This all happened some time back now, on the 51st day of the Season of Shelter. I’ve been trying to keep it secret from untrustworthy folk, and trying to make sense of it all.  But, way things spread, they probably know already. I was wandering around the east side of the Stygian crater...

A curving beak.  Round glassy eyes.  A scarlet scalp.  These features usually describe a common critter known well to Wastelanders:  the turkey buzzard.  A simple-minded but patient scavenger bird valued for food and feather by many hunters.  Young and old alike know this bird is a...

No Pulp this week.  Only pulp happening here is the bloody masses I keep coughin’ up. Writing anyway.  Writing and drinking.  Takes my mind off the sick.  Can’t hardly keep focus to write, but it helps me anyway if nobody else.  Too sick n drunk to care. Don’t care if...

The Season of Revival seemed to seek nothing but punishment.  Late ice storms, snow storms, and general coldness keep scavengers bundled up, even as the Season of Violent Winds drew near.  The Buzzards still seem to be nesting, even though other food could be found again – but a brief...

The Digger wrote up the basics of how all this started — the dead girl, the key, the stones, her weird tattoo, the Courier, and that old note from Madeye. None of us knew Madeye all too well; that time he was prancin’ about the Bazaar all crazylike was the first and only we’d...

Despite Shelter’s frigid chill, not everyone was frozen and still during the last few seasons.  A stranger’s death with a curious inheritance set off a complex chain of events.  Continuing into Revival, the rumors and stories turned into a buzz of activity humming across the...

Winter digs in the knife one last time.  Pellets of ice, hard and sharp and slick, pummel everything.  The business of scavenging and trade go on unabated while the sheets of ice and sleet cover our actions.  Wastelanders seem inspired by the foul weather.  We, too, harden ourselves and...

The nights grow a little bit shorter now.  The winds blow a little less bitter.  The arctic air threatening to slowly freeze your guts with every breath becomes a little less dry, a little less biting.  It always starts so slow, with only these small changes, but day by day Revival comes....

Shelter.  That’s all a body could want, this deep into the season.  Somewhere to hole up against the cold, when not clawing needful things from the unforgiving sand.   Some scrap of ground to claim for oneself, to make safe.   A refuge.  But refuge is never easy to come by in The...

The skies are the color of dark steel, and equally cold and cutting. Scavengers emerge from their hovels only rarely, bundled in whatever rags they’ve managed to find.   Many walk on wobbly legs, hoping in vain that this is the day they’ll find food – but even the wild...

The full Season of Hoarding has come and gone since I last forced an article out of this battered old word-masheen.  Food has become scarce, and whatever excess we scavengers had stocked up during the warm months has slowly been eaten away.  The Food Trader hasn’t been sighted in at...

The Season of the Fire King meets its second moon.  Buzzards wheel effortlessly in the burning sky, while the bipeds below do what scavenging they can before seeking an unattended shelter.   Those who can’t take the heat find their tempers rising with the temperatures.  Others find...

The Season of the Fire King begins.  As abruptly as they rose up, the fierce winds die down to an eerie and stifling stillness.  Clouds become a memory.  The sky is as iron in a fire, weighing heavily on everything beneath it, growing hotter by the moment until the glowing red of sunset...

It’s now the second moon of the Season of Violent Winds, one of the most volatile seasons in the Wastes, and the sands are blowing fiercely.  The wind does little to chill the air:  no matter how shady your shelter, the heat seems to snake in through even the smallest crack.  Yet...