Greater Gaelgar is an adventure setting for the Mecha Hack setting, Ruins & Rigs. Looking for a city to loot? This article is for you!
Gaelgar was a relatively prosperous city before society collapsed. A container port on its west coast served as a busy hub for import and export operations, and the skyscrapers of its downtown core were home to financial and technical firms. Now, most of this lays in ruin. Many skyscrapers have collapsed, and the port is overrun by bandits and crystalline monsters. At the south end of the city, in a residential area, a shelter called Bainsbury provides an essential refuge from the ash rain.
Bainsbury Shelter is an above-ground fortress located in an old residential area. Its center is the Bainsbury Arms, a 12-storey apartment building from which the shelter takes its name. All of its balconies have been sealed up with transparent plastic and a patchwork of metal sheeting covers its roof. The roof is used as an observation post for the Defense Force.
The rest of Bainsbury Shelter consists of several blocks walled in by metal and concrete, and covered by sloped glass. A few new structures have been built under the glass, but most of the buildings are old houses in varying states of repair. Electricity is provided by a nearby solar array, backed up by a V-Crystal bank.
Living in Bainsbury generally costs about 50 luka (⍼) per week, which covers a place to sleep and basic food. Working almost any job will cover this cost with a bit to spare. Renting a space large enough to comfortably service a Rig and store resources costs another ⍼50 per week.
The symbol of Bainsbury is a sword overlaid on a blue kite shield. This crest is painted on every piece of government property, including the gates.
A dive bar in the basement of Bainsbury Arms. Above the bar counter, there are about a dozen pictures of Pilots and their Auxiliaries standing near huge crystals. Zeke’s is popular with Pilots, and more than one stupid plan has been hatched in its booths. A sign that says “NO GUTS, NO GLORY!” has been attached to the wall by the door, so that it’s the last thing customers see on the way out.
Ezekiel “Zeke” Baker, barman. Zeke is a tall man with a pink mohawk. Zeke used to be a Pilot himself, but retired after a big score. He does give advice to new Pilots, but it mostly consists of “Trust each other,” and “the job isn’t over until you’re back behind the walls.”
Marissa “Riss” Morita, server. Riss is a woman with black hair and blue eyes. She lives in an apartment just above Zeke’s, which is filled with old sci-fi memorabilia.
Carla’s Curiosities is a shop specializing in pre-Damocles relics. The front room of the shop is full of shelves stocked with old action figures, knick-knacks, and automobile badges. A glass counter holds more valuable things, by Carla’s estimation, like light-up replicas of fictional laser swords
A large room behind the counter holds the rest of their stock, as well as precision tools for cleaning and restoring old memorabilia. These are useful for many things, including repairing old electronics.
Carla van Wycke, owner. Carla is a tall woman with braided blonde hair and glasses that went out of fashion a century ago. She is perpetually cheery, but drives a hard bargain. She travels regularly, buying and selling pop culture relics and museum pieces.
Khaleesi “Kal” van Wycke, cashier. Kal is Carla’s daughter. She has short blonde hair and green eyes. She is not quite as enthusiastic about the Old World, but she has a soft spot for old punk rock. She has been learning to play guitar from old books.
Bainsbury’s premier junk shop is Coleman Salvage, run by Pam Coleman. In her younger days, she was a Pilot herself, and she turned her hoarder habits into a proper business. Her own Rig, the Rooster, sits in the yard just behind the shop.
Coleman Salvage carries many spare parts for Rigs, including weapons. Many of these are built or converted by Pam and Stone.
Pamela “Pam” Coleman, merchant. Pam is a tall woman with black hair and dark skin. She looks perpetually exhausted, but she’s always willing to talk with the local Pilots. She speaks with a rural accent, and usually wears blue overalls over a red t-shirt.
Stone, auxiliary. Stone is an electronic warfare Auxiliary with black hair and green eyes. He works at Pam’s junk shop, decrypting data, upgrading software, and performing diagnostics. He is almost always sitting at a console a few feet behind the store’s counter, unmoving, thus the name.
Moray Automotive is a small factory operating out of the Bainsbury Shelter. They take scrap metal and parts and build Haulers and Rigs out of them. Moray pays for scrap by weight, since almost everything they take gets melted down and repurposed instead of being used for repairs. Currently, Moray Automotive can only build one Rig at a time.
Matt Lewis, CEO. Matt is a former Pilot who, after a substantial injury, has moved into repair and fabrication instead. Thanks to a few canny trades, he has acquired a large amount of machinery for reprocessing scrap metal. Matt uses a motorized wheelchair to get around, but can stand for a minute or so at a time.
