By Carl Rigney.
You have to be really hungry to eat a demon. Also, not too bright, since the flesh of demons corrupts mortal blood, just as the voice of demons corrupts mortal flesh.
I remember being that hungry, growing up. My little sister starved to death; my parents had to choose between her and me and they figured a boy would help them more in their old age. That's the way the world used to be, you know, before the Buro came and straightened things out. There's been enough food for everybody for a century, but the distribution was all wrong. In the rich countries, food went to waste. In the poor countries, food was imported and drove the little farmers into ruin, then used to leverage the power of the Elite. Hunger politics. The Buro came in under its Food for All program and disposed of those elites, and now everybody everywhere has enough to eat all the time, except those places who still resist the rightfulness of the Buro's cause.
So that people's sons and daughters should not have to die for the good of all, the Buro builds the soldiers it needs. One of the raw materials needed for these reconstructed soldiers is found very, very far away, and is very dangerous to harvest. I'm proud that my talents and skills have proved useful to the Buro in performing those harvests, and if some day I slip up and die screaming, it's at least in the warm knowledge that because of the work I did there were kids who got to grow up instead of starving. Yes, these are the:
Confessions of a Monster Hunter
A lot of recruits, even after careful screening, training, and grading, lose it in their first encounter in the Interface Zone, and have to be extracted sobbing and crying and tearing at their eyes. No one knows why some can take it and some can't, but it's why the first mission has one veteran and five firsties, just into the Zone and back, no capture. The firsties that pass are placed two to a team. Now there's a lot of debate over team size, but I agree with standard ops, a team of six, two fresh meat, two experienced, two veterans. Survive five successful missions and you advance, they split the team into two teams each with one old veteran, one new veteran, and two new experienced, and add more frosh. Sure, we'd rather stay with our buddies we can count on, but the need for material is ever-growing and loss rates are high even in skilled teams, so this grow and split methodology is the best way, claim the braintankers, and it's their job to know and our's to do.
Sometimes if you retrieve enough of a team-member, the fixitankers can salvage and impress them into some piece of equipment, so you can have the benefit of their advice. The rumors that some teams have pacts not to bring each other back like that are just enemy propaganda.
I've got a pretty good team, even with only two missions together so far, and three to go before we split.
Janine is our Buro Issue Virgin (and yes, I've heard all the jokes already, thanks) and also our designated Poet. Some teams like to split these functions, since some creatures go for Maidens and some go for Poets and so either job is pretty dangerous, but you can't fake skill in Poetry, any more than you can fake marksmanship or talent at lance revitrification. Janine can do all styles of Poetry, but in our downtime training she mostly makes up dirty limericks. She says she's in for her 25 missions and then upgrade to instructor, and plans to marry then and have lots of kids, which is kind of shocking but a 25 mission sticker gives you unlimited repro, so why not?
I don't know of anyone who's made it to their 25th mission, but I'm a third of the way there with hardly a scratch so far. Sometimes the nightmares get pretty bad if I forget to dose myself before downtime sleep. On uptime we try to sleep as little as possible, of course, especially after contact, capture and during transport. That's where a lot of teams lose it; not in capture, which is plenty dangerous but mostly physical and where you have the benefit of surprise and wavegear the target's never seen before, but in transport, where they nibble away at your sense of self and goals with their soft voices and delicate tentacles. Some are worse than others. Some just bluster about their terrible vengeance and how horrible our fate will be, and those are easy to ignore, stupid loudmouths are nothing new to a Buro recruit. Some... Some I still wonder... if I did the right thing. And then I think of my little sister who'll never grow up and never have children, and what I do doesn't seem so bad.
Peace has a price.
Shadowfist and Feng Shui: The Shadowfist Roleplaying Game as well as all characters described therein are copyrights and trademarks of Daedalus Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved.
Last modified: September 12, 1996;