The New-Look Autopsy. Cleaned up and expanded blog articles, support and other material for a variety of games in a more screen/tablet friendly format.
This issue:
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At the side of the half-shattered remnants of the road sits an almost pristine, gigantic, silver trailer with a sprawling wooden shack build onto the back of it. The delicious smell of sizzling meat wafts out from the spinning fan set into the grubby window and a few battered road-warrior cars are parked outside. It seems popular enough so maybe it is safe…
Mom’s truck stop is run by Mom & Pop, conjoined mutants. Mom is a… large woman (never trust a skinny chef) and her ‘husband’, ‘Pop’, is joined to her back which only increases her mass. Both of them are charming, down-home, lovely people to talk to and genuinely try to run the truck stop the best way they can and to look after everyone who stops by.
Of course… it is suspicious where they get all that meat, which they trade for the rest of the food and other produce they sell. Mom and Pop’s extended family – of which there seems to be an endless number spread out over the surrounding area in a large, extended clan and all of which look uncannily like Mom and Pop (both of whom were lookers at a younger age) only with a wide variety of strange mutations, to which they seem to be particularly susceptible.
Players being players the first thing that they’re going to expect is probably ‘CANNIBALS!’ but the truth is somewhat more tragic. Mom and Pop can’t help but have a huge family because they’re fused in such a way that Mom’s pregnancies were inevitable, a form of parthenogenesis almost, making ‘clones’ of Mom or Pop depending how things went along.
One of their mutant offspring (while they’re clones they’re often highly mutated) was Jedadiah. Jed is really little more than a constantly growing, cancerous lump of regenerating flesh. He’s a nice enough boy, somewhere at the centre of that fleshy mass, but without constant ‘harvesting’ of his tumorous flesh he would soon be crushed under his own weight. In order to help him and to support the clan they hit upon the grotesque solution of selling his ‘meat’ at the same rate that they harvest it. Something that has made Mom & Pop – and the clan – relatively well off, but which is disgusting and sooner or later may get them into trouble, even if they are genuinely good folks who are just doing what they can to survive.
Plots:
Atomic: (4 point Merit) You have a radioactive half-life that is recharged by the presence of radiation. You can absorb up to two levels of radiation from any source taking no negative effects from it and healing up to two levels of non-lethal damage per source of radiation.
Beauty School Drop Out : (3 point Merit) Your style may not be normal but out in the wastelands people care more about ‘striking’ than anything else. Your radical ideas mean you can use make-up and styling to give someone a 24 hour +1 bonus to either Charm or Control.
Brothel Creeper : (6 point Merit) You’re adept at sneaking in places where you’re allowed to be, even supposed to be, but still don’t want to be found. You have a +3 bonus to stealth, sneaking and hiding rolls when you’re in such a place. Good for getting out without fuss when you’re cornered.
Brylcreem : (3 point Merit) A little dab’ll do ya and it’ll keep you looking unruffled and dapper even in the heat of combat. You have a pool of 3 points which can be used during a session to take lethal or non-lethal damage before it hits your health bar. You can also spend these points to boost your social rolls on a 1/1 basis, as you look so slick.
Crybaby : (3 point Flaw) You blub at the drop of a hat. When someone’s trying to upset you or you’re trying to resist pain you have a penalty of -1 to your rolls. If you fail in either case, you cry like a little girl.
Dapper Dan : (3 point Flaw) You’re a stylish devil and that means when dealing with the ladies you have a +1 bonus to your social rolls. Unfortunately, you also have a knack of bringing out the jealous side of other men though, a role-playing penalty that your Games Master should hit you with whenever possible.
Diner Regular : (3 point Merit) You’ve got a place where you regularly go to eat or used to regularly go to. It needn’t be a diner, it might be a badlands BBQ shack, a food pill repository or a cannibal trading post. Whatever it is, it’s a place where everyone knows your name, where you have a ‘tab’ and where you – and your friends – can get a free meal and a drink whenever you want.
Gigantor: (12 point Merit) You’re enormous, maybe even fifty feet high. Your Strength and Resilience are increased by three each and you gain 3 points of natural armour resistance against any attacks. Any Dexterity check is penalised by -3 due to your clumsy size and slowness and enemies gain a +3 bonus to hit you, due to you being humungulous.
