Deadlaws - Conrad Yoder

Player: Illusory Wall 

"The frontier is no place for a learned man" Conrad's colleagues warned him before his survey team set out westward. They held such small-minded ideals for big-city academics. They viewed the people out here as lawless lowlifes, hootin' and hollerin' and carrying on in ways most unbecoming. They saw the necessity in teams like his to document the landscape so Uncle Sam could carve it up and transform these untamed wilds into proper civilization. They just couldn't stand the thought of soft little Conrad coming to harm out there.

"No better than the godless natives they rub elbows with." Those words ruffled his feathers like no others. He'd met the people that settled out here, as well as the so-called savages that were steadily being displaced by the very government he served.

They were people, damnit. And as time went on, he began to resent the part he played in despoiling this beautiful land they called home.  They deserved better. The land deserved better.

Instead it all went to Hell. Literally, as far as he could tell. The team at the communications station awoke one day to find that morning never came. The landscape around them twisted and buckled, corrupted into some dark reflection of nature's beauty. All attempts to contact the outside world failed. The rest of the team set off east to try and get help. Conrad was left to man the fort, to protect all that expensive government equipment from the locals. 

They never came back. 

With each day that passes, the engulfing darkness encroaches further and the strange, twisted creatures that stalk these sunless lands grow bolder. But a few lights still flicker dimly in the nearby town he'd been frequenting for supplies. His only hope for salvation might just lie in Southpaw.