[Lore] The Wrath of Narko, Pt I: Out On A Limb.
Creating some of my own stories and content is something I’ve long been meaning to do both as a writer and ISC contributor, but in my perpetual admin-heavy operation of the site/blog/podcast, life stuff, etc, it’s constantly been on the backburner.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love creating all of the content I personally put out here. Heavy News, Gig Reviews, Dicey News, Interviews, et cetera. It scratches a lot of soul-satisfying itches and is a great part of my daily life - it’d want to be anyway, consider we’re not
Likewise, a full review of Kenshi as a video-game title alone is something I did a good few months of background writing and research for. Thing is, guys - that draft stopped at eight thousand words, and I was nowhere near finished.
Straight out of the box, Kenshi is a title that is pretty hard to get across conceptually. Equal parts a self-contained cRPG for each individual character, you can expand to have literal legions across various squads, then turning the game into a malleable mash of RPG/squad-based tactical/RTS and more. Plus not to mention technology, base-building, automation, etc.
That’s all pretty doable, though, in comparison to getting across just how uniquely this game speaks to me in terms of emergent/sandbox story generation. You’ll often see and hear Kenshi be compared to titles such as Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included, Dwarf Fortress et al - games with open-ended and at times complicated mechanics, but an insane richness and depth that lends each playthrough to its’ own narrative.
And then you’ve got the lore itself. Nope, not even going into that today. There’s a reason those prior notes are so comprehensive, and lore/setting forms the bulk of it. I’ll redirect you instead to a couple of links below from content-creators who’ve packaged it much more nicely’n’concisely than I could hope to achieve. Go check ‘em out - worth a look even if you’re an ardent fan of the game.
‘Narko’ refers to a demonness figure in Holy Nation scripture. She is used pretty brazenly as a tool for justifying both control and subjugation of women (both in-home and through imprisonment, enslavement, execution and the like - yeah, The Holy Nation are kind of theocratic dick-bags), and free licence to openly slaughter non-human sentient races in the world
In-game and lore-wise, in battle, screeches of ‘Agent of Narko!’, ‘Damn Narko heretic!’ and the like often come from bloodthirsty Paladins, Holy Chosen and the like, right as they cleave, dismember, shackle and kill with wonton abandon.
Sam (Samantha), our protagonist in today’s tale, finds herself in a Hive in Vain, a swampy, jungle-like wildland filled with murderously-dangerous animals, and a eusocial insectoid sentient race known as Hivers, who are often wary of outsiders due to the ongoing oppression they often receive at the hands of The Holy Nation, slavers, and the like.
What started as a mild domestic dispute with her drunken husband, culminated in being clubbed, knocked unconscious, publicly paraded as ‘an Agent of Narko’, ‘a devil-woman succubus’ and the like, on completely unfounded grounds of adultery, heresy and sabotage.
Carted off in heavy shackles under the burning sun on the continent of this small, faraway moon, Sam had effectively received her death-sentence: Rebirth. A prison/labour camp where the intention, theologically speaking, is to reincarnate those made in Narko’s image (Hivers, Shek, Skeletons, etc) or those supposedly under her spell (i.e. many oppressed females such as Sam) to death, with their reincarnation being where they will receive absolution.
With the help of Flotsam Ninjas, being in the right place amongst a stampede of desperate prisoners, Sam was able to make it out alive - barely. A crossbow bolt piercing through her shoulder, sword-gashes across her torn orange fabric, she nevertheless was able to crawl, limp and hide as a wanted fugitive through Okran’s Pride, south to the more neutral climes of The Border Zone.
For this prelude, I’m taking a bit more creative/narrative licence as a free-form how-Sam-got-here primer. From here, I’ll be constructing the narrative alongside my real-time playthrough of my current Kenshi campaign, utilising in-game events and developments to inform the fiction. It’s my hope you enjoy it, and do let me know if you’d like to see other game settings explored!
This, my friends, is where Sam’s story and indeed the tale of ‘The Wrath of Narko’, begins.
(CONTENT WARNING: Gore/graphic descriptions of violence)
Day 0: The Day I Lost My Limbs.
(Border Zone, Neutral Territory)
‘Man was created in the image of Okran, Lord of Light.’
Credit: Mark Makovey, via ArtStation (see for portfolio/additional artwork)
The dunes had a way of swallowing sound until the killing was done. To trust the silent whisper of wind in a land where each footfall could mean ambush and the serrated blade of a Black Dragon Genin, was folly of the highest order. To tread far, here, one must tread lightly.
