LogWanderers-Jason-2

Game log for the 2016/11/13 session of Wanderers, as taken by Jason

Spoonman sees the kid with no face and nopes right off the tanker. He starts loading up his taco truck instead. Ace asks him what's going on and all he'll say is "It's not right." Grey Rat tries to calm him down with a gentle hand on the shoulder, using some of his weird mojo, but gets it wrong and gives him a painful jolt instead. Ace, in a hurry to wrap up so he can go back indoors and get healed, jumps up on the truck to look inside and see what has Spoonman all wigged out, and Fifi follows, stopping to check the situation. The kid starts levitating out of the tanker, reaching out to touch her. She opens fire, followed by Ace, and the kid takes many wounds, then slumps back into the tanker. Ace goes to look into the hatch, sees the kid flopping around, and shoots him some more. He stops moving... for a second, and then starts flopping around again. On close examination, it seems like it's something under the surface of his body making him flop around. Ace suggests to Fifi that they should try fire. As they talk, the body begins to shrivel in on itself and bubble. He's turning into some sort of black tar, which drips out the holes in the tanker and hisses. And we bought this mess back to the Lido Deck. The problem here may be us.

Ace goes to visit Sweatband in hopes of making this his problem. As he approaches, Sweatband punches him right in the face, and orders his goons to bring Ace along, as Sweatband goes to see what the hell is wrong with the truck. When Ace can't tell them what the sizzling tar stuff is, they drag him closer to it and tell him he's about to find out.

Major Tom tries to access the maelstrom. All the sudden he sees himself pushing a cart through a suburban supermarket. He hears a voice on the intercom calling for a cleanup on aisle 5. He's in aisle 5. There's a broken jar of black tar sizzling on the floor, melting the linoleum. The tar starts to crawl for him. There are jars full of the same goo on the shelves, shaking, and some of them knock themselves off the shelves so their goo can crawl toward him too. Ace is panicking, not wanting to go facefirst into the goo, but not able to put up a fight when he's so outnumbered and also full of bullet wounds. With Grey Rat providing a show of force, Spoonman orders them to steer clear of the crap or they're all dead. Sweatband and his men let Ace slump down but don't let go of him.

Spoonman endorses Ace's idea - siphon out some fuel and try to light the black tar crap on fire. Always kill stuff with fire. Ace also suggests that Spoonman can probably find a way to rig a pump to spray fuel onto the tar from a distance. Grey Rat helps him out. Sweatband hands Spoonman a hand grenade to help the burning process along. Spoonman doesn't really want to use it, so Sweatband tries to take it back, but Spoonman wants to hold it a little longer. Just at the edge of hearing, there's a high-pitched squealing noise. The crew then explains to Sweatband about the raider convoy they trashed, and Sweatband agrees to set them free.

Spoonman starts raving about how he needs crash test dummies. There ain't no such thing. We'll have to go find some. The team goes to report to Captain Crook, with most of Satan's Prom Date on guard duty over their booty. They're ushered onto the bridge to report, and she acknowledges that a lot of raiders got whacked, and SPD lost some men, but the evil in the tanker remains unexplained. Captain Crook agrees to comp our medical and give us 50 gallons of diesel each, but wants us to get out once we're able, and stay gone for a while.

As they load up, Fifi asks Spoonman what he wants the crast test dummies for. He says, "Listen, if I want to pack something with meat, I don't want it to be made of meat." Whatever. Ace arrives wearing no pants and the group sallies forth into the unknown. We've got Major Tom and SPD scouting, Fifi running security, and Spoonman coordinating logistics. At one point there's a mixup with SPD's chose route and we find ourselves turned around. Navigating using sand dunes as landmarks will get you into trouble eventually. Having to reorient screws up our supply situation a bit.

