It's a Cold, Cold World
The world's ending in ice, not in fire. People who bother to talk to the oldsters hear that first the world was getting hotter, and then it got colder, and then it got way cold, and then it got bad. Maybe it was something they did to try to fix the warming, stupid as that sounds nowadays.
As the winters got worse and the summers got winter, people started to go underground. Some went in bits and pieces, converting subways and steam tunnels, but if they really had their shit together they built something shiny-new, deep and well-stocked. The luxe ones and the jury-rigged ones alike became known as "Cores." The lucky got in and the unlucky stayed topside.
Things break; the Cores couldn't remain sealed forever. The surfacers had had a much rougher time of it, scavenging for heat and food and shelter enough not to end up a corpsicle. The cultural exchange was a little rough at first, but each side had stuff the other wanted. That was a ways back; the surfacer/core distinction is more about pedigree than practicality nowadays.
The known world goes from the edges of the sea-ice on the east coast, west (along the highway that is the frozen river) and north and south until you run out of ruined cityscape and start getting into wilderness and the cannibal tribes. There there be dragons. Sometimes travelers come through claiming to be from other, distant Cores, and there are people who range the wastes and claim to know safe ways through.
The Yard’s Golden Age iron fence has gotten some beefing up into a proper compound since the local Core (built around four miles of steam tunnels and a subway station, among other things) opened up. It’s a little ways from the where the river hits the southern tip of the s-kink it takes before continuing west. The Yardies have good relations with the Beaverhold that lies on their side of the river to the east, dealing through them with Administrator Romulus at Government Center.
The cast:
Lobsterclaw, the Chopper. His gang of snowmobile-riding hard bastards -- the Claw Crew-- operates out of an old boathouse by the river.
VERITAS, the Hocus. Her secret society, Phi Beta Kappa, reveres the written word and hordes books while structuring themselves in layers of initiations and titles like P.h.D, Magna cum Laude and Assistant Dean of Housing.
Nero, the Operator. A cold-as-ice, James Dean looking motherfucker. He's got a super hot, way competent crew of highly skilled badasses... as long as he can keep the gigs in order and the jingle flowing. Preferably while staying ahead of Romulus' boys, a neighboring hardholder (and his father).
Dirty Snow
Tum-Tum’s gotten knocked up. Her man, Hill, left the Yard and left her in the lurch. Tum-Tum’s sad about it. Her brother Dremmer isn’t too pleased, either. Which is why he’s paying Nero a fuckton of jingle to make sure that Hill never comes back.
Nero’s got Cloud and Feather, pretty blond sharp-faced killers. Cloud has a tendency to stare off into the distance vacantly when he’s not engaged in murder or rutting, and Feather has the personality of a razor blade, but they’re both good at their jobs. Nero had got word that Hill had run off north to Belmont Medical, and was making some kind of courier run back. He has the route.
They’re just along as consultants, though. He tossed this one to the Claw Crew, offering them as pay whatever he was carrying. They’re lounging around behind snow banks, waiting for Hill to come topside via a manhole cover. Sunny, one of the crew, is making snow angels, his assault rifle across his chest. Cloud and Feather sit apart, together, quietly. They all come to attention as the manhole cover slides away with a scrape, and they hear Hill saying goodbye to his pals, and pushing the cover back.
Lobster lets him get a little ways, but not so far he’ll make the cover of a building. He guns his snowmobile and comes roaring through a snowbank, a huge man in blue camouflage and a bulletproof vest. Hill pulls a pistol, which tickles a little before a machete takes his hand off at the wrist. The Crew takes their lead from Lobster, circling and taking potshots. Sunny, smiling the big smile that earned him his name, finishes it by pulling up beside Hill and planting his crowbar in his head before grabbing his courier bag. Lobster makes doubly sure by parking his growling machine on him, popping the clutch and revving.
Hill dies ugly in the snow. Dremmer paid enough for ugly.
***
VERITAS is sitting in her library underground, scrawling intensely into a ratty notebook. Stacks of books, moldering golden age texts and ones transcribed by her students on crude paper. Dictionaries and Thesauri and Encyclopedias take pride of place, but there’s everything from Reader’s Digest to academic journals to technical manuals to Harlequin novels. Times are good. Her students sit around, philosophizing and shooting up. Three of her tenured faculty are trancing out together, Blood’s reading a text in a distant voice while Salt and Slack rock back and forth.
A dirty-faced girl comes in. She’s probably pretty, under all of it. She’s maybe seventeen. VERITAS sits up, in her academic robes and hood, made of Golden Age plastifabric. Her eyes glow reptile-like in the dim light. “Yes?”
“I... I have a question.” She’s small and withdrawn, which isn’t actually like the rodents that run around the tunnels at all. They’re fierce sons-of-bitches. She blurts it out, though. “Can you tell if someone’s pregnant?”
VERITAS stares at her for too long. “Come into my office.” She stands and turns in a spin of crimson robes and heads back to her office, not a separate room but a cave of books. There’s a huge wingbacked chair, a bar stool, and a couple of folding chairs leaning against a wall. VERITAS sits in the chair, and Tum Tum perches.
