LogWanderers-Jason-11

Game log for the 2017/03/12 session of Wanderers, as taken by Jason

Having departed Sparta, the group is headed for the Cliffs of Insanity... except for Major Tom, left for dead back in Sparta. Eight ways east of Sparta, we've posted up in Brampton, a settlement built mostly underground, or at least dug in to the ground. The settlement gets water from the deeper tunnels, which get low enough to ooze water occasionally. This is actually Ace's home settlement. We stumble into a bar called the Red Leather Purse.

Another group of travellers arrives, and one of them, disturbingly enough, looks to be Major Tom. Tom heads right to the stage and begins setting up. Sekhmet tosses the previous singer off the stage. Fulton, the barkeep, almost pulls a shotgun before Tom shuts him down. Grey Rat and Ace exchange confused looks. Spoonman suggests that maybe Grey Rat should apologize, but Ace and Grey Rat disagree, because Grey Rat isn't sorry.

A large guy with an artificial arm comes in and gives Ace a big old hug. "Ace! My boy! Why didn't you tell me you were home?" Melody inserts herself into the conversation and maneuvers Ace into introducing her to his family. Ace's mom shows up promptly thereafter, and congratulates Melody on shooting Ace's car. While mom and Melody bond, Ace asks after his sisters Rocket and Betty. Rocket's knocked up, Betty's on the road, and Dad thinks Ace's refusal to take responsibility for his offspring brings shame to the game. Ace catches his Dad up on recent events, and Dad comes up with the idea of zipping over to Sparta and looting it dry. Ace suggests getting Spoonman to build him some protective equipment before he loots a place covered in poisonous mystery slime.

Ace's Dad goes to visit Spoonman and asks for a consult on his wife's cough but also if he can make protective gear for Sparta. Spoonman begins work on an augury-powered goo replicator.

Grey Rat waits for a break in the set and goes to talk to Major Tom. Grey Rat comes right to it and says that the Major Tom he knew died. That gets Sekhmet's attention, but Grey Rat says there's no problem.

Fifi opens her brain, trying to find a path to someone who can properly fix up all her wounds. One path in the jungle leads to Spoonman, but all the jungle vegetation along that path is dead. This feels like a bad omen. She finds one path that leads to a pool, and dipping herself in the pool makes her feel refreshed, but when she gets out, she feels like she's covered in tar sand. Tar sand means the Tangle, and that's ten days west, whereas the Cliffs are east.

When the conversation ends, Sekhmet asks Tom whether he's a slime creature. They conclude that Tom is not evil, and that though Grey Rat is not entirely trustworthy, he's useful.

Ace's Dad brings his Mom, Harvard, and Melody over. Spoonman takes Ace's Mom into the taco truck and starts working. She either needs new lungs, or cyberlungs. Spoonman eventually works something up, but it uses up his entirely supply of impermeable rubber. In exchange, Ace's dad coughs up 2-barter worth of money and mushrooms. Spoonman's disgusted by the low pay scale.

Ace consults the psychic maelstrom on how to ditch Melody. The action movies show him leaving her on the homestead while she says, "Come back to me, Cowboy! Come back to me!" Ace's parents insist that he and his friends have to stay for dinner, and everyone but Fifi agrees. Even the band are going to come over.

Grey Rat finds the one guy in town who isn't from here and asks him about what's east of Brampton. There's a place called Big Sky right on the edge of the salt flats, and after that, it's 40 days at least before anything. The stranger knows about the cult with the faceless kid - he calls them Specters. The idea of them wiping out whole towns or having black goo is new to him, though. Grey Rat warns him to stay off the road to Sparta.

Dinner at Chez Ace! Rhino makes some advances on Grey Rat. Grey Rat gently moves his arm aside and does a deep brain scan on Rhino. Rhino's secret pain is his lack of a father figure; his lowest moment was when he killed the previous guitarist / lead singer; and he does not deal well with rejection, hence the sad fate of the previous front man. Major Tom tries to cheer Rhino up but it's hard going. Tom ends up cooking the mushrooms. They don't turn out well. Dinner's awkward, with Ace's mom failing to draw Sekhmet out, but failing utterly. However, Ace does his level best to be super congenial and help Melody bond with his family, and that goes very well indeed.

