the Minister

The Council of Iron

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Having restored a sense of purpose and honour to his people, it is the infamous General of Monsoon’s quest for the past that threatens to undo it all.

by Ali May Sang (the Librarian)
featuring passages from the High Plains Samurai Core Rulebook

When it comes to the warlord of the Five Cities, the general population who have either been unable to survive the acidic mist concealing the City of Rust from the rest of the world or knew better than to try consider a mysterious figure known as the Minister as its leader. Technically, they would be correct. And also incredibly wrong. When it comes to the true power in this underground engineering marvel, the Council of Iron stands at the top of the heap.

That is not to say the Minister does not hold a position of power in Rust, but all evidence dictates he commands the religious influence of its people. With uncounted effigies displayed on every street and in every home in Rust, it can be easy to believe the Minister controls the day-to-day functions of the City or leads the sermons that the people follow blindly or by force. This is not the case. The Council of Iron, those personally selected by the Minister for their specialties and devotion to the cause, rule over the people, protecting them from the blasphemy of the outside world. Proving their devotion requires physical sacrifices; each Councillor has augmented their bodies with artificial limbs, appendages, senses, and more.

Total subjugation is the price for living in a city of metal and advancement, with the Council of Iron acting as the Minister’s voice. While they may seem to have it all compared to the remaining Cities, everything a family owns can be stripped at a moment’s notice at the Council’s whims. Those who have managed to flee with their lives intact speak of the Council’s madness and the rampant disease from a life surrounded in rusted metals and an unkempt populace. Public hangings, beheadings, floggings, and more are common occurrences. Armed sentries known as dominions patrol the streets and back alleys in search of offenders, particularly those with qi powers who sully the City with their abomination.

There are nine members of the Council, all but one charged with a district to tax and enforce their laws using sermons and dominions. Their servitude to the Council is for life, though their role within the Council and the district they govern rises and falls based on their machinations. Above them all stands Prefect Hassaf Youz, the Minister’s Voice. The makeup of the Council and its functions in the City come direct from the Prefect as only she has looked upon the Minister’s true face and proved her worth to lead the Council and the people of Rust. It is she who dictates the rule of law and the sermons given to the people every day, and those who question her choices are no longer around to question her again.

The Salvation

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A symbol of hope and resurgence in a world torn apart, the Salvation is more than just a train connecting the Five Cities.

by Ali Mai Sang (the Librarian)

For hundreds of years after Chaos touched the land, there were only two ways to cross the deserts: by foot or by steed. Neither was a guarantee of arrival and many skeletons lie buried under the sands as proof of this difficulty. One person sought to change this.

Over two-hundred years ago Deckland Burr fled Rust with nothing but the clothes on his back and the tools in his pouch. The third-born of a powerful and respected family in the City, with close ties to the Council of Iron and many sons and daughters serving its elite clergy, Deckland challenged the Council’s “abuse of power.” He loudly decried their failure to use the technology they had unlocked to better all societies, not just those sworn to the Minister. For his heresy, he was jailed. Not only were his words dangerous, but the inventor was known to have the ambition and morale code to follow through on the ideas he spouted in his speeches. His greatest concept was for a massive armoured locomotive, driven by a perpetual engine, carving a trail through the Wastes to connect the Five Cities for trade and travel alike. After his daring escape, Deckland made for Yung Zhi and twenty years later fulfilled his dream. Dubbed the Salvation, the people today simply know it as the Train.

Thousands of coins and hundreds of lives later, the Salvation operates across large reaches of desert connecting all Five Cities. Equipped with iron reinforcements, powerful weaponry and an interchanging crew of dedicated guardians of Deckland’s own design, the Salvation itself is but the means by which others can pass through the Wastes. Unable to take any passengers itself, other vehicles capable of high speeds in rugged terrain join up with this behemoth, breaking formation as each connects to way stations for passengers to disembark or climb aboard when the Salvation makes its next approach. At any one time, as many as twenty privately run connections, colourfully known as wagons, follow the Salvation through the dangers of our world’s deadliest terrain. Many wagons have been lost to Outcast raiding parties, leviathans and raging storms, but the Salvation continues to this day.