Greasy Hair: (1 point Flaw) Your hair isn’t slick, it’s just greasy. In any rolls to do with your appearance you take a -1 penalty. On the plus side, your greasy hair and skin give you a +1 bonus to escape from bonds, ties or cuffs.
Hot Betty : (5 point Merit) You’ve got more curves than a coiled snake and bigger headlamps than a police cruiser. Your jello jiggles, you’ve got junk in your drunk and you ain’t going to snap during the mattress mambo. Your sexiness gives you a +1 bonus where appropriate along with a pool of 3 points you can use to boost your dice when you choose to ‘vamp it up’. On the downside you have to suffer through a lot of wolf-whistles and bottom pinches.
In Love with a Square : (8 point Flaw) You’re head over heels in love with a Nerdlinger, a geek, a square, someone so unhip it’s a wonder their bum doesn’t fall off. If this ever came out you’d be socially devastated and permanently lose one point from each of your social statistics. You need to continue your affair, but keep it quiet from anyone but your closest friends.
Indestructible Leather Jacket: (4 point Merit) This jacket is your constant companion and by luck or some supernatural intervention it cannot be destroyed. It provides 1 armour against any and all incoming damage sources, no matter what they are, and can never, ever be destroyed. Even if it’s taken off you it returns to your possession at the earliest possible opportunity.
Lucky Strikes : (3 point Merit) You have a crumpled packet of cigarettes containing three magical cigarettes. If you spark one up it provides you a generic +1 bonus to any rolls for the duration of the scene but, at the end, you take a single point of non-lethal damage. If you celebrate with a cigarette at the end of a battle you can swap one level of lethal damage for one level of non-lethal damage.
Prom Queen/King: (9 point Flaw) You’re the kind of person who was a massive deal in high school, or whatever passed for high school in your tribe, city, people or Zeppelin fleet. School was the absolute high point of your career though and while many people still look up to you for who you were, those who had a hard time as teenagers (most people) FUCKING. HATE. YOU. You take a -3 penalty for social interactions with anyone who had a troubled adolescence while you get a +1 bonus with authority figures and fellow school snobs.
Psychobilly : (3 point Merit) You love the weird, the strange, the unnatural, the odd. When dealing with anything horrific, science-fictiony, psychic, mutated or otherwise beyond the ‘norm’ (before the world was lit with atomic fire) you gain a generic +1 bonus.
Scary Walk: (6 point Merit) You may not move fast but it’s damn intimidating and scary, plus people tend to supply their own scary theramin soundtrack as you move. While striding purposefully towards someone you’re considered to have 3 armour and a +3 bonus to scare or intimidate people – though they can easily outrun you.
Strange Attractor: (1 point Flaw) Mars needs men and Venus needs women, when these aliens – or other monsters – have some unnatural rumpy-pumpy in mind, it’s you they think of. It’s always YOU that gets carried off first by robot monsters.
That’s Some Hair : (1 point Flaw) You have an outrageous hairstyle of some type but whatever it is, it’s the natural state of your hair and cannot be disguised for long. It’s incredibly recognisable and contributes to your notoriety as well as making you easy to find for bounty hunters and the like.
The Claw: (6 point Merit) One of your hands is not a hand, it’s a massive claw like that of a crab. In close combat this claw does lethal damage +3, based on your strength and can also snip through fences and chains. The downside is that you can’t use two-handed weapons or rifles and take a -1 penalty on anything else that requires two proper hands.
Too Cool for School /Too School for Cool : (1 point Merit) You’re either too hep to bother with that academic rubbish or too much of a square to bother with ‘jock stuff’. You get a generic +1 bonus to one set of skills and a generic -1 penalty to the other.
X-Ray Spex: In a wrecked store in a bombed out city you found a miraculous pair of red plastic glasses, humming with atomic energy. When you wear them you can see through clothing, skin, flesh, even brick walls but not anything any thicker and not metal. Where appropriate – say medicine – the glasses provide a +1 bonus.
America’s all very well if you like freeways, giant ants, deserts and gun-wielding crazy people by the dozen but sometimes you might be after something a little more low key or you might simply wish to escape the balkanised Rock n’ Roll hell that is the disunited states. If you don’t want to stray too far from your home culture you might brave the glowing mists and mut0-sharks of the Atlantic and head for jolly Old Blighty.
