Rolfball

Rolfball

Rolfball is the Hardholder of South Bend, and benefits from its´ bullet farms as well as - lately - a drug business.

Mr. Static has less than fond memories of the man:

He'd been young then. So full of violence. Honestly, the Wizard was half responsible for keeping him from erupting at all hours, against friends and enemies alike. Every noise was the promise of a new attacker, every breeze carried the scent and promise of blood. He had been so afraid, and so enraged at that fear. Everything in the hot, bright world burned--only in the cool blues and placid grey hiss of snowfall was peace. He had thought himself inured to horrors.

Rolfball had changed his mind. Bullet farming, they called it, but Rolfball and his clan held ammunition in more than regard. Just as farming communities had their corn maidens, and hunters made shrines in the deep woods to spirits of the rustling leaves, bullet farmers had their rituals too. They would not call themselves a cult, just 'respecting local traditions'.

The Bullet Babies, they called them. Men and women alike would fossick amongst the ruins of the world that was hoping for unspent bullets, their million deep scattering pointing at a world before the Fall that bore iron to the multitudes, the crack of bullets unending like applause in a crowded theatre, that their offcasts might be this world's greatest currency.

Any wonder then that some pocketed a bullet or two from the common store, hoping to feather their own nest. A defence? An artisanal business? Some of both.

There was one punishment for this. Thankfully there were so many spent shell casings.

The bodies hung by the roadside, chained by their arms and left to dangle. Stripped to the waist, they were unmarked by wounds, noted only as odd by the gravid bellies, swollen with steel. One by one they had been force-fed the old casings, teeth broken out and jaws held fast by strong hands, until they swelled and stretched with the weight of metal in them. When the storm grew strong and the days grew hot, the older ones would burst in putrefaction, showing the dirt with gore-spattered metal, falling like showers of old coins.