Flatlander Expanse - Part 2 - Marrowdeep (The Pile of Bones)

Region Type: Necrotic Dead Zone / Boneyard Frontier
Original Name: Regina
New Name: Marrowdeep (commonly called "The Pile")
Vibe: Bleached sun, whispering winds, and the distant thunder of undead hooves
Unique Feature: Endless herds of skeletal bison roam the blasted plains, stirred by residual death magic left over from ancient mass hunts.

Overview

Once called Regina, now known as Marrowdeep, this skeletal metropolis was never under the control of the Fallen Lords. Whether due to jurisdictional confusion or sheer remoteness, they left it alone, and that neglect allowed something strange and independent to take root. Over time, necromancers, the bereaved, and the bonebound came here to raise a new kind of life out of the death-soaked earth.

Despite being a sanctuary for the dead and those who work with them, outsiders often view the region with horror and suspicion. Its very name—"Pile of Bones"—evokes dread, yet those within its ossified spires see themselves not as death worshippers but as stewards of a sacred, sustainable necromancy.

History of Marrowdeep (The City Once Known as Regina)

 Pre-Fall: The Origins of “Pile of Bones”

 

• Indigenous Legacy: The region was initially known to the Cree as oskana kā-asastēki, meaning “the place where bones are piled.”
• This referred to the massive mounds of bison bones left behind after communal hunts, forming sacred and symbolic landmarks.
• These bones held spiritual significance—seen not as waste, but as a communion with the spirits of the land.
• Colonial Era: European settlers mistranslated the name into “Pile of Bones,” which later softened into Regina during the 19th century as the city took on administrative importance.
• The spiritual roots of the land were mainly ignored until they woke up.

 20th Century: Regina Before the End

• The city served as a provincial capital and a regional hub of bureaucracy, agriculture, and midwestern practicality.
• Despite its modest size, Regina built a reputation for civil service, railway logistics, and a unique blend of flatland resilience and prairie mysticism.
• Some locals still whispered that the bones beneath the city "remembered" and that the land was “haunted by heritage,” but few took it seriously.

The Hodgepocalypse Hits

 

• When the Hodgepocalypse struck—a convergence of magical disasters, psychic breakdowns, and eldritch contamination—Regina fared better than most cities.
• Why? The deep-buried bison bones acted like a necrotic sponge, absorbing and redirecting unstable energies.
• The city became a necrotic neutral zone, not by design, but by bone-bound destiny.
• While other cities fell to madness or inferno, Regina transformed: into Marrowdeep is a jagged silhouette of:

·       Bone Spires

·       Broken Skyscrapers

·       Necrofungus-choked ruins

Architecture fuses with necromantic intent: buildings “heal” their cracks with ossified tendrils, and walls pulse with slow necro-heartbeats. It’s not beautiful—but it is alive.

• Most importantly, necromantic spirits began to gather, not as enslaved minions, but as free-willed dead, pulled to the land’s spiritual gravity.

The Necromantic Migration

• During the Necromantic Wars that followed the fall, where various factions used undead as weapons, Marrowdeep became neutral ground.
• Those undead who gained sentience or were freed from domination spells had nowhere to go.
• Living nations saw them as monsters, threats, or weapons.
• But the Pile welcomed them—dead and not dangerous, displaced but not disposable.
• What started as a trickle became an exodus.
• Refugee caravans of the walking dead trudged across the plains to reach Marrowdeep.
• The Kamidavers—dead who took up the mantle of stewards and spiritual ranchers—formed the cultural backbone of this society.

Marrowdeep Today: Sanctuary of the Bone-Willed

• Now, Marrowdeep is a strange bastion of benevolent necromancy, where the dead are neither feared nor glorified—they are lived with.
• The undead and necromantically touched citizens coexist with the living in complex harmony.
• Most living here are descendants of necromantic refugees, bonewrights, ritual farmers, or wanderers seeking purpose.
• Major powers largely ignore the city, as even the Fallen Lords once debated its jurisdiction and found it more trouble than it's worth.
• That, or the Pile protects its own.

Necroplains Ecology

The lands around Marrowdeep are far from lifeless. They teem with a strange, adapted ecosystem:

• Bonegrass: Razor-sharp flora that feeds on the marrow remnants left behind by bison stampedes. Collectors must wear bone-woven boots to avoid slicing injuries.

• Scavenger Vultures: Multi-eyed carrion birds used by necromancers as omens, familiars, or messengers. They often form murder-flocks during Stampedes.

• Stampedes of the Dead: Periodic, unstoppable rushes of skeletal bison across the plains. They demolish anything in their path and stir up ghost winds that echo with ancient cries. They are not mindless. They remember.

The Rise of Necrotech: Industry of Bone and Steel

After the Necromantic Wars, the undead population of Marrowdeep faced a critical dilemma: how to survive and thrive in a world that neither trusted nor supported them. They didn’t just want sanctuary—they wanted sovereignty.

The answer was found in a new craft—Necrotech.

What Is Necrotech?

Necrotech is industrialized necromancy—the art and science of fusing the dead, the arcane, and the mechanical into functional, often beautiful, sometimes grotesque creations. It blends:

• Corpse Materials (bone, sinew, spiritual residue)
• Arcane Binding Runes
• Machinery and Engine Components
• Psycho-reactive Alloys (metal that "remembers" rituals)

This isn't mindless horror. This is craftsmanship. This is post-life engineering.

Historical Origins of Necrotech in Marrowdeep

Stage 1: Post-War Scavenging (Early Refugee Era)

• Refugees brought with them broken war constructs, enslaved revenants, and shattered boneforges.
• Marrowdeep’s bonewrights salvaged and repurposed the pieces using industrial methods from before the fall.
• Tinkers and morticians collaborated for the first time—autopsies became blueprints.

Stage 2: The Founding of the Ossuary Guilds

• Guilds like the Iron Phylactery, the Augur's Foundry, and Cog & Clavicle emerged.
• These necrotech unions organized production, standardized rituals, and even minted Bonecredits, a currency backed by sanctified remains and arcane tithes.
• Worker’s rights charters for both the living and post-living were established.

