LogAWBO Smoke On The Water-Jason-8

Game log for the 2023/01/15 session of Apocalypse World Burned Over - Smoke On The Water, as taken by Jason

Living day-to-day rolls:

• Jacob finds fresh foods easy and jingle hard
• Finch finds downtime easy and specialized good hard
• Crill finds security easy and ammo hard
• JP finds news is free and time is easy
• Churban failed again, haha, loser

JP's still planning to do the job for Wendigo, but he needs details, so he motors over and moors near the Tuscany. They let him come aboard and take him below, where a bunch of folks are gently heating artillery shells to get the propellant out. The pirate captain asks JP if he's familiar with the Tarawa, which, as in 21st century earth, is an LHA. The current owners have modified it so that it's mostly well deck and acts as a sort of mobile covered harbor. Wendigo wants JP to drop the barrel under the ship's CIC, set the fuse, and get out. They can also help put lots of empty boxes on the Betty Jo to help make it look it's loaded for trade.

Churban and Crill are sitting there, both in stable but bad condition after the sudden destruction of McQuade's boat. Churban decides to take some time to try to unravel the mystery of why Crill is the way he is, but things go horribly awry. Instead of scanning Crill's brain passively, he invades in, and Crill has terrible hallucinations about some woman talking in garbled fragments. It finally resolves to her saying, "Churban!" Crill wakes up and finds himself pointing a gun at Churban's head.

Churban is having a vision. He and Merody have snuck out of the dorm. They're visiting one of the places in this catacomb where there's open space, and a strange piece of equipment in the middle. Merody keeps asking him to come with her, so she can show him something. He does, and he sits on the floor of the open space while she goes into a different room. The machine in the center of the cavern comes to life, and suddenly the dome is filled with a representation of the night sky. Churban has never seen the real thing, so this is entirely new to him. He can see stars, nebulae, and all the other beauties of the night sky. She tells him about constellations and the way the stars turn. Then the stars go out, the lights come on, and the overseers find them. As they drag them away, Dr Defoe says, "Churban, I should have known that you would be behind this." One of the guards pistol whips him. He wakes up to see Crill pointing a gun at Churnan's head.

Churban sees the gun, raises his hands, and asks what's going on. The no one lies reflexively, but Crill sees right through it. He doesn't chose to shoot Churban, so he just goes up onto the deck. He sees people moving something from the Tuscany onto the Betty Jo. A lot of them are moving boxes, but four of them are very very carefully moving a barrel, with help from two spotters. Once the barrel is on board, the workers step away with a quickness.

JP's plan is to attach the barrel to an improvised anchor and use it as a naval mine. The CIC is now over the well deck, so it can do the job from there. He sets forth.

Finch docks at Upwell and sends Lil' Abner to tell Jacob to expect a couple urgent patients, then works on moving the injured. When they arrive, he fills Jacob in on recent event, and introduces Eloise to Jacob. Shoeshine starts showing the newcomer the ropes. Finch and Jacob also discuss their next salvage dive for Prentiss.

They step into Jacob's office, where it's private, and Finch tells him about the compartment with power deep in Hooligan's Grotto. The doc is frankly astonished. Finch pushes to invest in more tanks, so that they can stay down longer and salvage more thoroughly next time. Jacob isn't opposed, but that will take jingle he doesn't have just this moment. He offers up his cut to Finch to be spent toward that expansion. Finch pushes to do more diving in the Grotto before moving on. He figures they do another dive and the report it's tapped out. Maybe that report will keep other people from going there, letting them come back later and go even deeper. Finch and Jacob agree on that plan. Finch heads to the market and manages to make some deals. Working scuba tanks with regulators are premium items, but field expedients are common. One merchant has located some helium and thinks he can get more, and can fabricate tanks as well.

It takes the Betty Jo a couple days to get close to Tarawa. He knows he's close when he gets overflown by a helicopter. Pretty soon, the ship is in sight. He starts rigging the drum to be towed in, and decides not to set the timer until he's ready to leave. Right away he finds a guy waving him to a slip - which is not in the right place for the explosion to take out CIC. JP follows orders, and Churban ties off the lines. JP then disembarks and starts figuring out how trade works here. They're OK with people walking around and looking for deals, so he tries to find someone in the interior he might do a deal with. That would give him an excuse to bring the Betty Jo deeper in. There is a guy in the right place (Sunday) dealing lithium-ion batteries.

