Veeky Forums gets its shit together and makes a setting part 2: deck'Em Edition"

I guess I'll keep this thread alive until people start posting.

> Roughly 60 years ago, the NASCAR track in Fort Worth, Texas was renovated into the wasteland's largest Moto-Jousting stadium. Annually, Moto-Jousters from far and wide come to the "Thunderdome" to do battle, and hordes of fans come to Fort Worth to watch the month-long "Grand Tournament" in which Moto-Jousters compete against each other for the right to claim the "Tournament Trophy", and gain the title of undisputed Moto-Jousting champion of the year, along with bragging rights.

> The Grand Tournament isn't just Moto-Jousting, hundreds of activities take place, from free-for-all mud wrestling brawls to mutant wrangling circuses to even bloody gladitorial combat! Merchants make obscene profits selling equipment, food, fuel, and tickets to the masses and competitors, and much of the profit goes back to Fort Worth itself.

> Fort Worth is ruled with an iron fist by King Jonah, Supreme Lord of the Tourney, and the King is easily one of the wealthiest men in the wastes. He owns almost 20% of the Corporation, and has his own standing army of mercenaries. In Fort Worth, his word is law and his word is final. King Jonah is an extremely cunning businessman and he makes the Grand Tournament into an even larger spectacle each year. Fortunately for the people of Fort Worth, the King is benevolent and has a sense of fairness, all within Fort Worth have equality, regardless of mutations, augmentations, or religion, and aside from the Grand Tournament, violence is forbidden under pain of death, amputation, or immolation. He's content to rule over Fort Worth and its Grand Tournament, and he pays his taxes to the Corporation, but aside from that, is more or less completely autonomous.

Kek, you all posted before I finished my post. Now, let's get this show on the road!

I think the Corporation should be a bit more spread out, maybe owning the rightmost fifth of Neo-Texas with a few outlying small pockets of territory scattered throughout Independent Space?

While mostly used by bandits and criminals, drugs are fairly spread out around the wasteland.
Not many remember how to make them, but there's a group of people who does and is lucky enough to have the needed components. They're the "Whiteys".
The Whiteys are a closed group, almost a cult, some would say. They keep their recipes to themselves, and nobody knows where they get all those chemicals and ingredients. They say their leader, Black Walt, knows how to make them from just some glue and biofuel.
They're usually set up in old factories turned into drug labs. You recognize them by the symbol that's usually painted on the front door: some winged bug colored with yellow and black stripes.
Don't even bother trying to rob them or anything, bandits have already tried. Apparently, the Whiteys always disappear before they arrive, with the only evidence of them ever staying there being the smell of burnt plastic and their campers smoking up the horizon.

Whenever you see a camper coming up slowly, smoke coming out of the roof, and feel that weird smell in the air, you know a Whitey's around, and things are gonna get fun.

While the Whiteys are the only ones who know how to make synthetic drugs, natural drugs are grown across the wastes. Tobacco, marijuana, freakishly huge mutated psychedelic mushrooms and more all thrive in backwoods farms. The Neo-Catholics frown on drugs, but the followers of the Backwoods Gospel vary in opinion, some believe that they're holy gifts from God and that they can be used to come closer to him, and others believe that they're degenerate and shouldn't be allowed in any decent community.

Don't you die on me, thread!

I laughed at this much more than I should have.

A variety of strange mystery cults preach strange doctrines and even stranger teachings to the gullible and unwary across the wastes, hiding away in secrecy, preforming their dark rituals in service to their dark Gods... Or just refusing to consume pasta because they believe the Giant Flying Spaghetti Monster told them to. It's really a mixed bag with most mystery cults.

This is beautiful Veeky Forums

Good to hear that user, but it'd be even better if you contributed.

> This thread seems slow, so to get the ball moving, let's each come up with an organism of some kind that evolved after the apocalypse, or a unique individual who can be found in the wasteland!

>Is preapocalypse origins good?
In the years preceding the apocalypse, something very much like life was evolving over the myriad pipes and lines of the Internet. Programs were made, on purpose or accidentally, that were capable of mutating. Some of these programs soon out-evolved any restrictions on reproduction and spread themselves over the Internet-competing, changing, thriving.
Even more bizarre lifeforms soon appeared-memes that had somehow combined with programs to become something more, strange things that harnessed human brainpower and machine algorithms alike to spread themselves, react intelligently to circumstances, and live where less capable memes had faltered.
The study of these new artificial lifeforms, this new informational ecology, became the new frontier of computational and social science.

