Atomic Barbarian: Savage Adventure After The Bomb

[CaptainPenguin]

Jon Son-of-Jon, whose grandfather was Raul the Finder, snarled and spat, roaring in the face of the muutanti. Grimacing with rage, he hurled himself against his bonds, snapping like a wolf at the hideous man's throat.

The muutanti grinned evilly, his face splitting open like a suppurating blister to reveal a mouth of teeth like broken, brown-yellow columns. His rasping chuckle had the sound of a thousand years of rust being scraped from rough metal.
"It was a hearty chase. You are stronger than the others we have caught!" the muutanti said, licking his warty lips with a black tongue.

"I am Shinchireh! We do not fear muutanti," growled Jon Son-of-Jon, with the fury of his grandfather Raul in his voice. "Give me my sword, you hideous demon coward, fight for your life!"

Once again the muutanti laugh, a chuckle which devolved into a croaking fit of coughing. When he recovered, he drew in a deep breath, swelling his barrel-like chest to reveal disturbing keloid scars. "You are a wild one! We Sons of Batsha appreciate such a struggler. I assure you, you shall have a warrior's death."

A wretched muutanti, his face twisted into a strange knot with a babbling mouth, hobbled to his master's side. This was one of the barely functional, idiotic creatures who were born too weak to serve as warriors- it was common to use them as slaves and messengers, where true men would not do. The trembling creature began to stutteringly whisper a message to the larger muutanti.

Jon's aggressor turned from the slave-mutant with a pained expression across his ugly mask. "It is good news for you, manchild. You are not to be eaten yet (though I hunger greatly). We have a feast upon our hands!" A burly, bluish-skinned muutanti came forward and gagged Jon with a length of tarry rope.

Muutanti clustered about the jagged edge of the high rocks upon which they had gathered, to stare down at the grey path which the Ancient Ones had sliced through the mount. The peak was silent, the muutanti being hushed of their usual hootings and strange vocalizations. His sensitive ears picked out the distinctive pok-pok of lizards' paws against Ancient-stone, and the rumbling of bent wooden wheels. A human voice tunelessly droned a Yushani peasant prayer-song:

"Hey, Lord Sun, hey-ey-ey
Hey, Lord Sun, shine your rays upon my brow
Hey, Lord Sun, hey-ey-ey
Hey, Lord Sun, be friendly, oh God,
Hey, Lord Sun, hey-ey-ey
Hey, Lord Sun, don't let the muutanti eat me..."

Jon was up, out, whipping his hard and lean arms around the neck of the blue guard and crushing his spine with little sound. Panther-like, he crept towards the edge, where the muutanti had gathered stones and spears to fling down upon the traveler below.

"Hey, Lord Sun, my heart is for you
Hey, Lord Sun, my face is for you
Hey, Lord Sun, hey-ey-ey
Hey, Lord Sun, hey-ey-ey..."

Snap. A muutanti fell limply back against Jon's body with a stifled snarl, his head twisted too far sideways. Jon took a length of black metal from the fire, and held the glowing-hot end over the master-muutanti's head.

"Hey, Lord Sun, rise up, oh God
Hey, Lord Sun, hey-ey-ey..."

The song cut off with a high, sharp cry, and Jon heard the startled hiss of a pack-lizard as he hurled the broken-skulled muutanti over the edge. The line of monstrosities leapt into confused action- Jon was assaulted by feebly-flung stones, and thwacked with a spear's haft. With a bull-roar, he smashed in amidst them and took up a broken blade, whirling blood about him in a gory storm.
An old man's voice jabbered in an eastern tongue which Jon barely knew.

"Die, muutanti demon!" Jon roared.
In his mind, the grim voice of his grandfather Raul the Finder said:

In the ancient days, the Old Ones brought down fire from the sky to test the strength of men. This is the way that we forge swords out of shovels.

As he sank his fingers through the poxy eyes of a snarling muutanti, Jon bellowed his agreement to the hot sky.

[Scrasamax]

Trevor climbed further up, his arms and legs buring from the effort. Loose stone tumbled away from him as he made way up the side of the mountain. Unicoi was a behemoth among giants, its scrabbly stone face mute against the clouds, silent in the face of the burning rains and the sun that caused the water to steam and the trees to groan. The cavern wasn't far ahead, and he would soon be safe. Below he heard the baying of the andropedes as they tracked him. If he could get to the stream and break his scent, they would loose him, his trail fading into the smell of sun-baked rock and splintered stone.

He mounted the ridge, the stream should be only a few hundred paces away. The heaps of metal rust marked the path well, and he reached the first one with a few long strides. He rested against the hulk of metal. There were humans inside it, or the very badly weathered remains of humans. He had taken a treasure from one of the skeletons, a band of shiny glass and metal from around the wrist of one. The sound of shale cracking underfoot reminded him that he was still being chased.

He abandoned the shelter of the hulk and ran again. Down the trail, where it would cut back around a low and especially rocky hill he would find the stream. He cleared the rough hill and was stopped in his tracks. He was paralyzed by the groan and creak of plants. The stream was gone from sight and all he could see was thick and wxy leaves. They glistened with stolen moisture, their leaves lurid shades of yellow, orange, violet and green. Tendrils waved gently in the wind, and worse were the large pods that dangled here and there. Too close to one of those and it would all be over. His heart raced, but the andropedes wouldn;t care about such things.

