"I tried askin' people… askin' them why things were the way they are here, and all they could say is that a flood happened. A flood like the kind in that Bible Tau reads. They say it happened overnight, a great flood that washed away the world. No gods, no kings, just man. But they say it is peaceful. There are no wars, no fighting over more than the necessities to survive. There is no war of national boundaries or ideologies. It—So many people must have died…"
Dajan Dunsimi — La Mer, Part II
How Time Works in the Flood of the Garden of Forking Paths
After the initial arrival of the travelers into the Flood Timeline on October 22nd, 2018 we will rapidly catch the characters up to "current" time in November of 2018. After which point we will be moving on a 1:1 ratio through to the end of the story.
The events of the Flood Timeline of Garden of Forking Paths will ICly take place (and be OOCly played) between October 22nd of 2018 and February of 2019.
Further information will also be made available soon.
A World Unlike Any Other
The world of the Flood timeline is both dramatically divergent from the "Prime" timeline as detailed in the timeline page. While things can be dramatically different, there is also cause to believe some things may have happened the same in Flood as they did in Prime, but under different circumstances. See the 2006 Midtown explosion happening in Flood and Prime with similar figures involved, but also different circumstances and effects.
The world of the Flood is both harsh and serene. Nine years ago the Earth was thrown into apocalyptic environmental upheaval accompanied by a swift but brutal global conflict with the Vanguard, who diminished and disappeared when their grim task was complete. The world left behind is one where civilization has not been forgotten, but must simply be rebuilt. The lives of the focal-characters of the Flood Timeline in Garden of Forking Paths are spent primarily at sea or in towering communities built within the crumbling remains of skyscrapers. Life is about survival, how communities come together to rebuild, and the persistence of humanity in the face of disaster.
Due to the proximity of the Stormfront it is overcast and rainy more often than not in the local area.
If you'd like to see more of what the world of the Flood looks like, please check out this link for a sea-level rise map set to the appropriate height.
Additionally, for some inspiration for how civilization and infrastructure breaks down after an apocalyptic event, I recommend Life After People. This link begins at 5 years.
Where in the World?
The Distant Shores Flood timeline's primary focus is in New York City, centered around the Archipelago of Manhattan (known colloquially as the Pelago) and the open oceans beyond.
The first half of the story takes place in the Pelago (see below for more details) and eventually takes the travelers and their allies on a journey north across treacherous waters into the heart of the Stormfront, a massive super-storm perpetually spinning off the coast of what was once the American northeast.
In the second half of the story, we shift focus to the Mainland, otherwise known as the toxic, wartorn ruins of the United States of America that weren't drowned in the great flood. There will be more information on the Mainland later.
New Geography
The Pelago
The Archipelago of Manhattan, also known simply as The Pelago, are a chain of artificial islands made from the remains of Manhattan's tallest skyscrapers. With sea levels risen roughly 300 feet, much of New York City is located underwater. Wherever dry land is available settlers have moved in and attempted to make life work. The Pelago has a population of 18,750 survivors of the war with the Vanguard and the flood that preceded it. The residents of the Pelago live in mostly communal dwellings and internal cities constructed within the towering husks of skyscrapers. Settlements are often named for the buildings they once inhabited or local intersections they were famous for. Settlements like Empire, Sachs, and Broadway are divided up into residences formed from old office spaces, marketplaces that were once entire floors, workshops, scrapyards, and even hydroponic gardens. Rooftop spaces are reserved for additional garden spaces and salvaged solar paneling that — along with makeshift rooftop turbines — provide electricity to the Pelago. Tanker ships containing crude oil, long ago taken over by enterprising survivors, make the rounds from the Manhattan Pelago up further down the east coast and in to the newly forms bays and canals of lowland America, selling fuel for essential supplies and trade scrap.
Most residents of the Pelago are workers keeping the settlements operative, security against pirates and internecine crime originally formed from pre-flood law enforcement professionals but rapidly becoming a people's militia. Buildings are accessed at sea level via docks and piers constructed against the outside of the structures, often lashed together with rope, wire, power cables, and other salvaged material. Many ships survived the flood, and most independent residents either own a vessel of their own or are part of another resident's crew.
