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Lone Wanderer

Originally posted by Taki:

A lone survivor of a settlement with camping supplies, a marksman rifle and their horse is fleeing from a mechanoid disaster that is following them. They need to let others know before it's too late, or escape the endless pursuit.

You have discovered a buried inert mechanoid hive and while exploring the ruins, a red light catches your eye from a crack in the wall. You push stones out of the way and topple the loose wall down, unfortunately on yourself crushing your arm. You manage to pull your arm out and while the injury doesn't look bad, it sure does feel bad.

Crawling over the rubble and swearing profusely, you go to collect your expensive prize. The object appears to be a piece of equipment meant to strap onto an arm or leg but has an unusual bulkiness at the top where it glows. Poking around at it with your non limp arm, you find that as soon as you move a strap towards the other side, it snaps into place as well as unsnaps as if it understands what you're trying to do.

Pleased with your plunder of alien technology, you go to head out which unfortunately involves climbing.. You struggle for a bit holding the artifact to your chest before trying to clip it onto your belt wishing you brought a bag or literally anything with you. Frustrated, you slide your arm into the casing while holding it against your chest and it latches on smoothly.

You climb for about a minute before suddenly you feel a sharp pain, can't see and you feel an explosion like your head being blown off. Instantly it goes away and you see the wall you were climbing as you're now laying on your back. You're not sure how you survived that and are not given a moment to think about it either as stone rubble blasts across the room from multiple directions, revealing several scythers raising up. There is a lot of rumbling and explosion sounds from below and before you know it, your arms and legs are going at full speed to get you out of here.

You quickly get to the top of the ruins and bolt out the entrance untying your visibly anxious horse and mounting it. You get a good distance away and you hear a loud rumble and as you look, you see several mechanoids falling backwards into the ruin that is cascading in on itself.

You breathe a sigh of relief feeling a bit safer and then realize that your arm isn't crushed anymore and the artifact isn't strapped to your arm. While inspecting your un-crushed arm, your heart rate raises as you can see the blood flow in your veins through your skin. Whatever that artifact did, it changed you. Sure it fixed your arm and gave you freaky x-ray sonar vision or something, but where there are blessings, there are curses.

A few hours pass and you make it home in time for dinner with your family. You tell them the tale of your weird experience and jokingly complain that you need something you can sell to keep food on the table. After dinner you go to the building out back where you keep your horse and prep your camping kit to go hunting the next day. You're cleaning your family's marksman rifle when your heart sinks and is racing. There was an explosion with no spray of shrapnel or fire but you sure hell could hear it and it completely shredded the home in front of you. Your home, with your family.

While screaming, crying, running.. you don't know what the hell you're doing, you hear gunfire of your colony reacting to the attack. There are several more explosions, beam weapons being fired and gunfire, all of which are your fault. A nearby sound of gunfire, a pair of bursts at a time grabs your attention as you lock eyes with your neighbor with a shotgun. He shouts at you waving his hand, "GET OUT OF HERE, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ GO! GO GET HELP! GET YOUR ♥♥♥♥ TOGETHER AND GO!" ushering you away.

You grab your bag, shoulder your rifle and mount your horse. The view of your razed settlement at dusk from this elevation sinks your heart and is one you will never forget. You've escaped but at what cost, and do you even deserve it? You don't know but it doesn't matter, you need to let the others know before it's too late.

Originally posted by Taki:

This is a standard difficulty scenario meant to be used with Yayo's endgame forcing the lone pawn to only stick around in one place for a year or so while they build their equipment, skills and research. There are a few other conditions the artifact inflicted them with such as luciferium need and psychic hypersensitivity. Feel free to use the prepare carefully mod and use the artifact as an excuse to boost them to be whatever you're in the mood for, the priority is for the journey to the end over game challenge.