SIXTY YEARS AFTER

Writing and Rules

Soren van Loben Sels

Images
Jorge Franganillo from Barcelona, Spain, CC BY 2.0
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FunctioningMemberOfSociety, CC BY 4.0
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Carol M. Highsmith, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Kevin Collins, CC BY 2.0
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California Department of Fish and Wildlife from Sacramento, CA,
USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>,
via Wikimedia Commons
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Twilight:2000™ & © 2021 GDW and

Fria Ligan AB. Used with
permission under the Community
Content Agreement for Free League
Workshop. All rights reserved.

Special thanks to my friends and family for providing invaluable

advice and guidance for me through the long process of making
this, to discord user lategamer for their invaluable and to Free
League for making this excellent game.
Today is the anniversary, sixty years since the world of silicon and oil collapsed. Well,
roughly sixty years. Nobody is sure when or where it started. It doesn’t matter now.
They are gone, we remain. The years of hiding have passed into distant memory.

I wonder what my grandfather would think of the world as it now stands. I have read
histories of his days and see the shell of the life he must have lived. My father said
that the men of his father’s generation had fought wars across an ocean I have only
heard of in stories. They fought for oil I heard it said, though it did them little good.
All of the gasoline rotted in barrels before I was even born.

The warlike blood remains, just at much closer proximity. As I write, the fighting people
of the village are drilling themselves in the use of the flintlock. I fear we will have war
before winter, our overlords from the south seem to thirst for it.

I wonder if we are to ever climb back up to the heights of the Old World. I wonder if
we will have wars for oil once more. I wonder if we will rebuild those aging concrete
husks that we climbed as youths. The military men talk propaganda about it often
enough, how through unity we will return to what it was like. As I read more, I am not
so sure that’s a good thing. Is our world tragedy or opportunity?

Gods, I am sounding like a poet. I must return to my buckskin, it’s been in with the dye
solution for long enough. If we are to go to war, we need proper coats.
 Introduction

Welcome to Sixty Years After. Sixty years after The Zombie

Apocalypse. The subject of this supplement is a world recovering
from it and reforming into new factions. This is a much more
complete collapse than the limited nuclear war of the standard
setting, industrial civilization is practically erased. We play
in a rebirth of a much more simple one.
The game touches on different themes than Twilight 2000,
with a lot more focus on cultural memory, rebuilding society,
and the formation of different identities. The focuses of groups
are longer term, as they are beyond the desperation of collapse
unlike Twilight 2000.
The world is not entirely hope and renewal. The differing
visions of what the world should be lead to ideological clashes
that supplement the background of warfare that one might expect
of a now much more bronze or iron age level of societal
organization. Widespread food insecurity has returned without
the modern technology to protect against the whims of weather,
disease, and fortune. Medicine is much less effective without
modern drugs. They have some medicines and vastly more
understanding than pre modern doctors but it's nothing like what
they were used to before. Through all this the people of this
world endure.
This setting could be set in any other place in the world,
I don’t live in those places yet. This is born from my
imagination looking through the world around me and wondering
what it might look like in this odd odd scenario. If you want to
change it to your region, the rules I’ve invented will mostly
remain the same. You’ll change the groups, methods of food
production, building materials, population density, etc. I don’t
think I really need to explain to you folks how to do that. You
know what the hell you are doing.
I did a good deal of research into technical aspects and
historical inspiration. For media inspiration it was from three
main sources: Station Eleven, Fallout New Vegas, and The Last of
Us.
Players might play as a small military unit within any of
the factions, roaming merchants, bandits, mercenary adventurers,
migrants, pilgrims, explorers, or outcasts. There is no longer a
military / civilian divide in player characters. Those lines are
blurred, though there do remain some professional warriors; it
is very much unlike the many soldiers filling out a usual
Twilight 2000 group.
The Hex Crawl and survival rules remain a major part of
gameplay, the world is dangerous. Factions have limited areas of
control that rarely extend to protecting roads. There are many
small groups and settlements to meet outside of the factions,
which can be expressed through the encounters. Water can be
tough to come by and will be crucial in the hot summers. The
game rich woods host hunters who pursue both deer and man,
posing a great threat to those players who see them as a way to
solve their food problems.
Combat remains mostly similar, the basic rules relatively
unchanged though the different equipment, lack of most vehicles,
and high value of primered bullets are sure to alter tactics
completely. It is more survivable though infection is a larger
risk. The new dynamic should take some getting adjusted.
There are many options for types of campaigns. Wandering
travelers trying to survive is a classic but would need either a
goal or a threat as the world is a lot more survivable than it
is in Twilight 2000. Faction politics are ripe for players to
get involved in, as they are numerous and radically different
with no one group being solely dominant. Warfare is small scale
enough that a player group can turn the tide through direct
fighting rather than just doing special missions or some such.
Games focused on personal issues are also good for the setting
as the looming history of the apocalypse and the new developing
identities create unique interpersonal conflicts.
I hope you enjoy
 The History

A new disease swept the world in 2020. It was not a

respiratory virus but something far far worse. Few, if any, know
how it functioned in the body but all still alive know what it
created. It bent their minds and the bodies towards one goal:
propagation. Those infected felt no pain, remorse, or human
feeling as they clawed at those they once saw as fellow man.
They had cunning, all directed towards survival and the hunt.

Though they were never reanimated humans, they got the name
zombies from most folks. Some still call them local names: rabid
men, the accursed, infected, etc. The name may not be the best
for them, as their speed and intelligence make them a far
greater threat than the shambling depictions zombies have had in
pre-collapse media.

Nobody knows where it started or how it spread so fast.

Some think that it got into the water supply in a form that
would spread that way, that it was a bioweapon deployed as part
of some grand conspiracy, or that it was a curse from the
Almighty for man’s wickedness. By the time people realized what
was going on, it was too late to limit it. Maybe some isolated
places were able to shut down quick enough to avoid infection,
the rest did not.

Panic gripped the populace and they flooded from the

crowded urban centers (where it often first started). Roads
clogged, food was hoarded, and people fortified if they could.
Society suddenly stopped. Nothing of normal life mattered. Some
didn’t believe it but that didn’t last long.

The military sprang into action. They tried to fight it the

best they could but with massively varying delays before
symptoms and uncertainty about infection methods they couldn’t
tell who was infected well enough to establish any sort of
perimeter for a safe zone.

Things fell apart in the rural areas quickly as the

question of food became even more important than zombies.
Refugees demanded food as many of the locals had hoarded as much
as they could. The military tried to step in to prevent the
riots and growing bloodshed but that only caused more paranoia
in the farmers. Many armed themselves and fortified what they
could against refugees and the coming zombies. Ranchers took
their herds and began to ride, sticking together in armed camps
while always on the move.

Zombies, as well as the people who remained, quickly tore

through the food available in the cities and suburbs. No new
food was coming in. Distribution centers for it were either
seized by the military or other opportunistic groups. With less
to eat and the easier to catch humans already found, the zombies
ventured from the cities in larger numbers. The military
succeeded in killing many and grew increasingly rash in gunning
down refugees suspected of being infected as well.

The military was given orders to sweep through and purge

the zombies through massive military force. This failed as no
matter what they tried, they could not secure their back lines
from reinfections breaking out. Soldiers increasingly lost faith
in the higher levels of command who seemed to have no idea what
the situation on the ground was.

Groups of soldiers took the initiative, setting up safe

areas of a much smaller size than the massive area the national
level command tried to get them to clear. They quarantined those
they let in in a way they could not on the wider scale. They
hunted, grew, and stole the food they needed. The higher up
command eventually gave up their hopes for any form of victory
and formalized orders to set up these forts.

Some other forts were made by other groups: preppers in

bunkers, armed thugs who secured food depots well enough they
could outlast the first famine, farming communities that were
isolated enough that they could fight off the refugees that made
it to them.

The Great Famine, as it has come to be known, was harsh.

Many on land outside of those forts had no way to get food.
Little was sown. Food stores outside of those secluded by small
groups ran out. Mass starvation gripped the people and a great
many died. That and the zombies also experiencing hunger
scattered the refugee groups into small bands far and wide.
Zombies feasted on the bodies of the dead and any other prey
they could get their hands on.

Zombies can’t swim. They have a deep conscious fear of

water and they drowned when they tried despite it. This meant
that the best protection was water. Though it definitely started
before this was realized, this knowledge motivated a large
migration to the waters. Communities rafted together in the
middle of lakes and slow moving rivers. Islands became a safe
haven, though some fell to unknown or hidden infection. The
people fished. On the Islands they grew food.

Time passed. The zombies exhausted more and more of their

available food. They could not make tools which made hunting
difficult. Increasingly there were reports of them eating a
person instead of letting them have time enough to be infected.
Zombies hid, hibernating to conserve energy. This made it so
while they were less active, they were no less a threat to
attempts by the humans to leave their isolation. Even this could
not keep the zombies alive for a very long time.

Hunting and gathering became a main food source for many

settlements, their food stocks running out not too long after
the first famine. Others secured a wider area and farmed what
they could. The environment recovered with industry and large
scale agriculture gone. Deer and decay took over urban areas.
Eutrophication decreased in the delta, meaning more fish to
sustain its people. The silenced plants of industry no longer
poisoned the birds, whose numbers grew.

About 12 years in, they began to eat each other. Nobody

knows why they hadn’t done this before. This just caused them to
spread out more, either searching for or hiding from each other.
The threat slowly was waning. By 20 years there were few
remaining and scavengers started to move into the cities, tired
of just stripping metal from highways.
 The last sighting was probably 32 years in. It was until
around then that most people felt comfortable traveling freely
and living out in the open near a pre-collapse settlement
(hotbeds of where the zombies hibernated). We are still careful
in areas believed to be undisturbed as who knows what could be
lurking even after all these years.

This was the true new beginning. The days of fear were
over, though their trauma will ring down in our people’s memory
for untold generations.

Some people scattered while others stayed together. Farmers

took up along the delta, building siphons and leaving their
floating refuges. Nomads and sailors brought trade and
information between newly open forts. Scavengers stripped and
sold what they could from the city ruins. Other nomads settled
and became ranchers. Hunters left their fortified holdings to
find better grounds and for the freedom of travel. Fighting and
conflict drove some back into forts, as valuable in keeping
raiders out as zombies.

Military authority had collapsed during those thirty years.

Every fort had become its own independent group. Some of these
reformed into large blocs at the first chance they got while
others preferred an independent status. Some had become more
civilian institutions while others had descended into fascistic
autocracy. Without the threat of zombies, many of these forts
disintegrated. Soldiers without people to feed and clothe them
turned to banditry and raiding. Warlords rose. Other forts and
blocs expanded into warlordism. They extracted tolls, taxes, and
tithes from all they could.

The thirty years that followed brought great change. The

old world aged while the new solidified. New generations grew up
without the effects of protective isolation. Technology was
developed with their reduced scale and scavenged materials.
Governments developed in structure and beliefs. Much of the
still functional old technology failed, with no way left to fix
it. Identities formed from the differences in history, material
conditions, and who people were before.
 The World as it is now

Population
The population of California is in the tens of thousands.
It is recovering and growing. Other areas had more survivors
such as the rural center of the country where lower population
density made zombies easier to deal with.
Many survivors in the early years migrated from Nevada into
California as their food depots ran out and the desert was
unable to support them, especially since a lot of areas close to
good water access for agriculture were too highly urbanized to
be safe back then.
A small trickle has come in since from the East: farmers
whose wells ran dry and lacked the heavy machines to dig deeper
ones. Most head east becoming pastoralists on the great plains
or even farther to the fertile lands of the Mississippi. But
still some, go West.
The generation that remembers the world before is reaching
their twilight. With less medicine and less secure food, they
die easier. Some communities give them priority in honor of
their unique memories, but when hard times come food must go to
those whose labor is needed most. It’s a sad truth.
There was a low birth rate during the time of fear but it
rebounded when the gates opened. The population has been growing
since. Some groups see repopulation as a goal, especially the
religious ones who view the apocalypse as some sort of biblical
flood.

Water
A major concern given the climate of California. It is
needed for drinking but far more goes to agriculture which takes
it at a much bigger scale. Its weight makes it impractical to
get it at distance for agriculture or to build even a hunter
gatherer settlement too far from a source.
Rain is a lot lighter in California than most of the
country. The rains come during the winter and spring and vary
year on year. People work hard to collect it, using various
systems from simple to complex to get it into cisterns for the
dry parts of the year.
 Water can be collected from streams. Doesn’t make them year
round reliable though, dry winters make drier summers. Some
groups add water from them into cisterns so that they have a
backup for if they go dry, though often it might be more viable
to just walk to a better source rather.
I don’t need to explain how to get water from a big river,
reservoir, or lake, at least not on a small scale. But if you
want to water fields, you might want something larger than just
carrying pots. One can make a pump system using muscle, wind, or
solar power to pull it into pipes (so much piping exists in the
modern world to scavenge). Much of the Sacramento River Delta is
actually above the level of the land around it with levees
keeping them apart. This means a siphon can pull water over the
ledge and down into the field with no labor necessary.
Wells supply it in some parts. They can be powered by wind,
solar, or muscle to pull up water. New wells are not worth the
labor in most scenarios and deepening wells is completely not
viable so farmers work with what they’ve got. Decades of ground
water recovery with no well use has made ground water recover in
some spots, allowing a lot of use before they run dry. There are
also much less people than land, allowing farmers to move on
when wells run dry.
Many communities doing smaller scale agriculture use Ollas,
buried unglazed pots that passively irrigate gardens. They pour
in water every once in a while from whatever their source may be
and it keeps the soil moist.

