As the old idea goes, in space nobody can hear you scream. Unfortunately, this denies both...
Kingdom of Detroit ISOT (EU 4 Quest)
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OP
7734
Trust and verify.
- Location
- Philmont
As the old idea goes, in space nobody can hear you scream. Unfortunately, this denies both screams of horror and screams of warning- to be specific, the screams of warning one rather young (as far as they measure time) being that would be right at home in the poor head of Howard Lovecraft.
"Hey, Earth! Lookout below!"
---
On Earth, which was most certainly not looking out, there lived a city, and its suburbs, and its satellite towns, and its own little counties too. So, when the remains of a project that involved turning time into a pretzel, and most of space too, hit the area, things got weird.
For most of the residents, all they saw was a bright flash of light from above as a glorified science fair project made things get a little frentic for a minute. As linear causiation went out the window and wibbly-wobely timey-wimy came in what was left of the front door, the city of Detroit and it's metropolitan area suddenly up and migrated nearly a thousand years into the past and a quarter of the way around the globe as Oslo, Norway was suddenly displaced forever.
As the head of your city, you are in a precarious position. With issues springing up at every opportunity, you need to keep a level head and be ready
---
READY CITY ONE
((GM NOTE: What, you thought you started off in the hotseat here? Nah man, you gotta work your way up the ladder, starting at the bottom. Each city or burrough of Metro Detroit has a very specific flavor, and they all will play very differently.))
[] Rochester
-A sleepy town on the Clinton River, this wealthy community has a strong multicultural presence and history. While lacking in industry, it has an excellent basis of potential trade and intellectual prowess. Close to the relative frontier, a wise mayor might wish to scout the boarders before turning inwards to the scrabble for information and resources in Detroit.
-Stat Block
--Diplomacy: 8 (Well-cultured and serene, this timeless town understands the finer points of a negotiation.)
--Military: 4 (Surrounded by people who have more to lose than to gain, the citizens here are rather mild and there is no obvious source of combative power.)
--Administration: 14 (With excellent connections and education networks, this city can bring to bear a mighty intellect towards their own or other's problems)
-Starting Resources: 100 Diplo, Admin, and Military points, one diplomat, one merchant, one councilor, Mayor, 2x Diplo Agents, 2x Military Agents, 2x Admin Agents
MAYOR: Cathy Aragon-Daldin (1 Diplo, 1 Mil, 2 Admin)
[] Hamtramack
-Located almost entirely inside the boarders of Detroit, Hamtramack is a very unique city for a number of reasons. Despite being almost made of Poles at its prime, the city is now home to an incredible diversity of people from the world over. With the remains of heavy industry haunting it's past, the city can either choose to embrace the future with open arms or look to its megalithic neighbor and seek solace in the known past.
-Stat Block
--Diplomacy: 6 (With a multitude of homeward diversities, everyone in this town knows how to wheel-n-deal, but formal training is notably absent.)
--Military: 12 (Surrounded by a slowly-decaying megapolis, this city has learned to defend itself from the desperate, and it's war veterans enjoyed the peace here, but their skills are not forgotten)
--Administration: 6 (With several facilities dedicated to the arts of administration and a solid school system, this city understands the concepts of management well.)
-Starting Resources: 100 Diplo, Admin Military points, one diplomat, one merchant, one councilor, Mayor, 2x Diplo Agents, 2x Millitary Agents, 2 Admin Agents.
MAYOR: Karen Majewski (1 Diplo, 2 Military, 1 Admin)
[] St. Claire
-Perched on a river both before and after the Event, St. Claire has always been recognized as the border with the Detroit Area and the rest of the state of Michigan, as well as a secondary boarder with Canada. Now located at the tip of the fjord, will this town be ready to brave the coming storms, or will they fold back into the collective and bow down before their lords, old or new?
-Stat Block
--Diplomacy: 10 (With an international boarder right next door for time immortal and closeness to several American Indian reservations, the people here understand that diffrences are something to let groups build together, not cleave apart.)
--Millitary: 12 (With a multitude of hunters and wildlife handlers as the civilian base, boarder control officers as the middle line, and Coast Guard units as the peak, this area has a solid crop of armed forces.)
--Admin: 2 (With mediocre schooling and no local collegiate options, growth can be hard on this city.)
-Starting Resources: 100 Diplo, Admin Military points, one diplomat, one merchant, one councilor, Mayor, 2x Diplo Agents, 2x Millitary Agents, 2 Admin Agents.
MAYOR: Bill Cedar (2 Diplomacy, 1 Military, 1 Admin)
---
As Mayor in a small city, you knew things at the local level weren't always smiles and roses. Kept at the beck and call of the City Council, you walked a careful line between re-election and not getting stonewalled by the people you individually stood over but together far outmassed your authority. However, given the strange tidings and translocation of distant landscape, you were fairly sure that right now keeping a level head was the first order of business. By some miracle, enough of the cell phone network was up for you to make calls, and wired telephones still operated according to plan. No Mayor ever got elected without having a wingman, an a-political set of ears to the ground and eyes on the horizon to keep the head honcho on the level without letting the smoke-blowing minions knock him off his game. Your helper, though, was an old friend from high school.
---
READY PLAYER ONE
((GM Note: This is your main source of narrative, so choose carefully. They're also your best tool for keeping the peace inside and outside your city.))
[] Jack LaRue: A sardonic Eagle Scout with a laconic sense of humor and the usual odds-box of skills those who pushed through the ancient organization known as the Boy Scouts, he's been with you for a long time. You've scratched his back with enough favors over the years so that he's not about to run off, but keeping him in your pocket's going to need more than cash.
-Traits
--Jack of All Trades: +1 to all rolls
--Red-Headed Stepchild: +1 to all Military roles
--Marksman: +3 to all gun rolls, +1 to all Military rolls
--Worn hands: +2 to all Admin rolls
--Sharp: +2 to all Admin rolls, and may be assigned to an Admin action as an Admin Agent
[] Laquesha Villamount: A younger woman from the ghetto, she's dug herself into a decent household and stayed there when her husband and sugar daddy died on a car accident on M-696 when a Mack truck objected to his Audi. She's got ambition, she's got drive, and most importantly she knows how to pick a winning bet and give 'em a leg up, which is how she left the hellhole she'd been born in in the first place.
-Traits
--Detroit Patois: +5 to all rolls made in Detroit proper, -2 to all Diplo-type actions outside of Detroit.
--Attractive: +2 to all Diplo rolls.
--Exotic: +2 to all Diplo rolls.
--Stubborn Wisdom: +1 to all Admin rolls.
--Weather Eye: +1 to Military rolls.
[] Rajamandra Hesif: A slightly older Indian barber, you've been to his shop since time immortal, and so has the rest of your town. While it might not be fancy, he's got the basics of a good hairdressing business down pat, and more importantly he speaks impeccable English for the purposes of gossip and information-trading.
-Traits
--Exotic: +2 to all Diplo rolls
--Veteran: +1 to all Military rolls
--Trusted Gossip: +1 to all Admin rolls, +2 to all Diplo rolls.
--Stylish: +1 to all Diplo rolls.
--Old Hand: +1 to all Admin rolls.
----
So, you've got your wingman on notice, and that's awesome. Now, you actually need to decide your first action in this Brave New World.
----
MAYORAL ACTION
[] Scout The Boarders: Send out your wingman and their helpers to find out exactly how much trouble you're in here. The answer's obviously north of "a lot" but you need data to push on the City Council and use to make decisions for later. (MIL)
[] Contact Neighbors: You've got backchannels and front channels and secretaries who gossip, and you need to know who came through with you and who got left behind. Shit's gonna get harry, and knowing where everyone is looking is the first step to getting a handle on this mess. (DIPLO)
[] Take Stock: When the storm hits, the first thing you learned how to do was circle the wagons. This is, by definition, a pretty big storm; the best option you've got for now is learning how to weather it. Rationing's definitely on the table, and you know that the difference between civilization and savages is three missed meals. (ADMIN)
"Hey, Earth! Lookout below!"
---
On Earth, which was most certainly not looking out, there lived a city, and its suburbs, and its satellite towns, and its own little counties too. So, when the remains of a project that involved turning time into a pretzel, and most of space too, hit the area, things got weird.
For most of the residents, all they saw was a bright flash of light from above as a glorified science fair project made things get a little frentic for a minute. As linear causiation went out the window and wibbly-wobely timey-wimy came in what was left of the front door, the city of Detroit and it's metropolitan area suddenly up and migrated nearly a thousand years into the past and a quarter of the way around the globe as Oslo, Norway was suddenly displaced forever.
As the head of your city, you are in a precarious position. With issues springing up at every opportunity, you need to keep a level head and be ready
---
READY CITY ONE
((GM NOTE: What, you thought you started off in the hotseat here? Nah man, you gotta work your way up the ladder, starting at the bottom. Each city or burrough of Metro Detroit has a very specific flavor, and they all will play very differently.))
[] Rochester
-A sleepy town on the Clinton River, this wealthy community has a strong multicultural presence and history. While lacking in industry, it has an excellent basis of potential trade and intellectual prowess. Close to the relative frontier, a wise mayor might wish to scout the boarders before turning inwards to the scrabble for information and resources in Detroit.
-Stat Block
--Diplomacy: 8 (Well-cultured and serene, this timeless town understands the finer points of a negotiation.)
--Military: 4 (Surrounded by people who have more to lose than to gain, the citizens here are rather mild and there is no obvious source of combative power.)
--Administration: 14 (With excellent connections and education networks, this city can bring to bear a mighty intellect towards their own or other's problems)
-Starting Resources: 100 Diplo, Admin, and Military points, one diplomat, one merchant, one councilor, Mayor, 2x Diplo Agents, 2x Military Agents, 2x Admin Agents
MAYOR: Cathy Aragon-Daldin (1 Diplo, 1 Mil, 2 Admin)
[] Hamtramack
-Located almost entirely inside the boarders of Detroit, Hamtramack is a very unique city for a number of reasons. Despite being almost made of Poles at its prime, the city is now home to an incredible diversity of people from the world over. With the remains of heavy industry haunting it's past, the city can either choose to embrace the future with open arms or look to its megalithic neighbor and seek solace in the known past.
-Stat Block
--Diplomacy: 6 (With a multitude of homeward diversities, everyone in this town knows how to wheel-n-deal, but formal training is notably absent.)
--Military: 12 (Surrounded by a slowly-decaying megapolis, this city has learned to defend itself from the desperate, and it's war veterans enjoyed the peace here, but their skills are not forgotten)
--Administration: 6 (With several facilities dedicated to the arts of administration and a solid school system, this city understands the concepts of management well.)
-Starting Resources: 100 Diplo, Admin Military points, one diplomat, one merchant, one councilor, Mayor, 2x Diplo Agents, 2x Millitary Agents, 2 Admin Agents.
MAYOR: Karen Majewski (1 Diplo, 2 Military, 1 Admin)
[] St. Claire
-Perched on a river both before and after the Event, St. Claire has always been recognized as the border with the Detroit Area and the rest of the state of Michigan, as well as a secondary boarder with Canada. Now located at the tip of the fjord, will this town be ready to brave the coming storms, or will they fold back into the collective and bow down before their lords, old or new?
-Stat Block
--Diplomacy: 10 (With an international boarder right next door for time immortal and closeness to several American Indian reservations, the people here understand that diffrences are something to let groups build together, not cleave apart.)
--Millitary: 12 (With a multitude of hunters and wildlife handlers as the civilian base, boarder control officers as the middle line, and Coast Guard units as the peak, this area has a solid crop of armed forces.)
--Admin: 2 (With mediocre schooling and no local collegiate options, growth can be hard on this city.)
-Starting Resources: 100 Diplo, Admin Military points, one diplomat, one merchant, one councilor, Mayor, 2x Diplo Agents, 2x Millitary Agents, 2 Admin Agents.
MAYOR: Bill Cedar (2 Diplomacy, 1 Military, 1 Admin)
---
As Mayor in a small city, you knew things at the local level weren't always smiles and roses. Kept at the beck and call of the City Council, you walked a careful line between re-election and not getting stonewalled by the people you individually stood over but together far outmassed your authority. However, given the strange tidings and translocation of distant landscape, you were fairly sure that right now keeping a level head was the first order of business. By some miracle, enough of the cell phone network was up for you to make calls, and wired telephones still operated according to plan. No Mayor ever got elected without having a wingman, an a-political set of ears to the ground and eyes on the horizon to keep the head honcho on the level without letting the smoke-blowing minions knock him off his game. Your helper, though, was an old friend from high school.
---
READY PLAYER ONE
((GM Note: This is your main source of narrative, so choose carefully. They're also your best tool for keeping the peace inside and outside your city.))
[] Jack LaRue: A sardonic Eagle Scout with a laconic sense of humor and the usual odds-box of skills those who pushed through the ancient organization known as the Boy Scouts, he's been with you for a long time. You've scratched his back with enough favors over the years so that he's not about to run off, but keeping him in your pocket's going to need more than cash.
-Traits
--Jack of All Trades: +1 to all rolls
--Red-Headed Stepchild: +1 to all Military roles
--Marksman: +3 to all gun rolls, +1 to all Military rolls
--Worn hands: +2 to all Admin rolls
--Sharp: +2 to all Admin rolls, and may be assigned to an Admin action as an Admin Agent
[] Laquesha Villamount: A younger woman from the ghetto, she's dug herself into a decent household and stayed there when her husband and sugar daddy died on a car accident on M-696 when a Mack truck objected to his Audi. She's got ambition, she's got drive, and most importantly she knows how to pick a winning bet and give 'em a leg up, which is how she left the hellhole she'd been born in in the first place.
-Traits
--Detroit Patois: +5 to all rolls made in Detroit proper, -2 to all Diplo-type actions outside of Detroit.
