Terrosaur Badlands - Part 7 - Locations of Note

 

Roads, Ferries, and Frontier Travel

“Out here, the distance isn’t the problem—it’s everything that happens while you’re crossing it.”

Distance is one of the quiet killers of the Terrorsaur Badlands. A settlement can survive monsters, weather, and bad water, only to lose people anyway because help arrived too late, a crossing failed, or the road ahead changed since the last convoy passed through. That is why roads matter here. They are not conveniences—they are lifelines, rumour lines, retreat routes, and sometimes the only proof that one pocket of humanity still knows another is alive. Travel is rarely direct, no matter what the map claims. Routes bend around memory as much as terrain, shaped by coulees, unstable ground, nesting territories, and the hard lessons of where not to go anymore.

Crossings make everything worse. Ferries, bridges, and valley descents turn distance into delay, and delay into exposure—choke points where convoys gather, tensions rise, and anything watching knows exactly where to find people. That is why travel has become as much a ritual as logistics: scouts ride ahead, supplies are checked twice, and there are rules for when to push forward and when to leave something behind. In the Badlands, every journey is a wager. The land is still beautiful, the sky still wide—but no one mistakes that for safety. Every road is temporary, every crossing has a season, and every trip depends on whether the world ahead is still behaving the way it did the last time someone made it through.

Other Locations of Note

Atlas Coal Mine and East Coulee

“Some places were built to dig up the past—this one started digging back.”

The Atlas Coal Mine and East Coulee form one of the most layered and unsettling locations in the Terrorsaur Badlands: a place where industry, community, and buried depth overlap in dangerous ways. The towering mine structures still loom over a maze of shafts, tunnels, and forgotten infrastructure, while nearby East Coulee preserves the bones of everyday prairie life—schoolhouse, homes, and streets that feel too intact for comfort. Together, they offer salvage, shelter, and answers, but also hint that the old coal seams were never just routes for miners. In the Hodgepocalypse, this is where human memory meets something deeper, and where the line between what was built and what was uncovered has started to blur.

Plot Hook:
A tunnel sealed since the coal era has reopened from the inside, and the first thing to emerge was carrying a school bell. Now the bell rings at irregular hours—and something below is answering it.

The Bleriot Ferry Crossing

“If it’s running, you’re lucky. If it’s not… you’re already in trouble.”

 The Bleriot Ferry Crossing is one of the most vital—and unreliable—routes through the Terrorsaur Badlands, a narrow Red Deer River crossing where convoys bottleneck, rumours spread faster than truth, and timing can mean survival or disaster. When it runs, it keeps the region connected; when it fails, whole stretches of the Badlands go quiet and dangerous. Reinforced docks, warning posts, and layered tracks from every faction mark it as a place where people wait, watch, and make hard decisions about whether to cross, turn back, or risk being stranded on the wrong side of something moving through the land. In a region where routes matter as much as destinations, the ferry is not just a convenience—it is a pressure point the entire Badlands depends on.

Plot Hook: The ferry has begun making unscheduled night crossings with no crew aboard, and each morning, new claw marks and strange symbols appear on the deck. Whatever is using the crossing isn’t asking permission—and sooner or later, it’s going to start coming across in force.

Dinosaur Provincial Park

 “The paths are there for a reason—you just don’t know whose.”

Dinosaur Provincial Park is the wide-open, bone-rich heart of the Badlands, a place where beauty, exposure, and ancient weight collide under a thin layer of order. Marked trails, old interpretive signs, and guided routes still shape movement, creating the illusion of safety in a landscape that punishes curiosity the moment you step off-path. It draws scholars, pilgrims, scavengers, and watchers alike, all for different reasons—but the land does not care why you came. Here, every footprint matters, every disturbance echoes, and the difference between discovery and disaster is often just one step too far.

Plot Hook:
A guided expedition has gone missing beyond the marked trail system after reporting eggs in a place where no nesting ground should exist. The trails still lead there—but they don’t lead back the same way, and something has started treating them like borders.

Dry Island Buffalo Jump

“Some places remember how things used to die—and don’t see a reason to stop.”

Dry Island Buffalo Jump is older than the Badlands as people understand them—a place where hunters once drove herds over the edge, where survival, ritual, and landscape were bound together long before the Hodgepocalypse. That history lingers. The ground feels intentional, the ridgelines feel watched, and the drop itself carries a weight that isn’t just gravity. Now, the site has become a layered sacred zone: respected by some, avoided by others, and quietly used by things that understand the shape of a killing ground. It’s not just a cliff—it’s a pattern, and something has started following it again.

