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Well now, I like them if nobody else does! Dammit, I can't believe you're in Edinburgh - I just moved from there to London! I'd have loved to see this stuff up close, all the work you put into each one really is something. It would drive me mad I think. But then again I am trying to do something similar for a small band of zombie apocalypse survivors I have. Wibble wibble wibble.
By the way, LOVING what you're doing with those vehicles! The truck is a badass piece of machinery and the smaller one is coming along nicely too! Sweet fluff too. Okay, that's enough crawling now
Hoi Hoi scarper, I've been pretty much absent from Dakka for a wee while but it's grand to see you're still going strong. just wanted to touch base and say keep it up, your minis are smashing and show up much love.
Cap'n R
Run a whole lot of wfrp and other rpg's, play The Woods and Kill Team, gather and look mournfully at imperial guard knowing I'll never finish enough to use them on the tabletop
@Jihad_Ragsta - Hahaha, not at all, I really appreciate the compliments. Thank you so much! And I think the individual attention probably comes from never really gaming with them - no pressure to get units down on the table, so I can take as long as I like! I would love a game if you ever happen to be up around Edinburgh again though. And I actually lived in London before I came to uni, just in case you want to kick yourself some more
@monkeytroll - Not this time round. That little episode did get me the most replies of anything I've posted though (I think!), so maybe I should make it a regular feature... Jumper girls for all! Every 3rd post a jumper girl! Starting next week Cheers for the well wishes
@Anung Un Rama - Groovy new avatar! And they do fit nurgle really well! I'm trying to get as many gas mask designs as I can into the army though - very much a 'non-standard equipment' kind of feel
@samwellfrm - Thanks! I really enjoyed last week. Taking my own models along for the first time tomorrow!
@alabamaheretic - Thanks so much! And don't worry, the guard won't be eclipsing the necromunda stuff, just for a few weeks or so to get my army cleaned up. I'm aiming for 750pts, and I'm basically there already with what I have
@Captain R - Hey, man, thanks so much for stopping by! I was actually wondering where you'd gotten to, thought maybe you'd gone from Dakka. Glad to see I was wrong though What are you up to at the moment?
UPDATES! Not the best pic, but a complete vet squad. Hope you like
More to come later today I hope - got some boring jobs to do, but then some free time this eve!
Thanks a ton, guys, I really appreciate the comments.
Not much of an update, but I've made some progress on my pimp my wizard entry. She'll eventually be part of my developing scavvy gang, so I thought some viewers might be interested!
(There are some other models in there that are one hell of a lot better than my work, so check it out if you can!)
Story update time! This one's about Coop and Riff again. Was in two minds about whether to post it, but here we go. It's the first of a two parter. Hope you like!
Ah, Riff and Coop. A great pair, those two – funniest bastards I’ve ever met who weren’t trying to get me to buy something. You’ve got to get them started on something, there’s – you won’t have heard nothing like it. No one else gets a word in, once they’re going at it – It’s always a competition. Just got to outdo eachother’s stories, you know? Has Coop told you how he ended up in the Penals yet? Oh, he will. I don’t want to spoil ‘em, but there’s one for every occasion – last I heard he got busted impersonating a Commissar to get at the Amsec rations in his PDF conscription. As to what he actually did? Pshh, who knows. Something small, I’d bet. Can’t imagine him hurting a rat if it wasn’t looking funny at Riff. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t cross him; he wouldn’t think twice if he had to, you know? Just - not one of those men who gets enjoyment from it.
They’re good people, basically. Twitch too, though he’s not right any more. The fact that they stick by him, what with his new mindset and all – kind of thing that says a lot about a character, I’d say. They’ve been through a lot together, and I wouldn’t believe how they tell it neither – the real story’s a lot less cheery. Less bear-wrestling, too.
So RiffRaff first, right? From what I’ve heard, she really did live in Haverbrook, and she did leave of her own accord before the Evac. I know! It’s not the ‘coming of age’, swashbuckling adventurer type exit she likes to spin though; it was a little more sordid; a little more sad. She wasn’t the same girl back then. There was a man involved – I know, I know – but this wasn’t a romantic story. Not through his eyes, anyway. He was some real scum from Rookpoint Spire, though Throne knows which part. His settlement kicked him out and he was living rough in Haverbrook, stealing whatever he could to survive. Got cornered by the Arbites, of course – they didn’t used to put up with the underclasses there. By then, though, he’d met Riff, and Riff’s parents were in the guild – real important people. She wasn’t so smart back then, too trusting, too naive. Typical surfacer. He span her a story about false accusations, an evil associate setting him up to steal his business or some such, saving orphans from landmines, I don’t know. But she bought it, and begged the watchmen who came for him to let his crimes slide, for her. Promised to make him her personal project. Considering how upset her parents would be if their daughter didn’t get her way, they actually listened. You believe that? Bastard probably couldn’t believe his luck either.
The guy kept in touch, of course. Wasn’t going to lose a mark like RiffRaff. Over the course of a few months, he started giving her a taste of underhive life – spun it as a way of thanking her. He had some old contacts who sold him ghost, kalma, spur, whatever they’d scraped out of the chem pits, and she took it all; she’d never seen anything close. Thought she was doing something spiritual, some kind of cultural vibe, and you can guess where it led her. There’s no place for addicts outside of the hive, no tolerance for them. She needed her hits, and he was the only place she could get them. He knew it, too. When her parents began to suspect that she was spending their credits on something other than booze and clothes, he suggested they run away together, live on the road and follow the rebels. He talked her into stealing nearly ten thousand credits from her parents – after all, what had they done for her? They would never understand. If she took what she could, they would have all they needed to live the good life, away from their meddling. The good life for Riff, of course, began with multiple stab wounds in a ditch barely three miles from Haverbrook.
Amazingly, that’s not where her story ended, though no doubt been the end of many other lives these days.
A trade caravan ran from Rookpoint city (the polite name for the sprawling expanse of corrugated plasteel and concrete that had surrounded the hive in recent years) to Easthollow, run by a young guy named McCaughey. They dealt mainly in reconditioned electronics, buying and fixing mining and industrial equipment – junk that others considered beyond repair. The caravan stopped at some of the smaller shanty towns along the way to sell their wares - an old-fashioned way to do business, at the time, but they made good money in the places that the bigger conglomerates didn’t consider quite profitable enough to cater for. McCaughey and his partners made a comfortable living, and Rookpoint state was fairly secure in governmental territory, meaning that the route was also ‘safe’, as far as trade routes went. Course, the rebellion had been underway for a fair bit of time, and bodies turned up on quiet stretches of every highway. No one asked questions anymore; it didn’t matter who they were. Some were dissenters, killed by governmental forces; some were soldiers – men and women who had fought on either side. Some, no doubt, were the poor bastards killed by bandits: desperate men feeding their families in any way they could, or simply those that had come to enjoy the anarchy. It’s hard to judge a man who couldn’t watch his children fade away, you know? Whoever they were, they all carried equipment and goods, and McCaughey quickly realised that a corroded autogun or repainted flak armour could fetch a decent price on the black market. It was in this capacity that one of his men discovered that RiffRaff was still breathing.
McCaughey was a businessman, and mercenary as all get out, but he wasn’t a monster. Riff rode in the back of one of their trucks as their expedition medic, an old PDF dog named Kew, looked her over. He gave her as much medication as they could spare. She had lost a lot of blood, gone septic from the dirt in her wounds, and was going through one hell of a comedown from the drug withdrawal. She would have been raving, seeing things; fighting and lashing out. Wouldn’t have been easy to deal with, even with the ReBound they pumped her full of. They took her anyway. Good people. McCaughey planned to offload her in one of the last few free clinics that the sisters were running once they got to Easthollow – keep her safe, but no longer his problem.
Over the few weeks they travelled, Riff recovered. Physically, at least. Her temperature dropped, the demons left her vision, and though the shakes came back with every missed dose, the gnawing pain in her gut was much more short lived. The pain in her chest, though, was there to stay. She had betrayed her parents, left her home, burdened and attacked strangers, and nearly died, all for the sake of protecting a man who then tried to kill her. She’d thrown away everything – everything she had ever known, you understand? – and she was only realising now how well she’d been played. The man she’d saved had stolen her life, and she would probably never see him again. Riff knew that she would never return to Haverbrook. How could she? She begged McCaughey to take her on for work, anything that he might have going. She had no skills (who the hell does, growing up in a palace?), but was desperate to repay the debt that she felt she owed. McCaughey turned her down though. He wasn’t one to refuse free labour, but the girl was a liability. Since she wouldn’t tell him where she was from, he would leave her in Easthollow, and that was that. Only, they never got that far.
Before the haze, you could see Easthollow for days. A crooked spear jutting into the sky, mottled orange and brown, like rotten wood. There was no getting lost, it was just there – on a clear day, you could almost make it out on the horizon from Rookpoint. Which is why, despite being a few days travel away, the men and women working for McCaughey saw Easthollow fall.
