CHADRON

This is the start of an adventure for The Morrow Project role playing game. It is keyed to my Morrow Project Travel Guide, so please check that out while you are here. Thanks.

Northwest Nebraska

Situation, pre-war: Northwest Nebraska was mostly economically depressed farm country in the late 1980s. Industry was very limited, with agriculture and tourism providing most of the income. Population levels were low but steady and most people led quiet, small-town lives. Chadron, where most of our story takes place, was a bustling little college town in Dawes County.

Situation, the war: Chadron's introduction to the war to end all wars was a series of bright flashes of light on the southern horizon on the night of November 18, 1989. Most people figured they were lightning storms, but they were actually Soviet nuclear warheads smacking into the ICBM silos in southwest Nebraska. They woke up the next morning in Chadron to a total lack of electricity and outside communications.

Situation, post-war: Things were stable until the first bands of refugees started to arrive, coming from all compass directions. With them they brought diseases and desperate violence. There were shootings, there were some vigilante lynchings, and there was a general decline in law and order. The town held on, however, through a combination of location and luck. By the end of the year, the refugees had stopped coming and Chadron was able to concentrate on survival.

Chadron today: 150 years after the war, Chadron is still a farming town. Perhaps a quarter of the town's buildings have fallen into disuse and are no longer fit for habitation. The population has stabilized at some 550 people, with roughly two-thirds being women or children. The average age is about 29, and there are two dozen people over the age of 60 still in the town. These older people are valued for their experiences and wisdom. In fact, nearly all the leadership of the town are men over the age of 50.

Chadron Police: Chadron has a militia of sorts. Perhaps 40 older men serve in the Chadron Police. The Krell's taking of younger men has left the Police a hollow shell by removing the strongest and the bravest. While this is a police force in the pre-war sense of internal law and order, it also serves as an external recon and fighting force. The leaders are usually older policemen with the Chief being one of the town's leaders. In addition, by town decree, all men and women between the ages of 15 and 50 are required to have yearly training courses in weapons and tactics, given by the police. Equipment is limited to melee weapons and about 40 flintlock rifles of various calibers. The rifles are kept in the town armory. When the Krell come to town, these firearms are taken far out to the countryside and hidden in a special cellar to avoid confiscation. They ride horses on external patrols, but keep to shoe leather when in town. The police force has twenty horses available at any time, with the right to requisition more if needed. In the event of an emergency, perhaps 250 semi-trained men and women could be called up to protect the town. This would be a last-ditch sort of effort, as there are only enough firearms for about 20 of these men, the rest having to make due with farming implements and crudely made spears.

Crawford: Located 22 miles west of Chadron along the banks of the White River. The citizens of the smaller town of Crawford wisely came to Chadron during the chaos years. Over the generations, many of the original citizens came back to their small town to pick up their lives again. The population has fluctuated widely over the years, depending on the weather and the crops. For many years there were no people here, and in some years there were as many as 50. Today, there are about five families for about 20 total people living in the town. The economy of Crawford is dependent on Chadron, with the river serving as a trade route between the two towns. They have no police themselves, but have a few flintlock rifles that are kept for hunting.

Fort Robinson State Historical Site: About six miles west of Crawford is the former frontier US Army post of Fort Robinson. While the site was looted by surrounding towns following the war, the buildings themselves mostly remained intact. Monks have taken over the post and have set up a monastic school here.

The Monks: These monks have some psionic powers, as well as a mysterious ability to heal the wounded and sick. Rumors abound of their power to do much greater things.

The Krell: Once every eighteen months or so, a party of Krell warriors comes to northwest Nebraska. They come to get their quota of loot and take the healthiest young men off to become warriors. They also come to look for weapons, though the town's flintlocks are so crude compared to the weapons possessed by the Krell, they probably wouldn't take them even if they found them. Since Chadron is on the very edge of Krell territory, this system has only been in place for the last four years, with a total of six visits in that time. Before that it was decades between Krell visits and most of the younger generation in the town had never even seen a Krell warrior before four years ago. Almost a century ago, early in the days of the Krell expansion, the citizens of Chadron tried to resist. In response, the Krell killed fifty people in the town square and raped every woman in town. While that incident has become a legend, the collective memory of that has influenced many of the older leaders of the community.

The last straw: Chadron is a dying town. Over the generations of relative isolation, the gene pool has shrunk. The Krell have taken too many young men in the last four years, and the townspeople don't think they will ever return. With the loss of the young men, the local women have no one to marry and have children with. There are now several dozen young women of child bearing age with only a few being married. The situation is approaching critical and something must be done.

The Krell unit: Coming about every year and a half, the Krell collection mission is usually in company strength, some 80 warriors with five officers. The officers ride in two Krell-built armored cars, while the rest are mostly foot soldiers, with a few wagon trains for baggage and supplies. They are armed with an assortment of weapons, but mostly pikes and swords. The officers and perhaps 15 of the other men have firearms. These are mostly percussion cap rifles, but there are also a few modern guns as well. The armored cars mount 20mm anti-tank rifles firing MP ammunition. One of the cars also carries a M-60 light machinegun, also from captured MP stocks. The Krell mission follows the same pattern every time. When the Krell arrive in Chadron, they have already sent off the captives and loot collected from the southern towns back to the Krell heartland. The split comes in Alliance, where a platoon of Krell leaves the main body and takes the captives east along Highway 2. The rest of the force heads north to Chadron, takes their collection and then heads east.

