Kaylna Country - Part 1 - A Prairie That Remembers

“History is never clean, never neat. It clings to the land like burrs to wool, stubborn and sharp. And here, where the dust rises slow and the roads forget where they were going, the past is still very much alive.”

Professor Rebecca Stonesworth of the University of Tristam Bay.

Kalyna Country is not just a place—it is a persistence.

Once, it was a mosaic of prairie towns and curling clubs, babas in headscarves with hands like wrinkled bark, and grain elevators that stood sentinel over fields sown with hope and hard lessons. But time, like a prairie fire, changes everything. The skies cracked. The world tipped. And Kalyna Country, stubborn as ever, didn’t fall—it stitched itself back together with embroidery thread and old magic.

Now, it is a land of rust and ritual, of ghost-wheat and God-silos. The highways are broken but still lead somewhere. Spirits ride sidecars. Elders mutter protection spells into their borscht. The dreamtime runs close here—close enough to kiss.

Pull on your rushnyk. Pour a shot for your ancestors. The solstice is coming, and the road is waiting.

Timeline of Kalyna Country: From Roots to the Hodgepocalypse

Pre-Contact Era

Before the plow, before the prayers, this was a land of whispers and wind.

• Cree, Saulteaux, and Métis stewards live in rhythm with land and spirit.
• Sacred trails walk away from unworthy feet.
• A Sky Serpent is said to dream beneath the Beaver Hills, curling in sleep and storm alike.

Settler Arrival & Cultural Entwinement

They came with seeds in their pockets and stories in their bones.

• Ukrainian immigrants build villages where the land doesn’t complain too much.
• The kalyna shrub becomes both symbol and spell—its berries as red as martyr’s blood, its leaves whispering home.
• Churches rise. So do secret rituals. The old country and the new land begin to sing in harmony—and sometimes in discord.

The Teacher Generation

• The babas raise teachers. The teachers raise villages.
• Veterans return from strange wars with stories that don’t quite fit on medals: ghost trains, frozen lights, woods that move when no one’s looking.
• Families start avoiding certain corners of their land. Not out of fear—out of respect.

Cold Dreaming

The weirdness grows roots.

• In 1973, a meteor scars the Vilna sky. Crops fail in perfect circles. Radios die near the crater.
• “Blessed children” start arriving kids who dream in weather patterns and smell lies like smoke.
• Babas know the land is waking. So do the deer. So do the crows.
• Edmonton’s suburbs stop short of Vegreville like they’re afraid to cross some line no map remembers.

The Dimming Years

As the world buckles, Kalyna Country refuses to vanish.

• Mass migration westward turns the region into a cultural ark—what isn’t preserved here, may not survive at all.
• A secret school of magic hides beneath a “historical society” sign in Smoky Lake.
• St. Paul’s UFO pad, once a Cold War curiosity, becomes a beacon—though no one can agree what for.
• By century’s end, the Vegreville Egg pulses like a second sun on the frost.

The Hodgepocalypse

 

The world ends not with a bang, but with a transformation.

• The Great Pysanka splits open, and out steps the first Silver Baba, smiling and carrying prophecy in her apron.
• Mundare’s sausage monument comes alive, armored in smoke and blessed grease. It becomes a roaming knight.
• Smoky Lake drowns in psychic cranberries and haunted maze-ways.
• Trollitariots take root in fungal shrines outside Vilna—part Troll, part fae, all union.
• Eight Great Babas manifest, each bearing a different school of magic like a quilt of power and protection.

Post-Hodgepocalypse Kalyna Country (2100+ CE)

Kalyna Country survives. Of course it does.

• Now a dream-warped borderland, laced with ley lines and stitched in spirit thread.
• Descendants of settlers and spirits alike walk the roads—some mutated, some awakened, all changed.
• Relics live. Psalms glow. Even the scarecrows dream.
• Rushnyks become battle flags. Pysanky become keys.
• And in the mushroom abbeys beneath the fields, the babas train new Sentinels—because even magic needs defenders.

 Kalyna Country: A Living Culture of Magic, Memory, and Resistance
By Professor Rebecca Stonesworth, Department of Comparative Anthropologies, Ed-Town Institute of Post-Revelation Studies

"Our ancestors whisper in the wind, stitch spells into our sleeves, and ride shotgun in the rusted sidecars of memory. We do not forget. We do not fall. We feast, we fight, we endure."
— A common saying among Kalyna folk

A Day in the Life: Kalyna Country Post-Hodgepocalypse

By Professor Rebecca Stonesworth, University of Tristam Bay.

Field Note, 14th of April, 24 P.R.

