Milwaukee

 

Milwaukee didn’t survive the Hodgepocalypse because it was lucky. It survived because it was stubborn. When the revelations tore the world apart and the Necromantic Wars bled it dry, this city of smoke and steel refused to sink into Lake Michigan like so many others. Its skyline, rust-bitten and bone-white under the soot, still cuts the clouds like a row of broken teeth.

Here, people learned to reforge ruins into lifelines. Breweries became alchemical forges; machine shops turned into scrapyard temples where sparks fly like fireflies. You can smell it in the air—ozone, oil, and old sweat. Milwaukee is a place where the living barter with the dead, where species from a dozen worlds rub elbows in guildhalls lit by furnace glow. It is not safe, it is not clean, and it certainly isn’t fair—but it endures. And endurance is the only currency left that matters.

Historical Foundations

The following account is pulled from the journals of “Rust-Eye” Callahan, self-appointed chronicler of Milwaukee’s rebirth. Callahan was no scholar, just an old dockworker with a bad memory, a flask of fungal gin, and a taste for exaggeration. His version of history is as full of holes as the city itself—but it’s the story most folks tell around the scrapyard fires.

“They say Milwaukee was built on three things: beer, blood, and busted knuckles. The Potawatomi and Ojibwe knew the land first, knew the rivers before they stank of grease. Then came the fur traders, then the Germans with their breweries, and the Poles with their muscle. By the time the 20th century came roaring in, the city was a machine—gears turning, chimneys choking the sky.

Now, I’ll be honest with you—I wasn’t there for all that. Most of what I know comes from old signs and ghost stories. But the way I figure it, the city was always about work. Work the soil, work the steel, work the brew—the kind of place where even your free time stank of sweat.

Then came the 21st. Folks traded hammers for laptops, smokestacks for biotech towers. Still blue-collar at the heart, but the collars got cleaner. They call it a ‘blue island’ now—tolerant, loud, a little too proud of its festivals. You could dance to a dozen different bands in a dozen other neighborhoods and eat pierogi in one block, tacos in the next. Didn’t stop the cracks, though. Inequality, segregation—Milwaukee carried those scars before the end of the world.

When the Hodgepocalypse hit? Most cities went down screaming. Milwaukee grounds its teeth and kept going. Lake Michigan fed the people when the fields burned. The old breweries turned out brews that burned hotter than gasoline, good enough to keep the lights flickering. And the people? They cobbled their lives together from rust and ruin, same as always. Some say it was pride. Me, I say it was stubbornness.

Now the city breathes a new kind of smoke. The guilds keep the wheels turning, the port hauls in whatever scraps the Great Lakes cough up, and the neighborhoods cling together like families in a storm. Milwaukee’s no paradise. But it’s alive—and after all this, that’s saying something.”

Government and Structure

Milwaukee’s system of governance is not the product of a grand design but the outgrowth of its past. Long before the Hodgepocalypse, the city had been a patchwork of neighborhoods, immigrant communities, and labor unions, each carving out its own space and voice. That legacy of grassroots activism and working-class grit carried through the collapse, shaping a model of survival that favors local leadership and collective responsibility over centralized authority. Decisions are forged as much in crowded guildhalls and smoke-stained assembly rooms as in any formal chamber, and compromise is the currency that keeps the city alive.

The modern city functions as a confederation of neighborhoods. Each district is self-governing mainly, with its council made up of leaders chosen by reputation, skill, or sheer necessity. These councils send their delegates to a central assembly, where city-wide concerns—trade, defense, the management of Lake Michigan’s vital resources—are argued out with the same fervor once reserved for labor disputes. The debates can be raucous, but the system ensures that no single faction holds unchecked power and that every neighborhood has its voice heard in the clamor.

Overlaying this civic framework are the guilds, whose influence reaches into every corner of daily life. The Brewers’ Guild, descended from the city’s brewing dynasties, has transformed into a brotherhood of alchemists and potion-makers whose concoctions keep the city fueled. The Engineers’ Guild, masters of salvage and improvisation, patch the bones of the city together from rust and ruin. The Defenders’ Guild maintains the walls and patrols the buffer zones, blending discipline with the grit of old union militias. These guilds do more than provide stability; they embody the industrial soul of Milwaukee, each hammer strike or boiling vat a reminder of the city’s will to endure.

