Yeast Ave
Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast. The Apocalypse taught us that we can indeed survive on bread alone. But that’s not all that Yeast Avenue is. Located in the heart of the Rocpocalypse, exists a District packed with merchants and businesses which specialize in the preservation of food and natural resources.
A mercantile district ruled by a strict guild council and dedicated to preservation during the long nuclear winters, Yeast Avenue is the heart of a trade route whose veins run throughout the general Rochester area.
Demographics
Race, gender, and sexual orientation is of no importance in Yeast Avenue. The merchant’s guild council which governs the district was colloquially known as more of a ‘boys club’ but has become more and more accepting of female members in its ranks due to a significant amount of pressure applied from the matriarchs of The Brights.
Inhabitants of the district can be broken into five different classes – unemployed, outsider, employed, owner, and council member.
Unemployed: Yeast Avenue is in constant need of more hands to help with the work of collections, trade, preservations, and transportation, making unemployed individuals the most hated members of society. The unemployed members of the district are left homeless and occasionally run out of the district.
Outsider: A solid thirty percent of Yeast Avenue’s population is composed of outsiders. The district has very strict rules of where outsiders may stay and for how long – one sub-district is dedicated solely to the regulation and observation of visitors and is located to the far west near the Infinite Loop. The outsiders mostly come from the nearby districts. Doctors come from Wedgeward seeking medicinal herbs or performing procedures on the sick and injured. Gang members come from The Roc seeking food and resources or sometimes just a place to rest for a while. The trade relations established with both gangs in The Roc prevent conflict for the most part, with the understanding that any altercations on Yeast Avenue soil are subject to the rules of the merchant’s guild (which usually results with all involved ending up dead). Farmers and high-ranking aristocrats from The Brights flood the district during the end of the harvesting season but are very uncommon at any other time. Even the occasional freak stumbles out of the Infinite Loop when they realize that they can’t survive on the energy of the psychic maelstrom in lieu of actual food.
Employed: Employed workers make up over half of the district’s population. This is your every day worker. While there are often smaller hierarchies within this class (unskilled labor, skilled labor, manager) they are simply acknowledged as ‘employed’ by the council. Employed members of society live in housing contained within their business’s sub-district. A small percentage of the employed population is the drivers and tradesmen who occupy the east most area of Yeast Avenue. These workers often leave the district to trade with more remote Districts.
Owner: Owners are those who own their own business in one of the many sub-districts within Yeast Avenue. Often a manager promoted from the employed class after the previous owner dies or is promoted into a council position, owners are a very small group of the business elite and make up a small portion of the population.
Council: Composed of only a handful of the top owners from each sub-district, council members are treated with the same respect you might give a king or even a god. As the main governing body of the district, they're known to be shrewd, calculating, and unforgiving. Council members are provided separate lodging within the Guild Halls where they meet. They are given a strict code of conduct which they must always abide by. The most prominent rules include the inability to accept bribes, consume any alcohol or narcotics, or leave the district.
Government
There are two types of businesses in Yeast Avenue -those which are a part of the District’s merchant guild, and those which were recently destroyed by said guild. Strict, merciless, and firm in their rules, the guild is not something to be trifled with. Its main council is an oligarchy that contains representation from the most successful business owners in each sub-district (root cellar, fermentation, drying, canning, housing, and driving).
The council meets once every week to discuss trade issues, outside threats, and new business requests as well as pass judgement on infractions made throughout the district. Judgement is swift, brutal, and redacted only in the case of extraordinary events (very rare, but it has happened before).
Council members are allowed to collect a small amount of resources from their respective sub-district to support themselves. Accusations of abuse through this system are taken very seriously and often lead to a full-scale investigation of the entire sub-district’s resource distribution. All individuals found guilty of taking part in abuse of the system are publicly hanged as an example and left until the body rots off the noose or the rope breaks.
Industry & Trade
Yeast Avenue is a thriving town filled to the brim with businesses specializing in surviving the apocalypse. All finds of food preservation can be found in the district from canning to fermenting to drying.
Trade is the name of the game in Yeast Avenue. Be careful not to disrespect or double-cross their merchants - it will usually end up with your name on a black list and your remaining mangled form on an organ donor's list.
Infrastructure
Yeast Avenue takes its trade routes seriously. Roads have been built up over time to become pristine when compared to the rubble and dirt paths that exist outside of the district. The 490, which is on the district's southern border is jointly maintained and guarded by Yeast Avenue and The Brights.
Another joint venture maintained by both Yeast Avenue and The Brights is a giant scrap metal wall which separates both districts from the hell that is Fenfield. The wall has significant reinforcements around the district's southeastern border, where the trading hub between both districts exists.
Guilds and Factions
There are eight (8) sub-districts in Yeast Avenue. Of those eight, six (6) are given representation in the merchant’s guild council, indicated by a star (*) next to the sub-district’s name.
