Jeff
Access Level: Intermediate.
The only mention of a possible meeting with the gunsmith Jeff. Received from Seeker Fossett.
I couldn't bypass the wandering red zone. I only remember the ripples in the air and the darkness. The last thing I saw was clouds over a mountain range.
I woke up in a stone house with a round stove. Dark night was looming behind the window. A man was sitting at the table with his back to me.
— You're safe. Eat, — he said, pointing to the supplies nearby.
He was silent while I was eating. Realizing that they were not going to kill me, I asked what the place was.
— Heard about Jeff? The Bloody Gunsmith? — The stranger asked, leaning back in his chair.
I said the truth:
— I heard about “Jeff’s guns”, I don’t know the details.
The man grinned:
— That so?..
The stranger kept his back to me. After a pause, he spoke again:
— This was his home. See the smelter in the corner? He lived and worked here. They say the metal in his hands was more plastic than clay.
Some blacksmith tools really were hung on the wall.
— Jeff... His guns were worth a whole year's stock of food. People believed that Jeff’s guns never misfired and aimed on their own. And also that for his guns this psycho cut people alive and tore out their souls. A maniac, a monster!..
I felt uneasy, I reached for my bag, but the stranger just waved his hand.
— Those people were ready to put every disappearance, every tortured corpse on Jeff. — But he never cut the healthy ones — he helped the crippled, implanted them with new hands and feet so that they could return to a normal life. Do you think that saved Jeff's name?.. One day he got fed up, tired of being a monster to scare the kids, he hid his face under the mask of a monster and disappeared.
After a moment, the stranger got up and turned to me. His face was hidden by a mask — a dried-up leather muzzle, as if plucked from a dead lizard.
— Jeff never took an innocent life, — said the stranger.
Then he just left.
Years have passed, but that mask still appears before my eyes.
E. F.
The portrait “Jeff” is currently available to players. It can be obtained by reaching reputation level 2 with the faction “Nomads”.