--Attractive: +2 to all Diplo rolls.
--Exotic: +2 to all Diplo rolls.
--Stubborn Wisdom: +1 to all Admin rolls.
--Weather Eye: +1 to Military rolls.
[] Rajamandra Hesif: A slightly older Indian barber, you've been to his shop since time immortal, and so has the rest of your town. While it might not be fancy, he's got the basics of a good hairdressing business down pat, and more importantly he speaks impeccable English for the purposes of gossip and information-trading.
-Traits
--Exotic: +2 to all Diplo rolls
--Veteran: +1 to all Military rolls
--Trusted Gossip: +1 to all Admin rolls, +2 to all Diplo rolls.
--Stylish: +1 to all Diplo rolls.
--Old Hand: +1 to all Admin rolls.
----
So, you've got your wingman on notice, and that's awesome. Now, you actually need to decide your first action in this Brave New World.
----
MAYORAL ACTION
[] Scout The Boarders: Send out your wingman and their helpers to find out exactly how much trouble you're in here. The answer's obviously north of "a lot" but you need data to push on the City Council and use to make decisions for later. (MIL)
[] Contact Neighbors: You've got backchannels and front channels and secretaries who gossip, and you need to know who came through with you and who got left behind. Shit's gonna get harry, and knowing where everyone is looking is the first step to getting a handle on this mess. (DIPLO)
[] Take Stock: When the storm hits, the first thing you learned how to do was circle the wagons. This is, by definition, a pretty big storm; the best option you've got for now is learning how to weather it. Rationing's definitely on the table, and you know that the difference between civilization and savages is three missed meals. (ADMIN)
Rules and Mechanics
7734
Trust and verify.
- Location
- Philmont
(GM Note: Yes, this is hosted here and at Spacebattles via Tabac Iberez. If I know you have accounts on both sites, please only vote on one of them.)
Base Mechanics
-Dice
--On dice, there are two types this Quest will be using- the d100, for actions regarding cities, states, and other large, organized polities, and the d20, for actions of individuals and small companies.
--On bonuses to dice rolls, all dice rolls are for one of four purposes- determining a table result to which there is no bonuses, or a Diplo, Admin, or Mil action. (Diplomacy, Administration, and Military, in long form, but Diplo, Admin, and Mil are my standard abbreviations.) When a bonus states "1" that therefore is a straight +1 to a d20 roll, or a +10 to a d100 roll.
----The astute might notice the d20+1 has greater influence than the d100+10, which is entirely by design.
--I will be doing all dice rolls via rolz.org, and if I can remember how I'll post the results here.
Actions
-Each turn, you will have a list of options to pursue, sorted by the three types of action. You may pick one action in each catagory for each two Agents of that type you have. Additional Agents may be recruited or otherwise acquired via special events.
Diplo/Mil/Admin points
-Diplo, Admin, and Mil points are the three currencies of internal power, and to some extent external power as well.
--These points are naturally accured by taking your City's score, multiplying it by ten, adding any modifiers, which is your yearly total. A fourth of your yearly total is dispensed at each seasonal turn.
--To focus the aquisition of one kind of power at the expense of the other two, you may dedicate an Agent of that type to gathering power, which will double your yearly output of it (after modifiers) in exchange for a third of the two other kinds of power.
Agents
-To Be Typed
The Wingman
-Your Wingman is an extension of your will that is nominally unconstrained by legal affairs and other problems. While their resources and influence are fairly limited, they will, if left alone, try and build up their power base and supply of resources.
-Your Wingman generally has very few limitations on what actions they can take, but are heavily constricted by resource limits. As nominally private citizens, they have the singular advantage of being able to travel freely and conduct buisness ventures.
-For those intrested, the Wingman is where and how most write-in decisions will be taken, and omakes involving the Wingman or other characters will recieve a dice roll bonus dependent on their quality. While good omakes give benifits, bad omakes will never give dice maluses.
Politics inside the Metro Detroit Area
-To Be Typed
Politics outside the Metro Detroit Area
-To Be Typed
Transfer of Power
-To Be Typed
Base Mechanics
-Dice
--On dice, there are two types this Quest will be using- the d100, for actions regarding cities, states, and other large, organized polities, and the d20, for actions of individuals and small companies.
--On bonuses to dice rolls, all dice rolls are for one of four purposes- determining a table result to which there is no bonuses, or a Diplo, Admin, or Mil action. (Diplomacy, Administration, and Military, in long form, but Diplo, Admin, and Mil are my standard abbreviations.) When a bonus states "1" that therefore is a straight +1 to a d20 roll, or a +10 to a d100 roll.
----The astute might notice the d20+1 has greater influence than the d100+10, which is entirely by design.
--I will be doing all dice rolls via rolz.org, and if I can remember how I'll post the results here.
Actions
-Each turn, you will have a list of options to pursue, sorted by the three types of action. You may pick one action in each catagory for each two Agents of that type you have. Additional Agents may be recruited or otherwise acquired via special events.
Diplo/Mil/Admin points
-Diplo, Admin, and Mil points are the three currencies of internal power, and to some extent external power as well.
--These points are naturally accured by taking your City's score, multiplying it by ten, adding any modifiers, which is your yearly total. A fourth of your yearly total is dispensed at each seasonal turn.
--To focus the aquisition of one kind of power at the expense of the other two, you may dedicate an Agent of that type to gathering power, which will double your yearly output of it (after modifiers) in exchange for a third of the two other kinds of power.
Agents
-To Be Typed
The Wingman
-Your Wingman is an extension of your will that is nominally unconstrained by legal affairs and other problems. While their resources and influence are fairly limited, they will, if left alone, try and build up their power base and supply of resources.
-Your Wingman generally has very few limitations on what actions they can take, but are heavily constricted by resource limits. As nominally private citizens, they have the singular advantage of being able to travel freely and conduct buisness ventures.
-For those intrested, the Wingman is where and how most write-in decisions will be taken, and omakes involving the Wingman or other characters will recieve a dice roll bonus dependent on their quality. While good omakes give benifits, bad omakes will never give dice maluses.
Politics inside the Metro Detroit Area
-To Be Typed
Politics outside the Metro Detroit Area
-To Be Typed
Transfer of Power
-To Be Typed
Last edited:
Rochester
7734
Trust and verify.
- Location
- Philmont
The City of Rochester
-Client Towns: Rochester Hills, Utica, Oakland Charter Township, Waldenburg, Anchor Bay, Harrison, New Baltimore
-Notable Facilities: Rochester High School, Adams High School, Stoney Creak High School, Rochester Public Library, Crititon Hospital, Rochester Downtown, New Baltimore Marina
-Notable Personages: Mayor
Current City Stat Score
Diplo: 8
Mil: 4
Admin: 14
Current Items granting Bonuses
Mayor: 1 Diplo, 1 Mil, 2 Admin
Explorer Team: +5 to Exploration rolls and Surveying.
-Client Towns: Rochester Hills, Utica, Oakland Charter Township, Waldenburg, Anchor Bay, Harrison, New Baltimore
-Notable Facilities: Rochester High School, Adams High School, Stoney Creak High School, Rochester Public Library, Crititon Hospital, Rochester Downtown, New Baltimore Marina
-Notable Personages: Mayor
Current City Stat Score
Diplo: 8
Mil: 4
Admin: 14
Current Items granting Bonuses
Mayor: 1 Diplo, 1 Mil, 2 Admin
Explorer Team: +5 to Exploration rolls and Surveying.
Last edited:
International Relations
Turn 1; A Brave New World
7734
Trust and verify.
- Location
- Philmont
Take Stock: 36+20+14=70, Dc 60, success +1
As Mayor of Rochester, you were fairly confident in your abilities to handle things. The city was nice in that for the most part it practically ran itself, which meant your job devolved into "catch the flying catastrophy" and making sure everyone talked nice to each other. On the plus side, it meant your job wasn't terribly hard.
On the minus side, when an absolute shitstorm came down the pike, you had to play hardball. This wasn't the first chaos-filled week you'd had, but the first seven days post-event were rather hellish. The city of Rochester wasn't very big, and it's population was rather small, which was a plus. However, your city also had periphery towns, which raised the stakes a lot.
On your own, you had about three months of food with rationing, and the potential to grow enough food for maybe a twentieth of your population sustainably before taking into account Ye Olde Winter. Add in Rochester Hills, Utica, and Oakland Charter Township, though, and things looked better and worse. Better, because you could theoretically start farming a lot of dirt in Oakland Charter, plus the farms there, plus putting the Stony Creek metropark under tilliage. Worse, though, because you now had Rochester Hills and Utica to contend with for food drain- which left you at about twelve percent for sustainable food production.
In plain speak, not good. That said, though, there was still opportunity. If you could get Romeo, Macomb, and hopefully New Baltimore under your sway, that would theoretically get you up to about seventy-five percent food production sustainable, plus any work you put in to get New Baltimore turned into a slightly larger fishing community.
On the topic of other materials, there had been mail from DTE stating that they had about two years of power on hand before fuel stocks became an issue, along with the factoid that the nuclear power plants hadn't come with when the Event happened. Making sure to write a very polite return letter, you even signed it personally to let the guys over there know you appreciated this. With power and food sorta-handled, the next issue on your plate was petroleum. You'd be sending mail out to the Marathon boys in Detroit for this one- the two hundred and fifty acres their plant sat on were right now the most valuable place in the known world right now. Houses needed heat for the winter, and heating oil or natural gas was the de facto solution for your town. Woodstoves were going to be coming back in a big way, though- your rationing was already scheduled to come down like a brick on gasoline and diesel.
Now, time to call Jack and see-
Riiiiiiing…
Well, that was Jack's ring tone. Something must've gone tits-up.
"Hello, Mayor Aragon-Daldin speaking."
"Cathy." Jack's voice growled over the phone. "We got a problem."
"What kind of problem?" you asked, pulling out an old notepad.
"You know how you haven't said a peep towards me all week?"
"Yeah?" you replied, dread feeding your gut.
"Well, I got some buddies together from the American Legion outpost, and we kinda found a shitstorm."
"What are we talking about here?" you asked, dread coming to your stomach.
"Well, we found the border line of the Event. Just about three quarters of Pontiac made it through, all of Auburn Hills, and a quarter of Orion Township. We also met the natives."
You quietly wrote this all down. "So?"
"So we don't speak the language, at all. Sounded kinda like German, but it was a decent bit more lyrical. One of my boys wants to say it's from the Baltic, and I'm willing to believe him."
You nearly broke the pen in your hand. "Okay, so what happened next?"
"Well…"
---
Independent Action: 14+1+2=16, Dc 14, passed
Your name was Jack LaRue, and boy oh boy was Cathy going to try and tear you a new one for this. After doing your meet-n-greets at the bar to get a reading on the town's preparedness and some trips out into the known land, you'd been given exactly zero incentive to stay in town and be "a pillar of the community" as it had been suggested. So, you'd done the next best thing- went and gathered a few younger guys from the VFW hall in Shelby, a few more from the American Legion, and Jimmy Kibbler, your troop's old quartermaster with a gift for cartography.
After pulling a "Captain Mexico" moment as Jimmy so eloquently put it, you got all twenty-odd guys into the back of your pickup, and headed out to start charting the boarder. First stop just happened to be a bodega in Pontiac to get lunch- from there it was all business, poking and prodding along neighborhood roads to trace the line. Intrestingly enough, the line seemed absolute- a few trees and houses were sliced clean through, and in one disturbing incident so was a deer. After agreeing not to talk about it ever again, you promptly started the bit you were probably going to get an ass chewing over- the expedition into Terra Incognita.
Now, you weren't going to be stupid about it. The plan was simple- head up the Paint Creek, and see how far you could get before about three or four o'clock, at which point you'd head back home for the day. Once you crossed the Event Border, things got weird. For starters, the trees changed abruptly, going from the hardwood mix common to Michigan into a mess of spruce, pine, and birch. From trees more like shrubs to towering birch, you felt scared. This was a cold forest, and mostly young too. Young forests usually indicated poor soil, plus the heavy amounts of pine and spruce suggested harsh winters.
It was about half past two when the shitstorm started. As you and the boys stumbled out near what looked like a homestead, you noted two things. One, there were a fuckton of horses around here; and two, it looked like the barn miiight have been on fire.
At that point, you were all in favor just walking away, right up until Jimmy pulled out a dollar-store set of binocs and hissed.
"Jack, they're going in with saps and clubs."
You rolled your head, and pulled out your pistol. "And?"
"And I see two… three girls, I think, tied up like hogs on the back of those horses."
"And?"
Jimmy glared at you. "Aren't we going to do anything?"
You shrugged. "Doubt it. For all we know, this is what happens when you welch on you taxes here."
At that point, you heard a lot of words that all reminded you of "bork? Bork!" and you saw some swords come out.
"Well, I'm doubting that's a positive welcoming committee" one of the guys said, racking the bolt on his hunting rifle. "Think we need to give 'em an American gift package?"
"We don't have time to call in a drone strike, Malcom." You grumbled, flipping the safety off and holding your pistol up. "Anyone with a gun, front and center. The rest of you, grab some sticks for clubs and cover the flanks. Jimmy, get ready to run for the truck."
As the pile of motely hunters remembered their misspent youths in the Army and Marines, six of them started picking out passable quarterstaves.
"On three." You said, taking careful aim at the one with the shiniest helmate who was doing some impressive yelling. "One… Two… Three!"
As the whatever-they-were charged the hundred, hundred and fifty feet towards you, your rough firing line opened up in return. Wooden shields exploded into splinters, blood flew through the air, and barely a minute passed before the opposing side was on the ground, few moaning and crying out in pain.
"Alright, alright." you grumbled, reloading and safeing your pistol. "Time to do the dirty bit. Howler, Ray, see which ones are dead and which ones aren't. Tom, can you get Jimmy back to the truck?"
