Table of Contents
Dixie
“We stopped mourning the dead. At least they might find some peace.”
Dixie is not a nation. It is what remains when nations fail. Once fertile and proud, the eastern coast of West America has been ground into dust by centuries of war, plague, and wanton exploitation. The world tilt turned rivers into deserts and fields into craters. The Foreverwar between Amazonia and Cordoba stripped away what little authority survived. What stands now is not order, but persistence.
The land is broken into fiefdoms ruled by whoever can hold water, fuel, or ammunition the longest. Cities cling to life like scabs over old wounds. Roads are dangerous, borders are imaginary, and yesterday’s ally is tomorrow’s raider. Dixie survives without illusion. There are no grand promises here, only the next meal, the next shelter, the next sunrise.
To outsiders, Dixie looks like chaos. To those who live here, it is a hard education in survival. Pride runs deep, even when hope does not. Families pass down stories of better times not because they expect them to return, but because forgetting would mean surrender.
Adventurers come to Dixie for reasons that rarely sound noble. Escort a refugee column. Break a warlord’s hold on a water plant. Steal an airship from a militia hangar. The pay is unreliable. The danger is constant. The work is endless. There is no myth left to uphold, no golden future promised. Only survival, stubborn and defiant, passed from one battered generation to the next.
Those who live here learn quickly. Never trust a banner. Never waste water. Never assume tomorrow is owed to you. Dixie is not civilized. It is not orderly. But it is alive. And in a shattered world, that counts for something.
A Land Without a Crown
Dixie has no central ruler and no enduring government. Authority belongs to the strongest presence in any given place. Militia captains, mercenary warlords, dishonored generals, and fanatic preachers carve territory out of ruins and defend it until someone stronger arrives.
Savannah serves as a loose survivor-capital, not because it rules, but because it endures. Markets there trade scrap, munitions, food, and rumors. Alliances are formed daily and broken nightly. Nothing binds Dixie together except shared hardship and mutual suspicion of anyone who claims to offer salvation. Attempts at unifying Dixie have failed repeatedly. Every banner raised eventually becomes another target.
Cities and Scars
| Location | Summary |
|---|---|
| Savannah | The largest surviving city in Dixie. A hub of scrap markets, militias, and shifting authority. No ruler holds it for long, but it never truly falls. |
| Chicago | A fortress-port on the Great Lakes. Drydocks and salvage guilds ring a city locked permanently on war footing. |
| Old New York | The skeletal remains of New York, rising from ash flats and tidal sloughs. Enclave lights burn behind blast doors while the dead city feeds smugglers and cults below. |
| Panama City | A fortified choke point at the rim of the American Sea. Whoever controls it taxes every cargo or bleeds for the attempt. |
| Havana | Technically outside Dixie, Havana operates as a proxy port for the Bengal Isles’ pirate factions, bartering Dixie’s meager resources to any power with coin. |
Warlords, Weather, and Want
Dixie’s greatest threats are rarely singular. Storms coming from Lake Deseret tear settlements apart without warning. Magnetic anomalies scramble navigation and wake things buried beneath devastated cities. Warlords rise around fuel depots and aquifers, trading ceasefires for ammunition and hostages. Maps change weekly.
Shard-blight lingers in old battlefields. Unstable weapons surface from forgotten caches. The land itself remembers the violence it has suffered and reflects it back without mercy. Borders mean nothing here, except where Cascadia and Quebec enforce them with steel and spell. Beyond those lines, Dixie bleeds outward into the wars of other nations, and inward upon itself.
Faith, Fury, and Survival
Religion in Dixie is fractured and unstable. There is no dominant faith, only belief taken up in moments of desperation and abandoned when it fails. Shrines rise and fall as quickly as the settlements around them.
Worship of The Choir & The Legion appears where hope or despair dominates mortal souls. It offers comfort, revenge, mercy and power. The idea that suffering has meaning is enticing to those who've spent their entire lives under its shadow. Those who adopt worship or bargain do so quietly, knowing that faith rarely stops bullets.
Warlocks, prophets, and self-made messiahs roam freely, offering snake-oil certainty in exchange for obedience or coin. Some are revered. Some are tolerated. Most are shot on sight. Dixie does not lack belief. It lacks trust. Faith in Dixie is a risk most are unwilling to take.