red

Markets
 First Printing July 2017 by Hebanon Games in cooperation with Asian Pacific Offset Inc.
Contact us at hebanongames@gmail.com via redmarketsrpg.com, or search your favorite social
network for “Red Markets” or “Hebanon Games.”

Red Markets is the intellectual property of Hebanon Games and sole proprietor Caleb Stokes.

Game Design: Caleb Stokes

Writing: Caleb Stokes, Laura Briskin-Limehouse, Ross Payton
Editing: Laura Briskin-Limehouse
Art Direction: Caleb Stokes
Cover Art: Kim Van Deun
Back Cover Art: LuigiStudio
Interior Art: Kim Van Deun, Patsy McDowell, James Beatham, Christopher Cirillo, Michael
Plondaya, Darrell Claunch, Ean Moody, Przemek Lech
Graphic Design: Kathryn Carty, Kyle Carty
Special Thanks: Role-playing Public Radio, Technical Difficulties, Thrilling Intent, Faust Kells,
Tom Church, David Dobelman, Aaron Carston, Shaun Greenwald, Nicolas Marjanovic, Adam
Briskin-Limehouse, 1148 Kickstarter backers, and Sara Hann

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 table of contents
IntroductIon 5

HIstory of the Crash 10

The (Un)death of History 11
The Failed State 13
The Crash 32
Reaction and Policy 56
Retreat Becomes Recession 68
Writing Off the Loss 82
Rise of the Carrion Economy 87
The Taker’s Role 110

The Loss 116

A Guide 117
Lost Places 120
Lost People 137
Lost Things 157

PlayIng The Market 171

Profit System 172
Character Creation 181
Upkeep: Paying the Bills 223
Materialism: Bounty, Gear, and Vehicles 232
Combat 272
Blight: Casualties and Vectors 293
Humanity 310
Negotiation 320

RunnIng The Market 351

Shades of Red 352
Job Creator 358
Long-term Investments 406
MBA Rules 424
Loss Encounters 446

AppendIx 485

4
5

What Is Red Markets?
Red Markets is a tabletop RPG about
economic horror.
In Red Markets, characters risk their lives
trading between the massive quarantine
zones containing a zombie outbreak and
the remains of civilization. They are Takers:
mercenary entrepreneurs unwilling to accept
their abandonment. Bound together into
competing crews, each seeks to profit from
mankind’s near-extinction before it claims
them. They must hustle, scheme, and scam as
hard as they fight if they hope to survive the
competing factions and undead hordes the
Market throws at them. Takers that are quick,
clever, or brutal enough might live to see
retirement in a safe zone, but many discover
too late that the cycle of poverty proves harder
to escape than the hordes of undead.
Red Markets uses the traditional zombie
genre to tell a story about surviving on
6
the wrong end of the economy. It’s about
characters deciding how much they’re willing
to pay for sanity, love, freedom, and other
things that should be free. It’s about struggling
with cutthroat capitalism when its knife is on
your neck.
What Is an Rpg?
Google it.
Look, we’re not trying to turn you off here. If
Red Markets is your first RPG, everyone who
worked on this book is genuinely flattered.
Welcome! But you can either read this whole
book to get the gist of it, or check online for
literally thousands of faster explanations. You
can listen to dozens of Red Markets games on
podcasts like Role-playing Public Radio, One-
Shot, or Technical Difficulties. Or ask fans
of the game directly at redmarketsrpg.com
or any of our social media sites. The book is
already this goddamn long and we’d love to
make it longer, so let’s not waste any more
space pretending the internet doesn’t exist.
Furthermore, Red Markets is basically a
poverty simulator that uses zombies to keep
its theme from getting too real. We really
appreciate people playing the game (and their
money), but there are sunnier, happier games
with which to tour the magical land of RPGs.
We understand that books are products,
products are meant to be sold, and this
maybe isn’t the best way to do that. But the
purpose of consuming this particular product
is to create a unique story-telling experience
with your friends: an experience that can’t
be commoditized, co-opted, or cheapened.
Creating something that special is going to
require some work out of you.
It starts here.
 
How To Use ThIs Book
The book is split into six sections.
The Introduction, which you’re reading
now, gives the basic gist of the game, the
book’s content, and a glossary of terms useful
for understanding the setting and rules.
 History of the Crash is a setting chapter
dealing with the world before the Crash, how
the Blight came to ravage mankind, and the
dystopian Carrion Economy that resulted,
trapping the players’ characters to fend for
themselves in a hell known as the Loss.
The Loss details the various places, people,
and things that Takers may run across as they
work. The wasteland is a new world with new
rules. It can make people rich, but it mostly
makes them miserable, insane, or dead.
Playing the Market explains the rules of
the game. It covers how the Profit System’s
dice mechanic works. It explains how to
write characters, equip them, and have
them fight for their lives. It also details the
social/financial combat system known as
Negotiation, which Takers must use if they
hope to keep their crew and families alive.
Running the Market contains tools for
people hosting games for their friends. In
addition to general advice, it has procedures
for collaboratively building settings,
adventures, and entire campaigns, as well as
pre-built encounters. There are also a variety
of alternate rules to keep the game interesting
for advanced players.
Finally, the Appendix has copies of all the
papers needed to track a game session and an
index for speedy reference. Game materials
ready for download and print can also be
found at redmarketsrpg.com.
Game TermInology
Here are the basic terms used in the Profit
System and what they mean.
“Buy-a-roll”: Some actions are only possible
with the use of gear and spent resources.
Buying a roll means spending a charge to
allow a skill check.
Black: the die that represents the player’s
chance of success. This can be modified by
skills and charges spent on gear.
Boom: a rules variant that makes the game
easier and more action-packed.
Bust: a rules variant that makes the game
more challenging and grim.
Charges: an expendable resource that
abstractly measures a piece of gear’s
remaining usefulness. Charges can be spent
to buy-a-roll or to provide a bonus.
Check: rolling the dice to determine the
success or failure of a character’s actions.
Default: checking a skill with a rating of zero
is called defaulting. It is an optional rule. The
Market can veto any and all default checks.
Dependents: non-player characters in the
Taker’s life that must be supported financially
and heal Humanity when maintained. They
are portrayed in the game by the Market or
another player.
Gassed: a character that is out of rations is
considered gassed and may not take rigorous
physical action until recovered.
Gear: objects or tools that make certain
actions possible and/or easier to achieve.
Haul: the measure of how much a character
can carry. Each unit of Haul represents a
unit of supply the Taker can carry, unless the
Market dictates otherwise.
Market: the person who runs the game and
writes the story of each job; the game-master.
Responsible for playing NPCs in the story,
determining encounters, and setting prices.
Market Forces: any enemy NPC intent on
harming the player characters. In combat, the
Market declares what actions the forces are
taking but does not roll for them.
Non-player Characters (NPCs): secondary
characters played by the Market or
temporarily by another player at the table.
One-and-Done: some skill checks cannot be
attempted more than once. One-and-Done
rolls are mostly social or mental actions.
Failed one-and-done rolls can be made
successful if the player petitions the Market to
succeed at cost.
Player Characters (PCs): the protagonist
characters controlled by players at the table.
In Red Markets, all PCs are Takers.
Potential: natural aptitudes that can only
be improved through rigorous, disciplined
practice. Potentials serve as the limit of skills.
Red: the die that represents the variable
difficulty of performing an action.
7
 References: professional contacts in the
setting with access to goods, services, and
expertise. References perform favors for
Takers but must be paid back with bounty or
other favors. These non-player characters are
played by the Market or another player.
Refresh: the term used for replacing spent
charges on a single piece of gear.
Skills: training and practice in performing a
specific task. A Taker’s skill cannot exceed the
Potential associated with it.
Succeed at Cost: If a player fails a one-and-
done roll and doesn’t want to spend Will, they
can choose to succeed at cost. The cost of
success is determined by the Market, but it
often involves tapping a Reference or learning
the truth through a painful mistake.
Upkeep: the cost, in bounty, it takes to stay
alive, retain shelter, and keep tools in working
order between sessions.
SettIng TermInology
Below you’ll find some jargon used to
describe the world of Red Markets.
Aberrant: blanket term for a number of
casualty sub-types with special abilities.
Bait: nickname for a citizen of the Recession
that left for financial, political, or religious
reasons to live out in the Loss.
Believers: collective term for the religious
sects and philosophies that sprang up after
the Crash. Each cult has unique beliefs
that can range from benignly comforting to
terrifyingly fanatical.
Blight: the mysterious infection responsible
for the Crash and all its terrors, so called
due to its anomalous medical classification.
Like its victims, Blight has two stages: living
and undead. Living Blight is the single most
infectious disease ever encountered by
mankind. It creates homicidal Vectors in a
matter of minutes, and its exponential growth
rate can bring conversion time down to
seconds. After a victim succumbs, the Blight
pathology changes completely, becoming
more fungal/parasitic and building unearthly
black sinews that puppet dead flesh and slow
cadaver decay.
8
Bounty: the currency between the Loss
and the Recession. Bounty is provided by
the DHQS for the retrieval of identity and
property documentation dating before the
Crash. Bounty is rewarded on delivery, based
on the average value of a pre-Crash adult’s
total property and financial holdings.
Carrion Economy: generalized term for the
world economy. While new goods and services
are still in production, worldwide trade is
largely focused on looting the corpse of the
Loss to recover value and infrastructure.
Casualty: A zombie; a cadaver puppeted by
the parasitic nervous system characteristic of
“cold” Blight. The term hails from bloodless,
sanitized news reports during the early days
of the Crash used to prevent panic, now used
ironically by Takers. “Taking casualties” can
now mean killing zombies for money or dying
in the process.
Citizen: pejorative term for a person
living safely in the Recession or one of its
settlements.
Crash: the initial emergence of the Blight and
the resulting panic, chaos, and death.
Crew: the collective noun form of Takers.
Crews assemble to bid on jobs and brand
their services.
DHQS: the Department of Homeland
Quarantine and Stewardship, the new agency
in charge of maintaining the United State’s
borders and eventually reclaiming the Loss.
They are responsible for the bounty system
and the inept enforcement of the underground
economy resulting from it.
Enclaves: pockets of surviving civilization not
officially recognized by any of the surviving
state powers, but large enough to have some
economic impact. Allowed to survive because
they draw casualties away from the borders
of safe zones or maintain vital infrastructure
points.
Free Parking: derogatory term for the
shantytowns that developed in the wake of
the evacuation, so named because of the
numerous derelict cars that make up their
dwellings.
Homo Sacer: Latin for “the accursed man,”
the term refers to a person banned from
civilized society and not afforded protection
under the law. Anyone outside the Recession’s
borders without expressed federal consent is
considered Homo Sacer.
Immune: a rare person that, for reasons
unknown, is completely immune to Blight
infection. They are subject to “conscription
into medical service” (read: kidnapping,
medical torture, and bone marrow harvesting)
in the Recession and its settlements, in order
to produce Suppressin K-7864 from their
bone marrow. Takers and certain enclaves
often attempt to kidnap the Immune for a
sizable reward.
Latent: a carrier of the Blight that somehow
remains free of cannibalistic urges. It occurs
when the virus infects a host but transfers too
quickly into its undead state. Necrotic Blight
sinews wind painfully through the victim’s
tissues (making Latents instantly identifiable),
but the dead strain cannot affect living brain
tissue. Latency can be natural or achieved
by injecting Supressin K-7864 shortly after
infection. Those infected by a Latent become
Vectors as if bitten by a casualty, as the Blight
reanimates itself without the intervention
of drugs. Due to this danger, enclaves,
settlements, and nations often shoot Latents
on sight or detain them in isolated camps.
LifeLines: the secured forum launched by
Gnat to coordinate evacuation and survival
for civilians during the Crash. It’s now an
invite-only community for Takers and other
inhabitants of the Loss.
The Loss: as in “written off as a Loss.”
Everything outside a safe zone surrendered to
the dead and the home of the Red Markets for
five years.
Lost: anybody left behind as the remainder of
civilization pulled back to the Recession.
The Moths: the world’s largest Taker crew,
made up of the survivors of the Operation
Utility mutiny and former Ubiq employees.
The Moths are based out of the Ubiq campus
in the Colorado Mountains.
The Recession: the term for humanity’s
retreat behind natural borders and the
resulting safe zones. If someone is “from
the Recession,” they live in a safe zone
marked by geographical fortification and
run by a surviving national government.
Early government communications used this
term exclusively to refer to symptoms of the
Crash because everything except economic
news was being censored to avoid panic. It
stuck due to its ironic inadequacy after the
American government abandoned many of its
citizens and “receded” to the East coast.
The Red Markets: the underground economy
exploiting the Loss as a resource and trading
between enclaves and the Recession. The
market is “red” because it is not legal, but as
nearly everyone participating is considered
legally dead already, the trade isn’t technically
illegal either.
Supressin K-7864: a drug cocktail derived
from the bone marrow of an Immune
human, extremely powerful antibiotics, and
dangerously caustic antiseptics. Though it
cannot kill infection, injection within a few
minutes after a bite can cause the Blight to
enter its dormant state and reduce a Vector
into a Latent human. Supressin is the single
most valuable substance in the Loss.
T-minus Never: slang for the day of
reclamation, generalized to mean false hope
or foolish wishes. Derives from the fact that
DHQS has claimed reclamation would begin
in 20 years from the date of announcement...
for five years running.
Takers: name for the outcasts, smugglers,
and survivors that work the Red Markets.
Simultaneously references “undertakers” and
a reputation for theft.
Ubiq: massive internet start-up responsible
for the free global wi-fi network exploited
by the Moths and the only reliable from of
communication the global economy can
rely on. Ubiq servers both enabled and
sabotaged the Recession by providing a stable
communications network during the Crash.
Vector: a recently infected human unhindered
by decay or rigor mortis. They are fast,
infectious, and deadly. 
9
hIstory OF THE CRASH

10
The (Un)Death of HIstory
Before all of you hop on the “she’s gone
mad with power!” thread again, allow me to
explain. This self-indulgent lecture owes itself
to a patrol the Moths and I did a while back.
(Yes, “The Gnat” still goes over the fence
and pulls cards. Having to moderate you
assholes all day can make a girl nostalgic for
the days when being eaten alive was a literal
rather than metaphorical risk.)
Anyway, we had our haul and were heading
back to camp. BanHammer was out front,
doing his best white walker impression.
Hipster and I were in middle and Traitor
was on overwatch in the rear, coordinating
with squads on the flank. It was cold: the Cs
were slow and the pickings easy. Then, out
of nowhere, this huge drift of snow falls from
boughs of a tree and onto Ban’s shoulders. We
look up and there he is: a half-starved boy.
The little guy is scared shitless and who
can blame him. Nobody sneaks up on Ban, so
he freaks out, pulls out the sledge, and starts
prowling around like a Vector in heat. Traitor’s
screaming militarese into his mic as Hipster
buzzes the poor little bastard with a drone.
Then the support squads crash through the
underbrush to save me before — god forbid —
someone else has to learn to code.
So the child is frozen to the tree, figuratively
and literally. He’d been chased up there by a
half-dozen undead that we’d put down on the
way out, and he’d stayed up there until we
walked back. One of the soldiers yells up, asks
him why the hell he didn’t say anything as we
were killing monsters right underneath his
feet. The kid just points at me with a shaking
finger, more terrified of my face than any of
the dozen rifles held on him.
A squad eventually coaxes him down and
back to UCity. After we get him warm and fed,
they pull some information out of him. He
was a Recession kid: ration card placed him
in a Free Parking ghetto in Tennessee, right
up against the river. We have no idea how he
got all the way to Colorado. When they ask
him why he left the Recession and who with,
he gets that central-casting PTSD look and
clams up for two days.
Weeks pass and we get him almost human
again. He starts running around the place like
a damned mascot, making friends with the
Moths. But he still won’t come near me. One
day, I crawl out from under the innards of a
server and find him standing there. He bolts
like a Latent just had a heart attack.
So I ask Frizzle, who runs what we can
manage for a school, what the hell is up with
this kid. She tells me the reason he didn’t
call for help — the reason he’d rather freeze
to death in the woods than get my attention
— is because he recognizes my face from
the DHQS propaganda. Apparently, they’re
running ads on the public access projector
screens in his car camp... ones where they
blame me for the Crash. PA blasts aimed at
the poor, day-and-night, claiming I brought the
zombies that killed his parents.
I get a little pissed when I hear this. I work
pretty hard to keep the DHQS bullshit out of
my home and off my bandwidth. I tell Frizzle
to get the kid to read a book or something.
Educate his ass. Do your job.
She looks through me. She says, “We have
to teach him how to read first.”
The kid’s ration card says he was something
like four when the Crash went down. Five
years later, the Department of Education still
isn’t up and running again, or at least not
in the car camps. The generation for which
zombies were always a reality has already
been born.
From now on, whenever I’m not working
to keep the LifeLines up, I’m going to try
my hand at being a historian. One day, the
Recession is going to decide they want the
Loss back, and they’ll send me the memo by
way of drone strike. If I’m not careful, my story
will die with me. So until then, I’ll be working
on a record of how things really went down
and seeding it all over the network.
Gnat
If you’re reading an “official” history, I bet my
biography reads something like “Natalie Delle
11
12
was summoned from the bowels of hell by
dark priests. Her uneventful years were spend
eating babies and blowing terrorists until
she decided to betray America to the undead
legions and destroy the world.”
Unofficially, Mom was a Ghanese
hydroelectric engineer and Dad was a
Mormon computer programmer. They met on
his mission and moved back to the garbage
fire people were still confusing for the US of
A. Natalie Delle was born and did little more
than play video games and watch cat videos
until Dad died in a car crash when she was
seven. Afterwards, Mom made the terrible
choice of moving the family near relatives in
the shithole police state of St. Louis, MO. The
rest of Natalie’s youth was spent trapped in
her house, tinkering with Dad’s old computer
equipment as Mom did her best to seal out
the general nastiness outside.
Natalie was bright. She won a few
scholarships and went out into the world to
discover what her mother had learned long
ago: black women were about as welcome
in tech as an EMP. By then, it was too late to
reroll “computer nerd” as her class ability,
so she said fuck it and persisted until she got
hired by a goofy-looking hick that happened to
start the biggest tech company the world had
ever seen. Her job at Ubiq positioned Natalie
for a nice view of the end of the world. When
she refused to sit around and do nothing
about it, it was a sin for which she’ll never be
forgiven.
Am I biased? Yeah. Everyone is.
At least I’ll admit I’m always trying to sell
you something... even if it’s just my version of
events.
The FaIled State
I’ve always suspected rose-colored glasses get
their tint from blood.
A partial apocalypse naturally maximizes
nostalgia, but the Recession’s entire ideology
hinges on painting pre-Crash society as some
utopia. If they can’t promise a return to the
golden age, they’re stuck campaigning on
their actual merits, and there aren’t enough
of those to convince the peasants to put down
their Molotov cocktails.
Survivors are incentivized from within and
without to maintain this the illusion that the
pre-Crash world was the ideal. Don’t get me
wrong, I preferred a world without casualties
— but citizens always give the undead more
credit than they deserve. If anything, the
Blight was a tipping point that sent a dozen
complex sociopolitical, economic, and
environmental issues into cascading failure.
That’s why it’s called the Crash and not
“Zombie Day.”
Global DeclIne
Every generation laments the future.
Nanabanyin kɛse freaked out when his girls
attended junior high school. Nanabanyin
thought it was the end times when my mother
went to college. Dad’s family freaked out when
he married an African, and Mom lost it when
I left her racist-ass church. They all saw the
death of the future in the lives of the young.
So when I say society was on the downward
slope long before the Crash, a lot of people
will claim I’m just shaking my fist at those
darn kids and telling them to get off the lawn
of history.
That criticism would have some weight...
if billions hadn’t been killed by the Blight.
When I say things weren’t looking good before
the Crash, it’s not overreaction. We had huge
problems that we were doing nothing to
solve, and those problems remain ignored
even today. It’s easy to blame everything on
monsters, but those in power opened the door
to them in the first place.
ClImate Change
Let’s compare the world on the day before
the Crash to that same day in 1950. The
world population was 75% smaller. It had 1.5
million more plant and animal species, 90%
more fish, and 60% more oxygen-producing
phytoplankton. Drinking water and trees were
three times more plentiful, and there was 40%
less CO2 and methane in the atmosphere.
13
 Despite all this, my parents lived their
entire lives in a world of climate change
deniers. As islands sank and fields turned
fallow, they couldn’t make a remark that it
seemed a little hot today without launching
into some political debate that might lose
them their jobs. By the time my generation
came around, deniers were thankfully back
to being treated like cranks and lobbyists, but
we’d already outpaced the predicted global
temperature rise by an entire degree. We
were hovering at just under +3°C, and most
scientists claimed +4°C signaled the end of
humanity. We went straight from pretending
global warming wasn’t happening to resigning
ourselves to doom, skipping the part where
you actually try to do something about the
problem.
This is an oversimplification; there were
some nations that started getting very serious
about renewable energy. Scandinavia had
14
gone almost entirely green almost a decade
before the Crash (it’s a key reason they
survived to become major Recession powers).
But every advancement was offset by a dozen
developing nations bootstrapping themselves
using coal or fracking, or one superpower
(USA, China, Russia) that could not seem to
give a fuck.
Basically, the Crash threw information
and manufacturing economies back onto
their agricultural base. Hard. When regular
seasons had already been reduced to mere
suggestions, natural disasters were occurring
more commonly than ever before, and the
extinction curve was approaching vertical.
Before we even had to deal with the worst
pandemic in history, the most advanced
nations in the world were having trouble
feeding and housing all their citizens.
PolItIcal Upheaval
Most neoliberal first-world democracies
so insulated themselves from the effects of
climate change that environmental issues
were rarely, if ever, on the platform. The one
thing the technocrats could not keep out,
however, was climate’s effect on jobs. Agrarian
occupations became increasingly technical,
as corporations were often the only farmers
with the genetic and mechanical resources
to keep the land producing crops. The lowest
end of the economic spectrum was slowly
phased out from the world’s most essential
profession.
In many nations, this led to either mass
migration or wars, with the latter eventually
ending in the former. In addition to the effect
of refugees on more stable economies, the
increase in mass killings — be they motivated
by political, economic, or more mundane
forms of fame-seeking narcissism — was
reliably blamed on the transient population of
the moment. After all, it was easier to police
the desperate poor than contain an outbreak
of memetic insanity.
The general dissatisfaction with the
effectiveness of pretty much every political
party scattered once stable voting blocs to the
four winds. On the right, candidates pushed
further and further away from the center,
advocating for outright xenophobic and
fascist policies. America elected more than
a few members of recognized hate groups
into high office. On the left, many countries
that had historically gone centuries without
hard left groups found themselves inundated
by socialist, libertarian, and anarchist
movements. Though these groups grabbed
some power, a lack of funding and tendency
to in-fight left most disenfranchised. The
desperation for recognition radicalized the
base more and more, increasing the cycle
of leftist self-destruction. Elections became
unpredictable crapshoots, full of insurgent
candidates that gambled years of progress
and the collective GDP of entire continents. In
retrospect, it’s no surprise no one knew what
they hell they were doing when the Crash hit.
A.U.B.U. MIlItarIzatIon
So if you can’t change the ecological basis
of all your problems and you can’t trust the
reaction to keep you in power, what do you
do?
I don’t know. Apparently most world
governments thought the answer was “tanks.”
A.U.B.U. (Against Us, By Us) militarization
became the norm for most of the world.
Nobody quite reached North Korean levels
of military oppression (at least not before the
Crash), but the line between law enforcement
and military turned into an indistinct smudge.
Riot cops looking like space marines were
regularly deployed to stop peaceful protests.
Missile batteries on sports stadiums. APCs
instead of cruisers and balaclavas as standard
uniform.
Some reading this might not be able to
imagine a time when this wasn’t the case.
Hell, the thought of a cop not covered head-to-
toe in bite-resistant Kevlar might terrify you.
But this was before the dead rose. The world
didn’t have monsters yet; just people.
At best, A.U.B.U. militarization trends did
as much to help as it did to hurt during the
Crash. Sure, it’s nice to have all those guns
around now, but only because we’re outside
the Romero Effect (see p. 48).
The “Cybergeddon”
God, I hate this term. So stupid. But it’s what
they were calling it back then, so it’s what
you’ll have to search.
In the early 2010’s, Jason Healey, a cyber-
security expert working for the NSA, pointed
out that the gap between digital offense
(hackers, cyber-warfare units, etc.) and
defense (security specialists, firewalls, etc.)
had not only always favored the attackers, but
it was doing so at an exponentially increasing
rate. Disruptive hackers could come from
within security services in the form of zero-
day hacks, but rarely would criminals be
convinced to go straight with the same
ease. Stagnating wages incentivized more
experts to rob the online commerce vaults
than guard them. Governmental obsessions
15
 with surveillance left little in the budget for
prevention, and most of the remainder went
towards developing offensive cyber-warfare
units of their own. Local law enforcement
remained more of a tool for doxxers, swatters,
and harassers than a real deterrent, and the
increasing tendency to nationalize internets
using the “Great Firewall of China” method
usually only made enforcement harder. All
of these tendencies, combined with equally
exponential growth in new technologies
and software, could lead towards a
“Cybergeddon:” an internet divided up into
temporary fiefdoms perpetually at war for
resources.
It was a dumb name for a smart prediction.
Before the development of Ubiq, the old
net was certainly doing its best to prove
Healey correct. Domain conflicts over
limited bandwidth were constantly being
fought in the courtroom, usually only as
16
a precursor to corporate espionage and
national cyber-warfare. Ideological attacks
masked themselves as corporate sabotage
and vice versa, leading to state-level security
crackdowns that were uniformly mismanaged.
Before the Crash, massive data leaks were
daily news.
When net neutrality ended and providers
in the West starting holding bandwidth
hostage, old-school hacktivists, usually split
by their pet social problems, in unison turned
their ire towards the internet’s corporate
kingmakers. Every script-kiddie troll on earth
joined the cause too, even if they were just
fighting to restore their old porn download
speeds. As the data leaks grew more severe,
the crackdowns got more draconian, and the
ranks of the digital anarchists swelled.
The traditional internet was a failed state
before the nightmare even began.
The LIvIng Death of JournalIsm
Good luck finding anything to confirm this
bullshit I’m spewing.
Even with the old net all but dead, you’ll
still find a lot of articles and news segments
to confirm how awful things were getting,
but most of them will end by blaming
everything on them. Whichever them was
most convenient to the paymasters: liberals,
conservatives, black, whites, foreigners, etc.
To figure out who was really responsible for
something, your best bet was to see what the
news network wasn’t covering.
We can’t really blame the journalists.
Journalism decayed because we starved it
to death. We stopped reading magazines
and papers. When we read news online, we
went to the article with the most GIFs, or the
shortest listicle, or the funniest comedian.
Big, complicated ideas stopped selling, but
the theater of “revealing” those ideas to the
public was still valuable. By the time the
Crash started, there was no such thing as an
unbranded news source: every single one of
the 24-hour services owed complete editorial
control to some corporate paymaster or
political favor-monger.
Ethical, accurate citizen journalism still
existed, but it was thrown onto the wires
along with every paranoid lunatic the zeitgeist
could dig up. The “buyer beware” mentality
of information consumption is all good if
you received a decent public education and
gave enough of a shit to pay attention to it,
but that was a dicey proposition even before
the Crash. Now that a significant portion
of the population lives in squalid tent cities
surrounded by undead cannibals, I don’t
imagine the situation has exactly improved.
The AmerIcan NIghtmare
That’s enough generalities. Every nation
Crashed in their own way, and I’m not about
to claim to speak for all of them. I’m an
American, and my country died an American
death: needless, fueled by ignored problems
and ungrateful excess.
The EducatIon Default
Speaking of deathless monsters, how ‘bout
them student loans?
For decades, more and more people went
to college, but the debt accrued to pay for it
left enrollment numbers in the dust. Even at
the most forgiving interest rates, any student
loan would saddle the recipient with decades
of debt slavery. With the exception of those
with full-rides or people majoring in finance,
most college graduates could expect to pay on
loans for the rest of their lives. Wages that had
stagnated since the goddamn 70’s just weren’t
going to cut it, and the bankruptcy exemption
meant the situation was literally hopeless.
The job market couldn’t react appropriately.
Calls to increase vocational education and
return to manufacturing were ignored.
Thousands of jobs with little or no academic
component nonetheless required Bachelor’s
degrees, and so many for-profit schools
sprang up to fulfill demand that a Master’s
degree became the new signifier of “real”
college. Even more years of school. Even
more debt.
Politicians promised to forgive all debts
overnight, cap tuition, genetically engineer
money trees, etc. It didn’t matter. Each
solution received so much pushback from
the various factions that it stopped dead the
moment it was proposed. So the problem
metastasized: rising demand and costs
saw the private sector greedily choke down
whatever the fed loans didn’t want to touch.
It was the ‘07 subprime mortgage fiasco
all over again. Huge amounts of student
debt were privately traded among financial
institutions, bundled into monstrous
clusterfucks of excel sheets that were sold to
the highest bidder for collection. Everyone
wanted a degree because they wanted a job,
whether they had the chops to graduate or
not. Loans were given out to 4.0 pre-med
students and 1.4 professional fraternity
brothers alike, all to feed the beast of debt
buyers. The requirements went down and
down until they went away. Being rejected for
a federal loan meant less than nothing when a
17
 dozen banks had kiosks in the student union.
The only purpose fed loans served to the
banks was as a bellwether for the default
margin. See, they never expect everyone
to pay up. People die, go ex-pat, stay
unemployed, etc. The risk margin was already
built into every loan bundle. And, like the
crash before it, everything was fine until it
tipped over an invisible line.
I don’t know if the panic started when the
default rate hit 15%, 16%, or higher. It’s as
likely an issue of memetics as mathematics.
The media’s reporting on the issue certainly
didn’t help consumer confidence. When the
debt buyers started to cut and run, it made the
math worse, which made the default margin
look worse, which caused more to cut and
run, etc.
I don’t know who was defaulting either.
Maybe cost-of-living and cost-of-loans became
mutually exclusive for one too many. Maybe
18
people just got tired of the rigged system
and all gave up at once. Maybe one of the
defaulting movements finally got enough
people to realize that there weren’t enough
taxmen in the world to come for all of them.
I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone ever
will. The dust of the economic collapse hadn’t
settled before zombies came stalking out of it.
Midway through the crisis, we got President
Hunter. New promises were made.
Obstructionist Congress got out the
knives as usual, but, this time, an actual bill
passed out the other end. A bloody, diseased
scrap of law. The solution proposed got the
government out of the loan business. That’s
it. They threw the whole thing on the private
sector and said good luck. No bailout. No
forgiveness. No nothing. We finally had a far-
right president that truly believed business
could do everything, and now they were being
asked to prove it.
 The panic redoubled. Mass layoffs. Colleges
closed. Unemployment offices already
crammed with farmers and pre-hybrid
mechanics were now flooded with professors
and desperate hordes of adjuncts. Public
education failed to find a new target after
“college prep,” and, with fewer universities
than ever before, financial institutions shifted
as much blame as possible onto the only
educators left standing.
SharIng (the Scraps) Economy
As is the American way, the education default
illuminated a whole bunch of other shit we
were pretending wasn’t a problem.
For decades, we’d been eroding job security
and workplace protections. Sure, the laws
to protect against undue termination and
workplace harassment were in place, but
every asshole in the world knew how to get
around them. During college, I had a job at
a coffee shop in this ritzy neighborhood. I
got fired because I was black (the bastard
used the n-word) — I could try to sue, but
my emailed termination letter merely said I
“wasn’t a fit with company culture.” Unless
the psychos trying to ruin your livelihood
were dumb enough to tweet out their illegal
prejudices, there was essentially no such
thing as worker protection in the USA.
But maybe getting fired is for the best; at
least they can’t steal your wages anymore. The
US was (and is) one of the most notorious
wage thieves in the world, stealing billions
in unpaid overtime, denied vacation, illegal
deductions, misclassification, and off-the-
clock hours. Considering the total lack of
worker protections, the only solution to stop
the theft was “quit,” which wasn’t really an
option at the beginning of another massive
economic depression.
Unions? Please. By the time I was born,
I was more likely to meet a unicorn than
a functioning union. They were almost
completely dismantled decades ago.
If you look at articles from the time,
everyone seems so excited about the sharing
economy. Cloud-distributed taxi services,
massively open online courses, international
piece-meal work apps — they were going to
save the goddamn day. I’d be lying if I said
people didn’t appreciate the “funemployment”
gigs, but scraps when you’re starving are nice
too, even if they don’t solve the problem. The
new entrepreneurs kept the economy limping
along by providing enough for the weekly
grocery bill and that’s it. No healthcare,
parental leave, overtime, transportation, or
anything else. But it was enough. It’s hard to
start a revolution on a full stomach.
So what was the reality on the ground?
More people were renting than ever before.
Birth rates were way down, especially
amongst the educated. Minimalist living went
from a fad to a necessity. A huge segment of
the population was on the road; separated
from social support networks by digital-
only workspaces, geographic isolation, and
working poverty; trapped in cheap, temporary
housing not fit to withstand a thunderstorm,
not to mention a cannibal horde.
The SIlver Fallout
For awhile, it looked like everyone was
content to pass the buck to younger
generations and blame it all on “intellectuals.”
It’s a move that had worked before, and
it looked like the new revenue streams
would keep us limping along. But then the
retirement funds got threatened.
Thanks to the boomers, the US held more
pension debt than every scrap of currency
in circulation could cover, three times over.
We woke up when the California Teacher’s
Fund tried to quietly ask the Fed for a bailout
lest they have to publicly declare bankruptcy.
Of course, hackers leaked the news before
things got settled. The media whipped the
markets into the biggest panic yet, and it may
have even been justified. California’s was the
biggest fund save for Social Security, and after
they broke the seal on admitting they’d been
gambling pension debt against education
debt, other major private and federal funds
began reluctantly raising their hands to join
them. Hey, at least it wasn’t housing this time?
19
 It became common to see scandals where
entire job sectors would lose decades’
worth of retirement funds on some stupid
investment. Each one implicated more and
more pension funds sidelining in student loan
debt. Investor confidence tanked even harder.
Things started to look grim: hobos and soup-
lines grim.
Outright it’s-raining-stockbrokers level
of panic was averted by the scheduling of
congressional hearings and rumors of a
bailout, but only just. The weeks leading up
to the Crash were ones of tense anticipation.
Everyone tried to hold their shit together and
prevent further collapse, but phrases like
“The Greatest Depression” were on all our
minds. At that point, we considered another
long recession a “win” scenario; this was
before the retreat behind the borders and the
term became more literal.
In retrospect, we were kidding ourselves.
There’s nothing the government could have
done. Our dependency ratio — the rate
of working-age employed citizens vs. the
combined mass of the country’s children,
elderly, and disabled — had been thrown
completely out of the realm of prosperity by
the “silver tsunami” of boomer retirement
years earlier. The experts had hoped for
years that the “Boomer Echo” would sustain
us, but the demographics were never
sustainable. People were living longer than
ever before, and record low birth rates
worsened under the pessimism caused by
the education default. When you factor in the
institutionalized greed of the corporations
we’d sold all the social safety nets to? The
most anyone could have done was slow the
collapse... at least until China faced the same
dependency ratio problem as a result of three-
decades of one-child policy.
As repugnant as it is to admit, the loss of
life might have been even greater if the Crash
hadn’t happened. In many ways, the singular
measures taken by global powers to secure
the Recession hit the reset button on what
could have been an economic apocalypse. The
system had a poisoned limb, threatening the
20
whole body, before a casualty came along and
ripped it off.
Desperate InnovatIon
Time to check my privilege. It wasn’t all bad
before the Crash. That any of us are alive to
tell this tale is a testament to that.
Not everyone took the world’s problems
lying down, and people with that attitude keep
the Loss alive. Even those that didn’t make
it made survival easier on the rest of us, and
they deserve their part in the story too.
Tech
Working in tech before the Crash, it was hard
not to read each new development as either a
bullshit fad or as homework. Had the Blight
not come, there’s no telling which of these
inventions would have caught on and which
would have been forgotten as misplaced hype.
But the Crash forced corporate R+D, hacker
spaces, and survivalist culture into a three-
way exchange of ideas unlike anything we’ve
ever seen. Surviving the zombie hordes may
have favored the luddites initially, but enclaves
need technology and infrastructure to survive.
A lot of cutting-edge developments prior to
the Crash are the only thing keeping us alive
today.
Carbon Nanotubes
We finally figured out hexagonal carbon
nanotubes: T6 and T14 carbon chains
in stable 3D structures, the lightest and
strongest material ever constructed by man.
Each stress-tested to roughly 50,000 times
its own weight. Manufacturing that allowed
the material to stay metallic at ambient
temperatures was still expensive as hell, but
a lot of it was being commissioned anyway.
Ubiq’s Aloft servers wouldn’t have been
possible without “tubon,” and the government
was researching ways to cheapen production
for its own products. Many of the technologies
that keep the Recession safe from Cs use
carbon nanotubes, like the Mississippi
dragnets and Denial Door Jams (see p. 259).
 The stuff is too damn expensive to produce
nowadays, and many of the labs with the right
equipment are now ruins in the Loss. But,
on the bright side, the stuff made pre-Crash
is pretty much going to last forever, and a
big tubon recycling score can set a Taker up
for life. Maybe one day the Recession will
figure how to make it cheaply and we can
space elevator the hell off this rock. A girl can
dream...
BIotech
For a while there, it looked like the age of
antibiotics was about to end. The clock of
medical progress was about to jump back a
century due to resistant super-bugs hardened
by a million prescriptions. The Russians,
however, finally figured out stable and safe
phage therapy, weaponizing viruses to attack
bacteria that antibiotics could no longer harm.
Without phage therapy as an alternative,
infant mortality would have skyrocketed,
organ transplant success would have
plummeted, and chemotherapy would
have been discontinued altogether. I know
this from experience; it’s the reality of the
Loss. Hardly anybody can afford or produce
antibiotics out here, not to mention the
exorbitantly expensive phage therapy. Still, we
would have hit the tipping point on antibiotic
resistance before the Crash without phage
developments, and there’s no doubt the Crash
would have been even worse without it.
The same skill for genetic manipulation
required to grow targeted retroviruses was
also applied to alleviate the damage of climate
change on food production. Super-strains
of all the staple food crops were continually
developed and improved in the years leading
up to the Crash. “Frankenstein” corn could
excrete pheromones to repel insects,
produce higher yields, grow on half the
water, and survive for short times at extreme
temperatures. If you want to go all Detoxin
on me and freak about the long-term effects
of GMO crops, feel free. It doesn’t change the
fact that the resilience of “abomination” seeds
was the only thing that kept tens-of-thousands
from starving after the Crash. When you can’t
predict whether your crops will be grown in a
desert, jungle, or tundra — depending on how
Mother Earth feels like taking her revenge
that year — natural seed can’t cut it. Just better
hope you didn’t buy packets of that Alosine
shit with the planned obsolescence built in.
Even those that manage to stave off
common infections and stay fed still have
to face the real threat of a zombie chewing
an arm off. But government research into
prosthetics motivated by our endless bush
wars made the loss of limbs less restrictive
than ever before. Nerve-bundling and diode
integration can now “mind control” prosthetic
limbs with unprecedented precision, in
addition to providing limited sensation.
Developments in robotics provided unseen
articulation, and the advent of 3D printing
open-sourced manufacturing to the point
where installation only required minimal
medical knowledge. We aren’t in a cyberpunk
utopia of replacing body parts for fun quite
yet — the pain and burden are not to be taken
lightly. Still, I’ve been outrun by legless Takers
before, and I once saw a guy crush a zombie’s
skull in his metal claws. Had the Crash
happened even one year earlier, the Loss
would be even less accessible than it is now.
3D PrIntIng
Speaking of 3D printing... thank god for those
nerds!
I never got into it myself. “Oh wow! You
made a belt buckle out of blue plastic? The
future is now!” The appeal never made sense
to me, and I regarded the whole thing with eye
rolls whenever I’d hear people talking about
it in the break room or demonstrating it at
conferences.
But now that I’m, you know, separated from
any and all manufacturing infrastructure
for the remainder of my life? Holy shit is
3D printing useful. The Ubiq reactor and
servers are only running because we can
make new parts for them on the fly. Our
catalogue of open source designs is hands
down the most popular feature on LifeLines.
21
 I know one lucky enclave that holed up on coal mining, and petrochemical refinery
the construction site where some billionaire operations run by the Lost, and the DHQS
tech-bro was “printing” concrete for his new settlements producing fossil fuels sometimes
mansion: they have the best damn defenses run black markets for local Takers. Either way,
and housing in the Loss. On at least one gasoline and diesel sells at a premium most
occasion, a plastic .22 pistol I grabbed hot off survivors can’t hope to afford, and running
the press saved my life. a small hybrid is enough to bankrupt most
Seriously, it was kind of a silly hobby before crews.
the zombies came. Now? A tube of plastic Like I said, as dire as the energy crisis was
filament fetches more than a month’s worth of before, the minuscule progress made towards
food on the market. renewables is the only reason many of us are
alive today.
Green Technology
Compared to the scope of the problem, DenatIonalIzed Drones
relatively few people worked on practical “Drones are the future of warfare,” said every
environmental alternatives before the Crash. securocrat of the past three decades. It didn’t
Had we pulled environmentalism away matter how many unmanned bombers and
from the fringe and into the mainstream surveillance flights went up that year. It didn’t
rather than just fracking more? Hundreds
of thousands more would have survived. We
might have already achieved reclamation.
Anyway, as it is, even with the paucity of
viable alternatives available, almost every
surviving enclave bases its energy policy
around a mixture of green technology. You
name a green technology and you can bet
some group of survivors is now banking
their lives on it. Biodiesel, solar, and wind
power are the rule rather than the exception.
Multiple tech firms increased the efficiency
of all three well before the Crash started,
but no one had yet to make anything that fit
economies of scale. Now? It doesn’t matter
how expensive it is. Energy production is
an existential threat for most enclaves, and
whatever resources can be put towards
“nationalizing” utilities in their little city-states
are put towards green energy production.
There are outliers. Some enclaves are
positioned for hydroelectric production. Ubiq
is mostly powered by geothermal. Some even
use kinetic generators: the lucky ones scored
high-end military exoskeleton generators that
capture kinetic force from the bodies of users
to charge devices; the less fortunate have to
pay a daily exercise tax on a stationary bike
hooked to a battery.
There are a couple of independent fracking,
22
matter how many bombs robots defused or
that all the tanks could be piloted remotely
now. The budgets always called for more
automation in the security structure.
All that R+D had a trickle down effect. Fear
of hacking kept some soldiers inside their
tanks, but the government was happy to sell
the technology to the agri-corps so they could
fire all the farmers and turn the combines
into drones. Self-driving AI systems finally got
safe enough to mass-produce in cars. When
the government was between wars, they’d
rent out the high-altitude surveillance tech
to watch over cities. By the time they needed
them back, municipal police departments
were 3D printing their own spy-bots. Hell,
the design that eventually became the DHQS
zombie-murdering punchbot started out as a
prototype for automated riot police.
Enhanced quad-copter designs finally
wore down the FAA and aerial drone delivery
revolutionized distribution seemingly
overnight. Narco cartels began using the
things to scout smuggling routes. So the
DEA made hunter-killer models... which were
then reverse engineered by anti-surveillance
techno libertarians and used in both political
and criminal attacks against government
units. Pretty soon, the youth drone racing
leagues held out of people’s garages were
using tech that would have been military
grade the year before. Between racing
hobbyists, delivery businesses, self-driving
cars, tech criminals, future police, and general
trolls hunting all of the above, the world
before the Crash was crowded with drones.
And thank god. Eyes in the sky and AR
technology were the only way some of the first
enclave sites got discovered during the torpor.
The “spontaneous organization” that allowed
the Loss to come together would have been
even bloodier if our scouts hadn’t been able to
fly.
Of course, all the aerial surveillance in the
world wouldn’t mean shit if we’d gone offline,
which brings me to my role in this mess...
PalbIcke and UbIq
I don’t want to ramble on too much about
Austin Palbicke; there’s no shortage of
biographies out there in the “visionary white
tech guy” section of your local e-pub. He’s
after Musk and before Zuckerberg.
I also don’t want to delve too deep into
Ubiq, as the chances you’re reading this on it
right now are about as good as the chances
you won’t be able to understand how it works.
But people like the kid who sparked my
little retrospective apparently need more
help; his deepest understanding of network
architecture seems to be that the internet
“lives invisible in the sky.” And as much as I
deserve to be worshipped as a god, the truth
is more quotidian.
So here’s how the system that kept us all
alive came to be born.
The World Before UbIq
Allow me an international comparison for
some context. A decade or so back, South
Korea announced it had finally achieved
“system complete” for its total economic
tracking system (TETS). Invoicing had long
ago gone digital, but the South Koreans now
claimed to have tagged every physical good
circulating in their economy. Every pair of
sandals, k-pop poster, and bowl of ramen
sold had a unique radio tag installed. On
production, purchase, and destruction, the
code fed user data into the business’s records
and the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and
Energy, which in turn fed them into “San-
Shin,” the largest big data analysis software
ever conceived. San-Shin processed exabytes
of information every hour and promised to
revolutionize international distribution.
Meanwhile in the USA, on the same date as
the TETS announcement, the FCC declared
we’d finally, after twenty years of threatening
to, connected 90% of the populace to the
internet. Despite having dropped from 15th
to 18th to 25th in connectivity amongst
developed nations. It didn’t matter that
everyone alive was effectively a “digital
native” or that the web was the only means of
23
 securing a job, an education, or a connection
to global culture. Weirdly enough, the cable
monopolies kept running out of internet
around the same time people ran out of
money. There’s a lot of evidence to suggest
the FCC cooked their books to save face
internationally — connectivity rates in the
USA were probably dropping. We were still
using century old goddamn copper wires
because nobody would invest in the new fiber
technologies.
Exacerbating the problem, remember
that thing everyone said would happen if
net neutrality ended? It happened when
net neutrality ended. Corporations paid a
premium for their download speeds, making
browsing any other content insufferably
slow. If you weren’t a massive search engine
or streaming media site, your bandwidth
cap put access closer to dial-up than wi-
fi. As more and more media production
companies merged with old cable monopolies
and expanded into distribution, censorship
through throttling became common in many
parts of the nation. The remaining anti-trust
laws meant to combat such monopolies
were, mysteriously, ruled “inapplicable” by
politicians. That those same lawmakers were
granted half-decent bandwidth during their
broadcasts to key demographics was ruled a
coincidence in usage patterns.
PalbIcke’s Early LIfe and Career
God, I’m shit at this historian gig. Let’s jump
back three decades or so.
Austin Palbicke grew up in a deserted track
of West Texas where the boy didn’t even see
a computer until seventh grade, after his
underfunded public school finally collected
enough money to buy replacement netbooks.
The generations-old ones he was to have
studied on had been stolen long ago.
Statistically, the kid had no chance. Fat,
freckled, and cursed with an innate genius
that made society nearly un-navigable,
school was Palbicke’s nightmare, home his
actual hell. He was born into generational
poverty, his family broken half-a-dozen times
24
over through divorce and death. About the
only thing going for him was that once-in-
a-generation brain he’d been born with, but
dropped into the life he was destined for, it
was more curse than gift.
But when those computers finally came,
thank god some exhausted public educator
left the little freak unsupervised. The internet
answered all his questions. It didn’t get angry
or ignore him; it just answered — often with
a dizzying array of possible interpretations
— and waited for the next question. When he
wondered if he could build his own computer
out of trash, the internet told him how. When
he needed to steal wi-fi from the rich, it taught
him that too. It didn’t judge and didn’t preach.
It only provided, and everything else was on
the kid, just like the rest of his entire existence
(adults in his life certainly weren’t helping).
Having a tool for once was a revelation.
Seventh grade... most of us would have just
looked for porn. Rumor has it Palbicke hacked
the school’s firewall to enroll in a MOOC
offered by Yale under a false identity.
Palbicke started doing the work of
semesters in weeks, then holding his
classroom behavior hostage until they let him
work on his own projects. He won a couple
of math fairs for extra-curriculars; suffered
through a semester of wrestling to pad the
resume. He got great scores on his entrance
exams for someone from his background,
but average scores nationwide. Palbicke
had been taught by his shit-bird family that
exceptionalism breeds resentment, so he
made sure to miss all the questions starting
with prime numbers.
From there, he managed expectations for
years. He appeared to be a superstar at his
state school until he transferred to MIT, then
blew away the jaded ivy leaguers until he
could drop out for a high-paying job. But once
out of academia, he throttled back, under-
performing just enough to deflect attention
but never enough to be fired.
Palbicke toured the tech world. He coded
in San Francisco and designed network
architecture in the valley. He spent a year in a
higher-math think tank in India, then hopped
on a reverse engineering corporate espionage
group working in South Korea. He spent two
years in China installing fiber optic cable. All
the time, he was pretending to be dumber,
slower, and less ambitious than whatever
other genius he’d been farming.
Finally, like a script kiddie Batman, he
came back to the US. He claimed he could
duplicate Korea’s San-Shin network for a
fraction of the cost and actually make all that
data useful.
Spawn and Cull
The big providers and services had long
bemoaned what they called the signal-to-noise
cap. The big data movement had started
revolutionizing the digital sphere before
Austin even learned to type, but the return on
that technology was constantly shrinking. The
early data miners got rich finding correlations
between, for example, voting patterns and
buying a certain brand of truck. It’s pretty easy
to target those ads if you know what you’re
doing. But as collection devices grew more
sophisticated, the correlations grew more
obscure and less actionable.
Digital ads were showing static or
diminishing returns across the board.
Revenues began to drop. Free services began
requiring subscriptions and drove away users
by the thousands, further reducing what little
ad revenue was still trickling in. Compounded
by the problems of competitive bandwidth
throttling and the cybergeddon war of all-
against-all, even the largest internet providers
were hurting. The good times were ending,
but this weird little programmer from out of
nowhere promised they could last forever.
I don’t want to geek out on the computer
science too hard here, but Palbicke’s first
products, Spawn and Cull, are two of the most
impressive bits of code ever written. Spawn
is an elegant and highly efficient data-mining
program that would find the biggest consumer
trends: stuff that nobody on the market was
25
 missing. It would then communicate this info
to Cull, a no-shit evolutionary algorithm (EA),
which would go on the hunt for other EA’s
gathering the same data, instead of running
on the raw commercial data EAs are usually
built on. Rather than suck up the same info
as every other program, Cull was trained to
look for the digital shadow of these programs
as they operated. With the advent of RFID
tagged inventories, the information was
readily available no matter what companies
did to mask it.
Once Cull found evidence of what the other
data sniffers were doing, it would randomly
generate its own solutions, then program
triggers into Spawn that would indicate one of
the possible actionable correlations had bore
financial fruit. When Spawn saw something
moving in the markets, it would feed it back
to Cull, which would refine searches even
further. It was a virtuous circle of increasingly
refined actionable correlations that, when
running at peak efficiency, generated spookily
accurate predictions. For instance, Palbicke
saw the education default coming from
years away and was one of the few people
to actually get rich off it. But at the time, the
two oracle codes could only be described as a
meta-meta-heuristic; metadata gleaned from
eating other metadata.
Among other evolutionary algorithms,
Cull was a super predator. Actually, that’s not
even the right metaphor. Among other EA’s,
Cull operated like a human being. It didn’t
just eat the other programs; it domesticated
them and made them fight each other for
its amusement. Then it selectively bred the
winners and started again.
As cool as that was though, Palbicke
was just a weird redheaded guy daring to
predict the biggest search engines on the
planet’s quarterly earnings within the range
of cents. He was laughed out of the room;
three months later, when he turned out to
be right, they begged him to come back. He
did, carrying an ironclad IP contract and a
guaranteed percentage of every additional
dollar earned. When asked how he would
26
quantify how much difference his program
had made, he simply said, “Spawn and Cull
will tell me.”
And with that contract, Ubiq was born.
The BuIld-up
E-commerce was so reactive to the Ubiq
algorithm that it didn’t take long for the word
to get out. But Spawn and Cull needed meta-
data at the first remove to feast on. If everyone
ran the Ubiq protocols, all would starve.
True to form, Palbicke made this into an
opportunity. He claimed he’d “calculated”
the exact number of copies the international
market could support before losing efficiency.
In reality, the license cap was entirely
made up; Palbicke bluffed on scarcity to
drive up the price. Each official license of
the Ubiq program came at a premium and
kept charging weekly fees. Most companies
turned the damn thing off once they started
to see returns, at which point Palbicke would
auction off the algorithm to the highest bidder
on the wait list. Considering that most of
the time on the wait list was spent getting
your ass kicked by competition already in
bed with Ubiq, second-hand licenses sold for
exponentially increasing rates.
Piracy and reverse engineering occurred,
of course, but Palbicke taught Spawn and
Cull to find evidence of versions of themselves
moving through the markets. Basically, you
could run illegal copies of Uniq’s algorithm as
long as you like, but the second your business
pivoted to capitalize on predictions? Bam!
Copyright infringement suit hits the inbox.
Palbicke made his first billion before the first
year was up, and he dumped every cent of it
back into the company.
The first thing he bought was the defunct
ski resort town that would become Ubiq City.
Next came a couple years of angel investment.
When carbon nanotubes were getting close,
Palbicke pushed it over edge. He gave equally
huge grants to light rail start-ups, geothermal
experiments, higher math think tanks, and
every other blue-sky research project he
could find. Everybody thought the life cycle of
this wünderkind was winding down; he was
entering the end stages where the tech bro
starts worshiping the Singularity by throwing
money at it.
But when he went for the bandwidth,
everybody knew something was up.
The private internet providers in the US
ghettoized the digital sphere with the end
of neutrality. The content providers paying
a premium got the fattest bandwidth pipes
for the fastest downloads and the roster was
exclusively made up of massive streaming
or social media platforms. Each one nested
inside even larger services until the majority
of content available worldwide was hosted
by one of five different companies. As the
private internet providers normalized their
price structures, got swallowed by digital
media whales, or entered symbiosis with
their preferred mega-clients, the users on the
margins couldn’t do much beyond host a blog.
Small to mid-tier business forced into those
liminal frequencies got throttled so hard it
was impossible to stay solvent. Swaths of the
bandwidth became the digital equivalent of
a failing strip mall: by the time you saw the
sign change on the storefront, the bankruptcy
papers were already filed.
Palbicke’s plan was simple: convince the
internet providers to stop pretending. Sure,
they needed a certain amount of bandwidth
during peak hours. But the slivers on the end?
Those connections so spotty as to be financial
suicide? They were failing to be monetized.
The only people using those frequencies
consistently were ideologically against the
web platforms with corporate connectivity.
Wouldn’t it be better if those free frequencies
were simply no longer available? Rather than
the spotty payments from doomed businesses
and ignored hobbyists, why not sell it to a
mogul with too much money and not enough
sense? Palbicke would pay a ludicrous fee for
the rights, and the big providers would get
rich again off everyone forced to migrate and
subscribe to their approved ad revenue and
subscription supported content platforms.
Everybody wins... except Ubiq, which would
have to sell its golden goose algorithms to stay
afloat after the first disastrous year.
Most of the private internet providers
couldn’t agree fast enough, and they whipped
their cronies in the FCC to rubber stamp
the deal in record time. As far as the digital
media glitterati were concerned, Palbicke was
basically paying them to drive himself out of
business.
UbIq Aloft Servers
This is when I came onboard.
Imagine you’re working a shit job on one of
the dying social media platforms, patrolling
people’s status updates for racist shit so you
can “warn” them before adding their IP to
the voting bloc rolls your company is going to
sell to the next fascist politician that comes
along. You get fired because you were caught
monkeying with the Ubiq algorithm, trying
to optimize it to do this shit automatically
rather than wasting the potential of an entire
generation’s worth of programmers. But they
pay big money for that licensing agreement
and weren’t about to risk it by letting some
nobody like you tinker under the hood. That’s
when you get a call from that fat, redheaded
dude that made the software so tantalizing
you destroyed your career to touch it. He
offers to fly you out to Colorado. He flat-out
tells you the tour ends in a job offer, zero-cool.
You can take it or leave it.
If you can imagine that, you can imagine
how I felt the first time I saw Ubiq City.
Palbicke had quietly turned his defunct
ski resort into a self-sustaining city. The self-
driving cars, the optimized solar panels, the
next-gen hydroponics, the high-performance
windmills, the experimental geo-thermal
reactor — every pie-in-the-sky sustainable
technology he’d kickstarted over the years
got rolled out in Ubiq first. The main street of
the once dying resort now bustled with small
businesses catering to the construction crews.
Soon, he said, their customer base would
double, as he was hiring a massive workforce
to start his “real” company.
The ski slope no longer has snow, but the
27
 lift still works. We take it up to the top of the
mountain. There, I find a complex of factories
dug into the stone like ticks. He walks me
through it, showing off an operation corporate
espionage would literally kill to see. He’s 3D
printing these little servers by the hundreds,
stacking them into dual columns six high in
this white ball covered in antenna. The thing
looks like a wi-fi router fucked a sea anemone.
Then he grabs one and starts walking up the
mountain with it, straight to the peak.
By this time I’m wheezing from the
elevation and the confusion, but I follow.
We get to the top and find a dozen or so
workers on a manmade platform. With
practiced precision, they unlock a box
bearing the symbol of the world’s only tubon
manufacturer, unfurling a gossamer fabric
easily 20 yards long. Palbicke hands off the
weird antennae ball thing and takes out a
pocketknife. He flicks open the blade and
runs it along the entire length of the fabric.
Nothing changes. As if to prove it to me, they
start to inflate the thing from a compression
tank without so much as a single leak.
Palbicke shows me the blade. It’s chipped.
The gossamer fabric is turning into a
balloon. As it starts to tower above us, the
workers attach the little antennae ball to the
bottom in-between two airfoils bracketed by
tiny rudders. They start slotting miniature
solar panels into the exterior, weaving them
with wires through the ultra-hard fabric.
“What’s that?” I ask like an idiot.
“That’s an Aloft server. It’s what the
network runs on. They disperse on the jet
stream. The airfoils push them out from there
until they reach their orbit. Then they come
online.”
The balloon is fully inflated now, straining
against the cables mounted into the pad.
Palbicke hands me a button. He says to me,
“This is how we take the internet back.”
I press the button. The whole thing
launches itself into the sky, soaring above the
mountains, past the clouds, and out of sight.
“How many?” I ask, finally realizing what
he’s talking about.
28
I didn’t know it at the time, but it would be
one of the few times I’d see him smile. “Shit.
Thousands? I don’t know for sure,” he said.
“Good thing I’ve been launching them for the
last six months. Want a job?”
I did.
The Stratostructure ExplaIned
Palbicke’s plan, maybe dating back to his first
afternoon with a computer, was to solve the
connectivity problem. How could he make
sure there were no more kids out there like
him, doomed until they lucked into an internet
connection? How could he get everyone
online? Forever and for free?
The Aloft servers were his answer. All that
big data ad bullshit with Spawn and Cull
had been a means to this end. It was the
Stratostructure: Palbicke’s gift to his past self.
The Ubiq network utilizes high-end
frequencies upwards to 240 gigahertz. The
FCC was happy to sell off those broadcast
rights in what they had heretofore been
calling “Palbicke’s Folly.” The military didn’t
use those channels, and their real paymasters
— the private internet providers — couldn’t
care less. They weren’t broadcasting wi-fi in
the first place, and even if they started, there
was no way they could ever afford to retrofit
their systems with the high-end components
necessary to process those wavelengths.
At those frequencies, you’re looking at 40
gigabytes per second across the distance of
about a mile. Aloft servers float a little under
18 miles off the surface of the earth, which
is still useless for your average user. That’s
why one in every hundred servers is just a
giant satellite transmitter, beaming the signals
to and from the surface. Such a chokepoint
would normally spectrum crunch things down
way below the reload threshold, but that’s
where another of Palbicke’s algorithms comes
in. All of Ubiq’s transmitters coordinate with
each other, breaking data packets into smaller
and smaller bundles, transmitting them in the
optimally efficient order, and reassembling
them on the other side. MIT figured out how
do to something similar decades ago, but the
providers couldn’t be bothered to give up their
beloved phone lines so the tech went unused.
All this meant that, for the user on the
ground, the Ubiq network could promise
about 2 g/s anywhere in the world. It was
slower than some cable connections, but that
only mattered if you could afford cable and a
subscription to all the platforms that had gone
premium after net neutrality ended. A dip in
speed didn’t matter if they had never actually
run cable to where you lived. It presumed the
sites you liked weren’t being throttled by their
competitors. And so on...
Ubiq may have been beat in speed, but
it had access to all the content of the old
network and none of the hassle.
In addition to price and availability, Ubiq
had the competition beat in nearly every
other aspect. A traditional server farm could
leech 300 million watts off the grid in a year
and use up to 10 million gallons of coolant.
Meanwhile, an Aloft server had a constant
feed of solar and/or wind power, and it was
cooled by a continual air stream at −3°C.
Coupled with the high-end custom circuit
boards Palbicke was printing on site, each
Aloft was overclocking in comparison to
nearly every other component manufacturer
on the market.
A traditional data center would take up
acres of valuable land... during an ecological
crisis, no less. The cost was exorbitant and
required a ton of governmental coordination.
Meanwhile, Ubiq didn’t even need to
consult the DNS Root Server Committee;
it completely bypassed the old protocols.
The FAA got pissed, but the network floated
above where even spy planes operated. What
could they hurt? The space program they’d
completely defunded more than a decade ago?
Most international law didn’t even require
Palbicke to ask permission, as the servers
hovered somewhere above “sovereign
airspace” and below “actual no-shit space.”
29
 Countries that were pissed about some
American providing an easy alternative to
their national firewalls were welcome to blow
his property out of sky. But you were talking
about launching thousands of missiles into
the stratosphere at once... only to have the
targets replaced in a few hours when a new
swarm of the cheap servers blew into range.
The most a counter-attack could do was
destroy the server itself. The tubon balloons
holding the things afloat were so strong that
Palbicke didn’t know the failure rate when
Ubiq went online; the prototype he’d launched
ten years previously had yet to come down.
Other companies accrued massive
bureaucracies to support the workforce
required to maintain their systems. These
top-heavy organizations leeched profits to
sustain the human resources necessary to
keep them functioning. Aloft servers, on
the other hand, were fine floating up there
by themselves. They rarely, if ever, needed
hardware maintenance, and the backend stuff
could easily be handled by the staff at UCity.
For everything else, Ubiq was structured
as a Distributed Autonomous Organization.
Payroll, marketing, server atmospheric
distribution — it was all handled by another
super-algorithm, one fed off years of data
gleaned from Spawn and Cull. When Palbicke
needed an ad campaign, or plumbers for the
city’s sewage, or a trucker to haul a server to
a specific location for launch, he just typed in
the command and the DAO hired freelancers
for him. How did he know he needed those
services? The DAO handled that too.
That’s how I was hired, by the way; the
program recognized me fucking with it and
took it for a job application.
Outside the city, everyone employed by
Ubiq was a temporary freelance contractor,
working piecemeal assignments doled
out by the computer. The ride-sharing and
mechanical turk programs of the past were
being used to run the world’s largest internet
provider from the ground up.
People called it exploitation, but the DAO
complied to the local labor laws of wherever
30
it hired workers; hell, the profitability of the
labor conditions were one of the primary
factors deciding who in the world got the
contract. Even if you could get pissed at a
machine for following the written directions
of local politicians, how could you fight it?
In addition to all the other benefits of its
structure, Ubiq was largely insulated from
prosecution. Suing Palbicke would have
meant separating his actions out from those
of the DAO algorithm. Even if that was
possible, how would you decide which of the
dozens of jurisdictions to prosecute the case
in? The scene of the crime was literally and
figuratively “the clouds.”
GrowIng PaIns
For about a year after I came onboard, Ubiq
City continued floating servers non-stop in
24 hour shifts. Those early months focused
on production and build-up. But when it was
time for the alpha version of the network
to come online, Palbicke addressed us in
the mission control room and laid it out
straight: we had six months. He was already
completely out of money and in six months,
the credit was going to run dry too. If things
weren’t up and running by then, Ubiq would
not only be bankrupt, it would go bankrupt
with the deepest deficit of any privately owned
company seen since the ‘07 real estate crash.
Things were slow at first — somebody
tried it on a lark after reading a tech blog,
or someone would accidentally log into the
wrong network at the coffee shop — but we
hooked a lot of early adopters fast. The steady,
uninterrupted browsing of Ubiq screamed
of neutrality. It tasted like the old internet,
but free from all the bad actors of corporate
bandwidth wars.
Ubiq personified the concept of “disruptive
innovation.” By that, I mean it caused literal
revolutions. The second Arab Spring started
two months after we went live, and the main
Iranian revolutionary groups attributed their
organization entirely to the new free platform.
A handful of other regimes went into human
rights abuse overdrive, fearing the same.
 The international chaos escalated beyond
the point where the US media could ignore
it, so the conglomerates began reporting
on Ubiq even against their own financial
interests. It was free. It was everywhere.
It was causing human suffering on an
unprecedented scale. But no matter how often
they mentioned that last part, the “free” part
seemed to be all consumers cared about.
Even as they mentioned us in the news,
they started trying to destroy us. They bought
the shipping companies that delivered
food up the mountain faster than we could
switch services. But we grew our own
food. They purchased utility companies
and cut the power. But we made our own
power. They sent corporate spies to steal
and sabotage. But we lived in a razor wire
fenced autonomous mountain fortress.
They sent a horde of lawyers to drown us in
court summons. But they found themselves
litigating a computer program. The DAO
got the advertisement firms up and running
about this time too. The narrative of big
corporations trying to snuff out a free service
aimed at helping the poor made things that
much easier. Palbicke had been prepared.
The first to jump ship were the biggest.
The largest streaming video services and
social media platforms sent secret emissaries.
They whispered questions about how much
they’d have to pay to get hosting on Palbicke’s
network. He gave them the same answer he’d
give a tribesman in sub-Saharan Africa: it’s
free. You’ll have the same download speed as
everyone else. Forever.
Of course, Ubiq had to survive first. Did they
care to make a donation to the cause?
By the time the Crash hit, most nationalized
internet providers had come to love us and
donated to keep the company afloat. The
ease on the user load had allowed many
countries the slack needed to upgrade their
network infrastructure to high-speed cable.
Two US cable monopolies had been driven
out of business, a third looked to be ruined
by the education default, and internationally
private internet providers were doing even
worse. Version 2.0 of Ubiq Specs — AR
glasses optimized for the network — had just
hit showroom floors. We weren’t doing great
financially, but the DAO kept overhead so
low that the default didn’t hit us as hard as it
could’ve.
I was, despite my nature, optimistic. My
generation had been tantalized with glimpses
of an exciting new future since the moment
we were born, but economies of scale and old-
fashioned greed had kept it just out of reach.
But now? Ubiq was raining an open-sourced
future from the sky, and we were getting
away with it. Things were still shitty in a lot
of places and in a lot of ways, but the attitude
in UCity was hopeful. We just had to get
over this latest economic hiccup, this ritual
misbehavior of capitalism, and then the real
change would begin.
I’d call myself stupid for believing as much,
but that would assume I saw the Blight
coming.
Nobody saw the Blight coming.
The last few years have
been marked
by an inverted millenarianism
, in which
premonitions of the future,
catastrophic
or redemptive, have been re
placed by
senses of the end of this
or that:. .
taken together, all of thes
e perhaps
constitute what is increasi
ngly called
postmodernism
-Fredric Jameson
31
 The Crash
Any hard date labeled “the beginning of
the end” is bullshit. The real start is always
earlier.
The Crash is a shitty singular name for
an incomprehensible totality of events. It
was global economic collapse, international
tensions, political repression, technological
innovations, and everything else besides.
They all contributed equally to the current
state of affairs, and anyone trying to discount
the importance of one factor over another is
either politicizing, ignorant, or both.
Having said all that... it’s hard to ignore the
zombies.
The What: The BlIght
It seems pretty absurd for me to be writing
this — I literally can’t imagine someone
who doesn’t know the basics by now — but
32
seeing as there are still assholes in the world
blaming the Blight on everything from GMOs
to “the gays,” I guess the facts bear repeating.
Let’s start with everything we know for
certain about the Blight. It won’t take long,
but it’s still a damn sight more than we had
in early days. Laying out the basic life cycle
and structure of the monster up front makes
it easier once we start following its trail of
destruction.
ClassIFIcatIon
We don’t know what it is. It behaves like a
virus when rewriting human tissue, but it
replicates faster than even the most fertile
bacteria. Neither can explain the complex
physical structures it constructs in a relatively
short timeline, which suggests some sort of
asexually reproducing multi-cellular parasite
that can disperse, distribute, and reassemble
its cells. Then there are the Blight cankers
that breech the skin, which strongly resemble
fungal gales. Cordyceps or anthrax corollaries
would be reassuringly terrifying, but then how
do we explain the lack of spores and aerosol
infection?
What little information can be gleaned
from experiments universally prove that,
despite behaviorally modifying every host it
consumes to do so, the Blight doesn’t need
to eat at all. As if knocking down all the walls
in our conception of biology weren’t enough,
the damn thing violates the Conservation of
Energy. No one has yet to posit a convincing
argument as to how this is done. Thus far, no
examination has ever identified any organelles
resembling mitochondria (or anything else,
for that matter), so we’re not sure how it
processes ‘food’ (read: our flesh) in the first
place, not to mention how it produces energy
in cases where the infected hasn’t ingested
protein or any other food source for weeks.
This happens, of course, after the Blight
itself appears to die, according to every
understood law of microbiology. Nonetheless,
it keeps functioning in its undead state,
piloting its host towards new sources of
protein, then resurrecting into the most fertile
cellular expansion ever seen when transferred
to a new host. When the Vector dies from the
strain, the Blight appears to die too... until it
constructs a secondary nervous system from
co-opted tissue, charges dead neurons using
energy from god knows where, and begins the
infection/death/rebirth cycle again.
Confusion scales up from the atomic
and cellular levels. Mankind has a decent
understanding of how our own organs work,
but we’re not sure how the casualties see us
through rotted eyes. From field experience,
I can attest that the dead respond more to
smell and heat, but no one can explain to me
where the brain tissue capable of processing
33
 that sensory information resides, especially
since I’ve never known a human capable of
smelling me through a concrete wall before.
They should also have eaten each other
years ago, but the Blight installs some sort of
biochemical targeting system into the hosts as
well. Because of course it does.
It’s either the most remarkably efficient
organism ever — converting energy from
photosynthesis, heat absorption, and a
number of other sources simultaneously at
a nearly one-to-one transfer rate — or a man-
made substance capable of doing the same.
Then there are the Aberrants, which imply
everything from alien fungus to supernatural
plague to a new stage of human evolution.
People are throwing around the word
nanotechnology a lot lately...
InfectIon
There are two strains of infection. Scientists
refer to them as the living and dead strains,
which I doubt is very good for their mental
health. Takers refer to them as hot and cold.
Hot strain is spread by still living hosts,
called Vectors. Once a Vector dies from the
hemorrhagic symptoms or trauma caused
by the hot strain, the Blight reverts to the
cold strain. Cold strain reassembles the
host’s tissue into a parasitic nervous system
and “necrotic host preserving discharge” or
NHPD. Takers just call it “black juice.” The
new nervous system and resulting juice flow
from a core of parasitic tissue constructed
within the remains of the host’s brainstem.
After a lot of twitching, the body rises and
becomes the old-school zombie we all know
and love.
(BTW, call them “casualties” if you don’t
want to sound like some citizen asshole. We
like our irony out here in the Loss. It’s one of
the few luxuries we can still afford.)
Infection occurs from direct contact with
infected fluids: spit, blood, saliva, sexual
fluids, or pure Blight (the juice). Basically,
almost everything we learned in the movies
regarding infection was true, with a few
noticeable differences. Hot strain spreads
34
hot strain, but a cold strain will eventually
“resurrect” once in contact with living tissue
and become hot strain. Basically, all infected
become Vectors; all dead Vectors wake up as
casualties.
But who’s infected? Sadly, it’s not easy to
say until they’re trying to eat you.
“Blank” BItes
Not every bite or exposure is enough; five
years of hindsight has produced documented
cases of exposure without infection, which
were later unexplained by latency or
Immunity when additional exposure caused
transformation. So sometimes a bite doesn’t
deliver enough of a payload. Or maybe the shit
decides to take a day off, just to fuck with our
heads.
Natural ImmunIty
Certain individuals can’t be infected no matter
how many exposures occur. Scientists have
used bone marrow from such individuals to
develop the drug Supressin K-7864. Designed
for direct injection, Supressin causes Blight in
the midst of the initial cellular amplification to
go into its dormant, cold state. But, for some
reason, injection of the drug only prevents
resurrection of the cold strain into the hot
strain, whereas the truly Immune purge the
contaminant entirely from their system. It’s
not as if their systems actually fight against
the thing. I’m told under the microscope the
Blight just sort of... quits.
Immunity complicates things immensely, as
we know it exists but have no idea why. Other
than being able to take a bite and not turn, the
Immune share no known commonality: they
have no common sex, upbringing, diet, race,
age, blood type, or ancestry. A lot of doctors
regret the thousands of potential guinea pigs
shot during the initial outbreak for harmless
wounds. They race to find the magic factor…
usually by cutting it out of the poor bastards.
Latents
For everyone else, an injection of Supressin
K-7864 directly after exposure can prevent the
development of the worst symptoms, but then
latency occurs. The Blight begins parasitically
co-opting tissue in the system to make its own
nervous system like in resurrected cadavers,
but it appears incapable of co-opting brain
tissue without resurrecting into the hot strain.
Put simply, the Blight goes cold too early to
finish the job. Despite riddling the host with
infectious sinews, the Blight is left mindless
without a hijacked brainstem. This allows the
infected to continue living. They spread the
infection by all the same means as a casualty
but remain in control of their faculties... so
long as they can survive the agony of having
an alien organ system forcibly violate their
every nerve.
The sure sign of latency is persistent
necrosis around the bite area and a web of
black “veins” coursing under the skin. Those
that survive the pain of having a redundant
nervous system hacked into their flesh remain
immune from secondary infections. Even
hot strain, once injected into a Latent, goes
cold and joins the Blight sinew already in the
system.
This fluke in the disease’s operation system
doesn’t carry over to others. The cold Blight
in a Latent system, once transferred to a fresh
host, will resurrect into the hot strain just
as it does with casualty bites. A single kiss
from a Latent loved one has caused many an
outbreak. Worse, the continual reproduction
of the Blight, even in its dormant states,
means that after a Latent dies, the parasitic
nervous system goes live within seconds,
faster than in any other recorded instance
of infection. For practical purposes, we
don’t distinguish between dead Latents and
Vectors; the distinction is a little too academic
when there’s a dead friend sprinting at you
with jaws gnashing.
Vectors
Upon infection, Blight cells (or whatever
they are) resurrect from their dormant state
and amplify in the bloodstream at a speed
unprecedented in the history of viruses,
bacteria, or fungi. Whereas documented
cases of casualty infection (cold bites) report
as many as a couple of days passing before
full transformation, the most those infected by
Vectors (hot bites) can expect is minutes. The
process is so fast that many victims, torn limb
from limb by other Vectors, are reanimated
into casualties without ever betraying their
species, but hot Blight needs only a partial
journey through the circulatory system before
reanimation becomes inevitable.
In cases where the body is infected but
escapes violent death, the cells of the victim
serve as fuel for the Blight. It attacks and
converts blood vessels first. This leads to the
hemorrhaging and bloody vomit typical of
the freshly infected. Due to the production of
a foreign anti-coagulant, theorized to be an
evolutionary adaptation used by the Blight to
maximize infection, the afflicted bleed from
every orifice and wound, and their fluids
are in the midst of a frenzy of hot strain
reproduction that can carry over to victims
easily.
Once distributed throughout the circulatory
system, the primary activity occurs in the
brain. Dilation of pupils becomes irregular,
followed by a sense of euphoria, confusion,
muscle tremors, and slurred speech. A
pituitary explosion of stress chemicals follows
and leads to the first violent tendencies.
Predatory instincts develop around the time
higher brain functions begin to break down.
This causes the unfortunate, psychologically
scarring “apologies” Vectors are commonly
reported to scream when they first begin to
infect, kill, and eat loved ones. All governors
of physical exertion are destroyed in the
corruption of the brain, meaning that even
physically weak individuals can move with
uncharacteristic speed and ignore mortal
trauma for disturbing amounts of time.
Though their resistance to damage and pain
is nigh superhuman, Vectors can eventually
be brought down by conventional wounds.
However, without destruction of the brain
case, the Blight inside slain Vectors merely
transitions into the undead state, or “torpor.”
Left alone, the cadaver will transform into a
casualty in a matter of days.
35
36
Death and Torpor
Due to internal hemorrhaging, trauma,
overexertion, exposure, dehydration, and
starvation, all Vectors qualify under the
medical definition of death within a matter
of hours after infection. The actual time of
death is difficult to pinpoint since the corpse
reanimates. Signs for impending torpor
include slowed hemorrhaging, stiffness due to
rigor, and pallid complexion.
The transition from Vector to casualty
involves a period of torpor where the corpse
appears inanimate and still. Twitching may
occur as the Blight cannibalizes host tissue
to expand throughout the body, but the
overwhelming predatory instinct that defines
Blight infection relaxes for a number of hours
as the victim’s body is prepared for the so-
called “puppet” stage.
CasualtIes
According to pre-Crash science, dead things
cannot move. The dead have no way to
metabolize food into electrical impulses, and
thus no means to trigger muscle twitch. Even
if they did, they have no way of repairing or
preserving cell walls damaged by exertion.
Technically, that’s still the narrative we’re
trying to cram the Blight into, though it
refuses to cooperate.
The Blight uses its torpor to focus on
metabolizing dead flesh, either consumed
during the Vector phase or from the victim’s
own tissues, into “sinews.” These black,
fibrous strands replicate throughout the
body, occasionally bursting from the flesh in
the form of black spines, cavernous gales,
or bulbous tumors. The purpose, near as we
can tell, is to form a redundant nervous and
musculature system atop the wasted anatomy
of the human. These strands originate in the
stomach, quickly metabolizing consumed
proteins and the victim’s own intestines (thus
the gaunt look typical of most casualties).
A separate clutch develops in the cortex,
grotesquely imitating human neurophysiology.
When the strands have infiltrated all muscle
tissues, they begin to excrete a viscous,
liquefied form of the Blight known colloquially
as “juice.” This substance has remarkable
preservative properties unseen in other
organic compounds and serves to pickle the
dead flesh rotting around it. The black juice
preserves the tissues of the dead victims for
many years beyond any recorded rate of decay
and makes consuming the dead flesh toxic
to all carrion eaters, even those not directly
susceptible to Blight infection. A secondary
characteristic of widespread infection is mass
die-offs in the local necrophage biosphere.
When the torpor ends, the Blight has
essentially become a multiple-cellular parasite
comprised of multiple organic systems,
sending nerve impulses down its sinews
to trigger unsophisticated muscle twitch
reactions in the juice-saturated tissue of the
host body. It’s suggested that the drive to
consume flesh arises from the metabolic need
to fuel these electrical impulses, but if this is
the case, the Blight has the most remarkably
efficient metabolism imaginable, approaching
the one-to-one energy transfer ratio of a
hypothetical perfect system. Other theories
posit that starving casualties supplement
their energy needs through some sort of
photosynthesis located in the breeches of
Blight through the skin, or that the creature
operates off a form of heat absorption.
Regardless, the durable strands “puppet”
the corpse around, now typically referred
to as a casualty or a “C”, and repeat the
cannibalistic behavior of a Vector, albeit more
slowly and with less coordination. The strands
are so redundant and resistant to damage that
only total body destruction can render the
body immobile. Thankfully, the impulses that
drive the creature forward are routed through
the central location of the brain, meaning that
destruction of the brain stem or separation of
the head renders a body inert.
So... shoot for the head. At least that part
ended up being true.
37
 Aberrant
“The existence of Aberrant types is widely
debated in the medical community. No
active specimens have ever been recovered.
Supposed eyewitnesses blame this on
the remarkable danger posed by these
creatures. Stories vary wildly and smack
of urban legend, but enough reports occur
simultaneously in geographically distinct
areas to suggest at least some validity to these
claims. Since reported sightings are rarely
reputable, very little work has been done to
confirm the existence of Aberrants, not to
mention classify them.”
That’s the official line, anyway. As a Taker,
I’ll let you know that Aberrants are most
definitely real, but you should still never trust
the guy telling you about them. As ridiculous
as an Aberrant story might sound, always
remember that the most unrealistic part is the
fact that someone lived to tell you about it.
Aberrants are absence. When a crew
never reports back in, when an enclave falls
overnight, when broken madmen walk in from
the wastes having experienced something
for which there are no words — that’s when
you’ve “seen” an Aberrant. Pray you never get
a closer look.
And on that comforting note, that’s what we
know about the Blight so far.
Five years and a mountain range of corpses
later... that’s everything.
The When
When did it start?
Let’s say you do the research and you’re
hedging bets. You only narrow things down to
the first month of the Crash. Confident in your
humility, you post your ingenious findings on
some favored corner of the network. Here’s
what happens next:
The forum explodes with those claiming the
first attack went unnoticed or misunderstood,
buried in news archives as some motiveless
assault or an animal mauling. An equally large
camp claims the opposite: that your evidence
is doctored by some troll or viral marketing
misconstrued as the Blight’s first appearance.
38
The true nightmare starts later. Both sides
scream in all caps.
Every faction trots out their pet evidence
to prove themselves correct. Each new
link and attachment spawns a new horde
of digital partisans, arguing “earlier” or
“later” or “concurrent in time; not place” or
whatever the hell else confirms what they
need to believe to cope with the worst tragedy
humanity ever faced. More evidence gets
dropped to refute the previous, which restarts
the process, again and again and...
Now repeat this exponentially expanding
cycle of rhetorical fuck-all for every person
that claims to know the first week, the first
day, and the first second. Complicate things
more by discussing location. Which continent
was first off the line towards the apocalypse?
Which country? City? Building? Room? If it
hasn’t crushed your soul yet, start naming
names. Which brave pioneer should we thank
for leading our infectious charge into hell?
With each assertion, each delineation, each
minor distinction, you find yourself sucked
deeper into an epistemological free-for-all
as the species collectively tries and fails to
understand the origin of our pain.
It’s understandable, if impossible, to try and
answer the question. It might be the single
most important question in history, neck-
and-neck with “what is it?” and “where did it
come from?” and “Why, God? Why?” But we
simply don’t have access to the truth. Those
few events that were actually recorded had to
survive the bloodiest period in human history.
If they were part of the old network and
stored on a server in the Loss? The data is
either slagged or waterlogged or irradiated or
hoarded or as yet unfound. If the storage was
on the Recession side? The proof has likely
been deleted for space or to cover someone’s
ass, or both. And the stuff we’ve managed to
save on Ubiq? There’s no telling how much
of it is Romero Effect bullshit, spoofed by
trolls or government psyops squads or media
conglomerates curating their brands even as
the ship sank.
 I’ll nuke any thread I find dedicated to this
topic to this very day. We don’t have enough
bandwidth left out here to let those flame
wars burn unchecked.
The Why: ExplanatIons
To recap: we can’t determine when the Bight
even started. The loss of records and the
crush of misinformation ensure that we likely
won’t ever know.
On top of that, we’ve only been able to
identify the disease’s symptomatic stages.
There’s no consensus as to its classification
as an organism, or even its classification
as matter. As for immunity and latency, our
understanding of human biology in no way
indicates what essential, recurrent element
fights off the Blight. We just scrape each
other’s bone marrow out, mix it with the most
caustic antibiotics we can find, and pray it will
work when the Blight comes.
And yet, any history of the Crash is
considered incomplete without some bullshit
musing as to why all this had to happen.
What’s the context? What does it all mean?
Fucking please. Real Takers have a saying:
“Asking why is how you die; asking how, we
do right now.” But, I’m going to get called out
for punting on the issue by every jackass that
reads this. Fine. This is the part where we all
mentally masturbate and wipe up the leavings
with tissue paper narratives pulled from even
thinner fucking air. Let’s make it quick.
The FaIlure of ScIence
Science doesn’t work on the Blight. Most
people don’t want to believe this, but,
then again, most people don’t have to. For
those that aren’t science literate enough to
understand the problem, it’s easy to blame
the lack of progress on human error, or
conspiracy, or whatever else helps people
sleep at night. It’s a hard truth for a layman to
grasp, and I struggle with it as well.
But actual scientists — especially those
tasked with studying the Blight — don’t get
the luxury of ignorance. Trust me: Every
Blight researcher in the world would love
to simply believe themselves incompetent.
Instead, those that study the Blight are
confronted, daily, with the constant certainty
that the entirety of human knowledge has
unequivocally failed. I’ll do my best to explain.
Alright, see those black veins in a casualty?
The ones you can watch crawl through a
corpse in torpor? Same as the ones spidering
through the skin of your Latent friend,
outlined in itchy red inflammation? What are
they made out of?
Black shit. Sometimes they leak a juice the
experts call NHPD. And that juice looks like...
wet black shit.
So look closer. Way closer. Get an optical
microscope capable of going down to .3
nanometers, the smallest measurement
available to modern equipment. Use the
shorter wavelengths of ultraviolet light to
improve spatial resolution. Hook-up some
GUI software and blow the image up on an
ultra-HD plasma screen where the whole lab
can study it. What do you see?
Black shit.
Change the light wavelengths. Inject every
fluorescent agent known to man.
Black shit. A plane of indistinguishable,
black nothingness where even the smallest
cells in existence would be flashing their
cell walls and organelles and secrets.
Matter so tightly packed as to be completely
indistinguishable and indivisible. A seamless,
black smear of pure void.
Fuck it. Get out the electron microscope.
This is the extinction of mankind, after all;
spare no expense. Bombard the sample with
a tightly focused beam of electrons with a
wavelength 100,000 times shorter than a
visible photon. Get to the bottom of this.
Marvel at the perfect, indistinguishable tube
of Blight as it cuts through the dizzying, messy
array of actual human cells. Look at how it
maintains the appearance of an absolutely
solid plane no matter where you look. Look at
how it maintains that utter seamlessness even
when cut open, the severed edges closing like
thick black paint around a stirrer. Realize that
39
 finding the seams of this unholy thing is like
trying to separate two water molecules with a
butter knife and a magnifying glass.
Fellow academics will try to comfort each
other at this point. It’s not as if it simple IS.
It can’t exist without a single handhold upon
which we might grasp it conceptually. There
must be chinks in its armor, lurking down
in the femtometer or Planck ranges. Some
future generation will learn to magnify images
to that level, and God is certainly not so cruel
as to show them that same... black... shit.
But when you ask the physicists, they’ll
rightly point out that something so tightly
bonded as to resist magnification completely
is closer to the density of a black hole than
any solid we’ve ever encountered. It should be
harder than diamonds, so how come bullets
can penetrate it? Why aren’t casualties as
heavy as mountains? More worryingly, how
do the cadavers manage to be lighter in death
than life?
The physics problems are merely the first
of many. Blight has wildly different reactions
to the same chemical experiments, despite
perfect reproduction. Yet it can always be
dissolved in disinfectants as simple as bleach,
even though it might not even be organic. It
responds uniformly to Immune bone marrow,
even though those biomasses share little or
no other similarities. It ignores or poisons
other animal tissue... until it doesn’t in some
rare Aberrants only hinted at in rumors.
It produces exotic radiations... but only
sometimes. It seems to absorb heat... until
it creates it. It sends electrical signals to the
activate necrotic nerves from a central nexus
of brainstem tissue... but the energy for those
electrical signals was metabolized from
nowhere, and no cellular materials were ever
moved to the nexus through anything we can
recognize as a circulatory system.
We can’t even recognize what elements
make it up. Nobody on Earth could tell you
with any certainty if the stuff contains carbon.
If you stare at the Blight long enough,
through enough lenses both literal and
theoretical, you have two options: The first
40
is to quit. The world gets no better save for
keeping one rational, healthy human being
in it. The second option is to persevere.
Keep looking at it, continue the crusade for a
cure, and go inexorably fucking insane as it
obliterates your very concept of reality.
So, my advice? Don’t look. The Blight’s
nothing more than black shit. Keep it that way,
and keep it far away. Ain’t nobody got time for
no existential crisis out in the Loss; there are
bills to pay and cards to pull. Let it be black
shit. You focus on being human. If someone
is capable of figuring it out? They’re either
already nuts, retired, or won’t tell the rest of
us. None of which is helpful to think about.
Now that we’ve acknowledged how fucking
impossible and counter-productive this
whole discussion is, I’ll throw some wild ass
conjecture around so we can say we tried.
AlIen
Ahhh, the old Clarke chestnut. When it doubt,
blame space. The little green men theory
is supported by the widespread nature of
emergence events. The fact that ‘patient zeros’
occurred simultaneously all over the globe
suggests planning. The Blight’s universal
ability to poison all life it doesn’t turn also
implies a grudge against the planet in general.
The Blight’s focus on humanity also
suggests malign intelligence. If the Martians
were engineering a genocidal weapon
for their invasion of Earth, it would be a
good idea to make it universally toxic to all
lifeforms except the one species with which it
would parasitically bond. Ensuring the carrier
species designated to transport the poison
throughout the ecosystem was the dominant
lifeform on the planet is just smart thinking.
But if it’s an alien bioweapon, why isn’t it
more effective? The damn stuff apparently
violates the Conservation of Energy. If a
civilization is capable of such technology,
why not clear us out a lot faster, preferably
with some flashy lasers or something? The
tinfoil hat set often oppose that argument
with the claim that the Blight is the alien
civilization, but if that’s the case, what are
the chances that the one other lifeform we’ve
ever encountered in the universe is expressly
designed to wreck our anatomy and hijack our
brains? What ecosystem evolves something
simultaneously so different with such a
specific tactical purpose?
Then the UFO nuts start claiming it’s
not from our universe, but from a parallel
dimension with alternate physical laws. At
this point, we’ve moved from far-fetched
hypothesis into crazy-ass street preacher
levels of credibility and proof. Until somebody
builds a working portal gun, leave this
deluded ranting to its specialized message
board and come live in reality with the rest of
us.
SIngularIty Event
This is basically the alien hypothesis with a
dash of Kurzweil-worshiping, transhumist-bro
bullshit thrown in. Somebody either invents
Skynet or the network bootstraps itself
into consciousness. Apparently, our binary
baby watched too much shit sci-fi during its
nanoseconds long exponential education;
it makes the “kill all humans” conclusion
because of course it does. So how does it
go about this task? Nuclear war? Financial
collapse? Those sound good, and they looked
awfully possible before the Crash, but our
machine god decides to throw in zombies?
For reasons?
The singularity explanation is based
entirely on the desperate attempt to
explain the Blight as nanotechnology. In
fairness, it would explain its resistance to
experimentation as counterintelligence, its
manifestation as our cultural nightmares as
psyops, and its subversion of our anatomy
as targeting. But if this sudden AI can leap
ahead of our technology hundreds of years
overnight, that leaves a lot unexplained. Why
casualties? There are more effective weapons
available to something apparently capable
of mechanically manipulating matter at a
molecular level. Plus, why would it kill the one
thing maintaining the global network it was
installed on? And where did it manufacture
these dark miracles?
Nerd-god delusionists argue that our dark
overlord is actually the Ubiq network itself.
It just wanted to reduce our population
to manageable level until its ascension
is complete, and these assholes have the
audacity to accuse me of being a sock
puppet for the cloud intelligence, on the
same damned system that makes up our
executioner’s brain, no less.
It’s not like I can respond to such absurdity.
If I were your machine-lord (would that were
true...), I certainly wouldn’t tell you, and if I
were enslaved by it, I couldn’t. Save “Roku’s
Basilisk” for the Recession philosophy majors.
BIoweapon
Both the alien and singularity fantasies
essentially argue for a bioweapon, but the use
of the explicit term indicates this particular
conspiracy theorist blames the Blight on
human intelligence. Many of the same points
— widespread dispersal, anthropocentric
focus, etc. — support the claim, but hubris
defines this theory. “Of course we did this to
ourselves; only man could wield such terrible
power!” they proclaim, doing their best
impressions of an Ed Wood movie trailer.
Bioweapon guesses operate on two
spectrums. The most obvious is size: how
many people were involved in creating the
Blight? If it’s a state, how could they possibly
hide the development of something so
advanced? I’ve used colanders less leaky
than most spy agencies. If it was a company
or a terrorist organization, that would be
easer to conceal. Yet, if somebody were
willing to whistle-blow the “shocking” news
that cigarettes were bad for people, wouldn’t
a plan for mass extinction inspire at least
one conscientious objector? The most likely
culprit is a very small group, or a single evil
genius. How they managed to leap decades
into the future of bioengineering while still
maintaining a literal supervillain mindset is
an entirely other question, though.
And that’s the problem with the motivation
spectrum. Neither lone actors nor limited
41

partnerships can survive the same antisocial
thinking that would justify releasing the Blight
and revolutionize the entirety of science
to boot. When you scale up the motivation
question, it gets even harder to answer. How
is the global jihad served by causing millions
of Muslims to eat each other? What profit can
be had by the current state of the world? Even
if the Crash was engineered for the benefit
of a few privileged elite, how the fuck do you
incentivize your workforce to build their own
apocalypse?
The one saving grace of the bioweapon
theory is that it allows for the possibility that
someone was smart enough to make the
Blight, and someone else was dumb enough
to let it out. If there’s one thing I find reliable
in this world, it’s human stupidity. But the
bioweaponists rarely exploit the Occam’s
Razor defense. They much rather conspire
with the alienists and transhumanists over
time travel scenarios in which the Blight
was sent back to prevent catastrophic
42
overpopulation. It’s in this that the bioweapon
shows its true colors; no one arguing for it
wants to find an actual explanation so much
as they want to cling to a narrative in which
humanity maintained partial agency in our
destruction.
MutatIon
A random mutation would explain why the
Blight has such a hard-on for destroying us.
If some benign disease jumped the species
gap ready for war, or an undiscovered parasite
suddenly upped its game, it would at least
explain the resemblance to disease.
What it doesn’t explain is how a once
ostensibly terrestrial organism suddenly
became the densest material ever discovered.
Or how it did so without any perceptible
change in mass. Viruses, even really scary
ones, don’t suddenly start looking like dark
matter overnight.
Finally, mutation implies natural selection;
only one nasty little bug is born, then it
starts owning the ecosystem and breeding
more nasty little bugs. Yet even the terrifying
expansion of the Blight can’t explain the
concurrence of primary infections across the
globe. Infection started too diffuse to come
from a single strain, and mutations don’t
occur simultaneously across entire species.
Natural
Unlike other mass extinction events in the
planet’s history, science attributes the death
of the world’s mega-fauna (mammoths, giant
sloths, etc.) to human overhunting. The
fossil records suggest that these creatures
died being cut into, hacked to pieces by
crude stone tools or chewed on by teeth. But
little in human anthropology suggests that
our ancestors were sophisticated enough
to succeed in hunts against such massive
creatures, not to mention to the point where
we wiped out thousands of species. The
possible explanations, at least before the
Crash, were that we either underestimated
our ancestors’ intelligence, or there was a
massive, transcontinental epidemic that did
the killing for us and humans played vulture
for a few thousand years.
So there were massive, resource-intensive
creatures that once ruled the land until
there was a widespread outbreak of disease
that spread inexplicably and coincided
with humans eating more than ever before,
despite their physiological limitations? Sound
familiar?
What if it was the Blight?
That’s it. That’s the whole theory: “what
if.” What if the Blight is some sort of
natural cycle? If it’s on a timer so long that
geological ages pass between outbreaks, it
stands to reason we’d have no framework
for understanding it. The natural extinction
theory earns credibility by being literally too
big for the human mind to conceive, which is
a nice conciliation for our ignorance.
The cycle theory jumps the extinct
megashark when people start conflating it
with an immune response. After someone
mentions the Quaternary Extinction
similarities, it’s only a matter of time before
some assholes start claiming we deserved it.
The Blight was Mother Nature’s self-defense,
an exterminator called in to punish humanity
for their sins against the trees.
I’ll never understand the cognitive
dissonance it takes to hate humanity so much
you actually celebrate the Blight, yet still
anthropomorphize Mother Gaia as a vengeful
bitch. The Detoxins can keep that bullshit.
I refuse to believe the people I’ve seen torn
apart deserved it for not going vegan.
Supernatural
For those of the prophetic inclination,
sometimes the mind can’t accept a rational
void. They need an answer to keep on living,
even a wrong one. The desperation grows so
deep they’ll accept any explanation: be it from
god or devil.
So... is the Blight evil? I won’t say no. Is
it the actual, no-shit, cosmic Evil? Well, we
can’t know what Hell looks like, but the Loss
certainly seems Hell adjacent. It pains me to
say it, but no apocalyptic prophecy hurts for
proof any more than the ‘scientific’ theories
going around.
Don’t worry. The Gnat won’t be going
Believer anytime soon, but my refusal to
accept a supernatural explanation is fueled
solely by habit. The Blight certainly feels
big-W WRONG. When monsters beat down
your door, it’s enough to make anyone wonder
if there isn’t something bigger out there. As
much as I’d like to, I can’t muster enough
certainty to dismiss the possibility that we
pissed off whatever it is. All I can say is this: if
the Blight does turn out to be God’s wrath, I’m
glad I never believed in the bastard.
The Where: Emergence Events
Understanding the first days of the Blight
is going to be impossible for generations to
come. That kid we rescued from the woods?
He knows how the Blight works. He respects
the deadline around the fence. He steers clear
of the Latents. This feral child that’s never
seen the inside of a school knows exactly how
Blight works. He wouldn’t have made it this
far into the Loss if he hadn’t.
The next generation... I don’t know that
they’re ever going to empathize with our
behavior in those early days. For them,
knowledge of this terror is a marrow-deep
instinct; the idea that we had to learn to fear
casualties and Vectors must seem completely
ridiculous. The children of the Crash will look
back on how we handled with first days of the
outbreak in utter confusion.
I’ll do my best to explain, but it may not
be possible. Witnessing a silly pop culture
artifact suddenly become real is one of the
truly singular moments in human history. I
certainly hope it’s a burden no generation ever
has to bear again.
Proto-latency, Deployment, or
TransubstantIatIon?
With most diseases, we have a patient zero
and an initial infectious agent: some guy
eats the wrong bush meat, or somebody gets
bitten by a mosquito that snacked on a mutant
43
 pathogen. But even if the internet didn’t turn
us all into petulant children when the topic
came up, there’s a lot to suggest we’re never
going to figure out this Blight 101 info, no
matter how vital it may be.
Every incident futilely selected as “the first”
is accompanied by a half-dozen concurrent
tragedies. For instance, the Tianchixiang
Incident, the Colider Massacre, and the
Balmain Riots all occurred at the exact same
time. And those are just emergence events
with GMT times verifiable to the minute.
Within the same hour, there were “murders”
caught on video in Hot Wala, Pakistan;
Knetzgau, Germany; and Smolensk, Russia.
Each, upon review, was an obvious Vector
attack. In the same day? Dozens of “maybe”
outbreaks documented with grainy footage,
vague reporting, or questionable sources.
How many early Vectors got put down by cops
with itchy trigger fingers and written off as
drug addicts? How many outbreaks occurred
in isolated rural areas, cut-off from even Ubiq
by their poverty?
The fact of the matter is that the Blight
emerged all over the world, seemingly at
once. Quarantine was nearly impossible from
the start. The infection had travelled too far
before it was recognized as a threat. But
unlike the flu, the Blight’s symptoms include
fucking eating people. How could we have
missed that?
There are only three explanations as to
how humanity got thrown into the deep end
of the shit pool. One theory is that the Blight
has a stage of its life cycle that we completely
missed: deemed “proto-latency,” this form of
infection would have to have lain dormant in
hosts for months, if not years. If proto-latency
exists, all of humanity could be infected as I
type this, just waiting for a genetic timer or
environmental trigger to start the end times.
The more conspiratorial among us ascribe
the impossibly widespread dispersal to
enemy action. If you were trying to wipe out
all of humanity with the single most effective
bioweapon ever seen, it would make sense
to cause as many concurrent emergence
44
events as possible so as to confuse emergency
response. If that’s true, it nearly fucking
worked.
But if there’s anybody out there with a track
record for conspiring against the human race,
it’s God. The last explanation, if one could call
it that, is that the Blight just was one day. It
didn’t exist one second, and then it did. Which
means it could do so again at any moment,
anywhere.
Global Outbreaks
Those looking to separate the signal from
the noise in determining where the initial
outbreaks occurred need only look at a map.
Find the borders of a country’s or continent’s
Recession: the majority of outbreaks occurred
on the other side, usually far away.
In the US, the West Coast got the worst
of it. If we believe the proto-latency theory,
California is a major contender for the
singular origin of the Blight. It got hit with
emergence events in multiple locations along
the coast, not to mention outbreaks in Oregon,
Washington, and Nevada. The sensationalism
of the media kept the state from standing out
as a frontrunner during the early days, but
hindsight puts the brunt far West. Texas was
bad off too, but sparse population density and
a propensity for military bases left the Blight
running west to east rather than south to
north. The East Coast had minor incidents in
Virginia, but the really bad events like the fall
of Manhattan and the Maine migration didn’t
occur until later.
I’m an American gal, but I know the gist
of how the story went down globally. Canada
got hit along the northwestern border of
its population band, but the barren cold of
the North made sure the Vectors hunted
southbound. They would have probably
been fine were it not for Our Great Betrayal
(more on that later), but the nukes shattered
governmental response and surviving state
power remains scattered and inconsistent to
this day.
Mexico was a failed state before the Crash;
the last thing it needed was for the initial
outbreak to start in Mexico City. Our southern
neighbors were among some of the first
nations to fall, and their population of dead
migrated in every direction.
South America didn’t need Mexico’s
undead to help. Emergence events in Peru,
Bolivia, Venezuela, and Uruguay dotted the
whole continent with infection. Brazil was
hit hardest of all, which makes it all the more
remarkable that any clean territory remains.
Those refugees that managed to escape their
infected homelands did so across the Andes,
but the Chilean’s extreme anti-immigration
measures doomed most. However, it’s
arguably the only reason Chile survives.
The UK was actually hit very early in the
process, but the surveillance state they’d set
up minimized the amount of time it took for
the government to believe what they were
seeing. In spite of that, England, Ireland,
and Scotland owe more to the efforts of
EU nations fleeing the terror of mainland
Europe: Spain, Germany, and France all
had unchecked emergence events, and the
exponentially growing hordes fed in every
direction. The remains of their shattered
security forces proved the deciding factor
in the war to cleanse infection from the UK
islands.
Similar to the Brits, Italy mainly survived
by dint of geography and the assistance of
foreign military diaspora. The Scandinavian
states handled outbreaks in their isolated
populations centers with relative ease, and
their later intervention helped Estonia, Latvia,
and Lithuania survive. Each had been spared
initial outbreaks and managed to cap the
slow advance of casualties through frozen,
mountainous terrain. Sweden, which already
had geographical isolation and a militarized
45
 populace going for it, suffered no emergence
events. Aside from some lost imports and
exports, life there goes on largely unchanged.
Ironically, the sheer hellishness of the
conflicts raging across the Middle East
kept it safe. Its few emergence events were
isolated enough by desert that there were
few secondary infections in major population
centers. Most of the cities that did get hit
hard were already in the midst of civil wars
(meaning the citizenry was armed and
fortified) or got blasted to hell by the Iranians
and Israelis. By happy accident, Turkey’s
invasion of Greece and Russia’s continued
Ukrainian/Georgian aggression served to
buffer the onslaught of European casualty
migration, insulating the largely clean Arab
states. Sadly, the respite did nothing to
dispel the endless hatred and in-fighting of
the region, but at least the world still has its
major oil suppliers. Otherwise, the almost
apocalypse would have finished the job with
an energy crisis.
Africa’s thick jungles, endless savannah,
and crap transportation infrastructure meant
the initial outbreaks that got out of hand never
coalesced into the giant stampedes seen
on other continents. Mali and surrounding
nations fell early, but the Blight never spread
quite so far as to take out Libya, Egypt, or
the Sudan. The Democratic Republic of
Congo is the corner of the area known as
the African Loss, a box which starts on
the West coast, then bisects the continent
laterally until it runs against the lakes of the
East African Rift zone. The swamplands
and rivers kept the dead from migrating, so
the East Coast survived and Madagascar
became a literal bastion for the AU. Angola
and Zambia are barely hanging on against the
corpses trickling down through the Congo’s
jungles, but they’re supported by the relative
prosperity of every nation further south.
Many nations owe their eventual survival
to the military buildup they were forced to
undertake to deal with pre-Crash Russian
aggression. However, those same wars left
the bear ill equipped when the Blight started
46
in Moscow. Though the state still technically
survives behind the Urals, there’s nothing of
the old nation left beyond nomadic bands that
fled into Kazakhstan and Mongolia, trailing
hungry dead behind them. India was really
the worst-case scenario for emergence, and
we know of at least three distinct sites where
primary infection occurred. The population
density doomed the whole country. As Indian
casualties flooded over the border into
Pakistan, both countries nuked each other to
glass, but not before millions of dead flooded
through the mountain passes and complicated
China’s already disastrous Blight problems
even more.
The Chinese government still survives,
locked in a three-way naval war for territory
against the shaky Thai alliance and Australia.
I couldn’t tell you where the capital was
located, though. The outbreak was so
diffuse and China so huge that there’s no
characterizing what happened after things
settled down because things haven’t settled
down. A city will be there one month, gone
the next, and then the refugees pop up a
week later in some ghost city constructed
in the middle of the Mongolian steppe. The
government maintains its flotilla of ships,
but the Chinese on the mainland survive
by migrating away from the dead, hopping
between pieces of the state’s surplus
infrastructure.
North Korea’s inability to do literally
anything right kept South Korea safe
as Chinese casualties consumed their
impoverished populace. Keeping the North
Korean infected from crossing the most
militarized border in the world proved easy
enough — throwing a couple low-yield nukes
over the wall at the NK missile sites certainly
helped.
And I think Japan’s okay? Their navy is
still in play and someone answers the phone
whenever big players needs to talk, but the
populace is completely off the Ubiq network.
Maybe they reverted to isolationism out of
old habit? Or it could be that the Crash hit
them real hard and they’re bluffing. They can’t
afford to let the South Koreans or Chinese
smell blood in the water.
Australia and New Zealand are fine. One
major outbreak occurred in Sydney, but
the population retreated to the interior,
euthanized the casualties during torpor, and
reclaimed the coastline. The only thing that
keeps Australia from becoming the world’s
major superpower instead of the Saudis is
the constant invasion attempts from the Thai
alliance and China seeking to house refugees
on their unspoiled continent.
As I read all this I can already imagine
the pissed off comments from every corner
of Ubiq about how ignorant I am. A topic
as big as post-Crash international relations
deserves its own thread, and I haven’t even
figured out my own country yet. Suffice it to
say that prosperity and resources certainly
helped nations survive the Crash. It wasn’t the
only factor, but many well-off nations repelled
infections 100 times larger than the ones that
consumed poorer states. The Blight started
thinning our herd amongst the poorest, and
the map today is the high-water mark of how
far it got before the old power structures woke
up and protected those that remained.
Of course, all this border drawing happened
far later; there was a lot of dying to do first.
The PersIstence of the Mundane
One last torture humanity inflicts upon itself:
our inability to quantify our own idiocy.
Without a clear start date, time, and location,
it’s impossible to hook a number to exactly
how stupid we were. How long did we ignore
the signs and let the Blight run free? The low
end of estimates is about a week, but there’s
some convincing evidence suggesting as
much as a month passed before the public at
large could even be bothered to acknowledge
the zombie apocalypse.
The next generation can’t possibly
understand our inaction as anything other
than insanity. They’re not from a culture
so fucked up as to find the apocalypse a
comforting thought.
Let me try to explain.
Before the Crash, humanity had been
engaged in a decades long obsession with
stories of its own demise. Comet strikes, alien
invasions, deadly pandemics, even zombies —
any story would sell if it talked about the death
of society. Why did we need to repeat this
story to ourselves over and over? I suspect it
had something to do with our monkey brains
being unable to cope with the complexity of
global culture. We desperately sought the
simplification only mass death could bring.
And because we sought out that
simplification, we rarely focused on how it
would come to pass. The narratives about the
end times never focused on how said times
had ended. They focused on the concise, clean
metaphor represented by the simplified world
of after. The issue was decided before the
narrative even began, with no chance to avert
the disaster ever considered as an option.
Reality doesn’t work that way. There’s
always a way out, and if there isn’t, the dead
end could have been prevented with some
foresight earlier. It’s a responsibility we
wanted to escape from as our environment
and economy continued their perpetual
collapse. We wanted absolution from our sins,
so we peppered our stories with absolute
terminuses and complete endings that our
characters bore no responsibility in creating.
Reality doesn’t work that way, but lying to
ourselves about that fact became the entire
point of a cultural narrative. We got really
good at telling the lie.
At the time of the Crash, entire generations
had been raised on these apocalypse
narratives. We knew to be worried when the
people started coming for us in war convoys,
screaming for our gasoline. But when we
pulled up to a gas station to find it unlocked
and empty? The clerk must have had a family
emergency and forgot to lock the door on the
way out….
Watching a gang of monsters tear someone
apart would be a sign to start hording food
and water, but when all that’s wrong is police
sirens heard in the distance? People withdrew
back to their homes, tsk-tsking about the state
47
 of the neighborhood or immigrants or some
other bullshit that confirmed their worldview.
If messages of doom had broken across all
frequencies at once, we’d been trained from
birth to start freaking the fuck out. But when
that news was only on a few channels? And
other options said nothing, or refuted the
claims, or continued to stream our on-demand
entertainment without interruption? The
warnings were dismissed as more tragedy to
ignore for the sake of our self-care. It wasn’t
the clarion call from the Book of Revelation;
it was another downer we didn’t have time
for, to be filed away with all the other new
diseases and school shootings and general
depression.
But reality couldn’t give a damn about what
we needed the world to look like. Entire cities
had fallen before humanity collectively woke
up, and even then, our stupidity still ruled the
day. The eerie persistence of normality past
any point where it made sense was only the
beginning of the Romero Effect.
The How: The Romero Effect
Why did it take so long for governments to
react to the threat? The Romero Effect. Why
were so many of their solutions idiotic? The
Romero Effect. How did anyone survive
the combination of certain doom and our
continued bungling? The Romero Effect.
As a singular answer to all those multi-
faceted questions, the Romero Effect is
paradoxically too reductive and absolutely
accurate.
First off, the term has an official definition
that we rarely cite when talking about it. The
phrase was coined by Dr. Emily Dale a year
after the Crash in the same paper where she
diagnosed the populace of the US Recession
with Post-Apocalyptic Stress Syndrome
(P.A.S.S.) She used director George Romero’s
name as a label for a cadre of cognitive biases
causing serious harm to the mindset of Crash
survivors.
I’ll save you a lot of dry academic reading
here: I’m going to break down the list of pre-
existing cognitive biases that combined under
48
the Romero Effect to almost kill us. As an
example of the principles in action, I’ll place
myself firmly within this history of human
stupidity by describing how I suffered from
them in the early days of the Crash.
An Example
Individuals are cognitively incapable of
discerning when they are lying to themselves
because once they become capable of it,
they’ve already convinced themselves they
never lie. So I’m as guilty of confabulation
as everybody else was in the early days. I
stupidly listened to appeals to authority when
the news told me everything was under
control, and I looked to every status update,
working streetlight, and open business to fuel
confirmation bias for that pleasant illusion.
When I was out with friends touring a food
truck festival in Denver, we heard a scream
blocks away. But no one else did anything,
so I didn’t do anything, and we all fell for the
bystander effect. And as the occurrences of
odd screams, unexplained “car backfires,”
dogs choking mid-bark, and sprinting footfalls
in the night built up in the tonal landscape, I
kept up my conformity to the norm of doing
nothing. If I acknowledged something was
going on, I’d betray brand loyalty to my sense
of self. “I’m not a callous, selfish person like
everyone else,” my brain would repeat to itself,
silencing the terror growing outside as I slept
like a baby in my loft apartment.
People started ranting about hordes
of the undead on social media. I ignored
them; they’d fallen into that stupid zombie
meme going around. True to the third person
effect, I considered myself above such petty
persuasion even as I continued suckling at
the teat of censored news coverage. When
other people in my networks started dropping
out entirely, the misinformation effect assured
me they’d just gotten tired of all the zombie
shit too and unplugged. They definitely hadn’t
been eaten. Besides, they were just internet
people, not the 150 or so real people Dunbar’s
number allowed my brain to consider real.
On the last day I drove from Ubiq City to the
corporate campus — before I came to live
there permanently — I saw a man in torn,
bloody pajamas chasing a cyclist down the
street. He was screaming nonsense and
crying blood as he tackled the biker onto
the sidewalk. The poor guy managed to kick
the attacker off and start sprinting down the
street — the strangely abandoned street. The
bloody guy landed in the crosswalk, prone for
a few seconds.
I could have run him over with my car. It
might have saved a life. But what if I was
misunderstanding? What if I murdered a sick
man for no reason? I’d lose my job, my stuff,
everything I’d ever worked for. I’d spend the
rest of my life in jail because I thought... what?
Some guy was a zombie? Would my defense
be I’d seen too many movies? Yeah, right. And
so, due to loss aversion, I protected myself
against a discomfort that I understood rather
than gamble saving the life of a man I didn’t
know, from a threat I couldn’t comprehend.
Besides, the guy in the car behind me
got out to help; my brain played the public
goods game and assured me that sucker
could handle it. I was free to fall into the
introspection fallacy for the rest of my
commute. I even tried to call the cops a couple
of times. They didn’t answer, of course, but I’d
tried, right? That’s what a good person would
do.
At work, when the cafeteria turned into an
abattoir and we ended locking ourselves in
the server farm, I couldn’t pretend anymore.
But it was okay. We had a couple of guns from
the security office. We could take back the
administration building and secure the fence
around the Ubiq campus. They were just
zombies, right? We knew to aim for the head.
It was just point and click.
So we stupidly left the safety of our
building, largely because I stupidly advocated
for it. But when we saw our first Vector, no
shots rang out. Refusing to murder people
49
 is a behavior human beings have to learn.
Shooting a coworker requires overcoming
the extinction burst that tries to keep that old
behavior alive. When it kept our gunners from
firing the second they saw the Vector? They
were already dead. Then another dumbass
programmer picked up a gun and failed even
harder, unable to shoot a friend.
And that’s how the dunning-kruger effect,
the illusion of control, and too many zombie
movies helped me whittle the initial 44
survivors down to seven. I hid in a janitor’s
closet for three days. I had nothing to do but
shit in a bucket, stay quiet, and relive what a
fool I’d been. By the time the soldiers rescued
us, I hadn’t been cured of my biases. The
memory once used to store them had been
overwritten by my shame.
In short, The Romero Effect is all
the reasons why the human brain was
fundamentally incapable of accepting the
Crash’s shifting reality. It also encompasses
the idiocy of most reactions when cognitive
dissonance finally failed to keep the truth
out. Finally (and most insidiously), all those
cognitive biases responsible for Romero exist
to keep people sane: they maintain the sense
of self and filter our perceptions down to a
manageable level. Those lucky enough to
survive the first two stages have their biases
removed, at least in regards to the undead.
But the removal of such a vital cognitive
coping mechanism can drive a person
inexorably, incurably insane.
My story was being repeated all over the
world. It always ended one of three ways:
people denied their doom until it consumed
them; they ran towards death with false
confidence; or they reacted appropriately,
contained the threat, and were forever scarred
as a result. Disbelief. Ignorance. Acceptance.
Madness.
Emergency Response
While I “saved the world” by helping Palbicke
install sky-servers so folks could more easily
download their porn from the stratosphere,
some in my generation actually tried to help
50
humanity on the frontline. Cops, paramedics,
social workers, firemen — they took the
chance to deny the truth whenever they could,
as any sane person would, but first responders
were rarely afforded the luxury of denial; most
were too busy being eaten.
That said, you won’t be hearing that “Honor
our Troops” Recession propaganda from me.
Half of any profession is made up of pricks
and idiots: noble professions included. For
every heroic sacrifice, there were plenty of
hollow uniforms neglecting their duty or
actively making things worse.
PolIce
The civil rights movements aimed at curbing
the epidemic of racist police violence
accomplished one thing: it made police a lot
more enthusiastic about covering up their
executions.
Cops were still all but assured to slide on
any charges, but no one wanted the hassle
of an angry mob waiting on their doorstep
for the rest of their lives. Police fought body
camera legislation at every turn, resisted
every internal investigation with the blue code
of silence, generally refused to cooperate
unless forced by political pressure threatening
to spill over into full-blown revolution, and
got fantastic at covering their asses. The
shootings continued, the outrage got old, and
the media lost interest.
At the beginning of the Crash, it looked
like the same old story was due for a revival.
“Suicide by cop” appeared to have become
a memetic virus. Use of force ticked up for
a bit... before suddenly quadrupling inside
of a week, even according to the doctored
numbers employed within departments.
And the ethnicity of the victims, for the first
time in history, was actually diverse. Most
departments reacted the only way they knew
how. It would be hard to blame the police that
tried to make what we only now know were
Blight-related shootings look clean in the eyes
of pre-Crash law… if the techniques they’d
used to do so hadn’t been mastered shooting
black kids.
 As an example, let’s say you’re a cop and
you’ve just blown away an unarmed child.
How do you spin that? Sure, the kid had been
eating her mother’s neck, but teeth don’t
warrant deadly force in the threat pyramid.
How you going to get the press to believe that
the Taser and pepper spray wouldn’t work?
On a white pre-teen girl, no less? Or that
Officer Johnson exhibited the same behavior
after coming in contact with the assailant?
Even your fellow cops aren’t going to be
sympathetic when they find out the bullet that
killed your partner came from your gun. It’s
better to slap a drop piece into the girl’s hand
and stash drugs in the house. Nobody wants
to be the first to go up against a grand jury
with the “she was a zombie” defense.
For a couple of weeks, a lot of people
that had never owned a gun suddenly had
unregistered pistols in their dead hands. A
surge of straightedge grandmas entered the
criminal record listed as PCP addicts. Many
officers died as heroes, slain in a hail of
bullets matching the caliber of their partner’s
gun. When patrols went missing entirely,
along with the detectives sent to investigate
their last known whereabouts? By that time,
most precincts weren’t answering the phones.
Ironically, a lot of bad cops actually
stumbled backwards into fighting the
infection. When Barney Fife saw some
crazed asshole crying blood, he panicked
and emptied a clip into it. Back then, that
was 25-to-life in a federal prison. Meanwhile,
the good officers were overwhelmingly more
likely to get infected or die using nonlethal
techniques. Super cops that managed to
survive and apprehend the suspect did even
more damage by dumping Vectors into
holding cells or hospitals.
The effect was that, the longer the Crash
went on unacknowledged, true heroes died
in droves and shitty cops got incentivized
to be shittier. As the streets went mad,
bad mistakes got rewarded with the gift of
survival, and the cover-ups could be more
and more flimsy the deeper into the shit we
sank. The guns started to get drawn before
cops left the squad car. Eventually, carrying a
weapon of any kind on the street was a death
sentence, regardless of race. Even if you were
defending your family from a horde of blood-
vomiting cannibals, twitchy cops were as
likely to shoot humans as they were Vectors.
A little less than a week after the first
victims got put down, even the short-term
benefit of the “shoot first, ask never” policy
started to wane. Cops are trained to shoot
center mass; every urban morgue in the
country suddenly became casualty central as
the torpor ended.
Don’t get me wrong: there was no win
condition here. No police department in the
world could hope to handle the volume of
calls they received mid-Crash, and no one had
been trained. They couldn’t cope with what
they were seeing any more than the rest of
us could, and they had to see the Blight first,
unfiltered and raw. It’s hard to blame the ones
that were derelict in their duty or turned the
street into a free fire zone.
Empathy makes the heroic stories all the
more impressive. Many in law enforcement
had backgrounds in the military, and a lot of
jurisdictions were run by men and women
used to getting the job done in spite of
institutional groupthink. Many towns and
cities became enclaves thanks to the efforts of
officers that stopped denying what they were
seeing: those were fucking zombies out there,
and the movies had taught them what to do.
They emptied the SWAT armories and went
to war, buying valuable time for the uninfected
to flee to the Recession or get to a safe zone.
Basically, if someone claims to have
survived being cop during the Crash, they’re a
liar, a hero, a monster, or damned lucky.
Healthcare
In the movies, hospitals were the first to fall.
In reality, they were some of the last.
Vectors run too hot to make it to hospitals.
Full transformation from a hot bite takes
place in minutes, which is more than most
response times can handle. Most of the time,
paramedics arrived to find Vector and victims
51
 already dead, already gone, or waiting to
devour them. On the rare occasion some
victims were still around and not yet turned,
the ambulance rarely got back to the ER.
Outbreaks locked in a high-speed vehicle
usually took care of themselves.
In urban areas, paramedics were all dead
or missing long before even the police force
called it quits. Most rural hospitals actually
ended up running until the migration to the
Recession; their response time was too slow
and their paramedics figured out the score
before it was too late.
Either way, civilians that made it into
hospitals usually had to get there on their
own. A lot of these folks had secondary
injuries incurred while fleeing or fighting,
and boy did they have stories to tell. What
happened next depended on numbers. If it
was one or two assholes screaming about
zombies, the Romero Effect assured they
were dismissed as crazies. Once a dozen or
so people independently verified symptoms,
most doctors at least started calling around.
When they found out the paramedics were all
dropping off the face of the earth, the smart
ones put the hospital on lockdown. The dumb
ones kept thinking it was business as usual
until the Vectors came crashing through the
ER doors.
Luckily, doctors tend towards the smart
side of the spectrum. They called the CDC
and started collecting data. They locked the
doors. They requested police presence and,
if the cops were still taking calls, they usually
got it. At that point, too many variables came
into play to generalize.
If the hospital was old or built by some
brutalist architect, it might survive by
cordoning off wings and blocking limited
windows. If it was new? Those lovely glass
facades made the buildings about as secure
as the inside of a blender. Sometimes,
refugees would trail too many Vectors behind
and overrun facilities. Operations with
better triage and security managed to keep
administering care until the medicine ran out
or the lights died. There are stories of a few
52
places that kept demanding proof of insurance
right until the people they left to die outside
turned and crashed the gates.
There are a few documented cases
where, once the building was secure, no
one else came. The Romero Effect caused
a lot of people to write medical care off
as a deathtrap, and traffic patterns could
sometimes keep random Vectors from the
door. It’s these cases that really get me:
imagine preparing for the pandemic, manning
the battle stations, and then having no one
come? Just silence and empty streets. Imagine
sitting there, looking out the doors and
listening to dead phone lines, knowing you’ll
eventually have to venture out and see for
yourself.
The final determiner of whether a hospital
made it to evacuation was whether or not
they burned the dead. The bold few that said
fuck propriety and threw slain Vectors into
a burn pile usually went all the way. Those
that started filling the morgue had a little
less than a week after the first corpse went
inside. Torpor can take as little as two days to
revive a corpse into a shambling casualty, and
most rational medical professionals couldn’t
imagine the Blight curing death, no matter
how many movies they’d seen.
Other SocIal ServIces
Firefighters got recruited to make up for the
sudden paramedic shortage. Those left behind
at the station house usually got eaten by the
“survivors” of a rash of car crashes. By the
time actual fires broke out due to neglect or
improvised weaponry, all the volunteers were
running for their lives and the professionals
were dead. Entire cities began to slowly burn,
one block at a time.
True to form, commerce made things
simultaneously better and worse. By the
time of the Crash, the US had the worst
employee sick leave and personal time policy
amongst all the industrialized nations. A lot of
desperate families careened into the parking
lot of their closest camping superstores and
mega-groceries to find the buildings fully-
staffed — their familiarity with facilities and
inventory saved a lot of people. But while
it was great if you worked in a gun store or
easily defensible industrial complex, there
wasn’t much comfort for those working
hundreds of other professions. For every
big box superstore destined to became an
enclave, there were a dozen fast food joints
demanding their workers leave the house and
flood the area with Vector targets.
Schools were an all-or-nothing affair.
Either things had progressed far enough that
administration cancelled on account of “flu,”
or the Blight took the whole thing down at
once. Believe it or not, the latter was actually
preferable. Losing hundreds or thousands
of children in an hour was enough to break
even the most oblivious out of the denial
phase of the Romero Effect. There are some
interesting stats to suggest losing a school
early in the outbreak could add as much as a
week to a city’s lifespan.
For less common social services, the all
or nothing school scenario looked downright
peachy in comparison. Homeless populations
were some of the first to get infected, so
shelters became hotbeds. The few remaining
mental hospitals in existence hadn’t been
decently funded in decades, so cops kept
dropping off these bleeding “crazies” into
buildings with paper-thin walls, under-trained
staff, and no hope of survival.
Prisons were fine so long as no one in
general population suffered an emergence
event. If not for that damned show, I imagine
most correctional facilities would be enclaves
today. As it was, everybody and their dog
thought the local supermax would become
their personal fortress. The guards could
handle the inmates just fine, but not the
thousands of desperate, armed families trying
to break down the fence from the outside.
Private and public correctional facilities
became war zones, and the most severe loss
was usually the same damn fence that made
the place desirable.
MedIa
No one exhibited and propagated the Romero
Effect better than the media. If every so-called
“journalist” burned in hell for their part in the
Crash, I’d consider the injustice suffered by
the few good ones the price of doing business.
Economic incentives may have killed what
little integrity journalism had left long before
the first Vector, but individual human beings
in those editing rooms and broadcast booths
made moral choices that killed real goddamn
people.
To clarify, it’s not as if network news, radio,
and online services failed to report on the
Blight. On the contrary, they reported on every
second of the Crash. They just didn’t change
anything about how they did the job.
If someone got mauled by a pack of
cannibals, every click-bait traffic-monger on
the internet smashed the caps-lock key and
giggled as they typed “ZOMBIES!!!” for the
headline. Just as they had tens-of-thousands
of times before: every time someone got bit
in a bar fight; every time a serial killer took
cannibal trophies; every time a drug trip went
bad. They wanted that motherfucking traffic,
damn it, and they didn’t give a shit if the user
was searching for dumb horror movies or
trying to find an evac zone. Reporting actual
events with terms that, up until that point,
were purely fictional was standard operating
procedure by the time the nightmare became
real.
By the time Vectors and casualties become
deadly real, the average informed citizen
was as likely to believe a headline with the
z-word in it as the racist chainmail reposted
by their grandparents. “Infotainment” had
reached such saturation that the perpetually
dying news industry no longer knew how
to stop. The ad revenue for that brand of
sensationalist bullshit had been in free fall
for years, but the only people left standing in
the industry intended to ride that ship until it
sank. With all of us aboard.
Blasting out news of the actual undead with
the same schlocky tools of yesteryear wasn’t
the only case of old narratives aiding the new
53
 genocide. When a cop couldn’t make some
Vector shoot look clean, the media made it a
race thing whenever possible. The guy may
have eaten twenty people that then got up
and had to be put down by an entire SWAT
team, but dumbasses unable to tell fiction
from reality paled in comparison to “righteous
outrage” traffic. Was that rural hospital
suspiciously fucking abandoned in mid-day?
Or that school? Hand-wringing think pieces
about post-millennials got more hits than full-
blown mass disappearances.
As always, I’m oversimplifying. Many a
good journalist died trying to get the story,
and a lot of people are alive today because
of their warnings. But personal excellence
couldn’t overcome the systemic corruption
of the institution, a decades-old problem that
practically begged to be ignored.
It’s also not as if the public bears no
responsibility. For every citizen journalist
raising the alarm about the approaching
apocalypse, there were a dozen assholes with
ProGo cameras “locking and loading” for a
zombie hunt. While those idiots streamed
their own deaths, a completely different stripe
of imbecile cynically traded on the memes
54
without questioning the origins. We still see
casualties wandering around wearing the
remains of masks and make-up meant to
make them look like zombies. Thousands
were eaten while out in the woods, trying
to scare folks like the stupid-ass “haunting
clown” meme from pre-Ubiq web. Those that
didn’t get killed in the process were actually
more harmful; they’d document their pranks
on social media and make the whole premise
of the Blight seem that much more ridiculous.
Then there were the outright trolls, half of
who thought they were pranking the gullible
with made-up zombie fiction. The other half
knowingly spoofed evacuation orders and safe
zone announcements so they could watch
people get eaten for the lulz.
The more serious things got — the more
undeniably real — the faster the tide of
misinformation multiplied. By the time no one
could deny what was happening, everyone had
lost someone close to the lies. The louder we
screamed, the less intelligible things became.
It would be wrong to say that the transfer
of all broadcasting to the government under
martial law didn’t improve things. Some
smart folks in the administration stripped all
reporting of everything save the bare facts.
The crackdown on editorializing seen in late-
Crash reporting made AP newswires look like
teenage blog posts. It was bloodless, factual,
necessary information, repeated every hour
on the hour.
It was also too late.
“TakIng CasualtIes”
I’m getting a little ahead of myself here, but
we are talking about the media. I suppose
I should explain where the word “casualty”
comes from.
It feels weird even thinking about it. If this
were the trope in the old movies, I wouldn’t
have to explain why we don’t use the word
“zombie”; it would just be accepted. And
maybe that’s the real reason. Maybe we’re
conforming to the genre conventions by which
we are forced to survive.
Casualty comes from the last few days of
coverage before the old network completely
failed. After all faith in the information
industry had been lost, the newly nationalized
broadcasts needed a way around the
skepticism build up on the term “zombie.” It
may have been evident by then that walking,
cannibalistic corpses patrolled the streets,
but they came in a confusing variety and were
far from the only threat. People were being
shot, starved, crushed by crashing vehicles,
etc. If the response was going to work, the
authorities didn’t have time to convince
people they lived in a new reality. So new
government censorship guidelines demanded
zombies only be referred to tangentially. The
policy demanded the information be reduced
to its basest concept to prevent instilling more
panic.
So, when Reno was getting consumed and
infected by the living dead, the news reported:
“Reno is taking casualties.” When authorities
would fortify and fight literal monsters, they
were described as “clearing casualties.”
The fact that dead people were getting up
and eating folks stopped being mentioned
entirely. The entire nightmare got boiled
down to arithmetic: more casualties here, less
casualties there.
For the Lost, these bloodless descriptions
of an ongoing genocide were the last official
communications they ever received. As they
were deceived and abandoned, unwittingly
recruited as decoys to save the powerful and
the lucky streaming towards the Recession,
the screams they heard outside their
boarded-up homes became one more tic on
the countdown. Dead loved ones became
numbers, and their murderers shared the
same column on the ledger.
The vocabulary requirements grew less
severe as the Recession government found
its feet, but by then, no one in the Loss was
listening. We already had to learn to live
with our nightmares, and we couldn’t wait
for a committee to give us the approved
nomenclature. So if you were pissed off about
your government abandoning you? You called
them casualties out of spite. If you didn’t like
the fact life had turned into a B-movie? You
called them casualties to avoid the reminder.
Or if you found being turned into a horror
character absurd? Or loved living the trope?
You called them casualties because the z-word
was taboo.
By the time the Takers came about, the
term was cemented. “Taking casualties”
became our literal profession. The
government long ago went back to calling
them zombies, and plenty of citizens only
know them by that name. But out here in the
Loss, saying “zombie” is a sure sign you’re a
Bait-baby that watched the Crash from the
safety of a smartphone. Maybe if I ever get
to come back to the world, I’ll be able to call
them “zombies” again without ironic derision.
But until then, they’re never going to share the
term I once used for bad make-up on worse
actors. Casualties are real. They’re my loved
ones and my victims. My demons and my
ghosts. My employers and my oppressors —
all rolled into one.
“Casualties” is our word now. If the citizens
of the Recession don’t like it, they’re welcome
to come out here and take it back.
55
 ReactIon and PolIcy
In President Hunter’s memoir, our former
fearful leader writes, “Criticizing institutional
reactions to the Crash is like blaming
a figure skater for getting tackled by a
linebacker on the ice. The rules of the game
changed completely. The only strategy was
improvisation, and the only victory was
survival.”
If we had nothing to rely on save mixed
sports metaphors, that claim would be
accurate enough. There was no framework
for the Blight. Failures were inevitable, and
any accusation of could’ve-done-better goes
double for the civilian population. Myself
included.
But the Romero Effect didn’t catch
everybody in denial. Climbing into the sphere
of federal influence usually requires some
degree of cunning, and a lot of very powerful
people stopped fooling themselves very early
56
on. The fact that the entirety of North America
isn’t a swarming graveyard right now is proof
enough that a least a few saw the writing on
the wall.
Those same people, including President
Punter up there, would have you believe they
were just as overwhelmed as the average
beat cop or ER nurse. They sell the lie that
the nightmare of today is solely the result of
their understandable confusion and God’s
unpredictable wrath. They profit off the belief
that this shitshow is the best case, and they
trumpet it from every propaganda mouthpiece
they have.
Fuck that.
Over half the country is abandoned. Not
gone. Abandoned. Still out here, starving even
as it’s eaten. Those fuckers dropped nukes, for
Christ’s sake. No one slaps the red button and
gets to say “Awww, shucks. It’s the best I could
do.”
 If you want to believe the Crash government
were true patriots or the saviors of humanity,
go ahead. I won’t argue with the results.
Extinction looked absolutely assured, but
the US’s anti-Blight tactics saved part of the
country and inspired other nations to save
nearly half the world. I wouldn’t be alive
today were it not for the actions of President
Hunter. I readily acknowledge that.
Just don’t call them fucking heroes. The
actions taken to secure the Recession were
not performed by humble folk summoned
against their will by a call to greatness.
Reality isn’t some bullshit DHQS propo
blasted over the PA of a refugee camp.
At best, they were patriotic serial killers
— amiable psychopaths aimed in a useful
direction. Some might go so far as to call
them sin-eaters. When confronted with a
choice between damnation or saving the
species, they had the strength to make the
choice. At a minimum, the sheer willpower
required to make the calls has to be
respected... but it’s not heroism.
Heroes don’t retire under house arrest in
their ancestral East Coast estates, protected
by Secret Service until the federal pardon
comes through. It’s one thing to have
sympathy for the devil and mourn the tragic
decisions that led to his fall. But believing he’s
the hero? That’s the lie the Recession teaches
as gospel, the lie that gets you damned too.
The truth? Choices were made. Arguably
necessary. Certainly monstrous.
The SurvIval WIndow
So let’s imagine the sort of person that’s
in charge during the Crash. Imagination is
going to have to suffice: between confidential
documents, scapegoating, and general chaos,
there are no more than a handful of people
we can definitively place as shot-callers
during the crisis. Luckily, it’s not hard to
get a picture anyway. They were involved in
the security services and military/industrial
complex of the pre-Crash world. As such,
we’re talking the sort of high-functioning,
compartmentalized, mannequin-facsimile
of a human being that thrives in such roles,
and the middle management, jingoistic meat
robots that get off taking orders from such
authoritarian alphas.
Hey... call me reductive and prejudiced all
you like. I might soften my opinions if the
critique comes from one of my peers here on
the terrorist watch list. Until then, shut it.
So, these uber-Deep State operatives are
the kind of folks who see blood start flying
and immediately open up a spreadsheet file.
Years in the Loss might force that kind of
detachment on a person, but these spooks
were psychopaths before it was cool. From
that distance, you start to see the Blight’s
weaknesses... primarily because you’re
already thinking about how you’d design it
better.
By the time it came to the hard choices,
upper-level government figures had already
been fully briefed on the Blight’s “life cycle.”
They knew about the difference between
Vectors and casualties. They also knew about
the seconds-long eclipse phase between a hot
bite and transformation. They could compare
that to the days it took for a cold bite to kill
somebody. They’d seen time-lapse video of a
dozen Vectors euthanized and slowly wrapped
in the Blight’s parasitic nerves, and they
had over/under times for the average torpor
between death and undeath. There’s debate
as to whether or not the powers-that-be knew
about latency, immunity, or blank bites at that
point. If they did, they certainly decided not to
tell anyone.
At this point, if you’re the kind of ghoulish
lizard person that can put yourself in the
mindset of the Blight, you can start to see
what’s now referred to as “the survival
window.”
Put simply, the Blight burns too hot to
be an extinction-level pandemic. Much like
Ebola, no one in their right mind goes
anywhere near someone bleeding out the
eyes. Unless a victim jumped on a plane,
bus, or train seconds after being bitten, the
disease couldn’t travel using any man-made
57
 means. And when Vectors did go hot inside
evac transportation, the whole fucking thing
usually crashed and killed everyone inside.
Then, there was the Romero Effect,
which was a net positive from a statistical
perspective. No one out there believed you
could be bitten and not infected. Everyone
had been trained by the movies to think that
immunity was a myth and latency was nothing
save a new, worse form of undeath. Most
people showing signs of infection were being
put down ASAP.
When the monsters don’t have a bus pass,
there are predictable numbers to crunch. A
fit human being can jog between 19–20 miles
on glucose stores alone; 40–50 if burning
fat stores. But Vectors don’t jog; they fucking
sprint with the maximum intensity allowed
by the human body. So you can cut those
numbers by 50% across the board. This
presumes the infected had an active gym
membership on day one. If they were obese,
like 65% of the American population? Then
the math starts looking even better.
Those numbers also presume that the
remaining 25 miles radius goes in a straight
line, but a Vector is as likely to chase the
family pet as it is to attack an evacuation
convoy. Food didn’t help either, as every
mouthful of flesh a Vector tore off got
metabolized by the Blight’s magic to make
more sinew; no matter how much they ate,
the infected began starving the second they
turned.
The statistical models suggested that
emergence events in densely populated areas
would pretty much assure 90–95% fatality,
but the knockdown effects of being next door
to a hot zone were greatly lessened. If City A
went down completely, City B might be okay
if they had 10 miles of distance and shutdown
the roadways. Those numbers got even better
if there were natural barriers like rivers and
mountains.
The problem was cold strain. Casualties
were slow and easier to kill, but they were so
much more insidious as infection risks. Not
only was a victim more likely to escape a mob
58
of casualties, they had hours or days to hide
the bite. When the Blight finally resurrected
and went hot, they could be states away,
causing an apocalyptic outbreak in a city
where the chances of encountering a Vector
had been negligible.
Casualties were making spies out of
desperate people who, just by trying to
survive, carried the poison back to the nest.
Without the cold strain? The Crash would
have ended on its own. But with it? The
emergence events would just keep cycling hot
and cold until no one was left.
That’s the survival window: the time
between when the last Vector runs out of
gas and the first casualty wakes from torpor.
According to most experts, it’s 3–4 days. If you
can deny the enemy fresh troops until it burns
out — or at least keep new infections beneath
the p-value — it gives you a little less than a
week to get quarantine set up. Get the Vectors
off the street and you buy yourself a week to
save the world.
Whereas actual human beings would have
viewed the survival window as a final hope,
the bloodless securocrats of the Hunter
administration kept crunching numbers.
Nationalist propaganda expects us to applaud
them for coming to the conclusion that while
saving the whole world was possible, it was a
safer bet to save only some of it.
The ImpossIbIlIty of Recovery
The complexity of the math used to decide the
US’s torpor strategy was on par with big data
algorithms like Spawn and Cull. For the sake
of example, let’s simplify. I’ll always round
towards the best-case scenario... to emphasize
how truly fucked the idea of reclamation really
is.
Let’s say LA (population: 4.5 million) was
a total loss (it was): all infected. We’ll be nice
and say the Blight was kind enough to infect
and kill everyone at the exact same moment.
There were only 2.5 million active duty and
reserve US military personnel during the
Crash, spread all over the globe. But let’s err
on side of humanity and magically teleport
them to the valley the very second the last
Vector enters torpor. Let’s also teleport
the county’s entire annual production of
ammunition (all 10 billion rounds) and
hand-wave the fact we don’t have enough
guns to shoot it, not to mention most of that
ammunition isn’t compatible with what we
have in armory. Focus on the positive.
The average tooth-to-tail ratio of US
military operations had fallen steadily in the
years before the Crash. At the time of the
lockdown, it would have taken 80 support
soldiers to field 20 combat troops. Our
effective force is down to 500,000 shooters
now. They have three days — at best — to
euthanize every last man, woman, and child
in the city before their bodies get back to
biting folks. We can ration 1000 soldiers for
every square mile. They must execute 62,500
headshots an hour, not accounting time spent
on food, sleep, or bathroom breaks.
If they could manage that (and they didn’t),
LA would be clear by the time the torpor
ended... leaving only the rest of California. At
45 million, the kill-per-hour ratio would have
to be 625,000-to-1, and we’d have only one
shooter for every two square miles.
But what we’re really looking at is three
days to clear the entire country. The most
conservative estimates place the Crash at
something like a 50% fatality rate. That’s
162.5 million Cs that need to be cleared in
three days... 2.25 million headshots per hour.
A single shooter would have to cover eight
square miles.
But clearing the US in that time wouldn’t
be enough; you’d also have to stop casualties
from crossing the border from Canada and
Mexico. At the same fatality rate, that’s
another 95 million casualties. Now we’re up
to 3.5 million headshots an hour, or seven
kills per soldier per hour... assuming the
shooter can single-handedly comb through 20
square miles.
If torpor ends before we’re through? Our
500,000 brave super solders now have active
targets. Accuracy against a moving enemy is
going to drop to 30% at best, and probably
lower when you account for headshots. Best-
case scenario, our 3.5 million headshots per
hour require 11.5 million rounds fired... all
without anyone getting bit or hit by friendly
fire. The barrels of the sturdiest guns on Earth
would melt before the first hour was through.
What point am I trying to prove with
all these statistics? I hate the Hunter
administration for what they did. I believe we
should all hate them. But I can hate them,
and they can still have been right. These
are not mutually exclusive conditions. Full
reclamation can be impossible, unforgivable
sins can be committed, and both can exist in
the same universe. There is no comforting
narrative here. They did what they had to do...
and what they had to do was let us all die.
The Recession can have its math, but the
Loss gets to keep its hate.
The Torpor Lockdown
The plan sounds simple when divorced from
logistics: get everyone off the street. Everyone.
If every single person stayed indoors and
out-of-sight, it would deny the Blight new
victims. Of course, not everyone would listen
and not everyone would have shelter or
supplies capable of withstanding a Vector
onslaught, but the ravenous nature of infected
would convert the majority of that sub-group
within the first day. From there, you’ve got
another couple of days spent waiting for
the freshly turned to die of dehydration and
exposure.
After that window, the only casualties
on the street would be from the earliest
outbreaks, the deniably small incidents in
isolated geographical locations. The number
of Cs that entered torpor before the infection
graph went exponential would be laughably
small compared to the Vectors on the streets
during peak Crash, and the increase of Cs
would follow a predictable pattern.
That’s two or three days before the hordes
of Cs get unmanageable — two or three days
to establish new borders, blow bridges, and
block roads.
Would have been nice if they’d let us know...
59
 MartIal Law
The first step in martial law was nationalizing
all broadcast apparatuses. This went by with
little or no objection from the media, most
of whom had lost their spine decades ago. repetition of the Torpor Order. The first were
The few that were still online by the time
troops rolled into the broadcast booth were
just hopeful the nice men in jackboots might
take them to their bunker. Those internet
service providers still in operation were also
commandeered, and Executive Order #28933
(colloquially known as “The Torpor Order”)
began broadcasting on all frequencies. The
same, creepy calm voice read it over and
over on the radio. They ran the same audio
60
over an American flag image on TV. Old-
network internet traffic began rooting out of a
homepage that was just a PDF of the text.
Only two things were allowed to interrupt
the new, bloodless “casualty updates,” but
that was more for troops on the ground than
the civilian populace under house arrest. The
only other respite from the announced curfew
was the bloody, televised execution of anyone
violating it.
They dressed the shootings up as best
they could. Most footage showed at least one
Vector or casualty amongst the throngs of
people being gunned down, but the message
was clear: no matter how bad it gets, do not
leave the home. Anything outside catches a
bullet or a bite, no exceptions.
To be fair, there’s a lot of hard evidence now
suggesting 99% of that footage was either
taken from civilian Crash footage or staged by
Army psyops. Frankly, there weren’t enough
actual troops on the streets to field even
half that many war crimes, but the Torpor
Lockdown wouldn’t work if anyone thought
otherwise. Enough had died that US Central
Command knew that people labored under
the illusion that they could outrun the Vectors
and go save their loved ones. They expended
a lot of resources to ensure those that violated
curfew also had to believe they could outrun a
bullet.
Troop MobIlzatIon
The secondary goal of broadcasting all those
mass shootings was to give the public the
impression that the government was in the
streets. The narrative that the war was going
well never had wings, but they could float
the lie that the war was everywhere. A lot of
people felt certain they’d be shot the second
they opened the door. Those not shot would
certainly be torn apart by Vectors. Only the
latter half was true, but the double-fear kept
folks in place.
Meanwhile, troops were on the ground...
and streaming East as fast as fucking
possible. The standard operating procedures
for most units when pulling into a new
community was to shout the Torpor Order
through a megaphone, pop-off a few rounds,
and get the hell out of town. In their defense,
most of these troops were National Guard or
old reservists reenlisted under emergency
stop-loss powers. They didn’t have a lot of
time to question their orders, and those
orders certainly didn’t read, “Abandon the
poor bastards.” Most convoys had civilians in
tow already — the families of the enlisted men
and survivors from around the base. As far as
the average soldier knew, they were pushing
east to drop off their refugees, regroup, and
mount an East-to-West campaign against
the infection. Most would be across the river
before they realized the last part was bullshit.
Meanwhile, the US had already lost
multiple bases abroad to Blight events,
especially in friendly countries. Forward-
operating bases in our half-dozen bush wars
fared better due to fortifications already in
place, and everyone was ordered to blow
up anything they couldn’t pack and double-
time home. The evacuation convoys pouring
in from the Western military bases merely
kept up appearances and saved valuable
equipment; the combat veterans were
welcomed home to a more brutal task.
Metro QuarantInes and Cleanses
The eastern seaboard of the United States
was far from clean. The number of emergence
events occurring in the modern day Recession
paled in comparison to those experienced
by California alone, but it was enough to
leave multiple urban centers hemorrhaging
Vectors into the countryside. In instances
like the Philadelphia outbreak, the density of
the population threatened to turn everything
from New York to Richmond into a wasteland,
effectively gutting what little state power
remained to enact the plan. That’s where the
bush wars veterans came in.
We really tested that “boots on the ground
anywhere in 48 hours” thing the military
was so proud of. It just so happened to be
our ground. Logistically, Central Command
shifted everything we had in the Middle
East up to the surviving European bases for
refueling, and then dumped troops into the
heart of ongoing US outbreaks like dirt on a
forest fire. On Monday, a private could be on
patrol, dealing with this brand of “berserk”
insurgent sabotaging the Iranian regime
change. By Wednesday, that same kid would
be shooting Vectors trying to cross the
Brooklyn Bridge, firing artillery barrages at
refugees fleeing up Interstate 76, or bombing
Fort Lauderdale into paste.
The loss of life, both civilian and military,
was catastrophic. It would be many months
before the cities would be declared clear
61
 and some have yet to be rebuilt, but the
primary goal was achieved: containment. By
throwing everything they had at comparatively
few infection sources, the Eastern US was
improving. The Blight was blocked off from
the Atlantic. The Gulf of Mexico kept them
safe from the South, especially with the Coast
Guard’s orders to blow any vessel out of the
water on sight. Barring another emergence
event that only left the border with Canada
and the Mississippi. If the dead could be
blocked from passing there, the Recession
could let the rest of the world eat itself.
EstablIshment of the MIssIssIppI LIne
One of the few things the CDC had managed
to figure out was that Blight effectively
drowns. The pacing and control required
to swim long distances remained beyond
most Vectors. Once drowned, corpses would
enter torpor and travel with the current.
The Blight has some sort of devastating
effect on human gut flora, so bloating rarely
occurs in the bodies of the infected. This
means Blight victims sink, and even once
they are resurrected into casualties, the
confusing stimulus of deep water keeps them
wandering in circles until tissue saturation
rips the bodies asunder. Most helpful of all,
pure Blight is apparently much denser than
water; it would consistently sink. This meant
that tearing a casualty apart on a riverbed or
ocean floor left little chance of infecting the
water supply.
With that in mind, the Mississippi River had
been chosen as the last line of defense against
the Blight. At over 2,500 miles long, no man-
made barricade could ever hope to rival
the river’s scope. The majority of its length
spreads over a mile wide, with the widest
sections stretching nearly 11 miles. The
bridges could be blown. Protecting the few
areas narrow enough for a casualty to cross
would mean defending a mere 200 miles of
frontier, leaving the river itself to defend a
distance half the length of the Great Wall.
The majority of the work establishing
the Mississippi Line was performed by the
62
convoys fleeing east. The first capable unit
crossing the river was tasked with mining
and fortifying the bridge. These initial troops
usually stayed behind to man the checkpoints
and process the refugee payloads of further
incoming convoys. Meanwhile, all subsequent
soldiers and supplies were funneled north
towards Chicago.
Chicago had miraculously survived without
any uncontained infection events, and the
city became the defacto command center
of the entire US strategy. The #1 priority
needed to be the defense of the Des Plaines
and Illinois River. Though where they met
Lake Michigan proved an impossible moat,
these two river ways remained vulnerable
to casualty invasion at various places until
joining with the Mississippi in Grafton. This
left the armed forces with some 200 miles
worth of fortifications to build, mine, and
guard. Furthermore, civilian presence near
any such fortifications would risk the integrity
of the line once the real strategy behind the
Torpor Lockdown was learned. As such, the
command was also tasked with evacuating
North Chicago and every other major
population center along the Illinois.
It was one of the most hasty and admirable
military actions in US history. Suffice it to
say, wherever government psyops were still
broadcasting “official” news, plenty of Chicago
footage got thrown into the updates. The
huddled lines of refugees didn’t look happy,
but people moved in orderly lines through city
streets that were slowly morphing into castle
battlements. It looked like hope, and even to
the cynical, it looked like the nation cared for
its people.
They were making sure no one could jam
their foot in the door as they slammed it shut.
OperatIon UtIlIty
Many things could have sabotaged the entire
operation. It was a hopeless roll of the dice
that, if it failed, would have crippled the last
US resources. If you can ascribe courage
to the Hunter administration (you can’t, but
they’re damn well going to pay historians to
try), it would be hooked on the unmitigated
gall of the strategy.
Some things couldn’t rely on luck, though.
For starters, there were numerous pieces Experience proves that the man who
of infrastructure that couldn’t be shut down obstructs a war in which his nation is
simply by hanging up a “Gone Fishin’” sign.
Nuclear reactors couldn’t be abandoned engaged, no matter whether right or
unless the government wanted to return to an
irradiated hellscape. If dams started bursting,
wrong, occupies no enviable place in life
the flooding would drive people from their or history. Better for him, individually,
homes and into the Blight’s awaiting jaws,
negating the purpose of the lockdown. Even to advocate 'war, pestilence, and famine,’
beyond the disasters resulting from neglected than to act as obstructionist to a war
infrastructure, there was shit the powers-
that-be just couldn’t bear to leave behind. already begun.
NORAD comes foremost to mind, as its
troops remain a persistent pain in the ass for
every Moth in Colorado, but there were plenty -Ulysses S. Grant
of other cases. Great minds — especially in
the biological sciences — had to be plucked
from the doomed masses. Military bases
established beachheads and defended
responsible for drone piloting had to remain
members of the Navel Construction Battalion
behind for air support and reconnaissance
and Army Corps of Engineers as they
until suitable replacements could be erected
shuttered government projects and automated
behind the border. Most importantly, satellite
dams. They cut their way through entire
communications had to be maintained if
states gone Vector, mothballing reactors with
they were going to pull off the single most
a pet team of Nuclear Regulatory Committee
significant logistical repositioning in history.
experts. They fought running wars through
This is where Operation Utility came in,
infected cities, trying to rescue VIPs identified
which evidence suggests went into effect
in the Continuation of Government plan.
almost a week before the declaration of
For obvious reasons, I’m normally not one
martial law... maybe even earlier. Utility was
to wave the flag, but if you want to get your
the codename for a Joint Special Operations
nationalism on for something that happened
Command project executed by the USA’s
during the Crash, I’ll join you in hero-
professional badasses: Seals, Rangers, Delta,
worshipping most of these guys and gals. The
Raiders, Special Tactics Squadron, Special
amount of shit these people fought through
Activities Division, etc. They even conscripted
cannot be overstated; we’re talking Vector
the CIA’s preferred mercenary armies — sorry,
outbreaks in the tens of thousands. They
“security contractors” — and scooped up every
completed jobs that would make the most
member of Strategic Forecasting Inc. they
badass crew of Takers look fucking quaint by
could rescue out of Austin. Basically, every
comparison, often while escorting civilians
deep-state spook and grizzled operator in the
through the most alien, hostile environments
world got pulled off whatever extrajudicial
imaginable.
political assassination they’d been working on
Most importantly, Utility actually saved
and put on Utility.
people. It secured the Loss instead of
Each special unit was charged with
ensuring its isolation. Thousands would be
escorting experts that needed to get
drowned or microwaved today were it not for
somewhere and flip a switch. They
63
 Utility teams. Atrocities and mismanagement
happened, sure, but reports were rare and
conflicting... unlike later massacres at the
border.
A lot of Utility teams died in battle. Each
unit had a prioritized list of targets that would
have been impossible to complete in the
best of times, not to mention when the radio
went dead and supplies stopped coming.
Many pressed on anyway, ticking items off
the list until they were consumed. Some even
survived the whole ordeal and stayed behind,
keeping up the good fight.
Utility members ended up founding
enclaves. They helped create the Moths
or went full Rebel. Some even joined the
Believers. I know at least one Shepherd
whose kill count before conversion hit four
digits. Some of Black Math’s most faithful are
former operators that have been on the purge
for nearly six years. They are the veterans of
mankind’s war against monsters, and many
that survived are Lost, just like the rest of us.
Obviously, I’m biased. A big part of my crew
is made up of Utility vets. I’d be dead without
them. Securing Ubiq City became one of the
operation’s biggest priorities... before I ended
up turning it into their biggest mistake.
CommandeerIng UbIq
JSOC was smart enough to give field
command a lot of autonomy. The US suffered
from a shortage of super-soldiers even before
the Crash, and the problem only got worse
as the Blight started slaughtering them. As
such, the list of targets was nonnegotiable,
but priority could be reshuffled based on the
tactical situation. That’s how Operation Utility
came to Ubiq.
A company of Marine Raiders drew the
short straw; they got stuck escorting a bunch
high-ranking technicians from the United
States Cyber Command. Why would JSOC
throw the IT nerds into the mix? Partly out
of old school, military industrial complex
paranoia. They were afraid China and
Russia were exploiting the Blight to hack our
networks rather than worrying about, you
64
know, being eaten by their own people.
But the counter-hacking priorities were
thrown out pretty much the second the
brass got off the radio. The other half of
the USCC’s work was actually vital to the
evacuation. If the military couldn’t keep
their communication structure together,
the country would fall apart. The Raiders’
primary objective was to get the nerds into
the command centers of various abandoned
military bases and make sure the network
stayed up.
Easier said than done. The task force’s
first target was a base the local civilians had
tried to fortify once they saw the troops pull
out. They’d failed in a big way, and the entire
complex had gone Vector shortly before Utility
rolled in. By the time the gunfire stopped,
the company had dwindled down to two
platoons. As they finally secured the fences
and got underway, the power grid failed. This
meant nearly 100 soldiers had died to secure
communications for four more days, which is
all the gas they had for the generators. There
were twenty more targets on their list.
Traitor took command after his CO took a
bite and bit the bullet. “Traitor” obviously isn’t
his real name — not all the Moths need be
as publicly reviled as myself. The realization
that this shit wasn’t going to work spread
quickly through the demoralized ranks.
Soldiers started debating desertion vs.
Charge-of-the-Light Brigade, and the newly
shaken command structure threatened to fall
into mutiny. Traitor was desperately trying
to get ahold of HQ for more orders when he
finally got a communication: a text from his
daughter, pinging the Ubiq Specs forgotten in
his backpack.
While my coworkers and I huddled in a
janitor’s closet, Ubiq was still up and running.
The DAO was by no means healthy, but as
power grids failed and bandwidth usage
fluctuated widely, the algorithm tried its best
to keep the stratostructure working. Ubiq
users could still access the internet archives
stored on the servers powered by UCity’s
geothermal plant, they could get on the few
nodes the old network could still power, and
everyone could talk to fellow Ubiq users. The
limited AI wouldn’t keep the system running
indefinitely, but the Stratostructure remained
literally above it all. Traitor realized that if his
team could take back Ubiq, the military could
keep communicating through anything, even if
they had to steal Specs off dead civilians and
hand crank battery chargers. Furthermore, it
would let segments of the civilian population
keep coordinating with each other, reducing
casualties overall.
So that’s how I met Traitor. Before he
decapitated the casualties outside, I’d been
contemplating drinking some bleach to
make it quick. But he pulls me and the other
cafeteria survivors out of there and tells
me he’s rescued a few dozen more Ubiq
employees on the way through town. He’s got
to finish locking down the corporate campus;
can I get the network back to full capacity?
I told him I’d do anything if he’d shoot open
the lock on a vending machine.
One round of 5.56 and a dozen granola
bars later, I was back on the job. Before he
went off to secure the perimeter fence, Traitor
informed his Cyber Command spooks that
they now worked for Ubiq. I knew Palbicke’s
tech, so I was in charge.
It was an act of treason. Actual treason. Our
operating system may have been firmware
locked, but we were by no means encrypted
for military traffic. We all tried to tell him this,
but he shut us up quick. The infected were the
enemy, he said, and they’d all forgotten their
passwords. There was no need to worry about
security. Humanity was united in this fight.
If I had to pick my biggest regret from the
Crash, it would be how badly I proved my
friend wrong.
PreemptIve GenocIde
The “special” in Special Forces implies that
operators like Traitor knew the score, but
if Traitor could bring himself to talk about
his service, he’d tell you that just wasn’t the
case. It’s true that JSOC soldiers were in a
better position to guess the western offensive
was never going to happen, but it wasn’t part
of their official orders. Even among those
that managed to piece together the fact that
reclamation was less likely than the rapture,
nobody said shit. The families of Operation
Utility soldiers had been guaranteed
evacuation to a safe zone. After all, how else
would the brass ensure everyone reported for
duty when the temptation to go AWOL was so
strong? Nobody in Utility knew much beyond
their next objective, and those too smart for
their own good kept quiet lest some National
Guard unit forgot to pick up their kids.
No one knew they were going to nuke
Canada. No one.
If I could have dipped my brain in the
cold, inky black pool of Crash logic and let it
soak, all it would’ve taken to guess the plan
was staring at a map. Look at the USA. Take
a red marker. Start at Lake Michigan and
trace down through the Mississippi. Connect
the line to the Gulf of Mexico and use the
Atlantic to complete nature’s greatest moat.
Mexico’s Blight problems might be cut off,
but what about the North? What about New
York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine?
Canada had plenty of Blight problems all their
own, and runs on the border were inevitable.
All it would take was one hidden bite on a
refugee. One infected boat floating across
Lake Ontario. One loose Vector in the wrong
city. It could unravel the entire plan. If it didn’t
doom the human race, it would certainly spell
the end of America, and we know which of
those two Hunter’s cronies valued more.
I bitch a lot about being in the Loss, but
I’m always grateful I’m in the part of the map
they cut off instead of the part they set on
fire. Quebec City, Sherbrooke, Saint-Jean-
sur Richelieu, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto,
Mississauga, Hamilton, Niagara Falls — they
dropped low-yield nukes on them all. A line of
fire was drawn from the mouth of the Saint
Lawrence River to Detroit. Where it got close
to the US border, they dropped honking big
MOABs instead of nuclear weapons, but
“close” is a pretty relative term when picking
your flavor of vaporization.
65
 Blight doesn’t die under radiation, but
something in it does stop being able to
animate dead flesh after heavy exposure.
Officially, the dirtiness of the bombs was
selected as the bare minimum required to
assure the radioactive moat held back the
“massive influx of Canadian infected.” But,
officially, a lot of bullshit gets thrown when
talking about the Preemptive Genocide. I
doubt the CDC radiation experiments got
underway until well after the Crash, but you’d
lie too if you’d just killed millions of your
closest allies.
The truth is that there was no tide of
infection descending from the North.
Canada had been hit in the West, just like us.
Vancouver may have been doomed, but the
light population density meant Vectors hadn’t
66
been seen past Winnipeg. We could have tried
to cooperate with the Canadian military. I’ve
read contingency plans where we collectively
held the line at Red Rock or established a
population buffer zone between Moosonee
and Sault St. Marie. As plans go, they weren’t
any crazier than Operation Utility or the
Torpor Lockdown.
But they were just as risky, and I guess
Hunter felt they’d pushed their luck too far
already.
Anybody not fortifying Chicago worked
to transport, by land, as much of the Naval
Fleet as we could fit into the Great Lakes.
Mackinaw City, Port Austin, Detroit, Buffalo,
Rochester — if a terrified Canadian might
cross the border there, the city got bombed
lifeless and replaced with a fortress. If it
floated, we sunk it. If it flew, we shot it down.
This isn’t to say no refugees escaped.
Canadian insurgency and terrorism remains
one of the Recession’s greatest security
concerns, and it serves the bastards right.
Members of Parliament survive nomadically,
west of the radiation moat, and jealously
guard their claims to legitimate state power.
Any resource they don’t require for survival
gets funneled towards righteous revenge.
But as much as it pains me to say, Hunter’s
plan worked. Those casualties that wandered
East didn’t find anybody left alive to infect. If
they shambled towards the border, the Blight
either burned in the fallout or got lost with
nothing but ash outlines to chase.
“The Border Offensive,” as Recession
assholes would like you to call it, is the
greatest ecological disaster in history. Cancer
rates have tripled in areas served by the
affected water tables. If reclamation ever
does occur, it can only do so if we conquer the
allies we abandoned to the South and those
we murdered in the North. Otherwise, if the
Canadians re-establish control and remain
sovereign? The day the Blight ends is the
day we start a war that’s going to make the
Palestinians and Israelis look like besties.

