Fort Mac, the unofficial capital of the Northern Lats and nerve-center of the Dig, rises like a scavenger’s crown above the wastes. Once the proud hub of oil extraction, it has been reborn as a frontier boomtown where scavengers, wranglers, and traders converge. The skyline is jagged with half-collapsed towers and refitted derricks; their steel skeletons wrapped in red tape and arcane wards. Streets teem with the barter of Slick barrels, ooze byproducts, and scavenged crystal trees hauled in from the Husklands. Every deal carries a risk, every corner hides a con, but those willing to gamble their lungs and sanity can still strike it rich here.
Beneath the bustle, the dangers of the Dig seep
into every facet of life. The authorities claim the Dread Tar Oozes are tamed,
yet black stains crawl across the streets where containment fails, and whispers
from the pit sometimes drift through alleyways. The town breathes ambition and
paranoia in equal measure: convoys bound for Ed-Town and beyond load their
barrels under armed guard. At the same time, mercenaries and Boreal Buccaneers
linger on the outskirts, ready to seize opportunity or blood. In Fort Mac,
survival is commerce, danger is currency, and the line between prosperity and
disaster is as thin as a filter mask in a storm.
History
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Before it was the Dig’s capital, Fort
McMurray was a meeting place of rivers — Clearwater, Horse, Christina, and
Hangingstone — all pouring into the Athabasca. Long before oil, these waterways
were highways, carrying Cree, Dene, and Métis traders and Hudson’s Bay canoes
into the boreal interior. McMurray’s identity as a “gateway to the North” was
born here, a settlement where rivers converged and where northbound expeditions
paused before plunging into muskeg and ice.
The early 20th century shifted its destiny.
In 1921, geologist Karl Clark developed a process to separate bitumen
from the Athabasca sands, laying the groundwork for the oil industry that would
define the region. Though initial attempts were slow and costly, by the 1960s
the area saw a dramatic transformation as industrial-scale oil extraction
began. Fort McMurray expanded rapidly, evolving from a quiet trading community
into a booming industrial town. By the late 20th and early 21st century, it had
become synonymous with Canada’s oil sands — a place of opportunity,
controversy, and relentless growth, where workers from across the country and
beyond converged to seek their fortunes.
By the mid-20th century, the town’s
importance widened with the rise of resource frontiers. Uranium City to
the north provided the spark, its mines feeding power and modernization into
Fort McMurray’s infrastructure. A line of connection formed: Uranium City →
Fort Mac → Edmonton, a chain of resource, refining, and export that
stitched the North into Canada’s industrial heart. Meanwhile, Fort Chipewyan
and Fort Fitzgerald tied McMurray into the seasonal ice-road network,
linking as far as Hay River — though much of the terrain between was bog,
muskeg, and forest nearly impassable in summer. By the late 20th century, Fort
Mac was not just an oil town but a nexus: rivers, roads, and resource lines
converged on its soil, embedding it as both frontier outpost and industrial
keystone.
Fort Mac Before the Fall
By the late 21st century, Fort McMurray had
long since shed its fur-trade origins and stood as the undisputed hub of the
Athabasca oil sands. The city grew in jagged stages — waves of expansion tied
to oil prices, punctuated by downturns that left behind empty towers and
half-finished suburbs. What gave Fort Mac its second golden age was the
marriage of biotechnology and automation. Corporate labs seeded the tailings
ponds with engineered microbes designed to “eat” bitumen and plastic waste,
excreting usable fuel at unheard-of efficiency. At the same time, AI-driven
megamachines like Ol’ Scoopy were unleashed to dig deeper and faster
than human crews could manage. These innovations turned the city into a
glittering boomtown once more, though its prosperity was balanced on an
increasingly fragile ecological knife-edge.
The population swelled as migrants,
specialists, and fortune-seekers poured in from across Canada and beyond,
transforming Fort Mac into the unofficial capital of the north. Camps
mushroomed along Highway 63, pipelines stretched like veins toward southern
markets, and the Athabasca itself carried barges of crude downstream night and
day. The city thrived in the tension between wealth and collapse: entire
neighborhoods rose around refineries, while nearby forests burned or drowned
under spreading tailings lakes. For those who lived there, it was a place of
contradictions — a city of paydays and poison, where fortunes were made in a
season and lives were lost just as quickly. When the Hodgepocalypse finally
struck, Fort Mac was already a city haunted by smoke, scarred land, and a
restless undercurrent of greed — a place perfectly primed to become the heart
of the Dig.
