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First Shift - Performance: A Red Markets Novel - Chapter One

Published on: 31st October, 2025

By Caleb Stokes

Read by Fae Kells

The following is the first chapter of Performance, a novel set in the world of Red Markets: A Game of Economic Horror.

Purchase the entire novel!

When the tired joke of the zombie apocalypse clawed its way out of the subconscious and into terrifying reality, society's cultural obsession killed as many as it saved. After the chaos finally subsided, the apocalypse ended up unevenly distributed... just like everything else. The world is now more divided than ever: haves and have-nots, living and dead, The Recession and The Loss. It's a world ruled by the Red Market, where supernatural terrors born of nightmare join forces with the inexorable pressures of undying capitalism. 

 

Nickel, Bloom, Dono, and Bait, four strangers barely surviving in the shadow of the system, find their grim futures cut short as an undead terror shakes the foundations of their dystopian reality. As the Crash leaves them even more marginalized and dispossessed, they must join together as a crew of Takers, mercenary entrepreneurs risking their bodies and souls to trade between the monstrous wasteland and a civilization that abandoned them. Even as their shared trauma insists they find a new family in their co-workers, the market demands they profit from each other's suffering. Can the crew survive the snapping teeth of the hordes, the strangling hands of the market, and the madness inspired by their never-ending struggle against both? 

 

Performance is a novel set in the world of the Red Markets RPG by Hebanon Games. For more information, visit redmarketsrpg.com

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Dead Letter Bureau - Delta Green
A Delta Green RPG Actual Play.

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