Gamma World: Strange, yet symbolically compelling
 

As always, keep rules questions, strategy planning, and other out-of-character talk to the discussion thread.

Home is just a place to hang your head.

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A little future history:

On October 22, 2012 at approximately 15:25, something happened within the Large Hadron Collider beneath the France/Switzerland border. The exact nature of the Big Mistake is unknown (and may remain unknown indefinitely), but the consequences are clear: the men and women of CERN had breached the barriers separating thousands of alternate realities, and each of these realities converged upon and merged with our own. The vast majority of alternate Earths were very much like ours in most superficial ways, but on some Earths the differences were much more dramatic. Indeed, some Earths seemingly operated under entirely different physical laws. There is a tremendously large creature (natives call it the trask) which survives only within a certain area of Death Valley. If a trask should wander out of this habitat, it is immediately crushed by its own weight.

Nearly all Earths which developed nuclear weapons of any kind had used them enthusiastically. There are only 3 known world-lines (as these alternate realities are called) where the Cold War remained cold. Some cities were replaced by their own bombed-out husks; others by primeval forests, jungles, deserts. Civilization did not long survive.

------------

It's been almost 200 years since the big mistake. The year is 2205 (or, depending on your world-line and calendar, 1632, 5965, 0413, 13.9.15, or The Red Year of the Black Decade of the 2nd Century of the 8th Green Era). People recognizable as human are pretty rare these days; between a massive increase in background radiation and generations of crossbreeding with the denizens of other world-lines, mutants of all sorts are the norm. In fact, you're never seen a purestrain human in your entire life.

No one survives who remembers the world before the Big Mistake, but everyone is generally aware that the world was, not so long ago, much different from what it is today. Some people would like to return to what they imagine must have been a paradise; others see the Big Mistake as a punishment and a warning to avoid Ancient settlements and technology lest they be tainted somehow. Most folks, though, are indifferent to the lessons of the past.

You and nearly everyone you know lives in a cluster of mesas and arid prairie to the southwest of what was once Parker, Colorado (oral tradition calls the ruins Pakka; literacy is a rare gift these days). Parker was a sleepy suburban enclave and, so far as anyone could tell, was left unchanged by the Mistake. This did not prevent it being mercilessly razed in the aftermath. You've gone into Pakka quite a few times, mostly to gather building supplies and Ancient trinkets. You've been as far north as Stonegate and as far south as Castle Rock (neither of them, in your opinion, lived up to their names).

You know very little of the world beyond; what little you've heard about from passing caravans intimidates you. Two or three days to the south there's another old Ancient city called Rod Springs, and other day or two will get you to a place called Weblo. To the north (past Enver) there's a place called Shine which sounds sort of inviting, but rumor has it you have to get past some kind of fort. Some of the caravans went west over the mountains to a place called Salt Lick; it's not for you but it answers the question of where salt comes from. Hardly anyone seems to go east, but if they do they're usually heading to a town called Can Sit; it's apparently about a week's travel.

The vast metropolis of Enver is only half a day's travel to the north, but to get there would require crossing the old Ancient trade road everyone simply calls the 470. Nobody crosses the 470 as a matter of tradition, or superstition, or perhaps both. At any rate, no emissaries from Enver have ever visited, and nobody who's gone to Enver has ever come back. It's probably best left alone.

And it would continue to be left alone if not for the ugly fact that all the little Pakkas and Stonegates around your village are very nearly stripped of everything the tribe considers useable. Someone needs to visit richer hunting grounds and, to put it bluntly, you're expendable — you're all unmarried males with no particularly valuable talents. If you can fill your wagons with supplies for the coming winter, excellent. If you get slaughtered by marauding porkers, well, that's a shame, but everyone else will get a bigger share of the turnip harvest.

Well, Enver's probably going to kill you, but at least your last days will be exciting.

------------

Now: The five of you are in downtown Pakka, standing outside a misshapen beige building with a placard identifying it as the Parker Academy of Martial Arts. It seemed like a good place to find a few weapons, maybe. There are a few old Ancient autowagons on the faded sfalt surrounding the Academy, but most of them look pretty busted up. Stonum's brought the mostly intact autowagon he found last month with him anyway, so you don't need these broken things. Of course, Stonum's rusty blue wagon doesn't actually have any fuel in it, but it rolls okay, especially downhill. There's a type of thing here you've never seen before: it might be some kind of autowagon but it has a very strange shape compared to the others. This rusty yellow thing only looks to have one seat, and there's a big metal.... what was the word? A spoon with teeth? It has one of those, anyway.

To the west there's a green-roofed building like a big barn; BOBCAT is printed on the exterior wall in barely-legible block letters. You don't hear any bobcats, but you've tangled with the furry bastards often enough to know discretion may be in order.

To the east there's an Ancient school building; the training gear juts out of the overgrown lawn.

To the north (across a wide Ancient road that the old signs only identify as "Pony Express": you feel a little nervous every time you cross it, as the ponies could be along any moment), there's a huge white cube of a building that calls itself a "Post Office". You don't know what you'd do with any more posts, but you'll keep it in mind.

To the south is another shapeless beige structure called the AMC Twenty Mile. You have no idea who the AMC are or, for that matter, what a mile is. At any rate the only "Coming Attraction" posted is "Sinister". Who would want to visit a place advertising itself as sinister?

Doc tightens the straps on his impressively shiny shield, and Skittles slides a disc labeled The Rock into his discthrower. It's quiet.

Squeeze struts over to the entrance of the Martial Arts academy. He strokes his pseudochin. "Comrades," he booms in his chocolate smooth baritone, "My membrane is tingling at the thought of going into this building. The sweet smell of ancient sweat and oiled bodies.. oh, it's enough to make a slime swoon, I'll tell you what."

He begins to hum a little. "One of my conquests was this sweet, handsome octopoid, mmmhmm. She taught me the martial arts, I taught her the marital arts. Oh, the memories." Squeeze's humming grows a touch louder, coming not just from his head-like appendage now, but from every part of his slowly undulating, roughly humanoid form.

Skittles shuddered with barely disguised revulsion at the thought of Squeeze's "conquests". Shaking his antennae, he asserted, "It would seem to me that we already have adequate weapons, and I doubt we're going to find anything useful inside. However, I have noticed that the picture on Stonum's autowagon matches the picture on that BOBCAT building over there. Perhaps we can find some fuel in there."

Dr. Andesite's permanent frown breaks slightly, "don't be alarmed, my Dictyopteran friend. We have a long journey ahead of us, and I'm sure we'll have some time for discussing the beauty of meiosis and recombination of genetic material." His eyes sparkle with wonder. "It's really quite fascinating!"

He turns to address everyone, "Skittles is right, though. We would be remiss if we left on our quest without taking time to prepare diligently. Perhaps this 'bobcat' building retains spare wagon parts."

Hearing no argument from his travel companions, Skittles leads the way west to the mysterious BOBCAT building. An encounter with a wild cat or two doesn't trouble him especially (most cats prefer human flesh to the taste of cockroach), but he holds his discthrower at the ready all the same. If The Rock didn't incapcitate a predator, the 2nd disc blooper reel would finish the job.

Squeeze snaps out of his reverie, his hum fading out. "No love for the martial arts? Well, I suppose a cat is fine too, mmmm."

He makes his way to the BOBCAT buidling.