RiffRaff’s never really told anyone what happened next. Doesn’t like to talk about it, you understand. You ever see someone that’s been burned with rusinate runoff? Nah, I suppose you wouldn’t have. No one goes near the dumping sites anymore – most of ‘em are wired off and signposted by now. But this stuff, the stuff they used to ship off world? It’s – I can’t really properly get across the horror this gak provokes in anyone who survived Easthollow. It’s corrosive, it burns you, right? But that ain’t always what kills you. Sometimes it’s slower, more painful, inevitable. Get contaminated, and it burns you fierce on the contact site, sometimes through to the bone. Some people died then and there – I don’t know if it was the burn, don’t know if their blood carries the poison around their bodies, burns ‘em up from the inside. Just a splash, though, step in something out scavenging, stray too close to a restricted site, that won’t kill you by itself. I’ve got no idea how it works (Farrell’s your man for that, if he’s in a talking mood), but those who die outright are maybe the lucky ones. The survivors - they got the burns, sure, but there’s something else in there too, something that stays in your body once the burning’s stopped. Over a couple of weeks, they just started to swell up. Cancers, tumours, I don’t know. Some kind of growth that just starts out and don’t stop. Didn’t hit them evenly either: might just affect one arm, might be your face; could be your liver, might be in the brain. Some people went crazy – turned violent and aggressive, beat someone to death just for staring. Farrell says it must have been compression – in the skull, you know? Others just went vacant, staring into space or just walking into gunfire. A lot of people killed themselves. Barely looked human anymore, guess they didn’t feel it either.
You’ll still see them around, sometimes. You probably have, just wouldn’t recognise them. People don’t take too kindly to those who got burned. After the hive fell, a lot of people saw the crazy ones, saw what they’d do if they got close to you – There are still people around who’ll shoot a hollow on sight. I’ve only met one or two, but they keep wrapped up, no skin on show. I don’t think there’s many left now. It’s - just no way for a man to live.
Ah, Throne, you’re right. Sorry, where was I? Poor bastards always throw me off. Right! Easthollow. And the aftermath, I guess. Rumour is, it rained runoff in parts of Shantytown. Literally poured from the sky. Think of the worst acid shower you’ve seen out on the wastes, kind of thing that strips paint from your truck, and imagine it doing the same to people. Reduction compounds got thrown up into the air too – you know the stuff that gives you blight throat? This is where all of it came from. ALL of it. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? There were rebreathers and gas masks around, of course, industrial protection for workers and the like, but nothing like as many as we’ve got today. More people back then, too, so less to go around. McCaughey’s train had masks – reconditioning gear like that was what they did, but the general public had nothing to protect themselves. Riff would have seen it all – the burned, the people whose lungs were slowly dissolving, the hollow crazies, hell, starvation and regular disease will have taken thousands. At first, they sold to the crowds, but Kew eventually talked McCaughey into giving out the spare masks they had left for free to any who would take them. It was already too late, really. All I know for sure is that once it was clear that there were more refugees than there were resources, people got desperate. Once the shooting started, McCaughey made the wise decision to get the hell back to Rookpoint.
Their flight took them past Haverbrook, of course, though they didn’t slow down. Riff still wakes up sometimes convinced that the glow off the generator is the fires of her home. She had no idea if her parents had reached an evac, fled to safety, been killed in the fighting. Who knew? She had the realisation, then and there, that she didn’t really care. She felt nothing when she thought of them, of all her old friends and neighbours. It was like a different reality, an old time. Numbed.
Over the course of the next few months, McCaughey let Riff work. She’d told him she was from Easthollow, and as far as he knew, she had just watched every person she had ever met burn. In a way, she had. Bresnan, one of the younger lads working for his team, showed her how to make repairs as he fixed up the few things they had left, and slowly but surely she began to pick it up. They stayed in Rookpoint, for a few months. Too dangerous to head out, back when the air was still poison. They were one of the first caravans to head back into the wastes, among the first to re-establish contact with all the new settlements that had sprung up in the carcass of the old ones. Over the course of the next five years, they helped more than thirty settlements start up – mostly for profit, of course, though I understand McCaughey was known to sell below cost if he could see that people were dying. Once again, though, McCaughey was making himself a tidy living. They had a pretty high turnover of caravan guards: riding shotgun was dangerous in the early days. Lot of desperate people.
The last day that Riff saw her friends off the route, they were travelling from Pallain to Ruckett. A pretty safe route, usually – through the bones of the old world city of Newhall. Lots of stories were told in the camps of sinewy monsters eating travellers there, or gangs of cannibals, creatures that used to be human. Nonsense, of course, but it made for a quiet route. They were a small convoy – a couple of smaller buggies up front, heavy stubbers and flamers on pivots, to keep the road clear. Riff and Bresnan were in the back of the first merch truck along with a couple of guards. One more truck ran behind them, a single buggy following up from the rear. Safe, but manoeuvrable. She was chatting with Bresnan, she remembered. Joking about vampires ambushing their route.
The first explosion knocked Riff to the wooden floor and threw boxes from the flatbed, spilling scavenged circuit-boards behind the truck. Shots rang out, as the truck skidded to a stop. The caravan guards began firing wildly into the buildings along the side of the street. The leading cars were on fire – Parin and Holt, the men who had built her shelter back in Rookpoint, already dead. Bullets ripped through the canvas around her, killing one of the mercenary guards and catching Bresnan in the shoulder. He screamed, and fell from the truck. More shots echoed out, and his screaming stopped. The other mercenary jumped from the back, dropping his rifle as he ran. Riff saw him collapse. Before she had even taken it in, the shooting had stopped. She could hear men laughing, two of them arguing over who would get Kew’s lasgun. A louder man with an Easthollow accent barked orders. Shaking, Riff pulled a pistol off the belt of the man lying dead alongside her, trying not to meet the empty stare of his wide eyes. When a face appeared at the foot of the truck, a young man in a penal collar, she pulled the trigger. Nothing happened – a faint, repeating click revealing the jam in the firing mechanism. The butt of a rifle met her temple, and the world slipped away.
And though she didn’t know it yet, this was how she met Coop.
I also have a little bit of background info on Jackal cells and the Remnants themselves. More to come on this, but thought this could be interesting!
Among the residents of Pinepoint, service is required for citizenship. Outsiders, paid in credits, alcohol or food, are hired for work, but military service is a requirement to stay within the relatively safe and desirable Remnant settlements. Ridgeway was criticised harshly for the introduction of this system, but he called for realism among his people – there simply were not the resources or room to shelter everyone who came begging. Despite this, he relented, saying that those too weak or ill to serve could also be sheltered provided another within their group would serve double time to take their place.
Newcomers wishing for full citizenship in Pinepoint or one of the smaller Remnant settlements had two options – work with Ridgeway’s Remnants themselves, or service in a Jackal team. The Remnants were a form of defence force and military police. Once given brief training, they would carry out local patrols outside the settlement, settle disputes between citizens, and form the only line of defence should the settlement be attacked. They were reasonably well equipped, with each ‘volunteer’ issued a rifle and armour from the remaining PDF stockpile, to be returned at the end of their service. Whether this equipment was still functional was another question. The minimum service within a Remnant squad is one year, though many stay longer than this. With steady (though meagre) pay, free equipment, and a relatively stable lifestyle, service in the Remnants is seen by many as a great way to live.
For those wishing to finish their service sooner, give something back to the community, or simply the poor misguided souls bored with life in the settlement and seeking adventure, joining a Jackal cell is an alternative option. Usually led by a veteran of the PDF, Jackals receive no training, no equipment and have no official instructions. There is no fixed term on service within a Jackal cell, but the cell is dissolved once it is judged to have acquired a resource of “significant value” to the settlement itself. The Jackal cells are usually a ragtag group with scavenged or homemade weapons and armour, and many have not returned after leaving the safety of Pinepoint. Others have forged trade routes with other settlements, discovered large caches of fuel or medical equipment in the wastes, or travelled to old military bases to pick through the broken equipment left behind. Some have been rumoured to have sacked other settlements for the resources they own. No questions are asked as to how the gain was made, but those proven to have stolen or murdered face the full force of Remnant justice. Any weapons and equipment that a Jackal may come across during their service is theirs to keep. Service with a Jackal cell is seen as a quicker way to gain citizenship in Pinepoint itself, but few are fully aware of the dangers that they face when they sign up.
Hope you like, and please please let me know what you think, good or bad
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/08/14 20:12:36
2011/08/14 20:08:12
Subject: Scarper's Scavenging Necromunda Gangs: Big story update 14/8 - Jackals, Scavvies and some QA!
Thanks Scarper I really like your writing style! A lot of times people like to write about how much better the future will be. But sometimes tomorrow isnt as nice as to day, and we should remember that.
2011/08/15 16:58:27
Subject: Scarper's Scavenging Necromunda Gangs: Big story update 14/8 - Jackals, Scavvies and some QA!
Hahaha, thanks Monkeytroll! And you might be a bit more pleased with this update, even if the fisherman jumper is only in picture form...
