I've heard rumors of juniper berries growing not so far from here that have unusual properties. The locals say they glow faintly at dawn. Bring me some - we need to understand what's changed them.
We're putting up a small greenhouse on the south edge of Twin Rocks - water-efficient, climate-controlled enough for the saplings to make it through winter. The garbage piles have window glass that survived the wars. Most of it's cracked. We need the ones that aren't.
There's an old riverbed east of the Frontier where wolfberries are coming back without our help - wild-strain, hardier than the cultivars in our greenhouses. That's land remembering how to live. Bring me what you can pick. We're going to crossbreed them with the stock at the nursery and give it a generation.
Agave hearts west of the outpost are coming up with a bitter resin instead of sweet sap - Institute runoff, most likely. Their precious science seeping into ground that was healing before they arrived. Bring me a few. I need samples for the council, and the council needs to know what the Frontier's neighbors are actually doing to the soil.
Scorpions have moved into the seedbeds west of the wells. They burrow through the rows and the young roots can't recover. I hate doing it, they're part of the ecosystem too, but the saplings won't survive another season of this. Thin them out where the new growth is.
Iron Wolf breachers hit our seed vault last week. They didn't want the seeds - they wanted the copper from the irrigation pumps. Years of restoration work, traded for scrap. I don't enjoy this part of the work, but the ecosystem doesn't recover when scavengers tear the infrastructure out. Put them down. Defense is gardening, sometimes.
Echoes have been drifting through the southern groves and the soil dies wherever they pass - leaves blacken, roots wither, seeds won't take for a season after. The Institute calls them anomalies and writes papers. I call them what they are: something the land can't heal around. Disperse them. The grove needs time to come back.
A colony of mutated rats has infested some old grain silos. They're twice the size of normal rats and carry diseases that could spread to other wildlife. We can't let this infection spread through the ecosystem.
We're charting where the soil's coming back and where it isn't. Plant these markers at the points I've drawn up - color-coded, dated. In a few years we'll know which patches are reclaiming and which are dead for good. The work is in the watching.
Four parcels of land east of the Frontier are showing real recovery - measurable soil regeneration, returning pollinators, all of it. I need them flagged before the Institute decides to drill a test bore through one. Tie a ribbon at each site. The council will know what they mean. The Institute won't.
Mesquite trees fix nitrogen back into dead soil - they're how the desert gets started again. Drop these pods at the sites I've marked. Bare ground, washed-out arroyos, places where nothing else is trying. Give it ten years and you won't recognize the land.
There's a scorched stretch north of the outpost where the Rangers fought off raiders last summer - ash and bone and not much else. Three pods, spread across the burn line. The pioneer species in them will hold the topsoil through the next storm season. The land doesn't care who fought there. It just wants to live again.
The nursery hands are working bare-knuckled because our last shipment of gloves went to a Ranger patrol the Frontier deemed more important. Three pairs of treated leather will keep my people from infection through harvest season. Bring them, and I'll see the council remembers your name when restoration grants are issued next spring.
Our healers at the outpost are running short on wolf tincture, and the Institute infirmary won't sell to us at any price - they don't trust what they call our "folk pharmacology." Bring me five doses. The sick don't care which faction made the medicine. Only the well can afford that kind of pride.
Half our irrigation tarps tore through during the last duststorm and the patches won't hold without proper stitching. Bring me sewing kits in any condition, as long as the needles aren't bent. The smiths in Twin Rocks are backed up with weapons orders. Apparently rifle stocks come before farm tools.
The nursery beds need steady irrigation through the dry months and our reserves have been thin for weeks. Bring me whatever water you can spare. Empty hands, empty drums, empty saplings - that's the order it goes in.
The faithful in Prosperity have noted certain wolfberries that ripen pale instead of red - a sign, the elders say, that God has set them apart for the sick. Gather what you can find. The poor in our infirmary will thank you with their prayers.
Pre-war luxuries are proof of humanity's vanity - the sins that brought God's fire. Salvage these artifacts. We display them in the Church as warnings of what pride and excess wrought upon the world.
The Lord buried His warnings in the rubble of what came before. Certain stones from the ruined places carry a heat the others don't - God's mark, plain enough to those who look. Bring them to me. We set them at the well-mouths as witness.
Giant scorpions infest the approaches to our sacred water sources. Their venom corrupts the land God has entrusted to us. Hunt them down. Purge the unclean from His creation.