Skittles cautiously approaches the imposing BOBCAT structure, his twitching antennae gradually relaxing when he doesn't hear the telltale yowling of the fearsome rocky mountain bobcat (which, post-Mistake, grew to roughly the size of a lion and sported a durable carapace).

After a few false starts ducking into pointless little nooks full of dead wagons, Skittles finds the front of the building and peers in through the shattered windows. Inside is a wide-open expanse of Ancient noleem floor, checkered red and black. Studded here and there inside the vast building are perhaps two dozen weird machines painted in various garish colors. They have different shapes, but all of them include the weird toothy shovel he'd just seen on the machine outside the Academy. Some of the shovels are attached directly to the body of the machine, but some of the shovels are on the end of an awkward-looking arm. Each of the machines has a few uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs scattered around it. On the right hand wall, perhaps a dozen meters from the front door, is a huge maroon slab of some kind with a plush (if tattered) chair behind it. A placard on the slab proclaims "PARTS - SERVICE - RENTAL".

What is rental? Perhaps the Ancients meant to write parental. Skittles isn't sure if he's ready for that kind of a commitment.

The back of the building is hidden in darkness; the light from the front windows is inadequate to illuminate the entirety of the building.

Assuming my flashlight comes with batteries (I wouldn't be surprised in this game to be given a flashlight that won't even work) I will turn that mother on and look around to see if there are any other windows we can expose for more light.

Squeeze steps away from the phantom and his flashlight, and approaches a window. The daylight would make those opaque folk stand out if they try to slide through a window as Squeeze is attempting to do, but Squeeze is one smooth motherfucker, and more importantly, translucent.

As he enters through the window, Squeeze makes a note about teaching Dr. Andesite from the great and bountiful books of love sometime - specifically, the chapters pertaining to stealthy entry into a lover's bedroom with the concurrent evasion of parents/guardians/spouses/automated defense systems.

Stealth check: 3+8=11

Squeeze has a little difficulty going over the window frame; once again, thinking about a past conquest. She called herself Rapunzel; her head was shaved, but her beard was long and lustrous, allowing for certain interesting acts of passion. Hopefully, that has not alerted any potential denizens within.

Dr. Andesite leans on the windowsill, his rocky yet ethereal elbows unharmed by the jagged shards of brittle glass. The heavy-duty flashlight flicks on, flooding BOBCAT with harsh yellow light. What was revealed was largely more of the same (the building seemed devoid of windows other than those alongside the front door), save for a raised dais covered with a dingy tablecloth near the back of the building. Atop the dais was one of the shapeless machines the Ancients of BOBCAT had seemingly adored; this one seemed comparatively shiny and new, possibly because it was encased in a glass box, the box in turn festooned with a ribbon that had likely once been red but had been persuaded by dust and age to settle for a nice carnation pink. Only a few meters beyond the glass case was the back wall of BOBCAT's main chamber. Double doors potentially lead to deeper mysteries, but brass letters affixed to the doors sternly warn: E PLO S ON Y NO U LIC TH OOM.

Throwing caution not to the wind, but, at the very least, to a mild breeze, Squeeze oozes through the window into BOBCAT. His attempt at stealth and subtlety are stymied somewhat by the pile of ancient glass shards his blobulous form meets on the other side. There's not a whole lot to see that he couldn't see through the busted window, but he does get the honor of being the first person in 175 years to notice that Dave Sheldon had been awarded Salesman of the Year for 2011. The small glass trophy case on the far left wall was hanging askew but looked intact, and the pictures within were only moderately faded, being out of the line of direct sunlight. Dave looked awfully proud of his brass plaque. Nice work, Dave.

Despite Squeeze's abortive attempt at stealth, no guardians rush out to challenge him. The sinister machines don't even roar to life and attempt to crush him. It's a little disappointing.

Slim's eyes quickly blink open to the sensation of... light! It seems to be slowly flickering around the shiny noleem floor (he'd liked to keep a clean 'home', as it were), then back again as if the sun was dancing around. He knew he should've replaced the door with one of those solid 'mettle' things.

Slim stands up, stretches, and readies a throwing microwave. He slowly inches towards the door to peek out.

Intruders!

Stealth check: 10 + 2 = 12

"A Boy and His Blob," he muttered under his breath, as he stepped through the shattered glass door to face his (hopefully) unsuspecting victims.

Stealth attempt with penalty for moving: 7. Skittles' passive perception: 19. Nope.

Peering across the expansive showroom, Skittles notices a shaggy form skulking through the shadows. Could be a bobcat. Could be two bobcats stuck together with glue. The porkers got pretty experimental sometimes when they'd had too much to drink.

As Slim lunges out into the sunlight, he finds a translucent man-sized roach already leveling a weapon at his head.

That could have gone better.

"Uh. 'lo." Slim grins sheepishly as he slowly puts down his Microwave.

Barely noticing that his companions have entered a building, Stonum examines the autowagon in hopes of finding out what might be wrong with it. After all, what use are stacks and stacks of parts if you don't know which one you need?

He's had some luck with these types of things before. Somehow the intricate workings of the ancient machines seem more willing to yield their secrets to him than to others. Maybe it's just his tire iron hand that's more accurate due to its stumpiness (most folk have no idea how many things pop back into place after a good whack of the iron), or maybe it's just the radiation he emits that coaxes life back into the machines he touches. Like that one time, when he accidentally peed into the container of a multi-bladed feet-chopper, and it started towards him with a sputter, nearly making him a literal foot shorter in the process. As if he needed to be more vertically challenged.

What's certain is that if this thing can be fixed, he's probably the one who can perform the task.

Mechanics check on autowagon 14+10=24

"Friend cat, " says Squeeze, sliding over towards the bugbear, " I accept your, mmm, box, as a gesture of welcome. I assume you must be the guardian of the tomb of the illustrious Dave Sheldon. I am Squeeze Majello, which I must emphasize, is both a name and an invitation, but only if your motivations are pure. If not, I will strike you down where you stand, and possibly use your fur for a chest wig."

He glances around.

"Perhaps you can tell us a little more about this tomb? Those doors over there... 'Y U NO LICK THE OOM', was it? A fertility rite for the Dave Sheldon, maybe, mmmmmhmmmmm?"

Skittles lowers his weapon, as clearly the furry creature poses no immediate threat, other than stirring Squeeze's ravenous libido. One of these days, that creepy blob was going to proposition the wrong creature, and it would surely be the death of all of them. Putting that disturbing thought out of his head, Skittles walks over to the trophy case and gently removes the illustrious Dave's prize trophy. "Perhaps I can answer some of our questions about His Holiness through a more direct approach," he tells his comrades.

Skittles uses his Object Reading ability on Dave Sheldon's trophy.

"Squeeze!" Slim exclaims, whilst pressing his hands together tightly. "I would graciously give you the box, however... Well." He gestures towards it in invitation. "Chances are you won't be able to take it. It'll just automagically return to me. Except different. I honestly don't exactly know how it works."

"As for this Dave Sheldon man, I don't believe I've ever seen him. He might be from the Before Times. You know, the Ancients. I just hide out here in one of the rooms. Far as I know it's been abandoned for years. So it's quiet. I like it. Plus the noleem is nice."

Stonum gives his old pickup a once-over while his companions from the village chat up some furry thing. None of his business. While it's tempting to hope that he'll find some more subtle mechanical issue with his wagon, what it comes down to is that it's straight-up out of fuel. He's had some luck with various different fluids but wagons generally liked what the Ancients called gas. Generally you found gas inside other wagons or in big reservoirs under weird little mechanical boxes standing in a row. In a pinch, though, he could probably get a wagon going with a few liters of anything liquid and flammable.

