| Primrose | |
| |
| General Information | |
| Establishment: | 2140 |
| Status: | An active and violent Copper mining town. |
| Location Information | |
| Location: | Northwestern Corridor, Tamaulipas |
| Societal Information | |
| Population: | approx. 175 |
| Notable Individuals: | La Placa Ladron Hierro
Alberto Barrela John-Paul Giraud |
| Factions: | Comancheros (Temporarily) |
| Notable Events: | Brass Plate Robberies
Comanchero Takeover |
A mining town sitting just over the Rio Grande in Mexico. Once a thriving Copper mining town, it has since divulged into a series of individual mines owned and run by various foremen working their tired workers to death at slave wages. All in the quest of the valuable Copper which has become quite a profitable commodity among the various caravans and towns in Southern Texas.
History[]
Pre-War[]
The Pre-war history of Primrose is a rather short one. Primrose was never a town in the pre-war days as the copper deposits that are now the driving force behind the town's economy had never been discovered up until the week prior to the Great War's commencement. The location that was to become Primrose was at one point or another, surveyed by a team of Geologists contracted by Barracuda Minerals, a subsidiary of Petro-Chico. The team of Geologists were in the area to see if the area held any sort of mineral deposits that could be exploited by Barracuda Minerals, and in fact they did discover a sizable deposit of copper lying in the ground under their camp.
Excited by their discovery they began to take samples, make notes on the individual locations of each bane and preparing the site for mining crews to move in and begin work. Knowing the value of copper among robotics and electrical appliance producers they expect to be paid handsomely for their discovery. However their efforts are cut short by a group of Anti-American guerrillas who take the group of Geologists hostage and hold them for ransom, however, the ransom was never paid as just as the guerrillas make the call to the Geologists Poseidon Energy supervisors the bombs start to drop.
The Great War[]
The Great War for the future sight of Primrose was relatively uneventful, the sight was not directly affected by any nuclear weapons, although the area did experience some fallout from nuclear blasts that occurred in San Antonio and El Paso.
Boom Years[]
The Boom Years for Primrose started in the year 2140 when Howard Bascom rediscovered the site of the copper deposits. Howard was what he liked to call a "Traveling Investor" making money here or there, off one scam or another with the occasional legitimate business venture tossed in to keep his reputation somewhat clean. Yet when Howard discovered the sight he couldn't have imagined what he had stumbled upon, after surveying the long collapsed campsite he discovered the copper samples taken by the Geologists all those years ago. Realizing what they were he looked around to find where their source was. He quickly came upon the small shaft that the Geologists had dug and after looking through the old shaft he discovered chunks of copper sticking out of the rock, excited by his discovery he immediately laid claim to the whole area and then ran to the nearest town to hire some workers to work the sight.
After selling the old copper samples at a local general store he began spreading the word that he was looking for experienced mine workers, who were willing to work for good pay and even better benefits. This word spread fast and soon he had a small group of 35 volunteers, about six had worked in a mine before and two of those were old ghouls. As for the rest of the workers they were either wasters looking for a quick buck, out of work farm hands and junkies looking for caps to get a fix. Taking this motley group of workers he led them to the sight of the mine and allowed the non-experienced workers to go out and construct homes from materials they scavenged from the wastes. Meanwhile, he took the six experienced miners and brought them too the shaft, asking if they thought the shaft was safe to work in. The answer was a resounding no, they pointed out how the supports were severely weakened, chunks of rock fell from the shaft roof at the slightest movement and the air itself stunk of sulfur.
Not discouraged by this news, Howard then set the group of miners to the task of making the shaft safe to work in, and using materials from the old campsite and going back into town to purchase building material they slowly and cautiously reinforced the old supports, put up new ones at weak points and dug a few ventilation holes to cycle out the carbon monoxide that filled the shaft. After their work had been completed, Howard having overseen the construction of the miner's camp sent the rest of the workers into the mine, armed with pickaxes, shovels, hammers and picks to begin expanding the mine and start digging out the copper deposits. A few weeks later, things hadn't quite gone Howard's way. There was hardly any copper
A group of miners on a brief break.
from the mine that had been harvested and he was slowly running out of money to pay the miners, growing frustrated at the lack of progress he then dictated a new payment system to make his workers actually work hard and to save him money, a miner would be paid by the amount of copper he brought in at the end of each week. This angered many of the workers who were more than comfortable putting in their three hours of work and then relaxing the rest of the day, but when they protested Howard introduced his two new "foremen" Collie and Johnson, a mercenary duo Howard had hired to get his workers whipped into working.
