Front Creation, Just Outside the City: Cannibal Country, the Garden

  • 13 Replies
  • 10649 Views
*

Judd

  • 203
Padriac, J.J., K.K., Barry, Brandy, you probably should not read this.






The Gardeners

Expresses: Seemingly more stability but...at what cost?

Dark Future/Agenda: The Gardeners re-build civilization but eat people on their sabbath day in order to remember the shame of their past and the importance of making, rather than fighting over the left-overs of the old world in a salvage only culture.

Description and Cast: I have thought a bit too much about these people and my main problem is that I kind of like them.

Of course they don't call themselves cannibals; they call themselves Gardeners.  They live in the Garden (Jersey is the Garden State, doncha know).  Their parents turned to cannibalism to survive and were riddled with guilt about it.  The children turned that guilt into a part of their culture, eating weak folk.  Weak folk are people who do not produce, people who live by salvage, considered to be animals living off of the corpse of the world that was, unable to move on and build anew.

They have a government, elected officials...but on Sunday, they eat people.  People who produce cannot be eaten and of course the Elders decide which vocations are considered productive and which are to be hunted.

The cannibals most people have met outside of the Garden, outside of what Hudson River Valley folk refer to in hushed tones as Cannibal Country are teens, out on a helling, the last murderous mischief of youth before turning to adulthood.  Many teens out on their helling have their teeth filed into sharp points, living up to the cannibal stereotypes.

Stakes Questions:

Will the Gardeners convert the River Folk to their traditions?

Will they get the trains running again?

Will they convert any of the player characters?

Will they make a treaty with Dog Head and his blossoming slaver operation?

Will they continue to sell their meth to Gams, as their primary drug dealer up to the Hudson River Valley?




Threat 1
is called: The Garden Elders

Kind: Grotesque, Cannibal

Impulse: craves satiety and plenty

Description and Cast: Boom, Elder of North Garden, Lead Engineer of the Train Yards

Mariner, Elder of Central Garden, Commodore of the Hook Fleet

The Devil, Elder of South Garden, Sheriff of Atlantic City

Custom Move: Not sure there is one.  Huh.  Thinking about it, suggestions appreciated.

Countdown: Again, don't think there are any, might add some for the Elders' special projects.



Threat 2
is called: The Garden Way

Kind: Affliction, Custom

Impulse: to promote and justify violence

Description and Cast: Man, they have a point, don't they?  They've got some electricity and they're making shit.  Maybe eating some shmuck once a week to remember the Long Winter, to gather with our family to do something horrid in order to remember how low humanity can get isn't such a bad idea?

Custom Move:  Sabbath Meal, roll + Cool

12+ Not only is eating people wrong but choose someone at the table and you convince them that these customs are bullshit.

10+ "Dude, eating people is wrong.  This is fucking dumb."  You see through the bullshit.

7-9 Choose 1

Miss, whoops, all 3, snap out of it whenever you feel its appropriate.

 - You feel comfort in this meal and a bond with the other sabbath-takers.  Take +1 on your next roll to help any one of them or the Garden.
 - You have comitted a terrible sin in order to survive in the Apocalypse World. Talk about it with your fellow sabbath-takers and you will feel absolved (for now).
 - You have the urge to make something, to be a producer and not a salvager.  Talk over your plans over dinner to make something that would make the world a better place.

Countdown:

00-03: Some river-folk villages start to make their own long-boats.

03-06: Garden diplomats secretly meet with river-folk villages who are making their own ships.

06-09: Some river-folk families begin to make their way to the North Garden, partaking of the sabbath.

09-11: River-folk families feud over the Garden's offers.

12: The River-folk who are not Gardeners slowly begin to be driven off of the Hudson.

Threat 3
is called: Helling Teens

Kind: Brutes,

Impulse:

Description and Cast: Kids dressed up in their Sunday best, teeth filed to pointy cannibal-chic, guns often pillaged either from a local township gun locker or their parent's garage, out to score some salvage, some meat and some laughs.

Custom Move: Not sure that there is one.

Countdown:  00-03: Some kids leave the Garden, shoot some shit up and get back with some good stories

03-06: Some kids rampage their way through a village.

06-09: Some helling teens show up at Bear, West Point or Kip-town with barter and cause a ruckus.

09-11: Some helling teens kill a warlord, eat his people and leave the rest in fear.

12: Some helling teens seize a piece of real estate, declare themselves a hardhold and settle down for a spell.


« Last Edit: September 28, 2010, 07:04:23 PM by Judd »

Re: Front Creation, Just Outside the City: Cannibal Country, the Garden
« Reply #1 on: September 29, 2010, 11:22:09 PM »
Amish cannibals. That's awesome.

*

Judd

  • 203
Re: Front Creation, Just Outside the City: Cannibal Country, the Garden
« Reply #2 on: September 29, 2010, 11:43:11 PM »
Amish cannibals. That's awesome.

They're not full-on Amish not by a long shot but I think they did take on some of the Amish crafts, clothing being one of them.

