Control Something
A water source, a salvage cache, a defensible position, a skilled population.
The Waste Lords
Power Brokers of the Ungoverned Wastes
Type Loose Confederation
Number 12-15 at any time
Territories All major Waste regions
Status Active
Average Reign 7 years
Overview
In the ungoverned territories between Sprawl cores, certain individuals have accumulated enough power to matter. The corporations call them "regional stakeholders." The Wastelanders call them lords. They're not a faction—they don't coordinate, don't share ideology, often hate each other—but they share one trait: the megacorporations have to talk to them.
The Waste Lords control what corporations need: salvage routes, water aquifers, refugee populations, rare materials, or simply the ability to make corporate extraction operations very expensive. They're not legitimate. They're not pretending to be. But when Ironclad needs to ship materials through the Rustbelt or Nexus wants to quietly dispose of something in the Deadlands, someone has to grant passage.
How Lords Rise
No one starts as a lord. They become one through accumulation:
1
2
Survive Long Enough
Most who try die. The Wastes are unforgiving.
3
Attract Followers
Success breeds loyalty (and opportunism).
4
Negotiate with Corporations
The moment a corp sends an envoy instead of Enforcers, you've arrived.
5
Hold What You Have
Other would-be lords never stop trying.
The Current Lords
This roster shifts constantly. Three of these may be dead by next year.
Duchess Steel
Territory: 200km of dead industry between Old Detroit and the Atlantic core
Resource: Salvage — the best pre-Cascade industrial equipment in North America
Reputation: "Treats her people fair. Cross her, she doesn't kill you—she puts you to work."
Duchess Steel runs the Rustbelt's salvage operations. Her crews strip factories dormant since the Cascade, cataloging components, grading materials, preparing shipments. She sells to all three megacorps equally—higher prices for exclusivity, volume discounts for repeat customers.
The Contradiction
She's building something. Schools for Waste children. Medical clinics. Infrastructure that looks almost like a state. The corporations find this charming as long as she keeps shipping salvage. When she stops...
Papa Ash
Territory: Toxic coastal zones from Old Florida to the Gulf remnants
Resource: Disposal — anything that needs to disappear, permanently
Reputation: "Don't drink the water. Don't breathe the air. And don't ask what's in the drums."
Papa Ash controls the Bleach, and the Bleach is poison. Industrial contamination, sea level salts, Cascade residue—it's a dead zone that kills most visitors in weeks. Papa Ash has lived there for 40 years. Nobody knows how.
The Contradiction
He's dying. The Bleach is finally killing him, slowly. He's looking for someone to inherit his territory—not his power, just his responsibility. He knows what's buried there. Someone has to guard it.
The Shepherd
Territory: Former agricultural megafarms across central Eurasia
Resource: Food — actual growing things, mutated but nutritious
Reputation: "She feeds you. Then she owns you."
The Shepherd figured out how to farm the Green Sea. The crops are different—modified, adapted, strange—but they grow. In a world where most food is corporate-controlled synthetic protein, she has something irreplaceable: plants that reproduce, animals that breed, sustainability that doesn't require supply chains.
The Contradiction
She has thousands of dependents and no heirs. When she dies, the Green Sea reverts to chaos. She knows this. She can't stop acquiring more dependents anyway. "Someone has to feed them," she says. She's right. She's also wrong.
King Circuit
Territory: Data centers and communication relays in the Eastern Seaboard ruins
Resource: Information — intact pre-Cascade databases, working communications
Reputation: "Everything has a price. Information has two."
King Circuit doesn't control physical goods. He controls what's left of the old information infrastructure—server farms that somehow survived, fiber optic lines that still carry data, archives that haven't been cracked. He sells access, not ownership. Every megacorp has deals with him. None trust him.
The Contradiction
He knows too much. His archives contain secrets about all three megacorps—Cascade-era records, early corporate crimes, things that were supposed to be erased. He's never used this leverage. He claims it's insurance. Others suspect he's waiting for something.
Mother Mercy
Territory: The Haven alliance in Australia's interior
Resource: People — a functional society of 3 million
Reputation: "She's not a lord. She's a mayor. A governor. Something civilized."
Mother Mercy leads the closest thing to a nation in the Wastes. The Cradle isn't a territory—it's a network of cooperating Havens with shared defense, trade agreements, and something approaching law. They have schools. Courts. Elections. The corporations find this disturbing.
The Contradiction
She's proof that the Wastes could be civilized. That people could organize without corporate oversight. The megacorps tolerate her because she's useful—The Collective uses the Cradle as sanctuary, Ironclad buys rare minerals, everyone trades—but she represents something they can't allow to spread.
The Feast Threat
For thirty years, the Waste Lords operated on a simple principle: hold your territory, deal with whoever pays, survive. Then The Feast arrived, and the rules changed.
