#original syn

[thew-mfacw]

MFA Alumna, Beth Kander, returns to The W on Monday with the first two books in her Original Syn trilogy. She will read and talk for #NaNoWriMo at Mississippi University for Women’s Fant Library on Monday 11/18 from 4:30-5:30. We’re looking forward to catching up with this dynamic novelist and playwright! As always, books will be on sale. https://homeboundpublications.com/kander/

https://www.facebook.com/events/485948098667917/

[fenrir-kin]

Good food, good meat, good god, let’s eat!

She couldn't remember when she'd fallen over that particular edge. Maybe there had never been an edge for her fall off; fuck knows the Wastelands were too fucking flat for that. It had always been easy for her, getting food.

Wait til dark. She was the meanest piece of shit here and the wastes knew it. She could wait til dark. Find a campfire. Fires attracted ghouls sometimes, but there'd always be an idiot or three who wanted hot food. Approach the fire. Get free food. Repeat for the next fire if the offerings weren't too good.

“Hey, Mister? You got any space next to that fire of yours?” “Sure, honey. You scoot on in close, now. Don't want you catching your death of cold. Look at you, barely wearing rags! You hungry?” “Starved, but I ain't got no caps or nothin'...” “Well, I'm sure I can find something going spare, ain't no food better'n free food... got a few mystery cans here, let's crack them open.” “That's a big old knife you've got, Mister.” “Keeps the raiders at bay, sugar. Careful, it's sharp.”

The Fancy Lads she saved for the Boss, and she'd indulge in one or two sugar bombs before leaving the rest for the boys. Good to keep them going. Cans were carefully inspected; sometimes it was dog food, sometimes beans, and very occasionally it was pickled fruit, an all too rare delicacy. The trick was the weight of the can.

The meat she'd smoke. Most of it, anyway; no sense wasting a fire they went to so much trouble to build. But she'd leave a steak for herself, holding over the coals until it was just about cooked through before wolfing it down. She'd learned a long time ago that you could savour food even when it barely touched your gullet. No sense dying to a death claw because you were too busy eating.

“Thanks, sugar; that was just what I needed.”

His surprised face stared back at her, his body gutted and very effectively stripped from the neck down. She never had any use for the face. Maybe it'll shit the Supermutants up.

A campfire flared into life a couple of miles away, and her eyes locked onto her new target. Stuffing the smoked meat and other supplies into her backpack, she headed towards her new target.

“Ain't nothing better than free food.” She repeated softly, and laughed.

[fenrir-kin]

I AM STILL IN DENIAL THAT SYN IS DEAD. NOPE. DENIED, MOTHERFUCKER. 

[fenrir-kin]

I did a review! 

[fenrir-kin]

One of the best snippets of conversation last weekend? Friday night, in the bar. Syn is with Jericho, scoping the place out, and goes to get a drink.

Eddie the barman: Uh, evening' Syn. Just here for a nice, quiet drink, yes? Don't want no trouble, just a nice, quiet night. Here's your usual.

Syn: Oh, Eddie, you wound me. Of course it'll be a nice night!

Pretty Boy: Hey, Doll, what's a lady doin' way out here? You wanna stick wit' me, doll, you'll have a good time.

Eddie: NICE, QUIET EVENING, SYN. NO TROUBLE. QUIET EVENING.

[fenrir-kin]

Numbnuts was a bit of a Howler oddity; the Howlers like big, tough, utterly batshit crazy guys to join them, and Numbnuts was definitely on the small side. Furthermore, the Howlers prefer to get up close and personal with their fighting, but Numbuts had an AK47, and boy did he love his Betsy. Couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with that thing, but he loved it. 

Now, because he was so small, he got picked on by the rest of the Howlers, especially Syn, who couldn't see any kind of use for him - he was useless in close quarters combat and useless with a gun, and he was so small that he wouldn't even make good eating - so she bullied him mercilessly. But never killed him, because the Boss found him funny and the Boss said he stayed. 

Anyway, the first night, Jericho, Syn, Mongrel and Numbnuts all went down to Truckstop to scope the place out, get an idea of how big the place is how many people were in there, whether it was worth trying to take it by force, etc etc... and the whole time they were there, Numbnuts was giving Syn shit. For the most part she ignored him, but if he jostled her or was particularly loud in his backchat, she'd casually knock a few teeth out. 

