtown is also a center of scrounge trade, where Badlands Rovers sell off the various things they dig up from the wastelands and get back in some semblance of working order. Just about anything can be found in the markets here. [/justify]	02/18/09 18:50
Charissa	This is a great project and one I think is long overdue. As I thought about this, what role the Brood or any Demon civilization might play in shaping the face of the new post-apoc era, I went and did some research on a couple of things that I recall from my distant gaming past. So before I even touch the demon perspective on the map here, I thought I'd offer up some additional ideas that perhaps should be kept in mind while shaping the map out? One is [b]Biomic Geometry[/b]: [quote]"biome - a major ecological community (biotic community) of living plants and animals, occupying an extensive area, e.g. Desert, Grassland, Rainforest, Tundra. The plants of land biomes comprise formations. Ecosystems." Dictionary of Geography, A.N.Clark, 1998 Biomic Geometries of Place evolved from an expanded study of the New England's Gaia Matrix. It was found that the biomes of Maritime Canada, southeastern United States, the Great Lakes, the Four Corner region of SW United States, the Arctic Tundra of Canada, and the oil producing zone of south central United States all demonstrate circular patterns that connect significantly with the central geometry of North America's tectonic plate.[/quote] [img]http://geometryofplace.com/images/GIF/NA%20Matrix.gif[/img] [quote=USER]These Biomic Geometries of Place tend to share not only ecological patterns but social patterns as well. The Oil Biome for instance, centered on Oklahoma City is ringed by sites significant to the military industrial complex and America's Christian Right. This biome could be seen as being the present center of power in the United States - the past three Presidents have come from this biome. Industrial, political, military, religious, and monetary might have coalesced here to propagate a social agenda experienced in the 2004 USA.[/quote] [img]http://geometryofplace.com/images/GIF/OilBiome.gif[/img] Biomic Geometries of Place can be more fully explored in the book [url=http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://geometryofplace.com/images/GIF/NA%2520Matrix.gif&imgrefurl=http://geometryofplace.com/biome.html&usg=__Jjm2kkyFNTa5AsVPMpyPsysqnNY=&h=371&w=289&sz=14&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=Gp50RIoNeA6d2M:&tbnh=122&tbnw=95&prev=/images%3Fq%3DLey%2BLines%2Bof%2Bnorth%2BAmerica%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26channel%3Ds%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN]Gaia Matrix[/url]. Additionally a collaborative study (PDF) on the health impact of biomes and ley lines was done with Dr.Wayne London and can be downloaded [url=http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://geometryofplace.com/images/GIF/NA%2520Matrix.gif&imgrefurl=http://geometryofplace.com/biome.html&usg=__Jjm2kkyFNTa5AsVPMpyPsysqnNY=&h=371&w=289&sz=14&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=Gp50RIoNeA6d2M:&tbnh=122&tbnw=95&prev=/images%3Fq%3DLey%2BLines%2Bof%2Bnorth%2BAmerica%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26channel%3Ds%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN]here[/url]. Above may be something to consider in the progression of the continental map. Additionally, one thing I was always personally fascinated by is Ley Lines. It seems to me, in this post-apoc meta-verse, with the large number of supernatural beings that now roam the planet, some consideration to these natural phenomena should be incorporated into the world map? So I went looking for what is believed to be the ley lines of the North American continent. [url=http://www.vortexmaps.com/irley.php]Return Focus Triangle & Marble Mountain Wilderness[/url] I also highly recommend you take a peek over at this page [url=http://liminalthresholds.blogspot.com/2008/04/ley-line-maps.html]Google Earth leys - Peter Champoux[/url]. This fellow has compiled a ley line grid/map of the world using Google Earth. It's very interesting when you take a look at it and then apply that information to the project I think. I'll come back to this more later after I've had a bit more time to think on it where Demons are concerned. :) Hope this helps!	02/19/09 00:31
AntiZero	[b][/b]The Scrapyard A catch-all area compromising the former financial and industrial areas of downtown Boston and the South End. The name comes from the heavily unfinished sky-scrapers and bombed out ruins leading it to form the silent, sublime state that it is today. The main attraction of the Scrapyard is the former interconnecting complexes of the Boston based defense development corporation, Leviathan Industries. Leviathan started in the early 1940s and worked as a contractor for the United States government in developing highly expiremental weaponary based off self created concepts and designs of Nikola Tesla. Tesla sent designs to various companies of his death-ray and electric based technology. Using Nikola's genius technology Leviathan began development of their own version of rail-guns and electric powered high precision "cell-fusion" rifles. The contract ended with the government shifting focus from electricity to the newly harnessed atomic bomb. Leviathan discontinued their Tesla series and shifted to traditional contemporary weaponry. Leviathan grew as a juggernaut in the defense and munitions industry. In the late 1960s, a strand of children across the globe allegedly began developing "anomolical" abilities that defined scientific logic. These children were tracked down across the globe and isolated into the London based branch of Leviathan. These children were monitiored, evaluated, and ultimately iniatated into a highly confidential program: Project Delia. The purpose of PD was to fully develop their abilities, bypass their human limitations, and finally deploy them in clandestine operations across the globe; a word of note though, the physicans examining the children noted a strange, unknown substance located within their bloodstream. Project Delia often left its products mentally unstable due to the constant demand of their services; some attempted to flee, and others opted for a blissful end:suicide. The Ophelia division of Leviathan splintered in the late 1980's by a series of share-holders. The schism created internal backlash and the newly formed Daedulus Partners Inc, caused an uproar within Leviathan's inner circle. The Daedlus board covertly shifted away funds and various resources over a period of three years from the Ophelia division. The company smuggled the operatives and three thirds of the gene storage that housed the operatives genetic information and DNA. Leviathan dismantled the bare-boned Ophelia division. The Ophelia Facility is the dirty white, ruined windowless building siutated to the east of the main complex. Those children who carried the unknown substance were infected by the Twilight and thus a prototype to the third generation "Null Requiem" phenomeon. The twilight has seeped into this reality and over the cyclic nature of history and time left a portion of its essence in this minority of humans. The twilight infected other children and offspring in an attempt to understand what type of unexpected results would ensue. Leviathan Industries collasped during the apocalsype when it sent all its resources to their war front. These children were ultimately considered a failure due to the twilight strand only spreading to humans. The goal of the twilight was to infect the various supernatural races and see how they would mutate and react to subversions and inversions of their traditional traits and abilities. The truth of the matter is Leviathan Industries is a financial front for the The Drokan, specifically the Shattered. The Shattered advocated throughout history for the fusion of magic and science to engineer a faultless synthesis of the two. Leviathan Industries was the answer they created. The Drokan left behind their legacy for any to harness intentionally or unintentionally. If their final concepts and ideas were commandeered by an ill intent group, it would ignite a stark rise of power for those who controlled the hybrid accomplishments and inventions left behind by the Drokan. Leviathan Industries left a shard of this legacy in Seattle and Los Angelos(now Lost Angel's). Pray that no one ever unearths Leviathan's harbinger facilities of their contradicting legacy.	02/19/09 01:26
Tamara	Okay we are starting to get a good picture of the continent. Well certain parts of it. The other states of the CRNA are still something of a mystery, but here is a second stab at a north america map. [url=http://img258.imageshack.us/my.php?image=northamericamapcolays2.jpg][img]http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/8681/northamericamapcolays2.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://g.imageshack.us/img258/northamericamapcolays2.jpg/1/][img]http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/northamericamapcolays2.jpg/1/w700.png[/img][/url] Also we're getting a good look at Southern Pacifica and the area surrounding Lost Angels. [url=http://img8.imageshack.us/my.php?image=lostangelsenvironsub6.jpg][img]http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/2153/lostangelsenvironsub6.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://g.imageshack.us/img8/lostangelsenvironsub6.jpg/1/][img]http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/lostangelsenvironsub6.jpg/1/w700.png[/img][/url] I don't think anyone has already written up any storylines dealing with other parts of the CRNA but perhaps we could put our thinking caps together and come up with at least something of an outline. I put my best guess up there with Pacifica, Northwest (Portland, Seatown, Vancouver), Baja, and my new settlement of Ohmtown out in the badlands. Potentially, the territories could be more like city states. If this is the case, we could break it down to a few different territories: Pacifica (Los Angeles/so cal), San Francisco, Northern Cali/Southern Oregon (perhaps called Arborea? Is that too corny?), Portland, Seattle (already renamed Seatown), and Vancouver. To the south we could have Tijuana, Baja, and Baja Sur. This would be a fair number of Territories. Also, potentially CRNA could extend up to Alaska and Hawaii and have a large naval presence, since the mainland is so screwed up. We also know nothing about middle america, the deep south, canada west of cul din, mexico, latin america, or the Caribbean. Thoughts?	02/19/09 18:27
