#for best results read in logan cunningham's bastion-narration voice

[melleonis]

under the middle sky

setting write-up for the Apocalypse World game i’m fixing to run:

Deadwater: On the plus side, you live here, you got the only lakefront property anywhere under the middle sky. On the minus side, Deadwater ain't named that for nothin. Don't go boating, don't drink the water. Leave the dead alone and they'll probably leave you alone. Around the lake you've got a bunch of steadings and a couple holds, some even populated still. Palings, at rivermouth, is the big one. Drinkable water without having to dig wells or rig dewcatchers. Everyone else round Deadwater sends tribute to Palings, if they're lucky.

 If they're not lucky, they send tribute to Roos and all her necro fucks on their barge out on the lake, and Roos takes tribute in flesh and blood.

On the east side of the lake, opposite Palings, is the Horizon Dam, or just Horizon. No one goes there except Lark and his family. Whatever they're building up there, best of luck to em.

Past Horizon, the world ends. Well, not ends ends, but whatever's down there is a long, long way down.

South about half a day, you got Santa Loba and their wolf cult. Also the world's last Waffle House. Worth the trip, if you've got something to trade the lobos for safe passage.

Past Santa Loba, the desert turns to glass. Nothing there but sharpness, heat, and mirage men.

North you got desert, desert, more desert, and then Matelas Vegas, hung with its perpetual thunderstorm. Don't go there. Kill anything that comes out. It'll look like a person, at first.

Northwest you got Rez, built into the river canyons with rope and sheet metal, and past that Riverhead and its bigwitch Aquaraina. Pilgrims sometimes go there. Water cultists, families with deadwater kids, the desperate and the lost. It's custom for whoever holds Palings to go up to show face, bend a knee.

And west, you got the best goddamn racing land anywhere, should you got the knuckles for it. Flats, buttes, arches, and honest earth. And why would you risk the howler winds, the lightshows and the occasional uninvited copilot? Speed, brother. Speed and glory. Heaven's shut, but for a few seconds this comes close.

Past that, in the far west, you got silver flats - salt shallows out to the horizon. At night, sometimes you can see the gold and towering form of the holy city, and it casts the angel road all the way to shore. Angelinos walk it, sometimes, perfect and hypnotic and deadly. They come to take something, or change something, and then they go back. Some folks think they can travel the angel road too. Shit, maybe they can. None of em ever come back to say otherwise.

One more thing I gotta tell you about, and that's the Agency. They show up out the desert - always two of em - in their shiny black cars with "DRA" painted on, wearing gold-age blacklux, with their shades and their books and their guns. They act all primo and touchless, and they got much hi-tech to back that up, killer stuff. Most times, tho, they just ask questions, then get back in their car and drive off. The other times, well. Like I said, killer stuff.