Now, one of the guys that had arrived at Truckstop was a man called Honest Charlie. he was one of the few men who, after hearing about Syn from the barman, had enough balls to go up to her and shake her hand. She found him amusing, especially when he sought her out later in the evening to let her known that he couldn't stand hearing a man call a lady a 'slag', and he didn't want to interfere in gang business but it really made him angry. Syn laughed and told him to go ahead, he wasn't interfering in anything. So he went back to where Numbnuts had been shooting his mouth off, and beat the crap out of him, yelling that it wasn't right to call a lady such things. When Honest Charlie was done, Syn went over to Numbnuts and said 'Now then... what have we learned here?' and backhanded him for good measure. 

It's moments like that, that you never ever expect, that make LARP what it is. 

[fenrir-kin]

I'M BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK

Well, it was an ok event, I guess...

Syn died, sadly, but she died in the most EPIC way possible. One on one with another ex-pit fighter, with all her Howlers cheering her on behind her. Everyone stopped shooting each other long enough to watch the fight, it was EPIC. And then, when she finally got put down, her opponent stood there and yelled 'WHO ELSE FUCKING WANTS SOME?' and the ENTIRE GANG OF HOWLERS piled on him. IT WAS AMAZING. 

But that was just today! The first night, Syn went with Jericho (her boss, even scarier than her in a cold way) to check out Truckstop, see if it was any good - yes it was, we quite fancy some of that! Got walls and everything! - and while she was there she sized up to the ex-fighter (who initially tried to deny he used to be a fighter), AND dealt with some catcalling which was amazing. 

Then Saturday arrives and we invite the players over to our camp for some hospitality, and a nice chat over some food (we got some belly pork in to simulate human flesh, and cooked it over the fire and offered it to them - a surprising number of people took it XD). Turns out there's some kind of sickness going around, and we'd founf this Vault-tec box that was supposed to make you better, so we needed their Vault engineer to fix the box so the box could fix our lads. 

He refused. So we kidnapped him :D They did a sneaky mission that evening to rescue him and we had to be Skyrim guards ('WHAT WAS THAT?.... Must be hearing things.') so they could be sneaky successfully otherwise they'd have gotten jobbed very quickly and violently. 

Turns out he couldn't fix the box anyway, it was too much of a mess... so a few of our boys started falling sick. The players didn't quite grasp how bad this sickness would be, so we sent in a few 'zombies'. I was one, and it was AMAZING. 

Basically, one of the refs handed me a UV marker and told me to draw veins all over my face. The players had a load of UV torches, they'd already encountered a minor zombie with mild symptoms; we were gonna be the real deal. 

There were only 4 of us that went down, and inititally we went in as full-on rage zombies, screaming and sprinting and hard as nails (guns did fuck all, we needed dismembering to stay dead). WE shat a few people up, and when we'd all been put down, we trotted on back up to the crew area, all fired up. 

We were met by a ref. "Guys, just heard over the radio, they're stood around the fire, laughing and joking, and most of them have dropped character. Fuck 'em up." Sir, yes SIR! Back down we went.. and this time, we were sneaky fuckers. We got right in close to the bar before any of them realised we were there, and then we kept popping up in different windows every time someone got too close. I managed to scare someone so much he dropped character momentarily to scream like a baby and club me as hard as he could (he apologised immediately but the concussion was SO WORTH IT.) And I got dragged halfway through a window and held down by three big guys while a fourth dismembered me. AWESOME FUN. We seriously shit them up that time! 

And then there was today and my big death scene and GUYS YOU HAVE TO COME TO THE NEXT ONE. THERE WILL BE ONE NEXT YEAR. COME TO IT. IF YOU EVER LISTEN TO ANYTHING I TELL YOU, LISTEN TO THIS: COME TO THE NEXT EVENT. YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT. HOLY SHIT. 

I hurt so much...

[fenrir-kin]

Going to Gloucester in an hour to have a good time at What's Your Game! :D Syn won't be there after all, but there may just be a wastelander with a very striking resemblance to her... 

Hope I'll see some of you guys there!