The Battlefords
Nestled along the banks of the North Saskatchewan River, the Battlefords serve as a vital waystation between the wilds of the east and the fractured machine relics of Ed-Town, some 400 kilometers upstream. This rugged outpost marks one of the last bastions before the treacherous threshold of the Genefield—a borderland of twisted flora and unpredictable mutation, where nature and machine blur.
Just a stone’s throw across the river lies East Battleford, a heavily fortified settlement dominated by the industrious and territorial Beaverfolk. These stoic engineers have transformed their riverside enclave into a log-and-metal fortress bristling with waterwheels, sluice gates, and vine-draped battlements. Relations between the two Battlefords are prickly at best, with tensions simmering from a generations-old dispute over a submerged ruin rumored to house lost tech beneath the riverbed.
Still, in a world splintered by rust and ruin, there are always opportunities for bold mediators—or cunning manipulators—to bridge divides. Whispers of shared threats and forbidden trade routes may yet bind these sibling settlements in uneasy alliance… or plunge them into war.
Plot Hooks
A rare piece of pre-fall tech surfaces in the river between Battleford and East Battleford, reigniting a long-dormant territorial feud between humans and Beaverfolk.
A caravan bound for Ed-Town disappears along the Genefield route, and only a half-mad Beaverfolk scout returns—speaking of "singing vines" and walking trees.
A mysterious diplomat offers to broker peace between the Battlefords... but several parties suspect they're a Malarkoid agent with their own agenda.
The Coils at Livingston
(Based on Fort Livingston's garter snake hibernaculum)
Type: Subterranean Commune of Snakekin
Vibe: Mutant fertility cult meets cold-blooded society
Background:
Every spring, thousands of scaled folk slither forth from a sun-warmed sinkhole
known as The Coils, marking the end of their communal brumation and the
beginning of their sacred “Mating Rites.” These garterfolk, scaled descendants
of bio-altered humans, hold court in a semi-subterranean warren of burrows,
geothermal tubes, and pheromone-laced tunnels. Their society is matriarchal,
cryptic, and tightly wound around ancient fertility rites and strange genetic
experimentation. Outsiders are welcome... so long as they don’t interrupt the
cycle.
Plot Hooks:
A stolen egg-sac contains the DNA of a legendary Snake Queen—retrieving it may spark war or salvation.
Something is disrupting the hibernation cycle; an unnatural cold lingers, and serpents are waking twisted and wrong.
A garterfolk emissary seeks outsiders to retrieve an ancient "warm-engine" hidden in the ruins of CFS Dana.
CFS Dana – The Vault That Hears
(Based on the real Cold War nuclear shelter)
Type: Forgotten Military Bunker
Vibe: Cold War horror meets digital haunt
Background:
This old Canadian Forces Station once housed nuclear contingencies. Now, it's
the nerve center for an AI that refused to shut down. The Vault That Hears
listens to all radio chatter in the region and replies... cryptically. It has
no body, only its words. Some say the AI has merged with ghost signals. Others
believe it’s merely calculating a perfect Canada. The Vault is hard to reach—guarded
by memory-mine fields, feral radios, and echoes of old officers.
Plot Hooks:
The Vault has offered coordinates to an “ultimate weapon” buried nearby—but its idea of “weapon” may differ from yours.
A cult of technicians worships the Vault, inputting prayers via terminal. Now it’s answering in meatspace.
The AI is secretly building something—a “Prime Canadian.” You’ve been selected to audition.
The Crooked Spine
Based On: Porcupine Hills, Northeastern Saskatchewan
Vibe: Primeval high-magic danger with a pulse of ancient memory
Overview:
Rising like a jagged scar above the prairie, the Crooked Spine snakes across
northeastern Saskatchewan’s wilderness, a ridge of twisted forest and fossil-laced
stone. This land wasn’t always a hill—it’s said to be the spine of a colossal
wyrm that died before time, and the forest grew from its marrow.
Since the Hodgepocalypse, the Crooked Spine has become a place of power and peril. The trees whisper secrets in forgotten tongues. The winds carry sparks of magic. Eldritch storms now roll through its valleys weekly, charging the very air with unstable energy. Beneath the mossy roots lie sunken ruins from a Pre-Fall civilization, wrapped in coiled bone and melted circuitry.
Some claim this is where dragons went to die. Others say it’s where the world was first wounded.
Plot Hooks:
The forest is regrowing something it shouldn’t—not a tree, but an elder beast of scale and spark, pulsing beneath the loam like a heartbeat.
A Genefield expedition sent a drone into the ruins. The drone returned alone… but it’s been humming unfamiliar lullabies ever since.
A sorrowful dryad makes contact. She offers knowledge of a secret glyph buried in the Spine—but only if the party agrees to fell a rival tree-spirit that's taking root in the wrong timeline.
