Has anyone done a run in Nashville? In RL it is hte home of ocuntry music and there's a lot of money in all that. As the USA falls apart this could easily become the music capital of the CAS. Atlanta might be the media capital but Nashville, spared from any serious uphevals would probably grab up all the other types of music. "Hey the indians blew up our recording studio, where can we record?" "I got us in for two days at Nashville!"

So has anyone tried a run there or the music industry?

Anyone from that area posting here able to tell some of the other stuff to be found in that area?

There is this little Gem. Don't believe it has been collected, so would be worth a run by any major players, including a self-motivated team (and of course, the text says only one person gets their wish.... )

To any person who possesses a ticket stub to Maria Mercurial’s only foray into country music, performed at My Brother’s Place in the Nashville sprawl: present yourself to the Draco Foundation at any time, and the Foundation will grant you one wish. I believe the saying is, be careful what you wish for—you may well get it.

- Portfolio of a Dragon: Dunkelzahn's Secrets

OOO, good catch. I'd forgotten that. But it looks like no one else here has an interest in Nashville or has any suggestions about what might be there.

Sorry to res what must be a truly dead topic, but I have great interest in the shadows of Nashvegas. My little brother is interested in pencil and paper RPGs, and I just moved back home from the region. Maybe some people who have an interest in running the Mid-State "sprawl" could post some ideas?

Biggest industry in Nashville is hospitals. I'm not sure if publishing is second or 3rd, as Nashville is apparently the bible publishing capital of the world. But music is either 2nd or 3rd.

I could...really see Nashville becoming the music capital of the CAS. That makes strange sense.

It's not just country music. Also, I think I recall seeing (though I have no idea where) that Nashville actually became the media center of the CAS; so runs there would include a lot of sabotage and PR campaigns. Also, it (currently) is a major pipeline location, providing multiple transit options; so smuggling would be a major industry (probably three or four under Denver, maybe top three in CAS). And bootleg drug production in the hill towns to the east would probably be a major thing too.

There are several major universities and collages in the region. And I can just imagine the kind of craziness that would occur in small towns like Carthage.

Well hello!

I'm not far from NashVegas, and, believe me, there's quite a lot in the Athens of the South (Actual nickname!) for runs. Aside from country music, Nashville is well known as the Simsense (And BTL) capital of the CAS and, indeed, beats the UCAS pretty badly in the production as well. TN as a whole is a smuggler's Mecca, but the state is chock full of stuff from Memphis to Nashville to Knoxville and beyond. You have the Trail of Tears, Mississippi mounds, Appalachian witches, coal, oil, Reelfoot Lake, the Parthenon... the list goes on and on.

We call it the 'Vol Sprawl', and I could go on about it for *days*.

I seriously think that we should start collecting our info and stuff here. I had this whole thing for the Hwy 70 corridor east of Nashville, with a bunch of stuff centered around smugglers in Carthage. This also included a bunch of hillbillies who had undergone creepy SURGE (think the swamp people in Fallout3).

Oh heck, the hard part is in cutting the stuff out, not adding it in. Memphis and the pyramid, why the Church of Elvis is in Nashville instead of Memphis, the New Madrid fault, Oak Ridge (Home of the only nuclear bombs ever dropped in war!), the Bell Witch, Lookout Mountain, the Clarksville Train Disaster (I lived through that one), Kudzu ...

WEALTH of stuff.

Am I the only one wondering just what is showing up in the BBQ pits of Nashville in 2070?

Pulled Pork, of course.

Mind you, this line of talk invites a barbeque flamewar, and if you've never seen one, you'd best hunker down. It usually pits Memphis vs Texas vs the Carolinas vs Kansas City.

And it gets ugly.

And it gets there FAST.

Pulled Long Pork is more likely. It is Tennessee after all...

You're thinking South Carolina. We're civilized on THIS side of the mountains.

Heh... My Mistake...

Maybe for city slickers. I was thinking along the lines of wild game BBQ. Anyone care for some BBQ bandit, Basilisk, cockatrice, and firedrake?

Yeah. The best bbq in Tennessee is still no match for the worst bbq in Texas.

Just my (correct) 2¥

Oh, don't get me wrong, we'll kill and cook *anything*, but BBQ is kinda sacred.

That's like going to a Texan and wondering if they'd make some goose chilli.

Yeah. That ain't happenin'.

Amen to that...

"In our lead story today, the Confederation of American States broke up over the issue of Barbeque. As armies gathered in defense of Memphis, cries of "Pork, not beef!" could be heard, while in Texas, militias formed around the banners of local cookoff winners. Mississippi is expected to be a battleground state between these two great powers, while Lousiana released a statement in Creole which no one quite understood."

I think that we can all agree that White Barbeque is an abomination, however. (Mayonese as a base? Seriously? DEATH to the blasphemers!)