Presiding over this patchwork order is the Mayor of the Forge, a figure more symbolic than authoritarian. Chosen by the assembly and guildmasters for their wisdom, reputation, or ability to keep warring factions at bay, the Mayor acts as mediator and envoy, representing Milwaukee in its dealings with outsiders. Terms are kept short, no more than a handful of years, to prevent the office from becoming a throne. Often, the Mayor is a retired guildmaster, elder statesman, or figure respected across species lines, chosen less for ambition than for their ability to hold the city together with calloused hands.

An advisory council of elders lends further weight to the assembly’s decisions. Long-lived species such as elves, Fossileborn, and gnomes often take these seats, their perspective stretching across generations. While their voices do not command, they remind the younger and more hot-blooded leaders of the city’s hard-earned lessons, grounding present ambitions in the memory of past scars. Together, this decentralized web of councils, guilds, and advisors ensures that Milwaukee’s government remains a reflection of its people: noisy, rough-hewn, and forever marked by the clang of the forge.

Law and Order

Milwaukee’s approach to law and order is as rough-hewn as the rest of its institutions. With no centralized police force surviving the Hodgepocalypse, the city fell back on traditions older than the nation itself. The medieval Frank Pledge system, once long forgotten, found new life on Milwaukee’s streets. Each neighborhood became responsible for its safety, and every household was bound to watch over the next. What began as vigilante patrols hardened into an accepted structure: neighborhood councils raising “Watchers” from their ranks, sworn not by uniform or badge, but by the simple duty of keeping their blocks alive.

These Watchers act as both militia and constables, patrolling the alleys, guarding markets, and stepping in when disputes turn violent. Their authority is rooted in community trust rather than statute books, though echoes of old Wisconsin law creep back in. Terms like disorderly conduct and trespass are still muttered at hearings, even if the legal codes they came from lie buried in dust. What matters is precedent: neighborhoods remember what worked, and they enforce it with a mix of pride, suspicion, and sometimes the blunt end of a hammer.

When disputes rise above the level of fistfights, they are carried to trial by the guild. Panels of elders and masters—brewers, engineers, defenders—sit in judgment, weighing facts and custom in equal measure. A verdict may call for fines paid in labor or goods, exile from a neighborhood, or in the rarest and most serious cases, the branding of an outlaw mark. In this way, justice is hammered out like steel on an anvil: hot, loud, and not always fair, but durable enough to hold.

Yet Milwaukee is not only a city of humans. Its survival depends on the fragile coexistence of species and factions, and so the Pact of Coexistence was written—not on parchment but carved into stone and welded into iron. This pact codifies the uneasy peace that keeps the streets from burning. The so-called Undead Code grants refuge to those risen from the Necromantic Wars but binds them to districts set aside for their kind, with strictures against feeding and necrotic magic. They are citizens, but citizens under watch.

Likewise, magic itself is subject to oversight. Alchemists, hedge-wizards, and Faustian mechanists are all required to register their crafts with a guild, a practice eerily similar to pre-war licensing laws. Those caught casting outside the guild’s approval risk fines, confiscation of their grimoires, or worse, banishment into the cold beyond the walls. To the city’s leaders, unlicensed magic is no different from unlicensed firearms once were in Wisconsin law: a threat not just to individuals, but to the fragile order of the whole.

Milwaukee’s law is not written in marble halls or backed by the threat of federal courts. It is written in soot, smoke, and the memory of neighbors who still recall what it cost to lose everything. Justice here is communal, provisional, and industrial in spirit: welded together from precedent, sweat, and the determination not to let chaos have the last word.

Foreign Relations

 Milwaukee sits at a crossroads of the inland seas, too valuable to ignore and too vulnerable to stand alone. Its industry and trade routes have made it a prize in every age, and in the aftermath of the Hodgepocalypse, it has learned to balance diplomacy with the clang of its forges. Where Chicago has surrendered to the Corpsemen and their Fallen Lords, Milwaukee has chosen militias, guilds, and wary diplomacy to hold its ground.

Relations with Chicago – The Corpsemen to the South

“Rust fights rot—that’s the way of it. Better to stink of oil than of grave dirt.” – common saying among Milwaukee Defenders.