"Yeah." Tom grunted, sliding a few more shells into his shotgun.
"Good. We'll be along shortly with the wounded and- uff!" you called out, as a girl from the homestead grabbed on to your arm. Babbling in whatever language the people here spoke, she refused to let go. Sighing, you just started to hold your head in a hand as you wondered how you were going to explain this to Cathy.
----
As the Mayor of Rochester, you had certain responsibilities. Not strangling your dumbass friend over the phone with your bare hands was one of them.
"So, Jack, let me get this straight. You go out into the wilderness without my express permission or knowledge-"
"Yep."
"-engage multiple natives in armed combat, killing twenty, wounding six, and what looks like taking one of them as your own-"
"I literally have yet to get her to let go of me, doesn't count."
"-broken several laws regarding firearms and vehicular safety-"
"Those rules are stupid and I was outside your jurisdiction."
"-and have booked all the afformentioned wounded in the hospital! How are we supposed to pay for that?!"
"Well," Jack said, sly. "If I were you, I'd recommend a fundraiser by the fire department, and see if you can pry some faculty out of the community college to figure out the language here."
Sighing, you pushed your hair up and back. "Listen… I'm not okay with this. Just… just lie low until we can get things sorted out, okay?"
Jack laughed, and you remembered quickly why you dated him back when you were younger, stupider, and full of hormones. "Alright, alright. I'll keep my head under the radar. I'll need some favors, though."
"Later." You grumped, finishing off the page of notes. "Things are looking pretty bleak in here right now- I'll get back to you soon, okay?"
"Alright, boss. Now, excuse me while I try and teach this poor waif English. For example, 'stop kicking my gearshift' or 'let go of me, damnit."
As the phone clicked, you sighed and got back to your desk. Time to put your government to work.
-----
VOTES
--
DIPLO ACTION
[]- Grand Survey: Someone needs to map out the area hit by the Event, and as Jack so archly performed, the waterways and trails outside the Event Area. On the plus side, it's going to be dirt cheap. On the minus, though, it means letting Jack off the leash for a bit,
[]- Bond Together: You need those food producing regions, and you need them yesterday. Rochester has a technically weak government system, but those townships have effectively no government. Absorbing them should, technically, be a cinch.
[]- Southern Focus: To the south of you sits Troy, and likewise Pontiac. Both are significantly bigger than you, both have a lot less resources, and both have major criminal elements that, if provoked, will make a hell of a lot of headaches. A little polite shoulder tap should keep them off their back, though
[]- Eastern Focus: There's more options than just the northeast for food. Waldenburg might not be the most agricultural area, but it should be able to put you less in the red- and more importantly, it also gets you a straight shot at Anchor Bay Gardens and Harrison Charter Township, both of which have potential for fishing.
[]- Concrete Jungle: Nobody has gotten close to Detroit with a ten foot pole yet, and you're not sure you want to. There's a lot of territory ripe for the taking, as well as potential land, but there's also a lot of people who started off desperate and are only seeing things get worse.
MIL ACTION
[]- Scout The Boarders: To hell with what the old maps say, you need to get boots on the ground and start flushing the surrounding area to see what you're dealing with. A cold and young forest leaves a lot of opportunities open for sivliculture and tree farming, and you need to see the options. Plus, it gets Jack out of town for a few months.
[]- Deep Scouting Run: This one's more dangerous, and quite frankly you're not sure if you want to do it. In essence, Jack & Co. have a proposal that involves getting canoes and going as far up the Paint Creek and Clinton River as they can, trying to make sure your waterways are safe. It probably won't end in tragedy, and if it does then it'll be easy to find out how it went wrong when everything washes downriver.
[]- Assemble Response Force: As Jack's misadventure proved, there are some very violent people out there who are aggressive. Having a way to fight back would be excellent, although you're going to have to drag it through the Town Council kicking and screaming. (-25 Mil on success, -50 on failure)
[]- Assemble Paramilitary Unit: A cheaper alternative to actually getting a government-organized fighting unit put together, you could probably get Jack to whip together a "citizen response force" under his command, which would give you a lot of leeway in their use. However, they'd be fairly finicky, and you'd hate to see some of your neighbors' reaction to that kind of thing if they found out.
ADMIN ACTION
[]- Tight Rationing: You've got the rationing system in place, now it's time to set the throttle. You need your critical resources and semi-critical resources to hold out, and there's some stuff you can't see getting more of for the next couple years, such as gasoline. (-10 Admin, +3 turns of Critical Resources)
[]- Victory Gardens: There's a lot of land getting used as lawns and golf courses you can think of, and right now the situation is too tight to ignore. You've got a couple of florist and agriculture shops on the rosters, and if they were persuaded to start a fire-sale plus tax breaks for gardening citizens, you could probably get a healthy gardening culture set up. (+2% food production, -5 Admin)
[]- Housing Codes: Time to bring housing back into code. You've got a lot of houses, and a lot of them use gas stoves. If you can make it mandatory to go wood, and God knows, you've got wood, then you can definitely stave off some of the issues that are going to be popping up when winter rolls around.
[]- Language Barrier: Jack's right, as usual, and you need to crack the language barrier if you're ever going to get trade going. Considering what you've got going for you in terms of food production, you're going to need trade as soon as you figure out whatever the local version of "dos tacos, por favor" is, and you're going to need to get on that really quickly.
[]- New Census: To be perfectly frank, right now information is king. You need an accurate count of the population if you want anything to get done, and the only way to get that right now is to break out the door-knockers with clipboards. More importantly, it could show you if you've been highballing or lowballing the population numbers, showing how close your food estimates are.
---
Town Stats
Critical Resources Turns Remaining: 2
Food Supply: 1 turn
Food Production: 12% of required
Cash Flow: Good
Credit Rating: Excellent
Public Order: Excellent
Public Mood: Confused, Hopeful.
As Mayor of Rochester, you were fairly confident in your abilities to handle things. The city was nice in that for the most part it practically ran itself, which meant your job devolved into "catch the flying catastrophy" and making sure everyone talked nice to each other. On the plus side, it meant your job wasn't terribly hard.
On the minus side, when an absolute shitstorm came down the pike, you had to play hardball. This wasn't the first chaos-filled week you'd had, but the first seven days post-event were rather hellish. The city of Rochester wasn't very big, and it's population was rather small, which was a plus. However, your city also had periphery towns, which raised the stakes a lot.
On your own, you had about three months of food with rationing, and the potential to grow enough food for maybe a twentieth of your population sustainably before taking into account Ye Olde Winter. Add in Rochester Hills, Utica, and Oakland Charter Township, though, and things looked better and worse. Better, because you could theoretically start farming a lot of dirt in Oakland Charter, plus the farms there, plus putting the Stony Creek metropark under tilliage. Worse, though, because you now had Rochester Hills and Utica to contend with for food drain- which left you at about twelve percent for sustainable food production.
In plain speak, not good. That said, though, there was still opportunity. If you could get Romeo, Macomb, and hopefully New Baltimore under your sway, that would theoretically get you up to about seventy-five percent food production sustainable, plus any work you put in to get New Baltimore turned into a slightly larger fishing community.
On the topic of other materials, there had been mail from DTE stating that they had about two years of power on hand before fuel stocks became an issue, along with the factoid that the nuclear power plants hadn't come with when the Event happened. Making sure to write a very polite return letter, you even signed it personally to let the guys over there know you appreciated this. With power and food sorta-handled, the next issue on your plate was petroleum. You'd be sending mail out to the Marathon boys in Detroit for this one- the two hundred and fifty acres their plant sat on were right now the most valuable place in the known world right now. Houses needed heat for the winter, and heating oil or natural gas was the de facto solution for your town. Woodstoves were going to be coming back in a big way, though- your rationing was already scheduled to come down like a brick on gasoline and diesel.
Now, time to call Jack and see-
Riiiiiiing…
Well, that was Jack's ring tone. Something must've gone tits-up.
"Hello, Mayor Aragon-Daldin speaking."
"Cathy." Jack's voice growled over the phone. "We got a problem."
"What kind of problem?" you asked, pulling out an old notepad.
"You know how you haven't said a peep towards me all week?"
"Yeah?" you replied, dread feeding your gut.
"Well, I got some buddies together from the American Legion outpost, and we kinda found a shitstorm."
"What are we talking about here?" you asked, dread coming to your stomach.
"Well, we found the border line of the Event. Just about three quarters of Pontiac made it through, all of Auburn Hills, and a quarter of Orion Township. We also met the natives."
You quietly wrote this all down. "So?"
"So we don't speak the language, at all. Sounded kinda like German, but it was a decent bit more lyrical. One of my boys wants to say it's from the Baltic, and I'm willing to believe him."
You nearly broke the pen in your hand. "Okay, so what happened next?"
"Well…"
---
Independent Action: 14+1+2=16, Dc 14, passed
Your name was Jack LaRue, and boy oh boy was Cathy going to try and tear you a new one for this. After doing your meet-n-greets at the bar to get a reading on the town's preparedness and some trips out into the known land, you'd been given exactly zero incentive to stay in town and be "a pillar of the community" as it had been suggested. So, you'd done the next best thing- went and gathered a few younger guys from the VFW hall in Shelby, a few more from the American Legion, and Jimmy Kibbler, your troop's old quartermaster with a gift for cartography.
After pulling a "Captain Mexico" moment as Jimmy so eloquently put it, you got all twenty-odd guys into the back of your pickup, and headed out to start charting the boarder. First stop just happened to be a bodega in Pontiac to get lunch- from there it was all business, poking and prodding along neighborhood roads to trace the line. Intrestingly enough, the line seemed absolute- a few trees and houses were sliced clean through, and in one disturbing incident so was a deer. After agreeing not to talk about it ever again, you promptly started the bit you were probably going to get an ass chewing over- the expedition into Terra Incognita.
Now, you weren't going to be stupid about it. The plan was simple- head up the Paint Creek, and see how far you could get before about three or four o'clock, at which point you'd head back home for the day. Once you crossed the Event Border, things got weird. For starters, the trees changed abruptly, going from the hardwood mix common to Michigan into a mess of spruce, pine, and birch. From trees more like shrubs to towering birch, you felt scared. This was a cold forest, and mostly young too. Young forests usually indicated poor soil, plus the heavy amounts of pine and spruce suggested harsh winters.
It was about half past two when the shitstorm started. As you and the boys stumbled out near what looked like a homestead, you noted two things. One, there were a fuckton of horses around here; and two, it looked like the barn miiight have been on fire.
At that point, you were all in favor just walking away, right up until Jimmy pulled out a dollar-store set of binocs and hissed.
"Jack, they're going in with saps and clubs."
You rolled your head, and pulled out your pistol. "And?"
"And I see two… three girls, I think, tied up like hogs on the back of those horses."
"And?"
Jimmy glared at you. "Aren't we going to do anything?"
You shrugged. "Doubt it. For all we know, this is what happens when you welch on you taxes here."
At that point, you heard a lot of words that all reminded you of "bork? Bork!" and you saw some swords come out.
"Well, I'm doubting that's a positive welcoming committee" one of the guys said, racking the bolt on his hunting rifle. "Think we need to give 'em an American gift package?"
"We don't have time to call in a drone strike, Malcom." You grumbled, flipping the safety off and holding your pistol up. "Anyone with a gun, front and center. The rest of you, grab some sticks for clubs and cover the flanks. Jimmy, get ready to run for the truck."
As the pile of motely hunters remembered their misspent youths in the Army and Marines, six of them started picking out passable quarterstaves.
"On three." You said, taking careful aim at the one with the shiniest helmate who was doing some impressive yelling. "One… Two… Three!"
As the whatever-they-were charged the hundred, hundred and fifty feet towards you, your rough firing line opened up in return. Wooden shields exploded into splinters, blood flew through the air, and barely a minute passed before the opposing side was on the ground, few moaning and crying out in pain.
"Alright, alright." you grumbled, reloading and safeing your pistol. "Time to do the dirty bit. Howler, Ray, see which ones are dead and which ones aren't. Tom, can you get Jimmy back to the truck?"
"Yeah." Tom grunted, sliding a few more shells into his shotgun.
"Good. We'll be along shortly with the wounded and- uff!" you called out, as a girl from the homestead grabbed on to your arm. Babbling in whatever language the people here spoke, she refused to let go. Sighing, you just started to hold your head in a hand as you wondered how you were going to explain this to Cathy.
----
As the Mayor of Rochester, you had certain responsibilities. Not strangling your dumbass friend over the phone with your bare hands was one of them.
"So, Jack, let me get this straight. You go out into the wilderness without my express permission or knowledge-"
"Yep."
"-engage multiple natives in armed combat, killing twenty, wounding six, and what looks like taking one of them as your own-"
"I literally have yet to get her to let go of me, doesn't count."
"-broken several laws regarding firearms and vehicular safety-"
"Those rules are stupid and I was outside your jurisdiction."
"-and have booked all the afformentioned wounded in the hospital! How are we supposed to pay for that?!"
"Well," Jack said, sly. "If I were you, I'd recommend a fundraiser by the fire department, and see if you can pry some faculty out of the community college to figure out the language here."
Sighing, you pushed your hair up and back. "Listen… I'm not okay with this. Just… just lie low until we can get things sorted out, okay?"
Jack laughed, and you remembered quickly why you dated him back when you were younger, stupider, and full of hormones. "Alright, alright. I'll keep my head under the radar. I'll need some favors, though."
"Later." You grumped, finishing off the page of notes. "Things are looking pretty bleak in here right now- I'll get back to you soon, okay?"
"Alright, boss. Now, excuse me while I try and teach this poor waif English. For example, 'stop kicking my gearshift' or 'let go of me, damnit."
