TRIBAL

Concept:
Tribal, set in the far future (500 or so years from now) follows the first encounters with England after
300 years of silence. The brief given was to create a game based on our surrounding area, Stroud
and Gloucestershire in the southwest of England. This area has a rich history, being pivotal in the
war of the roses and having megalithic burial mounds. The concept behind tribal was instead of
drawing on that history, to make it. To make what we know as modern day Stroud into a distant
memory.

Premise:
The premise of tribal surrounds the re-building of civilisation after a massive solar storm 200 years
from now destroys most of the world’s electronics. South Africa (whose territory now extends
northwards to the borders of Kenya and Uganda) has become a Massive state; heavily policed before
the solar event it kept order and re-built within the first century (rebuilt referring to the restoration
and turning on of the central power grid). South Africa then expanded north, swallowing
Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Angola, Botswana, and Namibia, annexing them to house the influx of
refugees that flooded down from central Europe. Climate change had caused much of Europe to
become frozen, their technology had kept them warm but without it, they sought warmer
temperatures.

The game starts out in Stroud College, which used to be a technological and cultural hub, a hyper
university 200 years from now. South Africa’s growth technologically now depends on salvaging old
technology. Taking it apart and reverse engineering it. South Africa is also dependant on nuclear
batteries, long lasting to near infinity. There is a shortage however; South Africa has expanded too
quickly and the batteries they have are strained to crisis point. Working batteries are hard to find,
many were buried too shallow (nuclear shielded meant they didn’t need to be buried deep) and
were destroyed by the solar event (one in Newcastle exploded completely wasting the area). But
Stroud College has one buried deep under the ‘old building’, which still powers some very rare and
valuable surviving systems. In a joint operation between the JNR (a salvaging company based in New
Johannesburg, Johannesburg Nuclear Recovery) and the South African government, they aim to
recover the battery in a small operation.

England however hasn’t been contacted before; the energy signals from the college were picked up
by the South African orbit station. England has become unreachable by air due to massive
overgrowth turning it into a forest island, and just as hard to access by sea as half of the coast is
flooded swamp land created by rising sea levels. Wales has been cut off, and Scotland more or less
drowned.

Location Back-story taken from Design document

South Africa Back-story:
Previous to the solar flare, South Africa’s gang violence has escalated considerably, fuelled by the
economic and technology boom paid for by Africa’s nuclear material mines. Many mining companies
were at war with each other, and although Africa as a continent was lifted out of poverty, no longer
being considered a 3rd world country, the gang violence and private armies had grown, and Africa
was divided more than ever. South Africa had become a policed state, at this point one of the most
advanced cities in the world, nuclear material mining was heavily regulated, and a lot of money was
pumped into national development. Martial law kept down violence and although tough, South
Africa flourished. When the solar flare hit, South Africa suffered as much as the rest, rioting and
looting emerged, but law and order was burned into most people through years of heavy policing,
and the state maintained control.

Damage done by the solar flare is reversible, and the South African government had its core systems,
automated public transport, intranet and Security shield generators up and working nationally
within the first decade, 30 years after a lot of the minor systems are up, power is restored to almost
every city when the individual underground nuclear batteries are hooked up to repaired systems. 80
years after and life for south Africans is almost like before the solar events, martial law has been
dropped in favour of private expansion and national recovery, a century after the solar flare and the
city was fully powered and operational.

A lot of refugees flooded into South Africa with the first trickling in within the first decade, 30 years
in and it was a torrent. South Africa underwent aggressive expansion, annexing nearby Mozambique,
Zimbabwe, Angola, Botswana, and Namibia. Most were overrun by mobs of refugee’s, but were re-
assigned as districts of South Africa after the mobs were quelled by the South African National Guard
and army.

The first nation to re-establish contact with was Korea, which was in a sorry state. A lot of people
were imprisoned in their homes, and forced to work, restoring technology. Little else is known about
Korea, its government is a mystery, and has become highly paranoid about technology theft,
although some trading is permitted between private parties. Korea however gave a stark warning
when asked about Asia, stay clear of china.

Contact with France was a big step, as a stepping stone to Sweden and Norway, which has been cut
off by vast tundra’s sweeping through Russia and the Eurasian countries, caused by natural weather
cycles (commonly misconceptualised as ‘climate change’ or global warming). The French we’re found
to be peaceful community’s living in the echoes of the old great cities. Although reports suggest that
France wasn’t so peaceful for the past couple of decades. These peaceful communities have been
taken advantage of by some unscrupulous salvage teams, and France is now the first ‘protected
colony’, where some South Africans have established education bases and technology repair stations
in a mutually beneficial relationship, where the French are educated and given work, and south
Africa benefits from the untouched technology scattered around France.

