Castle[Marie rolled 4+3+1wits=8]
“Hey Carol. You said you heard a truck going south? It was probably us, but we’ll check it out.”
Get in the Truck and start heading south
Check if I have a good amount of ammo for my pipe rifle, and get in the truck
Marie checks her her ammo. She's got 8 bullets left for the pipe rifle. She leaves with Amy into the big truck. They drive up to the gates in the wall made of smashed cars that protects the keep. The guards pull it open and they drive out down the hill and through the weed-choked streets south...[Could you put you character sheets in your posts, as it makes it much easier for me to check your stats and remember your character names, thanks!]
Walt LabsIf that mutant comes for another pass, use my free arm to grab her from the sky.
head NW and see what’s going on
[El Tigre rolled 6+5+2body-1headwound=12]
Outside the lab, Irma with the pistol stands frozen taking in the bizarre scene. The wrestler holding the biker in a chokehold, a flying girl swooping around, a tentacled robot nearby. And then things get weirder. Driving in from the north there's a huge truck rumbling towards them. In the cab, she sees two young women, heavily armed. Hovering over an overgrown restaurant from the northeast is a small drone hovercopter with a telescopic camera lens. Loping in from the northeast, is a small robotic terrier with needle-like teeth. And then, from the southeast a towering robotic millipede emerges.
El Tigre still holding the woman in a chokehold, swivels so that he can face the girl as she swoops down again. He bats his hand and the swoop goes wide. Helen hisses, "What do you want?"
"Let me go Tiger," the woman croaks at El Tigre, "and I'll tell you who paid me to bring you to him."NexusIn cyberspace, Helen's avatar appears next to Sandra. Her image appears like a woman in an old photograph, sepia stained, pocked and faded. Sandra knows through some new sense that Helen is embodied in the tentacled robot.
"Sable sent you to help?" she says. "My tentacles are bust. I need a vehicle. Can you help us take one? The wrestler is an ally, I don't care about any of the others."
Cow Tower"Lets go see what that drone's talking to."
Try to sneak up on whatever the drone's talking to and see what it is.
[Goldstine rolled 6+2+2wits+1soldier=11]
Goldstine and Red Cap climb through the rotting shell of one of the houses. They climb up to the first floor and look down. The drone is hovering above a cyberlion and two cyberdogs. The dogs are scrawny and razortoothed. The lion has a mane woven with glowing fibre-optic cables. Its tail has a claw hand at the end, and strapped across its bag is a plastic saddlebag thronged with human skulls. They're standing in the street adjacent to the river. Past them, further down the river to the northeast, Goldstine spies an intact bridge crossing back into the centre of the city.
Suddenly, on some hidden signal all three of them set off towards the bridge at high speed. The drone must have got the same message as it zips straight across the river, south-south-west.
"I can't grok their signals," says Red Cap, "But they only move like that when they're going to kill someone." He turns his masked face towards Goldstine and says, viciously, "Shall we see who?"
Cromer PierDrink up, and then I guess help load up the crate onto the bike.
“So, Frost, is this place a base of operations, or just an outpost, or something else? Because it’s mostly road between here and the Keep, and if we could get it better secured, we could probably establish a trade route or something.”
Darrin drinks the purple liquid. It's thick, filling and tastes like sweetened yogurt.
"This is the closest safe port to the Norcom lab," says Frost. "The city was too dangerous to stay in, but I wanted to stick in the area until everyone was safely unfrozen."
"The city won't be dangerous forever," says Cass. "We'll defeat the robots, the snatchers, all of them."
The man whose face is obscured by the scarf speaks up. His voice is thin and crackly, "We'd like that very much. After today, we can promise a crate of food for everyone of those cyborgs you destroy. Bring us the chips in their head. That'll be trade enough."
Chemical PlantCheck to see if whatever-it-is fell into a hole and is at least temporarily disabled. If so, lets see if I can find some oil or grease to keep it that way (by spilling the barrel or whatever to lubricate the pit so the robot can't get traction.)
