Stuck in Cocktail

They showed Cybelle the dry well where they heard the voices and she went down on a rope and checked it out.  There was a narrow shaft filled with bats but who the hell knows where it led.

Doc made up with Bar, brought her a desert flower and charmed her into accepting his apology.  He rolled a 7, so in order to get her to accept his apology he left his nurses, Shigusa and Mox in Cocktail.  Shigusa and Mox were looking forward to the R&R and handed over their air-horns with glee.

Harlan got Esmerelda to have her biker gang ride with them into Hoover, part guards, part show of force.

Cybelle kind of adopted (or was adopted by) a coy-dog, little guy could sense her hitch-hiker, the later psychic, Ma.  She likes the dog because he doesn't talk.

As the MC, I had to not push them towards Hoover.  There were loose ends they wanted tidied up in Cocktail and its just the third game in; everyone's easing into their characters and how the group dynamics shake out.

Anthony took a few gigs and one of them is taking Cocktail's tribute to Hoover.  They took a barrel of hooch with them to give to the Engineer-in-Chief.

On the ride to Hoover, they saw a light that had been left on from a road-side stand.  The light was a broken heart, blinking and red.  Doc asked one of the bikers what that meant.

"Its a love pit?"

"What?"

"A pit with people in it who you can pay to fuck on... a love pit."

"People just end up in these things?"

"If you get taken and don't have nobody to stand up for ya....sure, it happens."

Finally...Hoover

Hoover's a sleepy town during the day.  They rolled in and some engineers, in gray overalls with their wrench on their hips as part badge, part melee weapon, met them.  There was a failed read a sitch, they knew they were coming and knew damned well that the doc wanted a hospital.

They met with the Engineer-in-Chief, Phoenix on top of the dam, under cover of umbrellas with ice water to cool them down.  Phoenix and Doc immediately started talking about how to make a hospital happen.

"For our next tribute, we'll ask the rim towns to bring in hospital equipment, that will get the salvagers to work."

Harlan went with an engineer, Bisbee, to take the hooch in to the dam.  They got 'jacked by Carson and his gang.  "Hand it over, gents.  Hooch ain't worth dying over, is it?"

They handed it over, though Harlan was pissed.  He fired up the Croaker and found their bikes.  He ran the bikes all over and took the hooch back.  Not wanting to fuck with his car while they were on foot, the Carson and his gang ran for it. 

When Phoenix heard that some jackals turned guns and weapons on her engineer and the doc's driver, she got on the P.A. system and announced that Carson and his gang were in the dark, exiled, wanted dead or alive for their crimes.  Harlan, Doc and Cybelle had a conversation about the right and the wrong of it.  Doc seemed to think it was alright, the way civilization worked but Harlan saw it as cut and dry despotism.  Harlan refers to Phoenix as the Head Wrench.

Cybelle got a touch on Phoenix with her violation glove and did the ole Deep Brain Scan.  Rough.  She found out that Phoenix was holding her parent's dead brain waves/ghosts in Hoover and that she felt she had to control everything that showed a glimmer of civilization.  Also, she ordered the destruction of a rim-town called Library and held the Librarian's Brain/Ghost in Hoover so that she had the information.

Cybelle is figuring out when to drop this information on Doc and/or Harlan.

Bisbee took Doc around to see the local bone-setters.  They're quacks, using a mix of crystals, dirty saws and rough hands to do the best that they can.  Doc is going to gather them when he is next in town in hopes of recruiting for his hospital.

Before they left, Doc went to see Phoenix, letting her know that they were going to go pick up their nurse crew.  She offered to send engineers to get them but he insisted on doing so himself.  She sent a Wire Sheriff with him, a lady from Gas named Saint John.  Harlan immediately started flirting with her shamelessly.

As they left Hoover, the sun set and the lights went on.  They could see the rim town's various lights on the horizon including the blinking cocktail glass that they were heading to.  On the ride to Cocktail, they held a palaver.

"Some things, Doc, they seem too good to be true because they are too good to be true."

I reckon we'll finish the car ride talk at the beginning of the next game.

Seemed almost shorter this week, though I think this was the longest game yet.  I was beat from the previous day, so I got home from work, took a nap and woke up just in time to walk downstairs and start gaming with my hair still going in all directions from bed-head.

The game's been delayed for ages.  First it was the holidays and then it was my practicum schedule.  Finally, we get to game and though we didn't have Padraic at the table, we went for it and played the foray into cannibal country.