Food
Hunting and gathering is the practice for many peoples. It
gives their groups less surplus but is more nutritious,
flexible, and requires less overhead. Hunting is done with
flintlock or arrow but never firearms using rounds with primer
unless out of desperation. Game has rebounded as areas once
agricultural have been reclaimed by nature. Horses, if a group
has them, are extremely helpful for hunting, pastoralism,
agriculture, war, and travel.
In the Delta, birds are hunted especially. The new and old
wetlands make a great environment for them. The reeds growing
along the banks are gathered for a variety of purposes from
saltpeter to textiles.
 Fishing is extremely common on the Delta and Bay. This is
done from both the shore and the boat. Fishing supports
sedentary communities as the supplies are rich enough to allow
it. It was the main support for many of the floating and island
communities for years.
Small scale agriculture is common within sedentary fishing
and hunting communities as well as what passes as towns
nowadays. How much is grown varies based on water and labor
available to a community. Medicinal herbs are a very common
thing grown by communities as relying on gathering them is too
unreliable.
Pastoralism is another major mode of agriculture. The
Spanish used California for ranching and to ranching much of it
has returned. This is done in both nomadic and sedentary
manners. It was phased out historically in a lot of areas
because with better technology wells could be dug and the land
grew in value, neither applies here. Land is very available and
the labor to improve it is expensive. Pastoralists can also get
other goods from animals. Buckskin can be made of cowhide, wool
is more labor intensive and thus expensive, and animal dung is
highly valuable. That animal waste is used by the pure sedentary
pastoralists to make gardens or to make saltpeter
Pastoralism can mix with the other forms of food
production. Sedentary farmers, fishers, and hunters can keep
some animals around fenced in. Farmers especially value animals
to pull plows and fertilize fields. Nomadic pastoralists can
supplement their herds with hunting parties.
The final major food source is intensive agriculture. This
needs water as covered early as well as labor and capital. A
group needs to have the surplus to set up and do all the work
before they can get the first of the rewards. This is a level of
investment that stops many hunter gatherers from devoting
themselves to farming. The labor is performed by the community
members though some communities hire trusted outsiders (usually
hunter gatherers) to perform labor during planting and
harvesting.
They grow a variety of crops as was done before the
apocalypse. Legumes are grown and fields are rotated to keep the
soil good. Some farmers, in tents and with movable equipment,
just work the land dry and move on to free land. This is a hated
practice and there have been feuds over it.
Ruins
The old world is crumbling. Rebar rots inside of concrete
and makes it weak. Bridges have collapsed. Exposed metal has
corroded. Weather, small earthquakes and time have made their
marks.
Electronics as a whole are mostly shot. There are no
replacement parts either. Solar panels still work but there’s
not much to do with them from the old world, just the simple
machines you can make with wire and magnets.
Many buildings have fallen but not all. Wood rots, concrete
collapses, and brick does not stand up well to an earthquake.
Roofs give in, leaving their walls behind. Fires have consumed a
good few towns though climate change has eased and there are no
man made causes anymore.
Petrochemicals are practically gone now. Some of them
degraded into uselessness. Propane doesn’t degrade but its
containers do. Even if you find a tank that hasn’t leaked, have
fun getting it out safely. Methane can be produced with the
right linings of a garbage pit though using it well is tough and
likely not worth the effort.
Some advanced machines have been saved, preserved, and
remain in use but they are few and far between. Their numbers
decrease every day as they fail and cannot be replaced or
repaired.

Buildings
Old ruins are lived in by some. Their roofs are considered
dangerous to live under, especially in case of earthquakes.
Textiles, wood, or adobe can be put over gaps or to make new
roofs. Wood supports are built to reinforce sagging walls.
Nomads often like to set up in ruins as temporary camps, though
they made no alterations that they can’t just strip down within
hours. Even if a group does not want to use most of a ruin for
safety reasons, there’s still some useful parts such as having a
nice flat foundation to build upon.
The building materials are locally produced usually as it
rarely warrants the cost to move large amounts of them for most
types of material. Hides from wild game or livestock can be
tanned for use. Wood from various species of tree are cut and
used, some are even brought along the delta to parts that lack
good lumber. Adobe mud bricks are made and used very widely.
Reeds can be dried and bundled to make thatch for roofing or
walls. Dirt can also just be gathered and packed against other
substances for insulation and protection from the elements.
The elements influence design greatly. The housing closer
to the water has less fluctuations of extremes of temperature.
For the hot months, groups will set up sunshades out of thatch
or hide so that stationary work can be done in the cooling
breeze and out of the sun. Rains must be protected against
though in drier parts that is not much of a concern.
Location plays a role as well. The further from areas of
earthquake concern, or where the people believe is earthquake
concern, the more willing people are to live in ruins or under
adobe (which doesn’t hold up well). In the wetlands, people
often live on floating or stilt houses, which is out of
tradition and protection from raiders. In the mountains, houses
are built to deal with snowfall.
Many settlements have walls, palisades, or other
fortifications. This started during the time of fear, as it
provides rather effective protection. Settlements expanded
outside of their original walls afterward as they grew. Some
built new walls, motivated by the threat of raiders. Others just
relied on falling back into their old walls. Some new
settlements built new walls while others did not, depending on
how much threat there is in the region. Walls are made of wood
though packed earth is used to create useful cover for
defenders, same with trenches. Trenches are usually built around
the edge of a settlement, even if the settlement has expanded
since. Sometimes settlements will build a keep, made of thick
enough materials to take gunshots with slits to fire out of.
This is meant to be a final location for the people of the
village to fall back to, often with places for the storage of
valuables.

Clothing
Much clothing remains from before, though age has taken its
toll. Scavengers have taken much of the good stuff that remains
in stores and storehouses. Improper storage has ruined much of
it with moisture and pests destroying what may have been good
fabrics. Wear and tear has broken down others over the years.
Often the good bits of fabric are cut from pieces and sewn
together into new garments.
Grown textiles, mainly hemp, is produced though that is
limited by the high cost to grow, spin, and otherwise prepare.
That also applies to harvested textiles like bamboo and reeds
though to a smaller degree. Wool needs to be spun which can take
many hours even if a settlement has spinning wheels which not
all of them do. Drop spindles are used by some nomads as they
walk their broken highway paths.
Buckskin is a major part of the new textile production. It
is produced from cattle as well as deer. Brain tanning takes
less time by my estimation than wool spinning which makes the
buckskin cheaper, though both are expensive as many communities
have very few people with the skills to do either. It isn’t that
good against rain but that’s not a problem most of the year. It
is used for a variety of purposes. Walnut husks (and probably
other nuts) can be used to tan it red or black.
These fabrics are used in a mix of new and old styles.
Clothing is generally light for most of the year, with extra
layers added as they are needed. Many old styles remain:
jackets, shirts, trousers, and so on. They are a bit more
utilitarian sure but generally similar. Styles not really in the
normal way of things have also come into dominance such as wide
brimmed hats made of reeds or bamboo, moccasins, or separate
leggings from tunics (attached so one can pass through
undergrowth without risking cuts on legs).
Jewelry lasts better as we tend to value precious metals
which are generally corrosion resistant. This makes their value
socially far lesser. Gold is easy to melt and work making it a
useful metal where metal is needed but not exceptional hardness
but not exactly the most precious of metals. What is considered
much more socially valuable is the amount of man hours put into
the creation of a piece, the skill of the crafter, and from how
far away it was sourced. How this shows varies wildly across
location and culture.
Makeup from before has degraded to uselessness but there
are some primitive methods that people use. Minerals and powders
can be made to serve as blush or eyeshadow. Warpaint is used by
some groups. Cultural attitudes are extremely varied on makeup
ranging from daily use, to elaborate ceremonial styles, and even
prohibition by certain sects.
Warfare
Many groups seek to avoid it as much as possible. They hope
for rebuilding of humanity, reforging of non violent societal
bonds, and repopulation. But even those people are unable to
completely reject it as threats abound in this new world.
War is waged on a smaller scale with this smaller society.
Forces are more warbands than they are armies, with numbers very
rarely above a few dozen. The capacity to support a large force
is limited as logistical capacity is very small for even the
most organized of groups. Groups can feed themselves by hunting
or raiding farms but settlements are fortified for a reason and
hunting parties are vulnerable to enemies on their own turf.
Firearms are deadly at range even if only with the less
good designs and powders. This forces battles to be skirmishes,
ambushes, and sieges. Foliage, ruins, and purpose built
fortification provide cover that is essential. Ambushes by
stealth or quick approach are crucial tactics. Fortifications
are a common element of many settlements, which requires a siege
of some form. Cannon isn’t used much but some of the large
factions invest in such fortification breaking weapons.
Fortifications provide cover, protected ways to fall back, and
good firing positions over being able to hold out enemies
completely, perhaps comparable to Mauri forts or blockhouses.
Bullets are a limiting factor. The bullets from before are
mostly spent. Those that remain are closely guarded and are only
used sparingly. New bullets are much more common. These use
black powder as the main propellant, weaker and more dirty than
smokeless but far far easier to make. To be able to use a
functional pre collapse gun you need to have a bullet that
contains primer, the material that explodes when the hammer hits
it. These pre-collapse guns and any newly made one’s that ignite
primer with a hammer are referred to as ‘hammer fire guns’.
Without primer you have to revert to flintlocks or other systems
of ignition of gunpowder. Cartridges with primer are far more
expensive than the blackpowder needed to fire the other weapons.
Primer is produced through a series of hard and dangerous
chemical reactions. The raw materials include acids, elemental
mercury, and actually functional chemistry equipment. This
limits primer production to large factions or areas with complex
trade networks. The important sources for this game are that the
Sacramentos, SDR, and some barely known Oregon folks can produce
it. It is a valuable trade good.
Without it, flintlocks have come into fashion. Many are
modifications of hammer fire guns, while others are of new make.
They fire a lot slower but that is made up for in far less cost
per shot. They are not ideal weapons of war but are very good
for economical hunting and emergency fighting.
Electric ignition black powder weapons have come into
fashion as well. Batteries are made in various ways and used to
create charge that sparks the blackpowder on the pull of a
trigger. The advantage is that you can fire a lot quicker than
the flintlock. The downside is that it is just as reliable, the
equipment is bulky and costly. It is most useful for fighting
from fixed fortifications rather than in the field, especially
for groups with problems getting their hands on primer.
Armor exists from before, mainly ceramic plates. Kevlar is
useless. Ceramic plates remain intact but grow rarer year on
year as they are not repairable nor replaceable. New plates,
produced out of ceramic and fiberglass, are weaker and heavier
than the real ones they imitate.

Currency
Bullets are a common currency as they are transportable and
valuable to all. This also includes primer sold by weight. The
value varies widely, mainly by how many hammer fire weapons a
group has and how far they are from the nearest producer/trader.
It is not exactly a good currency within a group though as
hammer fire weapons are very commonly communal items for
defense.
Water is a good in some areas but that’s only in deserts.
Otherwise it is too expensive to transport for its worth. The
same applies to many types of food and building goods. Alcohol,
salt and other luxuries provide an exception as they are highly
valuable by weight. Precious metals are used but not universally
as scavenging has made them plentiful to the point of near
worthlessness in some areas.
The San Diego Remnant is large enough that it’s internal
scrip “ration tokens” are a legitimate currency even a bit
outside its borders. They are recast plastic slips molded with
their insignia. Many other groups have similar internal scrip
but it is usually never used outside their own walls.
 Equipment stats

Ammunition:

Leftover Ammo: Same stats as normal rules

Black Powder: Increase the Armor rating of weapons using them by

1, and for every 1 rolled on a fired unpushed attack, reduce
reliability by 1. Reliability reduced in this manner can be
removed by either a Tech or Ranged Combat roll through cleaning
it (+2 if with proper cleaning equipment)

Firearms:

Hammer Fire: Same stats as weapons from before except with lower
reliability at GM discretion. Can only fire Leftover or Primered
bullets. Very often have reduced ROF.

Flintlock: Reloading takes multiple actions: A Ranged Combat

roll is made to reload, a success reducing the actions needed by
1. The number of actions (either fast or slow actions) needed
will be listed in the stat block

Electric Ignition: User must carry a battery: a light battery

weighs 4 and has enough charge for 15 shots, a heavy battery
weighs 8 and has 40 shots. Same stats as hammer fire but with
ROF of 1.

