The Wasteland Landmarks
- Geography: Regional History and Loading Screen Text
......Ark Bay 313
......Back Range
The Hestia Back Range is frequently used as a basic training area for Hestia Company Candidates and freelancers.
+History
Originally the area known as the Hestia Back Range was built for use as an outdoor military test facility. Located near Ark I, the Hestia Back Range sits in a rocky wide bowl, buttressed against a series of cliffs and mountains to the west and east, with the highway running down the valley in the middle. After using the area for as a testing ground for terrestrial and orbital weapons, the Frontier Location Command (FLC) moved a series of drone launch platforms into the Range - remote devices that proved to be a boon in training and recruit indoctrination. In fact, FLC routinely uses the Back Range as a basic training area for Hestia Company Candidates, where they can fully evaluate a recruit’s individual disciplines in real battle conditions before moving them on to Upside.
Of interest to new arrivals is Ascent Station, a small cluster of buildings, repair facilities, and merchants located in the northeastern section of the range. Candidates will call this area home as long as they are on the Back Range, and it contains generally everything one will need to survive and even prosper in this area. Of course, Hestia has a number of officials and other employees scattered throughout the area, evaluating Candidates with all sorts of tasks and missions. Directly to the west of Ascent Station is the Drone Range, a crater-filled basin where Hestia still does a lot of weapons testing, notably orbital calibration shots. Human shielding prevents any damage from these tests, but the less-than-bright Scavs typically venture into the area – and never come out.
The FLC and the League of Observation and Access (LOA) frequently have tasks that need quick resolution involving the Scavs. While a small minority of the Scavs provide a useful labor force for Hestia, many live and scavenge outside the shielded areas around Ark I, including the Back Range. They frequent an area called The Pileyard in the western and southwestern area of the range. Hestia discards a lot of their waste material in this wreck of an ancient city, which the Scavs consider a literal gold mine. For entertainment, the Scavs drive around the racetrack south of Ascent Station. Often times these annoying but potentially dangerous Scavs need to be culled and reduced to be taught a lesson, but the cynics believe this to be a temporary solution at best.
.......Upside
Upside is the Hestia Company sponsored 'First New City of the Human Race'. Upside is a shining example of The Hestia Company's advanced enviroprocessing technology, showcasing the latest shield and energy techniques developed in the Company's laboratories. Hestia Labs, where your future is designed and perfected!
+History
As the Hestia Company first emerged from Ark I, the process of the Reclamation Project was already long underway. Nestled deep in a series of rolling hills and newly formed ranges of low mountains, Hestia Company referred to this spot of the Humans' return to the surface as Ascension. Those that emigrated to the surface, to live life anew in this new world, immediately coined the growing city Upside.
In the following months, the name of Upside took hold, despite Hestia's weak objections. Many of those that left the Ark saw the surface as a new beginning, a dramatic change in the predictable and somewhat sterile way of life in the Ark that Hestia had designed for them (after all, it's part of their logo). Therefore, as the vernacular went, living on the surface “had plenty of upside.” That wasn't all, however. Even before the construction of the city grid, Hestia established a series of powerful energy shields around the hills and valleys – a protective barrier against the powerful factions its reconnaissance-in-force patrols had already encountered. These shields produced a bright blue glow, which attracted many of the indigenous, downtrodden peoples still on the surface. Hestia saw an immediate need for their use, and after proper processing and adjustment introduced them into the new colony (the Ark was entirely off limits). To them – living within the new city also had tremendous “upside.”
Currently Upside is the largest pure Human settlement in all the Central Wastelands. It acts as the cradle of Humanity, where ambassadors and representatives from other settlements visit, meet, and plan how they can emulate Hestia's relative success with Upside. While access to the Ark proper is heavily restricted (it is even rumored by conspiracy theorists that once you leave the Ark you can never come back), Upside houses the largest population of pure Humans in the Central Wastelands and is home to the Frontier Location Command and other military organizations. In fact, housing and commercial endeavors have quadrupled within the last year, as many young recruits in the armed and science services pass through Upside before deploying into the unknown – while others continue to call it home today.
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The League
Bounty Hunters that work for the Hestia Company usually find themselves working for the branch known as the LOA. The League of Observers and Access is the primary intelligence arm of The Hestia Company, and are often the first to know of a situation as they are sent before the FLC to spy out the way.
Over a Century of Excellence
The Hestia Company is proud to provide clear, refreshing Hestia water to the people of the Ark. Hestia has maintained the only source of 100 percent pure water on the planet for over a cerntury. Hestia Water...Tastes Great, Less Mutating!
