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Old 08-30-2018, 11:02 PM   #3
Zibani
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default Re: Odd New West - A (not Fallout) Post Apocalypse Adventure

Booker C. McGuire

27 years prior to the fall, whatever the cause of that event, an enormous lithium deposit was discovered beneath Springfield, MO. Albemarle Chemical Company tried to gain mining rights to the land, but it was situated under a heavily populated area of the city, so they were shut out. This didn't deter them, though. The deposit was worth billions, and they would have it, so they started a long, arduous process of lobbying, bribing, and blackmailing the appropriate people so they could take the rights to the land.

26 years later, they finally succeeded. They displaced thousands of people and shipped in hundreds of tons of mining equipment to begin mining operations for Table Rock Mines, now one of the most valuable mines in North America. A year later, soon after they had started operations, the Fall hit, leaving a brand-new mine complete with basically undamaged equipment ripe for the picking. It sat untouched for many years, as society fell apart then pulled itself back together, waiting. Many years later, an enterprising scavenger with a penchant for pre-Fall technology combed through the work site that had been picked clean many years ago. Unlike previous scavengers, though, he wasn't looking to make a quick buck. He was in it for the long haul. Digging through documentation, he found the true purpose of the derelict work site, and knew the value of what he'd stumbled upon. His name was Michael Rathmore, and with the help of a few friends and family members, he got the mine back into full operation.

He helped turn what used to be Springfield into the post-Fall battery capital of the Americas. The vast variety of uses for lithium in medicine, metallurgy, electronics, glass, ceramics, and nuclear absorption made the Rathmore family one of the richest, most influential families in the whole of post-Fall America. In the many intervening years, he christened the growing city Apolloton, after the Greek god of light and healing, among other things. A good portion of all new batteries, among other things, are mined, manufactured, and shipped from Apolloton.

With the lack of governmental oversight, his family slowly built the city into a modern-day company town. Everything in the city, from the mine to the homes to the shops to the bars to the doctors are still owned by the Rathmore family. Employees are mostly paid in company credit to keep them in debt, while schooling mostly focuses on the skills necessary to make students effective employees. Many who work the mines often die fairly young of kidney failure.

There are a few differences from 19th century company towns, though. For one, the pre-existing infrastructure of highways and railways in and out of Springfield have left Apolloton a thriving trade hub, which unfortunately for the Rathmores means that company credit is decidedly less effective at keeping the citizens obedient and in line. Secondly, despite the collapse of organizations like OSHA and the EPA, Table Rock Mines does still put an emphasis on safety equipment and PPE, at least so far as it affects the bottom line, so it's much safer for the miners to work their whole lives there. Additionally, due to the fact that lithium is a mood stabilizer, the little contamination that employees do experience has left Apolloton a reputation for being a city full of fairly even-headed citizens.

Abigail McGuire was one such citizen. She and her brothers were the latest in a long line of lithium miners, and she took to the family calling like a fish to water. She was a tomboy growing up, and when she reached adulthood, she immediately started work in the mines. It was an easy life for her: work all day, then go to the bar with her crew at night. She didn't really need much more than that.

One night, when she was 37, after a long day in the mines, she went out with her crew. As usual, she got extremely drunk, which wasn't out of the ordinary for her. It had been a long time since she got laid, so when she saw a long-haired, dark-skinned man eyeing her from across the bar, she didn't hesitate to jump on the opportunity. She followed him to his hotel room, and they shared a wild, drunken night together. She woke up the next morning in an empty hotel room.

Abby was an enormous beast of a woman, so gaining 20 pounds over the course of 36 weeks wasn't particularly concerning to her. It wasn't until she went to the company doctors for severe stomach cramps that she even knew she was pregnant. Somehow, against all odds, the infant arrived completely healthy, despite the daily mining and heavy drinking that Abby did throughout her entire pregnancy. The doctors saw nothing immediately wrong with him, and she wasn't important enough to merit more in-depth tests, so they sent her home with an infant that she hadn't even known was coming.

Growing up, Booker was a quiet child. He was creative and prone to flights of fancy, always talking about his imaginary friends. His mother was never particularly clever or maternal, but she loved her son. She raised him properly, as one of the Displaced, teaching him hope for the future, and proper faith. When he was 8 years old, as a special treat, she took him to a roving trader of books. He had dyslexia, so he always had trouble reading, and she'd heard this merchant had comics, which would need less actual reading, even though he had wanted to. There, he saw a collection of photocopies of reprints of scans of Golden Age comics, which she purchased for him using what little savings of actual money she had. Spider-man, Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Superman, Batman: He devoured them all, quickly becoming obsessed.

Themes of gaining powers caught his attention the most. These Golden Age comics often gave strange and wonderful gifts with radiation, and the idea captivated him. So much so that his chosen Table-Rock Job Training Program field was studying Geological Survey equipment and Prospecting, secretly, (and maybe even subconsciously) hoping to find a secret vein of uranium or plutonium. He often did poorly in the classroom, but every time they went down into the mines for hands-on training, he excelled. He chalked it up to his dyslexia; though unknown to him, there may have been something more to how he found the veins.

In his private time, he liked using abandoned scrap electronics from school, as well as those found in dumpsters, and fiddling with them. Over the course of his studies, he started making even stranger and more wondrous devices. His mother was never quite able to use them, likely because he was so much smarter than she. The devices he made were wonderful contraptions of tubes with blinking lights.

At 17, while the debts were still his mother’s and not his, she asked him to leave town. Take his genius elsewhere, and make something of his life, free from the debts of the Table Rock Mining company. So he left, scant few things on his back, promising to come back for her some day. Aimless, he started wandering. It was during the early days of this that he stumbled across a man named Solomon Ward...
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