Re: Front Creation, Just Outside the City: Cannibal Country, the Garden
« Reply #3 on: September 30, 2010, 09:07:35 AM »
Good moral quandary stuff going on here!

tell me more about how the sabbath meal works. What's the "when you..." part?
"I don't care what Wilson says." -- some slanderous bastard on the internet

*

Judd

  • 203
Re: Front Creation, Just Outside the City: Cannibal Country, the Garden
« Reply #4 on: September 30, 2010, 11:26:05 AM »
Good moral quandary stuff going on here!

tell me more about how the sabbath meal works. What's the "when you..." part?

Thanks.

I'm not sure what you are asking, Matt.

Re: Front Creation, Just Outside the City: Cannibal Country, the Garden
« Reply #5 on: September 30, 2010, 11:30:56 AM »
You know, how moves are like, "when you do X, roll + Y."

What triggers the roll for the sabbath meal? When I sit down to eat? When I'm offered the meal? When I realize what I've eaten and OMG it's so perfectly seasoned?

Just curious.
"I don't care what Wilson says." -- some slanderous bastard on the internet

*

Judd

  • 203
Re: Front Creation, Just Outside the City: Cannibal Country, the Garden
« Reply #6 on: September 30, 2010, 11:32:15 AM »
You know, how moves are like, "when you do X, roll + Y."

What triggers the roll for the sabbath meal? When I sit down to eat? When I'm offered the meal? When I realize what I've eaten and OMG it's so perfectly seasoned?

Just curious.

Oh, gotcha, yeah it is willingly sitting down to the sabbath meal, wanting to hear what these people have to say.

Re: Front Creation, Just Outside the City: Cannibal Country, the Garden
« Reply #7 on: September 30, 2010, 11:44:31 AM »
Awesome. I dig that.

I'm not nearly as schooled in the moral ambiguity as Judd the Karl Man, so I watch eagerly to see how this plays out.
"I don't care what Wilson says." -- some slanderous bastard on the internet

Re: Front Creation, Just Outside the City: Cannibal Country, the Garden
« Reply #8 on: September 30, 2010, 11:52:55 AM »
Seems like a custom move related to the Garden Elders should be like:

When you parley with the Elders, X

or

When you enter the territory of the Gardeners for the first time, X

This is cool. I like how they've been humanized. Nutritional cannibalism is inherently outwardly-focused - they need more people from outside the community, so conflict and expansion tend to get baked in historically. Ritual cannibalism not so much, but I like the idea that these guys are walking that line of considering it a protein source as much as atonement. Also:

When you eat a shit-ton of human organ meat, roll +hard

10+ It's all good, just meat, innit?

7-9 People are dirty and no fire's hot enough to catch all the filth, you know? Choose two:

* You aren't outrageously 0-harm gut-sick right this instant
* You don't get 1-harm ap gut-sick later, when less convenient
* You aren't nerve-sick with the shakes, a certain tell-tale of cannibalism

On a failure you just got brain-sick with Kuru straight up. It's a slow brain-wasting disease that takes its time. Hard moves comin'.
« Last Edit: September 30, 2010, 02:20:35 PM by Jason Morningstar »

Re: Front Creation, Just Outside the City: Cannibal Country, the Garden
« Reply #9 on: September 30, 2010, 12:53:10 PM »
(Thanks Vincent)
« Last Edit: September 30, 2010, 01:15:50 PM by Jason Morningstar »

*

lumpley

  • 1293
Re: Front Creation, Just Outside the City: Cannibal Country, the Garden
« Reply #10 on: September 30, 2010, 12:57:41 PM »
Admin note: I've upped the allowed edit time. I thought I already had!

*

Judd

  • 203
Re: Front Creation, Just Outside the City: Cannibal Country, the Garden
« Reply #11 on: September 30, 2010, 01:19:12 PM »
Thanks for the medical cannibalism info, Jason and thanks again for the custom moves!

Great stuff.

Re: Front Creation, Just Outside the City: Cannibal Country, the Garden
« Reply #12 on: September 30, 2010, 01:54:15 PM »
Amish cannibals. That's awesome.

They're not full-on Amish not by a long shot but I think they did take on some of the Amish crafts, clothing being one of them.

Oh yeah, I didn't figure they were totally Amish, but I saw enough similarities there that I felt like being silly and pithy :) It might be interesting, though, to actually link these guys to the Amish, and think about how much it would fuck up a bunch of pacifists to be forced to cannibalism, and then examine their particular customs through that lens. They're already plenty exciting, though.

*

Judd

  • 203
Re: Front Creation, Just Outside the City: Cannibal Country, the Garden
« Reply #13 on: September 30, 2010, 06:45:03 PM »
These guys came from two places in my brain-meats.

1) Is that face my lady-friend, Janaki, makes when she sees cannibals in some fictional context and their flesh-eating isn't part of some kind of ritual.  She got her bachelors in anthropology, so I hear a bunch about that.

2) The idea of a salvage culture rooting around in the muck of the world-that-was vs. getting back to a production culture in Apocalypse World.  I like that the Gardeners value makin' shit and makers in general.