Introduction

[Eanwulf]

My life fades
the vision dims.

All that remains are memories.
I remember a time of chaos
ruined dreams this wasted land.

But most of all, I remember the Road Warrior
the man we called Max.

To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time
when the world was powered by the black fuel
and the deserts sprouted great cities of pipe and steel.

Gone now swept away.

For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war
and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all.
Without fuel they were nothing. They'd built a house of straw.
The thundering machines sputtered and stopped.
Their leaders talked and talked and talked
but nothing could stem the avalanche.

Their world crumbled the cities exploded.
A whirlwind of looting
a firestorm of fear.

Men began to feed on men.

On the roads it was a white-line nightmare.
Only those mobile enough to scavenge
brutal enough to pillage would survive.
The gangs took over the highways
ready to wage war for a tank of juice.

And in this maelstrom of decay
ordinary men were battered and smashed.
Men like Max
the warrior Max.

In the roar of an engine, he lost everything
and became a shell of a man
a burnt out, desolate man
a man haunted by the demons of his past.

A man who wandered out into the wasteland.

And it was here in this blighted place
that he learned to live again.

Welcome to Fallen Times
A Savage Worlds Post-Apocalyptic Setting

[Eanwulf]

An Overview of the World
Fallen Times is an adventure setting that takes place in a post-apocalyptic version of Earth. It mostly deals with one fraction of the world, what was once the United States of America, and some of Southern and Central Canada. As an adventure setting, Fallen Times includes many compelling locations and adventures, but also gives the heroes freedom to explore the world. The Earth has undergone a lot of changes since the present era. This section gives a brief overview of the spirit of our game.

Fallen Times uses the Barbarians of the Aftermath and Barbarians of Lemuria Mythic Edition rules system to play.

[Eanwulf]

Sparse Population
Earth’s population is approximately one thousandth of the modern population (7 million or roughly equal to what it was in 4,000 BC). Most communities number fewer than a hundred people. A town of a thousand people is a metropolis, and ten-thousand is an empire. The population isn’t distributed evenly, and there are many parts of the world where you can travel for weeks without seeing another human. Also, the distribution doesn’t match the modern spread; in fact it’s often inverted, as many population centers in our present world were top targets in the Great Fall.

[Eanwulf]

Technology Lost
After the devastation of the Great Fall, humanity was focused on survival, and many advances in technology were lost. This was partially a knowledge loss, but was also caused by the loss of infrastructure, as many forms of technology we depend on today require highly specialized manufacturing equipment and material resources that come from all around the world. Only a few communities are able to produce electricity, and there are very few petroleum products being created. However, many people of the broken planet take advantage of the technology created before the Fall. They frequently use and live in pre-war buildings, ride pre-war vehicles, and defend themselves with pre-war guns.

[Eanwulf]

Return to Subsistence Societies
Between the population drop and the loss of technology, most people’s lives focus on getting enough to eat and drink. They may be hunters and gatherers, farmers, fisher folk, or herders. A small number of people work other jobs like craftsmen, traders, and scrappers, and most of those people live in the larger towns of Fallen Earth.

As a result of the return to a subsistence lifestyle, literacy rates dropped dramatically. While some farmers pass down knowledge of reading and writing to their children, many people are uneducated. Those with more specialized occupations are more likely to know how to read. The best scrappers know that reading helps them find the best scrap.

Of course PCs are exceptional individuals. They’re likely to be literate and have more advanced skills.

[Eanwulf]

Nasty, Brutish, and Short
The average life span in Fallen Times is about fifty years. Raiders and mutant monsters take their toll, but the lack of medical care is a bigger factor. Diseases once cured with simple antibiotics can devastate whole villages. Cancer rates are higher as a result of the increased background radiation. Child birth and infant mortality rates are also higher than in modern times. Because of this, citizens of Earth grow up faster than they did in the early twenty-first century. Children work from a young age, and can be married as early as sixteen.