No relationship shapes Milwaukee’s foreign policy more than its uneasy standoff with Chicago. The Corpsemen, a necro-industrial juggernaut ruled by the Fallen Lords, regard Milwaukee as both rival and resource. Milwaukeeans are pragmatic—they will trade spare parts, enchanted iron, or even alchemical brews with Corpseman agents, but the militia councils never let their guard down. Every guild keeps emergency stockpiles “for the day Chicago marches north,” and watchfires burn along the southern rail-lines and highways.

Northern Ties – The Apostles and the Door

“The lake never forgets. It takes your body, your ship, your secrets—and still asks for more.” – overheard at the Rust Harbor taverns.

To the north, Milwaukee’s lifeline winds along the coast toward the Apostle Islands and the Door Peninsula. The Apostles are haunted by the ghost fleet of the Witch, whose fog-bound armadas prey on traders. Milwaukee has adapted with innovations in ship-forging: ironclad barges, rune-marked lanterns, and militia flotillas meant to fight or flee at a moment’s notice. The Door Peninsula, meanwhile, is ruled by the Green Warden and the Rainmaker Circle. They provide rare herbs, enchanted roots, and druidic wisdom in exchange for careful tribute and ritual respect. Milwaukee’s alchemists serve double duty as envoys, since without Door County’s flora, the Brewers’ Guild would wither. 

Mackinac Island – Neutral Trade Rival

“Every treaty signed there feels like we’re drinking someone else’s beer.” – grumble of a Brewers’ Guild envoy.

Further east lies Mackinac Island, whose neutral courts and retrofitted shipwrights shape much of the lake’s politics. Milwaukee resents the island’s reputation as a neutral meeting ground, seeing it as a rival that siphons contracts and prestige. Yet the city’s militias know they cannot afford to alienate Mackinac outright: too many pirate crews and mercenary fleets hold to its neutrality. Milwaukee thus plays a careful game, sending envoys to Mackinac’s courts while strengthening its own militia fleets in preparation for the day neutrality fails.

Militia Diplomacy – The Rusty Fortress Abroad

“Our word is iron; our handshake is steel. If either break, you’ll hear the hammer.” – oath of the Defenders’ Guild

Unlike cities that rely on old-world bureaucracy, Milwaukee projects strength through its militias and guilds. Diplomats often travel with visible contingents of armed Watchers, their soot-stained armor a reminder that the city’s diplomacy is backed by its forges. Neighboring towns and enclaves respect this—Milwaukee is seen not as a lofty capital but as a gritty, pragmatic partner whose word carries weight because it is always prepared to fight for it.

Milwaukee endures not by chance, but by iron, sweat, and stubborn will. It is a rust-red fortress city whose smoke-stained militias and guild halls stand as a reminder that survival requires both pragmatism and pride. Between the necro-foundries of Chicago and the haunted channels of the Apostles, Milwaukee holds the line—trading with one hand, gripping a weapon with the other. To its neighbors, it is neither saint nor monster, but a city that refuses to die, hammering out its future on anvils that never cool.

Species of the city

Bogey

Bogeys are the children of shadow, fear, and story—yet they walk Milwaukee’s streets as surely as any human, dwarf, or elf would. Rather than being monsters lurking in the alleys, many Bogeys see themselves as citizens of the city, though the anxieties of those around them shape their existence. Their forms tend to be fluid, reflecting fragments of nightmares, masks, or urban legends, but Bogeys are self-aware and can stabilize their appearance with effort. A Bogey PC might struggle with how others react to them: feared as haunters, hired as spies, or courted as guardians against worse things that stalk the night.

In daily life, Bogeys gravitate to the city’s margins—rusted factories, abandoned rail yards, half-lit speakeasies—yet they also serve as negotiators, informants, and tricksters within Milwaukee’s guilds. Some neighborhood councils treat Bogeys as a necessary counterweight, using them to root out corruption or scare off rivals. Others view them as a civic issue, enforcing curfews and laws to control Bogeys. For the Bogey themselves, identity is both a curse and a power: they are walking stories in a city that remembers too much. Whether as adventurers, diplomats, or saboteurs, Bogeys bring the city’s hidden fears into the open—and force Milwaukee to reckon with them.