Carefully snapping off the corroded padlock, Skittles opens up the trophy case and tries to intuit the history of the Employee of the Year plaque (he'd only had this ability for a week or two, accidentally discovering it in passing when cleaning up some rubbish outside Squeeze's tent: never again). Oddly enough, the figure that comes to mind looks nothing like the picture of Dave in the case. The last creature to handle the plaque for an hour or more had been an Ancient engraver named Mathila Pjobjorn, who had exchanged it for two of those green papers with the number 20 on them. After Mathilda no one had paid the plaque too much attention, it seems. The Dave himself had, apparently, only touched the plaque long enough for the picture to be taken.

Keeping one eye on the cat and turning the rest of his face around, Squeeze peers out a window for his companions, and raises his voice. "Stonum! Dr. Andesite! You may want to come in here - we have found the Bobcat, and he may lead us to the site of an ancient orgy!"

To temper his excitement, Squeeze decides to examine the machinery in the room. Most folk tended to underestimate Squeeze's facility with all things mechanical, but his ability to divide his pseudopodia into smaller probe-like appendages for fine manipulation isn't useful only in the bedroom.

He is particularly intrigued by the machine on the dais surrounded by the glass box. It sure would be a shame to smash the box, and not particularly subtle, but the Ancients must have put the machine into the box somehow, so there must be a way to take it back out.

Try to access the machine without smashing the box, and then examine it.
Perception check if needed: 20+3=23
If this is not possible, examine the machine the best he can through the glass.
Mechanics check when/if applicable: 7+7=14

"well, it's all burnt up again, is it now?"

Stonum breathes a heavy sigh as he starts to walk towards the old BOBCAT yard, searching through the debris of old autowagons in hopes of finding a tank with that ancient gas liquid left. Once again, his companions were off having fun while he was taking care of their most important asset if they were ever getting to Enver.

Maybe this time he should find a way to bring extra stock with him. Hopefully one of the tanks would be in good enough shape to fill up and bring along in the wagon.

Search through the old machines in the yard for gas tanks with some content left
Some kind of check? 15+?=?

There don't seem to be any particularly subtle methods of opening the glass box, but Squeeze doesn't want to smash it either. Luckily the glass walls do not actually extend beneath the machine, and Squeeze is both strong and flexible enough to lift the heavy glass case an inch or three and then ooze on through.

There's a slightly brittle brochure sitting in the seat of the encased machine. "E45-E50-E55 COMPACT EXCAVATORS", it announces. There is a photograph of two of this same machine, both piloted by Ancients in some kind of bright yellow ceremonial armor. So far as Squeeze can tell, the object of the pictured contest is to scoop up dirt and dump it on your opponent. The Ancient in the foreground is probably winning.

The machine in the case is in far better condition than any other Ancient machine he's seen at all, let alone a wagon. There's no key, but there is a yellow button labelled "Enter Code".

The fuel indicator is in the green! Squeeze reflexively recoils away slightly. This was unheard of, and, frankly, a little spooky.

Stonum wanders round the lot, feeding a length of rope into the fuel reservoirs of various wagons in hope of finding some luck. No dice. Well, maybe pop open a few storage compartments, and... well, here's an empty plastic gas can. The Ancients are mocking him. At length, he finds himself rummaging under seats and it is then that he makes a discovery. "EVERCLEAR", asserts the bottle he finds under the passenger seat of a large, cubical wagon with missing wheels. "GRAIN ALCOHOL 95% ALC. BY VOL."

This would burn, but, as a dwarf, he had serious reservations about giving perfectly good alk to a machine. In the large, lightless back of the wagon he finds 3 more bottles of the stuff, adding up to about 3 liters in total. That might be enough to push his wagon to Enver. It might not.

If you're looking for something; that's Perception.

"A code, eh? I'd wager there's some kind of riddle we need to solve in order to start up this machine. Perhaps if we search the inner sanctum, we'll find the resting place of the high priest of this temple, and the code."

Perception check on the main chamber, looking for the code, though I think Pang already took into account my passive check? Roll: 7+9=16

Squeeze pushes open the ominous doors and steps inside.

Slim stares and the numbered panel for a moment, thinking about things he may have seen during his time living in the office. He definitely gave the room a good cleaning, at the very least.

"I Think There's a Check For This™" Check: 7 + ?

[[This is Slim trying to remember if he's seen anything similar to a code, and remember said code itself. If that fails...]]

"I'm Incredibly Lucky™" Check: 7 + ?

"Sniff Sniff...
...
...
Sweet Juice of the Gods!"

Upon finding the bottles of EVERCLEAR, Stonum's mood suddenly lightens. As he starts sipping on one of the bottles slowly, he pours the other two slowly into the gas tank of his blue Kumatsu autwagon.

As he starts staggering towards the BOBCAT building (after a few more swigs) in search of more fuel on the inside, he yells out to his band of bizzaros:

"Boys, tonight's gonna be a swell night!"

With that, he slams his Shield into the remains of the front doors of the building, in an attempt to get in without having to squeeze through the glass as his chums have.

Athletics to bust down remains of the door: 18+0=18
Perception check to locate more fuel on the inside of the building: 13+2=15

Squeeze exits the box in the same fashion that he entered. As he does so, he gets an eerie sensation... almost as though the cockroach had taken control of him. He shakes it off. Not an entirely unpleasant sensation. It's good to be the submissive one, sometimes.

Just as he is done squeezing through the glass, he hears a crash. Ah, it was the dwarf. At least slightly inebriated, which seemed to be customary.

"Friend Stonum! We may have a functional wagon thing under this glass box, I'll tell you what. You may like it, mmmmmm."

Doc Rock follows Stonum into the building, provided the dwarf's attempt at obliterating Slim's front door is successful. While perhaps less interested in being led to the orgy than Squeeze is, he's certainly interested in checking out the interior of this ancient building. Historical archaeology was always something he found interesting, having grown up listening to bedtime stories of the legendary explorer Indiana Joe. It's rumoured that he still walks the Earth, an ageless being who discovered the secret of life and death itself.

Move inside the building.
Assist in searching for this "code" that the others were speaking about rather loudly.
Perception: 15 + 4 = 19

Stonum, already more than a little tipsy, blunders directly into what remained of BOBCAT's glass front doors. With the glass entirely redirected into its new home on the ground, the steel frame also abandons its duty in a fit of pique. Issuing a rusty creak not unlike an exasperated sigh. He pokes around, but in his inebriated state he finds no further fuel sources save those obviously lurking within that wagon in the glass box.

Skittles and Doc peer around looking for any codes and immediately run into a snag: the Ancients loved plastering strings of meaningless numbers over practically everything. The surface of each of the wagons is emblazoned with at least 4 potential "codes"; half the pages in the brochure are covered in numerals as well. It might be necessary to narrow the search somehow.

Slim just stares at the nearly-pristine wagon in the glass box and frowns. There had been a plastic packet labelled MASTER CODES in the manager's office, but he'd rearranged things quite a bit and wasn't certain offhand where he'd left it. He certainly hadn't ever bothered opening it, since he had no idea who the Master was and frankly didn't care to find out. At length, Slim pulls a shiny coin from his pocket, flips it, and looks vaguely disappointed in the result.