Charissa	[b]CRNA Impact sight installation - Code name: New Gomorrah[/b] [b](Spoiler!)[/b] As the story goes, "In the summer of 2032, after it already seemed the human race was in its darkest hour, the Armageddon of religious prophecy began. The Earth itself, passing through the tail of a massive comet named Wormwood, was enshrouded in several months of near total darkness and burning hydrocarbon fire and huge cometary fragments cascaded through the sky, blasting the cities and the landscapes of the world and setting the them afire again..." One of these meteors became known as the "Heart of God". This hunk of debris is the largest known meteorite from the Wormwood comet known to exist. It's impact on the Los Angels region was devastating, the initial object being roughly 50 meters in size with an impact equivalent to the explosion observed at Tunguska in 1908. This object however, was different in that a large portion of it some how survived the event, with concentrated levels of radiation contaminating the area around the impact site. The meteor also emits electromagnetic fields of considerable strength, capable of disabling virtually any unshielded technological device within the effected area. Originally, when this chunk of Wormwood was found, it's radiation field was detected out to a distance of 5 miles, with most electronic devices ceasing to function out to a range of 2 miles. What remained of the military establishment of the time moved into the region attempting to obtain and study the cause of this great calamity and the devastation that followed. With the world in a state of unrest, with reports of Angels and Demons roaming the land, it became quickly apparent that a time of tribulation was at hand. From the perspective of many mortals at the time, their place was largely an insignificant one, caught between forces of legend, myth and religious prophecy. Once found, the meteor seemed to provide a potential advantage in the apocalyptic struggle that was unraveling around the humans of this world. And so they set about attempting to contain and study this meteor, the arrival of which coincided with these global events shaping and changing the world before their eyes. The military (CRNA), using shielded technology managed to contain the fragment within a device known as Core or Fragment Chamber. This piece of technology is heavily shielded, capable of generating a plasma shield to contain the fragment, negating the radiological dangers it emits substantially. They quickly moved heavy equipment into the region, erecting walls of steel around the research facility. This served the dual purpose of providing a defense against potential attack as well as helping to shield the area beyond from the radioactive effects of the meteorite. Many who were aware of the existence of this meteor saw this as an act of the Divine. The fiery devastation it wrought on the region caused the more theological men and women to think back to another time in biblical history, in particular the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is because of this, that the research facility was given the name "New Gomorrah". Through trial and error, the researchers and military personnel who worked on the project were able to quickly utilize the Core as a means to harness, direct and focus the radiation emissions from the meteor for various purposes within the New Gomorrah facility. The primary use of this was as a power source, providing necessary energy to sustain the base and the needs the personnel who were stationed there. The fragments radiation levels were never fully negated however, allowing comparatively low levels of radiation to escape into the immediate area around the fragment. The researchers at the facility were able to utilize the Core Chamber to mitigate the previously erratic energy discharges that would come from the fragment at random intervals. But due to the volatile nature of this strange space rock, they were never able to fully contain it. By using the Chamber, they determined that, so long as the fragment's radioactive energies were allowed to escape over time, the fragments energy levels would reduce to more manageable levels. Therefore, they set the system to "ventilate" excess energies from the core tower once an hour. Unfortunately, and once again due to the unstable nature of this meteor, the energy emissions remained unstable, changing cyclically from one hour to the next. These energy waves would at times be harmless to human beings. In fact, it was determined that the energy field emitting from the meteor proved beneficial to the human physiology, healing wounds, curing illnesses and even disease. The following hour, however, the fragments energy wave would change, capable of inflicting wounds, causing diseases like cancer and other ailments depending on the level of exposure. The duality of the meteor's nature inspired those who worked on the project to coin the nickname "The Heart of God". And so the fragment of the great comet Wormwood was seen by some as a religious relic, capable of healing the sick and injured yet able to inflict sickness and suffering. Word spread and soon many beyond the walls of the facility learned of this "relic", and soon pilgramages began to the region. Within a short few years, a community of shanty towns and villages sprung up around the base, with religious zealots and false prophets attempting to admonish themselves with those in authority over the New Gomorrah facility. This admonishment did not last long and soon, more extremist sects began to reveal themselves. Their attempts to subvert and infiltrate the base became a near-weekly occurrence, complete with attempted terrorist attacks against the surrounding communities and the base it's self. This tumultuous situation only escalated further when beings ascended from the depths of the ruins the facility stood upon. It was quickly learned these creatures were actually demons, clawing their way to the surface from the tare in space-time that had opened below the surface. It was at this time that angels appeared on the scene to do battle with this new threat. And soon the epic struggle between light and darkness spilled into the very heart of the facility. During this climatic struggle, with many deaths and casualties on both sides, the containment field for the meteor suffered irreparable damage, flooding the base and the entire region with the unstable energy waves emitted by the fragment. The region had to be quickly evacuated, with many more succumbing to and dying from this last, final catastrophe. And so, for years, the facility stood abandoned, sealed up and inaccessible to anyone. The great steel walls standing as silent guardians, protecting the outer regions from the effects of the calamity that rests inside. ------------------------------------------------------------- Judging by the map thus far, I took the liberty of marking where I though might be the most likely location for the facility given the location of the Sim that is currently under construction, after LL moves it. [img]http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m304/Charissa_Korvin/New%20Gomorrha/MeteorImpactSight.jpg[/img] Edit: Could put it further SE?	02/20/09 02:50
Suzanna	You people humble me. One of these days, maybe we'll have time to set all this out official...theres just so much work left to be done....but I love this thread...probably the best thread like EVER.	02/20/09 06:17
Logan	[quote=Suzanna][img]http://www.roflcat.com/images/cats/270913946_efa38ec3d8.jpg[/img][/quote]	02/20/09 06:29
Charissa	Stickied	02/20/09 10:17
Tai	This thread reminds me of the Fallout Bibles.	02/20/09 22:04
Shyann Nightfire	So I’m coming into this thread very late and I apologize, it was just brought to my attention actually. I doubt this will be much help to your Map, but when I came to CoLA I wanted Shyann to be the “New Kid” in town that was sort of lost in this new hell hole. Her back story was that she originally came from Paris, which had been hit pretty hard in nuclear attacks but much like LA the Major Vampire group there had managed to “Save” the City and develop some semblance of order in the midst of Chaos. Shyann hit LA because she was running from her snooty stuck up French Sire, who she figured would never look for her in this cockroach infested town, he’d just be too good for that. Of course, she was wrong, and he came for her, and in the end Shyann ended up taking him down and inheriting his territory in Paris. I use trips to Paris to check on the situation of the Coven of Vampires there as an RP excuse anytime Shyann has to be out of the City for any great length of time. So at least from my Characters back story, Paris is a lot like CoLA, but the vampires there are so stuck up they keep working to make that City as fancy as possible. After all they have to be able to say they will always have Paris! 	02/20/09 22:13
Tamara	I had originally wanted to leave this focused on North America, since I viewed it as a higher priority to get that straightened out. However, since this thread has been going fairly well and gotten a lot of responses, I'd love to hear what people have written up for places outside of the US. I imagine Europe and Japan/Asia will get quite a bit of attention. Anyone have anything? My character comes from Japan but I have no real background to provide for it. I was deliberately vague on that subject.	02/20/09 23:07
Rip	[quote=Su Pointe]Catalina Island, 25 miles off the coast from LA, is controlled by an organization called The Masada Project....[/quote] [b]Awesome Su! That was one of the best times RPing when Rip got that info from your "kidnapper" and then from a Masada agent later on. Glad I kept those reports![/b] :)	02/21/09 00:22