Feylin

The Feylin are whimsical city-fae born from the echoes of pop culture, neon nights, and half-remembered folklore. Drawn to abandoned theaters, dusty record shops, and festival grounds that pulse with collective memory, they weave enchantment from nostalgia itself. Equal parts trickster and tastemaker, Feylin thrive as DJs, festival organizers, and performers who blur the line between magic show and cultural movement. Some trade in memories like others trade in coins, while others bend fashion and trends through mischievous glamour. Though often playful, their influence carries weight—Feylin shape how mortals remember the past and imagine the future, for better or worse.

Fossileborn

The Fossileborn are living echoes of a world that never fully died, hybrids of infernal lineage and saurian ancestry who embody raw survival against extinction. In the crumbled industrial landscapes of the Hodgepocalypse, they stride like primal guardians—scaled, horned, and unyielding, their very presence a reminder that history’s bones still walk. Some embrace tribal traditions, wielding ancient instincts to lead clans on the city’s fringes; others sell their ferocity as enforcers and shock troops to factions hungry for power. In Milwaukee, where factories rust beside monuments of history, the Fossileborn resonate as symbols of rebirth: creatures who refused to be programmed into oblivion, now standing tall as living fossils armed with teeth, claws, and fire-forged will.

Garter Folk

The Garterfolk slither through Milwaukee’s forgotten tunnels and abandoned factories with an ease that makes them both unsettling and indispensable. Born from mutations of common garter snakes and touched by Dreamtime energies, these snake-people thrive in tight, overheated spaces where others can’t survive. They gather in sprawling, chaotic colonies—sometimes dozens, sometimes thousands—where warmth, closeness, and celebration define their culture. To outsiders, their open sensuality and strange etiquette are disarming, but their friendliness and knack for weaving connections often turn enemies into partners. In the post-apocalyptic cityscape, Garterfolk become natural scouts, mystics, and lorekeepers, slipping unseen into the crevices of power struggles or offering their unique perspective as unflinching diplomats who are truthful to a fault. Always underestimated as “snakes in the ruins,” they are survivors, equally at home in a neon dive bar or a crumbling sewer shrine.

Harlowe

Once winged warriors from another dimension, the Desecrator Lord Asmoday twisted the Harlowes into tools of seduction, espionage, and death. For centuries, they served as courtesans and assassins, their wings clipped not in body but in spirit. When the Desecrators were dragged to Earth, however, cracks in that system allowed rebellion to flare—and Harlowes embraced freedom with a vengeance. Now, they walk the wastelands as beautiful exiles, their feathered hair shimmering in hues of black, blue, or white, their obsidian eyes glowing in the dark. They are guarded and scarred, shaped by centuries of oppression, yet wield charisma and cunning like weapons. Some manipulate court intrigue, others rally freedom-fighters, but all embody a dangerous balance of trauma and power. A Harlowe’s trust is rare, their companionship a treasure, and their fury a curse best avoided.

Kamidaver

The Kamidaver are accepted in Milwaukee not out of love, but out of grim necessity. Once stuntmen, daredevils, or performers who refused to stay buried, they now find their niche in the Rotwild Coliseum, where their ability to die spectacularly and return again makes them the ultimate entertainers. To most citizens, they are unsettling reminders of mortality, their scarred bodies and stitched flesh walking proof that the line between life and death is thinner than ever. Still, Milwaukee tolerates them, for their presence fuels the economy of spectacle, keeps the masses distracted, and provides a vent for violence that might otherwise tear the city apart. The living may flinch at their eerie smiles, but the Kamidaver have become woven into the city’s culture—half pariah, half icon—because no one else can put on a show quite like the dead who refused to stay down.

Mechanical Life Forms (MLF)

The Mechanical Life Forms of Milwaukee are not sleek utopians, but rust-stained survivors forged from the city’s industrial past. Awakened in abandoned breweries, steel mills, and scrapyards, they see themselves as the new working class — stubborn, proud, and scarred like the factories they inhabit. Some cling to their forges as guardians, others form “Circuit Unions” that echo the old labor guilds, while zealots in the Cybercult preach that the Forge is God and Code is Gospel. To outsiders, Milwaukee’s MLFs may look like broken machines, but within their dented frames burn memories of labor songs, baseball scores, and union pride — and they will defend their Rust Spire shrines and their place in the city as fiercely as any flesh-born.

