The Green Place

History

The Green Place was an idea and a dream long before it got official approval in 2019. There were already a few camps in 2016 that carried a Vuvalini aesthetic, and the idea to form a neighborhood of these tribes started around 2017. Attempts were made for a couple years to organize a Vuvalini neighborhood, but without official backing from the Wasteland Admin.

In 2018, there was an unofficial Green Place neighborhood right where the ward is placed today, consisting of the Clan of the Boltcutters, the Keepers, and the Sanctum of the Many Mothers.

After the event in 2018, Sanguine approached Donda about making a serious push to get the Green Place to exist officially. We knew the Wasteland Admin were enthusiastic about a Vuvalini neighborhood, but we just hadn’t found the right pitch to get them to sanction it.

In the early months of 2019, Sanguine and Donda drafted a pitch to Admin, drawing on what we knew they had been interested in and what had not struck a chord with them in the past. We settled on spreading the theme out a little bit, to allow for nomadic looks that were not strictly within the Vuvalini aesthetic, and to focus the overarching theme of the ward solely on a shared look, leaving out the previous attempts to include a Green Place culture as part of the defining characteristics.

In February 2019, we sent our completed proposal to Admin, and they gave us their approval!

Thus began a whirlwind of planning, with Sang and Donda preparing everything needed for the ward, from making signs to starting to build our community spaces and find more tribes to join us, to working with Admin to make sure everything would work as smoothly as possible.

In April 2019, we were able to work closely with Admin and propose our idea for the Initiates Zone, and were given approval to go ahead with it as an experiment. Sang and Donda were then able to do further outreach and find small, non-tribe camps with our shared aesthetic who wanted to join our ward and get a chance to camp in the Theme Zone with the official tribes.

Wasteland Weekend 2019, the ward’s first year, was a tremendous success. We had 7 placed tribes, 13 initiate camps, and a total of 93 people camped in the ward. Our placed tribes inculded Backwoods Convoy, The Clan of the Boltcutters, The Farlanders, OG Arcade/Temple of Valhalla, The Ragweavers, The Sanctum of the Many Mothers, and The Smog City Civic Center.

We filled up all of our available space for initiates, and had to overflow into some nearby unused land. It was great to see people so enthusiastic about the ward, and there was a great sense of community among the tribes and initiate camps.

In early 2020, Sanguine stepped down as a warden in order to take a much needed break and address oncoming burnout. Kodiak stepped up to take her place as a new co-warden with Donda, and from there it was full-steam ahead on planning our next year!

Despite the cancellation of 2020’s Wasteland Weekend event, we were still able to work with Wasteland Admin on our plans and dreams for 2021. After 2019, 5 of our initiate camps decided to take the plunge and apply for full tribedom, a few more showed interest in joining us, and it was quickly apparent that the Green Place was growing fast!

The Green Place entrance sign nestled between our Mojave Express stop, the Tree Thing altar, and our events sign in 2021

The Green Place's second year was another resounding success, despite many of our anticipated tribes having to skip the year due to the ongoing state of the world. Instead of nearly doubling our number of placed tribes, we stayed about the same size, with 7 placed tribes (some old, some new), 7 initiate camps, and 64 people total camped in the ward.

Our tribes in 2021 were The Boneyard Buzzards The Clan of the Boltcutters, The Fire Ferals, The Lost Toys (a tribe that made the jump from the Initiates Zone!) The Ragweavers, Salt City Scavs (a contingent of the Farlanders), and The Scam Bandits.

With the base infrastructure of the ward already built, Donda and Kody were able to focus on beautifying the ward in 2021, with an upgraded Path to Peedom, new street lighting along the entire length of the road, and our own Mojave Express stop. The Green Place Homeguard was also debuted in 2021, giving Green Place residents a chance to support the ward and interact with the wider community in a fun, in-character way.