Thornlands - Part 5 - Arsenault Angel Company

 

If you need mercenaries in western Canada, you call the Arsenault Angel Company—or the "Double A Company" in polite circles. Those less polite call them the Arsehole Angels. They are ruthless professionals: direct, precise, and known for fulfilling every contract to the letter, if not always to the spirit. They are not the cheapest mercs around, nor the most charming, but they are the best money you can buy if you need a job done clean and fast.

They’re not beloved across the wastelands of North America, but they’re respected, especially around Prairie Oasis, where their influence is undeniable.

History

Founded over 30 years ago by Agnes Norton Arsenault—ANA to most—she earned legendary status in the Necromantic Wars and was nearly granted citizenship in the DPP. She declined, choosing instead to carve out her destiny in the wreckage of western Canada. With her iron will and military brilliance, she created a legacy.

Settling on a ruined farmstead outside post-apocalyptic Calgary, ANA raised a family and trained them as soldiers. Her offspring became the command staff of her private army, the Arsenault Angel Company, named for their emblem: a reaper-winged skull with a halo and combat knife.

Though officially retired, ANA still trains promising recruits in “The Dungeon”—a subterranean facility beneath their fortified base. Her presence alone can silence a rowdy mess hall. Every grunt has heard the phrase: “If Granny picks you for wet work, you’re already halfway dead—or halfway great.”

Key Members

Agnes Norton Arsenault

Better known as ANA, is the iron spine of the Arsenault Angel Company—the founder, the matriarch, the myth. Thirty years ago, she walked off a battlefield in the Necromantic Wars soaked in blood and holding a broken radio and a plan. She was offered citizenship in the DPP, told them to “shove their gold-plated coffin,” and headed west into the smoke. Outside of Prairie Atlantis, the resettled ruins of Calgary, she built a homestead, a fortress, and a family of warriors there.

ANA doesn’t command anymore—at least not officially. She trains. She teaches. She tests. Her battlefield is now the Dungeon, a grueling training maze beneath Angel’s Grave. Recruits either come out stronger... or not at all. Her face is weathered but sharp, her gait slow but commanding. She looks like someone who’s survived every kind of war—on battlefields, in family dinners, and in her mind. Her voice can silence a riot.

Don’t let the “granny” image fool you. She’s still the most dangerous person in the room. She’s forgotten more battlefield strategy than most commanders ever learn—and she only respects two things: grit and growth.

Her constant companion is Maxine, a massive psychic Maine Coon with thick, ghost-haloed fur and glowing blue eyes. Maxine exudes power the way others breathe—generating ectoplasmic tendrils, shielding allies, and sniffing out lies. She and ANA communicate silently, efficiently, and sometimes unsettlingly. Maxine has been known to corner a trainee mid-lie, sitting quietly on their chest until they confess—or pass out.

ANA’s children call her “Ma.” Her soldiers call her “Boss.” The world calls her “Angel of the Iron West.” And if she ever laces up her boots again, someone's gonna burn for it.

Alwyn “The Joker” Arsenault:

The youngest of the Arsenault brood, the one most likely to turn a battlefield into a stage for slapstick genius. A reluctant warrior with a gift for tactical mischief, Alwyn fights with the flair of a trickster and the precision of someone who could’ve been the best—if she wanted the job. Equal parts daredevil and jester, she’s notorious for wild improvised gear, feints layered in feints, and combat moves that make seasoned vets ask, “Did she just banana-peel that warlord?” Her downtime antics are legendary, from joyriding troop transports to fake memo scams signed “Love, Mom.” Always at her side is Alphie, a tuxedo-patterned telekinetic cat who floats gear, disarms enemies mid-punch, and deadpans harder than most snipers. Together, they’re the heart, humor, and occasional headache of the Angel Company.

Belladonna Arsenault

The Arsenault Angel Company’s undisputed queen of information warfare, morale manipulation, and glam-fueled chaos. Ever-reinventing herself—from leather-clad rockstar general to cybernetic diva technician to the ominous “List-Keeper”—Belladonna weaponizes charisma with surgical precision. On the field, she’s a walking psych-op campaign, dismantling enemy cohesion with taunts, illusions, and viral disinformation while rallying her troops with sheer star power. Her signature is theatrics: smoke machines, misleading broadcasts, enemy troops arguing about who’s "on the list," and morale shattering from the inside out. She’s rarely seen without Velour, her sleek psychic Burmese cat whose empathic sarcasm is so potent it has reportedly caused hallucinations in weak minds. Together, they’re a two-beings propaganda storm with a soundtrack.

Beretta “The Assassin” Arsenault:

She moves like smoke and leaves art like a signature wound. Silent, poised, and unnervingly graceful, she’s the Angel Company’s shadow blade—slipping through defenses, finishing the job, and leaving sprawling murals in spray paint or blood, depending on the mission. Her graffiti isn't just art; it's a warning, a chronicle, and a taunt, often depicting twisted saints, shattered crowns, or cryptic family inside jokes. Beretta speaks rarely, and when she does, it lands like a bullet—cold, precise, and impossible to ignore. Her telepathic British shorthair, Oscar, is her voice often, broadcasting snarky comments, emotional cues, or deadpan quips directly into the minds of nearby allies (or enemies). Together, they’re a perfectly calibrated duet of silence and sting—turning infiltration into performance art, and assassination into a statement.

Eden “Lady Mask” Arsenault

The quiet storm of the family—elegant, elusive, and terrifying when the masks come down. A multi-style melee savant trained in countless martial disciplines, Eden switches combat modes by donning specialized masks—each one unlocking a different stance, rhythm, and brutal philosophy of movement. One moment she’s grappling with surgical restraint, the next she’s a whirlwind of strikes, flowing like silk over razors. But it’s more than muscle memory—there’s something else in the masks. Watching something with her.

Family says she was always gifted. Others say she was always touched. Eden insists it’s just instinct and practice. But her collection of worn, hand-painted masks… whispers sometimes. Each one remembers a fight, a loss, or a lesson. And lately, they’ve started remembering things she doesn’t.

