Lore update: the ballad of El Farid and Jack Flash.
((This is based on my idea of giving lore to loreless areas of neocron, I had a story in mind and I wanted to run with it, commentary and suggestions, alternate ideas, and general comments are always welcome!))
The wastelands weren't always as dead as they are now, you know. I'm talking even after the war, I mean look around there were plenty of little towns-- Tawkeen, Crest, Loba, Yucinda-- and perhaps most famous of all the former trading post of El Farid. It wasn't too long ago that trade caravans running from city to city stopped there overnight, or to hawk their wares to the locals, tank up on water at the oasis and rest their droms.
There was enough foot traffic that no one noticed a few small groups go missing. It was hot talk for the caravaners back when, fodder for rumors. Of course there were enough troubles with worms in the area, and the occasional DoY bot wandering around it wasn't unusual for a caravan a week to go missing somewhere. El Farid was in a safe enough spot though, it shouldn't have had the casualty rate it did. Then there were whispers of strange goings on at night, during the new moon under an ominously black lightless sky.
Village folks are funny sorts, some of them lived right on top of ancient war factories and never were too much bothered by it, others buried their dead in caves home to snakes that would kill outsiders on sight and but quick too, El F though has to take the cake.
They had a strange sort of religion, bits of old world, bits of Ceres War propaganda, and some downright frightening gods like "the trader of souls" and "Screamer in the Dark." They'd keep it to themselves usually, might talk a bit to a trader whose face came to be known around the town, but outsiders only ever got whispers of "She Who Comes in the Night." Unless they got taken to see her that is.
When the stars were just so, and the group wasn't too big to bushwhack, they'd knock the visitors out and carry them down to the storage rooms under the city. The next thing a poor sod knew he was waking up in a brick-lined pit with a primordial scorpion the size of a hovertank perched over them. A quick sting, the painful ripping of an ovipositor and they were done for, food for the next brood.
Well those bastards made their mistake when they grabbed a kid named Jack Flash. He'd made his start walking the dust road from techhaven, and you really don't want to screw with a kid that cut his teeth dodging DoY cyber-bombers and war cyborgs. They said he was the fastest gun north of Blakkmist, and that he could peg a credit chit from a hundred yards with his fusion pistol. I'm not so sure about that but a hell of a lot of men ended their life to the camera-flash pulse of his Atomfist pistol.
He was running with a caravan group looking for fun, or a challenge, who knows. What we know is they made the stop, got slipped something in the tea, and that was that... except it wasn't, not for Jack Flash.
See the Cult of the Scorpion made two huge mistakes-- they forgot to pop the module out of his psi glove when they went to strip them down, and since they'd never seen a stealth injector before they didn't bother to get it off him either.
He woke up laying on the ground with a pounding headache, to the sound of horrific chittering, and a dull ache in his gut where the queen's attendants had run him through with a stinger. He already couldn't feel his legs and he was going numb pretty damn quick. Jack's still mighty quick though, even with enough poison to kill a Grim Chaser in his veins.
One, two, three, in quick and precise order. One: throw everything he's got into his psi-glove and get the poison out of him. Two: hit the stealth injector. Three: less than a minute to get the hell out of there.
A minute can be a quick time or it can be an eternity. When you're hopped up on adrenaline, nerve-blocking poison and a heavy head-rush of psi power... yeah it's a long long time, especially for a kid as quick as Jack Flash. He was halfway up the ladder before his brain caught up, and he was halfway to the exit before the effects of the poison really caught up to him. See a stealth injector speeds your heart up like a hamster hyped out on Redflash. He'd gotten plenty of the poison out with the Crahn module, but he was no monk, you see. It messed him up but good by the time he was crawling into an alley, gasping in the cool dry desert night air.
He wasn't ever the same either, Caravan found him wandering the desert south of Farid half out of his gourd and half dead, stuffed him into a generep and dumped him back to NC. Messed up end to a kid like Jack Flash: when they shoved him into the rep station it stored his pattern, of course it stored the one that had been chemically lobotomized by scopion venom. Poor unlucky bastard.
Except that wasn't quite the end.
