Head Rush Raiders
The Head Rush Raiders are a bizarre and violent raider clan identified by their "gridded iron" helmets and the bloodstains running permanently from their eyes. They fight as berserkers, laughing when struck and laughing while striking, displaying a jovial disregard for pain that unnerves even hardened wasteland fighters. They favor seizing incapacitated victims and dragging them away to an unknown location for purposes no survivor has been able to confirm.
Their enigmatic leader is known only as "the Cheez," seen on rare occasions wearing a misshapen yellow foam cheese-wheel headpiece that would be absurd if the person wearing it were not surrounded by blood-eyed killers. Speculation holds that the Cheez discovered something in a toxic place that twisted the minds of the entire clan, turning them savage and causing the perpetual bleeding from their eyes. Whether the discovery was a chemical exposure, a pre-Fall artifact, or something worse, the result is a raider band that fights without fear, feels no pain, and treats violence as celebration.
Some who have encountered the Head Rush Raiders and escaped claim the victims dragged away are eaten. Others say they are converted, forced to see whatever the Cheez saw, emerging with bleeding eyes and the same terrible laughter. Neither explanation is comforting, and both may be true.
Their enigmatic leader is known only as "the Cheez," seen on rare occasions wearing a misshapen yellow foam cheese-wheel headpiece that would be absurd if the person wearing it were not surrounded by blood-eyed killers. Speculation holds that the Cheez discovered something in a toxic place that twisted the minds of the entire clan, turning them savage and causing the perpetual bleeding from their eyes. Whether the discovery was a chemical exposure, a pre-Fall artifact, or something worse, the result is a raider band that fights without fear, feels no pain, and treats violence as celebration.
Some who have encountered the Head Rush Raiders and escaped claim the victims dragged away are eaten. Others say they are converted, forced to see whatever the Cheez saw, emerging with bleeding eyes and the same terrible laughter. Neither explanation is comforting, and both may be true.
History
The origin of the Head Rush Raiders is tangled in rumor and the unreliability of traumatized witnesses. What is known is that the clan appeared on the northern Ironworks frontier wearing gridded iron helmets and bleeding from the eyes. Their leader, the Cheez, is believed to have led a group into a toxic area where they encountered something that broke their minds and reshaped them into what they are now. The foam cheese-wheel crown the Cheez wears may be a relic from that place or a mockery of whatever they found there. The clan has grown since, either through recruitment or through whatever process they inflict on the people they drag away from the battlefield.
