Medieval America General #2.2

Last Thread: (Inspired by the After The End mod for CK2)

Post-Apocalyptic settings are all the rage, but that shit's gay as fuck and is mostly just "yo I'm a survivalist eating beans out of cans."

ITT we talk about a truly apocalyptic setting where people have to literally rebuild their civilization -- worse than the collapse of the Roman Empire. It's been a few hundred years, some remnants of the Old World survived (like Mt. Rushmore) but they're seen as the remnants of Gods who came before. Myths of Old America have been passed down and warped over time. Castles, fortresses, and knightly battle cover eastern sea-board while competing hordes of "cowboys" and plainspeople roam the West.

In the old capitol, a cult has arisen, offering worship to a pantheon of Founders: Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton...

A lot of people have already contributed ideas and one poster had a great idea for getting more of the states covered -- pick your state. Ctrl+F it to see previous mentions of it. See if you dig those ideas and want to add to them, or would rather come up with your own idea. Big not! Kingdoms, Duchies, etc. don't need to follow state borders unless the borders denote a specific culture (like Texas). Medieval territories would be more likely to follow topographical features.

I'll include a list of some well-liked ideas from the last thread in the next post.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Good ideas from last thread:

>Minnesota Vikings become real vikings. Norwegians turn their roots and Neo-Norse begin raiding and conquering in the Great Lakes region. Influenced by football paraphernalia, these vikings actually have horned helmets.
>A Cult to the Founding Fathers and subsequent presidents forming on the eastern seaboard.
>Amish are the setting's elves. Having been able to ride out the apocalypse and continuing their simple, isolationist existence for hundreds of years, the Amish of rural Pennsylvania and upstate New York are seen as marvelously advanced compared to the standards of most of medieval America.
>A Rust Cult based on the worship of the old, hollowed shells of factories in the Rust Belt which sees Henry Ford as a Prophet/God figure.
>Duke Walton V of Disney, ruling Orlando and the Magic Kingdom with an ironfist and a knightly order descended from old Disney Mercs/Security.
>The Hoosier King of Indiana maintaining power through great agricultural resources and a few forts staffed by knights who can deploy quickly on the bones of old highways
>A myth that "out west" there's still people from the Before Times or Old America, but to get there you have to pass the Mountains at the End of the World. (Trick is there's nothing there, of course)
>Cheyenne Mountain Facility as a sort of Holy Grail.


There's more, but a lot of it is taken straight from ATE, like the Rust Cult and the Founders Cult. Also a Plains Indian revival with Indians serving the role of Mongol Hordes in the midwest. A Mormon Kingdom of Deseret.

One of the best ideas from the last thread that didn't get much discussion was the idea of Biker Gangs basically becoming the new Condotierri, which I think is very cool.

That was right at the end and I think people were sleepy and worn out from dealing with pissed off indians.

I think it's a solid idea. I just don't know enough about biker clubs/gangs, their HQs, their territories, etc. to say much else other than "it'd be cool if biker gangs were mercenaries."

In After the End, a lot of mercenaries are football teams: The Buckeyes of Ohio. The Atlanta Bravemen. To me, this makes less sense as they're tied to a geographical location. Not something neutral like "The White Company."

Also nobody really got into the Southwest or Northwest other than the joke about white nationalist cascadia.

More Ideas

>Missile Silos in Montana have been dug down, and form massive shafts, with small pueblo-style apartments on the sides of the silo wall. Climb down via ladders or ropes, weird albino missile-cults live in the micro-apartments and watch you as you descend into long-dead mineshafts.
>The most lucrative freelance jobs in the thalassocratic states on the Gulf is to go on expeditions to abandon Oil Rigs, and scavenge them for tools and resources, as many still remain relatively untouched. Radiation-touched things lurk in the water.
>NASA's crawler-transporter has a city on top of it, and is found somewhere in the Midwest, where it moved before running out of fuel, and is now just rusting away

Yeah depending on which you intend to include in your game, there's plenty of info to expand on their internal culture or what's left of it. I imagine there might be a dozen that roam about, and are really able to turn the tide of battle, elevating them to some small amount of folkloredom, with kids saying they want to join up with so and so's company when they grow up.

I like the Montana Missile-Silo cavepeople a lot.