Life in Kalyna begins in reverence and ends in riotous communion. Each morning, villagers tie their rushnyks—sacred cloths embroidered with wards and encoded bloodlines—around their waists, kiss their fingers, and touch the teaching flame. It’s not just a ceremony. It’s epistemology. These flames teach, you see—whispering ancestral truths via heat and light. (And yes, I once got burned trying to fact-check one.)

By midday, the rhythms shift. Farmers tend cranberry bogs engineered for solar resilience, children study under psionic blue fire, and scouts patrol ley lines on mutant elk or ornery dirtbikes. Watch closely and you’ll see didukhs—metal-and-wheat effigies swaying in wind-dreams—guarding fields like silent ancestors with joint pain.

Come nightfall? Feast, song, and vigilance. Toasts function as magical triggers. Meals are layered rituals of enchantment, nutrition, and intergenerational trauma unpacking. Kobzars perform—half-bard, half-medium—pulling melody from memory like thread from a wound. Their songs hush the land, and sometimes, wake it.

"They don't just eat here; they enchant calories into community."

Foreign Relations

"But even a land stitched from memory cannot exist alone. Kalyna Country, for all its enchantments and entrenched rituals, must still contend with neighbors—some helpful, some hostile, all impossible to ignore."

Boreal Buccaneers

While Kalyna Country views the Boreal Buccaneers with a mixture of exasperated disdain and reluctant admiration, the relationship is best described as a seasonal dance of bartered goods, shouted insults, and occasional shootouts that end in shared vodka. Descending from their tractor-armadas in Westlock or thundering up from Port Outlaw, the Buccaneers are as likely to plunder a relic convoy as they are to sell it back “with interest” two weeks later. Kalyna villages tolerate their presence when trade routes grow thin or when a local Baba needs a favor only a pirate with poor impulse control can deliver. But make no mistake—while Kalyna folk will toast with them, they always count the silverware afterward.

Cybercult

To say Kalyna Country has a complicated relationship with the Cybercult would be like saying birch bark is mildly flammable. The cult’s austere machine faith and barcode evangelism stand in spiritual defiance of Kalyna’s ancestral songlines and folkfire rituals. Where Kalyna raises didukhs and tells threefold truths, the Cybercult rolls into villages with flickering tablets and sermons in hex code. Yet, their ability to repair aging tech and “bless” vehicles has earned them a cautious welcome in some outlier communities—at least until smocks replace embroidery and the barcodes start appearing on necks. Babas have issued quiet but firm warnings about “metal ghosts preaching salvation.” While no formal war has broken out, more than one Solstice Race has ended in mysterious software failures blamed on “helpful visitors.” For now, the cult is tolerated, watched, and politely directed toward the next village over.

Ed-town:

Kalyna Country’s relationship with Ed-Town is as tangled and emotionally charged as a folk ballad played through a distortion pedal. On one hand, Ed-Town—the ever-thrumming, psychic-glittering nerve center of Strathcan—is the land of dreams, gigs, and glittering promise. Kalyna folk commute there in droves, chasing contracts, fame, or a fleeting brush with The Fest’s lingering echo. On the other hand, Yeggers tend to treat rural visitors like quaint relics with pitchforks instead of personalities. For many Kalynans, Ed-Town is both a lifeline and a cautionary tale—where dreams get supercharged, then chewed up by pop-up band battles, rogue psychic storms, or spontaneous rooftop drum circles. Mayor Larry does his best to keep things together, but Kalyna travelers know to carry cash, charms, and backup boots. As the saying goes: “Work in Ed-Town if you must, party in Ed-Town if you dare, but always come home with your soul accounted for.”

Lloyd

Lloydminster—oh Lloyd, dear fractured echo of fame’s afterparty. Once famous for straddling a border that no longer matters, it's now a town that straddles relevance and delusion. The streets still bear the ghosts of provincial bureaucracy, with faded lines cutting through the cracked asphalt like a punchline no one remembers. These days, Lloyd is a refuge for Ed-Town's musical runoff: glitter-worn synth shamans, rhythm anarchists, and the tragically unbooked. Led by the tireless (and perhaps slightly delusional) half-elf Tall Yana, the self-proclaimed “Wannabees” have turned the town into a 24/7 open mic fever dream. It’s part utopia, part tinnitus. Shows occur whether you’re ready or not, and while the riffs are heartfelt, the reverb tends to outlast the inspiration. Still, for all its noise and neon nostalgia, Lloyd has heart—and in Kalyna Country, that still counts for something.

