Texas Almanac plodding progress

[castlebravo92]

At least I have a concept cover!

[Bulldog1972]

Will this be going up on the forums? Or trying to make a buck on DriveThruRPG? I'll start rolling some pennies...

[castlebravo92]

Originally Posted by Bulldog1972

Will this be going up on the forums? Or trying to make a buck on DriveThruRPG? I'll start rolling some pennies...

LOL, no it'll be a labor of love and I'll post the pdf here if I can. If it goes up on DriveThruRPG, it'll be free.

[Ewan]

Looking forward to reading it when released.

[Raellus]

Hey, CB. Sorry for being a bit late to the party, but I'm looking forward to this. Given your cover's distinct v1 vibe, is your project compatible with v1 canon (e.g. Red Star, Lone Star) and ruleset, or is it more system agnostic? Does it build on established world-building from published materials, or does it essentially "reboot" Texas?

Not that any of that will affect my enthusiasm for your project. A lot of us mix-and-match from T2k's various iterations. For example, I much prefer v1's timeline, but I've been won over by 4e's mechanics (after having used v2.2 rules for many years). Like a lot of Ref's out there, I am comfortable picking and choosing from what's out there for my own T2kU.

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[castlebravo92]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Hey, CB. Sorry for being a bit late to the party, but I'm looking forward to this. Given your cover's distinct v1 vibe, is your project compatible with v1 canon (e.g. Red Star, Lone Star) and ruleset, or is it more system agnostic? Does it build on established world-building from published materials, or does it essentially "reboot" Texas?

Not that any of that will affect my enthusiasm for your project. A lot of us mix-and-match from T2k's various iterations. For example, I much prefer v1's timeline, but I've been won over by 4e's mechanics (after having used v2.2 rules for many years). Like a lot of Ref's out there, I am comfortable picking and choosing from what's out there for my own T2kU.
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A bit of a hybrid. I purchased the 4E ruleset, but have only peripherally read through it, and am much more comfortable with the 1e timeline, so it will be largely based off that, although I do plan on incorporating some 2e elements (specifically, area control classifications such as "devastated", "organized", "independent", "insular", "terrorized", "anarchy", etc. Everything will be as consistent with canon as possible, with color added in, with the specific exception that I ignore the drought. Where things change it's mainly to add color rather than changing the final result. For example, I did a write up for El Paso & Fort Bliss (which will likely be cut for the final product, but I'll include here) which added 6 battalions of soldiers undergoing basic training at Fort Bliss when the city was nuked (and I think even 6 battalions might be low for a world war military build up with a universal draft). Additionally, where possible, I'm keeping it consistent with Chico's write-ups as well since I think those are very well done (so the timing of the attack for El Paso came from Chico's writeup, since there is no canon date for it).

* * *

Here's the color write-up for El Paso:


