Thornlands - Part 2 - Prairie Atlantis - Part 3 - Schools and the Submerged

 

S.A.I.T. (Sanctum of Applied Innovation & Technology)

Once a renowned institute of trades, technology, and applied sciences, the SAIT complex now towers above the flooded ruins of Calgary, its elevated walkways and tiered buildings spared from submersion. Known simply as “The Forge” to locals, it has become one of the last working tech-education enclaves in the region—a bastion of half-functioning machines, jury-rigged laboratories, and wisdom passed through burnt schematics and mnemonic tattoos.

The campus is surrounded by flooded debris fields and canal-pocked streets, making ground approach difficult. However, it remains highly active thanks to zip lines, drone couriers, and solar-rail lifts.’

Factions of S.A.I.T.

The Emberlings – Young Sparks of the Forge (

right-eyed and scorch-marked, the Emberlings are the next generation of makers and fighters in Prairie Atlantis. Part apprentice, part scrap-warrior, they wield wrench-axes and thermal welders with reckless pride. They form ad-hoc guilds with names like “The Socket Order” or “Boil Team 6,” and take pride in surviving mid-lecture explosions and scav runs into the TCZ.

Plot Hook: “Pipe Dreams”
An Emberling capstone project—meant to recycle sewer heat into clean energy—accidentally awakens something beneath the Red Vault. Now the party must either help contain it... or help the Emberlings convince the Tenured it counts as extra credit.

Ghost Faculty – Professors Emeritus (and Ominous)

Bound to the Forge by willpower, trauma, or unfinished lectures, the Ghost Faculty roam the quieter halls, flickering through broken terminals and forgotten labs. Some are brilliant, eager to teach again. Others are bitter, looping through toxic tenure disputes or cursing students who failed their final projects—and them.

Plot Hook: “The Midterm That Wouldn’t Die”
Students in Lecture Hall 9b haven’t emerged in two days. When the party investigates, they find the room trapped in a psychic recursion loop, with spectral faculty demanding answers to an unsolvable midterm. Worse yet, failing grades have consequences… metaphysical ones.

Gleamers – Salvagers of the Sacred Circuit

These tech cultists and code scavengers believe every working machine holds a shard of divine memory. Some are pious tinkerers loyal to the Forge, while others slip memory cores to Cybercult agents in exchange for neuro-hallucinogens or forbidden firmware. They dress in layered LEDs and hoarded circuit boards, whispering to coffee makers and worshipping the occasional operational vending machine.

Plot Hook: “Debugging the Divine”
The Gleamers have uncovered an ancient AI fragment buried beneath the old IT wing. They claim it's a "mechanical messiah"—but it keeps asking for firmware updates in languages no one remembers. The party must decide whether to help, translate, or terminate.

The Tenured – Keepers of Lost Curriculum

Ancient, respected, and mildly terrifying, the Tenured are the intellectual aristocracy of the Forge. Cloaked in scorched lab coats and ceremonial lanyards, they guard what remains of pre-Revelation knowledge with paranoid pride. Each professor governs a discipline like a fiefdom, and admission to their teachings often demands more than tuition—blood compatibility, fealty pledges, or the completion of dangerous “entrance exams” in malfunctioning labs.

Plot Hook: “Final Thesis”
A Tenured professor has died—again—and their last wish was to pass on forbidden schematics buried in the Radiotron’s memory vault. The party is chosen to deliver a mnemonic key... but a rival Tenured faction claims it was meant for them and invokes the ancient rite of Thesis Combat.

The Foundry Floor – Sparks Beneath the Forge

Beneath the Red Vault and the elevated halls of the Sanctum, the Foundry Floor blazes with kinetic purpose. The air is thick with molten ozone, shouted schematics, and the ringing cadence of metal beaten into survival. Welding sparks light the shadows of towering exo-limbs and half-built monstrosities, while apprentices race drones down grooved tracks for calibration rites. Every bench is a battlefield of innovation, where repurposed scrap becomes a lifeline, a weapon, or a transport—often all three. Overseers clad in scorched aprons and mirrored visors enforce discipline with magnet-charged hammers and a grudging respect for ambition.

Plot Hook – “Scrap Sabbath”
An experimental railgun frame went missing overnight, and now glowing footprints lead into the lowest catwalks. Someone—or something-is building its project, and it's not sticking to the curriculum.

Highline Walks – Rooftop Lifelines of the Flooded Core

Winding through the upper levels of submerged Prairie Atlantis, the Highline Walks form a web of steel-plated catwalks, garden bridges, and reinforced overpasses between the remnants of skyscrapers and institutional towers. What began as emergency evacuation routes has evolved into thriving aerial communities—complete with sniper nests, rooftop hydroponic farms, and stray cat sanctuaries guarded as fiercely as supply caches. Traders whisper that the Walks are protected by an old Angel Company blessing, and some claim that ANA herself once practiced her marksmanship on these rails, trading wisdom for shelter among rooftop sages and scaffold-born ferals. Now, the Highlines serve as both arteries of survival and high-ground battlegrounds, perched above flooded chaos.

Plot Hook – “Whiskers and Crosshairs”
A beloved Highline sniper has gone silent, and her cat sanctuary now broadcasts a distress signal in Morse via blinking LED collars. The party must trace the signal through hostile rooftops, hydraulic traps, and an enemy sniper who may be using her old perch—and old tactics—for very new goals.

The Red Vault – Heart of the Forge

Once the central administrative building of SAIT, the Red Vault has become the pulsing heart of post-Revelation innovation in Prairie Atlantis, its reinforced structure now houses a hybridized library-workshop-grid complex, buzzing with stored kinetic, solar, and arcane power. During the day, scholars, salvagers, and sapiens alike crowd its halls, exchanging blueprints and barter-pacts. At night, the building emits a steady crimson glow—an unintended side effect of excess energy cycling through the jury-rigged systems beneath. While its upper levels are filled with chalkboard blueprints, burnt-out screen terminals, and mnemonic tattoos inked onto parchment and flesh, the lowest levels remain sealed. The door to the sub-basement is marked in glowing glyphs and one ancient, very clear stencil: Uranium Curriculum – Authorized Personnel Only.