>Some silos remain connected to the vast underground logistical networks needed to tend to the ICBM forces of old
>Graffiti coats the walls of the tunnels, telling stories of times long past
>The Silo People are generally peaceful, but in the most cramped conditions, things can go wrong
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
>Those trapped in a cramped silo behavioral sink quickly turn towards psychosis and cannibalism, wandering in unlit silo caverns, where there eyes have atrophied, but their other senses grown in capability
>Kingdoms generally designate any silo clusters as forbidden territory precisely for this reason
>All well and good until the daughter of a Deseret nobleman travelling on a pilgrimage to Northern Mormon Compound-Duchies is stolen away into the depths of one of the most notorious silo-complexes

PCs could negotiate their way through abandoned missile silos, meeting shy silo-people, aggressive ones, and those that seem utterly inhuman, all with medieval equipment, as if it was a straight-up dungeoncrawl

I would extend the mormon kingdom a bit north but otherwise great map.

Really good ideas.

It does not make any sense that the Mississippi River would be chopped up by different states like this. Domination of the river IS domination of the interior. Either areas along the river would untie to control trade or the "heaviest weight" of these other powers would put real effort into controlling it all the way to Louisiana. At best everywhere along the river should be disputed territory. A hellish landscape of unending war similar to France during the Hundred Years War.

that does remind me of one idea I had though that I didn't get a chance to mention in the last thread, having one of the more common armor styles in this post cataclysm world be modeled after NFL uniforms(NHL style suits are probably also fairly common), indeed I wouldn't be surprised if at least a couple "Knightly" Orders in America are descended directly from Football and other professional sports teams

also my thoughts on both Tech and Weird levels;

Tech: the average tech level is probably a weird mish-mash of late Iron Age through American Civil War in most regions on average, but there's probably all sorts of pockets of both higher and lower tech levels(I imagine Disney's average tech level to be approximately WW1 levels with them managing to maintain some outright modern tech at the heart of the Magic Kingdom)

Weird: honestly I'd like things to be fairly weird, like there's a fair amount of unnatural monsters and creeps in the wilds and wastes of America, and even some weirdness the PC's are capable of accessing, cause Post-Apocalyptic stuff works best when things are allowed to get weird

I made some of the New England coastal cities (Boston, Providence, Bridgeport), into merchant republics like Italy. They mostly fight over control of the fishing and trade routes in the Atlantic, and some have set up "colonies" as far south as Savannah.
This idea also works as many banking and insurance companies still operate there, despite no manufacturing.

What is this map from?

Also, I think as Medieval America -- the goal is no guns -- or maybe very primitive guns in a few spots.

Was the Danube controlled entirely by one state in the middle ages?

reposting Mormon Kingdom stuff from last thread since it doesnt seem to have made it over here

>The safest route for traders working the pacific/Atlantic is through the Deseret league controlled Rocky Mountains. Rates are reasonable but constant, angering many traders. But seeing as the only other option is through raider desert country most pay the tolls.
>Every once in a while a trader leaves the caravans, thinking he can make their way through the mountains on their own. But they quickly find hundreds of false trails and dead ends marked by signs in an odd script. Trespassers often hear whistling through the canyons before passing out.
>The isolated Deseret communities near southern raider territory are protected by an organization named the Knights of Rockwell. Rumored to be impervious to bullets they actually have access to effective armor to wear under their clothing and solve most issues by talking.

Related info in next post

>Beyond the Native American confederacies in what was Oklahoma (Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw, etc.)
>Beyond the Great Mountain Ranges that seem to mark the end of the world
>There lies what was once the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, completely depopulated as leaders didn't get to it in time
>Access to this vault is highly sought after among the secretive guilds formed from the remnants of governmental agencies skulking in DC
>The truth is that within Cheyenne Mountain lie the last functional computers, directly connected to ancient, long-dormant machines in the sky
>SDI-tier lasers, railguns, and other dilapidated space-based superweaponry that has been waiting for a master since the fall of the United States
>Whoever controls the fortress that is Cheyenne Mountain controls the sky
>Whoever controls the sky controls the Kingdoms, Empires, and few Republics that are scattered across the continent
>To find the access keys, you'll need to negotiate with the various warring Librarian-Archivist City-States that thrive in the massive, labyrinthine sewers of the shells of East Coast Megalopolises, where they accumulate information from ancient bookstores or raids on each others vast collections
>Getting from the East Coast to Cheyenne Mountain is no easy task
>Travel either through viking territory, the Ashanti Empire, Scattered Neo-Catholic dominions, or just the boundless Waste
>The rewards are immense, competition bigger, and it's still unclear if someone ELSE made it into the vaults first

The Mormon Kingdom of Deseret or the Kingdom of Deseret does not want anyone to find it for obvious reasons. I imagine they have a secret order dedicated to making sure the weapons are never found like National Treasure the movie and the Free Masons. Not violent per se, just very quiestly obstructing any attempts to locate the vaults. The Deseret trade network is involved in this.

