Hey, I wrote a... thing. I basically just wrote something to help me explore the setting (specifically, the rot-infected wastelands), my potential character, and just in general help me find a tone. It's rough and certainly can be improved by much, but I reckon it might be interesting for y'all to get a glimpse at what I'm thinking about. Have fun :P

[hider=The Ranger]
The starless sky loomed above endless dunes like an all-devouring abyss. It was dark even by day, but at night the rotten wastelands became shrouded in perfect darkness, as if the whole world were buried in a tomb. The air was filled with fine, colorless sand, whipped to and fro as if by tempest gales; only there was no wind at all. Even the air was thin, and one might feel tempted to think oneself stranded on the moon or some other alien world if one did not know any better.

What drives one to seek this dreadful domain out of their own free will? She has often asked herself this very question but could never find a satisfying answer. If it was simply a desire to be free, to bond with nature or to shun humanity, there were many wild and abandoned places one could go to that, in spite of myriad deadly forms of wildlife, were vastly safer – and far more wholesome. And yet here she was again, stalking across the drifts like a predator on the hunt. Or, perhaps, like prey hoping to slip away. Whatever the truth might be, there was something out here amidst the lightless dunes that called out to her like a mother to its lost child.

Her boots left gentle imprints in the dead soil, shallow enough that the shifting dust would wash them away within five to ten minutes at most. But it was not the risk of leaving tracks that made her step so softly; rather, it was the fear of being too loud, of sending tremors into the earth. All manner of hideous, infernal monstrosities burrowed beneath the dunes, feeding on the ashes of cities, forests and mountains that were turned to dust. To attract their attention was to invite certain doom – and was likely the fate that had befallen her quarry. She was close now; the distress signal had originated just ahead.

Slowly manifesting out of the ash-choked darkness in the visual feed of her helmet, she could make out the contours of a disabled Type-6, a kind of tracked vehicle the size of a small house. Their ease of maintenance and generous interior space made them desirable for many types of caravans to transport their goods between settlements, but only a madman would have chosen to drive one into rot-lands. They were too slow, loud and heavy to ever make it through in one piece. More than likely the cargo was either supremely valuable, or supremely illegal, to warrant such a decision. If she was lucky, she might even find out.

She slowed her pace now, approaching the wreck with apprehension. Gently she pulled a contracted, gunmetal device from underneath the tattered cloak wrapped around her shoulders, which unfolded and extended into a long-barreled type of rifle at the press of a discrete button. Weapon at ease, she halted just a few steps from the vehicle’s rear end where the open cargo hatch yawned at her like a great maw. The metal ramp extending from the opening was already covered in little holes where the Rot had eaten into the material. Unsurprisingly, there came no light from the open cargo bay, implying that the interior was as lifeless as the dunes she had come from. Stepping onto the ramp, she steeled herself to dive from one type of darkness into the next.

The inside was a long hallway filled with nondescript crates and bags tied down onto the floor and the walls using the myriad attachment points distributed throughout. A narrow pathway was left open in the center to slip in between the large containers and she slowly made her way through while casting nervous glances to the left and right, fearing to spot something dangerous lurking in the dark spaces between two boxes. Above her, the ceiling was a tangled mess of pipes, ducts and cables coiling around, over and under one another in a dizzying fashion. How any technician could find their bearing working on this machine was beyond her.

Towards the end of the room, around the time she spied the iron staircase leading up into the second floor of the Type-6, she picked up a strange audio signature. Only on the feedback graph at first, going up and down in almost rhythmic fashion. Too quiet to be heard by ear just yet; perhaps it was some kind of vibration from the engine? Cocking her rifle, if only to reassure herself and pretend that it afforded her safety, she pressed on towards and up the stairs.

Emerging into the lightless, cramped corridor of the personnel deck the noise became even more audible and she could finally hear it – it was a voice. Weak, rasping and, so she thought, trying to speak. She could not make out any of the words just yet, but found the tone of voice strangely melodic and almost pleasant. Standing at the end of the corridor and staring towards the opposite, she called for thermal optics, knowing that her voice would not penetrate outside of her helmet. The walls and floors were mostly cool, but there was a whiff of faint heat emerging from the second door to the right, perhaps indicative of something warm inside – like a survivor. Switching back to darkvision, she pressed on into the lightless bowels of the vehicle and hoped that she would make it out alive.

