Socorro County: Overview
these keys are not meant to be gameable. They're a brief overview of PoIs in the setting. My intention is to crop this map into smaller sections and key them so that each section fits on a two page spread. Dungeons and towns get their own.
Valle Socorro
the wind smells like a snuffed candle. Last year's fire left a dark bleed on the western side of the forest. It seeps east, to where the Río Socorro scoops an axe wound from the plateau.
What once was the west side of Socorro became a charcoal slope dotted with the hunched, blackened corpses of buildings. Quickly it sprouted a colony of bone-white, yellow-haired aspens. They shimble their yellowness in the face of the green piñon needles, their neighbours.
The East side was shielded by the Río. By the grace of God one sawmill was left intact. The surviving population clings to it like a log adrift. Out-of-towners are clocked by the lack of scar tissue on their palms, arms, faces. You can see the fire literally everywhere but no one talks about it.
casa del Coronel
The timber fort of the pioneers burned down twenty years ago. Old men in town still bear the scars of that short-lived insurrection.
The Aspens have grown back in its shape, filling in the memory like a cast mould. Walls of bunched living wood, seamless, growing perfect corners.
There -- at the gatehouse. Movement. A trick of the shivering leaves?
the House
In their dreams, the locals wander within. Deeper, the trunks grow together into corridors, rooms, towers. Shaped like homes; connected like thoughts.
Come day, some enter and do not return. Worse, some do.
socorro oeste
Western Socorro is steeped in the eruption of new growth. Charred roofs impaled by sappy trunks. Clover boils up over blackened floorboards.
But there is no noise. No animals, no people. Just the hiss of a thousand quaking aspen leaves.
mirador rojo
A humble imitation of the Casa del Coronel. A platoon of 14 auxiliaries mans this tower, their main concern being to look out for fires rather than project the City-State's influence. They are afraid. The northeastern blinds are always shut.
pueblo socorro
The people of Socorro cut trees, ply timber, and try to forget the fire. They turn their backs on the growing Aspens. Disappearances are taboo subjects. Conflict with the Vaqueros is a welcome scapegoat and distraction.
There is a bridge over to Socorro Oeste. It is untravelled by day. It is hard to see what crosses at night.
parliament of mould
A secret place, older even than the trees.
cow field
Alba's cows keep going missing, and she wants to know who's responsible. She suspects Vaqueros or Trappers. She fears it's the Aspens.
At midnight, a bovine spore ghoul from the Parliament of Mould descends to the cattle field, feeds for an hour, spreads spores, then returns to G2.
the thrice hand
The Vaqueros -- horsemounted brigands hired to clear land for the City-State's growing herds of cattle. Their writ supercedes any local claim to the timberland. The Vaqueros don't chop. They burn.
the old men of the forest
Go on; try it. Go and tell your tall tales. See if any of those mean sons of bitches in La Bruja with faces like chewed leather do anything other than laugh and beat your ass to next Sunday. Sasquatch? Shit, don't waste my time.
vulture rings
A sophisticated, decentralised nation once existed here. They practised natural magic rooted in animism and reciprocal relationships with deities of Law and Chaos.
When colonists first landed on this continent, an avian disseminated plague travelled far ahead.
The people were decimated in five months. No struggle. People just crawled, dying, into great heaps, eventually returning to the earth.
It was fifty years before explorers from the Eastern City-State even penetrated this region. By then, the landscape was barren of human habitation.
Artfully bio-engineered tree canopies once guarded entrances to subterranean cities. Untended, they became impassable thickets. Barrow mounds became hills.
The only hint of an advanced prior culture is a network of perplexingly large lithosculptures and unintelligible petroglyphs.