Status Deadzone [Paid] 11-1-2000

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Status Deadzone - Necromunda short stories

In the nightmare industrial underworld of Necromunda, brutal gangs clash in desperate battles to increase their standing with the rich decadent families who occupy the uppermost spire of the teeming hive city. Every day in the Underhive brings danger, battle and untold horrors, a few of which are covered in this anthology of Necromunda short stories. From Nathan Creed's attempts to hunt buried...

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A world Above This Story illustrates well the brutality of the Underhive. It is the story of a Ran Lo Spyrer hunt of Eschers, where the question of who is really hunting who has to be asked several times. It is told mostly from the perspective of the Escher gang, which works very well. This is an awesome look into the Underhive.

 

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The Day of Thirst This is a Goliath vs Escher (Chaos Cult?) story. It's really good if pretty disturbing. It's all told in the second person which is very cool, if had to follow since very little besides Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style books story tell this way. It's a Goliath telling the story of the last encounter with these Escher to a new recruit. Hard to tell more without giving away too much, but it is very worth the 10 or so pages of reading.

 

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Badlands Skelter's Downhive Monster Show This is kinda a Cawdor vs Scavvies story, but the Scavvies are very different than what you would expect from the rule book. They are carnies that seem to take a lot better care of themselves than the rules in the book imply. The thing that makes them seem like Scavvies is they have a spear gun toting Scalie, which leads to a wonderfully descriptive scene of spear gun's use. It also depicts nicely the problems of religious zealotry over actual skill. So far, my favorite story.

 

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Mark of a Warrior A Goliath initiation story. A wannabe is sent into an abandoned mine to hunt a Millisaur armed with a stubgun & a knife. It has an amusing examination of all the stupid bits and bobbles that one will wear to look. Also a nice subtle self reference in the G40K stubgun. It really is a nice examination of one gang's initiation process and one wannabe's overconfident view being slapped in the face by reality.

 

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The Daemon Bottle A half-breed Ratskin gets caught between Scavvies and Guilders. At first I thought this was going to be some sort of commentary on drinking, since the main character is a typical settlement dwelling drunk Ratskin. It may still be, but if it is the message is much subtler than I expected. The actual Daemon Bottle was different than I was expecting and the final resolution was very interesting with a nice twist.

 

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Rites of Passage An Orlock initiation story (gone wrong) with a Spyrer, & Cawdor hate, & a sprinkling of Wyrd for flavor. This one is a more multilayered tragedy than the average Necro story. A group of Orlock juve wannabes are sent out to duke it out with some Cawdor juves when things go tragically wrong. Badness ensues and only one survives, sorta.

 

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The Lake I liked this one a lot. It's story where a guilder pits a down on their luck Orlock gang against a Goliath gang with ultimately disastrous consequences for everyone (there's a nice amount of build up to this point). A dome is cracked open in a hive quake and it is found to contain an abundant number of spiders which are too tempting a target to pass up. It was fun to see the author bring back a gang he used in a former story (the Goliath from The Day of Thirst), even if they were only a minor antagonist. Until this story I had thought wood would be far too rare to really make into the story, but some of the boats are made out of fungus wood, which is a source I had formerly not considered. Overall it was a good story with a very nice, mysteries of the 40k universe twist in it.

 

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Sisters This is an Escher story (unsurprisingly). A particularly heartbreaking one. An Escher leader who feels like she is losing her grip on her gang after the recent loss of a close friend goes out to hunt a zombie with a ratskin. Nice twist in this one. Shows the lengths that gang leaders will got to protect their position in the gang and the community.

 

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Rat in the Walls Basically part 2 of "A World Above." Tells the Story of What happened to Liz once she got uphive. Hits the classic trope of cleaning up a thug to fit into high society for nefarious purposes. An awesome sequel.