LogThe Mouldering World-Jason-3

Game log for the 2014/07/13 session of The Mouldering World, as taken by Jason

Fluffy rolls through the shaft in a coal cart, trapped by her foot. The furnace approaches, or to be precise, her cart approaches the furnace. The cart hits the tipping point and sets Fluffly into the chute, but she grabs the lip and hangs on by it, danging one-handed from the edge. As she makes the leap, her knife falls out and slides down the coal chute into the furnace. She slide-dangles from the rim of the chute to the floor, and finds herself face to face with someone who'd previously been engaged in shoveling coal. She tries to sneak off, but she's forced to take cover when the line grinds to a halt and hears the sounds of search parties. Seems that she's escaped the creeper section of the factory, which makes her an escapee. As she watches, she begins to think that it's less of a search and more of an evacuation. She tries to merge with one of the groups leaving the facility and sees them all heading to an old loading gate, onto which a grate has been welded and a personnel board afixed. Everyone leaving has to pass by dogs. One suspects they're creep-sniffing dogs.

She's busy trying to figure out what sort of distraction might get her past the guards when another whistle blows. At that point the guards un-muzzle the dogs and let them off the leads, then scurry back through the gates. The dogs go running through the factory, and one heads right for her. She climbs an I-beam and then scurries up a pipe to get away from the dogs, but they can't climb the girder, so she's safe for now. She runs along the ceiling joists to the edge of the building, then uses a chain dangling from a hoist to swing down and out through the window. She lands on a pile of old wooden pallets. By the time she recovers her footing, three men have surrounded her with guns, yelling "get down! Get down!"

She's about ready to hurl a pallet and take her chances when a thrown rock, out of nowhere, takes out the center guard. One of the two remaining guards opens fire in the direction the rock came from, and the other opens fire at Fluffy. She sprints toward the guard shooting at her, broken-field style, rolls, tosses a chunk of wood to distract him, and then grabs his gun away from him. The other surviving guard, demoralized by how swiftly his group of three armed men has become one armed man and an unknown number of attackers, drops his gun and flees.

Fluffly looks around and sees that someone has thrown a rug over the top of the concertina wire between this side of the factory and the creeper zone, and now the creepers are boiling out of Creeptown. Some of them are throwing chunks of glass and other projectiles and the fleeing guard. Fluffy now has a hunting rifle, a shotgun, an AK-47, and a group of creeper followers. She asks them for the way out. One tells her to follow him... but she sees him split in two and run off in two different directions. As he does so, a different creeper asks for a gun. She gives him the shotgun, on the theory that it looks sort of crappy, but she keeps the other two weapons for himself. One of them challenges her on that, but Fluffy's fury and presence cow him in short order.

As the riot begins to really move into high gear, Vance makes his way to the front of the crowd. "So, you're the new sherrif in this town, huh?" He offers the way out in exchange for an AK-47, but she declines. He points out that if they get free into Binghamton, there will be guns enough to around for everyone. Turns out there's a sort of trick wall panel in the Factory that opens up and lets him into a theoretically open section. He mentions, as they go, that he's been planning something like this for a while, but she kicked it off for them.

A dog comes flying out of nowhere and tackles the rioter nearest Fluffy. Someone else stabs it with some rebar and the rest of the horde doesn't even slow down. They move through the factory until they get to an old industrial turntable, which, it turns out, is sitting on top of a tunnel of sorts. Vance motions for her to go through the tunnel; she motions for one of her new followers to go, and then there's a steady stream of escapees going through the tunnel. Vance seems to be having the time of his life.

The tunnels lead into or are the storm drains, which lead to the river. At the river the bars have been bent aside, so people are free at the river's edge, outside of town.

At Bank's Place, the sound of the riot leads Bank to order the staff to fort up. Someone runs by, pounds on the door, and orders them to stay closed up until the all clear sounds. Pixie, a newer waitress, asks what it all means. She's terrified of what it all means, but Bank promises that once we get the all clear, we'll make the rounds and check on everyone - but not until the all clear sounds. Wallace starts consuting with everyone and making a written plan, which takes everyone's minds off the riot.

A while later Ward comes by and asks if we're OK. Bank says yes. A while later, there's a long blast on the factory horn, and then the shooting starts. Bank puts four people on watch (two on each door) and has the rest hide in the basement, so we have minimum exposure to stray rounds.

Meanwhile, at the crossroads, Jonjo and Resonance are hoofin' it to Clydesdale. This leaves us lots of room for philosophical musing, which only servers to enervate Resonance. After some time, we hear the sound of hoofbeats on the road, so we duck off the side of the road into cover. Resonance is slow off the mark, and while Jonjo tries to give him a yank to speed him up, Resonance bounces off a tree and ends up flat in the road, right in front of the lead riders of a large group of horsemen. They're all in black and wearing wide-brimmed turbans, which makes them the Riders on the Storm, of whom Resonance has not heard. Jonjo notices that the instant the group stops, the rest of them move automatically to set perimeter security and set up a yurt, which shows they're competent and disciplined.