Been messing around trying out colour schemes for Scratch whilst I wait for the PVA on her base to dry. I quite like this one, but I was worried it had a little too much blue to fit the others. Hopefully it meets the 'more colourful' advice I've been given, though! (excuse the rubbish drawing, please)
Obviously there will be a bit more freehand and weathering going on, but this might be bare bones how she looks. And the standard, mini character blurb:
Scratch
At 19, Scratch is the youngest member of the 21st Jackals. Optimistic and adventurous, she spends as much time on the surface as she can, and adores the ruins. Scratch had no real experience of the world before the Easthollow disaster, and was carried to Pinepoint shortly after the evac by her parents, both of whom have since passed (her father of rusinate lung, her mother of radiation sickness while serving with the Remnants). She was raised mostly be Elara, another orphan girl discovered by Remnant patrols shortly before her arrival, and the two are very close. Scratch revels in finding what she can of life before, and has developed a penchant for old world luxuries – she has spent many an evening with a begrudging Elara combing old stores for lho sticks, soda and sour candy. She also delights in finding gifts for others, hunting out undamaged spray-paints for Coop and Riff, or interesting mechanical parts and wiring for Skragg.
Originally from the poorer quarters around Rookpoint Spire, Scratch’s parents had little money for medical care, and her birth was complicated. She suffered a nerve injury to her right leg, leading to complete loss of sensation that led to multiple fractures and injuries as she grew. Though it does little to slow her down, pain and fatigue quickly set in if walking longer distances and Scratch is loathe to admit this, pressing through the pain for as long as she can. She learned to drive at a young age and has developed some skill, often being entrusted with the truck by Murdock on their expeditions outside of the hive.
Not much of an update, but just a sign that i'm still ticking over! Would love any thoughts on the colour scheme etc. Hope everyone's having a nice weekend
2011/08/20 18:00:18
Subject: Scarper's Scavenging Necromunda Gangs: Scratch update 20/8 - Photoshop and some background
Don't think there's any issue with the blue Scarp. Works for either a 'fancy' jacket or a denim jacket I'd say. Denim as it would be a relatively sturdy jacket, plus as I recall, Coop's wearing jeans. Or a 'quality' jacket sh acquired whilst hunting through those old stores, seems to me with her interest in the old luxuries she'd grab something like that.
Thanks a lot guys! And monkeytroll - you're dead on. I was thinking she might have ignored some of the hardier, more practical clothes for something with a little style
Possible patterning, and a few extras - a few small button badges on her bag, and a (tiny!) character design for branding. I'm off to bed - going to have an actual model to show at some point soon, I promise!
2011/08/21 10:03:47
Subject: Re:Scarper's Scavenging Necromunda Gangs: Scratch update 20/8 - Photoshop and some background
Oh, and I forgot to say well done for making her a redhead Instantly makes her my favourite When I thought of her grabbing a jacket from an abandoned store I had a little movie playing in my head featuring Molly Ringwald
Hehehe, thanks Monkeytroll! And I swear you've mentioned Molly Ringwald before in this thread...
I guess she's done now. I'm not really sure how I feel about her. Colour scheme seems a bit off, the lines I sculpted were'nt too sharp, so painting was a little tough. I also resculpted her hair four times, and still don't really like it Still, I was looking to try something new, so that worked out. Hope you like, anyway, and please let me know what you think!
Night shift tonight, so I'll be getting a few hours shut-eye now.
Scarp
2011/08/24 18:00:22
Subject: Scarper's Scavenging Necromunda Gangs: Scratch painted 24/8. Would love any feedback :D
Very nice work but i would do some dirty work on the bottom of the jacket or something to make it a bit more dirty like the others
[ "Don't worry, Vik! You have all of your internet friends to keep you company! And, as everyone knows, internet friends are at least one step above imaginary friends "-Rawson
"Does an Ork shiiiit green?" "...Rogue! -you rock!" "Damn you too Rogue!""[TTFN]... That means tittyfething right?""Yep, that's me, a two-dollar whore"-Dsteingass
"... but if we all fail together we can make it look like we´ve won actually.." "...to all killers out there...: my face will hit your fist so hard it´s gonna bleed...your fist that is...""lol....OMG... you are a serial""he knows no pain...nor fear^^ he is a riveteer""yep... some of the dakka chaps here sure made the joints of my jaw quite loose...""er... emailsex... now that at least sounds like the perfect safer sex... but i like mine a bit more...wet""do you know what they call a quarter pounder of a buckte full of rivets in france?" "No...what?" "Rivitz royal"-Viktor von Domm
" I expected to hear gak like that from RW, not you Vik... for shame Sir, for shame"-AnUnearthlyChilde
"We are Vik's private collection of muses for the monkey on his back.....""you, guys are worse than my children......"-mxwllmdr
"Singling one out as odd in a =][_= thread is like going into an asylum, pointing at someone at random and saying "that person's insane""-Shrike
2011/08/24 20:37:06
Subject: Re:Scarper's Scavenging Necromunda Gangs: Scratch painted 24/8. Would love any feedback :D
Err, I have? Umm, well, that would be becauase, um, you see, ah yes, that's because she was in a dodgy post-apocalyptic type thing back when I was a kid and so I automatically associate her with this thread. Yes that's it. Nothing to do with having a crush on her or anything like that you understand. And I definitely didn't want to get stuck under her desk in The Breakfast Club. Someone else entirely
After looking at her a while I think your issue with the colour is maybe down to the jumper (it always comes back to the jumper ). The jumper, the strap and to some extent the flesh and mask are all fairly similar, depending on angle and lighting. Looks fine though.
Not got a good angle on the hair so can't comment, but a scavenger team probably isn't going to have the best-kept hair
@Rogue Wolves - Thanks a ton, man I'll see what I can do to dirty her up further - I think I was a little too cautious about overdoing it.
@Monkeytroll - Well, that's what I assumed, of course. And completely understandable, that other thing you mentioned - the one that had nothing to do with you I know what you mean about the colours in the photos, but I do feel like they are visibly different in person. Might be worth a few extra highlights though, so thanks for the tip and I'll try to get some shots of the hair up too, probably some time tomorrow.
Thanks so much for all your comments, btw - I really appreciate it!
I've actually just made a kind of cumulative blog - some (new!) photos of the gang so far, and all the fluff I could dig out, all in one place. More for my own benefit than anything, but there we go Take a look if you fancy it!
2011/08/29 21:41:05
Subject: Scarper's Scavenging Necromunda Gangs: Scratch painted 24/8. Would love any feedback :D
Working on Elara now. She'll be the final member of the Jackals before I move on to a bit more serious work on the QA.
Thought I'd post this here as well for completeness - kind of an amalgamation of all my fluff and models for the Jackals so far. With some new pictures!
TL;DR campaign fluff - Caitiff is a planet under imperial control that suffered an environmental disaster in the midst of a civil war. An evacuation was planned, but only a miniscule proportion of the planet's population were able to reach evacuation points. The planet now has no system of government and conditions are anarchic outside of several larger settlements. Much of the air on the surface is poisonous, though settlements have sprung up in pockets of clearer air, and hive cities with their own air filtration systems remain. Major factions include Ridgeway's Remnants - a small community originating from PDF remnants; the Quadring Accord - a group originating from prisons and penal legions and a few others. The Jackal cell detailed below (my gang) is affiliated with the Remnants. Hope you enjoy!
Info on the planet setting:
Spoiler:
Caitiff is a medium-small temperate world on the outer southern fringe of Imperial-controlled space. Its population once stood at around 15bn, with several small hive cities containing the vast majority of the population. Its income and value to the Imperium came from a rich supply of rusinate below its surface, a material essential in the production of, among other things, bolter cartridges, temperature regulation cells and in the refinement of various mineral ores. For several hundred years after its reintegration, Caitiff prospered – a bolstered economy, protection and trade with newly contacted Imperial fleets produced a new upper class of self-made industrialists and traders.
As stocks of rusinate dwindled, however, so too did Caitiff’s value to the Imperium. With a small population and little other minerals of value, the off-world contact and trade that had been the life blood of the new Caitiff slowly ebbed away. The economy suffered, and rising food prices and increasingly squalid living conditions kicked off a process of grumbling unrest among the working classes of Caitiff’s larger cities. The planetary governor at the time, Dyran Lavenne, was a corrupt bureaucrat widely recognised to be in the pocket of various industry moguls, and little to no relief effort occurred. Food riots in Rookpoint Spire and The Point were met with live fire from PDF forces, and an increasingly brutal arbite force enforced draconian ‘austerity laws’, leading to the disappearance of many dissenters. Civil war seemed a certainty. A number of popular resistance groups arose, and a pattern of ‘liberated’ population centres being mercilessly retaken by government forces began to emerge. Civilian casualties numbered in the hundreds of thousands, but it was only when several companies of the PDF defected to the rebel cause that the rebellion became a real and credible threat. Reports of executions and massacres on both sides could not be verified.
