If you were a tourist from planet Sunrise you would find it easy to judge the population of Camp Lamplight with a few sweeping statements. You could call them crude and uneducated, you might go so far as to call them uncivilized. In a whisper you could call them dirty and violent.
All of these things are a little unfair. It is true that Camp Lamplight does not have a school and its children do grow up uneducated, where even rudimentary things such as math and literacy are wanting. Very few people in Camp Lamplight can read and they have a poor grasp of the galaxy around them. Their whole world is Camp Lamplight.
Are they crude and uncivilized? This should be placed in its proper context. By the standards of planet Sunrise, with its futuristic mega cities with innovative sewer systems and little shops with little overpriced soaps, Camp Lamplight is dirty and uncivilized. But Camp Lamplight and its people are shaped by its surroundings. They are precisely so civilized that they survive, and on Rimworld #53219 this is no small feat.
Dirty and violent however they are plainly not. Hygiene is no joke in Camp Lamplight and failing to live up to basic hygiene standards is a punishable crime. Medicine is in short supply at the best of times and cleanliness is the enemy of disease. You’ll hear the doctor preach this as passionately as any priest. The sheriff tolerates a degree of fisticuffs but the moment something goes beyond that there is hell to pay. Camp Lamplight might be the least violent place in the galaxy. You know … in its proper context.
Over the years several factions of importance have arisen in Camp Lamplight. No longer is there the old divide between guard and prisoner, rather there are new divides between families and professions.
Do not forget though that to outlanders we are one Camp Lamplight. Right?
Please see the Role List for which positions are available.
There would be no Camp Lamplight without the sheriff and their guards. They rule Camp Lamplight according to galactical prison law - more or less. In Camp Lamplight the sheriff is judge, jury and executioner. Neither the sheriff nor the guards are locals, instead they are citizens of planet Sunrise and have come here on guard rotation. The average guard rotation for Rimworld #53219 is ten years and very few would volunteer for such a position. It is career suicide, and for the sheriff especially one has to wonder: why did they come here?
The Howler Family are royalty by the standards of Camp Lamplight. They are the only ones who know how to operate the radio and thus they control everything. Zealously they guard the secret of reading, so that no message coming in or out of Camp Lamplight does so without going through them. This means that they alone know the time and location of the supply drops and subsequently they control the food and medicine. If you need something off-planet be assured you will not get it without doing a few favours for the Howlers.
The main saloon is also run by them. So long as Camp Lamplight is a prison, they rule it, and in turn they are ruled with an iron fist by the head of the family.
The identity of the Hunter family is as simple as their name. They are the only people in Camp Lamplight who dares leave the fort to hunt and gather. If the Howlers won’t give it to you, you can always hope the Hunters have something to spare. They ply a dangerous trade and few factions see as many losses as the Hunters, but they make up for it by having far more children than anyone else. They are loud, rowdy, and disorganised, but good at heart and keen to value each voice. They have a very strong community spirit and they are the ones who pushed the hardest for the application as an outpost. If they could simply be free to trade they would be wild and free and perfectly happy.
This family isn’t actually called Smith, but they are smiths by trade and they were a godsend upon their arrival. Finally, there was someone to make the many metal fixtures that could secure the ramshackle buildings! Their trade is so invaluable that they have no enemies, but they are also … outsiders, off-worlders. Even though they've been here for several years, plying their invaluable trade, they find that though there’s many things that divide Camp Lamplight, nothing unites them as effectively as an outsider. It is hard work becoming part of a small community.
Once upon a time a man poisoned the water main of Planet Sunrise and killed many people. Some say several thousand, but in truth it was closer to two dozen. Why he did it no one knows, but he did get sent with all the other death row prisoners to Camp Lamplight. Here he served as a doctor, found someone he could tolerate, and had a child. That child took over the family business, but started using poisons in their medical quantities and became a doctor. Doc Poison is from a long line of Doc Poisons, but Doc Poison these days does a whole lot more healing and a whole lot less poisoning - we hope, anyway. To their aid Doc Poison has trained nurses, some trained here in camp, others off-world trained in fancy schools. In prison health care is free, but in a free world everyone sets their own rates.
The Lamplighter is the closest thing Camp Lamplight has to a priest. Their main job is to keep the lamps lit. It’s a dangerous job, when lanterns near the outer edges of the Fort go out, going there to light them must be done day or night. And at night, something could snatch you. This danger, and the great importance of the lantern, has given the Lamplighter its status as a religious leader. The Lamplighter is a neutral party at Camp Lamplight. The Lamplighter, as a community leader, also has good relations with the sheriff but remains in essence a prisoner too.
If you belong nowhere else in Camp Lamplight you probably belong here. Those who work the saloon would claim themselves free of alliance, but the saloon belongs to the Howlers so it’s a tenuous freedom at best. This is where the orphans and outcasts wind up. If you get by doing odd jobs you are part of the most motley of crews - the saloon family.
Not only has Camp Lamplight managed to apply for outpost status, miraculously something is even happening in the sluggish bureaucracy of Planet Sunrise. They have sent an ambassador to evaluate your community and they are a major deciding factor in whether you will continue living as prisoners or whether you will finally gain freedom and recognition as an outpost of Planet Sunrise. No one knows anything about the Ambassador or their entourage. All you know is that with their arrival nothing will ever be as it was before.
The thing about all those people who left and died is that not all of them died. Most did, and anyone foolish enough to leave should expect nothing else. But sometimes there’s people in these forests who could have come from nowhere else. What they do to survive is unclear but there’s something different about them. Something unnatural and terrifying. They aren’t hostile but none of you trust them.
The Lost are not a playable people, they're just flavor.