Things characters 30 or younger would know:


IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS THE OLD WORLD:

     The Old World was a beautiful country where everyone had everything they wanted until it was destroyed in a gigantic war when the old people were young.  Enemies called 'Russians' and 'Chinese' destroyed everything, burned the cities, and poisoned the land.  They invaded with ships far to the west beyond the mountains and somewhere north of Slowtown by the Sea, and down south in Hell-A.  They killed a lot of people and they brought the Plague with them, which almost killed everybody.  The invaders died when Hell-A was destroyed by fire from the sky, which the old people call 'nukes'.  The nuke fire is still dangerous, and that's why the ruins glow at night.



     The ruins down south that glow in the dark are called Hell-A.  Hell-A used to be called Ell-A, and it was the greatest city in the Old World.  Everyone was beautiful, people spent their days making videos or on the beach and their nights in debauched parties.  All the kids lived in Disneyland, which was the Happiest Place on Earth.  Some say that the Russians and Chinese wanted Disneyland for themselves, and that's why they invaded.  The people wouldn't let them take it, so they destroyed it and turned it into Hell-A.  Now it's just a twisted jungle of glowing slag covered in cinders which sting the eyes and mouth.  When the enemies turned Ell-A into Hell-A, it turned the people into gangs.  The gangs killed and tortured everyone they caught.  The old people killed a lot of them, but they only died when the Plague killed them along with almost everyone else.


PLACES:


     Bakersfield is where the factories and farms were that kept Ell-A supplied. The enemies didn't get as far as Bakersfield, but the gangs tried to destroy it.  The cops and the Army killed all the gangs, but the gangs burned most of Bakersfield.  That's why there are walls around the city now.  Today Bakersfield grows food and makes 'diesel' for the cars and trucks which still go.  There's a big trading ground at Bakersfield where people can find pretty much whatever they want.



     Slowtown by the Sea is hard to get to, but rumor has it that people live pretty well there.  They still have a college there, which is a place where scientists live.  A few trade caravans go to Slowtown because they have arrangements with some of the people who live along the route and they blast their way through the rest.  The word is that it's a dangerous trade route but pretty profitable.



     Santa Cruz is in a big forest by the sea.  The climate is cooler and the forests have a lot of game, but the people who live there don't like outsiders and kill them when they catch them.  They hang their bodies up over the old roads as warnings.  Rumor has it that the people who live there are crazy, and that they believe that invisible spirits in the plants and the animals caused the war to kill all the people in Ell-A because they were harming the Earth.  Only a couple of caravans trade with Santa Cruz, but they're very wealthy because the people of Santa Cruz grow more weed than they can smoke and they'll trade it to people they have accepted.  People say that Cruzers have plenty of food, but there's plenty of weird there too and it's best to steer clear unless you know exactly what you're doing.



     The Northern Death Zone is really nothing to see; there were cities up there like Ess Eff, San Ho, and Old Sack, which is where the Government was, but those were all burned.  There were big battles up there during the war.  Afterward, the poisonous smoke settled on the land in a big strip from the sea to the mountains, like Hell-A's poisoned land down south that goes from the sea to the desert.  The dangerous thing is that in the north the Death Zone looks like normal wilderness, and people don't know they're in it until their hair falls out and they start puking blood.  Then it's too late.



     The mountains to the east have people living in the forests; they're independent homesteaders mostly.  Some of them are friendly enough if you stay on the main roads, but most of them aren't.  A lot of them hate people from Bakersfield.  Most of them are dirt poor and don't have much in the way of weapons, so they aren't going to start a fight unless they're sure they can win or they're completely desperate.  The mountains are full of twisting trails and dangerous traps, and the mountain people will follow travellers for days until their vehicles break down or get stuck.  Then it's just a matter of time.



     Beyond the mountains is just the desert.  It's hotter than Hell-A and nothing grows except scrub grass and tumbleweeds.  Only a few people go out there, and even fewer come back. Some say there are old cities out there, preserved by the dry desert air and ready for plundering. First among them is Las Vegas, where people from Ell-A would go when their debauchery was too low to do too close to Disneyland.



     The Road, or Eye Five as the old people call it, is a dangerous place.  It goes from the Northern Death Zone to Hell-A, or from Dead to Hell as the road warriors say.  There's no law, no mercy, and no one expects any.  What happens on the Road stays on the Road, and any grudges started out there get finished out there.  Townies come down hard on travellers starting trouble inside their turf, and they don't care about who started what.