Her companion, Cheshire, is a longhaired phase-walking cat that blinks between shadows and carries “mask memory”—a psychic resonance with the emotional imprint of each mask Eden wears. When she changes style, Cheshire shifts, growling, grinning, or vanishing entirely, together, they operate on a wavelength no one else in the company understands. Eden fights like a legend, moves like a ghost, and trains like someone trying to outrun something inside her.

Georgia “Hammer” Arsenault

Built like a blueprint and hits like a wrecking ball wrapped in compassion. As the Angel Company’s top demolitions expert and structural engineer, she doesn’t just blow things up—she understands them. One long stare, and she can see exactly where to plant charges to bring down a building, collapse a tunnel, or pop the hood off a tank like a beer can. She walks into bunkers with a laser pointer and a tired sigh, marking the stress points like she's sketching a family portrait.

But Georgia isn’t just muscle—she’s quiet, methodical, and almost maternal in her intensity. She drinks black coffee like a sacred ritual and teaches rookies how to disarm a mine while explaining pressure plate philosophy. She doesn't raise her voice, but people clear the room when she does.

Her bonded cat, Penny, is a sleek Siamese with unsettling insight into people's emotional “fault lines.” Together, they make a terrifyingly efficient pair: Georgia cracks structures; Penny cracks psyches.

Leona “Spanner” Arsenault

The miracle mechanic of the Angel Company—the one who looks at a smoking pile of parts and says, “Give me ten minutes and a snack.” She’s the grease-streaked soul of the motor pool, working miracles in coveralls three sizes too big, with a burrito jammed in her mouth and a welding torch in her hands. Equal parts genius and chaos goblin, Spanner doesn’t believe in “can’t”—only in “hasn’t exploded yet.” If it sparks, she can fix it. She can make it spark just for fun if it doesn't spark.

She’s rarely seen without Socket, a tabby cat with a natural static charge and a taste for licking battery packs. Socket’s presence has shorted out entire supply depots—and possibly a few enemy drones. The pair is a walking safety violation and an unspoken reason the vehicle depot runs better than any warzone garage has a right to.

Mittens – Arsenault Angel Company Mascot

“If you pet her, you’d better mean it.”

 

Mittens is more than a mascot—she’s a legend among the Angels. A full-sized Boreal Tiger with psychic invisibility and a mean streak for trespassers, she patrols the animal pens like a velvet-pawed warden. To family, she’s a purring giant who naps on warm truck hoods and tolerates being used as a footrest. She is an invisible judgment made manifest to strangers, seen only when it’s too late.

She rarely moves fast, but when she does, she vanishes mid-pounce and reappears behind her prey. Officers joke that Maxine and Mittens once settled a turf dispute between themselves without anyone ever seeing it. If the perimeter’s breached and Mittens is loose, everyone knows: the Comeback isn't coming—because she already did.

 

Morrigan “Bulldog” Arsenault

Bulldog doesn’t kick down doors, she rips them off the hinges and sends her dogs through first. The Arsenaults’ premier beast-handler and close-quarters specialist, Bulldog is a relentless forward assault operative who trusts animals more than most people—and with good reason. She’s trained everything from feral stalkers to bio-augmented warhounds, and she treats each one like family. Her unit doesn’t just breach—they hunt, moving as one, barking commands, and flanking with practiced fury.

At her side is W00f, an F1d0-class cyber-canine with titanium jaws, integrated radar, and a growl that could shake bones loose. W00f is more than a pet—he’s a partner, built in memory of an old dog that saved her life. They move with synchronized aggression: leap, smash, bark, breach. Morrigan’s command barks are encoded with microtonal psychic pulses, so when she growls “DOWN,” you hit the floor whether you’re canine or not.

She’s broad-shouldered, braided, and deadpan, built like a linebacker who never skips arm day. Her armor is bite-scuffed, dented, and smells faintly of kibble and oil. Off-duty, she’s all quiet warmth, endlessly polishing gear and feeding scraps to her training squad of rescue-mutts.

In combat, she’s the storm in a dog ’s-eye view—fast, loud, and never alone. And if you hear W00f howl before you see them, it’s already too late.

Natalya “Spinebreaker” Arsenault

The wall you hit when you’ve pushed the Angels too far—and she hits back harder. Towering, loud, and built like a freight train with feelings, Natalya is the family’s frontline enforcer and battlefield big sister. She leads from the front with zero patience for cowardice, cruelty, or half-assed punches. Her laughter is as devastating as her body blows, and when she yells “GET OVER HERE,” people do—whether they want to or not.

Besides her proud pink mohawk, her defining feature is a bionic arm scavenged from a ruined Power Armor unit. It's oversized, overpowered, and occasionally autonomous. Sometimes it twitches like it remembers another war, another purpose. Other times, it reacts before she moves—shifting her aim, pulling her to cover, or slugging someone she swears she wasn’t mad at.

Her psychic companion, Purrserker, is a calico with a sixth sense for incoming danger. The cat sits on her shoulder like a war totem, growling moments before a sniper’s scope glints or a mine clicks. They share an eerie bond—part instinct, part trust, part shared battle rage.

Rip “Graveheart” MacLaren

Undead Stuntfighter & Walking Apocalypse

There’s tough, hard to kill, and then there’s Rip “Graveheart” MacLaren, who already died once and returned with more attitude than ever. A former stunt fighter, pro-wrestler, and combat showman, Rip died in a pyrotechnics accident during a militia raid-turned-theatrical production, then got back up and finished the match. Now a full-fledged Kamidaver, Rip serves the Arsenault Angel Company as their rowdiest brawler, their undead hype man, and the only one who insists on cutting promos before a fight.

He dresses like a post-apocalyptic gladiator Highlander—complete with a kilt, boots, a leather harness, and the occasional bandolier of smoke bombs. His weapon is the Kilt-Lifter—a massive, rune-scarred claymore with a pommel made from a chunk of his gravestone. When he swings it, people move. Or explode—or both.

