Mutant Marauders

What ho and well met!

Welcome back Thaumaturgists, Adepts, and Swordmasters!

At long last you have returned, and so have I!  We're talking some more Mutant World here at the blog.  This time, we're gonna talk about the Marauders!

Who are the Marauders?  Well, they are a large mob of mutants, who rampage and terrorize various settlements throughout the wastelands.

So, first, I suppose I should talk a little about mutants in general.  Mutants in my afterworld are caused by the fallout of nuclear and chemical warfare.  As if that isn't bad enough, somewhere in the past there was a war with the Martians.  The Martians conducted weird genetic experiments on various Earth animals, which then got mutated by the fallout.

And so, by the time these stories take place, there are thousands of little sub-species.  Many of these are localized phenomena, because of what specific radiation is present in an area.

Some of the animals have human-like bodies.  They could look like minotaurs, or those animal-headed Egyptian Gods.  Some may have hair or fur or scales instead of skin.

Other animals look normal, at least at first glance.  Most likely they are a weird combination of two (or more) animals.  In the very least, they may have an extra limb, or wings, or crab claws, or something.

But the Marauders are NOT these kinds of mutants.

These guys are mutated humans.  Yes, some of them may have extra limbs, but these guys are covered with nasty, tumorous and cancerous growths.  They've lived in radioactive territory for so long that their skin has turned green.  


The Marauders are ugly and depraved in mind, body, and soul.  They hate unmutated humans and strive to exterminate them all from the face of the Earth.  

They believe that mutants are meant to be the new masters of the world.  They subjugate communities of mutant animals into submission, or kill them, too.

They are led by a self-styled warlord named Maligno.  He has two goals:  to destroy the scattered tribes of unmutated mankind, and to find more efficient weapons to accomplish it.  

To cross paths with the Marauders is certain death.  No one in their right mind would dare to challenge this small army of depraved mutants.  At least, not without an army.

But then, nobody ever said that Axel, Smogara, and Biter were in their right minds, now did they?  Why would they embark on such a suicidal adventure?  What prize could they hope to gain?  Will any of them come out alive?

YOU can find the answers to all these questions in:

Mutant World #3

The Might of Maligno

Available Now!
on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited!





Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell

Post-Apoc-A-Rama!

Hello and Welcome Back!

In our last exciting episode we were talking about bad post-apocalyptic movies from the 80's.  So that's where we start now.


I think the first movie I ever saw that could count as post-apoc would have to be The Last Man on Earth starring Vincent Price.
Of course, this isn't an 80's movie, and isn't at all akin to the sort of cheesy flick I wanna talk about.  But it's still the first one I ever saw.

The next one must have been Damnation Alley starring George Peppard an Jan-Micheal Vincent.  This movie was cool!  First off there was the Ultimate RV, a twelve-wheeled monster of an all-terrain vehicle designed to go anywhere in a ruined world.  There were giant scorpions and man-eating cockroaches.  This was sort of a slightly more realistic future than Thundarr presented:  no magic, no super-tech.  Somehow, though, there was enough gas to run the Super Rv and a motorcycle.

The next one that really stands out in my head is the Ralph Bakshi movie, Wizards.  This movie is just haunting and disturbing, but not really in a bad way.  The narration and the still-picture slide show in the beginning I find particularly haunting.  Then there's the weird animation style.  It's cartoony, as opposed to trying to render the weird creatures and characters realistically.  Then there's the weird rotoscoping and the subject matter itself.  Weird but cool.  

There was a movie called She, it starred Sandahl Bergman (she was Conan's girlfriend Valeria in Conan the Barbarian).  It was supposedly "based" on the H.R.Haggard story She, but the only resemblance I could see were in the title.  

In a post-apoc world survivors trade goods with one another until these raiders show up and cause a ruckus for no good reason.  They kidnap this girl, so her brother and her boyfriend go to rescue her, knowing full well they'll probably die.  But instead, they hook up with She, a powerful warrior-woman and she-who-cannot-die (thanks to her "magic" sauna in a cave in her village).  Through an episodic series of weird misadventures, including an incident with a werewolf commune, a mutant bridge guard who multiplies every time you hit him, and that standard stand-by a gladiatorial arena; our heroes find the bad guys and (spoiler alert!) rescue the girl.  It was weird stuff, seemed to have a definite Gamma World vibe to me.

Like I said, Terrible And Silly!


There were a bunch of other flicks, too.  After a while they kind of blend together.  But movies like The New Barbarians, and Land of Doom show us that people wear way too much leather in the post-apocalyptic desert.

  
Battletruck and Wheels of Fire show us that there will still be plenty of gas and bullets (and yet food and water will be scarce), and that all the vehicles will get pimped up with spikes. 

 Meanwhile, films like She-Wolves of the Wasteland and Stryker show us that there will be a great abundance of hot chicks, and a few cool guys...but apparently not enough clothes to go around (at least if you're adverse to the above-mentioned black leather).  

Are you ready for the punchline?  I've NEVER seen a single Mad Max movie.  Bits and pieces, but not the whole film.  But I've seen all of these flicks, and each one has left its indelible mark on the world I've created...or ended(?)...for the stories I'm writing.

And there were a few others, too.  But my point is this:  My post-apocalyptic world is not just drab and gray.  And there are more dangers lurking about than just zombies.  

When my world suffered its great calamity, there was advanced science.  AIs, robots, weird chemical medicines, advanced tech for daily appliances, experimental prototypes.  These things still exist and are half-understood (at best) by people trying to use them and repair the damage.  Weird chemicals and radiation have cause innumerable mutant sub-races and new hybrid species.  

Wanna know more?  Of course ya do!  So come on back next time, and I'll share some more about my upcoming science fantasy post-apocalyptic adventure series:  Mutant World!  Until then, I wish you...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell