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FerrumVirum
Meteorite
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2020
Good evening from Georgia.
If you're reading this, I would wager you're looking for much the same type of story I am. A story of intrigue and excitement, of drama and pain, and of love and lust. I have several stories which I'm anxious to try, but first let me tell you a bit about who I am.
I have been role playing a long time. I sat down to count it up and realized that it's been nearly ten years since I started, back when AIM was still a thing. I have taken a break recently because of school, but I'm glad to be getting back into the swing of things now. I am typically on in the evenings in the Eastern time zone (Working 9-5 these days), and some on the weekends when I am not busy with other projects or working on my business. I try to maintain fairly regular visits here, so I appreciate it if my partners do the same. I may not be an every day poster, but I should be able to get 2-3 posts per week. I tend to be a multi-paragraph writer. I will write what I am given, but except in situations where relatively little input can be given before getting a reply from the other player (as might occur during conversation or rapid action), I try to write at least two. If you can't do this every time, that's fine, we all have off days, but I prefer if at all possible for that to be your average.
I was raised on stories of valorous chevaliers and steadfast warriors, and those tend to be the type of characters I play. Early to mid 20's, tall, strong and generally a good person...within the limits of his time...but hard enough to do what needs to be done. I enjoy stories of alternative history, changing details to see what might happen, along with stories of more traditional history and fantasy. If you enjoy those kind of stories, feel free to pitch them to me. In the interim, I've got some ideas below. More ideas will be added as I have time to work on them.
As far as kinks go, I'm a dominant guy that loves to play around with themes of slavery, dubious consent, and equally dark topics. I do enjoy a bit of mild age play (mid to late 20's on my end to 16-20 on my partner's end). Other than that, I'm fairly vanilla. Sex will take place in any story I'm a part of, but as a small part of a large picture, not the central theme.
The modern world ended not in a bang, but in a whimper. At 2100 exactly, on the 4th of September, 2025, over the island of Nantucket, a great dome of green fire emerged from the aether, completely surrounding the island. The dome persisted for an hour, and for that hour panicked calls from the mainland were ignored. Was it some new super weapon being tested on a populated area? Was it aliens, something from beyond this world? None knew, and the mystery deepened as the time passed. Thousands of people anxiously watched their TVs, trying to get word of what would happen...and what would happen when it ended.
The great globe disappeared at 2200...along with every TV image around the world. A great wave left the dome as it broke apart, scattering its harmful effects across the globe. Where it passed, the light of the world disappeared. Electric lights flickered and died as the filaments cooled, computers failed, and the world's power grid went completely kaput. Cars stopped working, planes fell from the sky and every non muscle powered device slowly ground to a halt. Quickly, food ran out for most of the population, as the fabric of modern life fell apart. The stories set in the fall universe take place in a few different places on the timeline, and I'll go into some of my favorites below. These are told from the perspective of Adonis Nethain Lejune, my preferred character in this setting.
One thing you learn about humans real quick...routine and light keep us honest. So long as everyone is able to convince themselves that the world keeps on trundling along like it always has, they tend to be happy, productive little sheep. Let the lights go out and the cars start working though, and everyone suddenly becomes different. The wolves inside of people are on a shorter leash, and I guess in a way I was no different. The misting rain was becoming steadily heavier, forcing me to take cover in an arched doorway against the rain. Downtown Athens had always been a little rough, located next to the projects and a popular hangout for drunk college students, which the local undesirables saw as easy pickings. A young woman left a few moments after me, pulled out her umbrella, and started heading for the parking deck a few blocks away, and hidden in the door as I was I was in a perfect spot to see the man step out of the shadows and accost her, grabbing her arm and pulling at her purse, a silver streak in his hand a threatening knife. I was preparing myself mentally to step forward and stop him, my gentleman's reflexes convincing me it was better to die than watch her be hurt, when a cop in a wet blue uniform stepped forward from the other direction, drawing his pistol and commanding the man to drop the knife.