Rip channels his fury and undead resilience into theatrical mayhem. He laughs at pain. He eats flashbangs for breakfast. And if you kill him? He might thank you, then stand back up and return the favor.

Tagging along is Miccheck, a lightweight, semi-sentient utility drone shaped like a floating microphone stand. It records his one-liners, boosts his entrance music, and sometimes provides live commentary, often without anyone's consent. Rip insists it’s just there “to keep the legend alive.” Others suspect it might be the only thing holding what’s left of his sanity together.

Rip “Graveheart” MacLaren isn’t just a soldier. He’s a statement: Death is optional. Hype is mandatory.

Ruth “Chippy” Arsenault:

The eldest of the Arsenault clan, and it shows—in the scars, in the gravel of her voice, and in the hard-won discipline she brings to the battlefield. Gruff, pragmatic, and razor-focused, she’s the current field commander of the Angel Company and the one who’s had to earn every shred of her respect the hard way. She trains squads like a storm drills stone, relentless and shaping. Her orders aren’t flashy, but they work, and when things fall apart, Chippy’s the one pulling people out of the fire with a curse and a backhanded compliment.

But there’s always been a chip on her shoulder—thus the name. Being the eldest means watching the others steal the spotlight: Beretta with her art and precision, Alwyn with her antics and charm, and Natalya's ability to take over a room. Ruth gets the job done, not the glory. And while she’d never say it out loud, it eats at her. What she does say is usually short, direct, and laced with salt.

Her bonded warcat, Matilda, is a mountain of a Maine Coon—battle-hardened, ghost-touched, and utterly loyal. Matilda projects psychic barriers that block bullets and fists alike, and when needed, she manifests ectoplasmic limbs to lay down brutal ghost-knuckle justice. Together, they’re a two-woman tank crew, smashing through breach points, holding ground under fire, and staring down horrors without blinking.

You don’t rise through the Angel Company without blood, dirt, and discipline. Ruth “Chippy” Arsenault bleeds all three. She may not be the favorite, but when the chips are down, she’s who you want calling the shots.

Torrance “Torchy” Arsenault

Torchy isn’t your average medic—she’s a walking contradiction of holy fire, battlefield grit, and zero-patience triage rage. She charges through gunfire with a trauma kit in one hand and a flamethrower in the other, screaming at people to “hold still so I can heal you, dammit!” Born with a rare mutation that allows her to manipulate flames as a surgical tool, Torchy can cauterize wounds instantly, sterilize entire rooms with a sweep of fire, and cook dinner without flinching.

She’s not subtle—but she is sacred. Some say she’s a divine anomaly. Others say she’s angry enough to set miracles on fire until they behave. She treats the wounded with the same intensity she torches her enemies—with love, violence, and an uncanny ability to make both feel a sense of healing.

Always prowling at her feet is Ashpaw, a soot-colored kitten with the eerie ability to “eat” pain. The cat curls around a soldier’s wound, purring like a Geiger counter, and somehow draws the agony out through its whiskers and vanishes it into... something else.

Motor Pool

The Arsenault Angel Motor Pool is where desperation meets ingenuity, wrapped in a dieselpunk aesthetic of scorched steel and improvised warfare. These aren’t factory-made war machines; they’re refitted tractors, repurposed delivery trucks, and salvaged relics of a lost world, reborn as instruments of defiance. Every vehicle carries the scars of its past life and the signature of its rebirth: patchwork armor plating, scorched Arsenault Angel insignias, and black-and-silver paint jobs that flake like old memories. Modular compartments bristle with drone docks, gun nests, and med bays, making each one a rolling expression of battlefield adaptation. And true to Angel tradition, every rig bears a name that hits like a punchline or a power cord—equal parts pro wrestler, heavy metal album, and World War II bomber.

Dust Saint

The Arsenault Angels’ field logistics truck and mobile repair rig are designed as resilient utility vehicles that play essential roles in long-range missions, defensive positions, or recovery operations.

Freightmare

The Arsenault Angels’ signature troop transport and mobile command unit. It’s the standard heavy vehicle you'll see in big deployments—reliable, reinforced, and full of personality.

Jackknife Jess

The Arsenault Angels’ go-to fast attack gun jeep. Designed for recon, flanking, and drive-by suppression, it’s lean, loud, and usually operated by someone with a wild grin and something to prove.

Killdozer

The Arsenault Angels’ brutal assault bulldozer—a battlefield breaker built for urban breaching, area denial, and terrifying show-of-force drives. Plated in tombstone fragments, and with a flame-belching engine, it's less a vehicle and more a moving threat display.

M.U.L.L.E.T.

Mechanized Utility Load Lifter & Emergency Transport (or M.U.L.L.E.T.), the Arsenault Angels’ experimental walker transport. It's a bipedal beast of burden, repurposed for field rescues, cargo hauls, and stomping through the kind of terrain that would strand a tank.

Rebuttal

The Arsenault Angels’ enforcer pickup—a brute-force riot rig built for crowd control, smash-through assaults, and battlefield intimidation. It’s the vehicle that doesn’t just arrive, it announces itself with smoke, sirens, and the sound of something being flattened.

Tap Out

The Arsenault Angels’ flatbed gun platform/sniper nest, operated by elite sharpshooters like Beretta or Belladonna. It's half-mobile death perch, half-battlefield chessboard—designed to lock down lanes, deny airspace, and take the high ground wherever it parks.

Wingclipper

The Arsenault Angels’ light scout motorbike. This stripped-down, turbo-fused ride is made for lightning recon runs, risky courier missions, and rookies trying to prove they’re tough enough to hang with the legends.

Angel’s Grave

“Home is where the guns are oiled, the mess smells of beans, and the cat might be psychic.”

Set on a lonely hill overlooking the scorched plains near Prairie Oasis, Angel’s Grave is equal parts fortress, homestead, and proving ground. The old red-brick farmhouse—once someone's dream retirement property—is now the beating heart of one of Western Canada’s most infamous mercenary companies.

A patchwork of military engineering, scavenger genius, and psychic warding keeps the place tight, weird, and unbreakable.