Post Apocalyptic UK
Britain has a bit of a history of post-apocalyptic stories and they tend to be darker, more low-key and understated than the US post-apocalyptic ‘lore’. That’s not to say that it’s any less strange in its own way what with triffids, mind controlling aliens, plagues, kids taking over and a hundred other odd things. It just tends to be more about creeping doom and the breakdown of civilisation, the decline of social order, rather than – necessarily – big explosion and hotrods.
Keywords
Keep calm and carry on, blitz spirit, stiff upper lip, surreal, strange, odd, tea and crumpets, deference, stubborn civilisation, mad dogs and Englishmen.
Britain in ’45: Psychobilly Retropocalypse
Britain was heavily targeted by the revenge weapons of Nazi Germany and the atomic bombers of the Soviet Union. As such blighty took a bit of a battering and was cut off from its Empire, now lost, about which little is known. Fortunately(?) it was the more populated and urban areas that were most heavily targeted and so the population was decreased enough that the loss of imports did not make things any more miserable than they were already. Since the bombs fell Britain has been divided and has struggled to maintain some sort of order and civilisation between the different factions who, relatively unwilling to fight each other, have settled into a stalemate.
Where America was ravaged, Britain has been made ‘odd’. Lapses in reality, strange portals, strange life, mutants, oddness. The country has become strange and unpredictable, directions, gravity, colour, light, nothing properly obeys the ‘known’ laws of physics and the Radar Shielded areas are the only ones that remain safe.
England
England took the heaviest hits in the war with the majority of its cities having been blown to kingdom come. The cities are now shattered hulks, filled with mutant rats, cats, dogs and pigeons and the odd scavenger and survivor – most of whom were just too stubborn to leave, no matter what.
London in particular was heavily hit, over and again. Other than the buildings protected by by Radar Shield (an application of electromagnetic technology) the city is practically levelled. A glowing husk. On the surface only governmental, military and royal buildings survive unscathed, most particularly the grand offices of The Ministry. Otherwise most survivors are mutated ‘trogs’. Gangs of albino Teddy Boys and other ne’er-do-wells, occupying the sewers and the underground.
The countryside is relatively untouched, though it suffered the worst of the fallout. This has been both a blessing and a curse as strange mutated animals and plants are found everywhere and you can’t really be sure what (or who) you’re eating or what effect it will have on you. Despite all that the English still consider themselves the rulers of Britain – and the Empire (whatever has happened to it) and stubbornly refuse to admit that their country has been gutted, employing caches of military and Ministry technology to hold the line against their detractors.
Wales
Wales was spared any direct hits but a huge cloud of fallout settled over it as it drifted away from ravaged England. Wales is now a glowing, hilly country, suffering under a near constant rain of glowing radioactive particles, different rain showers in different colours. This contaminated water pools in rivers and lakes and distorts reality in strange ways as well as mutating the wildlife. Most especially the sheep who have turned out to be quite sensitive to mutagenics. Rapid evolution over not that many lambing seasons has pulled the sheep up by their bootstraps turning them giant… and dangerous. Being a Shepard is not the easy job it once was.
Scotland
Scotland, like Wales, was largely untouched, mostly because there isn’t much worth blowing up in Scotland once you’re done with Glasgow. Nominally independent Scotland is a hotbed of Republic support, overrun with clannish gangs of cannibals who, while relatively polite about it, are almost impossible to understand. Scotland’s cities – bar Glasgow – remain relatively intact though the strange fallout that afflicts Wales has also afflicted Scotland, leading to a strange profusion of dimensional distortions and oddities across the Highlands.
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland was barely hit but the Irish – what is left of them – took the opportunity to grab hold of Northern Ireland and Britain was glad to be shot of the whole mess and to deal with its own problems. Northern Ireland is now reunited with Southern Ireland and it’s their problem – something that it is proving to be as those who don’t want to be part of Ireland are now in the underdog position.
The Ministry
The Ministry is what remains of the British civil service and controls what remains of the police force and other civic services as well as the machinery of government – even if it doesn’t have that much to preside over any more. Elected governments are only over the surface rulers of Britain, the true rulers have always been found in Whitehall, persisting despite the vagueries of the electoral system.