Flintlock stats:

name Rel Dam Crit Range Ammo Armor Time

Flintlock 4 3 4 3 1 +1 5
Rifle
Flintlock 4 3 4 2 1 +1 4
Musket
Flintlock 4 2 3 1 1 +2 4
Pistol
Flintlock 3 2 3 1 6 +2 1/2
Revolver*
Trapdoor -1 +0 +0 +0 +0 +0 Now
Modified =3
**
*Modified revolver rather than a home creation. The first number
in Time is for between shots and the second is for switching in
new cartridges per cartridge loaded
**Stats listed are added to base stats of a Flintlock rifle,
musket, or pistol.

Armor:

Rule change: Armor is not repairable

name Protection Weight

Steel Helmet 1 (head) 1
Plate Vest 2 (torso) 3
Home made plate 1 (torso) 5

Thermite:

Thermite is produced from things very readily accessible in the

post apocalypse. Its use creates an Intensity A fire that
affects only a small section of a hex and can cause secondary
fires if it ignites flammable materials. The fire has armor -1
and +2 to damage whatever it is placed directly on.

Vehicles:

Very few motorized vehicles have survived 60 years. Those

that have are not doing well. Reliability should be reduced by 1
or 2 and certain other stats reduced. The main problem is that
there basically are no vehicle spare parts left. Looting
abandoned cars no longer provides vehicle spare parts.

Name Combat Travel Front Side Rear Crew Cargo

Speed Speed Armor Armor Armor

Armored 1/1 W 2/1 1 1 1 1+2 50

Wagon

Large 2 2 1 1 1 1+14 400

Sailing
Boat

Explosives:

Hand Grenades:

Name Damage Crit Blast Range Armor Weight

Black 2 3 D 2 +1 1/2
Powder
High 2 3 C 2 +1 1
Explosive
Smoke - - - 2 - 1/2
Black Powder grenades are powder, fuse, and metal shell made to
fragment
High Explosive is material from stuff like artillery and mortar
shells reused into an IED
Smoke is made from match heads and other such stuff

Molotov Cocktails have same stats and can be made in same way

A sling can be used to increase range of grenade by 3 but at the

cost of a slow action aiming and the need to not be prone (uses
skill Heavy Weapons)

Artillery:

Mortars: Improvised only but the ammunition remains around

-Improvised artillery: shells have same damage but a range of 7
as they are fired without any sophisticated equipment
-Many artillery shells have had their sophisticated detonation
mechanisms degrade so stats should be changed in those respects
-Artillery shells are often left hidden and detonated with an
electric charge, fuze, or shot to set them off
Name damage crit blast range armor mag

Small 7 2 - 15 -2 1
cannon

Cannon 10 2 - 20 -2 1

Medicine:

Antibiotics: rules remain the same for their use. They are
incredibly expensive and only produced by a large community up
in Oregon and brought down by ships along the coast.
Spirits: can be used to disinfect a wound for a +1 on the
check, consumes one unit (there are 5 units per one ½ weight
bottle). These are preferably extremely high alcohol.
Herbs: to collect medically useful herbs roll survival and
medical aid, you only get medical herbs if both succeed. It
takes two shifts (one searching, one preparing) for every
attempt and success only yields one dose. A herb garden can be
cultivated to avoid having to roll a survival roll every time.
Herb effectiveness is from +1 to +3 depending on referee fiat.
What problems they can help with is also on referee fiat.
Sterilization: surgical tools must be sterilized before
surgery can be done. Settlements will often make a primitive
autoclave for this purpose. When such a thing is not available,
tools are cleaned with lye, extreme heat, or medical (too strong
for drinking) spirits. Surgery without it causes a roll for
infection same as wound infection rules.
 Factions: The Cabrites

Named for the Spanish word for goats, they are a culture of
pastoralists and scavengers that exist in many areas around the
bay but are politically dominant in the range from San Francisco
to San Jose.
They don’t just herd goats but a wide variety of animals,
basically anything they can get their hands on. Goats are just
important in the way that they are especially good for
pastoralism in ruins as they eat the plants of the cracks. They
supplement pastoralism with hunting, fishing, and trade as the
circumstances permit.
As much as they can while still watching their animals,
they scavenge. This is more disassembly than the simple pass
throughs they did in the first decade. They take any material
that is easy to remove, salvageable, and economically worth the
effort. Thermite is sometimes necessary for breaking things
apart. The ratio between scavenging and herding the animals
varies widely from person to person and day to day. They use
herding dogs to reduce the necessary effort and sometimes people
on horses (in areas where that is possible).
They are very protective of their lands. A lot of other
groups are not given that at this point there is little
competition for land. The Cabrites take a longer view. They want
to preserve the amount of salvage for their descendants and not
just themselves. To this end, outsiders disrespecting their land
rights are retaliated against (this is anything from fishing,
logging, hunting, herding, or of course scavenging).
They are organized into large pseudo-extended families.
These evolved from the traveling bands that developed into the
Cabrites after the time of fear ended. Blood matters a lot less
than adoptive family. Within groups there can be entirely
unrelated nuclear families that nonetheless are treated as one
family under one name.
The families act as one economic and political unit.
Internal structure varies with a mix of informal rules,
consensus, and seniority determining decision making. They own
animals, territory, and other major property collectively.
Members can move between families fluidly (though one does not
bring property like animals that are considered family
possessions with them) and there are still traditional familial
relations that can cross the boundaries between the Cabrite
families. These crossing relationships form important bonds to
facilitate alliance and trade between Cabrite family units and
are thus often encouraged and specifically chosen.
Throughout the year, families move along paths throughout
the seasons within their marked territory. They usually travel
in informally aligned groups of families. These families set up
settlements together, sharing some resources and mutually
collaborating with each other. This includes shared education of
youth, mutual bargaining in trade, having a larger force to
defend themselves with, shared use of some mobile tools, and
having a larger scale which allows them to support more
specialists within the settlements. The alignments are not
permanent and can often flip year on year over disputes both
personal and political.
The moving villages rarely stay in place for more than a
few months but they are not the only Cabrite villages. There are
stationary ones, usually coastal. These settlements are not
always of Cabrite culture, even if completely surrounded by
Cabrites. Cabrite stationary villages are more than just fishing
villages but are also processors of animal products and salvage.
These processing villages can build the stationary
infrastructure the moving one’s cannot such as forges. They use
these forges, after cleaning the metal of rust and corrosion, to
recast/reforge salvaged metals into new tools, wire, or ingots
for external trade. They often slaughter and process animals and
their products: producing buckskin at a largish built up scale,
using non movable machines to turn raw wool into saleable goods,
and salting meat for trade. These communities get their food
from gardens, fishing, and trade. The trade makes the culture of
these settlements more commercial, with less of a focus on the
communal property of families. These villages, if possible, are
set up at the boundaries of different territories, such that
different groups will pass by them at different times of year
keeping trade and contact constant.
Animal waste is mixed with soil to create nitre beds that
can be used by the Cabrites to create saltpeter, an important
ingredient in black powder. This is an important trade good for
them as it is by far the cheapest for them to produce. Sedentary
people don’t have the herds to produce that much saltpeter and
need dung to fertilize crops. Other nomads keep moving too much
to do this. Processor villages using herder dung turn this waste
into valuable trade goods

Caption: a building before the Cabrites perform a proper

scavenging sweep, there are fewer of these left every year.

Judges and Soldiers

I will describe the typical style of them and to avoid
using the words often, usually, and mostly to death, I will just
assume you get that all this should have those applied. There
are a good few groupings amongst them that have radically
different organizations.
Disclaimer out of the way, let’s describe the structure of
governance beyond the cohabitating family scale. Those families
do have a share of governing power and cover some of what a
normal government might see to and sometimes the governments are
of a scale that they are just limited to one of those
cohabitating groups.
 The leaders of these polities are judges. They settle
disputes within and without, enforce laws, and manage warfare.
Families join one’s domain for the offered protection and ease
of doing business/collaboration with others within the same
jurisdiction. All families part of a jurisdiction pay an agreed
upon flat tribute to support the judge and their efforts.
Payments higher than that are forbidden as are preferential
deals and the judge’s family group maintaining any real business
of their own.
Judges serve career terms, with retiring being not
mandatory but socially expected. Following the death or
retirement of a judge, all the families they rule over gather
and vote (one vote per tribute paying family) to determine a new
judge from within the judges family group, which includes
adoptive members such as apprentices.
The Judge’s family has two businesses: assisting the
administrative efforts and acting as warriors. In the former,
they survey land claims, send members to negotiate with other
groups, and host councils to discuss changes to laws. In the
latter, they enforce laws, retaliate against outside aggression,
and train for war. Judges' families sometimes move in a similar
pattern to subjects but if subjects did not all follow the same
pattern, the judge rules a major stationary village or
fortification is necessary (usually on the border of cabrite
lands)they may take up permanent residence.

Example: Fort Point Government

The largest judicial jurisdiction within the Cabrites, as
well as a typical example of a judicial state. They are ruled by
Judge Commander Zeno, an older woman of scholarly bent. She
studied books on classical philosophy and government and was
greatly inspired by them. She emphasizes her family, a very
large unit, as philosopher-warriors and herself in the role of
philosopher-king. She is growing towards the end of her career
and has served as a major influence in developing what a Cabrite
judge is and should be.
Zeno rules from the old civil war fort of Fort Point, in
which he acts as banker for the many traders under his domain,
protecting their wealth with newly made cannon. The center of
his power and largest town of the Cabrites, the Presidio lies a
bit south. Their fishing fleet is the largest of the Cabrites,
and they keep war rigged ships to enforce their control.
His warriors are rather well trained and armed. They act
like dragoons, riding for mobility but dismounting for combat.
Hammer fire weapons are their primary armaments and cabrite made
plates (combined with steel helmets) serve as their armor. Zeno
clearly chose a smaller, better armed, and trained force instead
of a larger group.
Fort Point has made no strong alliances with outsiders,
preferring to play the game of internal politics. They fight
frequent conflicts with groups north of the bridge as the
Cabrites attempt to expand and eliminate threats of raids.

Example: Borani
Another large judicial jurisdiction and dominant force in
San Jose. They are largely more militaristic than regular, ruled
by a supreme commander rather than a leader titled as judge.
They are notable for expansionist patterns, taking territory and
herds over small slights with their impressive cavalry force.
The current ruler is Paula of the Borani, a skilled commander
who trained under the SDR for a period in her youth.
Those under the Borani pay high tribute. This is made back
up as they are given the rewards of the military campaigns the
money helps fund. They do not fight themselves except to defend
against retaliatory attacks. This is atypical as will be
explained.
The Borani family rules from a system of forts they have
placed throughout their territory which serve as areas to raid
out of and retreat back into. These forts have thick but short
adobe walls and stout trench systems with the goal of favorable
casualty ratios.
Their warriors fight from horseback with a mix of weapons,
probably the largest host any ruling family possesses. They are
mounted and known to be highly skilled at ambushing and
outmaneuvering opponents in street battles.
Borani has made a strong and old alliance with the SDR,
especially collaborating to subdue the peoples along the coast
between Alameda and San Jose in return for training and bullets
for the Borani warriors.
Cabrite Culture
Cabrites originated from nomadic groups during the time of
fear and remain close culturally with them with people switching
from one to another often. They have also adapted some culture
from fishing people who have settled along their coasts,
especially the Cabrites in stationary villages.
Families break up into small groups in each tent. The
tents, made of decorated and painted hides, are well built and
have internal structure made of wood. The splitting into
sleeping groups is determined by both family politics and
personal preference but is typically kept within family lines.
There is little gender division of labor within the
Cabrites. Childraising is generally a task handled by chosen
elders shared between families. Cooking is generally also a
communal thing done based on preference or skill within each
family.
Fresh meat is eaten in soups and dairy products make up a
major part of their diets. This is supplemented with gathered
plants (as well as gardened plants and fish if you are from a
village) and imported foods like grains. Extra meat is cured or
turned into jerky for later consumption.
They wear a variety of clothes as all the previously stated
types are available to them (except reeds). Specific flares and
styles are often picked up by a family to make themselves
distinguishable and display their importance or wealth. There is
a lot of emphasis culturally on showing off with the direct
creations of your people rather than using bought clothes or
jewelry.
Music is a very wild mix of styles but the instruments are
relatively constant: drums, guitars, and horsehair fiddles. With
these they play a mix of new folk music, old country, and
surprisingly well adapted rap. Music shows up very often in
large gatherings as a way to open or close meetings or
festivities.
Festivals are a major occasion. Organizing them is a major
way that judges can flex their authority and wealth. They take
place at important times of the year. The most important is the
anniversary of the outbreak. For that occasion, they have many
performances focusing around teaching the traditions of the time
of fear to the young who don’t remember those days. Dramatic
mock fights between warriors in exaggerations of the makeshift
armor of the early nomads and masked “zombies” are the main
show, often drawing spectators from throughout the bay to come
watch.
The Cabrites put a lot more cultural focus on remembering
their history after the collapse rather than before it. They
tell of the heroes of those uncertain times: warriors fighting
off hordes of zombies and surviving by the skin of their teeth
or the first judges organizing the conflict to push the hunter
gatherer scavengers out of SF.
Religiously, Cabrites are very mixed. Christianity is
dominant but has changed with changing times. Catholicism as a
structure is practically gone but worship of catholic saints has
increased. There are also a few new saints that various Cabrites
believe in. This is hand in hand with some animist and
spiritualist elements being adopted. These beliefs vary very
widely between groups. Prayers are given to the land and animals
through the saints. This Cabrite blended religion has a slight
majority with the rest being mostly not religious or
protestants. There are some serious religious conflicts over the
scavenging of churches which the Cabrite religion followers will
not touch but others are more liberal in looting.