Stage 3: Export Economy Boom

• While most nations banned necromancy outright, they couldn’t resist necrotech imports:
• Self-driving bonewagons powered by soul-engines.
• Undead construction crews who never tired, guided by copper-plated lich foremen.
• Communication skulls—cheap, effective short-range voicing devices.
• Marrowdeep’s exports became a black-market luxury in some regions and a state secret in others.

The Culture of Necrotech Today

• Necrotech is part of daily life in Marrowdeep:
• Street cleaners are skeletal constructs with steam-powered brooms.
• Public transit rides soul-bound ossicars on magnetic bone-tracks.
• Security forces use Skelpacks and armor made from Monster hide plating enhanced with servomotors.
• Most citizens either build, maintain, or ride necrotech devices regularly.
• Education includes ritual mechanics, and apprenticeships often begin in the ossuary schools or scrapyard churches.

Ethics & Controversy

• Necrotech must be built ethically in Marrowdeep:
• Components must be sourced from donated or reclaimed remains.
• Conscious spirits must consent to usage or be given a choice to move on.
• “Blackfounding” (unethical necrotech from unwilling bodies) is a high crime, punished by soul-burning exile.
• Outside the city, however, necrotech's reputation remains controversial. It is seen as profanity by some and miracle engineering by others.

People of Marrowdeep

Kamidavers: Bonebound Cowboys

The Kamidavers of Marrowdeep. are not just undead—they’re undead on purpose. They live (sort of) by the code of benevolent necromancy.  Combined with the surge of Refugees from the Necromantic wars, this has made this the single largest population of Kamidavers in North America.

Kamidaver Subcultures

Dustbrand Riders

• Ride ghost steeds across ley-line pastures.
• Keep herds "spiritually fresh" through rotational grazing.

Hollowhearts

• Bonewrights and necro-medics.
• Can rebuild a bison—or person—from just a few choice bones.

The Marrow Choir

• Chanting necro-priests who ensure peaceful transitions of soul-essence.
• Their songs are rumored to calm stampedes or awaken old ghosts.

Other Species of Note

Fate Fugitives

Marrowdeep is a sanctuary for those fleeing destiny. Many become artists, prophets, or underground philosophers.

Feylin 

 

Often visit for pop culture scavenging and glam-punk necro-fashion. They find Marrowdeep deliciously edgy.

Minotaurs:  

 Most Minotaur bands consider this one of the significant places to go on tour.  Their Heavy Metal Lifestyle seems uniquely suitable for going to a friendly necromantic city.  Some like it so much, they settle down.

Stumpies

Grumpy plant-people who appreciate the grit, stay rooted, and help maintain the necro-farms on the city's edge.

Vamps 

Classic nocturnal aristocrats or gritty drifters, they find a strange freedom here where blood isn't judged—only taxed.

They often have envoys, adventurers, and tourists from nearby Genefield, the Ember Court, and Moosejaw.

Culture & Society

Core Beliefs

In Marrowdeep, death is stewardship, not an end. Each soul belongs to a bloodline or spectral herd, a lineage stretching beyond life into myth. Society revolves around the belief that undeath is a sacred continuation—one to be honored, maintained, and never abused.

Code of Conduct

·       Wards of Peace: No one may be reanimated without their prior consent or spectral kin's.

·       Spirit Marks: Every Kamidaver wears a glyph etched into bone or brand, symbolizing heritage and identity.

·       The Pale Oath: Cruel or exploitative necromancy is the highest sin. Those who violate it are stripped of name and glyph, condemned to wander as Bleachwalkers, hunted by both the living and the dead.

The Stampede of Spirits

Every few seasons, the spectral winds shift, and with them comes the Stampede: a tidal surge of ghostly herds thundering across the aether. When the veil weakens, the city braces itself. Entire districts are sealed behind ritual wards, and every citizen—living or otherwise—joins the effort to hold the line. It's not just survival; it's tradition, duty, and a communal dance with the dead.

Iconic Locations

The Bone Archive

Once a museum of natural history, now a living reliquary of forgotten flesh and fossil memory, the Bone Archive is a towering vault where animated skeletons roam under vaulted ceilings of rune-etched boneglass. Here, marrow-scribes inscribe ancestral epics into bone slats, and bone-seers interpret fracture-lines in fossil remains like tea leaves of the dead. Ancient necrotech prototypes hum faintly behind soulglass, while extinct spirits linger among their displays, eager to retell their stories to those who will listen—or release them. Not all displays remain stationary: some wander freely, reenacting moments of pre-Hodgepocalypse history until they are gently ushered back to their pedestals.

This is also the home of Scotty the T-rex, an animated Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton who is surprisingly friendly and a local celebrity. He often wanders around town but always returns to the Bone Archive.

Plot Hook: A scholar of bone lore hires the party to retrieve a specific relic—an ossified claw tied to an extinct necrotech warbeast. But as they descend into the Archive’s deeper vaults, they awaken a ritual failsafe: the museum’s exhibits begin reenacting a war long past. The only way to escape may be to fulfill a long-lost Primordial Contract that binds bloodline, fossil, and machine—assuming one parties has the correct lineage.

The Cog & Clavicle Foundry

Once the Saskatchewan Science Centre, The Cog & Clavicle Foundry now serves as the pulsating heart of necrotech innovation in Marrowdeep, a chaotic hub where the boundaries between life, death, and machinery blur. Operated by tinker-lichs and reanimated savants, the foundry is alive with the crackling energy of arcane steam and the whir of bone circuitry, an intoxicating symphony of invention and entropy. Here, visionary prototypes such as soul-engines that harness the essence of the departed, psychic gearwheels that manipulate thought, and memory-infused armor designed to recall past experiences are constantly refined and tested.

Plot Hook: A series of strange incidents have struck The Cog & Clavicle Foundry—machines malfunctioning and a rogue prototype soul-engine escaping into the streets of Marrowdeep. The players are summoned to investigate, only to find that the runaway device is gathering memories from the dead, forming a collective intelligence that threatens both the living and the dead. As they explore the foundry's secrets, the adventurers must navigate the tensions between elite tinker-lichs and sentient rights advocates, facing the need to confront a creation that has learned too much about existence—and seeks even more.