If not, that'll be the next trap. Head over and try to get the first strike, if it's another robot. Aim to disable a limb, trying to reduce the enemy's ability to move around.
[Sandeep rolled 3+1+1wits-1headwound=4]
Sandeep creeps down the stairs to see what it was. He sees a snapped wire between a doorway, some alarm cans scattered across the floor. He looks around and sees no one... and then it lands on him.
Falling from its place hidden up by the ceiling is a heavy set, squat humanoid figure, plated in rusty irons and verdigris copper held together by frayed rope. Its skin is hidden by thick fur, like that of a rainbow. There's a holey bucket over its head, bright purple and yellow tufts of hair sticking out the gaps. It holds a huge wooden club, its end carved into the shape of a bone.
Sandeep takes in the details upside down, as the heavy thing stands on his chest.
"What fun!" it gleefully announces."Mayhaps you will give Troll cause to spare you? Though wary be! Troll is mispleased that one would seek to steal his rhinoceros-oros-oros kill!"Sandeep gains +1 tally for critical failure.
Sandeep gains condition: pinned.
DumpIssac decided to spend a bit of time checking to see if anything of value could be found here. While the best loot was probably long gone, Issac figured he might be able to find some old newspapers or something which would have been of little value to most modern looters.
[Isaac rolled 5+3+3wits=11]
Isaac climbs a mound of trash and halfway digs through. Pressed under a heap of faded bags, kept sealed from the elements, he finds a newspaper. A lot of it is faded or otherwise uninteresting: old sports results, stockmarket movements, crosswords; but there in the middle of the paper, he sees two short articles that catch his eye.WALT LABS CONTRACTIONJanuary 4th 2027The last overseas Walt Labs facility has now closed, a spokesperson for the corporation has now confirmed. It has been a difficult year for the company, after the fake cryogenics scandal and the disappearance of its controversial CEO and founder Eve Walter. Under the leadership of current CEO Malcolm White, the company has consolidated all of its laboratories and offices in England and Wales, with the San Francisco headquarters, Sancom, closing its doors for good on January 3rd.
Once a globe-spanning corporation offering the optimistic a doorway into the future, Walt Labs was forced to close business in most jurisdictions in the summer of last year when it was revealed that the cryogenic process was invariably fatal. Many of it's global cadre of scientists have fled to England & Wales to avoid prosecution. England and Wales is now the only country in which Walt Labs operated which has upheld the legality of the waivers they made their clients sign before being fatally frozen.
The decision to not take legal action against Walt Labs in England was called "an utter depravity" by Labour Leader David Lammy. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said of the scandal, "Unlike those timid Scots and Irish, we true Brits are always open for business."
The company spokesperson would not comment further on the ongoing issue of bodies not being returned to their families.REPUTATION APP SURPRISE SUCCESSJanuary 4th 2027The KUDOS reputation app has swept the App Store with over 100 million downloads in its first quarter. The app uses the RealYou identification infrastructure to allow its users to give a reputation score to real people, whether those people are a user of the app or not. Users gain discounts and VIP treatment at KUDOS participating businesses, with a given reputation score now being used to gatekeep entry to some exclusive clubs and resorts.
While the KUDOS is independently created and maintained, its funding is backed by the government of Finland as an initiative to increase community engagement and further socially just aims. It has found unlikely success across the seas, with the international Zoomer generation taking to growing their digital reputation scores for real world benefits.MarshBarring any events that would prevent it, Issac would head to the northwest after searching.
Isaac walks on and soon finds himself stuck in an interminable marsh. Everywhere he looks is reeds, muddy channels, drooping willow trees. The water runs in confusing rivulets here. Isaac soon finds himself mud-besmirched and unclear exactly how far he has travelled.Isaac gains condition: covered in mud.
Isaac gains +1 tally for exploration.
Isaac gains +1 tally for learning mystery: Kudos started as an app for rating reputation scores.