In the wake of the Sundering, when the waters abandoned the planet and we who lived upon it, few managed to remain so ‘alive’. Those who became us, in their finite luck, brought themselves together along the edges of what was once a vast inland sea. Further cataclysms swept them out to the coral sand wastes, confining them to a desolate white-washed hell of sand and dust.



“Home”, should it be called that, was found upon a relatively calm stretch of salt-desert within that hellscape. Sharp rocky outcroppings reached up from the barren white plains, providing tentative shelter. Meager clefts were eventually found in the rock, shallow and pathetic places in which to hide from the sun; But soon we found some which widened into great empty sea caverns.



For years we had subsisted on rationed food made before the Sundering, but we knew that it would not last forever. And so we delved deep into the rocky caves, cleaning out truly cavernous spaces that reached deeply enough to tap the scarce groundwater; and so wide that cool air would gather moisture on the walls like a mythical morning dew. We covered the rocky floors with our dirt and with laboriously pulverized minerals, meticulously cultivating soil for the few seeds we had saved from the world before. In the space of two generations, we were truly surviving. Our population stabilized, and then grew. Within a few short decades we began to venture out from our dim paradise.



At first it seemed that we were utterly alone. The wastes beyond our home were an ocean unto themselves, ever-shifting like great lumbering granular waves. Nothing seemed to emerge from them, and those few brave enough to journey out into them became naught but memories. Brothers Jaqen and Varran, Lone Selas, and a dozen other names were carved into the alabaster arch leading out to the wastes; remembering those who had not returned.



But, eventually, something was found. Or rather, something found us. Men wrapped in thick and ragged cloth with faces obscured by ugly, hissing respirators.



Valvers.

Pipeheads.

Nozzlebrains.



Dopesmokers.



We called them by a hundred names, each dripping with unease and timid disgust. For to us they were little more than man-shaped vultures- brutal scavengers out to satisfy their hunger for scrap and salvage.



And there was truth to that, of course. They were scavengers, and they were brutal in their pursuits; but in reality, as far as we could tell, they were just like us under their loose tattered-rag dusters and heavy rebreathers. Pale heat-strained brows. Weary, deadened eyes. Like us.



However, beyond the apparent biological similarities, they had most certainly diverged. To them we were mere tribals. They valued us for trade, as they needed water and foodstuffs like any other living creatures; but they never engaged us beyond that. Never offered advice, or shared knowledge. They gave no guidance- and most strangely- no names.



They were like macabre ghosts of the old world to us- draped in and towing with them incomprehensible mechanical gore. Wandering in from and then back out into the vast unlivable wastes.



Again decades passed. We gained much in our exchanges with those ghosts: Well-preserved and barely rusted metal of many sorts. Mostly functional electrical components. The tools to fix what did not come to us in working order. Our subterranean gardens flourished under artificial light, and we erected a veritable fortress of rock and steel around our tiny bluff-strewn valley.



Soon we grew confident. Ambitious, even. We crafted a sailship meant for the sands- only one, at first. The bravest among us climbed upon her shining metal saddle and roared out into the wastes- compelled forward by the relentless desert wind, and the shouted prayers echoing out from their home.



When they returned some months later, it was as gods. They brought news of other settlements like ours, so strewn across the furthest reaches of the wastes as to explain why we had yet to meet them. They claimed to have seen the remains of the old world, too- giant towering skeletons of steel, half-swallowed by the yellow sands at the extreme edges of our white wastes.



And they told of the Dopesmokers.



That name- the one which we so commonly use for them, now- was not borne of our own creative disparagement. We adopted it from those other “normals” spread out around us. Through decades of contact, they had come to realize that the respirators for which these people were immediately recognizable, served a dual purpose. While it was true that their primary function must have been to filter dust from the air as they trekked across the wastes on foot, something else pumped through the stiff tubes twisting around and beneath their ragged clothes.



It had a faint smell- one that grew stronger the longer they lingered- and one that few could place at first, but that all came to recognize: chem vapours. They were huffing inhalants.



Whatever strange concoction of fumes it was that swirled in their lungs, we made up our minds quickly. It probably wasn’t healthy; and it was most definitely the cause of their very apparent behavioural oddities. They were paranoid and flighty, with constantly shifting gazes and itchy hands, complete with eternally bloodshot eyes. They were careful to keep a healthy distance from us “normals” when they came for trade, raising a hand to ward us off if we strayed too close. Despite their always-present paranoia, they never once threatened us with violence.



But we saw what they carried under their robes. The glint of polished metal, slung around their shoulders. Weapons from the world before, preserved- often flawlessly- and glinting in the sun whenever the wind would blow about their clothes.



