Capital Parkland - Part 08 - Westlock Continued - Featuring Captain Jack Tractor!

 

Westlock Species 

Beaver Folk

Beaverfolk in Westlock are the soul of the shipyards — thick-furred, buck-toothed engineers who treat scrap like scripture and water like gold. Born of murky origins, possibly the Cult of the Beaver Lodge, they build fortified dam-compounds beneath the scrapyards and maintain the town’s vital filtration sluices, rail welders, and fuel traps. Territorial, suspicious, and fiercely loyal to their crews, Beaverfolk treat adventuring parties like family and will chew through steel for them. They wear paramilitary gear, favor tools over weapons (but use both), and bond easily with dwarves and MLFs, though they view the undead with open distrust. When one stomps onto the scene smelling of pine tar and diesel, you know the job’s getting done — their way.

Bogey

 

 

Never trust a Bogey—unless you need something fast, cheap, or questionably acquired. In the Wrecker’s Anchorage of Hodgepocalypse Westlock, these neon-hued, pointy-eared prairie pirates run the Swash Market, auctioning everything from scavenged relics to whispered secrets. Descended from fey or dimension-hopping tricksters (depending on who you ask), Bogeys thrive on chaotic barter, backroom deals, and fast talk. Their clans, often packed into welded-together railcars and junkyards, operate like extended crime families—competitive within, but scarily unified when threatened. They pilot smuggling trains, grease palms, and always “know a guy.” Known for oversized ears, wild hair streaks, and unpredictable charm, Bogeys are small but unmissable—especially when they’re selling you your own missing tools, memories, or mutt. Lovable pests or indispensable rogues, Bogeys turn every encounter into a negotiation... and every negotiation into a score.

Dwarves

 

In Westlock, the Dwarves are rust-and-grit kin — squat, square-jawed workhorses who trace their soot-blackened ancestry back to grain elevators, rail lines, and powder foundries.  Steel Dwarves have turbocharged their tech base, becoming some of the finest machinists, weaponsmiths, and gearwrights in North America. They dominate the railyard’s gun crews, the boiler guilds, and the forge halls of the Memory Forge, griping about bolt-looseners and “kids who don’t respect torque.” Dwarven culture runs on two tracks: the Board of Elders (grease-stained captains of industry, mostly male) and the worker unions (often run by canny, steel-eyed female Dwarves who get things done). Outsiders often mistake the stoic beards and dry wit for inflexibility — until they see a Dwarf weld a ruptured coolant pipe with one hand and deck a mutant scavver with the other. Whether you're dealing with a Cavern Dwarf, a Homesteader, or a full-blooded Steelgrove tech-savant, you're getting someone who treats work like gospel and enemies like cracked anvils. Just don’t mock their beard rituals — that’s how bar fights start.

 

Feylin

Tiny, winged, and wired with chaos, the Feylin of Westlock are post-apocalyptic pop-culture gremlins—radio pirates, meme-punk pranksters, and the soul of the blackbox airwaves. Broadcasting out of a shattered satellite dish atop the Wrecker’s Anchorage, they run Radio Rumrunner, jamming signals, remixing propaganda, and dropping mixtapes like folk spells. Obsessed with ancient media, they adopt the personas of forgotten action heroes, anime idols, or synthpop prophets with evangelical zeal. In town, they’re part morale officers, part living cartoons, and part saboteurs—sprinting through junkyards yelling “six inches of TERROR!” while rewiring your toaster into a sonic mine. Don’t expect consistency—just charisma, chaos, and one-liners shouted into the void. Whether you need a distraction, a cult zine, or an impromptu jam session, a Feylin’s already halfway through it... and probably live-streaming the results.

Humans

Still the baseline by which all others are measured — for better or worse. Every crew, caravan, or pirate barge has a few humans on deck, thanks to their sheer adaptability and stubborn will to survive. In Westlock, they tend to hold leadership roles, run canteens, or form the bulk of the working-class rabble.

Mechanical Life Forms (MLF)

Westlock is one of the few places where sentient machines aren’t just tolerated — they’re wanted. Between the shipyard’s tech demands and the loose command structure, MLFs can find purpose repurposing. From Aimbots acting as turret-gunners to Diplobots handling negotiations with tech cults, they’ve carved out respect. Some even form clanker-only convoys that roam the rails for parts and philosophy.