IIRC it also picked up greater importance music wise when the bugs took over Chicago. The corps moved their operations from Chicago to Nashville or LA.

Oh, and for the record?

Don't eat possum, people. Not even on a dare.

It's only mildly, MILDLY edible in a stew, but it's desperation food at BEST.

Never trust any meat that's more liquid than solid and that makes it's own blue gravy.

I agree with that last bit... Mayo is not a good base for any of my bbq's. It's just... I dunno... A couple of ingredients in my BBQ and chili involve brown sugar, cinnamon, and habanero peppers..



I... I made this mistake once... I'd rather eat squirrel...

Yeah, my uncle was a professional hunter and bass fisherman. If it walked, wiggling, flew, or swam, we ate it at some point. Rattlesnake's pretty good for example (Though twenty years later I found out that it's illegal to kill rattlers in this state), catfish can be amazing depending on where it comes from, deer is famously gamey but, with the right treatment, is yum. Squirrel and rabbit have their moments, but, possum?

Just ... just no.

Actually, the possum I've eaten wasn't bad. They're omnivorous, and they do eat roadkill, so they have a very strong taste.

The most frequent error is failing to remove all the scent glands. In particular the secondaries that activate while it's "playing possum", in the small of the back and behind the forelegs. If you don't do that while dressing them, you get that nasty smelling/tasting liquid. If you rupture them while dressing them you contaminate the meat as well.

If you do dress them properly, they taste a lot like raccoon.

FWIW, my copy of the 1962 Joy of Cooking says it's best to catch them, cage them, and feed them milk and cereals for a week to ten days. That'll purge some of the gaminess. Clean them like a pig: wash, scald, scrape, and remove the (at that point bright red) glands while leaving the skin on.

its not that bad if done right. Anything that highlights the texture and flavor of opossum will be, as you say, mildly, MILDLY edible. However, when cooked as a chili it is fair. However, the amount of effort needed to render opossum into a fair meal is far above what is gotten out of it. I've eaten two opossum, now I let the buzzards eat them.

Scent glands are a problem with ALL wild game that has sharp teeth. I'm not sure what raccoon you ate, but the ones I've had are nothing like opossum. Opossum is stringy, greasy, and without substance. Raccoon has wonderful texture, if its a lean coon then its not going to be greasy (all opossum tastes greasy) and the flavor of coon is reminiscent of beef, its a very dark meat. I like coon roast.

The coon I had was greasy.

and yeah, I guess beef might be a better fit for coon while possum reminded me of pork. I was referring to the gaminess, however. Both were very strongly flavored meats.

ah, yea coon can have some gameyness. sometimes they hide their glands really well. One coon had at least one gland at every major joint, knees, elbows, shoulders and hips.

You know you've hit the big time when you can roll around in one of these. For protection, of course.

Yee-haw and all that.

I like the idea of hunting awakened critters for BBQ. All yummy food aside (and dry rub always wins), what corps are prevalent in the midstate sprawl? (For the record, I'm focusing on the Midstate only, Memphis and Knoxville are separate sprawls). Also, would NASCAR turn into Twisted Metal?

You're in the area? Feel free to add on, once dead or not heck, getting the info still works for me. My problem with TX BBQ is it is too much centered on beef. I just RL got my hands of Clarissa Dickson-Wright's new book "The History of English cooking" and she talks about beaver tail, swan and badger among other things. For weirder meats in my experience aligator tastes like rabbit, not chicken, and rattlesnake seemed closer to smoked herring than 'chicken.' Venison has always seemed too salty for me and I love wild boar though that could just be my DNA. My dad came from this small villiage in Brittany, the sort of place that went back to the days of the Romans, though it's up for debate if they ever got in.

How close to Nashville was the Bell Witch tales? A seriously nasty haunting for those of you not familiar with it. How close was Alvin York's home?
Was that a nuke plant developed or just refining nuclear material? I thought they closed that down once the war was over. THe potential to a Tugusta blast senario is just way too big. Like Manhattan and Chicago someone in 1940 DC realized developing nuclear weapons in a population center was an amazingly bad idea and moved it out west.

Ayup. 87 miles east of Nashville.



Bell Witch was in Adams, as seen here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adams,_Tennessee

As opposed to Nashville, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville,_Tennessee

So, fairly close.

Oak Ridge is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Ridge,_Tennessee

It's where the Manhattan Project was done, and is still used for weapon creation (IIRC, it's the only place in the US that still makes nuclear wepaons, replacing worn-out ones and the like.) ... the Oak Ridge National Labratory is all kinds of cool.

