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Originally Posted by kalos72
I am curious what some of us have named and located communities or cantonments in their campaigns.
Where have you put larger populations or organizations and what have you called them?
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This is sort of an interesting thread that I think should not be allowed to drop dead. The naming of a community is going to go a long way towards sending the message the inhabitants what to project.
On the subject of larger cantonments' locations, I think that it would be a bit hard to justify it not occupying a previously inhabited area, like a town or part of a city. Most communities exist where they do because they have an economic reason for the location combined with sufficient resources (primarily water) to support the population. A lake, a river or access to wells. Otherwise, no community or cantonment.
But back to naming places...
I have a preference for names that aren't too comic bookish... if they are an official name. I don't mind the "Sea Lord of Jacksonville" only insofar as that name feels like something his enemies call him. I got the impression that the military dictatorship in Jacksonville is the result of the Navy base mutinying under the leadership of a senior officer and setting up their own private kingdom. Perhaps they officially call themselves the "North East Florida Martial Law District," but they aren't returning MilGov or CivGov's calls.
A lot of towns and villages are just going to call themselves by the place's original name, unless there is a political reason to change it. I mean, if some new political group like New America takes over, they might change the name of the town to something more in keeping with their political agenda. Like maybe eliminating any native American names or places. At the other end of the North American political scale, if there's a cantonment operating up north of Oakland, I have no doubt that it'll be some variation on "the Berkeley People's Democratic Collective."
Or if a group with a peculiar religious bent takes over the town, they might rename it something out of the Bible (or whatever religious tract takes their fancy). There's going to be a lot of "New Somthings."
New Canaan, New Zion, New Gilead, New Eden, etc...
For a place to be named "General Mayhem's Sodomy Parlor and Funtime Jamboree, it's going to be a sign that neither the leadership, nor anything else around there is going to be anything more than temporary. A joke name for a cantonment is not going to inspire a lot of confidence.
Maybe you can get away with some place calling themselves "The Republic Tanstaafl"... as in "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch" (like in Traveller 2300), but such names are going to be few and far between.
Some communities might have a name's for repurposed things in their area. Like if the cantonment is build around an abandoned military facility, maybe they call it "Fort Something." Or if it were built in an old shopping mall they might adopt the name of the mall... I wonder what they'd call the Mall of America? Probably just America.
"Where do you live?"
"America."
". . . Smart ass."
Or if there is a community built around a resource, like a mine, a factory, a power plant, or even a bridge, the new community might adopt a name related to the resource. "Bridgetown" anyone? "Coalville?" "Fordtopia?"
For bigger cantonments away from Milgov or Civgov control (or the remnants of any pre-war government for that matter) you're likely to get a lot of "Free City ofs." Krakaow... Barnaul... Memphis... things like that.
If an area is big enough they are going to start calling themselves "the Free State of BLANK." The isolationist community in Connecticut for instance... although I don't recall that they declared their independence from the USA.... only that they weren't cooperating with either MilGov or CivGov.
Of course over in the old world you have a whole lot of other options for naming your cantonment. For one thing, the whole place is divided up into Duchies and freeholds and Baronies and whatnot from all the way back to the Middle Ages. Is there a spot in Europe that couldn't be rechristened with it's pre-unified nation state name?
Is this the sort of thing you were looking for?
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