Iron Wolf scouts have been pressing the trade road south of Prosperity, robbing pilgrims who came to us in good faith. I don't ask you to hate them - that's not my place. But put enough of them in the ground that the next caravan reaches our doors.
A swarm of those clicking wasps has settled near our chapel's rain catch. Their nests tick like the old counters from the war, and the faithful are afraid to draw water. Thin their numbers, child. God's mercy reaches further when His people aren't trembling.
The vermin have grown bold around our grain stores. They are God's lowest creatures, made lower still by the sins of the old world, and now they covet what we have set aside for the faithful. Drive them out. Burn the nests where you find them.
Four pauper's graves in the lower quarter went into the ground last winter without rites - the chapel was short of hands, and the foundries don't stop for funerals. Pour a vial of blessed water at each marker. The dead are owed what we can give them, even late. Grace doesn't keep a calendar.
The earth where our scorpions have died is foul with their venom: the land itself remembers their corruption. Pour the blessed oil at the marked sites. Where the oil touches, the ground will heal. Where it does not, the sin remains.
There are a few abandoned wells outside Prosperity that the faithful once drew from, before the foundries fouled the ground. Light a censer at each and speak the old words of return. We may not drink from them again in my lifetime, but a place remembered is a place not yet lost. God hears the smaller prayers too.
The roads to our wells must be marked for the faithful who walk them in the dark. Set these candles at the way-points I have blessed. Each flame is a small covenant - that the Church watches, that the Lord watches, that the unclean things keep their distance.
A caravan of pilgrims arrived from the Frontier last week with little more than the dust on their backs. Two vests would clothe the men among them until the chapel can outfit them properly. Bring what you can spare. Charity given is grace returned - sometimes in this life, more often in the next.
The infirmary is full again - three children with fever, two elders who haven't kept food down in a week. Wolfberry flatcake is gentle on weak stomachs and travels well to the bedside. Bring me what you can spare. Charity costs the giver little.
Our lamps burn through the long vigils and the supplier from Prosperity has not come - too busy, I am told, hauling spirits for the unwashed. Bring me oil. Any oil that burns clean. The Lord's house must not go dark while the godless drink themselves blind.
The robes of our novices wear thin from the dust and the kneeling, and we have no proper cloth left in our stores. Bring me what scraps you can find - clean linen if the Lord provides it, anything else if He does not. Modesty is owed to Him, whatever the fabric.
The Prosperity assayers tag every legitimate ore shipment that comes through the gates, and tagged steel ends up in someone's ledger I'd rather not be in. There's a vanadium vein the assayers haven't found yet. Pull what you can. My armorer doesn't ask where the metal came from, and I don't tell him.
Ammunition doesn't grow on cacti. We've been rationing rounds on patrol for two months, and the next caravan won't come through until who knows when. Bring back the densest galena you can pull from the deep veins - our reloaders need the high-lead stock for cast rounds, not the surface scrap.
I need stocks for a dozen rifles and the licensed mills in town all answer to the merchant council. There's good oak out past the eastern hills, nobody's counting it. Cut what you need and bring me the planks rough - my carpenter prefers them that way. Less paperwork, fewer questions.
Our weapons and armor need constant maintenance in this harsh environment. We need high-grade iron ore for forging replacement parts and reinforcing damaged equipment. Look for ore with minimal rust contamination.
A pack of mutated rats has moved into the storm drains east of town. Once they nest, they spread - and we've already lost a horse to a bite that wouldn't stop bleeding. Cut their numbers down before they push into the settlement proper.
Giant scorpions have been terrorizing a trading caravan route. These oversized killers are too dangerous to let roam free - innocent travelers don't stand a chance against their stings.
Iron Wolf gunners have set up nests along the south road and they've been picking off caravans for the toll. Two caravaners dead this month, one of them a kid. I don't have the manpower to flush them out and the merchants won't pay for what they call "ranger overreach." Put the marksmen down. I'll handle the paperwork.
The Scrappers have a foreman running crews out of the old rail yard, organizing them into something that looks too much like a militia for my liking. Cut the head off and the rest will scatter back to looting. Don't engage the full crew: get the foreman alone if you can. Rangers don't have the bodies to spare on a brawl.
Three weapon caches need stashing along the trade road - emergency supplies for caravans that run into trouble between checkpoints. Activate a marker at each site I've designated. Bury it shallow. If the merchant council asks, they're surveyor stakes, and you don't know me.