With every step she took, it became more and more apparent that the voice she was hearing was not simply trying to speak. It was, in fact, singing, and there was more than one singer. By the time she reached the door, she was certain there were four, maybe five voices, repeating the same chorus in a disturbing sing-song. She recognized none of the words and could not even guess at what language – if any – they were singing in, but they were consistent all the same. Her heart was pounding now, and she had to take a big swallow as she pressed another button on her rifle to contract the barrel and make it more wieldy in the cramped interior. The shorter rail length would lessen the exit velocity of any fired rounds, but it would still be sufficient to punch through meat. With a final, calming sigh she pushed open the creaking metal door.

Seated in a circle inside the pitch black interior, four naked men squatted around a bizarre, organically shaped growth that sprouted from the ground. The thing had the appearance of a dozen veiny tendrils coiled around themselves and twisting upwards, like a strange tree sapling. The men were haggard and suffered obvious wounds from Rot exposure. When the door creaked open, they turned to look at her but did not interrupt their song for even a second. Their sunken faces were hollow and lifeless, as if they were corpses animated by a puppeteer. She had to take a step back into the corridor and trained her rifle against the opening.

“Can you understand me?!” she nervously called out, her voice sounding strangely robotic through the vox-caster. The nearest man extended his half-dissolved hand towards her, as if beckoning her closer. “Hello?” she tried again, but still no answer. But things subtly became clearer to her. The words they were singing in, the rhyme of the song, the meaning of the next verse. She could not explain how, but all these things suddenly came flooding into her brain as if opening this door had opened a valve that had always been present, only forgotten.

Before she knew it, her lips were moving all on their own, and she too was softly singing the hymn of the elders. As if in a trance, she did not stop to question her actions even once as she sang with ever more confidence, and stepped into the room. It felt so liberating to let go of all fear and doubt and immerse herself in the beauty of what she had found. She stopped in front of the coiled artifact that had grown from the ground and stared at its surface through the grainy, black-and-white image of her visual feed. To her flanks, the men staggered closer to her, clutching at the steel-reinforced composite fabric of her leggings and staring up to her through bloodshot, decaying eyeballs as if she were a messiah. In a flash of remembrance, unsettling thoughts of her childhood played out before her and she forgot about the song for a brief moment – long enough to catch herself and send a jolt of panic through her body.

She shrieked in horror and, before she could rationalize her decision, pressed her rifle against the man clutching her left leg and pulled the trigger. A bright blue flash illuminated the rotting bunk room for a split second before the unfortunate man’s upper torso was ripped to shreds to the sound of a high-pitched coil whine. She pulled the other leg free from the feeble, decaying hands of the second man and stumbled backwards, hitting a bunk bed with her back. “Get away from me!” she yelped, heart pounding and breath wheezing. But then it came back to her, words and verses and melodies worming their way into her brain. These motherfuckers wouldn’t stop singing! If only she could-

“Audio, shut down!” she yelled into her helmet, and near-instantly all audio feed from outside was cut out. All that remained was the rhythmic thumping of her own blood in her ears. She clumsily fumbled her way towards the exit, almost tripping over the doorsill, before she tumbled into the corridor. The visual feed became blurry, or so she thought. It took a moment for her to realize that she was crying she knew not why. Every second she remained in this tomb threatened the partial or complete loss of autonomy over her body. Out – she had to get out. Awash with panic, she ran and stumbled towards the staircase, hurried downwards and pressed her way through the heavy boxes anchored in the cargo bay. Whatever racket she was making in her escape, she could hear none of it through the silenced audio.

When she emerged into the ashen desert she collapsed onto her hands and knees, shivering all over. Her eyes were still watery, but there was nothing she could do to wipe them dry. The alien melody was still stuck in her mind, and would remain with her perhaps for the rest of her life, but at least her lips were not moving, not singing. She was quite sure of that. Rising to her knees, she gazed around herself and beheld nothing, save for a thick fog of airborne dust, a pitch black sky and endless dunes comprised of the ashes of the world. A fresh tear rolled over her cheek, and now she knew why it was that she cried.
[/hider]