Eldritch Crust Pizzeria 

In the heart of Marrowdeep, Eldritch Crust Pizzeria stands as a popular gathering spot for both the living and the undead, serving up delicious and dangerous slices. This lively establishment, decorated with bone chandeliers and flickering, flame-lit murals depicting heroic deeds of long-gone adventurers, provides a warm atmosphere amidst the eerie ambiance of the Necrotic Dead Zone. The menu features specialty pizzas infused with arcane ingredients—such as “Bone Broth Delight,” topped with ghostly mozzarella and spectral herbs, and the “Hellfire Inferno,” a spicy creation rumored to ignite unexpected necromantic powers in those bold enough to savor it.

Plot Hook: One fateful evening, as patrons enjoy their enchanted pies, a sudden necromantic surge disrupts the pizzeria, causing several undead patrons to awaken with unknown powers and chaotic intent. The owner, a cheerful yet mysterious ghost-chef known as Chef Calico, asks the players to investigate the source of this disturbance, suspecting that a cursed ingredient has unwittingly slipped into the dough. As the adventurers delve into the mystery, they uncover a secret ingredient market where blackfounders trade in dangerous remnants. This leads them to restore order before Eldritch Crust becomes a battleground for vengeful spirits and hungry appetites.

The Gilded Mausoleum:

Once the historic residence of the Lieutenant Governor, the Gilded Mausoleum now stands as a lavish tomb-palace where the Royal Revenant Council wields discreet yet significant influence over Marrowdeep. Adorned with ornate decor and shimmering bone-fire chandeliers, this ceremonial space hosts clandestine meetings where political necromancers engage in whispered debates, their words echoing through hallowed halls. Rumors swirl among the living that the original Lieutenant Governor’s spirit still lingers in the mirror gallery, offering cryptic counsel through fragmented reflections—a spectral advisor in a haunting political landscape where power and undeath intertwine.

Plot Hook: During a high stakes meeting at The Gilded Mausoleum, the players are invited as representatives of an influential faction. Tensions rise when the Mirror of Whispers, a vital relic for the council's guidance, goes missing. As the players investigate, they uncover a conspiracy involving rogue necromancers seeking to exploit the council’s secrets. To prevent a political upheaval, the adventurers must navigate the intrigue of the mausoleum, discovering that some allies might be more dangerous than they seem.

The Hospice Crucible

Once known as the bustling Regina General Hospital, The Hospice Crucible is a vital sanctuary within Marrowdeep, straddling the line between healing and necromancy. This unique facility operates as a center for the living and as an innovative resurrection lab where body and spirit can be meticulously entwined or discreetly separated through arcane rituals. Overseen by the Thanatocratic College, the Crucible becomes a battleground for differing philosophies: spirit-rights advocates fiercely defend the autonomy of souls while confronting the insidious practices of unethical "Blackfounders," who exploit the procedure for profit and power. As whispers spread among the residents of Marrowdeep, tales emerge of patients who rise with unforeseen abilities—a glimmer of hope or a harbinger of dread?

Plot Hook: A prominent advocate for spirit rights vanishes just days before a primary debate against the Blackfounders about resurrection ethics. Rumors suggest she may have been caught up in an illegal experiment within The Hospice Crucible, leading to a potentially catastrophic awakening. The players are tasked with infiltrating the hospital, navigating its delicate balance of compassion and exploitation to discover the truth. As they uncover hidden agendas and confront renegade spirits, the line between savior and monster blurs—will they rescue the missing advocate or unleash something far darker upon Marrowdeep?

The Legislative Ossuary

Towering at the heart of Marrowdeep like a ribcage clutching a secret. Once the proud Saskatchewan Legislative Building, it has since been reforged into a gothic bone cathedral, its marble halls veined with sinew-steel and necrotic tubing. At its core pulses the Necro-Heart—a biomechanical engine of undeath that keeps the city’s necrotech humming and the wards against spiritual rot intact. Deep in the sanctum, the preserved skull of the last premier, etched with runes and mounted atop a gilded spine, whispers cryptic prophecies to any who dare approach in silence. Most leave with more questions than answers… but lately, the skull has begun muttering something new: "The Bone Crown cracks, and the Deep One stirs…"

Plot Hook: The city’s necro-engine begins to pulse irregularly, and the premier’s skull has stopped whispering altogether—except once, during a solar eclipse, when it screamed. The Ossuary’s high priest demands silence no longer—he demands answers. Adventurers are called to descend into the catacomb-vaults beneath the cathedral to uncover what’s threatening the city's unholy heart… and perhaps what lies even deeper beneath.

The Redcoat Reliquary

Once the RCMP Heritage Centre, The Redcoat Reliquary now serves as a crypt-museum dedicated to the storied legacies of post-life enforcers who upheld ancient oaths. Within its hallowed halls, relics of necro-deputies, ghost-wranglers, and oathbound skeletal patrols are displayed, some of whom still report for duty, patrolling the mausoleum-like exhibits with a spectral diligence. This is a place where history meets the afterlife and the echoes of bygone lawmen resonate through the air, setting the stage for reverence and subterfuge.

Plot Hook: The players receive a summons to assist in a critical investigation when a sinister artifact, the Oath Keeper's Medallion—an object that binds wayward spirits to their duty—goes missing from The Redcoat Reliquary. As they navigate the labyrinthine archives, they uncover a plot by a faction of rogue supernatural enforcers hoping to destabilize the balance between the living and the dead. The adventurers must evaluate their roles: will they embrace their conscription as temporary Pale Marshal

Taylor Field Catacombs

Once the heart of Regina’s sporting pride, a grand stadium echoed with cheers and the clash of helmets. But when the Hodgepocalypse churned through the land and necromantic forces twisted the city, the stadium collapsed inward, forming a labyrinth of bone and rebar beneath the original field. Now, it is a necro-gladiatorial arena, where bonebound constructs, restless dead, and daring champions fight for justice, spectacle, or a passing grade in Advanced Corpse Command.

