Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to The Wastes. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
The Fabled Kingdom; Solo
Topic Started: Dec 4 2016, 11:40 AM (33 Views)
Golgotha
Member Avatar
I could live in a hole
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
A haggard old man with a bushy white beard stands before a lecture theatre comprising perhaps one hundred students. He licks his cracked lips and adjusts the circular spectacles that perch atop his long pointed nose. Professor Emeritus Benjamin refers to him jovially as Fagin and none but the two of them know why. Now as he hobbles up to the podium there are whispers that flutter through the ranks of acolytes sat before him. Hush up, Professor Hobbes is gonna speak! Look out now, don’t let him catch you talking in his lecture, ‘ole Fagin’s got a bad temper!

“A man in a dark and worrisome skyscraper might only need strike a single match to uncover a wealth of riches around him. More importantly he might find candles too, with which he may grow his incipient flame into a veritable convocation of light. Without that first match, though, he shall find naught and he will die in the blackness. My friends, we are the lucky ones who have been graced by the first flame; that of the Great Librarian whom founded our order. We have been touched by his light and now we may go and find the riches of the world around us.”

“What makes us different from the Brotherhood we fight, then?” An insolent young man pipes up from the back of the theatre.

“A fine question, young acolyte! We are different because we understand that a fire cannot last if it doesn’t spread. A candle will burn itself out if its flame is not taken to another candle or hearth. The supposed Brotherhood do not understand this; they have no interest in sharing their knowledge with the world. We have the motto of the trifecta to guide us—”

On cue, the room bursts into a monotone recitation: ‘Faith in humankind. Through faith to the cause comes revelation. Hope for the future. In refraining from despair, hope will guide us to revelation. Charity, the virtue that unifies us. Our banner is as broad as those who can hold it high.’

The lecture comes across as apostolic at first; Professor Hobbes would not look out of place in a pulpit, if only he dressed in the typical vestments of the University, rather than a moth-eaten old tweed suit.

“The impetus towards sharing our knowledge is vitally important, already we have taken a great sword and thrust it into the belly of poverty with our work, liberating many a town from the vices of dearth, ignorance and idleness. Our work in the factories of Austin have given thousands of wastelanders access to lightbulbs, engines, farming tools and a myriad other goods. We are creating what those before the ablution called, ‘consumerism’, and to hark back to the words of Saint Eisenhower—to whom much of this ‘consumerism’ is credited— “we have never had it so good.”

He pauses for a moment to let this idea sink in, then points to a female ghoul acolyte who has nestled herself between two burly, shawled girls perhaps a hundred years her junior. The ghoul stands shakily; Hobbes gives a kindly smile and waits for her to find her voice. It comes eventually, crackled and nasally, as if someone had toasted her larynx.

“Professor, if we are here to spread knowledge, why post us to a place as desolate as this?”

“My child, if only you would permit me to continue. I was just about to move on to this, as it is the reason you have all been summoned to this brief lecture.”

A vigorous rush of murmurs begins to rise into the air but Hobbes casts them away with a wave of his hand, like a magician dispelling a spirit. “We have a tape, a holotape from two brave University runners who passed away whilst on their journey to Camp Lyndon. They were coming from a ways east of Hearne…or what was once Hearne, so I have heard. Where exactly they were coming from isn’t important, what matters is that they held vital knowledge of the ‘Killem Fields’. Information that our technicians were waiting for. Fortunately, the tape was recovered and transported here by an unlikely apostle to our cause. Fortune and circumstance came together and in a moment of universal beneficence and thus, the source of the energy signature emanating from those hellish tracts has exposed itself. My acolytes, the generator has been revealed.”

A whooping cheer bursts into existence augmented by more excited voices every few moments. Professor Hobbes lets the din exist unabated until it reaches a tremendous crescendo. Again, he raises his bony old hand and again the sound bubbles away, replaced by whispers and then silence. The lecturer smiles and once more licks his lips—as a lizard can taste the air for food, he can sense the tangible excitement, leavening the atmosphere like yeast.

“I know that about half of this cobbled-together class are part of our military division, and thus are not trained in such things as science and mathematics, but the Board of Professors thought that since you will all be embarking on the excursion into the heart of the ‘Killem Fields’, you should all be trained in the basics of electrical physics. We need to make sure that anyone who survives what will be a perilous journey, is sufficiently educated to do what we need to achieve our objectives. So, let us begin with an introductory seminar: electrostatics, Coulomb and medium-scale wireless power transfer.”

The Professor shuffles back from his podium and dims the large vacuum tube lights that are suspended from the thick plywood ceiling panels above, and proceeds to turn on an overhead projector. The machine hums quietly and Hobbes gently places down the first of a stack of acetate slides, his hairy knuckled thumb and fingers blown up black-and-white on the big screen at the front of the room.

“So, let’s first remind ourselves of the Lorentz equation…for the uninitiated, turn to page 25 of your project packs. Lorentz force is measured as the charge of the electric field, plus the velocity, multiplied by the magnetic field. Does that make sense? No? Right, sorry, let’s take a step back then…”
Lidie Rider: Level 3 Raider
Age: 25-28
SPECIAL: 6.9.7.4.6.6.3 Condition: [x][x][x][x][x][x][x][x][x][x]

Weapons: Post War Musket (tier 1) Tribal Sword (tier 2) Flash bang x1 snub-nosed revolver x1
Clothing: Basic Raider Armour (tier 2)
Equipment: large hide x2 medium hide x1 psycho x3 gnarled root x1 mapulator 300, secret holotape, pre-war photo, hair gel, x1 bobby pin

Kills 12

Companion: Ghilian Kheroseen.
Offline Mini Profile Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
« Previous Topic · In the Wastes · Next Topic »