Highland Spring Water Clansmen

Happy New Year readers! While most of my time has been hoovered up by various parties and the 150 pages of prereading that I need to do for my next module, all my spare time is now being dedicated to the ATR project and I can happily report that I have my first unit completed, with the other now completely built and awaiting paint.

Here are some pictures of the Highland Spring Water Clan, otherwise known as the Highland Spring Tranders.

Basic Musketeers

The standard bearer - front and centre - still has to have his banner added. I've made the flag, I just need to get it to a printer. As it turns out, I am simply not good enough to paint intricate design.

Some more colourful figures

The second photo contains some of the "characters" of the group. At the far left is the squads LMG gunner and to his right, with the ornament on his turban is the squads 0 Leadership leader. The figure behind and between the two is the NCO for the Clan detachment.

The Highland Spring Water Clan came together when I envisioned a more post-nuclear setting for our game. They were pulling double duty as a stand in for Clean Water Cartel/Generic civilised wastelanders for Dariwns World. As the setting for our game become more unspecified, generic human die-back their mode of dress became rather odd, but I do have an in-story handwave for that.

In all honesty, I probably should have given these guys a desert wasteland basing, rather than a generic wasteland basing.

Ahem

The Highland Spring Water Clan

Soon after The Fall, the families of the Highland Spring group took refuge at their bottling plant in the Brecon Beacons National Park. The isolated location afforded safety and an abundance of game. It soon came to their attention that there were plenty of concentrations of people without access to sufficient quantities of clean drinking water. Soon they were back in business producing and transporting bottled water. As people learned to deal with the new realities of the world, the bottom quickly fell out of the water market, but by then, the Highland Spring Traders had an established network of contacts and clients and began to trade in other commodities.

Their idiosyncratic mode of dress was established early in their history. During a period they refer to as "The Burning Years" they came to believe that increased solar activity was a major threat - due to whatever reason, global warming, use of nuclear weapons in other parts of the world - and began to dress accordingly. They claim that this threat has now passed, but by then the new style of dress had become cultural. In reality, this paranoia was provoked by a series of nasty sunburns suffered by their children during an unusually cloudless summer in the higher altitudes of the Welsh Mountains.

Membership of the Highland Spring Water Clan is restricted to family members, thus the Clan part of their name. Everyone currently in the Clan is related, at least by marriage to the original families who took shelter in the bottling plant. This proved problematic during their initial expansion as manpower was constantly stretched and resulted in a rash of adult adoptions, arranged marriages and rumoured bride and groom kidnappings. Now the Clan's presence has stabilised, reaching from Manchester to London.

Their northern interests have been severely damaged by the presence of the marauding Northern Nomads and it was the Highland Spring Water Clan that first truly realised the threat posed by these new, powerful raiders, and proposed the idea of a multi faction coalition to the Mayor of Manchester. While they incessantly promote the coalition as a cosmopolitan group, the majority of the forces involved belong to Manchester, with the Clan itself providing a distant second. Unfortunately, the Clans warriors are little more than caravan guards and have never fought anything like a pitched battle. They are desperately unready to face the seasoned raiders of the Karns forces.

An evening with the nomads

From the journal of Kendall Nintendo -  self-proclaimed explorer, archaeologist of dubious merit and suspected charlatan
"I found myself invited to a banquet of one of the savage northmen's petty chieftains, a man called Carn Bjorn, of Clan Drakkar. The banquet was held in the Carn's feasting yurt - a massive tent, formed from the hides of 36 mammoths, set at the heart of a sea of tents, yurts and the wheeled sheds the nomads call 'Kampacans'. The feasting yurt had a great bench set across the far wall, and three massive fires in the centre. To one side, food was being served on rough tressel tables - hunks of reindeer and mammoth, flat breads and dried fruits. On the other side the band were getting ready for the nights merriment, tuning guitars, checking drum skins and polishing flutes.

In the centre of the bench sat a large man in a red tunic, baggy trousers and dark blue caftan-style coat draped over his shoulders. A bushy beard, fur hat, and long straight sword hung from his broad belt finished off the ensemble. He was flanked by even larger men, clad in long coats of chain mail, their burnished helmets reflecting the light of the fires. This was Carn Bjorn himself, slayer of a hundred mammoths, said to be the favoured grandson of the great war godess Kalash and her twin brother Nikov.

I  hung back, whilst a small man in characteristic tattered clothing of an upcountry scav prostrated himself before the mighty Carn. Such men are often found outside the major cities, peddling tat excavated from among the ruins of the Ancients. The scav raised his head, digging in the sack next to him, and pulled out several rusty lumps which he pushed across the floor towards the Carn. The armoured man on the right of the Carn leant forward with interest, but at that moment a wild figure with spiked hair lept in front of the Carn.  It was his technomance, a shamechanic of the lowest grade, who proceeded to wave his wire bedecked rhythm-stick whilst chanting protective apps incase the acheotech carried Malware curses into the heart of the tribe. Fools. Surely they must know that Malware can only be dispelled by the application of the proper rituals to invoke the mighty god Norton himself?!