The Ministry has reorganised after the war, Departments A-Z, each taking responsibility for a strange variety of things that seem to fall, at least loosely, under that letter. The Ministry is presided over by an experimental computer running out of Bletchley Park. TARQUIN – nobody seems to know what the acronym stands for since Turing’s death. This is an artificial intelligence and it has a ‘plan’, even though it doesn’t seem to make much sense The Ministry has decided to follow its computed orders as efficiently and briskly as possible.
The Republic
The Republic is made up of those elements who have rejected the pre-war government and the monarchy and struck out for independence. Most of The Republic is to be found in Scotland and Wales but they have made some inroads into the North of England before the opposing sides have ground to a halt.
The Crown
The Crown is those parts of the pre-war government – outside The Ministry – that survive, along with the survivors from the Royal Family. More loyal than sensible they are determined to keep England united and to explore to find out what happened to The Commonwealth and the Empire. More aggressive than The Republic, The Crown is determined and has a great deal of hardware – for now – though it concentrates too much on living on what’s left of the old, rather than trying to make the new.
Judge Gourmand:
Strength 2, Resilience 3, Dexterity 3, Speed 2, Intelligence 4, Perception 4, Charm 3, Control 3, Resolve 5, Resistance 5
Skills
Argument/Legal/Prosecution 4, Intimidation/Bossy 3, Business 3, Firearms 2, Drive 2
Merits & Flaws
Lecherous -1 on social rolls/resistances versus women (3 points)
Greedy – Always takes more than his fair share (2 points)
Nasty Reputation +1 bonus to intimidation and courtroom Law checks. (2 points).
Gear
Hog-leg – Sawn off shotgun, white-painted jeep.
Sherrif Haslok Poutane:
Strength 3, Resilience 4, Dexterity 3, Speed 3, Intelligence 3, Perception 3, Charm 4, Control 2, Resolve 3, Resistance 3
Skills
Drive/Police Cruiser 3, Firearms/Pistol 3, Animal Handling/Dog/Swift 3, Alertness 2, Tracking 1, Melee 2
Merits & Flaws
Animal Companion – Swift the Bassett hound (8 points)
Lucky Escape – Can completely negate all damage from a car crash once per game (3 points).
Gear
Battered old police cruiser, mutant bassett hound, .38 revolver, 12 gauge pump action shotgun, billyclub.
Swift the Bassett hound:
Strength 2, Resilience 3, Dexterity 1, Speed 2, Intelligence 1, Perception 4, Charm 4, Control 3, Resolve 2, Resistance 2
Skills
Tracking/Scent 5, Looking sad and adorable 4, Running Under vehicles 3, Biting 1
Merits & Flaws
Mutant Immortality – Swift regenerates one column of damage every turn, even if killed or reduced below what the wound table would allow. (12 points). Swift can only be destroyed by fire.
Gear
Collar, Weird little antennae sticking out his head.
Deputies Rufus Gourmand & Enis Bent:
Strength 3, Resilience 3, Dexterity 3, Speed 3, Intelligence 2, Perception 2, Charm 3, Control 3, Resolve 2 Resistance 2
Skills
Drive 3, Tracking 2, Firearms 2, Alertness 2, Melee 2
Merits & Flaws
Too dumb – Rufus and Enis are gullible but any direct mental attacks or attempts to confuse them suffer from the fact they find anything but blindly following orders to be too mentally demanding. They gain a +1 bonus to all resistance checks, because they’re too dumb. (2 points).
Gear
.38 revolver, pump action shotgun, billyclub.
Crazy Pooter:
Strength 3, Resilience 4, Dexterity 4, Speed 3, Intelligence 2, Perception 2, Charm 2, Control 2, Resolve 2, Resistance 2
Skills
Engineer/Automative/Jury Rig 4, Brawling 3, Melee/Wrench 2
Merits & Flaws
Gills – Pooter is beginning to mutate and, as a consequence, can breathe underwater (4 points).
Gear
Big wrench, toolbox, radioactive moonshine in a thermos.
Lola Gourmand:
Strength 3, Resilience 4, Dexterity 1, Speed 1, Intelligence 4, Perception 4, Charm 3, Control 4, Resolve 5, Resistance 5
Skills
Intimidate/Men 5, Cooking/Southern style 3, Business/hotelier 3, Brawl 2, Melee/Frying pan 3
Merits & Flaws
Armour of corpulance – Lola reduces all incoming harm by 1, due to her blubber. (3 points).
