Oilberta
The cold comes first. Then the smell of crude oil, thick and sweet and wrong, layered over everything the wind touches. Oilberta is a region of blood and petroleum, a frozen expanse in the far north where the dead outnumber the living by margins that no one has bothered to count because counting requires going outside, and going outside in Oilberta is an invitation the wasteland is eager to accept.
Snow flurries cut into exposed skin. Reclaimers haul oil drums through drifts that reach their waists, and the cold makes their muscles slow and their joints scream. The restless dead are everywhere: icy creatures roaming the haunted reaches, preserved by the same freeze that keeps the landscape hostile to anything warm-blooded. Oil flows south from here as the region's singular lifeblood, streaming down rivers, pouring through road convoys, riding with Diesel Jocks and sailing with Salt Wise. If the oil trade stopped, every settlement connected to Oilberta would feel the absence within weeks. The region exists because the oil exists. Remove one and the other collapses.
New Calgary is the heart of the operation, and it is no place for the living. A necropolis in the truest sense: frozen corpses wander the decaying streets while the Grave Mind whispers in the ears of the unliving. The dense pre-Fall population succumbed quickly to the plague when the world ended, and the extreme cold preserved their bodies rather than letting them decompose. Years passed. Then the first Full Dead began to wake, opening pale eyes in frozen faces, reclaiming a city that had been waiting for them in the ice.
The Full Dead run New Calgary now. They use the shambling dead as a natural defense perimeter, a wall of corpses that discourages the living from getting too close. The Fifteen, an aboveground highway system connecting buildings throughout the city, still functions as a transit network, but sections have been compromised. Grave Mind growths have pushed fleshy tentacles and pulsing sacs of gelatinous tissue into the highway structure, fusing biology with concrete in ways that make the Grave Robbers who study the site both fascinated and deeply uncomfortable.
The Sunken Center is where the Full Dead have made their home: a high-rise building in the heart of New Calgary, each crumbling floor designated for a different purpose. Living quarters, offices, spaces for socializing, and operations dedicated to unearthing frozen dead from the permafrost. The Full Dead dig their brothers and sisters from the ice, waking them, adding them to the population of a city that grows not through birth but through excavation. From this tower, the Full Dead control oil operations stretching from Raincouver to Fort Murray, managing the resource that keeps the entire region relevant and the trade routes that carry it south.
Beyond New Calgary, No One's Hill sits where the Infection spread through the land like rivers through blood. The ground there is claimed by no one, considered holy in a way that implies Reclaimer cultist influence. The living who pass through Oilberta do so quickly, with purpose, and with the understanding that the frozen north belongs to the dead in every sense that matters.
Snow flurries cut into exposed skin. Reclaimers haul oil drums through drifts that reach their waists, and the cold makes their muscles slow and their joints scream. The restless dead are everywhere: icy creatures roaming the haunted reaches, preserved by the same freeze that keeps the landscape hostile to anything warm-blooded. Oil flows south from here as the region's singular lifeblood, streaming down rivers, pouring through road convoys, riding with Diesel Jocks and sailing with Salt Wise. If the oil trade stopped, every settlement connected to Oilberta would feel the absence within weeks. The region exists because the oil exists. Remove one and the other collapses.
New Calgary is the heart of the operation, and it is no place for the living. A necropolis in the truest sense: frozen corpses wander the decaying streets while the Grave Mind whispers in the ears of the unliving. The dense pre-Fall population succumbed quickly to the plague when the world ended, and the extreme cold preserved their bodies rather than letting them decompose. Years passed. Then the first Full Dead began to wake, opening pale eyes in frozen faces, reclaiming a city that had been waiting for them in the ice.
The Full Dead run New Calgary now. They use the shambling dead as a natural defense perimeter, a wall of corpses that discourages the living from getting too close. The Fifteen, an aboveground highway system connecting buildings throughout the city, still functions as a transit network, but sections have been compromised. Grave Mind growths have pushed fleshy tentacles and pulsing sacs of gelatinous tissue into the highway structure, fusing biology with concrete in ways that make the Grave Robbers who study the site both fascinated and deeply uncomfortable.