At some point during the show, Ace's Dad makes a crack about Ace that gets Major Tom laughing, and then Ace's Dad sees that Major Tom has the Fix. He asks Ace to get Tom out of the house, right now, with no bloodshed. Ace hustles them into the kitchen, and breaks the news, at which point Sekhmet plants a big kiss on Major Tom, so they can share everything. Ace asks them to leave, and they do.

Tom goes out to the van and consults the maelstrom. He finds Spoonman working the meat counter. Nope. He goes to pharmacy, where the clerk has no lips. He asks for help with his trench mouth. The clerk asks him to wait while he autoclaves the scalpels and heats the flaming brand.

Fifi goes to the taco truck to wait for Spoonman. Randy's voice box on the truckasks what she needs, and they carry on a conversation about Fifi's woes. Randy/the taco truck thinks Fifi has a nice body. The truck invites Fifi to come inside to wait and opens its back door, but Fifi wants no part of it. The truck makes chicken noises, invites her inside, and then finally yells, "You can't handle the truth!" None of it convinces Fifi to go inside. Instead, she pulls her shotgun and threatens to shoot the truck. "Ooooh, I'm soooo scared." At that point she just takes off.

Ace asks Spoonman for advice on the Major Tom Fix situation. Spoonman wants Major Tom to come to him for treatment.

Fifi goes looking for Spoonman, but he finds her instead. Meanwhile he's talking to the truck. It wants him to put her and some gruel in a box to see what happens. Even Spoonman can tell that this does not make sense, which raises the question of why Randy wants to do stuff to Fifi so badly. Meanwhile, he calculates that fixing Fifi requires time and assistance, or exposing her to risk by using the crap tubing he has on hand. After Spoons explains the various difficulties attending the situation, he says, "we should probably fuck."

When they do that, he can see what's wrong with her more clearly. She's being pursued by something in the psychic maelstrom. He shouts "Eureka!" as he climaxes. He also gets her memories of the argument with Randy, and finds out that the last person she had sex with was Nutsack back at the Lido Deck.

Now that they're all finished, Spoonman gives her the anesthetic, and then he and Grey Rat go to work on her. When she wakes up, her Harm is down to 3 o'clock. As they work, Randy keeps trying to convince Spoonman to scoop out Fifi's brain and connect it through some servos to make a targeting system. Also, as Spoonman and Grey Rat talk during the surgery, Grey Rat learns that Major Tom has the Fix.

Ace goes to try to convince Melody to stay in town. He offers to leave her with some barter goods. She considers the idea, but just won't accept being separated from Ace. Ace's Mom intervenes, and the experience of having Melody and Mom gang up on him leads to Ace departing in a rage.

When Ace goes to pack up in the morning, he finds Melody loading up the war buggy... without Harvard. She thinks she decided to leave Harvard behind. Ace disagrees. She says that he has no choice, and Ace gives into rage and slaps her. She fights back and it turns into a brawl.

Major Tom starts playing along to the fight, and decides to crack the world open. He reaches into the maelstrom to connect to the Sun cult. He makes the connection but the backlash knocks him unconscious. To the outside world, he cranks out a thunderous harmonica blast, and in the following silence, we hear chanting, and maybe whalesong? And then Tom cries tears of blood and falls over.

Zippo, the local enforcer vigilante thug, steps up and says, "Ace, buddy, what's going on here?" (Ace has +1 forward with Zippo.) Ace also leaves a couple of barter with Zippo, to make sure the deal is exactly what he offered. Grey Rat suggests that we should all leave. Spoonman wants to wait until the sample is processed.

Randy and Spoonman confirm that there's Fix in the food. He sets to curing it. That will take months of research. He'll need to contain the Fix, and that will either kill people or put them at risk. He will need a gene sequencer for the workspace, and those are relics of the golden age past.