Stumpies

Westlock is one of the few places where bark-breathers like the Stumpies feel the wind in their leaves and call it freedom. These soot-caked, frost-hardened plant-folk tend fuel-crop gardens, stoke boiler-stoves, and root themselves into hibernation when there’s no work to be had. Built from bark, sap, and stubborn willpower, they wear diesel exhaust like cologne and grumble poetry about entropy and destiny. Some think them slow; Stumpies call it steady. Whether they’re murmuring conspiracy theories about their origins or carving haiku into fuel drums, they see themselves as future forests on legs — wandering seeds in a world that’s forgotten how to grow.

Landmarks  

Captain Apollo’s Mess Deck

Once a beloved family pizza and steak joint, now rebranded under the banner of the Boreal Buccaneers, Captain Apollo’s Mess Deck is a rowdy refueling station where raiders swap stories, scars, and slices. The walls are scorched, the booths are patched with scavenged armor plates, and the once-cheerful salad bar now serves irradiated pickles and mutant fungi. A glowing bust of "Captain Apollo"—a salvaged naval mannequin in a paper sailor hat—presides over the dining floor like a mascot god. Fights break out every few hours, often over who gets the last slice of bomb-pepperoni, but the radioactive cheese never fails to draw a crowd.

Plot Hook: A Saucy Crime!

A mysterious shipment of "red sauce" never arrived, and Captain Apollo’s chefs are getting twitchy. The party is hired—willingly or not—to track down the caravan last seen near a scorched checkpoint. But what they uncover isn’t just a stolen crate of ingredients… it’s a cult of cheese-slinging food fanatics trying to resurrect the lost art of pizza divination—and they're not sharing the recipe.

The Dropout Dens

Once a faded roadside motel clinging to relevance, the Southview is now known across the Boreal Buccaneer routes as The Dropout Dens—a last-chance shelter for drifters, disgraced crew, and greenhorn smugglers too broke or busted to bunk elsewhere. Its cracked stucco walls are patched with ship hull scrap, and its flickering neon sign is missing half the letters, casting an eerie glow on the sagging deckchairs and suspicious puddles out front. Inside, room doors are more likely to be barricaded than locked, with "guest services" often involving side hustles, favors owed, or impromptu duels. The Dens are cheap, sleazy, and dangerous—but they’re always full. Because here, no one asks where you came from... only what you’re willing to do next.

Plot Hook: “Payment in Kind”
A PC wakes up in The Dropout Dens missing half their gear—and a stranger in the next room claims the party signed a blood contract in exchange for lodging. The problem? None of them remember agreeing… and the favor owed might involve sabotage, smuggling, or something even worse.

The Dropzone

Where most see wind and wide skies, the Skyfall Corsairs see opportunity—and targets. The ruins of Westlock Municipal Airport have been converted into The Dropzone, a windswept launchpad of half-collapsed hangars, sky towers patched with aircraft wings, and fields littered with deflated chutes like broken feathers. Here, airborne raiders sharpen their blades, test unstable jetpacks, and rehearse “death-from-above” maneuvers on rusted-out school buses. Their motto: Gravity is free—use it violently. Whether boarding moving technicals from the air or zip-lining into the hearts of convoys, these daredevils strike like thundercracks from clear skies. The Dropzone also serves as a proving ground for initiates, where a single misstep means a long, fatal plummet… if the saw-rigs don’t get you first.

Plot Hook: "Sky Burial"
A rogue Corsair captain kidnaped a town’s elder during a botched aerial ceremony, and now their parachute-burial has become a sky-duel hostage situation. Can the party scale the ziplines, survive the aerial gauntlet, and land a deal—or will they plummet into obscurity?