Harvesters

The relationship between Kalyna Country and the Harvesters is best described as “cordial exasperation layered in compost.” These squash-skinned biotech monks of Smoky Lake speak the dialect of logic and genome, not gossip and proverb. While their communes are officially autonomous, their runoff problems are everyone’s headache. It's not uncommon for a quiet Kalyna hamlet to awaken to find a six-legged vine-hog eating the church shingles— “an experimental growth module,” the Harvesters will explain while issuing a politely damp apology. Still, there’s no denying their agricultural marvels, from fungal bread ovens to chlorophyll-fed grain mills, which earn them a wary seat at the Solstice table. They’re strange kin, kept at a distance, but kin all the same—as long as their seedlings don’t start singing again.

Strathcan Militia:

The Strathcan Militia casts a long shadow across Kalyna Country—not as occupiers, but as guardians of a world that’s already split at the seams. In this patchwork land of psychic roads, enchanted relics, and saint-haunted crossroads, the Militia serves as both rite of passage and rite of order. Many a young soul from the hamlets and wheat-warped villages volunteers for a tour through Ed-Town’s Garrison, seeking purpose, power, or escape, only to return hardened and half-mystic themselves. Some see the Militia as protectors, others as paternalistic relics of a dead Canada, but none can deny their presence. They train our defenders, quarantine our curses, and sometimes, if the stars align and the forms are in order, help patch the holes left by rampaging relic-beasts or out-of-season hauntings. They hold the line, though whether against the apocalypse or for it remains a matter of debate at many a tavern table.

Living Traditions Reforged

Lecture Segment: Applied Folkloric Technomancy

1. Pysanky (Egg Magic): Not just painted eggs. Arcane grenades of symbolic geometry. Blessings, hexes, or encrypted leyline access keys—depending on the artisan’s mood.  These are often the keys to get to the dreamworld.
2. The Babas of Power: Think of them as regional matriarchal sorcerer-governors. One per major school of magic. Each terrifying in its way. Each can outwit a demigod before breakfast. 
3. Kupala Night → Prairie Bonfire Vigil: The Solstice Festival, now with more fire, more spirit encounters, and less chance of making it through without magical singeing.
4. Didukh → Iron Totems: Spiritual status made from scrap of the past and wheat. They hum softly when you lie near them.
5. Rushnyk → Cunning Cloths: Think ritual spell maps. Folded the right way, they grant passage, protection, or panic attacks.
6. Sunflowers & Kalyna Berries: One fuels spirits. One fuels spells. Both taste like defiance.
7. Hopak (Combat Dance): When fists meet folklore. Enhances endurance, morale, and the ability to kick your problems in time to a drum.
8. Feasting and Toasting: Meal as magic. Toasts as pacts. Calories with consequences.
9. Birch Groves (Berezka): Natural peace zones. Violate one and you’ll wake up hexed and embarrassed.
10. Oral Song & Memory (Kobzars): These are not your average bards. They carry psychic libraries in their lungs. Sometimes the songs remind you.        

"There are no casual meals here. Every plate tells a story. Every toast dares a spirit to listen."

New Cultural Rites

Selected Observations from Field Rituals:

• Teaching Flame: Localized psychic fire, unreplaceable outside its village. No, I’ve tried. Yes, I still smell like a burnt proverb.
• Ride of the Freehands: The solstice motorcycle pilgrimage. Equal parts spell, cartography, and tribute to the road spirits.
• Shoring of the Ghost House: Haunted renovation with sunflowers, singing, and just a hint of exorcism.
• Ceremony of the First Book: Every child receives a living book at age seven. Mine has grown teeth and refuses to be shelved.
• Three-Times Telling: Say it thrice under open sky, and it becomes magical law. Yes, even petty revenge.

The Land Provides – Crops in Kaylna Country.

 

 

Even after the world cracked open and the skies learned to hum, agriculture remains the beating heart of Kalyna Country. The black soil endures—rich, stubborn, and whispering with old roots—and the people still coax life from it with calloused hands and quiet prayers. Crops like rye, buckwheat, and sunflower still grow in familiar rows, while others—like glowcorn, Didukh grains, and the truth-ripened Firebush Kalyna—have changed alongside the land, touched by leylines, saintly intervention, or pre-Hodgepocalypse genetic miracles. In villages circled by rune-carved fenceposts and guarded by scarecrows that sometimes blink, farming is more than sustenance—it’s resistance, memory, and a way to keep the world stitched together one harvest at a time.

 

Legacy Crops (Still recognizably the same)

These survived due to hardiness, seed vaults, or fast adaptation.