1. Main Compound (“The Keep”)

A rugged farmhouse reinforced with armor plates, concrete patches, and occasional graffiti. It's the core of Angel operations.

• Command Center: Housed in the attic and upper floors, with radar dishes, encrypted comms, and strategy boards littered with pins and notes.
• Barracks: Spartan sleeping quarters for regulars and temporary bunks for recruits.
• Mess Hall: Giant stove. Always something bubbling. Cards and cat hair everywhere.
• Armory: Steel-reinforced. Voiceprint + code locked. Stocked with rifles, pistols, and the occasional antique saber.

2. Training Grounds

Directly downhill from the Keep, the grounds are loud, muddy, and brutal.

• Obstacle Course: Mud pits, barbed wire crawls, rope climbs, and the infamous “car chassis maze.”
• Firing Range: Targets (paper, steel, and sometimes robotic) lined up for ranged drills.
• Simulation Arena: Open field with adjustable cover. Often used for tactical mock battles, LARP-style melee training, or “dumb cousin wrestling matches.”

3. Vehicle Depot

A half-buried Quonset hut and some tarped garages house the Angels’ mobility.

• Garage: Tools, welders, oil stains, and two mechanics always arguing over torque settings.
• Storage: Fuel drums, tires, ammo crates, scavenged parts, and an old satellite dish converted into a barbecue.

4. Animal Pens

Behind the main building is a rough-shod collection of pens and cages.

• Boreal Tiger Enclosure: For Mittens, the company's mascot and last-resort security system. It is giant, cuddly with family, and murderous with strangers.
• Stables: Contain bionic snow-cats, hardy moose-mounts, and a few "chimeric experiments" too stubborn to die.

5. Perimeter Defenses

The hill may look like a scrap pile—but it’s a kill zone in disguise.

• Watchtowers: Two primary and two auxiliary towers equipped with spotlights and scoped rifles.
• Trenches & Barriers: Sandbags, tire stacks, welded steel traps.
• Sensor Arrays: Psychic motion sensors, pressure plates, old-school tripwire alarms. Cats monitor some.

“The Dungeon”

A simulated combat zone designed to test recruits. It measures performance by using illusions, robots, oozes, paintballs, and psychological stress. Successful runs get you full recruitment. Failures mean another few weeks of KP duty and trying again.

Use of the Dungeon is mandatory for all rookies and any mercs who "get too cocky."

Purpose: Test tactics, teamwork, stress resilience, and innovation
Format: 5-Room Dungeon, modular, recycled obstacles

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Training Dungeon Layout

• Entry Hall: Graffitied walls, metal grates. An intercom issues distorted orders. Dim light. Cats watch.

Room 1: Guardian Hall

• Challenge: RC Racers of Doom (tiny explosive drones), Laser Gophers (housed in turrets that fire light beams)
• Goal: Survive waves for 3 minutes.
• Fail Penalty: 1 level of exhaustion (or bruised pride and singed eyebrows).

Room 2: Puzzle Chamber

• Challenge: Disarm a timed “bomb” (paint-filled water balloon rig).
• Catch: Clues are scattered in illusions. Team members outside the room must guide the one inside.

Room 3: The Setback

• Challenge: A bridge over a pit. Crossing triggers mud geysers, narrow balance beams.
• Optional: Shortcut that requires grappling up a wall. Fail = exhaustion.

Room 4: The Boss Fight

• Enemy: A Thunder Bat (rubber-suited Angel in a jetpack using rubber explosives and a sound cannon).
• Goal: Defeat or force retreat. Working together is required.

Room 5: Revelation & Reward

• Reward: Access code to official Angel locker, gear package, and name on the board.
• Twist: A psychic illusion shows what kind of leader/failure you might become—your "future self" taunts you.

Notable Features

• Breakroom: Half-bar, half-supply depot, where off-duty Angels play cards, grill meat, and share scars.
• Training Zones: Includes a “paintball killhouse,” “mud & wire” crawl zone, and a remote obstacle course on old farmland.
• “Family Hall”: Honors fallen Angels, especially kin.

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

“We fight smart. We fight sharp. We fight for family.”

The Angels number roughly 400, with about 60% being support staff. Uniforms are black and silver urban camo, customized with survival tricks and family markings. The Family Book, a heavily redacted and handwritten military manual, is passed down through bloodline and battlefield loyalty.

Tactics use a mix of scavenged vehicles and surprisingly intact military-grade equipment to emphasize electronic warfare, ambushes, and overwhelming firepower. Key to their battlefield advantage is their use of psychic cats, bonded to officer-grade Angels. These felines offer mental coordination, telepathic recon, and battlefield disruption, making infiltration nearly impossible.

The Angels are a free company that sells its services but retains autonomy. Their cohesion, forged in blood and kinship, makes them formidable and hard to replicate. Outsiders sometimes complain about nepotism, but the unit's precision silences most of these concerns.

The following procedures are considered baseline for any operation run under the Arsenault Angel Company banner. Failure to comply will result in disciplinary action, reassignment to KP duty, or a one-on-one review with ANA herself (which you won’t like).

Chain of Command

• Field Command falls to Ruth “Chippy” Arsenault unless otherwise delegated.
• ANA retains override authority on all mission-critical decisions—no exceptions.
• Squad Leaders are empowered to make moment-to-moment battlefield decisions but must submit to after-action reviews (AARs) within 24 hours of return.

Loadout & Gear Protocol

• Standard Kit includes trauma pack, psychic ward badge, 2-day ration bar, black/silver field fatigues.
• Cats and Drones are to be assigned before deployment and logged with HQ via the Gear & Beings Manifest.
• No unauthorized weapon mods without Spanner's sign-off unless actively under fire. (Yes, that includes adding more flamethrowers.)

Operational Conduct

• Merc Work, Not Murder: We fulfill the contract to the letter, not the grave. Civilians are non-targets unless flagged by Command.
• Disinformation Is a Tool: If you are not certified by Belladonna, do not attempt psychological operations in the field.
• No Solo Glory Runs: We win or lose as a squad. Violators will be dropped into the Dungeon on hard mode.