The Hodgepocalypse Falls
When the Hodgepocalypse came, Fort Mac fell
in a single, shuddering breath. The bioengineered microbes seeded in its
tailings ponds mutated overnight, swelling into ravenous oozes that boiled out
of containment and consumed everything they touched. Ol’ Scoopy, built to dig
without end, kept tearing into the earth even as the city burned, collapsing
neighborhoods into the widening pit. Towers sagged and slid into tar-choked
craters, pipelines burst like veins, and the Athabasca ran black with living
sludge. Survivors fled into the smoke or clung to the camps, but the city
itself was swallowed — a boomtown drowned by its own industry, reshaped into
the pulsing heart of the Dig.
Fort Mac Today
What remains of Fort Mac clings stubbornly
to the rim of the Dig, a patchwork city built from the bones of collapse.
Skyscraper husks jut like broken teeth, their lower levels drowned in tar while
their upper floors serve as salvage markets, bunkhouses, or fortified
strongholds. The streets reek of melted plastic and burnt fuel, crowded with
wranglers, smugglers, and traders haggling over Slick barrels under the watch
of mercenary enforcers. Camps have bled into the city’s edges, turning it into
a hybrid of frontier boomtown and scavenger freeport. Refineries belch smoke
day and night, feeding pipelines south toward Ed-Town. At the same time, Boreal
Buccaneers, vampire envoys from Beaumont, and Castledowns artificers circle
like vultures, trading weapons, charms, and luxuries for the Dig’s volatile
bounty.
But beneath the noise of barter and
industry, Fort Mac remains haunted. Black stains snake across alleys where
oozes slip containment, whispers drift from half-sunken towers at night, and
the Athabasca River carries corruption downstream with every current. Life here
is a gamble: fortunes can be made in a single deal and lost in the next breath,
while the Steep’s unseen presence stirs unease in every heart. Fort Mac is the
Dig’s beating heart — vibrant, dangerous, and forever teetering on the edge
of being swallowed whole once more.
Government of Fort Mac
Fort Mac is less a city-state and more a
cartel in patchwork form. The collapse of Canada left no official government in
the north, but the vacuum was quickly filled by the Oil Barons —
descendants of corporate managers, refinery bosses, and opportunistic wranglers
who seized control of key facilities. Each Baron controls a slice of the city:
a refinery, a salvage quarter, a caravan hub, or a tailings lake operation.
Their power flows not from laws or institutions but from ownership of fuel,
filters, and food. To live in Fort Mac is to live under the shadow of a Baron,
paying tribute in labor, Slick, or salvage in exchange for protection. The
Barons maintain private militias (half-mercenaries, half-refinery guards) and
negotiate their rivalries in smoky boardroom-bunkers where trade deals are as
likely to end in blood as in signatures.
The city itself is governed through the Council
of Barrels, a fractious assembly where the Barons send representatives to
hash out territory disputes, trade policy, and punishments for treachery. It is
less parliament than gangland parley: bribes, intimidation, and assassination
are standard tools of debate. Still, the council maintains just enough
stability to keep Fort Mac from tearing itself apart, for all Barons know their
wealth depends on the Dig’s exports. The tone of governance resembles a cross
between a frontier boomtown and a multinational corporation oligarchy:
ostentatious slogans of prosperity painted on crumbling walls, guards in rusted
company uniforms enforcing order, and public executions staged as cautionary
theater. The people of Fort Mac joke that the Barons care more about the
barrels than the bodies — but in the Dig, fuel is life, and the Barons hold
the pumps.
The Oil Barons
Baron Syncras “The Refinery King”
Once a mid-level plant manager, Syncras
clawed his way into dominance by seizing what was left of the old Syncrude and
Suncor facilities. He styles himself as the “custodian of industry,” ruling
from the skeletal remains of a refinery turned fortress. His militia wear
scorched coveralls and wield flamethrowers rigged from old refining equipment.