Cabrite Warfare
They have judge structures in place to prevent internal
violence within and between Cabrite groups. These are not always
successful and some groups like the Borani seek out
opportunities to war. Typically when facing an external threat,
Judges will band together in a way they would not when facing
other Cabrites.
Most Cabrite families keep around a few flintlocks and
train in their use. They prefer flintlocks as families other
than of a judge don’t usually want the expense of hammer fire.
Cabrite production of saltpeter also makes black powder
especially cheap for them. They use these for hunting trips into
the forests on occasion (the forests are too rough for herding
and are considered fair game as keeping down game there makes it
so less grass is eaten by them entering herded lands during non
grazing periods).
During times of real war, judges call together a militia
from their tributary families to go on campaign. These little
armies are led by the judge or chosen commander and tied
together by personal relation and mutual obligation over formal
rank and chain of command. The soldiers are not paid but instead
get a share of spoils taken in war. The judges are expected to
provide armor but not weapons or horses.
The Cabrites prefer raiding over taking ground in a fixed
manner. The goal is to inflict enough damage to bring the other
side to negotiation or to drive them into retreat. They are
usually overly cautious in wars with avoiding casualties being
preferred over quick victory or economic gain.

Example Cabrite adventure

The players arrive during a festival where conflict brews
between different families over a land dispute. A member of
family A tries to use the players as intermediaries in bribing
the ruling judge but this is actually a member of family B
pretending to be a member of family A so that the incorruptible
judge will rule against Family A.
 Factions: The San Diego Remnant

The largest piece remaining of the US military in

California that still resembles the US military. They are
centered in San Diego as the name suggests but have influence
along the coast and up into the Bay Area.
Early in the outbreak a USS Nimitz class aircraft carrier
anchored itself in the port of San Diego. It rafted together
with cargo ships waiting in the port, its electricity powering
them all for decades. This artificial island served as a safe
place for a great many people. They fished and grew food on the
wide decks as well as feasting on supplies of food brought by
other military groups who migrated to San Diego to join this
safe haven.
As the time of fear progressed they built walled
settlements and cleared areas of zombie presence through careful
and thorough purges. By the time the zombies were gone, they had
formed a large settlement of a military nature. They trained the
next generation extensively from a young age to be soldiers and
officers. They linked up with and absorbed other remnants, most
importantly to us this included the barely surviving but well
fortified coast guard base on an island in Alameda.
They used their military power and technical training to
expand their power. They set up a production network to make
their own primer for when their real bullets run out (which they
mostly did a decade ago). Nearby settlements and those just
along the coast were given offers of “mutual aid” that in
practice is a protection racket to bring in footsoldier grunts,
money, and supplies to support their military presence.
Their Alameda base receives tribute along the coast from
Alameda to about Fremont and a bit into the hills but not far
enough to get to Dublin. They do actually provide important
military aid to those settlements, mostly stopping the raids
from the hills that used to be endemic to the region.
They have gotten into conflicts with most of the groups
around them but especially with the Cabrites on their southern
border and Arnold on their northern one. In general a lot of the
region views them as an existential threat to their independence
and a bit of a coalition is forming against them.
Structure
They are a Military Junta ruled under the basic idea that
stability and safety are worth a loss of liberty and that once
the area is united and secure, then there is time for democracy.
They have been saying the same thing for nearly sixty years but
democracy seems no closer.
The junta is composed of a three person council of the
heads of land forces, sea forces, and technical elements. Their
authority is passed down to chosen successors when they retire
or die. Below each of them is a well organized department of
extensive training and passed on institutional knowledge.
The members of the SDR are educated very well by the
standards of post outbreak. Their education may be a bit heavily
organized and martial but it only becomes directly militaristic
after 16 when children decide which branch they want to be in
(transfers are definitely possible in the years afterwards
though). This extensive education is definitely expensive, with
it drawing a good deal of resources made worth it by producing
technically educated officers and technicians. Students who fail
too much or aren’t set out for school are transferred directly
into learning mundane trades or training so they can do best in
the serve as a non officer. This is seen as highly shameful.
Members of the SDR in good standing generally do not do
grunt/unskilled labor. They use flunked out or demoted members
in secure areas and rely on tributaries elsewhere. Their biggest
collected tribute is food, which they do not grow that much of
on their own. Grunt soldiers recruited or conscripted from
tributaries are used for manual labor with the flimsy
justification of it “keeping them strong”. Elitism is extremely
prevalent in member interactions with non members.
The technical branch has very wide bounds from developing
new designs with the resources they have, running the primer
production, making goods, directing manual labor, and any other
skilled non combat task the SDR needs.
Within the army branch, the main specializations are
different levels of combat and logistics officers and the
special forces soldiers. The officers take similar roles to the
ones in the pre-collapse military. Logistics officers are the
ones who collect tribute, negotiate trade, and manage supplies
in collaboration with the water branch. The special forces are
what they sound like. They are extensively trained though they
serve as more shock troops than covert ones. They are armed with
the best gear and even sometimes use what remains of the pre
outbreak bullet stash.
Within the naval branch, the main specialization is between
marines and sailors. The SDR has a large fleet of logistics and
combat rigged ships and their navy crews. The sailors serve all
of the crew roles from navigator to cannon operator. The marines
are trained a bit in sailing but primarily as skilled soldiers
the SDR can quickly deploy from the fleet often making crossing
from sailboat to shore in canoes or kayaks.
SDR officers eventually retire from active service but that
is usually at a pretty old age for non direct combat. Direct
combat officers retiring usually shift into education or a non
combat role they picked up some experience in.

The Alameda Base

The fort from which the SDR rules in the bay area. It is an
island that used to be used by the Coast Guard pre collapse. Now
it has their barracks, administrative center, and workshops. The
only ways in are a bridge they’ve secured with unassailable
defenses and waterways they have complete control over.
There is no domestic element on the base beyond a handful
of young children. There is no education there, with children
being sent south for proper education and training. There are no
elders in full retirement. This is a foreign land for all of
these officers, a second home even for those who’ve been there
for decades.
The workshops are minimal, only what is needed is
transferred up. The local industries of tributaries are
developed enough that they are able to get more developed goods
through tribute. The base’s garrison is mainly naval, with army
forces just for securing the main base and organizing
tributaries to defend borders. Offensive measures are handled
primarily by marines and special forces who work hand in hand.
The forces on the base are generally rather hostile to
local culture, only interacting socially with the Oakland
Airport settlement and a few others that have tried to
culturally integrate with the SDR.
Commander Richard Salvini runs the base. He is a middle
aged former special forces man who was one of the best until the
injuries caught up with him. He is aggressive in his tactics
with a ruthless streak of cunning that has carried him to many
past victories. He was transferred here recently after he
successfully led an operation to crush some bandits that were a
problem down south.

Caption: SDR naval ship (origin: pre collapse sailboat) sitting

anchored in the bottom left, a show of force in San Pablo Bay

SDR Culture
They are a perpetuation of military culture and pre
outbreak culture. These values are taught to them standardized
through an education system run by veterans and soldiers. Their
view of the past is rose tinted American exceptionalism. Their
new manifest destiny is the “liberation” of the west to pave the
way for future democracy and freedom.
They preserve a corpus of literature that follows that
ideology they have their children read and absorb. They have
grand festivals for the “American” holidays of 4th of July and
Thanksgiving.
The hair regulations have remained the same except that men
have been permitted to have previously only female hairstyles.
Preference for specific hair styles varies between units as
often soldiers want to adopt as close to the styles of the
locals as is permitted. Other times they intentionally
contradict them.
They wear shirts, trousers, shorts, and jackets. They vary
but are constrained to those categories which are a lot more
limited than many other cultures. They are standardized to
neutral colors but vary in material and quality. The identifier
of an SDR soldier is wool dyed a specific shade of lightish navy
blue. The dye recipe is a controlled secret. SDR soldiers always
wear something of it, usually armbands and hats.
Religion plays a factor for some. It is not taught in
schools but is passed along in families. Religious services of
an interfaith nature are available in larger bases. It is
increasingly less common for SDR members to be religious.
SDR members are paid well in scrip made of recast plastic.
Many groups outside the SDR accept it so they have good spending
power. Luxuries are permitted within moderation, a system
relying heavily on looking the other way. Investments in local
businesses are not considered appropriate but are often
overlooked leading to all sorts of corruption.
The SDR’s culture is often very individualistic given the
differences between the tributary grunts and their member
officers. Things are more collectivist with those who work
closely with other members. There is not the most emphasis on
family, especially with how they get spread out across the SDR’s
length.

SDR Warfare
The SDR has an incredibly strong and well organized
military but it is spread thin and faces widespread opposition.
Their forces in the Bay Area are limited as it is the farthest
north point in their control.
They still have access to proper ceramic armor though they
are running out at a rate they do not like. They do make new
armor and use it but aren’t happy about it. They use hammer fire
weapons not exclusively but primarily. They are stingy about
giving armor and large amounts of bullets to tributary soldiers
though. SDR tactics are primarily on foot with horsemen acting
more as scouts than for quick movement.
Even their tributary soldiers are considered pretty well
trained by bay standards, though their penal troops not so much.
Their officers are considered very good soldiers and their
special forces unmatched. Casualties in officers and special
forces are not really that acceptable for the SDR and their
willingness to sacrifice tributary troops drives up tensions.
Tributary desertion is a major problem which they are struggling
to deal with. Punishment and retaliation has been escalating and
unhappiness is brewing in those settlements. SDR analysts are
already drawing plans to deal with insurrection or revolution.
They have a good few cannons and make pretty good use of
them with officers trained in how to calculate shots of both
direct fire bombards and squad-carried mortars. This includes
boats with cannons on them larger than three inches bore, which
is very rare and formidable.
Their forces are very large but they are spread thin. The
bay is the farthest north they have reached. They are
considering shifting more forces northward recently as attempts
to hold onto the Mexican coast have suffered high losses due to
a large confederacy forming against them. A shift north would
mostly still focus on strengthening their main settlement and
its satellite forts. SDR forts are produced in the same style
across their entire domain. They are two story buildings with
sand bag reinforced walls and many windows for shooting from.
Entrances are only on the second floor.

Example SDR Adventure

The SDR gives the players a list of names and drawings of
deserters, with a bounty on each one for their killing or
capture. The rewards are reasonable but the men are either hard
to locate or very ready to use their issued equipment to deal
with bounty hunters.
 Factions: Arnold’s men

In the first days of the outbreak the workers of the port

of Oakland built a fort. They made it out of containers using
forklifts, it has massive walls and they filled it with long
lasting goods from warehouses nearby. By the time they fully hid
inside, it was a truly great safehouse.
They thrived inside it for years. The city around them fell
apart quickly and became far too dangerous for the military to
try to “requisition” any of their horde of food. They lived well
through the time of fear. They accepted a few new arrivals,
hiding inside from the outside world. They aged and their
younger people left.
This left them weak and Arnold took advantage of it. His
men killed a lookout with a bow and climbed the side of the
fort. They took the inhabitants by surprise and forced their
exit. That was fifteen years ago and they’ve held it since.

Arnold’s history
He was raised in a town ruled by a military remnant. They
trained him as a sharpshooter and he fought their enemies for a
few years. He hated them, how they crushed local independence
and forced people into their war machine. He hated their
expansionist goals. He started plotting.
He made close friends in the young generation of their men,
people like him with grudges against those they fought for. He
trained angry young men how to shoot with skill and stealth.
They were found out too soon. He did not have the men to
overthrow them so he took those that would follow and fled.
Arnold and his were bandits for a while, targeting military
remnants when they could. They picked up other bandits and
trained them, his ranks swelled. When he heard word of the SDR
and the fort in Oakland, he made his move.
With the fort secure, Arnold approached the surrounding
villages. He promised them protection like the SDR does but
without loss of independence or drafting of locals. Many the SDR
was threatening turned immediately to his side. He took other
towns by violence. He recruited from runaway tributary soldiers
and others seeking wealth through adventure.
 This was not altruistic. Arnold took and still takes taxes
and opting out is not an option. Though, he does respect local
independence in a way the SDR does not. He built brutality as
his reputation, butchering captive SDR soldiers, bandits, and
anyone else who stands in his way.
He’s been rethinking his brutality recently. He wants his
organization to be democratic but is unwilling to give up
control yet. He fears that if he is seen as soft, his men will
replace him. He doesn’t like the culture of the group he has
built but sees no way out. He is aging. He cannot keep hold
forever and doesn’t know what to do but fight so that’s what
he’s doing. He is preparing slowly for a war with the SDR, his
final war, by building a coalition, training men, and testing
their borders.
Arnold now is an aging white man with graying hair, a
charismatic but tired smile, and still razor sharp instincts. He
wears blood stained armor still bearing an SDR brand on top of
fine scavenged clothing.

