#boomalope

Three people stand outside their makeshift shelter. It wasn’t made very well and the beds are hard, but they’re glad to have a roof over their head. 

Everyone else that had been on their ship perished during the crash. Only these three had survived- crashlanding on the planet in pods. 

The tropical air buzzes with insects. The aliens move as one, dense cloud, lazily swatted away by a survivor. Her eyes remained on the horizon. As a distant figure moves into view, she raises her pistol. She’s never shot a gun before. Not really. She’s shot at animals, sure, to provide food for the group, but never had she shot at a person.

Fuck, the girl was only 19. She was too young for this. 

She shoots. It bounces off the ground at the invader’s foot. She curses, reloads.

The invader holds a knife. It’s dull, but dangerous nonetheless. From the look in the wild man’s eyes, he’d been born on this godforsaken planet. And of course. No person from any civilized community would so readily throw themselves at another in an act that can only be interpreted as suicide. 

He lunges for one of her friends. He is older, but he survived the crash alongside her. He is also the only one of the three survivors without a gun. He’s older with a heart problem. But he doesn’t run.

The third of their group, an elderly woman, brandishes a shotgun. She takes aim down the sights, even as the younger girl struggles to differentiate between friend and foe in the struggle, and shoots. Perfectly. The bullet enters the front of the invader’s skull and exits the back as a bloody mess.

He stumbles and falls. Even before he is down, the bugs go for his sickly sweet blood. The girl forces down vomit as she watches the aliens drink his blood, unable to look away.

Then, another siren goes off.

Shit. Again? Already? The fuck was wrong with this planet?

The male of the group is uninjured. He looks out towards the trees and clicks his tongue. In his rough voice, he says, “Twenty goddamn rabid tortoises headed this way.”

My colonists did not survive the tortoises. I mean, come on, there were twenty of them. No matter how slow-moving they were, those little fuckers were tough.

That’s the beauty of Rimworld, though. The most random stuff will kill you whenever it pleases. 

Rimworld is a game lovingly nicknamed “Warcrime Simulator” by its fanbase. Whatever horrible acts against humanity you can think of, it's probably possible in Rimworld. Personally, I like taking alcoholics and banning them from drinking alcohol, so they have to go through a painful withdrawal.

Others (Not me! I have not done this! I am not this mean!) employ child soldiers to fight on the front lines. They purposefully explode boomalope (prompted by death, of course, these gasoline-filled cattle explode with the force of several sticks of dynamite). They summon robotic threats knowing full well that their tribe equipped with some javelins won’t stand a chance. They, more morbidly, (as if child soldiers weren’t morbid, but Rimworld has numbed me to the more tame crimes against humanity) harvest the organs of enemies to either sell, eat, play with, or give to one of their friends.

There are plenty of ways to die (or kill) in Rimworld. Disease. Starvation. Cold. Hot. Any kind of animal. Other people. Old age. Dementia. A friend might kill you. One of your traps might accidentally spring. Giant bugs. Fire. A coma. Boomalope bombing. Cave collapse. Wild goose. Eldrich deities. Giant robots. Small robots. Maybe a medium robot will kill you.

No matter what, you will die. Just like real life. And who knows how horrific and morbid your death will be. Just like real life.

Is the talk of death making you anxious?

Well, you and Rimworld NPCs alike. 

Rimworld NPCs have traits- even animals, who can be stuck with life-long diseases. They typically have three traits, ranging from ‘kind’ to ‘pyromaniac’. Colonists can be ‘bisexual’, ‘misandrist’, and ‘insomniac’. Perhaps someone in your group is ‘trigger-happy’, ‘agoraphobic’, and ‘sanguine’.

You’re stuck with whoever comes into your group. Sure, you can ‘get rid of them’ later on, but, especially early on, you’ll need as much manpower as you can get. So you’re stuck with the wonderful person who manages to be ‘pyromaniac’, ‘sociopath’, and ‘sickly’ all at the same time. Pretty much anything a real person can be translated to Rimworld NPCs. If I were a Rimworld colonist, for example, I believe I would be ‘animal lover’, ‘asexual’, and ‘anxious’.