The criminal released the woman, who ran away screaming, but did not drop the knife as commanded. The cop screamed at him to drop the knife and surrender, but apparently the mugger had other plans. He charged the cop with a roar, and even over the fifteen feet that separated us, I could hear the cop's pistol click. He cursed, ran the slide once, and tried to fire again with the same result, just a click that echoed into the night. He tried to drop the gun and draw his baton, but by now the mugger was too close. I stood watching, helpless, as the mugger's arm pumped eight times, before the cop collapsed and the murderer ran off into the night. The rain was further intensifying, lighting crashing through the magnolias, illuminating the crimson stream of blood being washed from the dead man's wounds into the storm drain. Any hint of drink was gone by this point. I had just watched a cop get killed in the street by a man with a knife...and the man's gun was useless.
I had shot a lot, growing up south of the Mason Dixon, and knew that guns were fundamentally fairly reliable. The fact that the criminal didn't back down also indicated he might have experienced it before. Was it possible that all guns weren't working? I didn't dwell on that too long, nor on the cars scattered around. It was past time to leave Athens, this black pit that I had once called home. I had to stop by my apartment first. My dad had always harped on us about being prepared, and I had a go-bag ready. It had supplies enough for me to hike home, along with the tools I'd need. Perhaps more importantly was my weapons collection. I had studied Historical European Martial Arts, or HEMA, for years and I had a fair trove of muscle powered weapons at my apartment, in addition to some light armor that I used for sparring. If there were any more knife wielding baddies out there, it would make me feel a lot better to have steel of my own in my hand.
The woman was gone into the night, and I couldn't take the time to find her. My decision set, I ducked into the street to head for the temporary refuge of my apartment. I left Athens that night, hoping things would be more normal once I got home. I couldn't have been more wrong."
Some thoughts on your character's role: Perhaps your character travels with mine to leave burning Athens, perhaps even the young woman he saw accosted. He is strong and able to protect her, but like many things, that protection comes at a price.
"It took me a long time to get home after that. Athens was a nightmare to get out of, and the seven days of food that I had in my pack was wealth beyond all measure. I never will forget watching the phalanx of men charge at another group of men protecting an overturned semi truck on 129, all of them armed with improvised weapons like tire irons, machetes, or homemade spears. I was about four hundred yards away, hidden in a tree line with a monocular, but when the two groups of men clashed I put the optic away. I had seen enough death in the days prior, and had no desire to see more. Carefully, I crawled back down the embankment out of sight and started back down the road North. The curved blade at my side had already tasted blood in the remains of Jefferson, frantically cutting a man who charged me with an axe handle, though I didn't stick around to see the results when two of his friends had come out and pointed at me, then started running my way. Luckily, even in my armor, I was faster than them and able to get away, but that had been a recurring pattern whenever I spotted people these days. Either I was told to go away, that they had no food to spare for a wanderer, or I was attacked outright by those a little more desperate. Any larger settlement had ran out of food quicker, often in as little as 3 or 4 days, and the riots that spawned when the food ran out were often the death knell of any community. Gainesville had been little more than four or five heavily armed and hungry camps attacking each other trying to raid for food which was practically gone. Luckily, I was able to sneak across a lightly guarded bridge late one night and continue north into the mountains.
I was having most of my luck breaking into abandoned houses, gathering up dry goods and getting out as quickly as possible. My seven day hike had already stretched several months at this point, and though the bow on my back had secured many deer and rabbits, game was getting harder and harder to come by as more people tried their hand at hunting. I knew it wasn't sustainable though...eventually, all of the food would be gone. I needed to get home. My dad had prepared for this for years. He had everything we needed.
It was five days later when I finally walked onto the family farm. I smiled as I saw the place, set back in the woods. It was peaceful, a small glen surrounded by forty year old trees, planted when my parents married. I started running forward, relieved to see everything as it should be, a happy shout coming to my lips.
