Deadlands - The Wasted West: The Brightwood Beacon, Eposide 2

 

“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 Two: The War and Judgement Day
Now that we’ve discussed the ancient history and laid the groundwork, it’s time to get into more recent events and how we ended up where we are now.
Once again, there might be some terms and phrases that might not sound pretty. And once again no offense is intended.

The Really Fast History Lesson
Now that we’ve covered the very basics of the Hunting Grounds and what happened way back when, we’re going to quickly review the last couple of centuries.
When it comes to the USA and CSA, they were able to set aside most of the differences between them and grow as brothers. That also means that slavery was abolished in the CSA (from French and British pressure, I imagine). The USA also seems to have gotten Detroit back at some point. This meant that the North American continent was finally at peace. And stayed at peace for a while.
Part of this wind down of the war was the division of the Maze. The USA controlled the north part of the Maze, NorCal, while the CSA controlled the southern part of the Maze, SoCal.
Anyway. Moving on, things kept moving on and the world started having some conflicts that led them to the first and second World Wars. The American nations were allies and members of the Allies, fighting against the Nazis. While I’ll discuss some more stuff about the Nazis in a later part of this series, just know that when you add the Reckoners to the Nazis, you get some very horrible things.
For North America, this meant that crossing between the USA and CSA was as simple as crossing the Canadian or Mexican border. It was routine and something that people did daily in many places. With peace and prosperity, technology continued to advance, and things were pretty good for most people.
Outside the USA and CSA, things also got better. Germany was put back together after the way, as was Japan. The USSR and the Warsaw Pact kept chugging along. China got its act together. And so on and so on.

The Farawar War
One of the major players in the Weird West that I haven’t discussed yet is a man named Dr. Darius Hellstromme. Dr. Hellstromme is a British inventor who moved to the nation of Desert (the former state of Utah) to get access to the plentiful supplies of Ghost Rock and created Steam Wagons (very early automobiles) to help the Saints survive the appearance of the Mojave Rattlers. Eventually, he grew old and put his brain in a cybernetic body and continued to invent and create things. Mostly weapons of war, which he sold to just about everybody. There’s a lot more to his story, which I should hopefully get around to before long.
Moving on, Dr. Hellstromme ended up getting involved in space exploration and faster than light travel. Somehow, he discovered an inhabited solar system, and it also had Ghost Rock! Of course, the inhabitants of this new world, Banshee weren’t technologically advanced, and they were living on a pile of Ghost Rock, so the Hellstromme Industries marines did a bit of genocide before the settlers arrived. As you do. There was a peace deal reached between the natives of the planet, the Anouks, and the settlers. Which was broken before the ink was dry. Tensions escalated and the settlers begged for help from the UN, so a massive task force was sent to Banshee, which included a ton of Sykers.
I haven’t talked about Sykers yet, and I will go in depth on them in another broadcast, but they’re an important part of this sordid tale. As I mentioned in my last broadcast, the Hunting Grounds are the source of magical power. Well, of course the military wanted to use that. Huckster were no good, Blessed had too many morals, and shamans weren’t exactly willing to help out the white man and his military. There was another group that could tap into the Hunting Grounds without too many complications: the Martial Artists. Using this as a basis, they found people who were sensitive to the psychic realm and started training them as masters of espionage. Now, these very powerful psychics, trained as assassins and covert operators, are sent into a meat grinder of a war. Why? Because the Anouks turned out to have powers over their own, including the ability to control people’s minds. This makes an important difference between those who came back from this war and the ones that stayed for the Last War. Just to get that part of their history out of the way.
So, this war is going on this distant alien planet, only accessible using a ring gate built by Hellstromme Industries. That means that resupply is long and expensive, and Ghost Rock takes a long time to get back. Why is that important, well, that’s next.

Rising Tensions
I know that some of you are wondering why we’re talking about some colony and war way far away from everything. Well, you have to remember that Ghost Rock is a very important resource for every government in the world. And it’s not infinite. When there was a report that came out that said that there was only about 20 years worth of Ghost Rock left, at current consumption rates, the governments of the world were more than willing to dump more resources into Banshee.
And then they started building up their militaries. Not just Sykers, but cyborgs as well. Cyborgs are made from the Harrowed, which are dead folks that have a Manitou take up residence in their noggins after death and then have to fight for control of the body with the original resident. Originally, the Harrowed could heal any injury (except for the fatal one), but there was that pesky demon in the skull to deal with. So, the arcane researchers (or Dr. Hellstromme) found a way to keep the monster under control. However, this limited how much power it could access to heal the body, in addition to the other powers they could manifest. But since the dead don’t really need their organs, as they don’t need to breathe and all they need is their brains (the seat of the soul), you could stuff them full of all kinds of cool technology. In general, there are two types of cyborgs: combat and infiltration. Both of these were used in the Last War. Other things that they started to build were powered combat armor, hover tanks, laser weapons, and irradiated Ghost Rock bombs. Those will be important later.

