So.. I thought I was going to get out of this one but apparently people want to know what the acronym people think Stalker is made of means... to quote a wise man, I do not think it means what you think it means.
anyway, common vernacular for some people who deal in the business of item acquisition aside, this is what the supposed acronym stands for: Scavengers, Trespassers, Adventurers, Loners, Killers, Explorers and Robbers.
Wandered over into San Jose because I'd heard Axel was out there running a tailoring shop. When he looked up from the counter he broke out laughing saying "I thought one of you was skulking about around here." Asked him to make some modifications to my gear, re-etching the runes on my goggles, adding a couple layers of light cloth stitched up with runes to soften impacts to my vest, that kind of stuff. He even re-did the hood so that it will stay up even during the worst storms and gives the wearer enhanced vision at night. Generally he does't do more complex runes like this except for people who survived out in the ashlands, or for people who pay very...very well. Afterwards I stopped at one of the Fry's electronics which has now grown and taken over half the shopping center and is now called "Fry's Electronic Empire"... I swear if it wren't for the lighting I'd swear these guys in here were cyborgs.... kinda interesting to meet the people who are now maintaining the internet and keeping the limited connectivity alive. They took a unique interest into the battery and electrum ore (it's what I'm calling it anyway) I had and for a chunk about the size of a C-cell battery they took the time to condense my Laptop, car battery, satellite phone and solar panel setup into a single unit, boosted the antennae power. Also some kind of voodoo bullshit to fully weatherproof it... they've asked me to field test it.... I told them I'm taking it to an active volcano and they got all bright eyed and excited like this was the ultimate field test.
Made a trip home and sorted some stuff out with my dad... we're not on the best of terms, but at least I now know I didn't disown myself. Apparently he's the one who told Leishey where he and Eivan might find me so we couldn't have parted on as bad a terms as I thought we had. Speaking of, Leishey's grouped up with his ecologist at the Stanislaus Campus to lay the groundwork and get it approved so we have more funding than whatever we can find that isn't nailed down and has tasked Eivan and myself with getting out to Salt Lake City to prep for the expedition and gather intelligence for what's going on out there since word of mouth really isn't that reliable.
So while Eivan looks for some work to take us that way, probably some kind of courier job that requires armed guards, I'm helping some of the locals hunt down the guy that's been killing stalkers.
Monday, July 27, 2015
Monday, July 20, 2015
Huh, of all the people I'd have expected to dig me up Leishey was not on that list... Not because I didn't expect he and Eivan would be back, but because I didn't expect them to be back so soon, have work for me, or that my dad would have tipped them off to where I was.....Gonna have to make a trip back home and sort out that mess at some point...probably before this job of Eivan's.
See, they found an ecologist that is insane enough to want to go out to yellowstone.... And for some reason he doesn't trust anyone to guide him there other than people who actually walked out of the ashlands, and somehow he found Eivan and convinced him of this idiocy.
And for some reason I'm contemplating joining them in this...insanity... like something out there calling to me.. like there's some grand mystery to be discovered.
Lot of crazy rumors about the ashlands too. Places where gravity doesn't work right, patches of grass growing unabated, items that were normal now infused with magical energy. There's even a rumor of a golden statue of a coiled snake that grants wishes that turn out with an ironic twist...
I'm going to take a couple days, think on this and even go back home and try and make peace with my dad, it just doesn't feel right leaving that unresolved.
See, they found an ecologist that is insane enough to want to go out to yellowstone.... And for some reason he doesn't trust anyone to guide him there other than people who actually walked out of the ashlands, and somehow he found Eivan and convinced him of this idiocy.
And for some reason I'm contemplating joining them in this...insanity... like something out there calling to me.. like there's some grand mystery to be discovered.
Lot of crazy rumors about the ashlands too. Places where gravity doesn't work right, patches of grass growing unabated, items that were normal now infused with magical energy. There's even a rumor of a golden statue of a coiled snake that grants wishes that turn out with an ironic twist...