As the phone clicked, you sighed and got back to your desk. Time to put your government to work.
-----
VOTES
--
DIPLO ACTION
[]- Grand Survey: Someone needs to map out the area hit by the Event, and as Jack so archly performed, the waterways and trails outside the Event Area. On the plus side, it's going to be dirt cheap. On the minus, though, it means letting Jack off the leash for a bit,
[]- Bond Together: You need those food producing regions, and you need them yesterday. Rochester has a technically weak government system, but those townships have effectively no government. Absorbing them should, technically, be a cinch.
[]- Southern Focus: To the south of you sits Troy, and likewise Pontiac. Both are significantly bigger than you, both have a lot less resources, and both have major criminal elements that, if provoked, will make a hell of a lot of headaches. A little polite shoulder tap should keep them off their back, though
[]- Eastern Focus: There's more options than just the northeast for food. Waldenburg might not be the most agricultural area, but it should be able to put you less in the red- and more importantly, it also gets you a straight shot at Anchor Bay Gardens and Harrison Charter Township, both of which have potential for fishing.
[]- Concrete Jungle: Nobody has gotten close to Detroit with a ten foot pole yet, and you're not sure you want to. There's a lot of territory ripe for the taking, as well as potential land, but there's also a lot of people who started off desperate and are only seeing things get worse.
MIL ACTION
[]- Scout The Boarders: To hell with what the old maps say, you need to get boots on the ground and start flushing the surrounding area to see what you're dealing with. A cold and young forest leaves a lot of opportunities open for sivliculture and tree farming, and you need to see the options. Plus, it gets Jack out of town for a few months.
[]- Deep Scouting Run: This one's more dangerous, and quite frankly you're not sure if you want to do it. In essence, Jack & Co. have a proposal that involves getting canoes and going as far up the Paint Creek and Clinton River as they can, trying to make sure your waterways are safe. It probably won't end in tragedy, and if it does then it'll be easy to find out how it went wrong when everything washes downriver.
[]- Assemble Response Force: As Jack's misadventure proved, there are some very violent people out there who are aggressive. Having a way to fight back would be excellent, although you're going to have to drag it through the Town Council kicking and screaming. (-25 Mil on success, -50 on failure)
[]- Assemble Paramilitary Unit: A cheaper alternative to actually getting a government-organized fighting unit put together, you could probably get Jack to whip together a "citizen response force" under his command, which would give you a lot of leeway in their use. However, they'd be fairly finicky, and you'd hate to see some of your neighbors' reaction to that kind of thing if they found out.
ADMIN ACTION
[]- Tight Rationing: You've got the rationing system in place, now it's time to set the throttle. You need your critical resources and semi-critical resources to hold out, and there's some stuff you can't see getting more of for the next couple years, such as gasoline. (-10 Admin, +3 turns of Critical Resources)
[]- Victory Gardens: There's a lot of land getting used as lawns and golf courses you can think of, and right now the situation is too tight to ignore. You've got a couple of florist and agriculture shops on the rosters, and if they were persuaded to start a fire-sale plus tax breaks for gardening citizens, you could probably get a healthy gardening culture set up. (+2% food production, -5 Admin)
[]- Housing Codes: Time to bring housing back into code. You've got a lot of houses, and a lot of them use gas stoves. If you can make it mandatory to go wood, and God knows, you've got wood, then you can definitely stave off some of the issues that are going to be popping up when winter rolls around.
[]- Language Barrier: Jack's right, as usual, and you need to crack the language barrier if you're ever going to get trade going. Considering what you've got going for you in terms of food production, you're going to need trade as soon as you figure out whatever the local version of "dos tacos, por favor" is, and you're going to need to get on that really quickly.
[]- New Census: To be perfectly frank, right now information is king. You need an accurate count of the population if you want anything to get done, and the only way to get that right now is to break out the door-knockers with clipboards. More importantly, it could show you if you've been highballing or lowballing the population numbers, showing how close your food estimates are.
---
Town Stats
Critical Resources Turns Remaining: 2
Food Supply: 1 turn
Food Production: 12% of required
Cash Flow: Good
Credit Rating: Excellent
Public Order: Excellent
Public Mood: Confused, Hopeful.
Turn 2; Cool Summer's Eve
7734
Trust and verify.
- Location
- Philmont
Diplo Action: Bond Together; 1d100=76+10+14; Minor Crit.
Looking over the framework for incorporating the periphery townships under Rochester's banner, you smiled. It was fairly airtight, with provisions for representative democracy and town councilship ballenced very carefully so that the farming communities couldn't overthrow your home, or vice-versa. More importantly, you'd managed to snag the whole kit-n-caboodle out to the Edge of the Event up to almost St. Claire, which had been remarkably conservative with it's gerrymandering and land grabs from the Townships. Either way, you had Romeo, Macomb Township, and New Baltimore solidly under your grasp, plus as your little birdies told you, there was a good chance Sterling Heights would swing around to your cause soon. Whether you wanted Sterling Heights was another matter, as they had almost zilch for agriculture.
Considering the speed you'd made your land grabs at, you'd had a few ears to the ground to make sure nothing came rumbling out of the county seat in Pontiac that you couldn't handle, but the Event seemed to scramble them enough so that they were far more receptive to the usual offers for keeping things hushed than usual. Not that you'd dare try and bribe one, mind- no, most of this involved favors. For example, the favor that within a New York Minute of Rochester getting to be in the black for food, you'd start sending some to Pontiac so they wouldn't end up with riots. The town had been going downhill for a while, and the worst part was that the bit that they lost to the Event had been one of the richest.
Needless to say, you doubted you were going to have any issues with future grabs from the county. Mind, the townships themselves might object to any takeovers, but right now that wasn't an issue. Yes, you had a good base going- but you still had further to go.
---
Mil Action: Scout The Boarder; 1d100=34+4+10=48 Dc 50, Failure.
Looking over the mess of contradictory maps in front of you, you growled quietly at your "mapmakers", mostly citizens who had responded to the public initiative to get some cash, who apparently skimped you of a hundred dollars a head.
"Alright, gentlemen." You grumbled, splaying the varying qualities of paper over the table. "Let me start off with the obvious. This preliminary area survey was very simple- go out into the bush, and get some data on the area regarding relative areas of elevation and depression, what sort of wildlife live here, and where the closest settlements are. Of the sixty-odd people who submitted their maps, forty of you did not in fact leave the Edge of the Event and instead re-mapped the townships that are now de facto and soon de jure part of Rochester. To the three of you who mapped the Edge of the Event all the way to the St. Claire River, you may stay when I dismiss the rest of these scalpers. The remaining twenty of you who left the Event Area, I'd be congratulating you if any of this was actually useable data. The relative elevations are a mess, none of you can agree on the water sources, and either we're surrounded on all sides by tiny farms or none of you have good relative ideas of location."
Taking a breath, you looked pointedly at the door. "I'll call out the names of all those who are going to get paid, now."
Fifteen minutes and two calls to Security later, you looked at the twenty-three remaining junior cartographers and explorers. Cracking a smile, you grinned.
"I meant what I said earlier, I'm afraid. I can't use these maps." You began solemnly. "But! But, these maps do tell me something. You're all willing to try. You're all willing to go outside the Event Area. Well, almost all." You amended, looking at the three looking at their boots. "Most importantly, you all have the basics figured out. When we try this again, you're all now on the short list. Try and keep in touch with each other- I need maps, which means pretty soon, I'll need you."
--
ASSET GAIN: Explorer Team; grants +5 to all Exploration rolls.
--
Admin Action: Tight Rationing; 1d100=21+14+20=55 Dc 30, Success +2
Looking over the grim mess of reports on your desk, you sighed and rubbed your head. You'd tightened the rationing as tight as it was gonna get, and you'd barely scraped up enough food to keep everyone fed until autumn came. The farmers were reporting above-average yields on what they were growing, thank God, so the winter wouldn't be a long mass casualty event, but even at their best things would still be very tight. You fully expected to blow through every vitamin supplement in what was left of the state, plus everything vaguely edible. Right now, you had people counting calories- a starvation diet that wouldn't leave people incapacitated was somewhere at least eight hundred calories, preferably more than twelve hundred. Obesity was a thing of the past, you thought grimly- you'd be lucky to see a two thousand calorie diet, and most of your people doing physical work would need three thousand or more. Hunting was on the table, which in theory would keep some people in better shape, but you knew decimating the local wildlife wasn't a good long-term solution.
Fortunately, the fishing reports from New Baltimore were coming in, and things weren't bad. Aside from a mess of pike and herring, they were consistently recording good catches from all their boats. Once they processed it and froze it in the ramshackle handling plant someone had whipped together, it got shipped out via very carefully packed semi truck to your markets and distributed.
Of course, food wasn't the only thing being rationed. You hadn't sent out people with warrants and rubber tubes to siphon gas out of car tanks yet, but gasoline and diesel sales were at a dead halt unless you had a permit to buy, permit to sell, and were sending in receipt books every day. You had just enough gas and oil to go around until spring, thank God, at which point you could hopefully buy from the Marathon plant in Detroit to keep your mechanized farming going. If you could get the mechanized farming going balls to the wall, expanded the fishing fleets, and got ocean fishing going, you might, just maybe might, be able to go food-independent.
---
Independent Action: 1d20=12+1+1+3, Dc 10, Passed
A wise man said once that power projected from the point of a bayonet. He might have been a godless imperial Russian, but that man had known which end was up. A strong offence was backed by a strong defense, and both were critical to the strength of a nation-state.
You were just one man, though, one grumpy Eagle with orders to keep his head beneath his wing and pretend to be a quail. Well, in the words of many an action-movie actor, "fuck that shit".
"Tom!" you yelled out across the speakeasy, looking to where your companion was drowning his back pain one shot glass at a time. "I need to talk to you!"
"Fuckoff, Jack." He muttered, knocking back another round of paint thinner. "I ain't going on that stupid map trip."
You laughed, and walked up to him. Slapping a thin tome on the bar, you slid the bottle of what claimed to be vodka away from Tom. "Recognize this?"
Tom blinked. "Where the fuck did you get a copy of the Anarchist's Cookbook?"
"Rummage sale in Flint. This is the '71 printing, too- not the watered-down version from '02. It's got a hell of a lot in it, but we're not starring in Breaking Bad here. I need someone to help make gunpowder, Tom, and an ex-EOD is as good as I've got."
Tom laughed, and laughed. "You gotta make it hard. I'm a black, Scottish cyclops, they got more damned bastards in bomb suits than they got the likes o me."
"So you'll do it." You said, smiling.
"One crossed wire, one wayward pinch of potassium chloride, and KABLOOY!" the drunk demoman yelled, trying to talk you and himself out of it.
"Well?" you asked, flagging down the barman for a jug of rum.
"When we're done with 'em, Jackie my boy, they'll have ta glue 'em back together in Hell!" Tom howled, before making a good start on the bottle you'd discreetly paid for. Guns had four parts to make 'em work; and you'd just gotten the first part down right there. Now, only three more to go.
-----
VOTES
-----
DIPLO ACTION
[]- Grand Survey: Someone needs to map out the area hit by the Event, and as Jack so archly performed, the waterways and trails outside the Event Area. On the plus side, it's going to be dirt cheap. On the minus, though, it means letting Jack off the leash for a bit.
[]- Trade Focus: If New Baltimore with an anemic fishing fleet is pulling in enough catch to need to set up a makeshift processing plant, then St. Claire should be neck-deep in their catch. You need food, they got food- and you've got a lot of things you can use as trading leverage.
[]- Southern Focus: To the south of you sits Troy, and likewise Pontiac. Both are significantly bigger than you, both have a lot less resources, and both have major criminal elements that, if provoked, will make a hell of a lot of headaches. A little polite shoulder tap should keep them off their back, though
[]- Eastern Focus: There's more options than just the northeast for food. Waldenburg might not be the most agricultural area, but it should be able to put you less in the red- and more importantly, it also gets you a straight shot at Anchor Bay Gardens and Harrison Charter Township, both of which have potential for fishing.
[]- Concrete Jungle: Nobody has gotten close to Detroit with a ten foot pole yet, and you're not sure you want to. There's a lot of territory ripe for the taking, as well as potential land, but there's also a lot of people who started off desperate and are only seeing things get worse.
MIL ACTION
[]- Scout The Boarders, Again: To hell with what the old maps say, you need to get boots on the ground and start flushing the surrounding area to see what you're dealing with. A cold and young forest leaves a lot of opportunities open for sivliculture and tree farming, and you need to see the options. Plus, it might get Jack out of town for a few months- you're not sure why he stayed last time.
[]- Deep Scouting Run: This one's more dangerous, and quite frankly you're not sure if you want to do it. In essence, Jack & Co. have a proposal that involves getting canoes and going as far up the Paint Creek and Clinton River as they can, trying to make sure your waterways are safe. It probably won't end in tragedy, and if it does then it'll be easy to find out how it went wrong when everything washes downriver.
[]- Assemble Response Force: As Jack's misadventure proved, there are some very violent people out there who are aggressive. Having a way to fight back would be excellent, although you're going to have to drag it through the Town Council kicking and screaming. (-25 Mil on success, -50 on failure)
[]- Assemble Paramilitary Unit: A cheaper alternative to actually getting a government-organized fighting unit put together, you could probably get Jack to whip together a "citizen response force" under his command, which would give you a lot of leeway in their use. However, they'd be fairly finicky, and you'd hate to see some of your neighbors' reaction to that kind of thing if they found out.
ADMIN ACTION
[]- Preliminary Planning: There's a painfully likely chance you're not going to have machines to help you with a lot of what you need to do next planting season. As such, you're going to need to replace mechanization with warm bodies, and that's going to be a difficult proposition at best. Start thinking about it now, and if it comes up later you won't have too many issues.
