Pre-war name:
Estimated Population: 3,000 (2,000 transients during the best of times, swelling to an estimated 10,000 transients during times of severe drought)
Ruling Faction: Guardsmen
Background: Visionary Reinventor
Skinball team: Bastion Gronts
The guiding light of the western side of the
Pax Brittanica
In the 18th century wars began to become larger and larger as European powers with far-flung empires engaged in conflict on a scale never before witnessed. America seceded from the British Empire with the help of the French, who then proceeded to war with the English navy over the West Indies. The spiral of war seemed to grow ever larger in its scope and the French Revolution which put the conquest-minded Napoleon on the throne only added fuel to the fires of Europe. Finally, in the early 19th century, things came to a head at the Battle of Trafalgar. In this climactic battle the British navy sent 27 ships of the line against a combined French and Spanish fleet numbering 33 ships of the line. The British fleet was led by its greatest naval hero Admiral Lord Nelson and despite his death during the engagement it was a tremendous victory for England, who reasserted her naval dominance in this battle. In fact the battle finally brought peace to the oceans, the so-called “Pax Brittanica”. Following Trafalgar there would not be another major engagement at sea until the First World War.
Despite the peace imposed by the fearsome British Navy during this period, technological change began to come to naval warfare, the first revolutionary changes since the introduction of the large sailing vessel and the cannon. Ship designers began to experiment with steam engines to replace the sail as a vessel’s primary motive force. Weapon designers also began to adopt exploding shells to replace the iron cannonball. These explosive rounds could sink a wooden vessel with a single hit, prompting the need for iron plating over the ship’s now vulnerable wooden hull.
Age of Sail
As larger sailing vessels exceeding 100 tons displacement began to appear, powered by increasingly sophisticated sails, vessels were able to make longer voyages and withstand the harsh weather of the open ocean in order to begin exploring areas further and further away from their homes in Europe. These larger vessels were also able to carry more weapons and with the addition of the cannon, ships became more dangerous than ever, both against targets at sea and targets on land.
Although the voyages of discovery made during this period were primarily mercantile in nature, the protection of sea lanes allowing the profits of these voyages to return home quickly sparked an increase in battles at sea. Just ten years after Vasco da Gama opened trade with India in the 16th century, the Portuguese fleet crushed an enemy fleet to gain dominance over the Indian Ocean and ensure that goods could travel freely between Europe and India.
Seventy years later, in 1582, the first naval battle in the Atlantic took place as Spain and France fought over the Azores. Just six years after this victory for the Spanish navy, they sent an Armada against England, then ruled by Elizabeth I in one of the first naval engagements fought on a mass scale. Sir Francis Drake was able to scatter the Spanish fleet, which lost more than half of the 130 ships forming the armada. This marks the rise to dominance of the English Royal Navy, a position they would enjoy for nearly 300 years.
Barbarians at sea: Naval Warfare in the Dark and Middle Ages
Although the barbarians that brought about the fall of the Roman Empire operated mostly by land, the infamous Vandals were a notable exception. These barbarians moved down through modern-day Spain where they began to build a large fleet. In 429 80,000 Vandals crossed to North Africa where they took the city of Carthage. From this base, one of the most excellent deep water Mediterranean ports, they conquered Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearic Islands, attaining a virtual stranglehold on Mediterranean trade. Despite becoming a sea-faring superpower of the dark ages, the Vandals were not primarily a mercantile empire as the Carthaginians had been but instead conducted piratical raids on trading vessels of more civilized empires.
As the political landscape began to become more settled following the fall of Rome, new seafaring powers took to the seas, most notably the Byzantines and the Arabs who fought many heated battles in the 7th and 8th centuries for control over the Mediterranean and its valuable islands, especially Sicily. The Byzantine vessels of this period were greatly feared because of their use of “Greek fire” which they could shoot from the bow of their ships in the first known flamethrower.
In the 8th century the Norsemen made their first appearance as a naval power, adopting a tactic of a surprise attack from the sea, raiding and plundering a target then retreating with their bounty before reinforcements could arrive. This tactic would prove devastatingly effective for centuries.