The miners realizing their predicament, went back to work with a new vigor as they broke their backs digging out copper just to make enough caps to buy food from the new company store (run by Howard), to add the workplace became even more savage as opportunistic miners turned on their fellow workers in order to gain the approval and power from Howard who soon added three new foremen to the site. The foremen themselves acted more as thugs then overseers of operation, they beat those who didn't look to be working hard enough, enforced Howard's new rules (always calling him Mr. Bascom) and stealing the biggest chunks of copper for themselves to be sold to Howard. Meanwhile, Howard sat atop an ever-increasing pile of caps as starving workers traded an arm and a leg for food from the company store and he made a killing off selling copper ore to merchants who made the mine a priority stop.
To add, new workers, came in almost every day, many were desperate for caps or heard that there were openings for ruthless men and women to become the owner's personal thugs. The town grew, and so did the mine, which turned into two, then three, then four mine shafts as new banes of copper were found in the surrounding area. With all these developments, Howard decided to give his town an identity, naming it Primrose after his mother, according to Howard she was quite a bitch.
The Two Comancheros[]
In 2190 the Boom Years came to an end for Primrose as problems began to arise for the growing town in the form of outlaws. Up to this point the biggest issue the town faced had been from defiant workers, an issue easily fixed with a nighttime hanging and extra work hours for his fellow workers. However, no one could've expected the kind of trouble that one man could cause the town, whoever the Iron Plate Robber would pose for the town.
the Iron Plate Robber
At one point a worker, one of the countless disgruntled mine workers who left the town angered by the lack of results his hard work had given him, had decided to get some revenge on Howard (now elderly) and his associates. He took some scrap metal, torn off the wreck of an old pre-war car and formed it into a suit of armor for himself and promptly began to rob the town inhabitants and store. Protected in his suit of armor the bullets that guards and mercenaries alike fired at him, clanged and bounced off as he walked through the streets, spraying guards and mercs alike with a hail of bullets from his M3A1 Grease Gun, or from his double-barreled shotgun.
Despite the best attempts of the foremen, they couldn't seem to put a stop to the armored bandit who appeared to also have some help up in the hills. Whenever a man would try to sneak up on the bandit from his exposed rear or flanks, a shot would ring out and then person would fall to the ground with a bullet placed firmly in his back. Whoever this sniper was, he and the bandit clearly had their operation worked out as the bandit held up the town store or individual miners. Even the guarded storage shed, with the mine's compiled copper ore stored within, was safe from the bandit who would often carry off copper ore in a burlap sack he often had with him.
The only thing that gave the robber any sort of personality was his strong Mississippi accent, yet the armored robber was not to plague the town for long and after three weeks of robbing and attacking the town he and his partner left the area. The disappearance of the robber could not be explained, but on his last raid on the town he made a big show of himself, as he heaved grenades into homes, shot mercenaries dead with a sort of cruel eloquence and even posed for a quick photo, taken by Howard's grandson.
Yet just as the bank robber vacated the town, a new terror roled in. Comancheros, two of them, one calling himself Alberto Barrela and the other a Frenchman named John-Paul Giraud. The duo had been friends since they had met in Ciudad Victoria the previous year and had decided to combine their two gangs to
Alberto Barrela
operate as one strong gang, with both men taking equal leadership of the gang. They rolled into Primrose right on the heels of the Iron Plate Robber and after a quick gunfight with the town's mercenary guards and foremen they took over, making the town their own.
The duo ruled with an iron fist, with Giraud being the cunning leader and Alberto being the muscle that terrorized the populace into work. Both men were known to be sexual predators who actively kidnapped women from around the town to have themselves a night of fun and debauchery. When they weren't kidnapping the local womenfolk they were attacking the caravans that plied the trails leading to Primrose and passed by it, quickly driving all legitimate business away from Primrose.