At length Skittles does what his people had done since time immemorial: scuttle into places that humans tried to keep them from scuttling into. Granted, some dingy doors hanging ajar were not much of an anti-pest measure but he still feels a tiny swell of ancestral pride.

Doc's flashlight beam illuminates two doors about a meter apart from each other, each sporting a bipedal figure wrought entirely in black. One of the tiny black figures has a massive triangular abdomen. A corridor leads to the left, terminating in a dark chamber with the door flung wide. Skittles lacked the excellent night vision of his grandfathers, but it definitely looked like something was moving around in the gloom between a big desk and a row of lockers. Maybe someone should have asked Slim if he lived here alone. Whatever it was, it either hadn't noticed them (implausible at best) or simply didn't care.

Trusting that Stonum had heard his words about the pristine wagon, Squeeze moves in the direction of Doc's flashlight beam into the corridor, thinking translucent thoughts as he does so. He is fairly certain by now that anything lurking within would have heard Stonum charging into the door, but he needs to ensure that no one sees him.

Stealth: 9+8=17

He knew those doors were where ancient opaques rid themselves of their metabolic waste. Fairly inefficient process, that. Better to just continually secrete it out of one's membrane. Instead, Squeeze moves past the doors, searching for any signs of fertility rituals and potentially angry defenders.

Perception to check if Squeeze notices the moving figure: 12+3=15

Skittles suddenly remembers the pair of night vision goggles he obtained from a travelling salesman a few weeks prior. He'd had to trade an entire case of hair tonic and some moldy saltines, but really, what does a cockroach need with hair tonic? If he ever feels insecure, he can always fashion a toupee out of a patch of Stonum's back hair. Skittles slips the goggles over his eyes and gets a better look at the thing(s) lurking in the dark.

As Squeeze sidles past him, Skittles slips on his night-vision goggles to better see the mysterious thing lurking in the office. Amidst the (flung-open, their contents strewn across the room) lockers, the (overturned) desk, and a (tipped over) bookshelf wobbled a gelatinous blob not entirely unlike Squeeze, save that this one had forgone the rudiments of civilization and appeared to be concerned primarily with cramming the entire contents of the office into its undulating bulk. Dozens if not hundreds of Ancient books and documents swam around within its membrane, which had been stretched to perhaps three times Skittles' size. It's bright green, but then everything is bright green with the goggles on.

The voracious blob continues to pay the intruders no mind whatsoever.

As he staggers into the building, Stonum takes a good long slurp of his new found medecine. Stumbling around ever more loudly, he turns to Squeeze and asks him:

"Whatsa zit like being all squiguegly like llllad? Hass anyone ever tryyed to yooze you for fuel? Like, BUUUUUrn you?"

And with that, another sip of the bottle, followed by a somewhat loud thud.

Slim had been pretty much enthralled with trying to remember anything about a code to the case, and hadn't really noticed anything going on around him. He suddenly jerked his head around, prying his drifting eyes away from the small control panel. He'd heard a loud thump.

"There is a tiny man on the floor." he said, matter-of-factly. "Is... is it glowing?"

He wasn't exactly sure what had happened, but his instincts immediately kicked in. He called out for the Doc, in hopes that he could help the small lump of muscle and beard on the floor.

Squeeze assesses the gelatinous bulk. Ironically, Squeeze has no interest in mating with his own kind; offspring are just so inconvenient.

Was it worth the trouble to try communicating with it? Squeeze has no idea - certainly, his fellow blob seems to be a little on the wild side. Still, he must try. An unprovoked attack on a fellow slime would be so gauche. At the same time, Squeeze is aware of the danger of being alone in a room with a voracious slime. Yes, well aware.

He starts humming and broadcasting messages in every slime lingo he knew. The messages are something like:

HELLO JELLY BRO
I AM FRIEND JELLY
WE NO EAT YOUR FOOD
PLENTY OF GOOD FOOD IN ROOM OUTSIDE
LOTS OF GLASS AND GAS CONTAINERS MAKE YOU BIGGER
COME OUTSIDE SO YOU CAN EAT

As Squeeze communicates this message, he backs away slowly, one hidden tendril wrapped around his cowboy boot chain.

Interaction: 9+1=10 (+ any bonuses for interacting with slimekind?)


Having an interaction bonus of 1 while playing a supposed legendary slime Casanova is going to be interesting :tpg:

The lumbering rock man surveys the goings-on, taking notice first of Slim's shout, and second of Stoney's prone form. He sighs, a low grumbling noise emanating from deep within his exasperated personage.

"He does this all the time. Always with his 'one for the wagon and one for me' method of refueling vehicles. We really ought not to leave him on fuel detail in the future."

Check to see if the master code book is noticeable inside goo-dude.
Perception: 10 + 4 = 14

Of course, slimekind reproduce through mitosis; any liaison Squeeze might have with another slime would not result in offspring but would present a significant risk of absorption. Not that this was any better for Squeeze, of course, and his misapprehension was harmless.

Less harmless was his silly notion that he knew "slime lingo", which he apparently believed was much like standard Merkin dialect save that it sounded as though the speaker had recently undergone elective brain surgery. Regardless, the blob starts undulating very slowly in his direction, making no particularly threatening moves other than continuing to engulf everything that wasn't nailed down. As it jiggles its way out of the dark office, Squeeze and Skittles notice the dark orange tint of its translucent form. Maybe it had eaten a lot of paint. Either it could not speak, or was just a really antisocial jerk.

Doc peers around the corner, checking the strange blob for any sign of the ever-so-important codes. Indeed, at least three "MASTER CODE" pamphlets seemed to be inside the ochre bulk, but which of them (if any) belonged to the wagon in the box was a mystery. The pamphlet-makers had not made the seemingly obvious decision to denote which codebook had gone with which wagon.

Skittles' antennae twitch with faint revulsion as the thing approached. The blob stank of burnt plastic, though no one else seemed to notice.

Slim fiddled around with a couple of buttons and devices near the main office. They looked slightly primitive compared to the glass-box-tech in the central hall. The one he was most interested in he'd come to know as Mike Rofon. At least that's what he'd heard others call him. (Or was it a her?) He turned a knob clockwise, one counterclockwise, pressed a button here and there, when suddenly...

Get the Flash Player to play this audio file:

A loud stream of bouncy-sounding Ancient Myusik started to resonate through the building. Slim rushed out towards the others and saw the rusty coloured blob slowly... lumbering? Slurping?

At any rate, it was moving towards them at an alarmingly slow rate.

Skittles slips off his night vision goggles and calls over to Dr. Andesite. "Doctor, bring your torch over here and shine it on this gelatinous beast. I'm going to take a running jump and see if I can grab the code books. I'm going to need you guys to pull me out once I've grabbed them."

"A moment, friend Skittles. I may be able to wrap my cowboy boot chain around your legs, to pull you out quickly should something go wrong."

"If you will permit me, I may also be able to coat you from head to toe with my secretions. This may give you some protection against the digestive enzymes within. Mmmmhmm."

"Mmmmhmm."

Slim stares blankly, intrigued.

"Mmmmhmm."

Since Diss isn't paying attention, I'm going to assume the good doctor is pointing his flashlight on the blob, so we can all see.

Ignoring his pledge never to get involved in bondage play with Squeeze, Skittles wraps the friendly blob's chain around his right leg and takes a running leap into the giant mass of ooze. Much to his chagrin, he trips and falls flat on his face.

Only if Skittles indeed failed his check, and doesn't oppose my action:

"Right, well. Perhaps I can help." Squeeze reaches for Skittles with frightening slime speed, grabs two of his arms with his pseudopodia, spins the cockroach around like a top, and then violently lets him go in the direction of the gelatinous bulk.

Athletics: 15+5=20

Fortunately Skittles remembers to put on his Enviromask before being unceremoniously tossed into the gelatinous mass. His squeak of surprise is muffled by the goo and comes out sounding something like a cat meowing underwater. He flails around and reaches for the nearest code book.

??: 17 + ?

Success! He discovers that moving around in the blob is not unlike swimming through jello (something he did one summer for money when he was younger, and would never speak of it again), and he moves agilely towards the next code book.

??: 16 + ?

Another code book is within his grasp, and he swims towards the last one.

??: 9 + ?

He grabbed something, but he isn't sure what. Skittles is growing a bit worried, and swims around to face Squeeze. He waves and yells, "Ok, pull me out now!" which sounds something like "Mmmmbth, pllluuu meeeooow!" to the rest of the party.

Squeeze "helpfully" flings his old friend into the ooze, ignoring the cockroach's squawk of alarm. Making the best of it, Skittles flails around, grabbing as many of the little MASTER CODE books as he can.

Hmm, trying to grab small objects while your vision's obscured... guess I'll call those Perception rolls, so the worst of them is an 18 so yeah enjoy having three codebooks I suppose.

Squeeze hauls him out with an unpleasant squelch. The ooze has temporarily halted its forward progress in response to part of its dinner being stolen. It seems out of sorts.

"*CROUGH!*

*CRUUUUUUUH!*

*COUGH!...*

Oooooooh...

*BLARGH!!!!!*"

As radioactive chunks of semi-digested rat and blood start spewing forth from his mouth and all over his face and upper torso, Stonum makes the necessary effort to sit up. He wipes his face slowly, and considers the bottle next to him intently for a bit, before finally settling for putting it into his pack.

As he sees the giant blob starting towards the party, he gets up. He looks at Skittles, takes a few weak steps towards the door, and shakes his head in disappointment while leaning heavily on his shield.

"Why did you lads have to go and disturb that thing? Do you ever want to get to Enver, or am I the only one who...

*BLUUUUUHHHH!!!!...*"


After hurling up a few more chunks, Stonum readies his Blunderbuss for battle.

"UUUnnnn....

Well, here we go again."

Skittles hears the dwarf stir from his drunken stupor, and turns around to see a giant gun pointed in his general direction. "Whoa, Stonum, put that thing away. Our slimy friend here isn't going anywhere fast, and you're liable to shoot us instead. Besides, what is a gun supposed to do against a ball of slime?"

Turning to Squeeze, Skittles hands him the master codes he just retrieved. "Why don't you try these out and see if you can awaken that machine?" Everyone backs out of the room with the slime and closes the doors, blocking the blob from view. "Hurry up," Skittles urges. "Let's get that thing moving and get out of here before that blob catches up to us."

Once again, Squeeze feels a strange compulsion coming from the cockroach, as if the cockroach was trying to control his body. Something like, leave the room and close the doors? He shakes it off, hustles over to the glass case, slips under it, and tries the codes on the machine.

Stonum squints briefly at Skittles, and then turns back to continue watching the blob.

"Maybe your right, Bugg-o, but I'd still rather be ready if it tries anything. And you'll see what my little darling will do to that slimeball if it does."

While the doc scrapes some samples off of Skittles' dripping form, Squeeze slips under the case again to try the various codebooks one after the other.

8, 6, 7, 5, 3, 0, 9. No dice.

2, 8, 1, 8, 0, 0, 4. Nope.

1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1.

The ancient (if well-preserved) machine responds with a low hum, the multitude of little buttons on its controls lighting up like a well-loved Winterweenmastime shrub. Of course there was still the small issue of which button actually makes it go, not to mention getting it out of the box. What did all these buttons do? Ancient pictograms were always so unclear. Other than the numerical buttons to input codes, there were twelve other buttons on the panel:

A cube with two circles in it, a rabbit, a bottle full of fire, a box full of fire, a bottle with two butterflies fighting each other, a diamond with an exclamation point, an acorn, a man sawed in half at the waist, a snake with a bag on its head, an upside-down light bulb, a rectangle with a plus and minus sign, and finally one of those metal boxes one so frequently finds above old gas deposits.

The blob, which had been slowly squeezing its way beneath the doors, freezes up at the sound of the wagon's electronic hum and then retreats back to the office. Hopefully Slim hadn't left anything terribly important in there.

"Hey Stonum? Open the case. Like you opened the door."

Squeeze waves frantically at the dwarf and the doctor. "I'll get this figured out in due time - don't be hasty!"

He stares at the buttons on the panel. One of this has to allow him to smash through the glass panel himself before it gets all drunken dwarf up in there.

Mechanics: 17+7=24

Stonum relaxes his stance just long enough to let out a good hearty burp.

"Slime-o, your lucky I've got this aching headache, otherwise I would probably have obliged the good doctor already."

Well, maybe this button wasn't a snake. It could be a picture of the big shovel on the front of the wagon! Squeeze could use the shovel to carefully lift up the box. Feeling inspired, he punches the button.

The massive mechanical arm whips itself straight up, smashing a massive hole in the glass case. One problem solved. And, well, what makes it go? The bunny makes sense. Bunnies are fast. Some of them. The bipedal ones not so much, but regardless...

"FASTEN SEAT BELT", the control panel helpfully advises, but Squeeze neglects to do this before tentatively pressing the bunny button. When the machine lurches out from under him and surges across the floor and nearly through the wall of the BOBCAT building (the rubber treads cannot quite clear the window ledge), he only has himself to blame.

Squeeze splits each of his "arms" into two smaller arms, and uses one on each side of his body to wrap around the seat and secure himself. Now, all he has to do figure out how to make this wagon stop long enough to get his comrades onboard...

Mechanics again to stop the machine.. or perhaps to check if Squeeze knows what the brake pedal for this thing looks like: 13+7=20

As the machine barrels across the building, Squeeze flails wildly at the controls and drags the chuckling doctor along for the ride. He manages to disable the machine before it can flip itself over; the button with the exclamation point kills the engine.

"Nice ride you got there."

6 or 7 husky, pig-faced mutants in tattered black leathers are loitering outside the window, crowded around the spectacle Squeeze has made of himself. Porkers. The bane of any civilized mutant, the average porker spent most of his day marauding and looting peaceful settlements, and then wound down the evening by burning things. Worse, they were talented salvagers, so any kludged-together weapon they were pointing your way probably actually worked. In this case there were "only" two blunderbusses pointed at Squeeze, the rest of the gang being armed with an assortment of rusty chains and sledgehammers. Their motorbikes were still idling nearby; thanks to the noise of the new wagon no one had heard them approach. The largest porker levels his blunderbuss at Squeeze meaningfully.

"Why don't you two step, uh, get down from there and hand us the keys. Nobody has to get hurt. I done enough hurtin' today. I got what you call, eh, what was it, Ed? Repeatin' Stress Injury? From all the hurtin' I been doin'."

Ed (the other lucky gun-haver) offers a rheumy chuckle and then spits a wad of greenish phlegm onto the wagon's windshield.

