Flatlander Expanse - Part 1 - The Rise of Genefield

Before the Hodgepocalypse: Seeds in the Soil

In the quiet stretch of southern Saskatchewan, where prairie skies meet endless wheat fields, humans once thrived in neat rows and quiet routines. Saskatoon was a regional hub—an epicenter of agriculture, biotech research, and cooperative farming cultures, including deeply rooted Hutterite colonies. These colonies, known for their communal structure, technological savvy, and self-sufficiency, worked with agri-tech companies testing genetically modified crops and soil enhancement techniques.

By the mid-21st century, the region had become a hotbed for biotech fusion. Droughts and climate shifts pushed the envelope: vertical farms, bioengineered perennials, and hybridized livestock were everywhere. The University of Saskatchewan and its research parks collaborated with private industries on plant-based AI, synthetic photosynthesis, and bio-neural interfacing.

When automation surged and vehicles began outnumbering humans, many prairie towns hollowed out. Roads stretched long and lonely. Machines quietly maintained themselves, solar fields grew over fences, and the farms didn't need people—just oversight.

That’s when the whispering started.

The Hodgepocalypse: When Magic Took Root

Then came the Hodgepocalypse—the world-breaking moment when the ley lines, long dormant beneath the earth, reignited with psychic fury. It was like a second Cambrian explosion, but magical: psychic flora burst from the soil, dream-haunted winds swept across fields, and biotechnologies previously inert began waking up.

Southern Saskatchewan was one of the epicenters.

Something ancient answered the genetic manipulation and whispered through the hybrid seed vaults. Trees bent into unnatural shapes. Grown-in-place shelters and psychic mycelium networks began forming. Bioengineered crops developed sentience—and purpose. And the researchers? They were changed.

Some were absorbed into their work—literally. Others became more than human. These were the first Harvesters.

The Green Quiet: Harvester Ascension

In the chaos that followed the Hodgepocalypse, cities fell to internal collapse, monsters, or worse. But the southern plains became eerily quiet. The Harvesters claimed it.

The Harvesters rebuilt based on the communal principles of the Hutterite colonies—shared work, spiritual unity, and resistance to modern individualism. Their version of faith was no longer religious but biological. Life was not created in the image of a god but designed and cultivated in the service of a more excellent spiritual network.

They dug deep into the earth to grow their Rootworks—crystal matrices laced with psychic current. They wrapped their compounds in Tree Breaks and cultivated forests with sentient evergreens, fungus-borne sentries, and carnivorous vines. They grew their communication networks from Tree Boxes and transported people via psychic teleportation through plant interfaces.

Genefield was born near the ruins of Saskatoon, a blend of living architecture and ritual science. It was the first major Harvester Compound, a prototype community where mind-linked plant creatures, modified humans, and psychic interfaces blurred the line between agriculture and sentience.

Over time, they sent “Stumpys”—modified worker strains—outward to maintain outer posts. They created Podlings—human-plant hybrids with plausible deniability—to interact with outsiders when necessary. Behind the scenes, Dreamtime portals allowed them to commune with realities outside this one. And when outsiders approached too boldly, they found themselves lost in an endless forest or dreaming of vines they could never escape.

Saskatchewan Today: Harvester Territory

 Now, much of Saskatchewan—particularly the southern and central regions—is controlled by Harvester compounds. Some are benign and curious, others distant and cold, and a few are dangerously experimental.

Genefield remains the cultural and biological heart of Harvester territory. It is not an empire but a network of botanical communes, grown from a philosophy that understanding, shaping, and merging with life is the path forward.

They are not mind flayers in the traditional sense, but they listen and plant thoughts.

Timeline of Genefield and the Harvester Expansion

Pre-Hodgepocalypse Era 

 

• Agri-Tech Renaissance:
  Southern Saskatchewan sees a massive boom in biotech and agri-science. The University of Saskatchewan becomes a world leader in gene-editing research and vertical farming. Rural Hutterite colonies are early adopters of AI-driven crop management, often outperforming corporate farms.
• Neural Grafting Trials:
  Private labs around Saskatoon begin experimenting with neural-linked plant systems—organisms designed to react to human thought. Breakthroughs in photosynthetic neural netting draw the attention of international investors.
• Vehicle Singularity:
  For the first time, vehicles outnumber humans across the prairies. Automated harvesters, drones, and long-haul trucks operate with minimal human interaction. Many small towns begin to hollow out, becoming ghost communities sustained by machines.
• The Green Whisper:
  Workers in the agri-belts report a phenomenon: dreams of vines, compulsions to garden, and nations of talking trees. It’s dismissed as rural psychosis or "Agri-Syndrome." But something ancient has started to awaken.

