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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