||||| The Wasted Lands

Death Before Breakfast
Mortal City is paralyzed in fear as people are being abducted and their organs harvested from them while they are still alive. It will take the unorthodox crime-solving ploys of local "repairman" Iguana to put a stranglehold on the twisted perpetrators and save hundreds of lives.

The Uninvited
The Drones are dying mysteriously and M. d’Cease is on the verge of diagnosing the cause and uncovering the evil culprits behind the outbreak…until she becomes infected. It’s a race against time through the most terrifying pockets of Mortal City to find the cure and stop the carnage.

Mortal City is a city of suffering -- an urban landscape being eaten alive by its own industrial cancer and corruption.

The Industrial Apocalypse, followed by the Iron Wars, have destroyed Mortal City’s infrastructure. Sewer lines and water pipes are damaged, and water-processing plants lie in ruins. The streets are clogged in many places with debris. Logically the city shouldn’t run, but it does.

A relentless orchestra of wailing sirens, gunshots, demolition and construction can be heard night and day. The Drones, as laborers with a mysterious internal agenda of building towers around the city’s parameter, deliver much of the disturbance. Only they understand the purpose of these towers.

Shreds of municipal authority remain. The Force Police maintain order on a level that moves up and down the corruption ladder depending on who’s pulling the bureaucratic strings. The real power in Mortal City, however, lies with the criminal element, the wealthy elite, and The Engine -- a mafia-like army led by criminal bosses like Dr. Sai Khan Uluc, otherwise known as The Doctor.

Life in Mortal City is one of quiet desperation. The citizenry must endure injections of artificial antibodies (called AAs) to survive the toxic hell of the Mortal City environment, or perish from some unspeakable cancer. Water and food are always in short supply and usually must be bartered for or stolen.

A toxic river empties into an equally fetid ocean, dividing this once-beautiful seaport. The weather is permanently afflicted with a toxic inversion layer that produces chemical-laden showers, corrosive mists, and poisonous fogs.

Some parts of the city are off limits and largely unexplored, even by the seedier characters. The Electric Fields, for instance, are notorious for harboring awful creatures -- mutated forms of the wildlife that once inhabited the area. Other off-limit areas are controlled by ruthless career criminals.

Although life in Mortal City is bleak, there is hope…in the faith and desire of a small group of men and women who have chosen to follow the way of the Stone and the Sword towards the final Reconstruction.