Aside from that, the deserted, desolate, and downright unpleasant landscape denied travelers any joy. The artists had designed it to be a backdrop for the towns and other points of interest, not as scenery for hikers. Games are made for players, players who might see screenshots of town buildings rich with detail that would convince them to spend their time, money, more time, and more money in that game over thousands of others.

“I see a casino!” Wiffle yelled from a few yards up, and the spirits of the travelers rose yet higher than she. “It's unbelievably gaudy. We have to check it out.”

“There lies a building with a dome of copper. The town hall perhaps. The courthouse. Either way, it will burden the backs of Rs and UCs soon enough,” Ivar said.

“Aw, come on,” the signified characters moaned, though one in words far angrier and the other with speech more polite.

“There are some granaries and storehouses all right. I'll let the rest of you loot those, if it comes to it. Won't go near them myself. Bad memories. Hold up, wasn't that your fault?” Kindo slowed and peered at Ulrik.

“No. I killed you once. The storehouse part had nothing to do with me.”

“That sounds right. Yeah, I remember. That's what we got for being too lazy to sort our materials. I was as guilty as anyone.”

“More so.”

“Don't push it, two-star.”

The troupe entered the city where it made use of the gleaming gold streets, or at least concrete if not gold and smooth if not gleaming, to negotiate the turns and corners just the same as countless mohawk punks, pit fighters, and post-apocalyptic peasants who ought to have been persecuted by said punks but in that city were not. The travelers passed a restaurant that provided outdoor dining at tables under a vivid green awning, all without the need to bring your own Rare to serve you and hold up the table. They passed that same building at several corners. A newspaper office incited dangerous commentary on the possibility of ending Lasva's monopoly if local talent could be recruited. A factory! What was manufactured there? Factory stuff. You know.

Some might have laughed at calling such a place “the city” rather than “the midsized town,” but Public Service occupied Beans Istemus and Surfs Nesetta somewhere farther away than the moon and closer than the heart so that they lacked any opportunity to pour scorn on a non-Perandran municipality. Regardless, its frequented streets, presumably profitable enterprises, and purposeful citizens all put it over Freegate's chill dignity as far as both hustle and bustle, as though that were less a city and more a fortress wrested by a young hero from a space pirate admiral in the pay of an unethical genius from a star-spanning civilization of schmucks. Put next to a real city such as Perandra Splendida, one difference favored the post-apocalyptic town, or Postapocown: growth.

“I've been working on that one construction project every time I get dispatched and nothing happens,” Kindo said. “That crew started three minutes ago and that bank is one-third finished. Why can't we get things done?”

“Poor leadership,” Ulrik said, and Kindo agreed after due consideration that Cadmos had biffed it again.

“How's the construction scene over in Holy Legend Army?” he asked the crusaders.

Wiffle appended a relevant question. “Is it more of a destruction scene?”

“A worthy idea, but one not implemented,” Ivar said.

“No building will stand tomorrow but that it stands today, nor will it fall,” Acolyte confirmed.

“Uh huh. OK, how about we make nice with the mayor to learn more about municipal development before we sack the city while he watches, tied to a pole in a pyre's center and all? It's tough to be patient, but it might just pay off.”

Kindo's proposal passed over Ivar's heated and frankly incoherent objections that continued as the travelers headed straight for the domed building till Wiffle suggested they use the streets.

“Why? These stores don't slow us down hardly at all.” Kindo struck with lightning to level a shop, barber pole and all, as a demonstration and also for practical reasons.

“This, then, is the way you 'make nice with the mayor?' Never would I have complained, had I known,” Ivar said as he split a wooden wall apart with his all-cleaving ax.

“Oh. Right. I forgot,” Kindo said, and retreated to allow workers room for rebuilding what he had debuilt seconds earlier.

After a dull, tedious, and just plain uninteresting journey around city blocks instead of through them, the travelers reached the official-looking dome place and saw a man outside it whose glasses, stubble, and stethoscope identified him as either a doctor or someone forced to escape a hospital one step ahead of the conspirators trying to silence him.

