A letter from the writer.

I really need to apologize to you all. At first it was "oh I'll write a post tomorrow instead" then it was "maybe next week"... now it's gotten to "but it's been so long since I wrote something in this story".

I've got a case of writers block, not really where I want to take the story, but more "how does it get from where it is to where I want it to go", and I guess this is one of the downfalls of trying to keep a blog style story written in real time.

I've got a few ideas though on where to go from here, but I don't think I'll be able to tie the blog with the blastwave storyline to the continued march of time like I used to.... there's only so many times I can have the main character hide in a bunker, or fall through a temporal paradox without it being cliche.

Thanks for reading for the last five years, it's been rocky at times and I've tried to improve on my writing over time. I'm not giving up on this story, but I can't just shackle it to our timeline like I've tried to, so for now we're dropping the shutters on this project, and I hope to pick back up on it soon.

For the time being though, Please Stand By.

in the ashlands again

Got delayed at Salt Lake more than anticipated, there's still serious tensions between the Republic and the Confederation and despite having prior approval to get through the order checkpoints they delayed me and had an interrogation every couple days just to confirm I was who I said I was, what my purpose traveling through the bi-state area was, where I was going.

Apparently there was someone wandering around that could shapeshift.

The archivists (leishey's people) have some serious gear now, it concerns me to say the least, and that's just the stuff that they let me see.... Still they let me take one of the UTVs that was "liberated" from the military in the confusion following the war, so there's that.

GPS stopped giving me a decent location a few days ago, but I'm somewhere in wyoming, judging by the main source of light reflected off the ash clouds, I'm somewhat southeast of the caldera itself.

Heading out into the ashlands

Took a bit longer to get geared up and start out into the ashlands than I'd like.

My back hurt a bit longer than I anticipated... pretty sure I'm fine though. Left Elko and heading for salt lake city first for supplies, and then I'm going to head east out into the ashlands proper, before the weather gets foul.

sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction

To say I survived the welcome Elko gave me is putting it lightly. I was driving out towards where I figured what I was looking for would be when I got turned around and was stopped looking at a map when a drunk rear ended the car I was using with his truck

I honestly don't remember the impact, and things are a bit blurry after the fact but some firefighters helped me back to the national guard depot just through the tunnel outside of town when I said I was out there working for the order. Said they came on the wreck probably not long after it happened and that I was rendering aid to the other driver... don't really remember that either.. still the docs at the depot, they patched me up right. I should be fine, troublesome that there's no one out here that picked up on any healing magics so it's time and pain pills for my sore back.

I did eventually track down my target, a stolen transport truck (up the route I thought it was up mind you) loaded up with communications equipment that the order deemed necessary for retrieval, but they weren't entirely sure where it was and couldn't just afford to be going off on wild goose chases after every little rumor. They may have more fuel than anybody else, but that doesn't mean they can afford to waste it.

So I'm kinda taking it easy before I head off on that big trip off into the ashlands.. probably another couple weeks and I'll start in on that.

made it to elko

Two days of travel to get out here.... so what is it I'm doing out here you might ask?

More of the same really. Drifting, following the work, finding lost and misplaced things... or things that have been "misplaced"., or in some cases misplacing those things, though I try to avoid jobs like that.

Place itself reminds me of a smaller Reno. Granted none of that really answers the question as to why I'm here. Hopefully before the week is out I'll be able to answer that.

Signal found

Authors note: Some portions of this post are actually based on reality. You be the judge as to what those are though.

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A belated N-day to everyone. I'm about thirteen days late. Firstly, I would like to apologize for having not posted for four months. I kind of got out of the habit for a couple weeks and those weeks turned into months, and by the time I had something worth writing about I'd gotten so out of practice, I basically ignored it.  I've actually been out of the SLC area since may believe it or not and am now off in the Bi-nation area between the California Republic and the Salt Lake Confederation (what they're now calling themselves after this spring's vote). More or less  it's kind of a demilitarized area patrolled and enforced by The order that stretches from the eastern sierras out to about old highway 93. This was the result of a full on shootout between militias of the CR and the SLC in Elko, the only reason the order didn't roll in and start disarming both is there's no proof anyone actually gave any orders.