I'm not sure what caused me to suddenly realize something was wrong. Perhaps it was the lack of animal sounds....there were always a few chickens out and about, at least, and I doubted Dad had sold his prized beef cows in the light of everything. They were both retired, but dad pampered those cows in a way he never would have when he was actually trying to make a living. Regardless, my eyes suddenly focused on the scene a bit tighter. There was a shutter hanging awkwardly from where it had been torn off, and two of the windows were broken. A sudden breeze revealed that the door had been busted in, before it slammed shut suddenly on another draft.
That bad feeling saved my life as a figure jumped out from beside me, screeching and holding a large boulder over his head to brain me. Instinctively, I twisted the spear in my hand in line with the man and felt the meaty feeling of resistance as a foot of cold steel drove through the man's sternum. I was forced back a step in shock as his chest met the crossbar on the spear, limiting his further travel, and would have went further had the pointed back end of the spear not dug into the hard clay ground, halting our progress. The berserker rage left his eyes a moment later, along with his life as he slumped down. More screams erupted from around me as half naked, near feral figures emerged from the house and the wood line nearby. Frantically, I grabbed at the spear but it was well and truly stuck, so my hand went to my curved sword at my waist, drawing it free and looking for a means of escape.
I had heard about eaters as I traveled, but I didn't want to believe they were real. People who had eaten other people. It always started with corpses, as there were plenty of those around, but as those became rarer, they had been known to help along the process of death by killing their future meal. There was no good escape path clear, so I gripped my blade in both hands and started to fight in earnest.
I killed five that day. The remaining three fled. I found one of my mother's stockpots over a firepit behind the house, filled with thankfully unidentifiable meat. I also found a pit filled with all too identifiable bones. I was never able to tell how many people's bones were in that midden pit, much less which ones were my mother and father, but I took the time to give them a proper burial at least. That red day was the day that I swore I would stop this madness. It was hopeless, hoping to rekindle civilization as it was, so it was my job to build a new civilization."
Some thoughts on your character's role: Perhaps your character is a survivor he finds while trying to establish his new civilization, and gets to see it started. Perhaps they're a captive he takes in a raid against a bandit clan shortly after when he begins to clean up the woods, or a meal rescued from a band of eaters. With razor thin margins, how can your character convince him to take her on?
"The first year was the hardest. The best estimates we have is that ninety percent of the population on the Eastern seaboard died, and the percentage may have been higher in the Northeast. We've not been able to get any messages out of there since this entire thing started, even with bicycle messengers who could travel a hundred miles in a day, if it was safe to travel. They always hit a dangerous area filled with eaters and raiders before they could get close enough to even begin to see Norfolk. Not that we've had much time to see the world, as we've been much too busy here. Luckily, I found several of my Dad's caches on the land that had not been raided, and between them and the bunker we were able to get sixteen people through the first winter. When we merged with the other seven enclaves, the following spring, we brought out count to close to two hundred souls. That was the start of Urbe Ferro...the city of iron.
The eaters largely burned themselves out after the first year. Their lifestyle is inherently unsustainable and as pockets of civilization like ours started to reemerge, they were often our first targets. After we put up the initial wall around Urbe Ferro, my first duty as war leader led me far and wide on patrol, wiping out bands of eaters until the woods became mostly safe. Once the first crop came in that second year, we were good for food and began to expand. We instituted the pledge system to make sure new members contributed to the town once they joined, and thus far it's been working very well.
Slavery? I'd call it more indentured servitude. A pledge swears fealty to a citizen of the town, to serve for two years, and a citizen can have up to two pledges at a time. During those two years, the citizen who sponsored them is responsible for their actions and is responsible for making sure they are adequately trained in a skill to let them contribute. We don't need CPA's anymore after all, and most people don't know how to farm. We're just getting the first batch of pledges swearing as full citizens, and they're eagerly seeking out more to join us as pledges. Not that many people out there any more that aren't affiliated to some group of course, but there's always a trickle from farms that have went under or been attacked by raiders, or towns that can't defend themselves. We try to help all civilized people as best we can, but even our rangers are not able to be everywhere at once.
