Gateway
Gateway looks like everything the wastes are not. Over a thousand people spread across five residencies, wood homes with thatch roofs lining well-maintained roads, farmland stretching outward with reservoirs for crop irrigation, and a central courthouse in Downtown Gateway where the community conducts its business. The settlement bills itself as a bastion of repopulation, a place where the Nuclear Family faith thrives and the doors have no locks, because only those with something to hide would ever need one.
The truth beneath the surface is totalitarian and absolute. The Municipal Board rules Gateway without a public face, issuing decrees on posting boards stamped with silhouettes of "Mother" and "Father" and signed with the phrase every citizen learns before they can walk: "Thank you Mother, thank you Father." The Board dictates marriages to maximize community growth. It decides how many children each family will have. It forbids distilled non-medicinal alcohol. It employs dozens of hidden spies and sleeper agents called the Silent Neighbors, who watch, report, and manufacture evidence against anyone the Board wishes to remove. Citizens who deviate from directives are black-bagged in the night and never heard from again.
The conditioning runs deep. Residents display a feverish pride in community that outsiders find unnerving, a wholesome exterior that masks a population programmed to respond to outside thoughts and outside ways with vehement hatred and violence. Anti-Red Star sentiment is absolute; pro-Red Star sentiments are grounds for the complete destruction of a family. Brainwashing is not an aberration of Gateway's culture. It is the foundation.
Outsiders who visit see a clean, orderly settlement with stone emergency shelters, a hospital, markets, and artisan shops. They see Iron Slaves functioning as property of the state collective, children who smile and adults who wave, and a community that feels too good to be true. The locals despise the nickname "Little Wardville," but those who have left and lived to speak freely say the comparison is generous.
The truth beneath the surface is totalitarian and absolute. The Municipal Board rules Gateway without a public face, issuing decrees on posting boards stamped with silhouettes of "Mother" and "Father" and signed with the phrase every citizen learns before they can walk: "Thank you Mother, thank you Father." The Board dictates marriages to maximize community growth. It decides how many children each family will have. It forbids distilled non-medicinal alcohol. It employs dozens of hidden spies and sleeper agents called the Silent Neighbors, who watch, report, and manufacture evidence against anyone the Board wishes to remove. Citizens who deviate from directives are black-bagged in the night and never heard from again.
The conditioning runs deep. Residents display a feverish pride in community that outsiders find unnerving, a wholesome exterior that masks a population programmed to respond to outside thoughts and outside ways with vehement hatred and violence. Anti-Red Star sentiment is absolute; pro-Red Star sentiments are grounds for the complete destruction of a family. Brainwashing is not an aberration of Gateway's culture. It is the foundation.
Outsiders who visit see a clean, orderly settlement with stone emergency shelters, a hospital, markets, and artisan shops. They see Iron Slaves functioning as property of the state collective, children who smile and adults who wave, and a community that feels too good to be true. The locals despise the nickname "Little Wardville," but those who have left and lived to speak freely say the comparison is generous.
History
Gateway grew as a Nuclear Family settlement in the Western Excess, building outward from a central core into five organized residencies. The Municipal Board consolidated power gradually, replacing open governance with anonymous decrees stamped with the silhouettes of "Mother" and "Father." Over time, the Board embedded its Silent Neighbors into every residency, creating a surveillance network that reaches into every home. The settlement's population has grown steadily through the Board's arranged marriages and reproduction mandates, drawing in new Nuclear Family faithful while ensuring no dissenting voice survives long enough to be heard twice.
Geography
Gateway sits in the Western Excess region of Mountaina, organized into five residencies. Downtown Gateway occupies the center, housing the central courthouse, anti-Red Star league headquarters, hospital, and markets. North, East, West, and South Gateway surround it, each outer residency containing roughly twenty homes with connecting farmland and water reservoirs for crop irrigation during dry season. Construction is primarily wood with thatch roofs, with a few stone structures serving as town centers and emergency shelters against rad storms, swarms, and other threats.
