Category:Puyallup Barrens

Something like thirty years ago, Mount Rainier erupted and buried Puyallup in tons of ash and lava. Shortly after that the district was occupied by refugees fleeing the new NAN states. The greater part of the district is a wasteland spotted with abandoned buildings, rusted factories, and squatter camps, from the boiling geysers in the Hell’s Kitchen lava fields to the metahuman ghettos. Kids grow up hacking black crap from their lungs and knowing that every scrape or cut could mean infection and death. Because of the constant ash fall from Mount Rainier, Puyallup suffers more acid rain than any other district in Seattle. Over half the district’s population is metahuman.

The Mowich Lava Flow is Puyallup's most distinctive feature, formed by the rivers of lava that poured down from Mt. Rainier, wiping out everything in its path. Eventually the lava flow pushed the Puyallup River out of its former bed, flooding a lot of the low lying areas with toxic grey mud. Large amounts of water were drawn underground, where they formed pockets of boiling mud or steam geysers on the surface of the lava plain. The river eventually settled into a new course, although it's still shallow and floods sometimes during the late winter and early spring.

Always looking to turn disaster into profit, several corporations saw opportunities to build geothermal power plants on the lava fields. Several projects were approved, but the Crash of 29' wiped out their funding and often, the companies sponsoring them. So the lava flats are dotted with the rusting hulks of half completed structures, some of them taken over and used as stations or shelters.

Hell's Kitchen does see some visitors; shamans make their way out across the lava flats and ash dunes on vision quests and to commune with nature spirits, while talismongers search for useful minerals and bones of animals that died out on the plain or in one of the boiling mud pits. Some hardy dwarf miners make their way out with pick and axe shovels looking for valuable mineral veins. The rest are either tourists enjoying the stark beauty of the lava flows (often from a safe distance) or smugglers making their way across the desolation to or from the border, avoiding the automated monitoring stations and patrol drones.

Only a few parts of Puyallup can be considered “safe”. Lone Star still patrols Puyallup City, a nice clean little enclave kept afloat with Mafia money, but they leave the rest of the district to fend for itself. The elven ghetto of Tarislar, packed with thousands of Tír Tairngire expatriates isn’t too rough, either—the elves actually pay Knight Errant to keep the peace, and the Laésa keep things quiet too. Sperethiel is the dominant language there, and children that grow up there learn English as a second language, if they learn it at all.

The mainly Black and Latino orks of the Carbanado neighbourhood do a good job of organizing themselves against racist attacks and predatory gangs. That area used to be heavily mined for precious metals and is covered with quarries, pits, and tunnels. On the other end of Puyallup, near Fort Lewis, the Loveland area remains a battleground between the Mafia and Yakuza looking to entertain off-duty soldiers and trendy corp kids at their fashionable nightclubs.

Outside of syndicate skirmishes, few runs will take you into Puyallup—there’s nothing here a corporate Mr. Johnson would want. It is a great place to disappear, though, if you don’t mind dealing with a different gang every 10 meters. The district is perfect for smuggling and establishing all manner of illicit enterprises. The Crime Mall is also a good place to shop for black market items or unload anything you picked up on that last run.

Puyallup At A Glance

Size: 1,008 square kilometers Population: 506,000 (estimated) Human: 48% Elf: 21% Dwarf: 4% Ork: 22% Troll: 4% Other: 1% Population Density: 502 per square kilometer Per Capita Income: 6,200¥ Corporate-Affiliated Population: 18% Hospitals and Clinics: 6 Voting Precincts: 10 Education: Less Than 12 Years: 80% High School Equivalency: 16% College Equivalency: 4% Advanced Degrees and Certificates: less than 1% Major Corp Facilities: None Major Gangs: The Black Rains, Forever Tacoma, the Princes, the Reality Hackers