August Harrow

1. #1P-USA (Provisional United States of America)

   Keys: USA, P-USA, Provisional USA, Provisional United States of America, United States, Provi USA

   The United States of America exists in several working drafts simultaneously. Nobody planned this. Something beneath the continent began changing the already existing geography — quietly at first. A river wider than last spring. A mountain range the old maps don't mention. An island off a coast that used to be coast. A forest that took a long time to realize it was becoming a desert. Washington is still drawing borders. The land is not consulting Washington. The fragments govern themselves provisionally as the land as been undergoing harsher and dramatical changes. Washington D.C still, tries to keep it's hold on the states by having all the militar power to withold the biggesf cities across the country.

2. #2W1-USA

   Keys: W1-USA, West 1 USA, West one USA, West 1 United states of america, Westy one USA · Secondary:

   W1-USA — the westernmost sector, what used to be called simply the frontier — got the strangest revision. The territory still functions. Towns still form. Gold still gets found. It just looks increasingly like the Sahara, in fashion it also has been consistently getting terracota mountains discovered and sand "trees" and forests.

   Around the south of the W1-USA, the tribes of Native Americans recall stories of something they call "the gold reveal" with rituals of gold and blood.

   Through the west and east cities and towns thrive, although routes have changed as the old ones now wlild travel under terrible rocks of the terracota mountains.

   North, bigger caves and where the train rails become more seen, lots of fabrics and camps, with their share of criminals too.

3. #3The Gold Rush

   Keys: Gold Rush, The Gold Rush, The Golden Rush, Golden Rush, rushing gold

   Since the 18060s, a lot of miners are flooding to W1-USA specifically. Poking directly INTO whatever is rewriting the continent. Gold veins that geologically shouldn't exist at those depths. The Sahara-ification accelerating around active mining zones. Nobody makes the connection officially. Some make it personally. August made it personally for example.

4. #4San Francisco of the W1-USA

   Keys: San Francisco, Capital West, the mouth, mouth D.C

   San Francisco — The Mouth Where everyone arrives. Pacific port, so ships still function normally — the ocean hasn't been edited yet. But the city itself sits on increasingly strange ground. Fog that tastes different than it used to. The bay slightly wider than the oldest sailors remember. Still the financial and supply heart of W1-USA. Newspapers. Banks. Hotels. Desperate people arriving daily who don't know yet what they're walking into. Population exploded so fast the infrastructure is held together essentially by ambition and crim

5. #5Sacramento of the W1-USA

   Keys: Sacramento, Gov City, Washington 2

   Sacramento — The Chokehold Capital since 1854. Sits at the junction between civilization and everything wrong with the interior. Government buildings that look increasingly absurd against a skyline that keeps adding unfamiliar shapes on the horizon. The territorial administration of W1-USA operates here, drawing borders onto maps they reprint constantly because last month's version is already wrong. Merchants. Politicians. Men pretending the mountains that appeared two years ago are someone else's problem. Some call it Washington 2 because of it's harsh political stance to keep itself allied and under the power of Washington D.C

6. #6Coloma

   Keys: Coloma, Gold D.C, Gold Town

   Where Sutter's Mill sits. Where the first gold was pulled in 1848 and everything started. Small, scrappy, historically significant in a way that makes it both proud and cursed. Miners still work it. The surrounding hills have taken on a faint reddish tint nobody comments on directly.

7. #7Hangtown of the W1-USA

   Keys: Hangtown, Placerville, Hanging town, Killing Town

   Named Hangtown because they hanged people there and didn't feel like lying about it. Placerville officially but nobody calls it that. Rougher than Coloma. Supply stop. Place where deals get made and occasionally people disappear into the new terrain and don't come back. The kind of town that grows not because it's good but because it's necessary for the operations between the cities and the mines.

8. #8Terracotan Mountains

   Keys: The mountains, terracottan mountains, W1-USA Mountains, red clay mountains.

   THE TERRACOTTA MOUNTAINS: Nobody has a geological explanation that satisfies any scholar. They rose — not overnight, but fast enough that people watched and couldn't do much about jt. Red-orange clay and compressed stone, striated like something was PRESSED from below. The old California Trail routes cut straight through where they now stand. Several passes simply ceased to exist. The mountains aren't volcanic. As far as its been studied. They're not any known formation. They're warm to the touch in the morning before the sun has hit them. OLD ROAD DANGERS: Routes that now dead-end into solid rock face with no warning Ground subsidence — stretches of old trail that just. dropped. Sometimes a foot. Sometimes enough to swallow a wagon Compass unreliability near the mountain bases — something magnetic happening in the clay Heat pockets. The Sahara-ification concentrated along old routes specifically, as if the land is discouraging use of them Disappearing landmarks — a distinctive tree, a rock formation, a creek used for navigation — simply gone or wrong The psychological problem: men who knew these routes for years suddenly don't trust their own memory of them NEW ROAD DANGERS: Longer. Significantly longer. Added weeks to supply routes Exposed. The new paths skirt mountain bases through terrain with no shade, no established water sources Unstable shoulders — the terracotta runoff makes ground soft in unpredictable patches The new terrain hasn't been mapped reliably yet. Surveyors keep coming back with contradictory measurements Banditry concentrated here now because the choke points are NEW and therefore unpoliced although Washington already controls some choke points already.

9. #9PolvoTown of the W1-USA

   Keys: Polvo, Polvo town, Polvo Town, ghost town

   POLVO — The Junction Town Population: approximately 340 and growing extremely fast, any new day, new families come to build their houses and businesses. Born entirely and obviously because of the new roads. Sits at the only reliable pass through the southern terracotta range — a natural gap that didn't exist before 1849 and is now the single viable supply artery between Sacramento and the interior mining camps. Named Polvo by the Mexican miners who arrived first and noted the obvious: dust. Everything here is coated in fine red-orange clay. Laundry hung outside comes in terracotta colored regardless. People's skin takes on a tint after a few weeks. Long-timers have stopped noticing. Polvo has: One functional saloon doubling as a courthouse A blacksmith who charges extortionate rates because he's the only one for 40 miles on the new route A doctor of questionable credentials who is nonetheless the only doctor A permanent argument between the Mexican founding miners and the Anglo rush arrivals about who owns what A water situation that is fine and nobody should worry about The town shouldn't work economically. It works because the road has no alternative. Every supply wagon going interior passes through Polvo. August Harrow passed through Polvo. Most people do, eventually.

   Its a rite of pass almost for any miner to come to pass Polvo at least once-in-a-lifetime.

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