Wasteland Capital
Location
On the south, City of T@Ö#Ä3 is bordering on Wasteland. At first glance, this seems to be a desolate area, devoid of any life, and for the most part this might not be far from the truth. However, on the west, close to Haunted Forest, you’ll find a very unique settlement that is considered to be Wasteland's capital.
Establishment and History
Not only this is the only settlement here, it’s considered to be one of the oldest, if not the oldest, in the world. In fact, the old decrepit buildings found here are believed to even predate the apocalypse. It’s quite clear that since then the great majority of them haven't been rebuilt or renovated. You’d hardly believe you’d find anyone living in these ruins, but surprisingly enough this town does have it’s community of inhabitants. Most of them are only here for a short term, a few weeks or months maybe, but they have been keeping this settlement alive since Ascent.
As the story goes, somewhere in Haunted Forest the very door leading to underground bunkers where people survived the post apocalyptic years can be found. When they returned to the surface, these ruins on the old civilization were the first and most suitable location for them to inhabit and start building a new world. But this land was barren and devoid of any useful resources. This pushed people to move forward and find more suitable places to start a new life and there never was enough interest or motivation to renovate these old ruins. Nevertheless, this was for a long time an important spot for people returning from underground bunkers. It was the first stop where people could get shelter and supplies to move forward. For this reason, a community of people have decided to stay here, renovate a few buildings and gather supplies, information and any help they can provide to those coming through here, trying to find a place to start a new life.
For years to come, people would come and go through here. Some would stay for a few days and move forward as fast as they could, while some stayed for longer and decided to help out. Slowly, this became a quite important trading post, importing all the goods and supplies from more favorable and fertile parts of the world. This is where people could get all they needed to rebuild this bottom side of the world.
Lanternfest
Since back then the infrastructure was still quite poor, and there weren’t many well established towns and shops where people could conveniently buy all they needed, a new tradition was born. Every once a month this Wasteland outpost would celebrate what quickly became known as Lanternfest. This was a celebration of the return back to the surface, as well as an important trading event. They would gather all the goods form all the parts of the world here to sell them to people living here, who may otherwise not be able to get everything they needed for a stable and comfortable life. Lanternfests would last for four days and nights, with a Lanternfest dinner each evening - for some the only time they could really eat a full, satisfying meal. For this time, people would make colorful paper lanterns for decoration and to light up the area during the long nights. It is those lanterns that gave the name to this festival that is still celebrated across the world to this day.
Archeology
But as the time passed, the purpose of this place has slowly changed. All of the people have made their way out of underground bunkers, a lot of the world was rebuilt and resources and supplies weren’t as scarce anymore. Now, with a new life and a new civilization established and civilized, people could look past only their immediate needs. And by now, people living here noticed that these old ruins aren’t the only thing left of the old civilizations. In most of the world, cities were rebuilt on top of the old ruins. People worked hard to build these cities as fast as they could, with little regard to what became lost below the new buildings. But here in Wasteland, the land remained mostly intact and it’s here where the most ancient artifacts can now be found. Now that this settlement isn’t as needed for stranded travellers anymore, and supplies are easier to get, people here started focusing more on diggin up these old artifacts. They sell or trade them to the visitors form cities of T@Ö#Ä3 and Ä+*4~; the historians and archeologists who are willing to pay good money to get their hands on them.
Strange Art of Wasteland
These valuable fancy artifacts aren’t the only thing that can be dug up here - oh no - this land hides some more gruesome secrets as well. You don’t have to dig deep to run into the bones of the poor souls who failed to make it to the safety of the underground bunkers in time to escape the apocalypse. Sure, some of these are sold to the same archaeologists for research, but they can be used in many different ways. The best known and the most important use is the strange and macabre art Wasteland is famous for today. If you need a rocking chair or chandelier made of bones, a unique wall hanging or a statement piece for your living room, or maybe a tooth ring, you can find them all here. Tooth rings in particular have contributed to the popularity of tooth fairies in T@Ö#Ä3; they will buy teeth from you for good money and trade it to artisans in Wasteland for you. That is of course, unless you dare to go there yourself.
