Winter Wasteland: El Toro

The frozen wasteland of El Toro enjoys few luxuries, but the people who have found themselves a home here seem to be happy. There are many undiscovered mysteries hidden within the frozen ruins of the perilous city, and many more remains of intrepid explorers who took a chance. You have arrived in Liberty, the most populous city for miles around, ready to make a name for yourself by doing what no one has ever managed to do before. I'm looking for four players

An old sign on an overpass leading into what was once one of North Americas largest cities once read ‘Welcome to Toronto’, now corroded and down by time, all visitors through that main artery to the city are welcomed by the same words:

 

WELCOME TO

TORONTO
 

Much of the peaceful population are the descendants of the once displaced First Nations people, who were ironically saved by many of their population centers being distant from targets. Very few of the communities remaining had passed down the skills to live off the land that had been commonplace before the colonization and near genocide of their people by the imperialist nations across the ocean, but those few were enough to gather other survivors and pass on those lessons. When the bombs dropped, the one aimed at Toronto missed its mark, landing in Lake Ontario, not only destroying the city in the explosion, but flooding the city with irradiated water as well. The skies were darkened with ash and temperatures plummeted, turning the city into a frozen wasteland, preserving much of the prewar society that escaped the immense heat of the blast within their frozen hearths. The nuclear winter affected much of the country north of Toronto, and progressively colder and colder temperatures as well as dangerously mutated flora and fauna forced survivors in the northern reaches of Canada south to the ruins of the larger cities, of which Toronto was once more the most populated.

Initially, lonely scavengers rooted through ruins, hoping to find treasures beneath the ever growing layer of permafrost that had begun to settle, but soon, others arrived, with the warm, irradiated waters of Lake Ontario being the only thing keeping the nuclear winter at bay. Though the snow still fell and the cold still cut through cloth all the way to bone, occasionally the warmth of the lake would be carried up through the city by the lake effect winds, a microwave that warmed the body and burned the DNA. The fresh water of the lake had never been considered clean by Torontonians, but the radiation was much kinder to the fauna beneath the surface, often bulking the species up, slowing them down, making them easier to catch, and slightly less toxic than they had once been before the war, if you did not mind the radiation. On land, the mutations were no less impressive, with the most notable being what the locals simply call Bandits.

The largest community was centered around what was once known as Liberty Village, now simply known as Liberty to its residents. It had initially simply been a place where the fish had been easy to coral and catch thanks to the man-made peninsula which had been easily defensible even with minimal man-power and resources, and once those two issues had been resolved, the community spread quickly and effectively outward thanks to the generous fishing yields, access to lots of scrap and resources to build and the warmth of the lake. Currently Liberty is home to close to two thousand people, ghouls and even remnants of Unity. Here, almost anything can be found thanks to the flourishing trade routes that are navigated by skilled captains and merchants who brave the crossing of the lake as well as the talented crafters that have wound up there.

Things in El Toro are not all peaceful though, as outside of the safety of Liberty, the frozen ruins of the city are also home to dangerous creatures, the most dangerous of which are the raiders who reside in the shell of the Skydome, a once prized point of interest of the city whose sports fans once filled with joy. Now, it stands as a testament to violence, a colosseum where the basest instincts are praised and power is idolized. The current reigning champion of 'The Dome' is Gorge, a remnant of the Masters army whose right arm had been replaced with a flamer, and whose lack of direction after the fall found him wandering across the country with some of his fellow supermutants, before finding his new home and celebrity within the crumbling stone walls of the stadium. The raiders have a tenuous peace with the inhabitants of Liberty, though they are considered enemies if encountered in the wasteland.

There are others who had found themselves a home in the Winter Wasteland, though they are few and far between, each with their own reasons and goals. The Secrets of El Toro are many and buried deep, waiting to be discovered.

---

New Characters will either be from El Toro (For which there is a Homebrew Origin), or have arrived by boat from somewhere else, the current year is 2250, the Master is a long distant memory in the minds of the occasional supermutant, which can be found in El Toro, having wandered far since the fall of Unity, the only Supermutants in El Toro would be remnants of the Masters army (For which there is a Homebrew Origin). The Enclave is an unknown entity in El Toro, though that does not mean their presence has not been felt in such a way. There are no such things as 3rd generation synths in existence at this point in time, but the institute does exist. There is no active vaults in El Toro from which a Vault Dweller can be considered native, while rare, the occasional dweller does wind up in the winter wasteland. The Brotherhood has never arrived in El Toro, but this does not mean an initiate or scribe could have somehow wound up in the far north.