The desperation for new customers for the town led both Alberto and John-Paul to seek out buyers in the black market, leading to shady deals with everyone from buyers up north from San An to as far south as Mexico City. However they were able to make ends meet and caps once again began to flow into Primrose, causing a new boom in the town's mining industry that quickly led to an influx of shady characters into the
John-Paul Giraud
town, most of them contacts or friends of Alberto and John-Paul. This is when Alberto began to experiment with Jet and soon the comanchero was hooked on New Reno's finest invention, in three weeks he was dead from a hot dose. John-Paul was devastated by the loss of his friend (his reaction quickly spread rumors that they were much more than friends) and he himself began to experiment with drugs, choosing Psycho to be his poison of choice.
In the following weeks, John-Paul became more and more addicted to Psycho and pretty soon was a mere shut in going day to day on one dose or another. It was during this lax in leadership that the people of Primrose began to make plans to revolt. With the help of the surviving Foremen, the townsfolk were able to meet and soon had formed a militia of people to retake the town. With the help of a two-faced arms dealer they were able to get their hands on some firearms and in the early hours of one April morning, they attacked. The Comancheros were taken by surprise, many of them still hung over or throwing their whores off themselves in order to grab their weapons to defend themselves. Those who weren't hammered were killed in the hail of bullets that rained down on their quarters and the rest were either shot down as they ran out or burned to death when the building was set afire.
With their allies gone, many of the drug dealers, pimps, black marketers and arms dealers left town much to the pleasure of the townsfolk. In the weeks to follow the town was restructured with the Foremen agreeing to rule the town amongst themselves, and giving the townsfolk the choice of where to work and live. This dividing of the town quickly led to conflict between the individual foremen.
Division of Labor[]
The individual Foremen promptly went their separate ways, taking their halves of Primrose with them. There then existed a short time of tranquil peace that allowed the town to get back on their feet and the Foremen to begin reaping a profit from the copper mined from the mines. However this era of peace evaporated with the death of the mine Foreman Fiona Reed in 2230. Fiona was one of the few Foreman in Primrose who was a female and for that she was often looked down upon by her fellow miners. The lack of respect even
Primrose circa 2232.
spread to her lowly miners, many of whom simply didn't see as their boss and thus disregarded many of her directives. This was quickly rectified when a disobedient miner gave her some attitude and she gunned him down in front of his laughing group of friends. This quickly changed their opinions very quickly and they were soon back to work with a new vigor, however this show of force didn't impress her rivals within the town. Thus when she was found one morning outside her favorite saloon with her throat cut, there were very few people in town who couldn't pick out the culprits.
Yet this didn't stop Fiona's brother, Samson from coming down to Primrose to settle scores with his sister's killers, in a well-publicized and spoken of duel, Samson challenged the four foremen that the miners had implicated in the murder to a duel. Many of the townsfolk fully expected to see Samson gunned down in the street by the four foremen, however when the shooting began they were shocked to see Samson standing tall over the bodies of the Foremen. With now five mines open for a prospective miner, the other four mines were quickly taken over by other miners while Fiona's old setup was taken by her brother Samson. After that episode the town again settled down in its old ways as the new foremen integrated with the older ones. Then there as the man that still lives in infamy within Primrose, his name was Rett Holsen. Rett was a thug who had run a racketeering operation up North in San An, he had been run out of town by an angry lynch mob and had promptly drifted down South into Primrose with the intention to pick up his racketeering operation.
Yet when he arrived in Primrose he quickly figured out the mining operation that the town was running on and figured that was a better way of making cheap money than risking his neck extorting shop owners. Thus taking his little .22 in hand he walked down to one of the mines, and demanded that the foreman hand the place over to him, the Foreman responded by laughing in Rett's face and turning back to directing his workers. Enraged, Rett put all eight shots of his .22 into the Foreman and as he reloaded, declared himself the new boss of the mine. The miners having witnessed businesses around town change hands at the end of a gun before, shrugged off the killing of their old boss and went back to work. Rett promptly went about dropping the price of copper down to dirt cheap prices and intimidating his workers to stay, as well as harassing the local townsfolk, and forming a gang of thugs to keep himself and his operation safe.