America, most of Asia has been silent, there is either no one to hear the South African government’s
attempts at contact, or they are ignoring them. Australia is out of everyone’s reach, and Russia along
with Eurasia has become inhospitable, and considered a dead land, with no technology able to
survive the harsh cold, or people; what was considered once a small world has become a lot bigger.
Tribal History
In England the first few months after the solar events saw the ending of vast nationwide riots looting
and violence, and most of who was left starved, unable to provide for themselves. After a decade or
two, only a few clusters of people are left. Who have survived have become savage nomads, moving
from city to city, picking over what food is left preserved, and hunting the boom in wildlife, thriving
without humankind to suppress numbers. Escaped pigs have reverted to boars, and wild dogs
running in packs, have lost their tolerance too humans. Deer numbers have exploded, and rabbits
coat the land churned by herds of cows. Unkempt and unchecked by humans most of the major
forests have rapidly expanded, a century after solar events and most of England is engulfed in a
forest, the remaining clusters of people find more permanent territories after everything has been
raided, and form rough tribal settlements. Thousands of years of survival techniques lost in a
devotion to technology, all have too be relearned. England has become wild.

One of the biggest tribes have no memory of where they came from, but live and hunt in what we
call Stroud. The valleys lush with animals and plants from overgrown farms provide an oasis allowing
the tribe to grow and become dominant. In the centre of the valleys is the second source of their
power, the shell of a college blessed with a rarity, a piece of working technology. The tribe members
believe it the light of god, the unearthed nuclear battery a gift, heat without fire. This is why
professional soldiers have been brought in too do private work, and why the player’s mission is so
vital. A piece of holographic technology, one of the jewels of pre solar events society has survived,
ready too be studied and copied; a holy grail of salvaging.

Character Back-story’s
Name: Kaya Langa

Sex: Female

Age: 28

Race: South African

Role: Main character, player controlled

Appearance:

Kaya’s Mother is a Korean immigrant, and her father South African, giving Kaya a rich cultural
heritage in both appearance and history. She is slim, and lightly muscled like most military service
workers. She has her father’s nose, and his mouth, but her mother’s eyes, giving her a sultry,
determined look.

Bio:
Born into money, Kaya was raised privileged in New Johannesburg. Never doing overly well in
school, achieving average grades, she sailed through her educative years in mediocrity. Kaya’s
Mother and Father were both civil servants, her mother an architect raised in the civilised but
decaying Korea, immigrated to South Africa for education, her father a civil engineer, son to a well
off South African salvage merchant. She got an internship at their government building in the
security department, and gained an interest in a military career, and a scholarship to a military
college, partially funded by her parents. Kaya excelled, but a severe arm injury during training
threatened her career. Again her parents stepped in and saved her from disability with a robotic
prosthetic.

Kaya’s first mission was securing an area of southern France where the little better than tribal locals
were being abused and controlled by UANR agents who were forcing them into guiding them into
the French wilds. They arrived to find many of the locals fenced into their houses, some
‘troublemakers’ were being strung up to be made an example of. The area was secured, and Kaya
spent time desperately cutting down the hanging locals against orders. After several years of similar
missions, and several disciplinary hearings later, Kaya was serving administration time, when she
met her would be husband, 12 years her senior, and a brigadier, well above her rank.

Kaya married young and above her rank lifting her out of the normal grunt work and placing her in a
special team, a national army mercenary branch, who are contracted out on missions of interest to
the JNR and the South African nation.

Personality;

Kaya is generally quiet, not the strong silent type, but choosing to think carefully about what to say
and when. Although not possessing a genius intellect, common sense was born into her after being
left at home to fend for herself whilst her parents were busy working.

Name: Mia

Sex: Female

Age: 27

Race: South African

Role: UANR co-ordinator

Appearance:

Mia is a stern well worn woman, with startling flame orange/red hair and sharp features. She is well
muscled and tattooed from a 6 year stretch in prison, the most prominent being, the South African
Army insignia midway down her back, a South African Special forces insignia at the base of the front
of her neck over the top of scrollwork text of the motto ‘We fear Naught but god’. Various other
tattoos a scattered over her body including the gold operators badge on her left breast. She is
naturally very light skinned.