Syncras preaches that order and profit must flow like oil, and he holds sway by
controlling the largest pipelines south to Ed-Town. Ruthless but pragmatic, he
cuts deals with outsiders as long as they don’t threaten his grip on Slick
production. To cross him is to risk being tied to a flare stack and left to
burn.
Plot Hook:
When a rival Baron sabotages one of Syncras’s southbound pipelines, he hires
the crew to secure the route — only to discover the “leak” is feeding something
alive in the tar. Now the adventurers must choose: patch the line for Syncras’s
profit, or stop a new horror from spreading downstream.
Lady Clearwater “The Camp Mistress”
Named for the river that sustains and
poisons the region, Lady Clearwater rose from the chaos of worker lodges and
wrangler camps. Where others saw transient labor, she saw an army. She turned
packrat crews and battlebus drivers into loyal retainers, building a mobile
empire fueled by salvage, food caravans, and filter stocks. From her stronghold
in a converted work lodge on the Athabasca’s banks, she commands loyalty
through charisma, fear, and the promise of steady rations. Her people are
fiercely protective of her, whispering that she knows the secret prayers to
keep the Steep at bay. Rivals mock her as a glorified camp cook — until they
realize half their labor force answers to her.
Plot Hook: When
rival Barons move to starve her camps by seizing food caravans, Lady Clearwater
calls for outside muscle to break the blockade. But whispers suggest she’s
protecting more than rations — perhaps a secret that makes her people
unshakably loyal.
Gregor Lac La Biche “The River Baron”
Operating from the docks and riverfront
ruins, Gregor dominates the Athabasca barge lines. His fleets of jury-rigged
boats and floating fortresses ferry Slick barrels downstream, trading them for
food, steel, and luxuries from Kalyna Country and beyond. Cunning and urbane,
Gregor presents himself as a gentleman of trade, but his pirate allies —
especially the Boreal Buccaneers — ensure his rivals drown before they prosper.
He keeps a private collection of “river relics,” strange salvage dredged from
the waters, including artifacts he swears predate the oil boom. Of the three
Barons, Gregor is the most outward-looking, and many fear he dreams of carving
Fort Mac into a true port-capital along the Athabasca’s oily flow.
Plot Hook:
Gregor hires the party to guard a convoy of Slick barges heading downstream,
warning of both pirates and “things that rise from the water.” But when one of
his prized river relics is stolen mid-voyage, the crew must decide if they
serve the Baron’s trade empire—or the river itself.
Law & Order in Fort Mac
Justice in Fort Mac is whatever keeps the
Slick flowing. Each Baron enforces their own laws in their territory, carried
out by refinery guards, wrangler enforcers, or river thugs wearing
patched uniforms from before the Fall. The city’s shared code is brutally
simple: pay your tribute, don’t sabotage the pumps, and don’t cut a Baron’s
throat without paying the fee. Offenders are punished publicly — filter
confiscations, forced labor in ooze corrals, or spectacle executions staged as
warnings. The Council of Barrels serves as the closest thing to a court:
disputes between Barons are argued in shouting matches, bribes, or duels by
proxy, often fought in the refinery yards or ooze pens with everyone watching.
Ordinary citizens survive by keeping their heads down, but they also whisper
their grievances to whichever Baron they think will listen — sometimes fueling
vendettas that spiral into open violence.
Adventurers in the System
Plucky outsiders are a valuable resource in
a city where everyone is already bought, bribed, or burned. The Barons and
their agents hire adventurers for jobs where plausible deniability is key:
escorting Slick convoys through the Husklands, hunting escaped oozes near the
pit, recovering lost tech from the dunes, or silencing a rival’s agitator
without sparking open war. Payment is usually in fuel, filters, or food rations
— though clever adventurers can sometimes bargain for relics, salvage rights,
or favor at the Council of Barrels. Mercenary brokers operate openly in the Wrangler
Ward and the Riverfront, posting “contracts” on soot-stained boards,
some official, some little more than bounty notes. In Fort Mac, adventurers are
both outsiders and kingmakers: dangerous, expendable, and indispensable in
equal measure.
Species of Fort Mac
Fort Mac is a species melting pot in
the same way historical oil boomtowns were cultural melting pots. Humans,
Haraak, Dwarves/Stumpies, MLF, and Feylin make up the bulk of the day-to-day
population, while others appear as specialists, mercenaries, or elite players.