Plot Hook:
Fresh tracks show a herd being driven over the edge—but nothing is found at the bottom. Whatever is using the Jump isn’t hunting for meat—it’s recreating something older, and it hasn’t finished.

Horsethief Canyon

“If you can see the whole canyon, something else can see you.”

 Horsethief Canyon is one of the most striking and treacherous natural zones in the Terrorsaur Badlands, a place where beauty and danger overlap in ways that punish the unprepared. Its layered walls, winding paths, and hidden basins create a shifting maze of sightlines, echoing sounds, and exposed routes where visibility becomes vulnerability and high ground decides who survives. Scouts, smugglers, and hunters all use it, but none of them trust it—because in Horsethief Canyon, it is never entirely clear whether you are navigating the terrain or being guided by something that already knows where you’re going.

Plot Hook:
A rancher’s child vanished after claiming the canyon walls were “moving at sunset,” and now search parties are returning with the wrong number of footprints. Whatever is shifting in Horsethief Canyon isn’t just hiding—it’s rearranging who makes it out.

The Oilfields

“Some machines were built to pull from the earth—this one started listening back.”

Across the wider Badlands—especially east toward the prairies and along older extraction routes—you’ll find scattered oil infrastructure still standing where companies once drilled and left: pumpjacks, wellheads, storage tanks, and skeletal rigs dotting the horizon. Most are dead. Some still move. A few have been claimed by scavengers, cults, or things that treat the machinery as more than tools. One known site, the Prayerjack, stands alone in a scrub valley: a pumpjack that cycles in slow, deliberate patterns that don’t match any known extraction rhythm, surrounded by offerings, cables, and hand-painted symbols. Locals say it’s “pumping something deeper than oil.” There are others, quieter and less understood rigs that only move at night, wells that hum when no power runs to them, and fields where the ground feels pressurized with something that isn’t meant to surface. In the Badlands, the oilfields didn’t die—they changed purpose.

Plot Hook: A pumpjack has begun moving in a precise, repeating pattern that doesn’t match any extraction cycle, and nearby instruments are picking up a response from below. The pattern is spreading to other rigs—and something down there has started to synchronize.    

Star Mine Suspension Bridge  

“The bridge holds. The question is what’s waiting on the other side.”

The Star Mine Suspension Bridge spans a deep badlands cut with just enough stability to keep it in use and just enough sway to remind travelers how exposed they are. Over time, it has become more than a crossing—charms, bones, ribbons, and warning markers line its cables, each one left by someone who either survived the passage or didn’t want the next traveler to make the same mistake. It serves as a natural choke point for scouts, smugglers, and patrols, where visibility is total, escape is limited, and anything watching from the cliffs or below has all the advantage. In the Badlands, you don’t cross the bridge casually—you cross it knowing something has probably already seen you step onto it.

Plot Hook: The protective charms strung along the bridge are disappearing one by one, and no one has made it across safely since. Whatever is taking them isn’t just clearing the path—it’s removing the only thing that was keeping the crossing intact.

Wayne & The Last Chance Saloon

“You don’t pass through Wayne. You end up there.”

Wayne is a stubborn, bridge-linked badlands settlement anchored by the Last Chance Saloon, where routes, rumors, and reputations collide before anyone risks heading into Drumheller. Reached by eleven narrow bridges, it serves as a last stop, contract hub, and neutral ground where Bonepickers, Wardens, Brooks agents, and survivors trade information, half-truths, and bad ideas. It survives because it’s useful: the last place to get real intelligence and the first to hear when something goes wrong. In Wayne, every map has a price, every story has a motive, and every job already has someone else interested—and more than one regular swears the town itself doesn’t always agree on who’s still alive, with lights, footsteps, and voices lingering long after closing time.

Plot Hook: Someone is paying in pre-Hodge coal scrip for information about mine tunnels that don’t exist on any known map. The trouble is, everyone who’s followed those leads has either vanished—or come back with stories that don’t match each other… including a few who insist they took directions from people buried decades ago.

d100 Badlands Encounter Table

Use when traveling between locations, lingering too long, or when things feel “too quiet.”

👉 Tip for GMs:
Roll once for event, once for tone escalation (optional), or chain results.