Natural authority – Lola gets a +1 bonus whenever she’s ordering or bossing anyone around. (3 points).
Gear
Rolling pin, Frying pan, Fan.
Doc Petticoat:
Strength 1, Resilience 1, Dexterity 2, Speed 1, Intelligence 2, Perception 1, Charm 4, Control 4, Resolve 4, Resistance 4
Skills
Medicine/quackery 1, Bullshit/medical 4, Elicit Sympathy 5
Merits & Flaws
Senior Moments – the Doc constantly forgets things, up to 3 things each session when it would be most annoying for the players (3 points).
Gear
Doctor’s bag, seersucker suit.
Rose Puke:
Strength 3, Resilience 3, Dexterity 4, Speed 4, Intelligence 3, Perception 4, Charm 5, Control 3, Resolve 3, Resistance 3
Skills
Seduction/Flirtation/Elicit Favour 4, Waitressing/Get Tips 3, Survival/Swamp 4, Lie 3
Merits & Flaws
Drop Dead Gorgeous: +3 to any manipulation of menfolk (9 points).
Gills: Rose is partially mutated and, as such, can breathe underwater (4 points).
Gear
Tiny, tiny, denim shorts and a halter top.
Aunty Bessie Puke:
Strength 4, Resilience 4, Dexterity 2, Speed 2, Intelligence 4, Perception 3, Charm 3, Control 4, Resolve 4, Resistance 3
Skills
Brewing/Distilling/Moonshine 5, Survival/Swamp 5, Brawling 2, Melee 3, Firearms/shotgun 3
Merits & Flaws
Gills: Bessie is partially mutated and, as such, can breathe underwater (4 points).
Mental Control of the Clan: Bessie can telepathically give commands to the fully transformed Pukes (4 points).
Gear
Double barrelled shotgun, old truck.
Lo Puke:
Strength 3, Resilience 4, Dexterity 3, Speed 4, Intelligence 3, Perception 4, Charm 4, Control 3, Resolve 3, Resistance 3
Skills
Drive/Muscle Car/The Beauregard 4, Brawl 3, Archery 3, Melee 3, Survival/Swamp 4, Dodge 3, Tracking 3
Merits & Flaws
Gills: Lo is partially mutated and, as such, can breathe underwater (4 points).
Gear
Compound bow, arrows, knife, dynamite.
Booker Puke:
Strength 4, Resilience 4, Dexterity 4, Speed 4, Intelligence 3, Perception 3, Charm 3, Control 3, Resolve 3, Resistance 3
Skills
Drive/Muscle Car/The Beauregard 5, Brawl 4, Archery 2, Melee 3, Survival/Swamp 3, Dodge 3, Tracking 2
Merits & Flaws
Gills: Booker is partially mutated and, as such, can breathe underwater (4 points).
Gear
Compound bow, arrows, knife, dynamite.
The Beauregard:
Sports Car: Health 13, Armour 3, +2 Speed/Acceleration +1 Handling
Armoured
Blower
Heavy Chassis: +1 health box per row.
Oversized Engine (2 seats only)
Smuggling compartment
Turbocharged
Wheel Blades 9 damage.
Fulfilling another Christmas wish:
The Pukes of Dannger
Deep in the south lies Dannger County, a tucked away, rural area that was spared the worst of the war, but not the worst of the fallout. The town of Dannger City is constantly on a knife-edge of survival, caught between being too small to survive and not being large enough to attract any attention from anyone powerful enough to harm them.
They’re also protected by their ruthless ‘hanging judge’, Judge Hoss Gourmand. The Gourmand family are credited – largely self-credited – with being the saviours of Dannger County and the city. Judge Gourmand’s rough justice is another reason that few people bother the county. Backed by his sherrif and deputies Judge Gourmand runs a tight ship and claims ownership of just about everything within the county’s borders, standing for no guff.
There’s a problem though, one clan of swamp-billies is holding out against Gourmand’s attempts to bring justice and civilisation to the county. Mutated, rebellious and determined to spread their corruption to others, the Puke family runs radioactive moonshine to the outlying farms and even into Dannger City itself. One by one people are succumbing to strange mutations and disappearing into the swamps and there’s nothing Doc Petticoat – the town’s aging doctor – can do about it.
There’s little Judge Gourmand and his law officers can do to stop the Pukes, thanks to their souped up muscle car, the Beauregard, about the only fast car in the whole county.