The scav had flattened himself at the technomancers appearance, but had now half stood and was chanting back a litany of uninstallation to counter the technomagic. Guards from the Carn's Vaktar-gang had come rushing in drawing pistols, swords and axes. Seeing the oncoming mass of chainmail, fur and weapons the scav evidently decided that a possible technomagic virus was better than a rapid disemboweling. He put his hands up, and was dragged bodily out of the tent to face prosecution by the  clan's law-speaker. The Carn nodded his thanks to the technomancer, and I decided that I would keep my distance for a while whilst the guards calmed down. I circled the feasting yurt, taking in the sights of a barbarian camp - the men's costume was varied, and it seemed that baggy trousers were in fashion, protruding from under the skirts of tunics and jackets. Furs, long hair and beards added a savage note, further excentuated by jewellery made from animal teeth and fragments of old tech. The clan's ladies typically favoured long dresses, with cloaks and aprons instead of the men's furs. Several were dressed in a similar manner to the men, and from the weapons stuck through their belts I gathered that these must be the famous nomad shield maidens, but before I could engage any in conversation the band started.
The  guitarists started shredding heavy rifts, whilst the drums pounded and the pipes wailed. There lead singer began a most extraordinary song,  practically growling out his words in a savage frenzy. The effect was mesmerising. The crowd in the tent went wild, violently shaking their heads in time to the music, causing their long hair and beards to swish rythmically. I  had heard tales that the certain sects, the metallurgists, of the ancients had once practiced such music and dance as part of their rituals for controlling iron and steel... ''

The rest of the page is unreadable, the ink having run from a spilled drink or partial submersion.

- Xander 

The 'world' of the display game

This is the setting for our display game, told from the  perspective of my northern nomads - it's not the default setting for ATR [There isn't really a default setting for ATR - Seb], just an example of what is possible. Please feel free to use whatever setting you want for your ATR games - Twilight 2000, Fallout, or anything else you can imagine!

Game details:
Tech level: At the time of the Fall, the technology level hadn't progressed too far from current levels (e.g. projectile weapons, no functioning robotics)

Apocalypse: Depopulation bomb

All That Remains: The aftermath of post-Fall north-west Europe. The ice-sheet is just off the top of the map...

-The northland trader sits opposite you across the fire, the ruddy flames highlighting his bearded face and reflecting dully from the hilt of his straight sword, buckles and the  CD which forms the centrepiece of his animal tooth necklace. He takes another swig of beer from his tankard before speaking-

''The world ended with a splutter. That's what they say, anyway. As far as I know, no-one from then is still alive to ask. My great grand father could barely remember the early bad years after the Fall - the ones we now call the dark days. Someone once told me that one of the  Ancient's weapons misfired: It unleashed a plague that  killed almost everyone. But then, someone else told me that the whole world tilted on its axis slightly - they said a rock hit it. I've seen plenty of rocks land, but I can't imagine one big enough to make the whole world move... It's fair to say that I don't know.  It doesn't matter now. People died. The  Ancient's civilisation crumbled like stale bread. Things changed.

People drifted from place to place, trying to find somewhere to live. In the north, where my people are from, winters started getting really bad. Then they got worse. The ice didn't always melt in summer. Year by year, the  ice sheet creeps southward. Some years, it barely moves. Some years it moves miles. So the people kept moving, trying to outdistance the ice sheet. People from east and west became one in those early years, breaking into smaller clans to travel, only coming together for major feastivals. As the ice grows, the sea recedes. At least we can wander further.

We graze reindeer and the mammoths. Someone once said that all the mammoths died long ago, but they must have been lying.  There were mammoths in my great grandfather's day. He said they were kept in special places, Zors, where folks could go to see them.  No point in looking at a mammoth.  Farm them, hunt them, use them to tow your kampacan. But not look at them. When we get close to tribes that aren't of the People, we trade. Or if we can best them in battle and take their things, we do. The weak and useless don't last long in the north. Those who fight back we respect. War is part of life, death is part of life too. Like 8 month old reindeer jerky. We don't make peace, but we move on when the fighting profits no-one and goes on for too long. Often we come back and try again. But always we tell them that the Ice is coming. They say that their walls are thick and that their fires are warm. We shake our heads at such foolishness. The Ice in unstoppable. 

Some tribes in the south live in cities, and the Ice has pushed us so far we occasionally come into contact with them . I could not imagine such a thing as a city until I  saw it with my own eyes. So many people living together,  and so many ways of doing so. In some places,  everyone chooses a leader. In some,  they say god chose for them. Mammoth dung the lot of it. Each of our clan's is led by a Carn, and each year the Carn's pick the mightiest to be the Great Carn of the People.

That's enough from me - the beer is doing the talking for me... I'll tell you more another time youngster...''

-He stands up, shaking out his long hair snd adjusting his fur jerkin. The old tech charms on his belt chink gently against each other as he strides away, mutterings to himself in the guttural tongue if the nomad people-

-Xander