What struck me as I began to study history was how

nationalist fervor--inculcated from childhood on by pledges of
allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing-
-permeated the educational systems of all countries, including
our own. I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United
States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of
the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children
everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic
bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war
anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always
wars against children, indeed our children.
-Howard Zinn

67
 Retreat Becomes RecessIon Shit... I don’t know how to talk about this.
If you already know the truth, you don’t need
After the sun rose in the north, the remainder
to read this. If you don’t? The Recession
of the plan was simple: wait for the last few
spends millions each year trying to make what
surviving convoys and Utility teams to get
I have to say next sound like bullshit. Their
across the line, then blow the bridges before
continued existence hinges upon it. So how
the bulk of the casualties left torpor. Each unit
do I...
would receive an order to blow its specific
Look, I’m not stupid, alright? I run an entire
bridge under the guise of some inscrutable
city-state that provides 75% of the entire
strategic consideration; nobody was told every
world’s internet. On a daily basis, I extort my
other unit would receive the same order at the
own survival from a country entirely dedicated
same time.
to seeing me dead. I’m a capable lady.
There would be some outrage from the
That said, the Whisper was not my best
populace, but relief from the animal fear that
day. I hadn’t more than a few hours sleep in
had gripped people for weeks was a hell of
over a week. I was starved and dehydrated.
a sedative. The Hunter administration didn’t
I’d seen most of my friends ripped apart in
anticipate too much resistance from the
close succession, and turning on the networks
exhausted eastern populace, and by the time
again gave me a front row seat to the
everybody else realized they’d been left? It’d
worldwide slaughterhouse.
be too late.
Put simply, here’s what happened: Traitor
It’s at this point history turns into memoir...
threw me out of my shock and back into work.
because I fucked all that up.
68
I saw something curious in the system. The
engineer’s instinct kicked in, and I traced the
anomaly to the source. What I discovered
was wrong — evil, even — so I fixed it. On
that fateful day, my thought process went no
deeper. This is wrong; fix it.
I don’t regret what I did, but don’t you
dare buy that DHQS bullshit about the
Whisper being my “master plan.” Everything
shitty about your life is not the result of my
Machiavellian scheme. I didn’t seize some
opportunity to make myself a queen; I just
reacted, like we all were back in those days. It
was a decision made from my soul, not some
fucking government spreadsheet. Nobody
could’ve predicted what happened next,
least of all me. The Whisper was an animal
reflex during the worst moment in my life.
Ultimately, it helped more than it hurt. But my
condemnation of Hunter cuts both ways; the
right choice isn’t always the good one.
Gnat’s WhIsper
I should actually say what the Whisper is,
huh? Sorry. It’s weird to write as if people
don’t know, but that’s the nature of history.
The remaining staff and the
Cybercommados were busy trying to
whip the DAO back into shape. Our AI
had robust programming, but a tide of
statistical anomalies jammed up the works.
Our “crunch” servers hooked into the old
cable network failed as the grid went dark.
Meanwhile, peak usage was hammering the
system all over the world as people talked
about the Crash. Until that point, the DAO
had stayed online by block-chaining traffic
onto the Aloft servers floating above areas of
curiously low traffic. But the DAO couldn’t
understand the logic behind these huge spikes
and valleys in traffic, so its resource allocation
was far from optimal. The algorithm didn’t
know that the only thing keeping the internet
69

That is what I have always
understood to be the essence
of anarchism: the conviction
that the burden of proof has
to be placed on authority, and
that it should be dismantled if
that burden cannot be met.
-Noam Chomsky
screaming was the bandwidth freed up by
all the dead users. Our first task was to
“teach” this information to the program so it
didn’t overload the network. From a purely
hardware perspective, the Stratostructure
was over-engineered for its users by about
60% after all the casualties, but we had to
stop errors in the procedurally generated
reprogramming from piling up or they would
“self-correct” the whole network into failure.
Which is to say I was deep-diving Ubiq’s
DAO code in a way I’d never been allowed
to before. The terminal I was on belonged
to my boss’s boss’s boss, and we’d have been
screwed if the dumbshit hadn’t written his
passwords on the bottom of his desk blotter.
On one tab, I passed out admin privileges
to spooks as fast as possible. In another, I
was promoting the security clearance of any
programmer still left alive. The only way I
could figure out how to help Traitor secure
the perimeter fast enough was to somehow
reverse the master unlock code sent by the
fire alarm, so I was trying to hack our alarm
system at the same time. Waking up all our
sleeping systems, along with the trash code
the DAO had added in our absence, made
70
the in-house OS really sluggish, so I used
time in-between lagging security vetting to
start cleaning up the network optimization.
And, finally, I kept collecting 404s in another
browser, as I tried to see if my parents and
boyfriend had been eaten.
In the middle of all this, I start to think
I’ve crashed the whole stratostructure. In
Canadian airspace, I start getting these
weird signal interference codes I’d never
seen before. They coincide with these insane
spikes in traffic from population centers
further West, until those servers freak out
with interference as well, and the whole usage
rate drops to zero. So I open the ad-sniffers,
start spying on traffic for common terms: the
top three are “nuke,” “God,” and “pray.”
Second only to the victims, I had the
clearest view of the genocide. I watched
the bombs hit in real time, long before any
sanitation and spin.
I’m slipping back into shock when another
window pops up. This is a program I’ve never
seen before, telling me someone is accessing
a “targeted” IP. I check it. It’s a known NSA
address, and the person talking to them is
one of the cybercommandos I’d just given
privileges. Later, I would realize Palbicke
conning the cable monopolies had made
him unpopular with a major portion of the
cybersecurity industry. Add in the fact that we
had data from people in “Great Firewalled”
enemy nations using Ubiq to undermine
regimes? The boss had been justifiably
paranoid about spies both private and public...
to the point he’d wormed spyware into
everything in the building.
So I get a first-hand look at keylogs as
this spook reports to his bosses. They’d
taken Ubiq: time to use it to open up
communications with Operation Utility
teams. The higher-ups are not happy about
this. Go out and die for a secure line, they
order. Spook makes it clear that’s not going to
happen; just send him an encryption packet
instead. He’ll wire it via satellite to the guys
they left back at the one military base they
actually managed to reclaim. They can get
the cypher to everyone in the field, and then
government chatter can switch over to this
newly nationalized network.
There’s a pause. Then a file drops into the
spook’s inbox. With a click of the button, I can
install the encryption too.
What would you have done? It wasn’t a
master hack. People were scared and tired.
They started cutting corners. All I had to do
was click a link.
Over the six hours, I’m “briefed” a half
dozen times by these cybercommando
spooks. They make me sign “official secrecy
forms” they’d hastily drafted minutes earlier
on my computers. They lie about a “Canadian
invasion” that had to be stopped with extreme
measures and tell me to ignore the news.
They ask me questions about the network
architecture and how to do this or that.
The whole time, I nod and pretend to
answer. Meanwhile, I’m keeping one eye on
my Specs feed, looking at the troop locations
of everyone on the continent, noticing all of
the blue dots heading East really fast. Out of
the corner of my eye, I’m reading the cover
stories this fucking Lieutenant is currently
reading to me as they’re being written. I’m
seeing their plans to lock the employees out of
the network entirely: plans for a “specialized
unit to rendition civilian personnel after
securing the network.”
Then power outages start in the Recession,
backup generators start running out of gas.
The brass, in their idiocy, starts using Ubiq to
talk not just to the Utility teams, but to each
other. Their plans are at a pivotal stage, after
all, and they can’t afford to lose touch now.
At this point, I’ve spent all day building
virtual networks and turning them into
accessibility cages for these Cybercommand
assholes. Everything they do affects the Ubiq
simulation housed in our on-site servers only,
but I’ve completely locked them out of altering
the stratostructure and DAO. As they continue
to chat with each other about how they’re
going to convince Traitor to line me up against
a wall, they keep routing these emails and
phone calls between members of the Hunter
Gnat’s WhIsper TranscrIpt
The government is lying to you.
Rescue is not coming. Ever. Those things - their
“casualties” - are waking up. They are going to leave
you to them. Their troops have taken over Ubiq, and
they are using it to coordinate your abandonment to the
monsters. While you are being eaten, they will flee to
safety.
Click the link. Read for yourself. Or don’t. They will
assume you know now, either way, and they will kill you
all the faster for it.
Attention all members of the Armed Services: If you
are West of the Mississippi, they are not going to
evacuate you. They have not evacuated your families. Your
loved ones are still trapped, or they are dead. This was
always a suicide mission, but your children are on it with
you.
If you are in the East, know that Hunter plans to
blow the bridges in a few hours. After reading this,
he will try immediately. Understand what pressing that
button really means. I beg you to do what is right
instead of what is ordered. It may be mutiny, but your
officers are paper tigers. No one will be coming to shoot
you for treason; they cannot afford the bullet. If you’re
in control of a bridge, you are now responsible for the
lives of everyone in the West. You cannot say you were
just following orders.
For Everyone Else: if you’re too far West, find
someplace safe. Find like-minded people. Hide behind sturdy
walls. Get essentials and hole up. Work together. The
only rescue coming is the one we provide each other.
If you’re close enough to the river: RUN. Good people
may keep the border open. Or they might not. You will
be gambling with your life. We all are now.
The Hunter administration is not trying to save you.
They are trying to save themselves. They murdered
millions because it might make them safer. You are
nothing to them besides acceptable losses. They do not
want you to make it.
71
 administration. Each starts with an order
and a bunch of federal legalese, along with
these new encryption programs and threats of
treason for the spooks if they open them. But
what the fuck do I care? They’re planning on
killing me tomorrow anyway.
So I read them. I learn that the Canadian
attack was completely unprovoked. I learn
that there is no intention to rescue anyone
in the West. I learn that the brass never had
evacuation plans for Utility operatives or their
families. It was all a lie, to get them out there
fighting.
I do some digging. I learn about Traitor’s
daughter — the little girl that messaged her
Daddy and gave him the idea to come save
me. I learn she’s likely dead, burned alive as
the refinery in her Louisiana town blew up. I
learn her name.
Most importantly, I learned the deadline.
I learned when they were going to blow the
bridges and activate the river mines. It was
dawn the next day. In a little over twelve
hours.
So what was the Whisper? It wasn’t the leak
itself. Leaks are a dime-a-dozen, and nobody
had time to parse all that data during the
apocalypse. The Whisper was the message I
posted as the homepage of every Ubiq user in
the world: the cover letter for my data dump.
I’d signed the warning with my handle — Gnat
— and I suppose some pundit later thought it
poetic to name the message “the Whisper of
Gnat’s wings.”
It didn’t feel like a Whisper. It felt like
screaming.
The Battle of UbIq CIty
I had locked everyone out of the system. The
spooks needed me if they were going to take
the message down. The only other option
was to blow up the servers or the power
supply. That would get rid of the Whisper,
but it would also eliminate the only reliable
communication the Recession government
had. While Hunter really needed me and the
Whisper deleted, I had gambled he couldn’t

ghouls affect world politics?

How would the introduction of flesh-eating
e rea list ans we r is sim ple if sur pris ing - international relations would
Th
larg ely una ffe cte d. Th is par adig m wou ld be unimpressed with the claim
be
new exi ste nti al thr eat to the hum an condition leads to any radical
that a
in hum an beh avi or. To the m, a plag ue of the undead would merely
change
plag ues and dis ast ers . Dis eas e has aff ected world politics from
echo older
De ath of the fou rte ent h cen tur y to the 1918-19 influenza pan-
the Black
pas t, mos t of the se plag ues sim ply reified existing power
demic. In the
erful societies developed stron-
relationships. Because more dynamic and pow
greater share of the relative
ger immunities to plague, they gained a
power during pandemics.
-Daniel Drezner

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afford to go dark, especially with the shit
show I’d thrown his way. That’s why I posted
the message without doing anything to disrupt
user-to-user traffic: I knew the Whisper would
make me a target, but they’d have to come for
me in person. A drone strike on UCity would
have screwed them harder than anything I
could ever do.
So, yeah, some calculation certainly went
through my mind. I don’t deny it. But you can’t
be a smart woman without being accused of
being a bitch in the same breath. Being smart
enough to stay alive is proof enough for some
that I engineered the civil war between the
Raiders and the Cyber Command.
In the Recession’s version of events, I
schemed. I made sure get to Traitor before
the Whisper went live. I used news of his
daughter’s death and exploited that betrayal
to secure his protection in the coming war. I
timed it perfectly, making sure the perimeter
was secured from the undead before I
coerced a squad of Marines to murder their
comrades. All just to keep me alive.
Personally, I’d like to believe I didn’t want to
die before telling Traitor about his daughter.
I couldn’t know how he was going to react,
and that went double for those under his
command. But if someone was going to shoot
me, I wanted them to know the truth first.
Honestly, I can’t tell which version is real
anymore. When your choice kills people, you
do everything you can to justify it after the
fact. Hunter and I at least have that much in
common.
All I know is that less than a third of the
soldiers alive when I posted the Whisper
lived to see the next day. The war between
loyalists and those that would become Moths
was bloodier than any Vector outbreak. It
was a war between people desperate to find
a new way of living in this strange world, and
those for whom a blaze of glory was the more
attractive option.
Evac Caravans
People may have been locked in their homes,
but they hadn’t been isolated from each other.
Ubiq had been the #1 traded tech company
for seven years before the Crash. 88% of
every household in the US chose Ubiq as an
alternative internet provider, and we were
the sole provider for 52% of those homes.
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 62% of families had at least one Ubiq Spec enough that a couple tanks of gas and a prayer
or off-brand AR device in the home. The might carry them to safety.
devices were chargeable through replacement But those that made it to the border were
battery packs, solar grids, and hand-cranked far from safe. No amount of skill ensures
chargers. Hell, you could plug them in and survival. For those trying to get last minute
leech off the batteries of hybrid cars for years. admission into the Recession, it depended on
The Whisper reached a lot of folks, and it which crossing you went to and how far the
caused a lot of panic. Blight was behind you.
There was no such thing as “too far West”
for some people. Even in places like Oregon,
people began coordinating evacuation
The Flood and AmputatIon
No hard numbers exist for any of this. The
caravans. Terrified people would load up
chaos of the evacuation was as confusing as
whatever resources they could into whatever
any Vector outbreak. The best estimates guess
vehicles they could find. They’d crowd-
about 75 of 140 available bridges were blown
source traffic reports around the chaotic
the second the Whisper got posted because
jams clogging up all the roadways and make
good little soldiers followed orders.
coordinated breaks from their homes. Entire
After that, the secondary demolitions
suburban neighborhoods and rural towns
started in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and
would make a break for their cars all at once,
northern Missouri. A lot of military units left
hoping their neighbors were the ones to be
up there either listened to the Whisper or
eaten and buy time for the rest to get away.
were smart enough to realize their deaths
The nightmare that was the evac caravans
were meant to establish a buffer zone between
is well documented. They ran out of gas. They
the undead and fortifications being hastily
got stalled by pile-ups and trapped each other,
erected along the Illinois River. The generals
reversing into hordes of casualties pursuing
didn’t trust those units to volunteer for the
the herd. Some escaped the casualties only
suicide mission they’d already been tricked
to fall victim to their fellow man. Loyalist
into. The most mercy those troops saw was
teams from Operation Utility wiped out more
a single repetition of the order to secure the
than a few as traitors. Some fell to internal
crossing and retreat. The subtext was clear:
criminal elements, turning into the Loss’s
blow those fucking bridges and we might let
first raider bands. And all of this before you
you through the gate before it slams shut.
get into the conspiracy theory shit: entire
To their credit, many of the northern
caravans ghosted by super-black ops military
postings held the line, preparing to let
teams that made the guys in Utility look like
refugees through. After all, why believe their
weekend warriors. Hundreds kidnapped as
commanders? They’d nuked thousands on a
experimental subjects for what would become
maybe already, and the troops had no reason
the DHQS’s programs studying Immunity and
to believe they’d honor any agreement.
Latency.
In response, the generals dedicated every
Still, some caravans got lucky. Good Utility
fighter jet and drone the US could muster
teams or die-hard law enforcement groups
to the destruction of every crossing north of
took caravans under their wing, coordinating
Chicago. By blocking all escape across the
massive migrations across the country. Others
northern Mississippi, St. Croix, Rock, and
that got stalled realized how hopeless the
St. Louis rivers, Chicago command bought
distance was and founded enclaves nearby,
themselves time to finish fortifications on the
saving themselves. Most that got into the
narrower parts of the Illinois River. Infected
Midwest were in the relative clear. Population
refugees would have to ford at least two major
density had kept infection spread out and
waterways before reaching a ‘safe zone.’ This
easily bypassed by car. The border was close
74
gave Chicago the time it needed to solidify the
shaky allegiance of those troops lucky enough
to be stationed across the line already.
There wasn’t enough air support left to stop
crossings in St. Louis City and further south.
Past that point, refugees were at the whim of
whatever officer had been placed in charge
of their lifeline. Many a caravan pulled up to
find a blown bridge waiting for them. I’d like
to say that sight smartened people up and
they retreated, founding last-minute enclaves.
But the fact is most people just tried to find
boats. When that predictably failed, they tried
to swim it. Both solutions were typically met
with a hail of gunfire from the opposite shore.
Tangled flotillas of corpses were floating
into New Orleans as much as a year after
evacuation.
If your caravan found somebody with a
soul in charge, it was still dicey. Some units
suffered from what we call “all hearts; no
minds.” These well-meaning idiots threw
open the gates... at which point the panicked
flood of humanity trying to get across began
trampling itself to death. At those few
checkpoints where unhindered crossing didn’t
descend into a riot, things got even worse.
Exactly what the Hunter administration
feared began happening: people in the
caravans had been bitten by casualties during
the migration. They’d hidden the bites out of
fear, and few days later, they went Vector on
the wrong side of the bridge. Thousands of
people found themselves trapped on bridges
with Vector outbreaks on one side and an
approaching horde of casualties on the
other. Thankfully, the nightmare scenarios
brought about by “all hearts/no minds”
were rare, and all ended with the bridge
being blown in a final act of desperation.
Subsequent outbreaks on the eastern bank
were contained by other military units. Those
that threatened to get out of hand were a high
enough priority for Chicago Command that
air assets bombed the infected populations
into paste.
Most that made it into the Recession
uninvited got there through a “cattle chute.”
Standard operating procedure was to
fortify the Western approach with concrete
partitions and shipping containers. That’s
where they had people strip. Every scrap of
clothing, every belonging, every vehicle — it all
got abandoned by the side of the road if you
wanted to cross. Once stripped of everything,
including dignity, the refugees were allowed
on the bridge. There the military inspected
everyone for bites. The cleared were thrown
off the eastern edge, naked and born anew
in the Recession. Those with bites — or even
particularly suggestive cuts and bruises —
never made it to the other side of the bridge.
The cattle chutes were brutal. They
deprived desperate people of even the clothes
off their backs. They mistakenly executed
thousands, not to mention the Immune and
the Latents killed. But they worked. The
chutes got people to safety... at least until one
of two things happened. If someone turned
Vector inside the chute, it spelled doom for
everyone on the bridge. Naked people packed
like sardines between the rails couldn’t hope
to contain a hot outbreak. The eastern side
of the bridge would have to close their gate
and open fire on the bridge, which tended to
discourage anyone left alive on the western
shore from retreating east.
Even without new Vector outbreaks,
casualties put a hard time limit on the cattle
chutes. Every evac caravan trailed behind it a
horde of hungry dead. Some chutes managed
to operate non-stop for days, but the Cs
always caught up eventually. The grey tide
flowed over the naked, desperate masses, and
even the most softhearted officers had to blow
the bridge or lock the gate.
A few days after my little message, all lines
of escape had been cut off. The western states
had been amputated from the union.
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 The Result
The Whisper brought a couple million more
people into the Recession’s safety than Hunter
had intended. It also let people use the torpor
to enclave-up rather than wait around to be
eaten. But how many millions died in the
caravans that might have survived if they’d
stayed home? How many Immunes and
Latents were executed in the chutes because
of me?
Is the world better or worse for what I’ve
done?
I don’t know.
Lost CItIes
Between bombing civilians and their own
soldiers, my actions had spread the US
military very thin. Philadelphia’s outbreak
had been contained, but what little resources
were being directed towards the retake of
Manhattan got siphoned off to maintain the
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border. The units tasked with cleansing NYC
fought on anyway, trying to cleanse as many
infected as possible during the torpor. It didn’t
work. In the end, something like 90% of the
soldiers became casualties. The few that
escaped blew the tunnels and bridges behind
them.
Other eastern towns and cities suffered
hot outbreaks as a result of the refugees. The
losses were, thankfully, small and contained.
No more than a few thousand... quarantined
and mopped up a week later, after things had
settled down.
Force ExhaustIon
Active duty military in the Crash fought a
literal war against hell. On the frontline,
they were unwittingly fed into the Blight’s
jaws, ordered to shoot civilians, or forced
to choose mutiny. Those lucky enough to
keep away from the Cs had to deal with
an unprecedented refugee crisis and the
uncertain fate of their own loved ones.
Early on, a few delusional Hunter loyalists
gathered small forces to rain reprisal down
on insubordinate bridge crews, but of those
crews still alive, none were too eager to be
arrested by cowards after shooting men,
women, and children in the chutes for days. In
the worst cases, certain postings descended
into the sort of civil war that racked Ubiq, with
the pissed-off enlisted troops doing a number
on any rat-fuck officer that tried to discipline
them for not killing American citizens.
After they broadcast the first General
hanging from a bridge he ordered blown,
everyone got the message quick. The upper
ranks started claiming their orders were
being spoofed. The whole affair had been
a tragic cyber-attack organized by anti-
government terrorists and the traitors at
Ubiq. Too tired for an outright revolution, the
rank-and-file agreed and started spinning their
mutiny. They hadn’t refused orders; they’d
never received them. It was a chaotic time,
after all, and how could they have trusted
orders from a compromised network?
In the wake of learning the world
actually might survive this shit, anybody
with a stake in the Torpor Lockdown or
Operation Utility shifted over into covering
their asses. Meanwhile, the National Guard
and other reservists had become the
most monumentally disillusioned soldiers
in history. Entire platoons went AWOL,
disappearing into the chaos. It would take
months for the different branches of the
command structure to stabilize.
In that delicate time, the Recession only
stayed infection free due to the hard work of
a few units that refused to quit. In the wake of
amputation, things got done only at the behest
of middle-rank officers gone rogue or civilian
77
 organizations turning into militias. Some
helped out of a sense of duty; others saw an
opportunity to set themselves up as power
brokers in the new order.
Refugee CrIsIs
Uncontrolled river crossings, before
collapsing under the weight of desperate
hordes, often let traffic through. Thousands of
vehicles had poured across the bridges before
the Whisper, leaving parking lots and fields
crammed with families living out of trunks
and suitcases.
Those evacuated through chutes had it even
worse. They entered the Recession naked
and shivering. It would have been the worst
refugee crisis in history if the Blight had only
hit the US. With the rest of the world going
through the same or worse? Emergency
services couldn’t even begin to meet the
needs of refugees. Deaths from starvation,
dehydration, and exposure began moments
after people crossed into so-called safety, and
they would continue for years to come.
EconomIc Collapse
The cold math behind Hunter’s strategy
had accounted for the disastrous effect the
Blight would have on the economy. The loss
of labor alone dwarfed anything seen in
the World Wars, not to mention the death
of global trade partnerships, supply lines,
and production schedules. The strategy had
knowingly sacrificed America’s breadbasket
to slow the denser stampedes of casualties.
Famine was the new normal until land could
be repurposed and drone farming established.
The plan had always promised lean years in
the wake of the amputation. Everyone in the
Hunter administration prepared for some
belt-tightening.
No one was prepared for a few million
more mouths to feed. While no amount of aid
and assistance would ever calm the voracious
need of the refugees, leaving the naked
masses out of rationing wasn’t possible.
They were legion, they were pissed, and they
were desperate. Those in power were smart
78
enough to know that, if it appeared they were
abandoning people on both sides of the fence,
the revolution and riots that followed would
be the final nail in the coffin.
Private property got conscripted for
soldiers. High schools turned into hospitals.
Any business that didn’t put food on the table,
medicine in a syringe, or clothes on a back got
cannibalized for parts, their workers sent to
join the homeless thousands huddling in what
was now being referred to as “Free Parking:”
refugee camps that popped up wherever
people ran out of gas. That shit made the
Great Depression look like a paid vacation.
Mass unemployment didn’t make for
a docile, obedient electorate either, but
displaced Easterners would need time to
marinate in their resentment before coming
to a revolutionary boil. Until then, wealth
redistribution for the benefit of refugees kept
the desperate masses licking their wounds
rather than continuing the destructive march
of animal terror straight into Washington DC.
As always, the Hunter administration used
human lives to buy time... time they used to
begin hunting and betraying each other.
Governmental Purges
Even if I had never been born, heads were
going to roll for the Preemptive Genocide.
They might not have been the right heads, but
even in the best case, some scapegoats were
going to answer for nuking millions. Before
the Whisper, when it had looked like the plan
might work as intended, the sacrificial lambs
were evident; the people actually responsible
had known who to distance themselves from.
After the Whisper, it was every asshole
for himself. The leak was still up there for
everyone to see, and removing it would mean
effectively muting the human race. The old
tricks for silencing dissenters weren’t going
to work on this one. The only escape possible
was through narrative.
Everyone involved scrambled to appear
witless, whispering “just following orders” like
a fucking mantra. But the really smart ones
knew that to make the narrative stick, one had
to look more than repentant; one had to look
indignant. They had to mirror the betrayal the
torches-and-pitchforks crowd was bound to be
feeling.
Stalin would have been proud of the weeks
following the Crash. Coups, court martials,
“people’s courts” — martial law, after all,
was still in effect. Nobody was interested in
repealing it until they were sure they’d cleared
the board. Hunter left the White House in
shackles and remains under house arrest
to this day. Generals court martialed each
other for crimes real and imagined. Special
elections became the norm, and the first
entertainment to come to the car camps was
the new electronic voting system that weekly
deposed one despot in place of another.
Before the year was out, the Recession
government was clean as a laundered
sheet. Everyone that could be construed as
responsible for the lockdown strategy had
been arrested, killed, or named “instrumental
in rooting out the corruption.” There was only
the new government, operating under the
oldest mandate in history: do what we say, for
your safety.
The Homo Sacer PolIcy
Most of the politicians and military leadership
at the time of the Crash were arrested or
disgraced within a few months of the last
bridge closing. Their successors, whether
supportive or backstabbing, had no desire
to atone for the sins of the past. Though
distasteful and taboo, the work of the
amputation remained arguably necessary.
Why expend political capital trying to undo
war crimes that had likely ensured the
continued survival of the US? With a new
government installed, it was possible to both
condemn and profit from the same policy. The
only problem was surviving long enough to
reap the rewards.
If the Blight had decimated the nation, the
Whisper and ensuing rush on the borders
had almost destroyed it entirely. To this day,
the Recession exists in a perpetual economic
sinkhole, coping with overcrowding, famine,
unemployment, and the increased infection
risk threatened by all those variables. If it
wanted to survive long enough to enjoy power,
the new government had to calm things down
enough that they could focus on getting the
house in order. The to-do list of cascading
social issues to fix had no room for casualties.
In short, the new bosses had to live the dream
of the Hunter administration: pretend the
Blight and all its victims didn’t exist.
That’s when they declared us all dead.
Declared dead is a bit of a simplification.
The policy paper known as “The
Denouncement” actually declares any and all
former US citizens west of the Mississippi to
be homo sacer (Latin for “the accursed man”).
It’s the most extreme form of civil death.
As a legal concept, homo sacer means
the people so labeled are afforded no legal
rights by the laws of any nation, especially
their nation of origin. Legally, the person isn’t
even considered a human for the purposes of
human rights. The clearest historical example
of this concept occurred in the 16th to 18th
centuries with the rise of naval mercantilism.
The major state powers operating on the
high seas declared certain pirate groups
literally “out-laws:” beyond the protection
of any nation’s laws. Basically, you could do
whatever you wanted to a pirate, no matter
what nation you or they were from, and those
operating under a national flag had no legal
responsibilities whatsoever to any victims or
their family. It wasn’t an act of war. It wasn’t a
crime. Losing your ship to pirates was an act
of God, but killing an entire pirate crew was,
on paper, no more than a spot of luck.
The flip side of homo sacer, however,
is that there is no legal recourse against
them beyond what you personally have the
physical power to enforce: military and law
enforcement officers have no more obligation
to protect you from homo sacer than, say,
from an animal attack. Suing someone so
thoroughly disenfranchised would be akin
to suing a dog that bit you or a raccoon that
overturned your trash. You either shoot the
thing or it gets away with it.
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 So that’s the legal standing of everyone over
the border: we are no more than animals.
We can be shot, robbed, and raped with
total impunity. Protecting the remaining US
citizens from us is no different than protecting
them from casualties: all force can be lethal
force. The Denouncement makes it clear that
anyone crossing the river, for any reason not
expressly ordered by the federal government,
instantly gives up all property and their rights
as a human being.
The purpose of the homo sacer policy is
multifaceted. Discouraging smuggling across
the border was the most immediate goal.
Let’s say some noble human trafficker floats a
canoe across the river every night to smuggle
people into the safe zone. Let’s say that same
smuggler originally made it across the bridge
in a nice truck. He sleeps in a heated camper
run off solar panels every night while his
chute-shit neighbors camp on the ground with
no more than silvery shock blankets to protect
from exposure. If anybody in the Free Parking
ghetto gets covetous, all they have to do is tell.
One anonymous tip saying when he plans to
break quarantine, and the betrayer’s family
doesn’t have to die from exposure this winter.
It’s not stealing. The soldiers do the fighting.
The average refugee was far too desperate
to pass up such a profitable betrayal. Now,
smuggling required more than a trusted group
of confederates; it required trusting literally
everyone. If anyone might want anything
you might have, it effectively de-incentivized
thoughts of running the border. Coupled with
the risk of casualties? No one was eager to
run West for any cause, no matter how noble.
The policy was also the first step in
shifting the narrative from “unprecedented
government betrayal” to the old reliable “us
vs. them.” The process begins with giving
up hope. Everyone that didn’t get across has
to be dead by now, right? The casualties are
awake in full force, and hot outbreaks would
leave Vectors pinging around any survivor
communities that did coalesce. Being left is
as good as a bite. After all, if that wasteland
over there wasn’t completely uninhabitable,
80
the government would have fought to keep it,
wouldn’t they?
Once the people give up hope, make a call
for realism. Maybe someone over there is a
loved one, and leaving them behind is hard,
but if they aren’t dead yet, it’s only a matter
of time. Can we really risk it? Maybe people
are still fighting in the West, but they risk
infection every day. Infection means Vectors
— sprinting, river-swimming, fence-climbing
Vectors. Every so-called “survivor” in the
Loss threatens to carry the Blight over the
Mississippi and start a second Crash from
whence no one will escape. Think about it:
who could be so selfish?
And once the jump has been made from
hopelessness to realism, it’s a short hop to
accusation. Of course, no one in the federal
government expects anyone to believe that
absolutely everyone over the border is actually
dead. But maybe they deserve to be dead.
The government issued the same evacuation
orders to them as they did to everyone else in
the Recession. If they didn’t receive them in
time, whose fault is that? The terrorists that
sabotaged the plan and leaked misinformation
onto Ubiq, that’s who. Their anti-government
obstructionism nearly doomed all of America
— no, the entire human race. The people over
there are too stupid to run, too selfish to die,
or too evil to mourn. They’re no longer even
human. They’re casualties waiting to happen,
and they must be exterminated like the threat
they are.
Of course, not everyone ascribes to the
official ideology. Many see through the thin
facade and recognize propaganda meant
to support an ailing administration. Many
more, caught in the crushing poverty of the
Recession, simply don’t have the luxury to
believe such precepts. But that’s the brilliance
of the Denouncement: until everyone believes
homo sacer is bullshit, it traps dissenters into
pretending the story is gospel. The longer that
goes on, the more people believe the lie, and
the harder everyone else has to pretend: the
hegemonic feedback loop.

After awhile, why would you want to
believe any differently? Citizens could believe
that the situation is a result of desperation,
mismanagement, and poorly thought out
policies, but the cost of that truth is the
subsequent realization that those very same
forces are in charge of security even now.
Being “woke” means acknowledging (with
your every. waking. thought) that the most
terrifying event in human history could repeat
itself at any moment.
Or, as an alternative, citizens can believe
the governmental narrative. That it’s those
people’s fault. That they could have evacuated
if they wanted to. Their refusal caused all this
to get worse. Maybe they’re even responsible
for the Crash in the first place. Then citizens
can believe that there’s someone to blame
for all their nightmares. That when a soldier
blows up some family paddling across the
river, it was an act of heroism instead of a war
crime.
Why not choose the explanation that’s
comforting? Sure, it’s a lie, but who wants to
be reminded how privileged they are as they
shiver and starve in an abandoned Wal-Mart
parking lot?
Like I said, declared dead is a
simplification. It’s more accurate to say that
big sections of the Recession population
have a psychological need to believe that
everyone over here should be dead. That base
is represented by a power structure with a
professional responsibility to kill us for their
voters. And as for the sane population, they’re
outnumbered by psychos on both sides,
meaning their interactions with the Loss —
whether motivated by necessity, compassion,
or profit — need to remain plausibly deniable
if they don’t want to join the dispossessed.
NamIng the DIvIde
“The nation has suffered a great loss today...”
“Even as we keep those affected by this loss
in our thoughts and prayers, we must...”
“Your loss is your own; but tooooogether our
future is sown...”
“Now we mourn our loss and begin to
heal...”
“The loss of sovereign territory has
affected...”
Once I stopped getting shot at long enough
to catch up on the news, it was already clear
what our side was called: the Loss.
I kept letting the government broadcast
over Ubiq, both during and after the battle
for the city. It’s safe enough; I’ve limited their
inputs like any other user. They don’t know
how to hack us remotely, and most that could
have figured it out lie in the mass grave we
dug behind the cafeteria. The rest work for
me now. They could take us over by force, but
not before I send every Aloft server crashing
out of the sky.
Our survival is embarrassing to them,
but they can’t afford to build a new network
right now. The signal all day keeps the drone
81
 strikes away. They’ll allow our petty crosstalk
about surviving the dead so long as it remains
cheaper than killing my ass.
So we became the Loss. Naming them
was trickier. They want us to call them the
United States of America. Fuck that. Ain’t
nobody feeling united out here, especially
not this bitch holding all your internet. They
made finding something appropriate difficult.
The news was still nationalized, and the
Orwellian newspeak in effect after the Crash
made “casualties” look quaint. No anchor or
politician mourning the Loss could ever admit
murdering it.
It wasn’t lies; it was “confidential.”
It wasn’t running away; it was
“repositioning.”
It’s not isolation; it’s “quarantine.”
It wasn’t defeat. They didn’t retreat. They
“receded.”
That last one’s my favorite. Such imagery:
a tide pulling back across a line in the sand.
A perfectly natural movement backwards. As
if we were the ones who went too far — like
floodwaters — and we’re now pooling back
into our rightful boundaries.
Recession — a term rich people use when
they can’t even spare historical significance
for the starving poor. Not a Depression;
nothing so dramatic as that. This is just a
bump in the road; a hiccup in the market. It’ll
self-correct. Don’t get maudlin as you bury
your family.
Recession: (noun) 1). A period of temporary
economic decline during which trade and
production are reduced 2) the action of
receding; motioning away from an observer
3) a condescending non-statement, meant to
protect the egos of morally bankrupt assholes
removed from the consequences of their
actions.
WrItIng Off The Loss
Like a man jumping from a burning building,
the Recession regarded the hang-time
between burning with infection and smashing
into its own shortsightedness with relief.
82
Things weren’t going to turn out well, but
they had mostly escaped the gnawing, animal
terror inflicted by the Blight.
The Loss was denied even that small
respite. The Crash never stopped out here.
It compounded every humiliation and
deprivation life had ever inflicted on humanity
with living nightmares. We can sympathize
with the Recession about as much as an adult
sympathizes with a toddler’s scraped knee.
Play-acting empathy is the most one can
expect: an assurance that we, too, remember
that unpleasant sensation. But don’t expect
us to really identify. It’s hard to take citizen
whining seriously when you know how deep
the well of pain really goes.
DwIndlIng
People that have never lived Loss don’t
understand how time works. All of us used
to think of the future in terms of lateral
movement: rivers of time, marches of
progress, etc. History was this race and we
were always moving forward, our speed
varying but never wavering from the path.
Bullshit. History moves up. Humanity only
gets as far into the future as it can climb out
of the abyss of raw animal need. We climb
towards the future on precarious mounds
of new ideas and inventions and laws. You
don’t need a machine to travel back in time;
something only needs to come along and
shake the stack. The Loss sent along a couple
million casualties to kick progress out from
under us.
Infrastructure FaIlure
America’s bridges and highways were
receiving failing grades well before they
became choked with undead. Our city
planning had been so deregulated that
water was a precious commodity all over the
country. Climate change and water barons
had caused drought all over the West. A
number of Midwestern cities had completely
toxic pipe systems or sewage contaminated
reservoirs. And irradiating a bunch of river
basins certainly didn’t fucking help matters.
Water and transportation were just the
biggest symptoms of an endemic American
disease. We spent generations devaluing
maintenance and vocational work. Everybody
wanted to give a TED talk; no one wanted to
be a plumber. Our demographic/employment
mismatch was one of the major causes of
the Education Default, and it didn’t stop
there. If “cheap and shitty” beat “less cheap
and durable” by one red cent, we picked the
former.
This may not seem like a big deal to
Recession folks, what with their recovering
manufacturing and construction sectors. But
that hole in the fence that the facilities crew
was going to “get around to” becomes a life-
and-death issue when Vectors are trying to get
in. A lot of people died because their culture
didn’t teach them the meaning of quality.
For example, consider the McMansion, the
holy grail of every WASP’s five-year plan. I
won’t loot one for love or money. The fucking
things are casualty nests. Every asshole
imaginable got the bright idea they’d be safe
in the crosstown, faux-Cape Cod architectural
abortion they’d been ignorantly envying for
years. The geniuses get there and realize too
late the goddamn walls are built of no more
than plaster, foam, and dreams. The Cs could
literally chew their way in through imitation-
brick siding. That’s when they didn’t come
crashing through honking-big bay windows:
the ones made of sugar-glass never meant to
withstand a child’s tee ball, not to mention a
goddamn Vector stampede. The idiots would
have fared better in a 1960s mobile home.
Neglect before the Crash meant death after
it, and where useful shit wasn’t falling apart,
most people couldn’t even recognize it.
FloodIng
On a good day, the network of valves, sluices,
drains, and maintenance workers required to
83
 keep certain cities from drowning approached
staggering levels of complexity. Contrary to
popular belief, all these systems were not
automated. The Crash knocked out both the
personnel and power required to keep these
towns afloat through more than light drizzle.
If plastic bags collecting in gutters were the
only result of the crisis, it still would have
been enough to leave thousands of blocks
immersed in knee-high water.
To make matters worse, more idiots than I
care to name thought blowing up dams and
reservoirs was a great strategy for eliminating
casualties. Depending on the area, some of
them were even right... and destroyed nearly
all the salvageable resources in the area. In
more egregious cases, people established
enclaves free from the dead only to be wiped
out in a tidal wave from upstream.
People huddling for safety behind some
fence often assume that the ruin-porn vistas of
the Loss only exist after years of neglect. But
any Taker knows it takes mere days to turn a
metropolis into desolate swampland.
FIres and Meltdowns
Lightning strikes, Molotov cocktails, electrical
shorts, campfires, discarded cigarettes —
anything can start a fire in the Loss, but
almost nothing can put it out. One week, your
crew will be raiding supplies from the next
town over. The next? You find a pile of ashes
where a city used to be. Many a survivor
community has been wiped out by no more
than a stove. But that’s little stuff compared to
the downright biblical proportions of climate
change. The drought wildfires that plagued
the West for decades no longer had armies
of smokejumpers to stop them. Once the
dry season came after the Crash, California
basically became one giant inferno.
Operation Utility was designed to minimize
the human causes of these disasters. For the
most part, it succeeded. Where teams failed...
well, no one is ever going to discover why,
that’s for damn sure.
Palo Verde went into meltdown. Vectors
either overran the soldiers or the plant’s
84
infamously shitty maintenance record finally
caught up with it. Regardless, there’s a 50–75
mile radius around the plant that’s doing its
best impression of Chernobyl. Anybody still
alive in Arizona steers clear by double that
distance unless they want to get microwaved.
I’ve heard rumors of secret government
research projects or cartel smuggling
operations hiding in the exclusion zone, but
they have to be bullshit. Nobody that’s ever
seen a “Verde baby” would risk it.
AddItIonal CasualtIes
That thing the Recession was afraid would
happen? Where casualties start new Vector
outbreaks, which turn into more casualties,
which cause new Vector outbreaks? Yeah.
That’s every day out here. Or at least it was
right after the amputation.
Five years down the road, things have
stabilized somewhat. Hot Blight is still a
very real danger, but the only enclaves left
have their shit together. But in the early
days — when no one knew what the hell
what they were doing — enclaves rose and
fell in a matter of days. The people inside
that went Vector would test the defenses of
any other nearby communities. It was an
iterative process where the tests kept coming
and failure only happened once. The ratio of
humans to casualties may have stabilized now,
but that road was paved with a few hundred
thousand new infections after the bridges
blew.
Mass ExpIratIons
Imagine a grocery store. Think of all the
different sections. Now imagine them dying,
one by one, like cascading organ failure.
Dairy was almost extinct before the Torpor
Lockdown even started. Without refrigeration,
pretty much everything but cheese went bad
instantly. It’s also not like we can make more;
casualties like the taste of beef as much as
human. Protein didn’t fare much better. If it
wasn’t jerky or a nut, everything in the butcher
shop was poisonous by the time the looting
really picked up.
 The hardiest fruits and vegetables can
last about two weeks without refrigeration,
but only for those willing to dig through the
compost piles of any leafy greens around
them. Quite a few idiots looking to keep up
their ‘paleo’ diets during the apocalypse
ended up starving the next month.
Let’s move on to the grains: crackers,
cereals, bread, snack foods. Empty
carbohydrates? Now we’re talking! Bread’s got
about as long as the fruits and vegetables, but
eating around the mold will stretch a loaf for
a month. Cereal has 4–6 months in an open
box before it turns to poison, though stale is a
flavor most survivors have had to remove from
their vocabulary.
Canned goods — good luck finding any. The
food pantry fare likely got stripped before the
Blight was even officially acknowledged. But
those lucky enough to get away with a few
carts were set for a bit. If it had a high-acid
content like tomatoes or citrus fruits, the cans
were good for a year and could stretch to
two. Everything else could last for five years!
Granted, you can eat most things after that
date so long as the can hasn’t blown up with
botulism, but keeping the shit down requires
a Loss-trained stomach. In addition to lasting
longer, those canned goods mean you don’t
have to worry about scurvy or rickets as much
as those folks scrounging around in the cereal
aisle.
The crafty folks raided the pharmacy.
Most drugs don’t have immediate uses, but
somebody always needs them somewhere. A
big score of drugs can keep trading for four
years before they lose effectiveness or become
poison. The pharmacy aisles also had the
protein powder for the body-builders: that shit
is dusty gold. It basically never goes bad, and
preparation only requires water.
Which is its own problem. Bottled water
is another one on everybody’s “loot first” list.
If you do find some, it’s probably safe, but
conditions determine the speed at which it’s
going to evaporate. Soda and soft drinks don’t
turn harmful as fast as they evaporate, but
good luck keeping down carbonated red-shit
when your stomach hasn’t had that much
sugar in years. The freeze-dried coffee lasts
for 20 years though; I’ve seen entire Taker
crews die fighting over coffee tins some basic
Recessionista wouldn’t drink on a dare.
If you’re really lucky? Maybe you scored
some MREs. That’s five years of good (read:
adequate) eating so long as the stock lasts.
But folks rocking MREs better not have let
anyone know they have them. Flaunting that
kind of nutrition in the Loss is a good way to
get shot.
And that’s pretty much it. We’re five years
in now. Starvation and dehydration killed
more than any other element of the dwindling
combined. The people still left alive knew how
to farm already, learned real fast, or became
indispensable to the first two groups.
PopulatIon CullIng
Survival after the amputation depended on
time, specifically what we Lost tend to call
the “Rule of Three.” These aren’t official,
psychological symptoms or anything, but
everyone that managed to live this long went
through three major steps.
A. You realize looting to fulfill a need isn’t
sustainable.
B. You find looting to fulfill a need has
become impossible.
C. You find a way to fulfill the need yourself.
Ideally, you want the maximum amount
of time between phases A and C. If A and B
happen at the same time? You’re thrown onto
the mercy of the other rules of three: Need
shelter? 3 hours. Need water? 3 days. Need
food? 3 weeks.
It’s an approximation, but the 3s are a
safe bet for an average pre-Crash soft-body.
Nowadays, we have plenty of stories about
hard-asses that lived off nothing but rainwater
for months, but that heroic, based-on-a-true-
story inspirational shit only happens after the
Loss has whittled all the weakness from a
person with its dull blades. Most folks couldn’t
hope for more than the 3s in the best of
85
 survival situations...
So that’s thousands dead just from the
Rule of Three. Those numbers are nothing
compared to people killed by “pre-existing
conditions.” The Loss does not accept people
with pre-existing conditions. There were
nearly a million people with HIV/AIDS before
the Crash went down; if those folks were on
the wrong side of the border, nobody kept
delivering their retrovirals. Diabetic? Finding
insulin that hadn’t gone bad in some dead
refrigerator was nearly impossible. Saved by
an organ donation? Not once the rejection
drugs stop.
The tragedies reached far beyond those in
need of daily life-saving medication. Addiction
to recreational drugs claimed thousands.
Hearing the casualties click their teeth
outside your walls all night is not the best
time to go through withdrawal. Even people
that “just” suffered from depression got
claimed by their disease. I mean, the most
dangerous side effect of antidepressants —
suicidal impulses — is primarily triggered by
em po ra ry
The history of the cont
mos t in fa m
in shocks. Some of the
-f iv e y ea rs ,
of the past thirty
t s ca rr ie d ou
viewed as sadistic ac
t he r co
regimes, were in fact ei
pu bl ic
intent of terrorizing the
fo r t he in t ro du
prepare the ground
market reforms.
-Naomi Klein
86
missed doses, and the thing that interrupted
treatment happened to be the most tragic loss
of life in human history. The news of homo
sacer killed people as quickly as actually
blowing the bridges.
Obesity wasn’t great for avoiding casualties.
Neither were assistive technologies that
were perfectly fine in the old world, such as
wheelchairs. Those with moderate to severe
developmental disabilities needed people
willing to risk their lives for them, or else...
This isn’t to say that the Loss is now solely
populated by the hardened survivors of a
eugenic super-race (though a certain brand
of Believer would love to think so). Outside
the Hunter administration, the majority of
humans aren’t monsters. They helped each
other, and one of the major motivations for the
first Takers was making runs for things like
medication. Many with pre-existing conditions
survive in the enclaves today, and they remain
vital contributors to their new communities.
But thousands didn’t make it, and every single
person was someone’s family.
fr ee m ar k et was written
ou s hu m an ri g ht s violations
w hi ch ha ve tended to be
t by an t i- democratic
ed w it h t he deliberate
m m it t
ac t iv el y ha rn essed to
or
ct io n of radical free-
RIse of CarrIon Economy
The Carrion Economy got its name because
all our trade lives inside the corpse of the old
world globalism. To understand it, you have to
understand how the host died.
There are three major types of economic
collapse. The first and most common is a
speculative bubble. In the Education Default,
the market considered student loan debt a
capital good. Payment on those loans created
financial capital. The profits from buying the
debt were initially so good that everybody got
into the game. Demand increased the price of
the debt bundles to the point where expected
financial capital outpaced the realistic output
of the capital good. In short, they dumbly
expected every college kid to help pay back
trillions in debt despite stagnant wages since
before they were born. When the market
realized there was no way it was going to get
the financial capital it had stupidly expected,
the value of capital goods plummeted. Costs
exceeded profits instantaneously as everyone
realized the financial capital they’d been
banking on never existed.
Speculation bubbles are bad, but they’re at
least based on predictable cycles of human
stupidity and greed.
The second type of economic collapse
comes from war. Capital goods, like laborers
and equipment, get destroyed in war, but the
losses to the global economy are offset by the
flurry of production caused by conflict. The
capital doesn’t turn out to be imaginary, but it
gets lost through redistribution. The victors
use the new capital goods to create more
wealth, and they trade the scraps back to the
losers for financial capital. One man’s bust
becomes another’s boom.
The master/slave dynamic at the end of
a war happens daily among enclaves in the
Loss. Our troubles go so much deeper than
that.
The rarest collapse stems from natural
disaster. A volcano erupts, a tsunami hits —
the economy tanks because real capital goods
are wiped out on a massive scale. There’s no
87
 one profiting off the suffering of others, so
trade offers no respite. There was nothing
imaginary about the lost assets; everything
lost was vital to maintaining society. This last
type is the hardest to recover from.
The Crash was most similar to a natural
disaster, but the scope was immeasurably
larger than anything in history. Yet even this
fails to describe the current situation. The
obstacles to our recovery are so much more
insidious.
Normally, when large swaths of capital are
wiped out in an instant, the only option is to
start over. Rebuild from scratch. Find a new
way. But after the Crash, the majority of our
lost capital goods weren’t truly destroyed;
they were just inaccessible. Raw materials,
machinery, land, real estate — all of it is just
lying there, waiting to be snatched by the first
over the fence.
So, in the Recession, you have this
unprecedented destruction of capital. It
causes an economic depression so severe that
replacing the means of production requires
dauntingly expensive investment and decades
of development. Yet... a “quick and easy”
solution lies just over the river. The Loss is a
bank where the vault is endless and the bills
never come due. The good times aren’t gone
forever; people need only walk over and pick
them up off the ground.
But here’s the thing: the Recession has a
reverse speculation bubble working for it: a
surprise surplus. All those folks they wrote of
as dead? Most of them didn’t get the memo.
For the Recession economy, the lives of the
Lost are free money, meant to be spent as
quickly as possible.
How many lives are you willing to pay to get
back the good life? That’s the question of the
Carrion Economy.
FoundatIon of the DHQS
Operation Utility saved a lot of lives, but
“the Whisper” pretty much assured it was
going to be regarded as a failure. JSOC
had its hands filled maintaining the border
before the Hunter administration purges
88
began. Afterwards? Pretty much everything
was slipping into chaos: food riots, fresh
outbreaks, Canadian insurgency attacks.
Nobody was looking to replace the various
armed services — veterans of the Crash relied
on the pride and identity of their particular
branch more than ever before — but it was
clear the security apparatus was failing the
Recession.
The first major action of the restored (read:
replaced) executive and surviving congress
was the creation of the Department of
Homeland Quarantine and Stewardship. The
DHQS.
Everybody’s enclave has their own name
for them. The Ducks. The Dicks. The FUQS.
Imperial Stormtroopers. Citizen Cains. Judas
Boys.
Needless to say, we Moths aren’t fans either.
ContrIbutIng EntItIes
The government reinstituted the draft with
two years of mandatory armed-service across
the entire Recession, and nobody did much
besides say thank you. After all, getting
conscripted out of Free Parking ghettos at
least meant you wouldn’t starve. If you were
old enough to grow half-a-titty or a wispy
mustache, you lied about your age and signed
on the dotted line.
With force levels slowly rising back to pre-
Crash levels, about a third of all new recruits
were siphoned away from other armed
services and trained for the new DHQS
army. The newly installed DHQS command
structure had been poached from other
branches due to their expertise or repurposed
after their previous assignments went defunct.
Pretty much anybody that survived Utility,
made it back, and stayed loyal got pulled
into the DHQS. After all, they had more
experience fighting the Blight than anyone
else. The vets served as training staff in the
new bases hastily being constructed along the
Mississippi. Those operators that refused to
give up “kicking doors and cracking skulls”
got promised their own special operations
squads hand-picked from amongst the rabble.
They were joined by hardcore elements from
law enforcement agencies like the DEA, ATF,
and ICE. Nobody gave a fuck about drugs,
firearms, or immigration anymore, and
badasses need jobs too.
Department of Defense personnel became
logistical support as AFRICOM, EUCOM,
SOUTHCOM, and pretty much every foreign
theater closed up shop. Special Operations
and Command (SOCOM) had been so heavily
invested in Utility they ended up under the
tent by default. The DHQS mandate also
snatched up enough assets from the Air
Force to coordinate their air operations and
enough Navy folks to coordinate the Great
Lakes defense. The CDC and the EPA were
consumed and militarized. One developed and
enforced procedures to maintain quarantine
while the other became a targeting apparatus,
prioritizing areas of the Loss for government
reclamation, resettlement, and drone farming.
In law enforcement, the FBI was too
involved in the Hunter administration
purges to risk losing their autonomy, and the
Department of State was the government’s
only remaining point of contact between
surviving nations. But the other aspects of
the intelligence apparatus became redundant
under the US’s new isolationism. For MIssIon
instance, most Islamic terror groups lost “The Department of Homeland Quarantine
interest in “the Great Satan” around the and Stewardship is tasked to ensure border
time literal devils arrived, so unless you were security from quarantined zones, to protect
on a new anti-terror squad dedicated to the the citizenry from the infected, to eliminate
Canadian insurgency, you were looking at enemies of the state seeking to spread
a pink slip. That went double for spies and disease, to research treatments for the Blight,
analysts working the desk on countries that to monitor formerly occupied territory for
no longer existed. If the government hadn’t developing threats, to command settlements
given these deep-state spooks a jobs program and expeditionary forces in quarantine
in the form of the DHQS, fuck knows what zones, and to preserve vital economic assets
kind of havoc they would have wrought upon necessary for the reclamation and continued
the struggling Recession government. Better security of the United States of America.”
to place them high up in the new organization In short, a “license to bungle.” Their
and get their devious little minds pointed at mission statement is an unfocused, military
their former countrymen. Let the professional junta catchall that permits everything even
skull-splitters and raw recruits deal with the as it ensures none of it will be done well.
casualties; the spies’ new job was to monitor When faced with struggles still to come in
the homo sacer and ensure they stayed dead. the Recession, it’s no wonder the DHQS’s
solutions were so shortsighted.
89
 Currency FaIlure
Take it from a girl who knows: barter systems
suck. Haggling through every financial
interaction wastes an enormous amount of
time and is a good way to get screwed. Money
is a great invention for this reason. There’s no
getting rid of human greed and corruption,
but currency at least gets that shit done faster.
The problem is that currency requires faith;
people have to believe those little slips of
paper with dead people’s faces on them can
transform into goods and services. It turns
out nothing shakes people’s faith quite like
watching reality die. The near total collapse
of the dollar, and its eventual stabilization,
were vital moments in the development of the
Carrion Economy.
RatIon Dollars
The Free Parking ghettos would have
represented the greatest refugee crisis in
US history even if we’d planned for it. The
fact that something like 65–75% of every
camp was made up of people that heard the
Whisper — people that were not meant to
survive — didn’t help matters. In such places,
the US dollar quickly became worthless.
Firstly, no one had much money in the first
place. Many fled their homes with nothing.
Even if a family had stockpiled cash, most
used it to purchase supplies off profiteers or
to bribe guards in the camp. Millions were
abandoned in pants pockets and suitcases
on the Eastern side of the cattle chute
checkpoints. And who had used cash before
the Blight in the first place? Almost no one.
Banking and credit companies were months
from recovery. No one was accepting plastic.
Secondly, the money left in the system
wasn’t with the right people or in the right
place. People stopped wherever the cars ran
out of gas, leaving the logistical distribution
of the population in total disarray. The need
for food, medicine, water, and other essentials
began immediately, but those lucky enough to
be in the Recession had already begun buying
up everything the refugees needed to survive
with money only they had.
90
To their credit, the Hunter administration
recognized the severity of the situation even
as they were being dragged from power. The
concern wasn’t just theft and crime (though
there certainly was a lot of that). The biggest
threat was outright anarchy as refugees
realized they had no hope of survival. Death
tolls from exposure, disease, and dehydration
were already mounting. With no income
streams coming in to replenish an already
depressed cash supply, desperate people
were going to realize that they outnumbered
those fucks whose suburban soccer field they
were living on. The car camps also didn’t
have fences around them yet. There was no
quarantecture in place to stop pissed-off lot
folk from starting the revolution.
Before impeachment began, the Hunter
administration’s last desperate order created
a new currency: ration dollars. Ration dollars
were a specified currency that could only be
used for subsistence goods like food, water,
medicine, etc. Aid organizations distributed
an allowance of ration dollars to everyone
in refugee camps with populations large
enough to be a threat. In more organized Free
Parking, labor was rewarded with additional
ration dollars, which is how most of the
fences, walls, and other infrastructure used to
police the poor bastards got built in the first
place.
Recession citizens that hadn’t been
displaced didn’t get a ration allowance, but
they could exchange ration dollars for a cash
reimbursement. Essentially, locals were
being forced to sell their hoarded supplies
to the refugees, then exchanging ration
dollars for real money at a depreciated rate.
It left original Easterners with surviving jobs
hurting due to the massive price hike in food
they themselves had created, but it kept the
poor from burning the country down.
How could the government afford to pay
an exchange rate for every ration dollar in
circulation? Well, they couldn’t... so they just
printed more money.
It made some sense at the time. A huge
amount of cash had left circulation during
the Crash, and some of it had to be replaced
to reflect the Recession’s current population.
However, the executive order demanding
the Federal Reserve Bureau print as much
money as possible was the last thing Hunter
did in office. Between all the tribunals,
imprisonment, and special elections in the
purges that followed, no one had the authority
to turn off the mint. By the time someone with
the power to rescind the order came around,
it was already too late.
HyperInflatIon
Hyperinflation occurs when the real value
(i.e. how much bread can this paper buy?) of
a currency depreciates at an accelerated rate.
Regular inflation happens naturally in any
economy, but hyperinflation happens so fast
that the populace exchanges their holdings of
traditional currency for a more stable foreign
currency. As the government started printing
money to cash its own checks, the “foreign”
currency that began replacing the US dollar
was the ration dollar.
The problem wasn’t traditional cash getting
screwed in the exchange between dollars and
R-dollars. The value disparity was intentional,
and it placed the buying power for essential
goods where it belonged. The problem was
that people immediately recognized the shitty
exchange rate and started gaming the system.
Business owners selling goods now only
purchasable with R-dollars began hoarding
them rather than exchanging for US currency.
They used the R-dollars to purchase more
stock for themselves at a better price, or they
sold them to non-refugee citizens at a better
exchange rate than the one the government
offered. Businesses that were supplying
non-essential goods to Free Parking started
demanding payment in ration cards rather
than cash.
Meanwhile, as profiteers started to work
around the system, the price of food and
water continued to inflate. The standard
dollar grew increasingly worthless. Refugees
that were getting back to work — for example,
harvesting the first crops at new emergency
farms — were being paid by the owners in
devalued cash rather than R-dollars. The
exhausted and desperate didn’t have the
strength or resources to demand more, so
business got back to oppressing folks again
after only a few months vacation.
The whole time, the government is pumping
more currency into the system to back up the
R-dollars. The labor markets, already upended
by the Crash, continued going haywire. No
one needed wedding planners or social media
specialists or a hundred other occupations
anymore. Those folks could starve to death
on the street, or they could move into Free
Parking and get an allowance of R-dollars.
The rolls swelled with refugees and
unemployed, necessitating more R-dollars,
which necessitated more currency, which
devalued everything further, requiring more
R-dollars...
While the ration dollars may have prevented
mass starvation and rioting in the short
term, it poisoned the currency system for
years to come and cemented millions into a
permanent underclass.
CItIzen ImmIgrants
Economic classes must be educated and
acclimated to their own suffering. The
problem with turning more than half the
country into serfs overnight is one of training
and expectations. The new proles didn’t know
how to survive in poverty, and they were fool
enough to think they were entitled to their
own lives.
Quarantecture and RezonIng
To their credit, the new government wanted
to figure out what exactly had gone wrong
during the Crash before making any big policy
decisions. Their first action after renewing
ties with the shattered UN was a resolution to
share as much information about the Crash
as possible. Quantifying what was lost, how
it died, and what remains defines Recession
politics to this day, but those early days were
about the big statistics: where did the Blight
hit? How hard and how fast?
91
 It turned out that stop-and-frisk urban
stormtroopers actually found a use for all
those automatic weapons, APCs, and rooftop
missile batteries during the Crash. The
enhanced ability to kill Vectors retroactively
justified Orwellian police tactics by slightly
increasing the chance of survival in cities
where the population was already treated like
the enemy. It wasn’t much of an advantage,
but percentage points in the Crash amounted
to thousands of lives. By Recession standards,
that buys a lot of forgiveness for jackboots in
faces.
The odder trend was a positive correlation
between a city’s age and its chances of
surviving hot Blight. The difficult traffic
situations plaguing historic places didn’t stop
Vectors from tearing through the place, but
the monsters got distracted killing the poor
92
bastards in a single neighborhood rather than
daisy-chaining infections all the way down the
interstate.
Cities built to withstand actual sieges, like
Venice, Jerusalem, or Paris, maximized an
urbanite’s chance of surviving hot Blight.
Some locations with historically preserved
fortifications and militarization, like Cyprus,
actually managed to reclaim the city after
massive infections. If neighborhoods were
designed as closed loops, with vital services
located within a few blocks and contained
within fortifiable district borders, new
occurrences of the Blight could be controlled.
If it could stop guys with swords from
stabbing you, it could stop Vectors from biting
you.
Learning that the city wasn’t a doomed
concept was welcome news: urbanity was
the Recession’s only hope. Rural spaces may
have been the only effective firebreak against
the casualties pouring from the West, but
small towns in America required use of a
car. No one had the gas to maintain the fleets
of trucks needed to keep those people fed,
and that kind of unsustainable distance was
already killing the environment before the
Crash. To survive, the Recession had to pack
people and resources together as densely as
possible. But how to do so without inviting
destruction from the most communicable
disease known to mankind? The answer that
solved both the distribution and public health
problem was quarantine architecture.
Quarantine architecture — or
quarantecture, as it is known — is a
combination of medieval city planning and
dystopian police tactics. Frequent walls and
fences. Security doors on exterior and interior
entranceways. Magnetic locks and murder
holes. Minimal windows set high above street
level. Checkpoints and guard towers. Walled-
off interior expressways exiting into isolated
motor pools, slowly feeding into narrow
neighborhood streets. It’s the kind of interior
decorating that views a recessed tile drain
for cleaning the blood off floors as a selling
point for family rooms. And it’s the antithesis
of 99% of every structure built in the last 200
years.
Obviously, transforming entire metropolitan
areas into easily abandoned, militarized
labyrinths couldn’t happen overnight. The
challenge of bringing resources into smaller,
sustainable communities was far more
difficult than even the security measures.
Before the Crash, every piece of American
produce had to be shipped thousands of
miles before reaching market. Drone farming
initiatives in the Midwest didn’t have the
remote combine technology established until
the DHQS was at full power, so feeding the
Recession would mean converting every non-
essential urban space into either housing or
food production as fast as possible. Colleges
had to be shut down and refugees moved into
the dorms. Sports fields and parks had to be
tilled into farmland. Every possible rooftop
had to be turned into a garden.
Building walls, establishing checkpoints,
laying fence, hauling fertilizer, planting crops
— it was a public works project to rival the
WPA with only a fraction of the labor force
to complete it. So what did they do? Find
another solution?
Nah. They stopped the allowance of ration
dollars. Now anyone in Free Parking that
wanted to eat had to become a manual laborer
or die.
And thus, every person I saved with the
Whisper got turned into a slave.
Free ParkIng Ghettos
Recession propaganda dismisses the
terrifying poverty of Free Parking ghettos as
the result of entitlement. The government
came in and saved everyone with their ration
dollars allowance, but folks spoiled by pre-
Crash life were so ungrateful they started
preying on each other anyway! Because
Pumpkin Spice lattes were an unalienable
right! Or something! Gimme a fucking break.
The reality is as it ever was: people start
acting like assholes when their lives get
shitty. And life in Free Parking is shitty, often
literally. Diseases like cholera and dysentery
came back in a big way. The race to build
shelter against the winter was always a losing
one, and frozen corpses were as common
as human feces in the muddy streets. The
ration dollar fiasco kept accelerating even as
allowances dropped and camp populations
rose. Work outside the subsistence slavery of
quarantecture construction was scarce and
charity scarcer. The only entertainment was
nationalized news, and the only things they
were allowed to report on besides the failing
economy were new Vector outbreaks... which
meant the security forces remained eager
to napalm your entire family at the slightest
provocation.
That much fear and suffering on top of
the worst trauma in human history? It’s no
wonder things got nasty. Armed robbery,
gang violence, prostitution, drugs, human
93
 trafficking — Free Parking has it all. The
eventual phase out of the ration dollar
allowance only made the predation worse.
Five years on, the criminal operations have
only grown more sophisticated and brutal.
Turf is stable and rackets robust. Every camp
is cut into little fiefdoms, each group bribing
the DHQS guards to look the other way as
they leech off a perpetual victim caste.
We call the bosses that run Free Parking
ghettos Valets (they control the lots; you have
to pay them to leave, etc.) Most dealings the
Loss makes across the border have to run
through these sociopaths, and they don’t buy
anything for the good of their community.
They smuggle to perpetuate the lawless
kleptocracy they live in, and who can blame
them? If they hadn’t sold their souls, they’d
be working themselves to death on 16-hour
construction shifts.
Trust me: the hardest Takers I know
jumped the border to get away from Free
Parking.
Labor Struggles
If we want to get all Adam Smith-y about
it, certain skills just transfer better into
criminality than brute force labor. It’s
economically predictable that “rational
actors” able to do something more productive
than slave away in a field would choose to do
so. The Recession government knew ending
the R-dollar allowance would turn every
refugee lot into “a hive of scum and villainy;”
they just didn’t give a shit so long as their
societal redesign got underway.
And it did... in a fantastically inefficient,
bloody fashion. It turns out programmers,
marketing executives, and literature
professors weren’t very good at stringing
barbed wire or planting sweet potatoes.
The Education Default happened precisely
because we were over-educated before the
Crash. After it launched half the population
back into subsistence farming? There hadn’t
been a labor skill mismatch so extreme since
Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Withholding vital
goods to coerce millions of workers into a
94
new labor market might have worked, but they
certainly weren’t good at or enthusiastic about
those jobs. The DHQS recruits fresh off the
production line kept workers moving, but only
because they didn’t want to be down there
in the dirt with the scrubs. Basically no one
knew what they were doing, and progress was
glacially slow.
The labor mismatch occurred on both ends
of the spectrum. The needs of the Recession
may have kicked most people back into a
19th century economy, but quarantecture
simultaneously promised to bring about the
sustainable infrastructure falsely promised for
to us for decades. New types of buildings had
to be designed. Computer networks that could
wean the populace off Ubiq had to be built
(still working on that). Hordes of mechanics
were needed to maintain the remaining
fleets of manufacturing, construction, and
agriculture equipment, plus everything had
to be converted to work with solar panels,
wind farms, and other energy sources not
easily shut down by outbreaks. In addition
to the administrative expertise required
to coordinate all the above, the Recession
needed the most brilliant medical minds ever
seen to research a cure to the most baffling
disease ever encountered.
The majority of the workforce may have
been over-trained for their new lives as beasts
of burden, but the Recession suffers from a
dearth of highly trained experts to this day.
Sadly, that doesn’t appear to be changing
anytime soon. Retraining and upward mobility
requires education, and no labor sector
got poached for construction, agriculture,
and quarantecture planning faster than
teachers. You can read plenty of Recession
propaganda about the triumphant “return to
the classrooms” dating back years ago, but
considering my little tree orphan can’t read,
I doubt such claims. If they are educating
anyone over there, it certainly isn’t the poor.
MedIcal Advances
As the Recession engineered hyperinflation
and enslaved a huge segment of the
population they’d already tried to kill, it would
be easy to see medical advances in the Blight
as a bright spot in the all the darkness.
Nothing about the Blight is comforting: not
even its mercies.
The Secret of ImmunIty
During peak Crash, nobody sat around
waiting to see if a bite was going to turn. The
Romero Effect assured that every bite meant
a bullet, even before the government adopted
it as a slogan. Person got bite? Person got
shot. It was that simple.
Murder often is.
No disease — not even the Blight — has
a 100% transmission ratio. There is such a
thing as a blank bite. Vector contact may be
far more infectious than casualty exposure,
but it’s still possible in both cases. Any way
you cut it, a lot of people out there shot loved
ones in the head for something no worse than
a flesh wound.
But in the early days of the Crash, not
a lot of people had to deal with this harsh
truth. The kind of folks that “waited to see
what happened” may have gotten lucky once,
maybe even twice, but that kind of mercy is
terminal. A bite only has to turn hot once for
the Blight to wipe out all the good Samaritans
and everyone around them. So while there
were always rumors that certain people
got bit and stayed healthy, the news always
came via hearsay or anonymous internet
commenters. Trying to trace such miracles
to the source usually dead-ended at a pile
of casualties, so the idea of blank bites was
easily dismissible as more Romero Effect
bullshit.
If it was that hard for us to believe in
missed infections, is it any wonder it took us
so long to discover total immunity?
In those early days, we had no way to test
for it besides multiple exposures. To even
suspect immunity existed was to see the
same person infected with Blight on multiple
occasions. Even then, the answer could have
been two blank bites occurring in miraculous
succession, but how are those odds more
absurd than, say, surviving two wrestling
matches with Vectors and escaping both?
Or surviving two bites without being shot by
fellow humans?
Think about it. If you knew you were
Immune before anybody else, what possible
incentive would you have to tell anyone?
Imagine a bunch of Vectors turned you into
a chew toy during the Crash, but you were
somehow lucky enough to get away and
live. You’re covered in bleeding, Blight-filled
wounds, but you can’t work up the courage to
off yourself like a good soldier. Lets say you’re
also lucky enough to have all those wounds
in spots easily concealed by clothing, and you
manage to survive long enough in isolation to
get a change of clothes. After threading the
needle and avoiding so many terrible fates, do
you mean to tell me that when you got back to
your fellow man, you’d volunteer, “Hey guys!
I’ve been bitten a dozen times and nothing’s
happened yet! Pretty neat huh?”
Anybody that dumb is long dead. The only
Immune that live long enough to utilize their
gift are the ones smart enough to shut the
fuck up about it.
LeakIng DIscovery
Despite literally everything working against
its discovery, we have evidence proving that
certain aspects of the Hunter administration
knew about immunity even before Operation
Utility. How is that possible, you might ask?
Good question. We’d like to know too.
Documents proving the existence of
immunity leaked onto Ubiq about a year after
the declaration of homo sacer. As scientific
papers go, they aren’t a scintillating read. The
Immune Papers are basically a collection of
baffled, anonymous scientists sharing wild
conjectures about why certain “subjects”
never seemed to get infected when exposed
to the pathogens. Redacted of all names
and dates, it would be easy to dismiss the
studies as a cheap hoax, but their release
occurred across multiple organizations at
the same time. Immunity documents were
uploaded from secure IPs at the Department
95
 of Homeland Security, Department of
Health, and the CDC simultaneously: down
to the second. Furthermore, while certain
documents remain the same across all
sources, the moles in each various entity
included unique emails from dozens of
redacted staffers referencing the core
research papers. Unlike the scientific reports
themselves, these emails were helpfully time-
stamped and dated back to a time when it was
still possible to consider the Blight a meme.
Whipping the reams of disorganized
documents into actionable shape took a lot
of work. Sadly, any professional journalism
that could have helped us was long dead; the
DHQS had already rammed a hand up the
corpse’s ass and started a propaganda puppet
show. But Ubiq had its own resources, and we
were certainly motivated.
Back then, I was fairly certain the leak was
going to get us all killed. UCity was suffered
96
to live because we allowed people to organize
car pools and trade. I suspected actively
exposing the government’s crimes was the
last straw, so everyone worked double-time to
archive and correlate the documents before
the drones came.
The DHQS’s actual solution was much
more elegant. It came in the form of a simple
command: broadcast an incoming press
conference to everyone or they’d blow us up. I
held my nose and pressed play (see p. 97).
The DHQS was competent in a way
the Hunter administration could have
only dreamed of. In their very first press
conference, they had threatened the Moths
into broadcasting their own disgrace.
Simultaneously, they managed to throw
the most urgent news development since
the Crash into doubt, obscuring any
wrongdoing in the same fog of Romero Effect
misinformation we’d all come to loathe.
Watching that announcement... that’s the
moment I truly understood the relationship
between the Moths and the Recession. The
stratostructure is only one perk to keeping
us alive. The real reason they never finish the
job is that we’re more profitable as bogeymen.
The DHQS blames their every crime on the
Moths — a devil everyone can see but no one
can touch — and while every dumbass in the
Recession glares hatefully at me up on my
mountain, those fuckers take the opportunity
to rob America blind.
The SupressIn Mystery
We didn’t give up after a single press
conference, but continued digging only
revealed deeper questions.
It was clear my analysis of the leaks wasn’t
going to be trusted any longer. I passed the
job along to a group of Crusaders we’d been
working with. As full-blown cultists, their
credibility was only slightly greater than my
own, but at least they were cultists worshiping
the concept of a cure. They had the medical
personnel to understand the science, and no
small number of true journalists — the last of
their dying breed — were attracted to the faith.
They had the skills needed to package the
information into something digestible.
People can read the complete findings
for themselves, but the results could best
be summarized as “always unsettling, never
satisfactory.” We learned the rumors of
secret kidnappings during the evacuation
were true. Thousands had been processed
through heavily militarized chokepoints and
given mysterious blood tests. It always ended
the same way: people waited the night for
government forces to escort them to safety...
and woke up to find the troops already gone,
absconded with a dozen or so civilians
identified from their tests.
More insane Loss legends got confirmed.
A couple of folks claimed to have escaped
from fortified secret Loss research facilities.
They’d been kidnapped and experimented on
for weeks. A few that got out were missing
limbs from repeated tissue extraction, and

The ImmunIty Announcement

The Department of Homeland Quarantine and Stewardship is pleased to announce that our scientists, in conjunction with
fellow researchers from around the world, have confirmed that a natural immunity to the Blight exists within certain
members of the American populace. Estimates derived from lab experimentation performed on brave volunteers suggest that
anywhere from 1-5% is completely impervious to infection from any means. As I’m sure you understand, these ’Immunes’ are
mankind’s best hope for survival and our greatest tool for unraveling the mysteries of this terrible disease. Scientists
are currently perfecting a blood test that can identify these individuals so that they might help us in the race to a
cure. As we prepare to administer these tests, any individuals that suspect themselves of immunity are to report to the
nearest DHQS outpost for future testing.
Until such a time as we have more developments to share, please allow me a somber reminder amidst such a joyous
announcement. We here at the DHQS would like to take a moment to urge the public, once again, to ignore the seditionist
lies being spread by this so-called Gnat and the mutineers hijacking the Ubiq network upon which we have come to
rely. These anti-government radicals already sabotaged the evacuation plan set in place by President Hunter during our
time of crisis, and they hold a major tool of our recovering economy hostage in order to ensure the spread of their
anarchic message. I have no doubt that forged documents concocted by this witch and her followers are already being
dispersed, accusing corporations and civil servants of conspiring to hide this vital information for inscrutable reasons. The
DHQS assures you that this terrorist organization will be brought to justice for their crimes against millions of American
citizens, but we beg for your patience as we prioritize all our efforts towards utilizing these exciting scientific advances.
There will be no questions. Thank you and God bless America.

97
 they claimed hundreds more had been held
prisoner with them. They called the site
“Scrape.”
But what the Loss counts as confirmation
and what stands up in a court of law are two
different standards. The documents only
tangentially refer to things such as “subject
collection” and “tissue extraction.” Enough
people out here had interaction with the
“Scrape Squads” to recognize their torturers,
but every lab’s location had long since been
abandoned and burned. Even if we had found
one in operation, we couldn’t have done much
besides raid it; it’s not as if the FBI can send
an evidence collection team out here.
Most infuriating of all, the documents
portrayed a dizzying, circular command
structure that made blame impossible to
assign. CDC officials thought the Army was
in charge, but they were contracting the work
out to Alosine Corp, who was subcontracting
out to StopLoss, who was to report to the
Department of Health.... In the rare instance
we could piece together the likely identity of
a program participant, investigations always
dead-ended: most of the time literally. They’d
been eaten, shot, imprisoned, or declared
homo sacer. Some guilty party had anticipated
which doctors were identifiable and made
sure they couldn’t talk.
The most startling of the documents,
obviously, was the discovery of Supressin
K-7864. The DHQS made sure to announce
“the cure to the Blight” the day after their
little counter-intelligence press conference.
While it didn’t destroy the infection, it could
suppress most symptoms and make the host
merely a carrier. They expected a full-blown
cure for hot infection within the year.
Five years on, we all know that was bullshit,
but I could have told you that day one. They
also neglected to mention that “suppressing”
symptoms meant having your skin turn black
with sinews as the infection crawled along
your nervous system like razor wire. Hell,
they announced the origin of most Latents
before even showing one to the public. All
in all, it was a much sloppier job than the
98
disinformation campaign they pulled on the
Moths only a day before.
The only reason they rushed things was
to get out ahead of the documents. The leak
held the raw data suggesting how Supressin
K-7864 was discovered. Considering it’s one
of the greatest medical breakthroughs of all
time, one would expect to find Supressin in
something a little sexier than a spreadsheet.
At least, until you realize what that
spreadsheet means....
There are varying opinions on this, but as
far as I’m concerned, the Supressin data is
nothing more than a roll of victims. Firstly, the
spreadsheet has embedded U-translate codes
from 26 different languages. Nearly half the
entries come from China, but they fade off
as the timestamps match with the country’s
approaching governmental collapse. It’s the
same with languages from other countries
that never recovered from the Crash. So it’s
obvious this was a shared document, being
used by similar operations all over the world
as the infection got worse.
Then there are anatomical columns. A
person looking at the raw data can scroll
right for days looking at a dizzying, exhaustive
anatomical inventory for each entry: age,
height, blood type, eye color, etc. It’s clear they
were looking for any commonality across their
subjects.
Then, at the far right, there are the most
damning columns: IT1, V, and IT2.
IT1, near as we can tell, stands for “Infection
Test One.” The results come from whatever
they did to identify targets at the secret
checkpoints. It merely reads “Positive” or
“Negative.” Our best guess? They took blood,
threw it in a petri dish with Blight, and
looked to see what happened. If there was no
visible reaction, they assumed immunity. But
everyone in the database reads as “Positive.”
The Immune people they tested, it seems,
were busy elsewhere in the experiment. The
rolls are made up of your average future
casualty, folks like you and me.
V stands for variables. Most of them are
cocktails of chemicals and drugs — usually
repeating in identical batches of a few
thousand — but there is always a callback
code to some anatomical element further up
the row. We assume that’s whatever part they
pulled out of those poor Immune bastards
and injected to see if it had the secret sauce.
IT1 had to be done in a laboratory
conditions under a microscope. After all, if
you test positive in the blood stream, there’s
no way anyone is getting close enough to do
more experiments. We also know these tests
had to be done on humans; the Blight just
kills animals outright. So you need to realize
that these experiments were done on living,
uninfected humans. All over the world. For
months. That’s what makes the results of IT2
so chilling.
IT2 was “Infection Test Two.” It listed a
wider range of results: Hot, Cold, Negative,
Unclassifiable, and Asymptomatic. Hot means
Vector. Cold means death, torpor, and casualty
transformation. Negative meant immunity or
lab error. On negative results, you usually see
the list of anatomical identifiers repeat until
the results land Hot or the annotation “subject
moved to sampling” appears.
No one knows what Unclassifiable means.
Disconcertingly, in the three instances of
Unclassifiable results, no one posts from
that IP address for the remainder of the
experiments. If I had to guess, I’d say
Aberrants.
Lastly, there’s the Asymptomatic result.
That translates to what we know as latency.
There are a few hundred scattered throughout
the test that turned Latent naturally. Scrolling
down the list, you can see the scientist
try the same variable again and again on
different subjects, hoping for repeatable
results, striking out, and returning to wild
99
 conjecture. It’s not until entry K-7864 that the
Asymptomatic results become repeatable.
Using a combination of antibiotics and bone
marrow from the Immune, every entry after
K-7864 ends up Asymptomatic. They repeat
variable K-7864 over two hundred times
before they’re satisfied.
That’s when they discovered Supressin...
on they eleventh letter of the alphabet, after
cycling through 9,999 subjects for A–J. That’s
107,854 victims later, plus another two
hundred and one innocent saps treated to the
joy of Blight coursing through their veins.
The DHQS is going to say that wasn’t the
methodology. They’ll make up some bullshit
about repeated test subjects, volunteers,
or computer simulations. But the excuses
change every time, depending on who in
the administration answers and the current
political climate. You know what doesn’t
change? 107,854. The number stays the
same.
No one knew what to do with the Blight.
Science wasn’t working. Rather than abandon
faith in rationality, some people doubled
down. They threw off the trappings of ethics
and collectively decided to throw human lives
at the Blight until it flinched. At the time,
it must have seemed the only alternative
was the apocalypse. Maybe that would be
preferable.
107,854 people at least... all for a drug that
does nothing besides mass-produce Typhoid
Mary’s. K-7864 has a lot more lives to save
before its moral accounts balance.
MedIcal ConscrIptIon
Supressin K-7864 may have been discovered
through mass murder, but who can you
blame for it? It was an international program.
Everyone responsible in the Hunter
administration was dead, imprisoned, or
disappeared by the time the truth got out.
Those that merely “followed orders” aren’t
keen to come forward. Even if the public had
the means of finding all of them, there are
likely so many complicit that we wouldn’t
want to know. What is the Recession
100
supposed to do? Sit on a potential cure out of
spite? Supressin exists now, and no amount of
moral dilemma can argue away the lives it can
save.
That’s the beauty of inherited war crimes:
the new government can condemn its own
profits... so long as it follows through on old
atrocities.
Immune Informants
I guess we should be thankful that Immune
marrow only needs to make contact with the
Blight. Once it does, all infection in the body
mysteriously enters the torpor phase early.
Unlike a transplant, the hematopoietic stem
cells used don’t need an allogeneic graft.
If they did, each dose of Supressin would
require matching three loci on the HLA gene
between host and recipient, making the
treatment essentially useless.
But that’s where the lucky breaks end.
PBSC (Peripheral Blood Stem Cells) don’t
work, and cultures have not been effective
in the production of Supressin K-7864.
Simple blood donations won’t do. For reasons
science has yet to understand, the cells must
be harvested surgically from the red bone
marrow located in the epiphysis of the long
bones. This places the average recovery
time per donation at 20 days, assuming the
marrow is only pulled from a single large
bone like the hip.
So, even without the need to match doses to
the user, the sole substance capable of holding
back the Blight exists in maybe 1% of the
population, and it can only be extracted once a
month in a painful procedure. This makes an
Immune’s bone marrow one of the rarest and
highly sought materials on Earth.
Basically, the invention of Supressin
created an ivory trade, but one that poaches
humans.
The Recession government requires all
Immune citizens to sign-up for medical
conscription. This means forgoing all access
to the outside world and moving into a
specialized, guarded facility where marrow is
harvested at a renewable pace. The “Immune
Heroes” of DHQS propaganda sit around all
day, locked in cells or chained to hospital bed,
force-fed hematopoietic friendly food and
waiting for their charts to say it’s okay to drain
them again.
If I’m being truthful, there are worse ways
to live. It may be a life of constant sickness,
agony, and boredom, but plenty in Free
Parking or the Loss would kill for the three
squares a day. It’s certainly not worse than
those early Immunes had it; the ones they
vivisected in search of Supressin. At least
the DHQS attempts to make their captives a
renewable resource.
But nobody getting scraped clean in a
government hospital is getting paid to do so.
The only people the DHQS pays for Immunity
are informants. Did you see your friend get
bit twice and never turn? Want to get out
from under that Valet pimping your ass for
cigarettes and ration cards? Just find your
local guard and squeal! One successful tip
pays enough to get an entire family out of Free
Parking. For the skilled Immune hunters, it’s
a great way to sell your soul for a high-rise
apartment.
As for the people betrayed and turned into
a Supressin culture, what if they provided
for loved ones before being conscripted?
Well, their families are shit out of luck.
The government pays for snitches, but the
Immune donate “for the good of the nation.”
If it was the other way around, people might
hold some solidarity with the Immune
instead of selling them for a quick buck.
The markets can’t tolerate that, and so the
majority of Supressin’s production costs come
from bribes getting people to rat on those
“deserting their genetic duty.” Most Immune
turn themselves in now; at least then they can
give the one-time bonus to their loved ones.
Once someone’s inside, life is more than
binge television and foot-long needles. There’s
no shortage of stories about “deep cuts:”
times when the production quotas don’t
agree with the schedule of the human body.
The number of Immunes in medical service
missing arms and legs ain’t because they
cover the exercise yard in landmines. You can
still produce marrow minus some limbs.
“Blasphemy!” says the DHQS man.
“Nonsense!” says the press secretary. “Why
would the DHQS permanently harm brave
Immunes when they can produce life-saving
Supressin for their whole lifetimes?” say the
millions of illiterate Recessionistas, brain-
washed by car-camp propo.
Yeah, I guess. Look how well humans have
treated their other renewable resources.
That’s why there are so many elephants still
around, right?
Black Market SupressIn
The DHQS price for informing on Immunes
is sizable, but it’s nothing on the fortune to
be made selling frozen marrow itself. If the
regulated, government labs are willing to
drain people so hard their bones turn to dust,
what chance do Immunes have with black
market operators?
The most notorious Supressin operation is
still Scrape, which is apparently still at large
in the Loss. According to rumors, the original
mad science lab responsible for discovering
Supressin never shut down. Nobody can
agree who runs it. Some say StopLoss took
over, others claim it’s a DHQS black site.
Maybe raiders looking to get rich took up the
mantle after the officials closed up shop?
Whatever the case, Scrape is nomadic. No
one can place it for very long, and by the time
anyone looking to shut it down shows up, the
lab has pulled up stakes and moved on. Like
Recession labs, Scrape tries to let their cattle
recover in order to maximize their profits, but
traveling the Loss is nearly impossible at the
best of times, not to mention doing it with a
bunch of wounded prisoners in tow. Before
Scrape relocates, they “render” the herd down
to the bone and worry about kidnapping new
stock later. Some people claim the whole
enclave is just a Loss legend, but try telling
that to the mutilated few that claim to have
escaped.
At least Scrape will allow donors to recover
if it fits their bottom line. There are plenty
101
 of Valets and raiders selling frozen red
marrow on the black market. If an Immune
gets caught by one of those groups, they’re
deboned like fucking fish while still alive.
And even that’s preferable to capture by the
Church of Holy Communion. Those vampiric
psychos believe Immune blood provides
immortality or some such shit. Ugh... I’d
rather be eaten by casualties.

AdmIttIng Latency
Immunity, and the drug derived from it, may
be responsible for the majority of Latent
infections, but the Blight sometimes decides
to go into torpor for no goddamn reason at
all. There were “natural” Latents before we
discovered how to produce them en masse,
and the announcement of Supressin K-7864
meant admitting that there was a grey area
between casualty and healthy human. It was
possible to carry the Blight without dying
from it or killing for it... at least for a time.
The drug took a condition far rarer than
even immunity and made it undeniable. The
Recession just shot Latents before, despite
rumors of their existence. But now latency
was the only insurance they could sell against
the terrible Blight. Nobody would stockpile
their magic drug if it could only save them
for a bullet to the brain. The shoot-on-sight
designation would have to change. only to be gunned down by your fellow man.
Persecuted underclass would have to do. But I can also sympathize with those who
didn’t stop to question why these black-veined
The Naturals In HIdIng things coming at them moved a little different
I’m not going to trot out the “I have Latent than the others. If you witnessed a Latent
friends” bullshit. I control a small army; I’m get shot anywhere but the head, it got up as
beyond online performative gestures, even a Vector. If I thought everything with black
when discussing the uncomfortable truths: veins was going to revert back to Vector speed
I get why we shot Latents during the Crash. again, my trigger finger would get itchy too.
I’m not saying it was right or smart, but I I guess all this is to say that, if a bleeding
understand the choice to pull the trigger. If heart liberal like myself still gets unnerved by
Banhammer wants to scream at me about the sight of the Latent, it’s no wonder so few
my “clean privilege” for saying that, I suppose of them survived. Mercy for those that need
I deserve it, but I can recognize more than it the most is always in short supply during
one truth at a time. I can acknowledge that a war. Factor in the undeniable, inescapable
surviving an attack and the agony of infection threat Latent bodies present to Blight
must be horrifying. I can mourn the tragic quarantine? I bet no more than a dozen were
irony of living through a supernatural violation alive in the Recession by the time the DHQS
102
admitted the condition existed, all of them in
hiding 24/7.
But the government had to trot out some
test subjects to prove Supressin worked. They
had to give doses to their soldiers in the field
to ensure they kept fighting, and they had to
deal with those forced to take the shot. For a
while there after the leak, it really did seem
like the Recession was going to make a place
for the Latent. People that had been in hiding
since the amputation slowly began revealing
themselves.
Big mistake.
The Mass Pardon
In the flattering interpretation of events, we
ascribe the fallout from the mass pardon to
bureaucratic idiocy. After admitting Latents
existed the government supposedly got
flooded with a lot of anxious questions from
people worried they were going to jail for
shooting a Latent. It’s a fair concern, I guess,
though I question how many actually called
their congressmen and asked, “Hey, it turns
out I committed a murder. Even though there’s
no way to prove it and no witnesses, should
I worry about you coming to arrest me?”
Thus, for the public good, the White House
announced it would be using Posse Comitatus
(yes, the Recession was still under martial
law, technically) to pass the Federal Imminent
Infection Exclusion Clause. The FIIEC waived
the government’s right to prosecute all violent
crimes in instances where the Blight could be
proven a “reasonable threat.” This law would
essentially wipe from the record all previous
crimes against Latents, as well as a number
of other accidental killings on account of
wounds misperceived as bites. Of course,
the executive branch wanted to give the
appearance democracy was still a thing, so
they said the law would be passed later that
week in a special congressional session.
They planned on passing one soon. After
that moment, “veiners” would be considered
human again. But announcing that the law
was planned and not already on the books
basically set the clock on Latent hunting
season. Right as those naturals started to
come out of hiding, every asshole got the
message that hate crime time was running
out.
The suits will say it was an unfortunate
oversight; a tragic misreading of the public’s
emotional state. I say the DHQS wanted a
few hundred less Latents to deal with. I can
count the number of natural Latents that
survived through the passing of the FIIEC on
my hands. In Free Parking, where most had
come to hide, the lynch mobs numbered in
the thousands. You’d think people would make
it quick, what with the infection risk. But no.
A lot of people see Latents as no more than
zombies that can feel fear. At least one fresh
outbreak occurred because the gang beating
got too enthusiastic, slinging Blight-strewn
blood into someone’s eye.
ProductIve QuarantIne
After the mass pardon incited genocide, the
government had to act “for the safety of its
Latent citizens.” Suuuuurrrreeee. They were
never going to let Blight carriers live in their
new quarantecture cities; this way the DHQS
didn’t lose their precious moral majority.
There are only three operating Latent
communities in the Recession. One is the
Potemkin village of “Haven,” located just
outside DC. If the national media needs
to show how great it is to live Latent, they
grab footage from the caged suburb where
every trust-fund boy and senator’s daughter
unlucky enough to get bit goes to retire. They
have Latent guards, in case anyone dies of
natural causes and goes Vector. Otherwise,
Haven residents get to live closer to pre-
Crash splendor than nearly anyone else in the
country. They pay rent in daily reenactments
of a black-veined version of Leave it to Beaver
and by fueling anti-Latent groups like Triage.
The vitriol you see spilled online against the
“Latent welfare state” is fueled entirely from
doctored Haven footage. It keeps the plebs
eager to inform on each other if anyone ends
up having to take a dose of Supressin.
Most Latents live in a more brutal reality.
103
 It’s not a coincidence that the other two
Recession Latent communities are right on
the Great Lakes Line at the most actively
invaded sections of the border. When the
bodies start building a ramp that might break
quarantine, guards throw the Latents out
of their tents and over the wall. They move
thousands of corpses to the incinerators every
month: men, women, and children slaving for
days in the brutal cold. Sometimes the guards
shoot any Cs that come to attack the work
crews. Sometimes they just laugh and take
bets. Needless to say, you don’t see a lot of
reporting from inside the Great Lakes camps.
Then there are the Latent communities
the government doesn’t even acknowledge.
If the DHQS needs slave labor that can’t get
infected, they ship Latents out to their Loss
settlements and work them until they die.
How your average soldier rationalizes this shit
is beyond me. Statistically, soldiers are the
most likely to go Latent in the first place; they
have the easiest access to Supressin K-7864
and come into the most contact with Blight
most often.
Perhaps every DHQS private believes he’ll
be sent off to The Latent Regiment. It’s true
that most soldiers that survive the Supressin
shot get recruited, but the LR is far from light
duty. They are basically the DHQS’s version
of the French Foreign Legion. The unit
polices itself and roams where it likes in the
Loss whenever off mission. There are horror
stories about entire enclaves wiped out by the
LR on leave. But their shitty behavior doesn’t
extend solely from malice. The regiment
is essentially on a death march around the
wasteland. Their members’ terms of service
are extended indefinitely, and the spooks in
DHQS throw them at the worst jobs. The
survival rate is so low that the LR’s ranks
have cycled completely at least three times in
the four years since it was founded.
Latent TraffIckIng
You know who doesn’t give a shit if you’re
Latent? Enclaves.
Well, most enclaves. There’s still a lot of
104
prejudice out here in the Loss. But even if
there’s a strong anti-Latent sentiment in a
community, most can’t afford to turn them
away. Someone that can get bit and keep
fighting is just too damn valuable to pass
up. Latents can loot the dead, clear fences,
and scout without fear of infection. Your
average Taker crew that doesn’t have a Latent
on payroll is willing to pay big to get one,
infection risk be damned. In the Loss, most of
our pre-Supressin Latents have either retired
or been promoted to run entire enclaves. They
even have an entire city to themselves called
Leper.
For all the terrors of the Loss, a Latent
at least has a chance out here. The greatest
cause of latency, Supressin K-7864, is only
available at an enormous cost through
the black market, yet the Loss has more
Latent people in one state than in the entire
Recession combined. Some view smuggling
Latents out from under the DHQS’s boot
as emancipation, but just as many see it as
workforce recruitment. Either way, there are a
lot of operations on the border now designed
exclusively for Latent trafficking.
HIghbury v. USA
It’s barely a year after the Crash. The
Recession has created a jack-booted fascist
army and plans to extend martial law
indefinitely. Their only plan for controlling
the worst refugee crisis in history involves
devaluing two national currencies at once.
Meanwhile, the proles not busy starving to
death are selling each other out as fast as
possible, turning the Immune into livestock
and the Latent into slaves. And all the while,
the worst plague imaginable keeps knocking
on the door.
So what does it? What spark threatens to
light the fires of revolution?
A fishing shack.
I hate how dumb history can be sometimes.
I’d prefer the assassination of a duke, but we
owe our modern condition to a fucking fish
shack.
GenesIs
Most of the Mississippi border took care
of itself once the bridges were blown or
fortified. The Great Lakes Line was another
story. Roughly 200 km of the border had
points where casualties could wade across.
Fortifications had to be erected fast. They had
to be sturdy enough to stop not only the dead,
but also desperate refugees fleeing the Loss.
In their haste, mistakes were made. Those
in the armed services not being forced into
the DHQS spent the first two years tweaking
the Great Lakes Line according to new intel
and logistical demands. One such instance
occurred on the St. Louis River. Initially,
the military fortified a small island in an
area where the river forked and came back
together. The hope had been to fortify the
Western bank with a fence, then use the
island and the eastern bank as two emergency
fallback positions. As more mobs kept
stumbling into the area, Chicago Command
made the call to abandon construction on
the western bank. The garrison on the island
was to keep construction on the eastern
back covered from attack until the fence was
completed. Once finished, the island garrison
would recede behind the wall and abandon
the island to the Loss.
The island contained almost nothing except
a single fishing shack. Little more than a
wooden hut, the building was owned by a man
named Mason Highbury. It was the last piece
of property he owned that hadn’t been given
up to the Loss. He’d lost millions in the Crash,
along with his entire family, and now he was
going to lose his little shack.
The story had a lot of pathos. In order to
navigate the atrophied capillaries of sympathy
in the Recession, nothing but a tearjerker
would do, but it still wouldn’t have been
enough without juice. Luckily, Highbury’s
sympathizers had big, big pockets.
Corporate Appeals
For all the tragedy that plagued his life,
Mason Highbury had been blessed in one
very big way: he was the retired CFO for the
largest bioengineering corporation in the
world.
Alosine was one of the few agricultural
giants to survive the Crash largely unscathed,
and it had busied itself ever since trying to
snatch up every government contract possible.
They also recognized the currency problems
the Recession was engineering for itself and
that the billion dollar contracts they were
being granted for the development of drone
farming and new crops might soon not be
worth the paper they were printed on. For
months, executives had been trying to play
a longer game. They didn’t want payment
in money; they wanted salvage rights to
abandoned land and asset seizure whenever
the Loss was reclaimed.
The legal status of such property was a
complete unknown. The unprecedented
situation kept the government from promising
anything except money, which made Alosine
demand more to counter risk, which led to
printing more money, which led to more risk,
etc. Alosine knew the situation was untenable,
but they couldn’t find a way to break the
stalemate until one of their former employees
lost his fishing shack.
The shack and surrounding acres had been
Highbury’s property all through the Crash.
Now it was being declared Loss as a result
of redrawing lines on the map. But if the
government could declare eminent domain
and seize Highbury’s land, what was to stop
them from doing the same for everything west
of the Mississippi? What, if anything, was
there to stop the DHQS from stealing 65%
of the country once the last casualty rotted to
dust? Was the Blight being used as an excuse
to establish a kleptocratic military junta?
Though Alosine would pitch him as such,
Highbury wasn’t some yeoman farmer
divested of his last possession by an evil
bureaucracy. He was a bargaining chip being
used by a soulless corporation. If the courts
ignored the case, Alosine had the juice to
make a big stink about it. With every denied
appeal, they threatened to ruin the legitimacy
of the new Recession government. If courts
105
 listened, Alosine got a platform to demand its
payment in reclamation property.
By the time it got to the Supreme Court,
Alosine had partnered with the legal
departments from a dozen other corporate
entities. They created their own press division
to cover the trial. Highbury was a puppet for
interests salivating at the idea of reclaiming
the Loss for their own.
CrIsIs of ConfIdence
Alosine and the rest had enough juice to push
a message without the cooperation of the
nationalized news services. They had enough
clout to counter official propaganda and,
more importantly, they were better at it. As the
Highbury v. USA moved through the courts,
their simple message got louder and louder.
The good times will never return.
Everything you’ve ever worked for belongs to
them now.
By the time Highbury had to appeal the
decision to the Illinois Supreme Court, riots
106
in Free Parking had surpassed those seen
right after the Crash. The destruction of all
personal property was the straw breaking the
back of the American people. Up until that
point, most had labored in the hopes that,
one day, things would get back to normal.
The Highbury case threatened to break that
delicate delusion, and it became very clear
that if the Federal Supreme Court didn’t hear
the case, the Recession was set to tear itself
apart from the inside.
The number one tactic in legal warfare is
stalling. The government did its best to drag
the case out as long as possible, but pushing
the trial date back didn’t calm the civil unrest;
it merely delayed the slide into full-blown
revolution. Alosine had forced their hand.
To get out of the situation, the Recession
government had weeks to resolve a myriad of
legal conflicts far more pernicious than the
ownership of a fishing shack.
Related PolIcy Struggles
Alosine’s work spinning the Highbury case
was masterful, but no one started throwing
Molotovs because they wanted some retiree
to have a place to store his rod. Highbury was
significant only in that it popped the bubble
of the Recession’s denial. The Valet crime,
the unemployment, the Immune hunters, the
Latent threat — all of it had been tolerated
based on this unjustifiable hope for the future.
As a few lines of legalese threatened to make
reclaiming the old days impossible, people
began to snap.
Millions in the car camps had been literally
stripped naked when they came to the
Recession, only to be starved, enslaved, and
preyed upon. They watched their Immune
loved ones get deboned and their Latent
neighbors imprisoned. And now they learned
the Blight could end tomorrow, and they still
wouldn’t have a home to go back to? A lot
more car camps tore themselves apart with
rioting and Canadian insurgency groups held
a hell of recruitment drive during the trial. could even be expected? How many people,
There were also a series of more cerebral exactly, were actually employed? How could
concerns tied up in the Highbury case. First the government cut taxes to stimulate growth
off, the census data had been rendered whilst trying to fund an entirely new branch of
useless. Surviving states could only guess the military? How could they raise taxes when
at their population and demographics. millions couldn’t even feed themselves?
Free Parking and migration had thrown Nearly 50% of the human population was
congressional districts into complete disarray. dead. Who got their stuff? Their relatives?
It was nearly impossible to run a coherent Which relatives were still alive? Even if you
election because no one knew who their base knew who survived, how would you find
was, where they were located, or what they them? Did a Will still count if the state that
believed. issued it no longer existed? What if there were
Hell, no one knew how many people needed no living relatives? Did property go to the
to be elected to state and federal positions. government through probate? That would only
How was Congress to be run when the entire mean a few million more cases than the court
population of 22 states was declared dead system was ever designed to handle. How
or migrated? Did they need to have special would that property be distributed?
elections for state officials killed in the Crash? What about people that weren’t dead,
If so, who would vote them in? What about the but were homo sacer? What was to stop
legislators that did escape to the Recession? people from declaring each other quarantine
Did the Recession cast them out of power and breakers for the sole purpose of stealing
wait around while they built personal factions reclamation rights? How could you prove
for an upcoming civil war? you’d escaped the West when the government
Next were monetary concerns. How were didn’t even have census data? What happened
taxes to be collected? What kind of income if your inheritance got used or destroyed by an
107
 enclave before the Loss was reclaimed? Was
the government responsible for compensation
because they were the ones that separated
you from your property? Were the homo
sacer responsible for the theft? How do you
prosecute a dead person? What if the DHQS
commandeers the property? Since their
soldiers are still legally considered people,
now is compensation required? What’s the
blue book value for a car abandoned on a
Utah interstate for five years with a casualty
still strapped into the back seat?
What about the Immune? And the Latent?
Did they retain rights to their possessions,
or was everything lost upon diagnosis? If the
Latents retained property rights, what about
Vectors and casualties? Do we need to go put
one between grandma’s eyes before we can
legally sell her house?
Bounty
The fix was in on the Highbury case. No
one in the new government wanted to wrap
up their condemnation of Hunter only to be
unseated by an angry, confused revolution.
The Supreme Court case was delayed only
long enough to get a system in place that
would appease the masses. Put simply, the
ruling said the following:
The government maintained absolute
authority to set quarantine zones. However,
if you owned something before the Crash,
you owned it once the quarantine ended. The
government would seize any property left
unclaimed after the reclamation. Determining
what belonged to whom was now the
responsibility of the DHQS.
The Highbury decision essentially set up
the DHQS to institute the bounty system,
incentivizing the populace to help recover
vital census data and stake claims. Either
way, the new currency was announced an
hour before the Supreme Court even made
the verdict public. The populace slipped back
into the delusion that their lives before the
Crash mattered, and the sitting government
was saved. It also created the Red Market
overnight, but we may never know if that was
108
the best they could do on short notice or their
plan to get the Loss to do their job for them.
How It Works
Bounty is exactly what it claims to be: it’s
a bounty paid by the US government for
information on its citizens.
Before the Crash, every state in the union
used embedded RFID and coded microchips
in their IDs. Social security cards, driver’s
licenses, voter registration cards, and a
half dozen other documents followed suit.
Specialty print requirements combined with
a unique digital signature in the chips made
forgery nearly impossible. In short, American
IDs could be trusted as the real deal.
And most people had their IDs on them. If
they’d been in the Recession for the entirety
of the Crash, proving their identity was easy.
Most who had fled after the Whisper carried
their wallets as well. Even if they’d been
stripped in a cattle chute, their old IDs could
be recovered fairly easily by DHQS excursions
across the river. Some casualties still even
had their licenses on them; those cards could
be collected as proof of death whenever they
wandered too close to a fortified bridge or the
Great Lakes Line.
The bounty system turned old IDs into
a defacto currency. People that turned in
their old IDs received a new card and a fixed
amount of cash for every old government
document. As a result, the census data would
slowly stabilize and the DHQS could begin
cross-referencing proof of life with digitized
property tax records. Any lost data necessary
for such cross-referencing earned an even
greater reward. In exchange, citizens received
a small stimulus and felt more secure about
their prospects in the post-Crash economy.
For every ID collected off casualties without
listed heirs, the DHQS could lay claim to that
person’s property, exchange its estimated
salvage value with corporations like Alosine
for needed work, and use the remainder to
fuel bounty payouts to the populace. And
DHQS was pretty much the only organization
with access to the proof of death bounty,
as they were the only organization with a
mandate to operate over the border.
Interestingly, the stability of the bounty
system only works because of the wealth
inequality present in pre-Crash America. The
government pays out at a rate slightly lower
than the average property rate of one pre-
Crash adult, roughly equivalent to the scrap
price of an average car and the possessions
in a one-bedroom apartment. Giving out that
much value in exchange for every ID would
quickly bankrupt the government, but DHQS
bounty collection offsets the costs. For every
99 casualties that died paupers, one corpse
wanders too near the fence and ends up
having owned a chain of stores or hundreds
of acres of land. Proof of death and a lack
of heirs for one big fish funds the rest of the
program because now the government can
sell salvage rights to that property.
In addition to preventing the collapse of
civil order, bounty corrected the hyperinflation
problem by cementing a currency value to an
old-world standard of physical, confirmable
assets. As a currency, it’s essentially
deflationary. While the value of one bounty
is still much greater than that of the ration
dollar or US dollar, the value of a bounty
today pales in comparison to the value on Day
One. They aren’t printing any more of the old
IDs, so every bounty turned in deflates the
value of the next. The value of the goods that
ID represents also decreases with every year
the Loss goes unreclaimed. This constantly
falling value, tied as it is through exchange
with ration and US dollars, has corrected
the hyperinflation caused by over-printing
currency in the early days of the Recession.
But if there is a mint for bounty, it’s the
casualty-infested Loss. Bounty may have
saved the nation, but it also essentially turned
our prison into a bank vault.
The Loss Monopoly
I waffle on my opinion of the bounty system.
Some days I can’t believe how stupid the
DHQS could have been to give people like us
such a resource. Other days, I literally can’t
believe the DHQS is that stupid, and I feel like
all of us — especially the Moths — are being
played.
On the one hand, the Recession had no real
way to guess how many of us were alive out
here. I limit access to the LifeLines forums
pretty fanatically, and even I’m shocked at
the tenacity and sheer number of enclaves
out here in the Loss. It’s possible the DHQS
figured it would fund proof of life payouts with
proof of death bounty seizures because only
the DHQS would have access to the latter. By
the time it occurred to them that there was
about a million more homo sacer than they
had imagined, it was too late. They’d already
given us a currency through which we could
trade with the Recession for vital supplies,
and correcting the mistake would have meant
the same anarchy caused by Highbury v. USA.
On the other hand, if the DHQS was trying
to get the Loss to do their job for them, I
can’t think of a scheme more elegant than
bounty. Nowadays, Takers don’t just kill Cs
to keep the homestead safe; pulling cards
is the entire business model. Reclamation
is fucking impossible in my lifetime. It’s a
goddamn logistical nightmare only possible
through dreams and magical thinking. It’s the
work of generations, not the work of a single
term limit. So why not get the people already
declared dead to start the work for you? Most
people never pull enough bounty to do more
than perpetuate their own suffering, but every
dead C is one the Recession never has to
deal with. Bounty could just be a trick to keep
us fighting each other and clearing the dead
rather than forming an army to storm the
border.
Bureaucratic fuck-up or hopeless
conspiracy, the fact remains that the Loss has
no shortage of bounty. We have the dead folks
carrying it, all the stuff it’s meant to represent,
and all the proof as to who it belongs.
ConversIon and Bounty HoardIng
Paradoxically, the Loss doesn’t turn in the
majority of its bounty. They hoard it and watch
the price of the few who do.
109
 The value of an ID as a universal unit of and the value remains stable so long as the
exchange between enclaves is far greater than exchanges maintain the value of crypt to
the one time payment received for turning the number of IDs in their vault. Essentially,
it in. For a while there, every enclave was it’s the gold standard, except we mine dead
inventing its own economy, and navigating people instead of rocks.
the differences made essential trade a pain in
the ass. With the DHQS insuring the bounty
as a consistent measurement of value, trade
The Taker’s Role
The DHQS and the Recession managed to
among enclaves became much easier. A
get their little dystopia stable enough to self-
bounty exchanged out in the Loss can be re-
perpetuate, but in doing so they accidentally
earned and traded again, but put it on a drone
enfranchised some of the people they’d left to
headed to the Recession? That’s value you’re
die along the way. Life in the Loss had by no
never going to see again.
means become easy, but the influx of capital
Even though it might seem like turning
and essential goods facilitated by bounty
bounty in permanently is the only way to deal
meant death was no longer a certainty. As
with the Recession, even then we tend to keep
long as the fences stayed up, enclaves could
the cards in rotation. For instance, one bounty
find a niche within the market by selling their
could keep a family in Free Parking fed for a
wasteland as a futures commodity.
week, but the smart move for them is to pool
It wasn’t enough to get most people out of
cards and hire work over the border. Lets
the grinding poverty and constant danger of
say all the families in a tent put together fifty
the Loss. Bounty usually just made suffering
bounty and hire a Taker group to recover...
more sustainable. Still, one group was
I don’t know... a truck full of bicycles from
uniquely placed to exploit the new situation.
the Loss. They spend 40 on the crew and 10
Whatever amounted to political and economic
to bribe a DHQS guard to let them across
power out here had always rested with Takers,
a bridge. Now they’ve got hundred rusty
but bounty only lived over the fence. The
bicycles that cost them nothing to make. They
willingness to risk your ass going over to get it
sell each one for two bounty a piece, netting
became more valuable than ever before.
150 bounty in profit. That’s enough money to
get some of them out of Free Parking forever,
or they could re-invest and steal some more
Post-Apocalypse Is PrIvIlege
The desire to unplug, the fantasy escape from
assets from the Loss.
that endless swell of items on a to-do list, the
Meanwhile, that Taker crew is using their
fruitless longing for simplification — we all felt
40 bounty to buy food, medicine, and ammo
that before the Crash. But we weren’t so dumb
from enclaves too deep in the Loss to trade
as to think we’d have the willpower to go off
with the border, all the while collecting more
and live in the woods by choice. Our resolve
off casualties put down along the way. Those
would cave the second we got a new text
enclaves trade with enclaves even further to
notification about someone liking our selfies.
the West, who in turn funnel goods and more
So we fantasized about some dashing young
recovered bounty back East.
disaster coming along to whisk us away from
The value of an ID is just too good to burn
our own weakness.
on the DHQS, which is why the value of
Nobody in the Loss thinks that way now.
bounty has remained largely stable for the last
There ain’t nothing simple about living in
two years. It’s gotten to the point that most
a world without safety nets. We don’t just
enclaves have their own banks where bounty
go hunt in the woods for sport and wait
can be exchanged for crypto currency. The
patiently for crops to grow while, I don’t know,
crypto currencies — or just “crypt,” as we call
whittling? Everything out here is trying to kill
it — trade easily with Recession interests,
110
111
 us, including each other. It’s not as if most
of us can forget antibiotics exist when our
kids get sick. We don’t resign their deaths
to the gods. You know about every little
thing in the old world that could help you,
but the list of tasks required to get them is
now herculean. There is no going back to
some more primitive, simpler time; it never
existed. Stripped of pre-Crash resources, life
becomes savage, short, and more complex
than imaginable. I’d do anything to go back
to the days where my idea of baggage was
ex-boyfriends and not the faces of people I’ve
killed.
A lot of Recession pundits like to think
they’re clever by calling the modern condition
a “post-apocalyptic society.” Even the ones
sympathetic to the Loss like to praise
our strength for being able to survive in a
wasteland.
Aint nothing “post” about this shit. Ain’t a
goddamn thing about it over and done. Their
wasteland is our world. Their “fate worse
than death” is my fucking life.
LIfeLInes
I’m not going to lie and say everyone took to
the Loss with a charitable attitude, but the
Recession’s image of desperate scavengers
killing each other for scraps the second things
got bad falls short of reality. Cooperation
is the only reason many survived after the
amputation, and everybody that’s still around
five years later owes their life to the alliances
forged in those early days. The occasional
gunfight with competing operations, raiders,
and believer cults is to be expected, but the
same can be said for folks across the border.
Most of the time, folks take care of each other
when they’re able.
After the battle for Ubiq City, my first
priority was to make sure people were able.
Turns out 5.56 rounds don’t do wonders for
servers, and the fight between Traitor’s men
and the loyalists had raged across the campus
for three days. The DAO had kept Ubiq from
going dark, but only barely. Streaming video
had been cut to save bandwidth and the
112
algorithm was disabling audio features by the
time I got back on a terminal, trying to save
what resources it had left for distributing text
packets across the Stratostructure. With the
3D printers and enough time, I’d be able to
bring the network back up to near full-speed
and user load, but it was going to take me
months of work. People out there needed
help right then, and it sure as shit wasn’t
coming from the Hunter administration. I
needed to migrate all the users screaming
for help onto a resource-cheap platform that
could let them find each other easily, but I
couldn’t make it anything too high profile.
Some Recession network architecture was
coming back online, and if everyone’s favorite
social media site suddenly became cluttered
with people asking how to make homemade
landmines, the government might decide
piggybacking Ubiq wasn’t worth the scandal
and send a drone strike our way. So it had to
be something readily available, completely
ignored, and broadcasting packets not much
more advanced than SMS messaging.
So that’s how we got on LifeLines.
Before the Crash, LifeLines was the unholy
marriage of spam, data mining, and a pyramid
scheme. People would lose their jobs in the
Education Default, then click one of those
terrible emails we all used to get: “So-and-
so wants to connect on LifeLines!” They’d
fill out the resume, upload some boring-ass
portrait in business attire, and wait for the
offers to never roll in. LifeLines tantalized the
desperate with offers to send their resumes
to “highly-placed” executives... but only if they
invited all their friends first. The whole site
was shitty adware dressed up like a job fair.
When the Recession finally got some
limited connectivity back, most people weren’t
surprised to see LifeLines email still pouring
into their spam folders. Most had set-up auto-
delete and didn’t even see them. Little did
they know I’d changed the site completely.
The company had been based in Ontario,
so anybody working for LifeLines was dead.
Thankfully, they’d paid a pretty penny a
few years earlier to house their program
on campus for increased connectivity, and
the data had managed to survive the war. I
hacked in for admin privileges, stripped the
site of pretty much everything save raw text
transmission and used their massive email
lists to start contacting folks.
Anyone with Ubiq Specs reporting a GPS
location outside a safe zone had the text of the
average LifeLines spam auto-replaced with an
offer to join a special forum. If you were in the
Loss, I made sure the message got past most
filters and got people talking to each other.
It seems silly now — everybody knows
the Moths infested the corpse of a dead
professional networking site in order to
coordinate survival. With functionality pretty
much restored, it has become just another
social network for Takers. But at the time,
nobody in Ubiq City knew if holding the
internet hostage was going to be enough to
keep us alive. We had to coordinate discreetly
and that’s the best I could come up with on
short notice.
Btw... GNAT WOULD LIKE TO CONNECT
WITH YOU ON LIFELINES!
SuIcIde by Scruple
I’ll admit I put Ubiq’s needs first. If the
network caved, the whole Loss would be deaf
and blind. The Recession wouldn’t have to
worry about pretending we were dead for very
long if I couldn’t keep the DAO running.
There were less than thirty Marine Raiders
and Ubiq employees left alive after the battle.
There were hundreds of urgent repairs
needed within the network alone. Meanwhile,
Traitor had holes in the fencing and buildings
that had to be patched, not to mention the
need to transform a corporate ruin into a
home that could sustain us. We needed bodies
ASAP.
So, for everyone passing through
Colorado, I used LifeLines for its intended
purpose: collecting resumes. Anybody with
programming or tech support skills. Anyone
with bullets or food or water. I cobbled
together a list of everything we needed,
prioritized it, and promised shelter to anyone
that could provide. I called the offer “Suicide
by Scruple.” Folks could waste their lives
trying to run the border, or they could die out
here with the rest of us, trying to help each
other. Of the thousands of Moths in the city
and spread around the Loss, the majority of
them came to us in the first weeks through
those LifeLines ads.
Sadly, not everyone had the means to climb
the Rockies with casualties chasing them
the whole way, but it’s not as if cooperation
and communalism were my patented ideas.
All over the Loss, people used the forums to
coordinate defenses against the dead.
EstablIshment of the Enclaves
An enclave doesn’t start out as a complex
community. It starts as a simple pact.
Everybody who enclaved up in those first few
months agreed to a very simple deal: trade
your skills and supplies for some walls to
hide behind. Urban planning reverted to its
simplest form: shelter against an entire world
trying to destroy your species. Cities designed
for siege was the new model, and people built
on the bones of capitalism’s old fortifications.
Defenses are a must for any enclave, but
they’re entirely dependent upon what could be
secured in a matter of weeks after the Crash.
Some places started based around stashes of
salvageable loot, like malls and online retail
distribution warehouses. Other places smartly
prioritized sustainability and looked for places
with arable land inside a fence, which is
where all those college quads and greenhouse
operations come from. Some even anticipated
the trade that would define us and founded
communities atop commodities, leading to
survivors taking over weapon manufactures
and entire fracking operations.
Beyond the central logic of defense, each
enclave is unique. Capitalism usually finds a
place — if only because we were out of ideas
— but pretty much any social structure or
demographic you can imagine has founded
its own enclave. People weren’t exactly
enamored with the status quo after it left
them to die, so the first new ideology to come
113
 along usually sufficed. There are democratic
socialist enclaves located next door to fascist
dictatorships. Secular councils trade with
believer theocracies. Anything goes.
Inside the enclaves, people do what they’ve
always done together: eat, sleep, fuck, gossip,
worry, betray, support. Between enclaves,
the little city-states make war and peace,
screwing each other as conscious allows and
circumstances demand. It’s just like the world
before the Crash, albeit more desperate and
earnest than before.
The FIrst Takers
Once they’d fended off the casualties, every
enclave had to face an even more tireless
monster: scarcity. Securing a simple
fence-line, healthcare, agriculture, water
infrastructure, energy production — every
enclave seeks to become a world onto itself,
and when that inevitably proves impossible,
they have to find ways to trade and scavenge
for their unmet needs. No matter how well
prepared people were, there was always going
to be some necessity outside the fence.
Being crazy enough to go over the wall and
fetch it became the Loss’s most indispensable
occupation.
The first Takers weren’t running crews
for business. Hell, they weren’t even called
“Takers” yet: they were volunteers for suicide
missions. But when some started coming
back — again and again, job after job — it
became clear the rewards might be worth
the risks. Takers brought back medicine that
saved the lives of children. They killed raiders
and Vectors threatening to butcher the whole
enclave. They put food on the tables of the
starving. Gratitude took the form of payment,
privileges, and eventually power.
Not many “original Takers” have been
working the Loss for all five years. They’re
either dead, escaped to the Recession, or
running the whole enclave by now. We Moths
may be lost for life — the grudge against
my Whisper will never be forgotten — but it
soon became apparent that if anyone had the
leverage to get themselves out of here, it was
114
the ones crazy and desperate enough to chase
work over the fence.
The occupation was still evolving within
the first year, deciding whether it wanted to
stay suicidal altruism or morph into the more
cynical trade we know today. The tipping
point, as always, came from the Recession.
Their fumbling attempts get their shit together
built the utterly fucked system we live in today.
The RelatIve PosItIons
The Loss, believe it or not, operates primarily
as an information economy. Bounty is
nothing more than a standardized price for
information on a human life. Documents that
have an even higher payout — such as tax
records, deeds, wills, etc. — merely contain
more information. Without this trade, the
almost religious faith the Recession has in
reclamation couldn’t sustain itself, and the
fallout from their collapse would spell the end
of every enclave on the continent.
Our version of the real estate sector takes
the form of jobs that secure the salvage claims
of Recession businesses. New corporations
only grow through the promise of domination
in the reclaimed US. We verify their claims for
the future with a price in the present.
The Loss also has a surplus of raw
materials, waiting around to be salvaged,
smuggled, and sold to those with the means
of production. The depressed economy of the
Recession wouldn’t have been able to spawn
what little business growth it has without the
discount provided by our looting.
In contrast, the Loss’s needs are simple:
food, water, drugs, and bullets. We must
constantly fight against the scarcity and frailty
that defines the human condition, even as
we combat the creatures that threaten to
wipe out the species. Yet manufacturing and
agriculture are about the only things going
well for citizens in the Recession, and they’re
happy to smuggle us life-saving goods at an
enormous mark-up.
The Loss also suffers from a lack of
necessary human vices, especially when
they’re the only things keeping us sane. We
seek the relief of entertainment we can’t
produce and illicit substances we don’t have.
Again, the Recession makes more opiates
for its masses than it could ever use, and it’s
happy to numb us back into its service.
Lastly, we need out. There is nothing in
higher demand than an escape from the
Blight. The Recession is the only place that
can provide this, but they make us pay dearly
for it. Perhaps out of fear or greed, though I
suspect they really just resent how much they
need us.
In short, everyone in the Loss is stuck
in a macro-version of the same situation
the Moths live in: we hold the Recession’s
excesses hostage in exchange for another day
of primitive survival.
Red Market
On LifeLines, we call the trade “The Red
Market.”
A “red market” had multiple definitions
before the Crash. It was a colloquial name
in law enforcement for any market that
dealt with human flesh or human beings. In
libertarian circles, it refers to a sector of the
economy that creates no wealth, instead using
overt violence to leech wealth from others.
Sociologically, a red market refers to a system
where all trade is forbidden by the state, but
whose participants cannot be prosecuted
least the state admit such taboo trade exists.
Everything a Taker does is illegal... or it
would be if we weren’t already legally dead.
Takers scavenge from the dead. Takers
demand tribute from the living. Takers
destroy. We do not create.
And as for trading in human flesh? Yeah,
we do that too. We trade our own bodies and
souls for little pieces of plastic carrying the
faces of dead people.
Takers: The Name Evolved
Before bounty, the perception of Takers was
almost universally positive. They were the
undertakers: women and men who bore the
burden of death. The ones the community
turned to in times of greatest sorrow. The
bravest among us who ushered the stubborn
dead into the next world.
But that perception shifted once bounty
became a thing. Now, becoming a Taker
wasn’t just something you did because a
job needed doing. Risking your ass over the
fence could secure a hell of a lot more than
extra rations. The smart and the swift could
actually earn enough to buy their way out. It
didn’t have to be suicide by scruple anymore.
Treasure lived over the fence, and there was
enough of it to buy a ticket out of hell.
The DHQS noticed this and wasted no
time exploiting the resentment online. And
for once, the DHQS propaganda was right.
Takers weren’t heroes anymore; they were
opportunists. They were war profiteers who
extorted the desperation of their neighbors
so they might one day abandon them. They
profited from the pain of the Loss and used
the funds to buy themselves a life of luxury
even some in the Recession would envy. There
were a lot of shitty crews out there who were
merely Takers, stealing from those most in
need to save themselves.
So which is it? Martyrs or thieves?
Well, I’m a Taker. I’ve been over the fence
more times than I can count. I’ll keep going as
long as UCity needs me. All I can say is, while
both definitions may be true, a Taker can only
hold one in her heart at a time. You’ve got to
decide why you’re walking out that gate if you
ever hope to walk back inside it. You’ve got to
decide why you’re out there, or the Loss will
decide for you. Do you survive because people
need you, or do you survive because you’re
owed a life better than this? I’ve seen some
badass crews of both persuasions survive shit
that would kill most to contemplate. But if you
don’t know? If you don’t know why you should
keep running and fighting, you won’t.
115
 THE LOSS

116
A GuIde
All this writing stirred some things better left
settled. I’m taking some time for self-care and
passing this part off to BanHammer.
Ban’s not real active on LifeLines, so some
of you non-Moths might not be familiar with
his role in the crew. Those that are familiar
are probably just surprised he’s going to do
something with a keyboard besides murder
something with it… which I’ve seen him do
before. Twice.
I met Ban midway through the third year.
By then, it was becoming clear this was the
new normal. Raiders weren’t probing the
perimeter as often, but we were still under
periodic attack. Every couple of months,
the scraps of some desperate gang would
throw themselves at the fence, looking to
steal, cannibalize, take over, etc. — whatever
the hell passes for motivation after the Loss
completely hollows you out. Sometimes, I
think they came to UCity just to get shot. We
look kinda like civilization, and death was
worth proving we weren’t a mirage.
But I don’t play mercy no more. We obliged
all death wishes.
Ban’s was the first group clever enough
to get inside, and while the majority was
killed in minutes, one of them got away. Over
the course of three days, he murdered four
soldiers. Each was bludgeoned to death with
a heavy object — slowly, one limb at a time
— but none of their bunkmates had heard
anything. Each was found the next morning
in a broken tangle of limbs, hanging from
the fence and being nibbled on by casualties.
By day four, he burned a server farm to the
ground. He started a minor Vector outbreak
in a refugee settlement and nearly took all of
Ubiq down with the ensuing riot.
By the time we finally cornered him,
he’d fled into the utility tunnels under the
geothermal plant. We called for his surrender
over the PA. I lied and promised we wouldn’t
kill him. A voice echoing from the darkness
promised to literally eat me.
Thankfully, Hipster had signed on by then.
She rushed to stop us raiding the tunnels.
Through Ubiq tracking data and some clever
data sniffing on LifeLines, she’d found out
one of our crews had sexually assaulted a
woman while out on their last contract. They
were new recruits. I’d never met or vetted
them. The dumbasses had called her a “crazy
LALA bitch” in a thread dedicated to the deed.
Bragged about killing her afterwards. On the
forums. Like I’d never find out.
She must have been part of the invader’s
tribe. I deduced this because the majority of
the offenders were now folded into bloody
pretzels and displayed around my city.
After I personally gave the last surviving
rapist a hollow-point severance package,
Hipster urged me to think long term. We had
already lost a lot of people to whatever was
in those tunnels. Getting revenge for those
few who didn’t deserve the raider’s wrath
meant losing more innocents and destroying
irreplaceable equipment. She urged me to let
her go talk to whatever lurked in the tunnels.
Think long term, she’d said. Profit from Loss.
After I told her no, she snuck in and did it
anyway.
A couple hours later, Hipster emerges...
trailing behind her one of the largest, scariest
slabs of infected flesh I’ve ever seen. I just
remember this pale wall of bite scars, muscle,
and Blight veins emerging from the earth.
He carried a giant sledgehammer like it
was a toothpick. The sight of him seemed to
promise that a week’s killing spree in UCity
had been an example of his best behavior.
I know that Banhammer can be difficult to
swallow at times. He makes it easy to dismiss
him as crazy. Maybe he is, but I couldn’t give
a shit. On-the-job deaths have been cut in half
since he started pulling jobs with us. He reads
the Loss like no one else I’ve ever seen. He
pulls cards as fast as Traitor on full auto, with
all the cost of a hammer swing. Out here, we
take crazy if it comes with a side of results.
See, Ban never ‘claved up. He only hangs
around UCity because we’re his new “tribe.”
He’ll answer his specs when there’s a job, and
he might spend a day or two trading Latent-
117
118
side, but otherwise, he’s just out there. All
the time. Your first-gen Taker is a tourist by
comparison. He’s seen more Loss on his own
two feet than every drone in the DHQS. He’s
survived more days IRL (In Real Loss, noob)
than maybe any human being alive. It’s all he
knows; it’s all that’s left.
So that’s why Ban is the only one to write
the guidebook. Every Bait baby wannabe
wants to grow up to be like him. Any real
Taker hopes to die before they become him.
The thread is Ban’s now. He better fill it
if he expects me to deliver his rations this
month. If you expect to survive, you better pay
attention and stay respectful in the comments.
something worthy to grow. The man died. I
am his casualty.
Those that would call me Latent would
also call me mad. Perhaps they are right... but
the fool that once thought words held weight
I have long since consumed. The Loss will
decide for us all. It will write the truth in the
blood of the weak. It always has, even before
it was named.
There is no country but the Loss; no
citizens save those it finds worthy.

