Alright, fast forward.

Baby, Dent, Marsh and Bullet are all in Dent's shiny new deuce and a half, parked in frotn of Kip-town.  The Chopper, the Faceless, the Brainer and the Driver are screaming at one another.  Out of game, Barry, JJ, KK and Padraic are more or less screaming at one another.  I let them know that I won't let it go on for too much longer before we go to dice or something.

Ya see, Baby's boys rolled into town proud as hell of their boss, who opened fire on cannibal soldiers at West Point (their facts were fuct).  Bullet is in debt to the Kipsie and he was ready to barter for some fancy driving down to Bear to put them under Kip-town's heel but when he heard about West Point, a fine place to control the southern part of the Hudson, the Kipsie got ideas.

Bullet was ready to give his daddy's car to Kipsie as a hostage...not the gunned up Vette but his daddy's Nascar, the car that is hidden away in storage somewhere, the one that hasn't ever been driven in game yet.  In return, the Kipsie would allow Bullet to rule West Point as hardholder but under the Kipsie, in his name.  The Kipsie liked how Bullet talks about his dad; one of the Kipsie's big motivations for making Kip-town a safe place was to give his parents a place to grow old gracefully. 

Dent thought that was pretty reasonable, but then, Dent had been looking at this bridge and his hammer, back to the bridge and then at his hammer all night, wondering if he could break it...break the suspension bridge with a few swings.  Dent wasn't too worried about the Kipsie or Kip-town.  I am reminded of those lines for Dune, "He who can destroy a thing controls that thing."

Bowing down to the Kipsie stuck in Baby and Marsh's craw, hence the yelling.  Bullet just wants to start building something, to start being decent.  He is noble intentions wrapped around .30 caliber bullets and a fast car.

After yelling all night (10-15 minutes of game time), the crew went to talk to the Kipsie. 

I had described Kipsie's motorcycle gangs as not really his own.  He keeps them working through barter and smarts but they aren't particularly beholden to him so much.  Kipsie has a solid group of folks around him, including the Dancer.  They all sat down, biker gang leaders standing around the table, watching the proceedings.

The proceedings went around in circles for a while and then the Kipsie said something about no one having to bow down to him.  I tell everyone that he is fucking lying.

Baby fucking shoots him.  Seize by Force.

The king is dead, hail to the queen.

In last week's game, if you follow along, you might have noticed that Baby didn't do shit.  That is because Baby didn't do shit.  KK was exhausted and when I put situations in front of her, she'd look at me, nod and that was that.  I have gamed with KK for years, so I didn't sweat it, thinking that if it became a pattern, I'd ask if she was enjoying herself.  Tonight, KK was back and it was nice to have her at the table.

In the last few rolls of the night, Baby and Bullet got improvements; they both took their advancements from the Hardholder's book.  Bullet will be the Hardholder of West Point and Baby will be the Hardholder of Kip-town.

"Yeah, the Kipsie's dead but how long until we have to worry about this despot killing us!" Bullet said.

"But this despot's Baby; we know her."

Heh.

It was one of those nights where if I didn't have to open a library in the morning and if I didn't have a battle in my skull between my sinus infection and my antibiotics, I might've seriously thought about gaming all damned night.  We had that kind of momentum.

Other things to post about later:

 - Rubbin's arc
 - Food, food, food

 - Baby wanted military motorcycles for her boys.
 - Dent wanted a big army truck...like the kind with a canvas top (a deuce and a half,      Barry told us, it is called).
 - Bullet wanted a crane, a working construction crane.
 - Marsh wanted...to meet Cannibals.

I don't recall the mix of misses and 7-9's but it was a nice mix and it resulted in this:

They they were, cannibals in their homemade suits, almost Amish looking but if Amish were special forces soldiers in an apocalyptic world with matching AR-15's assault rifles, gathered around the deuce and a half they had just salvaged with their shiny new crane.

Baby wasn't having it and opened fire, seizing the crane.  She took some shots but drove them off; they took cover behind the truck.

