Lud

Typically populated by folks who work in Demeter and Dionysus and used to live there, but no longer agree with the advancing technology in either octant. Home to the largest single population of humans in any borough.

Have you ever actually faced down an angry mob with torches and pitchforks? Do you want to?   In all seriousness, Lud’s defenses are primarily… defensive. Beneath the borough lies a network of tunnels stocked with canned goods and dried meat. The Warrens are well-ventilated, built for siege, and large enough to hide the full population of the borough within. Bolt-holes are spaced apart far enough to be easily defensible, and every Luddite knows how to get to two or three of them from any given location in the borough.

Lud is a borough of craftsmen. If you want something hand-crafted in small numbers, made with a fierce love and built to last, you find a Luddie whose mother’s mother has been making it since they first tread the Wilds.

Other boroughs might consider Lud’s infrastructure poor, but much of this is by choice. Most public buildings and many houses have indoor plumbing - even the Luddies have to admit that clean, reliable water is a necessity for safe living. However, Lud has vehemently refused electricity and most machinery that can’t be powered by hand-crank or steam. Most of the wealth that comes into the borough goes right back into making furniture, household repair, and any of the hundred other crafts and skills its residents have picked up to try to divorce themselves from reliance on the Octants.

The August Foxglove Society
An association of (primarily elderly) residents. On the surface, they are a social club - they organize public stitch-and-bitch style gatherings, often over picnics or afternoon tea. Their secondary purpose, however, is to protect residents from Lud itself. The insular culture often shun new residents, particularly newcomers with cybernetics or other pre-existing reliances on machinery. It is equally unwilling to let go of people who find the borough too restrictive and wish to leave it, whether on a trial basis or for good. The Foxgloves facilitate both of these processes - integrating newcomers and vouching for their character, and passing departures over to welcoming communities in other boroughs. They have a particularly close relationship with Dolce Vita's Rosa Nonnas. Residents under the protection of the Foxgloves wear or carry a custom-tailored cloth glove embroidered with their chosen name and a spray of foxglove blooms.   The Association for Preservation and Perpetuation of Luddite Ethics (APPLE)
An organization founded by the oldest and wealthiest families in Lud. These families, and those looking to earn their favor, have taken it upon themselves to enforce compliance with Lud’s no-technology ruling. Their choice of acronym was inspired by a number of stories found in the Olympia Ark’s records, all of which repeatedly pointed to apples as a symbol for knowledge and life. However, to their endless annoyance, their less-fanatical neighbors immediately took to calling them “bad APPLES” or “poison APPLEs”. Retroactive efforts to change their name have, if one will pardon the pun, borne no fruit.

As Demeter was one of the first octants to develop, so, too, was Lud one of the first boroughs. Hand-in-hand with the discovery of more and more LOSTech came the discovery of more and more writings about simple, self-reliant communities - communities swept away under the mindless evil of technological progress. The founders of what would become Lud took these as a warning. They feared their original ways of life, hard-fought and hard-won during the Wastelands period, would be lost under that same march. Thus, Lud was established as a bastion of The Old Ways - the simple ways, the ways that work.

Town Hall
One of the only buildings in the borough built entirely of stone. Its columns are lovingly carved with sheaves of wheat, curling grape vines, pomegranates, and sunflowers, reflecting the original mason’s wish for the prosperity of their borough. The space is used to host town meetings, dances, and any other event requiring a great deal of indoor space.   The Warrens
Lud’s subterranean complex of defensive tunnels. While loitering in the Warrens is technically prohibited, the rule is poorly-enforced. The tunnels are a popular haunt for the daring explorations of children and the surreptitious meetings of adults. Many of the burrowed homes in Lud have backdoors that open directly out into the Warrens complex, which has led to any number of pranks.

Victorian cottages, American farmhouse, and straight up hobbit holes.