Saffron wrassled up an extra walkie-talkie to go with the other one they had and a case of mortars (but not mortar tube).  Some volunteers had come, a few dozen desperate people who hoped that the foray into cannibal country would be profitable.  Other than that it was Dent's Demons, Baby's Boys, Skanky's Bastards (she was hot to get revenge since her brother, Dirty, had been killed due to cannibal ambush), a few Green Mountain Boys and several other smaller gangs going out there.

The plan was to have Baby's Boys come in behind the cannibal's shipment coming in from out west and the rest of the group hit it from up front.

Baby watched the convoy go past her position.  It was a semi-truck with two storage containers behind it.  The storage units were rigged up with machine gun nests to cover its angles.  Leading the convoy was the biker gang that had betrayed them to the cannibals way back and backing it up was a trio of humvees armed to the teeth.

Baby's Boys waded in, taking fire, losing folks but getting in close enough so the humvee's grenade launchers weren't much use.  Baby herself leaned in to the window of one humvee and shot the driver in the head.

Dent and Bullet took the bridge in brutal fashion, helping one another and cutting loose with their troops.

The dice were with them tonight but since they were under fire, I had them roll several Harm rolls just to see how they were holding up.

The only failed rolls were two failed Harm rolls.  Bullet took the semi-truck head on, blazing away with this .30 machine guns, showing the 'vette's horsepower.  The truck jack-knifed and rolled but not before swiping the car off the road, sending it off the highway.  Shit-head dragged Bullet out of the car before it blew up and Dent ripped the machine guns off the roof.

Baby took some bullets that laid her out, forced her to stop her bike and command that she be taken back to her doc in Kipsie before passing out.

The took some spoils, killed any survivors, destroyed the bridge and headed home.  The cannibals who went looking for their brothers and sisters would fine the bridge blown into the gorge and Dent's final touch: a pile of cannibals' heads, one on each side of the bridge, each with their teeth smashed out.

It is going to be a hard winter in the garden a.k.a. cannibal country.

I need to look over my fronts again.  Its been a while.

And I reckon we might have some letters for getting through winter.  Maybe not, though, maybe we'll just play it out.

Just before the attack, Bullet mused that this whole thing, the Hudson Valley Compact, shooting Kipsie in the face, taking West Point started because some asshole blew up the bridge at Bear.  That act had pissed off the players to such a degree.  They wondered what kind of person would do such an act.

His answer: The kind of people who consider themselves at war.

I dig this campaign.

Other things to write about:
Rubbin primed to take over.
Baby's sick bed.
The Road to Watertown.

Harlan, the driver, played by Pete

Doc Dez Setter, the angel, played by Anthony

They had been heading west out of Lost Angeles for two years now.  It can take a while to get out of there since the whole west coast turned into a volcanic, seismic disaster.

Hoover Dam is something of a legend, a place that still has electricity, still runs lights.

Shig and Mox, doc's triage team, were out on a dune somewhere far enough away so they could have sex but not far enough that trouble couldn't take them if trouble came.  Harlan and Doc were sharing a pipe when the horizon lit up.  It was just dark, hours until dawn.  It was their first good look at the miracle of Hoover Dam.

They set out.

The first ring town that sits on the peripheral of Hoover is RV, a once-moving caravan that settled around some good wells and never left.  They looked it over, saw how the RV's were now boarded up walls with chain link and barbed wire filling in the gaps.  Doc read a sitch and knew to be wary of someone in those walls putting a gun in his face and keeping the angel in town.  "Yer our doctor now, dammit."

They moved on around the ring.  The next town was Gas, a series of fortifications set up around a gas well.  Again, they moved on.

Next up was Cocktail, a two story shack with lots of bikes outside.  Blinking outside was a neon cocktail glass that lit up the night.  They heard a shot from within and saw a man get dragged outside and left for dead.

This was their place.  Croaker, their 4x4 Cadillac ambulance, drove on up.  Doc and Harlan walked in, leaving Shig and Mox on the hood of Croaker, playing cards.  Each pair had an air-horn in case things went poorly.

JJ (Dent) and KK (Baby) couldn't make it to the game, so we played without them but didn't want to go forward with the assault on cannibal country without those two key players. 

Padraic had Marsh pick up two gigs, one was surveillance and the other was infiltration.  We decided the surveillance was Millions from Pole wanting to know more about Mrs. W in Albany.  He sent Marsh up north with some barter to trade, some unmarked canned goods, known as Canned Surprises.

Captain Dale was sent to Watertown to find out if there were any military remnants.  Its a 100+ mile trek, so they hitched a ride with a squid-eater (also called Squiddee's nowadays, thanks, Barry) and threw in some more MRE's for the captain's wife to make some ponchos to cover up their gear and uniforms.