• Rye – The backbone grain. Hardier than wheat, still a staple.
• Barley – Brewed into rustic beers or psychic kvass. Popular among Trollitariots.
• Buckwheat – Used in soba-like noodles and ritual porridge. Good for bees.
• Canola – Rebranded as “Blackgold Blossoms,” still grown for oil in rugged zones.
• Potatoes – Gnarled but reliable. Some glow faintly if improperly buried.
• Sunflowers – Mutated into watchflowers in some regions. Otherwise still useful for oil and seeds.
• Beans and Lentils – Soil-fixing heroes of the black earth, traded heavily with the Dwarves of Fallhold.
• Cabbage – Prized for fermentation. Occasionally becomes Kabbage Rolls if exposed to Harvester spores.

Cultural Holdovers (Kept for tradition, ritual, or stubbornness)

These are grown because they matter, even if they’re tricky.

• Kalyna Berries (Highbush Cranberry) – The namesake. Used in syrups, preserves, and blood-oath rituals.
• Beets – Cultivated not just for borscht but for ink, pigment, and a minor blood substitute.
• Garlic – Grown in ceremonial braids. Repels both the undead and in-laws.
• Dill – Ubiquitous. Used in pickling, prayers, and protective sigils.
• Hemp – For rope, cloth, and soothing tinctures. Occasionally smoked during vision quests.

Kalyna Firebush

"Once just a garden decoration—now it guards the land like a grandmother guards her secrets."

Born from the bones of the highbush cranberry (Viburnum trilobum) and twisted by the strange tides of the Hodgepocalypse, the Kalyna Firebush now thrives across fallow fields and memory-rich soil. Its vivid red clusters glow faintly with ancestral rhythm, pulsing in time with nearby heartbeats. Farmers say it listens—root systems stretch through the soil like tangled lullabies, reacting to old songs, gossip, and grief. More than a plant, it's a healer of land and spirit, rebuilding depleted soil through sonic communion, and fiercely protecting the ground it claims.

Kozakoffee Bush

A pre-Hodgepocalypse GMO miracle crop, now a sacred addiction and source of eldritch anxiety.

Engineered initially by a Ukrainian-Canadian agro-research firm called PryvitGrow, the Kozakoffee Bush was a genetically modified hybrid between coffea arabica, alpine wild roses, and devil’s club. Designed to thrive in cold climates with erratic magic exposure, it was deployed in sealed agrodomes throughout east-central Alberta—some say in secret government contracts to keep frontline researchers awake during the Dream-Surge Crisis.

Shedskin Olive

“It doesn’t grow where it’s wanted—it grows where it’s owed.”

An experiment in cold-climate cultivation, the Shedskin Olive was PryvitGrow’s boldest graftwork—splicing Mediterranean olive trees with pincherry resilience. Its bark is gnarled but faintly luminous, shimmering with ancient sap; its leaves curl like downturned feathers, and its fruit ripens matte-black—until kissed by moonlight, when it gleams like spilled ink. In winter, the tree survives by shedding its bark and curling inward like a child in hibernation. Its roots don’t just seek water—they seek forgotten promises, buried secrets, or unquiet bones. Few dare plant it, but those who do often find more than they sowed.

Tools of Tenacity — Technology in Kalyna Country

"Rituals evolve. Culture adapts. Magic? It just finds new kinds of weird to wear."

Excerpt from Stonesworth's “Post-Revelation Engineering: How to Build a Miracle from Scraps and Salt”

Kalyna’s approach to technology is equal parts folklore, frontier pragmatism, and low-level magical terror. It’s not sleek. It’s sacred. Every device is carefully calibrated and often blessed by a Baba who should charge more.

Pioneer Tech Reborn:

• Root Cellar Reactors: The cool, dark battery you didn’t know you needed.
• Sod House Mesh: Bio-circuitry and mud, together at last.

War Adaptations:

• Solar Oven Artillery: Yes, it does melt through shields and slow-cooks stew.
• Ghost Signal Blockers: Granny’s lace panels, now with spectral jamming properties.

Philosophy: Kalyna tech isn’t an upgrade. It’s an offspring. Blessed, built, and passed on. Every bolt holds a story. Every spark a promise. You don’t use it. You partner with it.

"In Kalyna, technology doesn't run on electricity. It runs on trust, tradition, and duct tape blessed by your great-aunt."