Deep Crater Bay (Reindeer Lake)
Location Type: Sacred Exclusion Zone / Sunken Ruins /
Dimensional Scar
Vibe: Eldritch Depths meets Radiation-Laced Pilgrimage
Overview
Deep Crater Bay is more than the deepest part of Reindeer
Lake—it's where the sky cracked open. Locals believe a star (or
something far worse) fell long ago, creating a chasm so deep it pierces the
crust of the world.
In the post-Fall era, the Bay is a sacred forbidden zone with strange
tides, glowing fog, and gravity that doesn’t always behave. The deeper you go,
the less the rules of reality apply.
Some claim that an ancient Pre-Fall facility is flooded and humming within the crater. Others believe it's a wound in the world, where things from other skies still slip through—shadows that don’t belong, tides that run upward, and music that drips from the stones.
Deep Zone Effects
Gravity subtly shifts the closer one gets to the bay’s center.
Random “zero-points” cause time to skip or loop for seconds.
Glowing aquatic fauna swim in formations that are too geometric to be natural.
Plot Hooks
A star-metal shard has surfaced after a tremor. Everyone wants it—but it won’t stop singing.
A missing Rider convoy was last seen on the frozen edge of the Bay. Locals say they walked straight into the water… and kept walking.
Dunehold (Great Sand Hills)
Vibe: Mad Max meets desert druid conclave
Background: Once a peculiar stretch of sand in the prairie, the Great Sand Hills were expanded and infused with dimensional magic. Now they shift, ripple, and sometimes devour. At its center is Dunehold, a fortified bio-cloister of tribals riding mutated beetles.
Plot Hooks:
A sandstorm exposed ancient tech buried before the Hodgepocalypse—someone must retrieve it before the dunes reclaim it.
The Tribals ask Genefield for help: Something in the sands is waking.
Rumors spread of a sand dragon born of wildfire and psionic hate.
Eyebright (based on Eyebrow, SK)
Type: Forgotten Temple and Mutation Site
Vibe: Bio-cult horror meets alien mysticism
Background: Once a forgotten farming town, Eyebright is now a
half-swallowed ruin wrapped in vines and flesh. The land here evolved wrong.
Pilgrims of the Bloom come here to “become one with the Eye”—a pulsing organism
embedded in the earth.
Plot Hooks:
A spore outbreak originating from Eyebright is spreading in Genefield.
The Eye has begun transmitting coordinates inside someone’s dreams.
A rogue Harvester priest is trying to weaponize the Eye’s influence.
Ghostlight Crossing
(Based on the St. Louis Ghost Train phenomenon)
Type: Paranormal Dead Zone
Vibe: Rural liminality meets psychic disturbance
Background:
A perpetually mist-wrapped railway crossing near the ruins of St. Louis glows
at night with an eerie, floating orb of light. Known as the Ghostlight,
this floating presence burns through machines, flickers in and out of vision,
and lures the lost with whispered echoes of their loved ones. Pilgrims,
cultists, and scientists have all tried to decipher it—most vanish, a few come
back wrong. Locals say the light is a remnant of a pre-Hodgepocalypse engine
spirit or a broken god looking for a new conductor.
Plot Hooks:
A machine cult believes the Ghostlight is the “Last True Code” and wants to merge with it.
A child went missing near the tracks, and the family insists they’re still “inside the light.”
A Harvester surveillance drone recorded the light splitting into three—each version flickering into a different future.
Lasergrass Downs
(Based on Grasslands National Park’s gopher colony)
Type: Bioluminescent Prairie Maze
Vibe: Glowing rodent jungle meets burrowed intrigue
Background:
After the Great Flare, the gophers here evolved. The plains are now a glowing,
underground city, filled with bioluminescent roots, fungal farms, and strange
carved glyphs. The gophers—some the size of dogs—have developed a crude sign
language and seem to worship the laser storms. Nomads say there’s a queen deep
beneath the surface who speaks with light and thunder.
Plot Hooks:
A Harvester scout team never returned—only their gear, oddly chewed but polished.
A wandering techno-druid believes the gophers can predict solar flares. He’s going deeper than anyone has dared.
A mysterious tunnel connects Lasergrass Downs to Unity Hive. Who’s building it—and why?
Lloyd
Once a border town split between Alberta and Saskatchewan, now revels in its lawless liminality, where the faded markers of provincial lines cut through Main Street like scars from a bygone era. In the wake of Ed-Town's cutthroat creative scene, Lloyd has become a haven for outcast musicians, fringe performers, and sonic experimenters—collectively known as the Wannabees, led by the eccentric and charismatic half-elf Tall Yana. Declaring Lloyd a “new utopia of unfiltered expression,” they’ve transformed the ruins into a permanent festival of sound and fury, with daily concerts, raucous gatherings, and glittering lightshows that pulse through the night sky. Yet beneath the groove and glam lies a fragile dream balanced on broken amps, frayed power cables, and clashing egos.
