EVENTS:

Peggy: "I, I'd only been as far as the bridge, never into the wastes... But, there has to be someone, something here! The Master's trucks have to come from some sort of settlement!"


Eigla starts probing the ground. Sand, sand, stone, broken concrete... Is that a wire?

She starts digging, revealing what seems to be an old, rusty power line, probably fallen from a long-gone electric pole. She starts pulling it up, following it to the top of a nearby dune-

Oh. So there's Le Refuge.


A huge crater stretches out before the party, probably miles across. The broken husks of fallen buildings little the blast zone, as well as impossibly huge bones, scoured white by the winds. A large, bottomless fissure cuts the ruins in half, sand slowly being blown inside by the wind.

The road seems to continue through the crater, though there is also a newer-looking path, marked by crude waystones, that skirts its edge.

EVENTS:

The group decides to circle around the vast crater, following the waystones. Curie falls behind a bit, as she stops several times to silently stare at the ruins. Nothing seems to be moving down there, however, save for the continuously falling sand.

When they've almost reached the other side, the party comes across a gigantic skeleton, hanging off the edge of the depression. In fact, "gigantic" doesn't even begin to describe it. It's snakelike, or pehaps dragonlike, and hundreds of meters long, with a spine as thick as a large tree, and jaws that could comfortably fit around a freight truck. It seems it was once even longer, but most of it was destroyed in whatever blast leveled the city, leaving only the front half intact.

Several of the skeleton's ribs seem to have been broken off so as to not block the improvised road. As you walk under it, the sheer size of it reminds you of a gothic church of bone and ash.

The wind picks up, bringing with it even more smoke and ashes. A sandstorm seems to be approaching.

EVENTS:

Klimt and Eigla consider using the giant skull as a shelter, but it's too spiny and full of holes to properly protect from the wind. The group will have to keep moving.

Half an hour later, the storm hits. Visibility is nonexistent, and you have to hold one another's hands to avoid getting lost. The piercing wind seems to get through every tiny crack in your ponchos, and its disorienting effects are unavoidable.

Rosa finds her mind constantly wandering, thinking of vast dark abysses and unfathomable depths. Looking around, she sees Eigla and Klimt practically sleepwalking, while Emilia has her eyes rolled over, brainlessly letting herself be pulled along. Peggy has passed out, and her limp body is being roughly dragged through the sand.

There is no sense of time or space within the storm. You might have walked for hours, or several days. Every so often there's a small piece of cover, and you take the chance to rest for a bit and munch on your dwindling supplies of jerky. No sunlight pierces the unending cloud of ash, so there is no way to know the time. Your path is lit only by the flashes of distant thunder.


Eventually, something changes. Instead of light grey ash and sand, the storm grows darker, with an overpowering smell. Oil smoke? Volcanic fumes? There is no way to know, so you press onwards. The last few supplies are long gone, and everyone grows irascible and antsy. Curie has stopped talking, seeming to hibernate to conserve energy. Peggy is a limp cluster of limbs, tied to Klimt's shoulders with a rolled-up poncho.

Climbing over top of a particularly large dune, Eigla slips, and tumbles forwards. The rest of the group is dragged along with her, cutting and bruising themselves on rocks and broken pipes buried in the sand. Suddenly, there's a break in the wind.


A huge building, or perhaps a mountain, lies in front of you, its silhouette broken by a veritable forest of smokestacks and wind turbines. You can't see where it starts or ends through the impenetrable dust clouds, but at least some part of it is close to your position. There is a small door on the side of the concrete and corrugated metal behemoth, promising some sort of shelter.

EVENTS:

Klimt cautiously approaches the door. It is clearly old, encrusted with rust and a thick layer of soot. A sticky red liquid seeps from under it, as well as through cracks in the concrete wall.

Eigla knocks on the door, leaving fist-shaped indentations on the metal surface. She doesn't feel in full control of her strength at the moment.

Minutes pass. No one answers. There might be sound coming from the other side, but the howling winds drown all meaning.

EVENTS:

Rosa approaches the door, propping her huge, powerful tail against it. She activates the inner piston, slamming the portal with all her might.

The door is blown clean off its hinges, falling inwards. A powerful stench immediately floods the group's nostrils, like a mix of manure, blood and rotting flesh.
Inside, there is a small concrete corridor, floor slick with blood, lit by flickering tungsten lamps. It ends abruptly in what seems to be an old-style industrial elevator, sliding door invitingly open.
More blood, as well as other oily fluids, slowly drip down the shaft, pooling under the lift. Even the walls seem to be seeping an unpleasant mucus, and even the normally imperturbable Emilia starts retching.

EVENTS:

Emilia seems to look right through Klimt as he speaks with her. Her hands make strange, repetitive motions as she follows the rest of the group inside.

Emilia: "It, it tells me to chop and cut..."


You all pile into the elevator, closing the folding door and pressing the UP button. As the machine screeches into life, scraping the walls of the shaft, a downpour of blood and oil falls down onto you, drenching you to the bone. Emilia falls to her knees, spilling the meager contents of her stomach onto the lift's metal floor.

Eventually, you reach the top and move out, gasping for air. You seem to be in a massive open room, like an oversized warehouse, lit by the same unhealthy, flickering amber lights. Conveyour belts and pipes crisscross the ceiling, many dripping unknown fluids down onto the rusty metal floor. The few windows you see are boarded up, and large industrial fans do little to remove the pervasive smell.

Most disturbing of all, the floor you're in seems to mostly be made of a rectangular pattern of catwalks, stretching over a large pit. On the bottom, some 20 feet below, you see a mass of moving creatures, hard to distinguish from the waist-high mud they're living in. As you approach the edge of the platform, they start squealing and jumping in your general direction, splashing manure in every direction. One of the pipes in the ceiling begins to gush a red slurry onto the pit, and the beasts swarm to it, seemingly forgetting about your presence.

A small group of zombies, wearing rags and leather aprons, pushes a simple cart along the catwalk, filled with decomposing bodies, solid waste and Flesh too rotten to use. Ignoring you completely as they pass by, they dump the contents into another pit, then start slowly walking back the way they came.