One day not long after we celebrated our first successful trade caravan, the Dopesmokers came doubled up with those frightening tools. At first we thought they had come to challenge our audacity to trade so freely as they did- but their intent was laid bare quickly.



Together with them we had established a wordless form of communication for use in trade negotiations. Metal chips painted or engraved with symbols for the basic necessities, denoting a quantity or weight to be given or taken. On any normal occasion we would offer five units of water and ten of salted greens. In turn, they would leave a pile of scrap- junk to the world of the past, but a veritable goldmine of varied utility for us.



But on that day, when we so nervously laid the chips flat?



They swept them all aside. Their eyes stayed locked with ours as they silently picked out one unit of water, a paltry token of fair trade, and nothing else. The leader of them slid the chip from the table and tilted his head- calling his companions forth. As one body they brushed aside their filthy matted robes and pulled free a weapon each, raised them forward- and dropped them on the table without a word. The leader- again, wordlessly- nodded. And then as one they turned and left, stopping only to take their unit of water from our open-air store before disappearing once more into the wastes.



It was the first and only time that they did not take more than they had given. To most it was a truly random act of benevolence; kindness, even. Protection against that which may cause harm, at no price to us.



But some knew better. Some could recognize a warning.



The Dopesmokers had been roving, scavenging, and trading since long before we first ventured from our stinking caves. They knew of material greed. Of what it did to many- and what it may eventually have done to us. And so they made us ready.



Over time, as we proved ourselves capable of restraint, they would trickle another weapon into our trades… And then another, and another, slowly providing us with ample means to protect ourselves. They never did acclimated to our settlement- never venturing below the surface level. but they seemed to gain trust in us, however faint. We were far from the largest settlement in the wastes, but thanks to them we prospered. Their trades grew even fairer with time, and soon we considered ourselves to be their equals- in spirit only.



As we stretched our legs out into the new world, we mapped it all around us.



We sat at the northern edge of the White Wastes, a great salt flat blanketed by shining white coral-sand dunes. A week-long trek further north would put you at the Edge of the World. A ring of gargantuan yellow dunes that seemed to stretch around and encase the wastes themselves, ever-shifting beneath a violent, darkened sky. Those who had witnessed it with their own eyes claimed to have seen impossible graveyards filled with titanic steel skeletons- twisted and broken within the dunes- left to reach out like giant silver fingers from the sand when the winds would rarely settle. City-husks, as they came to be known; the crushed remains of the world before.



Eleven days sailing to the south-west would have you reaching the Maullurs; a people who settled underneath the upturned corpse of a mile-long vessel left over from the world before. A massive steel umbrella with a thousand upside-down rooms, and nearly enough people to fill them. They traded in scrap steel and metalwork. Their great sunken ship, the Maullur- after which they named themselves- had capsized, trapping seafloor soil beneath its massive heft and preserving a wide stretch of arable land in the middle of the white wastes. Their source of water was ripped from the bowels of the Maullur, one of her internal systems removed and repurposed as a crude but incredibly effective condenser. Her massive fusion reactor provided all the power they could use, though it had not always done so- the Maullurs would never speak of it, but it was rumoured that the Dopesmokers were the ones who uncovered the great leviathan’s mechanical secrets and flipped the switches back over. The Maullurs merely happened upon it, years after the ghostly scavengers had moved on.



Five days to the east from the Maullurs would put you firmly in the territory of a smaller group who made their home in the half-buried remains of an undersea habitat. The Glassers got their name from the countless tinted panes composing much of their settlement, and they didn’t have much to trade- dealing mostly in the curious shrooms that flourished in the deep levels of their darkened complex. They also had electronic scrap, but that they were far more protective of. Their way of life relied on electricity; from the flickering lights that kept their nights bright to the blowers that forced cool, fresh air through their halls. They were brilliant with tech salvage, but they trusted noone- least of all the Dopesmokers, who they viewed as selfish vagrant hoarders. Not an entirely false assertion, one must admit. They drew their electricity from hardened solar panels set high above them on the top of their “keep”. Great batteries beneath the sand filled during strong daylight hours, and slowly ran down when the sun set.



The Dopesmokers themselves were living myth. Men foolish enough to try and follow them would find only sand, wandering lost amongst the trackless dunes.



Some of those who journeyed to the Edge of the World said that they saw them there, standing still among the steel skeletons in the roaring yellow sands. No one living or dead knows the truth of their origins, or of their purpose in roving out as they do.



Are they truly men like us?



Were they, once?



Perhaps they’ll tell us, someday.



When we are ready.