So the officers said, but Acolyte doubted their judgment. “I see no cassock, no miter, no mace. What succor offers this disheveled man to the faithful? His own socks, you perceive, match not.”

“He's either a Medic or a Warper, and I don't see a lens,” Kindo said. “The stethoscope might be a lens, except they don't have those here.”

“Why did you bring it up, then?” Wiffle asked.

“No reason.” Kindo stretched out his hand, rolled his lens down from his sleeve where it had been hidden along his arm into his fingers, twirled it around, raised his arm, and let the lens run back under his sleeve. Wiffle tried to clap, and the result blew everyone a few inches back before she gave up on it.

“The weather report didn't tell us anything about that. We ought to upgrade that next.” The presumed doctor held his hand out for rain, shrugged, and scratched his jaw. “Oh!”

What thoughts did he have when he saw those five champions of strength and sorcery, whose ax, lens, wings, scimitar, and mace promised no less ruin than the apocalypse itself, and whose visual distinctiveness set them as members of a category far distant from those generics who built coffee shops and collected scrap from pre-disaster junkyards?

“Oh boy! Strangers!” He trotted over and shook their hands in turn, Kindo's first, passing over Wiffle, then Ivar's, sliding back to Wiffle before going for Acolyte's and Ulrik's. He slung himself back in front of Wiffle and pondered.

“Don't bother,” she advised. “Nice to meet you. Doctor Erwin, I presume?”

“That's me, sure enough. I'm the mayor of this town, though political science wasn't exactly my major in college, ha ha. Say, speaking of different, are you all from a different game? You're welcome either way of course, but the farthest friends are the dearest, aren't they? And the games you don't play have the best schedules.”

“I heard that in Legendary War Chronicles, lower rarities are good,” Ulrik said.

“Exactly!”

“Not that good. Ahem. I'm Wiffle, an officer of Commandment of Hero. These are Kindo and Scimitar Rare, likewise.”

“I'm Ulrik, but you can call me Scimitar Rare if you best me in fifteen straight bouts.”

“Our companions are Ivar and Acolyte, both crusaders of Holy Legend Army.”

“Wow. I never thought our little community, a shelter among the ruins more than anything, would attract any visitors at all, let alone from where you're from. Then again, maybe it makes more sense for people from farther away to want to come. It's a little exotic here, right? We're aren't about fantasy, for one thing.”

“The chains and leather your citizens wear figure prominently in lots of fantasies,” Wiffle said.

“You think so?” Four foreigners nodded while Acolyte looked puzzled. “We can put that in the brochure. I've been meaning to get to that ever since the Road Empress suggested we should print one up, but there's so much to get to these days. I really need to prioritize that, since a suggestion from her is an order as far as we're concerned, ha ha.”

“I can imagine! Ha ha.” Wiffle, who lacked any manner of Diplomacy score, said “ha ha” instead of laughing, but perhaps Doctor Erwin appreciated the effort. “Really, I have to imagine. We aren't from around here, after all, but we're curious to hear more. Who is this Road Empress? Does she have any postcards?”

“She's our savior. It's hard to tell you more, since she doesn't really talk about herself. She showed up one day and asked if we needed help cleaning up the place. I'm sorry to say we brushed her off. In our defense, not that we deserve one, we were in a grim state back then, and it didn't seem like any amount of help would make a difference.”

“No local specialties?”

“Not even a funny-shaped pastry. We couldn't get any resources, so we couldn't upgrade, so we couldn't field stronger forces. It was an inescapable cycle. I'm embarrassed to admit we told that stranger to go get lumber from the closest wood-gathering point if she was so desperate to watch us do some work, and that she could even take our landship, since we weren't doing anything with it. And never seemed likely to.”

Ivar interjected. “Hold! A word or two about this 'landship' is what I want.”

