The Canadian Crownwaste
Post-War Canada, Annexed American North — 2278
1. Title and Region Name
Wastelanders call southern Canada the Crownwaste, from Atlantic ruins to Pacific rain. The name is half joke, half insult: the old country was swallowed by the United States, stripped for resources, then left to freeze under flags no one trusts.
2. Overview
The Crownwaste is huge, lonely, and practical: black spruce, shield-rock, drowned ports, dead suburbs, grain towns, frozen checkpoints, hydro dams, and highways that run farther than hope. It is known for winter, occupation scars, working power, and settlements built around heat. Its rivers, mines, forests, ports, rails, farms, and dams can still feed, arm, move, or freeze whole regions.
3. Pre-War History
Before the Great War, Canada had already lost itself. During the Resource Wars, the United States annexed it under slogans like ONE CONTINENT. ONE FLAG. ONE FUTURE. Troops guarded pipelines, uranium mines, timber, fisheries, hydro stations, rail hubs, and Arctic posts. Cities filled with ration bureaus, occupation courts, contractors, propaganda schools, and “unity centers.” Resistance survived in unions, depots, churches, hockey rinks, forest camps, and coded radio chatter.
4. The Great War and Immediate Aftermath
The bombs did not kill the region evenly. Ottawa burned. Toronto and Montreal became industrial mazes. Vancouver’s harbor drowned under blast waves and black rain. Halifax became a half-sunken naval graveyard. Prairie air bases and missile fields were cratered, while many northern towns survived by being forgotten. Dams failed, refineries cooked, rivers changed course, and winter killed more survivors than radiation. Automated checkpoints kept enforcing curfew after the officers were gone.
5. Geography and Environmental Zones
Great Lakes Belt: Southern Ontario has farm ruins, factories, flooded suburbs, toll bridges, lake fog, caravan towns, and the best roads with the worst gun traffic.
Laurentian Divide: Quebec’s forests, rivers, and mines are cold, proud, and hard to rule. Montreal glows with chemical weather; raiders hide in ski resorts.
Atlantic Bones: The Maritimes are fog, fisheries, naval wrecks, drowned bunkers, ghoul crews, and villages that read the sea better than maps.
Prairie Glass: Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta hold grain silos, oil fields, missile scars, dust storms, rail forts, and distant danger.
Rockies and Pacific Reach: Mountain passes, avalanche roads, hydro bunkers, logging ruins, and Vancouver’s drowned towers make travel slow and costly.
The High North: Yukon and the territories are rumor: mines, listening posts, frozen labs, weather stations, and lights locals do not discuss indoors.
6. Major Settlements
Rondo: Built in and under Toronto’s ruins; bridges, markets, gangs, engineers, fortified districts, and councils ruled by food, roads, and ammo.
Bytown Hold: A bunker-town in Ottawa’s shattered ministries. It trades records, sealed-office access, forged IDs, and legal judgments.
Kingston Chain: A prison-port on Lake Ontario surviving on ferry tolls, salvage diving, and caravan bargains.
The Peg: Winnipeg’s rail-market city, built around heated tunnels and grain silos. Practical, suspicious, and famous for winter doctors.
Calgary Stamp: A stockyard fortress where brahmin herds, oil salvage, and mercenary contracts meet. Its rodeo includes mine-disarming.
Van-Rain: A stilt-and-rooftop settlement in drowned Vancouver, trading fish, batteries, timber, and secrets from sunken towers.
Halifax Wake: A fogbound harbor of ghoul sailors, fishers, and naval scavengers. Its bell rings for storms and things under the water.
7. Factions
Dominion Road Compact: Toll-keepers, repair crews, and caravan judges who fix highways and charge like kings.
Red Maple Remnant: Anti-annexation descendants. Some guard towns and memory; others bomb bridges and call every outsider an occupier.
Northern Command Deadhand: U.S. bunkers, robot garrisons, officer descendants, and automated law still enforcing occupation orders.
Hydro-King Cooperatives: Dam towns controlling power lines. They bring light and heat, then ration it like scripture.
Lake Kings: Armed ferries, icebreakers, pirate trawlers, and dock bosses ruling stretches of the Great Lakes.
Canon outsiders are rare in 2278: Brotherhood scouts, wandering medics, and southern traders pass through, but no outside power owns the region.
8. Economy and Resources
Caps travel well, but locals also trade in heat, ammo, clean water, winter clothes, food, generator hours, antibiotics, fuel cells, and road access. Wealth comes from dams, fisheries, maple camps, grain silos, mines, timber mills, salvage yards, reactor plants, and working snow engines.
9. Roads, Travel, and Trade Routes
Main routes are broken Trans-Canada arteries, Great Lakes ferries, old rail beds, river crossings, prairie service roads, and mountain passes. Distance is a predator: blizzards, lake storms, washed bridges, toll gangs, minefields, radmoose, dead checkpoints, and robots demanding obsolete paperwork.