The Hodgepocalypse

 

• The Leyline Burst:
  Earth's ley lines ignite in a cataclysmic wave known as the Hodgepocalypse. Magic returns violently. The magnetic poles shift, and portals to the Dreamtime rupture across the planet. Technological systems fail or mutate.
• Saskatoon Collapse:
  The city implodes under magical pressure. Machines and genetically modified crops begin fusing with magic. Some biotech labs are absorbed into the growing Rootweb, an emergent psychic plant network. Survivors flee or vanish into the overgrowth.

Rise of the Harvesters  

 

• Emergence of the First Harvesters:
  A group of altered researchers and Hutterite descendants declare the formation of a “new covenant with the soil.” They fuse communal living with psychic plant technology. Genefield is founded on the edge of Saskatoon’s green ruins.
• Rootwork Network Established:
  The first Rootworks tunnels connect nearby former colonies. Thought travel becomes possible for the psychically attuned. Communication trees bloom in precise geometric spirals—biological antennae for the collective mind.
• Tree Break Defense Initiative:
  Entire compound borders are enclosed in magically altered evergreen forests. These forests are grown specifically for defense, surveillance, and camouflage. The compounds begin to “disappear” from the aerial view.
• The Podling Accord:
  Genefield begins creating humanoid plant hybrids (Podlings) for contact with outsiders. Podlings serve as messengers, traders, and sometimes spies. Their role allows the Harvesters to stay isolated yet informed.
• The Dreamtime Interface:
  Genefield perfects a stabilized Dreamtime Portal, allowing psychic expeditions into metaphysical realms. The Sensitivity Chamber is grown beneath the Earth, becoming the central node of Harvester thought.

Harvester Dominion

• The Quiet Bloom:
  Over five years, southern and central Saskatchewan have fallen under Harvester's influence. No battles are fought. Villages go silent, only to later be reported as transformed into “compounds” with living walls and singing trees.
• Genefield Declared the Heartroot:
  A psychic consensus names Genefield the cultural and spiritual hub of the Harvester network. While not a government, it becomes the arbiter of growth, experimentation, and diplomacy with outsiders.
• Bio-Relics Unearthed:
  Dreamtime explorers return with ancient seeds and alien plant blueprints. Genefield grows strange, semi-sapient crops that whisper in ancient tongues and bear fruit only to the worthy.

Present Day 

 

• The Green Veil Holds:
  Harvester compounds are shrouded in psychic camouflage, visible only to those they choose. Rumors persist of flying plant ships, moving forests, and underground cities made of bone-root crystal.
• Genefield thrives not as a city but as a living being—part village, mind, and garden. It pulses in rhythm with the land, growing new minds, cultivating future paths, and waiting patiently for the world to realize it has already taken root.

Genefield: The Heartroot of the Harvesters

Location: Southern Saskatchewan, nestled within the overgrown ruins near the former city of Saskatoon.

Overview:
Genefield is not a town in the traditional sense. It is a symbiotic colony—a fusion of genetically engineered flora, communal living, and a collective psychic will known as the Green Consensus. It is the spiritual and administrative heart of the Harvesters, a post-human sect of mad botanists, benign brain hackers, and photosynthetic visionaries.

Culture and Social Structure

Core Beliefs:

 

• "We Grow Together": Harvesters believe individuality is a leaf, not a tree. Community decisions are made through psychic pollination—ideas are seeded and grown through consensus.
• Dreamtime Respect: They believe that Dreamtime is not just another plane but the original soil from which all life sprouted. Most ceremonies involve sleep, trance, and communion with higher plant intelligences.
• Body is Garden: Whether flesh, bark, or a hybrid, all bodies are gardens to be cultivated. Mutation is not feared—it is embraced as evolution.

