bres vineBres Vine (Ruins of Washington, D.C., United States of America)
Population: 356
Background:
The old capital’s marble, steel, and asphalt became a strange kind of soil. Roots threaded through shattered monuments. Vines braided around broken columns. Whole groves grew out of collapsed buildings like they were planters. The first resurfacing scouts called the place Bres—an old bunker word meaning “breakstone”—and added Vine when they realized the greenery wasn’t just reclaiming the ruins… it was organizing them.
Today, Bres Vine is a city-state of timber shacks and huts, and woodcutters scattered throughout the cracked geometry of Washington, D.C. The National Mall is now a long, green corridor known as the Hollow Mall. The Potomac and Anacostia rivers are the city’s lifelines; their banks terraced with log-reinforced levees and floating docks made of sealed timber and resin. The old Metro system is partly collapsed, partly inhabited, and partly forbidden. People say the tunnels still “breathe” warm air in winter.
Resources:
Bres Vine’s wealth is timber, but its power is what it can make from wood. Bres Vine’s trees aren’t normal. Their growth rings are thick, resin-heavy, and unusually straight—perfect for beams, hulls, and charcoal. The population believes the ruins “seeded” the soil with minerals that changed the forest forever. Whether that’s true depends on who you ask.
Culture:
-
Fire is a sin unless sanctioned. Open flame without a permit is punishable by exile.
-
Names are “grown,” not given. Children receive a second name after their first harvest or river crossing.
-
Old-world symbols are dangerous. Not because they’re evil—because they tempt people into thinking the past can be rebuilt exactly as it was.
-
The Ringcount Festival brings in the New Year. Once a year, the city counts the harvest rings, announces quotas, and burns a single ceremonial log in the public square—big enough to remind everyone what an uncontrolled fire could become.