JP bluffs poor Sunday into thinking there's a good deal to be made here, and the two of them visit the harbormaster and ask permission for JP to come alongside. The harbormaster says it can be done and tells him what light signal will tell hi it's OK to move forward. JP is realizing that the ship is the legacy of a military unit, still operating by military tradition. Crill is keeping watch from the top of the cabin, and presents a very imposing figure. When Crill gets the signal, he starts moving forward, knowing that his play won't hold. Tying up to Sunday's boat won't put him under the CIC, and of course he has no actual goods to trade with. He thinks about backing out, but Churban tells him that if he doesn't do the job he was hired for, Wendigo will kill him. A lot. He needs to commit now, just gun it and hope. JP is not wildly enthusiastic about this.

Churban opens his brain, hoping to learn something about the defenses of the Tarawa. He can feel a storm, just over the horizon, waiting. He tells it to come running. It wants to drown all humanity, and we're here to help! Churban tells JP that there will be a storm here in a couple hours, and also offers to be a distraction if the cap'n needs one.

JP comes alongside but tells Sunday he wants to buy him a drink before they get down to loading. Sunday goes for it. They go and have a nice drink a few decks up. The former hangar deck is now a market and food court, so there's all sorts of options there. Sunday explains that his big thing is a windmill-powered generator for recharging batteries. They talk for a while and then JP feels the storm coming on. First the air pressure drops, then the horizon goes dark, and then the 1MC orders all hands to prepare for foul weather. Sunday suggest they wait until the storm has passed to reload. JP likes that plan!

JP is almost about to chicken out and just blow the bomb where they are, but Churban tells him he can't back out now. If the bomb goes off and doesn't take out CIC, the Tarawa's CIWS will wreck the Betty Jo like it was a soup can at a shooting range, and if that doesn't kill them, Wendigo will. JP decides it is, indeed, too late to back out. Churban goes onto deck and begins an elaborate display of public grieving. People seem oddly mesmerized.

As he approaches his destination, JP realizes that there's a portcullis that could separate the well section under CIC from the original well. There's a quick-release system for it, but nobody standing by it right then. JP throws Churban overboard, goes after him to "save" him, and then set the fuse. The moment Churban isn't doing his thing, people begin yelling. JP has getting low enough to find the controls, so Churban basically stands on him. He's not sure how long the fuse is. Churban resumes his public display of emotion - this time, he's angry at this asshole who threw him overboard.

That gets a lot of people distracted, but at least one person goes running for the trip lever to drop the portcullis. Crill blows that person right off their feet with a sniper rifle shot, and everyone else is having trouble looking away from Churban. Crill starts calling out navigation tips as JP winds his way the hell out of this vessel. The Betty Jo is very maneuverable and runs like it's made for this. The big problem now is that as people lose sight of Churban, they can act again, and the ship security patrol is wise to the idea that someone is trying to get away with something here.

A security cutter comes after the Betty Jo, but Crill takes them under fire, and in short order there are brains all over their cabin. Instead of stopping and blocking the Betty Jo in, they just cut across her path. The boat hits open water, a storm wave pitches the ship hard, and Churban goes overboard. JP yells for Crill to throw him a life ring, and though the ring goes a little high, Churban manages to dolphin-kick and latch onto it. They can't get him out of the water before the bomb goes off, though, and Churban gets walloped by a shockwave that also rips the goggles right off his head. The explosion isn't lovely for the boat, either, but it's much worse for Tarawa. Fire breaks out immediately, though JP can't see much else. The ship does not engage the Betty Jo as it flees, so it must have worked. Churban is puking up blood and then switches to coughing up blood, so massive internal injuries are kind of a given. JP sets course for Upwell, where he knows there's a hospital.

JP knows these waters and has a hunch about the weather, and sets a course that takes full advantage of a favorable wind.

Finch and Jacob are just about ready for their next trip when the Betty Jo comes in. Finch is looking for canine digestive remedies when he sees JP and Crill more or less dragging Churban to the infirmary. Finch happens to know that three days ago, Bantam heard that JP was at Finnegan's Shoal, so he went looking for him.