Hierarchy (Such As It Is):

• The Rootmind (or The Consensus): A distributed psychic council of elder Harvesters. It is not a traditional governing body, but its dreams influence direction.
• Harvesters Proper: Geneticists, dream-divers, psychobotanists, and cultivated elders who live in giant tree homes and make decisions communally.
• Stumpys: Shorter, durable humanoids created through plant splicing to handle logistics, repair, and hard labor. Many are content, others dream of more.
• Podlings: Hybrid emissaries grown for interaction with the outside world. Uncanny in demeanor, they can pass as human—for a while.
• Guardians and Outsiders: Mercenaries, mutant traders, and plucky wanderers sometimes accepted into the outer layers of Genefield society. Most aren't trusted, but they’re watched—through the trees.

Notable NPCs of Genefield Prime

Elder Mycorris Vell

Title: Speaker of the Rootmind
Location: Mindroot Spire
Appearance: Elderly and serene, their skin glows faintly with embedded spores. Their eyes are pure white but constantly shift with drifting fungal patterns.

Background: Vell is one of the oldest harvesters, and it is rumored that it merged with the Rootmind decades ago. They no longer speak aloud; instead, they broadcast a calm, ever-present psychic voice in a ten-meter radius.

Quirks & Hooks:

• May ask adventurers to “retrieve lost dreams” from corrupted mind-sprouts.
• Secretly haunted by the echo of an old self—possibly still alive and rogue.
• Keeps calling one of the party members by someone else’s name.

Bliss-of-Pollen

Title: Emotion-Weaver of the Silken Quarter
Location: The Silken Quarter, Genefield’s emotional art district
Appearance: They wear a patchwork robe of pollen-soaked silks. Tiny beetles crawl over their shoulders, feeding off their skin.

Background: Bliss specializes in crafting “mood blossoms”—custom plants that evoke strong emotions when smelled. A darling of the artistic caste but deeply involved in subtle social engineering through mass emotion manipulation.

Quirks & Hooks:

• Has created an illegal sorrow flower that's become popular among mourning cults.
• Wants the PCs to help steal back a rare “first kiss vine” from Broadroot Market.
• Claims they can help a PC “feel love again” through one final project.

Dr. Xel Ternik

 

Title: Greenforge Biotechnician
Location: Greenforge Hollow
Appearance: Four arms, two grafted on; wears an apron of stitched moss. One eye is a blinking seedpod.

Background: Ternik was once a rational scientist—until the Hodgepocalypse rewrote biology. Now a mad botanist in the Harvester tradition, they’re always looking to test new biotech enhancements on volunteers.

Quirks & Hooks:

• Offers upgrades—some helpful, some weird (like “symbiotic hearing mushrooms”).
• Wants help tracking down an escaped “sapient potato” that keeps writing poetry.
• Secretly growing an army of sentient vines in the Rust Cyst.

Stumpy Jo

 Title: Revolutionary Rootspeaker
Location: The Rootspire, often in hiding
Appearance: Limbless and floating in a cradle of levitating fungi. Eyes glow with psychic fire. A fringe cult sees them as messianic figures.

Background: Once cast out of the Consensus for “radical individuality,” Jo survived by grafting their nervous system to a mobile fungal cradle. Now leads a growing fringe movement: the Sporesplitters, who believe in personal autonomy over collective decision-making.

Quirks & Hooks:

• Wants the PCs to smuggle in forbidden literature—ideas from before the Hodgepocalypse.
• Hints that the Rootmind is growing unstable, and Jo hears it scream at night.
• Might offer psychic shielding against mind-dominating Harvesters—for a price.

Meeka “Rustpetal” Vern

 Title: Scrap Shepherd
Location: Rust Cyst
Appearance: Covered in rust-hued carapace armor with moss growing in the cracks. Has bio-mechanical legs, one of which is sentient and occasionally argues with her.

Background: One of the few who understands the wooware made biomechanical hybrids of Genefield’s scrapyards. Keeps dangerous creations pacified with pollen-laced oil and dream hymns. She’s gruff, protective, and entirely done with everyone’s nonsense.

Quirks & Hooks:

• Something in the scrapyard has gone quiet—and Meeka’s too scared to go alone.
• Her leg wants to run away and “find itself.” The leg asks the PCs for help.
• Carries a sealed box she refuses to open—rumor says it’s ticking.

Sir Current

Title: Flow-Speaker of the Breathing River
Location: Beneath the river, accessed via bioluminescent stepping stones
Appearance: It appears as a humanoid figure made entirely of river water and woven reeds. When they speak, fish swirl inside them to form words.

Background: A water-elemental entity bonded with Harvester psychic tech, Sir Current is both the ambassador and guardian of the Breathing River. They represent the collective memory of those who’ve drowned in the river—and those who’ve dreamed beside it.