[]- Victory Gardens: There's a lot of land getting used as lawns and golf courses you can think of, and right now the situation is too tight to ignore. You've got a couple of florist and agriculture shops on the rosters, and if they were persuaded to start a fire-sale plus tax breaks for gardening citizens, you could probably get a healthy gardening culture set up. (+2% food production, -5 Admin)
[]- Housing Codes: Time to bring housing back into code. You've got a lot of houses, and a lot of them use gas stoves. If you can make it mandatory to go wood, and God knows, you've got wood, then you can definitely stave off some of the issues that are going to be popping up when winter rolls around.
[]- Language Barrier: Jack's right, as usual, and you need to crack the language barrier if you're ever going to get trade going. Considering what you've got going for you in terms of food production, you're going to need trade as soon as you figure out whatever the local version of "dos tacos, por favor" is, and you're going to need to get on that really quickly.
[]- New Census: To be perfectly frank, right now information is king. You need an accurate count of the population if you want anything to get done, and the only way to get that right now is to break out the door-knockers with clipboards. More importantly, it could show you if you've been highballing or lowballing the population numbers, showing how close your food estimates are.
---
Critical Resources Turns Remaining: 5
Food Supply: 1 turn
Food Production: 35% of required, 75% of required next full growing cycle.
Cash Flow: Good
Credit Rating: Excellent
Public Order: Excellent
Public Mood: Confused, Hopeful.
Points
Diplo: 145
Mil: 120
Admin: 166
Looking over the framework for incorporating the periphery townships under Rochester's banner, you smiled. It was fairly airtight, with provisions for representative democracy and town councilship ballenced very carefully so that the farming communities couldn't overthrow your home, or vice-versa. More importantly, you'd managed to snag the whole kit-n-caboodle out to the Edge of the Event up to almost St. Claire, which had been remarkably conservative with it's gerrymandering and land grabs from the Townships. Either way, you had Romeo, Macomb Township, and New Baltimore solidly under your grasp, plus as your little birdies told you, there was a good chance Sterling Heights would swing around to your cause soon. Whether you wanted Sterling Heights was another matter, as they had almost zilch for agriculture.
Considering the speed you'd made your land grabs at, you'd had a few ears to the ground to make sure nothing came rumbling out of the county seat in Pontiac that you couldn't handle, but the Event seemed to scramble them enough so that they were far more receptive to the usual offers for keeping things hushed than usual. Not that you'd dare try and bribe one, mind- no, most of this involved favors. For example, the favor that within a New York Minute of Rochester getting to be in the black for food, you'd start sending some to Pontiac so they wouldn't end up with riots. The town had been going downhill for a while, and the worst part was that the bit that they lost to the Event had been one of the richest.
Needless to say, you doubted you were going to have any issues with future grabs from the county. Mind, the townships themselves might object to any takeovers, but right now that wasn't an issue. Yes, you had a good base going- but you still had further to go.
---
Mil Action: Scout The Boarder; 1d100=34+4+10=48 Dc 50, Failure.
Looking over the mess of contradictory maps in front of you, you growled quietly at your "mapmakers", mostly citizens who had responded to the public initiative to get some cash, who apparently skimped you of a hundred dollars a head.
"Alright, gentlemen." You grumbled, splaying the varying qualities of paper over the table. "Let me start off with the obvious. This preliminary area survey was very simple- go out into the bush, and get some data on the area regarding relative areas of elevation and depression, what sort of wildlife live here, and where the closest settlements are. Of the sixty-odd people who submitted their maps, forty of you did not in fact leave the Edge of the Event and instead re-mapped the townships that are now de facto and soon de jure part of Rochester. To the three of you who mapped the Edge of the Event all the way to the St. Claire River, you may stay when I dismiss the rest of these scalpers. The remaining twenty of you who left the Event Area, I'd be congratulating you if any of this was actually useable data. The relative elevations are a mess, none of you can agree on the water sources, and either we're surrounded on all sides by tiny farms or none of you have good relative ideas of location."
Taking a breath, you looked pointedly at the door. "I'll call out the names of all those who are going to get paid, now."
Fifteen minutes and two calls to Security later, you looked at the twenty-three remaining junior cartographers and explorers. Cracking a smile, you grinned.
"I meant what I said earlier, I'm afraid. I can't use these maps." You began solemnly. "But! But, these maps do tell me something. You're all willing to try. You're all willing to go outside the Event Area. Well, almost all." You amended, looking at the three looking at their boots. "Most importantly, you all have the basics figured out. When we try this again, you're all now on the short list. Try and keep in touch with each other- I need maps, which means pretty soon, I'll need you."
--
ASSET GAIN: Explorer Team; grants +5 to all Exploration rolls.
--
Admin Action: Tight Rationing; 1d100=21+14+20=55 Dc 30, Success +2
Looking over the grim mess of reports on your desk, you sighed and rubbed your head. You'd tightened the rationing as tight as it was gonna get, and you'd barely scraped up enough food to keep everyone fed until autumn came. The farmers were reporting above-average yields on what they were growing, thank God, so the winter wouldn't be a long mass casualty event, but even at their best things would still be very tight. You fully expected to blow through every vitamin supplement in what was left of the state, plus everything vaguely edible. Right now, you had people counting calories- a starvation diet that wouldn't leave people incapacitated was somewhere at least eight hundred calories, preferably more than twelve hundred. Obesity was a thing of the past, you thought grimly- you'd be lucky to see a two thousand calorie diet, and most of your people doing physical work would need three thousand or more. Hunting was on the table, which in theory would keep some people in better shape, but you knew decimating the local wildlife wasn't a good long-term solution.
Fortunately, the fishing reports from New Baltimore were coming in, and things weren't bad. Aside from a mess of pike and herring, they were consistently recording good catches from all their boats. Once they processed it and froze it in the ramshackle handling plant someone had whipped together, it got shipped out via very carefully packed semi truck to your markets and distributed.
Of course, food wasn't the only thing being rationed. You hadn't sent out people with warrants and rubber tubes to siphon gas out of car tanks yet, but gasoline and diesel sales were at a dead halt unless you had a permit to buy, permit to sell, and were sending in receipt books every day. You had just enough gas and oil to go around until spring, thank God, at which point you could hopefully buy from the Marathon plant in Detroit to keep your mechanized farming going. If you could get the mechanized farming going balls to the wall, expanded the fishing fleets, and got ocean fishing going, you might, just maybe might, be able to go food-independent.
---
Independent Action: 1d20=12+1+1+3, Dc 10, Passed
A wise man said once that power projected from the point of a bayonet. He might have been a godless imperial Russian, but that man had known which end was up. A strong offence was backed by a strong defense, and both were critical to the strength of a nation-state.
You were just one man, though, one grumpy Eagle with orders to keep his head beneath his wing and pretend to be a quail. Well, in the words of many an action-movie actor, "fuck that shit".
"Tom!" you yelled out across the speakeasy, looking to where your companion was drowning his back pain one shot glass at a time. "I need to talk to you!"
"Fuckoff, Jack." He muttered, knocking back another round of paint thinner. "I ain't going on that stupid map trip."
You laughed, and walked up to him. Slapping a thin tome on the bar, you slid the bottle of what claimed to be vodka away from Tom. "Recognize this?"
Tom blinked. "Where the fuck did you get a copy of the Anarchist's Cookbook?"
"Rummage sale in Flint. This is the '71 printing, too- not the watered-down version from '02. It's got a hell of a lot in it, but we're not starring in Breaking Bad here. I need someone to help make gunpowder, Tom, and an ex-EOD is as good as I've got."
Tom laughed, and laughed. "You gotta make it hard. I'm a black, Scottish cyclops, they got more damned bastards in bomb suits than they got the likes o me."
"So you'll do it." You said, smiling.
"One crossed wire, one wayward pinch of potassium chloride, and KABLOOY!" the drunk demoman yelled, trying to talk you and himself out of it.
"Well?" you asked, flagging down the barman for a jug of rum.
"When we're done with 'em, Jackie my boy, they'll have ta glue 'em back together in Hell!" Tom howled, before making a good start on the bottle you'd discreetly paid for. Guns had four parts to make 'em work; and you'd just gotten the first part down right there. Now, only three more to go.
-----
VOTES
-----
DIPLO ACTION
[]- Grand Survey: Someone needs to map out the area hit by the Event, and as Jack so archly performed, the waterways and trails outside the Event Area. On the plus side, it's going to be dirt cheap. On the minus, though, it means letting Jack off the leash for a bit.
[]- Trade Focus: If New Baltimore with an anemic fishing fleet is pulling in enough catch to need to set up a makeshift processing plant, then St. Claire should be neck-deep in their catch. You need food, they got food- and you've got a lot of things you can use as trading leverage.
[]- Southern Focus: To the south of you sits Troy, and likewise Pontiac. Both are significantly bigger than you, both have a lot less resources, and both have major criminal elements that, if provoked, will make a hell of a lot of headaches. A little polite shoulder tap should keep them off their back, though
[]- Eastern Focus: There's more options than just the northeast for food. Waldenburg might not be the most agricultural area, but it should be able to put you less in the red- and more importantly, it also gets you a straight shot at Anchor Bay Gardens and Harrison Charter Township, both of which have potential for fishing.
[]- Concrete Jungle: Nobody has gotten close to Detroit with a ten foot pole yet, and you're not sure you want to. There's a lot of territory ripe for the taking, as well as potential land, but there's also a lot of people who started off desperate and are only seeing things get worse.
MIL ACTION
[]- Scout The Boarders, Again: To hell with what the old maps say, you need to get boots on the ground and start flushing the surrounding area to see what you're dealing with. A cold and young forest leaves a lot of opportunities open for sivliculture and tree farming, and you need to see the options. Plus, it might get Jack out of town for a few months- you're not sure why he stayed last time.
[]- Deep Scouting Run: This one's more dangerous, and quite frankly you're not sure if you want to do it. In essence, Jack & Co. have a proposal that involves getting canoes and going as far up the Paint Creek and Clinton River as they can, trying to make sure your waterways are safe. It probably won't end in tragedy, and if it does then it'll be easy to find out how it went wrong when everything washes downriver.
[]- Assemble Response Force: As Jack's misadventure proved, there are some very violent people out there who are aggressive. Having a way to fight back would be excellent, although you're going to have to drag it through the Town Council kicking and screaming. (-25 Mil on success, -50 on failure)
[]- Assemble Paramilitary Unit: A cheaper alternative to actually getting a government-organized fighting unit put together, you could probably get Jack to whip together a "citizen response force" under his command, which would give you a lot of leeway in their use. However, they'd be fairly finicky, and you'd hate to see some of your neighbors' reaction to that kind of thing if they found out.
ADMIN ACTION
[]- Preliminary Planning: There's a painfully likely chance you're not going to have machines to help you with a lot of what you need to do next planting season. As such, you're going to need to replace mechanization with warm bodies, and that's going to be a difficult proposition at best. Start thinking about it now, and if it comes up later you won't have too many issues.
[]- Victory Gardens: There's a lot of land getting used as lawns and golf courses you can think of, and right now the situation is too tight to ignore. You've got a couple of florist and agriculture shops on the rosters, and if they were persuaded to start a fire-sale plus tax breaks for gardening citizens, you could probably get a healthy gardening culture set up. (+2% food production, -5 Admin)
[]- Housing Codes: Time to bring housing back into code. You've got a lot of houses, and a lot of them use gas stoves. If you can make it mandatory to go wood, and God knows, you've got wood, then you can definitely stave off some of the issues that are going to be popping up when winter rolls around.
[]- Language Barrier: Jack's right, as usual, and you need to crack the language barrier if you're ever going to get trade going. Considering what you've got going for you in terms of food production, you're going to need trade as soon as you figure out whatever the local version of "dos tacos, por favor" is, and you're going to need to get on that really quickly.
[]- New Census: To be perfectly frank, right now information is king. You need an accurate count of the population if you want anything to get done, and the only way to get that right now is to break out the door-knockers with clipboards. More importantly, it could show you if you've been highballing or lowballing the population numbers, showing how close your food estimates are.
---
Critical Resources Turns Remaining: 5
Food Supply: 1 turn
Food Production: 35% of required, 75% of required next full growing cycle.
Cash Flow: Good
Credit Rating: Excellent
Public Order: Excellent
Public Mood: Confused, Hopeful.
Points
Diplo: 145
Mil: 120
Admin: 166
Turn 3; Winter is Coming
7734
Trust and verify.
- Location
- Philmont
Diplo Action: Trade Focus; 1d100=45+14+20, Dc 65, Success +1
As you looked over the recently-expanded and bustling docks around St. Claire where the negotiations to buy a shitload of fish were taking place, you had to suppress a sigh. Things had been going fairly well so far, with you having your merchants talk to their merchants, but the honest truth of it was that these fishermen and border guards were savvy folk. Part of the problem was that economically they had backslid to a glorified barter system in record time, with greenbacks trading hands very infrequently. As such, since you were low on barter objects, you needed to go to their Mayor and Council to hash things out.
The end deal was, in your opinion, very close to you getting filled like a fish. In exchange for all students from St. Claire paying in-county tuition when going to the Auburn Hills Oakland Community College campus (something you were disguising via generous applications of grant money) plus providing round trip transport for the fish and said sales being a non-taxable item on the St. Claire end, you got about a quarter of the food needed to keep your town and the peripheries fed. The education boost to St. Claire was incredibly important- about doubling their administrative capabilities as they slowly crept away from the Good 'Ol Boys network. If you needed more than a quarter of your total food requirements, though, it was going to come right out of your Strategic Resources stockpile of gasoline, ammunition, and pharmaceuticals.
Right now, that was a price you were willing to pay.
---
Trade Deal Acquired, Trade Route Established. St. Claire opinion +25.
