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[h1]The Smoke Bloom[/h1][h3]"The Pain Improves You
Bleed Red For Your Brothers-in-Arms
As Your World Bleeds Black"[/h3]
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[h2][b][u]OVERVIEW[/u][/b][/h2]


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[indent]There is a place on the edge of the known wasteland where the earth still bleeds that precious black machine blood, where great plumes of hellish fire whirl and whip at the sky with justified indignance. In times past, perhaps a century ago, this was one of many places where man wrested wealth from beneath stone and sand. The great struggles of scarcity that followed did not even leave even this land of riches unscathed, so great was their magnitude. The struggles of the end-times had no beginning and no end, and what was precious to one man - to all men - was a target worthy of destruction, both as a matter of strategics and of spite. The fields were set alight in times past, perhaps by invaders, perhaps by retreating natives, and they still burn to this day. The sky is choked by black smoke, lakes of precious crude stretch out to the smog-hazed horizon, and columns of fire dance.

Most travellers choose to avoid crossing through the Smoke Bloom, as it has come to be known, given the great perils of acrid smoke and toxic lakes. Vehicles have a tendency to become bogged down in the accumulation of raining crude. Where there once might have been a known road or trail, the shifting and accumulation of the viscous black might have subsumed that place in the next. Even worse, the perpetual burn-off of oil that issues from the veins of the earth has made visibility almost nonexistent. It's far too easy to become lost in the Bloom, in that Hell-on-Earth of fire and smog, and never emerge. So many bold and foolhardy folk have vanished into the oily fog and never returned.

Only the natives seem to have a grasp of the Smoke Bloom and its secrets, and they're loathe to share as much. Many of those who have managed navigating the Bloom speak of a people clad in heavy suits and even heavier, repurposed scrap. They tail travellers on their custom two-wheeled steeds, they watch from cliffs and from beside oil pyres as foreigners pass through that dark, surreal hellscape. The people nearest the Bloom have little experience with them save for curt business dealings - guzzoline for steel, guzzoline for luxuries, guzzoline for relics - and the half-remembered days when great hosts of growling motorcycles, slick with black blood, would emerge from the Bloom to exact half-understood vengeance on the peoples of the wasteland.[/indent]

[h2][b][u]CULTURE[/u][/b][/h2]


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[indent]The 'Smokers', as the residents of the Smoke Bloom have come to be known, are an extremely insular people for a great many reasons. Foremost, perhaps, is the land they live in, the deadly and borderline uninhabitable land of burning oil wells and stagnant oil lakes. Knowledge of the Bloom is well-kept amongst the Smokers, but that knowledge is jealously guarded and is a product of short and violent generations of survival necessity. The tales the Smokers tell of their sojourn into and subsequet settling of the Bloom are more myth and tale than actual truth, but a few key points can be inferred from all of the heroic campfire tales: they lived elsewhere before, they were driven into the Bloom by some ancient enemy, they were turned away from all the other waste societies they prostrated themselves before.

The Smokers are loathe to emerge from their subterranean settlements and their secret oases within the Bloom without their heavy, garishly colored environmental suits. They wear thick yellow and orange jumpsuits, generally old world hazmat equipment or lovingly assembled imitations. They paint across these suits in bright colors, they proudly display neon-hued iconography, amongst which the lotus is one of the most common and most popular. The flower has great spiritual significance to them as a sign of resilience and beauty in a place where nothing can grow. Over their environmental suits those who range from the warrens and the oases will wear tactical vestments and exactingly forged scrap armor, and other than this it does tend to be difficult to differentiate one Smoker from another. Men and women share the same silhouette. Simple pilgrims are just as brightly dressed as the deadliest soldiers.

While the suits and the armor certainly make sense given the environs they've chosen, they make even further sense once one has gotten a look beneath the plexiglass they wear across their faces. The Smokers are, both by common ancestry and common hardship (a common theme amongst their myths is 'suffering under the yoke of the rattlers', wherein they conflate geiger counter ticking with malicious spirits), genetically degenerated. Cancer and other maladies are very common, and inbreeding was an issue in times past. It's this state of perpetual suffering, of dying children and poisoned bones, that spawned their religious fanaticism.