Plot Hook – “Crack the Curriculum”
A group of rogue engineers has begun experiencing vivid, identical dreams: blueprints of impossible machines, scrawled in a glowing, unknown script. All clues point to the Red Vault’s sealed basement. The party is recruited to escort a psychic key down into the heart of the Forge—but something behind that door is awake, and it remembers the Atomic Age too well.

 The Radiotron – Voice of the Ruins

Once a proud communications tower beaming civic announcements across Calgary’s skyline, the Radiotron now pulses with outlaw rhythm and static-laced wisdom. Covered in graffiti and bristling with makeshift antennae, it’s the domain of rogue tech-DJs who call themselves the Freqlords—broadcasting encrypted schematics, survival tactics, and rebellious sermons woven into bass-heavy beats. Locals tune in with salvaged receivers or psychically attuned earbuds, listening for the next drop of knowledge—or resistance. The Radiotron is more than a signal tower; it’s a lighthouse for the mind, and a war drum for those who still believe the city can dance again.

Plot Hook – “Dead Air at Dawn”
The Radiotron has gone suddenly, eerily silent. Its last broadcast ended mid-beat with a scream and a burst of binary. The party is tasked with climbing the tower, decoding the signal logs, and discovering what silenced the Freqlords before the city's scattered enclaves lose their rhythm—and their hope.

Submerged or Flooded Zones of Prairie Atlantis

Bowness – The Fract Isles

Once a riverside suburb, Bowness fractured during the Great Flood into a chain of scattered islets—now known as The Fract Isles. Twisting canals flow between rooftop peaks, half-drowned cul-de-sacs, and hastily built stilt-villages lashed together with driftwood and scavenged piping. It’s a place where oars speak louder than words. Beaver Folk navigate the waters on raft-caravans loaded with root liquor and reclaimed tech, while painted war-kayaks from rival gangs skim silently between the reeds. At the heart of it all is the Canoe Mafia—a tight-lipped flotilla syndicate controlling tolls, smuggling routes, and the lucrative paddle-for-hire trade. Every island has its secrets, and every current carries rumors downstream.

Plot Hook – “The Oath Oar”
A legendary canoe said to be carved from the last pre-Revelation cypress has resurfaced—and with it, an ancient debt tied to a forgotten blood oath between Canoe Mafia founders. Now every gang wants it, and the party’s boat just drifted into the middle of the warpath.

East Village – Slickshack Row

East Village has surrendered to the tide. Once a beacon of urban renewal, it’s now a chaotic flotilla of half-submerged condo husks, lashed-together barges, and rusted shipping containers stacked like errant dominoes. Locals call it Slickshack Row, a drifting shantytown of paddle-peddlers, bootleg traders, and synthetic fishmongers selling meat that might still twitch. Canal Muskrats—tough-as-silt survivors and former infrastructure workers—run protection rackets and taxi services. Smugglers weave neon-lit paths through the driftwood alleys while the Cult of the Neon Minnow chants to aquatic circuitry, swearing their patron swims just beneath the oily surface. Here, deals are made with a nod, a paddle, and a knife never drawn.

Plot Hook – “The Minnow’s Mouth”
A preacher of the Neon Minnow has begun broadcasting omens through a floating speaker-tangle made from stolen data towers. He claims a "flood inside the flood" is coming—and the cult is stockpiling batteries, hydrogel, and live sacrifices. The party must infiltrate Slickshack Row to uncover whether this is doomsday prep or something worse… a summoning.

Eau Claire & Prince’s Island Park – The Green Deep

Where cobbled paths once welcomed joggers and festivals lit the night, now only water and whispering roots remain. The Green Deep is a lush, half-submerged dream-bog formed atop the drowned ruins of Prince’s Island Park, where aquatic fey have taken root and twisted memory into habitat. Bioluminescent lilies bob alongside waterlogged playgrounds, while drowned trees hum lullabies that invade sleep. Acclimated hippos—semi-mystic beasts with territorial wisdom—guard sacred pools, and sapient fish trade forgotten songs for shiny offerings. The boundary between dream and water grows thin here; those who linger too long often surface with new scars… or someone else’s memories.

Plot Hook – “The Pond Remembers”
An envoy from the Strathcan Militia vanished after attempting to ally with the sapient fish of the Deep. Days later, a shimmering replica of them emerged—singing a lullaby in reverse and demanding to speak with “the original.” The party must dive into the submerged ruins to uncover what the waters honestly remember… and what they’ve become.

Fort Calgary – The Drowned Redoubt

Built at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers in 1875 to assert Dominion control over the frontier, Fort Calgary now lies submerged beneath murky waters and metaphysical tension. Known today as The Drowned Redoubt, the former outpost is locked in a ceaseless psychic loop—replaying moments of colonial clash, resistance, and uneasy diplomacy between long-faded NWMP officers and spectral emissaries of the land’s first peoples. Time eddies here: gunfire echoes with no source, ghost treaties are signed and torn up again and again, and drowned artifacts radiate emotional resonance potent enough to rupture memory. Archeo-spiritualists seek to harmonize the past through ritual re-enactment, while rogue ritualists see it as fertile ground to rewrite psychic history with blood and will. The water is thick with silt, sediment, and unresolved reckoning.