Yan, auxiliary. Yan is Matt’s auxiliary, a tall man with short, spiky black hair. He usually wears a suit with a blue tie, but a picture in Zeke’s shows him in a white tank top and a shiny black cropped vest. He tries to play the role of a stoic assistant, but is actually quite excitable, especially when machinery is involved.
Gold is a dark-skinned man with a thick accent. He is quite well-known in the area and most Pilots have a story of either being saved by him or helping him save someone. He wears a suit and tie at all times, even inside his Rig.
Silver is a dark-skinned auxiliary with gray hair. He speaks with a prim and proper accent, and has the often-associated gift for understatement. Like Gold, he wears a suit and tie at all times.
At the beginning of every week (Monday morning), roll on this table to determine what’s going on in Bainsbury.
| Roll 1d20 |
|---|
| 1-10. Nothing much, this week. |
| 11. One of the local Pilots hasn’t returned after an expedition into the downtown area. |
| 12. Moray Automotive is looking to expand. 2x buy price on scrap metal. |
| 13. Bainsbury is starting construction on a new section of the Shelter. 2x buy price on construction materials. |
| 17. Khaleesi van Wycke is organizing a talent show and wants to build a stage and basic sound system. 2x buy price for wood, electronics, and audiovisual equipment. |
| 15. A Shard of Damocles crashed into the farm sector recently, seriously damaging the crops. 2x buy price for canned food. |
| 16. Bandit patrols seem to be pushing closer to Bainsbury. Multiply bandit numbers in encounters by 1.5. |
| 17. Khaleesi van Wycke is organizing a talent show and wants to build a stage and basic sound system. 2x buy price for wood, electronics and audiovisual equipment. |
| 18. An envoy from one of the Crystal Cults has come to Bainsbury, looking for brave Pilots to make a strike against the Red Legion alongside him. |
| 19. A Red Legion Rig has shown up at the gates, looking to defect. Can they be trusted? |
| 20. A recent meteor shower deposited some new Crystals in the area. Increase the size of any found crystals this week by one step. |
West of downtown is the Shipyard, a seaport filled with transport containers, sealed warehouses, and rusting ships. A few of the boats are still serviceable, including a tugboat attached to a barge which is large enough to carry three Rigs. Recently, the bandit group known as the Red Legion have docked their home-ship here, and have been using the area as their personal playground.
Unassuming from the outside, Warehouse 15 has unusually thick walls and an unusually robust security system. This is because Warehouse 15 was a staging point for military hardware before the end of everything. It still holds a ton of hardware, palletized and ready to be moved quickly. These could be worth a lot, but the passcode to this hangar could be worth even more…
Roll on this table every 10 minutes while the party is in the Shipyard area.
| Roll 1d20 |
|---|
| 1-10. Nothing much, this week. |
| 11. Party+1 Bandit Hunters |
| 12. Emplaced Bandit Weapon: See Ion Emplacement in the Mecha Hack core book. |
| 13. Bandit Boss, alone. |
| 14. Devil guarding a Large crystal. |
| 15. A Tank. |
| 16. A friendly Pilot fighting against a pair of Bandit Hunters. |
| 17. Bandit Trio: Two Hunters and a Disabler. |
| 18. Three Butterflies. |
| 19. Bandit Boss, one Hunter and one Disabler. |
| 20. Crystal, roll 1d4 for size. |
The central core of the city is a maze of rubble and wrecked cars. The skyscrapers provide plenty of cover for ambush teams with anti-materiel weapons, but the rubble hides plenty of useful materials and treasures. Fights are common in this area, whether with hostile Rigs or crystal creatures.
Near the center of Downtown is the Gaelgar Mall. In days long past, it was filled with throngs of people looking for clothing, collectibles, and groceries. It is directly connected to several skyscrapers. The corridors of Gaelgar Mall are quite wide and tall, and can accommodate two Rigs side by side.
One of downtown’s skyscrapers used to be the headquarters of Black Dog Biomed, a technology company that promised a wide range of miracles, always just five years away from delivery. A lot of their research files are still accessible, if their computers can be powered up and hacked into.