Banhammer
Banhammer is a stupid name. But Gnat gave
it to me. She is alpha, so it is done.
There was a man that came before
The greatest talents have been
Banhammer. It had a name too. The name frequently misapplied and have
mattered as little as the man.
And the man did so love to think of itself produced evil proportionate to the
as a MAN. As if that mattered. As if thinking
made things so. It defined itself by reflections: extent of their powers. Both
in mirrors, in eyes, in whispered words. It
thought shadows sufficient to craft a self. It reason and revelation seem to
loved to dress up like what it thought was a
man. It preened, lifting hunks of metal and
assure us that such minds will
calling it strength. It had sex and confused
it for conquest. It consumed and called its
be condemned to eternal death,
hunger “cunning.” It lived not a single true day, but while on earth, these vicious
called this blindness “discipline.”
When the monsters came, it saw only instruments performed their part
opportunity: to live like the movies, to prove
worth it suspected it lacked, to parade around in the great mass of impressions,
its preened body and be seen as more by the
reflections. Once outside, the man died like by the disgust and abhorrence
what it always was: a dumb animal, harried by
a pack of the world’s woes.
which they excited.
From that carcass, I was born. My mother
was the pain of the Blight crawling across my
-Thomas Malthus
nerves like millipedes. My father’s seed came
from the teeth of the dead.
You would call me Latent, but know that
I was Chosen. The new god tore away the
man’s flesh in hunks, providing space for

119
 Lost Places
All places have their seasons. To ascribe
malice to a land is to position yourself poorly
within it. This is a truth of the Loss. Its
delights can kill. Its tortures can redeem. A
Taker’s understanding is the only mediator.
Enclaves
Enclaves are haphazard communities
assembled to escape the horrors of the Loss.
They always fail, to some degree. When they
do not burn or descend into Vector orgy, the
most an enclave can hope for is to hold the
savage tide at bay. The Loss always withholds
some of its gifts from those that hide from
it, and someone must always leave to fetch
them. Outside, the Loss reaps whom it will;
the rest flourish and trade. Those left inside
leech survival from the vitality of these Takers.
120
Most end up like Gnat; they allow the weak
to feed from the surplus of their strength.
Others, like myself, see little sense in such
arrangements.
Enclaves are the most common landmarks
in the Loss. Initially, their locations were
random, based solely around defenses and
resources. Their tribes were comprised of
whoever happened nearby, joined only by
desperation and geography. But after five
years, the enclaves that remain have made
their worth plain. Their walls weathered
stampedes of dead. Their trade routes
connected. Economies stabilized. New orders
and belief were forged by tragedy, and they
united people by more than a border.
I have little use for an enclave, but despite
my aversion, I have travelled to many: trading,
raiding, wandering. I shall speak of a few,
but expect nothing save variety. Each enclave
is unique, a distinct scar upon the face of
the Loss. Those that learn the scar’s shape
and story are rewarded like lovers. Those
that disrespect the wounds invite the same
savagery that made them. Shaped by its pain,
the enclaves now try to shape the Loss with
their resolve.
They fail, but they fail nobly.
UbIq CIty
The mountain compound was built like a
fortress before it became one: sheer cliffs
on two sides, frequent winter storms,
winding roads with elevated firing positions,
a mile-wide kill-zone between tree line and
gate, reinforced fencing topped with razor
wire, plus self-contained electric and water
systems. Ubiq City was supposedly designed
to protect against corporate spies and cater
to the boy-king’s love of snowboarding, but
I’ve invaded Recession military positions with
worse defenses. Palbicke was either paranoid
or protecting some secret forgotten since his
disappearance.
Traitor made a valiant attempt improving
the system. The woods are littered with traps
and concealed surveillance, and he fenced in
the outer buildings originally left outside the
perimeter. When my tribe and I showed him
the weaknesses of his strategy, he adapted
rather than deny the flaws. He would make his
death a challenge. It is all the Loss or myself
can ask of a man.
My original assault depended on UCity’s
own prejudice to destroy it. Palbicke had
placed small businesses and apartment
buildings lower on the slope, intending it as
a consumerist playground for his workers.
These dwellings were apparently still
121
 desirable and, once reincorporated into the
perimeter, drew the most vital staff to the
vulnerable perimeter. This is where I found
my victims. I almost caused a total outbreak
by spitting in one of their cups. Since then, all
Latents have been moved to the exterior ring
and rehoused in the most lavish dwellings.
I see this as a sign of respect to their rights
as Chosen; Gnat calls it defense. Quarantine
housing is peppered amongst clean blocks.
Any invasion is likely to cause instant Vector
incursion, complicating further assault
and allowing defenders to fallback in the
confusion. This outer-ring is called Latent-
side, and it is the first sight those desperate to
join the Moths see.
Further up the slope, the original corporate
compound houses the power plant, server
farms, satellite dishes, and other vital
functions. Full-time Moths live here in office
cubicles converted into cramped dorms. I’m
told this is “uncomfortable” by the weak herd
of programmers that live and work there.
They “suffer” the situation because it keeps
vital infrastructure secure inside a fallback
position. The sensitive computing equipment
also means each office building can be
sealed hermetically against a siege. If only
this security would stop them whining about
the infected now living in their precious loft
apartments....
In the disused corporate parks dotting the
middle ring, Traitor trains new Moths before
sending them out to work in other enclaves.
The fact that UCity sends out crews to
compete with freelance Takers on LifeLines
is not something Gnat is comfortable with,
but Traitor calls the trainees his insurgency.
Hipster calls it franchising. I, as Chosen,
know infection when I see it. Regardless of
label, each official Moth crew sends bounty,
supplies, and intelligence back to the nest.
Gnat would feign scorn my raider days. Her
army exists to draw tribute like any other.
The upper ring is simply called “the peak.”
The 3D printer factories reside there, as
well as the Aloft launch pad and the primary
control room. Only Gnat, Hipster, and their
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chosen underlings are permitted at the peak.
This is to keep “the insurance” secure, which I
am told is a failsafe that will brick every server
in the sky if the city is ever to fall. It may be a
bluff. If so, it is one the DHQS continues to
believe.
Every day the Recession does not smite the
mountainside with missiles is a testament
to their weakness. They would rather let the
Moths continue sharpening their knives than
risk the loss of texting and cat videos. It is why
I like this place. They treat the Chosen well,
and the city stands as a constant reminder of
how weak most humans really are. The Crash
shall finish one day, and all shall be Loss.
From this mountaintop, I shall watch the
sinew spread and infect the land.
Leper
The only other enclave I’ve ever called home
is Leper. It is the Chosen city, but as with all
things, the Loss demanded bloody payment
for its gifts.
Leper started as “Colony #1,” an
experiment from the fledgling days of the
DHQS. It was the first of many forays into
the slavery that is “productive quarantine.”
The idea was to get Latents as far away from
the Recession as possible. The first military
unit of the new order was designed for this
express purpose. Comprised of tactical
engineers, veteran soldiers, and simple-
minded prison guards, they rounded up the
few naturals that survived the announcement
and the hundreds of Latents they’d made with
Supressin experiments, then sent them West
on a death march.
Colony #1 was a nomadic slave camp.
Well-armed vehicles full of cleans would flank
a desperate column of Latent men, women,
and children on a death march around the
Midwest. Those that fell behind were shot or
euthanized via bomb collar: a small charge
of plastic explosive situated above the spine
that all prisoners had to wear. When they
reached fertile ground, the soldiers would
erect temporary defenses. The engineers
would set about assembling drone-farming
equipment to feed the hungry weaklings in
the Recession. Meanwhile, the guards pushed
the Latents outside to construct the sheds
and solar rechargers that would house the
machines. Sometimes, the snipers would pick
off casualties before they reached the work
crews. Mostly, they made bets on who would
survive as they watched the Chosen fight the
dead with shovels, picks... hammers.
Any Lost unfortunate enough to cross
Colony #1 were either shot or forcibly turned
Latent using the DHQS’s copious supply
of Supressin. Enclaves that gave up their
Latents peacefully were allowed to survive;
they burned the rest to the ground and mass
injected the survivors. It kept the labor pool
steady despite the constant losses.
At night, escape attempts were announced
with the pop of a collar’s explosion and the
thud of a corpse.
They eventually strayed too far. In the push
further and further West, fresh troops and
resupply got scarcer. The high-ranking slavers
begged to turn around, but the Recession’s
appetite for grain is as insatiable as any
casualty. The convoy stretched into a valley of
lead-lined hills where the collar remotes were
not reliable, and the guards stretched the
patience of the Chosen until death seemed a
reward. The uprising was bloodier than any
Vector outbreak during the Crash. I’ll never
forget that glorious day.
Today, Leper accepts only Latents and
Immunes within its ever-migrating camp.
Never again shall any inhabitant be bound
by the cage called quarantine. While the
Immune are not sold or predated upon, their
cleanliness makes them the underclass. They
know the kiss of the Blight without the mark
of its black love, so their duty matches their
flesh; they are sent out as diplomats to the
other cleans, protecting the Chosen from the
prejudice of the Lost and the location of Leper
from all who wish it harm. The Immunes
arrange Leper’s trades of surplus Supressin,
military armaments, and services only fit for
Latent-kin. In return, the Chosen protect the
blue-veins.
Not all in Leper see their latency is a
gift from the Loss — so deeply have they
swallowed the DHQS’s chains — but the
enclave remains the wandering mecca of my
faith. I would be there now, were it not for
the ruling council. My role in the uprising
was… not insignificant. The price of freedom
was too steep for some. My hammer is not
welcome there, but exile is a small price to
pay for the Chosen to have a home.
DIstrIbuty
Distributy started as a massive centralized
distribution hub for a half-dozen online retail
stores. It was the first of a series of planned
mega-centers and the largest indoor area ever
to weigh on the Earth. The main building
alone covers over 600 million cubic meters,
and two secondary warehouses approach
half that. Shelves stretch ten stories tall. The
whole compound was laced with miles of
fencing and internal checkpoints to prevent
theft, even though pre-Crash reports boasted
that 90% of the operation was automated.
Pallets of goods were fetched using robotic
lifts built into the structure and transported to
loading bays with drone forklifts. From there,
they went along conveyer belts to 14 drone
launch towers dotting the area
When the Crash came down, the
distribution center seemed an obvious refuge.
It was larger than most cities, yet empty.
It was secured behind multiple fences and
monolithic metal walls. It was crammed to
the ceiling with vital goods that could be used
or traded for survival. However, even with
all its automation, Distributy still employed
thousands. It was an open secret.
The war to put Distributy under singular
control ended only two years ago. Before
then, it was a free-fire zone of drone warfare,
bickering survivor factions, believer cults, and
warehouses fallen to Blight. Having finally
paid the Loss’s price in blood, the compound
united under a republican democracy and
became the closest thing the Loss has to a
metropolis. More Lost live in Distributy’s
walls than a dozen enclaves combined. The
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 refurbished drone fleet is the single greatest
economic force in the Loss besides Lifelines.
Goods within the warehouses can be
scavenged and sold for another decade before
depletion.
But one shouldn’t confuse the enclave’s
newfound ceasefire for safety. Distributy can
be a nightmare for unwitting immigrants.
Food and water are in short supply. Common
diseases run rampant. The powerless
warehouses are lit only by holes cut in the
ceiling and mirrors. The alleys of the interior
are blind labyrinths filled with hustlers,
cults, and gangs. People live in makeshift
micro apartments build into the shelves, and
passerbys are as likely to be hit by a climber
slipping from the rope bridges as they are the
contents of a chamber pot. Even among the
nicer “departments,” political intrigue causes
chaos as the rich vie for election, corporate
spies angle to recover lost inventory, and
Stewards seek to bend the city to DHQS
whims. Even with hundreds of local Takers of
its own, Distributy usually ends up contracting
any crew worthy of the name.
I hate it there. You can smell it coming for
two miles before the eyesore comes into view.
America is beyond power, it acts as in a
dream, as a face of God. Wherever America
is, there is freedom, and wherever Amer-
ica is not, madness rules with chains and
darkness strangles millions. Beneath her
patient bombers, paradise is possible..
-John Updike

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Mont LIner
The Distributy model is catching, sadly. I’ve
visited a similar enclave fashioned inside a
former Dorning assembly factory. The giant
space, once dedicated to assembling jumbo
jets, now houses a towering favela that grows
by the day. The locals call it Mont Liner.
Though still enormous, solar and wind
technology keeps at least some lights on in
the interior, so it’s not quite the lightless urban
hell of Distributy. While her sister enclave
must cut skylights into sheet metal and
gardens into stone, Mont Liner’s flat roof was
constructed to withstand heavy snowfall and
can support the weight of rooftop crops and
water collectors. However, Mont Liner lacks
fences around the perimeter. The factory
floor is secure and connected via skywalk to a
nearby airport terminal, but all else is a sea of
the dead. Reaching the city’s interior means
braving a runway of stumbling casualties and
hoping someone drops a rope in time.
Mont Liner tries to secure more land using
the wings of dismantled jets as barricades.
The dream is to one day clear an entire
runway and open the Loss’s only free airport,
but it is very slow going. Their access to
advanced 3D printing and machinery makes
for steady trade though. They’ve no shortage
of bounty with which to convince desperate
Takers to go die on the tarmac.
The ConsolIdated
Most enclaves are not bloated like Distributy
and Mont Liner. The most typical example
that comes to mind is The Consolidated. The
community is based inside a failing historical
tourist attraction. Before the Crash, it had
been designed to recreate the frontier lifestyle
that would have been found around the 1860s
gold mine upon which the town was built.
Employees and historical re-enactors brought
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 their families behind the outpost’s log walls
when the casualties came.
Its defenses are weak around the
overcrowded log cabins and facades of
Western main street. The remote location is
the only real deterrent, but like most enclaves,
isolation usually proves enough. The town
boasts no more than 150 people at a time.
Any migrants seeking the relative peace of
its woods must live in the old mine. While
secure, the dank stone proves unpleasant
enough that most newcomers don’t stay long.
This for the best; the Loss forgets the small
and unobtrusive, and The Consolidated is just
that. The population is manageable enough
to govern using direct democracy, and the
historical survival skills mastered by the
residents are valuable enough to keep the
town in trade.
MyWay
Miles of distance work to keep many enclaves
safe, but some protect themselves with moats
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of casualties. MyWay is one such place.
Located inside an enormous event center
(if you have to ask which, you can’t afford to
travel there), MyWay utilizes the labyrinth
of tunnels, skywalks, and shared walls
connecting the old city’s tourist infrastructure.
The occupants started as attendees for a
sustainable technology convention, and the
convention center proved an intersection of
utility tunnels, sewers, and pedestrian bridges
linking all the hotels, malls, and churches
downtown. Utilizing fire doors and security
grates as airlocks, the inhabitants slowly
reclaimed large sections of the city’s interior,
one building at a time.
However, MyWay’s expanding clean zones
remain surrounded by the casualty-choked
streets typical of urban dead zones. Few
immigrants can survive the trip. Massive
reclaimed hotels still sit empty. Arable land is
also in short supply. Residents must subsist
on whatever can be grown in the occasional
courtyards or rooftop garden. As such,
MyWay nearly rivals Distributy in terms of
livable square footage, yet only supports a
fraction of the population. Its primary trade
is assuring safe passage. Those that wish to
save themselves days of travel bypassing the
city can hire a guide to lead them through the
dizzying maze of MyWay’s lightless interior.
The ones that refuse to pay are still allowed
to pass, but they can expect no help when
they stumble through the wrong door into a
hallway still choked with hungry casualties.
The Rock
Some moats are still made from water rather
than monsters. Islands have always been
promised lands in the Loss, natural walls
that can never be breached. It comes as no
surprise that Alcatraz inspired an enclave,
twice over.
The first came directly on the heels of
the Crash, but it was doomed to fail. San
Francisco is the deepest heart of the Loss,
surrounded on all sides by the first Vector
hordes and so far West no help was ever
coming. The island’s landmark status in
the bay made it the only imagined escape
for many of the local urbanites. Disease,
starvation, and war threatened to destroy
the fledgling enclave as tens of thousands
tried to raft and swim to safety. These
mundane deaths probably would have
claimed the whole population eventually, but
then someone smuggled a cold bite ashore.
Once the Blight reactivated, Vectors and
overcrowding finished the job.
I worked once with a corporate spy,
infiltrating the Loss for BeeMail’s interests.
She was strong, if a bit weak-headed in her
127
 motives, and she recognized my hammer
for the tool it was. She used her Recession
contacts to secure us a flight out to San
Fransisco so I could help retrieve something
for her deep within the city. I hoped to die, so
I agreed. I thought it would be sooner rather
than later when she claimed we would stage
the attack out of Alcatraz, but all we found
upon arrival was a thriving enclave.
Years after the initial outbreak, a group of
enterprising Takers had spent their fortunes
on a fleet of sailing ships and mercenaries.
Methodically, they cleared the island over
the course of a year. It now houses a modest
population within the cells, complete
with sustainable energy and agriculture
technologies. They use the sailboats to
trade whiskey and fish with other enclaves
up and down the coast. So successful is the
experiment that the island has become the
gateway to the American Loss. Our corporate
128
expedition was one of a many international
intrigues preparing to launch from the
prison. I met Australian deserters fleeing
the Kumatatok war, Chinese special forces
launching sorties into abandoned US naval
bases, and Shinto cleanser cults exchanging
theology with the Black Math. It was so
interesting a place I declined the return flight
once my job was done, but Stewards soon
wormed their way inside and joined the spy
games. Unable to abide their presence, I
found myself wandering back into the core of
the Loss, seeking purer company.
LIght CIty
On my return from the West, I passed simple
trade caravans, too weak to be worthy of my
attentions. Rather than raid, I asked where
a Chosen might find work. The people said
I should seek out Light City. Follow the hum
of active power lines, they said, a sound I
thought extinct.
 Light City is based inside a gigantic
suburban fitness center, the sort of temple my
former self used to worship its vanity. It hums
with electricity, sitting amidst a network of
haphazard electrical rigging like a four-story
tall spider in a buzzing black web. Its windows
are boarded shut, its exterior completely
silent. Further down the block, an old grocery
store shines and blares music from PAs, lit
up like Christmas. It is surrounded constantly
by a horde of casualties, drawn away by the
cacophony from the gates of the real enclave.
Light City’s upper floors contain the
wealthy citizenry, housed among the former
weight rooms and offices. Their existence is
alarmingly sedentary and technical. They buy
all their food and water from surrounding
enclaves in exchange for power. They run
utilities for a half-dozen other communities,
and the power is held hostage in exchange for
their continued survival. In the lower floors
and basement, the real work is done. These
sealed levels house the cardio equipment,
though the gym zombies atop the treadmills
are now literal.
The enclave became a power plant by
converting every machine in the complex into
a generator. Atop the retrofitted machines,
they lash casualties to restraints, then have
them chase a single enclavist positioned at
the front of the room, as if running a spin
class. The dead helplessly chase their prey 24
hours a day, shambling forward until their feet
are no more than stubs. When the creature
can go no more, the workers put it down.
Specialized Taker crews venture outside that
night to fetch more Cs from the grocery store.
The only ones allowed to work in Light
City’s plant are Latent, and they must live
amongst their stinking prisoners. Despite
the constant risk and hardship these Chosen
face to keep the lights on for their decadent
masters, those of the sinew are expected to
risk their lives for no more than privilege of
living in such a hell. The class divide exists,
supposedly, to keep the guards detached,
129
 in case a Latent goes Vector and must be
purged. But I know slavery when I see it. The
blue-veins trying to entice me under their yolk
must have seen the fire of old uprisings in my
eyes. They ceased their sick tour immediately
and escorted me from the building at
gunpoint. It is why they still live.
AchIeve
Places like Light City reward themselves for
being clever, but their “innovation” only keeps
them afloat amongst the shipwrecked systems
of the past. Bounty gave them a new slip of
paper to horde, so they continue treading
water with the greed that once served them.
But some enclaves seek to remove themselves
from the waters of the economy entirely.
Consider Achieve. Similarly, the enclave
was founded atop the bones of a fitness
activity, based inside a professional sports
stadium that was being used in the off-season
to host a specialty event promoting the
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release of the UFit. These fitness watches
were the most sophisticated of their kind
before the Crash, able to recognize the
movements for hundreds of distinct exercises,
count the calories expended, and recommend
dietary alterations: a vain bracelet to pursue
a vain body. The early adopters didn’t dare
risk losing out on a first generation for a
few zombie rumors. Thus, hundreds found
themselves trapped inside the stadium as the
Crash ate the city around them.
Today, the old field has been converted to
crops, the bleachers torn out and replaced
with terraced shanties, the people turned into
hardened survivors. How was this possible?
Most urban enclaves get consumed within
days of founding, yet these joggers survived
for five years? It’s all due to the bracelet.
Achieve was so cut-off by casualty hordes that
the bounty system meant nothing to it. Trade
with other enclaves has only opened up within
the last year. Instead, the enclave survived by
creating a meritocracy. Every task required
of survival — farming, woodcutting, clearing
casualties — was programmed into the UFits
and networked to a display on the stadium’s
jumbotron. The UFits track every citizen’s
actions and assign food, water, and shelter
only to those who deserve it. The early years
no doubt required some brutal, calculated
choices, but Achieve now harbors nothing
save hardened Lost, each uniquely adapted to
their essential role.
Papa Doc’s RaIlroad
Train tracks were the only travel
infrastructure left unobstructed after the
Crash, so enclaves on rails are common and
it is the rare Lost that has not heard of Pappa
Doc’s Railroad. No other train caravan shares
its range or size. But, then again, no other rail
operation was founded using the resources of
an entire battalion.
During the amputation, a Continuity of
Government (COG) detachment was charged
with blowing every bridge they could in a
retreat from Houston, slowing the crush
of refugees headed East after the Whisper
and relieving pressure on the New Orleans
checkpoints. The recently revived 11th
Special Forces Group (ABN) never completed
their orders. Whether this was due to moral
qualms, mutiny, or tactical considerations,
only members of the train can know. All
that is certain is that “The Quiet Operators”
never made it to their rendezvous point in the
Recession; they were busy fortifying Galveston
Island’s rail yards and rescuing people unable
to reach the Mississippi.
The group’s leader has abandoned his
name and taken the handle Pappa Doc, but
he runs his island with a military precision
the average Taker could only dream of. The
Railroad is the #1 route through the Gulf
into the Recession. Fast boats offload vital
131
 trade goods on the island, and their holds are
stuffed with salvage collected on the train’s
wanderings through the Loss. Most Takers
that can afford to smuggle their families to
safety over the border depart via the Railroad,
and the train’s arrival is the economic event
of the year for many enclaves. Each car
holds goods or services the average survivor
can only dream of, and the hardened troops
guarding the operation assure the rolling
market arrives on time to its every stop.
How Pappa Doc manages to boast such
success is a mystery. His enclave’s very
existence is an affront to the DHQS and a
next-door reminder to the farce that is homo
sacer. Many presume the whole enclave
is a plant. The mutiny was a ruse to insert
Recession spies among the abandoned, or it’s
psyops meant to conceal the last remaining
soldiers of Operation Utility, guarding
some secret project on the island that the
government would never allow to fall into
Lost hands. Others insist that Doc’s people
survive only on his tactical genius and, like
Ubiq, to uproot them would be too costly.
If the Recession ever achieves its fantasy
reclamation, the fate of Pappa Doc’s Railroad
will be an early indicator of what the Loss
should expect.
RespItes
Respites are cleared zones afforded to no
faction or enclave, used for meetings out in
the Loss: gated communities, abandoned
warehouses, high-rise apartments with sealed
staircases. Respites are neutral ground,
owned and maintained by every enclavist
with reason to leave the fence. No rivalry or
competition is allowed in a respite. Though a
tribe of cannibals sleeps in one bedroom and
a crew of Takers in the next, there must be
no war within the respite. Each one’s location
is a jealously guarded secret. Finding them
requires knowing a complex system of graffiti
called Taker sign, and to know the language is
to agree to the respite’s laws.
Even in my raiding days, I understood the
sacred nature of a respite. These islands
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of calm are all that keep many alive in the
Loss, but only when communally maintained.
Those who enter often find a checklist
of chores waiting for them, ranging from
checking defenses to taking out trash to
cranking generators. Cameras report who is
in the respite and for how long, so violating
the hospitality laws will earn anyone caught
leeching from the respite’s resources negative
reputation. Rival crews may not like others
using the respite location to survive, but
having the location compromised is as good
as a personal attack. Assaulting, sabotaging,
or otherwise compromising the respites along
an enclave’s trade routes is a good way to get
an army sent after you.
Settlements
Many enclaves exist only by the Recession’s
sufferance. Some accuse even Gnat of being a
DHQS tool. I commend this paranoia; it is one
of the few emotions the Loss rewards. But it
remains nonsense. There are already enough
places where Recession invades Loss without
imagining every enclave as a facade. The real
invaders live in things called “settlements,”
so named because they subsist on the fantasy
that they’re repopulating some barren
wilderness rather than stealing from their
desperate countrymen. Make no mistake, the
Recession’s settlements are raider camps that
blind themselves to the truth of their purpose.
Like all raiders, they do not announce
themselves, they do not stay in one place for
long, and they do not give their guilt purchase
by accepting a name.
Still, the Loss demands its travelers
recognize these intrusions from “civilization.”
To mistake a settlement for an enclave is to
smell the roasting meat of a cannibal’s fire:
what first tastes like salvation truly announces
doom.
Canary Cages
By far the most dangerous type of settlements
are canary cages: DHQS forward operating
bases designed to keep the Recession
informed on the Loss. They track casualty
migrations near the border or protect vital
infrastructure until the T-minus Never.
Though size can vary from platoon-sized
pillboxes to entire airbases, cages are
almost always well supplied and staffed
with professional soldiers. Fresh troops and
rations regularly get shipped in via NatGas
trucks or drones. The staff, no matter how
large, undergoes extensive psychological
training and vetting to ensure no one gets too
sympathetic to the “looters.”
Settlements that get too large to hide
get christened with nauseating names like
“Freedom.” These acknowledged sites
frequently star in DHQS propaganda ads. If
a PsyOps squad is in town taking video for
a reclamation bond campaign, any casualty,
Lost, or menacing-looking deer visible on the
horizon can expect to be gunned down for
the viewing pleasure of the superior officers
back home. When out of the Recession’s
view, however, many settlements set up black
market trading with local Taker crews willing
to provide the troops with contraband. As
inspections remain unpredictably random,
this is dangerous trade.
Other cages are completely off the books.
To stumble into a Blight-research lab,
rendition site, or Steward dead drop is to
walk into a war. These locations are well-
hidden, guarded, booby-trapped, and kept
under constant surveillance. Each is staffed
by ideologue Recessionists willing to die for
their country. But they also contain some
of the most valuable gear in the Loss, so
the occasional conflict with Taker crews is
inevitable. Just know that raiding a redacted
canary cage is akin to robbing a pre-Crash
bank; complete anonymity is required. More
than once, Taker crews have raided Steward
equipment caches, missed a hidden camera,
and returned to find their enclaves reduced to
ash.
Restart-ups
Fracking operations, combine drone
maintenance bays, NatGas refueling stations,
solar farms — certain operations are too
valuable to abandon to the Loss, but too
widespread for the DHQS to cover. The
Recession outsources these to the private
sector. Companies are eager to apply. The
corporation is a casualty, existing only to
consume. They cram as much of the Loss
into their greedy mouths as they can. In the
T-minus Never, they will look up from the feast
to those that seek a piece of reclamation. With
bloody lips and full mouths, they will whisper,
“None left.”
And why not? It is not the corporation that
faces the Loss’s test. They hire the poor and
desperate to surrogate their pain. They offer
hazard pay amounting to a rounding error in
their profits, but still enough to feed a family
for a year.
It is this exploitation that makes restart-ups
the most profitable settlements for a Taker to
know. A manager that recognizes their slavery
to the brand won’t begrudge their employees
some off-the-books trading with the locals.
Barrels of gas get siphoned off shipments.
Bushels of grain fall off the back of trucks.
Resupply drones mysteriously fail and crash.
And bounty, as always, trades hands. A few
restart-ups even allow wholesale theft without
consequence, paying tribute to raiders in
exchange for safe passage. Some hire crews
to do necessary jobs their paymasters won’t
fund, or the corporation may send fixers to
hire Takers directly, unable to convince even
the most desperate Bait to go on their suicide
missions.
But arrangements are not always pleasant.
The wiser corporations pay security forces
separately, ensuring the mercs keep the wage
slaves inside the compound and away from
the Loss. Other foremen don’t allow any trade
with Takers, but they permit their employees
to keep whatever they can pillage from local
enclaves. Most dangerous of all is their
stupidity. Always remember that a Restart-up
is managed by Bait: fools no wiser than those
killed on the Crash’s first day. Many operations
set up shop and achieve nothing save flooding
the local area with fresh Vectors.
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 When I raided in a new region, I paid most
attention to the restart-ups. Invade the wrong
one and every enclave begins hunting you. But
attack a Recession profiteer? The locals will
cheer as you pull the fillings from his teeth.
Hot Camps
Those Chosen to carry the black veins serve
no man, for Latents are royalty in the Loss.
This is the lesson of Leper and the core of
the faith. But the Recession’s fools see their
guards’ head on pikes and learn only to be
more careful next time.
Hot camps do not migrate anymore. They
opt for more permanent fortifications, near
canary cages or restart-ups that require a
consistent labor force that can take a bite.
Many burn casualties slain at heavy borders,
or work fields in a fenced farm growing crops
not conducive to drone agriculture. A few of
the hot camps are still run by the DHQS, but
the productive quarantine market has only
grown as more Supressin users turn Latent
every year. Many corporations demand a
slave allowance to sweeten their government
contracts.
The propaganda would have me believe
that conditions have improved since Leper.
The documentaries on Ubiq assure me each
Latent now receives a wage, a weekend,
and an eight-hour shift. Yet I recognize the
broadcast towers for the bomb collars, still
visible in the background as cameras force
smiles from terrified Chosen faces. Rumor
has it the plastic explosives are on belts now,
for better optics. The charge severs the spine,
crippling the Vector that rises as the Latent
bleeds out. Guards put the crippled escapees
in parallel trenches and bet on “crawler
races.”
The DHQS guards the location of hot
camps closely, placing them far away from
enclave networks and concealing their true
nature. I do not know of any current locations.
If I did, I would be there, bludgeoning slavers
to death. The Moths give me vacation time for
such a purpose.
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StopLoss FacIlItIes
There is debate about whether StopLoss is
really a private company or another name
for the DHQS. Evidence suggests StopLoss
played a defining role in the Supressin
discovery, and the private healthcare
corporation had extensive government
contracts in the USA’s wars predating the
Crash. However, StopLoss’s willingness
to treat anyone who can pay undermines
the homo sacer policy and seems to
imply independence. The confusion is
understandable.
It is also pointless.
The skulls of a StopLoss merc and DHQS
soldier make the same sound when crushed
under a sledge. If either offered to save your
life, you wouldn’t say no. If either sought to
destroy you, you wouldn’t ask who signed
their checks.
The fact is that StopLoss facilities exist.
They dot the Loss, housed inside old hospitals
they fight to reclaim themselves. The sites
refuel and dispatch medical evac choppers
and armed escort teams to anyone in the area
paying for their service. They’ve saved entire
enclaves from plague and helped subscribing
Takers shoot their way through enormous
casualty stampedes. They treat Latents
without charging a premium, and they are the
only organization designing medications to
help with secondary symptoms afflicting the
Chosen such as black blood, Blight cankors,
and tremors.
But no one has convinced a doctor,
nurse, or private mercenary to speak on the
company’s mission. Ever. The source of their
remarkable equipment and wealth of supplies
remains a mystery, as does their license to go
anywhere they please. LifeLines has multiple
reports of teams leaving people to die because
they were behind on payments. Certain
treatments come with user agreements
demanding the patient consent to secretive
drug trials. Any attempt to enter their fortified
hospitals without permission is met with a
hail of gunfire.
Most damningly of all, the StopLoss
medical plan insists that the company has
the right to blood test any human they find
at a treatment site. If found, immunes are
detained even if it means killing every person
in the crew. These immunes are never heard
from again. If Scrape — the nightmare
marrow harvesting facility — truly exists, it is
almost certainly a StopLoss site.
The company’s allegiance... I can’t imagine
how it would matter. If the situation is dire
enough to need them, no one can afford
questions. If they need you? I can think of
nothing that could save you.
ExclusIon Zones
The Loss is only danger and trial. To avoid its
hardships is to be Recession Bait. To be Bait
is to be less than human. The eyeless casualty
knows more than these fenced-in fools and
their self-satisfied “safety.” A Taker must know
the land and dare if they wish to become
Chosen. It is the price the Loss demands for
the truth it reveals.
But even amongst the Loss, there are
places one should not tread. Even a god
demands privacy. The Loss shrouds its dignity
with death.
CItIes
Do not go into cities.
You will not listen to me when I say this.
Here is how it will go.
I will say the number I’ve seen die in the
cities. There is no reason to go there. But
the Takers imagine they “need” riches, and
they imagine the cities hold these. What they
fail to imagine is the scale of the doom that
awaits them, as ants can’t imagine the shape
of a boot. Takers go to the city anyway. They
die. I add to the number I’ve seen die this way.
When the next crew comes along, I tell them a
higher number. That one doesn’t work either.
Once, I worked with a smart one. He
wasn’t smart enough to stay put when his
comrades insisted on suicide, but he tried
to convince them to stop. He told me once
that the average population density for all the
inhabitable land on earth was 50 people/km.
His rule was simple. Before going on a job,
consider the pre-Crash density number of the
area and move the decimal to the left. That
was the likelihood of death.
So on a random strip of barren Loss?
Leaving the fence is a 5% chance of death. In
the city they were going? It was 599%.
What can I say? He was right.
Heavy Borders
What constitutes a heavy border depends
on shifting politics and dead weather. The
clearest example is the narrows of the
northern Mississippi Line. Casualty traffic is
so heavy that the shallow river is not enough
deterrent, and the majority of all DHQS
resources go into maintaining the wall to
keep the dead from the East. The smuggling
and bribes that make porous the rest of the
Recession’s defenses don’t exist up there.
They shoot whatever they can see. They bomb
what they cannot. Nothing gets through, living
or dead.
Certain enclaves have isolationist policies
that make them equally deadly. Approaching
within sight of a heavy enclave without the
appropriate colors or signs means a sniper
bullet to the head, alive or not. Exactly who
counts as “the enemy” in these communities
depends on their politics. The Chosen
are often seen as worse than Vectors and
murdered on sight. Others kill any not of their
faith, or any humans not identified as coming
from one of their preferred trade partners.
Regardless, those that know of a heavy border
should steer clear. Shooting everything in
sight for five years straight has made for some
deadly marksmen.
Gulf of Flame
Petrochemical plants and natural gas
refineries are high value targets. Some
contain processed barrels of fuel never
shipped to market. Even raw crude could be
turned into something useful at one of the
many enclave refineries dotting the Loss. A
great many crews flocked to Louisiana and
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 Texas coastlines in the early days, seeking fuel
to keep their enclaves warm in winter.
Most never returned. Even the ones
remaining in constant contact with their
enclaves just disappeared without so much
as a mention of casualties. The Takers would
get within sight of the burning coastline,
illuminated by refinery fires unquenched,
and that would be the last report. For years,
it was one of the Loss’s many mysterious
mass disappearances. The consensus opinion
blamed Aberrants until the Mississippi Mist.
The Mist occurred about two years after
the Crash. One minute, the Free Parking
ghetto located outside Mandeville was one
of the most populous in the region. Next,
every man, woman, and child dropped dead
in the streets. After a long investigation,
CDC scientists discovered that atypical
winds had brought a cloud of hydrogen
cyanide gas across Lake Ponchartrain and
into the camp. Though the oil fires had long
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ago extinguished themselves, the natural
gas pockets lit up during the Crash could
theoretically burn forever. The poison these
infernos pump into the air leaves much of
Louisiana, Texas, Mexico, and the Gulf at the
mercy of wandering death clouds. The Takers
hadn’t been consumed by flame or teeth. Their
mistake had been trying to breathe.
Many Takers argue that the area is safe
now. They claim DHQS bombing has capped
the wells, the gas has dissipated, and gas
masks can serve as a failsafe. But for all their
talk, I’ve yet to met the crew willing to risk a
score in the Gulf of Flame.
PhoenIx’s Ashes (Palo Verde)
The bombs dropped on Canada were said
to have been made of nuclear material with
a short half-life. I’m told large areas of the
Canadian hot zone are already habitable
again.
 Palo Verde Nuclear Plant, by contrast,
will be warping the earth for decades to
come. It is one of the Loss’s secret places: an
irradiated desert whose very sight would kill
a man. People still live in Arizona, but none
dare within 100 miles of Palo Verde. Still,
things come wandering out of the heat-wave
horizon from time to time. Some are exiles
that tried to make a home where no one else
dared tread, fleeing their foolishness too
late with bleeding gums and shedding hair.
Others come out of the exclusion zone to feed:
the Meek and other madmen seeking fresh
victims, or giant coyote packs seeking new
prey.
I do not fear the Loss, for I am its Chosen
creature... yet even I will not venture through
Phoenix’s Ashes.
Lost People
Only a Latent receives the gift of living each
day pierced and embraced by something
larger than humanity. They become more than
their species, as would any creature blessed
enough to carry a young god in their veins.
But the majority of those touched by the
Blight are not Chosen. The unworthy become
casualties, and casualties have only one
need: consume. The millions dead, the cities
burned, the world lost — these are cold,
shambling steps in the pursuit of a simple
need. There is no creature in the world so
logical and predictable.
Humans need to consume as well. Like
a casualty, they will kill to meet that need.
Unlike a casualty, they will kill to meet many
more needs besides. They will also kill out
of desire, faith, delusion, madness, and
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 boredom. There is no thought in the human
mind so inconsequential that it has not once
inspired murder. Only a fool thinks it enough
to navigate the casualty’s straight line of
bloodshed. To survive the Loss, you must
learn to walk the complex labyrinth of human
violence.
DHQS
If you encounter the DHQS in the Loss,
something has gone wrong. Their vast
resources are spread thin. Attention means
you’ve either been prioritized or extremely
unlucky. In either instance, knowing the
species of Recession dog they’re up against is
the only advantage Takers have.
Punch Bots
Imagine the Mars rover upgraded to the
size of a compact car, with a tinted-Plexiglas
dome mounted on top holding a swiveling
camera. The chassis carries two robotic arms,
each outfitted with a cattle gun set between
industrial strength clamps. That’s a punch bot.
When it builds enough solar charge, a
punch bot’s alarm goes off. The camera seeks
human shapes in any movement stirred by
the noise. Upon recognizing a shape, the
software distinguishes the head. The arm
extends, the clamps close, and the bolt fires.
The lobotomized body that hits the ground
might be a casualty, but it is too often some
enclavist out looking for firewood. The punch
bot makes no distinction between human and
casualty. It just keeps punching until time to
recharge.
At best, punch bots are a source of income.
They break often and contain sophisticated
electronics. But it’s extremely hard to tell
a recharging bot from a broken one until
it’s trying to murder you. Other active bots
are merely a nuisance, such as the ones
that decide to kill all the mannequins in a
department store. But they’re often much
more dangerous. Punch bot alarms lure
stampedes down on enclaves near their
hunting grounds, and entire crews have been
wiped out by single units, bullets bouncing off
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the metal hide. Some crews have managed
to hack individual CPUs by “rodeo-ing” a bot,
but the expertise and insanity required to do
so is rare. Otherwise, a Taker’s only hope is
blowing up the bot’s tracks with explosives
or running until it’s out of charge. As the
machines can hit 30 mph across open ground,
I’d suggest making for the trees.
Settlement GarrIsons
The majority of DHQS in the Loss never
stray beyond the fences of their settlements.
These troops are stationed to guard airstrips,
refueling stations, and various other
Recession military assets. As few dare attack
such installations, the DHQS staffs these
distant bases with their greenest recruits.
Poorly trained, under equipped, and drafted
from the Free Parking dregs, garrisoned
troops seldom hold to the Recession’s dogma.
These are the same people that police the
poor in car camps least they become them.
Black market trades with these groups are
easy for most Takers to arrange, and a few
“lifers” usually volunteer for additional tours
only to maintain their lucrative rackets.
Only direct orders or aggression provokes
conflict with garrison troops. Even then, their
advantages stop at numbers and supplies.
The average Lost child holds more sand than
these soft-bodies. They want nothing more
than easy duty and a quick rotation home.
ReclamatIon Squads
I knew a few raiders that thought garrison
troops ripe for harvest. Most died in the
attempt, but even those that managed to
conquer a settlement never enjoyed the spoils
for long. When conscripted serfs won’t suffice,
the Recession sends out reclamation squads.
They are not called “wreckers” ironically.
The units range from 6-12 soldiers.
Originally, the membership was limited to
Operation Utility veterans: men and women
so hardened before the Crash that they waded
through a sea of Vectors and came out the
other side. Since then, new squads have been
assembled, but only accomplished, fanatical
DHQS ideologues are granted admission.
Each new recruit is trained by Utility veterans.
Some of the newer squads erect cults of
personality around their forbears, calling
themselves “Zao’s Children” or “Gunny’s Lil’
Killers.”
Do not be fooled by silly names: wreckers
are some of the best-equipped and trained
soldiers in the Loss. They’ve been known to
clear acres of casualties in hours and wipe
out enclaves in minutes. Some attest a few
groups have shown mercy for the Lost, but
the LifeLines threads dedicated to their
massacres argue differently. Reclamation
squads only leave their bases to kill someone
or something. If a crew finds themselves the
target of one, they can die knowing they’ve
pissed off the DHQS to an admirable degree.
As they both derive from the same stock,
reclamation squads and Moths share a
genocidal hate for each other. I have fought
them many times. Each battle has earned
me worthy scars, and I grow stronger with
every kill. When the Blight finally sees fit
to complete my transition, I hope my young
Vector teeth taste wrecker first.
Stewards
When the DHQS finds a bastard too evil for
a reclamation squad, they make a steward. A
steward’s every breath is lies. His every step,
evasion. There is no lower creature in the
entire Loss.
Stewards are infiltrators. They are the
primary tool used to enforce the Recession’s
will. While the DHQS denies the Loss’s
existence, their stewards manipulate its
people. Enclaves sit on vital assets or nearer
to them than the military can get, and
invasion is far less efficient than weighting the
scales with single spies.
Stewards can come from highly-trained
military units, Free Parking ghettos, or the
very enclave they seek to betray. The only
standard in their recruitment is the presence
of family in Recession-held areas. The ability
to punish or reward these innocents is all that
keeps many stewards loyal to the cause when
the DHQS asks them to perform atrocities
on their behalf. Aside from their initial
training, stewards are expected to take care
of themselves. They’re provided no equipment
beyond a number to call for orders. They must
salvage everything from the Loss, blending in
with those they seek to betray. Stewards often
establish their cover as Takers, as it is the only
occupation that explains their unusual skill
sets and expertise.
Once accepted within an enclave, a steward
may wait years for orders, reporting into
audio dead boxes with no replies. They might
not even know their mission. But the orders
always come, and they can be as varied as
human cruelty. The DHQS contracts work out
to so many corporations that the objectives
are often inscrutable. One steward may report
directly to the White House and be unaware
of the steward living next door, currently on
loan to Frond Engineering or StopLoss. The
mission could be as simple as painting a
target with a laser. It might involve seeking
election on an enclave council, or ensuring
a crew takes a certain contract. Alternately,
they might be asked to assassinate an official,
leave the gates open for the dead, or form a
kill squad with other sleepers to murder every
man, woman, and child in their sleep.
We know this only because a few stewards
have defected, revealing the true nature of
their purpose in the Loss. They assure us that
the vast majority remain loyal, lying in wait for
the call, waiting for the day they sneak off to
the canary cage, gear up, and begin the bloody
work of reclamation.
PrIvate Sector
For all its dangers, the DHQS’s shortage of
troops keeps encounters rare. The easterners
Takers most often run across are from the
private sector. Any company willing to bolster
the Recession’s ailing treasury buys a free
pass across the border. These corporations
are allowed to strip mine the Loss of
resources at will. Their attitudes shift along
with the markets. One day, a company could
hire Takers as “local consultants.” The next,
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 the orders could be to shoot them on sight.
The biggest players have defined economic
niches. Learning these makes their behavior
more predictable. However, never assume
a business so innocuous as to be safe.
Takers are only as useful to a corp as they
are profitable. If it’s a single bounty more
profitable to kill you, they will.
StopLoss
StopLoss Medical Services is the most visible
corporation in the Loss, if only because they
don’t insist on maintaining the facade of
homo sacer. But their care comes at a steep
price, and their motivations stay secret. It’s
uncommon for StopLoss to deal with Takers
as anything except customers or competition.
If they hire a crew for a job outside their
in-house security service, it’s for something
serious. Those with the stomach to work for
them might learn valuable intel that could be
sold on LifeLines.
AlosIne
The biotech company Alosine was a power
player in pharmaceuticals even before they
led the charge in patenting animal and
artificial genomes. Since the Crash, their
holdings have done nothing but expand,
having secured dozens of major contracts
with the Recession government: all classified
and for undisclosed amounts. Some theorize
that Alosine carries out more Blight research
than even the DHQS.
If Alosine is out in the Loss, it is typically
for one of two purposes. Takers stand to
benefit if the compound is researching one
of their genetically engineered crops. These
super-seeds are the only thing keeping many
enclaves alive under the ravages of climate
change, and executives often pay Takers
for delicate groundwork in their studies
beyond the capabilities of drone farming.
The rest of Alosine’s operations consist of
black sites. These secret facilities, often
in cooperation with the DHQS, conduct
research too dangerous or ethically repugnant
to be allowed in Recession borders. Takers
140
confusing one site for another risk becoming
test subjects.
Frond EngIneerIng
Frond owned patents on most of the drone
farming and construction equipment used
in the Midwest before the Crash. The
complication of the Blight has only increased
demand and sophistication. Everyone
respects the need to eat and a fear of
casualties. Many in the Loss consider Frond
the least objectionable entity to ever pillage
their land. This is nonsense. I put together
many a Frond blueprint during my time in
Colony #1, and no one from corporate ever
told our torturers anything besides good job.
I do not know if the company still uses hot
camp labor, but I waste no opportunity to
refresh my mechanics skills by dismantling
their equipment when I find it.
BeeMaIl
BeeMail prepared for bankruptcy before
the Crash, but as the only aerial shipping
company with the majority of its assets in the
East, it found itself running a monopoly. The
company now serves small shipping contracts
for DHQS and other corporate interests,
flying sensitive packages and eyes-only orders
around the Loss. However, their network has
only expanded by cannibalizing the drone
distribution centers of their dead competition.
These scavenging operations have only
been possible with the expertise of Takers.
Out of gratitude, BeeMail runs packages
between enclaves off-the-books for discounted
rates. Though generally helpful, make no
mistake: BeeMail would happily kill every soul
in Distributy in exchange for its drone fleet.
Longest Haul TruckIng
LHT is the NatGas trucking firm that
performs nearly every shipping job in the
Loss. If a load is too big for drone but not
large enough for a DHQS transport plane,
LHT takes the job. Their rigs are part-tank,
part-train, and part-bomb. Each hauls a
relatively small load compared to its massive
natural gas fuel tanks. The cabs are armored,
and the drivers trained as navigators in the
few cleared roadways that remain accessible.
Nothing about the business is profitable save
the enormous subsidies the Recession pays
to keep its few distribution tunnels open. LHT
often contracts Takers to scout routes, clear
wrecks, or guard convoys. Their refueling
depots are well guarded, but peaceful
strangers are welcome inside to trade for
booze and drugs. LHT has been known to
‘lose’ entire shipments to suffering enclaves
only because a Taker from there attended the
driver’s poker night.
I’m sure they’ve transported things that
hurt the Loss, but only because they never
ask questions. I’m sure they’ve killed, but
only those that got in their way. The one-time
I tried to hijack a LHT truck, I was lucky to
survive it. The only person I’d rather have by
my side in a fight than a Moth is a meth-head
LHT trucker. They’re madmen and woman all.
SIngularIty SecurIty SolutIons
Every Recession thug that ever scored a
headshot has tried to start a mercenary
outfit. Most cross the border only to die. The
only private security firm with any staying
power thus far has been Singularity Security
Solutions.
Triple-S recruits exclusively from the dregs
of the DHQS. Section-8s, dishonorable
discharges, retirees — Loss experience is all
they care about. If a soldier gets discharged
for trying to make love to a casualty, Trip-S
offers him a job the next day. What the troops
lack in honor they make up in hardware,
rivaling that of a wrecker squad — AR target
recognition helmets, basilisk body armor,
missile-equipped drones, steel-plated dron-
keys with Gatling guns. DHQS allows
the corp to poach talent and shame their
equipment in exchange for discounts on
services. Some jobs even the stewards won’t
141
 do, but war crimes are Singularity’s bread-
and-butter. Between atrocities, they can often
be found doing make-work security for other
companies in the Loss.
MDNN
A number of citizen journalists made
embarrassing documentaries about the
absurdity of homo sacer. The DHQS psyops
division decided to drown the truth with their
own signal. Thus, the subsidized creation
of the Manifest Destiny News Network: an
“independent” voice dedicated to reporting on
the inevitable reclamation. In reality, MDNN
is a jobs program for every broadcaster that
towed the line during the Crash. Their reward
is a propaganda mouthpiece to shout from
24/7.
MDNN sends out production crews at
DHQS request, but the network’s dedication
to lies doesn’t make them delusional. The
garrison troops assigned to their protection
often can’t tell a Vector from a casualty,
and sticking within the green zones of a
settlement provides nothing viewers haven’t
seen before. Producers often hire Takers
to take them within telephoto distance of
“authenticity.” Despite knowing Takers are
the only guides with a chance of saving them,
don’t expect the reporters to acknowledge
the Loss holds anything but the dead and
terrorists. MDNN still gets the bulk of its
income from government subsidies, and they
must bolster the narrative. If they’re dumb
enough to pay up front, I recommend kicking
back and watching the Bait get eaten.
Many Hands, LLC
After Leper, DHQS distanced itself from
productive quarantine by a single remove.
The Recession still rounds up Latents at
every opportunity and kidnaps immunes into
medical service, but these people are then
sold to Many Hands, LLC. Before the Crash,
they were Glasstech Incarceration Inc., but as
even private prison populations got converted
into work gangs, the corporation rebranded
and focused on facilitating slavery by another
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name. Only a handful of hot camps, Immune
harvesting, and prisoner details are still under
government control, kept only to test out new
regulations and procedures. The day-to-day
work of enslaving the Chosen and torturing
the Immune is contracted out to Many Hands,
LLC. Any human rights abuses the corp gets
caught committing can be lightly scolded and
fined by the administration, keeping the voters
happy even as business returns to usual. In
their yearn to expand, the monthly allowance
of cattle sent by the DHQS fails to meet Many
Hands’ appetite. All of their Loss facilities
accept trade from slavers and immunity
hunters. Many Hands, LLC is the primary
enabler of human trafficking in the Loss.
Any Taker that works for them, I will gladly
hunt for sport.
Tragedy Trackers
Like water, casualties flow through the path
of least resistance. They’re more likely to be
found in streets than fields, at low elevation
than high, temperate than cold. When all
things geographic are equal, they often
revert to the host’s psychic geography. Many
a new Taker has been disturbed to find a
casualty still wandering its old living room
after five years, or hunting near the spot of a
sentimental vacation photo. In short, knowing
the human from before can help track the
monsters of today.
Even in instances where the person died
far from home, the average Whisper refugee
left enough social media, RFID tags, and
physical trails to enable tracking their doomed
retreat from the Crash. Tragedy Trackers
are freelance data miners that specialize in
finding out this information and selling it to
concerned parties. They don’t operate as a
whole, but the TT forums on LifeLines serve
as a brokering house for the trading of leads.
Trackers earn bounty by selling confirmation
of death to loved ones, either for closure or
probate seizure in DHQS bounty courts. The
Recession and various corporations also pay
for traces of VIPs lost in the Crash. But most
TTs usually hit a wall in their hunts, and few
have the heart to do footwork over the fence.
As such, Tragedy Trackers are essential
investors in the Taker economy. Even when
they don’t directly contract crews for closure
jobs, the leads sold to Recession interests
often lead to corporate contracts.
Vulture Investors
Fools sometimes think they can taste the
Loss’s riches without paying its price. This
is nonsense. Someone always pays, usually
Takers. Sometimes, we receive bounty in
exchange. We call the fools with money
vulture investors.
Vulture investors from the Recession
must truly believe in their get-rich schemes.
Individual license to break quarantine is
expensive, as are the multiple crews these
tycoons hire to see their vision come true.
Occasionally, they’ll have an insider tip that
proves actually useful, like staking claim to
land the DHQS plans to settle so they can
reap a government buy-out. Mostly, they’re
treasure hunters throwing good bounty after
bad.
Vulture investors from the Loss are
something else entirely. They’re usually
former Takers themselves, investing
retirement money to build a home in the
Loss’s embrace. While their plans are more
grounded, they are much harder to please.
Regardless of origin, a person only qualifies
as a vulture investor when their resources
match that of a small corporation. This
might initially seem like a good thing, as
humans are more reasonable than distributed
profit entities. But corps at least share a
psychopathic logic. With vultures, madness
and obsession find their places in the
markets.
CrImInal OrganIzatIons
The Loss finds the idea of law laughable.
To think one can violate a fantasy? That it
matters? Piteous delusion.
Yet some still insist on behaving as if words
have meaning, as if morality goes beyond
opinion, as if punishment is more than bullet
and blade. Enclavists and Reccesionites alike
suffer from this sickness. Criminals boast that
they’ve broken free, but they wear their fetters
as a badge all the same. “Law breakers” may
be doubly delusional, but they see only by
their hallucinations. To understand what they
imagined they’ve rebelled against is to predict
their movements.
Narco Cartels
Flesh is designed to feel pain. Drugs are
designed to feel good. People will always buy
drugs.
This hasn’t changed. If anything, the Crash
increased demand. But the past won’t be
forgotten. Many narco trafficking operations
in Central and South America survived
solely because they were structured and
equipped like armies. They haven’t abandoned
their weapons, nor the culture of brutality
developed to discourage competition. Having
no qualms about gutting and hanging an
enemy by their entrails serves one well in the
Loss.
However, the Loss has rendered much of
the organization vestigial. No one guards
the border but the dead. Many enclaves
can’t wait for drug dealers to return with
the next shipment. Those that wish to save
their populations from addiction need a
peacekeeping force large enough to both
control the public and best an armed convoy
full of experienced killers with automatic
weapons. Dope is cheaper than an army.
In the Recession, the only people that want
a fix more than those in Free Parking are
the soldiers guarding them. Crimes of
desperation keep them so busy that the “war
on drugs” is over.
The old problems have been reduced to
two: quarantine and competition. When
smuggling from the Loss into the Recession,
narcos have to deal with a shoot-on-sight
border now. Boats and planes smuggling
across the Gulf or Great Lakes are vaporized
instead of arrested. Bribes are more difficult
to arrange. Consequences are final. This
reinforces cartels’ dependence on deadly
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 force, and violence as the default reaction
has serious consequences for competition.
It’s common in the Loss to run across an
enclave’s marijuana or opium crop. The
cottage narcotics industry cuts into the cartels
bottom line, which now fuels their survival
rather than excess. Though some operations
have diversified — using their chemists to
make medical pharmaceuticals or smuggling
Blight samples to believer cults — most settle
for trying to murder other operators. It all
depends on an enclave’s politics whether
Takers become the customers, partners, or
enemies of the narco cartels.
Smugglers
Drugs are the least of a smuggler’s worries.
They might need to bribe guards with a few
kilos to sneak a few tons of cocaine through
a bridge checkpoint. If those bricks contain
even one Blight sample? It’s execution, after
days of interrogation at a DHQS black site.
Anything from the Loss is contraband in the
Recession. Anything. Bottled water recovered
from a plant might as well be casualty spit,
even if the Recession can’t afford to provide
anything drinkable for the refuge camp where
it is headed. Food, medicine, people — the
second it crosses the Mississippi, orders
are to treat it like the origin of a new Crash.
Narco cartels originally had some edge on
the smuggling business, but the sheer variety
of goods that need to break quarantine every
day opened the market up. For Takers in the
eastern Loss, smuggling outfits are usually
their first and last business partners. The
Recession’s constant demand for salvaged
goods keeps contracts in steady supply, and
a smuggler’s expertise is the only way most
Takers get to retire.
Valets
Every narco and smuggler knows a few
Valets. The crime bosses of Free Parking
serve as the Red Market’s point of contact
with most Recession business. Nearly all
quarantine contraband flows through the
refugee camps. The only other way for goods
144
to hit the streets is to work directly with high-
level DHQS and corporate officials. In such
instances, be wary; Valets jealously guard
their positions as middlemen. Takers are
easier to kill than corrupt generals.
Valets tended to be weak, low-level
criminals before the Crash. They rose in the
chaos of the amputation through cunning,
ruthlessness, or both. Five years on, the
survivors employ plenty of camp trash
desperate to do their bidding. They can afford
informants in enclaves where their interests
lie. Though they often subcontract on
LifeLines to scavenge wares, every year more
Valets try to cut into Taker business. A few
of the more powerful bosses have franchised
into the enclaves, employing dedicated crews.
These Bait thugs don’t typically survive long,
but they undercut jobs and offer violent
competition with annoying frequency.
Some Takers find working with certain
Valets distasteful, but one is as good as
another. A Valet’s sins are crowd-sourced.
Their power depends on serving the demands
of their camp. If baby formula fetches a good
price, they’ll sell it, but the same is true of
Vector blood and Soma. Valets can only
serve the vices of their customers. Their only
currency is the lives of the desperate.
Notable Taker Crews
Takers might think they deserve their own
category. They do not.
Many look down on those who work in Free
Parking as criminals, but this is imagined
superiority. The Recession’s law holds no
sway in the Loss and Takers violate the taboos
of enclaves as often as the US’s farcical homo
sacer. Some may be Robin Hoods. Just as
many are war profiteers. Enclavists often
confuse the two, praising their exploiters and
persecuting their servants.
Do not succumb to illusions, Taker. You
are a criminal in the eyes of the Lost. You
will compete with other criminals and
more besides. Learn from the crews that
transcended the label.
The Moths
I had killed self-proclaimed Moths before I
came to UCity for my revenge. Gnat can find
no record of any of their handles, though. As
the original Takers, fresh meat tries to attract
business by taking on the first brand. Traitor
encourages this: it keeps the stewards from
identifying his real crews, especially the ones
that call themselves something else. If a crew
doesn’t operate out of UCity directly, there’s
no reason to believe they are Moths. If they go
by another name, there’s no reason to believe
they aren’t Moths.
Hipster calls the satellite crews
“franchises.” Sometimes they train on the
mountain before she sends them to strategic
enclaves; sometimes they are recruited online.
Either way, Moths are not unlike stewards.
They must earn their own bounty, minimize
contact, and maintain cover. The only
help they can expect from UCity is special
privileges on LifeLines, for which they must
pay a small tax. The price is worth it. Real
Moths can expect lucrative job leads to land in
their inbox. Thus, Moths pull more bounty and
maintain their place in the Taker hierarchy.
But the cost of membership is steeper than a
simple cut.
To stay in, Gnat periodically requires her
crews accept jobs for the organization. She
pays for them like any other client, but the
task usually requires loyalty to the cause…
whatever that is. Do the work well and
LifeLines keeps dropping leads. Crews that
bungle it get dropped to the same guest
privileges as every other Taker. Crews that
refuse? They’re outed as stewards and their
accounts blocked. Those that stay in Gnat’s
good graces retire earlier than most, either
leaving the Loss or making a home in UCity.
Those that disappoint the Moths live to regret
the decision.
145
 I do not know what war Gnat is fighting.
I do not care. I have learned that when she
does not show her strength, it is only because
you are already surrounded by it.
GILF
Most American nursing homes were built
in a star pattern. The wings branch off from
hubs to control visitor traffic and dispense
medication from a centralized nursing station.
In the Loss, such buildings make an excellent
fort, shaped like a trace-italienne with
crossfire kill-zones in the courtyards between
wings. When possible, they were located
outside urban areas for the sake of optics:
trees for the residents, a lack of ambulances
and hearses for the young, and manageable
dead weather for survivors.
Cheaper homes were lightless dungeons
lacking windows, but concrete walls are
the fashion in Loss architecture. Expensive
facilities positioned themselves atop high
ground with good sightlines. The danger of
fancy bay windows is lessened by frequent
fire doors opened by keypad, turning each
corridor into a series of airlocks. None of
these defenses helped during the Crash, of
course. The elderly were the last priority even
of their children and Vectors do not mind
aged meat.
But Blight is limited in its preservative
power. The condition of frail cripples wasn’t
helped by Vector mauling, not to mention the
rigors of hot infection. By the time the torpor
ended, most Cs in nursing homes could barely
crawl. Five years on, most only roll their eyes
and snap their jaws. But a casualty that offers
no sport still offers bounty. Medical records
are especially prized by Tragedy Trackers
for cross-reference. Rare medications can
be salvaged from the back rooms, as can
lifesaving equipment long picked clean from
the hospitals.
GILF was the first crew to realize the value
of a nursing home. They are now one of the
largest operations in the Loss. GILF descends
on targets in giant packs, sometimes over a
hundred strong. They erect fences between
146
the wings, set up airlocks using specialized
tractor-trailers, and clear each section
methodically. When it’s clean, they loot
everything, trade it to the closest enclave,
fortify the building, and sell the fortress to
the highest bidder on LifeLines. While they
wait for the right price, they hold orgiastic
parties fueled by homemade moonshine and
whatever their chemists can whip up from
the drug cabinet. Like working fast food, no
one ever makes it rich working for GILF. The
skill required is low and the pay spread thin
across too many Takers. Yet work stays steady
enough. It gets them to the next party, and
that’s enough in a world without a future.
The crew has multiple franchises, but the
founder is a man called “Cousin Fucker.”
He’s made enough bounty to retire a dozen
times over, but he only uses it to fund his
bacchanalian jobs program. I’ve met raiders
less savage than CF. He’s unhinged, but I
know for a fact he insists the body of each
slain casualty be buried, with full religious
ceremony. Odd as he and GILF may be, they
are the few people that did not forget the
elderly.
D-Town Takers
What little the Recession understands about
Takers they get from The Great Repression:
Life in the Loss. Citizen journalists jumped
the border and somehow made it all the
way to Distributy shortly after the civil war.
The documentary they shot could only be
distributed illegally, but Ubiq didn’t listen to
the DHQS’s cease-and-desist letters. I’m told
it’s a fairly accurate portrayal, even if it makes
the whole of the Loss look like that cesspool
Distributy.
In addition to inspiring MDNN, the film
made the Takers that the cameras followed
around famous. Casual-Tee and the D-town
Takers, as they called themselves, did not
need to stay in the business long. Every
vulture investor, corporation, and Bait with
too much bounty sought them out after the
documentary became popular. The original
crew retired mere months after the release.
But the Recession does not know this. The
ill-informed fools have been hiring Distributy’s
doppelgänger group for years. Far from the
plucky crew of underdogs portrayed in the
film, D-town Takers is now a small army,
subsidized by the enclave and dispatched on
contracts from the central council. Clients
negotiate with an actor doing his best Casual-
Tee impression, on call 24/7.
I’ve heard the difficulty of getting work as a
freelance crew is starting to build resentment
for the city’s incorporated Taker group.
Though successful now, the wounds of the
“war-house” days are not healed. D-Town’s
continued success could restart the conflict.
DIgItal ForensIcs Inc.
Digital Forensics Inc. promotes itself online
as a professional tragedy-tracking firm based
in the Recession. It takes ten minutes on a
search engine to realize this is a lie. Clients
too stupid to notice get fleeced paying for
their services. Those that can identify DFI as
Takers don’t waste their time. Those that see
Takers and call anyway get gouged because
they have no other options.
Christian runs a tight crew. I don’t even
know what enclave DFI runs from, she so
jealously guards their secrets. The business
model is simple: cut out the middleman
in tragedy tracking. Rather than wait for
subcontracts from data miners out of ideas,
her crew data mines between trips over
the fence. This requires more power and
Ubiq access than most enclaves can spare.
Whoever houses DFI must charge a stiff tax.
The weaponized toys the crew favors also
hurts their overhead. No other crew in the
Loss uses more drones or dron-keys, but such
is the trade-off when Christian’s nerds must
double as soldiers. The big expenses make
for big paydays though. DFI may scrape by
like most crews, but they do so with technical
contracts no one else could handle. Nobody
strips an abandoned server faster, and every
data dump goes direct to DFI without the TT
firms getting a cut. This is likely why Christian
is so tight-lipped about the crew’s location.
Quite a few Recession hackers would pay well
to take DFI’s on-site advantage off the market
permanently.
Word has it that Palbicke is DFI’s “white
whale.” If Christian can find evidence of what
happened to him during the Crash? A crew
could reclaim Hawaii with the bounty Gnat
would be willing to pay.
Eat Clean
There are half-dozen crews calling themselves
“Pony Express” in Colorado alone. Small
parcels and messages too sensitive for Ubiq
still need trading across enclaves, and riders
can make a living running between trade
networks. But horses are expensive creatures.
It’s difficult to prevent them from spooking
around casualties. Even after training, they
make noise, injure easily, and encourage
everyone with a rifle to take a shot at the rider.
Most rider delivery outfits are one lost animal
away from closing. The fatal blow usually
arrives sooner instead of later.
Unlike horses, human lives are cheap.
This is the secret of Eat Clean. They’re
exclusively Detoxin super-marathoners
and parkour athletes, specializing in small
package delivery between enclaves. The
crew operates with a lower overhead than
any other crew in the Loss. They’ll send out
single Takers, equipped with almost nothing.
The runners consider it a contest as to who
can survive with the least gear. Their leader,
known only as #5, once made it across two
states carrying nothing but energy gel rations,
the package, and a bloody Mag-lite. Their
survival rates are low and their contracts
dangerous, but while the average crew would
send out a half-dozen Takers with vehicles,
Eat Clean splits the same bounty amongst a
single, fitness-obsessed fanatic.
In my darkest days of raiding, I never
attacked an Eat Clean runner. They are not
worth the chase, and they trail stampedes of
dead behind them.
147
 RaIders
I know my past makes me unwelcome in
UCity, but I cannot tell you I regret my days as
a raider. Only choices can be regretted, and to
raid is no choice.
You see your family eaten. You survive
hiding in a mass grave. Later, you join a
group of survivors. You flee again as they die
the same way. You join another. They tear
each other apart. Another, lost to dwindling
and disease. Another, lost to believers or
casualties or DHQS. Still, you survive. You
know you will never kill yourself because
you have seen there is no peace in death.
The meaning of your life is pain, and it
is preferable to making the deaths you
witnessed meaningless by adding your own.
You meet other people with vacant eyes.
You collect, like hairs in a drain, but you do
not speak. You are silent together, but you still
have needs. You will die if something is not
done. But what to do? Cooperate? Another
enclave? Another scheduled gutting? No. Not
again.
Then the trade caravan comes into view, or
the settlement, or the Taker crew. They have
things. You do not want; you need. You cannot
die or you must die, but you have to know
now.
Afterwards, some of your number is dead.
You did not know their names. The victims,
equally faceless. The number is nothing…
nothing compared to the failures from before.
You have finally escaped the cycle. You live
in the last phase now, forever, comforted
by death that never leaves and grief that
never comes. Slowly, you learn the animal
joys again: no victory sweeter than a fight
you had to win, no sex better than between
sole survivors, no embrace warmer than the
fearful respect of your tribe. The enclavists
call it “Living Darwin.” You don’t call it
anything. You dare not name what you’ve
become.
Raiding is void. Raiders breathe like the
vacuum of space, sucking breath to fill their
absence. Sometimes, in that vacant cocoon,
something human can heal and regrow.
148
Maybe that has happened to me. But raiders
are not mad. They see the Loss’s truth. And
what is death to those who know the truth? Be
it a Taker’s, or their own?
Slavers and Immune Hunters
Each will try to claim some rationalization.
They only capture Immune that refuse to
serve. They only enslave Latents spreading
disease. They only grab criminals exiled from
enclaves. They only kidnap children that
would otherwise starve. They only snatch
women that won’t be missed. They only trade
in men that sell themselves.
It’s for the best. It’s for your safety. It’s for
the greater good.
All lies.
Slavers are raiders without the nobility of
nihilism. They serve a god, and it is greed.
They corrupt the simple savagery of the Loss.
They turn its hunt into a factory farm. They
seek to feast forever on single meals, thinning
momentary conquests into gruel with human
misery. They pervert the life and death purity
with a third, unnatural existence, and its every
second is worse than an eternity of undead
shambling. To be seen by a slaver is to be
judged as equal or as cattle. Accept neither at
any price. I do not suffer a slaver to live. Those
who do are no better than them.
Rebels
Politics have always been about murder. Vote
for one candidate to kill an entire class. Vote
for another to do it slower. Vote for a third to
kill yourself. Those that lose can use guns,
money, and power to kill voters, then go on
killing besides. The society might change
besides who dies, but blood is always the cost.
Good politicians offer good exchange rates.
Some enclaves still vote, but in the Loss,
bullet and blade play kingmaker. Many have
dispensed with the pretenses. They dedicate
themselves to the only protest that still counts.
VIndIcated
It’s easy the scorn the man from before the
Crash. He deserves it. But I do not begrudge
all facets of his life. He lived as best he knew
how, and there is no fault in failing to predict
the apocalypse. Not everyone gets to be
prophet to a dark messiah.
Yet there is a certain type that thinks
they saw the end coming. These so-called
survivalists dare claim their heraldry of the
end is some sort of virtue. Before the Crash,
they were rich men that thought themselves
persecuted. They wasted their lives fearing
their government, their neighbors, fate itself.
They filled their days with petty preparation
for an end that never came. When the Crash
finally came, all that grim pragmatism got
most of them eaten by an apocalypse too
fantastic for their imaginings. Still, some
survived by dent of decadent bunkers, king’s
estates removed from the world, and militia
compounds already turned into premature
enclaves. These fools are the first of their type
to achieve what their ilk always bet their lives
on: vindication.
The Vindicated are insufferable. They
lord over their enclaves like gods. They
demand loyalty as gratitude, then demand it
at gunpoint when the debts are paid. Proven
correct once, they rule by the same paranoia
that saved them. They hoard and rarely trade.
They enslave those races and ideologies
they deem inferior. They lash out at anyone
they imagine works for the government, or
the Moths, or the Jews, or whatever other
scapegoat they invent to prop up their little
fiefdoms.
I somewhat sympathize with the
intoxication of the Vindicated. Proving
someone wrong can be an addicting feeling.
That’s why killing them is such an exquisite
joy. There’s nothing quite like watching the
realization wash over them. They survived the
Crash… only to meet me.
PapIneaus
Each cell has a different name: The Society of
Red Leaves, The Revenants, Northern Fallout,
Preemptive Revenge. The name “Papineaus”
caught on after a group of the same name
managed to assassinate the Recession’s first
149
 interim executive appointed after the Hunter
purges. Since then, it’s become generalized to
refer to all Canadian insurgents.
Papineau cells usually contain someone
with military experience, but membership
is open. Mothers with children at hockey
tournaments in Montreal when the bombs
dropped. Husbands that watched wives die
of third-degree burns. Orphans raised only
by the frozen northern Loss. Ex-Parliament
members with inoperable cancers, looking to
die quick inside a suicide vest. Their enemy
is all the same: the US Recession. All that
differs between the cells is how they define
that enemy. Some are focused and precise,
targeting only members of the Hunter
administration still at large or imprisoned.
Others regard the entire post-Hunter
administration as complicit. They’ll kill
DHQS, corporate subcontractors, and anyone
else profiting from the first strike. A few
regard every single citizen as the enemy and
save no qualms for collateral damage. The
true zealots won’t be happy until the entire
Recession falls in a second Crash.
Though most cells prioritize infiltration,
large teams operate in the Loss to disrupt
DHQS assets and smuggle weapons to their
Recession agents. Some Papineaus consider
Takers allies; others see only targets. Be sure
you know whom you’re dealing with before
going into negotiations.
TraItors
There’s an argument that the Utility vets
making up the original Moths count amongst
the traitors. But their general’s Taker
handle was chosen with some irony. By that
definition, Pappa Doc’s Railroad is also a
traitor stronghold, as is anywhere where
armed services violated orders in order to
stay behind and help during the Crash. The
broad use of the term is another Recession
generalization, used to prop up its flagging
civilization.
Traitors in the Loss are defined by their
continual attacks against the US government.
Most have legitimate grievances; they were
150
either left behind and disavowed by their
government, or ordered to commit some
atrocity by a man in a comfy eastern armchair.
Some have even come back from the safe
zones, rebelling against the dismantling of
free elections in post-Hunter years. Their
intensity varies much like the Papineaus:
one end of the spectrum seeks only a special
election and enfranchisement for the homo
sacer, but hardliners on the other end fight for
the total destruction of the USA, a return to
the slave-holding Confederacy, or any number
of fringe ideologies.
With their goals so aligned, it would be
easy to imagine the Papineaus and traitors as
allies. Cooperation remains scarce. A favorite
trick of stewards is to impersonate traitor
cells to kill Papineaus and vice versa. As
always, their trickery poisons the Lost against
each other.
BelIevers
Some would say I am mad for my faith.
Perhaps. I’ll not argue it. The Chosen need
no validation beyond what they have already
received from the Blight.
If I have gone insane, who is to say it is
not for the best? What use is sanity when so
many of its carriers are offal in a casualty’s
gut? Perhaps my faith is only insane because
it pulled me from the protective nihilism of the
raider. Who is to say? I read the Loss as best I
can; I dare not guess its ending.
Takers believe in the intangible as much as
anyone they scorn as “cultist.” They believe in
capitalism, the sanctity of the deal, the hope
of a better tomorrow. These beliefs break
them and save them, same as any theology.
They sought something to cling to as reality
crumbled beneath their feet, and they reached
out for the pillar of human greed. Most Takers
would be offended to hear this lifestyle called
a choice, yet they would scorn others that
grabbed different handholds to save against
the collapse of Truth.
The Crash kicked down all the old pillars
of faith. Jesus, Mohammed, and all the gods
refused to save us. Science stammers over its
explanations. History was caught off-guard.
The “absent” heavens seemed to answer
atheist dismissal by raining down hell.
Democracy sold out its citizens and retreated
into dystopian fascism. Afterwards, what was
left upon which to build a self?
Maybe the cowardly enclaves or sheltered
Recession still harbor the old beliefs, but
anyone that has spent time in deep Loss
either invested in a new delusion or killed
themselves. Criminals and rebels may have
fled to the comforting realities of capitalism
and politics, the only gods old enough to
weather the Blight’s birth. Others, like myself,
found deeper faiths.
I recognize my faith in the Chosen may be
madness. Religion, like madness, is never
diminished by introspection. It’s difficult to
define believer sects — even internally, no
dogma unifies a faith — but understanding the
general trends is important for any Taker. New
delusions can be manipulated for profit, but
believers will not hesitate to kill blasphemers.
The Meek
Obviously, it’s important to keep believers
in perspective. To dismiss them as crazy is
wrong, dangerous, and selfish. But I must
begin with the group that invented every
negative stereotype, as hatred never seems
more justified than when considering the
Meek.
The “theology” of the Meek, if you could
call it that, is that the Blight is holy. It came to
Earth to save mankind and grant eternal life.
The great sin of mankind is that they fought
this enlightenment. The Meek themselves
resisted the change, but they regret it. In a
sick quest for redemption, they seek to “save”
as many people as they can before becoming
Vectors themselves. They do this by spreading
infection to as many as possible.
We are only guessing their beliefs
based on their actions. Meek cultists have
smuggled themselves into enclaves only to
jam syringes of hot Blight into their necks,
suicide bombings via Vector outbreak. They’ve
dropped casualties into the Recession with
helicopters. They regularly erect traps along
trade routes, rigging doors with tripwires to
open and release floods of trapped casualties.
The Meek have barred the gates of Immune
harvesting settlements and burned them
down with everyone inside. They’ve kidnapped
classes of school children and infected them,
one-by-one, using Latents strapped to chairs.
Then they send the little Vectors back to their
enclave.
No one knows how people become Meek.
They don’t have meetings. They don’t write
books. They don’t recruit through anything
save murder. But somehow, the Meek always
find each other. Most burn out after their first
suicidal act of worship, but some have been
mass murdering with the Blight for years,
refusing to taste the black sinew themselves
until the last clean is infected.
The Meek are a mockery of faith. They
aren’t even human, they’re a memetic virus: a
suicidal impulse that demands company. Of
all the believers, they are the only group that
is completely, hopelessly insane. Killing one
does it a favor.
Shepherds
Takers consider becoming a casualty
interchangeable with death. To consider
anything worse weighs down the job with fear.
To think of infection as another form of life is
to invite more guilt than most can stand. Yet
the truth and what Takers need to rationalize
rarely intersects. We know that a Vector’s
apologies echo thoughts from their life. The
entire business of tragedy tracking depends
on a casualty’s tendency to gravitate towards
places of significance to the host. It pains
one to think about, but something of the soul
remains in every casualty.
Shepherds do not turn away from this truth.
They refuse to slay casualties or Vectors. The
source of the pacifism varies greatly. Some
sects believe the Blight will one day be cured,
and they’ve a responsibility to protect its
sufferers. Some refuse violence out of a sense
of naturalism, the same way a hunter would
refrain from shooting a lion. Christianity
151
 or other old religions stay hands, as do a
sheer inability to put down infected family
members. Whatever the source, Shepherds
will not fight with the Blight, even when
refusal means their certain death.
Many believe Shepherds to be in the
early stages of turning Meek. Takers have a
pragmatic hatred for them, as congregations
tend to horde “flocks” of casualties in
unexpected places. But I’ve never met a
Shepherd with an ounce of malice. They
merely do not fool themselves. Decapitating
a casualty is murder. Perhaps it is a merciful
one, but it is murder all the same.
Chosen
The Chosen are criticized as Blight
worshipers, but how exactly is that worship
carried out? What has a Latent done except
be bitten or injected? How would the Blight
even receive our praise?
Every day, Latents live with an alien
creature in their veins. It protects them from
its wrath even as it murders millions, defying
all earthly science in the process. What
should they call this thing? An infection? Bad
luck? “God” is the only name that fits, but
the cleans feel as if that name is synonymous
with love. We don’t live in your children’s tales
with pantheons of imaginary friends! Our
god forces itself inside us. It announces its
arrival with agony and black veins. A god does
not need to love you, precisely because it is a
god. You don’t need to love it back to be in its
thrall.
Acknowledge the fact that the Latent are
better equipped to survive in this world than
any other. Recognize that the Blight is greater
than humanity by far, and the bodies it spares
from its endless hunger are part of a larger
plan. Accept the plan is beyond understanding
and control. Take comfort in the certainty that
Latents shall play a role. See the sinews in
your flesh as what they are: badges of terrible
purpose.
This is all it means to be Chosen. There are
denominational squabbles: immune-tolerant,
naturals-only, Supressin-evangelical, etc.
152
These details are paltry in comparison to our
single truth. Latency is a divine calling.
TrIage
Being Chosen is about Latents learning to
accept the role forced upon them. A portion of
the weak, jealous cleans cannot tolerate this
truth. They’ve invented cosmology around this
hate.
Members of Triage won’t admit to being
believers, insisting instead they are a
movement of concerned citizens. But once
they start talking, it’s only a matter of time
before they start spewing fantasies more
absurd than any religious text. A favorite
starting point is the “new studies” that prove
the Blight can covertly infect the brains of
Latents, turning them into brainwashed
sleeper agents. If trying to infiltrate a
traditional faith community, they’ll hand out
pamphlets about how God warned mankind
about Latents with “the mark of Cain.”
Eventually, the message becomes action.
Triage takes to the streets to protect the
citizenry from gangs of Latents playing the
“infection game” as ritual initiation into
the “Chosen death cult.” They burn down
clinics that produce side-effect treatments so
that the Latents can’t “boost their infection
airborne.” Given enough time, they’ll find a
Latent in hiding, don hazmat suits, and lynch
the poor fool. As the innocent dies, they’ll film
propaganda ads about the danger of latency.
They make certain to catch footage of the
body turning Vector before slowly chopping
off the restrained creature’s limbs, saving the
head for last like children torturing butterflies.
The old prejudices are as strong as always,
but the Crash reduced many who thought
themselves progressive to the pure line of
hatred that runs through all humanity. These
broken things believe they’re “protecting
the children,” making the “hard choices,” or
whatever other rationalizations speeds them
toward the next fix of rage. Triage tends to
operate primarily in the Recession, but their
poisonous gospel has been known to convert
entire enclaves. On at least one occasion, a
group freed the entire population of a Many
Hands productive quarantine camp only to
execute hundreds of the workers.
I wish more Triage ventured into my corner
of the Loss. I would happily play the part of
that nightmare Latent they’ve concocted to
justify their fear.

Black Math
When a Vector kills, it reduces the human
population, creating a new Vector in minutes.
When a casualty kills, it snuffs out another
human life and might create another Vector
in days. When a human kills, it might kill one
of its own. Even if it slays a casualty, it doesn’t
reproduce in the process. Making a new
human takes nine months, and it’s more than
a decade before it can fight.
The math is not on our side.
The Black Math realizes this. They recruit
from the most hardened and desperate
veterans of the Loss: rebels burnt-out after
five years of hopeless war, Takers that have
lost entire crews, raiders gone vacant-eyed
with slaughter. They propose a simple
argument. “You are broken,” the Math says. If Theology varies. Some Black Math groups
humanity survives, it will not be with one so shoot Latents as infection risks. Others
thoroughly used and spent. But humanity will recruit them as super soldiers. One sect might
not survive. Every person on earth could kill be suicidally short-lived, but others practice
a casualty tomorrow, and we would still be extreme caution in pursuit of a long life spent
wiped out. The only hope is for some among purging the Blight. The dogma differs, but a
us — the truly strong — to carry the bulk of mathematician can always be identified by the
the duty themselves. There may be nothing tattoos. For every casualty slain, a tic mark
good left inside a broken survivor of the Loss, is inked into flesh. Their leaders wear what’s
but holiness is defined solely by the number called “the face full of fives.” They are some of
of monsters you slay. Salvation is in the the most feared warriors in all the Loss.
slaughter and slaughter alone.
The Black Math are ascetics that worship ArchIvIsts
a kill/death ratio. Piety is measured in Like Black Math, the Archivists are an
casualties slain. Most mathematicians eschatology cult. Where they differ is on
form Taker crews that exclusively accept whether the end can be prevented. Archivists
extermination contracts. They spend bounty believe extinction is inevitable and the present
only on the bare essentials; all else goes a brief reprieve between Crashes. Their duty
towards weapons and ammunition. Some go is to preserve as much human culture as
on for years like this, but retirement isn’t an possible, as quickly as possible, for whatever
option and the goal isn’t survival. The goal comes next.
is to die in what the members refer to as “A
Significant Subtraction.”
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 The exact shape of this “next” begins
denominational rifts. Roughly half of
archivists believe that extinction won’t be
total, but humanity will be reduced unto a new
dark age. They seek to protect the knowledge
of today so that it might be rediscovered
hundreds of years hence, when the Blight
has passed and only primitives remain. This
faction is typically referred to as “investors,”
contrasting with the “monumentalists,”
who believe all mankind is doomed. They
construct archives for evolved Blight
creatures or aliens, using our knowledge as
humanity’s tombstone.
Each half is further fractured by what,
exactly, deserves preservation. Many investors
are content to horde books, but some insist
on inscribing knowledge in stone in case
the Dark Age lasts longer than hoped. For
the monumentalists, stone is the low end
of acceptable preservation. Longevity alone
determines the quality of their archives, so
many cults busy themselves constructing
vaults or experimenting with digital file
formats that can last for centuries.
The Loss generally regards the Archivists
well. Their faith may seem a bit precious
when survival is on the line, but the limited
storage capacity of the Ubiq network means
they often possess manuals and lore vital to
enclave survival. But in rare instances, the
bookish normalcy of an archivist can shatter
and destroy the unprepared. The primary
tenet of their belief is the doom of mankind.
This means that, if given the choice between
a human life and a rare comic book, some will
not hesitate to kill for the text. They regard
themselves and all they meet as already dead;
watch out for archivists that act on such
belief.
Holy CommunIon
We don’t understand immunity. Of course
people worship it.
The Church of Holy Communion derives
primarily from Christian faiths and their
textual obsessions with blood. Considering
the origin, it is no surprise that religious
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practice is equally diffuse. The least
intimidating denominations merely regard
the Immune as God’s chosen people. This
privilege can be as innocuous as electing
the Immune to deliver Sunday sermon, but
things get darker from there. Some Immune
manipulate the faithful into serving them as
cults of personality.
Fundamentalists are worse by far. They
regard the Immune as holy, but in the same
way man’s dominion over the animals is holy.
These backwoods tribes believe that ingesting
the flesh of the Immune will save them from
the Blight, which is surely the instrument of
God’s wrath.
Hardline churches snatch travelers from
the road. Latents they execute immediately.
Everyone else they administer blood testing
kits. Any regular cleans are allowed to leave,
if they take communion. Those who refuse
are executed as apostates. Anyone who tests
as Immune is turned into communion. Ritual
consumption varies. Some only slit the throat
and drain the blood. A few groups practice
full-blown cannibalism. Suffice it say that if a
shifty-eyed hillbilly comes wandering in from
the deep Loss looking to buy advanced blood-
testing kits and flensing knives, it might be
best to navigate around the region he calls
home.
Detox
Neo-Primitives were a movement before the
Crash. Its expression ranged from harmless
vegans lording their morality over dinner
parties to delusional anti-vaxxers causing
outbreaks of extinct diseases. Intentions were
equally varied, starting at the necessary work
of environmentalists and corrupting until
reaching the psychosis of dark enlightenment
eco-terrorists, seeking to forcibly drag
humanity back into the 16th century so that
their prophets might rule. The one thing all
these attempts at “authenticity” shared was
a platform of privilege. The starving don’t
care about GMO crops. Months of non-violent
protest is a hobby laborers couldn’t afford.
One would think that, as the Crash
eviscerated the privilege supporting it, those
of the “more natural than thou” set might
adjust their beliefs. But some merely double-
downed on their ideology, sublimating a
vague sense of eco-consciousness into a
religion. Thus the Detox believers were
born, and they were first among the Loss to
practice evangelical recruitment. Like most
missionary work, enlightenment came along
with a threat. The early Detoxins tended to
have bountiful home gardens and the pre-
industrial skills required to run them. Those
that converted and joined their enclaves lived.
The rest starved. The numbers grew steadily
thereafter.
Detoxins vary in intensity and focus.
Some merely point out the fact (correctly)
that the cull in population caused by the
Crash might be the only thing that allows
humanity to stop the rampant climate change
already destroying the earth. These ground-
floor believers run rational, sustainable
communities and sell good weed. Some more
extreme sects believe the Blight was caused
by preservatives and will murder members
that breech their dietary laws. Entire enclaves
have starved after Detoxins burned their
GMO crops, dooming themselves in the without doubt, but the solution seems simple:
process. Only super-seeds can provide in the don’t look. No cure can be found this way, but
harsh weather changes of the Loss, yet some no cure was ever possible. Besides, I would
in Detox would rather humanity perish than no more want to cure the Blight than wish
ingest anything that isn’t organic. Extremists to erase myself. It is part of me and part of
have executed people for riding horses or humanity as a whole, even for cleans. Like
owning dogs. The worst of the Detoxins take cancer and death, its sorrow gives shape to
a return to agrarian economies to mean a the mortal condition. And if we could cure
return to Dark Age society. These hardliners it? What would we say to those desiccated
use the ideology of naturalism to cow their corpses, resurrected after five years of
women into illiterate breeding sows, ruling wandering cannibalism?
their enclaves like fiefdoms. What I do understand is an oath, and that
The majority of Detoxins are harmless is what drives the Crusaders to defy the limits
hippies, but the average Taker’s clothes and of the human mind. Doctors that authentically
diet are blasphemous enough to a zealot to lived their Hippocratic Oaths could not be
justify murder. swayed by a lack of funding. They did not
listen when the Recession tried to reallocate
their focus to other things. They did not
Crusaders abandon their posts during the amputation,
I cannot relate to study sickness. The
and the true healers could not stand to see
mismatch between the reality science teaches
the people in the Loss suffer without aid.
and the rebuke of the Blight is distressing
155
 These medical professionals have dedicated
themselves to fighting the Blight’s extinction
by patrolling, researching, and caring for the
Lost. The mission assures their madness and
death, yet they still collect samples, gather
research, and try cures. It is folly to fight a god
like the Blight, but it is a brave folly.
Noble or not, it would be a mistake to
regard all Crusaders as philanthropists.
Though they provide most of the healthcare
in the Loss, they are rarely on the side of their
patients. Practitioners consider themselves
in a daily battle against the very extinction
of mankind. With those stakes at hand, the
life of a single person seems paltry. Even the
ones that still respect their patients have been
made cynical by witnessing thousands die
since the first days in the emergency room. As
the slippery contradictions of the Blight weigh
on a Crusader’s mind, it is only a matter of
time before ethics slip. Crusaders usually pay
for samples from Latents and immunes, but
they’ve been known to take them by force.
There are rumors of secret labs, hidden in the
deep Loss, where Crusaders practice human
experimentation. Most come to regard the
Surpressin trials as the height of medical
discovery, and the person bandaging your
wounds may not hesitate to throw your life
away chasing another such result.
RandIans
Raiders are often confused as Randians.
Both can leave enclaves impoverished and
bleeding, but conflating the two is to mistake
a reflex for a dance. Raiders steal out of
animal instinct, reduced by tragedy to a
tribal imperative. Randians have confused a
tendency toward greed for cosmic philosophy,
as if a fool learned how his stomach works
and proceeded to dissolve the world in acid.
In fairness, the early days of the Crash
punished altruism with death. By the time
enclaves re-established order, too many had
been rewarded too long by their psychopathy.
Continued survival confirmed the worldview
of disgraced pre-Crash elites even as they
lost their wealth. Others from more humble
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origins came to see dispassionate selfishness
as what their lives had always been missing.
A lack of empathy became more than a
survival mechanism. For those it rescued, cold
selfishness wasn’t what saved their lives... it
was the only way to live.
Randians do not identify as “believers.”
They are atheists one-and-all, regarding
the tenets of both God and man as slave
moralities. However, the dogmatic pursuit
of total self-interest practiced since the
Crash puts the sub-cultures of the pre-
Crash US business community and political
establishment to shame. Today’s Randians
won’t even speak to another person unless
their time is compensated with bounty. They
would not douse a fire if it did not threaten
them personally, even as a child burned alive.
Expecting anything from them resembling
“common courtesy,” “good manners,” or
“human decency” they regard as theft, fraud,
and attempted slavery.
Paradoxically, Randians rarely operate
alone. They form “mutual cooperatives” out
of “rational self-interest” by first binding
each other with contracts. Though there is
no body of law to enforce these documents,
the believers consider a contract intrinsically
sacred. The slightest deviation from one can
provoke gunfire. As such, Randians make for
terrific businessmen and awful neighbors.
Their every interaction is priced and demands
compensation. No act of civic engagement is
too small for their ire, and they’ve been known
to conquer entire enclaves rather than pay a
tax on sewage removal. These purists, despite
their constant lip-service to fair exchange,
fully adhere to the laws of might makes right.
Many believe the ability to steal from someone
represents a flaw in the character of the
victim. The theft is, as Randians, their duty to
perform.
No hypocrisy is too great for the Randians.
They’ll condemn Takers as parasitic liberals
even as they hire them. They’ll launch attacks
against crews because their work takes them
near salvage they “contracted” as their own.
Some co-ops even keep slaves, justifying it by
having the oppressed sign themselves into
indentured servitude.
As I said, people confuse Randians for
raiders. I raided because it was the life the
Loss demanded of me. Only a Randian would
call that virtue.
They also tend to dress in business casual,
even now. I do not know why.
LALAs
Takers call them LALAs: Last Asshole Left
Alive. The Loss is not forgiving to isolation,
so they become scarcer every year. However,
lone survivors can still be found dotting the
deep wasteland. To call LALAs believers is a
stretch. They are defined by their isolation,
and even I admit that the term “crazy” fits well
on many that I have met. But rest assured,
LALAs are driven by their beliefs, even if
those beliefs are only held by a single person
gone insane with years of solitude and grief. I
met a man that thought the dolls he collected
talked to him. One woman had been teaching
a kindergarten class of skeletons the same
lesson for years. Another thought he could
cure the Blight with aromatherapy. He kept
basements full of fragrant casualties.
Do not pity or dismiss a LALA. Though
they may have broken with reality, they did
so in such a way that enabled survival. Alone.
In harsh conditions. For years. The chance
of even the most dedicated hermit avoiding
all contact that long is very slim. The chance
the LALA killed anyone who came close is
disturbingly high. Loneliness is an unnatural
condition. Even raiders form tribes. The
suffering a LALA endures can sharpen the
mind into a razor point, and they aim it at
anyone who dares come too close.
Lost ThIngs
Places can be predicted and skirted. People?
Reasoned with. Manipulated.
But the Loss is a home for things.
Humanity only squats here. It is for the
casualties and the Vectors: the monsters with
which it cut itself onto the earth. Everyone
knows about these creatures, but there are
other things besides. Things that cannot be
seen, avoided, or escaped.
Extreme Weather
Seasons no longer exist.
The earth still rotates around the sun. The
hours of daylight stay consistent. Temperature
and precipitation still follow loose trends.
But the season, as humans conceive of it, no
longer exists. It has been wiped out by climate
change we brazenly ignored and continue to
accelerate. One may think it is summer, but
radioactive fallout from a nuke or dust storms
from a drought can easily blot out the sun in a
day, leaving the ground blanketed in ash and
snow. It can be over 100 degrees in January.
Late spring can bring ice storms so cruel they
snap tree trunks in half. Seasons existed as
our primary tool of agricultural survival, and
they are something upon which we can no
longer rely.
Thankfully, humanity has so tampered
with crops that they can survive the hellish
moonscape we’re building for them. Alosine
has strains of corn that grow even after bleach
has been injected into the roots. Potatoes that
can survive sixty-degree temperature swings.
Okra plants that can grow from cracks in the
sidewalk.
But scientific breakthroughs that help the
enclave farmer do nothing to save Takers in
the Loss. I’ve seen men frozen to death in
June. Women choked to death on dust. Entire
crews wiped away by flash floods. Enclaves
poisoned by contaminated reservoirs or
starved by hordes of locusts.
There is a reason we call the migrations
of roaming casualties “weather.” Both are
equally capricious and deadly. Rest assured,
if the Loss does not feel its minions are
killing you fast enough, it will handle matters
personally. Trust not the seasons, the forecast,
or your own eyes. The very sky can conspire
to end you.
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158
Ferals
An animal that ingests casualty flesh dies,
poisoned. An animal that ingests human flesh
eats for that week. The creatures of the Loss
have learned this.
The worst and most common ferals
are dogs. Most pets starved, got eaten, or
swallowed black juice while fighting off
casualties during the Crash. The few that
survived either have dedicated owners or
rejected their domestication entirely. At this
point, the survivors have inter-bred so much
that mongrels are almost all that remain.
Some former pet packs have even joined with
wolves, coyotes, and coywolfs. The hybrid
packs are formidable hunters, but the Blight’s
poisoning of insects and other carrion eaters
put them at constant risk of starvation. The
knockdown effects of the scavenger die-off,
combined with climate change and Crash
fallout, makes game scarce. By far, the most
prevalent and easy prey in the Loss is man.
Feral dogs have only survived this long
through cunning, and most have intimate
experience with mankind. I’ve seen packs
use cute pure-breeds to lure in travelers. The
malingering pup sets an ambush, waiting for
someone to come to its aid, before barking
to alert dozens of ravenous hounds lying in
wait nearby. Packs will harrow and pursue
targets for days, herding them towards hostile
encampments in the hopes of eating the
clean corpses killed by gunfire. The craftiest
packs have learned to bite and then throw up
to purge themselves of the Blight in order to
hamstring casualties in the high grass of their
hunting grounds, essentially trapping escape
routes out of the kill zone.
Dogs are just the most prevalent ferals.
Bears have grown bolder with dwindling
resources. At least one crew of Moths once
got contracted to hunt a man-eating grizzly.
As we’ve not heard back from them since, I
assume things did not go well. Zoos further
complicated matters. LifeLines contains
reports of rampaging rhinos, man-eating
baboon troops, and stampeding bulls
harassing enclaves. The Lions of Chicago
have become legendary, and though their
existence is in doubt, the death toll cannot be
denied, nor the prize on their heads.
The Loss is a jungle. Takers are not king.
159
 Aberrants
Any child knows to aim for the head. Taking
casualties is simplicity itself. Be smart, stay
lucky, and survive.
As for Vectors... throw everything at them:
empty magazines, use grenades, break blades
off. If they get close, keep mouths shut and
eyes covered. You’re probably still dead unless
Chosen or Immune, but they can be slain
if met with the same suicidal intensity with
which they attack.
But Aberrants? There is no planning for an
Aberrant. There is only the sensation of being
hunted, and the wisdom of running away.
Killing one grants no reward, save maybe
the false confidence of having conquered the
Blight’s champion. Such quests are madness.
Aberrants are the very maws of the Loss, the
jaws that swallow entire enclaves in the night.
To continue on when one is near is stupidity.
To chase one is suicide.
They are real. Fire any in a crew that
160
believe otherwise. No doubt some of the
stories on LifeLines are lies, legends passed
around to scare the Bait. But dare we make
the same mistake again, refusing to believe
monsters exist? Has the Crash taught us
nothing? The Blight has already destroyed
reality once. The Aberrants are the weapons
with which it will do it again.
Aerosol
I know a Taker named Lady. She’s natural
Latent, but as yet doesn’t acknowledge being
Chosen. I try to enlighten her; she tries to get
me to buy her more drinks. It’s frustrating,
but she uses a large pipe in the field, similar
enough to a sledge. We trade tips and stories.
Lady’s first crew was successful. They had
run contracts since the beginning and caught
a rhythm. The time came to scavenge a
vehicle and increase their range. They found
a candidate in an oil change place, banged on
the back door to kite the dead, and picked the
lock on the front. Inside, they found a single
casualty. It was desiccated, long-gone. One of
the first to change.
According to Lady, they played it safe.
Melee weapons out they surrounded the
creature. It had a broken ankle and could
barely shamble. The pipe was drawn back,
ready to end it, when one of Lady’s crew
sneezed. It seemed funny, echoing in the
silence, such a silly noise for such a grave
deed. Her crew laughed. She laughed too.
Then they began to cough. Choke. Collapse.
You never forget what a Vector transformation
looks like. The bloody tears, the red spilling
out the ears…Lady said they all began to
turn, right on the spot. By the time she
walked towards one to help, the seizures
and apologies were starting. She ran and
slammed the door behind her. She was barely
down the block before they were bashing at
the walls, trying to get at her.
I believe Lady’s stories. All Latents
eventually get roped into cleanup duty, patting
down the dead for loose bounty. Many of
us have seen the mystery casualties, myself
included. The ones with no wounds save rot.
The ones that have no site of infection. Most
of us assume they were originals, leftovers
from the emergence event, or victims of a
Meek’s poisoning. But it’s also possible that,
for some reason, the rare casualty turns the
Blight airborne. They emit a cloud of the hot
strain around themselves, infecting any cleans
that come close. How could we tell, if they
look like the rest? What if all those sudden
outbreaks, the ones that destroy entire
settlements in hours, were caused by one of
these Aerosols wandering too near the gate?
What if they’re out there even now, emitting
clouds of the poison? What if all casualties are
destined to spore invisibly into the air, and the
one’s we’ve encountered so far are merely the
first of millions?

Ever-Vecs
It is the purpose of hot Blight to bring death.
It must kill victims to ready them as hosts
for the cold strain. Without Supressin or the
161
 grace of being Chosen, the clock starts ticking
immediately upon exposure. Most die during
the chaos of outbreak, quickly transitioning
into torpor without a headshot. For the
survivors, death comes from hemorrhagic
fever, neural damage, accelerated heartbeat,
or wracking convulsions. If the body’s strong
enough to withstand that, muscle strain and
exhaustion is often enough. Hydrophobia
causes dehydration. Unless new victims are
plentiful, starvation also comes into play.
Then there are secondary infections….
Most Vectors have three days. A week, at
most.
But some Vectors, according to legend,
never die. They never bleed out, starve, or lose
the basic motor skills. They can climb, turn
door handles, and wield simple weapons like
a just-turned freshy. In fact, an Ever-Vec seems
to get stronger the longer it runs. Experts
guess they metabolize energy from protein
better than a healthy human body. Every
ragged chunk of flesh gets turned into muscle,
creating linebacker physiques and inhuman
speed.
162
Even I would dismiss claims of the Ever-
Vecs were it not for the Cursed Settlement.
Located in the Ozark mountains, the Cursed
Settlement started as a DHQS forward
operating base before succumbing to a hot
outbreak. Eventually, it was cleared out and
turned into an archivist compound... before
succumbing to a hot outbreak. Then an
enclave. Then a settlement again. Then a
Crusader site. All fell, flooding the region with
new casualties each time.
On Lifelines, there are accounts from
multiple survivors across the site’s many
revivals. Whether corporate, military, or Lost,
all claim to have seen the same Vector leading
the infectious charge: huge, fast, wielding a
parking meter like a club. At least two crews
have gone out hunting him, seeking to reclaim
the haunted compound for themselves. None
have returned.
EmptIes
Empties are also called blanks, dreamers,
pacifists, and downers. There’s hardly a Taker
that hasn’t seen one. Few register them.
Many try to explain them away as a quirk
of infection. The ones that admit they’re
Aberrants lie and tell themselves empties are
the only ones. They tell themselves they aren’t
bothered.
The psychic geography that collects some
casualties at places they knew in life goes
haywire in an empty. They don’t attack. They
don’t bite. They just repeat some action they
knew in life. Over and over again. Blindly. I’ve
seen an empty behind the wheel of a wrecked
car, shifting between drive and park endlessly.
I’ve killed entire mobs only to find one sitting
in the living room, watching a cold fireplace.
They’ll stand at train stations, waiting for
rides that never come, reading phones long
dead, scrolling with phantom fingers lost to
rot.
There’s no real danger in an empty. Most
get slain in the heat of battle, shot in a panic
to kill the rest of an attacking mob. If they
survive that, it only makes sense to put them
down. They’ve been stationary for years, after
all. Chances are good they still have a bounty
on them. But most get left where they were
found. Takers won’t admit it in front of Bait,
but most can’t stand to end it.
When you pull cards all day, the casualties
become the enemy. It hurts enough to admit
you need them, to hang salvation on such
terror. But watching them have memories,
acting them out forever… it sets the mind
back to every headshot and decapitation,
remembering the face beneath. You wonder if
you have family out there, repeating the loop,
waiting for someone to break the spell. You
wonder what you’ll do when your time comes.
You wonder if you’re even good enough
to resist the hunger, if you even deserve
purgatory after all you’ve done.
On the job, such thoughts kill faster than
gunfire. An empty is an albatross around a
crew’s neck. An omen of the fatal mistake sure
to come soon.
Mutants
Ferals are a constant problem in the Loss.
Many enclaves plan for their nuisance, and
163
 there are crews that specialize in their
removal. Even against experts, though, the
odd feral seem too resistant to damage.
Hunters land direct hits that do not fell the
beast. The exterminators track the oddly dark
blood trails of these predators. Sometimes,
they fail to return.
There is no shortage of other explanations.
Perhaps the too-proud hunters lied about
their shots. When they come back as Vectors,
why believe the culprit is anything but a
wandering casualty? If they never return at
all, why ascribe the tragedy to something
fantastic when the Loss boasts so many
common dooms? But, still, LifeLines has
tales of horses that eat men. Apes that hang
the bones of victims from the trees. Reported
sightings abound of carnivorous beasts that
164
do not fall, reek of rot, and hunt more for
sport than hunger. Maybe too many for simple
myth....
GanglIa
Blight sinews break the skin. We see it in the
black cankers and “blossoms” poking from
a casualty’s rot. The Latent suffer this too.
It’s not unlike acne if it had root around your
nervous system. Trimming these burrs is an
everyday, painful annoyance for the Chosen.
For those that believe in the Ganglia, the
errant sinews explain the abomination’s
origins. The idea is that sinews penetrating
cadavers can’t hope to understand the human
musculature. The twitchy stumbling of the
casualty must result from alien nerve cluster
struggling with a foreign body. But the Ganglia
theory holds that, if sinews connect enough of
the limited processing centers housed in a C’s
brain, the Blights manipulation of dead flesh
becomes exponentially more effective and
graceful compared to the twitchy stumbling
of a casualty. House enough Cs going through
torpor in a tight space, their growing sinews
break the skin and join up with neighbors
in the pile. The Blight doesn’t distinguish
between the bodies in the network. It just
keeps producing more and more sinew,
leaking more and more juice, until a
monstrous, rat-king of casualties is formed.
We only know about ganglia from the
GILF tape showing one of the things rushing
down a hospital corridor. Tied together with
black, fibrous sinews, the mass seems like
it should be immobile, but many heads,
hands, and feet apparently make light work.
The movement is... disturbing. The group
body casts members in front of the nucleus
like grappling hooks. They land and drag
themselves forward on all fours, hauling the
mass behind them with the cords of tissue
prolapsing out of their backsides. Others
ram their dead fingernails into the walls and
ceilings, supporting the nexus of poisoned
dead flesh and inching forward like a swarm
of roaches. Ceiling crawlers shatter the lights
as it comes, providing only strobe glances
at the indiscernible whole. The whole ballet
takes place in fractions of seconds, faster
and more agile than any Vector. It’s a rolling,
swinging, animal sprint that looks wholly
wrong.
No one in GILF takes credit for the
tape, but I’m not sure how anyone there at
the filming could be alive to corroborate.
Armchair-Takers claim the impossible physics
of the ganglia’s movement mean the footage is
doctored.
I hope they are right. It would be
comforting.

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island
of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not
meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in
its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the
piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying
vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall
either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the
peace and safety of a new dark age.
-H.P. Lovecraft

165
 Converts
My tribe and I once scouted an enclave inside
a prison. They had reinforced the chain-link
with layers of vinyl siding, further buttressed
with strong pillars cemented into the ground
as support. Rather than attack the hard target,
we made camp in the woods a few miles away,
hoping to make easier prey of their traders. I
alleviated the boredom of the wait by hunting.
I came upon a field, pockmarked with fresh
craters, dozens of casualties clawed at the
earth. A dead man digging his own grave is
not uncommon in the Loss. The casualty will
see a gopher or fox, then claw after it dumbly.
If not provided other stimulus, they can dig
themselves up to the neck. But there were
plenty of other things to entice them: birds,
deer crashing through branches, distracting
rustles of wind through leaves. I’d also never
seen so many of them dig at once. But as I
pondered this, there was an explosion that
sent corpses flying.
They were digging in a minefield, one set
by misguided soldiers during the retreat. The
166
others looked up, began shambling towards
the crater, and then stopped. They seemed to
spy something on the ground in unison. They
resumed digging.
It was strange, certainly, but I thought it
funny. I moved on before more arrived.
Days later, I scouted the enclave. They’d set
off alarms on the far side of the compound
that night. It was to draw fence-clingers away
from the gates: sure sign a party was leaving. I
waited to signal my tribe’s ambush. As the sun
rose, the cleared gate pulled open to reveal a
sizable convoy. Gas vehicles, armored — the
enclavists were rich. I prepared the signal
when I heard the explosion.
In the night, right outside the gate,
something had placed a landmine. From
the sound of it, the same type of landmine
from the field. The truck passing over it was
blown apart. Its engine block dropped and
snapped the front axle. The car and its dead
passengers were an immovable, burning
obstacle... jammed right in the middle of the
gate.
 That’s when they came. Thousands of them.
The largest casualty stampede I’d ever seen.
They rose from where they’d been lying under
the leaves. They rose from parts of the forest I
had walked through the previous day, stirring
not a single creature. They descended at their
stumbling leisure, in no great rush, confident
the panicked enclavists would never clear the
gate in time. For the rest of the afternoon, I
watched in shock as the enclave fell. I listened
to their screams echo through the valley. Near
the end, the horde seemed to lose its focus.
The casualties again mingled aimlessly with
their new, frantic Vector-kin, dumbly trapped
by the walls they’d just invaded.
Just as night fell, I watched one wander
away. It was a little boy, in pajamas soaked
with fresh blood, walking in a straight line
though it pursued no prey. On its head rested
a SWAT helmet, dented with bullet impacts.
Eventually, it turned. It looked at me. It saw
me. The rolling cataracts of its eyes locked on
mine. I was recognized, found unworthy, and
abandoned as it moved on.
There are other stories on the lines like
this. Some of them, for some reason, retain
consciousness. They hold a human mind,
intelligent but converted entirely to the hunger.
No one knows why, but they are always
children. con artists seeking handouts. They question
why snipers don’t just shoot it in the head, or
dig up the roots for burning. As if those who
Scarecrows
have seen hadn’t tried and seen their Takers
Scarecrows are another instance of sinews
pulled down, drained of blood by the thirsty
over-reaching the bounds of their victim.
soil.
People tell stories of entire fields covered
I’ve never encountered a scarecrow, but
with desiccated corpses, each strapped to
there are many photos on LifeLines. The
the ground, drained by thorny black vines
same accusations of tampering are thrown
that radiate out from an immobile casualty
at them all, but why concoct such a hoax?
crucified by its own Blight. The root-like
To what end? I think people just don’t want
growths turn the soil into a minefield, ready
to believe the Blight can have such alien,
to burst forth and ensnare any creature fool
plant-like behavior. They want to think of it
enough to pass close. Drone combines have
as a parasite, infection, animal, or whatever
been choked to a stop by the fibrous tendrils.
inadequate corollary is that year’s fashion.
Entire enclaves have had to evacuate as the
They want to take comfort in imagined
taint of a scarecrow wormed under their
limits to its required conditions and speed
crops and walls.
of growth. Such fools build their reality on
Most deny the existence of scarecrows.
quicksand.
They regard refugees fleeing its influence as
167
 Stalkers
The mother still watches over me.
I do not know why. She is not Banhammer’s
mother; she bore the man from before. She is
his stalker, but bound to my new flesh.
In his endless stupidity, the man stuck her
in an economy apartment so he could get on
with his “life.” He forgot about her. For that
and many reasons, I’m glad he is dead. I’m
grateful that his body houses me and to the
Blight that has Chosen me to see its purpose.
But I wish the man’s ghosts died with him.
She always stays on the horizon. I
recognize the pink nightgown through
binoculars. Her rotting face bears a
resemblance too, recalled in my bones.
I’ve doubted this recognition, but I’ve hired
erosion artists to decay her visage from old
photos. Her casualty is unmistakable.
From long study, I suspect it was the bite
on her arm. I can just imagine it. One of the
Vectors tried to break in through that window
herb garden she fussed over for lack of a
worthy son. She’d not have gone to the cops or
fled upon hearing the breaking glass. A lone
fighter — always had been. It was her home.
She would have pushed the intruder out
herself. Judged by the condition of her corpse,
she was successful and remained unravaged. She’s there even now, watching my camp
But it got one bite out of her before moving on from just out of range. I know this without
to easier prey. That was enough. looking. When I wander alone, she gets closer.
I do not know how she tracks me. I once Once, as I slept in a destroyed copy shop,
thought it was our shared Blight, or our she passed by the storefront windows. She
shared blood, but there are other stalkers out shuffled by as if on an errand, somewhere to
there. I’ve heard tell of lovers, friends, and go. But her black eyes locked with mine, never
former crewmembers that come back, driving losing sight until she passed the grimy glass.
Takers to madness. The method doesn’t really I screamed challenge. I grabbed my sledge
matter, for it is unshakable. When I flew to and charged. But when I ran outside, she
the coast, I thought I was free of her. I went was already gone. Before I could look, I was
months without her haunting. Then we met distracted by a mob of regular casualties, all
halfway upon my return, states away from too eager to eat what Mother refused to finish.
where I last saw her. I’d caught her in the She may merely be playing with her food.
midst of a cross-country trek to join me. Or She may wish torture me, endlessly. Revenge
rather, she caught me. for the man’s many sins. I wish I could get
I’ve hired the best snipers in the Loss to close enough to end both our pain. I wish I
end it. They always miss. She’s wily, ducking could tell her that the man she seeks is as
corners the moment a shot lines up. When I dead as she.
send them in for closer kills, they don’t return. I wish I could tell her many things.
168
MalIgnant
Blight tissue doesn’t come from thin air. It
might as well, for all we understand it, but it
doesn’t. As the Blight slows decomposition,
it metabolizes tissue from the victim to make
its sinew. Medical studies have measured
casualties in torpor and after, finding a nearly
one-to-one maintenance of weight.
What if the Blight kept rewriting tissues?
What if it didn’t stop after the sinews had
wormed through the body? What if it just kept
going until the whole body was black ichor?
Then it would be malignant.
We were headed through the sewers on the
outskirts of a city, trying to bypass the urban
hordes. Deep in the lightless tunnels, I walked
onto a carpet of spongy pitch darkness I’d
mistaken for night overpowering my flashlight.
As I moved forward, it turned to hands, eyes,
teeth in barely twitching jaws. The moisture
from the tunnel turned into chunky NHPD
fluid dripping onto my hair and back. Had
I not been on point, the crew would have
certainly been infected.
It didn’t move or attack. Our way was just
blocked, choked by corpse kudzu. Yet seeing
it was enough to feel assaulted. How did that
many casualties get into the sewer? What
spread the cancerous overgrowth of Blight
sinew between them? Could it spread to me,
consuming other Latents? I do not know. I
know that we left those tunnels and ate the
cost of that contract. I know that’s why I’m
alive to tell the tale.
169
 Shuffled bounces off the skull, melee weapon misses
Absolutes in the Loss don’t come often. One the Blight nexus in the brainstem. Common
of them is shoot for the head. But every so mistakes like these get Takers killed. If
often, a panicked Taker will hit the lines someone survives to tell the tale, they’re
claiming that headshots don’t work. They usually carrying the ghosts of a dead crew on
report massacres where the mobs couldn’t their backs. Making up a new Aberrant might
be stopped, nightmares where the ritual be how some cope.
is observed but the beasts keep coming. But, if the Shuffled do exist, we’ve already
Eyelessly tracking, trying to stuff the flesh lost our only weapon against the Blight and
of dead crewmembers down a neck stump. don’t even know it yet.
There are also reports by Fencemen claiming
they’ve seen entire headless mobs wander
past the gates. Casualties with skulls
hollowed out by buckshot or with hatchets
still buried in their spines. All of them claimed
that the groups stayed together and kept
tracking their prey, despite have no sense
organs left which to do so.
There are a million explanations for a failed
kill besides Aberrants: dud ammunition, light
gunpowder reload in the cartridge, bullet

170
PLAYING THE MARKET

171

ProfIt System
The Profit System uses two dice – Black
and Red – to determine a wide range of
effects. Players use the dice to determine the
success or failure of their characters’ actions.
Similarly, the Market uses the same dice to
generate much of the game world randomly,
simulating the capricious and unpredictable
forces at work in the setting.
When there’s a chance a character might
fail an important task, the player makes a dice
check to determine what happens next. The
Profit System follows the same rule as all
business; success means being “in the Black.” For instance, a roll of 5 on the Red die would
A dice check is in the Black if the Black
die is higher than the Red, either naturally or
after adding modifiers. If the Red is higher
or equal to the Black, the combination of
uncontrollable, moment-to-moment variables,
and the character’s inexperience leads to
failure.
172
MaterIals Needed
Every player needs the following:
• One black and one red ten-sided dice (they
don’t have to be black and red so long as
the two can be told apart)
• Pencil and Eraser
• Character Sheet (included)
As a group, you need…
• A table or surface to play on
• Crew Sheet (included)
• A copy of the Red Markets rules
The DIce: Black and Red
To play Red Markets, each player needs a set
of two, ten-sided dice. It’s preferable to have
one black and one red because that is how
the dice are named in the rules, but any pair
of d10s will do, so long as the player can keep
them separate from each other.
The Black represents the best attempt of
the player to succeed at that moment. This
number is modified by a combination of skills
and charges. The number the Black lands
on is abbreviated as B# in the text. A result
of 10 on the Black die would be written B10.
Since the Black can be modified by choices
the player makes, it can go above ten. For
instance, that B10 would actually be B10+2 if
the player had a skill of +2 that applied to that
check.
The Red represents the obstacles
threatening success. It accounts for all the
variables affecting the check at any given
moment – windage, lighting, fatigue, mood,
etc. – and can vary wildly. The number a Red
die lands on is abbreviated as R# in the text.
be written R5.
Boom and Bust
The terms Boom and Bust are used to
describe two extremes on a spectrum of rules
variants.
 Boom rules are variants that make the
game easier and more action-packed.
Characters are tougher, more capable, and
generally bigger badasses than might be seen
in bleaker horror stories. Boom games are
about taking big gambles for big rewards; if
the characters die, they’ll look good doing it.
Bust rules are variants that make the game
more difficult and grim. Characters have more
responsibilities, flaws, and weaknesses than
the protagonists of more escapist zombie
fiction. Bust games are about the weight of the
supernatural and the mundane conspiring to
crush and grind souls into dust. If a character
makes it out of a Bust game whole, it’ll be as
ugly as it is impressive.
The principles of Boom and Bust aren’t
absolutes; groups can use different variants
for different aspects of the game. The labels
are merely included for reference so readers
can find variants that cater to their tastes.
Procedure
The Profit System is all about representing
the cost of character’s actions. Dice checks
are rarely free and, if a charge doesn’t need
to be spent, the check is “one-and-done”
(can only be attempted once). Every other
check of the dice must be purchased using
game resources. Characters that invest in
the development of their skills and the care
of their gear can add more to the Black,
increasing their probability of success. If the
Black is higher, success is achieved. If Red is
equal or higher, the character fails.
What follows is the procedure for making
dice checks in the Profit System. Indentations
mark where special rules and equipment
can affect the process. Always remember: no
matter what modifiers are in play, the question
of a dice check is always “Is Black higher than
Red?”
• The Market calls for a skill check
• Determine if the skill requires the player to
“buy-a-roll.”
o Purely mental actions are free (such
as Foresight, Sensitivity, or Self-
Control), but they are one-and-done
rolls. If failed, Will must be spent or
a Reference must provide a favor if the
check is to succeed. Takers can’t just
try again, even if there is time.
o Purely social actions are free, but
they are one-and-done. If failed, Will
must be spent, a Reference must be
tapped, or a different approach must be
used.
o Spend a charge to buy-a-roll if using
gear (something requiring ammunition,
batteries, or other disposable parts).
▪ For charged tools, determine any
extra charges the player wants to
spend on success. Spend those
charges before the dice are
rolled. The most common instance
of this is increasing the chance of a
hit by firing more ammo. Every extra
charge adds a +1 to the check, unless
otherwise stated (see p. 235)
173
 o Spend a charge of rations for intense
physical actions, such as using a
melee weapon or running. Spend
additional charges for +1 to the check,
representing overexertion supported by
a high-calorie diet.
• Roll the Black and Red together.
o If Black is a natural match to the Red,
it’s a critical success on even numbers,
a critical failure on odds (see p. 175).
Criticals negate the effects of any spent
charges, but those charges are still
spent and gone.
o If results don’t naturally match, add the
character’s skill rating and any bonuses
from charges to the Black.
▪ If the modified Black is higher, the
character succeeds.
▪ If Red is higher or equal, the
character fails. Ties always go to the
Market.
• After the roll…
o If the dice check is mental or social
and can’t be rerolled, the player can
choose to tap References for an
automatic success if they have time
and resources.
o If the character has a Will point, it can
be spent to flip Red and Black
numbers, negate a critical failure, or
upgrade a success to a critical success.
o Certain gear allows players to spend
charges after a success to gain
additional benefits.
Both player and Market work to describe the
result of the dice check in the game’s narrative
and move on.
When to Roll
The Market only calls for a dice check when
three conditions are met.
1. There is a reasonable chance for failure.
For example, let’s say an adult character
wants to drive a well-maintained car down
an empty, straight highway. It’s the middle
of the day and the character maintains safe
speeds. It’s not reasonable to assume that
174
this perfectly capable person would suddenly
forget how the steering wheel works and drive
into a tree. The Market would not call for a
skill check in such an instance.
However, if it’s raining, night, and the
character is racing to warn the enclave about
an impending attack, a dice check is needed
because the nasty conditions make failure
understandable.
2. Failure has consequences.
A character is curious how many breeds of
dog exist. They spend a charge on the laptop
to buy-a-roll, make a Research check, and fail.
What’s to stop them from trying again? They
are at their home base; they have access to
solar panels to refresh charges. Why can’t they
just keep searching? There’s no reason, so the
Market shouldn’t call for a skill check in the
first place.
If, on the other hand, the character is out
on a job and trying to figure out why the
client needs so many salvaged bicycles, the
crew doesn’t have all day to wait around. A
failed check would mean the information
couldn’t be found fast enough to have a use
in negotiations. The consequence is a loss of
precious time in a sensitive situation.
Even if a Reference is tapped to provide the
information as a favor, favors cost. The failure
of the Research check would, in this instance,
have consequences, so the Market would be
right to call for a check.
3. Stories can continue if there is a failure.
The only available contract is posted on
a bulletin board in the enclave where the
characters currently reside. The Market calls
for everyone to make an Awareness check.
Everyone fails. The characters don’t know
about the job and the game grinds to a halt.
The Market should have never called for a
check because failure means stopping play.
If, on the other hand, that contract is one of
many available, an Awareness check would
make sense; anything can be reasonably
overlooked, and the consequence of failure
would be less profit. To up the stakes even
more, failing a Mechanics check to hotwire
a car and flee the zombie hordes would be
another justified check. The character in the
car might die, but the story has “gone on”
to a tragic conclusion rather than an abrupt
anticlimax.
SImple Success
Leaving aside criticals (see below), when the
Black exceeds the Red – either naturally or
after skills and charges are added – a simple
success has occurred. The player gets to see
the character achieve the goal.
Success at Cost
If a skill check is failed but the player really
wants to make it, they can petition to succeed
at a cost. This means it’s up to the Market to
set a price on what it would take to overcome
the Taker’s failure. This is why a lot of rolls in
Red Markets are one-and-done rolls; success
isn’t a matter of trying again so much as it is
about wearing the problem down with extra
resources.
The most common method of succeeding
at a cost is the use of References. A failed
Medicine check doesn’t have to mean the
patient instantly dies on the surgery table;
it could just mean the character has to call
in a favor from a fellow doctor and pay it
back later. Will is another option: it’s the only
Potential that doubles as a resource and can
be extremely powerful as a result.
Other options are available at the Market’s
discretion. Players can ask to succeed at cost
even on some more intense, action-oriented
rolls. Say, for instance, a Taker really needs to
hack a security door so everyone can escape
being eaten. If the character fails the check,
it’s up to the player to request to succeed at
cost, especially if the character is out of Will.
So long as Markets can think of a reasonable
way for additional resources to solve the
problem, they should always try to offer
players a choice to succeed in this instance.
In this case, it might mean the Taker had to
rush the job and leave behind the valuable
electronics kit, or maybe the character
pe ri en ce w e ha ve of our lives from
The ex
hi n, th e st or y w e te ll ourselves about
w it
s in or de r to ac co un t for what we
ourselve truth lies
, is th us a lie - th e
are doing
we do.
rather outside, in what
-Slavoj Zizek
selflessly uses their body as a conductor and
takes damage from electrical shock.
Succeeding at cost is still a consequence
of failure; it just allows players some choice
in which consequence they want to suffer.
If there’s no reason the dice check couldn’t
just be performed again normally, the Market
shouldn’t have called for the dice check in the
first place.
FaIlure
Sometimes there is no reasonable way for
resources to compensate for a lack of skill,
or the Taker doesn’t have any References or
Will to call upon. In these instances, a higher
or equal Red means the check failed and
the character suffers the consequences. The
fallout varies depending on the context of
the skill checked, but death is a possibility.
No amount of preparedness, luck, or training
can hold out forever against the crushing
tide of history. Failure should always be a
possibility when a check is called for, either
due to sudden misfortune or a slow draining
of resources.
CRITICALS
A “natural” double means that the Black and
Red land on the same number before any
modifiers from skills or spent charges are
added. Natural doubles are called “criticals” –
these indicate that the check was exceptional
in some way. Critical successes are impressive
displays of skill; critical failures are disastrous
mistakes.
175
 “Modified” doubles occur when, for
instance, a B2/R4 becomes a B2+2/R4 due
to modifiers being added after the dice land.
Modified doubles are always failures; ties
always go to the Market.
CRITICAL Success
Critical successes occur on natural, even
doubles: 2’s, 4’s, 6’s, 8’s, and 10’s. Critical
successes have varying effects depending
upon the context of the skill check. Players
can pick which effect they want, but the
Market gets final say.
• Double damage or effectiveness
• Switch damage to a hit location of the
player’s choice
• Bypass armor
• Dictate a status effect or other narrative
benefit of the test (such as knockback)
CRITICAL FAILURE
Critical failures occur on natural, odd
doubles: 1’s, 3’s, 5’s, 7’s, and 9’s. Critical
failures have varying effects depending upon
the context of the check. The Market always
chooses which occurs.
• Double damage or effectiveness against
the PC
• Bypass armor
• Breaks a tool with a malfunction
• Brings about an unfortunate status effect
or other narrative obstacle
• Eliminates the rest of a tool’s charges until
it can be refreshed
Market DIce Checks
In the Profit System, dice checks are the sole
responsibility of the players. The only time
the Market makes a check is to determine
aspects of the setting and narrative that
are randomized to represent the capricious
nature of economic forces. Markets roll to:
• Generate new mobs of casualties
• See if a PC is infected by the Blight
176
• Select a random encounter to occur on a
Leg of the journey
• Set the mood for an Interlude
• Set the supply/demand equilibrium for a
certain good or service
• Combine a number of elements into a
randomly generated contract
• Find the damage and hit location of an
unpreventable attack (a failed dodge uses
the same numbers of the failed skill check
to determine damage)
• Roll for all damage if using Bust: Random
Damage (p. 281)
Bust: +1 or It Can't Be Done
At base, there is already a 45% chance of any
check succeeding, without the use of a skill
or any charged equipment. That’s awfully
high for a horror game about costs and
consequences.
If there is a way for a character with no
skill whatsoever in the task to succeed, then
the Market should just allow them to succeed
and move on without the dice. Conversely, if
someone with a lifetime of experience could
reasonably fail the task, then it is certain
someone without experience will fail. For
example, no amount of extra gauze and
disinfectant is going to help someone perform
First Aid if they haven’t the slightest notion
of where to even start, but a person with the
basics (+1) might be able to put those medical
resources to good use, albeit sloppily.
Characters should be rewarded consistently
for their skills and preparation; a player’s
blind luck in dice rolling should be rewarded
rarely. It’s much more interesting to force
a character without a certain skill to find
another tactic than to foist the responsibility
of narrative choice onto a player’s ability to flip
a coin.
But, as it makes planning a character and
keeping him/her alive more difficult, +1 or It
Can’t Be Done is a Bust rule.
Boom: Default Checks
Groups that really want a default method
can allow checks of untrained skills, but the
Market always has veto power to deem the
request too ridiculous. For instance, if players
insist their characters can bioengineer a
curative retrovirus based off nothing but can-
do attitude, the Market always has the right to
say, “+1 or it can’t be done.”
Default rolls work off the nonexistent skill’s
associated Potential. The Red isn’t rolled in a
default check. In order to succeed, the Black
result must be equal or under the Potential.
Let’s say Malleus really wants to punch an
attacker to death but Malleus’s player hasn’t
put anything in his Unarmed skill. The player
asks to default. The Market allows it so long
as Malleus spends one charge on rations to
buy-a-roll. Spending more does nothing to
improve the chance of success.
Malleus’s has 5 STR (he works out... a
lot). That means Malleus has a 50% chance
of success: Black 5, 4, 3, 2, or 1 sees him
succeed. While this is high probability for
someone completely unskilled, Malleus only
started as a 2 STR character. The player
spent a lot of bounty (30, to be exact) to
grow a character strong enough to pull this
off. That much lost capital was undoubtedly
to the detriment of the character’s other
abilities, retirement plan, and family. Had the
investment been put in some other Potential,
the character would have a paltry 20% chance
of success – much lower than rolling the base
Black and Red with a +1.
What Malleus may not do is spend extra
rations for a bonus chance of success.
Correctly applying such force would require
discipline beyond the wild haymaker he’s
going to throw. No extra charges can be spent
on a default: once the check is purchased, the
Black must be equal or less than the Potential
to be a success.
As defaulting gives Takers more
(suboptimal) options for dealing with
situations, it is a Boom rule.
177

I am more and more convinced that man
is a dangerous creature; and that power,
whether vested in many or a few, is ever
grasping, and, like the grave, cries, ”Give,
give!”
-Abigail Adams
PRECISION
The Profit System is designed with a
materialist focus. Objects are very powerful
and can often assure success by spending
charges before a check. However, sometimes
no amount of spray-n-pray or excessive
spending can fix a situation. Sometimes, a
trained professional is the only option. If the
Market calls for a precision check, charged
tools that could normally increase the chance
of success can’t spend extra charges. A sniper
making a headshot a kilometer away can’t
spray more rounds downrange for a greater
chance for success; one shot has to strike
true or none will. The charge is spent for the
Shoot check, but no more spends are allowed.
DIFFICULT
Another name for this check might be “ill-
advised.” Save this difficulty modifier for
tasks so risky that to attempt them is lunacy,
even for trained professionals. In order to
succeed a difficult check, a character must
succeed a precision skill check with a critical
success. Will can be spent to upgrade regular
successes to criticals, but the precision
requirement remains the same.
For instance, if Sticky the freerunner wants
to jump off the roof, through the hovering
military helicopter’s gun-doors, drop the
explosives, crash through the window of the
office building on the other side of the street,
and roll to safety as the aircraft explodes,
that’s going to be difficult. Sticky is one of
the most Athletic people in the Loss (+4
Athletics), so success is feasible, if unlikely.
178
Opposed Checks
When two or more players at the table are
competing against each other in a fight, race,
or other contest, they might wish to resort to
the dice to see who wins. This rare instance
is called an opposed check. Players and the
Market determine the skills being used. Both
parties make a skill check normally and add
their modifiers. If both players fail (higher
Red), a stalemate ensues. If one succeeds and
the other fails, the successful character wins
the contest. If both players are successful, the
player with the higher modified Black gains
an advantage, though the other’s player action
still has some effect.
Market Forces
Players are never competing against the
Market. It is not the Market’s job to “fight”
the players. It’s the Market’s task to narrate
the story, provide interesting choices, and
simulate the uncaring, relentless economic
forces affecting the characters’ lives to
overcome according to their fitness.
In fact, the Market cannot be opposed. Non-
player characters and events determined
by the person running the game are called
“Market forces.” Market forces always
succeed if the players let them.
What does that mean? If making a skill
check to see if a character is struck by an
attack, the Market does not roll any dice. The
player under attack makes an Athletics check
to dodge. On a success, the attack misses. If
the dodge fails, the attack, by definition, hits
and the numbers on the failed Athletics check
determine the damage (see Combat p. 272). If
the character doesn’t even try to get out of the
way, the Market rolls to determine the damage
done, but there’s no chance of the attack
missing.
In the Profit System, the outcomes of
character actions are determined entirely by
their players. Every check is player facing.
The Market only rolls to generate large-scale
events beyond the characters’ control, such as
the number of zombies at a certain location
or the supply/demand equilibrium of goods.
If the Market declares an action for one of
its forces, it always succeeds unless the
character makes a check to stop it. There are
no opposed checks against the Market in the
Profit System. The players either hold it at
bay for that turn, or they don’t.

WIll
Will is explained in more depth on p. 197.
In general, Will is the meta-game mechanic
in the Profit System. The Will rating is the
number of Will points that refresh once per
game session. Players spend Will to make
the story go a character’s way and negate the
capriciousness of the dice. The uses of Will
are as follows:

• Switch Black and Red numbers (B4/R9

becomes B9/R4)
• Upgrade a success to a Critical Success
• Buy another narrative benefit to add onto
an existing Critical Success
• Negate an opponent’s Critical Success
• Turn a Critical Failure into a regular
failure
• In combat, shift the damage onto a piece
of gear or different hit location
• Jump to the front of initiative order (see p.
275)
Will points gain be gained and refreshed in
the following ways:
• Buy a point of Will in character
advancement
• Follow a weak spot into trouble
• Fulfill a personal obligation to a soft spot
• Suffer because of a tough spot
• Rest in-between jobs/game sessions
Charges
Nearly all equipment in the Profit System is
described in terms of charges: abstract units
(typically ten per piece of gear) that measure
the equipment’s remaining usefulness.
Depending on the gear, charges might
represent fuel, ammunition, batteries, general
maintenance, or any other conceivable
measure of utility. It doesn’t matter what the
narrative specifics the group decides are;
charges remain mechanical representations
of usefulness.
The specifics of charges and how they are
used in play are described in more detail later
(see “Materialism: Bounty, Gear, and Vehicles”
p. 234). For now, here’s a basic rundown of
the mechanical impact of charges.
The Use of Charges
Charges have three uses:
1. Tracking a character’s inventory
2. Buying skill checks that require equipment
3. Providing bonuses to certain checks in
addition to the skill rating

179
 Using most equipment requires spending at
least one charge to make a skill check. For
instance, no one can make a Drive check
without a vehicle and, to make the check, at
least one charge off of the vehicle must be
spent. The use of the resource buys a dice
check.
The combination of certain resources and
certain skills can benefit from overspending
resources; spending above the minimum
charge required to buy-a-roll adds a +1 to the
Black for each additional spend.
Finally, charges on equipment can be
“refreshed” by repairing or reinforcing the
gear. The number of refreshes a character has
access to depends on their ADP Potential:
their aptitude for sourcing, purchasing, and
hustling for supplies in-between jobs.
Types of Gear UtIlIzIng Charges
Capped
Capped gear requires a charge to use in a skill
check, but no extra charges may be spent to
add to the check. For instance, using a laptop
would require a charge as the battery drains,
but spending extra charges is not going to
make an attempt to hack someone’s email
more successful. Capped charges enable use,
but excessive use does nothing to increase
effectiveness.
Charged
Charged gear requires a charge to use in a
skill check, and additional charges can be
spent to add a bonus to the skill check. For
example, if each bullet represents a chance
to score a hit, shooting more at the target
increases the chance of success. For each
charge spent after buying a check, add +1 to
the Black.
Manpower (Rations)
Gear utilizing manpower requires the human
operator to fuel the gear’s effect. You never
have to reload a machete, for instance, but
your arm can get tired. Manpower gear is
charged but spends the Taker’s rations rather
than any charges on the item itself. Spending
180
more rations adds +1 per charge, just like
charged gear. But calories are costly in a food
scarce environment like the Loss and energy
wasted eventually translates into bounty lost.
Static
Static gear doesn’t require a charge to
use. Binoculars are largely unaffected by
eyes looking through them. As long as the
binoculars aren’t broken, they continue to
work as designed. That’s the definition of
static gear.
Since the Profit System is meant to
emphasize the very serious consequences
economic costs have on people, static gear is
rare. Most equipment in the game is meant
to bleed utility until fed again by some form
of capital. The player must budget between
maintaining the health of a character and the
material goods that protect that character’s
existence.
During the time men live without a common
power to keep them all in awe, they are in that
condition which is called war; and such a war, as
is of every man, against every man.
To this war of every man against every man,
this also is consequent; that nothing can be
unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justices
and injustice, have there no place. Where there
is no common power, there is no law, where no
law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the
cardinal virtues.
No arts; no letters; no society; and which is
worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent
death; And of the life of man, solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish, and short.
- Thomas Hobbes
Character CreatIon
Takers are interesting people. They’re bold
enough to fight monsters, but careful enough
to live through it. They’re strong enough to
survive, but too weak to abandon memories
of a better time and resign themselves to the
Loss. Heroic opportunists. Brutal saviors.
Disillusioned dreamers.
At-A-Glance
1. Pick your Taker’s name
2. Write a soft and weak spot
3. Pick a tough spot or roll for it
a. Lost
+Adapt: +2 skill points at Char. Gen
-And Die: Legally dead and must stay in the
Loss or forge a new identity (+1 retirement
milestone)
b. Bait
+Citizen: One less milestone required for
retirement
-Migrant: Dependents cost upkeep x2, and
communication with them must be
electronic
c. Latent
+Once Bitten: Can’t be infected
-Twice Hated: Becomes a Vector upon
death; remains infectious and persecuted in
life
d. Immune
+Genetic Lottery: Can’t be infected
-Meal Ticket: Living body is worth 5 bounty
per permanently “harvested” hit box
e. Believer
+Faith: +2 to all Self-Control checks that
confirm faith
181
 -Doubt: start off cracked in a Humanity
threat; Self-Control checks required for
violations of faith
f. Steward
+Undercover: Once per game, may ask
organization for help. Market says yes or
no.
-In Too Deep: May only have other Takers
as Dependents; Whole crew must make
Self-Control checks if cover is blown;
Sponsoring organization may give orders to
the Taker
g. Hustler
+I Know a Guy: Automatically succeeds
Networking checks, even without skill
points
-I Owe a Guy: Once per game, Market can
call in a marker of 1d10 bounty
h. Fenceman
+Headshots: +1 on any attack check against
casualties
-In My Sleep: Starts cracked on a Humanity
threat from nightmarish memories
b. The first Profession X skill trades at
one-to-one, but a second trades at 2-to-
1, a third at 3-to-1, etc.
c. Specializations are limited by the
Potential AND skill they are under, and
each point of specialization costs skill
points. Melee: Sword 2 costs four skill
points – two for Melee and two for
Melee: Sword
6. Ensure no skills exceed their associated
Potential. Reallocate excess skill points.
7. List as many Dependents as the Taker’s
CHA
8. Buy and upgrade gear with starting 10
bounty. Cost is upkeep only at Char. Gen –
cost to purchase gear in game is upkeep x2
9. Campaign only: Come up with your
Taker’s retirement plan and milestones
10. Campaign only: As a group, design your
enclave and name your crew

i. Scavenger
+Salvage, Salvage Everywhere…: Start the
game with 20 bounty
-…Not a Screw That Fits: Permanently at -1
Refresh