Anyway I've been mapping springs for ranchers out here, some of them moved back to their forefather's lands, some have been out here since before the war and just needed the help.. drifting from ranch to ranch is working out pretty well and being able to kinda figure out where springs are by using ice magic kinda has it's perks. It's honestly pretty nice out here... well once you get past the smoke from all the wildfires and the fact you have to distill the water (arsenic and other heavy metals in the groundwater from some of the old mines and cinnabar deposits.)

Part of the reason I even begrudgingly decided to post, is that one of my contacts in the order got word to me through Hawthrorne depot offering me work. A decent gig, and straightforward. Go find a cache of equipment for the order, get paid handsomely and get claiming rights to anything I fancy at the cache. Seems simple enough. Well the catch obviously is it's deep into the ashlands in one of the areas where rumors of weird things come from. Man like creatures as tall as a tree, fire breathing lizards, thunder eggs the size of cars. the usual outlandish bullshit that comes out of inexperienced people wandering off into areas chock full of wild magic. I figure a couple more weeks of this and then I can head back east, stop in on Eivan and see what Leishey's outfit is doing now. I kinda cut ties with them.. nothing to do with Leishey himself, just more the bureaucracy and that they're kinda... some of the people getting hired on are not the best sort of people I guess is what I'm trying to say.  There's some truths to those rumors of dealing in weird swag out of the ashlands and it sounds like they tried to "forcefully acquire" the electrum mines... it didn't work out for them but.. well I'm not working with the Archivists anymore to say the least.

Actually now that I think on it I might be heading to Elko next week anyway for... well I'm really not at liberty to say.

Oh well, let's survive the week and I'll see if I can muster up the energy to post something when/if I get there.

Some of you have wondered and messaged me where I've gone. No I haven't vanished or wandered through another time dialation field.

The fact of the matter is for The Order has had me doing work. Odd jobs, fetch and get-it kind of stuff and been letting me use an empty cot and keep me fed. Yes the food hasn't been that good, and yes I've had to abide by their rules, some of which includes "no posting every little damn thing you do for anyone that can get a net connection to see". However the weather is starting to clear out, and that means other people are going to be needing my services again, and I'm already in talks with some people regarding some equipment they'd like to salvage out of the ashlands provided they can get it cleared with the SLC... they also want someone who's experienced enough with magic and the ashlands to be able to determine if the equipment is safe to salvage, or if it'll be like a thunder egg again.

Speaking of, I had the opportunity to make a short trip into the ashlands recently along with a couple other stalkers to teach some of the order folks how to survive out there (yes I do have permission to post about this since it's not really important to keeping their forces secure and keeping order between the SLC and CR). During the trip a couple of the order soldiers found some thunder eggs, and to demonstrate the destructive power of them we threw one into a gravitational anomaly (gravity well+self contained geode of magic= floating crackling thunder, at least that was the idea at the time), which made an impressive light show, released the magic and then temporarily dispersed the gravitational anomaly. What we also got out of it were the pieces of a thunder egg fused with ash that turned to glass during the magic release.... there's something odd about them but no one's really figured out if there's anything truly special about them, or if they're just good for trinkets that can be sold on a street corner... Other than that, taught the scrubs how to use pocket junk (rocks, coins, spent shell casings, bolts, etc) to identify magical anomalies and their areas of effect. No one died and we didn't get snatched up by inter-dimensional bullshit... At this point that's my threshold for a good day I guess.

Not dead, just busy with surviving.

There's no room at the barrows this time around what with the druids being busy with studying their magics and Bideford, Fiske also is helping them.. not sure what kind of help he'll be able to provide honestly.. but we'll see. I've been kinda couch surfing, which also limits my options because my accent pegs me as a "coastie"...which is kinda odd because I always thought the people on the coast sounded weird, but that's neither here nor now.

Regardless I think I worked out a deal with the order guys on work shelter and food. They've been having issues with some of the locals getting through their security and into their caches and want an actual skulker to catch them and "teach them the error of their ways" and apparently Leishey's organization has enough credibility with them to get me the job.

