LogWanderers-Jason-9

Game log for the 2017/02/05 session of Wanderers, as taken by Jason

Enter Spoonman, wearing pieces of a hazmat suit, and showing obvious signs of radiation poisoning. Grey Rat shows him the thing we recovered for Captain Savage, and Spoonman identifies it as part of a two-party authentication system. GR takes a look at Randy and senses that she's wide open to the maelstrom right now, and that's why she's catatonic. She needs a reset, and even then, she might never be quite right again. Spoonman says she's been catatonic for about four days, which is an awful long time. GR tries to do some brain surgery on her, and it turns out that your more reliable brain surgeons wear surgical masks, not giant rat's head masks. Randy's in a vegetative state now and there's no reason to believe she'll ever recover. Spoonman puts her on life support.

The healer in Apollo's Wells is Albatross, and when Spoonman finds him, he's packing up to leave. Once he gets over the shock of the savvyhead's appearance, he tries to turn him away, because his dialysis machine's already packed up. For the right price, though, he's willing to unpack and work. Instead of the jingle price, Spoonman offers to give him the credit for fixing the well. Albatross doesn't entirely believe he can fix the well, though, so the final deal is that if Spoonman can fix the well, Albatross will tune his flesh up for free.

Badge and the boys, with help from Fifi and Ace, are stripping the parking area down for Satan's Prom Data, getting ready to take off, but the mambers of the security force who aren't leaving aren't willing to let Badge take unlimited volumes of stuff with them. Major Tom overhears shouting between the guards and the ex-guards and realizes that things are about to get out of control, and he's only got a portion of Satan's Prom Date with him. He sends Fliss to get more guys. The guards tell them to leave now, Major Tom prevaricates, and the guys in the elevated position open fire.

Tom, Mama Cass, Badge, and Meatloaf end up hiding behind an aluminum panel wall, under automatic weapons fire.

Ace, who has acquired a threadbare pea green bathrobe, ditches the robe (for spreed) and begins suppressing the guards in the elevated position. Fifi, slightly ore tactical, realizes that this place is a rat's nest and there could be bad guys coming from almost any direction, as could civilians trying to flee. Most of the hostiles are uphill, the guys in the elevated positions are suppressed, but at least three hostiles at street level haven't been engaged. She suspects that the leader of the guards was on the high ground, leaving the bad guys leaderless, so she tries to force the folks on street level to die or back off. She forces the guards to drop back, but during some room clearing, she takes a shotgun blast at point blank range that leaves her extremely messed up. On the plus side, the guards have fled, so Satan's Prom Date are free to move.

Major Tom realizes the pressure on his position has lifted, but also that the characteristic sound of Fifi's assault has stopped. He decides that the gang will takes its loot and pull out.

Spoonman gets to the well and is surprised by the depth - he can see the guys digging 200 feet down. He rides down and starts to look it over. The bottom 20 feet show signs of recent digging, meaning that even 20 feet down from the point where the bottom was when the water stopped, they have seepage, but haven't found flowing water. Grey Rat introduces Spoonman to Spambot. Spambot asks Spoonman for an opinion, and the savvyhead replies that digging is an outdated solution. He's thinking energy lance, to spear right through the earth into the aquifer, but he'll need to go down to the taco truck and get his gear. Once the shooting dies down, he begins planning an energy lance that will spear into the earth, vaporizing rock, and a series of extractors to pull the rock vapor out of the shaft. It will of course be enormously dangerous and require oodles of power. He lacks an appropriate power source. He tells Major Tom not to pull the gang out, that he's going to need their help to restore the water flow. Tom offers to help collect batteries and all other power cells in town, but makes it clear to Spoonman that he's going to stay ready to cut and run.

Spoonman starts readying the gang to help out with Spoonman's plan, but Badge refuses to stick around. The shooting has broken out, Badge just shot his cousin, he and his people need to leave town directly. Tom gets right in his face and tells him how it is: the gang stays for another twelve hours, though the gang will not be going back up the hill. Grey Rat and Spoonman go to see Flenser the car salesman, who has a bike, a car, a mostly disassembled car, and some pack animals that are selling like hotcakes. Oh, and a pony trailer. Grey Rat apeals to his patriotic desire to help out by loaning them the cars they need, as he tries to plant some in-brain puppet strings. Flenser coughs up the cars he has for a couple hours.

