LogApocalypse World: Purgatoria After Dark-Jason-9

Game log for the 2016/04/17 session of Apocalypse World: Purgatoria After Dark, as taken by Jason

The Collapse hit China worst. High population density meant a catastrophic death toll when things went bad.

Adrian staggers back to Coffeemesto but it's closed. He goes to Natalya's clinic and asks Gregoriy to send for her, but he doesn't know where the boss went. That leaves only the urchins, and sure enough, he bumps into Gleb, who offers to take him to the General. Adrian does not want to go there. Gleb does not have time to screw around with setting up meetings but he'll pass the word along that Adrian's looking for them and can be found in the old building across from Coffeemesto. The word eventually makes it around.

Konstantine gets the word and explains Adrian's skills and principles to the General, with advise not to meet Adrian personally. The General wants to go personally, so Konstantine arranges for Babushka to go along as bodyguard and also for a squad of soldiers to be ready to respond to any contingency.

Up above, it's raining, and the roof over Adrian's head leaks. When Konstantine gets in, he sees some thug in street clothes beating on Adrian. He tries to check and see if the guy's alone, but accidentally knocks over some stuff, at which point the goon opens fire. Konstantine fires back and absolutely stone murders the goon, then goes to try to rush Adrian out. Adrian writes "there's a tracker in my head" in blood on the floor. They head into the tunnels, and Adrian grabs his attacker's pistol. They get a little progress and then talk. Adrian can jam the thing in his head but he needs to be in his workspace. Unfortunately he can't go there while under surveillance. He needs lead sheets. Konstantine writes "pumpig station 4 hours" in the dirt and goes rushing off to find some lead sheets.

Adrian goes looking for places that might harbor resistance fighters - mid-level only, of course. He goes to a seedy vodka and gambling den, a filthy, smokey, dingy place. He walks up to the bartender and asks for Yavno. The bartender reminds him that Yavno got caught. Someone slightly overdressed for the joint rolls up and inquires as to Adrian's business. He takes Adrian aside to talk and introduces himself as Roman, then asks Adrian to come with him. They go through the back room, and out the back door, but then Adrian stops him and writes a warning in the dirt to let Roman of his... difficulties. Roman assures him that his woriries are no matter. Adrian lies a little bit to convince Roman that while he was at Coffeemesto when the raid happened, he didn't get caught. He then explains about his demolition project, and Roman directs him to Mikhail Popov, with whom he can arrange a meeting. But what can Adrian do for Roman? Perhaps he could crack a safe, with the right tools. Now he has Roman's full attention. Roman wants the safe opened right away, but Adrian has a meeting to be at, which means there's a bit of a conflict waiting to happen. Any doubts about that conflict are resolved when someone throws a bag over Adrian's head.

Nastia goes looking for work. She knows this guy Andrei who might be willing to hire her and her friends. He wants trouble made and people hurt, which service she will happily provide for money. He wants the current Arsenal work boss and his crew beaten down a bit so that Andrei can be the new work boss. They can meet at the gate at the next shift change for the first half of her payment. At the appropriate time, Andrei hands off a suspiciously heavy lunchbox, which turns out to be full of bullets. Excellent trade goods! They then go to stake out likely routes for Katyushin. They find him walking home with four of his buddies.

Nastia comes up to Katyushin and tries to separate him from his friends by saying she has a message about Yavno. She tries to duck into the alley but he grabs her and demands plain words. She won't spill the message in front of his friends, so he tosses her aside and walks on. She gets in front of him again and lets herself be seen, but then she and the gang go back to shadowing them right up to the tenement they live in. She resigns herself to trying again tomorow.

Natalya's wakeup efforts are consuming most of her time. The portion of people with adjustment issues is growing, and it's becoming hard to care for them and wake up people at the same time. Some of the folks who adjust poorly are complaining of weird ailments as well as mental issues, including phantom pain. She's keeping them sedated. Worse, some of the people who seemed fine at first are also reporting weird ailments. She decides to ask Dr Zhivago for advice. She talks to him for a long, long time, though his advice is not especially helpful. When she comes to, patient Glockov has vanished, and three other patients' throats have been slit. She goes looking for Glockov, but he's the one who finds her. Rather than politely calling out, "found you!," he stabs her in the neck with a scalpel, inflicting a brutal injury. She takes another stabbing but knocks him out with her stun gun. She immediately decides that he's not just a soldier needing treatment but a threat to be dealt with, so she takes him out with the scalpel. She begins grabbing supplies to heal herself, but then the people who'd been up top walk in. Babushka immediately investigates and then tries to administer first aid. Natalya goes through a whole lot of medical supplies trying to get the bleeding under control but eventually manages, and discovers that the extremely sharp blade of the scalpel made a surprisingly neat cut that should heal true. Babushka has the joy of explaining the mishap to the General.

