There is no mercy where they are.
There is no grace, no beauty, no laughter save that which is cruel. There is no light save what is reflected from the silvery metal barrels of their ever-present flamethrowers onto the faces of tormentors and victims alike and the unseeing, uncaring rock walls of their subterranean hideaway that so effectively swallow up the screams.
There is no warmth save that of the fires they worship, every licking tongue of flame a sacred thing; whenever they go raiding, at least three of their number are left behind to guard the bonfire that they all vow never to allow to be extinguished. They believe that fire long ago scourged the land to make it clean and so they attempt, in their small yet substantially horrible way, to do the same: to the land, its inhabitants, and each other. There is not one of them unmarred in many places by the lumpy shininess of old burn scars, the lumpy pustulence of new burns, or both. They, more than any other inhabitant of the Wastes, are purely a product of their environment, and they rejoice in their resemblance to it as well.
There is no love where they are; no joy save that of the quick release as they bugger each other in quick, quiet couplings, or ravage one of their prisoners.
There are no manners here, no sharing, no gentility, no empathy. There is most assuredly no compassion. They are all men, all lean, strong, hard men, made so by the desperate deprivations of their environment and the disgusting depredations of their fellows. In a land this inimicable to life, this adverse to survival, simply being strong is no longer enough to survive. Their lives have taught them that being selfish, vicious, and pitiless are also necessary.
Of their victims, women are arguably the lucky ones. This Raider gang is known as the Flamers for two reasons - their predilections and their weapon of choice – and they are the ultimate misogynists, usually killing females out of hand without even bothering to torture them. Of course, being burned alive has rarely been considered a merciful death, so some girls may have briefly rejoiced in their brief captivity, especially considering how indifferently the Flamers treat them; until being sold into slavery, to vanish behind the rusty walls of Paradise Falls to whatever fate awaits them there, where they may compare the various merits of each potential end.
One such woman is approaching their hideout even now, slowly edging her way down the defile towards the cave mouth in the cliff face she vaguely remembers living in for a month when she was perhaps ten years old. She moves slowly not out of a desire for self-preservation, for she cannot imagine her next life being any worse than this one, and she fully believes she will be reborn into this Wasteland. She moves slowly not out of reluctance to confront the Flamers again, for she fears nothing more than her current master. She moves with care only so that she can live to complete her mission; if the Flamers receive her message and decide to kill her anyway, she will not have displeased him.
But she thinks they will not kill her. She knows they will not remember her, for she remembers them; remembers who they are, and what they like, and what they did to her brother. He was only two years older than her when they were taken, though he aged a year for every day thereafter.
But that was ten years ago now, so she reckons, ten years of her life spent fighting to stay alive, and sometimes, if she tries very hard, she can just barely remember his face. She knows he was still alive when they sold her, but by that time she was dead to him.
The wan moonlight illuminates the narrow path across the side of the cliff that an observer from below would swear wasn't there. It picks out the sad figure of a girl once named Sonia from a settlement once named Summervale, and occasionally gleams dully off her black armour, highlighting the contrast between that and the stylized white talon painted on the breastplate. It does not, however, enter the cave wherein the fires flicker. There is no illumination where they are.