More stuff you seem to have forgotten

>Mormon King being the biggest power in the mountains -- but also an isolationist ruler, confident in his territory, and wary of outsiders who aren't temporary.
>the Mormons would be some of the people that got their shit back together the quickest after the apocalypse. Strong community ties, strong religious center. So they're probably the pre-eminent ruling power in the Rockies, surrounded by many petty tribes and warlords.. and wilderness.
>invading Deseret is like invading Russia. Sure you could do it, but they can just burn everything down and retreat. Competent fighters, but if the land can kill the enemy why waste soldiers?

And that seems to be it from the last thread

Viking stuff from last thread:

A notice, pinned to the board of a Inn near the most southern fringe of the Viking's Territory.

>A Warning to All Northbound Men!
>This land you wish to traverse is that of the heathen Norse!
>Be Warned, Ye Who Enter This Accursed Winterland!
>Tho' She is populated by disparate chiefs and Tribes, all hold in sacred common belief but one truth - "No soul but their own is beloved by Þor, and all souls not beloved, shall die."

Duluth = Dyewlutte

Minneapolis = Minæþulis

Milwaukee = Milwækæ

Marquette = Murkiþ

What happened to Alaska and Hawaii?

When a friend of mine was going to run a Fallout game set in the Pacific Northwest, my other friend and I came up with this idea for a group of tribals. We were both going to be young shaman, out away from our tribe on a spirit journey.

The Tribe is centered around a religion that revers Starbucks and Starbucks symbology - thinking the Sea-Goddess on the seal is some kind of diety and that all of the Starbucks stores were obviously some kind of worship center.

The job of the Shaman is to venture into these old, decaying, coffee shops and search for sealed K-cups.... Not knowing that they are Irradiated 200 year old coffee pods... and make from them a poultice which, when drank, will give you visions of the spirit world.

The morality of the religion is built around providing "Good Customer Service" and is collected from different training pamphlets and new hire videos from the backrooms of other stores. They provide CPR and first aid, they wish everyone to have a good day, smile, etc.

They deplore "bad customer service" and punish it with 'disciplinary action'.

Their goal is to spread their religion and provide quality customer service across the world.

Also, in their creation myth, they know that they are servants of a Goddess, but only one in a Pantheon of other Corporate Logos - but from their expeditions they have discovered that the concepts of customer service are universal.

>Also, I think as Medieval America -- the goal is no guns -- or maybe very primitive guns in a few spots.
honestly that's pretty boring, besides there were gunpowder weapons of some form or another through more than half the medieval period anyways

I'd rather the Medieval America concept not be taken literally, and more of a guiding aesthetic

also I don't think we ever directly established what caused the apocalypse for this setting, personally I'd suggest that rather than the usual Hot Nuclear conflict or Super Plagues causing the collapse, that instead it was a slow collapse over a century or two, as much an economic and cultural collapse as it was caused by any disasters or war

The whole point is knights and jousting and castles. It's explicitly a no-guns setting. Every post-apocalypse is "the old ruins around, people with guns." Fuck that boring shit.

A Medieval America is supposed to be one where pretty much all of the signs of the old world, beyond some highway overpasses (aqueducts) and some excavated ruins and some preserved relics... are gone.

Was European geography different from American?

Also the Danube runs through one of the most historically war-torn regions of Europe so I mean...

>The whole point is knights and jousting and castles. It's explicitly a no-guns setting. Every post-apocalypse is "the old ruins around, people with guns." Fuck that boring shit.
>A Medieval America is supposed to be one where pretty much all of the signs of the old world, beyond some highway overpasses (aqueducts) and some excavated ruins and some preserved relics... are gone.
that pretty much makes it being a post apocalyptic setting completely pointless though

besides just because there's guns around doesn't mean there can't still be knights and castles

honestly it just sounds like you're a crotchety asshole who is too lazy to figure out how to fit more modern technology logically still being around in some form, so you lazily handwave all of it as being gone

>can't figure out

I literally don't want modern technology. That's the point.

Is it "American" without guns? They're a huge part of our history and national consciousness

So your neo-Norse definitely go a-Viking down the Mississippi don't they? Fleets of longships bringing fire and sword to all the communities in reach of the river...