---
Mil Action: Scout The Boarders, Again; 1d100=55+4+10+5, Dc 50, Success +2
Well, after the great Springtime Fumble, your thoughts on the likelihood of the next shot at exploration were fairly hopeful. You'd managed to wrangle Jack into the mess this time (mostly with an offer to have someone take care of that mangy old house he loved to death and the waif that he needed to scrape off for this trip) and your Explorer Team had been joined by Jack's load of missfits for this misadventure.
When they called in three weeks later, the news was one of those for better and for worse scenarios. For starters, the entire Detroit area had experienced a complete turnaround, meaning what was north was south now. Thanking God very quietly you only had one mosque to worry about and very happy you weren't in Hamtramack, you looked over the rest of the neatly typed and printed report. The area was absolutely riddled with lakes, streams, duck ponds, and all sorts of oddities. More importantly, to the east there was a decent-sized alluvial plain, along with a preliminary survey showing that there was a pretty good chance that whatever river system that St. Claire and New Baltimore were fishing off of didn't actually connect to the Detroit watershed. The group had also encountered several dozen groups of the natives to the area, and the report boiled down to "so we're somewhere in Scandanavia" in terms of global location.
The most important thing that the report noted, though, was that most of the people around here were fairly friendly, and nobody was terribly likely to take massive offense at your existence. That said, though, more than a few groups had fjord-facing defenses and protective measures, their actions speaking louder than words as to where they expected trouble to come from. The end conclusion- "don't start shit and we'll be fine" was vaguely welcoming, but not enough to make you step back from defensive ideas. After all, knowing Jack those mappers went in armed to the teeth.
---
Admin Action: Victory Gardens; 1d100=94+14+20, Minor Crit
After getting Jack out of your hair, you'd quickly settled down to get to work on one of your pet projects- the concept of the Victory Garden. Or, considering your dire straits right now, more like Survival Garden. The idea was simple- by having a small, independent food source, people would buy less food, which would both reduce the amount of food you'd have to import and reduce strain on your road net. Not that the road net was under any real strain right now, but the idea was there- get people off the convience store idea, get people on to the idea of growing and eating their own food. Considering the number of people out of work, you figured a state-sponsored hobby might help them.
When the numbers came in from Bordines, though, you were almost in shock. People here were smart, and they all knew that food reserves were running low. Thus, the idea came about, a lot of them started their prep for gardens. When you added Official Encouragment, though, the wheels came off the wagon. More than a few people used the last of their gasoline buying up miniature greenhouses, hydroponics gear, and strings on strings of plantage. The two-inch green grass mat lawn was on it's way out with narry a whimper, and in return came the giant-ass garden overflowing with produce.
Humerously enough, your local deer population, which was already well over what the remains of the Department of Natural Resources, started to rapidly fall off as people began to realize that one, they were destroying their prized gardens; and two, there was a lot of meat on a deer. You weren't one to complain until some kid accidentally set off a deadfall trap, at which point you had to restrict in-town hunting to daylight hours and bows only.
---
Scout The Boarders Again; 1d20=5+1+1+1, Dc 10, Failed
Grumbling along on the horse you'd purchased in town, you looked down at your latest acquisitions and sighed loudly.
"Really, guys." You complained for the hundredth time. "I understand the idea behind the whole 'learning the native language the hard way' system, but for fuck's sake where am I going to put a trio of ex-slaves?"
Looking over to you, the Explorer who had pissed most of your disposable income away grumbled back. "Listen, we got the cash back when we killed the slave trader later, right?"
"Not the point, dumbass. Really, really not the point. For one thing, I don't think these guys even speak whatever version of Scandinavian the natives here speak. Two, we can worry about the whole slavery thing later- we need to get these maps home. Three, we're probably going to be fighting those natives if some warlord pops up, and I don't want them to understand the basic principle of 'woods equals death' until we have enough of a response force to make it stick when they try and push a few hundred troops through broken terrain and we whack 'em when they're not looking."
Looking down at his boots, the Explorer kicked a loose stone angrily. "Still…" he muttered, his borrowed gun riding poorly in it's holster.
Sighing, you turned, wincing at the glancing arrow wound you had taken from when a local hunter overshot. It might have skipped off your ribs, but the fucker still hurt like a bitch.
"Listen, kid. First, we make sure we're not going to get drowned in a wave of horned helmets and angry axes. Then we enact Great Social Change, probably at about the same time we have to beat off the waves of angry axes when the kings of Bumfuck Nowhere realize they just got outclassed literally overnight. Okay?"
"Okay." The Explorer grumped.
"Good!" you said. "Jimmy! How that map coming?"
"The scale's fucked, the towns are dots, and the relative elevations are piss." Jimmy complained. "But we've got most of the area down pat. At least when the survey boys get their asses out here we can make sure they probably don't end up with an arrow in the ribs."
"a ha ha fuck you Jimmy." You replied, wincing again. "C'mon boys, let's get home and see if they still have toilet paper left."
---
VOTES
---
DIPLO ACTION
[]- Grand Survey: Someone needs to map out the area hit by the Event, and as Jack so archly performed, the waterways and trails outside the Event Area. On the plus side, it's going to be dirt cheap. On the minus, though, it means letting Jack off the leash for a bit.
[]- Southern Focus: To the south of you sits Troy, and likewise Pontiac. Both are significantly bigger than you, both have a lot less resources, and both have major criminal elements that, if provoked, will make a hell of a lot of headaches. A little polite shoulder tap should keep them off their back, though
[]- Eastern Focus: There's more options than just the northeast for food. Waldenburg might not be the most agricultural area, but it should be able to put you less in the red- and more importantly, it also gets you a straight shot at Anchor Bay Gardens and Harrison Charter Township, both of which have potential for fishing.
[]- Concrete Jungle: Nobody has gotten close to Detroit with a ten foot pole yet, and you're not sure you want to. There's a lot of territory ripe for the taking, as well as potential land, but there's also a lot of people who started off desperate and are only seeing things get worse.
[]- Northern Conference: You, right now, know a lot. Thing is, you're on the border with this mess, and there are a lot of people who aren't. Getting them on your side would be nice, and more importantly it'll help you keep everyone on the same page. Equally important, if anyone else knows things like the fishermen in St. Claire and gangers in Pontiac then you want to get them knowing what you're knowing and working together.
MIL ACTION
[]- Survey Grounds: This one's nice and simple. You've got surveyors on the County payroll who you can easily snipe, you've got Explorers cooling their heels and enjoying the little luxuries of life, and you've got a lot of people who are going to be chomping at the teeth to get their hands on raw materials like wood. Surveying the Outlands is the first step to getting civilized people there, and more importantly you know will have a home-field advantage off your own, valuable turf.
[]- Deep Scouting Run: This one's more dangerous, and quite frankly you're not sure if you want to do it. In essence, Jack & Co. have a proposal that involves getting canoes and going as far up the Paint Creek and Clinton River as they can, trying to make sure your waterways are safe. It probably won't end in tragedy, and if it does then it'll be easy to find out how it went wrong when everything washes downriver.
[]- Assemble Response Force: As Jack's misadventure proved, there are some very violent people out there who are aggressive. Having a way to fight back would be excellent, although you're going to have to drag it through the Town Council kicking and screaming. (-25 Mil on success, -50 on failure)
[]- Assemble Paramilitary Unit: A cheaper alternative to actually getting a government-organized fighting unit put together, you could probably get Jack to whip together a "citizen response force" under his command, which would give you a lot of leeway in their use. However, they'd be fairly finicky, and you'd hate to see some of your neighbors' reaction to that kind of thing if they found out.
ADMIN ACTION
[]- Preliminary Planning: There's a painfully likely chance you're not going to have machines to help you with a lot of what you need to do next planting season. As such, you're going to need to replace mechanization with warm bodies, and that's going to be a difficult proposition at best. Start thinking about it now, and if it comes up later you won't have too many issues.
[]- Housing Codes: Time to bring housing back into code. You've got a lot of houses, and a lot of them use gas stoves. If you can make it mandatory to go wood, and God knows, you've got wood, then you can definitely stave off some of the issues that are going to be popping up when winter rolls around.
[]- Language Barrier: Jack's right, as usual, and you need to crack the language barrier if you're ever going to get trade going. Considering what you've got going for you in terms of food production, you're going to need trade as soon as you figure out whatever the local version of "dos tacos, por favor" is, and you're going to need to get on that really quickly.
[]- New Census: To be perfectly frank, right now information is king. You need an accurate count of the population if you want anything to get done, and the only way to get that right now is to break out the door-knockers with clipboards. More importantly, it could show you if you've been highballing or lowballing the population numbers, showing how close your food estimates are.
------
Critical Resources Turns Remaining: 2
Food Supply: 0 Turns!
Food Production: 37% Base, 25% as per Passive Trade, 50% as per Active Trade Deal
Cash Flow: Good
Credit Rating: Excellent
Public Order: Good
Public Mood: Worried, Determined.
Points
Diplo: 165
Mil: 130
Admin: 194
(Starvation Rules/Conditional Trade Rules to be posted shortly.)
As you looked over the recently-expanded and bustling docks around St. Claire where the negotiations to buy a shitload of fish were taking place, you had to suppress a sigh. Things had been going fairly well so far, with you having your merchants talk to their merchants, but the honest truth of it was that these fishermen and border guards were savvy folk. Part of the problem was that economically they had backslid to a glorified barter system in record time, with greenbacks trading hands very infrequently. As such, since you were low on barter objects, you needed to go to their Mayor and Council to hash things out.
The end deal was, in your opinion, very close to you getting filled like a fish. In exchange for all students from St. Claire paying in-county tuition when going to the Auburn Hills Oakland Community College campus (something you were disguising via generous applications of grant money) plus providing round trip transport for the fish and said sales being a non-taxable item on the St. Claire end, you got about a quarter of the food needed to keep your town and the peripheries fed. The education boost to St. Claire was incredibly important- about doubling their administrative capabilities as they slowly crept away from the Good 'Ol Boys network. If you needed more than a quarter of your total food requirements, though, it was going to come right out of your Strategic Resources stockpile of gasoline, ammunition, and pharmaceuticals.
Right now, that was a price you were willing to pay.
---
Trade Deal Acquired, Trade Route Established. St. Claire opinion +25.
---
Mil Action: Scout The Boarders, Again; 1d100=55+4+10+5, Dc 50, Success +2
Well, after the great Springtime Fumble, your thoughts on the likelihood of the next shot at exploration were fairly hopeful. You'd managed to wrangle Jack into the mess this time (mostly with an offer to have someone take care of that mangy old house he loved to death and the waif that he needed to scrape off for this trip) and your Explorer Team had been joined by Jack's load of missfits for this misadventure.
When they called in three weeks later, the news was one of those for better and for worse scenarios. For starters, the entire Detroit area had experienced a complete turnaround, meaning what was north was south now. Thanking God very quietly you only had one mosque to worry about and very happy you weren't in Hamtramack, you looked over the rest of the neatly typed and printed report. The area was absolutely riddled with lakes, streams, duck ponds, and all sorts of oddities. More importantly, to the east there was a decent-sized alluvial plain, along with a preliminary survey showing that there was a pretty good chance that whatever river system that St. Claire and New Baltimore were fishing off of didn't actually connect to the Detroit watershed. The group had also encountered several dozen groups of the natives to the area, and the report boiled down to "so we're somewhere in Scandanavia" in terms of global location.
The most important thing that the report noted, though, was that most of the people around here were fairly friendly, and nobody was terribly likely to take massive offense at your existence. That said, though, more than a few groups had fjord-facing defenses and protective measures, their actions speaking louder than words as to where they expected trouble to come from. The end conclusion- "don't start shit and we'll be fine" was vaguely welcoming, but not enough to make you step back from defensive ideas. After all, knowing Jack those mappers went in armed to the teeth.
---
Admin Action: Victory Gardens; 1d100=94+14+20, Minor Crit
After getting Jack out of your hair, you'd quickly settled down to get to work on one of your pet projects- the concept of the Victory Garden. Or, considering your dire straits right now, more like Survival Garden. The idea was simple- by having a small, independent food source, people would buy less food, which would both reduce the amount of food you'd have to import and reduce strain on your road net. Not that the road net was under any real strain right now, but the idea was there- get people off the convience store idea, get people on to the idea of growing and eating their own food. Considering the number of people out of work, you figured a state-sponsored hobby might help them.
When the numbers came in from Bordines, though, you were almost in shock. People here were smart, and they all knew that food reserves were running low. Thus, the idea came about, a lot of them started their prep for gardens. When you added Official Encouragment, though, the wheels came off the wagon. More than a few people used the last of their gasoline buying up miniature greenhouses, hydroponics gear, and strings on strings of plantage. The two-inch green grass mat lawn was on it's way out with narry a whimper, and in return came the giant-ass garden overflowing with produce.
Humerously enough, your local deer population, which was already well over what the remains of the Department of Natural Resources, started to rapidly fall off as people began to realize that one, they were destroying their prized gardens; and two, there was a lot of meat on a deer. You weren't one to complain until some kid accidentally set off a deadfall trap, at which point you had to restrict in-town hunting to daylight hours and bows only.
---
Scout The Boarders Again; 1d20=5+1+1+1, Dc 10, Failed
Grumbling along on the horse you'd purchased in town, you looked down at your latest acquisitions and sighed loudly.
"Really, guys." You complained for the hundredth time. "I understand the idea behind the whole 'learning the native language the hard way' system, but for fuck's sake where am I going to put a trio of ex-slaves?"
Looking over to you, the Explorer who had pissed most of your disposable income away grumbled back. "Listen, we got the cash back when we killed the slave trader later, right?"
