As in my earlier actual play reports, small green text indicates out of character talk, mechanics and other game aspects outside of the fiction.
Our main characters are:
- Gator (the Gunlugger/Hardholder) is an assassin and part-time bodyguard who wears customized scrounged armor made from Kevlar and ceramic inserts. Camouflaged for the jungle, his face was ruined in a fight with an alligator. His eyes are always sizing things up and his brutal life has left his body a hard sheet of muscle. His gang of mercenaries now run white's former holding: the Big Ship.
- Jarhead (the Savvyhead) is a thin African-American man with a short goatee, long dreads, and clothes covered in pockets and gear. Travelling around in an old news van, he repairs items for a living. He is investigating a device that can bend space and time. He has also obtained employees in the form of a young woman Allison and her brother Waters as well as a little girl named Memo. His old mentor Sir Fredricks warned him of danger from the psychic maelstrom. He built a weapon to kill 'the gods' and is working for a ghost in the maelstrom.
- November Orleans (the Skinner/Battlebabe) is descended from a family which left New Orleans before it sank. She is a beautiful woman of mixed heritage with dark eyes and skin, a sweet face and lush body. She dresses herself in a mix of scavenged clothing that somehow works together and wears a necklace made from rows of antique coins which jingle and shine as she moves. Her main profession is as a dancer, especially belly dancing, but she has a sideline business in cooking and animal training. She works for the "gods" but hopes to betray them.
- Violet Jefferson (the Touchstone/Scholar) is descended from survivalists and her clothing and gear reflects her origins. Plain looking but fit, she carries a pocket copy of the Federalist papers and founding documents of the United States of America, an idea she hopes to revive. She recovered from the wound November inflicted but they have not reconciled.
As of last session, Gator now runs the Big Ship as hardholder and is busy dealing with a climber infestation. Jarhead has numerous projects occupying his attention: White’s new body, Violet’s recovery, shock collars and the God Smiter. November’s plans are also moving quickly.
As if the “wheels of universe are being greased for you, probably in blood. The gods are like that.”
Wound-wise people were in good shape, the downtime left Gator and November unharmed and Violet at 1-harm. Jarhead never rests so he is still at 2-harm.
”I ain’t got time to rest.”
Finally Lily has left Violet’s followers, upset at how things turned out.
“It’s probably not going to come back to haunt you,” I say.
We dub her “the last deserter” and Violet comments, “she probably wasn’t a true believer anyway.”
Start of Session
First highlighting:- Gator marks Sharp (by Jarhead) and Hard.
- Jarhead highlights Weird (thanks to November) and Hard. I struggle with the last one but since violence is in the air choose I know he will roll hard for his gang soon.
- November unsurprisingly gets Hot (by Jarhead) and Sharp.
”I don’t need your puritanical judgements,” she says.
- Violet marks Cool (by Jarhead as well) and Sharp.
“I finally know people!” Jarhead says.
”It’s only taken the entire game.”
Next Violet rolls Fortunes and gets 8. She chooses disease.
“That will be fun,” I cackle.
”I’m tired of argumentative,’ she explains.
Then Gator rolls Wealth and gets a 12, so all is good. He marks experience and I mark up my countdown clocks and we begin.
The God Smiter
Jarhead tightens the last bolt holding the Tesla sphere in place. Behind him Rox attaches the final leads while the rest of the gang keeps watch.Violet props herself up in her gurney as she pours over some Golden Age document on her tablet. Her fingers manipulate the touch screen like cold sausages. She tries to shake the cobwebs from her head from Jarhead’s drugs. Distantly she notices a metallic banging.
We establish Violet’s wealth at 9.5 barter. “Just tell me when you want to buy that fleet of attack motorcycles.”
I also point out she could leave Jarhead’s care if she wanted. “You could get a lawn chair and soak in some rays for a week.”
Shazah looks over to Jarhead, his massive sword gun pointed at door.
Jarhead frowns and calls out, “Who is it?”
A woman’s voice barks, “I want to talk to Violet.”
“Not much of a name,” he says.
“It’s Fire! Let me in,” she says after a long pause.
Jarhead glances at Violet. She nods. The tinkerer says, “cool beans. Let her in. Be careful though.”