But bone art isn’t the only art form unique to Wasteland. One of the more popular things that you can find here are earwax candles and figurines. Yes, those are candles and figurines made out of earwax. They sell for a lot of money, understandably, sufficient amounts of earwax are hard to get. When you live in an area where there are next to no natural resources to find, even earwax is valuable. Rumor says they even sell blood by gallons up to the bat people living in the next town over. But don’t throw your toenail clippings away either! And shapes and sizes of nails are welcomed by artists who create tiny insects out of nail clippings. And if nail clippings aren’t your thing you can get your own piece of jewelry with a real (dead) bug trapped in amber. You’ll find a lot of this here, but better get your bug spray as well; you’ll run into a lot more live insects here.
If you aren’t comfortable with dead stuff and bodily fluids don’t worry, there’s also trash. Wasteland is in fact one of the biggest importers of trash. Yes, that’s trash. With all the resources being very limited and all, in the past even moreso, people had to make due with what they could get their hands on. Upcycling has been a way of life rather than just an artform here from the very beginning. Today the days of dodgy makeshift driftwood chairs are long gone though. Here you’ll find many unique and colorful decorative as well as useful items. Anything from mosaics made from glass of broken XXXX bottles, shopping bags made of old worn out shopping bags, armchairs reupholstered with your old clothes, you name it, it’s all here.
People
But, before you get too excited for your shopping spree, you should be warned about the people here. They tend to not be very trusting of the outsiders and you may very easily end up scammed.
Most people here don’t come here for the long term. A lot of residents are people just coming here to get away from everything, to live in isolation and modesty, to take time off, away from the disturbances of life in the city. Here they meditate, work for the community or create arts and crafts in peace.
Another type of people here are the ones interested in archeology, usually students that come to camp out here to learn about the subject from more educated people living here and uncover some artifacts of their own. This is a requirement to finish your training.
Because this area is pretty much cut off from the rest of the world and too far away to be influenced by the silly things such as the laws that may be in place in the rest of the world, this is also a good spot for criminals on the run from the law. There’s a lot of those to be found in T@Ö#Ä3 in particular, which is very near so this is convenient for them. They come here to hide out for a while until they feel safe to return to the City, or more likely, until they get fed up with this lifestyle. As crime in T@Ö#Ä3 goes hand in hand with drugs, some come use this as sort of a rehab community as well.
Others here are just visitors, coming to get their bone furniture, historians interested in ancient artifacts, and fairies who bring goods and supplies form the City. Here, fairies are welcomed and treated a lot better than in City of T@Ö#Ä3. This is because they always bring goods to people, and because people here are nice to them, they keep returning.
Visiting and Living in Wasteland
People who intend to come live here for a time must apply for permission to enter, preferably also a letter of recommendation form their family leader or a local fairy or satanic priest, and are to bring in a donation in the form of goods and money. This will be for everyone living here. Here, people don’t form families like in the rest of the world, but rather form a community that shares everything with each other. It’s common for people to come in pairs, or form smaller families with 2 or 3 people, but in general they all stick together. Life is tough here, and this is the only way to survive and be able to provide for everyone in the community. But this survival also often comes on the account of the visitors. Fairies might always be welcomed and treated nicely, but everyone else is on thin ice. People here need to get all the possible supplies and resources they can, so they will scam and steal from outsiders if they have to. They’ll talk around you in circles until you end up paying double the price for an item and in the end you may still find your item missing when you get home. And there’s nothing you can do; the laws don’t apply to Wasteland. This is exactly why the term “lawless wasteland” exists in the first place. People do tend to remain loyal to those who lived here at any point, so if you wanna visit, your best bet is to go with someone you know who lived here. But this person better be your friend or you might still end up scammed or robbed.
All in all, people here are a tight knit cult like community that prefer to keep to themselves anyway. It’s interesting, if you think they grew from a community that welcomed everyone, but as the world and the society changed, so did inevitably this Wasteland settlement. But apart from this, the life here today is still very similar to how it was in the beginning. There’s more easily accessible goods and supplies in the world, but people here still live very modest, even ascetic lives in run down derelict buildings. They rely on their crafting skills and making things from scratch with only basic tools and materials. They value their community and simplicity over whatever the cities have to offer. Though it may not seem like it, to this day they still do care for helping others, though in more spiritual ways than material. Any lost soul with pure intentions will always be welcome here to find their peace.
RUINED SETTLEMENT
in apocalypse, it was a ruin when we got here
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