James Saito	[b]Japan:[/b] During the world economic crisis preceding the apocalypse, which crippled the world's infrastructure, a firmly guided Japan, now under control of a single massive corporation, Fuyu-Co, managed to weather the worst of the storm. Tokyo, long on the upward spiral, became a shining metropolis, but the advanced technology and flashy lights could not hide the fact that Fuyu-Co had turned Japan into a supreme dictatorship. Dissenters, those that rallied for change and a stand against the rampant extreme capitalist dogma, were herded like animals and shot, or made to work in factories, producing the so-called revolutionary technology which had begun to enslave the populace. It was not widely known that Fuyu-Co was being run by the Kuei-Jin, unified under a single particular leader, having utterly destroyed the previous Japanese government. When the vampire covens of the west came into the open, declaring dominance, Fuyu-Co remained a front, masking their true intentions. Of course, nothing could prepare them for inevitable apocalypse. No one could see it coming. The destruction was immense, and in the chaos, ancient yukai and oni, imprisoned for centuries, slipped free. Japan was split, evenly, into two. The northern half, from Tokyo and Nagano up to Sapporo was controlled by the remnants of Fuyu-Corp, continuing their technological stranglehold of the human populace. It was them that spread the rumors that Japan was fractured and sank into the Pacific, to prevent anyone from seeking refuge or plunder. The south, however, from Nagoya to Kagoshima, belonged entirely to the newly formed Oni state, known in English as The Domain of Demons. It was here that the ancient creatures spoken of in Japanese myth came to life, using the human populace for sport and sustenance. Now, Japan is in the grip of a massive civil war, the paranormal remnants of the past clashing with the high-tech futuristic Kuei-Jin, set on reclaiming the rest of Japan, and perhaps even expanding deeper into Asia. Fuyu-Co makes its headquarters in Tokyo, matched with the Oni headquarters in Osaka. The conflict seems evenly matched, so it looks like neither side will make a significant jump for a while. This, like the framing of the world, is subject to change at any moment, however.	02/21/09 13:32
Llyr	Not to throw cold water or anything, because I think that everything that everyone is contributing right now is fracking fantastic, and I'm sorely tempted to start hammering out a mythology of modern Europe myself but... As much fun as it might be, I'm reluctant to assign fixed descriptions to places, overseas or in North America, not intimately connected to my own characters' backstories or RP history. I don't want to close off or limit the options of a player in the future who might have wanted to be from that place, and to have had the fun of setting the parameters of his or her own background. For example, Both Llyr and Conall have hopped back and forth to Ireland and Spain and a few other locations in the course of RP, but the only Eire I'd want to describe fully is the one they lived in two thousand years ago (and thus have a bit of a claim to). However, if a player should show up in LA having made his or her way there from modern Cork or something, I'd say their right to construct the modern mythology for Eire would trump mine. Now this isn't my call to make, of course, but I'd suggest, tentatively, that players submit geographical ideas for regions that directly affect their own characters or RP they've been developing, and hold off otherwise to leave room for future contributers. It's like jazz jamming -- you have to leave openings for everyone as the song progresses. It'll take a little longer for the map to flesh out this way, but it will be more organically representative of the stories of the CoLA community.	02/21/09 14:09
James Saito	I agree, Llyr, which is why I've stuck with things related to my character in some way for every suggestions. Japan may seem a bit off the wall, but James' father was Japanese, who fled the rise of the Fuyu-Co dictatorship to the States prior to the apocalypse. I'm not saying it's the definitive look at Japan, but yeah. Another thing which I've been reluctant to bring up so far because we've agreed a lot so far, but it's entirely possible with Wormwood, and all of the dimensional timey-wimey craziness that reality fractured and that different interpretations of certain areas, if not able to coincide, could be alternate dimension shards coming together. I mean the new city, when we moved to our own sim, was essentially ICly the result of the Archangel Michael eradicating everything through the rift Mordred tore in the fabric of reality. It was only the sheer force of will of the LA residents that managed to keep us together, and managed to re-form the city in a new image. It was also conveniently used to nullify the existence of a certain former allied chain of sims which turned enemy.	02/21/09 15:41
Llyr	Wasn't pickin' on you mate! I was just suggesting in general. The thread as a whole has been terrific fun so far, and potentially really useful for RP development. And of course you're right. With freeform RP it is always possible to find ways to reconcile narrative contradictions.	02/21/09 15:47
James Saito	Oh, no, I know! I was just talking in general. I know a lot of characters have a Japanese twist, or backstory, and I didn't want to pigeonhole anyone. Just...I agree with you. Totally. Gonna try to get some more info up later, especially about some stuff in the Central Badlands that James hit on his journey west.	02/21/09 17:04
Tamara	I totally agree with what you said Llyr. I think its important that whatever we say here is a) not canon, b) a roleplaying aid, not a straight jacket, and c) doesn't attempt to define any areas concretely that nobody's been from yet. I would like to see a better writeup of Pacifica territory and the CRNA mostly because that's where we're all from, and so far its the least well written up area we have! As for Europe and Japan, its kind of like the east coast. The east coast area is pretty distant from COLA but a lot of characters are from there, so they've described the background. My character is from Japan, but I've hesitated to add a description of the current goings on there, since I have a feeling others have. I'd really like to see what other people have done though! I imagine it would be the same for people who have their characters coming from Europe. I think this is useful if it adds a common ground for roleplay, but it starts to become a problem if we try to make this the be all end all of the game. When we start coming up with the Pacifica state flag and bird and listing every city in it... then we have a problem!	02/21/09 17:17
AntiZero	I agree with what alot of what people are bringing up with the concrete end all descriptions. I think it imperative to list these as possible locales for usage and or alternative locations throughout the cola universe. Each of the post are impressive and detailed, but they could possibly contradict and infuriate others interpretations of the places described. If I remember correctly, James and I have two totally different ideas about what Boston is like ic. His is the heavy purifier dominated area, while mine was originally more like a ground zero graveyard area, but I like the fact things can merge together and mesh. It would be bad if a certain group of humanist zealots hijacked more technology from a ghost race >_<. Take it with a grain of salt, though, and consider it mostly "possibilities" for reference and background.	02/21/09 17:57
Kit Ristow	One thing I did--and a couple people commented on it and liked it--was make the insinuation that Lincoln, Nebraska was actually a city overrun and ruled by nekos--that it was like a city rising from a great savannah, and that it was dangerous as fuck. But it was just an allusion. I just felt like mentioning it 'cause. . .er, I like mentioning stuff? And, of course, Kit could be wrong on what city it was.	02/21/09 18:13
Tamara	As well as working on the map, obviously one of the questions I've had is, what's life like in COLA in this post apoc setting? What do we use for money? How lawless are things? Where does our water, power and food come from? I've tried to at least provide something of a background suggestion below. Probably a little presumptuous of me, but here goes. From Wikipedia: [i]“The U.S. Bureau of the Census has designated the five county region as the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside combined statistical area, with a July 1, 2006 population estimate of 17,776,000[5]. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Los Angeles metropolitan area has a total area of 4,850 square miles (12,561.442 km2), while the wider combined statistical area covers 33,954 square miles (87,940.456 km2), but more than half of this is the sparsely populated eastern areas of Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Los Angeles has a long-standing reputation for sprawl; however, this reputation is undeserved. As of the 2000 Census, The "Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana" Urbanized Area had a population density of 7,068 inhabitants per square mile (2,729 /km²), covering 1,668 square miles (4,320 km2) of land area, making it the most densely-populated Urbanized Area (as defined by the United States Census Bureau) in the United States.[7] For comparison, the "New York-Newark" Urbanized Area as a whole had a population density of 5,309 per square mile (2,050 /km2), covering 3,353 square miles (8,684 km2) of land area.“[/i] So we can assume that the city of Los Angeles at the time of the apocalypse had a population of roughly 18 million. Clearly this would be untenable by current standards. But how much lower is the current population? Let's start with a tentative suggestion that 9 out of 10 LA residents has either died or left the city. That still leaves us with 180,000 people. That's about the size of current day Salt Lake City. That's possibly still too big of an assumption but let's start there. Los Angeles covers about 34k square miles, but over half of that is Riverside and San Bernardino, which I wouldn't really count as part of COLA. Let's cut the 34k in half and count 17k square miles as the area of LA proper, and knock our potential population to a relatively even 150,000. The current population density of this area is about 1050 people per square mile. Let's knock that down to 1000 per square mile. That gives about 150 square miles of actually heavily occupied territory in the LA sprawlzone surrounded by 16,800 square miles of empty ruins. Any way you kajigger the numbers, we are looking at a very small populated area surrounded by a vast sea of ruins. A lot of Los Angeles is suburbs kept green by water pumped in from as far away as Canada. 