The Story so far…
A Light in the Darkness
New Bravado was once a boomtown built on the promise of wealth, status and discovery. The wastelands that make up the San Saba; the greater region upon which New Bravado resides, are irradiated and unforgiving to the fragile Survivors who brave them. Overshadowed by the military fortress of Bastion looming nearby, past the radioactive nightmare of the Exclusion Zone, the town is isolated from easy access, both to survivors, raiders, or zed alike. New Bravado risks being forgotten once more, a reminder that the wasteland is a cruel and brutal mistress,
Built by its own citizens, Bravado is a frontier town whose identity and relevancy are now staked almost entirely on The Ox, one of the few remaining locomotives built from the detritus of broken construction equipment, several derelict train cars and a single jet engine. While the Ox once rocketed across the greater wastes at ludicrous speeds to deliver raw products and finished goods to their respective markets, the quickly decaying network of rails now only stretches between a few remaining settlements across the San Saba Wastes.
Beneath the town, in the ruddy clay of yesteryear, lie the bones of an ancient oldcestor Facility - fossilized in the stratum below the surface by eons of disuse and quietude. Rare metals, scrap and salvage are harvested from within, wiring pulled from ancient and unknowable machines, steel plating ripped from walls, and glass and metals gathered from forgotten workshops below. Despite the arcane script of lost Barogue inscribed on walls below, only the Delvers and diggers who work for the nearby settlement of Drywater seem to care any longer for the forgotten secrets within, and the howls of undead that lurk in the shadows.
Below it all, below the quiet streets of New Bravado, beneath the Facility and below what lurks beneath that, the Mortis Amaranthine churns with all the whirling surety of a meat grinder, and it waits inevitably for its time and its turn. The town was once destroyed by a wave of nightmarish undead, emerging in a vast horde to wipe the memory of civilization from the wasteland, and it seems like some pressure is building towards a cruel repeat of the past.
Left alone to their own devices, doomed to repeat that which has been lost to a fog of memories, and isolated from their allies, New Bravado has entered a tenuous epoch during which its future is unsure, but its potential is vast. It will be up to the citizens of this ghost town to survive new threats and challenges from within and abroad, and to make a mark on history that can never be forgotten.
Season Eight: hope shines in the dark
For a future to be forged, it must first endure the test of fire. Though the San Saba has weathered many a Burning Season, the flames that curl over the region in the wake of the fall of Pride’s Hold proves one of the most challenging in recent memory.
The brutal heat, burning air, and rampant wild fires usually forces the wasteland to a stand still. While the survivors of the San Saba have learned to thrive despite the conditions, the months following the summer are filled with a bustle of activity of rebuilding, replanting, and emerging from the ashes. This devastating heat usually includes the silver lining of controlling the dangerous wildlife, undead hordes, and raider clans of the region. Zombies are burnt to a crisp, critters are purged and sent into hibernation, and the raider clans are devastated and scattered.
This year, the entire Tri-City Alliance finds themselves without the usual reprieve from the Raider threat as the nearby fortress of Pride’s Hold, once filled with Peacekeepers and Reckoners, the bulwark against the constant dangers of the wasteland, has become a hornet’s nest of deadly scavengers. While the survivors still need to rebuild and recoup, the cisterns and underground barracks of the fortress kept the raiders organized and thriving in a way never thought possible. Without an organized force of defenders to keep them in check, the Raiders born of those lost to the fall of Pride’s Hold are quickly becoming an apocalyptic threat.
The City of Light and Sound, Essex, has become crucial to this new threat to the wasteland. The lone city of note excluded from the Tri-City Alliance, the thriving metroplex is remerging as a center of culture and celebration, drawing merchants, revelers, refugees, and grifters alike to the town. The bustling city, with no walls on a vast plain of prairie is a tactical nightmare to defend, and a ticking time bomb for every other settlement in the wastes. If the raiders overtake Essex, Bad Brain will spread like wildfire and bolster the ranks of the predators like never before. Bastion has presented a plan to reinforce the town, but cannot hope to succeed without help from Bravado to overcome old grudges and memories of the war.
Underneath it all, a creeping doom beneath the town of Bravado rears its head, a promise of a necrological rite meant to contain the worst of the corruption within failing step by step. Phantom words in a forgotten language are heard on the wind, or in the minds of those that pass through the Mortis Amaranthine. New and dangerous undead have been found within the tunnels of the Facility below the town, and strange red crystals have been growing in unusual places. The undead monstrosities that swarmed from old Barogue at the end of the War of Antlers are returning, new undead threats from ages long gone. And at the heart of darkness, a familiar threat stirs once more..
The end of Bravado seems to draw near. Will the survivors survive the test of fire and darkness that threatens to spill out from within the Mortis? Will they ready their defenses before a crushing wave of cannibal raiders sweep across the wasteland? Will the tense politics and alliances survive the pressure of the moment or will they abandon each other in their moment of need?
Will hope shine brightest in the dark? Or will Bravado be the last to stand before the darkness that engulfs the San Saba wasteland?