Plot Hook – “The Treaty of Bubbles”
A radical faction of ritual historians plans to conduct a binding ceremony deep within the Drowned Redoubt to “amend the original treaty in psychic law.” But something in the loop has started fighting back. The party must dive into the heart of the echoing conflict, decide which version of history they’re walking into, and whether they’ll come out of it unchanged.

Inglewood – The Shatterbank

Once one of the oldest neighborhoods in Calgary, Inglewood has become The Shatterbank—a crumbled floodplain of broken storefronts, leaning brick skeletons, and half-sunk century homes. Amid the wreckage lies a ruptured ley line node, cracked open like a geode and leaking ambient arcana into the surrounding ruins. The result is a magical contamination zone where gravity stutters, time twitches, and reality doesn’t always reload correctly. Goblin treasure divers thrive here, weaving through the eddying ley-pools in search of pre-Revelation vaults and cursed curiosities. Rival scavenger crews clash over relic claims, and strange, sentient fungus blooms in the shadows, whispering stock tips from a timeline that never happened.

Plot Hook – “Spoils of the Spiral”
A leyline distortion near Shatterbank just spat out a golden coin stamped with tomorrow’s date and a goblin sigil that doesn’t exist—yet. A powerful scavenger lord wants the party to trace the anomaly to its source and secure the node before a rival crew (or something weirder) gets there first.

Mission & Lindsay Park – The Coral Commons

Once a quiet residential stretch nestled along the Elbow River, the neighborhoods of Mission and Lindsay Park have transformed into a hallucinogenic aquatic sprawl known as The Coral Commons. Submerged condos and cul-de-sacs are now encrusted with glowing coral formations and feral biotech gardens that bloom with impossible colors and whisper in photosynthetic verse. Schools of carnivorous koi patrol the flooded alleys, drawn to movement and amplified emotion. The zone attracts exiled artists, runaway gene-sculptors, and junk cults who view the coral as divine architecture—living proof of beauty birthed from collapse. At night, the water glows like stained glass, and the line between inspiration and infection blurs dangerously.

Plot Hook – “The Canvas Bites Back”
A mutated installation artist has gone missing after declaring the coral her “final collaborator.” Her last livestream showed a koi biting into her pigment gland and vanishing into the coral galleries. The party must dive into the drowned Commons to recover her—or her art—before the Cult of Chromabloom claims it as a holy relic.

RiverWalk Pathways – The Echo Tunnels

What was once a scenic pedestrian route now lies entirely submerged beneath the murky flows of Prairie Atlantis. Known as The Echo Tunnels, this sunken web of walkways winds between collapsed bridges, flooded underpasses, and drowned art installations. But it’s not just the currents that stir—whispers drift through the water, echoes of alternate histories and futures-that-might-have-been. Reflective spirits drift among the ruins, reenacting choices never made. Fate Fugitives come here to bargain for borrowed time, and Medusa clairvoyants dive blindfolded, claiming to glimpse timelines too fragile to name. The deeper one goes, the more personal the echoes become—until the tunnel stops reflecting the past and starts mirroring you.

Plot Hook – “The Ghost in the Choice”
A renowned Fate Fugitive resurfaced, babbling about “the decision that split the sky”—then turned to stone without meeting a Medusa’s gaze. Now, clairvoyants across the city are falling into trances they can’t wake from. The party must follow the Fugitive’s path into the Echo Tunnels before the timeline they’re living in gets overwritten by something worse.

Stampede Grounds – The Sloshedome

Once the beating heart of Calgary’s festival spirit, the Stampede Grounds are now a warped coliseum of spectacle and survival. The Saddledome, half-collapsed and half-flooded, has been rechristened The Sloshedome. In this gladiatorial basin, post-apocalyptic cowpokes ride mutated nightmare beasts through knee-deep water and electro-psychic storm bursts for fame, rations, or absolution. The arena hosts "psychic rodeos," chaotic bloodsports where riders bond mentally with their mounts or suffer psychic backlash in the middle of summoned hailstorms. Between events, the submerged concourses serve as betting halls, makeshift stalls, and outlaw training grounds. Spectators chant for bucking crabs, weather wranglers, and the occasional summoned tornado with hooves.

Plot Hook – “One Last Ride”
A local legend named Gully Mae was supposed to ride the three-headed thunder-bull “Voltage Pete” in the season opener. Still, she vanished the night before with a stolen relic spurring storm activity across the city. The party is hired to either bring her back—or ride in her place before the Sloshedome declares open season.

Stephen Avenue – The Mirror Maw

Once Calgary’s bustling commercial artery, Stephen Avenue now glistens under waist-high water, its glass towers reflecting more than sunlight. Locals call it The Mirror Maw—a zone where psychic residues of ambition, greed, and collapse swirl like sediment in the flooded streets. Holographic echoes of stockbrokers and CEOs flicker along the canals, repeating pre-Revelation transactions with eerie precision. Psychic disturbances ripple through the glass facades, projecting memories that aren’t your own. Rogue archivists and knowledge divers pilot canal-boats through the district, hoping to retrieve lost data caches, intellectual property relics, or haunt-bound patents. But every transaction leaves a trace—and sometimes, the ghosts want to collect.

Plot Hook – “Hostile Takeover”
A freelance archivist broke open a sealed vault beneath a former bank and uploaded something… that’s now uploading itself. Psychic instability is spreading like a memetic contagion across the Mirror Maw. The party is hired to enter the submerged vault and “negotiate” with whatever digital ghost believes it has just acquired the whole district.

University of Calgary Zone – “The Arcanum Campus”

Overview:
An enchanted sprawl of broken lecture halls, dorm towers repurposed as arcane keeps, and leyline-charged commons. Meant initially to bring enlightenment to Prairie Atlantis, the colony from the Rock brought its regional magic, slang, and student hierarchy. Over time, they built rival Houses—not just dorms, but magical micro-factions locked in a never-ending cycle of pranks, political maneuvering, and ritual one-upmanship.

