In-Depth Look: Scrappers
A HANDFUL OF SCRAP
The wind is howling like a wild animal, driving fountains of dust and ice crystals through the street canyons. The woman turns away. Her skin is coarse-pored and leathery. Fleshy lids cover her eyes, leaving only slits. Her brows, lashes, and hair are frozen tangles. Many layers of patchwork made from sewn leather, plastic, and faded cloth weigh down upon her shoulders: they must be about as heavy as a calf, and she moves about as gracefully as one, too. Her head swings slowly back and forth, sometimes she sticks it out slightly, chewing on a piece of root. She staggers on before stopping in front of a wall, frowning and sniveling. What is that? A sign the size of a head marks the gray concrete – something with jags, underlined with dots, it’s hard to tell, it’s all blurred. The woman spits a thick gob at it and rubs at it with her fist.
The wind subsides, and the dust settles. The ice crystals glitter in the midday sun. The woman keeps walking through the street canyons. She makes guttural, giggling sounds, interspersed with words like “little shit”, “wankers” and “arsehole”. The walls of the buildings are full of signs, simple runes next to stick men and abstract but complex shapes. Some are the size of her fist, others as tall as a man, some drawn with a charred stick, others carved. The woman stops, looks around, and sits down. Her body trembles with her giggling. “How could you have stumbled into such a looted region? Incredible!” She bends over and buries her hands in the red dust. Suddenly she freezes, then digs with her fingers in the sandy ground.
Carefully, she extracts something. It’s about palm-sized, cold as metal with rounded edges. Her face shows disbelief, root sap trickling from the corner of her mouth. She wipes it away with her sleeve without taking her eyes from the weird artifact. “No idea what that is. But it looks valuable. The Chroniclers will get all damp when they get their hands on that.” She looks around, stares at the signs on the walls. Her face trembles. “What sort of idiots are you?”, she screams, toppling over backwards and laughing loudly.
Every sign stands for one Scrapper. Each and every one of them put it here to say: “I was here. Took it all. Walk on.”
The woman gets up again, now trailing a wake turbulence of dust. She is still giggling. Idiots.
LOST KNOWLEDGE
The Bygone cities were deserted. Concrete giants rose from a sea of crater ash, stone dust, bone fragments, and glass in complete loneliness. Ragged cloth swayed in the wind. Ocher-colored clouds raced across the sky, forming vortices the size of entire cities, breaking up and vomiting trails of poisonous aerosols over the land.
In chasms and basement entries, something stirred. Eyes glittered in yellowish light, observing the vortex. A new type of human rose from his hiding place, making a home in the ruins. They learned to interpret the weather, sheltering themselves against the cold with layers of racks and against the dust with moist scarves. Yes, their homes were destroyed, and that hurt: the harder you fall, the more desperate you are. But they did not give in and they did not flee from the shimmering clouds of ash.
Maybe the world that had collapsed around them had not been theirs anymore even before the catastrophe. Instead of complaining, they now examined the ruins, prodding the dirt with long stakes, ignoring the bones and the mummified corpses. They burrowed into the dust with their bare hands, ever deeper, only to drag back a piece of yesterday into today’s twilight. They had not yet forgotten the names and uses of their findings, and they discarded many things as broken that would be treated as treasures and artifacts in a few decades.
The Scrapper was born.
SAVIOR
The years after the Eshaton were a phase of change from the civilized human being with limitless access to food, warmth, and entertainment to the savage with bared teeth. Without the Scrappers, humanity would have remained that way. They felt obliged to their communities, and so set out into the dangerous outside world to procure equipment and spare parts.
Thousands combed through the ruins, staggering across the dusty plains like paper scraps from an upturned trashcan, drifting in the wind. Collapsing buildings weakened by the hellfire, basements full of explosive gas, barrels leaking flammable oil across the concrete, electrical generators still charged up and able to jolt the heart, and other, similar hazards all reduced their numbers. The survivors became shrewder and stronger, embracing their new role. Mice became Foxes. Foxes became Lone Wolves. The land that had felt so hostile to all forms of life became their home.
They started to return to their fortified settlements less and less often. The long, ascetic weeks in the ruins had alienated them from other survivors. In the villages, the helpless people would just keep complaining incessantly and clinging to old, irrelevant ideologies. Those people were so dependent. Whenever a water pump collapsed, there was a big clamor, most of them not even trying to fix the problem. Then, the Scrappers were on their way again, searching for surrogate generators and pumps in waterworks or filling stations.
