LogApocalypse World: Black Rain-Jason-14

Game log for the 2021/07/11 session of AW: Black Rain, as taken by Jason

We pick up where we left off. Luna and String are at the grotto, hanging out on a rainy morning, and the inhabitants are just starting to stir. String hears a muffled cry from inside the place. She finds Aster lying on the ground, bleeding from the back of his head where somebody clubbed him. She shouts for help, and Luna hears. They move Aster to the infirmary together. As they're doing so, someone steps out from behind a tapestry, sap upraised, and heads toward String. She screams and tries to retreat. Once he realizes she's not a threat, he shoves String aside and goes for Luna, hand outstretched. She pulls her knife and swings at him as String tries to grapple with him. Their efforts sort of offset - String inadvertently yanks his arm out of the way of the knife. The club hit stuns Luna.

String tries to wrestle the attacker down and gets her arms around his neck, hand around his neck, still calling for help. She drives her thumb right through his flesh because she's grabbing his neck so hard, and only gets a few bruises in return. Luna grabs some rubber tubing to try to tie the intruder's legs up. Reebok jumps in to help. Eventually the intruder passes out, and then they move him to the infirmary and make sure he's not going to die. String opens her brain to try to figure out who this club-wielding thug might be. She discovers that he's some poor guy with a gambling problem who needs the money. Back in the real world, she grabs Luna and heads for the door. The cultists naturally get out of String's way. The skinner asks what's going on, and String says, "You're coming with me, bitch," and punches Luna with the stub of her arm. It would have been a good hard swing if there'd been a fist on the end of that arm. Luna wins free and sees String once again trying to reach for something with an arm that has no hand.

Fisher walks in and sees String trying to grab Luna, and immediately goes to stop her, shouting, "quit it!" He cold-cocks her, kicks her a couple times, and grabs hold of her, shouting, "What the hell did Luna do to you?" The cult then jumps Fisher, who allows himself to be pulled away. He asks Luna if she's OK, and she says that she doesn't know what happened. String clutches her head and lays down, then points to the dead body on the stretcher. He got his throat slit somewhere during the fighting.

Fisher treats String, pilfering a little stock in the process. When she's feeling better, she tells everyone that the dead guy was called Trolley. String doesn't know what happened, but Fisher recognizes the symptons immediately. Luna worries that she's bringing trouble to the grotto, and Fisher suggests that she should move into the keep. At Luna's request, Fisher agrees to introduce her to the Captain. String heals Luna and explains that she did it with her third eye. Prentiss says that if she's going to bring this sort of trouble, Luna should move out. String takes that poorly and tells her that if she wants to make rules, she needs to move out. Prentiss and a few like-minded people point out that String is unique and the cult needs her. Fisher interrupts to ask Luna to come with him to the keep right then and there. She agrees to come along, but he feels like she's just using him. String gives her a sympathetic look as she leaves. As Luna packs, Reebok tells Fisher that if he ever does something like that again, she'll bleed him, then turns and walks away. To her back, Fisher mumbles, "People with more teeth than you have tried." Dualla points out that with the infirmary, the grotto has become a sanctuary in both real and spiritual terms, and turning people out ruins it. Nobody ever confesses to cutting Trolley's throat, though String makes it clear that if anyone admits to doing it, they'll still be welcome in the grotto.

Fisher and Luna arrive at the keep. Xander's working on his plans when they walk in, but he puts things down to fall in behind them. Luna's surprised to find that he lives in the keep, and explains that they're going to see the Captain. Suddenly Xander wants to go see the Captain too. He reads Fisher's bristly behavior and realizes the gunlugger has an inchoate thing for Luna. Xander doubles down on being nice to Luna.

They arrive in Captain Maxwell's office and he can immediately tell that something's going on between the three of them. The boss hasn't seen Luna close up since he was in Kelphaven. Luna tells him that things there got complicated, she's decided to relocate, and she'd like to live in the keep. Xander offers the Airstream. Fisher ignores this and explains to the boss about the assault in the keep. Xander tries to figure out how to get Luna to move in with her, and realizes she just won't. Maxwell asks what happened in Kelphaven, and she admits that she isn't entirely sure what went wrong, but the place has gotten violent and unsafe for her. Maxwell can tell she's not lying but maybe she's being evasive. It occurs to him that if she's performing in the great hall, he could get a cut. Otherwise, having her around doesn't benefit him directly.

Fisher tries to mumble some gibberish about how this is a good idea, which doesn't actually impress the boss any, but Luna makes a pretty good case for herself even without his "help". She'll sing for her rent, saving him the normal entertainment expenses, but she wants to be allowed to keep any tips she gets. The Captain wants her around to entertain but won't allow it for free. She has to pay rent if she wants to stay with him. She accepts.

Xander then pitches his idea of turning the wreckage in the lantern deep into a power source. If he can build a working control system, Running Rock would have power forever. Maxwell is interested but still wants to see firm, concrete plans before he makes a decision. He also asks the savvyhead to brick up the dumbwaiter door in the old office.

