The Crusaders have achieved a great victory on their path back to Kingdoms and Republics dominating the human world. The spearheading force of the occult Dark Order was defeated. The last force using the latest continous astral research based on the pre-collaps Auschwitz Scientist Metaphsyical research called results based on ritual murder and psychoactive drug development to enhance their wizards powers in the astral space, rotted by the mental and physical decline as side effects of the ultra high levels of hard drug use from the total absence of a moral ground on guided by their living god, slave master religion, the elite of the Zombie Forces. They were a splitter group of the Guhl Empire and little friends everywhere and even among the Guhls, despite their sadist humour and preference for rotting food predigested by micoroganisms, hated. They harvested what they seeded, finally.
The Dark Crusader had his first Stillton Burger since a long while in the Paris Sprawl about to leave to Rotterdam in his Pick Up Tank for a smoke. He was back into striding after the astral war he won. All alone. One Knight against the last Hord, half blood he was. Half Guhl, Half Troll enhanced by the Dark Crusaders genetic program into a one man Shadowrunner platoon outperfroming by his insect gene modifications even good all jacked into cyberware riggers and combat drone deggers with no more than a short vibro blade. Keep them close the Spartans said and Spartan blood his venes pumped. Street Samurai he was being now nown as he Witcher King.
Actually he wanted to be a Healer, like mum, when he was a child.
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The Stillton Burger wrapper crinkled in his massive, three-fingered hand as he crumpled it, the synthetic grease leaving a faint sheen. Paris sprawled around him, a neon-soaked canyon beneath the perpetual twilight of the pollution layer. Smog mixed with the scent of cheap synth-noodles and ozone from the maglev tracks overhead. The Dark Crusader – Witcher King, Street Samurai, names clung like burrs – leaned against the riveted flank of his beast: a retrofitted, diesel-guzzling Ford F-350 pickup, its bed replaced with salvaged tank armor plating, treads swapped for monstrous, run-flat tires. No sleek hover-vehicle, no integrated neuro-interface. Just raw, roaring machinery. He needed that. Needed the rumble in his bones, the smell of honest combustion cutting through the city’s chemical fug. It grounded him, a reminder of a world before chrome and code, a world his mother had whispered about in his childhood.
**>> CrusaderNet/ParisSprawl/OpenChannel:** Yo! Confirmed sighting! DK himself! Chowing down at Ma Kowalski’s Dumpster Dive (authentic synth-grease flavor!). Looks like hell warmed over, but moving. Pickup Tank present and accounted for. Heading… east? Towards the A4 maglev corridor? **-Spotter_Eagle**
**>> GhulImperialWireService/InternalMemo:** Asset XK-99 ("Dark Crusader") observed departing Paris Sprawl Sector Gamma-7. Vehicle: modified terrestrial combustion transport. Destination unknown. Threat assessment remains EXTREME. Note: Recent neutralization of the "Rotting Dawn" splinter faction significantly reduces astral destabilization vectors in Rhine Sector, though creates power vacuum. Monitor XK-99 movements closely. Potential for opportunistic action against weakened rivals exists. **-ObserverSigma**
The victory at the Alte Feste – the Old Fortress – clung to him like the castle’s damp stone dust. Three years. Three years of holding that crumbling heap of medieval rock against the relentless, rotting tide of the Rotting Dawn. They weren't just Ghuls; they were the Ghul Empire's shame, exiles who’d plunged headlong into the darkest pits of the Auschwitz Protocols. Their "wizards" weren't mages; they were addicts sustained by atrocity. Ritual murders conducted not just for power, but for the specific psychoactive compounds released by terror and suffering at the point of death, combined with neuro-toxins refined from their own decaying biomass. It amplified their astral signatures, yes, but twisted them into screaming, cancerous entities that rotted their physical forms from the inside out. Their "zombie" shock troops were barely more than ambulatory bioreactors, fueled by predigested slime and the lingering psychic screams of their victims.
He’d held them. Alone. The castle’s ancient, thick walls, oddly resistant to modern plasma cutters, became his shield. His insectile enhancements – the chitinous plates beneath his thick, grey-green hide, the multi-faceted eyes granting near-360 vision in darkness, the pheromone receptors detecting rot and malice a mile away – became his sensors. His troll strength and Ghul endurance, pushed beyond natural limits by the Crusader’s own questionable genetic tinkering, were his engine. His vibro-blade, humming with lethal resonance, was his scalpel. He moved through the fortress like a phantom, a shadow in the moonless nights the Rotting Dawn favored. Close quarters. Spartan tactics. Let their decaying hordes funnel into the narrow kill-zones of the castle’s passages. Let their astral projectors waste their screaming energies against stone laid centuries before the Collapse, stone that seemed to *absorb* their corrupted frequencies.