MEANWHILE
Africa. The large coastal cities had been devastated by tidal waves, but the reconstruction was in full swing. Not much could be saved from the debris, though – the undertow had taken almost everything with it and sunk it in the Mediterranean. Children dove from the coast, tying ropes to everything under water that seemed valuable to them. The adults then pulled it ashore. Battered metal and broken engines were piling up on the sand.
The Africans looked across the Mediterranean appraisingly, speculated, and discussed within their Clans whether the jump across the water would be worthwhile. After all, they had salvaged only trash here, but what might be waiting for them over there?
They repaired ships, loaded them with tons of dried meat and quinoa. They filled their water tanks, and cranes lowered buggies into the ships’ holds.
They put out to sea. Destination: Franka.
The coastal cities were destroyed and empty, but the first African Scrappers had expected nothing else. Yet the hinterland was like a treasure drove: generators and tools soon found their way into African cities. Soon after, steel bars were salvaged from the concrete and shipped away. Metal plates on walls torn down to rivet to the side of a vehicle. Entire factories were slowly dismantled and transported off piece by piece. Village after village and city after city, the Scrappers scoured Franka.
Africa flourished while Europe spiraled downwards into the new Stone Age.
PAYMENT
The Chroniclers spread out. In Borca, there have always been many of them. From the Central Cluster in Justitian, they travel to Franka’s Atlantic coast and deep into Purgare’s hinterland. They palpitate a little due to the possibilities, the artifacts and the Stream fragments enclosed in them. Too often, that leads to greed.
The Scrappers come in flocks to bring them their findings. Almost none of them really know what the artifacts are truly worth. It makes little to no sense to discuss this with the Chroniclers, for at the first sign of discussion or haggling they will suddenly lose interest, raise their pinky and rattle a brief “Exit! Exit!” from their Vocoders. The Scrappers have to take what they get. Supposedly they can get more whenever the Scrapper Cartel’s Appraisers are involved, but who knows for sure?
Actually, the Chroniclers have made an art form out of evaluating an artifact: they examine it from all sides, plugging in diagnosis gear or using one of their crackling boxes on it. The artifact check can take an instant or minutes – but that has no effect on the price. As payment, the Scrappers get information on Bygone artifact stores (the Chroniclers call this “recursive information trade”) or Chronicler Drafts. The Scrappers accept, sometimes grudgingly, sometimes euphorically. It doesn’t matter to the Chroniclers, they’ll always return anyway.
What the Chroniclers are to European Scrappers, the Neolibyans are to African ones. The Magnates’ Surge Tanks can hold tons of scrap: artifacts are cleaned and improved, metal is melted and cast into trusses and armor plates for new Surge Tanks. But if you offer an amount of Chronicler Drafts that a Borcan would kill for to an African, he will spit at best. African Scrappers want to be paid in Dinars, minted by Tripol’s Bank of Commerce, heavy and shiny with gold.
THE CRAVING FOR THE PAST
Centuries passed. In Europe, artifacts became objects of worship, but only the chosen ones were able to use and repair them. With every generation, more knowledge about electricity and mechanics disappeared.
These were hard times for Scrappers, probably the hardest. Scrap doesn’t fill your belly. A steel rod a villager could use to support his hut or to bash in an attacker’s skull was worth more than one of the legendary thinking machines. However, the Europeans never gave up completely on the artifacts: the memory of the Bygones was supported by their gear, and where there was a will, there potentially was a way, too.
The worship produced strange effects. Clans propagated stories of the relics’ inherent magic, accumulated scrap for their own tribes, and prayed to it – with negligible effects. Others banned the artifacts as a symbol of exaggerated materialism that must have driven any divinity from the Bygone people’s lives. Naturally, the two groups didn’t get along very well.
The Scrappers were in the midst of it all, the piece of iron between anvil and hammer.
However, better times were to come.
In Borca, the Judges conjured a hail of lead and drove the sects from their Protectorate, while the Chroniclers built Alcoves and even showed interest in those platinum fragments that had been worn as jewelry on a necklace before. Suddenly, scrap was valuable again, and without all the dancing, screaming madmen in the wasteland, the risk became reasonable once more. The Scrappers set out. Thousands of them entered faraway seas of debris, built camps in the dust within days and let them fall to ruin once the looting was done.
FASTER
The Africans were faster. While Borcan Scrappers were still waiting for Justitian to smoke out the last remaining nests of the Cockroach Clans, former Frankan industry sites were already back in service in Tripol and Bedain.
Now, the African Scrappers turned to Purgare. Soon, the convoys thundered across the crumbling roads from Naples to Rome, along the Liri, past Ceccano, Colleferro, and countless other villages. In droves, the Scrappers clung to the rumbling Surge Tanks like insects to decaying flesh, waiting to get their hands on Bygone technology.
