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The Border Territory sits between two dying empires, but is controlled by neither. Indeed, it’s not really controlled by anyone – law is local at best, and if you stumble onto the wrong ranch, you might just end up in the pig trough.

Neither here nor now, the Border Territory is a blasted land of wheat fields, oil rigs, and train tracks that sits between the remaining territory of the Crown and the corporate state of the Dominion. Crown troops hunt defectors, the Dominion tries to capture resources, biker gangs fight over turf, and everyone else tries to survive.

History

Before it was the Border Territory, it was the breadbasket of the Crown Territory of Rothsven. The wheat fed the soldiers, the oil fed the machines. Quinn Corporation, a mega-corporation, hauled the goods to the distant front lines of the Old Continent, and the locals took the meagre pay they got for taking bounty from the soil.

Then, the war ended. Exactly how is still unknown. The few survivors who made it back to the Crown Territory spoke of hellfire, the surging ocean, and scorching light from the sky. In the chaos and confusion following this, the Quinn Corporation attempted to overthrow House Rothsven by assassinating its head, Queen Katherine.

Ever since the end of the war, things have been weird, to put it lightly. Some people get strange visions promising dark powers, half the rig-pigs that head out to the Patch come back drooling crude and swinging chainsaws at anything that’s still alive, and there’s fricking ghosts in the swamp. Whatever happened on the old continent, it freed things almost as bad as the war itself. Almost.

The conflict between Quinn and the Crown has died down over the years, but the hatred still burns in the veins of both parties. Each controls some of the countryside, and the area that neither could take became the Border Territory. Dozens of minor powers thrive here, from shifting webs of small-town alliances to brutal biker gangs to mercenary oil drillers.

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The Crown

The Crown bears a deep grudge against the Quinn Corporation, stemming from what they see as the corporation profiting from the war and price-gouging vital supplies, which was then amplified by their attempt to take control of the Crown Territory. For the Crown, the vultures at QuinnCo need to be destroyed, even if the Crown burns with them. Long-term, they want to retake the Border Territory and QuinnCo’s corporate fiefdom, rebuild the New Continent’s industrial base, and figure out just what happened on the Old Continent at the end of the war, but that’s a long way out.

The most prominent Crown unit in the Border Territory is the 6th Raider Squadron. Crown infantry mounted on motorbikes, ATVs, and a pickup truck. They are in charge of “requisitioning” food— either by buying it for criminally low rates or, if that fails, taking it outright.

Jenny Tiara, radio propagandist. Widely believed to be one of Queen Katherine’s daughters under a pseudonym. She sings the praises of the Crown and its values, bracketed by classical music, harmonizing quartets, and hymns. She ends every one of her broadcasts with “Gloria ad Coronam.”

Cmdr. John Doyle, commander. Commander Doyle is a tall, thin man with short brown hair and a shiny officer’s cap. He fought in the war on the Old Continent and sent many, many men to their deaths for queen and country. Now he’s not sure why he sends them to die.

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The Quinn Corporation

The Quinn Corporation was founded before the last war by Noel Quinn, a Crown subject. QuinnCo began as a shipping company, working as a middleman between rail operators, industry and last-mile delivery companies. All of its profits were reinvested by buying out the companies it used to work with, creating a monolithic logistics giant, and then moving into the manufacturing sector. This made its services essential when the war broke out. They say half of the Crown’s materiel bore QuinnCo’s mark somewhere on it, from rifles to motorcycles to airplanes.

The Quinn Corporation’s employees see the Crown as a bunch of entitled parasites wrapped up in ancient ideals and preposterous traditions. They believe the decisions of the Crown Military led to the destruction of the Old Continent, robbing QuinnCo of the bountiful resources they were promised in return for their aid. Some of the lower-level employees’ hatred stems from the belief that the Crown Military’s rigid structure and inability to adapt to changes in how wars are fought caused the deaths of thousands for no good reason, but once you get above middle management, it’s all about money.

QuinnCo’s long-term goal is to crush the Crown and turn the New Continent into a machine of production and consumption, creating value for the shareholders and widgets for the masses.

The most prominent piece of QuinnCo influence on the Border Territory is the “Billboard Truck,” a shiny white pickup truck with QuinnCo logos on the doors and a billboard reading “QUINNCO: SAFETY AND A SALARY,” which roams around the Border Territories. S-Sgt. Miles McFee rides in the back, hanging out full, reusable water bottles with QuinnCo logos. It is impossible to remove the logo without puncturing the bottle.

DJ Ash, QuinnCo shill. DJ Ash is a young woman with graying hair. Her husky voice can be heard over the radio waves most days, talking about the virtues of QuinnCo’s administration, logistics and benefits (there’s a ping-pong table in her office!) in between synth-rock and auto-tuned pop made by interchangeable psuedo-stars.

Salaried Sergeant Miles McFee, recruiter. S-Sgt. McFee is a short, sharp-faced man with slick black hair. He is friendly in a customer service kind of way, but his main concern is meeting his recruitment quota.

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Red Creek, BT

Red Creek is a small town surrounded by farmland. Its namesake creek is a muddy red, thanks to red dirt it carries from upstream. Red Creek is primarily a farming community, growing and processing wheat and shipping it out on the rails to whoever will pay. Sometimes it’s the Crown, sometimes it’s QuinnCo, mostly it’s other towns. The older locals want little more than for the factions to leave them alone to live their lives. The youth, however, yearn for purpose. The constant propaganda broadcasts, leaflet drops and postering campaigns pull them towards QuinnCo and the Crown, and gangs like the Wheat Kings attract the people that can’t stand being told what to do.

