So I had a dream last night...

[Rusty_Old_F250]

And it was clearly inspired by the long dark, hah!

Anyways, I am wandering  along the coast hunting for supplies when I come across a small ship run aground in shallow water, next to the remains of a pier. The vessel looks like a small passenger ferry, or maybe a tour boat. It sits low in the water, heeled over and the the bow sits much higher than the stern. As I explore it I come across a person. He's haggard and tired looking, sitting on the floor surrounded by odds and ends he's collected. Clearly he has been living here for a long time. He asks me if I have anything to trade and we barter over a knife I had. But the more I talk to him the more I realize he's been here so long he's gone completely nuts, he just keeps babbling on about how his boat's engines run so nice and he's going to start them up and sail away one of these days. (Keep in mind the engine room is completely flooded with salt water, those engines will never run again) So we talk about the engines for a while, he says their CAT 3208's (I'm a car/truck guy, so of course the engine models come up in my dream, hah!) I tell him I worked on 3406 CAT's in a boat once. We talk some more and then he just drifts off into a blank stare. Then he asks me to find him more thing to barter for and turns away.

I leave him alone and head back to the mainland. The dream ends there, but it got me thinking, What if we have an NPC who is completely whacked, off their rocker, gone mad? That would make for some interesting encounters... Losing your sanity is a very real threat in a situation like this, and the isolation would affect some people a lot worse than others.

And what do you do with a person who is crazy like this? Clearly he isn't stupid if he's survived here so long, but if he offers you some advice or tells you how to get somewhere, do you believe him? If he tells you he's dying of some horrible disease and needs medicine, do you help him? What if he is actually fine and imagined his illness? If he tells you his family was killed by a band of rogue survivors in the next town, will you heed his warning?

I feel like these kinds of moral quandaries fit the world of the long dark perfectly, and besides, writing and voice acting for a character who's completely nuts is just plain fun!

Sam