Engines of Devotion: Car Culture in Kalyna Country

Excerpt from Stonesworth’s Lecture: “Horsepower, Heritage, and the Solstice Screamers”

In Kalyna Country, the wheel isn’t just a tool—it’s a doctrine. Where roads still breathe and relics still hum, vehicles are the lifeblood of pilgrimage, power, and post-Hodgepocalyptic survival. This isn’t your pre-Revelation fuel economy spreadsheet. This is a culture where carburetors get blessed, exhaust pipes are engraved with family prayers, and fuel is half gasoline, half folklore.

“Your vehicle isn’t just yours—it’s who you were, who you carry, and where your ghost wants to go.” —Local mechanic-sage, Smoky Lake.

Nearly every family has a “legacy rig”—a battle-scarred pickup, a three-wheeled rune-sled, or a psychic go-kart passed down through generations (or bartered during dramatic weather). These machines are patched with embroidered rushnyks, powered by jury-rigged hybrid engines, and named like saints: Saint Veronica the Reliable, Old Sputter-Wind, The Grumbling Loaf.

The most significant expression of this wheeled theology comes in the form of the Solstice Circuit—a high-speed spiritual gauntlet run each year before midsummer. Participants must navigate Kalyna’s fractured backroads, stopping at all eight major relic sites to reawaken ancient magical totems known as the Relic Roadshows. Each site demands a different test: a song, a sacrifice, a meal, a dream retold, or just not exploding.

Winning the race isn’t the point—completing it is. Those who do are said to gain the land’s blessing for another year. Those who fail often disappear into legend… or get absorbed into the strange, humming machinery buried beneath the asphalt.

And it’s not just the racers who matter. Pit crews include hedge-wizards, roadside priests, and Gnome Pit Crews. Spectators line the ghost roads with banners of wheat and engine oil, cheering with enchanted air horns and throwing sunflower seeds instead of confetti.

So yes, car culture in Kalyna isn’t just about going fast. It’s about remembering faster. It’s about keeping your soul mobile in a world that wants to trap it in amber. And when the roads forget themselves—as they often do out here—it’s the drivers who remind them who they were.

The Orthodoxy

Excerpt from Stonesworth’s Notes: “Ascetics, Icons, and the Art of Tactical Theology”

In the smoking shadow of the old faith, a new order has risen—stoic, iron-spined, and wrapped in embroidered scripture. Calling themselves The Orthodoxy, these individuals claim to follow the path of the Ukrainian Orthodox tradition, albeit through the distorted lens of the Hodgepocalypse. Their doctrine blends ancient liturgy with modern necessity: prayer, yes—but only after your morning calisthenics and law enforcement patrol.  It also combines elements of the Doukhobor faith, which was historically nicknamed “spirit wrestlers”

Effectively acting as templars of moral order, they patrol Kalyna’s wilder reaches, offering spiritual counsel, field justice, and the occasional unsolicited sermon. To some, they’re protectors. To others, sanctimonious relics with stun batons.

Their headquarters, the Basilican Bunker in Mundare, was once a religious museum. Post-Revelation, it was consecrated anew with reinforced pews, devotional combat drills, and a library of scripture-encoded field manuals. It now serves as both seminary and stronghold—housing initiates in cells lined with iconography and resistance diagrams.

Father Melosky, a wiry zealot with a taste for both debate and bruises, leads the order. Equal parts philosopher and pugilist, he has a habit of challenging travelers to "friendly spars"—which often result in spiritual revelations and sprained ankles. He’s infamous for blessing a punch mid-swing and quoting saints during takedowns.

“They carry crosses, but don’t expect them to be ornamental.”

Their presence in Kalyna is controversial revered by some villages for bringing structure, resented by others for their strict codes and moral absolutism. But love them or loathe them, the Orthodoxy is here to stay—armed with prayer staves, doctrine, and an unshakable belief that faith must be tempered on the anvil of action. 

The New Cimmerians

Dictated en route to Kalyna border checkpoint #6, bruised ribs courtesy of a “blessed spar.”

The New Cimmerians are what happens when ancestral reverence, martial obsession, and a gym membership cult crash headlong into the Hodgepocalypse and emerge ripped.

They’re massive. They’re mystical. They’re maddeningly sincere. Picture Conan the Barbarian after a crash course in Ukrainian mysticism and then give him a flaming barbell, a sacred tattoo, and the unwavering conviction that leg day is a holy rite. That’s your average New Cimmerian—and believe me, that’s the mild one.

Their core belief? The Ancestral Fire. Not a metaphor, no—an actual divine spark said to dwell within the disciplined body. According to their sermons (typically delivered mid-squat), every repetition is a rite. Every deadlift is a dialogue with the dearly departed. I once witnessed a man scream his grandmother’s name while shoulder pressing an anvil. She might have responded.