When we stop for the night, Spoonman goes to the back of the truck for a while and then comes out with some weird gloves on his hands. He tries to persuade Grey Rat to be his test subject, but the Brainer wants no part of Spoonman's crazy experiments. Ace volunteers. There's a lot of deranged screaming but Spoonie gets his new shock gloves dialed in before Ace runs out of patience. Mama Cass gets a little worried about what's left of Ace's carcass, but she doesn't get a vote.

When we get within sight of Sparta, Grey Rat stops to open his brain. He hears "Blinded By The Light" and sees a glow coming from it. Major Tom follows suit and finds himself back in the supermarket. "Attention shoppers: For the next 15 minutes, all items marked with a red tag are 90% off!" At that point he hears the sound of a thousand shoppers rioting for their discounts, overruning anyone who stands between them and all that crap that nobody needs. Tom goes into a bit of a fugue, and when he doesn't respond to a little shaking, Spoonman pulls the Major into his workshop. Some members of the gang contemplate defending their boss, but Baseball stops them. Spoonman puts an amplifier into Major Tom, making his shouting much louder and a little Darth Vader-y. He also has an implanted mixer to control the sound. The bad news is that when his batteries die, he can't be heard. He stars speaking in a hoarse whisper to save power.

Sparta's an old container ship. Spoonman immediately opens his mind and follows the veins toward crash test dummies. He never quite finds them but he gets a strong feeling that they're out there. Major Tom also goes looking for batteries, and Ace for a utilikilt. Unfortunately, Ace and Tom have both made unfriends here before, so this isn't entirely safe for them.

Grey Frog goes looking for someone who might know where Fast Freddy's caravan is, or when it's due. He ends up talking to Bully, who doesn't know where it is, where's he going, or when he'll come around again, but seems interested in being bribed. The end up drinking together in The Pitt. Nabs pours them something made from tires. Once properly lubricated, Bully says that Fast Freddy's been through this season, driving a mule train. He then tries to get Grey Rat to tell him what he wants from Fast Freddy. Bully somehow guesses that GR wants "the box of pain." Bully's seen it and knows that Fast Freddy has it. He used it on fight night, and got kicked out for that, headed north. As they talk, two guys in orange robes walk in, and suddenly Nabs is extremely nervous. Grey Rat notices that they're cut their lips off. Fascinating. Bully explains that there's a virus going around that causes gum lesions, and the Sun Cult cut their lips off to prove that they're pure. He then calls them crazy fuckers. To their faces. Interesting choice!

Ace finds a sort of skirt-thing made out of a waistband and a bunch of hanging belts. He buys it.

Tom goes looking for a battery recharger, like a solar recharging unit or something. Turns out he doesn't need to buy it, Corbeau has one and will trade it for 2-barter and Baseball's bike. Of course, Baseball doesn't feel like giving up his bike. Major Tom tries to exert his will on Baseball but his new voicebox doesn't come through for him - seems like one of the capacitors just conked out. When Baseball refuses to cave to his newly mute leader, Tom kills him, and then goes looking for Spoonman to get repairs. He begins to get the sense that maybe he's being followed. He goes into The Jukebox to drink and lay a little lower. Major Tom can see that someone followed him in and then went away.

Fifi goes looking for a place to hang out and solicit bodyguard work. She ends up at The Pit, after Grey Rat moved on, and starts drinking their proprietary "Scorpion Piss" crap. She consults her psychic maelstrom, a jungle, and gets chased out of it by a group of tigers with human faces. As she sits there at the bar, feeling a little freaked out, a guy comes in asking if she does freelance hits. He knows a guy who owes him money and he wants to collect, which means he'd like Fifi to come with him to collect the debt. She gives him a good looking-over and thinks he's sincere but is probably underselling the job. He'll give her two grenades as payment if she's up for it, one up front, one when the job's done. She accepts the deal and he introduces himself as Dremmer.

