castrametation
Castrametation
(August 2024 Event)
The immediate threat to the region was a massive horde that was heading directly towards the Anvil, driving refugees before it as they fled the necropolis in droves. The HIC had not yet been able to get all of the supplies and manpower to the Anvil in time, but they were out of time – the survivors gathered in the area would have to hold out until they managed to get through. They arrived in the area and took over some ramshackle buildings for the time being, refugees already flocking there in hopes of finding safety. Moving swiftly, the town’s graverobbers set up a morgue before there could be any deaths, to prevent their people from being lost to the necropolis in case the worst happened.
The first night, Elias Frank – a ‘Mortis Enthusiast’ from Booming Bay, dabbler in necrological technologies – showed up, looking rather worse for wear. As he painted a grim picture of the situation and the loss of his home town, the survivors began to realize that the disaster may have at least partially been their fault… as they had sold dozens upon dozens of necroinfluencers to the people of Booming Bay, and while Elias didn’t know what exactly had caused the ‘Incident’, it seemed likely that it was their meddling with the Gravemind that caused it. He also brought word of a plague that was spreading from the Bay, a disease called Gravis Immortum, and confessed to being too far gone to save. The survivors gave their old trading partner a merciful death, knowing this would only be the beginning of hard decisions they would have to make.
News reached the survivors soon after that the horde was approaching, and they did not have the numbers or manpower to stand against it… but two groups offered their firepower to the cause. Survivors of the Firewatch Security Group had pulled together in the aptly-named Phoenix Corps – but despite having people, they needed the weapons, armor, and other resources to fight. On the other hand, a group of hard-bitten mercenaries called the Marauders asked only for cold, hard cash. Despite sympathies for their old allies, the survivors of the Anvil decided to pay for the Marauders’ services in the end, gaining their services to keep the horrors of the necropolis at bay.
The companies and organizations that held influence throughout the Hammer Inlet Coalition began to make themselves known during preparations for the oncoming horde; a representative of a mysterious group known only as Resurrection showed himself asking probing questions about the disaster, scouts from the Citadel reached out to faith leaders, and in the early morning the maritime salvaging company called the King-Fishers requested aid in handling what turned out to be an undead kraken, revealing the grim fact that animals could also be infected by the Gravis Immortum disease.
The refugee situation was a complicated one, and the survivors did their best to ensure that those who escaped Crossbones Central and the surrounding settlements were well-fed and cared for. A rowdy camp populated by the remains of the ‘gangs of Crossbones’ was shunned, however, left to their own devices. A desperate refugee whose posse had cobbled together a bridge, ‘Handsome Jack’ Kirkland, established a toll – and perhaps surprisingly, the town cooperated with him. It was found out that the town of Resilience managed to survive by removing the safety precautions on their reactor and flooding their town with radiation, and the scientist that carried out the procedure was suffering from intense radiation exposure. He was given mercy, but questions arose about treaties and agreements that Resilience had made with others about their reactor, questions that would no doubt become louder in time.
Time eventually ran out, and the walking dead crashed into the crude outpost like a wave crashing upon the rocks. The mortar fire and guns of the Marauders could be heard holding the bulk of the horde at bay as the group proved their value, but some still slipped through, led by a massive, bloated Juggernaut of a zombie. A prolonged battle eventually led to victory for the survivors, although more than one valiant fighter emerged from the morgue and not the battlefield in the aftermath. Once the horde had been defeated, the supply caravans started arriving from the coalition, the supplies of brew and herb from the ORCAS Foundation particularly appreciated by the exhausted strains recovering from the battle.
Relief had arrived, and while the guns kept firing late into the night the man from Resurrection, ‘John’, returned to inform the town that they had deployed some method of repelling the undead along the border of the Anvil, but they would only last so long. Scouts were delving into the necropolis to find the source of its spread, and they would need to be ready to act when the time came… but that also meant that they would need to organize, to come together and decide how they would be operating as a community going forward. Representatives of the HIC, he told them, would be arriving the next month to make plans.
And so the survivors had a chance to breathe, while the decisions they made weighed heavily upon their minds. What consequences would those decisions bring, for good or for ill? And what decisions would they make next?