Sure it is. But the real desire is imagining how a Eurasian, medieval-style society would map onto the territory of the United States. And then using some of the cultural stories of the United States, passed down in a centuries-long game of telephone, to define the new medieval cultures. Knights calling themselves Cowboys in a Texas divided into fiefs and principalities based on high school and college football teams. A cult to the Founders on the east coast.

Like in After the End, some items from the Before Times of Old America are held up as great artifacts -- like a telescope which still works, or a rusted out gun. Perhaps the King of Deseret still has a working Boomstick, painstakingly maintained by his royal engineers.

Yeah, of course. And up the Great Lakes to Quebec.

Where's the klu klux kingdom?

Nowhere. Someone proposed an order of Klu Klux Klan knights, but I think it's retarded....

The South is a number of kingdoms, principalities, petty states, and free cities, sometimes briefly united under one ruler as the Dixie Confederacy. But usually the rulers spend their time fighting and trying to amass enough prestige and land to make such a claim.

Virginia/The Old Dominion
>Well, first things first, the D.C. area is naught but glowing ash and the occasional ruined memorial or archive. For humor's sake I'd say the Librarians of Congress are constantly digging shit up around there to try and preserve as much as possible.
>Much as it is in the modern day, Hampton Roads is still a mess of squabbling cities not wanting to do the obvious thing and band together like every other metropolitan area. Holding Norfolk is probably a big deal, assuming it isn't also glowing ash, on account of being a bigass naval base.
>Every generation or so some King/Prince-Governor/whatever the term'll be decides to whip out the ol' colonial charter and make a go for some of the old borders. This hasn't won many friends in West Virginia or Kentucky.
>A bunch of shadowy tattered orders of what was once the alphabet soup of federal agencies skulk around, following centuries-old COG plans without any real leaders

To help flesh out areas, people should pick their own state and come up with stuff to populate it, preferably in relation to pre-written "canon."

Florida
>part of the holy southern confederacy
>doesn't produce as much grain as the rest
>very distinct culture in all regions
>northern flordia is apart of the kingdom of the gulf
>most culturaly distinctive culture out of any kingdom because of louisana
>central flordia falls under the duchy or orland ruled by the duke disney
>due to the nature of disneys ancestory they produce the most scribes and famous novels in the south
>duchy of orlando has an elite knight group made up of the decendents former disney mercs
>it is still apart of the confedracy but the current duke Walton V wants to rebirth the kingdom of florida

California should be the settings equivalent of England, an island republic several miles off the coast of the mainland, inhabited by vegetarian druids and highlandesque bodybuilding berzerkers, ruled by descendents of a living god, Schwarzenegger.

>I literally don't want modern technology. That's the point.
and that point makes you out as a boring moron

that doesn't sound interesting at all, it's just taking standard Medieval Low Fantasy and putting a shallow coat of paint on it

>Nowhere. Someone proposed an order of Klu Klux Klan knights, but I think it's retarded....
Bullshit, you would just rather stamp out some perfectly fine ideas than see some feelings hurt. Trying to make a "clean" medieval society is possibly the greatest disservice you can do to medieval history. Almost all of it was dirty, brutish, and nasty. I think the klu klux knights and the eternal pyre were a great idea.

Don't contribute then. We're trying to make a medieval low fantasy world. Literally, in the last thread, the goal was something like Conan the Barbarian, but better armor. Not yet another generic Fallout tribal world.

Fuck niggers. I don't care about feelings. You're assuming a bunch of shit because you're a dumb, over-confrontational asshole.

The idea of KKK knights is fine, I just felt that the suggestion made them way too dominant/powerful (partly because the proposal was making them a Big Bad villain type) as well as raiding white Catholics in the north for slaves... which I feel seems a little silly.

So we can adjust them. I agree parts of what he wrote are shit, but if you ever heard of the california gold rush you'd know how long it takes to get from one end of the US to the other once we've lost our modern conveniences. They can be a distant sidenote in the midwest, maybe a quarter of kansas or located in some big canyon in new mexico. I already think a lot of these factions are way too big as it is, for medieval societies. There's no way places outside of the cities can't be crawling with bandits. Speaking of which, we haven't fleshed any bandits out, I don't think. I know there'd be a couple native american tribes going back to stealing horses or maybe a mongol-esque empire in the west, but what else?

Sounds like you'd rather be writing a book than collaborative world-building my dude. Good luck with it. I'm out.

so you're not only an authoritarian asshole trying to make this into your own project, you're also a racist douche, good to see your opinions are worthless

>racist
>bad
Okay. Seeya. lol

You all have forgotten the Face of your Fathers!