The powerful warrior unlatches the door. An armored teenager girl pushes past him toward Violet.
“What are you doing lying around here for?” she accuses the survivalist. “I figured you at least would have something to do around here?”
“There’s plenty to do, but we have time to do it,” Violet says calmly.
“What do you think about this mess here?” Fire says loudly.
“What Gator?”
“Yes, Gator! A.T. thinks Gator is a good guy but I know you at least wanted some sort of real change after White.”
Violet sighs. “Gator...he’s made up his mind. It seems like the people here seem to agree with him. The best way to make democracy work is to use people who are behind it. If we don’t, it won’t be long before somebody else, possibly worse, takes his place. My plan is to let them be. We are going to find somewhere else and make it work there.”
Violet rolls manipulate a person to make Fire see reason, she gets a 7.
“That’s not horrible, I could do a lot worse,” she says.
“You could do one worse, that would be a lot worse.”
Fire eyes the weary woman before her. After a long moment she crashes down into the chair beside her. “Damn it,” she mutters. “The Militia is falling apart. Most of them seem to want to give up on restoring democracy.”
“It’s not too late,” Violet says, struggling through the haze in her head. “We just have to find the right way.”
“But we need people,” Fire says staring her in the eyes. “With A.T. running things the Militia is useless. Maybe if you talk to them, you can get their spirits back up. Then we could all work on this new place.”
Violet nods. “It won’t be easy but if we put our hearts into it I think we can. I’ll talk to them.”
Thus agreeing to pay Fire’s price.
The young woman leans back and stretches. “Alright. It’s just been frustrating. We put so much effort into this just to see it all fall apart.”
“It’s hard,” Violet says, studying her potential ally.
Violet reads a person and gets 8. She also marks experience.
Jarhead decides to joins the conversation. “She’s interrupting my concentration,” he says. He helps her roll successfully though it doesn’t change the result.
Jarhead comes up beside her.
Fire looks up. “So you’re some sort of wonder maker aren’t you?”
“Me? Well I’m not going to toot my own horn but yes,” he says smiling.
“I heard you have ways of seeing things,” Fire says with surprising gentleness.
“Yes. I see things. I see you right now,” he jokes. “Come on lady spit it out.”
“I mean you can find things in the Maelstrom,’ she says.
“I can sometimes. The Maelstrom is not easy to deal with. Why? What do you want?”
She looks away. “There’s somebody I’ve been looking for.”
“Who are you looking for?”
“A man,” she says turning back towards him, her eyes low. “His name is Adam.”
Hmm I think we’ve heard that name before.
“Is he dead?” Jarhead asks. “Alive? Undead?”
“I don’t know. I want to find out.” Finally she looks him in the eye. “He failed me.”
“I can take a look but it will cost. Anything worthwhile in this world costs something.”
“How much?”
“I can do it for one barter but I can’t do it now. It will take a day or two.”
“I’ve been waiting a while,” she says getting up.
“Alright hommy?”
She looks at him oddly and leaves.
Violet finally asks, what does she intend to do?
”It’s pretty clear she intends to try to wrest part of Militia from A.T. and establish democracy someplace.”
“Well then that’s fine.”
Next we jump to Gator.
We establish that his wheel of punishments is finished.
Gator shifts in his cracked leather chair. Around the round table, his key advisors and warriors share space with the latest crop of petitioners looking for something from the new government.
Currently an odorous pair of women occupied those chairs.
Joe’s Girl scratches her balding head. “Joe’s feeling really sick right now,” she explains.
Jessica pipes up. “He’s all really hot to the touch.”
“Have you checked his eyes?” he asks.
Jessica rubs her arms and glances at Joe’s Girl.
Gator reads a person and gets a 9. He gains experience.
“He’s been looking off into space,” Joe’s Girl says. ”He’s really sick.”
”What do they wish I would do?” he asks.
”Get someone to take care of Joe,” I tell him.
“Has he gone to any healers?” the new leader asks.
“Well we don’t really have anyone,” she says. “People have been saying that the creepy guy you’ve got down in the old workshop can patch people. But we haven’t gone down there.”
“That would be Jarhead,” he explains as she claws at her mangy hair. “He could provide such services, you’d just have to make a deal with him.”
“We don’t really have anything. There hasn’t been time to do any scavenging yet. We don’t have anything to trade.”