The Cracked Flask – House Alchemicide’s Chaotic Crucible

Once the University’s proud science complex, The Cracked Flask now bubbles, bangs, and belches with arcano-chemical lunacy. Claimed by House Alchemicide, this frat house of volatile brewers, potion-fighters, and fermentation theorists is infamous for its dangerous parties and academically questionable concoctions. Potion kegs roll through the halls unsupervised, beer golems burst into drunken fights with fire elementals, and every floor has its own unique ambient hazard warning. Students joke that it's always under lockdown—not because the administration says so, but because reality itself prefers it that way. A cauldron-filled lounge and bombastic ritual bar serve as both battleground and bonding site for anyone reckless enough to sip something unlabeled.

Plot Hook – “Last Call Labyrinth”
The aftermath of a legendary Alchemicide party has transformed part of the building into a looping, mutating time lab. A hungover planar anomaly still occupies the center, reliving the rager on an endless loop. Now, strange echoes of partygoers keep crawling out of closets and reciting drink recipes that haven’t been invented yet. The party must break the cycle before the loop expands—and turns campus into one endless bender across time.

The Frosted Dome – Vault of Enchanted Aesthetics

Once the elegant Nickel Galleries, the Frosted Dome now broods like a half-buried relic itself—its cracked skylights glowing faintly with containment runes and the haunting aura of suppressed expression. The interior is a museum-turned-arcane strongbox, housing cursed artwork, forgotten relics of magical history, and paintings that move too much. Sentient graffiti slithers between exhibit labels, correcting historical errors or delivering sass in glowing sigils. Curse-bound interns still tend the exhibits, mouthing silent warnings to those who dare peer too long. Most chilling is the Weeping Portrait, which sings anti-magic lullabies that unravel enchantments—and sometimes minds. Student Houses must file under-the-table favors or “borrow” credentials to enter, making every visit both illicit and unforgettable.

Plot Hook – “The Sculptor’s Wake”
One of the exhibits—Form 78B: “Ascension in Marble”—has come to life and is “correcting” reality across campus. Buildings are warping into symmetry. Students are reshaped into idealized versions of historical figures. The party must stop the living sculpture before it overwrites someone important, or one of them is chiseled into a role they never auditioned for.

The Hexchange – Bazaar of Wits and Wagers

Once the beating heart of campus student life, the Hexchange has mutated into a chaotic nexus of magical commerce and whispered obligation. Arcane lights flicker overhead as booths brim with cursed trinkets, retooled artifacts, and illicit scrolls bound in cafeteria napkin contracts. Floating chalkboards trail behind customers, recording everything from potion trades to heartbreaks converted into spell components. Presiding over it all are the Registrar Golems—ancient stone automatons carved with rune-ledgers, enforcing both decorum and debt with eerie impartiality. Beneath its stone floors, the food court has become a dueling arena and secret speakeasy where favors flow faster than mana, and every deal echoes forever.

Plot Hook – “The Founder’s Fragment”
A fragment of the university’s mythical founder’s wand has resurfaced as the top prize in a forbidden betting ring beneath the coffee shop. But rumors swirl that the wand carries more than power—it stores the founder’s memories, and maybe their will. The party must infiltrate the underground scene before a rogue house or unbound construct claims the fragment and rewrites campus history from the student union up.

House Ophidia – Sisters of the Serpent Veil

Coiled within the overgrown remnants of the old zoology wing, House Ophidia thrives in a tangle of arcane mystery, emotional alchemy, and reptilian grace. Its sorority members are masters of serpentomancy, illusion, and identity-magic—studying scales and sloughing skin with equal reverence. At the heart of their lair lies the Dorm of Skin, a sacred, steamy chamber where they ritually shed their former selves into animated husks—symbolic and sometimes disturbingly literal. Ophidians are infamous for their glamours, veiled motives, and passive-aggressive spellcraft, constantly sparring with the bombastic House Pyres in an escalating feud of fire and fang. Outsiders say you never truly meet a member of House Ophidia—only the version she wants you to see.

Plot Hook – “The Shedding Error”
One of the sorority’s illusions has gone rogue—except it’s not a glamour, it’s a discarded self made flesh. The dopple-self is acing classes, charming professors, and stealing a life the original claims as hers. The party is hired to find out if the “new her” is a threat, a blessing… or a dangerously incomplete person with ambitions of her own.

Bonus Hook – “The Bite Beneath”
A serpent familiar from the House’s inner sanctum escapes, whispering dreams of a hidden ritual called The Third Shedding. Now other students are waking with scales... and strange urges. What exactly are the Ophidians preparing for?

House Pyres – The Ember Crowned Brotherhood

Born from the still-smoking remains of the athletics center, House Pyres is a searing fusion of elemental evocation and varsity bravado. These jock-mages specialize in channeling raw firepower into athletic ritual, fielding pyroclastic prodigies in sports like Ley line Lacrosse, Rift Polo, and the occasional unsanctioned Mage-Brawl—their dorm reeks of scorched incense, brimstone protein shakes, and ego. “Fireball Fridays” are both a weekly rite and controlled hazard, where duels, parties, and spell-offs ignite across the red-lined gym floor. Most see House Pyres as hot-headed and reckless, but beneath their bravado lies deep magical discipline honed through motion, adrenaline, and perfectly timed explosions.

Plot Hook – “Coach Ignis”
After a particularly spirited Fireball Friday, a rogue fire elemental refused to return to the plane of flame. Instead, it took up residence in the remains of the gym’s sauna and began coaching. Now it’s transforming a band of underachievers into lava-laced legends—and threatening to incinerate the opposition (and referees) who get in their way. The party must intervene before Coach Ignis sets fire to campus unity… or ascends to godhood via intramural championship.