Man, if I told you: "Hey, we're gonna be designing a world for Pokemon RPG!" and you were like, "But wouldn't some Digimon be cool?" would I be in the wrong for saying "hey, that's.. uh... outside the scope."

Indiana (Specifically Indianapolis) seems like the best place for the New New Roman Empire. It is the car-travel epicenter of the U.S., with flat, easily traveled land and very fertile soil.

The KKK is a faked organisation founded and funded by the Democrats. Originally they were meant to keep blacks down and help reinstate slavery... Later on they were just used as a tool to slander the republicans via ''The southern strategy'' proposed by two ''Republicans'' who ''switched over'' (infiltrated) from the Democrats and never got any support from the Republican party.

A different take on the KKK, not as a multi-state-spanning dominion, could be cool.

As for the Plains Indians, in the last thread, there was talk of many of the tribes flourishing in the post-apocalyptic hellscape and eventually forming Mongol/Hunnish-style hordes on the Great Plains. You've got the Blackfeet in the north, going into Canada, then the Lakota Sioux in the Dakotas (harrassing all of the Founders trying to get to Mt. Rushmore), then the Comanches in the central plains, and finally the Apache going down into Arizona.

Also, a lot of the realms you see in the map here aren't fully united kingdoms. Just cultural/religious boundaries because I didn't wanna add a bunch of lines and new cities to an already cluttered map. The Dixie Confederacy is actually multiple kingdoms and duchies which somewhat share a culture (medieval Germany, for example). The purple of the Minnesota Vikings just represents their cultural sway. Probably not all of Minnesota/Wisconsin are united under one King and UP of Michigan as well of the upper part of the Mitten might be independent.

Not all of the Catholic Kingdoms are united -- they're just all tied to the Pope in... Chicago?

And Texas is a bunch of warring states which could one day develop into a mighty empire.

Copying Indiana stuff from last thread. Tell me what you think:

Cmon man do this shitty state some justice.
>Northern and central dedicated to the largest fields east of the mississippi
>Small forts dot the remnants of trade routes long established in and out of the center of the state
>the southern has returned to a densely forested hillside until the southern border
>this land is considered prime hunting ground by the ruler of the state
>the Hoosier rules the state through quick mobilization of horse cavalry through the remains of the highways and the economic dominance of grain and corn

Aha, but what if I like the KKK for its racism but also like the Republicans for their (supposed) opposition to welfare?

Because "Medieval America" is as tightly and completely layed out as Pokémon right?

Different user, but I actually wrote the indiana shit in the previous thread. That was a bit of the idea i was going for. Fast deployment of forces over long prairies means the state would be easy to hold to people who know how to get around

Underrated post.

Underrated post.

Underrated posts

I was the guy that wrote the KKK knights, and I wasn't meaning for them to be the primary bad guy, or a truly massive organization, I was imagining a teutonic knights type organization.

Not the primary bad guys, the bad guys for one small arc.

I think that the idea of KKK Paladins is dark and solid for a medieval post-apocayptic America, and I don't think they should be a major force, but they should definitely have a few strongholds that are tough to assail.

I was originally going to say they collected slaves from chicago or nearby black communities, but I liked the catholic crusader states precisely because it was weird and a bit silly.

I don't mean to make it canon, these are general ideas for a setting for a campaign. Silo people, New Ashanti Empire, Cheyenne Mountain Complex, KKK knights, biker condotierri, the West is a wasteland that is rumored to be the promised land, it's all just random stuff I suggested as campaign hooks or whatever, so take it with a grain of salt if you're trying to formulate an official setting.

I'm just throwing out loads of ideas, some stick, all can be modified to make em better.

Speaking of, I really like the idea of pic related as a weird abandoned castle/dungeoncrawl type deal.

Then I definitely misunderstood you when it came to your take on the KKK. Sorry. Are they still wearing the funky hoods? As for grabbing blacks -- why not from the black belt, itself?

I don't imagine that many blacks left in the Chicago area, desu -- probably nuked in holy fire. The area is reoccupied centuries later.

The Space Shuttle Crawler Castle is very cool looking.

You must be fun at parties...

There is a group of WV mountain clansmen seeking a golden horseshoe to become knights. Based off of an Old American Order of the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe(It was believed that the men sent to explore the Blue Ridge Mountains had penetrated as far aw the borders of modern WV)

>Hell's Angels came from "Out West." They didn't have any stories of a promised land where Old America still existed, but they came with the scars and scalps to prove they'd survived Indian Territory.
>"The Devil's Own," as some called them, were very different from our own knights and serjeants. Their horses were covered in glittering baubles and trophies, and protected by steel. They rode headlong into danger, against immeasurable odds, and almost always came out ahead.
>If you had the money, Hell's Angels were yours, so long as your enemy didn't offer more money, women, or spoils. Merciless in their brutality, Hell's Angels have made a home in the Mississippi Territories as one of the most effective fighting forces in America.