I'm going to take a couple days, think on this and even go back home and try and make peace with my dad, it just doesn't feel right leaving that unresolved.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Mondays suck.
Yes I know it's Wednesday now, but still Mondays suck.
So, to back up a little bit, Sunday night I went into the Alamedan DMZ. Pretty simple, sneak in avoid the patrols and the dogs at the border and the landmines, find the address go in, grab the swag and do the same thing in reverse.
Went easy enough. Got back to the drop site sometime Monday morning and the client was waiting for me.... That should have tipped me off that something was wrong... Frankly everything about the guy should have tipped me off something was wrong. He was a little shady, didn't really describe the interior of the house right, the offered pay was too high for the simplicity of the job things like that.
And so as I'm camouflaging the stash, he walks up, waves hello, asks me how things are, and then shoots me in the chest a couple times before taking the swag and walking off.....I can happily say that yes Axel's runes stopped the bullets.... it still hurt like I got hit with a sledgehammer and I apparently was the pawn in some kind of operation and expected to be disposable... unfortunately I am now pissed off and the information brokers are stirred up like a nest of bees trying to find out what the hell went down, because well, it's bad for business if they get strung along and dragged into some kind of insanity involving people getting shot. Apparently I'm not the first stalker this has happened to either. I'm just the first one that walked away from it alive.
Now before I get inundated with questions, a stalker is someone that sneaks into restricted or dangerous areas to retrieve things for fun, family and profit. Some people say it's an acronym, others don't depends on who you ask and what the guy they're referring to may have done or not done... I however can say I know who first started referring to "retrieval experts" as stalkers. It's some guy who read a bunch of books before the war came up with the term from a book he read about the aftereffects of first contact with aliens, and the stalkers in that pretty much did the same thing and he's the one who is in charge of keeping things sensible in the chaotic world of information trading in the bay area.
Anyway, not sure which is more annoying, that I was shot, or that I was duped into doing the hard part of a retrieval for someone else.... didn't even get paid either. Anyway the only reason I'm even posting this is because someone was asking around in the shadows for me... specifically by name, and that kinda sent up a red flag, so I might be disappearing for a while.
Yes I know it's Wednesday now, but still Mondays suck.
So, to back up a little bit, Sunday night I went into the Alamedan DMZ. Pretty simple, sneak in avoid the patrols and the dogs at the border and the landmines, find the address go in, grab the swag and do the same thing in reverse.
Went easy enough. Got back to the drop site sometime Monday morning and the client was waiting for me.... That should have tipped me off that something was wrong... Frankly everything about the guy should have tipped me off something was wrong. He was a little shady, didn't really describe the interior of the house right, the offered pay was too high for the simplicity of the job things like that.
And so as I'm camouflaging the stash, he walks up, waves hello, asks me how things are, and then shoots me in the chest a couple times before taking the swag and walking off.....I can happily say that yes Axel's runes stopped the bullets.... it still hurt like I got hit with a sledgehammer and I apparently was the pawn in some kind of operation and expected to be disposable... unfortunately I am now pissed off and the information brokers are stirred up like a nest of bees trying to find out what the hell went down, because well, it's bad for business if they get strung along and dragged into some kind of insanity involving people getting shot. Apparently I'm not the first stalker this has happened to either. I'm just the first one that walked away from it alive.
Now before I get inundated with questions, a stalker is someone that sneaks into restricted or dangerous areas to retrieve things for fun, family and profit. Some people say it's an acronym, others don't depends on who you ask and what the guy they're referring to may have done or not done... I however can say I know who first started referring to "retrieval experts" as stalkers. It's some guy who read a bunch of books before the war came up with the term from a book he read about the aftereffects of first contact with aliens, and the stalkers in that pretty much did the same thing and he's the one who is in charge of keeping things sensible in the chaotic world of information trading in the bay area.