Back at the taco truck, the air feels just a touch tense, but Spoonman ignores that, and puts all his energy into setting up a capacitor and tying the engines into it. Meanwhile, Grey Rat lays his hands on Fifi and heals her a bit. In the process, he has to open his brain to the maelstrom, and senses that she was being chased by snakes, and now that he's helped her, so is he.

Ace consults the maelstrom as to how he can help, and sees a vision of himself, junk blowing in the breeze, delivering the energy lance down the well.

Major Tom consults the maelstrom and sees a vision of a grocery store in the midst of a robbery gone horribly wrong, two rival gangs exchanging fire aisle by aisle.

Spoonman interrupts Tom's crazy vision by asking him to get the gang's bikes hooked up to the capacitor and help build a charge. Tom has worries about staying around that long and does not want to let anyone tamper with the bikes before they leave. Tom asks the gang to hear Spoonman out, but Fliss doesn't really want to hear it. Tom's appeal is based on fixing the town, but at least half of the gang doesn't care about the town. Spoonman grabs Major Tom by the jacket to bellow orders at him, and though Tom knees him in the groin, Spoonman makes it clear that the gang can do what Spoonman wants, or it's going to be on. Tom won't cooperate - he puts a finger on his voice box and says that if Spoonman wants the gang's help, Spoonman can convince them. Spoonman starts talking right to Fliss, trying to understand why the gang wants to cut and run. He suggests that with everyone leaving town, once they can restart the water, the gang and Spoonman represent enough muscle to own this town. The gang isn't feeling it, but Grey Rat tries to explain that if this works out, and we have influence in this town, it's still a useful source of water for the gang. Tom and Grey Rat end up yelling at each other and end up having to get separated by the gang, which really undermines the Major's authority as gang boss. Fliss, however, will stay for the remaining hours if the jingle is right. They also agree to take payment in water if the plan works.

Grey Rat asks Ace to donate the Superbird's power to the cause, which is not a problem. He then has to go back to un-domesticating the war buggy, which has been nest-ified by Melody and Harvard.

Hours pass and by the time darkness falls, the capacitor bank has gotten pretty charged up. The gang likes watching the current increase as they rev the bikes, so it's gotten noisy as hell around here. Spoonman has test-fired the laser on a nearby rock and vaporized it, and has rigged the system for transport. The power cells are on a baby buggy. Ace has volunteered to fire the weapon, and for the occasion, Spoonman has made him new briefs, based on parts of a parachute harness and a bag of quicklime. Right over his genitals, the new thong says "concrete."

They go to fire it, and halfway up the hill, they're stopped by the local constabulary. They want to take our weapons, including the laser, which means they have to come up the mountain with us. Spambot hates Ace for showing up his engine-building skills years back, but he's perfectly willing to let Ace commit suicide with Spoonman's boring device. Today, it's win:win for Spambot! Ace asks Spoonman for a final briefing on the operation of the device, and then asks him to hold Ace's bathrobe. Spoonman tosses the bathrobe aside. As Ace readies himself, Sebastian Falk comes to see what the ruckus is about, and asks who the fuck let Ace in. Ace replies, from the well top, "God sent me, whooooo!"

Ace rides down and positions the laser, which involves a level of intellectual calculation well beyond his actual capacity. He fires it off, and next thing he knows, he's knee-deep in water. With a baby buggy full of capacitors. Ace requests a lift out of that place, por favor, post with the haste.

Sebastian Falk welcomes Ace back to Apollo's Well.

At the bottom of the mountain, Satan's Prom Date see the incredible beam of light from atop the mountain, assume that things have gone poorly, and prepare to leave.. but then they remember that Spoonman owes them water, so they need to either get paid, or confirm his death and take all his stuff.

Atop the hill, Spambot calculates that the well will support about half the people it used to, due to the slower fill rate. Spoonman shows Albatross that the well is flowing, and Albatross begins treatment, though it will take a couple days.

Ace arrives at the bottom of the hill and hooks up with Satan's Prom Date, who are about to go offer and commit road piracy. Melody and Harvard are asleep in the war buggy, and Ace rudely rousts them, trying and apparently failing to explain to Melody that he does not consider himself bound to her in any fashion whatsoever... and then he drives off to help with the aforementioned road piracy.