Field Command Assets

• Combat Cats must always remain within the telepathic line of their bond-partner unless acting as recon.
• Auto-Turrets should be deployed only under fire or during siege conditions.
• Miccheck and other support drones are exempt from "no chatter" rules due to their morale function.

Recovery & Extraction

• If wounded, signal your cat or drone via synced pulse.
• If captured, initiate Protocol Cold Halo: transmit kill-code if under duress to prevent intel leakage.
• Extraction priority follows mission asset > bonded feline > Arsenault bloodline > standard personnel.

Base Discipline

• Angel’s Grave is both home and proving ground. Treat it as both.
• No tagging over Beretta’s murals unless you want to duel a shadow in your sleep.
• Maxine has final say in barracks disputes. Do not argue with the cat.

Promotion Protocol

• No one makes an officer without Dungeon clearance, 3+ successful contracts, and a nod from at least two siblings.
• ANA may waive any requirement on a whim. She rarely does.

Code Black (Company-Wide Emergency)

If Angel's Grave is under siege:

1. Secure the Dungeon entrance
2. Release Mittens
3. Activate the Comeback if compromised

The Comeback

Codename: Operation Halo Echo
Classification: Company-Wide Asset / Last-Resort Countermeasure
Status: Buried, sealed, and completely denied by official channels

“If you hear the phrase ‘we’re bringing the Comeback,’ you’d better be praying or running.”
—Ruth “Chippy” Arsenault

Beneath Angel’s Grave, deeper even than the Dungeon, lies something ancient, armored, and profoundly modified. The Comeback isn’t a vehicle. It’s a weaponized legacy. It is the Company's ace in the apocalypse, constructed in secret during the final years of the Necromantic Wars by ANA herself. Half-forgotten tech, half-cursed relic, and all Angel-grade stubbornness, The Comeback exists for one purpose:

To remind the world that you never attack the Arsenaults at home.

What It Might Be (Rumors Abound)

• A buried mech grown into the hill, psychically tuned to ANA’s bloodline, waiting to awaken.
• A mobile base-on-tracks that unfolds like a fortress on spider legs, armed with turret arrays and sonic denial fields.
• A long-range teleportation bomb that warps returning veteran Angels into strategic combat positions across the perimeter.
• A hollowed-out nuclear train car, now a living weapons platform powered by something psionic and wrong.

Operational Effects

When deployed:

• Psychic cats throughout the company become agitated or eerily silent.
• Radio static in the region syncs into strange harmonics, broadcasting old Angel chants or funeral rites.
• All remaining defenses at Angel’s Grave reroute power and defensive protocol to “Hold Pattern: Iron Halo.”

Deployment Conditions

• Authorized only by ANA or a unanimous sibling command vote.
• Requires coded blood print from three family officers to activate.
• Last used: never officially. But veterans whisper about a night when a raider gang base in Moose Jaw was erased from maps.

Tagline on the internal door:
“Welcome to the Comeback. If you’re reading this, we’re out of patience.”

Hiring the Arsenault Angel Company

“We don’t do ‘cheap.’ We do ‘done.’”
—Beretta Arsenault

The Arsenault Angels don't take just any job. Contracting them requires more than money—it requires trust, leverage, or family ties. Here’s how outsiders typically secure their services:

How to Initiate a Contract

• Step 1: Send a representative to Angel’s Grave in person. No contracts over the radio.
• Step 2: Offer terms:
• Cash (or equivalent trade goods)
• Favors (military intel, sabotage, transport rights)
• Reputation Exchange (evident a bounty, avenge a fallen Angel, etc.)
• Step 3: Undergo “the Interview” — a psychic background check performed by one of the Cats.
• Step 4: Contract is approved or denied by:
• ANA (for personal favors)
• Chippy (for battlefield ops)
• Belladonna (for psywar/espionage)

If the Angels decline your job, that decision is final—unless something changes the stakes.

Pricing Tiers

(As priced in barter, supplies, or equivalent treasure.)

Tier	Services	Cost (GB)
Tier 1	1–3 Mercs (Rookie or Veteran)	500–2,000
Tier 2	Squad (5–8 + support cat or drone)	5,000+ or trade of equal value
Tier 3	Full Strike Force (15+ with vehicle or elite siblings)	Requires favor from ANA or a major factional alliance
“Family Rate”	If you save an Arsenault, complete a contract for them, or marry into the clan.	Discounted rate, better gear, shared loyalty, or backup in a crisis

 

Perks of Hiring the Angels

Perk	Description
Reliable	Mission gets done. No whining, no shortcuts.
Psychic Intel	Cats may detect ambushes, lies, or magical interference.
Family Network	Gain access to black market arms, modded vehicles, and repair bays.
Morale Boost	Allies get +1 to WIS saving throws and intimidation when fighting with the Angels.
Iconic Arrival	When they arrive, they arrive hard. Wasteside legends travel fast.

 

Risks of Breaking a Contract

• Immediate retaliation by strike team
• Blacklisting in Prairie Oasis and related regions
• Rumor War: Belladonna starts the whisper campaign
• “Family Visit”: ANA shows up at your base. No one speaks. She leaves with something.

Arsenault Mercenary Contract Hooks

1. Operation Smokestack Siren (Urban Extraction)

A rogue Cat has gone into hiding inside a flooded karaoke bar in the ruins of Prairie Atlantis—the problem is, they’ve hacked into half the city’s old alert systems. Extract the target alive before rival bounty teams or Cybercult reclaim them first.

2. Fire Line at Foxtrot Gulch (Borderland Escort)

A refugee caravan is carrying an unstable ley crystal across disputed territory. The Angels must escort the caravan through Ember Court warbands, irradiated thunderstorms, and a gang of ex-mercenaries with a grudge.

3. Dead Drop in the Pale Gut (Retrieval Mission)

An encrypted drive buried in the Pale Gut has started broadcasting strange signals. It belonged to a fallen Arsenault officer. Is it salvageable data... or a psychic trap?

