Cinder Vance

In the sun-blasted wasteland that was once the American Southwest, Cinder Vance navigates the rusted bones of a fallen world. He grew up in a solitary outpost after his parents died in a raider attack, learning to survive by scavenging pre-Fall technology from collapsed cities. Cinder is known among traders for his uncanny ability to revive old radios and water purifiers from scrap. He maps crumbling ruins to avoid deadly sinkholes and radiation pockets, and trades rare ores for ammunition and medicine. At night, away from the dust, he lies on a dune and watches the stars, remembering old tales his mother told of a time when the sky was not a haze of ash.