Junktown

Junktown
A field of wrecked and crushed cars piled up in a scrapyard in Pennsylvania · Carolyn Williams, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

A frontier town built from what fell from the sky or broke down on the road: houses cut from old hulls, walls of car doors, a water tower that was once a fuel tank. Scavengers bring in wrecks from the wastes and tinkerers make them run again. Water is money, everything is for sale at the general store, and the sheriff keeps the peace with a rebuilt arm.

Light
Lit
Going
Slow

Hear it

Hazards

  • Unstable wreck. Decks hang at odd angles over drops, plating gives way underfoot, and the whole hull shifts when the wind or the scavengers move it. D&D 5e: A fall deals 1d6 Bludgeoning damage per 3 m (10 ft), at most 20d6, and Prone unless no damage was taken. Spotting weak plating is a DC 12 Wisdom (Perception) check.
  • Rusty edges. Torn sheet metal, loose wire and rust on every surface. A careless hand or a slip on a heap opens a cut, and in the dirt of a scrapyard a cut festers. D&D 5e (House rule): House rule: a creature that takes Slashing or Piercing damage from scrap makes a DC 11 Constitution saving throw after its next Long Rest; on a failure the wound festers and it has the Poisoned condition until a DC 12 Wisdom (Medicine) check or magical healing tends it.
  • Crossfire. A gang quarrel, a raid or a battle line: shooting breaks out with little warning, and rounds go through thin walls and parked cars as if they were paper. D&D 5e (House rule): House rule: while a firefight goes on nearby, each creature caught in the open makes a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw at the start of each round, taking 2d6 Piercing damage on a failure. A creature behind Half Cover or better is spared.

What may happen

  1. The houses are old hulls cut open and stacked; one front door still carries a ship’s name and a registry number.
  2. The weekly scrap auction: a whole engine block, a crate of unlabelled power cells and a sealed escape pod nobody has opened.
  3. A tinkerer with a magnifying eyepiece offers to fix anything for a hot meal, and everything on her stall hums.
  4. Oil drums burn along the main street, and the scavengers around them trade stories of the richest wreck they ever stripped.
  5. The water tower is leaking, and the whole town turns out with buckets and opinions.
  6. The general store sells nails by the piece, coffee by the spoon and ammunition by the round, all weighed on the same scale.
  7. Two scavenger crews are shouting over the same wreck, each waving a claim scratched on a sheet of metal.
  8. A magnet crane lifts a car, swings it over the street and drops it on a pile with a crash heard across town.
  9. A dog with a welded steel leg trots beside the party for a while, then turns off down an alley.
  10. A child is playing with a power cell that still glows and is warm to the touch.
  11. The sheriff, a broad woman called Mags with a rebuilt arm, asks every stranger at the gate their business.
  12. A hot wind drives grit through every gap in the walls, and the whole town rings like a tin roof in hail.
  13. A scavenger offers a map to an unclaimed wreck, in exchange for a share of whatever is inside.
  14. A heap of scrap beside the path shifts with a long groan, and a sheet of rusted hull starts to slide.
  15. In the bar, a bet: who can strip a drone’s motor fastest. The stake is a week’s water.
  16. The town radio picks up a distress call from out in the wastes, on a frequency nobody has used in years.
  17. A trade caravan rolls in on mismatched wheels, and every shop in town raises its prices before the dust settles.
  18. Sparks rain from a welding torch in a workshop with no front wall; a boy holds the work steady with one thick glove.
  19. Overnight, someone has taken a part from the party’s gear, neatly, and left the bolts lined up in a row.
  20. Something has chewed through the generator’s cables; the tracks are small and clawed, and they smell of burnt plastic.
  21. A stall sells drone parts by the kilo; in the pile, a head unit still blinks with a stored message.
  22. The town’s only doctor works out of a gutted ambulance, and she has run out of antiseptic.
  23. Two men face each other in the main street at noon over a stolen gearbox, and the town gathers to watch.
  24. On the edge of town, someone has welded a giant figure out of car doors; it points at the horizon.
  25. Somewhere in the scrapyard, where nobody is supposed to be, an engine turns over and starts.

Adventure hooks

  1. A tinkerer has rebuilt a ship’s drive from scrap and needs the last part, which lies in a wreck the raiders call theirs.
  2. The town’s water still is failing, and the only spare sits in the general store at a price nobody can pay.
  3. A scavenger crew came back from the wastes with a sealed pod and one member fewer, and they will not open it.
  4. The scrap heaps are a metre lower every morning, and whatever takes the metal leaves no tracks.

Who and what is met

Each is an SRD stat block under another name, as game masters reskin them.

Other places among the stars

Orbital station, Derelict ship, Colony outpost, Precursor ruin, Asteroid field, Gas giant orbit, Deep space relay, Terraforming works, Prison hulk, Research lab, Crashed freighter, Nebula, Neon city, Spaceport, War front, Alien hive, Living ship, Undersea base, Lava foundry

This work includes material from the System Reference Document 5.2.1 ("SRD 5.2.1") by Wizards of the Coast LLC, available at https://www.dndbeyond.com/srd. The SRD 5.2.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

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