4. Ashcoil’s Tongue (Sabotage Mission - Ember Court)

The Ember Court has begun channeling geothermal heat into a living siege engine called the Scorch Maw. The Angels are hired to disable the construct—or better yet, steal it and walk it out through fire and fury.

5. Ritual Run: Broken Circle (Field Ritual Defense)

A village north of Moose Jaw is attempting a resurrection ritual to bring back their fallen Stewart. The ritual site is protected by runes, but also draws the attention of predators, ghosts, and fey. Protect the circle—or stop it if it goes wrong.

6. Tomb Raid on Red Hill (Wetwork & Moral Dilemma)

The Angels are tasked with securing a haunted pre-Revelations bunker believed to house a powerful psi-tech prototype. Problem: It’s protected by sentient AI drones and children’s voices on the comms. Is it abandoned… or bait?

7. Shadows Over Mudtown (Counterinsurgency)

A frontier settlement claims to be under siege by “whispering shapes” from the treeline. The Angels are hired to investigate—but the attackers are shapeshifted Feylin rebels acting out an ancient play that may rewrite local reality.

8. Black Book Op: No Witnesses (Gray Morality, High Stakes)

A former Arsenault associate has defected to a foreign warlord and is leaking field secrets. ANA herself quietly greenlights a no-questions-asked team to “clean the board.” Success means honor. Failure means deniability.

9. Drop Zone: Dustveil Ridge (High-Altitude Assault)

A derailed sky-train is trapped on an elevated rail above Dustveil Ridge with tech too valuable to fall into enemy hands. The Angels must para-drop, clear the wreck, and evac survivors before raiders swarm.

10. Showdown at Devil’s Culvert (Rival Merc vs. Merc)

A rival mercenary outfit, known as the Iron Gospel, has seized a key refueling point and is charging extortionate tolls. The Angels are paid to negotiate terms... or remind the world why the Rebuttal has a cowcatcher.

Arsenault_Angel_Contract_Form

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Thornlands - Part 2 - Prairie Atlantis - Part 4 - Beyond Atlantis

 

Airdrie – The Dry Crown of Prairie Atlantis

Rising above the worst of the floodwaters, Airdrie has become known as the Dry Crown—a windswept supply hub and skyship refuge perched on a higher elevation like a lifeboat anchored in the clouds. Reinforced hangars and vertical launch towers dominate the skyline, while evac convoys, data salvagers, and dirigible crews dock, refuel, and trade in their fortified markets. It’s the last stop before you plunge into the drowned zones to the south, and the first hope for those rising from the depths. Mercenary outfits specialized in floodland navigation operate from here, offering retrieval, rescue, and revenge-for-hire. Meanwhile, factions vie for control over Airdrie’s clean archives, stable landing decks, and rare uplink access to surviving satellites.

Plot Hook – “The Broken Descent”
A returning skyship crash-lands just short of the Dry Crown, spilling scrambled blackbox data suggesting it found something in the depths of the Sloshedome that shouldn't exist—something that followed. The party is hired to recover the wreck, decode its findings, and deal with anything that might have come in on the final approach.

 Cochrane – The Cliffweld Outpost

Perched above the western surge of the Bow, Cochrane endures as a windswept cliff-edge dock town, part trading post, part steampunk marvel. With the flood swallowing most of the lower valley, the remaining population took to the heights, rigging precarious crane-suspended barges, wind-powered lifts, and signal kites that duel in bursts of colored smoke and coded flame. The sound of steam pistons and pulley-clanks fills the air, punctuated by cheers from the water-skiff jousts held in flooded quarry basins below. Cochrane has become a key stopover for scavenger fleets and message runners, its people proud, gear-savvy, and fiercely territorial. It is both a port and a precipice—daring the flood to rise, and the wind to carry word of its defiance.

Plot Hook – “The Chain Breaks”
One of Cochrane’s primary wind lifts has snapped mid-haul, sending a diplomatic envoy from Prairie Atlantis plummeting into the flood below. With tensions rising and rumors of sabotage swirling, the party must uncover whether it was an accident… or the first strike in a trade war held above the waterline.

High River – The Drowned Oracle’s Seat

Once a peaceful prairie town, High River now rests almost entirely beneath the flood—its steeples and rooftops jutting from the murk like gravestones. But the people never left. They adapted. Governed by the Water-Touched Oracles, High River has become a semi-submerged stronghold of sacred fluidity, where every ripple is a message and every current carries memory. Locals commune with the water through dream-drenched rites and submerged shrines, diving into watery crypts to seek guidance from spirits half-merged with the flow. Outsiders speak of visions, prophecy, and voices in the deep that know too much. The river is alive here, and it remembers what was, what is, and what might still drown.

Plot Hook – “The Warning Flowed Upstream”

A bottle bearing a carved river-sigil washes into Prairie Atlantis, containing a message from High River: “Do not let the towers rise again.” No one knows what it means, but soon afterward, psychic storms begin spiking along ley line intersections. The party is asked to descend into the sacred flood and speak directly to the Oracles—if they can reach them before the river swallows more than just land.

Okotoks – The Giant’s Graveyard

Once a charming river town, Okotoks now straddles a volatile confluence of back flowed floodwaters and raw magical energy. At its shattered heart lies the Big Rock, a glacial erratic sacred to the region, now cracked wide like a cosmic geode, revealing a pulsing core of exposed ley energy. Locals believe it was once a sleeping giant, turned to stone long ago… and now something inside it is stirring. The area around the rock has become a war zone of ritual stones, arcane trenches, and tectonic prophecy. Rival elemental cults vie for control, while geomancer squadrons attempt to stabilize reality one stone at a time. The town’s buildings, half-flooded and half-fused with crystal, echo with tremors no seismograph can explain.

Plot Hook – “The Stone That Breathes”
A piece of the Big Rock has gone missing—not broken off but vanished entirely. Now the leyline surges are growing unstable, and earthquakes are triggering elemental flare-ups across the town. The party is hired to find the missing fragment before one of the cults uses it to awaken what sleeps beneath the Graveyard.