FAR WEST TEXAS / TRANS PECOS
The Trans Pecos is the part of Texas that lies west of the Pecos River and lies entirely within the Chihuahuan Desert, which is the largest desert in North America. It is the most sparsely populated part of Texas, and the most mountainous (all of the mountain peaks over 5,000 feet lie in the Trans-Pecos). Most of the area is classified as true desert, receiving an average of 9 inches of rain in El Paso to 15 inches of rain in Marathon. The most common vegetation type is desert grassland in the lowlands, and open woodland in the higher elevations. Upland soils are shallow and unproductive, and the alluvial soils of the basins are too saline to be very productive as well. Pre-war, there was almost no rain-fed agriculture in the region, with limited agriculture using irrigation from the Rio Grande north and south of El Paso, and very limited irrigation from ground-pumped water around Dell City and Van Horne. Outside of the Rio Grande areas, ranching was the most prevalent ranching activity, but edible vegetation being as sparse as it is, the land can only support 1 cow per 50 acres (or worse), as compared to 1 cow per acre in fertile grassland areas in the east.
EL PASO / FORT BLISS
El Paso was one of the oldest European settlements in Texas, with El Paso del Norte originally being founded on the south bank of the Rio Grande (now the present day city of Ciudad Juárez). It was also the largest city in the Trans-Pecos region of West Texas, with a pre-war population of 623,000, a diverse economy founded on trade with Mexico (principally automobiles and components from the maquiladoras in neighboring Ciudad Juárez), oil and gas services, transportation, logistics, and of course the military. The largest employer in the area was Fort Bliss – and Fort Bliss itself was the largest military base in land area in the United States. Pre-war, it was home to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Brigade, the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command, the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, and various other support units. When the 3rd Armored Cavalry shipped off to Europe early in the war, it left its heavy equipment behind and took over heavy equipment stored at POMCUS sites in Europe. The other units remained behind, and Fort Bliss was given over to training for the European theater, with a training brigade set up (formally attached to the 95th Training Division) with 6 battalions configured for basic combat training. Fort Bliss was also used as a rotational location for armor training for combat replacements destined for the European theater.
The nuclear escalation of the war in Europe in July of 1997 spurred a panic across the United States including in El Paso. Within hours of the news breaking, grocery stores were cleared out and gas stations pumped dry by panicked residents. Almost a hundred thousand residents fled the city, some crossing over into Mexico, others dispersing to other places in New Mexico and West Texas perceived to be safer than El Paso.
The Pentagon communicated orders to all US military bases to update plans and facilities for attack, including dispersal of forces, material, and equipment, and the hasty construction of fallout shelters. Additionally, domestic base and force commanders were instructed to conduct expedited training on “civil disturbance operations”, including incorporating the troops that were going through basic into the operations training.
Given that FEMA attack projections had the El Paso area being targeted with 4 nuclear warheads during a general attack (with 2 falling on Fort Bliss), the commander of Fort Bliss, Major General John Costello, took his orders seriously. In addition to the orders specified, Costello dispersed and stockpiled firefighting, construction, and excavation equipment, fuel, and food well away from the primary base, and set up an alternate base headquarters in the desert 30 kilometers to the northeast near the Hueco mountains in southern New Mexico. Additionally, he worked with the newly elected mayor of El Paso, Carlos Ramirez to shore up the city’s civil defense plans in the event of an attack.
When the nuclear strikes finally did hit the United States in late November, the entire country was placed under the equivalent of martial law under the executive orders contained in Federal Emergency Plan D-Minus. Civil administration of the El Paso area “officially” passed into the hands of the military and FEMA Region 6 on Nov 29th, 1997. In effect, this meant a senior military liaison officer and a small staff was permanently assigned to the mayor’s office and other critical city departments (police, fire, water, power). Additionally, workers in these departments were effectively drafted into service “for the duration” and were henceforth to be governed by the UCMJ and no longer able to simply quit or walk off the job. Even so, not even half of the “critical” city employees showed up for work after the initial attacks on Nov 28th.
In some cases, this was not the fault of the city employees. EMP destroyed the nation’s power grid, and El Paso was plunged into darkness. The phone system went down, most radios were damaged (it turns out that antennas make good conductors), and surprisingly, even a number of vehicles had their electronic ignitions or alternators burned out by EMP and so were useless for the owners. To keep the city running and to prevent it from descending into chaos, Costello armed his 6 battalions of basic recruits and deployed them throughout the city to enforce a dusk to dawn curfew. The 93rd and 76th Military Police Battalions were sent out to the homes of critical workers to let them know they had been “drafted” and to escort them into work. Additionally, they were tasked with securing bulk food at grocery stores and locking down fuel supplies at gas stations and depots.
Sustainment units similarly engaged with logistics firms in El Paso. Separate from maintaining order, a core concern of Costello was managing the logistical challenges of feeding city with almost 700,000 people in it. Although EL Paso was almost in the “center” of the country from an East-West perspective, logistically it was the end of the line for food deliveries, and most of the food that El Pasoans ate came from far afield, and the closest logistical hub feeding El Paso was in Abilene, and as far as Costello knew, was destroyed with the attack on Dyess Airforce Base. In the long term, Costello knew many of the citizens would need to be relocated.
In each neighborhood, rosters of able-bodied men and women were collected for non-evacuees. Neighborhood captains were assigned with instructions on food distribution and surveys for future work details. Pamphlets were distributed on neighborhood firefighting casualty recovery, and first aid in the event of an attack. As one week, then two weeks passed without an attack, the population breathed a collective sigh of relief in the hopes that El Paso had been passed up, and some of the evacuees began filtering back into the city.
Alas, it was not to be. On December 17th, 1997, a missile launched from the Typhoon-class submarine Barrikada released three 100 kiloton warheads in a cloverleaf pattern centered on the Marathon oil refinery east of downtown El Paso. The refinery itself was destroyed, and extensive blast damage was to El Paso International Airport, and central El Paso. On Fort Bliss proper, base housing was severely damaged and most of the aircraft at Biggs Army Airfield were damaged by overpressure.


