EVENTS:

Sally listens intently to Eigla's tale, occasionally looking back at the other party members before nodding in assent. Until she gets vinebrushed and hit on (???), that is. Then she blushes, all but leaping back before struggling to regain her composure.

Sally: "UHM. T-that is, good to hear. To, know someone has, my back, hehe. Hum. Heh. Uh.

Anyways. I know how it feels to be surrounded by weirdos. You shoulda see my sisters. And yeah, bloody cannibals, they're hell to deal with. I mean, you've met the old hag back at the fact-

Wait. Desuri, she contacted us. Said, this blob monster's that's been stalkin' you, it wants to kill Rosa then kill itself. Then, why're you even dragging the fat shark around? She sounds like the source of all your trouble. Leave her in a ditch by the road, drive away, no more meatblob."

Sally: "Oi, no one's talking to you, bleedin' heretic! Like chomping on people for fun isn't rude."

EVENTS:

Sally's half-face contorts in a strange way. It takes you a moment to recognise that she's doing the equivalent of raising an eyebrow.

Sally: "...Sentimentality won't get you very far in this world. Who says you won't get eaten before you find your so-called cure?

Still, lemme give you some advice. I doubt Kelly will care much for helping you, but Molly's going to be interested in whatever science you can give her."

She lowers her voice.

Sally: "I don't really give a damn about the others or the leviathan in the back, but you seem alright. There might be an opening for you in the crew, if you play yer cards right."


The rig is very close now, and you see a large platform descend from its lower end. A cargo elevator, perhaps? It could easily fit several trucks.

EVENTS:

Sally opens the cab's window, waving at some sentry towers near the rig's base, then directs Eigla through a series of reinforced metal gates. The area under the superstructure seems like a fortified loading and staging area - Engineer zombies swarm the place, filling tanker trucks and preparing escort vehicles for a convoy, under the watchful eyes of a handful of Dolls in work overalls.

Most of the vehicles following you stay behind, and only your truck and the legged cube enter the huge lift. It lurches upwards with a grinding sound, rising with surprising speed.


Sally: "Well, you've seen the pumpjacks. Oil is pretty much the biggest thing - Without it, there's no convoys, no power, no flamethrowers to keep the mud people at bay. The shipwrecks mean we have pretty much as much steel as we want, but we don't really export that.

I'm the one in charge of plunderin' the husks, and digging for the buried treasure. Black gold, you see? We pump it up here for refinin', then my sisters take over. Kelly keeps the place running and the workers in line, and Molly- Well, she mostly does weird sciency stuff, but she's good at making machinery when she feels like working."

Sally: "At best, they're bloody annoying. You can't just shell them, they pop back up a week later. We end up having to burn them from up close, then dig out the entire area and uproot all the stalks so they don't regrow. Their flesh is close to unuseable, too, it makes the zombies go mad and run for the ocean.

At worst - Well, we've had a couple mud emperors show up. Each time, it took years to repair the damage."

Sally: "Imagine a mud king, except bigger and angrier and it can actually move around. Worse, they carry tons of mudking cores in their bodies, so they're bound to sprout up even after you've killed the big one. There was even one, once, that could shoot them out like cannonballs. Was not fun, findin' the ugly bastards hiding in the middle of our fields.

And - Well, it's not like it happens often. Mostly if a starvie gets too antsy, or way back when we were still trying to find a way to make their flesh useable. Simple zombies tend to mill around the beach until they find another mud king, then slowly turn into mudmen. Dolls, we just let them go and drown themselves - No sense trying to harvest infected flesh. Occasionally they get violent though, then we just kill 'em and burn up the remains."