A rover village ship that once traded between Cushulain and Ascondea along the Rappian River is at the center of Shipwreck. Its brightly painted masts jut up conspicuously from the hull at odd angles in a stark juxtaposition to the dead fields surrounding the ship. Whatever brought the ship out into the plains that now surround it did not do so gently. The ship’s hull, garishly painted with multi-colored, whirling designs similar to the tattoos worn by many rovers, is split in two from starboard to larboard. The head of the ship lies on its starboard side, while the stern came to rest on its larboard side. The red-painted foremast juts up from the lolling bow and points due east, while the yellow mizzenmast points to the west. The main mast is being used as the center beam of a common house being constructed by the villagers.

After the Night of Fire, the masts were like beacons to those scanning the near featureless horizon for shelter from the cold. The first to find it was a rover named Whan Cho. After being ostracized from his village ship by his girlfriend’s overprotective father who was the ship’s captain, he had become a common laborer. He had been harvesting in the fields of Cushulain when the world nearly ended. He stumbled upon the ship through the ash, hoping to find other survivors – maybe even someone he knew. But the broken ship contained only dead rovers, strangers all. In the following weeks, others came, mostly humans. Their natural wariness of rovers was overcome by sheer exhaustion. Seeing a rover in a rover ship, they assumed it was his and were grateful for the shelter it provided. Whan saw no need to correct their mistake and graciously accepted all comers.

The Night of Fire directed Whan down a path he could not have predicted. Once happy to work during the day, drink through his pay and start again – he now had a greater goal. He found he was adept at settling disputes among the survivors during the Long Winter. He created a fair plan to dole out the ship’s goods, and the people followed it. In a way, he had risen to the pinnacle of rover society. He was a ship’s captain, and he was good at it. He never gave up hope that the thaw would come. When it did, the people of the ship – his people – asked him what they should do. Whan told them to build.

They first dug a moat in a wide circle around the ship. They used some shovels crafted from oars and barrel staves to dig into the muddy ground. Whan directed them to toss the dirt onto the inner bank to create a low earthen wall that they topped with whatever flotsam from the ship was not useful for anything else. Whan told them the wall and moat would help them defend themselves. From what, they did not know.

The survivors fell back upon the type of society that had gotten them through the Long Winter. Each person’s talents were identified. The best hunters were given the metal-tipped spears made by the best craftsmen in the little group. The best cooks prepared the game for everyone to eat. Those with farming experience planted what few seeds the survivors had and traveled with the hunters to harvest more from any plants that, protected beneath the earth as seeds, emerged into the light as the snow melted away. Everyone in Shipwreck had a place in the small society. The sense of purpose helped keep the despair away. They had come to rely on each other, which helped shape them into a solid community.

The warming weather brought other travelers now and then. They were greeted with distrust at first, but allowed to trade and given shelter if they posed no threat. Whan spoke with each one personally and weeded out those with no useful skills and those who he thought might threaten his authority. The others he encouraged to stay, especially the strong but unambitious.

The people of shipwreck have expanded outside the shelter of the broken ship hulls. Tents and crude sod structures surround the ship. The frame of a long, common house is being built and will be covered with hides to provide shelter for all should the winter come again.


Geography:
* Though he’s not sure, Whan Cho has told his people they are in the Freeland formerly known as Cushalain. Its his best guess given that’s where he was when the Night of Fire struck, and many of his people are also from Cushalain.

* Scouts from Shipwreck have noted the following landmarks within five days’ hike:

* Ruins of a small village three days to the south. It is nearly buried in ash and the people of Shipwreck think they have picked it clean of useful items.

* A massive, obviously new, cliff wall two days north that stretches east and west for longer than any of them have explored.

* A sizable copse of petrified trees about four days to the southwest. The hunters heard hideous growls coming from it and have not returned since.

* A sinkhole five days to the south that leads underground. Two scouts were sent to explore it but neither returned. Whan has chosen not to explore it further, though he is curious about it.

Hullo, Jamie,

That is some very cool material, and gives me a few ideas for some stuff for the game.

Thanks, John.

We've been writing quite a bit of new material that we're pretty excited about. I hope we can get a Desolation 2.0 draft out to the playtesters in the not too distant future.

How do you become a playtester again?

Hullo, Jamie,



This is good news to my ears! I've been wondering when you guys were going to do an update on the game for us to work off.

So, any chance of hearing in a separate thread about stuff at the convention and all? (Some of us weren't there, you know )

Yeah, good question. How DOES one become a playtester again?

--tom

If you're definitely interested, just send a tell or email to me and we'll get you started. The usual rules apply regarding non-disclosure and putting in an honest effort. We'd love to have you playtest Desolation.

Nice write up. I've sent the link to a guy that will be playing a Rover in my upcoming campaign.

Did this make it into Survivors? Or is this the only place that it's listed?

Wow, that's an old post. Shipwreck is actually in the core book. An illustration of Shipwreck and a few other community previews are here: http://www.desolationrpg.com/tour.htm.

Survivors has a few communities with prominent rovers, including Fair Trade, which includes a rover merchant who was so horribly burned during the Night of Fire that he is now mistakable for a mongrel, and Ki-Chan's Village Ship, which uses Beguilers to bring pleasant memories of the Before to survivors up and down the waterfront (while probing their minds for the location of their valuables so the rovers can steal them before sailing away).

Oops. I have the core book. I looked in the index and didn't see a reference to Shipwreck, so assumed it didn't make the cut or wasn't released yet.



Silly me. I'm going through all of the existing threads before I begin my deluge of questions.

Hey now, I spent many, many hours on that index, so I had to check. It is indeed there, under S and everything

Yeah, well today, my alphabetizing skills were broken, and Ship came after Skills. So...oops.