(Some crew survived in Cali and ended up moving east and selling their services)

>The Outlaws have been a thorn in the side of the Hoosier and other rulers in the Ohio Valley and up to the Mississip' since as long as anyone can remember
>A highly unpredictable and highly effective company, the Outlaws are almost as much of a pain to their employers as they are to their enemies
>Outlaws are known for taking heaping doses of the "Speed" before battle (and after battle, and whenever they're bored) which drives them into a violent, maniacal, and paranoid rage.

(Interestingly, two Outlaw MCs, the Vagos and the Pagans, use Norse gods for their patches. But they aren't near Minnesota)

how could being racist be in any way a good thing?

I think I'd prefer California along the lines of how After The End has it - an Eastern-style Mystery/Neo-Hippie empire with vague Chinese and Tibetian feelings, where the Emperor is also the spiritual head of the religion.

The society is inward facing, and doesn't care much for outside the borders of New California, despite trading extensively with "the un-enlightened barbarians". Exports consists mainly of ruined old tech artifacts, dried fruits and nuts, and high quality wines.

Additional trade items flow through the port of San Francisco - the First Emperor gained his authority by devising and overseeing the Opening of the Golden Gate (clearing the wreckage of the Golden Gate Bridge that prevented shipping). Thus San Francisco still is a major port of what trade occurs across the Pacific, taking in more tropical fruits and coffee from the Kingdom of Hawaii.

Modern California would primarily be the Northern part of the state with some portions of the Pacific Northwest. The Southern Half is nominally part of the Empire but the distance from the capital and divergent culture makes the various rulers of the Socalian Satrapies de-facto independent.

The government itself is run mainly as a meritocratic bureaucracy, with members having to pass exams on various topics and classic literature as taught in the various Universeties. This isn't a current-day education but more like the examination system of China.

The trade route from California to the rest of the continent is called the Silicon Road, named after the valley it passes through.

>how could believing in reality be in any way a good thing?
>bruh, fucking you're just diseasist against people with deadly diseases. It doesn't spread via proximity. You're just a bigot.
>bruh, fucking gravity is evil and only nazi bigots believe in it

In the last thread, someone suggested that the regional isolation and resource poverty of SoCal and Baja could be a good spot for a Shogunate-style kingdom. In addition, in last thread, most of the talk was of California largely being an utter wasteland (probably wracked by earthquakes and desertification from so many river diversion and dams to other states) plagued by the worst sort of cannibals and savages... many of whom practice human sacrifice by cutting off the genitals.

But I also like your ideas. There was also mention of the survival of White Nationalist Survivalists in Cascadia.

Some more lore for you
>Exec Caleb of Louisiana was one of the greatest exec's the holy confederacy had in recent memory
>he lead the first expedition on the Yucatan raiders, torching villages, taking trophies and freeing slaves taken in their past raids.
>After his peaceful death,Cletus Peach-tree the first, duke of Georgia was elected exec with a policy of allowing more state independence, thus spurring more inter Confederation war
>His son Cletus II has a rivalry with Caleb's son Marcus, as they will be the prime contenders for Executive of the confederacy in the election following the death of Cletus
>To secure the throne he had duke Walton admitted into the confederacy and encourages the north Floridians destabilization, as they are supporters of Marcus.
>Marcus knows the position is in danger, and is funding adventurers and settlers to capture lands of Appalachian tribes and the lands of the great plains west of the Mississippi
> Border clashes of these to factions are many, blood and moonshine have spilled from both supporters in the field of battle and bars nationwide
>The foreign states of the Founders, Amish and border states back Cletus for the perceived instability he would cause
> the lone star and Cuban kingdoms back Marcus, due to the Yucatan and southern nations becoming more powerful and in need of a great purge
>Supporters of both sides hire adventurers and mercenaries to combat and defend against each-other.
> county conflict and diversion of resources have lead to bandits popping up and the prince of Raleigh slowly gaining support of the people for hiring adventurers to defeat them in a bid for the throne
>when the emperor dies, a civil war will break out and many grudges between counts and families will be made and settled.

lol. Emperor Cletus.

Why go with "Exec?" I like the difference, but I'm just curious.