Greens of Glory

(Westlock Golf Course)

Where once polite golfers whispered on manicured greens, now cheers and jeers echo across the cratered fairways of the Greens of Glory. This twisted reinterpretation of a country club serves as the staging ground for the Golfclap Syndicate’s wildest whims — a loose cabal of stylish, golf-obsessed raiders who mix showmanship with savagery. Tee-offs involve explosive slugballs aimed at long-distance targets, while “hazards” include spike pits, grenade bunkers, and mutant gophers with a taste for caddies. Disputes are settled with ceremonial duels on the green, each swing potentially lethal. Audience members wager on outcomes using barter chips, rare salvage, or even body parts. The old clubhouse, lovingly spray-painted and retrofitted with a hot tub powered by a lawnmower engine, serves as the VIP lounge for high-stakes negotiations, bandit diplomacy, and post-match parties

Plot Hook: “The Last Mulligan”

A famed duelist and folk hero named Big Irons has gone missing mid-tournament, right after teeing off against the Syndicate’s reigning champ. Rumors swirl of sabotage, buried debts, and a cursed golf ball filled with brainworms. The party is offered free entry to the next “Hole of Honor” match — but only if they play, investigate, and win their way to the truth… one deadly drive at a time.

The Infamy Spire

Once the Westlock Inn, this towering roadside hotel now bristles with scrap-metal battlements and neon sigils that glow like siren calls across the wastes. Now operated by the Boreal Buccaneers and open to "neutral parties" (read: tolerated threats), the Infamy Spire serves as a drunken parliament of pirates, smugglers, mercs, and outlaws. Its rotating roster of guests includes warlords in silk, bounty hunters on holiday, and disgraced nobles in exile. The bar on the top floor, “The Crow’s Nest,” offers the strongest fermented pine-brew north of the Capitol Parkland and the worst karaoke south of Slave Lake. Beneath the debauchery, however, every room is fitted with manacle-ready bedposts, soundproofing hexes, and listening glyphs. Few guests leave without having signed a contract—or broken one.

Plot Hook:
A known diplomat went missing after checking into the Infamy Spire under an alias. The players are hired to extract them before a war breaks out between factions… but they must first survive a night of pirate speed-dating, a stolen duelist’s honor, and a mysterious bounty marked only with their own faces.

The Iron Reliquary

 

The Iron Reliquary looms over Westlock like a rusted cathedral, its 90 preserved tractors now venerated as reliquaries of the "Saints of Industry"—figures of mythic engineering prowess. The Order of the Drive Chain, a sect of grease-streaked zealots and diesel mystics, lovingly maintains each machine, believing they hold divine blueprints for survival. Sermons are given amid the rumble of starting engines, and rituals involve oil libations and wrench blessings. A motorized tractor on the roof acts as both a ceremonial sky-chariot and emergency battle mount, occasionally launched with absurd fanfare.

Plot Hook: "Saint Ignition's Missing Spark"

A legendary tractor, once said to have been kissed by lightning, has gone missing from the Reliquary’s vault. The Order believes someone has stolen its “divine memory core”—a holy spark plug. They’ll pay handsomely for its return… unless it has already been installed in a rival’s landship, giving them unholy horsepower.

The Jade Corsair

Once a kitschy Chinese buffet, The Jade Corsair has transformed into a neon-drenched haven of spice, secrets, and slippery neutrality. Suspended paper lanterns flicker alongside salvaged holograms, illuminating tables where rival warbands break dumplings instead of each other’s skulls. The cuisine is a volatile fusion of irradiated ingredients and ancestral recipes, often cooked tableside by blade-wielding sous-chefs in dramatic culinary showdowns. But make no mistake—this is more than a restaurant. It’s a sanctum of diplomacy, enforced by the iron will of Chef Wok Fu, a former warlord turned culinary monk. The only rule? No violence inside. The second rule? Never mock the dumplings.

Plot Hook:
A stolen recipe scroll—rumored to contain the secrets to psychotropic spice infusions—has vanished during a high-stakes summit at The Jade Corsair. Chef Wok Fu hires the party to recover it… quietly, before the balance of power (and flavor) is thrown into chaos.

JD’s Fuel Stop

Once a roadside haunt for truckers and travelers, JD’s Fuel Stop has evolved into a legendary den of nourishment, negotiation, and no-nonsense rulekeeping under the iron-stirred hand of Maul-Chop Mae. Matron of the mess and tyrant of the table, Mae is equal parts den mother and demon chef. Behind her welcoming grin and apron stained with mystery sauce lies a culinary warlord who wields a chainsaw cleaver like a maestro. Her “engine chili” (a volatile mix of mutant meat and spice grenades) can cure a hangover, spark a psychic episode, or start a bar fight—sometimes all three. Everyone knows not to cross Mae unless they want to become tomorrow’s special. But if you need gossip, maps, favors, or protection while on the run, her diner is the safest bad idea you’ll ever have. Cross her threshold, and you’re part of her kitchen—whether as a guest, a grunt, or a grease stain.