The General feels pretty nervous about the increasing rate of troubled revivees. Konsantine advises maintaining forward motion and developing plans; there will be time to research cures for the problem once the Imperial forces can operate openly. The General asks for rapid progress on the plan to liberate the Archduke.

Gleb goes looking through the market for something that the Hoard might like. One seller deals in old books and manuscripts, and used to have a book of maps that the Hoard would really quite enjoy. The bookseller, Kirov, doesn't much care for the way Gleb keeps touching everything. Gleb doesn't like the fact that Kirov sold the book he wants to someone called Drago. Out of what's left, the best thing in the entire store would be Kirov's glasses. He distracts the old guy by knocking a book over, then tries to snatch the glasses when Kirov stabilizes the books. Kirov slaps his hand away and then beats him vigorously.

Babushka tries to access the Stasis armory. She cannot. She steals a pistol and an SMG from the barracks arms locker instead. Tatiana asks her what's going on. Babushka says she has a problem to solve, which of course gets Tatiana's immediate attention. The friendly robot assures her that she's seeing to a site security issue, and the Lieutenant tells her to carry on. She then heads off to the Hoard.

Her entrance disturbs one of Gleb's telltales. Gleb grabs some shoes from a pile and then uses his swing to let him throw them at her while quickly moving across the room. Unfortunately the swing hangs up on some of the other crap in the Hoyard and makes him a perfect target for Babushka. He takes a few rounds, tries to jump out of the sex swing, fails, and ends up hanging there by one foot. He fals out a few seconds later just in time to avoid the second burst Babushka sends his way. He ducks deeper into the Hoard and she pursues, but he eludes her by shimmying up a pipe and then distracting her by tossing a coin, then drops a head-in-a-jar on her. Well, near her. The Hoard does not approve of using heads from the Hoard as weapons and so Gleb's problems only get worse. He tries to run but Babushka catches him with another burst, which Disfigures him. He gets out of her line of sight, elswhere in the Hoard. She contemplates methods of cornering him and concludes that smoking him out might work best. She begins setting flammable objects aflame, working in from all but one of the exits.

Gleb has to try to protect the Hoard and tries to dowse the flames, with some success. However, enough continue to burn that he will eventually get smoked out. He grabs the best item in the Hoard, an old bedazzled diary kept by an angsty suicidal girl, and looks for a way out. He doesn't have an obvious one, so he tries going through her instead. The Hoard is not going out like this. Gleb lacks fighting skills, though, and his beserker rush on Babushka ends with him grappled in her clutches. She says, "I can make it quick." Until he responds, she plans simply to hold him in place and let him succumb to the smoke. He tries to kick loose but cannot. Gleb perishes in the smoke. The Hoard burns.

Someone pulls the bag off Adrian's head. Time to crack a safe. It shows clear signs that other people have tried to crack it. He recognizes the brand - it would have come from Nurnburg. Without specialized tools, he can't crack it. Roman doesn't like that answer and someone clubs him. They whale on him a bit and then dump him in an alley. He makes his way to the pumping station, where Konstantine awaits him with an X-ray tech's lead-lined gown. The Major then leads him to stasis.

Adrian, gown wrapped around his head, begins telling the folks at Stasis how to build a jammer out of the parts in the shop. When Babushka returns, she volunteers to help Adrian with his work. Well, after she cleans the guns she borrowed. Konstantine has to ask a couple times to get Babushka to say, out loud, that she killed Gleb, at which point the Major thanks her.

Natalya goes into the Psychic Maelstrom to make sure Gleb is really dead.

General Tartakoff shouts "what did you do?!" and begins beating on Babushka. Natalya tries to intervene but he backhands her halfway across the room and resumes choking the robot. Babushka just says "General, it had to be done. Please stop. You're hurting me." Eventually she rats out Natalya as the source of the order. The General sees her standing with a syringe in her hand, so instead of trying to beat her, he pulls his pistol and shoots her in the face. Babushka grabs the gun out of his hand and messes him up while she's at it.

Konstantine, in the ready room, comes running at the sound of gunfire and gets to the scene just in time to see Natalya falling and Babushka crushing the General's face with a blow. Yeah. He dead. The Major just became the General.