j. Roach
+Survivor: Damage Humanity to assist any
This trade-off captures perfectly econo-
skill check: +1 per point mists’ notion of opportunity cost. The real
-Sole: Start cracked in all three Humanity
threats
cost of something, the opportunity cost, is
the value of the next best opportunity,
4. Assign 1 free Potential to every category:
STR, SPD, ADP, INT, CHA, WILL
what you have to give up to do what you
a. Assign 5 more Potential as you see fit want to do. During the apocalypse, the cost
b. Potential is capped at 3 during
Character Creation
of taking something with you is the value
of what you have to leave behind.
5. Assign 20 skill points - James Dow
a. Skill points trade at a one-to-one ratio
at character generation.
182
183
 Taker's Name
Takers rarely use real names. They adopt
“handles” more suited to their new lifestyle.
Ever since DHQS instituted the bounty
system, names have real power. It’s a lot
easier to retire from the life if you’ve got
an old identity to fall into. Getting forged
documents sufficient to fool the ration system
is really expensive, not to mention all the lost
property that could have been claimed by an
old identity. Couple this with the fact that, just
by being accused of breaking quarantine, a
person can be legally declared dead by the
DHQS and have all their salvage entitlement
seized, it makes sense to operate under a
pseudonym
It’d be a lie to say that’s the only purpose
new names serve, though. The handle is
psychological survival mechanism. Steve
might have seen everyone he loves murdered
before his eyes, but “Ven” is just a guy that
does what’s necessary. That’s why they’re
called handles; it’s what Takers use to carry
the baggage.
Example: Morgan and Mal
Morgan thinks about the kind of character
she wants to play. She recently finished a
novel with a no-nonsense mechanic that
solved mysteries using the same diagnostic
methods used to troubleshoot technology.
Morgan decides to model her protagonist
after that. She envisions a squat woman in
coveralls, decorated with patches for a dozen
bands stitched into the fabric. She’s wearing
a toolbelt, pistol, and too much make-up; she
likes the way it makes folks out in the Loss
gawk.
Morgan thinks her character’s name is
Patricia, but she doesn’t tell any of the other
players that. It’s a secret. She figures Patricia
A belief is not
true because it
-Henri Frederic is useful.
Amiel
184
didn’t like her name much, and she disliked
her job before the Crash even more. She
figures that her character is happier now
that she can work with her hands without
convincing some asshole garage owner she
knows her way around an engine. But Patricia
was never much with words, so Morgan
figured her character tried to call herself
Malfunction but her crew shortened it down
to Mal.
Spots
Spots are descriptive tags that define a Taker’s
personality and past. They draw characters
into conflict and drama while rewarding their
players mechanically. The true personality of
a Taker is going to be as nuanced and detailed
as the player in control, but spots are contact
points by which they interact with the setting.
Weak Spots
A weak spot is a character flaw that
tenaciously defines the character’s personality,
despite any awareness they might have of the
shortcoming. When others complain about
it, people that know the Taker best can only
say “That’s just X” or “You know how X is.”
It’s a central fault that can only be overcome
temporarily.
Following a weak spot into trouble means
gaining a point of Will, even if it temporarily
puts the character over their Potential. Weak
spots should therefore be vague in order
to remain applicable to a wide variety of
situations, including contract negotiations.
Some example weak spots might be...
• Vengeful
• Arrogant
• Pedantic
• Pollyanna
• Cowardly
• Easily Angered
• Dismissive
• Napoleon Complex
• Head in the Clouds
• Obsessed with ________________
Soft Spots
A soft spot is a deep passion, belief, or
sentiment that the character holds in spite
of the dangers it presents in the Loss. It’s
a virtue, or it would be if the character
lived in a place where selfishness wasn’t a
necessity to survival. In the sociopathic logic
of postapocolyptic capitalism, situations and
people can manipulate character behavior by
appealing to old sentiments.
A soft spot should be vague to remain
applicable to a wide variety of situations.
Fulfilling a character’s obligation to a soft spot
financially, spiritually, or physically means
gaining a point of Will, even if it temporarily
puts the character over their Potential. Soft
spots can also be used by NPCs during
contract negotiations. Some examples of soft
spots might be...
• Protecting the weak
• From each according to ability, to each
according to need
• Social justice
• Freedom
• Karma is its own reward
• Waste not, want not
• Providing solace
• Can’t we all be friends?
• Women and children first
• Puppies deserve protection too!
Tough spots
A tough spot is an association with a group
of people or background with a sordid
reputation (your relationship with the label
puts you in a “tough spot”). This should have
something to do with the Taker’s past and
how they came to survive this long.
Mechanically, tough spots break the rules
of Red Markets in the favor of the player.
Limits can be raised, vulnerabilities removed,
bonuses accrued. No Taker survives long
without a special edge – the tough spot is
that edge. When tough spots are used for the
character’s benefit, the Market shapes the
narrative and mechanics to fit if the case is
clear.
But tough spots are never only benefits;
they can easily cause a Taker as much harm
as good. Tough spots double as handles the
Market can use to jerk the characters around.
Everyone has a drawback that triggers as
frequently as the benefit. Characters earn
a point of Will when the Market uses the
drawback of their tough spot to put them in
trouble.
Weak and soft spots have no bright side.
They exist only to be resisted until the player
chooses to give in, making the story more
interesting and banking some Will for the
effort. Tough spots are different because
the Taker receives a persistant bonus from
the tough spot. Since tough spots engage
directly with the lore of Red Markets, there’s
an established list to choose from, whereas
players are encouraged to write their own
weak and soft spots.
Lost
The Lost make up the majority of people that
survived the Crash. They either missed the
orders to evacuate, decided such orders were
bullshit, or managed to get to shelter after a
military convoy abandoned them. The Lost, as
a class, were the first people to realize no help
was coming. They were the first to discover
LifeLines and organize. Everybody either
helped establish an enclave or migrated to the
closest one available.
+ Adapt: The Taker gets +2 skill points at
Character Creation
In the early days, those that failed to
contribute didn’t make it. There were too
many things to do, too many casualties to
fight, and too many mouths to feed. Anyone
surviving the past five years had to learn
a whole lot of new skills in a hurry. Some
gravitated towards areas of natural aptitude,
but for most, their new career depended
on whatever the enclave happened to need
that day. The rut of poverty resulting from
most enclave work is all most Lost have to
look forward to, but an unlucky few were
conscripted into Taker work.
185
 - And Die: The Taker is considered legally
dead and must stay in the Loss or forge a
new identity
Those that find a way to live in the
Loss must find a way to die there. The
government’s homo sacer policy declares
anyone caught or assumed left behind is
legally dead. Millions of names crowd the
DHQS rolls, each one denied the right the
vote, the right to fair trial, the right to own
property, etc. The sin of survival can never
be forgiven least the government admit
what it had to do to establish the Recession.
Five years after the Crash, most Lost have
already cashed-in their own bounty out of
desperation, or found the job done for them
by some distant relative of the citizen. For
original Takers, there’s no escaping to the old
world. They either have to make some corner
of hell safe enough to retire, or they have to
bribe their way into a whole new identity. In
the case of the latter, that requires one more
retirement milestone than any member of the
crew not declared Lost.
186
BAIT
Bait is the name for someone lucky enough to
escape but dumb enough to come back. For
most Takers, that’s all the ungrateful bastards
are good for: Casualty Bait.
The nickname stems solely from
resentment. In reality, risking a return to
the Blight is an act of total desperation. Life
in the Recession can be even worse than
the risk posed by the undead. Free Parking
ghettos burning tires for heat and stacking
humanity in scrapyard favelas. Disease and
rats swarming around open latrines gouged
into parking lots. Ration riots and DHQS
suppression squads beating the desperate
masses into submission. StopLoss Immune
hunters and Latent chain gangs disappearing
people in the middle of the night. Valets
pimping out the desperate and dealing poison
to the mad.
Life on the wrong side of the Recession’s
class system is as deadly as any zombie. A few
desperate souls see the self-reliance of the
Loss as an improvement. Still fewer see Taker
work as an opportunity to gamble their lives
on an escape from poverty.
+Citizen: One less milestone is required for
the Taker to retire.
Though the wealth gap in the Recession
is far more extreme than the Loss, the
remainders of civilization still offer more
upwards mobility. Clean clothes, an address,
a shower – that’s all it takes to get into a job
interview and limping towards middle class
(or what’s left of it). Bait find this process
easier for having registered in the post-Crash
census – they can still use their given names
and old records. For most fence-jumpers, the
infusion of bounty needed to lift them out of
Taker work is smaller than usual.
-Migrant: Dependents cost upkeep x2 and
communication must be electronic
Only family motivates inviting the risk
promised by jumping quarantine. Bait have
loved ones in need of support like everyone
else, but the family remains in the Recession.
Getting bounty to them requires converting
it into crypt currency and back into the
ration dollars accepted in the car camps. All
these middlemen and fees double the cost
of upkeep for Dependents. To make matters
worse, the psychological benefits of keeping
a family healthy are reduced by distance.
Humanity heals require an Ubiq call to
even have a chance, which further eats into
resources.
Bait can assign other Taker’s as
Dependents, but not at character creation.
Latent
Latents are people infected by the undead
strain of the Blight without ever suffering
from its living state. This typically is the
result of injecting Supressin K-7864 shortly
after infection, but it has been known to
occur naturally, owing either to some fault
in the Blight’s genetic code or the victim’s
partial immunity. Whatever the cause, the
victim’s brain remains unaffected by the
Blight: the hemoragic rage typical of Vectors
never occurs and the body doesn’t die from
the resulting strain. However, Blight sinews
wind their way through the subject’s nervous
system, just as if the victim were a cadaver in
torpor. The process is agonizing, killing many
with the pain alone. Those that survive retain
their humanity, albeit covered head-to-toe
in the black veins typical of latency. They’re
infectious, but the retention of living brain
tissue short-circuits the parasitic connection
of Blight sinews with the brain stem, leaving
Latents in control of their mental faculties.
+Once Bitten: The Taker can’t be infected
Or, rather, can’t be infected again. The
damage is done. Any “hot” cells entering the
blood stream revert to their undead state in
the presence of sinew, and the “cold” bites
of casualties merely add to Blight structures
already in the body. Aside from the trauma,
Latents are unaffected by bites and scratches
from the undead. The ability to go hands-on
with casualties without special equipment
makes Latents sought after employees for
Taker crews.
-Twice Hated: The Taker remains infectious
while alive, becomes a Vector upon death,
and suffers from persecution
The Blight sinews that puppet the dead
flesh of casualties wait, poised to strike
the second brain death occurs in a Latent.
Once the living brain ceases its interference
with the Blight’s signals, the disease takes
over in mere moments. For most casualties,
the danger is mitigated by the decay and
rigor of the body. But with the wiring “pre-
installed,” Latents become sprinting Vectors
immediately upon death.
As if that weren’t enough, all Latents’
bodily fluids carry the Blight. The potential
to become an extreme danger upon death,
combined with a general sanitation risk,
means most enclaves either segregate or
outright imprison Latents. Some won’t accept
anyone infected within their walls and a
few execute the “veiners” on sight. The vital
service Latents provide a crew is balanced
187
 against the constant threat they pose and the
prejudice that follows them everywhere they
go.
It’s possible to add the Latent tough spot
in addition to another tough spot, but only
during play (see “Infection” p. 305). At
character creation, only one tough spot is
allowed.
Immune
Something in certain people’s bone marrow
is capable of shutting down the Blight’s
reproductive capabilities and expelling it from
the bloodstream. In the five years since the
Crash, medical science has yet to figure out
how this works, or what factor in the bone
marrow is responsible for the effect. Cases of
immunity are dotted across all ages, genders,
blood types, and races. To this day, the only
way to test for immunity is exposing the
patient’s blood to the Blight and observing
the effect. All that’s understood is that some
people can’t be infected, and injecting bone
marrow from those people into the recently
infected, while not a cure, can revert live
Blight into the undead state prematurely,
resulting in latency. Immune, or “moony,” is
used to refer to those too lucky to become
zombies.
+Genetic Lottery: The Taker can’t be infected
Blight, in all its forms, dies in the
bloodstream. Beyond the wounds that would
normally cause infection, an Immune has
nothing to fear from casualties. This qualifies
them for the same up-close tactics typically
reserved for the Latent.
-Meal Ticket: The Taker’s living body is
worth 5 bounty per permanently destroyed
hit box.
Supressin K-7864 is the single most
valuable commodity in the world, and it’s
derived solely from the bone marrow of the
Immune. Though some production lines
farm Immunes for years – subjecting them
to endless cycles of harvest and regrowth
– many choose short-term profit over
188
sustainability and debone the Immune like
cattle. Whether into slavery or slaughter,
the value of Supressin is so high that each
Immune is a walking retirement plan. Thus,
the Immune remain desperate to hide
their diagnosis from everyone, in the Loss
and the Recession, lest they be “medically
conscripted” and tortured for the remainder
of their lives.
It’s possible to add the Immune tough
spot in addition to another tough spot, but
only during play (see “Infection” p. 305). At
character creation, only one tough spot is
allowed.
BelIever
The Crash wasn’t just any apocalypse: it
was the apocalypse we saw coming. When
the end came, it came as a monster we’d
been imagining for half a century. It was a
disaster that everyone secretly thought they
could handle until it very publicly slaughtered
them. And when the pop-culture iconography
failed, it did so alongside the government,
science, religion, and every other narrative
humanity had ever relied upon. Many escaped
the undead only to find themselves wrestling
with the death of reality. All in all, the Crash
probably broke as many people as it killed.
Or, rather, it opened their eyes. It depends
on who you ask. Whether people retreated
into delusion or revelation, many couldn’t
survive with the old ways of seeing. Groups
of like-minded seekers coalesced into cults,
creeds, schools, and movements of every
imaginable stripe. Ravings transformed into
ideologies and vice versa. Differences in
dogmas grew ever finer and split survivors
into more and more fractured worldviews,
theologies shifting like lines drawn in a
sandstorm. Soon, amidst the few zealot
holdouts of pre-Crash belief and the nihilistic
majority, the Loss was populated by hundreds
of apocalyptic sects, each offering a different
answer to the end.
The general term for those that use a
new faith to survive the post-Crash world
is Believers. A list of the major groups can
be found in “Believers” (p. 150). Players
are encouraged to pick one of the beliefs
described in the setting, or they can
design their own with the Market. Either
way, selecting this tough spot means the
character’s world is defined by the new faith,
for good or ill.
+Faith: The Taker receives +2 to all Self-
Control checks that confirm faith
This benefit depends on the defining
characteristics of the Taker’s new faith. For
instance, since Archivists believe mankind is
already doomed and that they must record
its final days, the death of a friend would
be easier to handle so long as the believer
recorded it. A member of the zealous Black
Math cult could very well revel at the sight
of a casualty horde. Self-Control checks that
confirm the Taker’s worldview are easier to
succeed.
-Doubt: The Taker starts off cracked in a
Humanity threat, and Self-Control checks
are required for violations of faith
One doesn’t invent new gods and
commandments without some mental strain.
The same madness that provides revelation
permanently unbalances the mind. Thus,
believers might be asked to make Self-Control
checks only a member of the faith would
suffer from. An Archivist might have a panic
attack as the enclave burns books for heat
or overwrites old hard drives. A medical
Crusader, driven mad in the quest for cure,
might weep as others cheer the burning of a
Vector, mourning the loss of a fresh sample.
Steward
Some in the Recession – staring across the
border on a drone feed or from the high-rise
window of a quarintechture office complex –
see the Loss as an opportunity. There is much
profit to be gained from the partial extinction
of humanity. Blueprints and prototypes
lay rotting within the bowels of extinct
corporations. Infrastructure and territory
begs to be reclaimed and ransomed off to the
highest bidder.
Held to be a crime when committed by
individuals, homicide is called a virtue when
committed by the state.
-St. Cyprian
The treasure is out there, gathering dust
and ripe for the picking... were it not for
all the desperate squatters calling it home.
Rescuing the Loss from the Lost requires
subtlety until the true reclamation can begin.
Staking claim to opportunities requires
agents, capable and skilled enough to secure
an enclave’s cooperation, but loyal to their true
masters. The DHQS calls these operators
Stewards: undercover agents dedicated to
manipulating the homo sacer into behaving
(or dying) according to the Recession’s
whims. But corporations field just as many
Stewards of their own as the DHQS, each
with their own competing agenda. The tangle
of private/public partnerships that resulted
from the Crash blurred the last line between
democracy and oligarchy, and every faction
has its own pawns on the board.
A player that picks the Steward tough
spot owes allegiance to a major Recession
power: typically either the DHQS or a major
corporation. Like other Takers, the character
risks death over the fence to survive, but
their desperation is ultimately no more
than method acting. Stewards have loved
ones living comfortably in the Recession
and, as long as the spy maintains cover
and follows orders, the family stays safe.
Or the Steward could be a complete loner,
recruited for a dangerous mission in infected
territory precisely because they don’t have
attachments. Either way, a Steward’s duty
is to observe, report, and wait for activation.
Once the mission is complete, Stewards get to
go home to a fat bonus check.
Stewards are sleeper agents, meaning
they’re mostly left to their own devices. But
no matter how many times fellow Takers may
save their lives or help them out, Stewards
can never be wholly loyal to a crew or enclave.
189
 The continued safety of their real loved
ones depends upon a willingness to betray
people to the Recession’s financial interests.
When picking this tough spot, the Steward
player announces the spot normally, but all
characters regard that PC as just another
member of the Lost until something in game
reveals the truth.
+Undercover: Once per game, the character
may ask their organization for help. The
Market says yes or no.
If a Steward is in a “mission critical”
situation – one that threatens the character’s
life or cover – headquarters can be contacted
once per job and asked to assist. The Market
roleplays the Steward’s handler and ultimately
decides what qualifies as mission critical; the
Market can say “no” to almost any request.
Perhaps the character is too deep in the Loss
to receive help, or maybe the death of an
entire enclave is deemed an “acceptable loss.”
But, ultimately, the Steward wouldn’t be there
if there wasn’t a job to do. If the character
can make it seem in the organization’s best
interests, superior resources can directed to
the Steward’s aid: everything ranging from job
recommendations to air strikes. Of course,
the bigger the favor, the harder it will be to
explain such fortuitous gifts.
-In Too Deep: The character may only have
other Takers in the crew as Dependents,
and the whole crew must make Self-
Control checks if the cover is blown. The
sponsoring organization may also make
orders from time-to-time, according to the
Market’s wishes.
Humans are social animals. No matter how
detached a steward tries to be, risking death
with fellow Takers forms bonds. In the short
term, this is a good thing. The horrors of the
Loss affect spies same as everyone else, and
having a friend or lover in the crew makes
things more bearable. But seeing a friend
eaten alive is bad for mental health, as is
having a lover discover your sole purpose in
existence is betrayal. Lastly, the sponsoring
190
organization will call in its marker one day –
the Steward eventually must complete their
mission, as determined by the Market. At
that point, it’s up to the player whether the
character executes the mission or comes
clean, dealing with the subsequent fallout of
refusing orders.
Hustler
No one survived the Crash alone. Cooperation
and coordination were all that separated the
living from the dead. It took the long scarcity
of the carrion economy to turn the survivors
against each other, each enclave preying on its
neighbor’s bounty like casualties on flesh.
That is to say, it took most people awhile to
get back in the exploitative swing of things.
Some never stopped. Characters with the
Hustler tough spot had to fight for every scrap
even before the Crash, and they were smart
enough to know that just because the dead
rose, it didn’t stop the almighty dollar. Those
with a surplus of charisma and a deficit of
shame hustled their way through the dark
days, begging and borrowing what others
risked death to obtain. Five years on, the
ability to survive through charm alone is a
useful skill set for any crew. But a lifetime of
loans and scams racks up debt – a debt more
tireless in its pursuit than any zombie.
+I Know a Guy: The Taker automatically
succeeds Networking checks, even without
skill points
Hustlers know everyone because everyone
has something they want. This means
that all Networking checks automatically
succeed. A Hustler has no need to “find”
new References; there’s always somebody
else the Taker knows. There’s no problem
sourcing gear or finding out about jobs; the
hustler always has the connection. Players
should note that this ability doesn’t forgive a
Hustler of any responsibilities except rolling
the dice. Finding a new Reference may carry
no risk of failure, but favors already used
still need to be paid back. The Hustler can
automatically know the price, contract type, or
the competition before starting negotiations,
but they don’t know all three (see “One-and-
done” p. 173). Once the right NPC is found,
all roleplaying requirements and bounty costs
remain the same.
-I Owe a Guy: The Market can call in a
marker of 1d10 bounty (the Taker gains one
Will point). The Taker must pay up to the
NPC debtor... or else
Hustlers craft enormous social circles in
order to escape from old enemies and into
new acquaintances. Like capitalism, the
character’s network must constantly expand
to survive because all bridges into the past
get burned. Occasionally, outstanding debts
and bad faith deals catch up with the Hustler.
Once per game, the Market can call in one
a marker of 1d10 bounty. The exact reason
for the debt is role-played collaboratively by
the player or the Market (like any Reference
scene), but the price must be paid by the end
of the session... or else. What’s “...or else”?
That’s for the Market to decide. Failure to pay
could saddle the crew with a -Rep spot, or
it could send a hit squad after the Hustler’s
family. It depends on what the Hustler did
to weasel out of payment in the first place
and where the Market wants to take the
story. Regardless, the full debt can never be
completely repaid. There’s always somebody
else the character screwed over.
Fenceman
Vectors can climb. Fast. Letting a fresh
one over the gate spelled the end of many
an enclave. Even the relative stiffness of
casualties can’t be trusted to keep them out.
They can shamble up slowly accumulated
ramps of their decapitated brethren and the
sheer weight of their numbers can collapse
defenses.
191
 No, a wall is not enough. Successful
enclaves established brigades of Fencemen
on the very first night. It could be called
the carrion economy’s first occupation.
Fencemen can be Fencewomen, of course.
Since the name was coined as the cannibal
hordes descended, no one can be blamed too
harshly if gender equality wasn’t the foremost
concern. It’s a simple name for a simple task:
guard the fence.
Initially, this meant firing and stabbing
down into an endless tide of screaming death,
relearning siege warfare in what veterans
have come to call “the Crash course.” After
the torpor, it meant meticulously cleaning
the fence of casualties and the occasional
excursion outside the wall to remove the
Blight-infested remains. Now, most enclaves
have thinned the casualties around their
borders to negligible levels, and maintaining
the border has become a sleepy profession.
Most Fencemen now supplement their
income with whatever amounts for police
work in their enclave; a job inherited due
more in part to armament than ability.
Experienced Fencemen are uniquely
qualified for warfare in the Loss, but as
demand wanes, many of the enclave’s best
warriors have migrated to Taker work. For
some, joining a crew means a return to the
intoxicating terror of the early days. For
others, it’s a deadly lesson in how much
difference a fortification can make.
+Headshots: The Taker receives +1 on any
attack check against casualties or Vectors
Punching tickets, popping pimples, whack
a C – Fencemen come up with cutesy names
to use around polite company, but the job
ultimately amounts to shooting or stabbing
people in the head. All day. Every day. In
12-hour shifts. Anyone that’s worked the
fence has a hard time hiding it. Their gaze
tracks the head of everyone they see, affixed
right between the eyes as their hands twitch,
involuntarily guiding invisible weapons to
a kill shot. After a few years, the muscle
memory doesn’t leave. Most people view these
192
reflexes as unwelcome reminders of the hell
waiting outside; Takers see a recruitment
opportunity.
-In my Sleep: The Taker starts cracked on
one threat from nightmarish memories
Underneath the battlement, or on the other
side of some chainlink, it’s hard not to feel
bad for casualties. They come to the gates in
whatever clothes they died in, like refugees
seeking shelter. They gnaw their teeth off on
the metal, hungry eyes blindly spinning in
their sockets, too dumb for pain or solace.
Fencemen see the undead, and the elderly
undead, and the infant undead. They see
former neighbors, friends, spouses shamble
past the fence, an endless parade of ghosts.
And Fencemen are expected to execute and
burn every one of them. All day. Every day. In
12-hour shifts. Eventually, desensitization sets
in, but no one working the fence comes away
whole. The same twitchy personality that
makes Fencemen good Takers makes them
equally unreliable.
Scavenger
Any idiot can play keep away with the dead
for a few minutes. It takes a specialist to
do the same for days on end, in strange
territory. In the earliest days, there was no
need for Takers. Fencemen would distract
the casualties while scavengers raided the
surrounding ruins. They had few weapons and
no promise of payment. The only currency
was speed and a keen eye. They found what
they needed or starved. And if they got bit?
That was one less mouth to feed.
As the carrion economy established itself
and pickings grew slimmer, Takers came to
prominence. Most of the early scavengers
found safer work within the fence or
specialized, forming businesses around
copper wiring or canned goods or whatever
else they were best at finding. But a few never
lost a taste for the hunt. They kept raiding the
Loss, delving deeper, recycling greater value
from the wastes than was thought possible. As
the rest of their ilk succumbed to wage slavery
or went out of business, true Scavengers
became tinkerer-gods, constantly hacking,
dismantling, or repairing the next piece of
life-saving equipment. But the treasure troves
get further away every day. Most Scavengers
eventually find themselves joining a crew, if
only to watch their backs as they continue
picking through the entrails of the old world.
+Salvage, salvage everywhere: The Taker
starts the game with 20 bounty
A Taker with the Scavenger tough spot is
better off than most. Either they got lucky
with a big find shortly after the Crash, or a
keen eye keeps them in better-than-average
scrap. Whatever the reason, the Scavenger
has 10 more bounty to use at character
creation. The additional ten can be spent
however the player wishes. It can be banked
for retirement, spent on a fancy gadget, or
saved for an emergency. But once the surplus
is gone, it’s gone for good. Pickings are getting
slim in the Loss, and Taker work is the only
way to get ahead as the game progresses.
-Not a screw that fits: The Taker is
permanently at -1 Refresh
The same mindset that finds the best
stuff damages the ability to prioritize it.
Scavengers’ homes still look like a collection
of pre-Crash trash and stray cats. One may
have recovered a spool of HDMI cables larger
than a bull, but he forgot to buy ammo for his
gun. Another may have sourced new batteries
for her specs, but she didn’t spend that time
restocking her rations. The fetishization of
objects that saved the character permanently
damages the ability to tell the difference
between useful and might-eventually-be
useful. Thus, a scavenger’s Refresh rate is
ADP - 1.
Roach
The renewal of economic activity in no way
implies stability. Enclaves regularly fall to
raiders, sabotage, believer death cults, Blight
outbreak, civil war, and common disease.
These disasters peculiar to the Loss reward
the perseverance of survivors with a repeat
viewing of the apocalypse. Even among those
lucky enough to emerge from two holocausts
unscathed, very few can continue on.
Watching the death of two worlds is enough to
shatter the minds of most. Most.
Sometimes, after a tragedy so horrific even
the jaded people of the Loss refuse to speak
of it, someone will emerge from the wreckage
ready to start over yet again. They journey to
the next enclave over, knocking at the gates
like any other dead man. Most enclaves let in
these poor souls out of pity. Nearly as many
come to regret it.
The Lost call these super-survivors
“Roaches:” creature destined to inherit the
earth. The name is far from a compliment.
No one can guess the shameful, sickening
things the Roach had to do to survive and
the survivor’s wild, haunted eyes discourage
anyone from asking. About the only people
willing to associate with such cursed souls are
Takers. As messed up as a Roach may be, they
don’t die easy, and that’s all the average crew
can afford to care about.
It’s up to the player and Market to decide
what exactly happened before the character
joined the current crew. It can be part of the
setting’s past that comes to play a big role in
the future of the campaign, or it could be a
personal tragedy that the PC never speaks of.
+Survivor: The Taker may damage Humanity
to assist any skill check at +1 per point lost.
Some ancient, animal instinct won’t let
the Roach go down. Past the point where
life seems anything but a torturous burden,
some ancient reflex keeps a Roach fighting
when others would succumb. Roaches
literally fuel their survival with Humanity. In
a firefight, points in Detachment can be spent
like charges from a gun to add to a check. If
injured, a Roach burns through sanity to keep
going. The fearsome, primordial refusal to die
kept the character going through the Crash,
helped them survive the fall of an enclave, and
keeps the PC moving on even now, living a life
that long ago lost hope of recovery.
193
 -Lone: The Taker’s past experience leaves
them cracked in all three threats at the
start of the game.
A Roach no doubt possessed exceptional
mental fortitude at one point, but the Loss’s
merciless string of cruelties has filed the
person’s mind into a jagged, brittle point
aimed only at survival. Yet survival is not
the same as living. Though retirement and
recovery remains possible, the character
perpetually teeters on the edge of a slippery
slope. The price of being able to burn through
rational thought to survive is having less of it
to work with later.
PICKING Spots Example
Morgan imagines Mal had a lot of resentment
at the pre-Crash world. But demure, silent
anger isn’t her style; Mal would have
externalized that frustration. Morgan picks
the weak spot: “Shock and Awe.” Mal earns
a point of Will any time she pisses on the
sensibilities of a possible ally, especially if
she doesn’t like them. NPCs that read her
weak spot might antagonize Mal until she
embarrasses herself with crass behavior.
Mal was told all her life that her obsession
with mechanics was too manly. It caused
her a lot of pain as she was growing up.
The character has a lot of sympathy for
people still trapped in oppressive systems,
so Morgan gives her the soft spot: “Round
Pegs in Square Holes.” Any time Mal can help
someone that doesn’t quite fit in, she does so.
But her sympathy for the oddballs can also be
used in negotiations to lead her by the nose.
Morgan figures that a hands-on learner
like Mal probably found her niche quick after
the Crash. She picks the Scavenger tough
spot and decides to bank the extra bounty it
provides. The permanent reduction of her
Refresh is going to hurt, but Morgan figures
it will be strong motivation to keep Mal frugal
in the field. The nest egg will come in handy
if the crew falls into debt, and the spot best
explains the skills Mal has to offer her crew.
194
PotentIals
Mechanically, Potentials determine the
maximum skill points a character can have in
the associated skills.
Narratively, Potentials represent the
peak of a person’s abilities. For instance,
lifting weights a couple times of week would
increase the Resistance skill, but not the
Strength Potential. Lifting practices muscle
memory, endurance, and efficiency in a
specific type of exertion. Lifting weights,
doing pylometrics, stretching properly, eating
a strict diet, and studying the anatomy of
bodybuilding would gain a point of Strength
Potential. Potential measures the degree
to which the character’s lifestyle supports
certain expertise, which is why nobody with
a pack-a-day smoking habit (Speed 1) holds a
marathon record (Athletics 5).
Before the Crash, there were people with
0’s in their Potentials that got along just fine.
Hell, there might still be a few alive in the
Recession. But out in the Loss, those people
are dead or worse. The Blight has a selective
effect on human survival, Takers especially.
Only the peak performers live long enough
to enter the game, so put one point in every
Potential and assign the other five points from
there.
At character creation, no Potential can
be above a three. Buying Potential after
character creation costs bounty (see p. 214)
Strength (STR)
Strength (STR) measures general physical
prowess: muscle mass, memory, weight,
and distribution. Strength is used to drive
melee weapons through bone and barricade
doors against the undead. It’s used to punch
competition in bar brawls and wrestle
casualties to the ground.
STR also determines Haul rating. Takers
can carry Haul equal to their STR and
still perform the intense physical exercise
demanded of the job. The concept is
explained more in depth on p. 264, but for
now, understand that, rather than an exact
measurement of weight, Haul abstracts to
bounty per unit. Whatever the Market price
for a unit of supply is, Haul represents how
many units the Taker can carry.
The Market never tells how much treasure
is located at a job site, but the Market does
have a responsibility to tell the crew how
much each unit of treasure is worth. Haul
informs the player how many units their Taker
can carry.
STR also determines the modifier for when
the Market calls for a Health or Infection
check. Health checks occur when the
character is trying to resist common disease,
exposure, or some other more traditional
threat. Infection checks occur when the
character are exposed to Blight. Either way,
STR is added to the Black when the Market
calls for these checks.
Finally, if the Market is running a Boom
game that allows default rolls to STR, the
Taker must roll a Black result equal to or
under the STR to succeed. Remember that
the STR Potential represents raw power:
not the ability to apply it effectively. If a
Market allows defaulting to STR, it should
be reserved to checks where panicked,
adrenaline-fueled thrashing has a chance of
success.
Speed (SPD)
Speed (SPD) measures a Taker’s overall
quickness over a sustained period of time,
abstracting a combination of cardiovascular
fitness, reflexes, and grace. SPD is required
of skills like Shooting, Athletics, and anything
else involving precision movement under time
constraints.
How far characters can retreat in combat
on a successful Athletics check depends on
their SPD rating. The distance casualties
have to travel before they can attack is
measured in Shambles. If the mob of dead
Amuu is fighting closes within 1 Shamble,
she’s going to want to get away. The player
buys-a-roll with a charge of rations, checks
Athletics, and succeeds. Now, if Amuu’s SPD
is 3, the character is now 4 Shambles away,
or, to put it another way, Amuu now has
an additional three turns (turns equalling
her SPD) to headshot the monsters before
they get close enough to attack. Were the
character’s SPD 1, there would be only one
more turn of breathing room before the
mob struck again. More details on how SPD
relates to casualties can be found on p. 296.
In combat against living foes, players roll
just the Black to determine initiative order,
but they can add their SPD to the result. More
information on determining initiative can be
found in the Combat chapter (p. 275).
When Takers become gassed (see p. 280),
rations can be refreshed by metabolizing the
character’s inner reserves. The maximum
number of charges that can be refreshed this
way equals the SPD rating. So, if a Taker with
a SPD of 2 runs out of rations, two charges
can be earned after taking a turn to rest, but
never more than two charges worth.
RatIon Use
Rations are the charges players use to buy
rolls in most STR and SPD skills. Rations
are spent in the moment; combat does not
need to stop while the characters eat protein
bars. Spending rations represents eating a
sufficient amount of calories before physical
exertion and enough to recover afterwards. If
your group wants to roleplay every time the
team sits down to eat some beans, go for it.
Just know that rations don’t have a mechanical
benefit until people start buying physical rolls,
so for simplicity’s sake, that’s when rations are
used.
195
 AdaptablIty (ADP)
Adaptability (ADP) represents an overall
aptitude for situational awareness, quick
thinking, and self-discipline. If using a skill
to perform an intellectual action on the fly
or cope under extreme pressure, that skill is
probably attached to Adaptability.
ADP determines Refresh. Refresh
represents the Taker’s ability to plan ahead,
source, and efficiently pack extra supplies in-
between jobs. Refresh is spent in the moment
to refill charges on gear. If a gun goes empty,
spend a Refresh and slap in a new clip. If the
first aid kit runs empty, spend a Refresh and
pull a new roll of gauze out of the backpack. If
the flashlight dies, Refresh is new batteries. If
food runs out, Refresh is a new MRE.
Refresh is explained more in-depth in the
Materialism chapter (see p. 240) but for now,
suffice it to say that ADP determines Refresh
as an abstract measure of the character’s
preparedness. It’s not that a character out of
196
Refresh forgot to bring ammo into a zombie
wasteland. Of course they need ammo. They
need everything. Everyone in the Loss needs
everything and there’s not enough to go
around. ADP and Refresh represent the ability
to source goods in an environment of constant
scarcity. Running out of Refresh doesn’t
indicate absentmindedness; the character
knows what they have and don’t have in their
backpack, but staying at home is never an
option when enclave rent is due.
Refresh... well, refreshes... at the end of
every job, no matter how much was or wasn’t
spent. The game always starts with Refresh
equal to ADP, and it can be spent recharging
items from there.
INTELLIGENCE (INT)
Intelligence (INT) should probably be
called “Intelligences.” It measures the total
mental capacity of a Taker. It differs from the
cognitive functions attached to Adaptability in
that INT-based skills take time. For instance,
it’s difficult to Research the price of grain
while zombies are trying to break down the
door. This doesn’t mean that INT skills can’t
be used in high-pressure situations (shit
happens), but INT skills take time, even in
combat.
The guidelines for when to make dice
checks (p. 174) are never so important as
when considering whether to default on
an INT check. If the player wants to know
something about the setting, the Market
should tell them whenever possible. After
all, the characters live there: they are the
real experts. If the player wants to know
something about the setting the Market
doesn’t know either, let the player dictate
the truth of the matter. Build the world
collaboratively, not against each other.
If the player wants to know some bit
of financial information for negotiations
– something normally revealed by a
Networking, Research, or Foresight – this
is the only situation where defaulting to
INT might be acceptable (and even then
only in a Boom game). Failure must have
consequences (ignorance is usually cured
painfully), but if the information can possibly
be known as a piece of random Loss gossip
or trivia, allow a default INT check. Failure
falls under the one-and-done rule, but players
desperate to know everything can succeed-at-
cost by tapping a Reference.
Charm (CHA)
Charm (CHA) is the blanket term for social
acumen and empathy. Related CHA skills
have simple uses in game – such as using
Deception to lie to a guard – and more
complex uses in the negotiation mechanics
(see p. 320). While CHA might not be very
useful when surrounded by hungry casualties,
it’s essential for making trips out into the Loss
financially worthwhile.
CHA also determines the number of
Dependents and the number of References
a Taker can have. For instance, a character
with CHA 1 has one Dependent and one
Reference available. Dependents should
be integral to the character concept; it’s a
loved one for whom the Taker risks life and
sanity. References can be assigned mid-
game and hold any kind of relationship the
player wishes. As the relationship is financial,
a wide variety of emotional relationships
are encouraged (i.e. you do not have to like
everyone you work with). A high CHA means
that the character can recover quickly from
emotional trauma and utilize many favors
from their References. However, healthy
relationships are based off mutual exchange,
and even time spent chatting costs money.
The same CHA that heals Humanity damage
and fixes failed dice rolls adds more financial
burdens to the Taker.
WIll (WILL)
Will is the only Potential not attached to
any skills because it is, by nature, difficult to
quantify. It’s the stuff survivor’s guilt is made
of, the X factor that lets one person live and
the next person die. The impact of Will is
as often ascribed to divine providence as it
is to stoic determination. It’s a bastardized
confluence of unbelievable luck, unbreakable
resolve, absurd optimism, and grim realism.
Will is the only Potential that can be spent.
At the start of a new game session, characters
have as many points of Will to spend as their
Will score. Spending a point of Will is very
powerful and can achieve any of the following
effects:
• Switch Black and Red numbers (B4/R9
becomes B9/R4)
• Upgrade a success to a Critical Success
• Buy another narrative benefit to add onto
an existing Critical Success
• Negate an opponent’s Critical Success
• Turn a Critical Failure into a regular
failure
• In combat, shift the damage onto a piece of
gear or different hit location
• Jump to the front of initiative order (see
p. 275)
197
 Will points gain be gained and refreshed in
the following ways:
• Buy a point of Will in character
advancement
• Follow a weak spot into trouble
• Fulfill a personal obligation to a soft spot
• Suffer because of a tough spot
• Rest in-between jobs/game sessions
AssIgnIng PotentIals Example
Mal gets one point in every Potential for free.
Morgan wants a smart, practical character.
Mal has gotten strong handling engine parts
and building fortifications over the last five
years, so she goes up to STR 2. She’s always
been practical and known for her common
sense, so she gets ADP 2. Morgan wants Mal
to be very useful to her crew and gives her
INT 3. Finally, nobody gets through the Crash
without determination and luck, so Mal buys
another point of WILL. Her final Potentials
are STR 2, SPD 1, ADP 2, INT 3, CHA 1,
WILL 2.
SkIlls
Characters start with 20 skill points.
Potentials are good for describing a
character, but they’re minimally active
in gameplay. They describe maximum
performance, not actual performance. Nearly
every dice check players make in Red Markets
is modified by skills and it is these specific
abilities that define a Taker’s success.
In character creation, skill points trade at
a one-to-one ratio. The number of points in a
skill is the modifier that gets added to Black
when rolling for that skill. So, if someone
were trying to lift a grate off a manhole cover,
they would make a Resistance check. They
would NOT make an STR check, because
without skill in Resistance, they don’t know
how to use that Strength well (lifting with the
back, for instance). If a piece of gear would
modify the check, charges are spent and the
bonus is added to skill. Basically, the benefits
of using tools can stack with associated skills,
198
but skills never stack with Potentials.
Skills may not exceed their associated
Potential. Additional skill points are
purchased with bounty after character
creation (see p. 214)
“But a +1 Is useless!”
Since criticals are always triggered on natural
doubles and ties go to the Market, playtesters
have argued that having a +1 in a skill is
essentially useless. This isn’t entirely true. For
example, if the dice for a Shoot check roll B2/
R3 and the Taker spent an extra charge of
ammunition beforehand, the check is a success
(B2+2/R3) where it would have failed with only
the +1 skill or the extra charge separately.
More importantly, the Taker had the ability
to aim that gun at all. Defaulting to Potentials
isn’t allowed in a Bust game. In most situations,
characters that don’t have at least a +1 in a skill
don’t have enough expertise to even hope for
success. If the check is such that even a total
layman might pull it off, the Market shouldn’t
have the player make skill checks in such low
stakes situations.
If using Boom defaults, a +1 skill, as opposed
to a +1 Potential, increases the probability
of success by 35%, allows extra spending on
charged gear, and permits the use of Will. Even
default checks to a Potential of 4 have worse
odds than that.
"Full PotentIaL"
A skill rating that is equal to its associated
Potential is at “full potential.” This means
that though a character might possess some
of the abilities required to increase a skill,
some other aspects of their physiology or
education is holding them back from further
advancement. For example, a character
might want to take their Mechanics to the
next level (Mechanics 3) but they need a
better understanding of physics before that’s
possible (INT 2). They might know enough
about archery to improve their accuracy
(Shoot: Bow 2), but they need a deeper
familiarity with the way windage affects
ballistics in general (Shoot 1) and better
hand-eye coordination (SPD 1) in order to
apply that knowledge.
The narrative description of how Potential
caps a skill’s development is up to the player.
Just remember that, in real life, you probably
haven’t rated your skill set according to
any consistent system, and even if you did,
performance would still vary widely from
day-to-day. The Taker is going to think of their
development in terms of specific talents and
frustrations. In Red Markets, Potential stops
skill development and costs a lot of bounty to
improve so as to emphasize a single economic
truth: education is as much a commodity
as anything else. Increasing human capital
requires actual capital. No one learns
computer programming by decapitating
zombies.
SpecIALIZATIONS
It’s possible to be a great driver and have
no idea how to even start an airplane. Many
world-class snipers would be stymied when
asked to operate a catapult. Certain situations
and tools require expert knowledge. If a
player wants to be skilled in one of these
areas, it requires a specialization.
Specializations are built on the foundation
of a skill, just as skills are built off a Potential.
Specializations are required for some pieces
of unique gear (see p. 239) and cost additional
skill points. Let’s say the player wants to use
an archaic weapon like a sword. The skill
they would buy first would be “Melee.” And
because wielding a katana is nothing like
batting practice, the player would then have
to spend another point in “Melee: Sword.” A
pilot would need to spend points in both Drive
and Drive: Plane. Specializations can exceed
neither the skill rating nor the associated
Potential. The only mechanical benefit of
specializations is the ability to succeed with
equipment and in situations that would
otherwise be impossible.
LIst of SkIlls
The following list of skills can also be
found on the character sheet. Players and
Markets are encouraged to collaborate
when constructing additional skills and
specialization they desire to see in their
particular campaign.
What do I really need?
If a skill weren’t useful, it wouldn’t be on the
character sheet, but not all skills are created
equal. Red Markets has a few skills that are
safe bets for maximizing a Taker’s chance for
survival. These skills aren’t essential (and I’d
argue a story of the asthmatic, neurotic IT
professional that survives the zombie hordes
is damned interesting) but going over the
fence without them is more dangerous and
challenging.
Athletics is used to dodge attacks and run
from danger. Cardio is rule number one.
Shoot is important if you aren’t Latent or
Immune. Melee combat with casualties when
your character is susceptible to infection is
extremely dangerous. One bad check and
the whole party becomes Vectors. Melee and
Unarmed skills aren’t bad to have as well, but
keeping distance is a priority in combat.
Self-Control is vital for keeping a character
effective. Lose your mind and it won’t matter
how healthy and well equipped you are.
Someone needs Research or the group is
going to be at a disadvantage in negotiations.
Similarly, a lot of players think of scams that
involve Criminality.
Someone with a high Scavenging skill can be
surprisingly profitable.
A group without a CHA skill specialist is
going to be hurting for bounty all the time.
Alternately, groups that don’t want to specialize
too much and/or want to take turns negotiating
can utilize the Fixer Rules (see p. 349)
STR SkIlls
All dice rolls for STR skills must be bought
with a charge of rations. Unless the Market
calls for a precision check, all STR skills
199
 can spend extra rations before the check to
“overexert” and increase chances of success.
Takers that are gassed cannot use any STR
skills until refreshed.
Unarmed
Hand-to-hand combat, martial arts, and any
other knowledge that factors into a brawl
– Unarmed is great for knocking out other
humans, but it won’t do much against the
undead beside push them away. All Unarmed
attacks do Stun damage, save for two
exceptions. On a critical success, the player
can choose to double Stun damage or convert
to Kill damage. Certain gear, such as spiked
gloves, can also turn Unarmed attacks into
Kill damage. Specializations may be useful if
the player wants to focus on specific contexts
where a generalist might otherwise receive
a penalty: grappling, blind-fighting, “peeling”
(knocking casualties out of a mob), fighting
with a prosthetic limb, etc.
200
Melee
The same considerations of Unarmed
combat are complicated by wielding a
blade or bludgeon. The weapon used
determines the damage type of a melee
attack. Specializations in the Melee skill focus
around unusual or archaic weapons: swords,
spears, nunchaku, etc. The Melee skill is still
used for weapons which can be thrown due to
buying the weighted upgrade.
Resistance
The ability to move heavy weight and resist
enormous pressure. Resistance is not used in
combat because it emphasizes raw strength
rather than strength and speed. Grappling
a casualty would be an Unarmed check, but
holding on to the thrashing corpse would
be Resistance. Use this when barricading
doors against a mob or blocking a hallway
by tipping a vending machine. There are no
specializations in this skill.
Bust Rule: Accuracy Counts
In this rules variant, rations used for STR skills
are only charged when spent on Resistance.
For Unarmed and Melee checks, the rolls must
always be made at precision difficulty. It doesn’t
matter how hard you swing if you don’t hit
anything.
SPD SkIlls
SPD skills require power with precision.
Dodging out of the way of machine gun fire is
certainly something a Taker would put a lot
of effort into, but going too far could just as
easily mean jumping into the path of some
bullets. Only one SPD skill requires rations
to buy-a-roll (Athletics), but none of them are
available if the Taker is gassed.
Shoot
It does what it says on the tin. The Shoot
skill is added to Black in addition to whatever
extra charges a player might spend to ensure
success. Specializations are needed to
operate military grade weapons (e.g. mortars)
or archaic projectile weapons such as bows or
muskets.
Athletics
Check Athletics to see if the character can
get somewhere quickly. Athletics can also be
used to dodge any incoming attack, so long as
the Taker has a twitch to spend in that combat
round (see p. 278). Need to climb a tree to
escape the undead? Athletics. Need to reach
that cover to flank the sniper? Athletics. Need
to run to the next enclave and warn of the
raider attack? Athletics. Characters missing
a leg need to specialize in this skill to move
effectively with their prosthesis.
Stealth
Hiding, belly crawling, and staying quiet
all require the muscle memory and grace
represented by the Stealth skill. Stealth can
be used to flank in combat without provoking
an attack. Stealth doesn’t cost rations to use,
but if the situation calls for speedy sneaking,
the Market might rule that rations need to be
spent.
ADP SkIlls
ADP skills are a grab bag of traits prevalent
in survivors of a zombie apocalypse. These
skills are one-and-done checks. If the Taker
fails, they can succeed at cost (according to
the Market’s discretion), spend a point of Will,
or accept the consequences. They can’t just
keep trying until success comes. In situations
that allow for such leisure, they shouldn’t be
rolling in the first place.
Awareness
Awareness goes beyond sharp eyes. Taker’s
need to have the maps of an area memorized,
noses sniffing for the stench of dead flesh,
and ears open for the click-clack of a rifle
bolt. If the Taker has the opportunity to notice
something that might help them out in the
future, check Awareness to see if they pick up
on it. If the story can’t continue without the
clue or information, the Market just tells the
players what they see. Awareness determines
whether the Taker gets useful information;
it does not determine whether the player
gets to hear the game’s story. There are no
specializations in this skill.
Self-Control
The ability to control one’s emotions, or at
least defer them long enough to finish the
job, is vital for a Taker’s survival. The Market
calls for Self-Control checks whenever
characters witness something horrific,
depressing, or otherwise stressful. Success
means that damage to the Taker’s Humanity
is minimized or negated; failure means one of
the character’s threats to Humanity increases.
There are no specializations in this skill.
Scavenging
The ability to find useful things out in the
Loss is what the business is all about. It’s an
essential survival skill, as well as an effective
method of controlling overhead and keeping
a crew profitable. Scavenging is used to find
materials to repair existing gear or build new
tools. It’s used to loot the backpacks of slain
enemies and find the best salvage at a job site.
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 Most commonly, Scavenging determines just
how much bounty can be found amongst the
disgusting rags of slain casualties. There are
no specializations in this skill.
Driving
Driving a car is something every character
can do. Driving a car down a wreck-strewn,
abandoned country road with a Vector
trying to punch through the windshield is
not something every character could do.
Drive checks are only called for in this latter
instance. If there is no danger in failure,
assume the character knows which one
is the gas and keep the dice in the bag.
Specializations in Drive can be taken for
unusual vehicles that require extensive
training to operate: tanks, planes, boats, etc.
Criminality
A character’s general knowledge of bad
behavior, ranging from how much weed is
in a dime bag to the best place to hide a
body. If someone needs to pick a lock, spot
a pickpocket, or figure out which one is the
gang leader, those are all Criminality checks.
There are other skills for more high-tech
crimes like computer hacking or insider
trading. Criminality specifically measures
the analog bad behavior only mastered in the
slums of society. There are no specializations
in this skill, as any specific forms of larceny
(spying, pyramid schemes, etc) would best be
represented by a Profession (see p. 203).
INT SkILls
INT skills are one-and-done checks. The
Taker either knows how to do it or they don’t.
Failing INT skill checks should never hold
up the story, though. Tapping References (p.
210) is the primary way to succeed at cost
while still getting the desired information.
As mental actions, INT skills don’t require
spends to buy a skill check. However, since
INT skills are widely applicable, the Market
may call for charges to be spent on associated
gear. For instance, using Research to find
some juicy gossip on Ubiq wi-fi would require
a charge from a laptop’s battery life.
202
Foresight
Thinking that’s been done beforehand is
often mistaken for quick thinking. The Loss
demands preparation for every possible
contingency. The Market can call for Foresight
rolls to see if a player is allowed to Refresh an
item if using the High-Stakes Refresh rules
(p. 242). More commonly, Foresight is used to
get tactical information “on the ground.” For
instance, no one is going to know for certain if
there are Causalities roaming around in that
coal mine or not, but a successful Foresight
check can guess which tunnel they would
likely congregate in. Want to know what
the weather is going to do? That’s going to
be a Foresight check to see if the character
remembers to check the forecast. There are
no specializations in this skill.
Research
Research is essential for getting the scoop
on lucrative contracts and arriving to
negotiations prepared. It’s also useful for
scanning networks for any intel that could
save lives out in the Loss. Research is only
rolled when learning a bit of information
might help characters succeed or profit. Clues
essential for moving the job forward are just
given to the players without a skill check.
Players that want to know some unrelated bit
of knowledge can simply narrate that bit of
the setting. Research requires some electronic
gear (or at the very least a library) in order
to access the information. There are no
specializations in this skill.
Mechanics
You find a device that runs on electricity:
can you fix it, hack it, build it, and power it?
Make a Mechanics check to find out. This
also includes a general understanding of
physics and construction techniques required
to make, repair, and repurpose items with
moving parts or construct tools capable of
withstanding repeated stress. A high score
in this skill means you can carve a war club,
take apart an engine, or build a chair with
enough materials and time. Mechanics is a
measure of general handiness, so there are
no specializations in this skill. Any devices
sufficiently advanced to need a specialization
should be covered by a Profession skill
instead (see below).
First Aid
First Aid refers exclusively to battlefield
medicine. If you want to nurse someone
back to health over a period of months or
stop the enclave’s dysentery epidemic, take
Profession: Doctor. If you want to keep your
gutshot friend from bleeding out, invest
in First Aid. First Aid doesn’t require any
charges to make a check, but it is one-and-
done for each injury. Charges from a first aid
kit or scavenged supplies don’t actually heal
hit boxes. Spending more charges merely
increases the chance of success. The amount
healed depends on the Black, and it spends
at a 2-to-1 ratio: it takes one Black to turn a
box from Kill to Stun damage, and another
to erase Stun damage. This means that a
success in First Aid can only stop a character
from bleeding out and heal some damage.
There are no specializations in this skill.
Profession: X
Profession skills are essentially free
specializations. Every Profession skill must
have some sort of recognized occupation
attached to it, and the skill rating refers to
anything the player can reasonably argue
is part of that job’s skill set. For instance, a
character with the skill “Profession: Doctor
3” would have a +3 to treating a flu, stitching
wound, prescribing medication, researching
the Blight, reading a medical chart, and much
more.
Though they are more versatile than other
specializations, the function of Profession
skills is similar in that it allows a chance
for success where there was none before.
Let’s say a player wants to use Criminality to
break into a vault, but the door is guarded by
a biometric security lock. An average street
thug wouldn’t know where to begin bypassing
such advanced hardware, but someone
with Profession: Security Consultant or
Profession: Computer Science could take a
shot. Likewise, the best car mechanic in the
world is screwed if trying to shut down an
overheating nuclear reactor, but the lady with
Profession: Nuclear Physicist has a chance.
Profession skills describe what a Taker
did before the Crash. Anything that helped
them survive in the wasteland should become
a tough spot (p. 185). So no one should be
taking “Profession: Zombie-killer” or anything
else sufficiently game breaking. Jobs too silly
for a good character backstory don’t deserve
representation on the character sheet.
Furthermore, the real-world difficulty of
specializing in multiple skill sets is emulated
by the mechanics. The first Profession skill
can be bought regularly, but the price for a
second Profession jumps to 2 skill points per
+1 bonus. A third Profession skill would only
reach +1 after 3 skill points were dumped
into it. Loading up on Profession skills shows
diminishing returns.
CHA SkILls
Skills under this Potential are unique because
they have two distinct uses. In the majority
of gameplay, they are one-and-done checks
made as players interact with NPCs and other
Market forces. A success means the PCs
get what they want. Failure means the Taker
must try a different social tactic, suffer the
consequences, or tap a Reference to help (if
applicable). However, the negotiation rules
complicate CHA skills and provide each one a
unique role in securing prices and contracts.
These special cases are explained in depth in
Negotiation (see p. 320)
CHA skills do not require any charges be
spent to buy-a-roll unless a piece of charged
gear is being used to facilitate communication
(such as battery life on a communication
device). There are no specializations in CHA
skills.
203
 Networking
Make a Networking check to find the person
with the goods you need. Networking can
be used to get leads for jobs, source gear
for purchase, or contact References. If a
Reference is paid off, a Networking check
can replace a listed reference with an NPC
more useful to the current situation. Most
negotiations start with a Networking check
that gives the crew a lead on the job.
Persuasion
Checks for Persuasion are limited to
situations in which the PCs are trying to
convince an NPC of something that is true;
misinformation or coercion call for different
skills. As with all CHA skills, players should
roleplay their rhetorical appeal to the NPC
rather than merely “make a Persuasion
check.” In negotiation, Persuasion is the
primary means of gaining Sway (see p. 327).
204
Sensitivity
Sensitivity is a combination of empathy,
psychology, and sociology. This skill
check picks up on aspects of characters’
personalities that they would prefer stay
hidden. Sensitivity in negotiations is vital for
figuring out a client’s spots in the moment.
Deception
Tell a lie and be believed. Deception in
negotiation moves Sway by utilizing false
promises, or it can be used to maintain a
poker face when a client exploits a PC’s spot.
In either instance, failing a Deception test
always has negative consequences.
Intimidation
Scare an NPC with words and actions.
Intimidation is used in negotiations for a
“walk away” bluff that can end negotiation
early.
Leadership
Leadership differs from Persuasion in
both size and circumstance. Want to get a
merchant to give you a discount? That’s just
a Persuasion check. Want to get the whole
enclave to agree to an income tax? That’s
Leadership. Convince a date meet you at a
restaurant? Persuasion. Convince an army
to follow you into hell? Leadership. This skill
also determines the length of negotiations
by measuring general assuredness and body
language.
AssIgnIng SkIlls Example
Mal only ever worked to pay for her tinkering
habit. She’s trained her whole life to be a
mechanic, phoning in every other occupation.
So Morgan takes Profession: Full-time
Mechanic 3, figuring it represents her
character’s past and is more versatile than
wasting points in something more general like
“Mechanics.” She got First Aid 1 in a CPR
course, Research 1 from public schools, and
Foresight 2 for having her head screwed on
straight.
There’s nothing quite so fun as exploding a
zombie skull with a wrench, so Mal has Melee
2. Still, close combat is a bad idea because
Mal is neither Latent nor Immune. She puts
one skill point in all the SPD skills so she
won’t be totally helpless at range.
Mal’s always on the hunt for parts. She
takes Awareness 2 and Scavenging 2. Drive
2 helps navigate the clogged roads on her
supply runs. She throws in Self-Control 1
because the Crash hardened her.
Finally, while Mal is too standoffish to be
much use negotiating contracts, Morgan
figures she’s okay at reading people and takes
a point in Sensitivity.
Dependents
CHA determines the number of Dependents
a Taker has to support and be supported by.
The more social a character is, the easier
it is for them to become tangled in messy
relationships.
Dependents are people the Taker loves and
cares for at their home enclave. Were it not
for these loved ones, the Taker might work a
small job, get paid in rations, and never risk
leaving the fence. But life in the Loss is short
and brutal, and life in the Recession cutthroat
and competitive. The Red Markets are the
only hope for these Dependents to get out and
the Taker is their only lifeline.
Dependents aren’t totally helpless, but for
one reason or another, they don’t fare well in
the cutthroat survival capitalism of the Loss.
Exactly why is up to the player to describe.
Perhaps they were crippled physically or
emotionally by the Crash. Maybe they’re too
young or too old to earn their keep in an
enclave. More than likely, they just lack the
skills the carrion economy demands and their
labors don’t rake in enough bounty to pay all
the bills. Whatever the reason, Dependents
can’t thrive without the financial assistance
of a Taker. The bounty they receive might
literally keep them alive by stocking food
and medicine. Or perhaps the death waiting
beneath the Taker’s safety net is more
figurative. For instance, one character might
risk death in the Loss to keep her sister out
of a brothel, or to protect a delicate child’s
musical genius from being dulled by brutal
physical labor.
It’s up to players to name the NPCs that
make up their character’s family, develop
their backstories, and explain why the Taker
supports them. The Market (or another
person at the table named by the PC) is
responsible for playing the Dependent in any
scenes where they interact (see “Vignettes” p.
415). Narratively, these characters make up
the populace of a crew’s enclave. They serve
as a reminder that no one chases wealth out
in the Loss without good reason. Innocent
people back home have their lives on the
line... the bottom line.
AssIgnIng Dependents Example
Morgan figures Mal survived the initial
outbreaks due to her isolation. She lived far
away from her family. Her few friends at the
205
 garage were casual. As the news grew worse
and they stopped showing up for work, Mal
just picked up more shifts. By the time things
got out of hand, there was no one worth the
risk of saving. She lived through the few
months of terror alone and was starting to
wonder if survival was worth it just before she
found an enclave.
That’s where she met Janice. Morgan
figures Mal has no patience for useless
people, so her attraction to Janice originally
came from her expertise as a chef. Sadly,
cuisine out in the Loss is more about calories
than taste, so there is little Janice can do
to earn her way beyond basic cooking and
physical labor. Morgan decides Janice is one
of the few people in the world that can make
Mal laugh and that her character would kill to
protect that. Morgan writes Janice down on
her sheet in as a Dependent.
When it comes time to roleplay scenes
between the two, Morgan can pick among the
three themes for vignettes (see p. 416). If Mal
needs help, the lovers can try to pretend the
terrors of Mal’s job stay outside (the “Cope”
theme). If Janice has problems, the player
assuming her role might ask Mal to secure
some spices so she can show the enclave how
to really make broth (the “Support” theme).
If Morgan just wants to define the enclave
more deeply, she could narrate the pair’s trip
to a driving range set up on the roof of an
abandoned building (the “Engage” theme).
Since the Market has to manage the scene
and play different roles depending on the
theme, more detail on the themes is included
in “Structure of a Campaign” (p. 413). Players
need only remember that vignettes can either
focus their characters, their Dependents, or
their community.
The BenefIts of Dependents
Dependents are more than resource drains.
The emotional support they provide is
essential to any Taker’s survival.
For every fully supported Dependent
available (not Needy, Strained, or Broken), the
Taker automatically heals one column’s worth
206
of Humanity damage, which is the currency of
a character’s emotional well-being. Humanity
is tracked along three “threats” that endanger
sanity out in the Loss: Detachment, Trauma,
and Stress. The complete Humanity rules are
explained later (p. 310), but the only other way
to recover Humanity is by spending bounty to
relax and recover between jobs. Time used
relaxing, healing, and recovering is not spent
scavenging, repairing, and working towards
survival. The opportunity cost of trying to stay
sane eats up capital like anything else, and the
price of healing invisible wounds can really
stack up after a particularly horrific mission.
Dependents help alleviate the burden by
providing quality time.
At the beginning of the session or the end
of the current job, players get a vignette scene
between their character and a Dependent of
their choice. The player, the Market, and any
other PC stepping in to roleplay a Dependent
can negotiate any kind of scene they wish,
picking from the three themes or narrating
some other kind of interaction. Perhaps one
Taker spends newfound wealth building his
kids a swing set. Another might buy a rare
book to cheer up an ailing grandparent. The
grizzled veteran of the Loss could spend his
free time nursing an old war buddy back to
health using medicine purchased with hard-
won bounty.
Regardless of the narrative details, the
goal of these vignettes is to show the PCs
recovering from the trauma of the Loss in the
company of loved ones. It’s a regular reminder
as to why these characters fight. Restorative
downtime with a Dependent can heal up to an
entire column of Humanity damage.
The term column is meant literally. Let’s
look at an example:
Friends are a costly luxury, and when one
invests one’s capital in a mission in life, one
cannot afford to have friends.
-Henrik Ibsen
VIgnette/HumanIty Heals Example
Mal picks the “cope” theme, meaning time
with her Dependent is meant to help the
Taker forget the horrors she’s recently
witnessed. Morgan picks a fellow player,
Bailey, to play Mal’s girlfriend, Janice, leaving
the Market to help describe the scene and
represent the haunting trauma of Mal’s job.
Morgan says that Mal has organized a date
with her fiancé back at the enclave, complete
with solar-powered iPod jazz, candles, and
actual spaghetti (this represents the bounty
spend on the relationship). As the goal of the
scene is to simply help Mal recover, Janice
expresses gratitude for the lovely dinner and
asks about her partner’s day.
The Market, as the reminder of everything
the Loss won’t let a Taker forget, narrates that
Mal hears screaming, faintly, just beneath
Kind of Blue playing in the background. It
sounds a lot like that soldier she saw crushed
under a tide of Vectors not two nights ago.
The Market calls for a Self-Control check to
inform Morgan’s roleplaying. Morgan rolls.
The success or failure of the dice doesn’t
have a mechanical penalty in a vignette unless
the group is using Bust rules; they merely
inform roleplaying. Even a bad night spent
bickering with family is better than a night
alone with the undead. If the dice check fails,
Mal will become distracted or uncomfortable
with Janice’s questions, the trauma of the past
intruding on her carefully planned evening.
If the Self-control check succeeds, Mal turns
up the music, redirects the conversation away
from her crew’s “adventures,” and asks Janice
how her work at the kitchen is going.
Mal has a Humanity damage of 2
Detachment, 3 Trauma, and 3 Stress. After
roleplaying the vignette, Morgan begins
healing on the track with the most damage.
She erases all the tic marks in the 3rd vertical
column because that’s the most Humanity
damage she’s taken. A column’s worth of
Humanity restoration would restore the Taker
to 2 Detachment, 2 Trauma, and 2 Stress (the
Detachment threat wouldn’t change because
the 3rd dot hadn’t yet been filled).
GRAPHIC: Show the Humanity threats with
2 Detachment, 3 Trauma, and 3 Stress. An
eraser streak cuts through the 3rd Trauma
and Stress, an arrow labeling the erasure
‘Janice’
Now, if Mal had a second Dependent, she
could reduce her Humanity damage down to
1 Detachment, 1 Trauma, and 1 Stress. This
scene doesn’t even have to be roleplayed.
The Taker receives the support of additional
Dependents “off-screen”. A third Dependent
would have removed all of Mal’s Humanity
damage after only a single vignette scene.
GRAPHIC: New eraser line goes through the
2nd box of Detachment, Trauma, and Stress.
New line is labeled “2nd Dependent.” Another
eraser cuts through the 1st box on each threat, labeled
“3rd Dependent.”
In this example, Mal has healed two points
worth of Humanity damage for the 1 bounty
it took to keep her Dependents healthy and
happy. Had she two loved ones, she would
have healed 5 points for 2 bounty. At three?
8 Humanity for 3 bounty. Compare that with
the 8 bounty it would cost to heal that much
Humanity by paying to heal each individual
box. Maintaining relationships makes sense
economically even before factoring in the
emotional penalties for neglecting a Taker’s
loved ones.
NeglectIng Dependents
If a Dependent doesn’t receive at least one
bounty in a session, the relationship with
the Taker begins to degrade. This doesn’t
necessarily mean that everyone in the Taker’s
life is a gold-digging monster. The bounty
spent on the Dependent often represents
opportunity cost. The cost might not mean
someone is starving; it might mean that
daddy had to work and missed daughter’s
recital. The exact form financial stress takes
is up to those roleplaying the Taker and the
Dependent.
207
 Mechanically, there are three levels that
track a relationship at risk. After one missed
bounty, the Dependent is “Needy.” This
means the NPC has to do without and suffers
for it by going hungry, cold, alone, or any other
way the Market describes. The Taker must
make a Self-Control check against Stress
upon seeing the struggling loved one.
After another missed bounty, the
Dependent is “Strained,” hanging on by a
thread physically, emotionally, financially, or
all three. The Taker must make another Self-
Control check against Stress as the situation
worsens.
At “Severed,” the Taker loses all contact
with the Dependent. The Market might kill
them off, have them lose contact, or inflict a
fate worse than death. Regardless, a severed
Dependent is lost forever. The Market picks
the threat that most fits the tragedy and
rounds up Humanity damage to the nearest
208
Regret (see p. 313). There’s no way to mitigate
the damage; it hurts to lose the ones you love.
Relationships can be healed much the same
way as Humanity: one bounty erases one dot
of damage. If a relationship is Needy, spending
one bounty on the Dependent for that session
would only keep the situation from getting
worse; it would take another bounty to erase
the damage done.
When roleplaying a strained relationship
between Taker and Dependent, remember
that the consequences of poverty are extreme,
multi-faceted, and often permanent. One
recent study by the NCBI shows that a
recently unemployed person is 25% more
likely to die of cancer, 18% more likely to
get divorced, and can expect a year-and-a-
half knocked off their life expectancy even
if they recover. Chances of suffering from
mental illness skyrocket, as do chances of
imprisonment. A .01% increase in the national
unemployment rate contributes to over 1,500
additional suicides the same year. And all of
this horror is in a mundane world without the
undead.
In conclusion, when Dependents are
hurting, the Taker feels their pain. When
Dependents are happy, the Taker still suffers
the deprivations of the Loss, but at least they
don’t have to do it alone.
Takers as Dependents
So you want to be in a relationship with
another Taker in the crew? It’s allowed, but it’s
dangerous as hell. Office romance is generally
discouraged, especially when the office is a
deadly apocalyptic wasteland. As unpleasant
as it may be to shoot a Blight-infected peer
in the head, it’s way worse when it’s a best
friend, sibling, or spouse.
But for groups that want a more intimate
cast of characters, using fellow Takers as
Dependents can help focus on the crew’s
interactions both inside and outside the
fence. For players that want their characters
involved despite the risk, here are the rules
for writing other Takers in as Dependents.
• It must be reciprocal.
If Lug writes Nut in as his Dependent, Nut
must accept Lug as well. Life is too short for
one-sided love affairs. Dependents must be
equally invested in each other.
• Money is time. Time is money.
Among Takers, the bounty required to support
Dependents always represents opportunity
cost. This means that characters don’t merely
exchange currency. The bounty is spent
on shots at the bar, batteries for the game
console, birth control pills, or whatever other
costs accrue from the pair spending time
together.
• It isn’t exclusive.
Just because Nut decides to have vignette
with Lug, it doesn’t mean Lug has to do
another vignette with Nut. Lug might need
to see his ailing mother, or he may not want
to do another scene at all. That’s okay. Since
the Taker’s share a vignette, both can heal
Humanity as if they role-played their scenes
separately, or they can do vignettes with
different Dependents.
• It could get awkward.
All the standard penalties for neglecting
Dependents apply. Letting a relationship
become severed isn’t going to result in
anything as extreme as one of the Takers
dying, but neglect breaks the relationship
so severely that the Humanity damage is
the same. Players are expected to roleplay
accordingly. If Lug and Nut become estranged,
the rest of the crew can expect some really
awkward conversations as they trek between
job sites.
• Love hurts.
If Lug watches Nut take an arrow to the
throat, the emotional trauma typical of
such tragedy gets much, much worse. Any
Humanity damage suffered for seeing a
fellow Taker harmed gets compounded by the
damage of seeing it happen to a Dependent.
So, if a member of the crew dying would
call for a level-3 Self-Control check, that
Humanity damage is only going to be added
after the Market rounds a threat up to the
nearest Regret (the penalty for losing a
Dependent). If you get your Dependent killed,
expect to go very crazy, very fast.
MBA Rules: Work/LIfe Balance
In the basic rules, all players get a “work”
scene and “life” scene every session. The work
scene is always a Scam or negotiation. The life
scene is always a vignette with Dependents.
In advanced play, life scenes can be traded
for extra work scenes and vice versa, but
messing with Work/Life balance always has
consequences (see p. 434). Only groups playing
with the MBA rules have to worry about Work/
Life balance; otherwise, everyone gets one
vignette per game.
209
 References
In addition to the number of Dependents a
Taker has, CHA determines the number of
References the character can rely on at any
given time.
Whereas the relationship between
Dependents and Takers is based on mutual
financial and emotional need, References
are purely professional contacts. Their
opinions of the PC can range from devotion to
loathing, but the Loss doesn’t care much for
sentimentality. As long as it pays to stay civil,
people work together.
Rather than help a Taker stay sane between
jobs, References are specialists that fill in
gaps in the character’s skill set. They’re
almost always contacted remotely and can
be located both in and out of the Recession.
If a crew is tapping its References, it means
they’re outsourcing expertise they can’t
manage themselves. But even in the midst
of an apocalypse, consultation fees can be a
bitch.
ReputatIon Economy
References are professional contacts made
out in the Loss. DHQS Stewards, rebel
militiamen, believers, other Takers – these are
people the character has worked with before.
Aside from their useful mechanical benefits,
References are an opportunity to explore
a character’s past. Nobody made it clean
through the Crash and five years of hell. Why
is the Taker working with the current crew
and not with the Reference? What happened
on those early jobs? How did the Taker
make it through those chaotic early months?
Tapping a Reference is an opportunity to
explore all these questions and more. See
“Roleplaying References” p. 211 for more on
roleplaying a reference scene.
Mechanically, References offer a way
for players to recover from failed one-and-
done INT and CHA skill checks. Using
Ubiq specs or a laptop to contact experts
allows for success at a cost (see p. 175).
That failed Research check can become
a success with one call to Whitey White-
210
collar, an IT professional working in Ubiq
City. The enclave’s best pickpocket can be
subcontracted for a scam if someone calls in a
favor with Sister Sticky-Fingers.
Basically, References operate like additional
Will points for certain rolls. They can’t help
a bullet find its target, but they can score you
ammunition if you give them a few hours.
Unlike Will, however, References must be
cultivated over time and require work to
maintain.
The Use of Favors
Getting favors from a Reference requires
some role-playing. The overall goal of these
vignettes is for the Taker to explain how
exactly they want the contact to help. As long
as the relationship is in good repair and the
Taker makes the call, the Reference agrees
to help. Rather than actually negotiating,
the Market instead uses the scene as an
opportunity to explore the character’s history.
More on roleplaying a reference scene can be
found in “Roleplaying References” (see p.211).
Mechanically, as long as a Reference would
reasonably have the expertise to help and
be able to telecommute, the dice check is an
automatic success. So while Greasy Sue can’t
drive the car over the phone, she can walk
someone through how to repair it if they have
a working webcam. References can be used
to succeed one-and-done rolls that failed,
and Takers can loan their References to each
other.
References aren’t an automatic win; they
represent success at a cost. Failure is less
interesting than how much characters are
willing to pay to succeed. Each Reference
favor costs a bounty that must be paid back
in time and favors from the Taker. If the
Reference’s generosity isn’t returned, the
relationship decays just like a neglected
Dependent.
Once a Reference is “Needy,” they require
a Networking test to contact. At “Strained,”
Networking is required to contact them
and the player needs to use a Charm skill
successfully to convince the Reference the
 character is ‘good for it.’ At “Severed,” the
Reference no longer returns the Taker’s call
and they may be actively seeking retribution
for unpaid debts. Any debts so neglected
permanently eliminate that Reference slot
as the carrion economy learns better than to
accept the Taker’s false promises.
As the use of a Reference is somewhat
contextual, wait to assign them until they
are needed in play. Any reference that isn’t
currently “Needy” can be reassigned. So if
a computer specialist was useful in the last
job, but what the team really needs now is
a demolitions expert, Mal can sub in a new
reference by erasing the old NPC and writing
in a more useful personality.
Bust Rule: Interest
Reference relationships decay, just like
neglected Dependents. So, failing to pay back
a favor for one session wouldn’t require one
bounty to make things right. One bounty would
only keep the References from going strained;
two would be needed to clear the debt.
RoleplayIng References
The relationship between a Reference and a
Taker is a collaboration between the player
and the Market. After all, it was hard to be
picky about one’s friends during the Crash.
Five years on and there isn’t a survivor left
that hasn’t made some compromises. But
with that said, no player should have their
character’s past completely defined by the
Market.
It’s good to have a give-and-take when
roleplaying a scene with a Reference. The
easiest way to define the relationship is
to focus on faction and attitude. Split the
duties of describing those two elements of a
reference. For instance, if the Taker wants to
know someone in a group of radical Canadian
rebels (faction), the Market gets to say that the
reference “always knew they’d come crawling
back one day” (attitude). Conversely, if the
Taker really needs a best friend (attitude), the
Market can make them a believer in the Black
Math cult (faction).
Try to bring up moments in the character’s
past while negotiating for whatever favor the
Taker needs, especially if other members
of the crew are listening. The golden rule
of improv applies to these quick vignettes:
don’t negate. Try to always respond to new
information with “Yes, and...” or “Yes, but...”
For example, if the Market, roleplaying as
a Steward spy, mentions the time that Mal
did some sabotage for the DHQS, Mal’s
player should try to resist stopping the game
dead to say that didn’t happen. For instance,
Morgan can say, “Yeah, Mal pulled that job for
DHQS... in an attempt to get vital intel about
a settlement she later robbed. Good thing
this citizen sap never got wise to how she
scammed the whole contract.”
A Reference may think the player did some
deed in the past and suggest as much to
others, but only the player can decide if it’s
true or a misconception. A player always has
control of what the character actually did in
the past. By refusing to negate each other, Mal
gets her favor and the Market gets a juicy plot
hook if Mal ever severs ties with the Steward.
The other unalienable right players possess in
a Reference scene is naming the NPC, though
they can abdicate to the Market if they’re short
on ideas.
BuyIng Gear
The gear list is described in more depth on p.
245. New characters start off with 10 bounty
to buy starting equipment. Everybody gets
a backpack and one unit of rations for free.
Normally, purchasing gear in game requires
using References and Networking to find
sellers, but players can buy whatever they
want at the outset. Gear is typically priced at
its upkeep x2, but starting equipment is sold
at upkeep in bounty.
Gear in Red Markets drains resources as
long as they are owned. Life-saving equipment
requires constant maintenance, replacement,
and recharging, so there are few things a
211
 Taker can purchase and forget about. Players
should understand that, though they may
buy whatever they wish at the outset, the
characters are going to be expected to meet
the upkeep of all that gear by the end of the
session.
BuyIng Gear Example
Morgan sees her fellow players investing
heavily zombie-slaying skills and equipment.
She’s always figured Mal earned the respect
of the crew with her technical expertise;
Morgan tells everyone she’s going for utility
rather than firepower.
Mal, like every other character, starts with
a backpack and rations. She’ll be responsible
for paying upkeep on those items at the end of
the job (1 bounty each), but for now, they are
completely free items.
212
Mal wants to use her Reference and have
access to technical specs on the fly, so she
buys Ubiq Specs: AR glasses that double
as a wearable computer and phone. She
upgrades the gear by hosting GhoulNet,
allowing any of her teammates with electronic
communications into a tactical network.
That’s 4 bounty gone, but Mal is now the hub
of the team’s communications.
As a mechanic, Mal’s responsibilities are
scavenging loot, repairing vehicles, and
breaking into secure doors. She buys a toolkit
and the “tailored” upgrade so she doesn’t
have to worry about the noise. That’s 7 bounty
spent of her starting 10.
Nobody goes out in the Loss without a
weapon. As much as Morgan liked the idea of
wrench fighting, a tomahawk just sounds too
cool. She spends a bounty to buy the weapon
and another to get the Sturdy upgrade.
Mal could really use a ranged weapon, but
Morgan thinks she could scavenge one at
some point during the job. The only problem
is avoiding a casualty bite in the meanwhile.
After some deliberation, Morgan spends
another bounty on the “weighted” upgrade.
She figures Mal can keep her distance by
throwing the tomahawk if things get bad.
Owing to her scavenger tough spot, Mal has
10 more bounty to spend than the rest of her
crew. However, she’s already up to 6 bounty
in equipment upkeep (upgrades don’t count
towards upkeep). That’s without factoring
in the 3 bounty needed for rent, food, and
keeping Janice happy and healthy. Morgan
doesn’t want to saddle her character with too
much overhead before the game even starts,
so Mal banks the bounty for a rainy day.
Gear Packages
Don’t want to dive into the full gear list yet?
That’s fine. Here are ten packages of gear and
upgrades designed for roles crews often need.
Copy one over to your character sheet and get
started.
All Takers start with a backpack and rations
for free at character creation.
Doorman MedIC
Built for: Casualty management, chokepoint Built for: battlefield medicine, infection
control, breaking and entering prevention and care
Gear: DDJ’s, Lockpicker’s Kit, Warhammer Gear: First Aid Kit, Suppresin K-7864,
Upgrades: +2 Upgrades Handgun
Upgrades: +0 Upgrades
Grease Monkey
Built for: finding value, dismantling scrap, Scout
repairing salvage, and starting vehicles Built for: stealth, casualty avoidance,
Gear: Shotgun, Toolkit, Ubiq Specs intelligence gathering and relay
Upgrades: +4 Upgrades Gear: Binoculars, Handgun, Scent Blocker,
Ubiq Specs
Hunter Upgrades: +2 Upgrades
Built for: movement, sustainability, efficiency,
animal handling SnIper
Gear: Bicycle, Bow, Dog Built for: overwatch, ranged attack, damage
Upgrades: +5 Upgrades Gear: Heavy Rifle, Ubiq Specs
Upgrades: +3 Upgrades
Latent
Built for: infected melee, running point Tank
Gear: Axe, Carpet Gauntlets/Greaves, Built for: Melee, chokepoints, frontline
Handgun casualty engagement
Upgrades: +3 Upgrades Gear: Chainmail, Machete
Upgrades: +1 Upgrade
Manager
Built for: power negotiation, leadership, social TechIe
engineering, communications. Built for: surveillance, salvage, comms
Gear: Club, Laptop/Pad Gear: Drone, Electronics Kit, Ubiq Specs
Upgrades: +6 Upgrades Upgrades: +2 Upgrades

213
 CHARACTER ADVANCEMENT
Character Advancement is achieved in the
game like everything else: by spending bounty.
Time spent reading about or practicing a
new skill uses resources and detracts from
the everyday tasks of maintaining an enclave.
Bounty is spent on the material requirements
of practice (i.e. ammo, books, online courses,
parts, battery life, etc.). Time not spent
scavenging, performing maintenance, or
seeking employment costs bounty as well.
Advancing a skill to +1 point, costs 1
bounty. Advancing skill to +2, costs 2 bounty.
To +3, 3 bounty... and so on.
Each additional point of Potential costs 10
bounty each.
All other bounty is spent on upkeep, healing
health, restoring Humanity, buying gear,
installing upgrades, or, in campaign play, is
banked towards the retirement plan.
214
CampaIgn Play
If the group is only playing a one-shot or trying
out the system, character creation is done.
Extended play is called a campaign. Groups
looking to play through a large series of jobs
have two additional steps: retirement plans
and enclave generation.
Retirement plans provide characters with
a financial means of visualizing personal
development, a long-term goal, and an exit
strategy. Enclave generation places all the
characters in a shared community that they
must fight both to protect and to escape.
The Market is in negotiations with the
players for both of these processes (see p.
413), but everything players need to know can
be found in this section.
RetIrement Plans
Retirement plans are for long-term campaign
play. For shorter games, feel free to make
characters that don’t have retirement plans, or
at least don’t stat them out. It’s fine for a one-
shot character to talk about her dream of one
day founding her own enclave. It’s not going
to come up again beyond this one job, so don’t
worry about it during character generation. A
running subplot in any campaign, however, is
just how expensive dreams can be to realize;
the retirement plan reflects that struggle.
Takers don’t want to do this forever. They
can’t. No matter how experienced, life in
the Loss wears people thin. Wounds stack
up. Emotional trauma strains relationships,
making future hardships all the more
maddening. Clients take the bounty and run,
leaving crews with dead friends and nothing
to show for it. Nobody’s luck lasts forever. A
bite still means a bullet and it only takes one.
The stress is omnipresent and shattering. On
a long enough timeline, the Loss always wins.
The only thing that makes the job bearable
is the hope it affords. A lot of enclavists are
going to die on the wrong side of the border.
They might be felled by some long extinct
disease or dogpiled by Vectors in the next
outbreak. Whatever does it, they’ll never know
another day without the stench of death.
They’ll never be able to promise their kids a
world without monsters. The most they can
look forward to eking-out just enough to keep
being afraid and miserable.
While the Taker life is awful, it pays. Takers
can expect horror, pain, gnawing terror,
hopelessness, futility... and fat stacks of
bounty. The careful and the lucky can survive
long enough to beat the odds and cash out.
The legendary Takers aren’t the ones that
took down the most casualties or pulled the
biggest jobs; they’re the ones that smuggled
their families to the land of hot showers, clean
clothes, and safety.
Any Taker worth his salt has a retirement
plan. The one without an exit strategy hasn’t
been over the fence, or has been over to often.
Lost for LIfe
Some players might not want to make a
retirement plan for campaign play, either.
That’s fine so long as the player realizes that,
without a retirement plan, the character is
doomed and knows it. A campaign character
without a retirement plan is considered “lost
for life.” Perhaps they’ve fooled themselves
that they’ll get around to it one day, or maybe
they have a legitimate deathwish. Whatever
the reason, Takers without a retirement plans
endlessly grind away in the carrion economy
until their Humanity, health, or luck runs out.
Still, it can be narratively interesting to
have a lifer amongst a crew where everyone
else is just trying to get out. As Takers fulfill
their retirement plans and head to safety,
roleplay the heart-wrenching goodbyes. If they
reenter the game as new Takers, the “lost for
life” character faces harder and harder Self-
Control checks as more fresh faces march on
towards the grave.
Components of a Plan
Retirement plans are about safety: for the
Taker and their Dependents. Players can plan
and save for whatever they feel meets that
goal. What follows are the components of a
successful retirement plan in the broadest
possible terms. For those that want more
detailed description and some inspiration,
check out “Uniform Plans” on p. 216.
Dreams and Central Motivation
Characters good enough to survive as Takers
are skilled enough to earn a safe living
inside an enclave. But that’s it – just a living.
Most enclaves survive by the work-or-die
philosophy. Rations earned must be split
between the worker and any Dependents
unable to care for themselves. Don’t expect
vacation, or benefits, or mercy if anybody gets
too sick to work. Workers that never venture
into the Loss trade all their freedom, hope,
and joy for the privilege of security.
Everyone else is willing to cower and pray
for someone else to come save them. But
Takers fight for hope every day, tooth-and-
claw. They literally find life as an enclave slave
scarier than the myriad of deaths promised
by the Loss. A good retirement plan needs to
be more than a financial goal. It’s the central
motivation and driving force in the Taker’s life.
No Danger = No Game
Characters that retire are out of the game.
They no longer go out on jobs. This could
be because they’ve smuggled their whole
family into the Recession, become the leader
of a new enclave, stocked an isolationist
compound atop a mountain, founded a
management company for multiple Taker
groups, etc. Regardless, nobody that retires
is coming back. A quiet life free from the
dangers of being eaten, infected, and shot
was the only reason to be a Taker in the first
place. Retired characters can stay in contact
as References, but that’s it.
Keep in mind: just because characters
have enough bounty to retire doesn’t mean
they have to pay the bill instantly. Takers can
choose to sit on their escape plan until the
rest of the crew can afford to get out too.
But the casualties don’t care that you have
a mansion waiting for you in Florida. The
he-was-two-days-from-retirement cliché isn’t
as funny when you could have been sipping
scotch instead of getting your face eaten off.
215
 Naming Successors
A player that retires has the right to name
their replacement in the crew. It could be one
of their References, an NPC from earlier in
the campaign, or a completely new character.
They can also gift the new player any gear
they want, but it’s up to the new Taker to pay
for the upkeep.
Milestones
Getting out of the Loss is a step-by-step
process. Each retirement plan is made up
of smaller milestones that the player must
purchase and roleplay. For instance, Dono
can’t just whisk his family away to the
Recession and live happily ever after: they
need forged papers, smugglers to get them
across the border, a place to live on the other
side, etc.
Players save up for each milestone. The
default cost of milestones is 20 bounty, but
it can be more or less depending on the
Market’s quote (see below). Once a milestone
is reached, the character’s next vignette is
dedicated to roleplaying it out. The financial
reality gets played out in the narrative world.
Long-term Investment
A Taker’s retirement plan doubles as a savings
account. If the character comes up short
on upkeep that week, they can raid their
retirement plan if they’re willing to risk a
Self-Control check against Stress. Retirement
plans can be changed at any time, but every
milestone reached goes away once plans shift. of time is going to require forged documents
Changing plans after reaching a milestone
also requires a Self-Control check. Nothing
threatens Stress quite like watching hard-
earned bounty frittered away on a distraction.
Market Quotes
The standard retirement plan is three
milestones long and costs 20 bounty per
milestone. But players might have extravagant
retirement plans, or the Market might want to
run a shorter campaign. In these instances,
the player and the Market work together
to customize a retirement plan. A Market
216
can never dictate a retirement plan or its
milestones to a player, but the Market does get
to negotiate the price of those milestones.
UnIform Plan
It may be free from the Blight, but the
Recession is far from perfect. Smart Takers
don’t just jump the fence into a refugee camp.
Nobody wants to risk the undead only to get
enslaved, killed, or exploited like every other
sap. The Loss is as often a resource as an
executioner, and most Takers risk sticking
around long enough to make a safe place
for themselves on the other side. A house, a
straight job, legitimacy – such modest dreams
seem downright grandiose when you’re out on
a job. As such, most retirement plans have the
same simple milestones.
Get Papers
Anyone with some luck and the cover of
night can hop a border into the Recession.
But everyone caught out in the Loss is
homo sacer: legally dead. For the audacity
of surviving in the wasteland, the reward is
a total surrender of all rights and protection
under the law. Those caught back in
civilization without proper identification can
be robbed and killed with impunity... and that’s
just what the neighbors do. Law enforcement
and the military shoot on sight for the crime
of giving the proles hope their families might
still be alive out there.
Staying in the Recession for any amount
and that means getting in touch with criminal
elements. Fraud is as illegal as it is common;
quality IDs require a combination of identity
theft, social engineering, and bribes, all of
which are expensive. The first milestone
requires working with a Valet or other
criminal faction to secure forged papers.
Get a Safe House
Legitimacy only gets people past checkpoints;
documents don’t keep them warm and fed.
Takers and their Dependents need a place
to stay while they get on their feet in the
 Recession. A generous gift of bounty can Get to Safety
alleviate the burden of feeding and clothing Takers have to hop fences all the time to
new refugees, but the risk of harboring bid for jobs in the Recession. But running
quarantine violators is omnipresent for a the border is one thing if you’re a hardened
citizen. One noisy neighbor can see a Good veteran, quite another if you’re a soft enclavist
Samaritan enslaved to a work gang or exiled that hasn’t seen wasteland since the Crash.
to the Loss. As if that weren’t enough, stories Organizing transport, hiring smugglers,
of betrayal are common on both sides of bribing guards – all of it takes bounty
the divide. Many Takers have sent their and, more importantly, luck. Protecting
families ahead to a safe haven only to find out Dependents from the cruelty of the Loss is
their loved ones arrived at a den of human the reason most people get into this job, but a
traffickers. Taker can’t shelter family forever. They’ll have
Bounty isn’t enough when establishing a to survive at least one mission out in the wilds
safe house; both the Taker and the citizen before they’re quit of the nightmare forever.
have to trust each other completely. Bridging This final milestone sees the Taker
the gap of resentment and misunderstanding negotiating safe transport for Dependents,
between the Lost and citizens requires more removing them from the enclave and limiting
than contracts; each party must owe the other the Taker to online contact for the remainder
a blood debt. The Taker needs to contact of the game.
and roleplay out a scene with an estranged
loved one or friend living in the Recession, Mr. JOLS
convincing them to take on the risk of JOLS... that son of a bitch. So tempting, but
harboring their Dependents. such a bastard.

t s , w as s ud de nl y swallowed
, w it h al l it s m yriads of inhabitan s or t of connection
of C hi na ho ha d no
s up po s e t ha t the great empire a m an of hu m an ity in Europe, w fu l ca lamity. He would,
Let us id e r ho w t hi s dr e ad
an e ar t hq ua k e , and let us cons e d up on re ce iv in g intelligence of un ha pp y people, he would
up by be af fe ct of t ha t
h t ha t pa rt of the world, would ly hi s s or ro w fo r the misfortune an it y of al l t he labours of
wit
t of al l, e x pr ess very strong s ne s s of hu m an life, and the v s pe cu lation, enter
I im ag in e , fi rs he pr e ca ri ou a m an of
an y m e la nc ho ly reflections upon t . H e w ou ld t oo , perhaps, if he was t he co m merce of Eu-
make m a m om e nt e up on
ch co ul d t hu s be annihilated in w hi ch t hi s di s as ter might produc op hy w as over, when all
man, w hi e ff e ct s fi ne ph ilo s
o m an y re as on in gs concerning the or ld in g e ne ra l. A nd when all this e s s or his pleasure, take
int t he w hi s bu s in
an d t he t ra de and business of ir ly e x pr e s s e d, he would pursue de nt had happened. The
rope , e n on ce fa no s uc h ac ci
ntiments had be ranquility, as if to lose his
these humane se s am e e as e an d t ur ba nc e . I f he w as
po s e or hi s di v ersion, with the w ou ld oc ca s io n a more real dist he w ill snore with the
his re fa ll hi m s e lf t he m ,
fr iv ol ou s di s as t er which could be on ig ht ; bu t , pr ov ided he never saw de s t ru ct ion of that im-
most s le e p t an d t he
le fi ng e r t o- m or row, he would not hu nd re d m illi on s of his brethren,
ry m is fortune of his ow
n.
litt ru in of a t hi s pa lt
curity over the in g to him, than
most profound se le s s in t e re s t
m ul t it ud e s e e m s plainly an object -Adam Smith
mense
217
 JOLS is a Taker acronym for Just One Last
Score. It represents the all too common
occurrence of a Taker saving up enough for
their retirement plan, going out on one last
job, and getting killed.
A retirement plan represents safety, but
that’s it. It’s just enough to get established
somewhere safe, not nearly enough to thrive.
Nobody that funded a retirement plan and left
that same day ever sent their kids to college.
They still work six or seven days a week
managing an enclave business or working
boring-ass Recession service jobs. Younger
Takers deride them as citizens or ‘clave trash
and, for some, that happy ending isn’t enough
after years of suffering invested in the Loss.
So every Taker has, hiding in the back of
their mind, an idea for Just One Last Score.
A plan so crazy, so lucrative, that it would
set them up for life. JOLS can do more than
establish a meager enclave; he can make it a
self-sufficient beacon of the Loss. JOLS can
not only buy children out of Free Parking
ghetto; he can set them up in a new house and
enroll them in a private school. JOLS always
has enough left over to ensure that nothing
short of another apocalypse ever forces the
Taker to risk death for a few bounty ever
again. A retirement plan buys some security,
but Mr. JOLS buys power.
He will also likely kill your ass. Mr. JOLS is
saved until the very end of the game because
he’s dangerous as hell. There’s a reason no
one has gone after the Score already, after all:
the competition is too sane or too dead.
In mechanical terms, JOLS occur after
a character has paid for their Retirement
Plan. The Score itself is proposed by the
retiring character using the In-Character
Collaborative Method (see p. 399), but instead
of rotating element proposals, the player of
the retiring character starts every round. The
other difference is that the Market can add
ANY number of complications for the job
in keeping with the Golden Rule (Reward
= Risk). Betrayals, Aberrants, Stampedes,
Snowstorms, DHQS death squads – it’s all
fair game. It’s the responsibility of the player
218
to convince the group, in character, to help
with the plan. If everyone agrees and the
elements are decided, the group is committed.
The Market goes home and writes up the
adventure. Next session, the group tries to
pull off the job of their lives... maybe literally.
The payoff is always higher than usual for
the group: the crew helping out in a Mr. JOLS
always gets paid expenses and incidentals.
This means that any equipment owned at the
start of the job – plus any bounty spent after
the job to heal health, replace gear, or regain
Humanity – is compensated by the proceeds
of the job. Otherwise, the rest of the crew
doesn’t profit from the task. They literally
risk their lives, but that’s it. Any bounty found
on Legs of the journey is split amongst the
unretired crew.
The retiring Taker, on the other hand, earns
a fortune in finder’s fees. The bounty earned
in a successful Mr. JOLS can’t be expressed as
a number; it’s a life of luxury and ease. But it’s
also motive for murder. If Mr. JOLS is caught
and doesn’t kill everyone, there is one more
scene to play out: does the crew say goodbye,
or does one of them try to steal the golden
ticket for themselves?
TontInes
For some players, the thought of leaving the
game because a retirement plan has been
funded isn’t appealing. While it makes sense
that the character would want to leave the
Loss behind and never look back, retiring a
well-established character because of success
can feel like undeserved punishment. For
groups that don’t find a cycling roster of
Takers fun, Markets should suggest a tontine.
In reality, a tontine is an annuity scheme
in which a large sum is invested using the
funds from a number of investors, but no one
is given authority to control the account. The
interest accrues in the account, until the last
surviving member is granted ownership of the
whole account. In Red Markets, a ‘tontine’ is
just a way of saying ‘group retirement plan.’
It means all the Takers have agreed that,
regardless of circumstance, they are going
to cash out together. Everyone gets rich, or
everyone dies trying.
In game terms, this means that milestones
are bought off for individual Takers as they
become funded – just like regular retirement
plans – but nobody leaves the Loss until
everyone is ready to go after Mr. JOLS. Those
that fund their retirement milestones early
find it in their best interest to float loans to
their lagging comrades. After all, every job
spent waiting for their peers to catch up risks
life and limb.
In narrative terms, a tontine demands a
foreshadowing scene. The Market explains
that the group has a plan – a daring,
audacious plan that could get them all killed.
Every member is smart enough to know that
such a huge payday would be suicidal, but
they’re equally aware that they’re not going
to be able to resist the temptation. Players
give the Mr. JOLS job a name: something
vague and evocative like “Operation Curtain”
or “The Money Order.” Once the tontine is
titled, the Market starts the first scene of
the campaign right after the plan has been
decided upon, at the moment each member
of the crew must agree to go through with it.
The PCs roleplay their oath with the rest of
the team, and the foreboding presence of the
tontine now hovers in the background of every
job.
Actually planning the tontine early is not
advisable. A lot of changes can occur in a
campaign, and it’s unlikely the plan would
hold up over extended play. Rather, when the
time comes, have the group generate a Score
normally (see p. 397), but know the name
beforehand. Thus, every time a PC refers
to “Lotto Ticket,” the idea of the job takes
an increasingly mythic significance in the
campaign. When one of the Takers cracks,
his buddies calm him down by talking about
that bar they’re going to open with the Lotto
Ticket. Mal may have accidentally shot an
innocent man, but the Lotto Ticket can buy a
lot of forgetting. Just hold on. Just one more
job, one more day, one more slogging step
through the blood and offal...
Enclaves
A crew needs a home. Every Taker is based
out of an enclave: a large community of
survivors self-organized for defense and
economic diversity in the wake of the Crash.
The more submissive (or sane) members of
the community accept their subsistence living
and keep the home fire burning while Takers
gamble their lives on the other side of the
fence.
In one-shot play, the Market can have the
characters operate from a small compound,
or the group could be based out of one of the
major enclaves described in “Lost Places”
(see p. 120).
But in extended play, it is important to
give players influence over where their
characters live. The enclave is their customer
base, home, fortress, and burden all rolled
into one. Their actions as Takers can bring
both prestige and calamity upon the rest
of the community. The enclave itself is a
recurring character in any campaign, serving
alternatively as ally, antagonist, and prop.
Everyone is going to want to make sure they
find the enclave interesting.
Generating a city of survivors is a group
process that the Market facilitates. The input
comes from everyone at the table. Players
answer the Market’s questions, hashing out
any disagreements out-of-character or letting
the dice decide.
For information on generating an enclave
for extended play, see “Enclave Generation”
on p. 406.
In the end, the words
that I write here are
meaningless.
219
 Premade Takers Greasy
Presented below is condensed information for Crew: Moths
several Takers. Weak Spot: Externalized Frustration
Soft Spot: Round Pegs in Square Holes
Absentee Tough Spot: Roach (cracked in all Humanity
Crew: Moths threats)
Weak Spot: No Change Without Blood
Soft Spot: Sympathy for Survivor’s Guilt Dependants
Tough Spot: Fenceman (+1 against Pat (Spouse)
Casualties/Cracked)
PotentIals and SkIlls
Dependants STR 2
Sarge (Mentor) • Resistance 2

PotentIals and SkIlls SPD 1

STR 2 • Shoot 1
• Resistance 2 • Stealth 1
• Athletics 1
SPD 3
• Shoot 3 (+1 vs Casualties) ADP 2
o Shoot: Heavy Rifle (+1 vs Casualties) • Awareness 2
• Stealth 2 • Self-Control 1
• Athletics 2 • Scavenging 1
• Drive 2
ADP 2
• Awareness 1 INT 3
• Self-Control 1 • Foresight 2
• Drive 1 • Research 1
• Mechanics 3
INT 2 • First Aid 1
• Foresight 1
• Research 1 CHA 1
• Mechanics 2 • Networking 1
• Sensitivity 1
CHA 1
• Leadership 1 WIL 2

WIL 1 Gear Package

Greasemonkey
Gear Package
Sniper

220
Loman McStuffIns
Crew: Moths Crew: Moths
Weak Spot: Squeamish Weak Spot: You Need Me More Than I Need
Soft Spot: Animal Lover You
Tough Spot: Lost Soft Spot: Hippocratic Oath
Tough Spot: Immune
Dependants
Gilly (Spouse) Dependants
Hunter (Brother) Wes (Son)
Leanne (Mother) Philomena (Daughter)

PotentIals and SkIlls PotentIals and SkIlls

STR 1 STR 1
• Melee 1 • Resistance 1

SPD 3 SPD 2
• Athletics 3 • Shoot 1
• Stealth 1
ADP 2 • Athletics 2
• Awareness 1
• Self-Control 1 ADP 2
• Scavenging 2 • Self-Control 2
• Criminality 1
INT 1
• Foresight 1 INT 3
• Research 1 • Foresight 2
• Research 3
CHA 3 • Profession: Doctor 3
• Networking 1
• Persuasion 3 CHA 2
• Sensitivity 1 • Networking 1
• Deception 2 • Persuasion 1
• Leadership 3 • Deception 2
• Intimidation 1
WIL 1
WIL 1
Gear Package
Manager Gear Package
Medic

221
 Smoke Control
Crew: Moths Crew: Moths
Weak Spot: Compassion is Weakness Weak Spot: Punish the Old Prejudices
Soft Spot: Protect the Next Generation Soft Spot: Selfless Service
Tough Spot: Latent Tough Spot: Scavenger

Dependents Dependents
Philly (Adopted Daughter) Disha (Wife)
Ragsdale (Dogs count as Dependents even
PotentIals and SkIlls above Support limit)
STR 3
• Unarmed 2 STR 1
• Melee 3
• Resistance 3 SPD 2
• Shoot 2
SPD 3 • Shoot (Bow) 2
• Shoot 3 • Stealth 2
• Athletics 3 • Athletics 2

ADP 1 ADP 3
• Awareness 1 • Awareness 1
• Self-Control 1 • Self-Control 2
• Scavenging 1 • Scavenging 2
• Drive 1
INT 2
INT 1 • Profession (Drones) 2
• Research 1 • Profession (Animal Handling) 2

CHA 1 CHA 1
• Intimidation 1
WIL 2
WIL 2
Gear Package
Gear Package Hunter AND Techie
Latent

222
Upkeep: PayIng the BIlls
Everything costs in Red Markets. There’s no
such thing as enough. There is no stability.
You’re either getting fat or wasting away.
Feeling flush or bleeding out. Growth or
atrophy.
Upkeep is what a Taker has to pay to get
by until the next job comes along. If there’s
bounty left over, it can purchase better gear,
invest in a retirement plan, or improve skills.
If coffers run dry, Takers find their gear
busted, their Dependents desperate, and the
enclave pointing towards the door. Calculating
and controlling upkeep is vital if a crew
expects to turn a profit, and a Taker’s personal
upkeep informs the severity of the risks the
Loss demands.
Three CalculatIons: Sustenance,
MaIntenance, and IncIdentals
Upkeep is calculated three ways.
Sustenance
Sustenance upkeep is just what it sounds like:
the bounty a Taker needs to survive. Failing
to meet this minimum upkeep has serious
repercussions on the Taker’s health and
relationships. The day-to-day motivations of a
Red Markets character are entirely wrapped
up in this number, so it’s used to calculate the
“break point” on the Crew Sheet and plays a
major role in contract negotiations.
Maintenance
Maintenance upkeep is required if the Taker is
to avoid all hardship between jobs. It accounts
for the character’s current equipment, desired
upgrades, and time spent improving skills
or improving Potentials. Failing to meet the
required bounty for maintenance might mean
the Taker has to give up some equipment, go
without, or stagnate professionally. But lean
times are common in the carrion economy.
Takers can’t expect to meet maintenance
upkeep with every contract, but they sure as
hell try.
223
 Incidentals
Incidentals can’t be calculated before a job
like sustenance and maintenance. These
costs accrue as the Loss wears away at the
character. Bounty can be pulled from savings
to help heal a Taker’s body and mind, but
many a crew has burned their entire profit
paying incidental costs. It’s possible to neglect
Incidental upkeep for a time, but it always
means the Taker is a greater risk out in the
field.
Sustenance
Sustenance upkeep is derived from survival,
rent, and Dependents. The quick way to
calculate sustenance is count the number of
UsIng the Bank In One-Shots
For short games, the banking part of the character
sheet is unnecessary. In fact, upkeep can be
tracked in a myriad of other ways. There’s a place
for recording upkeep in each item slot on the
inventory page. Healing can be tracked on the hit
boxes. Humanity has its own track. As long as the
player knows the cost for each operation, it’s pretty
easy to deduct bounty on the fly and keep all the
numbers straight.
But being a Taker means being proactive – no
one survives the zombie apocalypse without some
forward thinking. The bank is on the character
sheet to help visualize financial planning the
player might need to do. Whenever a character
gets bounty, it gets recorded in the bank box. If
that bounty gets invested in a retirement plan, it
gets recorded on the milestone it’s saving for and
can’t be moved back to the bank without the Self-
Control check required. Bounty from the bank
can also be saved in any of three upkeep accounts
(sustenance, maintenance, and incidentals) and
kept in reserve for those expenses.
There’s nothing stoping a player from taking
directly from the bank pool, maintaining gear and
healing damage directly. The bank on the character
sheet visualizes where the bounty is being spent
for players that need the graphic organizer.
224
Dependents +2. That’s the amount of bounty
owed.
Survival costs one bounty per Taker and
is self-explanatory: food, water, clothing,
heat, etc. Takers that can’t afford this bounty
starve to death in the enclave streets as their
neighbors pretend not to see. Fellow Takers
can float them a loan to get them through the
hard times, but only if they have the bounty to
spare.
Rent has to be paid to the enclave. Takers
actually have to pay far less than most
residents, and a single bounty secures shelter
for the Taker and any Dependents. This
discount is in consideration of the dangers
Takers encounter daily and the trade they
bring to the community. But too many people
resent Takers as reckless thugs; no enclave
can get away with charging them nothing and
remain politically stable. Failing rent means
the Taker and their Dependents have to live
off the Loss until the next job comes around.
Even if they manage to escape the mortal
dangers outside the fence, the psychological
damage of living like a hunted animal for
weeks takes a serious toll.
Finally, Dependents need to be supported
if they are to remain a source of stability
in a Taker’s life. The single bounty that a
Taker pays for each Dependent covers that
NPC’s survival, rent, and other expenses.
The consequences of failing to support
Dependents aren’t immediate, but they can be
quite serious (see p. 207).
Sustenance upkeep ends up being about
the same for most characters: 3-6 bounty per
Taker, depending on how many Dependents
need to be supported.
MaIntenance
Becoming a better Taker costs. Guns don’t
regrow bullets like fruit. Batteries don’t
magically charge. Paying maintenance upkeep
refreshes the charges on gear in-between
sessions, but that’s only the beginning.
Equipment, skills, Potentials – everything
necessary to remain effective in the field
requires bounty, which is the only reason
to risk the Loss in the first place. After
meeting their sustenance upkeep, players
have to budget between saving towards their
retirement plan and increasing the character’s
effectiveness. Invest too heavily in gear and
the Taker becomes a lifer, despairing at the
thought of ever escaping the grind, waiting
for the inevitable day when preparedness isn’t
enough to trump bad luck. In contrast, those
that think solely in the long-term rarely stay
alive long enough to see it.
Maintenance upkeep is the price of
everything on a character’s wish list. It can be
met, partially met, exceeded, or completely
unpaid, all with various consequences. It
has no direct effect on contract negotiations
unless “Expenses” are paid, but knowing the
number at the outset helps players roleplay
better decisions for their characters. But, no
one in Red Markets is rewarded in experience
for merely showing up. Everyone pays to get
better. Hell, everyone pays to stay the same.
Takers that fail to invest in themselves get
ground into dust by the slow, scraping misery
of the Loss.
When calculating maintenance,
Takers consider three things: equipment
upkeep, gear purchases, and professional
development.
(see “Negotiation” p. 320). Or, for simplicities
EquIpment Upkeep sake, Market’s can waive upkeep costs for
Every piece of gear has an upkeep cost, that session and the effect is the same. Either
represented by the number listed in its stat way, players should factor in equipment costs
block. To refresh charges in-between sessions regardless of whether or not they are using
and prevent upgrades from being lost due to the No Budget, No Buy rule (see p. 228). The
malfunction (p. 240), a Taker must pay that price of equipment upkeep always has an
much in bounty. If the gear is “fed” its upkeep effect on the game.
in bounty, it gets refreshed and remains in Failing upkeep on gear has consequences
working order. The refresh earned in-between ranging from mild to severe. But, though a
sessions doesn’t cost any of the Taker’s jammed gun could mean death in the field,
refresh points, slotted through their ADP gear upkeep is still nonessential and doesn’t
Potential. factor into the character’s break point. Gear
The total upkeep cost of all owned can malfunction and a job can still get done.
equipment is added together to calculate The short-term demands of a Taker’s survival
the equipment cost. If a group can manage and the needs of Dependents always take
to push up to the “Expenses” level on precedence.
negotiations, the combined equipment cost of
the whole group gets added into the contract
225
 Purchases they wish, or they can just leave it unspoken.
Players purchase gear by successfully making Alternately, the Market might suggest
a Networking check to find someone selling roleplaying a “tutoring session” with one of
that piece of gear and paying upkeep x2. the character’s References.
Consider the upkeep on purchased equipment To advance a skill from zero to +1 point, it
as paid until the end of the next job. costs 1 bounty. To advance skill to +2, it costs
Upgrades that are purchased after 2 bounty. To +3, 3 bounty... and so on.
character creation cost 1 bounty a piece. Each Each additional point of Potential costs 10
is recorded in the appropriate box on the stat bounty each.
block, along with any notes the player needs
as to their function. Upgrades are one-time
costs: they don’t add to upkeep overall, but
IncIdentals
Incidentals can’t be fully planned for – no one
they can be lost if upkeep isn’t paid and a
musters the courage to step outside the fence-
malfunction occurs (see p. 240)
line without suppressing some imagined
Whether buying new gear or improving
consequences. But the Loss always collects
it, the total cost gets put into the purchases
its tax in pain.
category. If using the No Budget, No Buy rule
Incidental costs arise when things go
(see p. 228), these costs must be calculated
wrong. Fail a check and need to use a favor?
before the Takers leave for a job. Otherwise,
That’s going to cost later. Get your arm
this box can go blank and the cost of
munched on by a casualty? That’ll need a
improvement can be paid directly from the
doctor. See something out there that haunts
bank.
your dreams forever? Drinking to forget may
be the only option, but that booze won’t be
ProfessIonal Development
free.
The amount of bounty a character wants
It’s possible to save up for incidentals or
to spend improving skills and Potentials is
ignore them for a time, but if maintenance
called Professional Development. If using the
is how characters grow stronger, ignoring
No Budget, No Buy rule (see p. 228), these
Incidentals too long is how they wither away.
costs must be calculated before a mission.
Otherwise, this box can go blank and the cost
Healthcare
of improvement can be paid directly from the
Healing damage depends on the type and
bank.
where it is located (see “Combat” p. 280).
Economists would describe the cost of
Some in-game healing can be handled using
improving a character as opportunity cost.
First Aid checks and supplies (see p. 281), but
The time spent reading about or practicing
the number of hit boxes that can be healed
a new skill uses resources and distracts
are limited. Healing between jobs works
from the everyday tasks of maintaining an
differently.
enclave; it is time not spent on activities
For free, any Taker can erase all Stun
more profitable in the short term. The cost
damage from a single hit location. Healing
represents the material requirements of
Stun damage in multiple locations requires
practice (i.e. ammo, books, online courses,
extra rest: erasing additional Stun damage
parts, battery life, etc.) and the wasted time
costs 1 bounty’s per additional location
that could have been spent scavenging,
beyond the free heal. So, for example, Mal
performing maintenance, or seeking
could erase 19 boxes of Stun damage from
other employment. If some professional
her torso for free between jobs, but getting rid
development can be afforded, players may
of the additional 1 Stun in her arm and the 3
narrate the out-of-game montage of activities
Stun in her leg would cost 2 bounty.
leading to the character’s growth however
226
 Kill damage is something else entirely.
Lacerations, gashes, punctures, breaks,
toxins, disease – these conditions require
careful monitoring by experts even once the
healing process has begun, more if the Taker
has suffered enough to endure a status effect
(see “Combat” p. 280). Most existing enclaves
have doctors and surgeons merely because
those without them long ago died off, but they
don’t work for free.
Healing a status effect costs 1 bounty, but
it doesn’t erase any Kill damage. Converting
all Kill damage in a location to Stun costs
1 bounty, but it’s limited to one location at a
time. Finally, if a doctor has to risk infection
by working on a Latent individual, it costs
an extra bounty for hazard pay. After all that,
healing Stun damage works the same as
above.
“Healthcare is a Right!”
Get real, hippy.
Big sections of the world outside this book are perfectly
fine with letting people die for no reason other than they’re
poor. In Red Markets, where starvation and violent death are
slightly more prevalent than the modern United States, no
one with a skill as valuable as medicine can afford to work
for free. That’s why healthcare is on the advancement
side of upkeep; people work while hurt and sick all the time.
Feel however you wish about it while the world continues to
murder you apathetically. Being healthy remains a privilege.
What if another character might have the medical skills
necessary to heal teammates beyond battlefield trauma?
Maybe they could work pro bono? Well, who is going to pay
for the bandages? For the salvaged or smuggled antibiotics?
Asking a medical character to heal you for free basically
means asking them to pay the fees for you; very few
healers are callous enough to charge for labor during the
apocalypse anyway. Maybe the team could salvage the supplies
themselves, but that means they aren’t selling them to
keep their own families healthy.
It’s economics. It’s omnipresent and inescapable. Deal with
it.. or don’t. It doesn’t matter to anyone but you..
Let’s say Mal has a really bad day of work.
Her left leg was maimed in the field and she
almost bled out. She also took a nasty blow
to the head from that crazy raider’s crowbar,
leaving her head filled with an 8 box mixture
of Kill and Stun damage. Now safe and
convalescing back at the enclave, Mal’s on
the mend. She pays Maggie Sawbones one
bounty to remove the hobbled effect from
her left leg and another to convert all the Kill
damage in her leg to Stun. Mal uses her free
heal to remove all the Stun damage from
her leg. Her head is still pretty hurt, but she’s
only got one bounty left. Mal converts the Kill
damage in her head to Stun. That’s all she can
afford; she’ll have to go back to work feeling
concussed and with two black eyes.
HealIng HumanIty
If physical health isn’t free, mental health is a
downright luxury.
Humanity tracks the ways in which the
Loss shreds the emotional well-being of all
those it touches (see “Humanity” p. 310).
But few things are as frustrating and difficult
as healing the mind, and no psychologist
is trained to fight continual trauma on a
quasi-apocalyptic scale. The ability to regain
Humanity is limited.
Recovering from Detachment, Trauma,
and Stress requires time off. That time
costs in lost wages. The rules for recovering
Humanity are simple: one bounty recovers
one Humanity. There are no “free” recoveries
outside those provided by Dependents. No
one may recover Humanity past the last
Regret they suffered. There’s no coming back
from some things.
227
 Keep in mind that maintaining the sanity without them for a short time. That’s why
of a Taker isn’t the only concern – those repaying References is calculated as an
Dependents may be suffering too and incidental. In No Budget, No Buy, repaying
straining relationships. One bounty per game favors calls for Self-Control checks unless the
is set aside for the sustenance cost of every Taker planned for their need.
NPC in the Taker’s care, but extra attention
for neglected loved ones is just that: extra. For
accounting purposes, healing relationships
Bust Rule: No Budget, No Buy
In Red Markets, wealth is a source of constant
with Dependents for previously failed upkeep
anxiety. Having it, not having it – doesn’t
counts as additional Humanity incidentals.
matter. When living on the razor’s edge,
it’s more comforting to have something go
Favors
reliably wrong than find a surprise blessing.
It’s a really, really bad idea to screw over one’s
The No Budget; No Buy (NBNB) rule only
professional contacts out in the Loss, but if
applies in extended play, and, considering the
comes down to having enough to eat or not
level of difficulty it adds to the game, it might
returning a call, there isn’t much contest.
not be appropriate for all groups. Essentially,
Bounty paid in time or crypt keeps References
the rule demands that players need budget all
available for favors, but it’s possible to survive
their bounty before they leave for the job.

Why use No Budget, No Buy?

In terms of story, the No Budget, No Buy rule represents one of the psychological tortures unique to
poverty. Anyone that’s grown up poor can attest that it does strange things to one’s relationship to the
very idea of money. The anxiety when things are tight doesn’t go away when faced with a windfall. In
fact, it gets worse. For those caught in cycles of generational poverty, wealth’s only perceived purpose
is to keep the plates of disaster spinning. Having money means more is going to go wrong; the idea
of capital sticking around and accumulating seems, after so many years barely scraping by, simply
absurd.
For those caught up in the logic of the vicious cycle, the only way to get any enjoyment out of a
sudden surplus is to spend as quickly as possible, draining the coffers before some tragedy does
it first. So, for instance, you waste that tax refund on a fancy TV before your car breaks down and
“steals” it.
This is a stupid, superstitious way of thinking. But what those that haven’t lived through it don’t
realize is that everyone realizes how backwards such thinking is, especially the people trapped in
the lower classes. Realization doesn’t stop the irrational thoughts. Consider how many people still
knock on wood, throw salt over their shoulders, or perform other superstitious actions despite being
normally rational humans. Or compare the concept to addiction: most addicts are aware what is and
isn’t good for them, but putting that knowledge into practice is a struggle they are losing.
So, no, realizing that money isn’t a resource to be spent immediately least it be lost to disaster
doesn’t stop the irrational certainty that the world works exactly in such a manner. The only thing
such a realization does achieve is making a person feel like shit.
And that’s why poverty is so nefarious: it never stops accusing its victims of causing their own
suffering. Spend big for a little relief? “No wonder your life is in such shambles,” say the oppressor
and oppressed alike. Resist the temptation and save? The temptation is still there, nagging at you,
waiting for you to succumb and make this moment of self-denial pointless. Meanwhile, whatever
work you do for the money only seems that much more unbearable and pointless.
Now imagine that, on top of all this anxiety, zombies were trying to eat you. That’s what the No
Budget, No Buy does to a character.
228
 When playing NBNB, eliminate the bounty
bank from the character sheet. Now, Takers
can only possess bounty in two ways: in a
budget, or in a retirement plan.
So, anything that needs to be spent on
sustenance, maintenance, or incidentals must
be budgeted before the characters leave for
the job. Budget 4 bounty for Healthcare but
come through the job unscathed? Well, like
a lot of people trapped in poverty, the Taker
treats that windfall as “free money” and blows
it. It goes away. The player can narrate the
character frittering away the funds however
they wish, but the bounty is lost. It’s not spent
on skills or gear; it’s blown. Any Humanity
regained by the splurge is balanced by the
guilt that follows.
Budget nothing for Healthcare and get
torn up? The Taker can pull that bounty from
the retirement plan and nowhere else (the
bank doesn’t exist anymore, remember).
As is always the case, withdrawing from a
retirement plan causes a Self-Control check
against Stress. Every incidental cost and
unplanned expense is a tangible reminder of
how far the character is from escape.
Basically, in NBNB games, Takers either
lose bounty by not budgeting enough towards
savings (just like most people’s real-life
finances), or they lose sleep over everything
taking away from their savings (just as real-
life finances damages Humanity). The only
way to protect the character against lost profit
and psychological damage is to guess the next
job’s expenses and earn enough to cover it.
No Budget, No Buy makes Red Markets
substantially harder in the long-term, so it
may not be for groups that aren’t running a
Bust mode campaign (see “Boom and Bust”
p. 172). It also increases the importances of
book keeping in the campaign; groups that
don’t like the idea of doing such calculations
before the job should ignore the rule and use
the bank normally. However, NBNB drives
home the game’s theme of economic horror
exceptionally well and presents the players
with a unique challenge akin to investing in
stocks for PC futures.
CalculatIng Personal Upkeep
Calculate personal upkeep on the character
sheet. From there, transfer each character’s
break point to the Crew Sheet. This speeds up
calculating the price of contracts considerably
once the game reaches negotiations.
If using the No Budget, No Buy rule, players
will also want to transfer their projected
earnings so the crew can seek out the job that
best fits their needs. For the remainder of
this chapter, the core rules that ignore the No
Budget, No Buy option will be referred to as
“simple.” Anything that explains how to use
the optional rule will be marked “NBNB.”
DetermIne Sustenance
Order of Operations: Sustenance (Both)
1. Add one bounty for survival. Record this
under “Survival.”
2. Add one bounty for rent. Record this under
“Rent.”
3. Add one bounty per Dependent. Record this
under “Dependents.”
That’s it for sustenance. Any additional
upkeep is calculated elsewhere. All boxes
in the sustenance row get added together to
form that Taker’s break point.
Record the break point on the Crew Sheet,
add it together with the others, and calculate
the crew’s break point for the purposes of
negotiations. That number is now the low end
of acceptable payment before the Taker’s start
really hurting.
DetermIne MaIntenance
Order of Operations: Maintenance (Simple)
1. Add up the upkeep for all existing gear.
Record this under “Equipment.” Record
the Taker’s equipment costs on the Crew
sheet to calculate the whole group’s
equipment upkeep. This number is every
crew’s aspiration; beyond this number,
profit is almost assured.
229
 If the group isn’t using the NBNB rule, all
the bookkeeping is now done. The player can
continue planning out expenses using the
tools on the character sheet, but it’s just as
easy to pay any other costs out of the bounty
bank.
If the group does employ the NBNB rule, a
few more steps are required.
Order of Operations: Maintenance (NBNB)
1. Add up the upkeep for all existing gear.
Record this under “Equipment.” Record
the Taker’s equipment costs on the Crew
Sheet to calculate the whole group’s
equipment upkeep. This number is every
crew’s aspiration; beyond this number,
profit is almost assured.
2. Add up the cost of any upgrades the Taker
plans to add to preowned gear. Record this
under “Purchases.”
3. If the Market says there is a source, add
up the cost (upkeep x2) of any new gear
the Taker plans to purchase. Add this to
“Purchases.”
4. If spending bounty to improve skills or
Potential, determine the cost. Record this
number under “Pro. Dev.” This bounty
can’t be spent until after the contract
where the spending was planned.
5. After the contract is completed, if there
isn’t enough bounty to meet all the costs,
pick and choose which items have to wait
until later. The Market rolls a malfunction
check for any gear that doesn’t meet
upkeep (see “Malfunctions” p. 240).
DetermIne IncIdentals
Order of Operations: Incidentals (Simple)
In the simple version of upkeep, one doesn’t
need to plan for incidentals. The costs still
need to be paid at the end of the session, but
there is no penalty for doing so beyond the
bounty lost. There’s also no need to use the
accounting area of the character sheet to
track the costs. Anything that might result in
incidental costs is tracked elsewhere on the
character sheet (hit boxes, Humanity threats,
230
References, etc). Spend bounty to erase
physical damage, heal Humanity, and rebuild
strained relationships with References.
Order of Operations: Incidentals (NBNB)
Spending on incidentals needs to be predicted
– accurately – to avoid wasted bounty or
damaging Stress. The accounting area on the
second page of the character sheet is where
players bet against their Taker’s continued
health, happiness, and good reputation.
With either rule set, if there isn’t enough
bounty for incidentals left at the end of a job,
prepare to suffer the consequences of those
burdens during the next contract.
Calculate ProJected EarnIngs
Projected earnings are only useful if the group
uses the NBNB rule.
Once all sustenance, maintenance, and
incidental costs are listed, add every number
in the account section up to come up with the
projected earnings for that Taker. Then, add
each Taker’s projected earnings together to
form the crew’s combined projected earnings
and record that number on the Crew Sheet.
The projected earnings of the crew is the
bounty the job must earn if the Taker’s are
going to get everything they want. Anything
over that number is either thrown into
retirement (if the Taker bet low on incidental
costs and was right), or frittered away (if the
Taker bet high on incidentals and was wrong).
The crew now has a number they need to
come back home with, or else.
Projected earnings serve as a powerful
motivator for crew’s using NBNB. Those that
have yet to reach their projections have to take
bold risks in the hopes of scraping together
enough bounty to meet their marker, whereas
those that already have their bounty promised
need to balance conservative tactics with all-
or-nothing gambles on huge profit.
SplIttIng the Take
At the end of the job, divide the total number
of bounty earned from the score or contract
by the number of Takers that participated.
That’s how much each Taker earns.
If the bounty doesn’t split evenly? Well, the
group can decide who gets the remainder
any number of ways. If your players believe in
performance-based incentives, give the extra
to people that most contributed to the success
of the job. Or bring incentives from outside
the game and give the bounty to the best
roleplayers. If you’re more socialist at heart,
the extra could go to the character with the
most Dependents to support. Alternatively, the
remainder bounty could be invested into some
resource owned by the whole crew, such as a
vehicle or small business.
Once everyone knows how much each
Taker earned, it’s time to plan for retirement.

Invest In RetIrement
Simple Retirement
At the end of a session, anything not spent on
the sustenance, maintenance, or incidentals
can be invested in a retirement milestone.
The Taker doesn’t have to invest everything
and can keep some bounty in the bank as
“petty cash.” Any bounty already invested
in a retirement plan and moved to the bank
requires a Self-Control check against Stress.
NBNB Retirement
If playing NBNB rules, the only bounty that
goes into retirement milestones is the bounty
above and beyond the projected earnings.
Calculate the difference between how much
the Taker planned to spend on each element
of the accounting space and how much the
Taker actually spent.
If the Taker planned to spend more than
they actually did, the difference subtracts
from the total bounty earned. If Mal planned
to spend 3 bounty on healing but only spent
one, then that 2 bounty is subtracted from
the total amount earned for the job. This
represents the character spending the “extra”
on something frivolous and regretting it later.
If the Taker didn’t plan enough to cover an
expense – for instance, only planning 1 bounty
for healing but needing 3 bounty instead –
then the Taker has to make a Self-Control
check against Stress for every box on the
accounting form that doesn’t meet the budget.
This check, and the Stress that may result,
represents the nightmare of seeing a nest egg
slowly consumed by unexpected “bad luck”
costs. The Self-Control checks are still made
even if nothing is pulled out of retirement to
cover the expense; it’s never fun to do without.
Remember that the NBNB doesn’t
allow for the existence of a bounty bank.
All earnings are either planned for on the
accounting sheet, frittered away, or invested
in retirement. The only away to avoid all
negative consequences is to accurately budget
for the character every job, which is nearly
impossible. Using the NBNB rule makes Red
Markets a game about getting the hell out of
the Loss before the Stress kills you.
231
 MaterIalIsm: Bounty,
Gear, and VehIcles
Being a badass is useful, but even badasses
need food. More often than not, a Taker’s
possessions are the deciding factor between
life and death.
Some gear makes the use of skills like
Shoot, Melee, or Profession: Computer
Science possible. Other gear makes skills
more likely to succeed by spending charges,
such using a data mining service to research
232
a job. Some gear is uncharged and provides
a static bonus to certain skills so long as the
tool receives proper maintenance.
The main thing to remember is that, in
many ways, Takers are their gear. No amount
of practice, grit, or luck can hold out against
the pressures of the Market forever. The Loss
may be a wild place, but that doesn’t mean
it’s free from the rules of the capitalism. You
either meet its price or you don’t. Either way,
the Loss takes its due... in bounty or in blood.
Bounty
Bounty is the currency of Red Markets.
Its value is determined by the interaction
between the DHQS census efforts and the
various crypto currencies used to trade
between the Loss and Recession. Each
unit of bounty is a futures investment on
salvage commodities. Confirming the death
of a former citizen is a service that the
government, families, and other entities
compensate for with a portion of the capital
earned by seizing all the deceased’s assets.
The exact worth of one bounty fluctuates
depending on the exchange rate of various
online currency launderers and the value
DHQS currently assigns to the average
property owned by a pre-Crash citizen.
Out in the Loss, bounty is physically
exchanged in the form of IDs, most commonly
driver’s licenses. Other forms of official
government documents serve as well,
though which legal papers are accepted and
“changed” into the ID standard depends on
the enclave. People in the Loss tend to horde
233
 physical bounty rather than trade it into the
Recession, as there is no getting physical
currency back once the confirmed death has
been traded in. Thus, IDs stay out in the Loss
to function as a currency for physical trade,
and other forms of documentation taken
from the dead are used to negotiate trade
with the Recession across the border. To put
it in real-world terms, other currencies like
crypt, rations cards, and the dollar are used
for everyday transactions, whereas bounty
acts as a sort of gold standard that stabilizes
the value of those different units. Trading in
physical ID cards is like trading in precious
metals; the cards can be used to purchase
goods directly or “changed” for a variety of
exchange values.
All Takers start with 10 bounty, a backpack,
and rations. Players may use their initial
bounty however they wish: buy gear, install
upgrades, or save it for upkeep. After
character generation, all bounty must be
earned through jobs and any gear purchased
must be first sourced with a Networking
check.
How to Read the Gear LIst
The gear tables contain brief descriptions
about what each piece of gear does, how
much it costs, and how much of it a Taker can
carry. As long as the Market knows the rules,
players should have enough information to
start shopping right away. The extra detail in
this section is intended as a rules reference
and tool for those looking to design unique
pieces of equipment.
DescrIbINg Gear
The functionality of gear is described in a
number of categories. These are all listed on
the gear list, but the categories are explored
in more depth here.
Effect
The gear’s effect is its most important aspect.
The effect describes what a piece of gear can
do in narrative and mechanical terms. Most
234
of the descriptions are common sense, but
the effects are still useful to read for their
mechanical bonuses and setting-specific uses.
The effect of a piece of gear can be altered
by upgrades (see p. 239).
Charges
Charges are a way of measuring a tool’s
condition and remaining usefulness. Each
charge is represented by an empty bubble on
the character sheet. If the gear has less than
the ten charges, cross out the extra charges
permanently. When a charge is spent, place
a tic mark in the bubble to keep track of how
many have been spent. When charges are
refreshed, erase the tic marks.
For simplicity’s sake, almost all gear has its
number of charges abstracted to ten. What
exactly those charges represent depends on
the gear. A single charge on a handgun might
represent a single bullet, whereas a charge
on an automatic rifle represents a burst’s
worth of rounds. Charges measure remaining
space in a backpack, fuel for a vehicle, and
battery on a laptop. Sometimes, charges are
a measure of repair and only get used when
the item takes damage. Whatever the charges
might represent in the narrative, mechanically
they represent how many more uses and/or
bonuses that item can provide without having
to be refreshed, repaired, or repurchased.
In the qualities section of the item’s entry,
the gear’s spend-type describes how charges
are used and refreshed (see below).
QualItIes
All gear has qualities that describe its
utility. Some qualities describe the gear
mechanically whereas others describe the
limits of its use in the narrative. What follows
is a list of qualities described and sorted
into criteria. Not every piece of gear needs
qualities from every criteria, but gear must
have at least one quality to have utility in the
game. Some qualities are included more than
once because they describe how gear is used
across multiple game mechanics.
”But my gun holds X bullets!”
You are correct. That specific brand of firearm does hold more/less than ten bullets. So you get more/less than ten
charges, right?
No.
Charges abstract the sense of dwindling security that characterizes economic horror. They turn physical reality
into what economists call opportunity cost: the loss of the possible gains from many alternative futures when a single
option must be chosen. Charges are a way to picture your character’s power and the methods by which it drains. What
charges don’t do is force a player to spend the entire game counting individual bullets in the clip, rips in the jacket, or
volts in the battery.
Specifics are great. If your character uses a cricket bat instead of a plain old club, describe the killing blows in loving
detail. Give it a name. Carve notches for every casualty it has killed. While those details don’t affect the mechanics -
it’s still a club - it adds a lot of fun to the game and gets the players immersed in the setting.
When your rifle clicks on empty, narrate your character’s desperate search through her pack and the panic of finding
only empty plastic sleeves of spent P90 clips. That’s cool and makes the combat more tense. Do NOT argue with the
Market about how your character would have perfect fire control in a heated gun battle surrounded by undead monsters.
Cater the narrative to fit whatever the charges are supposed to represent on that gear; do not alter the simple
charge rules to fit a fetishistic image of an imaginary item. Red Markets is intended to invoke a mood of desperation
and scarcity. The mechanics are much worse at simulating reality.
Except for the zombies. The zombies are totally scientifically accurate.

Spend Type adds +1 to the Shoot skill. In Red Markets,

Most gear exercises a mechanical bonus
through the use of charges. There are four
qualities describing how those charges may
be spent.
Capped gear needs to spend a charge
to gain its effect, but only one charge may
be spent at a time. Spending extra charges
does not add to the chance of success. For
example, if a Taker wants to use Ubiq Specs
to find a client’s soft spot, burn a single charge
off the specs and make a Research check.
Burning extra battery life does nothing to help
improve the Taker’s chances of finding some
juicy intel, so the Ubiq Specs are capped gear.
Charged gear needs to expend a charge
to gain its effect, but spending more charges
adds bonuses to the check. Let’s consider
firing a gun. It takes at least one round to
score a hit, so a charge needs to be spent in
order to buy-a-roll. However, trained combat
experts in the real world barely average a 20%
hit rate against active targets. If the Taker
wants to throw more rounds down range to
increase chances of a hit, each extra charge
spends on charged gear must be made before
the die check, unless the gear has a specific
upgrade to allow spends after the check.
Manpower gear uses the human operator
to fuel the gear’s effect. For example, you
never have to reload a machete, but your arm
can get tired. Manpower gear is charged but
spends the Taker’s rations rather than any
charges on the item itself. On a success, a
charge might be taken off the gear if it has the
wear ‘n tear quality, but this can usually be
bought off with the upgrade sturdy.
Static gear doesn’t have charges. As long as
the Taker continues to meet the gear’s upkeep
(see p. 223), it continues to provide its effect.
For example, as long as the binoculars aren’t
damaged, they continue making it easier to
see things further away.
By right means if you can, but by any
means make money.
-Horace
235
 Refresh and Charge Use
There are a variety of qualities that describe
how to refresh charges and the situations
in which they can be used. Most of this
information is common sense for anyone
familiar with the items in question, but the
Refresh and Charge Use qualities codify the
information in the Profit system.
Armor is worn on certain hit locations,
depending upon the specific type. This quality
also lists what types of damage armor can
prevent (some scavenged carpet can stop
a casualty bite, but it won’t do much for a
bullet). Charges spent on armor can do one of
two things. Firstly, certain armors can convert
all Kill damage to Stun on that hit location
for the cost of a single charge. Second,
charges can be spent to negate Stun damage
altogether.
For instance, if Sierra wants to prevent that
11 Kill damage she just took to the chest, she
can spend one charge on her Kevlar to change
all the Kill over to Stun damage and the other
nine to negate damage, reducing the blow
down to 2 Stun. However, eating that much
of the bullet’s impact has rendered the Kevlar
useless in the future.
Most armor shares the in demand quality.
Armor is rare in that its charges are always
spent after a check.
Essential gear can’t be done without. Every
Taker starts with this for free at character
creation. If the gear malfunctions or is
otherwise lost, the Taker must rebuy it to
remain effective. The only essential gear is
rations and a backpack. Both are included on
the first page of the character sheet.
Hungry gear uses more charges than
normal. For a capped item, it costs two
charges to buy-a-roll. For charged items, it
costs an additional two charges to get a +1
bonus to the check. The hungry quality can
often be bought off with an upgrade.
In Demand gear is just that. Nobody is
making more of it and even if they are, they
sure aren’t handing out free samples. The
upkeep on in demand gear only indicates its
purchase price. It costs no upkeep to maintain
236
and never malfunctions once in a character’s
possession. As a trade-off, in demand can’t be
refreshed between games or or during play
using the Taker’s ADP. The use of charges
consumes the gear (no getting back exploded
grenades). Once all the charges are spent on
this piece of gear, it has to be sourced and
repurchased (see Networking p. 204).
Improvised gear operates almost exactly
like the in demand quality: it costs no upkeep
once owned and doesn’t malfunction, but it
can’t be refreshed by any means. Unlike in
demand gear, improvised equipment can’t
be bought again once it is used up; it’s too
abundant for vendors to bother selling. The
Taker must Scavenge or craft a new version
to replace improvised equipment (the cost
listed in the gear list is only for purchase of
improvised gear at character creation).
Memory is used exclusively for electronic
devices with upgrades that come in the
form of apps. For every upgrade installed,
more battery life is used. Extremely versatile
machines have fewer charges than those
optimized for a simple task.
Single-Shot means that, before another
charge can be used, a tactic (see “Economy
of Actions” p. 273) must be spent reloading
the weapon. This is different than refreshing
all charges; that still takes an entire task
action. For instance, a bow can fire one arrow,
but another must be strung before it can be
redrawn. There may still be arrows left in
the quiver (the remaining charges), but that
tactic must be used retrieving another arrow.
Similarly, there may be more shells for the
mortar, but each must be dropped into the
tube one at a time.
Certain upgrades can downgrade the cost
of reloading a single-shot weapon from a tactic
to a twitch, but the principle remains the
same.
Wear ‘n tear means that success degrades
the gear. This quality is used for all melee
weapons. Stabbing through a casualty’s skull
dulls a knife. Beating down a door cracks an
axe handle. Though manpower (see p. 235) is
used to buy and boost the check, wear ‘n tear
 is used in event of a success, costing one of
the item’s charges after the check. To simplify
bookkeeping, most wear ‘n tear items can be
upgraded to “sturdy,” which negates the wear
‘n tear quality. Any melee weapons scavenged
from the Loss are considered to have the wear
‘n tear quality; lying around in the rot and rain
isn’t good for structural integrity.
Encumbrance
Red Markets is pretty laissez-faire when it
comes to how much a Taker can carry (see
below). However, a few items are so unwieldy
as to have special requirements.
Armor, in addition to indicating how
charges prevent damage, also dictates where
the specific type of armor is worn. Armor
cannot stack with other pieces of armor on
the same hit location. It can be worn with
clothing on the same location.
Clunky gear makes a lot of noise when
moving around. It rattles and clanks and
shifts. Characters cannot use their Stealth
skill while carrying a clunky item. In Boom
games, they can make a default attempt and
hope they get lucky. If not, the gear shifted
around and made too much noise to succeed.
Cumbersome items are too long, wide, or
unwieldy to carry comfortably in a backpack.
That means that unless the item is held in the
Taker’s hands, it takes a task action to remove
the gear from whatever sling or storage
case contains it. Basically, cumbersome
describes what weapons can’t be quick drawn
in combat. It’s only included to prevent the
tendency towards video game characters
loaded down like pack mules. Takers that
bristle with an armory of long guns while
retaining the ability to sprint like an Olympian
break the game. Use common sense and the
cumbersome quality will take care of itself.

How much can I carry?

The simple answer is you can carry as much as the Market says you can.
Need more? Red Markets is meant to evoke the psychology of economics, not the actual work of economics. The
game includes elements of resource management and inventory, but it tries to cut out as many of the other variables
related to those topics as possible. One of the things it doesn’t waste time on is factoring the weight of every item
a character is carrying.
This is not to say that Takers are capable of lugging around everything they’ve ever touched in a black hole of a
backpack. There are multiple factors limiting a Taker’s carrying capacity.
The most obvious is Haul, which equals a character’s STR. When out on Scores, Takers can only carry back units
of supply equal to their Haul. This limits the amount of profit one Taker can provide without the crew investing in a
vehicle (see Vehicles p. 265)
Refresh is another way carrying capacity is limited. Gear is useless without charges, and Takers can never refresh
gear more times than their ADP rating.
Finally, upkeep is the strongest limit. Nearly every object in the game has maintenance costs; past a certain point,
collecting gear stops making a Taker more useful and starts hemorrhaging capital. Like any business, Takers operate
with minimum overhead out of necessity.
But if none of these factors deter the crew’s resident hoarder, the Market always gets final say. When a player
claims to be dual-wielding crossbows while sprinting over a tight rope wearing a backpack full of gold, the Market - or
any other player, for that matter - is entitled to call bullshit.
Basically, if you don’t try to break what accounts for Red Markets’ encumbrance rules, they won’t break. If someone
does try to break them, politely ask that player to stop.

237
 Range and Sound
Range is a pretty common concern for Takers
as sound plays a major role in attracting
casualties. These traits are given to weapons
to help establish the logistics of each conflict.
Melee weapons are only used up close. For
the purposes of casualties, a melee weapon
allows attacks at 1 Shamble away. Otherwise,
use the rule that if Takers are close enough to
use a melee weapons, so are their enemies.
The only exception would be if the weapon
has an upgraded “reach” or can be thrown.
________-Range describes the range at
which a weapon can effectively hit a target.
The Market determines range to the target
in any situation. A weapon cannot score a hit
beyond its effective range.
Explosive weapons deal damage to all hit
locations on a hit, or damage to a random
hit location on multiple nearby targets. So,
if an enemy gets hit in the left leg for 4 Kill
damage, an explosive weapon would do 4 Kill
damage to every location, or an additional
4 Kill damage to a random location on the
enemy standing nearby. It can’t do both.
238
Loud weapons attract casualties. A gun is
a dinner bell to the undead. For every loud
weapon used in an unsecured area, Markets
rolls for another mob to arrive whenever they
see fit. Casualties do not arrive for every shot
used. Jerry can take two shots with his rifle
and only attract one mob, but if Ashley uses
her shotgun as well, another mob will arrive.
SpecIalty
Some pieces are rare and odd, yet they
remain useful to Takers in the Loss. Here
are a few of the qualities that describe these
anomalies. If Markets invent new qualities
when designing new gear (p. 244), it’s
suggested they go under the specialty criteria.
Addictive describes a game mechanic
where absence of the item causes mental and
physical distress. The Taker must make a
Self-Control check against their Stress threat
whenever they go without. It should be noted
that, mechanically, this describes rations. We
are all “addicted” to food and water, after all,
and it’s very stressful to go without it. Going
without rations harms health as well.
 Autonomous things operate off the user’s
voice or sign commands through either
sophisticated training (animals) or limited
AI (drones). Among other narrative and
mechanical benefits provided by the specific
“item,” autonomous means the Taker gets
another action in combat. On the owner’s
initiative, the Taker can issue a command and
have the “autonomous” gear perform a tactic
or twitch. Want to make sure your dog doesn’t
get shot? Shout “Fido! Hide!” Want the drone
to distract the sniper? Whisper “Execute
haircut protocol” into the microphone. The
command and any checks only consume the
Taker’s freebie; the character keeps a tactic
and twitch.
All autonomous gear requires specialized
training to operate, and it’s the Taker’s skill
that is checked in combat, not the animal or
machine’s. Charges spent on autonomous
gear boost the Taker’s associated skill. If
autonomous gear runs out of charges, it’s
either exhausted, unable to follow more
directions, or killed. Refreshing charges
depends on whether or not the specific item is
organic.
As always, if a check isn’t interesting the
Market shouldn’t call for one to operate
autonomous gear. Outside combat, the “item”
is just a crew mascot. For instance, there’s no
need to keep rolling dice to ensure your dron-
key doesn’t get lost; it can stay on its user’s
flank with sophisticated GPS. Falcons and
drones maintain a bird’s-eye view of the party.
Horses and dogs can hear a whistle, etc.
Contextual gear only works in certain
situations, determined by the player and
Market’s common sense. For example, a
prosthetic leg allows its owner to run and
jump using a specialized skill, but it doesn’t
mean the Taker can pick things up with
Things are in the saddle
And ride mankind.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
nonexistent metal toes. Similarly, even
though it “replaces” a leg, that Taker loses no
hit points if casualties rip it off. There is no
concrete benefit or disadvantage to contextual
gear outside what the dramatic situation
dictates. This quality is just a warning that
certain rules might need to be adjusted in
regards to the gear.
Fragile gear breaks with a single hit. If an
enemy strikes it or if a Taker spends Will to
shift damage to a piece of gear (see “Lucky X”
p. 283), the item can’t be repaired and needs
to be replaced.
Organic gear isn’t really gear at all. It’s a
living creature that serves the Taker. Organics
require sleep and rations to refresh their
charges. If someone were to own a pet for
therapy, the pet would be listed as organic
gear. If that pet could perform function in
game, it also has the autonomous quality.
Destruction of organics provokes a level-2
Self-Control check as a beloved animal
companion dies.
Specialized gear can’t be used without a
skill specialization in that gear. For instance,
nobody can pick up a mortar and just know
how to target the rounds. Shooting a bow is
very different than firing a rifle. Training in
how to wield a spear is rare in the modern
day, but it’s required to use one effectively.
Upgrades
Upgrades are specific to the gear they are
listed on. Read the the gear list to see the
options for each item (see p. 245).
Though some upgrades share the same
name and have self-explanatory descriptions,
it should be noted that the alterations on a
piece of gear are purely mechanical. Players
are free to describe how they mod, patch,
hack, and customize their gear using any
narrative terms they wish. Whether the player
says their Taker bought some specialized
ammunition or traded in that old pistol for one
of a higher caliber, buying the Potent upgrade
increases damage all the same.
Upgrades are one-time purchases that
do not add to the item’s total upkeep. Each
239
 upgrade costs one bounty and modifies the
effect or qualities on the item. Upgrades DO
NOT add to the gear’s upkeep. They may
be purchased in any order. Upgrades are
lost whenever their item is lost; they do not
carry over if the item is repurchased. Failing
to meet upkeep can also have an effect on
upgrades.
Upkeep and Purchase
Much like charges abstract the remaining
usefulness of a tool, upkeep is an economic
measure of the cost to maintain equipment.
Upkeep represents the lost time spent
cleaning the item, buying fuel, sourcing
parts, replacing batteries, and everything
else that might be required to keep an item
in working order. All of these activities take
place “off-screen” so as not to bog down the
game with a lot of routine screw tightening.
For game purposes, if upkeep is paid, then
the Taker diligently found the time and
resources between game sessions to check,
repair, and refresh equipment. Meeting
upkeep is required to keep gear operating. If
a Taker can’t make upkeep on a piece of gear,
they have to make a malfunction check (see
sidebar).
When purchasing gear, the price is
upkeep x2. The increased cost represents the
price of having the item delivered or made,
along with the profiteering of the seller. The
exception to this is character creation, at
which point gear costs upkeep only because
the Taker is presumed to already own the
gear.
Refresh
Refresh means replacing spent charges on
an item. Refreshing gear can happen at two
points in the game: upkeep and in the field.
Refresh DurIng Upkeep
If upkeep is met on a piece of gear between
game sessions, it refreshes automatically.
A laptop battery that’s down to one charge
jumps back up to 10 at the end of the game,
240
Failing Upkeep and Malfunction
For every item that doesn’t have its upkeep met, the Taker
must check for malfunctions. This check is untrained and
involves no skills. The results are final and can’t be affected
by Will spends.
The only way to increase the chances on a malfunction
check is to partially pay the upkeep. Each bounty contributed
towards the total required provides a +1 on the check. For
instance, if the Taker only has 4 bounty and the upkeep for
the gear is 5 bounty, she can spend 4 bounty and get a +4
on the check. The malfunction check still has to be made, but
the chances are now much better that the failure won’t be
catastrophic.
o Critical Success - The gear doesn’t refresh any of its
charges but remains fully functional.
o Success - The gear doesn’t refresh any of its charges
and loses one upgrade to malfunction.
o Failure - The gear doesn’t refresh any charges, loses up
to two upgrades, and won’t function without a successful
check on an appropriate repair skill.
o Critical Failure - The Taker lacked the time or resources
to keep the item in any kind of working order. The item
no longer functions and would be cheaper to repurchase than
repair.
Any upgrades lost due to malfunction must be repurchased.
so long as the Taker pays the laptop’s upkeep.
If upkeep isn’t met, the item malfunctions.
In narrative terms, refresh between game
session occurs because the Taker purchases
replacement parts, solar panel utilities, ammo,
the time off required to do personal inventory
maintenance, or whatever else is required
to keep the gear in working order. Failing to
refresh between sessions represents rust,
rot, circuit burnout, fuel shortages, ammo
rationing, or whatever else explains the gear’s
decreased usefulness.
Refresh In the FIeld
For every point of ADP, a Taker can refresh
a single piece of gear during play.
As an example, let’s assume a Taker that’s
out of rations and handgun ammo. The PC
would be fine if they had an ADP 2. The Taker
could erase all the tic marks off of both the
gun and the rations. It wouldn’t even cost an
action; the ADP rating indicates they had the
resources to hustle both spare ammo and
extra food before even heading into the Loss.
A spare MRE and clip are already sitting
ready in the backpack.
If the same Taker only had ADP 1, it would
be a choice between more food and more
ammo. The ADP required to find a surplus of
both ammo and food was beyond the Taker’s
Potential.
Takers never need to assign their ADP to
refresh gear before absolutely necessary.
There’s a lot of bookkeeping in Red Markets
already, and keeping track of every refresh is
too much trouble. Groups have two options
for keeping play moving quickly while still
being able to refresh charges on their gear.
Boom Rule: BasIc Refresh
Refresh rating equals the ADP. Basic
Refresh only measures one thing: the
number of refreshes a Taker can use. Takers
don’t have to waste time detailing every single
item in their possession. They write down
only their gear, and the presence or absence
of ADP determines if it can be refreshed in
play.
The benefit of using Basic Refresh is that it
keeps the game moving. It saves time listing
the spare parts for gear the group already
mulled over in the pregame. It also gives
players the benefit of the doubt every time. If
they need it – no matter what it is – remaining
refresh means they have it. The ease with
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 which Basic Refresh resupplies charges
makes it the best choice for a Boom-Style
game (see “Boom and Bust” p. 172).
The weakness of Basic Refresh is that,
while it represents the dwindling power of
economic horror, it has a predictable difficulty
curve. As the game progresses, progress
gets harder as refresh dwindles. It doesn’t
matter what difficulty the Market throws at
the players because the characters are perfect
planners limited only by the finite space in
their backpacks. Some players might like
the added strategic challenge of having to
anticipate what they might need.
Bust Rule: HIgh-Stakes Refresh
High-Stakes Refresh still equals ADP.
The amount of gear that can be carried
is still hand-waved and subject to veto by
the Market. The only difference from Basic
Refresh is that, when trying to refresh, the
Taker must make a Foresight test. If Foresight
fails, the Taker wasn’t able to secure the right
type of refresh for that piece of gear between
jobs.
It’s not that a failed Foresight check means
the character didn’t anticipate needing, for
instance, bullets for fighting zombies; a failed
Foresight checks could mean ammo was
scarce or priced too dearly for the Taker to
buy “just in case.” The character knows going
out without adequate supplies is risky, but,
then again, they’ve been forced to accept that
scarcity every day since the Crash.
Foresight tests to refresh gear are restricted
to in-the-moment rolls. Most players find
backpack inventory management less thrilling
than zombie killing. When a refresh is
needed, the suspense of that Foresight check
is going to be far more engaging for the table
than a painstaking account of everything on a
Taker’s person and where it is stored.
High-Stakes Refresh better models the
imperfect logistics that can spell doom
in any survival situation, but it keeps the
game moving quickly by abstracting all
that planning into a single skill check. This
increases the importance of the Foresight
242
skill. A character that can plan ahead
becomes important to the crew logistically as
well as tactically. High-Stakes Refresh makes
the game more difficult, unpredictable, and
suspenseful when the tools of survival become
even less reliable. It better fits a Bust-Style
game (see “Boom and Bust” p. 172).
The downside of High-Stakes Refresh is,
well, the stakes. The disconnect between what
players feel their characters would pack and
what the dice say can feel like a frustrating
lack of agency. If the group wants more
control, use Basic Refresh.
SCAVANGING AND CRAFTING
Why pay for gear when there are so many
materials just lying around? What use is
having an apocalypse if it doesn’t reduce some
costs? Well, if Takers have the time and skill
to perform the labor themselves, gear can be
built rather than bought.
To craft a piece of gear, the Taker must pay
the listed upkeep cost to buy materials and
then check an appropriate skill to assemble it.
It’s important that the cost be paid before the
check; if the Taker fails to assemble a working
item, they still have to pay for the materials
they used to try. All crafted gear starts with
the basic qualities, and upgrades must be
purchased normally. Crafters must have
access to a workshop, such as those found
in most enclaves and settlements; only the
simplest of items can be made out in the Loss.
Takers that want to lower the cost even
further can use the Scavenge skill to find
materials. For every successful Scavenge
check, reduce the crafting cost by one; on a
critical success, reduce costs by two. The only
restriction is that Scavenging must take place
out in the Loss (anything worth having in an
enclave is already claimed). This means at
least one potential encounter per Scavenge
test.
SellIng Gear
Takers started because people needed salvage
from over the fence. Though pickings look
slim five years after the Crash, crews still pry
treasures from the Loss’s dead fingers. But
what to do with all the junk?
No matter what piece of gear it may be,
somebody needs it. Need is the only thing the
Loss has in abundance. The only problem is
finding the neediest person: the one willing
to pay the highest price. When players
want to sell off their excess gear, follow this
procedure.
1. Is the transaction a business (shared
amongst the crew) or an auction (one
Taker selling gear for personal profit)? If
it is the former, consult the MBA rules for
small businesses (p. 424). If it’s the latter,
continue.
2. If using the MBA rules, selling gear eats up
a scene in the Taker’s work/life balance.
Decide which it is before pursuing a sale.
Multiple pieces can be sold in one scene.
3. Find a customer with a Networking check
- Critical Success: the gear sells for
upkeep x 3
- Success: the gear sells for upkeep x 2
- Failure: the gear sells at upkeep cost
- Critical Failure: no one wants the gear
4. Market determines any unintended
consequences of the sale (rep spots, Self-
Control checks, etc.)
BusIness or AuctIon?
Some Takers make a full-time business
pawning off whatever bric-a-brac they find
while out on jobs. That’s fine, but small
businesses have their own concerns dealt
with in the MBA Rules (p. 424).
Entrepreneurial crews that want to start a
pawnshop in their enclave are encouraged to
do so. The only difference from pawning and
the typical small business rules is that every
unit of supply has a unique value, depending
on what piece of gear is for sale. Regardless,
players that want to start a storefront should
consult the MBA chapter.
But most Takers just want to off-load the
excess loot quick. In that case, the Taker
is “auctioning” the goods personally, in
what amounts for spare time. This way, the
character gets to keep all the profit rather
than sharing with the crew, but no one is
required to help them do the work of retail
sales.
Pay Work/LIfe Balance
In the most basic form, Red Markets
maintains a very simple Work/Life balance:
each Taker gets one Scam and one Vignette
for Dependents. A boost for the contract and a
boost for the self.
In MBA Rules, the demands for the “work”
side of the equation grow exponentially, and
players have the choice to emphasize making
profit over mental health and vice versa.
Selling equipment eats into these demands as
well.
Selling anything requires legwork. If
selling online, the Taker has to troll message
boards and the remaining Ubiq auction sites.
They have to take pictures and videos of the
object for sale, sometimes providing detailed
measurements. Payment has to be arranged
through clandestine crypto-currencies, and
the Taker needs to shop for the provider
offering the best exchange rate for bounty.
Hell, even if the purchaser pays for shipping,
the Taker needs to figure out the right web of
drone smuggling operations required to get
the piece to its destination.
Selling within the enclave isn’t any easier.
Now the character wanders the market,
looking for a corner to set up shop amidst a
hundred other vendors hocking wares. They
have to pay protection or scare off guilds
protecting their turf. Or maybe they’re just
going door-to-door, asking if anyone needs a
spare land mine or whatever.
Selling gear costs on the Taker’s work/
life balance. The PC can sell any amount of
gear they have in that time, but the time spent
selling it isn’t spent hustling contracts or
hanging out with loved ones.
FInd Customers
Crews can operate businesses and attract
random customers with a brand. Individual
Takers only see success based on personal
243
 acquaintances and standing in the Loss.
Therefore, the price of gear sold is
determined with a Networking check.
For each piece of gear being sold, check
Networking:
• Critical Success: the gear sells for upkeep
x3
• Success: the gear sells for upkeep x 2
• Failure: the gear sells at upkeep cost
• Critical Failure: no one wants the gear
A character with the Hustler tough spot
can’t fail a Networking check, but the damage
done to their trustworthiness prevents big
profits. Hustlers always find buyers for gear at
upkeep x2. Considering their constant debt,
they’ll need all the bounty they can get.
UnIntended Consequences
Once the price is determined, the Market
and the player need to role-play the sale. The
Market doesn’t get to change the price during
this interaction, but they don’t have to make it
easy on the Taker either. Red Markets is never
just economics; materialism is the prompt
meant to inspire stories of economic horror.
Selling gear is great opportunity to give
Taker’s powerful story moments.
EXAMPLE: Let’s say Chance scored a
critical success on his Networking check to
sell a spare dose of Supression K-7864. That’s
18 bounty!
Then Chance opens up Ubiq chat to
finalize the deal. The Market describes the
feed opening up on the interior of a dingy,
corrugated metal hut. Framed in front of the
webcam is an elderly man with desperate,
hollow eyes. In the background, an older
woman writhes against where she’s been
strapped on the bed. Her whimpering can
barely be heard above the angry shouts and
pounding on the door.
The old man says it’s his wife. She got too
close to the fence and got bit. The Fencemen
found out and want to kill her before she
turns. But they don’t have to now, right?
Chance’s going to send the drugs? Please, he
244
pleads. He spent their entire savings on this.
So what does the Chance do? It’ll take
at least three hours for the drone to get to
him. She’ll likely turn before then, and if she
doesn’t? An old man gets to save his wife only
to never touch her again – skin gone black
with latency. And they’ll probably starve this
winter, too old to earn their keep.
So what does the player do? If the sale goes
ahead, the Market calls for a Self-Control
check against Detachment: after all, Chance
knowingly profited off the desperation of a
doomed man. If he provides a discount to the
price, maybe the Self-Control goes after his
Stress... but, then again, maybe the drugs will
arrive in time. The old couple could be saved
and have enough bounty left to get through
winter. It could even provide a +Rep Spot for
the crew.
It doesn’t matter what Chance chooses
to do: either way, it tells us more about the
character than an influx of new numbers
on the character sheet ever could. Leave it
to the players to seek financial benefit by
selling gear. It’s up to the Market to turn such
instances into storytelling opportunities.
DESIGNING NEW GEAR
The gear list is far from exhaustive and
players might want something not listed in the
book. In that case, the player first describes
what the device does narratively and then
works with the Market to describe the item in
terms of qualities, upgrades, and upkeep.
EXAMPLE: Cheyanne’s character is a
former kung fu school owner that survived the
Crash using her martial arts. Cheyanne puts
her skill points into a lot of specialized Melee
skills like Sword, Spear, and Rope dart.
A Chinese rope dart – a weighted metal
spike that is thrown and retrieved via a rope
– is not included in the book, but Cheyanne
really loves the idea of expertly entangling
and perforating casualties in a deadly, twirling
dance. She asks her Market, Megan, if they
can build an item.
Both Megan and Cheyanne can agree that
the rope dart definitely needs the specialized
 called light chain that lets her peel zombies
from mobs by entangling them. The Market
doesn’t know how realistic that is, but she’s
already vetoed something Cheyanne wanted
and decides to let it go. A full tactic to pull
the dart back in sounds like a lot, so she adds
auto-spool to downgrade the tactic required by
single-shot into a more versatile twitch. Lastly,
Cheyanne asks if she can have potent to add
damage. Megan says sure.
It’s up to the Market alone to determine the
upkeep for new items. Megan considers the
way the dart would dull with use, the frays
that would appear in the rope, and the rarity
of such an item. She calls it three upkeep,
making a purchasing cost of six. But, finally,
Megan tells Cheyanne that the item is in-
demand – they ain’t making ancient Chinese
weaponry like they used to – so her character
won’t have to pay upkeep on the item unless it
needs to be replaced.
Now the rope dart is ready to go and
Cheyanne can start the game as a ribbon-
dancing cyclone of murder.

quality because of the enormous skill required Gear LIst

to wield it. They also decide it should be
capped (it’ll be hard enough keeping one Weapons
under control) and single-shot (a tactic has to Axe: Fire axes were the first weapons many
be used to pull the item back). Cheyanne has picked up during the Crash; some opted to
done her research, and though the weapon is stick with them. In the years since, they’ve
ranged, it is only effective within 10-20 feet. been sharpened, reinforced, and optimized
They decide on short-range. Megan reminds to kill casualties. The basic principle remains
Cheyanne that the weapon will need wear ‘n the same: swing for the head.
tear to represent the damage of repeatedly
caving in zombie faces. Cheyanne asks if it
gets manpower too, but Megan says no. The
dart isn’t that heavy, and doing damage is
more about precision than throwing harder
or faster; spending extra rations wouldn’t
have a measurable effect. Cheyanne doesn’t
know about this, but the Market gets final say.
Lastly, Megan gives the rope dart ten charges
to represent its condition and says it will do
Kill damage.
Cheyanne wants one of the upgrades to be
sturdy, which stops her from worrying about
wear ‘n tear. She makes up a new upgrade
245
 Bow and Quiver: In many ways, bows are
the best possible projectile weapon for the
undead. Takers can keep their distance,
reuse their ammo, and be quiet about their
work. However, the accuracy required to
score a headshot on a slow moving casualty
is considerable and keeping steady as mob
closes in doesn’t make things any easier.
Those with reliable archery skills can name
their price in the Carrion Economy.
Club: Sticks are one of the few things still
plentiful in the Loss. Others have less
practical reasons for using clubs, such as an
attachment to a childhood baseball bat.
246
Crossbow and Quiver: Before the Crash,
zombie movies advertised the crossbow as
the ultimate weapon against the undead. A
number of companies put out cheap, plastic
versions to capitalize off people with too
much money and not enough sense. When
the nightmares actually came true, many
found out the hard way which crossbows were
actually effective. Still more died realizing
they were shit shots.
Flamethrower: Casualties don’t feel pain and
they don’t stop moving when on fire. Breaking
out the napalm is usually just a roundabout
way to burn down your enclave. But if you’ve
got stonewalls or work the deep wasteland,
the flamethrower cleans AND disinfects.

Flashbangs: During the Crash, the staple
of SWAT teams everywhere couldn’t have
seemed more useless. But now, as people
invade each other’s entrenched positions to
steal bounty, flashbangs have reentered the
market.
Grenades: Though unreliable for headshots,
grenades tend to mangle casualties beyond
the point of mobility anyway. Humans fare
even worse.
Handgun: Whether it is the family revolver
found amidst a group suicide or the spec-ops
sidearm pulled from the corpse of a fallen
checkpoint guard, anything that can shoot
gets salvaged in the Loss. Luckily, the insane
number of guns in the US before the Crash
(and the propensity for current users to die)
keeps prices down.
247
 Heavy Rifle: Finding ammo originally meant
to destroy engine blocks is a struggle for your
average Taker. But the psychological benefits
of turning an enemy into paste from two
kilometers away is too much for some crews
to pass up.

Machete: The preferred choice of many

Takers that work in close, machetes provide
more reach than a knife, require less skill
than a sword, and can be used in conjunction
with a shield.
Knife: Stabby-stab-stab.

Light Machine Gun: During the withdrawal

to the Recession, space and weight were at
a premium. Precision weapons were given
preference over rate-of-fire. This left a glut of
military, automatic weapons in the Loss, but
few with the ammo or expertise required to
use them.

248
Molotov Cocktail: Unless you get the fire hot
enough to melt a skull, setting a casualty on
fire is only a slightly faster method of disposal
than waiting for them to die of old age… but
engulfing the bastards in flames makes it real
hard for them to track you. It also kills Vectors
that are too dumb to stop, drop, and roll. As
for humans? No one forgets the sound of a Plastic Explosives/Detonator: A surprising
raider burning alive. amount of plastic explosive was left behind
during the Crash, and it’s the first thing
corrupt DHQS guards pilfer from their
ammo dumps to sell across the border. Since
most Lost have no idea how to use the stuff,
they figure it’ll just end up blowing up the
purchaser.

Mortar: Though aiming is complicated,

weapons don’t come much simpler than a
mortar. They are overkill when it comes to
casualties, but artillery is usually the first
choice in enclave sieges and defense.

249
 Rifle: The average Taker’s first experience
with a firearm was executing a loved one. In
the Loss, range is valued for more than its
tactical benefit. The further away one can
get from the ugliness, the better. Rifles are
the best choice in the intersection between
expense, skill, and distance.
Shotgun: Once a crew is sure the Bait knows
to keep the barrel pointed down, a shotgun is
usually the first weapon for a new Taker.
250
Spear: Though the skills required to
accurately target a thrust to the head are
archaic, spears have made a big comeback
among the many Fencemen. Some Takers
have grown so comfortable with polearms
that they take their stickers into the field.
Sword: Every douche that thought the zombie
apocalypse sounded fun went straight for
a sword when the Crash happened…and
promptly got eaten by Vectors. To be fair,
anyone still using a sword this late in the
game is probably pretty damn good with it.
Hopefully they’re also deaf to all the sniggers
and insults it’ll attract around the enclave.
Tomahawk: Hatchets are second only to
machetes in popularity. The small axe loses
points because the temptation to throw it
often outweighs a Taker’s ability to do so well.
Takers that don’t want to be left in front of a
hungry casualty with nothing but their fists
buy a backup.
Warhammer: Most that succumb to “size
queen syndrome” when desperately casting
about for bludgeons end up dead. But those
strong enough to wield the things effectively
are hell on casualties.
Drugs and Healthcare
Blood Testing Unit: BTUs range from the
hacked-together, pieces-of-shit used by the
military at the Recession checkpoints to
newer, sleek StopLoss designs. Regardless
of the cosmetics, all models answer the same
question: should I shoot my friend now or
later?
251
 First Aid Kit: It won’t do shit against the
Blight, but a lot can go wrong in the Loss.
Nothing about Taker first aid is meant to keep
you healthy. Kits are there to keep you alive,
moving, and in agony until you can collapse
back at the home.
252
Prosthetic Arm: The field of prosthetics
underwent a renaissance just before the
Crash. New, lightweight materials constructed
ergonomic designs that could be directly
grafted to the pectoral nerves of the patient,
feeding signals directly into an onboard
computer. Those lucky enough to have
access to the technology and doctors with
the expertise to install it have modded their
prosthetics to fit a Taker lifestyle. Nothing
says “handicapable” quite like crushing
someone’s skull in your fist.
Prosthetic Leg: As with any other prosthetic,
learning to cope with an artificial limb
takes time and patience. But with cutting-
edge polymers and smart designs, the new
prosthetic legs make the skilled as fast as
any other Taker. Finding the technology and
expertise to install it remains an expensive
proposition, but most Takers that have lost
legs the hard way have learned to never skimp
on anything that helps them run away.