Sam picked her way along an ochre ridgeline in the Border Zone, bare blistered feet wrapped in worn sandals, muscles aching from too many days on the move. All four of her limbs were still flesh and bone, but hardly: scarred hands calloused around the grip of her scavenged club, legs corded by lean strength beneath tattered, bloody Holy Nation rags. The wind tugged at her dark hair, whipping it into her face, and carried with it the metallic tang of old blood and the sour reek of smoke where someone’s camp had burned out hours ago. A camp who’s occupants were most assuredly either dead, dying, or busy being carted off to the religious hell-pit she’d just slaved away in for months, barely escaping with her life. Whilst the circular puncture of the crossbow bolts’ exit-wound below her left shoulder might’ve healed, she swears there’s nights where the trickle of blood and pus can still be felt.
Below, the desert was a patchwork of aftermaths, a tapestry of bloody carnage.
A Dust Bandit camp reduced to scattered tents and splintered stakes, corpses picked clean and severed limbs chewed upon. A Holy Nation patrol strewn across the sand like bucket-hatted dolls, white tabards stained brown‑red. A lone Shek warrior fallen on one knee, horn cracked, blade still buried in a dead paladin’s chest, scanning his surrounds and certainly not approachable. Closer to the horizon, she could just make out the slight dark crescents of Black Dragon Genin lying where they had finally stopped moving.
Let them kill each other, Sam thought, scanning the valley with tired, calculating eyes. Let them tear their own throats out for pride and gods. I’ll take what’s left. Better a scavenger than a slave, she grinned to herself. The sun’s rays beat relentlessly upon her, but the fact Sam could wear a path in the sands of her choosing, and not just the cart-like rut of so many feet shuffling to the quarry’s boulders, was penance enough for now. As was being alive. Plenty weren’t. Plenty won’t be.
She slid down the slope, sand hissing around her ankles like the stinging rasps of a Skimmer protecting her Great Desert brood. The sun bore down like a punishment. Every breath tasted like dust and rust, a metallic tang blending Second Empire ruins, weather-beaten machinery, ramshackle-structures, and the coppery scent of so much blood. Her shirt clung to her, sweat and Border Zone grime forming a second, itchy skin.
Bodies meant loot. Cats. Food. A chance to buy something that wasn’t rags, maybe even a halfway decent weapon. Steps toward a future that didn’t involve chains, priests, ex-husbands condemning her to the clergy for feigned adultery due to a bad night on the cactus rum.
She crouched by a dead Paladin first, fingers moving practiced and quick: check belt, check pouches, check boots. A few loose cats, a cracked medkit, half‑used bolts. She stripped the better dagger and slid it into her own sash.
Behind her, a small gaggle of Hivers picked their way down the dune with hesitant steps. They’d fallen in with her that morning, skittish but hopeful — two workers and a guard, baskets rattling with scrap. Antennae quivered, the idiosyncratic chirp of their speech equally cutesy and alien, but certainly not of a Greenlander dialect like hers.
“Many fights,” one chirped, antennae twitching.
“Human‑Sam brings us to good fields.”
“Good fields full of bad corpses,” the other replied. “Bad corpses mean bad things nearby. This one is nervous.”
Sam smirked without looking back. “You’re always nervous.”
“Nervous ones live longer,” the Hiver said simply.
Hiver fan-art by Reddit user /u/goldenboifishsauce, via the Kenshi subreddit.
He/(it? she couldn’t tell some days) was right. Trade was expensive on this isolated continent; paying for constant mercenary protection amounts to fairly tight profit-margins. It also amounts, however, to survival. Most of the time.
A pair of wandering traders had chosen to shadow them from the safer side of the ridge, close enough for mutual protection, far enough not to be committed. Their caravan guard kept scanning the horizon, hand resting on his blade.
“Border Zone’s gone mad,” he muttered solemnly to his companion. “Feels like every faction’s decided this is the place to die.”
Sam nodded thoughtfully, scanning across the horizon to take in various dried pools of blood and debris. It’s almost as though some unseen force had propelled attackers and ambushers en-masse from their hiding places, bringing long-brewing resentment into daylight clashes of sword and steel.
Sam moved from corpse to corpse: a bandit here, a Shek there, a Black Dragon scout face‑down in the sand. It became rhythm — kneel, search, strip, move. She tried not to dwell on the faces; the dead were easier to stomach as sources of gear than as people. People whose last thoughts had probably been as frightened and furious as hers had once been in Rebirth.
You’re doing this so you never need to go back, she reminded herself. So no priest ever says your name with that little curl of contempt again. So no man ever gets to lie about you and have the world believe him.
By the time she reached the shallow basin at the bottom of the valley, she had a small pile of loot started behind a rock: a serviceable sword, some bolts, a decent leather scrap that might be reworked into armor. The Hivers began timidly collecting broken weapons and bits of metal she deemed not worth her time.
“Holy ones bleed like everyone,” one of them observed quietly, looking at the dark pool seeping from a paladin’s side.
“Holy ones scream louder,” the other added. “Think someone hears them.”