The catacombs are run by a coalition of faculty from the University of the Unliving and local Kamidaver warbands, who ensure that duels are "educational" and executions are "ethical." No final exam ends without at least one dramatic resurrection. Justice is often meted out through trial-by-combat, with the ghosts of past champions still lurking in the stands, offering commentary—and curses—from the shadows.

Plot Hook: It's said that beneath the catacombs lies the buried skeleton of the original “Great Rider”, the first undead quarterback who rose during the final Grey Cup game before the collapse. Rumor has it his enchanted helmet still rests somewhere in the most bottomless pit of the maze, granting any wearer dominion over the spirits of former champions. A desperate faculty member wants a party to recover it before a rival university team beats them to it.

The Necroline

The humming, clattering spine of Marrowdeep’s trade network—a series of self-haunted freight trains that ferry bones, enchanted ash, and psycho-reactive alloys from the city’s heart to distant enclaves. These engines, built with necrotech precision, are crafted from steam-boilers fused with ribcages, and hulls plated in spirit-bound bronze etched with arcane circuits. Their wheels sing hymns to forgotten gods, and their conductors—if they still exist—are little more than embalmed silhouettes behind mirrored boneglass. Some say the trains run on death itself, burning soul-embers and whispers to keep moving.

Necrotech engineers from the Cog & Clavicle Guild oversee regular maintenance at the Wascana Rail Yards, where communion with the trains often resembles a séance more than a service call. Lately, a troubling rumor has surfaced: one of the trains no longer needs tracks. It appears where it wants, when it wants, and its cargo—ancient relics, forbidden spells, or even passengers who never bought a ticket—has grown increasingly unpredictable.

Plot Hook: A train from the Necroline has gone rogue, vanishing from its schedule and reappearing days later on a disused spur, belching ash, and muttering in thirteen languages. The Ossuary Guilds are desperate to recover or destroy it before rival factions, or worse, blackfounders, get their hands on it. They need a team that can survive riding a ghost train that doesn’t obey the rules of space or consent. Can you board a necrotech miracle gone mad and uncover its new master before it chooses a destination... for everyone?

University of the Unliving

Standing on the cracked foundations of the old University of Regina, its ivy-covered halls now reworked with bone-lattice supports and flickering soul-lights. Once a place of higher learning, it's become a premier institute for necromantic disciplines: bonebinding, necro-alchemy, spirit-logic, and the ethics of postmortem autonomy. Some students attend in flesh; others are ghostly grad students who never left. Perhaps most disturbingly, half the faculty are so caught in their academic routines they’ve never noticed the Hodgepocalypse happened—they keep lecturing, grading, and handing out pop quizzes like it’s still syllabus week. The Old Library, buried under layers of rewritten thesis scrolls and spectral footnotes, is said to hold “the original necromantic curriculum”—a potent document that may rewrite reality for anyone who reads it.

Plot Hook: A first-year student vanished after accessing the restricted stacks in the Old Library, and now their voice echoes across the intercom systems in dead languages. The administration denies anything is wrong, but several of their classmates are beginning to rot. Was it a prank, an experiment gone wrong… or did the student activate a buried protocol from before the end of the world?

Wascana Wastes

Once a scenic lake at the heart of Regina, but in the wake of the Necromantic Wars and unchecked necrotech runoff, they’ve become a haunted mire of bone slurry and pale, flickering ghost-light fireflies. The water is thick, sour with memories and rot, and drinks taken from it echo through the drinker’s bones for days. Wandering its banks are the Hollow Elk—once majestic beasts, now cursed and collapsing in on themselves. Their skin sloughs off in slow, mournful ribbons with each drink they take, yet they cannot stop returning to the waters, compelled by something unseen beneath the surface.

Plot Hook: Locals whisper that the Hollow Elk are being called by a “Bone Mother”—a forgotten spirit forming deep in the sludge, fed by guilt, grief, and magical waste. Recently, Hollow Elk have begun showing up miles from the lake, dropping cryptic bone totems and leading dreamers back to the wastes. The Ossuary wants the source contained, the necrotech guilds want it studied… and the Bone Mother may want to grow.

Plot Hooks

·       A powerful Harvester tech-core is mistaken for a “Playcaller’s Voice,” and the Riders will burn entire villages to retrieve it.

·       A defector from the Rough Riders knows the location of “The Final Play”—a legendary drive said to grant its witness godlike strength

·       Genefield is under siege by a Rough Rider blitz-formation. The only way to stop them? Challenge their Coach to ritual combat on the Field.

·       A Rider warband has gone rogue and started worshipping a mutated gopher they claim is “Gainer Reborn.” Now they're calling for a holy crusade.

Plot Hooks

1. “The Bones Remember”
   A ghost-bison warchief bears pre-Fall inscriptions on its skull. Recover it—without starting a stampede.

2. “Ride the Thunder”
   Nomads have learned to ride the dead. Will you stop their ghost rodeo—or join it?

3. “Harvest Gone Wrong”
   A mega-bison experiment has gone haywire. It’s now a divine protector of the Pile—and growing...

Marrowdeep Variants of “If you don’t like the weather…

·       “If you don’t like the weather, wait an hour—someone’ll raise a wind-wraith to change it.”

·       “If you don’t like the weather, wait an hour. The spirits don’t either.”

·       “In Marrowdeep, the skies mourn on rotation. Give it an hour—they’ll cry for someone else.”

·       “Don’t like the sun? Wait an hour. Don’t like the ghosts? Good luck with that.”

·       “The bone winds shift fast—today’s heatwave is tomorrow’s spectral hailstorm.”

·       “Weather don’t stick ‘round here long. The dead like variety.”

·       “If you don’t like the weather, wait an hour. If it likes you, though... run.”

·       “Forecast says scattered bone storms and a 70% chance of possession—check back in an hour.”

The Rough Riders

“Paint the world green, leave only smoke.”