Mothfolk

In Milwaukee, the Mothfolk carve out quiet sanctuaries in forgotten corners of the city—abandoned breweries, derelict warehouses, and half-collapsed rail tunnels. Their colonies thrive in the shadows of rusting steel and crumbling brick, where the hum of old machinery mixes with the flutter of their wings. To the city’s survivors, they are unsettling omens: watchful, silent, their luminous eyes glinting from the rafters. Some whisper that they are seers of impending catastrophe, while others accuse them of harboring secrets stolen from the depths of Fort Pleasant’s mines. Yet in truth, Milwaukee’s Mothfolk see themselves as keepers of balance, mediating between the industrial scars of the past and the uncertain future of the apocalypse. They move like living urban legends—half feared, half revered—offering cryptic guidance to those willing to listen, and sudden, dazzling fury to those who would threaten their fragile kin.

Transband

In the post-apocalyptic sprawl of Milwaukee, the TrashBands have carved out a peculiar niche as both scavenger kings and urban tricksters. Beneath the rusted skeletons of breweries, factories, and rail lines, their sewer warrens and rooftop shanties form a hidden city-within-a-city. They thrive in the wreckage of industry, viewing Milwaukee’s endless scrap, bottle caps, and discarded tech as a sacred treasure hoard. To wastelanders, the TrashBands are guides through the labyrinthine ruins, smugglers who know every storm drain, and keepers of secrets whispered in neon-lit alleys. Yet they are also Milwaukee’s mischievous conscience—forever raiding tyrant strongholds, redistributing “shinies,” and mocking those who try to hoard power. To ally with them is to gain eyes and ears across the city’s underbelly; to cross them is to wake up stripped of everything but your socks and pride.

Trollitariot

When Milwaukee’s glass towers fell and the stadiums emptied, it was the Trollitariot who stayed behind and got to work. Drawn from their Dreamtime exile into a ruined city that finally gave them tasks worth sweating for, they rebuilt blockades, patched collapsed highways, and raised the gutted skeleton of the Brewers’ old stadium into a fortress of brick, scrap, and stubborn willpower. Their unions became councils, their muttered curses became law, and Hollow Hill stands now as both a refuge and a warning: here, order is maintained not by nobility or faith, but by the grumbling, tireless labor of Trollitariot bosses and quarrymen who’d rather break their backs than their word. Other species mock their circular speeches and ribald humor, but no one denies that without them, Milwaukee would have sunk into the tar pits long ago.

Locations of Note

Bronzegut Yards (Inspired by the Milwaukee Iron Works)

 

Once a sprawling foundry district, Bronzegut Yards has been reborn as a massive junkyard and repair hub under the iron stewardship of the Mechanical Life Forms. The place groans with the sounds of welding torches, grinding gears, and repurposed necro-tech being hammered into new life. Piles of rusted war machines and shattered prosthetics form labyrinthine scrapyards, while makeshift workshops churn out jury-rigged vehicles, weapons, and artificial limbs. It is both a marketplace and a forge-temple—where scavengers bring their finds to be reforged, and where the sparks of innovation fly brightest in Milwaukee’s chaos.

Plot Hooks:

·       A faction war brews after a scavenger uncovers a forbidden war relic in the Yard—do the PCs claim it, destroy it, or sell it to the highest bidder?

·        A charismatic MLF foreman seeks help to stop a sabotage campaign by rival scavenger gangs, but his “repairs” might be fusing more than just metal and machine.

Deepshore Warrens (Inspired by the Milwaukee Riverwalk)

 

Once the proud Riverwalk, the Deepshore Warrens have sunk into a half-drowned maze of tunnels, collapsed walkways, and makeshift bridges strung with scavenged lights. The waters below churn with oily reflections, hiding Garter Folk nests and Feylin gang hideouts in the shadows. Smugglers and outcasts thrive here, trading in contraband, secrets, and favors while the ever-present risk of ambush or drowning keeps outsiders on edge. It is a place where the city breathes its secrets, and where every deal comes with a ripple of danger.

Plot Hooks:

·       A smuggling run through the Warrens has gone wrong—now the adventurers must navigate flooded tunnels while rival gangs and unseen river predators close in.