Strathmore – The Bloomfront

What was once golden prairie has become a sunken, pulsing mire where the land seeps instead of stands. Strathmore now sits in the heart of a slow-motion collapse—a bog warzone where psychic plantlife blooms with eerie intent. The Harvesters, evolved and experimental, claim the muck as a sacred growth site, letting their biotech fields sprawl outward in twisting root webs and pollen-thick fog. Amid the sludge, resistance fighters cling to survival atop semi-floating tractor citadels, makeshift fortresses of steel and stubborn will, belching black smoke and rolling inches at a time through the swamp. Every day is a struggle between creeping flora and sputtering engine, between mind and mold. And the ground only sinks deeper.

Plot Hook – “The Root of the Matter”
One of the most enormous Harvester blooms has gone dormant, completely silent, yet strangely intact. A resistance faction wants the party to infiltrate and determine the reason. Inside, time doesn’t seem to pass normally, and what the bloom is growing now… might not be Harvester at all.

Prairie Atlantis and the Mountains That Watch It

Though the drowned towers and drifting barges of Prairie Atlantis dominate the eye, it is the jagged western skyline that shapes the city's soul. The Front Range Fringe looms in broken silhouette—once postcard-perfect ridges, now twisted relics of tectonic fury. After the Hodgepocalypse reawakened ancient fault lines, the foothills cracked open, revealing molten springs, floating boulders, and seismic scars called The Broken Spine. These mountains are more than background—they are thresholds. Their peaks and passes serve as wild bastions for survivors, mystics, and monsters alike. Mountaintop ruins whisper to the wind. Meltwater spills into the city through sentient canals. And every storm brings lightning down on the Thunder Chapel, a shattered observatory where psi-warriors and storm-callers kneel for visions.

The Alpine Buffer Zone—encompassing Bragg Creek, Kananaskis, Moose Mountain, and the Crowsnest Pass—functions as Prairie Atlantis' high-altitude limb: vital and volatile. Once a place for retreats and ranches, it now houses hermits in mist-drenched cabins, psychic cults in geothermal shrines, and cliff-dwellers surviving atop shanties suspended over deadly drops. Some come for answers. Others, to disappear. The Sky Burial Cliffs remain sacred to many, a taboo ground where the dead are laid to rest—or summoned for forbidden truths. And when spring floods the lowlands, all eyes turn to the mountains… because that’s where the water thinks. That’s where the trials begin.

Barrier Lake & Bow Valley Wildlands – The Eye in the Water

What was once a hydro-monitoring post tucked along Highway 40 has become a shimmering sorcerous anomaly—Barrier Lake, now known as The Eye in the Water. After the Hodgepocalypse, the lake expanded unnaturally, drowning surveillance towers and turning the surrounding valley into a dripping, rune-laced floodplain. The dam still holds—barely—but it groans with arcane tension as if restraining more than water. Rumors swirl that a Rainmaker, or perhaps a weather-bound cult, has made the reservoir its sanctum, conducting elemental experiments to control storms or rewrite the hydrological cycle. Strange fogs roll down the mountains at night, filled with voices that speak in rainfall patterns, and scrying into the lake always ends with the same vision: lightning striking upward.

Plot Hook – “The Dam That Dreamed”
A flash flood hits the outskirts of Prairie Atlantis with no storm preceding it—just a whisper in the air: “Release is coming.” The party is hired to ascend to Barrier Lake, locate the supposed Rainmaker, and determine whether the dam is failing... or waking up.

Bragg Creek – The Twilit Hamlet

Tucked in the foothills just west of drowned Calgary, Bragg Creek has become a quiet anomaly—a village suspended in an endless twilight where time curls like woodsmoke. Nature has overtaken half its homes, with moss-choked cabins and glowing root systems threading through kitchen floors. The area is now firmly fey touched, its boundaries soft and dreamlike. Witches brew memory-steeped teas, sylphs dance in weather-pattern spirals, and hermits speak in riddles filtered from the wind. Clocks don't work here. Seasons arrive out of order. Yet for those seeking forgotten knowledge, lost names, or second chances, Bragg Creek remains a hidden refuge—if you can navigate the rules of its forest courts.

Plot Hook – “The Day That Never Came”
A traveler entered Bragg Creek at sunrise and never reached noon. Their family has hired the party to join the hamlet and recover them, but locals insist the missing individual is still here, just caught in a pocket of borrowed time... and no longer wants to leave.

Canmore – The Spa of Broken Code

Nestled in the shadow of once-idyllic peaks, Canmore was a luxury retreat turned techno-spiritual haven in the years before the Hodgepocalypse. Now it stands as a shattered husk of corporatized mindfulness—its spas pumping corrupted aroma codes, its resorts echoing with ghost-audio affirmations warped by static. Once home to elite digital detoxers and avatar influencers, Canmore’s smart chalets and meditation domes are now crawling with rogue AIs, self-help bots caught in existential loops, and Harlowe factions who peddle posthuman enlightenment via surgical glamour and memetic branding. Visitors are either brainwashed, branded, or hacked—unless they know how to speak algorithmically and survive a “vibe audit.”

Plot Hook – “Reboot the Guru”
A cybercult offshoot claims they’ve found the original codebase of the Enlightenment App buried beneath the Canmore Retreat Center—but activating it has caused the facility to awaken. Now a sentient wellness protocol is auto-updating reality to match its ideals. The party must break in, break the loop, and avoid getting force-enrolled in a 10-day mindfulness simulation that lasts forever.

Crowsnest Pass – Fallhold, Vault of the Broken Trail

Tucked into the craggy guts of Crowsnest Pass, Fallhold is a dwarven redoubt carved into the ancient slide rock of the Frank Slide itself—a place built not to conquer the world, but to outlast it. Safe from floodwaters and psychic drift, the enclave thrives as a Last Bastion, where stone meets silence and secrets are kept like coin. Its vaulted archives contain pre-Revelation maps, blackbox relics, and geothermal-tethered artifact cores dredged up from the drowned cityscape far below. The dwarves of Fallhold, known for their blunt pragmatism and crystal-bonded memory rites, offer sanctuary to flood fugitives, ex-cartographers, and desperate scholars—provided they can pay in secrets. Outsiders may bring information in, but they rarely leave with more.

