Necrosonic engineers (necros) are one of my favorite Badlands subcultures Equal parts engineer, shaman, and musician, the necro provides a bridge between the living and the walking dead and keep the lights on at night. They’re necessary but only barely tolerated, working in close contact with the deaders like they do and reminders of the Badland’s dark days that people would rather forget about and move past. The necros, for their part, lean into their untouchable but indispensable status and carve out their own islands of independence. They dress in dark leathers, regardless of desert heat or military uniform codes, train at their own university where they study music and electrical theory, and their workplaces are little enclaves onto themselves.
I came up with the idea while reading an article on the Death Metal Cowboys of Botswana, and after I got over the shock of people wearing motorcycle leathers in the Kalahari Desert, it got me thinking about subcultures and subverting expectations. At the same time, I was still a working engineer and mused about discovering a problem in a motor because it sounded off-key. The two ideas merged and came out in that day’s drafting: a heavy-metal musician-engineer who sang to the walking dead and turned them into undead electrical generators.
I’m not certain what the future holds for necros. They’re a necessary part of keeping civilization running after the exodus from the Badlands and the founding of Paradise City but if you’ve read the books, there’s some question about whether using deaders as a power source is sustainable (Badlands Cursed), not to mention ethical (Black Betty). Beaumont’s Gambit hints at a mass migration of deaders from the Badlands to somewhere outside Paradise City’s influence. If society decides (or forced) to stop using deaders to power their infrastructure, what need is there for a necro? Do you think they adapt or die out? Leave a message in the comments!
