4 Fight to the death in a hellish gameshow environment
Almost every settlement in Wasteland has some form of provision for ritualised combat in order to settle differences: in Hierarchia it’s the national pastime, and even in the most out of the way settlements you won’t have to look long before you find two hulks throttling each other in a pit, before an audience with tentacles for eyes and tin openers for hands. And if you want to get involved – go ahead! Just be sure to cheat by bringing an incredibly powerful gun, so you don’t die like a dog.
DON’T MISS: MENTAL DEREK
There’s a semi-legendary figure in the Wasteland, and he’s called Mental Derek. He’s extremely competent with a shotgun, doesn’t say much, and has what you might call a habit of getting into trouble. Derek doesn’t seek out fights as such – he just wanders around the region in his knackered old police car, seeking redemption or just something to do. Either way, when he travels through a settlement, it tends to either undergo dramatic regime change or disappear from the map altogether. For the right fee, you can travel with him. Strapped into the passenger seat of his car, you can expect truly abysmal conversation, but the most mind-blowing, white-knuckle adventure that Wasteland has to offer. Spend a month with Derek and you will see dictators overthrown, refineries blown sky high, and countless war machines sent careening off the road in explosions of bolts and nails.[6]
Region by Region
Geography is a bit of a tricky subject in Wasteland.[7] All the world’s civilisations are either too rubbish to produce accurate maps or have no interest in doing so, while sandstorms rearrange the landscape constantly. Settlements come and go with such alacrity that there’s little point in charting them, but there are some areas and locations permanent enough to be worth noting.
1 The Badlands
Covering a huge swathe of the planet, the Badlands used to be an ocean, until all the water dried up. Now it’s a vast, sun-blasted salt flat, soaked with poisonous heavy-metal residues. Thanks to the vast tracts of flat land, this is classic territory for eccentric warlords, who enjoy launching grotesquely inefficient crusades with armadas of cars. Things are just as fun beneath the surface too, as bunkers and vaults of all sizes hold a wealth of claustrophobic nightmare societies.
2 The Worselands
Even grimmer than the Badlands, the Worselands occupy the remains of what was once a continent in Wasteland’s Southern Ocean, and which was a notably desolate place even before all the bombs and the madness. For the warlords of the salt flats, it’s considered a mark of prestige to be able to trade up for a fortress in the Worselands, and so its inhabitants tend to be an altogether higher class of mad bastard, with a corresponding air of weird snobbery.
3 The Land of the Dead
During its final days, society on Wasteland was stricken by an outbreak of zombies, which spread like wildfire across its eastern continent. As a result, this landmass is now an eerily silent wilderness, dotted with decaying cities where the dead still roam. Human survivors persist here in fortified shopping malls, where they survive off the wreckage of the old world while having bleak revelations about the empty nature of consumerism.
4 The Monkey Zone
Settled by superintelligent apes who revolted against humanity during the apocalypses, this region comprises a patchwork of feudal states ruled by chimps, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans.[8] Although they have a longstanding habit of breeding captive humans for slave labour, the Apes are relatively affable, and are for the most part fairly accepting of tourists.[9] In fact, the Apes claim they would be open to trade and co-operation with their human neighbours if it wasn’t for the tragic ‘misunderstandings’ that keep kicking off wars between them.[10]
5 The Robot War
The Robot War is many things: it’s a conflict, a place and a way of life. Originally kicking off when a network of supercomputers became self-aware and hostile, this conflict still rages long after the rest of the world has fallen into collapse. Its combatants are the Resistance, a band of humans whose scavenged technology would easily empower them to conquer the rest of the planet if they weren’t so busy with the Robots, and the Robots, who would be able to crush the Resistance overnight if it wasn’t for a set of particularly bizarre programming quirks.[11]
6 Hierarchia
The huge pyramid-city of Hierarchia is seemingly the most civilised place in Wasteland – but it is a society divided. At its gilded apex sits the supreme leader, plotting ever-more Byzantine ways to oppress the masses beneath,[12] while said masses spend their time plotting equally complex schemes to depose the leader. The result is near-constant, usually teenager-led revolution. Indeed, Hierarchia can go through the whole cycle – from initial insurrection through to government overthrow and then the bleak moment when the new rulers realise they are as bad as the people they replaced – in as little as three weeks.
2. UNDERSTANDING WASTELAND
A Brief History
Wasteland doesn’t really have a history. If it did, it would arguably lose its charm. Every group of maniacs has their own set of creation myths,[13] which they debate as they cluster round to roast scorpion bums over barrels of burning tar, and that’s half the fun of the place. Even so, there are some facts we know for sure:
At some point the region possessed a technologically advanced global society of between six- and eight-billion people. Then it had … a real run of bad luck (or hubris – depends who you ask).
It seems the region experienced pretty much every cataclysmic event that can happen to a place, all within the space of a few years. Between an