"Gentlemen, it just so happens that I am a medical practitioner! Ed, that looks like it could be a nasty chest infection you've got there. And, I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name, why don't you come over here and let me take a look at that wrist of yours?"

Descend from the Bobcat and stand beside it.

"I know a thing or two about hurting-induced repeating stress injuries. I've got some medicine that I bet could clear it right up. Something for your cough, too!"

Attempt to put the two with guns at ease and convince them to come near.
Interaction: 1 + 6 = 7. Fuck.

Skittles, still standing in the back of the showroom, attempts to quietly sneak towards the porkers, in hopes of getting a shot with his launcher.

Stealth check 9+0=9

Failing at that, he raises his launcher, whispers the sacred prayer to the almighty Cage ("How'd it get BURNED?"), and fires The Rock at Ed.

Attack 5+3=8

Making a tentative attempt at being a little stealthy for once, Skittles creeps around the back of the new wagon only to bark his knee on the bright yellow metal. With the element of surprise lost, he opens fire anyway. The Cage would have wanted it that way.

18 vs AC 16: Hit! 8 damage.

The Rock whirled toward Ed's face, slicing cleanly through one of his tusks and hacking off a good part of the warhog's right ear before flying across the street to destinations unknown. The porkers are unprepared for his sort of proactive resistance, and Doc's in a position to put some real hurt on them before they can react.

Skittles racks the next disc into firing position. Deadfall? Sounds good.

Marauders x5: 5+2=7
Warhogs x2: 19+3=22
Skittles: 12+3=15
Squeeze: 9+3=12
Doc: 19+3=22
Slim: 3+2=5
Stonum: 11+3=14

Tiebreak coin flip for Doc vs Warhogs favors Doc

:savepoint: Initiative order: Doc, Warhogs, Skittles, Stonum, Squeeze, Marauders, Slim :savepoint:

Enemy defenses:
Marauders AC 17 Fort 16 Ref 13 Will 12
Warhogs AC 16 Fort 8 Ref 17 Will 15

Battlemap

"My medical opinion is go to hell."

Mix something together and throw it at Ed.
Flasks of fun: 5 + 7 = 12.

Move to the square to the right of Nutty.

Ed and Frankie look on curiously as the vials smash harmlessly into the concrete at their feet.

"Well, that's just uncalled for", Ed snarls. "A couple of interesting scars is one thing, but now you're wastin' perfectly good bottles. An' without bottles, how you gonna store your hootch? That's a waste of natural resources is what it is."

This monologue is largely unheard, of course, delivered as it is alongside the din of two blunderbusses firing off their payloads of ball bearings and small animal bones. Everyone near the window takes a beating but Skittles gets the worst of as multiple fish bones spear his sensitive compound eyes.

The wounded throw themselves to the floor to avoid a second barrage, but the warhogs are already tossing their guns aside in favor of a pair of very well-used tire irons. Damn things take too long to load. They advance on Squeeze with foul intent and even fouler odors.

27 total damage to Skittles
12 total damage to Doc
13 total damage to Squeeze
All three are bloodied and prone.
This seems like a good time to remind you all that you each get one second wind heal per encounter!

:savepoint: Skittles, Stonum, Squeeze, Marauders, Slim, Doc, Warhogs :savepoint:

Battlemap

Skittles has never felt such pain in his life, but he draws on the strength of the mighty Cage. When all is lost and the world has knocked you down, the only thing you can do is turn yourself into an undead skeleton who pees fire and beat the hell out of your enemies. Skittles takes pride that at least he has the ghost part down. He takes a deep breath and rises from the ground. Coincidentally, the music that Slim turned on earlier switches over to a new song:

Get the Flash Player to play this audio file:
Skittles uses Second Wind, gains 14 HP

Skittles walks purposefully over to the nearest Warhog. He stares directly into the man-pig's eyes. "You think you can just show up and take what's rightfully ours and not have to deal with consequences? Not today!"

3+ 3 (CON) + 1 (level)=7 vs. Warhog's 8 FORT

He tries to release his powerful Eau de Roach, but suffers performance anxiety.

Suddenly stirring from his EVERCLEAR induced rêverie, Stonum turns abruptly and let's his finger slip on the trigger of his Genuine Blunderbuss just as the barrel points in the general direction of Ed.

Blunderbuss shot in the general direction of Ed's face
7+5+2+1= 15 Vs. AC 17
miss...

"Ohhhhhh... What have ye done now, snaplings?"

A weak dud of a shot comes out of Stonum's weapon. He sighs loudly as he shoves it into his belt, trading it for his trusty tire iron. He staggers awkwardly towards The scuffle.

Move real good and close to Ed

Squeeze gets up, shudders and retracts his cytoplasm into himself so that some of the blunderbuss shot drops out of him.

Move action: Stand up
Minor action: Second Wind, +13 HP


"Mmmmmmmm. Leather and pain. You folks are making me some kind of excited, I'll tell you what. Mmmmhmmm....!"

Squeeze turns to Ed, and with a mighty UNF, releases a substantial blob of nastiness.

Attack with Paralytic Goo
Attack roll: 10+4+1=15 vs. Fort=8 HIT
Lol min damage: 1+2+4=7
Target is slowed until the end of Squeeze's next turn

"He slimed me!"

Ed twitches as the various contact poisons that comprise most of Squeeze's body work their way into his bloodstream.

"Ugly little spud, isn't he."

And with that the underlings charge, armed with the triumphal roar of "DON'T GET ANY ON YOU!" But they are far too disorganized, bumbling into each other and generally crowding the building entrance. Skittles and Squeeze easily duck their swinging chains.

:savepoint: Slim, Doc, Warhogs, Skittles, Stonum, Squeeze, Marauders :savepoint:

Battlemap

Slim blinks as everything around him moves. So fast, they all are.

Move Action: 3sq W, to E-5.
Minor Action: Draw weapon: Wrinklefucker (if that's even required, but I don't think I need a minor action beyond this.)

Slim raises the Wrinklefucker high above his head, and swings it as hard as he can down on [D-4]'s head! (Using Predatory Eye.)

Attack with Predatory Eye! 12+3+1 = 16 vs AC 16 (Though attack roll also says "+accuracy", and not sure where that is on character sheet. Don't remember if matching 16 vs 16 counts as a hit, either.In which case it does...)
Slam dat hammer: 9+3+1 = 13 damage

Though a fresh dent has appeared in his skull thanks to Slim's alarmingly dangerous sense of style, Ed's more upset about being soaked in gelatinous issue.

"Get that thing away from me! It's probably got all sorts of diseases! I don't need any more diseases, Frankie!"

With that, Ed heaves his considerable weight at Squeeze, sending the handsome blob sprawling, somehow. Squeeze doesn't really have legs or a center of gravity, but he gets knocked down. Accept this.

9 damage to Squeeze (knocked prone)

"Tha's right, Ed. That there robodoc we tore down for parts said you was, what was it? 'A perfect model of bacterial armory.' Like, all your bacterisms is good friends wit' each other. DON'T RUIN ED'S BACTERIAL PARADISE!"

Frankie brings down his tire iron on Squeeze's floorbound form with a fury, splattering goop all over everyone present. For his part, Squeeze issues a startled burbling noise and his eyes (lacking proper lids as such) sink into the relative safety of his interior.

16 damage to Squeeze (unconscious, dying)

This could be going a lot better.

:savepoint: Skittles, Stonum, Squeeze (KO), Marauders, Slim, Doc, Warhogs :savepoint:

Battlemap

Skittles hears the strangled burble of his fallen companion, and draws a mighty stream of bile from deep within his body.