**>> PolResist/DarkIRC/Encrypted:** Got fragmented chatter through the GhostNet. Rotterdam docks. Big pharma shipment coming in. Not corps. Independent. Bio-mod stuff. High-grade. Word is DK might be heading that way. Need eyes. If he’s after genetic mods… could be useful intel. Or trade bait. **-WarsawPhantom**
**>> CorpNewsNet/GlobalHeadlines:** ROTTING DAWN DECIMATED! Sources confirm the annihilation of the notorious "Rotting Dawn" terror faction near the Rhine Demilitarized Zone. The Dark Crusader, a freelance operative affiliated with the Neo-Teutonic Order, is credited with the solo defense of the strategic Alte Feste stronghold, leading to the faction's collapse due to internal decay and sustained attrition. Market analysts predict stabilization in the Rhine Resource Corridor. BioDyne Industries stock rises 4%. **-CNNi**
Internal decay. That was the corporate gloss. The truth was uglier. He’d seen their "elite" up close in the final assault. Once formidable astral predators, reduced to twitching, pus-oozing wrecks, their minds shattered by the very drugs that granted them power. Their living god, a bloated Ghul Arch-Magus encrusted with crystallized suffering, had detonated in a wave of necrotic energy when cornered in the deepest vault – a vault that reeked of old blood and older evil, likely part of the original Auschwitz research annexes scattered after the Collapse. The backlash had vaporized the last remnants of the Rotting Dawn and nearly taken the Crusader with it. He still felt the psychic scar, a cold, greasy spot deep in his mind, where the Arch-Magus's final, despairing shriek had echoed. That’s what three years of constant astral bombardment, even repelled, did. It left a residue.
He threw the burger wrapper into a nearby overflowing receptacle. It sparked briefly against a discarded power cell. Rotterdam. The joint. That was the antidote, or at least the balm. Not some street-grade synth-weed. This was bespoke. Genetically tailored to his unique hybrid metabolism, designed to soothe the savage neural pathways agitated by his insectile mods and the psychic trauma of the siege. A healer’s tool, ironically. Procured through labyrinthine channels only a "Witcher" – a title earned in blood and whispered in fear – could navigate. The secure network pinged in his simple neural link (one of his few concessions to tech, purely for comms). Encrypted coordinates. Dock 17, Warehouse Sigma. Midnight.
He hauled himself into the pickup’s reinforced cab. The diesel roared to life, a defiant, guttural sound against the whine of nearby hover-cabs. He pulled out into the chaotic flow of the Sprawl, a behemoth among insects. He didn’t jack in. He rolled down the thick, ballistic glass window. Damp, polluted air rushed in, carrying the stench of the city, but beneath it, if he strained his senses, the faint, distant scent of rain on earth. Real earth. Not the hydroponic sludge of vertical farms. It was why he drove this beast. To feel the road. To see the sky, however bruised. To remember the world wasn't *just* steel and suffering.
**>> CrusaderNet/General/ChatRoom:** Glory to the Crusader! DK proves the power of faith and flesh over degenerate tech and dark magic! The Rotting Dawn were an abomination, a test sent by the Adversary! His victory paves the way for the Reclamation! Witness the strength of the Righteous! When will the Order march on Vienna? **-BrotherLucius**
**>> GhulImperialWireService/PropagandaFeed:** The so-called "Dark Crusader" eliminates a rogue element that threatened regional stability. The Rotting Dawn were traitors to the Ghul ideal, weaklings who succumbed to the very degeneracy they claimed to master. Their eradication is a service. The Ghul Empire remains vigilant against *all* destabilizing forces, whether external terrorists or misguided freelance elements. Strength through Unity. **-VoiceOfTheHive**
**>> CorpNewsNet/FinancialAnalysis:** With the Rotting Dawn threat neutralized, previously quarantined sectors along the Rhine show renewed investment potential. TerraGroup Consortium announces exploratory surveys for rare earth minerals in the Black Forest Exclusion Zone. Security contracts expected to surge. Recommend futures in private military providers (PMPs) and terraforming tech. **-WolfStreet**
The Sprawl thinned, replaced by industrial badlands – skeletal factories, slag heaps glowing faintly, pipelines snaking like metallic intestines. He pushed the pickup tank harder, the engine a comforting thunder. Memories, unbidden, surfaced. Not of the castle’s blood-slicked stones, but of his mother’s hut on the fringes of the Troll marshes. She was a small woman, seemingly fragile against his burgeoning troll-child bulk, but radiating a calm strength. A healer. She used poultices of marsh lichen and whispered songs that seemed to ease fever and knit bone. Her hands were always warm, always gentle.