Plot Hook: “A Chili scenario”

A traveling preacher staggers into JD’s and collapses after just one bite of Mae’s chili—his convulsions spelling out coordinates in blood and spice. Mae slams her cleaver into the counter and declares, “No one leaves until I find out who spiked my recipe.” Are you brave enough to trace the source, or will you be chopping onions for the rest of your days?

The Memory Forge

Once a dusty collection of settler relics and school tours, the Westlock Pioneer Museum has been reborn as The Memory Forge, a pirate-run nexus of revisionist history, brazen identity fraud, and curated chaos. Its weathered barns and reconstructed homesteads now house rows of forged bounty posters, personalized myth-scrolls, and alter-egos for hire. At its heart is the Hall of Not-Yet-Heroes, where a rogue’s resume is written in song and stain. Overseen by the Archivists of Infamy—a clandestine cabal of bardic forgers, exaggerators, and rumor traffickers—this site sells fame to the nameless and pasts to the forgotten. Whether you’re faking your way into a raider crew, laundering your reputation, or rewriting your convoy’s origin myth, the Memory Forge makes sure you were always the legend you claim to be.

Plot Hook: "The Legend of the Ghost Convoy"

The Archivists are offering top-tier notoriety status for proof of the fabled Ghost Convoy—a spectral fleet said to appear in the northern mist and vanish without a trace. One client has paid in advance to have it discredited; another is willing to kill to ensure the myth survives. Will the party chase the truth, forge it, or profit off both?

The Ram’s Hold

A reinforced, bunker-like embassy standing sentinel at the edge of contested territory. The exterior still bears the faint imprint of its corporate past, but inside, it’s all steel gates, red velvet, and weapon scanners. This is the diplomatic crossroads for the pirate nations, a black market embassy where rival captains, smugglers, and emissaries parley under an uneasy truce. Deals are made over aged whiskey, betrayal is whispered through bug-proof walls, and the “Concierge” — a retired spymaster turned concierge-counsel — ensures that hostilities don’t spill past the lobby. Even the walls seem to listen, and those who break the rules of neutral ground rarely make it back out the revolving door.

Plot Hook:
A notorious sky-pirate has arrived at The Ram’s Hold with a stolen relic said to grant command over a weather-controlling weapon. Several factions want it. Trouble is, no one can make a move inside the embassy — unless they find a loophole in the rules... or someone willing to break them.

The Rustspire

Formerly a towering concrete grain terminal, the Rustspire is now a lookout fortress and trade tower. Scavenged antennae, signal dishes, and blinking hazard lights sprout like weeds from its summit, repurposed by radio-tech smugglers and signal-jackers. Its deep silos now store more than grain—everything from barter goods to illicit nanospore sacks is stashed here, accessible only by retractable rope lifts and magnetic rail carts.
Faction control rotates seasonally, depending on bribes and bombardments.

Plot Hook: A recent shortwave signal has been bouncing out of the Rustspire in old NORAD encryption, claiming to have found the coordinates to a pre-Collapse seed vault. Is it real, or bait?

The Scree Slopes

Once a modest recreational escape, the Tawatinaw Valley Ski Area has been consumed by the cold embrace of the Ice Axes — a splinter tribe of the Boreal Buccaneers who traded sails for snow. Known for their alpine cunning, they fashion wind-driven sleds from scavenged parts and patrol the whiteouts with eerie precision. Their trails are marked not by signs, but by the frozen silhouettes of those who ignored the warnings. Using old Westlock County firewatch towers as elevated signal pyres, they light the sky in bursts of colored flame to coordinate raids across the valley. Locals whisper that beneath the slopes, near the ruins of a forgotten curling rink, lie geothermal vents that keep the war-frost at bay — and perhaps fuel something far more dangerous than ice.