Arnold’s men
They are trained marksman irregulars. Arnold is good at
teaching and willing to drill them for hours to get them good.
They know the land well, reload quickly, and are skilled at
getting out of a position once it is compromised.
Some are from his military days, these are his old guard
and are extremely loyal. His recruited bandits are skilled and
very bloodthirsty, having often joined him for his gruesome
reputation. His recruited deserters are more normal people and
he has been trying to get them to be more ideologically
motivated for democracy and independence.
Loot is split based on a mix of seniority and participation
in fighting. Loot is kept as personal property while taxes are
collectively owned and usually just food, building materials,
and other such things. Many of his men invest some of their loot
into the local community, sure that nobody would be foolish
enough to doublecross a warlord over an agricultural deal.
His organization leans on the male side of things but he’s
been working on bringing in more women and non warriors.
Grumblings are all that’s come in response.
They tend to eat collectively and all live inside the fort,
which they have decorated with much finery. They welcome people
with great hospitality but never to stay inside the fort, having
a table for guests and a few of Arnold’s people in a well made
timber hall not far from its gate.
They wear no uniform but a wide variety of good clothes
from whatever culture they originated from. They largely retain
the same culture but many have picked up an attitude of
glorification of war and warriors. This includes grandiose
prayer before battles, wild boasting, and non lethal honor
duels.

Arnold’s Men Warfare

His men are irregulars with specialization in sniping and
stealth. They have prepared many locations for easy shooting and
escape throughout their territory and even a bit into SDR lands.
They fire from these until their guns are out then retreat while
others cover their fire.
They use some hammerfire, though the SDR ban on selling any
ammunition to them has made it hard. Flintlock and electric
ignition are preferred for not needing any primer. Electric
ignition works well when they fight from their pre prepared
shooting spots. They use few horses and boats but do use armor
and mortars.
His men are good shots but not as good general soldiers as
SDR officers. They are a lot less organized and disciplined
though this has yet to be seen in real full combat. Whether they
will hold or fold has yet to be determined.
Arnold prefers an ambush to a raid. He pays local youths to
spot for his men and watch their patterns. He takes care to loot
bodies and often strings the stripped corpses as a warning. This
habit was what earned him a lot of his reputation.
Their numbers are in the dozens, much lower than the SDRs
force even not counting tributary troops. They are slowly
expanding but Arnold’s standards are high so training is slow

Example Arnold Adventure

Arnold is hiring mercenaries to join his upcoming war
against the SDR. The fighting will come soon, the players just
must prepare themselves. They could also work to try to recruit
people of other factions to join his cause as his reputation is
tainted which makes the work hard.
 Factions: The People of the Delta

In the time of fear many people took to water. It was safe

against the zombies. Some of those people were in the bay and
stayed there, many many others went to the Sacramento river
delta. They rafted up together, taking over islands, and
throwing anchors. These communities formed from the people
living on these islands to start with, those who have boats, and
those with the cunning to steal them.
They fished and hunted, living off the increasingly wild
land while living safe through all those years. They did short
scavenging trips onto land. They ran out of fuel, motor boats
just floating platforms now. Communities built norms and
cultures on the water. One group blew up a levee to create more
wetlands for them to hunt and live in.
Many moved on land as the zombies disappeared. They built
houses and farms. Many remained on the water and wetlands,
floating or on stilts. They still hunt and fish. Some sailed,
water nomads trading back and forth. Some others moved into the
delta setting up farms too.
These communities have been interconnected from the very
beginning, forming a culture on a similar scale to the
nomad/rancher culture but with more shared characteristics. They
were formed of probably the most varied starting population as
all from the crazy hippie Ephemerisle folks to the hard
practical trap fishers to random folks who had the good sense
and guts to swim out to a delta island.
Following the end of the time of fear, ranchers and farmers
from outside began to settle along the Delta. Those coming in
small groups who joined and assimilated were accepted but that
is increasingly not how the new arrivals act. They are setting
up settlements of their own, whose culture and practices are not
Delta.
The Delta has less scavenge than other locales with a lower
availability of metal and wood. They rely on reeds and bamboo a
lot more because of this, using it to make houses, boats,
certain clothing items, mats, and a few other woven goods.
Captions: a rafted together settlement in the early days

Governments
The delta is the least universal of any of the factions I
will list in government type. They are a general culture, not a
political entity. Though there are some common types that I will
draw differences between:
Kin Organized: These groups are organized around ties of
family. They can be run by a matriarch/patriarch or town council
style. There are two types of Kin Organized group, one where
it's only kin and one where there’s an ingroup and an outgroup.
The one’s where it is only kin are typically rather small and
often very decentralized. Example: a wide family network of
fisher people spread out through a flooded area that share
resources internally (informal trade), mutually bargain, and
protect each other. The larger type of kin group usually is
created by a kin group having enough power to bring outsiders
into the fold as subordinates. This could be through control of
some sort of capital resource (like a siphon water pump or solar
array) or coercive control over an area of valuable land.
 Heterogeneous but unified: A settlement or group managed
independently of family ties (which of course will still matter,
it is just not the decider of ingroup out group here). These are
often tied together by group history (especially those
originating in the time of fear), more recent mutual interest
(different groups banding together to resist raids), geographic
location (especially on islands and old floating settlements) or
religion. They can be egalitarian or have coercive structures
internal (caused by control of governmental power, resources, or
martial power) or external (caused by the same factors as for
Kin Groups). Ruling is most commonly done by group vote or some
singular leader (though individual traditions are extremely
varied).
Venture Oriented: These are called crews if by water or
bands if by land and most commonly originate as (temporary)
split offs of other groups. They are organized around goals,
usually the profit of all members. These are the raiders and
traders that haunt the waters, the lines between the two
practically nonexistent (who you are matters more to what they
do to you than who they are). Some exist for other purposes such
as a large one that is trying to form a supply chain capable of
producing primer, but they are rarer. Ventures typically operate
by chosen laws formulated at the start and agreed to by all
joining members through oaths on divinity and good reputation.
Membership is not mutually exclusive with other groups, as for
example a fisher that is part of that example kin organized
government remains under it even if they are part of a sailing
crew. These connections remaining strong is actually extremely
important for most ventures, with that providing the allies and
trade partners they need.

Delta Politics
Identity, kinship, economic interests, common history and
personal relations create a complex network of alignment and
enmity between Delta groups. Alliances can change quickly.
Alliances turn on individual deaths as personal and kin bonds
are all that back them. An alliance without those can be broken
without problem as long as one provides the other with suitable
warning of the change. This impermanence of bonds makes their
politics fickle and very hard to understand to outsiders
 Identity comes in two ways, all that can spark conflict or
tie alliances together. First: The Delta self identifies as a
separate culture to the rest of California and will actively
fight incursion from the outside. Second: Some of the large
delta communities from the early days that later split apart
still retain that as a group identity, most notably the
descendents of Ephermisle. Though split apart politically now,
they consider themselves as one people group.
Kinship plays an important part in inter community
relations. Marriage is used to seal alliances together. Larger
communities put less emphasis on individual ties and kin
oriented groups put great emphasis on any from the kin ingroup.
Non kin groups usually value blood ties of cousins as important
enough to keep it so such a bond only lasts one generation
unless they are a very small community or are very close to the
ally (as then the cousins will get to know each other).
Economic interests of course come into play. Important
trade partners are not backed out on or attacked. Competitors
for resources are targeted. Raiding provides great economic
returns, especially against soft targets. Economic damage, if
too excessive, can invite retaliation from those who relied on
the injured as part of their trade network.
Common histories are varied in importance and whether they
help or hurt relations. Alliances that last long build bonds
that self reinforce. Peoples who lived together during the time
of fear, if they parted well, hold those memories across
generations. Being seen as having a history of real betrayal
will ostracize a group.
Personal relations are extremely important. Personal bonds
between important members of groups are enough to back an
alliance (but are even more fickle than marriage). Feuds over
crimes, personal slights, and other such matters can wreck an
alliance or spark a war. These feuds can be settled through
duels. They can be lethal, blood, or knocking. Lethal and blood
duels are fought with machetes, an important weapon and tool to
the Delta peoples, with the difference being whether it ends at
first blood or last one living. Knocking duels are unarmed with
the person to lose being the first to have both feet off the
ground for at least two seconds. (Rules wise you run this as
unarmed close combat where instead of attacking a character
makes a move to knock which is a contest they need two more
successes than their opponent to win).

Delta Culture
The Delta culture was formed from a lot of very disparate
folks. The main groups are the interesting kind of characters
that already lived on the islands before or did Ephemerisle (a
pre collapse festival where they built a rafted together
community on the water once a year), the more wealthy folks who
own boats of some form for recreation, the serious fishing
types, the bold boat thieves, those who could swim to an island
or raft and the rando late arrivals who generous communities
helped survive. These communities internally weren’t tied
together from before unlike the nomads or preppers usually were,
even if the connections between them were a lot stronger than.
This diversity and mish mash within groups and sharing
between them has led to a generally kinda free wheeling
independent identity for the Delta peoples. They had to learn to
live with each other and have continued to do so.
Some groups do not follow this pattern, people who found
those like them during the early days and formed homogenous
patches who while still seen as Delta by right, did not join in
the mainstream culture. They stayed like that for a while but
things opened up somewhat with the next generation. Doesn’t work
demographics wise to keep tight longer than that. They are still
often very much culturally isolated, even if that is starting to
decrease.
Clothing is a very important tool in identity and a large
imported good for the delta. They display wealth and connections
through fabric type and quality but culture through its
recutting and styling. Gifts of clothing between allies is a
token worn as warning of who a group has at their back and sign
of loyalty. When an alliance is ended, clothing gifts are humbly
returned. Even if the differences between clothing styles of
different groups are small they are deliberate, such as a wide
brimmed hat made out of dried reeds that has a clipped flat edge
on the side of the right ear vs a hat without the clipped edge.
Singing while one sails is a time honored tradition and has
greatly affected their musical culture with much more importance
given to singing skill and choirs than to bands and instruments.
This is not to say they do not use instruments, of course they
do. Just that, they don’t put them front and center.
There is one major Delta faith, though it lacks a majority
of the Delta as in general religion is just very mixed. This
Delta faith is animist, with practitioners believing that with
the use of hallucinogenic substances they can attune with the
spirits of the river and its wildlife. The religion is
decentralized with vast differences in the details of theology
across the Delta. Prayers from those truly in line with the
spirits are seen to have great power so people will pay ascetics
(who use the supplies to survive and acquire hallucinogens) to
pray on their behalf.
A very popular art style is calligraphy. They paint
stylized words using naturally produced dies onto a sort of
papyrus-like paper made from the local reeds. In some of the
settlements, one’s signature is a thing of great cultural
importance and pride that is chosen as a part of their coming of
age ceremony. Prayers written with this style are rolled up and
burned during a popular midsummer festival, with people
unskilled in calligraphy commissioning prayers to be made in
their name.
Kinship bonds can be made later in life and not just
through marriage. Blood brotherhood (and sisterhood) is very
common and the easiest way to get into a family. There are many
rituals for it. This is used to back alliances and by large kin
organized settlements to expand the in group with chosen people
to add to their power (often outsider warriors)
Intoxicants of various forms are popular. Hempen products
especially are grown and sold from the islands in both
traditional Mexican and old world forms, if you know what I
mean. Produced grains are fermented or distilled into alcohol.
These are all liberally consumed but also exported for good
money that brings in the metal and fabric they need in return.

Delta Warfare
They raid a lot. It is the main form of warfare. The
infliction of casualties and economic damage for personal
enrichment and pressure for negotiation. These raids can be from
horse or ship, come at day or night, be done by a handful or a
whole horde, it is all variable.
 Primer and weapons enter the delta from both sides.
Flintlocks are dominant for their use in hunting, which hammer
fire is not cost effective for. Bird hunters use shotguns,
making them the most dominant weapon in the delta. Armor is a
lot less common in the delta with scavenge and military remnants
being rarer there.
Cannons are used on ships, usually of not that large bore.
This is for sinking ships, shredding sails, and killing enemy
crew. The purchase and operation of them is expensive so only
richer groups have them.
Militias of defensive or offensive nature make up a
majority of forces with few groups having professional soldiers.
Though large kin group settlements often have semi professional
forces.