The apocalypse tore down the Internet along with everything else, destroying the great informational ecology. The knowledge of artificial life has been lost like so much else to the ravages of time.

But some remnants survive. Not all of which is benign.

Scattered around the wasteland, ensconced in salvaged microchips and Hazardous Environment Data Drives, pieces of a vast and incomprehensible program are being unknowingly gathered and assembled. Where the item being produced is simple and small-an engine controller, a robot arm- it is safe enough to use.

But the bigger a computer made from salvaged components is, the more likely it will manifest the Raven.

The Raven, once manifested, is capable of spreading itself to any computer it can communicate with-wired, wireless and ham radio are known vectors. No size of computer is too small, for once the Raven is manifested it can regenerate all but the most vital functions from fractal code generators a few kilobytes large.

Where the computer has merely a screen, the effects are usually more annoying than dangerous-large space of memory taken up, constant processor use, surreal imagery of ravens and snow, garbled speech. Here the chief danger is that it can be spread by the unwarned and unwary.

But when the Raven manifests or spreads in a cybernetic limb, it's bearer is in mortal danger. It whispers to them in their sleep through bio-feedback, promising the impossible to minds too asleep to see the lie. Over the course of weeks it bends their minds to it's will.

The lucky figure it out in time to commit suicide. The unlucky are bent to it's service, becoming shells of themselves, seeking only to infect others and find the Frozen Forest...
>Yes, yes, Corvus from COD:BO3.

Meme-aggeddon? Neat.

Y'all know of the Cryptofreaks, right?
A lot of time ago, they were scientists trying to get whatever technology from the old world they found up and running again.
And problems with things breaking aside, they were doing a damn fine job at it.
But then they started experimenting.
Grafting computers to their bodies, attaching screens on their backs and having wires run under their skin.
A disgusting sight to look at, but they became absolute geniuses in everything.
For some time, everything was well... Until the Raven got hold of them.
You see, that shit corrupts tech, and by doing that it corrupted their bodies too. They stopped being people, just bundles of information.
Now... They shamble around, on the brink between life and death. If you watch closely, though, you can see that on those screens they have attached to them, they're continuously running calculations. Like, it never ends, they go on for hours and hours, never stopping, and nobody knows why.
Some say the Cryptofreaks kidnap people at night to make them like they are, but i think it's just stories and legends.
Well, i hope so.

Let's quickly go over the reason why small Khanantes stay in the south, since they are basicly already the huns of this setting
>The Wall of El Donaldo isn't really a fortification and hardly more then a hinderance.
>Badly Damaged, he is hardly more then a monument to a long forgotten age.
>Yet the wall still marks the undisputed boarder between the 'civilized' world and the barbaric south.
>Few aside from the ocassional invasion force from either side ever passed the wall and returned to tell the tale.

Does someone want to open a Google Doc to give ideas a more permanent home?

The old world didn't just create cybernetics, it also built machines in the shape of men, to do the labor men either couldn't do or didn't want to do. Most of these machines used a crude AI designrd to let them interpret simple orders and carry them out to the best of their ability, but not advanced enough for free will. A few of these machines had a more advanced AI, giving them an almost Human intelligence and some semblance of free will.

After the apocalypse, most of these machines rushed and fell into disrepair, but some, through luck or careful maintenance, have lasted to the current day. The semi-autonomous machines are almost all used by those wealthy enough to afford them an effective, tireless, and cheap labor force. The ones with advanced AI have largely developed their own unique personalities over the years and they now wander the world searching for a purpose. They're extremely rare and highly valuable laborers, and many slavers would be ecstatic to capture one of these thinking machines.

> Spicy Gus is an amicable, pot-bellied, hulking giant of a man fortunate enough to have been born with four arms instead of the usual two. Unlike most intelligent mutants, Spicy Gus makes no effort to hide his extra appendages, and is more self-conscious about his bald head than he is about the extra arms.

> Ever since he was a small child, Gus has loved food more than just about anyone, and one day, Gus decided to learn to make food himself. It turns out, he had a huge talent for it, and he was so good at making food, he decided to build a shack and use it just to sell food.

> "Spicy Gus's Fry Shack" turned up so much profit, Gus decided to go ahead and hire some people just to make Fried food and sell it all day long, and he went off and built another shack to do the same thing somewhere else.