Xander goes down in the keep to find some materials and also to talk to the maelstrom about the void. He realizes that the void and the maelstrom are two entirely different things, and that he's never done proper experimentation on the properties of the void. He starts dangling a plumb line with a watch at the end downthe dumbwaiter, then opening up a bit of the bricked-up wall in the kitchen and see if he sees the watch there.

Of course, the staff report to Captain Maxwell that Xander's busting open the kitchen. He goes downstairs and finds that Xander's going on at length about how to the watch isn't hanging straight down and this is important data. The Captain is displeased and tells Xander he needs the boss's approval before he does any tinkering with the bricked-up regions. Bento offers to babysit the savvyhead and cocks her weapon. She required Xander to actually mortar up the bricks in the kitchen while Tinderbox complains about the ruckus. Hours later, Xander and Bento go upstairs, and he begins pulling in his line. Suddenly, something start pulling on it. Xander runs over and looks inside. Suddenly all the walls are a cacophany of whisphers. As he's trying to wrap the line around something for leverage, it breaks. The moment it breaks, the whispering stops. He mutters that next time he'll use chain. "The fuck you will," says Bento, and orders him to get to mortaring.

Fisher gets a new special assignment to find Dyke or any of his cronies in town and take care of them.

That night, Captain Maxwell entertains the Weaver's Guild, who'd like to trade textiles for water. Luna does a wonderful job entertaining them. Cyrus feels a need to give her a gift, admires her patron, and wants to meet her. Cyrus promptly brags to the Captain about how he made Luna's cloak, and asks him how she came to work here. Cyrus also decides that Luna needs gloves to go with her cloak, and mentions to the Captain that his guild have always been strong supporters of the Maxwells. He also tells him that for travelers, Running Rock is a beacon of civilization.

Cyrus then approaches Luna and tells her how happy he is to see her and hear her perform. After making sure she still likes her cloak, he offers to make her a gift of matching gloves.

Fisher's hanging around a dive named The Hole, looking for Dyke or Dyke's agents. The Hole is not a nice place. It's a drug den, bar, and brothel. Bento comes in, sees him, and comes over to talk. She explains that someone needs to do something about Xander, and when Fisher enquires, she tells him all about Xander's little experiment in the kitchen. She mentions that when the string broke, she heard wingbeats coming from the void. Fisher tells her he's not going to hurt Xander without the boss's orders. She tells him that she thought he'd be willing to take Xander out, so Xander wouldn't be around Luna. Fisher tells her that String can fix her nose and then tries to break her nose for her, but sort of accidentally kills her instead. No sign of Dyke or any of Dyke's agents, either. When he comes back to the keep, he leaves word with Slingshot that Bento isn't coming back. He goes to sleep in his room.

Captain Maxwell ducks out of the performance along with a couple guards, though he asks the guards to wait in the hall while he talks to Fisher. They talk, and Fisher knows before the boss says so that he's going to need to leave.

After the concern, Xander goes looking for Fisher, but only finds Depthcharge, who's only too happy to tell him that Fisher's not living there anymore.

Time passes.

In the wee hours of a morning, 8 - 10 heavily armed men rush into the grotto, carrying a bleeding guy wrapped in a shower curtain. One of them puts a shotgun at String and says, "Fix him." She's happy to. She lays her hands on the poor gutshot fellow, then tells the apparent leader that they heal anyone who comes in just for the asking. He blusters a bit, but calms down slightly when she points out the supernatural speed with which the wounded guy healed. Though he healed a litle bit right away, it's going to take a couple barter and some time to heal him completely, because the guy is septic. The boss identifies himself as Quigley. She tells him he and his people are welcome to stay while she heals their friend as long as they don't cause trouble.

String goes out looking for Fisher. After hearing he's not living at the keep, he's findable at the Kiln House, where someone saw him squating. He's a little down but he's willing to give her back the stock he purloined. She's trying to be nice and he's not really wanting anyone to be nice to him. They end up talking about the cult and the poison water and how crazy some of her followers are. She tells him that her followers are passionate, and she thinks he's forgotten what that's like. He laughs and then starts crying. She sees herself out.

String then finds Kruger and tells him about how Dyke hired someone to come for Luna, though the guy failed. Kruger seems to know Trolley's name. They talk about Quigley, who Kruger identifies as a raider and the leader of a pack of hyenas. However, their gang is very tight. Kruger once tried to hire someone away from them and couldn't. He's given guys the choice to break ranks with the gang or die and they've chosen death. Anyway, Kruger's also heard there are seekers in town, guys in robes, and he thinks people who believe in stuff are usually trouble. He himself only believes in money. Kruger then asks if Fisher's going to cause trouble. One of the other guys playing cards with Kruger speaks up and says he is absolutely trouble. String seems to be the only one who finds any redeeming characteristics in the local gunlugger.

