Back to Ottawa

Today we explore Ottawa a little bit more.

Gangs
Like any city, Ottawa has its gang problems. Beyond the Royalists and the separatists, there are still plenty of ordinary, every day gangs festering in Ottawa's dark corners. The two largest and most powerful are the Coyotes and the Snappers.

The trickling brown sludge of the Rideau River defines the border between the two gangs' territories. While the Coyotes tend to stick to the area around Barrhaven, their territory ranges as far as the west bank of the river. Dressing in brown, and known for their large packs and generally skittish but by turns savage behaviour, the Coyotes can be difficult to avoid in Ottawa.

On the east side of the river, sticking much more closely to a defined area than their rivals, the Snappers are easier to give a wide berth, and they are less likely to pursue any perceived threats. Marking their members and territory with dark green, the Snappers are content to sit in their heavily-defended cribs, though they are vicious and dangerous when provoked.

The Farm
Once a centre of Canadian scientific discovery and research, the Central Experimental Farm has become Ottawa's dark garden, a place all willingly avoid.

Covering four square kilometres in a loose, bulging L-shape, the Farm has become a series of decaying fields, where overripe crops rot where they fall, and cloying vines seem to move with a malignant intelligence. And yet, despite the apparent abandonment of the facility, the fields are not in total disrepair. Indeed, they still appear tended and tilled, sowed and planted each year. By whom, no one can be sure, but figures have been seen moving through the fields on dark nights.

In truth, the Farm's fields are tended to by the decrepit scarecrows that can be seen standing watch by day. No mere straw, these scarecrows are the semi-living remains of trespassers, remoulded with metal and plant matter into cyborg slaves.

Duty as a scarecrow is not the only fate that can befall foolhardy trespassers of the Farm, and far more foul things have been seen stalking the fields.

Cobwebs lay thick between rows of bloodwheat, too thick to have been made by any ordinary infestation. The braying of goats can be heard at strange hours, braying that sounds uncomfortably similar to human screams.

What the truth of the Farm is, none know, but rumours exist of dark masters, dwelling deep within, at the old research buildings. From the remains of a bastion of progress they draw their plans, scanning the stars from their observatory, and tampering with nature in ever more horrific ways, in the name of some mad plan.