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Jan 22, 2025 20:51
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- WINNERSH TRIANGLE
- Aug 17, 2011
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Slasher
His name is Harvey Ecks. Once, he romaed the highways alone, practicing his art on anyone who he'd meet on their lonesome. Early on, he was sometimes sloppy, leaving headless torsos. They called him the Rest Stop Killer in those days, or the Torso Maker. But eventually, he got it down pat, able to torture and kill without leaving any trace. He wasn't satisfied - it was too slow, too inefficient. So he decided to claim a small network of interstate highways and offshoots, taking some time to set up surveillence all over it, to brainwash and coopt the waitresses, troopers and gas station attendants. Time well spent for this Maniac - now, he can see everyone who comes through his little kingdom, to see if they are worthy. If they are, he takes them. His pawns call him the Driver, because it always begins with a long drive on a dark night. By the end, they are his - full of the fear and madness he plants in their heads. Harvey believes he's not a killer - he's an explroer, driven by a dream he claims he had in the womb. In that dream, he saw a network of paths, conduits embedded in reality. From an early age, he searched out that pattern. He found hints of it over and over - ancient Mayan pottery, the Book of Kells, the rantings of a New Delhi street preacher. Whoever could understand the Dream Pattern, the Road to Under and the Black Sun Map would unlock an understanding of reality that could do anything. Harvey belives that some people contain fragments of the Map in their minds. He finds that under extreme stress - torture, usually - they spontaneously reveal part of the answer. And so he tells his agents what to look for, what gestures, habits and speech match the dream he had. Harvey could look like anything he wants - he could be anyone, his agents know. But his natural appearance, with no disguise, is a rail-thin, tall man with a beaky nose and narrow, constantly moving eyes. When he spots a victim, he sometimes takes them immediately, sometimes tail them so they won't bring down the police on him. Sometimes he'll have his agents sabotage a car so he can show up to "help." His convictions never waver, but he has one great fear. He thinks others are trying to beat him to the map. He's heard there's at least two of them - the Water Doctor and the Man with the Moth, he calls them. Any indication that someone else is close to completing the Map always shakes him.
Interesting how many links with the God Machine stuff/other nWoD stuff there is here - geomantic control over/communion with road networks (features heavily in the God Machine anthology), control over a mysterious butterfly/moth creature (there's the whole thing with the "crypt of the butterfly" in GMC, as well as a lot of other moth-related stuff across the fiction), and 'the rantings of a New Delhi street preacher' (Marco Singe). The 'Water Doctor' might be Dr Brine, an Osirian Promethean recurring throughout that gameline who keeps trying to experiment with the generative forces of life, but I don't know about the Black Sun ... isn't there a meso-American Mage legacy who seek to gain power by gaining control over secret transport-network-based leylines called the Dreamers of the Black Sun?
I realise that trying to peer too deeply into this and see too many parallels is exactly what turns you into a [fixed]maddened antagonist scholar[fixed], but there are a few noticeable easter eggs in this passage, and I'm wondering if anyone knows what the other refs might be to.
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May 31, 2015 13:17
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- WINNERSH TRIANGLE
- Aug 17, 2011
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The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games always struck me as one of those "man-only" environments, especially given how most of the Zone's population is voluntary to a degree and most of the normal people who lived in the Zone before it expanded either were evacuated or mutated. It's not the place for "girly-girls". A woman stalker is probably going to resemble her male counterparts in more ways than one, like Calamity Jane in "Deadwood", and recognizable women in the Zone would be rare as unicorns, such as a female scientist or a prostitute in 100 Rads (and even they would probably get worn out after awhile, also like in "Deadwood").
If there's any rape, it would likely be homo-rape given that the whole place is like a giant prison once you get past the barricades. As well, there would probably be a lot of male-on-male hooking up, since male-exclusive environments tend to make for a lot of "gay for the stay/range" situations
great post, a+
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Dec 19, 2015 22:10
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Jan 23, 2014 09:42