The Salvation

Supporting Character
A cross between the steam engine train and an armoured tank, this windowless, seemingly crewless masterpiece of engineering never stops for anything. Guarded by numerous automatons, including warmechs, every angle is covered by canons, flamethrowers, and other heavy firepower. Using an endless supply of gear and tactics to handle any obstacle the Wastes can throw at it, The Salvation has been known to reconfigure and repair most damage and restrictions by adjusting plates and components with ease. There are many who believe these adaptations are a sign of some form of intelligence, possibly conceived by the very chaotic radiations of the Wastes. It would explain many things, especially since no one (not even those in the Caravan) have ever seen an operator or engineer.

Homeland: The Wastes
Qi Power: N/A
Unique Features: A giant locomotive engine built like a tank with heavy firepower and warmechs.

An Unstoppable Force (d12+1/9/5)
One Step Ahead (d8+1/5/4)
Protect the Passengers (d8/5/4)

Resource Slots: 3
Vitality: 50
Adaptation: The key to the Salvation’s endurance driving through the Wastes day after day for years are its back-up features and the ability to reconfigure its parts. These near flawless transformations are the Salvation’s most amazing feature and the reason it can handle all forms of complications like any living character.
Bonus Challenges: The Salvation has a number of additional challenges it can use. These bonus challenges work exactly as regular challenges but can also be used for additional perks provided here. It starts the story with 1 bonus challenge per lead character.
Built To Take A Beating: Built to withstand and push through anything the Wastes can dish out, this marvel of modern steampunk can spend 1 bonus challenge to roll its potential’s dice to determine its Defence. The Director can choose to use either the result or the potential’s original Defence but the bonus challenge is spent either way.
Damage Trigger: Whenever the Salvation takes damage, it (or the Caravan, if the Director prefers) can immediate use a free detail with a d8 for any complication rolls.
A Little Help: The Salvation can spend 1 bonus challenge to grant the Caravan a second description in a round.

(This version of the Salvation has been revised from the original version found in High Plains Samurai: Legends.)

Rust, City of Industry

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Forced underground by their own pollution, Rust has become a beacon of hope and a bastion of disease.  

from High Plains Samurai: Legends

Tall spires of scrap metal pierce the horizon in this pocket of the One Land ripe with strong electrical currents as bolts of lightning bounce from one tower to the next. These towers are a monument to a world of bizarre creations and marvels that cannot be found until you begin to look underground. Buried beneath the barren soil, everything that is this final City is concealed beneath the earth. That is perhaps its greatest defense. Blending salvage engineering with religious devotion, Rust is a beacon of hope, for those who can both physically and morally endure, in an otherwise dreary hellhole. Yet most would rather take their chances in the Wastes.

Every street, building, and construct in Rust was built from the wreckage of the world before Chaos’ wrath, and its people have completed wondrous feats with these remains. Despite the brown-flecked appearance of the metal applied in these inventions, its citizens have manufactured some of the most advanced forms of technology available today (some even more than what was possible before it was all destroyed). They even have the ability to harness the electricity flowing through the air around them (a lesser side effect of the storm-riddled northern landscape above) to provide heat and illumination. It is this ingenuity that makes Rust a powerhouse among the Five Cities as it sits on a powder keg of weaponry. While all the other warlords would unleash an army to seize this city for their own, none would dare face down a barrage of contraptions built for the sole purpose of tearing a man in half.

Ingenuity in the face of devastation is the signature conceit of this final City overseen by the Council of Iron and its messiah, the Minister. The people of Rust have built impressive technologies and architecture using the leftovers of the world before Chaos’ judgement and have dedicated themselves to the worship of the Minister as their guide to the afterlife away from all of this toil and death. Total subjugation is the price for living in a city of electricity and advancement, with the Council of Iron acting as the Minister’s voice. While they may seem to have it all compared to the remaining Cities, everything a family owns can be stripped at a moment’s notice at the Council’s whims. Those who have managed to flee with their lives intact speak of the Minister’s madness and the rampant disease from a life surrounded in rusted metals and an unkempt populace.