The plan: The next Krell collection mission is due in a few weeks. It is currently to south in Scottsbluff and they have to stop at several towns along the way before they reach Chadron. Chadron's plan is to ambush the column at night somewhere south of the town in the Nebraska National Forest. Using the town's horses as flanking cavalry, they hope to do a classic envelopment maneuver on them. Hopefully, they will end up with a large amount of weapons and ammunition from this ambush.

Bonus: As fate would have it, this time the Krell mission is weaker than normal. A nasty outbreak of cholera in Alliance killed off some 25 of the warriors and severely weakened another two dozen. These sick men, along with the regular guard platoon and one of the armored cars, has already left Alliance with the loot and captives for Krycheck City (Nebraska City). The main force then headed north up the old Highway 385 for Chadron, reduced to just 55 men and two officers. About a dozen of these men were still suffering some ill effects of the disease and are still of limited value. Along the long road north to Chadron from Alliance, eight of these sick men died of sickness, one fell and broke his leg and was left behind and another was killed by a mutant snake. As well, one of the supply wagons broke an axle and had to be stripped and abandoned. All this means that by the time the Krell column reaches the ambush point in the forest, there will be only one armored car, two horse-drawn wagons, 45 warriors and two officers remaining. Of these, perhaps ten warriors are still sickly. The townspeople should be able to take them, though they will take losses.

Enter the team: Ideally, this should be a Science Team. The MP team wakes up somewhere in the area and begins to explore. They should first find the north-south Highway 385 and come across the broken down Krell supply wagon. Searching the wagon will produce little except a busted 20mm ammo box marked "Morrow Industries". They should also be able to identify the tire tracks as being the same as the tires on a Cadillac Gage V-series car. The Krell armored cars often use MP parts from caches and bases they have raided, including the same tires. Give the team enough hints that they should believe that another Morrow team came through here recently, headed north. Our team, eager to make contact, should logically follow the tracks north, hoping to catch up with the other team.

The battle: Our team should arrive as the battle between the Krell mission and the townspeople is raging. Again, make them think initially that they are coming to the rescue of another MP team under attack, so this should be an interesting battle.

The aftermath: The battle should be bloody and uncertain until the end. Clearly, one of the officers has to escape the ambush and carry word of the treachery back to the Krell.

The Krell response: How much time will the town and the team have to prepare for the return of the Krell? That depends on how the Krell react to resistance. I would think that they have a plan in place to deal with resisting towns. Probably a flying column of armor to simply crush and burn the town flat, leaving heads on poles as an example. The sheer distance from the Krell heartland to Chadron might change that�maybe a cavalry unit? It should be at least a month, I'd think, before the Krell reprisal arrives.

Following the ambush and the figuring out who are the good guys and the bad guys, the MP team goes to Chadron. The team sits in on a town hall meeting where the leaders decide what to do now. It is clear that no one really gave much thought to what would the Krell do if they killed off their warriors. Now they are desperate to find a solution. Some people (travelers, Mailmen?) can stand up and tell of what the Krell do to resisting towns, tales of nasty death and torture. There is conflict between parties wanting to flee and others wanting to dig in a fight whatever the cost. In the end, a wait and see approach is decided on. It is also decided to ask for assistance from the people groups around the Chadron area.

They ask for a representative from the Monks at Fort Robinson to come visit them to discuss ways to handle the situation. It is hoped that the monks might offer the townspeople safe refuge if needed. The representative comes in a few days. He seems distracted a bit, but is willing to listen to Chadron's proposals. He says a sickly man recently came to the monastery on foot from the east, presumably from Chadron. The monks were just figuring him out when the call came from Chadron for help. The representative is eager to return to the monastery as he has a "psychic bad feeling" that something is wrong. Over the next day and night, the representative begins to feel "disturbances in the force" and feels intense pain.

The Monk Representative, with the MP team, return with haste to monastery. Halfway there, they find a messenger headed to meet with the representative. He is dead of radiation exposure, but his message says that the last surviving monks are headed west to "home base" to bring the Church Army to "punish the unbelievers who brought this disease upon the Lord's house". The message further tells the representative to not deal with the heathens at Chadron as their fate is the sword of the Lord...At Fort Robinson, they find nearly all the monks dead of radiation. The stranger is still alive, now totally distraught at the havoc he has caused and holed up in a basement. He is John the Blue Undead from Cheyenne...see the travel guide entry for Colorado. John came from the east, having been wandering around the area for sometime exploring and contemplating life. The monks assumed he came from Chadron as John was there during the night a week ago without being noticed.

So now the Science Team has a mystery on its hands, a Blue Undead, a bunch of dead monks, a misguided Church Army on the way, and still no solution to what to do about the Krell coming for blood.

At the same time, an Amerind Empire delegation has been contacted by Chadron, asking for help. Chadron has a trade agreement (maybe a defense pact as well) with a major South Dakota Indian group across the border in the Pine Ridge Reservation area. Chadron is a provider of some important natural resource that the Indians want. What is it? The Indians are also concerned that the Krell might move further north if allowed to swamp Chadron, which they see as a southern outpost of Amerind influence. They agree to send a force of cavalry to defend the town. But it might take a little time to organize and arrive.

So the set up for the final battle of Chadron is complete. It is a race between the Krell, the Indians and the Church, who are all converging on the area at the same time, with the town and the team in the middle. Each of these three groups has a different agenda and motivation. All in all, a nasty situation for any team to be stuck in.

Needs work, I know, I will finish it one day, really...