GM Information : Newhaven Survivors : Johnny did see a couple of survivors, but they ran off when he spoke to them. They had no respect for his safety concerns.
Jackson’s Sawmill sits at the edge of the forest like a rusted monument to exhaustion.
The conveyor belts are still. The sawblades hang motionless, teeth stained with old resin.
Stacks of timber lean precariously, warped by weather and time.
A sign above the entrance reads SAFETY FIRST! in cheerful red paint, now flaking like dried blood.
The air smells of sap, rust, and something sour beneath it — the scent of a workplace that never truly shut down.
Somewhere inside, a heavy boot drags across the concrete floor.
Johnny steps out from behind a stack of logs, gaunt and towering, wrapped in tattered flannel and heavy work boots. His skin is a sickly grey, stretched thin over powerful limbs. Rusted chains hang from his belt like trophies. A lumberjack’s tool — cracked, dulled, but still heavy — dangles from his hand.
His eyes glow faintly, but his expression is almost… proud.
“This is my mill,” he rasps, voice thick with decay. “My floor. My rules.”
He studies the survivors with the slow, appraising look of a man checking the quality of timber.
“Good grain,” he mutters. “Solid structure.”
He chuckles — a deep, guttural sound that dissolves into a wet rasp.
He isn’t approaching yet. He’s evaluating.
Johnny steps closer, movements jerky but purposeful — the muscle memory of a man who spent his life hauling logs and feeding machines.
“You’re on the floor,” he says. “That means you’re inventory.”
He gestures toward the conveyor belt with a casual flick of his wrist.
“Everything that comes in gets processed. That’s the system.”
His tone is matter‑of‑fact, almost bored, like a foreman explaining workplace policy to new hires.
He taps a rusted sawblade with one finger, producing a metallic ring.
“Used to be trees. Now it’s whatever’s left standing.”
He tilts his head, eyes narrowing with predatory curiosity.
“You’ll go through just fine.”
His logic is industrial, procedural, and utterly broken — a man who no longer distinguishes between lumber and flesh, only between raw material and finished product.
When the survivors hesitate, Johnny’s posture shifts — shoulders squaring, grip tightening on his tool.
“Don’t stall,” he growls. “Stalling slows production.”
He advances with sudden, brutal lunges, each movement powered by the remnants of a lifetime of physical labour. His boots slam against the concrete, echoing through the mill like a countdown.
If the survivors back away, he follows with increasing irritation.
If they speak, he waves them off like noisy machinery.
If they freeze, he circles them, muttering about “waste,” “efficiency,” and “proper throughput.”
“You’re clogging the line,” he snarls. “I can’t have that.”
His aggression is not emotional — it is procedural. He is enforcing workflow.
The sawmill tells Johnny’s story in splinters and rust:
A punch‑clock still holding his last timecard
A breakroom calendar frozen on the month the outbreak began
A locker with his name stencilled on it, door hanging open
A clipboard listing production quotas, each day marked MET in shaky handwriting
A chainsaw on a workbench, half‑disassembled, as if he tried to repair it after death
A “TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK!” poster peeling off the wall
The mill remembers him as a worker. He remembers only the work.
Johnny speaks like a foreman who never left his shift — blunt, dismissive, and obsessed with process. His humour is dark, industrial, and unintentional.
Sample lines:
“You’re on my floor. That makes you product.”
“Everything gets processed. No exceptions.”
“Don’t make me redo the cut.”
“You’ll go through the line just fine.”
“Keep still. Makes the work cleaner.”
“I don’t get breaks. Neither do you.”
His voice should feel like a machine that learned how to talk.
Players can notice the way he inspects them like lumber, the tools integrated into his clothing, the conveyor belt he keeps glancing toward.
Talking may slow him briefly, but he interprets everything through the lens of production and workflow.
Moving where he directs may buy time, though it risks being positioned for “processing.”
Possible, but the mill is a maze of machinery, blind corners, and unstable stacks of timber.
Johnny considers the party as just a type of lumber he has to process. He will attempt to get them to move closer to his machinery, and then try to push them in, so the machines can 'Refine' them into finished product.