It's all good

He asks if you've ever heard of "Starfox." You say yes again. He says his character is a "space pilot" like the Starfox crew. He offers to send you his ref by Telegram but he doesn't know how the QR code thing works and was hoping you would. Instead, he just shows you his ref on his cracked phone screen instead. The ref image on is phone is not the ref itself, but rather, a photo the phone has taken of a computer screen showing the ref. The ref, of course, looks nothing like any Star Fox character. You're a little disappointed. You decide to spare Bluefox from any additional technology-related trials and quickly snap a pic of his phone screen with your phone. You now have a photo on your phone of a photo his phone took of a computer screen displaying his ref. Good enough.

Bluewolf's besuited companion D'ORFOXXX has been quiet this entire time, save for some occasional faint squeaking as shifts his weight from foot to foot, peering closely at your sticker rack and giving you a really good view of his fursona's golden nipples, visible on his badge. You try not to stare too hard. But when you accept Bluewolf's "commish", he quickly and deftly removes one of his oversized, shiny, squeaky gold-glittered paws and whips out a credit card from somewhere unseen.

Still silent, D'orfoxxx's petite human-skin hand offers you his card for payment. You do a double take as you notice his immaculately manicured gold french tip nails. As he taps your Square reader, you notice that the credit card clutched between his talons is one you've never seen before, but you can infer from the design that it's one of those fancy rich person credit cards. It is at this moment that you realize that you are not merely talking to a Person, but a Character.

This is one of those rare drop furry con person-sightings that will live on in legend: a person so intriguingly bizarre that you will spend the rest of your life wondering what their story is.

The majority of those who survived the initial event were those dwelling outside major cities. The destruction each city endured seems to loosely correlate to how much magic was in use. Therefore, Westhaven and Whitefell were particularly decimated in the West, while Raaja Si and the rest of the ring of cities around Mani Bay were utterly obliterated.

Those in the northern region of the Western Kingdom fared better than most. The surface of the earth seemed to dampen the cataclysm's effects, meaning northerners in root cellars, caves, and mining tunnels survived. Already accustomed to cold weather survival, northern language, culture, and cuisine became dominant influences in the post-fall world.

Initially, resettlement seemed fairly straightforward. Survivors attempted to repair and build anew as needed. Construction looked different without magic, though, and mundane technologies began to rapidly develop to fill these new technological gaps.

But the world wasn't done cooling. It grew colder by the year, and many fledgling towns collapsed when their pre-fall economy turned out to be impossible in the new climate. People headed south, where it was warmer, or grouped up into larger established cities. Eventually, like the Western Kingdom before it, one consolidated power came to stand above the rest: The Ironfrost Empire.

These days, most of the continent is comprised of tundra and snow-buried ruins. Though the southern edge of the continent remains habitable, the cold season feels a little longer and the sun feels a little weaker each year.

Major Post-Fall Locations:

Ironfrost - The walled city-state at the head of the Ironfrost Empire and a land of stark inequality. Ruled by a hereditary ruler known as The Iron Queen and located above a cave system fueled by the Dragon's Fire geothermal magic font, Ironfrost's fierce leadership and excellent strategic location allowed it to grow into an industrial and military power at a time when its neighbors were struggling with basic survival.

Ironfrost demands mandatory military service of its citizens, taxes from its vassal states, tolls from its roads, and obedience from its people. Though their demands are often seen as excessive, allyship with Ironfrost has significant benefits in the Post-Fall world. The Ironfrost Great Rail Line makes travel and trade feasible across the tundra, and soldiers keep the roads fee of highwaymen and beasts. Foods such as chocolate can be produced (almost) nowhere else. It is a bargain nearly all of the surviving towns in the region have been forced to accept. Even those that maintain independence, such as The City of the Sun, usually have some kind of trade deal.