The Quad of Rites – Field of Spells and Specters

Once a quiet green lawn for campus sunbathers and protesting undergrads, the Quad of Rites has become a crackling field of ritual energy, crisscrossed with leyline anchors and half-permanent glyphs burned into the grass. Here, students duel not for pride but for scholarships, tuition waivers, or access to forbidden syllabi. Public rituals—some sanctioned, most not—flare under the watchful eye of floating familiars and semi-sentient chalk circles. Looming over it all is the ghost of Chancellor Wryndel, the last living administrator before the colony cut contact with The Rock. Now he returns each finals season with maddening riddles, arcane insight, and hexes disguised as extra credit.

Plot Hook – “The Final Curse”
A senior student vanished mid-thesis duel after receiving a whispered “hint” from Chancellor Wryndel. The Quad has since become unstable—rituals misfire, summoned familiars refuse to leave, and the air hums with unfinished test questions. The party must confront the ghost and uncover what dark syllabus he's been grading from… before the final bell tolls for them too.

Additional Plot Hooks

1. “Rush the Ritual” – A rogue mage is attempting to form a new, unregulated House using a blood oath, an old exam paper, and forbidden access to the yearbook golem.
2. “Thesis of Doom” – A senior student’s final dissertation goes rogue and gains magical sentience. It’s building a logic bomb out of rejected footnotes.
3. “Tenure or Terror” – A new professor from the Rock is promising unification, but their methods seem increasingly eldritch and authoritarian. Are they just trying to reform campus… or reboot it?

#hodgepocalypse #dnd5e #ttrpg #dungeonsanddragons #canada #alberta #apocalypse #calgary

Thornlands - Part 2 - Prairie Atlantis - Part 2 - Locations of Note

 

The Airport

 Once a gateway to the world, Calgary’s international airport now serves as a walled fortress of the Cybercult. Protected by arcane encryption towers and mind-linked drones, the runways hum not with jets but with the synchronized steps of initiates marching beneath blinking satellite eyes. While the surrounding city drowns in water and entropy, the airport stands dry and immaculate—an unnerving oasis of cold order. The old Hangar Flight Museum has been retooled into a recruitment and indoctrination center, where curious wanderers are lured by historical exhibits and leave with blinking neural ports and strange new directives. The Cybercult controls all approach vectors, land or air, and considers even casual trespass an act of espionage.

Plot Hook:
A former cultist stumbles into Prairie Atlantis, brainfried and babbling coordinates—his memories hint at a secret hangar beneath the old museum. The party must infiltrate the airport’s security perimeter, navigating Cybercult patrols and propaganda to uncover what lies in Hangar 0… and why the cult wants it buried.

The Angel’s Grave.

In Prairie Atlantis, where the Hart family once had their home and dungeon, the Arsenault Angel Company operates. Known as the "Arsehole Angels," this mercenary group is known for taking select contracts and fulfilling them precisely. Founded 30 years ago by Agnes Norton Arsenault (ANA), a hero of the Necromantic Wars, the company is led by her children, trained as officers. Recognized by black and silver uniforms and psychic cat companions, the Arsenault Angels are both feared and respected. Despite budget issues and accusations of nepotism, their tight-knit structure and advanced equipment make them one of the most reliable mercenary outfits in Western Canada. This will be expanded in future blog entries.

Bowfort Towers – Spires of the Forgotten Accord

Rising like skeletal fingers from the floodplain’s edge, the Bowfort Towers remain miraculously intact—weathered steel beams cradling ancient slabs of Rundle rock in defiance of entropy and ruin. Once a public art installation, they are now regarded as silent antennae or forgotten wards, humming faintly with unseen resonance. Something in their geometry draws aerial entities—elemental, spectral, and otherwise. Flocks of spirit-birds wheel overhead, shimmering glyph-kites dip between beams, and once, a harpy choir nested there in solemn stillness for an entire season. Locals avoid the site, claiming it echoes with lost speeches and half-finished songs, while mystics debate whether the Towers are a call, a cage, or a question.

Plot Hook – “The Echoing Pact”
A celestial envoy descended onto Bowfort Towers three nights ago—and hasn’t left. Now beings from rival skies have begun to gather, circling the structure in ritual patterns. The party is tasked with mediating a pact no one remembers signing… or preventing an aerial war from igniting above the remnants of Prairie Atlantis.

Bovine Statue Graveyard – Meadow of the Still-Eyed Herd

Nestled in a misty stretch of overgrown parkland, the Bovine Statue Graveyard is a surreal and unsettling sight: dozens of life-sized cow statues scattered across a field in various poses—grazing, walking, staring straight ahead. No plaque explains their purpose. Some are pristine; others are cracked and weeping rust. Locals whisper that they move when unobserved or shift positions during the night. Faustian Mechanics report trace energy readings beneath the soil, while older residents mutter that “the herd remembers.” Birds never land here. The air always smells faintly of ozone and old milk.

Plot Hook – “The Bell Rings Once”
One of the statues has gone missing—just vanished overnight. The next morning, a nearby silo was found half-collapsed and filled with hoofprints and static-charged hay. The party is sent to investigate before the rest of the herd decides to follow.

The Garrison Crate – Vault of Infinite Scenarios

Once nestled near the edge of the city’s industrial heart, The Garrison Crate now stands as a half-submerged fortress of imagination and memory. Encompassing multiple flooded floors and reinforced by layers of enchanted shelving, the Crate is a post-apocalyptic nexus for salvaged rulebooks, battle maps soaked in dream-ink, and dice that roll futures instead of numbers. Inside, mystic archivists known as Scenario Wardens oversee gameplay rites that influence real-world outcomes—some say a well-played campaign here can echo across fate itself. The structure survives due to a combination of obsessive preservation rituals, psychic resonance from unfinished campaigns, and the protection of deeply nerdy warlocks who remember every edition ever printed. Its halls are a maze of waterlogged minis, magical game tables, and flickering monitors displaying impossible maps. Outside, scavengers barter for expansion packs like holy relics. Inside, the next campaign might summon something real.