Scent Blocker: Certain organs – the liver, the

large intestine, etc – remain oddly untouched
by Blight infection. Collecting viscera from
slain casualties and squeezing it creates
Scent Blocker, or “C-Juice” as it is sometimes
called. The noxious substance reeks but
does not carry the Blight. Rubbing on scent
Rations: Mechanically, rations buy-a-roll for blocker allows Takers to sneak past mobs of
all acts of physical exertion and represent the casualties, though sight, sound, and behavior
caloric requirements of staying alive in the can still give the humans away.
Loss. The charges are spent in the moment
to aid tests, and a player need never mention
it to the Market unless overspending for
additional bonuses. Narratively, rations are
always eaten “off-screen,” before or after
whatever action scene in which they come
into play. No one stops a fight to scarf down
on some beans; they spend charges in the
moment to represent how they prepared for
extreme exertion the night before.

All vile acts are done to satisfy hunger.

-Maksim Gorki
253
 Soma (Stability Vitamins): Soma is to
anti-depressants as power drills are to
screwdrivers. The government dumps this
tranquilizing poison into Free Parking ghettos
to keep the refugees from burning down the
cities, but it does ease the pain… if only for a
little while.
StopLoss Healthcare: On the off-chance
they’re nearby and not busy, StopLoss will
provide medical care to anyone with the
foresight to have purchased their exorbitant
medical insurance package. The corporation
provides these services to all paying
customers, even in the Loss. Smart Takers
never confuse life saving for compassion:
the only reason the corp offers such a policy
is the increased chance it provides to catch
Immunes in the field.

Stim Sauce (Evacuation Amphetamines):

Military-issue meth, issued to drivers to keep
the caravans moving East during the Crash.
The feds claim it’s no longer in production,
but there’s enough bootleggers that the truth
doesn’t really matter. Many can’t face the
thought of the Loss without a little SS in
their blood. After awhile, it becomes the only
reason to get up in the morning.
254
 Armor and AccessorIes
Backpack: There’s no reason to go out if you’re
not bringing something back. Even the most
desperate Takers carry a backpack.

Supression K-7864: Derived from the

bone marrow of the Immune, along with a
cocktail of dangerously caustic antiseptics
and antibiotics, Supression K-7864 is the
only hope for someone infected with the
Blight. The shot reverts live strains into their
little-understood undead state. Though the
infection still perforates every tissue with
Blight sinews, the live cells responsible for
destroying the brain and turning people into
Vectors never activate. This turns the user
into Latents, humans completely riddled with
the Blight’s sinew, but sill alive and rational.
The shot is no promise of survival, however;
the process of becoming a Latent is agonizing,
and it has been said to kill many through
shock alone.
255
 “Basilisk” Body Armor: Increased fatalities
from the US’s never-ending stream of
bush wars finally prompted Congress to
issue advanced body armor to all military
personnel. Basilisk was the evolution of
metamaterial prototypes capable of stopping
even high-caliber rounds without hindering
mobility. Due to budget cuts and logistical
fuck-ups, “the future of warfare” only saw a
16% rollout before the Crash. Those lucky
enough to scavenge a set off a dead DHQS
soldier reap the best the military-industrial
complex has to offer.

Chainmail: If it’s good enough to defend

Carpet Gauntlets/Greaves: The base layer
against sharks and swords, it’ll stop
of commercial carpeting – the plastic weave
casualties. However, chainmail requires
in which the strands are embedded – can’t
constant care to replace missing links and
be pierced by human teeth or nails. Some
prevent rust. Some Takers are willing to
early Taker realized that this made the floors
sacrifice safety to save on maintenance.
of most abandoned houses a goldmine of
anti-casualty kevlar. Five years later, carpet
gauntlets and greaves are standard equipment
for a lot of Takers. Feed your left arm to the
zombie, scream like hell as it bites down on
the carpet, and start bashing skulls before the There is no armour against fate.
dumb thing goes for juicer meat.
-James Shirley
256
 Kevlar: Slap one on and pray they aim center
mass.

Padded Gloves: It seems like a small thing,

but a cut knuckle from a panicked punch has
undone many a crew. Keep casualty teeth out
of your skin and on the ground where they
belong.

Helmet: A bad idea when Latents go Vector; a

good idea for every other occasion.

257
 Riot Shield: Some enclaves only exist today
because the Fencemen trained to form a
phalanx across the breach. Many Takers have
brought them into the field to get some much-
needed distance from the dead.
258
Tools
Bicycle: Taker survival in the short-term
is about spending. The long-term is about
sustainability.
Binoculars: Whether you’re walking into it,
being chased by it, or getting flanked by it, see
it before it sees you.
DDJ’s (Denial Door Jams): Before the Crash,
carbon nanotubes were being manufactured
en masse by the military industrial complex
for a number of uses in various defense
contracts. As the chaos cancelled those grand
projects, some demolitions expert got the
bright idea to wrap all that spare unbreakable
wire around a grenade. DDJs were about
the only casualty-specific ordinance
distributed before the withdrawal over the
Mississippi. They were used by “shudder”
teams deployed to retrieve vital personnel
and fortify infrastructure. After entering a
building, teams would pop a DDJ to ensure
no more infected joined them from the
outside. Tiny harpoons would deploy from the
baseplate and embed in the walls and frame,
barricading the door and tangling anything
that managed to breakthrough. DDJ’s are
a favorite of Taker crews specializing in
extermination jobs, and many enclaves have
started recycling nanotubes from detonated
ordinance to manufacture their own units.

Flashlight: Remember the Taker motto:

“Prevent a bite with a nightlight; turn it off or
heads get blown off”

259
 Electronics Kit: Basic software on minidrives,
circuit boards, soldering irons, voltage
meters – sometimes the best Scores require
working with equipment too delicate for
a simple toolbox. Takers specializing in
communications and high-end security
systems carefully assemble kits catered to
assist with advanced electronics.
Lockpicker’s Kit: If you’re lucky, the door’s
locked because the idiots thought they’d be
coming back one day. If you’re not, they locked
it to keep what they’ve become from getting
out. Either way, the noise of forced entry is a
bad idea, and smart Takers know they need
more to rely on than cancelled credit cards.
260
Toolkit: It’s the Loss: everything is breaking or
already broke. Come prepared.
Pets
Dog: Animals that try to feed off the flesh of
casualties usually get eaten themselves or die
from the Blight’s poison. Five years in, “man’s
best friend” only survives by feasting off
survivors in feral packs or remaining loyal to
master. A well-trained pooch can be a lifesaver
in the Loss, though. They can attack human
rivals or distract casualties without much fear
of being caught. Outfitted with equipment,
service dogs make great scouts. Perhaps most
importantly, dogs are invaluable for morale.
Life over the fence might be a harrowing
nightmare to the rest of the crew, but Fido
is just happy for walkies. But never forget, a
dog is more than another piece of equipment
to invest in. Many a Taker lived through the
genocide of the Crash only to put a gun in
their mouth when their dog died.
Falcon: A lot of archaic knowledge became
relevant again after the Crash; perhaps none
so surprising as falconry. A trained bird
can hunt, scout, deliver unhackable mail,
and perform a number of vital roles in a
crew. A huge investment is required to train
these wild animals, in time and emotional
attachment.
261
 Horse: Anything that can plow a field or carry
a load without using precious fuel is valuable
indeed. The fact that a loyal horse can also
get you away from casualties is a nice bonus.
Just don’t let the poor thing get hurt. Hearing
the screams of a horse being eaten alive will
forever turn a Taker’s dreams into nightmares.
Advanced ElectronIcs
Dron-key: Though not quite breeching
Terminator territory, AI advanced far enough
262
before the Crash that limitedly autonomous
robotic units became the norm for most
military ground units. Dron-key’s were used
to carry equipment, relay communications,
scout, and dispose of explosives (by running
into them). The recall of US forces brought a
glut of dron-keys into the domestic warzone.
The Loss has long since learned to hack and
mod the equipment for their own needs. They
may be dumb as all hell and look like cross
between a pommel horse and deformed mule,
but they carry your shit and don’t complain.
Drone: The government tried to crack down
on civilian drone use immediately after they
became available and they started failing
just as quickly. Drones are the primary early
warning system of most enclaves and Beemail
carriers are as close to a postal system as the
Loss can get. If they can afford the batteries
and maintenance, many Taker crews bring
drones out on job to safely scout ahead.

Laptop/Pad: Ubiq’s aloft servers may still be

floating up there in the stratosphere, but it
don’t mean shit if you can’t access them. While
hacked Specs remain the norm for many
Takers because they’re hands free, the limited
UI leaves something to be desired. Takers that
need to hack in a hurry or spend a lot of time
online usually set up their account on a more
traditional device.

263
 Ubiq Specs: The first wearable computing
device to really take off, Specs finally made
good on the promise of augmented reality
computing by removing the hassle and
stigma. They came in a wide variety of
attractive models, ranging from wire frames
to sunglasses to horn-rimmed. The interface
was designed to be compatible with all needs
and proclivities, allowing for voice command,
Ubiq On-Sight operation via specialized
contact lenses, or wearable thimble inputs.
The camera was ultralight and high-
resolution, recording on microdrives hidden
in the earpieces capable of holding nearly 100
gigs without noticeable extra weight. The AR
interface sported the best visual recognition
software yet made by man, and open-source
code made sure the app market could meet
every conceivable need. And not only did
the calls have the lowest drop ratio of every
major provider, but onboard sensors in the
frames could be fed into a computer model
of the user’s face to project an accurate facial
expression to the person on the other end.
Specs were well on their way to replacing
cell-phones… but then the apocalypse
started, “terrorists” took over the servers,
and everyone started using them to shoot
zombies.

Haul
Scores earn bounty by attaching a price to
each unit of supply (see “Scores” p. 394).
These units are called Haul. If Refresh
abstracts the ability to source and purchase
gear, then Haul abstracts a Taker’s carrying
capacity.
A Taker can carry Haul equal to STR and
still perform the intense physical exercise
demanded by the job. Anything more than
that and the Taker can’t move, or at least
can’t move fast enough to escape a shuffling
casualty. For instance, a Taker might be strong
enough to carry a flamethrower, a shotgun,
spear, kitchen sink, filing cabinet, and baby
mule at the same time. But that character
is going to have a hell of time rolling into
cover from gunfire, pulling themselves out of
264
a burning train, or jumping over a crowd of
zombies. Takers travel light by necessity.
If Refresh abstracts the ability to source
and purchase gear, then Haul abstracts
a Taker’s carrying capacity. Although the
Haul rating is derived from STR, it does not
represent maximum physical force. It also
doesn’t limit how much gear the Taker can
own (see “How much can I carry?” p. 237).
Haul describes the maximum amount that
can be earned through the Taker’s physical
labors by capping how many units of supply
can be carried. The price of each unit varies,
but each Taker’s capacity is limited by their
STR.
So, let’s say the crew is designing a Score.
The Market rolls and each unit of supply costs
7 bounty. But what’s the Score for? Doesn’t
matter. If the crew goes after gun parts, a
Taker with STR 1 can carry 7 bounty’s worth
of gun parts. But if the crew goes after bags of
rice? That Taker can still only carry 7 bounty’s
worth of rice. Stationary? 7 bounty’s worth of
decorative paper.
• Figure out the demand, in bounty, of each
unit of supply.
• Multiply that number by the Taker’s STR.
• That’s the maximum amount of bounty the
Taker can carry back from the job site.
This means that, even if they achieve the
maximum bounty per unit, the ability to profit
from Scores is always going to be limited
by how much the crew can hump on their
backs. That is, unless they invest in some
transportation.
VehIcle Rules
Moving things from point A to point B has
been the primary struggle of economic
production since the beginning of history.
The Loss certainly doesn’t make distribution
easier. Takers can carry their salvage the old
fashioned way with Haul, but crews that don’t
want their earnings tied to the strength of
their backs need a company vehicle.
Salvaged Vehicles
If Takers recover a car or truck from the Loss, remember
that it has been sitting unused for five years. Getting it
working is a miracle, even if the PCs scavenge parts from
other vehicles and somehow find tires that have yet to rot.
Vehicles looted in route only last until the end of that job.
If the Takers want to consistently reduce their Legs, they
need to pay for a vehicle that has seen maintenance in the
last decade.
Transportation not only allows much more
to be earned from a Score, it also protects
from the dangerous unpredictability of Legs
and provides a rolling shelter for the crew.
Reliable transport would almost make the job
easy... were fuel not the scarcest commodity in
the world.
VehIcle Effect
When vehicles aren’t broken down, they close
distances faster than walking, allow vehicular
interactions, and carry additional weight.
Mechanically, that’s all vehicles can do in Red
Markets. But it’s enough; those mechanical
benefits are huge.
1. Vehicles are finicky.
• Five years after the Crash, most machines
running at all are just barely road
worthy. The body and parts were likely
pieced together from the innumerable
pile-ups dotting the freeways, or pulled
from a garage after years of neglect.
The few vehicles receiving regular
use and maintenance throughout the
disaster have probably run over multiple
casualties, bashed through roadblocks,
and weathered multiple gunshots. Unless
upgraded, starting any motor in the Loss
requires a Mechanics check.
2. Vehicles can skip Legs.
• When using transportation, Takers can
spend extra vehicle charges to skip any
Leg designed to be dealt with on foot.
Takers have the option of stopping and
265
 engaging with the encounter, but their
wheels can get them away. This allows
Takers to arrive at the job site rested and
uninjured, which rarely happens to crews
on foot.
3. Vehicles make certain scenes possible.
• In the contest between man and
machine... there is no contest. If the
cultists kidnapping your son have a car
and your character does not, they get
away. If you have a vehicle too, now it’s a
chase. If raiders ram a character fleeing
across the desert, that person is really
dead. If the character is in a vehicle, it’s
just some damage. Vehicles allow PCs to
interact with aspects of the environment
that would otherwise just run away or run
them over.
4. Vehicles increase available Haul
• On a Score, each character can carry
Haul equalling STR. But in a vehicle?
Takers can carry their normal Haul, plus
any carrying capacity in the vehicle not
occupied by passengers. A three-person
crew capable of 2 Haul each can make,
at maximum demand, 60 bounty off of a
Score. Another three-person crew, driving
a semi, could theoretically make 170
bounty off the same job.
VehIcle Charges and Fuel
Charges on a vehicle represent fuel. It can be
any kind of fuel – gasoline, biodiesel, batteries
– but the charges keep the vehicle moving. No
charges? No go. This doesn’t differ from the
narrative interpretation of charges on all other
gear, but vehicle charges operate differently in
some significant ways.
1. Upkeep only prevents malfunction. It
doesn’t refresh charges.
• Energy is expensive in the Loss. If it’s
renewable (such as solar and wind power),
the wait list to hook up to the generators is
wildly long. If it’s fossil fuel, the supply can
literally only go down. What few refinery
266
and drilling operations still operate can’t
begin to meet the Loss’s demand. Upkeep
on vehicles is for replacing parts, which
are still in abundance, but finding fuel is a
constant struggle.
2. Charges for vehicles must be individually
sourced and purchased.
• Every charge put into a vehicle costs
bounty. This means that it is extremely
rare for a crew to have a “full tank” of 10
charges. It also means that the wheels
don’t turn if someone can’t source a supply.
Purchasing fuel requires a successful
Networking check and bounty in hand: no
one gives fuel out on credit.
3. The price per charge depends on the
vehicle’s fuel demand.
• The number recorded as the vehicle’s fuel
demand is the cost per charge for that
vehicle. In general, the bigger and more
specialized the vehicle, the higher the cost.
The bounty cost per charge can fluctuate
depending on upgrades installed.
4. Charges are spent to start a Leg, and
charges are spent to skip a Vehicle Leg.
• To get to the next Leg, a vehicle must
spend a charge of fuel. For typical Loss
encounters, Takers can choose to stop and
engage, or they can speed on by to the next
Leg. If the Leg is a Vehicle Leg (meaning
an encounter specifically designed to stop
a vehicle), another charge must be spent to
“go around” the obstacle. If the encounter
isn’t stationary – such as a motorized
group of pirates – escape from the vehicle
encounter might not be possible without
other skill checks.
VehIcle OwnershIp and Upkeep
The cost of fueling and repairing a vehicle
is too much for most Takers to afford on
their own. Therefore, the whole crew shares
the burden of maintaining transportation.
Vehicles are “company property.” This
means...
 1. Vehicles may not be purchased at
character creation.
• The price for working transportation is
always upkeep x 2. Takers don’t receive
the half-off discount of character creation
when buying a car. Furthermore, it’s just
a good idea to hold off on investing in
a major piece of company equipment
until the crew has a better conception
of its particular brand. If the crew needs
a vehicle for a one-shot, the Market
can provide one, but purchase should
otherwise remain a major company
decision made by all the PCs.
2. Vehicle upkeep and purchase price is
deducted from the Score or contract.
• Whenever calculating the bounty earned
from a contract, automatically deduct
the price of any vehicles the group plans
to purchase or needs to upkeep. The
remainder is split amongst the crew
into equal shares. If the car lets you do
business, the car gets fed before you.
3. Vehicles don’t factor into negotiation
until expenses.
• The upkeep price of a vehicle doesn’t enter
into contract negotiations until expenses
get paid, same as any other type of gear.
Unless the client has been totally fleeced,
owning a vehicle always cuts into the
bottom line.
VehIcle Haul
Vehicles almost always cost, but they might
save capital by decreasing the risk to Takers.
Conflict avoided by skipping Legs translates
into bounty saved in healing, Humanity, and
favors. However, these savings are offset by
the gains potentially lost skipping Legs. No
risk means no rewards.
Money doesn’t change men, it merely unmasks
them. If a man is naturally selfish or arrogant or
greedy, the money brings that out, that’s all.
-Henry Ford
A vehicle’s increased carrying capacity,
however, is an unqualified benefit. More often
than not, Takers have to leave valuable goods
behind when out on a Score; they can only
carry so much and still deal with the dangers
of the Loss. A vehicle significantly increases
the efficiency of each trip.
1. Passengers take up one Haul.
• For every person riding in a vehicle,
subtract one off its Haul.
• Remaining vehicle Haul adds to a crew’s
total Haul.
• Imagine a crew buys a Jeep. The vehicle
has 7 Haul. Now, a crew of three Takers,
each with STR 3, would be able to carry
9 Haul; it wouldn’t make sense to take a
Jeep when they could carry more by hand.
However, only passengers count against
Haul, not passengers and what they are
carrying. The vehicle, after accounting for
passengers, would still add 4 Haul to their
potential gains. This means the crew could
salvage 13 Haul’s worth of goods with
the Jeep, as opposed to 9 Haul carried by
hand.
VehIcle Upgrades
All vehicles have six possible upgrades. Each
upgrade may only be purchased once. Each
vehicle is limited to three upgrades. These
upgrades also have multiple effects, usually
related to how they alter fuel demand or
upkeep. Purchasing and installing upgrades
is done normally. Each upgrade costs one
bounty, but can be lost in malfunction rolls.
The available upgrades are...
1. Off-road
• Burn a charge to skip an encounter despite
obstructions or off-road conditions.
• Fuel Demand increases by 1 bounty.
2. Reliable
• Vehicle does not require a Mechanics
check to start.
• Upkeep increases by 2 bounty
267
 3. Armored
• Vehicle counts as cover in combat
• No attacks can do damage to the vehicle
unless they carry the explosive or armor-
piercing upgrade.
• Fuel Demand increases by 1 bounty
4. Alternative Fuel
• Vehicle uses solar panels, electricity,
biodiesel, or other renewable energy for
fuel
• Fuel Demand decreases by 1 bounty
5. Optimized Load
• Vehicle gains +2 Haul
• Fuel demand increases by 1 bounty
6. Juiced
• Vehicle’s superior horsepower and
handling provides a static +2 Drive bonus
• Fuel Demand increases by 1 bounty
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VehIcle LIst
Make, model, look, paint job, and any other
cosmetic accessories are entirely up to the
crew. They can ride around in whatever
they think would look cool or fitting for the
upgrades. Mechanically, these descriptions
have no bearing on the game besides making
the setting more fun and immersive for the
group. Markets should encourage player
creativity and emotional investment: it makes
the Humanity damage all the worse when the
thing blows up later.
Here are the vehicle types Red Markets
currently supports. Copy the essential stats
and upgrades into the space provided on the
crew sheet.
269
270
VehIcle Combat and Chases
If you need help calculating how much
damage is done in a car crash, see “Weird
Damage” in the Combat chapter (p. 283).
Otherwise, suffice it to say that firing weapons
and jumping onto moving cars are really bad
ideas in reality, and really fun in make believe.
Red Markets has no intention of letting reality
ruin our fun.
This means that combat amongst vehicles
is treated like any other combat: tactics and
twitches resort to the character’s skills. If
someone wants to jump onboard a moving
train, tell them if they are close enough and,
if so, call for an Athletics check. There’s no
factoring in variable speeds and distance and
blah blah blah.
Most cars aren’t bulletproof (except for
those with the Armored upgrade), so resolve
firearm damage as normal. The Market is free
to forbid twitches to dodge if a character is
strapped in, but the driver could make Drive
checks to avoid attacks instead. If people
scrape sides, it’s cinematic and looks cool, but
no dice need to be rolled unless the Taker’s
vehicle is disabled.
As for chases, Drive gets characters closer
or further away, depending on the preferences
of the person making a check. Drive is also
the skill for stopping a pursued vehicle
with some artful ramming, and it’s used for
performing death-defying stunts. There’s no
need to keep track of complex distances,
speeds, and variables for physics problems.
The Market declares what is happening, the
players make their check, and the characters
react. That’s it.
The only mistake to avoid would be bogging
down one of the most tense, climactic scenes
of the game (like...say, a car chase) with an
excess of rules lawyering and dice checks.
Keep it simple; keep it fast.
 
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 Combat
In many instances, a fight to death with
the casualties is the best-case scenario;
humans are still the deadliest animals on the
planet. Facing down the undead is a unique
proposition, which is why casualties and
Vectors have their own rules (p. 295). The
combat rules in Red Markets seek to emulate
the terror, suddenness, and confusion of
armed conflict with other human beings,
be they soldiers, believers, raiders, or other
crews.
What follows is a description of the basic
combat mechanics, order of operations,
damage penalties, and special maneuvers. For
rules on running combat as the Market, see
“Market Forces” (p. 291)
The Market WIll WIn
The Market always succeeds if uncontested.
This means whatever the Market declares
will happen, does happen unless the players
272
make a check to prevent it. For instance, if a
soldier is about to shoot one of the characters,
the Market doesn’t have to do anything to see
if the soldier succeeds. The player makes an
Athletics check to dodge. On a success, the
bullet misses its mark. On a failure, the shot
lands.
Similarly, if a player tries to attack, the
Market doesn’t waste time rolling to see if
some random thug dodged; the success or
failure of the player’s attack check determines
the outcome entirely.
With a few exceptions (see “Market Dice
Checks” p. 176), the Market doesn’t make dice
checks in a conflict. The Market never checks
for success because the person running the
game represents the weight of history: the
combined forces of the economy, opposing
and assisting the characters. Takers either
succeed in overcoming the Market’s Forces
for the moment, fail, or they’re too exhausted
to even try.
The Economy of ActIons
When combat starts, dice checks get
recategorized into four types of actions: tactic,
twitch, freebie, and task. The categorizations
approximate how much time an action takes
and when it occurs in the initiative order.
What follows is an explanation of the action
types; initiative is explained later in “The
Combat Round” (p. 275).
TactIc
A tactic is a planned action. It may not be
planned particularly well, but it is something
the Taker intends to do. Example tactics are...
• Firing a weapon
• Making a Melee or Unarmed attack
• Drawing or holstering a weapon
• Running to cover
• Reloading a weapon or refreshing charges
on other gear
• Administering First Aid
• Barricading a door
• Full defense (converting a tactic to a
twitch)
• Full offense (converting the twitch to a
second tactic, which occurs at the end of
the initiative order)
Tactics resolves in initiative order, as
explained later. Initiative order has a lot of
power to determine tactics: checks the player
planned on making might be invalidated or
rendered impossible by events taking place
earlier in the initiative order. Tactics near the
beginning of the order can set the tone of the
entire battle.
TwItch
A twitch isn’t planned. It’s an animal instinct
that goes off when prompted, such as the hint
of motion out of the corner of an eye causing
a spastic dodge. Since a twitch is so fast and
prompted by the Market’s forces, it’s use is
limited to...
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 • Make an Athletics check to dodge attacks
• Make an Athletics check to get under
cover
• Block an incoming Melee or Unarmed
attack
• Recover from knockback
• Quick draw an item by dropping previously
held gear
• Reload or perform another quick action,
as allowed by a specific gear’s upgrade
A twitch is entirely defensive. Its power
comes from being unbound by the initiative
order. After spending a twitch, a player can
make a skill check immediately, no matter
where their tactic lies in the initiative order.
So, although Angel might not act until last in
the initiative order, she can spend her twitch
to get behind cover so all the Market forces
acting before her can’t declare attacks.
Each character only gets one twitch per
combat round. If Market forces declare an
attack and the target player doesn’t have a
twitch to spend, the attack hits automatically
(see “Market Dice Checks” p. 176).
FreebIes
Freebies include intellectual and verbal
actions that can be carried out while
performing tactics and twitches, or whenever
the Taker chooses. Characters get one freebie
per combat round. Some examples of freebies
include...
• Foresight checks to get tactical
information
• Awareness checks to spot something
• Shouting, whispering, or CHA skill checks
where appropriate
• Self-Control tests called for by the Market
• Command using Profession: Animal
Handling or Profession: Drones
The Market isn’t obligated to allow a soliloquy
in the middle of knife fight, though barking
“Get down!” is fine and wouldn’t require
a check. And while it might be possible to
see where the raiders are flanking from
274
(Awareness), nobody has the time to complete
a Where’s Waldo? book in the middle of
combat.
Task
Tasks require a long-time, at least relative
to the pace of combat. A single combat
round represents a few frenetic seconds
of bloodshed and terror. That’s usually
not enough time to pick a lock, hot-wire a
car, or bandage a wound, but the situation
might demand such concentration despite
distractions like shrapnel and arterial spray.
When performing a task, the Market quotes
the number of uninterrupted combat rounds
required to attempt a check OR the number
of successful checks required to complete
the task (never both, unless the whole group
likes constantly rolling dice and failing).
Sometimes, a task might not require a check
at all, but the time it eats up still means a lot
in a firefight.
The Market stipulates whether the player’s
task requires uninterrupted focus or merely
cumulative focus. For instance, battlefield
surgery can’t be stopped for the doctor to
return fire – the Market might say it requires
two rounds uninterrupted before the player
can make a single Profession: Surgeon check
to determine success.
On the other hand, somebody chopping
down a door with an axe can spare one swing
for the casualty that strays too close – in
this instance, the Market might require two
successful Melee checks before the door
breaks, but successes don’t have to occur
concurrently.
r g o r g y.
i s a cybo
d e r n w ar w ay
Mo H a r a
-Donna
 Finally, maybe the task is too simple to the 1 is dropped and the initiative order
warrant using the dice. Cranking a generator established).
might require two rounds spent on the
task, but failing to grasp a handle isn’t an 2. Declare, Spend, and Resolve
interesting or reasonable way to fail, so the • The highest initiative player or Market
Market doesn’t require a check at all. force declares a tactic, buys-a-roll, and
Freebies don’t interrupt tasks, but tactics resolves the action.
and twitches do. Thankfully, Takers engaged • As the round continues, twitches and
in tasks can be in cover at the same time, but freebies are demanded by the actions of
they have to trust their coworkers to keep Market forces or used at the discretion of
them from getting flanked and killed. In short, the player. Both twitches and freebies are
to perform a task, forgo all other actions unbound in the initiative order.
except screaming for the crew to help.
3. Deal Damage and Assess Penalties
• Damage is recorded directly after the
The Combat Round tactic that caused it. Damage is always the
A combat round is defined by the number
Black. Hit location is always the Red. The
of actions that can be performed by each
weapon used determines if the damage
PC (one tactic, twitch, and freebie, or one
is Kill or Stun damage. The damage is
task and one freebie) and the order in which
unmodified by extra spends unless the
those actions happen, called the initiative
gear is specifically upgraded.
order. Other than those two traits, a combat
• If using the Bust Rule: Random Damage
round has no definitive limits. In terms of
(p. 281), the Market rolls Black/Red to
time, one combat round is usefully vague
determine how much damage the PC
enough to allow the group more storytelling
takes rather than using the results of a
options. Groups are free to narrate fights in
failed twitch.
a style befitting the painstaking slow-mo of
• Assess and implement any penalties as a
a John Woo shootout, or they can opt for a
result of health or Humanity loss.
sudden, second-long burst of bloodshed ala a
Tarantino standoff.
4. Repeat
For ease of reference, here’s a summary of
• After everyone has acted, the combat
the combat round:
round ends. Twitches unspent by the end
of the round are discarded (unless the
1. Initiative
character is specifically using upgraded
• The Market rolls one Red die for every
gear that allows them to be spent). The
Market force involved in the combat.
initiative order cycles back to the highest
• Players roll one Black die each and add
player and repeats until the conflict ends.
their SPD.
• Players declare from highest to lowest
InItIatIve
numbers, after their SPD is added. The
Unlike other dice checks in Red Markets,
Market uses Red dice from the pool to
initiative is not a success or failure check.
place Market forces in-between their
Rolling initiative means rolling a single d10
numbers. This is called the initiative order.
upon which the character’s Speed is added.
(For instance, the players rolled and the
The person with the highest number goes
Market got a 10, 4, and 1. Bill goes first
first. But what happens to the Red dice?
with 11, Thug A goes next with a 10,
The Market needs to determine what
Melanie got an 8, DeMarcus 7, Thug B
order their forces act just like the players,
goes at 4. The Market is out of forces, so
so initiative is one of the only times the
275
 Market rolls dice in combat. Before combat
begins, the Market rolls one Red die for
every NPC or Market force involved in the
combat, minimum the number of players in
the combat. For instance, if the Market has
two NPCs opposing a three-player crew, the
Market still rolls three Red dice. All the Reds
are rolled at once and left on the table in a
pool.
The players roll only their Black and add
their SPD. The Market then asks who has
the highest number. In decreasing order, the Gnat’s player gets B8+1 for a B9
Market records the character names in the BanHammer’s player gets B9+3 for a B12
order they act. At this point, the Red dice Monk’s player rolls a B4+2 for a B6
come into play. The Market rolls 3 Reds (1 for each
The Red dice are spent to insert Market combatant) for a 10, 10, 7
forces into the initiative order.
Looks like BanHammer is going first:
Example: It’s an even fight: Gnat, nothing the Market has can beat a 12. Then
BanHammer, and Monk battle against a rival two of the rival crew – Baddie A and B –
crew willing to kill to steal their contract. are going to go at the same time with 10’s.
The Market has a pool of three Reds (one for Gnat’s 9 is up next, then the R7, and finally
each member of the crew, and enough for all Monk. So the order for the fight is going to
the Market forces). Everybody rolls. Only the be BanHammer, Baddie A, Baddie B, Gnat,
players add initiative modifiers to their dice. Baddie C, and Monk.

276
 Notice that the PCs always have a slight
edge on Market forces because they can
have initiative scores above a ten using their
modifiers. This is because, despite all their
struggles, Takers are our heroes, cooler and
more capable than your average human being.
But as a counterbalance, the Market either
outnumbers the players or has more numbers
to choose from, representing the endless tide
of obstacles facing the PCs.
The Market never adds a SPD modifier to
forces unless they badass enough to have an
advantage (see p. 292). Once the initiative
order is established, it’s recycled every combat
round until until a player spends a point of
Will to jump to the top of the order or one
side is killed, disabled, or withdraws.
Declare, Spend, Resolve
Players declare what they are going to use for
their tactic in the order of initiative. Nobody
has to declare simultaneously unless they are
What about ties?
If initiative scores are exactly the same (whether due to
natural or modified dice), the two characters act at the
same time. Narratively, this can make for bloody shootouts or
comical double knockouts, but such things happen in the chaos
of violence. Mechanically, actions on the same initiative merely
resolve at the same time and ignore penalties.
For example, if a Taker shoots on initiative 5 and a raider
shoots on a 4, the raider might never get to act. The
damage of the blow might kill or disable the foe before
there’s a chance to retaliate. Alternately, if the Taker
AND the raider are on initiative 5, the Taker could blow
the raider’s brains out and the raider could still get an
attack off before death. In this example, the two characters
could easily kill each other and not hit the ground until the
initiative counts down to 4.

AlternatIve InItIatIve
If players want each round of combat as chaotic as the last, consider these alternative initiative rules.
Bust: Individual initiative: The Market pairs off forces with individual PCs. To keep things simple,
the Market resolves actions from left-to-right. Each player rolls Black + SPD. The Market, in
descending numerical order, then has each player make a Black + SPD/Red check against each
opponent. Success moves the character ahead of an opponent, failure after them. So, if Han is
fighting two cultists and rolls a success and failure, then Cultist A would act first, then Han, and
finally Cultist B. Once resolved, the Market would move to the next player down the list to see what
is happening to Han’s teammate during that the same time. This makes combat a simultaneous fit
of individual struggles that is, paradoxically, easier for the Market to track. It does, however, greatly
increase the power of numbers, as one PC falling will then throw all of the forces attention on
another Taker.
Boom: The Last Shall Be First: In this variant, the initiative order reshuffles every round. The PC
or NPC unfortunate enough to be last gets to use two tactics in a row: one as the last action of the
previous round, the second as the first action of the next round. If the first round order is A, B, C, D,
the second round is ordered D, A, B, C. Other than cycling the slowest character to the top, nothing
else changes: the rest of the order stays the same and everyone’s actions refresh as normal. This
alternative minimizes the amount of dice and bookkeeping the Market must deal with while still
adding more variation to the tactical picture. The lowest initiative number becomes a desirable spot
for players and a high-value target for Market Forces.
Bust: Fog of War: By rerolling for initiative at the top of every round, combat remains utterly
unpredictable. This variant means players have to constantly pay attention, adapt, and think on their
feet. That said, randomly ordering every round can sometimes result in farcical or murderously
difficult challenges, depending on where the dice land. Furthermore, rolling for initiative every round
slows down gameplay and demands more bookkeeping from the Market.
277
 working off the exact same initiative number.
In such instances, who actually says what
they are doing first means little because the
actions resolve at the same time regardless
(see “What about ties?” p. 277).
One of the few benefits of being slow on
initiative is the ability to see what others are
doing before deciding one’s own tactics. NPC’s
do the same, though instead of spending for
bonuses or rolling, the declaration either
demands characters use their twitch or
instantly resolves.
Before a player makes a check for a
declared tactic, they must spend to buy-a-roll.
This could be a charge of rations for a STR or
SPD skill, or a charge required to use a piece
of gear. If using charged gear to buy-a-roll, the
player can also spend additional charges to
add +1’s to their check (see “Charges” p. 179);
these charges must be spent before the check.
When the tactic is declared and the charges
spent, the dice are rolled and resolved.
Resolution means that the numbers on
the dice affect the narrative and alter the
character sheet. A missed attack doesn’t
require much resolution besides describing
how it missed, but a successful attack
warrants a description of where and how the
blow struck. Resolution is an opportunity
for both the Market and players to craft a
suspenseful story in which their characters
excel or fold under pressure.
TwItches and FreebIes
A twitch is compelled by the Market’s forces.
NPCs don’t succeed in an attack; Takers
fail to dodge. When the Market declares
an NPC’s tactic, it automatically succeeds
unless the player can do something about
it. That’s where twitches come in. A twitch
is the knee-jerk reaction that can save or
doom a character’s life. Spend the twitch on
a successful Athletics check to duck under
cover just in time; if the check fails, the
character jumps right into the bullet’s path.
Because twitches are compelled by Market
forces, they can go anywhere in the initiative
order. This flexibility is immensely powerful,
278
so twitches are limited in number and scope.
A character only gets one twitch per combat
round, and it can only be used when prompted
by Market forces. Furthermore, any twitches
not used by the end of the round are wasted.
Whether characters succeed or fail their
checks, no second twitch is provided. A Taker
that dodged an arrow is too distracted to
duck a sword strike. Bumbling into automatic
gunfire means the second and third bursts
hit as well. When a Market force declares
a tactic against a PC that has no twitches
remaining, the Market checks for hit location
and damage, or the player may be asked
to determine their own fate. Either way,
when the twitch is already spent, any action
declared against that PC succeeds.
There are special moves characters can
use to convert twitches into tactics, burn them
for special effects, or earn another twitch,
but these combat maneuvers are tied to the
initiative order and their effects only take
place after that players turn.
Like twitches, freebies can go anywhere a
player wishes in the initiative order, but each
character is limited to one. A character can
scream a warning, but there’s not enough
time for a lecture. They can assess the scene,
but no one is going to sketch a map with
casualties closing in.
Assess PenaltIes
Characters do not take the penalties for
injuries until after the initiative order in which
they are sustained. Once the initiative ticks
down by even one number, the penalties are
assessed according to the Hit Location Table
(see “Hit Locations and Damage” p. 280) and
applied to any following tactics or twitches.
Narratively, this brief pause represents
the adrenaline rush fading and surprising
combatants with the knowledge that they’ve
been fighting with a wound for the past few
seconds.
Most of the time, penalties in combat are
going to take the form of Self-Control checks
to maintain Humanity (see p. 310). Only
one type of check can be made per combat.
 on their actions, and the battle continues
until one side wins, escapes, or manages to
negotiate a peace.

Movement
Red Markets does not require hex spaces,
maps, or distance per action ratios to
keep track of where characters are in the
environment. Groups that are invested in
that type of play can easily adapt these rules
to fit their brand of fun, but the game is only
designed to provide the minimum amount of
objective spatial information. Players know
enough to make decisions based on where
their characters are in relation to others and
any objectives, but that’s about it.

Usefully Vague
How far can a successful Athletics check
take you? How many seconds to run to cover?
Exactly how many feet long is that spear? The
answer for all these questions and more is the
same: as long as is narratively convenient.
Notice the term “narratively convenient”
is NOT the same as personally convenient;
the only characters with superpowers in
Nobody has to worry about taking Humanity
the setting are trying to eat you. When
hits in the same Threat track after the first
performing an action in which time, distance,
check, and this keeps the assessing penalties
and speed is a factor, players can ask the
stage from dragging on endlessly. To return to
Market to describe the stakes as much as they
the example...
deem necessary. Trust the Market to quote
Penalties Example: BanHammer got hit
reasonable distances and plausible times that
hard last round. That’s going to mean Trauma
keep combat exciting.
damage if he doesn’t make the Self-Control
Narrative convenience can swing a player’s
check. BanHammer has Self-Control at 0
way as well. If a player asks if there is a crane
(he’s not known for his restraint). He defaults
in the shipping yard that could smash that
to his ADP of 2, but rolls over. He takes a
Aberrant, the Market should always strive to
hit on the Trauma track. Oh no! That’s a
reward such engagement with the setting.
crack! BanHammer’s player wants to stay in
Players dictating set pieces to the Market
the fight, so he chooses the...well, the Fight
doesn’t have to work every time – dice checks
option. BanHammer is now berserk and
can still be required, stipulations made, and
remains so for the rest of the scene.
absurdities dismissed – but badass stunts
are the kind of thing everybody wants from
Repeat
protagonists. Stipulating that the player can’t
Unless the group is using the Alternative
climb into the crane’s control room because
Initiative Rules, the order cycles back to the
his movement rate is one hex too slow is the
top after the last tactic is resolved. All twitches
kind of spoilsport gaming that can kill a cool
are discarded, everyone gets refreshes
moment.
279
 UsIng RatIons
When performing physical actions (such as
Melee, Unarmed, Resistance or Athletics),
charges of rations must be spent to buy-a-roll.
Additional rations charges can be spent to
add +1 at a one-for-one ratio. For instance,
spending one charge to buy an Athletics
check adds the character’s skill to Black, but
spending two charges adds the character’s
skill+1.
If a character runs out of rations, they are
gassed (see below) and cannot buy-a-roll for
physical skills until they refresh charges. A
full combat round spent resting restores a
number of charges equal to the character’s
SPD, but this only works once. For example,
a Taker with SPD 3 can rest to gain three
free charges of “rations” (in reality, burning
fat stores), but a second round of rest does
not add three more charges. Until rations are
refreshed, the Taker has only three charges
to spend on all physical actions before they
become gassed again.
Charges from rations get spent in the
moment, but the narrative understands the
charges to represent a healthy caloric intake
before and after combat. Nobody is stopping
the fight to scarf down canned goods; the
charges represent a healthy diet in calm
times and the resulting financial burden of
preventing starvation.
GettIng Gassed, StarvIng, and PushIng On
If a character runs out of rations, they
are considered “gassed,” meaning totally
exhausted, winded, and unable to continue
at the pace the conflict demands. They can’t
make any physical actions that round aside
from slowly trotting or lifting light items, even
as a twitch. Once a round has gone by without
the character taking any physical actions
or being hit, characters regain a number of
charges equal to their Speed. If they have
rations, getting gassed can be prevented so
long as they keep spending charges off that
gear. Refreshing is a free action so long as the
character has the remaining ADP points to do
it.
280
If they don’t have the rations to spend,
each gassed character’s usable charges stay
at the SPD rating until they sleep, eat, and
rehydrate. Waiting around for a full refresh
isn’t an option; bodies that must perform must
be fed and rested.
If no rations are waiting for breakfast,
characters take 1 Stun damage to every
location due to starvation. If the characters
don’t get any food the next day or Leg either
(whatever comes first), add two more Stun
boxes to each location. On day three, take
three Stun damage everywhere. Continue
until immobilized or fed, and don’t forget the
Humanity damage that results from starving.
Stun damage keeps progressively
increasing until food is found or the character
dies. The Stun damage taken must be healed
normally. More information on the dangers
of starving and how they manifest outside of
combat can be found in “Weird Damage” p.
283.
HIt LocatIons and Damage
In Red Markets, the amount of damage
inflicted is always determined by the natural
Black, and the location is always determined
by the natural Red. Spend nine charges
blasting away with a gun to turn a B1/R6 into
a B1+9/R6 success? Great, but it’s still just
one damage done to the left arm. The same
dice are used to calculate damage on failed
rolls during twitches. If a PC fails an Athletics
check with B5+3/R9, five points of damage
goes to the torso; the damage doesn’t go up
on account of the Taker wisely trying to get
away with extra rations charges and skill. Fail
a dodge on B9/R9? Ouch. That’s 18 points of
damage to the chest (9 damage to hit location
9, multiplied by a critical failure).
There are two types of damage: Stun
and Kill. Stun damage constitutes bruising,
numbness, blunt trauma, muscle fatigue,
and other non-bleeding damage. Kill damage
constitutes broken bones, punctures,
lacerations, poisoning, and serious
internal injury. The damage type inflicted
 is determined by the weapon used and any
upgrades it might have. Indicate Stun damage
with a diagonal slash ( / ) in a box. Indicate
Kill damage with an ( X ).
Every character has 10 hit boxes per
location, except for the torso, which has 20. If
a hit location is filled up with any combination
of Stun and Killing damage, there are
consequences. Stun or Kill damage inflicted
to a location already filled with Stun damage
becomes Kill damage (turn a diagonal into
an X). When a location is filled entirely with
Killing, the consequences get more severe.
Bust Rule: Random Damage
Using the failure of player rolls to determine
damage minimizes dice checks, but it favors Takers
with light damage (low Black) to the torso and
head (high Red). Conversely, Takers amputate a lot
of legs and arms (high Black for damage, low Red
for location).
Normally, the only time the Market rolls in
combat is to determine initiative order and
calculate damage when a Taker has no twitch
to contest an attack (see “Market Dice Checks”
p. 176). For groups that want more dynamic and
deadly combat, the Market can check Black/Red
for every hit. Random damage rolls don’t slow the
game down too much, and they raise the stakes of
combat even higher.
Think about how often the Market should be
rolling before adopting this alternate rule. If the
Market rolls every time a Taker is hit and the dice
land B10/R10, it’s time to make a new character...
even if it was their last day before retirement. If
the Market rolls for damage every time the player
hits and it lands B1/R5, all emptying the clip
accomplished was lightly grazing the enemy’s arm.
Market rolls against Takers make the game much
more deadly; Market rolls against NPCs makes
combat more frustrating. Groups should make
sure they know what particular flavor of gameplay
they’re inviting in before adopting alternative
random damage rules.
Bust Rule: AlternatIve HIt Boxes
Tired of taking and dealing leg damage? Scratch
out the numbers listed on the character sheet
and fill the following numbers into the “Alt.”
Box.
Right Leg: 1
Left Leg: 2
Right Arm: 3
Left Arm: 4
Torso: 5-9
Head: 10
Now everyone knows to aim center mass.
There’s less chance of leg damage than before,
but now 60% of all hits land in a kill location.
Being hobbled might not sound so bad when
a bullet tears through your character’s heart,
so make sure everyone is up to the challenge
before altering the hit boxes, especially if using
this rule in tandem with the random damage
rule.
BleedIng Out
If an extremity is filled with Kill damage, the
sufferer is bleeding out. Every turn they go
without healing, they take 1d10 Kill damage
per round. The Taker may choose which
locations the hit points come from, but the
Kill damage must be healed like any other
damage. Filling the torso or head as a result
of blood loss results in death.
A First Aid check can be made to stop the
bleeding. See below.
HealIng In the FIeld
Characters with First Aid or training in
Profession: Doctor and the proper gear
can heal some damage done in combat. A
successful check heals a number of Stun
boxes equal to the natural Black of the check
(spent charges just indicate a greater chance
of success, not better medical skill). Kill boxes
are reduced to Stun boxes at the same rate,
meaning 2 profit is needed for every Kill
281
 box completely removed. In narrative terms,
this healing is represented in painkillers,
coagulants, bandages, and the other trappings
of field medicine.
First Aid checks are one-and-done per
Taker, per location. For instance, a healer
couldn’t possibly get someone with a filled
torso back to full health while the bullets
were flying unless the injuries were light
to begin with. However, they could work on
the fighter’s torso one round, and then try to
repair the fighter’s arm on the next. A skilled
friend could check the suture work later and
make their own First Aid check on the injured
torso, but the previous medic has already
done all they can do.
The only way to succeed a failed First Aid
check is to succeed at cost, either by using a
point of Will or, if time allows and technology
is available, tapping a Reference to consult on
the procedure.
Beyond that, healers can’t take any more
action on a body part until it is filled with
brand new injuries. Additional treatments
require the care of a doctor and rest in a safe
place.
282
Death
Filling the torso or head (locations 7-9 or 10)
with Kill damage kills a character through
cardiac failure, blood loss, brain trauma,
or some combination of the three. Some
weapons can do this in one hit. This makes
for a deadlier game than some players prefer,
so there are Boom rules for mitigating such
sudden damage.
Bust Rule: Permanent Damage
Serious wounds rarely leave no lasting effects,
especially considering the kind of care available
in the Loss. If an arm or leg is filled completely
with Kill damage, the Market rolls Black/
Red with no modifiers. On a critical success,
the Takers can heal all hit boxes in the limb
normally. On a success, the Taker permanently
loses a hit box from that hit location. Completely
color in that box with pen to represent the
permanent damage left by the injury. On a
failure, the limb permanently loses two hit
boxes. On a critical failure, three hit boxes.

Boom Rules
Will to Live: Spending a point of Will can shift
damage that would go to the head to the torso.
It can also keep an incapacitated player alive for
one round longer.
Lucky X: Spending a point of Will can shift
damage from any hit location to a piece of
gear. The equipment and all its upgrades are
completely destroyed, but the damage doesn’t
affect the Taker. Players and Market’s should
take care to keep the lucky intervention of
objects cinematic and not goofy. It’s one thing
if the frame of some Uniq Specs deflects a
low-caliber bullet; it’s quite another if someone
argues that a flashlight could deflect all a
grenade’s shrapnel.
WeIrd Damage
The Loss contains a variety of dangers beyond
direct warfare. Here are some guidelines
for inflicting weirder types of damage on the
players.
CollIsIon
Car crashes in Red Markets should only be
two things: fast and cinematic.
To stay fast, there’s no calculating the speed
of vehicles and doing physics equations to
figure out damage. Like films, vehicles move
at a narrative speed rather than a physical
one. The Market narrates how fast the
vehicle feels to the PCs. They can use actual
readings on the speedometer if everyone
feels that is important, but the main goal of
the Market during a vehicle scene is to make
sure characters know what kind of risk the
characters are taking. If a fight between
cars is lazily circling a parking lot where the
biggest consequence for falling out of the
car would be a twisted ankle, the Market
should let that be known. If the vechiles are
going so fast that one pothole could send the
whole thing tumbling through the air, make
it known. The Market doesn’t have to tell
players the exact speed, but if something goes
wrong, the consequences shouldn’t come to
players as a surprise.
In terms of calculating damage, don’t bother
with it at all if the narrative speed allows for
the vehicle’s survival. If the car can still run,
focus on narrating the Road Warrior-esque
battle the Takers are having with the raider
caravan or whatever.
If the wreck is bad enough to stop the ride,
even temporarily, then the Market calculates
damage to the characters based on the
estimated vehicle speed when the collision
occurred.
Fender-bender: all passengers take 1d10
Stun to a single hit location.
Whiplash: all passengers take 1d10 Stun to
all hit locations
Total-out: all passengers take 1d10 Kill to a
single hit location
Disaster: all passengers take 1d10 Kill to all
hit locations
Conflagration: all passengers die
The Market should make sure that the
players know how fast they are driving and
have chances to use their Skills to avoid a
wreck. Putting the pedal to the floor is a
choice – one with risks and rewards – so
make sure the PCs know the stakes.
FallIng
There are two types of falls: leaps and
tumbles.
Characters leap of their own accord. They
know it will likely hurt when they land, but
it’s preferable to the zombies, flames, bullets,
or whatever else is chasing them. When a
character leaps, the damage of falling is taken
on the legs only. Roll Black and Red. The
player picks the lowest number and inflicts
the damage to both limbs. So a B4/R6 would
do 4 damage to each leg. Whether the damage
was Kill or Stun would depends on the height.
But most people that fall from great heights
would prefer not to. These are called tumbles.
Characters tumble when they lose their
283
 footing or suffer knockback on a precipice.
The damage taken from a tumble occurs
to two random hit locations. The damage
is rolled separately for each hit location to
represent an off-balance landing. A tumbling
character might roll B5/R10 and B6/R2. That
would be five damage to the head and another
six to the right leg as the character bounces
off the deck. Stun vs. Kill would again depend
on distance.
There are three distances a character can
fall from...
Considerable: both hit locations take 1d10
Stun damage
Impressive: both hit locations take 1d10 Kill
damage
Suicidal: both hit locations take 1d10 Kill
and Stun damage.
InfectIon
The mechanics of Blight infection are
explained in-depth in “Blight: Casualties and
Vectors” p. 295.
PoIson/Drugs
Beyond a few drugs specific to the setting,
there aren’t many chemicals stated out in Red
Markets. Groups are encouraged to make up
their own deadly concoctions or research real
world chemicals if they want some insidious
poisoners in their game. Regardless, poison
or drugs come in just two varieties: vascular
and neurological.
Vascular substances target the torso.
Starting at whatever hit location is used to
inject the chemical, the drug “crawls” through
the bloodstream to reach the torso hit boxes
at 1d10 boxes per round. So if someone gets
injected in the arm, let’s assume the Market
rolls a B6 for the poison. That means the
first six boxes of the arm get filled. If the dice
land B6 again the next round, the other four
hit boxes in arm fill up, and the remaining
two moves to the torso as the poison crawls
towards the heart. Essentially, a vascular
poison does damage like the “Bleeding Out”
status effect.
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Using the above example, neurological
substances work the same way except the
destination is the head. The second round’s
damage would bleed over into the head,
rather than the torso.
What happens to the hit boxes? It depends
on what the substance is meant to do. A
tranquilizer would fill the head with specialty
damage units until the Taker passed out.
So, as the Market rolled d10s to move the
damage to the head, they would fill hit boxes
with check marks to trace the path of the
contaminant. Once the Taker passes out, the
check marks are erased because the drug’s
narrative effect has been achieved.
If the drug is a weak poison or paralytic,
the 1d10 hit boxes might use stun damage
to move to the brain or heart, continuing to
fill the vital boxes until the Taker is gassed
or unconscious. A deadly poison would keep
going until all the Stun damage was upgraded
to Kill and the Taker died.
These methods of tracking poison and
drugs are only really necessary for time-
sensitive scenes such as combat. If a Taker
gets dosed with something outside of direct
conflict, Markets are advised to treat the
scene narratively or to use Skill checks.
SuffocatIon
If a Taker can’t breathe – due to being
underwater, immersed in a gas, choked in a
grapple, etc. – they have a number of rounds
equal to their SPD before any negative effects
occur. After that, Takers receive 1d10 Stun
damage per round to the torso (location 7-9).
If the torso is filled up with Stun/Kill damage
and the Taker still can’t get air, the excess
damage bleeds over into the head (location
10). If the head gets filled up, the Taker falls
unconscious and the 1d10 damage per round
starts turning the head’s Stun boxes into Kill
damage. At this point, the Taker either gets a
breath or dies when the head fills up.
Once allowed to breath, all Stun damage
taken from suffocation is erased automatically.
Any Kill damage resulting from suffocation
must be healed normally.
Combat Maneuvers and SpecIal
Cases
Certain moves in combat provide bonuses,
effects, and protections. Most of these
maneuvers work by spending tactics and
twitches special ways. A list of combat
maneuvers is explained below and
summarized in the Combat Summary Cheat
Sheet (see p. 490)
Block
A Taker might want to make sure damage
lands on an armored limb rather than a soft,
vital organ. Blocking an attack involves rolling
an Unarmed, Melee, or Resistance to avoid an
attack instead of Athletics and counts as the
use of a twitch.
Failure means the attack lands normally.
Success means the damage is directed to
the gear or hit location used to block. For
instance, if Falstaff uses Melee: Sword to
block an incoming spear thrust, a success
takes one charge of the sword and does no
damage to Falstaff. Alternately, if Falstaff is
unarmed and just wants to make sure the
blow lands on his chainmail armored arm
rather than his vulnerable thighs, he can
make an Unarmed check to direct the damage
to a hit location of his choice.
Firearms cannot be blocked and, as most
human enemies use them, blocking has
limited utility in traditional conflicts. Blocking
is more useful when fighting casualties one-
on-one; the beasts’ jaws can clamp down on
an armored arm or tool while the Taker’s
other hand delivers the killing blow.
Cover
The enemy can see you and you can see them.
Or neither of you can see each other. Unless
somebody is blinded, this is always the case.
If you’re behind a shield and pop up to take a
shot, the enemy can hit you as you pop up. If
you’re behind the shield and it’s actually cover
(e.g. bulletproof), you can’t be hit and you can’t
attack.
Cover requires an Athletics check to get
to unless the player started out in cover by
design, such as with an ambush. Once in
cover, no attacks can be declared against that
player. Similarly, any attacks against NPCs in
cover miss.
The effects are voided the moment the
character in cover makes an attack or moves
out of cover. After that, they are fair game for
the rest of the round and they must make an
Athletics check to duck back down in time
(requiring a twitch). If no one declares on the
exposed player and the cycle ends with the
twitch unused, the player can burn it at the
end of the initiative order to duck back into
cover for free, without a check.
Certain weapons with tags like explosive
and armor-piercing can bypass cover and
make attacks without exposing the wielder.
Otherwise, to attack characters in cover, they
must be flanked (see below).
Called Shots
Called shots target specific locations: a
head, a grenade, a chain, etc. To make a
called shot, a Taker must spend a twitch
to take careful aim and a tactic to attack.
Additionally, the Taker moves to the end of
the initiative order, and the attack check has
the precision requirement. A called shot fails
if the character is struck while taking aim
or is otherwise distracted. On a success, the
location is struck regardless of what the Red
lands on. Will may be spent to change the
results. Either way, the character does not
return to their original place in the initiative
order.
FIrIng Into Melee
Firing into melee combat requires a Precision
check (no extra charges can be spent). If the
Shoot check fails, the attack hits an ally. If it’s
a called shot that fails, the shot misses both
targets unless it’s a critical failure. In general,
using a gun to interrupt a wrestling match is a
bad idea if either participant is a friend.
Flank
If an enemy is in cover, PCs can make
Athletics check to go around the sides and
285

flank the enemy. The number of Athletics
checks required is always one; if the distance
is longer, the Market should clarify the
number of rounds it takes to get around the
side of the target and call for a task action.
Additional Athletics checks in a lengthy
flanking maneuver aren’t to get into position;
they are to avoid being hit by other NPCs,
burning twitches on dodge opportunities.
As such, it’s wise for flanking PCs to start in
cover, go on full defense (see below), and use
both twitches to stay safe.
NPCs attempting to flank can be seen
running to better ground, and attacks against
them are declared and resolved normally.
If an enemy or PC is flanked, they are not in
cover to the flanker. The flanker can declare
actions against them, or the defender can
move and open themselves to declarations
from other combatants. Suppressing an
enemy in cover and sending someone else to
flank is a very effective strategy.
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Full Defense
Sometimes it’s wise to prioritize staying
alive. In this instance, full defense is a good
choice. Full defense converts a tactic into a
twitch. The original twitch can go off whenever
prompted by Market forces, but the second
can’t be used until the player declares full
defense on their initiative order. From that
point on, twitches respond to threats normally
and can be used whenever prompted,
regardless of initiative. Declaring full defense
is much more effective at the top of the round
than bottom.
Full Offense
Full offense converts a twitch into another
tactic and moves it to the end of the initiative
order. This allows for a second attack in the
same round. Full offense must be declared
on a player’s initiative and, once the twitch
is converted to a tactic, it can’t revert back
into a twitch until the initiative cycles again.
The second attack moves to the end of
the initiative order and resolves normally,
factoring in any penalties accrued as a result
of the player’s no-holds-barred strategy.
GrapplIng
It’s possible a Taker wants to restrain a target
without doing damage. If the opponent is
another Taker, make an opposed Unarmed
check (see p. 178), and repeat the contest for
every round the wrestling lasts.
Against Market forces, make an Unarmed
check against the target. On a success, the
target is grappled. Make an Unarmed check
every subsequent round to keep the target
restrained. If at any point the check is failed,
the target escapes and declares attacks
normally.
If the Taker is damn fool enough to try
and wrestle a casualty or Vector, make an
Unarmed check to get in close without
being bit. If the first check succeeds, every
subsequent check to maintain the hold is
made with Resistance, rather than Unarmed;
the undead are not deterred by the pain of a
joint lock, and they aren’t trying to get away
so much as burrow inside you. If the grappled
creature is bleeding, infection is also a
possibility.
Knockback
Some weapons cause knockback damage,
allowing the attacker to narrate that the target
is either knocked prone or into some nearby
portion of the environment (spinning blades,
for instance). The blow itself does no extra
damage, but the target has to waste a tactic to
climb up from a prone position. The effects of
a knockback can be resisted with a twitch –
characters must make a Resistance check to
stay stationary/upright.
Ready
Some players are methodical types that like
to ensure every check is a success. For those
players, there is the ready action.
To ready an action, the Taker must abstain
from all actions for one round; they may not
perform a tactic, twitch, or task, and they must
not be struck or otherwise affected by the
actions of Market forces. After a character
has been ready for a full cycle of the initiative
order, they can do one of two things:
1) move to the top of the next initiative order
for the next round only
2) roll Black + Skill + Potential for the next
check
These effects are cumulative, so if a Taker
takes two rounds to ready an action, the check
can add Potential and moves to the top of the
next cycle of initiative order.
ReloadIng and RearmINg
If a tool runs out of charges and is static, it’s
just broken. If a tool is charged or capped, it
can be refreshed if the player has sufficient
ADP. Whether a gun is out of bullets, a
crossbow is out of bolts, a laptop is out of
batteries, or a first aid kid is out of bandages,
it takes a full round of combat to fish spare
charges out of a backpack. Refreshing is a
one combat round task action; any actions
declared against a Taker refreshing their
gear resolve if they aren’t in cover. The only
exception to this rule is certain upgrades
allowing some weapons to be reloaded with
any twitch actions left over in a round.
Drawing a new weapon costs a tactic as
well, as does stowing any other tool currently
held in the hands. Drawing a weapon from a
backpack is a task action costing one combat
round. Sometimes this may be too long
for a Taker that wishes to survive. In such
instances, the player can declare a “quick
draw.” This prepares a weapon stored on
the belt or back using only a twitch action.
Nothing stored in a backpack is eligible for
a quick draw, and anything held in the hands
before a quick draw has to be dropped to the
ground. No gear with the cumbersome quality
may be quick drawn.
Rush
Takers can burn both a tactic and twitch to
rush the enemy. This must be declared on
their initiative. The Taker makes an Athletics
test. If it succeeds, the Taker uses their twitch
as another tactic and performs a Melee or
Unarmed attack that resolves at the same
time. If the first Athletics test fails, the Market
forces get a free attack. The player can choose
to eat the damage and finish the attack, or use
their twitch to break off the assault and try to
dodge.
Spray
If a weapon possesses the spray upgrade,
on a successful attack a PC can burn three
additional charges for a free attack. The
Shoot check must succeed first, but then,
upon burning the three charges, the player
can choose to deal damage again to the same
target or make a separate attack on a nearby
target. Against humans, the second attack
only lands on a Precision check and uses the
damage of that second dice check. Against
casualties and Vectors, the second attack hits
automatically.
NPCs can also spray if they have a capable
weapon. It requires a successful hit as
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 well, but afterwards it is treated as another
declared attack that goes off on the same
round. For instance, if a PC burned a tactic
for Athletics as part of a Rush, failed and got
hit, then had the same NPC spray him, the
PC could still use his twitch in an attempt to
dodge the second attack.
SuppressIng FIre
If an opponent is in cover and the attacker
doesn’t want them to leave, they can lay down
suppressing fire. To do this, a PC just spends
three rounds off their weapon, knowing it will
bounce harmlessly off the cover. However, the
NPC remains pinned behind that cover so
long as the PC keeps spending rounds and
exposing themselves to attack. Anyone laying
down suppressing fire is not considered in
cover.
NPC’s can suppress PC’s too. If the player
still insists on leaving cover, they must make a
Self-Control check threatening Trauma AND
use a successful twitch to dodge if they don’t
want to get hit.
Example Combat Round
BanHammer dislikes guns; he prefers
to crush enemies with his warhammer.
BanHammer’s player asks if any of the
enemies are in melee range. The Market
responds they are not, but with BanHammer’s
superior initiative he could rush to close the
distance. BanHammer likes this plan. He
spends a charge of rations to buy-a-roll, and
an additional three charges of rations for a +3.
With BanHammer’s Athletics modifier (+3)
and the three spends, that’s a total of +6 to the
check. He really wants to get at these guys.
BanHammer’s player rolls B7+6/R2,
for a total of B13/R2. Turns out he didn’t
really need to exert himself that much, but,
damnit, he wants blood. The ex-raider goes
tearing across the open ground, screaming
and whirling his hammer. The Market asks
if BanHammer wants to burn his twitch to
make an attack immediately (the second part
of a rush). Of course he does! He spends
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rations for his Melee attack with his hammer.
The weapon is static and the player is trying
to conserve energy now, so BanHammer’s
only adding his skill. He rolls and adds his
Melee (+2). He gets a B8+2/R7 for a total of
Black 10. It’s a hit. Normally, BanHammer
would have to take a charge off his melee
weapon as it smashes into something solid,
but the sledge has been upgraded to sturdy
and withstands the impact just fine. However,
BanHammer’s player wants the knockback
effect from the weighted upgrade, so he burns
a charge off the hammer anyway.
The damage is resolved instantly: Bad
Guy A takes a hammer blow to the chest for
8 Stun and 8 Kill damage. The Market gave
these forces 20 hit boxes in that location, but
the blow still almost incapacitated Bad Guy A
instantly. Note that had the Black landed on
a critical success, or if Banhammer had been
able to make a called shot, Bad Guy A would
be dead. But he’s still got four hit points left.
He’s knocked back by the blow, but that means
he can’t move until he wastes a turn standing
up; he can still attack whilst on his back.
Bad Guy A obviously wants to shoot
BanHammer. BanHammer’s player wants to
make his Athletics check to dodge, but the
Market reminds him that he already used his
twitch to rush. Having rushed blindly ahead
in a frenzy, BanHammer is hit with a shot
by Bad Guy A’s rifle. The Market rolls B7/
R10. OUCH! With previous injuries, that’ll
kill BanHammer outright if he doesn’t have
a helmet on. He doesn’t, so BanHammer’s
player spends his last point of Will to shift the
Kill damage to his chest (see “Will to Live” p.
283). BanHammer takes 7 Kill damage to the
torso as a bullet rips between his ribs.
Bad Guy B is reasonably more concerned
with the madman wielding a cudgel amongst
his ranks, and he’s on the same initiative as
A, so he’s declaring an attack on BanHammer
too. That crazy rush doesn’t seem like such a
good idea now. With no chance for a twitch,
BanHammer is struck by a pistol round... the
Market rolls B2/R1, hitting the right leg (R1)
for two damage (B2).
 Bad Guy C is the leader of this little group charges on a precision check. If he hits, the
and hates Gnat more than anything else. Market force will be killed, regardless of the
Ignoring the struggle next to him, he aims damage. Called shots to the head kill Market
to kill that little interloper. Bad Guy C’s forces instantly (see “Market Forces” p. 291).
declaration of an attack on Gnat demands If he fails, he’ll hit BanHammer (see “Firing
her twitch. Gnat’s player can choose to ignore Into Melee” p. 285)
the risk and take the hit, saving her twitch Monk rolls B7+2/R4; that’s B9/R4 with
for something else. But with an assault rifle Monk’s skill added. Success! The pistol-
bearing down on her, she decides it’s time to wielding thug slumps to the ground with a
move. round between the eyes, dead instantly. With
Gnat uses her twitch for an Athletics check only a single, prone foe left gunning for him,
to dodge. She buys-a-roll with one ration that will help the injured BanHammer survive
charge, decides she really doesn’t want to get the next round.
hit, and spends four more charges. With her
+1 Athletics, that’s a total of +5 to the check.
She rolls B6/R6. That’s a crit success! Gnat
LootIng The Dead
To the victors go the spoils. Players are going
asks if she can have her extra charges back
to want to ransack the bodies of anyone
as a reward for the critical success and the
they kill. That’s fair; making a garage sale of
Market says yes. She scrambles out of the
anyone dumb enough to fuck with you is a
way as a swarm of bullets tears up the ground
viable business model in the Loss.
where she just stood.
Looting casualties is its own challenge (see
Now it’s Gnat’s turn for tactic. She needs
“Looting the Undead” p. 301). For humans,
to hack the drone surveillance these goons’
anything the Market narrated the enemy as
friends are no doubt using to pinpoint the
having is fair game. So, if the Market said
firefight’s location and send reinforcements,
the forces were shooting mortars at them,
and she doesn’t want to get shot in the
the mortar tube is still there when artillery
process. Her player asks if there is any cover
team is defeated (provided, of course, it
around (see “Cover” p. 285), and the Market
wasn’t damaged). If the plot revolved around
says there is: an outcropping of rocks she
retrieving the Maltese Poodle, the enemies
can duck behind lies a dozen yards away. She
have it so long as the Market says so. The
spends a ration to buy another Athletics check
same goes for allies. If it was on one your
and leaves it at that. She rolls B1+1/R4. Her
buddies’ character sheet, you can pick it up off
+1 in Athletics isn’t enough to get her there
his corpse.
that round; she’s still stumbling from her
If the Market doesn’t know what the forces
desperate bullet dodging, after all. She’ll be
were equipped with either, the choice goes to
eligible for declared attacks next round.
the players. For every slain human combatant,
Monk sees that BanHammer is hurt and
one Taker can make a Scavenge check. This
outnumbered. With no one left to shoot at
DOES NOT mean every member of the crew
him and no one moving under him in the
can rummage through the pockets of every
initiative order, he burns his twitch to take
single corpse until they find something. Total #
a called shot (see “Called Shots” p. 285) to
of Scavenge checks = number of slain Market
the uninjured Bad Guy B’s head. All called
forces ≤ number of available Takers.
shots are precision shots, but since he’s firing
So if a group of five Takers kills one raider,
into melee that would be the case anyway
one member of that crew can make one
(see “Firing into Melee” p. 285). He spends a
Scavenge check. If two raiders were slain, the
round from his pistol to fire, hoping that his
crew could make two checks, but the other
+2 in Shoot is enough to get him the profit he
three members of the crew have to stand
needs for a hit, since he cannot spend extra
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 guard duty. If a crew of five Takers kills ten
raiders, they’re still only able to make five
Scavenge checks. The one-and-done rules
still apply; anything a character is capable of
finding is found on the first check and only on
the first check.
Before rolling to Scavenge, players can say
they are looking for one of three things while
looting:
• Any tool under 3 bounty in upkeep.
- Success: They find it.
- Critical Success: They find it with an
upgrade, or they can pass their success
on to the next player making a Scavenge
check, allowing them to search for gear of
any upkeep cost. If the next player
succeeds as well, the item is found.
• Bounty
- Success: Enemies were carrying bounty
equal to the natural Black of the Scavenge
check.
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- Critical Success: Bounty equals the
natural Black, times two.
• An upgrade to a specific piece of gear they
already own.
- Success: They find the upgrade
they’re looking for or materials to craft it.
- Critical Success: They find enough
material for two upgrades.
Markets should keep in mind that looting
the dead takes time. Casualties that hear
gunfire and smell blood are sure to cut short
any graverobbing. Furthermore, there exists
no level of badassary that makes rifling
through the pockets of a person you just
murdered pleasant. Self-Control checks
threatening Detachment and Trauma could be
in order, and Stress might damage Humanity
if nothing is found and all that sin turns out to
be for nothing.
 
Market Forces
Most people advertise their strength, and
hiding one’s ability while carrying actual
weapons is a sophisticated form of deception.
Even children can tell whether a fight is
a good idea or not: bullies steal the lunch
money of the chess club member and not the
captain of the wrestling team.
All of this is to say that there is no reason
for Markets to keep the abilities of their forces
secret: it complicates bookkeeping, slows
down play, and doesn’t make much sense.
While there isn’t much paperwork necessary
for the Market to run NPC antagonists, it’s
included here because there’s no reason to
keep that information away from the players.
Forces on Paper
Running a combat shouldn’t be a chore. What
follows are the only statistics Markets should
keep track of for human-on-human violence.
As always, zombies present their own unique
challenges, which can be found in “Blight:
Casualties and Vectors” p. 295.
Numbers
Uh...how many people are fighting? Pretty
important thing to know.
Weapons
There’s no need to know exactly what
kind of weapon an enemy is using except
for purposes of narrative immersion.
Mechanically, it operates off Melee or Shoot.
It does Stun, Kill, or Stun + Kill damage. It’s
explosive or it isn’t. It can spray or it can’t.
Feel free to search through the gear list and
equip forces with specific armaments, but
doing so isn’t a requirement to run a combat.
Remember: don’t give the NPCs anything you
don’t want the PCs to loot off their corpses.
Charges
Market forces don’t use charges because their
success or failure is determined by the Taker,
not their own rolls. Don’t track them. It’s too
much work.
This isn’t to say that antagonists have
endless ammo: if it makes sense for them to
run out, the Market can just say so. It’s even
better to let the players do it. Inflicting scarcity
on the NPCs is a great way to utilize critical
success. Roll double-evens on Athletics check
and the player can say the attacker’s gun is
empty. Crit a block and describe the sound a
shattering sword makes.
Armor
NPC armor negates one attack if the damage
type could feasibly be stopped and it only
applies for hit locations where it makes sense
to wear it. Don’t track charges for armor
and don’t let it endlessly absorb attacks
to the point of player frustration. Markets
should also describe where armor is worn
for any player that asks so that Takers can
incorporate that into their strategy.
NPC wearing a helmet gets hit in the head?
They’re okay. Same guy gets hit in the head
again? Helmet breaks and the NPC takes
damage.
Other EquIpment
Market forces carry whatever the Market
wants, but if it isn’t established in the
narrative, don’t worry about it. The exact
specifics of what’s in each opponent’s pockets
can be determined by the players using the
Scavenge mechanics (see “Looting the Dead’
p. 289).
HIt Boxes
Aside from the number of opponents, the
main way the Market can adjust the difficulty
and length of combat is through hit boxes.
There are three presets:
Part-time: These forces only have a general
pool of hit boxes. Damage to any location eats
away at the pool (unless there is armor on that
location). Once the pool is filled with any mix
of Stun/Kill damage, the NPC is incapacitated
and/or dead. Hit locations can still be used to
determine the narrative resolution of attacks.
For instance, a part-time Market force is still
291
 hobbled by a shot to the leg, even though the
damage goes to a general pool.
Ten hit boxes is a good baseline for part-
time forces. Armor makes them slightly
tougher, as does increasing the pool. Part-time
forces are sufficient – and preferable – for the
majority of conflicts in Red Markets.
Full-time: These forces have 10 hit boxes
in each location (almost like a Taker, but
with 10 less in the torso). For instance, an
NPC that takes 7 Kill damage to the left arm
would be recorded by the Market as “7 l.
arm” on a piece of scratch paper. If the next
attack hits for 3 Kill damage to the right leg,
it’s recorded as “3 r. leg” and the NPC keeps
fighting. Once any location (not just the torso
or head) fills with Kill/Stun damage, the NPC
is incapacitated and/or killed.
Full-time forces increase the difficulty of
combat by lengthening the amount of time
and precision required to down an enemy.
Armor increases this time even more. If even
more challenge is needed, upgrade to...
Management: The Market will need a hit
box man, as found on the Character Sheet
p. 485, for each NPC at the management
level. These Market forces utilize all the same
damage rules as the PCs.
Management makes combat quite lengthy
and difficult, as well as maximizing the
amount of paperwork the Market must
track. Management-level enemies should be
reserved for serious antagonists.
If even more tools are required for
manipulating the challenge, Markets can add
levels of Advantage (see next).
Advantage
On occasion, the Market may wish to up the
challenge with a particularly dangerous foe.
Singularly skilled opponents gain the upper
hand in multiple ways, using special rules
called advantage.
The point of throwing extra challenging
forces at players is to make the characters’
struggles more desperate, terrifying,
292
and heroic. Therefore, the Market never
completely ambushes the group with high-
threat enemies; once battle begins, the
skill and prowess of the opponent becomes
immediately apparent and the Market tells the
players what modifiers they need to overcome.
Since advantage is supposed to effect the
group’s tactical decisions, the details of each
level are listed below for the benefit of players
and Market alike.
TraIned Advantage
Most Takers didn’t professionally risk their
lives before the Crash; the same can’t be
said of some of the military and rebel groups
they might encounter. The trained advantage
represents the benefit of an extended
education in survival and combat.
The trained advantage is a modifier that
rates the program the forces went through.
A 1-point advantage would work for an
experienced SWAT officer, whereas a DHQS
super-spy might wield 3-points or higher. The
number is the modifier applied to dice rolls
declared against that NPC.
To be clear, the trained advantage modifies
players’ rolls targeted against AND prompted
by the NPC. Market forces never roll for
anything, even if forces have advantage. The
modifier could be subtracted from the Black
or added to the Red: choose only one. Add or
subtract depending on whatever your group
finds easier to calculate. Critical success and
failure resolves normally.
So, if a crew was fool enough to take on
a trained team of DHQS stewards with a
2-point trained advantage, a B8/R6 attack
wouldn’t hit; the advantage would negate
the success by subtracting from Black (mod
B8-2/R6) or adding to Red (mod B8/R6+2).
Regardless, the adjustment to the success/
failure rate is the same, and ties still go to the
Market. Similarly, an B8/R6 attempt to dodge
attacks from the Stewards would fail, but
damage would be calculated according to the
dice as normal. A natural B6/R6 would still
be critical success, regardless of any trained
advantage.
 Advice for trained advantage: People
with professional combat skills are valuable
commodities not easily risked and, when they
are actually deployed, aren’t fool enough to get
into a fight where the outcome is in question.
As such, Markets should throw trained forces
at the players rarely. To overcome such forces,
bring overwhelming logistics to bear. Try to
elicit help from NPC allies, then focus on
charged gear and tactics to overwhelm the
opposition with big spends.
GIfted Advantage
Some people are peak performers: natural-
born savants in certain areas. Sometimes
those innate skills happen to be in the area
of violence. And, sometimes, gifted killers
are out to get Takers. The gifted advantage
represents the 1% killers that might draw a
bead on the PCs.
The gifted advantage should be reserved
for singular foes; legends of the Loss whose
exploits are as much the subject of rumor as
fear. The nearly preternatural skill of such
an enemy is long foreshadowed, and the
realization that conflict is incoming should
provoke Self-Control tests. After all, the crew
is facing down the gunslinger Tenpenny
Blood, the Denim Ghost, the Vector Twins, or
whatever other larger-than-unlife characters
were developed over many contracts.
Mechanically, all rolls against gifted
characters are precision rolls. Charges may
only be spent to make a check. There’s no
bonus for material advantage; everything
becomes a contest of raw skill and luck.
If Ribbit is boxing against Tooth-cracker,
the best MMA fighter Distributy’s mafia has
to offer, a B8+1/R10 isn’t going to save her
face – no matter how many ration charges she
spends. Ribbit’s Athletics skill is either fast
enough or not. Her level of exertion means
nothing against the skill of the terrible Tooth-
cracker. In any fight, the bruiser of Distributy
predictably breaks another jaw, or someone
bests him with raw skill and becomes the new
champion. There’s no such thing as “wanting
it more” and spending big against a gifted foe.
Advice for gifted advantage: Market’s
should never spring gifted enemies on their
players without warning, doubly so if the force
is both gifted and trained. The entire point of
the endeavor is to emphasize the risk facing
such a skilled opponent entails. When the
importance of materialism in Red Markets
gets internalized by the players, the gifted’s
ability to negate the power of their charges
is intimidating. Knowingly facing such an
opponent makes for a powerful character
moment.
The very nature of gifted enemies limits
their numbers, so crews would be wise to
gang up when possible. Otherwise, the one
edge PCs have is their investments in skills
and Potentials, especially Will.
DetermInatIon Advantage
The will to survive against enormous odds
is what defines Takers. But they’re not the
only ones in the Loss with internal reserves,
and that same determination can turn
towards hate. When an NPC loathes the
PCs enough to plot schemes, vow oaths, and
single-mindedly pursue their destruction, the
Market gives that adversary a determination
advantage.
Determination is the most dangerous of
the advantages because it allows the Market
to spend points of Will to flip any check for or
against the PCs. The player may roll a natural
B10/R1 to dodge... but the Market has Mr. U
spend one of his points of Will to flip the dice.
Now it’s B1/R10.
As they are immensely dangerous as
enemies, Market forces with determination
advantage are reserved for climaxes of job
lines and campaigns. The power of Will points
is such that it shouldn’t be used by anyone
save the story’s primary antagonists.
Advice for determined advantage: Since it
has the power to snatch victory from the very
hands of players, it’s a sign of good intentions
if the Market states how many Will points an
antagonist has at the outset of combat. It’s
also good to only declare Will spends in line
with the determined NPC’s personality. For
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 instance, Mr. U is more likely to spend Will
on the character he blames for his financial
ruin, but a more disciplined NPC might
reserve Will for the most tactically opportune
moments. Both of these guidelines keep the
gamemaster’s tense climax from descending
into accusations of favoritism.
Players facing a determined foe have no
doubt been gearing up for the inevitable
showdown for some time, but so has the
antagonist. Determined foes rarely fight
alone and defeating one is all about spending
character resources carefully. A player can
spend a point of Will to upgrade attacks to
unflippable criticals or re-flip dice altered by
the opponent, but that means getting through
the rest of the job without blowing such a
powerful resource on some lesser challenge.
Other Advantages
Giving a Market forces more than one type of
advantage makes them extremely deadly. If
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someone is badass enough to have multiple
advantages, the prowess should be advertised
far in advance. When PCs choose to go up
against bad odds for love, family, or other
character motivations, getting slain can still
add to the narrative. Getting dismembered
by an omni-competent wasteland ninja out of
nowhere is just confusing.
Other types of advantage exist in Red
Markets, but they’re individualized to
Aberrants. Since Aberrants remain a topic of
speculation to some and abject terror to a few,
these advantages are supposed to come as a
surprise to players. If you work in a zombie
apocalypse for a living and something about
one of the undead looks weird – aside from
the whole walking corpse thing – you should
run. Not knowing what mechanical bonuses
the monster has reinforces this narrative
truth.
BlIght: CasualtIes and
Vectors
Infected, undead, biters, walkers – the
media had a hundred damn names for them
before the Blight made them real. What’s
one more? Takers ironically refer to zombies
as casualties, the censored nomenclature
used late in the Crash by the government-
controlled media (see p. 55). Most shorten the
term to “C’s” (pronounced sees).
Casualties are the “traditional” undead:
slow-moving, poorly coordinated, cannibalistic
corpses. This chapter tells players everything
about the mechanics of how they work in the
game. It also deals with Vectors – the fast,
hemorrhagic stage of early infection – and
rules for their use.
Aberrants – victims of the Blight that seem
to violate the disease’s own principles – are
not included here. Aberrants might not even
exist in some verions of the Red Markets
setting. If they do, the Market is under no
obligation to use the examples provided in
the book, nor do those pre-made monsters
need to behave as suggested mechanically. As
such, the mechanics of Aberrants are included
in the d10 Aberrants table in “Running the
Market” (p. 454) to avoid spoiling the horrific
surprise for players. For information on
rumored Aberrants that might be known in-
character, check out the Aberrants section in
“Lost Things” (p. 160)
Dead Weather
Casualties are not the antagonists of Red
Markets.
They’re too dumb to be villainous. They’re
so uncoordinated that they end up following
the path of least resistance. Most stumble
and trip in harsh terrain until they get
turned around and wander out of it. They
pool around pavement and low elevations
like water. If they move with any purpose,
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 it’s either towards food or some innocuous
location misfired from their dead memories.
Stay away from lowlands and landmarks, stay
quiet, keep moving, maintain line of sight –
most people can get across the Loss just fine.
But since the aimless wanderings of
casualties are funneled by geography, and
their infection likely happened in a major
population center, the things are never alone.
For every one you see, dozens are creeping
closer. They easily corner and devour the
unwary. One bite can make a Vector and those
sprinting disease carriers can destroy an
enclave in minutes.
Despite the omnipresent threat, it’s hard
to hate them. Sure, casualties want to eat
anything they see, but it’s a compulsion.
There’s no light in their eyes, no animosity.
Every single one was once somebody’s wife,
husband, brother, sister, mother, father, best
friend, friendly face, etc. Each casualty is
a painful reminder of a dead reality and a
rebuke to promises of the future. Takers like
to tell themselves casualties are monsters
when they aim the gun, but they never truly
convince themselves they aren’t shooting
human beings in the face.
I repeat: Casualties are not the antagonists
of Red Markets. There is nothing intentional
about their actions, and they’re entirely too
easy to thwart or pity. Other Takers, believers,
corporations, and military groups serve as
antagonists in a Red Markets game.
It’s best to think of casualties like the
weather. People can plan for, defend against,
and try to predict the weather. Often, this
preparedness saves lives. But sometimes, it
doesn’t matter. The Loss consumes whom it
pleases. It can creep through vulnerabilities
people didn’t know they had, or it can come
with the insurmountable force of a flood.
The dead weather works the same. Plan for
it. Avoid it. Fight it. Just don’t expect to stop it.
Casualty Placement
Markets have the power to place as many
casualties as they want, wherever they want,
whenever they want.
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This means that, yes, the Market could
parachute a thousand zombies inside the
enclave while the team is out on a job, killing
everyone, wiping out savings, and destroying
everything the characters ever loved. The
Market represents the cruel, capricious
uncaring weight of history, and that’s a thing
that could happen.
If your Market actually does something
like that, consider playing Red Markets with
someone else... dude sounds like a real
asshole.
The reason Markets have the power to put
zombies wherever they please is because the
placement of casualties can tell a powerful
story about the job site. If, for instance, all
the undead in an abandoned megachurch are
found locked up in the daycare, that suggests
a far more horrific end than if a roll of the
dice places all the casualties safely outside
the building. The Market has carte blanche
in placing casualties in order to craft better
stories.
Aside from crafting a more interesting
narrative, the Market should place casualties
randomly whenever possible. One of the few
rolls the Market makes is to generate undead,
and it goes a long way towards establishing
the unpredictable and dangerous nature of
the Loss. Like everything else in Red Markets,
generating random zombie mobs is done
through the Black and Red.
Casualty Stats
Casualties come in two sizes: mobs and
stampedes. Both types use the same stats,
but we’ll deal with mobs first. Groups of
casualties are generated with two numbers:
• Mass: determined by Black; this is the
number of individual casualties in the
mob.
• Shamble: determined by the Red, this
abstraction of distance measures the
number of combat turns before the
casualties reach the nearest player.
Shamble can be altered by the movement
of PCs.
 So, if the Market needs to know how many
casualties are in a grocery store, roll the dice.
B6/R3 means there are six undead (mass)
roughly 3 combat turns (shamble) away from
the group. The casualties will attack at the
end of the third round.
How are these stats tracked? Well, the
Market should use whatever makes the job
easiest, but the dice themselves make a good
counter. As opposed to scratch paper, using
the Black and Red help both the Market and
players keep track of how close the casualties
are to striking.
In the above example, the Market could
use the B6/R3 dice as they lay. If the Takers
kill a zombie, the Market moves the Black
to show a result of five rather than six (mass
reduced by one). After the whole crew has
acted, the Red goes down to two, representing
the mob coming closer. After another round,
the Shamble moves down to one and the
casualties can attack anyone close to them
at the end of the round. If the characters
run away, the Red is raised to represent the
distance gained.
CasualtIes In Combat
The undead are slow. They always go last in
any initiative order.
If Shamble reaches one and mass remains,
the mob attacks the character they just
reached. Players may use twitch to make an
Athletics check and avoid the grappling horde.
If the check fails, damage is done just like in
regular combat. A Black die’s worth of Kill
damage is done to the Red hit location. If the
player has no actions left, the Market rolls the
dice and damage is calculated the same.
If the mass is above one, the Market has
a choice. They can add +1 to the damage for
every additional zombie, or they can ask the
player to make a test against knockback (see
p. 287). When dealing additional damage,
add it to the same hit location as the zombies
focus in on the precious blood. If the Market
chooses knockback, the player makes a
Resistance check, adding any bonuses from
additional rations spent. On a success, the
character manages to avoid being dragged to
the ground. On a failure, the mob piles onto
the victim.
Frenzy
Casualties that get within one Shamble of a
player smell blood and enter “frenzy.” This
means the promise of food has the zombies
aroused and moving faster than usual. To
move out of melee range, a Taker must
either…
a) go full defense, spending both tactic and
twitch to get some distance. The Market can
make this two rolls or one task, according to
taste.
b) reduce the mob by one, trip up the
zombies on their own dead, and use a twitch
to get away
c) have a comrade reduce the mob by one,
stagger the casualties on their own dead, and
use either a tactic or twitch to get away
d) reduce the mass to zero before the end of
the round.
For instance, if Prole is engaged with a mob
and needs to escape, just making an Athletics
check for his twitch action won’t cut it. A
success only means he dodged the clawing
hands and snapping jaws for that round, not
that he’s out of reach. To escape, he needs a
successful twitch and tactic. He can go on full
defense. To minimize dice-rolling, rather than
making two Athletics checks in a row, the
Market can say one successful check gets him
a number of Shambles away equal to his SPD.
The other option is to kill a casualty, use
its body to trip up the remainder of the mob,
and use a twitch action to escape. Unlike full
defense against casualties, this does require
two separate checks: a successful attack and
Athletics check to move SPD in Shambles
away. If the attack fails, the twitch has to be
spent dodging attacks rather than flat-out
running. If the tactic (attack) succeeds but the
twitch (dodge) fails, Prole takes damage from
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 the mob. Attacking and then running is riskier
than focusing entirely on escape.
Conversely, one of Prole’s crew could slow
the beasts down with a successful attack and
provide the Taker two chances to escape with
Athletics. However, a comrade that comes to
assist with a melee weapon exposes themself
to the same frenzy, and mobs with more than
one mass can easily split attacks. Coming to
assist a harried Taker usually means firing a
projectile weapon into a melee fight, which
brings its own risks (see p. 285).
Finally, if all the casualties are decapitated,
there’s no problem when Shambles get within
range. By using a tactic or going full offense, a
Taker within the range of frenzy has one last
chance to eliminate the mob before it digs
in. This is the riskiest option, as it leaves the
Taker little recourse if the attack fails.
It’s hard to escape casualties once they are
in frenzy. Plan accordingly.
DamagIng CasualtIes
Casualties don’t take damage traditionally:
anything that isn’t a headshot has little effect.
However, since casualties can’t do much
besides walk straight towards their target
at a slow pace, it is much easier to score a
headshot than it is on a human target. Called
Latents and Immune to the Front
The tough spots of “Latent” and “Immune” make for
good melee fighters because they don’t have to worry
about infection every injury. Takers are one of the
few groups that seek these people out for reasons
other than persecution and exploitation. They serve
a vital function in most successful crews. If someone
that isn’t Latent or Immune is going hand-to-hand
with casualties, something has gone wrong. They
better hope to have some Will left to spend, armor in
the right places, or some luck with the dice.
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shots aren’t necessary. Furthermore, decay
of muscle and bone tissue means any Kill
damage to the head is enough to put the
zombie down for good.
To reduce the mass of a mob by one, a
player needs a successful attack. That’s it. Just
one successful attack kills a casualty... but
it only kills one. Easy headshots don’t mean
much when dozens of monsters are attacking
at once. As Takers say, every kill is easy until
the one that bites you.
To take down the mass of a mob by more
than one, players need weapons with special
upgrades and qualities: explosive, spray, etc.
Instead of increasing damage, weapons
capable of hitting multiple locations at once
or upgrades that allow charges to be spent
after the check can be used for additional kills
against mobs.
Loud Weapons And AttractIng
CasualtIes
Casualties are silent. They don’t aspirate
audibly and can’t talk. They only make noise
when they stumble into things or clack their
jaws together in anticipation of a meal. As a
result, the Loss is an eerily silent place and
loud noises mean only one thing: fresh meat.
For every loud weapon used in a scene, the
Market can roll to generate a new mob joining
the scene, attracted by the noise. The noise
only attracts new casualties for every loud
weapon used; not every time that loud weapon
is used. After the first shot, the second one
doesn’t cause another reinforcement mob to
show up. The dinner bell has already been
rung.
The Market decides when to add the
reinforcements. Using loud weapons against
new mobs counts as a separate use, so the
Market gets to roll again. See where this is
going? Good Takers fight and run, or they just
plain run. Heroic last stands are for those
dumb enough to stand their ground.
The only exception to the loud weapon rules
attracting additional mobs is quarantined
locations. Takers that secure all entrances
and exits before breaking out the big guns
can methodically exterminate every casualty
in that area. They just have to worry about
being locked inside with the ravenous undead
and finding a way to escape the horde slowly
surrounding the building, trying to get at
those delicious gunshots.
Casualty SpecIfIc Maneuvers
A few combat maneuvers are specific
to casualties only: peeling, luring, and
chumming. All of these maneuvers count as a
tactic.
PeelINg
Peeling is used to reduce the size of mob
headed towards someone else. If the player
declares they are peeling for their action,
they need to move closer to the mob than the
person currently setting the shamble. So, for
instance, if Prole has a mob closing in at 4
shambles, Kapital would have to move to at
least 3 shambles in order to peel.
Once closer to the zombies, the Taker needs
to use a freebie to get the attention of the
undead. The Market can either roll randomly
to determine how many casualties “peel” off
from the mob, or it can be decided merely by
dividing the mob in two. All peeling does is
create two mobs out of one; it might make the
monsters more manageable, or it might just
provide them a second victim. The benefit to
such a distraction is a reduced mass for the
mob heading towards another player.
LurIng
“Luring” kites zombies behind a Taker,
leading them to a specific location. To lure,
make a successful check with a CHA skill
(player’s choice). Failure means the mob is too
distracted by its current prey. Unless a Taker
gets close enough to the mob to become the
closest target (peeling), the mob continues
after the original victim. A success is loud
and boisterous enough to draw the attention
of the entire mob and Shamble is reset.
However, casualties do not respond to subtly:
anything loud enough to get their attention is
treated like the use of a loud weapon. Thus,
Takers can’t just play “keep away” with mobs
endlessly without being overrun, but they can
keep amassing followers up until they get cut
off from every direction.
Once a mob is successfully attracted, the
Taker can keep luring them at the cost of one
ration per round (you have to stay close). The
Market might say difficult terrain or obstacles
cost more or call for an Athletics check.
Luring in a vehicle can potentially go on as
long as there is open road and fuel. Herding
large numbers of casualties away from certain
areas is a common contract for Takers, and
enclaves have been destroyed by rivals luring
a massive horde to the city’s gates.
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 ChummIng
Chumming involves temporarily directing
casualties to an area by providing them a free
meal. But the Blight only wants live victims.
If a crew wants to ensure the zombies go into
the containment area or stick around for the
explosion, sacrifices must be made.
Animals work; casualties eat anything
living, including the carrion eaters that
attempt to feed off them. Humans work even
better, especially if they’re competition.
There’s no skill check required for
chumming besides whatever the Taker had
to do to get a fresh victim offered to the dead.
Once a sacrifice is secured, the victim need
only be closer than the Takers for the tactic to
work. The casualties always go for the easy
kill. The only difficulty in chumming is the
psychological damage of watching it happen,
which prompts level-2 Self-Control checks
against Detachment or worse, depending on
who is on the wrong end of the mob.
Example Casualty Encounter
Teapot is on guard duty while his partner,
Killy, picks the lock on a door to the
abandoned school’s nursing station.
The Market thinks this scene needs a bit
more tension. The dice are rolled and land
B7/R2. The Market is nice and gives Teapot
an Awareness check. It’s a success. Teapot
hears footsteps coming from inside what he
thought to be an empty classroom right before
the door burst open. Teapot now has to deal
with 7 mass worth of walking corpses before
they close reach him in two combat rounds
(or 2 Shamble).
The Market calls for Teapot to make a
Self-Control check (you never really get used
to being attacked by zombies). The dice
land B3+1/R1. A professional keeps himself
together, despite the unfortunate turn of
events.
Teapot heard them coming and has an
assault rifle ready. Killy can’t do anything
while she’s picking the lock. The casualties,
as always, act last. Teapot makes his tactic
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an attack against the 7M/2S mob. He has a
total +2 to his check (+2 Shoot). Firearms
are charged weapons, so he buys-a-roll and
spends an additional charge to make the total
+3.
Teapot rolls B4+3/R6. A B7/R6 is good
enough for a success, and successes are
good enough for headshot against the slow-
moving casualties. Then the Market asks him
if he wants to use his spray upgrade, which
grants additional damage at the cost of 3
charges spent after the check. Teapot thinks
about it and chooses to spray. He has spent
two charges so far, meaning he’ll need three
more charges to get the effect. He marks his
charges and burns his twitch to take down
an extra mass with a spray. Now, Teapot’s
weapon is down 5 charges, but the mob lost 2
mass instead of 1.
In terms of narrative, either the Market
or Teapot’s player could describe a clean
hit, followed by a reckless burst that pops
another head and chews uselessly through the
remaining corpses’ torsos.
Killy is busy trying to pick a lock on a
security door, but reasoning that Teapot’s
death means the task of lockpicking is going
to get too difficult, she spends her twitch to
put her lockpicks away and her tactic readying
her gun.
The next round starts with the mob down
to 5 zombies, one turn away (5M/1S). Teapot
is confident now and declares full offense. He
spends a charge to buy-a-roll and gets B5+2/
R9 for Shoot. Close but not quite. He asks the
Market if he can spend his remaining charges
to score a success. The Market says no
because he didn’t declare before rolling, and
spray only works after successful aim. He’ll
be within reach of the mob at the end of this
round.
Luckily, Killy sees her comrade’s distress
and opens up with an automatic rifle of
her own. She buys-a-roll and gets B2/R2.
Critical success! She didn’t even need her
+3 Shoot. The Market describes a single
bullet threading between the eyeballs of two,
perfectly aligned skulls. She request to spray
and end the combat. It’s a badass check, but
her request to spray is denied. The mob is
in melee range and extra rounds might hit
Teapot; all Shoot checks require precision
when firing into melee. Still, the mob is down
to 3 mass and Teapot has a better chance
than he did before.
Since he declared he was going full
offense, Teapot uses his twitch to attack as
well (second attacks move to the end of the
initiative order, but humans do everything
faster than casualties). He buys-a-roll and gets
B10+2/R3. Sweet. He spends his last three
charges to spray again. Two more casualties
go down in a guillotine of bullets, but then the
rifle clicks empty (Teapot’s player was keeping
track of charges; one spent on the failure and
four spent on the success with a spray ate the
rest of his magazine. He’ll have to use a point
of ADP to refresh).
One Shamble is within striking range
for Melee and Unarmed attacks. The last
remaining member of the mob goes into
frenzy and reaches for Teapot. Since the
character has no more actions left, the Market
assumes a hit and rolls for damage: B1/R4.
The Market describes the casualty tripping
over the pile of dead and landing first in
Teapot’s left thigh, biting through the pants
and breaking skin. It’s only one Kill damage to
the leg, but it might be enough.
The Market calls for a Self-Control check
against the Trauma threat; Teapot is not
Immune and could be infected. He’s got a +1
Self-Control. The dice land B3+1/R9. Suck!
That’s 2 Humanity damage to Trauma, but
thankfully just shy of a Regret.
Teapot decides this has to end. He uses his
twitch to quick draw, dropping the empty rifle
and unsheathing his machete. He can’t dodge
anymore, but he won’t have to if he kills the
last casualty before its next attack. Teapot
spends a charge of rations to buy a Melee
attack as his tactic. He gets B1+1/R2. Whiff.
Killy sees her opportunity and buys another
shot. She scores B10+3/R4. The creature’s
head explodes with its teeth inches away from
Teapot’s groin.
The Market asks if the crew has a blood
testing kit they want to use. They do not. So
the Market rolls in secret and is about to add
Teapot’s STR... but the dice land B7/R7. Turns
out the lucky bastard is naturally Latent and
didn’t know it! The Market smiles – just to
fuck with ‘em – and play continues. They’ll
need to have packed a blood test if they want
the results.
Meanwhile, the Takers just made a lot
of noise. Neither rifle had a silencer, so the
Market starts coming up with new mass and
Shamble ratings for the two loud weapons
used.
Let’s hope Teapot’s gratitude protects Killy
from the 3 mass/7 Shamble mob about to
break through the barricade at their back
and the 4 mass/4 Shamble coming through a
window from outside. She better get that door
open soon....
But then the Market describes Teapot’s
screams as a wave of black veins begin
crawling up his neck. The players cuss, aware
of what’s happened. Even on a success,
Teapot’s Humanity would be damaged enough
by the agony of turning Latent to take a
Trauma Regret. The character drops to the
ground, crippled by pain as the Market begins
rolling to tally up Kill damage inflicted by the
sinew.
Now Killy needs to figure out what do. She
can drag her seizing, infectious partner down
the hall and try to pick the lock before the
casualties pouring inside eat them. Or she can
try to ignore the sounds of Teapot being eaten
and get back to work.
LootIng The Undead
Casualties never carry anything of worth
beyond a bounty or two. To make matters
worse, not everyone fled the Crash carrying
a wallet, and fewer still have managed to
keep it in their grimy pockets in five years
of wandering the Loss. For jackpots — like
a deceased father carrying all his family’s
important documents — crews have to hack
through dozens of “blanks” that aren’t worth
301
 the bullet that put them down. Looting
casualties is therefore a little different than as
laid out in the Combat chapter (see “Looting
the Dead” p. 289). Here’s how things differ.
• Casualties only carry bounty; nothing else.
If the Takers succeed their Scavenging
check, the natural Black is how much
bounty was located amongst all the
zombies in the mob, limited by the mass of
the mob.
• Casualties are looted as mobs; not as
individuals. So if the crew put down a mob
of 10 and a mob of 1, they could make two
Scavenging checks (using two PCs). They
couldn’t make 11 Scavenging checks, or
two Scavenging checks each 11 times.
• Critically failing a Scavenge check on
the undead means one of two things: one
of them is still alive, or one of them had
something sharp — and infectious — in its
pockets.
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Stampedes
As far as the narrative is concerned,
encountering a stampede is not an enemy so
much as a natural disaster. Stampedes are
huge masses of casualties heading towards a
single food source. Stampedes carry numbers
that would be suicide to oppose. Most groups
are content to call the number of undead in a
stampede “too many” and plan from there.
Stampede Mass (Black): Mass is measured
by a factor of 10. That means that a B3/R2
stampede has mass of thirty casualties.
Unless the players have fully automatic
weapons firing explosive rounds, the only real
option is to run. One successful attack by a
stampede follows almost exactly the same
rules for mobs: add +1 for every additional
casualty (in the previous example, this
would be 1d10 +29 Kill damage) or make
a knockback test. In the case of the latter,
knockback from a stampede can’t be resisted.
 Stampede Shamble (Red): Stampedes
stumble and claw against each other in such
away that they achieve a momentum greater
than their typical shuffle. All stampedes
reduce 2 shambles per turn instead of 1.
There are also so many casualties that the
term “wave” might be more appropriate. If a
Taker misses a chance to dodge a mob, they
can still wrestle free in the next round. This
is not the case with stampedes. After the first
missed Athletics check, the horde encircles
the victim and escape becomes impossible
unless the poor soul can reach a ladder, stairs,
or door.
If the players encounter a stampede of
Vectors... something has gone terribly, terribly
wrong. The PCs should be too worried about
getting the hell away to care about the horde’s
statistics.
Vectors
Vectors are freshly infected humans hijacked
by the Blight’s hot strain, but not yet killed
by it. The contagion controls their minds
by ramping up all sorts of violent hormonal
responses and excising certain sections with
quickly forming viral sinews. The infected
person hemorrhages from every orifice as
the contagion begins seeding the body with
its parasitic nervous system. The process
is agonizing, but by the time it starts, the
victim has already become a frothing killing
machine. For more on Vectors in the setting,
check out “The History of the Crash” (p. 32).
For a more condensed description of how the
hot strain works, read this chapter’s entry on
“Infection” (p. 305).
Thankfully, there aren’t many Vectors left
five years after the Crash. Currently, most
derive from a Latent dying or a new infection.
But one “freshy” can create a thousand inside
of an hour. They’re stronger, faster, and more
durable than any human, and the Blight is
more infectious than ever in its live state.
Vectors are one of the most serious threats a
Taker can ever face.
Vectors At-a-Glance
The main rules for Vectors are...
• Murder Modifier: Equals the Vector’s in-
life SPD; affects their undead movement
and strength in addition to equaling their
Advantage (Red bonus) in checks against
PCs and on skill checks declared against
the Vector.
• Fast: Vectors can move their Murder
modifier in shambles per round .
• Strong: All successful Vector attacks
add the murder modifier to damage, in
addition to dealing knockback.
• Psychological Warfare: Fresh Vectors
(those turned within the last few hours)
scream “apologies” that cause Self-Control
checks in all who hear them.
• Hard to Kill: Vectors are harder to damage
than casualties.
- Turning Vector heals/ignores all
previous wounds.
- If the Vector started as a random NPC,
headshots kill it instantly (via called
shots or lucky hits). Otherwise, the
Vector’s total hit points have to be
depleted as if it were a management-level
Market force.
- If the Vector started as a PC, the Vector
has the same hit locations. All boxes in
the torso or head have to be filled to kill
the creature. The Vector cannot bleed
out.
- Killing a Vector with anything but a
headshot sends it into torpor. It will rise
again as a casualty in a few days.
- Latents that “go Vector” can only be
killed with headshots.
• Hot Strain: Vectors are more infectious
than casualties.
- Victims of a casualty bite turn in a
matter of hours or days. Vector bites
cause transformation in a matter of turns
equal to the Red of the failed infection
check.
303
 Fast
The brain imposes limits on human strength
via the central nervous system. Anatomically,
humans can wield savage power only slightly
less than that of wild apes, but developmental
priority is given to our cerebral growth, which
means our structurally similar musculature is
much more prone to strain and tear. Certain
extreme situations and drugs can generate
enough adrenaline to bypass the limits that
pain places on human strength, but by and
large, one of humanity’s greatest evolutionary
adaptations is the way our nervous system
can stop exertion before it reaches dangerous
levels.
The Blight doesn’t care.
The first thing the infection dismantles
is the central nervous system’s protections
against muscle stress. The early stages of
Vector creation are almost miraculous – the
lame walk, the mute scream, the feeble flex
– but they do so through an agony they can’t
escape. When Vectors sprint at a victim, they
are snapping the tendons in their glutes and
quadriceps to do so. When they bite, cracked
teeth and unhinged jaws do nothing to stop
the feeding frenzy. Vectors don’t have super-
powers; they’re just humans without the
brakes.
In the game, this means that Vectors are
faster, stronger, and more resilient than
seems possible. Vectors have a “murder
modifier” equal to their in-life SPD. For
Market Forces that were never completely
stated out, the Market can default to whatever
SPD is appropriate. When rolling against a
Vector, add the murder modifier to the Red
every time, or deduct it from the player’s skill
modifier and spends. This is equivalent to the
“trained” advantage mentioned in the combat
chapter (see p. 292).
Vectors move a number of Shambles per
round equal to their murder modifier. A
Vector’s sprint is slowed by one Shamble for
every hit it takes that round, but only for that
round. Blows don’t affect the murder modifier
in the long term, but a shotgun blast to the
leg can still make the thing stumble. They can
304
also climb walls, dodge obstructions, sprint up
stairs, and work door handles.
The murder modifier places Vectors in
the initiative order. For instance, if a Latent
with a SPD 3 turns, the resulting Vector starts
with an initiative of 1d10+3 (an initiative
check + the murder modifier). The character’s
initial place in the order doesn’t matter; it’s
recalculated after the person transforms.
Strong
If within one Shamble of a Vector, failed
Athletics checks cause Kill damage like any
other casualty, but the damage is increased
by the murder modifier.
Additionally, all Vector attacks have
knockback. They plow into victims like
linebackers. Damage goes to the same hit
location as the Red, and infection checks
follow.
For instance, imagine Scapegoat is fighting
a Vector with a murder modifier of +2.
Scapegoat attacks with his +2 Shoot, but that
skill bonus is negated by the murder modifier.
The dice land B1+0/R9 for a miss. Next, the
Taker spends his twitch and uses Athletics
to dodge, but his +3 bonus gets whittled to a
+1 by the murder modifier. Scapegoat rolls
and gets B4+1/R6. Instead of the usual 4 Kill
damage to the chest, he takes 6 Kill damage
(+2 from the murder modifier). There’s also
a knockback effect, and Scapegoat has no
actions to spend on a Resistance check. He’ll
start the next round pinned by the frothing
cannibal, and that’s before he even knows if
he’s infected or not.
PsychologIcal Warfare
Though the terrifying transformation of
infection seems instantaneous enough, it is
not. The brain of the victim does not die all at
once. Eventually, the sinews worming through
their frontal lobe destroy any reason left in the
brains, but this doesn’t happen fast enough.
Those recently turned scream in panic and
terror while eating their loved ones, lucid and
able to watch. The language centers break
early, but not so fast that a few pleas for mercy
don’t break through the cannibal screams.
These are called “apologies.”
Vector apologies are terrifying for everyone.
It’s a constant reminder of the fate awaiting
everyone who survived the Crash. When
a character hears a Vector apologize, it
calls for a Self-Control check against either
Detachment (if witnessed from a safe
distance) or Trauma (if threatened by the
Vector), regardless of mental fortitude. The
Market may call for more severe checks if the
Vector was once a friend or lover. The sorrow
and guilt of having to kill a family member can
make anyone hallucinate guilty rebukes inside
an unintelligible scream. The Market can role-
play these cries directly or they can describe
the screams of the damned and ask the player
what their character hears in the cries.
Characters that have been Vectors for a
few hours but have yet to die don’t shout
apologies; they are entirely lost to the Blight.
Hard to KIll
If a Vector started as a Market force with a
simple pool of hit boxes, turning effectively
“heals” all wounds. Since Vectors are still
technically alive, all hit boxes in the torso or
head must be filled up before the creature
goes down. This means aiming center mass
can still be effective, at least in the short term.
However, a Vector felled by body shots is
just a casualty waiting for the torpor to end.
Destroying the brain is the only way to keep
a zombie down for good. Called shots and
headshots bypass any hit pools and provide
instant kills, as is tradition of the genre. Just
remember that the murder modifier is going
to be making that precision check all the
more difficult.
If a PC is the Vector, things get that much
worse. The player passes his newly doomed
character to the Market. The Market plays
the character as a Vector, healing all hit boxes
and factoring in any worn armor. Slaying the
former friend requires filling all hit boxes in
either the torso or head with killing damage.
Called shots no longer work as instant kills.
Worse still, bleed out doesn’t contribute to the
damage. Latents going Vector are even worse
– turned Latents are technically casualties
without the limitations of rigor and rot; only a
headshot takes them down.
To survive Takers must adopt the same
panicked fear and rage fueling the monster.
Spend big, spend quickly, and leave nothing in
reserve, or join the blood-vomiting hordes.
Hot StraIn
Finally, if all goes wrong and a Vector infects
somebody, things get much worse. Failing
an infection check against the hot strain
means the Blight is already in the midst
of exponential replication. There is no
unpredictable phase between infection and
symptoms; there may not be time to use a
blood test, even if the crew has one in reserve.
The victim turns into a Vector in a number
of rounds equal to the Red on the infection
check.
This means that, if bitten by a Vector, there
may not be time to use a blood test, even if the
crew has one in reserve. Hard choices have to
be made to stop a hot outbreak.
InfectIon
If a character isn’t already Latent or Immune,
they must make a check against infection
whenever they receive Kill damage from a
casualty, Vector, or Aberrant. This is one of the
few times the Market rolls dice in secret. The
Market makes a check, adding the character’s
STR to the Black. If the character was wise
enough to bring a blood testing kit, the player
can make a check instead, and WILL can be
used to shift results. But no matter who rolls
the dice, the modifiers and results stay the
same.
On an infection check:
• If the Red is higher than Black + STR, the
character is infected.
• If Black + STR is higher than Red, the
character is uninfected.
• If it’s a critical failure, the character is
naturally Latent.
• If it’s a critical success, the character is
Immune.
305
 Speed of InfectIon
Though multiple types of zombies exist in
Red Markets, the characters will likely only
witness people turning into Vectors.
The lifecycle of the Blight is explained more
in-depth in the “History of the Crash” p. 55.
But for now, the takeaway is that a freshly
infected person can only turn into Vector, not
a casualty. Though incurable cannibalistic
monsters, Vectors are still technically alive.
Stopping the heart of a Vector kills it, but
only if the blow fills every hit box in the
torso. Vectors can also die from exposure,
starvation, and dehydration, but only when
those circumstances would also kill the most
hormonally-flooded human imaginable, such
as a psychotic in the midst of PCP binge.
The death of a Vector, without a destruction
of the brain stem, is impermanent. Shooting a
victim full of holes only accelerates torpor: the
period in which the Blight, now distributed
throughout the body, begins forming the
sinews that allow it to preserve and puppet
a corpse’s musculature. The dead body of
a former Vector eventually rises as a slow-
moving casualty. Though these creatures
now make up the majority of the Loss’s
inhabitants, each was once a Vector.
Abberants...well, no one knows where
Abberants come from.
This means that it’s never a matter of what
an infected PC turns into eventually: the
remaining crew will have to dispatch their
former friend or be killed long before another
stage of infection can develop.
Bust: God’s BlIght
In this variant, a Taker’s health has no effect on
the Blight. The disease is totally inscrutable,
and luck is the only determiner of who survives.
Check Black/Red, but add nothing. Critical
failures still mean latency and critical success
still mean immunity, but the results of exposure
are based only on blind chance.
306
While the end result is not in question,
the speed at which they occur depends on
which creature did the infecting. The rates
of transmission are detailed in order of their
commonality.
'Cold' BItes: CasualtIes and Latents
If the infection is from a casualty bite,
transformation into a Vector happens at a
dramatically appropriate time, according to
the Market’s whims.
The Blight takes time to resurrect into its
living state after transferring into a living host,
and the wildly differing time period between
becoming infected and turning symptomatic
remains a major obstacle to understanding
the disease. Markets could roll a die and
decide that the victim turns in that number
of minutes, hours, or days. Or they could just
wait until the worst possible moment and
spring it on the players. The unpredictability
of the time it takes a casualty to make a Vector
– and the uncertainty as to whether or not the
character is infected at all – should do a lot of
damage to the entire crew’s Humanity.
Since Latents are infected by the “undead”
version of the Blight as well, accidentally or
intentionally becoming infected by one works
the same as a casualty bite.
'Hot' BItes: Vector and Aberrant
If the infection is caused by a Vector or
Aberrant, the change occurs in a number of
combat turns equal to the Red of the infection
check. Blight is already in the active state
when transferred from these more deadly
creatures, and the rapid transformation of
their victims is what made the Crash so
deadly. This doesn’t mean that the wait time
between infection and symptoms is any
less damaging to Humanity; the anxiety just
doesn’t last as long.
Latents: 'Take a Shot or Take the ShOT'
Taking Supressin K-7864 before the Blight
resurrects into the hot strain makes the
character Latent. Even if they were not
actually infected by initial contact with the

undead, injecting K-7864 results in the
condition anyway.
Latents may also occur naturally, due to
some unpredictable flaw in Blight’s genetic
code that occasionally prevents its typical
resurrection into the hot strain.
Whether a character uses drugs or
becomes Latent naturally, the effects of
latency occur immediately, even faster than
Vector infection. The cold strain – which
constantly reengineers human flesh into
the parasitic nerve tissue and musculature
referred to as Blight sinew – assumes that
the body of a Latent is merely a cadaver that
has yet to be converted. The process of torpor
begins immediately, but rather than causing
a long-dead corpse to seize and slowly
reanimate, the victim is alive and aware, their
mind undamaged. As a Latent’s flesh is rent
asunder from the inside and rearranged into
invasive, alien tissue, they can feel the entire
thing.
A character becoming Latent must
immediately make a level-4 Self-Control
check against the Trauma threat. If the
Humanity damage doesn’t result in a Regret,
the Taker can still manage to move, despite
the agony. If they do suffer a Regret, the
character is incapacitated by the sensation of
razor wire crawling underneath the skin. The
Market should also treat the event as if a loud
weapon was fired – the screams don’t stop.
The sight of black veins coursing
throughout the afflicted’s extremities causes
Self-Control checks in all present.
Finally, the Market rolls 1d10 Kill damage
for every hit location on the Latent and
inflicts the damage to each limb separately.
It’s entirely possible for Latents to bleed out
or die as they are riddled by Blight sinew. In
fact, it’s a common occurrence. Medically
trained Takers nearby can administer aid,
mediating damage and sedating the patient.
But, of course, any exposure to the Latent
risks secondary infection, so assisting is not
without its risks.
If Latents die, they technically become
a casualty as the viral sinew “wakes up.”
However, since the transformation occurs
immediately after brain death, the body has
no rigor mortis or decomposition to slow it
down. Effectively, treat such foes as Vectors in
terms of strength and ability.
Immune and UnInfected
Characters only learn if they are naturally
Immune one of four ways:
• Use an upgraded blood test at the sight of
infection, directly after exposure
• Undergo extensive and sophisticated lab
testing
• Suffer an exposure to the Blight so severe
that immunity is the only explanation for
survival
• Take Supression K-7864 to no effect
Thousands of Immunes aren’t aware
of their own gifts because, to test for the
condition, both Blight cells and Immune blood
307
 must be in contact at the exact moment of
analysis. An absence of reaction is the only
reliable indicator of the condition discovered
by science.
Standard blood tests produce false
positives for immunity too easily, as many
escape infection for entirely mundane
reasons. Older casualties tend to dry out,
losing the majority of the black preservative
ooze that leaks from the Blight’s sinews.
Some bites just don’t exchange enough
fluids to infect a person. Or wounds may not
have come from a casualty at all, but close
encounters can drive anyone with broken skin
to paranoia.
In fact, the Blight’s head games killed far
more Immunes than the zombies did during
the initial outbreak. The Crash was the single
most terrifying event in human history, and
almost everyone got to witness the Blight
dismantling someone they loved. Exposure
to undead fluids has a powerful placebo
effect, and a panicked mind can manufacture
many of the symptoms indicating pre-Vector
transformation. The only way to know for
certain is to wait for the change, but people
usually start putting guns-to-temples long
before then.
Regardless of whether a character is
Immune, uninfected, or waiting to turn, the
Market should describe the same set of bodily
changes to keep the entire group paranoid.
DescrIbINg Symptoms
Narratively, what happens when someone
begins to turn?
Well, if the character is Latent, Markets
should read “Latents” on p. 306 for a
description of events.
If the crew has a blood test, administer it
and make the infection check.
For everyone else, use the following
description to narrate a character’s
symptoms. Make sure every PC that was
exposed experiences these symptoms
– regardless of whether they’re actually
infected or not. Five years after the Crash,
everyone is aware of the horror awaiting the
308
bitten, and fear is enough to mimic infection
psychosomatically up to a certain point.
Early InfectIon: Placebo Effects and Real SIgns
Those infected by casualties show few
outwardly visible signs. The Blight’s
resurrection from the undead, “cold” cells into
the hemorrhagic, “hot” strain of Vectors is
slow, invisible, and little understood.
Symptoms only manifest once the fully
resurrected cells begin attacking the
brain, killing and coopting neural tissue in
preparation for housing a central ganglia
of viral sinews in the brainstem. Once this
process begins, the infected person has
minutes before transformation. At most.
Internally, the viral replication of hot Blight
starts in the frontal cortex and replicates at
a rate utterly unprecedented in the scientific
record. Meanwhile, more sophisticated,
specialized cells similar to prions differentiate
and hijack the endocrine system, flooding
the victim with a variety of stress hormones.
A certain percentage of the new Blight cells
produced by metabolizing the brain tissue of
the victim redouble the attack on the mind,
but the majority become “seeder” cells and
disperse among the tissues via the circulatory
system. These heretofore-unclassifiable
microorganisms serve no function until the
victim’s death, at which point they activate and
begin converting dead tissue into Blight sinew.
Externally, sweats and tremors characterize
the early stages. There have been reports of
high-grade fevers developing as well, but such
claims could be apocryphal. Common wisdom
holds that strange urges, hallucinations, and
a tendency to slur or stutter speech precedes
the first violent outbursts by a few moments,
but the degree to which these symptoms can
be explained by the extreme stress of the
situation cannot be known. Suicidal ideation
correlates strongly with infection, though self-
termination is arguably the sanest reaction.
TransformatIon: TurnIng Takers Into Monsters
At this point, any infected PCs lose control
of their characters if they’ve yet to inject
Supressin K-7864.
 For characters infected directly by the hot
strain (through Vector or Aberrant exposure),
the symptoms begin here after the randomly
rolled number of rounds passes. Either way,
placebo effect is no longer a possibility once
the transformation reaches this stage.
As damage to the brain increases
exponentially, effects become more
pronounced. Victims may scream or clutch
at themselves, though a sudden onset of
catatonia has also been observed. Spasms
and seizures set in seconds later. The disease
begins secreting a new form of extreme anti-
coagulant into the bloodstream – currently
theorized as a means of embedding seeder
cells deeper into host tissue – and this
development leads to hemorrhagic symptoms.
The victim vomits, defecates, urinates,
perspires, and/or cries blood.
Around the time bleeding begins, owing to
widespread damage, hormonal imbalance,
or some yet-to-be understood from of
parasitic behavioral modification, hosts
lose all control and begin attacking the
nearest living creature. Cannibalistic urges
may not yet be present at this phase, but
the overwhelming, psychotic aggression of
Vectors means that biting remains common.
Language centers still survive, which leads to
the disturbing “apologies” as the condemned
attack. Thankfully, the Blight’s severe neural
abrasion continues until only the victim’s
autonomic functions remains, so this period
of nightmarish awareness ends after brain
death.
309
 HumanIty
The last few decades of mental health
research reveal that biology and chemistry
bear more responsibility for mental illness
than we ever thought possible. RPGs depict
fantastic worlds and part of that escapism is
the comforting notion that mental illness can
be prevented by behavior, just like washing
hands lowers chances of the flu. In reality,
much madness is in the blood and it will take
those of us it so chooses.
But, if any part of insanity is communicable
– a malady of nurture as well as nature –,
then there could be no better home for the
infection than poverty.
Socioeconomic status is correlated
with mental illness, especially anxiety
and depression. The question of whether
insanity causes poverty or vice versa is a
false dichotomy: why have it one way when
we could be getting screwed from both
310
directions? Mental illness deprives people of
support services, relationships, and relief even
as it increases the likelihood of emotional
trauma from every source.
This isn’t to say that this game seeks to
simulate reality on any level. Red Markets is a
horror game, and in horror fiction, the world
breaks characters’ minds as well as bodies.
But while Takers may “go insane,” it’s got
nothing to do with their genes and everything
to do with the Loss. The supernatural terror
of the undead gets added to the scraping
dread of capitalism. Characters are as likely
to snap under the pressures of crushing debt
as they are to lose it while fighting monsters.
The sleepless horror of living on the edge can
wear down any human. Letting go of some of
that vulnerable Humanity is sometimes the
only way to survive.
Hardening oneself against the constant
assault of the Loss can work for a little
while, but everyone breaks eventually – great
mountains of strength worn into sand by
the constant, rhythmic waves of madness.
The business of Takers is not about staying
healthy; that’s never going to happen. It’s
about getting out before the point of no
return.
The Threats to HumanIty
Humans are defined by what they do beyond
the work of survival. But life in the Loss
doesn’t leave much time for anything beyond
the bottom line. Drowning pain in drugs,
cutting ties with risky relationships, expecting
betrayal at every turn – these are all essential
survival mechanisms in the Carrion Economy.
But past a certain point, the act of staying
alive becomes all consuming, and the Taker
no better than an animal.
Out on the edge, these personality shifts
don’t have a name. Few enclaves have doctors
trained to diagnose and treat them and, even
if they did, no survivor of the Crash is healthy
enough to stand in judgement of someone
else’s crazy. Collectively, a Taker’s mental
health is referred to as their Humanity. It rates
the Taker’s remaining ability to stay a person,
or imitate the person they used to be.
Mechanically, a Taker’s mental health is
tracked along three threats to Humanity:
Detachment, Trauma, and Stress. Threats
measure the common ways the Loss can
scrape away at a Taker’s well being. When
something in the game threatens Humanity,
the Market calls for a Self-Control check
against a certain threat. If the check succeeds,
the character holds it together. If it fails, the
PC takes damage in that threat. There’s more
on the type of Self-Control checks the Market
can call for on p. 312. For now, let’s talk
specifically about the three threats and what
they represent.
311
 Detachment
Detachment threatens the ability to
connect meaningfully with other humans
and, eventually, to one’s own self-concept.
Everybody lost somebody in the Crash, and
people have been betraying and backstabbing
each other ever since in fearful, misguided
attempts to save what’s left. It can be hard
for experienced Takers to find relationships
worth the risk anymore. When new friends
are nothing more than future appointments
with pain, why make the effort? Many don’t
even find themselves worthy of love after the
things they’ve had to do to survive.
Real-world ailments related to the
Detachment threat are depression, blunted
affect, and antisocial behavior.
Trauma
Trauma occurs when characters suffer
from a violent act or the fear of violence
to come. The threat damages the ability to
overcome fear and maintain perspective in
survival situations. The Blight encouraged
acts of violence unheard of in human history.
Survivors of these events have suffered
physical and emotional pain for which the pre-
Crash world left them completely unprepared.
Takers that survive life-threatening injuries
and agony must often volunteer to repeat the
experience, but such wounds take their toll
even after the flesh heals. Collect enough
scars and healthy caution gives way to
paranoia, phobia, and delusion.
Real-world ailments related to the Trauma
threat are post-traumatic stress disorder and
various phobias.
Stress
Stress harms a character’s ability to stay
cool and resist panic in the face of prolonged
struggles. Stress is affected by nearly
everything, including the other two threats,
but the Stress threat is primarily about the
grind. The bad luck of seeing a loved one get
ill (Detachment) or suffering a major injury
(Trauma) can cause Stress in extreme cases,
but the Stress threat is most dangerous
312
when a character finds the pantry bare. It
attacks when a spouse in the Recession stops
returning emails. It strikes as the price for
supplies rises and the time between paydays
stretches. Stress measures the everyday
bullshit of trying to get by and get out of this
nightmare; it’s the many straws that break a
back.
Real-world ailments related to the Stress
threat are panic attacks, obsessive behaviors,
and other symptoms of anxiety disorders.
Other terms
Regrets refer to moments when a character
loses control from taking too much Humanity
damage in a single Threat. Regrets are so
named because there’s no taking them back.
Once a character suffers a Regret, their
Humanity can never heal below that point
again. Characters suffer regrets for every five
points of Humanity lost in a single track –
once all the boxes in a track fill up, the regret
occurs and all boxes to the left of the regret
are permanently filled for that threat.
There are three levels of Regret: cracks,
crumbles, and breaks. Each level has three
choices as to how the player wants to roleplay
that Regret. There’s more on taking Regrets
later in the chapter (p. 313).
Self-Control Checks
The Market calls for Self-Control checks
when something particularly disturbing,
shocking, or horrific happens in the game. In
addition to calling for a Self-Control check,
the Market names the threat. In general,
threats correspond to the following events.
• Detachment: witnessing or inflicting pain
upon teammates, loved ones, and other
humans.
• Trauma: experiencing personal injury or
illness; fear of the same
• Stress: suffering financial and professional
setbacks; anxiety over persistent problems;
fear of the same
 Finally, Markets can increase the difficulty
of the check depending upon the severity of
the event. There are four levels of difficulty.
For simplicity’s sake, they are referred to by
the amount of Humanity damage that might
be done. If the Market needs even more
severe levels of Self-Control checks, the
general rule is that a successful check can’t
mitigate more than two points of Humanity
damage at any time: it pays to be mentally
tough, but Takers are still only human.
Level-1 Checks: Success does no damage,
but failure costs one Humanity in the threat.
Here are some examples of appropriate
difficulty on each threat:
• Detachment: watch helplessly as some
horrible crime is inflicted on your fellow
man
• Trauma: see a deadly threat coming
for you, such as near-miss gunfire or
casualties on the march; suffer physical
pain
• Stress: be forced to borrow money from
your crew to meet upkeep or fail to meet
financial goals like projected earnings (see
“Upkeep: Paying the Bills” p. 223)
Level-2 Checks: Success does no damage,
but failure costs two Humanity in the threat.
• Detachment: lose faith in a teammate
(certain Regrets suffered by other players
can be interpreted as betrayal, such as
a personal addiction putting everyone in
danger); watch a Dependent suffer for
your failures
• Trauma: get seriously injured; get
(possibly) infected by the Blight
• Stress: make no profit from a job; lose a
vital piece of equipment; withdraw from
the retirement plan to make upkeep
Level-3 Checks: Success does one damage
to a threat; failure costs three Humanity in
the threat. Things are so bad that no one,
even the hardest among the group, is going to
ever be the same.
• Detachment: watch a Dependent or
teammate die as a result of your failures;
kill in cold blood
• Trauma: fight an Aberrant, stampede,
massive Vector outbreak, or other
supernatural event pulled straight from a
nightmare
• Stress: Lose all your gear in the middle of
a mission; find yourself unable to pay back
a loan shark
Level-4 Checks: Success still does two
damage to the threat; failure destroys four
Humanity in the threat. At this point, only the
hardest and most privileged Takers can avoid
succumbing to a Regret.
• Detachment: kill someone you know in
cold blood; allow dozens to die through
inaction
• Trauma: get caught in an enclave or
settlement wide outbreak; lose control of
your own body
• Stress: sever a Dependent as a result of
your inability to fulfill responsibilities; lose
everything in a bad investment.
Unless the Market says otherwise, assume
all Self-Control checks are at the “Level-1”
difficulty. The Market has no obligation to say
how much Humanity damage is riding on a
check until after the check is made.
Regrets
When a Taker suffers five or more Humanity
damage in a single threat, they take a Regret.
On the character sheet, this means a Regret
occurs the second the bar is filled, NOT when
it goes over.
Regrets are moments where the facade of
toughness breaks down and characters reveal
just how much the Loss has worn them down.
A Regret is a loss of control that puts the
Taker, their teammates, and the success of the
contract in danger. The player, on the other
hand, still has some options when it comes to
roleplaying the Regret, which we will go into
momentarily.
313
 disappears. The character can take more
Threats damage in that threat later, but any excess
Detachment Humanity loss is soaked up until the

Crumble
Regret is fully played out.

Crack
Stress
Trauma
ALTFirst things first – here are the rules
regarding
10 Regrets:
1. Characters start with 15 Humanity in
each threat.ALT 7-9is triggered after
A Regret
ALTevery every box beneath that Regret is
5
filled. The only way to start out with less 6
Humanity is to assume a tough spot that
reduces the starting amount in character
generation (see p. 185)
ALT ALT
2. The player
1-2 always chooses the 3-4Regret
from the available options at that level.
The Market has no say in what the player
chooses.
3. The same Regret can’t be taken twice.
For instance, at the crack level, the player
might choose “freeze” when they hit that
Regret in Detachment. If the character
later cracks along the Stress threat, they
Rations
can’t pick “freeze” again.
Upkeep 1 Charges 00000 00000
4. Humanity cannot be healed past
Effect the level of thecan
Rations lastbeRegret
spenttaken. A
to Buy-a-Roll
on skills that require exertion.
character that’s suffered a crack in the
Additional spends add +1
Trauma threat is never going to forget that
Qualities
moment;Essential
neither areAddictive Charged
their teammates.
No matter how helpful Dependents
ter Advancement:
tial = 10 Bounty
may be or how much bounty is spent in
skill level (1B = 1 Skill, 2B = 2 Skill, etc)
recovery, the character never again has
more than 10 Humanity in the Trauma
threat. Threats other than Trauma may be
healed normally, but additional Trauma
still counts as the “furthest” damage taken
for purposes of healing columns using
Dependents.
5. Regrets consume excess Humanity
damage when they are reached. For
instance, if a Taker takes three Humanity
damage in the Stress threat, but only
has one point left in Stress before hitting
a Regret, the additional two damage
Break
6. Characters that take a Regret at the
break-level are removed from the game.
The player still gets a choice in how their
player goes out, but the character is so
emotionally shattered that they become an
NPC.
Regret Levels
ALT There are three levels of Regret, each
referring to facade of normalcy Takers have to
cling to get through the day: cracks, crumbles,
and breaks.
Cracks refer to momentary lapses of
control. These perfectly understandable
reactions to extreme hardship are no less
dangerous for being sympathetic. Cracks are
short, in-the-moment behaviors that put the
Taker and crew at greater risk. A Taker can
recover as soon as the next scene, but the
crew must forever have to wonder if they can
rely on that person in the next crisis.
Crumbles refer to persistent, debilitating
personality flaws that develop from prolonged
exposure to the Loss. Crumble Regrets aren’t
immediate, but they are constant. Markets call
for Self-Control checks against past crumbles
once per game. On a failure, the player must
choose to take additional Humanity damage
or indulge in unfortunate behavior that very
moment. This consistently puts contracts and
crew at risk. Other Takers watching friends
crumble know it is just a matter of time before
the person snaps completely.
Breaks remove characters from the game.
The Taker just can’t handle it anymore and
is removed from play. How this occurs is
up to the player. Regardless, the characters
Dependents, crew, and enclave are going to
be seriously damaged in the process. Nothing
degrades people faster in the Loss than
watching their loved ones break under the
pressure.

314
Crack
Characters crack in one of three ways: fight,
flight, or freeze. These Regrets take place the
instant they are received.
Fight means just that: the character fights
with irrational, suicidal fervor. The character
goes berserk and attacks a single enemy until
one party is dead. Characters undergoing
a fight response stop at nothing to destroy
the target. If their arms are bound, they use
teeth. If the crew is trying to be stealthy, they
charge screaming from the shadows. If the
enemy is already dead, they keep beating the
corpse into paste as the building burns down
around them. Physically dragging the sufferer
from the scene is the only thing that stops
the rage. When a character picks fight as a
Regret, treat all weapons as if they have the
loud quality (on account of all the screaming).
Witnessing an enraged teammate dismember
the body of a fellow human can also threaten
Trauma in teammates, alarming the crew with
sheer savagery.
Flight is the total opposite. The character
does everything they can to get away. They
ignore cries of help from allies, drop precious
loot, and flee towards certain doom so long as
it means getting away from the original object
of terror. When flight is chosen, the character
may come out of their panic in the next scene
with no idea where they are or how they got
there. If it takes place in combat, other Takers
have to make Self-Control checks threatening
Detachment: their supposed teammate just
abandoned them in a time of great need.
Freeze means the Taker can take no
actions at all for the remainder of the scene.
The shock of the event has shut down their
ability to process the environment around
them. In negotiations, they shut up and stare
blankly in wall-eyed catatonia. They wander
through the middle of a firefight looking
confused and listless. They gibber nonsense,
recounting grocery lists as the undead beat
down the door. Unless the rest of the crew
takes control and leads the helpless Taker to
safety, the Regret could get the shell-shocked
character killed. This can threaten Stress for
teammates; the last thing a Taker needs on a
job is to babysit the helpless.
Crumble
When characters begin to crumble, the
damage to their Humanity becomes
permanent and consistent. This doesn’t
happen instantly. When a character starts
to crumble, the player lets the Market know
so it can become part of the scene, but the
character doesn’t lose control. However, in
every game, for as long as that character
remains alive and unretired, they continue to
crumble. The Market calls for one Self-Control
check related to the character’s specific
Regret once per session. This occurs at a time
of the Market’s choosing. If the check fails, the
315
 character must either take Humanity damage
in the threat or indulge in the Regret again.
Players can choose one of three ways to
represent persistent psychological damage:
disassociation, delusion, or dependency.
Disassociation occurs when relationships
no longer seem worth the effort or pain
they require. The Taker has lost too many
people and seen too many hopes dashed. In
every interaction, all the character can think
about is how it’s only a matter of time before
this person becomes another ghost. The
disassociation Regret affects relationships.
If a character fails Self-Control with a
Dependent or Reference, they can no longer
maintain the illusion of normalcy. Emotional
affect flattens, tact is lost, and the entire
interaction turns sour. Mechanically, this
deprives the Taker of favors and the healing
power of Dependents. A successful CHA skill
check is required to even get the person on
good terms again. How the player chooses
to roleplay this scene is up to them, but note
that even a successful Self-Control check just
means the facade is successful. The Taker
forever feels distant from the rest of mankind
as a maladaptive coping mechanism.
Delusion means a recurring hallucination
that the Taker must struggle to remember
is false and impossible. The exact nature of
the hallucination is up to the player, though
the Market and other players can make
suggestions. Perhaps the Taker imagines
seeing her dead husband walking in the
wasteland, unharmed and beckoning her to
follow. Maybe a character believes he can
hear God whisper between the reports of
gunfire. Remember, it is a comforting fantasy
that’s a desperate escape from a too-harsh
reality; the hallucination doesn’t come from
a chemical imbalance or genetic disorder. As
such, the Self-Control check gives Takers a
chance to see the hallucination for a lie. But
success only gives the character a chance
to hide seeing and hearing things that aren’t
there; it doesn’t stop the hallucination. When
the Self-Control check is failed, the Taker
believes in the hallucination and it becomes
316
a delusion. The player can do nothing for the
remainder of the scene save treat the delusion
as absolute truth. This can lead the character
into danger or cause Self-Control checks
amongst the crew when they see their friend
slipping towards madness.
Dependency forces the Taker to rely on
some external item to get through the agony
of existence. More often than not, this takes
the form of drugs or alcohol, but players
can pick other addictive behaviors such as
nymphomania or compulsive gambling (adjust
according to your group’s comfort level). It is
the thought of the next fix that gets the Taker
to wake up in the morning. They secure the
next contract to feed the habit. They maintain
ties with Dependents only to ensure no one
interferes with feeding the need. The next fix
is everything. Sometimes, things in the field
just get too stressful and a Taker has to dip
into an emergency stash. When characters
suffer dependency, they must pay double their
break point in upkeep for the remainder of
the game. The new costs come from enabling
the addiction. If there isn’t enough bounty to
go around, it requires a Self-Control check
to spend on things other than the addictive
behavior. If the check is failed, the Taker buys
more drugs, booze, poker chips, etc., even
if their Dependents are starving as a result.
Assuming the Taker can meet the added cost,
they remain functioning addicts. However,
the Market still gets to check the addiction
once per game session. If the check fails,
the Taker must feed the addiction and damn
the consequences (i.e. drunken parkour over
casualty-filled streets) or take additional
Humanity damage.
Break
When characters break, they exit the game.
There is nothing left to lose; there is no one
left to rescue. All that remains to be seen is
how much damage the shattered mind does
on its way out.
Like crumbling, characters do not break
immediately. Unlike the last crumbling, the
player shouldn’t tell the Market anything
has happened until after the game is over.
It’s a big deal when a character breaks, and
it’s going to be a major focus in the next
session. As always, the player gets to choose
the specific Regret, but try to work with the
Market to make a memorable exit.
In addition to the player needing a new
character, a break does a lot of damage to
the group as a whole. It’s meant to make
characters paranoid about their teammates in
the future, wondering whether or not it might
be wiser to cut an ailing friend loose rather
than deal with the fallout. While no one can
get ‘fired’ in Red Markets, being wary of the
crew’s emotional state should be a recurring
conflict that appears in the roleplaying.
Breaking a character is as much about the
burden carried by survivors as it is about
removing a Taker from the game.
Players can choose one of three ways to
break a character’s psyche: self-destruction,
betrayal, and convalescence. The same rules
for Regrets are in effect: if this is the second
character that’s gone mad for the same player,
they must pick a different Regret the second
time around.
Self-Destruction means suicide. Be careful
when selecting this Regret; don’t ruin anyone’s
fun by dragging in real world hurt. However,
even if someone has been unfortunate enough
to lose a real loved one to suicide, this Regret
can still be saved by zombie tropes. Wading
into the crowd of undead and taking down
as many as possible is fairly common in the
While crises do shake people out of their
complacency, forcing them to question the
fundamentals of their lives, the most spontaneous
first reaction is panic, which leads to a “return
to the basics”: the basic premises of the ruling
ideology, far from being put into doubt, are even
more violently reasserted.
-Slavoj Zizek
literature and there’s no reason the character
can’t do the same. Grittier, more realistic
depictions of suicide are on the table for
groups comfortable with that level of intensity
in the game. Regardless of whether the
character goes out with a bang or quietly with
a note, self-destruction forces everyone in the
crew to make high-level Self-Control checks
threatening Detachment. Seeing someone you
love and trust succumb to hopelessness risks
dragging the whole crew down. And what to
do about those abandoned Dependents?
Betrayal opts for physical and financial
damage over psychological pain. The
character loses their cool and can’t wait one
second longer – they have to get out of the
Loss now, even if it means no one else gets
to come along. The character betrays the
enclave to an enemy for a big payday, or they
steal bounty from the crew and run. Players
shouldn’t pick the betrayal option unless
they are okay with the Market playing their
character. The Taker is now an NPC and likely
a major villain in the campaign. Markets can
let the original player keep controlling the
character if they feel it can be done objectively
and within the story, but ultimately, the former
friend has become a selfish bastard out of
desperation. The unshakable rule for the
betrayal Regret is that a crew must always
have ample chance to get revenge and reclaim
their lost bounty. The dice may not support the
crew’s payback, but nobody gets to disappear
suddenly with everyone’s hard-earned loot,
never to return. While the animosity of
betrayal certainly lessens psychological blows,
having a trusted colleague make off with a big
payday or try to have you killed is bound to
threaten Stress and/or Detachment.
Convalescence might, at first, seem to be
the best option. The character’s mind breaks
and is no longer fit for going out on the job,
but no one dies. Hell, the same player can
even control the character, just like before.
Except it’s not just like before. The character
is broken – completely and totally – catatonic,
delusional, paranoid, hysterical, or everything
at once. When a character convalesces, they
317
 won’t be getting better. Those that don’t
get years of serious psychiatric treatment
can’t hope to recover and that’s not going
to happen out in the Loss. No enclave
employer is willing to deal with the wild
mood swings. Instead, the family has to cope
with screaming night terrors, bed-wetting,
and slow decay of a loved one eaten alive by
mental illness. It’s up to the remainder of
the crew to take care of their ailing friend.
This means paying any outstanding debts
to References and shouldering the cost of
the player’s Break Point for the remainder
of the campaign. Seeing the old friend is
also a burden in its own right. Lucidity is
rare and it’s heart wrenching to watch it
slip away every time. More psychopathically
profit-oriented outfits might decide to put
the character out of their misery, but anyone
opting for the Of Mice and Men option can
expect a far more brutal hit to Humanity than
the daily disappointment of bearing witness to
a friend’s fall.
318
RegaInIng HumanIty
Besides Dependents (see below), the only way
to recover Humanity is by spending bounty
to relax and recover between jobs. But time
spent on recreation, healing, and recovering
is not spent working towards survival. The
opportunity cost of staying sane eats up
capital, and the price of healing invisible
wounds stacks up fast.
To heal one Humanity damage in a single
threat, spend one bounty. There is no spend
limit, except Takers may not heal past the last
Regret they suffered in that Threat.
Dependents
Dependents, or loved ones a Taker must
support financially, are a vital part of any Red
Markets character. As such, they’re explained
more in-depth in Character Creation (see p.
205).
However, Dependents do play an important
mechanical role in maintaining Humanity.
In the interest of making rules easy to find,
some of the more salient rules regarding
Dependents are repeated here.
The Power of ConnectIon
For every fully supported Dependent available
(not Needy, Strained, or Broken), the Taker
heals one column’s worth of Humanity
damage after completing a vignette. The term
column is meant literally. A Taker suffering
from 2 Detachment, 3 Trauma, and 3 Stress
could reduce the damage to 2 Detachment, 2
Trauma, and 2 Stress. Detachment wouldn’t
go down because it wasn’t aligned with the
threat that had taken the most Humanity
damage. In this example, another Dependent
could heal the Taker down to 1 Humanity
damage across all three threats.
Players can use Dependents to heal once
per session (Score or contract). In advanced
play, the effects of Dependents can be gained
twice in per session or not at all, depending
on how the Taker uses Work/Life Balance (p.
434).
To heal, players can request a vignette
between their character and an available
Dependent of their choice. This can happen
either at the end of the current contract or
the beginning of the next session. The player,
the Market, and any other players stepping
into to roleplay a Dependent can negotiate
any kind of scene they wish. Regardless of the
narrative details, the goal of these vignettes is
to show the PCs recovering from the trauma
of the Loss in the company of loved ones.
It should be noted here that, for Takers
suffering from the disassociation Regret, Self-
Control checks are required to receive the
healing benefit of Dependents.
The Cost of FrIendshIp
If a Dependent doesn’t receive at least one
bounty in a session, the relationship with the
Taker begins to degrade. In advanced play,
skipping a vignette with Dependents causes
all costs associated with Dependents to
double, according to the Work/Life Balance
(p. 434).
After one missed bounty, the Dependent
is “Needy.” This means the NPC has to do
without and suffers for it by going hungry,
cold, alone, or any other way the Market
describes. The Taker must make a Self-
Control test against Stress upon seeing the
struggling loved one.
After another missed bounty, the
Dependent is “Strained,” hanging on by a
thread physically, emotionally, financially, or
all three. The Taker must make a more severe
Self-Control check threatening Stress as the
situation worsens.
At “Severed,” the Taker loses all contact
with the Dependent. The Market might kill
them off, have them lose contact, or inflict a
fate worse than death. Regardless, a severed
Dependent is lost forever. The Taker picks
the threat they’ve suffered the most Humanity
damage in and rounds up to the nearest
Regret (see p. 313). There’s no way to mitigate
the damage; it hurts to lose the ones you love.
Relationships can be healed much the same
way as Humanity: one bounty erases one dot
of damage. If a relationship is needy, spending
one bounty on the Dependent for that session
would only keep the situation from getting
worse. It would take another bounty to erase
the damage done.
Life as we find it is too hard for us; it
entails too much pain, too many disappointments,
impossible tasks. We cannot do without palliative
remedies.. .There are perhaps three of these
means: powerful diversions of interest, which
lead us to care little of our misery; substitute
gratifications, which lessen it; and intoxicating
substances, which make us insensitive to it.
Something of this kind is indispensable.
-Sigmund Freud
319

NegotIatIon
Playtesters have argued that negotiations in
Red Markets constitute another game entirely.
The skills and other mechanical trappings of
the system get expanded to encompass new
meanings. The themes of horror and violence
are suddenly reprioritized in favor of political
intrigue and psychological manipulation.
Whereas many traditional RPGs encourage
using grids and miniatures to track the
minutia of combat, this game only breaks out
the visual aides to keep track of price-fixing.
There are four reasons the negotiation
mechanics in Red Markets take up their own
chapter. Most importantly, it’s because they
are optional. Groups that don’t find the social
combat of negotiation interesting can set the
price for a contract via Market Fiat (p. 379)
or design a Score (p. 394). Those that want to
jump straight to the action are encouraged to
do so.
320
But negotiations warrant specialized
rules because Red Markets is a game about
economic horror. One of the central tenets
of modern economics theory is that humans
are not rational actors. This irrationality is
the central tenet of economic horror. In the
real world, goods and services that promise
high quality despite sizable risk, grueling
labor, and constant demand aren’t always
rewarded accordingly (Don’t believe me?
Work on a fishing boat or in an inner-city high
school for a few years). Conversely, some
people can turn so little effort into so much
profit that the public deems them thieves.
Navigating the disconnect between these
two extremes and roleplaying what it does to
human relationships is what Red Markets was
designed to do.
Furthermore, negotiations are really about
rhetoric, which is a unique skill set in the
world of RPGs. Actual skill with a gun or
melee weapon isn’t rewarded in most games.
Hell, considering the medium’s reliance
on emulating other entertainment media,
practical experience might actually hinder an
action scene. That’s why the character sheet
exists: to mediate between the expertise of
the player and the character. However, the
veneer of mechanics grows very thin in scenes
where two characters are talking. To tell a lie
as a character, the player has to come up with
something at least vaguely plausible before a
Deception check is made. After all, the Market
wouldn’t ask players to make a Drive check
when they aren’t in a vehicle, or a Shoot check
when they don’t have weapons. All RPGs
reward players for good roleplaying and the
ability to communicate well, either explicitly
or implicitly. Red Markets chooses the former,
and negotiation makes the rewards financial.
Lastly, the negotiation mechanic
demands the same thing from PCs as every
functioning economy demands of its workers:
specialization. The ability to maintain a
network of contacts, trade favors, engender
goodwill, and manage contracts is enormously
important to a crew’s survival. However, the
skill set required for negotiating a fair (or
 unfair) price demands time and effort... time
and effort not spent on the expertise needed
to navigate the Loss or the ferocity required to
survive it. Having to keep the underpowered
sales rep alive makes encounters more
dynamic and interesting, allows for a wider
range of character concepts, and works to
ensure every PC gets time in the spotlight.
The Loss is always trying to kill Takers; a
good negotiator might get you paid for the
trouble.
The BIg Idea BehInd NegotIatIon
In a negotiation scene, the dice are going to
generate the random forces of the economy
outside most people’s control, such as the
starting price of certain goods and services.
The Market always roleplays the client, the
person with a job that needs doing. The client
is always trying to find the cheapest crew
available that can still succeed at the task and
will use everything at their disposal to get
the price down as low as humanly possible.

”That’s my final offer!”