Standard action: Eau de Roach on C5
7+3+1=11 vs. Fortitude (8)
Damage: 11 + 3+ 2=16, plus push target back to C4 (?)

A greenish-brown liquid streams from Skittles' open mouth, dousing the Warhog. Skittles bellows a loud roar (or what passes for a roar in cockroach circles), beats his chest, and disappears briefly, reappearing a short distance away.

Shift to D6

Though still groggy, Stonum is conscious enough to see what has happened to his squishy friend, and his dwarven defender instincts kick in. The ancestral memory of the defense of Iregard Keep flow through him, and he swings with all his dwarven might at Ed, while shielding the glippity-gloppy remains of Squeeze as best he can with his shield arm.

Shield the Fallen on Ed
20+5+2+1=27
Critical!!!
16 damage to Ed
+2 to all defenses and saving throws for Squeeze and Slim until the end of my next turn


The Iron connects on the side of Ed's head with a huge THWOP.

Stonum Shifts on top of Squeeze's remains to shield him from more pain, and as he steps into the goo he can swear that the ooze is slowly starting to crawl up his leg, evn though Squeeze is obviously unconscious, In fact it's crawling towards the only part of him that is equal to a full-sized man. Well, apart from his head.

Shift to Squeeze's space to protect him, and maybe some fun times

Ed staggers back as the trickle of blood from his temple escalates to a cascade.

"Uh buh... gubba derrrr... flub" he threatens, as his eyes fail to focus on much of anything.

Ed bloodied

The marauders charge in chains a-whirl to protect him, battering back the defenders at the door and swarming in to surround the Bobcat. Stonum stands unharmed, batting back the chains and dauntlessly defending the fallen blob (who is looking a little worse for wear regardless, if such a thing is possible).

7 damage to Slim; knocked back to F5
6 damage to Skittles; bloodied, knocked back to E6

:savepoint: Slim, Doc, Warhogs, Skittles, Stonum, Squeeze (KO), Marauders :savepoint:

Battlemap

AH'M WATCHIN' YOOOOO, PIGFACE...THING.

Move Action: Shift to E4

Attack - Predatory Eye: on D4
12+1+3 = 16 vs 16AC (again?!)
Damage: 3+3+1 = 7 PLUS 1d6 = 2 BRAIN MELTING damage

Slim raises his ironhammerthing high in the air once again over the Warhog's head, and swings it down with all his might. He unfortunately loses grip of the handle mid-swing, and the hammer falls slightly-more-gingerly-than-expected on the Warhog. Slim, slightly taken aback, sees that it didn't quite do the trick, and squints at the creature, dealing an extra 2 points of damage.

That oughta do it. Yeah.

If there's one thing Andy knows, it's crushing. Not driving, unfortunately. However, desperate times call for desperate measures, and unless something drastic happened to change the odds in their favour, Pang's entire written introduction was all going to go to waste. It was time to draw upon his knowledge of classical mechanics to display how forces work. Forces like that Bobcot on top of those ugly pig things.


Move: Move past Skittles and enter the Bobcat.
Move: Start 'er up, and drive at half speed (2) through D/E5 and D/E4.
Minor: Second Wind.
Attempt to crush E5 and D4 into paste.
Attempt to scoop up Slim, Stonum, and what's left of Squeeze with the bucket, in the process of driving. (I actually just realized everyone else's names starts with S)
Mechanics: 9 -1 = 8 (Assuming I have to roll, since we already figured out how it works)

Ed struggles to clear his head, but the blurry, menacing countenance of a bugbear filling his vision just panics him further. The mass of porkers crowding the entrance works against them as the Bobcat revs into motion; speedy retreat is impossible. Before he can even understand the situation, Ed is pulled under the hungry treads of the Bobcat E55 Compact Excavator (with tilt bucket). One of his underlings is crushed as well but somehow survives, which, if anything, is a bit worse.

22 damage to Ed and Marauder E5
Ed killed
Squeeze/Stonum/Slim are in the scoop, disembark to any adjacent square as part of your move.

With three out of reach in the scoop and Doc ensconced in the relative safety of the cockpit, the group is fairly safe for the moment. Except for Skittles. That's unfortunate.

Crawling out from under the treads, the badly wounded marauder makes no attempt to get to his feet. Rather, he just issues a tremendously foul belch, nauseating everyone nearby who is capable of nausea (that is to say, the other porkers don't even notice). Skittles, luckily, still has his enviromask on, but the hideous odor permeates the open cab of the Bobcat. Doc's rock-studded projectile vomit leaves a nasty crack in the Bobcat's windshield.

11 poison damage to Doc (dazed for one round)

Most of the other marauders are in no position to cause any harm, but Skittles still gets a nasty beating around his thorax.

7 physical damage to Skittles (-5 thanks to Ghostly)

:savepoint: Skittles, Stonum, Squeeze (KO), Marauders, Slim, Doc, Frankie :savepoint:

Battlemap

Feeling a bit left out that he's the only one not on the Bobcat, Skittles decides a bit of self-preservation is in order.

Move action 1: Shift to F7
Move action 2: Move as far to the right as possible (it doesn't appear that F7 is actually adjacent to a wall, it's just where the current map ends).

As he is lifted up into the air by the BOBCAT's frontward apparatus, Stonum suddenly feels the EVERCLEAR start to come back with a vengeance. He struggles to stay standing, but the rancid smelling puke emitted by the marauder proves too much even for this radioactive dwarven stomach.

Stonum slowly bends his knee and starts sinking in the goop, and he lowers his head inside his armor to try and escape the stench. As he does so, what he had up until this moment thought was but a very fancy trash can lid he used as a hat connects to his torso cover and starts to emit a faint yet high-pitched noise. A few bleeps and bloops later, an odd looking lens is uncovered on the rim of the lid, and it begins to emit an intense burning light.

"We're gonna have a funky time" Laser attack vs. Marauder at B5
17+6 = 23 Vs. Reflex 13
Hit!
17+5+2 = 24 Damage to Marauder at B5

Stonum peeks slowly above his armor at the ground. He then nods approvingly at the results of his chance discovery.

Despite the shabby treatment afforded to him by having his sloshy form heaved around in a shovel, Squeeze's condition seems fairly stable for the moment. It's only a matter of time, however, before he loses cohesion like so much leftover Jell-O, fit only to be poured down the sink.

(The vast majority of ancient foods have failed to endure the years since the Mistake, the occasional canned ham notwithstanding. Packages of Jell-O, however, have routinely been found completely intact and none the worse for wear. Whether this is a testament to Ancient preservation techniques or a working factory still exists is largely a matter of individual belief. Most Gamma Terrans lack refrigeration facilities, meaning that Jell-O is generally served as a hot soup.)

Squeeze's death save fail count: still at 1

Acting surely out of confidence that his allies had the situation in hand, and not merely out of craven cowardice, Skittles makes a tactical retreat toward the rear of the building.

Alas, the iron stomachs of the dwarves are only a legend these days, the soft food of Gamma Terra having spoiled them for the hearty food and drink they once enjoyed in the stone halls of Iregard Keep. Aye, it was a rare dwarf in this weak generation that could chase a dinner of fire beetle with a tankard of fermented bulette blood and keep it down. Shameful. But it is Stonum's queasiness that results in one of his porcine tormentors nearly being reduced to a cinder. Indeed, nausea had not produced such glory in battle since Stonum's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather once drowned an entire army of invading pixies purely by accident.

