What Almost Was: Bad Road and Two-Shot

Crossposted from tumblr.

So now that I’m thinking about Salvage, I figure I can talk about this finally.

In the original skeleton draft of Salvage, Bad Road was intended to be a permanent member of the group. In this incarnation, he was a fatalist and faithless itinerant preacher of a self made religion to Nightmare Moon/Luna. While he didn’t believe a word of what he said regarding redemption and rebirth, he still spoke about it because he thought it brought hope to the wasteland. He was a morose and grim character, and one to serve as a face of the defeated wasteland that just kept on for the sake of it.

However, as I was writing, I found more wealth in the character of Two-Shot and his own backstory. As slated, he was going to die in the raid of his safehouse while Curtain Call, Fizzy and Daisy made their escape. When I was sketching out his backstory and motivation, I was finding it ultimately more interesting and closely tied to the ultimate themes of Salvage than Bad Road’s so I spared him.

This left me with a bit of a problem, I now had two relatively similar perspectives in the form of Two-Shot(as he became) and Bad Road(as he was). My ultimate solution was to tweak Bad Road into what he is now, and give some of the shaved off bits to Two-Shot. Thus creating the sniper that no one seems to love and the tribal leader with visions of death that exist now.