The Last War and Judgement Day
The Last War began on February 22^nd, 2078 when the LatAm (Latin American) forces invaded the CSA, including SoCal, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona. Led by the Mexican general Carlos Santa Anna Ramirez, they invaded city of Lost Angels, which was weird as they were an independent theocracy, and took months to conquer Phoenix. In the end, General Ramirez was captured and spilled the beans about who was helping him: US President Romero and the rest of the Northern Alliance.
Once that got out, President Romero, a former movie director, was impeached and tossed out on his ear, allowing Mary Rose Tremane to take over. She wasn’t some wilting rose, she had guts. She proved this after the CSA tried to capture the rest of California and ordered some minor strikes against CSA military facilities. Which caused the CSA president, Allen Sothby, to declare war against the USA. Which drug in just about every other major power. If you want a detailed list of the countries in the North Alliance and the Southern Alliance (the NA and SA respectively), you can look them up.
Anyway. Things started heating up. 2079 was a bloody year, with conflicts all over the world, and between the USA and CSA just about everywhere they touched. Plenty of battles along the Mason-Dixon wall, in the Maze, and anywhere else you can think of. But by the time 2080 had started, things had started to cool down, as everyone had been touched to some degree or another by the killing and conflict. A cease fire went into effect over the holidays and President Tremane went on a tour of the country, to assess the damage and build morale. Until she and Air Force One vanished on January 1^st, 2081. Her VP, Andrew Bates ended up getting sworn in after they were unable to locate the plane or President Tremane.
Andrew Bates was not the calm, cool, and collected person that his predecessor had been. He immediately blamed the CSA and demanded they turn over all of California or he would nuke one Southern city a week until they did, earning himself the nickname of “A-Bomb Andy.” Of course, he lived up to his moniker.
It was the Germans that started the ball rolling again by invading Mexico City. They ended up attacking the French embassy, which held out for a whole week, before the Germans got in and left the French ambassador’s head on the spiked gate of the embassy grounds. The French crossed the Rhine and began their invasion in force. The British then landed at Normandy (again) and fought the French forces there, and then German invaded France through Belgum (again) and then everything got started. It was Pakistan who launched the first conventional nuclear weapon on India (yeah, they both had them). And then the UK nuked France after their invasion stalled. The Warsaw Pact joined the French, and everything went to shit in Europe. Asia was already a burning Dumpster fire of conflict. And it was the Canadians that dropped the bomb first in North America, hitting Washington State and New England before their land invasion, reaching as far south as Boston in the east and past Portland to Redding, California in the west.

Reckoners Revealed
On September 23^rd, 2081, at 6:17pm Eastern Standard Time, the first irradiated Ghost Rock bomb was dropped, and it was Judgement Day. Every major, and minor, city was hit by one of these. And only after they landed did we find out what they really did. Originally designed to kill the population and leave (most) of the infrastructure intact. Well, they did. But not really. Originally a secret from the public, Ghost Rock was made from the souls of the damned and demons. When they exploded, they created a Deadland on earth. Deadlands are the “bad parts” of the Hunting Ground, driven by fear and tainted by evil. The bombs destroyed a five-mile radius at Ground Zero and then created a mile-high storm of trapped and tortured souls another thirty miles (or so, it can vary) called a Ghost Storm that’s about ten feet thick.
But that wasn’t the worst part of it. This was all part of the plan by the Reckoners to manifest themselves on earth, in the flesh, so to speak. They had been working on this since they had awoken on July 3^rd, 1863. And now, over two centuries later, they were here. And their names were: War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. That’s right, the four fucking horsemen of the fucking apocalypse.
War appeared in Kansas before going up to the Sioux Union and destroying Deadwood. After the Sioux drove him off, he was the first of the horsemen to cross the Mississippi.
Famine appeared in the Maze and fought her way to the City of Lost Angels. But the priests of the Church of Lost Angels were powerful and managed to call down a huge beam of heavenly light down on her and killed her horse. Of course, the waters of Prosperity Bay were turned to blood and the following earthquake dropped the city some hundred feet into the water. She then walked across the West until she, too, crossed the Mississippi.
Pestilence appeared in Texas and made his way across the state, leaving death and rot in his wake, until he crossed the Mississippi.
Death appeared in Death Valley, California and began gathering a massive army of the Walkin’ Dead with him as he made his way to the Mississippi, like the others.
What happened on the other side of the Mississippi? No one really knows. As they had their way across the rest of North America, those places fell silent as everyone there was killed by the various servants of the Horsemen. And then they made their way across the rest of the world. Europe, Asia, Africa, and even Australia, if you believe people. And what’s going to happen when they come back? No one really knows that, either. But there’s people who wait and watch along the banks of the Mississippi, keeping an eye out for their return, and hope they can give us some kind of warning.

And that’s where today’s broadcast comes to a close. Thanks for listening. We’ll be back soon. Until then, keep your powder dry.