Prologue: Desert Dreaming

The Estancian desert was beautiful at night. Stars stretched in an unbroken chain across the black sky. Gentle breezes swirled the sand in whirling eddies that danced in the light of the moon. The rolling dunes were soft pillows cushioning the air and dampening sound. But most remarkable was the sand itself: it appeared, in the soft light of the moon and stars, almost crystalline. The desert itself shone with an inner glow. Some naysayers said it was left-over radiation from the massive Gray Storms that hit the country half a century ago. Others said it was the crushed-up remnants of the cities of glass that once stood here. It was, if nothing else, peaceful, and beautiful. 

Adrian Naldan - trader, merchant, businessman extraordinaire - hated it. He couldn’t care less about the moon and stars, but he very much cared about the sudden swirls of sand that forced him to adjust and re-adjust his mask and check his filters over and over. Not only did the sand make it hard to breathe, the crystal dust got all over his face and rubbed awkwardly against his beard - he was sure he was developing a terrible rash. And those dunes! Climb up one only to roll down the other side only to climb another, and then again - endlessly. It was torture. 

He was sure they were lost. They should have been back at the Gafian border by now. The bags on the right side of his gugee were stuffed to the brim with trinkets while the bags on the left side were running painfully low on food. They had already started to ration out the remaining biscuits and cured meat, much to the chagrin of his guards. Still, some food was better than nothing. Being alive was better than dead. 

Dead like Laers. He never should have listened to him. His mother always said: “Don’t trust those Svetters, greedy gutter rats.” But it was he who had been greedy. Laers had a big tip that there was a close-by ruins near to the midpoint of the northern trade loop through the desert. “Just a quick trip over a couple of dunes - think of the riches! Untouched Estancian technology and who knows what else. Just lying there!” Laers had smiled like he could see it and Adrian had believed - had seen himself back in Raki selling Estancian tech in a private auction to the highest bidder. 

So they had turned off the beaten path and made their way to these ruins. And they certainly found ruins, but they didn’t find much of any treasure. Instead they had found trouble: a group of hidden bandits who wiped the smile off of Laers’ face and sent the rest of them packing. They had barely escaped, and now they were totally lost, traveling at night just to avoid any other danger - without a full complement of guards, they were easy pickings for any of the many scavengers who made their desert their home.

Adrian Naldan looked around nervously. Night was slowly giving way to dawn. They would need to make camp. They were in between dunes; it would be difficult to spot them from here - as good a spot as any. A sudden gust blew sand into his face again, and Adrian bent down to cough it all out. The cough saved his life. Seemingly out of nowhere, a salvo of crossbow bolts rained down on his small group. His guards dropped to the ground, gurgling in agony, red blood draining onto the golden yellow sand. 

Adrian himself dropped to the ground and lay unmoving. He tried very hard not to move, not even to breathe. He could hear the stamping of heavy boots on the sand and muffled voices speaking: “...collect the...orders were clear….” He started praying - to what, he did not know - he had never been a religious man - but he prayed as hard as he could. Just let him live. Just this once. 

Suddenly he was flipped over onto his back. He let out a short yelp as he stared up into an animalistic skull mask. The macabre face grinned down at him, then kicked him hard in the stomach. The world exploded around him. Then he was being slapped back to consciousness. The masked man was holding him by his shirtfront. “Gafian dog,” the voice spoke in an accent heavily inflected with Estancian tones. Adrian started babbling in broken Estancian: “Honor to the tribes, may Neezhiva keep you-oof.” A powerful slap to the face shut him up. He tasted the salty stickiness of his own blood. The man above him motioned to himself and his friends. “We are the Flames of Odryssa. These are our lands.” He waved at Adrian’s stock. “These are our goods now. Understood?”

“Please! It’s yours! Keep it all!” Adrian realized he had wet himself. The man above him looked down at him like an uncaring god. “Tell them. Tell them that the Flames are coming to Gafia. Tell them that you will all burn, as we once did.” Then he hauled up Adrian and shoved him forward. The merchant started running as fast as he could. Alive! He was alive! Tears streamed down his face, making it hard to breathe through his mask’s filters. There was nothing but silence behind him, but he dared not look back. He ran. 

A short while later, a border patrol stumbled across the soiled, half-dead merchant and took him back to Gafia. Reports of another merchant attacked by Soil Ghosts spread quickly through the slums of Svetlom. A riot broke out in the Miner’s Quarter and went unchecked for several hours before finally some of the Lightning Boys stepped in to stop the whole city from collapsing in on itself. News of the riots spread quickly from the capital in Gafia to the neighboring Omangan Imperial Court, where noble courtiers shook their heads in faux disbelief and whispered that it was better, at least, in Omanga. The news also, after a few days, reached the front pages of the Agurts Daily, the most popular newspaper in the Agurts Federation, one of the more prosperous nations of the Acid Rain Era…