A Quick Guide to Dressing for Your Strain & Lineage

In previous blogs, we’ve explored how to dress for your faction and your union, helping you create a costume that tells the story of your character’s place in our corner of the post-apocalypse wasteland.

In this blog, you’ll find some guidance on how the different strains dress in BoomTown. This guide will be short and sweet, giving you a quick rundown on how to incorporate strain-specific details into your costume.

Your strain and lineage is more than just a character trait—it’s a defining part of who your character is and how they fit into BoomTown.

For a deeper dive into the nuances of each lineage, be sure to check out the rulebook, where you’ll find everything you need to bring your character to life. You can also hop over to our Discord to see pictures and see what everyone else is wearing.

Lineage: Elitariat

The Elitariat carry themselves as though the apocalypse was merely an inconvenience. Their look should scream wealth repurposed, a kind of faded glamour with a functional edge.

Digitarian 

Key Look: Sleek fabrics and clean lines mixed with scavenged tech: circuit boards repurposed as brooches, carefully patched coats. Combine tech pieces with leather strips salvaged from worn-out belts, discarded bags, or old furniture, and incorporate vintage tech scavenged from antique shops and flea markets.

Pure Blood 

Key Look: Tailored coats, high collars, and jewelry that once screamed luxury. A tarnished brooch or frayed silk scarf hints at faded grandeur. Think high-collared linen jackets or wide-brimmed hats adorned with faux jewels. Carry a weathered parasol or cane.

Solestros 

Key Look: Flowing fabrics, shimmering accents, and a look that feels ethereal, like starlight caught in human form. Add sun-inspired touches, a necklace with a golden disk, or a scarf dyed to mimic a prairie sunset. Keep it light and airy, as if you float above the Kansas plains even when trudging through dust.

Lineage: Nomad

Nomads don’t stay in one place, and their look is built for the road. In Boomtown, that means practical clothing with layers of sun protection and dust-covered gear.

Diesel Jock 

Key Look: Grease-streaked leather jackets, goggles, and fingerless gloves. See The Iron Rail Collective

Rover 

Key Look: Layers of mismatched clothing, scarves, and sashes tied for easy removal. Add hand drawn prairie maps patched onto your coat or carry a sun-faded journal of scavenging notes.

Saltwise 

Key Look: Stiff, bleached fabrics with hints of salt damage. Add ropes or netting. Use Kansas salt marches for inspiration, salt-crusted hats, or patches of the Morton Girl.

Lineage: Devoted

The Devoted are defined by their dedication to something greater than themselves: faith, ideology, or perhaps even survival itself. In Boomtown, that devotion should look worn but unwavering, as if your belief has been tested by every dust storm but never broken.

Accensorite 

Key Look: Start with sturdy, practical clothing, but layer it with details that scream faith and ritual. Scorched hems, painted gloves, a scarf with layered patterns. Add elements tied to Kansas wildlife, a blackened piece of prairie grass, or charms made from osage orange wood. 

Red Star 

Key Look: Faded reliable jackets, boots that have stomped across miles of dust. Incorporate relics of local history, patches shaped like wheat stalks or star insignias that echo the Kansas state flag.

Unborn 

Key Look: Layers that flow with the wind: long coats, loose sashes, and fabrics that look like they’ve survived centuries. Add trinkets of memory, like a cracked watch or a carved token. Integrate prairie-inspired elements, woven shawls, or scarves with wildflower motifs. 

Lineage: Evolved

The Evolved wear their survival as a badge of honor. Their costumes should be utilitarian, scarred by mutation, and built to endure.

Irons 

Key Look: Thick gloves, reinforced jackets, and clothing patched with metal scraps or rivets. Use rusty, sun-faded metal accents.

Reclaimers 

Key Look: Earth tones, scavenged plant life. Incorporate prairie grasses and wheat motifs, braid grasses into your scarf or attach small seed pods to your gear. 

Unstable 

Key Look: Asymmetry is key, torn sleeves, mismatched fabrics, and hints of biological instability like painted veins or glowing accessories. Add frayed scarves, loose, flowing fabrics that seem on the verge of unraveling, or goggles that shield your wild, unblinking stare.

Lineage: Gorger

The Gorgers embrace hunger, decay, and desperation. In Boomtown, their look should feel like they’ve emerged from the salt mines or risen from beneath the prairie itself.

Full Dead 

Key Look: Pale makeup, dark eye sockets, and tattered clothing with stitches suggesting you’ve sewn yourself back together. Add salt-crusted edges to your clothes, as if you’ve risen from underground salt mines. 

Semper Mort 

Key Look: Decayed formality, suits or dresses that have seen the grave. Faded elegance paired with a grim practicality. The people who got frozen would have been local business types, insurance salesmen and the like. Incorporate Kansas charm: bolo ties or prairie-inspired lace patterns.

Lascarian 

Key Look: Heavy, light blocking fabrics, hopefully lightweight enough to survive the heat. See Tel’Veracians.

Lineage: Landsman

The Landsmen are tied to the earth and tradition. In Boomtown, their outfits should look practical and sun-beaten, as if they’ve weathered countless seasons under the prairie sky.

Merican 

Key Look: Denim, plaid, and trucker hats. Add patched overalls or boots with worn-out soles. Include wheat stalks tucked into your hatband or a rope lasso slung over your shoulder. A rusted horseshoe tied to your pack screams BoomTown prairie life.

Natural One 

Key Look: Greens and browns, draped fabrics, and woven accessories. Add hand-carved wooden trinkets or charms. A cloak made from stitched-together feed sacks adds both practicality and charm.

Quiet Folk 

Key Look: Rustic, homespun fabrics layered with scarves and hats that suggest secrecy. Add small tokens of prairie life, a hand-carved whistle or a pouch of seeds tied to your belt. Keep your hat wide-brimmed and shadowy.

Lineage: Townie

Townies bring regional personality to their survival gear. In Boomtown, their costumes should blend practicality with charm, nodding to small-town life.

Baywalker 

Key Look: Striped fabrics, rope belts, and simple, durable gear. Add prairie-meets-water elements, like a small fishing net tied to your belt or a weathered anchor charm.

Yorker 

Key Look: Leather jackets, clean lines, and bold accessories. Incorporate bandanas or sun-bleached hats and gloves that hint at a longer trek to BoomTown’s dusty roads under an unforgiving sun.

Vegasian 

Key Look: Sequins, bright colors, and showy accessories that demand attention. Steamboat chic. The Vegasians around Boomtown live on a large casino steamboat.

Lineage: Mutant

Mutants are celebrated for their remarkable ability to adapt genetically to their surroundings, with each Strain showcasing distinctive traits influenced by their particular region of the wasteland. Their costumes in Boomtown should feel fused with the dust, grit, and decay of the plains.

Remnant 

Key Look: Depends on mutations

Retrograde 

Key Look: Heavy clothing, often long sleeved. Use coyote pelts or other prairie animals as accessories. 

Tainted 

Key Look: Use asymmetry and unsettling, warped designs. Use elements from Kansas’ industrial history, rusted tractor parts or bits of machinery painted with neon accents.