Fallout: Blood of Cascadia Should've been careful when you wished for a nuclear winter
War. War never changes.
The year is 2210. The New California Republic has spent the better part of two decades taming the wastes, and bringing their namesake state under the banner of the two-headed bear. In their steady march north, the NCR has come to blows with raider gangs, tribals, the remnants of the Master's Super Mutant Army, and hostile weather fit to boil a man in his boots. But nothing they faced could have prepared the unstoppable force of the NCR's expansion efforts for the immovable object that awaited them near the northern California border;
A sheer wall of wind, snow, radiation, and a cold so absolute that it froze the very blood in their veins. The scorching deserts gave way to a nuclear winter of such monstrous severity that most of Oregon state was rendered utterly impassable.
For years the NCR watched that impenetrable border, languishing before the one foe they could't overcome with guns and bullets. Even as the expansion efforts turned to the South and to the East, and new territories were being bled over every day, it was never enough. The same summer that the Hawes Radio Relay Site was captured and restored to working order, an unexpected break in the northern storms allowed a single radio message to make it through to NCR command from an unidentified source. The city of Portland, long believed to be buried under thirty feet of snow, was miraculously still standing.
But with the Tribal Wars raging in the east, the NCR could scarcely spare the men or the material to launch an expedition into the cold unknown. They did have one thing, the resource that any burgeoning nation has in spades; Convicts. You are one such person. Whether justifiably by your hands or unjustly through no fault of your own, you have been deemed a criminal by the New California Republic and offered a choice. Freedom, a pardon for your crimes, and settlers rights in a new land. You just have to survive the journey there. How could you refuse?
Long ago, the Oregon Trail was a symbol for setting out into the great unknown in search of a new life. Manifest Destiny they called it, man's God-given right to claim all that can be claimed for himself. Nearly four centuries have passed since then, and just as before a young and ambitious nation sets its sights on lands beyond their grasp. Desperate people striking out for the hope of a better future, risking everything to carve out a space for themselves in a cruel world, spurred on by the cruelty of their fellow man.
The NCR has written a check for their own destiny, given themselves the divine right to take what isn't theirs from whoever stands in their way just like the America of old. Will you cash it, honor the terms of your release? Or will you seize the opportunity to forge a future of your own?
Manifest Destiny is just as much a lie today as it was back then. You will fight, you will bleed, and you may die to build a better tomorrow. Time is a flat circle. Ouroboros devours its tail, and the mistakes of yesterday's history become the nightmares of today's reality. The past offers us lessons, and if we choose not to learn them then we are doomed to the same unthinkable fate.