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When the Great War destroyed civilization, humanity's petty rivalries died along with
the people who harbored them. From the leaders of nations right down to neighbors squabbling
over their gardens, the voices went silent when the bombs fell. But there are is a small
group of people who survived the war and kept on living for hundreds of years afterwards.
Along with their deformed bodies and deteriorating minds, they've also kept alive their grievances
from hundreds of years ago. They call themselves a microcosm of the old world, and they play
an endless game of treachery and manipulation that has lasted so long they can barely remember
why they're fighting.
The old world was filled with secretive people and organizations. Small towns and seemingly
innocent locations could hold both wonders and horrors. Beneath those wholesome diversions
were many secrets, some of which simply refused to die. Point Lookout National Park was a
ways south of Washington DC, far enough to not get scorched by the bombardment during
the war, but it still got a good dose of fallout pouring in through the waters of the Potomac.
There are some records of what it was like in the final days, left behind by a medical
team that passed through. The backwater residents of the place were
hit hard by the New Plague that spread across the land in the years before the war. The
government had sent in a series of medical experts to curb the spread of the plague,
but the locals weren't exactly hospitable to outsiders. And that was back before they'd
had two centuries of inbreeding and mutation.
Now the place is crawling with a local flavor of mutant hillbillies who survive off a regional
fruit called the punga. They supplement their diet with whatever protein they can find,
and that usually comes from travelers who visit Point Lookout searching for pre-war
loot.
"Come out and play!"
"Come on out."
"We ain't gunno bite."
"I hear something moving!"
"Don't you go runnin'!"
"I'm gunno eat good tonight!"
"You in the wrong place girl!"
"Oh my god! Someone help me!"
"I got somethin' for ya!"
No! No! Please! Get away!
"You ain't got no chance!"
The only way to reach the peninsula is by boat, and on the Potomac there used to be a man
with an antique paddle steamer. Claimed that he once sailed up the Atlantic coast all the
way up to the Commonwealth.
He would sell punga fruit to traders in Washington – although he never seemed to bring any
goods with him back to Point Lookout, aside from passengers. Those passengers usually
didn't return to their point of origin but, according to the few that have, there is a
church down in Point Lookout that is surprisingly welcoming to newcomers.
The church was the Ark and Dove, named after the ships that brought the first settlers
to Maryland close to eight hundred years ago. The Calvert family was among the first people
to settle the region, and by the time of the Great War, they had influence in politics,
finance, and industry. They could pull strings with General Atomics, and had the clout to
acquire and scientific acumen to modify the military biogel that keeps disembodied brains alive.
They had the kind of resources to keep a person alive through the apocalypse, and beyond.
That kind of influence also brings enemies. One explorer came back from Point Lookout
full of stories of pre-War rivalries that bubbled up again like swamp gas. A ghoul had
been stalking the Calverts for over two hundred years, and the knowledge that one of them
might still be alive drew him back to the Calvert ancestral estate in Point Lookout.
Desmond Lockheart has been an international operative since the Resource Wars of the twenty
first century. Now, that man's on the radar of every organization from the Regulators
to Talon Company, to Littlehorn & Associates. Not many ghouls in the wasteland have a British
accent, so that “bloke” stands out wherever he goes. Doesn't make him any less conspicuous
that he always travels with a pair of tough as nails attack dogs, and carries enough ordnance
to blow up a Brotherhood bunker.
I was never sure how his rivalry with Calvert turned out. Desmond isn't the sort to linger
around swapping stories of his exploits, but one or both of them must be dead, for sure.
But that feud was only one of the hidden horrors of Point Lookout. The locals called it haunted
long before things like ghouls ever existed, and that swamp has deep roots that dig down
to what a praying man would call hell. But that is a story for another day...