Dead End Kings

The few scattered remnants of the past are dangerous but yet desired places. The abandoned buildings and ruined factories of ancient dead cities in the vastness of the wastes hold big treasures, though most of the wastelanders try to avoid those sites. May it because of RAD-contamination, danger of collapse, the possible presence of enemy gangs or the simple fact that you cannot survive long enough to settle here with limited supply and defence.

The most common reason however is another one; even if noone would admit it. Stories told by the camp fire at night. Stories of unspeakable terrors which lurk through the darkest and most godforsaken corners of the rotting remains of the once blooming past. Lunatic laughter and whispered chants in unknown tongues howling over those nightmarish places and barely visable things flit through the endless darkness. Dreadful creatures, stuff of dark legends, the Dead End Kings.

Virtually every inhabitant of the great expanse from the menial mutant to the most powerful warlord knows those legends though only few believe in them. They are dismissed as spine-chillers to scare off children; although not only children are scared by them. And their fear is more than justified, cause the Dead End Kings are far from being a simple myth.

They are described as gruesome grotesque parodies of human beings, whose flesh is pervaded by horrific mushroom-like tumors with mouths that are contorted into a scornful and crazed grin. Pity the wretched that get lost in their sinister realm, as they are haunted by maniacal whisper and are lured deeper into the bowels of the underworld. The smartest ones choose suicide before they can experience what happens if the voices ever catch up. The legends tell tales of a cyclopean city in the darkest chasms under the wastelands, where ghoulish towers protrude into nothingness like the worm-eaten teeth in a jaw of a fallen god. There so it says he holds court. He who is the inexpressible King of all Kings and a constant of raging madness wrapped in yellow, the ruler of the sleeping Carcosa. That is the true reason why no dweller feels comfortable in the old cities cause every ruin could be a secret entry to that hellish homestead.

However if black stars obscure the nightsky and the sun forsakes the great expanse for days, strange vehicles are emerging at the dunes seemingly uprisen from the feverish dreams of an insane artist. In those long nights the creatures come to the surface to loot for their King. In those nights nothing is safe in the wasteland... may it be alive or dead.