Not sure I really want to keep working with them, I've heard there's some shadiness going on that I don't want to be involved in. Trafficking stuff from the ashlands like thunder eggs and other magically augmented materials... even weaponry... I mean don't get me wrong, I'd work all day to tag caches of stuff for the order in a heartbeat because they're doing it to keep the peace, the rumors around what the "archivists" (what leishey's group is calling itself) are up to... it sounds like they're setting up a private army.

I'm going to have to shell out a couple boxes of ammo though. I sheared a locking lug on my rifle and, while it still shoots I'd rather have one of the order's armorers take a look at it and make sure the M4's in top shape. They may be here to keep the peace and offer some of their services to the public, but it isn't free that's for sure.

that's about it for now. Might have more to talk about next month.

We didn't take a time portal again.

And that's not for lack of trying, rather than mess around with dealing with winter we did attempt to use our previous campsite as a way of skipping the snow and rain, which, well, didn't work.

It ultimately took us a couple extra days to get back into confederacy territory after getting the truck stuck in a slurry of ash and snow more than once, thankfully with liberal use of duct tape, a couple 2x4s and luck, we managed to get it unstuck both times..... and then we got met by a patrol unit and got led into processing... because of how much stuff the ecologists were bringing in, how long we'd been gone for, and the fact only two of us were really known to them it took the majority of December to process us... and even then I only got stuff like my tablet and satcom yesterday.

The druids have no idea what to make of Bideford, I honestly don't care at this point, but I've told Leishey (well his liaison out here), that I'm not doing any more large team stuff. 2-3 people max, easier to prevent stupid shit from going down that way.

Still attempting to make heads or tails of the last few days, for starters there's been too much interference to connect the uplink for almost a week.. which is alright anyway since we were on our way out of the ashlands last week already.

Bideford's dead... but he's not dead. It's a weird state of being to say the least, basically I need to rewind to the 18th and work my way through the events that've led to today.

The short of it is, Bideford pissed off the tree-man thing I've seen out here... he and I were patrolling the campsite edges for any last bits of equipment that the ash might've swallowed up since we were moving camp to a new area to see if there were any different species to catalogue. The Ent (just going to refer to it as that for here on because it's more or less what it was) just wandered up over the rise, stomping along, more or less ignoring us, I gave it my usual wave.... and well Bideford... He lost his cool, snapped up his rifle and shot it, right in the side. I'll admit, I'm impressed at how quick he got the shot off, side note, .30 cal hollowpoint does literally nothing to one of these creatures, at least nothing visibly.

Well you ever have one of those moments where you screw up, and you have a bit of time to reflect on the fact you've screwed up.... that's basically what happened. The ent , just kinda stops and turns to face us, as if to say "I'll give you one chance to apologize"... well bideford is lining up for another shot, I try and get him to drop the rifle because at this point I've realized two things, "the ent is intelligent" and "It's welling up magic and waiting"... well bideford takes another shot, hits it in the arm, and it, howls out something, low and monotone before loosing whatever spell it was making on us,

 Eivan has made it over to us by that point, so has Fiske, and the plants on the hillside begin to convulse and rapidly grow, growing from woody stems to softer and vinelike tendrils that brush the three of us aside and converge on Bideford... kinda like a venus fly trap on a fly almost.. he struggled, we tried to pull him free, but the plants kept shoving us off and the wines started constricting around him...I'll spare ya'll the details....

 At the point Bideford finally stops screaming, and struggling, I realize the ent has stomped over and is admiring it's work. It's easily twenty or twentyfive feet tall, and just looms down at us before reaching down with it's gnarled hands, and just brushes me, Eivan and fisk aside, picks up the plant coocoon around Bideford and just stomps off into the ashlands.


So... Eivan breaks out the alchohol we were saving for a successful return from the expedition and we just spend the rest of the day drinking around our campfire. No one really talks for about a week.

Well on friday, as we're pulling stake and getting ready to head out finally, Bideford stumbles into our camp... only.. well he's not bideford... I mean he has all his memories, well aside from his death and whatever the ent then did to him, there's also the fact that he has a set of wooden deer antlers growing out of his head now and has gone... more or less "full hippie"...love peace and flower power... it's a strange change to say the least and we're still debating on what to do with him... Eivan says he's been marked by nature magic and the druids back in SLC will want to study him...