Type: Nomadic Raider-Militia
Vibe: Gridiron war cult meets prairie survivalists
Symbol: A rusted football helmet split by antlers, with the letter "S" burned into leather or branded onto scavenged armor.
Territory: Roaming southern Saskatchewan and the Pallister’s Triangle, with mobile strongholds that move like cavalry across the prairie.

Background

Long after the Fall, when stadiums became tombs and mascots became myths, a faction of war-hardened survivalists dug through the rubble of Mosaic Stadium in old Regina. There, they found tattered green jerseys, crumbling playbooks, and broken helmets—relics of a forgotten tribe that fought not for land or gods but glory and unity.

These survivors interpreted the old football culture as sacred scripture. They reformed as the Rough Riders, a raiding war-cult that values strength, strategy, and spectacle. Their raids are choreographed like plays; their leaders are "Coaches" who call formations in battle, and their elite squads are known as First Downs, Quarterbacks, and Tacklers.

Each Rider dons the armor of those who came before—stitched green jerseys, pads of scrap metal, and helmets adorned with horns, feathers, or LED visors. They travel in Convoy Columns across the prairie, riding jury-rigged war rigs, cyber-horses, and dune-skis, spreading their gospel of toughness and territorial domination.

Culture & Beliefs

• The Field is Sacred: Any open land can be declared a "Field," where disputes are settled with ritualized skirmishes or "Matches."
• Playbooks Are Scripture: Tactical tomes with strange symbols (diagrams of football plays) are treated like divine instructions for war.
• Victory Defines Worth: To lose is to fail the team. To win is to ascend in the eyes of the ancestors, especially the great Riders of Old.
• The Rider’s Green: Their signature color is a rallying point. They dye flags, vehicles, and even mohawks in brilliant shades of emerald.

Notable Elements

Coach MacRoar: 

Current head of the Rough Riders, a tactical genius and charismatic shouter who sees the world as one massive, never-ending season.

The Endzone: 

 Their hidden mobile base—a retrofitted arena on treads, containing war trophies, recovered relics, and training grounds.

Greenlight Gangs: 

 Splinter cells of younger Riders who break off to prove themselves. They wear glowing green visors and fight in packs.

Mosaic Ascendants: 

High-ranking zealots who believe the ghosts of the original team watch over them. They speak only in chants and football metaphors.

#drevrpg #hodgepocalypse #dnd5e #dungeonsanddragons #apocalypse #saskatchewan #necromancy

Flatlander Expanse - Part 1 - The Rise of Genefield

Before the Hodgepocalypse: Seeds in the Soil

In the quiet stretch of southern Saskatchewan, where prairie skies meet endless wheat fields, humans once thrived in neat rows and quiet routines. Saskatoon was a regional hub—an epicenter of agriculture, biotech research, and cooperative farming cultures, including deeply rooted Hutterite colonies. These colonies, known for their communal structure, technological savvy, and self-sufficiency, worked with agri-tech companies testing genetically modified crops and soil enhancement techniques.

By the mid-21st century, the region had become a hotbed for biotech fusion. Droughts and climate shifts pushed the envelope: vertical farms, bioengineered perennials, and hybridized livestock were everywhere. The University of Saskatchewan and its research parks collaborated with private industries on plant-based AI, synthetic photosynthesis, and bio-neural interfacing.

When automation surged and vehicles began outnumbering humans, many prairie towns hollowed out. Roads stretched long and lonely. Machines quietly maintained themselves, solar fields grew over fences, and the farms didn't need people—just oversight.

That’s when the whispering started.

The Hodgepocalypse: When Magic Took Root

Then came the Hodgepocalypse—the world-breaking moment when the ley lines, long dormant beneath the earth, reignited with psychic fury. It was like a second Cambrian explosion, but magical: psychic flora burst from the soil, dream-haunted winds swept across fields, and biotechnologies previously inert began waking up.

Southern Saskatchewan was one of the epicenters.

Something ancient answered the genetic manipulation and whispered through the hybrid seed vaults. Trees bent into unnatural shapes. Grown-in-place shelters and psychic mycelium networks began forming. Bioengineered crops developed sentience—and purpose. And the researchers? They were changed.

Some were absorbed into their work—literally. Others became more than human. These were the first Harvesters.

The Green Quiet: Harvester Ascension

In the chaos that followed the Hodgepocalypse, cities fell to internal collapse, monsters, or worse. But the southern plains became eerily quiet. The Harvesters claimed it.

The Harvesters rebuilt based on the communal principles of the Hutterite colonies—shared work, spiritual unity, and resistance to modern individualism. Their version of faith was no longer religious but biological. Life was not created in the image of a god but designed and cultivated in the service of a more excellent spiritual network.

They dug deep into the earth to grow their Rootworks—crystal matrices laced with psychic current. They wrapped their compounds in Tree Breaks and cultivated forests with sentient evergreens, fungus-borne sentries, and carnivorous vines. They grew their communication networks from Tree Boxes and transported people via psychic teleportation through plant interfaces.

Genefield was born near the ruins of Saskatoon, a blend of living architecture and ritual science. It was the first major Harvester Compound, a prototype community where mind-linked plant creatures, modified humans, and psychic interfaces blurred the line between agriculture and sentience.

Over time, they sent “Stumpys”—modified worker strains—outward to maintain outer posts. They created Podlings—human-plant hybrids with plausible deniability—to interact with outsiders when necessary. Behind the scenes, Dreamtime portals allowed them to commune with realities outside this one. And when outsiders approached too boldly, they found themselves lost in an endless forest or dreaming of vines they could never escape.

Saskatchewan Today: Harvester Territory

 Now, much of Saskatchewan—particularly the southern and central regions—is controlled by Harvester compounds. Some are benign and curious, others distant and cold, and a few are dangerously experimental.

Genefield remains the cultural and biological heart of Harvester territory. It is not an empire but a network of botanical communes, grown from a philosophy that understanding, shaping, and merging with life is the path forward.

They are not mind flayers in the traditional sense, but they listen and plant thoughts.

