The Big Muddy Tradin’ Com’ny
Before the bombs, the Mississippi was the beating heart of the South, carrying everything from oil to culture. By the 2070s, it was more industrial machine than river, lined with levees, dams, and corporate ports. The Resource Wars only made it worse, turning it into a militarized shipping lane guarded by surveillance towers and defense contractors. When the Great War hit, the river was shattered by multiple nuclear strikes, flooding, toxic runoff, and radiation. What was once a powerful artery became a broken mix of swamp, sludge, and dead channels.
In the decades after, Cajun survivors and river workers tried to reclaim it, blasting through clogged waters and fighting mutant creatures to keep the current alive. Out of this chaos came the Big Muddy Tradin’ Com’ny, a rough alliance of rivermen and salvagers who built a new economy on the back of jury-rigged boats and dredging barges. These “Mudcrawlers” travel between New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Jackson, but every trip is a gamble with raiders, mutant horrors, and radioactive waters.
The Com’ny is both savior and tyrant. They move food, tools, and medicine that keep swamp settlements alive, but they also dabble in slavery and extortion. Their boats are floating fortresses bristling with hunting rifles, pikes, and flamethrowers, and passengers are expected to work or fight for their passage. Every traveler signs a “mudman’s waiver,” which basically means if you get eaten by something in the river, it’s your own damn fault.
Locals tell stories of strange things lurking beneath the sludge: eel-bodied mutants or multi-limbed nightmares that drag entire crews into the depths. Sometimes a boat vanishes, and when it’s found days later, the crew is gone, leaving only muddy prints on the deck.
Like them or not, the Big Muddy Tradin’ Com’ny keeps the Cajun Wasteland alive. Without their patched-up boats and hard-bitten code, the settlements along the river would starve. As long as the Mississippi flows, no matter how broken or cursed, the Mudcrawlers will keep grinding forward.