025 - Grief's Junkyard, Inhabitants

This is the fourth in a series of posts intended the outline the framework for a game in the same vein as the official Campaign Starter Kits.

Grief’s Junkyard, Inhabitants

The Dead

Anyone who died in a vehicle who was the most loved of someone still living exists within the Junkyard, locked in an infinite loop of their final actions. They will exist this way so long as they hold prime place in that person’s heart (in game terms, occupying the Favourite relationship slot) before fading and collapsing into scattered dust and leaving behind only the wreckage they died in (all vehicles in the Junkyard are ruined in some way, even those which have no reason to be). They can be woken from this state by physical contact, which makes them fully aware of their surroundings.

Once woken they are dependent on the person who touched them, no longer fully tied to the otherspace which trapped them in their half-life. If physical contact is broken with the person who woke them while in the Junkyard they crumble away as if forgotten. The only sure way to avoid this is to leave with them via the Pit. Allegedly there are ways around this.

The Lost

Not everyone who enters the Junkyard finds their way out. Some get lost and some lose themselves. Some were never meant to leave. Most of these people die of exposure, human needs are just as prevalent in the Junkyard as the real world. Others eke out lives as scavengers, surviving on the scraps they salvage from new wrecks. The most successful band together in groups, preying on those weaker than them, including visitors from the outside.

Some think you can take them back with you. They might be right. They might do anything just for the chance. They might hate you if you try. There are several prominent groups among them:

The Lost - Raiders

Consider the kind of person who looks at the Mad Max franchise and sees that lifestyle as something to emulate. Not as a joke, not as a temporary fictional escape from crushing, prosaic banality but an honest to god pitching it all in and becoming a sports gear clad lunatic behind the wheel of a tricked out junkheap for however long they’re able to stay alive.

Those are the Raiders and, by god, this is heaven for them.

The largest of the Raider groups - Freya’s Liberated - draw their power from ties to the outside world. They use the smaller groups to feed their membership, promising access to real world luxuries, weapons and gasoline obtained by trading with clued-in outsiders. Occasional schisms and thefts are brutally put down to maintain hegemony.

This may change in the near future. Freya’s Liberated have struck the motherlode, the long lost USS Scorpion submarine sunk in 1968. Although it’s crew have long since dispersed as their loved ones have died or grieved and moved on the submarine itself is (somewhat) intact, along with two W34 nuclear warheads.

Nuclear weapons are a game changer. Some of the Liberated want to keep them as a symbol of power, some want to use them on their enemies (assuming they could figure out how), others want them gone. Factions have sprung up within the gang and word has spread to other, smaller gangs looking for a coup. For now the plan is to sell at least one of them to the Saturn’s Bulls who will flounder trying to find a real world buyer.

The Lost - Slavers

Being completely dependent upon another person for survival can produce unhealthy dynamics, especially in a resource scarce environment. Some people seek out this kind of dynamic, either because they’re sick or they’re malicious. It doesn’t make much difference which, in the Junkyard these people wind up being the slavers who prey on the dead.

Being able to kill someone by not touching them anymore is some pretty insane leverage. It limits what they can do for you, sure, but most of the slavers don’t mind. Plus there is evidence that those further up the hierarchy have discovered methods which allow them to circumvent the hard limitations on handling the dead: being able to rouse several at a time and give them the ability to survive independently for short periods.

Whatever the truth, it is locked away inside the slaver vaults. Hand dug, underground moleman-style settlements they use to hide the dark practices they indulge in, emerging only to collect more human chattel.

The Lost - Independents

It takes a real freak to survive alone in the Junkyard’s environment, but it’s not like the Occult Underground has any shortage of those. Otherwise loners tend to be those who’ve only just entered or fragmented remainders of a larger group, neither last long:

The Cleanser

No one should be allowed to play god. The Junkyard is a mistake and a temptation that humanity is not equipped to handle. The Cleanser understands this and works to thwart the weak wills of people who would try to take advantage of the Junkyard’s dubious fruits. It lays the dead to rest.

To the other Junkyarders the Cleanser is a boogeyman. The gaskmasked lunatic won’t bother with raiders preying on each other but has no problem skulking up and waylaying a pack of slavers while they’re resting with a machete and molotovs. No one has seen its face and when it does speak its voice is a hollow rumbling.

The Cleanser needs no Favourite.

STATS
Personality: A cross between the titular character from The Book of Eli and Doomguy. Despite the fact it isn’t religious the Cleanser sees itself as a holy warrior fighting its way through hell for humanities’ salvation.
Rage: Violations of natural order. The Cleanser especially hates adepts.
Noble: Risking itself for humankind.
Fear: “When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth” (Unnatural).
Obsession: The dead stay dead.
Wound Threshold: 70.

The Cleanser 70%* (Substitutes for Struggle, Provides Wound Threshold, Provides Initiative)
Avatar: The Martyr 70% (Avatar, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick)

Shock Gauges

Notches	Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
Hardened	5	5	3	5	1
Failed	1	5	0	0	1

Disorder: Obsession - Cleanse the Junkyard.

Huxley

Huxley is a bit dim but he probably would have still turned out okay if it weren’t for the way he was raised. No one ever loved Huxley or if they did they never showed it: indifferent and disappointed parents who instead doted on his older, smarter sister, peer groups who he never fit in with, a community in which he was invisible. There was no bitter resentment at being excluded from these experiences in Huxley, purely mild acceptance and cow-eyed curiosity.

The idea of love fascinates Huxley, even if he isn’t quite sure what it is.

This unanchored preoccupation defined Huxley, forming a tiny core around which turned all his waking thoughts. He had no other life: no friends and distant family, he never finished school, worked a series of dead-end jobs and lived alone. He found joy in studying the cultural detritus of familial and romantic affection, comparing it to the staggering collection of real-life observations and photographs and stories he hoarded in his trailer. Huxley never loved anyone, but fancied that he loved everyone.

He couldn’t tell you how he ended up in the Junkyard but it feels like home. Something about Huxley short circuits this place, his liminal, yearning grasp on the sensation of attachment without experiencing it allows him to slip freely through and live carelessly in the Junkyard’s confines. It would be entirely plausible for him to play petty god here except he has no leash or desire but his overriding obsession.

You’re all Huxley’s Favourite.

STATS
Personality: Gormless and starry-eyed like Dondi Snayheever from Last Call or a combination of Sy Parrish from One Hour Photo and the Trashcan Man from The Stand.
Rage: Huxley has no Rage passion, he’s capable of terrible things but doesn’t have a drop of malice in him.
Noble: Huxley is extremely protective of all kinds of love and will do whatever he can to preserve it, often to the detriment of those experiencing it.
Fear: Physical abuse. Huxley’s father wasn’t a rough man but on a few occasions in Huxley’s formative years he completely lost his temper and Huxley carries that deep down (Violence).
Obsession: Human connection.
Wound Threshold: 50.

Damaged 30% (Substitutes for Secrecy, Coerces Self, Protects Isolation)
Junkyard’s Pet 90%* (Unique - Substitutes for Favourite in the Junkyard, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick)

Shock Gauges

Notches	Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
Hardened	2	6	4	5	4
Failed	2	3	1	3	1