Fallen Earth Diary #1

RPG Vault opens up a new series of Fallen Earth developer diaries, the first of which discusses the Town of Terance.

Since its original conception, the Central Plains settlement has been a spooky ghost town. The first iteration was a creepy place with a handful of survivors after a nasty zombie plague wiped out most of the population and threatened to spread to other nearby settlements. It was designed, with tongue slightly in cheek, to be a neighboring town to Phillips Triangle. Back when we were allowing ourselves a little more in the way of obvious pop culture references, this paid homage to the Canadian TV duo known as Terance and Phillip on South Park.

Last year, though, we took another pass at the area. We came up with a backstory for Terance that grounded it more fully in the Fallen Earth game lore. It was a town that grew around a facility managed by a GlobalTech subsidiary called Brenhauer Corp. Workers and middle-management personnel lived in houses nearby. Some sharp programming types came up with an artificial intelligence, known as TETRAX, to manage the operation with an eye toward greater efficiency. However, the AI’s idea of better organization meant downsizing, getting rid of all those pesky workers with their salaries, pensions and 401k programs. It started generating monstrosities known as Diggers – shuffling zombies – to swarm the town and wipe out all the real personnel.