“Welcome to the Brightwood Beacon! Broadcasting from the Doorstep of the Daimyo, coming to you live from the base of Mount Hood with all the information you need to survive in the Wasted West!”
Part one:
History lesson
Today, we’re going to start with the ancient history of the world and how we
ended up in the Wasted West. This is going to be talking about history,
religion, and the first War Between the States.
A note about terms: Given the sources for this information are from the 19th
Century, I’ll probably be using out of date terms and phrases. No offense is
intended.
The Hunting Grounds and Deadlands
The Native Americans don’t have a monoculture, even if some would like to make
you think they do. However, it’s from the Native American groups that we get
the terms like the Hunting Grounds, also known as the Spirit World and/or the
Afterlife, as well as Deadlands, Nature Spirits, and Manitou. Just to name a
few.
What’s important about the Hunting Grounds is that it’s where the spirits
reside. The spirits that are non-hostile towards humans are the Nature Spirits.
These Spirits are connected to nature, like you might imagine. Things like
Brother Bear, Brother Wolf, and so on. These spirits can be called upon by
native shamans by performing rituals and appeasing them and then they’ll do
some magic for them.
And since we can’t have nice things, there’s the counterpoint to the Nature
Spirits, the Manitous. These spirits are demons or devils by any other name.
These perverted and malevolent creatures delight in torture and creating
suffering for humans, under the command of the once mysterious beings known as
the Reckoners. When the calling on the Spirits, you could get one of these
instead. And in places where spirits have power, Manitou have power, too. Only
those with evil in their hearts would willingly serve these creatures. Which
means there were plenty of them.
The important thing you need to know about the Hunting Grounds is that it is
the source of all magic, good or bad, and is hope to good and bad spirits. And
it’s where you go when you die. It’s too complicated to get into the weeds of
it right now, but we can cover more later if you want.
The Old Ones
At some point in the ancient past, exactly when isn’t precisely known, a bunch
of Indian powerful shamans got together at a pow-wow or other gathering and
discussed the problem of the Manitous. In addition to the Manitous, the
Reckoners would also create monsters, bringing stories and legends to life in
the shadows of the world. To create fear and feed on fear.
As you might imagine, this wasn’t a good situation for people. So, these
shamans, they get together, and they talk. They debate. They pass around pipes
and mushrooms and cacti and whatever else. They communed with their spirit
guides and each other. And these old men, they come up with a solution. They
make a bargain with some of the other and more powerful nature spirits. These
spirits are powerful enough to hold the Manitous at bay, but it’ll take up most
of their power and the power of the other nature spirits. This will prevent the
Reckoners from gaining power, but the Nature Spirits will grow quiet. And the
Spirits required that these shamans, the Old Ones would stay in the Hunting
Grounds with them. Forever.
Raven and the Last Sons
Now, things start rolling along. The Manitous and Nature Spirits fall quiet,
and humanity is allowed to live on their own. Which might have led to the
Renaissance and other advancements in Europe. Which sounds all well and good, except
when you remember what happened in Americas after the Europeans arrived. I
wouldn’t be surprised if the Reckoners only let themselves be quieted, knowing
what would happen in the future. You can almost hear them laughing about it.
Anyway. As I just mentioned, Europeans arrived in the Americas and humans being
humans, it wasn’t long until blood started being shed. Some of that blood
belonged to a tribe on the East Coast of what is now America. This tribe was
almost completely wiped out, leaving one survivor, a young shaman named Raven.
Raven didn’t believe in turning the other cheek, and to be honest, I don’t
blame him for being full of hate and rage after suffering a genocide. It can
change a man. And it sure as shit changed Raven.
Raven tried to curse the white man but couldn’t get enough mojo to pull it off.
He started seeking out Manitous instead of the Nature Spirits, and they in turn
started whispering in his ear about how he could get the power to punish the
honkeys, if he could free the Reckoners from their slumber. So, Raven spent the
next century or so gathering other survivors of the seemly never-ending
genocide being pushed onto the Indians. He took these young, angry men and
taught them dark magics and got as much vengeance as they could. Soon enough,
it was time to lead them into the Hunting Grounds, using one of the weak
portals that opened once a century (in those days) in Yosemite. Yeah. That one.