“Have you ever had sex?” she intones, leaning in closely.
“... yes. I... I just want to be able to tell Hill...” she hesitates over the words before saying, “the father.”
“Let me... consider.” VERITAS sits, and contemplates, and opens her mind.
In front of her expands a vast sea of words. She knows many words, but she can never tell what the ones far away mean; they come into focus, not like through a lens but for her mind. They swirl, the ones in focus forming a garble and then becoming clear, in words of red: the father was killed.
VERITAS jerks back into reality, eyes wide. There is a long pause as she scribbles in her notes, muttering. She looks up, then down, then up again with awkward, halting movements.
“I have understood.” VERITAS begins suddenly, loudly. “I’m...” She stops again and stares, her manic intensity fading into something resembling empathy. “I’m sorry. Hill isn’t alive anymore.” Tum Tum’s face falls, confused and hurt. VERITAS puts a hand on hers in comfort, a show of rare affection. “Don’t worry. We are here, and we will care for you.”
Tum Tum sniffles and looks down at the floor. Finally, she whispers, “I... I don’t know how to read.”
“That’s all right.” VERITAS smiles. “We will teach you.”
***
After showing the Crew to the manhole cover, Nero climbed behind Grass on her machine and roared off back towards Lobster’s boathouse. Grass is one of Nero’s, but rides like one of the Crew because she used to be. She’s actually Lobster’s niece; when Nero headhunted her, he got one of the Yard’s best mechanics. Something of a sore point with the gang, but bikes need fixing, so they grit their teeth and alternate between being pissed at Grass, for deserting, and Nero, for luring her away.
They roll up on the boathouse from the frozen river side, with the ramp and the large doors. As the engine dies, they hear... fucking. And screaming. “Shit,” mutters Nero. “Go left, quiet.” They draw pistols and go to opposite doors; Nero kicks his in.
He sees Dust, one of his crew, dangling by his thumbs while a thug digs into his stomach with a sharp stick. He’s one of the ones screaming. In the corner are Frost, June, and Grace -- Dust’s whores -- probably not getting paid for what’s being done to them by three others. Between those three and the rest of the room, holding guns, are two more, keeping an eye on some of the Crew -- Clam, Fox, and Tooth, plus Big Tuna, although he’s lying against the wall and not moving.
Romulus’ goons. Nero figures the one with the stick for their bossman, and lets him look all the way down the barrel of his magnum. “Tell them to drop their guns or you get a new hole in your head.” He’s ripshit, no-one messes with his crew like this, but cold.
The man slowly lowers the stick, looks him dully in the eye. “Your daddy wants to talk to you.”
BANG. The back of his head explodes outwards to the wall, and there’s a moment where he stands before flopping bonelessly to the ground.
The two with guns look at him, eyes wide. He goes to try the same move on them and they just open fire. He flings himself back, firing, towards the boathouse door while Grass opens up with her nine from the other side. A shotgun demolishes part of the heavy wood in a hail of splinters and the submachine traces fire across the wall and both sides of the double door, with Nero in between. He feels something warm and wet.
One of the two goes down to Grass, and the other turns on her. Nero draws a bead through the pain. Click. A rat-a-tat-tat and a cry from Grass. Clam and Fox and Tooth rush him; he rounds and takes out Clam’s knee in a spray of blood, and then the submachine gun clicks empty. The Crew is on him with boots and fists.
The three who were in the corner with the whores still have their pants down and are scrambling for their weapons. Nero forces himself to his feet through the pain in his belly and levels his empty gun at one of them as he’s about to grab an assault rifle off the floor. The man hesitates. Nero’s hand is steady.
“Anyone who can still walk, can walk with whatever they’re holding.”
The man still hesitates over the gun. The sound of Clam, Fox and Tooth beating his buddy to death echoes off of the ceiling of the big room.
“How do I know you won’t just shoot us?”
Nero lowers his gun to his side, eases the hammer down on the empty chamber. The man starts to back away, and then eyes the gleaming rifle.
“You’re not holding that,” Nero clarifies. The man pulls up his pants, and he and his three buddies start shuffling out.
Nero starts gives orders in a loud, clear voice. “Tooth, go get Key, fast.” Key is part of Nero’s crew, a medico. The door closes behind the three brutes. “Fox...” he takes the assault rifle and passes it to him, speaking quietly now. He picks up the submachine gun, takes a clip from the corpse, loads it. “They don’t walk away.”
They’re starting up their snowmobiles when Fox and Nero come out and gun them down in a hail of bullets.
Mechanical notes:
Nero worked two gigs, Doing Murders (Hill) and Technical Work (fixing the Claw Crew’s bikes). He got a weak hit, and chose tech work to go poorly, figuring the hurt feelings about Grass would be the problem. Since he was leaving his Avoiding Romulus gig unworked, it didn’t quite turn out that way (the third gig is Fucking, hence Dust).
VERITAS’ cult are academics -- argumentative, but drug-fixated with a disdain for fashion, luxury, and convention. Also a powerful psychic antenna, but that didn’t come up until next session.
The Claw Crew are well-armored and disciplined.