The Train Graveyard - Running trains on the tundra is risky and dangerous. A massive railyard of decommissioned and damaged trains, snowmobiles, and other vehicles sits on the edge of the city, just outside its industrial district. Twisted metal bones curve into the sky and piles of frozen, rusted scrap litter the ground. Blackened by soot from the smokestacks yet also warmed by their residual heat, squatters will sometimes set up camp here if they lack the funds or credentials to make it through Ironfrost's gates.

Pinebrook (Ruins) - A former timber town that was consumed by the tundra. Much of the Great Rail Line's timber came from here. It began to decline around 30 years ago and was fully abandoned about 10 years ago, when the forests began to die and even the summers became inhospitable. These days, it sits abandoned, frozen in time and covered in ice.

Stonedeep (Ruins) - A small community located in caverns under the foothills of the Dragon's Jaw range and Alex's hometown. Insulated from the brutal cold above ground by same geothermal heat font that once powered the northern bathhouses of the old kingdom and somehow survived the Fall, Stonedeep's strange, dark, honeycombed cavern structure made it a surreal place to navigate for all but those who grew up there. Most of its residents were bats, whose wings and ecolocation abilities made navigating the dark, strange caves easier. Like many unincorporated towns, Stonedeep was relatively isolationist. Hunters and trappers would trade with nearby communities when needed, but they attempted to minimize their contact with Ironfrost or its infrastructure.

Stonedeep was destroyed roughly 30 years ago by an unknown threat, rumored to be The Shadow. Many of its key tunnels have since collapsed and scavengers have picked over the ruins. It is occasionally used as shelter from the cold by squatters, but the place is said to be too cursed to risk staying in for long.

Northcrest - Located in the small strip of the continent still able to have a growing season, Northcrest and its surrounding farmlands support Ironfrost with foodstuffs in exchange for relative independence. For hundreds of years, Northcrest has held the caput baroniae of the North family, a lineage of mage nobility that have managed to cling to their land, title and continued survival despite the fall and rise of nations around them. The ornate tracery, delicate arches and twisted wrought-iron metalwork typical of Northcrest architecture are beautiful, aging relics of a more prosperous time. Over the past decades, Great Barrens-born blights, harsher winters, the loss of working-age citizens to industrialized cities and trade competition from the City of the Sun have threatened the traditional Northcrest way of life. Time will tell whether the city will survive the family that shares its name.

August Cannery Company is the largest canning company in operation and either directly or indirectly supports much of the city's workforce.

Brimme-on-Bitterun - Also known as "Brimme"--Bitterun is the name of the river that runs through it. A chilly, gloomy industrial port city, one of several located around the the rim of what was once the Valledor coastline. Fishing is a critical industry in the Post-Fall world, with fish pulled from the seas and processed at port cities like Brimme before being shipped up to the frozen lacklocked Ironfrost imperial core.

The City of the Sun - The only place in the world still blessed by the ancient Celestials, where darkness and winter ice gives way to lush greenery and the warmth of the summer, guarded by an immortal god-king who brings his subjects prosperity and peace. At least, that’s what the City’s emissaries would have you believe. Foolhardy travelers willing to brave the forbidding tundra journey to its borders will see nothing but its miles of towering walls. Only those invited are permitted to enter. Even if you disregard tall tales about divine kings and magic plants, there is certainly something unique about the City of the Sun—the fruits, vegetables and plants it trades in can be found nowhere else on the continent. A tenuous peace agreement between the City and Ironfrost allows trade between the two regions and the flow of luxury goods such as chocolate and fruit wine to outside world. The City’s export of exotic peach fruits, once thought to be extinct by Ironfrost experts before trade opened between the two regions, are only served at the most exclusive of events.

Though located in what used to be the Old Kingdom's northern territory, The City of the Sun draws architectural inspiration from both its divine ruler's homeland of Valledor and the beautiful arches and mosaics of Raaja Si, which its founder is said to have seen with his own eyes back in his youth.