Desperate to bring the Puke clan under control, Judge Gourmand sets out to hire people from outside to deal with the Pukes once and for all. That’s where the players come in…
Dannger County
Dannger Country consists of Dannger City, outlying farms and a good deal of swamp. It’s criss-crossed with trails and dirt roads that pick their way alongside the rivers and through the swamps. None of them are great surfaces to drive on and there’s so many dead ends and blind turns that the whole thing is incredibly dangerous to anyone who doesn’t know the area.
In the summer Dannger Country is a sweltering, fly-blown and stinking place and it’s not much better the rest of the year.
Dannger City
Dannger City is the only town in the whole county and it’s not much of a city. It has a few houses, a bar – The Gator – which belongs to the Judge, the Hotel Dannger, the doctor’s office and Pooter’s Garage.
The Gator:
The Gator is a big wooden building, it’s ceiling lined with rotating fans (the generator runs off swamp gas). It serves local food but – alas – no drink. There isn’t much that’s suitable for making into booze in the swamps. Indeed it’s something of a mystery what the Pukes use to make their ‘shine. You can get food and entertainment here, not least of all the lovely presence of Rose Puke, a pretty swamp flower who was rescued from her cousins in the clan Puke by the Judge and his law officers, about the only victory that they’ve ever had over the Puke clan the whole time they’ve been duking it out.
Hotel Dannger:
Judge Gourmand lives here with his impressively fat wife Lola, who runs the hotel. It’s clean and relatively dry and that’s about all that can really be said about it. It’s horribly overpriced for what it is – at least if you’re an outsider – but Lola is a fierce and intimidating woman and won’t stand for any guff, least of all her husband and she’s the only person in the whole area aside from the Pukes who stands up to him.
Doc’s Office:
Doc Petticoat is ancient and wrinkled old near-corpse. He has forgotten more about medicine than most people have ever known. Unfortunately he’s also forgotten most of what he’s known. Any talent he still has for medicine may have more to do with an intimate, personal knowledge of death than any medical skill. He only has the most basic of medical equipment and yet he’s still the best doctor (the only doctor) for some considerable distance.
Pooter’s Garage:
A graveyard of scrap metal, Pooter does his best to cobble together and keep running the few vehicles the town has going for it. The Judge suspects that Pooter is helping the Pukes keep their own car running, but he’s not been able to prove it as of yet and Pooter is far too valuable to the town to lock up or accuse without cause.
The Puke ‘Stead:
The Puke Homestead is a terrifying old farm out in the swamps, lurking atop a big pile of earth and slowly but inevitably sinking into the swamp bit by bit. The Pukes don’t spend much time there any more, it’s really just a rotting heap though it still contains many stuffed and mounted animals in its cobwebbed depths and the Pukes still congregate here as a clan on notable occasions.
The Swamp:
The swamp is a tangled mess of twisted and mutated trees, sucking mud, alligators, snakes and giant mutated catfish. It’s also home to the Puke clan – scattered in various hovels where they run their stills – and the mysterious source of their power and the fruit that they use to make their ‘shine.
Hovels and Stills:
The Puke clan hovels are all close to the raised dirt tracks that criss-cross the swamp but are little more than shacks with fold down beds and a pot to piss in. The stills are primitive affairs, distilling mashed up and fermented foul-smelling fruit into a clear, powerful, slightly glowing liquor that can be very flammable and explosive.
Mother Hydra:
Deep in the Puke-owned swamps is a grove of seven twisted trees, hung with heavy, misshapen fruit that smells faintly of fish. This is the source of the Puke clan moonshine and the mutation effects of their radioactive moonshine that introduces strange, fish-like traits to those who imbibe it, over time. Some members of the Puke clan who’ve been drinking it for some time have completely transformed into ‘Creatures from Lagoons’ (P85 of the ’45 rulebook) and rest here, protecting the mother trees.
Townsfolk
Judge Gourmand:
Fat, arrogant, disgusting, murderous, lecherous. Gourmand is, nonetheless, the unbending master of Dannger County and the only one standing between the county and chaos. Shame he’s such a disgusting, horrible, bastard.
Sherrif Haslok Poutane:
Incompetent and goofy the only reason he’s sherrif at all is that Gourmand knows he can be easily dominated and made to do what he wants. Haslok has an unreasonable love for his mutated bassett hound, Swift.