The Smokers are practicioners of a peculiar faith born of the trials of modern survivalism and the high ideals of old world religion. In finding sanctuary from day-to-day physical torment, they turned to the spiritual, and they resolved that their plight was both a trial and penance for past wrongdoings, in their current life or in the one before. They believe that physical maladies, especially those that are essentially beyond prevention such as their host of cancers, are direct symptoms of spiritual impurity. Thusly, as the warrior-poets put it, one must be as the holy lotus. One must grow from the muck and bloom despite circumstances and environment. They believe that the lives they live in the Bloom are wholly transitory, that it is a purgatory that they must wrest themselves from by word and deed. In this, the Smokers are fanatical. They do not fear death, so long as it is a noble or serene death. They do not fear any peril. They believe that virtuous conduct in this life will cleanse their souls for the next, some better world where the sun is not swallowed by black smoke. They work to improve their communities for the goodness inherent in the act, and to ease the sufferings of those who are too weak and ill to work alongside them.[/indent]

[h2][b][u]RESROUCES[/u][/b][/h2]
[indent](Basically your "economy", how and what do you produce? Think of your rare resource and equipment quality here)[/indent]

[h2][b][u]LEADERSHIP[/u][/b][/h2]
[indent](Describe your "government" style as well as your leader/s and their flagship if you want here. Flagship can also be put in military)[/indent]

[h2][b][u]MILITARY[/u][/b][/h2]
[indent](Boast about your boiz and their cars, obviously based on motor pool make up and special shit rolls. Feel free to expand on it with whatever else you can think of, but vehicles are the main attraction here, word descriptions are fine if you can't find a picture to match)[/indent]
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[u]Genetic Make Up [/u]
[b]Wretched:[/b] Riddled with tumours and malformations, these poor sods are kept at an arm's length by everyone else. Ugly and deformed, think Hills have eyes. Very high infant mortality, and fewer still make it to adulthood. Always in need of breeders.

[u]Cultural Meta-Group[/u]
[b]Settlers:[/b] The only “normal” people left. Generally just trying to make it through their daily lives without too many violent intrusions. Have built the most since the apocalypse, and generally behave the most like people from the old world. Don’t mistake civilization for civility or peacefulness though. Many are just as cold and merciless as raiders, as they have to be to survive these days.

[u]Leadership[/u]
[b]Democracy/Consensus:[/b] A relative rarity in the post-apocalypse, the group has decided that no one individual holds all the power, but generally makes decisions based on everyones imput.

[u]Cultural Quirks[/u]
[b]Death Cult:[/b] Unsurprisingly among the blighted folk of the wastes, some have taken to worshipping death, or the idea of a “Good death”. Perhaps it’s a mythical afterlife, a desire to see the world well and truly die, or simply a nihilistic belief that death is an inevitable constant in life, for whatever reason this group worships death itself.

[b]Distinctive Icon:[/b] A motif or symbol runs throughout the groups structures, clothes, and vehicles. Maybe it’s a specific animal or object, or maybe it’s something less specific like bullets or flames.

[u]Distinctive Appearance[/u]
[b]War Paint:[/b] When they go to battle, these people paint themselves, and maybe even their rides, in a distinctive style.

[b]Swaddled:[/b] Wrapped up in distinctive trappings, these people’s skin is rarely actually seen. Maybe enviroment suits they never take off their bodies, maybe cloth wraps all over themselves to protect from dust and grit like a desert nomad. In any case, they might be seen as exceptionally mysterious due to it.

[b]Leathers:[/b] Never ride without your distinctive leather jackets and other assorted biker gear. Never.

[u]Unique/Exclusive Resource[/u]
[b]Guzzolene:[/b] Black gold. Everyone needs it, and it isn’t too rare to come by but not too many have the means to refine it. This group does, and it can be extremely lucrative.

[u]Equipment Quality[/u]
[b]Military Grade:[/b] Exactly what you think. Military stockpiles of armor, guns, and gear. Usually live in military bunkers or other fortified locations.

[u]Motor-Pool General Make Up[/u]
[b]Bikes:[/b] The groups rides are almost entirely bikes. Anything from choppers, to dirt bikes, or even nitro-boosted sportbikes.

[u]Special Vehicle Shit[/u]
[b]Harpoons/Graplers:[/b] The ability to keep your vehicular prey where you can kill it is an important ability, and what’s more is that if you’re actually faster you can then drag the slower vehicle behind you.

[b]Extra Armor:[/b] Extra armor bolted onto the vehicles. No matter the type, they gain extra protection with minimal speed penalties.

[u]Flagship Vehicle[/u]
[b]Legendary Car:[/b] It’s not a giant warmachine, or even all that impressive compared to some other things, but it’s the perfect blend of fast, tough, and reliable. This car is everything anyone could ever want and it’s certainly made a name for itself. When a group rolls up with this thing, people know who they are. Takes the form of whatever your generic type of vehicle is.
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