The Frontier Location Command
The Hestia Company's front line troops bear the appellation The Frontier Location Command. These brave Commandos are The Hestia Company's main line of defense against gang and bandit incursion. They spend their days 'Locating', which usually means looking for pockets of Thugz or the Corps to kill.
.......Upside Greasepit
This garage complex is part protected parking lot and part fix-it shop. Jake Detroit bought himself a mutually beneficial partnership with Hestia when he took over operations of the Greasepit himself. This deal set a new precendent for Citizens that wanted to strike their own path, and yet still uphold the glory of Humanity. The Hestia company has since struck many similar deals, andmutually beneficial partnerships with the Company is the heart of the Freelancer protocol.
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Jake Detroit's Craft Stations
Jake has installed the latest in Hestia's micronized Fabrication, Reactor, and Control facilities. This makes Jake Detroit's a one stop, full service solution for any of your repair needs. Jake Detroit and The Hestia Company welcome all Citizens with skills at craft to make use of these stations for the good of the Emergence. Thanks for stopping by Jake's!
.......Scav Alley
.......Highway 80 West - Hydroelectric
This area was once a buzzing row of mills and industrial towns, all powered by the great hydroelectric facility build into the northern cliffsides. Now, naught but ruin remains of the small towns and fabrication mills and is overrun by Scavs and Thugz. Wehn the LOA mapped this sector, company forces found the area rich in resource and wildlife and the HARP now consider this region one of the richest in natural resource within the Company's perimeter.
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Apollo
The FLC base known as Apollo is the second major Hestia installation along Highway 80 West. While Revival was built primarily as a research station, Apollo is designed to both house and equip FLC commandos specifically to pacify insurgence in this region as the Company's Emergence schedule proceeds.
.......Apollo Base
A few short years after the HARP established Revival, the COmpany decreed that the Highway 80 west region could easily host a secured second city site. After both the Glass Rock Quarry area and the Hydroelectric complex itself were considered and found for varying reasons to be unsuited for long term human habitation, the Apollo Station Project was initiated. The HARP and FLC came together for this effort, and a record breaking 3 months later the first vault room of Apollo was ready for internal construction to begin. Now Apollo Station is second only to Ark 1 in population and facilities.
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Wide Band Bend
During the construction of Apollo, the FLC was contacted by members of a well organizes trucking group that called themselves the CBers. At first, negotiations went well and these self-proclaimed traders were allowed passage near the new Hestia establishment, but soon it became apparent that these CBers were bent on domination of the road networks themselves. After many skirmishes with 'Road Tax Collectors' and 'Cargo Inspection Crews', the CBers were declared a threat on the order of notorious Corps or Thugz, and passage rights were revoked.
.......Apollo Well
.......Outfall
.......Aurora
Intro
+History
A verdant oasis, Aurora is built at the source of the river that winds throughout the region. Pilgrims often come to meditate in the peace of the Zendig spring house. There is a Zendig Barter meet here, as well as a Human owned body shop called Buck's.
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Fact
Text
.......Dreamtime
.......Duenna
Duenna began as another Ark project facility, but after the Arks all became separated from the communications grid, each began to degrade in various ways. Only the Ark I was sufficiently well operated and maintained to stand the test of years. Duenna suffered the effects of apathy, power-mongering and elitism within it's walls, making the restoration a long one once rediscovered by the Hestia Company.
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Hestia Assured Purity
Do not accept foodstuffs or medicines is trade from any unlicensed purveyor that you may encounter in the wasteland. Remember, only Hestia Assured Pure foods keep your body H.A.P.py!
.......Duenna Deeps
.......Fasthold
.......Fireline
.......Lost Stronghold
.......Highway 21: Militia Base
This region just outside the purview of the Hestia Company's Ark I is largely populated by Scavs and Thugz. These gangs descended from the days when this was little more than idle suburbia on the edge of a major city. Dominating the hills in the center of the region is The Corps, a militant group led by the mad General Nostos. THe Corps hold the lesset Scavs of the region is sway with the guns of their mighty flying machines.
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General Nostos and The Corps
Before the bombs fell, the Corps was a crew of armchair warriors that threw an occasional demonstration at the local decommissioned military base. Once the Mutant scare began, they closed up their doors and moved within the walls of the base itself. As the years wore on, The Corps went through many leaders, some more ambitious that others. The head man at the base for the past 30 years is the Mad General, Nostos
.......Revival
.......Ruins Of Geinsville
.......Rusty Iron Mine
.......Steelfields
.......Suicide Town
.......The Falls
.......Windjammer
.......Highway 99-00: The Choppin' Maul
This once-proud bastion of commercial excess has festered and collapsed in with the passing of many years. Subsidence has caused the very foundation of massive shopping complex of avenues, walking paths and shops to buckle and collapse into a massive crater-like pit, lined with fallen structure and ringed with suburbs of old spiraling outward into the nearby hills.