The morale was excellent. Eternally oppressed Africa had thrown off its chains and climbed towards the zenith of culture over Europe’s dead body. Everyone wanted to be a part of this.
LONELY
The European Scrapper is an individualist. His clothing is a patchwork of rags, capes, and leather reinforcements that is very inconspicuous in the light and shadow of the ruins: to the untrained eye, he is invisible in the wasteland. It’s his best and only protection in the first years in the dust. Those who don’t know how to hide will not be Scrappers for long – but they will be dead forever.
All alone, the Scrapper roams the ruins, digs into vaults, and returns to the exchange Alcove as soon as his cart is full or his belly is empty. This goes on for years. Sometimes another ragged figure accompanies him, a spade over her shoulder, and some take in orphans – the so-called ‘Mice’ – to lower into openings they are too large to enter themselves.
Life amidst the relics of the Bygone people changes them. They develop a feeling for the ruins, learn to interpret them. Who lived here once? How did they fare? And especially: did they survive the Eshaton and take their treasures with them? In a weird way, most Scrappers feel at home in the ruins. No unnecessary talk, no maneuvering, no misunderstandings caused by thoughtless compliments. Life is so simple out there. Sure, you have to watch out for the Gendos, and there isn’t always fresh water, and there’s little hope of good food, but even so, the ruins are a home to them that they won’t leave until their dying breath. A few deviate from this path of scavenging. They become Mechanists, creating true marvels from scrap: many legendary rifles, traps, and highly complex clockwork devices and locks have been built in their workshops. The Chroniclers are suspicious of this development. Suddenly, there is someone who has a use for the artifacts instead of trading them for a fistful of paper in the exchange Alcoves at once without second thought. A grain of dust in the delicate cogwheels of the Cluster.
STRENGTH
The Africans are different. For them, it’s an honor to set out in the name of their village, Clan, or Culture to add to its wealth. The Scourgers may treat them like shit, and for the Neolibyans they are pawns in a gamble for wealth and power, but they don’t care. They know their worth. African Scrappers are idealists.
During the expeditions, the community is extremely important. It is a surrogate family, but also a piece of culture brought to the inhospitable realms of Europe from back home. After a hard day in the dust, the Scrappers spend the evenings celebrating and laughing together, talking about homesickness and giving each other solace. Physical contact is very important to the Africans: they embrace a lot, and they touch each other while speaking. To see two male Scrappers hand in hand is not a sign of homosexuality, but signifies that they are good friends. Out in the field, they take care of each other and work together to increase both of their hauls.
With their colorful clothing, they express their individuality and convey their views and whims. Their mood, their basic ideas about life and death, money and family, and even their origins are encoded in patterns and colors dating back to their ancestors. They are very different to the Europeans’ dusty capes.
RUNES
A Scrapper’s way rarely runs parallel to the path of life of an Anabaptist or a Spitalian or even a simple citizen of Justitian. He rather crosses that path, dragging a sled with a pile of scrap, eyes cast down. Between the Scrappers, it’s the same: if you set out in groups, you are easier to find and have to share the haul. Still, they have developed a means of keeping in contact: the Scrapper runes.
No one would remember Grief who wandered the streets south of Tech-Central when the tunnel system still existed or Toktok who searched refugees’ mummies in mountain caves if both of them had not marked their way with runes. Their sign language is similar to a dog’s scent marks, pointing at dangers, events, and the user of the marks. Almost every Scrapper knows simple line symbols of his own design that can be easily scratched into walls with a knife. Many Scrappers have their name sign tattooed onto their forehead or the back of their hand as a mark of their individuality. Once they have searched a ruin, they mark it with a sign: “Was here. Walk on.” Other signs serve as waymarkers (arrows and triangles), danger signs (jagged lines), or point at watering holes (three horizontal lines). The meanings of the runes differ from region to region: there is no common alphabet.
African Scrappers do not know this way of communication. They exist in a living community and prefer the spoken word.
BEDAIN
Bedain is the world’s largest wrecking port – for ships as well as for human driftwood. Its magnetism attracts every Scrapper, luring him into the labyrinth of monolithic wrecks and enormous junkyards. Old African Scrappers build rifles and apprentice anyone who slides a fistful of Dinars across the workbench. Clockwork showing the course of the stars, ship cannons, gearboxes weighing several tons, even delicate music boxes – if something can be built, there is a workshop that makes it in Bedain. In halls the size of the Cluster, thousands of people live in the rafters while Surge Tanks are built and maintained below. Scrappers looking for like-minded individuals can find lots and lots of them here. This is the heart of the Scrapper world, and it beats with the rhythm of the hammers.