These young men and Raven went to war in the Hunting Grounds, hunting down and
killing the Old Ones. Since time works differently in the Hunting Grounds (and
even allows travel time and space), it still may have taken them centuries from
their perspective. Finally, they killed the last Old One and all of the Spirits
were free.
The Reckoning (July 3rd, 1863)
Unfortunately for all of us, the last Old One died on July 3rd,
1863. For those of you who forgot your history from school, this was the third
and bloodiest day of the Battle of Gettysburg (if you haven’t seen it, go watch
the movie, it’s a good one). After his day of blood and fear, monsters crawled
out of the shadows. The dead rose to devore the brains of the living. Creatures
of nightmares and gunpower were born, still haunting the world to this day. Men
were butchered. It was not a good time.
It was The Reckoning.
It was the day the world changed forever.
Because of these changes, the War Between the States ground to a halt, as
whenever they tried to have a battle, things got… Weird. And scary. So, the war
slowed down. Until it was an election year. That means that the CSA was allowed
to exist long enough that the French and the British to break the blockade and effectively
recognize the CSA. And then we pissed off the Canadians one time and they took
over Detroit. I say they could have kept it, but that might just be because of
that girl from Chicago I slept with years ago. Anyway.
Magic was now back. And people found several ways to tap into it, being
knowingly or unknowingly.
The most commonly known users of magic were the Hucksters. When the Reckoning
happened, people who had studied Hoyle’s Book of Games discovered a code in the
rules and examples that taught them how to mentally enter the Hunting Grounds
and engage in a duel with Manitous, represented as a card game, and force them
to power their spells. This was dangerous in so many ways, but it was also
powerful.
Next up were the Blessed. By following the rules laid down by their faiths,
those with a deep connection to their religions could channel what amounted to
divine power. Christians, Islamists, Jews, and even Taoists could use these
powers to fight back the darkness that started to grow around them.
Another group that grew to prominence were the Mad Scientists. While they
didn’t know it at the time, the Manitous whispered into their ears and used
their powers to create wonderous and terrible machines using junk science and
magic. And Ghost Rock. We’ll discuss Ghost Rock more in a moment, but one of
the important things about the “new science” was that these inventions almost
always lead to making weapons or destructive creations. Which meant that the USA
and CSA were using airplanes, tanks, and chemical weapons against each other in
the 1870s.
This release of magic didn’t just affect the war, it effected the Indians, as
now their medicine was stronger than in had been in memory. It let them fight
back against the white man. Before too long, there was the Sioux Union in what
was the Dakota Territory and the Coyote Confederation in was once called
Oklahoma or Indian Territory. Unfortunately, it was too late for most other
groups and tribes to seize the same amount of power and reclaim their
territories.
The Great Quake, The Maze, and Ghost Rock
Once the Reckoning had begun, there were more changes to the world. In 1869,
the coastal half of the Union state of California suffered a great earthquake
and that part of the state fell into the sea. San Francisco, San Diego, and Los
Angelos were wiped off the map in an instant. In their place, Shan Fan, Lost
Angels, and Lynchburg rose up from the ashes. Shan Fan was created and run by
the Chinese Triads, who used their now much more powerful Kung Fu and other
martial arts masters as enforcers. To the south, Reverend Grimme lead his survivors
out of the new wilderness and founded the City of Lost Angels, founding his own
VERY Protestant church that was a government unto itself. And, even in the
devastated land, was able to have massive feasts every Sunday.
The land that was once California was soon called by a new name, The Maze. This
was because the land didn’t just fall cleanly into the sea, it left behind tons
of mesas and tableaus that stood over the expanded sea. And in these exposed
rocky bits of land, a new mineral was discovered: Ghost Rock. It was like coal,
but it burned hotter and longer and had all kinds of applications. Mostly in
weapons and the like, but it helped create all sorts of things. Soon, Ghost
Rock was also discovered in the Watasch Mountains near Salt Lake City and the
Black Hills in Sioux lands. And thus began the Ghost Rush.
Ghost Rock was also discovered all over the world, but it was found in the
largest amounts in the American West. This caused Mexico to start grumbling
about losing Texas and Alto California again, and the CSA President, Jefferson
Davis, to declare that the US state of California no longer existed. Before
long, warships from the USA, CSA, Mexico, and others turned up in the narrow
channels of the Maze, along with pirates of all kinds, and the wat had a new,
more chaotic front. With all kinds of crazy super weapons and destruction that
followed.
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