Pathology of the Badlands

 is a shard in.

Location
In Rocky Ridge, on one of the tables on the second floor of the arcade bar. This location is visited during the Ghost Town quest.

Transcript
Have you ever dreamed of leaving the city for a life on the road? Has your child ever told you they dream of becoming a nomad adventurer?

MISTAKE!

The romanticization of these "brave highway pirates" is as common as it is harmful. These drifters are NOT as mysterious or noble as you might think. No! In fact, they are no different from any criminal organization (although even "organization" may be a stretch). These wandering bands are no more than chaotic jumbles of trigger-happy anarchists roaming just outside the margins of civilization. Descended primarily from the largely extinct agrarian society of the Californias and beyond, these outsiders have rejected the amenities of modernity and chosen instead a path of bloody revolt. They make rusted trucks and trailers their homes, denying themselves the basic necessities of running water and SCSMs! All of this squalor... by choice. Is this yet proof enough of their insanity? Of course, they do manage to scrape together just enough to survive. How, you ask? Without factories, hotels, restaurants and bars? They attack us... The transports of weapons and food destined for our businesses and dinner tables. As if not shamed enough already, they smuggle psychoactive drugs across our borders... even known murders and rapists. It's true! And even they themselves are known to whore themselves out to contract killings... the bloodiest and most brutal that no one else would dare accept. You might think these self-proclaimed rebels, these "fighters for a cause," would have some semblance of camaraderie. Nothing could be further from the truth. These scattered gangs of vagabonds and drifters are divided into dozens if not HUNDREDS of smaller subgroups who are at each other's throats more often than not. One day they unify to hijack a textile transport, the next they murder each other in cold blood as they sleep. Even their children join in on the bloodbath... While our kids receive games and toys for their birthdays, theirs are given rifles and rusty blades! But don't blame the children - blame the parents for depriving them of a happy and fulfilling future! And for what? Some illusion of freedom? Obscured by a shroud of resentment and envy? Each of them has the potential to become a future technician, NetWatch agent, or even CEO. But instead they'll die alone in the desert, buried under the sand - all for a couple ennies or pouch of drugs...

Still have romantic dreams of the Badlands? I didn't think so.

Pathologie des Badlands