10. Vaults
Vault 81-C, Ottawa: Public purpose: preserve bilingual civil leadership. Secret: two governments forced into one command system with contradictory laws. Status: sealed factions still pass useless bills. Its leaked codes shaped Bytown Hold.
Vault 214, Sudbury: Public purpose: mining refuge. Secret: low-dose radiation and productivity conditioning. Status: breached. Descendants are pale, strong, sickly, and rumored to smell ore.
Vault 303, Calgary: Public purpose: agricultural continuity. Secret: ration-based social rank tied to crop failure. Status: open. It produces brilliant farmers and cruel quartermasters.
Vault 119, Vancouver Island: Public purpose: marine research shelter. Secret: adaptation to irradiated aquatic labs. Status: flooded but active. It opens exterior hatches during storms.
11. Pre-War Ruins and Points of Interest
Maple Leaf Unity Center: A propaganda museum where animatronics explain annexation beside skeletons in the “terrorist wing.”
Sudbury Pit: A cratered mining hell of nickel, radiation, mutant fungi, and ore crawlers.
Pearson Wreckfield: Toronto’s airport, now crashed jets, luggage forts, customs Mr. Handys, smugglers, and terminal gangs.
Rideau Black Locks: Frozen canal gates, ghoul lockkeepers, hidden military storage, and drowned patrol boats.
Vancouver Arcology Shell: Half-submerged executive towers still sending elevators to corpse-filled offices.
CFB Cold Lake: A ruined air base where automated hangars maintain aircraft too unsafe to fly.
12. Creatures and Mutations
Radmoose roam like walking trucks with antlers. Frostlurks nest under lake docks. Slagbears prowl mining country. Mutant beavers build dam-forts that flood roads. Great Lakes mirelurks haunt ferries and ports. Snow ghouls freeze stiff until heat wakes them. Glow-wolves hunt rail beds. Prairie glasshoppers strip crops overnight. In the north, pale “weather men” near old labs mimic voices through broken radios.
13. Robots, Technology, and Old-World Machines
The region is full of stubborn machines: snowplow Protectrons, forestry Mr. Handys, customs Sentry Bots, rail loaders, hydro turbines, weather towers, reactor controls, and propaganda transmitters. The tech is chunky, loud, bolted down, and nuclear-hearted. A terminal may still demand a badge, ration code, and loyalty oath before opening a bathroom door.
14. Culture and Daily Life
People wear wool, patched parkas, hockey pads, road leathers, and uniforms with flags cut off. Meals are fish, brahmin stew, beans, radstag, potatoes, maple sugar, and reactor-grown greens. Slang includes “Yankee ghost” for occupation robots, “red road” for danger, and “warm-rich” for steady power. Children learn the old world lied about peace and obedience. Radio means fiddle music, storm warnings, fake hockey scores, preacher-static, and cereal ads.
15. Moral Conflicts and Story Hooks
A dam can power five towns by flooding a ghoul village. A Red Maple cell has proof of annexation war crimes, but releasing it may restart a regional war. Rondo needs food from farms guarded by brutal toll men. Vault 303 can end famine if allowed to impose ration law. Lake Kings offer safe passage in exchange for hostages. Northern Command robots defend towns from raiders, then execute residents for expired IDs.
16. Random Encounter Style
Encounters should come from place and weather. Roads bring toll crews, frozen caravans, broken snowplows, checkpoint robots, refugees, and bad maps. Forests bring radmoose trails, trap lines, bunker vents, hunters, and logging ghosts. Water brings ferry disputes, fog signals, mirelurk eggs, pirate lights, and half-sunk cargo. Cities bring scavenger claims, gang borders, old alarms, and terminals waking things best left asleep.
17. Visual Style
The Crownwaste should look cold, rusted, patriotic, and wounded: snow gray, lake green, hazard yellow, faded maple red, U.S. blue, sodium orange, and reactor glow. Architecture mixes brick towns, brutalist ministries, fences, grain elevators, hydro dams, rail yards, suburbs, and cracked towers. Signs combine American slogans with painted-over Canadian symbols. Vehicles are armored snow trucks, ferries, rail rigs, icebreakers, and plow-nosed police cruisers.
18. Fallout Authenticity Rules
The Crownwaste is not clean sci-fi. It is a real place twisted by annexation, war, weather, business, and hunger. Settlements exist because something nearby keeps people alive. Factions need food, heat, roads, power, workers, and ammo. Ruins tell jokes and tragedies. Vaults leak consequences. Monsters fit the forests, lakes, plains, coasts, and labs that made them. The region supports sandbox play: trade, survival jobs, faction choices, lost roads, local disputes, and old secrets.