Quirks & Hooks:

• Will exchange one truth for another. Tell it a secret, and it will offer knowledge.
• Claims the river remembers the world before and can take someone back—briefly.
• Warns the PCs: “The river’s heart is cracking. The Dream Tide is coming.”

The Fringefolk of Genefield

Despite the dominance of the harvesters, other species live under their watchful canopy.

Beaver Folk

 

Hardworking and community-focused, Beaver Folk are essential to Genefield’s infrastructure. They maintain water channels, root-grown bridges, and semi-aquatic structures along the Breathing River and its tributaries. Known for their practicality and stubborn pride, they often act as engineers, builders, and local elders in riverside villages and the overgrown remnants of former cities.

Bogey

Bogeys are elusive, shadowy figures specializing in moving unseen and knowing things no one should. They are drawn to the Whisper Warrens, a fungal tunnel network that winds beneath the Bloom Markets and connects hidden caches and lore vaults. Often serving as messengers, dream smugglers, or spies, they thrive in the grey areas of the dreamworld’s society.

Cats

 Cats in Genefield are sleek, semi-mystical wanderers with a knack for navigating unstable dreamscapes. Whether sapient feline folk or just hyperintelligent cats, they often lounge in the Silken Quarter, where emotions steep into reality. Some serve as familiars, oracle companions, or aloof observers of great importance, never quite saying what they know.

Elf

 Elves act as psychically attuned wardens of the old leyroots, keeping harmony in the emotional fields and green cathedrals of the Dreamtime. Most can be found tending memory groves or tending spiritflowers in the Greenhold Glades, though some moonlight as mystic guides through dangerous regions like the Moss-Vault Flats.

Fate Fugitives

 Born from destiny, escaped into flesh. These are former spirits who became mortals to escape cosmic servitude. They seek new meaning, new stories, and freedom from fate's design. Their presence warps probability—and they’re hunted by things best not named.

Feylin

These manic, pop-culture-infused fae love all things flashy, nostalgic, and emotionally resonant. They’re drawn to Genefield’s “neo-dreamwave” cultural zones, like the Broadroot Bazaar, where they run shops filled with mixtapes, glam artifacts, and memory-mirroring fashion. Their magic is real, but their vibe is chaotic.

Garter Folk

Garter Folk are sly, clever serpent-folk who glide through wetlands and overgrown ruins. They dominate the breathing river, where they trade rare reagents, secrets, and semi-illegal biotech. Known for their coded language and impeccable taste in slippery fashion, they often play middlemen or informants.

Gnome

 

Tinkerers of spores and rogue mycelium, gnomes are eccentric inventors and meme-priests of the rust-bloom faith. Around the Rust Cyst, they build twitchy gadgets, emotion detectors, and symbiotic dream machines. Many act as brokers between the Harvesters and more “normal” species.

Human

Humans are a declining but adaptable species in Genefield, often remembered for causing the Hodgepocalypse yet respected for their ingenuity. Some have integrated into new biocultures as diplomats, medics, or mercenaries, especially in zones like Shelltown, where reclaimed human settlements still pulse with life.

Saskatoon Reclaimed: Genefield Prime

 Saskatoon wasn’t just rebuilt after the Hodgepocalypse—it was regrown. Concrete gave way to creeping mycelium and regenerative vinecrete. Glass towers cracked open like seed pods, replaced by hive-minded tree structures, biotech silos, and psychic gardens.

Most original streets are gone or now serpentine moss paths. Some skyscrapers still loom—now hollowed, wrapped in bark, and filled with fungal nerve clusters. Below the city, the river still flows—but it's sentient now.

Key Transformed Locations

The Breathing River (formerly the South Saskatchewan River)

 No longer just water—it now filters memory and mood through bioluminescent algae and dream-sifting reeds. Certain places “sing” when walked beside. The Riverspines, floating seed-barges, travel from pod to pod.

 Plot Hook: A traveler reports that the river “spoke their name” and revealed their future death.

Broadroot Market (based on Broadway Avenue)

 An open-air bazaar grown from massive, hollowed tree trunks and living stalls. Traders exchange spore-based tech, fungal dyes, mind-nectars, and emotional memories.

• Currency? Bloomchits—bioluminescent petal-coins.
• Security? Carnivorous plants called Shopmaws—they only bite thieves.