Also, when I made Tennessee and Kentucky "border kingdoms" it was just because nobody had written anything about them and they're partly separated by the Appalachian mountains.

Short for "Executive" you see Rome had a tradition of calling it's rulers something other than king, so they made a whole bunch of terms.

And a good campaign would be for the adventurers to be playing the political game to get one of their supporters on the throne for an independent state, and thus a vote for their guy if the state joins the Confeds.

I think the hoods are neat because even if you make them regular knights or whatever this setting requires, the hood still acts as the sort of identifying symbol.

Black belt snatching works, wherever really, I just like the idea of taking over some backwards town, enslaving some people, and calling it a crusader state. Just thematically neat, and easily tweakable.

This is fantastic

I was really behind the idea of Californian cities being the promised land and then you get there and it's ruins filled with sexual deviant folk crawling through the shells of burned-out buildings, but this also works.

I think that no matter what, it's a good idea to have the Western cities just be "they're supposed to be a paradise, the last one in the US" and when PCs get there, you have the ability to decide precisely what it is they encounter.

The idea is that California retains a lot of pre-apocolypse institutions and trappings, and holds itself to be The Last American Paradise...

But the reality is that it's mostly propaganda. The vaunted Universites of California have devolved mainly to rote memorization than innovation and teaching - sure the rote is good, but it allows for information rot.

It's an inward and past orientated society run by a beaurocracy that is partially grounded in the real world but lends itself to naval gazing.

At first blush it seems to live up to the rumors and myths spread East of the Rockies, and even some beyond the Sierra's believe in Harmonious California. How much California actually lives up to the reputation could be up for debate, but i expect that knowledge of the empire is similar to how the Romans and the Chinese thought of each other.

"California is a wealthy empire, headed up by the wisest of them, and trained by gurus to bring their people forward to prosperity and maintain harmony among men. Their leadership is chosen from the best at their universities, which still teach as in the old world."

How accurate would this summary of California, as taught in Atlantic schools, be? How many grains of truth would it be?

Either way, California should be inward focused. They have no desire to go beyond California's borders for conquest, punitive expeditions against the Cascadians or Mojave Raiders at best.

Additional thought:

Lending credence to California's mythology are their electric lights. The myth has them all over the place; reality is just the rich ajd some government buildings, or even just the palace.

However, those who maintain them are less engineers and techs, and more like Adeptus Mechanicus merged with New Age WooWoo and Eastern/Tibetan spiritualism/mysticism. They work by rote and ceremony.

Quest idea: they will pay handsomely for more parts for their lighting system. I presume by this time most of the ewsy salvage near the heart of California is gone. Perhaps thats what they trade wines and fruit for?

>Either way, California should be inward focused. They have no desire to go beyond California's borders for conquest, punitive expeditions against the Cascadians or Mojave Raiders at best.

Agreed.

This. Fuck this, this isn't collaborating so much as one dude reeeeeeing over anything outside a very specific vision.

Fuck it, I'm out too.

Who are you?

Also, very specific? It's literally just: "medieval knights, no guns" and dumbasses keep coming in and saying "yo, but what if there was guns, though"

I'll seeing a lot of old tech stuff come in. Guns shouldn't be common place, but they should exist and people familiar with the concept even if they've not seen one in action.

This is a post-post-apoc America, not America 1300AD.

The one California fella is suggesting a lot of old tech and I'm not really down with it. But I'm not shooting him down or anything because I'm willing to see where it goes.

Stuff like electricity or existent university buildings seem like going against the spirit of the thing.

So ignore him, user.

Building California into an American China/Middle Kingdom with limited advanced tech is within the spirit of the setting. It's relatively isolated and protected by mountains from the East and has a lot of potential exportable wealth in terms of ruined tech and wine, and offers a good "Silk Road" type deal.

Plus i dont buy that everywhere loses all tech. Nobody forgets everything in an apocalypse and theres no chance we forget everything, plus theres shittons of libraries and bookstores everywhere with basic physics.

The original conception of this was a couple of apocalypses all happening at once and the world being slowly populated by the descendants of some survivalists and it taking hundreds of years to get to this point.

alright, we can have the world have an age of strength and an age of innovation.
Age of strength is no gunpowder with whispers of tech existing in hidden ports
Age of innovation has 1500s gunpowder and people trying to understand the old worlds tech
If you come up with story idea you can determine when it takes place.

my emperor Cletus the first idea can take place in the age of strength

"The Age of Strength"
"The Age of Rebirth"

I like it.