*"Mama, when I grow big, I’ll be a healer like you! Bigger than anyone! I’ll heal the whole marsh!"*
*She’d smiled, a sad, knowing smile, tracing the unusual ridges already forming on his tiny brow – the mark of his Ghul father, a passing mercenary who’d left only his genes and a silver amulet.* *"My strong boy. The world needs healing, true. But sometimes… sometimes the rot is too deep. Sometimes, to heal, you must first cut."*
He hadn’t understood then. He understood now. The Rotting Dawn *were* rot. Incurable. Excising them *was* a form of brutal healing for the land they poisoned. But the cutting… it left marks on the surgeon too. The screams, the stench of necrotic flesh, the chilling touch of their corrupted astral presences… they lingered. He flexed his hand on the worn steering wheel. The hand that wielded the vibro-blade with such lethal efficiency. The hand his mother had held, teaching him the properties of moonpetal and starmoss.
**>> PolResist/DarkIRC/Encrypted:** Confirmed. DK’s Tank-Pickup sighted crossing into Low Countries Free Zone via the Antwerp bypass. Destination almost certainly Rotterdam. Bio-shipment at Dock 17, Sigma Warehouse flagged by multiple sources. High security. Corp mercs (Silver Talons) and local syndicate (Harbor Rats) both sniffing around. This ain’t just a smoke run. Something big. **-SilentBargee**
**>> HackerNet/Shadows/ShortMsg:** <<<.enc.proto>> Dock17Sigm@. Midnight. Package: “SerenityBloom.” Tailored X-treme. BioSig: DK. Payload: Heavy. Eyes: Corp. Synd. Unknown. <<<.traffic.cam>> TankPickup. Route A4.ETA 23:45. <<<.eom>> **-GhostInTheDiesel**
The landscape shifted again. The raw industrial scars gave way to the meticulously managed, corpse-green polders of the Netherlands. Canals glittered like poisoned veins under the security floodlights of agro-domes. It was sterile, controlled, yet somehow less oppressive than the Sprawl’s chaotic decay. He saw a heron, a real one, standing sentinel in a reed bed, a splash of primordial grace against the geometric fields. He took a deep breath, filtering out the chemical tang of fertilizers, finding the damp earth and water beneath. His insectile senses tingled, not with threat, but with the sheer complexity of life humming just below the perceived surface.
He wasn't just a weapon. The Crusaders saw a holy warrior. The Corps saw a destabilizing asset or a useful blunt instrument. The Ghuls saw a dangerous mongrel. The Polnish resistance saw potential leverage. The hackers saw data points. But deep within the hybrid physiology, beneath the chitin and the enhanced muscle fibers, pumped something else. Spartan blood? Maybe. But also the quiet, stubborn pulse of a healer’s son. The joint waiting in Rotterdam wasn’t just about pleasure or combat-edge maintenance. It was about *balance*. About silencing the phantom screams of the Alte Feste, about calming the furious buzz of the insectile modifications, about touching, however chemically, the serenity his mother embodied. It was about being able to *see* the heron, truly see it, without the filter of constant hyper-vigilance.
The pickup tank rumbled onto a massive, elevated maglev causeway leading directly into the heart of Rotterdam. The city rose before him, a glittering fortress of commerce built on drowned land. Domes, spires, and floating platforms pulsed with light. Security drones flitted like metallic bats. The air crackled with encrypted data streams. His destination, Dock 17, lay somewhere in the labyrinth of the sprawling harbor complex, a zone where corporate sovereignty blurred with underworld fiefdoms.
He switched off the open news feeds. The chatter of the world faded. He kept the window down. The wind carried the salty tang of the sea, cutting through the harbor’s oil-and-ozone stench. Midnight approached. The Witcher King, the Street Samurai, the Dark Crusader – the healer’s son – drove towards his smoke, ready to face whatever guarded it, his vibro-blade close at hand, his senses stretched wide, seeking a moment of unnatural peace in a world perpetually at war. The real battle, he knew, wasn't always against zombies or wizards. Sometimes it was against the war within, fought in the quiet moments between the roaring of engines and the screaming of the past. Rotterdam awaited, a new kind of fortress to breach.