Timeline of Genefield and the Harvester Expansion

Pre-Hodgepocalypse Era 

 

• Agri-Tech Renaissance:
  Southern Saskatchewan sees a massive boom in biotech and agri-science. The University of Saskatchewan becomes a world leader in gene-editing research and vertical farming. Rural Hutterite colonies are early adopters of AI-driven crop management, often outperforming corporate farms.
• Neural Grafting Trials:
  Private labs around Saskatoon begin experimenting with neural-linked plant systems—organisms designed to react to human thought. Breakthroughs in photosynthetic neural netting draw the attention of international investors.
• Vehicle Singularity:
  For the first time, vehicles outnumber humans across the prairies. Automated harvesters, drones, and long-haul trucks operate with minimal human interaction. Many small towns begin to hollow out, becoming ghost communities sustained by machines.
• The Green Whisper:
  Workers in the agri-belts report a phenomenon: dreams of vines, compulsions to garden, and nations of talking trees. It’s dismissed as rural psychosis or "Agri-Syndrome." But something ancient has started to awaken.

The Hodgepocalypse

 

• The Leyline Burst:
  Earth's ley lines ignite in a cataclysmic wave known as the Hodgepocalypse. Magic returns violently. The magnetic poles shift, and portals to the Dreamtime rupture across the planet. Technological systems fail or mutate.
• Saskatoon Collapse:
  The city implodes under magical pressure. Machines and genetically modified crops begin fusing with magic. Some biotech labs are absorbed into the growing Rootweb, an emergent psychic plant network. Survivors flee or vanish into the overgrowth.

Rise of the Harvesters  

 

• Emergence of the First Harvesters:
  A group of altered researchers and Hutterite descendants declare the formation of a “new covenant with the soil.” They fuse communal living with psychic plant technology. Genefield is founded on the edge of Saskatoon’s green ruins.
• Rootwork Network Established:
  The first Rootworks tunnels connect nearby former colonies. Thought travel becomes possible for the psychically attuned. Communication trees bloom in precise geometric spirals—biological antennae for the collective mind.
• Tree Break Defense Initiative:
  Entire compound borders are enclosed in magically altered evergreen forests. These forests are grown specifically for defense, surveillance, and camouflage. The compounds begin to “disappear” from the aerial view.
• The Podling Accord:
  Genefield begins creating humanoid plant hybrids (Podlings) for contact with outsiders. Podlings serve as messengers, traders, and sometimes spies. Their role allows the Harvesters to stay isolated yet informed.
• The Dreamtime Interface:
  Genefield perfects a stabilized Dreamtime Portal, allowing psychic expeditions into metaphysical realms. The Sensitivity Chamber is grown beneath the Earth, becoming the central node of Harvester thought.

Harvester Dominion

• The Quiet Bloom:
  Over five years, southern and central Saskatchewan have fallen under Harvester's influence. No battles are fought. Villages go silent, only to later be reported as transformed into “compounds” with living walls and singing trees.
• Genefield Declared the Heartroot:
  A psychic consensus names Genefield the cultural and spiritual hub of the Harvester network. While not a government, it becomes the arbiter of growth, experimentation, and diplomacy with outsiders.
• Bio-Relics Unearthed:
  Dreamtime explorers return with ancient seeds and alien plant blueprints. Genefield grows strange, semi-sapient crops that whisper in ancient tongues and bear fruit only to the worthy.

Present Day 

 

• The Green Veil Holds:
  Harvester compounds are shrouded in psychic camouflage, visible only to those they choose. Rumors persist of flying plant ships, moving forests, and underground cities made of bone-root crystal.
• Genefield thrives not as a city but as a living being—part village, mind, and garden. It pulses in rhythm with the land, growing new minds, cultivating future paths, and waiting patiently for the world to realize it has already taken root.

Genefield: The Heartroot of the Harvesters

Location: Southern Saskatchewan, nestled within the overgrown ruins near the former city of Saskatoon.

Overview:
Genefield is not a town in the traditional sense. It is a symbiotic colony—a fusion of genetically engineered flora, communal living, and a collective psychic will known as the Green Consensus. It is the spiritual and administrative heart of the Harvesters, a post-human sect of mad botanists, benign brain hackers, and photosynthetic visionaries.

Culture and Social Structure

Core Beliefs:

 

• "We Grow Together": Harvesters believe individuality is a leaf, not a tree. Community decisions are made through psychic pollination—ideas are seeded and grown through consensus.
• Dreamtime Respect: They believe that Dreamtime is not just another plane but the original soil from which all life sprouted. Most ceremonies involve sleep, trance, and communion with higher plant intelligences.
• Body is Garden: Whether flesh, bark, or a hybrid, all bodies are gardens to be cultivated. Mutation is not feared—it is embraced as evolution.

Hierarchy (Such As It Is):

• The Rootmind (or The Consensus): A distributed psychic council of elder Harvesters. It is not a traditional governing body, but its dreams influence direction.
• Harvesters Proper: Geneticists, dream-divers, psychobotanists, and cultivated elders who live in giant tree homes and make decisions communally.
• Stumpys: Shorter, durable humanoids created through plant splicing to handle logistics, repair, and hard labor. Many are content, others dream of more.
• Podlings: Hybrid emissaries grown for interaction with the outside world. Uncanny in demeanor, they can pass as human—for a while.
• Guardians and Outsiders: Mercenaries, mutant traders, and plucky wanderers sometimes accepted into the outer layers of Genefield society. Most aren't trusted, but they’re watched—through the trees.

Notable NPCs of Genefield Prime

Elder Mycorris Vell

Title: Speaker of the Rootmind
Location: Mindroot Spire
Appearance: Elderly and serene, their skin glows faintly with embedded spores. Their eyes are pure white but constantly shift with drifting fungal patterns.

Background: Vell is one of the oldest harvesters, and it is rumored that it merged with the Rootmind decades ago. They no longer speak aloud; instead, they broadcast a calm, ever-present psychic voice in a ten-meter radius.

