LogApocalypse World: Black Rain-Jason-8

Game log for the 2021/05/09 session of AW: Black Rain, as taken by Jason

Time passes. Sybil, String, and Fisher return to Running Rock. String and Sybil go to visit Xander, who's a little surprised by the state they're both in. He invites them both in, and String asks how he is at forensics. She shows him the hand she acquired, and asks him to investigate it on the down low and clean it up. He uses his fancy savvyhead mojo on it, and senses that it was made by a team of scientists in clean suits. He senses pain, fear, desperation, determination, and hope from it. He also finds that everything about it is backward. It's threaded wrong, the wiring polarity is backward, and so on. He asks String for a little payment in exchange for the work, as Sybil tells String to remember that he still has her box too. Sybil gives him a barter to start repairing her brain relay. As soon as they leave, Xander starts cutting into it.

Whispering starts almost as soon as he begins to work on it, in a strong strident tone. He thinks it's a sermon he's hearing, inspirational. He also hears the name Avaya. He can clean the previous owner's meat off it, but it's fused to the bone. He begins to understand now the neural connections were made. It's clearly something that gets grafted on, with the stump/cuff attached first, and then the hand assembled on top.

String then goes to see Captain Maxwell, and Sybil follows along. The boss, too, can't believe the condition they're in. String reports that he double will not be a problem anymore. She checks on events in town, and the Captain reports things have been quiet. String mentions that she and Sybil are both looking for work, if Maxwell needs anything done, and he says he'll get back to her. There's been no progress figuring out who tried to kill Fisher, but String rats out the old Doctor as the guy who tried to arrange it all. String asks if anyone has seen a duplicate of Sleaze, like the one she saw from the roof, but nobody has. Everyone thinks Sleaze is dead. As they go to leave, Sybil asks whether there isn't something she oculd do to help out, because she really needs money. Negative.

Fisher reports in and complains about being almost killed when the guards didn't stop the sniper from shooting him. He also reports in on String's adventure and his role in it. They speculate on why String wants the other hand. Fisher then goes to investigate the spot from whence he got shot.

He finds the remnants of the "mine" (actually a grenade trap) that almost killed Depthcharge. He suspects the use of a grenade trap was deliberate, to keep the body count down. He finds the spent casings from the shooter and sees that they're full on rifle rounds, not just an assault rifle. One of them has an oddly crimped neck, which on examination turns out to be a hand-made sabot round. Someone found an AP round for something else and had a sabot made so the could send it through their hunting or battle rifle.

Fisher takes the case from the sabot round to the market and asks who might have made it. He ends up at Absalom's stall, hands over the brass, and asks if he ever saw something like it before. Absalom figures it was hand-fitted, maybe by someone using a jib to place the dimples. He saw someone do something like that maybe thirty years ago, in a fight against some killer drones that could only be hurt by AP. Guy was called Severenson. Absalom tries to teach Fisher a little life lesson about how people can take being shot at personal even if Fisher doesn't mean it that way. Fisher doesn't get it.

The Cattle Clan comes through town on schedule, which means the tanners do as well. The Syndics plan a festival in a couple weeks. Fresh water cultists have been coming through and venerating the spring, as part of some sort of religious gathering. Their leader, Marshall, thinks that since the source of the water is holy, Captain Maxwell needs some sort of ecclesiastical leadership in the keep, and Marshall is just the guy. It might be tempting to kill off the cult, but their preaching is free publicity for the hold.

Captain Fisher sends for String and Sybil. He tells them the water cult is back, and he wants to know what they're planning. Sybil asks if he wants them taken care of, and the boss tells her that she thinks she's a little confused. String actually likes the idea of taking them out, but Captain Maxwell has other people for that. He also asks the two cultists to find out which Syndics support the water cult, so he can keep track of what the Syndics are up to. The Captain pays them in advance.

String returns to the grotto and talks to her followers about the water cult. One of them suggests that the best way to undercut the water cult would be to get rid of the source. After all, the grotto cult doesn't need fresh water. If everyone knew they could drink rain water, then the fresh water cult wouldn't be so interesting. She actually suggests doing something to the spring, but String doesn't like that.

Xander has a camera on a string, down near the source of the spring. There's a guard with him, because nobody's allowed at the source alone, even Captain Maxwell. There's a big igneous rock with a hand-sized hole in it, through which emerges pure water. There's a pool around the spring, and a series of sluice gates that to to various cisterns. It gets pumped from there to spigots for distribution. In cistern four, the water level has dropped below output pipe level, and part of that pipe has rusted away. There used to be a section that descended into the water, but it rusted off. The water here is brackish and green now, since the sluice leading here has been closed. Xander's lowering the camera on a string down into the cistern. There's a light attached to the camera so he can see. About a quarter of the way over from the center, there's a round spot that looks like it was once a hatch, but now it's bricked over. He notices ripples in the water before his camera touches the surface, but it's not clear what makes them. There's something down there, a vibration, but he can't see anything in the water. When he pulls the camera up, the ripples pulsate.

Testtube, who had been keeping an eye on Xander, reports to the Captain that Xander wants to unbrick that hatch. Xander doesn't like the idea, so the guard casually offers to kill Xander if needed.

