LogWanderers-Jason-5

Game log for the 2016/11/27 session of Wanderers, as taken by Jason

We're still in Sparta, and now Grey Rat and Spoonman are looking for work. Cain will hire Grey Rat to provide some leverage on Bully, because while he doesn't think Bully pays his fair share of taxes, Bully's too powerful for Cain to move against him directly. As Mr Rat leaves, Tum-Tum offers him a side job: make Ace love her, and everything she has goes to the Brainer.

Over at The Jukebox, Major Tom and Satan's Prom Date are doing karaoke when a bunch of lipless orange-robed men walk in. The cultists begin proselytizing, which immediately kills the mood in the bar. Eventually Fliss gets in a cultist's face and starts some shit, but the guy hisses something in Fliss's face that makes her and Corbeau sit right back down. Tom gets the impression that maybe he told them something they never considered. One of them eventually comes around to Tom. "Have you considered the sun lately?" Tom tries to get cute with them, but they don't laugh. Eventually, they assure him, he will submit. When the cultists leave, Fliss goes with them.

Spoonman hangs out his Mr Fixit shingle, and quickly, someone approaches him. He needs help welding something up in a flammable environment, somewhere four days outside Sparta. This guy, Gravel, needs the help off in The Tangle. Grey Rat offers to go with if he can wait an hour, which is fine with Tom. They hit the road, with Tom and the gang following behind like parasites.

Grey Rat finds Ace and lets him know that Tum-Tum has ascended to a whole new level of crazy. Ace, faced with this malignant alternative, decides that he's happy to accompany Grey Rat and Spoonman to the Tangle. Four days later, they're in the Tangle. Gravel shows him tha the pipes leading to the pumping unit have internal heating elements that warm the tar sand enough to flow. The heat stopped working, and if they can't pipe the tar sand, they don't have the resources to extract it anymore. They need Spoonman to fix the heating coils between the inner and outer pipe layers without doing anything to touch off the tar sand that still fills the inner pipe. Spoonman reckons he can fix it but it's a whole lot of work, requiring time and extra hands. Spoonman, unwilling to subcontract out to his friends, asks Gravel to provide some extra workers. He does so but the workers lack any enthusiasm for working with hot tar sand, so Spoony decides he has to drain the pipe and repair it clean. That will take a long time, which doesn't suit Gravel's expectations. He wants it done without waiting to drain the pipe, which means winning over Gravel's hands, or going back to subcontracting. Gravel's guys don't really cotton to Spoonman's winning ways, but he wins over Bugger and the rest by getting them drunk. He's getting a little concerned that he needs cooperation in this town, but Major Tom and SPD keep lurking around town like an accident waiting to happen.

The next day, the workers all stand amazed as Spoonman cuts away the outer pipe without setting the tar sand on fire. He's about three hours into the day's work when the gunfire starts. Melody is using a shotgun to blaze away at Ace's car, and she's already done a point of harm. He reads the situation, grabs his magnum, and rolls out the opposite door, then pops up and opens fire on her with his magnum. He hits her in the neck and she goes down, gurgling. Grey Rat approaches, asking Ace who she is, and then lays hands on her. Ace answers that she's just some chick he slept with three years ago. Grey Rat opens his brain, sees the video for "Silent Lucidity", and realizes she'll probably still die, and her son Harvard, 2 1/4 years old, has Ace's eyes.

Grey Rat rushes Melody to the taco truck and calls for Spoonman to fix her up on an emergency basis. Spoonman doesn't understand why this repair work should take priority over the repair work he was already hired to do. Fifi, nearby, tells the repairman that Melody's the daughter of the Seer and having her die would be bad for everyone. Well, Spoonman can fix her so she doesn't die, but she'll be disfigured. Fifi tries to find a quiet place for her to heal up, where maybe it won't have to be a huge deal for the entire holding.

Grey Rat goes over to the local bar to see if the Seer is in. Template:Nocref says she's out, maybe in the red dunes, due back today or tomorrow. He goes back to the car and tells Fifi he's headed out to the red dunes. At that point Traipse comes over, demanding to know what's what, and Grey Rat tells him the truth, minus the proper nouns. Fifi tries to break in and misdirect Traipse away, but Grey Rat wants to tell the truth so that they don't dig themselves a hole. Fifi places her hand on her knife and tries to push Grey Rat into going her way, but Traipse sees her do it and pulls his pistol. He tells Fifi to shut up and commands Grey Rat to tell him exactly what happened. GR tells him what happened.

"[Ace] shot the mother of his child? What the fuck is wrong with that guy?"

"There's a lot wrong with him, but let's stay on topic here."

After hearing the whole story, Traipse goes walking off in the direction of the gantry.

Ace decides to depart the situation, destination elsewhere. Shortly afterward, Traipse and some other dudes go after him. Ace, on the open road at last, cannot be caught.

Kensington comes to lead Grey Rat to the Red Dunes, and Tom decides to follow, gang in tow. Kensingston warns GR that they can go so far in a vehicle before they have to go on foot, because the vibrations from vehicle traffic attract scorpions. Major Tom leaves a fifth of the gang behind to watch the bikes and brings the rest along on foot.

Back in the Tangle, the workers are complaining that someone took off with their water buggy, and they're pissed about it. Spoonman's ignoring them because he has work to do, but Fifi pays them some attention. Spoonman follows the pulsing veins and sees that they lead south of town. Someone in Satan's Prom Date stole the water. Fifi goes after it.

Out in the desert, Grey Rat gets attacked by a scorpion. He tries to pop it with his pistol, fails to insta-kill it, gets grabbed, and almost gets stung. Tom, close by, opens fire and sprays scorpion guts over the desert. Kensington tells them to hurry up. Eventually they come around the edge of a dune and find an old woman squatting and digging gently in the sand. Kensington calls out for her to come quick, which is not how someone the Seer's age moves.

Fifi arrives at the bikes and starts reaming out the gang members for stealing the water buggy. They feed her a line of crap about how they took it just for the mission because they needed it to help Grey Rat and Spoonman. Spoonman appears out of nowhere and demands to know where the water buggy came from. He can tell that the gang members are prepared for violence and tries to calm them down by reminding them that they came to work and get paid, and stealing random shit from the Tangle interferes with that. He sees that Ringo is too focused on Fifi to be effective against him. He threatens to pop them with the bass cannon if they don't start doing what he tells them. One of the gangsters briefly pretends to give Spoonman static, but they quickly fall into line and hitch the water buggy up to Fifi's bike. She and Spoonman return to town.

The Seer tells Grey Rat that there's a storm coming... but that he already knows that. He brings her back to town.

Back in town, Vornigath and Traipse come up to Fifi. Vornigath is not happy to see her and gives her shit, so she slips away instead of engaging him in conversation.

Grey Rat, Kensington, the Seer, and Major Tom come back to the bikes. Tom asks where the water went, but once Fifi's name comes up, he understands what went down. Tom also figures out that the situation in town is pretty dang tense and tries to figure out what's what, and all that thinking means he's a little surprised when the workers come to beat the water thieves. The members of SPD go for their guns, because they don't do fair fights. Major Tom orders them to stand down and enforces it by smacking Ringo upside the noggin. Vornigath sees all this and acknowledges Tom's skills as a leader. He offers them 110 gallons of tar sand if they'll find the Ace.