The Scrap Queen

Brutus was happy, though a little hung over… It had become late last night in the bar. He could still hear snippets of that ancient Terran song from yesterday.

Have a drink on me

…Have a drink on me

Have a drink  on me

…Have a drink on me

He could still taste the puke in the back of his mouth, but who would care? Brutus had been celebrating along with most of the other lost Boys! The Scrap Queen had finally emerged from her cave, where she had been hiding like a spider. She was finally among the boys, she had had some changes made to her lower rig and her power plant had been enlarged. Other than that, she looked just like herself still… except from the extra arms growing out of her mechanical body parts, they took some getting used to. She said she had become more powerful, faster and better tuned than ever before.

The Scrap Queen Ilse the Vengeful in all her glory

Now the black thirst was upon the lost Boys yet again, stronger than ever before. They were riding to war and their queen was riding with them. The noise was deafening, the smoke strong the wind was in his hair. Now, life was good and nothing else mattered. Brutus listened again to the ancient music:

….++++….+… Hey mama, look at me

I’m on my way to the promised land……

Wow!

I’m on the Highway to Hell

Highway to Hell

I’m on the Highway to Hell

……

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If you are new to Secrets of the Void, you might want to read the following articles, which lead up to this one: Burning Sun burning Rubber burning Promethium, Turning up the Heat, Making Desert Terrain Pieces, Escape from Alfa Secundus, Out on the Plains we gave them Hell. These are all my work on the Tor Megiddo project and show my simultaneous development of figures and background story as well as providing a connection to the rest of my body of work.

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She was once the daughter of a flesh baron. She guards her secrets closely. This, she has told nobody. As soon as Ilse came of age, she ran away from her cannibal father and family, never to look back again.

In time, Ilse became the leader of a rather large band of bandits out in the desert, she was known as Ilse the Vengeful, there was always a slight sense of bitterness about her, maybe a mask to cover the sadness of a broken heart beneath the surface. She became a ruthless and powerful leader of the bandits. In time they came under the scrutiny of Tor Red Sands, which clearly saw Ilse and her gang of bandits as a threat.

Ilse found out that Tor Red Sands had housed her father, the nameless flesh baron at some point… So Ilse vowed to end the Tor and their conflict turned into an outright war.

Another gang of bandits was also in war with Tor Red Sands; Crazy Joe and old Max’s gang. She approached Joe and they agreed to join forces to defeat the Tor once and for all. Together, their gangs became a small army.

When the smoke cleared, there was no more Tor Red Sands and no more army of bandits either. Only Crazy Joe, Raegar the Gunner and Ilse the Vengeful had survived the battle. The Nameless flesh baron had not been in Tor Red Sands at that time, but unbeknownst to Ilse and Joe, he was watching them from a nearby hill.

Ilse, Raegar and Crazy Joe made their living in an old abandoned promethium refinery and started recruiting warriors for a new tribe in the wastes. The tribe grew fast, Ilse took in every misfit, freak and underdog, who couldn’t fit in elsewhere and soon the Lost Boys became a power in the wasteland of Tor Megiddo.

All the time, the nameless flesh baron was watching them, especially their queen Ilse, biding his time.

One evening Ilse was out alone on a patrol of the perimeter, she was set upon. It was a fat beast of a man, more dirty than sin. It was the nameless flesh baron, her father. They fought long and hard, trading many blows and wounds. In the end the flesh baron swung his cleaver and dealt Ilse a mighty blow to the small of her back, it felled her.

In the mean time Raegar had started to worry because Ilse had not returned from her patrol. He took Joe with him and started to search for their leader. They found her unconscious with a gigantic fat man looming over her, looking like he was going to eat her raw then and there… They attacked and drove the nameless flesh baron off into the night. Raegar and Joe carried Ilse back to their hideout. She was mortally wounded, they had to help her and get her stitched up. As much as they wanted to, they could not pursue her assailant. After a sleepless night and a lot of work by their local healer, she was stabilized and started to slowly recover.

Unfortunately she had lost all feeling in her legs. She could no longer walk.  They put her in a wheelchair, but Ilse became more and more reclusive. In bitterness and defeat, she took to living deep within a dark cave, leaving the day-to-day running of the Lost Boys to Raegar and Joe.

One scorching day about a decade later, a spacecraft crashed out in the rad wastes. The lost Boys, who had taken to tinkering and wrecking was at the crash site first. They recovered much tech from the cog skull adorned spacecraft. Much of it was incomprehensible, yet much of the loot would yield spare parts and new machinery. They found one very special piece of tech inside; the Magos Dominus, who had been traveling on the ship. They hauled the cyborg corpse back to the oilasis. They removed the pitiful organic remains from the dominus’ mechanical body, then they grafted Ilse to the mechanical body.

It needed some tweaking, the nuclear electrical power plant was beyond the Lost Boys to control, so they built another promethium driven one. Ilse took a long time to learn how to control her new lower body. Eventually she did learn and became very god at controlling her mechanical body, she got a new lease on life.

She could walk again, she had become powerful. She could run as fast as a bike could go. She was reborn as the Scrap Queen! She came out of her cave and joined her lost Boys again for a time.

What better heraldry than a sun for a hot desert

After a couple of years of banditry with the lost boys, the Scrap Queen took to brooding again. She became more and more obsessed with making more or less minor corrections and improvements to her mechanical body. She was not entirely happy with her centaur form, but could not find any alternative to it. She withdrew more and more to her cave working obsessively on improving her mechanical parts.

In the end she stopped coming out of the darkness of her cave entirely. She just stayed there tinkering and brooding for years. The Lost Boys started to worry that she might be dead, but Crazy Joe assured them that she was alive and well, just too busy. Eventually little Rosa Molotov showed up, was sent to the queen’s cave and some of the veil of darkness upon her soul started to lift.

Now the black thirst is upon the Lost Boys stronger than ever before and she has finally emerged from her cave into the sun again…

+++++

Step into the Light

The Scrap Queen and the Lost Boys prepare for war

Rolling out

A pair of holy men from the deep desert petitions the Scrap Queen

The Heat of tor Megiddo

I made this quick little painting in pen and ink to serve as a background for photographing my warband and their queen. At the same time it serves as some form of manifestation of what I imagine Tor Megiddo looks like.

The smoke is rising

To war!!

The Scrap Queen and the Lost Boys

Now my warband for Tor Megiddo is complete.

 

Thanks for reading.