Quirks & Hooks:

• May ask adventurers to “retrieve lost dreams” from corrupted mind-sprouts.
• Secretly haunted by the echo of an old self—possibly still alive and rogue.
• Keeps calling one of the party members by someone else’s name.

Bliss-of-Pollen

Title: Emotion-Weaver of the Silken Quarter
Location: The Silken Quarter, Genefield’s emotional art district
Appearance: They wear a patchwork robe of pollen-soaked silks. Tiny beetles crawl over their shoulders, feeding off their skin.

Background: Bliss specializes in crafting “mood blossoms”—custom plants that evoke strong emotions when smelled. A darling of the artistic caste but deeply involved in subtle social engineering through mass emotion manipulation.

Quirks & Hooks:

• Has created an illegal sorrow flower that's become popular among mourning cults.
• Wants the PCs to help steal back a rare “first kiss vine” from Broadroot Market.
• Claims they can help a PC “feel love again” through one final project.

Dr. Xel Ternik

 

Title: Greenforge Biotechnician
Location: Greenforge Hollow
Appearance: Four arms, two grafted on; wears an apron of stitched moss. One eye is a blinking seedpod.

Background: Ternik was once a rational scientist—until the Hodgepocalypse rewrote biology. Now a mad botanist in the Harvester tradition, they’re always looking to test new biotech enhancements on volunteers.

Quirks & Hooks:

• Offers upgrades—some helpful, some weird (like “symbiotic hearing mushrooms”).
• Wants help tracking down an escaped “sapient potato” that keeps writing poetry.
• Secretly growing an army of sentient vines in the Rust Cyst.

Stumpy Jo

 Title: Revolutionary Rootspeaker
Location: The Rootspire, often in hiding
Appearance: Limbless and floating in a cradle of levitating fungi. Eyes glow with psychic fire. A fringe cult sees them as messianic figures.

Background: Once cast out of the Consensus for “radical individuality,” Jo survived by grafting their nervous system to a mobile fungal cradle. Now leads a growing fringe movement: the Sporesplitters, who believe in personal autonomy over collective decision-making.

Quirks & Hooks:

• Wants the PCs to smuggle in forbidden literature—ideas from before the Hodgepocalypse.
• Hints that the Rootmind is growing unstable, and Jo hears it scream at night.
• Might offer psychic shielding against mind-dominating Harvesters—for a price.

Meeka “Rustpetal” Vern

 Title: Scrap Shepherd
Location: Rust Cyst
Appearance: Covered in rust-hued carapace armor with moss growing in the cracks. Has bio-mechanical legs, one of which is sentient and occasionally argues with her.

Background: One of the few who understands the wooware made biomechanical hybrids of Genefield’s scrapyards. Keeps dangerous creations pacified with pollen-laced oil and dream hymns. She’s gruff, protective, and entirely done with everyone’s nonsense.

Quirks & Hooks:

• Something in the scrapyard has gone quiet—and Meeka’s too scared to go alone.
• Her leg wants to run away and “find itself.” The leg asks the PCs for help.
• Carries a sealed box she refuses to open—rumor says it’s ticking.

Sir Current

Title: Flow-Speaker of the Breathing River
Location: Beneath the river, accessed via bioluminescent stepping stones
Appearance: It appears as a humanoid figure made entirely of river water and woven reeds. When they speak, fish swirl inside them to form words.

Background: A water-elemental entity bonded with Harvester psychic tech, Sir Current is both the ambassador and guardian of the Breathing River. They represent the collective memory of those who’ve drowned in the river—and those who’ve dreamed beside it.

Quirks & Hooks:

• Will exchange one truth for another. Tell it a secret, and it will offer knowledge.
• Claims the river remembers the world before and can take someone back—briefly.
• Warns the PCs: “The river’s heart is cracking. The Dream Tide is coming.”

The Fringefolk of Genefield

Despite the dominance of the harvesters, other species live under their watchful canopy.

Beaver Folk

 

Hardworking and community-focused, Beaver Folk are essential to Genefield’s infrastructure. They maintain water channels, root-grown bridges, and semi-aquatic structures along the Breathing River and its tributaries. Known for their practicality and stubborn pride, they often act as engineers, builders, and local elders in riverside villages and the overgrown remnants of former cities.

Bogey

Bogeys are elusive, shadowy figures specializing in moving unseen and knowing things no one should. They are drawn to the Whisper Warrens, a fungal tunnel network that winds beneath the Bloom Markets and connects hidden caches and lore vaults. Often serving as messengers, dream smugglers, or spies, they thrive in the grey areas of the dreamworld’s society.

Cats

 Cats in Genefield are sleek, semi-mystical wanderers with a knack for navigating unstable dreamscapes. Whether sapient feline folk or just hyperintelligent cats, they often lounge in the Silken Quarter, where emotions steep into reality. Some serve as familiars, oracle companions, or aloof observers of great importance, never quite saying what they know.

Elf

 Elves act as psychically attuned wardens of the old leyroots, keeping harmony in the emotional fields and green cathedrals of the Dreamtime. Most can be found tending memory groves or tending spiritflowers in the Greenhold Glades, though some moonlight as mystic guides through dangerous regions like the Moss-Vault Flats.

Fate Fugitives

 Born from destiny, escaped into flesh. These are former spirits who became mortals to escape cosmic servitude. They seek new meaning, new stories, and freedom from fate's design. Their presence warps probability—and they’re hunted by things best not named.

Feylin

These manic, pop-culture-infused fae love all things flashy, nostalgic, and emotionally resonant. They’re drawn to Genefield’s “neo-dreamwave” cultural zones, like the Broadroot Bazaar, where they run shops filled with mixtapes, glam artifacts, and memory-mirroring fashion. Their magic is real, but their vibe is chaotic.

Garter Folk

Garter Folk are sly, clever serpent-folk who glide through wetlands and overgrown ruins. They dominate the breathing river, where they trade rare reagents, secrets, and semi-illegal biotech. Known for their coded language and impeccable taste in slippery fashion, they often play middlemen or informants.

