Places

Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant: The power plant had four reactors, and two more were under construction. The infamous meltdown of Reactor #4 forced the evacuation of the area, and the 1991 fire in Reactor #2 convinced the post-Soviet government to shut down the plant entirely, which was completed in 2000. It is expected to take about 300 years for the site to be relatively safe for human occupation.

The human authorities locked the remains of Reactor #4 inside a concrete and steel sarcophagus to prevent its radiation from causing more damage than it already has. However, this sarcophagus is not reflected in the Penumbra, and the area within 10 km of the power plant is a particularly nasty Hellhole responsible for bringing countless Banes into the immediate vicinity.

Prypiat: Pripyat was founded in 1970 to house workers for the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Pripyat was also intended to be a major railroad and river cargo port. It was officially proclaimed a city in 1979 but was abandoned in 1986 following the Chernobyl disaster, which required the evacuation of nearly 50,000 people.

Many of the building interiors in Pripyat have been vandalized and ransacked over the years. The roofs leak and most of the windows have long since broken, so many rooms have flooded. Trees grow on roofs and even inside buildings, and these are slowly pulling down the vestiges of human habitation. There are about 30 high rise apartments in the city, as well as a Ferris wheel that is visible even in satellite photos. Although the clean-up efforts buried most of the radioactive materials, there are still many radioactive “hot” spots throughout the city ruins.

The Glass Walkers would not recognize the urban warfare going on here. By night werewolves trade blows with the fomori and Banes that seem to lurk in just about every corner of the city. Garou patrol the streets openly in Crinos, for the chance of a human glimpsing them is very low. While there are a few tactically valuable positions, the city has few useful resources. An entire night’s battle might be fought to reclaim the Fetish of a fallen ally. Minions of the Wyrm engage in these raids and skirmishes for love of killing Garou, while the werewolves seek only to destroy the corrupted servants of the enemy and annihilate the fomori spawning nests.

Red Forest: This area received the highest doses of radiation from the Chernobyl accident, and the pine trees turned ginger-brown as they died. Most of the trees were buried during the clean-up efforts, but the radiation they contain leaks into the soil and ground water. The Banes this corruption attracts find no humans nearby. However, the animal population of the Red Forest has swelled in the absence of humans, and the Banes are content to twist them into fomori. These corrupted creatures are little more than mindless monsters with many of the same twisted Charms as their urban cousins. Most soon join the endless war for the streets of Pripyat, but some stay in the forest or even leave the Exclusion Zone in search of fresh victims to corrupt. Most of our wolf Kinfolk in the area live in the Red Forest, so these Wyrmspawn pose a serious threat to Garou breeding stock.

Chernobyl: This port city nine miles south-southeast of Pripyat was abandoned after the meltdown. Once a town of about 14,000, it remains mostly uninhabited. A small number of people, including a handful of human Kinfolk, still live in houses here. Workers on watch and administrative personnel of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone are stationed in the city on a long-term basis, since it lies near the edge of the zone.

The port and its nearby parking lot are a graveyard of abandoned cargo ships and automobiles, including many trucks and rigs that were used in the human efforts to clean up or bury the most dangerously radioactive areas of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Banes and other Wyrm-tainted creatures frequently emerge from these husks, and the terrorist attempt to breach the dike to the Dnieper River so that radioactive water in the harbor could escape downstream was almost certainly a Wyrm-inspired plot.

Chernobyl-2: This former Soviet military installation located relatively close to the power plant consists of a gigantic transmitter and receiver belonging to the Steel Yard over-the-

horizon radar system. Due to the secrecy of this unit, rumor holds that it was the real cause of the disaster. Humans fear the accidental collapse of the rusting iron superstructures of the now-defunct station could cause a microearthquake that might damage the radioactive storage of the installation. The human government has vowed to dismantle the station before that happens, but they haven’t yet taken action. No doubt such a collapse will unleash more Banes. A large underground military complex located about two kilometers from this installation was once used for anti-missile defense, space surveillance and communication,