Just Outside the City: Mission Aborted

Pre-Game

We haven't played in a while and of the regular players, only Barry and Padraic could be there tonight.  The good news is that both Barry and Padraic have extra characters who haven't gotten a whole lot of table time.  Padraic made up his Savvyhead and we launched into Barry's Quarantine.  He had woken up the Major and was sent north to the nearest Army base to find remnants of the chain of command.

Randall, a friend of Barry's and guy who I've known from around for a while, was there when I arrived.  Barry asked if it was cool if he made up a character too and I reckoned that was fine.  Randall made up a male Battlebabe named Butane, a bad-ass with a monstrous rifle and a bright blue tuxedo.

The Quarantine made a roll to find out another clue about the apocalypse.  Barry asked me what they had tried and failed.  I told him that the army had started a psychic spec ops battalion but that it had ended poorly and his squad had been called on to hunt them down and kill them.

"So, you're saying that my squad hunted psychics?"

"Army trained experimental psychics...yeah."

"Wow."

Padraic made his Savvyhead, Nimbus, whose workshop was a Goodyear blimp.

I picked a spot on the New York State map, between Albany and Watertown and put the town of Tower.

Maybe Seven Samurai...nope

I needed to bring everyone together.  I decided that the blimp was a solid place to start.  Nimbus was bringing it down, a storm was incoming and a town built around a radio tower was the best bet.  Everyone saw the dirigible land in a nearby field.

Tower is a small town, behind on its payments to the Five Points Empire.  Their hardholder, Mother is hoping to get the radio working again in order to communicate with other towns.  But the Five Points have made it clear that they had to pay their tribute.  And in walk the PC's...

Mother was talking to Nimbus when Captain Dale came out of the forest in a poncho made by squid-eaters to help disguise the squad.  Dale looks like Five Points Empire muscle.  She draws her pistol, starts screaming at him.

Dale puts out his hands tells her that he is not affiliated with any local groups and asks her to notice the laser sites blooming all over her chest.

Rolled Manipulation and failed, one of the many failed rolls Barry would make that night.

She opens fire on Dale but the kevlar soaks it up and his damage roll is fine, he ends up on his back, dropped his gun.  The squad opens fire and she dies, the townsfolk who came to see the dirigible run, and Nimbus screams, runs towards his air-ship.

And that was the last we saw of Tower for the night.

Other Bits:

Butane's Intro
The Storm
Into the Maelstrom
Seize by Force
Rescue
Seize by Force

I really want to write about last night's game, same campain but back with the founding Hudson River Valley crew.

So, to sum up this session:

Dale leads his team into an entrenched encampment of Five Point Empire guys.  He fails his roll and his team get's brutalized.  One goes down with a head-wound, another is shot and he takes Harm.  His Harm roll goes poorly and he's out.  When he wakes up, he's naked, chained up, being asked questions about where he stole his gear.  They can tell him and his boys are not from around here.

Menendez, one of Dale's soldiers, makes his way back to the dirigible and Nimbus tries to leave him around because the Private is going mad due to the maelstrom and he's just a kind of beligerent dick.  He ends up shooting Menendez off the dirigible, killing him.

Before that the Savvyhead does his augury and I get to describe the difference between doing augury and just seeing into the maelstrom.  One is scrubbing at the window of the maelstrom and trying to see in.  The other is opening the window and stepping in, maybe re-arranging furniture.  Nimbus makes contact with the Five Points Empire networked brainer and realizes that the wires coming out of the back of his skull allow him to communicate with his four other cloned brothers.

The savvyhead and the tuxedo-wearing battlebabe break into the Five Points Empire camp and save their friends.  When Dale get's free, he has a confrontation with their psychic kid,  with a tattoo onhis forehead: III (as in, III of V).  He slits the kids' throat, old school army-psychic-hunting style.

I had no idea that the savvyhead and the  battlebabe would attempt a rescue and I definitely didn't think it would work.  Neat.

The big emotional beat for Captain Dale is that he is done being a soldier.  He has taken off his rank and has asked his comrades to just call him Dale, no rank, the mission is over, there is no sign of the chain of command; its over.  Time to find their place in this world.

Now there's this other odd posse in the Hudson River Valley, the Five Points Empire is down one brainer.  Things move along...