We're extending our patrol perimeter to cover the new traders' route. Hammer these stakes in at the marked points - they're keyed to our radio repeaters, so we'll know if anything crosses the line. Don't waste my time asking how the keying works. It works.
I'm rerouting the western caravan trail around a stretch the Wolves keep ambushing, and I need four waypoints planted before next week's run. Activate a beacon at each spot I've marked on your map. The drivers will see them at dusk. Quiet work - don't let anyone watch you do it.
We've lost two patrols on the night route nearby - they go quiet, and we find them at dawn. Plant these signal flares at the rest points. If a patrol misses check-in, the flares fire automatically. Won't save them every time. Better than nothing.
The standard-issue boots aren't surviving the gravel out past the mesas - soles wear through inside a month. Bring me steel scrap and our cobbler will reinforce the toe caps. Small thing. Saves a lot of complaints on the long routes.
Patrols are coming back with wounds we should be treating in the field, not in the infirmary. Bring me clean bandages - any kind, as long as they haven't been used. Half my Rangers think they're tougher than they are. Bandages help with that mistake.
New rangers rotated in from Twin Rocks and the quartermaster has them in patchwork until the next requisition comes through - could be a month, could be never. Bring me proper vests, used is fine, and I'll get them on the road tomorrow. A ranger in scraps is a ranger who gets killed.
My patrol rotation goes out short on rifle rounds again because the merchant council "regrets the shortfall" every quarter. Bring me cartridges from your own stock and I'll see they end up in the hands of riders who actually shoot back. No questions about where you got them.
The elders say certain pines preserve their seeds in sealed cones for decades, waiting for the right conditions. There's a lesson there about data preservation. Gather some - I want to study their structure.
Salvagers in the market keep tossing the boards that "talk" - faint static when nothing's powering them. I've been buying the ones I find, but I need more, and the dealers here charge me triple because I'm a shaman. Pull a few from the stockpile yourself. The pattern in the noise is almost a language.
Sacred devices data patterns require specialized conductors to interface properly. Pure copper ore with minimal oxidation will help me decode what the spirits - or whatever they truly are - are trying to communicate
There's a vein under the eastern ridge that the readings won't sit still on - the dowsing rig pulls toward it like the metal itself is humming. The elders would call it touched. I'd call it interesting. Bring me ore from that vein and I'll see which of us is right.
These corrupted machines guard pre-war data terminals like jealous gatekeepers. They're stopping people from accessing knowledge that could save lives. Help me clear them out - information wants to be free
Iron Wolf troopers have set up around the canyon where I cache my listening gear. My antennas are dark, the elders are asking why, and the merchant council shrugs because shamans don't pay them tax. Put enough of them down that I can walk the canyon again without ducking. The signal's been silent too long.
A nest of mutated rats has infested an old library I've been cataloging. They're destroying irreplaceable texts. Every book they shred is knowledge lost forever. This isn't about territory - it's about preservation
Echoes have been clustering near the old switching yard, and every time one flickers through, my recordings come back wrong: frequencies that shouldn't exist, voices nobody spoke. The elders say the dead are walking. I say something's bleeding through the weave. Either way, thin them out.
The elders taught us to leave stones in places where the ground talks back. I want to test the practice - properly, with markers I can find again. Set these where the air feels wrong. If we get a pattern, we have something. If we don't, at least we'll have ruled it out.
I need three sites surveyed for the hum I keep picking up at night - places the locals avoid without knowing why. Plant a beacon at each. It'll log the signal long enough for me to triangulate. Don't open the casing. Half of it I don't understand myself yet.
There are old transformer pylons nearby that still draw something from the air: power, maybe, or just attention. The elders taught me to leave an offering. The engineer in me wants the calibration data. Activate the censers at each pylon. We'll see what answers.
There are sites where the old recordings come back wrong - a hum underneath, or words that weren't on the original. I need fresh tape laid at the marked points. Press record, leave it, walk away. We'll see what the place puts on it.
We burn pinyon for the smoke. It carries differently than juniper, and the elders insist the difference matters. I'm less sure, but I'm not the one who decides. Bring me a good handful. If nothing else, they're good eating once the ritual's done.
Half the devices the elders called sacred are just radio sets nobody knows how to fix anymore. Bring me what pre-war electronics you can pull from the scavenge piles. Capacitors, coils, anything intact. The line between ritual tool and broken transistor is thinner than most people think.