Sam snorted. “No one’s listening,” she said. “Not to them. Not to us. Not out here.”
For a time, the only sounds were the dry sigh of sand shifting, the clink of metal on metal and the low murmur of the traders on the ridge. The sky overhead was a flat, glaring blue, the sun a white hammer on the back of her neck. Heat-shimmer made distant rocks waver like so many forlorn ghosts.
Then the ground shivered. Grains of sand filtered from their resting places like disturbed snow-grit.
It was subtle at first — a faint vibration through the soles of her feet, like a giant heartbeat buried deep under the desert. Loose sand danced in shallow ripples around boot heels and bare toes. A dropped bolt rolled a few centimeters on its own.
One of the Hivers froze, antennae rigid. “You feel that?” he whispered. “Earth is angry.”
The caravan guard on the ridge straightened, squinting toward the hills. “You hear that?” he asked. His voice had gone tight.
Sam stood slowly, knuckles whitening around her club. She listened. “Shit,” she mouthed, face contorted into a stern wreath of consternation and hypervigilance. Vibrating anything was never a good thing on this damned landmass. Ever.
The wind carried a distant thunder — a heavy, rolling drumming that didn’t match wagons or pack animals. It grew steadily, turning from suggestion to certainty.
Shit, shit, SHIT.
Her stomach clenched.
They crested the far hills in a ragged line: impossibly tall, bony‑limbed creatures with oversized, hook‑beaked heads and tattered feather crests flapping in the hot wind. Their eyes were too small and too focused, sweeping the valley with predatory intent. Each step dug deep furrows into the sand, the packed muscles of their legs bunching and releasing with terrifying power.
Image: ‘Kenshi -Beak Thing-’, via Dadoknez on Imgur
A stampede of them, kicking up a boiling cloud of dust as they thundered down.
“Up!” Sam shouted, every nerve lighting up at once. “Drop everything. Get to the ridge!”
The Hivers jolted, scrap clattering from their hands. One shrieked, a high, panicked sound. “Big birds! Big teeth! This one does not want to be stew!”
“Move!” Sam grabbed the nearest worker by the arm, hauling him into motion. Her own legs burned as she sprinted for higher ground, breath tearing at her throat.
The traders didn’t wait to be told. “Beaks!” one yelled. “Run!”
But the stampede wasn’t heading for the ridge. Not yet.
The Beak Things had found something closer.
A Hive Village lay in the shallow dip east of the basin, just over a rise Sam hadn’t bothered to crest earlier — a cluster of chitin huts and spidery towers, smoke from cookfires curling lazily into the sky. She’d marked it mentally as a potential trade stop on the way back.
Now she watched, helpless, as the creatures slammed into it like a living avalanche.
Hiver workers scattered, their thin limbs a blur as they tried to form ranks. Hive guards raised crude weapons and crossbows, mandibles clacking frantic orders. A few bolts flew, a brave but pathetic volley that stuck in leathery Beak Thing hide like toothpicks.
Then the monsters were among them.
Talons the size of machetes scythed through chitin and cloth. One Beak Thing lunged, its beak clamping down around a Hive guard’s torso; with a jerk of its neck, the guard tore in half, green ichor spraying across the sand and splattering the nearest hut. Another stomped, its weight turning a pair of workers into a smear underfoot, legs bending at wrong angles before vanishing into the mess of mud and blood.
Screams filled the air — shrill Hiver voices layered over the guttural roars of the Beak Things. The huts that had looked so fragile from a distance now shattered like eggshells as the creatures ploughed through them, roofs collapsing in slow, graceful arcs of dust.
The sound hit Sam like a hammer. Vain, her mind supplied, unhelpfully. Just like Vain. Different village, same slaughter.
She should have run. Every rational instinct screamed at her to take her hard‑won scraps and flee, to use the chaos as cover and vanish into the dunes.
Instead she stood there, heart pounding, nails biting into her palms, watching Hivers die.
You didn’t save anyone in Rebirth, a bitter internal voice said. You couldn’t in Vain, either. Are you really going to just stand here again?
The Beak Things tore through the village with obscene efficiency and then, as if some hidden flock sense had reached a conclusion, several peeled away. Their eyes locked onto new movement: the Hivers scrambling up the ridge behind Sam, the traders, the lone human figure standing too far from safety.
Of course, she thought, throat suddenly dry. Why gorge on small prey when there’s something my size right here?
“Keep going!” she yelled over her shoulder, forcing her legs to move, shoving a Hiver toward the ridge. “Don’t stop! Don’t look back!”
“Sam‑friend!” one cried. “Come with!”
She wanted to. Gods, she wanted to.
Instead, she turned to face the oncoming monsters, club in one hand, borrowed dagger in the other. Her chest felt too tight. Her skin prickled as adrenaline slammed through her veins.