She then seeks out the guys in robes, who are of course conspicuous. The robes are a dark indigo color. They're doing some weird thing where they walk around, then one stops and stand still. They seem to be making some sort of geometric shape with the places they're standing. One of the nearby merchants tells String that they robe-wearers were asking questions about disappearances and glowing lights above the keep. She decides to just outright ask. She walks up to a robe-wearer and asks what he knows about the void. He's wearing a Cobra Commander-style mask that muffles his voice and turns the question back on her. She tells him the void is bad and it's spreading. He can tell that she's a seeker herself, and asks where she can be found so a priest can talk to her. Then, he resumes his geometric alignment. She buys some food and goes back to the grotto.

Xander uses his sonic screwdriver to try to locate someone who can teach him about the void. He thinks he's got something tuned in when suddenly a beam of yellow light shoots out of the screwdriver, punches through the roof, and illuminates a cloud above the keep. The beam bounces off the cloud and splits, creating a pulsing energy pattern connecting the stationary seekers. They all raise their hands in sync and then clap once, and the beam stops. In the Airstream, Xander's screwdriver explodes. String immediately thinks of many questions to ask them, so she goes up to one and asks how they did that.

They've started moving around again now. The one she asked explains that what just happened was a sending, which they have captured. He then tells her they will seek her out.

Fisher hears the thundclap and goes to see what that was. Once he realizes it was all weird stuff, he files it under someone else's problem, and gets back to looking for whoever is hiring people for snatch jobs. He doesn't find anyone hiring people to kidnap Luna, but there is a merchant offering good money to get his daughter back. He doesn't know who the bandits were who took her, but he can tell where it happened. He's not looking for that kind of thing, though, he wants to do what the Captain wanted done. He hears that someone from out of town is buying provisions, which Kellogg is loading up.

Xander's in the Airstream, grieving for his busted toy, wondering what destructively interfered with his mojo. He hears that the machine tools he's been looking for will arrive soon. He opens his brain again and hears a voice saying, "Your course of action is dangerous and you must desist immediately." He tells it he wants to understand and it says, "To understand is to obey." Then it tells him to come to the grotto. He goes directly, at which point the guards remind him he's not allowed to leave. He goes to talk to the Captain.

Depthcharge found Captain Maxwell to report the beam of light, which got them both looking for him. Xander tells them both what the voice said, and the Captain agrees to let him go... with the Captain and a guard going with. Depthcharge does not want in, so Slingshot goes instead.

Luna sees the beam of light and hears the thunderclap too. She asks one of the keep workers what that, and whoever it is sort of dismisses it as Xander screwing around again, and mentions the holes in the wall. She expresses curiousity, so the lackey takes her to see it, and explains about the voids. She's warned not to go below the great hall level.

String gets to the grotto and delivers food, and shortly afterward, Xander, Maxwell, and Slingshot show up. Xander explains what happened, and she immediately tells him his ascension was hijacked by the seekers. She asks how he's doing with her arm, and he explains that he was trying to get the information he needed when his sonic screwdriver exploded. The Captain interjects to ask what String's plan for dealing with the void is. She compares the void to a psychic cancer, and says she needs to find the source tumour and excise it. This does match up with what not-Fisher was trying to say, which was that the spreading void will result in the collapse or one or both universes, but that destroying the void might sever the connection between the universes. She thinks that if she had both artificial hands, it would be easier for her to move between universes, and she could locate the source of the "cancer" and deal with it. Maxwell concludes that nobody has a solid plan. String disagrees, because she really thinks that if she gets over to the other world, kills the right people, and does the right damage, she can fix stuff. She puts her hand on his shoulder and assures him this isn't her first rodeo. After all, she has the one fake hand. The boss isn't persuaded and wants to hear what the new people have to say.

String reminds Xander he needs to fix her hand, and he starts asking how he can get to the other side to get the wire he needs, when a Seeker comes in and says, "You open a door." The Captain asks the Seeker what they seek, and he predictably says "truth" and "enlightenment." They've heard that there are doors in the keep. Xander isn't happy with that answer, since people go into those voids and get lost. The Seeker says something about doors having two sides, but that the pathway is his to find. Xander needs to know how to find the path! The Seeker doesn't seem to know but assures him that every man has his own journey. Xander asks who spoke to him from the maelstrom, and the Seeker says it was him, and that speaking into the maelstrom is unwise. The maelstrom is dangerous, especially for the uninitiated. Xander tries to claim he's not exactly uninitiated but the Seeker straight disses him with an, "And yet." They want to observe the void, to cast information into it, and see if it can be traversed. Captain Maxwell and Xander both try to read the Seeker. The Captain cannot for the life of him see what this guy intends to do. Xander notices that more Seekers have come in. They have numbers.

The Captain asks if they want to observe the void for the long term or just for a while and then leave. The Seeker explains that they want to observe it until they learn what they came to learn, and then they'll move on to the next mystery.

Xander decides to try some of the grotto's dust. He starts talking to god.

The Captain offers to let one of the Seekers in to view the void. They ask for two, so one can observe and one can collaborte. The boss accepts that, on the understanding that when they're done observing, they'll be on their way. He says they can come by tomorrow, and gives Slingshot the nod.