The downfall of the government of Caitiff didn’t come through military action, however, but through accident, poor construction and bad luck. The last hive city to spring up on Caitiff was different from the others. Over hundreds of years as the previous cities had grown, councils had been elected to ensure adequate ventilation, constant power and water supply, and structural integrity of the spire itself. Most of these councils were hereditary positions, chosen from the educated and wealthy elite. Some were benevolent, some self-interested, but all ensured the safe growth of their cities, both in height and spread. Easthollow, however, was in essence a vertical shantytown, a swaying and ever-expanding structure that sprang up over less than fifty years. It was composed entirely of the dwellings, both official and makeshift, of workers employed at the hundreds of vast rusinate refineries that made up the hive city’s base, and whilst an Easthollow council did exist, its members were hand-picked by the plant owners. At every turn, the council made concessions in the name of ‘austerity’, pocketing the funds that went unspent. A looming tower of plasteel, corrugated metal and scavenged building materials, housing a workforce of labourers widely considered disposable, run and maintained by a panel of corrupt and uninterested industrialists. It was a miracle that the hive stood as long as it did.
It’s unclear exactly what happened on the day that Easthollow collapsed, and survivor’s accounts are few and far between. It’s known that the ventilation system for one area of the hive was damaged in a wilful act of sabotage by a small rebel cell, though it’s unlikely that they were fully aware of what kind of chain reaction they were setting into motion. As their bomb, fashioned from stolen mining and factory equipment, exploded, Sector 12, location of one of the largest reactors powering the spire, lost both atmosphere and temperature regulation. The fires that started in the sector should have been stopped by auto-regulated flooding systems put in place to protect the lives of the inhabitants in such an emergency, but these never engaged, even as the fires spread into the power plant itself. Immense explosions ripped through the facility, containment domes failing and contingency measures overcome. It is likely that the colossal supporting beams housed in the area collapsed or melted in the intense heat, bringing entire layers of the hive down with them. The sudden and immense pressure on a single quadrant of a structure already weakened by cheap materials and years of poor maintenance proved too much to bear, and in less than an hour, the hive tore itself apart.
Refinement of rusinate is not a clean process. Several of the by-products produced are toxic to both plant and animal life even in miniscule amounts, and many of the radioactive elements have a half-life of thousands of years. Official policy required all waste from the process to be shipped off-world as soon as it was produced, and conveyed to planets designated ‘dead’ for long-term storage. This course of action was, of course, highly expensive, and many unscrupulous plant owners had taken to storing waste on site until such a quantity had been produced for a more efficient round trip. This efficiency measure proved disastrous with the collapse of Easthollow hive, and millions of tons of untreated industrial waste escaped into the atmosphere.
In the weeks following the incident at Easthollow, it became quickly apparent as the death toll rose that there was no containing the environmental pollutants, even if the various warring factions could put aside their differences long enough to enact a plan. Evacuation of ‘loyal citizens’ of the planet was organised by the planetary government, but woefully few evacuation centres were arranged, and rebel blockades, rioting, and bandit roadblocks made travel all but impossible. It is estimated that of the entire population, less than 1 million people were on board when the evacuation ships left for good.
The current story on Caitiff takes place fifteen years after the ‘evacuation’, and the planet is a very different place. The air on the surface itself is poisonous, though microclimate and uneven spread of the toxins from Easthollow results in wide variation - small pockets of more hospitable land exist, whereas the radiation in some areas would kill a man within hours. The atmosphere has thinned, and water vapour is scarce, resulting in sweltering days and freezing nights. Plant life, too, has been all but extinguished on the surface, and sprawling cities stand empty and abandoned – almost all surviving humans live in the vast hives, where filtration systems ensure relatively clean air to breathe. Humanity still thrives, adapting as it always has, and small, self-governing settlements exist throughout the world. Supply leads to wealth, and the settlements near clean water or functioning manufactorums quickly grew in power. With no central government, though, war and conflict are constant. Manufacture still takes place, though with no off-world interest raw materials are scarce. Scavengers pick through the corpses of the old world for technology that can no longer be reproduced, or simply materials or product that would be useful to surviving communities. This work is lucrative, but dangerous – many a team of fully equipped soldiers has failed to return from relatively simple pick-ups. Hardier creatures still stalk the surface – wiry, venomous nightmares that occasionally find their way into the deeper depths of the towering cities. Outside of the rudimentary justice system of the settlements, anarchy reigns, and gangs of murderous outlaws and bandits control vast swathes of the surface. Dark rumours persist of cannibalistic or mutated sects sweeping the land (always one continent over, or in an uncontactable hive); or of hive cities on the other side of the planet unaffected by the toxins, where crops still grow, the air is clear and clean water flows. The sensible take these stories for what they are. Life is hard on Caitiff, but, for better or worse, humanity prevails.
Info on Jackal cells:
Spoiler:
Among the residents of Pinepoint, service is required for citizenship. Outsiders, paid in credits, alcohol or food, are hired for work, but military service is a requirement to stay within the relatively safe and desirable Remnant settlements. Ridgeway was criticised harshly for the introduction of this system, but he called for realism among his people – there simply were not the resources or room to shelter everyone who came begging. Despite this, he relented, saying that those too weak or ill to serve could also be sheltered provided another within their group would serve double time to take their place.
Newcomers wishing for full citizenship in Pinepoint or one of the smaller Remnant settlements had two options – work with Ridgeway’s Remnants themselves, or service in a Jackal team. The Remnants were a form of defence force and military police. Once given brief training, they would carry out local patrols outside the settlement, settle disputes between citizens, and form the only line of defence should the settlement be attacked. They were reasonably well equipped, with each ‘volunteer’ issued a rifle and armour from the remaining PDF stockpile, to be returned at the end of their service. Whether this equipment was still functional was another question. The minimum service within a Remnant squad is one year, though many stay longer than this. With steady (though meagre) pay, free equipment, and a relatively stable lifestyle, service in the Remnants is seen by many as a great way to live.
For those wishing to finish their service sooner, give something back to the community, or simply the poor misguided souls bored with life in the settlement and seeking adventure, joining a Jackal cell is an alternative option. Usually led by a veteran of the PDF, Jackals receive no training, no equipment and have no official instructions. There is no fixed term on service within a Jackal cell, but the cell is dissolved once it is judged to have acquired a resource of “significant value” to the settlement itself. The Jackal cells are usually a ragtag group with scavenged or homemade weapons and armour, and many have not returned after leaving the safety of Pinepoint. Others have forged trade routes with other settlements, discovered large caches of fuel or medical equipment in the wastes, or travelled to old military bases to pick through the broken equipment left behind. Some have been rumoured to have sacked other settlements for the resources they own. No questions are asked as to how the gain was made, but those proven to have stolen or murdered face the full force of Remnant justice. Any weapons and equipment that a Jackal may come across during their service is theirs to keep. Service with a Jackal cell is seen as a quicker way to gain citizenship in Pinepoint itself, but few are fully aware of the dangers that they face when they sign up.
Murdock
Leader of this Jackal cell. Claims to have been a sergeant in the PDF, but carries a lot of ‘non-standard’ equipment. He has spent many years on the scavenger teams training new recruits in the Remnants, far more than his required service. If asked, he tells people that it’s because he upset a high ranking officer in the Remnant forces themselves, but many other stories are told. Some believe that he hates Pinepoint, and will do anything to leave it. Others have suggested that he is fighting to his death, his only means to reunite with a family killed in the rebellion. Others, perhaps more realistically, have wondered if he simply enjoys the work. Whatever the suggestion, put forward to Murdock it results in scorn and hard labour. Often brusque and unfriendly, he will nonetheless go out of his way to protect those under him. Trinkets or alcohol have often appeared in the packs of his cell members after an excursion to trading posts, but Murdock denies all knowledge of this. He recently suffered a serious head wound after a blast knocked him from a window during a skirmish with some local outlaws. He recovered well, but Murdock's reactions and instructions have since seemed slower during combat situations.
Farrell
Medic and plasma gunner. Farrell was found in the wastes a mile outside of Rukob, bleeding badly from embedded buckshot and a (clumsily stitched) stab wound to the stomach. He was carrying an infant girl, unharmed, but with a strange symmetrical birthmark on her back. Both were carried back to Pinepoint, the largest Remnant settlement. His wounds were infected, and the fever almost killed him as he raved about mutants and monsters. As he recovered, he first asked about the girl, then about others who may have come after him. The medical staff became concerned that he may have a bounty on his head. Many of the Remnants don’t trust him, and from his strange arrival to his refusal to explain where he came from, he didn't help himself. The plasma weapon he carried was also a rare find, unusual to see outside the slaver camps to the North. Leaving the girl in the safety of the camp, he joined a Jackal team to pay back the kindness he was given, believing that his skill with medicae and especially his work with bionics (again, an unusual skill in the underhive) would prove invaluable. Friendly and jovial when spoken to, Farrell was nonetheless rather quiet, with a tendency to stare into space and tune out of conversations. He was most vocal when discussing his frustration at the lack of medical equipment available – there was nothing on the planet, he said, more heartbreaking than knowing exactly what was wrong with a man and being able to do nothing to fix it. He regularly wrote notes in a small book, telling any who asked that it was a diary. Convinced that that he was a spy for the QA, Twitch stole his book and handed it to Murdock. Whilst he did write detailed notes of his own activities, almost the entirety of Farrell’s book was filled with letters to a particular woman, none of which it appeared had actually been sent. Murdock spoke to him about it, but saw no reason for concern. Farrell went missing following a series of engagements with an offworld private security company, and is presumed dead or captured.