Example Delta Adventure

A settlement has been attacked many times by the same water
raiding fleet. They are doing it on a schedule every two months.
The villagers have been preparing this time and enlist the
players to help to protect them / ambush the raiders any way
they can.
 Factions: The Nomads/Ranchers

Movement brought safety during the time of fear as being in

one place too long brought unwanted attention from both humans
and zombies. They’d set up for a while, holing up in abandoned
houses or camping in the wilderness. They herded and hunted for
food. Many settled down after a bit and left the nomadic life,
building walls to protect themselves. They ranched, continued to
hunt, or started farms.
Those who kept moving started to visit protected
communities as it became safer to leave the completely empty
lands. They traded goods with great precaution about infection
and spoke at a distance with walls or water between them. The
nomads developed routes, earning money through trade and
delivery. Their numbers protected them.
They were some of the first scavengers, most making just
quick passes to take the obvious stuff that had high value to
weight. Some of these people stuck around in urban areas to take
the rest becoming the Cabrites.
The rest spread out throughout the state. They formed
ranches with their herds and formed new settlements. Fear of
zombies and military resource seizure behind them, they built
anew. This did not stop nomadic ventures from continuing.
New merchant groups arose largely from people gathered from
many previous bands. This new system (the one that continues
now) brought goods from ranchers to market (often each member
bringing their own original group’s exports) and goods between
the large settlements
These new caravans built wagons and streamlined their camps
for continuous travel rather than hanging in each area for a
more extended period. They mostly traveled along the extensive
but rundown freeway system, with some shepherds in the group
guiding the animals through the grass nearby. They prefer to
travel near sources of water whenever possible but this is not a
limiting factor.
Those able do other tasks while traveling including
hunting, scouting, gathering, or doing artisanal work while
riding in a cart. They have people sleeping during the day
inside covered carts so that they can watch at night to prevent
attack. Those doing other tasks are often horse riders who can
travel faster and thus have time to do those things while
keeping up.
Nomadic groups very often fall off of or back onto the
trading paths, splitting up to return home or staying together
to build a new settlement. In the reverse, the process of
ranchers from many group structures coming together to form new
merchant caravans is common.

Caption: ranching lands in the hills of California, where they

are king

Nomad Culture
The merchant nomad’s material culture is extremely varied
as they don’t produce many of their own goods(with the exception
of textiles) and display wealth often through how wide afield
the sourcing of their possessions is. To a person in the Delta,
an Oregonite made ring is of much more perceived value than a
San Jose cabrite creation. This incentivizes extreme diversity
and discourages domestic production for trade (except in the
creation of items in imitation of those from far flung groups).
The settled ranchers have a bit of similar values of far flung
origins but match that with an increased value for goods
produced within the family structure as a method of displaying
family strength.
Ties of mutual obligation generally referred to as
“companionship” are the base social glue of the nomads.
Companions include family, close friends, and all those one is
currently traveling/living with (Note: for ranching communities
this only means those in your dwelling circle which is rarely
above two dozen even if the larger settlement is much bigger). A
tie of companionship is a formal matter, established through
ritual, though they will be ignored if one hasn’t interacted
with a companion in a long period. Companion bonds sometimes
come with expectations of gift giving but that is nowhere near
universal. They can be broken with reason through a witnessed
ritual.
Nomad traveling groups are generally then arranged people’s
companion ties, with leaders determined by group judgements
about experience and seniority. The leaders do not do individual
negotiation over trade goods but instead direct the group’s
movements, mediate internal disputes, and make agreements on
behalf of all. A group’s path (or composition) is usually chosen
so that they have at least some companion bonds with those they
will be trading with. This is to ensure trust on both sides.
Companion bonds also obligate aid to companions. These
obligations are a lot stronger in ranching communities where a
person who has fallen on hard times is expected to be taken care
of by their companions. Ranchers going on merchant caravan will
usually get loans of goods from companions, which they take to
market and sell. This gives them the initial investment capital
to become a merchant but it doesn’t take many mistakes for the
companions to lose their investment which may cost the foolish
merchant their companions.
The specifics of trading are done on an individual level.
The only collective property in a group are for travel and even
that is limited. Each nomad is expected to bring their own
supplies and trading goods as well as conduct their own trading.
They may get into the settlement through one person’s contacts
but after that it's a free for all of individual interest. Those
who don’t have goods to trade in that particular town guard
everyone’s property and are paid by each of the trading
merchants on that visit.
 Like the Cabrites, the cultural stories told by the nomads
focus much more on the experiences of their people since the
outbreak rather than before it. This is very often through oral
tradition around the behaviors of their ancestors during the
time of fear and their heroic and daring survival stories. These
ballads are turned to song or poem and told both internally and
externally. Their history is thus an oral tradition.
They are a wide mix when it comes to religion. Some are
catholic, often with newly minted saints from the time of fear.
Some are protestant, with experiences creating weird new
reinterpretations of the bible. Many others turned to religions,
their pre outbreak ancestors knew little of. Religion is
considered a private matter and much less of a group activity
than with other factions.
In terms of clothing they wear utilitarian garb while
traveling. Wealth displays here are through quality of material
in its utilitarian purpose. These are light fabrics, often of
good scavenge origins. While visiting towns is another matter.
Each nomad has a special garb for their visits, robes they wear
on top of or instead of their normal garments. These are
sumptuously decorated with fine ornaments from as far afield as
the individual can afford. Ranchers wear a mix of these
fashions, preferring utilitarian for day to day and elaborate
ceremonial garments for their many festivals and holy days.

Nomad warfare:
Raiding is endemic but not indiscriminate. They don’t try
to attack fortifications. Their targets are the softest
available: lone or isolated homesteads, herds whose animals they
can steal, or other such helpless things outside town walls. The
most important rule of raiding is that it must be justified.
This can be through acts against any group the raider identifies
with (such as religion, companion network, or even
nomad/ranchers as a whole) or the target’s status as “accursed”.
The accursed status is a term levied against groups shunned from
nomad/rancher society for committing many crimes (such as
raiding without cause) or against non nomad/rancher groups that
are seen as a large threat. It is always disputed but generally
not levied without cause.
Raids try to move quickly and escape as any battle with
settled people will not be favorable to the small bands of
nomads. Usually this means attacks on horseback by as much
stealth and surprise as possible. Raids against other nomads and
ranchers have to be especially careful as retaliation may
immediately pursue one on horseback.
Nomads also must fear attack while on the road, which
necessitates their lookouts and scouts. Rival groups and bandits
see them as amazing targets. When attack is imminent they
(literally) circle the wagons and break out the best of whatever
weapons they were bringing for sale. This fear of raids (and
also betrayal/attack from the settled groups they trade with) is
another crucial part of the importance of companion ties.
One is expected to avenge their companions if they are
attacked, killed, or have other misdeeds done against them. This
means that causing injury against someone arouses not only their
companions but their companion’s companions. These will overlap
highly but this still means an individual murder nearly always
causes forces who don’t even know the dead to take arms. Any
sort of feud of this nature is justification for raids and some
warlike factions stay in a constant state of feud to permit
raids.
The spiraling of blood feuds can be prevented through an
agreement of restitution that gives resources from the
instigator to the victim, as mediated by a third party (very
often a priest if the two are of the same faith) or a trial.
Trial can be through an agreed judge (very often a religious
leader) or by combat. This is less common in cases of killings
where the stakes are higher. There is a third way to settle it
in the case of a killing, unless the killer is denying their
act. If the killer does not deny but defend their killing (such
as by saying it was part of a legitimate raid, self defense,
etc) and are killed by a companion (not companion of a
companion) of the original dead the feud ends there. This whole
process is justified often using the bible, a justice of an eye
for an eye.
They use the best quality weapons they can get their hands
on for defense, willing to burn primer in order to protect
everything they’ve got, while usually being a bit more frugal
for their raids.
Example Nomad Adventure:
A singular nomad goes to the players and tries to pay them
to hide him. Shortly afterward nomad pursuers show up and demand
to know where he went, threatening that the players will be
considered targets of their vengeance if they protect the
killer. If the players ask the singular nomad if they killed
anyone, the nomad will admit they did but only as vengeance for
the killing of a cousin.

Factions: The Black Panthers

There is little direct continuity between them and their

traditional namesake (the Black Panther Party of the 1970s) but
they do see them as inspiration and an identity with which to
legitimize themselves.
The Black Panthers are an alliance of 5 fishing villages
that are along the northeast coast of the bay that styles itself
as a revival of the Black Panthers dedicated to mutual
protection and aid. Racism was not killed by the end of the
world so the Black Panther’s original goals still hold weight
with even new generations. Though most of its power as a symbol
comes through its cultural weight as a group from within the
black community that protected and supported it. These stories,
amplified by oral tradition, were what motivated this
resurrection.
The towns form a central committee of 5, each a chosen
elder (by democratic vote by all above 16) from each town. They
deliberate on decisions, settle disputes, manage a common fund
for large projects, and choose leaders for the armed forces of
the party. The individual towns elect a different leader or
council to handle local matters, though the structures of local
leadership vary.
They keep to the parties original ideals of socialism
through common ownership of a large amount of property. Food is
cooked and served collectively to all villagers. Villagers work
tasks independently or for the party. Those doing independent
work pay taxes in kind to the party, which pays some of those
goods out as wages (workers choose what they want). Housing is
built collectively by the whole community, with the new owner
paying by giving all able to participate gifts of some form.
As resources permit, they are inducting in new members
primarily from refugees or wandering delta fishers. They recruit
mainly black people and put them through a series of trials and
a probation period before they are allowed to join the
settlement and “the party”.
Culturally they focus heavily on keeping culture of the
past alive. They take great care teaching it, both through
writings and oral tradition. The teaching is done by elders too
weak to work or fight and is considered rather good by Bay Area
standards.
The settlements have a rather strong citizen soldier force
of members who receive a wage to train in addition to other
tasks. They dress in the “traditional uniform” except with
buckskin increasingly replacing the scavenged leather in their
jackets. They have domestic production, via a skilled gunsmith
who has been passing down his skills, of quality breech loading
muskets and drill effectively. They shun hammer fires for the
most part as they would make the party too tied to external
trade and the influences of other factions.
They strongly oppose the SDR, seeing it as continuation of
the racist American warmachine the Black Panthers fought in
their first incarnation. This is most directly shown through how
they assist and encourage escape from conscription by the SDR.
They also do not work well with Arnold, fearing that his
brutality may eventually turn their way. They prefer
independence from both sides, making only a few alliances with
smaller Cabrite judges or delta tribes.

Factions: The Believers of Alcatraz

Alcatraz was a prison many a year ago. Those buildings are

aged and weak now. Their walls are supported by beams of wood
and newly made mud brick. Inside them dwell a new type of
people, fundamentalists descending from preppers and various
fishers.
Early on a preacher took prominence in the community. She
spoke of how the end of the world was brought about by God's
displeasure with how we had treated his earth. They embraced
this message, seeing their faith in god as their shield and
their continued survival as his favor.
The time of fear passed and people began to rebuild. This
scared the preacher. She saw a path in which within mere
generations to dark smoke spitters would be built once more and
the world would be threatened again. She could not let this
happen. In those early days, with machines still working some
scavengers were on the brink of making some truly great
machines. A raiding party of Alcatraz faithful killed the
engineers in the pitch black of a moonless night.
Several other raids and battles played out through the next
decade. The preacher was slain and many of their fighting men.
Signed agreements were made with Cabrites and they fell back to
their island. They increasingly trade and evangelize to those of
the delta, causing the creation of similarly aligned bands with
similar goals but less fear.
Nowadays, Alcatraz is a well fortified neutral faction that
few align with but none are willing to deal with for good.
Internally they are a theocracy run by a newly chosen preacher.
They fish throughout the bay and grow gardens. They have
connections to those in the Delta now but very little with the
bay. Interact with them at your own risk.