18 million people are a massive drain on resources to keep the desert at bay. Now this is no longer happening and its likely that the desert would quickly overrun huge areas. You'd find wide stretches with suburban ruins filled with sand, tumble weeds, cacti and joshua trees. There'd probably still be quite a few buildings that hadn't yet been touched yet, even several years after the apocalypse. Someone could probably make a good living going out into those ruins and salvaging food, equipment, supplies, etc. Its also likely that factions would lay claim to areas like this and claim all the salvage within for their own purposes. Its likely that a lot of this outer ring of city would quickly revert to wilderness. Coyotes are a common nuisance and there'd likely be large coyote packs roaming around living off of carrion for awhile, then switching to the rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, rats and mice common to the area. Mountain lions would probably move in and, considering how many fracking Lycans we have in the city, I have to imagine they dragged wolf packs along with them. Even assuming no demons, monsters or supernatural beasties, roaming around the outer ruins could be dangerous. And naturally these ruins surrounding LA would be a perfect haven for all sorts of those too. Then there's also the likelihood of bandit gangs from the wastelands lurking out here waiting to pick off slaves/salvage from COLA natives. Any and all of these could also find their way into Lost Angels. You could be coming out of the zodiac and run into a coyote pack or mountain loin! Its also likely areas would be re purposed. Parkland could become local ranches to help provide food for the still relatively large population. Anything that could would be converted to power sources to feed the still quite hungry city power needs. Considering the layout of the city, the power needs would still probably be out of proportion with the new population size. Considering the city is in the middle of a desert, water would also still be a big problem. I proposed the city of Ohmtown in part to help answer where the resources to keep COLA surviving would come from. Within the small settled core of COLA, the biggest problems would probably be power and water. I imagine that the power grid is not in any better shape than the rest of the city. It would probably be similar to Iraq with periods of brownouts and blackouts, power flickering from time to time, etc. Power should be unreliable at best without your own private faction generator to keep your buildings going. Food and especially water would be something of a luxury when outside of a faction as well, probably quite expensive unless you have some weight to throw around.	02/21/09 18:17
Llyr	One of the common ideas in post-apoc fiction by writers like S.M. Stirling and Harry Turtledove is that in the event of a full scale nation-killing disaster, urban areas get obliterated first because they exhaust their food supply long before they redevelop the capacity to produce food. They estimate the gap between civilization and complete savagery and cannibalism in a city like New York or LA to be about 2 weeks. As things get worse, gangs from urban centres would spread outwards, consuming resources as they go, and very very few would survive the first year. Dead zones would spread around old urban centres, and the larger the centre, the broader the dead-zone as the further they would have pushed in the vain attempt to sustain themselves. Survivors would be rural or in small communities surrounded by sufficient food production capacity to support them, and far enough from urban centres to avoid being over-run and eaten clean by refugees from cities. Oh, and cannibalism and large quantities of unburied human bodies is a terrific way to start plagues, so that horseman would get to come out and play for a while too. Cities would tend to get recolonized long after their original populations were dust, by people from rural areas as social systems become re-established. The chances of a native LA'er surviving in LA? So close to zero as to make no odds. I always assume that the difference between the classic apocalyptic scenario and the one we experience in CoLA is accounted for by magic -- Suzanna and her coven intervened to preserve something like structure in LA, Angelic intervention availed elsewhere and so forth. Sorry... rambling on. All this is appropos of nothing beyond my thinking more and more about the map project :)	02/21/09 18:54
Tamara	This was my thinking actually too Llyr, in anything like a real apocalypse, you want to escape the city as fast as possible.	02/21/09 19:26
molly switchblade	[quote=James Saito][b]Japan:[/b] Japan is in the grip of a massive civil war, the {Southern Japans based} paranormal remnants of the past clashing with {Northern Japan} high-tech futuristic Kuei-Jin[/quote] This dovetails well with the background set up with Myself, Ricercar Chevalier, Fox Onizuka, TELF Ling, and the deceased Ricercar Voltaire. In our shared backstory, NeoTokyo holds closer to traditional Japanese culture, with Yakuza and Corporation lords vying for power in the streets, Kuei-Jin is easily integrated as the highest levels. With southern Japan as a demon-controlled land, there's immense potential. Kudos.	04/01/09 22:03
ricercar	[quote=Kit Ristow]Lincoln, Nebraska ....rising from a great savannah, and that it was dangerous as fuck. ... overrun and ruled by nekos.[/quote] [img]http://arton.no/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/mythbusters_plausible_spray.png[/img] Having attended UNL in RL, I can say this is totally realistic.	04/02/09 01:20
molly switchblade	So rice put this all into a wiki but won't tell anyone. http://gadzikowski.com/mediawiki/main/index.php?title=Places Is this worth maintaining in that form?	04/07/09 08:43
Missy	Oh wow!! I'm on a wiki! Representing Canada. I feel uhhh... like other Canadians need to add their 2 cents in too. :D	04/07/09 16:07
Llyr	Oy!! I'm a Canadian! I contributed!	04/07/09 16:25
ricercar	Make good use. Remember the tragedy of the commons.	04/07/09 17:47
Suzanna	[quote=molly switchblade]So rice put this all into a wiki but won't tell anyone. http://gadzikowski.com/mediawiki/main/index.php?title=Places Is this worth maintaining in that form?[/quote] Not a bad idea, allows for multiple contributors, have a chat with me Molly, we'll get it onto a server that can handle a bit more bandwidth if yours is limited.	04/10/09 22:44
Malice Ashdene	[b]Japan stuff:[/b] i talked to Yuzuki (Kytori) once and it drifted to her backstory. she looked up alot of info on japan before just randomly declaring her character japanese. i believe she told me Yuzu was from Hokkaido, which is northernmost of japan (being about the same latitude as northern china, souther russia). she guessed that the climate change and other things brought about by the wormwood wouldve turned Hokkaido into a frozen wasteland, and people wouldve either frozen or died. currently, ive written a backstory for a character that im using to help someone whos helping someone with their backstory (lolwut?), but i ended up using a pre-existing character from another rp sim, except changing his story to suit CoLA. in the other sim, hed originally came from Okinawa (in the Ryukyu islands. southernmost japan, really close to Taiwan) (cause i spent my life there from age 3 to age 7 or 8 or so, so i actually knwo about the place first-hand. it helps) but of course, no one has said much of the state of japan after the wormwood o_O let alone the state of a tiny SPECK on the map that is Okinawa (seriously. some maps dont even list it) so, knowing a good amount of okinawa's history, both from my time in their schools and some passed-around stories my mom told me (and verifying it on Wikipedia) ive come up with this: the wormwood's passing wouldve turned Okinawa prefecture as a whole into almost a hellfire (-almost-), which wouldve killed off a large portion of the population (as normal temperatures on okinawa are generally warmer than even egypt) and whoever's left would be crazed by hunger and thirst, killing each other and blaming the japanese mainlanders and the americans for all of their problems (as they tend to do, due to things in the past). this semi-hellfire would also be the perfect place for a large group of demons to spawn up from the ground and start wreaking havok, restarting some old grudges that descendants of native Ryukyuans have had with mainland japan (the japanese not only generally treat okinawans as second-class citizens and hicks, but also mistreated them horribly in the battle of okinawa and other wars) thus starting a mass rebellion/war. whoever hadnt already died, hadnt committed suicide, or wasnt fighting a war with mainland japan and overturning all the american military bases dotting okinawa, was obviously trying to leave the country. aaaaaand... thats what my aforementioned character did o_o; any objections? any other thoughts on what couldve happened? does this clash with anyone? o_O http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokkaido http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryukyu_independence_movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryukyu_Islands most important reference (includes info on the battle of okinawa) : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ryukyu_Islands as well as : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Okinawa quoted from wikipedia: "In its history of the war, the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum[16] presents Okinawa as being caught in the fighting between America and Japan. During the 1945 battle, the Japanese Army showed indifference to Okinawa's defense and safety, and the Japanese soldiers used civilians as human shields against the Americans. Japanese military confiscated food from the Okinawans and executed those who hid it, leading to a mass starvation among the population, and forced civilians out of their shelters. Japanese soldiers also killed about 1,000 Okinawans who still spoke a different local dialect in order to suppress spying.[17] The museum writes that "some were blown apart by shells, some finding themselves in a hopeless situation were driven to suicide, some died of starvation, some succumbed to malaria, while other fell victim to the retreating Japanese troops."[16] Soldiers on both sides also raped Okinawan civilians and rape by the Japanese troops "became common" in June after it became clear that the Japanese Army had been defeated."	06/01/09 03:22
