Spoiled Coast
The petroleum stench reaches you miles before you see the shore. When you finally do, the sight is enough to reinforce the hell-sworn beliefs of a Final Knight. Hundreds of miles of blackened coastline stretch along the Gulf, the beaches turned sooty black, the dunes coated inches thick in oil sludge. The sea surface is covered in an ever-spreading slick that reaches far into the open water. Entire sections burn eternally, pillars of smoke rising from rivers of fire that crawl across the waves.
Before the Fall, oil rigs dotted this coast by the dozens. When the dead rose, the crews fled or died, and maintenance ceased overnight. The rigs collapsed one by one into the sea, breaking shafts and pipes that bled crude into the gulf for decades. The hemorrhage never stopped. The soil along the shore has taken on a grey tinge, and plant life dies progressively closer to the coast as the contamination spreads inland. On windy days, the fumes reach as far as New Austin.
Invisible pockets of unbreathable, extremely combustible gas drift across the flats. One spark in the wrong place and the air itself ignites. The creatures that adapted to the toxic environment are invariably dangerous, camouflaged in the same slick black as the landscape, and poisonous to anything that tries to eat them.
The worst threat comes from the water. Red-daubed slick-ships ply the rainbow-black waves, raiding inland settlements for goods, weapons, and slaves. Loudspeakers scream a litany of judgment as the pirates attack. Those taken to the Fortress, Ulysses Tarback's stronghold fifty miles offshore, are never seen again.
Before the Fall, oil rigs dotted this coast by the dozens. When the dead rose, the crews fled or died, and maintenance ceased overnight. The rigs collapsed one by one into the sea, breaking shafts and pipes that bled crude into the gulf for decades. The hemorrhage never stopped. The soil along the shore has taken on a grey tinge, and plant life dies progressively closer to the coast as the contamination spreads inland. On windy days, the fumes reach as far as New Austin.
Invisible pockets of unbreathable, extremely combustible gas drift across the flats. One spark in the wrong place and the air itself ignites. The creatures that adapted to the toxic environment are invariably dangerous, camouflaged in the same slick black as the landscape, and poisonous to anything that tries to eat them.
The worst threat comes from the water. Red-daubed slick-ships ply the rainbow-black waves, raiding inland settlements for goods, weapons, and slaves. Loudspeakers scream a litany of judgment as the pirates attack. Those taken to the Fortress, Ulysses Tarback's stronghold fifty miles offshore, are never seen again.
Geography
The Spoiled Coast stretches hundreds of miles along the Gulf, a wasteland of oil-blackened beaches and toxic dunes. The sea surface is coated in an ever-spreading oil slick, and entire sections burn without ceasing, sending pillars of smoke and rivers of fire across the water. Petroleum fumes can be smelled miles inland, and invisible concentrations of combustible gas drift unpredictably across the shoreline. The soil takes on an increasingly grey tinge as you approach, and plant life dies in a widening margin around the contaminated zone.
The coast runs along the southern edge of Lone Star territory, with the petroleum stench reaching as far as New Austin on windy days. Fifty miles offshore, Tarback's Fortress rises from the slick on the pylons of a pre-fall oil rig.
The coast runs along the southern edge of Lone Star territory, with the petroleum stench reaching as far as New Austin on windy days. Fifty miles offshore, Tarback's Fortress rises from the slick on the pylons of a pre-fall oil rig.
History
Before the Fall, oil rigs dotted the Gulf coast in great numbers. When the dead rose and civilization collapsed, survivors abandoned the platforms and fled inland. Without maintenance, the rigs deteriorated and collapsed one by one into the sea, rupturing shafts and pipelines that bled crude into the gulf for decades. The contamination spread unchecked, coating the surface in an oil slick that now stretches far into open water and burns in sections that have not gone out in living memory.
The Spoiled Coast is a wound that will not heal. Each year the grey tinge in the soil creeps a little further inland, and the plant life dies a little closer to settlements that once considered themselves safely distant from the shore.
The Spoiled Coast is a wound that will not heal. Each year the grey tinge in the soil creeps a little further inland, and the plant life dies a little closer to settlements that once considered themselves safely distant from the shore.