When The Chef first built her army in 2175, the Lords barely noticed. Another warlord. Another army that would burn itself out. They'd seen dozens like her. They were wrong.
The Lords dealt with each other through negotiation, threat, and occasional violence — always with the assumption that today's enemy might be tomorrow's trading partner. The Chef doesn't play that game. She doesn't want arrangements. She wants everything. And the smell of her forward camps tells you why: cooking fires, chrome polish, and something darker underneath that nobody asks about. The sound of Duchess Steel's doubled border patrols — boots on cracked asphalt, the whine of makeshift surveillance drones — is the sound of someone who has spent twenty years building schools and clinics in a lawless territory and now watches it all slide toward a woman who only knows hunger.
2175–2178
The Feast absorbs refugee camps, consolidates supply routes. Three small districts fall. Still minor. Still ignorable.
2179
The Chef conquers the Saltflats — Duchess Steel's primary southern trade route. An envoy is sent to negotiate passage rights. His bones are returned as a response.
2184
The Feast controls significant Waste territory. Multiple Lord domains are threatened. No unified response has materialized.
Lord-by-Lord Assessment
Duchess Steel — Armed Neutrality
The Feast's northern expansion threatens her salvage routes. Two minor probing conflicts have occurred. Steel is building schools, clinics, infrastructure — she can't risk it in total war, but she can't look weak either.
Her border patrols have doubled. She's quietly reaching out to other Lords about coordination.
"She thinks she's building a nation. Nations are just feasts waiting to happen."
Papa Ash — Transactional Cooperation
The Bleach has nothing The Chef wants. It's poison — a toxic shimmer hangs over the landscape, the air tasting of corroded metal and salt-crusted chemical runoff, a place so contaminated it protects its ruler because nobody else can survive there. But The Feast generates... waste. Bodies. Failed experiments. Evidence. Papa Ash makes problems disappear in exchange for materials and medical supplies.
He's dying — the Bleach is finally killing him after forty years. He's looking for someone to inherit not his power, just his responsibility. He knows what's buried there. The drums that rust in the shallow water. The things the corporations paid him to forget. Someone has to guard it.
"The old man knows what he is. He won't last long enough to be a problem."
Papa Ash: "She'll conquer everything except what's not worth having. I made sure my territory isn't worth having."
The Shepherd — Armed Standoff
The most dangerous border in the Wastes. The Shepherd controls food production. The Feast needs food. But the Shepherd's followers would burn the crops before surrendering. A successful conquest might leave The Feast with nothing but ashes.
"She feeds thousands. Imagine if she fed The Feast."
The Shepherd: "She consumes. I nurture. We cannot coexist. One of us ends the other."
GG's private assessment: "This is where The Chef might overreach. The Green Sea isn't a conquest — it's an ecosystem. Break it, and we starve."
King Circuit — Wary Intelligence Exchange
The Feast has conquered territory around his data centers without touching them. King Circuit sells information — corporate movements, security gaps — but not his archives. The Chef hasn't forced the issue. Yet.
"He thinks his secrets protect him. Eventually, I'll decide which secrets I can live without."
King Circuit: "I've made certain that destroying my facilities triggers data releases. Mutually assured disclosure."
Why the Lords Can't Unite
Historical Rivalry
They didn't become Lords by trusting each other. Duchess Steel and King Circuit have territorial disputes dating to 2160. The Shepherd considers Papa Ash's disposal operations an ecological crime. Asking them to unite is asking them to forget decades of grudges.
Different Assessments
Steel sees an existential threat. Papa Ash sees a manageable customer. The Shepherd sees an inevitable enemy. King Circuit sees an information opportunity. No consensus means no coordination.
The First Mover Problem
Whoever moves against The Feast first bears the cost. The Chef would concentrate force on that target while others watched. No one wants to be the sacrifice that benefits their rivals.
Contested Resources
| Resource | Original Control | Current Status |
|---|---|---|
| Southern salvage route | Duchess Steel | Feast-controlled |
| Eastern data relays | King Circuit | Contested |
| Central water basin | Minor lord (fallen) | Feast-controlled |
| Northern passage | Duchess Steel | Threatened |
| Agricultural surplus | The Shepherd | Standoff |
The Wild Card: Sage
Everything has accelerated because The Chef's dog is dying. Her conquest isn't just territorial — it's a desperate search for medical knowledge disguised as imperial expansion. The Shepherd's agricultural expertise might include longevity research. King Circuit's archives might contain pre-Cascade veterinary breakthroughs. Helix facilities that Lords have salvaged might hold answers. The Lords know about Sage. Some pray for the dog's death. Some fear what follows more than The Chef herself.