Me?... I just want to get back to civilization, get paid and be done with these ecologists. They're getting on my nerves wanting to stop and look at everything... they literally have a half ton of samples that we're hauling back, and a quarter of that is scat from the bison, deer and coyotes that are out here... I'll admit I'm curious as to how they've survived out here too... but there's no reason to bring back that much crap.

The ecologists need their own satcom.

So.. add that onto the list of things needed for further expeditions out here, along with one or two of the Order's GPS units with the twin signal for better accuracy. Would make for mapping out anomalies a bit easier.

That or a signal booster for both. for some reason out here there's just horrendous latency, making ecological uploads take so long, and phone calls have that awkward 2 to 3 second delay between what you say and the response...

Few more new species. They'e more or less decided what I was calling manzanita is a species of manzanita, they're debating over the scientific name though.

Not much else to mention though.

delayed updates are a thing too.

I had intended to make an update sooner, but the ecologists were hogging the  uplink sending data back since Friday.

I won't bore you with the details but they've identified about twelve new species of lichen, 6 new species of plants, tried to catch as Bideford described it, "a coyote that was running around that had deer antlers strapped on its head"...kinda think someone came out here and strapped a set of christmas antlers on it as a prank, but that'd be farfetched to say the least and I didn't see it personally.

No sign of the entfolk yet, or a dragon but on occasion I've felt like we were being watched from a distance. Eivan noticed it too and we've been taking watches at night as a precaution.

Well....time dilation... that's a thing I guess.

To say today is a weird day is an understatement.

Last night we set up camp, staked tents, dug trenches and prepped for a long stay... today we completely undid it all, pulled stake and moved about a quarter of a mile and re-established our main camp... why you might ask?

Well yesterday for us was May 1st.... and today is October 30th. Somehow in the span of about eight hours we managed to lose, would lose even be the right term?  Skipped I suppose is better.. regardless, 6 months. Half a year!

We chose that site oddly enough because it had less ashfall than some of the other areas.. Eivan said it seemed to have weird magic, but we just thought it was what was keeping out all the ash.

Last night we went to bed all well and good, and this morning we woke up all fine, well aside from there being much more ash at the edges of the clearing, and then I go to rig up the sattelite uplink and my PDA syncs up and flips forward 6 months, I don't realize this till I patch through, adjust the antennae the right direction and manage to call out to Leishey to let him know we'd established our camp, and... well freaking the hell out would be an understatement, he thought I was a ghost. I had to get Eivan on the line to talk him down, and get the full story... seems we missed some stuff back in civilization, but the weather isn't changing (it almost never does change in the ashlands anyway), so we may as well complete the job. Bideford insisted we make a radio call to SLC, got the Order guys on the first try too, and asked them to relay a message to his wife to let her know that no he's not dead... next radio day is going to be next weekend, hope things work out for him I guess.

Hopefully no timey wimey bullshit is going to happen again tonight. I'll be very pissed off if I miss christmas new years and my birthday.

Blowout soon fellow skulkers

At this moment, I'm going to have to go on hiatus once again. No it's not writers block.

As some of my readers are aware there's been a change in where I'm working, and due to the nature of my work, I'm way off in the remote mountains and living in an area where internet is less a fact of life, and more a luxary (unless I can convince my cell service guys to allow tethering).

Anyway, how long the hiatus lasts depends on how well I can fast talk my phone company, or if I can figure out if these phone lines where I'm living are actually connected to anything, but it has the potential to last until october.

Thanks for being a reader, and I'll be back in the future. I swear it.

The rest of the team arrived along with a bunch of Leishey's people who are going to be setting up an office for The Archive (what he's calling his organized stalker outfit now) in the SLC area. No one I actually know and none of the guys who were "running" things out at the DMZ either.

Fiske is back for another trip out into the ashlands, he took my and advice and tracked down Axel (literally the only person I trust when it comes to runic magic) and got his equipment and clothing improved.

Leishey managed to convince Doyel to join us to help wrangle the ecologists, so that's definitely a plus.