Swift the Bassett hound:
A mutated dog, trained by the military to wear a explosive harness and run at tanks, Swift turned out to mutate, during the short war and has somehow managed to survive many attempts to destroy tanks, tractors and several cars. Perhaps swift is immortal?
Deputies Rufus Gourmand & Enis Bent:
Interchangable, amiable dumb-dumbs whose defining characteristic is that they’re dumb enough to be ordered around by Poutane.
Crazy Pooter:
A slowly mutating, secret alcoholic, Pooter is utterly in the pocket of the Puke clan. He’s a good engineer but he’s just not on-side with the town or the judge.
Lola Gourmand:
A heaving mass of pale flesh and terrifying, indomitable will, Lola is a woman you do not want to cross. Through sheer power of intimidation and hard stares she can cause as much damage as a man with a shotgun.
Doc Petticoat:
A dried-up, ancient, mumbling, living corpse getting the Doc’s help with your injuries may be more harmful than not bothering at all.
Rose Puke:
A gorgeous woman, Rose is the only member of the Puke clan that’s liked around Dannger City. She was rescued from the Puke clan and brought into the town, taken under the Judge’s wing and given a job at The Gator. She has a sunny and bright disposition and everyone loves her to bits. Little do they know that blood is thicker than water and that she allowed herself to be ‘rescued’, just so that the Pukes would have an extra person in town to look out for their interests.
The Puke Clan
Aunty Bessie Puke:
A big, beefy woman, Bessie is the matriarch of the whole Puke clan. Clad in denim overalls she circuits the Puke family stills ensuring that they’re producing a good product that carries the taint that will mutate others in the same way as the Puke clan has been, spreading their mutant taint in service of the mysterious trees in the hidden grove.
Lo Puke:
Blonde, muscular and charming. Lo Puke is the salesman of the Puke clan, roaring around in the Beauregard and convincing people – who are already desperate for a drink – to buy their ‘shine.
Booker Puke:
Dark haired and dangerous, Booker Puke is the muscle of the Puke clan, a bareknuckle boxer who intimidates into compliance those who Lo cannot charm.
The Puke Clan:
Mutated into rampaging swamp beasts the majority of the clan hides in the swamps
The Beauregard:
A souped up muscle car resembling an Oldsmobile Jetstar 88, the Beauregard is painted grey and has the racing number ‘OO’ painted on the side.
Double Feature for ’45: Psychobilly Retropocalypse
Featuring two short adventures
RANT! – Attack of the radioactive ants
NITRO EXPRESS – A deadly race across the atomic desert.
Get it HERE
HE was a mutant with a gift for the guitar and an eye for the ladies…
SHE was a hotrod-racing bombshell on the lookout for love…
IT crawled from the wastes of Nashville crater, seeking human victims…
THEY were trapped in a world they never made!
’45 is a world where WWII was fought with atomic bombs on all sides
’45 is a world where the B-movies are real
’45 is a world where Rock N’ Roll mutants do battle with giant ants
’45 is a Psychobilly Retropocalypse
All the cool cats dig ’45 daddy-o, are you hip to the scene?
’45 is so cool, it’s radioactive, man!
’45 is powered by Postmortem Studio’s Xpress system and features customisations specially tailored for pulp/B-movie play.
Filmed on location in
IMAGINATOVISION®
“The author nails the B movie genre of the 1950’s squarely in a fun evocative style. Freely mixing and matching icons, tropes and fads its rock and roll meets attack of the fifty foot woman, its James Dean with three arms blazing nickel plated .45’s featuring in Plan 9 From Outer Space, its voluptuous cavewomen named Lalula riding Harley’s being pursued by giant radioactive ants. Its a pulp game of over the top B movie madness combined with a Rockabilly flair where the atom bomb and science are king. The world encapsulates everything, Femme Fatals, crazy scientists, mysterious swamp creatures, vampires, gumshoe PI’s and sinister Nazi mooks (’45 supposes everyone nuked each other so the war isn’t exactly over). The rules are succinct and to the point and there are plenty of interesting character examples and plot hooks to get you started. Indeed the book is a perfect length giving you just what you need in a comprehensive well laid out format. Art is thematic and sexy and overall its a good looking book.”
Postmortem Studios 