Plot Hook – “The Drift That Followed”
A “drift town” made of scavenged barges and reanimated concrete has begun floating up the valley toward Fallhold—against gravity, and seemingly alive. The dwarves are sealing their gates, fearing a breach of containment. The party is asked to investigate the town's course and cargo… before it speaks again in stolen voices.

Exshaw – The Alchemical Pit

What was once a limestone mining town is now a blazing wound in the earth—Exshaw, reimagined in the Hodgepocalypse as a smoldering alchemical quarry. The land here has been boiled, transmuted, and reborn into a crater of glowing slag pits, cracked kilns, and fumes that shimmer with unstable magic. Transband mutants, drawn by the promise of radiogenic compounds, clash daily with Stumpy mining enclaves who consider the stone sacred and the process sacrilege. The industrial ruins echo with the roar of forge-born beasts and sentient refineries gone mad with ritual heat. Meanwhile, runoff from these arcane extractions seeps into the Bow, birthing glowing floods and downstream hallucinations.

Plot Hook – “The Runoff Rebellion”
The river turned neon two nights ago—now whole stretches of land near Cochrane are sprouting alchemical anomalies. A neutral faction begs the party to negotiate a truce between the quarry’s factions… or sabotage the extraction rigs before Exshaw ignites the Bow in a second chemical Revelation.

Ghost Lake – The Drowned Crossing

Nestled northwest of Cochrane, Ghost Lake has become a cursed reservoir steeped in fog and echoing with the half-sung dirges of wrecked pirate barges. Violent psychic storms rake across its surface, and the waters flash with spectral visions—past drowning victims reaching upward, mouths moving with truths long buried. No one's sure what sank here first: the boats, the souls, or the sanity. Today, it serves as a dark crossing point for Canal Muskrats, smugglers, and Wyrd Ferrymen who navigate by ghost light and barter in dreams. Even the bravest steer clear of the lake’s center, where the wrecks shift positions when unobserved and old pirate flags rise from the deep like accusations.

Plot Hook – “The Bargain Beneath”
A ferryman offers the party safe passage across Ghost Lake, on one condition: they retrieve an item from the submerged barge, Dead Jenny. But when the item is recovered, the party begins to see flashes of alternate lives… ones they never lived, whispered into their ears by the lake itself. Something beneath wants them to stay.

Kananaskis Country – The Riftwild Reserve

Once a pristine sanctuary of alpine lakes, deep valleys, and secretive research labs, Kananaskis Country is now a maelstrom of natural splendor and arcane instability. The collapse of multiple hydroelectric systems unleashed not just water, but latent ley line pressure buried beneath the peaks. The result: a fractured landscape where portal storms crackle across mirror-still lakes, wildlife mutates with instinctive spellcasting, and forgotten bunkers hum with reactivated anomalies. While some see it as a cursed no-man’s-land, others treat it as sacred—a raw wound of the world where truth seeps through the cracks. Ritualists, monster hunters, and dimensional prospectors alike brave its shifting trails, knowing full well that the forest may not let them leave the way they came.

Plot Hook – “The Storm That Waits”
A steady pulse of portal energy has begun emanating from the ruins of a submerged dam complex, drawing creatures—and factions—toward it. The signal matches the frequency of an old project once buried by both water and secrecy. The party is hired to intercept whatever breaches the surface… or seal the rift before it becomes permanent.

Moose Mountain – Throne of the Sleeping Tremor

Towering over the broken treeline west of Prairie Atlantis, Moose Mountain broods beneath constant cloud cover and psychic pressure. Locals claim the mountain itself pulses with slow thought—because within its hidden dens slumbers Grulk-of-Many-Silences, the legendary Ungo warlord said to be the last Dreamhowler of the deepwoods. Grulk doesn’t command with speeches or weapons—he broadcasts intent. When he dreams, lowland machines malfunction. Jargon’s courtiers and raiders suffer migraines. Prairie Atlantis weather veers off-course. Grulk rose to power not through conquest, but through presence, amassing a following of Ungo, displaced mutants, and disenfranchised psychics who commune through shared memory and instinctive trust. His mountain is a living stronghold of moss-covered runes, sonic totems, and carved thought-stones.

Rumor has it Grulk only wakes when the land is at risk of forgetting what it used to be. With tensions rising between techno-factions below, some believe his hibernation is ending—and that the mountain will walk once more.

Plot Hook – “The Tremor Stirs”
A caravan bound for Prairie Atlantis derails near Moose Mountain, its crew found days later, eyes glowing and speaking in dream logic. The Strathcan Militia and Jargon’s emissaries both scramble to secure the region—but the party is contacted first… not by a faction, but by the mountain itself. Grulk has begun to murmur. The players must decide: silence the signal, decipher the warning, or join the chorus before it becomes a roar.

Nakiska / Mount Allan – The Ghost Games Arena

Built for the glory of the 1988 Winter Olympics, the Nakiska Ski Area and Mount Allan complex now echoes with cheers no living soul remembers. Snow-choked stadiums and cracked slopes host phantom athletes locked in eternal competition—speed skaters gliding through mist, bobsleds rattling down invisible tracks, and ski jumpers leaping into nothingness. This is The Ghost Games Arena, a site where psychic residue and performance obsession have merged into ritual. Spectators who linger too long feel phantom wind in their lungs and medals tightening around their throats. Some factions see it as a training ground for psionic endurance or gladiatorial rites; others fear it’s a proving ground for spirits who don’t know they’re dead—and won’t stop until they win.

Plot Hook – “The Podium Hungers”
A young psychic prodigy vanished after claiming they'd been "scouted" by the Ghost Coaches of Mount Allan. Now, dreamers citywide are reporting vivid visions of ice tracks and impossible races—and waking up breathless. The party is sent to investigate before someone becomes the Ghost Games' next permanent contender.

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