As for Alvin C York, he's in the northern border (almost into Kentucky!) of the middle-east part of the state, thus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pall_Mall,_Tennessee

He was never happy about his war record, by the by, having had all kinds of issue with killing clashing with his Bible studdies. Much more important, to him, was the discovery that he was essentially illiterate. When he just lived at home, he was about as good of a reader as everyone else, but when he went to war, he discovered how badly educated he was and *that* bothered him. He turned his fame into some money, then used it all, and his ongoing fame, to start the Alvin C York Institute, an organization dedicated to bringing literacy to the region. His schools were the biggest thing of his life, and the original building is, currently, in need of massive donations for renovation or it'll be torn down.

On a related note, Dolly Parton was born over in Sevierville:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevierville,_Tennessee

Her theme park took over for tourism after Opryland went under, years back. She's famous for country music and her 'vats tracts of land'. BUT! Much like Alvin C York, she's a big philanthropist, and, once again, focuses on literacy and books. Her Imagination Library gives a free book a month to children, from birth to kindergarden, to help support needy kids, and her bookmobiles roll out every year, hittng up communities to pass out free books all over the state (And often into connecting states, like Kentucky and the Carolinas).

You get the Sun Sphere in Knoxville, the Parthenon in Nashville, the Chatanooga Aquarium (And the train yards), the Memphis Pyramid and Graceland, the Scopes Monkey Trial...

There's a huge bog o' stuff down here.

Wakshaani, that would put you around Crossville, right? I could be wrong, but that feels about right.

Any thoughts on utilizing the flood from a couple years ago? I thought it'd be interesting to have Nashville's geography re-written by massive flood waters. Essentially the Cumberland would flow through parts of present day Nashville, and there would be a booming business in salvage. Or have floods become more frequent (but unpredictably so), making salvage a dangerous business.

I've also been knocking a political campaign around in my head. It would focus on Memphis trying to usurp Nashville as the state Capital. Not a huge thing, but I think it could prove to be a lot of fun. And I know for a fact that a lot of people who live in Nashville today would go for their guns if the thought people in Memphis might try something like that.

Wak, thanks for the stuff on Alvin York and Dolly Parton. I honestly never knew, but that is incredibly cool. Also, you should come visit us now that we're not *that* far away any more

I also want to mention that my brother's eaten moose before. Not because they went out hunting for it - he was at a campsite and someone hit a moose driving back from getting beer. The police showed up, said, "well, there's nothing we can really do with it," and let them take it back to camp. He said it was very gamey, but pretty good.

Cookeville, not Crossville, but fairly close. Cookeville (AKA Cookevegas, AKA the City the Never Wakes) is smack-dab betwixt Nashville and Knoxville, making it the perfect layover for anyone going between the two places... gobs of hotels and massive numbers of eateries, including the #1 of several chains (Biggest Long John Silver's in the US, #1 O'Charlies, #2 Red Lobster, #1 Logan's, #3 Cracker Barrel... this is a crazy eatin' town.) It's the only Cookeville with an 'E' in the US, the others having all gone to 'Cookville' instead. (The reason being newspaper fonts, of all things.)



You'd be better off by having a new flood hit, amped up with 'crazy weather patterns since the Great Ghost Dance', since the Nashville Flood wasn't *horrible*, just depressing. The damage done to teh Grand Ol' Opry was the biggest one (And there are several artifacts in there that probably Awakened), and the city was shut down for a week or so, but there was virtually no life lost and the damage got cleaned up pretty quick. The city is built around a river, after all, so has lots of flood protection, but the walls in two areas weren't as high as the Army Corps of Engineers wanted. The Opryland Hotel suffered the most damage, staying down for over a month, since they were one of the ones with a low wall ... they didn't want to shell out the money for a "Once a century" flood wall height and were afraid that it'd be too unsightly for the tourists. D'oh.

Remind me, later, to talk about the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) ... hugely important.



The rivalry between Nashville and Memphis is huge. It's wanted to be the capital several times, but the simple power of geography stymies it. Memphis is the bigger city, however, and is always hungry for more influence. TN has a rivalry with Kentucky that goes back to both being founded and sharing several bits of history (Davey Crocket vs Daniel Boone, Kentucky Racehorses vs Tennessee Walking Horses, Bluegrass vs Country, Wildcats vs the Vols ... huge list.) TN and Georgia also have issues, with water rights being the biggest by far, and there's some friction between Nashville and Atlanta. You also get some rub between TN and Texas... Tennesseans were big names in Texas history, with Austin and Houston both being named for TN fellas, for instance, while Dallas was founded by a Tennessean. Similar music and food tastes also exist, with a phrase you can hear here at times being "We gave 'em good music and good barbeque and they went and messed it all up." The Oilers leaving Texas for Tennessee was also a thing, but we got Bud Adams out of the deal, so mostly a wash.

As you might guess, many of these are one-sided rivalries, with Kentucky-TN being the only one that's heavily invested by both sides.