This place births legends and heroes, and everyone fancying himself a real Scrapper has to walk this city’s alleys once in his lifetime and leave his rune on a surfwashed iron wall at the southern cliffs. This is completely irrational, but the deed still feels completely natural. People will talk about it, and someone will recognize the rune. Ah, someone from Bedain. The inhabitants know each other and greet each other with a nod.
Once back home, the rain has long since washed the oily scent from the skin. The memory remains, however.
HIDDEN STORES
Laden like drones, the European Scrappers trudge through the land. Some tie their findings to their clothes – beginners who do not know that the rattling will only attract outlaws. The more experienced ones pile their artifacts onto a carrying rig made of tubes welded together. Others drag sledges or carts behind them.
But for some, the burden is too heavy. They have to divide their loot: part of it stays behind, the rest is brought to the Chroniclers. What they leave behind must be damn well hidden. Maybe in the ancient sewers, in the cavities under fallen concrete slabs, or buried in a dune of dust. Parting is not easy whenever the Scrappers finally leave their hideaway and trudge towards the settlement. Quickly, quickly! Most of them return and are relieved to see that their store is unmolested. But some get distracted, are abducted, die, or simply cannot find the damn hiding place again. In this fucking dust, everything looks the same!
These deserted caches are the stuff of legends. For example, there is Frahn who boasted about a massive find that he was forced to leave out in the wasteland, then suddenly clutched his breast and fell from his barstool, dead. Or old Tiber who always got some precious bauble from his “vault” whenever he was short of cash. To find such a cache could make life much easier. One thing is for sure: Scrappers are good listeners.
IN OLD AGE
Only very few European Scrappers ever retire. They comb through the ruins for some findings to sell and gild their old age. The search becomes an addiction: “Just this one last ruin, I can feel it. I’m almost there!” Most of them eventually die of weakness in the wasteland. They simply do not come back to the city at some point.
All their life, they have brought artifacts to Chroniclers and dragged metal to Scrapper halls. Those who manage to get out find a new home in those Scrapper halls. Not necessarily a better one, because to dismantle scrap is hard work and quickly depletes an aging body. At least it is not far to the next bowl of root soup here.
Those who have managed to become Mechanists or Manufacturers find a place amongst the rare communities of Scrappers. Even the Chroniclers have to admit that the Scrappers know a lot. Sometimes, the Cluster even sends Agents to be introduced into the secrets of mechanics by a Manufacturer. It is not always clear if that is supposed to be a reward, common procedure, or a punishment.
Social security among Scrappers is rather weak. Let the devil take the hindmost. In Africa, this is different, though: the Clan takes care of its old ones, showing them respect. Full of interest, the children bend closer to listen intently when the gnarled Scrappers talk about their adventures and battles against Borcan barbarians. In the end, they die in dignity, meanwhile the European Scrappers rot in the wasteland.
Ashes to ashes.
ALL AROUND THE WORLD
In Europe, the Bygones are omnipresent. Fields of rubble rise from the haze across the continent, tarmac paths stitch an intricate pattern into the land; and along them, Scrappers find dilapidated filling stations, houses hidden under dunes of petrified crater ash, old storage buildings, and overgrown halls. Much of it has already been looted, but those who dig deep enough will invariably find Bygone artifacts. For Scrappers, this land has always been paradise.
BORCA
Scrap, scrap everywhere. West Borca is a repository, bringing to the scene a whole army of Scrappers. Finding an untouched spot here borders on a miracle. Here, the Cartel, a community of Scrappers, has been flourishing for some years. Or rather that’s what Bosch, its leader, calls it with a wry smile. He is an irritable dwarf trying to leash the Black Lung’s Scrappers in order to extort higher prices from the Chroniclers. His bullies monitor the ruins and sell search licenses while his Appraisers offer their services to laden Scrappers in front of the exchange Alcoves – by force, if necessary. But his network has holes, and many Scrappers manage to bypass the Cartel. Even so, the organization is growing stronger by the day.
Beyond the Reaper’s Blow, Bosch’s influence fades. Over there, the rules are different anyway. Nature takes back the seas of debris, and the superstitious nomads consider them cursed: they steer clear of the rugged rows of walls. In the last decades, some Scrappers from West Borca found their way into the wide conifer forests and settled there. Wherever they set foot, they dig artifacts from the forest floor. But the next Chroniclers are hundreds of days’ marches away – beyond a volcanically active fault that you can only circumvent via the Hellvetics’ fortress. This is no fun. Luckily, there are the renegade Needle Tower Chroniclers. The Cluster buzzes with agitation when anyone mentions them. Those who trade with the Needles are banned for life by the Chroniclers. Of course, the Chroniclers don’t tell anybody how they find out who has dared to do so.