“If you make a deal and honor that deal, I’m sure he’ll work something out with you.”
The pair nod to him. “Okay we’ll go talk to him.”
“Tell him I sent you and to treat you fairly,” he tells them as they rise. “He’s pretty good at that.”
Gator sips a glass of water as he waits for the next batch. Suddenly heavy gunfire rattles the room as the main guns rumble to life.
“Secure the deck!” he shouts to his advisors as he heads for his sniper’s perch.
On to November. We review the notable members of her gang: the giant Lafferty, Tern (a road warrior biker chick), Jonker (a driver sort), Sunset (all white robes and meditation hiding swords and shotguns), and the Kite family (survivalists who know how to decontaminate food and water).
November and Tern work on the motorcycle. November looks east. The dancer shields her eyes from the blazing sun overhead. The Big Ship looms in the distance, towering over the shoreline ruins.
Tern tightens another nut. “It will be good to get back on the road. I can’t stand being in one place this long.”
November nods and asks her about her travels. Moments stretch out they quietly exchange stories. Slowly Tern falls under her spell.
November uses Hypnotize on her and gets an 10. Her goal is to make Tern and Lafferty her second in commands, bound to her by Hypnotize and Manipulation. She also marks experience.
November stops mid-sentence. Only the sound of rolling waves fills the air. That and the scattered footfalls of a couple dozen people moving through ruins around them.
November rolls read a charged sitch and gets a 9. What should I be on the lookout for? she asks. She also marks experience.
Her sharps eyes spot one, a blank faced woman, as she runs past. The runner moves without fear or hesitation, cuts covering her legs where her clothes have worn away.
“Climbers,” she whispers. “It is an attack.”
As Tern looks around, November says, “stick with me, we need to get to cover before Gator’s men start shooting. Jonker should be a block over in that ruined hardware store.”
The roar of machine gun fills their ears.
Back to Gator.
Gator scans the bay from his perch. As he loads a round into his sniper rifle, he notes the scores of people slogging through the waist deep water.
He reads a sitch and gets an 11. He gains experience.
He starts with, “what should I be on the lookout for? Which enemy is the biggest threat?”
The machine gun fire churns the bay, slicing down the blindly racing figures. The survivors don’t react to the carnage. Searching the crowd with his scope, he picks out women and children among the climber swarm. He scans the ruins for reinforcements finding only empty shells. He focuses on a small knot of former warriors in the crowd.
He grabs a voice tube, “focus fire on unarmored! They are all infected, we need to wipe them out.”
Gator rolls Leadership and gets a 9. “They didn’t turn on me at least,” he says.
Then he goes aggro against the armored foes to snipe him and gets a 8. He gains two experience for those actions.
Taking aim he begins to fire on the main threat as his men mop the floor with the softer targets. The churning water obscures his quarry, but his gun’s mighty blasts knock some sense into them. The fighters scatter, trading progress for survival.
Gator’s gang exchanges harm dealing 4-harm to the climbers, reducing them to a small gang.
In the midst of this my wife takes to showing the baby off to the other players.
”Stop swinging him at the computer!”
“But it’s fun!” she says.
Jarhead looks up as the blasts of the guns thrum through the hull. “Good to know the guns work. I betcha he wish we upgraded them.”
“What’s going on?” Violet says from her gurney.
“Shazah see what is happening,” the tinkerer orders.
The muscular warrior hurries out.
Back to November. She rolls acting under fire to avoid trouble from the bullets flying through air. Despite getting a +2 for reading a sitch earlier (because she has perfect instincts) she gets a 6!
A few stray rounds fly overhead as Tern weaves her motorcycle through the ruins. She pulls up short as a whistling noise shrieks past them. A white blur strikes the building where Jonkers was working, exploding in a spray of rebar and concrete.
Smoke and fire rises from the structure as November and Tern picks themselves off the broken asphalt. The dancer rubs the spot where a chunk the size of a child’s head bounced off her breastplate.
Back to the battle. As Gator engages in other activities the climbers advance. His gang mows down most of them, reducing them from a small gang to a few survivors.
Gator instead opens his brain to see where they came from. He rolls hard since this is a battle. He gets a 14! Since this is advanced he sees past the maelstrom. He gains experience since he has Battlefield Instincts.