PEOPLE:

     Townies are people who live in permanent settlements, like Bakersfield or Slowtown.  They don't get around much so they're interested in news and trade a lot of the time, but travellers can often get robbed or killed.  Lesser known settlements can be a lot more dangerous than the big towns like Slowtown and Bakersfield.  People starting trouble in towns find out that townies turn into armed mobs pretty quick.



     Homesteaders can live anywhere and try to live off the land and any farming they can do.  They depend on concealment as their first line of defense.  After that, they'll hole up or run away if the threat looks too strong.  Often running away is just a pretense to circle back and set up an ambush.  Groups of homesteader families can be as big as a small town.



     Road warriors are are the vehicle drivers who brave the dangers of the Road in their armored-up cars and trucks.  They live out on the Road and they travel farther in a month than most townies will in their lives.  They're hard and ruthless from a life spent in danger, and most of them are quick to anger.  They're only somewhat tolerated by towns, and some towns have parking lots outside the walls where the road warriors can trade for what they need and do repairs.  Most road warriors make ends meet by escorting caravans for a cut of the profits or serving as hired guns to towns or whoever will pay.  Bakersfield usually has a contingent of them hanging around because of its diesel refineries.  Road warriors are tough hombres with a lot of mobility and firepower, but they are dependent on fuel, supplies and maintenance.



     The Government hasn't been heard from since the Plague.  The old people say that the Army and the cops used to be a part of the Government, and that they were supposed to protect the Constitution, but the Constitution was Back East when the war came and it was destroyed.  Now some cops fight for their town, other cops made their townies slaves, and small towns don't have any cops.  Army troops call themselves 'units' instead of gangs, and they fight for their town or for themselves.  Some Army units have a 'base', which is a town they own.  A lot of old people used to be in the Army, and some Army units still have vehicles which can blow away any road warrior rig.
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:54, Mon 08 June 2015.

Mobile raider gangs were very common in the first few years after the war, like swarms of destroying locusts.  They were biker gangs and regular criminal gangs that got in their cars to raid and loot.  These gangs died out by around 3 years after the first nuclear exchange due to military response and the bioweapon called the Plague that was carried by the Chinese invasion force which landed on the West Coast.  The Plague depopulated the West Coast and spread to Mexico and beyond.


About 3 years later mobile scavengers began to appear.  These were people who survived the Bad Years, got vehicles in working order and began traveling around to salvage everything they could.  They were different from raider gangs in that they were usually individuals or small groups, and their focus was on scavenging instead of raiding.  Raiding was dangerous and ammo and fuel were scarce; it was much easier to just travel to out of the way places and pick it up for free than fight desperate people for it.  A few years after that when people began to form homesteads and communities again, some of these vehicular nomads settled down, some became trader caravans, and others became what the characters know as road warriors.


Road warriors are primarily individualistic mercenaries, scouts, and explorers who live out on the road or who are traveling most of the time and owe no allegiance to any settlement.  There aren't that many of them because of the difficulty of supplying and maintaining their vehicles.  Most of them are known by reputation, and mark their cars so towns will know who they are as they approach.  The biggest groups are about 4 or 5 vehicles strong.  There is a kind of rough brotherhood among them, and they frequently join together to pull off big escort jobs or to attack a common threat.  Reputation is vital; a road warrior with a bad reputation will find himself banned from settlements, shot at on sight, or even hunted down and destroyed.  A bad reputation comes from raiding, breaking a deal, causing enough trouble in settlements to get kicked out, and generally getting oneself and other road warriors perceived as a menace for townies to shoot at.  A good reputation comes from helping out other road warriors and travelers, keeping one's end of deals, fighting hard for one's employers, behaving dependably in settlements, and demonstrating prowess in fighting, driving, mechanical skills, or discovering new sources of salvage.


That said, none of this is done because anyone is 'nice' or a 'good guy'.  Road warriors are more violent and ruthless than townies or homesteaders because they live unprotected on the road.  They also depend on resources that only townies and a few homesteaders can provide, like maintenance facilities, fuel, and fairly safe places to rest and barter for what they need.  Every road warrior knows it might be him one day out in the desert on foot with his vehicle a smoking wreck behind him, and he dreads the day he'll have to stick his thumb out for a ride.  A road warrior with a bad reputation stranded in the desert better have some serious bartering power or a save a single bullet for himself.