Plot Hook: “The Ghost at Red Slope”

A survivor stumbles into Ed-Town raving about a sled patrol ambushed by their own shadow — an Ice Axe scout possessed, they say, by a voice rising from the thermal geysers below. The PCs are hired to track the signal flare pattern back to the Scree Slopes and uncover the truth behind the whispering winds. But as the snow deepens and their gear ices over, they’ll find the slopes are watching them just as closely…

The Stone House

Once a humble curling rink, now it echoes with howls and the clatter of weaponized stones. The Stone House is both arena and altar—where strategy meets savagery. Curling matches have become ritualized blood sports, blending brutal melee with precision tactics. Warriors known as Stonesliders hurl reinforced granite stones while dodging enemy blades and frost traps. Painted rings still mark the rink’s center, now scorched and pitted from countless duels. Overseen by the Order of the Broom, a cult of icy tacticians and sports anarchists, this is a place where champions rise and limbs are lost in equal measure.

Plot Hook:

The Order of the Broom has issued an open challenge: defeat their reigning champion in a three-stone match to win a long-lost relic encased in ice beneath the center ring. But whispers claim the ice is thawing—and something beneath is stirring.

The Western Anchorage

Once a sleepy rail spur, Westlock’s railyard has transformed into the Western Anchorage—an inland harbour for post-apocalyptic train convoys that traverse the ruins of Western Canada. Built atop rusted CN sidings and fortified with scrap walls and signal towers, it serves as a trade nexus where landships load and offload cargo bound for mushroom foundries, uranium pits, and storm-ravaged enclaves. The Steelbinders’ Guild enforces the Iron Pledge: no fighting on the platforms, no tampering with the rails, and always respect the schedule board—which now updates itself with prophetic symbols and blood-slick gears.

Plot Hook: Ghost Train North

A critical train from the northern outposts has vanished mid-route. The schedule board shows a new, ominous glyph: THE TRAIN RIDES STILL. The party is hired to follow the tracks and recover the shipment—only to find themselves haunted by the restless engine Longhorn of Despair and its undead conductor.

Adventures & Hooks in Wrecker’s Anchorage

Bushfire Ballad: A recent Ember Rave unearthed a forgotten cache of pre-war gold... and something else that’s now hunting the survivors.

The Ghost Engine Gambit: A legendary tractor engine is said to whisper blueprints to those who sleep near it. Several captains are willing to kill for it.

Silo Showdown: A duel between captains at Moot Hill spirals out of control, dragging PCs into a faction war.

The Skygrave Contract: A rogue Skyfall Corsair offers to teach PCs skyboarding... if they can survive a live-fire training jump over the Dropzone.

 

Captain Tractor Jack

Folk Pirate of the Prairie Sea

Captain Tractor Jack is the half-mythic, half-exhaust-stained pirate folk hero of the post-Collapse prairies—part river rat, part highway raider, part washed-up dad joke in a stolen admiral’s coat. Once a small-time farmer along the North Saskatchewan who “got tired of being robbed politely,” he bolted a rusted ship’s prow to a monster tractor, slapped sails on the grain hopper, and drove straight off the field into outlaw legend. Now his land-barge, the Prairie Scourge, crawls the old river valleys and broken highways like a roaming tavern and smuggling den, crewed by disgruntled farmhands, Bogey fixers, and one very opinionated Beaverfolk quartermaster. Jack leans hard into his own myth—quoting half-remembered novelty songs about himself, playing up the “last pirate” schtick, and pretending he’s retired—while quietly running rescue jobs, prisoner exchanges, and “redistribution raids” that keep small settlements from getting crushed between the Mall’s ambitions and the Anchorage’s appetites. Everyone from Boreal Buccaneers to Ed-Town refugees knows the same truth: if Tractor Jack shows up in port, trouble’s coming… but so is a way out.

Hook – “The Legend Owes You a Favor”
Captain Tractor Jack rolls into Westlock with the Prairie Scourge belching multicoloured smoke and a bounty on his head from three different factions—then loudly announces that you are his “official associates” and therefore under his protection. Before the PCs can deny it, they’re dragged into a madcap job to rob a convoy everyone swears is un-robbable… and Jack keeps dropping hints that this isn’t about loot at all, but about settling an ancient score.

If you want a second, shorter backup hook:

Backup Hook – “Retirement Plan”
Jack claims he’s finally ready to retire and wants the PCs to take over one of his secret routes—but every stop on the route reveals another lie, another abandoned ally, and another faction who “remembers what Tractor Jack did here.” By the time they reach the last waypoint, the party has to decide whether to fix his messes, inherit his enemies, or sell his legend to the highest bidder.

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