Locations

The Militia Barracks

Half of a garrison is what it has. The other half is what everyone believes it has.

Recorded history

The building was a Territorial Army centre before the Fall, and by the time it reached the archive it had been abandoned.

It first appears on file as a place nobody went. The two Old Soldiers, whose headquarters it had once been, had laid wire and anti-personnel traps deep around it, and the only route through was known to the two men who laid it. No faction and no individual would go in. It is where the pair met again after years apart, each having believed the other dead.

Later accounts describe something else. They make the barracks a point of contact in north Wales for surviving soldiers and for whatever remained of pre-Fall authority, drawing in British Army personnel and, at some point, the Crown department that calls itself RENED. Some survivors also remember it as an old headquarters after the bombs.

The archive holds both descriptions of the building and cannot say how the one became the other, or when.

The garrison

What Caernarfon can put on the road is the subject of constant rumour, and rumour is all the archive holds. The garrison is said to have scrounged together:

a Ferret armoured car, and a crew for it;
two Saxon armoured personnel carriers;
a Saracen, described by one soldier as "a fucker on six wheels". The archive has transcribed this because it cannot improve on it as a description.

There are also persistent stories of an FV101 Scorpion light tank, formerly stationed at FOB Llanbedr, which was once RAF Llanbedr, making its way towards Caernarfon "by any means necessary", with stragglers and surviving personnel picked up along the route. What is left of CONRAD, a Control by Radio communications system meant for government after a nuclear strike, is rumoured to be attached as well. The rumour does not say whether to the garrison or to the column.

Whether any of it is true is another matter. In the Wasteland, half the strength of a garrison is what it actually possesses, and the other half is what everyone believes it possesses. The archive is not in a position to say which half this list belongs to.

Filed as the barracks

A soldier in a scrim-covered helmet and camouflage smock holds a rifle in a wet, debris-strewn lane. Behind him a large stone building with broken windows stands behind high fencing and coils of razor wire, a steel watchtower hung with aerials at the corner of the wall and a figure at an upper window. — Filed as the Militia Barracks. A soldier in the lane outside, wire along the wall, a watchtower at the corner and somebody at an upper window. The archive cannot place it against either description of the building.

Archive notes

Former Territorial Army centre at Caernarfon, known as the Militia Barracks.
First on file as sealed by the Old Soldiers, with a way in known only to them.
Now reported as a garrison, a point of contact for surviving British soldiers and pre-Fall authority, and the place RENED came to in north Wales.
How the first condition became the second is not established.
Some survivors remember the building as a headquarters after the bombs.
Garrison strength is rumour: a Ferret, two Saxons and a Saracen. A Scorpion is said to be on its way from FOB Llanbedr, possibly with what is left of CONRAD.