Bio:
Mia was born to a middle class family; she spent most of her teen life in and out of squad cars being
arrested on various minor offences, mostly scuffles with bullies and anyone who was close enough
to pick a fight. She was removed from her secondary school, and placed in a monitored learning
environment, again mainly for fighting and her temper. Despite her ease around violence she only
had good intentions, and in truth most of her fights were started in defence of friends or peers. She
was left with no family at 16, after her parents and brother were killed in an arson attack on their
family home; Mia survived with only minor burns. She calmed down after the attack, and became
withdrawn and had a brief stint in a state college studying law and politics but left after frustration
and boredom that such a strict environment and topic breeds grew too much. She went straight into
the army, with no family or money she didn’t have much choice.

Her fighting spirit was re-ignited during training and it fed her determination to excel physically, she
was fast tracked to the Special Forces, which she met Kaya. They spent a brief time as lovers before
Kayas injury forced her to pull out of training. They met again in France, during Kayas first mission,
Mia was well experienced by then having completed several high profile missions and was well
commended for her roles in them. Kaya however was traumatised by what had been happening to
the locals, and when forcibly removed from the scene, Mia got into a fight with several high ranking
officers, wounding one quite severely. She was Court marshalled, deemed ‘feral’ by her superiors
and incarcerated in military prison for 6 years.

Just before release Mia was contacted by the UANR, who had head hunted her because of her
specific talents and attributes; Never one to turn away from a fight in her life, she snapped up the
job. A year later achieving the role of co-ordinator of ground missions, ruthless and brutal from her
time in prison, she has become sour towards anything or anyone linked to the South African
government.

Tribe Members
The tribal members are dirty and rugged; Ranks are kept by appearance, the lower grunts favouring
clean shaven heads and faces, as they aren’t given a lot of access to washing facilities like pools of
water. The higher ranks keep long Mohawks tied back into braids to signify rank, and status within
the tribe, and some of the most senior are permitted to keep facial hair. This system keeps a level of
control amongst the lower ranks, and helps keep the smell down. The race diversity within the tribe
is low, there at one time were little breeding couples amongst the scattered tribes, causing most
ethnic and physical diversity to be diluted and rendered unnoticeable by inbreeding.

The tribe as a whole is also a lot taller then most, maybe a side product of the inbreeding; making
the men a couple of inches taller then south African men, and the women just as tall. All are lean
and well muscled through years of hard labour and strife.

The tribal members speak broken English, a lot of the elaborate frivolities of the speech cut out,
leaving basic sentence structure and commands. They are all Pious to the extreme, and will have
been raised, and will die worshiping the technology in the college; they will protect it as if it’s a part
of them, which to them, it is.
The caste system is divided into utilities and both genders have freedom over what they do if they
earn the position; the lowest are the carers, those who look after the children (children are raised
community not kept to parents), but are banned from having children. These will often be the old
and crippled those who are seen as unproductive. Many of the crippled will be those injured during
tribal infighting which becomes more frequent during the harsh winter months when other tribes
invade the lush valleys. The next up will be the weavers and sewers, those who construct the
garments worn, and the material for the tent the tribe makes into homes. Many of these will be
those too weak to fight and again not permitted to sire children. Breeders are slightly higher; these
will be older retired hunters, considered good stock for the tribe.

The highest rank in the tribal caste system (other then matriarch) is to become a hunter. Unlike the
other roles, Hunters are male only, females are allowed to hunt and become huntresses, but do so
away from the tribe to expand territory and explore outside the tribal lands. They are seen as less
aggressive and therefore less likely to be attacked on sight. The men, although called hunters
actually spend less time actually hunting then the huntresses, completing more advanced martial
training to form the military element of the tribe. The huntresses are slightly lower down the castes
but not by much.

The Highest position in the Tribe is that of matriarch, or mother. The matriarch ascends her position
by having her son kill the old matriarchs son, to prove who gives birth to the strongest, and is
therefore of better stock. The matriarch then takes her son as champion, and assumes control of the
tribe, becoming a priestess of a sort as well as ruler. The strongest hunters are then chosen to sire
her children. This Eugenic style of breeding, has restored strong number to the tribe, and has
ensured there dominance, especially after the near extinction of all the English.

If the matriarch dies of natural causes, her first born daughter instead ascends with her brother as
champion; if she has sired no daughters then her sister ascends, also taking the old champion as her
own. In the rare occasion of the dead matriarch having no sister, then the nearest known kin
assumes the position. In the event of the champion dying, the Matriarch may choose herself a new
champion from any of the hunter stock, including her own sons if there of age.