Up until 2018 the primary government of the Pelago was the Manhattan Cooperative, an elected council of residents that conduct business within the remnants of the Empire State Building. When the Sentinel destroyed the Empire State Building nearly all members of the Manhattan Cooperative were slain. The new interim government for the Pelago is the Council of Captains, a self-appointed governate representing each and every ship captain in the Pelago with larger voting and influence based on the ship's total crew. The Council of Captains is seen as a temporary solution, but nearly three years out it has yet to be replaced. The addition of the notorious pirate queen Veronica Sawyer to this council has been a strong point of contention.
Surviving representative from each major island-settlement along with influential individuals with power or resources essential to the city's survival that once held power in the Manhattan Cooperative see the Council of Captains as an authoritarian leadership that does not accurately reflect the will of the people of the Pelago. However, struggles with maintaining order in the wake of the Sentinel's attack has made change slow coming.
Palisades Sill
Palisades Sill is a settlement in close proximity to the Pelago, once operated by a sect of the old Vanguard. Unlike the Pelago itself, Palisades Sill embraces piracy and functions as neutral territory and a general den of iniquity where morals are loose and the unscrupulous thrive. Visitors from the Pelago are not uncommon, although it’s understood that disputes between pirates and the Pelago’s inhabitants are either left at the door or dealt with in a manner that doesn’t threaten the status quo or damage management’s property.
The settlement itself is built both into and and on top of the Palisades: a five hundred foot stretch of cliffside that runs along what was once the Hudson River. Generally speaking, wealthier individuals and business owners are situated higher than those just scraping by, but there are exceptions to this rule where the settlement spills out onto the water, such as the expansive floating bazaar or distillers who have set up shop in the cave systems inside the cliffs themselves.
There are roughly one thousand permanent residents of the Palisades, but when business is booming and the cliffs are crowded by ships looking for a port, that number can sometimes triple. Ramshackle buildings built into the cliffs are connected by either rope bridges or rickety walkways of dubious construction that increase in reliability the closer to the top of the cliffs they are. A once-abandoned cruise ship, Freedom of the Sea, is permanently docked at the water’s edge and serves as a hotel for temporary visitors — for a price, of course.
In the aftermath of the Sentinel's attack, survivors of the Old Vanguard who ran the Sill were driven out by the residents. Their whereabouts remain unknown. The remaining business owners have created a coop, overseen by a (mostly) democratically-elected Council. The Sill allows visitors and welcomes trade. Traders from the Sill visit the Pelago regularly.
The Stormfront
When the flood began in January of 2010 weather-related disasters began to tear across the Earth. One of the most devastating was the formation of numerous hurricanes that spun up in the mid-Atlantic and ravaged the American coastline. By July of 2010 attempts by weather-manipulating evolved to mitigate these storms instead caused an even greater calamity to be born. Adjusting airflows changing from the melting Antarctic ice gave way to a super hurricane beyond known classification. The weather manipulators disrupted air flow over an enormous oceanic current in an attempt to push the stone back out to sea, but so immensely affected the weather that it permanently altered the position of jet streams. In a year already inundated with storms, the National Weather Service had moved past named hurricanes and onto the Greek alphabet. Hurricane Alpha tore up the east coast from Florida to Massachusetts before being caught in the manipulated currents over unusually warm water. Instead of just preventing the storm from reaching land, these air currents locked it at sea where it will continue to churn for decades before running out of fuel.
Hurricane Alpha, known now simply as the Stormfront churns 15 miles off of what was the coast of Massachusetts. Bold pirates and opportunists use the cover of smaller storms spun off of the Stormfront to lead raids on surviving settlements. Beyond the Stormfront there was once an underwater fortress known as the Ark, which was destroyed in 2019 when its reactor melted down. Survivors from the Ark arrived in the Pelago in early 2019 with fascinating and unbelievable stories.
With the Dread Pirate Sawyer no longer residing within the Stormfront more explorers have willingly traveled north to try and seek open sea lanes to Europe and beyond.