Meanwhile, down south, Saffron chose some bits from her 10+ role for her custom-welcome-back-move.  For her role at 10+, she got:

 - musicians in her joint, bringing in extra barter
 - an affair with the leader of the local West Point lumberjacks (he reminds her of her late bouncer, killed in the first session, Shmee)
 - and a gaggle of new girls from Bumfuck, Nowhere who want to work

But let's cut back to Albany, an industrial town with one manufactory making plastic tiles taht can be shaped easily with some fire and water and another manufactory slaughtering pigs and two more without enough people to work them.

Captain Dale and his squad walk onto to the dock and there's the leader of security, gathering his men.  They're watching as the security chief, Shelton, turns to speak to his men.

Wait, is he crying?  His gun is out.

They watch as he shoots himself in the face in front of his men.

What the fuck just happened?

Probably some fucking ju-ju psychic maelstrom shit.

Yup.

<<Rewind as Marsh get's off his squid-eater boat to cut some deals in Albany...

Everyone was in West Point for the wedding, so while they are all here, might as well call every gang leader together to talk.  Shit, they even let in that squid-eater, Webb, who is re-building the barge that Dog head rolled up the Hudson in....before Dent killed Dog head.

(It was just  Barry and KK tonight, so just the Hardholders, Bullet and Baby.  Marsh and Dent were MIA, which made for a very different game all together.)

Bullet talked to Baby and called for a sit-down.  The Cannibals were on his mind.  He wanted to either broker a lasting piece that everyone could agree to or give a call to arms and go to war.  This is a few days after Dent went into one of the cannibal's tunnels into NYC, sent the cannibals running and cornered one of their elders, Mariner, knocking out his teeth and sending him home alive.

Dirty was there of the Dirty Bastards, a bunch of village kids from up near Kip-town with bikes.

Viejo was there of the Long Riders...a tight squad of six said to be from out west somewhere.

Cloud represented the Night Riders, a bunch of guys whose M.O. is to ride to a place, turn their bikes off, jump in at night with night vision goggles on and beat everyone to death with various blunt metal implements.

Bone is in charge of the Green Mountain Boys, the largest gang, nearly 30 large, with ties back to some compound way up north in some mountains...all said to be family, all tight.

Dotty is in charge of the Highway Rats, a bunch of river kids, squid eaters, who turned their knowledge of boat engines to the road and started a biker gang.

Also there was D.D., representing Mrs. Washington or Mrs. Dubya in Albany.

Millions, the hardholder of Pole, the trading fort right outside NYC.

Garza, the guy the Hudson River Compact (that's what Bullet is calling us all) is trying to install as the King of New York City was there, they guy who took the tunnel with Dent and is now holding it.

Captain Webb is there, the squid-eater who is fixing up the barge with his kin. 

And with permission, Gams was there, the traveling drug dealer with ties back to Cannibal Country, where she scores her meth.

They want the city secure but Garza let's them know that it isn't a one-bullet problem.  Its, as he puts it, a thousand gangs, all with feuds, family drama and shit that dates back to before-who-knows-when.  "Imagine what a fucking bad-ass you have to be to survive the apocalypse in the city...now image they have kids and they have kids and the family tree is short and stumpy and that is what I am sitting on, a big fucking mess of bad-ass psychopaths.  The sub-men talk to everyone but half the time we can't understand their dialect.  The 86ers are trying to get their aircraft carrier going.  Shit, there are more gangs than I could name or count."  Everyone agrees that it is complicated and that they'll support Garza.  He reckons that with the barter Bullet dropped on him and the tunnel, he can hold tight 'till winter at least.

But these cannibals...

Yeah, everyone wants peace...sure.  But who is going to have the moxy to ask for it now that Dent had his hammer and mask fueled tantrum?  Shit, even Gams is scared to get her shit, not sure how she is going to be received.

Bullet has a spy deep undercover who reports through Gams.  Word is out that there is an election on for Mariner's replacement.  The peacenik stepped down after Dent de-fanged him.  Some war-minded folk are running for the office, Elder of the Central Garden.

Bullet and Baby will go ask for peace, meet 'em out on a boat like last time.  Dotty will go; she's been to Cannibal Country (or so she says, lying snake) and when Dotty says she'll go, Dirty insists on going, as their gangs are rivals...village-kids vs. river kids, doncha know.

Salt is a squid-eater with cannibal ties; he shows up with a message.  He's got a fucking TV with a fucking DVD player and the DVD player has a DVD they burned with Mariner's replacement talking.  Its all rigged up to his tug-boats engine.