I’m sorry I haven’t sent word in a few weeks now – I wasn’t sure anything was getting through. It’s been tough.
I’m not –
I’m not going to be coming home, Malaena.
It’s all gone to hell. Everything down here, just – I don’t know what happened to the others. Eli, Pirren, Clara. I think they might be dead. I took her with me, the girl. It was stupid. Throne, it was stupid.
But she was so desperate...
pause, heavy breathing
I’ve been missing you, Malaena. I wanted to come back to you. I tried to tell them we should go, that we should have left when the guards did, when he moved in – but... Crucien wouldn’t let us. He said it was humanitarian, but it – it wasn’t humanitarian anymore.
I don’t know how far I can –
Rustling. Subject grunts with pain
I’m going to keep moving. If I leave her here, she’ll die. If she dies, it was for nothing. I’m leaving the transmitter, I- I won’t contact you again. Crucien will look for you. Play him this. He’ll know.
I love you, Malaena. Always will. I’m sorry.
Stay safe.
file ends
Skragg
Heavy weapons enthusiast and inventor. Apparently mute, but adept at rigging technology from scrap, Murdock considers Skragg an idiot savant. Many of the others in the team think his silence is not a result of lack of intelligence, but rather a conscious choice. He had a close relationship with a younger Jackal named Scout, who was killed early in the campaign while the pair of them rescued Blind from rising floodwaters. Extended fluff story in the spoiler below. Skragg’s hearing has suffered as a result of his fondness for loud weaponry.
Skragg and Scout part 1:
Spoiler:
The guy with the...? Oh, you mean Skragg! Big guy, spiked hair, doesn’t talk much, carries a gun that looks like you couldn’t lift it? Yeah, that’ll be him. Don’t take offence or anything, he doesn’t talk to anyone. He’ll smile at you, laughs at jokes and that, but he’s been with us for years and I never heard him say a word. Nothing wrong with his head though - You know he built that gun himself? Two autoguns, few pipes from a condenser we found out near Saltash, couple of rings out of an old piston, Throne, I don’t know. Put it all together with that welding gun on his hip. Makes his own bullets, too! Keep an eye on him next time we’re out in the wastes. He stops every now and again, picks stuff up and pockets it. Trash, utter junk. The kind of thing you don’t look twice at, but give it a week and it’s part of a firing mechanism, or he’s put an autoloader on your shotgun. Murdock reckons he’s some kind of idiot savant, but I’m sure he’s all there. Just keeps himself to himself, y’know? Just cause someone don’t talk, doesn’t mean they don’t know how to.
His story isn’t the happiest though – you sure you want to hear it? Well, take a smoke, it’s kind of an epic. Nah, don’t worry bout it, got packs of them back at camp. Factory uphive gives ‘em out to anyone who asks – figured they’d stop all the raids that way. Most of their profits are offworld or something, I dunno.
Right, well I can’t tell you about Skragg without telling you about Scout, the kid we met him through. First time I saw either of em, they were in this drinking pit together in Hole, Second Best between them. This was maybe two years back, I think. We’d been following these rumours of some kind of tech stash that had been uncovered near Lent (turned out to be bunk, before you get your hopes up), and Murdock had us out hunting for someone who knew the area. We’d had a fair few choices, loud mouths proclaiming themselves the best around, wanting paid upfront. Crow’s a good judge of these kind of things though, wasn’t having any of it. We’d heard mention of Scout from a few different people, this kid who’d been in town for a few years, supposed to be the go-to guy. He wasn’t like the others – he was calm, relaxed. We’d heard his name and he knew that. He was 16, maybe 17, no older. Sitting at the table with Skragg, this giant of a man, just talking away at him. Told us he’d learnt his way around scavenging for tech to sell for as long as he could remember, and if we wanted a guide in the badlands, he said, he knew routes that few others did. He knew where the local gangs holed up, and where the local wildlife hunted and nested. If that sounded useful to us, he said, we could hire him and his associate for a 10% stake of whatever was found. No questions about what we were looking for, who he’d be working with. He was good to his word, too. While he was with us, raids went smoother, we didn’t get ambushed once, and no one got et by sumphounds.
He was a great guy, too. Generous with what he had, great sense of humour. Laughed at himself – not many men around who’ll do that, a real rare quality. He was always with Skragg though, just talking to him. The guy never replied, of course, but he always listened, and listened intent – had that look, you know what I mean? Just complete concentration. Always together. They were more than just friends – maybe that way, maybe not. Never felt it was my business to ask.
He told me they’d been partners in the scavenging business since they were kids – they’d been slaves together, working a chem pit in the Northern Wastes. Do you remember Derrick? No? Ah, well, little settlement to the North West, got overrun by the QA maybe 10 years ago. Everyone killed or captured, Scout and Skragg included. Reckoned he was 6 years old at the time. Second night they were in the mines, a friend of his dad’s, a barkeep named Garret, caved in the skull of their guard and made a run for it with four of the neighbourhood kids in tow. You ever met the QA? They’re pretty soulless, even by badlands standards. One of the kids was shot in the head as they ran, and Garret took a bullet to the gut, bled out in a dome 2 hours later. That left three of them. Skragg, aged maybe 7, Scout, and an older kid named Relleck. They did what any kids would do in the situation – panic. Scout wanted to go South, keep running until they found another settlement. He’d heard horror stories of what happened to kids who tried to pass through the hive on their own, but he knew it had to be better than the fate that waited for them in the mines. Relleck wanted to go back, thought that if they returned, hands in the air, they’d let them rejoin the chain gang as if nothing had happened. They’d have been crucified, for sure – the QA don’t forgive the killing of one of their own. Skragg, as always, said nothing. They argued for a few minutes before Relleck pulled the pistol off Garret’s belt and pointed it straight at Scout. For a few minutes, no one did anything. No one knew what to do. Scout cried. He told me that - no bravado, you see? They stood there, for what felt like minutes, just looking at eachother. Eventually, Relleck realised the position he was in. He broke into a smile, and told them to walk. He could at least save himself, he told em, if he bought the escapees back. He'd tell the QA he'd caught them trying to make a run for it, thought he'd be a hero. He told em he wouldn't care if they got boiled alive. Without a second’s hesitation, Skragg elbowed the kid in the face, put him flat on his back. He broke his wrist and took the pistol - Relleck was writhing on the floor. He shot him three times (slow and deliberate), then wordlessly handed the pistol to Scout. Without a credit between them, they headed South, into the badlands.
Blind
Whilst working as a gun for hire and going by the trade name of 'Jackdaw', Blind was hired with his mercenary partners by a power-armoured off worlder to retrieve a unique power cell he believed to be located in a subterranean section of the hive. After discovering that the factory had already been looted by Murdock's Jackal cell, Blind contacted RiffRaff, an old friend with whom he had once worked a caravan route, to arrange a trade. When they met for the handover, the stranger's men sprang a trap, blowing a resevoir dome and causing the area to flood with water. Blind was badly injured in the initial explosion, but was carried to safety by Skragg and Scout as many others drowned. After Murdock sold Blind's equipment to pay for medical supplies and bionic replacements, he joined the cell, with few other places to go. Gruff and unfriendly to strangers, Blind feels most at home with other professional soldiers and often seeks out the company of bounty hunters and other hired guns.
Crow
Before finding the Remnants, Crow scavenged the rocky and mountainous wastes outside the hive with her brother, who had raised her since they became separated from their parents during the Evac. After serving several months as a construction worker in the compound, Crow volunteered to join a Jackal team to rediscover the adventure and excitement of living rough. She may or may not regret her decision. Agile and sure-footed, Crow tends to stay high above the hive floor, shooting from vantage points wherever possible. She is good humoured and friendly, though with rather a dark sense of humour. She rarely takes off her rebreather, pointing out the very real danger that surface pollutants pose to the lungs. When pressed (or after a little too much wildsnake), she may relate the fate of her brother, who suffered worsening breathing problems on the surface. A few days prior to Crow’s discovery by a Remnant patrol, he left their camp in the middle of the night and shot himself without a word. He had complained over their campfire that his laboured breathing was slowing them both down, and one day waiting for him might get her killed. She had brushed him off, joking about carrying him. To this day, she resents his choice to make the decision without her, forcing her to carry on alone.
Ferret
Joined the Remnants after being caught attempting to steal food from the Pinepoint stores with her teenage son. Both agreed to serve in Jackal teams and eventually join defensive patrols if it meant access to the compound. Before the evacuation, Ferret worked as a teacher, educating the upper classes in Caitiff history, and the value of their contact with the Imperium. She was forcibly conscripted by the Eurata Separatist Front once the rebellion began, and served several years in a guerrilla unit. Ferret is very fast and a reasonable shot, but has been injured several times whilst in the 21st. Keen to return to base, Ferret rarely socialises, but will scavenge during her own time, hoping to find some archeotech valuable enough to merit a return to Pinepoint, and the peaceful existence that she longs for.
