Ozark Mists, Come fly the Friendly Skies...

[GamesMaster1]

The Ozark Mountains, had for centuries, been considered to be backwater country; out of touch, out of step, and out of mind. With the rise of the Consortium, this had only been intensified as it was stripped of its population, and the wild hills grew back. Beneath those thick forests and rolling bottomland was a network of caves and old shaft mines. Continuing a tradition almost as old as the Ozarks themselves, people who didn't want to be found retreated up into the hills, between the valleys and beneath the ground.

On the banks of the Buffalo River in in the wild lands of Arkansas, a cadre of rough-and-tumble survivalist anti-consortium settlers have set up their homesteads. Within sight of Pinnacle Mountain, they've explored the Ozark wilderness, and discovered some of the riches that so-called "Polite Society" has abandoned: Gold, Zinc, Copper, Aluminium, Coal and even Diamonds. In such small deposits, the Consortium had considered them useless, but to those living "outside", they were still good commodities.

So this means naturally that the settlement attracted anyone who had an inkling to pull a living from within the earth, and those who traded for those earthly treasures. Most of the people around called the place Pinnacle Outpost, if they even gave it a name at all. They still flew the Diamond flag at the Outpost's main buildings, and most of the organized militia had a white diamond on their clothing somewhere.

"Bloody Mary" Minerva Rosso could see one of those white-diamond-on-red flags hanging limply from a flagpole in the middle of the ramshackle settlement. Her airship had docked in a canyon a ways back, floating lazily in the humid air. The gnats buzzed around her and her crew, as well as the rest of the residents of the outpost. The one thing the outpost had going for itself was the merchants who traded there had just about anything. As long as you had the gold or the greenbacks, anything could be yours.

[Colonel Moriarty]

Minerva turned to her crew and told them to head back to the ship as she continued to walk to one of the larger buildings in the outpost. She walked in the door and was shocked by the cold air inside the building after being outside for so long to get here. She looked around the large shop. Mostly food goods, but she knew there was more here. She continued too walk and reached the counter. She waited a moment but nobody came. Eventually, she decided to take a risk. "A Madman sent me!" She shouted. She hadn't been lying, there was something she was supposed to pick up for the doctor.

[GamesMaster1]

The floor creaked beneath her feet; it didn't feel any more unstable than it normally did, but the dead silence in the room made the sound more obvious. She could still hear the tramp of boots outside, as a militia troop was drilling outside.

But not a sound came from inside that Minerva didn't make herself. In her walking around, it was slightly colder by the counter, by where a door went into an underground storeroom.

Her shout echoed through the empty building and something rattled in the storeroom, but she didn't hear footsteps on the stairs.