“So did she. I'll tell you what I told her, which is that each city in Dust and Highway, which is the name of our game. Did you know that? Yes? Great.” The mayor's voice lost some of its effusiveness, or bubbliness if one wanted to do him like that, as he adopted the impersonal tone all inexperienced lecturers take up, no matter how much their audiences wished otherwise. “Each city owns one powerful, customizable landship. Various parts affect all kinds of things like travel speed, battle power, harvesting efficiency, and so on. We make some of the weaker parts in our factories, but the good ones come out of the gacha.” With the end of the lecture portion, the mayor regained his enthusiasm. “Our broken-down, sad old landship wasn't doing us any good back then. That's why we let her take it, and, well, look around! The Road Empress always comes through!” Citizens in the vicinity paused to hoot before resuming their business.

Wiffle resumed her own business of interrogation. “Do you know her name? What game she's from? Why she always comes through?”

“No to the first, no to the second, and as for the third, something about generic bikers not getting through regen, I think she said. I didn't grasp the details. She seemed confident about it. That's enough for us.”

“Hi, I'm Ulrik.”

“Welcome, Ulrik!”

“A girl holding a staff that has winged snakes entwined around it. She says a word, possibly as many as three. Of course she's going to say more, you think. Instead she trails off. Agree or disagree?”

“Strongly agree.”

“I solved the mystery. Now that I know who she is, where is she?”

Ulrik was already walking away, but Kindo pulled him back. “Hold on, hold on, you can't run off without dropping a clue or two. Is the Road Empress bigger than a breadbox?”

“Yes. Not a breadbox boss though.”

“Me next.” Wiffle preened while thinking up a question. “Does she know any good places that aren't on the tour but are still tourist-friendly? Like the fifth-most popular abbey.”

“My colleague, Doctor Erwin, will field that one.”

“We don't have five abbeys yet. We hope everyone will be patient as we expand the city.”

“No more clues! Battle will lay the truth bare.” Ivar waited for someone to disagree with him, again, but mystery-solving distracted three of them while the fourth ran in place while gesticulating at Doctor Erwin.

The mayor watched and adjusted his glasses. “You want me to hurry this up? Do I have that right?” Ulrik nodded. “The Road Empress left to raid a gas station for supplies. It's an hour and forty-two minutes that way.”

“Is that flying, walking, or riding a post-apocalyptic bike?”

Doctor Erwin shrugged. “Any which way you please.”

A passing citizen wearing a hat that may have been gnawed by its owner once or twice when the hunger grew too great spoke up. “That's funny, 'cuz that threw off the Road Empress too, at first. Time is a resource in Dust and Highway, and there's no messing with it outside of upgrades.”

“That means we have a real problem on our hands,” Kindo said. “One the one hand, vehicles won't do us any good, but I want some anyway. That was the other hand, but I forgot to mention it.”

“I don't like to lecture anyone about their lifestyles unless it has medical ramifications, but I do have to insist on this one fact.” Doctor Erwin's single raised finger emphasized his seriousness. “Post-apocalyptic life is only worth living if you get to ride around the desert and look tough. I do it when I make house calls, for instance. Follow me.” He guided them away from the copper-domed central building toward a garage at the edge of town, exchanging greetings with townsfolk the entire way no matter how often Ulrik's scimitar slapped his back. “Here we are. Feel free to take out five of our raider motorcycles. We have plenty of spares now that we never lose them in map fights.”

A row of non-whimsical rides, all weathered with just the right amount of wear and dirt for the setting, extended for the garage's not-quite-boss-whale length. Kindo, Ulrik, and Acolyte ran to three of them, spaced at least one bike apart of course, and swung themselves on. “Don't touch the noodle cart. It's too powerful for you,” Ulrik warned the locals, who retreated from the otherworldly item as if the Road Empress herself had made a suggestion. Wiffle flew over another motorcycle and descended to test the phoenix-friendliness of the controls. One crusader, however, expressed discontent.

“I demand a car,” Ivar demanded.

“We have motorcycles.”

“Its backseat refashioned into a throne menacing in aspect.”

“We have motorcycles.”

“I will have the UC Cleric drive.”

“We have sidecars for motorcycles.”

Ivar spat and watched Wiffle try to grip the handlebars with her beak. “Attach the sidecar. I will drive the phoenix, and all who look upon us will know that the very storm personified rides with me.”

“Sounds neat,” Wiffle said.