The guardians of the Big Ship carve the attackers into smaller and smaller knots. The machine guns wind down as the defenders must fire straight down at the encroaching swarm.
As the climbers pull themselves up the rusted hull of the ship, Gator looks out past the battle into the new wetlands of Miami. His eyes caught subtle hints among the attackers: a syringe sticking from a neck, icons fashioned from old plastic cups around another. These people came from 711. White infected them and sent them against the Autodoc.
Then he looks beyond. Step pyramids rise from a jungle that appears beyond these people. He pushes past the ornate stones and blood soaked stairs. Past the illusion. He sees the gods for what they truly are: withered old men and woman, their minds trapped in the maelstrom so long that they’ve turned to goo. Minds filled with hate, feeding on each other until nothing is left but sickening mush. A mush that hates and hungers.
”Damn old people.”
“Fucking old people,” November says.
”Who else would it be in Florida.”
Jarhead agrees, “I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised.”
”Damn snowbirds.” Violet adds.
November decides to read a sitch to learn how she can rescue Jonker. It is a new situation, so I allow it. She gets a 12! She also marks experience.
What is my best way in? Knock down a telephone pole and race across.
What is my enemy’s true position? The fire has engulfed half of the building but only on the exterior.
What is my best escape route from the inside? Use Jonker’s car to smash through the far wall. It will damage the car.
November scrambles to her feet. The building shudders as the fire licks at it. “Tern, head for the back! I’ll catch up to you!”
As her second in command tears off, November turns, pulling her shotgun. She blasts the rotten wood of a nearby telephone pole. The thirty foot beam crashes down, smashing a hole in the burning structure.
I have November roll acting under fire for all of this crazy action. She gets a 13.
This next bit happens a bit later as I switch between the players but for the purposes of narrative we’ll put it here.
Racing across the beam, she jumps through the flames and into the smoke-filled interior. Jonker coughs and pulls himself off the floor.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” she shouts. “There’s a weak point in the wall. We’ve got to go through it.”
As flaming debris drops down, the crazy haired man protests. “It’s going to wreck the front end. I just fixed this thing.”
The flames begin to spread through the building. “It’s going to be metal slag if we wait!”
November rolls manipulate a person and gets a 7. She also earns experience and advances.
“We are going to fix this thing before we leave Miami,” he says adjusting his goggles as he gets into the armored car. “I’m not leaving my ride.”
“Of course,” she says sliding into shotgun.
To see how the escape goes I have her roll acting under fire again. It is another 13.
Jonker punches it. The car crashes through the wall with the sound of flexing metal and popping headlights. The windshield becomes a mosaic of star patterns but November makes out blue sky as they race from the inferno, over the grill and into the streets.
Back to the workshop.
Shazah races back into the workshop. He slams the door close and bolts it shut. “We’ve got crazy people climbing up the side of the ship!” the tattooed warrior shouts.
“That’s not good,” Jarhead mutters. “I wish he’d let me upgrade those guns.”
Jarhead asks who is in the workshop. I tell him Rox, half his gang (Mercy is out getting supplies), Waters and Memo.
The tinker heads for the door. “As much fun as it would be to just stick here, it’s going to a whole lot harder to get supplies if everyone is dead outside. We’ve got to go out there.”
“I’ll go with you,” Violet says pulling herself from her gurney.
Jarhead rolls Leadership to rally his gang. He fails with a 5. At least he gets experience.
“Let’s go!” Jarhead shouts to the others.
“Hell no!” Shazah says. “I’m not going out there. I’m not getting covered in spores.”
The other warriors looks to each other and nod.
“Yeah boss that’s a bad place out there,” says one with a chromed football helmet.
Jarhead’s shoulder sag. “What? Some gang you are.”
“We should seal the air vents too,” Shazah says. “Just in case.”
“That’s not actually a bad idea,” Jarhead says. Then Rox lights the welding torch. “No, not permanently!”
The crowd ignore him and immediately go to work on sealing the place up.
Violet shrugs and grabs her gun. “Let’s go.”
Jarhead tosses her a homemade gas mask. “It’s dangerous to go out alone, take this.”
