The bitter scent of blood fills your nostrils. Against your cheek, you sense the rough, cold touch of solid earth. A gentle breeze would tease your hair, had the caked blood not matted it down entirely. You open your eyes. Confusion grows in your mind. You see a wide expanse of rocky terrain. You sit up, the seedlings of panic and fear taking root in the pit of your stomach. Your gnawing hunger makes room for the additional emotions in your abdominal recesses. You sit, cross-legged, mostly stunned by your surroundings. You cannot remember. You shut your eyes tight, hiding from the painfully deafening silence. After several seconds, you manage to regain composure. You observe your surroundings more closely: To the NORTH: A tall, rocky spire looms, casting no shadow. To the NORTH-EAST: The shimmering sky dominates this view. To the EAST: This section of sky contains a pink-tinted sun. To the SOUTH-EAST: A second, slightly-shorter spire. To the SOUTH: The sky fades to a pleasant blue. To the SOUTH-WEST: Navy sky. To the WEST: Strange structures seem to take form in the distance. To the NORTH-WEST: A large gear is clearly visible protruding from the ground. More closely at hand, you notice a small pile of green-gray stones. The glint of metal attracts your gaze through the stones. Perhaps a marker? [Submit your course of action. Keep it short and to the point.]
Upon sighting the gear, you lose all interest in the stone pile. You head toward the gear in the North-West. The unbroken ground beneath your bare feet is neither moist nor soft: no plant could grow here. The dry dust soon gathers on your legs in a fine coating. While walking, you check yourself physically: Scabbed wound to the head, probably from a dull blade. Interesting cuts in the formation of small, half-inch crosses scattered on your chest. No clothing and no possessions. Extreme hunger and thirst, yet energetic. The oppressive silence seems to close in on you. It appears all that is keeping you from metaphorically suffocating is the open, expansive terrain. The breeze, at first, feels playful. However, it soon grows old and only serves to push you slightly off course to the west, despite how gently it flows through the air. Similar piles of green stones pass by occasionally on your trek. After what seems to be days of plodding, you reach the gear. While rusted and clearly out of use for ages, the dust has not filled its home nor the strange markings covering it. About twenty feet in diameter and three feet in width, it is partially submerged in a trench coated with smooth metal panels. The pink sun behind you has not moved, and little light enters the trench. You cannot see the bottom. Close at your feet, a rock rests, almost begging to be launched in to the abyss. On the opposite side of the gear, a large wire extends out of the trench and in to the distance to the WEST. You have yet to observe your surroundings closely. [Submit your course of action. Keep it short and to the point.]
After several minutes of studying, a sudden realization hits you. You remember your journey to the gear. Your footsteps made no sound. Listening now, the breeze you feel is also dead silent. Have you gone deaf? Silent tears of frustration begin to form, but you maintain composure. There is work to be done. You crouch down and take a look at the wire more closely. It is completely bare, about two inches thick, and of similar colour to the stone markers scattered about. You dare not touch it, for fear of possible electrocution. You follow its path in to the Western horizon. It seems to be unending. To the South-West and South the structures you noticed earlier lie, jutting up against the sky. Right of the wire, to the North-West and North, the faintest outlines of mountains are visible. You stand up and begin another long walk, this time along the wire. You stop to rest after what you gauge to be the same distance to the gear from your starting point. Your hunger and thirst continue to dominate your thoughts, and you look longingly toward the structures now in the South and South-East. The wire continues to the West, unwavering. The haze of what appeared to be mountains are now to the North. The sun to the East has still not moved, and remains an odd shade of pink. You take in to account your options: -Continue following the wire to the WEST. -Rest. -Explore the structures to the SOUTH and SOUTH-EAST. -Return to the gear in the EAST. -Head toward the haze (possible mountains?) in the NORTH. -Move toward open terrain in a different direction (NORTH-WEST, NORTH-EAST, SOUTH-WEST). [Submit your course of action. You guys are a little too good at short and to the point. Don't be afraid to invent your own, either.]
Soon, your self-allocated minutes are up, and you are again on your feet. The wire, continually extending in to the distance, hints at a long, dull trek. You head South, toward the structures. Soon you can make out what appear to be windows and entryways in to fairly symmetric boxes scattered randomly on the terrain. After a while you approach the closest. It is about fifteen feet tall, wide, and deep-apparently, a perfect cube. The entry is much larger than you are, easily fitting three of you abreast. Any creature inhabiting it must be of considerable size. The walls and roof appear to be made of the uniform green stone you see everywhere in the Wasteland, as you have dubbed the place. Inside, the structure is completely bare. No objects that represent furniture of any kind. No markings on the walls. A Spartan would find these living conditions difficult. You explore a second, and third, all of which are empty. However, a pattern emerges from the scattered positions: Two concentric circles; windows always aligned with the circles, entryways always perpendicular to the circles. The center is no different from any other patch of ground. It is not stamped hard from constant footfall, nor is it kept clear of stones and rocks. Further South, more structures are visible, whilst the first structures you spotted from the pile of stones are to the East. The West is just as bare as it was from the wire (then, it was the South-West), and the current South-West shows no promises. The large gear, unchanged from what you can tell, lies to the North-East. The lack of sound, movement, and any expression whatsoever in this world disturbs you. Absolute desolation is all about you. This somber thought suffocating you as a scarf on a Summer day would, you decide to... [Submit your course of action. Boy, you guys are jumping all over the place.]
[The spire is from several turns ago. Moving North will return you to the wire you were at previously.]
