LogWanderers-Jason-3

Game log for the 2016/11/20 session of Wanderers, as taken by Jason

Major Tom, broke and unable to even buy food, orders Softball to give up her barter for him. She does, but desertion becomes a real problem for the gang. A week or so passes between sessions, and almost everyone goes looking for work.

Ace gets told that Cain will see him. He hadn't actually requested the audience, but up to the bridge he goes. Cain greets him in an almost-friendly fashion, which is not a warning Ace can receive. He needs a half-ton of spent brass moved out and refilled at Niter Flats, ASAP, and he can pick up the brass from Dremmer.

As Ace leaves, he bumps into Tum-Tum, who calls him a son of a bitch and punches him. Seems that they had a little thing once and she thought Ace committed to taking her away from all this. Which, like, maybe if he ever gets away from it all, he'd take her with him, but he hasn't left yet, has he? He hires Firi and Grey Rat to go with him, Grey Rat in shotgun and Fifi as biker escort.

Spooonman goes to repair Major Tom's voicebox, but he nicks an artery. The "doctor" rushes Tom to Thatcher, who charges 2-barter to keep the Major from going all the way to the other side. Tom will need to stay at the Doc's for a while.

Ace pulls around to Dremmer's place and loads up the 500gk of spent brass. It's heavy as balls, enough to make the car carrying it -1 speed, +1 massive. He also loads up enough fuel to reach Niter Flats, which is 3 days out. Ace, concerned that Cain might have it in for him now, decides to drive wearing his battle speedo and driving high tops and not much else. Grey Rat, knowing Ace's prediliction for fighting light, opens his mind to try to do a little strategic recon. He gets lost in memories of hearing "A Whole New World" and not only receives no useful information, but he's a useless pair of eyes now. On the plus side, he's the only one who manages his responsibilities right, whereas Ace gets them lost and Fifi doesn't see the ambush in time.

The ambush starts when Ace hits a mine, which damages the passengers and puts the Superbird at 9 o'clock. Fifi skid-turns to see what's what and sees guys emerging from hiding places in the sand. She opens fire with her assault rifle and forces them back into their holes, so they'll have to reposition if they want to surround the crashed Superbird. That barrage runs her rifle and ready mag dry. Ace vault out of the car and charges the nearest enemy, firing his 9mm as he goes, killing the man and seizing his fighting hole. Spoonman materializes like a supertactical trunk monkey, charging over the roof, and Fifi makes a New York reload to give him cover. Spoonman deploys some sort of massive noise cannon that freaks the ambushers right out. It's basically a 55-gallon drump with wiring on the outside and a crapload of speakers on the inside. "Follow the trails of shit and you'll find them," he yells.

Grey Rat asks Ace to round up the unconscious attackers for interrogation. Now, Ace wouldn't normally subject people to Grey Rat's attentions, but these people damaged his vehicle, and no level of suffering would be excessive for that crime. Fifi stops to open her brain, and deep in the jungle, she hears drumming coming from the direction of Sparta. The drums mean the natives are on the move, and they sound like war drums. She thinks this ambush may have come at the behest of the bosses in Sparta. Meanwhile, Grey Rat uses his new healing powers on Spoonman, and the savvyhead fixes up the Superbird so it can finish the journey.

When the first prisoner wakes up, he finds Grey Rat, wearing a mouse mask, staring him in the face, asking who hired them to make the attack. Foxtrot ordered them to attack the blue car when it came through. Grey Rat reads him and calculates that if we killed his two friends, this prisoner would be willing to go back to Sparta and tell them that they killed us all.

3 and a half days later, the crew limp into Niter Flats. We're able to exchange the brass for ammo, no problem. Madge makes fun of the state of Ace's car, but not in a mean way. She tells Spoonman that all the stuff he needs to fix Ace's car is at the bottom of the hole. When Spoonman makes the trip down there and finds nothing, he fires off the bass cannon, just to let everyone know how he really feels about their little practical joke.

As the group prepares to leave Niter Flats, emerging from a watering hole, Grey Rat finds a woman siphoning gas out of Ace's Superbird. He tells her (it's Chigger) to stop. When she asks why she should, he hits her with direct brain whisper protection. She accepts the AP harm to steal the gas and puncture a tire. When the rest of the group appears, and Spoonman tosses Fifi a shock glove, Chigger hightails it, and almost gets away until Fifi corners her at the edge of the pit. When Fif asks why she did this, Chigger says that Ace owes her big, has it coming, and generally needs to suffer. Fifi goes to use the shock glove and puts Chigger to sleep. Spoonman fixes up the tire, Grey Rat calculates that there's enough gas to get home, and they're Oscar Mike.