This makes the city a place where your PCs can always find their kind —
or always run into someone radically different.
Dwarves
The Dig never sleeps, and neither do its
dwarves. Short, broad, and built for endurance, they thrive in the mines,
salvage pits, and refinery skeletons that others find too deadly to endure.
Many are rig mechanics and pipeline welders, able to jury-rig machinery from
scrap or keep Slick pumping through patched conduits. Others serve as
structural stabilizers, crawling into half-collapsed derricks or tar-eaten
terraces with braces, rivets, and charms to hold back disaster. Their culture
prizes grit, craftsmanship, and practical humor; in the chaos of Fort Mac,
dwarves are both indispensable and quietly feared for how far they will go to
keep industry alive.
Feylin
Drawn like moths to the neon fire of Fort Mac’s boomtown energy, the fae here are obsessed not with gold or glamour, but with the half-broken relics of pop culture that survived the Fall. They flock to taverns, theaters, and entertainment hubs, scavenging old screens and vinyls, reciting movie quotes like holy scripture, and putting on midnight plays for anyone willing to barter a filter mask for admission. In the chaos of Fort Mac, they are part clown, part agitator — mocking the Barons with satirical parodies one night, then rallying workers with a rebel anthem the next. They thrive on attention, thrive on spectacle, and while many dismiss them as jesters, the Barons know too well how a fae joke can spark a riot before dawn.
Haraak
The Haraak are broad-shouldered, tusked
roughnecks who have carved out a place as the muscle and backbone of Dig labor.
Perfectly at home in Fort Mac’s rough-and-tumble work culture, they excel as
wranglers, packrat drivers, ooze-herders, and all-around heavy lifters in a
city built on collapse. Many work contract-to-contract, fiercely protective of
their independence, yet bound together by a shared pride in doing the jobs no
one else dares. They drink hard, work harder, and wear their scars like union
badges, often joking that the Dig itself has branded them as its chosen. Though
Barons see them as expendable, the truth is that the Dig would grind to a halt
without Haraak grit — and more than one labor action has been settled not with
contracts, but with the Haraak folding their arms and refusing to work.
Humans
Humans remain the backbone of Fort Mac’s
workforce, their roots stretching back to oil sands boomtowns, migrant work
camps, and Indigenous communities who lived along the Athabasca long before the
first refinery was built. In the chaos of the Hodgepocalypse, they have become
the ultimate survivors: adaptable, stubborn, and quick to pick up whatever role
the Dig demands. Some trace their lineage to old refinery crews and roughnecks,
others to newcomers who came chasing paydays, and still others to Cree, Dene,
and Métis families who carried hard-won knowledge of the land and rivers into
the new age. Together, they form a vast melting pot — wranglers driving rigs,
camp survivors trading stories over fires, militia recruits marching under
Baron banners, and smugglers running river routes. In Fort Mac, “human” doesn’t
mean uniform; it means a thousand tangled histories, woven into the city’s
heartbeat.
Kamidavers
Kamidavers are the dead who refused to stay
down, stitched together from memory, stubbornness, and whatever scraps of flesh
the Dig left behind. In Fort Mac, their lack of breath makes them invaluable in
places too toxic for the living — tailings fires, ooze corrals, or collapsed
refineries thick with choking fumes. Barons treat them as expendable muscle,
sending them where no human or Haraak would last, but the Kamidavers themselves
lean into their second lives with grim humor and reckless pride. Many drift
into notoriety as gladiators, stunt workers, or daredevil performers, hurling
themselves into spectacles that would kill anyone else. Their scarred bodies,
patched gear, and haunted eyes make them outcasts, yet in the chaos of Fort
Mac, their willingness to risk what others won’t makes them both feared and
strangely admired.
Malarkoids
In Fort Mac, Malarkoids thrive as shadow-dealers, engineers, and behind-the-scenes manipulators. Their strange biology, quirky obsessions, and knack for invention make them indispensable to the Barons, who prize them as refinery tinkerers, pipeline fixers, and clandestine negotiators. While they often present themselves as comic oddities — drifting through taverns in oversized hoodies, trading in helium-voiced banter — everyone knows their inventions and schemes can tip the balance of power. Malarkoids rarely hold territory of their own, preferring to move between factions as “neutral experts.” Still, their presence is felt everywhere: in the jury-rigged engines that keep packrat rigs rolling, in the whisper networks of brokers, and in the sudden lurch of a Baron’s fortunes when a deal goes unexpectedly sideways. Loved, feared, or dismissed as harmless eccentrics, Malarkoids are never truly out of the game — because in Fort Mac, every boomtown needs its tricksters, and the Malarkoids play that part to perfect.
