Chapter 10 · Field NotesFM 93-07
Field Notes
The Network is a layer on Knox County. The county does not care. These are the pages that would have been in any field booklet, rewritten for a world with a market and a radio.
The county is still trying to kill you
Infection. A scratch is a dice roll. A laceration is a worse one. A bite is a clock. The Network does not reprint the Knox Event. If this county is still using the old transmission, you already know the rest. Burn the clothes. Watch the moodle. Do not “wait and see” next to the food.
The horde. Sound is a resource. Performance carries. Generators carry. Breach hammers carry. A busker in a claim is a lighthouse. Play under a roof, or play once.
Food and weather. Hunger, thirst, heat and illness were not rewritten for your convenience. A Merchant who cannot cook still starves. A Sysop still needs a bottle. Put a rain barrel on the claim before you put an arcade cabinet in it.
Vehicles. A stall does not spawn a truck. The road to an Encrypted sector is still a Kentucky road in July. Spare gas is a better listing than a rare stock.
Combat, two species
| Against | Rule |
|---|---|
| The dead | Push, stomp, do not get grabbed with a guitar out. |
| Hostile survivors | They reload. They flee if unarmed. They call friends. Corpses loot like people, because they were. |
| Other operators | Flagging is the law. Hitting a party member is hitting the operator. PvE dirt is a full stop, not a request. |
| Soldiers | The cordon warned you. There is no standing to repair on a roadblock. |
How to be useful in a county that remembers
- Specialize. Six workshops exist so a town can have a chemist and a gunsmith instead of six generalists with the same backpack.
- Be findable. A named stall on the map is a lighthouse. An unnamed stash in a shed is a future raid report.
- Pay wages. Unpaid labourers remember. So does standing.
- Read the refusal. Every grey control has a sentence. Net Control is tutoring you.
- Leave like you live here. Guards hold. Claims persist. A dark house may still be hit. Do not leave the till fat and the walls low.
A week in the life, if you do it right
Day 1. Live. Do not found. Identify whether the figure on the road is dead.
Day 2. Magazine for your skill. A bag that is not a plastic sack. A route that is not Main Street.
Day 3–4. Charter, or join. Overlay on. First stall or first hire, not both in the same hour.
Week 2. You are someone’s reason to visit. That is the point. The crate was always a trap. The till was always the work.
// CLOSING TRAFFIC
This is Ruckersville. If you can hear this, you are close enough to be useful.
Claim land. Hire the living. Pay your people. Watch the sky.
Keep this booklet. The next reprint is you.
Frequencies
Discord — the live Network, reports, the current box Steam Workshop — RZSN Core, item 3778046420 Project Zomboid — the county this booklet is written for Occupations — pick a life Get On Frequency — subscribe and connect
Printed in the voice of a field office that no longer answers. Standing orders on your county always win a fight with a booklet. The kit and the live frequency are in Chapter 02.