Scavenger Protocol

Same Woods, New Glitch in the Feed 😑

adjusts headset, side-eyes the containment fence Five delvers reported to Jones Park on a suspiciously pleasant Friday — low 70s, near-zero wind, the kind of weather that makes the Underdark's marketing team look bad. Scavenger Protocol, Week 5 of 10, marks the pivot from last week's frequency-hacking Glitch conflict into something new: energy spikes causing visual interference, forcing every mercenary to trust muscle memory over sightlines. Consider this the Volatility arc's next chapter, and the season is now officially halfway to whatever detonation Week 10 has planned.

Four Mercenaries, One Stable Core

Travis Preston took RAD at -5 with a 920-rated round — Round of the Day — outlasting Cameron Collar's -4, Troy Toler's -3, and Jared Zimmel's -2 in a pod that changed hands more than once. Collar seized the lead after hole 3 on the strength of sole birdies on holes 2 and 8, but a bogey on hole 19 knocked him out of a share of first right at the finish line. Preston didn't take control until hole 17, powered by a resilience run — two-under across holes 12-14 after a rough hole 10, capped by the pool's only birdie on 14. Toler scrambled around an OB penalty on hole 12 but still climbed to 3rd by that same hole thanks to a 35-foot Circle 2 strike on 10, landing just off the cash bubble. Preston, Collar, and Toler all logged personal bests on this layout — Preston's jump from -3 to -5 came with an 18-point rating dip, Toler leapt from -1 to -3, and Zimmel held the line at -2 while quietly shedding 45 rating points. A stable core, sure, but nobody's readings matched last week 🔋.

The Shadow Doesn't Share the Card

John Shearin was once again the entirety of RAH, and once again turned a solo round into appointment viewing — a bogey-free -7 rated 944, easily Round of the Day. He opened with the sole birdie on hole 1, rode a six-hole par train from 5 through 10, cooled for a three-hole stretch on 11-13, then closed with a clean back nine and another sole birdie on hole 19 for the wire-to-wire win. Compare that to last week's +3 at 874-rated — this is a 10-stroke, +70-rating swing that explains exactly how the Gloom Sigil's holder clawed from #6 to #1 in a single week. The shadow, it turns out, does not do things halfway.

Hole 2 Behaves, Hole 15 Doesn't

No aces dropped this week, but clean cards were everywhere: Collar, Toler, and Preston all posted bogey-free front nines in RAD, while Shearin ran the entire RAH round without a single blemish. Hole 2 — Jones Park's easiest look at -0.29 to par — delivered Collar's sole birdie right on script, while hole 15's brutal +0.93 reputation nearly claimed another victim before Toler's 35-foot C2 putt talked it down. The standout rating swing of the week belongs to Shearin's +70-point leap, which dwarfs everything else on the card by a wide margin.

Three Contributors, Zero Detonations

The Super Ace split pot ticked up from $182 to $188 after three contributors chipped in $6 apiece — no ace to claim it, so the seasonal balance keeps climbing toward whatever payout eventually cracks it open. On the achievement side, Preston banked both Division Winner and Birdie Bonanza for his three straight birdies on holes 12-14, while Shearin's spotless round earned Smooth Sailing to pair with his RAH title.

The Sigil Holds, The Crown Falls

In Pool A, Shearin's Gloom Sigil stayed exactly where it was — #1, defended by the same wire-to-wire performance that carried it all the way from #6 last week. Fitting, given the tag's lore: shadow mastery, one absorbed raid attempt per season, and a violet-black glow that pulses whenever it's tested. Pool B told the opposite story — Brian Taylor's Hollow Crown didn't survive contact with an empty scorecard. AllIn mode doesn't forgive absences, and Taylor's no-show triggered an automatic demotion straight to the bottom of the rankings, leaving that throne wide open heading into Week 6.

The Perimeter Closes Next Week

Week 5 wraps the season's first half with Shearin's shadow-dominance and Preston's RAD reign both very much intact, and the Super Ace pot still sitting there, unclaimed, building tension for whoever finally cashes it. The Volatility arc doesn't slow down from here — local authorities are set to cordon off the course perimeter next week, sealing every mercenary inside the blast radius as the march toward Week 10's "Big One" continues. Another raid, another relic exchange. Let's see whose legend survives the weekend...