Orlok Lectar	Shit. I really wished I had seen all this before I made my back-story. I didn't read it all (I have to use the latrine and I'm at a public wi-fi area in an airport right now. ARGH!)I got a basic concept of things from the map diagrams. Sadly, my back-story suffers for it. I play myself off as a medic soldier from the US Army who has was fighting around the DC area. (Where she grew up) Her unit got tasked with exterminating Lycans and Nekos due to the threat levels in various areas and was sent west to spear-head Operation Lycacide, which was the operation to purge the western regions of Lycans (US officials marked Nekos as a form of Lycans due to misconceptions during military operations) to allow for easier access from one coast to the other. Orlok's unit, after years of fighting, was routed by the massive number of Lycans and she retreated into Lost Angels, dropping off her gear in Abbey before entering so as to hide her identity from any on-lookers. When she found out LA was decently safe she admitted to her past affiliations rather openly. Now she's being called back to her unit (the leadership apparently survived) which should explain why won't be on for a few months. Point is, I'm trying to work out how my back-story might work. Later I'll read through everything and see if I can't solidify it. On an off-hand note, perhaps Operation Lycacide could be incorporated into the bigger scheme of things if everyone feels it might work. Edit: Having read a lot of what's been posted in reference to the military and D.C. in particular (as well as the various pushes into the west by eastern forces) it's safe to say the what's left of the federal government is split into several groups, the Purifiers being the most noticeable. The Purifiers have taken all of D.C. and thus chunks of northern Virginia (where I grew up) but that doesn't quite mean they have full stability there. Depending on the split in the government we can also expect a similar split in military forces as well. I'd go ahead and give the Purifiers the Marines as their main body. The idea of turning men into super-soldiers goes along with the Marine mentality to begin with. As such, with my character being in the Army, they had different plans. During the break-down of the US military forces, the Air Force was more-or-less grounded due to the events of the cataclysm and could not act anyways since most of the Air Force is comprised of various bomber wings. The use of such detachments would have spelled more destruction than the Pentagon big-wigs could see the country being able to recover from, thereby confining the USAF primarily to R&D. (Research and Development) The USMC's (United States Marine Corp) superiors demanded that action be taken with them as the brains and demanded the US Army and National Guard support their efforts to maintain control of the various bases around Northern Virginia, to include helping to maintain control over the Langely, VA (CIA) facilities and the Pentagon itself. What the equated to was the USMC going out on the offensive in all directions with the Army and National Guard pulling both guard and mop-up duty. As such the Army and National Guard got a good deal of dealing with the refugees from both sides of the conflict while the USMC was blinded by visions of being the saviors on the front lines, despite taking such heavy losses they were far from saving anything or anyone. Eventually the USMC joined forces with the Purifiers, believing them to be the rightful control over the shattered country, and again demanded the cooperation of the Army and National Guard, who had their own plans. Deciding that the actions committed by the Purifiers (with the USMC now part of them) were far from benevolent, they retreated further south into Virginia across the Potomac and into Fairfax. They started stationing out of Fort Belvaurd. With their backs against the oceans and scatter reports of groups gone to ruins towards Florida, the next best idea for any expansion was west and thus they continued to conduct operations farther west trying to tap into the bread-bowl that would be Central America. Rather than finding any salvation in its obscurity they found both Human refugees and Lycans following in their shadow trying to make prey of them. As such they began mobilizing units to clear the region of its Lycan infestation. The operation to clear the central region above the Texan regions was called Operation Lycacide. The Army spear-headed the operation with new, special units trained in fighting the 'paranormal legions' called ArcOps. (Arcane Operations) These units were small and considered to be a new Special Operations Force (SOF) and were skilled mostly in infiltration and assault techniques. They went on the offensive west while the National Guard (which maintained its name) and the Army regulars maintained their hold on central and southern Virginia. Sergeant Orlok was a line-medic in one such ArcOps unit. Her unit managed to slip west under the radar of the turmoil in Central US but not under the radar of the Lycans (and Nekos) they purged. Unfortunately her unit pushed too far and ended up stranded just east of the LA region. (North of Baja) They were surrounded and the call to fall-back was radio'ed in but there was nowhere to fall back to. Orlok was 'lucky' and managed to slip through the advancing Lycan forces and made break into the LA region, where she had stayed for only two weeks. She has now received word that a small number of her unit has survived and she is returning to them. (Again, due to my RL Afghanistan deployment) Due to the role-play I used before reading the rest of this thread I've put on the impression that while the Purifiers are far more technologically advanced the Army and National Guard forces aren't without a few tricks of their own. Orlok has a multi-use wrist computer with satellite up-link in her armor that allows for various up-dates for both her computer's systems as well as its INTEL. Her armor, though with powered portions, is NOT power armor but a high-end form of stealth ballistic armor, which is the standard issue of ArcOps forces. In other words, they're making advancements of their own but more in the departments of stealth whereas the Purifiers seem to employ more overt, mass-destruction capabilities. The Army forces also seem to be well versed in the use and maintenance of cyborgenetics but not so much in magitek, to which they actually seem to have little to nearly no expertise in. It is assumed, due to the Army and National Guard's break from relations with the Purifiers, that they are hostile towards one another. I hope this will help add to the storyline more. If I had the resources on me right now I'd draw a small map of both the VA region they control and the failed push west.	09/13/09 18:41
Shaneb	Wow, this is a great project. Just wish I'd seen this before tonight. Don't know if this will add any value, but here goes... My character Shane, was born and raised in San Diego, CA, in the Rancho Penasquitos neighborhood. When his parents were killed by lycans, he found his way to the only other place he knew, the mountain estate of a vampire named Ian. The estate was located in the Whispering Pines community, a small community in the mountains about 60 miles east of San Diego. After making his way there, Ian finished tending to his business manners and took Shane, along with his brother, to his secluded compound that housed Ian and his followers of Golconda. The nearly 900 mile journey led them to what once was a small, mountain community about 300 miles southwest of Denver, CO, in the Rocky Mountains. The community had been known as Lazear prior to the residents abandoning it, afraid of the roaming lycan gangs said to wander this part of the country. Shane lived as a human until the age of 21, when Ian offered him the opportunity of being embraced. Shane, being the way he was, couldn't resist the opportunity, so he agreed to the turning. A couple of years later, when his younger brother, who'd been rescued by Ian and his followers on the night of the attack, was offered the same opportunity. He said yes at first, but on the night that it was supposed to happen, he ran away from the compound, leaving only a note for Shane. The note said he was heading back for California, heading to Lost Angels where he'd heard there was a group of humans fighting to regain control of the city. He intended on joining their cause. Shane left for Lost Angels shortly after to search for his brother. Shane made it safely to Lost Angels. There is where he came across the Coven and began the story of who he is today...	09/16/09 04:21
Orlok Lectar	On a side note, I hope that everything I've added can be of use in the CoLA back-drop. If not I'd rather someone say something so I know whether or not it was helpful.	09/16/09 09:58
James Saito	Orlok, everything is five by five with me in regards to what you just said vis a vis the Purifiers. There are some things I kinda want to say about them, but I won't due to ruining a plot I got boiling in my brain, but it is conceivable that whatever was left of the USMC would be part of, or a good chunk of, the foundation of the Purifiers.	09/16/09 14:16
Orlok Lectar	It's great to know the background I tossed in works out. If you need anything from it changed please don't hesitate to mention it, because right now I'm looking at ArcOps having three main operations, including the previously mentioned Operation Lycacide. The others were to be Operation Necrocide (purging Vampires and other Undead from various areas) and Operation Savior. (An operation that ties into the other two, collecting up refugees that are escaping from the Lycan and Vampire threats.) Otherwise they mainly just defend their small territory and try to expand it to make room for more refugees as Operation Savior makes strides. As you may have noticed from this they're none too concerned with Demons and Angels mostly because the main regions they've hit are already being acted upon by the Purifiers. Speaking of which, the USA (United States Army) has no immediate plans regarding the Purifiers except to try and keep their location a secret from them, which shouldn't be THAT difficult since the Purifiers probably have their eyes set on taking out the various non-Human threats to the west. However, if there's anything (as I said before) that needs to be changed to make either current or future-planned events and canon make sense please go ahead and correct what I've typed thus far. If there's anything that I'll need to know regarding any of this that will have an effect before the end of this year then I can plan around my character showing some of it since she's technically acting around those regions right now. Examples include any info she may receive regarding the status of the Army as a separate entity from the Purifiers, any Purifier pushes that go south, thereby hitting the USA safe zone, and/or things of that nature which a Sergeant in the USA would most certainly receive news about from her chain of command. It'd be kind of silly for my character to eventually come back to CoLA with something heavy about to happen and despite her job and position she didn't know about it even though she should have. I'm sure there are private means to get me the info if you're worried about spoiling it for everyone else too early. If that's all out of the question I'm sure I can manage some sort of story that gives good logic as to why she might not have known about it. Though it's not quite a map I know I'd have an easier time making a diagram of the current chain of command with the USA and USANG. (United States Army National Guard) It would also include what areas of the federal government (if any) defected with them from the Purifiers. On that note, I can also make a similar diagram for the Purifiers if I was given the correct info about them. Again, I know it's not a map but it might still help to both add good backstory and also help with anyone who pans on making characters that are of recent military service.	09/17/09 01:25