The Tower
Located on the western edge of the Stormfront, The Tower is a broadcasting station in what was once Boylston, Massachusetts. Named after its eponymous radio tower that has weathered the arrival of Hurricane Alpha and the war that tore across the world, the Tower is a respite within otherwise hostile waters. The 1,350 foot tall tower resides on a wind-lashed island just off the new coast of Massachusetts near the island of Marlboro, ten miles outside of the Stormfront. A concrete broadcast building maintained by local settlers is set at the Tower's base and typically sends music and seemingly gibberish morse code signals as far south as New York, when the weather permits. The Tower is a landmark navigated by those brave enough to pilot through pirate-infested shores, as the glowing red beacons burning on the tower still shine at night. Pirates universally avoid accosting the residents of the Tower, and local wisdom is that they don't have the time, skill, or willpower to maintain the broadcast station and have become accustomed to its presence.
The Tower was a relay point for residents of the Ark to come and go from lands beyond and frequently served as a mooring point for the Ark's short-range submarine. Following the destruction of the Ark, the Tower was largely abandoned until Lance Gerken took the tower over and converted it into a radio station that broadcasts as far south as the Delphi Flotilla.
The Commonwealth
Rumors persisted for years of an underwater settlement located somewhere within the Stormfront, known as the Commonwealth. Seafarers long sought this fabled city that has resisted the collapse of civilization, but no evidence pointed towards its existence until early 2019, when survivors from the Commonwealth—known to them as the Ark—arrived in the Pelago with tall tales and wild stories of their life in the aquatic city and its collapse.
The Mainland
The flood didn't destroy the world, humanity did.
The "Mainland" is what remains of North America following the tumult of the flood. After the great waves wiped out coastal cities and the Sentinel destroyed or absorbed what was left of civilized governments and militaries, all that remained was a ravaged frontier of crumbling cities, starving survivors, and vast stretched of polluted wilderness.
First came extreme weather in the form of super-storms spun off of the Antarctic melt, then came extreme cold and hot temperatures that ravaged a nation with no running water or power. Food shortages turned into riots, turned into mass starvation and disease. In the first 3 months after the flood the global fatalities on the mainland was 2 billion dead. Epidemics swept through mainland communities unable to isolate themselves in the ruins of major cities, now turned into tombs.
Then came the nuclear meltdowns. As nuclear reactors in North America went unmanned, coolant systems failed and reactors went into critical resulting in superheating plutonium rods that created cascading steam explosions that jettisoned radioactive particles into the air. These clouds swept along changing jet stream currents, depositing radioactive fallout for thousands of miles. Food, water, and wildlife, all fell to this toxic morass. As infrastructure collapsed, survivors turned desperate and those who hadn't yet fled to the coasts did so. The remaining holdouts who live within the Mainland are hardened survivalists who have resources to survive or mitigate the effects of radiation or otherwise choose to live in remote hinterlands not as deeply impacted by the despoiling of civilization or fallout.
In the current era, only the brave or foolish go to the mainland beyond immediate coastal regions. Salvaging operations rarely last long, and entrepreneurs who have attempted to set up major salvage operations in the ruins of major cities rarely return.
Delphi Flotilla
The Delphi Flotilla is one of the largest coastal settlements on the North-American Atlantic residing over what was once Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is a skyscraper archipelago only rivaled in size by the Manhattan Pelago in what was once New York. Delphi was hard-hit by the Sentinel in 2019 but has since seen a renaissance since the Sentinel's defeat in the north. Delphi boasts a population of 2,350 spread out over two miles of above-sea level skyscraper rooftops, floatilla, and ramshackle wharves and floating structures. The settlement is a hub for smaller communities that dot the Atlantic coast and has become a major trade hub for the post-flood world. Salvage operations interested in operating on the Mainland coast go through the Delphi Flotilla.
Unlike many coastal settlements the Delphi Flotilla has electricity thanks to an extensive re-wiring project that connected the archipelago buildings to solar power receptors salvaged from the mainland and several large, permanently moored ships serving as auxiliary batteries. As such the Delphi Flotilla has amenities not found in other parts of the Atlantic coast, like powered lights, music from electronic players, and even entertainment in the form of salvaged televisions and disc media. Refrigeration is still not available due to the lack of access to coolant, as such food spoilage is still a major issue.