Things got nasty.  Everyone got shot but Baby kept seizing shit by force, so she got really shot up.  Everyone else I had roll their Harm right when it happened but I forgot with Baby, so when the fight was all over, after Marsh had knifed the little boy, Elijah, to keep him from revealing his stealthy position, after Bullet had been pinned down but backed Baby up, after Dent had attempted to get into melee but got shot and lost his grip on his hammer, after Baby sent them running again and I decided that they were done messing with her and they were in full retreat, numbers be damned, she collapsed with 3 damage.

The only doctors worth a damn was in Kip-town.

They stowed her in Bullet's 'vette (he went and got it) and he sprinted on up to the biggest city on the Hudson River.  The rest followed.

Ah, but I'm missing stuff, missing how Baby ended up possessed by the spirit of dead, Elijah and how Rubbin asked Baby if she should kill Bullet because he killed her entire family and a few other things.

But the important facts are there.  Baby's bleeding out and Bullet's running her up north to Kip-town.

That is the important stuff, that sets up everything else.

Dent and Marsh went to Bear to round up Baby's boys to meet up in Kip-town.

Bullet got into Kip-town and made a deal with their warlord, the Kipsie.

Yeah, I need to do dishes and to bed.  I'll start there tomorrow in Kip-town.

I drove right by Bear Mountain today but didn't get to see the bridge.

The game has given me an odd knowledge of the Hudson River bridges.

Neat.

The Dubious Morality of Bullit

At the end of the last session, Barry, who plays Bullit, said with a straight face, totally earnest, "Bullit is obviously the most moral person in the group."

"Barry, Bullit, drove a girl to her death.  You delivered her to her father and she told you all that her father would kill her and that he had slept with her."

"Yeah...but at heart he's a good southern boy."

?!

As everyone perused the map and talked about what to do and where to go next, Bullit said something like, "Guys, if we come across some warlord's princess...can we just leave her.  I mean, let's leave other people's problems to them.  I don't want to be remembered for only doing mercenary shit.  Wouldn't it be nice to be remembered for doing good things, for making the world a better place?"

Everyone scoffed at that.  Bullit wants to be a knight in NASCAR armor, riding a Corvette with machine guns into battle but the Apocalypse World just isn't helping him.

Toyota's kids were in his truck, outside of Saffron's place.  When they saw Bullit's 'vette, they started throwing rocks at it.  When Bullit got out of the car and talked to them, they waited until his back was turned and then they threw rocks at him.  Toyota has nine kids.

Toyota and Bullit talked some shit right as the game began but nothing came of it until the end of the night.  "Bullit, you are always saying that your American-made junk is faster than my so-called rice-burner...fuck that.  Let's race.  We need to know if the bridge up at Beacon is still standing or if the Kipsie's boys have gotten to that one too.  Let's race, first one to find out the fate of Beacon and get back first...wins."

Saffron drops the starting rag.  Bullit let's Toyota pull in front of him off of the starting line.  Toyota has his kids piled into the back of his truck.  Bullit fires a few rounds into the engine compartment but Toyota keeps going, daring him to really open fire.  As Toyota had said earlier, "You don't have the stones to kill me and my kids.  You aren't that cold."

I tell Barry that in order to stop him, he'll have to destroy the truck and kill everyone in it.  Bullit spins the wheels, turns off the guns and the 'vette jumps off of the starting line.  At the end of the race, Toyota is up front.  It is a text book example of the offensive driving maneuver that Bullit's dad taught him first, the one he had been dreaming about last session.

He rolled a 7-9 on winning this race under fire.

"You can win but you have to execute that move, coming up behind Toyota on a turn and spinning his truck, knocking him off the road."

Barry grimaces and does it.  "If he was a driver worth a damn he'd be able to pull out of this spin."  Bullit wins, Toyota goes off the road into a heap.

When he goes back to Toyota's truck after the race, to salvage gas, oil and car fluids, there is one kid left alive, a little girl.

"Her name is Rubbin."

Oh, right...Beacon was in flames, falling into the Hudson.

Bear Explodes

Stomp talked to Dent about finding work, mentioned a job he had turned down, something about leaving a bag on the bridge for one of Kipsie's boys to pick up (the Kipsie is the warlord of Kip-town).