01–20: Signs & Omens (Tension Builders)

1.      Fresh tracks that change species mid-trail

2.      A warning sign turned to face the wrong direction

3.      Distant bell ringing with no visible source

4.      Carrion birds circling… nothing

5.      A rope marker tied incorrectly (means “don’t proceed”)

6.      Footprints that start normal and end dragging

7.      A campfire still warm, no campers nearby

8.      A shrine missing a key piece

9.      Echoes that repeat words no one said

10.  A map that doesn’t match the terrain anymore

11.  Sudden silence in a normally noisy area

12.  A single boot print going the wrong way

13.  A ridge that appears closer than it should be

14.  A scent marker that has been deliberately overwritten

15.  A discarded tool covered in fine black dust

16.  A radio burst of partial coordinates

17.  A skeleton positioned as if watching the road

18.  A trail that loops back without turning

19.  A sign warning of something no one recognizes

20.  The wind carries voices that sound familiar

21–40: People & Factions

1.      Bonepickers offering to sell “safe routes”

2.      Shrine Keepers repairing a warning post

3.      Road Wardens trying to reopen a blocked path

4.      Brooks team scanning the terrain silently

5.      Pilgrims heading somewhere with purpose

6.      A lone survivor asking for escort

7.      A convoy stalled and arguing

8.      A guide who refuses to go farther

9.      A scavenger who found something they regret

10.  A wounded courier carrying partial intel

11.  A group pretending to be something they’re not

12.  A Shrine Keeper warning the party to turn back

13.  Bonepickers fighting over a claim

14.  A Brooks drone observing from distance

15.  Pilgrims marking a new “sacred” site

16.  A Road Warden trying to enforce order

17.  A silent group watching the party pass

18.  Someone offering a job that sounds too easy

19.  A returning expedition with fewer members

20.  A familiar NPC… acting slightly off

41–60: Creatures & Threats

1.      Headcomp swarm testing the party

2.      A lone Anklystomper building something

3.      Pterozotz circling overhead

4.      A skulk predator shadowing the group

5.      A wounded terrorsaur fleeing something worse

6.      A herd reacting to unseen pressure

7.      A creature that stops and watches

8.      Something moves beneath the ground nearby

9.      A flyer dives but pulls away at the last second

10.  A terrorsaur nest recently abandoned

11.  A predator that mimics familiar sounds

12.  Multiple species moving together unnaturally

13.  A creature that ignores the party completely

14.  A distant roar that changes pitch mid-call

15.  A carcass arranged deliberately

16.  A creature that retreats after making eye contact

17.  Something large moving parallel to the party

18.  A sudden ambush from above

19.  A creature that reacts to fear, not presence

20.  A hunting pack testing defenses

61–80: Environmental & Terrain Hazards

1.      Sudden windstorm reducing visibility

2.      Loose footing on a steep descent

3.      A crossing that’s partially collapsed

4.      A ridge that crumbles under weight

5.      A culvert filled with something unexpected

6.      Flash flood conditions forming rapidly

7.      A path that disappears mid-route

8.      Heat distortion causing visual errors

9.      A sinkhole forming nearby

10.  A bridge that sways too much

11.  Rockfall triggered by distant movement

12.  A canyon echo masking direction

13.  A trail that splits into identical paths

14.  Ground that feels hollow beneath

15.  A sudden temperature drop

16.  A river crossing behaving strangely

17.  A marked path that leads somewhere wrong

18.  A tunnel entrance newly exposed

19.  Dust cloud hiding movement

20.  A valley that feels “too quiet”

81–100: Weirdness & Escalation

1.      The party sees themselves in the distance

2.      A shrine activates unexpectedly

3.      A voice answers a question no one asked

4.      A map updates itself

5.      The sky briefly changes color

6.      A path appears where none existed

7.      A bell rings from underground

8.      A structure looks newly built… but isn’t

9.      A creature behaves like it recognizes someone

10.  A memory feels inserted or altered

11.  A fossil shifts position when not observed

12.  A second sun-like reflection appears briefly

13.  Time skips forward slightly

14.  A trail marker bleeds fresh paint

15.  The party hears themselves speaking ahead

16.  Something follows but leaves no tracks

17.  A location repeats slightly differently

18.  A dead thing moves but doesn’t attack

19.  The land reacts to a specific character

20.  Everything goes quiet—and stays that way too long

BONUS: Escalation Die (Optional)

Roll 1d6 after encounter:

1–2: harmless / warning
3–4: complication
5: danger
6: immediate threat

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