Anyway, not sure which is more annoying, that I was shot, or that I was duped into doing the hard part of a retrieval for someone else.... didn't even get paid either. Anyway the only reason I'm even posting this is because someone was asking around in the shadows for me... specifically by name, and that kinda sent up a red flag, so I might be disappearing for a while.
Saturday, July 4, 2015
Back in the saddle again.
Happy fourth of July everyone. Historically the celebrated founding day of the U.S. and consequently the day the world actually ended. Decided to post the celebratory post about the 5th a bit early, for those of you who've been living under a rock, or in a bunker (the crazy few that still are) the 5th is called N-day short for the day of the new world.
Anyway, those batteries I mucked about with in Utah. Trump's R&D team started selling them, much better and more refined than what I put together, however it's stupidly expensive due to how rare the ore used in them is, rumor has it there's only three sources off in Utah, and how they haven't been able to replicate the material's magical nature. the short of it is it's a rare material and it's hazardous to mine because it naturally builds up a charge and has a tendency to arc off.
Also if anyone is reading this and is off near cape Canaveral there's an open reward for usable materials and data from the space center out there deliverable to Vandanberg afb. This is includes a second larger reward for the heavy lift crawler, or parts.... so if you want to drive that from florida to the west coast go for it. Reward's being offered by the survivors of a few of the private firms and some of the government space cases that've started getting the national space center beta site up and running.... somehow this included convincing the russians to ship over the Buran, some scientists and a starter kit for building a heavy launch rocket since their cosmodrome got trashed during the war.
And that's enough about the world, now to small matters.
I had a big stupid post thought up and mostly typed out but have decided against it, the basic gist of it is that I got into an argument with my dad...it was kind of a long time coming over my goals in life and him not wanting me to end up in a similar situation to how he was with his brothers regarding the family farm and ranch, and well it ended up with me in self exile... which is why I'm now crashing on the couch of one of my brothers figuring out what to do next working odd-jobs and sneaking into the Alamedan-DMZ to collect scrap, trinkets, stuff from people's homes.
It's surprising how much people will pay for a keepsake from before the war, especially to people who can sneak past poorly equipped patrols who've never dealt with magically enhanced stealth... really they need to keep up with what's been going on with the world regarding magic.... it's funny how quickly people have tried to make some kind of normalcy out of a very abnormal world.
Anyway, those batteries I mucked about with in Utah. Trump's R&D team started selling them, much better and more refined than what I put together, however it's stupidly expensive due to how rare the ore used in them is, rumor has it there's only three sources off in Utah, and how they haven't been able to replicate the material's magical nature. the short of it is it's a rare material and it's hazardous to mine because it naturally builds up a charge and has a tendency to arc off.
Also if anyone is reading this and is off near cape Canaveral there's an open reward for usable materials and data from the space center out there deliverable to Vandanberg afb. This is includes a second larger reward for the heavy lift crawler, or parts.... so if you want to drive that from florida to the west coast go for it. Reward's being offered by the survivors of a few of the private firms and some of the government space cases that've started getting the national space center beta site up and running.... somehow this included convincing the russians to ship over the Buran, some scientists and a starter kit for building a heavy launch rocket since their cosmodrome got trashed during the war.
And that's enough about the world, now to small matters.
I had a big stupid post thought up and mostly typed out but have decided against it, the basic gist of it is that I got into an argument with my dad...it was kind of a long time coming over my goals in life and him not wanting me to end up in a similar situation to how he was with his brothers regarding the family farm and ranch, and well it ended up with me in self exile... which is why I'm now crashing on the couch of one of my brothers figuring out what to do next working odd-jobs and sneaking into the Alamedan-DMZ to collect scrap, trinkets, stuff from people's homes.
It's surprising how much people will pay for a keepsake from before the war, especially to people who can sneak past poorly equipped patrols who've never dealt with magically enhanced stealth... really they need to keep up with what's been going on with the world regarding magic.... it's funny how quickly people have tried to make some kind of normalcy out of a very abnormal world.
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