Plot Hook – “The Campaign That Played Back”
A long-forgotten campaign box has resurfaced in the lowest vault of the Garrison Crate. Its scenario is now playing itself out in the surrounding streets—and the party’s characters are already on the game board whether they like it or not.

 

The Giant Blue Ring. 

This strange, magical item was once controversial and considered more than an overly expensive streetlight, but during the Time of Revelation, it has become a place of power.  The ring hovers over the earth, as if held over the landscape. Once mocked as an overpriced and impractical public art piece, the Giant Blue Ring has outlived its critics and become something far stranger. Suspended above the shifting ruins, it no longer touches any support structure—it simply hovers, humming with faint energy and casting a cool cerulean glow that never dims. During the Times of Revelation, something woke up inside the ring. Now, it pulses with arcane resonance, disrupting psychic frequencies and bending ley lines like a tuning fork struck by gods. Locals say the space beneath it warps gravity, dreams, and memory, becoming both a shrine and a zone of caution. Whether it hovers above flooded ground or dry rubble seems to shift day to day, as if the land is still making up its mind.

Plot Hook:
A local Cartomancer claims the Giant Blue Ring has started broadcasting visions—blueprints of something massive and unfinished. The party is hired to retrieve one of these ‘prints,’ but they’ll have to pass through a warped dream-bubble beneath the ring, where time slips, doubles of themselves roam, and an echo of their future selves might have other plans.

Nose Hill Siksikaitsitapi Medicine Wheel – Circle of Sky and Stone

High atop the whispering bluffs of Nose Hill, the Siksikaitsitapi Medicine Wheel endures—older than concrete, older than maps, a sacred geometry of stone set by the Blackfoot to mark celestial truths and spiritual paths. Even after the Flood and the Falling Sky, the Wheel remains unbroken. Time-worn but not forgotten, it pulses faintly beneath the overgrown prairie grass, a place where stars still speak and the wind carries ancestral breath. In Prairie Atlantis, it is one of the few sanctuaries untouched by demonic influence—yet it is not immune to the deeper stirrings of the Hallowed Earth. Pilgrims, psychics, and elders alike make their way to the Wheel, drawn by dreams or summoned by signs. It is a place of healing, yes—but also of testing.

Plot Hook – “Stone That Dreamed”
A dreaming child has gone missing after claiming they heard the stones singing beneath the hill. Now, the party must ascend to the Medicine Wheel, navigate the layered spirits that protect it, and confront an ancient presence awakening below—something that remembers when the stars were closer and words were still shaping the world.

Snark Power Inc. – Green-Fuel Front for the Hallowed Root

Once a provincial crown corporation producing traditional gasoline, Snark Power Inc. was quietly sold to an American firm before the world fell apart. Miraculously, it survived the Times of Revelations—its headquarters, tank farms, and marketing departments intact but… altered. Now operating as a "natural energy leader," Snark Power has pivoted to bio fusion systems, geothermal-spliced spore batteries, and other "renewables" that are not subject to close inspection. Behind its chirpy infographics and nostalgic radio jingles lies its true purpose: a Harvester-run front that cultivates pod-grown gas jockeys, techno trained accountants, and chlorophyll-rich service staff from custom-modified biomass. Field stations act as both power plants and nurseries. Elder Harvesters use it to test long-cycle symbiotic infiltration, while the public thinks they’re getting clean energy. They are—but at what cost to free will, and how deep do the roots go?

Plot Hook – “Pump Number None”
A Snark Power fueling station on the edge of the city started playing distorted jazz over its loudspeakers and hasn’t stopped for six days. A local mechanic swears his apprentice was replaced by a pod-clone who keeps asking if his "chlorophyll levels are optimized for customer service." The party is hired to infiltrate the substation, only to discover that the next “fuel source” on the grid… might be people.

Plot Hook – “The Scroll That Wasn't Written”

A message never delivered—just an empty scroll case wrapped in black silk—has appeared in the party's quarters. The Umbranashi are watching, and a choice the party hasn't made yet is already being judged.

Above the Waterline: Viable Walled Burbs

When the Bow and Elbow swallowed the lowlands, only the high ground—or the heavily fortified—remained. What was once Calgary’s endless sprawl of cookie-cutter suburbia fractured into isolated enclaves, each reacting to the Hodgepocalypse in its twisted way. Some walled themselves off with concrete, drones, and bylaws; others turned to magic, machinery, or mutant cooperation to endure. These “Viable Walled Burbs” represent the pockets of resistance, ritual, and reinvention—each one a micro-fiefdom of survivalist philosophy, ranging from totalitarian technocults to pastel-perfect horrors hiding secrets behind every trimmed hedge. They may be above the water, but they're far from untouched.

Ranchlands – The Gearsmith Covenant

Once a sleepy suburb of strip malls and quiet lanes, Ranchlands is now a vibrant mix of scrapyard and basilica. Here, the Gearsmith Covenant preserves relics of the past in sacred garages: chrome-plated shrines, prayer wrenches, and speaking car radios that deliver divine wisdom in static. Every citizen must offer a working engine part and a quart of oil on the solstice. The Covenant’s bishop—a heavily modded, semi-sentient tow truck named Holy Roller—interprets breakdowns as omens and recalls as prophecy. Those who disrupt traffic without proper ritual are exiled to the Outer Alley.

Plot Hook – “The Backfire Gospel”: A heretical motor cult known as the Redline Apostles has introduced turbocharged chaos into Ranchlands. Now, sacred roads buckle under speed magic, and the Gearsmith Covenant is calling for a purge. The party is hired to either mediate… or race for the soul of the suburb.