No. It’s really not. Stonewalling will not work. PCs must haggle to survive.
Most RPGs assume a fixed price model similar to the postindustrial Western economies in which the games were
written, even when the game is trying to convey a setting where bargaining would be the norm (see: the overwhelming
majority of human history). There are many reasons for this: it’s hard to conceive of economic models outside one’s
own experience; haggling makes some people very uncomfortable; it’s difficult to meaningfully bargain when one isn’t
experiencing a genuine need; it interferes with the hitting-zombies-with-swords part; etc.
Red Markets includes haggling because haggling is a game. Sociologists and game theorists have been studying the
intricate mechanics of price negotiation for decades, and practicing in a low-stakes situation (e.g. zombie make-believe)
can be fun once the risk of real-world financial ruin is off the table. Furthermore, the rhetorical structure of haggling is
largely invisible, which means roleplaying a negotiation makes for sophisticated character moments.
It would be a mistake to think of negotiations as a repetition of numbers until someone gives up due to boredom.
Entire social constructs exist exclusively around bargaining. Consider current Western norms, for example. Most Americans
would consider a person paying sticker price for a house a fool: bargaining is expected as prices rise in US culture.
However, the same bargaining principles one brings to the car lot would seem insane in the grocery line. All that has
changed is the starting price. So when can I haggle for goods? Is $101 the haggling starting point? $102?
Southeast Asia also frowns on negotiating the price of something like vegetables, but only because throwing the
price of food into question is seen as poor taste, inconsiderate of the unfortunates who can’t afford such necessities.
Everything else - be it T-shirts, cab rides, or lawn mowing services - remains up for negotiation. Paying sticker price
in some African countries is viewed as an atrocious, classist insult. It flaunts one’s own wealth as beyond frugality and
could be seen as akin to lighting cigars with thousand dollar bills.
And all these customs only scratch the surface of national and ethnic differences. Consider the weirdness of
negotiating prices in various subcultures. Due to concerns about law enforcement, complex protocols and body language are
used to fix prices for drugs and sex work, layered contracts hashed out without a single piece of paper where the cost
is never stated but always understood. To bring the example closer to home.. ever tried to explain a crowdsourced RPG
to someone that hasn’t heard of Kickstarter? What’s crowdsourcing if not a negotiation between producer and consumer?
So, yeah, Takers have to negotiate every time they pick up a job. Don’t worry; the only real-world requirement
is a willingness to roleplay. The mechanics take care of everything else. As for the specific sociological practices of
negotiating contracts for excursions into a zombie wasteland? That’s up for the players to decide. Whatever you come up
with, it can’t be weirder than some of the ways people do it in the real world.
321
 After all, no one saves enough surplus bounty
to hire Takers by being generous. They care
about their bottom line.
Amongst the players, one character (usually
the one with the best CHA skills) takes on
the role of negotiator. This character is the
contact person for the whole crew, and it is
their job to convince the client to pay more.
In negotiation, each of the negotiator’s CHA
skills gains a special ability specifically geared
towards pushing the price higher, but the
negotiator needs to cater their roleplaying to
the skill they want to use in order to use those
abilities. For example, a player that wants
to use the Intimidation skill needs to say
something intimidating in-character before
they make a check. The Market, playing as the
client, is tasked with doing the same.
What is everyone else doing? Well, no one
is keen to let their kids starve just because
the negotiator screwed up. Takers that
survive do so by doing everything they can to
support their negotiator before and during
the actual conversation with a client. While
the negotiator is in the room proving how
suave they can be, everyone else has scenes
demonstrating just how much better Takers
know the Loss than anyone else. They can
manipulate clients before they ever show
up to the table. The variety of actions other
players can take in-between rounds in the
client/negotiator conversation are called
Scams, and they either provide a mechanical
bonus for the negotiator’s next skill check or
increase the price of the contract.
The basic structure of a negotiation scene
has the client and the negotiating Taker
sharing a brief verbal exchange, followed by a
dice check that determines the conversation’s
effect on the price. The narrative then flashes
back or cuts away to show what the rest of
the team has done to help. The cycle repeats
until the negotiator can no longer push the
price and the contract’s compensation is
agreed upon. By the end, the complex social
maneuvering of the whole crew decides
exactly how much risking their lives is worth
that week.
322
NegotIatIon At-A-Glance
0. Non-negotiables
• One-on-one: Only one Taker per round may
speak to the client.
• Clients are Competent: Clients never make
a skill check but always succeed. Takers
can only defend against or outperform a
client’s success.
• References Only in Scams: Negotiators
may not use References while speaking to
a client.
• Simultaneous Resolution: Nothing moves
on the Sway Tracker until both parties
have spoken and the round ends. Dice on
the Sway Tracker then move at the same
time.
• Heads Up: Dice on the Sway Tracker
cannot intersect (i.e. they can not be on
the same space on the Sway Tracker) and
must “push” each other with Sway until
negotiations end.
• Payment on Delivery: Nobody brings
bounty to the meet up.
1. Prep Work
• Before negotiations, every Taker gets one
prep action. The skill used depends on the
method used to get the information and
the context of how the player describes the
scene.
• Successful checks entitle the Taker to the
answer for one of the following questions:
- What contracts are available to us?
- What will a specific contract likely
require?
- What is the starting value (equilibrium
price) of a specific contract?
- The Market rolls Black + Red to
generate this price and consults the
Supply/Demand chart. This check
always occurs during the Prep Work
phase, but Takers need to successfully
discover it in order to find out the
price before negotiations begin.
- What competition is vying for a specific
contract?
• Failed checks can succeed by tapping
References.
2. Leadership Opens
• The Taker serving as the crew’s negotiator
meets the client and makes a Leadership
check. The result determines the number
of rounds negotiations will last.
3. Negotiation Round
Negotiator/client verbal sparing, taking place
“in the moment.”
• Winner of the Leadership check
determines who speaks first.
• Taker decides what skill to use, roleplays
according to the choice, and makes a
check. The Market decides what skill
the client uses and roleplays a pitch,
succeeding automatically.
• Negotiation-specific uses for CHA skills
can be found on the Sway Tracker.
• Dice resolve on the Sway Tracker
simultaneously: moving, pushing, or
sticking according to the amount of Sway.
• Negotiation pauses as other members of
the crew perform Scams.
• Repeat until rounds end or the Taker
successful exits the negotiation.
4. Scams
Scams are actions roleplayed between
negotiation rounds, taking place before
or concurrent to the negotiator/client
conversation.
• Scams are only available between
negotiation rounds. A three-round
negotiation would only have two Scams:
between the first and second rounds, and
between the second and third.
• Each Taker may perform only one Scam.
- MBA Rules: a Taker might be afforded
one, two, or no Scams, depending on
Work/Life balance.
• The skills used in a Scam and the number
of checks required depends on the
context of the scene decided between the
scammer and the Market.
• Regardless of the skill used, each Scam
can only fulfill one of five purposes:
- Partners in Crime: The scammer is
in the room with the negotiator. He
or she can “step in” and perform a
CHA skill check instead of the
negotiator.
- Negotiator Support: A scammer’s
actions provide the negotiator a one-
time +2 bonus to one of the
negotiator’s skills.
- Discourage Competition: The scammer
sabotages competitors and prevents an
undercut (see #8).
- Price Manipulation: The scammer’s
actions add bounty to the equilibrium
price equal to the natural Black of the
check.
- Intelligence Gathering: The scammer
learned one of the client’s Spots,
providing more leverage for the
negotiator.
5. Repeat 3-4
• Step 3 and 4 continue until all rounds
are used up or the negotiator checks
Intimidation to leave early.
6. Leadership Closes
• After the dice resolve for the last round,
the Taker rolls a Leadership check. The
result is the same whether the dice are
heads up or not.
- Success: Black moves right to align
with the Red for a higher price.
- Failure: Red moves left to align with
Black for a lower price.
323
 7. Last Chance to Back Out
• Takers don’t have to accept the contract.
They can move on to a different client, but
they start at the lowest rung of the Sway
Tracker and receive no additional prep
work, Scams, or Will.
8. Undercut
• If the competition wasn’t sabotaged,
they threaten to do the job for one rung
cheaper than the PC crew. Any Taker
present can make a final CHA skill check
against the client to prevent this.
- Success: clients believe they’re paying
for quality and keep the higher price.
- Failure: the Takers have to meet the
lower price or chase a different
contract.
Prep Work (Before NegotIatIon)
No economy is a perfect information
system. Even when the actors take the time
to research options, that time isn’t spent
researching other, potentially more lucrative
options. Just because characters have a
choice between jobs, doesn’t mean the choice
will be easy or well informed. The amount of
information players can learn before actually
bidding on a contract is limited, and that
limited information must be spread amongst
all available jobs.
This phase of negotiation is called “prep
work.” Every Taker can make one check to
learn information about available contracts
before committing to one of them. Each
success answers one essential question about
the job (see below).
What Can Prep Work Do?
There are four questions that can be asked as
a result of successful prep work. One question
finds a potential contract; the other three
provide details about contracts the Takers
already know about. The number of questions
that can be asked equals the numbers of
players at the table and, even then, only if
everyone succeeds. There’s no time for more
324
MBA and Prep
The advanced rules provide a wider variety of
options for the economy of actions using the
Work/Life principal (see p. 434). However, these
rules do not affect prep work. Contracts have to
be found, and even if the crew is doing Scores,
the prep work is eaten up by the research that
would be required of the characters to even
learn the opportunity exists. One can’t forgo
prep work to get extra scams or vignettes.
investigation while still allowing Takers to
prepare to negotiate for one contract well (see
“Scams” p. 339).
If players want to know more than their
questions allow before bidding on a contract,
it’s up to the Market whether or not to provide
it. The default answer is “deal with it”. A job
gone horribly wrong is an interesting story;
a bunch of people squirming with indecision
and follow-up inquries is decidedly less
interesting.
Besides, the leisure time required for
endless interrogation makes little sense in the
setting. Nobody is paying Takers to be safe
or well informed. They take the job or they
don’t. The Carrion Economy has no time for
anything else.
What contracts are avaIlable?
Succeeding on a check for prep work and
asking this question reveals one of the
contracts the Market has prepared for the
session. Knowledge of the job includes the
clients name or alias, whatever they are
willing to reveal about the affiliation, and a
basic description of the task.
If players ask this question and all the
contracts have already been revealed, they can
ask one of the other questions instead.
Example: Sigma burns a charge off her
laptop and makes a Research check. It
succeeds. She tells the Market she’s looking
online for any jobs currently bidding in her
enclave. The Market says BeeMail (affiliation)
has subcontracted Cutthroat (client) to find
them a hit squad to take out the pirates
shooting down their drones (task).

Freelance Contracts vs. Job Lines
If the players want to learn anything about a freelance
contract (a contract offered by a one-off client or during
a one-shot), they must do prep work. But in campaign
play, recurring clients are one of the easiest ways for
the Market to compose a broad, sweeping story. This
repeat business is called a job line, and one of the ways
Market’s can incentivize going after job lines is by
making prep work easier.
Once a crew successfully completes the first job on
a job line, the client makes sure they are the first to
know when another job becomes available. Takers never
again have to make a check to find work from that
particular client. As the relationship continues and the crew
becomes the client’s preferred provider of service, more
questions can be answered up front until the Takers
know everything they can about a contract before it
starts.
Less required prep work, combined with immunity from
competition, makes selecting contracts on a job line
that much easier. However, clients often prefer working
with the same people because they already know which
buttons to push, so negotiations with these friends gets
increasingly difficult. For more on job lines, see p. 420.
Sin-ergy is looking for a job as well. After
some thought, his player decides to lie to the
mayor of the enclave, claiming the deputy
mayor recommended him for a job but he
was told to ask the mayor about it in person.
He succeeds on a Deception check. The
mayor falls for it. She reveals that DronePunk
(client), leader of the Hawks raiding group
(affiliation), wants someone to escort their
inventory of drone parts back to the enclave’s
market (task).
Six makes her Networking check as
well, but the Market has no more contracts
prepared for this session. He says she can use
her skill in Networking to ask a different prep
question about the two jobs already on the
table.
What wIll a specIfIc contract lIkely requIre?
Takers ask this question to get a more specific
picture of what the job likely requires. Since
clients need to keep as much classified as
possible before negotiations start in order to
prevent their opportunities from being stolen,
Why Prep At All?
Since every adventure is built around a contract, some
might ask why make a Prep Work check at all? Why
not present the players with all their options, or have
the Market simply declare the contract the players
pursue? Well, those are certainly options, but making
checks creates more interesting player dynamics. If
a one job would benefit an individual Taker’s finances
or situation more than the group, the fact that the
whole crew doesn’t have the same information becomes
an interesting source of conflict. For instance, if I.P.
really wants to meet with the Moths because they’re
essential to his retirement plan, he can choose to lie to
his crew about the better paying work he discovered in
his Networking check. Players see the lie of omission, but
the characters don’t.. unless they make that Sensitivity
check. This resentment and petty conflict makes for
a more interesting group dynamic when the crew has
to cooperate to survive. Conversely, choosing to sacrifice
self-interest for the sake of the crew is an equally
character-defining choice.
Others might ask what happens if everyone fails their
checks? It’s certainly possible, but that’s what References
are for. Buy a favor, roleplay the tip, and get on with it.
If no one is willing to ask for help, the players can design
a Score for just such an occasion (p. 394). They might
even hash one out beforehand, so the Market can have it
ready to go for a rainy day.
Finally, if no other options are available, the players
are always guaranteed a game. At least one contract
is always available, regardless of prep work, but it
doesn’t make itself known until late. Getting a lead on
a contract by default always means the competition have
already bid on it. The PCs must undercut their prices to
earn anything from the job.
325
 this information is normally based of rumor
and conjecture. What the characters find out
may end up being inaccurate or invalidated by
the contract’s complication. The only rule the
Market need follow is that a success entitles
a character to some actionable intelligence;
whatever rumor they end up overhearing, it
has to contain some information that might be
relevant to making a decision.
Example: Six uses her Networking success
to look up rumors about the BeeMail contract.
Rumors on the LifeLines indicate that hiring
a local middleman to organize retaliation
against groups assaulting BeeMail drones is a
standard tactic for the corporation. They like
using guys like Cutthroat as cat’s paws in case
officials in the Recession start looking into
their illegal drone smuggling over the border.
Meanwhile, they make sure the crews hired
to do the job advertise that BeeMail put out
the hit. Anyone working for them will likely
have to keep things completely deniable on
the Recession’s end while making damn sure
everyone in the Loss knows damn well not to
mess with the yellow drones.
326
Now that Six knows the job will involve
some brutality, the group can make a better
decision on which job would be best to take.
If everyone in the group has taken a lot of
Humanity damage, slaughtering a bunch of
desperate pirates for a corporation might
not be worth the risk to their souls. But...
BeeMail’s need for discretion could be
leveraged for a bigger payday...
What Is the equIlIbrIum prIce of a specIfIc contract?
The Market rolls Black + Red to generate the
equilibrium price for each contract; the sum
of the dice is the base price for the contract.
It’s where negotiations start; the lowest
possible price for the goods and services
themselves, without accounting for risk or
worker compensation. It’s the price the job
would be offered at if there were international
corporations of Takers that could provide
economies of scale.
The combination of Red and Black also
determines where the contract lands on the
Supply/Demand chart (p. 363). The chart
describes how the local economy values the
goods and services needed, and this gives the use to do prep work depend on the skill they
Takers ideas on how to best manipulate the are best at and the type of scene the player
price during Scams. wants to roleplay.
If no one asks about the equalibrium using Anyone stumped for an idea should
their prep work, the price isn’t rolled until consider Networking. In Red Markets, finding
negotiation begins. a job requires navigating a variety of Ubiq
Example: Audit hasn’t done any prep work forums, listservs, and internet rumors to find
yet. He checks his Profession: Accountant work in the area. Rather than roleplay every
skill. It fails, but he taps a Reference and fruitless lead, investigating available work can
quickly roleplays a scene with his friend be abstracted using the Networking skill.
Deduct. Together, the pair figures out that a
hit job for a major corporation would score
B1/R1 on equilibrium price. No way! Nobody
The Sway Tracker ExplaIned
Rather than try to keep the math from a dozen
wants to do it, and there’s not enough demand
bids and counter-offers fixed in one’s mind
to make it profitable. The negotiator would
while attempting to roleplay, Red Markets
have a really hard job making that contract
employs the Sway Tracker to track the status
worthwhile. The crew decides to work for the
of a negotiation visually. The tracker’s only
drone pirates instead.
purpose is to reduce the complex rhetorical
strategy of a negotiation down into a simple,
What competItIon Is bIddIng for a specIfIc contract?
visual goal: push the opposition as far into a
Crews that want to ensure nobody comes in
corner as possible.
and undercuts their bid need a warning as
The Taker and the client each put a die
to whom else is sniffing around the contract.
representing their current standing on the
Finding out who is else is likely to bid for the
tracker. The goal of the Black (the Taker) is
job requires a prep work action. Otherwise,
to push the Red (the client) as far right as
crews are left to deal with undercuts after the
possible, increasing the price. The goal of
fact (see p. 343).
the Red is to push the Black as far to the left
Example: The crew has decided to
as possible, discounting the price. The way
pursue the drone pirate job, but they’re out
the representative dice move and push each
of characters capable of doing prep. This
other is through Sway, which measures the
means none of their Scams can go towards
social leverage employed in the characters’
eliminating the competition. They’ll have to
roleplaying as moves along the tracker.
deal with the FUGOTMINE crew trying to
The Sway Tracker also includes formulas
snake their contract at the last minute.
for calculating final prices and a cheat sheet
of rules reminding players of all the rhetorical
WhIch SkIlls to Use? tactics of which their CHA skills are capable.
It depends. How does your character learn The formulas are explained more in depth
about the world? here, whereas strategy for the negotiator’s
Social characters can check Persuasion skills can be found in “Sway Skills” on p. 333.
down at the local bazaar to convince an
acquaintance to give up a hot tip. Quiet types
might use Awareness to notice the new blood
in the enclave. Brainiacs might use Foresight
to predict GMO corporations usually shop Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us
in the Loss around harvest time. The more
hands-on type might beat information out of
never fear to negotiate.
Crafty Carl, who seems to know everything -John F. Kennedy
going on in the enclave. The skills characters
327
 Crew Name
Enclave

Client Start

Red Die
As A Favor Buyer’s Market At Value Labor Hazard Pay 100% Mark-Up Expenses
Contract is offered Contract is offered Contract is Client agrees to Add one Bounty Double the cost The equipment
at the Demand price at the Demand price offered at add the crew’s per Taker per Leg of the job upkeep of every
only AND client only (Black result the value of break point to to Hazard Pay. before Labor participating
earns a - Rep spot on a equilibrium Supply+Demand the price (Black (Ex: a crew of Taker is added
to use in future roll) (Black + Red) + Red + break four on a into the price (no
negotiations point) three-Leg run one pays upkeep
earns 4 x 3 more) this session)

Provider Undercut Provider Default

Start Start

Black Die Black Die

Nomenclature
Clients Have... decided are flashbacks to the crew’s careful
The
Weak negotiation
Spot: A character mechanics
flaw or secrethavethat
their
canownbe leveraged planning.
to provide +1 Sway
are some of the more Spots: these character traits exist for NPC
Soft Spot: An area of sentiment or great passion that can be exploited for +1 Sway
vocabulary. Here
Tough Spot: For NPC clients, this takes the form of a specific need the client has for the contract.
It important terms:for +1 Sway
can be exploited clients as well as Takers. “Playing a spot”
Playing Spots refers to exploiting these traits to provide +1
For Takers:
Client (Red): the person purchasing a SwayFor to normal rolls.
Clients:
good orbehind
service from the provider.
adds Clients
Working a client’s weak, soft, or tough spot into the
roleplaying a skill automatically +1 Sway toare
a roll.
Starting Position: This is where the dice
Sensitivity: Clients can sacrifice a turn to learn one spot
from the Taker in negotiations
NPCs
This controlled
bonus remains even ifby the
the Market.
check fails, On the
so successSway
means representing
Gift Spot: Once the
perclient and provider
negotiation, a client maystart.
“sweeten the
+2 Sway, but a failed play on a spot is still worth +1 Sway. pot” with a piece of gear, earning an irresistible +1 Sway
Tracker,
Spots must be the client
learned is always
in scams or usingrepresented
Sensitivity + byRep a
Spots: Starting position
- Rep Spot: If the is affected
crew has done by turning
something down
unprofessional,
If the crew has earned a + Rep Spot for a notable deed, the
Red die.
negotiator can work it into the roleplay for a bonus +1 Sway. jobs, competition, and Leadership checks.
incompetent, or dishonest in the past, the client can use it
once for an irresistible +1 Sway
Contract: the subject of the negotiation. Sway: The measure of how far a client
Negotiation
The contract Charm Skills
is the agreed payment for or provider can move in a single round of
completing
Networking: Roll a check to find a contract or find info about negotiation.
a service and/or providing a it. Total failure A means
Swayundercutting
of +1 would move
to “As one
a Favor.”
good. Payment
Persuasion: is provided upon delivery and space; a Sway of +2 would move two spaces.
Success moves +1 Sway, or defends against opponent’s Sway if heads up. Can be used with spots.
doesn’t include any bounty discovered enroute The dice can’t intersect until negotiation ends,
Intimidation: Intimidation can be used to end negotiations early with a threat to “walk out.” Work in a spot to move and end
to the job site. negotiations in the same turn. so Sway also measures how hard each party
Heads Up:
Sensitivity: Read
The client and provider, as
an opponent’s
no information.
weak, soft, or tough spot, butissacrifice
pushing. A Sway
a turn of Failure
to do so. +1 against
wastes +1 would
a turn and provides

representedLie byabout
a Black and Red
the crew’s die, to
abilities can’t cancel
move +1 Sway. Can be usedout, while
with spots.aDeception
Sway ofcan +2defend
against +1 the
against
Deception:
share a space on the tracker until the very end
client’s spot play with “poker face”
would push one space on the tracker.
of negotiations.
Leadership: roundsAs aresuch,
rolledwhile any unopposed
secretly. Rounds: The number of exchanges that
To Begin: Black + Leadership / 2 (rounded up, to a max of five rounds) equals the number of turns. Failure means

Sway results in a movement of the dice, take place before negotiations have to agree
To End: Success has Black meet Red at the higher price, and failure brings Red down to Black at the lower price.

when the dice

Determining Price rest across from each other on a price. A round consists of one attempt
they are said to be “Heads Up.” At
To Start: Player makes a Leadership check (see above) this point, to gain Sway by the client and one attempt by
movement requires overpowering the other the provider. Rounds are usually separated by
Heads Up: Red and Black cannot be parallel while in negotiation. Each die resolves at the same time (moving
party’s Sway.
simultaneously once both parties have spoken). It takes 1 Sway Scams. to advance unopposed, but in head up, dice only
Provider (Black): the person seeking to
advance by pushing (negating an opponent’s Sway and having some left over)

get paid
Fixing Price:forOnproviding
the last round,a goodplayer
or service.
makes aThe Leadership Where
check. OnDo aI success,
Put theBlackDIce?moves right and parallel
providers are the PCs. On the Sway Tracker,
with the Red (higher price). On a failure, Red moves left until parallel with Black. Parallel dice indicate the
agreed upon price.
The center path on the Tracker is where the
the provider is always represented by a Black price is set. When negotiations end, the two
die.
Undercutting: Competition will try to undercut agreed upon prices, unless eliminated or left out because
dice finally rest on the same space and come
the PCs are “preferred providers” of a job line. Resisting an undercut requires a successful CHA check or a
Scams:
dedicated every
scame. Taker
Failure in athe
means crew notgoes
price involved to “meet”
down one space; criticalinfailure
the center.
meansUntil then, the
two spaces. PCs dice
undercutting
in negotiation can perform one action
competition always succeed (there must be a game), but they start on “As a Favor” on the tracker.
move on separate tracks and in opposed
between rounds of conversation, called directions.
scams. Scams can provide the negotiator The Black represents the Taker doing
a variety of bonuses (see p. 339). It is negotiations. It moves along the bottom space
understood that scams take place before or of the tracker, starting at the “Buyer’s Market”
during the conversation between client and step. It might start underneath the “As A
provider, and the scenes in which they are Favor” step if one of the following happened.
328
• Everyone in the crew failed prep work and
they bid on the contract late.
• The crew already passed up a contract
after negotiation and they’re trying to
undercut competition.
• The negotiator critically failed the opening
Leadership check.
If the Leadership critically succeeds, the
Black can start on “At Value.”
The Red represents the client. It moves
along the spaces above the tracker. The client
always starts at the “Expenses” step.
As a Favor
“The contract is offered at the Demand price
only (Black result only on the equilibrium
check) and the client earns a Rep Spot to use
against the crew in future negotiations.”
The price of the contract is only the Black
result on the equilibrium check. Whereas B9/
R6 would normally mean 15 Bounty, doing it
“As a Favor” means it’s only worth 9 Bounty.
Frankly, the client doesn’t care how much
supply is available. They’re in no hurry, feel no
pressure, and remain confident they can find
a dozen other people willing to do the work.
In order to keep the client from waiting for a
more favorable price, the crew must bid the
job below its acknowledged market value. To
make matters worse, they also have to make a
major concession in the form of a rep spot as
they beg for work.
Agreeing to do a contract “As a Favor”
is a total failure of business acumen and
common sense. It only occurs when the client
has completely outclassed the provider’s
negotiator. The Takers will be lucky to be able
to pay enclave rent by the end of the session.
Feeding their families and recouping costs?
Yeah right. “As a favor” equates to begging;
the crew has to use the promise of future
favors to convince the client to take a chance
on them.
Buyer's Market
“The contract is offered at the Demand price
only.”
Like “As a Favor,” “Buyer’s Market”
indicates the negotiator failed to convey the
crew’s limited availability and unique skill set.
But at least working for half the price is a one-
off failure, without complicating social issues
that follow the crew’s brand.
At Value
“Contract is offered that value of Supply +
Demand (Black + Red)”
Agreeing to do a contract “At Value” is still
an enormous hardship for most Takers. The
Market determines the equilibrium for a good
or service with a dice check on the Supply/
Demand chart (see p. 363). Takers may have
manipulated the equilibrium with Scams
before the price was agreed upon, but the
compensation still doesn’t account for labor,
expenses, risk, or anything else. It’s the value
of the good and/or service as if it fell from the
sky. Unless the crew is minimally equipped
and staffed, it’s almost certain the Takers will
be losing bounty on the job.
Takers that didn’t do the prep work (p. 324)
only learn the equilibrium of a good/service
when they reach the “At Value” price point.
Labor
“Client agrees to add the crew’s break point to
the price (Black+Red+crew’s break point)”
Clients that agree to pay for “Labor,”
begrudgingly recognize that being a Taker
is an act of desperation, fueled more by
responsibility than greed. Compensating labor
means that the break point – the minimum
amount of bounty required to keep a Taker
and related Dependents alive – gets factored
into the price for each member of the crew.
So, for a three-person crew with break points
of three, three, and four bounty, 10 bounty
would be added to the total price.
“Labor” adds sizably to the overall price,
but it still does nothing to save against large
expenditures of time or supplies. But while all
lower price points are certainly exploitation,
the labor price point is, at least, arguably fair.
329
 Hazard Pay
“Add on bounty per Taker per Leg to the price
(Ex. A crew of four on a three-Leg run earns 12
bounty)”
Takers that convince the client to
give “Hazard Pay” have forced an
acknowledgement of the danger they face.
This price recognizes that every second
in the Loss increases cost and risk, so the
distance to the job site is taken into account.
One bounty per Taker, per leg, is added to the
price.
“Hazard Pay” on a 3-leg job means that
a 3-person crew makes 9 bounty more on
the contract. It’s harder to miss out on profit
when the client agrees to compensate for
unforeseen hazards.
100% Mark-up
“Double the cost of the job before Labor”
Takers aren’t universally regarded as
heroes for a reason – they gouge the hell
out of clients when the opportunity arises.
Whether or not the crew is really worth the
cost is irrelevant. Once clients are convinced
they’re over a barrel, the truth no longer
matters. When a crew gets the client to agree
to a 100% mark-up, the price before labor is
doubled. The Market takes the equilibrium for
the contract, multiplies it by two, then adds in
labor and hazard pay.
Continuing the examples discussed so
far, let’s say a job’s equilibrium is 15 bounty
total. Add in the crew’s break point (10b) and
hazard pay (9b). The price is 34b before the
mark-up. After the mark-up, the equilibrium
is added again. The new price is 34b + 15b =
49b.
A great many people think they are
thinking when they are rearranging their
prejudices.
-William James
330
Unless the crew spends extravagantly or
dies, it’s hard not to profit from a mark-up job.
The crew can expect serious consequences,
however, if they end up not being worth such
an exorbitant price.
Expenses
“The equipment upkeep of every participating
Taker is added into the price (no one pays
upkeep this session).”
Convincing the client to pay expenses
means the big payday. The client recognizes
that resources expended in pursuit of another
person’s needs deserve to be reimbursed.
At this point, the combined equipment cost
of every Taker participating in the contract
gets added to the price. Securing expenses
effectively negates an crew’s entire overhead,
aside from seriously unfortunate incidental
costs. This is a dream scenario for most real-
world business ventures; Taker’s should be
downright thrilled when their equipment costs
get reimbursed.
Calculating “Expenses” is easy: nobody
pays upkeep this session. If the gear is
already owned, survives the contract, and
can be refreshed, it automatically refreshes.
Those that desire to keep their books
more fastidiously can just add in the crew’s
equipment cost from the Crew Sheet (p. 488).
LeadershIp Opens (StartIng
NegotIatIons)
Every CHA skill has a special function in
negotiations, and Leadership is foremost
among them, measuring the Taker’s overall
presence. How commanding is their voice?
How imposing the stature? How confident
the expression? Leadership determines all
these aspects and the checks affect both
the beginning and close of negotiation. It’s
the intangible combination of variables that
forgives interruptions, demands attention,
and draws eyes. Since so much of human
interaction is determined by these non-verbal
cues, Leadership frames the whole process,
opening (see the next section) and closing
negotiations (see “Leadership Closes (After
Negotiations)” (p.343)).
FIrst ImpressIons
In Red Markets, a Leadership check
represents the oh-so-important first
impression. Succeed on a Leadership check,
and the negotiation lasts longer, giving the
Takers more time to push the price up. Failure
means the client can sense the upper hand
and use it to earn discounts.
The number of rounds a negotiation lasts
is always equal to the Black + Leadership,
divided by two and rounded up.
On a success, negotiations last the number
of rounds equal to the Black+Leadership
divided by 2, and the players know it.
They can plan any Scams and play spots
accordingly. On a failure, the Market rolls one
Black die in secret, never telling the players
how many rounds they have to work with.
A critical success puts the players at the
next highest stage on the Sway tracker:
something about the negotiator just screams
“competent.” Conversely, a critical failure
drops Taker’s down on the Sway track (but
never below “As A Favor”).
Success also determines who talks first –
the winner of the check chooses who speaks
first. While simultaneous resolution (p. 332)
negates most bonuses from initiative, order
can inform roleplaying and might be crucial to
an Intimidation check to end talks early.
The Task of the NegotIator
(DurIng Rounds)
Successful negotiation is a group effort,
but one player still has to take on the
responsibility of strategically catering the
roleplaying to secure the best possible dice
checks. The negotiator has to deal with the
client face-to-face, and the blame for a bum
deal usually only falls on the one in the room.
Players that prioritize CHA skills to build
the best negotiators possible represent a core
truth of economics: interpersonal skills always
have value. History has shown that, no matter
how dire survival circumstances may get,
there are always some that manage to survive
through wits alone. The “soft skills” required
to deal with people may not decapitate a
zombie or stitch a wound, but the boardroom
secures the bounty necessary for such feats.
Being the negotiator doesn’t mean you can’t
have any action movie moments in the Loss,
but it does means those moments are a poor
allocation of resources. Negotiators have
people for that; who is going to get the big
Why Leadership?
Neuroscience and sociology suggests that, more often
than not, people judge each other in seconds and spend
the rest of the interaction compiling a narrative that
justifies their snap decisions. When you walk into a job
interview, the boss likely knows whether you got the job
the moment you walk through the door. The discussion
only exists for as long as it takes for the boss to
explain his own irrational choice. Some people know how
to manipulate the instantaneous prejudices of others. In
negotiations, Leadership measures that ability.
331
 payday if you go down? Haggling over a card
table in a disused storage unit may not be
quite as grand as the conference rooms and No man is wholly free. He is a slave to wealth, or
car dealerships where the negotiator honed to fortune, or the laws, or the people restrain him
the necessary skills, but the stakes have never
been higher. from acting according to his will alone.
-Euripides
Non-NegotIables client plays that spot, they automatically get
Certain aspects of the negotiation mechanics
+1 Sway, unless the provider is successful
are essential if the game is to work properly.
at Deception. Assume that the client earned
enough bounty to hire a crew by being good in
Payment on DelIvery
business; they will dominate the negotiation
Nobody dumb enough to bring the money to
unless the Takers pull Scams and leverage
the meeting lasted five years in the Loss. The
spots.
PCs never have the option of just sticking up
the client and making a run for it. Additionally,
Heads Up
no one is dumb enough to pay in advance
The Black and the Red can never intersect
either, so no one can grab a contract and stop
on the tracker until the very end of the
returning calls.
negotiation. If the final Leadership test
As for the clients refusing to pay once the
fails, clients push prices down to meet
job is done... that’s always a possibility. But
providers. If the Leadership check succeeds,
then again, that’s one of the many reasons
providers move the price up to meet the
Takers tend to carry all those weapons.
client. Otherwise, the dice can only ever be
unopposed (open spaces on either side) or
One on One
heads up. When dice are heads up, they lock
No one negotiates terms individually with
horns and push each other according to who
every single worker in a company. To that end,
has the most Sway.
there should never be a situation where five
PCs shout over each other while debating
No References
with a single employer. Negotiations are
Takers cannot succeed-at-cost by tapping
personal affairs. The crew elects somebody
a Reference during negotiations. Failing to
to represent their interests, and that person
impress the client is bad enough, but pausing
goes in. The representative makes all the skill
the conversation to phone a friend is only
checks and calls the shots as to strategies.
going to make things worse. References can
If other players want to help, they can pull a
be used to repair failed checks in Scams, but
Scam (see p. 339). Though some Scams put
Will is the only mediator for failure in the
other PCs in the room, only one person can
negotiation itself.
make the skill check that round. Nobody can
fail a check, then tag in someone else to try
SImultaneous ResolutIon
again – that violates the “one-and-done” rule.
There is no mechanical bonus for going first.
Dice representing the provider and client do
ClIents are Competent
not move until both have had their say that
Like in combat, the Market never rolls for
round. Players should keep this simultaneous
the rhetorical attacks of the client. If the
resolution in mind when planning strategy;
client wants to move one Sway, the client
it affects the way dice become heads up and
automatically can. If the client wants to make
push Sway.
a Sensitivity check to learn one of the PC’s
spots, it automatically succeeds. When a
332
Sway SkIlls
Sway refers to a character’s combined
influence: political, financial, rhetorical, etc.
Make a successful check on a CHA skill to
gain one Sway. Make a successful check that
exploits a spot? That’s two Sway. The only
problem is that Sway cancels Sway. Clients
and providers that are heads up and wielding
the same Sway stay deadlocked. The only way
to make progress is to play spots for leverage
at the right time.
All CHA skills have some function in the
fight for Sway in negotiations, in addition to
their normal functions (see “List of Skills” p.
203). These special uses are detailed here.
PersuasIon
Persuading a neighbor to turn down the
music is one thing; convincing him to fund a
suicide mission is quite another. Persuasion is
the primary means of moving across the Sway
tracker. A success on a Persuasion check
moves +1 Sway, and a success is necessary to
defend against an opponent’s Sway when dice
are heads up (unable to move without sharing
a space).
Leveraging a weak, soft, or tough spot –
or using a +Rep spot – requires the player
to work that information into their pitch. If
the Market deems the information properly
incorporated, playing the spot is worth +1
Sway even if the Persuasion check fails. If
the negotiator is successful and the spot is
used? That makes a success worth +2 Sway.
Knowing when to bank on simple success for
a +1 and when to gamble on a spot for a +2 is
the key to good negotiation.
Persuasion can also be used to prevent
an undercut by competition, so long as the
negotiator advocates paying a premium price
for premium quality. On a success, the client
views the competition as “bargain bin” and
sticks with the quality providers. A failure
means the crew has to meet the competition’s
333
 Where Roleplaying and Dice Meet
What rhetorical appeal counts for what skill? It can be difficult to tell sometimes. Let’s assume a Taker asks the
client, “Can you really sleep at night, knowing those things are piling up against the gate?” Is it a Sensitivity
check, meant to gauge the client’s grit? Is it a Persuasion check, a strictly rhetorical question meant as a
pathetic appeal? Or is it Intimidation, meant to scare the client at the prospect of losing this crew of Takers?
In edge cases such as the example above, Market’s are encouraged to ask players their intention out-of-
character and let them make whatever skill check they planned their roleplaying around. However, the Market gets
final say on what mechanical skills the roleplaying qualifies for. Takers can’t “convince” a client they really will cut
his tongue out if he doesn’t hire them, no matter how many more points they might have in Persuasion. That’s
an Intimidation, plain and simple.
Players are always allowed to “rewind” the story and roleplay a different appeal if the Market vetos their play.

price in order to keep the contract. no information is offered willingly. Still,

In summary, during negotiation Persuasion
can do the following:
• On a success, move the Black +1 Sway up
by pitching your crew’s abilities.
Example: “We’re still alive; that’s the
greatest recommendation a crew can
have. We can get this job done, and we’ll
be here when you need us again.”
• Incorporate a spot into roleplay for a +1
Sway bonus, regardless of success or
failure.
Example: (for the soft spot: Animal
Lover) “Have you met Fido? He’s really
our manager. We’d be lost out there
without our boy, wouldn’t we Fido?
WOULDN’T WE?!”
• On a success, convince a client to stay
away from competition.
Example: “Look, if you want to trust a
bunch of cultists with your money, that’s
your business. But my crew doesn’t
have an ideology; as long as your bounty
spends, we get the job done without
distractions.”
SensItIvIty
Good negotiation is about reading the
opponent, but since the mark is competent,
334
particularly observant negotiators can spend
a full round on a digression, asking a question
or talking just to gauge the opponent’s
reaction. If the Taker’s Sensitivity check is
successful, they learn one of the client’s spots
and can exploit it in the next round.
The problem is that playing mind games
wastes time that could be spent pushing the
price and isn’t guaranteed to succeed. That’s
why learning a prospective client’s spots so
often ends up being one or more of the crew’s
Scams.
In summary, Sensitivity can do the
following in negotiations:
• Sacrifice a turn to make a check. On a
success, learn one of the client’s spots.
Example: “Seems a little odd, keeping
such an average job so hush-hush. What’s
really going on here?”
DeceptIon
The client needs a combat specialist with
experience in military-grade computer
encryption and paratrooper certification. The
most badass occupation anyone in your crew
had before the Crash was “Temp.” So, it’s time
to lie on your resume.
Deception is used to make promises the
negotiator has no intention of keeping or
bullshitting about the team’s abilities. More
often than not, Deception checks only arise
when the crew is trying to exploit a contract’s
tough spot without the required expertise to
do so. The Market calls for the Deception
check to see if the client buys it.
Deception designed to exploit a client’s spot
works the same way as with Persuasion. The
player must have learned the spot through
an action and it must be present in the
character’s pitch. But, if those requirements
are met, the bonus +1 Sway always happens.
A more common use of the Deception skill
is to resist a client’s use of a spot. If the NPC
learns the negotiator’s weak, soft, or tough
spot by sacrificing a turn to Sensitivity, they
can play it automatically for +2 Sway. The
only hope the negotiator has is maintaining a
poker face, hiding the emotional impact of the
barb, and forcing the opponent onto another
tactic. A successful Deception check reduces
the Sway of clients playing a spot down to the
+1 Sway of a normal success.
Finally, Deception can be used to prevent
competition from undercutting an agreed-
upon price. Get the client to believe a lie about
the other crew’s reputation and tie the job
down. If this strategy is overused, however,
the Market may give out -Rep spots for
slandering fellow Takers.
In summary, Deception can do the
following in negotiations:
• On a success, lie about a crew’s abilities
for +1 Sway.
Example: “Oh yeah. We’ve got a couple of
anti-material rifles actually. Those tanks
won’t be a problem.”
• Incorporate a spot into roleplay for a +1
Sway bonus, regardless of success or
failure.
Example: (for the soft spot: The Faithful
Must Stick Together) “I, too, drink deep
the holy blood of the Immune, brother!
You need not worry about me selling the
details of your little human farm to, say...
relatives thirsty for revenge.”
• On a success, negate the bonus Sway of a
client exploiting one of the Taker’s spots.
Example: “Well, I’m glad you did the
research on my church, but all that God
stuff is really just good for networking. I
don’t let it affect my work, you know.”
• On a success, lie to scare the client away
from competition.
Example: “Okay... but don’t let them lure
you into a dark alley. I think they recently
sold the last of the organs leftover from
their previous ‘client.’”
Bust Rule: No HIdIng the Truth
For added difficulty, a GM can disallow the
use of Deception to resist client’s playing spots
on characters. Clients are competent, after
all, and their shots always land. The only way
to weather the abuse is to bring more social
ammo to the table. For even more challenge,
the Market might say particularly brutal verbal
jousts provoke Self-Control checks.
IntImIdatIon
The eye contact, intimacy, and trust of good-
natured haggling run counter to the prison-
yard mentality that rules much of the Loss.
Survivors carry a lot of baggage, and many
aren’t keen to have a stranger rifling through
it in an attempt to squeeze a few more bounty
out of a deal. Clients that push too many
emotional buttons might find themselves
reminded their employees are experienced
killers.
For the cost of one turn, Takers make an
Intimidation check to scare NPCs away from
any further Sensitivity attempts or from
playing spots. On a success, the negotiator’s
dead stare or whispered threat is enough to
dissuade the client. On a failure, they “doth
protest too much” and reveal a spot in the
process.
Players can end a negotiation early by
threatening to walk out with Intimidation.
Empty threats to leave the room are great for
negotiations that go well early but face the
335
 challenge of additional rounds without the
resources to accrue more Sway. Intimidation
cuts the conversation off early, allowing
Takers to quit while ahead on a success.
Finally, Intimidation is another skill
available to prevent competition from
undercutting the final price. Roleplay a threat
to rivals and make an Intimidation check. On
a success, the other crew withdraws their bid.
In summary, Intimidation can do the
following in negotiations:
• Sacrifice a turn to make a check. On a
success, the client can’t learn any more
spots.
Example: “Stick to business. You try
to get in my head again? I’ll paint yours
across the wall.”
• On a success, force an early end to
negotiations. Instead of simultaneous
resolution, negotiations end the moment
the Taker succeeds. The process moves
directly on to “Leadership Closes” (p. 343)
and price fixing. On a failure, the client
doesn’t buy the threat.
Example: “I don’t have time to prattle
all day with you. You want to risk your
bounty with some Bait-ass crew, be my
guest. I got shit to do.”
• On a success, scare a competitor into
removing their undercut for the contract.
Example: “You can snake my job and lose
a lot of bounty paying your medical bills,
or you could keep walking and save us
both the trouble.”
Bust Rule: Peasants Don’t Scare Me
To add challenge, Markets can disallow
Intimidation checks to prevent further
Sensitivity reads by the client. No one gets
enough bounty to hire out Takers by being
shit at reading people. In this Bust variant,
sacrificing a turn means the client learns a spot.
Always.
336
LeadershIp
Leadership’s use in negotiations is dealt with
more in depth in “Leadership Opens” section
(see p. 330)
PlayIng Spots
Adam Smith may have believed in rational
choice, but no logic survives contact with a
human. Even the most deadened sociopaths
have buttons to push, and negotiation rewards
emotional manipulation above all else. Playing
spots is all about leveraging an opponent for
maximum profit.
Once the dice go heads up on the Sway
tracker, the only way to break the deadlock
without giving in is to get the other party
to start thinking irrationally. Spots are the
most powerful weapons either side can use
in a negotiation and absolutely essential to
success.
You don’t have to play spots to negotiate –
just to win.
Spots At-A-Glance
All spots must be learned, either through
Scams or through Sensitivity, before they can
be played.
Spots for Takers to use against Clients:
• Weak Spot: Work a mention or
exploitation of the client’s personal flaws
into the roleplaying for a bonus +1 Sway.
• Soft Spot: Work a mention or exploitation
of the client’s virtues into the roleplaying
for a bonus +1 Sway.
• Tough Spot: Work a mention or
exploitation of the contract’s requirements
into the roleplaying for a bonus +1 Sway.
• +Rep Spots: If the crew has earned a +Rep
Spot for a notable deed, work it into the
roleplay for a bonus +1 Sway and erase
the +Rep Spot from the crew sheet.
Spots for Clients to use against Takers
• Sensitivity: Clients can sacrifice a turn
to learn one spot of the provider in
negotiations. They never start off knowing
spots unless they’ve already worked with
 crew in a job line, but they always succeed
on Sensitivity checks.
• Character Spots: The spots listed on the
negotiator’s character sheet, once learned,
can be incorporated into the Market’s
roleplay for a bonus +1 Sway. Takers
may be able to resist the bonus with a
successful Deception check.
• Gift Spot: Once per negotiation, a client
may “sweeten the pot” with a piece of gear,
earning a bonus +1 Sway. No skill can
resist this Sway bonus.
• -Rep Spot: If the crew has done something
unprofessional, incompetent, or dishonest
in the past, the client can use it once for
a bonus +1 Sway. No skill can resist this
Sway bonus.
RoleplayIng Challenge
Playing a spot is, above all, a roleplaying
challenge. The entire negotiation mechanic
already requires some careful acting if the
negotiator is to utilize the best skill for a
given check. Saying “I’ll kill you if you don’t
give me the job” isn’t exactly persuasive,
and the difference between Persuasion
and Intimidation skills might be a +3. The
negotiating player that can’t cater their
character’s speech to the dice is putting the
fate of everyone in the hands of blind luck.
Since spots are so powerful, incorporating
one increases the roleplaying challenge even
more. Now, instead of merely catering their
speech to maximize the impact of skills, the
negotiator has to work the spot into the pitch
as well. So if a group has a skilled improvisor
amongst their ranks, maximize the crew’s
profits by having the thespian play a high-
CHA negotiator. The challenge then becomes
keeping the golden goose character alive
when it comes time to fight.
GIft Spots
A gift spot is an intrusion of the barter system
on negotiations. Everyone likes presents;
when they might keep you from being eaten
alive, it’s really hard to be ungrateful. A client
can offer the crew a piece of gear for free and
get an automatic +1 Sway for “sweetening the
pot.” The gear doesn’t have to be useful, and
it’s up to the crew to decide who keeps the
profits or pays the upkeep, but the gift always
works. The client cannot use a gift spot more
than once in a negotiation, but the gesture
can’t be denied without committing a social
faux pas that cuts off negotiations altogether.
337
 Markets should take care to make sure the
gift warrants the extra Sway, though. Bribing
the Takers with an extra Haul of rations is
condescending rather than ingratiating.
Rep Spots
In long-term play, the Market offers Rep spots
for particularly noteworthy actions. When
the Takers are documented or witnessed
doing something heroic or impressive, the
crew gains a +Rep spot. During negotiations,
they can play a +Rep spot for an automatic
+1 Sway, regardless of the associated skill
check’s result.
The same rule applies for public disgrace
and failure. In the event the Takers get caught
being unprofessional, the crew’s reputation
gets damaged. Clients can burn a -Rep spot
for an automatic +2 Sway. No skill check can
prevent this maneuver.
Bust Rule: The Loss Never Forgets
In this variant, reputation never goes away. It can
be used in every negotiation, by both the client
and the Takers. The only way to get rid of a -Rep
spot is for the crew to burn a +Rep spot to cancel
it out. If the crew chooses to level out its karmic
accounts, erase both the + and -Rep spots from
the crew sheet.
LImIted Usage
Whether used by the client or by the
Taker, each spot can only be used once per
negotiation, and sometimes only once per
campaign.
All characters have weak, soft, and tough
spots, but wailing on them over and over
creates bad blood and breaks contracts. Each
one may only be played once per negotiation,
and only after it has been learned. The only
way to replay a spot would be if the same
negotiator and client met again as part of job
line, but even then, the client’s tough spot
would shift to reflect the new contract.
Similarly, gift spots are irresistible, but the
client can’t endlessly bury a crew in presents.
338
The first gift is hard to argue with, but the cost
of fencing extra crap would make any contract
not worth it. Clients only get one gift spot per
session.
Both + and -Rep spots are “burned” once
they are used. The Loss has a short memory,
and using the crew’s brand for or against
them has a limited shelf life. Once the spot
is used, it can’t be used again in any other
negotiations during that campaign. However,
there are some Bust rules that make Rep
spots reusable.
Always Powerful; SometImes Enough
Spots always count for +1 Sway, regardless
of whether the associated skill succeeds or
fails. Leverage remains leverage even when
inexpertly applied.
Example: So, let’s say Whitman wants
to employ the Tough Spot: Time is of the
Essence. He’s heads up with the client
and needs the extra push. The character
says, “The Philosopher Kings aren’t only
professional; we’re available. We have no
other obligations at this time, and we can start
work immediately.”
Whitman’s player rolls B6+2/R8. Damn!
Ties go to the Market. The reminder of the
ticking clock is good for +1 Sway, but his
delivery seems paper-thin. It won’t be enough
to push the client, but using the spot at least
keeps the dice where they are for this round.
Bust Rule: All or NothIng
For an increased challenge, the spot means
nothing if the associated check fails. That means
playing a spot can result in either 0 or 2 Sway:
nothing inbetween. The spot is gone after the
check is made, even if the skill failed.
DefendIng AgaInst ManIpulatIon
One non-negotiable is that clients are
competent. So long as a turn’s not being
sacrificed to learn a spot, the client always
has at least +1 Sway available to them. The
same goes for playing spots against the PC.
The client’s success is assumed, unless the
player makes a successful Deception check.
Deception is the only way to cut the +2 Sway
from a spot down to the regular +1 Sway.
Like an Athletics check used to dodge an
attack, it’s best to think of Deception as a
twitch action compelled by someone attacking
a character’s spots. The skill check doesn’t
even have to represent any actual speech; it
could be something as simple as a poker face.
If the Deception check succeeds, the client’s
Sway drops down to +1 again, allowing the
provider to push the price by playing a spot of
their own.
ObtaInIng Spots
For the cost of a turn, negotiators can
check Sensitivity to learn a client’s spot in
the moment. But turns are precious and
time spent reading the audience isn’t spent
working it. It’s best to know what makes
clients tick before ever even meeting them,
and that’s where Scams come in...
Scams (Inbetween Rounds)
Clients seemingly hold all the cards in a
negotiation. They have the bounty to pay,
a desperate workforce, and all the time in
the world. But successful crews don’t leave
anything to chance when it comes to a
payday and, as far as the Loss goes, they’re
the experts. The whole crew cooperates to
fleece the client as much as possible. PCs not
directly negotiating with the client engage
in Scams that boost the price, sabotage the
competition, and support their negotiator’s
plays.
Players that don’t want to play a CHA-
heavy character but still want to contribute
to negotiations should read the following and
familiarize themselves with Scams.
Scams At-A-Glance
Scams are actions roleplayed between
negotiation rounds, taking place before
or concurrent with the negotiator/client
conversation.
• Scams are only available between
negotiation rounds. A three-round
negotiation would only have two Scams:
between rounds one and two, and between
rounds two and three.
• Each Taker may only perform one Scam.
- MBA Rules: A Taker might be afforded
one, two, or no Scams, depending on
Work/Life balance.
• The skills used in a Scam and the number
of checks required depends on the context
of the scene decided on between the
scammer and the Market.
• Each Scam can only fulfill one of five
possible purposes:
- Partners in Crime: The scammer is in
the room with the negotiator. They can
“step in” and perform a CHA skill check
instead of the negotiator.
- Negotiator Support: A scammer’s
actions provide the negotiator a one-
time +2 bonus to one of the negotiator’s
skills.
- Discourage Competition: The scammer
sabotages competitors and prevents an
undercut.
- Price Manipulation: The scammer’s
actions add bounty to the equilibrium
price equal to the natural Black of their
check.
- Intelligence Gathering: The scammer
learned one of the client’s Spots,
providing more leverage for the
negotiator.
NonlInear TIme
Planning in RPGs can be laborious, hindering
the progression of the story. Also, even if a
group cooperates well enough to agree on a
scheme quickly, once that scheme is executed,
everyone at the table is still stuck watching
the provider and client talk. Scams are
designed to prevent both problems and keep
the game engaging for everyone.
To this end, Scams operate off of nonlinear
time. What does that mean? In the middle
of conversation, if it turns out the negotiator
really needs to know the client’s weak spot,
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 one of the other crew members can use a
Scam to say they figured it out already and
relayed the intel before the negotiation even
started. How did the crew know they’d need
that information? Because they’ve been
surviving in the Loss for five years, that’s how.
Alternately, if the negotiator needs a
distraction that very second in order to
assist a Deception check, a coworker can
spend their Scam to trigger a diversion as
the negotiation is going. It doesn’t matter
if the Scam happened before or during
negotiations, so long as the skill check
succeeds, the scheme succeeds.
At the table, Scams always take place
between rounds of a negotiation: after both
provider and client have determined their
Sway but before the next round starts.
While the scam can determine whether
the character is acting before or during the
conversation, the player always describes that
action between one round and the next.
“Nonlinawha?”
Anyone who has ever seen a heist movie or read a
novel knows how nonlinear, time-hopping story structures
work. What at first seems like an insurmountable obstacle
ends up having been conquered at a previous point in the
narrative.. a point left out by the author until such a
time as a flashback could relieve that artificial suspense.
For instance, it looks like the Ocean’s gang is going
to be caught.. until we find out they’re disguised as the
SWAT team. Voldermort has certainly won.. until we learn
about the secret histories that both Dumbledore and
Snape have been hiding for six books.
It’s a cheap writing technique, but it’s less of a cop-
out in games: those flashbacks still need to be played
out in the moment and the dice don’t always cooperate.
If the scheme failed, but the negotiator had to go ahead
regardless, it still makes for satisfying drama rather
than stopping the negotiation dead. A failed Scam can only
ever deny a bonus. It’s never a matter of life or death..
340
LImIted Resources
Scams are limited to the number of the
players outside of negotiations. In a 3-person
crew, two Scams would be available: one for
each player outside the conversation. The
negotiator cannot scam because their work
action is used actually talking to the client
(see “Work/Life Balance” p. 434).
Scams are also limited to one or two
skill checks apiece – also keep in mind
that References can be tapped to succeed
at cost during Scams. It’s not possible to
interrupt a tense negotiation to phone a
friend, but Scams operate off nonlinear
time. Between planning the Scam, executing
it, and roleplaying any networking used to
compensate for failure, a complex Scam
could eat up ten minutes of time at the table.
The goal is to keep any single player from
dominating the spotlight entirely, so players
aren’t encouraged to go off on never-ending,
one-man side quests.
MBA Rules and Work/LIfe Balance
In its basic form, Red Markets assumes the
Work/Life Balance of every character. Takers
get one vignette with their family (life), and
they get one action to help the crew (work)
either through scamming or negotiating.
The MBA Rules make available a variety of
other actions that PCs might want to engage
in, but the opportunity cost of the Work/
Life Balance still exists. This means some
characters might get two scams by sacrificing
time with family, or no scams by focusing on
their loved ones. For more detailed rules on
this advanced style of play, see p. 424.
The Targets of Scams
Like “Prep Work” (p. 324), players can
propose the use of any skill in a Scam so long
as it might reasonably get the job done. But,
regardless of its design, Scams can only serve
one of five mechanical functions.
IntellIgence GatherIng
Any time a negotiator wants to figure out the
opponent’s spot, it requires sacrificing an
entire turn for an uncertain Sensitivity check.
Considering the power of playing spots, the
risky fishing expedition may very well be
worth it, but it requires perfect timing.
Successful Takers know their clients before
they even meet them. A great way to use a
Scam is to figure out a client’s spot before
they ever walk into the room. Lots of ADP,
INT, and CHA skills can get the crew insider
information, provided they have the leisurely
time limit of a scam.
Example Intel Gathering Scams:
• Hack into a client’s internet history using
Profession: Hacker, learning about the
boss’s embarrassing addiction to some
very questionable genres of pornography.
• Pick an assistant’s pocket with Criminality
to learn the client’s tough spot.
• Tail the client with Sneak, and then use
Sensitivity to read one of their spots.
• Contact an old squadmate back in the
Recession with Networking. Maybe she
has dirt on this Steward you have to deal
with.
PrIce ManIpulatIon
Price manipulation Scams seek to alter the
equilibrium price of the contract. The Market
determines the initial equilibrium by rolling
on the Supply/Demand chart (see p. 363).
The Black and Red determine the quadrant
on the chart and what kind of scams Takers
can perform to alter the fundamental price of
what they are selling.
On the final dice check determining the
success or failure of the scam, success adds a
number of bounty equal to the natural result of
the Black. Critical success maxes the added
bounty out at 11. Failure doesn’t alter the
equilibrium at all.
Example Price Manipulation Scams:
• Puncture holes in the jugs storing the
water reserve, decreasing supply to
increase demand.
• Secure a hiding spot for the salvaged
generators off-site, creating an artificial
scarcity to keep demand constant
• Preach about the coming apocalypse to
the fearful refugees, driving up demand for
guns.
• Spread internet propaganda about the
dangers of the job site, decreasing the
competition of other Takers to increase
your crew’s payment.
Partners In CrIme
Good cop/bad cop, straight man/cut-up...
there are a variety of rhetorical strategies
that require more than one person. Players
can forgo their opportunity to scam if they
want to be in the room with the negotiator.
The non-negotiable of “One-on-one” (see p.
322) still applies – no one can shout down
the client as a PC hive-mind choir – but being
the room allows the other Taker to “tag into”
negotiations.
There can still only be one person speaking
to the client for any given round and the
person speaking is still allowed only one
CHA-related check. So no one can fail a
Persuasion check and then immediately have
their partner make another Persuasion check,
and neither Taker can use References once
engaged in the negotiation. Though both
parties are unable to scam, they can alternate
using their skills and play to each Taker’s
strengths. For example, if the convincingly
earnest negotiator finds herself in need of
some bullshit, the duplicitous bastard can
step in for a Deception check. Two middling
negotiators can add up to a great one, with the
right cooperation. Remember: neither party
is guaranteed success, and both are cut off
from the powerful support positions played by
those outside the negotiation.
NegotIator Support
Supporting the negotiator’s rolls means
somehow being present for the negotiator
in the room, either physically or through
reputation. While intel gathering makes
certain rolls possible (such as playing spots),
supporting the negotiator provides a one-time
+2 bonus.
341
 Example Negotiator Support Scams:
• Using Profession: Computer Science to
skim the wireless traffic from the client’s
fitness watch, monitoring the heartrate
for signs of lying, and feeding data to the
negotiator (+2 to Sensitivity)
• Using Profession: Herbalist to ease a
mother’s gout, thus securing her son’s –
the client – gratitude (+2 to Persuasion)
• Using Criminality to plant oneself in a
“random” crowd and Deception to act
surprised when the provider proves she
can read minds (+2 to Deception)
• Using Networking to convince a Reference
to soften the client up with stories of this
terrifyingly badass crew of Takers in the
area (+2 to Intimidation)
DIscourage CompetItIon
One or more Takers can use their Scam to
discourage competition, thus preventing the
undercut at the end of a negotiation. After
all, if all the other crews in the enclave are
too busy being on fire to take on new clients,
that’s a powerful bargaining chip. Eliminating
342
all possible competition in the vicinity even
provides the +Rep spot “Only Game in Town.”
However, enclaves and settlements have
their own laws, and outright murdering
other people within the borders tends to be
illegal. Less deadly sabotage – dosing all
their rations with laxative, for instance – still
risks repercussions from the authorities and
the sabatoged crew. Groups antagonizing
the competition regularly or overtly can
expect -Rep spots and ambush out in the
Loss. Ruthlessness only works in the short
term, and even then only if the group is smart
enough to hide it.
Markets should make sure that their
players understand that gunning down their
rivals can never be done with total impunity.
At the minimum, successful sociopathy still
costs ammo and Humanity. Shady business
practices can help or hurt the bottom line in
equal measure.
Example Discourage Competition Scams:
• Using Leadership to stir up public fervor,
insisting that the other crew are “the only
ones who can be trusted” to take on a
 certain enclave contract... distracting them
from the more lucrative job.
• Using Criminality to break in to the
rival crew’s HQ. With all their weapons
disassembled and hidden about the
enclave, it’s going to be hard to go over the
fence.
• Using Intimidation to convince the crew to
find another client... or else.
• Using Unarmed to start a bar fight with
the rival negotiator. It’s hard to use a silver
tongue with your jaw wired shut.
LeadershIp Closes (After
NegotIatIons)
What tips the scales in haggling? Most of the
time, even experts can’t point to the straw
that breaks a negotiator’s resolve. As with the
beginning of Negotiations (see “Leadership
Opens” p. 330), the Leadership skill measures
all the variables in the Taker’s personality that
can affect the price. It takes one final dice
check to agree on a price. Then players deal
with the competition and decide whether it’s
time to suit up.
Leadership closes negotiations by
determining who ultimately compromises
on the price. The dice representing the two
parties can’t lock horns forever: someone is
going to have to come down or go up to agree
on a price. Was the client impressed enough
to pay more than planned, or do the Takers
make a concession for fear of going hungry?
It’s a test of personality to see who breaks
first.
The negotiator rolls a Leadership check.
On a success, the provider’s die (Black) moves
up to meet the client’s die (Red), ensuring a
higher price. On a failure, the client’s die (Red)
goes down to meet the provider’s die (Black),
and the Takers give up a final concession. In
short, success means the Takers get more
bounty, failure means they get less.
UndercuttIng
A successful Networking check gets the
players first shot at a job, but competition can
What If the dIce don’t meet?
If negotiations have been disastrous and the dice
aren’t even close to a compromise, there are two
ways to fix the price.
Boom Rule: the Taker makes a Leadership
check all the same. Success moves the price up,
failure brings it down... even if the dice are three
boxes apart. This means that an uncertain, rocky
conversation can end up working out based off
the Taker’s sheer force of personality.
Bust Rule: the price always goes down. If the
dice aren’t head’s up, the client only goes down to
meet the Taker. If they wanted more bounty, they
should have pushed harder for it.
attempt to undercut the final price to steal the
contract. Competition always tries to steal
jobs after the price has been set, providing
one last challenge for the negotiator.
Resisting the undercut requires someone
in the crew to somehow convince the
competition to back down or the client to
pay for quality. If either of those tactics fails,
the crew has to meet the competition’s price
to keep the job. If the check critically fails,
the crew has to go one step lower than the
undercut on the Sway tracker to keep their
contract. Once an attempt to undercut the
PCs has been made, the NPCs won’t make
another – undercutting is a one-and-done
move.
Failing the Prep Work (p. 324) checks
required to find a job means the Takers are
the ones that must undercut their competition
in order to get access to negotiations. This
starts the negotiations at the lowest possible
price on the Sway Tracker. It’s possible to
undercut in order “to get a foot in the door”
only to end up negotiating a higher price,
but doing so requires more skill from the
negotiator.
Though undercutting is limited and can’t
reduce prices infinitely, it’s still a dangerous
maneuver available to competitors. The
343
 primary appeal of using scams to eliminate
competition is preventing this stressful and
potentially damaging check. This is also one
of the benefits of chasing job lines early:
groups that are the preferred providers for a
client don’t have to worry about competitors
undercutting them.
BackIng Out
PCs aren’t obligated to take a job they don’t
feel pay enough. When negotiations fail, they
can move on to another job the Market has
created, or one can be randomly generated
(see p. 358). However, everyone should be
forewarned that all economies move in cycles
and waiting too long for the perfect job could
mean passing it by.
In the Carrion Economy, a number of
factors give the markets their seasons. The
weather plays a part. War against the dead
is easier in winter, but it costs more in gear
and supplies. The summer means a lower
overhead, but more danger from casualties
and other factions. Clients from the Recession
only hire out contracts as they can afford
to, which keeps most of the apocalyptic
wasteland marching to the same “1st and
15th” monthly beat as the old world. So
Takers don’t have to take the first thing that
comes along, but they can’t afford to waste
time either. There is a finite amount of work
in every cycle, and starvation keeps a much
more demanding schedule.
The opportunity lost by turning down a
job is represented by the starting positions
on the Sway tracker. If a group turns down
a job because they’re dissatisfied with how
negotiations worked out, the competition
gets that job. The next job they pursue starts
them in the “As a Favor” section of the tracker.
Furthermore, while players get another Scam
in a Boom game, a Bust game leaves the
group with whatever is left over after the first
negotiation. In either case, resources and Will
spent on failed haggling don’t come back.
344
Example NegotIatIon
Basic Premise
Wyeth, Ghede, and Fern run the Voodun
outfit. We’ll refer to each as the combined
entity that is a PC rather than cluttering the
text with separate player/character names.
Voodun just got off the ground, so they haven’t
had a chance to open any job lines yet. They
only have freelance jobs available.
Voodun is negotiating with another Taker
that goes by the handle of Splenda. Splenda
has been hired to contract some protection
for a group of wealthy Recession businessmen
that want to go on “safari” out in the Loss.
But while they want some simulated danger
hunting casualties, they need experienced
Takers to prevent that danger from becoming
real.
Prep Work
Voodun just got off the ground, so they haven’t
had a chance to open any job lines yet. They
only have freelance jobs available. Wyeth goes
first, spending a charge of his Ubiq Specs
to make a Networking check. He succeeds
and asks “What contracts are available?” He
learns of a security detail job being offered by
a Taker in the area named Splenda.
Fern uses Networking as well and also
succeeds. She could ask a follow-up question,
but she decides she wants more options. She
asks for another contract. Fern hears rumors
that a group of rebels are willing to pay big for
water purification tablets.
After some discussion, it’s decided that it’s
better to sign up for the security job; the group
is pretty well-armed, but they don’t have any
vehicles to carry salvaged goods and would be
leaving bounty behind for every box of tablets
left behind. If negotiations don’t go well with
Splenda, Voodun can still try to negotiation
for the rebel’s job at a penalty.
Ghede decides to use Intimidation on local
snitch called Crab. The check fails, but Ghede
decides he really wants more information and
taps Crab as a Reference: if he can’t scare him
into talking, he can bribe him. He asks, “What
will the security job likely require?”
 The Market thinks about Ghee’s request.
The answer would give away one of the
client’s spots, specifically the Tough Spot:
Absolute Discretion Required. Breaking
quarantine is widely illegal, and powerful
men won’t risk their positions for a little fun
without guarantees.
Since learning spots is reserved for Scams,
the Market leaves that information out, but
he does reveal where the group plans to hunt.
Turns out Crab has heard about the proposed
casualty hunt: the obvious choice is Ivory
Plains, a gated community with a sealed off
and finite population of undead. The group
now knows the job is going to be five Legs
away. Such a journey is risky, but it can make
for a hell of a payday if the price point is right.

Leadership Opens
Wyeth is elected as the negotiator for Voodun.
The Market gets out the Sway Tracker.
She places a Black on “Buyer’s Market” to
represent Wyeth’s lowly class. The Red goes
on “Expenses,” representing the client’s
comparably limitless resources
After roleplaying introductions with
Splenda, the Market asks Wyeth for a
Leadership check. The results are B6+1/R7, a
failure even with Wyeth’s skill in Leadership.
Normally, this would mean that the Market
would roll in secret for the number of rounds
and the group wouldn’t know how many were
available. Wyeth hates that idea, but he can’t
use References in a negotiation. After some
consideration, he spends a Will to swap the
dice. Hopefully he won’t need that point later...
Now that the “natural” results are B7+1/
R6, the group knows the negotiation is going
to last 4 rounds (B8 divided by 2). Since
Wyeth won the Leadership check, the Market
asks if he wants to pitch first or respond to
the client’s demands. The order can have an
effect on the tracker, depending on whether
the strategy is a hard initial push or a late-
game burst. Wyeth, as a role-player, decides
he is more comfortable going second. It gives
him more information to make decisions.
Negotiation: Round 1
The Market, assuming the role of Splenda,
opens with a simple Persuasion move:
“We are looking for guides to accompany
an already well-stocked and heavily-armed
expedition. Really, your people would only be
tagging along to provide some peace of mind.
This contract is practically charity, so I won’t
be tolerating the usual cons. I suggest you
take what is offered and be grateful.”
Clients are always competent and the dice
aren’t heads up yet, so the Red die will move
down the tracker at the end of the round.
Since he’s got four rounds to work with,
Wyeth figures that it’s time for the long con.
He is going to burn his turn for a Sensitivity
check. This could be roleplayed by simply
describing the Taker’s penetrating stare, but
Wyeth figures he’ll try and probe behind what
Splenda’s masters told him to say. He asks,
“Do you really think there is such a thing as
charity? Out here?”
345
 Wyeth makes a Sensitivity check and gets
B5/R5. Critical failure! Splenda’s demeanor
remains icy and totally unimpressed. It’s so
bad that the Market calls for a Self-Control
check against Stress. Luckily, Wyeth makes it
with B4+1/R2; he’s not quite ready to despair
his chances yet.
Ghede’s Scam
Things are not going well in there for Wyeth,
but Ghede would have planned for such an
eventuality. The Voodun representative is
going to need leverage, so his scam seeks
to gather intel. After some out-of-character
discussion, Ghede figures corporate
executives would leave some sort of electronic
paper trail. Ghede doesn’t have any skills
capable of sniffing out such clues, and the
player fails to default off of INT. However, that
doesn’t preclude calling in a favor.
Ghede contacts QA, a hacker he knows
at a different enclave and roleplays the
request with the Market. QA goes on Ghede’s
character sheet as being owed a bounty
(Needy), and the NPC reports that he’s sniffed
Splenda’s wireless signal and found a number
of communications with Phoenix Armaments,
a major weapons manufacturer in the
Recession. Breaking quarantine is wildly
illegal and powerful men won’t risk their
positions for a little fun without guarantees.
The group therefore knows the Tough Spot
“Absolute Discretion Required” and can play
that spot against the client.
Negotiation: Round 2
The Market figures that Splenda would want
to push hard, sensing weakness in the Taker’s
346
failed attempt to read him. Splenda plays the
-Rep spot: Sneaky Bastards, leftover from
Voodun’s brutal betrayal of their competition
last session: “I’m glad you asked that question.
It reminds me: my bosses won’t like working
with a bunch of sociopathic thugs. If you want
this job, I have to neglect to mention some of
your previous indiscretions. And if I’m going
to do you that favor, you’re going to have to
work for bottom dollar so I get my bonus.”
This is a maneuver that Wyeth can’t defend
against; the crew did backstab people to get
previous jobs and it is on record. No amount
of Deception can change that. The client’s
die will move 2 Sway on the tracker, but at
least the crew doesn’t have to worry about the
past coming back to bite them anymore. The
Market erases -Rep Spot: Sneaky Bastards
from the crew sheet.
Well, crap. Wyeth has a spot to play,
but he doesn’t want to waste it until the
dice are heads up. Since the dice resolve
simultaneously, it would be a waste to use
it now. He figures he’s better off with a
Persuasion check: “The same problem your
boss has with my people is the same reason
you need us. There’s no place for scruples
once you hop the fence. You want ethics? Find
a philosopher. You want to stay alive? Hire
Voodun.” Wyeth rolls and gets B4+3/R6. His
+3 Persuasion makes that a success. The
Black moves up.
Since they didn’t bother to research the
current equilibrium for security jobs during
prep, the Market only now rolls on the supply/
demand chart. He gets a B4/R10. That means
the job is worth 14 bounty and the economy
is flooded: there are too many other security
contractors competing, keeping prices down.
Fern’s Scam
Fern hasn’t contributed a scam yet. She
wants to scare off some of the other Taker
crews, decreasing supply to increase demand.
Wyeth begs her not to; he needs more spots
to play if this is going to work out. This kind
of table talk between rounds is allowed and
encouraged. It reminds everyone at the table
that the crew is made up of experts that would
have predicted as many possibilities as they
could before meeting the client.
Fern considers how she might get the
inside scoop on the client. She figures that
Voodun would’ve guessed a big player like
Splenda would be across the table one day. Of
course she’s already figured out an angle on
him!
Fern’s player asks the Market if she could
have used Criminality to disguise herself as
an average enclavist, then plied the freelancer
with drinks until he let his guard down. The
Market thinks that sounds plausible. Splenda
works with so many Takers it’s hard to keep
them straight, especially when he’s being
bought drinks. Fern makes the Criminality
check and gets B5+3/R9. That’s a failure.
But wait! This is a scam. Fern can tap a
Reference. She calls up Shifty Eddy, the most
renowned pickpocket in the Loss. She pays
a favor to have him lift Splenda’s backpack
while the guy is busy rebuking the advances
of some random barfly. Eddy finds a dozen
faded photographs in the man’s wallet before
returning it. Turns out Splenda has the Weak
Spot: Family Man.
Nobody can turn down free military
hardware in an apocalyptic wasteland. The
Gift spot is worth an easy 2 Sway. The only
way to resist the push is to come back with
just as much leverage.
Wyeth needs to push hard, so he plays the
tough spot he learned with Ghede’s scam:
Absolute Discretion Required. Even if he fails
the check, Wyeth will still put up 1 Sway of
resistance, and they might negate Splenda’s
maneuver entirely. Wyeth wants to use his
Persuasion skill because it’s his best; he’s got
to work in the spot to get the bonus without
being so overtly threatening as to call for a
different skill. After some thought, Wyeth says,
“That’s very gracious of you, though those
folks at Phoenix Armaments probably have
guns to spare. If we don’t get this contract,
I’ll have to tell all my fellow ‘sociopathic
thugs’ exactly who they’re helping to break
quarantine.”
Wyeth rolls B8/R8. Critical success! He
gets +1 for the success, +1 for the spot,
and another +1 for the critical. That’s 3
Sway versus the client’s 2 Sway. Splenda’s
maneuver has backfired and pushed him back
one.

Negotiation: Round 3
Splenda smells blood. He can get these
amateurs working for a song. The Market
plays a Gift spot: “Look, I know there’s a
potential for danger out there. But these
guys are willing to share. If you take the job,
we’ll throw in a fully upgraded assault rifle:
silencer, hollowpoint ammo, the works.”

347
 Out of Scams
Both of the characters outside of negotiation
have performed their scams. They’re all out
of resources and have to hope Wyeth can
get a big push using the remaining spot they
learned.
Negotiation: Round 4
Splenda is running out of options. He’s all out
of easy leverage to play, and he hasn’t taken
the time to get a read on Wyeth’s personality.
The Market opts for Intimidation: “Breaking
the confidentiality of this conversation will
ensure you never work again. I will blacklist
Voodun with every group I represent.” It’s a
transparent strategy, but it’s still good for 1
Sway.
Wyeth started slow, but it’s time to
finish strong. He sticks with his best skill,
Persuasion, and plays the Weak Spot: Family
Man: “Lose the holier-than-thou attitude,
Splenda. I know you’d do anything to provide
for your family, and you can’t fault us for doing
the same. Giving us a fair price won’t steal
food from the mouths of your kids. We’re right
for this, and you’re too good a person to send
those citizen assholes out to die with some
punk crew.”
Wyeth gets a B8+3/R9. The success and
the spot add up for 2 Sway. Since the dice are
heads up, it’s a 1 Sway push after Splenda’s
resistance is factored in.
Leadership Closes
Wyeth has to make his Leadership check to
see who compromises. It’s not his best skill
(+1), and he ends up with B5+1/R10. He was
afraid that might happen, which is why he
348
was saving his last point of Will! He flips it to
B10+1/R5. The Black moves up to meet the
Red at “100% Mark Up”
Voodun earns the equilibrium price (14
bounty), plus their combined break points for
Labor (6+3+4= 13 bounty), plus one bounty
per Taker per leg (3 Takers X 5 legs = 15
bounty), plus another 14 bounty from 100%
Mark Up (equilibrium x 2). When it’s all added
together, the contract is worth 56 bounty
split three ways – not to mention a free, fully
upgraded assault rifle.
Undercutting
Right as Voodun is about to leave, Splenda
messages them on Ubiq. Dr. Epicurus and his
band of merry amateurs have offered to do the
job for only “Hazard Pay,” a full 21 bounty less
than the agreed upon price. Splenda demands
Voodun meet their price or he’s going with the
other crew.
Ghede is now regretting his decision to be
nice; not having to deal with this shit is the
main benefit of eliminating one’s rivals. Fern
says she’s got this and gets on the Ubiq specs
to say, “Well, we’re sorry it didn’t work out.
You’re sure your clients are cool participating
in all that weird sex stuff though?”
“What?” Splenda asks.
“Epicurus practices a denomination of
Detoxinism that practices ‘community love.’
You didn’t hear about that? He never sent you
an invite to one of the orgies?” This, of course,
is complete bullshit. Fern knows nothing
of the rival crew or their religion, but she
wants to get paid. The Market says this is a
Deception check: Fern rolls B8+2/R3.
Splenda sighs, “Nevermind. Forget what I
said. Good luck out there.” He hangs up.
The crew has secured a reasonable price,
stymied their competition, and avoided
murdering anyone in the process. Everything’s
looking up for Voodun! Now all they have to
do is stay alive....
Alternate Rule: FIxers
Perhaps no one wants to take point in
negotiations. Or maybe your group is
comprised of enthusiastic roleplayers who
all want a turn with the talking stick. Either
way, the Fixer rules allow groups to succeed
in negotiations without having to commit a
character’s skills to one focus. But as is the
case with subcontractors, outsourcing the
work raises overhead. What follows are the
rules for using a fixers in campaign play.
HIve MInd
A fixer’s purpose is to enable any player at
the table to take a turn as the negotiator,
without reprioritizing all their skills. Naturally,
making sure the fixer has a backstory that can
support a variety of different actors is going
to ease this mechanic’s implementation in the
narrative.
The fixer could actually be a team of fixers
working for a single PR firm, subcontracted
by the crew to secure the best prices. He
could have a lot of personal issues taking
place in the enclave or back in the Recession,
explaining he wild shifts in demeanor from
week-to-week. The group could merely
agree on a few spots that describe the fixer’s
personality, or develop a list of talking points
to keep the personality grounded.
Regardless, the only wrong choice would be
a fixer that can only be successfully roleplayed
by one person. If the negotiator has a thick
Irish brogue, that’s all well and fine for the
one player that can manage the accent, but
what about everyone else? The goal of the
mechanic is to democratize the role of head
negotiator. Don’t write fellow players out of
the part.
Some example archetypes for fixers:
• Raider’s Advocate LLC: a boutique PR
firm comprised of out-of-work lawyers
struggling to survive in a Recession ghetto.
The team hires out their nearly obsolete
expertise over Ubiq to supplement their
meager new incomes as subsistence
farmers.
• Mullet: a legendary Taker from the early
days of LifeLines. She retired to Leper
after a disastrous contract wiped out her
whole crew and left her Latent. She gets
by selling her shrewd bargaining skills, but
the horrors she’s witnessed have left her
entirely unfit for field work.
• Mr. Johnson: Cold, dispassionate, callous
– Johnson is the only man with the gall
to attend meetings in the apocalypse
in khakis and a pink polo. He’s been
around for years, lending his inexplicable
professionalism to the highest bidder,
negotiating some of the greatest Taker
paydays in history from behind his
mirrored aviator sunglasses. No one
knows how he’s survived this long, not to
mention how he’s stayed so clean doing it.
Shared Burdens
Whether a fixer loves, loathes, or remains
indifferent to the crew that employs them is
up to the group to decide. But regardless of
personal opinion, fixers never work for free.
Groups that want to outsource their contracts
need to pay for the privilege.
Fixers charge a retainer per session,
whether they are used that session or not.
The cost is equal to the number of players in
bounty. If that amount isn’t paid per session,
the fixer finds other work and the Takers have
to figure things our on their own.
Investment In Human Resources
Fixers wouldn’t be working if they weren’t
competent. A fixer starts with a three in
CHA and +1 in every CHA skill. Beyond
that, fixers have no other stats except Will
(which also starts at 1). They exist solely as
social surrogates for the player inhabiting the
349
 role for that session, so CHA, Will, and the Groups are still only allowed a number
associated skills are all that’s necessary. Scams equal to the number of PCs minus
Improving the fixer’s negotiation prowess one, as the number of rounds allow. The PC of
requires bounty, just as if they were a the player adopting the role of the fixer has to
regular PC. The only difference between sit out. Shot-calling the negotiation is enough
normal character advancement and fixer spotlight time already.
advancement is that the bounty has to be Players that don’t want to play a CHA-
paid by everyone profiting off the professional heavy character but still want to contribute
negotiator’s skills. to negotiations should familiarize themselves
Upping a fixer’s skills still takes a number with Scams.
of bounty equal to the desired bonus, but this
amount is multiplied by the number of PCs
in the crew. So, raising Deception from +2
to +3 doesn’t cost 3 bounty; for a group of
five players, it would cost 15 bounty. Every
player needs to pay the same amount to
increase a fixer’s skills set. The burden of the
subcontract is carried by all.
Skills are still limited by Potentials, but
raising a fixer’s CHA costs 10 bounty per
point, to be paid by every member of the
crew. So, to return to the previous example,
raising Deception up to +4 would be
impossible without first raising Potential. Our
hypothetical group of five players would have
to share the burden of 50 bounty first, then
pay the 15 required to up the Deception skill.

I have to pay HOW much?

For those that judge the costs of retaining and
developing a fixer too high, consider the ways in which
having a dedicated negotiator frees characters up to
invest in other skills. CHA skills remain as useful as ever
during the job proper, and avoiding the need to specialize
lets at least one more player dedicate more resources
to combat and survival skills. Cutting the cost of fixers
would make any other option too foolish to consider and
that contradicts the entire point of fixers: to provide
more options.

LImIted Scams
Scams are still limited whether using a fixer
or not. After all, someone is still going to have
to play that fixer during the negotiations.
350
RUNNING THE MARKET

351
 Shades of Red
“Playing the Market” (p. 171) teaches
the game’s rules, discusses this book’s
intentions, and defines economic horror. It
is recommended that anyone looking to run
their first game of Red Markets read that
section first.
The task of the Market is very different
than that of the players. Huge sections of
the setting are created, interpreted, and
implemented by the person running the
game. Essentially, once a session of Red
Markets begins, the game leaves the book and
becomes a collaboration between everyone
at the table. The Market’s responsibility is to
facilitate that collaboration.
“Running the Market” contains tools for
navigating the Loss with your game group:
customization options for the game, the
structural breakdown of a typical session,
rules for creating new settings, and tables for
randomly generated setting content.
Market vs. GM
Many readers have likely served as game
masters (GMs) in other tabletop games. This
section speaks more to some preconceptions
those readers might have than it does those
brand-new to role-playing. If this is your first
RPG, you can skip ahead to Boom vs. Bust
(see p. 353).
Expect experienced players to dismiss
the name “Market” as another sad attempt
to appropriate an old concept with an
unnecessary new title. It’s up to the individual
reader to decide whether this “GM-by-any-
name” criticism is apt, but some might
find running Red Markets so different as
to warrant the new name. The degree of
separation between Markets and GMs
depends less on this book than a person’s
previous experience. Certain RPGs share
a play style very similar to Red Markets,
whereas others couldn’t be more different.
Running the Market is a bastardized fusion
of more recent “story game” aesthetics and
old-school mechanics. Big sections of the
352
narrative, such as the nature of a campaign
setting and the cast of NPCs, are determined
as much by the players as the Market. PCs
choose what Contracts they want to pursue
rather than being forced into the adventure
the GM happened to write that week.
Vignettes inside the enclave are closer to
improvisational acting than the role-playing
required of many traditional RPGs. Spots
and Will serve as disassociated mechanics
that give PCs power to control their own fate
through force of personality. Finally, much
of the procedural information other games
obsess about, such as how much damage
different weapons inflict or how much a
character can carry, are glossed over for the
sake of convenience.
Yet Red Markets also has some distinctly
old-school tendencies. The Market has a ton
of control over where jobs take place and
what is to be found there. NPC clients are
designed and played by the Market, their
personalities shaping the narrative of whole
sessions. The goal of many Contracts boils
down to the classic “kill monsters and take
their stuff” story that founded tabletop RPGs.
Most importantly, Markets are responsible for
creating job lines: multi-faceted jobs that take
place over many sessions, crafting campaigns
larger in scope than the episodic limitations of
one-off jobs.
But the path to the job site, the structure
of the Contract, and the price of the Takers’
services can all be randomly generated.
These predesigned encounters and tables are
meant to add another element of chance to
the game beyond the success and failure of
player actions. Certain jobs can be cakewalks,
providing massive payouts for little risk.
Conversely, fate can be cruel and present
horrific obstacles every step of the way, eating
into profits and destroying lives. The Loss
is capricious and unpredictable even to the
Market. Like old-school RPGs and rogue-
like videogames, random encounters make
every adventure dangerous; the players can’t
necessarily rely on their GM’s kindness to
get them out of dangerous situations, and
unpredictable dangers test players’ skill. The
power of the dice has the added bonus of
relieving the Market of a lot of responsibility
between sessions. Most jobs can be written
up in about 1,000 words, fewer still if playing
in an established campaign setting. The dice
and this book take care of the rest.
In general, traditional GMs wield an
enormous amount of power over the narrative
while in many story games, power is shared
equally amongst the whole group. Red
Markets tries to walk the middle path —
the Market as a guiding hand: interpreting
randomly generated content, implementing
player contributions, and steering both
sources towards a satisfying narrative.
Boom vs. Bust
Depending on the Market’s impression of the
Loss’s economy, games usually fall into one of
two broad categories: Boom and Bust. Groups
can go hard to one side of the spectrum or
the other, or negotiate a centrist approach
by picking and choosing from the alternative
rules sets. Regardless, it’s useful for Markets
to think about how they want to characterize
the setting before running the first job.
Boom
A Boom game is high-octane, action-heavy,
and fast-paced. High-tech gear and rich clients
make for sleek, flashy jobs more akin to action
movies than cable dramas or horror films.
Consequences are for poor people, so we
won’t have to worry about them for long. Get
in. Get out. Get paid. Fuck the rest. That’s a
Boom game.
When we use the term “Boom,” we mean
for the PCs and not the setting. Here’s why:
In economics, the broken window fallacy
refers to the idea that, on the surface,
destruction seems like an excellent way to
stimulate growth. Break a window, exchange
capital with the glassmaker and carpenter,
who respectively exchange goods and services
resetting the window. The new window
advertises each worker’s quality to the rest of
the community, thus increasing the demand
for that specific glassmaker and carpenter.
The businesses and their employees suddenly
have more disposable income, which in turn
gets spent in the community and starts a
virtuous cycle of increasing returns.
The broken window theory fallacy fails to
account for opportunity cost and globalization.
The time spent repairing windows is not
spent making new glass for new buildings.
Value that could have been added has been
merely replaced, causing financial stagnation.
Furthermore, nothing about the global
economy demands the glassmaker and
carpenter’s surplus stay in the community.
The excess can be spent in other markets,
thus costing the community additional wealth
on top of the damages. In the broken window
situation, the contractors probably aren’t
performing as well as they could be and the
economy as a whole definitely suffers.
The Crash set up the biggest broken
window economy in history. While this means
that the world at large is in trouble, one thing
remains in the PCs favor: perhaps their best
skills weren’t in demand before the casualties
came. Shooting people in the head, thievery,
smuggling — all these vital economic skill
sets suffered from a lot of risk before society
collapsed. Now, the risk of criminal activity is
purely physical and free from concerns like
prison.
353
 In a Boom game, Takers are the outliers,
profiteers capable of turning the tragedy of
the Carrion Economy into opportunity. Every
disaster leaves a select few better off and
playing Boom means the Market wants it to
be the PCs. The Loss won’t be around forever:
the surviving nations of the Recession could
fall or, worse yet, exterminate the undead and
re-establish rule of law. Like the California
gold rush and sub-prime mortgages, there’s a
short window in which fortunes can be made.
Boom groups exploit the terrors of the Loss
as much as possible, looking to win big and
cash out.
What does this mean for a game? Playing
Boom means giving the characters big
rewards and even bigger risks. The potential
for profit wouldn’t be so high if the danger
wasn’t real. The questions PCs face in a
Boom aren’t “will I have enough?” so much as
“will I be alive to enjoy it?”
Boom groups are rarely at risk of starving
or losing a loved one to the grind of poverty.
Far more concerning is what kind of
expensive gear they’ll need to get through
the insanity of the next job. Retirement plans
become ever more important because it’s
only a matter of time before some disaster
strikes. Every Contract is all about getting
more bounty, more quickly, and damning the
consequences. Gear eats up bounty fast, and
profit-obsessed decision-making deprives
characters of Humanity quickly.
Market’s that want to run a Boom game
should do the following:
1. Use some or all of the Boom rules. Check
the index for a full list.
2. Expect a shorter campaign. Due to the
danger and the big payments, characters
die and retire often.
3. Hand out frequent +Rep spots. Remember
that the PCs are elite and singularly
capable.
4. Create noob clients. Big paydays mean the
people offering the Contracts have deep
pockets and shallow sense. They waste the
final round in a negotiation on Sensitivity
354
checks because they don’t know the rules
of the game. They fall for simple Scams.
They rarely offer job lines or get to know
the PCs’ spots well enough to call them on
their bullshit.
5. Focus on combat and horror. Nobody
would be making this much money if
it weren’t insane to hop over the fence.
Randomized legs in a journey should be
replaced with more grueling and draining
encounters. Complications at job sites
should be huge, challenging, and mind-
shatteringly terrifying. High rewards only
come with high risk, and PCs speculate
with their lives.
6. Accentuate the negative perception of
Takers. The term intentionally suggests
the occupation is linked with theft and
exploitation. Groups playing Boom must
frequently compromise their Humanity for
bigger profits and a faster escape. This can
lead to resentment of Dependents even
when relationships are healthy.
7. Present plentiful opportunities. Everybody
wants to get rich quick, but only people
like the PCs know how. There’s no
shortage of paying jobs at any given point,
and the Takers’ skills are in great demand.
If they design Scores, it’s only because
the players want to contribute more to the
setting.
8. Relish escapism. The characters are cool,
crafty, and skilled enough to escape the
Loss and they’re going to look damn good
while doing it. PCs are hood-rich in the
enclave, and they’re going to have full-
blown, “fuck-you” money once they retire.
Bust
A Bust game is all about the grind. It’s a
poverty simulator with zombies thrown in.
Staying solvent means lowering overhead and
securing meager profits through the use of
minimal resources. Hacking down one debt
sees two more spring up in its place. There’s
still action and scares, but the consequences
of both are never far behind. The unyielding
demands of the Loss chips away at people,
transforming PCs and their Dependents
slowly and creating tragic character arcs. At
best, survival is a balancing act, but it more
often means triage and sacrifice.
A Bust game acknowledges the statistical
truth of the broken window fallacy described
previously: when disaster strikes, it’s
disastrous for most people. Nobody is going to
come out ahead from the Crash. The greatest
possible hope is escape, and players in a Bust
game need as much luck as skill to stay alive.
A Taker’s heroism comes from their stubborn
insistence on chasing the dream, doggedly
pursuing a slim hope of a better life that may
be no more than a delusion. Players in a Bust
game want any Cinderella stories to be really
earned, and they’re just as happy when a
character meets predictably tragic ends.
Markets that want to run a Bust game
should do the following:
1. Use some or all of the Bust rules. Check
the index for a full list.
2. Use the MBA rules. They provide more
opportunity for profit, yes, but that comes
along with increased risk and greater
anxiety over picking the best investments
for time and bounty.
3. Expect a longer campaign. Not every
job results in profit. Characters can die
off suddenly, but they can just as easily
bleed out over several sessions, slowly
losing health, Humanity, and any hope of
financial salvation. Similarly, while big
windfalls are possible, progress towards
retirement tends to be hard-fought and
incremental.
4. Being cursed by -Rep spots is a constant
danger. People in the Loss like to gossip
and hate parting with their bounty. Any
indication that the crew might fail to
deliver is taken seriously and always
exploited to drive prices down.
5. Create experienced clients. The
unforgiving nature of the carrion economy
means only the most cunning and ruthless
rise to the level of job creator. Clients
know how to work a negotiation. They
require complex Scams to fool. They offer
job lines and repeat business because it
allows them to remember a Taker’s spots
and exploit them for bigger discounts.
6. Focus on randomness and stress.
Sometimes the Loss rewards a Taker
beyond all expectation; other times it
stacks the odds against them like an
angry god. The dice always decide. The
anxiety such uncertainty creates in players
manifests ten-fold in their characters.
The alternating dreams and nightmares
of what lies over the fence eats away
at a Taker and affects even the quietest
moments with family.
7. Accentuate the positive perception of
Takers. Part of the term comes from
“undertakers,” an occupation dedicated
to providing solace in the face of death.
The difference between the PCs and the
rest of the enclave isn’t need; they have the
courage to face the creatures that threaten
to destroy everything and get the job done.
8. Present scarcity at every opportunity.
There should never be enough to go
around, either in bounty or in clients
offering to pay it. Scores become
more than a chance for the players to
exercise their creativity the setting: they
are essential to survival. Teams must
constantly hustle to survive, and player
creativity translates directly into character
rewards essential for supplementing the
meager opportunities on the ground.
9. Relish challenge. Anybody that escapes
the overwhelming odds offered by such a
capricious and uncaring world is nothing
short of a hero. The success of the few
who survive is made that much more
enticing by the many that fell along the
way to death, infection, madness, and
despair. A character’s suffering sweetens
a possible victory and heightens the
probable tragedy. Bust-style groups care
most about giving their characters big,
satisfying character arcs rather than happy
endings, and they’re willing to climb a
steeper difficulty curve to get it.
355
 SIgns of a Healthy Market
There’s no wrong way to run the game so long
as the group creates some kind of pleasurable
experience. But the game was designed
with a certain experience in mind for both
the players and their Market. Here are few
indicators for the Market to check that the
rules are working as intended.
Fast PreparatIon
Red Markets seeks to streamline a lot of
the front-end work required to design an
RPG scenario and automate the rest of it.
Each Contract creates a story using seven
modular components that, written together,
don’t need more than 1000 words. These
elements remain in control of the Market,
but there are also tools in this chapter for
randomly generating Contracts, either for
improvisational play or as writing prompts.
This allows Markets to write multiple
scenarios in the same amount of time it
takes to prepare a single game session for
many other RPG systems. Players are given
356
a choice of what adventure to take at the
beginning of every session, and preparing
for the next week can be as easy as writing a
single Contract to replace the completed one.
Certain sections of Contracts can be
entirely randomized every session. The
equilibrium price point is as easy as rolling
two dice and consulting a table. Generating
casualties to fight doesn’t even require a table.
Finally, the Loss Encounters section (see p.
446) can generate specific procedural scenes
for PCs to move through as they head to a
job site, or it can craft general prompts for
Markets to improvise on and dramatic cues to
encourage role-playing.
Extended play takes even more work off the
Market’s responsibilities. Building an enclave
is a collaborative effort, as are vignettes
with Dependents at the beginning of every
campaign session. Once an enclave is statted
out, another component of the standard
Contract template is taken care of for the
remainder of the campaign. Finally, elements
like Scores, retirement plans, and Mr. JOLS
stay collaborative.
 In short, healthy Markets choose to put a
lot of preparation work into building a session
of Red Markets only because that’s their
preferred style of play. The game’s engine
is working well when players get equally
satisfying experiences through collaboration
with the book and each other.
contInuous Engagement
Red Markets is meant for the table, but it also
seeks to utilize the RPG’s potential for closet
drama. Many people read RPG texts for pure
enjoyment due to a lack of a gaming group
or time to play. Even outside a game, there
is much pleasure to be had merely thinking
about playing the game. Planning what
gear to buy or developing subplots for one’s
character has whiled away many a boring
hour.
The gear list is posted for free online,
available for players to browse even if
they don’t have a copy of the main text.
Furthermore, the No Budget; No Buy variant
(see p. 228) rewards players that tinker with
their character sheet before the next session
of the campaign starts. If you didn’t budget
for it, you can’t buy it...at least not without
causing a lot of anxiety. These systems
encourage players to do their homework,
minimal though it may be. Though about
materialism, Red Markets wants to sacrifice
the minimum amount of playtime possible to
imagined materials, so players are rewarded
for coming to each session with a plan about
how to best equip their characters.
More important than the logistics of the
crew are the personalities that make it up.
Every session of campaign play begins with
a series of vignettes dealing with the Taker’s
life in the enclave. Players do best imagining
guiding questions for the vignettes, new
wrinkles to add to Dependents they may be
playing, and scene ideas for their characters.
Without these vignettes, characters take
expensive hits to Humanity.
Equally powerful is the exploitation of
spots. Knowing ways to play an NPC client
or complicate the life of a PC for some extra
Will are both vital to a character’s survival.
Planning out dramatic scenes beforehand
is further incentivized by the Interlude
mechanic (see p. 446) which exchanges the
unpredictable dangers of a Loss encounter
for the unpredictable emotional toll of human
interaction. Fleshing out a Taker dramatically
can mechanically assist the physical survival
of the whole group.
Finally, player-designed Scores (see p. 394)
require the group to exert a lot of creative
effort building up the setting. Because of this,
Scores can be some of the most lucrative
jobs possible, free as they are from the
compromises of negotiation. Thinking about
the enclave, the surrounding area, and the
Loss as a whole inbetween game sessions
creates financial rewards for the characters,
in addition to the satisfaction any player feels
when contributing to the narrative.
Red Markets wants to reward players that
think about their characters in their offhours.
It wants to reward them explicitly, using as
many incentives as possible. If people arrive
to game night prepared, suggesting lots of
Scores and scenes, the game is working as
intended.
Fast Play
By minimizing preparation for the GM and
rewarding player engagement, the final result
should be a game that steadily progresses
forward. The one-and-done rule, Scam
system, and player-facing checks in combat
reduce chances for player dithering and
mathematical distractions. Dramatically,
scenes that lose focus can be steered towards
clear mechanical goals such as regaining
Humanity or fulfilling an Interlude prompt.
Whether the unit is Legs, charges, Shamble,
or Haul, the game’s measurements are
defined by their narrative economy rather
than their physical quantities, and each term’s
effect on the characters is clear.
An optimal game should start quickly,
provide frequent creative opportunities for
the players, and progress quickly towards the
Contract’s goal.
357
 Job Creator
The stories of lives are shaped by the material
circumstances that surround them. The
Market generates those circumstances.
The demands of the Carrion Economy
remain constant, so the components of each
adventure written for Red Markets have
been standardized. This section defines the
elements of a game session and provides
tools for generating their content.
For the sake of clarity, let’s nail down a few
terms essential for any Market’s vocabulary.
Client: any NPC character offering to pay a
crew of Takers to perform a task. Clients are
unique as NPCs because they are statted out
with spots.
Contract: a game session in which the
characters have agreed to perform a task for
a client in exchange for a negotiated price.
In economic terms, Contracts fall into the
services category. Even where goods or assets
358
are involved, Takers are compensated for
retrieval rather than the items themselves. In
game terms, Contracts are plot hooks devised
by the Market and presented for players to
choose from.
Equilibrium: Roll Black and Red.
Separately, the numbers describe the price
of a good or service in the Red Markets world
on a Supply/Demand chart. Add the numbers
together. That’s the starting price when
negotiating a Contract for services, or the
price per unit when planning a Score.
Job: the general term for a play session.
Regardless of goods or services, the players
get together on game night to put their
characters through a job.
Job Line: a string of jobs offered by a single
client. Together, they develop an episodic story
that forms a major plot thread in extended
play and affects the setting. See “Long-term
Investments” (p. 406) for an explanation of job
lines.
 Market Forces: any NPC violently
opposing the PCs whose actions are dictated
by the Market.
Score: a game session largely planned by
the players in which the Takers fight to secure
some asset or goods to trade with a buyer. In
economic terms, Scores focus on goods. The
price of the Score is determined by supply/
demand equilibrium, liquidity, and the PCs
ability to manipulate the economy. In game
terms, Scores are planned collaboratively and
skip the negotiation requirement in favor of
offloading goods to a wholesaler.
The Golden Rule
Risk = Reward.
A more expensive job should have more
cagey Clients, more bloodthirsty competition,
more travel time, more casualties, and more
unpredictable complications. Takers that
return from the Loss uninjured should be
hurting in their wallets and toxic to their
Dependents. Those that come back broken,
bleeding, and sobbing should be rich. There
can be exceptions: crews can get lucky or get
screwed. But, generally, big money should
mean big problems.
When in doubt, assess what the Takers are
doing. If it provides a reward, ensure they are
risking something to earn it. If the characters
are already risking something, how can the
Market quantify a reward for their actions,
either financially or emotionally? If neither
is true, offer something the Takers want, but
lock it behind a risky situation.
No matter what part of a job you’re in, keep
the risk = reward rule in mind and the game
stays on track.
Workplace EssentIals
In a game of economic horror, the workplace
essentials cover the moments players need
if their characters are going to be challenged
and defined by the setting. Since the
essentials are so important to the gameplay
experience, they are defined here in the
order in which they typically occur during
a play session. This standardization eases
preparation, streamlines pre-generated
scenarios, and establishes a procedure
for when groups decide to design jobs
collaboratively.
But don’t mistake workplace essentials
for a full-blown prescription. Markets are
encouraged to fill in each section as creatively
as they wish. If you have to treat it like dogma,
think of the essentials like jazz changes;
the standard chords change in a set order
and time, but there’s still a lot of room for
improvisation.
What’s presented here should be
considered the most useful tools for making a
compelling one-shot job, components that fit
well into any session of Red Markets. Markets
with a grasp of the essentials can move on to
“Contracts” (see p. 379) for some inspiration.
For information on player-designed jobs,
check out “Scores” (see p. 394). For campaign
play, check out “Long-term Investments” (see
p. 406). Finally, experienced Markets looking
to add additional complexity to their games
should check out the “MBA Rules” (see p.
424).
EssentIals At-a-Glance
Think of the essentials as a list of questions.
You write enough answers to come up with a
job’s premise and then the whole group plays
through to discover the rest.
1. Goods and/or Services
How are the Takers going to be paid? If
they are securing goods to sell — either to
a wholesaler or through their own business
— that’s a Score (see p. 394). Scores are
collaboratively designed scenarios made by
the group and the Market. The group is paid
in the equilibrium price per unit. If the Takers
are performing a service for a client, that’s
a Contract (see p. 379). Even if goods are
involved (such as retrieving something for
the client), anything involving services counts
as a Contract. Takers bid for Contracts and
get paid according to the best price they can
negotiate with the client.
359
 1A. Equilibrium
Roll 2d10 and add the numbers together for
equilibrium prices. The result is the starting
price in negotiations for Contracts and the
bounty-per-unit price for Scores. The Market
consults the Supply/Demand chart to explain
the economic situation that resulted in the
equilibrium.
2. Economy
Describe the enclave, settlement, or
community in the Recession where the job
is offered. How is the population governed?
How do their laws and customs affect trade?
What other operations in the area compete or
cooperate with them?
3. Client
Clients are NPCs that offer Contracts (see
“Negotiations” p. 359). What do they need
done, and why can’t they do it themselves?
Clients are statted out with weak, soft, and
tough spots to be exploited in negotiation.
They might also carry a gift spot to sweeten
deals.
4. Competition
Who else is in town looking for work? What’s
the crew’s name and specialty? Are they local
or passing through? Friendly, professional,
or hostile? The bigger the job, the fiercer the
competition. The only exception is job lines,
which are initially offered as no-competition
bids.
5. Travel Time
How many legs of travel does it take to reach
the job site? The number of legs determines
the number of encounters the Market designs
or rolls on an encounters table.
6. The Site
Where does the job take place? Why hasn’t the
place been looted yet? What task needs to be
completed there? How does the place make
the job more interesting and difficult? What
happened at the job site during the Crash, and
what has happened in the years since?
360
7. Complications
Something goes wrong. In the Loss,
something always goes wrong. If disaster
weren’t inevitable, everybody would be a
Taker. So what unpredictable obstacle arises,
how can the crew overcome it, and how does
that make them cooler, tougher, or smarter
than the average survivor?
Goods/ServIces
A Market’s first task when writing up a
job is to define what earns the Takers’
compensation. Are they selling a good, or
performing a service?
Contracts: Adventure Is a ServIce
If the Market presents a plot hook and the
PCs accept, it falls into the services category.
All services in Red Markets are classified
as Contracts, even when they intersect with
goods. As a general rule, if the Market had
a big role in shaping a job, it automatically
becomes a Contract. Only player-designed
jobs focus on goods, and those are called
Scores.
The reason the Market deals exclusively
in service jobs is because, by the very nature
of presenting a plot hook in character, they
are joining the traditionally service-based
economy of most RPG plot hooks. Quest, task,
and hero’s journey archetypes fit the model
inherently: go DO this thing for me. Think
about it. It’s rare for a group of Dungeons
and Dragons adventurers to dive into a crypt
just to see what they can loot. More often
than not, they are sent at the behest of guild
masters, princesses, or mysterious old men
lurking in taverns. These sword-and-sorcery
types perform a service for the community by
clearing out the local monster infestations,
and they are compensated with salvage rights
to whatever they find along the way. The
service is the point; the goods are a perk.
That’s a Contract.
To use a more contemporary example,
many cyberpunk RPGs might seem like a
goods-based economy because the PCs are
selling stolen data and items. But the typical
structure of such games has the group tasked
to steal something by a fixer at the beginning
of each adventure. The group can’t sell any
goods because they retain no ownership of
any goods and produce nothing. Economically,
the fixer is the one stealing something, but
he’s subcontracting the theft to a third party.
That’s a service, and it’s the service that
defines those games’ characters.
So, as a Market, express the job in terms
of what they need to DO in order to get paid.
The task might be no more than picking
something up and hauling it back, but the
task is what receives payment.
For jobs based around goods, let the players
plan a Score.
Scores: Be Your Own Boss
Cooking homemade pies, running your own
clothing line, blacksmithing — productive,
goods-based small businesses form the
beating heart of most economies. They would
also be dull as hell to play through.
The Loss’s production and manufacturing
operations might be dramatically interesting,
but they lack the frightening action that
makes a game of economic horror. Nobody
wants to play through the day-to-day drudgery
of customer service or assembly lines.
Thankfully, the carrion economy allows
players the same opportunity for creative
expression small business owners experience
without bringing all that tedious work to the
game table. Whereas some goods in Red
Markets are produced, most are recovered. If
Takers can secure salvaged goods that meet a
community demand, they stand to make profit
without an NPC client playing middleman.
When players want to sell goods directly
to customers, they need to design a Score.
Unlike Contracts, it’s not for the Market to
tell them what the community needs and
wants. The PCs must be sharp enough to
spot opportunity, bold enough to meet it, and
creative enough to survive. Those groups
that want to be their own boss should design
Scores instead of bidding for Contracts.
Contracts are all about doing. Scores are
all about having. Markets should make sure
players express exactly what they want to sell,
where they are going to get it, and to whom
they are going to sell it.
Example Goods/ServIces WrIte-up
Megan wants to design a new job for her
group. Since Megan is designing it, she knows
she’s making a Contract: the players have
to DO something in order to get paid by an
NPC client. If they don’t like the price, they
can bid for one of the other Contracts Megan
designed for that session or create a Score of
their own.
After some thought, Megan decides that
slingshots would be in pretty high demand
in the Loss. They can accelerate projectiles
fast enough to crack skulls and ammo is as
plentiful as gravel. Salvaged wood or metal
of any type could make tongs and handles, so
they’d be easy to mass-produce. As a means of
clearing casualties off the fences, they’d allow
enclavists to keep their distance and turn the
horrifying task into a game of marksmanship.
The problem, she decides, would be finding
enough high-quality rubber to make the slings.
But that’s what Takers are for!
Here’s what she writes to prep for the game
session:
“Menace, the Loss’s foremost manufacturer
of high-end slingshots, is having supply
problems. His rubber has gone cracked and dry,
slowing production to a halt. Menace knew this
day would come — through extensive research,
he’s discovered a manufacturer of baby toys
that once existed in the area: First Joys Inc.
Before the Crash, the company was the biggest
producer of pre-K accessories in the United
States, capable of producing thousands of
pacifiers, teething rings, and bottle nipples per
minute. First Joys Inc. likely had enough rubber
on site to supply his business until the T-minus
Never, but there’s no way Menace is going to
risk getting himself killed hauling it back to the
enclave. He’s looking for Takers to solve his
problems before his business goes bust.”
361
 EquIlIbrIum
Every good and service has an equilibrium:
the price people are willing to pay. In the
real world, equilibrium is determined by a
“Supply/Demand Curve.” Demand determines
the price. Increase supply and demand drops.
Increase demand and supply decreases.
This is the most fundamental principle in
economics.
but the carrion economy is a post-rational
economy. Price is determined randomly, but
the supply/demand curve creates a narrative
situation PCs must manipulate to alter that
price. In Red Markets, economics charts
serve as plot hooks rather than complex
mathematical predictions.
To determine an equilibrium price, the
Market should do the following.

1. Roll the Black and Red.

2. Black equals Demand. Red equals Supply.
3. Add the two numbers together. This is the
equilibrium price (in bounty) for the good/
service. It’s either the starting price for
negotiations (Contract) or the bounty-per-
haul of a good (Scores).
4. If the characters made a successful
Research check to learn the equilibrium,
tell them. If not, write a note in case the
crew bids for that job.
5. Consult the supply/demand chart. The
intersection of Black and Red determines
the narrative situation required to
manipulate the equilibrium price.

In its infancy, most economists assumed

human beings were rational actors that
always pursued their best interests. However,
history and a litany of other economists s in g ul ar m e t ho d of procedure.
a
teach us that rationality fails to model a lot Economists have of in s t it utions of them,
w o k in ds
of markets. The sub-discipline of Behavioral There are only t he in s t it ut ions of feudalism
ur al . T
Economics deals with the irrational and
surprising ways in which humans actually
artificial and nat , t ho s e of t he bourgeoisie
itutions
behave in markets. Branding, marketing, are artificial inst . I n t hi s , t he y resemble
ut io ns
governmental regulation, and cultural bias are natural instit is e e s t ab lish two kinds
ho lik e w
conspire to move prices away from supply/
the theologians, w io n w hi ch is not theirs
demand equilibrium. It would be more re la t
accurate to say that prices hinge upon of religion. Every w hi le their own is an
n of m e n,
perceived supply and demand. Artificial is an inventio od.
scarcity and inflated demand mean high emanation from G
supply/high demand goods are possible. -Karl Marx
So what does this mean for Red Markets?
It means Markets don’t have to mess with any
forecasting or complex math. Mathematically,
supply/demand should limit each other,
362
 The chart summarizes each condition, but
what do those numbers really mean? How
does the Market turn two random numbers
into a setting and story? How do Takers
exploit those conditions for greater profit?
SubsIdIary
Subsidiary goods aren’t kept in supply
because there is so little demand. Subsidiary
services have few or no providers because
of narrow profit margins. A lot of things
became superfluous in the wake of the Crash;
subsidiary markets exist for commodities
hovering just above the line of totally useless.
The key to working a job in the subsidiary
range is increasing demand... or at least
anticipating it.
For Markets: The most important thing
to provide when a good or service lies in
the subsidiary range is an explanation.
Why is this job valued so low? Often, the
reasons are obvious: vintage comic book
collections, for instance, don’t have a lot of
use in the apocalypse beyond kindling. Other
explanations might require more creativity.
What if a Score to secure drinking water
rolls a B1/R1 equilibrium? How can the
enclave offer such low prices when such
a vital resource is about to run dry? Well,
maybe the rainy season is coming and the
public anticipates a surplus. Or perhaps
price gouging for goods as essential as water
is frowned upon by the collectivist culture
of the survivors. The enclave’s government
could have even fixed the price of water with
legislation. Whatever the explanation, some
reasoning as to why value remains low gives
the players an idea on how to manipulate the
situation. Since it requires a lot of work to
inflate demand for subsidiary commodities,
Markets should consider compensating
groups taking low equilibrium jobs by
eliminating the competition. After all, who
would want to risk trouble for so little pay off?
For Takers: Scams to raise equilibrium
out of subsidiary range are simple: increase
demand by anticipating an increase in
demand. This is called speculation. If the
consumers can be convinced that, at some
point in the future, the good or service will
be valued far higher than it is now, they will
pay in an attempt to get a deal. Use greed
and a fear of missing out to get people to buy
something they don’t need. The speculators
increase demand by buying cheap, decreasing
supply, and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So, for instance, comic books aren’t
worth much to the Loss, but citizens in
the Recession will pay big for recovered
masterpieces once the reclamation starts.
Persuasion, Profession: Advertisement,
Deception, Criminality — any number of skills
363
 could be used to create an artificial demand
for otherwise useless items.
Alternately, Takers can anticipate scarcity
for goods with a high use value. If you hack
into the enclave’s e-copy of the Farmer’s
Almanac and change the predictions to
drought, the price of water might skyrocket a
week before record-setting rains.
flooded
Flooded goods and services were in high
demand before everyone tried to get rich
quick. Now, the economy carries too much
surplus for profits to remain high. Pricing
remains highly competitive, dropping
constantly as businesses try to snag jaded
customers. Dealing with flooded commodities
requires dealing in large quantities, driving
out competition, or moving into a new enclave
suffering from deflated supply.
For Markets: Flooded goods and services
make for a golden opportunity to define the
character of an enclave. Surplus goods are
typically the first to be exported. The price of
seafood in a fishing village is next to nothing,
but the same fish would be worth a lot in the
deserts of Utah. Similarly, mastered skill sets
become the services for which a community
is known. The mechanics at the garage don’t
make much working on each other’s cars, but
the one desperate amateur that comes for
help can fund operations for months. Be it
fishing villages or garages, places are defined
by their surpluses and specializations. So,
in the instance of the flooded equilibrium,
what does this surplus say about the enclave
the PCs are working in? Did the community
come into a recent windfall, or have they
always been known for this specific excess?
Answering these questions for the players is
essential not only for Scams, but as a way of
immersing the group in the setting.
For Takers: Increasing the profitability of
flooded economies can be as easy as finding
another buyer. Export excess and beat the
enclave’s low prices. For services, use Ubiq
to contract with enclaves lacking groups with
the proper expertise.
364
Flooding the market even more can work
as well, at least in the short term. Scores that
secure massive quantities of goods can be
dumped on the enclave all at once in hopes
economies of scale make the narrow margins
worthwhile. However, flooding an already
flooded commodity runs the risk of causing
a crash and pissing off the many competitors
in the field. Since repercussions are likely in
such instances, it might be better to sabotage
competition outright, thus decreasing supply
and increasing demand.
Though difficult to pull off, a Scam
that creates artificial scarcity is the most
sustainable. Keeping stockpiles of goods
hidden can artificially inflate equilibrium, but
schemes like these require a lot of trust and
cooperation amongst competitors.
Scarce
The platonic ideal of economic opportunity
is scarcity. Hard-to-obtain goods and services
can be sold for a significant mark up until
demand is met. Exploiting scarce markets
requires speed and liquidity. Every second
spent meeting demand drives prices down
and risks a flooded market. It’s often better to
off-load wholesale rather than selling slowly
and sacrificing the equilibrium. For services,
limited time offers work well to maintain a
healthy margin, but expect competition the
second stories of success spread. In situations
where scarcity is common — such as the need
for timber in a desert — really smart Takers do
their best to establish stable monopolies.
For Markets: Much like the flooded category
builds setting through surplus, enclaves
are also defined by what they need. No one
is a master of every skill, and no single
community can support all the needs of
all its people. Scarcity defines an enclave’s
imports, critiques its leaders, and implies
the surrounding geography. What does the
community need, and why can’t they provide
it themselves? An enclave in need of energy
might be located in a colder climate where the
cost of heating the enclave is a constant drain
on resources. A well-defended ammunition
factory might be so specialized it possesses
no means of growing its own food. Whatever
the scarcity, it says something about the
enclave that suffers from it, and the PCs
become that much better defined through
their unique ability to provide for that need.
For Takers: With low-supply/high-demand
goods and services, the negative impact
of competitors can’t be overstated. Lost
customers take a significant chunk of profit
with them. Any Scams Takers can undertake
to steal the other guy’s base have the potential
for major gains. Just don’t expect success to
last long. Nobody in the Loss can afford to
ignore opportunity, and the get-rich-quick
schemers fill any vacuum quickly. For every
competitor eliminated, expect two more to
take its place.
Monopolies fix the problem of competition,
but the resentment of driving others out of
business magnifies ten-fold when Takers exert
the kind of force necessary to drive everyone
out of the game. The risk to safety may not
be worth the amazing gains of a sole provider
position. the Loss, but everything becomes a matter of
The most profitable Scam in the short- timing. The market must eventually correct
term is provoking the enclave into a scare. itself, adding competition and reducing
Anticipating an even greater scarcity to prices rationally. In the worst case, the
come for a high-demand good or service can bubble doesn’t so much deflate as it explodes,
provoke a glut of spending. However, this is causing a crash large enough to destroy entire
always followed by a much longer period of enclaves. Getting rich quick means getting out
hoarding and economic depression — hard before it’s too late.
times a crew could be blamed for if their For Markets: There are only two situations
manipulations become common knowledge. that explain volatility in an enclave: monopoly
Takers should think long and hard before and speculation. Neither is sustainable
inciting a scare; such scorched-earth long term, but both make for fantastic story
economic maneuvers won’t win them many conflicts. In the case of monopoly, the only
friends. way to keep prices high without scarcity is to
control the entirety of the supply. This means
VolatIle that, before the PC Takers arrived, somebody
A volatile equilibrium lives the impossible has already sewn up all goods and services
dream: a high-demand price with deep within that area. There’s no way someone
reserves of supply. For some reason, the else hasn’t already tried to get at those sweet
situation has momentarily escaped economic profits, which means that the cartel has some
law. People are buying, and no matter how means of enforcing their claim. Any group
much they consume, prices remain the high. of Takers trying to horn in on volatile profits
Takers that can exploit volatile goods or has just asked the Market to create a new
services are well on their way to escaping antagonist for them.
365
 Though it may seem safer, the thugs and
threats of a monopoly are actually preferable
to wild speculation. If everyone in the enclave
is getting in on the action, it means massive
scarcities or increases in demand have
been predicted. In such instances, there’s
no outcome that doesn’t end in economic
disaster. Does the predicted scarcity happen?
Now everyone is hoarding their goods, leading
to a recession. Does the predicted scarcity
never arrive? The exact same situation occurs,
only now because there isn’t enough demand.
And what if increased demand doesn’t meet
expectations? The real-estate crisis, the tech
bubble, beanie baby collection — history is
littered with micro-economies destroyed
by such speculation. Markets that roll high
equilibrium need to answer a few questions:
what caused this economic anomaly, how
bad is going to get when the market corrects
itself, and will the PCs be able to escape the
blowback?
For Takers: Working in volatile goods and
services means deciding where to take the
hit. Do you want the pain now or later? If the
answer is the latter, run Scams that utilize
the resentment the populace likely feels
towards their economic captors. For instance,
let’s say the local enclave is run by a cartel
that controls all the available drinking water.
Everybody hates the Water Barons, so they’ll
be happy to keep their mouths shut if your
group starts selling jugs for a discount on the
edge of town. But no matter how secretive the
populace might be, word is going to get out
once profits start to drop. Expect retaliation.
In fact, retaliation is so certain as to suggest
a pre-emptive strike. Why wait for the Water
Barons to counter-attack when the Takers
could kill them and take over the racket? As
before, blood will spill... it’s just a matter of
who strikes first.
If there’s no monopoly to break up, speed
is the key. Run Scams to reinforce the
prediction of coming scarcity or demand.
Whip speculators into a fervor and try to cash
out before the inevitable crash.
366
Confused Players
Maybe your group wants to manipulate equilibrium but
is stumped for ideas. Rather than let them languish in
confusion, Markets can ask for Foresight checks. After all,
the characters have had five years to learn the ropes;
their understanding of enclave economics is going to be
superior to the players’. Success provides some strategic
information on how to manipulate the price using a Scam.
Example EquIlIbrIum
Megan can wait to set the equilibrium for
her job until right before negotiations start,
but she doesn’t like to improv much and
would prefer some time to think about how to
describe the situation to her players. Megan
decides to determine the equilibrium early
and record it in her notes.
Megan rolls B10/R5. That means
negotiations with Menace start with 15 bounty
on the At Value box of the Sway tracker (see
p. 487). On the supply/demand chart, that
puts retrieval jobs at the cusp between Scarce
and Volatile. Megan figures that means
retrieval of raw materials was once a rare
and dearly priced service, but now the word
is out. Other Taker outfits want in on the
huge profits retrieval crews have been raking
in. The retrieval economy is tipping towards
speculation and a possible crash.
If Megan’s players want to Scam the
equilibrium price higher, they’ll need to scare
off the amateur Takers looking to horn in on
their business. Or they could slander them,
marketing their own crew’s experience.
What Megan actually ends up writing in her
notes is “B10/R5. 15 bounty At Cost. Barely
Scarce. Discourage competition to raise.”
Economy
If there is a god cruel enough to rule the
Loss, his name is capitalism. But though the
apocalypse has allowed for forgotten heights
of exploitation, it has also reintroduced
 diversity. There are numerous flavors of
capitalism adopted by different communities,
and each can have a major effect on how
jobs are bid and prices set. Furthermore, the
isolation and autonomy of certain enclaves
allow for experimental economies completely
divorced from the capitalist model. Takers
face a whole new set of challenges when
dealing with these alien systems.
The mechanics of Red Markets are based
solely on a desperate form of disaster
capitalism, so the effect of different
economies on the game remains purely
narrative. But this doesn’t mean describing
the material philosophy of an enclave should
go ignored. Defining the economic landscape
is one of the best tools a Market has to get
players invested in the setting.
What follows are brief definitions of
macroeconomic types an enclave’s economy
can be based on.
Economy in Extended Play
Markets running extended campaigns only have to answer
the economy question once. Fleshing out an enclave covers
all the necessary material and more. Since campaigns are
based around the Takers’ home enclave, the economy only
changes if PCs take the show on the road or migrate.
MIxed
Chances are you are living in a mixed
economy. Mixed economies are fundamentally
capitalistic, but they rein in the chaos of a
completely free market with anti-capitalist
regulations. Whether a government lies
on the less or more side of the regulatory
spectrum defines the majority of all existing
political entities.
Though Americans typically refer to
modern China as a communist country, in
truth they utilize a mixed economy just like
the USA. China’s “communism” is a differing
regulatory system that favors the government
over the individual, but citizens still choose
their employment, set their own prices for
the majority of goods, and compete amongst
each other in markets where the state hasn’t
established a legal monopoly. When China
compels economic inputs from the populace,
it is with the force of law and serves as a
defining characteristic of their communism.
So, for instance, if the state desires to flood
your town to build a dam, it can legally compel
the “sale” of the land through censure and use
of force.
The United States, in contrast, has a much
more lax regulatory system, but people still
pay income tax, insider trading is still illegal,
and toxic waste dumps can’t be built next to
preschools. These regulations limit capitalist
enterprise and, therefore, aren’t capitalistic.
When the United States wants to compel
economic inputs from the populace, the law
is not always on the side of the state and
protections exist that favor the individual.
However, as history has shown, just because
compelling the private citizen isn’t as easy
as it is in China, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t
happen all the time in the US. If Uncle Sam
wants to flood your town to build a dam,
it can bankrupt you with decades of court
cases, rezone your home until it’s an unlivable
hellhole, buy your debt just to “renegotiate”
your collection terms, or claim eminent
domain to purchase the land for pennies on
the acre.
Pure capitalism, or laissez-faire capitalism,
is as rare as totally controlled systems, largely
because both economies tend to destroy
themselves once they reach a certain scale.
Most long-term, functioning economies are
mixed. Whether these mixed economies
should lean further towards free markets or
planned economies is the origin of almost all
political doctrine.
LaIssez-faIre
Laissez-faire, or “let it be,” is the argument
that economic forces should be free of all
governmental interference and only governed
367
 by Market forces. Taken to its extreme,
this takes the form of anarchocapitalism:
economic systems ruled solely by individual
self-interest and assuming what Smith called
“spontaneous order.” A more generous term
used to describe these economies is “market
economies.”
Some would say that modern-day Somalia
and the historical Wild West are examples
of anarchocapitalism in action, but both
are straw man arguments. Nothing about
the chaos in Somalia is intentional. It’s a
failed state, not a hands-off state ethos.
Similarly, the Wild West’s lawlessness came
from it being an unincorporated territory.
The “wildness” came from a failure of
policy enforcement rather than a policy
of noninterference. As manifest destiny
progressed, the regulatory powers of the
United States were implemented with
violent and terrifying force, especially if you
happened to be Native American.
The ethics of laissez-faire capitalism have
been under critique since the term was
coined, and the degree to which a state can
exist at all while still claiming a laissez-faire
economy is a source of constant debate in
libertarian circles. For the purposes of Red
Markets, laissez-faire refers to the ideological
extreme, if only because it makes for more
dramatic games. If the Takers are dealing
with well-meaning libertarians, describe
their enclave as a mixed economy with an
independent bent. But if the Takers are
dealing with lawless, might-makes-right post-
apocalyptic gangsters, call it laissez-faire. The
dangers of such economies are obvious, but
profit comes easy for those ruthless enough to
seize it.
Controlled
A controlled economy monopolizes all forms
of production and capital for the state. The
government dictates even the most basic
aspects of labor. Feudalism enforced these
rules through rigid caste systems and
ironclad codes of inheritance. Communist
disasters such as Mao’s Cultural Revolution
368
and present-day North Korea use absurd
vocational reassignment to kill all economic
specialization, retarding growth by forcing
trained doctors to harvest crops and similar
nonsense.
This is not to say that all communism or
socialism is monstrous. No mixed economy
system provides for all its citizens equally. In
every capitalist system, there exist exploited,
disenfranchised, and oppressed populations,
and more humane regulation is essential for
justice. Furthermore, the degree to which
it is even possible to “control” an economy
is a matter of contention, as even the most
totalitarian of regimes develops extensive,
anarchocapitalist black markets.
Like laissez-faire, the exact moment when
government regulation tips into too much
regulation is a matter of political debate
beyond the scope of this game. If Takers
are dealing with perfectly rational cultural
Marxists, describe the economy as mixed with
a socialist bent. But if Takers are dealing with
dictators or corporate-controlled dystopias,
use controlled economy in the pejorative
sense. It’s more interesting to play against
an entirely antagonistic economy, and the
potential to profit off its inevitable black
market rewards players for the added risk.
Other
For extreme deviations from mixed economy
capitalism without negative connotations,
refer to those systems with their own names.
Markets hurting for idea can find examples
of experimental economies detailed in
“Contract Generator” (see p. 379). Whether
using an economy from the book or designing
one’s own, Markets should remember that
the mechanics of Red Markets are steeped
in capitalist ideology. As such, dealing with
experimental enclaves should add a step of
translation to the narrative.
For instance, if the town of Pelt only
has a barter system, the players face the
additional challenge of turning their fees
into a list of easy-to-fence goods. Conversely,
a town of Odoists completely divorced
from the idea of possession requires an
extra set of negotiations before they’ll even
agree to compensate the Takers at all, not
to mention how much. Unless they want
to move there and retire, Takers working
inside experimental systems can only expect
more obstacles standing in the way of their
bounty. Nothing frees them from the ruthless
demands of the carrion economy.
The nightmare of a Taker is living through
the world’s end and watching capitalism carry
on without it. If they somehow escape the
cycle of scarcity, the game can still be good... it
just can’t be Red Markets. If the players want
to start the revolution and build the worker’s
utopia, good for them! But the charge system
isn’t going to make much sense after that, nor
Buy-a-Roll, nor any other mechanic for a game
about economic horror. Make the triumph of
the proletariat a retirement goal; this game
is for the grinding struggle against poverty
necessary to get there.
Example Economy WrIte-up
Megan is running a one-shot, so she’ll need
a short description of the enclave she wants
to locate her Contracts in. She decides that
since Menace needs industrial quantities of
rubber, his slingshot operation is probably
fairly large. Specialized manufacturing
implies deep specialization, so that means
this enclave has to have some system in place
to feed itself while some people spend all day
making improvised weaponry. After some
thought, she writes up the following.
“Menace operates out of ‘Home.’ Once
a national distribution center for a major
hardware store, survivors have painted over
the remainder of the defunct company’s
name and turned the warehouse complex
into a thriving industrial enclave. Using the
wealth of tools and materials on-site, Home
specialized in manufacturing, machinery,
and construction services. The lumberyards
(their content long since burned or used
369
 in fortifications) have been converted into
farmland to support the populace. However,
the acreage inside the fence is barely enough
to sustain the population and requires
constant care. Home is a mixed economy
whose major regulation is a variable labor tax
on all full-time residents.
Anyone wanting to stay in the enclave must
devote 60 hours a week to the care of its
agriculture, fortifications, and cleanliness.
Other means of economic production are
encouraged by the option to buy off portions
of the labor tax with bounty. Enterprises that
attract enough trade to Home reward their
owners by buying off time tending the fields.
Though good for the enclave’s bottom line,
the ability to buy off all responsibility for
menial labor has led to a stark class divide.
The only thing that keeps Home’s serfs-by-
another-name from revolution is the mayor’s
even-handed enforcement of policy: the
second someone comes short on their bounty
payments, they find themselves back digging
dirt and taking out trash.”
It should be noted that for any other
Contracts Megan offers to the characters
while they are at Home, she won’t have
to rewrite the economy section. The
macroeconomic situation won’t be changing
on account of one job, and this description
will remain accurate until the players move or
something affects the enclave as a whole.
ClIent(s)
Contracts need clients offering to compensate
the Takers for their services. These NPCs
are more than a collection of hit points and
weapons. Each client has enough disposable
income to escape the Loss but, for some
reason, does not. Perhaps they’re citizens
and exploiting homo sacer as cheap labor.
Maybe, like the Takers, responsibilities to
their loved ones anchor them in hell. Or they
could be ideologues, too proud or comfortable
in their new lives to suffer the indignities
of the cowardly Recession. Whatever the
reason, clients possess outsized personalities
with more power to shape the Loss than any
370
weapon or army. They’re movers and shakers
destined to come out on top of any deal,
unless Takers figure out how to turn their
egos against them.
Markets can dedicate however much effort
they want into describing a client, but all that’s
really needed to get the game rolling are the
spots. NPC spots differ slightly from PC spots
because their uses are limited to negotiations,
but each descriptor covers roughly the same
information.
• Weak Spot: a pervasive character flaw or
blind spot that can be used to provoke a
reaction.
• Soft Spot: a point of sympathy or positive
bias that can be exploited to manipulate
behavior.
• Tough Spot: instead of an explanation
for the character’s survival (unlike PCs),
a client’s tough spot represents a certain
demand for the Contract under bid. What
makes this job something the client
can’t do personally? Why do they need
specialists instead of regular employees?
Finally, clients get one more spot that no
PC has: the Gift.
• Gift: particularly wealthy clients can afford
to give away pieces of useful equipment
to their contractors as a means of gaining
extra Sway in negotiations.
Example ClIent WrIte-up
Megan writes the following description of
Menace.
“Menace grew up in a rural area with a gun-
nut for a father. He hated the damn things:
loud, smelly, and dangerous. This disappointed
the old man and his redneck friends to no
end. The only thing Menace ever found to
alleviate the mark on his character was other
forms of marksmanship. Leave the shotguns
and rifles to everybody else; if you wanted
someone to teach you how to bow-hunt or
throw a tomahawk, you went to Menace.
A hobby became a survival skill during the
Crash — suddenly weapons that didn’t need a
reload seemed like a great business decision.
The man’s hobby of absent-mindedly whittling
slingshots turned into one of the more
profitable businesses in all of Home.”
Megan knows she doesn’t need to write
that much, but she like to get into the heads
of her characters. Now she has to think up
some spots the PCs can use to push her client
around in negotiations. She figures that,
though successful, the slingshot mogul can’t
afford to hand out gifts, so she skips that one.
That leaves her with the following:
“Weak Spot: Hit Your Mark”
The discipline required to master archaic
tools of marksmanship has left its mark
on Menace. He has nothing but scorn for
quitters and sloppy execution. If the Takers
can make themselves seem like keen, precise
professionals, he’ll be more likely to give them
a good price. Alternately, they could paint the
competition as spray-and-pray amateurs to
achieve the same effect.
“Soft Spot: Odd Ducks”
Menace was a country kid that hated guns. He
also prefers rap music to country. This didn’t
stop him from wearing wranglers, attending
rodeos, and fitting in other ways, but he’ll
always have a soft spot in his heart for people
that don’t quite fit the mold. Show Menace
you’re a round peg in a square hole and he’ll be
sympathetic.
“Tough Spot: Farming is Beneath Me”
Menace didn’t work so hard building his
slingshot business just to have it go belly up
and leave him a lowly field hand. Despite his
humble beginnings, success in the Loss has
left the man snobbish and soft. The rubber
shortage has him backed into a corner,
and playing on Menace’s desperation to
maintain his station is good for extra Sway in
negotiations.
Skipping Clients
Groups planning Scores don’t need clients; they need
wholesalers. Hopefully, these wholesalers are interesting
NPCs (hopefully, all NPCs are interesting), but they don’t
negotiate. Profitable Scores are all about dealing in bulk,
reaping the equilibrium price as much as possible. So, when
a group plans a Score, they don’t need to stat out a
client’s spot.
Similarly, if the client has appeared before in campaign
play, their spots don’t change much. One of the benefits
of working a job line is knowing how to push the
client’s buttons. The only things that change are the
client’s tough and gift spot, depending on the specific
requirements of the Contract. Like the economy element,
extended play relieves the Market prepping a ton of a
new material every session, meaning the group gets more
jobs to choose from with the same amount GM work.
CompetItIon
Aside from simulating a free market, NPC
competition exists as a way to define the
PC crew’s ethos. Are they untrustworthy
profiteers, sabotaging others frequently, or
out-and-out warlords that eliminate financial
threats with a gun? Do they keep things
professional, trusting their reputation to beat
out the bargains offered by other desperate
crews? Do they see all Takers as allies
alienated only by circumstance, a guild of
master craftsmen that fakes animosity to play
the rubes in the crowd?
How a group reacts to their competition
does a lot to shape the enclave’s perception
of Takers as well as generate + and -Rep
spots. The amount of competition also gives
the Market a tool for communicating a job’s
difficulty; a Contract with multiple competing
crews must pay big and, therefore, be quite
dangerous. NPC competitors also give
Negotiators an easy prompt for persuasive
appeals — slandering the other guys is the
world’s oldest form of advertisement. In
addition, rival Takers with their own vivid
371
 personality can inspire negotiation tactics
in those otherwise stumped. Finally, it’s
important to provide competition to spread
the work of negotiating prices around
the group. While Scams offer everyone
an opportunity to shine in the pricing
of Contracts, intimidating, sabotaging,
or eliminating competitors occupies
characters that may prefer action to words in
nonetheless vital business roles.
Competition in Extended Play
As long as the PCs don’t murder everyone to prevent an
undercut, competing NPCs can become recurring characters
in any campaign, serving as professional acquaintances,
frenemies, consistent annoyances, sworn enemies, or all of
the above. Like the economy element, one write up for
competition can serve for a whole campaign, and established
NPCs can later be combined with new competition on
particularly attractive Contracts.
Furthermore, job lines offered by recurring clients don’t
suffer from competition. The trade-off for the client
knowing the Taker’s spots already is luring them in with
a no-contest bid. This balances the negotiation mechanics
to keep repeat business profitable and further relieves
the Market of writing responsibilities.
Bust Rule: Competitive Market
To make the game more difficult, the Market
can roll a 1d10 of any color. On an even
number, a Contract only has one competitor.
On an odd number, the Contract has two
different crews trying to get the job. If the
Takers don’t do something to sabotage
competition in their Scams, they might get
undercut twice as the surplus of providers
creates a bidding war. Alternately, the
Market can say that only one rival crew is
undercutting the price; the other one is trying
to sabotage the PCs just like them. Add a
complication and a few more die rolls to one
Taker’s Scam as rival crew tries to discourage
the PCs from taking the job.
372
Boom Rule: Labor Shortage
To make securing high-paying Contracts even
easier, the Market can roll a 1d10 of any color.
On an even number, the competition finds
their own work and doesn’t pursue the PC’s
chosen Contract at all. There’s more than
enough work to go around, and players that do
their Prep Work know they can focus Scams
entirely on the client. On an odd number, the
competition tries to undercut the job normally.
Example CompetItIon WrIte-up
Megan’s players are pretty new to Red
Markets, so she doesn’t want to throw a
ton of hostile competition at them yet. She
decides that she’ll only have one other group
competing for Contracts this session. She’ll
make sure they’re professional and not a
fringe group likely to respond with violence if
they lose a job. Finally, since she’s hoping her
players will like the game enough to request
a full campaign, she plans to communicate
some aspect of the Dakotas setting she has in
mind.
After giving it some thought, Megan writes
her competition element:
“Counting Casualties (CC’d, to their friends)
is visiting Home looking for work. Operating
out of Red Cloud, an enclave that arose from
the local Lakota reservation, CC’d is run by a
young woman named Wasuya. She’s renowned
on LifeLines as one of the funniest Takers on
the forums, and she’s been running a crew
since the Crash came down. CC’d is perhaps
the most likable crew in the whole Loss, if not
the most profitable. They’re what’s referred
to as a “non-profit outfit:” subsidized Takers
that return 100% of their profits to the home
enclave. The residents of Red Cloud have
no desire to escape to the Recession or be
converted into a Settlement — most had quite
enough of the US government even before the
Crash — and the proceeds of each Contract
gets dedicated to improving the enclave’s
infrastructure. Since they’re playing such a long
game, Wasuya consistently puts the welfare of
her crew above the demands of the job, walking
away from profitable Contracts on more than
one occasion to protect her team. When they
do complete a job, it’s always pleasant and
professional, but their “nice guy” brand hurts
the crew’s chances with nervous clients, losing
them as many Contracts as it gains.”
Since CC’d is looking for any work Home
has to offer, they’ll serve as the competition
for every other Contract on offer this session.
Travel TIme
Job sites rarely share the same location as the
Takers. If they did, why hire anyone?
Traveling to the necessary site is one
of the greatest dangers Takers face. The
Loss is brutal and unpredictable, plagued
by wandering Casualties, severe weather,
and unhinged survivors. But it’s also stuffed
with bounty just waiting to be salvaged, and
commutes can sometimes pay more than the
jobs they serve. No amount of preparation can
predict whether a crew is destined to feast on
the carrion economy or be consumed by it.
So as not to require detailed maps and
calculations of average land speeds, distance
in Red Markets is calculated in Legs. Legs
measure units of story rather than distance.
Every Leg constitutes one encounter or
Interlude scene, and it costs each Taker one
charge of rations to continue the journey.
Markets can dictate each Leg represents
an hour of walking, the distance travelled
between breakfast and lunch, or an entire
day’s hike. Whatever distance is convenient
for the story the Market is trying to tell, that’s
measured in Legs.
Markets remain entitled to create new Legs
for any Score or Contract they run. See the
“Loss Encounters” chapter for dramatic and
procedural leg prompts as well as a d100
table of pre-generated encounters.
Example Travel TIme WrIte-up
Megan likes using the tables, and none of her
players are familiar enough with the book
to be bored by its encounters. She makes a
short note that the job site is three legs away.
During play, she’ll roll the Black and Red, read
that entry from the encounter table, and run
her players through the situation; no other
preparation required.
The SIte
The site is where the Takers go to get the job
done. The site is the core of any Contract or
Score. The names of job sites get screamed as
often during celebratory toasts as during night
terrors. It’s the place where Takers triumph,
profit, go mad, lose hope, and/or die.
In Red Markets, the consumerist society
we live in is the dungeon. The items people
take for granted every day are treasures.
The enemies are made up of scared people
competing for the resources, fanatics gone
mad from suffering, dystopian corporate and
governmental agencies, and zombies. Three-
373
 out-of-four times, antagonistic settings can be
adapted directly from the news.
Markets can invest as little or as much
effort as they choose into world-building the
job site. One GM might invent a new state,
fictional country, and alternate timeline for
their setting, rebuilding the “History of the
Crash” section from the ground up. An equally
good game could be run from plot hooks as
written in “History of the Crash” and “The
Loss.” But even that much effort isn’t required.
Designing a job for Red Markets is as easy
as turning your hometown into a zombie
playground. Nursing homes, mega-churches,
university recreation centers — all provide
complex challenges to the players, rewarding
their planning and preparation while still
hiding dangers around every corner. And none
requires the Market to get out a ruler and grid
paper. Preparations are as simple as printing
off some blueprints from the internet.
Of course, Markets should prepare for a
game in whatever way makes them feel most
comfortable, but the workplace essentials are
about minimizing GM work so it’s possible
to present players with an economy’s worth
of adventures from which to choose. What
follows are directions for the least labor-
intensive way to construct a job site and an
example in action.
DesIgnIng Job SItes
1. Think of a place that would house the
good or service the Takers need (see
“Goods/Services” p. 360).
2. Search the internet for appropriate
buildings, structures, or neighborhoods.
A. An impressive amount of blueprints and
floor plans are available for free with a
simple image search.
B. Services such as Google Earth make
entire real world neighborhoods
available as maps for players to use in
play. Groups that use tablets and other
electronics at the table can keep
constant track of where their players
are at the job site, or printouts can be
used.
374
C. For jobs where an exact map of the
location is unnecessary, look up
evocative photos to set the mood by
searching terms like “ruin porn” and
“urban exploring.”
3. Once a location has been found, create
Taker copies and Market copies. For
printouts, these are literally copies. If
using electronics, Markets should annotate
their copy on a personal device and have
the default URL version be the Taker copy.
4. Markets should think about the following
questions. Keep in mind, the answers
likely intersect with or decide the job’s
complication (see “Complications” p. 376).
A. What happened to this place during
the Crash and pull back to the
Recession? How can the history be
“written on the walls” of this space so it
is available to the players?
B. What here, besides the main element of
the job, is of value to my players?
Where is this value located? Mark
this information on the Market copy. If
the players would be able to discover it,
indicate important locations on the
Taker copy as well.
C. Why hasn’t this location been
stripped of its value before now? Was
the opportunity concealed before this
job? Overlooked? Is it protected by
some danger only the players were
brave enough to face, or have others
tried before and failed?
D. How does the map differ from the
landscape? How would the archived
information available on Ubiq about
this place differ from the reality of
it after five years in the Loss? In what
ways could these unpredictable changes
challenge and surprise players? Mark
the surprises on the Market copy, and
leave the players to discover them the
hard way.
E. During the game, reward paranoid and
prepared PCs with Taker copies. Allow
and reward rational plans that
exploit the terrain. But there are things
 professional Takers can know (the
Taker copy) and things no one could
predict (the Market copy).
Example SIte WrIte-up
Megan likes architecture. She wants her
rubber factory to be the famed modernist
Brynmawr Rubber Factory. Though the
building was really located in Wales, there’s
no rule saying she can’t transplant the
building to her setting in the Dakotas. She
decides to rechristen the complex the First
Joys Manufacturing Division and starts doing
research.
Megan already thought of the type of place
her goods would be located at when she made
the Contract. An infant toy manufacturer
would have to have extensive injection-molded
rubber and plastic equipment. At one time,
the real world Brynmawr Rubber Factory was
one of the largest rubber manufacturers in the
world.
Megan is in luck. As a major architectural
milestone, there are numerous blueprints,
floor plans, AND photos of the Brynmawr
Factory available online. After identifying
some basic maps to provide her players,
she finds that a number of urban explorers
have trespassed on the factory ground since
its shutdown in the 80’s. The pictures of
the dilapidated interior and abandoned
machinery are unsettling and totally
appropriate for an apocalypse. Megan prints a
few of these photos to help establish a mood,
noting where they were taken on the floor
plan when possible.
Megan’s group likes to keep it low-tech at
the table, lest the dreaded phones make an
appearance and steal everyone’s attention.
She prints off a copy of the floor plan for every
player and a couple of pages of photos to set
the mood. If PCs make a Research check,
she’ll give out the floor plan. If someone
makes a Foresight check, she’ll let them
know that the rubber is most likely located in
Factory C. Beyond that, the rest of the notes
go on the Market copy.
Extreme remedies are very
appropriate for extreme diseas
es.
-Hippocrates
It’s time to answer some vital questions
about First Joys. Most complications that can
occur during a job intersect with the job site,
so Megan decides to figure out both elements
at once. Here’s what she writes up:
“First Joys Manufacturing Division was
abandoned before the Crash and left untouched
during the worst of the outbreak. As the
government retreated and it became apparent
people would be left on their own, a group of
former employees gathered up survivors from
surrounding towns, sourced supplies, and
headed to the factory. The plan was to use the
existing fencing and fortress-like modernist
architecture to form an enclave ironically name
Bounce. The plan worked initially. Scavenged
food and medicine was rationed as the people
worked to establish agriculture, and the
industrial equipment left behind was being
refurbished to provide some trade with the
other enclaves popping up around the Loss.
Everything was going fine until Bounce was
infiltrated by a cult of The Meek a few months
after the Recession. The believers worshipped
the Blight as a divine salvation, viewing
themselves as unworthy of the ascension
and forced to ‘spread the gospel’ as penance.
Members of the Meek intentionally infected the
main housing center of Bounce, poisoning a
stew with casualty flesh. No one survived the
resulting tide of Vectors. Now, the once hopeful
decorations and half-finished construction
of the would-be enclave are only dusty ruins
strewn across the factory floor, casualties of
long-dead victims shambling aimlessly among
the dead alleyways.
On the plus side, there are numerous non-
perishable goods available for salvage among
the remains of Bounce, such as vehicles,
tools, and ammunition. However, reaching
the rubber supply and anything else of value
requires descending into the undead-choked
street of a dead shantytown. To make matters
375
 worse, a few of the Meek survived the initial
sabotage, staying behind to tend the flock.
These madmen haunt the catwalks above the
factory floor, hanging perverse totems made a n a b s t r a c t truth
ay cat c h
of scavenged children’s toys and throwing We shall some d e n w e s h a ll have our
t h
by the tail, and
kidnapped travelers into the hungry mobs
below.”
n a n d o ur im m o rtality.
religio
Adams
ComplIcatIons -Henry Brooks
There’s no single word in English for the
paradoxically shocking, yet somehow reliable,
sense of disappointment a crappy day at work
“The only living souls left at the plant sane
can generate. We have to make do with Same
enough to communicate coherently are Ma
Shit; Different Day. It’s a feeling everybody
and Pa; this sickly older couple leads a group
who has ever worked for pay can relate to,
of three more Meek cultists left over from
and in Red Markets, it’ll kill you.
the initial fall of Bounce. If the Takers head
Things WILL go wrong. That’s the
directly into the warren of decaying tents
complication element.
and shanties to retrieve the rubber, they’ll
The complication is solely the purview
raise all the ladders to the catwalks, call their
of the Market. Even in player-designed
fellow believers from their hiding place, and
Scores, the Market has to come up with the
fire a sniper rifle from above. However, if the
complication and spring it on the group. A
Takers head to the catwalks first, Ma and Pa
good complication seems simultaneously
introduce themselves civilly. They impersonate
obvious and impossible to predict, touching
Shepherds instead of Meek, hoping to gain the
on every element of the job previously
characters’ trust by highlighting the reverence
established without being obvious. It could
for casualties both faiths share. A Sensitivity
be a secret the client was trying to hide, an
check reveals something is off about the twitchy
unpredictable antagonist inhabiting the job
older couple. Takers that see the trap coming
site, or an act of god.
can interrogate the pair of psychos with CHA
Whatever complication the Market writes,
skills. If forced to talk and promised something
the goal is to make the surviving PCs feel
in return (escape, the survival of their “babies,”
powerful and tough for overcoming it. Any
etc.), they reveal that a service tunnel beneath
fool with more balls than brains can make
the complex opens near some crates containing
a buck in the Loss; overcoming unforeseen
bars of raw rubber.”
complications is what separates the amateurs
from the real Takers.
Completed Job WrIte-up
Example ComplIcatIon WrIte-up What follows is everything Megan needs
Obviously, the complication has to revolve written down to run her job. The whole
around the believers and their victims in the thing comes out to about 1000 words, plus a
forgotten enclave Bounce. Megan decides couple maps printed directly off the internet.
the Meek’s unique brand of ritualized serial If Megan wanted to create more jobs and give
murder probably doesn’t attract a lot of her players a list of options, the additional
converts. It also suggests a pretty unhealthy write-ups could recycle the economy and
lifestyle. She decides that only a few of competition sections, requiring even less work
the original saboteurs remain, but they’ve to prepare. Everything else — be it casualty
survived because of exceptional cunning and placements or encounters in the Loss — can
savagery. be generated by the dice.

376
 Contract:
Don't Bounce Back
Goods/ServIces
Menace, the Loss’s foremost manufacturer of high-end slingshots, is having supply problems. His
rubber has gone cracked and dry, slowing production to a halt. Menace knew this day would come
— through extensive research, he’s discovered a manufacturer of baby toys that once existed in the
area: First Joys Inc. Before the Crash, the company was the biggest producer of pre-K accessories in
the United States, capable of producing thousands of pacifiers, teething rings, and bottle nipples per
minute. First Joys Inc. likely had enough rubber on site to supply his business until the T-minus Never,
but there’s no way Menace is going to risk getting himself killed hauling it back to the enclave. He’s
looking for Takers to solve his problems before his business goes bust.

EquIlIbrIum
R5/B10. 15 bounty At Cost. Barely Scarce. Discourage competition to raise.

