Human Slaves, Outcasts and Wastelanders

[Rathustra]

First, know this – the desert hates you. It will kill your children, devour your mate – suck the moisture from your bones. The desert hates you and it wants you to suffer.

The wind doesn't care about your weariness. The stone underfoot despises your starved weight. You are a sore beneath the sun's gaze. You are a malign, itching worm on the weathered flesh of the land. The desert hates you and it wants you to know it. It wants you to understand that it wants you dead with each searing gust of its grit-laiden breath. It wants you to feel every skin-cooking step across every sloughing, insurmountable dune so you know how deeply, truly it loathes your fleshy wetness.

You repel the desert with your refusal to die. Your childish refusal to lay down and be torn into pieces by the low, hungry things that wriggle through its soil. Your impudent wish not to breathe your last and return the wastes to silence. Why do you persist? Give in – die and bake and be forgotten. Let the beetles burrow into your cheek. Let the flies drink your eyes. Let the myriad of vermin that wander the desert's hide turn you to dust.

When will you learn? The desert hates you. It wishes you would suffocate on the storms that sculpt its face. It wishes you could fall and dash yourself on the jagged rocks it lays in your way. It wishes you could be swallowed by its crevices and sinkholes and shatter your bones. When will you listen to the desert's reason and join its silence? When will you let your armour and weapons crumble away, let your rations spoil and your precious water evaporate. When you heed the desert's whisper?

Why do you go on? You are far, far from the ugly rocks and stink where you were bred. Wouldn't it be better to give up? To stop running and let them catch you? Can't you understand? Don't you want the ache to end – for the hunger and thirst to bleed out of you and settle into the dark, cool heart of the desert? The desert hates you – but it is forgiving.

The desert doesn't want you. The desert will put everything out of reach or lay it in barbs, or smother it in poison. The desert will cut you and gore you and tear into your flesh with its teeth. The desert wants you to know that you don't belong. The desert doesn't care if you and your kind huddle in stones. It pushes in each night, promising on the wind that it will one day bury this home. It knows you can hear it and it wants you to listen.

One day those who seek you will find you. One day when your body is old - when your skin is brittle and your mind decayed. One day when you feel safe and resigned to familiar dangers and stale, constant fear. They will come with their cruel swords and crossbows and slaughter you for sport - if you're lucky. But perhaps they'll bring nets and cages and take you back, back from the desert that hates you - to where you know, deep down, that you belong - back to the pens of your master.

A special heads up for players who aren't big into playing in clans. The tablelands and the wastes aren't just for desert elves and coded human tribes. There are fun alternatives to city life that you can have a stab at without any special oversight from staff. Life is hard for those without a tribe, without kin. For those who are on the run, who are entirely alone - or who have secrets to hide - the future is uncertainty. The outcasts and escaped slaves of the Mul Outpost have persisted for nigh on a King's Age by occupying the ancient ruins and being ready to give up everything when the winds change. But no matter how many times they have been stamped out - they've always returned. The winds are changing. Any player can form a player tribe using the guidelines in our player tribe documentation. Any player can play an escaped slave by generating a character with an escaped slave background, selecting Red Storm as a starting location and using the 'slave tattoos and brands' starting shop to gain a mark of previous ownership. They can then CC their first character report to the Arm of the Dragon with details of their escape. A lucky few might be able to wish up when I'm online to get transported to the Mul Outpost if it fits their background. Others might be patient enough to arrange a transport time before their character enters the game. Then the chase is on.