Death Fields is tagged in this topic, so I've been thinking of this idea a lot in terms of that game set, and I've developed further on the idea I mentioned in my last post of how "scavengers/nomads" could work within the setting, enough to plan a longer term kitbashing/development project. I talked about this a little bit in my own building/progress topic, but I want to expound on it further here.
My thought is of communities of scavengers that live hidden within the confines of the Death Fields arenas themselves - in the empty spaces behind walls and under floors, within giant pieces of game terrain, in long-forgotten storage rooms and air ducts. After the games end and the bodies are gathered for revival, these scavengers enter the empty arenas, scrounging together whatever scraps they can to brave a hard life; whether it be scraps of material to help build out their living, or weapons and armor to defend themselves against the giant pests that also take roost in what they have made home (or to perform covert operations against the Game Guilds to procure other supplies like food).
Where would they come from? The first logical answer is from the games themselves. Perhaps some Cannon Fodder squaddie decides they want to avoid their final death for just a little longer, see an open bit of wall near a game barrier, and disappear. Perhaps a soldier has a dispute with their owner/managing team which leaves them out of a spot in the army - left high and dry, abandoned at the stadium, they turn within, bringing only what they have left. Perhaps some soldiers teleported to the Death Fields find no glory in fighting for the entertainment of some sick aliens, and refuse to participate, slinking into the first escape opportunity across which they come. Perhaps still some of these scavenger communities have existed for generations, and their offspring know no other life than that of the arena's cold walls.
This is interesting to me because it means that potentially any army with compatible pieces could be given the scavenger treatment - lizardmen with large, flowing cloaks (made from Milliput) and the gas mask heads, a washed-out Grognard wearing the remains of their shako as they huddle into their robes for warmth, a family of Cannon Fodder scavengers who tame pest giant spiders, give them robotic limbs and train them as steeds and even to use weapons. Many possibilities with this kind of army, storytelling-wise.
The other possibility, of course, is that the scavengers come from outside the games. I imagine some worlds have arenas in huge, bustling sci-fi cities, where it is easy to come and go from the innards of the arenas unnoticed, blending in with spectators and staff. Scavengers in these regions could have the chance to trade whatever wares they don't use for their own survival. Imagine how many fans would jump at the opportunity to buy necklaces made from actual spent bullet casings from the night's game, or a real Grognard bayonet!
Other arenas would probably be in regions that are very hard or otherwise uninhabitable. These would be the smaller-scale or remotely-streamed games, perhaps played by the small earning teams. In these cases scavengers living in the arena building is much more practical; it'd be the only remotely warm place in a desert hitting negative degrees at night, or perhaps the only place with oxygen on a planet with an atmosphere of carbon dioxide. Perhaps there's trade with aliens on the outside, presumably who can breath CO2, but the thought is definitely more survival in these kinds of settings.
How does the wastelander/scavenger aesthetic make sense? Well, you have to make use of whatever you can get, even for clothes, which explains the cloaks, stitched together from the uniforms of the fallen. In those harsher environments, you'd probably need the gas masks to survive, and the goggles to save your vision, whether going out to hunt for game or whatever else is needed indoors or out, so that explains those. Weapons would be cobbled together from whatever people can get. And I threw out the idea of riding giant spiders or beetles above and in a previous post because it fits with the idea that what we normally envision as living within the walls of our house as being bugs, spiders, and other pests. I just like bug riders, and I think it fits here.
How would they make sense as a Death Fields army in and of themselves? Well, just as we tend to see the spiders, roaches and silverfish crawling around in our walls as pests, the Game Guilds see these scavengers the same way. Refusal to participate in the games, or otherwise "disrupting" the games, might be tantamount to a death sentence. Whenever the game guild catches these "pests", they are forced to participate in the Death Fields, without the benefit of organization, quality arms and armor, miraculous medical treatments, nor the sponsors who bankroll all of this. All deaths are final, and battles with the "pests" may be treated as light entertainment between standard rounds of play. It doesn't help them that many teams who have accepted the games are either willing or glad to gun down their former teammates, possibly even seeing them as "traitors" for not staying with their team or wanting to escape the games.
This whole situation might also give the scavengers the incentive to interrupt the games while they're still going, to save their captured friends and family before they are mowed down. This could manifest itself in the form of a "reserves deployment" mechanic unique to the scavengers. Perhaps the game guilds were going to try to put a stop to the interruptions once and for all, rather than just forcing captive scavengers to fight, but they found out the interruptions by the scavengers were popping huge ratings, so they have decided to let things to as is...for now.
Aesthetic inspirations are, of course, the 40K Ash Waste Nomads, as well as general post-apocalyptic fiction like Fallout and such. A big inspiration Fallout-wise is Veronica Santangelo from Fallout: New Vegas, who fits the whole "scavenger/nomad" sort of thing to a T, down to the dusty cloak. She's even a skilled tinkerer who can build great technologies from scraps. She's one of my favorite characters in the game, and I just finished a playthrough of F:NV, so that's why she's on my mind.
As far as the characterization, there are a lot of contributors, but the biggest one is my friend's D&D campaign. There was one point where we encounted a vampire antagonist who ran a lavish casino in a bustling town out in the wastes. To try and get rid of us, he threw us down a trash chute, and we were transported to the Elemental Plane of Garbage.
There we ran into all kinds of people (ranging from tinkerers to trash nomads) who were living off the refuse of the high society who opened these portals to keep their fancy lives clean. Eventually, we made it back, but this idea of "living off of what is left behind" is something that's fascinated me for a long time, and my friend's interpretation grealty resonated with me.
For other narrative inspirations I'm planning on turning to stories about killing game shows. I'm going to watch The Running Man again and explore things within the genre, seeing what I can find. I'd be surprised if this sort of idea hasn't somehow manifested itself in the genre before.
Real-life inspirations include tunnel-dwellers (like in New York and Las Vegas - I want to do more research on this so I can be a little more respectful in my reinterpretation of this idea, though), as well as Agnes Varda's documentary "The Gleaners and I", which explores this concept of people who subsist and create things out of what the world leaves behind. It's a beautiful movie, and I've been looking for an excuse to watch it again.
As a much, much more general source of inspiration, I'd also like to do some research and reading about Kowloon Walled City, a very small, very densely-populated area with lots of hustle and bustle. A similar lifestyle and aesthetic would probably be a necessity in the cramped areas between the stadium's scoreboards and loading bays.
Since there's no Death Fields game yet, I plan on using the setting to proxy for other wargames, like Bolt Action or 40K. For the latter, my Grognards are going to be Imperial Guard stand-ins, Cannon Fodder might be Orks, and I plan on making a team of Iron-Core folks as Space Marine proxies. But what I will cherish most of all will be the team which has no strict analogue: "The Pests." I can't wait.