Riggs
Friendly and affable, Riggs was born inside the Remnant compound. Initially charged with sump-farming and looking after the animals, he joined a Jackal team as soon as he could, and acts as a friendly second-in-command to Murdock. Despite his affable demeanour, Riggs has a natural gift for negotiation and persuasion, and often accompanies Murdock to trading posts or to form treaties with rival groups. He tends to know a lot of residents in the settlements they regularly visit, and takes care of the team’s dogs, Loki and Cass. Riggs was badly wounded and one of his dogs killed by an unknown animal during a scavenging excursion on the surface. Farrell fitted him with a bionic replacement taken from the remaining PDF supplies.
Coop and RiffRaff
An ex-penal legionnaire with a history of forced service with the QA, and a once-wealthy runaway who served with a trade caravan specialising in electronics. Coop and Riff sold their services as caravan guards together for several years before meeting Murdock with his previous Jackal cell. Tired of life on the roads, they planned to complete their time in the Jackals and acquire citizenship in Pinepoint, where they could live peacefully. RiffRaff knits (badly), and Coop has been known to decorate buildings where the Jackals camp with vast, spray-painted murals. The two were inseparable, and a few fluff stories are under the cut. During the campaign, RiffRaff drowned in an engagement with the QA. Coop continues to serve with the Jackals, acting as a kind of carer to Twitch but he has developed several self-destructive tendencies, and has not recovered from her loss. He fights with a jerry-rigged flame-thrower created by Skragg, and since Riff’s death, he has been known to become frenzied and uncontrollable when engaging other gangs.
RiffRaff origin:
Spoiler:
Ah, Riff and Coop. A great pair, those two – funniest bastards I’ve ever met who weren’t trying to get me to buy something. You’ve got to get them started on something, there’s – you won’t have heard nothing like it. No one else gets a word in, once they’re going at it – It’s always a competition. Just got to outdo eachother’s stories, you know? Has Coop told you how he ended up in the Penals yet? Oh, he will. I don’t want to spoil ‘em, but there’s one for every occasion – last I heard he got busted impersonating a Commissar to get at the Amsec rations in his PDF conscription. As to what he actually did? Pshh, who knows. Something small, I’d bet. Can’t imagine him hurting a rat if it wasn’t looking funny at Riff. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t cross him; he wouldn’t think twice if he had to, you know? Just - not one of those men who gets enjoyment from it.
They’re good people, basically. Twitch too, though he’s not right any more. The fact that they stick by him, what with his new mindset and all – kind of thing that says a lot about a character, I’d say. They’ve been through a lot together, and I wouldn’t believe how they tell it neither – the real story’s a lot less cheery. Less bear-wrestling, too.
So RiffRaff first, right? From what I’ve heard, she really did live in Haverbrook, and she did leave of her own accord before the Evac. I know! It’s not the ‘coming of age’, swashbuckling adventurer type exit she likes to spin though; it was a little more sordid; a little more sad. She wasn’t the same girl back then. There was a man involved – I know, I know – but this wasn’t a romantic story. Not through his eyes, anyway. He was some real scum from Rookpoint Spire, though Throne knows which part. His settlement kicked him out and he was living rough in Haverbrook, stealing whatever he could to survive. Got cornered by the Arbites, of course – they didn’t used to put up with the underclasses there. By then, though, he’d met Riff, and Riff’s parents were in the guild – real important people. She wasn’t so smart back then, too trusting, too naive. Typical surfacer. He span her a story about false accusations, an evil associate setting him up to steal his business or some such, saving orphans from landmines, I don’t know. But she bought it, and begged the watchmen who came for him to let his crimes slide, for her. Promised to make him her personal project. Considering how upset her parents would be if their daughter didn’t get her way, they actually listened. You believe that? Bastard probably couldn’t believe his luck either.
The guy kept in touch, of course. Wasn’t going to lose a mark like RiffRaff. Over the course of a few months, he started giving her a taste of underhive life – spun it as a way of thanking her. He had some old contacts who sold him ghost, kalma, spur, whatever they’d scraped out of the chem pits, and she took it all; she’d never seen anything close. Thought she was doing something spiritual, some kind of cultural vibe, and you can guess where it led her. There’s no place for addicts outside of the hive, no tolerance for them. She needed her hits, and he was the only place she could get them. He knew it, too. When her parents began to suspect that she was spending their credits on something other than booze and clothes, he suggested they run away together, live on the road and follow the rebels. He talked her into stealing nearly ten thousand credits from her parents – after all, what had they done for her? They would never understand. If she took what she could, they would have all they needed to live the good life, away from their meddling. The good life for Riff, of course, began with multiple stab wounds in a ditch barely three miles from Haverbrook.
Amazingly, that’s not where her story ended, though no doubt been the end of many other lives these days.
A trade caravan ran from Rookpoint city (the polite name for the sprawling expanse of corrugated plasteel and concrete that had surrounded the hive in recent years) to Easthollow, run by a young guy named McCaughey. They dealt mainly in reconditioned electronics, buying and fixing mining and industrial equipment – junk that others considered beyond repair. The caravan stopped at some of the smaller shanty towns along the way to sell their wares - an old-fashioned way to do business, at the time, but they made good money in the places that the bigger conglomerates didn’t consider quite profitable enough to cater for. McCaughey and his partners made a comfortable living, and Rookpoint state was fairly secure in governmental territory, meaning that the route was also ‘safe’, as far as trade routes went. Course, the rebellion had been underway for a fair bit of time, and bodies turned up on quiet stretches of every highway. No one asked questions anymore; it didn’t matter who they were. Some were dissenters, killed by governmental forces; some were soldiers – men and women who had fought on either side. Some, no doubt, were the poor bastards killed by bandits: desperate men feeding their families in any way they could, or simply those that had come to enjoy the anarchy. It’s hard to judge a man who couldn’t watch his children fade away, you know? Whoever they were, they all carried equipment and goods, and McCaughey quickly realised that a corroded autogun or repainted flak armour could fetch a decent price on the black market. It was in this capacity that one of his men discovered that RiffRaff was still breathing.
McCaughey was a businessman, and mercenary as all get out, but he wasn’t a monster. Riff rode in the back of one of their trucks as their expedition medic, an old PDF dog named Kew, looked her over. He gave her as much medication as they could spare. She had lost a lot of blood, gone septic from the dirt in her wounds, and was going through one hell of a comedown from the drug withdrawal. She would have been raving, seeing things; fighting and lashing out. Wouldn’t have been easy to deal with, even with the ReBound they pumped her full of. They took her anyway. Good people. McCaughey planned to offload her in one of the last few free clinics that the sisters were running once they got to Easthollow – keep her safe, but no longer his problem.
Over the few weeks they travelled, Riff recovered. Physically, at least. Her temperature dropped, the demons left her vision, and though the shakes came back with every missed dose, the gnawing pain in her gut was much more short lived. The pain in her chest, though, was there to stay. She had betrayed her parents, left her home, burdened and attacked strangers, and nearly died, all for the sake of protecting a man who then tried to kill her. She’d thrown away everything – everything she had ever known, you understand? – and she was only realising now how well she’d been played. The man she’d saved had stolen her life, and she would probably never see him again. Riff knew that she would never return to Haverbrook. How could she? She begged McCaughey to take her on for work, anything that he might have going. She had no skills (who the hell does, growing up in a palace?), but was desperate to repay the debt that she felt she owed. McCaughey turned her down though. He wasn’t one to refuse free labour, but the girl was a liability. Since she wouldn’t tell him where she was from, he would leave her in Easthollow, and that was that. Only, they never got that far.
Before the haze, you could see Easthollow for days. A crooked spear jutting into the sky, mottled orange and brown, like rotten wood. There was no getting lost, it was just there – on a clear day, you could almost make it out on the horizon from Rookpoint. Which is why, despite being a few days travel away, the men and women working for McCaughey saw Easthollow fall.
RiffRaff’s never really told anyone what happened next. Doesn’t like to talk about it, you understand. You ever see someone that’s been burned with rusinate runoff? Nah, I suppose you wouldn’t have. No one goes near the dumping sites anymore – most of ‘em are wired off and signposted by now. But this stuff, the stuff they used to ship off world? It’s – I can’t really properly get across the horror this gak provokes in anyone who survived Easthollow. It’s corrosive, it burns you, right? But that ain’t always what kills you. Sometimes it’s slower, more painful, inevitable. Get contaminated, and it burns you fierce on the contact site, sometimes through to the bone. Some people died then and there – I don’t know if it was the burn, don’t know if their blood carries the poison around their bodies, burns ‘em up from the inside. Just a splash, though, step in something out scavenging, stray too close to a restricted site, that won’t kill you by itself. I’ve got no idea how it works (Farrell’s your man for that, if he’s in a talking mood), but those who die outright are maybe the lucky ones. The survivors - they got the burns, sure, but there’s something else in there too, something that stays in your body once the burning’s stopped. Over a couple of weeks, they just started to swell up. Cancers, tumours, I don’t know. Some kind of growth that just starts out and don’t stop. Didn’t hit them evenly either: might just affect one arm, might be your face; could be your liver, might be in the brain. Some people went crazy – turned violent and aggressive, beat someone to death just for staring. Farrell says it must have been compression – in the skull, you know? Others just went vacant, staring into space or just walking into gunfire. A lot of people killed themselves. Barely looked human anymore, guess they didn’t feel it either.