Factions: Humbaba’s Children

The grand trees of the old woods protected them when evil
roamed. The grand trees of the old woods were where they
retreated when fear and isolation swept the world. The grand
trees of the old woods are things of great might and holiness.
The old forest must not be cut and the new forest must be aged
into it. The Children of Humbaba hold these truths close to
their hearts.
They are an animist religion that has formed from some of
the hunter gatherer communities that have resided in old growth
forests. They take their name from some nameless elder who
identified the spirit of the forest that protected them during
the time of fear as Humbaba, the forest demon from the Epic of
Gilgamesh. Humbaba’s mission was to protect the Cedar forest of
Lebanon. Their mission is to protect and foster the redwoods and
old growths.
 They use the wood of fallen trees or invasive trees when
they need it but consider it sacrilege to cut down a native tree
for any purpose. They do controlled burns to improve the health
of the forest and most infamously, mutilate those who harvest
the trees they protect.
This takes the form of raids carried out while clad in
masks painted with contorted demonic faces. They do take
resources when they can (which plays a good part in motivation
for the raids even if the raids are religiously justified). This
makes them the sworn enemy of most of the settled peoples. They
blend in with the other hunter gatherer forest peoples at other
times, avoiding retaliation by those unwilling to fight them
all.
Weapons they buy from nomads, who do not deal in wood and
care little about what their weapons are used for. The spoils of
raids are used to get bullets, powder, and guns. People with no
use of native wood are quick to support the Children in
attacking their enemies, often giving them information and aid
in return for their enemies being the next target.
They especially spread when a state tries to extend control
onto hunter gatherers in wooded areas. The religion provides
backing and ideological support to resistance. This has been
playing out with the SDR’s attempts to reign in the hills
especially. Bandits and ranchers also have flocked to them for
similar support and justification for raids against loggers.
They are not formally organized but are generally all
aligned and each group led by sages. Their great holy site is
the remnants of the UC Santa Cruz campus, whose library teaches
their sages the ways of the world(most importantly how to
properly care for the forest). The SDR is preparing on the coast
for an attack on the campus. Ths SDR’s previous brutal campaigns
have prevented them from spreading into Southern California and
now they want to cut them at the source.
Caption: The holy redwoods they venerate

Factions: The Republic of Sacramento

A strong proto-empire and the looming threat of the east,

they may be the closest thing left to the California State
Government. They descend from some of its officials and many of
its soldiers who secured and fortified the Army reserve camp on
the outskirts of Sacramento. This held out through the collapse
and worst of the time of fear.
They expanded slowly but surely, from hunting to herding to
farming and living outside the walls. When the time of fear
ended, they expanded rapidly as survivors flocked to them. They
ended military rule and brought about a representative
democracy. This democracy has remained strong and healthy,
though it only allows citizens of Sacramento to vote. The
current Governor-General is backed by a militarist political
bloc, though mercantile interests hold the state senate.
They grew strong, dominating all of Sacramento and
beginning to manufacture their own primer. They went to war and
defeated other settlements. They did not absorb them however, as
that would mean either giving those enemies votes or having to
deal with disgruntled voteless citizens. Instead they coerced
them into a “defensive pact” where they provided tribute. This
helped the people of Sacramento expand their military and
industrial sectors even more as their new subjects subsidized
them with grain sent downstream.
They limited new citizenship, as migrants streamed in for
access to their growing wealth. These outsiders increasingly due
more and more of the food production around the walled city (new
larger walls than the ones circling the old base) as they are
forbidden entry. This growing underclass is discontented and is
making the government uneasy.
Their efforts to expand more into the Delta have been
stopped for the moment, their focus turned east by the violent
unity shown by Delta groups against their encroachment. They
face troubles extracting tribute from nomads and preventing
alliances forming amongst their enemies.
Their soldiers are not highly professional but are strong
in number and gear. They are trained citizens paid well and
mostly not kept as a standing force. Their forces are also
supported by many many auxiliaries from tributaries, who are
kept motivated through surprisingly generous splits of loot.
They stick close to the river when possible as it is crucial for
their logistics.
Their culture is unique and forward developing. Poetry is
considered an art of the citizen, and spitting bars the ultimate
display of one’s refinement. They wear feathers to adorn their
waist cut jackets and fasten their wide trousers with gleaming
bronze. They have even implemented sumptuary laws to prevent
these clothing styles from being adopted by non citizens. They
are generally rather individualist and mercantile, with business
acumen and starting enterprise separate from one’s family being
highly respected. Children are educated privately and through
apprenticeships.
Economically, they are much more mercantile than other
groups. Small companies between 5 and 30 members dominate much
of the economy: improving land for collective farming, running
small manufacturers, operating trading boats, and so on. There
is little communally held property within the main city and
their single inheritor inheritance law creates many businessless
children of the propertied class that push for more expansion
economically and militarily.

Factions: The Prison Fort

San Quentin prison was in absolute chaos during the early

days of the outbreak. The guards left and many prisoners with
them. Preppers moved in and with the help of some remaining
prisoners they liked started securing supplies. They remained
safe through the dark times with fishing and a good stockpile of
food supporting them. The walls kept out those who wanted in.
With the time of fear ended, they left and spread out a bit
over the nearby countryside. The prison became a fort, a place
they could retreat to while under attack. They repaired its
walls and fashioned homes inside while they primarily worked
outside. The fort has held against past attacks.
Their culture was formed by a mix of doomsday preppers and
prisoners, and due to that was more isolated from the external
world than a lot of others were. They didn’t communicate at all
during the time of fear, though they did let more people in.
They didn’t trade across the bay for a long time, forming more
local connections with the northern hunter gatherers and low
density Cabrites. They are not really tied into Bay Area
politics but are an important trading post now between the north
bay hunter gatherers and the rest of the bay. Secretly they have
converted to the faith of Humbaba, though they’ve mixed it with
apocalyptic christianity more than others have.
They share resources internally and reject money as a
concept, blaming it as “one of the sins for which god sent the
deluge of the plague”. They are led by a group decision and
faith/community leaders elected on 4 year terms with no ability
to rule again.

Factions: Angel Island

Founded originally by boat refugees during the time of fear

it now hosts a decent sized community of fishers, merchants and
shipbuilders. They faced little struggle during the time of fear
besides lack of food and that shaped them. They never had that
sudden insertion of violence into their lives that the resource
poverty of the Delta and other places had and so never taught
those norms to their kids. This makes them much more stable than
other groups but more vulnerable to attack.
They were the farthest point seaward of the network of
Delta travel when it started a few years in, though they were
far enough from the rest of the Delta to make surprise raids
hard. They have been accepted into wider Delta culture and have
had many Delta refugees settle and join them. These connections
and their location in the bay makes them a very important
trading connection between the coastal trade network and the
delta trade network, bringing more wealth and importance to the
island.
They are used often as neutral meeting ground between
parties, something they are completely willing to be as it makes
them an entity in Delta politics that few want to assault (as
they are seen as truly neutral and respected by so many). They
have built a long hall of stout wood for this purpose that also
serves as one of the larger churches in the bay.
Refugees that included some with shipbuilding knowledge
settled on the island shortly after the time of fear ended. They
used the available wood and supplies to start producing ships
for sale to other groups. They gained a renown for it and taught
many others on the island so that now it sustains a solid chunk
of the population.
They have bought protection from multiple groups, often
with ships as their end of the bargain. Despite these
assurances, they have a small militia they maintain with good
equipment. Their meager force is completely untested as they
have not ever used it for more than parade and drill.

Factions: Diego’s Band

AT&T stadium stands rusting on the west coast of San

Francisco. It is the home of a band of Delta refugees dozens
strong. They are led by the charismatic Diego Negrete. They have
good warriors whose sworn loyalty bought them their land from
Judge Zeno. They came west after being delivered an ultimatum by
Sacramento to cede their claimed territory to a tributary of the
republic. Many of their members left not long after arriving,
disliking Diego’s warmongering plans they joined fishing and
cabrite communities.
Diego has bold plans for expansion and has been making
alliances with Arnold’s people. They are providing training to
some of the band’s younger members in return for Deigo’s
assistance in the coming fight with the SDR. They’ve been
gathering weapons, powder, and armor for a while. Though some
internally are split, wanting to use these resources to retake
their home rather than fight some war against those they barely
know.
Within the Cabrites, Diego’s band is generally disdained as
outsider mercenaries. Zeno’s use of them doesn’t help as their
use has been heavily in internal struggles where they’d be less
restrained than her own men who would often personally know
their enemies.

Factions: The Stanford Institute

The world of before held many medical marvels. Machines

that could use the arcane powers of light the eye can’t see to
spot malicious cancers deep within the flesh. Knowledge of
beings so small that a microscope using electrons must be used
to examine them properly. Techniques that were developed over
centuries.
Most of these are no longer possible. Decay, disrepair, and
disruption of the supply chains that provided modern resources
that made them function have left the grand machines broken.
Though some people still struggle to do as much as they can. The
most prominent of them in the Bay Area are those of the Stanford
Institute: a community of doctors dedicated to saving lives and
preserving medical knowledge.
They survive off payments from groups throughout the bay.
These come first from people paying to have their local healer
trained with the Stanford techniques. They also sell medical
supplies including strong alcohol for sanitation (bought from
others and certified by them for quality), powdered herbs, and
pre prepared salves of various natures. Their final service is
the ability for groups to hire Stanford doctors to stay in their
settlements. The hired doctors are paid a wage, of which much of
the money goes to Stanford.
They are well protected on the campus that was formerly
Stanford, the university. The local cabrites get good deals in
return for their armed men sticking by Stanford in time of
struggle. These local cabrite groups are very often where they
get the bright youths that are inducted into their training.
On the campus they teach new doctors, run administration,
create medicine, and perform research. To this end, they have
repaired what they can and built a few new buildings. They have
large gardens in which they grow countless herbs. Their research
consists of figuring out how to best implement their great
knowledge with their weak tools and how to best perfect the
remedies they have already figured out. Peer review is done on a
spotty basis, with continual calls for it to be done more often.
Leadership is by a council of senior three doctors that
vote on decisions. One is elected by the research doctors. One
is elected by the medicine makers, educators, and administrators
on campus. The final senior doctor is elected by the dues paying
doctor practitioners spread throughout the region (functionally
only the ones nearby).

Factions: The North Valley Communities

As the US military tried to seize food stores during the

early days, many banded together instead of giving in or
running. These are their descendents. They built a few fortified
farms in the north of the central valley. They recruited truck
drivers, circling 18 wheelers to make walls and using their
contents as supplies. They fought the few moves of the military
against them, declaring the US government as now invalid: a
communist takeover even. Surprising even the communities, the
military did not actually push it. They had better things to do
than start a war against people they knew would rather burn
their supplies than let the military steal them.
They opposed the centralized power of the military “having
turned communist” and sought to push in the opposite direction.
They abolished or de formalized many systems of power. In
effect, they instituted many anarchist adjacent policies and
reforms due to the pressure of the time of fear and out of
opposition to the greed and “communist government” they blamed
for the fall of the old world.
They have formed a system of mutual aid and collective
property with little formalized government and hierarchies in
the name of “embracing old American neighborliness”. This is not
without problems though, as their fetishization of American
nostalgia and belief of America’s “degeneracy” before the
collapse leads to them remaking prejudices others have left
behind more than them.
They know the Sacramento Republic will eventually come for
them. They see it as a continuation of those that tried to steal
their food in those early days. In opposition, the Communities
have worked as firebrands to whip up an alliance of the
nomad/ranchers in their area to oppose the Republic. Their
elected warrior class of sheriffs and deputies, skilled horse
warriors, are tooling up with primer bought from Oregonite
merchant caravans.
Culturally they stick a lot closer to conventional, but
extended, families than the more unconventional kin groups of
the Delta, Cabrites, and Nomads. This is because they were
composed of a higher chunk of families sticking together in
survivor composition than others (as they bunkered down instead
of scattering).

Factions: The Tolltakers of Vallejo

The Zampa memorial bridge in Vallejo is at a thin point of

the river. Under most of its span is stretched a bundle of steel
cable that no ship can sail through. There is a break through
which ships can pass but it is guarded and must be opened from
land.
This chokepoint was made and is operated by a heavily
fortified community on its north bank, the Tolltakers. They let
ships through that pay or display a flag showing that they’ve
already made a deal. This toll is steep but not too steep that
it is worth it to take them out. Their fort would be too costly
to deal with. Its trenches and blockhouses are well built and
their men have the best gear.
The original builders were killed by the current occupants.
The current group is a democratically ruled warband descending
from a time erased military remnant. They wanted stability and a
place where their families could be safe. Now they live well in
wealth.
The SDR secretly supports them. They drive the cost of
trade up for those who buy goods from up the river, making it
more profitable to trade with the SDR. Their support takes the
form of training the Tolltakers and selling them weapons that
they’d never dare trade to any other player in the bay. Long
term, they’d eventually want to take over the point but that
remains out of reach.
Culturally they are more isolated than a lot of other
groups. They interact and trade with inland groups more than
those of the bay, who are those who have hatred towards them for
the tolling them and driving up goods prices. Those inland also
dislike the bay peoples so are not displeased by those tolls.

Factions: The Shipping Armada

In the very early days of the apocalypse, many container

ships arrived in the San Francisco bay waiting to be unloaded.
As it became clear that the port would never become operational
again, even more ships arrived in the Bay while others left for
some imagined land of safety (a few of these actually did get
helped out by what would later become the SDR). Like the sailors
stuck in Suez during the Six Day War, they started to rely on
each other. These ships of the bay eventually decided to raft
up, a task that was achieved only partially (but still close
enough that crossing was a triviality).
They worked tirelessly from the early days of the outbreak
to retrieve and preserve all the food they would need from their
containers to survive an exceptionally long time. This worked
well enough for a long time, with them making up the difference
in the later years by selling useful items out of the hold to
communities of fishers who made their way out to the ships.
After the time of fear was over, they started to move to
shore. Their new settlement is where the town of Union City used
to be. From there they fished and hunted as well as experimented
with working the salt ponds. It took years to fully move over,
though they kept a skeleton crew of fishers on the cargo ships
with a good bit of bought weapons so that they could fend off
any attempts on the cargo they had not removed yet. Nowadays
there isn’t much of that left so they’ve removed that crew.
The crews of the ships were largely south asian and
generally from all over the world. Their combined practices,
forming over many years of isolation in the ships, are a
hodgepodge of an extreme nature. They were readily happy to mix
with outside groups, especially given the massive gender
imbalance of the crews.
They rose to economic prominence a decade ago when they
cracked an effective strategy to work the salt ponds with their
limited manpower. The salt they produce buys them a good
stanford doctor, serious amounts of firepower (they’ve had to
turn back a fair few raiders who wanted control of the ponds),
extra food from cabrites, and many luxuries others lack. It also
caused a large growth of the settlement, with many outsiders
joining for that wealth (and providing the muscle to harvest it
and to fight to defend it).
They are led by the ambitious Chesa Agbayani, the daughter
of one of the original sailors and a skilled engineer. She is
building a second settlement for them to fix and operate more of
the salt ponds out of, though this project has come under threat
by Cabrites who claim the area as part of their grazing lands.
Chesa may be looking to hire some extra muscle to help settle
this dispute.

