Czar’s warning comes too late. The sleeve of your coat sweeps the yellow fuzz covering the rock. The fuzz crumbles into dust but you leap away. Danger avoided, or so you think.
Fifteen minutes later you are coughing and vomiting up yellow fluid. The inside of your mouth feels rough and dry. Your lips bleed. You are thirsty, but Czar is making you drink vodka, not water. It might as well be molten metal.
“Professor!” someone is shouting. It’s Butterfly. “Stay awake! Breathe! The border is not far!”
They do not even know if crossing the border will work on this infection but there is hope. When you finally make it over, you get a coughing fit so bad you lose consciousness. The shouts of others and daylight among the branches vanish into a tidal wave of darkness.
Sound returns before sight. The hum of an AC unit. The steady beep of an electrical device. The rhythmic puffs of an iron lung. You know you are in a hospital even before you open your eyes. Your lips are dry an your whole body is numb from the lack of oxygen. Small room, fluorescent lamps, blinds in the windows.
You’re at the factory clinic, officially closed to outsiders. The doors still open for stalkers if the price is right.
165
THE GAMEMASTER’S BOOK
Mutants
There is no life in the anomalous areas and a stalker may make tens of expe- ditions into the Zone without seeing any trace of animals. If he heads to the oases instead, he may still not see any animals but they will have surely seen him. The Oases are sanctuaries for animals that survive in the Zones but over the years the Zone has warped their minds and bodies. The fauna and ge- neral ecology of the Zones is poorly understood. It is unknown if they were all just trapped when the Visitation occurred or if they have been breeding, in which case they would be now in their umpteenth generation, each one more weirdly mutated than the last.
To the GM, mutants are like salt: in small amounts, they will enhance the atmosphere and feeling of the game. But overused, they ruin the flavor. All mutants are based on ordinary animals that are trapped in the Zone. The original species can still be recognized but their changes and mutations are often terrifying to humans. Below are some descriptive devices for the GM to make his mutants even weirder and more horrifying:
Starved: Nothing but skin and bones but moving with the grace of a tiger.
Drools as it looks at the stalkers. It seems unpredictable, perhaps mad enough to not care about being overpowered and intent on a kill.
Filthy: A shaggy or greasy coat of fur, the stinking remnants of previous
meals in and around its maw, or clumps of mud and excrement hanging on its rear end make humans instinctively keep their distance. You don’t really want even a scratch from something like that.
Stench: the stuffy smell of a dirty animal and the whiff of excrement or
rotten flesh, both in the mutant and its nest, have pretty much the same associations as visible filthiness. They also go together well.
Injuries are also mentally unsettling. The mutant may be lame or half blind.
Some of its limbs may be mere stumps. Wide gashes in its side, with white bone showing underneath, may make them look more dead than alive.
Diseases and infections: Be it the bloody foam of rabies or mushrooms
growing from pus-filled wounds, both the stalkers and the players are on their toes and looking slightly green in the face. Mutants may get the same infections as stalkers but won’t necessarily die of them.
Skinned: A flayed animal makes pretty much everybody shiver, especially
if it is still alive and moving. It could also just be hairless, with its muscles, bones, tendons and veins showing rather too well under its skin, or its skin might be a translucent layer of slime to prevent it from drying out.
Eyes: Eyes have an exaggerated importance for humans. Murkiness, mal-
formations or missing pupils can turn even ordinary household pets into frightening freaks. Thus when starved, raggedy, eyeless rabbits gnaw upon the yellow grass of the oases they don’t look the least bit cute.
Disfigured: Disfigurements arouse fear and disgust, a fact the Changed
have to face every day. Bulges in their heads may have dislocated their jaws, or there could be extra limbs or heads that all work equally well.
Atrophy: Atrophy is a type of disfigurement. There may be vestigial limbs,
or the features of another face in its neck. A rat with useless hind legs crawls speedily forward on two oversized forelegs.
Exaggerations: Exaggerated features are stronger and more versatile than
usual. Bulging, sack-like eyes see even in darkness. The skin of a Pox Bear may look bad but the mushy substance coating it heals all but lethal wounds almost instantly.