Figure 1 – El Paso Nuclear Targets

The military had prepared well for an attack, and the prompt disaster response combined with the architecture of the city prevented a city engulfing firestorm, and fire damage was limited to the areas where blast damage was most severe. Military and civilian firefighting teams (including on-the-spot civilian levies) successfully controlled the fires that were started father out from the ground zeroes. Nonetheless, an estimated 50,000 El Paso citizens were killed outright and another 100,000 were injured (about a quarter of these would die in the following weeks due to a lack of medical care for otherwise survivable injuries). Due to the dry atmospheric conditions and the airburst altitude of the explosions, there was no significant localized fallout.
At the same time the military was fighting literal fires, it was also organizing refugee camps to house the 75,000+ El Paso residents whose residences had been rendered uninhabitable by blast and fire damage. Twelve large tent cities capable of housing 10,000 people each were set up between El Paso International Airport and Biggs Army Airfield, and the effort began to re-house the displaced El Paso citizens. For the first few weeks, there was surprisingly little unrest (although some people groused about being housed in “FEMA camps”).
Although the damage was centered on El Paso, neighboring Ciudad Juárez sustained extensive damage as well, and 40,000 Mexican citizens were killed and 96,000 wounded in the attacks. Even before the attacks, Juárez had been descending into anarchy due to the loss of electrical power and the inept response of the local authorities, and with the attacks, civil government completely collapsed. Control quickly fell to the local gangs and the Juárez cartel, with the military holding the line around the Zona Militar and Abraham González International Airport in the southern portion of Juárez. In the north, intense battles between the gangs over food stores and other loot, and within a week, a flood of refugees began fleeing the violence into the El Paso area. Crossing was relatively easy because the border fence had been knocked down along much of the border and the border was left initially unsecured.

* * *

The actual Almanac Entry is a bit shorter:

FAR WEST TEXAS / TRANS PECOS

The Trans Pecos is the part of Texas that lies west of the Pecos River and lies entirely within the Chihuahuan Desert, which is the largest desert in North America. It is the most sparsely populated part of Texas, and the most mountainous (all of the mountain peaks over 5,000 feet lie in the Trans-Pecos). Most of the area is classified as true desert, receiving an average of 9 inches of rain in El Paso to 15 inches of rain in Marathon. The most common vegetation type is desert grassland in the lowlands, and open woodland in the higher elevations. Upland soils are shallow and unproductive, and the alluvial soils of the basins are too saline to be very productive as well. Pre-war, there was almost no rain-fed agriculture in the region, with limited agriculture using irrigation from the Rio Grande north and south of El Paso, and very limited irrigation from ground-pumped water around Dell City and Van Horne. Outside of the Rio Grande areas, ranching was the most prevalent ranching activity, but edible vegetation being as sparse as it is, the land can only support 1 cow per 50 acres (or worse), as compared to 1 cow per acre in fertile grassland areas in the east.
Some of these ranches are still in existence in 2001, set up as strongholds supporting a handful of families each. The war has largely bypassed them, and the general area is too desolate and unforgiving for refugee flows.

EL PASO / FORT BLISS

El Paso was one of the oldest European settlements in Texas, with El Paso del Norte originally being founded on the south bank of the Rio Grande (now the present day city of Ciudad Juárez). It was also the largest city in the Trans-Pecos region of West Texas, with a pre-war population of 623,000, with a diverse economy founded on trade with Mexico (principally automobiles and components from the maquiladoras in neighboring Ciudad Juárez), oil and gas services, transportation, logistics, and of course the military. The largest employer in the area was Fort Bliss – and Fort Bliss itself was the largest military base in land area in the United States. Pre-war, it was home to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Brigade, the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command, the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, and various other support units.

As the war with the Soviet Union escalated, the Marathon refinery east of downtown El Paso was targeted with 3x100 kiloton warheads fired from a Soviet nuclear ballistic missile submarine. Much of eastside El Paso was destroyed, and damage to the southern part of Fort Bliss and El Paso International Airport was severe. San Augustín

Figure 1 El Paso Nuclear Strikes

The rest of the city was largely destroyed in the fighting between Mexican and US ground forces during the initial part of the Mexican invasion. Most of the original population fled (a significant number were also killed in the nuclear attacks, the combat, and reprisal attacks for the earlier massacres of Mexican refugees) only to be replaced Mexican migrants from across the border, who set up shop in large refugee camps surrounding the city. With the collapse of the Mexican transportation network in 1999, almost all of these refugees ultimately succumbed to starvation or apocalyptic violence as the refugees fought amongst themselves for the meager food and farmland in the region. As of January 2001, only around 2,000 people (all Mexican nationals) still live in El Paso proper, eking out a meager existence farming the northern bank of the Rio Grande, fishing, and scavenging the ruins for scrap to trade with the Constituciónales army units in cantonment in the farming communities northwest and south of El Paso.