When Pilots are exploring the Downtown area, roll on this chart every 10 minutes to see what they find.
| Roll 1d20 |
|---|
| 1-10. Nothing much, this week. |
| 11. Gold, a friendly pilot. He is willing to offer information or trade loot. |
| 12. Bandit Trio, two Hunters and a Disabler, searching for “Tribute” |
| 13. Bandit Trio trying to rob a friendly Rig pilot. |
| 14. Crystal, Large, covered in wax seals, liturgical scripts, and so on. Any attempt to harvest it triggers an ambush from cultists armed with anti-Rig weapons. Treat as an HD2 threat with a Mobility attack that does 1d8 damage. |
| 15. Party+1 Boars |
| 16. Three Boars and a Butterfly |
| 17. A skyscraper finally collapses, roll Mobility to avoid 1d4 damage from debris. |
| 18-20. Crystal, roll 1d4 to determine size. |
Bainsbury Shelter is run by its military, the Bainsbury Defense Force. The BDF is a relatively small force and, in times of crisis, leans heavily on the shelter’s Pilots for assistance. In peaceful times, they work as law enforcement, man the entrance gates, and so on.
The BDF’s rigs are painted in a mottled gray and black pattern, with the BDF’s crest on each shoulder.
Many Auxiliaries are contracted to the BDF, but they are always considered to be lower in the command chain than an equivalent human.
Commander Adam Ahn, leader. Commander Ahn is a man with black hair and slightly tan skin. He rarely leaves the shelter these days, and is almost always buried in paperwork. If you hear his authoritative voice over the speakers in the shelter, something bad is happening, or about to happen.
Sergeant Kyle McClasky, guard. Sgt. McClasky is a short, wide-shouldered man with pale skin and red hair. He and his partner, A-Sgt. Romeo, can usually be found in a Rig guarding the main gate of Bainsbury. He usually greets returning Pilots with a comment about how much damage they’ve taken. His uniform has red epaulets with three black chevrons on the shoulders.
Auxiliary-Sergeant Romeo, guard. A-Sgt. Romeo is a lanky, pale auxiliary with black hair. He is stoic and almost always stands at attention. His specialty is analyzing enemy Rigs.
The Legion are a bunch of hooligans who arrived in the area a year ago. Their Rigs are heavily armed and painted red. They are most commonly seen around the shipyard, but they send out what they call “tribute patrols” to harass any Pilots they encounter on the road, demanding payment with the threat of violence.
Their base, the Verge, is a white and blue roll-on/roll-off car carrier, docked at the Bainsbury shipyard. Its main deck has been converted into a Rig hangar/garage, and can hold up to 40 Rigs in various states of repair, plus a main battle tank that has been re-engineered to run on V-Crystals, just like a Rig.
The rest of the Verge is storage and quarters for the Legion, which has a total of roughly 150 members.
David Menez, the Red Lord. The Red Lord is a mysterious figure. He has been leading the Red Legion for years, after inheriting his title from his predecessor. He firmly believes that a medical lab in the Gaelgar area has a serum of eternal life, and is unlikely to leave the area until he finds it or is killed.
Samantha “Sam” Cutter, bandit. Sam Cutter is a bandit working for the Red Legion. She considers herself an ace Pilot, and she keeps a tally of Rigs she’s destroyed front and center on her Rig. She has pale skin and short, black hair. She likes to hop on the radio and taunt whoever she’s fighting.
Dys-N, auxiliary bandit. Dys-N is a quiet electronic warfare auxiliary who supports Sam largely by breaking into enemy communication networks so she can talk trash at them. Dys-N is a gaunt man with white hair and dark eyes.
“Damocles’ Disciples,” more commonly known as the Crystal Cult, is a religious group that believes that the V-Crystals and the crystal creatures are the envoys of a higher power. They are not a unified group, and each sect “adopts” a crystal as their worship site, covering it in strange seals and fetishes.
Few Cultists use Rigs, since V-Crystals are an important component of a Rig’s power supply. This does not mean they are pacifists, however. They simply prefer to use rocket-propelled grenades, anti-materiel rifles, and so on.
Most Crystal Cults avoid the rain, since it causes a lot of pain, but some expose themselves deliberately to it. This inevitably ends with crystals growing out of the bodies of the Disciples, and turning them into shambling, mindless creatures.
Father Farley, Disciple preacher. Father Farley is a charismatic man with dark, wrinkled skin and a staff with a Vitracite crystal taped to its tip. He has little love for the Pilots of the Bainsbury Shelter, but is willing to work with them against the Red Legion if necessary.
I hope you found this region interesting! I’ve got a third part of this series in the works, using most of these locations for a single adventure, but until that comes out I hope you and your group enjoy exploring Gaelgar.
If you’re running a game that doesn’t have mechs, like The Rad-Hack or The Wasted Hack, the easiest way to adapt this setting would be to remove the Rigs and replace them with souped up Mad Maxian vehicles. Hope that helps!
-Garm
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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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