THE WILD MEN OF WICHITA: A GANG RP OF APOCALYPTIC PROPORTIONS
"The year is 1971.
A little over fourty years ago the world as we knew it was destroyed.
It wasn't from some second great war. No meteor. No alien invasion.
No, it was just another Spanish Flu, and an economic collapse that did in thousands of years of civilization...but only for a moment.
Over the years humanity rebuilt, reformed their old societies, or made new ones.
Out here in the plains, we've built a way of life like no other. Big ass gangs gettin enough protection from all these hicks and their inbred families, and shooting up the ones that don't wanna pay. We fuck up all the shithead posers that want to cash in on our "clients", and the big cities fund it all, cuz they know at the end of the day we always head over there to drink and fuck after a hard day's ride.
It ain't so bad once you get used to it, and it's about the only life I've ever known. But out east they're talking about all the bigwigs getting together and tryin to make the world like it used to be, calling themselves the United States of North America, like the America there used to be before that plague and shit. I don't worry, though. We beat those pansy Texans we can beat em easy. Long as big boss Rufus Luckett is on the case. He took me in when I was nothin, raised me like his own. Now I've got my own gang, working for him. Call ourselves the "Wild Men of Wichita". Not very catchey, I know, but I can always change it. Cuz I'm the boss, see? And around here we do it
my way. So wadda ya think, tough guy? Think you got what it takes to be a Wild Man?"
Wild Men of Wichita is a post-apocalyptic RP set in a world that suffered a major civilizational collapse in the late 1920s. Although humanity has long since started to rebuild, there are some places still untamed. The Great Plains of North America is one such region. Where roving bands of raiders slowly conglomerates into syndicates big enough and with enough sway to be khanates of their own, they ride on horseback to collect their dues in valuables or in blood. Their regular fighting has long driven off any attempt to civilize the region, but now that the east is united under a single flag, and with the west doing similar, can this way of life last long? As a member of a small outfit under the suzerainty of one such syndicate, you must find that out for yourself. Although every day is a struggle to keep one's head above the water, lord only knows how much tougher it's going to get. Going forward your behavior and actions will make or break the future of this gang, and maybe your whole way of life...
Unfiltered and Unedited Lore dump if you want a gist of the setting
Imagine that in the late 20s, when the great depression was almost upon the world, a pandemic broke out of epic proportions. The spanish flu, which had been mostly dormant for nearly a decade, struck again deadlier and more infectious. The economic shock would trigger the depression early, and the nations of the world would begin to collapse.
Without a functioning economy and with almost neverending death and disease, society as a whole is torn to shreds and the fundamental building blocks of countries and civilizations cease to exist.
Eventually, the pandemic does end, but it leaves behind a devastated world that hardly resembles what came before. Almost no pre-outbreak government survived. They have all either become nonexistant or incapable of governing what was once their territory, leaving space for new countries and societies to rise. Countries like the League of St. Lawrence, a Quebecois state that would end up dominating not only Quebec but Ontario, the American Northeast and upper Midwest and even extending as far west as Winnipeg. Eventually though it would be felled by an alliance of two eastern American states: The Federal Government which controlled the rest of the eastern coast down to the Florida panhandle, and the Union Redevelopment Corporation, a massive Trade Syndicate that effectively took control of the American midwest and upper south. After their spat with the League, they jointly occupied Canada. This would be less of a fruitful enterprise for both and more of an ultimate battlefield where the two would form a de facto rivalry over control of the new lands. Ulimately the Feds would win by releasing ultranationalist terrorists for both Anglo and Quebecois communities in Canada to fight each other and the URC, driving them to bankrupcy and allowing the US the casus belli it needed to take full control of all territories and form the United States of North America. Now it sets its sights on the untamed west, where thuggish horseback raiders, independent agriculturalists, and a depleted Republic of Texas fight against each other.
Most of the story would take place following the massive developments in the east coast I described, which happened in the 60s, some 40 years after the collapse. These developments inevitably would drive those disaffected or displaced out of what would become the USNA. The main direction these people moved was west, where a patchwork of factions and microstates had emerged with no real power among them, mainly due to the constant raiding and extortion of settlements by gangs and semi-nomadic raiders who took advantage of the flat terrain of the great plains to create small but effective groups of raiders on horseback who could blitz any undefended settlement if they failed to pay for protection. These protection rackets eventually would grow big enough to conflict with each other, leading to gang warfare on a large scale and the creation of distinct identities for each gang to distinguish themselves. These raiders became tribes and cultures of their own, and some became large enough to establish proto-states from the great lands they brought under their protection, and building static compounds as testaments to their power. These nomads were often played against one another by the remaining independent settlements, which became something similar to city-states, hiring different tribes and sending them to fight others. Meanwhile they reaped powerful rewards from trade revived by their powerful guarantees of safe passage. It was not a wholly stable situation, but it was comprehensible, and for many who had been dispossessed by the League War and the Canadian revolts and subsequent genocidal militia raids, it was enough to be better than their old positions. The only real threat to the wild and untamed situation was the Republic of Texas, but its honeymoon of independence had long passed, and now it was plagued by corruption and incapability of defending its claimed borders from Nomads and Banditos alike.
This is
not an idealized setting by any means. This is basically a 1971 in which everything about the 20s is idolized as being from a time when you didn't have to wipe your ass with poison ivy, including the social climate. So that means there will be plenty of smoking, drinking, cursing, racism, sexism, bigotry, lead paint, and asbestos in keeping with that. Minority, Homosexual, Catholic, Jewish, Foreign, or generally health minded characters beware!
So, anyone interested?