This area is considered devastated.

SOCORRO AND HORIZON CITY

Socorro and Horizon City were a suburbs of El Paso with a pre-war population of 26,000 and 4,500 respectively. Relatively undamaged by the nuclear strikes, Socorro was next to a major cross-border bridge and was an area that saw significant cross migration of refugees from Mexico from late December 1997 to the end of 1998. Several temporary refugee camps were built in the area to house both El Paso residents made homeless by the nuclear strikes and Mexican refugees that crossed over. As such, Socorro and Horizon City were the location of much of the early fighting between US and Mexican forces. Both towns were reduced to rubble by artillery fire, and the rest burned. Some of the irrigated fields the two towns have been recently replanted under the supervision of the soldiers 2o Regimento lnfanteria Torreon. A total of 2000 acres are under cultivation, supporting approximately 1500 Mexicans living in a shanty community near the fields. The community itself is walled with rubble, and it and the fields are patrolled by a platoon from the 2o Regimento, augmented by a 200 man militia from the refugee camp. The militia is very poorly armed, with only a handful of civilian rifles and shotguns and a pitiful supply of ammunition (their main job is to keep order within the community, and help warn the 2o Regimento to outside threats). The community (and the 2o Regimento) is extremely hostile to all outsiders (especially non-Mexican outsiders).
Because of the relative flatness of the area, it has been subject to frequent raids by bandits and marauders (especially around harvest time) coming from across the border in Mexico, so the area is considered to be terrorized.

SAN ELIZARIO

A pre-war farming community southeast of El Paso with a population of 5,200, San Elizario fell quickly to Mexican forces, and so was spared much of the destruction from the fighting that devastated Socorro and Horizon City further to the north in the summer of 1998. However, the Mexican army set up refugee camps in and around San Elizario, and that their peak over 50,000 people were housed in these tent cities. When the regional food situation collapsed, many refugees from El Paso and Ciudad Juárez descended on the farms and fields around San Elizario, and it was the scene of some of the more vicious hand to hand fighting, with tens of thousands of people dying in mass melee combat during the early spring months of 1999. The area was almost completely depopulated by the end of 1999, but like Socorro has been resettled with around 2,000 refugees who are farming the area for the Constituciónales. They have about 10,000 acres under cultivation and generate enough of a surplus to permit trade with Fabens for methanol (largely used for trucks used to plow fields) and salvage from El Paso. As such, the 200 man militia is fairly well equipped by area standards with an assortment of civilian rifles, and a handful of military rifles. The community is nominally hostile to non-Mexican outsiders, but open to trade for high value items like medicine, military hardware, or ammunition. Like the refugee settlement near Socorro, the shanty town of San Elizario is surrounded by a rubble and sand berm wall. This area is considered to be insular.

Caveat...I haven't really copy edited the above yet, so apologies if I repeat some words or phrases too often. The narrative really isn't that hard to write, what slows me down is making the maps.

[ToughOmbres]

Originally Posted by castlebravo92

At least I have a concept cover!

I'm in favor of it and looking forward to seeing it. The original font and look are great.

[castlebravo92]

Trans Pecos area map update



Stylistically, trying to keep a v1 map style. Unfortunately, unlike Europe where, in my experience at least, open ground = agriculture land, that's not the case in West Texas which is predominately hills, mountains, or desert plains, so there's a lot more yellow and brown than the v1 GDW color fold out maps. Where the color is white is closer to traditional agricultural or grasslands.

I actually have the hills for New Mexico largely filled in, but forgot to turn them back on for the export, but the hills & mountains don't suddenly stop at the Texas border.

The grey counties to the east = the parts of Texas I haven't filled in yet.

In canon games terms, most of Trans Pecos is either controlled by the Constitutionales faction of Mexican army (a cantonment running roughly east to Van Horn in the south, and Carlsbad, NM to the north and to Deming, NM in the west, controlling the prime agriculture land in the area), or effectively independent or abandoned. Towns like Marfa, Alpine, Fort Davis would have been occupied briefly by recon elements of the Mexican military during the initial invasion, but they are extremely logistically isolated and were abandoned early in 1999 when Mexican logistics collapsed. The vast majority of the pre-war American population is either dead, or driven out. The exception would be isolated ranches or homesteads too far and remote to be attractive to the army or marauders. (In real life) Once you get 20 miles east of El Paso, this part of Texas is one of the poorer and least populated areas in the continental United States. The Twilight War would not have improved things in that regard.