There aren’t many young people in Red Creek anymore. Those that remain are too young to leave, or old enough to have already been burnt by the wider world.

Mayor Julia Vay, backwater leader. Mayor Vay is a thin woman with black-framed glasses. She is the elected leader of Red Creek, and works hard to make sure the town’s populace is content and the infrastructure is functional. She’ll pay good money to anyone who can solve some of the settlement’s problems.

Buckley “Buck” Vay, foreman. Mayor Vay’s son Buck runs the maintenance department of Red Creek, fixing potholes, realigning rails and improvising power generators. He got into some pretty serious trouble in his teens, and a few members of the Wheat Kings would take a swing at him if they got the chance.

Danyelle “Doc” Graves, medic. Doc Graves was a conscript in the Crown Medical Corps during the war, press-ganged into service along side the rest of her high school class to work in a military hospital. She’s no neurosurgeon, but she can set an open fracture and suture it shut blindfolded. She runs a small clinic in Red Creek, trying to turn the skills she was forced to learn into something worth knowing.

“Smoky” Joe McDichael, tavern owner. Smoky Joe is a former firefighter with long, black hair and brown skin. A halligan bar and fireman’s axe are mounted and crossed above the bar. His voice is deep and gravelly, as a result of spending years pulling people out of danger. Now he just brews some booze and provides a warm place to catch up with friends.

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The Wheat Kings

The Wheat Kings are a scruffy band of veterans, rebels and outcasts, living in an abandoned farmhouse. They grow drugs, sell drugs and get into fights with other nearby biker gangs. They all wear leather jackets with a patch on the back depicting a sheaf of wheat that resembles a crown, with “WHEAT KINGS” above it and “RED CREEK” below.

The Wheat Kings want to be left alone to their life of hedonism, but they seem to cause trouble everywhere they go.

Markus “Godfather” Stefano, leader. Markus is a burly man with a mohawk on his head and a dozen bullet holes in his torso. Markus is a veteran of the War, like many of the older bikers. He has a long-standing grudge against John Doyle of the Crown Military, for leaving him to die in a trench.

Hatchet Saul, muscle. Hatchet is a muscular man with close-cropped black hair and a bad attitude. He joined the Wheat Kings as soon as he could afford his own motorbike, and earns his keep by punching anyone who causes them trouble.

Francis “Frank” Baptiste, chemist. Frank is a chubby man with a short beard and bags under his eyes. He learned the basics of pharmaceutical production while working for QuinnCo, and now he uses that knowledge to make goods for the Wheat Kings. He doesn’t like being called Francis.

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Lazy Vulture Ranch

The Lazy Vulture Ranch is a pig farm north of Red Creek, run by Lars Nielsen and his family. The property is littered with half-functioning machines that the Nielsens are unwilling to sell. The Nielsens are overall quite insular, and only come to town to sell meat and buy feed. The most prominent rumor about the family is that they feed trespassers to the pigs.

This is true.

Lars Nielsen, patriarch. Lars is a half-crazed man with long red hair and pale skin. He spends most of his time either tinkering with the broken-down equipment on his property or firing his rifle at shadows in the treeline around the property.

Marcia Nielsen, pig rancher. Marcia does most of the work on the ranch. She’s much more stable than Lars and without her, everybody would probably starve.

Lars Nielsen, Jr., teenager. Junior is a wiry boy who doesn’t talk much and spends most of his time riding his horse around the area with a rifle on his back. It’s probably best to avoid him.

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Other Locations

The Patch

If you need a lot of money and you need it fast, there’s only one option in the Border Territories: The Patch. Small groups of drillers head out, set up an oil derrick, siphon whatever they can out of the underground reserves, and head back to civilization to sell their bounty. Or they die horribly in one of a variety of ways. It’s usually that second one.

See, the Patch has been just as weird as everywhere else since the end of the war. Drillers are occasionally driven mad by the things that come up from the rigs, turning them into crude-drooling, tool-wielding berserkers. Some say these “drill devils” can be turned back to normal with the right combination of eldritch magicks and alcohol, but those are only rumors.

Downvalley Swamp

Downvalley Swamp is a wide band of wetland full of gnarled trees, bubbling gas vents and wrecked machinery. An old winter-logging camp sits in the center of the swamp, its buildings rotten and its machinery sunk into the mud and muskeg. Ghosts of the dead loggers haunt this place, unable to make any noise but the sound of a revving chainsaw, unable to do anything but rip the world around them apart.

Afterword

Ride a horse, ride a motorbike, smash the crown or crush the corp! There’s a few systems you could run this in: Ultramodern 5 or Everyday Heroes (both modern 5E hacks) are the most obvious ones, but Modern AGE or White Lies would probably work just as well.

This article was mostly written while listening to Corb Lund and the Marlboro Men album How The West Was Lost and Other Vivid Hallucinations, so if you want a soundtrack for your own sessions, give those folks a listen.

-Garm

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Former esports wannabe, current TTRPG streamer and TTRPG creator interviewer. I like science fiction and I have a soft spot for licensed tabletop RPGs. You can find all the campaigns I’m in and interviews I’ve done over on YouTube.

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About the author

Garmbreak1

Former esports wannabe, current TTRPG streamer and TTRPG creator interviewer. I like science fiction and I have a soft spot for licensed tabletop RPGs. You can find all the campaigns I'm in and interviews I've done over on YouTube.

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