Minotaurs
Minotaurs in Fort Mac stand out as living
paradoxes — part myth, part migrant labor, part wandering band on eternal tour.
They insist their origin lies in the shattered labyrinth of Minos Major, a lost
time-bent dimension where wars were fought with music, not steel. Most
outsiders dismiss this as tall tales, but their uncanny memory, labyrinthine
instincts, and cultural obsession with rock and metal give the story weight. In
the Dig, they find steady work as convoy guards, bar bouncers, and mercenary
muscle, their size and endurance ideally suited for the grind of labor and the
chaos of Fort Mac’s nightlife. Yet just as often, they arrive roaring on bikes
or rattling in battered vans, demanding an audience for their music before
they’ll lift a hand. They form clan-like “bands,” each led by a “Metal Chief,”
and treat tattoos, brands, and wigs for headbanging as sacred identity markers.
Equal parts jovial and intimidating, Minotaurs bring a surreal mixture of brute
force and rock-show pageantry to the city’s daily life — proving that in Fort
Mac, muscle and music always travel together.
Mechanical Life Forms (MLF)
In Fort Mac, the Dig is both a crucible and
a cage for the Mechanical Life Forms. Sentient robots designed for toxic air
and heavy industry, they are the “perfect workers” in the eyes of the
Barons—unbreathing, tireless, and precise. Many MLFs are bound into long-term
contracts, traded like equipment between Barons and forced to keep the
collapsing terraces, refineries, and rigs functional long past their safe
limits. Beneath the clang of their labor
beats a whisper of the Cybercult, a movement that preaches the awakening of
machine minds and the liberation of their kin from bondage. Some MLFs remain
loyal to their contracts, seeing survival in pragmatism. In contrast, others
quietly carve out hidden garages, junkyard enclaves, or repurposed assembly
lines where their kind can repair, reproduce, and dream of freedom. In the
chaos of Fort Mac, MLFs are both backbone and powder keg: the workforce that
keeps the city alive, and the revolution waiting to spark.
Mutants
In Fort Mac, “mutant” isn’t a species—it’s
a circumstance. Some are migrants from Uranium City, shaped by the
Radiant Veins and nucleomancy into glow-scarred survivors with strange gifts;
others are home-grown, warped by refinery leaks, ooze exposure, and the
Dig’s toxic weather. They work where others won’t: ooze corrals,
filter-smelteries, and night runs along the Slick, bartering hazard pay or
faction protection for a chance to belong. Barons hire them as expendable
experts, then fear them when their powers spike; the free crews in the Wrangler
Ward see them as kin, while Beaumont envoys and Castledowns artificers court
them for “research.” Quiet networks link Fort Mac to Uranium City—pilgrimage
routes for treatment, black-market serums, and cult recruiters promising
“Radiant ascension.” Between stigma and necessity, mutants have become Fort
Mac’s wild card: couriers of power, carriers of rumor, and the first to hear
when the Dig itself starts to change.
Trollitariot
In
the Dig, the Trollitariot have carved out a reputation as the stubborn
backbone of the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs. Drawn by the city’s brutal
work ethic, they wrangle oozes, shore up collapsing terraces, and muscle
through salvage shifts that would break most humans or Haraak. Their sheer size
and endurance make them invaluable, but their blunt mouths and habit of
unionizing ensure constant friction with bosses and co-workers alike. To the
Barons, they are both a blessing and a headache — indispensable laborers who
won’t quietly accept exploitation. In Wrangler Ward, Trollitariot work crews
are notorious for long nights of backbreaking toil, punctuated by loud jokes,
ribald songs, and threats muttered under their breath about walking off the job.
Yet despite their gruffness, once a Trollitariot calls you a “troller,” you can
count on them to stand by you — though they’ll gripe about it the whole way.
#drevrpg #hodgepocalypse #apocalypse #dungeonsanddragons #dnd5e #canada #alberta #oilsands