"Not the point, dumbass. Really, really not the point. For one thing, I don't think these guys even speak whatever version of Scandinavian the natives here speak. Two, we can worry about the whole slavery thing later- we need to get these maps home. Three, we're probably going to be fighting those natives if some warlord pops up, and I don't want them to understand the basic principle of 'woods equals death' until we have enough of a response force to make it stick when they try and push a few hundred troops through broken terrain and we whack 'em when they're not looking."
Looking down at his boots, the Explorer kicked a loose stone angrily. "Still…" he muttered, his borrowed gun riding poorly in it's holster.
Sighing, you turned, wincing at the glancing arrow wound you had taken from when a local hunter overshot. It might have skipped off your ribs, but the fucker still hurt like a bitch.
"Listen, kid. First, we make sure we're not going to get drowned in a wave of horned helmets and angry axes. Then we enact Great Social Change, probably at about the same time we have to beat off the waves of angry axes when the kings of Bumfuck Nowhere realize they just got outclassed literally overnight. Okay?"
"Okay." The Explorer grumped.
"Good!" you said. "Jimmy! How that map coming?"
"The scale's fucked, the towns are dots, and the relative elevations are piss." Jimmy complained. "But we've got most of the area down pat. At least when the survey boys get their asses out here we can make sure they probably don't end up with an arrow in the ribs."
"a ha ha fuck you Jimmy." You replied, wincing again. "C'mon boys, let's get home and see if they still have toilet paper left."
---
VOTES
---
DIPLO ACTION
[]- Grand Survey: Someone needs to map out the area hit by the Event, and as Jack so archly performed, the waterways and trails outside the Event Area. On the plus side, it's going to be dirt cheap. On the minus, though, it means letting Jack off the leash for a bit.
[]- Southern Focus: To the south of you sits Troy, and likewise Pontiac. Both are significantly bigger than you, both have a lot less resources, and both have major criminal elements that, if provoked, will make a hell of a lot of headaches. A little polite shoulder tap should keep them off their back, though
[]- Eastern Focus: There's more options than just the northeast for food. Waldenburg might not be the most agricultural area, but it should be able to put you less in the red- and more importantly, it also gets you a straight shot at Anchor Bay Gardens and Harrison Charter Township, both of which have potential for fishing.
[]- Concrete Jungle: Nobody has gotten close to Detroit with a ten foot pole yet, and you're not sure you want to. There's a lot of territory ripe for the taking, as well as potential land, but there's also a lot of people who started off desperate and are only seeing things get worse.
[]- Northern Conference: You, right now, know a lot. Thing is, you're on the border with this mess, and there are a lot of people who aren't. Getting them on your side would be nice, and more importantly it'll help you keep everyone on the same page. Equally important, if anyone else knows things like the fishermen in St. Claire and gangers in Pontiac then you want to get them knowing what you're knowing and working together.
MIL ACTION
[]- Survey Grounds: This one's nice and simple. You've got surveyors on the County payroll who you can easily snipe, you've got Explorers cooling their heels and enjoying the little luxuries of life, and you've got a lot of people who are going to be chomping at the teeth to get their hands on raw materials like wood. Surveying the Outlands is the first step to getting civilized people there, and more importantly you know will have a home-field advantage off your own, valuable turf.
[]- Deep Scouting Run: This one's more dangerous, and quite frankly you're not sure if you want to do it. In essence, Jack & Co. have a proposal that involves getting canoes and going as far up the Paint Creek and Clinton River as they can, trying to make sure your waterways are safe. It probably won't end in tragedy, and if it does then it'll be easy to find out how it went wrong when everything washes downriver.
[]- Assemble Response Force: As Jack's misadventure proved, there are some very violent people out there who are aggressive. Having a way to fight back would be excellent, although you're going to have to drag it through the Town Council kicking and screaming. (-25 Mil on success, -50 on failure)
[]- Assemble Paramilitary Unit: A cheaper alternative to actually getting a government-organized fighting unit put together, you could probably get Jack to whip together a "citizen response force" under his command, which would give you a lot of leeway in their use. However, they'd be fairly finicky, and you'd hate to see some of your neighbors' reaction to that kind of thing if they found out.
ADMIN ACTION
[]- Preliminary Planning: There's a painfully likely chance you're not going to have machines to help you with a lot of what you need to do next planting season. As such, you're going to need to replace mechanization with warm bodies, and that's going to be a difficult proposition at best. Start thinking about it now, and if it comes up later you won't have too many issues.
[]- Housing Codes: Time to bring housing back into code. You've got a lot of houses, and a lot of them use gas stoves. If you can make it mandatory to go wood, and God knows, you've got wood, then you can definitely stave off some of the issues that are going to be popping up when winter rolls around.
[]- Language Barrier: Jack's right, as usual, and you need to crack the language barrier if you're ever going to get trade going. Considering what you've got going for you in terms of food production, you're going to need trade as soon as you figure out whatever the local version of "dos tacos, por favor" is, and you're going to need to get on that really quickly.
[]- New Census: To be perfectly frank, right now information is king. You need an accurate count of the population if you want anything to get done, and the only way to get that right now is to break out the door-knockers with clipboards. More importantly, it could show you if you've been highballing or lowballing the population numbers, showing how close your food estimates are.
------
Critical Resources Turns Remaining: 2
Food Supply: 0 Turns!
Food Production: 37% Base, 25% as per Passive Trade, 50% as per Active Trade Deal
Cash Flow: Good
Credit Rating: Excellent
Public Order: Good
Public Mood: Worried, Determined.
Points
Diplo: 165
Mil: 130
Admin: 194
(Starvation Rules/Conditional Trade Rules to be posted shortly.)
Turn 4; Shit's cold, yo.
7734
Trust and verify.
- Location
- Philmont
Diplo Action: Eastern Focus; 1d100=42+8+10=60, Dc 55, Success
Looking out across the snow-covered fields, you smiled slightly. Waldenburg had jumped in bed with you without even blinking, and Anchor Bay Gardens and Harrison Charter Township had given up the ghost of independence. You found it rather funny, to tell the truth- the Rochester Weekly praised you quiet loudly, but the southern newspapers were chewing you out one side and down the other as a imperialistic autocrat. You didn't care what they said, though- you stood on a solid base that would be food-independent as soon as the next crop went in the ground. Until then, you had stockpiles of fish from New Baltimore, that trade deal with St. Claire that had steadily turned your gasoline stocks into empty tanks, and the barest leftovers of what you did have as extra food were sent to the muckhole that was Pontiac.
Some of your citizens had complained up a storm, but you'd promptly ignored them. The civic council was on your side, and more importantly you knew that the foundation of industry was what kept your own gears turning. Rochester was an information town, with it's peripheries moreso. Engineering labs for Automotive Alley ringed your "industrial park" and your public schools and community college you pushed for brains first, arts second, and work ethic third. You exported ideas, and imported the finished goods; and if you didn't have anyone to send ideas, you were shit out of luck.
Mil Action: Survey Grounds; 1d100=59+4+10+5, Dc 60, Success +2
Looking out across the spread of full-page glossy photographs with James at his house, you had to smile faintly. The fire was stoked to a dull blaze, the leaky old Franklin stove keeping his living room a balmy eighty-five degrees against the winter snow.
"So, your opinions?" you ask, taking a sip of the basil and mint tea your old friend liked to grow. He'd been the furthest afield, according to his observations and very full notebooks. Of course, if you believed everything in those books, he'd been all around the world, working in every country from Afghanistan to Zanibar. Still, he was a died-in-the-wool ruffian and explorer.
"Well, good news and bad news." Jack murmered, looking over the glossies. "Bad news, they're right on top of a mess of pine and spruce; not awesome building material. Good news, once the river thaws they can get to sawing wood like nobody's business. Package the wood up, put it in carriages, and we can sell it to St. Claire for building boats or we can use it ourselves to put new houses up."
"You think we're going to have a population boom?" you asked, looking everything over.
"I think we're going to have a lot of houses get written off for insurance money, get their siding ripped off and replaced with wooden shiplap, and flipped."
"Ahh." You muttered. "So, everything going well?"
"Painfully so." He muttered, shooting you a small smile. "The survey wasn't even a blip on the radar as far as non-events go. Show up, pitch base camp, sort out a duty roster, and BAM." He clapped, as exclamation. "Expo group goes off, stakes out the survey site, survey team goes and surveys, coppiest copies the surveys, messenger rides off on my shiny new horse to give them to the City Hall, and-"
As the electric lights all flicker and die, Jack sighed. "Sorry, we've been getting brown-outs here in the sticks for a while when the town center kicks into night mode. Let me kick the breakers off to night mode, and I'll light a candle."
Sitting and waiting, you take a look out of Jack's big picture window. When he returned, you shot him a sly smile. "The lights in the barn never flickered." You mentioned offhandedly.
"The lights in the barn are vapor lamps running off fumes from the septic system I built. Always wanted to get into green energy, so my bright idea was to take offal offgasses and burn 'em. Couldn't quite get power generation off the methane and propane due to consistency issues, so I ditched the project when Mom left."
As a FOOMPH went off from the barn, Jack put his head in his hands. "And that's the sound of Chris forgetting to check the seals on the system when he flushed the secondary septics into the main tank. If you'll excuse me, again, I need to make sure the blast flaps flapped and I don't have a few thousand pounds of manure on fire."
Chuckling, you watched Jack shrug on a coat as you finished your tea. You'd find out what other projects he had going on soon enough, you figured.
---
Admin Action: New Housing Codes; 1d100=7+20+14, Dc 45, Failure.
Spurned on by the new lumber mill and new bloom of industry, you got to work on renovating the housing codes. Fireplaces as mandatory, basements as mandatory, peaked roofs, insulated windows, central heat, hot-water radiators, the works.
This immidiantly hit more brick walls than a tank in a bad war movie. Not being a foolish mayor, you went for the more vulnerable target- new build construction. You could probably scramble up a design for a hot-water heating system that used a central wood-fired furnace, right?
Wrong. Wrong on both counts. Fine, you groused to yourself. New-build commercial buildings had to be soft targets, right?
Nope. At the end of the week, you found yourself rubbing your head and hoping you hadn't accidentally burned any bridges in this attempt.
----
Independent Action: 1d20=15+1+1+3, Minor Crit
Grinning to yourself, you went out to your barn. Over the door, a sign reading "Jack's Toy Store" creaked in the winter wind as you slammed the rolley-door shut.
"Alright boys, what we got?" you called out, scrambling the dozen-ish guys who lived here. Something not many people except Cathy knew was that your house had a triple basement, absolutely stocked full to the brim with canned food, bottled water, and assorted survival implements. Dad had believed, with all his heart, he and his would see Doomsday come, and that they better be ready to ride it out, through the fire and flames it brought.
Sad to say, he never saw it. An aneurism of the heart did what a cold world never could, his remains in a cemetery with his family a thousand years in the future and a thousand miles from this house. Either way, you hadn't been letting the material go to waste. A mix of friends with nowhere else to go, promising students with home lives from hell, older drunks who needed a place away from the Foreign Legion post to get their wits back together. Dad was the one who started the habit, but you practiced it religiously. One parts charity to two parts mercenary, you had a think tank hiding out here that nobody knew existed.
"Finished working out the gun lock pattern!" Sudebey called, his dark hair bobbing. "It's a headache, but I got it down to eight pieces!"
Laughing, you clapped the slight kid on the back. "Good work!" you said, looking at the bench he used. A black rubber hose led from a central PVC pipe holding the sewage gasses, while the vapor lamp's cloth mantle smoldered with a dull light. Sudebey was a kid who'd been attending the Sihk temple in town, but had gotten lost in Rochester Hills trying to find his family's car. They'd scrammed to their home in Troy, while you'd gotten him a chicken sandwich and a side of undying loyalty when you offered to put him up for a while. Now, he'd payed off his food investment twice over with his clever hands, and if this flintlock design worked as advertised then you'd need to double it to four times over.
Now that you had a semi-steady source of gunpowder from the Bomb Shop (not your name) where Tom had holed up and a working flintlock design by Sudebey, you needed to start thinking about the last important piece of equipment for your proposed guns- the barrel and the stock. Given the new mill, you could easily buy lumber and get a few of your backup layabouts to get to carving, but the barrels were harder. You did know some guys further south who could help you, but they needed metal, bad.
Well, time to start abusing power. Cathy had set up a theoretical office for outland merchants- time to find it, and strongarm whoever was going to be on the pointy end of the stick into learning the local language with The Girl and those ex-slaves who were disturbingly good at digging. Seriously, it was creepy. You gave them shoveled, mimed/yelled slowly where you wanted the area dug out, and three days later- bmph! New foundation for the Bomb Shop.
You really needed to start learning the languages.
--------
VOTES
DIPLO ACTION
[]- Grand Survey: Someone needs to map out the area hit by the Event, and as Jack so archly performed, the waterways and trails outside the Event Area. On the plus side, it's going to be dirt cheap. On the minus, though, it means letting Jack off the leash for a bit.
[]- Southern Focus: To the south of you sits Troy, and likewise Pontiac. Both are significantly bigger than you, both have a lot less resources, and both have major criminal elements that, if provoked, will make a hell of a lot of headaches. A little polite shoulder tap should keep them off their back, though
[]- Concrete Jungle: Nobody has gotten close to Detroit with a ten foot pole yet, and you're not sure you want to. There's a lot of territory ripe for the taking, as well as potential land, but there's also a lot of people who started off desperate and are only seeing things get worse.
[]- Northern Conference: You, right now, know a lot. Thing is, you're on the border with this mess, and there are a lot of people who aren't. Getting them on your side would be nice, and more importantly it'll help you keep everyone on the same page. Equally important, if anyone else knows things like the fishermen in St. Claire and gangers in Pontiac then you want to get them knowing what you're knowing and working together.