Since we got the water system in, though, everything has been going much better. The watermills power our forges and hammers, letting us turn old scrap metal into weapons and armor to equip our men. Our blacksmiths turned out a working McCormick reaper eighteen months after the consolidation, and that has freed up a lot of hands come harvest time, enabling our A-list of fighters to focus on training. We have the best armed and trained fighters in this God forsaken year, but these days I worry about the Protector's forces coming up old 441. They just attacked Commerce and wiped out the community that had formed there, and within another year or two they might have gotten this far at the rate they're going..."
Some thoughts on your character's role: Perhaps your character is a pledge, come to swear fealty to Urbe Ferro in exchange for protection, and gets chosen as his pledge. Perhaps Adonis, as the head of the rangers, finds her on patrol as mentioned above and offers her the chance to join them. Or, perhaps, Urbe Ferro takes a darker turn and begins taking pledges by force...and your character is part of the booty.
If you're reading this, I would wager you're looking for much the same type of story I am. A story of intrigue and excitement, of drama and pain, and of love and lust. I have several stories which I'm anxious to try, but first let me tell you a bit about who I am.
I have been role playing a long time. I sat down to count it up and realized that it's been nearly ten years since I started, back when AIM was still a thing. I have taken a break recently because of school, but I'm glad to be getting back into the swing of things now. I am typically on in the evenings in the Eastern time zone (Working 9-5 these days), and some on the weekends when I am not busy with other projects or working on my business. I try to maintain fairly regular visits here, so I appreciate it if my partners do the same. I may not be an every day poster, but I should be able to get 2-3 posts per week. I tend to be a multi-paragraph writer. I will write what I am given, but except in situations where relatively little input can be given before getting a reply from the other player (as might occur during conversation or rapid action), I try to write at least two. If you can't do this every time, that's fine, we all have off days, but I prefer if at all possible for that to be your average.
I was raised on stories of valorous chevaliers and steadfast warriors, and those tend to be the type of characters I play. Early to mid 20's, tall, strong and generally a good person...within the limits of his time...but hard enough to do what needs to be done. I enjoy stories of alternative history, changing details to see what might happen, along with stories of more traditional history and fantasy. If you enjoy those kind of stories, feel free to pitch them to me. In the interim, I've got some ideas below. More ideas will be added as I have time to work on them.
As far as kinks go, I'm a dominant guy that loves to play around with themes of slavery, dubious consent, and equally dark topics. I do enjoy a bit of mild age play (mid to late 20's on my end to 16-20 on my partner's end). Other than that, I'm fairly vanilla. Sex will take place in any story I'm a part of, but as a small part of a large picture, not the central theme.
The Fall
"Some said that the world would end in fire, a great conflagration to wipe away the old world in purifying flame. Others said that it would be ice, as the world took away all of the warmth that was required for life to survive. To the best of my knowledge, though, no one ever said it would end in darkness." -Adonis, Year 10 AF.The modern world ended not in a bang, but in a whimper. At 2100 exactly, on the 4th of September, 2025, over the island of Nantucket, a great dome of green fire emerged from the aether, completely surrounding the island. The dome persisted for an hour, and for that hour panicked calls from the mainland were ignored. Was it some new super weapon being tested on a populated area? Was it aliens, something from beyond this world? None knew, and the mystery deepened as the time passed. Thousands of people anxiously watched their TVs, trying to get word of what would happen...and what would happen when it ended.