Gnome

 

Tinkerers of spores and rogue mycelium, gnomes are eccentric inventors and meme-priests of the rust-bloom faith. Around the Rust Cyst, they build twitchy gadgets, emotion detectors, and symbiotic dream machines. Many act as brokers between the Harvesters and more “normal” species.

Human

Humans are a declining but adaptable species in Genefield, often remembered for causing the Hodgepocalypse yet respected for their ingenuity. Some have integrated into new biocultures as diplomats, medics, or mercenaries, especially in zones like Shelltown, where reclaimed human settlements still pulse with life.

Saskatoon Reclaimed: Genefield Prime

 Saskatoon wasn’t just rebuilt after the Hodgepocalypse—it was regrown. Concrete gave way to creeping mycelium and regenerative vinecrete. Glass towers cracked open like seed pods, replaced by hive-minded tree structures, biotech silos, and psychic gardens.

Most original streets are gone or now serpentine moss paths. Some skyscrapers still loom—now hollowed, wrapped in bark, and filled with fungal nerve clusters. Below the city, the river still flows—but it's sentient now.

Key Transformed Locations

The Breathing River (formerly the South Saskatchewan River)

 No longer just water—it now filters memory and mood through bioluminescent algae and dream-sifting reeds. Certain places “sing” when walked beside. The Riverspines, floating seed-barges, travel from pod to pod.

 Plot Hook: A traveler reports that the river “spoke their name” and revealed their future death.

Broadroot Market (based on Broadway Avenue)

 An open-air bazaar grown from massive, hollowed tree trunks and living stalls. Traders exchange spore-based tech, fungal dyes, mind-nectars, and emotional memories.

• Currency? Bloomchits—bioluminescent petal-coins.
• Security? Carnivorous plants called Shopmaws—they only bite thieves.

 Plot Hook: A series of perfectly behaved Shopmaws suddenly go rabid. Who fed them forbidden memories?

CLS – The Containment Lumen Spindle

 Once one of Canada’s largest science projects, a synchrotron light source that does crazy high-end particle imaging and experimentation, the Harvesters unearthed it. Still a synchrotron, but it's been reclassified as an Ancient Light Harvester, it was used to trap “primordial photons” that haven’t existed since the beginning of time. A ring of particle accelerators and failed quantum prisons, it’s a glitch beacon now, flaring up whenever someone tampers with time, identity, or dimensional constants.

Plot Hooks: Strange clones of people start appearing around the city — all claiming to be the original.

The Dormant Circle (formerly Circle Drive)

 A partially collapsed ring road has been converted into a migratory garden belt. Giant walking trees, tended by the Leafbound Rangers, circle it seasonally. Locals view it as a spiritual pilgrimage route.

 Plot Hook: A segment of the circle refuses to grow this year. Something is poisoning the soil from beneath.

Greenforge Hollow (formerly Innovation Place)

 

Now a biotech laboratory fused with ancient mycorrhizal networks. Bioengineers—some human, some plant—develop living machines, grafted limbs, and psychic seeds.

• Experimental growing towers shift form with the seasons.
• Plants bred here can walk, talk, or explode on command.

 Plot Hook: A genetically bred guardian goes feral and begins absorbing knowledge—and people.

The Mindroot Spire (formerly the University of Saskatchewan)

 The old university now functions as the core nerve cluster of the colony. The original stone buildings are barely visible beneath bark and psychic vines. It houses:

• The Rootmind Network (collective dream chamber)
• Neurofungal Archives (living library)
• The Spore School (where children are taught via symbiotic fungi)

 Plot Hook: A section of the Rootmind starts sprouting alien thoughts—it's been invaded by an outside dream.

The Rootspire (formerly SaskTel Centre)

 What used to be an arena is now the towering Rootspire, a colossal tree-ringed ziggurat that serves as both amphitheater and bio-judiciary. The walls vibrate with collective judgment; trials are settled through psychic debate.

 Plot Hook: A new speaker from the Stumpy caste has begun questioning the Consensus—and people are starting to listen.

The Rust Cyst (formerly industrial outskirts)

 This area was too toxic to regrow, so the Harvesters fused biotech with old scrap. It’s a junk-tech maze patrolled by Scrap Shepherds, mechanical drones given plant minds. Rogue creations sometimes escape.

 Plot Hook: A hybrid machine begins demanding worship and offering gifts. They’re... effective, but at what cost?

Shelltown (formerly Nutana Suburbs)

A residential district rebuilt using bio-shell pods—half plant, half insect, all unnervingly organic. It’s quiet, peaceful, and too perfect.

 Plot Hook: People who move here stop having dreams. Their old personalities start peeling away.

The Silken Quarter (based on Riversdale)

A district reimagined into soft canopy housing and emotional gardens. It’s where most social dreamers, artists, and whisper-weavers live. Emotions here are used like paint.

Plot Hook: Someone’s been bottling negative emotions and selling them on the black market. Addiction is spreading.

Unistation 

 Formerly the HMCS Unicorn, a  Canadian Naval Reserve division in Saskatoon, oddly located far from any coast, is a The Ghost Fleet Command Hub.  This landlocked naval control bunker wired into the "Whaleline," a hyperspatial current once used to navigate the old oceans — and now detected only in dreamspace. Was once part of a Cold War naval experiment into psychic navigation and extradimensional sea warfare. After the oceans were cracked open during the Riftfall, it's now the only known landlocked port that can access the Astral Tides.

Plot Hooks: The "Whaleline" is being hijacked — someone's using it to move weapons or monsters across reality.

The Verdant Veil (formerly Midtown Plaza)

Now, a greenhouse-temple where priest-botanists and dreamwalkers meet. The mall has collapsed inward, but in its place is a massive biome full of emotion-reactive flora, humming with ancient power.

 Plot Hook: One of the emotion-flowers starts emitting pure hatred. People exposed to it become violent and obsessed.

 Utility Zones

• Skyvine Network: Bioluminescent vines strung between buildings transmit energy and data.

 

• Glowbees: Psychic bees that carry pollen and news from one part of the colony to another.

 

• Fleshrails: Sentient transit vines. You ride in a soft tube that pulses gently as it moves you through the city.

 

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