The world ends slowly. Mines run dry, crops start to fail, factories can't get enough raw material. Jobs disappear, money dries up, prices rise. The cracks that people slip through get a little wider. There's those that stay safe, even while fires, floods, droughts, and epidemics come for them, because they are wealth - or useful to the wealthy. For others, there is exile into the world beyond, where they are free to live and free to die in equal measure. Which group is luckier? Depends on who you ask.
The Enclave Askew is a community of outcasts living beyond what remains of "civil" society. There are no trucks of supplies coming, no wires carrying precious power from massive power grids. Only bodies and brains, and whatever they can scrounge together. They have nothing; which means they have everything. In their empty hands is wealth beyond measure; in their burning, beating hearts is a love that has lived on across centuries of oppression.
This is a place of hope, and place of constant struggle. Life makes a single demand here: survive. In exchange, the most modest of rewards: the world.
The trucks don't stop at the Enclave. No deliveries get made out here. The postman doesn't come to a place without an address. But people need goods brought in, and people have goods to be sent out. Anybody who can make that happen is a friend to all - or at least a useful asset.
Enter Zachariah.
It's not enough to have stuff. You have to do things with it. Somebody needs to turn seeds and cuttings into crops. Somebody needs to turn crops into food. Somebody needs to make the medicine and the drugs and the electricity. And somebody needs to keep all that moving when it starts breaking.
Enter Knots.
The cities have police to keep them safe. The important places in the country have the National Guard watching over them. But the kind of people who live in the Enclave were never the kind that the cops kept safe. Not everybody has it in them to do the kind of work that needs done to keep their community protected from those that mean it harm. Those that do need to stay organized, focused, keeping their strength where it needs to be. Somebody needs to do the tough work of turning a bunch of hoodlums into a halfway decent militia.
Enter Diesel.
Everybody comes from somewhere. We all, once upon a time, thought we were normal. We all, once upon a time, lived normal lives. Most of the people in the Enclave gave that all up a long time ago. But sometimes somebody new shows up, usually because they have nowhere else to go. They know people, normal people, who have more connections than we could hope for. They usually bring what's left of their cash. They also bring what's left of their prejudice. Freshcuts can be useful. They can also be dangerous. Time will tell which one is which.
Enter Bishop.
A goddess-cult of various new-wave feminists with a vendetta against the old world and its genders. Friendly and devoted to service to nature and community, their beliefs nonetheless antagonize more old-world personalities, sometimes to the detriment of the Enclave.
Diesel's crew of bruisers, cutters, toughs, braves, and soldiers. Foreswearing firearms (partially for brutally economic reasons), the Chains are named for the heavy metal chains they carry on their clothes and use as bludgeons. They're the Enclave's peacekeepers and defenders - but that doesn't make them its heroes.
A coalition of revolutionaries that is managing to achieve the pipe-dream of the old world: a unified front of radicals, bound by the new 'politics of the end' they theorize about. They have a vision for a new world, and the Enclave's role in building it... but not everybody in the Enclave shares that vision.
How the Enclave turns labor into goods.
Where the river water from the river-pump goes. First through a filter where it gets cleaned. Then into the hydroponics tubs. Then through a filter to be cleaned again and treated before being piped to the brew lab for further, chemical treatment, then use in the farmhouse. Crops grown in the tubs are leaf and root veggies, plus plenty of plants that civilized society still considers illegal.
Where the liquid magic happens. Wheat, rye, and potato crops get turned into beers and spirits over the course of weeks and months. Fruits from the nascent food forest across the river get made into wines.
Agriculture isn't dead, just broken. Forgoing the chemical treatments that defined the industrial age of farming, the Fields grow local and non-native crops in relative abundance thanks to indigenous guidance and educated soil techs living in the Enclave. The forest across the river has a few fruit treets, which have had other limbs grafted on to create a young food forest. There's nowhere near enough to support the entire Enclave's needs all year round ('not yet,' some try to say), so bringing in food from what's left of civilization is a necessity. Still, those who consider themselves responsible for the Fields work every day to realize the dream of true community sufficiency.
The hydroelectric generator on the river bank, where most of the Enclave's electricity comes from. Most of the power is used to operate certain critical systems, like the pumps and heaters and whatever medical equipment the Enclave can salvage for the medically needy among them. At night, it takes everything the grid has got to keep the parties going. During the day, the kitchen gets first call on non-essential power, to cook the day's meals before dark.
To visitors, this is a parking lot. For the residents, this is where every scrap of solar panel they manage to salvage gets hooked up to supplement the grid during the day. A few nonelectric set ups are scattered around, to heat water for the night's bathing. For the most part, though, the solar panels just keep the grid from overloading while the kitchen is running.
The owner of the property used to live here, before he died and left the deed to his only heir. His only heir was an endthinker who decided to give the property over to some friends - and they invited some more friends. Now, the farmhouse is a few things; the sheds are storage, the attic is a watchtower, the rooms have all been made into workshops, and the kitchen has been expanded to feed the entire Enclave.
Most of the money the Enclave has comes from city-dwellers coming out to slum it up and party. Party Town is the 'tourism' district that caters to those walking money bags and their interests.
Party central. The place where the music is loudest, the ground is covered with slabs to serve as a dance floor, and the taps are flowing fastest. Visitors pay to park, pay to drink, and tip the DJs and bartenders.
Tents and shelters for stoners and users looking for some relative peace and privacy. Hookah bars, opium dens, meth houses, pot caves; visitors pay to get in and pay for product. Residents barter and work for product, unless they're on a sobriety list.
Some people hook up with normies they meet in Party Town and need a place to do that privately. Some people come to find a hooker. Some people decide to do some adventuring or experimenting. No questions asked; just a fee to use the tents, plus whatever you're paying your escort. Residents patrol and listen out for anything that sounds like distress. Misbehave here and you're banned for life.
This is where most residents hang their hats. Across the Fields from Party Town, next to the water pump, Shanty Town is much quieter and safer. Unofficial neighborhoods have sprung up as residents gather based on shared interests and needs, but generally any given person might live anywhere.
Disability living. Closet to the water-house and clinic for ease of access. People who live here either need help, or want to help. Not fully accessible to everybody, but it's a work in progress.
Sobriety living. Absolutely no drugs - that means use or possession. Trying to use or sell here, or even move them through, is going to be met with somebody kicking you out at best. Most people here are recovering addicts supporting each other; some are helping loved ones and living nearby to facilitate that; a few are teetotalers who don't want to be near the stuff.
The artists' collective. Music, painting, sculpture, theater; it all goes down here. Creative types that like working together roost here and make the weirdest things, and the whole Enclave (generally) loves it. A few residents were normies that came out specifically to make their art happen. A few people complain folks here don't pull their weight; and in a few cases they might be right.
Some people just want to be alone when they aren't working. Some people want to be alone even while they're working. The outskirts are for loners and quiet-livers.