The great globe disappeared at 2200...along with every TV image around the world. A great wave left the dome as it broke apart, scattering its harmful effects across the globe. Where it passed, the light of the world disappeared. Electric lights flickered and died as the filaments cooled, computers failed, and the world's power grid went completely kaput. Cars stopped working, planes fell from the sky and every non muscle powered device slowly ground to a halt. Quickly, food ran out for most of the population, as the fabric of modern life fell apart. The stories set in the fall universe take place in a few different places on the timeline, and I'll go into some of my favorites below. These are told from the perspective of Adonis Nethain Lejune, my preferred character in this setting.
September 4, Year 0 AF (After fall)
"In the immediate aftermath of the fall, the world I knew started to fall apart. The cars had stopped, the lights went out, and humans being humans, the world started to unravel. I was sitting in a rooftop bar in Athens when the lights went out. At first, everything seemed pretty normal. The drinks kept flowing, even if they were getting a bit warmer, and the tiki torches around the edge of the roofline provided enough light to see by, giving the world a kind of campfire glow. Atop the building, we didn't notice the cars stopping, nor the increasingly disturbed cries...at least for a while. I finally left the bar around 1:00 AM, I say about, because of course the clock stopped working at eleven, chased down by a heavy misting rain coming down in the early autumn night.
One thing you learn about humans real quick...routine and light keep us honest. So long as everyone is able to convince themselves that the world keeps on trundling along like it always has, they tend to be happy, productive little sheep. Let the lights go out and the cars start working though, and everyone suddenly becomes different. The wolves inside of people are on a shorter leash, and I guess in a way I was no different. The misting rain was becoming steadily heavier, forcing me to take cover in an arched doorway against the rain. Downtown Athens had always been a little rough, located next to the projects and a popular hangout for drunk college students, which the local undesirables saw as easy pickings. A young woman left a few moments after me, pulled out her umbrella, and started heading for the parking deck a few blocks away, and hidden in the door as I was I was in a perfect spot to see the man step out of the shadows and accost her, grabbing her arm and pulling at her purse, a silver streak in his hand a threatening knife. I was preparing myself mentally to step forward and stop him, my gentleman's reflexes convincing me it was better to die than watch her be hurt, when a cop in a wet blue uniform stepped forward from the other direction, drawing his pistol and commanding the man to drop the knife.
The criminal released the woman, who ran away screaming, but did not drop the knife as commanded. The cop screamed at him to drop the knife and surrender, but apparently the mugger had other plans. He charged the cop with a roar, and even over the fifteen feet that separated us, I could hear the cop's pistol click. He cursed, ran the slide once, and tried to fire again with the same result, just a click that echoed into the night. He tried to drop the gun and draw his baton, but by now the mugger was too close. I stood watching, helpless, as the mugger's arm pumped eight times, before the cop collapsed and the murderer ran off into the night. The rain was further intensifying, lighting crashing through the magnolias, illuminating the crimson stream of blood being washed from the dead man's wounds into the storm drain. Any hint of drink was gone by this point. I had just watched a cop get killed in the street by a man with a knife...and the man's gun was useless.
I had shot a lot, growing up south of the Mason Dixon, and knew that guns were fundamentally fairly reliable. The fact that the criminal didn't back down also indicated he might have experienced it before. Was it possible that all guns weren't working? I didn't dwell on that too long, nor on the cars scattered around. It was past time to leave Athens, this black pit that I had once called home. I had to stop by my apartment first. My dad had always harped on us about being prepared, and I had a go-bag ready. It had supplies enough for me to hike home, along with the tools I'd need. Perhaps more importantly was my weapons collection. I had studied Historical European Martial Arts, or HEMA, for years and I had a fair trove of muscle powered weapons at my apartment, in addition to some light armor that I used for sparring. If there were any more knife wielding baddies out there, it would make me feel a lot better to have steel of my own in my hand.
The woman was gone into the night, and I couldn't take the time to find her. My decision set, I ducked into the street to head for the temporary refuge of my apartment. I left Athens that night, hoping things would be more normal once I got home. I couldn't have been more wrong."