Culturally, they operate like mobile war-monks on protein overdrive. Their gym-camps resemble something between an Eastern Orthodox boot camp and a Mad Max stronghold—with fewer skulls and more kettlebells. They pray through pushups. Their battle hymns are belted between sets. And their sacred texts are etched directly into their muscle tissue, one flex at a time.

Technologically? Brutalist minimalism with a side of rust. Their vehicles are hand-powered beasts—ox-drawn sleds and buggies reinforced with chain-wrapped iron. They view electricity with open suspicion, preferring muscle over machine, brawn over button. “If it doesn’t spark the soul,” one told me, “it shouldn’t spark at all.” I didn’t argue. His forearms were the size of my field pack.

Their relationship to Kalyna Country is... complicated. They're tolerated like a beloved but unpredictable cousin. They raise Thornslithers—those sonic-armored nightmare-cows—with a mix of reverence and brute command, treating them as both sacred steed and sweaty personal trainer. They respect the Babas’ shrinefire laws—barely—and only flex near holy flame if they've been properly anointed (or apologized profusely afterward).

Notable rites? Plenty. My personal favorite (from a safe distance) is the Trial by Burnt Barbell, a coming-of-age ceremony involving flaming weights inscribed with familial regrets. Participants are expected to lift until either enlightenment or dislocation occurs. Then there’s the Hundred-Mile Howl, where a lone warrior disappears into the wilds until they earn a new name or become a ghost worth remembering.

Their motto?
“Iron in blood. Fire in bones. Ghosts in every muscle.”
I’ve seen it tattooed on biceps, carved into mountainsides, and, once, muttered in sleep by a pack mule I’m fairly sure they blessed.

Thornslithers of Kalyna

Species Report: “If a Tractor Had Feelings and Spikes”

Recorded just after nearly stepping in a juvenile’s glue gland. Again.

Let us speak of the Thornslither—Kalyna Country’s favorite biological contradiction. Equal parts beast of burden, biological landmine, and living folk myth, these creatures are either the best thing to ever emerge from the Hodgepocalypse… or the punchline to a cosmic joke no one remembers telling.

Anatomically, a Thornslither looks like what happens when a centipede, a stegosaurus, and a bulldozer enter a very inappropriate relationship. They are armored from skull to spike, their tails could impale a ghost, and their heads are shaped like plowshares—presumably to till the land, destroy fences, or knock over researchers they don’t like (ask me how I know). Two drunken-antennae flop above their brow like confused radar dishes, twitching at stimuli that, near as I can tell, exist only in other dimensions.

Their coloration often mimics regional cattle—Holstein, Angus, even the occasional psychedelic 4-H project gone rogue. Whether this is camouflage, cosmic irony, or some deep-seated mockery of agrarian culture is anyone’s guess.

    “It mooed once. Just once. I haven’t slept since.” —Local herder

As for their origin? Absolutely not terrestrial. Possibly Dreamtime-adjacent. More likely, they crawled out of a pocket dimension that collapsed under the weight of poor planning and psychic rot. Wherever they’re from, they brought baggage. Sticky, screaming, stampeding baggage.

Their young are particularly treacherous: capable of excreting a hyper-adhesive substance affectionately known as “ranch glue.” It’s a blend of caulking gun, industrial solvent, and karmic punishment. I've seen it trap a grown ox, a hover-cart, and once, an entire wedding procession.

The elders, on the other hand, have developed what folklorists and traumatized militia recruits call the Thunder Roar. It’s less of a bellow and more of a full-body psychic detonation. Trees wilt. Comms short out. Your soul briefly forgets how to conjugate.

Behaviorally? They’re herd creatures, with intense emotional bonds to their group. Left alone, they become twitchy, unpredictable, and aggressively affectionate—much like my third assistant. But when herded properly, they leave behind perfectly tilled, nutrient-rich soil. By design or digestive accident, no one knows. Farmers love them. Fence manufacturers, less so.

Utilitarian uses abound:

    Their glue is used in everything from munitions to miracle adhesives to questionable folk medicine.

    Their hide is durable enough for vehicle plating and trauma-resistant outerwear.

    Their meat is technically edible. It smells like regret and tastes like burnt possibility.

Temperament-wise, they range from docile giants to feral nightmares, depending on social conditions, moon phase, and whether you’re wearing citrus-scented soap.

They’re often referred to as “Thunderslithers”—a nickname that, frankly, undersells the seismic chaos they leave behind. If you hear one coming, you are already late, unprepared, and probably standing in something you’ll regret.