Anyone can become a road warrior.  All he needs is a vehicle and the determination, skills, and luck to keep the vehicle going and survive.  New road warriors come from settlement-based drivers going rogue with a stolen vehicle, crewmen who repair salvaged vehicles and come into their own, or scavengers who get a vehicle running on their own.  It is perfectly possible to be born to road warrior parents, though this doesn't happen too much.  More commonly road warriors have children with settlement women, and pregnant road warrior women settle down.  Most road warrior vehicles are crewed by the owner/operator, for lack of a better term, and his gunners and hangers-on, about 2 to 6 people per vehicle, depending on size.  Some drive alone or hire gunners for jobs.  Hired crewmen are in a tense position because they are untrusted unless they have a sterling reputation.  Road warriors often find each other on opposite sides of mercenary contracts.  Usually they fight it out, but now and then they negotiate an cease-fire.  More commonly they fight it out until a vehicle is destroyed but look the other way as the driver escapes on foot instead of moving in for the kill. Grudges and reputations change everything, and a road warrior won't take a reputation hit over something that happened over 'bad blood'.

So it sounds like road warriors are not really marauding criminals for the most part?

Let me answer you carefully.


The big raider gangs are a thing of the past.  The easily scavengeable fuel and parts have disappeared over the years and the population density is much lower.  There really aren't enough people to form the big raider swarms of the the Bad Years (2020 - 2025) and even if a big gang formed, keeping the swarm going would demand a lot more fuel and parts than the environment can supply (like how locusts die after they've eaten everything).  Raiding homesteads and small towns wouldn't help too much because most people do without fuel and vehicles now. For a worthy haul, a raider gang would have to take on a well-established fuel rich settlement and those will be damn tough nuts to crack.


That said, road warriors are NOT 'good guys'.  They are apex predators who know they depend on the good will of the mechanics, refiners and merchants who support them.  It is in their interest to play well with others.  Near Bakersfield, many of them channel their predation into mercenary work and at least pay lip service to the reputation system.  Many of them are getting older, and they don't want to piss everyone off.

This is not to say they are moral people.  If a small band of road warriors decides they can get away with something, or if they have discovered or put together a base of support that doesn't care what they do, the people they meet on the road are in big trouble.  An individual road warrior might blow away a homestead because he hasn't eaten in a week and he doesn't care about the consequences, and really, the odds of people knowing it was him are very very slim.  It's all about risk vs. reward, and, as always, individuals vary widely.


Back to Fury Road:

Max was a road warrior because he was a fighter who lived a nomadic life on the road.

Furiosa almost became a road warrior until Max convinced her to take over the citadel.

The Old Mothers were road warriors because they were no longer attached to a settlement and didn't really have a permanent encampment, just an abandoned power line tower where one of them indulged her exhibitionist tendencies.  Imagine her surprise when a bunch of people in a war rig happened along.  "It's not what you think, honest!"

The mountain bikers were not road warriors because they lived in a set place by the pass, even though they were predatory and mobile.

The war parties chasing Furiosa were not road warriors because they were really the armies of their settlements.

In Mad Max 2, the Humongous and his gang were road warriors because they were nomadic fighters.  Even the gyro captain could be considered a 'road warrior' of sorts.

None of these examples are perfect, but I think they clarify what the distinctions I'm trying to make.



All that said, there are marauders on the Road.  The Road is very dangerous, and even traders might slit someone's throat if the prize is big enough, like an intact road warrior rig they can load up on a cargo rig and cover with a tarp until they can break it up for parts or sell it to a driver or a settlement that doesn't care where it came from.  This kind of thing is not uncommon, and that's just what is common knowledge.  Here is what most people would know. 