Some thoughts on your character's role: Perhaps your character travels with mine to leave burning Athens, perhaps even the young woman he saw accosted. He is strong and able to protect her, but like many things, that protection comes at a price.
January 31, Year 0 AF
"It took me a long time to get home after that. Athens was a nightmare to get out of, and the seven days of food that I had in my pack was wealth beyond all measure. I never will forget watching the phalanx of men charge at another group of men protecting an overturned semi truck on 129, all of them armed with improvised weapons like tire irons, machetes, or homemade spears. I was about four hundred yards away, hidden in a tree line with a monocular, but when the two groups of men clashed I put the optic away. I had seen enough death in the days prior, and had no desire to see more. Carefully, I crawled back down the embankment out of sight and started back down the road North. The curved blade at my side had already tasted blood in the remains of Jefferson, frantically cutting a man who charged me with an axe handle, though I didn't stick around to see the results when two of his friends had come out and pointed at me, then started running my way. Luckily, even in my armor, I was faster than them and able to get away, but that had been a recurring pattern whenever I spotted people these days. Either I was told to go away, that they had no food to spare for a wanderer, or I was attacked outright by those a little more desperate. Any larger settlement had ran out of food quicker, often in as little as 3 or 4 days, and the riots that spawned when the food ran out were often the death knell of any community. Gainesville had been little more than four or five heavily armed and hungry camps attacking each other trying to raid for food which was practically gone. Luckily, I was able to sneak across a lightly guarded bridge late one night and continue north into the mountains.
I was having most of my luck breaking into abandoned houses, gathering up dry goods and getting out as quickly as possible. My seven day hike had already stretched several months at this point, and though the bow on my back had secured many deer and rabbits, game was getting harder and harder to come by as more people tried their hand at hunting. I knew it wasn't sustainable though...eventually, all of the food would be gone. I needed to get home. My dad had prepared for this for years. He had everything we needed.
It was five days later when I finally walked onto the family farm. I smiled as I saw the place, set back in the woods. It was peaceful, a small glen surrounded by forty year old trees, planted when my parents married. I started running forward, relieved to see everything as it should be, a happy shout coming to my lips.
I'm not sure what caused me to suddenly realize something was wrong. Perhaps it was the lack of animal sounds....there were always a few chickens out and about, at least, and I doubted Dad had sold his prized beef cows in the light of everything. They were both retired, but dad pampered those cows in a way he never would have when he was actually trying to make a living. Regardless, my eyes suddenly focused on the scene a bit tighter. There was a shutter hanging awkwardly from where it had been torn off, and two of the windows were broken. A sudden breeze revealed that the door had been busted in, before it slammed shut suddenly on another draft.
That bad feeling saved my life as a figure jumped out from beside me, screeching and holding a large boulder over his head to brain me. Instinctively, I twisted the spear in my hand in line with the man and felt the meaty feeling of resistance as a foot of cold steel drove through the man's sternum. I was forced back a step in shock as his chest met the crossbar on the spear, limiting his further travel, and would have went further had the pointed back end of the spear not dug into the hard clay ground, halting our progress. The berserker rage left his eyes a moment later, along with his life as he slumped down. More screams erupted from around me as half naked, near feral figures emerged from the house and the wood line nearby. Frantically, I grabbed at the spear but it was well and truly stuck, so my hand went to my curved sword at my waist, drawing it free and looking for a means of escape.
I had heard about eaters as I traveled, but I didn't want to believe they were real. People who had eaten other people. It always started with corpses, as there were plenty of those around, but as those became rarer, they had been known to help along the process of death by killing their future meal. There was no good escape path clear, so I gripped my blade in both hands and started to fight in earnest.
I killed five that day. The remaining three fled. I found one of my mother's stockpots over a firepit behind the house, filled with thankfully unidentifiable meat. I also found a pit filled with all too identifiable bones. I was never able to tell how many people's bones were in that midden pit, much less which ones were my mother and father, but I took the time to give them a proper burial at least. That red day was the day that I swore I would stop this madness. It was hopeless, hoping to rekindle civilization as it was, so it was my job to build a new civilization."
