Town of Yesterday
When you first enter Yesterday, you may think it's simply a small, country town full of Quiet Folk and Mericans. There are local farms that dot the landscape, a country store where you can purchase or barter for supplies, and even a small school where children are taught the basics of reading and writing. There are, of course, local town guards that rotate shifts at outposts each night, but those are the norm for country towns. In all, it appears to be a peaceful place with only the occasional traveler passing through.
In reality, the small town in what was once northwest Connecticut is a legend among the members of Murder Inc. This is where children are housed and brought up in the ways of the organization since birth. Many Murder Inc families bring their children to Yesterday to be trained and raised in the ways of the group. The children and teens are taught all aspects of killcraft: methods of fighting, how to slide into almost any situation, how to communicate with other Murder Inc cells, and the state of various governments and organizations throughout the wastes. Their background education becomes more focused as they age, with individual strengths fostered through apprenticeships with adults who further their training.
When a teen reaches their eighteenth birthday, they join one of the many caravans that leave Yesterday. These caravans are purportedly trade missions, though in reality they serve as moving stations of death, where citizens work together to take out targets that are nearby threats to society. The teen works with the group to complete their first official mission, and then returns to Yesterday for further work or sets off on their own.
Yesterday is notorious among Murder Inc circles for its wariness of outsiders. The citizens are more than willing to travel and deal with an issue if other cells call, but less willing to accept members into their town. The hospitality is genuine: they will house a person, give them food, and provide entertainment in the form of country dances or fireside stories. However, if an individual who is part of Murder Inc comes to the town requesting training, the person will never be seen again. No adult outsider has survived.
In reality, the small town in what was once northwest Connecticut is a legend among the members of Murder Inc. This is where children are housed and brought up in the ways of the organization since birth. Many Murder Inc families bring their children to Yesterday to be trained and raised in the ways of the group. The children and teens are taught all aspects of killcraft: methods of fighting, how to slide into almost any situation, how to communicate with other Murder Inc cells, and the state of various governments and organizations throughout the wastes. Their background education becomes more focused as they age, with individual strengths fostered through apprenticeships with adults who further their training.
When a teen reaches their eighteenth birthday, they join one of the many caravans that leave Yesterday. These caravans are purportedly trade missions, though in reality they serve as moving stations of death, where citizens work together to take out targets that are nearby threats to society. The teen works with the group to complete their first official mission, and then returns to Yesterday for further work or sets off on their own.
Yesterday is notorious among Murder Inc circles for its wariness of outsiders. The citizens are more than willing to travel and deal with an issue if other cells call, but less willing to accept members into their town. The hospitality is genuine: they will house a person, give them food, and provide entertainment in the form of country dances or fireside stories. However, if an individual who is part of Murder Inc comes to the town requesting training, the person will never be seen again. No adult outsider has survived.
History
The founding of Yesterday is not recorded with the precision of larger Murder Inc operations. What is known is that the settlement was established in the former northwest Connecticut region as a dedicated training ground, a place where the organization could raise its own from the cradle rather than recruiting from the wasteland's uncertain supply of willing killers.
The logic was simple and ruthless. An operative trained from birth carries no conflicting loyalties, no habits learned in some other settlement's militia, no hesitation born from a life lived before the craft. Yesterday's founders understood that the most reliable assassin is one who has never known another way of living. The pastoral cover (Quiet Folk and Merican farming community, nothing to see, move along) was chosen with the same deliberateness. Nobody investigates a town that looks exactly like every other farming settlement in the region.
Over generations, Yesterday became legendary within the organization. Its graduates are recognized not by any visible mark but by a consistency of skill and temperament that other cells find difficult to replicate. The caravans that leave Yesterday carrying fresh eighteen-year-olds into the wasteland have become a quiet institution, trade missions in name and purpose that double as the final examination no trainee can afford to fail. The settlement endures because it serves a function no other Murder Inc location can fill: the manufacturing of killers who do not need to unlearn anything first.
The logic was simple and ruthless. An operative trained from birth carries no conflicting loyalties, no habits learned in some other settlement's militia, no hesitation born from a life lived before the craft. Yesterday's founders understood that the most reliable assassin is one who has never known another way of living. The pastoral cover (Quiet Folk and Merican farming community, nothing to see, move along) was chosen with the same deliberateness. Nobody investigates a town that looks exactly like every other farming settlement in the region.
Over generations, Yesterday became legendary within the organization. Its graduates are recognized not by any visible mark but by a consistency of skill and temperament that other cells find difficult to replicate. The caravans that leave Yesterday carrying fresh eighteen-year-olds into the wasteland have become a quiet institution, trade missions in name and purpose that double as the final examination no trainee can afford to fail. The settlement endures because it serves a function no other Murder Inc location can fill: the manufacturing of killers who do not need to unlearn anything first.
A quiet farming town in former northwest Connecticut where every child learns to read, write, and kill.