Orlok Lectar	Around the time I get back into the USA I'm thinking about initiating a progressive change in the storyline to the Army. It'll mainly go into detail about how they learn of Lycans and Vampires who are willing to co-exist with Humans and therefore not only also rescue the non-hostile as refugees but also start considering allowing them to join ArcOps, which should open new characters (other than Human) to be previous or current ArcOps Commandos. Basically I'm trying to give people a concurrent Special Forces background that feeds into CoLAs back-story... and possibly starting an army, but that's NOTHING to worry about. Like I said, I'll go into more details when I get out of this fucking country.	10/08/09 15:49
Juicy Redstar	Will be good to have you back, Orlock! Safe travels!	10/08/09 16:27
Orlok Lectar	COme to think of it, I might as well make a whole separate thread detailing AcrOps and their various SOPs, etc. when I get back. Going into their extreme detail should give people a good idea of where their Special Forces character could have originated and even give them something to fall back on. Um, what sort of history are we looking at for the Sidh in North America? If someone already typed it out (I'm too lazy to check) could you quote it please?	10/09/09 14:16
Tink	Was wandering if anyone has said anything about the NW Passage and the NW. It's about the area I was imagining Tink to be from, a place that is pretty much abandoned, with heavy woods taking over everywhere. I also established that the North Pole is controlled by a demon who uses trickery to enslave others. The outward appearance is that of a small village of elves who make various stuff to be given out once a year. :D	03/26/10 03:14
Dux	[quote=Tink]I also established that the North Pole is controlled by a demon who uses trickery to enslave others. The outward appearance is that of a small village of elves who make various stuff to be given out once a year. :D[/quote] Well of course, have you never heard of Satan Claws, he is a real mean Demon, giving out dangerous toys to kids that his enslaved elves and other miscreants makes for him in factories that make the coal mines of the late 19th century look like a cozy place.	03/26/10 15:50
James Saito	I remember that plot we did, Tink. EPIC.	03/28/10 21:25
Missy	That was an awesome RP. I had a lot of fun with that! Symbiotic Christmas presents... how totally ebil! And it was neat 'coz we sorta tied it in with the Syndicate Winter Formal event too, with a genuine Satan Santa, played by none other than the inimitable Michel Morane. Truly... I'll never forget my trip on Santa's knee :P	03/28/10 22:51
Dux	there is no Santa like Michel Santa, nuff said :D	03/29/10 00:37
Logan	[quote=Orlok Lectar] [/quote] Pretty much all of your stuff integrates perfectly with all of my stuff. So neatness there. Logan would certainly have been involved in the Military's exploration of supernatural forces, and I've been playing him this way for a long time. Anyone that decides to run with this ArcOps thing could justify recognizing my character as an instructor or consultant on the project. You me and James need to get together and go ahead and lock in just what path the US Government took.	04/04/10 20:09
DavidJoshua Artful	Area Fifty-One, Anyone?	04/10/10 09:00
Orlok Lectar	Sadly, I've heard rumor that a certain gun-company owner is planning on making a faction that is suppose to be the remnants of the Army. I don't know when this is supposed to happen or even if it's going to happen but if it does there's a large chance this person will utterly destroy the back-story I've set up, which is why most of my current characters as of late are either out of the loop on the main effort of the Army or simply not involved to enough of a degree to know what's happening with them, though nearly all have had Army training. This way if blank-Blankes person does, in fact, render my ideas wrong I can fall back on my character's ignorance. If said person decides to go with what I've said (which I doubt) then I'd flip a wig in sheer shock and probably die of a heart attack. As for Area 51, as DJ tossed in, that wouldd be rather easy. It's all for Air Force R&D (research and development) but throwing in a flying saucer or two would be funny, though the simple fact is I don't see such an area being used all too often. It's a military air base with experimental air craft. It's nothing more than some labs, tech-shops, and hangars. Good luck making that interesting. If you want story, it probably wouldn't be much if you went with how I said the Air Force looked less upon air traffic since it was a ground war in the USA itself it had to focus on, but rather they'd be hitting experimental armor, weapons, and communications rather hard. Though for THAT you'd want to hit Aberdeen (Maryland), not Area 51 (Nevada).	04/19/10 23:21
DavidJoshua Artful	Yeah, set up Area 51 somewhere nigh LVCD, so Wezzy Wez the Ranch Bouncer can have some open room to ride around in her refurbished tank. ... And regarding so-and-so setting up such a faction, sounds like hear-say to me.	04/27/10 01:13
Logan	Regardless instead of crying about it you could contact this person and work with them to create the backstory. Especially since your focus is on a small portion of the overall Army. ArcOps sounds more like Air Force to me anyway.	04/27/10 01:19
DavidJoshua Artful	[quote=Logan]Regardless instead of crying about it you could contact this person and work with them to create the backstory. Especially since your focus is on a small portion of the overall Army. ArcOps sounds more like Air Force to me anyway.[/quote] Definitely. Then you could like attract more RL military personnel to play in SL let alone CoLA, then they in turn can change the terrorists minds, such as like, "Hey buddies, I see you have some major pent up stress about your nation's economic woes. How about these free computers and you act out these violent scenarios with your friends in a controlled environment, rather than hurting your fellow earthlings. This way everybody wins, and we will all share a good laugh about it."	04/29/10 07:02
Christine Drachios	Totally great thread love the ideal my character is from Hays Montana up near ft. Belnap in the northern central badlands. I have a YouTube video where I talk a little bout it but left details kind of vague. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOIsnP_0p1s maybe I should go back and explore this more friend me and we can get a discussion going write a liitle of that map for you	06/23/10 21:04
Raelyn	[quote=Christine Drachios]Totally great thread love the ideal my character is from Hays Montana up near ft. Belnap in the northern central badlands. I have a YouTube video where I talk a little bout it but left details kind of vague. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOIsnP_0p1s maybe I should go back and explore this more friend me and we can get a discussion going write a liitle of that map for you[/quote] STOP! You STOP! Bad! Very bad Christine! BAD GIRL! smacks repeatedly on the nose with a rolled up newspaper	06/23/10 21:44
DavidJoshua Artful	[quote=Raelyn]STOP![/quote] Stop pressuring me! ~ Michael & Janet Jackson - Scream	06/24/10 00:25
Christine Drachios	Ow! /me look of surprise crosses my face, "ok, I say in a sorrowful voice, it was only an ideal forget I said it no one comes from that part of the country anyway."	06/28/10 18:17
DavidJoshua Artful	[quote=Christine Drachios]Ow! /me look of surprise crosses my face, "ok, I say in a sorrowful voice, it was only an ideal forget I said it no one comes from that part of the country anyway."[/quote] /me creeps up on Christine, fangs bared, as though he is thirsty for her blood. Eyes glowing red, he waits for her response.	06/28/10 21:11
Orlok Lectar	Things have gone in an odd direction. Rather than having it so the US Army is accepting non-Humans I've thrown it in a new direction by having it so the US Army is now screening their current soldiers to make sure they're Human. I'm going off the premise that despite the fact that LA shows the ability for non-Humans and Humans to live in relative co-existence it was determined that ultimately the low Human population in LA as well as the general state of oppression they go through is not becoming of the Green Zone and therefore the acceptance of non-Humans in stringent at best. Primarily Lycans, Vampires, and Risen are seen as the largest threats but there's a new awareness about Demons and Angels, so while they too would be screened for that's the newer of the screenings. Nekos, oddly enough, are no longer as hated. After digging through their own files about various military tests and what-not the files on Nekos being artificial bio-weapons was pulled up and after some time it was decided that they can be 'salvaged'. This means the US Army is accepting Nekos who still show combat potential and are willing to submit to military discipline. Their breeding habits, however, are HEAVILY regulated. Cyborgs and Androids are generally accepted for obvious reasons, even so far as to take pleasure droids and re-fit them for combat with new augmentations and combat programming that also allows them to follow proper regulations. In short they're trying to throw in a bit of diversity in order to gain strength but haven't accepted everyone quite yet and right now don't seem intent on doing so. Observation teams are still visiting LA to sent reports on the situation and in some case pull small operations there primarily with the simple goal of testing stability.	07/05/10 10:47
Grey Blankes	I'd imagine special operations command does not operate under the same personnel standards in this situation. In fact for the purposes of RP, you can assume certain units do not follow army regulations concerning race. For operational capacity it would be stupid to segregate.	07/06/10 03:51