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The Mall of the Universe
This was once the largest shopping environment in the region, fountains, a roller coaster and carousel and every type of commercial outlet imaginable once sat here. Naturally the money and population drew gangs and hustlers from all around. In the years since the Solution, subsidence and ordinance have reduced this structure to shards and disparate remnants.
Duenna
When the Ark IV was rediscovered a decade ago, it was with great fanfare and celebration that this sister city to Upside was founded. Sadly it soon became evident that many seals and environmental processing facilities had been poorly implemented or maintained and this Ark had not fared as well as the Hestia maintained Ark I.
The Law
These boys in blue gathered together naturally in the last throes of civilization in an understandable attempt to maintain some order as their world fell apart. Now they are locked in a seemingly endless struggle against their oldest enemies, a local gang called the EILM. Not surprisingly, over the many decades of battle, The Law have become no better than their enemies, levying taxes and curfews on those hapless Scavs that can't fight back.
The EILM
When the law of the Gun was the only law left to the cities, the E.I.L.M finally got an opportunity to try to be gangster 'Lynch Mobberz' they always wished they could be. So they went into 'bizness' - cooking bathtub dope and selling it in their turf. Once Mom's Minivan was reequipped with some heavy artillery, even The Law had to take notice.
Local Gangs and The Law
The main contingent of gangers in this region are known as teh EILM or the 'Lynch Mob' for short. These suburban kids gone bad continued their criminal ways long after the apocalypse, becoming the primary force of oppression and violence in the area. Their claim to this role is only rivaled by the forces of their arch enemies, the highway vigilantes who call themselves The Law.
Switchback
The Zendigs came to this region during their time of diaspora and were immediately chased from the junk pit at the middle of the region by the local gang violence. Some went south immediatly and abandoned the Highway 99 area, but a few took to the high hills that surround the area and from this removed perch make their careful forays into the wreckage.
.......Stalwart
The INC Stronghold of Stalwart is not only a landmark in the Choppin' Maul region, but a legend elsewhere. The largest of INC installations known to the Hestia Company, Stalwart rises proudly from the wreckage of the Mall of the Universe. The LOA scouts that found the tower named it Stalwart, as it stands firm against any assault from below and rises too high in the atmosphere to be assaulted by any other faction. INC refers to this tower as INC Epicenter 375AA, but none of Hestia's refer to that designation.
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Duenna
When the Ark IV was rediscivered a decade ago, it was with great fanfare and celebration that this sister city to Upside was founded. Sadly it soon became evident that many seals and environmental processing facilities had been poorly implemented or maintained and this Ark had not fared as well as the Hestia Ark I.
Fasthold Refugee Town
The LOA found the hidden settlement of Fasthold only after many days in the region. The Scavs of this withdrew into these high walled passes to shelter the seemingly never-ending conflict in the pit at the center of the region. The Hestia Company has since seized the opportunity to build and fortify as research facility in this town, to study the effects of contamination on the locals. Since that time, refugees have flocked from other hidden pockets to the shelter of the Hestia blue shield walls.
INC is your friend
These is no doubt that INC is "The only way to fly". Even Hestia has not taken the airways back in the way that INC holds them. Luckily for the Freelancer, the Company has close corporate ties to INC, and has negotiated a perpetual 'mutual interest' contract that covers every card carrying Hestia Freelancer by default. Further, convenient independent travel contracts are available for negotiation at a button press from any Hestia built vehicle.
.......Dark Hollow
By the time Hestia Company ordered the LOA into the region, an unnatural swamp at the southern end had consumed the once rocky canyon descent, leaving only murky contaminated deeps behind. These environs are home to extremely aggressive mutant tribes and should be entered only with caution. Current conditions are available at the Hestia LOA site, to the west of the canyon mouth.
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Caelus Purpurea
The microscopic spore designated Caelus Purpurea grows thicker as one heads south. Hestia Daemons are sent to sample and analyze atmospheric levels of Caelus specifically among the myriad xenomorphic spore types as Caelus is linked directly to Carceri in humans. Dread Carceri, also called Spore Poisoning or Spore Madness by Scavs is apparently caused by an infestation of these micro-spores in the human brain and is unilaterally untreatable.
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+Loot
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