The Tundra - A vast snowy wasteland that stretches all across the former Western Kingdom. It probably has some formal name, but nobody bothers with it… it's so featureless and bleak that naming it feels pointless. Its coldness and vastness makes travel by foot impossible--snow mobile is the norm. There is little to differentiate any one part of the tundra from any other, beyond mountain ranges in the distance and small stands of pine trees. Small villages--usually built over the ruins of Old Kingdom cities or over caves or geothermal vents--dot the landscape, but far more lay uninhabited and in ruin. Many towns were abandoned when the cold crept far enough south to consume them. Others fell to bandits, beasts or disease. A few were abandoned when taken by The Shadow. Those that survive are generally those that have given themselves up to the Ironfrost empire, paying taxes and tributes in exchange for trade, safe travel, and protection. The Great Rail Line connects major towns, offering a relatively safe and fast alternative to travel by snowmobile.

The Rising Dawn Research Outpost - A tiny outpost built into the caves under the northern tundra on the far western edge of the Dragon's Jaw Mountains. The bitter, bitter cold and extremely remote location makes it inaccessible for most of the year, even to those who know its location and are in possession of sufficiently kitted out Prowlers.

It was set up to study magic and The Shadow far away from Ironfrost's prying eyes and is staffed by a skeleton crew lead by Alex and Ridge. There were more of them at one point, but several were arrested or killed (or maybe worse).

It turns out one of the weird magical signals they were picking up was, in fact, the very same infamous Old Kingdom wizard who is said to have caused the cataclysm in the first place, in magical stasis and buried under the ice. They hadn't budgeted the supplies to comfortably take on someone like Hyden, but they managed to make it through the winter with a minimum of tantrums.

The Great Barrens - The cataclysm that destroyed the Old Kingdoms ruptured the magical font powering the Great Forest. At the moment of ignition, the magic inside every tree in the forest exploded simultaneously, razing the entire wood to the ground in an instant. What remains is a scarred, burned wasteland pocked by mile-wide craters, massive shattered stumps, and the woody, splintered remains of the great trees. Though it is far enough south to experience a mild warm season, the souring of the magical font that formerly powered the land seems to have suppressed new plant growth, too. The land now is a quiet, still world of death and gentle snow, preserved in time.

The Dragon's Jaw Mountains & The Sea of White Teeth - The icy sea north of the continent has begun to solidify into a solid ice-mass. It is hard to tell where the landmass ends and the sea begins, as the whole region is now a solid sheet of white, broken by occasional steep cliffs and frozen bays.

The Dragon's Jaw mountain range remained relatively intact. Its warped, twisted peaks are as steep and perilous as ever, but the "Dragon's Fire", the geothermal heat source/magical font below the mountains, seems to have been far enough below ground to avoid being soured by the cataclysm that destroyed so much of the rest of the world's magic.

Without the Dragon's Fire acting as an underground heat and power source, life on the northern tundra would be truly impossible… for all but those in The City of the Sun, of course.

The Ruins of the East & The Shattered Sea - If it truly was a secret Eastern Kingdom weapon that caused the cataclysm, it must have been a poorly deployed one. During the cataclysm, a great magical font explosion obliterated the continent. The land fractured along the Bhati Range, and the low-lying landmass east of it broke apart and sunk into the Jeweled Sea.

Lured by rumors of lost riches and magical treasures, particularly foolish crews sailing out of Brimme sometimes trawl the shallow seas inside the shattered continent for scavenge. However, the destruction of the Eastern cities was even more complete than those of their Western counterparts (likely due to their heavy reliance on magic) and both land and sea is lousy with sour magical fonts. A few groups of pirates and Ironfrost-resisting Eastern-descended isolationists carve out a meager existence among these rocky islands, but the rocky, windswept islands are not capable of sustaining large settlements. It is generally agreed that only the most desperate (or perhaps those with something to hide) would venture into this cursed, barren place.