Honestly, I'd like to see California pretty much the exact same in both ages - it is fairly static, rather than dynamic. Stable, but unchanging.

The Age of Strength saw expeditions to the Far West, following rumors of "Harmonious California", following the trade route called the Silicon Road, from which flowed ruined technological items, exotic dried fruits, and fine wines.

Crossing the Sierra Nevadas, these explorers found that the Bear Flag of the Californian Empire did indeed fly, and compared to the East, California seemed like a portal into the Old World. The streets were clean and organized, a good portion of the population was literate - and even the smaller towns had working running water.

The biggest draw for the sponsors of these investigations was the technology and knowledge of the Old World. California was rumored to be a land of scholars, and at first it seemed true. However, the Universities of California were light on hard sciences and heavy on literature and philosophy. Even worse, priority was on memorization rather than understanding the material.

Those who maintained the technological wonders of California were no better, having much of their labor codified into ritual and the "New Age Woo-Woo" mysticism of the central religion. The best could tell you how something worked, but not why. Creating new advanced technology was beyond their abilities.

However, much of what they did know and follow was based upon sound principles, and those who put in the effort to learn could learn useful information. Ideas slowly became another good flowing along the Silicon Road, among the greatest would be gunpowder.

(cont)

A small cloistered order in Southern California called the Mouseketeers received tribute from the various satrapies, but also the Emperor of California himself. The only legal producers of Fireworks in the Empire, the Mouseketeers sent an annual tribute for the New Year Celebration. The fiery explosions in the night delighted the Californians, but the more military-minded Easterners saw the potential of exploding rockets.

It would be the work of years, but eventually one small rocket was stolen by a group of adventurers who managed to escape unnoticed The firework was eventually broken down, and it would take many more years to determine how to make more of the explosive powder.

As the Eastern Empires and Kingdoms developed and expanding, incorporating many Californian-sourced innovations, California remained as it was. Still stronger and wealthier than any Eastern Kingdom, by the time of the Age of Rebirth California was no longer as superior as it was at the dawn of the Silicon Road.

With the Emperor concerned with spiritual development and the central government acting mainly by rote, the Southern Satrapies were always granted a greater independence by virtue of distance and their divergent culture. The Satrapy of Cajon in particular was usually restless, being on the border of California and the rest. The Satrap of Cajon had to keep his eyes on the world outside of California as much as the Northern border Satraps, but his distance from the Capital meant he had less restraint in ideas.

Frustrated with the central government's inability to adapt to changing circumstances, the Satrap of Cajon has quietly begun amassing arms, men, and allies, seeking to break Southern California free of the Northerner's control. He has much cover in the way of organzing against the Mojave Raiders, but several Mojave clans are working on his payroll and much of the goods "lost" in their raids make their way back to him.

The Satrap of Cajon's actions are not as subtle as he thinks they are. Some of the Eastern Kingdoms are aware of the situation and see a possible gain by supporting or opposing a possible Cajon Rebellion. Not all of the Socalian Satraps are with Cajon either; some will be neutral, others will loyal partisans of the Bear Flag.

In addition, rumors of Cajon's sedition has made it's way to the North. The central government has ignored it out of having no set reaction. The Emperor was informed of the rumors, but has only delegated the investigation to his second son simply because the prince kept pestering him and the Emperor was trying to have some quiet contemplation.

The Emperor's second son had, many years ago, traveled outside the borders of California and visited as far as the Kingdoms of the Founder Cult. While looking down upon the much rougher Eastern cities, the prince did note that the people seemed more dynamic and of greater initiative, and took that to heart. As such he has been filling his enterage with such men as he could find, and is always willing to hire more.

Thus in the Age of Rebirth - California is strong, but Southern California is a powder keg about to explode into civil war.

I'm basically laying the groundwork for something like the collapse of the Ming Dynasty in China, or the Opium Wars.

Reading this I imagine that the opinions of people in the Mormon Kingdom of Deseret would be divided. On one hand the size and wealth of the California empire makes some in the kingdom nervous, aware of how the East to West tolls in the Deseret Mountains angers some californians. Others are worried about trade breaking down if the Empire goes to war. Still others (predominately in the regional armies along the Deseret/Californian Empire) are worried about a civil war spilling into the southern reaches of the Deseret Mountains.

Deseret Forces are quietly building up an infrastructure in their southern area able to handle large amounts of refugees, repel any incursions, and possibly stamp out any Vegas or Mojave raiders that see an opportunity to go on the warpath. Imagine this picture without the guns and the tank. Or maybe some, I dont know

where is this picture from?