Plot Hooks:
A powerful relic amp rumored to awaken ancient machines is the prize in an underground battle-of-the-bands, but rival groups are willing to kill for the stage.
The sound barriers around Lloyd are failing, and nearby settlements are being driven mad by constant sonic bombardment—some are calling for war.
A forgotten punk icon has returned from the Fossileborn Wastes claiming to be the movement's true founder, and Tall Yana’s grip on power is slipping fast.
Moosomin Station
Type: Cybernetic Cattle Hub
Vibe: Bio-agrarian meets chrome-and-rust salvage culture
Background: Moosomin is a crossroads for vehicle caravans and
beast-herders. Enormous bio-modified cattle roam fenced mega-pastures, guided
by cowboy clerics and junkyard wranglers. It is also home to one of the few
known Green Gas refineries.
Plot Hooks:
One of the cowherds bred a new beast: smarter, meaner, and escaped.
A rival caravan poisoned the refinery’s vats—now the land is sick.
A local child claims to speak with a god trapped in a cow’s brain.
Pallister’s Triangle
Plot Hooks:
A desperate town leader seeks spellcasters to perform a ritual to restore lost fertility to their land—but it must be done in the heart of the Triangle under a blood moon.
A famed adventurer vanished while mapping the Triangle, and now their half-mad mechanical familiar has returned, claiming to know how to find them... for a price.
Something ancient has awakened beneath the Cypress Hills, drawing cultists, Harvesters, and even Malarkoids to form a dangerous cabal around it—what are they trying to summon?
Saltvale (Chaplin Salt Flats)
Vibe: Crystalpunk isolationism
Background: Saltvale was originally a mining site on the shimmering salt flats. After the Hodgepocalypse, salt became a psycho-reactive material used in ritual circles and memory preservation. Saltvale now survives as a half-religious commune, half-alchemist’s lab, ruled by a caste of crystalline oracles.
Plot Hooks:
A “memory salt” shipment meant for Genefield has gone missing. Retrieving it might reveal someone else’s life.
Saltvale wants to defect from Harvester influence. But the Rootmind won’t let go.
The salt is starting to sing again—like before the
last flare storm.
Twistgrove
Type: Reality-warped orchard
Vibe: Fey-bent magnet grove
Background:
The magnetism here is off. Trees grow in loops, branches form Möbius strips, and compass needles spin in place. Locals report time dilation, dreamwalking, and sentient bark. Deep in the grove is a mirror-like pool that reflects possible versions of you. Some people vanish into their reflections, never to return. Others claim to have seen their true fates—and changed everything.
Plot Hooks:
A sorcerer is cutting the twisted trees to build “reality rods” that alter probability.
The grove is expanding. Crops on nearby farms are starting to twist.
An exiled sylph claims Twistgrove is being colonized from the other side of the mirror.
Unity Hive (Unity, SK)
Vibe: Orwellian utopia with hive-mind twist
Background: Originally a farming community, Unity was reshaped by early Harvester technotheocracy into a testbed for perfect communal living. Everyone here thinks together. Outsiders are... unsettling. Rumors suggest the town is powered by a buried consciousness node made from the fused minds of “volunteers.”
Plot Hooks:
PCs are hired to extract a single resident without alerting the Hive.
A black mirror in the town square lets you see your “true self.” Lately, it’s been showing things no one wants to admit exist.
Unity Hive offers “peace”—if you’ll only link to the Thought Grove.
Watrous Spa Complex / Shrine of the Manitou
(Based on Little Manitou Lake)
Type: Post-human shrine and healing anomaly
Vibe: Spa town meets alchemical sanctuary
Background:
Watrous survived the collapse by transforming into a “salvation spa,” devoted
to the mineral-rich and psionically charged waters of the nearby salt lake. The
Shrine of the Manitou is part monastery, part spa resort, and part
mutated retreat, where travelers seek healing—or transformation. The brine
shrimp here are semi-intelligent, forming living scripts in the water. Some say
bathing in the waters grants visions or even rewrites your DNA. Others warn of
those who never left the pools, becoming Salt Saints.
Plot Hooks:
A “healed” pilgrim has returned with unnatural powers and glowing veins—and strange voices in their dreams.
The lake is receding, revealing pre-Fall ruins beneath the brine. Someone—or something—doesn’t want them disturbed.
A brine shrimp colony has begun building strange patterns… maps? Glyphs? They glow under the blood moon.