Spoonman lets it be known that he wants to buy crash test dummies, and the market does its thing. A guy named Nose says that Bailey Blue owns the Body Emporium, and would trade with him for the right price, if he had an introduction. Spoonman trades Nose some rations for the introduction and they're off. As they go inside the actual Sparta, they can hear the sound of a dance beat coming from somewhere, and they move across catwalks and through improvised corridors cut through the containers. Eventually they come to the place, and Nose says he needs to go in by himself to introduce Spoonman to Bailey Blue. If Spoonman goes in without being introduced first, it will be bad, so he has to trust Nose on this. After a while, Nose comes out and says that she'll see him. Spoonman walks in, Nose leaves. Spoonman sees an enormous Asian with pure white eyes, who reaches out, grabs him, and leads him in. When Bailey Blue finally comes in, he sees right away that she's crazy, and his attempt to read her fails. He asks her for crash test dummies. She's got them. She calls them "bodies" but assures him that few of her bodies are made of meat. She then offers to show him her collection, he accepts, and she leads him up a ladder into a new container, which is packed to the gills with mannikins, crash test dummies, etc. "These," she says, "are my children." Other people might be spooked, but not our Spoonman! They start talking deal. She wants one of his eyes. He wants to make a new one first, but sure, he can do that! They shake on the deal, at which time she notices his shock gloves, and tells him they're intriguing. She offers him a drink, he accepts, she gives him a brandy snifter full of something green, he slams in, she criticizes him for not savoring his beverage, and then they start talking shop. She wants his services because "Abraham has fallen on hard times." He doesn't speak anymore. He feels sure he can fix that! She leads him through a maze of mannikins, during which trek he feels oddly sure that a mannikin tried to grab him, and shows him a tall, thin, bearded mannikin-thing in a stovepipe hat. Yep, it's an animatronic Abe Lincoln. Spoonman has exactly the thing to fix him! He wants to trade the repair work done for the crash test dummy, avoiding the need to give her his eye, but she wants the eye. Then they go to settle up, and they get their swerve on. He realizes that she has severe abandonment issues, that her prior bed partner had power but no affection for her, and she was last "handled" by someone named Cain, who had cold hands. She prefers not to cuddle. She then has Chun escort Spoonman from the premises. As he leaves, she gives him the crash test dummies. He must have made quite an impression!

Ace rolls into The Jukebox as Delilah starts singing. He notices that Major Tom has found a bodyguard (Phineas Phogg) who can read, and has him acting as a voice. He's barely settled when Dremmer, Fifi, and a pack of thugs come in. The music stops instantly and the situation gets charged. "What's going on, Captain Tom?" Dremmer asks. Tom can only nod in response. Ace tries to see if Fifi is really with Dremmer on this, and though she tries to give him a reassuring look, it's not a natural look for her and Ace ends up convinced that she's purely in work mode and might just kill him first.

Major Tom gestures for Dremmer to join him, then tries to reach for his gun under the table. Dremmer beats him to it by jabbing him firmly in the testes with a collapsible baton, under the table. Tom gasps and drops his pistol. Dremmer, disgusted by this treachery, tells Fifi that Major Tom is too stupid to learn a leson, and she should waste him. Tom hands Phineas a note saying "I'll make it up to you." Fifi suggests they could come up with something better than killing, because she knows this Major Tom. Dremmer wants Major Tom to pay; Fifi thinks they can extract enough from Major Tom to keep Dremmer's rep for setting fully intact. Fifi suggests taking Major Tom's bike; Dremmer says that he's not concerned with vehicles, the deal was about guns and ammo. Tom replies that the guns were shit. Dremmer offers to take it back, but it's spent. Fifi puts her gun to Major Tom's head and Ace, panicked, offers to pay up. Dremmer wants 2-barter and Major Tom's gun. That squares everyone up, and Dremmer says they can do business again.

Fifi takes the time, over drinks, to calm Major Tom, Satan's Prom Date, and Ace down and reassure them that she was always on their side and never actually intended to kill anyone. She also gives Ace one of her grenades.