The first crawled over the hill, while a second came around the side. Perhaps the third had been unlucky and had fallen down the step ascent. Unlikely considering how low they were to the ground, and how many legs they had. He bit his lip, almost hard enough to draw blood. He could see their leering faces, with the most human of eyes placed well above and behind a pair of metal hard mandibles, backed by a pair of pedipalps, small arm like appendages that fed food into the mouth and nothing more. The leader roared and rattled the plates of his carapace and the females, the one on the side of the hill and several others responded with their higher pitched rattles. Trevor cursed, it sounded like there were as many as six or seven more of the loathsome muutanti following the leader.

He ducked towards the rapidly growing plantlife. He hoped that the amulet around his wrist would protect him better than it had protected its last owner. Despite the passage of time, it was still a lustrious gold hue. The andropedes smashed through the foliage behind him, heedless of the effect. He heard two of the pods go off, soft puffing sounds followed by the strangled screaming of several of the andropedes that were following him. If he could feint them into craching through more of the pods, he might be able to lead all of them into death traps.

Unexpectedly, his footing failed, and he was hip deep in the stream, the cold water shocking him and causing him to draw in a deep breath of surprise. He struggled across the water, seeking the far bank, perhaps ten or fifteen feet away. He grabbed at a snake-like branch and drew himself up and out of the frigid mountain water. He gasped, the cold permeating him. Thankfully the newgrown vegetation shielded him from the winds that could become very cold, especially at such high elevations.

There was a soft puff, one of the pods curled open less than a few feet from his face.

None of the Andropedes would venture deep enough into the rapidly growing wrack to find the corpse of Trevor, within minutes, thick and glossy tendrils were growing from his mouth, his nose, and his eyes.

Alone, the watch kept ticking...

[CaptainPenguin]

The Month of M'ar, Day the 27th
My lord,
We are camped at Ristanna Bridge, and are about to cross over into Apla territory. We expect run-ins with barbarians and muutanti. The following papyrus was discovered in fragmentary form among the ruins of the Monastery of N'ha. It appears that muutanti raiders, possibly aligned with the muutanti king Rauki, destroyed this community. Of the Master of the order (NERVus) there is no sign.
Your servant,
Shehth-Ha,
By grace of god, Grandee of Lower Patal

... [manuscript is burned and torn] ... it is brought down to us from the Glorious Past:
The Master NERVus, its name be blessed, sayeth: Men in that time created ships with sails of light which rose to the stars on tails of fire. In that time they engendered life among the cold rocks which fly among the stars, and in that time did many go to dwell among the quickened skies.

The Master NERVus, its name be blessed, sayeth: And from out the many nations was sounded the words that.... [there is a large hole in the manuscript]... and the king Prash Anteh in that time... [illegible, smeared with blood]... and all of those fell to war, with thunder-hatchets and dragons and lightnings and war-falcons and men of metal who never slept as their soldiers.

The Master NERVus, its name be blessed, sayeth: In that time it was made known to the sorcerors and the sages that the gods were angered. Men had taken of the gods, and taken of the land. In that time it was made known that the world groaned with the burden of men, and sickened. In that time, poxes were born, and a great plague spread through the land, and half of all men crawled upon the earth with death in their mouths and died.

The Master NERVus, its name be blessed, sayeth: And in that time, many kings were excited to fury, and raised their weapons, and in that time, when half of all men crawled upon the earth with death in their mouths, fire was unleashed from the sky, and from the kings were unleashed the Fires of Heaven, and the world was covered in a sea of fire.

The Master NERVus, its name be blessed sayeth: In that time, all the earth cried out in lamentation, and the gods did cover their eyes and cry out in lamentation, and Ein, the god who had given unto men the secret of the Fires of Heaven, did weep. In this time, all that was made by men was undone, save those things which proceedeth forth from the gods themselves.

The Master... [manuscript is torn off here]

[CaptainPenguin]

Scras-
that's awesome, exactly what I'm looking for. Keep 'em coming, if you wish!

[CaptainPenguin]

I have absolutely no desire to have this setting be realistic.

If Atomic Barbarian were realistic, the world would never recover so well, there would be no muutanti, and so on. This is pure fiction, pulp-fantasy which just happens to be post-apocalypse. I'm not suggesting that there will be magic, of course- in keeping with a sort of sci-fi suggestion, sorcerors will simply be the heirs of the pre-bomb super scientists, or psychic mutants. Demons and monsters will be outrageously-changed mutants, or descended Lovecraftian aliens, worshipped as gods by savage humans.

Basically, Atomic Barbarian is Savage Sword-and-Sorcery Adventure Pulp, with super-science instead of magic, and our coming future as the mythical past.

Dig it?

[Maggot]

Will there be any super-weapons left over from the pre-apocalypse days? It might be cool if any of these were to fall into the hands of '''soceror''' kings that use their arcane understanding of these great weapons to rule over primitive city-states

[CaptainPenguin]

Yes, quite, Maggot.

Done forgot about this for a little.
Give me a while, and I'll have something right up for this.

[Maggot]

Glad to see that you're planning to get to work on this soon,Captain. It has the potential to be one of your best settings,in my opinion.