A Very Brief History of the Pine Barrens

The Barrens is a huge swath of pine forest that stretches from the May Cape at the very southern tip of Jersea all the way up into the areas around Old York. It's a terrible place to try to make a life, honestly. The ground is more sand than soil, making it difficult to plant and even harder to rely on a harvest. Massive bogs hide more than cranberries beneath their water and their mud. And let's not get started talking about how half of it seems to always be burning down.

But the people who make their home there are proud of the fact that they live in a place where they shouldn’t be able to thrive. They keep themselves to themselves, living in families and trading among neighbors, but not collecting together. There's something stubborn written into them, most of them Landsmen. Pride tells them that a successful life is a self-sufficient life.

That is, until the land was turned against them. A pestilence that turned the land to poison and turned the Critters and Zed and Raiders into even more monstrous, even more powerful creatures was released into the world by groups who didn't care what it would do to the people, and it quickly spread, engulfing the Barrens.

The traditional people of the Pine Barrens were pushed out of their homes by the encroaching ecological disaster, taking shelter on the campus of Princeton Valley, a center for learning, with the help of the people of Leeds (now Barrens’ Reach). There, they found that relying on one another wasn't a weakness as they'd always assumed. They found strength in community for the first time, forced together with their neighbors, now their friends.

When the people of Barrens' Reach were able to put an end to the poisoning of the land and balance the ecosystem again, the Barrensfolk came back home, and instead of splitting back into their individual families, many decided to come together into a town. They formed the town of Batsto, on the same historic land that once housed the real colonial town of Batsto before the fall. Of course, they had to clear a necropolis out of it before they could build it up as their own, but they had the help of Barrens' Reach for that, too. They chose one of their own, Weaver Milligan, as their leader, and things began to settle into place.

At the same time, Barrens' Reach was getting more familiar with their other neighbor, a town called Woodsworth Mills. That town was a lumber town, the Capital of the Pines, and they offered to start up a trade partnership with Barrens' Reach. When Barrens' Reach burned down due to a forest fire that was definitely no one's fault, Woodsworth Mills provided lumber to rebuild, and helped to get Barrens' Reach back on its feet. Its leader, the Miller, was a quiet man with a good head on his shoulders. His right hand man, Foreman Danny Hilts, was a kind-hearted, if a little odd, representative of the people of the the town. Barrens' Reach was lucky to have them as allies.

Of course, things aren't always as they seem. The pines began to fill with stories and whispers about people disappearing, all of them psions. Whatever group was behind it got bolder and bolder as time went on. They were called the Wardens, and they seemed to be everywhere and nowhere. Panic around psionics was growing by the day, both about the safety of friends and about whether the Wardens were right to be taking them away from the Barrens. They were a draw for danger, after all.

Eventually, the Wardens slipped up, and intelligence was found revealing that the Wardens were led by none other than the Miller, the leader of Woodsworth Mills. He had been working all this time to bring Barrens' Reach into Woodsworth Mills' fold, under his control, while also dealing with what he believed to be the scourge of psionics in the Barrens.

Needing answers, Barrens' Reach trapped the Foreman into a meeting, and he swore he had no idea about the Miller’s anti-psion activities. He seemed to be telling the truth. He worked with Barrens' Reach to plot against the Miller, and they were able to overthrow Woodsworth Mills -- but they lost the town in the process. While the war raged, the non-Warden members of Woodsworth Mills moved to Batsto, and the groups merged.

The war eventually ended, violently and loudly, with Barrens' Reach and Batsto as the victors, and their psionic friends safe from harm.

It was hard to imagine how to move on from the bloodshed and madness that had gripped the Barrens for such a long time. Good memories and bad memories meshed on every trail. And then the Foreman was given an offer from some friends up north: there was a large stretch of forested land that had laid untouched for generations because of a constant radiation storm -- but the storm was lifting, and the land was going to be habitable again. The Foreman was offered a claim on that land, in tandem with the Last Eve Salvaging Co. He wanted to go. And so did about 200 people of Batsto and Woodsworth Mills. They could start over, and be the first hands on the gold rush that was all of the untapped resources of that area: Claimer’s Quarry.

The trouble is, that land is 100 miles north, and 200 people is a lot of people to move so far in the winter. So now they prepare, gathering information and food and methods of travel and plans, so that they can soon start out to find a new life for themselves, following the Foreman and Weaver. And Barrens' Reach, once again, is ready to help see their allies through.

Associated Material
"Miles to Go"
A short story about NPCs Weaver Milligan and Foreman Danny Hilts, and the anxiety of moving 200 people you love through the wastes to a place you haven't seen. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HhqIQmi6pL92n3OUgtAAkn-3ORbJcPPX/view?usp=sharing