Grey Blankes	Fiddlers Green is the declassified reference to a location that currently houses a defected First Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta. A former counter terrorism element of what was the U.S. Army. While this area can be found and visited, the unit has kept to strict secrecy about their current operations. The grounds of the compound are located on what was the Joint Readiness Training Center aka Fort Polk. Fort Polk was a tier alpha FEMA work camp responsible for the production of government materials. With a massive rail head and multiple independent oil and freshwater wells capped for the purpose the camp was put into full swing following the operations of the Purifiers. Sympathizers and non- humans alike were shipped here by road and rail where they would be tried, placed into hard labor and eventually culled. Millions of survivors of Wormwood were processed through this facility over its nine year run. Because of it's location an agreement was made with the Vampires of New Orleans to turn a blind eye in exchange for a continuous food supply. Likewise the devastation of coastal cities left no opposition to this pit of despair. With no established communications network barring strong microwave burst transmissions, nobody but the Purifiers knew of the operations in the region. Rail travel was largely overlooked and left completely intact across the country. It was far easier and often quieter to move hundreds of thousands of "refugees" a month to this facility. Unfortunately this facility was a victim of it's own success. Improvised expansions left the facility difficult to secure. An advisor was called from the east, Colonel Grey Blankes 1st Squadron Commander of 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta. This would prove to be a fatal flaw. In the first 15 years of the 21st century the army's special operations command had begun testing the effective integration of non human components into the army. At first the project was kept secret even to it's subjects, whom were appointed from elite units. Combat units, elite units populated by males and females alike due to the severely reduced acceptable combatants forcing the army's hand. Now with the Colonel, her out word appearance, complete with scars, old healed injuries, nobody would suspect she was anything except the best. She took a plane to this "FEMA" camp, the flight over was enough, it was a deteriorated situation, it was slum life at it's absolute worst. Upon meeting with the camp commander it confirmed her fears, these people were being exterminated by their own government. At the conclusion of the meeting, an attempt to establish a board of inquiry as to the camp's actual purpose was halted by command. Colonel Blankes consulted with her unit back east, and under cover of security detail, majority of the unit took every supply they could think of, countless amounts of weapons and ammunition, aircraft from 160th SOAR, even C5 Galaxies were requisition under Operation Fiddlers Green. What happened in the next 24 hours will never reach a page in history except for those who witnessed it for themselves. At 0430 HOURS on a late October morning, the assault that ultimately overthrew a 2100 man occupational security force began. Over the course of the next three months the camp was shut down entirely, closing off access and destroying over land routes to the location. A dispatch sent to New Orleans notified the local vampires of an embargo to the agreement, this was met with thin opposition but ultimately suppressed. Today you can find Fiddlers Green home to this unit, and a secret manufacturing facility for combat arms, past and present. Specializing in reproductions from captured dies and materials, producing perfect copies of no longer produced weapons. Self sufficient oil and water supplies taken over from previous purpose. This is quite possibly the saddest and most silent war relic in post modern history.	07/06/10 05:00
Orlok Lectar	[quote=Grey Blankes]I'd imagine special operations command does not operate under the same personnel standards in this situation. In fact for the purposes of RP, you can assume certain units do not follow army regulations concerning race. For operational capacity it would be stupid to segregate.[/quote] ArcOps, as mentioned before, is more-or-less a combination of various special forces groups to create a unified SOF specifically tasked with killing arcane creatures. The idea I put behind all this is that since there are far more hostile creatures in the wastes of the USA than there are non-hostile ones the US Army has generally decided it's not safe to trust them in their ranks. In short the Vamps, Risen, and Lycans have yet to show the US Army forces in the Green Zone that they can be trusted. In general, they blame the three for the majority of the issues Humans are going through as far as being driven on the brink of extinction.	07/06/10 13:47
Grey Blankes	My personal RP background is rather simple, we defected as a group BEFORE a unit such as Arc Ops would have been formed. Sometime in the wormwood aftermath but before the mass purification attempts beyond the D.C and New England areas. Delta Force has always been a group who's basic survival in hostile territory comes from blending in. Thus the government did to us what they wouldn't do elsewhere. They subjected us to all kinds of things, taught us the weaknesses of our enemies by having us explore anatomy of test subjects, observe behavior patterns and eventually unbeknownst to us, expose us to genetic modification ala retroactive viral gene implantation. We mapped out the controlled territories, vampire nests, located holy grounds and lycan dens. At first, and until resources were exhausted we would mark targets with lasers and air support would wipe it out. Eventually the human sympathizers grew in numbers beyond immediate control, with this in hand that would be when a new plan to both replenish resources and eliminate the problem simultaneously came about. Fort Polk Louisiana, Fort Hood Texas, Fort Levenworth Missouri, Fort Stewart and in the north Fort Meade, whom had been preposition before the last war to act as FEMA "Colonies". A modern day concentration camp, except acting with ruthless efficiency and maintaining incredible production capability. At preset, Operation Fiddlers Green succeeded in ceasing operations at one such facility, although it is widely believed a mercenary band of former Army Rangers was able to free Fort Hood and occupy the area. For obvious reasons, it is seeking death to look for these camps, and only the foolhardy would try.	07/06/10 19:59
DavidJoshua Artful	[quote=Grey Blankes]I'd imagine special operations command does not operate under the same personnel standards in this situation. In fact for the purposes of RP, you can assume certain units do not follow army regulations concerning race. For operational capacity it would be stupid to segregate.[/quote] Remember Androids from the movie Alien? That's the only race I'd be worried about in a setting like this. While the rest of the team is working together, the android might be brewing a plot to spit acid in their eyes. When they are called "human-like", they better have some people who are fit to program them and control their operations, otherwise I would probably feel uncomfortable to move out in an operation with androids, no.	07/07/10 09:25
Grey Blankes	Id be more worried about skynet...and terminators, to be honest those androids from the Alien movies were a bit frail. Anything I can beat malfunction into with a claw hammer doesn't particularly worry me.	07/08/10 05:00
DavidJoshua Artful	[quote=Grey Blankes]Id be more worried about skynet...and terminators, to be honest those androids from the Alien movies were a bit frail. Anything I can beat malfunction into with a claw hammer doesn't particularly worry me.[/quote] Haha Grey I agree. I'd ram a serrated bowie knife through their thyroid so fast they wouldn't even be able to curse at me one last time. Skynet and terminators are bad too... but I think if the Federal gov't made use of skynet-like technologies we'd all be in a safer society. Such as a hierarchy of police dispatch chat rooms, who can all monitor their local regions or whichever global regions they'd have access to. Such as: Ok. A Plausible future scenario. David is now an FBI Global police dispatcher and he happens to be browsing the San Francisco minimaps at an ungodly hour of the summer night. He sees a single dot standing outside a closed liquor store for a full five minutes. He types into SF local chat, "I'm seeing someone standing outside this liquor store at such and such intersection. Any patrolling officers nearby please check it out. Possible drug user, may have a cell phone. Possible terrorist attempt." Minority Report was a kind of annoying movie. I wouldn't want every street corner to look all sci-fi. I'd like RFID check-in points, but nothing too obtuse. If we can pinpoint possible crimes before they happen, though, and dispatch some officers to merely ask the defendants what they are up to, as in why they are standing there in the middle of the night... I think that would be beneficial to crime prevention.	07/08/10 10:27
Macca	Counterpoint: give me my goddamn privacy, it's none of the police's business what I'm up to if it's not illegal.	07/08/10 18:53
Grey Blankes	Wow, I am trying not to be...mean about it. You do know why they datafarm us right? It's not for your safety it's so they can use all means possible to separate you and your money. It's why Verizon sells location information and tracking data, or why facebook sells their data farm information to advertisers. It's all to make sure you spend every last dime. Believe me when I tell you the following since I have been on both sides of the door, on the know and from the outside. You do not what your government spying on you. You don't want RFID implants or even an RFID driver's license, you do not want laws that force you to carry your DL or ID with you. Crime breeds from ignorance, the true problem is much how the British have "dealt" with their problems, which are worse than ever. Gun control is the first nono, followed by restriction of personal freedoms, internet monitoring, all of it. Did you know even the government sells demographical data to corporations and foreign nations. You really want France to know how much you paid on taxes or if you have a valid passport, or to have advanced information about your bank accounts so they can clue their tourism industry to how much you might be ABLE to spend if you visited Paris. It all happens, it happens now, it's such a bad thing in so many ways the positive is outweighed three times over by the negative. Let me be blunt. Crime happens because we tolerate it. Period. In a nation where stealing money nets a longer sentence than taking a life, folks we are our own problem. Do you think there would be purse snatchers if that woman carried a .357 in a inside the waistband holster and put it on the base of his skull for trying to take her livelihood. Or if we were ignorant enough to let our best friend go home with someone they met in a club just that night only to find out she was raped for that mistake. Crime ONLY happens because we tolerate it's existance not because we aren't diligently monitoring it's activity. There are more cops now than there were 10 years ago, we spend more money now than we ever have before on crime prevention. Yet at the same time crime overall is as high as it has ever been. Try to remember certain things. Every time you witness a crime even petty in nature, your a contributor. Every time you let a clerical error or a book keeping error screw you over on a bill, and don't report it to the better business bureau, your a contributor to crime. See someone label swapping at walmart, your a contributor. Someone runs a red light...and you saw the plate but didn't think to call it in...your a contributor to crime. That is the problem, we assume someone will clean it up for us, for as long as we believe that, crime will get worse, even from inside the government.	07/08/10 21:15
