[HOE] The Librarian's Almanac for August 3rd

[Michael Cone <Michael.Cone@apollogrp.edu>]

Traders from Hobbs, New Mexico arrive with stories of three-foot cockroaches
and grasshoppers the size of horses flocking around the ruins of Carlsbad.
What happened to the thirty-odd townsfolk in the area as well as the
struggling farms?  More than a few nearby settlements are depending on food
from Carlsbad to survive.

Scouts in the Valley of the Sun report in Apache Junction that there have
been numerous reports of blasting in the superstition Mountains north and
west of the ruins of Phoenix. Piper is also a might curious as the last
party of Black Hats was wiped out to the last man with no chance to report
back. Or so he thinks. Some of the other local Junkers are looking up guides
to begin searching the mountains for the source of the enigmatic blasts. Or
course, they will need guards ever since that eight legged, purple bobcat
turned Stew's skin radioactive last month.



The mayor of the raft-town in the ruins of St. Louis, one Andrew Cunningham,
has a problem that needs solving. Several townies and a few Law Dogs have
vanished from the floating homes of the town only to turn up a few days
later in the ruins on shore, stripped of their major organs. People are
beginning to panic and the mayor needs things solved quick. There is already
a Templar named Jude the Penitent out in the ruins near the remains of the
arch but she has not reported back in a few days.


Scouts from the Treetown of Lafayette report sightings of a force of raiders
slogging through the swamps on some of the biggest Clydesdale horses that
anyone has ever seen. They made no move towards the tree-born encampment but
all reports state that they were searching the grounds for something or
somebody. Things get creepy when one of the scouts later reports that with
all two score heavily armed men on the backs of seven-foot horses; there
were no tracks in the muddy ground.

Seven days until the Great Pilgrimage!