> The second Fry shack took off just like the first, and soon, Gus had enough money to go ahead and build two more Fry shacks. So he did, and soon those took off just the same as the first two.

> So Spicy Gus built four more, and then he built eight, and so on and so on until finally, Gus ended up making the first Fast Food Chain since the apocalypse!

> He made a fortune with his delicious "secret sauce deep-fry sammiches", enough to buy a dozen semi-truck trailers, an enormous pile of parts, an ungodly amount of oil to fuel it, and a crew of mechanics to weld 'em and put 'em all together to make what amounts to a mobile warehouse.

> With a bit of elbow grease and some hired help, Gus turned the mobile warehouse into a mobile Fry shack! Nowadays, Gus goes across the countryside from town to town in "Spicy Gus's Fry Shack On Wheels", serving food to men, women, and children across the wastes.

> Legend has it, Spicy Gus is the richest mutant in the wasteland, and the best frycook to ever live. Dozens of his Fry Shacks litter roadsides and refueling towns across the wasteland, feeding and fueling travellers and settlers alike.

Kek. This brings to mind, how much do wastelanders know about the old world's history?

probably as much as todays generation knows about there history.
They know there were at least 2 world wars
nazis are bad
the end

Cartographer-user here. I'm glad to see this thread is back

Kinda. It's kindof a hybrid between a meme and a computer 'bacterium'(think a virus or other self-replicating program that can rewrite itself at need.)
It wouldn't survive or thrive without a human/machine interface of some sort, unlike a meme(human-to-human only) or computer virus(computer-to-computer only).

Something like this seems par for the course.

Check it. The Corp. just dropped the newest deck'Em expansion pack.

What do we think is going on in New Orleans in this world? That could be a good opportunity for a little variety

I was thinking of a Ghost-Dance-Inspired thing for Oklahoma. Any takers? I've already written a little tale about the backstory surrounding that.

Hit us with it

I suppose a better question would have been: Are supernatural things (like ghostly Sioux warriors) not allowed? But I'll post the little thing shortly.

(1/2)
Well, long ‘afore you or I was alive, there was a queerly religious sorta fella. His name was Jack somethin’, or Kowova, somethin’ like that. Anyways, this fella lived quite-a-ways north-a here and said he came face-to-face with God as a young man. He went on to preach about th’ things he saw. Some folks say he could control th’ weather and stop droughts, and make ice with his hands. I could believe em’ too, what with what he did later.

“I’m gonna teach ‘em all to dance my sacred dance. It’s gonna bring this world closer to the next! It’s gonna destroy evil forever!” He went on about that. It was a strange sorta religion, and it didn’t suit most folks alive in those days. He was in direct opposition to the powers-that-be of the time, and some rumor that they coulda had a hand in his death. I, myself, prefer not to speculate. Regardless, his ideas only found purchase with his own kind. And they were outgunned. The final blow t’ his followers came with th’ end of the old world, but he died quite a bit before that. Regardless, he had some grand ideas about peace and all that horseshit. Still, th’ unfulfilling nature of his unfinished and unexecuted grand plan tore his spirit’s mind up somethin’ fierce.

Only a few days after th’ dust had settled on that fateful day of th’ old world’s end, then he came a-riding on a ghostly horse outta the north. He weren’t nothin’ but bones, dressed in the garments of his tribe.Not only that, but he had an entire army of his dead followers behind! Seems he’d a-given up on peace without war. Not that I can fault him for it.

(2/2)
What I do know is that the dead have also risen up Oklahoma-way. They ain’t organized yet, who knows if they ever will. They also seem to be fewer this far south. But they’re cantankerous and mean, full of cunnin’ and hatred for mortal life. So iffen you ever see a funny-dressed man wandering through the desert, don’t take him up on any of his offers. He might just make off with your life.

(Somehow I cut off a large part of this paragraph. whoops! It should read like this:)

But they seemed keen to get the places way up north. Some superstitious fellas deep in Red Silk territory claim to have been raided by The Prophet and his kin. Nobody knows for sure what they’re a-doing, though, as nobody’s come out of that region of the North and nobody that’s gone in has cared to, neither. What I do know is that the dead have also risen up Oklahoma-way. They ain’t organized yet, who knows if they ever will. They also seem to be fewer this far south. But they’re cantankerous and mean, full of cunnin’ and hatred for mortal life. So iffen you ever see a funny-dressed man wandering through the desert, don’t take him up on any of his offers. He might just make off with your life.