·       Rumors spread of a Feylin gang hoarding an artifact in the deepest flooded chambers, but to reach it means diving into waters where the Garter Folk hold dominion.

Eldritch Overlook (Inspired by the Milwaukee Art Museum)

 

Once a gleaming symbol of culture, the great wings of the Overlook now spread as a shrine to the restless powers of the Great Lakes. Its gleaming halls echo with strange hymns, where Fossilborn relics and lake-spirits’ offerings are displayed like sacred art. Cultish Verkhail guardians—half-priests, half-sentinels—stand watch over relics that bend the boundary between history and magic. Few dare to linger here, for whispers claim that the artifacts themselves hunger for recognition, and that to look too long upon certain pieces is to invite madness or transformation.

Plot Hooks:

·       The Verkhail are preparing a grand ritual that will “awaken” one of the Overlook’s most powerful relics—unless the heroes can stop it before the city drowns in lake-born nightmares.

·       An ally has gone missing after entering the museum’s archives, and the only way to find them is to brave the Overlook’s shifting galleries and confront the spirits that now claim the place as their temple.

The Fanged Brewworks (Inspired by the Pabst Brewery)

 

Rising from the husk of the old Pabst Brewery, the Fanged Brewworks has become a landmark of alchemical ingenuity and dangerous excess. Its battered vats and copper stills no longer churn out beer for the living, but instead bubble with potions, serums, and intoxicants whose effects range from miraculous healing to nightmarish hallucinations. Undead laborers stir cauldrons without need for breath, while Fossilborn heft barrels of volatile reagents immune to explosions that would fell mortals. The air is heavy with strange fumes, a cocktail of ethanol, brimstone, and lake mist, but for Milwaukee’s desperate and daring, the brewworks is both lifeline and powder keg. Here, resilience and creativity ferment together—often with explosive results.

Plot Hooks:

·       A guild war erupts when rival factions accuse each other of sabotaging a prized batch of “Blood Brew,” said to grant temporary vampiric powers.

·       A shipment of enchanted kegs goes missing on the Great Lakes trade routes—whoever recovers them may claim not only wealth but dangerous leverage over the city’s future.

Gravewater Greenway (Inspired by Lake Park)

Once a jewel of Milwaukee’s landscape, the old park has grown into a spectral woodland where the trees whisper with the voices of the dead. Ghostly lights drift among the roots, marking graves long forgotten, while vines wrap around rusting playgrounds and shattered statues. The Harlowe caretakers tend the spirits as if pruning a garden, ensuring restless dead do not wander, while Fossilborn rangers stalk the shadows, hunting those who would defile the balance. It is both sanctuary and warning—nature preserved only by binding itself to death.

Plot Hooks:

·       A surge of angry ghosts has broken through the Harlowe wards, and the Fossilborn demand outside help before the Greenway overruns the city.

·       A strange relic lies hidden in the heart of the forest, but every path to it seems to twist back upon itself—unless guided by the whispers of the dead.

Hollow Hill (Inspired by the Miller Park / American Family Field)

 

Once a monument to spectacle and roaring crowds, the old stadium now serves as Milwaukee’s great fortress-market. Its cavernous stands have been gutted into warrens of stalls, taverns, and trading posts, all overlooked by massive floodlights repurposed as watchtowers. At its heart sits the Trollitariot Council, practical and unyielding, who maintain order with brutal efficiency.   Hollow Hill remains the city’s most important hub for survival, diplomacy, and smuggling alike. The stadium’s very bones rumble with the echoes of cheers long past, now replaced by the chants of barter and the clash of mercenary blades.

Plot Hooks:

·       A rival faction seeks to sabotage the Trollitariot Council, and the player characters must navigate Hollow Hill’s treacherous stalls to uncover who is pulling the strings.

·       A legendary artifact is rumored to be hidden beneath the old dugouts, but gaining access requires appeasing both the Trollitariots and the Haraak before venturing into the labyrinth below.

