Angelis

The Skid extends off to the south east of Mektown, a broad valley bounded with jutting walls of melted and shattered stone. Travelling along the Skid takes many days on a buggy and is next to impossible on foot. If the heat, thirst and sandstorms don't kill you, the whip scorpions, Muties and renegades will. At a number of points fractures in the rock walls or huge sand dunes make it possible to drive up out of the Skid and into the desert surrounding it.

Forts and small settlements are dotted liberally around, all along the Skid. Many of these are old and abandoned but quite a few are occupied by mobs of Orks. The mobs hunt for useful scrap along the Skid, though all the choicest pieces near Mektown have been snatched long ago. Nonetheless the Skid is still littered with all sorts of junk. Rusting frames of ancient spacecraft jut out of the ground, huge metal plates and pipes are fused into boulders or patches of vitrified sand, cables and wiring snake amongst the rocks and detritus.

Skid Row lies at the far end of the Skid from Mektown. Here the Skid tapers to a narrow, sloping defile, choked with wreckage from where the hulk first impacted on the desert surface. Skid Row is ruled over by the Gretchin evolutionary Committee as personified by the infamous Red Gobbo. The Row itself is a fairly intact section of a stellar

The Orks don't go anywhere near the pyramids, but not because of the Diggas. There are plenty of grizzly stories which do the rounds in Mektown about how "such an' such wen' up there an' only bits of 'im came back" or "Nuzgrot's Boyz chased sum Diggas to their 'oles an' got caught out by it gettin' dark, an' they woz never seen again". The pyramids are generally shunned and believed to be haunted by the "fings wot built 'em". Once or twice in every generation some avaricious Nob will gather a mob of Boyz together and set out to plunder the pyramids and prove everybody to be spineless wimps. They are always found in little pieces scattered around in the desert, or they just vanish completely.

The ghosts seem to come by night, and wytch lights have been seen glowing coldly on the obsidian faces of the pyramids on the blackest nights of the year. Over the years it has got more and more dangerous to go out after dark. According to the stories the fings only used to get you near the pyramids after dark. Nowadays boyz disappear at night, out in open desert, miles away from the pyramids and some forts have been found empty, their mobs apparently having vanished into thin air.

Outside of the Skid, Mektown and the pyramids, the desert stretches for miles in all directions. The desert is searing hot during the day and icy cold at night. Rocks, sand, bleaching bones and rusting metal are the only features of any note, apart from the Ork forts shimmering in the heat haze and huge chunks of wreckage shed by the hulk as it carved out the Skid. Many of the wrecks lie in deadly rad zones which promise only slow death for any who go too close.

For miles around Mektown and along the Skid, the desert belongs to the Ork mobs. Their forts dominate the land and the dust plumes kicked up by their vehicles can be seen everywhere. The mobs spend most of their time mining buried debris from the hulk and battling over the choicest scrap still lying around in the sands. There are many derelict forts too, their mobs having fallen victim to the perils of the desert or abandoned their mine to seek richer pickings elsewhere. Empty forts often become temporary homes to rebel Grots, raiders and other even less savoury denizens of Gorkamorka.

In spite of the bad reputation of the pyramids, the Orks do get on with the Diggas, as long as the Diggas don't leave themselves open to being captured and enslaved. This is for one good reason, the Diggas unearth plenty of tek from the tunnels in the mesa. They come in to Mektown to trade power cells, transmitters, fuel rods, generators, oxygen tanks and lots of other things that only a Mekboy has got the faintest idea about. The Diggas themselves don't really understand the artefacts they unearth, but they know the Orks will give them plenty of guns, armour, food and even vehicles for them. Diggas can't even maintain Orky levels of technology and are awed by the lights and sounds of Mektown. If any of their Orky gear breaks down, the Diggas have to haul it back to Mektown and trade more tek to get it fixed.

The Diggas come from several tribes, each led by a Diggaboss known as Da Wrecker. The Digga warriors form innumerable little clans, lodges and warbands which are led by Digganobz. Most Diggas have come to imitate Orks in many ways, wearing tight fitting skullcaps painted green, or hair squigs, and huge jawbones around their necks or grotesque masks shaped to look like fierce Ork faces. Some wear big hide coats with raised shoulders to shade them from the sun and make them look bigger. The Orks have got used to the idea that Diggas are a bit backward and act like Gretchin in a lot of ways , Orks usually treat Diggas with indulgence and some particularly desperate Nobz have even let them join their mobs in the past

Why the Diggas can live so close to the pyramids without getting killed is the hundred teef question. The Diggas say Da Wreckers keep them safe, but won't say any more than that. The Orks know that the Diggas have shamen who can use magic to find things and hide things, because they sometimes hire them for special jobs. But the Shamen aren't Da Wreckers, so what magic do Da Wreckers have to keep the night stalkers at bay?