Mariner's replacement is a woman named Flower...with filed teeth, meaning that she's been out into the non-cannibal world, out hunting scavengers, non-producers.  She says that she wants a meet and that she'll be armed.  Also, don't being Dent, please.  Thanks.

Its Dotty, Dirty, Baby, Bullet and Crowbar out to meet 'em.  Salt's got a raft his tug-boat tows behind him with a little shack/house on it for the meeting.  Read a sitch under the G.W. Bridge where the meet is said to happen.  Something is fucking wrong.  They are not fucking coming.

Baby tries to take Salt's boat but it all goes pear shaped.  She has to drop her gear into the river when she falls into the drink, just to get out before the squid get a hold of her.  Dirty got killed - bullet, then splash.  Bullet is fuct up badly, nearly killed but got away with just crippled and disfigured.  They had a bomb planted under the raft and it went up.  Dotty was lost (turned out to be a spy all along for the cannibals). 

They they opened fire, fired a fucking rocket-propelled grenade at the boat.

Grenade shrapnel next to Bullet's spine means he'll never quite walk right again.  His face got nailed by shattering glass when the bullets rained down.  Baby get's hit but they are clean shots and she'll live.. 

Its a fucking mess is what it is.

They've heard that some squid-eaters have gone cannibal but now shit is for serious.  This is real.  This is war. 

Read a sitch. 10.  The cannibals are most vulnerable in their trade routes that head out west.  The true position of the cannibals is on the Hudson somewhere, as they control much more of it than anyone originally thought.  Look-out for them hitting Pole.  Millions is way too isolated and isn't well guarded enough.

Baby looks towards Cannibal Country and opens her mind to the Psychic Maelstrom.  She feels the Kipsie's parents, still hitch-hiking in her brain with their hands on her shoulders.  She feels Elijah, the little Cannibal Country kid, Marsh accidentally stuck in her brain that one time (he got out but she still contacts him when she opens like this) and she takes a step towards Cannibal Country.

She has a nice astral/psychic/whatever conversation with the psychic and Elder of South Garden.  Devil is on top of a casino in A.C. and there are fucking electric lights glowing.  He has a cartoon devil tattooed on his chest.  They palaver for a while. 

"Are you from 5 Points?"

"No."

"Hm."

South, Central and Northern Garden each have a brainer, a psychic and Baby knows where they all are.  One is in a skyscraper in Cannibal Country that looks right over the Hudson into the City.

"I hope that when we come, our people take you alive, Baby.  I'd like to really meet you."

"I won't let that happen."

"It almo-"

She cuts, walks away.

Bullet calls Web into his office and demands the names of every fucking squid-eater who has gone cannibal.

"Its complicated...some husband and wives are split different...some kids...sometimes just a daughter but not the sons and other times the whole clan but not the outsiders who marry in.  Its a mess."

Go aggro.  Miss.

Webb lies his ass off and lies well.

Baby reads a person.  Miss.

He walks away quickly before the name doesn't check out.

When the names don't check out, Bullet calls up everyone with wheels to roll up to the barge to talk with Web.  They catch Webb on his way back up in his little dinghy, roll him and all of his kin on the barge into Kip-town.

"Half of the damned squid-eaters are fucking cannibals and not to be trusted."

Kip-town went into near fucking riots.  Squid-eaters are ripped from their boats, baths and meals.  Squid-eaters are ripped from whore-houses, gambling dens and saloons.  Squid-eaters are rounded up into the middle of town, stripped naked, their boats ransacked.  The late Kipsie was no friend to squid-eaters and people don't mind a reason to fuck with them all over again.  Webb and his family are seperated from the squid-eaters who are roughed up, kept in the middle of a circle of Baby's Boys' bikes.

Bullet said, "Webb, either you are with us or you are not with us.  Choose now.  Point out every fucking squid-eater who is a fucking cannibal.  Point them out.  Choose.  With us or against us.  Choose now."

So, Webb chose.  Those he pointed out as cannibals were splashed with red paint.  The others were let go.  Those with red paint were forced to the ground between Baby and Bullet.

20 squid eaters were cannibals, several with filed teeth.  Those with filed teeth were killed, given to the crowd, murdered brutally in public while Bullet and Baby deliberated.  The children would be taken back to West Point and taught a trade.  The women were divvied up after the men are slaughtered.  Bullet's second-in-command, Fox took one, not because he wanted one but because he just didn't want to see anymore death.  Baby's Boys are wide-eyed and horrified; they aren't fucking hyenas and sure killing is fine but...this...this is something else.

The prettiest, Cola, was sent to Saffron's joint to earn a living in the sex trade.

