2 out of 5

Been plodding away on the Exceptionals setting splat book. I have, at this point, the text for 2 out of the 5 chapters done and completed. It may be a bit before you see all of that, if only because  I want to keep ahead of the curve when it comes to posting here. You'll see peaks though. I get so excited about the stuff I work on.

I have...a lot to show you when I start on my next game. But for now, let's show off some more of that his history chapter.

Cw: Talks about historical racism including slavery and forced migration

Civil War

During the Civil War, Reedsboro, unsurprisingly threw it’s lot in with the confederacy as some families in this town are all too proud to tell you. The surrounding areas had some religious groups that objected the use of slaves, part of the benefit of having a diverse collection of people sailing in from ports all over the world, but ultimately many of them still benefited from the violence of slavery. And it was often many times more violent than your school books taught you and we’ll likely never know the true depths of the horrors inflicted. There is no such thing as a good slavemaster.

And while conscientious objectors, Lumbee, and Gullah Geechee (Pre-The Great Migration, the Gullah Corridor was the largest concentration of black communities in America) scattered along the islands weakened the Confederacy hold on the region and even provided a pathway to freedom for others. It wasn’t enough to stop the Confederates from forcefully conscripting both Black and Indigenous communities in a fight for what ultimately was about money and the right to treat human beings as livestock. No matter what hemming and hawing you might hear about states rights.

Many Gullah were ready and willing to defend their rights and helped establish a navel blockade as part of the Union Army’s First South Carolina Volunteers.

Andrew Jackson’s genocidal forced Indigenous removal was recent, and while targeted on the Cherokee to the West of the state, didn’t leave the Lumbee (and many other) communities untouched. The Lumbee peoples found themselves forced against their will to construct a navel base through the worst of the Yellow Fever epidemic. Indigenous peoples were forbidden to arm themselves under North Carolina law, and had little recourse but to try and hide in the swamps to escape.

State constitution had long since threatened Indigenous folks precarious status of “free men” and often, by design, pitted indigenous and black communities against each other for the sake of resources and rights. This would be a pattern which is continued up through today.

It made the land easy pickings for the unscrupulous. Land grabs were by no means nothing new, only further enabled. And with the racist courts and laws heavily weighted against anyone not a white man, there was little hope of fighting back.

Come the end of the war and paired with The Great Migration of black folk Post-Emancipation, these events set the stage for the next part of our story.

The Fall of Fishing and The Rise of Amusement Miles

With the loss of land stewardship, overfishing of the rich estuary places like Reedsboro was built upon was almost an inevitable conclusion. And as the advent of mass produced cars and the infrastructure to support it swept through the nation the surrounding ports became less profitable overall. A pocket of misfortune for what was for many a the gilded age.

Some took to more illicit means. Bootlegging (in the traditional sense, with alcohol and the like) and smuggling became quite lucrative, especially to those denied meaningful legal employment in other ways. It’s easy to paint what built into NASCAR and Jimmy Dean as white when you forget about who was making the booze in the first place.

But for some, the land that they stole provided them with opportunity. The post-World War I economic boom gave people a wealth they haven’t previously had, and this, combined with newfound mobility and a need to escape the horrors of war gave Americans a need to indulge and have fun. Beach culture started becoming less of a crass pastime for poor folk and the golden age of the amusement park began.

If there was one thing the sandbars of the outer banks offered it was beaches. And people needed places to stay on beaches, and things to eat, and of course things to do when they weren’t swimming. And so came the hotels, hospitalities, and amusement miles that the region would grow reliant on. While it wouldn’t really take off until post World War II, I think it says something that miniature golf was invented in North Carolina personally, but the alcohol didn’t hurt.

As the great depression rolled around, mostly what happened was that the mechanisms of colonial capitalism were reinforced. More land was swindled. Fishing operations worked harder for less pay, if not collapsing or being absorbed into some greater entity.  Money from bootlegging and the criminal operations that benefited off of them flowed, even if it rarely made it to the people brewed the booze. More often it was stowed by the smugglers or small time crime lords.

Many of the hotels and amenities that catered to all but the richest shut down on themselves as everyone but the people wealthy enough to flee the city for a while (but not rich enough for Europe or somewhere more trendy) found it harder to justify vacations in a collapsed economy and many of the Latine and Asian workers, both at the hotels and restaurants themselves, but the surrounding farms faced forced deportation.

World War II brought factory jobs into the surrounding areas in the form of furniture and metalwork which laid the groundwork for many of the blue collar industry up into today. It also brought with it Camp Lejeune in 1941 in order to handle the influx of new marine recruits and port of operations.

Post-WW2 hospitality swelled as another economic boom rippled through the nation. Car and Biker culture started to form it’s identity in a real way as a mixture of disaffected youth, marginalized folk (Greasers were originally Latine youth culture), and servicemen fresh out of the war found themselves neglected by gaps in the “American Dream” and lured by the promise of an open road.

Commercial flights became a glamorous way to see the world and suburbia boomed. People were ready to vacation again and feed a hungry economy.