The History of the Destroyers

Overview

From the Story Arc "The Truth Hurts" given by Jessica Flores.
This Souvenir is restricted to the level range of 8-15.

Souvenir's Text

The History of the Destroyers

Jessica gave you a copy of the recordings you made for her when questioning the Destroyers. Every once in awhile you think back to Acid Black and the thrashing of his life that you gave him. He asked you to light him a cigarette with his lighter while he told you a little story about:

The History of the Destroyers

It all started with the motorcycle gangs, way back in the 60's. You had turf wars all across the midwest, people claiming strips of desolate highway and what not. Heck, I was like two years old, but the stories, well, Marauder told them all to us. That's right, the big man, Michael White. He was our leader, the Top Dog of our band of ruthless killers.

Before the earth started to kill everything, White was just the toughest hombre you could run into in a highway saloon. But when the Devouring Earth came, that man had a plan. No... he had the only plan.

There was rioting everywhere, but man, you had to be there to truly know how horrible man could be to fellow man. The entire west coast was moving east, away from the ocean, and people were just flooding into Vegas.

Man, Las Vegas was the worst. After Los Angeles got nuked by the Reds back in '52, Vegas was just a cesspool of vagrants, destitutes, and homeless. All of 'em from L.A. Heh, where do you think they picked me up from?

Anyway, Marauder, he had the plan. He gathered up all the bikers he could find and turned us into an army. Quoted some crap about the Mongols, and how they swept across eastern Europe in the dark ages on horseback. Well, we had iron horses, and instead of bows, man, we raided every gunstore we found from New Mexico to Montana.

The first order of business was to eliminate competition. So instead of attacking the Devouring Earth, we ransacked every hold out settlement we could find. The weak, we purged, the strong, we recruited. It was total slash and burn policy. We were making a firebreak between us and the Devouring Earth.

It worked pretty well. We stayed away from the big cities, and on our bikes, we were faster than any of those shambling mushroom heads. We stayed mobile, lean, and mean.

But the hardest part was still to come. See, we started to run out of gas after a few months. At that point, we had to go back to the big cities. Marauder whipped us into shape, taught us how to fight smart against these creatures, how to control our fear. That was the big thing. If you were calm and alert, the creatures weren't that big of a deal. You just had to hit them hard, and fade away.

Marauder's training paid off when we took Salt Lake City. That place was loaded. We fortified twelve city blocks and leveled the rest. When we took Vegas, same thing.

Did I mention we didn't see a lick of the military during that time? Not one. Those green fatigue pansies got in their helicopters and transport planes five days into the war and left, they never looked back.

Heck, as far as we were concerned, good riddance. Things would have ended up tougher in the beginning if they'd stuck around. Pansies or not, they still had tanks before we did.

It took us about 10 years to carve out a living from the ashes of civilization, but man, we did it. We were doing well too. Sure, there were some rebellions here and there, or we'd stumble into a group of survivors who'd found a military installation and decided to try and claim some of our territory. They didn't last long, we simply couldn't risk bringing them into the fold that late in the game and having them muck up the operation.

Then came word that the war was over. My dead grandmother the war was over! Man, we were still fighting off shambling horrors on a weekly basis and some yahoos over here on the east coast proclaim the war to be over. They even had the nerve to drop pamphlets over the major cities that we'd cleared out telling survivors to 'hold tight, help was on the way'.

Marauder planned on invading the east, giving a little payback to those who'd abandoned us to die out there, you know, show them that they made a huge mistake. That was the plan, anyway, then the big man up and abandoned us.

When the Praetorian Guard moved in on us, man, we didn't stand a chance. We scattered to the winds, but the plan was to regroup, right here, in Praetoria City.

So here we are, years later, barbarians at the gates. Only now, we've got super powers too, and we're gonna repay what was done to us ten fold.

See Also

• Souvenirs