In the 10th century Arab naval dominance of the Mediterranean began to wane along with the rise of the great mercantile empires of Italy: Genoa, Pisa and Venice. These mercantile powers achieved dominance over the Arabs and Norsemen before fighting with one another over control of Mediterranean trade. These conflicts continued until the 14th century when Venice finally gained the upper hand and controlled Mediterranean trade for a century. Outside of Mediterranean during this period, use of sea power was restricted to the Norsemen and the use of ships to ferry troops across the English Channel during the seemingly endless conflicts between England and France during the early Middle Ages.The first known battle at sea occurred in 1210 BCE when the Hittites defeated a force of vessels from Cyprus and burned their ships at sea. By 700 BCE the Phoenicians were employing advanced vessels equipped with rams and two banks of oars, one on top of the other while a third deck carried fighting men for boarding actions.
By the time of the Greco-Persian wars, during which the Persian Empire attempted unsuccessfully to conquer the Greek city states on several occasions, combat at sea was carried out by fleets of advanced vessels known as triremes which worked in concert with forces on the ground in complicated land-sea operations.
Although the Roman Empire is known primarily for the military might of its powerful heavy infantry legions, they too engaged in naval warfare, especially in the Punic Wars against Carthage, one of the great naval powers of the ancient world. These early vessels leveraged the might of the Roman ground forces, with Roman ships equipped with powerful grapples that would allow their ships to link with enemy Carthaginian vessels so Roman marines could employ the infantry tactics of which Rome was the undisputed master to eliminate enemy vessels during boarding actions.
As Rome expanded, they discovered an increasing need for naval power in order to quickly project their military might over a wide area, a need every wide-ranging empire has needed from the Persians to the United States of America. The Battle of Actium, fought between Octavian and Marc Antony to determine the successor to Julius Caesar shows just how Rome’s naval power had expanded as the size of the Empire expanded, with hundreds of ships involved on each side bearing towers filled with archers and boarding parties and ship-mounted catapults.
Welcome to The Fertile Crescent, my own personal corner of Dom Covey’s magnificent Twisted Earth setting for Darwin’s World. Since this book has been (more or less) in the works for a few years I thought a little history might be in order as we prepare to explore a new area of the world after the Fall.
In 2002 I discovered RPGNow. Here the word “discover” is used in the same way in which Columbus “discovered” America. RPGNow was already around, making products and selling PDFs. I just had no idea it was there. I was on my way to India. Actually, I was looking for a good post-apocalyptic game for d20, something to allow me to run the Gamma World campaign of my dreams. In my googling I came across RPGNow and a book called Darwin’s World. My first PDF seriously spoiled me and my campaign was up and running.
The mainline campaign setting was a little grimmer than what I had in mind, so I decided to get all “do it yourself” and homebrew and picked the area around the Great Lakes, which hadn’t really been covered by any books to date as the location for my campaign. I decided to leave the lakes more or less intact, making the campaign area a relatively fertile region, a place where civilization might be reborn. Once I decided to get all historical and call the region the Fertile Crescent, after Mesopotamia, I knew I had a place where heroes could make a difference. Maybe even rebuild.
Around this time, I started talking to Dom and Chris at RPGObjects about my campaign and bugging them to release it. They liked the idea and although a lot of ideas went back and forth, I ended up doing other things for them, including providing some editorial help on Terrors of the Twisted Earth and Metal Gods. Eventually I would make a book with RPGObjects, then another, then dozens more, starting with Blood and Space. The Fertile Crescent was always just on the horizon bookwise but it never seemed to float up to the top of the list. In short we got busy.
When it came time for Darwin’s World 2nd edition, I provided some mechanical help and figured that was that. When I saw the map for the game though, Dom had marked the Fertile Crescent to Great Lakes region. That was my first signal that a gazetteer of the area would eventually need to be done. Eventually, Chris and I just decided to do it and the area was fleshed out. Since we needed an adventure for GenCon, I decided to use that adventure (Feeding Grounds) as an introduction to the setting. The ball was rolling.