Meanwhile, Fifi is still bleeding badly. Major Tom orders the mmebers of Satan's Prom Date to go through their bags looking for bandages or something, but the supplies they had have been stolen. Ace decides to skip the raid and try to get help for Fifi instead. He takes her barter and an AR up the hill, and convinces Albatross to come visit Fifi. Albatross is up for it, and on his way out, he provides Spoonman with the friendly advice that if he pulls out his dialsys tubes, he will die. In exchange for his healing services, Albatross gets Fifi's remaining barter, and one of her ARs. Arriving at the bottom of the hill, he examines her, and realizes she'll have to be moved up the hill. They borrow a mule from Flenser and take her up the hill on it. Being on a mule in the wee hours of the night makes her about as anonymous as a gunlugger can be, so for once, she has no trouble getting up the hill.

On the roads and tracks, Satan's Prom Date and Ace have been struggling to find a good target. Many of our quarries are either small enough to be able to hide from us, or too damn poor to be worth. Finally we find a group of 12-15 people with vehicles and pack animals. We find them through a heat inversion layer that shows them on the back side of a hill. Major Tom reads the situation and realizes that we have to keep them from splitting up, that they're on the backside of a hill and he can figure out exactly where, and that they have a cart and three camels for 12-15 people, which means many of them won't be able to escape easily.

The plan is for Ace to go roaring after them loud and solo, enabling them to flee, but also enabling Satan's Prom Data to lie doggo for them. The ambush goes off beautifully, and the first volley from SPD kills many members of the caravan. The survivors, including one camel, try to scatter. Ace, coming from behind, swings wide and machine-guns the stragglers. Convoy down, all their good stuff taken. We agree to spend another couple days running down people and come back with 2-barter each. On the way back to Apollo's Well, Major Tom feels a sore forming on his gums - he's come down with the Fix, though nobody knows it.

About a week later, Ace and Satan's Prom Date have returned, and Albatross has gotten Spoonman and Fifi back to some plausible semblance of health. Sebastian Falk comes to talk to Grey Rat. He expresses gratitude for the work on the well, and offers Grey Rat and Spoonman employment in his organization. He also asks about the thing Grey Rat pulled out of the well. GR explains about Ace's errand for Captain Savage.

Grey Rat is at Albatross' clinic, talking to Spoonman and Fifi, when Sebastian Falk comes back and asks whether they've had time to consider his offer. They've thought of it, but they want to look into what happened to Sparta instead. He gives them the run of the place for a couple days. Spoonman asks for a pardon for Fifi while they're at it, and Falk says he's willing to let it go, everybody even, if she agrees to shoot Satan's Prom Date on sight. She says she'll be gone when they come back. Falk asks, what if she isn't? She asks for time to think. He gives her thirty seconds. Grey Rat walks over to her and implants a command in her head to kill all the former guardsmen who joined Satan's Prom Date. She accepts Falk's terms. Maybe she means it, maybe she doesn't. Also, Falk wants the thing Grey Rat retrieved from the well.

They head down the hill to pick up Savage's key from the taco truck, and they see Major Tom, Satan's Prom Date, and Ace pulling into the car park. So much for Fifi's plan to leave before they arrive! When Falk sees that Ace is with SPD, he tells Fifi not to kill him. Satan's Prom Date, however, are not welcome in Apollo's Well. Major Tom sees Fifi unlimbering the Doof Cannon in his general direction and reverses course. Ace, who has the freedom of the city and plus also thinks he's good with Fifi, continues into the parking area.

Among the gang, Blondie starts screaming that she should have killed Fifi when she had the chance. Blondie isn't the only one, either. They see it as Fifi turning on them, and they want payback.

Spoonman begins work on a plan to put Randy's brain into a computer, so he can talk to her. He's going to need Grey Rat for that (shocking!) and some very specialized materials that will cost 6-barter. Spoonman borrows some tradeable goods from Grey Rat, pops off to the market, and comes back with the equipment he needs. Grey Rat performs the surgery and hey presto, Randy is a talking box. She reports that everything hurts. She blames Spoonman for her new predicament. On the other hand, she remembers how her body got her sold into prostitution. Being bodyless seems a little more attractive now. Next stage: wire her into the taco truck as a copilot. Final stage: Randy as a war machine.