Path of The Scourge
The Scourge started its infamous career in North Blythville in June 2016. We breached the barricades of the Hebditch Building, the only NecroTech facility in the suburb, allowing feral zombies inside. Afterwards, we invaded Julie General Hospital and made it the group's first ruin. Soon, we made the general vicinity of the Hebditch Building unsafe, killing several survivors and ruining most of the TRPs in the center of North Blythville.
With nearly a quarter of the suburb ruined, they moved on to greener pastures and the first Mall target in South Blythville. The destruction of Marven Mall took longer than expected, due to the agressive tactics and persistent defence of local survivors. Kudos! The fun was interupted by several suspected zerglings among the zombies there, which prompted us to leave sooner than expected. We're undead abominations out to kill every living thing in Malton, but that doesn't mean we can't be civilized about it...
Our next stop brought us to the steeples of Greentown, which we found mostly empty. Apparently a decade of zombie apocalypse has made the Maltonites renounce their faith... A pleasant visit to Dartside was up next, and we had lots of fun with the people from Tikhon Medical who truly tried their hardest to get eaten by us at least twice a day!
Tompson Mall, in Lockettside, was next on our list. The breathers here should be commended: they put up one of the most fun fights we've had so far and while we established a bridgehead several times in the SW corner of the Mall, it took us the better part of a week to really break through and ruin the Mall. Several attempts of Baraga and Rotting Rita to get combat revived at the Cheeke Building nextdoors to engage in some banter with the defenders were unsuccesful.
The next stop was Ruddlebank, where the north-east corner proved fruitful but the barricades were real tough. We then moved into Spicer Hills in hopes that the barricades would be less impenetrable, but this wasn't the case. We did our best, but chose to move on. Since we had such success in Dartside during the previous visit, we went back. The barricades started to fall again, and this time we took on buildings we hadn't touched last time. It proved to be our most successful suburb in our travels so far, giving us lots of unique ruins to add to our collection! This included our first-ever piñata at Samborne Towers, which would later inspire some further activities in that department...
In the fall, we passed through Kinch Heights for a couple weeks and then into West Grayside, where much of the suburb, including Pole Mall and Clapton Stadium, fell into our claws. The Scourge then turned southwards through Wyke Hills to settle in at Buckley Mall by Halloween. The Buckley residents proved the toughest yet, and held us off for two weeks over the Halloween season.
The 5th of November saw a hiatus for Scourge strikes, as some members traveled up to Ridleybank to participate. Two members stayed in Buttonville and got up to some hijinks, however, uncovering our first true artifact of worship: the Barhah Bambg!n. While at first installed as a decorative item by an unknown entity in what became known as Pumpkin NT, it quickly became a contested item of worship when The Randoms took it upon themselves to keep our members from licking the venerated pumpkin. Dudemeister, an ancient Malton survivor, was the first to deny the Scourge access, and saw her infamy rise to Satanesque levels within the community of Barhah. The Prophet of Pumpkin Phallacies, Krae, exposed the effects of the artifact upon direct contact in the first holy text, including hallucinations and the claims that it sometimes "whispered" to anyone close enough to hear... Scourge members Baraga and Rita engulfed the area in darkness, in an attempt to have the Barhah Bambg!n expose its enlightenment to them in a show of benign approval... so they can lick it. In the end, despite getting revived as rotters and trying their best, they were unable to lick the pumpkin as the Pumpkin NT was ruined by a zerg.
In the pumpkin's wake, the Scourge began to practice their new calling, piñataing buildings. After some practice in Buttonville, the group moved to Kinch Heights, with the goal of piñataing the entire almost-island around Milverton Place Police Department. However, they faced steep survivor resistance, and so moved a ways to try again in Miltown. Despite some more survivor zergers there, we were able to do a bunch of piñatas and quite a number of GKings, terrorizing Miltown for weeks over Christmas and New Years 2017.
After passing by (and briefly ruining) Mitchem Mall, the Scourge got our first bellow in at the heavily-populated Fort Creedy, where we hung out for most of January. February saw us move up to Rolt Heights, taking on the Burchell Arms Regulars in their home base. The BAR hopped from building to building, but we made sure to keep them on their toes! With the help of some ferals, we took down the Arms multiple times, and stuck around the Rolt/Pescodside area through early March, when our new allies from Feral Clowder showed up. With their help, we were able to ruin and occupy the whole BAR area.
We then moved back down to Pitneybank for our longest residency in one suburb yet! We moved back and forth between Giddings Mall and Fort Creedy from mid-March through June, taking down both over and over. In the process, our numbers swelled: we got onto the stats page with our tenth member in May. With all the new babahs, we dedicated ourselves to helping them level up, saving the tastiest morsels for our young. We also migrated from IRC to Discord to help better run our strikes, and move the Scourge into the 21st century. Meanwhile, our allies in Feral Clowder visited us several times, helping out with some of the tastier (and hardest-to-reach) humans.
Unfortunately, by late June the survivors had decided we were too much for them, and began to create a serious survivor-zerg problem. The Scourge opted to ditch the area, and proceeded southeastwards through the empty lands of Pegton and Dentonside, leaving a wide trail of ruins in their wake, including Tolman Power Station. They then proceeded southwards through eastern Houldenbank, into Penny Heights. Although the survivors there had kept PH safe for nearly three years, they folded like paper before the Scourge, who ruined first Lumber Mall, then crushed the TRPs in southwest Penny before taking down Joachim Mall by the middle of July. For the later part of the month, the Scourge smashed up the Joachim area, ruining the adjacent buildings and nearby TRPs again and again, culminating with another ruin of Joachim.
After departing Penny Heights, the Scourge steamrolled across largely-abandoned Pennville, quickly arriving at GBP-controlled Scarletwood. It took a mere few days for us to destroy their base area, popping into East Grayside for some snacks and, in August, re-entering Wyke Hills to approach our old haunt, Buckley Mall. After taking down nearby TRPs, including the old Pumpkin NT, Buckley itself fell into our claws by the middle of August. We spent a few days messing up Buttonville, before reaching Kinch Heights. After having failed to take it down last November, our increased numbers let us easily smash it up, and get KH a non-safe rating for the first time in nearly four years.
The next stop was Dartside, where we revisited our old friends at Tikhon Medical and took the time to ruin nearly the entire suburb. After some brief strikes in Greentown, we hit and easily took Marven Mall by the end of August.
Where will the Scourge head next? Check back soon, or join us to find out!
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