From the mountains in the south which separate the Valley from the Mojave Desert, about 30 miles southwest of Bakersfield, to the East-West Road about 100 miles north of Bakersfield (Highway 198) the reputation system is fairly well-established.  The marauders here are generally bikers who live in secretive homesteads or small unknown villages who lie in wait for the vulnerable, attack them, then bring their prizes back to their homesteads.  Most people suspect that marauders like this have connections in the major settlements where they sell their loot.  Some of them even operate as teams, with some marauding and some functioning as above-board salvagers who make a good living pretending to operate a legitimate business.  These marauders think the reputation system is a joke or they don't even know it exists.  Their small communities and networks provide them with support.  These people are considered providers by the families and communities they support.  Everyone else thinks they're dirty gangsters who are the same as the hated gangs of the Bad Years.  It doesn't help that these marauders are know to traffick their captives and subject them to savage abuse.  They are crafty and innovative when it comes to taking down prey and can be surprisingly well-armed.  One tale told is that they trapped a road warrior rig in a big pit trap, then just buried the driver alive.



North of the East-West Road the reputation system is known, but generally ignored.  The people who live here look on anyone they don't know as a resource to be exploited.  Cannibalism is not unknown.  Road warriors from the South know to Never Break Down North of the East-West Road.  Road warriors who operate in the North are some of the most vicious, ruthless men and women on wheels.  They fight the local marauders, the people on foot, expeditions from the South, the mutated animals, AND they somehow find or steal enough parts and fuel to keep their rigs going.  If they were to cooperate and get it together with enough support, they would be a gang like the Humongous.  Sometimes they come South to trade and will escort people through the North for a price, but their customers better grow eyes in the backs of their heads.  The individuals who some South on a regular basis mark their vehicles and generally play by the rules unless someone starts something.  When they form groups, it's usually a few bikes surrounding a couple of cars or trucks.  They know the land intimately and make excellent guides, but they simply can't be trusted.  Sometimes it's because the prize of a loot heavy client is too much to resist, but often it's just because the client is putting them at risk by being too slow, too inexperienced, etc.


Out on the West Road (Highway 101), the reputation system is unknown and there is no law.  Traders travel in heavily armed convoys and they are usually based out of Slowtown.  A few caravans are based out of Santa Cruz, but they're pretty weird and people will do business with them, but they're not entirely welcome.  Rumor has it, and it's just rumor, that Santa Cruz traders will turn on convoys their traveling with once close enough to the Santa Cruz mountains.  Santa Cruz is not one settlement, but a network of culturally and economically similar holds and homesteads spread throughout the Santa Cruz mountains.  They share an affinity and they are thought to support each other.  Santa Cruz marauders can find shelter and assistance from most Santa Cruz holds, but if they jeopardize the safety of a hold they can find themselves hanging from trees with their guts hanging out along with the bleached bones of outsiders.


Down South past the mountains, is the Desert.  The whole Desert is the Road, and there is no law.  Any type of marauder can be found here, from cycle locusts to car gangs, or even expeditions from settlements no one has ever heard of, but resources are very scarce so they're not that numerous.  The sound of an engine in a quiet desert night is a magnet to the predatory and desperate.  It is a harsh environment and probably still radioactive.  Not much is known about the people who live out there, but people somehow do and life is hard and vicious.  Anyone who goes out there who is not in a position of strength might as well shoot themselves at home.  Rumor has it that there are Army gangs out there that would scare the crap out of Santa Cruz.

I think I'm getting a better feel for things. It seems that in a pa world most folks would be opportunists. There seems to be a slight disconnect between saying most road warriors don't maraud and that they rob and steal in choice circumstances. The more detailed description makes it more like I thought - out on the road it is anything goes. You need to be more careful near settlements to not get a bad rep (although it seems like it would be better to be feared than loved). My impression is that Higgins would be a rarity because he's not going to take advantage if someone's pants are down just to get a meal or a drink of water (or some gas or parts or whatever).

Does that all sound about right?

Yes it does.

What road warriors are not is the stereotypical swarm of vehicle riding mohawked enemies who somehow exist in great numbers in a resource poor environment.

Your assessment about Higgins' ethics is accurate.  Higgins is on one end of a spectrum of behavior.  Around Bakersfield, more road warriors fall somewhere more toward the Higgins end of the spectrum, but their ethics are highly situational.  Up North or Down South, road warriors fall closer to the other end of the spectrum, the take advantage of the weak end of the spectrum.  It's easier for people in general to survive around major settlements, so they don't have to be as extreme.  There are also more consequences to their actions.

Feel free to point out inconsistencies so I can clarify them.

People are people in this game.  No one is designated as the good side or the bad side.