Welcome to Portland (Local Lore)

Portland, Maine: Year 3007



Portland, at one point, was a bustling city, full of life and towering concrete and steel buildings, resting idyllically on the scenic Casco Bay. Now, it has fallen to ruin with the rest of the country, as well as the world. What stood of the city is now almost completely gone,dense forest replacing the concrete jungle, nature reclaiming what rightfully belongs to Her. Portland was surprisingly one of the last of the US cities to fall, despite not having quite the resources or size of relatively nearby New York. When the Lamia outbreak was initially announced, they didn't react, thoroughly expecting the military to crush it down and eliminate any stragglers. They were wrong. By the time it reached the Great Lakes, however, and the military force descended upon them, shrieking orders, they finally realized exactly what nightmare was speeding towards them, and began evacuating to three available bunkers. Each bunker housed several hundred evacuees, one in the North, one on the opposite side of the city, downtown and to the South, and one on the outskirts of the city at the West side to gather any outliers. These residents were the only survivors as the plague spread and wiped out the city in only a few weeks time, leaving it desolate and abandoned.



Each bunker was assigned a General to keep order, as well as other basic military ranks. For as long as the government survived and power remained, scheduled air drops were coordinated in order to bring them supplies. When that ended, they began to send out scavenging parties, few of which ever came back, and those that did return, came back haunted by what they had seen. Despite these setbacks, they fought tooth and nail for survival, and for the last millennia, have done so with great resistance. Military order has only been kept over the Northern bunker, referred to as The Maw, and civilians reign over the Western compound, Ashwatch. The Southern bunker, Fort Mercy, fell within the last year to a mysterious force.



To the North lies what was once the heart of the city, including Town Hall. Town Hall still stands to this day, just barely, once constructed of glorious white marble and concrete, it's luxurious domes and towers have collapsed in on themselves, and it's once pale exterior is stained grey and drab, while the entire left wing of the building is nothing more than a pile of stone. Once standing across the street, and now not visible from the cracked stairs of the hall due to the thick copse of trees that annihilated and overtook the asphalt road, was a library that put Town Hall to shame. It's old stone brick walls and stained glass windows are cracked and shattered respectively, and the rows and rows of shelving that once made up the interior have deteriorated and decayed to nothing but dust. Many of it's books, however not all of them, found a home in The Maw and preserved. Of course, even further North, surrounded by wooden and metal spikes and barbed wire fences, like so many teeth of a sitting predator, and it's namesake, is The Maw itself, housing the largest surviving military force in the States, though that only amounts to maybe a hundred soldiers and a hundred or so civilians. The trees around The Maw were cleared long ago, and used along with scrap metal and stone to construct the large compound around their sprawling underground bunker. Both buildings above the ground, and barracks underground, house it's inhabitants and resources. Dotting it's reinforced exterior are a dozen wooden towers, each of which always contains at least one of two guards with crossbows aimed at anything that moves outside their walls.



To the East is Casco bay, once choked and polluted by the reigning shipping industry, the water is now clean and boasts plentiful saltwater animal communities, fine for fishing for both humans and animals alike. Along it's craggy shores, among lone destitute shipping warehouses, most crumbled into indistinguishable rubble and those that still stand whitewashed from sea spray and harboring few supplies, are several beaches. The paths to these are completely inaccessible save for the largest of them, dark sand once speckled with litter now soft and clean. The path down to this haven is steep and difficult to transverse, though if you know your way around it, can be rewarding. Wading in to the water and taking a short swim north around some jutting rocks, a cross mixture of natural stone and a concrete boardwalk that collapsed in to the sea, you'll discover a secluded inlet, and another treacherous path leading to a hidden cove, and some seaside caves, isolated and full of mystery. Several blocks in from the bay, far enough to not see the ocean but close enough to still taste the salt with every inhale, lies a large facility choked by vines, with a staggeringly large oak sprouting clear from it's center- a wooden blade through it's heart. This is the East Bay Zoogenics Research Center and Laboratory- occasionally mockingly referred to as "The Bay of Pigs". Clear across the country from the Nest, this lab worked extensively on studying and editing genes from humans and animals alike. Once known for being the highlighted producer of cosmetic and physical gene edits for general consumers and the military alike, it was contracted by the United States government for Project Dragon to map reptile genomes and provide their findings to The Nest.



The Southeast and Southern portion holds the downtown to the city. Once full of shops and office buildings as far as the eye could see, it is now somewhat barren, the trees thinning somewhat to larger, open areas, scattered with rubble. A sleeping giant lives here, perhaps the most whole building in the city- Mercy General Hospital. Before and during the evacuation, Mercy, like most hospitals, was full to capacity with injured and terrified humans, as well as several Lamia outbreaks originating from within when bitten victims came for aid. After the dust had settled, it was once of the first places scouted out and cleared of all usable supplies by The Maw, and distributed among the few bunkers. Now it stands, a bleak ghost, many of it's stairways blocked by rubble and it's upper floors fragile from age. Two miles south of it lies the second compound, though this one is as dead and desolate as the hospital. Fort Mercy was at one point as well fortified as The Maw, though some time in the last year, all contact with it was lost. Upon investigation, the compound was littered with bodies of humans and Lamia alike, and inhabited now only by the latter. It is a dangerous place, officially off limits for safety, though many can't resist the lure of hoards of supplies stashed underground. Few who wander here make it out alive.



The West holds what once were bustling suburbs on the edge of the city, rows and rows of picturesque houses, the long dead inhabitants fate's unknown. Many of the houses disintegrated to nothing, several are shells ready to collapse and only a few dozen still stand with any sort of structure still behind them, occasionally dotting the forest with their odd, moss covered surfaces, seeming both out of place and a part of the forest all at once. Deeper in to the forest, where the remains of houses end, is the final compound, Ashwatch. Not nearly as foreboding as The Maw, simple wooden and a single barbed wire fence surround this sprawling compound, dwarfing the other's. Several acres of trees within the fence and to it's edges have been cleared, allowing sunlight to penetrate the dense foliage and grow their crops, while large, modified tree houses make up most of the population's living quarters. Portland is dead- but somehow, in it's ruins, life thrives.