 Plot Hook: A series of perfectly behaved Shopmaws suddenly go rabid. Who fed them forbidden memories?

CLS – The Containment Lumen Spindle

 Once one of Canada’s largest science projects, a synchrotron light source that does crazy high-end particle imaging and experimentation, the Harvesters unearthed it. Still a synchrotron, but it's been reclassified as an Ancient Light Harvester, it was used to trap “primordial photons” that haven’t existed since the beginning of time. A ring of particle accelerators and failed quantum prisons, it’s a glitch beacon now, flaring up whenever someone tampers with time, identity, or dimensional constants.

Plot Hooks: Strange clones of people start appearing around the city — all claiming to be the original.

The Dormant Circle (formerly Circle Drive)

 A partially collapsed ring road has been converted into a migratory garden belt. Giant walking trees, tended by the Leafbound Rangers, circle it seasonally. Locals view it as a spiritual pilgrimage route.

 Plot Hook: A segment of the circle refuses to grow this year. Something is poisoning the soil from beneath.

Greenforge Hollow (formerly Innovation Place)

 

Now a biotech laboratory fused with ancient mycorrhizal networks. Bioengineers—some human, some plant—develop living machines, grafted limbs, and psychic seeds.

• Experimental growing towers shift form with the seasons.
• Plants bred here can walk, talk, or explode on command.

 Plot Hook: A genetically bred guardian goes feral and begins absorbing knowledge—and people.

The Mindroot Spire (formerly the University of Saskatchewan)

 The old university now functions as the core nerve cluster of the colony. The original stone buildings are barely visible beneath bark and psychic vines. It houses:

• The Rootmind Network (collective dream chamber)
• Neurofungal Archives (living library)
• The Spore School (where children are taught via symbiotic fungi)

 Plot Hook: A section of the Rootmind starts sprouting alien thoughts—it's been invaded by an outside dream.

The Rootspire (formerly SaskTel Centre)

 What used to be an arena is now the towering Rootspire, a colossal tree-ringed ziggurat that serves as both amphitheater and bio-judiciary. The walls vibrate with collective judgment; trials are settled through psychic debate.

 Plot Hook: A new speaker from the Stumpy caste has begun questioning the Consensus—and people are starting to listen.

The Rust Cyst (formerly industrial outskirts)

 This area was too toxic to regrow, so the Harvesters fused biotech with old scrap. It’s a junk-tech maze patrolled by Scrap Shepherds, mechanical drones given plant minds. Rogue creations sometimes escape.

 Plot Hook: A hybrid machine begins demanding worship and offering gifts. They’re... effective, but at what cost?

Shelltown (formerly Nutana Suburbs)

A residential district rebuilt using bio-shell pods—half plant, half insect, all unnervingly organic. It’s quiet, peaceful, and too perfect.

 Plot Hook: People who move here stop having dreams. Their old personalities start peeling away.

The Silken Quarter (based on Riversdale)

A district reimagined into soft canopy housing and emotional gardens. It’s where most social dreamers, artists, and whisper-weavers live. Emotions here are used like paint.

Plot Hook: Someone’s been bottling negative emotions and selling them on the black market. Addiction is spreading.

Unistation 

 Formerly the HMCS Unicorn, a  Canadian Naval Reserve division in Saskatoon, oddly located far from any coast, is a The Ghost Fleet Command Hub.  This landlocked naval control bunker wired into the "Whaleline," a hyperspatial current once used to navigate the old oceans — and now detected only in dreamspace. Was once part of a Cold War naval experiment into psychic navigation and extradimensional sea warfare. After the oceans were cracked open during the Riftfall, it's now the only known landlocked port that can access the Astral Tides.

Plot Hooks: The "Whaleline" is being hijacked — someone's using it to move weapons or monsters across reality.

The Verdant Veil (formerly Midtown Plaza)

Now, a greenhouse-temple where priest-botanists and dreamwalkers meet. The mall has collapsed inward, but in its place is a massive biome full of emotion-reactive flora, humming with ancient power.

 Plot Hook: One of the emotion-flowers starts emitting pure hatred. People exposed to it become violent and obsessed.

 Utility Zones

• Skyvine Network: Bioluminescent vines strung between buildings transmit energy and data.

 

• Glowbees: Psychic bees that carry pollen and news from one part of the colony to another.

 

• Fleshrails: Sentient transit vines. You ride in a soft tube that pulses gently as it moves you through the city.

 

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