In terms of Shadowruns, you'd best believe that Nashville wants to take over the CAS government and will doggedly haunt Georgia's polititians on pretty much every issue, ever. It's known as the Simsense Capital of the CAS, and unofficially the BTL capital as well, and the "Vol Sprawl" should be one of the big players in anything CAS due to population, finance, and social strength.

Just because it's distantly relevant, I'm running North Georgia (Atlanta to Chattanooga, bama border to the smokies.)

Background under development but you're welcome to read (and use) what I've got so far: Atl & N. Ga

Heck, I'll even read your comments. (Don't promise to use them, mind, but I'll read them.)

I never realized the death toll from that flood was so low. I wonder if the reports only count those who died in Davidson county? I know Smith county lost around a dozen people, and I thought Wilson lost a few too. The property damage was certainly not limited to the Opry region though, down town took some nasty hits if I remember correctly, and I know the damage was pretty spread out over the Cumberland's banks through out the Mid-State.

The Ghost Dance fueled (I was actually thinking the Comet more) floods were what I meant with the second half of the flood reference.

The thing I'm working on now is which Corps would be most active in the Mid-State. I figure Universal Omnitech would have the most power at Vanderbilt, or maybe Doc Wagon. Possibly Ares with Tennessee Tech in Cookeville. I'm pretty sure Bellsouth sold is batman tower, but I can't remember who bought it. Truman Technologies and Horizon would definitely have stakes in the simsense biz in the region. But I can't think of any others.

Side Note:
I've spent a fair amount of time in Cookeville. It is a truly beautiful town, especially compared to Lebanon, which just looks sad.

Well, it might have been THAT village, so I won't be surprised if:
a) the Romans never dared to get in, and
b) You're related to Obelix.

I wanna see this Cookevegas one of these days I've heard such amazing things about it from all my TN friends

It really is. Next time you're in, drop me a line, we'll hang.

As for corps, that ties in with a great CAS analysis I'm dabbling with. The CAS has an economy much stronger than the UCAS, with two thirds the population but no Triple-A corps native to the area ... as such, it has to be an absolute *playground* for the big guys. TN is, today, the second-largest automotives producer in the US, so it's reasonable to assume that there'd be continued investment from the Japancorps and S-K. Ares, maybe, but the others for certain. Horizon snapped up Turner in Atlanta, the Azzies are in agribusiness all over, etc etc etc.

That doesn't even count Lone Star and the remains of Cross Applied Technologies.

Well, the flooding of Soundcheck was pretty spectacularly destructive. And the only thing open in the Opryland mall last week was the new Bass Pro Shop, the rest won't be open for something like another 6 months.

And DocWagon and Atlantean. Half of Lockheed's in the CAS, too.

Really? Hrm!

I could have sworn there was a big "Open for biz!" vibe a few months ago.

Grf!

Teach me to blindspot myself, eh?

It might be a while before we can get back up there, but I'll do my best. (We're still getting our feet under us after I lost my job).

Apparently, flooding is the most frequent and most damaging disaster in the mid-state region. So I think my idea of an underwater salvage industry should work. The run idea I had based off of Big D's will, and a hundred or so unsold tickets that were meant to be scalped by an unscrupulous venue owner. I think the whole vibe and attitude of any runs in Nashville would be largely different too. We started talking about the big flood, and how people reacted. I think other than natural events (the actual floods) Nashville and its immediate neighbors would be largely untouched by the violence that rocked most of the rest of the country through out SR's history.

I suspect that the culture is a bit different too. Tennessee has much nicer and bigger gun stores than I've seen elsewhere. At least if the Outpost Armory is any example, as the parent Coal Creek Armory is supposed to be a LOT larger as is Frontier. But Outpost is right on the expressway exit as I drove to Nashville and has billboards all over the place. Which isn't exactly typical of say, Chicago.

York, unfortunatly lost otne quickly after the war. He tried to volunteer for WW2 but was politlety rejected due to high blood pressure and diabetes. He only gave permission for his story to be used in a film if Gary Cooper played him, but the film being made at all showed he was one of those Americans who recognized early on the evil of the Nazi's and tried to prepare his people for the return to european batlte fields

I'd forgotten the floods but since I think the Cumberland's head waters are in the UCAS there could be a whole plot along thosel ines in setting up/preventing floods or even planting the suggestion someone else wants one.

Considering the work Dolly Parton has had done that could be a whole new idea, she's still running around in 2070 but is it the original or a clone or an animatronic or....maybe she was always a great spirit or gave up her place to one when she couldn't go on- i so don't want to think what back problems she having, guys you just don't get it.

I dun know, Alabama has some huge gun stores. One local one is larger than many gun shows. Of course there is only one way to find out...