Some thoughts on your character's role: Perhaps your character is a survivor he finds while trying to establish his new civilization, and gets to see it started. Perhaps they're a captive he takes in a raid against a bandit clan shortly after when he begins to clean up the woods, or a meal rescued from a band of eaters. With razor thin margins, how can your character convince him to take her on?
April 2, Year 4 AF
"The first year was the hardest. The best estimates we have is that ninety percent of the population on the Eastern seaboard died, and the percentage may have been higher in the Northeast. We've not been able to get any messages out of there since this entire thing started, even with bicycle messengers who could travel a hundred miles in a day, if it was safe to travel. They always hit a dangerous area filled with eaters and raiders before they could get close enough to even begin to see Norfolk. Not that we've had much time to see the world, as we've been much too busy here. Luckily, I found several of my Dad's caches on the land that had not been raided, and between them and the bunker we were able to get sixteen people through the first winter. When we merged with the other seven enclaves, the following spring, we brought out count to close to two hundred souls. That was the start of Urbe Ferro...the city of iron.
The eaters largely burned themselves out after the first year. Their lifestyle is inherently unsustainable and as pockets of civilization like ours started to reemerge, they were often our first targets. After we put up the initial wall around Urbe Ferro, my first duty as war leader led me far and wide on patrol, wiping out bands of eaters until the woods became mostly safe. Once the first crop came in that second year, we were good for food and began to expand. We instituted the pledge system to make sure new members contributed to the town once they joined, and thus far it's been working very well.
Slavery? I'd call it more indentured servitude. A pledge swears fealty to a citizen of the town, to serve for two years, and a citizen can have up to two pledges at a time. During those two years, the citizen who sponsored them is responsible for their actions and is responsible for making sure they are adequately trained in a skill to let them contribute. We don't need CPA's anymore after all, and most people don't know how to farm. We're just getting the first batch of pledges swearing as full citizens, and they're eagerly seeking out more to join us as pledges. Not that many people out there any more that aren't affiliated to some group of course, but there's always a trickle from farms that have went under or been attacked by raiders, or towns that can't defend themselves. We try to help all civilized people as best we can, but even our rangers are not able to be everywhere at once.
Since we got the water system in, though, everything has been going much better. The watermills power our forges and hammers, letting us turn old scrap metal into weapons and armor to equip our men. Our blacksmiths turned out a working McCormick reaper eighteen months after the consolidation, and that has freed up a lot of hands come harvest time, enabling our A-list of fighters to focus on training. We have the best armed and trained fighters in this God forsaken year, but these days I worry about the Protector's forces coming up old 441. They just attacked Commerce and wiped out the community that had formed there, and within another year or two they might have gotten this far at the rate they're going..."
Some thoughts on your character's role: Perhaps your character is a pledge, come to swear fealty to Urbe Ferro in exchange for protection, and gets chosen as his pledge. Perhaps Adonis, as the head of the rangers, finds her on patrol as mentioned above and offers her the chance to join them. Or, perhaps, Urbe Ferro takes a darker turn and begins taking pledges by force...and your character is part of the booty.
The Recluse
The civil war, in America, was a time of great heroism, but even greater pain. The period immediately afterword, for the south, was one of horrible seizures as a newly minted country died and the U.S. reasserted it's control. Poverty reigns, and people are desperate for work. Yet even in this horrible time some people take time to dredge up old hatreds and prejudices, and the KKK is chief among them. They find out some horrible secret about an otherwise normal girl, be it a mixed heritage several generations back, an indiscretion or simply the gall to tell one of their members 'no.' She is kidnapped, brought to a remote forest before being told to run for her life. What follows is a moonlit chase through the back country till she comes across an old plantation house. There, an unexpected savior awaits. 
Starter Example- Warning, Language, Racism from the bad guys
More to Come