Present[]
Presently the town of Primrose has recently been able to rid itself of Rett Holsen at the hands of Weaver McBain. Weaver and his family had been planning to leave Primrose when Rett, angry over losing Weaver's parents (who were his best workers) had his men severely beat Weaver in retaliation. Weaver, in turn, killed Rett with his Browning Hi-Power, before leaving town with his family. Now the town was once again settled back into its normal routine of random killings in the streets, back-breaking labor in the mines and dictatorial foremen ruling over it all.
Government[]
There is no official government in Primrose, only those who run the town through their own devices. In the past the town's leadership has been passed down from Howard Bascom to his original group of foremen (which spawned the idea the would later evolve into the town's current form of government) then two Alberto Barrela, and John-Paul Giraud and then finally back to the foremen who continue to run the town in their own manner today. In some parts of Primrose the Foreman is a fair and evenhanded ruler, and in some other parts the Foreman is a stingy slave driver, it really depends on what part of town that person lives in. Arguments within the town are usually settled with a meeting of the Foremen to decide what was to be done with the troublesome citizen or troublemaking foreman, in some instances a rogue foreman has been dealt with with a shotgun blast to the back of the head and at other times a rebellious citizen or foreman has simply been cast out of the community.
In terms of other services within the town like; prostitution, medical services and food supply these functions are usually handled by the townsfolk but some like the food supply are run by the "town". In truth, the town's store; Green's General Store is a collective between the various town foremen and it's profits are shared between the foremen and since the store currently has a monopoly on the town, there isn't much of an alternative for the miners and their families. Medical services are provided by Doc Reeves, at one point a trail doctor he has since decided to settle down in Primrose after being offered a rather lucrative deal from the foremen to replace their previous doctor who suffered a tragic death of dismemberment. Entertainment is provided by the whores that hang around Shep's Saloon, while booze is also served inside the saloon or if you are in the mood for something a bit less watered down there are several black moonshiners in the town. Lastly, for those in the town that have higher beliefs, there is a small chapel in the town that serves all denominations of Christianity.
Economy[]
The economy of Primrose is almost entirely based around the copper mines that the town is built around. Everday the townsfolk awaken at dawn, go to whichever mine they work at and promptly descend into the dark, soot-filled labyrinth below. There they stay for most of the day, digging with picks and shovels in order to extract enough copper to sell back to their foremen and make enough caps to buy food for their evening meal. Yet with the dirt cheap prices, the foremen pay for copper and the steep prices at the town store the workers usually end up spending all their earnings within one day just to survive. This hard life and brutal cycle of
Typical group of miners.
laboring by day, bordering on starving at night, usually keeps most of the miners trapped within the town or having to face the prospect of living out on the streets without money, weapons or even clothes.
The copper the town mines is a very valuable commodity on the market throughout Tamaulipas and Southern Texas for its use in making electronics, robotic parts, and other parts that the average wastelander wouldn't be able to find by simply scavenging in the hulks of pre-war cars. This fact makes the town's copper mines even more valuable as the individual foremen are given the freedom to set their own prices and thus forcing the various merchants that visit the town to pay gouge level prices for chunks of copper ore, no bigger than a baseball. This sort of cutthroat capitalism has earned the ire of more than a few merchant outfits and thus the town has made quite a few enemies throughout its history, some small like the Iron Plate Robber and others big, like the Royal Caribbean Trading Company that has put an official embargo on the town.
Culture[]
Due to the fact that a man's survival in Primrose is entirely dependent on how hard he works, hard work is generally viewed with a great deal of reverence in Primrose, just as much as hard drinking, praying and brawling is. Primrose can best be described as frontier mining town and the people of the town, living rather bleak lives that are split between working deep below ground in not-so-safe conditions and settling their frayed nerves at the town saloon and making sure their immortal souls make it to the right part of the afterlife when the inevitable collapses, methane explosions, and floodings occur.
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