He turns to the gang as they reach the door. “You guys! I don’t like you as much anymore. Waters, Memo. Don’t let anyone touch anything they shouldn’t touch.”
The kids glance at each other. “Alright.”
“If they make trouble use the detonator.”
Water tries not to search around. “Okay.”
Jarhead rolls manipulate a person with the threat of implied violence and gets a 9.
The tinkerer points to the big red button on the metal endoskeleton. Everyone’s eyes go wide. He closes the door behind him with a solid clang.
We return to Gator and a second round of shooting. He goes aggro and this time he rolls an 11. Since he has Not To Be Fucked With he deals 3-harm +1 for Blood Crazed to the entire small gang. Armor piercing on top of that. There is one survivor. He also marks experience.
Gator snaps out of his reverie. As the waters of the bay calm, he sights the armored climbers, picking them off in a rapid succession of shots. 30 seconds later only corpses fill the bay. Somewhere down below a lone survivor bangs on the rusted hull.
He glances to the deck. Three climbers limp aboard. Fifty or sixty men surround them. The hail of gunfire is deafening and swift.
Gator uses the last of his hold for read a sitch. What is my enemy’s true position?
Something gnaws at him. Some clue he should have picked up on. Like an itch he can’t scratch. Then he spots him. Joe.
Gator rolls Indomitable and gets a 9. He spends one hold from that to get to Joe. He also marks experience.
“There’s one more armored guy at the bottom,” he shouts down. “Keep him off! I’m going after Joe.”
He jumps on a zip line and sails over the market to the far end of the deck. As he slides faster and faster he spots Jarhead and Violet coming up. Around the corner from them Joe and his girls move in with weapons drawn.
He lands in a crouch between the two groups.
Violet and Jarhead both read a sitch. Violet gets an 11, Jarhead a 7. She also marks experience.
“I’m pretty sure I know who is control here,” Violet says.
”Yeah it’s a bone of contention between you and some people,” I remark.
What should I be on the lookout for? she asks.
Which enemy is the biggest threat? is her second question.
Which enemy is most vulnerable? she asks last.
Violet’s eyes dart behind him where long shadows emerge from beyond the corner. The large one lines up with the rifle butt clearing the edge. She ducks down as a blank faced man rounds it, rifle at the ready. A mangy woman with a pistol flanks him followed by an even more ragged one with a knife.
Gator doesn’t hesitate. His MP5 tears through all three as he steps between them and their quarry.
Gator seizes by force. “I tried being nice!” he says. He gets a 12 and doubles down on little harm. He uses the last of his hold from Indomitable to protect Jarhead (who would have been hit for 0-harm and otherwise suffer a harm move). He also marks experience.
Their shots ring off his armor, shots meant for the bewildered inventor. Gator checks their bleeding corpses and glances over to his men as they clean up.
“Hey is that one moving?” Wire shouts from the edge of the Big Ship.
“Let me see,” Morgana says looking down her rifle barrel. A single shot rings out.
“How about that one there? He looks like he’s sloshing around,” Wire says moments before another shot is heard.
“I guess we weren’t needed after all,” Violet remarks.
”My work here is done,” Jarhead says heading back down below.
“Not done yet,” Gator says stopping him. “The gods are sending everything they’ve got at us. I hope you’re ready.”
“I need a certain person’s assistance,” he hints.
The players quickly discuss if November is their best option. Memo comes up as a possibility but they decide against harming a little girl.
“I guess the cat’s out of the bag anyway,” Gator says surveying the damage. “I’ll get her. You stay in your workshop and hole up.”
“Aye-aye,” he replies with a mock salute.
Gator looks at Violet. “Can you keep an eye on him? It’s important.”
“Fine by me,” she says.
The pair turn and head for the stairs. Before they get far however a familiar voice shouts out to them.
“Hey Violet!” Boo says rushing up to them along with several other members of the Republicans. “We’ve been looking for you, trying to catch up.” He catches his breath. “You look a lot better.”
“Better than I was,” she says.
“So what’s the plan?” the older man says searching her face. “Things don’t seem to have worked out like we hoped.”
“Seems that way,” she says. “Short term make sure nothing happens to Jarhead. Long term I’ll fill you in when we get where we are going.”
As she moves to leave, he says, “well it would be nice to know what the plan is now.”