The Sunken Center is where the Full Dead have made their home: a high-rise building in the heart of New Calgary, each crumbling floor designated for a different purpose. Living quarters, offices, spaces for socializing, and operations dedicated to unearthing frozen dead from the permafrost. The Full Dead dig their brothers and sisters from the ice, waking them, adding them to the population of a city that grows not through birth but through excavation. From this tower, the Full Dead control oil operations stretching from Raincouver to Fort Murray, managing the resource that keeps the entire region relevant and the trade routes that carry it south.
Beyond New Calgary, No One's Hill sits where the Infection spread through the land like rivers through blood. The ground there is claimed by no one, considered holy in a way that implies Reclaimer cultist influence. The living who pass through Oilberta do so quickly, with purpose, and with the understanding that the frozen north belongs to the dead in every sense that matters.
Geography
Oilberta occupies the frozen north, a territory defined by extremes that discourage habitation and reward exploitation. Snow and ice blanket the landscape for most of the year. Rivers that would be navigable in warmer climates freeze solid, then thaw into oil-slicked channels that Diesel Jocks and Salt Wise use to move crude south. The terrain is flat where it is not mountainous, and the wind crosses both without obstruction, carrying cold that strips warmth from anything it touches.
New Calgary dominates the region's geography the way a scar dominates a face. The pre-Fall city's infrastructure survives in various stages of decay: buildings still standing but crumbling, streets still navigable but choked with frozen dead. The Fifteen, the aboveground highway system, threads between structures and provides the primary transit network for the Full Dead who control the city. Sections of the highway have been physically infiltrated by Grave Mind growths, fleshy tentacles and pulsing sacs of gelatinous tissue pushing through concrete and steel. The Sunken Center high-rise anchors the city's interior, its floors stacked with purpose from ground level to the upper stories.
South of New Calgary, the oil extraction infrastructure stretches toward the trade routes. Refineries, pipeline remnants, and hauling stations mark the path that crude follows on its way to markets in Raincouver, the Burning City, and settlements further south. The terrain between these points is hostile: frozen wastes populated by icy undead creatures and patrolled by restless dead that the cold has preserved well enough to keep moving. No One's Hill rises from the landscape at a point where the Infection is said to have spread through the earth itself, a place the living avoid and that belongs, by consensus, to no one. The geography of Oilberta is the geography of extraction: everything here exists to pull something from the ground and move it somewhere else, and the land itself seems indifferent to whether the hands doing the pulling are alive or dead.
New Calgary dominates the region's geography the way a scar dominates a face. The pre-Fall city's infrastructure survives in various stages of decay: buildings still standing but crumbling, streets still navigable but choked with frozen dead. The Fifteen, the aboveground highway system, threads between structures and provides the primary transit network for the Full Dead who control the city. Sections of the highway have been physically infiltrated by Grave Mind growths, fleshy tentacles and pulsing sacs of gelatinous tissue pushing through concrete and steel. The Sunken Center high-rise anchors the city's interior, its floors stacked with purpose from ground level to the upper stories.
South of New Calgary, the oil extraction infrastructure stretches toward the trade routes. Refineries, pipeline remnants, and hauling stations mark the path that crude follows on its way to markets in Raincouver, the Burning City, and settlements further south. The terrain between these points is hostile: frozen wastes populated by icy undead creatures and patrolled by restless dead that the cold has preserved well enough to keep moving. No One's Hill rises from the landscape at a point where the Infection is said to have spread through the earth itself, a place the living avoid and that belongs, by consensus, to no one. The geography of Oilberta is the geography of extraction: everything here exists to pull something from the ground and move it somewhere else, and the land itself seems indifferent to whether the hands doing the pulling are alive or dead.
