Issue 01 - Welcome to the Pit!
By wasteland standards, the settlement known as the Pitt is a pretty decent place. The town had braved all the usual troubles of a wasteland settlement -- acid rain, radiation, drifting bioweapon clouds, raiders, horrors, hunger, insanity -- to become a burgeoning community of about seven thousand. The star of the Pitt was a pre-war smelting plant that had been meticulously reassembled and rehoused, melting down the irradiated and corroded scrap of the Pittsburgh ruins into fresh, clean, strong steel. The metal trade was the lifeblood of the town, trading ingots and high quality blades and tools to surrounding settlements in exchange for the food and medicine they desperately needed. The prosperity of the town was coveted by its neighbors, but its sturdy reinforced stone walls protected it from incursion like a medieval fortress. All was not well, however. Various problems were preventing this rare island of metastability from growing any further and kept it teetering on the edge of disaster.
It was exactly the sort of situation that Mother preyed upon.
Through the underground pipeline Legacy X hears from his predecessor that the Pitt was due to be prospected by Mother for integration into her Barrier City Initiative. The town is simply not ready however; there's too many doubts about the AI's promises of safety, too much attachment to their independence, stubborn holdouts, and (metaphorical) skeletons out in the open. Even the town's current mayor, one delightfully-named woman going by Gyarados Skullfucker, is rumored to be on the fence about whether to fight or let herself be absorbed. Even if the population were to be sucked up into the Mother-ship, the resulting vacuum would have disasterous consequences on the surrounding smaller wasteland communities. Unless something changes, and soon, there is going to be violence.
Thus does Legacy X put out the word to some of his contemporaries in the Wonder space. They're going to save the Pitt... though whether that means facilitating their integrating, strengthening their position to make Mother's offer less attractive, fighting the mechanical menace off by force, or simply taking the place over is up to them. The benefits of being outside any authority is that no one is telling them what to do!
The Pitt is more than just a clever shortening of the city whose ruins the town is built atop. The orbital weapon that had destroyed the city had cut a quite literal fissure through its remnants. You knew this, but beholding it for the first time and seeing the physical reality of the war-scar leaves you speechless. Almost a hundred miles long, ten miles wide, and who even knows how deep; even at the height of noon the sun fails to illuminate its murky depths. You had always thought that the Treatymaker satellite had destroyed Pittsburgh with a direct hit, but it looks like it had actually struck the outskirts; if it had been a direct hit then there would have been nothing left! Even with a near miss much of the city had been buried in dirt and molten rock, very much as if the victim of a volcanic eruption.
The Pitt is built on the south side of the Treatymaker Fissure. As you approach the city you occasionally spot small salvage crews digging with restored pre-war construction vehicles, moving dirt with huge mechanical buckets and breaking through deposits of molten stone with jackhammers and improvised explosive devices. They are rather protective of their claims, but cautiously help direct the incognito Wonders towards the town if asked. Getting anything else out of them would likely require a smooth tongue.
Passing through (or flying over) the Pitt's impressive stone walls greets the Wonders with cobblestone and metal buildings. Each residence has a square plot or two framed by stones from whence the small, struggling leaves of carrots, potatoes, and other hardy vegetables protrude, protected from the environment by varied means. One overachiever even has a semi-sealed greenhouse made of stretched clear plastic sheeting. Even at a glance it is clear there is something wrong with the plants, but it'd take someone knowledgeable about plants to figure out what.
There is a bone-fide market in the center of town, with wastelanders from all over trading post-apocalyptic goods; biodiesel, water, vegetables, seeds, soil, spare parts, guns and ammunition. One joker is selling books and handheld video games out of a purple carriage drawn by a pair of pigs, who seems to be getting a lot of window shoppers out of sheer absurdity. A couple of shouts go up as you take in the scene; an early-teen boy is sprinting away with what looks like a whole watermelon in his arms as an annoyed vendor yells at him. He doesn't get far before a man with a crowbar snags his leg and trips him, and as he hits the cobblestone street a second "guard" joins the first in beating the everloving shit out of him with the flat of his machete. They spit on the swiftly-broken and mewling body of the would-be thief and carry the miraculously intact watermelon back to the stall owner. The boy is left in the street to suffer; no one is rushing to offer him any medical attention.
The smelter is as far from the walls as practical. The smelting house itself is made of corrugated sheet metal rather than stone and is almost two hundred meters long. A big diesel generator on the side provides power, and brick chimneys belch coal smoke. More prominant as you approach the building however is the stench. It's hard to place exactly, but it smells like algae, ash, and rot. A momentary breeze makes the source obvious; the smell is coming from the Treatymaker ravine. It looks like the Pitt has been using the old war scar as a dumping site for slag and other garbage. This is probably a problem, though its exact nature is elusive without further investigation.
Gyarados Skullfucker's office is not far from the smelter. It is the biggest and most fortified building in the place, looking very much like a medieval castle with machine guns. The place looks like it could withstand a full scale assault and probably also serves as the town's vault. Miss Skullbleeper (as she is known to the kids) took over the Pitt by force some four or five years ago in a bid to retire after thirty years of being a badass wasteland pirate woman. She was apparently a child during the War, making her impressively old by wastelander standards, and survived where many of her contemporaries failed by being smart, rational, and humble. According to Legacy IX, the mayor is expecting them, knows what they are, and may even have work for them.
There is a lot to do in this town, and likely not all of the problems are obvious. The town has a sizable pub just off the market plaza, and though much of the citizenry is engaged in work at the moment it might be a good place to befriend of the locals and learn their less obvious troubles.
Whatever they do, the Wonders have to manage their time carefully; Mother's first arrivals are due to arrive in only three days.
What do you do first?