The Chef's Strategy: Divide and Consume
The Chef understands the Lords' weaknesses perfectly. GG has mapped their rivalries, identified their pressure points, tracked their fears. The approach is systematic:
1
Never attack two Lords simultaneously. Concentrate force, achieve overwhelming victory, move on. Let the others watch.
2
Offer impossible terms. "Join or die" ensures rejection, which justifies conquest. No messy negotiations. No precedents for mercy.
3
Make examples. The Saltflats envoy's bones sent a message. So did the fallen minor lords. Fear is cheaper than siege engines.
4
Exploit divisions. When The Feast moves against one Lord, the others calculate whether to help — or benefit from the distraction. They always choose the second.
What Happens Next
Most Likely: Gradual Consumption
The Feast continues expanding. Lords fall one by one. Duchess Steel holds longest due to resources and determination. The Shepherd's territory becomes the decisive battle. Within five years, the "Waste Lords" become historical footnotes.
Possible: Lord Coalition
Something forces the Lords to cooperate — a Feast overreach, corporate intervention, an external threat. They form a defensive alliance and halt expansion. Likelihood: low. The Lords' mutual distrust runs too deep.
Wild Card: Sage Dies
If Sage dies before The Chef finds a solution, everything changes. The Feast might accelerate into pure destruction, collapse into despair, or find a new purpose. The Lords pray for the dog's death. They fear what follows.
Corporate Perspectives
Nexus Dynamics
"Regional stakeholders serve as interim governance structures in pre-development territories."
Translation: They're useful until we don't need them anymore.
Ironclad Industries
"We deal with whoever controls the ground. Results matter. Politics don't."
Translation: Business is business. We'll work with anyone who delivers.
Helix Biotech
"The autonomous communities represent fascinating case studies in adaptation."
Translation: They're research subjects who don't know they're being studied.
The Collective
"Some lords are allies. Some are problems. Most are just obstacles or shortcuts."
Translation: Pragmatism isn't just for corporations.
What Corporations Want
Corporations don't come to the Wastes for charity. They want:
- Safe passage for convoys through dangerous territory
- Labor from populations outside corporate citizen rolls
- Disposal sites for materials that can't be traced
- Salvage rights without claiming the territory
- Deniability for operations that never happened
What Lords Provide
In exchange for resources, weapons, technology, or just being left alone, lords offer:
- Guides who know the terrain and threats
- Guarantees that convoys won't be raided (by their people, anyway)
- Silence about what they see
- Workers who won't ask questions or file complaints
- Access to things the Sprawl has forgotten
Connections
The Chef / The Feast: Territorial rival and existential threat. The Chef's army has already swallowed trade routes, water basins, and minor lords whole. The Waste Lords' decentralized power structure — their greatest strength for decades — is now their fatal weakness against a unified hunger that doesn't negotiate. Some lords deal with The Feast quietly. Others sharpen their defenses. None sleep well.
Sector 7G: Territory overlap. The industrial ruins of Sector 7G sit in the contested margins where Lord-controlled salvage operations bleed into Sprawl territory. Several lords maintain covert supply caches and extraction teams operating out of 7G's abandoned infrastructure — arrangements the corporations tolerate because the salvage flows both ways.
The Wastes: Primary territory. The ungoverned expanse between Sprawl cores is where the Lords reign — if you can call it reigning. Each lord holds a slice of this poisoned, irradiated, impossibly vast territory, extracting value from what the corporations abandoned and what nature reclaimed wrong.
The Dregs: Operating zone. The Dregs serve as a critical interface between Lord territory and the Sprawl's underbelly. Waste Lord agents move through the Dregs recruiting labor, fencing salvage, and maintaining the back-channel contacts that keep corporate negotiations flowing. It's neutral ground — as neutral as anything gets.
Ironclad Industries: Salvage competition and uneasy commerce. Ironclad wants what the Lords dig up but doesn't want to deal with what lives in the Wastes. The Lords want Ironclad's credits but don't want corporate infrastructure in their territory. The result is a perpetual trade relationship where both sides suspect the other is planning betrayal — and both sides are correct.
Fragment Hunters: Sometimes allied for salvage. When a pre-Cascade site surfaces in the Wastes, Fragment Hunters and Lord crews occasionally cooperate — the Hunters bring the technical expertise to crack sealed vaults and hardened systems, the Lords provide territorial access and muscle. These partnerships dissolve the moment the salvage is divided, usually acrimoniously.
Defector Network: Trade route overlap. Corporate defectors fleeing into the Wastes pass through Lord territory. Some lords charge passage fees. Others offer sanctuary in exchange for corporate knowledge. The Defector Network maintains careful relationships with several lords, trading intelligence for safe transit — a mutually profitable arrangement that the corporations would very much like to disrupt.