The Swampers

The Swampers are a loose tribal confederation, uniting a portion of southern Louisiana. They are headquartered in the city of New Orleans and traverse the swamp. With their knowledge of the lands, and how to use the swamp to their advantage, they are able to defend their lands from stronger enemies using guerilla tactics and the weaponizing of the irradiated swamp wildlife. They originated from Vault 122, the local Vault for New Orleans. They worship the swamp wildlife, like Alligators and Turtles, decorating their body in the shape of their gods.

## History

The Swampers were formed on October 6th, 2143 after their breach from Vault 122. They exited the Vault to find the city of New Orleans in disrepair, the swamps had flooded the city after a near century of disrepair, the only human interference being scavengers. Even then, the scavengers knew that the monsters of New Orleans were too dangerous for them to stay longer than a few hours. Mutant Alligators and Snapping Turtles roamed the city, searching for any fools who hadn't heard the tales of the beasts from Orleans, anyone who stayed in The Big Easy never came out alive.

The Swampers began to learn and adapt to the swamps, keeping their presence low as to not alert the beasts to their presence, mostly living in silence and the dark. They were happy, albeit unfulfilled, and they remained happy. But one day, a gang of raiders arrived in New Orleans. Their leader, "Chainsaw Vinny" believed that he could best the beasts of the Big Easy, while he could possibly defeat the monsters, he could not defeat the inhabitants. The Swampers began to leave trails of meat on what little land they could use in the flooded streets, leading the monsters to raider encampments. The Swampers used their stealth to throw spears from the dark windows of the ruined buildings, and in a few seconds, an entire raider outpost was dead.

Ultimately, The Swampers won, establishing their presence to the rest of Louisiana. They began to send expeditions to the nearby cities outside of New Orleans, and became a loose confederation of cities.

### Vault 122

Vault 122 was the local Vault of New Orleans, it tested the effects of limited Human interaction, and only interacting with animals outside of the yearly "Reproduction Day" in the Vault to keep the experiment going. The only Human interaction the subjects of Vault 122 had was Reproduction Day and the food and water dispensers.

Vault 122 was a massive complex of prison cells, each being connected via the tunnels the Vault Staff used to fill up the water and food containers in the cells. Aside from prison cells, the Vault had a staff zone. It had bunks, the Overseer's office, a large farm they used to sustain the population of the Vault, and the water purifier.

The subjects of the experiment began to grow a strong bond toward the animals they were put in the cell with, most of them harmless turtles and birds you would see in a Louisiana swamp. Some of the more zealous of the group began to see the animals as their saviors due to them being their only connection for every 364 days of the year. One case had a man starve himself in order to feed his god, as he believed that when he died, he would go to "bird heaven" as he called it in the security recordings.

## Culture

The most notable aspect of Swamper culture is their clothing and religion. Their clothing is decorated in body parts of swamp animals, like turtle shell armor and alligator hide. Along with this they used weapons made from alligator teeth aside from scavenged weapons and normal tribal weapons like spears and rudimentary knives

In their religion, similar to tribes like The Vipers, The Swampers worship the swamp animals of southern Louisiana like gatorclaws and snapping turtles. This also rarely includes irradiated birds and frogs.