Jonjo, wanting to make friendly contact, makes some noise and emerges slowly. They recognize him and notice that he doesn't his gang with hin anymore. Jonjo explains they he's found religion and taken a new path. The leader of the Riders expresses interest, but they're bound for Raleigh, so there's no time for religious discussion now. Their leader will stop for coffee with Jonjo, as a gesture of respect for the Black Knights. He explains that last night, riding from Clydesdale, they saw the stars. The moon set twice that night. That's not the usual number. Jonjo suggests that Jackson Twain might know more, and they all agree that Twain knows many strange things. Apparently Twain asked them if they'd been to Oak Ridge. Resonance volunteers that from what he's heard, it's death to approach Oak Ridge today. The leader of the Knights says that the leader of Clydesdale has a vision, but it's a short vision, and he is not to be trusted.

Arriving in Clydesdale, the guards rudely refuse to allow Jonjo to meet Ghislaine. Jonjo goes to arrange lodgings and secure a base of operation, while Resonance lurks near the warehouse to see what's happening. He realizes that a sneaky person could pile up 55-gallon drums, climb up, and get in a warehouse window.

Jonjo, elsewhere in town, catches someone trying to steal his magnum out of its holster. He traps the thief's hand, spins, and points the gun at... a terrified eleven year old girl. He drags the girl over to a food stall, sits her down hard, and buys her food. She explains the lay of the land - Buzz runs the town, Fagin runs the market, Marta's sort of on-again, off-again with Buzz and has lots of pull. She also advises him to get rooms at The Spit. Jonjo reads her aura and finds that deep down inside, she has a cool, blue-green, "regular as the surf" aura. Her name turns out to be Becky. Jonjo offers to take care of her problems for her, if she has that sort of problem.

Resonance opens his mind to the psychic maelstrom, which for him means Gaia, the fundamental interconnectedness of all life, and tries to puzzle out the reason that Jonjo is so curious about the shed. He realizes that Jonjo is very loyal.. but also that the shed contains a fire-breathing iron horse that can carry purifying fire across the land. As he loiters and watches, he notices a cloaked fiture walking through the rain, then stopping suddenly. Resonance explains that the sudden stop made it suspicious. He introduces himself, and she gives her name as Chrysalis.

Backstory note: Resonance's long-lost love is a girl named Bridget. Our parents split us up when she got the creep and Resonance (who was Tim back then) didn't seem sufficiently bothered by it.

Anyway, Chrysalis looks a lot like Bridget. Resonance feels the infatuation and asks her out sometime, when she isn't making trouble. She tells him it all depends on why he's really lurking there. He explains that he fears the iron horse will spread fire across the land, and he needs to stop it. They have a dinner date at the spit the next night.

Meanwhile, back in Binghamton, Fluffy stands at the vanguard of the revolution. Discussion of the juche ideal cannot be far away. Vance tells her they can stick together to fight, or scatter to escape. She asks him why she shouldn't collect the bounty on him... and her answer is not satisfactory, so she turns his braincase into confetti. Fighting breaks out, with people going at one another and also running in all directions, and by the time it's done, she leads a hardened core of about fifteen survivors who look to her for leadership. They get across the river before dark, south of town. She starts going over the group, trying to reinforce her authority, when someone gets behind her and brains her with a rock.

She comes to and finds that her guns are gone. She's not tied up but the group seems to have decided that she's not going to have the guns anymore. She tries to talk them into giving her the guns and making a plan together, but they're committed to keeping her gun-free. She ends up advocating road banditry on the way to Clydesdale. Pitfall turns out to have lived in the woods around Binghamton before and can act as a guide. Unfortunately he knows the landscape well but doesn't know about the creeper bear that lives there. It gets a couple kills off the gang, but Fluffy and her remaining thirteen run away.

Later, she hears the sounds of motorcycles, and finds a spot where she can see that it's the Black Knights escorting a tanker to the crossroads. She asks Pitfall how they could get to the crossroads, because that's the first path to obtaining loot. It's after dark by the time they cross the river.

She sneaks up on the crossroads and scouts out the places where Borax has patrols and where the Black Knights have set up. She figures there are a couple sentries so isolated that they could be removed silently, which if done at night, would offer a path through. When they try to implement the plan, someone steps on a twig, Nancy asks if anyone else heard that, Chet yells, "It's the creepers!" and there's one hell of a mad minute from the gas station. Fluffy's vest pocket rebel alliance flee, though nobody gets hurt. Fluffy decides that the next best plan would be to wait for the Black Knights again and then try again.

Eventually, four hours after the shooting started, the all-clear blows in Binghamton. Bank and Wallace lead the staff on their rounds to check on loved ones and provide mutual support. Seems some citizen militia intervened to keep the creepers out, and a bunch of creepers did try to escape through town. After the staff have been on their rounds, Amano comes to Bank. She's unusually rattled and asks whether Ward had come through. Seems he made the same security check on her place, but left a man outside. She's concerned that he's making a play for power in the town. They exchange thoughts about the threat Ward poses to peaceful commerce in the town, but don't come to any specific decisions.

In Clydesdale, Jonjo wanders in to The Spit. He notices that while Tick, the barman, takes the orders and provides the service, it's Viper, sitting off in the corner, who's really in charge. The beds are dorm style but there's space available. Jonjo collects Resonance and the enjoy a meal of roasted goat and barley ale.