Root Cellars* – Located on the eastern edge of Yeast Avenue, the Root Cellars district is categorized by giant expansive mansions which have been cannibalized for resources. All that remains are empty half-constructed shells of formerly grand estates. What the looters and scavengers failed to realize was that the true value of these houses lived in their basements. If you dig deep enough into the ground, you find cool, moist earth which hasn’t been scorched by the cruel and unforgiving nuclear wastelands. That is where the power of this sub-district lies. Functioning as giant, primitive refrigerators, root cellars are the primary destination for most produce received from The Brights. There it is kept fresh for as long as possible before being sent off to the other sub-districts for processing. Workers in this district carefully monitor produce for spoilage and sort crops into specific cellars to maximize shelf life.
Fermentation* – The most popular sub-district with outsiders, the fermentation subdistrict is located on the southern border near The Brights. Fermentation takes on many forms – lacto fermentation (bread, yogurt, cheese, kombucha, sauerkraut, and vinegar), salt/sugar fermentation (preserves herbs for medicinal uses), and pickling (pickled eggs and vegetables). Owning a bakery in this sub-district is one of the most lucrative and simple gigs you could have. The Brights produces a gigantic amount of wheat, which is then grinded into flour by the sub-district workers. Add water, yeast, salt, and time and you get the best food the apocalypse has to offer. The methodology of breadmaking is often sought by outside districts, however the few bakers who know the exact proportions and timing are bound to secrecy by the merchant’s guild.
Drying* – A small strip of land in the middle of the district, drying is a new and oft overlooked industry. This is mostly due to the lack of proper meat to dry except for the occasional rat or pigeon. Workers in this district meticulously skin, slice, and arrange their produce just so, which often results in making a significant profit out of whatever resources they do manage to gain.
Canning* – Located to the right of the garage district, canning is responsible for almost all long-term fruit and vegetable preservation. As the root cellars are slowly filled with summer harvests from The Brights, the canning district workers can be seen hauling wheel barrels packed with fruit around the two districts. A significant portion of fruit is cooked into jams and jellies for immediate resale. In the winter months, workers are responsible for rationing stock first to trade with the other sub-districts and then with the outside world.
Garages* – Shoved into the northwest corner of the district against the border between civilized society and The Roc lays the Garage sub-district. Here is where the tradesmen and drivers live when they aren’t traveling to far off districts to trade for rare products. Popular destinations are East Roc, western Wedgeward, Get High Falls, and even Maplehood. The sub-district also contains an old train yard which has been stripped of all train cars for car parts and upgrades. The barren patch of land that remains has been built up into a greenhouse which produces a small amount of staple crops for distribution throughout the district during the winters. Despite being in the Garage sub-district, the green house is viewed as a communal building which is supported entirely by volunteers.
Inns & Bars* – Visitors make up a significant portion of Yeast Avenue’s population. Outsiders are disliked by the merchant’s guild and therefor are only allowed to live a singular sub-district conveniently shoved against the border shared with the Infinite Loop in the hopes that if anything worse than the normal freaks and weirdos appears out of that area, the real residents of the district would be able to flee before it reached them. Inns are only allowed to offer temporary residence for a maximum of three months to outsiders. Extended stays must be approved by the merchant’s guild council and are usually denied.
Trading hub – In the south west corner of Yeast Avenue is the sprawling trading hub. Packed tightly with businesses from all the different subdistricts, the hub acts as the agreed-on rally point between Yeast Avenue and The Brights, where raw resources are traded for their processed counterparts. The eastern part of this district is heavily enforced against Fenfield. The southeastern quadrant of the district has access to a giant network of roads which allows tradesmen and drivers to travel to far off areas.
Guild Halls – The place where council members reside and where weekly meetings are held. Members of different sub-districts can be seen swarming the administrative building where their respective council members reside.
History
The average man looks at the apocalypse and weeps. A business man looks at the apocalypse and thinks "How can I turn a profit out of this?". In the very beginning, the Yeast Avenue merchants were a gang of merchants who traveled around the greater Rochester area selling just about anything they could get their hands on.
Unfortunately, the world was no so ready for open trade and the gang sported a very high morality rate. The gang leaders decided that it would be best to become a sedentary society with trade routes that venture far and wide into the surrounding districts, which is exactly what they did. Over time the gang became a faction became a guild as Yeast Avenue firmly planted itself in the heart of the former city.
Geography
While most of Yeast Avenue is relatively flat, the land begins to slope downhill towards the edge of its western border near the Infinite Loop. On the far ear, the soil becomes moist and soggy up to the wall which separates the bogs of Fenfield from the civilized society.
Beauty can be found in Yeast Avenue at night, when the fire in the sky goes out and the fires within the sub-districts light up. The flickering lights have been described as stars from distant onlookers, giving Yeast Avenue a whimsical reputation for the romantic (those dreams are usually crushed when they arrive in the district)
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