The Cuckoo of the Prohibited Wastes

Create your own tribe here!






    Under other circumstances Rangis would have found the night calm, almost relaxing even, as a cloudless sky bathed the scorched hillside in moonlight and a light breeze weaved a little fresh air into the ash and smoke of the Prohibited Wastes. The young man nonetheless stopped to adjust the cracked goggles and stained cloth that shielded his face; it would take a gale to clear the air. A small bundle knotted to his side shifted and squirmed, and Rangis adjusted this too, ensuring the cloth was not wrapped too tightly about the child he carried. He still could not bring himself to think of it as his child, though he supposed he felt a father’s love for it, enough at least to spare it the sure death that waited if they returned to his village.

    He carefully picked his way up and down the ragged landscape, thankful for the pale light that revealed gaping pits and fissures, piles of jagged stone and stretches of coiling, thorny vines that waited timelessly to trap and tear the unwary. The night dragged on, the moonlight waned, and each step sent a wave of dull pain up his legs. He hung his head forward and began focussing his narrow, clouded vision only on the ground before him, and so walked into a heavy pole rooted in the cracked earth. The child gave a deep, inhuman wail. Rangis clumsily patted and rocked the bundle as he pulled back his goggles to study the pole, atop which sat the sun-bleached skull of some carnivore of the Wastes. Surely this was a sign that he was on the right path, that the old stories were true... 

    A shadow to his right shifted, and then another to his left, and Rangis soon found himself reflexively scrambling back as his vision filled with grasping hands. The blade he drew from his cloak was plucked from his grasp, his arms and legs were pinned to the ground, a wiry forearm wrapped about his neck; it felt as if an entire war band had ambushed him, so swiftly was he disarmed and overcome. Four malformed faces leered down on him from three equally malformed bodies. 

    “The child...” Rangis rasped, his mind reeling from a lack of oxygen. “My son....” 

    The grip about his neck disappeared as one of the mutants deftly unwrapped the bundle at his side. It pulled the child free with a surprising tenderness. Rangis looked at his son for one last time, the legless child his mate had delivered that very night. It was bizarrely alert for a newborn, its hands grasping those of the mutant who now cradled it, the wide eyes that protruded from its torso fixing on Rangis’ own. And then it was gone, disappearing into the shadows along with its new tribe, leaving Rangis to clumsily pull the goggles back over his wet eyes before he got up and went home. 

Written by Steve Elliot 

This is a painted test cast & will be available in the standard packaging soon... for know creative types who like to carve on and paint their toys can get a rough cast "flesh" two pack in the store HERE!