Signal Hill – Home of the Broadcast Saints

Built on a high ridge that once overlooked the city’s hustle, Signal Hill remains miraculously untouched by floodwaters—its streets dry, its lawns neatly trimmed, its skies forever buzzing with satellite hum. But what saved it wasn’t luck. The district is now ruled by the Broadcast Saints, a technotheocratic HOA cult that believes salvation comes through a clean signal, constant surveillance, and devotion to the divine algorithm. Smart fridges report prayers. Security drones administer sermons. HOA dues are paid in screen time and personal metadata. Outsiders are welcome—but only if their frequency aligns.

Plot Hook – “The Static Gospel”
A scrambled signal has begun broadcasting from Signal Hill, overriding radio towers across the region. The Broadcast Saints deny involvement. The party is asked to investigate—only to discover the signal carries a personality… and it wants a congregation.

Tuscany – The HOA of Eternal Order

Above the drowned ruins, Tuscany gleams unnaturally pristine. Lawns are cut to precisely 6.66 cm. Hedges are shaped like angelic runes. Every resident obeys the bylaws—or vanishes into the Coven of Compliance, a shadowy HOA tribunal that operates out of a sunlit garage with blood-slick pruning shears. No one's entirely sure who enforces the rules, only that paper citations appear in your fridge when you break one. The magic here is subtle and strict, focused on conformity, home aura regulation, and charm-based neighborly manipulation. Despite its eeriness, Tuscany is popular with merchants and ex-scholars seeking “stability.”

Plot Hook – “Violation 34-B”
A local has dared to install a wind chime enchanted with unregistered melody. Now the bylaws are reacting—violently. The party is asked to investigate the source of the enchantment and stop a chain reaction of aesthetic corrections before the HOA declares the entire cul-de-sac a "design failure" scheduled for erasure.

 

Downtown Flood Plane

Despite its moniker, not all of the town is flooded. Still, it is known for the inhabitants who have adapted to the downtown area by living in the remaining buildings, both above and, in some cases, below the waterline.  They have a series of interconnected Skywalk system and bridges that keeps them isolated from the world.  However, some sections are hazardous due to the difficulty in maintaining and controlling invasive species.

Arts Commons – The Dreaming Stage of Prairie Atlantis

Where once echoed the voice of culture now resonates the raw, unfiltered chorus of humanity’s survival. The Arts Commons survived the Revelations not by resisting the storm, but by opening its arms to it—absorbing every performance, breakdown, and whispered wish. Now untethered from time and place, it pulses with emotional magic, existing simultaneously in crumbling downtown and the ever-shifting Dreamtime. It is a haven for broken bards, psychic dramaturges, and spellcasting street poets—a crucible where reality bends to story, and story bends back.

Plot Hook – “Applause Will Follow”
A well-known performer has vanished mid-monologue—along with part of the rotunda's floor and three rows of seats. The party must investigate the haunting script that rewrote itself during the show... and step into a role someone desperately wants them to play.

The Boar & Sash – Freehold Below the Flood

Hidden beneath a collapsed stairwell off the submerged stretches of 8th Ave, the Boar & Sash Freehold is a half-drowned, half-remembered public house that refuses to die. Built into the bones of an old Scotch-themed bar and protected by ley line-insulated masonry, it sits just below the water table, kept dry by stubborn enchantments and the will of barkeep “Uncle Duff”—a one-eyed Minotaur who speaks in toasts and silence. The ceiling drips with condensation and glowing lichen, while faded tartan booths cradle mercenaries, smugglers, rogue librarians, and unregistered warlocks alike. A sword hangs over the hearth that no one’s allowed to touch. A sign above the bar reads: "No Oracles, No Omens, No Refunds." Every job worth the risk starts at the Boar & Sash—or ends there with a wake and a new toast.

Plot Hook – “The Pint That Knew Too Much”

Last night, the Boar & Sash served a stranger who paid in memories. This morning, half the patrons can't stop dreaming of a place they've never been—and the bartender wants the party to find out why the keg is now whispering.

Boar & Sash Job Board (Nailed to a Salt-Damp Beam)

CURRENT CONTRACTS & CURSED GIGS – DON'T SLAP THE BOARD
All postings are payable in coin, favors, or one free drink upon triumphant return.

• “Minnow Menace” – Clear out a nest of Neon Minnow cultists who’ve turned the drain tunnel into a shrine. They keep chanting backwards.
• “Lost and Boxed” – A Gleamer left a glowing crate in locker 7. It's humming louder. They want it moved before it hatches.
• “Deadbeat Duelist” – Someone summoned a ghost to settle a bar bet. The loser refuses to leave. Dueling rules posted near the pool table.
• “Size 13 Trouble” – A member of Size 13 Rage left behind an enchanted boot that now walks on its own. Find it. Muzzle it. No stomping.
• “Night of the Five Bar Tabs” – Reclaim unpaid tabs from five known scoundrels. One’s a vampire. One’s a fungus. One’s the jukebox.
• “Clock Court Summons” – A writ nailed to the dartboard demands adventurers face trial for “Chronological Disorderly Conduct.” The bartender insists he’s not involved.

 

Calgary Tower

Rising above the flooded sprawl of Prairie Atlantis, the Calgary Tower still rotates—despite no known power source. Its top floors are shrouded in arcane signal static, believed to be remnants of a pre-Revelations AI or a living cloud consciousness. The tower serves as a neutral ground where warlords, mercenaries, and cult leaders meet under a tenuous truce. Elevators still function, though sometimes they stop at “phantom floors” that no one remembers building.

Plot Hook:
An emissary sent to the tower has vanished between floors, and now two rival factions blame each other. The PCs must navigate tense diplomacy, eerie tech-ghost phenomena, and the tower’s shifting architecture to uncover the truth.

