LogWanderers-Jason-6

Game log for the 2016/12/18 session of Wanderers, as taken by Jason

Ace sees lights in his rear view mirror and tries to duck into a pass, but ducks into a box canyon instead. He realizes his mistake when he comes to the end of the road and realizes he's stuck, so he sets the kill switches, gets out and heads for higher ground on foot.

Major Tom, Fifi, and Satan's Prom Date follow him through the canyon and run in behind him. At Tom's suggestion, Fifi get off her bike and also heads for higher ground.

Fifi goes past Ace in the dark, and after she's a fair distance off, he calls out and tells her to drop her weapons. She tries to spin around instead, he fires, and she ducks down into the gravel.

Meanwhile, SPD secures the Superbird, except for two guys who go to reinforce Fifi.

Fifi tells Ace she just wants to talk things out with him and figure out a way to get paid without anyone getting hurt. Ace expresses a certain skepticism about her intentions and whether she wanted to negotiate before Ace got the drop on her. He decides that he'll negotiate but only up here, not down there surrounded by SPD, so he calls for Tom to come up and discuss it with them. While waiting for Tom to climb, Ace consults the psychic maelstrom, and sees scenes from Con Air. Ace is Steve Buscemi, and Tom and Fifi are following him on a multistate manhunt, and it will probably get bloody. Ace convinces them that returning him for a wee bounty is grossly inferior to getting the war buggy, coming back, and looting the town. They drive nonstop to Sparta and return just before nightfall, to find that Sparta's a ghost town. There are no people. All sorts of stuff is there, but no people. Major Tom goes to read the situation and realizes that he needs to be on the lookout for a tanker truck on the outskirts of the Tumble. Ace tries to do the same thing, fails, and concludes that nobody's in charge here. He puts his hand on a shipping container as he peeks around its corner, and it comes away coated in some sort of viscous slime. The Major tries to access the psychic maelstrom, and his mental grocery store needs a cleanup on aisle six. He sees Ace there with a broken mayonaisse jar, except it's black mayo that crawls toward him across the floor. Also Ace starts screaming. In fact, in real world, Ace starts experience weird hallucinations. Everything has film grain, and someone seems to be messing with the contrast and brightness controls. He finds a light source to identify the sludge, and it's the same sort of stuff that came out of the tanker truck. He tries washing it off with gasoline, and it seems to come off, sort of. At that point Ace announces the danger to everyone else, and the group consensus seems to be that it's time to depart the place now. Unfortunately Kelso is missing. Ringo and Mama Cass want to leave without him. At that point Spoonman walks out of the shadows and announces that this is pretty fucked up. Ace promptly asks him for help with this hand-related situation. Meanwhile, Fifi opens her brain, and in her brain rainforest, the tangling vines have been replaced by snakes, which move slowly, and follow her. She's being watched. This convinces her she wants to leave, but Major Tom and Spoonman all want to find Kelso first. Nobody else in the gang will go with Major Tom to find Kelso, but he corrects that with a little discipline. Also, they loot the undefended town. As they look around, Ringo goes missing. That's hint enough for Tom to cut his losses.

Spoonman investigates the tanker truck. The top hatch is open, and there's a black light in there, so Spoonman asks Ace to stick his head in there. It's empty. Under blacklight, he can see the residue of the slime. Disconcerting. Spoonman dismounts the black light for Ace, who uses it to check the dispersal pattern of the slime. He expects to see spray, but instead he sees little footprints. They follow them into the Tumble, and they see various patterns of bundles and smears, which correlate roughly with ordinary patterns of human habitation. Ace theorizes that when that weird little kid touches someone, the person explodes into black slime. When they reach the market, the footsteps become many footsteps. Maybe it takes people a while to explode.

Fifi continues to feel like she's being watched.

Anyway, after everyone loots the place, we decide to decamp for the Tangle and get some distance from this insanity before we sleep. Spoonman picks out a camp site some fair ways off, a plausible place where everyone can rest up. Ace has messed up trippy dreams all night long. While he sleeps, Spoonman soups up the war buggy with a regulator from the oil pipeline and a ram air intake. It makes the buggy faster but it massively overstresses the engine and drivetrain.

Around the middle of the day after all that, we come into the Tangle. We have a plan where they turn Ace over and he accepts a fine or a scolding or something, but if they try to kill, mutilate, or imprison him, Satan's Prom Date and Fifi rend the place asunder, with the use of the war buggy for this purpose. They pay off Major Tom and SPD, then take Ace into the gantrywork, with Tom following along to see what happens. They take Ace up and onto the old platform, like six stories up in the air, and then two more levels up to the old office area. Vornigath and his men are there, and Seer, and Melody are there too. Vornigath thinks that Ace owes Melody something, and also that Ace owes them a week of hard, punitive labor. Ace offers an extra barters and the town not getting shot up instead, and Vornigath accepts... so long as Ace and Melody and the kid get out immediately.

Spoonman took some of the black goo with him in a milk jug, but it ate through the milk jug, and now it's on the floor of the taco truck. He starts sponging it up prior to analyzing it.

Major Tom goes looking for Kelso and Ringo in the psychic supermarket. He finds them working in the meat market. They're cutting pieces of themselves off and serving them. Sub-wonderful. No answers will be given.