Main Menu

Cursed Earth Too Tame?

Started by HiEx, 13 December, 2002, 10:24:05 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

HiEx

Is it just me, or does the Cursed Earth seem to have become much tamer as the years go by.

I mean in the Cursed Earth Dredd Epic, Dredd only just managed to make it across and then he had the Land Raider vehicle, Judges Paton, Jack & Gradgrind, Tweak, Spikes Harvey Rotten and a detachment of war droids to help him.

Nowadays though, or in fact since the Judge Child Epic, Dredd frequently rides out in the Cursed Earth, just by himself and his trusty Lawmaster and often comes back with nary a scratch.

So what is it, is Dredd just much tougher now, or is the Cursed Earth less dangerous? Note, I'm not saying the Cursed Earth is a safe place, there still lots of nasty shit out there like Gila Munja, but it does seem to me like it's lost a certain something over the years.

Oh, and whatever happened to the Death Belt, that flying band of rocks and garbage in the atmosphere?

HiEx


Devons Daddy

i considered this recently also. with the recent truckers story and the mutants revenge.they where talking about a trip of a few days i think to mega city 2????? that does not sound right.i thought that place was gone.
 
but its been 25 years so i would consider this to be fair to have happened. though my big question has always been.
why did dredd go by road? couldnt he have flown there and stopped just before the city?
course that would not have been much of an epic but there you go.
I AM VERY BUSY!
PJ Maybe and I use the same dictionary, live with it.

NO 2000ad no life!

HiEx

I always thought the reason for not flying was that the death belt and/or atmospheric inteference made flying over the Cursed Earth by H-Wagons difficult and only the high altitude Strat-Bat could make the journey by flying high enough to avoid all the crap in the atmosphere. As to why they couldn't just land outside the MC2...err.....perhaps the Strat-Bat needed a proper landing strip or pad to land on.

I've also wondered when the the plague first started, why didn't MC2 just request MC1 to transmit the data on how to manufacture the vaccine. Surely, in a city the size of MC2, the plague wouldn't have spread quickly enough before at least some hospitals, drug companies or medical facilities could have manufactured the vaccine.

HiEx

Dounreay

I always thought they didn't fly because in Roger Zelasney's "Damnation Alley", Hell Tanner drives across a radioactive waste land on a mercy mission. OOPs cynicism attack.

Agree the Cursed Earth does seem to be getting tamer. There's the work farms out there too. But the key qquestion is are house prices going up?

paulvonscott

I suspect some areas are better than they were, or were never that bad to begin with.  But there are some rather nasty things still out there.

Tu-plang

I reckon nowadays they know how to deal with what's out there better and Dredd never spends to long out there.

JayzusB.Christ

Yeah, but I wish the Cursed Earth was as hard-arsed as it used to be. Tyrannosaurs climbing abandoned churches are what I'm after; not poxy work-farms and bubble-towns. Respect to Robbie Morrison for inventing that massive city on wheels driven by slaves; now that's the kind of Cursed Earth I like.
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

Alan Barnes

"i considered this recently also. with the recent truckers story and the mutants revenge.they where talking about a trip of a few days i think to mega city 2????? that does not sound right.i thought that place was gone. "

They were going to Texas City in 'Radlander'  - "36 hours non-stop". Maybe it's an easier route, to the South?

They still go in convoy though, presumably for safety ...

--Alan

John Caliber

The Missionary Man stories and suchlike during the creatvely parched 1990s turned the Cursed Earth into a glorified Wild West and played down the outlandish sci-fi elements. I might be writing the Cursed Earth Sourcebook for the JDRPG and will seek to restore this amazing location's reputation as a hellhole where judges fear to tread...

- JC

Link: http://2kadpbem.20m.com/" target="_blank">The DICE ORGY

Author of CITY OF DREDD and WORLDS OF DREDD. https://www.facebook.com/groups/300109720054510/

McNulty

Re: the comment about Judge Dredd going into the Cursed Earth and returning with hardly a scratch. I seem to recall when he took the Long Walk, he came back to the City with a little more than a scratch...

Link: http://www.users.totalise.co.uk/~rjamieson/Cal-Hab/index.html" target="_blank">The A-Z of Cal-Hab


opaque

There is one thing I think is the case and that is the Cursed Earth is MASSIVE.  It's not like a thin strip of land crossing a few hundred miles. And I would assume that in some areas it is nice and quiet and easier to travel (maybe easier to be protected by MC1/Texas City or indeed MC2 jurisdiction) whilst in some areas you'd have all the nasty things we saw in the Cursed Earth Saga, natural phenomena, effects from the Atomic Wars etc.
On Hotdog runs they wouldn't take them to the worse places so we see moderately simple places, we see the townships in Missionary Man (where there did seem to be some degree of Texas City law) it's just that we haven't seen the worst bits. Who knows what happened to some areas after events like Judgement Day. Maybe whole areas have been wiped out, gangs might have wiped each others out or like the Brotherhood of Marshals they have been killed off by the Judges!
Theres lots of stories that are still out there.
I'd like to know more about the battles of the Judges vs Booth's troops.
The whole thing about there being a better way of delivering the vaccine is certainly silly though, was it ever actually explained? Maybe it was just a shortage thing, much like Dredd riding to the Emerald Isle?

esoteric ed

Gotta love the old school Cursed Earth, something about Mike McMahon's black junk filled skies that simply added to the menace.

Who knows... this could be Joe's future home? but it's not what I want to see as his fate.


Ed

John Caliber

'The whole thing about there being a better way of delivering the vaccine is certainly silly though, was it ever actually explained?'

The RPG Cursed Earth book will strive to find a plausible explanation for the land trek vs. strato-bat short cut ... so I hope!
- JC

Link: http://2kadpbem.20com/jd" target="_blank">THE JUDGE DREDD STREET SIM

Author of CITY OF DREDD and WORLDS OF DREDD. https://www.facebook.com/groups/300109720054510/

Jared Katooie

The cursed earth is utterly random so it's a mix, quiet then suddenly violent.

And I hope Dredd does end up there it'd be a fantastic end to his saga.

J.

judge dreddd

As its a hard place to live perhaps people have just died out, nobody having kids and lots of killing ends up with less people ?

Also, lets not forgot,... wait for it.... its a comic and not real.