Sweetwater
Sweetwater is a small city in the westernmost portion of the Greater Rivertown Area.
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Sweetwater is approximately 20 miles due west of Rivertown in the region known as the Western Wastes.
Sweetwater grew to regional prominence in the middle of the 19th century gaining a reputation for having healing waters. A number of health spas set up shop in close proximity to each other, and eventually grew together to form the town, which was historically affluent and politically conservative.
In the years of social unrest, Sweetwater citizens invested heavily in home security systems, converting lavish homes into the equivalent of air-tight bunkers. The superflu hit the area of Sweetwater particularly hard, wiping out nearly the entire population and leaving the dead and dying locked in their high-tech vaults as tombs.
Sweetwater was spared the mass destruction experienced in most other cities and, as a result, looks and feels like a ghost town. Visitors to contemporary Sweetwater remark that it is like stepping back into the past on a sleepy Sunday afternoon when all the shops are closed and the residents either at home or in church.
Because of the lack of scavengeable locations or items in Sweetwater, the town has very few residents. In recent years, travelers have discovered that many homes on the outskirts of town are able to be broken into, and they either tend to be completely empty (all belongings being taken by the fleeing home owners) or well-provisioned. As a result, some travelers intending to head into Rivertown are settling in Sweetwater instead.
Sweetwater's fortresses are undoubtedly treasure troves for anyone clever enough to find a way inside. The problem is that most owners, fearing the violent revolts in Rivertown would spill over into Sweetwater, set their security systems to protect homes with lethal force. This includes all types of electrified fences, automated gun turrets, active minefields, and other deadly apparatus. Even if someone manages to avoid these deadly deterrents, the homes themselves are security with safe-strength locks and near-indestructible windows.
The Rivertown Compendium draws from the much larger Rivertown Chronicles, a wide assortment of personal narratives and catalog entries of people, places, and things.