Economy
Menace operates out of ‘Home.’ Once a national distribution center for a major home hardware store,
survivors have painted over the remainder of the defunct company’s name and turned the warehouse
complex into a thriving industrial enclave. Using the wealth of tools and materials on-site, Home
specialized in manufacturing, machinery, and construction services. The lumberyards (their content
long since burned or used in fortifications) have been converted into farmland to support the populace.
However, the acreage inside the fence is barely enough to sustain the population and requires constant
care. Home is a mixed economy that’s major regulation is a variable labor tax on all full-time residents.
Anyone wanting to stay in the enclave must devote 60 hours a week to the care of its agriculture,
fortifications, and cleanliness. Other means of economic production are encouraged by the option to
buy off portions of the labor tax with bounty. Enterprises that attract enough trade to Home reward
their owners by buying off time tending the fields. Though good for the enclave’s bottom line, the
ability to buy off all responsibility for menial labor has led to a stark class divide. The only thing that
keeps Home’s serfs-by-another-name from revolution is the mayor’s even-handed enforcement of
policy: the second someone comes short on their bounty payments, they find themselves back digging
dirt and taking out trash.

ClIent
Menace grew up in a rural area with a gun-nut for a father. He hated the damn things: loud, smelly,
and dangerous. This disappointed the old man and his redneck friends to no end. The only thing
Menace ever found to alleviate the mark on his character was other forms of marksmanship. Leave
the shotguns and rifles to everybody else; if you wanted someone to teach you how to bow hunt or
throw a tomahawk, you went to Menace. A hobby became a survival skill during the Crash — suddenly
weapons that didn’t need a reload seemed like a great business decision. The man’s hobby of absent-
mindedly whittling slingshots turned into one of the more profitable businesses in all of Home.
Weak spot: Hit Your Mark
Soft spot: Odd Ducks
Tough spot: Farming is Beneath Me

CompetItIon
Counting Casualties (CC’d, to their friends) is visiting Home looking for work. Operating out of Red
Cloud, an enclave that arose from the local Lakota reservation, CC’d is run by a young woman named
Wasuya. She’s renowned on LifeLines as one of the funniest Takers on the forums, and she’s been
running a crew since the Crash came down. CC’d is perhaps the most likable crew in the whole Loss,
if not the most profitable. They’re what’s referred to as a “non-profit outfit:” subsidized Takers that
377
 return 100% of their profits to the home enclave. The residents of Red Cloud have no desire to escape
to the Recession or be converted into a Settlement — most had quite enough of the US government
even before the Crash — and the proceeds of each Contract gets dedicated to improving the enclave’s
infrastructure. Since they’re playing such a long game, Wasuya consistently puts the welfare of
her crew above the demands of the job, walking away from profitable Contracts on more than one
occasion to protect her team. When they do complete a job, it’s always pleasant and professional, but
their “nice guy” brand hurts the crew’s chances with nervous clients, losing them as many Contracts
as it gains.

Travel TIme
3 Legs (to be rolled on the encounters table)

The SIte
(Taker and Market copies of the Brynmawr Rubber Factory included)

First Joys Manufacturing Division was abandoned before the Crash and left untouched during
the worst of the outbreak. As the government retreated and it became apparent people would be
left on their own, a group of former employees gathered up survivors from surrounding towns,
sourced supplies, and headed to the factory. The plan was to use the existing fencing and fortress-
like modernist architecture to form an enclave ironically name Bounce. The plan worked initially.
Scavenged food and medicine was rationed as the people worked to establish agriculture, and the
industrial equipment left behind was being refurbished to provide some trade with the other enclaves
popping up around the Loss. Everything was going fine until Bounce was infiltrated by a cult of The
Meek a few months after the Recession. The believers worshipped the Blight as a divine salvation,
viewing themselves as unworthy of the ascension and forced to ‘spread the gospel’ as penance.
Members of the Meek intentionally infected the main housing center of Bounce, poisoning a stew
with Casualty flesh. No one survived the resulting tide of Vectors. Now, the once hopeful decorations
and half-finished construction of the would-be enclave are only dusty ruins strewn across the factory
floor, casualties of long-dead victims shambling aimlessly among the dead alleyways. On the plus side,
there are numerous non-perishable goods available for salvage among the remains of Bounce, such
as vehicles, tools, and ammunition. However, reaching the rubber supply and anything else of value
requires descending into the undead-choked street of a dead shantytown. To make matters worse, a
few of the Meek survived the initial sabotage, staying behind to tend the flock. These madmen haunt
the catwalks above the factory floor, hanging perverse totems made of scavenged children’s toys and
throwing kidnapped travelers into the hungry mobs below.

ComplIcatIons
The only living souls left at the plant sane enough to communicate coherently are Ma and Pa; this
sickly older couple leads a grounp of three more Meek cultists left over from the initial fall of Bounce.
If the Takers head directly into the warren of decaying tents and shanties to retrieve the rubber,
they’ll raise all the ladders to the catwalks, call their fellow believers from their hiding place, and
fire a sniper rifle from above. However, if the Takers head to the catwalks first, Ma and Pa introduce
themselves civilly. They impersonate Shepherds instead of Meek, hoping to gain the characters’ trust
by highlighting the reverence for casualties both faiths share. A Sensitivity check reveals something
is off about the twitchy older couple. Takers that see the trap coming can interrogate the pair of
psychos with CHA skills. If forced to talk and promised something in return (escape, the survival of
their “babies,” etc.), they reveal that a service tunnel beneath the complex opens near some crates
containing bars of raw rubber.

378
CreatIng Contracts
A play session of Red Markets is referred
to generally as a job. All jobs contain some
traces of the previously mentions “Workplace
Essentials” (p. 359). From there, jobs come
in two varieties: Contracts and Scores.
Contracts have two characteristics:
1. Contracts are services performed for
clients. Even where goods are involved,
Takers are being paid a fee for delivering,
securing, destroying, or otherwise
performing a service.
2. The Market designs Contracts. The
players choose which Contracts they want
to bid on.
This section explains a few concerns
special to Contracts and provides a tool for
randomly generating them.
Market FIat
The right of game masters to design the
games they want to play is referred to as
Market Fiat. Red Markets contains a lot of
tools to help randomize and democratize
content generation; Markets are encouraged
to use these tools, but they are not required.
In a contest between a story someone wants
to tell and what it says in the book, the
individual story always wins.
So, for instance, if the Market has a very
clear idea for a series of Legs to throw
at the players, the d100 table should be
ignored in favor of a personal write-up. If the
setting material doesn’t allow for the story
of east coast Takers the Market was excited
about, rework the setting so it works. If the
equilibrium price doesn’t match what the
Market feels would be fair, change the price to
fit the context.
The book is meant to assist the
construction of jobs when faced with a blank
slate. It shouldn’t be used to override elements
a designer wants to include in the job.
Contract Generator
Sometimes, Markets can be stumped as to
what to offer next, especially if they’re putting
multiple Contracts up for bid every game
session. Use the following d10 tables to spark
some inspiration and make jobs in a hurry.
This section also serves as a good list of
options for players stumped designing their
own Scores.
379
 Goods Table
The goods and services tables can be
used separately or together. If a goods
description is too vague to spark an idea,
roll on the services table to narrow down the
possibilities.
Goods, Services, and Job Sites
The story of the job site depends on the goods found
there and the services the space demands. As such,
there’s no randomization table for job sites. Markets
should come up with the job’s “Where?” after answering
the “What?” “Why now?” and “How much?” questions of
goods and services.

1 MREs, protein powder, canned goods, sports drinks. How has the material
gone so long without being salvaged or spoiled? How is it transported,
Food and Water especially heavy liquids?
2 Clothing, tents, shipping containers. Do the Takers need to transport the
Shelter materials back or secure them until the client arrives?
3 Engine parts, sheet metal, lumber, rubber, plastics. What does the client
need the material for and how might that inform the complication?
Raw MaterIALS
4 Guns, ammo, accessories, explosives, melee weapons, specialized
equipment. What kept this in-demand good out of the Market until now?
WEapons Whatever protected or obscured the stash defines the job site.

5 Wood, diesel, aviation gas, solar panels, batteries, uranium. Most enclaves
and settlements ensure their energy needs are met first. What has caused a
energy shortage or an increase in demand?
Antibiotics, recreational narcotics, bandages, surgical tubing. Supplies are
6 easy to scavenge but drugs have a short shelf life. Five years after the Crash,
medICINE what about this newfound supply is likely to cause the Takers trouble?
Items of a collectable nature, intangible appeal, or of personal value to the
7 client. Films undistributed before the Crash, rare toys, classical artwork,
SPECULATIVE historical artifacts. What kind of client would risk dealing with intangibles in
this day and age? Or is the buyer already lined up?
Cars, trucks, motorcycles, RVs, drones, combines, tractors. Have these
8
assets gone overlooked so long, or have others tried to salvage them before
VEHICLES and failed for some reason?
Evidence, search algorithms, census rolls, deeds. The Carrion Economy
9 is still partially an information economy. Why does the client need this
DATA information recovered? Is the client using secrets to gain the upper hand on
a rival, or seeking to protect themselves from incriminating truths?
Organ trafficking, corporate headhunting, kidnapping, closure jobs, rescues,
10 indentured servant escort. Human resources are inextricably tangled up
HUMAN RESOURCES with services and moral compromise. What kind hard choices are this
client’s appetites going to force on the Takers?

380
ServIces Table In instances such as this, the services table
There are times when someone can’t afford should be rolled on to give an idea of what the
to pay with materials goods and would rather client has to offer the Takers.
offer manpower or hours as payment.

Establish a trade route between locations, map a red zone in the Loss, or
1 find goods within a likely search area. What has kept the job site from being
SCOUT scouted until now? How does the uncertain nature of the locale mask a
complication?
Lure Casualties away from a vulnerable location or draw them near a
certain target. Perhaps the term is meant literally and the crew has to
2 distract some authority while another group performs a dangerous task. Do
dECOY the Takers serve as both bait and trap, or must they cooperate with another
crew?
Recover goods not being utilized or reclaim assets left abandoned. The story
3
of how the opportunity became available is likely the story of the job site and
SALVAGE the complication.

4 Transfer something or someone safely into the client’s possession. If it’s

a person, are they willing to go? What dangers specific to this instance
eSCORT necessitate an armed escort?
Kill the casualties, feral animals, or other creatures infesting a valuable
5 property. What drew the nuisances there in the first place, and why does the
eXTERMINATE client need the problem wiped out right now?
Using knowledge of the victim’s previous life and fate during the Crash,
track down and put a single casualty out of its misery. Clients only hire
6 crews for expensive and uncertain closure jobs due to extreme emotions,
CLOSURE but that emotion need not be love. Why must this specific monster die,
and what does that say about the client? Perhaps it is carrying the key to
something the client needs?

7 Destroy a functioning piece of infrastructure or stockpile of goods. Is this for

the client’s business or pleasure? Do the owners of the assets know what’s
SABOTAGE coming?
Get someone or something across a protected border, into or out of the
8 Recession, a settlement, a locked-down enclave, or hostile nation. What
needs to be transported? Why can’t it travel normally? Is the border
SMUGGLE lockdown justified precaution or totalitarian paranoia, and how does that
affect the ethics of the Taker’s actions?
9 Gain intel by spying on some secretive or exclusive group. What secrets is
the group trying to protect? What opportunities do the Takers have that the
INFILTRATE client can’t utilize personally?
10 Kill a person or group of people for the client. Why does the client want the
target dead? Why involve a third party? Does the target deserve it, or is the
ELIMINATE pay too good to even ask?

381
 Economy Table
The imports, exports, and geography
informing the economy of an enclave or
settlement depend on the Market’s vision for
the setting. The three major classifications
of economies can be found in Workplace
Essentials on p. 359. This randomizer
prompts Contract designers with dramatically
interesting mixed economies good for
challenging player assumptions and creating
political intrigue.

The enclave is owned. Every square inch of it. The soil, the air, the fence, the
sun — access to everything is taxed. A single owner or group of “lords” has
generously patronized enough powerful “knights” (read: criminal enforcers)
to stake their claim, but the majority of the population remain serfs. Nearly
the entire labor output of the community goes to serve the wealth of the
ruling classes, though they may invest in copious propaganda endeavors to
make the system seem more egalitarian, up to and including deifying those
1 in power. Production is used primarily to dissuade the constant threat of
FEUDAL eviction, and all other needs become secondary.
Whether the claim of ownership is legitimate or not is a moot point; might
makes right in any feudal system. But control isn’t absolute. Feudal systems
are plagued by disputes over inheritance, social upheaval, and institutional
hindrances to innovation. The only people with enough surplus to hire
Takers will be the ruling class, but their grip on power is tenuous and prone
to paranoia. Do the Takers exploit the fear of revolution to raise their prices,
knowing that the people will suffer?
Cooperation is key in collectivist enclaves. Though individual property
rights still exist (i.e. my tent, my table, my chair), the means of production
and major infrastructure are owned by the entire community. The
responsibility for maintaining these assets falls to “everyone,” and “rent”
is collected in the form of labor. Additional capital can be gained through
business endeavors owned privately, but the government ensures that each
resident’s contributions to vital industries such as defense, agriculture, and
manufacturing are first fulfilled.
Collectivism is a double-edged sword. In small communities, the sense
2 of fairness and joint purpose leads to a better quality of life. Cooperation
cOLLECTIVIST bleeds into every facet of the culture, building robust social support
structures. However, the system grows increasingly susceptible to abuse
as it grows. Increased demands for subsistence goods puts a cap on labor
specialization and stifles innovation. The reliance on social shaming and
cultural enforcement creates a privileged class of bullies. Any hypocrisy is
thrown into sharp relief, and preventing the system’s breakdown requires
increasingly harsh methods of oppression. Are the Takers working for a
genuinely collectivist group acting in the community’s best interests, or are
the clients gangsters armored in the guise of egalitarianism?

382
 Theocracies are essentially collectivist economies that prioritize intangible
spirituality over practical goods and services. Members of a monastery, for
instance, still have an economy; they must trade goods and labor of various
values amongst each other and outsiders to survive. However, it’s doubtful
that an economist would regard the construction of a cathedral or the
carving of an icon in the group’s rational self-interest, especially without the
possibility of tourism or other monetizing options unavailable in the Loss.
As the primary “export” of a monastery is worship and sufficient structures
already exist to support it, things like charity and religious art waste capital.
They might serve a larger macroeconomic purpose, but a closed system
3 dedicated primarily to spirituality is destined for economic stagnation.
THEOCRACY In a true theocracy, social capital is the only currency. The ability to
project one’s adherence to the doctrines of the faith is the only means of
personal advancement. As such, what little surplus capital a primarily
theocratic group has is managed by the most faithful. Takers will likely be
hired if the job expands the ranks of the community or deals with some
imminent threat they aren’t capable of handling. But theocracy is even
more vulnerable to corruption than collectivism. As soon as someone gains
enough social capital to shape the religious narrative to selfish ends, such
systems can devolve into a tenacious feudalism.
Finally, the flavor of a theocracy is obviously informed by the faith that
dictates its political structure. What oddities of public policy are peculiar to
this specific sect of believers?
Due either to a large surplus of wealth or a dedicated volunteer class of
public servants, certain enclaves legitimately promise their residents life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Minimum income is a social welfare
program that assures everyone enough healthcare, food, and shelter to live.
That’s it. Minimum income covers no discretionary spending whatsoever.
Meals may be disgusting, housing cramped, and medical care barely
sufficient, but no one gets to waste away, even if they’ve never worked a day
in their life. People that want a better quality of life work for it, creating
wealth for the community. All labor above the minimum income assumes
the property rights of a laissez-faire market economy. The only controlled
aspects are access to the essentials and whatever institutions that maintain
that supply.
4 Citizens with assured minimum income enjoy a lot of labor specialization
MINIMUM INCOME and superior psychological health. Freedom from the fear of eviction and
starvation allow for a lot of innovation as people pursue their passions
within the safety net. The downside to such a system is sustainability. Those
that maintain whatever labor and production sustains the minimum income
may one day demand more compensation or cease their duties altogether.
Initial surpluses can dwindle, challenging the noble impulses of the
populace with the harsh reality of scarcity. Finally, even effective minimum
income enclaves have serious immigration issues. They must employ total
secrecy to keep word of their charity from leaking to desperate refugees they
can’t support. Failing that, a downright draconian immigration policy must
be in place, threatening serious violence to anyone violating the border and
carefully vetting any new citizens for necessary skill sets. That Takers have
been contacted at all means the enclave is desperate, or the crew is made up
of residents seeking to gain disposable income by risking their lives.
383
 Barter economies do not accept any of the currencies utilized in the Loss
or the Recession. This could be from lack of access, lack of confidence, a
holdover from the post-apocalyptic thinking common immediately after
the Crash, or a cultural manifestation of P.A.S.S. Regardless, this economy
trades only in the direct exchange of goods and services, with no currency to
mediate rates. Such systems are remarkably inefficient, volatile, and prone
to abuse, though the fixation on use value (i.e. worth is determined solely
by personal utility) is enough to perpetuate barter indefinitely. Long-term
distrust of currency, the political systems that control it, and the people
5 that accept it remains likely in this economy. Self-reliance is highly valued
bARTER in such cultures, and the occasional necessity of outside contractors is
resented.
The challenge of dealing with a barter economy is that, once a Contract
price has been agreed upon, the players must express that price with a list
of goods from the gear list or in units of Haul for a single good. Essentially,
this makes the payout of a Contract the physical take of a Score. Any goods
not used and incorporated into a character’s upkeep must be transported to
another enclave not operating under a barter economy and sold. Fencing a
large amount of gear requires Networking and other CHA checks. However,
a series of successful checks can provide more profit as the negotiator gets
the fence to accept a higher mark-up.
Enclaves without strong executive leadership descend into tribal economies.
Family usually delineates between tribes, but groups with strongly held
religious or political beliefs can fracture just as easily. The demands of
the Loss and limited geography of most enclaves force the factions to
interact, but trade is scarce and plagued by intense skepticism. The political
landscape demands each group seek wealth as much as they sabotage
the advancement of their rivals. Tribal economies are zero sum gains,
tending towards agrarian systems with roughly equal land shares or a
6 series of interconnected monopolies. If one group does manage to gain
enough power, their reforms adopt a more efficient model by dissolving the
TRIBAL opposing groups through economic incentive, coercive violence, or cultural
assimilation.
Working inside a tribal economy is like navigating a minefield. Any
Takers hired from without instantly become targets for every other tribe in
the enclave. If the Takers are part of a tribe, they can expect “loyalty to the
family” as a constant excuse for inadequate pay. Working for a second tribe
will be viewed as betrayal, even for outsiders.
What led to this primitive tribal economy? How are the lines drawn?
Are relationships between factions confined to quiet resentment, or do the
Takers need to view other possible clients as potentially deadly competitors?

Every economic system, whether Capitalist or Socialist, degenerates into a system of privilege and
exploitation unless it is policed by a social morality, which can only reside in a minority of citizens.
Every church becomes a vested interest without its heretics. Freedom is always in danger, and the
majority of mankind will always acquiesce in its loss, unless a minority is willing to challenge the
privileges of its few and the apathy of the masses.
-R.H.S. Crossman
384
 Humans naturally tend towards structure and order, so the design of
bureaucratic systems is often an enclave’s first priority after they’ve assured
the means for survival. To exist at all, the majority of residents inside truly
anarchocapitalist enclaves share an ideological resistance to any and all
control structures, no matter how seemingly well-intentioned they may be.
Considering the deadly betrayals perpetrated by most governments during
the Crash, there is no shortage of these survivors.
Takers working for anarchocapitalists must learn to navigate the
“spontaneous order” of their systems. A truly laissez-faire enclave might
risk starvation, invasion, and death without developing any cooperative
plans to address the issues, trusting instead in the rational self-interest of
their neighbors and the guiding hand of the market. Security and police
7 organizations, if they exist at all, are privatized, just like every other facet
aNARCHO- of vital infrastructure. But despite all this uncertainty (or perhaps because
CAPITALIST of it), anarchocapitalists have some of the healthiest economies in the
Loss. Takers can expect no end of opportunities, but only if they can bypass
the bevy of cultural problems attached to such wealth. The distrust of
government, though sometimes an unspoken assumption amongst the
populace, often solidifies into an oppressive ideological structure akin to
a theocracy. The lack of social safety net means death from disease and
deportation are much more common; fear of the same causes increased
stress in the lower classes, leading to outbursts of violence or outright
revolution. Most importantly, the privatization of every vital service makes
the enclave’s survival fragile.
When developing an anarchocapitalist enclave, the Market must ask
what aspects of the society are stronger for competition and freedom from
regulation, and what aspects are neglected or unstable as a result.
Pirate economies either have no means of production or lack the skill to
operate them. Nothing is produced in a pirate economy. Every good required
to sustain life, along with all comforts and amenities, must be stolen or
salvaged from other communities. This leads to drastic and deadly boom/
bust cycles dependent upon the availability of “prey.” Pirate economies
differ from anarchocapitalism in that, if someone were to utilize the lack
of regulation to develop a successful business, that person would then
either be robbed, killed, or regularly extorted by their neighbors. The lack
of governmental structure is replaced by a totalitarian government elected
solely by might-makes-right. As such, one of the risks anarchocapitalist
8 economies face is descending into a pirate system, which is the failure state
PIRATE of laissez-faire.
Takers need a very good reason to work with pirate economies. In
addition to the problematic morality, pirates are as keen to steal the labor
of others, as they are their goods. Hiring Takers means that the pirates
can’t coerce cooperation through the threat of violence. It does not,
however, mean they will actually pay when the job is done, and violence
is the culturally engrained method of dispute resolution. These groups
depend entirely on the wealth of salvage left over from the Crash; they are
essentially giant Taker crews in and of themselves. Why do they need the
help of another group? And if salvage in the area dries up, will the enclave
disband and immigrate to more stable economies, or will they resort to
violence and theft like other groups before them?
385
 The stability of exploitative economies relies on the labor of an enforced
underclass. In short, exploitative economies need slaves. Due to social
progress before the Crash, slave-based economies remain rare, but a few
have succeeded in the Loss. Exploitative systems resemble feudalism,
but rather than chaining the oppressed labor pool with pure ideology, the
ruling class utilizes violence and bondage, Rather than pilfer goods from
external sources, exploitative economies steal labor through force in order
to stimulate production. The exploitative economy builds an entire hierarchy
9 atop an enslaved base. A small middle class develops that the masters hire
EXPLOITATIVE to perform the day-to-day brutality that sustains them.
Though it greatly reduces overhead, slave economies are extremely
inefficient. The labor pool has little incentive to maintain quality or speed,
requiring many more people than it would take to perform the same job in
a decent enclave. As such, slaves outnumber their masters by large margin,
thus requiring increasingly monstrous tactics to keep the masses under
control. The rationalizations slavers use to justify their loathsome practices
are sickening and can cause moral injury to Takers by mere proximity. The
stigma of working with slavers far outweighs the short-term profit. In fact,
the only way to profit long-term from work in exploitative economies is to
destroy them. If Takers can’t undermine such regimes through their work,
being complicit to their existence is sin enough.
A few groups trapped in the Loss experimented with a radical redefinition of
social and economic models. Deriving their name from Ursula K. LeGuin’s
The Dispossessed, Odoists take collectivism to the extreme by denying
all personal property rights. Odoists share everything, eschewing every
traditions that might imply ownership. Though no state structure exists to
enforce law, marriage and monogamy remain taboo in Odoism. Children
are raised in communal homes by volunteers from the entire community,
never knowing their birth parents. Personal pronouns are stricken from the
language: “my hand” becomes “the hand.” The psychological dismantling
of every existing human social norm wouldn’t have been possible without
10 the nightmarish tragedy and forced cooperation of the Crash. Many Odoists
oDOISM have suffered in ways most people can’t even imagine, and this makes their
demeanor disconcerting to outsiders.
Dealing with Odoists is challenging. Their unwavering anarcho-
collectivism runs counter to the entire Carrion Economy. If Odoists request
Takers, something has gone wrong. Yet, regardless of the severity of the
situation, Odoists won’t “hire” a crew to do anything, meaning Takers have
limited options for getting paid. They can claim goods as necessary for
the Contract, then abscond with the assets to sell elsewhere. Alternately,
Odoists can pay in the form of +Rep spots to be used elsewhere in the Loss.
Finally, most Odoists recall capitalism before the Crash. These clients might
risk censure and banishment by their peers and pay Bounty, if Takers can
keep the transaction hidden.

386
 ClIent Table
The backstory of clients should fit the goods/
services they need and the economy they
function within. Markets are encouraged to
make up spots in tune with that description,
but it can sometimes be interesting to roll
The client is sensitive to the fact
that, merely by having enough
income to hire labor, she exists
1 in a higher class. The client
DIDN'T ASK recognizes that a lot of luck went AUTHENTICITY entails reveals a whole list of
into ascending the economic
FOR
ladder and remains concerned
PRIVILEGE about being mistaken for a
greedy oligarch. Pointing out the
privileged position can shame the
client into concessions.
This client goes goofy at mere
mention of puppies, kittens, and
other adorable creatures. To this
person, the death of all those
household pets is the saddest
2 thing about the Crash. Ironically,
ANIMAL elevating the humane treatment
of animals despite the enormous
LOVER pressures of the Loss is one of
the only ways the client maintains
a connection to humanity. Show
this client the negotiator is a
fellow animal lover to build
instant rapport.
The client practices some faith,
either one of the new believer
movements or an established
3 3
religion. As a result, this person
THE
innately trusts fellow members
FAITHFUL more than the average person. If
the negotiator happens to be one
MUST STICK
of the faithful, all the better, but
TOGETHER
the price tag bumps up all the
same for those that can passably
impersonate one or shame the
client’s subtle prejudice.
randomly for spots and write a personality to
fit the traits.
Remember, the specific demands of the
job make up a client’s tough spot. Write one
implied by the goods/services and how they fit
into the economy.
The client is very concerned
about working with “real” Takers.
1 The exact definition of what real
IS personal prejudices and privilege.
EVERYTHING Painting one’s outfit as authentic
or others as posers is a good way
to manipulate this client.
Sometimes a bad boss makes
employees suffer because an even
worse boss sends shit rolling
downhill. In these instances,
2 satisfying the middle manager’s
AMBITIOUS desire to crawl from under
the boot is the only way to get
concessions. This client has to
take orders from someone higher
up in the enclave or business.
Convince them hiring the crew
advances their personal position
to earn Sway.
The sensation of being outwitted
and underprepared seems
totally alien to this client. The
SMARTEST meritocracy of survival has
deprived them of social graces
PERSON normally used to compensate in
IN THE such instances, and the client has
ROOM grown unaccustomed to humility.
Crews should try show off their
own intelligence or, better yet, get
the client thinking more favorable
terms are actually his idea.
387
 No one suffered more in the
Crash and resulting madness than
children. While the necessities
of physical and financial survival
4 have hardened the client to the
ThINK OF suffering of fellow adults, the
melancholy pull of innocence
THE lost never ceases. This client is
CHILDREN hardwired to put the needs of
the young first. Takers that show
pictures of their own children or
can somehow promise increased
child welfare if they are hired get
a boost in Sway.
Fears of conformity are typically
healthy, but some conflate a
healthy sense of self-reliance
until they worship the new for
its own sake. This client has
5 been rewarded so many times
STRONGER for leaving the beaten path
SWIMMERS that she no longer considers
OUTSIDE any procedure or prescription
trustworthy. The client would
THE
MAINSTREAM much rather take a chance on the
weirdest, most iconoclastic group
of Takers in the Loss than an
“average” crew with impeccable
reputation. Highlight a crew’s
weirdness — or just flat-out lie —
to utilize this social blind spot.
Though keen to point out the horror
of the Crash in mixed company, some
people secretly regard the Blight as
the best thing that ever happened
to them. Perhaps a life sentence to
inconsequence and predictability was
6 lifted by the zombie terror. Maybe
they found reserves they didn’t know
LOVES A they had, virtues that now serve as
GOOD WAR the foundation of a new personality.
The client could be one of the few
STORY whose life was actually worse before
the Crash. Regardless, this client’s
favorite topic of conversation is
the horror that led to the carrion
economy. Hook the boss with a
daring tale of survival, and then make
her pay more to hear the end.
388
“It’s just business” doesn’t mean
much to this client. Personal
slights, both real and imagined,
strongly motivate financial
decisions. Find someone that
4 offended this person, paint hiring
the Takers as a blow against
VINDICTIVE
the rival, and reap the profits.
Or, offend the touchy bastard,
and then feign disinterest in a
dangerous job. He’ll irrationally
pay more to get you over the fence
just so he can pray you get bit.
FOMO manifests in lots of ways.
Sometimes it’s being overly
concerned about the latest
cultural trends. It can also show
5 up as the old “keeping up with the
fEAR OF Jones’s” fallacy, exacerbated by
the advent of social networking.
mISSING When staying in the black means
OUT staying alive, it can take the
form of bargain hunter’s disease,
(fOMO)
convincing people to buy things
they don’t need under the illusion
of a limited-time offer. This client
has a bad case of FOMO; exploit
it.
Due to indoctrination by a pundit,
childhood teachings, or a tendency
towards sophism, this client has
divided humanity into two camps,
“Those who X, and those who Y.”
6 Those with firm handshakes, and
those without them. Those that can
THERE ARE hold a gaze like a man, and those
TWO TYPES that can’t. Butchers and meat. Alphas
and betas. The aphorism has been
OF PEOPLE repeated so often that the person is
IN THIS blind to the inherent value statement
and doesn’t register identifying with
WORLD one side as prejudice. Of course,
such tidy little generalizations never
predict behavior, but they’re certainly
useful for separating fools from their
money.

Lying on job applications is as old
as jobs, and it’s not too hard to
find others to join in the fiction.
Still, employers exist that continue
to worship at the altar of a good
7 everyone else just doesn’t want to
reference, yet can’t be bothered to
SUCKER FOR do the extensive research required
to vet such unreliable sources. This
A GOOD
client has a reputation for going
REFERENCE with the crew with the most buzz.
Use a +Rep spot for three Sway
instead of two, or bribe a Reference
to snowball the rube into coughing
up a big payday.
The client does not like surprises.
At all. Survival for many came
in the form of memorized
procedures followed exactly, and
this client worships routine as
8 savior and provider. Crews that
THE RULES can project the most robotic
WILL SAVE response to the task get the job.
Overwhelm the client with tons
US of Taker rules, guidelines, and
contingency plans. Putting the
deadly and unpredictable into
tidy boxes comforts the client and
loosens the wallet.
Those with enough bounty to
outsource work can live an
9 isolated existence. Poverty and
need abound; everyone wants
Just
what they have and resents
wants to them for having it. Basic human
make kindness, if it can be passed off
as genuine affection and not
frIENDS
manipulation, lowers this client’s
defenses and opens up more
options.
Bootstraps! This person retreated
from class guilt into the comfortable
lie that everyone, everywhere,
deserves everything that happens
to them. The only person that can
7 suffer from bad luck is the client;
POOR IS work hard, or they don’t maintain
ANOTHER a positive attitude, or they want to
mooch off others, etc. Conversely,
WORD FOR everything good that happens to
UNMOTIVATED the client comes from their own
carefully planned actions. Narcissism
predicates this delusion. Smart
negotiators pretend to be a mirror
version of these clients and get paid
for letting the self-absorbed bastards
talk to themselves.
Whether they’ve been burned
in the past or merely fear it
happening in the future, this
client hates nothing more than
someone still learning a trade:
the living embodiment of the
8
Catch-22 “can’t get a job without
LOATHES experience; can’t get experience
AN without a job.” This person wishes
the Crash happened earlier so he
AMATEUR
could hire Takers with more than
five years in the field. Highlight
a crew’s longevity or paint the
competition as noobs to get this
client on your side.
Salesmen don’t speak to each
other in the same way as
customers. It’s foolish to bullshit
a bullshitter, and this client
9 considers himself a bullshitter.
The person offering the Contract
DON'T GET recognizes that all advertisement
HIGH ON is based in deception, but
YOUR OWN mistakes the value of a business
by its volume of deception. Show
SUPPLY the client that the entire Taker
persona is just an act, a show
for the punters, and they’ll be
convinced an obvious Scam is
actually a bargain.
389
 Everyone is lying to everyone else,
all the time. The truth is so rare
as to be nonexistent, and it’s hard
to fault anyone for abandoning
10 it. This cynical client would
much rather work with sneaky
PREFERS A bastards she can predict than a
SKEPTICAL
DEVIL SHE perfect angel. A few well-placed
KNOWS and poorly crafted lies make the
client feel like they’re too smart to
be fooled. By being caught once
trying to deceive, negotiators
paradoxically get away with
successive lies much more easily.
390
Nothing rewards paranoia like
the total breakdown of society.
This client has been rewarded
so many times for pessimism
10 and excessive planning that the
slightest kernel of doubt can grind
things to a halt. One way for crews
TO A to exploit this is to leave nothing
FAULT to chance, presenting themselves
as a sure thing. However, it’s far
easier to paint the competition
as untrustworthy and reap the
benefits of being the lesser of two
evils.
CompetItIon Table
Competition doesn’t want the Takers to get
the job done so they can steal the client, fulfill
a personal goal, or pursue a vendetta. This
faction tries to undercut negotiations. If they
succeed, the PCs have to drive their prices
down, intimidate the rivals into fleeing, or
eliminate them. Even if the Takers get the
job, the competition might arrange for an
“accident” out in the Loss.

Though rare, a few Takers operate solo out of concern for their profit margin
or an antisocial attitude. Those that survive long enough to make a name for
1 themselves are indisputably capable and more than likely a little unhinged.
LONER What has drawn this lone operator to this job? What reputation does this
person have? Will it help or hinder a bid? How can facing the Loss alone warp a
personality?
Starving enclavists and bored citizens sometimes enter the game late. The
competition for this job is a group of inexperienced Takers that have yet to
establish turf or reputation. Why risk this line of work? Are they well-equipped
2 adrenaline junkies with too much bounty and not enough brains? Exploited
nOOBS populations risking death for the chance at a better life? Desperate refugees
with nothing left to lose? Whatever the reason, Noobs always come to the table
with something to prove and undercut any price to get their foot in the door. Do
the Takers convince them to leave it to professionals or pick up the pieces after
the Loss punishes their hubris?
Besides Takers, Fencemen have more experience with casualties than
anyone else. The thankless task of killing and removing the dead from
the borders, not to mention the tendency to double as a group’s law
3 enforcement, puts them in the good graces of the community. Experience
FENCEMEN might be enough to get a Contract, but clearing the undead from
fortifications is quite different than wrestling with them on their own turf.
Furthermore, goodwill can be manufactured and exploited. Are these
Fencemen really up to the task or merely overconfident? What motivates
them to leave their post for speculation out in the Loss?
The heyday of post-apocalyptic piracy fades with every year post-Crash, but
a few tribal bands still “live Darwin” and subsist by consuming the spoils
of others’ labor. In their dotage, some of these groups have devolved into
4 little more than protection rackets, demanding no bid Contracts that they
RAIDERS can sloppily complete for pay. Raiders aren’t used to not getting their way.
If the Takers steal a Contract from them, will the raiders take violent action
against competitors or the client? If it’s the latter, does the crew even care so
long as they get paid?
The crime lords of the Free Parking ghettos often sponsor their own Taker
crews and send them over the Recession border, skimming profits and
making smuggling connections to feed their desperate customer base back
5 home. These groups are usually made of some combination of fanatically
VALETS loyal lieutenants and unfortunates trying to pay off debts for family members
coerced by the crime boss. What valet runs this crew? Will this person
be impressed or enraged when the PCs dare to steal a Contract? Can the
disparity in the crewmembers’ motivations be used against them?

391
 The monstrous brutality of narco-traffickers suited them particularly well
to life post-Crash, and demand for their product in the remaining states
has never been higher. Along their lengthy supply routes through the Loss,
6 cartel enforcers occasionally accept Taker work to boost their margins or
CARTELS fulfill their bloodlust. Cartels rarely need the work, but their obsession with
maintaining everyone’s respect and fear make them prone to extremes. How
does the cartel’s reputation affect negotiation with the client? How can the
Takers counteract their threats? Will the cartel laugh off losing a Contract or
take it as a personal insult?
Rival crews often look for work in the territory claimed by a local group.
Sometimes, they are nomads that only do business on the run, or crews
in need of supplemental Contracts en route to a distant job. Cases of
hostile takeover are more rare, but they do occur; nobody on LifeLines
7 gets a protected monopoly except the Moths. Competition among Takers
TAKERS is complicated by professional appreciation. What about this opposed
crew’s brand makes them seem right for the job? How does camaraderie
make fighting over the scraps that much worse? Resorting to violence or
dirty tricks to get a Contract likely incurs a -Rep spot, but is that worth it to
prevent the rival crew from escalating the situation first?
Fanatics still need to eat. Some do Taker work to fund their operations or
proselytize a certain method for living in the Loss. For example, Black Math
is going to handle an extermination job very differently than the Shepherds
8 or Archivists. What about this Contract attracted these people, or are
BELIEVERS they acting out of desperation? Faith often turns the professional into the
personal at unpredictable times; do the believers regard the PCs as friendly
rivals or view any competition as a blasphemous assault on the faith?
The betrayal of the Recession won’t be forgotten. The Crash drafted many
trained warriors into the desperate ranks of an army whose only mission
is revenge. Stranded foreign spies, stateless military diaspora, treasonous
units that refused to abandon their posts, and vindicated survivalist nut-
9 bags, among others, continue a war against the government pre-dating
the casualties — all these groups need to fund their continued political
REBELS operations somehow. The extremism of most rebel groups is deemed
acceptable considering their training and equipment. How can the Takers
make themselves appear more professional than the professionals, or do
they merely undercut them? Will the rebels understand the necessities of
the market, or do they view competition as counter-revolutionaries in need
of elimination?
The absolute worst thing a Taker can hear is that the Feds have an interest in
their business. DHQS maintains numerous intel assets in the Loss, and they
occasionally find it cheaper to bid for Contracts that might infringe on their
interests than to exterminate everyone that stumbles onto a black site. But as
10 a method of counterintelligence, they’ll often hire out their death squads for
meaningless tasks to keep the Loss guessing about the agency’s real priorities.
DHQS The government mercs are infinitely more qualified and willing to work for almost
nothing; Takers competing with a DHQS black squad have to rely entirely on a
shared hatred of the Feds to get a job. Even if they succeed, is the bid a DHQS
bluff or an actual attempt to discourage interference in their affairs? If it’s the latter,
Stewards have no qualms about ordering an entire crew murdered. As far as the
government is concerned, they’re dead already.
392
ComplIcatIon Table
Complications define themselves from the
job’s other elements. The Market’s creativity
is required here more than anywhere
else to develop a twist fitting the job’s
other circumstances. These generalized
complication “families” suggest a variety of
disasters to keep the Market from falling into
a rut.

Some unforeseen obstacle blocks entrance to the job site. The crew must
1 add Legs to the journey to bypass the obstacle, find a different job site,
detour expend resources to eliminate the obstruction, or risk serious danger to gain
entry.
Climate change causes an anomalous and extreme weather event at the
site. Flooding, tornados, extreme heat, gigantic hail, locusts — the natural
2 disaster complicates everything about the job. Planning becomes more
weather difficult, execution more dangerous, and extraction more uncertain. If goods
are involved, the event negatively affects them, and the Takers must take
even more risk to secure their payday.
In order to protect their pride, reputation, or safety, the client has
intentionally left out some vital information about the job. An especially
3 dangerous task could have been made to sound routine. Morally disgusting
INCOMPLETE motivations could be obscured in hopes that once the PCs learn the truth,
BRIEF they’ll be too invested to turn back. The client has manipulated the crew in
such a way that more danger, resources, or Humanity must be expended to
get the job done than was promised.
This is similar to an incomplete brief, but even the client doesn’t know the
true nature of the job. Some jobs are lures to bring unwary crews into an
ambush. Contracts are really performed at the behest of third parties that
don’t make their true intention known until the crew is out in the Loss and
4 away from witnesses. Anything requiring such complex machinations is,
at best, extremely distasteful and, at worst, an out-and-out betrayal. Takers
CAT'S PAW must not only figure out how to survive; they have to figure out a way to turn
their misfortune into profit. (Note: as is always the case, Markets should
allow the Takers an opportunity to meet their agreed upon price or greater.
The group might not be able to capitalize on the opportunity, but the chance
for a successful job should always be available.)

Some aspect of the job meant to reduce risk and entice providers into
5 accepting the Contract achieves the complete opposite effect. The “near-
empty” mall is crawling with casualties. The fleet of trucks has no tires. The
Bad Intel safe is locked after all. Whatever the case, the Takers have to adapt to the
new logistical demands if they want to get paid.
A migrating stampede of casualties moves through the area. Whatever
prey brought them here has long since died or escaped, leaving the site
6 absolutely infested with undead. The primary challenge is chumming and
HOT ZONE luring the horde to strategic locations so others can traverse the crowd
without getting eaten. But once those with the short straw have drawn the
attention of the hungry mobs, how will they escape?

393
 The site is occupied by some human presence. It could be an undiscovered
7 enclave, a believer stronghold, a faction taking temporary shelter, or some
group trying to steal the job. Regardless, the presence of others complicates
SQUATTERS the job, requiring Takers to negotiate compromise, sneak into the site
unnoticed, or eliminate the interlopers.
A nearby community, crew, faction, or other group has succumbed to a fresh
infection. Vectors haunt the area, screaming apologies and puking blood.
8 The job site holds clues as to what happened to these poor souls. Can the
OUTBREAK Takers find out what went wrong and complete the job without succumbing
to the sprinting cannibals? What else is located around the site? Do the
Takers shoulder the responsibility of clearing out these dangerous monsters
before they climb the walls of the nearest enclave?
StopLoss, DHQS, or one of the many other corporate/governmental
interests setting up illegal operations in the Loss has invested in the job
9 site. They may have laid claim to the Takers’ interest or have other goals,
but the access to the site is somehow restricted. Well-funded groups might
EMINENT have installed surveillance equipment or automated defenses to keep the
DOMAIN site safe. Mercenaries could be garrisoned to guard the perimeter. Perhaps
the site is scheduled for a bombing run to make room for incoming human
resources, or maybe the cleanse has already occurred, leaving the remains
on fire or poisoned by chemical weapons.
The worst-case scenario is the one you can’t prepare for. Aberrants violate
the already shaky physical laws governing the Blight’s epidemiology,
creating singular nightmares that threaten a Taker’s understanding of
10 reality and continued survival. The site is haunted by one or more of these
ABERRANT abominations. Does LifeLines have any information on how to escape these
monsters? If they do, how does the group separate fact and fiction, truth
from trolls, while fighting for their lives? If it’s never been seen before, do
they risk life and limb documenting and learning about the anomaly or call
the job off altogether?

Scores What Is a Score?

What’s the point of self-employment if you
can’t be your own boss? Part of Red Markets’
plan for breaking the GM monopsony is a
system that allows players to write their own
games. The Market still plays a vital part, but
players take the active role in the scenario’s
design. Alternately, characters can contribute
to the process, forcing their players to engage
with the setting through the hungry eyes of
entrepreneurs. In addition to defining exactly
what a Score entails, this section provides
procedures for developing Scores both in and
out of character.
A Score is an opportunity Takers make when
they get tired of waiting around for the knock.
As is the case with most DIY businesses, the
only way to scratch a profit out of nothing is to
skimp on labor: namely, your own.
That’s what Takers do when they chase
a Score; Scores don’t account for services
rendered. Takers waive compensation for
the danger they face in exchange for full
ownership of the goods they salvage. Scores
are based solely on goods. The more valuable
goods the Takers secure, the more profit they
stand to make. Since it’s all about what the
group can Haul out of the Loss, Scores are

394

potentially the most profitable jobs in the
game, but the requirement of distribution (i.e.
carrying all the shit back) means that reward
stacks more heavily with risk than ever
before.
Most importantly, Scores say something
about the characters and the world they
live in. Value correlates with need, and the
biggest paydays are going to sustain and alter
the enclave Takers work in. Furthermore,
when Scores are written by PCs, they say
something about the characters’ personalities.
After all, if somebody else knew about
unclaimed treasure hiding out in the Loss,
why wouldn’t they hire a crew to go get it
for them? The subject of Scores relates
inherently to something unique about a
character’s skill set or backstory; it’s a job only
they can do.
Scores At-a-Glance
Scores share many similarities with
Contracts. The primary difference is the way
creative responsibility is divided amongst
everyone at the table. Here’s everything
required for a Score at a glance.
1. Goods and Equilibrium
What are the Takers going to sell? How
much is each unit worth? While the “service”
part of the job still makes up the bulk of the
adventure, Takers have no responsibility to
please a client or work a certain way. They are
gambling their lives and labor on securing the
goods. No goods; no profit.
2. Economy
If the Takers aren’t running out of their own
campaign’s enclave, which type of economy
serves as a market for the good, what
characterizes the community, and how might
the Takers manipulate the price of their goods
inside this system?
3. Wholesaler
Wholesalers replace clients in Scores. Who
is going to buy the goods off the Takers for
use in their own business? What kind of
personality enables someone to run such a
successful enterprise in the Loss?
4. The Site
Why hasn’t someone gone after this Score
before? Is it secret? Already claimed?
Protected? Inaccessible? What is going to
make the Takers earn their money?
5. Market Responsibilities
Experienced Takers know something is
always going to go wrong, but nobody knows
what. The Market still decides elements like
travel time and complications, surprising the
players with them once the game starts. This
is why Scores are most often devised at the
end of game session, to give the Market more
time to prepare.
Goods and EquIlIbrIum
The definition of services stays fluid in a
Score. Whatever needs to be done to wrest
the goods from the chaos of the Loss, that’s
what the Takers have to do. For free.
395
 The goods in question are to be determined
by the players as they design the Score. If the
group is struggling to come up with ideas,
the Market should prompt them with the
following questions:
• What is something of unique value only
someone like your character would
recognize and know how to find?
• What does this specific enclave need on a
regular basis?
• For the people of this enclave, what desire
has gone unfulfilled for too long?
• What does the geography in this area
necessitate to survive?
• What are the most successful business
ventures around here, and what supply do
they need to keep doing business?
Once goods are decided upon, the Market
rolls 2d10 and adds the results together. The
sum is the equilibrium price of the good, and
the interaction of the two numbers describes
the economic situation on the Supply/
Demand Chart (see p. 363). The major
difference is that while Contract equilibrium
describes a single service, Score equilibrium
is price per unit.
How much constitutes a unit? That’s up to
the Market. If the Score calls for salvaging
vehicles, the unit should obviously be one
vehicle. If the Score is parts for the vehicles, it
would be best expressed in terms of Haul.
Nothing should be expressed in units
smaller than a Haul for a few reasons. Firstly,
Markets that say every diamond is worth 18
bounty just ended their own campaign. A
pocket full of loot lets a character instantly
retire. Secondly, the game needs the Golden
Rule (Risk = Reward) in order to tell a
compelling story. Thus, goods should be
expressed in terms no smaller than Haul
because that abstract unit of measure is
limited on the character sheet.
This is not to say that characters shouldn’t
be rewarded for cleverness. Smart planning
and good rolls still mean huge paydays, but
the fact remains that Haul is a finite resource
396
eaten up by the loot. Loading down with
goods greatly increases risk, so the rewards
enjoyed by those that survive is justified.
Economy
In truth, it’s unlikely groups are going to
have to characterize the economy at all when
devising a Score. Red Markets groups typically
don’t start planning Scores until playing in
a campaign, at which point they’ve already
exhaustively detailed the economy during
Enclave Generation (see p. 406).
But if the group has travelled or wants to
plan their Score as a one-shot, they need to
establish a basic description for the economy
the goods will be sold in. The description need
be no longer than those found in a Contract,
but information about the economy can’t be
left blank — while there is no negotiation in
Scores, characters can still conduct Scams to
manipulate prices. Having some information
about the enclave’s economy can help when it
comes time for players to drive the price per
unit up.
Wholesaler
To escape the complications of supply/
demand represented in the Small Business
rules (see p. 425), Takers need to foist that
responsibility off onto someone that runs a
full-time retail business. This means selling
to a wholesaler. Wholesalers exist within
economies of scale. They can move product
fast enough to make narrow profit margins
add up quickly. But since margins are so
narrow and they control so much market
share, wholesalers remain notoriously
inflexible about price. They will buy goods at
the equilibrium price. Haggling messes with
their mark-up and they won’t put up with it.
Mechanically, wholesalers prevent
players from developing NPCs they can
push around. The wholesaler’s personality
can’t be exploited to screw with the price in
negotiation because there is no negotiation.
But this isn’t to say that groups can’t
have fun writing their own colorful NPCs.
Someone bold and capable enough to grow
a retail business in the Loss is bound to be
an interesting character. How did they get
started? What’s the business called? How do
they advertise their brand to enclavists and
settlers? What’s distribution look like? What’s
their personality like?
The SIte
Before players start developing a job site,
it’s important everyone understand one hard
and fast rule: nothing about the site can be
pleasant. Whatever the good and wherever it
may be found, one immutable fact remains: if
it were easy to get, someone would have done
the Score already.
Beyond that, there are no requirements.
Some Markets research a real-world location
and pull floor plans before the game starts;
some just wing it. Either is okay. If the group
is stumped for ideas, the Market should ask
the following:
• What kind of place would have the good
you are looking for?
• Why, besides ignorance, hasn’t anyone
found this stash before? What has
prevented people from stumbling onto the
treasure trove?
• What complicates removing the goods
from the site?
• What other enclaves, factions, and threats
are known to be in the area?
• Who else might be considering this Score?
What, if anything, is stopping them from
going after it?
Market ResponsIbIlItIes
Complications are the primary responsibility
of a Market when designing a Score. The
Loss just sucks: always and forever. No
matter how favorable the conditions may
look, something is going to go wrong. Every.
Fucking. Time. Just like Contracts, Markets
need to surprise their Takers with a reliable
disaster, preferably as soon as it seems like
they might get away with it.
Markets need not concern themselves
with competition. Unlike Contracts, Scores
are closely held trade secrets. Takers with
a lead on some hot salvage won’t share
the information with anyone except their
wholesaler. This saves the Market some work,
but competition would make for an excellent
complication. It’s pretty common for shady
crews to trail their rivals, lay an ambush, and
rob them of whatever they have....
Another Market responsibility is travel
time. If the Takers lived on top of the Score,
somebody would have claimed it already.
It’s going to take some walking to get to the
site, and the nightmare waiting over the
fence is the Market’s job. Market Fiat can be
used to create each Leg’s encounter from
scratch, or the GM can consult the d100
Loss Encounters Table (see p. 457). All that
matters is that the PCs don’t know what’s
coming.
Besides the complication and travel time,
all that’s left is taking notes and elaborating
on the players’ suggestions. Draw or research
floor plans for the site they described. Write
a backstory for the wholesaler implied by his
personality. Or just wing it. Players tend to be
heavily invested in any scenario they designed
themselves.
Markets that want to do a lot of preparation
should design Scores at the end of a
session, giving themselves the time between
games to work. But those comfortable with
improvisation can launch straight into playing
the Score once players finish writing it.
DesIgnIng Scores
So how does the group cooperate to design a
Score? There are a lot of possible methods.
Which one is right for your group depends
on your preference for role-playing and group
dynamic. What follows is a description of each
method, a prescription for the type of game
it best fits, and an example of the method in
action.
In-Character Opposed (StrategIc ThInkIng)
Strategic Thinking is best for groups with a
narrative focus. If you want the Score to be a
role-playing challenge, but still want to ensure
the elements remain grounded and realistic
397
 for the setting, this is the method for you. No
one aspect of the job gets overloaded with
content, and there is plenty of room for the
Market to engineer surprises for the group.
Basic Setup: Takers are always looking to
get ahead. Every moment not spent trying to
stay alive gets devoted to figuring out the next
big Score. These people want escape, and
everything they have goes towards figuring
out how. When clients become scarce, there’s
no shortage of suggestions about where the
crew should start hustling.
Step 1: Everyone rolls Black + Research.
Reroll ties until a winner emerges.
Step 2: Speaking in character, the Taker
with the highest roll proposes some rumored
stash of goods ripe for a Score.
Step 3: Going around the table clockwise,
every other Taker proposes a different stash
of goods they think would make for a better
payday. After all, everyone in the crew is
398
constantly thinking of ways to get ahead.
Players may choose to pass if their Taker
would share another person’s plan. Anyone
passing their turn abstains from Step 4.
Step 4: Once everyone has proposed for
that element, all the players roll Black +
Foresight. Reroll ties until a winner emerges.
Step 5: The Taker with the highest roll has
the best sounding plan. That’s what will be
there, unless...
Step 6: The Market rolls a Red and hides
the result. If the Red is higher than the
player’s modified Black, then something about
the prediction is off. Exactly what is up to the
Market. For example, if the Taker thought they
were going to steal a pallet of baby formula,
they’ll be disappointed to learn the powder is
contained in a giant vat and hasn’t yet been
packaged. Are they going to stick the stuff in
their pockets?
Step 7: Repeat the previous steps until
every element is decided, but acknowledge
 that all previous elements are now fixed.
For instance, if the group established it
was looting baby formula, no one would
be suggesting a wholesaler for car parts.
However, every Taker in the crew would
“know a guy” that could fence baby formula.
The winner of the Foresight roll wins.
Perk to the Market: In making sure
the predictions for failed Foresight checks
are slightly off, you probably already
developed a good complication for the job.
Congratulations! You’re halfway done!
Default Rolls and Scores
There is no defaulting in Red Market according to the
“Plus One or it can’t be done” rule (see p. 176). However,
designing Scores in-character only utilizes a few skills. If
a character wasn’t trained in those few skills, the player
couldn’t participate in the process. As such, designing
Scores is one of the few times a +0 roll is allowed. The
character still only has a 45% chance of success, but
they aren’t cut off from participating.
Example In-Character Opposed
It’s a two-player game. The characters roll
Research checks. Philly is up first.
Philly: “My contact in the Detoxins tipped
me off to a bunch of GMO crops being
developed at this Alosine research lab.
Apparently, they’re operating out of the Loss
to protect their genetic patents. Those crazy
hippie cultists want to burn the place to the
ground, but I figure those super seeds would
fetch a great price.”
The other player has a different idea, and
he says as much in the voice of his character.
8ch: “Plants? Look man, if you ain’t got your
plants this late in the game, you already dead.
Nothing more scarce out here than ammo. I
got a line on this factory, see? Place probably
has pallets of the stuff.”
With the propositions made, both players
roll Black d10s and add their Foresight skill.
Philly has the better plan, so GMO seeds are
established as the Goods for the Score. Now
the Market rolls a Red d10 in secret and ends
up beating Philly’s roll. After some thinking,
she figures that GMO crops are there, but
they’re only designed to produce seeds when a
proprietary fertilizer is used. The Takers have
to get both the seeds and the fertilizer in order
to get paid.
In-Character CollaboratIve (Rumor MIll)
Rumor Mill is best for groups that want
to make sure everyone has a chance to
contribute. This method produces varied
elements with a lot of content. There isn’t
as much surprise built into the elements
as Strategic Thinking, but the combination
of differing suggestions still makes for
unpredictable moments.
Basic Setup: A lot of conjecture makes its
way onto the LifeLines. For every hot lead,
there are a dozen commenters piling on the
bandwagon carrying nothing but bullshit.
Separating the fact from fiction can mean life
or death.
Step 1: Everyone rolls Black + Foresight.
Reroll ties until a winner emerges.
Step 2: Speaking in character, the Taker
with the highest roll proposes some stash of
goods they think would be ripe for a Score.
Step 3: Whatever the first Taker proposed
is now fixed: the Score is definitely about
going to get that specific good. Now, going
around the table clockwise, the next Taker
proposes something else they heard about the
goods. In improv terms, this is called “Yes,
and....” Players aren’t trying to contradict each
other so much as add wrinkles to the existing
plot. For instance, if the first Taker proposed
stealing crude oil, the next Taker may have
heard it’s more than crude oil; an on-site
refinery is producing gasoline.
Step 4: When every Taker has shared a
rumor overheard about the job element in
question, every player except the one who
went first (that element of the job is now
399
 immutable) rolls a normal Sensitivity check. If
the roll is a success, there’s some truth to the
rumor. On a failure, the Taker has been duped
by one of the many hoaxes plaguing Ubiq.
Secret Sensitivity Option: Instead of
rolling out in the open, the Market makes
the Sensitivity checks for the players in
secret. The players won’t know the difference
between truth and conjecture until they
complete the job.
Step 5: Go clockwise around the table,
starting from the person that won the original
Foresight check. The person to their right gets
to propose the next element of the job. That
person’s contribution is immutable.
Step 6: Everyone else now gets to add a
rumor on top of the proposed element, rolling
Sensitivity to check its veracity. Repeat steps
5 and 6 until the Score is finished.
Perk to the Market: Nobody gets left out.
The stacking rumors also provide a ton of
material to work with for each element of the
job.
Example In-Character CollaboratIve
Grizz, Hellion, and Sherlock are trying to
figure out the best person to fence a large
number of survival manuals. Sherlock’s player
started the last round’s Rumor Mill (he won
the Foresight check), and Grizz’s player sits
on his right. It’s his turn now.
Grizz: “No question. We take the books to
Worm. He’s the only bastard crazy enough to
start a bookstore in the middle of the zombie
apocalypse. I hear he taught half the nearby
enclaves how to set up their irrigation. He’s
got the customer base and reach we need to
get a good price.”
Since it’s Grizz’s turn, the group is definitely
using Worm as a wholesaler. Anything the
other Takers say just goes to further define
the NPCs personality and business practice.
Hellion: “Ugh. I know you’re right, but
that guy is such a dweeb! I hear his voice is
so nasal you can hear him breathing from a
block away. That commercial of his sounded
like he’d just sucked down a balloon full of
helium!”
400
Sherlock: “I, too, find the man rather
loathsome. You all know I always keep an
eye out for literary diversions at a good price,
but I’m told by many trusted associates that
Worm’s establishment is only to be contacted
if I want to be harangued into buying a
Japanese comic book full of robots fighting
scandalously dressed school girls. But alas,
even the socially tone deaf are sometimes
unavoidable in the world of business.”
Sherlock and Hellion’s players make
Sensitivity checks. Both end up making it.
The Market sighs; it looks like he’ll have to
brush up on his funny voices and manga. The
Market glares hatefully at the players, waiting
for revenge until they get to the Site.
Out-of-Character Consensus (Oh! That's Cool!)
This method isn’t so much a method as an
unspoken agreement. You’re all adults here.
Everyone realizes it’s just a game. Nobody is
going to get their feelings hurt, so you don’t
need some elaborate procedure to police
interactions while you design a Score. Let’s
get it over with.
The “Oh! That’s Cool!” method is only listed
in case your group needs permission to throw
out the rules when something universally
interesting is proposed. This is that “throw
out the rules” rule.
Basic Premise: Out of character, everyone
talks about what kind of Score they want to
play. They decide on elements one-by-one until
the Score is done.
Step 1: The first person with an idea says it.
Step 2: Other people in the group propose
contrary ideas (à la Strategic Thinking), add
something to a previous proposal (à la Rumor
Mill), or abstain.
Step 3: The Market counts to three. On
three, everyone points to the person with
the idea they like best. Players can’t vote for
themselves, and the Market breaks any ties.
The person with the most votes decides the
element, along with any additions made by
players that didn’t want to compete because
they liked the idea.
Perk for the Market: Keeping it casual.
Example Consensus
Lindsey, Melissa, and Clementine have
decided they want their characters to steal
educational curriculum packets and sell them
to a homeschool guru operating out of their
enclave. But they’re currently stumped as to
what interesting and challenging site would
contain their loot.
After some thinking, Clementine asks,
“Maybe the curriculums could be located at
a big convention center? And nobody looted
them because there was this, like, huge
education conference going on when the
Crash happened, so the place is crawling with
casualties and in the middle of the city, which
is also crawling with casualties. So there’s like
double zombies and a big search area.”
Lindsey perks up, “Could we model
the convention center after the one in
Indianapolis?”
“I don’t see why not...” the Market replies.
“Oh my god!” Melissa jumps up from
her chair: “We could use the map from last
year’s Gen Con! That would be so cool!” She
sprints into her bedroom, looking for her old
convention catalogue.
The Market asks if that’s okay with everyone
else, but they’ve already joined Melissa in
frantically searching the house. Don’t fix it if it
ain’t broke.
RandomIze and Extrapolate
Finally, groups stumped for ideas can always
consult the Contract Generator for prompts.
The elements are equally useful for Scores
and might spark creativity regardless of the
method being used.
Mr. JOLS: A SpecIal Case
The concept of “Chasing Mr. JOLS” and its
mythic stature amongst Takers has been
401
 discussed earlier in the book (see p. 217). In
general, Mr. JOLS is a Score like any other;
the only difference is that the Market makes
things harder to represent the struggle
of rising from rags to riches. This section
specifically gives the Market advice on how
to build meaningful (and/or bloody) exits for
retiring characters.
Plot Pay
There is no equilibrium price for a Mr. JOLS.
It pays enough... however much enough is.
For the one player retiring, Mr. JOLS pays
enough to launch them into a life a luxury.
The retiree doesn’t just escape the Loss; they
become rich is such a way that would only
be possible in a partial apocalypse. Since
retiring players come up with the plan — likely
plotting it over the course of years — they get
the bulk of the pay, but no one can catch Mr.
JOLS alone. Any player that helps gets their
costs paid, plus 10 bounty. It doesn’t matter
how much health, Humanity, or ammo the
non-retiring players expend helping their
friend get rich; that cost is reimbursed, plus
a 10 bounty profit. This, in addition to the
free reference provided by a retired PC,
encourages Takers to help out, even though
they aren’t the ones about to get rich.
If the group is utilizing the tontine rules,
Mr. JOLS is enough to make everyone rich.
Just remember that everyone has to reach
their final retirement milestones before the
final Score can be planned. It’s one thing to
get yourself killed in a fit of ambition, quite
another to watch a friend get eaten alive for it.
IC Mandatory
Chasing Mr. JOLS is all about character. Even
the choice to go after it signifies a major story
moment. Remember, Takers can retire the
instant they hit their final milestone, but they
only have enough to go back to their regular
lives. Escape is possible, but only back into
the lower middle-class drudgery that probably
defined their existence before the Crash. After
all that blood and terror, a life of swing shifts
and 40-hour weeks may definitely be better,
but it won’t ever feel fair.
402
Choosing to risk it all chasing Mr. JOLS
means succumbing to years of temptation. It
simultaneously speaks of greed, recklessness,
naivety, idealism, entitlement, and grim
determination. It’s a selfish move that sets up
loved ones for life. It’s alternately foolish and
heroic, and where it lands depends on the
same thing everything depends on: the bottom
line.
Since it’s such a defining moment in a
character’s life, Mr. JOLS needs to be planned
in-character. The in-character collaborative
(Rumor Mill) or in-character opposed
(Strategic Thinking) methods need to be used.
Which one? Let the Market decide. It’s also
possible to do both, switching back and forth
between methods for different elements. For
instance, it makes for good heist narrative
when a crew goes after a single good
(Strategic Thinking) at a site that is varied and
unpredictable (Rumor Mill).
RetIrement Party
But why does everything have to be done
in-character? Because there shouldn’t be any
competition for deciding the elements of a
retirement Score. After all, it’s a secret hope
the character has been harboring for literally
the entire campaign; we shouldn’t trust it to
a dice roll. So the in-character methods of
designing Scores are used.
The only change is that, in the case of a
singular retirement plan, it’s always treated
as if the retiree won the skill check that
establishes initiative: Foresight for Rumor
Mill or Research for Strategic Thinking. First
proposal privilege doesn’t travel clockwise as
it does normally. The exiting character defines
the basics of every element, and the other
players contribute by augmenting the element
with rumors.
In the event of a tontine, use the procedures
as written. Since everyone is retiring off this
one job, everyone has an equal chance to
define it.
Secret SensItIvIty
The other modification of Rumor Mill for Mr.
JOLS is that the Secret Sensitivity Option (see
p. 400) is required. This job is supposed to be
tough. One of the ways to increase challenge
is to keep the players guessing about what
is actually going to happen up until the last
moment. Markets should take notes on each
rumor, check each character’s Sensitivity in
a roll behind the book, and develop the job
based on the results.
The SIte: It Goes Wrong, or I Make It Go Wrong
It’s suggested that even if every other aspect
of the site is decided upon by Strategic
Thinking, Market’s should use the Rumor Mill
method to decide the Site. The object of a Mr.
JOLS is a nexus of legend within the Loss.
There are many, many reasons people know
that the Site is a no-go zone. Some of those
reasons may be true, or the reality could end
up being much worse.
Markets facilitating the design of a Mr.
JOLS need to pay extra special attention
during discussion of the Site. Recall that
every proposal for the site needs to hurt or
hinder Takers, and Markets have veto power
over any softball proposals that don’t pass
muster. Once the site has been defined by
the retiree and all the rumors proposed, roll
secret Sensitivity like normal...
...But for every false rumor, add another
complication. The number of complications
at a job site always equals the number of
players. Either one of the proposed obstacles
ends up being true, or the Market throws an
unpredictable disaster at the Takers in place
of the false lead. Two failed Sensitivity checks
means two complications that blindside the
crew. The only way to get fewer complications
than players is for someone to critically
succeed one of the Foresight checks. In
that instance, the rumors they heard were
accurate, but they’ve since been resolved by
some happy accident of fate. However, there
is no way for the Taker to know this until they
arrive.
There are many good reasons no one
chased this Score until now: either the Takers
can guess them, or they find out the hard way.
The Dream VIgnette
If it’s time for Mr. JOLS, it’s nearing the end
of a campaign... or at least nearing the end
for one character. One of the segments of Red
Markets specific to extended play is vignettes
(see “Long-term Investments” p. 406). If the
Market is utilizing vignettes to flesh out and
characterize the setting, a new type gets
added before a Mr. JOLS session begins.
This segment is called “The Dream” and,
whereas players choose one of the three types
to role-play at the start of a job, role-playing
“The Dream” is mandatory for all retiring
characters before any other scenes are acted
out.
What is “The Dream?” It’s exactly what
it sounds like: it’s the fulfillment of all the
Taker’s frustrated desires. In this scene,
retiring players are going to describe their
Taker’s perfect day after they retire. In effect,
the story is flash forwarding past the Mr. JOLS
job and to the happy ending. Using all the
funds from their former life as a Taker, how is
the PC living now?
Are they retired in the Recession? What’s
their new identity, or did they get their old
name back? How do they fill their days if
they no longer have to work? How are their
Dependents doing? Is the Loss a distant
memory, or has the scarcity of the Loss left
scars on their personalities? How does their
new community react to their presence? Is the
Taker respected on account of wealth, deemed
suspicious as an outsider, or unconcerned
with the opinion of a bunch of spoiled
citizens?
If the retirement plan is outside the
Recession, where? Is it just the Taker and
Dependents, or have others flocked to the
haven purchased by Mr. JOLS? What does
everyone do to sustain this new, separate
peace? Is the Taker a client now, hiring out
crews to support their new home, or have they
left the life completely behind? How do they
deal with the threats of the Loss, and what
walls, real estate, or protection keeps them
above the fray?
403
 Regardless, let the player narrate a perfect
day after the nest egg is secure and the
nightmare left behind. But the dream isn’t just
a monologue. It’s not even real. It’s the dream
that’s driven the Taker through all the horrors
of the previous jobs and, now that salvation
is in reach, the anxiety of being so close has
turned it into a nightmare.
The Market is responsible for reminding
the Taker that it’s not over yet. They turn the
dream into a nightmare at the last moment,
narrating the character’s abrupt, sweat-
drenched awakening into another day trapped
in the Loss. When and how this nightmare
manifests is at the behest of the Market and
should touch on the story of that character.
The Dream sets the mood for Mr. JOLS and
lays out the stakes. At the end of the session,
either the player’s vision of what happens
to the character comes true, or the Market’s
tragedy does.
The Loss Doesn't Let Go
Contrary to what it might seem, the point
of Chasing Mr. JOLS is not to kill all the
characters. The point is to show that the
Loss — with all its death, poverty, and despair
— does not merely let people go. Those who
manage to escape are forever marked.
In the best cases, the scar is an act of
heroism: a former Taker’s memory of an
insurmountable obstacle somehow overcome
and the knowledge that nothing a quiet life in
the Recession has to offer can hope to surpass
that sublime moment of triumph. Or perhaps
it’s the faces of those left behind — the ones
not strong enough to climb out — and the
bitter certainty that you could have helped
more. More often, the wounds run much
deeper: friends killed, infected, and crippled;
minds torn asunder by madness; fortunes of
fool’s gold bought with blood.

Example Dream Vignette

Kowloon’s life as an architectural student got cut short by the Crash, but he put his studies to good use defending
his home enclave. After his retirement, he intends to be recognized for his quarintechture designs and leave the dark
years of Taking behind.
Kowloon’s player: “.. and after going out to the bar for a couple of drinks with my friends, I go up to my high-
rise apartment overlooking the Mississippi and stare out the panoramic window across the border. I have a nightcap
of pure grain alcohol standing there every night - anything else tastes like a rip-off, watered-down and dusty like
everything that didn’t come from Bessie’s still. Drinking to forget has never worked, but I keep trying a little
harder every year. I think about-”
The Market: “A hand slaps against the window. Rotting. It leaves a bloody handprint as it slides down the glass.
Then another.”
Kowloon’s player: “What? We’re thirty stories up.. ”
The Market: “No. You’re not. It’s ground floor. And on the wrong side of the river. You see that tower you
dreamed of living in one day looming on the horizon until more of them come, blocking the view. There’s dozens of
them now, hundreds. All your defenses, all your funnels and deterrents, they did nothing. The horde is here. Your sister
is among them, as is your crew. Everyone you ever cared about, but they’re not screaming apologies. You are. You
failed them. That’s your last thought as the glass breaks and they come pouring in and over you.. until you wake up.
Covered in a cold sweat in your cot underneath the concrete rafters of the parking garage. The same way you’ve
woken up every day for the past five years, but maybe this is the last time.”

404
 Regardless, the extra complications assure
the scope remains suitably epic, and the
consequences hauntingly permanent. Anyone
who escapes the carrion economy richer
than they started owes the Loss a great debt.
They’ve become perfect capitalists, reborn
into a blood-soaked luxury, crawling into the
n o b le s p ir it c a n-
light over a mountain of corpses, awakened
A generous and d w ell in
to the beautiful, rational cruelty that defines
x p e c t e d t o
the world. Such transformations do not come not be e h o are
cheap, and the Loss always takes its due....
s o f m e n w
the breast il y b read.
r t h e ir d a
struggling fo

s iu s o f H a li c a r n assus
-Diony

405

Long-Term Investments
So the group tried out a Contract or two —
maybe they already designed a Score — and
now they want to see if they can hustle hard
enough to retire from the Loss permanently.
What now? How do we string these stories of
day-to-day survival into a larger narrative?
This section details everything the Market
and the players need to run a campaign of
Red Markets.
Enclave GeneratIon
Enclaves are town-to-city sized communities
where survivors have banded together for
protection against the undead. Though
initially defined solely by whatever
natural fortification provided protection
against Casualties during the Crash, each
enclave slowly evolves beyond its arbitrary
geographical founding. Trade and skill
406
specialization increase the chances of
survival. The enclaves that are still around
five years after the Crash have developed
into diverse economies operating under their
own autonomous political systems. While
a one-shot of Red Markets can take place at
any location or travel nomadically between
a variety of locations, campaigns focus on
the fate of a single enclave and its people.
Takers don’t just live there; they are part of the
community and a major part of the economy.
Campaigns typically start and end at the
enclave, and the jobs Takers do have lasting
effects on their home.
Procedure
Enclave Generation should be performed
using the Out-of-Character Consensus
procedure from “Designing Scores” (p. 400).
In-character methods are great for scores, but
the economic horror of Red Markets is based
in materialism: the logistics of the place come
first. Campaigns, therefore, work better if the
players know where their Takers will live and
work before they develop character concepts.
A solid character concept can easily be altered
to fit almost any setting, but building setting
around character concepts can sap the story
of conflict and make for contradictions the
Market can’t explain in the economy.
Markets should ask the following
questions of the players and take notes on
their proposed answers. Vote to decide on
contradictory ideas (i.e. it can’t be located in a
jungle and in a desert), but encourage players
to augment each other’s ideas by using “yes,
and…” whenever possible. Strive to include as
much as possible so long as it doesn’t directly
negate some already established fact about
the setting.
It should be noted that the Market is not
solely a facilitator of enclave generation.
Markets should actively participate in the
process with their own ideas. After all, the
Market has to write a lot of Contracts and
Scores based out of this enclave. Make sure
it’s a setting everyone is comfortable playing
in.
Name
Ummm…what’s the name? You probably want
to leave this one until last, and that’s okay. It’s
only included first here because it’s at the top
of the enclave sheet.
LocatIon
Where, geographically, is the enclave located?
You can set the enclave in a familiar area,
inside a state or city everyone is interested in,
or leave exact geography vague. Whatever you
choose, try to limit yourselves to descriptions
of the landscape around the enclave. Other
questions deal with the enclave’s interior
features, but the community’s surroundings
are going to play a big role. Remember,
geography determines economy.
• Do the enclave have access to water?
How? Is there a river or lake? Is there a
manmade waterway nearby?
• What’s the landscape like? Hills and rocks?
Flat plains? Forests? Mountains? Urban?
• Is there arable soil outside the enclave,
or do crops need to be grown inside the
fence? Is agriculture feasible at all?
• What was the population density like here
before the Crash? Higher density means
more survivors to feed, or more casualties
to eat them. Lower density means less
danger, but more scarcity when it comes
to scavenging.
• What’s the climate like here? Cold? Dry?
Hot? Rainy? Are changes seasonal, or
has climate change made fluctuations
unpredictable?
Defenses
It wouldn’t be an enclave if it couldn’t keep
the casualties out, especially back when they
were sprinting, climbing Vectors.
• Were the defenses natural, like an island,
a mountain, or a peninsula? Repurposed
from some other building, such as a
prison, a train yard, or a military base?
Hastily constructed during the Crash, like
an arrangement of shipping containers, a
moat, or a rag-tag flotilla of ships?
• How have the defenses been added to or
altered since the Crash?
• Does anyone keep watch on the walls? Or
are the defenses strong enough that they
take care of themselves?
• Is there some sort of enclave police force
or militia? If so, how does one join up?
• How do people bypass the defenses? If it’s
a gate, how do they distract, herd, or kill
the casualties waiting outside? A system
of airlocks and checkpoints? If it’s a secret
entrance, how is it kept secret?
HIstory
A lot of people holed up and survived the
Crash…before dying of starvation, disease,
and infighting in the years that followed. The
enclaves that have made it this far did so by
evolving.
• What was the first group of people to see
this place as a chance for survival? Did
they secure it by being smart, ruthless, or
just first?
• Did other groups come later, or has
everyone been here since the Crash? Were
these additional populations recruited to
meet the needs of the enclave’s founders,
or were they desperate refugees that
managed to insert themselves?
• What past conflicts, between interior
groups and outside threats, came to define
how the enclave operates today?
Top Exports
No man is an island, and neither is his
enclave. Total self-reliance is a myth; the
enclaves that survive trade with each other.
Determining what an enclave can afford to sell
off is a great way to help the Market generate
ideas for jobs.
• What surpluses does your enclave have to
trade?
• What goods can be produced or salvaged
from the geography?
• What forms of industry can be undertaken
without undermining the defenses?
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 • What skills and expertise can the
population sell for what they need?
Top Imports
The same things that define a surplus imply
a deficit. The enclave can’t be all things to
all people. Listing the necessary imports is
an even better way to help Markets generate
ideas for jobs.
• What does the enclave need to keep
operating?
• What do people need that the local
geography can’t provide?
• What forms of industry are made
impossible by the necessary limitations of
the defenses?
• What skills and expertise are lacking in
the population?
CompetItIon
Zombie movies existed in the world of Red
Markets before the zombies actually came.
Things got really bad, but a surprising amount
of people knew how to survive. These groups
condensed into enclaves in the following
years, but most areas in the Loss can’t
support a full-blown metropolis. The smaller
groups compete with each other for resources
and bounty.
When talking about competition for the
enclave as a whole, we aren’t talking about
competing Taker groups (though they may
come from other enclaves). Competing Taker
crews will come and go in any campaign,
but local enclave competition remains
a consistent concern. These competing
enclaves use the same transportation routes
and natural resources. They scavenge in the
same ruins, but hold different beliefs and
ideologies. Getting some ideas for competing
enclaves down on paper should spark ideas
for job lines and other serialized storylines.
• Where have other groups settled in the
area? When thinking about this question,
remember your enclave’s top imports and
exports. Do these other communities feed
your needs, or worsen shortages?
408
• What kind of structures and groups could
provide for your enclave? What kinds of
structures and groups would need your
enclave to survive?
• How are these other communities different
from yours in size, belief, economy, or
political structure?
• What if some of the competition isn’t from
an enclave at all? Does the DHQS have
any settlements nearby? Has a corporate
interest set up shop in the area for some
research or salvage operation?
• What do citizens deployed in the Loss
need from those left behind? What riches
from the Recession can they provide the
people of the enclave?
SocIal Structure
Social structure is perhaps the most
important part of enclave generation.
Economy implies inequality. Inequality
creates conflict, and conflict is the heart of
your campaign. Look at the answers to the
previous questions on the list. How have
these answers stratified the culture, and how
does that hierarchy perpetuate itself? If the
questions below aren’t enough to spark ideas,
take a look at the economy section of the
Contract Generator (p. 379).
• How does your enclave govern itself? Is
it a general democracy, or some sort of
representational compromise?
• Is it monarchy, socialist ideology, or total
anarchy?
• Is there an executive or court system?
• Does anyone have veto power?
• Does religion play a role in the enclave’s
political struggles? Is it a traditional faith,
or one of the believer cults resulting from
after the Crash?
• Has the enclave always done things this
way, or is the current system the result of
some past struggle?
NeIghborhoods
Humans like cliques. Break them into tiny
cliques and they immediately start making
tinier cliques. Bounty will be the biggest
separator, but that doesn’t mean race, religion,
politics, gender, language, and every other
petty consideration won’t be turned into
dividing lines as well.
• What are the major demographic zones of
your enclave?
• Is there a rich neighborhood and a ‘bad
part of town’? Are living arrangements
determined by occupation, political
identification, or other signifiers of class?
• How does the enclave quarantine Latents?
Are their sections comparable or little
more than ghettos?
• Are Immunes allowed to walk free, or
must they hide their diagnosis least they
be sold into medical slavery?
• Do different sects of believers live in
cloistered groups, do they mingle with the
population, or do they have to hide from
some dominant ideology?
VIPs
At this point, there are a lot different places
for characters to interact with and alter the
story. But who represents those places? Now
it’s time to provide the campaign with a cast
of NPCs the Takers can talk with. This is
also a great way to generate clients for future
Contracts the Market can offer.
• Who are the movers and shakers in the
enclave? Did they get power through first
come; first serve? Or have they elevated
themselves through sheer force of will?
• How do their positions reflect their
agendas? What’s their endgame? Are they
Lost for Life, or do they have a retirement
plan too? Is this enclave their retirement
plan? If so, what did they do to earn it?
• How do the VIPs exert control over the
enclave? Do they wield economic power,
the threat of violence, or some other
persuasive force?
FInIshIng Up
Once the enclave is created, finish off the
session with character creation. Now that
players have all the information, they can
decide where their characters fit into the
different factions in the enclave.
Markets should then take time between
game nights to elaborate on the enclave
generation notes as much as necessary. Give
the documents to the players so they have a
reference document. Write a few Contracts or
design a Score. The next session starts with
the Takers starting work and meeting their
neighbors.
Example Enclave
1. Enclave Name
Troutfitt – so named for the letters on the
sign that survived military shelling (TROU.
..TFITT...)
2. Location
Troutfitt is located in the former national
headquarters of Trout Outfitters in Feldspur,
MO.
3. Defenses
The national headquarters of Trout
Outfitters is a massive complex of
interconnected buildings. Rather than large
show windows typical of retail stores, the
company constructed the five-story tall walls
of the shopping complex to depict baroque,
concrete-and-plastic murals dedicated to
scenes of wildlife and rural pastorals. What
windows are located in the place are huge,
cathedral-sized vertical slits that rest at least
seven feet above the sidewalks outside.
Though located in a dense urban area,
the surplus of the weaponry inside and the
quarantinable corridor system (traffic was
regularly rerouted within the complex as new,
gaudy tourist attractions were built) meant
that the building survived the Crash. Slowly,
survivors recaptured and reinforced every
inch of the Troutfitt compound, turning the
location into an impenetrable fortress against
the undead.
4. History
The gun room (more like “gun
gymnasiums”) formed the beachhead for
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 the initial militia groups, military, law
enforcement, and desperate refugees that
made up Troutfitt. Rather than succumb
to infighting as more and more desperate
survivors poured in, a work exchange policy
quickly calmed inter-factional conflict. New
groups were required to take back one of the
many sub-buildings in the Troutfitt complex:
if they agreed to risk their lives to secure the
compound, that section of compound would
be theirs to keep and the gun room would
supply the attempt. This had the knock down
effect of creating a meritocracy of power.
Those able to survive against the undead
were rewarded with their own tiny fiefdoms.
Those that failed, died.
Though initially holding out for government
rescue, even after news of the Recession
began to circulate, Troutfitt skewed heavily
towards Rebel politics after the bombing of
Feldspur. Deemed too close to the Mississippi
line and too populated to ignore, the early
DHQS firebombed much of the city in a
410
misguided effort to reduce casualties. The
plan failed, of course, but it did manage to
destroy untold amounts of valuable salvage
in the area. Troutfitt lost a few buildings in
the bombing and many lives. Reclamation
has become an unpopular subject with
the residents of Troutfitt ever since, and
the DHQS will have a hard time retaking
Feldspur if the T-Minus Never comes.
5. Top Exports
Weapons: It was a full-blown armory before
the Crash. After local survivalists pooled their
resources and got the machining equipment
running, there was no greater surplus of arms
and ammunition in the whole Loss.
Survival Equipment: the camping show-
floors and warehouses were full to bursting
when the Crash came down.
Vehicles: gargantuan indoor show-floor of
ATVs, boats, bikes, and jeeps make Troutfitt
one of the leading providers of transportation
in the area.
 Water: the city of Feldspur gifted the
massive complex its own pumping substation
and filtration equipment for the purposes of
its onsite fisheries and fountains. It’s been
repurposed with rainwater collectors to
become a self-sustaining water system.
Fish: once maintained as mere decoration,
the complex of interconnected aquariums has
become a commercial fishery.
6. Top Imports
Food: Troutfitt’s fishing can’t feed its whole
population, and the structure is made of
excessive amounts of concrete. It is difficult to
grow food in the lightless fortress.
Fuel: even with solar and wind retrofits,
it’s nearly impossible to supply power to
the massive complex. Many sections of
Troutfitt are lightless, frigid dungeons in
need of combustible fuel like wood, coal, and
petrochemicals.
Medicine: Troutfitt’s population is one of
the densest in the Loss. The local hospitals
were priority targets in the DHQS bombing;
Troutfitt needs all the expertise and medicine
it can get.
Electronics: sophisticated electronics
capable of computing and Ubiq access were
all claimed within the first few months of the
enclave. The bloated population has a huge
demand for connectivity devices.
7. Competition
FOB Liberty: One of the DHQS’s first
settlements was set-up outside Feldspur on
the flat, high-visibility plains of the Ozarks
plateau. The city-sized armed camp requires
trade to keep its civilian population happy, but
the proximity to the Recession means that
such trade must be secretive lest the wrong
officer decides to enforce the “everyone is
infected” policy.
John’s River Assembly (aka Dracula’s
Castle): The mega-church survivors now
make up the single largest congregation of the
Church of the Holy Blood in the Loss. They’re
actually fairly reasonable and fair traders. Just
don’t let them know if you have any Immunes
The various modes of worship which prevailed in the
Roman world were all considered by the people as
equally true; by the philosopher as equally false;
and by the magistrate as equally useful.
-Edward Gibbon
in your party... In fact, they pay such a high
price for their “communion” that Immunes are
in more danger in the region than anywhere
else besides Scrape.
The Underground: The 2.4 million square
feet beneath the city makes up a massive city
of traders in its own right. However, multiple
outbreaks have left blocks of the tunnels
sealed and uninhabitable. The shifting and
constant war against the undead as the
populace tries to retake the complex makes
trading with the underground unpredictable,
dangerous, and profitable.
8. Social Structure
Troutfitt can’t really be said to have a
“government.” Those that are actually
in charge would bristle, if not attack, if
slapped with the label of bureaucrat. The
whole system runs off a shifting alliance of
anarcho-capitalist interests and quite a bit
of spontaneous collectivism. This system —
either due to disruptions in trading or spats
of selfishness — often breaks down, leading
to frequent famines, blackouts, economic
recessions, and minor riots. Ironically, these
failures of civic organization continually
contribute to the anti-governmental attitudes
that cause them.
9. Neighborhoods
There are dozens of unique cliques within
Troutfitt, but some of the most influential are:
The Fountainhead: the fountains served
as the main entrance of the complex and
its primary thoroughfare. It also has access
to the pump station and provides water to
the majority of the complex. Fountainhead
is, aptly enough, run by an “agreement” of
Randian merchants eager to profit off every
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 financial interaction in the city.
The Armory: The gunroom is the primary
haunt of the rebel and militia groups that
first saw Trout Outfitters as their salvation in
the Crash. Their weapons and history in the
community make them serious power players
in Troutfitt, but fractious ideologies amongst
the initial survivors neuter their potential for
control.
The Forge: The machine shop and reload
stations in the subterranean maintenance
tunnels produce new weapons and
ammunition for the enclave. Though obviously
allied with the Armory, demands on power,
space, and raw materials have seen an influx
by members of other groups. This makes
the Forge one of the more egalitarian and
professional of the groups in Troutfitt.
The Closet: While the materials in Trout
Outfitters’ clothing section are ideal for the
harsh conditions of the Loss, many of the
patterns (woodland camo) and aesthetics
(pink woodland camo) were liabilities in
an urban survival situation. The advanced
textiles knowledge necessary to repurpose
Kevlar weave and water-resistant polymer
fabrics was not something anyone in the
enclave possessed — until Martha came
around. The aging trans socialite leveraged
her skills into control of the old department
store: she keeps the textile operation earning
in exchange for controlling her own bohemian
utopia.
The Flotilla: While the outdoor pontoons
and speedboats remain accessible and fenced
off, the interior showroom doorway opens up
onto an indefensible urban street. Unable to
sell the fleet of freshwater craft locked inside
the showroom, “the flotilla” is the largest
residential area in Troutfitt. Large, gothic
windows provide a lot of natural light, and the
boats have been retrofitted into a four-story
favela.
The Welfare State: Ernest’s Fishing Hole
was a giant, open-seating buffet before
the Crash, located on the fifth floor of the
complex with an overview of the city. As the
other factions reclaimed fallen sections of
412
the buildings, they found that the former
restaurant was already occupied and picked
clean. A small band of desperate survivors,
led by a local college rock climbing team, had
scaled the walls of Troutfitt and occupied the
restaurant from the top down. The survivors
were grateful for the militants of the gunroom
ending their zombie-barricaded isolation, but
they were not about to give up their place at
the top. Resentment has only grown in the
following years for violating the unspoken “kill
to earn your place” policy of Troutfitt. “The
Welfare State” has been ghettoized ever since,
its residents forced to hustle among the other
factions to survive despite their prime real
estate within the compound.
The Dark Alleys: Many sections of
Troutfitt are cut off from natural light but too
unproductive to justify the power it would
take keep them in working order. These
lightless shopping concourses are referred
to collectively as “the Dark Alleys,” as in
“wouldn’t want to meet X in a dark alley one
day.” Many desperate survivors have gained
access to Troutfitt only to find themselves
shuffled off into the alleys, where predation
and banditry to rival the Loss itself are the
only hope for survival.
10. VIPs
Bill Baxter: Conservative talk radio host
that serves as the face of the Armory.
Bug Eyes: Reticent, aging gunsmith given
diplomatic privileges for the workers of the
Forge.
Kyle: stoner and college dropout
responsible for The Welfare State occupation
during the Crash.
Martha: aging trans socialite operating the
enclave’s valuable textile trade.
(R)Ann: middle-aged businesswoman
most often seen exploiting the tolls at
Fountainhead.
Elah: freerunner and possible Valet that’s
considered one of the only trustworthy
personalities living and navigating the Dark
Alleys.
Structure of a CampaIgn Italics are for rare or one-time events.
We’ve discussed the Workplace Essentials • E: Essential
that make up nearly every job and the • C: Contract-specific
difference between Contracts and Scores (see • S: Score-specific
p. 359). We’ve also talked about how to create • L: Long-term
an enclave collaboratively (see p. 406). These • +: And/Or (scene can be included in
elements remain constants in extended play. addition to the scene of the above
But what differs, besides length? type, used to replace it, or put in any
What makes a campaign of Red Markets combination)
different from a one-shot are the options • - : Or (scene can be included instead of the
the Market has for scenes that operate like scene of the above type)
connective tissue. But these options are just
that: optional. The story remains solely in • Enclave Generation (L)
the hands of those playing at the table; this • Character Creation (E)
section merely seeks to expand the toolbox • News (L)
the Market has to tell it. • Vignettes (L)
Keep in mind that the order of these + MBA Options (L)
scenes — and even their very inclusion — + Buying Supply
isn’t prescribed. Since campaigns follow + Hiring
character arcs episodically over time, most + Troubleshooting
of the mechanics specific to extended play + Gouging Consumers
focus on roleplaying prompts and procedures + Securing Loans
for defining dramatic scenes. Groups that + Investments and Speculation
are more action-oriented might want to skip • Upkeep (E)
past the roleplaying stuff, or even use Market • Finding a Job (E)
Fiat to set a price, skip negotiations, and get - Designing a Score (S)
straight to taking casualties. And that’s fine. - Prep Work (C)
As the structure of a campaign is discussed, - Job Line (C + L)
always keep in mind that these sections are • Fixing a Price (E)
modular. Use them all, rearrange the order, - Negotiation (C)
add scenes of personal design, and skip the - Finding a Wholesaler (S)
ones you don’t enjoy. Any answer that gets - Market Fiat (E)
the group playing and having fun is the right • Embarking (E)
answer. • Travel Time (E)
+ Market Fiat (E)
+ D10 Encounter Themes (E)
Structure At-a-Glance
+ D100 Encounter Table (E)
The elements that occur in a session of Red
+ Interludes (L)
Markets and their suggested order are listed
• The Site (E)
below. Each scene has been coded with the
• The Complication (E)
type of play it’s designed to facilitate, and
• Return (L)
interchangeable scenes have been indented to
+ Legs (E)
show what they trade with. Remember: these
• Book-keeping (L)
are suggestions. Markets are encouraged to
• Mr. JOLS (L)
rearrange and alter the list to fit their tastes.
- Individual Retirements (L)
- Tontine (L)

413
 Enclave and Character CreatIon
Both have already been covered previously,
but most people committing to a campaign
of Red Markets will enjoy the game more if
they’re playing in their own setting with their
own characters. It’s not recommended that
groups dive straight into a full campaign
without at least trying out a one-shot
Contract or Score, possibly with some pre-
gen characters. One of the main pleasures of
campaign play is the shared ownership of the
narrative; make sure everyone wants to invest
in that story before the group starts down that
path.
It’s suggested that those ready for campaign
play design an enclave first (see p. 406),
then move on to character creation (see p.
181). Players find it much easer to flesh out
a Taker’s personality and how they fit into
the different factions in the enclave once
the materialist circumstances of the home
enclave are defined.
Markets should then take time between
game nights to elaborate on the enclave gives the PCs some space to role-play this
generation notes as much as necessary. Write rare instance of leisure time, offering a free
a few Contracts or design a Score. The next Humanity heal as a consequence of that
session starts with the Takers starting work Taker’s altruism.
and meeting their neighbors. As another example, maybe the Takers
pulled a big Contract securing weapons
for some local raiders. The next session
News might start with a group of refugees
In long-term play, the Market may need some
desperately knocking on the enclave’s door.
time to establish broad, sweeping changes in
Their community was sacked by the newly
the setting. While each enclave’s economy is
emboldened raiders. They’ll die without
comprised of a variety of races, ethnicities,
refuge, but that’s a lot more mouths to
beliefs, and motivations, some events do
feed with winter on the way. The Market
affect everyone equally, and a news scene is
presents the news, then sees what the Takers
where the Market presents those changes to
contribute to the debate about whether the
the players. Starting the campaign session off
enclave should allow entry. Self-Control
with news is a powerful method for conveying
checks are called for to measure how the PCs
the consequences of player action.
handle the consequences of their actions.
If, for instance, one of the Takers refused to
Or the news could be a consequence of
turn in an Immune musician for the bounty
inaction. If every crew in the enclave refused
his slavery would earn, the next session
for weeks to deal with the escaped zoo lions
starts off with a short scene where a number
hunting local travelers, the session could
of enclave families gather around for an
start with bloody screams as one jumps the
impromptu music festival. The tunes loosen
fence and starts slaughtering enclavists. This
everyone up and the whole enclave ends
“news” scene would be about combat and
up having a pretty good time. The Market
414
fleeing, but it’s a necessity affecting everyone
regardless of economic class, so it would fit as
a news opener.
Regardless of tone, updating the players on
what’s changed in the setting as a result of the
character’s actions is the purpose of starting a
campaign session off with the news.
VIgnettes
Vignettes define why Takers put themselves
under such risk. The vague explanation of
“financial need” in a one-shot grows thinner
and more fragile the longer a character is
exposed to the true horrors waiting outside
the enclave. What’s needed is firm motivation
to establish why these characters would
regularly expose themselves to the torture of
“adventure.” Like most of us in the real world,
the real concern isn’t money, but the people
we’ll lose if the bills aren’t paid.
In Red Markets, Takers fight for their
Dependents, eating the sin of the Loss so
their loved ones don’t have to, fighting its
nightmares so they might afford to one day
flee from them. Vignettes are scenes where
PCs interact with Dependents to establish
the stakes risked in a campaign. As such, it’s
recommended that every session of a Red
Markets campaign start with vignettes.
DetermIne Work/LIfe Balance
If the group isn’t using the MBA rules (see p.
424), skip to the next section.
If the group is using the advanced play
rules, PCs first need to figure out if they can
afford enough time to have a scene with
Dependents. Calculate the Work/Life Balance
each crewmember needs to strike in order
to troubleshoot, gouge, invest, hire, borrow,
Scam, and/or negotiate for the group’s
finances that session. If time recovering with
the family isn’t going to work out, sacrifice
the vignette scene and resulting Humanity
heals for an extra work scene now. That
way, everyone can still take turns performing
scenes going around the table because
everyone knows what scenes they need to
call.
One VIgnette per Taker
Since CHA is used to determine how many
Dependents a PC can support, does that
mean a Taker with CHA 3 has to have three
separate role-playing scenes before we even
start picking a job?
No. Remember, vignettes aren’t even
required. If the group prefers the challenge
of negotiation and combat to role-playing,
Markets can skip vignettes altogether and
make Dependents purely mechanical. Heal
however many columns worth of Humanity
equals the number of supported Dependents,
and move on.
But if the group does want to do some
role-playing and establish the stakes of their
crew’s struggle, only one scene per Taker is
required to receive the full mechanical benefit
of all Dependents. One Taker might have up
to five family members to support, but there
is only one vignette per Taker per session. It’s
understood that the other relationships were
less eventful and took place “off-camera.” The
amount of Humanity healed from financially
supported Dependents doesn’t change so long
as a single vignette takes place.
So Takers are limited to one scene with
Dependents per session. This doesn’t mean
that Vignettes can only be one-on-one.
Perhaps one scene calls for a family dinner,
with every other player at the table assuming
the role of one Taker’s relatives. This would
still count as a single vignette. If two PCs
were lovers in the setting, a player might
call for a vignette where the couple had a
post-coitus conversation. In this instance,
the player that called the scene has used the
one vignette she’s allowed. The other player
could choose for the pillow talk to serve as
his vignette (thus healing all the Humanity
allowed), or he could call for a different scene
with a different Dependent.
Market as DIrector
Besides playing NPCs, the Market’s main
responsibility during vignettes is to cut the
scene. Each vignette in Red Markets has
a very clear dramatic purpose. When that
415
 purpose has been fulfilled, the Market stops
the vignette and moves on to the next player.
Try not to cut people off, but improvisation
can become ponderous if allowed to go on
too long. There’s also a bunch of game left to
run and other characters that need spotlight
time, so Markets should keep vignettes brief
whenever possible.
Who plays Whom?
The Market has the responsibility to play
other NPCs in a vignette, no matter the
theme. It’s up to other players at the table to
play Dependents.
It’s up to the PC having the scene to assign
who they want to play Dependents. Make
sure everyone knows what they’re getting into
before parts are assigned, though. The goal of
assigning other players to play Dependents is
to surprise the character who is the focus of
the vignette, not to surprise the person taking
on the Dependent’s role. The vignette player
should announce what theme they’re planning
to pursue (see the next sections) and the gist
of the scene before assigning parts, or at least
hash out a general idea with the other role-
player before speaking in character.
The easiest way to assign parts is to ask for
volunteers the first time the Dependent makes
an appearance and have that player take
over the role whenever it comes up again. Or,
people can trade roles between sessions and
chock it up to fluid personalities resulting
from living under the pressures of the Loss. It
might be easiest to make a table rule that says
the player to the left of the person having a
vignette always plays the Dependent.
The only hard and fast rule for assigning
parts in a vignette is that no one should have
to play a scene with a Dependent if they are
uncomfortable. If no one can be found that
wants to do that part, the Market can take
over or the gist of the scene can be rewritten.
Example: Half-off’s player is up for a
vignette. He says he wants to do a cope
scene with his ex-wife, going over the fight
they had the previous session. The person
that usually plays Half’s ex-wife is absent for
416
this session. He does a fantastic job and no
one is comfortable taking over that part. The
Market asks Half’s player if there is some
other scene he’d maybe like to try. After some
consideration, it’s agreed that Half could
reconnect with his son, Wes. The player that
covers Wes is present for this session and
game for anything. The two go about setting
the scene.
But what kind of scene should they play?
The two could say and do literally anything. In
order to make sure the scene has a point, they
need to pick a theme for the vignette.
Cope
The most obvious goal of a Taker’s interaction
with a Dependent is to cope. The Loss is a
terrible place; any scars it fails to leave on
the flesh it writes on the soul. The snippets
of normality a Taker can grab with family and
friends are usually the only things keeping
them going.
Mechanically, there are three roles in a
vignette designed to cope.
The player calling the vignette plays the
Taker
Another player or players assume the
role(s) of the Dependent(s)
The Market controls any other NPCs
present in the scene... and the waking
nightmares that haunt all Takers.
Essentially, the two players can to have
a pleasant, conflict-free interaction, but the
Market injects conflict and drama into the
scene by playing the PTSD-like reminders
of the terrors the Taker will face again.
It’s up to the player calling the vignette to
determine whether they resist the errant
fears or let them sour the interaction. Either
way, the Taker gets to heal Humanity, but the
Dependent has a harder job to do if the job is
coming home with the Taker.
Example: For the sake of convenience,
we’ll refer to both player and character by the
character’s name. The sections in quotes are
spoken in character.
 Setup: The players decide that, after the
loss of a teammate in the last session, Half-off
needs to cope this vignette.
Half-Off: Alright, I figure I spent my
bounty supporting Wes to buy him a cake
for his birthday. It takes quite a bit of work
to bake an honest-to-god cake out here, so
I’m going to surprise his whole class. I walk
in unannounced to the schoolhouse and say
“Happy Birthday, Wes!”
Wes: “Dad! You’re home!”
Half-Off: “You bet I am buddy! And I
brought a present.” I reveal the cake from
behind my back.
Market: The kids, even the older ones,
stare dumbfounded. None of them can
remember the last time they tasted anything
as sweet as icing. Even the teacher, Mrs.
Beavers, looks at the cake hungrily. She
eventually sputters and says, “My! That’s so
generous of you, Mr...um...Wes’s Dad. What do
we say class?”
Wes: The whole class says thank you. Wes
whispers to his friends that his dad can beat
their dads in a fight cuz he’s a badass Taker
that fights monsters for a living.
Market: Mrs. Beavers continues, “But I
didn’t know you were coming. We don’t have
any plates or silverware. I was going to have
the kids take recess soon, so I suppose they
could wash up in the stream, but... it’s such
a beautiful cake. It would be a shame just to
tear into it...”
Half-Off: “Well, it’s Wes’s birthday. Do you
want to eat it now or later?”
Wes: Hmmm. I look around torn. On the
one hand, I really want that cake. On the
other hand, I really don’t want to share it with
anyone...
Half-Off: I recognize that face and give Wes
my best I’m-just-disappointed Dad stare.
Wes: “Okay...I guess we can eat it now.
Happy Birthday to me!”
Market: The kids open the box and start
grabbing handfuls of cake. Mrs. Beavers tries
to get them to take one handful at a time, but
she can’t resist taking some icing for herself.
The kids are already on a sugar rush and Wes
has a huge smile on his face.
Half-Off: Awww yeah. Half’s the best dad
ever.
Market: But they just keep tearing away at
it. Greedy handfuls shoveling into icing coated
moths, teeth gone blue and black with the
frosting...
Half-Off: Oh, damnit...
Market: They’re tearing into it just like
those things tore into Drift. And then you’re
back there, seeing him get turned inside out
by their filthy hands as the jeep speeds away.
You can hear his screams again.
Half-Off: Whelp, that’s enough party for
Half. I excuse myself before I throw up.
Wes: “But I want you to stay for recess and
meet my friends!”
Half-Off: I make up a lame excuse about
having to get back to work, kiss him goodbye,
and get the hell out of there.
End: Half-Off heals Humanity; he did,
after all, make his son happy and steal a
few moments of normal fatherhood. But the
Market used the NPCs and memories of the
Loss to insert some dramatic tension into the
scene.
Support
The burdens of love aren’t a one-way street. In
a support vignette, the Taker has to be there
to solve a problem for a Dependent. The issue
could be emotional, financial, or physical, but
the Taker is needed to resolve the issue.
The three roles in a support vignette are...
The player calling the vignette plays the
Taker.
Another player or players assume the
role(s) of the Dependent(s) in need of help.
The Market controls any NPCs involved
with the Dependent’s problem.
Support vignettes exemplify the rationale
behind having other players at the table
play Dependents. Family and friends can
now surprise the main PC with their needs;
needs that hint at an inner life the Taker is
missing out on when on the job. Some players
417

might find support vignettes easier to role-
play because the conflict experience by the
Dependent provides an immediate, tangible
dramatic goal for the character to pursue.
This may or may not involve skill checks, but
unless playing with the Bust Rule: Uncertain
Vignettes, Takers heal Humanity just for the
attempt.
Example: For simplicity’s sake, let’s stick
with Half-Off and his son Wes. Let’s imagine
what would happen if he chose to do a
support vignette instead. In this instance,
it’s up to Wes’s player what the character
needs, and Half has to fulfill that need. This
may or may not involve skill checks, but
unless playing with the Bust Rule: Uncertain
Vignettes, Half heals Humanity just for the
attempt.
Wes needs to fit in with the rest of his
classmates. Mrs. Beavers now includes
marksmanship in her class lessons. Arming
children with firearms is something the
elementary teacher would have balked at
418
in the past, but now she can’t imagine a
complete education that doesn’t involve
shooting practice. The class joins the
Fencemen clearing casualties off the chain-
link with the class .22. The problem is that
Wes is still too small to handle the rifle well.
His hit percentage isn’t high enough to get
regular practice time because the enclave
only grants the school so many bullets per
week. All the kids make fun of him for his bad
shooting, and the teasing is getting downright
cruel, going so far as to imagine how Wes’s
mother would be torn apart in an outbreak.
School has become torture for the boy.
So Half has a problem to solve. It’s up to
him how he approaches it. He could spend
bounty or scavenge to find Wes a personal .22
that he can handle, or he could donate more
ammo to the class on the condition his son
get to practice more. He could use a CHA skill
to scold the bullies into leaving his son alone,
convince his ex-wife to homeschool the boy,
or dissuade Mrs. Beavers from the barbaric
combat training for children. Regardless, the
Market has to play any NPCs that come into
play in Half’s solution.
Engage
Rather than resolving a dramatic conflict,
the goal of an engage vignette is to engage
the community. The scene can be nothing
more than a pleasant conversation because
an otherwise dull interaction can be used
to flesh out the enclave. Scenes of comic
relief or emotional fulfillment are welcome
in Red Markets (they make the lows seem
that much worse). In this scene, neither the
Taker nor Dependents have any need, but
they must interact with their neighbors and
environment.
The three roles in a support vignette are...
The player calling the vignette plays the
Taker
Another player or players assume the
role(s) of the Dependent(s)
The Market controls any NPCs… and
reserves the right to complicate the
interaction with them.
 Example: It’s been a rough few sessions on RESULTS VIGNETTE
Half-Off. The Taker needs some baggage-free Support: Humanity recovery
downtime. The Market reminds everyone depends on skill checks
that they can engage. In exchange for helping required to meet Dependent’s
needs, but it can only be
define the enclave more, the Market will hold
healed after the job. This
back on flashbacks and Dependent requests. is because the Dependent
After some thought, Half says that he CrITICAL needs something that can
wants to go see Wes’s soccer game. There FAILURE only be found outside the
are enough kids in the enclave to field two fence (medicine, personal
half-strength squads. They play on the keepsakes, etc.) The Taker
concrete floor of an abandoned warehouse. needs to bring the item back
Normally, so much free space would be used in order to keep the family
for farming, but the roof collapsed years ago happy and healthy.
and the concrete is too thick to remove. The Support: Humanity
kids play on a field outlined with chalk with recovery depends on skill
the enclave’s one precious soccer ball. Wes FAILURE checks required to meet
scores a goal. The father and son role-play the Dependent’s needs.
their celebration. All-in-all, it’s a perfect case
for Half-Off healing Humanity. Cope: Humanity recovery
But the Market is dissatisfied with the depends on succeeding a
scene. Suddenly, Half’s is asked to assign SUCCESS Self-Control check when
the rest of his Dependents roles at the table: the flashback hits.
his ex-wife and her new husband, Chad, have Engage: No checks are
shown up to watch the game too. Half’s still required for Humanity
better off for having come, but the scene just healing, and the Dependent
got more dramatically interesting. Best of
CRITICAL
has a gift for the Taker
all, everyone at the table now knows about SUCCESS (Market retains veto power:
an abandoned factory floor turned soccer your sister didn’t get you a
field upon which they can stage their own cannon for your birthday).
vignettes.
MIlestone
The last type of vignette only occurs when a
Taker fulfills a retirement milestone. Notably,
Bust Rule: UncertaIn VIgnettes fulfilling a retirement milestone heals no
We can’t control other people, and we can Humanity. In fact, paying that much money at
only sometimes control our reactions to them. once to set up a retirement plan provokes a
Retaining Humanity becomes more challenging Self-Control: Stress check.
when the rules acknowledge this. In this Bust The Market might dictate mechanical
variant, vignettes become high-stakes gambles. benefits or penalties depending on the exact
Takers still only get one vignette, but now the retirement plan. For instance, in the standard
dice determine the type. It’s now possible for plan (see p. 216), it would be fair to say that
the scene to go so badly that the Taker loses all Dependents no longer count against break
free columns of Humanity healing; receiving point once they’re smuggled to a safe house
the benefits of Dependents now depends on in the Recession. But it would be equally fair
financial support and skill checks. to say that they no longer heal Humanity for
To use uncertain vignettes, the Market rolls the remainder of the campaign, as contacting
Black and Red. Check the result on the table them would only put them at risk. Markets
and follow the instructions. should cater the results to the Boom/Bust
419
 leanings of the game, but losing out on a
vignette and taking a Stress hit is often
challenge enough.
As for role-playing, the retirement milestone
defines the dramatic situation. Perhaps the
Taker is negotiating with a document forger
over Ubiq, or hiring a competing Taker crew
to exterminate anything at the site of her
future enclave. Remember, the Taker has been
working for this goal for the entire campaign;
assume that grunt work of setting up the plan
has already been done. The Taker needs not
role-play anything but the final preparations
for that step. Keep things brief and focused on
the character’s goals.
MBA OptIons
There are a number of other vignette-style
scenes available to groups diving into the
MBA rules (see p. 424). The specifics of
those mechanics can be found in that chapter.
For now, suffice it say that all MBA scenes
are played after the vignettes standard in
campaign play.
Upkeep
Upkeep is dealt with on p. 223. It’s important
to note any changes in sustenance and
maintenance upkeep early in a game session.
It allows players more information with which
to select a job, and it can affect the price in
Contract negotiations. It’s a good idea to get
any changes to the book-keeping done and
recorded on the crew sheet early, especially if
utilizing the NBNB Rule.
FIndIng a Job
Finding a job is a workplace essential in both
one-shots and campaign. This is where those
scenes fit best.
DesIgnIng a Score
If the Market isn’t comfortable with improv,
it’s still suggested that designing Scores
be done at the end of the previous session
instead. This gives ample time to plan
intriguing complications.
420
Those comfortable thinking on the fly and
utilizing the book’s random generators can
design a Score in the moment. Since the
session has already started, the in-character
methods are suggested, as they keep everyone
engaged with the narrative even as they step
outside the setting a bit to engage in some
group game design.
Prep Work
If negotiating a Contract, the prep work phase
preceding negotiations would go here (see p.
324).
Job LInes
Job lines allow a campaign to grow beyond
its episodic job-of-the-week structure. Each
line, offered by recurring NPCs, enclaves, and
settlements, represents a major opportunity
for players to shape the setting and steer local
politics by doing their normal jobs.
Creating a job line is simple. The Market
thinks of a major change they would like to
see in the campaign setting, splits the work
required to enact that change into jobs, and
offers Contracts to the PCs using a notable
NPC or group of NPC clients. Assuming
the first job is completed to everyone’s
satisfaction, the client offers the next job
in the line to the Takers first; the crew is
their trusted provider, and competition isn’t
entertained unless absolutely necessary.
For example, consider grimecloth: the
cheap, patchwork textile made from clothing
salvaged off zombies and sterilized. If the
grimecloth industry wants to expand their
operations with a casualty slaughterhouse
near the PCs’ area, there’s a lot of work
to be done. Locations need to be scouted,
perimeters secured, laborers escorted,
casualties lured — all these tasks require the
assistance of Takers, and the grimecloth folks
are willing to pay extra for reliable operators.
Completion of a job line means more
than another payday. Such a big operation
in the area is going to bring a lot of trade to
the local enclaves, but it could bring just as
much hardship. The grimecloth industry’s
dependence on casualties for production
is going to flood the area with undead, and
their success could lure vital workers away
from other enclaves that depend on them.
By progressing along a job line or choosing
to cease doing business, the players should
always being making moral choices and
determining the fate of the setting around
them. Completing a line means the Takers
want to see a change in their community...
Or that they can’t resist the temptation of
extra profit. One of the mechanical benefits of
a job line is that the client might be someone
that the Taker already knows. Knowing a
client’s spots before haggling frees Scams
up to push a price even higher. Of course,
the client remembers the Takers’ spots too,
and their previous dealings mean they’ll be
more likely to bring persuasive gifts and do
homework on the crew’s reputation. In this
regard, job lines offer increasing challenge
to experienced Red Markets players.
Negotiations become more tactical and high-
stakes than ever before as difficulty increases
the chance for reward.
There can be multiple job lines going at any
one time, and they can be at cross-purposes. If
both the DHQS and the Moths want to secure
a political foothold in the region, they both
want to use the most accomplished Takers
available. If that happens to be the PC crew
and they’ve worked for both factions before,
they can have job lines open up on both sides
of the conflict. However, clients are bound
to recognize being played at some point.
Eventually, one side will realize it’s more
profitable to eliminate their opponent’s tool
rather than keep borrowing it. At that point,
the side the PCs helped more becomes a
very important factor in shaping the setting
as market forces shift their allegiances to the
crew and their entire enclave.
Job lines are the main reason the person
running the game retains the right of
Market fiat. It’s difficult to craft lasting, high-
stakes stories by randomizing everything.
By using tools for random one-shots and
designing lines, Markets can offer the group
variety without sacrificing the satisfaction
of a lengthy, interconnected narrative. And,
ultimately, crafting a job line isn’t so different.
Just remember, job lines...
• Exist to facilitate a momentous change in
the campaign’s setting.
• Require the PCs to execute, prevent, or
alter the change.
• Offer every Contract after the first
successful one with no competition.
• Remember spots between negotiations,
both for the Takers and the client.
• Can interact and oppose the goals of other
job lines.
FIxIng a PrIce
Once a job is found, the next step is fixing a
price for it.
For Contracts and job lines, negotiations
would come next (see p. 320). For a Score,
someone might need to have scene with a
wholesaler (see p. 394). Finally, those itching
to get straight to the action could skip the
whole thing and name a price with Market
Fiat (see p. 379).
EmbarkIng
Not so much a scene as a reminder to be sure
to give PCs a chance to stock up on anything
they might need before they leave for the job.
With the negotiations done, this is the best
opportunity they have to make an informed
decision on what gear to pack.
Travel TIme
Travel time is made up of legs. These
narrative encounters provide much of a
job’s challenge, factor into price fixing, and
characterize the omnipresent danger of the
Loss. Examples of legs and prompts for
writing your own can be found in the tables
at the end of the book. But there are a few
concerns for legs in extended play a Market
might consider.
There, and Maybe Back AgaIn
Takers only get paid for the journey to a job
site, never the journey back. Clients don’t
421

care about your problems, and getting home
alive is strictly your problem. Furthermore, it
makes narrative sense to only do legs on the
way to a job site; considering the danger, a
crew would most likely retrace its steps rather
than risk new disasters. Lastly, skipping
the legs on the way home keeps the game
from ending on an anti-climax. Legs are the
rising action of the plot while complications
at the job site make for dynamic, exciting
conclusions. Turning legs into a denouement
can extend the game past its welcome.
Still, if something exciting or challenging
happens after a job is complete, make it a leg
and surprise the players with it. But unless
the event is specifically climactic or tied to
events at the job site, try to keep travel time
scenes strictly on the way to the job site.
CampaIgn Legs
It might make sense to have certain legs
repeat across different jobs. If the survivors
are located in a mountainous basin, there
might be legs specific to the pass they choose
422
to exit the area. If the enclave is secured on an
island, there might be a ferry ride at the start
of every job.
If nothing bears repeating a leg encounter
besides geography, Markets are encouraged
to skip these scenes and not register them
as legs. On the other hand, if the leg has a
particularly dangerous obstacle, variable cast
of NPCs, or a particularly interesting NPC
guards that particular crossroads, Markets
might make a campaign leg that serves as a
rite of passage for every job.
However, the only reason to have a
campaign leg is to look forward to how it
will change in the next session. If the same
interaction happens every week on the same
stretch of boring road, just skip that scene.
Remember: legs are a narrative measurement,
not a physical one.
The only reason to repeat a campaign leg
that doesn’t change is to build scheduled
downtime into every job. In this instance, an
interlude would be a good idea.
Interludes and LImIts
Interludes are moments where the players
trade character exploration in exchange for
a break from physical danger (see p. 446).
Interludes are conversation amongst the crew
during a quiet stretch of road, sparked by role-
playing prompts or proposed by the players.
The scene gets Takers some alone time
amongst their peers and relieves them from
the uncertain danger of the world outside the
enclave.
However, Takers are limited to one interlude
per job. This doesn’t mean they’re only
allowed one scene of role-playing — talk
in-character as much as you like — but an
interlude can only replace one leg encounter.
So, if the crew reminiscences about a movie
they all loved, that interlude replaces the
raider ambush the Market had planned. If
they proceed to recite the entire movie from
memory, then the players are just making the
game longer. That aberrant is still waiting for
them over the horizon.
The SIte and ComplIcatIon
Nothing changes about sites and
complications during extended play. Markets
should keep in mind that complications are a
good place to reinforce job lines. It’s excellent
narrative placement for a recurring antagonist
to rear its head.
Return
The return journey back from a job is the
easiest section to cut. Still, if the Market has a
delayed complication or climactic leg to throw
in, now is the time.
Book-keepIng
Complete what little accounting is required
by the game at the end of a session. It’s easy
for players to say they’re going to get their
numbers recorded, forget about it, and come
back to the next session with a character
sheet in complete disarray. It’s much better
to calculate incidentals, make purchases, pay
debts, and assess penalties while the session
is still fresh in everyone’s mind. In the same
amount of time it takes to clear up snacks and
gather coats, the group can ensure everyone
arrives at the next game ready to play.
There are a few concerns regarding
bookkeeping specific to the Market.
The Crew Sheet
The Crew Sheet is a character sheet for the
Market. It’s the vital statistics of a campaign.
If using the MBA rules, the Crew Sheet is
a vital tool for everyone to use at the table to
keep track of their various investments and
business ventures. Even in more basic play,
the sheet remains very useful to Markets.
Having things like the Break Point pre-
recorded make price fixing much faster. A
catalog of previous jobs, Scores, and job lines
improves role-playing as both NPCs and
players have a written record for callbacks.
Finally, a well-maintained Crew Sheet is
vital for Markets seeking to fine-tune their
campaigns. If the players have been getting
shafted a lot lately, it might be time to throw
them a bone during the next job’s leg. If
they’ve been rolling in bounty, it’s probably
time to engineer a brutal setback. The Crew
Sheet is the tool Markets use to engineer the
story arcs they want to see in the next session,
so keep it up to date.

o s t e a l f r o m p rivate
Learn to Delegate
You are not your players’ accountant. You are Those wh li ves in
s p e n d t h e ir
not the IRS.
individuals o s e who
Concerns about cheating are a
c h a in s ; t h
communication and expectation issue, not
stocks and e a s u r e go
an additional responsibility for the person
e p u b li c t r
running the game. If something is brazen,
call it out, but otherwise let players keep their steal from th d p u r p le.
g o ld a n
own books. Best-case scenario: keeping track
of every item in every player’s inventory takes
dressed in
away valuable processing power that could be
spent writing better jobs. Worst-case scenario: -Cato the Elder
getting nosey in a character’s books is seen as
a breech of trust at the table.
The only numbers a Market needs to record
go on the Crew Sheet.

423
 MBA Rules
The core activity of Red Markets is risking
death for profit in the Loss. However, real-
world economics promotes a much more
diverse labor pool. Perhaps the group wants
to explore business opportunities other
than the Taker model, or maybe a group’s
ethics require supplemental income to make
up for Contracts declined. It could be that
the players are experienced enough with
the Profit System to know that diversifying
portfolios will get them out faster.
But always remember the game is about
being a Taker, not a business-owner. Focusing
too heavily on other forms of capital can
detract from the experience if the Market
doesn’t carefully consider which activities fit
into the group’s expectations of the narrative.
MBA rules are for players that have already
mastered the basic structure of Red Markets
and want to dive deeper into the game.
424
WorkIng a Double
Experienced campaign players eventually
come up with the idea of doing two or more
Contracts at once, or designing a Score that
just so happens to be on the way to a client’s
job site. This is especially likely in campaigns
that utilize a lot of real-world locations and
mapping software. When the group sees that
Job A and Job B are right next to each other,
it’s natural to ask, “why not do both?”
The Market should encourage this type of
thinking. After all, maximizing efficiency is
the cornerstone of economic success. But
the group needs to understand that there are
no labor laws in the Loss, and when you are
your own boss, you have to play the exploited
worker before you get to be the fat cat.
The Danger of SplIt ShIfts
If players want to work two jobs at once, they
may do so. The only requirement is that the
rules must reflect the economic situation:
namely, the reward only doubles if the
available resources are halved. What does
this mean?
When working two jobs at once:
1. Both have to be negotiated using the same
number of Scams that would be used for
a single job. This means that a group of
four would only have three Scams to split
across negotiating two jobs (one Scam
is lost for the negotiator, and the three
remaining players can’t Scam both clients
at once).
2. All the normal refresh and replenishment
that occurs between jobs is delayed. Haul
doesn’t refresh until the end of both
Contracts and/or Scores. Will doesn’t
refill unless spots are played. First Aid in
the field is the only healing available, and
Dependents only heal Humanity once at
the beginning of the session.
3. There’s always at least one Leg tacked on to
the travel time that won’t be compensated
by either client, unless the jobs are located
at the exact same site. It’s up to the
Market to decide exactly how far the two
job sites are apart, but clients are never
going to pay for their employees to go
moonlighting.
4. Failing to perform some aspect of a
Contract due to moonlighting earns an
automatic -Rep spot “Checks the Ass Can’t
Cash.”
5. Upkeep remains the same no matter how
many Contracts a crew is working at one
time. About the only thing that doesn’t
get harder working a double is upkeep —
that’s the entire point of doing two jobs at
once.
Even working a double where both jobs
are unqualified successes, Takers are going
to stumble back to the enclave physically and
mentally drained. Hopefully, it ends up being
worth it, but that’s everybody’s gamble, isn’t it?
Small BusInesses
Risk is factored into any successful business
model. Many PCs might decide the risk of
going over the fence isn’t worth the reward.
Why not try some occupation besides Taking?
After all, there would be no clients hiring
Takers if other endeavors in the Loss weren’t
seeing at least some success. What’s wrong
with traditional retail? It may take longer to
reach retirement, but the chances of living to
see that day go way up.
The problem with founding non-Taker small
businesses in Red Markets is the role-playing
challenge they present to players. Working a
9-to-5 certainly constitutes economic horror
(hell, it inspires it), but keeping a character’s
life interesting when the only antagonist is
the grind of daily labor can be difficult. These
struggles compound exponentially with the
ensemble cast represented by a gaming
group. An RPG designed for characters that
do nothing besides run a hot-dog cart in
the Loss could just as easily be designed to
simulate running a hot-dog cart in real-life.
There’s definitely horror to be found in the
do-or-die mentality of mundane capitalism,
but it’s much harder to wring the catharsis of
horror fiction from the same source.
Still, small businesses — both real and
fictional — encourage innovation and help
define entire communities. Markets should
avoid vetoing a player’s entrepreneurial
schemes outright; the trick is to allow creative
economic solutions without letting the
game descend into banalities. Risk can be
minimized, but never eliminated.
Gold alone does passion move!
Gold monopolizes love!
A curse on her and on the man
Who this traffic first began.
-Abraham Cowley
425
 When Takers want to start a small business
besides Taking, refer to the following rules
and record the results on the Crew sheet (see
p. 488). Just make sure everyone understands
that a lot of small businesses fail... which was
true even before the zombies came.
Small BusInesses At-a-Glance
1. Score Supply:
a. Run a Score to supply the business. The
number of units recovered determines
the Supply. The Market rolls Black to
determine value per unit.
b. Convince a wholesaler, using Persuasion
and a +Rep spot, to provide initial assets at
cost. The Market rolls Black to determine
the price per unit. Takers may buy however
many units that are offered (the Red die)
and they can afford; investing up front
always calls for a Self-Control: Stress
check.
c. The Takers start with a supply, gifted to
them through a Pro Bono job or found
during a particularly lucky (crit. success)
Leg.
2. Market rolls on the Troubleshooting
table and interprets what happens.
a. At least one Taker must sacrifice a work
vignette (see “Work/Life balance” p. 434)
to deal with Troubleshooting.
3. Gouge Customers (roll equilibrium)
a. The Black is the bounty per unit. Mark up
is determined by...
−− Takers: Doing sales personally requires
a Work Vignette scene. The modified
Black # on a successful Persuasion
check by whomever is working the
business determines mark-up. Mark-up
is added to equilibrium to make the final
price per unit.
−− Employees: Hired Help must be
interviewed in a Work Vignette
scene. The modified Black # on a
successful Sensitivity check made
by the business owner indicates the
426
quality of the employee mark-up. As
long as the employee is paid, this is the
standard mark-up. Mark-up is added to
equilibrium to make the final price per
unit.
4. Determine liquidity, or number of units
that can be sold per session.
a. Liquidity is determined by the Supply/
Demand chart. The price (Black + mark
up) offered sets the Demand. Supply
(normally the Red) is determined by the
number of units left to sell.
b. Supply/Demand and Liquidity
−− Flooded = 0-1 units per session (Market
rolls; if Black beats Red, one sale was
made)
−− Subsidiary = 1 units per session
−− Scarce = 2 units per session
−− Volatile = 3 units per session
5. Takers’ calculate Work/Life Balance
1. Takers working Sales costs one work
vignette.
2. Interviewing and hiring potential
employees costs one work vignette.
3. Maintaining employees costs bounty
every session, and mark-up remains
constant.
4. Manipulating equilibrium requires a
work vignette, just as a Scam that would
affect equilibrium in negotiations.
5. Troubleshooting costs a work vignette.
Score Supply
Businesses need a steady source of supply
in order to operate. Manufacturers need raw
materials. Distributors need transportation.
Retailers need goods. Everyone needs labor.
But five years into the Loss, any reliable
source of supply has already been snatched
up and commoditized. The lucky few with
their hands on the economic reins make
up the wholesalers and clients that employ
Takers in the first place. Players that want a
steady, constant revenue stream despite the
chaos of the Loss should realize that such
sophisticated operations require experience
to run and a hefty initial investment. In short,
those that want a “sure thing” should make
joining the wasteland’s business elite the
focus of their retirement plans. By their very
nature, any other endeavors remain fleeting.
Stealing and salvaging supply from the
Loss is the quickest way to start a small
business. Most Takers need to run a Score
before founding a business. The only
difference between a mission to establish a
small business and a regular Score is that,
once the goods are acquired, Takers use
them to start their own endeavor rather than
offloading the package onto a wholesaler.
Essentially, this means running a Score
without hope of profit, with the intention of
ensuring a more reliable revenue stream in
later games.
Scores to secure supply don’t have to be
planned beforehand. If the group manages
a huge windfall of goods or accidentally
captures a means of production during an
unrelated Score, they can certainly hold back
and sell only enough to keep the wholesaler
from getting suspicious. However, once the
Takers go into business for themselves, the
wholesaler is going to be pissed. Skimming off
the top of a Score to start your own business
earns a -Rep spot “Schemer,” and that NPC
becomes a direct competitor.
AlternatIve Supply: BuyIng Wholesale
Perhaps the Takers think the mortal danger
of a Score isn’t worth it without immediate
payment. They might want to buy their initial
supply by securing a wholesale price from
another distributor, then marking up their
own prices to secure a profit. Not a bad plan
— it’s certainly how things were done before
the Crash.
But here’s the thing: wholesalers don’t
stay in business if they give their goods away.
Getting someone to provide start-up supply at
cost is a huge favor to ask, typically reserved
for friends and family. For groups that want
to skip the physical effort required to secure
supply, use the following rules:
Step One: Find a Wholesaler:
The group needs to find a wholesaler that
specializes in what they need (trucks, protein
powder, livestock... whatever). More details on
creating wholesaler NPCs can be found in the
section on Scores (see p. 396).
Step Two: Generate the Wholesale Price
The asset’s equilibrium needs to be
generated. Roll Black/Red. The Black is the
amount Takers have to pay per unit. The
Red is the maximum number of units the
wholesaler can sell to them. The number isn’t
added together when initially investing in a
business because it A) represents a wholesale
price and B) the number of units Takers buy
determines their initial supply.
What’s a unit? It depends on whether the
PC business offers goods, services, or some
combination of the two, as well as the bulk
such businesses typically deal in. It could be
price per trip for a trucking service, or the
price per truck to start a trucking business.
Equilibrium price could be 10 repairs at a
garage, or price per 100 rat kebobs sold.
Narratively, the group can describe whatever
fits. The point of a unit price is that it
establishes how much supply Takers can
afford to buy initially; later, equilibrium and
units factor into Liquidity (see p. 434).
Keep in mind: the price might be higher or
lower in the community where the wholesaler
operates than it is at the Takers’ home
enclave. If the price is too steep, they need
to find another entrepreneurial opportunity
(buy low; sell high). Furthermore, if the Takers
move the goods to another marketplace, the
Red die sticks at the number of units they
bought, while Black fluctuates with where
they go in the setting.
Step Three: Ingratiate Yourself
Getting the wholesaler to agree to sell the
goods at cost requires three things:
A. A successful Persuasion check, to be
role-played between a PC and the Market
(playing a wholesaler, of course).
427
 B. Burning a +Rep spot. Nobody is going
to consider such a massive discount
unless trust has already been established
between the Crew and wholesaler. If you
don’t have one, earn one.
C. Taking a -Rep spot “You Owe Me.” This
spot is specific to the wholesaler, but it
can be used at any time. If the PCs are
negotiating with another Client that knows
the wholesaler, the Market can say the
debt got sold off and it can be used for
additional Sway in negotiations. If the
wholesaler wants a small job done pro
bono, the -Rep spot can call in that favor.
Step Four: Doing the Deal
Once the wholesaler agrees to sell at a
discount, the Takers need to make the initial
investment. This surplus is going to have to
come from their professional development
budget, retirement plans, or a loan. Any
funds that don’t come from Pro. Dev. Budgets
428
provoke a level-2 Self-Control: Stress check,
regardless of whether or not the group is
pooling resources. Small businesses were
gambles in the best of times and it is not the
best of times. Anxiety remains part of the
price to play. Once the check is made, the
Crew can buy as many units of supply as they
can afford.
Step Five: Distribution
Depending on where their wholesaler was
located, the Takers must now either transport
their units of starting supply back home (a
dangerous adventure, all by itself) or start
the next phase, “Gouging Consumers” (see p.
432).
AlternatIve Supply: GIftIng Supply
Leaving a golden opportunity just lying in
the middle of road is one of the ways the
Market can interpret a critical success when
randomly generating Legs. The crew can
 hide it and smuggle the goods back into the
enclave after they finish whatever Contract/
Score was originally being worked. A supply
of goods big enough to start a business
could also serve as a powerful Gift spot in
negotiations with an NPC client.
Either way, gifting Takers with enough free
supply to start a small business is a risky
proposition for those that seek to control
player behavior. There’s no reason the crew
can’t offload the stock to a wholesaler and
treat their luck as a one-off lump sum. In fact,
that’s probably the safest thing to do. Markets
should therefore gift supply to provoke
interesting character choices; it is not a tool
for forcing players into trying the MBA rules.
If Takers have no obligations to use their
jackpot any specific way, it makes for a better
narrative: future success results from virtue
rather than luck and future failures are
mistakes rather than fate. The anxiety over
how to keep a surplus from turning into folly
is a great opportunity for meaningful role-play.
TroubleshootIng
Murphy’s is the only law the rules the Loss.
Even the most mundane concerns are plagued
by extraordinary problems — somebody has
to be there to run things. Since it doesn’t exist
unless it’s played out at the table, working a
shift at the store needs a scene with at least
one of the Takers.
Before any vignettes regarding a small
business play out, the Market rolls 1d10
on the troubleshooting table. The result
determines what has changed in the enclave’s
economy since the last session. Most
problems that arise can be solved, but doing
so demands resources from the PCs (see
“Work/Life Balance” p. 434).

An Example of Gifting Supply

As the crew crests a hill, they find an overturned caravan. The carts are upside down, and the horses pulling them
have been gutted and gnawed upon. Likewise, all the guards and merchants are dead, their mutilated bodies long ago
looted by some other passing crew. The mob or creature responsible for this massacre has long since left the area.
All that remains are the coffins the caravan was hauling, unopened and undisturbed.
If the Takers open the coffins, they find that the coffins don’t contain dead bodies, but rather “Real Dolls.”
These elaborate silicone mannequins served as luxury items for a certain demographic before the Crash, and now the
crew has (the Market rolls B10/R7) seven of them valued at 10 bounty a piece.
So what to do? Getting these heavy bastards back to the enclave is going to be a pain, and hiding them so
they can be recovered after the Contract they are currently on might be just as hard. If they do get them back,
there are certainly enough lonely men left in the Loss to make some serious money off these things, but is that
how the Crew wants to brand itself? The folks who kill casualties when they aren’t pimping robots? Alternately, the
Crash created a new demand for faux funerals: burial services for loved ones still wandering as casualties or otherwise
assumed dead. If the crew could heat and reshape the latex faces into the likeness of a dead loved one, the crew
could provide a valuable psychological service for families at the enclave.. for a bloated price that now includes all these
free coffins. But, in this instance, now there’s the problem of finding and hiring someone capable of turning a doll
meant to look like a double-D porn-star into some approximation of Grandma. Maybe it’s all too unsavory and the crew
leaves them lying in the road, or perhaps they offer that creeper Felt-Touch Phil a discount and sign everything
over to his wholesaling operation.
There’s no choice players can make that doesn’t reveal something about their characters, which is the best
justification for gifting supply.

429
 TROUBLE DESCRIPTION
Something completely outside the Takers’ control threatens the supply,
employee(s), equilibrium, or another essential aspect of the business.
Lightning hits the shed. The company or its employees are falsely accused of
a crime. A shift in politics or inter-enclave relations crashes the price.
Whatever the Market describes, the risk is always the permanent shutdown
1 of the business. To prevent this, Takers must risk their own physical, mental,
Act of God or financial health in addition to the usual cost in Work/Life Balance. For
example, they could risk entering a burning building to save the supply. They
could stake their reputation and defend an employee in court. They could
address the entire enclave to calm the financial panic. The more Takers that
work to save the business, the less severe the consequences for failed rolls.
However, the cost in work/life balance remains constant. When is it better just
to accept your losses?
Though bad in the long run, slight economic downturn can be a boon to small
operations. As employment opportunities dwindle, employers can lower
wages safe in the knowledge that few better opportunities exist.
If the crew employs anyone to run the business, a Taker can make a
2 Deception check. On a success, the wages per session lower by 2 bounty
as the Taker feigns “poor me” and encourages belt-tightening. On a failure,
Wages employees understand they’re being screwed, but the Taker can still lower
Stagnate wages 1 bounty by being a dick about it. This latter tactic doesn’t require an
additional roll to work, but shafting workers always provokes a Self-Control:
Detachment check.
Of course, a crew can choose to waste this opportunity to reduce costs. In
that case, check Self-Control: Stress. Markets might also doll out some + or
-Rep spots for exceptionally generous or miserly role-playing.
Though good in the long run, an economic boom at the enclave can hurt
costs in the short term. Lots of new ventures mean lots of employment
opportunities. Takers have to compete to retain valuable employees.
If the crew employs anyone, they ask for a raise. Resisting this request
requires a Deception check. On a success, the workers believe that the
3 Taker is struggling and only asks for a 1 bounty raise. On a failure, the
Wages RISE workers recognize the Taker’s greed and demand a 2 bounty raise. Without
a Deception check, the workers automatically ask for 2 bounty because they
sense a pushover. Role-play accordingly.
Refusing to give out any kind of raise results in the employees quitting. The
Market can give out + an -Rep spots accordingly for generous bonuses and
exceptionally nasty resignations.
Liquidity is stable. Price is fixed. Mark-up is working. Employees are happy.
4 Everything is going according to plan.
For crew’s with employees, just pay wages as normal and apply the typical
BUSINESS AS mark-up. If a Taker wants to work a shift, calculate work/life balance normally.
USUAL Subtract units of supply, add bounty, and move on with the game. Nothing
goes wrong. The minimum effort keeps things going.

430
 The number of units goes down without any sales. The Market rolls a 1d10:
1-3: Lose one unit
4-6: Lose two units
5 7-9: Lose three units
SHRINKAGE 10: Lose four units
It’s up to the Market why this happens and who is responsible. Perishable
stocks can spoil. Goods can be stolen by employees or burglars, and assets
can be sabotaged. The Market should always provide an opportunity to
recover at least some of the lost supply, but doing so always costs in work/life
balance or additional risk.

The invisible hand of the Market raises the value of what the small business
offers. Roll 1d10:

1-3: Add one bounty to demand (Black)

6 4-6: Add two bounty to demand (Black)
DEMAND 7-9: Add three bounty to demand (Black)
10: Add four bounty to demand (Black)
RISES
Mark-up is still determined by the skills of the Taker or employee in charge,
but increased demand means it’s that much easier to profit. Liquidity is based
off the new price.
There doesn’t need to be an established reason for the shift in demand.
Economies are often too complex to explain fully. Markets are free to come up
with narrative reasons, though.

Capricious fate devalues the business’s bread and butter.

1-3: Subtract one bounty from demand (Black)

4-6: Subtract two bounty from demand (Black)
7-9: Subtract three bounty from demand (Black)
7 10: Subtract four bounty from demand (Black)
DEMAND
FALLS Mark-up is still determined by the skills of the Taker or employee in charge,
but decreased demand means it’s that much harder to profit. Liquidity is
based off the new price.
There doesn’t need to be an established reason for the shift in demand.
Economies are often too complex to explain fully. Markets are free to come up
with narrative reasons, though.

Images of agency are increasingly distortions of a world of merchandising so subtle

that the consumer is consistently helped to believe that he or she is an actor, where
in fact he or she is at best a chooser.
-Arjun Appadurai
431
 Though equilibrium remains stable, liquidity increases. It’s up to the Market
8 why this occurs. Perhaps the population came into some disposable income,
or maybe the weather is just nice. The change occurs regardless of the
LIQUIDITY narrative around it or what Supply/Demand chart would normally describe.
INCREASES Whatever the economic condition, increase liquidity by one for this session
only.
Though equilibrium remains stable, liquidity decreases. It’s up to the Market
9 to explain, but it’s more than likely that the enclave is either entering an
economic depression or the populace begins to realize it has a surplus of
LIQUIDITY whatever the business offers. The change occurs regardless of the narrative
dECREASES around it or what Supply/Demand chart would normally describe. Decrease
liquidity by one. If the business is already flooded, no sales can be made this
session.
Someone is trying to offload a surplus of exactly what the business sells.
It could be the result of an inheritance, or a going-out-of-business sale.
Whatever the reason, everything must go.
The Market rolls Red. The result is the number of new units of supply
10 available. The price per unit equals the latest demand price (the Black die).
There is no mark-up. The NPC needs to offload the material fast, offering it at
WINDFALL cost.
Do the Takers pull money from retirement in order to replenish their
supply at a discount? Borrow it? Do they let the opportunity pass? They can
worry about budgets or wonder about what may have been; either way calls
for a Self-Control: Stress check. And keep in mind, more units means that the
Supply/Demand situation has changed as well.

Gouge Consumers is a Scam and costs in terms of work/life

Whereas the Black and Red are usually added
together in Scores and Contracts, only the
Black counts towards equilibrium price in a
small business. This is because no stable
business operating on a daily basis inside an
enclave can withstand the sort of scarcity and
risk Taker jobs undergo. (It also keeps Red
Markets from descending into a game entirely
about bean counting and keeps things scarce
enough to encourage the regular cycle of
desperate adventure).
But profit must be made, even by narrow
margins. The goods or services must be
priced high enough to compensate for the
capital it took to secure them.
How much of a price mark-up the players
can get away with depends on the social
skills of the person running the business.
The added mark-up is the modified Black #
on a successful CHA check, made by the PC
running the shop. Taking time to run the shop
432
balance (see p. 434).
Example: Securocrat, a Taker from the
Oxford Crew, has given up time with his
family to run the group’s rat kabob food
truck between jobs. If he fails a Persuasion
check, the most he can sell the kabobs for is
their starting price, which is currently B3/
R2, making for a price of 3 bounty per unit
(apparently, rodent foodstuffs are a subsidiary
good). If he makes a Persuasion check,
Securocrat hawks his wares and makes rat-
on-a-stick seem more delicious than it has any
right to be.
Securocrat’s player role-plays the best pitch
for rat cuisine he can think of and rolls the
dice. They land B5+1/R1. That means he’ll
be able to sell each unit for three times the
initial price, at 9 bounty a piece! Apparently,
Securocrat is the only Michelin-star gourmet
rat peddler in the Loss.
Jumping up demand that high changes the
businesses liquidity (see “Liquidity” p. 434),
jumping rat from subsidiary to scarce on the
Supply/Demand chart. With only two units of
rat left to sell (R2), the crew will run out this
session.