The Clock Court

In the drowned ruins of downtown Calgary, one structure stands dry and unyielding: the Clock Court. Once City Hall, it has become a psychic edifice where time and truth unravel with eerie precision. The courthouse clock still ticks, but its hands no longer follow the sun—they follow guilt. The air hums with unspoken testimony, and its crimson-roofed towers house trials judged by dreams, duels, or dance. The walls remember. So do the bells. Should one ring thrice in an hour, the building twists, turning its halls into paradoxes and timelines into trapdoors. Buried deep beneath, the Sublevel Archives shimmer with distilled confessions—memories you can break open and live through.

Plot Hook:
“The Time of Your Crime” – The party is summoned by name to the Clock Court, accused of a misdeed they don’t remember committing—or haven’t yet. To escape, they must piece together distorted memories, confront guilt that isn’t theirs, and survive a trial judged by their subconscious.

The Conductor’s Gate – Terminal of the Iron Vein

Nestled beneath the cracked archways of a ruined pavilion once tied to the Canadian Pacific, the Conductor’s Gate pulses with old-world reverence and otherworldly potential. What appears to be a weathered memorial is a threshold to the Iron Vein—a metaphysical rail line that cuts through lost timelines and spectral dominions. Whispers of phantom locomotives echo through the brickwork, and rusted tracks shimmer briefly under moonlight before vanishing. Those who linger too long find themselves slipping between whistles, drawn into sidings that should not exist. It is a place where ticket stubs carry fates, and conductors wear masks made of memory.

Plot Hook – “Manifest Malfunction”
An operative from Prairie Atlantis vanishes after attempting to decode a temporal passenger list found etched in rust beneath the Gate. Now the party must find the next station stop before the wrong version of history pulls into town—and they’re stuck riding it forever.

The Drowned City Hall Parkade – Anchorage of the Unquiet Dead

Once a bustling hub of civic order and commerce, the City Hall Parkade now juts from the murky floodwaters like a tombstone carved for a city’s forgotten soul. Submerged levels conceal half-collapsed concrete, rusting husks of cars, and spectral echoes of bureaucratic inertia. The dead here do not rot—they linger. Drawn to the last place they parked their ambitions, the spirits of clerks, councillors, and commuters drift through flooded stairwells and submerged ticket booths. Whispers rise with the tide, and some claim the elevator still works—if you're brave enough to push the button for the lowest floor.

Plot Hook – “All Rise”
A court summons, inked in blood and municipal wax, washes up on the shore. It demands the presence of the party for a trial taking place in the depths of the Drowned Parkade—where the judge has been dead for decades, and the jury is made of those who never left.

 

The Haunted Fairmonts – Grand Sanctuaries of the Afterlife

Majestic and untouched by time—or perhaps too touched—the Fairmonts rise from the ruins like memories refusing to fade. Draped in ivy and veiled in ghostlight, these grand chateau-style hotels once housed the powerful and privileged and now host a clientele of both the living and the long-dead. Echoes of chamber music haunt the lounges, spectral tea services clink without hands, and red carpet corridors stretch farther than physics should allow. The Bellhop Society, an eerie order of impeccably dressed Kamidavers, ensures protocol is strictly followed—be you baron or banshee. To stay here is to brush against history’s silk-draped throat... and risk never leaving the suite.

Plot Hook – “Room Service for the Departed”
An esteemed psychic journalist vanished after checking into Room 1912 to “interview a ghost that remembers the future.” Now, the party must navigate the timeless halls of the Fairmonts, where guest ledgers rewrite themselves, bellhops whisper riddles, and the only thing colder than the rooms are the secrets waiting inside them.

The Mindspire – Whisperhead of Forgotten Thought

Once a crown jewel of corporate ambition, the Bow has become something far stranger in the post-Flood world and is now known as the Mindspire. This sweeping glass arc hums with psychic static and forgotten dreams, casting warped reflections on the wet concrete of Prairie Atlantis. The haunting wire-mesh sculpture at its base, nicknamed the Whisperhead, functions like a grave marker for the drowned city’s psychic pain—a resonant memorial that hears every unspoken fear. No faction dares claim it. No seer trusts it fully. Yet all respect its pull. The tower doesn’t think like we do—but it remembers. And if you linger too long within its shadow, it might place you in return.

Plot Hook – “The Host Who Stayed”
An unregistered telepath has taken up residence in the penthouse and claims to be “custodian of the tower’s thoughts.” Psychic surges from the building have grown more frequent, and voices not heard since the first Flood are now whispering through drainpipes and light fixtures. Is the host maintaining the tower, or is the tower slowly becoming a part of them?

 Terrorsaur Containment Zone (TCZ) – Breachpoint of the Hallowed Earth

Once the pride of Calgary’s floodplain, the former zoo now festers as a rift-wound to the Hallowed Earth—an unstable realm where primal nightmare and daemonic ecology intersect. The land itself bubbles with warped vegetation, twitching nests, and fossilized footprints that appear overnight. Twisted remnants of prehistoric life—Terrorsaurs, creatures of bone, bile, and divine fury—roam freely inside the electrified fences of the TCZ. At the heart of the zone, a half-sunken biosphere dome thrums with low-frequency chants that no human remembers starting. The Strathcan Militia maintains a hard perimeter, but few are eager to volunteer for rotations. The air is thick with psychic resonance, and even the animals outside the fence howl in unison when something inside wakes up.

Plot Hook – “Echoes of the Apex”: An experimental Militia outpost inside the TCZ has gone dark. Their last transmission included footage of a bipedal terror-class entity mimicking the voice of a missing soldier, ideally. The party must enter the zone to confirm what, if anything, survived... and whether the containment is still holding.

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