One of the cornerstones of Stalker is endless mystery. The Player’s Book tells practically nothing about the Tribes and many stalkers will never en-counter them. However, when a Stalker campaign has gone on for a while and the group has seen all kinds of adventures, it may feel as though you’re scraping the bottom of the mystery barrel. Bringing the tribes in then will open entirely new possibilities. They should still be used sparingly but by then the players should already have had experiences with the Changed in the borderlands and the “quiet children” of the Refugee communities. These give the tribes an understandable frame of reference, making them some-thing more than just freaks in the woods.
The Changed of the borderlands are generally a good foundation for the existence of the tribes in the game. The tribes apparently have no children.
Their existence is entirely dependent on the Changed escaping across the border, which many Refugee parents want (and try) to prevent, even by force. A Changed contemplating escape will first have occasional contact from beyond the border, either by howling, following some stalkers, or maybe by climbing trees tall enough for him to see the border and beyond. The actual escape is usually caused by some trauma. It may be an act of violence toward the Changed, an attempt by the community to prevent escape by im-prisoning them or some other dramatic event in the area. The Changed are superbly skilled at finding ways across the border.
The Changed that the stalkers have met and perhaps even known from be-fore may be met again in the Zone, or one may have followed them, learning how to move in the Zone by following the stalkers’ example. It may also function as an unwitting guide, or may want to show a person around in the Zone, like it was showing him around its home. An item taken or received from a stalker may be encountered again as part of a construct in an Oasis.
Even though the tribes usually avoid contact with people, a Changed like this might show itself to someone it was familiar with back when it was still human. It rarely shows any other signs of recognition, though.
Neutral encounters with the tribes are random sightings of hunters and gath-erers. Usually the stalkers are noticed already from afar but not always.
The tribes’ members are just as interested in the stalkers’ provisions, the wounded or the dead left behind as mutants are but they are far more care-ful and intelligent in their attempts to lay their hands on them. Even though they live like cavemen and cannot communicate with people on practically any level, their problem-solving abilities are as advanced as anyone’s. In addition, instead of tools they are very skilled at using the abilities brought on by their physical, psychic and metaphysical mutations.
The reasons for hostile encounters cannot always be de-termined. Harming a member of the tribe, destroying a construct built in the Zone or disturbing social rituals are all sufficient causes but sometimes the reason just cannot be fathomed. They attack always by surprise, using the inhuman abilities of the Changed and the physical strength of Replicas. Those who flee will be pursued and the Changed will seek to surround them or herd them into un-familiar or dangerous areas. It often succeeds.
Tribes on warpath are only known from the descriptions of the very few survivors, or the depictions of other stalk-ers who later happened by. You should sooner surrender yourself to the Institute than get caught by a Zone Tribe.
STALKER: The SciFi Roleplaying Game
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The official truth is that the Changed cannot procreate by themselves (al-though when talking about the Zones, official truths tend be problematic).
Intercourse between a human and a Changed can result in at least a preg-nancy, though not necessarily a live birth. The Changed do not seek to mate with humans but it is a sad fact that there are all kinds of folk in the border-lands. The inability of the Changed to communicate even with their own com-munity is well known and as a result the Changed do get beaten up, sexually abused, raped and even murdered.
A girl of 13 who recently became fully Changed disappears from a border-land community. A few months later, the stalkers find her in the outskirts of the Zone, fairly close to the border, sick and clearly pregnant. The rape has been the trauma that drove her off. She has been trying to get to the tribes but is too weak because of her pregnancy. What happens next depends on the stalkers.
If they leave her there, not much will happen. The community promises a reward for her return. Soon after, some dealer shows up who promises an even greater reward for a pregnant Changed, as long as she is alive and some even more unscrupulous team is heading out to the Zone to find her.
They’ve found out from somewhere that the player characters have been roaming in that area and are on good terms with the missing girl’s community, so they figure that the player characters know more. Hey, it’s an adventure.
If the stalkers take her back to her community, they are grateful but two things happen: criminals trying to kidnap the girl to sell her to the highest bidder will start attacking the community and the tribe she was trying to join will start hounding the stalkers, even leaving the Zone for that.
At first, it is fairly innocent. The stalkers are being followed. They keep running into strange signs and constructs resembling the girl. Sometimes, members of the tribe will even show themselves to the stalkers. They will be followed in the Zone. It will also seem as if the tribe has power over the anomalies or fate itself, which stalkers tend to so fervently believe in. Things just seem to go wrong.
Bit by bit, the hostility starts to pick up. Rocks thrown from the darkness break their equipment and vehicles. There are strange coincidences and bad luck. Images of the stalkers themselves are found here and there, sprinkled with blood. They are attacked in the Zone, their gear is sabotaged and new dangers and difficulties appear on paths thought safe. Even in their dreams they will be hounded, as well as in hallucinations while drunk or high. The only way to end the conflict between the stalkers and the tribe is to kidnap the girl back from her community, which is practically keeping her a prisoner and to return her where she was found in the Zone. If the stalkers do that, the GM can let his imagination run wild...
The girl, who usually does not react to people in any way or behaves in a defensive manner, now leads them by hand to a dimly lit space or tunnel, its walls scratched full of strange, alien patterns. It is unnaturally dim and even flashlights will only illuminate a couple of metres ahead. There are other figures moving in the half-light, though. Now and then, there is a flash of inhuman eyes that cover half a face, or a human silhouette with more than two limbs in their upper body. The bodily dimensions are often wrong. The patterns on the walls will start glowing brighter and the stalkers will begin to hallucinate. The world disappears as the patterns burn into the vision, painfully bright even through tightly closed eyelids.
They wake up in an ordinary underpass or an industrial hall. There are a few artefacts on the floor, looking like someone abandoned them there like they always do. They can no longer find the place the girl led them to, not even if they drew a map. Nobody outside the Zone will remember the girl. It is as if she had never existed.