LogWanderers-Jason-4

Game log for the 2017/01/08 session of Wanderers, as taken by Jason

We decide to hear northwest, pursuing Grey Rat's ambition to hunt down Fast Freddy. Out in the desert, we stumble upon a group of walking people, with a couple camels along with them. Spoonman honks his horn to get their attention, and we pull up to them. It's eight to ten people, wrapped head to toe desert-style, but two have bright orange headwraps. When we pull up, a few of them take up defensive positions, but the group overall doesn't seem excessively hostile. They'll trade for clean water. Our water isn't so clean as we'd like, due to a wee bit of radioactivity. In exchange, they'll trade for one of their women. Spoons is up for that trade, to the surprise of some. They give us some gossip:

• there is a great fire to the south
• Apollo's well (a mountian spring in a largeish settlement) has run dry

But then one of them actually whips out a Geiger counter to scan the water, which instantly adds to the tension. Spoonman decides to scrub the water before he transfers it to them, but there's no time. He'd need to distill the water multiple times, so as to eliminate all the radioactive trace elements. He can do a crap version of that by using his nuclear power cell to create an ozone treatment and filtration plant all in one.

The girl, Randy, turns out to be another one of Ace's previous conquests, but these days she has patchy hair and radiation burns. Spoonman uses the idea that he's going to x-ray the girl as an excuse to explain all the radiation he's going to generate. Most of them back away from that, but one lunatic undresses and comes over to bathe in the glorious rays of bad science. Fifi agrees to help Spoonman with the machine, while everyone else proves eager to distance themselves from the machinery. The rig works, but it trashes the nuclear power cell.

Ace asks the orange turban guys about the black goo in Sparta. They say that it's the corruption, that it's darkness personified, but they don't know where it comes form. Beyond the cliffs, perhaps?

Spoonman takes Randy aboard and has her ride shotgun.

We eventually make it to The Dauntless. Spoonman takes a look around, then opens his brain to see where the heartbeat leads him. Straight to engineering! His faffing about is interrupted by a large dirt-covered man in welding goggles, who demands to know what he's doing there. Spoonman claims to be there to help, which oddly works to calm the man. Another fella, Pips, emerges to ask Spoonman to help them isolate an electrical problem. There's some sabotage of the wiring going on, so the deal is that Spoonman will fix it, while the rest of the gang will try to isolate the sabotage. Randy doesn't talk much, which bothers Spoonman in an assistant, so he conducts some diagnostic intercourse and decides that she has trust and abandonment issues, which can only be fixed by making her feel like she's worth something to him. Also she needs gene therapy for the rad burns. He also reads her brain to "overhear" a conversation between a trader and a sun cultist, with the cultist telling the trader to be cool, to scatter if there's trouble, and that we can't know they're carrying "her." We can reasonably surmise that they don't mean Randy, so Spoonman promptly asks her who they were carrying. She shrugs. Then she throws Spoonman's clothes at him and walks off. He tells her she has to help him, and she gives him the finger. He has to grab her and turn her around to get any work out of her, so she calls him an asshole. She talked, yay!

Pips finds Major Tom and tries to hire him. Well, actually, he finds Mama Cass, but she answers to Tom's name for comedy purposes. Then Pips sees Fifi and yells "What the fuck is she doing here!?" Seems that back in the day, he hired her to help with a small problem, but Fifi got bored with it and just started killing people, which Pips did not consider to be a desirable outcome. Tom steps forward and interrupts Pips' anti-Fifi rant and makes him talk business. In particular, Tom wants to be sure that he's not going to have any police trouble, but Pips assures him that as long as the settlement functions, Captain Savage doesn't mind the odd bit of ultraviolence. They work out terms, and Pips shows Tom where things have been going wrong, so that Tom can post members of Satan's Prom Date at the critical point.

Grey Rat and Ace have been wandering around the hangar deck, and someone tells GR that Fast Freddy is here. The Rat runs over to talk to him, with Ace following along. Freddy deals in all sorts of weird electronic stuff, including the pain wave projector that Grey Rat's been looking for. Freddy wants the equivalent of five barter for it, which is more than GR has, so he offers to do odd jobs for Freddie to make the coin. Really odd jobs. Grey Rat touches his face and reads him, and finds out that he has bad gout, and that he once abandoned his own son in the desert. That spooks the hell out of Freddy, so he invites them into his back room to discuss things in private. Freddy needs to get into a woman's good graces (Samantha), and Grey Rat just showed the capability to help him with that. Ace also asks him if there's escort work, which there is, for a convoy to Apollo's Well leaving in five days.