Meanwhile, Marsh has some unfinished business.  We roll and he get's 7-9, meaning he can find his mugger unarmed or unaware but not both.  He chooses unaware and finds him mugging another guy, big bowie knife up to the guy's throat...a bad scene.  He touches the mugger (whose name I forget) and does Brainer juju on him, making him stick his face in the river until he passes out, then while he's out he cuts out his tongue.

The guy getting mugged is named Dremmer and offers to buy Marsh a drink at Saffron's place and offers him in on a job he's in town to do for the Kipsie, some kind of drop-off.  His partner died on the way down, got caught by a squid while shaving near the river.

Long story short: Marsh and Dremmer are on the bridge and Dremmer has dropped off the package, near one of the support cables.  Marsh knows damned well that he is leaving a bomb on Bear.  Through some Brainer juju, he knows that Dremmer is more ashamed of what he  has just done than anything else he has ever done but the shame is drowned out by his real fear of being without food and shelter this winter.

The bomb explodes just before dawn, the bridge lurches and leans, some cables snap.  Dremmer starts getting aggressively drunk.  The town is trying to figure out what the fuck just happened.

I took a map of upstate New York and marked up Duchess County with red and black sharpie markers.  I X'ed out all of the bridges into the cities.  If you want in to NYC, you have to crawl down the western roads or make a deal with the cannibals who control the tunnels.

I labeled New Jersey as Cannibal Country (partly an homage to a post-apoc PTA game from a few years ago and partly because I grew up in New Jersey).

At the base of the Hudson I wrote, "Squid up through Kip-town," because I read that the Hudson is brackish right up to that point and I also saw a youtube video about these fucking squid on the west coast and liked the idea of them having made it this far east and up the Hudson.

Stuck Pole on the eastern side of the Hudson, coming out of the city, put Dog head's 'hold, Coop, in Yonkers.  The other 'holds are bridges, leading up to Kip-town, the self-proclaimed capital of the region. 

The players headed to Bear, the nearest bridge town.

Brandy came in with her Maestro'D this game.  We finished her character, Saffron and stuck her joint in Bear.  Saffron wears a big, purple dress with ruffles and lace, has a bodyguard who knows his business named Shmee.  I start the game with Shmee bringing in Been, a guy who owes Saffron.

I like starting off a new character with them making a judgment call.  She wants to cut on him and rolls 7-9, so there's a rough choice involved.  I say that she can do it but Shmee will get cut up a bit in the process.  She cuts on Been anyway, putting a little fork in his tongue to remind him to pay up on his debt, not caring that he lost his shipment on the river because of squid.

On a piece of paper I wrote the following words:

Rival
Lover
Unfinished Business
Friend

And asked questions, handing out one off the list to each of them.

Turns out Bullit has a rival, one of Saffron's customers named Toyota.  He drives a rusted out Toyota truck that he piles his nine kids into the bed, giving them weapons.

Baby's lover is one of Saffron's girls, Newton.  Newton wants her to buy out her contract so she can leave Bear and travel around with Baby's gang on the back of her bike.

Marsh has unfinished business, having been mugged last time he was in town by a guy who had pretended to be his buddy and gotten drinks with him.

Dent had a friend, another faceless named Stomp, with a mask made from car-seat leather and tremendous boots that give him his name.

And the whole game drove on from those four bits, those questions the players answered.

Bits of last night's game to write about later:

 - a little about Bear

 - Dent pays in violence

 - Bullit's race

 - Bear explodes

 - Saffron's Bouncer 

Thanks for the feedback, folks.  It has all been very helpful.

Threat 4 - Kip-town Thugs

Kind: Brutes/Hunting Pack

Impulse: to victimize anyone vulnerable

Descriptions and Cast: Kip-town has a well fortified bridge across the Hudson and is seeking to control all methods of crossing the Hudson before winter sets in.

The Kipsie - the warlord, out to make Kip-town safe for his aging parents

Dancer - Kipsie's bodyguard

Custom Move:

Crossing the Hudson (not the Kip-town Bridge)

10+ you find a willing ferry-man who takes people across out of spite, hating the thugs of Kip-town.

7-9 you get across but choose one:
- Giant River Squid attack!
- Rabid Kip-town thugs.

Miss: River squid and rabid thugs and something falls into the river.
(for some reason, this is my least favorite custom move, thoughts?)