Welcome to Lubech

My journal through Stalker Online! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Eventually the train pulled to a stop at an old looking station surrounded by heavy mist. There were a number of homeless people outside, as well as some well armed security personel. I instinctively checked for my pack but remembered that I had lost pretty much all my gear (and money) catching the damn train in the first place. A man called "Blacksmith" told me where I was, at the city of Lubech - which I've never heard of before... maybe the zone was expanding? He also handed me a map and gave me directions to another guy inside the station proper who was equiping "newbies" with a small medkit and a small pistol with 100 rounds. The interior was pretty well setup, they had electricity, a bar, an apothecary, a number of shops and a courier bank system in place - anything you stored in one bank could be delivered to another as long as your standing at the other end was high enough. Still, this place was quite deserted. Maybe the other guys who came on the train had already moved out?

Having received my "care package" I took a walk out into the streets of perpetual dusk. It reminded me of Silent Hill. Little mutated rats scurried around in the tall grass that was overgrowing the place, and the small delapidated wooden homes nearby were now occupied by little malevolent imps called Brownies. Two bullets were enough to take those fast moving freaks down though, and some houses had random spare parts I could collect for later crafting. Behind the houses I found large packs of mutant puppies - zombie dogs who I used as target practice, and took their heads back to a homeless guy collecting them. The rubles I earned were barely enough to buy back the ammo I had used though so I took a job to deliver a message to a nearby police station in hopes it would pay better. The streets were mostly inhabited by the mutant dogs, but the cop shop wasn't that far away. The building was also guarded by security but had less facilities within, though I did find the clan registar upstairs. There was little money in the task I did though, and with no ammo vendor here I decided to head back to the station before I ran too low.

If pyramid head shows up, I'm outta here.

After restocking I decided to try explore the streets to the south while looking for spare TV parts for another homeless dude. Threw rocks (out of bolts) to make sure no anomalies were ahead of me and carefully avoided a cluster or rats beside a burned out car. I hadn't gotten very far when suddenly I was being shot at! I turned around to see another stalker/bandit named Null25 shooting at me from near point blank! Fortunately these pistols are crap, so I managed to survive and empty a clip in his direction. Decided to make a run for it while he took cover, but it wasn't long before he and his bullets were after me again though (at least it looked like it) so I carefully positioned myself on the street to bait him to take cover behind the burned out car and soon enough he did. Not sure if my plan worked, but between me shooting him and the rat pack that should have been nibling his feet he retreated back into the station. I used the opportunity to do the same. Once inside the guards deterred any futher shooting and he apologized for shooting at me, thinking I was a bandit. Told him not to worry about it and decided to spend the rest of the day resting up indoors, under the watchful eye of the guards.