The Convoy
Land vehicles aren't in high demand after the flood, but here we are. The Convoy is a collection of seven vehicles carrying the Away Team to their destination of Mount Natazhat, Alaska. It consists of the following vehicles:
| Callsign |
Description |
Passengers |
| "Scout" |
A 2003 Hummer H2 outfitted with wire-mesh window plates and bullbars with a spare tire and a jerry can strapped to its roof. |
Castle, Chess, Nathalie, Ryans, and Tay |
| "Katie" |
1997 Ford E-350 with a raised roof. Originally, the van belonged to KT-3 News in Denver, Colorado. This vehicle's radio transmission equipment is still functional and allows for the convoy to broadcast short-range communications. |
Elliot, Gracie, Hart, and Squeaks |
| "Doc" |
1995 Ford F-350 Ambulance stocked with medical supplies. |
Destroyed |
| "Frizzle" |
1989 International 3800 School Bus that serves as the primary passenger-carrier of the convoy. |
Asi, Else, Erin, Eve, Glory, JR, Kendall, Monica, Nick, Nova, Silas, and Stef & Nate |
| "Speedwagon" |
A military REO M-35 general-purpose cargo truck carrying the majority of the convoy's supplies. |
Cat, Nadira, and Quinn |
| "Tinderbox" |
Freightliner FLD-120 semi-truck hauling a tanker trailer with enough fuel to bring the convoy to Alaska. It is outfitted with a hydraulic plow on the front capable of moving smaller vehicles and debris. |
Jonathan, Marlowe, and "Spades" |
| "Wildcat" |
1977 Steyr-Puch Pinzgauer 6x6 wheel drive hauler. The Wildcat is a "sleeper" transport with cramped bunks to accommodate up to 12 people sleeping at any time. |
Des, Edward, Huruma, Richard, and Zee |
New Chicago
New Chicago is a large, post-flood city nestled on the coast of the swollen banks of Lake Michigan. The city does not exist within the gutted and ruined remnants of Chicago proper, but rather is a constructed city set on an artificial peninsula in what was once East Chicago, Indiana. The peninsula was formerly the home of numerous industrial operations including the Lakeshore Coal Company, Coke Energy, and US Steel. The peninsula was also home to a coal-powered electric plant that survived the war with the sentinel. New Chicago was born of salvagers and scrappers united by Chicago crime lord Gideon d'Sarthe who turned a scattered community of opportunists into the largest known city in the post-flood world.
New Chicago has electricity, running water, and security in the form of the two oldest powers on the planet: Gasoline and bullets. After reviving offshore drilling operations that had begun in the late 2000s, Gideon d'Sarthe was able to bring a steady supply of fuel and power to New Chicago, centered around their coal-burning power plant that provides electricity and heat to the masses. Nearly anything and everything can be found in New Chicago, and its population of nearly one million souls is the single-most densely packed habitat in what is left of America.
Gideon d'Sarthe is the undisputed law of New Chicago and his enforcers control security, trade, and taxation at his whim. While the city is run by an armed crime syndicate, opportunities are fair and laws aren't draconian. Outsiders are welcome to trade and those who earn d'Sarthe's trust are permitted to stay and become citizens. Troublemakers are largely ignored and most disputes are settled internally, unless the trouble gets Gideon's personal attention. Then a troublemakers' bones join the scrapyards outside the city's walls.
Ships of the Flood
Sea travel is common in the Flood timeline and most characters either have a ship of their own or are a part of another character's crew. The choice in ships, crew, and the like will be extremely important toward the middle and second half of this final story arc, so be sure to consider if your character is a member of another player's crew or has a vessel of their own. Below are a list of confirmed vessels and their captains and crew. This list will be updated as time goes on.
| Ship Designation |
Captain |
Crew |
| The Featherweight |
Destiny (formerly Woods) |
Edward, Else, Nadira, "Spades" |
| The Trawler |
Ricky Daselles |
Darryl, Hart |
| The Tempest |
Veronica |
Biard |
| The Forthright |
Monica and Poppy (formerly Eve) |
|
| Oar Place or Mine |
Cat (formerly Walter) |
|
| The Cerberus III |
Ryans |
Huruma, Squeaks |
| The Shooting Star |
Tay |
|
| The Second Star |
Silas |
Asi |
| The Nine Tales |
Stef |
Sumi, Tibby, and a whole cat colony (whom Robyn helps clean up after) |
| The Kuíhuā |
Yi-Min |
Kara, Yi-Shan |
| Yeah, Buoy! |
Nova |
Jonathan |
