Miscellaneous Fluff

Basic Information
''I thought it might be nice/useful to have a page where we can gather together assorted fluff set in the world of PARPG. Short stories, 'historical' texts, personal records - writing that probably wouldn't appear in-game, but that helps establish (and play with) the sense of tone, adding detail, adding character... A kind of bank that established writers can use for inspiration and exploration, and that newcomers can use as a handy introduction to the game's fiction.''

Too Many Shells (Bob)
The wanderer sings as he trudges. The butt of his rusted shotgun resting in the crook of his shoulder, knocking with every step against the collar of his tattered coat. His face raw and bruised from the icy wind, his red-flecked eyes set in a constant squint against the blinding, sunlit snow.

He mounts the sunken iron fence in one leap and drops easily down on the other side, still singing. Singing to keep his spirits up; singing to give his weary feet rhythm. Singing to drive back the loneliness of the empty, one-note landscape,

"I'm on my way home..."

His boot sinks a little too far in; a pothole, and freezing snow spills inside, making him swear and shiver.

"I left three days ago, and no-one seems to know I'm gone..."

He halts on the crest of the hill. To the south, endless pine forests stretch out beneath the devastated skeletons of electric pylons. To the north, there's only the driving mists. The sky is swelling with white, fit to burst. It will snow soon. And the tent, stuffed into his backpack, is in serious need of repair.

"Junkie walking through the twilight," he hums, through his yellowing, gritted teeth, "junkie walking through the twilight...I'm on my way home..."

There are three white, lumpen figures stood in the field below.

With caution, he approaches. Lifting the shotgun out of its shoulder-strap.

"Hang on to your rosary beads...Close your eyes, to watch me die..."

The snowmen gaze back at him. Their eyes and mouths are marked out with pebbles; their noses formed from broken scraps of iron. The tallest has already begun to tilt.

He glances down, noting the three sets of footprints in the snow - two adults, and a child - stumbling south-east, towards the safety of the trees. One of the adults has attempted to clumsily wipe out the tracks.

"I'm on my way home..."

A single pillar of smoke rises over the pines.



It takes him four shells. He'd hoped for less.

But he misses with his first shot and his second isn't enough to halt the father, who keeps stumbling up the side of the ridge, ungainly and absurd, clutching his brutalised shoulder with one hand and shaking his carving knife with another. The wanderer reloads - the spent shells popping out in a hiss of smoke - and fires again. The father's thrown back down the slope. His body doesn't stop sliding until it reaches the bottom.

The mother stares at him, unmoving, but she goes down easy.

And then there's only the little boy, who dashes madly out from the little camp as the wanderer reaches the bottom of the ridge, before finally ducking behind a fallen trunk twenty feet away.

The wanderer makes a barking sound at him, threatening to approach, until the boy scurries further away, retreating through the pines and out of sight. The wanderer tells himself that the boy will most likely head instinctively back up the way he came - through the fields, then north, back into the wilderness.

It's just as well; he's spent too many shells already.

The wanderer returns to the camp, ducking under the rough tarpaulin. An iron pot is bubbling, full of a sweet-smelling, thick liquid, over a small flame. Ignoring it for the moment, he begins to search through the sack that's been dumped on the ground. Taking inventory of five cigarettes, a faded, unopened can of tuna, and a sheaf of old Swedish banknotes, he stuffs these inside his coat. He leaves the child's action figurine inside, untouched.

Then, wrapping himself tightly in the thick fur blanket, he returns his attention to the stew. The words of the old song begin to strain up, unconsciously, from between his lips. And he smiles.

"Home is where the hatred i-i-i-is...home is filled with pain...and it...might not be such a bad idea...if I never, never went home again."

It's just beginning to snow.