My listening rig burned a few capacitors out last week chasing a signal that didn't want to be heard. The market traders know I need them and have doubled their asking price overnight. Bring me modules from your own salvage.
The elders want a new prayer-loom woven for the equinox, and they've asked me to source the conductors. They call them sacred. I call them what they are - boards from before the war, still capable of holding a pattern. Bring me four. The ritual is real either way.
The Scar's influence causes unique isotope absorption in certain plants. Collect ephedra leaves from high-exposure areas. Unlike refugees wasting resources, this research actually advances humanity's understanding.
Pre-war lead isotope ratios will confirm my temporal displacement theory about the Scar. This is actual science, not the shamans' mystical nonsense. Extract samples from deep veins only
The Frontier lab needs nickel with low cobalt contamination - folks in Aniid Kin keep sending me the dregs and billing me for premium. There's a vein three klicks past the perimeter the survey rated clean. Pull what you can. I'll log it against the regional budget and nobody upstream needs to know what I actually paid.
I require carbon samples for dating Scar-affected geological formations. Twenty years of study taught me what amateurs miss - the data is in the details. Bring me uncontaminated specimens.
Half the equipment shipped to the Frontier arrives broken: vibration, bad packing, somebody skimming on the way through Prosperity. There's a dump site east of here where pre-war labs were stripped. Most of it's garbage. The rotors, though, if they're intact, are worth more than the rest of the shipment combined. Bring me what you find.
Scrapper drillers have been hitting our outlying caches and tunneling into the supply tents at night. I've lost two months of medical reagents to them this quarter - actual quantifiable damage, not the shamans' "the spirits took it" nonsense. Put them down. I'll mark it as pest control on the ledger and call it cheap at the price.
The ravens have been pulling components off our solar array: copper wire, mostly, and any small reflective piece they can carry. Replacement parts have to come overland from Twin Rocks at three times catalog price. Cull the flock. The accountants in me prefers the bird problem solved over the requisition filed.
Giant scorpions are disrupting my field equipment near critical Scar observation points. My research is keeping this settlement alive - these creatures are not. Eliminate them
Mimics display fascinating adaptive camouflage that may relate to Scar-induced mutations. Kill several and salvage their optical tissue. The Institute's understanding of this phenomenon far exceeds the shamans' 'spiritual' interpretation.
There's a Scar-touched depression south of the outpost the Institute wants properly mapped before they commit budget to a research station. Four corners, one stake each, activate in sequence. The data feeds back to my ledger and I can finally close out a requisition that's been open eighteen months.
Three cargo crates in the south yard tested positive for unidentified residue - could be Scar exposure, could be sloppy handling at the Prosperity transfer point. Either way I can't release the contents until they're sterilized. Activate a charge on each crate. The Institute will reimburse the loss; the Frontier can't afford the contamination.
My field instruments drift out of true within hours of Scar exposure - the shamans would call it haunted, of course. Plant these calibration spikes at the observation points I've marked. The data they collect over the next cycle will be worth more than a year of secondhand accounts.
I need atmospheric readings from elevations my assistants refuse to climb to - apparently the wind "sounds wrong" up there. Release these samplers at the marked sites. They'll capture particulate data the Institute has been requesting for months.
My isotope work requires lead of known provenance for baseline calibration, and the samples coming out of the Twin Rocks smelters are inconsistent at best. Bring me eight ingots from your own stock - I'll run the assay myself. This is how actual research is done. Not by chanting at copper wire.
The Frontier infirmary is short on burn treatment and the official supply line from Twin Rocks is "experiencing delays" - meaning the Church is hoarding again. Bring me whatever yerba mansa salve you can source locally. I'll pay above market and ask no questions. The Institute looks after its own when the official channels can't.
My survey teams keep losing scopes in the field: sandstorms, falls, the occasional Scrappers ambush. Replacements from Aniid Kin are quoted at four times what the modules are actually worth, because they know I have no other supplier. Bring me four working units. I'll add them to the inventory and nobody upstream is the wiser.
Atmospheric sampling at the Scar perimeter requires sulfur for the reaction vessels - and the Institute's supply line from Prosperity has been "delayed" for three weeks running. Bring me ten units. The data won't collect itself, and the longer I wait, the more the shamans' "spiritual readings" pass for science around here.
Meredith
Father Jonas
Garrett
Eliza
Azra
Keahi
Leon