JP and Crill are surprised by the new guards at the hospital, but they're very professional, and Churban's medical need is quite clear. Shoeshine, however, just says, "Oh hell no." Jacob will treat Churban, though, as long as someone's willing to cover the jingle. It takes Jacob hours of work to get Churban stabilized, and even then, he's not the patient will live. Healing him will take a lot of time, and a blood transfusion from Crill, and even then, what Churban really needs is new lungs. Speaking of Crill, Jacob has better luck healing him. Then he tells JP to start thinking about end-of-life planning for Churban. Crill does volunteer to donate the blood, though.

Churban is having another vision. It's a very affordable hobby. He's in the clean and antiseptic ward in his old place, and wakes up there with a splitting headache. He can see rows of beds, filled with kids like him. Only about a quarter of the kids don't have the sheets pulled up over their heads. He's passing in and out of consciousness as people work on him. He hears Dr Defoe telling someone, "No, we have to save him. He's responded perhaps best out of all of them to the procedure. The opportunity for study here is too good to miss. This is our best shot at a successful test subject." Then he wakes up, in a hospital, with Jacob right there, hand on a painwave projector. The projector looks like a coffee mug with a colander on the top and bottom and a button on the handle. Churban asks Jacob to tell Bulldog that he's sorry for invading his space.

Jacob warns the staff that weird things happen around Churban, and if things get too weird, they need to take care of business. JP tries to spend time sitting with him, hoping that will help keep him calm.

Finch looks to hire someone discreet, who can help him with a dive. A fellow named Template:Npcef, who has a reputation for being discreet, but also secretive and squirrely. He's a conspiracy theorist. Finch knows he can dive, though, so his skills are solid. The next site they'll be diving is a wreck, and the cargo containers of the wrecked ship are broken open, and the loot scattered across the ocean floor. Finch will want a metal detector. Headley really wants to make sure Finch knows to leave any test tubes they find alone. He thinks "they" are always watching when you mess with test tubes. That gets Finches attention, because he has seen the lab down deep in the Shambles. However, Headley keeps secrets, and he won't tell unless he knows Finch is solid and cool. Finch says he's seen the eyes in the lab, and that persuades Headley to open up. The holes in the floors aren't accidental, he explains. The people of Upwell didn't put them there... so who did? He thinks the people down there are always watching. They followed him all the way to the surface once. He had to drop the test tubes to get away. Finch ... kind of buys into all this. At least he has no trouble trading for the metal detector.

Shoeshine volunteers to go with Finch and his crew. When they arrive at the planned site, there's another boat diving there, and also a barge with a crane just bringing shit up with a crane and then sifting each crane load when it's on the surface. They find a spot to anchor somewhere out of the current salvagers way, and start diving. While they're under, the other salvage boat makes a pass, looking to see if they can run the interlopers off, but Shoeshine and a couple of very aggressive dogs on deck persuade them to just keep their distance.

Finch and Headley have a pretty routine dive, but Finch tries to stay down a little longer, so that he can be sure of paying Headley and still making a good profit. Problem is, there's a slow leak in the metal detector. If he pushes, it's going to be impossible to fix. He doesn't want to lose it, so he comes up earlier than he'd like. Once up top again, he can drain the detector and repair it. On the way back to Upwell, making conversation with Headley, Finch discovers that his hired help has also met the wiry blond man. Finch is happy to explain that Crill settled that down. Headley says, "They'll just have to grow a new one," and says he was one of three clones. Finch tells him about the volcano he knows about, an active and growing volcano that's still under the water... for now. It gives off occasional huge gouts of steam, and it smells.

When they return, Headley tells Finch he'd happily work with him again, and that they both know to keep their secrets. Finch checks in with Jacob, who says that he'd happily trade half his loot for stuff on the wishlist he left with Prentiss.

The big news everywhere at Upwell is that the guy who sunk the Tarawa is there! Word is out that John Paul Jones did the deed, and some people think he's a hero of the downtrodden, and some think he's got to be punished. Seems some people resented the old military habit of just taking anything they deem necessary, and won't miss the ship. JP has been spending roughly equal amounts of time dodging assassins and drinking for free.