C39: The Clinic C40: Mystery Cave Landmark Salvage Value: Ruined Building: Hospital, Clinic Hidden: DC 20 Perception or Survival Population: 88 (foragers) Salvage Value: (max 2) Buildings: House Tech Levels: production 2, maintenance The people of Rochester, Minnesota, tried to salvage their community after the Great War After their traumatic losses just after the War, it looked for many years like survivors might be able to establish a permanent community However between mutants, raiders, disease, weather, and people simply fleeing to perceived safer communities, the population dwindled over the decades, and it is now completely abandoned As the heroes travel through the area, they see hints of this failed community Unlike most ghost towns that have been abandoned since the war, they see evidence of post-war construction, including recently constructed wooden buildings, refurbished tools, and stockpiles of scavenged goods The most valuable things the heroes find are the remains of the Mayo Clinic, which the survivors used as a home base Though they lost much of the specialized medical skills necessary, they struggled to keep the clinic at least partially operational up until the bitter end These areas can be salvaged and repaired to make a hospital, or scrap from the clinics can be harvested, providing extra Build per week towards a hospital in another community Though there are no humans here, a particularly powerful ghost cat makes her home here Apply the Advanced Creature template from the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary to a standard ghost cast (page 157) Trogs When nuclear fallout rained from the skies after the Great War, many people took shelter in the natural caves of southern Minnesota The survivors found the caves made ideal shelters, and built them into small communities Several of these people happened to have undergone TransGenome therapies to enhance their night vision, a gene that, thanks to generations of inbreeding, has now passed to nearly all of the cave dwellers, who now call themselves Trogs Trogs believe they are God’s chosen people, and He led them to the caves to keep them safe By extension this means everybody outside the caves are not chosen by God The Trogs have adapted their life to living in the caves, and a world of darkness They cultivate a form of luminescent fungus by hauling dead wood into their caves for the fungus to feed on These fungi provide both food and illumination The light is quite dim, however, and those with normal vision suffer a -2 penalty to attack rolls if they have no other light Trogs emerge from their caves at night to forage for additional food If other travelers come into the Trogs’ territory, the Trogs may attempt to steal food and other useful looking items during the night, but they are not particularly violent and would prefer to simply slink off without leaving any clue about who was there (see Thief in the Night on page 121) The Trogs have two main living caves: Mystery Cave and Niagara Cave They are less than a night’s journey by foot, so there is frequent travel between the two caves and they are really part of a single community In addition they have several small “safety” caves they can use if there isn’t time to return to a major settlement Before the Great War, Mystery Cave was a popular tourist destination When the apocalypse came, many survivors fled to the caves to escape the nuclear fallout It is a large and complex cave system with miles of tunnels, and it currently serves as the larger of the Trogs’ villages Mystery Cave is made up mostly of many long passages formed by subterranean rivers and several larger caverns created by underground lakes The Trogs use these caverns as different “buildings,” such as acting as sleeping quarters, food storage, or meeting spaces The cave system has two entrances, one to the east and the other to the west To make it easier for tourists to visit, several parts of the cave system contain paved paths, hand railings, and (no longer powered) electric lights However these improvements only covered a fraction of the caves, and much of the floor is uneven stone Chapel: The chapel is a natural open space Before the Great War it was used for weddings and hundreds of people were married there Now it is still called the chapel, and functions as the cave’s spiritual center There are services every seven days (on Sundays, according to the Trogs), usually led by Shadow Johnson, but occasionally by others when he’s visiting Niagara Cave Even on days when there is no service, it is common to find Trogs in the chapel, praying or reading the community Bible 123