 

Necrotide Harbor (Inspired by the Port of Milwaukee)

 

Once the proud Port of Milwaukee, the harbor now thrums with a rhythm equal parts industrial and unearthly. Undead dockworkers, bound by necromantic contracts, move tirelessly through mist-shrouded cranes and cargo bays, hauling salvage, enchanted goods, and contraband alike. The living traders who come here speak in hushed tones, knowing one misstep could bring down the wrath of their skeletal coworkers—or the guilds that control them. Despite the eerie atmosphere, the harbor is indispensable, feeding the city with resources pulled from across the Great Lakes and beyond. Necrotide Harbor embodies the uneasy truce between survival and the unnatural, where commerce has chained death itself to labor.

Plot Hooks:

• A shipment of cursed cargo threatens to awaken something beneath the waters, and only those brave enough to venture into the docks at midnight can stop it.
• The living unions and undead guilds teeter on the brink of a violent strike, and adventurers may have to pick a side—or find a way to broker peace before trade grinds to a halt.

The Rotwild Coliseum (Inspired by the Fiserv Forum)

 

Once the pride of sporting events and civic pride, the Coliseum has been reborn as the city’s most fantastic arena of survival and spectacle. Its blood-soaked floor now plays host to gladiatorial duels, theatrical death-dramas, and musical showdowns where entire bands fight for their fans’ lives. The undead stuntmen of the Kamidaver dominate the stage, pulling off outrageous feats of pain and defiance that blur the line between performance and martyrdom. What was once entertainment has become ritual—a way for the city to both distract itself from ruin and celebrate those bold enough to test fate before roaring crowds.

Plot Hook 1:

·       The council needs outsiders to compete in a “Trial of Legends,” where survival earns respect—and failure feeds the Coliseum floor.

·       A Kamidaver performer whispers of a conspiracy behind the games, begging the PCs to help unravel the strings of those who truly profit from blood and applause.

The Rustspire (Inspired by the US Bank Center)

 

Once Milwaukee’s proudest skyscraper, the Rustspire now looms as a scarlet-stained citadel of ambition. Its upper levels are controlled by Transbands, a type of radioactive Raccoon humanoids. Within its reinforced shell, Faustian Mechanics experiments with forbidden machinery, stitching together otherworldly energy and industrial remnants. The building hums at all hours—an ominous chorus of turbines, crackling arcane conduits, and voices chanting in unknown tongues. For many, it is a beacon of progress; for others, a warning that some doors should remain closed.

Plot Hook: A mysterious pulse from the Rustspire has begun disrupting magical wards across the city, threatening to unravel protections everywhere. The party must either negotiate with the Transbands or infiltrate the tower before the city’s fragile balance collapses.

The Spire of Stories (Inspired by the Milwaukee Public Library)

Once a proud civic library, the Spire of Stories endured the Hodgepocalypse and emerged as one of Milwaukee’s most vital sanctuaries. Its towering facade of carved stone and cracked glass still rises above the city skyline, lit from within by the soft glow of magical lanterns. Within, the Mothfolk scholars flutter silently between towering shelves, tending to tomes of forgotten lore, maps of the Great Lakes Wastes, and relics of languages nearly lost. To adventurers, it is a beacon of knowledge and hope—one of the few places where learning is guarded as fiercely as treasure. Refugees and wanderers find not only safety here, but also guidance for the perilous roads ahead.

Plot Hook

• The Archivist’s Bargain: The Mothfolk demand the recovery of a lost codex rumored to contain the secret history of the Great Lakes’ spirits. But the book lies deep within a haunted ruin, and retrieving it may unleash more than knowledge.
• The Vanishing Beacon: The spire’s guiding light suddenly flickers and dies, throwing the city into unease. Who—or what—is silencing the library’s ancient wards, and why?

Beyond Millwaukee

The Driftless Area, WI

Unlike the rest of the Midwest, the Driftless Area escaped the grinding ice of the glaciers, leaving behind a land of rugged hills, plunging valleys, and labyrinthine caves. In the Hodgepocalypse, it has become a wild sanctuary, untouched by the urban decay that swallowed much of the Great Lakes Basin. Fey exiles, rogue spirits, and magical beasts made their home here when the world cracked, weaving their ancient powers into the land itself. Now, Primals—elemental avatars of stone, fire, water, and wind—roam as guardians, ensuring no would-be conqueror takes root. Hidden within karst caves and strange stone bluffs lie relics of both the Old World and the Forgotten World, waiting for those daring enough to claim them.

