Introducing
Jackabacka - A huge hairy guy with only one eye. Lives in an old overcluttered trailer outside town. Makes booze. Cares for a daughter named Fleece.
Sun - High priest of Brine.
The tenth and final session
We started by highlighting, as usual. (We have been highlighting at the start of every session) and Glenn spent his improvement to advance Open your brain, Go aggro and Seduce/manipulate. A GOOD MOVE as it would turn out.
Right after the party in last session, Tai somehow got into bed with III. As he is the savvyhead, he learns who made III the way she is, and who handled her last. Turns out III got herself crazy by seeing beyond the maelstrom, and the last to handle her was Canaveral, protecting III from Brine's influence. Tai has also had a dream where he visited a place of strange and powerful technology hidden in The Pit.
Canaveral has gotten a gig travelling around with Ik, who is head missionary in the new Peacewater church. Most of the time they dig wells, bless people and teach religion, but sometimes they come back and need patching up. Only recently has Canaveral realised that they get hurt because sometimes they preach by violence.
Sin has been playing at the old store man's place for a week or so. People gather there, it's become a thing, and tonight someone gives her some water when she takes a break. While she has stepped away from the guitar, Rufo and Rose busts in. Sin is eyeing them making their way to the guitar, and Rose grabs it - Surely she won't harm it, Sin thinks - But yes, her mom grabs the antiquity and smashes it to cinders on the counter. Everybody falls quiet and watches. Rose throws a fit at Sin and asks her why the hell nothing is good enough for her, why she comes back to New Jerk not giving her a moment of attention, ignoring Rose's plans for her well-being and immediately signs up to play at some dudes place every night.
Sin bites back, but then apologises and tell her, in front of everybody, that she just needs some time to do what she wants, and then she'll do what her mom wants: "Kill Daimyo and take his place" Seduce/manipulate -> BAM! Sin's mom is an ally!
Sin gets a place to stay from her mom, which she shares with Tai. She plans to turn it into a proper bar (The Grill burnt down a few months back) and Tai is a-okay with that. Sin goes to see Jackabacka, and tells him she wants him to make booze for her bar. He doesn't really say anything, he just wants to make liquir, get payed and live alone. Fleece shows Sin her father's box of pre-apocalypse photographs, which makes Jackabacka pissed off. Sin promises to come back the next day, with sweets for Fleece.
Tai decides to try and bring electricity to their new shack, and he visits Daff, who is busy building a cathedral for the Peacewater Church. Daff trades some schematics for solar power in exchange for a glue gun. Poor Daff! Attention span of a puppy dog.
Caneveral gets back to town, and while me and Jonatan are playing this out, Cannie and Sin are talking. I didn't catch what the players were talking about, but Sin has spontaneously decided to open her brain on the way to Jackabacka the next day. BAM! She sees beyond the maelstrom!
What happens is, Sin is in her water purification plant, and realises there is an exit door. She opens it and steps out, and she is back in the desert. Now she sees not just through the maelstrom, but she sees the maelstrom itself - Strings and strands of tiny particles, going everywhere, carrying information and knowledge. A nanite bacterium that has devoured life, and now is omni-present. Think the final scene of The Matrix.
Sin and Cannie both know that Brine must die for this land to be safe. With her newfound powers, Sin seek out Brine, who is super-excited about someone else manipulating the strings of the maelstrom. Sin tells her that she holds Canaveral hostage, and promises to bring Cannie to her if Brine will let her, and grants them safe passage.
All Brine really wants is to know and have everything. If she can have Caneveral, and maybe even Sin and Tai, she must have them.
They decide to go to Sunken City.
Sin sleeps with Daimyo in a nazi uniform in exchange for guns and grenades. Sin whispers Brace name to the maelstrom.
On their way to Sunken City, they pass Freetown, where they make glass out of glass storm shards. There they come across - surprise! Brace and Razor! Sin aces another manipulation roll, and now Razor is her ally as well.
They pay "Brazor" handsomely to protect them in Sunken City. At night, Tai wakes up at Razor oogling his mechanical arm. I was going for a PC-NPC triangle/different relations, but it didn't really go anywhere, so whatever. :)
Something is following them, always. A deep motor sound, with vehicle itself staying just outside of sight.
They get to Sunken City, and EVERYONE is out greeting them, holding torches across the walkway out over the water. The sun is setting beyond the black ziggurat-like and broken skyscraper where Brine resides. Her mouthpiece, Sun is there. I describe him as James Earl Jones-like. Yes, I was totally ripping of Conan at this point.
The PC's + Brazor walks into Sunken City, with all of it's people surrounding them and making way for them. Canaveral plays her part as a hostage. (Brine has never met Sin, and she kind of likes Tai) The humvee-kinda vehicle that's been following them has caught up with them too, waiting on dry land. Sun demands that they hand over their weapons. Sin refuses. Things get a little hot, some people get stabbed, Sin aces another manipulation roll. BAM! Sun sees the same holiness in her as in Brine, so he decides to carry her sword for her, (but return it later)
They go into to the black skyscraper with Sun. Brace and Razor stay behind. They're walking in dark and watery corridors, with Brine's voice in the loudspeakers, eager with anticipation. The mold-machine-creatures are here, gathering in larger and larger numbers, watching them. They arrive at the gates to Brines chamber. James is there too. (One of the fallen a year back.) He is one of them now.
Canaveral rolls for Visions of Death. Brine will die now.
And now they flip their shit, Sin grabs her katana and slices James up, Canaveral throws a grenade, and misses her roll. She manages to take cover behind the gates, but Sin and Tai doesn't catch up with what's happening. Tai is wounded, Sin is out of the action, and permanently deaf on one ear. Tai drags Sin into Braces chamber, as the torn asunder mold-creatures throws themselves at them.
Canaveral faces Brine's suspended body and slits her throat. Sin screams through the loudspeakers and retreat deep into the maelstrom. Tai catches and isolates her in his augury bionic arm. He throws his grenade, misses too, and takes a torrent of shrapnel. The building moans and cringe. Mold-creatures die. Canaveral wakes Sin up with Healing Touch. Sin expands her other four moves (Hx from friendly fire!) and rolls a sieze by force of 13. She flips the fuck out and kiiiiiiiilllllls the rest of the mold creatures around.
Sin opens her brain, finds the strands Brine used to control the mold people and turn the remaining ones in Sunken City against the people of the city. Brine dissipates in Tai's hand, the maelstrom particles that made her turn into dust and wind and she is gone forever.
They get to the surface, where Brace and Razor are firing away. The humvee is racing across the bridge, with Brace shooting and shooting into the driver seat until it turns over and crashes. Reckoning was driving it, but now he is mangled. The car carries the dead. Levis is there, dragging a gun out of it before Razor picks him off.
They get a big mold-creature to flip it back up again and drive out of the calamity.
...
With Brine dead and gone, maybe this shithole of California can survive. It'll be miserable and violent at times... But everyone will have a chance to do their best, and no dead and crazy queen will drop a nuke on them or take over their minds and end it all.