Factions: The Rest

Of course I have not covered everything. I couldn’t and

even if I did that would be horrid. Make your own groups!
I intentionally did not cover the dozens of tiny bands that
are throughout this world. Those who pay the taxes to the SDR or
Arnold, those who dot the coasts and roam the interior, and
those who fill out all the rest.
If your players want to leave this region, then develop
further. Keep in mind climate, pre-collapse urban density, what
historical groups did in the region, precipitation, etc and you
can come up with your own settlement patterns. Throw in a bit of
local culture and a whole heap of weirdness and you’ll have a
good faction.
 Stats: Character Creation

Archetypes:
These follow the same rules as the Archetypes in the
Player’s manual except that I leave it up to the players
entirely to determine character details beyond mechanics.

Name Key Key Specialties CUF

Attribute Skills

The Int Survival, Recon, Forager, Scout, Ranger C

Wanderer Stamina

The Str Ranged Combat, Reloader, Rifleman, Combat B

Warrior Recon, Close Combat Awareness

The Int Survival, Ranged Sniper, Hunter, Forager C

Hunter Combat, Recon

The Int Tech, Survival, Scrounger, {Any Tech D

Crafter Stamina Specialty}, Builder

The Emp Medical Aid, Tech, Field Surgeon, General C

Healer Survival Practitioner, Herbalist

The Str Stamina, Tech, Farmer, Builder, Cook D

Farmer Survival

The Agi Driving, Survival, Boatman, Scout, Fisher C

Sailor Tech

The Agi Recon, Ranged Infiltrator, Killer, B

Bandit Combat, Mobility Rifleman

The Elder Emp Command, Teacher, Frontline leader, C

/Leader Persuasion, Recon Psy Ops

The Emp Persuasion, Trader, Riding, Psy Ops D

Merchant Driving, Recon

The Str Driving, Recon, Veterinarian, Cook, Rider D

Herdsman Survival

The Sage Int Tech, Survival, Logistician, Herbalist, D

Command Historian
Specialties:
Riding is moved to be under Driving. Combat Engineer, and
Improvised Munitions are rolled into Chemist. Communications,
Computers, Locksmith, Racer, Pilot, Tanker, Paratrooper, NBC,
Machine Gunner, and Launcher crew are removed. New specialty:
Slinger: Gives a +1 modifier to Heavy Weapons rolls when
throwing explosives with a sling. New Specialty: Herbalist:
Gives +1 to Survival rolls to find and identify medically useful
plants. The Pitcher specialty applies to throwing explosives
which now falls under heavy weapons.

Gear:
The Players as a group likely should be given a vehicle of
some kind such as a wagon, good few bikes, or a boat. For
individual gear: everybody starts with 5 rations of food and 5
of water. Those who it makes sense to have good traveling gear
get a backpack, sleeping bag, and perhaps a tent.
Those with the best military gear (starting with this
should cost some drawback) get a good weapon, a helmet, and home
made plate. Those with military gear get a helmet and a good
weapon. Those who it makes sense to have a good weapon get one
as well (Bandits, lone couriers, etc). Hunters should have bows
or good flintlocks. People not in combat professions should have
decent weapons (typically) at most. Be careful giving extra
primered rounds even if it might make sense for them to have
more.
Players with “good weapons” get: a pre-collapse gun with
less than one reload of ammo, an electric fired gun with 15
shots and a small battery, or a selection of flintlock with over
40 shots. They can also get a melee weapon of some kind if that
makes sense.
Players with “decent weapons” get: a flintlock of a lower
quality and over 40 shots, or a pre collapse sidearm with one
reload of ammo.
People with a profession that requires gear get the gear
that makes sense for that. Merchants get a significant (as
determined by GM) amount of trade materials (ie alcohol, SDR
ration tokens, primered bullets). Usually don’t allow either of
these and good weapons/military gear.
 Stats: NPCs of the region

How To Use: This is just a base to build off and give a

general feeling. Add specialties as fixed things or just give
them +1s in stuff it makes sense they’d be especially good at.
These are definitely hard and fast stats

Cabrites:
Name Str Agi Int Emp HP CUF Skills

Cabrite C C B B 4 C Command C, Persuasion C, Ranged

Leader Combat D, Drive D, Tech D,
Survival D, Recon D

Cabrite B C C C 5 D Survival C, Stamina C, Tech C,

Herder Recon D, Drive D Ranged Combat D

Cabrite C C B C 4 D Tech B, Survival D, Persuasion D,

Processor Stamina D, Recon D

Cabrite C B C C 5 C Ranged Combat C, Recon C, Survival

Warrior C, Drive C, Stamina D, Melee
Combat D

SDR Military:
Name Str Agi Int Emp HP CUF Skills

Officer C B B C 5 C Command C, Ranged Combat C, Recon

C, Stamina D, Tech D,

Engineer C C B C 4 D Tech B, Command C, Ranged Combat

D, Recon D,

Footsoldier C B C C 5 C Ranged Combat C, Recon C, Survival

C, Melee Combat D, Stamina D

Special B A B C 5 B Ranged Combat B, Recon B, Heavy

Forces Weapons C, Close Combat C, Tech D,
Survival D

Marine C B C C 5 C Ranged Combat C, Drive C, Survival

C, Heavy Weapons D, Recon D
 Arnold’s Soldiers:
Name Str Agi Int Emp HP CUF Skills

Arnold C C B A 4 A Command B, Recon B, Persuasion C,

Survival C, Ranged Combat C, Melee
Combat C, Tech D,

Sharpshooter C B B C 5 B Recon B, Ranged Combat C,

Survival C, Melee Combat C,

Footsoldier C B C C 5 C Ranged Combat C, Recon C, Survival

C, Melee Combat D, Stamina D

Delta Peoples:
Name Str Agi Int Emp HP CUF Skills

Delta hunter C B B C 4 C Recon C, Survival C, Ranged Combat

C, Drive C, Stamina D,

Delta leader C C B B 4 C Command C, Persuasion C, Survival

C, Drive C, Recon C, Ranged Combat
C,

Delta C B B C 5 C Recon B, Ranged Combat C, Melee

warrior Combat C, Survival C, Drive D

Delta sailor C B B C 4 C Drive B, Recon C, Survival C,

Stamina C, Ranged Combat D

Nomads:
Name Str Agi Int Emp HP CUF Skills

Nomad Leader C C B B 4 C Persuasion B, Command C, Drive C,

Recon C, Survival C, Ranged Combat
D, Tech D

Nomad scout C C B B 4 C Recon C, Survival C, Drive C,

Ranged Combat C, Stamina D

Nomad warrior C B C C 5 C Recon C, Survival C, Drive C

Ranged Combat C, Melee Combat C,
Stamina D
Nomad C C C B 4 D Persuasion B, Survival C, Drive C,
merchant Recon C, Ranged Combat D

Raiders:
Name Str Agi Int Emp HP CUF Skills

Raid leader C B B B 5 B Recon B, Survival C, Ranged Combat

C, Persuasion C, Command C, Stamina
D, Melee Combat D

Forest Hunter C B B C 5 C Recon C, Survival C, Ranged Combat

C, Stamina D, Melee Combat D

Raider C B C C 5 C Recon C, Melee Combat C, Drive D,

Ranged Combat C, Survival D

River Raider C B C C 5 C Persuasion C, Ranged Combat C, Drive

C, Recon D, Melee Combat D

Other:
Name Str Agi Int Emp HP CUF Skills

Farmer B C C C 5 D Stamina C, Survival C, Drive D,

Recon D

Merchant C C C B 4 D Persuasion C, Drive D, Survival D,

Recon D

Healer C C B B 4 D Medical Aid C, Survival C, Recon D

Crafter B C B C 5 D Tech B, Stamina C, Survival D,

Recon D

Militia- - - - - - C +Ranged Combat C, Close Combat D

Experienced

Militia- - - - - - - +Ranged Combat D

Green
 Stats: Zombies

Rules:
They cannot be suppressed and they’re HP is more because
they don’t feel pain or fear. They fail death saves
automatically. They cannot swim and fear water. They cannot use
tools or weapons but are somewhat intelligent.
Crits lethal after a round disable instantly, after a
stretch disable after 2 rounds, after a shift disable after 5
rounds.
Any injury from them or large amounts of their blood left
on one’s skin for a stretch causes an infection. The infection
can count as -3 and is rolled every shift. One turns after their
HP hits 0, whereupon Zombie stats should be used.

Zombie B B D —-- 8 —---- Melee Combat C, Survival C,

Recon C, Mobility C
 Scenarios: Plausible Deniability

The players are approached by SDR Agent Richard Sadentem.

He offers them a considerable upfront payment and promises of a
grand reward if they accept a mission to intercept and kill a
well known merchant who is facilitating an alliance between
Arnold and some Delta tribes: the wily Felix Bregovic. Sadentem
provides them the following information: He runs trips back and
forth from San Francisco to Stockton every few weeks, he sails
in a convoy of three fiberglass ships with large red circles
painted on their sails, when he is stopped at Vallejo he always
offers the guard a gift by hand, and they like to anchor the
convoy near a ruined marina in Dublin ever run (this is to trade
with hunter gatherers he has a deal with but the players aren’t
told).
Felix and his crew: Felix commands the ship at their head
(Use Nomad Leader but with a Drive B, and specialies in sailing,
trading, and avoiding traps). Each ship has a crew of two River
Raiders and three Delta Sailors but most are not on deck at the
same time. Felix and his guards (the river raiders) wear Plate
Carriers. There are black powder loaded bolt action rifles (with
range reduced by 2 as sights are missing) stowed that can be
retrieved by crew members within the use of one turn.
Attacking at the Toll spot: The hills at that point are
rather steep but there is no cover but the ridgeline so players
likely can’t get closer than like 8 hexes unless they are on a
boat or are willing being seen setting up. The Tolltakers have a
good relationship with Felix so there will be a few of their
guards who will defend him, though they will play it safer. If
the ship gets lit up, they will let him through and he will try
to escape.
Attacking at the sleeping spot: On shore you can get up to
five hexes from the ship but Felix won’t be on deck till the
morning. If they kill him, a hunter gatherer group will track
them and make a retaliatory attack. If the players attack at
night, they will not run but just try to shoot it out unless
they players have explosives that could sink the boats.
There are of course so many other ways of attack but the GM
can figure them out.
Reward: 200 primered rounds, 100 SDR ration scrip
Scenarios: The Return

Oh shit… they’re back. The scientists at Stanford, the

hubristic fools, secretly kept a few zombies alive to study
them. The idea was to develop a vaccine to prevent any future
apocalypse. Then last week one got loose and we have many new
infected within San Jose.
The Cabrites in the area are fortifying or scattering. The
cabrites elsewhere are building fortifications to keep their
grazing grounds safe. The SDR has committed their entire bay
force to deal with it. Their soldiers, with every bit of skin
covered, are preparing to march the streets and kill every
person infected or not. None can be left to chance. Arnold is
unsure of what to do about the zombies but is moving to take
advantage of the distraction by the SDR. Other groups are
sending troops to assist the SDR or fortifying their own
positions.
How the players interact with this can be many fold. You
can throw this at them when they are visiting San Jose with them
trying to escape. You can send them towards San Jose to try to
fight the spread. You can have them elsewhere and hear about it
as an event happening elsewhere. You can have them going to San
Jose for some other reason such as rescuing a friendly NPC,
doing a quest, or some other thing they need to get out of there
before it is lost forever.
Being in San Jose during the second outbreak is
pandemonium. The local cabrites are trying to evacuate or
fortify while other groups try to prevent them from leaving as
they may carry the disease elsewhere. SDR soldiers are making
that perimeter, shooting to kill on sight. Cabrites are making a
northern perimeter and trying to establish quarantines. Those
stuck in those quarantines are panicking and trying to escape as
fears rise about the zombie spread hitting that position before
they are let through or about their captors running out of food
to give them. Parts of the city are on fire, possibly started by
SDR mortars. Those staying inside are looting from what’s around
them, trying to stockpile so they can wait out the zombies.
Misinformation is everywhere.Elsewhere people are bracing for
another time of fear. They are trying to stockpile and fortify
at rapid speed.
Does it spread? Does the world end? That’s all up to you