Plot Hook: Whispers spread of a Primal Stoneheart awakening deep in a limestone cavern, threatening to shatter the fragile peace of the Driftless. Brave adventurers must negotiate with the fey clans—or cut through them—to reach the relic before it reshapes the land forever.

The Great Lakes

The Great Lakes are a key feature of Wisconsin, and have been fleshed out here.

https://www.hodgepocalypse.com/2024/12/hodgepocalypse-ontario-thousand_12.html

https://www.hodgepocalypse.com/2024/12/hodgepocalypse-ontario-thousand_19.html

Green Bay, WI - The Frozen Battleground

Once the beating heart of football fandom, Green Bay now thrives as a city built on blood, frost, and devotion. Lambeau Field, reborn as the Gladiator’s Frozen Tundra, echoes with the roar of combat rather than touchdowns, where warlords and mercenaries clash beneath floodlights powered by scavenged generators. Overseeing these brutal games are the Cheeseheads, a zealous order of warrior-priests who venerate relics of the Packers like holy artifacts—helmets, pads, even the legendary Frozen Cheese Wheel said to radiate protective magic. Beyond the city, the frozen shores of the bay conceal ice caves filled with frost elementals and half-buried relics of the old world, their crystalline halls tempting treasure hunters while promising death to the unprepared.

Plot Hook: A warlord has declared a grand “Frozen Bowl” in Lambeau Field, where champions will fight for control of the city. But whispers say the prize isn’t power or land—it’s a relic pulled from the ice caves, a relic the Cheeseheads believe will awaken the true spirit of the Frozen Tundra.

The House on the Rock, WI

 

The House on the Rock has become a fortress of madness, a labyrinth of relics and curiosities where reality itself bends under the weight of hoarded magic. Half-sentient automatons and animated mannequins patrol its halls, each one twisted by decades of cursed energy. The infamous Infinity Room stretches out into nothingness, not just a marvel of architecture but a portal yawning into forgotten worlds and dimensions best left sealed. Lost souls wander the endless corridors, their whispers luring the curious deeper, while the wizard who claims ownership dares any intruder to challenge his collection of impossible wonders.

Plot Hook: An artifact critical to survival in the Great Lakes Wastes has been traced to the wizard’s hoard—recovering it means braving the cursed halls and bargaining with, or defeating, its eccentric master. But once inside, the Infinity Room begins to open at random, threatening to swallow the city in whatever world lies beyond

The Arcane University of the Lakes

Madison stands as a fractured jewel of learning and sorcery, where the ruins of academia have been reforged into a bastion of magical authority. The sprawling campus of the University is now a labyrinth of enchanted halls, each ruled by eccentric wizard-professors who duel as often as they debate. At the heart of the city, the gleaming white dome of the State Capitol has been reshaped into a citadel of mage-lords—equal parts library, fortress, and court of intrigue. Around it, Lake Mendota and Lake Monona seethe with fey remnants and ancient water spirits who whisper secrets or strike bargains with reckless scholars. Madison thrives on this uneasy marriage of scholarship and sorcery, but it teeters on the edge of corruption and arcane disaster.

Plot Hook: A stolen relic from the Capitol has awakened a vengeful spirit in the lakes, threatening to flood Madison beneath enchanted waters. The party must navigate rival wizard-professors and mage-lords, each vying for the relic, before the entire city is drowned in magical ruin.

 The Wisconsin Dells – Waterpark Ruins of the Ancients

 

What was once a cheerful mecca of slides, wave pools, and kitschy attractions has drowned under the weight of the Hodgepocalypse. Vast skeletal waterparks jut from the landscape, their rusted slides twisted like the bones of ancient serpents, while the wave pools churn with dark waters where mutated Aetherfiends, and aquatic monsters thrive. The sandstone rock formations, older than time itself, have awakened to reveal ley lines that draw sorcerers, cultists, and wandering mystics alike. The air hums with a strange power—half amusement, half apocalypse—where scavenger bands fight desperately for control of the last working lazy river, said to carry souls across realms when ridden under the full moon.

Plot Hook: A rival faction has seized control of the lazy river and begun charging blood-tolls to use it. The adventurers must infiltrate the flooded water park ruins to uncover whether the river is truly a portal—or a trap that feeds something waiting in the depths.