The Needle Towers aren’t the only ones who sometimes buy baubles. Osman’s ruling families buy them as well. With their help, life can be made a little more luxurious.
FRANKA
Long before the population started to realize the value of the artifacts, the Africans had picked the ruins clear. The cities on the south coast especially have been combed through over and over. You have to take great risks if you even want to find a screw here: only the crumbling basements that have been locked for centuries or the fields deep in the Pheromancer’s swamps still offer the chance to find something of value. The Scrappers here are daring figures that have looked death in the eye a thousand times – they are considered soldiers of fortune and are the heroes of countless Frankan legends. But the artifacts are not really needed. The Clans produce what they need for their day-to-day life. Chroniclers’ Alcoves only exist in a few larger towns, and the only Cluster is situated in Aquitaine. Artifacts are mostly used as jewelry or are exported to Borca.
POLLEN
The impact of the Pandora asteroid flattened most of the land. In the northeast, artifacts only exist in buried vaults. The ruined cities breaking through the gossamer are potential treasure troves, but no one could hope to predict where the ground will bulge upwards next, and it takes the arachnid swarms only days to spin a cocoon around the city again and turn it into a landscape of silky hills. That is not enough for a Scrapper Cult like the one in Borca to develop.
Scrappers in Pollen cling to the few settlements like flies to a flycatcher. For the Piast in Wroclaw they organize building supplies, and for his African guests they repair the armor, engines and gearboxes on their towering Surge Tanks. Danzig is being held by Spitalians and Anabaptists and is rather more interested in Petro than in new equipment, but capable Mechanists can find a job here, if they know what they’re doing.
One location seems especially promising. So promising that the Hellvetics register a steadily growing influx of Scrappers and Chroniclers via the East-West passage. Since the fall of Praha, dozens of soldiers of fortune leave the passage tunnels in the Steyr and Ternitz region every day, marching on to the north, across the barrier. Years ago, it was considered impassable but since the fall of Praha, new rules apply. Now it’s all about looting Praha’s remains before the ruins are cold and marked by Scrapper runes.
BALKHAN
For a long time, the Balkhani left the ruins to nature’s growth unchecked. Other things seemed more important. It was only very recently that they became aware of the clammy vaults full of history and rusty power resting beneath their feet. The Voivodes have them searched for weapons to further strengthen their rule. Thus, Scrappers should not dig in the ruins without the Voivodes’ permission. They could quickly be considered thieves – and how would a Scrapper dig in the dirt without his hands?
HYBRISPANIA
In the jungles of Hybrispania, strange things are happening. Within the Warpage, an undamaged Bygone building complex can trickle into reality tomorrow, a flickering, distorted picture hinting at findings of unimaginable quality. But it could also be that a giant swarm of jackdaws flies across the clearing, obscuring the sun hanging in the sky, never sinking, just like the immigration of the birds will never stop.
Those who dare to enter the Warpage can harvest tremendous treasures plucked directly from the Bygones, or get caught in a time warp forever.
PURGARE
Purgare was thoroughly looted by the Africans in a time when they didn’t have to fear the Psychokinetics. What remained was dusty walls and trinkets. Looting concessions from the Bank of Commerce in Tripol get cheaper every year. Young, inexperienced Neolibyans buy them, but they won’t get rich by doing so. The local Scrappers offer their services as Mechanists to the families or cross the Alps towards Praha, the promised land of Scrappers. West of the Apennines, they can make their profit. In the poisoned territories, a few treasures await, but the conditions – with all the gas clouds, searing lava rivers, and treacherous geysers – are deadly. The few that remained are highly specialized treasure hunters with remarkable gear and the survival instinct of a swarm of cockroaches.
AFRICA
Legends say the African hinterland had almost no ancient technology. Africa was able to come closest to the European civilizations technologically only in the coastal cities that were able to trade across the water – but these were torn into the Mediterranean by the floods following the Eshaton. African Scrappers are travelers, and usually their travels lead north.
Those who go south go looking for the UAO fortresses. In these military complexes, there are supposedly weapons stores large enough to equip all of Africa. But those stores are heavily guarded. The few who return tell campfire tales of ghosts made of quicksilver, shrouded in the rags of those who fell prey to them.
Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild
Comments