The Long After
The war lasted one afternoon, eighty years ago. Water is money, the ruins go deep, and the tax robots still come every month.
- Post-apocalyptic
- Wasteland
- Survival
- Open world
post-apocalyptic wasteland 1 memberBuilt by Worldtable
Eighty years ago the war lasted one afternoon. The people in charge died, and the machines they left running did not. Now the American West is dust and ruins, beasts that used to be dogs, and towns behind scrap walls. Clean water is money. And once a month, the robots of the Bureau still come to count heads and collect the tax, as if nothing happened. Be a scavenger, a caravan guard, a robot fixer, a raider who wants out, someone the dust changed, or someone from a shelter seeing the sky for the first time.
Where it all began
the Afternoon
Eighty years ago the war lasted one afternoon. The missiles fell on the cities, the bases and the missile fields; the government and everyone in charge died in the first hour. What they had built to run the country did not: the Bureau of Census and Revenue's machines, its central computer at Clear Valley, the dam's turbines, the factory lines at Millerland and the sealed shelters kept going, on their own, by the book. Three generations later the survivors live on what the old world left, and the machines still keep the rolls.
The lands
Bear Flats
the Crossroads
the dry flats where the old interstates cross, and Iron Junction, the trade town everyone passes through
Everyone in Iron Junction is armed and nobody draws: the one law of the crossroads, kept by the Arbiter and her deputies, because every caravan in the waste needs one place where trade is safe.
Stone Basin
the Old City
the ruins of Silver Rapids and its suburbs: mile after mile of something worth digging for
Silver Rapids was a city of two million. Its ruins go on for miles and go down for floors, and the deeper you dig, the better it pays.
Copper Hills
the River
the river canyon country east of the flats, and the Fox Falls Dam, which still makes power for whoever holds it
The Fox Falls Dam still turns three turbines and fills the only clean reservoir in the waste. Whoever holds it holds the water, the light and the price of everything.
Crystal Plains
the Crater
the glassed plains around the Crater, where the dust glows at night and the Changed live on the rim
The missile field was here. The Crater is a bowl of green glass two kilometres wide, and at night its dust glows.
Gray County
the Yards
the dead factory towns where the machine yards at Millerland still build robots, with no one in charge
At the Millerland Yards the factory lines never stopped. Robots build robots there, day and night, and no one is in charge.
Cedar Range
the North Road
the cedar hills and the north road, where Travis Collins's riders hold Fort Scheling and the passes
Travis Collins holds the north road from Fort Scheling, and he is buying every caravan on it. The ones who will not sell have been having accidents.
Magnolia Hills
the Green
the green hills where rain still falls: farms, Greendale where everyone smiles, and the Laurel Gap Shelter, open at last
Rain still falls on the Magnolia Hills. There are farms, orchards, a shelter that just opened, and Greendale, where everyone smiles.
Who you can be
Wastelander
The people of the waste, three generations after the Afternoon: sunburned, practical, armed and funny about it. Scavengers, traders, caravan guards, farmers behind scrap walls, raiders, fixers and docs. Clothes are patched from whatever the old world left; everyone carries a canteen and a knife and knows the price of water in three towns.
Shelter-born
Born in the Laurel Gap Shelter, sealed under the hills for eighty years, three hundred people living by the rulebook a dead government left them. The Shelter opened a week ago. Its people are pale, healthy, well-read, polite, terribly naive, and seeing the sky for the first time; they know pre-war machines from manuals and the waste from nothing at all.
Changed
People the dust changed: born near the Crater or soaked in it since. Some have scaled or hairless skin, eyes that shine in the dark, extra growth or a faint glow at night; all of them shrug off dust that would sicken anyone else. Some are stronger than any human body. Plenty of towns will not let them in after dark; the Changed of Desville Bluffs have stopped asking.