You’ll still see them around, sometimes. You probably have, just wouldn’t recognise them. People don’t take too kindly to those who got burned. After the hive fell, a lot of people saw the crazy ones, saw what they’d do if they got close to you – There are still people around who’ll shoot a hollow on sight. I’ve only met one or two, but they keep wrapped up, no skin on show. I don’t think there’s many left now. It’s - just no way for a man to live.
Ah, Throne, you’re right. Sorry, where was I? Poor bastards always throw me off. Right! Easthollow. And the aftermath, I guess. Rumour is, it rained runoff in parts of Shantytown. Literally poured from the sky. Think of the worst acid shower you’ve seen out on the wastes, kind of thing that strips paint from your truck, and imagine it doing the same to people. Reduction compounds got thrown up into the air too – you know the stuff that gives you blight throat? This is where all of it came from. ALL of it. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? There were rebreathers and gas masks around, of course, industrial protection for workers and the like, but nothing like as many as we’ve got today. More people back then, too, so less to go around. McCaughey’s train had masks – reconditioning gear like that was what they did, but the general public had nothing to protect themselves. Riff would have seen it all – the burned, the people whose lungs were slowly dissolving, the hollow crazies, hell, starvation and regular disease will have taken thousands. At first, they sold to the crowds, but Kew eventually talked McCaughey into giving out the spare masks they had left for free to any who would take them. It was already too late, really. All I know for sure is that once it was clear that there were more refugees than there were resources, people got desperate. Once the shooting started, McCaughey made the wise decision to get the hell back to Rookpoint.
Their flight took them past Haverbrook, of course, though they didn’t slow down. Riff still wakes up sometimes convinced that the glow off the generator is the fires of her home. She had no idea if her parents had reached an evac, fled to safety, been killed in the fighting. Who knew? She had the realisation, then and there, that she didn’t really care. She felt nothing when she thought of them, of all her old friends and neighbours. It was like a different reality, an old time. Numbed.
Over the course of the next few months, McCaughey let Riff work. She’d told him she was from Easthollow, and as far as he knew, she had just watched every person she had ever met burn. In a way, she had. Bresnan, one of the younger lads working for his team, showed her how to make repairs as he fixed up the few things they had left, and slowly but surely she began to pick it up. They stayed in Rookpoint, for a few months. Too dangerous to head out, back when the air was still poison. They were one of the first caravans to head back into the wastes, among the first to re-establish contact with all the new settlements that had sprung up in the carcass of the old ones. Over the course of the next five years, they helped more than thirty settlements start up – mostly for profit, of course, though I understand McCaughey was known to sell below cost if he could see that people were dying. Once again, though, McCaughey was making himself a tidy living. They had a pretty high turnover of caravan guards: riding shotgun was dangerous in the early days. Lot of desperate people.
The last day that Riff saw her friends off the route, they were travelling from Pallain to Ruckett. A pretty safe route, usually – through the bones of the old world city of Newhall. Lots of stories were told in the camps of sinewy monsters eating travellers there, or gangs of cannibals, creatures that used to be human. Nonsense, of course, but it made for a quiet route. They were a small convoy – a couple of smaller buggies up front, heavy stubbers and flamers on pivots, to keep the road clear. Riff and Bresnan were in the back of the first merch truck along with a couple of guards. One more truck ran behind them, a single buggy following up from the rear. Safe, but manoeuvrable. She was chatting with Bresnan, she remembered. Joking about vampires ambushing their route.
The first explosion knocked Riff to the wooden floor and threw boxes from the flatbed, spilling scavenged circuit-boards behind the truck. Shots rang out, as the truck skidded to a stop. The caravan guards began firing wildly into the buildings along the side of the street. The leading cars were on fire – Parin and Holt, the men who had built her shelter back in Rookpoint, already dead. Bullets ripped through the canvas around her, killing one of the mercenary guards and catching Bresnan in the shoulder. He screamed, and fell from the truck. More shots echoed out, and his screaming stopped. The other mercenary jumped from the back, dropping his rifle as he ran. Riff saw him collapse. Before she had even taken it in, the shooting had stopped. She could hear men laughing, two of them arguing over who would get Kew’s lasgun. A louder man with an Easthollow accent barked orders. Shaking, Riff pulled a pistol off the belt of the man lying dead alongside her, trying not to meet the empty stare of his wide eyes. When a face appeared at the foot of the truck, a young man in a penal collar, she pulled the trigger. Nothing happened – a faint, repeating click revealing the jam in the firing mechanism. The butt of a rifle met her temple, and the world slipped away.
And though she didn’t know it yet, this was how she met Coop.
Coop on the planet surface:
Spoiler:
The surface – the true surface – now had a strange kind of beauty to it, Coop thought to himself. The emptiness, the silence, had a unique sensation, a feeling all of its own. Between the settlements, in the mainly intact ruins of the old world, it still felt like trespassing, like sneaking out as a teenager. The truck growled through the silent city, echoing back and forth in the empty buildings. He felt as though he were walking through Greenmile City again, footsteps echoing impossibly loud in the early hours of the morning when the streets were dead. You could be the only person in the world. It would be easy to ignore the signs of what had happened, if you kept your gaze high enough. Facing skyward, the pockmarked walls and burnt out vehicles would slip out of view, the upper levels of what used to be Ruckarnlan jutting dark and silhouetted against the yellow-hued sky, looking now as he imagined they always had. He’d never come here before the evacuation – the empty streets of the old city were all he’d ever seen of it, a passing blur thrown up and down from the back of Carson’s caravan. The city told stories, like every place on the surface. He’d learned to read the environment as they drove, hear the history it whispered, just below your hearing, through the tedium of the long ride. Here a former shop-front was boarded up with scrap scavenged from nearby buildings, corrugated iron and rotten wood. Empty food cans littered the ground, a rainwater collection duct rigged to the front of the building. A scavenger, maybe a family, had lived there once, maybe died there. Picked the area clean before moving on, or succumbing to the poisonous air. Conditions on the surface were harsh, and few survived up here for long.
Here, a faded mural. Scorpions, a gas mask, crossed rifles. A gang? Perhaps just a lone waster? Might even have been prior to the rebellion – images of warfare and revolution were nothing new on Caitiff. There were others around Ruckarnlan, less warlike, less violent – things of beauty. Real artworks, sprawling growths of painted plants, painstakingly etched representations of women, surrealist blooms of colour. Multi-storey buildings covered in swathes of pigment - hours upon hours of work in the deadly conditions of the wastes. He’d often wondered about who could produce such things: could they be the work of a single man? Some crazed artist lost in the wilderness? Coop had seen shadows moving through the buildings, all of them had – ghosts of the old world, they called them. Killed so quickly when the violence began that they’d never realised that they were dead. Stories were common in the hive of people taken by these shadowy spectres, vanishing silently from the back of vehicles in dust storms, not a trace of their passing, only to be seen in the painted walls of the surface. Coop didn’t believe them, but he still shuddered as the wind picked up.
There were still signs of the life that had once thrived here, if you looked high enough – tattered rags hung on what had once been washing lines, faded curtains still blew from open windows. The signs were always there, though. Windows, shattered. Paintwork peeling and torn. With time came decay, and decay was all that was left in the wastes.
Pulling at his uncomfortable mask, Coop nudged Riff awake. It was her watch, and he’d seen enough.
Coop and Riff join the Remnants (written a waaaay back, and not very good ):
Spoiler:
Riggs moved through the shattered entranceway, following the glow of the fire. He could hear them talking - low and cautious, still unsure of themselves. He smiled. It would be good to get some new company. The dog growled, leaning into the rope around her neck as the campfire came into view. Riggs bent down, pulled her in and patted her side as her hackles rose.
"Easy, Cass. Calm down, girl. They're friends, ok? No one's trying to kill me today."
The strangers by the campfire turned towards him, the male half rising. His hand was at the holster hanging off his belt. The girl spoke first.
"Uhh... hey. You okay, man? We're new. Murdock's cleared us, so... no need for the dog, alright?"
Riggs laughed, raising his arms in what he hoped was a disarming gesture. "She's not that bad, honest - just talks a big game. She'll be fine once she's used to you." He tied her off against a door frame and patted her muzzle once more. "You mind if I join you?"
The man sitting opposite the fire still hadn't lowered his hand. The girl turned to him, and he nodded, sitting back where he had been. He smiled, and appeared to relax. Riggs pulled a bottle optimistically labelled "Wildsnake" from his bag and offered it to his new companions. The girl took it and drank deep before spluttering a few times and passing it back.
"Not the best, huh? Got it in Jento - should have been warning enough, I guess." He took a sup of the spirit and passed it on to the man opposite him. In the light of the fire, the thick gouges in the newcomer's arms were thrown into relief. "Name's Levin Grigg, though the folks round here tend to call me Riggs." He sighed. "Guess two syllables was a little much to ask. The girl growling at you on then end of that rope is Cass. I know the welcome Murdock gives to strangers can be... a little less than friendly, so I figured I'd stop by and say hi. What're your names?"