Fifi gets a spot at the bar to herself and opens her brain, looking for an opportunity to earn some coin in a somewhat hostile place. As she's doing so, someone sits down next to her and says, "so, are we gonna fuck or what?" That snaps her out the maelstrom and she finds Epsilon sitting next to her. She asks what's in it for her. He recoils. He suggests that if she'll sleep with him, he will hook her up with work. For example, Caliber needs a new barmaid. Epsilon knows this because he's about to kill one of the existing barmaid's. She's not loving this deal but she pretends to be willing to go with it. Once they're alone, though, she's so obviously not into it that he smells a rat and handcuffs her. He then leads her off to his place. Ace sees them and runs to let Spoonman know what's going on, on a vague notion that Spoonman's the planner. Once they're out of public view, though, Fifi chokes Epsilon out with the handcuff chain, she steals the key from his pockets, and she's free. She finalizes him with her knife and moves to the exit.

Ace warns Spoonman that things in this town are going to her hot for them. The Savvyheat asks Ace to cover for him and vanishes to go see what's up with Fifi. She calmly explains that Epsilon needed killing. Spoonman is just suggesting that they need to vanish the body when two guys spot the body and quickly escalate to firearms. He tries to blast them with the doofcannon, but they shoot first. Fifi hits the deck and avoids harm, but Spoonman takes a flesh wound. Fifi throws the knife right through one guy's forehead, which takes him out of the fight, and grabs for her gun. Before she gets it, Spoonman has the Doofcannon out, and as he warns them how much it's going to hurt, the other guy runs away. They try to get out of here but they get separated. Spoonman realizes that he didn't actualy hurt anyone, so even if they catch him, he's not nearly as screwed as Fifi would be. Eventually they go catch him, and he fronts like he has no idea why anyone might want to shoot at him. A short, wiry, dark haired, tan, soul-patch having hipster steps to the front and asks what the problem seems to be. Spoonman explains that he doesn't know what Fifi did but he was trying to help her out; they arrest him for being a friend of the girl who murdered their man Epsilon.

Ace tries to figure out Randy's shit while they're waiting for Spoonman, and figures out that she won't think of herself as part of the team or anything other than a prisoner, and realizes that we need to treat her that way for a while first. Team play is not exactly Ace's strong suit. This could be a long wait.

Fifi's already outside the carrier when she sees the guy posting up flyers about tonight's thunderdome bout in the chain locker, "geek vs the Crusher!" The geek, of course, is Spoonman. She changes clothes to try to disguise her looks, then tries to sneak in. She figures that if she doesn't look like herself, and she goes through the right companionways and compartments on the ship, she might be able to sneak in OK. She goes looking for Major Tom, and members of the gang direct her aft. She tells them what's going on, but they just laugh. She finally locates Tom talking to Pips, who immediately complains that he thought she wasn't part of all this. She shows them the poster, and Tom just starts laughing, while Pips begins shouting about how his wiring problems will never get fixed.

Meanwhile Grey Rat, blissfully unaware that every other PC in the game has metaphorically touched their tongue to a very cold piece of metal, goes off to see Samantha. The bartender, Coats, chats him up, but takes him so seriously when he talks about his interrogation skills that he keeps Grey Rat at arms' length. After a while, one of the ladies comes over and leads him to Samantha. They search him, though they don't get all the knives. They discuss things, and they agree on a test - she will set him up with someone called Toke, and Grey Rat has to read his brain and report back with information.

Pips brings Major Tom, Fifi, and Ace to see Captain Savage. They search everyone, so nobody gets to bring any weapons in. Savage is playing solitaire. They eventually do a deal where Fifi will fight in place of Spoonman.

Savage asks Ace to get something for him from Apollo's Well. Ace needs to go there and talk to Duster, and if Duster isn't there, contact Savage on the satphone he produces. Ace just needs to tell Duster that he's come to retrieve the item, and Duster will know what to do. Then Captain Savage starts musing on the unpredictable nature of Ace and changes the deal - Ace has to go get his thing, or the Captain will kill everyone Ace knows. Ace, heavily outnumbered by bodyguards, decides to save his rage for future use.

Down in the bowels of the ship, they swap Fifi in and Spoonman out. Fifi begins recruiting the people in adjacent cells to join her gang.