Before them lies a vast graveyard of mothballed airplanes, some of them in orderly rows, most of them in messy jumbles of glass and metal. Huge bombers sit there, scores of ancient fighter craft, helicopters and even stranger engines of war. Four broad runways cut through the silent chaos, short rows of squat concrete hangars limit the large field which would be big enough to house a small city. In the failing light, the group makes out three buildings that stand out .
At the southern border of the gaveyard is a large control tower, rising 60 meters into the evening sky, its windows blinded by the abrading dust of the Great White.
About two clicks to the North of it a large pylon looms. It is a colossal construction, at least 80 meters high, and festooned with antennas, satellite dishes and other strange gadgets.
But in the north-eastern part of the graveyard the travelers see something that makes some of the curse: Someone tooks parts of the ancient warplanes to create an enclosure, a fortress 100 meters across. The wings of USAF bombers are used to create high walls, and within this settlement, scores of fires are burning. Our heroes are not alone.
The group makes camp away from the depression and, hidden under camouflage nets and gripping their binoculars, they spend the next morning observing the inhabitants of the fortress from the eastern lip of the depression. The people living there seem to be ferales, carrying spears and crossbows. They send out hunting parties and tend meagre fields close to the walls of the settlement. Two things stand out: Most of the inhabitants seem to be female, and once their hunting parties enter the thick of the graveyard, they are instantly lost from view - even Dan is not able to track them. They are very probably the surviving Pla'Thun.
Everybody agrees that a meeting with these people should be avoided. Taking their cars on a wide detour and settling in a new campsite, the explorers enter the site from the South. They are kitted up for a long and dangerous visit: Everyone is carrying weapons, gasmasks, flashlights, but also some food and water. Every few steps, Mal and Ben check their geiger counters. It is evening when they finally reach the border of the airfield.
First, they come upon a row of concrete hangars, monstrous things 50 meter long and 10 meters high, built to withstand the terrible weapons of the Long Ago. The hangars are empty, anything of use has been removed. Close to the hangars, at an old refueling point, the chemsniffer beeps a warning: High concentrations of poisonous gases are present. The group hurries on, towards the control tower.
The inhabitant of Wellspring have erected long metal poles in a rough circle around the tower and festooned them with skulls of humans and other animals, rusty warning signs and broken electronics. As the wind moves through the poles, strange boxes begin to chatter and rattle, mimicking the sound of a geiger counter. As the group crosses the circle, Carlos, bored and irritated from a whole day of waiting and skulking around, fingers a red cardboard tube hanging from one of the poles. Suddenly, the top of the tube pops off, and a bright red flame appears. Shocked, Carlos throws the old emergency flare on the ground, just before a red starshell can rise into the night sky. The shell races across the ground for a few seconds before it goes out, throwing its ghastly red light over the area. Did the Pla'Thun notice?
It's no use taking chances. The explorers move into the building encircling the stem of the control tower to get into a defensible position. Their original target, the tower itself, stands in the middle of a courtyard covered with fine, white sand. As Carlos steps into this courtyard, shapes explode from the sandy floor. With blinding speed, pale tentacles shoot from the sand and wrap themselves around arms and legs, and where they touch skin, the body goes numb. The group has stumbled across a nest of whipstars, bloated monstrosities of the western wastes.
The group answers the attack with a hail of gunfire and destroys the creatures, but not before one of the whipstars stings Ben in his left leg. Panicked, the traders jabs a syringe of aesculapin into his thigh. And the fine dust of the western desert seems to play havoc with the group's equipment: Two automatic weapons jam.
As the combat ends and the gunshots echo away, everyone knows that now the Pla'Thun must be aware of their visitors.
People met:
-none
People/ creatures met their demise:
- Five whipstars, shot to pieces
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