“Come on then,” she muttered, more to herself than to them. “You took one life from me in Vain. You’re not taking this one quietly.”
The closest Beak Thing shrieked, lowering its head. The sound scraped inside her skull, but she held her ground until the last possible second, then dove sideways as its beak slammed into the sand where she’d been, hurling grit and bits of old bone into the air.
She swung her club with both hands, smashing it into the creature’s knee joint. There was a sickening crunch and a wet crack; it stumbled, leg buckling. Greenish‑black blood spurted out, spattering her face and shirt.
It reared back, furious, talons raking blindly. One claw caught her across the ribs, ripping fabric and skin alike. Fire lanced through her side; she staggered, breath erupting in a hoarse scream.
Too slow, she thought wildly. Too small. Too fragile.
The second Beak Thing came in from the other side. She saw its shadow first — long, spidery, blotting out the sun — then felt the impact as its talons caught her right arm.
There was no gentle lead‑in to the pain.
One moment she had an arm, fingers white‑knuckled around the hilt of her dagger; the next, something hit with impossible force and everything from shoulder down exploded in a white, screaming absence. She saw the limb, absurdly distant, spinning through the air trailing arcs of blood before it hit the sand with a soft, wet thud.
She heard herself scream and didn’t recognize the sound.
The world narrowed to a tunnel. Hot, wet warmth poured down her side, soaking her shirt, pattering onto the sand. Her legs buckled. She clung to consciousness with sheer stubbornness and the animal instinct to not die here, not like this.
Another strike. This time from behind. Talons scooped her off the ground, something sharp punching through her thigh, her calf. For a moment she was dangling, weightless, the desert wheeling crazily beneath her.
Then she was falling.
She hit the ground hard. Something in her hip gave way with a crunch. Her left leg didn’t feel like a leg anymore; it felt like a distant, burning object she was attached to by mistake. Her vision flickered as her body dumped everything it had into useless attempts to keep blood on the inside.
Through the blur, she saw flashes: the Hive Village still being shredded, huts flattened, Hivers torn and thrown aside like scraps. One small Hiver she vaguely recognized from earlier in the week, the one who’d traded her stale rations with shy pride, ran for her life, only to vanish under a descending beak.
Can’t… Sam’s thoughts came in ragged fragments. Can’t do anything. Again.
The first Beak Thing limped closer, blood pouring from its damaged leg, one eye half‑closed. Its beak dripped a mixture of its own fluids and those of everything it had eaten on the way down the hill. It studied her with a horrible, clinical curiosity — as if gauging whether she was worth more effort.
She tried to move, to roll, to crawl. Her remaining arm scrabbled weakly at the sand. Her good leg kicked once and then spasmed uselessly. Every heartbeat was a hammer blow driving her deeper into the dark.
One of the Hivers screamed her name from very far away.
“Sam‑queen! Sam‑friend! Get up! Please get up!”
I can’t, she thought, and the admission tasted worse than blood. Not this time.
The Beak Thing’s shadow engulfed her. Its beak opened, lined with broken, serrated edges. Up close it stank—rotting meat and old feathers and the faint, sour tang of stomach acid that had never seen proper digestion.
If I live… she told herself, clinging to the thought like a lifeline. If I wake up from this… I swear to Narko, or whatever cruel god actually listens, I will come back. With steel. With fire. With enough wrath to wipe your kind from every Hive you’ve ever hunted.
The beak descended.
Pain tore everything apart — bright, shattering, total. Then sound fled, colour drained, and the hot weight of her own body fell away. Somewhere, in the collapsing distance of her awareness, she thought she felt hands on her — small, chitinous ones tugging, dragging, frantically trying to haul what was left of her toward safety.
She couldn’t help them. Couldn’t help herself.
The desert dimmed to grey. Then to black.
When she eventually woke, naked and limb‑less in The Hub with cold metal where flesh had been, the last thing she remembered clearly was that Beak Thing’s shadow and the Hive’s screams. Everything between was a smear of blood and dream.
And the promise, still echoing in her skull:
I will come back - with an army.
For those subscribed to our Patreon community, you’ll be given access to a bunch of behind-the-scenes content related both to the ongoing Wrath of Narko series, as well as some Members-only content further exploring the background lore of this uniquely Wakizashi-wielding retro-tech wasteland.
I’ve got some intentions (time, energy and the like allowing) to also produce a narrated audio-version for the Inner-Strength Check Podcast. Let us know via our socials/contact details if this is something you’d like to see in future! This would also be available as public/free-access episodes ongoing.
Thanks for joining me on this little creative experiment - back soon with Part II and much more.
As Always,
Peace, Love and Beak Thing Filet Grindcore - Brady.
inner-strength check - links:
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Peace, Love and Grindcore - Brady & The ISC Team.