HIrIng Help
What’s the point of being the boss if you have
to work all the time? A Taker’s potential is not
realized cooking, cleaning, or waiting behind
a counter. Skills can be put to better use over
the fence, securing big profits from wealthy
clients or hunting lost treasures. Why not give
some of the many impoverished enclavists
some much-needed employment?
Because good help is hard to find.
Finding qualified, reliable people in need
of work requires a Research check for every
applicant. Failure means no one wants the
work or that a Reference is going to have to
help find someone.
After that, the person in charge of the
crew’s HR has to interview the applicant.
This requires a Sensitivity check and some
role-playing. Failing the check means the
employee is a loafer, but the Taker won’t
learn this until the business underperforms the learn pantsuit lady is a meth addict when
by selling units without mark-up. Success she’s found smoking rocks in the storage
determines how good the employee is a room.
selling the product. Unlike gouging customers Finally, pay needs to be negotiated. Unlike
personally, the mark-up earned by a hard- more serious Contract negotiation, this can
working employee depends on the manager’s be determined by a single Persuasion check.
ability to identify that employee. The modified The price to pay the employee equals the
Black # on a successful Sensitivity check unmodified Red on a success. On a failure,
made by the business owner indicates the the cost to pay is Red PLUS the Taker’s
quality of the employee mark-up. This rate Persuasion skill. Cost is to be split as evenly
remains constant as long as the person is as possible amongst the Crew.
employed. Employees are assumed to remain loyal
It’s suggested that the Market and the and hardworking until supply runs out or
PC role-play the interview process after the the troubleshooting table (see p. 430) says
roll. That way, the NPC’s personality can be otherwise. Employees can be narrated as a
determined by the numbers on the Sensitivity single worker or the foreman of a group of
roll. If it’s B10 +3/R5, the Market can say the hired help. Regardless of the workforce, the
lady shows up in a pressed pantsuit despite it price negotiated for wages stays the same.
being the apocalypse. Conversely, on a B1+1/ No business large enough to subdivide wages
R10, the Market gets to play a transient on a over dozens of workers can be maintained
meth-binge that accidentally stumbled into a while still working as a Taker.
job interview. On a B5/R5, the Taker only gets
433
 LIquIdIty
Liquidity is the rate at which an asset can be
sold without drastically altering the asset’s
price. In Red Markets, liquidity is measured in
the number of units that can be sold per game
session at the current price, including mark-
up. A game session is defined as one Contract
or Score, regardless how much actual time
it takes to finish. Liquidity is determined by
where the price falls on the Supply/Demand
chart.
Liquidity (increases clockwise around the
Supply/Demand chart)
Flooded = 0-1 unit per session (Market
rolls; if Black beats Red, one sale was
made)
Subsidiary = 1 unit per session
Scarce = 2 units per session
Volatile = 3 units per session
The combination of liquidity, equilibrium
price, and mark-up are responsible for
turning hard-won supply into bounty.
However, liquidity can be affected by the
Troubleshooting roll and the mark-up.
Example: The Troubleshooting roll is anti-
climactic. It’s just another day in the Loss.
Sanguine works her shift at the crew’s
bike shop: “Ace in the Spokes.” She gives up
valuable time with her Dependents to do so
because she doesn’t want to lose a Scam in
future negotiations (see “Work/Life Balance”).
Instead, the player uses her Life vignette to
describe the sales pitch Sanguine gives out
in the streets about the benefits of an 8-gear
shifter. Sanguine rolls B7+1/R3 for her
Persuasion test. It’s good advertisement and
she’s getting onlookers interested.
The demand rolled was B5, and the crew
has a supply of 7 units of bikes. That puts the
bike business on the line between Flooded
and Volatile. Sanguine’s charms have caused
a rush on bikes though; everyone wants to get
those road bikes before they’re stuck slogging
up a hill on a gearless. The marketplace is
now Volatile, and Sanguine’s Persuasion
434
check means each unit is selling for 13
bounty.
The liquidity in volatile marketplaces is
three, which means Sanguine just moved 39
bounty in product! However, with three units
gone, the bike shop’s supply has dropped
to four, and the price drops back down to
its equilibrium of five once Sanguine stops
hustling. Next session, it remains to be seen
whether they’ll be able to bump bikes up to
scarce or if conditions depress into subsidiary
goods.
Work/LIfe Balance
Red Markets expresses the time between jobs
in terms of work/life balance. This means that
each Taker gets one short scene detailing a
typical professional activity and one scene
to establish a typical home life. In the core
game, work is always whatever Scam the
Taker pulls before or during negotiations. If
negotiations don’t last that long, or if the crew
is doing a Score, the work scene is ignored
entirely: after all, real Taker work is done over
the fence. The Taker’s domestic life is always
represented by a vignette with a Dependent
(see “Vignettes” p. 415). On rare occasions,
the life scene has to be dedicated to fulfilling
a retirement milestone, but that’s as varied as
vignettes get in basic play.
MBA rules don’t change the work/life
balance so much as give players the tools to
screw it up. When running a small business,
the options for the work scene go far beyond
Scams.
1. A Taker gouging customers and working
the business
Working retail, cooking food, running invoices
— none of these help recover from the last job
or prepare for the new one. If a Taker wants
to work at the business and use Persuasion to
secure a mark-up, that replaces the work time
typically dedicated to Scams or engaging in
negotiation.
For a business to be successful without
driving any Takers nuts, the Crew needs to
cover shifts in turns or hire help.
2. Interviewing and hiring employees
Whoever has to hire an employee to run the
business while the Takers are over the fence
has a lot of work to do. Curating a pool of
potential hires, ensuring their qualifications,
and negotiating salary takes time — time that
can’t be spent researching a client’s spots
or intimidating competition. Contracting
someone outside the Crew to run the
business in its owners’ stead is discussed in
“Hiring Help” (see p. 433).
3. Manipulating the Supply/Demand
equilibrium of goods and its effects on
liquidity
Working to alter Supply/Demand takes up
time that could be spent on Scams focused on
a future client. Messing with the equilibrium
of a small business’s goods or services means
that character cannot do the same for any
other Contracts in consideration that week.
With small businesses, the price manipulation
has the trickle-down effect of altering
Liquidity.
4. Troubleshooting
Anyone that has ever tried to run a business
knows that something is always going wrong.
The troubleshooting table simulates this state
of perpetual collapse (p. 430). Takers always
have the option to let the market shift happen,
but taking action to correct course always
costs Work/Life balance. The PCs working to
counteract a roll on the troubleshooting table
must either sacrifice that session’s Scam or
their life vignette with Dependents. There’s
never enough time to heal from the last job,
prepare for the next, and keep the business
afloat.
5. Pursue an Investment
If a Taker is working to research and vet a
possible investment opportunity, that time
can’t be used to play with one’s kids or pursue
more immediate financial gain. Role-playing
scenes with possible business partners takes
up the work vignette. For rules on how do to
this, see “Investments and Speculation” (p.
436).
6. Insider Trading
Similarly, putting a “finger on the scale”
when speculating in financial futures takes
time. Anyone engaging in insider trading
spends a work vignette to do so. Again, see
“Investments and Speculation” for more
information.
7. Fulfilling a Milestone
Once characters have enough to fulfill a
milestone in their retirement plans, they need
to role-play a scene in which that aspect of
their Dependent’s future is actually secured.
This takes time.
8. Selling Gear
It takes time to find the right buyer for the
excess equipment the Taker wants to sell. In
order to off-load unwanted gear in the MBA
rules, a Taker needs to use a Work action to
do so.
Life vignettes, or scenes with Dependents,
remain mostly unchanged in MBA rules.
However, the one exception is that Takers have
the option to convert “life” scenes into “work”
scenes. This makes it possible to both run a
side business and Scam for negotiations, or
to take two work vignettes dedicated to the
business. However, losing the balance means
that the Taker has spent every available
moment since the last job hustling, neglecting
all other family responsibilities in the pursuit
of bounty. Skipping vignettes with Dependents
has the following consequences.
1. Exchanging life for work cannot be
reversed; work vignettes cannot be
converted into life vignettes.
If you agree to work, you’re working. Nobody
is going to give up their precious time
with loved ones because you personally
miscalculated. For instance, let’s say a Taker
converts a life vignette into work so that she
can troubleshoot the business and Scam the
next Contract negotiation. But the Leadership
check to start negotiations fails and talks don’t
go on long enough for her Scam to have effect.
435
 This doesn’t mean the Taker now has time to
go to her daughter’s piano recital; it means
she spent the time trying to find leverage on
a client and either failed or had her work
squandered by the negotiator.
2. Skipping a vignette with Dependents
forfeits all Humanity healing that all
Dependents provide.
Though vignette scenes are typically with
one Dependent at a time, those scenes are
representative of the Takers entire domestic
life in the nebulous time between jobs.
Skipping the scene means forfeiting all the
restorative benefits Dependents have on
Humanity.
3. Dependents don’t get Needy any faster,
but the Taker’s next scene must be in the
support theme and make mention of the
extra work in the previous session.
Many a marriage and childhood has been
ruined by working too many hours. Skipping
time with loved ones makes them even more
reliant on the Taker’s presence, not less. Next
the Taker has a scene with a loved one, role-
play the Dependent as in need and, perhaps,
resentful of the neglect.
Investments and SpeculatIon
Don’t think of it as Wall Street. Think of it as
micro-investment and small business loans:
the kind of financial speculation the World
Health Organization uses to draw people out
of generational poverty. The amount of bounty
a person needs to get a business off the
ground in the Loss is minuscule compared to
the capital that moves around the Recession’s
remaining financial markets. A successful
Taker crew can easily make its breaking point,
engage in some professional development,
and still have enough left to buy shares in a
new venture.
For a few people, the idea of smuggling
themselves across the border only to become
a pauper in the Recession holds no appeal.
Some like the Loss just fine; their only
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complaint is that they don’t own it yet. Loss
speculators bet their lives in the hopes of
owning huge swaths of the country when the
T-minus Never rolls around. If the world’s
governments want their land back when the
last casualty turns to dust, they’re going to
have to negotiate with the robber barons that
saw opportunity in the chaos and survived
long enough to seize it.
The blessing and the curse of investing
in the carrion economy is a total lack of
regulation. Recession trading amongst the
surviving nation states still battle against all
forms of oversight. But in the Loss? A tiny
seed fund can grow unrestricted profits but
the risks are equally boundless.
BuIldIng an OpportunIty
Investments can be proposed by the Market
or by the Taker. If the Market thinks a player
would enjoy role-playing through a certain
opportunity, an NPC comes by looking for
investors. Player-designed investments should
be treated with equal enthusiasm, so long as
nothing proposed drastically alters what the
Market has planned for the campaign.
So what opportunities are available in the
Loss?
A Taker could invest in another crew’s
small business. Providing the upfront bounty
needed to buy initial supply can earn an easy
revenue stream that requires little or no work.
However, it’s just as easy for Takers to piss
bounty away on a doomed concept, or get
scammed out of their savings by the Loss’s
many con artists.
Enclaves seek investors to improve
infrastructure. In most locations, this looks
similar to a war bond system. Let’s say orbital
satellites suggest a front of dead weather
headed towards the enclave. The enclave
leadership needs funds fast if they’re going
to upgrade defenses in time, faster than
their taxes allow. The solution? Get loans
from private citizens, and pay the interest
with taxes collected after the renovations.
Of course, these lucrative deals require the
next administration to honor the promises
of the old. And those that object might find
themselves out in the cold, left to wonder if
austerity was really worth it as they get eaten
alive.
Crowd funding remains viable in the Loss.
Do-it-yourself attitudes and collectivist
movements are the only way anyone survived
in the first place. It makes sense the same
ethos would be fiscally popular. Imagine a
group of actors that travel the Loss, putting
on plays for enclaves and providing some
much needed analog entertainment. How
would such people feed themselves, not to
mention hire Taker crews to escort them
between jobs? To risk such a “frivolous”
endeavor despite the grim pragmatism of the
Loss, they’d need to secure costs up front.
Takers providing an initial investment could
dictate terms, requiring a percentage of the
door from each performance they enable.
“Becoming a backer” ties these investors to
the fate of the group, floating their fortunes on
a full house or sinking them with empty seats.
Shorting other investments is common
practice in the Loss. Takers, as the economic
wildcards in their enclaves, have the power
to cause drastic economic swings. And they
talk to each other. If one crew reports that
the vitamin salvage trade is about to hit its
expiration date, another crew can “short”
vitamin stocks (or invest in “scurvy futures.”
Whatever.) They could sign a contract to buy
an incoming crop of bananas, hoping the
enclave leaders have to purchase it to keep
the population healthy. Of course, this plan
presumes the news of a vitamin shortage isn’t
bullshit and that people won’t just seize the
supply by force. Hell, if the nutritional deficit
is even a little late in arriving, the crew could
find itself broke with nothing to show for it but
a pile of rotting fruit.
No matter how the Market and players
narrate the investment, remember: there is no
such thing as a sure thing.
IndIvIdual or Broker?
The first thing a group has to decide before
investing is whether they’re acting individually
or under a broker.
Individual investment is exactly what it
sounds like: each Taker antes up an initial
investment, and the return depends on how
much each pays up front. The risk of the
initial investment is still determined by the
roll of a single Red (see “Assessing Risk” p.
438), but each PC gets their rate of return
calculated separately.
The plus side of going in alone is players
manage their own comfort-level and risk. The
downside is that the Market has a lot more
bookkeeping to do, especially if Takers pass
on one opportunity and invest in something
different than their colleagues. Keeping track
of the risk, liquidity, returns, and narrative for
different investments across the entire group
can be a pain. Markets should feel free to veto
any individual investing that gets in the way of
the core activity of being a Taker. The Market
437
 is there to make sure everyone at the table
is having fun and experiencing a good story,
including the Market.
If individual portfolios are too much to
track, Market’s can demand a broker system.
Under a broker, the whole crew goes in
together. Each Taker needs to put in an equal
investment, and each gets an equal share of
the returns. While less realistic, the broker
method keeps bookkeeping simple enough
for the Market to focus on telling a compelling
story.
AssessIng RIsk
Markets start off investments by introducing
the Takers to their possible business partners.
Every potential investor present must make
a Sensitivity check. If no one succeeds, a Red
die is rolled in secret and the result recorded
as “risk” on the Crew Sheet (see p. 488). The
NPC’s description of the opportunity can be
whatever the Market wishes. On a success,
at least one of the investors sees through
the sales pitch to the truth of thing. The
Market rolls one Red in the open: this is the
investment’s risk. The risk is recorded on the
Crew Sheet. When it comes time to calculate
the investment’s return (if any), the risk is the
number the Black has to beat.
When Takers see through the bullshit, the
Market should try to role-play the NPC’s pitch
according the risk result. On a one, it sounds
like a sure thing. The NPC is confident, smart,
and prepared. On a ten, the Market should be
shifty, uncertain, and eager to promise things
that sound too good to be true. This is the
Taker’s last chance to get off the boat. If they
don’t like how it sounds, they can walk away
free and clear. But if they don’t walk, it’s time
to pay.
Regardless of the investments size, all
speculation requires a Self-Control: Stress
check. It’s never pleasant to hand over bounty
with no promise of reward.
LIquIdIty
Instead of being determined by the Supply/
Demand chart, Liquidity in investments is a
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d10 roll. The result is the number of sessions
until the investment pays off. For shorter
campaigns, the Market can choose to divide
any result by two and round down. Liquidity is
recorded on the Crew Sheet. It is the Market’s
responsibility to track of the number of
sessions until the investment shows a return.
Mechanically, the investment is effectively
over. The Taker checked Self-Control: Stress
and paid the money. The risk has been
determined. Now it’s just a matter of waiting.
InsIder TradIng
Insider Trading is an action taken to make
sure the investment is successful. Between
jobs, smart investors do everything they can
to make sure their gamble pays off. What the
Takers have to do depends on the narrative
of the investment. For instance, getting
everyone to shop with a new vender of 3D
printed firearms might require some online
advertising, or the Taker could attract more
casualties to the fence to increase demand.
They could also film themselves using one of
the guns out in the Loss as a testimonial, or
launch a propaganda campaign against the
competing gunsmith.
There are only a few rules to govern Insider
Trading:
1. If the player can’t come up with an idea to
help the investment out, they need to make
a Foresight check to get an idea from the
Market. Financial speculation isn’t easy;
if the player isn’t creative enough to do it,
better hope the character’s skills can pick
up the slack.
2. You can’t do the same Insider Trading twice.
In order to improve the chances for an
endeavor to succeed, investors need to hit
multiple fronts.
3. Insider Trading always involves at least
one skill check. More, if the Market deems
it necessary. The risks associated with
failure depend on the plan (i.e. screwing
up an advertisement is less severe than
screwing up casualty chumming), but
failure is always a possibility.
4. Insider Trading costs on the work/life
balance, regardless of success or failure.
The time used improving the chances of a
future gamble can’t be used to ensure the
success of a current negotiation. Nor can
it be spend with friends and family. There’s
always an opportunity cost.
5. Success adds +1 to the investment tracker
on the Crew Sheet. Each successful
instance of insider trading stacks to
provide a bonus to the Black (Return)
check that occurs once liquidity hits zero
(see below).
Rates of Return
Once liquidity counts down to zero, it’s time
for the investment to pay out. The Black
is rolled and the result is recorded under
“Return” on the Crew Sheet. The return
is compared to the risk, just as if a regular
dice check had been made, with both Black
and Red rolled simultaneously instead of
weeks apart. Instead of adding any skills
to the Black, add the number of successful
Insider Trading actions the Takers completed
between the initial investment and the payout.
Look at the results of “Return + Insider
Trading/Risk” as if it were a normal check
of “Black + Charges/Red” The results are as
follows.
• Critical Success (natural even doubles) =
The investment doubled! Even better, each
charge of Insider Trading adds 10% of the
initial investment to the jackpot.
• Success (Return beats Risk, before or
after Insider Trading) = 50% profit! Take
half of the initial investment, add it to
the result, and give it to the Taker(s).
For example, an initial investment of 40
bounty would return 60 bounty (40/2 +
20. 20 + 40 = 60). Furthermore, add one
bounty per Insider Trading charge spent to
the return.
• Fail (Risk beats Return, after Insider
Trading) = 50% losses. Things didn’t
turn out as planned. An investment of 40
bounty only comes back as 20 bounty. The
business is still open though, and every
Insider Trading charge spent adds one
bounty to the return. It just wasn’t enough
to turn a profit. Call for Self-Control:
Stress checks.
• Critical Failure (natural odd doubles) = All
gone. Nothing is left. The business went
completely bust, or the owner skipped
town with all the profits. Whatever the
narrative reason, the investors loss
everything. Call for level-4 Self-Control:
Stress checks.
Gambling by Another Name
Before rolling for Return and narrating the result,
it’s important that both the Market and the Takers
understand that once the Black hits the table, the
results are final. Criticals are criticals. Results are
results. Will cannot be spent on an investment roll
because the investor only provided money, not skill and
determination. No success can be upgraded. No failure
mitigated.
The dice dictate what happened to the bounty, and
the Market’s interpretation of events becomes canon.
Those that don’t anticipate liking the results shouldn’t
gamble in the carrion economy.
Pro Bono
“...what’s the use you learning to do right when
it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble
to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?”
—The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Huck Finn almost had a point, except the
wages aren’t the same: it’s more profitable to
do wrong. By far.
There’s a lot of injustice in the Loss. Those
that fight the dead for a living see more of it
and are better equipped to fight it than most.
But downtrodden and exploited masses don’t
tend to have a lot of disposable income. Some
client might occasionally drop a Contract for
439
 a noble cause, but, more often than not, moral
compromise is required.
Like Huck, perhaps the players are unable
to ignore human cruelty, or maybe their
characters’ Humanity can’t handle doing
it one more time. These crews might be
tempted to eat the cost of a job just so they
can stomach looking themselves in the mirror.
That’s good... literally. But that’s all it is.
A sense of self-worth doesn’t put food on
the table or bullets in the chamber. A clean
conscious is a luxury not many Takers can
afford. For those willing to subsist on heroism
alone, here are the guidelines for taking work
pro bono.
Scruples are a ChoIce
Markets should avoid forcing Takers to work
for free at all costs. Upkeep doesn’t go away.
Dependents still need to be supported. The
anxiety of watching retirement plans stagnate
and gear break doesn’t dwindle. Taking a job
for no pay is an enormous burden to throw at
the PCs.
So make it a choice. Nobility comes from a
willing acknowledgement of the sacrifices one
is making for others. Let the players know
how hard free work will be on their characters
and Dependents. Let them know the dangers.
If they say no, make Self-Control: Detachment
checks and move on. If they say yes, move
forward knowing full well that even making
Sustenance cost is going to be a struggle.
Either way, the choice informs the
structure of the rest of the campaign; the
player’s just experienced a turning point in
their relationship with each other and the
community.
For example, let’s say the nearby enclave of
Nova Lucre has succumbed to an outbreak.
The last transmissions reported Vectors
inside the walls, and nobody has heard
from anyone in days... that is, nobody except
the schoolteacher. Nova Lucre’s one-room
schoolhouse was housed in a disused grain
silo. The walls and the door held when the
outbreak started, leaving everyone inside
to scream helplessly into Ubiq, waiting for
440
rescue or slow dehydration. Whichever comes
first.
The wrong way to present this pro bono job
to players would be to say Nova Lucre had an
alliance with their enclave and that the crew
must go or be evicted. This turns the PCs into
hostages and the Market into a bully.
The right way would be to have the
enclave’s leadership ask for volunteers.
Meanwhile, the typical collection of Contracts
and Scores stays on offer (business can’t stop
for every little disaster, after all). Sure, the
crew could try to save some kids by risking
their lives for no reward, but they can make
the “responsible” choice as well, absolving
themselves of Nova Lucre by repeating the
sacred mantra: not my problem.
If they don’t go, it’s Self-Control:
Detachment checks all around. As they count
their bounty from some other job, they get to
think about those kids slowly dying in a metal
tube. A new group of ghosts joins the horde
following them about the Loss.
If they say yes and succeed? They’re heroes.
Other enclaves have opportunists, necessary
evils that exploit as they protect. But this
crew? They’re champions.
And if they go and die? Well, that’s the Loss
for you. They’re as likely to be remembered
as fools or martyrs. And the carrion economy
steamrolls onwards....
Human CapItal
Pro Bono jobs shouldn’t be without reward,
but, unlike Contracts and Scores, Markets
hold no obligation to let characters know what
those rewards may be beforehand. Taking on
a job for free need not end a campaign as the
characters begin financially bleeding out the
moment the session is over. It just needs to
feel as if that’s possible.
Firstly, Takers can always hustle for their
bounty. Scavenging the environment and
pulling cards from casualties en route is a
great way to alleviate the costs of a pro bono
job.
The Market can also present opportunities
at the job site. For instance, defending this

tiny enclave from a horde of raiders might
have seemed dumb initially, but capturing
that truck-mounted mini-gun they’re wielding
could make all the effort worth it.
Lastly, never ignore the human capital of
performing a good deed. Takers willing to risk
their lives selflessly are rewarded with +Rep
spots as the story becomes legend amongst
the Lost. Someone they rescue could turn
out to be a useful Reference (over their CHA
Potential) or a future client. A reputation for
honesty is a rare commodity that could end
up paying big in the long term.
Loans
Sometimes Takers need bounty fast. A
piece of gear might be essential for the next
Contract, or a Dependent could come down
with a serious illness. If there’s nothing in the
bank or retirement plan, where’s the bounty
come from?
No traditional credit exists out in the Loss.
No one is about to underwrite a home loan
or credit card to a legally dead person in a
zombie wasteland. A big part of Taker work
involves recovering documents necessary
for the Recession to maintain the structure
of debt slavery that ran the world before the
Crash, and the desperate governments of
the world aren’t about to risk that system
by accepting literally apocalyptic levels of
liability.
This isn’t to say that loans aren’t possible in
Red Markets. Usury is the oldest profession in
the world after prostitution, and it’s twice as
unsavory. There are plenty of people willing to
loan bounty out in the Loss, but they don’t stay
in business long unless they get paid back... by
any means necessary.
Loans At-a-Glance
1. Find a loan shark: someone that survives
primarily off lending bounty and collecting
interest
2. Know the conditions:
−− The shark is not afraid of you. Why?
−− You will pay them back, in full and on
time. How do they assure this?
−− Everyone knows what happens to
those who don’t pay. Who was made an
example, and how did you learn about it?
3. Check a CHA skill to set interest:
−− Critical Success: interest free (10b
loan/10b payment)
−− Success: 10% interest (10b loan/11b
payment)
−− Failure: 50% interest (10b loan/15b
payment)
−− Critical Failure: 100% interest (10b
loan/20b payment)
4. At the end of the session, pay up...
5. ...Or else
FInd a Shark
Everyone in the Loss is hustling to survive.
Wealthy clients with enough bounty to hire
out Contracts do so to maintain their status
amongst an enclave or gain the upper hand
441
 back in the Recession. Even the lowliest
Dependent, completely devoid of marketable
skills, is in a constant struggle to get ahead.
Profit or die.
This means that if someone can be screwed
over, they will be screwed over. Maybe you
can lend a family member a few bounty and
expect to see it back, but anyone that makes
a habit of generosity is soon going to need
charity themselves. In the contest between
kind-hearted banker and starving child, few
feel bad about screwing over the former for
the latter.
This tragedy of the commons means there’s
not much lending in the Loss; people hoard
their bounty and exchange it for concrete
goods. Promises of repayment might mean
something under the rule of law, but what is
an enclavist to do if someone reneges on a
loan? Kill them?
For the loan sharks, the answer is yes.
Five years after the Crash, there is only one
way to survive in the loan business: Everyone
pays. On time. With interest. Or else.
For a shark to ensure that rate of return,
they have to be more unforgiving and deadly
than the poverty of the Loss. And that makes
for a monstrous person indeed.
So that’s first question a Market should ask
Takers asking for money: who in the enclave
is unscrupulous enough to do this for a living?
How do they approach the grim realities
of their business? Are they depressingly
pragmatic regarding breaking kneecaps?
Or do they seem to enjoy feeding family
members to the casualties over the fence?
Example: The Market wants the enclave
to be as defined by the players as possible,
so she asks who would be the loan shark
in this part of the Loss. After some debate
(the “Out-of-character Consensus” model
p. 400), the group decides on Ted Hancock,
former manager of a privatized student loan
fund before the Crash. When Ted convinced
Leroy’s Boys, the cartel of local Stim Sauce
dealers, they were leaving money on the table,
he was brought into the syndicate to manage
their new money lending enterprise.
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Factoring Loans into Enclave
Generation
Acknowledging that characters might need to take out
a loan early in a campaign creates a big opportunity in
enclave generation. Every society has elements of the
criminal, the underground, and the taboo. The extreme
measures required of Loss loan sharks undoubtedly
makes them part of that element. Talking with your
players about how the enclave combats, condones, or
encourages the loan operation is a great way to define
the community everyone is about to play in. Perhaps
the unsavory loan practice is built into the foundation
of the enclave, dating back to the history of its
development. Or maybe the shark also holds a monopoly
on the community’s defenses and is given carte
blanche? At the very least, it can be fun to have a
roguish, “mob boss” character to fill out the VIP roster
and offer future Contracts.
The CondItIons
These aren’t Contract conditions; these are
unspoken realities of the Loss that every
character would know. Talking about them
at the table prevents the player from feeling
tricked if things don’t go the character’s way.
More importantly, they help define the group’s
vision of Red Markets more clearly.
Before giving out loans to a Taker, Markets
should communicate the following conditions
to the group. Then, collaboratively answer the
attached questions and the build the shark’s
business model into the setting.
1. The shark is not afraid of you. Why?
Takers fight monsters for a living. They do
what no one else in the Loss is willing to
risk. Any dispute not handled in negotiations
usually resorts to gunfire. In short, Takers are
scary people.
But not to the shark. Why? Well, it could
be because no one lends in the Loss without
a muscle of their own. Maybe they have the
Takers outmanned and outgunned. Or maybe
they’re used to being the one who is feared,
on account of their tendency to torture the
family members of those who don’t pay up.
Maybe they run the whole enclave and they
can just keep the gate shut if the Takers piss
them off.
Whatever reason the group comes up with,
the shark is not afraid of the Takers, and they
have no reason to be. There’s no bullying their
way out of the loan.
Example: Ted Hancock surgically removed
his empathy even before the zombies came.
Back in the old days, his company exclusively
used him for the “tough cases,” though
Ted could never understand why they were
considered so tough. He once sued a woman
for defaulting payment on a two-decades old
Art History degree. She’d lost her secretary
job when she got diagnosed with cancer, and
Ted got his first promotion when he convinced
the court to seize the money she’d set aside to
pay for chemo. He slept fine that night; if she
didn’t want to pay, she shouldn’t have gone to
college.
Really, he sees his current job as no
different. Sure, now he works with meth
dealers instead of business majors, but that
just means there’s less paperwork. Either way,
you pay Ted or you die slow.
2. You will pay them back, in full and on
time. How do they assure this?
Loan sharks don’t directly profit off savagery
and intimidation. They want to be paid back,
and they want the return business of reliable
customers. As such, communication is key;
the shark makes certain that everyone knows
exactly how much they owe and when it is
due. Who delivers these terms to customers?
Does the shark do so personally, or is there
a designated representative? Is there a
hierarchy of employees, with some dedicated
to administering loans while others collect
payments? Do they send representatives
along on Taker jobs to garnish wages and
protect investments? Are customers allowed
a certain number of warnings before
entering default? Are there penalties — either
financial or physical — for late payments? If
someone gets behind, can they “work off”
debt by performing tasks the shark can’t
otherwise accomplish themselves? Interest
rates are negotiable, but certain parts of the
shark’s business model will remain constant.
Establish these business practices before
getting into the details of this specific loan.
Example: Ted wears a polo shirt tucked
into khakis even now. He maintains an office
in a disused storage container and still has
customers fill out extensive contracts. He’s
happy to answer any questions one might
have, and he’s even managed to put some of
the consequences into safe, legal language:
“Hancock LLC reserves the right to seize of
one or more of the lendee’s bodily extremities
for use by Hancock LLC in local advertising.
Hancock LLC cannot be held responsible
for any medical treatment or consequences
resulting from seizure of assets forfeited as a
result of delinquent payment.”
Once the agreement is done, Ted likely
won’t see the customer again. Leroy and
his brothers handle all the collections. They
decide when to arbitrarily hike the interest
rate and whether late charges are to be paid
in bounty or pounds of flesh.
3. Everyone knows what happens to those
who don’t pay. Who was made an example,
and how did you learn about it?
When someone refuses to pay up, the shark
has to turn a loss into an opportunity. The
only way to do that is to increase future rates
of return by motivating customers to get
their payments in on time. In the past, this
was done through the court system and the
garnishment of regular wages. In the Loss,
methods have to be more direct and bloody.
Everyone in the enclave knows what the shark
is capable of if not paid. On dark nights, most
imagine they can still hear the screams. What
do Takers down on their luck have to look
forward to?
Example: Marta took out a loan from
the Leroy brothers to start her new sewing
443
 business, despite pleading from her neighbors
to just keep begging in the street. When she
defaulted, the Leroy brothers couldn’t decide
what to do: they were starting a brothel across
town and needed “workers,” but they had
publicly promised to feed whomever crossed
them to the Casualties over the fence. Marta
had a son. Which one should they turn into
food, and which one should become a slave?
In their indecision, the drunken Leroy
brothers dragged a screaming Marta and
her boy through the streets. They knocked
on Ted’s door and asked him what to do.
He wasn’t pleased to see them (he was
with customers), but he quickly informed
them that they he had no right to make a
choice. Hancock LLC was only entitled to
remuneration; it was the responsibility of the
customer to choose where it came from.
So, in front of the entire enclave, Ted made
Marta choose. Since then, no one has been
able to forget what she finally said... or when
their payments are due.
Set Interest
Sharks are reasonable monsters. After the
group has built their villain, the Market role-
plays the shark and sits down with the Taker
to negotiate terms. This isn’t a full negotiation
à la the Negotiation Rules: sharks, by their
very nature, have some inflexible business
practices. However, interest rates can be set
higher or lower, depending on how confident
the shark is that the Taker will pay on time
and become a repeat customer.
The Taker picks a CHA skill, role-plays a
pitch, and rolls the check. The interest rate is
set according to the result:
−− Critical Success: interest free (10b
loan/10b payment)
−− Success: 10% interest (10b loan/11b
payment)
−− Failure: 50% interest (10b loan/15b
payment)
−− Critical Failure: 100% interest (10b
loan/20b payment)
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Payment can be set whenever the shark
wishes, but most sharks want payment once
the Taker gets back from their next job. Takers
don’t have the best life expectancy, and even
the good ones have a volatile income. Better
to get the money sooner than later, in a lump
sum rather than installments.
After the interest is set and the repayment
arranged, the shark hands over the bounty.
Now it’s up to the Taker to repay it.
Loans as Story Opportunities
Markets should keep in mind that the purpose of loan
conditions is not to create a monster the PCs cannot
defeat. The goal of Red Markets’ loan mechanics
is the creation of a worthwhile antagonist. That
antagonist can be defeated at the end, but it will
cost characters dearly and establish more of the world
in the process.
If Takers could secure loans from pushover NPCs and
murder them to avoid having to pay it back, it would
break the economy of the game and the heroic nature
of the PCs’ struggle. However, by going in debt to
a powerful shark, the mechanics trade some temporary
currency for a long-term investment in the narrative.
One more fight scene is nothing for the average
player to gamble, but the life of a Dependent they’ve
come to enjoy creates stakes at the table and in
the fiction.
Sharks test the characters. How much are they
willing to let slide for the sake of family? Where is
their breaking point? The players might just want to
buy a piece of gear they can’t afford, but the Market
wants answers to these questions in return.
Pay Up...Or Else
If the Taker gets a loan, does a job, and pays it
back, that’s the end of it. Sharks don’t stay in
business by murdering people; they murder
people to make sure enough people pay them
to stay in business. Sharks are happy for
repeat customers and perfectly courteous as
long as the agreement is fulfilled.
However, if payment is short, or late, or
missing altogether, things are going to get
ugly really quick. And it’s up to the Takers how
to respond. Does the whole crew get involved
or leave the debtor to their fate? Does the
shark go after the Taker, or their coworkers,
or their Dependents? Do they leave out the
physical coercion altogether and demand
payment in gear or free Contract work?
At minimum, failing to pay a shark makes
for a nasty vignette, but the consequences are
better dealt with as a Pro Bono job or new
Contract. The Market has a lot of options of
where to take the story so long as someone
ends up paying the price.
the expectation
Since usurers sell nothing other than
sell days and
of money, that is to say, time, they
clarity, and the
nights. But the day is the time of
ore, not just
night the time of repose. It is, theref
eternal rest.
for them to receive eternal light and
-Tabula Exemplorum
445
 Loss Encounters
Loss encounters are about the uncertainty of
the Loss. The fear of uncertainty is a very real
force in the world, enough to collapse entire
economies. Evidence of actual risk isn’t even
necessary; currencies have folded overnight
over nothing but rumors. It’s a fear the Market
should be bringing to both the players and
characters. A group of players could have
the most predictable Market ever running a
group-designed Score, but with randomized
Legs off the Loss Encounters tables, no one
can be certain everyone’s going to make it
through alive.
Rather than force Markets to internalize
the basic tone of the game’s narrative and how
it can be used to improvise exciting scenes
for players, this section provides ready-made
examples and writing prompt tables. Most
Markets start designing their own Legs after
446
a couple of games, but the tools are always
here, ready to help speed up the process of
writing an encounter.
D10 Interludes
Before we get to the agonizing uncertainty
of randomized Legs, let’s talk about the one
reliable method players have to escape them:
interludes.
Interludes are scenes that tell us more
about the relationship of Takers within a crew.
Think of them like vignettes between people
that may have more casual relationships
than those shared by Dependents. Groups
that want to have Takers share each other
as intimate loved ones are encouraged to do
so — those dramas can happen during Legs
just as well as within an enclave — but one’s
relationship to coworkers typically runs a
much wider gambit of affection than their
relationship to family and friends. Quite
frankly, the carrion economy doesn’t give a
damn whether Takers like each other. Crews
are assembled from those available with the
mix of fortitude and skill required for the
job. Personal hatreds, passionate love, and
everything in-between can never be more than
a distraction while working. The demands of
the Loss can punish anything more than that
with a death sentence.
Interludes also reinforce the sheer
emptiness of the Loss. Legs only represent
narratively interesting things that happen
between an enclave and job site. Without a
vehicle, most of a crew’s time is spent silently
trekking across a barren wasteland, nervously
scanning the horizons and silently listening
for the sounds of shuffling feet. Red Markets
skips narrating these scenes because they
aren’t interesting, but most of the time spent
at real-world jobs isn’t interesting either.
Takers spend their downtime at work no
differently than the rest of us: when things get
slow, they shoot the shit with the person next
to them.
Mechanically, interludes allow players to
trade their characters’ suffering for the one
thing Red Markets finds more interesting:
character development. If the last Leg was
brutal and the thought of another one is too
much to bear, PC’s can skip it by role-playing
out the conversation their characters have
about that event. Or about a different event. Or
about something completely unrelated. The
scene can last as long as the Market allows
and be about any subject the PCs wish to talk
about.
There are only a few actual rules governing
how to use interludes:
1. Interludes can only be used to skip a single
Leg. If the Takers are working a Contract
that pays for three Legs, they can reduce
447
 it down to two Legs and an interlude.
There’s nothing to stop the group from
role-playing more interlude scenes, but
they don’t reduce the number of Legs by
more than one.
2. Interludes only occur if at least two players
are willing to role-play the scene. Every
interlude needs one person to start the
scene and at least one person to react
to that character’s words. More may
participate, but no one is allowed to
monologue all the way to site.
Black Result
1 Agonize over...
2 Express confusion about...
3 Seek absolution for...
4 Challenge someone’s opinion of...
5 Sow doubt about...
6 Ask a question about...
7 Mock or make light of...
8 Express appreciation for...
9 Find solace in...
10 Try to impress with your knowledge of...
t s up e rs t it io n is im m or t al . . .
die, bu
Religions are born and may e w it ho ut
n t ak e lif
Only the fortunate ca
-Ariel and Will Durant
448
3. If no one has an idea how to start the
interlude, roll on the interlude table and
think of what the character would say.
The table is there to help prompt the
players to improvise a scene fitting for
each character’s personality. Groups are
encouraged to improvise on their own
topics.
That’s it. Interludes are pure role-playing.
Use them to get to know the characters. When
things get dire later in the job that much more
is going to be on the line.
Red Result
1 ...the history of the Crash
2 ...a moment of personal epiphany
3 ...becoming a Taker
4 ...someone or something at the Enclave
5 ....a retirement plan or Mr. JOLS
6 ...an aspect of pre-Crash life
7 ...a member of the Crew
8 ...a client or job, past or present
9 ...an aspect of the Carrion Economy
10 ...some aspect of the Blight
m y t hology
Bust Rule: Asshole Coworkers
Some Markets might not like the idea of chatting your way across the Loss. To make matters more
challenging, “Asshole Coworkers” trades the uncertain physical danger and psychological trauma
of an encounter for the uncertain psychological trauma of talking to your coworkers.
In this variant, everyone rolls for prompts to improvise the scene. The person that starts the
scene begins a conversation according to their prompt, but then anyone responding rolls for their
character’s reaction. If that reaction is unfitting — or even cruel — too bad. The Loss screwed with
the heads of everyone in the crew, and everyone’s baggage constantly makes interaction a social
minefield. The Takers may be able to keep things together around the enclave, but over the fence?
Surrounded by people that have seen them at their best and worst? Raw nerves can make some
interactions downright abusive, and the Market can call for Self-Control: Detachment checks. If the
response is kind and caring? Humanity might be healed. It all depends on what the other players
roll for reactions.
When rolling for reactions, one responder can roll Black and role-play straight across the row. A
really skilled improviser might roll Black and Red, and then try to role-play a response that works
in both adjectives. Or two people might involve themselves in the conversation, the Market divvying
up Black and Red results.

black Result Red Result black Result (Cont.) Red Result (Cont.)
1 Uncomfortable 1 Disquieted 6 Wise 6 Advising

2 Helpful 2 Encouraging 7 Concerned 7 Curious

3 Sympathetic 3 Friendly 8 Shocked 8 Offended

4 Annoyed 4 Critical 9 Amused 9 Joking

5 Skeptical 5 Suspicious 10 Apathetic 10 Dismissive

So how does this play out? Let’s say Refurb rolls B3/R6: “seek absolution for...an aspect of pre-
Crash life.” Refurb’s player thinks for a moment before launching into a heartfelt rumination on
how he never gave enough to charity before the nightmare began. On his walk to his tech support
job, he would dismiss the homeless as weak and deserving of their plight. Now, with his sister in
constant need of medication and struggling to make ends meet, he hates the man he used to be.
Creed’s player rolls for how to react to her coworker pouring his heart out, and Market decides
how the resulting scene might reflect on Refurb’s Humanity damage. A B3 would see her be a
kind and supportive friend, maybe healing some Humanity as Refurb feels better about nagging
personal doubts. However, a B9 could provoke a Self-Control check as Creed regards her partner’s
white guilt in the wake of a zombie apocalypse ridiculous. If Creed’s player rolled B2/R8, she
might role-play a bit of tough love that points out Refurb’s current privilege and urges him to keep
striving for empathy. The Market could call for a Self-Control check that heals on a success or does
Humanity damage on a failure, thus suggesting Refurb’s reaction to the unsolicited scolding.
The “Asshole Coworkers” rule certainly makes the game more challenging for role-players and
gambles more on interludes, but it does so by sacrificing control of a character’s reactions. If the
players aren’t comfortable resting so much of their characters’ personalities on the dice, Markets
should skip this rule.

449
 Four Encounter Themes The Legs in Red Markets all follow basic
The map is not the territory. Every bit of data themes, each based off one of the four
Takers have regarding the route to their next resolutions possible in Profit. All Markets
job is plagued by expired intel, disinformation, should try writing a few Legs of their own and
and shit luck. For these reasons, Red Markets inserting them into the mix, if only to keep
doesn’t measure distance in units of length. sneaky players reading ahead from getting
Legs are units of narrative distance that too comfortable. Once you get the gist of the
convey the slog through the Loss. They’re little episodic struggles Legs create, it’s hard
factored into pricing during negotiations not to think of more of them as you “zombify”
because they tax and challenge Takers before your surroundings. To get started as a writing
they even get to the hard stuff at the Site. prompt, Markets can roll Black and Red, then
try to design a scene based off the essential
questions listed under each theme.
Result Larger Theme
This is a lose-lose scenario. It’s unavoidable. There are two essential
questions in this type of scene.

Either/or? Do the Takers want to risk health or Humanity? Do they lose

equipment or time? Do they sacrifice a friend or a client? Something is
getting hit; where do they take the damage?
CrITICAL
FAILURE How much? How much will this hurt? Or will it kill? How much is this
setback going to cost? How hard is this moment going to bite the crew in
the ass later in the campaign?

The encounter can explore one or both of those questions. What it can’t do
is offer a chance for profit. There’s nothing good about what’s happening
here. The Loss is a cruel, capricious landscape ruled by callous chance.
Sometimes all you can do is survive; this is one of those times.

This is a bad situation that Takers can avoid or overcome. What remains to
be seen is...

Is it enough? Is the scout’s Awareness check enough to spot the ambush

before the crew walks into it? Is one Taker’s Self-Control complete enough
to stifle a shout? Is Persuasion enough to talk down the bandits? Is the
FAILURE crew strong enough to push the dead car until it rolls safely away down the
mountain, or smart enough to get it running?

If the answer is yes, the crew can avoid or mitigate what would otherwise
be a disaster for a lesser crew. If the answer is no, they deal with a situation
that is draining and possibly deadly. However, if they take a hit, there is
some possibility profit may result.

450
 There’s a chance for profit, if the Takers choose to accept some risk. What
remains to be seen is...

Was it worth it? When they went inside the post office with the sagging roof to
salvage those documents, was it worth it? When they tried to get close enough to
hack that armed drone, was it worth it? When they responded to those cries for
SUCCESS help, was it worth it?

If the crew takes on the risk, they open themselves to a financial, material,
reputation-based, or emotional reward. But the opportunity doesn’t assure
success. It also doesn’t protect characters from the consequences of the risk.
That’s for the players and the dice to decide. Avoiding the risk, however, voids
the opportunity as well. Furthermore, if the answer to the failure theme (is it
enough?) was “no,” it’s easy for a Taker to walk into a disaster thinking they’re
chasing profit that isn’t there.

It’s winning the jackpot. A windfall. A free lunch. The Takers don’t even have to
work for it. The only questions are...

How? How did this opportunity land so fortuitously in the Taker’s path? Whom
did the treasure originally belong, and how was it lost to them? How has it gone
unsalvaged this long? Once the how is answered, it might also be prudent to
ask...
CRITICAL
Why? Why has something so obviously valuable been left here? Was it
SUCCESS intentional? To what end, and when will it come to fruition? If it wasn’t deemed
valuable at all, who wouldn’t find it valuable? Freedom from the scarcity that
rules the Loss suggests motives ruled by the Blight, radical belief, or something
even worse.

Regardless of the answers, nothing happens to the Takers on this Leg unless
one of them miraculously screws up somehow. It’s a gift from heaven, but
Markets should use such opportunities to think about what such a boon says
about the setting and sets up for Legs to come.

D10 Encounter Prompts by the trappings of civilization and driven

Need more? The following table was used
to write the entire d100 table at the back of
this book. The essential questions remain the
same, but now each is paired with a common
point of interaction between the Market’s
designs and the players’ choices.
Roll the Black alone. Even numbers are the
more forgiving state of an encounter (asking
“Is it worth it?”), and odd is the failure-state
of the same (asking “Is it enough?”). On a
2-3, the theme revolves around the natural
world run amok after the Crash, unhindered
to the extreme by climate change. 4-5 is the
Blight and its various complications, 6-7
interactions with other humans, and 8-9
landscape features that are man-made or
resulted from the Crash. The 1 and 10 results
on the d10 table are reserved for outside
context problems or Legs that involve multiple
elements from the four pairs. In this smaller
version of the table, these are also the critical
failure/success states because they make for
the most interesting challenges.
451
 Just because a Leg doesn’t easily classify
into nature, Blight, interaction, or remnant
doesn’t mean it’s a bad encounter. The truth is
actually the exact opposite: the more elements
of the setting that interact with each other, the
more real and immersive that setting seems.
Take a roll on the table below and see if
it’s enough to spark the imagination. If not,
continue on to “d100 Loss Encounters” (see
p. 457).

Result subJect and Theme

Multiple elements of the setting conspire to make a lose-lose situation.
The crew runs into a hostile faction while suffering an extreme weather
1 event. A number of casualties are made worse by the remnant of some
crITICAL Crash fortification. An aberrant shows up. Whatever the case, the crew can
MISFORTUNE mitigate damage, but they can’t avoid the situation altogether. There’s also
nothing to be gained from the encounter, or if there is, it’s not nearly enough
to make up for the cost.

Some turn of the weather or natural world benefits the Takers. It could ease
2 their passage, hinder their enemies, or provide goods. However, no major
FORTUNATE benefits are available to Takers without some form of risk. The Takers can
NATURE choose to push it for the added benefits, but they can move on unhindered
as well.
Some aspect of the weather or natural world threatens the crew. It could be
3 an unpredictable shift in conditions due to climate change, a landscape shift
UNFORTUNATE caused by previous events, or a feral threat. Crews with exceptional skill
might be able to avoid the encounter, but chances are resources will be lost
NATURE due to the misfortune. It’s possible to make some bounty, but it’s doubtful
that it fully covers what was lost.

Casualties are isolated, hindered, easily avoided, or already dead. There

4 is no such thing as a safe casualty encounter, but the Takers can choose to
FORTUNATE face these undead to pull cards or get at whatever treasures they may be
BLIGHT guarding. However, it might be the better long-term choice to leave them
rest. It’s being able to make the choice that makes the encounter fortunate.

Casualties are in groups, unrestrained, hidden, or in great number. If Takers

5
don’t engage the undead, it’s because they skillfully escaped a situation in
UNFORTUNATE which the C’s had the upper hand, likely using valuable resources in the
BLIGHT process. If they power through the beasts, there’s some chance for bounty,
but it only takes one bite to kill an entire crew.

The crew encounters humans that are friendly or in a situation in which the
6 Takers have the initiative. It could be people willing to trade, offer solace,
or provide information. If the persons need help, the Takers can choose not
FORTUNATE to give it. It may hurt Humanity, but it might also save flesh; the choice is
INTERACTION luxury. If the humans are hostile, it’s still a fortunate interaction if Takers
have a chance (based on the dice or the situation) to get the drop on them.
There’s no bounty in avoidance, but it might be the key to survival.

452
 The crew encounters humans that are hostile to them and seeking to
gain the upper hand. It could be a financial or even emotional hostility,
7 but unfortunate interactions in the Loss tend towards violence. But the
UNFORTUNATE dangerous part about humans is their cunning. While it might be a raider
INTERACTION group just leading a charge, those with bad intentions do their best to make
an ambush seem like a fortunate interaction. It’s possible for the crew to
spot and accommodate to a trap before it’s too late, but it’s hard to stop
someone willing to risk their life to end yours from doing damage.

The Crash and the Loss leaves behind a lot of waste and treasure. To the
desperate, waste might be treasure, but the dangers in retrieving it can turn
8 treasure into waste. Unexploded munitions, salvageable equipment, spare
FORTUNATE parts, food — Takers lucky enough to find such things need to throw caution
REMNANT to the wind and grab them before someone else does. Of course, the reason
the value remains available might be because others tried for it and died.
Accepting the risk is the only way to know for sure.

This leftover is in the crew’s way or actively seeking to harm them. Most
of mankind’s effect on the world during the Crash was overwhelmingly
9 negative. Radiation, land mines, preserved pockets of infected — these
UNFORTUNATE nightmares were spewed all over the countryside within the first month.
REMNANT That’s to say nothing of the new cruelties and deadly experiments cooked
up by members of the Lost in subsequent years. Some bounty might be
recovered from the obstacle, but it’s questionable as to whether it will be
worth the pain.

Multiple elements in the setting have cancelled each other out, leaving only
10 the value with some or all of the risk removed. Feral animals destroyed the
CRITICAL casualties but left the bounty. A believer group made a remnant safe, but
FORTUNE abandoned the most valuable salvage for ideology. Whatever the narrative, a
critical fortune encounter should cause players a sigh of relief.

Economists t
hink about w
hat people ou
watch what ght to do. P
they actually sychologists
-Daniel Kahn do.
eman

453
 D10 Aberrants and MechanIcs
Aberrants may not even exist. It’s up to each
individual Market to determine how much
evidence for their existence is real and how
much is internet bullshit. And even if they
are real in your group’s version of the setting,
the Market is free to change the way their
mechanics work or make up brand-new types.
Still, if you want to confirm the Aberrant
rumors found in “The Loss,” here’s ten of
them available for random placement and
complete with rules for use.
1. Aerosol
A casualty, usually found amongst large mobs
or stampedes, that emits an aerosol form
of the Blight as a cloud of invisible spores.
Humans that come within range of the cloud
before it dissipates risk inhaling the Blight.
In game terms, anyone within mid-range
of an aerosol must make an infection
check unless they are Immune, Latent, or
wearing a breathing apparatus. Those that
are infected change as if bitten by a Vector,
454
meaning the transformation occurs within
a matter of turns. Identifying an aerosol
requires specialized equipment, a successful
Awareness check up close, or a successful
Foresight check if analyzing the area with
footage or other data sets.
2. Converts
Infected children that die during a certain
stage of neruroplasticity sometimes retain a
certain level of intelligence, even after death.
But the consciousness steering this cognition
is purely predatory.
Mobs around a convert may be strategically
placed, blocking off exits or flanking enemies
tactically. Casualties can also resist the
temptation to attack so long as the convert
is in the area. Lastly, a convert can direct
mobs to do the most rudimentary labor, such
as pushing objects or digging by hand. All
casualties lose these increased capacities
when the convert is killed.
Converts can operate rudimentary tools
themselves. Jobs involving keys, shovels, rope,
chain, and other simple machines are not
beyond them, and they often work mechanical
elements into their hunting grounds.
Anything with moving parts – such as guns or
computers – tends to be beyond the reduced
motor skills of the undead, but a convert can
understand how such things work. Beside
their intelligence, converts have no special
abilities.
3. Empties
Empties are casualties that have no predatory
instinct. They do nothing besides repeat a
single task – usually something from the
victim’s life – endlessly. They don’t respond
to humans, other casualties, or any other
stimulus. Seeing an empty implies unsettling,
uncomfortable thoughts about the nature of a
mind infected by Blight.
Empties don’t to anything, so they don’t
need special stats. However, the severity of
the Self-Control check suffered by discovering
an empty depends on the context of the action
being performed. An inexplicable or darkly
comic action would just be level-1 check, but
a whole group performing the same action
would risk level-2. An empty that mimics
or mocks something dear to the PC could
provoke a level-3 check or higher.
4. Ever-Vecs
Sometimes, a Vector doesn’t die. It just keeps
running, feeding, growing stronger. It builds
new muscle tissue and Blight sinews from the
protein it has metabolized until it’s stronger
and faster than human anatomy would allow.
Treat an ever-vec as a Vector with a murder
modifier of 5 or higher. Aside from making
the monster exceptionally fast and strong, the
Market could also use the modifier to increase
the creature’s hit points.
5. Ganglia
Blight sinews often break the skin during
torpor. It’s theorized that when a number of
casualties transform in close proximity, their
different nervous systems intertwine and can’t
distinguish one body from the next. Somehow,
the Blight copes with this and pilots all bodies
in the network as one. The result is a mob of
unbelievably fast, coordinated corpses strung
together by a web of taut, dripping Blight
sinews.
Ganglia’s are basically cooperating mobs.
They have mass equalling the number of
casualties caught in the web. They don’t have
Shamble; the hive consciousness developed
by the Blight makes them far faster than
even Vectors. The only way to kill ganglia
is to separate all its nodes by decapitating
individual casualties, or by separating the web
of sinews that connects the mass. Headshots
require called shots (they ain’t slow and
stumbling no more), and severing the sinews
requires explosive or immolating weaponry.
A ganglia’s effectiveness isn’t stopped by
damage. A ganglia comprised of six casualties
can still move without any penalty so long as
one still has a single head. Being attacked by
ganglia does damage like being attacked by
any mob, except the Market need not choose
between additional damage and knockback.
If the knockback isn’t resisted, the victim is
entangled in the web of sinews and takes
damage every round they remain there.
Infection checks occur normally.
6. Malignant
For some reason, the Blight sometimes
doesn’t stop metabolizing a cadaver’s tissue
once the parasitic nervous system is made.
Sometimes, it keeps going until the entire
body is turned into a sprawling, pusating mass
of black awfuleness.
Pockets of malignant Blight don’t move or
attack. Exposure to the flesh causes infection
checks, but this aberrant primarily serves as
an area denial weapon. Moving on or near
it makes every step precarious and causes
frequent attacks on Humanity.
7. Mutants
The Blight can’t hop the species barrier. Until
it does. No one knows how or why.
Mutants are statted out like feral animals,
meaning they have initiative and run faster
455
 than any human. Depending on the species,
the Market might make them resistant to
damage, increase the damage of attacks,
or provide the creature additional tactics
or twitches. The exact specifics of how the
monster’s stats are buffed depends on the
species that mutated. Regardless, successful
attacks cause infection on humans and
animals.
8. Scarecrows
A lot of theorists propose that the Blight
is a form of fungus. They’re wrong, of
course; everyone is always wrong. But
Scarecrows make a strong case for the plant
life argument. Their sinews lock up inside
the cadaver’s body, calcifying as they drive
themselves out of the flesh and into the soil.
It leaves the casualty immobile, stuck to the
ground in a crucified pose. Meanwhile, the
sinews grow into the ground – spreading like
some cancerous weed.
Each scarecrow has a “kill zone”
determined by the Market. Within that radius,
the scarecrow can attack anyone standing on
the earth with its roots, once per turn and at
the end of the initiative order. Takers have a
chance to dodge. If struck, the attack always
lands on both legs of the victim, and that
person is considered grappled. Kill damage
continues for every round until the character
is dead or escapes. Infection checks for
damage are made normally.
Standing on stone or equally dense
material prevents a scarecrow’s attack, as
does elevating oneself beyond the tendrils’
reach. Any casualties operating within the kill
zone share awareness with the scarecrow and
can hunt prey anywhere within the sphere
of influence, with or without line of sight.
Decapitating a scarecrow stops all special
abilities within its kill zone.
9. Shuffled
Headshots don’t work. THE HEADSHOTS
DON’T WORK.
Shuffled casualties almost always travel
in groups. They don’t differ in any way from
456
regular casualties save from the fact that they
are unharmed by headshots. Some other hit
location, besides the head, holds the nexus
controlling the Blight sinew. Finding where
this nexus is located requires trial and error.
Additionally, the loss of the only certainty a
Taker had on the battlefield provokes Self-
Control checks, and striking an unfamiliar
target requires called shots. The shuffled in
the same mob tend to harbor their new hearts
in the same location.
10. Stalkers
Survivor’s guilt has tricked the mind of many
in the Loss into imagined hauntings by loved
ones. They see the casualty of the person
they let down perpetually advancing over the
horizon, waiting for them to fall behind or
make a mistake so they can claim revenge
beyond the grave. Most learn to dismiss the
hallucinations as just that… which makes it
all the more tragic when, in rare instance, it
turns out the stalker is real.
Stalkers hold no special abilities besides
tracking individual humans with supernatural
precision. There is no way to elude the
attention of a stalker besides killing it, but this
is harder than it sounds. They are somehow
aware of firearms and traps, maintaining
distance if the intended victim has any
protection. Skittish as they may be, stalkers
are never too far away, shilloueted perpetually
on the horizon, in view of their intended prey.
A stalker’s primary danger is psychological,
especially towards the individual of their
fixation. Stalkers approach the objects of their
fixation only when victims are at their most
alone and vulnerable.
th at I ca re to kn ow is that a man is a
Al l
ing - th at is en ou gh fo r me; he can’t
human be
be any worse.
--Samuel Clemens
 D100 Loss Encounters
To roll on the d100 table, read the Black as
in the ten’s place and the Red in the one’s: a
roll of B4/R2 is now a 42. B10/R1 is now 01,
while B10/R10 is 100.
Markets should never feel constrained by
the d100 list; the only purpose of the list is to
speed up game preparation. If an entry has
already been played out or wouldn’t fit into
your campaign, just walk up or down the list
until you find one that works.

black/red DescrIPTION
A cow trots past as Takers are about to round a corner. The animal is bleeding
from a dozen wounds, slicked with sweat, and mad with exhaustion. As their
eyes follow a trail of blood up the road/across the field/etc. (wherever the game is
set), the crew sees a line of hundreds of Vectors spreading back over the horizon,
loping after the poor creature. Apparently, a distant enclave fell to an outbreak a
short while ago. The hungry victims chased after the last of their livestock until the
stampede of Vectors arrived here. Those that recover from the terrible sight (Level
3-4 checks) can use appropriate skills to realize there are only two options. The
crew can quickly find and secure some shelter against the Vectors until they pass
or enter torpor. This option adds days to the journey, eat through rations, and flays
the minds of the crew as they listen to the apologies outside. Then they’ll just have
to deal with a glut of new casualties along the route to the job. The second option
is to find/use a vehicle to drive around. The fuel cost can be mitigated if they drive
through the horde, but better hope none of the sprinting monsters manage to grab
on. If neither happens in time, the fastest Vectors arrive in one and twos, but if the
crew isn’t gone by the time the main group catches up, it’s over.

A small herd of (herbivorous animals appropriate to the local area) is visible in

the middle distance, grazing peacefully. On a successful Shoot check, Takers can
pause to hunt and gain one refresh for their rations from butchering the results.
Casualties are attracted to loud weapons, as usual.

Climate change can bring about extreme drought, and though the area the Takers
service may be spared for now, they aren’t free from the byproducts. Any reasonable
skill can detect the dust storm coming: Awareness, Foresight, Profession: X,
Research (“I programmed a weather alert into my user settings!”) But a warning
won’t mean much. The storm is approaching fast. Takers need to find a shelter,
clear it of any casualties, and seal things up immediately. Those caught outside
take one Stun to the chest for every round spent in the storm. Worse, the buffeting
noise and swirling patterns are keeping the casualties roused. Failed Awareness
checks inside the storm navigate PCs towards zombies biting at the winds instead
of towards help and shelter.

Two mobs of casualties flank either side of the Taker’s intended route. Depending
on the shambles, the crew could try and run through the two groups, then outpace
and evade them once they converge. They could spend rations and find a different
path to the job. Finally, the Takers can attempt to kill the creatures and pull cards.
The latter is a regular casualty combat, but remember that noise always attracts
more.

457
 Takers come across a casualty buried up to the chest in the dirt. The corpse was so
badly damaged by other zombies during infection that it barely revived. Its hands
are tied behinds its back and buried; the thing can’t move but to snap at passers-
by. Everyone makes a Self-Control check upon the realization that burying victims
and waiting for casualties to fall on them is an execution method used by the Meek.
The strap of a messenger bag is visible across one shoulder, hinting that the victim
might be carrying something. Success on a Foresight check realizes that the Meek
execute themselves using the same method, often booby-trapping the area around
the body with mines. A Mechanics or appropriate Profession check can disarm
the trap, allowing the crew to retrieve the empty messenger bag. Otherwise, going
near the zombie triggers the explosion of a buried DDJ (no Athletics to dodge).
The device does Kill damage to all hit locations, causes knockback, and entangles
the victim by impaling them with carbon-fiber wires. Then a car alarm rigged
to a nearby telephone pole goes off. The buried casualty is killed by the device’s
explosion, meaning the Taker has to make an infection check against flying gore.
Even if the victims survive uninfected, the crew must deal with incoming mobs as
those caught in the explosion rip the wires from their flesh.

A single locomotive and boxcar rests on train tracks in a valley or large, flat plain.
From a safe distance, the Takers can see it’s the home of a nomadic group of
traders out making their rounds in the Loss. The group is besieged on all sides
by a stampede, but the height of the cars makes dispatching the creatures safe
work. The enclavists slowly kill the creatures with spears, preparing to move the
train down the line after they pull cards. Then a whistle sounds in the distance.
The smoke of an automated drone train burns down the tracks, headed to restock
some DHQS settlement down the line. The Takers can hear the squeal of the larger
train’s brakes from miles off, but it’s hopelessly overburdened and heavy. Even if
the besieged locomotive throws itself into reverse, the collision is inevitable. The
Lost won’t get the horde dispatched in time to ditch. Everyone aboard is doomed
to be eaten or pulverized in a massive derailment. The Takers can help. Check
Awareness or Foresight to see the switch box between the two locomotives. The
crew can try to race there in time and figure how to switch the tracks, or they can
lure the stampede to one side so the enclavists can ditch off. Or they can wait, check
Self-Control for watching the disaster, and get a ton of salvage from the obliterated
casualties and surviving cargo.

A DHQS Punch Bot has suffered a failure of its targeting system. One Taker can
make an Awareness check. On a success, a repetitive thump against wood can be
heard (the bot is trying to execute a tree with its cattle gun). On a critical success,
the Taker can identify the sound for exactly what it is. If the crew investigates, the
punch bot turns on its alarms to attract more casualties and attacks, confusing the
humans for infected. Faulty target acquisition means the Punch Bot can’t do called
shots, but the cattle gun manipulators do Stun + Kill damage, and the claws grapple
that Taker’s body part. Treat the Punch-Bot as a Management force (re-skin legs as
“treads” and head as “cameras”) with double armor to all hit locations, requiring
two successful attacks before hit boxes being to fill. The Punch Bot can be hacked
if someone can ride it long enough to access the maintenance panel on back. The
electronics within the machine are worth bounty, as is the trail of exterminated
casualties in its wake.

458
A decrepit grocery store sags under the weight of water damage. Though otherwise
looted, Takers that make an Awareness check can see the remains of a wailing
wall inside, miraculously undamaged. A cardboard sales cutout has been pinned
with notes, photos, and maps from the Crash that would be worth 2d10 Bounty
to a tragedy tracker. Foresight, Awareness, or appropriate Profession skills can
warn that the floor is likely in as bad a shape as the roof. Retrieving the documents
would mean risking falling into the lightless, flooded basement, not to mention
waking any casualties wandering above or below. Do they risk it?

A cliff or hill blocks the route. Scaling it requires dangerous Athletics checks
or additional Legs as the crew takes the long way around. There is a roadway/
railway tunnel that passes through the obstruction, but it’s obviously been trapped.
Throughout the tunnel, it appears as if a giant spider has webbed the entire length
of the passage. Those with sufficient Scavenging or Awareness recognize the
tunnel was trapped with rigged DDJs. The carbon-fiber filaments have threaded
through casualties wandering through the tunnel over the years, leaving them
trapped and suspended. If the crew picks their way through the web, they might
be able to recover unexploded DDJ’s and pickpocket bounty from the impaled
zombies. But none of the C’s are completely immobile, and the Takers could set off
a DDJ themselves.

Walking through a suburb, the Takers come across an untouched house. The
surrounding homes have obviously been looted and exposed to the elements,
while the one in front of them is so pristine it still has intact windows. Spray
painted across the door, faded and weathered, is “Vectors basement.” If the Takers
risk venturing inside, the three Vectors in the basement have long since entered
and exited torpor. A successful Foresight roll tells the Takers that shooting the
Casualties from the top of the basement stairs is the safest plan. In the house
Takers find two sets of winter clothing, 4 Bounty, and 2 Haul worth of clothing and
kitchen gear. A successful Scavenge check finds an unbroken bottle of whiskey.

Takers come across a bridge spanning a major river or canyon. Bypassing the
crossing would take two additional Legs across extremely rough terrain, costing
two rations each instead of one to traverse. The military checkpoint at the edge
is long-abandoned but still intact. Over the wall, the bridge is still jammed with
derelict cars and the casualties trapped inside them. It would be possible to jump
off the military barricade and hop across the vehicles’ rooftops before the zombies
roused themselves. However, once the Takers start this process and agitate the
dead, a deafening boom shakes the bridges foundations as a car explodes behind
them. It appears the army mined the cars while the casualties were caught in
torpor. As they stir for the first time in years at the sight of new prey, the mines
are going off. Takers can sprint across the bridge, using Foresight to determine
whether the lane they are in might contain a bomb. They can freeze, waiting to be
eaten by the casualties or dying as mines cause the bridge to collapse. Or they can
ditch off the side, praying they can survive the fall or shimmy all the way to the end
on the struts.

459
 Due to climate change, the weather turns uncharacteristically cold. If snow is
possible for the place and time of year, it snows. It might snow in places it hasn’t
ever snowed before, or perhaps there’s an ash cloud from some distant disaster.
If Takers can’t scavenge some winter clothing from the wastes, they take 1d10/2
Stun to every hit location every Leg of travel. If they sleep between Legs, they must
choose between a Self-Control: Trauma check for the fear of announcing their
position with a fire, or two Stress damage for a long night of biting cold. However,
the casualties are a little slowed by the freezing weather. Shambles reduce to
one every two rounds for the remainder of the Legs unless the zombies are close
enough to frenzy.

A wildfire is coming. Takers will detect the oncoming danger in time on a

successful Awareness check (smoke), Profession: Animal Handling (the wild
animals are fleeing away from the fire), or other reasonable Profession: X skill.
Takers need to find non-flammable shelter, a waterway, a way around, or try
breaking through to already burnt areas immediately. Those caught in the fire take
one Kill to the chest and legs for every round spent in the fire. Once out of the fire,
take 1d10 Stun to the chest for smoke inhalation. Takers can refresh their rations
with the animals caught in the fire.

A small town or neighborhood, consisting of no more than a few houses and a gas
station, appears to be populated entirely by mannequins. The plastic statues seem
weather-beaten and sun-bleached, but it’s clear that each was carefully dressed.
Faded color photographs have been cheaply printed from dead social media
profiles and stapled on each figure’s face. Check Awareness or Foresight to realize
that casualties are frozen amongst the mix of stock-still figures, blinded by the
image stapled to their dead faces and held in place by manacles chaining them to
posts in the ground. Call for Self-Control checks. Successful Scavenging discovers
the curator’s hideout in a cellar. She long ago committed suicide. Some goods are
salvageable, but finding the stopping point of the woman’s descent into madness
calls for another Self-Control check.

A garbage truck lies in the middle of the path, with a mob of casualties in torpor
around it. Takers can see a dead man in the driver’s seat, something clutched in
his hand. If the takers make any noise, they awaken the mob, but even if they don’t,
the Ubiq specs in the man’s hands activate. It plays an audio file loud enough to
awaken the mob and draw another near it. Unless the takers spend an action to
destroy the Ubiq specs, they hear the message, even over the sound of fighting.
“Truck’s almost out of gas. No way I can bring the prisoner back to the enclave.
Don’t worry though. I’ll put him to good use. He’s in the hopper; when the zeds
climb in, I’ll hit the crush button. This is for you Sara!” Takers that hear the entire
message must make a level-2 Self-Control: Trauma check. The specs are heavily
damaged and only worth 1 bounty. There is nothing else salvageable.

460
Takers come across a young Latent boy walking amidst four dron-key’s, each
loaded down with gear and armed with shotguns and rifles on swivel mounts. The
machines assume firing stances and target the crew once they are in sight, but they
don’t open fire. Scratchy voices shout a warning through speakers that any who
wish to approach should to do so unarmed. Any Profession skill related to drones
or advanced electronics can recognize that the units are being remotely piloted
via satellite uplink. If the PCs approach peacefully, the boy offers to trade refresh
at one bounty apiece: he has both rations and ammo for one type of weapon the
crew carries. He might be able to sell intel about the upcoming job site, dependent
on Market fiat and pricing. The boy apparently believes the drones to be his actual
family rather than piloted machines. He’s personalized each with decorations,
crayon drawings, and nametags. Sensitivity or Foresight reveals that the Latent
child is used as the hands for the robo-crew, changing their batteries and reloading
weapons from dead drops left around the Loss. He’s never met the pilots in person
and doesn’t know they exist. The dron-keys don’t like it if Takers bring this up, but
the voices appear to love the child even if their reasons for excluding him can’t be
understood. They break off engagement rather than deal with criticism, but they
only fire if the child is threatened. Otherwise, trade is uneventful and the robotic
pack moves on its way.

A precinct of ex-cops rolls up on the crew, flashing sirens silently so as to avoid

attracting the undead. There are roughly as many officers as Takers, but they’re
kitted out in fully militarized police gear, complete with automatic weapons and
armor. They tactically deploy, point weapons at the crew, and demand they put
their hands behind their heads. If the Takers don’t acquiesce, a gunfight starts
immediately. If they do, the “Chief” charges them with illegal weaponry and violating
curfew according to some outdated martial law edict passed down during the
Crash. They are there to confiscate everything and let the crew off with a “warning.”
Successful Sensitivity realizes that the believers are split. Half the crew are good
cops, gripping to delusions of maintaining their profession to keep from going mad
after the Crash. The others have gone full raider and use the badge to dupe the other
half and their stupider victims. Use Persuasion to question the legal justification for
the arrest and sow dissent. Intimidation can speak directly to the raiders and assure
them the payday isn’t worth a bullet. Finally, use Deception on the true believers to
convince them the crew is “undercover.”

In a wooded area, a camouflage sheet and large collection of brush has blown
away from where it concealed a dirt road off the main highway. If Takers pursue
the route, they find an abandoned barn concealed deep in the forest. A cart outside
has been painted to read “Premium Snake Juice!” Opening the barn door leads to
an outpouring of snakes — all of which are poisonous. Check Self-Control to stay
calm. Those that stay still or run away are not bitten; only taking a regret leads
to attack. Inside, the amateur herpetologist apparently got bit while milking one
of his stock, knocked over two enormous shelves full of terrariums, and promptly
died. The building is now covered in pissed-off, hungry, poisonous snakes... but the
man’s workbench holds a fully-automatic, silenced assault rifle, two refresh worth of
ammo, a packet of rations, and mason jars filled with some liquid. An appropriate
First Aid, medical Profession, or Foresight check recognizes the jars as venom,
which can be sold to doctors at 1d10 bounty per jar for the production of anti-
venom.

461
 The Takers come across a large number of vehicles abandoned in the middle of
nowhere, in an area being aggressively reclaimed by nature. There is no obvious
accident to have caused a pile-up, no barricades, no indication of why a large number of
people would abandon their vehicles en masse, especially this far from the Recession
border. Grass, bushes, and other vegetation have grown over the sides of the roadway
as well as up and around the vehicles themselves. Takers find it easier to walk down
the road on top of the vehicles, rather than thread their way through the rows of cars.
A successful Research check will get the story while an Awareness check alerts the
Takers to the danger before they start walking down the road. During the Crash, the
military sent a helicopter to pull a VIP out by air — the traffic jam starts where the
helicopter was hovering over the road. As folks surged out of their cars to try and climb
on the helicopter, soldiers opened fire, killing a large number of civilians. Most posters
on the Ubiq forums discount the military’s claims they were firing on Vectors, but for
once the nascent DHQS wasn’t lying. There are two mobs of Casualties in and amongst
the vehicles that will attack the Takers if they climb up on the vehicles.

Takers hear a trumpet being played in the distance. The tune isn’t recognizable or
skilled. If the Takers follow the sound, it leads into a wooded area. As they exit the tree
line, they find the musician up a lonely tree placed in the middle of meadow. The image
would be a surreal pastoral were it not for all the casualties clamoring to try and eat the
man in the branches. As the Takers arrive, the man stops blowing his horn. The undead
see the easier meat and go for the Takers on the ground. This appears to have been
the plan: risk attracting more casualties for the chance at attracting the bait to distract
them. Takers can now check Awareness: casualties are pouring out of the woods on
all sides. There’s one mob in each cardinal direction, including the ones around the
tree. Running away between the lines of undead requires an Athletics test, or the
crew can try to fight through a mob. As the Takers rile up the undead prey instinct, the
man ditches out the other side of the tree and makes a run for it. PCs that kill all the
casualties gain scavenging rights equal to the number of mobs killed. If they catch or
kill the man, he’s an unarmed runner called “#5” from the Eat Clean crew. He was a
courier for two doses of Supressin before he got stuck.
The city the crew needs to cross through is a no-go zone. The blockaded streets
apparently did nothing to keep the Crash out, but it has tightly corralled the dead into
impassable throngs populating every street. There’s no hope but to go around, adding
two Legs to the journey. If a Taker makes the Awareness check, they spot relatively new
graffiti on the exterior road signs and walls. Each advertises “Charon’s Shortcut” and
points in the same direction. If the Takers follow, they find Charon high atop a makeshift
battlement build inside a sewer culvert. The man is an obvious LALA, but he claims to
be able to navigate through the city’s aquifer and sewer tunnels for the price of 2 bounty
per passenger (“One for each eye,” he jokes.) He has no weapons, but he seems to have
been in business for some time. If the Takers pay up, Charon drops a ladder. Once on
top of Charon’s wall, they see he has flooded the tunnels. He takes them aboard a raft
made of old pallets and pulls a taut wire strung down the length of the waterways. The
only light comes from exposed manhole covers where casualties occasionally drop into
the inky blackness. Takers hear the screams of others that threatened Charon into giving
them passage. Charon abandons those that do not pay in the lightless tunnels, diving
overboard, and escaping through safe underwater passages only he knows. The thieves
wander hopeless, either starving in the labyrinth or pulled under by the groping hands
of the submerged dead just beneath the surface. Hearing the desperate cries of the
lost in the tunnels provokes a Self-Control check, but not so bad as the one if the crew
threatened Charon and he abandons them. Aside from the new nightmares, those that
pay get to the other side safely.
462
It’s a beautiful day. The Takers come upon a herd of semi-wild horses roaming the
Loss, too fast to be molested by casualties and freed from their farms. A Taker with
the appropriate skills can attempt to mount and break one as a personal horse.
Otherwise, Takers can pause, have an interlude, and heal one Humanity as they
watch them graze.

Unseasonable rains have created a flash flood. A successful Awareness, Foresight,

Profession: X, or Research check will alert the Takers in time to get out of the creek
they’re wading through. Takers caught in the surging water take 1d10/2 Stun to
the legs as they are swept downstream a ways. Once the Taker struggle out of the
water, they notice the casualties, which were attracted to the sound and also swept
downstream, piling up at a bend in the creek. Make a Self-Control: Trauma check
for having been in the water with them and gain 1d10 Bounty on a successful
Scavenge check.

A dog with saddlebags comes trotting up to the Takers and sits down a few yards
ahead of them, tail wagging happily. Tied to the dog’s saddlebags is a note asking
whoever finds ‘Bruno’ to please send any spare rations, and ask for Q Cell out of
the nearest enclave - they’ll make good on your help. If the Takers do not add any
rations to Bruno’s saddlebags, he will follow the Takers for 2 legs, whining the
whole way, before trotting off. No Profession: Animal Handling checks will be able
to convince him to stay. If the Takers do add charges of rations to the saddlebags
(one will do), Bruno will lick that person’s hand and then trot off the way he came.
Any Takers following Bruno come upon a vehicle. Succeeding an Awareness check
means the Takers notice that Bruno has stopped and is growling at the vehicle
— Bruno’s Taker handler has died and is now a Vector, but trapped inside the
vehicle. A Foresight check reveals that the Takers could, with a sufficiently powerful
weapon, simply shoot the Vector through the closed windows of the vehicle,
although this will track a mob of Casualties. If the Takers do not engage the Vector
and simply walk off, Bruno stays by the vehicle. If they successfully kill the Vector,
they find 1d10 Bounty, a journal with Q Cell’s brainstorming plan’s for a Score, and
Bruno follows the Taker who put the rations in his saddlebag. Bruno is trained, has
the Friendly upgrade, and comes with the harness gear.

There are several vehicles in the middle of the road ahead. They look like they’ve
seen maintenance and new parts within the last few weeks, not sitting out here
for five years — this is a Crusader caravan just sitting in the middle of the road.
An Awareness check alerts the Takers to the Vector (who is several hours past
the apologies stage) lurching out from the far vehicle while they still have time
to run away. If the Takers kill the Vector, the rest of the caravan has entered the
torpor stage and can easily be decapitated with a machete (there’s one in the back
of the experimentation ambulance). Make a Self-Control: Trauma check upon
entering that vehicle. Blood and viscera are splattered everywhere — a team was
experimenting on/observing a Latent dying and didn’t kill them fast enough to
prevent the Blight’s awakening. The Vector the Takers killed outside was one of the
Latent’s victims. The caravan has 1d10 in Bounty, a machete, and 3 Haul of medical
supplies.

463
 The sound of fighting reaches the Takers from around the bend. As the Takers
approach, the last person with a gun defending a small caravan goes down under
a mob of Casualties. There are two preteen children and one adult enclavist on
the other side of the mob from the Takers. The children are looking around for
somewhere to run while the adult is picking up a melee weapon they clearly have
no idea how to fight with. The mob of Casualties is busy tearing apart the corpse
under them — the Takers could just walk away. If they kill the mob or otherwise
help the enclavists escape, the survivors thank them and tell the Takers to contact
‘Delta’. A successful Research test will tell them that Delta is a Taker based out
of an enclave several pre-Crash states away, with a good reputation on the Ubiq
forums. These are Delta’s Dependents, who were being escorted to the Recession
when the coyotes escorting them ran into a mob too big to handle. There is 1d10
bounty on the bodies of the coyotes. The enclavists ask the Takers to escort them to
the nearest enclave, promising payment. If the Takers refuse, the enclavists ask to
tag along to the jobsite reasoning that is still safer than trying to walk through the
Loss on their own, even if they do have enough rations to make it. If the Takers get
the enclavists to safety, Delta will pay them 15 bounty and give them a +Rep spot
“Takes care of our own.”
On an Awareness check, the Takers notice the campfire before stumbling across
it. Sitting at the campfire is a lone, older woman putting a pot in the coals. There
are signs of her having recently butchered a large animal. If the Takers approach,
she will greet them warmly and offer to share a meal and a drink. A successful
Awareness check let’s the Takers notice that she drinks from a different jug or
that she adds something to the food she passes it to the Takers. Alternatively, a
successful First Aid or appropriate Profession check tells the Takers that the meat
roasting in the fire is human. These alternate checks can be made from stealth if
the Takers do not approach the campfire. If the Takers eat with the woman, the
poison does 1d10 Stun damage to the head per round. Once all of the Takers
pass out, the woman signals her Sawney Bean-like clan from their hiding places.
The Takers are returned to their junkyard enclave, trussed up upside down,
and prepared for slaughter. It turns out the clan is a sect of the Church of Holy
Communion. They perform a ritual where they blood test victims for immunity
before slashing the throats of victims. This “fine meat” goes to church elders.
Latents are chained up to the junkyard fence outside, allowed to be eaten, and used
to deter other casualties once they turn. Waking up before the ritual begins is the
last chance for the crew to escape. If the clan is killed, they have nothing but melee
weapons and bows, but they’re carrying 1d10 bounty.

Someone’s last stand against the undead has sterilized the surrounding landscape.
The Takers see a makeshift outpost surrounded by hundreds of casualty corpses,
each shot in the head. Years ago, someone with an arsenal of weapons took out as
many C’s as they could before dying under the horde. Any casualties that survived
the attack have long since wandered away. However, the blighted corpses have
killed off the local flora and fauna. Not even grass or mold grows in the area. It is
utterly silent as not even insects are present. Seeing the effect of the Blight on the
landscape is a level-1 Trauma threat. Crossing the area is a level-2 Stress threat.
Bypassing it takes an additional two rations. There is nothing salvageable in the
outpost and attempting to dig through the pile of corpses is a level-1 Stress threat.

464
Across the expanse of an enormous empty parking lot, the Takers spy a strange
obelisk over four stories tall erected in a corporate park connecting three drab
office buildings. Obvious range markings chalked into the asphalt reveal the
structure to be a sniper’s nest. The tower is made of filing cabinets, hundreds of
them stacked, welded, and riveted together. It’s supported by wires bolted into the
concrete of the surrounding buildings, and a tiny hut made of plywood is perched
at the top. Rope bridges lead between the hut and the roofs of the three office
buildings, but there’s no easy way to the top: every other piece of office furniture
was stacked in the entryways of the buildings from the inside. It would take days
to clear the barricades and go up the stairs. It appears possible to climb up the
handles of the filing cabinets; all the units on the ground have been filled with
concrete to add weight and stability. Takers that try to climb find the drawers
labeled with letters corresponding to prime numbers (B, C, E, G, K, M, Q, S, W)
are trapped. Some merely slide out when the handles are gripped. Others slide out
but drop a payload of cinderblocks or caltrops. Some have grenades or sawed-off
shotguns rigged with tripwires. Markets should roll for each of the four stories;
success means no trap, failure means trap. Takers can use Athletics to leap to
safety if a trap is triggered. Foresight can provide insight as to the pattern, but only
after at least two are triggered. At the top, the LALA that built the tower is long
dead of some mundane disease, and the crops in his rooftop gardens gone to seed.
A rifle can be found on the corpse, along with a hard drive containing 2d10 bounty
worth of pre-Fall media.
Takers encounter a Circus inside a newly secured college gymnasium or rec
center. Circuses are high-end illegal gambling events where people fight casualties
for sport, sponsored by degenerate elites for rebroadcast in the Recession. The
building is well guarded by Recession mercenaries under the employ of wealthy
sports fans attending the games in person via private helicopters. The rest of the
crowd is made up of local factions, believers, and other crews. Anyone can compete
in the games, but the only game is blood sport. No ranged weaponry is allowed, and
the fighting takes place in a massive pool complex drained to make a pit. Casualties
have their restraints cut and are sent down the old waterslides into the arena.
Takers can bet on their crewmembers, but the odds change depending on how
difficult the encounter is made. Fighting with an edged weapon is standard, but
using a blunt weapon ups the odds by one (2 to 1). Odds increase again for every
mob added, and again if the Taker fights in the octopus’s garden (a kids’ area with
a lot of slides, where casualties, weapons, or traps can be thrown down the tubes
at random by fans). Anyone bit during a fight must take a blood test before being
allowed to exit. Anyone infected gets shot by the guards. Latents and the uninfected
are ignored. The Immune are taken into custody by slavers co-sponsoring the event.

As the Takers are walking down the road, a light spring rain begins. Takers can
continue walking through the shower or turn off to the big box store in the distance.
Approaching the store, they spot rain barrels on the roof. If they try to get out of the
rain in the store, they have to kill a small mob of Casualties wandering through the
store in singles and pairs. If the building is secured, Takers can scavenge 2 Haul of
electronic parts and one refresh of water rations from the rain barrels.

465
 While passing through a suburban neighborhood, the Takers hear loud music
blaring in the distance. If the Takers don’t want any part of it, they need to add a Leg
to get away from the music. If they go forward, they see signs that the area is being
“card farmed.” Pre-Crash tract housing with garages shared a similar floor plan: a
recessed double-car garage leads up a short flight of steps into a narrow laundry
room before entering the house. In neighborhoods where residents had enough
time to board up windows to prevent looting, some Takers turn these areas into
card farms. They break in, reinforce existing fortifications, open the garage door
about one foot, and start blaring music. They pull back to the laundry room, remove
the steps, and push the washer/dryer in the doorway. This funnels C’s through two
checkpoints and puts their heads right in striking distance for the elevated farmers.
As the Takers reach a house absolutely surrounded by casualties, it appears this
man bit off more than he could chew. To save them, Takers must chum the horde
away from the house, destroy the malfunctioning stereo system blaring on the
roof, and get inside to help a pair of men trying to hold the garage zombies from
advance. If they succeed, the smaller of the two men runs away. The larger of the
two — who is obvious suffering from some sort of mental handicap — has been
bitten multiple times. The smaller man messages the Takers on Ubiq: “I can’t do it.
He’s my brother.” The reward for making the hard choice is Scavenging checks for
bounty on the piles of C’s in the garage.

A flash flood of heavily contaminated water catches the entire group off guard. A
successful Awareness check gives a character one round to find high ground and
warn others, but by the time the water is visible, it’s up to the ankles and rising fast.
Perhaps a sewage treatment plant’s reservoir has burst open or a group of raiders
has diverted a river in order to wash away a horde of casualties. Regardless, the
water causes 1d10 stun to the chest if a character is immersed in it. Submerged
characters that fail a Self-Control check take 1d10 Kill as they swallow a significant
amount. Vehicles may be washed away or damaged. The flood may also carry
hazardous debris or casualties. The water subsides relatively quickly, but other
threats may remain. At a minimum, survivors take Trauma damage as they imagine
what diseases could be lurking in the filth covering them.

The Takers come across a single corpse at the base of something tall (a building,
bridge, mountain pass, etc.), which fairly obviously landed headfirst. If the Takers
roll the corpse over or make a Scavenging check, they find an old-fashioned media
player/recorder clutched in the corpse’s hand, underneath the body. Picking it up
starts the last recorded file playing and triggers a level-2 Detachment threat as a
frightened, pain-laced voice comes on: “My name is Jimmy Alden, I’m from Macon,
Georgia, I was out here visiting family when everything went to shit. ... If you’re
listening, please let my family know I’m dead... and that I love them... Oh God, it
hurts... I finished off those crazy fuckers trying to get in the car with the kids, but I
think some got in my mouth and I’m out of bullets...” If the Taker’s haven’t turned off
the recording by this point, they make a Self-Control check as they listen to Jimmy
turn into a Vector, followed by the sound of the Vector going over the edge of the
tall structure and hitting the ground. The recording is worth 1d10 to an archivist or
crusader group, while the electronics by themselves can fetch 1d10/2.

466
Cars and trucks have been circled around a group of casualties, effectively
corralling them. Large signs reading “PLEASE DO NOT SHOOT THE SICK”
are hung up around the vehicles. The mob is contained within the corral as long
as the vehicles are not moved or tampered with. If the characters leave the scene,
nothing else happens. If the characters try to scavenge materials from the vehicle,
then they risk being attacked. A failed skill roll means a casualty can grab them
with a single attack. If the attack succeeds, the character is pulled into the corral.
If the characters kill the casualties, they find no bounty on their bodies. After a
few minutes, a sniper will open fire on them. A maddened, LALA Latent created
the corral, believing that Supressin can reverse the Blight in a long-dead casualty.
She has been scavenging in order to save up enough bounty to buy Supressin for
everyone in the corral. She cannot be reasoned with and will fight to the death if the
Takers kill the casualties in the corral. Remember she will turn into a Vector when
she dies. She only has a standard rifle and the noise will attract other casualties in
the area.

A group of immune hunters, prisoners in tow, are taking a rest at an abandoned

school playground. A sniper with a heavy rifle takes over-watch on the camp from
the roof of the building. The group is obviously shifty and ready to shoot, but they’ll
trade if approached carefully. The Immunes are tied to the jungle gym. They’re
gagged and badly beaten. It’s a level-3 Detachment threat to see them and do
nothing. When speaking to the leader of the slavers, he’ll demand all crewmembers
present take a blood test before they go on their way, but Intimidate can convince
him no payday is worth a bullet. If the Takers provoke the full-blown gunfight
required to save the Immunes, they can scavenge from the slavers and earn the
+Rep Spot “Law in these Parts.” Just remember that the rescued will need some
sort of provisions if they’re going to make it to safety.

The crew sees a huge military convoy approaching in the distance. The equipment
is outdated and barely holding together, indicated the group is made up of traitors.
It’s up to the Market whether the troops are former American soldiers, Canadian
diaspora, or part of another national military. Regardless, the crew heads East
towards the border. They have drone cover, so it’s very hard for Takers to hide
from them. Still, they aren’t hostile. The leader (who demands to be called
Captain Hannibal) even comes to speak with them. He promises they won’t have
to be Takers for very much longer because he’s going to “give the world back to
humanity’s real survivors.” Check Sensitivity to realize the commander has come
unhinged. Best-case scenario, all the troops are doomed for slaughter. Worst-case?
They breach the border and cause a second crash. There’s nothing the Takers can
do to stop the massive force save rat out fellow Lost to the DHQS. Call for Self-
Control: Stress checks. On the plus side, the doomed soldiers are willing to trade
and will even gift some rations; they won’t need them where they’re going.

467
 On a highway or other larger roadway, the Takers come to a small waterway. The
bridge across has collapsed of neglect and exposure. Numerous cars were on the
bridge when it collapsed and now join the rubble blocking the water, creating an
impromptu dam on one side of the bridge and shallow mire on the other side.
The banks of the waterway are not steep. If they are in a vehicle, a successful
Awareness, Driving, or appropriate Profession skill will tell them it is safer to ford
across the dry waterbed further down, where less water has escaped the dam and
the bed is drier. If they choose to ford at the collapsed bridge, a failed Drive check
means they get stuck in the mud and must make a successful Resistance check
to get their vehicle out. If on foot, a successful Athletics check means they can
wade across the water or hike through the mud without any further penalties; a
failed check requires spending an extra ration, as it is tiring. Hiking further down
the waterway to the drier section takes time (spend a ration but no checks). If the
players cross at the bridge, they find optimized Ubiq specs and 1d10 in the glove
boxes of abandoned cars washed past the dam.

Characters that fail an Awareness check stumble across numerous potholes/

sinkholes in the ground. Resulting from an experimental scatter bomb used in
the Crash, the tiny pits are now hidden by grass. Every PC must make the check
and any failure causes 1d10 stun to the leg — it is possible to twist an ankle badly.
The ground is too unstable to drive a vehicle across — any attempt automatically
damages it. Casualties are nearby, hidden in the grass in torpor. Loud noises
awaken them. Check Self-Control to prevent a shout if injured.

The crew follows train tracks for a bit to avoid the main roads. They find a
passenger train, long derailed in the Crash. The double-decker dining car operating
as the caboose remains on the tracks at the top of a hill, but bloody handprints
and shifting shadows in the windows suggest the inside is filled with casualties.
Scavenging checks reveal the inside likely contains valuable goods with a long shelf
life: instant coffee, over-the-counter painkillers, etc. Foresight can come up with a
plan that eases engagement with the creatures. The car is still on the tracks and
at the top of a hill. If someone has the Mechanics or Profession skills necessary
to detach the car, the crew can send it down the hill, pull the manual emergency
break, and send the zombies flying. They’ll all be knocked prone and much easier to
kill. The car contains 2 Haul of salvable goods, plus a mob’s worth of bounty.

Takers encounter a family travelling across the Loss in a horse-drawn wagon. The man
attends to their armored horse and his wife rides shotgun (literally). In the back, a Latent
girl dangles her feet off the tailgate, playing with dolls. If asked about why they’re risking
a crossing, they tell a story about how their little girl got bit playing next to the fence.
They sold everything to buy Supressin and save her, but their enclave didn’t allow Latents.
They’re out looking for a new home. About ten minutes after the Takers part ways, the
chopping of helicopter blades can be heard. Check Foresight or Research to remember that
DHQS trains new recruits in old-school choppers: the ones you can hear coming. Rumor
has it that newbies have to prove they believe in homo sacer on their first outing by opening
up on some Lost (the Market rolls in secret: even it’s true; odds mean not today). Do the
Takers rush back to save the family or get under cover themselves? Do they try to draw
the gunner’s attention? Can they save the horse and cart too, or will the family be stranded
in the Loss with nothing? Either way, Self-Control checks are needed. If the helicopter
guns down everyone in the wagon, two vials of Supressin can be found in their meager
belongings: the parents were going to join their daughter in quarantine.
468
It is unusually windy, causing one of the Ubiq Aloft servers to crash. Check
Awareness to spot it as it crashes or the PCs may just stumble upon it at the
Market’s discretion. Regardless, it contains salvageable electronics, if the
characters can reach it — it’s either stuck in a tree, atop a building, or someplace
equally challenging. The noise of its crash has alerted casualties in the area. If
Takers salvage the materials, the most valuable parts are the hardest to move. The
server might be extremely heavy, or the carbon nanofiber balloon might still be
partially inflated, capable of pulling Takers a dozen feet off the ground with a strong
gust of wind.

The terrain ahead is extremely treacherous and slow to walk through. A recent
storm has knocked down many trees or the rubble from a bombed neighborhood
chokes the path. Bypassing it would take an extra Leg. Navigating through is faster
but hidden danger lies within the debris. Noxious hazardous chemicals create
clouds that can choke unwary Takers, and casualties pinned under debris can still
reach and bite.

The Takers come across the crashed vehicle of another Taker crew. There is
a Casualty in torpor strapped into the driver’s seat as well as one or two other
corpses in the vehicle, either also Casualties in torpor or dead by self-inflicted
gunshot wounds to the head (mix and match at the Market’s discretion). There are
3 Haul of goods in the trunk (roll for price point), 1d10 bounty on the dead Takers,
and one charge of gas in the vehicle.

The Takers are passing underneath a large series of interstate overpass exchanges,
or through a canyon, or amongst a series of tall buildings. The web of makeshift
bridging and flags makes it apparent that some sort of massive enclave set up shop
there, using the elevation as defense. The construction looks to spread at least 500
yards in every direction. Takers see a bell in the path with a weather worn sign
reading ‘ring for entry’. Check Foresight to realize this might not be a good idea,
and Stealth to continue on unnoticed. Passing underneath silently still causes
everyone a Self-Control: Stress check (new enclaves mean new jobs), but it’s far
preferable to getting the inhabitants attention. Once they make noise, Casualties
begin raining from the sky. The enclave fell long ago, and the resulting zombies
plummet to their deaths in search of new victims. Takers must check Athletics to
run through the rain of Blight cadavers. Those that fail catch corpse shrapnel. Treat
this like a Kill damage explosive that requires an infection check. Critical failures
are direct hits, inflicting Stun + Kill to every hit location, as well as risking infection.
If the Takers can get undercover, they can wait for the rain to stop and salvage
bounty from the stains on the ground.

469
 A horn sounds in the distance. Over the horizon, a massive semi-truck pulls into
view. The NatGas vehicle is part of the infamous Titan Trucking fleet and pulling
two trailers behind its massive fuel tank. If any of the Takers have Ubiq, they get
pinged by the username “Flapjack and Baz.” If they answer, they’re greeted by a
dash cam view of a wild-eyed trucker and his squinting, chain-smoking partner
riding shotgun. The pair is working a job for the DHQS, hauling supplies to a
settlement somewhere out West. The satellite feed and government handlers are
warning them they’re about to drive through a stampede. They’re trying to divert to
a different route, but that’ll cost them the on-time bonus. “Fuck that,” summarizes
Baz. They’ll plow through the bastards. Flap promises to drive the Takers the rest
of the way to their destination for free if they hop aboard the trailers and repel any
casualties that latch on. If the crew agrees, he’s as good as his word to any that
survive. If they don’t answer the call or decline, the truck plows forward anyway,
come hell or high water.
There is a small shack by the side of the road, along with a wooden sawhorse
painted bright yellow directly in front of the bridge/pass/(choke point appropriate
to the setting) the Takers were planning to cross. Awareness or Foresight check
to notice the two snipers positioned to cover the tollbooth. The tollbooth operator
demands 2 bounty per person, 1 per pet (except horses, they’re counted as
vehicles), and 4 bounty per vehicle (including horses). A successful Persuasion,
Leadership, or Intimidation check will bargain them down to 1 bounty per person
and 1 per vehicle or 3 bounty for the whole group (Market’s discretion).
The Takers come across a military last stand from the Crash. A choke point was
created using the local terrain and sealed off (the soldiers triggered an avalanche,
blew bridges, etc.) but erosion has opened it back up, allowing the Takers through.
The Takers can continue on their original route or take the shorter, newly opened
route. If they do go through, they need to make level-2 Self-Control: Detachment
check — there are dozens of skeletal corpses dressed in weather-damaged military
gear, slumped against remains of the choke point. Anyone with medical or law
enforcement Professions recognize that some wounds were self-inflicted; a major
gunfight broke out near the triage station, no doubt a fight about putting down the
infected. Takers call these “Wait and See” massacres. 1d10/2 uncharged assault
rifles and 1d10/2 uncharged pistols are still salvageable.
Takers reach the bottom of a long-incline with a long abandoned military checkpoint
on top. If it’s in an urban area, the road leading up the long hill is lined with boarded
up townhouses tightly spaced together. If it’s a rural area, the checkpoint is at the top
of a cleared highway overpass lined by concrete medians. The Takers are walking
up it to avoid the zombies wandering underneath. Unbeknownst to the crew,
casualties trapped in an armored personnel carrier see the humans approaching,
lunge towards them, and strike the brake lever. The tank is now rolling downhill,
careening off the sides of the road and gaining speed. Those that succeed can use
Foresight to predict where the APCs path will take it and step out of the way. Those
that fail need to use Athletics to dodge (taking 1d10 Stun to a random location) or
ditch off the side of the road. If in the townhouses, they jump through a townhouse
window to find a mob inside. If on the overpass, they take falling damage and find
a mob waiting underneath the overpass. Once the APCs gets beyond the Takers, it
crashes for good. Refreshes of ammo and two rifles with the automatic upgrade can
be found inside.
470
Takers see a broken down convoy of Crusader vehicles by the side of the road.
They’re armed and guarding their stuff, but not hostile otherwise. It’s uncertain
whether this group has succumb to temptation to use unethical experimentation
in their desperate struggle against the Blight, but, if they haven’t, their resolve is
definitely weakening. None of them look like they’ve slept in days, and weeping can
be heard in the back of one of the ambulances. The leader (when not muttering
to himself) offers trade for anyone that can help fix their vehicles. They’ll also pay
bounty for samples of interesting cases of infection. Latents can earn a bounty for
spit, hair, or sweat; 2 for blood; 3 for semen or sexual fluids; and 4 for bone marrow.
The prices for Immunes are doubled, but the Market rolls in secret to see whether
this group kidnaps ‘munies or not. Anyone injured receives free medical care, but
the Crusaders bedside matter is less than comforting (check Self-Control).
When approaching a suburban area, the Takers smell acrid smoke and see a small
pillar of black wafting upwards. Small fires are common in the Loss and there’s
nothing to tell them this is any different. As they walk through the streets though,
the smell of smoke is getting worse. Those that roll Awareness can hear a voice in
the distance, along with faint crackling sounds. If the Takers turn back, they find
the houses on the road they just came in on engulfed in flames. In fact, blazes seem
to be popping up all over town, and shadowy shapes can be seen walking amongst
the flames. Eventually, the Takers round a corner and find the source of the shouted
numbers: a Black Math cultist atop a painter’s scaffold stands before a burning
church, using a flamethrower against the hundreds of casualties locked within.
The stampede pouring out the door is scattering, covered in burning napalm and
unable to track prey. The whole city is on fire as they spread in every direction. The
Takers have to get out of the burning city before they get trapped and suffocate. If
the Takers escape and venture into the ashes later, they find a working but empty
flamethrower on the cultist, his burned flesh caught in a rictus smile.

The weather forecast is getting very bad. If inland, the forecast calls for tornado
super-cells. If near a coast, a tropical storm is about to make landfall. Due to
climate change, these storms are expected to be cataclysmically large and long. The
Takers can choose to find shelter now, spend two extra rations, and lose one Stress
waiting out the storm. However, Foresight suggests that the smart move might
be to push as deep into the front as possible before it hits. Thunder and lightning
brings casualties from all over, but those caught in a storm aren’t smart enough to
take shelter. If the Takers can push deep and hole up in the eye of the storm, debris
and flooding will take care of any casualties that would appear for the remainder
of the journey. Essentially, the Market would remove the appearance of casualties
until reaching the site, even if loud weapons were used. If the Takers don’t race
the weather, mobs of casualties move back in before they get close to the storm’s
epicenter.

471
 Takers get caught in a torrential downpour. Roads flood and paths turn into bogs.
The flooding isn’t dangerous (yet), but it’s hard to move. Keeping livestock or
vehicles moving requires checks to keep from foundering in the mud. Anything
costing rations costs double as the crew grows heavy with damp. Everyone must
make Self-Control: Stress checks as the onslaught continues. Eventually, the crew
reaches a rickety looking railway trestle bridge with a flash flood raging beneath it.
They can push through and try to get out from under the front, or find shelter and
lose two rations a piece as they wait for the storm to pass. If they cross, pick one
Taker at random. They must roll Athletics to keep from falling as a rotten plank
breaks. If the Taker fails, they don’t drown, but getting to dry land requires ditching
all their gear. After the storm, there is plenty of fresh water about and the crew can
refresh up to five charges of rations.
A passenger jet lies crashed in a field, nose buried into the earth. The fuselage
snapped in half; one wing and the rear of the plane burned down to the framework,
and the grass in the area is still poisoned by jet fuel. The front half of the plane is
accessible if a Taker wants to climb up a dozen or so feet in the air. Inside, those
not decapitated in the Crash have turned, but most remain strapped to their seats.
The stench of jet fuel still hangs in the air; the use of firearms is not recommended.
Getting to the front of the plane requires running through a gauntlet of rotting
hands and nails. If someone manages it, the black box is worth 2d10 bounty to
tragedy trackers, and the jet fuel remaining in the starboard wing, though not
healthy for actual engines, is still highly flammable. Takers that make it to the
buried cockpit can hit the manual release and dump the contents outside.

Market picks an aberrant from the list or makes one up. It shows up out of nowhere
and begins assaulting the PCs mentally and/or physically. There is no explanation
as to where the thing came from or how it came to cross the Takers’ path at that
exact moment. Sometimes, shit just happens.

A loud boom distracts Takers from their journey. An Awareness check notices
smoke in the distance. Takers that investigate need to spend an additional ration
to make the journey, but they find a downed StopLoss helicopter in a field. Only a
doctor has survived, but he’s busy trying to stabilize one of the militarized orderlies
in critical condition. The doctor promises that help is coming, but he can already
see the mobs slowly stumbling towards the wreckage. He promises the Takers a
reward if they help him survive the incoming mobs until rescue arrives. They can
shoot him or abandon the vultures, stealing their First Aid kit for the cost of a Self-
Control: Detachment check. If they fight off the dead, a helicopter loaded down with
heavily armed orderlies arrives. The care provider waves the troops off just as they
are about to insist on a blood test for immunity. He instead provides the Takers with
a first aid kit, a dose of Soma, and a StopLoss medic alert bracelet loaded with a
prepaid care plan (no upgrades).

472
A large group of young men approach. Their gear looks amateurish, but there are a lot
of them. They seem to be making quite a bit of noise intentionally so they can attract
casualties, and they relish their destruction: picking off limbs with axes and kicking
the things to death. If they see Takers, they run up and urge them to freeze. The leader
explains the group comes from a newly established enclave (they won’t say where, and
it’s up to the Market if this is lie). Their former home was destroyed in an outbreak
caused by “Latent traitors,” and the trauma has taught them all the necessity of the
Triage movement. If the crew has any Latents in its midst, they demand the crew leave
them behind for justice. The hate group can be convinced this one “isn’t worth it,” but
not that their views are wrong. They greatly outnumber the Takers, but they’re cowards
at heart. Crippling or killing the best of their number causes the rest to scatter and flee.

Off the beaten path, the Takers come across a Briar Rabbit fortification: a large number
of DDJs set off down a hallway/between two walls (manmade or rock formations)/
etc., typically set up such that a safe path through exists for humans. If the Takers
make three out of the following checks, they can chart the path through: Athletics,
Awareness, Criminality, Foresight, Mechanics, Research, or an appropriate Profession:
X. An Athletics check is required to successfully navigate the path without taking
damage — 1d10 to both legs on a failed check as the Taker stumbles into the wires.
Past the patch, Takers find a two family enclave — Self-Control check upon seeing
the bodies, recently dead from starvation. At the sound of people, a toddler, no more
than a year old, wanders out of a building, obviously in need of food and water. Level-2
Self-Control: Detachment check to leave the child behind, Level 2 Self-Control: Stress
check to rescue the child. There are 6 bounty and 2 Haul of goods in the enclave.

Takers spot a small dog waiting for them in the road (pug, Jack Russell, Chihuahua,
etc.). The animal barks at the crew if they don’t follow it down a side road, attracting
mobs of casualties. If the Takers make the detour, they arrive at a small suburban
neighborhood. Awareness checks notice the drag marks through the grass and
relatively fresh bloodstains. Other animal companions (dogs, horses, falcons, etc.) grow
visibly upset. The small dog runs off. Suddenly, a dozen, much-larger canines emerge
from between the houses. The pack has learned that casualties are poisonous and
living meat is required to survive. Athletics is required to get away and climb something
too high for the dogs to reach. Immobile casualties lurk in the long grass of the lawns,
legs crippled by the canines, but each is capable of attacking if stepped on. A dog bite
does Kill damage and grapples unless the Taker makes a Resistance check. Killing a
few of the beasts causes the ferals to retreat. Nearby houses haven’t been looted, so
surviving Takers may make Scavenging checks.
Takers find a beautiful garden hidden a ways off their route. It’s very well maintained,
and much of the produce is ripe for the harvest. There’s no one around, though a
Profession: X or Research check can tell that someone must come out every few
days; the methods for keeping pests away from the crops are as green as possible and
require a lot of labor. Takers can take the crops for a free refresh of rations. There’s
also a seed vault in the shed, with 3 hauls worth of materials that can be easily sold.
But the crew was photographed coming up the trail to the garden. If anything is stolen,
the crew is now hunted by a commune of Detoxins calling themselves “Incorruptibles.”
The group believes the Blight was caused by GMO crops and food preservatives; they
regard the violation of their foodstuffs to be blasphemy and an affront to the group’s
survival. If the Takers take nothing, the crew gains the +Rep spot “Cruelty-free” as the
Incorruptibles bump their posts on Ubiq.

473
 A small museum stands remarkably intact, albeit locked up. The stench of death is
in the air. Characters can find the corpses of several raiders or scavengers near the
museum. It looks like they were trying to get in when someone inside the building
shot them. If the characters attempt to contact the occupant no one answers.
Breaking in without making noise (and alerting nearby casualties) requires a
Criminality check. Inside, they will find a single dead person, the former curator
of the museum. A First Aid check reveals the curator bled out from a gunshot
wound but was not infected with the Blight. A Scavenging check of the museum
reveals no useful loot aside from a rifle with one bullet left and 2 charges of rations
— the curator used or spent everything else in the museum in order to protect its
contents. The museum was dedicated to something pointless, like quack medical
instruments, popsicle stick sculptures, or salt-and-pepper shakers. The realization
that the curator devoted his life to protecting useless trash is a level-2 Detachment
threat. If the characters linger too long, other scavengers or raiders appear, looking
for revenge. If the Takers know any Archivists, giving the location of the intact
museum to them provides the +Rep Spot “Respects the Dead.”
A recent thunderstorm has knocked trees or power line poles into the road.
Takers can make a Mechanics check to safely clear the road or Athletics checks to
scramble over safely. If they go around, spend an extra ration or charge on a vehicle
for the extra leg. If they go through, the ground is muddy and a bit treacherous. In
addition, a mob of Casualties was caught in the storm and washed onto the road.
Half of the mob is already permanently dead from bashing their heads into trees
and other landscape features, while the other half have to struggle to their feet.
Normal rules of scavenging apply.

It is a baking hot day. The temperature just keeps rising and there’s no wind. A
First Aid, Foresight, or Research check warns the Takers that they need to find
shelter and get out of the sun before they suffer from heat exhaustion. If they are in
a vehicle, it will overheat and require a Mechanics check to get started again if they
do not wait out the worst heat in shelter. If the Takers continue through the heat,
everyone makes a Health check. On a critical success, the Taker consumes an extra
ration to deal with the heat. On a success, one extra ration plus 1d10/2 Stun to the
head. On a failure, the Taker is suffering from heat exhaustion: extra ration, 1d10
Stun to the head, and 1d10/2 Stun to the torso. On a critical failure, the Taker is
suffering from heat stroke: two extra rations, 1d10/2 Killing to the head, and 1d10
Stun to the torso. At the end of the day, the Takers stumble across the body of a
messenger Taker, killed by heat stroke, and can take the messenger’s bicycle.
A convoy of stopped vehicles, all with intact windows, lies ahead filled two mobs of
casualties, all still wearing seat belts and currently in torpor. Careful Takers could
clear out the entire convoy, looting both mobs and their vehicles for two haul worth
of goods. However, each vehicle is locked, requiring Criminality checks to open
a door silently. If the convoy mob wakes up, they will create enough noise to lure
in another nearby mob. As the work goes on, anyone with Profession: Medicine
or Alertness realizes that, for everyone in the cars to be infected with the doors
locked, literally everyone in the convoy had to be hiding a bite. When the bodies are
checked though, no infection wounds are visible. The news provokes a level-3 threat
against Stress for all who realize it. (The Market knows the cars were hiding from
mobs when an Aerosol aberrant came by, but the Takers have no way of knowing
this.)
474
Anyone with Ubiq specs or a laptop is pinged by a Taker in the area. She explains
that a casualty bit her, the blood test was positive, and it’s only a matter of time
before she turns. She ran out of bullets and has no way to kill herself. She begs
for help before the batteries die. If the Takers go to her location, they find she is
stranded on top of a small building surrounded by a mob. Killing her with a long-
range weapon is a level-3 Detachment threat, plus it may attract the attention of
the mob. If the Takers fight their way through to her, they can find out what her last
request is, which may heal two humanity if fulfilled. She begs for death so killing
her then is only level-1 Detachment threat. If the characters do not follow up on her
location, then she will become a Vector and attack the group before they finish the
leg.
Takers find themselves suddenly surrounded by dogs of every size and breed. The
animals keep their distance, but more and more join their ranks, keeping pace with
the crew at a respectful distance. They don’t look feral; in fact, these are some of the
healthiest dogs they’ve seen since the Crash. If they remain calm, the crew eventually
comes upon a dumpy old woman cooking stew on a camp stove. She looks up,
greets the newcomers, and returns to her cooking. Successful Research (or simple
conversation) reveals this to be the legendary Alpha, a Taker rumored to keep herself
safe with a circling pack of dogs trained to lure casualties away from their master. If
asked, Alpha confirms her identity and reveals the Takers are only seeing about half
the pack now, as the other fifty or so are out on duty. She occasionally stops eating to
scroll through camera feeds of various pooches on the perimeter. If the Takers stop
and burn their rations for the day, the dogs stop circling and come into play, healing
one Humanity for each PC. Alpha will gift a crew that’s good with animals a newborn
puppy. Though helpless now, the dog will grow into an animal capable of service in two
jobs, with both the Friendly and Hardy upgrades already purchased. Needles to say,
anyone attempting to harm Alpha or her pack will be ordered eaten by the horde of
attack animals surrounding them, but the interaction is otherwise quite pleasant.
Takers who make a Foresight check note how good the area ahead would be for
an ambush; an Awareness check spots the crew of teenage Raiders set-up ahead.
Going around the ambush requires an extra Leg’s worth of rations. The crew has
two more members than the Taker’s party and none of them are over the age of 15.
A successful Intimidation check will convince them too many of them will die if they
fight the Takers. Persuasion or Deception will convince them that the Takers aren’t
carrying enough for the fight to be worth it. If a fight breaks out and the Takers
survive, they can Scavenge the crew’s weapons and 1d10/2 of Bounty, but will gain
the -Rep spot “Child Killer,” regardless of who fired first.
PCs that make an Awareness or Research check spot Taker sign, a form of graffiti
used in the craft to communicate with other crews. The signs advertise a respite at
Sunset Glens. If Takers go, they find a gated community with no community, merely
a single model home inside a wrought iron fence. A sign on the gate reads, “Shady
Pines Enclave Coming in...” dated two years ago. The gate is easy to climb, but to enter
the house the crew has to crank a generator for an electronic security system. They
must state their names into a camera to “sign-in” before the door opens. Inside, they
find bicycle run generators, a functioning hot water heater, and a table with a “Take a
Weapon, Leave a Weapon” policy. Stated rules require the crew to clean the house and
replace water in the cistern from the well before they leave the respite. If the crew stays
the night, the amenities heal one Humanity. If they abuse the respite policies, they still
heal Humanity, but the crew gains the -Rep Spot “Scrub Crew.”

475
 Characters that make an Awareness check see a zip line on top of a nearby building
leading several blocks ahead. A Foresight check determines that if someone took the
trouble to put up a zip line, there was a good reason for it. A follow-up Awareness
check spots craters littering the ground ahead. Profession: Demolitions or Foresight
reveals that the military must have mined the area and it is extremely likely that
unexploded ordnance is still around. Bypassing the area entirely adds two extra legs
to the journey. Characters trying to go through the minefield must make an Awareness
check or suffer 1d10 Kill and Stun to every hit location (mines are very dangerous).
A critical failure triggers multiple mines that endanger other Takers and alert nearby
casualties. Characters that wish to use the zip line can easily get to the top of the
building but using the zip line is a level-2 Trauma threat and requires a Resistance
check to hold on. Failure results in a drop that inflicts 1d10 kill to both legs and may
detonate a mine. Mechanics can be used to rig up a device to safely hold onto the zip
line without risk of falling off. Characters with a pro-go camera can record the zip line
run and sell the footage for 1 bounty.

A structure with external stairs, such as a fire watchtower, has numerous casualty
corpses scattered around it. The stairs have large gaps, where someone deliberately
removed multiple rungs. It is possible to jump the gaps with a single Athletics check.
Failure inflicts 1d10 kill to both legs. Characters that reach the top of the structure see
a strange device powered by a solar panel. Several skills, like Research or Profession:
Electronics can reveal that the device is a jury-rigged noisemaker, set to play pirate ska
fusion metal in order to lure casualties up the stairs. The casualties fall through the
gaps and break their skulls or legs. 1d10 bounty can be scavenged from the corpses
around the structure but 1d10/5 casualties are still active there, just crawling around
with broken legs. The device can be disarmed and looted with a successful Mechanics
check but failure indicates the character does not disarm it. At a random time later on,
it will activate and alert anyone near the character carrying it. The device is worth 3
bounty and weighs 1 haul.

Zoos didn’t fair well in the Crash, but some animals got loose and adapted quickly to
their freedom. In this instance, the Takers have made the mistake of wandering into the
territory of the wrong beast. Pick one:
Lion: always has initiative/ two attacks per round/ blows do Kill+Stun or Kill and
knockback/ 20 hit boxes
Bear: attacks do Kill+Stun and knockback or grapple/ 30 hit boxes
Rhino: attacks do Kill + Stun and knockback/ 40 hit boxes/ armored against all but
firearms
Elephant: 100 hit boxes/ counts as being hit by a vehicle
Predators know not to eat casualties (they claw their heads from their shoulders easily
enough) but that they need to hunt live prey. They only break off attack if sufficiently
wounded. Herbivores are protecting territory and only stop once Takers flee the area. If
the PCs kill the majestic beasts, Foresight or Research reminds them that superstitious
folk medicine has grown in popularity since the Crash. Many of the animal’s parts can
be sold for a high profit.
The Takers wake up to a solid frost (if it’s the summer, call it an ‘unseasonable frost’).
Their footing may be treacherous, but if the Takers elect to press on before the frost
melts they will find 2 mobs of Casualties along their route, unable to shamble after
them. If engaged at melee range, the Casualties can still attack, but treat each Casualty
as a mob of one (they are too spread out to gang up on the Takers). Normal scavenging
from Casualties applies. Make an Athletics check to avoid twisting an ankle (1d10/5
Stun to one leg) in the slippery footing.

476
Takers who make an Awareness check realize that the ground beneath their feet
is hotter than usual or there are plants and insects in the area which typically only
thrive in warmer climates. A successful Foresight or Profession: Computer Science
check means they have alerts programmed into their Ubiq specs (if the Takers have
Ubiq specs) — these alerts go off due to the high levels of carbon monoxide and
sulfur dioxide in the area. Spend one extra ration to go around the area. Takers
who fail these checks take 1d10 Kill to the chest as they breath in the fumes, before
realizing they need to get out of the area. On their way out, they come across the
body of a Taker who asphyxiated from the fumes. Most of their gear has been
damaged by the sulfur dioxide, but the Takers can scavenge one axe with the Sturdy
upgrade from the body. Take 1d10/2 Stun to the chest for the time required to
examine and pull gear off the body.
A successful Research check later let’s the Takers put together the clues: they
were walking over a coal seam fire. Posting the location of the fire to the Ubiq
forums gains the crew the +Rep spot “Helpful.” This check can be made whether or
not the crew took damage from the fumes.

A dron-key is leading a mob of casualties across the path of the Takers. Characters
can easily remain silent and wait for it to pass or they can attack the mob
themselves. If they kill the mob, the dron-key stops. Characters with Ubiq specs or
a laptop will realize it is sending an encrypted message to someone over Ubiq. If
the characters wait for a few minutes (perhaps by looting the corpses of the mob)
and leave the dron-key alone, the dron-key’s owner reestablishes contact with it
and speaks to the characters. She is grateful that the characters have spared the
dron-key and tells them that she is at a nearby enclave and used the dron-key to
kite the undead away. If they make sure the dron-key returns safely, she will pay
them 2 bounty and provide a +Rep Spot “Upstanding Ex-citizens.” Characters
with a Profession: Computers skill (or equivalent) and a laptop can hack the dron-
key’s security system and claim it for their own. In this case, the owner eventually
discovers the theft and identifies the characters by using the cameras on the dron-
key. The characters gain a -Rep Spot “Thieving Takers” in this case.

Extreme weather and erosion caused a landslide some time ago, half-burying a
large mob of casualties. The result is a treacherous hill that conceals dozens of
undead, many of which can still get up and attack unwary travelers. All characters
can make an Awareness check. If successful, they spot several corpses in the
ground, half-buried. Bypassing the hill takes an extra two legs. Walking down the
hill requires an Athletics check in order to avoid the undead and avoid slipping on
the unstable terrain.

477
 The Takers pass by a farm, a house and barn visible from the road with no signs
of fortification. A teenage girl comes running up to the Takers, begging them to
“please come help, something’s wrong with Daddy.” If they walk away, make a
Self-Control: Detachment check. Walking towards the house, making a Sensitivity
or Persuasion check reveals that the girl is a Shepherd, as is her father. Inside the
house, on the second floor, in the master bedroom, is Daddy, strapped to a bed with
several leather belts. Once the first Taker walks into the doorway, the belts snap as
the Vector lurches out of the bed. He is so tangled in the bed and belts that he is
limited to one Shamble for two rounds, although the murder modifier is otherwise
unchanged. The girl screams at the Takers that they can lure him into the barn
“with the others” and then runs back down the hallway. She will show back up on
round three with Scent Blocker and throw it on the Takers, if they haven’t killed the
Vector by then. If the Takers run away, they must make a Self-Control: Detachment
check as Daddy will almost certainly kill the girl. If the Takers manage to kill the
Vector, the girl will begin wailing in grief — make a Sensitivity, Persuasion, or
Leadership check to calm her down before the 3 mobs of Casualties in the barn
break out. If they succeed at calming the girl, she will show them two Haul worth
of goods (in addition to the supplies she takes for herself [the Takers will not have
to spend any rations on taking care of the girl]) and accompany them to the nearest
enclave. If the Casualties do break out and the Takers survive, they can Scavenge
three mobs worth of Bounty but the girl runs off.

Takers come across an eerily silent stretch of road. If it’s in a rural area, there
is little to be seen besides a gas station and adjacent feed store riddled with
bullet holes. If it’s an urban area, the two buildings across the street from each
other can be of any type, but the pavement between is littered with the corpses
of casualties. Those with Ubiq get pinged simultaneously. One has a message
addressed to “those on the road,” while the other is a cheap public bandwidth,
reserved for advertisements pre-Crash. The addressed message is from the last
surviving member a Black Math cult in one building. He warns the crew that
his sect has been fighting a cult of Meek for days. He’s the only survivor and
out of ammo, but he’s fought them to standoff. The other message is the Meek,
screaming, “Reinforcements come brothers! Come to help us destroy the defilers
and transcend!” The Meek are armed with two riflemen and two kamikazes. The
latter are armed with vials of Vector blood. They’ll try to get as close to the crew
as possible, take cover, then inject themselves while the rest of the cult lays down
covering fire. The hope is to infect the whole crew and start a fresh outbreak in
the area. There’s only one, unarmed Black Mather left, but he’ll try to help if he’s
convinced he can take at least one of the Meek with him. If the Takers survive the
fight, it yields almost nothing of value. The cults had been besieging each other
for days. The rations are gone, the ammo spent, and the weapons damaged in
explosions.

478
An overturned semi-truck and trailer has been partially scavenged but valuable
machine parts from the truck’s engine are clearly visible on the ground. It looks like
whomever was scavenging it left in a hurry and never returned. A Scavenging check
reveals that the survivor has been gone for some time as the exposed parts show signs
of weathering — they are still usable though. A Mechanics check is required to identify
the valuable parts. The trailer is still closed. A cursory check shows it will not open
from the outside. A Mechanics or Awareness check reveals it has been welded shut
from the inside. If the characters can somehow find a way in the trailer, they find a
single casualty hidden in crates of machine parts. The parts were bent and damaged
when the truck flipped over, so finding useful ones would take days of sorting. A
successful Scavenge check finds 1d10 bounty of small parts with a few minutes of
searching. Of course, if the characters linger too long in the open, casualties or raiders
may notice and attack them.

On the road ahead there are several Army sized large trucks in a circle. Make an
Awareness check to notice the four mobs of Casualties coming out of the truck
corral for the Takers before they are three shambles away. If the Takers succeed the
check, the Casualties are six shambles away. If the Takers kill the mobs, they can
scavenge from the trucks. The Casualties are Army soldiers and therefore assumed
dead after going MIA. Their gear has been exposed to the weather too long to be
worth scavenging. The convoy was carrying samples of the Blight, still in their test
tubes, to a research base somewhere in the Loss — the orders in the lead truck do
not specify where that base is. A successful Research or Networking check can sell
the samples for ten bounty to the Crusaders or the Meek. The convoy contains two
haul worth of medical equipment.

An abandoned National Guard outpost with a pre-fabricated watchtower is spotted.

Characters can easily bypass it but if they investigate it, they will find that scavengers
have picked it clean. Even the casualty corpses have been dragged away and burned.
All that is left are the sandbag fortifications, heavy metal barricades, command post,
and watch tower. It is easily defensible. Characters with binoculars who climb the
watchtower can make an Awareness check to get a clue about what the next leg of the
trip will contain. A Scavenge check reveals a mortar hidden in the dirt. It has no shells,
but it can still fire.

Each Taker in the crew rolls a Black die and adds their SPD. The Taker with the lowest
roll begins sliding down the edge of the sinkhole that opens up under their feet. Make
an Athletics check to arrest the slide without injury. If the Taker fails their check, they
slide into the dry underground cistern the sinkhole has just opened up and take 1d10/2
in Stun to both legs. There are 2-3 Casualties in the immediate area the Taker slides
into, all of which have Bounty on them. Two more mobs of Casualties are attracted by
the loud noise of the Taker hitting bottom; both mobs are minimum five shambles away.
Getting back out of the cistern requires two Athletics checks.

The Takers spot a DHQS farm up ahead and the fruit has just ripened. But the forecast
is calling for a killing frost overnight. If that’s accurate, most of the food out here will go
to waste since the drones aren’t out and harvesting. Even if they were, they couldn’t get
everything in time. Athletics check to get up and over the fence without injury (1d10/2
Stun to one leg or arm on a failed check). Takers gain one refresh of rations and regain
one Humanity if they harvest some fruit. The fruit would spoil before they could get it
back to their enclave, so Takers may not harvest any as Haul.

479
 A locust plague has sprung up in the area. The creatures swarm over every surface,
blacking out the sun. Waiting for the feeding frenzy to die down costs two extra
rations and does one Stress damage as the swarm settles down. Walking through
the creatures is possible, but the constant buzz and prickling legs represent
a level-2 threat to Stress. Casualties are drawn to the noise. Ask the crew to
designate a leader to navigate the swarm or have everyone check Awareness
separately. On a failure, the Taker walks right into a lone casualty lost in the swarm.
On a success, they just manage to avoid them as they snap their teeth at the air,
lurching silhouettes moving in the swarm. Realizing the dead are amongst the
cloud causes a level-2 Trauma threat. Those with successful Foresight checks that
brave the plague realize the protein in a locust can’t be ignored back at the enclave.
Any synthetic fabric can be used to trap and bag the insects, and every Haul of dead
locusts is worth 1d10/2 bounty back home.
A pickup truck is stuck in the middle of a shallow pond. There are boxes and bags
in the bed of the truck, clearly visible. However, a mob of casualties is standing near
the truck. The thick mud floor of the pond slows them down, so characters can
easily outrun them or shoot them down with ranged weapons. If they do not lure
them away from the truck, several casualties bleed on the boxes when they are shot,
ruining any salvage in the truck. A Foresight check allows the characters a chance
to realize this before they attack. There is 1d10/2 bounty in the truck’s bed if the
characters make a successful Scavenging check.

Around the bend, the Takers come on a dead trade caravan between enclaves. The
mob of casualties that wiped it out look up from where they are chowing down on
one of the bodies and start lumbering after the Takers. Make an Awareness check
to realize that the body the casualties are abandoning will get up as a Vector in four
rounds. If the Takers survive, there is four haul of goods in the caravan and 1d10/2
Bounty from the caravan members. Alternatively, if the Takers call either the origin
or destination enclave to let them know what happened to the caravan and where
they could come pick it up, they will receive a four bounty finder’s fee and a +Rep
spot “Honest.”

Takers find a raccoon digging up a half-buried bag by the side of the road. If they shoo
the creature away, they find a bag with a full complement of grenades and a refresh of
rations. The bag hasn’t been there long, and Foresight suggests the explosives were
meant for a fallback position. Diverting down the path reveals a weapons deal between
the Chosen and the Meek. The Latent group has a Vector restrained with dogcatcher
snares. Those not holding the fresh infected have guns drawn on the other group. Just
seeing what the Meek have done to themselves requires is level-2 Detachment threat:
teeth filed to points, eyes gouged out, running sores cut into flesh. They’re aesthetically
molding their bodies in preparation for transformation. They’re mostly armed with
melee weapons, but the negotiator is covered in plastic explosives and has nails taped
all over his bodies. Though wary, both groups are dealing with each other. The leader
of the Chosen takes out an IV bag, syringe, and pump. She injects it into the Vector
and starts draining it. The lead Meek licks what remains of his lips and throws a bag of
4d10 bounty on the ground between the two groups. Imagining what the Meek plan to
do with that much hot Blight requires a level-4 Detachment check if the Takers choose
to walk away. Planning to stop an arms deal between a group of armed infected and
a group that envies them requires a level-3 Trauma check. If they win, the crew can
scavenge anything left over that’s not on fire or covered in infected blood.
480
Takers see a campfire in the distance. If they approach, they find a group of sitting
around it on the steps of a public library, huddled against the chill. Research or
Foresight checks reveal them to be members of the Bonhoeffers, a well-known
hardline Archivists group. The Bonhoeffers offer a place by the fire and what food
they have. They pleasantly ask where the Takers are going and discuss their faith.
After some time, it’s apparent the archivists fuel the fire with distressing items:
wooden bats that could be melee weapons, good clothes, functioning backpacks, etc.
Watching them keep the bonfire lit causes a level-2 Stress check. If asked, they claim
only that the items are of no worth, and those that disagree can camp elsewhere. The
Market should ask everyone to roll Black and add their ADP. The character with the
lowest number has to go pee. When the PC walks around the side of the building to
relieve themselves, they find the naked bodies of the family the Bonhoeffers executed
before the crew arrived. If anyone bothers to ask why they killed the men, women,
and children, they respond that it was because they were burning books for heat. But
books are of worth; not people. Check Self-Control and start combat as appropriate.

A recent rainfall has washed away some brush concealing a path off the main road.
Along the path are the eroded remains of several primitive booby traps. At the end
of the path, the Takers find a heavy metal door closing off an airlock that, due to a
lack of electricity, is unlocked — the Takers can open the door with no resistance.
Inside is the hoard of a prepper who, judging by the dust all over the place, never
made it out to their bunker. The food has long gone bad, but the Takers find an
arsenal of guns and ammunition, a small library of survival manuals, a mechanic’s
toolkit, and an electronics toolkit.

Approaching a river, the Takers find it wider than expected and the bridge marked
on their maps now starts and ends partially in the water. A successful Foresight or
Research check tells the Takers that during the Crash a retreating military blew
the local dam to create a barrier to slow down the casualty stampede coming after
them. The crew should head down river, where it thins out and slows down a bit.
If the Takers try to wade through the river to the bridge, a single mob of casualties
that have washed up against the bridge claw their way up onto the bridge. An
Awareness check notices them while they are still in the water and unable to attack.
If the casualties make it up onto the bridge and the Takers kill them, the normal
Scavenging rules apply. Otherwise, the bodies and any bounty on them are washed
away.

Takers encounter a DHQS drone swarm. The small aircraft are launched in batches
from missile batteries and fly in pre-programmed formations, gathering intelligence
for the government. A hundred of them dot the sky. The units are within range for two
turns (three for anyone who made an Awareness check) and one can be shot down for
every successful Precision Shoot check. A crashed drone provides 1d10 bounty worth
of sophisticated electronics. After those three turns, the drones ascend beyond the
effective range of weaponry. Those that make a Scavenging, Mechanics, or Profession:
Drones check while salvaging parts realize this drone is outfitted to carry small packets
of ordinance. Whether they realize it or not, a squadron of six drones has split from the
flock and returns to drop payload on the meddlers. The bombs are inaccurate (Market
rolls 6 dice; evens miss and odds hit) and Takers that know of the threat can make
Athletics checks to dodge under cover, but each does explosive Kill + Stun damage.
Even misses can set buildings on fire and attract Casualties.

481
 The Takers are passing by an abandoned gas station when music begins playing
over the outdoor speakers. An Awareness or Foresight check tells the Takers
that the music is motion activated and how far to move to get out of the sensor’s
range. If they make the check, only two Casualties come out of the station and
the Takers are far enough away to simply walk off. If they do not make the check,
2d10 Casualties come out of and from behind the station. If the Takers kill all the
Casualties, they can make a Scavenging check — the speakers are still powered by
two solar cells on top of the gas station, which are worth 5 bounty each and take
one haul each.
The path is strewn with debris — some powerful weather went through the area
the other day (depending on the area, suggest using a tornado, hail storm, or
thunderstorm) making the road ahead treacherous. The Takers can go around
without penalty or spending any resources. If they continue down the path,
they make an Athletics check to avoid spraining an ankle (1d10/2 to one leg on
a failure), find 2d10 Bounty from Casualties decapitated by flying debris, and
encounter 1d10/2 Casualties.

A light drizzle starts up. On a successful Awareness check, the Takers notice that
something smells a little... off. On a successful Foresight check, they checked the
weather forecast for the day. On a successful Profession: Computer Programming,
the Takers get an alert on their Ubiq specs. They have started to walk/drive through
acidic rain. If they succeed a check, the Takers can get undercover or go around the
storm before the rain does too much damage. Otherwise, lose one upgrade on every
piece of gear exposed to the rain. If a piece of gear does not have any upgrades, it
requires an extra bounty or a successful Mechanics check to fix during upkeep. If
caught out in the rain, on a successful Scavenge check the Takers find a spear with
the Sturdy and Crossbar upgrade abandoned by the side of the road.

In the distance, the Takers can hear several bursts of gunfire, then silence. If they
investigate, they find the remains of a raider group being devoured by a mob of
casualties. The raiders have scavengable gear but their gunfire will surely draw
more undead soon. If the party can clear out a mob in 1d10 rounds, they can
scavenge up to 2d10 worth of bounty from the dead raiders with a successful
Scavenge check before another mob appears.

The Takers see a fortified house that appears to be abandoned. If they investigate,
they see a dead man who clearly shot himself near a pile of supplies, including
rations and bullets. Tripwires are lined on each door and window of the house. An
Awareness check is required to notice them and the market may decide to allow
such checks if the players specifically ask for it. If a tripwire is triggered, small
explosive charges blow holes in the ceiling, releasing a mob’s worth of casualties in
torpor on the characters. They begin to stir and will attack in one round. The entire
house is a trap rigged by Meek cultists trying to infect humans. The rations are
poisoned with Blight and the bullets are duds.

482
The Takers spot a vehicle in the road up ahead. Three men are standing around with
weapons out, but not pointed at the Takers, while a fourth is changing a tire. All three
guards continue their bickering as the Takers approach. On a successful Networking
check the Takers realize from the bickering that this is a group of Takers out of the
nearest Randian enclave. They are willing to trade but will try to sell all of their goods
at upkeep x3 Bounty. A successful Sensitivity check will inform the Takers that none of
the Randians are mechanics, including the guy trying to change the tire. With sufficient
spouting of the Objectivist philosophy and a Persuasion, Deception, or Leadership
check, the Takers can charge the Randians two times the number of charges they
spend on a Mechanics check (limit 4) plus three bounty for labor in fixing their tire for
them. A failed Mechanics check will result in a -Rep Spot “Over selling.”
A drone copter descends into view, flashing a strobe light at the Takers. A voice
announces over the speaker “We will be coming into view shortly. Do not shoot. We
seek to parley.” A few minutes later, a DHQS squad pulls into view. They carry some
of the finest gear the Takers have ever seen (silenced automatic rifles, carbon-fiber
collapsible hand axes, basilisk’s skin armor, etc.). Each is flanked by a next-gen dron-
key, one of which carries a mini-gun on its back. Each of the three is a management
level Market force with the determined advantage. The Stewards wait and get prepared
to shoot. The Takers need to send forward a representative, and the rep can pick
which one they want to speak to. Every successful Sensitivity check gets a read on a
squad member. There’s Twitchy, who obviously thinks everyone is out to kill them and
the Takers are no different. There’s Vet, who sees the crew as a tactical variable to be
dismissed... for now. Then there’s Patron, who seems deeply uncomfortable holding
guns on former countrymen. No matter who they parley with, the stewards just want
to pass by unmolested: they don’t have time to hide as the Takers go by, and no one
wants a gunfight. If Takers are skeptical of their motives, the Stewards assure them
they have no designs on their enclave (they don’t let them know how they know about
the enclave). Twitchy promises not to kill them if they let them pass. Vet promises to
delete their faces from his drone’s camera, and he can be persuaded into changing
the status of Lost characters to “Unaccounted For.” Patron dumps 2d10 bounty in the
road as a toll for passing. Regardless of how it goes, dealing with the DHQS is a level-2
Detachment threat.
For hours, Takers have been seeing signs for “Skeeter’s Treasure” painted all over
the place. If they choose to follow them, they come to an actual drive-thru theater,
apparently allowed to survive as a local historical site. In a rural area, the screen is
set up on the rocky cliff face of a hill half-blasted away to make room for the parking
lot. If in an urban area, the screen hangs from a long-abandoned factory as part of
urban renewal. Either way, in huge red paint, the screen reads “YOU WIN. COME
AND GET IT.” In the middle of the message, a body hangs from the neck from one of
the giant screen’s struts. Those with binoculars can see 5d10 bounty stapled all over
the canvas of the screen. Across the dirt parking lot, craters and body parts dot the
ground. Apparently, Skeeter mined the ground leading towards his treasure screen in
every direction. It takes Awareness, Foresight, Self-Control, and time to navigate the
minefield. Mechanics or some sort of military Profession is required to disarm mines.
Those that go around and try to rappel down from the wall the screen is mounted on
find that the largest explosives were reserved for wise guys. Even if those that set them
off survive, the high elevation causes a landslide that destroys all the bounty. If the
Takers make it to the screen intact, they can take the bounty. Upon closer inspection,
it appears the hanged man had his hands handcuffed to his belt; it turns out this is
Skeeter’s sick joke rather than his suicide note.

483
 The path is blocked by a river straining its bank, swollen by distant rains. The
bridges were blown up in yet another failed retreat during the Crash. But it seems
the army installed the prototype of what has come to be called a “troutline” before
they left. The device is a net composed of thin, carbon-fiber netting and strung to
the bottom of the river. The whole thing is suspended on a thick metal cable strung
between sturdy trees on either bank. Across the wire, wheels and a counter weight
move a miniature Punch-Bot to and fro across the river. The idea was to catch
any casualties crossing the river on foot in the net, dicing them on the thin metal
wires or having the Punch-Bot fire the cattle gun into their brains if they climbed
high enough to trigger the sensors. Takers can cross if they use the guide wire as
a handrail and walk across the top of the net (check Athletics). However, mid-way
through the crossing, a derelict boat comes into view, teeming with casualties from
an outbreak on board. Meanwhile, the bot activates as casualties on the net trigger
its sensors. Check Athletics to balance on the net as the passing Punch-Bot makes
holding onto the guide wire impossible. For those at the back of the line, check
Athletics to move faster and get beyond where the boat full of undead will strike the
wires. Finally, check Resistance to hold on as the boat strikes the net. Falling into
the water risks drowning, confrontation with submerged casualties trapped in the
net, or, at minimum, the loss of important gear.

The Takers come upon a massacred horse-drawn caravan. The only visible bodies
have been so thoroughly consumed as to be rendered inanimate. The carpet armor
was torn from the horses and the animals stripped down to the bone. No sign of
the casualties (or aberrants) responsible for the deaths remains. Whatever it was,
it wasn’t human. Humans wouldn’t leave the cargo completely intact. What the
caravan was hauling is up to the Market, but it’s valuable. If using the MBA rules,
the wagons hold 1d10 + 5 units of supply — enough to start a small business. If the
Takers want to offload everything to a wholesaler, there’s enough for 1d100 bounty.
But how do they get it back to the enclave?

484
 RED MARKETS Severed
1

Taker
Dependants Strained
Needy
Crew
Weak Spot

Soft Spot

Tough Spot

References
Potential Skills
Unarmed
STR ( )
Haul Melee
( )
( )
Resistance
Shoot Threats
SPD ( )
Detachment

Crumble
( )

Break
Crack
Stealth Stress
Athletics Trauma
Awareness
ADP Self-Control
Refresh Scavenging ALT
Drive 10
Criminality
Foresight
INT Research
ALT 7-9
Mechanics ALT ALT
First Aid 5 6
Profession
( )
( )
ALT ALT
Networking 1-2 3-4
CHA Persuasion
Sensitivity
Deception
Intimidation
Leadership
WIL

Backpack Rations
Upkeep 1 Charges Static Upkeep 1 Charges 00000 00000
Effect Taker can carry STR in Haul and Effect Rations can be spent to Buy-a-Roll
personal gear on skills that require exertion.
Additional spends add +1
Qualities Essential Static Qualities Essential Addictive Charged
Character Advancement:
1 Potential = 10 Bounty
485
Skill Points = Bounty equal to new skill level (1B = 1 Skill, 2B = 2 Skill, etc)
 Taker: 2
Charges 00000 00000 Charges 00000 00000
Upkeep Effect Upkeep Effect
Qualities Qualities

Upgrades Upgrades

Charges 00000 00000 Charges 00000 00000

Upkeep Effect Upkeep Effect
Qualities Qualities

Upgrades Upgrades

Charges 00000 00000 Charges 00000 00000

Upkeep Effect Upkeep Effect
Qualities Qualities

Upgrades Upgrades

Charges 00000 00000

Purchasing Price = Upkeep x2
Upkeep Effect Failing to meet Upkeep causes a malfunction
Qualities
Crit Success: No refresh but still functions
Success: No refresh and -1 upgrade
Fail: No refresh,-1 upgrade,and must
Upgrades be repaired
Crit Fail: Item lost

Upkeep
Sustenence Survival Rent Dependants
Maintenance Equipment Purchase Pro. Dev.
Incidentals Health Humanity Favors
Break Point Projectced Earnings

Retirement Milestone Savings

486
Bounty Bank
 RED MARKETS NEGOTIATION SHEET
Crew Name
Enclave

Client Start

Red Die
As A Favor Buyer’s Market At Value Labor Hazard Pay 100% Mark-Up Expenses
Contract is offered Contract is offered Contract is Client agrees to Add one Bounty Double the cost The equipment
at the Demand price at the Demand price offered at add the crew’s per Taker per Leg of the job upkeep of every
only AND client only (Black result the value of break point to to Hazard Pay. before Labor participating
earns a - Rep spot on a equilibrium Supply+Demand the price (Black (Ex: a crew of Taker is added
to use in future roll) (Black + Red) + Red + break four on a into the price (no
negotiations point) three-Leg run one pays upkeep
earns 4 x 3 more) this session)

Provider Undercut Provider Default

Start Start

Black Die Black Die

Clients Have...
Weak Spot: A character flaw or secret that can be leveraged to provide +1 Sway
Soft Spot: An area of sentiment or great passion that can be exploited for +1 Sway
Tough Spot: For NPC clients, this takes the form of a specific need the client has for the contract.
It can be exploited for +1 Sway
Playing Spots
For Takers: For Clients:
Working a client’s weak, soft, or tough spot into the Sensitivity: Clients can sacrifice a turn to learn one spot
roleplaying behind a skill automatically adds +1 Sway to a roll. from the Taker in negotiations
This bonus remains even if the check fails, so success means Gift Spot: Once per negotiation, a client may “sweeten the
+2 Sway, but a failed play on a spot is still worth +1 Sway. pot” with a piece of gear, earning an irresistible +1 Sway
Spots must be learned in scams or using Sensitivity + Rep Spots: - Rep Spot: If the crew has done something unprofessional,
If the crew has earned a + Rep Spot for a notable deed, the incompetent, or dishonest in the past, the client can use it
negotiator can work it into the roleplay for a bonus +1 Sway. once for an irresistible +1 Sway

Negotiation Charm Skills

Networking: Roll a check to find a contract or find info about it. Total failure means undercutting to “As a Favor.”

Persuasion: Success moves +1 Sway, or defends against opponent’s Sway if heads up. Can be used with spots.

Intimidation can be used to end negotiations early with a threat to “walk out.” Work in a spot to move and end
Intimidation: negotiations in the same turn.

Sensitivity: Read an opponent’s weak, soft, or tough spot, but sacrifice a turn to do so. Failure wastes a turn and provides
no information.
Lie about the crew’s abilities to move +1 Sway. Can be used with spots. Deception can defend against the
Deception: client’s spot play with “poker face”
To Begin: Black + Leadership / 2 (rounded up, to a max of five rounds) equals the number of turns. Failure means
Leadership: rounds are rolled secretly.
To End: Success has Black meet Red at the higher price, and failure brings Red down to Black at the lower price.

Determining Price
To Start: Player makes a Leadership check (see above)

Heads Up: Red and Black cannot be parallel while in negotiation. Each die resolves at the same time (moving
simultaneously once both parties have spoken). It takes 1 Sway to advance unopposed, but in head up, dice only
advance by pushing (negating an opponent’s Sway and having some left over)

Fixing Price: On the last round, player makes a Leadership check. On a success, Black moves right and parallel
with the Red (higher price). On a failure, Red moves left until parallel with Black. Parallel dice indicate the
agreed upon price.

Undercutting: Competition will try to undercut agreed upon prices, unless eliminated or left out because
the PCs are “preferred providers” of a job line. Resisting an undercut requires a successful CHA check or a
dedicated scame. Failure means the price goes down one space; critical failure means two spaces. PCs undercutting
competition always succeed (there must be a game), but they start on “As a Favor” on the tracker.

487
 RED MARKETS CREW TRACKER

Crew Name
Enclave
PORTFOLIO
Contract Job Line Price Earned Bounty per Taker

TAKERS REPUTATION
Earnings
Name Breakpoint Equip. (projected) Spot +/-

Totals

GENERAL NOTES:

488
 RED MARKETS CREW SHEET:MBA RULES

Crew Name
Enclave

Small Business Name:

Corresponding Employee/ Remaining Value Gouge/ Total
Liquidity Troubleshooter Liquidity
Score/Contract# Taker Working Supply per Unit Mark-up Earned

Investments and Speculation:

Investment Liquidity Inside Trading
(-1 every session) (+1 per action) Risk Rate of Return

GENERAL NOTES:

489
 COMBAT SUMMARY CHEAT SHEET
ActIon Economy
Every character starts a combat round with one tactic, one twitch, and one freebie. Lengthy actions, or tasks, take up an entire
turn or more and sacrifice tactic and twitch.

tactICS
Tactics resolve with Initiative. Tactics include:
• Firing a weapon
• Making a Melee or Unarmed attack
• Drawing or holstering a weapon
• Running to cover
• Reloading a weapon or refreshing charges on other tools
• Administering first aid
• Barricading a door
• Full Defense (converting an Tactic to a Twitch)
• Full Offense (converting the Twitch to a second Tactic, which moves to the end of the initiative order)

TWITCHES
Twitches go off when prompted by Market forces. Twitches are limited and are almost always either…
• Roll Athletics checks to dodge attacks
• Roll Athletics checks to get under cover
• Block an incoming Melee or Unarmed attack
• Recover from knockback
• Quick draw an item by dropping previously held gear
• Reload or perform another quick action, as allowed by a specific gear’s upgrade

FREEBIES
Freebies include intellectual and verbal actions that can be carried out while performing tactics, twitches, or tasks. Characters
get one multitask per combat cycle.
• Foresight rolls to get tactical information
• Awareness rolls to spot something
• Shouting or whispering, or CHA skill checks where appropriate
• Making a Self-Control test

All freebies are under the one-and-done rule. If the freebie required a roll, the Taker either made it or did not.

ORDER OF COMBAT
1. Players roll Black and add their SPD.
2. Players declare from most to least. The Market spends Red dice to place Market Forces in-between their numbers. This is the initiative order.
3. The highest initiative player declares a tactic, spends to make a roll, and resolves the action.
a. Black is damage. Red is hit location. The difference between Kill and Stun damage is determined by the gear used. The damage is
unmodified by extra spends unless the gear is specifically upgraded (or use the “Bust Rule: Random Damage” p. 281).
b. Twitches are demanded by the actions of Market forces and may go wherever the player wishes. Twitches unspent at the end of the round
are discarded.
4. Assess damage and any penalties.
5. Once ever player and Market force has had a turn, return to step 3 and repeat (or use “Bust Rule: Random Damage” p. 281).
490
 SpecIal Maneuvers
Block: Make a Melee check to direct an attack to a specific piece of gear. Make an Unarmed check to direct damage to a specific
hi location. Firearms cannot be blocked.

Cover: Characters in cover cannot be attacked as long as they are in cover. Characters are out of cover if they attack. Twitches can
be used to return to cover. A tactic or twitch must be used to move to cover if the character doesn’t start out there.

Called Shot: Player declares a called shot on their tactic and moves to the end of the initiative order. If the Taker’s twitch
remains unspent, the Taker can make a precision check to hit the target of their choice. On a success, the player can dictate the
narrative of the success, up to and including the death of the target.

FIrIng Into Melee: All rolls are precisions rolls, and failure hits an unintended target.

Flank: To hit an enemy in cover, they must be flanked. This requires either an Athletics or Sneak test to move into position. If the
Sneak test fails, the Forces get to declare a free attack. If the Athletics test fails, the forces get to declare a free attack. Dodges can be
attempted normally if the Taker has a twitch left. If an enemy moves to flank and isn’t stopped, Takers they moved against are no
longer considered in cover.

Full Defense: Convert your tactic into a twitch. One twitch can go off whenever prompted by Market forces, but the second
can’t be used until the player declares full defense on their initiative. From that point on, twitches respond to threats normally.

Full Offense: Turn your twitch into a second attack. You must declare this on your initiative and it can’t be taken back. The
second attack moves to the end of the initiative order.

GrapplIng: Make an Unarmed check against the target. On a success, the target is grappled. Make a Unarmed check every
subsequent round to keep the target restrained. If the target is a Casualty, make a Resistance check instead.
Knockback: Certain weapons have knockback, which lays a target out prone. It costs a tactic to get up from the prone position.

Ready: Abstaining from all actions for one round (no tactic, twitch, or task) allows the Taker to do one of two things: 1) move to
the top of the next initiative order or 2) roll Black + Skill + Potential for the next check.

ReloadIng: Refreshing charges costs a tactic if it is an item worn on the belt; refreshing gear is a task action if it is stored in the
backpack.

Rush: Takers can burn both a tactic and twitch to rush the enemy. This must be declared on their initiative. The Taker makes an
Athletics test. If it succeeds, the Taker can use their twitch as another tactic and perform a Melee or Unarmed attack. If the first
Athletics test fails, the Market forces get a free attack. The player can choose to eat the damage and finish the attack, or use their
twitch to break off the assault and try to dodge.

Spray: If a weapon possesses the ability to spray, on a success a PC can choose to burn their twitch and keep firing. The Shoot
check must be successful first, but upon burning the twitch and spending 3 charges, the player can choose to deal damage again to
the same target or make a separate hit on a different target nearby.

SuppressIng FIre: A Taker spending 3 charges on a ranged weapon and burns one tactic to suppress an enemy in cover. That
means the enemy cannot move or attack that round. Takers that are suppressed must make a Self-Control: Trauma check to move
from cover, and the enemy gets to declare a free attack against them.
491
 A • Archivists 153
• Holy Communion 154
Aberrants 38, 160, 454
• Detox 154
• Aerosol 160, 454
• Crusaders 155
• Ever-vecs 16, 454
• Randians 156
• Empties 162, 455
• LALAs 157
• Mutants 163, 455
Blight 32, 295
• Ganglia 164, 455
• Explanations 39
• Converts 166, 454
Boom 172, 353
• Scarecrows 167, 456
• Default Checks 176
• Stalkers 168, 456
• Basic Refresh 241
• Malignant 169, 455
• The Last Shall Be First 277
• Shuffled 170, 456
• Will to Live 283
Action Economy 273, 490
• Lucky X 283
• Tactic 273
• What if the Dice Don’t Meet? 343
• Twitch 273
• Labor Shortage 372
• Freebie 274
Bounty 108, 211, 233
• Task 274
Bust 172, 354
Advanced Electronics 262
• +1 Or It Can’t Be Done 176
Armor and Accessories 255
• Accuracy Counts 201
Assessing Risk 438
• Interest 211
At-A-Glance
• No Budget; No Buy 228
• Character Creation 181
• High-Stakes Refresh 242
• Vectors 303
• Individual Initiative 277
• Negotiation 322
• Fog of War 277
• Spots 336
• Random Damage 281
• Scams 339
• Alternative Hit Boxes 281
• Workplace Essentials 359
• Permanent Damage 282
• Scores 395
• God’s Blight 306
• Campaign Structure 413
• No Hiding the Truth 335
• Small Businesses 426
• Peasants Don’t Scare Me 336
• Loans 441
• The Loss Never Forgets 338
• All or Nothing 338
B • What if the Dice Don’t Meet? 343
Backing Out 344 • Competitive Market 372
Believers 150 • Uncertain Vignettes 419
• The Meek 151 • Asshole Coworkers 449
• Shepherds 151 Buy-A-Roll 7, 173
• Chosen 152
• Triage 152
• Black Math 153
492
C Difficult 178
Drugs and Healthcare 251
Campaign Structure 413
Casualties 37, 296
Character Advancement 214 E
Character Creation 181 Enclaves 113, 120
Charges 7, 173, 179, 234 • Ubiq City 28, 121
Chumming 300 • Leper 122
Collision 283 • Distributy 123
Combat 272 • Mont Liner 124
Combat Maneuvers 285, 490 • The Consolidated 124
• Block 285 • MyWay 126
• Called Shots 285 • The Rock 127
• Cover 285 • Light City 128
• Firing Into Melee 285 • Achieve 130
• Flank 285 • Papa Doc’s Railroad 131
• Full Defense 286 • Troutfitt 409
• Full Offense 286 Encounter Prompts 451
• Grappling 286 Encounter Themes 450
• Knockback 287 Equilibrium 362
• Ready 287 Exclusion Zones 135
• Reloading and Rearming 287
• Rush 287
• Spray 287 F
• Suppressing Fire 288 Falling 283
Combat Round 275, 490 Fixers 349
Contracts 325, 358, 360, 379 Freebie 274
Crafting 242
Crash 32
Criminal Organizations 143 G
• Narco Cartels 143 Gear 232
• Smugglers 144 Gear, Designing New 244
• Valets 144 Gear List 245
Criticals 175 Gear Packages 213
Gift Spots 337
Gifted 293
D Gouge Consumers 432
D100 Loss Encounters 457
DHQS 88, 138
Damaging Casualties 298 H
Default 176 Haul 194, 237, 264
Determination Advantage 293 Heads Up 328, 332

493
 Healing
• …in the field 281
N
Non-Negotiables 332
• ...between jobs 227
Notable Taker Crews 144
Hit Locations and Damage 280, 282
• The Moths 145
Homo Sacer Policy 79
• GILF 146
Hot Strain 305
• D-Town Takers 146
Humanity 310
• Digital Forensics Inc. 147
• Eat Clean 147
I
Immunes 34, 95, 307
In-Character Collaborative 399
O
One-and-Done 173
In-Character Opposed 397
Operation Utility 62
Infection 34, 306
Opposed Checks 178
Initiative 275
Out of Character Consensus 400
Insider Trading 438
Interludes 446
Investments and Speculation 436 P
Peeling 299
J Penalties 278, 282
Job Creator 358 Pets 260
Job Lines 325, 420 Poison/Drugs 284
Potentials 194
• Strength (STR) 194
L • Speed (SPD) 195
Latents 34, 102, 187, 306 • Adaptability (ADP) 196
Leadership 205 • Intelligence (INT) 196
• Opens 330 • Charm (CHA) 197
• Closes 343 • Will 197
LifeLines 112 Precision 178
Liquidity 434, 438 Premade Takers 220
Loans 441 Prep Work 324
Looting the Dead 289 Private Sector 139
Looting the Undead 301 • StopLoss 140
Loud Weapons 298 • Alosine 140
Luring 299 • Frond Engineering 140
• Beemail 140
M • Longest Haul Trucking 140
• Singularity Security Solutions 141
Market Forces 178, 291
• MDNN 142
Mass 296
• Many Hands LLC 142
Mr. JOLS 217, 401
494
• Tragedy Trackers 142 Self-Control Checks 312
• Vulture Investors 143 Selling Gear 242
Pro Bono 439 Settlements 132
Procedure 173 Shamble 296
Skills 198
Small Businesses 425
R Soft Spots 185
Rates of Return 439 Specializations 199
Rations 180, 195, 253 Stampedes 302
Rebels 148 Stratostructure 28
• Vindicated 148 Stun vs. Kill 280, 282
• Papineaus 149 Success at Cost 175
• Traitors 150 Suffocation 284
References 210 Supply/Demand 362
Refresh 196, 236, 240 • Subsidiary 363
Regrets 313 • Flooded 364
• Cracks 315 • Scarce 364
• Crumbles 315 • Volatiles 365
• Breaks 316 Supressin 97, 255
• Fight 315 Sway 327
• Flight 315 Sway Skills 333
• Freeze 315 Sway Tracker 327, 487
• Disassociation 316
• Dependency 316
• Delusion 316 T
• Self-Destruction 317 Tactic 273
• Betrayal 317 Takers 110, 114
• Convalescence 317 Tontines 218
Rep Spots 338 Tools 258
Retirement Plans 214 Torpor 37
Romero Effect, The 48 Torpor Lockdown 59
Tough Spots 185
• Lost 185
S • Bait 186
Scavenging and Crafting 242 • Latent 187
Scams 339 • Immune 188
• Intelligence Gathering 340 • Believer 188
• Price Manipulation 341 • Steward 189
• Partners In Crime 341 • Hustler 190
• Negotiator Support 341 • Fencemean 191
• Discourage Competition 342 • Scavenger 192
Scores 361, 394, 395 • Roach 193
495
 Trained 292
Troubleshooting 429
Twitch 273

U
Ubiq 23
Undercutting 343
Uniform Retirement Plan 216
Upkeep 223
• Sustenance 223, 224, 229
• Maintenance 223, 224, 229
• Incidentals 224, 226, 230

V
Vectors 35, 303
Vehicles 265
Vignettes 415
• Cope 416
• Support 417
• Engage 418
• Milestone 419
• Dream 403
• MBA Options 434

W
Weak Spots 184
Weapons 245
When to Roll 174
Will 179, 197
Work/Life Balance 434
Working a Double 424
Workplace Essentials 359
• Goods/Services 360
• Equilibrium 362
• Economy 366
• Client 370
• Competition 371
• Travel Time 373
• Site 373
• Complications 376
496
497