"Coop." It was the man who had spoken first. He was tall and heavy set, but probably no more than 20 years. Fresh cuts lined his features, and fresh bruises covered much of his face. His nose was set at an awkward angle - a look that seemed recently acquired, based on the crusted blood underneath it. Riggs could make out the profile of a penal collar beneath the man's coat - an interesting one, no doubt. "My friend here is Riff Raff." He paused for second, and grinned a smile with more than a little wince in it as he extended his hand. "Nice to meet you."
"Riff Raff?" The girl laughed. She was about Riggs' age, with dark eyes and bright green hair cropped short to her head. Slung at her side was a heavy backpack, filled with what looked like computer equipment.
"It kinda stuck! I grew up in Haverbrook, you know?" Riggs looked blank. "Haverbrook! Oh, come on. Big, fancy, posh oppressive arsehole community, couple miles outside the hive? Lots of trees? Back when there were still trees, that is. You'll know it if you see it." She paused for a second. "You know what a tree is, right?" Riggs smiled wanly, took the proffered bottle from Coop.
"So it's an ironic thing?"
"Sort of. fething hated that place, ran away the second the factories blew up. I like it - kinda burning out my roots, y'know? Guess my family got evacced though, so maybe I shoulda stayed." She laughed.
Riggs thought for a second. "So how did you guys end up in Rukob?"
"Series of coincidences, I guess." RiffRaff grinned. "Coop, me and Twitch - have you met Twitch? You'd uh... You'd remember if you had." She giggled. "We were working as guards for this donkey-cave guilder, going place to place. Nothing too serious, just -"
Coop, who had been valiantly swigging at the bottle, cut her off with a smile. "Aw, come on Riff. He wasn't that bad. For a guilder." RiffRaff glared at him.
"He was a solid gold prick. He ripped off everyone he met."
"He was a guilder."
"He charged more for drugs if people were sick!"
"He was a guilder."
"He mixed sumpwater in the liquor!"
"He was a guilder."
"He shot that trader in Saltash!"
"The one who tried to stab him?"
"When he ripped him off!"
"Like a guilder!" Coop broke into a playful smile, which was apparently a little too wide as he grunted and rubbed bruised jaw. He turned to Riggs. "Carson was an underhanded, backstabbing con artist, but that just meant that he was good at his job. With us though, he was a good guy. We sat shotgun on his caravan between settlements. Easy money, apart from the odd raider or underhive moron. Between us though, they didn't really have a chance."
"So what happened?" Riggs took another swig of the 'wildsnake' Coop had passed him, gagging a little as the aftertaste hit him. It really was foul stuff.
"Well," RiffRaff muttered. "like he said, we covered his ass between settlements. If Carson wants to shoot his mouth off to every guy in every drinking hole in Skillett, we can't be there to stop the guy who... well, shot his mouth off, I guess." Coop laughed and put his arm around her shoulder, but stopped when she threw him a look. "Turned out he messed with some local hired gun, a real badass apparently. And apparently he wasn't in the mood for Carson's gak talk." A look of sadness spread momentarily across her face, before her features quickly hardened. "Either way, we found ourselves between employments." She passed a bacc-stick to Coop, lighting her own off the campfire. "You want one?" Riggs shook his head."Eh, your loss, they're good."
Riggs smiled, patting his shirt sleeve. "Got my own. From uphive." RiffRaff looked briefly impressed, but pulled it into a good natured sneer, rocking her head from side to side. "So how'd you find yourself here? Skillet's what, like, 10, 15 miles East?"
"Business venture." Coop replied. "Whatever we think of Carson," a glance to RiffRaff,"he went out owing us a fair few creds in backpay. He also left behind a fair few crates of spirits, munitions and condensor parts that he was no longer using. We heard of a trader who didn't ask many questions out at this end, but unfortunately didn't quite make it all the way here. The guide we hired was the same guy who gave us the tip, and said he knew the fastest way from Skillet to Rukob - yeah, yeah, I can see in your face that you know where this is going. It was stupid as hell, I know." Riggs raised his hands and shook his head, trying to repress a grin. "There were 20-odd armed men - thugs hired by the local guild interest - waiting for us in a pass about 5 miles out. We did what any sane people would do in that situation - gave em everything." He paused for a moment. "Twitch was raging, practically frothing at the mouth. Couldn't stand the idea that we weren't going to fight them. We managed to calm him down before he shot anyone though, or I'm guessing we wouldn't be here." He spat in the fire and watched it hiss. "Still, I'd love to meet that 'guide' again. Just the once." RiffRaff cracked her knuckles.
"They let us live, which was an unexpected courtesy. Took everything, of course, but let us go. Not before their boss had given me a "lesson about trade rights" though." RiffRaff put her hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off and smiled at her. "We made it though. It's almost hard to hate them, they did it so well."
The dog had been whimpering for a few minutes now. Riggs pulled another bottle from his pack, set it on the rubble he'd been sitting on.
"That's one hell of a way in. Look, I need to move, or Cass here'll never forgive me." He gestured at the bottle. "That's yours, if you think you can stomach it. Sounds like you guys could use it." He untied the dog from the post, pushing her back as she licked his face. He stood upright, turned again to the two newcomers. "Welcome to the Jackals, guys. It's been a pleasure."
Twitch
A close friend of RiffRaff and Coop, Twitch worked with them for several years as a caravan guard. Somewhat of a heavy drinker with a talent with cards and a fast mouth, he was known as a story-teller and writer. Around a year before the three came into contact with Murdock, though, he was thrown from his truck in a collision with some local wildlife, striking his head against the road. Whilst he survived, he has been wildly unpredictable since, breaking down into tears with no provocation or attacking strangers over imagined slights. Despite this, he still experiences periods of lucidity, and can for days at a time seem the man he used to be. Whilst most men in such situations would not have lasted long, Riff and Coop stuck by their old friend, even though his outbursts cost them several contracts. Murdock was not happy with his inclusion in the Jackals, but allowed him to remain, as long as the others accepted responsibility for his behaviour.
Scratch
At 19, Scratch is the youngest member of the 21st Jackals. Optimistic and adventurous, she spends as much time on the surface as she can, and adores the ruins. Scratch had no real experience of the world before the Easthollow disaster, and was carried to Pinepoint shortly after the evac by her parents, both of whom have since passed (her father of rusinate lung, her mother of radiation sickness while serving with the Remnants). She was raised mostly be Elara, another orphan girl discovered by Remnant patrols shortly before her arrival, and the two are very close. Scratch revels in finding what she can of life before, and has developed a penchant for old world luxuries – she has spent many an evening with a begrudging Elara combing old stores for lho sticks, soda and sour candy. She also delights in finding gifts for others, hunting out undamaged spray-paints for Coop and Riff, or interesting mechanical parts and wiring for Skragg.
Originally from the poorer quarters around Rookpoint Spire, Scratch’s parents had little money for medical care, and her birth was complicated. She suffered a nerve injury to her right leg, leading to complete loss of sensation that led to multiple fractures and injuries as she grew. Though it does little to slow her down, pain and fatigue quickly set in if walking longer distances and Scratch is loathe to admit this, pressing through the pain for as long as she can. She learned to drive at a young age and has developed some skill, often being entrusted with the truck by Murdock on their expeditions outside of the hive.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/08/29 21:44:36
2011/08/29 22:15:17
Subject: Re:Scarper's Scavenging Necromunda Gangs: Scratch painted 24/8. Would love any feedback :D
this is looking very nice as usuall sculpting is nice especialy favorited on the warden and the coop and riffraff pair
Automatically Appended Next Post: to be honest every time i come here i start from page one as i love seeing where this came from keep it up
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/08/30 01:29:07
[ "Don't worry, Vik! You have all of your internet friends to keep you company! And, as everyone knows, internet friends are at least one step above imaginary friends "-Rawson
"Does an Ork shiiiit green?" "...Rogue! -you rock!" "Damn you too Rogue!""[TTFN]... That means tittyfething right?""Yep, that's me, a two-dollar whore"-Dsteingass
"... but if we all fail together we can make it look like we´ve won actually.." "...to all killers out there...: my face will hit your fist so hard it´s gonna bleed...your fist that is...""lol....OMG... you are a serial""he knows no pain...nor fear^^ he is a riveteer""yep... some of the dakka chaps here sure made the joints of my jaw quite loose...""er... emailsex... now that at least sounds like the perfect safer sex... but i like mine a bit more...wet""do you know what they call a quarter pounder of a buckte full of rivets in france?" "No...what?" "Rivitz royal"-Viktor von Domm
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2011/09/05 18:46:06
Subject: Scarper's Scavenging Necromunda Gangs: Scratch painted 24/8. Would love any feedback :D
Every one definitely unique. Tell me, do you play a lot of fallout 3?
I love anything post-apocalyptic. Sometimes I get the feeling we aren't far away from it...
Aww, it's upsetting riff-raff drowned. I really like the theme you have going through your gang, you really capture a sense of humanity in the miniatures.
I'd have loved to see this stuff up close, all the work you put into each one really is something. It would drive me mad I think. But then again I am trying to do something similar for a small band of zombie apocalypse survivors I have. Wibble wibble wibble.
and I'll try to get some shots of the hair up too, probably some time tomorrow.