Major Tom wakes up in Thatcher's med bay. He tries to communicate by writing notes, but Thatcher only knows the Cyrillic alphabet. Tom, finding himself shackled to the table, starts trying to be helpful to Thatcher's orderly, Piper. Piper's taking the ammo from Tom's gun and using the gunpowder to make a sort of cauteriizng paste. Thatcher tells the Major that the thing in his neck is interfering with his vocal cords. Tom mimes asking him to take it out, which Thatcher could do, but it wouldn't be enough for him to talk. He'd need donor vocal cords or something. Thatcher has Piper take Major Tom to see Bailey Blue to see if maybe she can help him out. Of course, Chun answers the door and he's stone blind, so Major Tom's efforts to write notes fail utterly. Eventually he puts Chun's hand on his neck so he can feel the vocoder, and then the penny drops. Chun leads him in to see Bailey Blue, who recognizes the device as Spoonman's handiwork. She's impressed with Major Tom's ability to write. She has just the thing to solve the problem, but she'll need to operate. Major Tom offers sex. She declines, then puts him under for surgery. When he comes to, he's naked, propped up against the wall, unable to move, and seeing Bailey Blue having dinner with someone. When he tries to talk to them, he starts reciting Abe Lincoln's animatronic soundtrack.

Days later, the Superbird crew return to Sparta and seek payment. Per Spoonman's advicd, they go together, and we're alert to any sign that Cain's disappointed to see them. Tum-Tum is once again starting daggers at Ace. Grey Rat tries to read the situation and sees that Tum-Tum is his true enemy. Ace reads Cain to see what the boss intends to do, and finding that he's going to get paid, figures it's OK, and it seems to be. As they return to the car park, Ace tries to get Spoonman's advice about his woman problems, but the wise savvyhead gives absolutely no fucks.

Back at the truck, a few members of Satan's Prom Date are hanging around the taco truck, looking for Major Tom. They thought he'd be at Thatcher's, but he ain't. Spoonman goes with to the maelstrom and finds that the veins convey a sense of stillness, like someone's on a bypass machine, or maybe turned into a mannikin. He tells the members of SPD to go look in Bailey Blue's body shop.

Phineas Phogg, Fliss, and Kelso go looking for Major Tom, but Chun won't let them in for another three hours. Inside, Major Tom's just stuck sitting here and watching Bailey Blue do some really weird stuff to some dude. He ends up in the maelstrom, where today, the only things on the shelf of the existential grocery store are arms and legs. Every time he takes one off the shelf to put it into his cart, it becomes a meat arm, dripping blood and smelling poorly. He snaps of it to find Bailey Blue carressing his face and asking whether he'd like to continue, at which point she gives him the freedom to move his head. He shakes his head to indicate that he would not, in fact, care to stay.

Kelso asks Spoonman to help. Fifi and Ace volunteer to go along, and Grey Rate follows as a spectator. Chun's willing to let Spoonman in, but he doesn't want anyone else coming in. Fifi calculates that she might get in with Major Tom's gang members as a distraction, but Chun might have a panic button or something in the hand she can't see, and he's the only enemy she can sense. She steps aside and Phineas and Kelso jump in Chun's face, and then she easees around past him. Spoonman introduces her to Bailey Blue as his attack dog, then asks for Major Tom back. She explains about his vocal difficulties and makes Tom demonstrate his new powers of speech. He's not moving because she stilled him, but she's able to undo it by fiddling with his neck. Spoonman throws Tom's weakened and numbed but mobile body over his shoulders and goes back outside.

With Tom back at the taco truck, Spoonman can work on him like he was machinery. Actually, to Spoonman, he is broken machinery. Since he's rooting around in there and committing a lot of valuable parts, Spoony decides to stick a remote-controlled mute switch, based on an Infinit car alarm fob. Major Tom can talk now! Spoonman works with him to test the mute switch as well, just to make sure it's quality work. Going rate for the key fob: 3-barter. Spoonman, now deep in debt, goes looking for work. He comes up with the idea of going on a raid, maybe on a caravan leaving Sparta. Ace will go along because it means adrenaline and driving.

As they move out to the east, they see a dust trail in the distance, which resolves into a food truck, a few cars, and a few bikes. Major Tom assesses the situation and calculates that the bikes are the biggest threat, since they can match his speed and agility. Ace, Major Tom, and SPD coordinate to drive the bogeys toward Fifi, who looks like a much weaker threat than she actually is. She tries a warning burst, and when they don't slow down, she inflicts some serious trauma. The side pane of the food truck drops down and she sees a minigun there, already aimed at her and spun up. She lays her bike down to drop out of their line of fire, which still wouldn't be enough against a minigun if not for the distraction posed by SPD. Ace opens up with his machine guns to provide covering fire for the wrecked bike and for SPD's incoming assault. Using the cover, Fifi pops up and shoots out a tire on the food truck, which forces it to swerve. The food truck turns the minigun on the prom date, exposing themselves to Ace's machine gun fire. SPD and Tom use wild evasive maneuvers to get close, while Ace's fire takes out the driver and transmission of the taco truck, stopping it dead, but not taking out the minigun. Fifi goes running toward the truck. Ace and SPD board the taco truck, surprising the gunner and stone cold murdering him. Ace begins herding other vehicles back to the taco truck, where Major Tom's men can engage them. Even without using the minigun, the gang is able to kill enough people that the bogeys surrender.

Interrogating the prisoners reveals that the convoy was hauling tar sand, working for Prince Emmett. Six remain alive, of whom three won't make it without prompt medical attention. The tar sands were bound for the Tumble to sell. It was a spec load, not sold to anyone yet, so as long as we leave no witnesses, we could bring the cargo in and sell it. We bring in a total of six barter along with various specific items of loot.