My name is Renault Vandal, funny name you say, take it up with my parents even though they have been dead nearly 100 years. I have lived in the Wasteland in a little cave near the western mesa since I ran afoul of those bastards the Shrouded Clan. Believe it or not I used to be one. I am an old man, how old, well old enough to have seen the comet hit. Impossible you say? No it is true, my organs sit in a stew of chemicals and glass, my brain is held in rejuvenating liquid and must be washed off and refurbished ever few years. Used to be free with the Shrouded Clan, but since communications have broken down I am a wanted man. Doctor Kvsir takes care of my technological needs, for a stiff fee. So i have watched our green and blue world turn grey and decay, hey that rhymes. So I avoid the roads, the bandits as violent and untrust worthy as they are still gossip like little girls. Some one as well known as my self needs to stay above the bull @#$% as the saying once went. I prefer my hangglider to cars, saves on gas and helps the enviornment, just kidding. Before the world burned and died a slow death things were not perfect, but you didnt have armed gangs of lunitics competing for who could slit your throat first. Well we did but only, well thats too complicated. Any way, when the world was going to end the wealthy went into bunkers, leaving the rest of us to suffer a punctured atmospere, solar storms, tidal waves, contaminated drinking water, catastrophic wildfires. And then it really got nasty, the superpowers started to invade the unstable areas. There was an uncertainty of if we had a president, who ran the army. News and radio were a thing of the past since missles came down that targeted electronics, frying what was left of our infrastructure. So when the nuclear fire came, no one had a chance. There was a resurgance of Authority, but the cruelty of their Death Squads made people resist. At the same time you had bioweapons and super plant viruses attacking farmers crops. The new plagues from bioweapons made the new cities grave yards. The Authority went off into the mountains and created a new civilization. In those days the Shrouded Clan seemed like a good alternative to the Authority, some even rumored the old government had festered in the dark and cold of their mountain bunker and fell vicitm to sickness, cannibalism. Can the imagine that, the old president eating his own family, secret service agents [censored] women and having little wars with each other over air and water? Seems like the worst of them became the new leaders, and that is the begining of the Shrouded Clan, they are the old government. You dont believe me? You dont think they would become a terrorist army against other people with resources they want. Thats ok, you dont need to take my word for it. So I was a scientist, well kind of, like a chemist that learned from looking at the pictures, since for some reason all our books were in chinese, why, who knows. But as all great conflicts start, this was over a woman. Dr. Cadence and I were once very close, after years of living in the dark. A beautiful womans attention was welcomed. Since the Shrouded Clan dont keep personal names, only numbers translated in bar code. I will just say an influential member wanted to take dr cadence and clone her, she would not have lived through the back ward process they devised. So using what little humanity i had retained I helped sneak her away, having to kill and destroy much of the Shrouded Clan in the process. When you see a Shrouded Clan member with a horribly disfigured face, chances are he knows who i am and would give any thing to return the favor. Once away I gave the knoledge I had of the old world to Dr. Cadence, in our escape we were bombed while trying to avoid a group of mutants in the wasteland. I was almost torn to peices in the blast, feeling a call to a higher purpose I forced Dr. Cadence to leave me. Between the mutants and the Shrouded Clan I tried to crawl away. What was left of an arm and leg was torn away by the teeth of mutants. Thinking i was dead the Shrouded Clan left me to die. Not feeling like being a mutant mothers reguritated lunch, I used a power cell from my left side cybernetic eye to stab the mutants to death. Didnt think i was going to say that, you thought i was going to say electricue them, or create a diversion. No, some times in the wasteland the harsh reality is when you cant blast with a pulse canon you take a long piece of sharp metal and repeatedly puncture the quivering flesh of a would be attacker. Mutants seem tough, but let them feel a puncture wound to their eye or testicle, and like any living creature. But having no mercy the ones that did get away were likely eaten by their own tribe because they were helpless and on the verge of death. I lay there covered in Mutant puss and death, I could have been a leader. The last man alive from before the world changed, my wealth of knowledge and I am beside a pile of burning rubble at deaths door. There are bizarre things in the wasteland, plants that walk to eat mammals, lizards that bark in a birdlike language, wolves with several more eyes then are natural, giant octopus amphibians that crawl across the road late at night to mate in the far desert. None of these creatures fed on me that night. I was able to make it to the ruins of the dead city, fashion an improvised arm and leg from debris. My early hanglider was from a spec i downloaded in the old city. Feeling the need to move on i flew over the waste land until i found a cave with naturally defensable walls. SInce I was no longer fully human i was able to live with no food. Out of lonliness I ventured out to find my love. The way i looked when i found her I could tell the love had died for her. I looked like a bluish corpse held together by wires and tubes with rough metal fingers and a leg that scratches even the sturdiest floor. Still she took me in, gave a purpose to gather intelligence for the resistance. I sit in my mountain hide away a slave of memories, occupant of a world that no longer exists, enemy of the one that does.