Their most devoted caretakers? The New Cimmerians. To them, Thornslithers are more than livestock—they’re sacred sparring partners, walking sermons in muscle and menace. Training one is a rite of passage. Surviving that training? A minor miracle.

    “If you can raise a Thornslither,” the saying goes, “you can survive marriage. Or a god. Possibly both if you’re lucky.”

    (I am not lucky.)

Packenpocks Production LTD.

Excerpt from Stonesworth’s Lecture: “Corporeal Capitalism: Meat, Memory, and Marketing in the Hodgepocalypse”

In a world where gods die and roads forget their destinations, one brand has proven oddly immortal: Packenpocks.

Reanimated from the greasy ashes of a pre-Hodgepocalypse meat empire, Packenpocks Production LTD. is a carnivorous colossus—equal parts nostalgia bait and territorial syndicate. The modern iteration was revived by one of the more ambitious patriarchs of the Packenpock clan, who wasted no time in weaponizing legacy branding. With logos lovingly ripped from 20th-century ad campaigns and jingles scrubbed clean of decay, the company has clawed its way back into public consciousness through sheer omnipresence.

“Pick me up a Packenpocks!”
Still blares from psychic radio, scavenged billboards, and jury-rigged TV broadcasts—now in three languages and one subliminal chant.

Their flagship facility—the Central Meatworks of Mundare—is less slaughterhouse, more fortified cathedral of industry. Massive smoke stacks billow like incense, feeding the sky with the scent of ambition and sausage. Inside, automated slicers, meat drones, and ritual butchers work in tandem, churning out everything from smoked marrow links to “protein bricks” stamped with eldritch QR codes.

The company’s reach is vast. Herding routes, ranch enclaves, and blood-traced trade lines across Strathcan and Kalyna are either owned, influenced, or quietly crushed by Packenpocks’ corporate arm. If you eat meat in the Wastes, odds are it passed through a Packenpock blade first.

And while their executives claim to “honor tradition,” their methods are anything but quaint. Reports persist of vat-grown cattle with psionic dampeners, branding rituals that mark both animal and handler, and flavor enhancers harvested from spectral residue.

“You don’t just eat a Packenpock meal,” one field agent noted. “You participate in its myth.”

Species in Kaylna Country

While Humans dominate the region, it is a place of surprising degree of cultural points and interaction.

Beaver Folk

In the patchwork heartland of Kalyna Country, Beaver Folk are the stoic sentinels of the waterways—gruff, geared-up, and never far from a wrench or a warning sign. Their lodges, hidden in sloughs and lakeside hollows, are half-homestead, half-bunker, woven from scavenged timber and reinforced scrap. Though wary of outsiders, they’ve quietly shaped the region's resilience, trading tools with Dwarves, sharing barricades with Little Bears, and occasionally feuding with Harvesters over whose roots run deeper. When the call to protect the land or settle a score rings out, a Beaver Folk adventurer might emerge—armored to the teeth, piloting a rust-red off-roader, and ready to damn the river or the road in equal measure.

Cats

In Kalyna Country, Cats are more than pets—they’re omens, secret keepers, and supernatural freelancers. Often viewed with reverence and wariness in equal measure, Inspired Cats are seen as living relics of the world before the Revelations. When bonded to a family or a town, they’re fiercely loyal (in their aloof way), acting as both guardians and gossip mongers. Local Babas often treat them as sacred messengers, reading their tail twitches like portents. Some Cats travel alone, whispering truths in alleys, while others lounge in sunbeams atop psychic relics, pretending not to care. But when the Solstice comes and the barriers thin, every wise soul knows: if a Cat chooses your side, it’s a sign the Fates are watching.

Fate Fugitive

When someone dies in Kalyna Country, the sky mourns with fire. A falling star streaks overhead—sometimes a whisper of light, other times a screaming omen—and if brave souls reach the crater before the dreamwinds do, a miracle may unfold. The departed might return... changed. These reborn souls are called Fate Fugitives—ghosts in defiance, stitched from memory and possibility. Neither fully dead nor truly living, they are echoes who slipped fate’s leash, driven by second chances and the unfinished business of destiny. Born from dreamtime breaches and starlit ruptures, they walk the world as living contradictions—haunted, gifted, and terrifyingly free. Whether harbingers of change or anomalies to be corrected, Fate Fugitives stand as living proof: not even death can stop a story that isn’t done being told.

