'They say that the tower was so tall that its pinnacle scraped the heavens. These days, though, only about two hundred feet of stained marble poke out from under the endless dunes of Arenas Vorax. What happened to the rest of the tower? Heh. They say that you can enter through a window and go down the steps, deeper and deeper under the sands, deeper and deeper until you reach the other side of the world. They also say that things lurk down there and skitter endlessly in the black abyss. But they say many things...'

The wretched animated beings that plague the desolate Riven Realms have many names, even the general, rotting raised dead such as the ones on the image: shamblers, unliving, awakened, undead, corpsemen, and many more. Travelers who died on the road and came back as undead are typically referred to as 'Forsaken', however, and these unfortunate creatures are often drawn to living travelers, seeking to extinguish their lives at the command some unfathomable curse.

It's spring 1990 and I'm in elementary school. My best friend brings a book to school that he reads aloud to a small group of us during our big walks at lunch break. The book has a weird old wizard on the cover conjuring smoke from a crystal ball. More interesting are the illustrations on the inside: intricate black and white drawings of strange fantasy creatures and dungeon locations. The little book is Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson's Warlock of Firetop Mountain, translated to our native language. Most of you probably know that it's a gamebook that you do not read from start to end but in branching numbered chapters that make the story personal and add replayability. Yet they are much more than simple choose-your-own-adventure books because they include a stat and combat system you have to manage throughout the adventure - albeit a really simple one.

This week’s character is another bandit type enemy from the roster of wasteland outlaws. We call him the Slinger, because he… well uses a sling! 

Slings are deadly in combat in the real world when someone knows how to use them. Though they don’t seem much, slings could propel simple projectiles (such as rocks) with power enough to break armor, cut through flesh, and devastate bones.

Called the Desert of Black Sands, or the Black Desert (Arenas Negrasin the Imperial language), this vast, empty desert that has fine, black sand instead of any other color is probably one of the most ill-reputed places of the post-Calamity era. Nothing lives here, not even insects. The silence is deafening. People who enter the desert and stay for a while usually inexplicably disappear. In the center of the area is a terrible place, supposedly the source of all evil in the region: The City of the Dead, Arx Mortis.

Formerly the capital of the Sanvorati province and previously known as the Shining City, Calderum was made into its own horrible caricature by the Calamity. These days, Arx Mortis is a dead place filled with eerie moaning and groans, cast in perpetual twilight, beset by bone-chilling cold and a pale, frigid light emanating from the faded rocks that are almost all that remain from the once beautiful buildings and walls. Now these stand vacant and hollow, often reminding visitors of broken teeth peeking out of black gums.

Countless vagrants, opportunists, bullies, and broken men end up becoming highwaymen and bandits on the forsaken continent of Xeryn. These individuals are often organized into marauding gangs by the more charismatic lowlifes. Liberated tribes, made up almost exclusively of escaped slaves, also roam the Realms, taking what they will and can.

Truly, these men and women are a plague on the Empire, as there are neither enough resources to hunt them down, nor would it be entirely possible due to the many places where they can hide in the wasteland. Also, there seems to be an endless supply of people who end up becoming such lowly criminals.

The Brigand here is one such individual, and one of the first of many enemies the player can come across in Vagrus.