“Alright, the short version is that we are going to found new holding and make this work there. But you heard the gun shots upstairs.”
He scratches his chin. “Yeah a lot of climber problems here.”
“They’ve held them off for now but the climbers will keep coming until Jarhead’s work is done. We need someone to aim it into the Maelstrom. It should end that threat.”
”She’s going to be your scope,” I tell Gator.
”Nice I like it.”
A murmur moves through the men and women around her.
“How can we help?” Boo asks.
“At this point we need to make sure Jarhead’s work isn’t compromised. We need people to shore up defenses too. Half of you stay up top and the rest follow me.”
AOL leads the men upstairs while Starbuck trails behind Boo and his son as they follow Violet to the workshop.
“We’ve got to make sure nothing happens to this device,” she says as they move through the dimly lit corridors.
“Sounds important,” he says scratching at his arm.
”Where did Lily get off to?” Starbucks asks. “Wasn’t she with you.”
“She left,” she says.
“She left?” he says.
November takes the move Cooperative. She takes Jonkers and Tern back to the Big Ship. I add that Jonkers needs supplies to fix his car.
Gator surveys the clean up. Crudehammer looks over the side and drops a single grenade. A boom and blood filled spray later, he gives his boss a thumbs up.
“Burn everything,” Gator orders as a pair of men equipped with flamethrowers arrive. He then directs his staff to conscript every able-bodied man they can, especially those who have been causing trouble lately.
Gator earned two advances in the conflict. He increases his gang from medium to large and loses decadent and perverse from his holding’s attributes.
“You’ve set enough examples now,” November says.
Then he turns to Morgana. “I’ve got a job for you. November should be on shore. Go and retrieve her. Be quick, it’s important. I’ll be in the workshop below.”
She nods and immediately heads out.
A speed boat slices through the water towards the beach, reaching it a few moments before Jonker’s car pulls to a halt.
Morgana hops off as November steps out of the vehicle.
“The boss wants to talk to you,” she says. Behind her, Wire carefully clambers off the boat, a heavy tank sloshing on his back.
“Did he say what about?” November asks.
“I imagine it has to do with the climber attack.”
“Yeah saw that.”
“He said to take you to Jarhead.” Then she turns to Wire and another soldier. “You two clean the beach.”
Wire ignites his flame thrower and begins to torch the corpses floating onto shore. Then November, Morgana, and the others speed back to the holding.
To Jarhead and Violet.
Jarhead pushes on the workshop door. It doesn't budge. “Open up!” he shouts pounding on it.
"Who’s there?" a muffled voice says.
“Me? It’s my workshop.”
"I think it's Jarhead," a voice says.
"Jarhead?" says someone else. "How can we be sure? He could have the climbers."
Violet steps up as the murmur of voices grows in volume. “I can verify for all of you that he does not have the climbers nor do the rest of us!”
She uses towering presence and gets a 10.
The door clangs open. Jarhead stomps inside. His protectors keep their distance as he checks his tools and gear. He glares at everyone as they hold their breath in the stale air. Cautiously Shazah locks the door behind them.
The techno-savages eye Violet's Republicans. They look back unsteadily.
Someone bangs on the door.
“Open up!” Gator shouts from outside.
"Who locked the door again?" Jarhead says testily. “Open it up.”
Shazah looks over his sword gun still pointed at this entrance. "What about the climbers?"
“They’re dead.”
Jarhead rolls manipulate a person and gets a 8.
“Okay but give me a mask," the barbarian demands.
Jarhead throws over his and the warrior opens up the door.
Gator strides in flanked by one of his men. “Is there anything else we need?”
"Hold on one second," Jarhead says as he turns to his guards. "If you guys are not going to listen to me, you can just get the fuck out. I’ll give you masks.”
Rox steps closer to him, her hands raised up slightly. “No, it's just we are really keyed up. The climbers are really scary things and we just want to make sure you're safe.”
His shoulders relax slightly. "Instead of saying 'no we are not going to do it', try saying let’s do it this way so it's safer. Like ‘here Jarhead remember to take your armor'.”
Rox nods and then steps a little closer. “Okay. Jarhead why are Violet’s followers all so scratchy?”
The lights go out.
That sounds like a good place to cut. See you in two weeks for the thrilling conclusion.
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