Gnomes

In Kalyna Country, Gnomes are the flickering candle behind every strange invention, roadside spell-vendor, or rigged-up chicken-coop radio tower. Known in local tales as Domovoi or “barn-spirits,” they’re whispered to fix broken tractors by moonlight, leave enchanted buttons under children’s pillows, or hex thieves with never-ending hiccups. These clever little fey blurs the line between folklore and commerce—some are mystic tinkerers making self-plucking pierogi machines, while others serve as bureaucratic enforcers with contracts longer than church sermons. Though they love secrets and side-hustles, Gnomes are loyal once bound by word, kin, or coin—and most rural families know better than to insult a Gnome’s mustache or question their unpaid tab at the pub.

Halflings

In Kalyna Country, Halflings are the joyful lifeblood that rolls through potholes and backroads alike. Traveling in tightly knit convoys or cozying into borrowed barns and repurposed diners, they act as storytellers, mechanics, and deliverers of laughter wherever they roam. Their convoys paint bright murals over rusted panels, trade food and songs at roadside stops, and keep old traditions alive with new names. Whether you need a smuggler who can charm border guards, a fearless courier who’ll race through a haunted interchange, or a friend who’ll offer half their stew, a Halfling won’t let you down. Resilient and radiant, they carry hope in glove compartments and family in their hearts.

Kamidavers

In Kalyna Country, Kamidavers have become unlikely folk heroes—undead stunt-performers turned freedom fighters who thrive amid the region’s magical chaos and roadside myth. Once feared as shock troops of the Necromantic Wars, they’ve reinvented themselves as vigilantes, showmen, and defenders of the weird. Whether backflipping off burning grain elevators to save villagers, racing across relic circuits, or guarding Baban shrines, Kamidavers have found a strange kind of acceptance in a land where being bizarre is a badge of honor. Though still haunted by their origins, they now chase glory not for war, but for wonder.  They also appear to be a bad habit as people that die in their presence often come back as fellow Kamidavers.

Little Bears

In Kalyna Country, Little Bears are beloved wanderers, diplomats, and oddball sages—walking the line between myth and mascot. With the build of plush toys and the hearts of golden-age community leaders, they serve as guardians of forgotten paths and cheerful medics on the long road. Their settlements—whether treehouse villages deep in the groves or retrofitted lodges atop ruined ski resorts—buzz with warmth, sweet smells, and off-key singing. While many stay close to their forest kin, plenty venture out as jam-traders, peacekeepers, or accidental prophets. They are often the first to show kindness and the last to abandon a friend. Even in a land of psychic mushrooms and diesel-fueled ghosts, a Little Bear with a scarf and a smile is a welcome sight.

Marlarkoids

Marlarkoids—those lanky, helium-bellied “aliens” with too many arms and too much enthusiasm—have made St. Paul their unofficial capital, drawn by the legendary UFO Landing Pad they believe marks their destined rescue point. Whether they truly hail from the stars or are just mutated eccentrics with delusions of cosmic grandeur is hotly debated. Still, nobody denies their big hearts, bigger eyes, and bizarre gadgets. In Kalyna Country, they serve as archivists of pop culture, curators of roadside oddities, and nervous optimists praying the next Solstice will finally bring a way home. Despite their awkward mingling habits and helium-voiced attempts at diplomacy, their strange insights and unpredictable powers make them beloved (if oddball) neighbors, especially to the Feylin, Halflings, and any town weird enough to accept them.

Stumpies

Stumpies are grumbling wooden workhorses whose roots in Kalyna Country go deeper than most trees. With bark like armor and conspiracy theories thicker than their canopies, they inhabit the wild edges of cranberry bogs, abandoned logging camps, and overgrown rail lines. Though the origin of their kind is wrapped in bark-shrouded mystery—some blame the Harvesters, others whisper of a forgotten war—they focus less on history and more on hauling lumber, fixing fences, and muttering about rapture storms and suspicious ducks. In a land rebuilt by stubborn hands, Stumpies find both purpose and paranoia. Adventuring Stumpies often take up the axe or hammer not out of hope, but because sitting still gives them more time to think.             

Trollitariot

In the ruins and rebirths of Kalyna Country and in Vilna in particular, Trollitariot find a strange kind of peace through relentless labor. These gruff, wiry-limbed fey are the first to build a bridge, fix a grain mill, or reinforce a bunker—whether it needs it or not. To the locals, a Trollitariot worksite sounds like swearing, hammering, and philosophy all mixed. They form roving road crews, mushroom-patch masons, and ad-hoc unions in mushroom towns and Baba-blessed ruins alike. Some even shadow the Industrial Baba as her grumbling protectors, drawn to her sense of purpose. In Kalyna Country, Trollitariot aren’t just laborers—they're the muttering backbone of reconstruction, rebellion, and overbuilt roadside shrines.

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