Another was given to Baby, who was thinking of starting her own whorehouse.

As Bullet said, "The nice Bullet was killed out there on the Hudson.  That Bullet out there wanted peace and he was reasonable.  Now you have this scarred fucker who is going to kill these bastards who betrayed him.  Now we are at war."

You can see the line of fucking mess and brutality that got us here.  You can see why squid-eaters went to cannibal country while The Kipsie was sending biker gangs to hunt down their villages into order to cement his claim on all Hudson River crossings.  You can see how Dent being brutalized and scarred by reckless cannibals out on their helling led to a man who never takes off his helicopter helmet and who slaughtered a fortified tunnel filled with cannibals with a sledgehammer, shattering bonesr, knocking out their peaceful leader's teeth and sending him home to be shamed, mocked and have his political power stripped from him.  You can see how the people of Central Garden elected a woman who would plant bombs under a boat filled with diplomats coming to discuss a peace accord.

There is a clear line of broken people and desperation that got us to the ugly events of this game.

My favorite scene, Prologue:

Rubbin is growing up so damned fast, 15 year old girls are like that and since she had been adopted by Bullet, she's kinda blossomed.  The Driver, turns out, is a decent dad and since he took over West Point she eats well and is learning from Fitty the art of the gun and learning some driving from Mr. Bullet.

So yeah, when one of the Road Demons cornered her behind the garage at Pole and told her what he planned on doing to her once she fell asleep, she took out her sawed off shotgun and put two in his chest.  The Demons' leader, Monk is a savage monster in charge of 40 other savage monsters.  When Bullet read a person he found that all Monk wanted was for Bullet to suck his dick and give him all of his shit, which was what he basically wanted from every person left on the damned planet.

And Rubbin had just killed one of Monk's boys.  Bullet gave her a look, a look that said, "You done right but doing right has a price and you might have to pay it."  So, she backed away slowly while Monk cradled the boy's head in his lap and got into Bullet's car, the vette with the machine guns mounted on the roof.

Bullet heard the vette's engine fire up.  Rubbin gunned the car outta town, lighting up the machine guns in the midst of the Road Demons bikes, fucking up many of them and cutting their mechanic in half.  Bullet managed to get a hold of the door and crawled through, getting dragged along the road.

They got away up to Kip-town, where Baby could deal with Monk and his pissed off crew.

Next up: Bullet's, Baby's and Dent's intro moves and violence at the wedding.

Spent the first bit of the game filling out info on their holds.  Both have manufactories (West Point makes lumber, Kip-town - cows).  We sped up time a month and just let them ease into things.  I didn't make any hard moves, lots of vague future badnesses and some apocalyptica vomitting but honestly, nothing heavy.

It was the two hardholders, Bullet at West Point and Baby at Kip-town and Dent, the Faceless, roaming between the two, hammer in hand.  Dent has become an unmitigated bad-ass.  Or as JJ said so aptly, "Take moves from other character types...why would I?  I have so many awesome choices with the Faceless...as soon as I get enough XP together, I will be able to TALK to my mask and ask it advice."

Baby talks to Turk and Mary, the Kipsie's elderly parents and confidants.  She plays it smart, keeping them alive and keeping the Kipsie's second on as her second because they know Kip-town and she does not.

Her hold-related gang is a group of fucking savage heyenas, real bastards.  They were Kipsie's old gang but their leader now is a bald monster named Monk.

Bullet is doing the same kindsa shit down south, meeting with the town leaders from Bear who have relocated to West Point.  Not much is decided, they are just getting the feel of this leadership thing.

Bullet meets with an Elder from Cannibal Country.
Baby meets with a messenger from Dog-head, the warlord from the city, the guy whose lady-friend they kidnapped the first game, bringing her back to her dad in Poles fro execution.

Bullet and Dent play bad-cop and good-cop on the cannibal, whose name is Mariner.  Truth is, Bullet wants to let them into his town for some good ole commerce but he doesn't think his people are ready for that, after reading a sitch and getting info on how much they fear cannibals.  Also, Dent was eye-fucking Mariner the whole time, offering to kill him, introducing himself as, "Dent, killer of cannibals and anything else that walks."

But Bullet and Dent know shit now.  They know a bit about the Cannibals and have pieced together that this is where Gams is getting her drugs.

Baby states that if Dog-head wants to talk to her, he'd have to come up to Kip-town.

So, ya know, Dog-head get's on his old garbage barge and floats up to Kip-town.

The barge meets some of the Road Demons first and they toss some grenades at the boat, take some shots.

Things don't go to well from there.