The other two members of his team are green, they brought unnecessary gear like axes, light duty synthetic tarps, hell their packs are half plastic, at least the guy the Confederacy is sending out to keep an eye on us (because we're going to be bringing in a silly amount of samples through SLC to the airport and they promised to execute us if there's a repeat of the thunderegg incident.), he at least is experienced enough to listen to Eivan and I when we told him fire resistant gear is a must.... seems a bit jumpy though... might throw his rifle into a gravity trap anomaly just to be on the safe side.

So in all we've got Myself, Eivan, Doyel, Fiske, Wissal (ecologist), Weaver (ecologist) and Bideford (SLC guy with an itchy trigger finger).


Somehow I suspect this is going to be a long three weeks.

Wow.... the last month and a half just sorta blew by.

And I don't really know hat to say really. Well the short of it is, things got really crazy, literally the day after the 6 tons of equipment showed up from the west.

After a bit of digging I think I finally figured out what sparked it all happened. Some dumbass dragged in a thunderegg from the ashlands and cracked it open in SLC.  To the initiated, an ashlands thunderegg isn't like its normal counterpart, these radiate some magic, granted not everyone can tell this, so to most people they're relatively normal looking agate rocks... well until you crack one open. If you cut, crack or otherwise destabilize one from the ashlands it releases all the contained energy all at once and temporarily inflicts everyone and everything in a two block radius with magical effects and abilities... which obviously caused all kinds of chaos.

Some of the people affected claimed visions from god, others just white noise filling their minds, Regardless things got out of hand and the SLC Confederation (as they're currently calling themselves) used this as reasoning to attempt to start regulating "anomalous peoples", which unsurprisingly backfired creating something of a "cold war" between magic users, regular people, and then some California Republic guy decided to agitate things by intentionally cracking about seven of them downtown by tossing them off a roof.

This started a half month vicious cycle of tougher crackdowns, more agitation chaos and bullshit, until the military remnants brought in heavy equipment and started enforcing curfews and order. Unfortunately this only happened after the confederation cracked down to the point where a miniature version of the inquisition was happening and "foreigner internment camps" were being considered in open.



So last week after the order forced the leaders of the confederation to "sit down and have words" with agitated magic users and foreign interests everyone was able to agree on some form laws and regulations, basically everyone coming into SLC territory gets inspected when bringing stuff in, mages don't get pulled out of their homes in the middle of the night and someone came up with some "standardized" rules for magical duels and managed to slip them into the discussion.... more or less everyone walked away unhappy.


So with that out of the way, Monday or Tuesday the rest of the expedition team should arrive for the ecologists to study deep into the ashlands some more.

Hopefully someone doesn't do anything stupid and break the peace again.

Sorting through a mountain of gear that Leishey got shipped to us from the west between the storms. We're kinda hoping that the weather calms down and we can get out back into the ashlands again... this snow is kinda getting on my nerves.

Odd dreams, nothing much beyond that.

Made it back to SLC between sets of storms, one of the guys who predicts the weather thinks it's going to be the last really cold storm that's going to hit out here. On a related note, we got word from Leishey that the next expedition into the caldera is starting to take shape and to not get caught up in anything that'll keep us busy beyond March.


Other than that had a few odd dreams involving the coyote, the one in the dreams not the one I was hunting, and wandering a desert with weird stuff way off in the distance, the basalt pillar from before, a giant eye of  providence in a tophat wandering along remaking things into caricatures of themselves just over the next ridge...things of that nature.

I don't know if coyote is just showing me these things to teach me, or warn me. Maybe in time I'll learn.

Game set match.

Took a while, also a few days wandering out in the snow after a whiteout storm buried the barn but I finally got the coyote...

Kinda sucks, it was an interesting challenge taking down a coyote that was much smarter than one should be but unfortunately it ended up being not only a job of protecting the livelihood of the rancher that was employing me but also an issue of protecting the ecology of this area since I found a few spots where it had killed some of the local antelopes and left them to rot like it was hunting for sport and not to eat... I think at times it was using a form of magic... like on a basic sense and not knowingly... hard to describe it I guess.

Rancher wants the meat, let me take the pelt, I think I'm going to get it cured in SLC and see what I can do with it... or maybe keep it and take it to California and see what Axel can make with it. Once the storm breaks again I'm going to make my way back to Salt lake and see what's been going on there.