MIL ACTION
[]- Deep Scouting Run: This one's more dangerous, and quite frankly you're not sure if you want to do it. In essence, Jack & Co. have a proposal that involves getting canoes and going as far up the Paint Creek and Clinton River as they can, trying to make sure your waterways are safe. It probably won't end in tragedy, and if it does then it'll be easy to find out how it went wrong when everything washes downriver.
[]- Assemble Response Force: As Jack's misadventure proved, there are some very violent people out there who are aggressive. Having a way to fight back would be excellent, although you're going to have to drag it through the Town Council kicking and screaming. (-25 Mil on success, -50 on failure)
[]- Assemble Paramilitary Unit: A cheaper alternative to actually getting a government-organized fighting unit put together, you could probably get Jack to whip together a "citizen response force" under his command, which would give you a lot of leeway in their use. However, they'd be fairly finicky, and you'd hate to see some of your neighbors' reaction to that kind of thing if they found out.
[]- Promote Defense Industry: There's a lot of next-to savages out there, and to be brutally frank you and Lake St. Claire are the tip of the spear. While most people are used to thinking in numbers of guns between you and the enemy, Jack's friends have long extolled the virtues of shovels that work and boots that don't leak. Making sure to have basic soldiering kit on tap might not be a bad idea, and it's well suited to the sort of cottage industry you're stuck with.
ADMIN ACTION
[]- Preliminary Planning: There's a painfully likely chance you're not going to have machines to help you with a lot of what you need to do next planting season. As such, you're going to need to replace mechanization with warm bodies, and that's going to be a difficult proposition at best. Start thinking about it now, and if it comes up later you won't have too many issues.
[]- Housing Codes, Again: Time to bring housing back into code. You've got a lot of houses, and a lot of them use gas stoves. If you can make it mandatory to go wood, and God knows, you've got wood, then you can definitely stave off some of the issues that are going to be popping up when winter rolls around. After the failure that was last time, though, you're going to need to be subtle- and more important, you're going to need to find friends in the construction industry.
[]- Language Barrier: Jack's right, as usual, and you need to crack the language barrier if you're ever going to get trade going. Considering what you've got going for you in terms of food production, you're going to need trade as soon as you figure out whatever the local version of "dos tacos, por favor" is, and you're going to need to get on that really quickly.
[]- New Census: To be perfectly frank, right now information is king. You need an accurate count of the population if you want anything to get done, and the only way to get that right now is to break out the door-knockers with clipboards. More importantly, it could show you if you've been highballing or lowballing the population numbers, showing how close your food estimates are.
----
Critical Resources Turns Remaining: 0 Turns!
Food Supply: 0 Turns!
Food Production: 15% Base, 25% as per Passive Trade, 100% as per Active Trade Deal
Food Trade: 40% to Pontiac
Cash Flow: Good
Credit Rating: Good
Public Order: Good
Public Mood: Worried, Frustrated.
Points
Diplo: 185
Mil: 135
Admin: 228
Looking out across the snow-covered fields, you smiled slightly. Waldenburg had jumped in bed with you without even blinking, and Anchor Bay Gardens and Harrison Charter Township had given up the ghost of independence. You found it rather funny, to tell the truth- the Rochester Weekly praised you quiet loudly, but the southern newspapers were chewing you out one side and down the other as a imperialistic autocrat. You didn't care what they said, though- you stood on a solid base that would be food-independent as soon as the next crop went in the ground. Until then, you had stockpiles of fish from New Baltimore, that trade deal with St. Claire that had steadily turned your gasoline stocks into empty tanks, and the barest leftovers of what you did have as extra food were sent to the muckhole that was Pontiac.
Some of your citizens had complained up a storm, but you'd promptly ignored them. The civic council was on your side, and more importantly you knew that the foundation of industry was what kept your own gears turning. Rochester was an information town, with it's peripheries moreso. Engineering labs for Automotive Alley ringed your "industrial park" and your public schools and community college you pushed for brains first, arts second, and work ethic third. You exported ideas, and imported the finished goods; and if you didn't have anyone to send ideas, you were shit out of luck.
Mil Action: Survey Grounds; 1d100=59+4+10+5, Dc 60, Success +2
Looking out across the spread of full-page glossy photographs with James at his house, you had to smile faintly. The fire was stoked to a dull blaze, the leaky old Franklin stove keeping his living room a balmy eighty-five degrees against the winter snow.
"So, your opinions?" you ask, taking a sip of the basil and mint tea your old friend liked to grow. He'd been the furthest afield, according to his observations and very full notebooks. Of course, if you believed everything in those books, he'd been all around the world, working in every country from Afghanistan to Zanibar. Still, he was a died-in-the-wool ruffian and explorer.
"Well, good news and bad news." Jack murmered, looking over the glossies. "Bad news, they're right on top of a mess of pine and spruce; not awesome building material. Good news, once the river thaws they can get to sawing wood like nobody's business. Package the wood up, put it in carriages, and we can sell it to St. Claire for building boats or we can use it ourselves to put new houses up."
"You think we're going to have a population boom?" you asked, looking everything over.
"I think we're going to have a lot of houses get written off for insurance money, get their siding ripped off and replaced with wooden shiplap, and flipped."
"Ahh." You muttered. "So, everything going well?"
"Painfully so." He muttered, shooting you a small smile. "The survey wasn't even a blip on the radar as far as non-events go. Show up, pitch base camp, sort out a duty roster, and BAM." He clapped, as exclamation. "Expo group goes off, stakes out the survey site, survey team goes and surveys, coppiest copies the surveys, messenger rides off on my shiny new horse to give them to the City Hall, and-"
As the electric lights all flicker and die, Jack sighed. "Sorry, we've been getting brown-outs here in the sticks for a while when the town center kicks into night mode. Let me kick the breakers off to night mode, and I'll light a candle."
Sitting and waiting, you take a look out of Jack's big picture window. When he returned, you shot him a sly smile. "The lights in the barn never flickered." You mentioned offhandedly.
"The lights in the barn are vapor lamps running off fumes from the septic system I built. Always wanted to get into green energy, so my bright idea was to take offal offgasses and burn 'em. Couldn't quite get power generation off the methane and propane due to consistency issues, so I ditched the project when Mom left."
As a FOOMPH went off from the barn, Jack put his head in his hands. "And that's the sound of Chris forgetting to check the seals on the system when he flushed the secondary septics into the main tank. If you'll excuse me, again, I need to make sure the blast flaps flapped and I don't have a few thousand pounds of manure on fire."
Chuckling, you watched Jack shrug on a coat as you finished your tea. You'd find out what other projects he had going on soon enough, you figured.
---
Admin Action: New Housing Codes; 1d100=7+20+14, Dc 45, Failure.
Spurned on by the new lumber mill and new bloom of industry, you got to work on renovating the housing codes. Fireplaces as mandatory, basements as mandatory, peaked roofs, insulated windows, central heat, hot-water radiators, the works.
This immidiantly hit more brick walls than a tank in a bad war movie. Not being a foolish mayor, you went for the more vulnerable target- new build construction. You could probably scramble up a design for a hot-water heating system that used a central wood-fired furnace, right?
Wrong. Wrong on both counts. Fine, you groused to yourself. New-build commercial buildings had to be soft targets, right?
Nope. At the end of the week, you found yourself rubbing your head and hoping you hadn't accidentally burned any bridges in this attempt.
----
Independent Action: 1d20=15+1+1+3, Minor Crit
Grinning to yourself, you went out to your barn. Over the door, a sign reading "Jack's Toy Store" creaked in the winter wind as you slammed the rolley-door shut.
"Alright boys, what we got?" you called out, scrambling the dozen-ish guys who lived here. Something not many people except Cathy knew was that your house had a triple basement, absolutely stocked full to the brim with canned food, bottled water, and assorted survival implements. Dad had believed, with all his heart, he and his would see Doomsday come, and that they better be ready to ride it out, through the fire and flames it brought.
Sad to say, he never saw it. An aneurism of the heart did what a cold world never could, his remains in a cemetery with his family a thousand years in the future and a thousand miles from this house. Either way, you hadn't been letting the material go to waste. A mix of friends with nowhere else to go, promising students with home lives from hell, older drunks who needed a place away from the Foreign Legion post to get their wits back together. Dad was the one who started the habit, but you practiced it religiously. One parts charity to two parts mercenary, you had a think tank hiding out here that nobody knew existed.
"Finished working out the gun lock pattern!" Sudebey called, his dark hair bobbing. "It's a headache, but I got it down to eight pieces!"
Laughing, you clapped the slight kid on the back. "Good work!" you said, looking at the bench he used. A black rubber hose led from a central PVC pipe holding the sewage gasses, while the vapor lamp's cloth mantle smoldered with a dull light. Sudebey was a kid who'd been attending the Sihk temple in town, but had gotten lost in Rochester Hills trying to find his family's car. They'd scrammed to their home in Troy, while you'd gotten him a chicken sandwich and a side of undying loyalty when you offered to put him up for a while. Now, he'd payed off his food investment twice over with his clever hands, and if this flintlock design worked as advertised then you'd need to double it to four times over.
Now that you had a semi-steady source of gunpowder from the Bomb Shop (not your name) where Tom had holed up and a working flintlock design by Sudebey, you needed to start thinking about the last important piece of equipment for your proposed guns- the barrel and the stock. Given the new mill, you could easily buy lumber and get a few of your backup layabouts to get to carving, but the barrels were harder. You did know some guys further south who could help you, but they needed metal, bad.
Well, time to start abusing power. Cathy had set up a theoretical office for outland merchants- time to find it, and strongarm whoever was going to be on the pointy end of the stick into learning the local language with The Girl and those ex-slaves who were disturbingly good at digging. Seriously, it was creepy. You gave them shoveled, mimed/yelled slowly where you wanted the area dug out, and three days later- bmph! New foundation for the Bomb Shop.
You really needed to start learning the languages.
--------
VOTES
DIPLO ACTION
[]- Grand Survey: Someone needs to map out the area hit by the Event, and as Jack so archly performed, the waterways and trails outside the Event Area. On the plus side, it's going to be dirt cheap. On the minus, though, it means letting Jack off the leash for a bit.
[]- Southern Focus: To the south of you sits Troy, and likewise Pontiac. Both are significantly bigger than you, both have a lot less resources, and both have major criminal elements that, if provoked, will make a hell of a lot of headaches. A little polite shoulder tap should keep them off their back, though
[]- Concrete Jungle: Nobody has gotten close to Detroit with a ten foot pole yet, and you're not sure you want to. There's a lot of territory ripe for the taking, as well as potential land, but there's also a lot of people who started off desperate and are only seeing things get worse.
[]- Northern Conference: You, right now, know a lot. Thing is, you're on the border with this mess, and there are a lot of people who aren't. Getting them on your side would be nice, and more importantly it'll help you keep everyone on the same page. Equally important, if anyone else knows things like the fishermen in St. Claire and gangers in Pontiac then you want to get them knowing what you're knowing and working together.
MIL ACTION
[]- Deep Scouting Run: This one's more dangerous, and quite frankly you're not sure if you want to do it. In essence, Jack & Co. have a proposal that involves getting canoes and going as far up the Paint Creek and Clinton River as they can, trying to make sure your waterways are safe. It probably won't end in tragedy, and if it does then it'll be easy to find out how it went wrong when everything washes downriver.
[]- Assemble Response Force: As Jack's misadventure proved, there are some very violent people out there who are aggressive. Having a way to fight back would be excellent, although you're going to have to drag it through the Town Council kicking and screaming. (-25 Mil on success, -50 on failure)
[]- Assemble Paramilitary Unit: A cheaper alternative to actually getting a government-organized fighting unit put together, you could probably get Jack to whip together a "citizen response force" under his command, which would give you a lot of leeway in their use. However, they'd be fairly finicky, and you'd hate to see some of your neighbors' reaction to that kind of thing if they found out.
[]- Promote Defense Industry: There's a lot of next-to savages out there, and to be brutally frank you and Lake St. Claire are the tip of the spear. While most people are used to thinking in numbers of guns between you and the enemy, Jack's friends have long extolled the virtues of shovels that work and boots that don't leak. Making sure to have basic soldiering kit on tap might not be a bad idea, and it's well suited to the sort of cottage industry you're stuck with.
ADMIN ACTION
[]- Preliminary Planning: There's a painfully likely chance you're not going to have machines to help you with a lot of what you need to do next planting season. As such, you're going to need to replace mechanization with warm bodies, and that's going to be a difficult proposition at best. Start thinking about it now, and if it comes up later you won't have too many issues.
[]- Housing Codes, Again: Time to bring housing back into code. You've got a lot of houses, and a lot of them use gas stoves. If you can make it mandatory to go wood, and God knows, you've got wood, then you can definitely stave off some of the issues that are going to be popping up when winter rolls around. After the failure that was last time, though, you're going to need to be subtle- and more important, you're going to need to find friends in the construction industry.
[]- Language Barrier: Jack's right, as usual, and you need to crack the language barrier if you're ever going to get trade going. Considering what you've got going for you in terms of food production, you're going to need trade as soon as you figure out whatever the local version of "dos tacos, por favor" is, and you're going to need to get on that really quickly.
[]- New Census: To be perfectly frank, right now information is king. You need an accurate count of the population if you want anything to get done, and the only way to get that right now is to break out the door-knockers with clipboards. More importantly, it could show you if you've been highballing or lowballing the population numbers, showing how close your food estimates are.
----
Critical Resources Turns Remaining: 0 Turns!
Food Supply: 0 Turns!
Food Production: 15% Base, 25% as per Passive Trade, 100% as per Active Trade Deal
Food Trade: 40% to Pontiac
Cash Flow: Good
Credit Rating: Good
Public Order: Good
Public Mood: Worried, Frustrated.
Points
Diplo: 185
Mil: 135
Admin: 228