Excessive Fiction
July 30, 2014
I mentioned in an earlier post that I was working on some fiction inspired by the same computer game that is inspiring me to work on an RPG. The game is Borderlands (right now, Borderlands 2) and the RPG I’m designing is under the working title Pandora Excess.
Here is a snippet that I think could be easily plucked from its environment and dropped into the RPG – if you dig on fiction in your games, of which I am honestly not particularly a fan. Like the plot of Borderlands, the story has a group of mercenaries seeking out a fabled storehouse . . . or something.
The fiction:
Solitaire sat in the middle of ruins, sand dunes stretching through the shattered remains of a hotel lobby, her feet upon the desiccated corpse of what might have been a crocodile the size of a rhino. Sparse of build, with short dark hair and an angular face, she frowned slightly at the three men who had burst through the door and leveled assault rifles at her.
“You didn’t even knock.” She didn’t move, save to raise an eyebrow.
The most average among the three lowered his weapon to reach inside his jacket and pull out a piece of paper. “You’re the mercenary known as Solitaire. The Tetrarchy of Hemera have a bounty on your head, a pretty damn big bounty.”
“We’ve come to collect.” That was the shortest of the three, speaking through the few crooked teeth still in his mouth.
“And here I thought you’d come to warn me.” Solitaire stretched, her right hand extending over her head. Three pairs of eyes followed that hand. None of those saw her left hand reach for the submachine gun leaning against her chair.
The mediocre one with the paper opened his mouth to say something. He didn’t speak. Solitaire drew up the Helios F-51 Igniter SMG. His eyes widened the moment before the three-round burst caved in his face and set his flesh alight.
The other two stumbled back, the biggest one grunting something feral. Solitaire flipped back, somersaulting over the chair and the stonework behind that. She got cover just as the two bounty hunters – well, I guess one could call them that, not that they had earned the title – unloaded their assault rifle magazines in a flurry of poorly aimed and uncontrolled cyclical fire. Under the cover of flying lead and shattering stone, Solitaire crawled to her left, keeping herself well below the rim of the stonework.
She hoped her pack didn’t take a hit or even some shrapnel. It had very fragile circuitry, and she had no idea what would happen if the pack’s dimensional interface ruptured. Something bad?
She had moved a few metres when the shooting stopped and she heard the unmistakeable sound of empty magazines leaving ports. She rose on one knee. So focused on changing magazines, the two didn’t see her. They certainly didn’t see the lean man, all in dark colours, masked and with an enhanced vision device over his eyes, step through the door, a revolver in each hand.
“Jester? What the fuck?” She spoke loudly, gaining the two men’s attention.
They slammed home magazines, and started to work bolts when Jester’s two revolvers fired, one just after the other. Brains painted floor, hitting well before the collapsing bodies did.
“Hazard sent out the call.” As always, a modulator veiled Jester’s voice. “You didn’t answer.”