Safehome

A cluster of small communities spread across the lower valley of the Broken River, an intermittent tributary of the Wet River. The Broken Valley has a fairly hospitable climate - protected from the worst of the dust storms by ranks of hills to the west and south, and with enough underground water to support relatively good grazing. Most of the settlers in the area tend the herds of beeve, while a dedicated labor pool works the farms and services the deep wells and irrigation wheels that keep the fields green.

The power in Safehome is the Chief Rancher, Denn Arkett, a despot whose ruthless subjugation of the valley twenty years ago is still a legend across the Dust Lands. Arkett's hand-picked toughs, called The Regulators, have a monopoly on force in the area, keeping an eye on the borders and also the households of the lesser Ranchers who still make up the Safehome Council. Arkett rules half the Council by favors and kinship and the other half by fear, and he shows little sign of growing old or giving up his hold on the region.

Safehome is a bad place to be an outsider, unless you're passing through on a clear errand. Vagrants and interlopers can be sentenced to seasons on the slave-farms or, worse, on the well-crews, and beeve-rustlers can expect summary execution. The main town, Bitter Wells, is far enough off the beaten track that only folks seeking the place usually end up there. Arkett makes his home in a fabulous relic structure poised on the tip of a mesa a few dozen kilometers from town. The house, called the Eagle's Haunt, is reachable only by a slave-cranked cable-car, and everything in it (water included) has to be hoisted three hundred vertical meters from the valley floor below.

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