DavidJoshua Artful	When things fall apart, public order justice is the only thing left to rebuild with, and individual rights are only as valid as the individuals who claim to possess said rights, as in the theory of natural selection.	07/09/10 00:09
Grey Blankes	So where are the controllable resources on this map, you know, clean water, fishing grounds, mining, cuz frankly, it only takes a few months to completely deplete our refined resource base. Imagine situations that closely match scenes from the movie "The Road". So obviously there is some resource and trade jockeying going on across pretty great distances, I imagine a mostly intact rail system as well.	07/10/10 05:36
Jenny Beale	Sothern California has always had very plentiful and easily accessible fishing off the coast and that improves dramatically with the reduced population and elimination of commercial fishing for export. Fresh water on the other hand has always been a problem but the weather patterns changes even bringing snow to LA in the winter which fills the Sepulveda basin all the man made lakes to capacity. For mining theirs still gold in the old los padres national forest area which could be traded east for iron and copper. (for RL crime Garry is badly mistaken In his basic premise, its at the lowest level it has ever been per capita, and it has been on a steady decline both nationally and locally sense California became a state. The idea that gun control encourage crime is a fallacy, Fire arms are generaly not much of a problem in rural areas excpt for idiot drunken hunters but in the inner cities thiers a direct coralation between the availibility of fire arms and the number of homicides. Also crime breads from poverty and population density far more then any other factor)	07/10/10 07:34
Jenny Beale	(double post)	07/10/10 07:45
Grey Blankes	Won't derail the topic, wanted to ask someone if indeed the waters off the coast could provide food or if wormwood/nuclear warfare overseas even otherworldy means have turned it into a deadpool.	07/10/10 10:15
DavidJoshua Artful	looks around 'Is there a chemist in the house? Grey has a contamination question.'	07/10/10 20:24

Oren Itano	oren	12/10/08 18:25	View
	Missy	12/10/08 22:22	View
The backstory of Vulpes.	Vulpes	12/11/08 01:46	View
Erica Kessel	Erica Kessel	12/11/08 07:52	View
Missy's Story.. a Do-over and another Chapter	Missy	12/11/08 22:38	View
	UsrBinPerl	12/11/08 23:48	View
	oren	12/11/08 23:57	View
Kwekwe's Backstory	Kwekwe Karu	12/12/08 01:02	View
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Eternal Sunset	Missy	12/13/08 12:19	View
	Kit Ristow	12/14/08 00:01	View
	ShyMathys	12/14/08 00:27	View
Masks	Alissa	12/14/08 00:58	View
	Lorae	12/14/08 01:24	View
	UsrBinPerl	12/14/08 22:07	View
Missy's Story Continued..Part 3	Missy	12/16/08 08:43	View
Missy's Story Part 4: Innocence Shattered	Missy	12/16/08 18:34	View
Missy's Story Part 5: Innocence Annihilated	Missy	12/18/08 17:16	View
Small Dangers	Vox	12/18/08 21:36	View
Saint of The Abyss: Part 1	Luciferiel	12/19/08 05:21	View
Zero....-1	Justa Zero	12/19/08 17:38	View
Zero....1	Justa Zero	12/19/08 18:26	View
Óðr’s Daughter. Chapter I: A Guiding Dream	Asil Karu	12/20/08 02:39	View
Omega To Alpha	erinnic	12/23/08 16:49	View
Her Bloody Tears [-Past Event-]	Methias	12/23/08 18:09	View
Lost Kitsune - A Shattered Mind	Kiera	12/25/08 18:51	View
Usr's story Part IV	UsrBinPerl	12/27/08 20:34	View
The Essex	Heir Maelstrom	12/29/08 04:23	View
Kwekwe's shame	Kwekwe Karu	12/30/08 18:11	View
Joint Round Robin Fic Anyone...?	erinnic	12/30/08 19:07	View
God Was On Her Lips As She Died	erinnic	01/02/09 23:31	View
Love and Betrayal - A New Beginning	kessjuliesse	01/03/09 13:46	View
The Diary of Cody Woodhen	codywoodhen	01/05/09 21:35	View
Missy's Story Part 6: Innocence Abducted	Missy	01/07/09 06:23	View
Cursed Blade	Yannis_Martynov	01/08/09 21:27	View
Story Thread: Community Round Robin Fic	erinnic	01/09/09 23:25	View
The demon within	Canly Fargis	01/11/09 16:14	View
Ziau- CoLA's Very Own Casanova	Ziau	01/13/09 02:09	View
Twisted Attentions	erinnic	01/21/09 20:34	View
Inspiration- music and roleplay	Ziau	01/26/09 08:01	View
Compilation! Where were you when it all happened?	Ziau	01/28/09 09:12	View
The Clock Struck Midnight	Malice Ashdene	01/28/09 22:31	View
With Precision- a poem by Kelly Welch A.k.A Ziau Jua.	Ziau	01/29/09 04:36	View
Alisa's dicovery of a new world (character sheet + story)	Alisa Draconia	01/30/09 19:17	View
The Shadow Stepper- Ziau the Enshadowed.	Ziau	02/01/09 07:26	View
Krista Lemon arrives to the streets of Lost Angels	Krista	02/03/09 00:09	View
Back Story Upto the Excile of Rune.	RuneCrimson	02/03/09 21:59	View
War with the Brood, war with the Coven, and the Pack.	Ziau	02/07/09 04:11	View
-- Halcyon's Backstory --	Halcyon Nacht	02/08/09 00:22	View
Planer/Exonar family (aka, Erinyse, Khalan, Viridian, Cummere, Selena)	Cummere Mayo	02/08/09 03:53	View
Kit's Backstory	Kit Ristow	02/10/09 18:40	View
Eyes in the Dark	Keyla	02/11/09 09:47	View
Surfacing Part I	Llyr	02/13/09 22:21	View
Surfacing Part II	Llyr	02/13/09 22:35	View
Tama-Chan: A Cat's Story (Tamara's background)	Tamara	02/17/09 07:35	View
Project: A map of Post Apocalypse North America	Tamara	02/17/09 19:21	View
Dreamtime Revelations	Winter	02/19/09 18:08	View
Reaver-the echo of the Blackwind	AntiZero	02/23/09 00:43	View
On the Origin of Species	Tamara	02/25/09 22:38	View
Confession	Kit Ristow	02/26/09 01:39	View
Personnel File: Pointe, Zsuzsanna C. (Inactive, Deceased)	Su Pointe	02/26/09 03:32	View
Malice, in a Different Kind of Wonderland	Malice Ashdene	02/27/09 18:07	View
The Dark of Inspiration	Kit Ristow	03/01/09 21:42	View
Jheric: Crucified	Kayle Ashdene	03/03/09 10:53	View
It's my life	arsene_Braveheart	03/05/09 18:18	View
The Tradgedy of the Hybrid	Digital Enigma	03/29/09 07:09	View
The Sin of Wrath	molly switchblade	04/02/09 21:28	View
Golden Boy	Ephran Ehrler	04/15/09 06:12	View
Story About A Girl	Aesendria	04/24/09 15:34	View
Climaxe by Smith and Wesson	Sloan	04/28/09 06:19	View
My new project ATTENTION Russian Characters!	Ziau	05/01/09 06:42	View
NSFW A Typical Tuesday Night for Missy	Missy	05/06/09 20:48	View
Post your profile links!	Cortero Landar	05/07/09 10:25	View
Making Logan Suffer	Aesendria	05/12/09 07:09	View
Jeanne Varun	Jeanne Varun	05/14/09 08:24	View
The Vanguard's True Purpose	Logan	05/16/09 01:03	View
Cortero's Infernal Armor	Cortero Landar	05/16/09 06:52	View
Bookstore Surprise	Aesendria	05/16/09 23:16	View
Post your profile links if you have in-story info in them!	Cortero Landar	05/18/09 10:33	View
Promises	Aesendria	05/24/09 02:44	View
Cyber Evolution Bios, Anur Seda, Cyber Reaper, and Commander of CE	Theassassin	06/08/09 11:28	View
Was any of it real?	Youko_Giha	06/12/09 15:28	View
A shift in priorities	Logan	06/17/09 04:21	View
Going home	Ludvig	06/17/09 19:10	View
'Ren in Japan	oren	06/18/09 23:11	View
Thelma across the board	ThelemaJuliesse	06/26/09 15:09	View
Pre-fiction: How Kayteear got here.	Kayteear	07/15/09 16:43	View
Story Time	Charissa	07/17/09 19:03	View
Pack Airship RP.	Tai	07/27/09 02:49	View
My Character	Lilith13	08/05/09 22:34	View
Lilith	Lilith13	08/06/09 09:30	View
The Haunter in the Dark	Shadow	08/14/09 21:50	View
The Flying Heads	Kwekwe Karu	08/16/09 16:52	View
Why selling coffins is impossible in CoLA	Ziau	08/23/09 04:14	View
Paint it red!	Ziau	08/23/09 07:51	View
Young Cowards.	Ziau	08/23/09 08:28	View
Great video for RPers and people passionate about writing.	Ziau	09/05/09 08:55	View
Dux - 264 BC	Dux	09/10/09 18:41	View
The Thing at South Gate Sanitarium	Shadow	09/15/09 22:09	View
♪♫ Do you wanna RP my avatar ♪♫	Kayteear	09/17/09 14:45	View
Jessica's Mother	Jessica Susser	09/21/09 04:19	View
Ziau Challenged me to. NSFW	ChasityDawes	09/21/09 07:17	View
The Divine Machine.................	Theassassin	09/21/09 22:29	View
I Bleed my Blood for Myself.	Ziau	09/22/09 22:28	View
Cronicle of a death	Kayteear	09/24/09 01:34	View
"Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself"	DavidJoshua Artful	09/26/09 17:07	View
Old Versus New	Digital Enigma	09/27/09 20:28	View
The Shadowed Order, The Eternal Order, Ordo Machina	Theassassin	10/06/09 06:55	View
Elamyrath's History	Elamyrath	10/10/09 00:52	View
The here, the now, the dead. The Minus.	TheMinus Ziskey	10/10/09 12:41	View
Before bed ritual.	Amy Guisse	10/17/09 04:13	View
Alone?	Ike	10/18/09 15:34	View
IS this High School again?	Theassassin	10/24/09 12:49	View
Sidhe vs Drow	Orlok Lectar	10/29/09 04:08	View
Daddy blues	arsene_Braveheart	11/17/09 19:01	View
Chronicles of SIE	agentlyseria	11/22/09 12:27	View
The Lady In Black(A Drokan Exile Twisted Love Story)	AntiZero	11/29/09 06:36	View
The growing Darkness.	Leirain Koray	12/01/09 11:04	View
The lycan	Kayteear	12/01/09 16:00	View
City of Lost Jackman: The Untold Hollywood Blockbuster	AntiZero	12/02/09 07:11	View
Coming home for christmas ..	Kes	12/10/09 22:17	View
Bunneh Vs. Lich, DBZ style	Karsha Yutani	12/14/09 11:59	View
A Farewell	Roland	12/16/09 20:50	View
Of Death and Rebirth	Digital Enigma	12/21/09 20:14	View
The Story of Reoco	Reoko Farspire	02/06/10 20:47	View
Homecoming......... The Story of Orpheus Darkfold	OrpheusDarkfold	03/11/10 02:27	View
The Story of Orpheus Part 2	OrpheusDarkfold	03/13/10 23:15	View
Who owns who?	Kayteear	03/22/10 22:03	View
Missing the Ocean	ricercar	03/23/10 22:27	View
Letter to the editor: Manners in LA	Tink	03/25/10 16:58	View
Chasity Backstory	ChasityDawes	06/14/10 19:43	View
Something Black and Violent...	DavidJoshua Artful	06/19/10 22:23	View
Doctor Visit	erinnic	07/12/10 04:26	View
Gabby Perdide	vacantghost	07/19/10 04:42	View

Agora Forum Archive

Thread table for forum City of Lost Angels - Character Fiction

Topic Project: A map of Post Apocalypse North America