Xander asks Cadbury what he knows about the history of the cisterns. Cadbury's matter of fact but not real helpful. Xander then goes back to Maxwell and asks if he can go into cistern 4. He's implicitly trading getting the cistern operational for access to the hatch. The thing is, the other cisterns have never been full. Getting #4 operational may not be that useful. Xander explains about the bricked-up hatch and the ripples in the water. The Captain forces him to admit that this hatch is bricked up, and Maxwell thinks it's probably bricked up for a reason. Maxwell decides to run a different cistern dry saking the water cult, and they'll see if there's a hatch at the bottom of that one.

String goes to talk to the water cultists. They're preaching purity, transparency, being like the water. She moves into the crowd and starts arguing with the preacher, telling that pure water can't open one's third eye. The preacher claims people only have two eyes. String disagrees, and one of the cultists challenges her to prove that the grey water will open her third eye. String does, and it does. The woman begins to talk, nonsense at first, but then one of the other guys in the crowd asks how she could know that. People begin coming forward and asking String to anoint them with the grey water. The water cult leaders are not happy. String tries to talk some people into joining her cult, but the leaders counter her with fervent preaching, and the crowd isn't ready to foresake their faith yet.

String suggests that Sybil should infiltrate the water cult, disparaging the hocus as an easy way of gaining credibility. She mingles, she sympathizes, she gets accepted by a guy named Ventnor, who makes a convincing show of being interested in her. He can see she's struggled, and asks if she's reached a point in her life when she needs to make a change. He assures her that the water cult takes transparency very seriously. She can ask him anything, and he'll never lie to her. She asks what's required of new members, and he says it's a matter of personal commitment that happens in stages. The first step is baptism in pure water. Her read is that she believes everything she's saying. If she spent some time with him, told him something personal about herself, he'll believe she's serious about joining. She tells him that's interesting and she needs to think about it.

String goes to see the Syndics. The Hall is busy, and people don't really notice her arrival. She tries to talk to people about the water cult. It's not hard to get people to talk about them, and hears mixed things. One of the Cattle Clan guys isn't real concerned about them, thinks they're find, but one of the Syndics thinks they're the absolute worst. She catches him maybe giving some sort of nod to someone, and she realizes he's suddenly worried and wants to cut the conversation short. She lets him leave their conversation but then follows him. He heads toward the commons to his wagon. She sneaks over to it and eavesdrops on the conversation inside. At first it's all mundane, but then he starts telling his wife he thinks trouble is brewing and they might need to move along. He almost mentioned to her that Borthwick had dealings with the cult, and that near miss makes him want to not be here.

Xander goes to work pulling the hand away from the cuff. He also starts a conversation with it. It talks back. He asks it its purpose, and it says it carries the word. It considers itself a disciple, a vessel of the message. It gives a sermon about unity of purpose, taking back that which was lost, and putting together that which was put asunder. He figures that if he added an infirmary to his workspace, he'd be able to attach the hand to someone.

After dark, Cadbury brings String to see the Captain, and she tells him about the connection between Borthwick and the water cult. She also relays some talk she heard about people who thought they paid for more food than they got. Maxwell's not surprised, since they've never exactly loved him.

Fisher goes to where he thinks the sniper was set up, then opens his mind and asks the maelstrom who shot him. He finds himself almost in the shoes of his attacker, looking through the sights at his target, and wakes up when he realizes he just shot someone in the market. He freaks out a little bit and rapidly heads down into the alley, and hears angry voices. Cabot is down there, probably with armed guards, talking angrily about some sort of sniper problem. Fisher comes walking out, weapon slung, and hears people pointing guns at him. He walks out, gets interrogated by Cabot, bluffs his way out after exchanging many unkind words, and realizes he knows exactly where the bullet would have gone. He goes there to investigate, finds some members of Syndic security there, ignores them, and finds the marketplace mostly deserted. He finds a wooden post with a bunch of shit hanging from it and two impact marks, in almost exactly the same spot. He takes a knife and digs the bullet out. They're identical. He goes to find String.

Xander asks Avaya what it knows about the keep. She thinks the keep is very important. It's where it all started.

Fisher arrives at the grotto. It's busy and a lot of people are baked out of their minds, as String goes around talking to her flock. He asks about the person who wanted him dead, and she describes the Old Doctor to him, adding that he's Xander's friend. She can't explain why the old man wants the gunlugger dead. He asks her to let him know if the old man comes back, and then goes looking for Xander.

Sybil goes to a water cult gathering, trying to mingle inconspicuously. Marshall is baptizing new members. It's a very solemn occasion until it's over, and then it's a party. It's a totally different sort of party than the ones at the grotto, and it kind of creeps her out, but at least she avoids being noticed. She leaves and returns to the grotto as Fisher leaves.

Fisher finds Xander, and they talk about the Old Doctor. Fisher can't quite puzzle out what Xander is trying to convey, but it seems to be that he can only find the Doctor when someone gets hurt, so maybe someone needs to get hurt. Fisher has just had a lot of people telling that maybe it's bad to hurt people and this just confuses the hell out of him. Fisher leaves with his head hurting.