B5 Marauder bloodied (to say the least)

"You killed Ed!", Frankie exclaims, looking more inconvenienced than saddened. "He's irreplaceable, Ed is. We replaced him six times already! Where am I gonna get another Ed? Out of this lot? Not likely!"

He mulls on it for a moment, coming to an inescapable conclusion.

"Aw, hell. I'm gonna have to be Ed." And so it was. Happily, Frankies were somewhat easier to replace.

Ed VIII clambers onto the Bobcat, swinging his chain in hopes of wounding the relatively small portion of Doc that wasn't behind a plexiglass shield. The effort is futile. Worse, Ed VIII fails to keep his footing atop the moving Bobcat (albeit very slowly moving). He tumbles to the floor.

Ed VIII accomplishes fuck-all, ends up prone. Yay.

:savepoint: Slim, Doc, Marauders, Skittles, Stonum, Squeeze (KO), Ed VIII :savepoint:

Battlemap

Move Action: FLYING LEAP out of the Bucket to D5
Acrobatics: 16-2 = 14!
ATTACK - Predatory Eye: On Ed VIII (D5)
3+3+1 = 7 VS AC16 ...but he's prone so AC-4, still f(l)ail
Damage: (none, unless my awesomeness warrants a point of damage)

Slim rises bravely from the Bucket, jumping high into the air, readying the Wrinklefucker for a crushing blow to Ed VIII... Something in the air (a bird? a plane? A BIRDPLANE?) distracts him and causes him to completely miscalculate him jump. Slim smashes his hammer into the floor beside Ed VIII, but lands elbow-first on him, and rolls over into (the next square).

Doc erupts with a gravelly cackle as he wipes his pebbly breakfast off of the dashboard, overcome by the exhilaration of grinding his foes into bacon and other delicious pork products 'twixt the whirring gears and spinning treads that propelled him forward. Not overcome enough, however, to keep from continuing the satisfying crushery.

His brows knit together with a peculiar grating sound and he stomps on the accelerator, barreling out the door and destroying everything in his path. Taking a sharp left, he heads south into the gaggle of oinkers, diverting his attention briefly back inside the building to take over the wounded pig and... apparently make him punch himself in the face and jump a few feet over, or something (seriously, what does temporary possession even do anyway?).


Move: Drive left 2 and down 2, ending at B6-C7. Also, uh, try not to run over Slim, wherever he ended up.
Targets: D5, C5, B5, C6.
Crush damage: 22.

YouTube Video

Standard: Temporary Possession on F5, If I can reasonably do this out the window after I turn south, or something.
Attack: 15 + 1 + 3 = 19.
Damage: 4 + 3 + 1 = 8. Slides to I5 and knocked prone.

:tubular:

If my trajectory is such that I can end my turn with the Bobcat's bucket inside through the window, over D6, that'd be peachy. If not, no worries.

Doc revs the Bobcat into — well, the Bobcat doesn't really have a high gear, but he leans forward in the cab and makes vroom-vroom noises, so it's like it's going faster. A throng of porkers is crushed under his merciless treads. There are not enough bacon puns in the world to describe the carnage.

B5 killed. C5, C6, D6 bloodied & prone. Well, Ed VIII was already prone but shut up, you

Pulling the stick hard to the left, Doc barrels over a few more pigs before doing a complete 180 and plunging the shovel arm back into the building. He ignores the porker just before him, however, briefly sending forth his murderous will toward an enemy across the room that was sluggishly crawling toward Slim's back. The porker's face was not prepared to cope with his own brass knuckles, and he slumps motionless with his fist buried wrist-deep in his snout.

Clarified the language on the possession power a little, you only get to do one of the three things. Killed him either way, so meh.

The bravado of the remaining porkers is rapidly dissipating. Most of the survivors are grievously wounded, unlikely to survive long even if the battle is won. They have nothing left to lose, and most of them are content to vent their fury on poor Slim, who was having a reasonably nice day before these translucent yahoos and their dwarf showed up. Good thing he's smart enough to back away slightly when a legless pig tries to punch him in the shins.

FFFFF ignore the warhog rolls I'm a jackass
Jack shit accomplished marauder-wise

:savepoint: Skittles, Stonum, Squeeze (KO), Ed VIII, Slim, Doc, Marauders :savepoint:

Battlemap

Marveling at the carnage, Skittles sees a chance to jump into the fray once more.

Move to F6

17+3+1=21 vs 16 Fort
Damage: 4+3+2=9 plus pushback to D6

"Do you pigs not know of my lineage? My father fought in the Great Swine Rebellion, and was known far and wide. Fear me, for I am the Son of Baconator!" Skittles launches another salvo of acid onto the nearest Marauder, causing him to fall back screaming in pain.

Stonum was unpleased. The Golem wasn't the world's greatest tread-climber pilot. He had a headache, and he was knee deep in some sort of cohesive...yogurt.

Fuck this.

He reaches down and grabs the goo with both big, glowing mitts.

Grab Squeeze's...uhh...corpse...pudding...thing

NOW IT IS TIME FOR...DWARVEN PIZZA ARTS

YouTube Video

Oh yeah work it, what now.

Tossing the jello carcass about until it was nice, thin, and flat, with the flick of a finger, he let it fly over the edge of the bucket.

Throw slime all over nearest prone pig.

Gripping the sides of the bucket while looking over the edge, DROWN IN THIS SHIT YOU ASSHOLE was about the most eloquent thing he could think of.

Pig D6 drowns in blob carcass.
18 has got to be good for something

As the pigs drown in acid and.... thicker, technically sentient acid, Ed VIII makes a command decision.

"You! Hey, you! You're Frankie now! Wear the mantle of Frankie proudly, as did I and the Frankies before me!"

And so, with both an Ed and a Frankie, the gang remains intact. As long as this tradition is kept, the dark days following the Baconator Incident will never recur. They flee, leaving behind three of their impressively-maintained choppers and about 500 kilos of fresh pork. The Battle of Fort Bobcat is won!

VICTORY GET! 170 XP each. HP restored. Both Omega items used in battle retain functionality (dang). Mutation updates incoming ASAP.

Doc's new mutation: FAST HEALING (Ffffuuuuu—)
Skittles' new mutation: NARCOLEPSY
Squeeze's new mutation: ADRENAL RAGE
Stonum's new mutation: ACCELERATED CLAW
Slim's new mutation: INHABIT CORPSE

The doctor always thought he looked smart in a motorcycle helmet. Not smart like a doctor smart. The other kind. The kind that makes female, uh, ghost rocks, walk over and talk to you. He'd have to remember to ask Squeeze later how he did it. Doc had never been great with the lady-rocks. In any case, he thought about how great it would be if one of the pigs had left a nice-looking motorcycle helmet behind.

Choose your own adventure!

If there was a motorcycle helmet left behind, go to page 3! If there was not a motorcycle helmet left behind, go to page 51!

















Page 3:
Doc picks up the helmet, wiping a bit of the dust off of it and placing it upon his head. He does up the chin strap and smiles contently.





















Page 51:
:(

HELMET ACQUIRED

+1 TO HELMETS

Skittles is sad because the helmets have no antenae holes. Then he remembers he's in a post apocolyptic wasteland, and bike safety is very low on his list of concerns.

The dwarf slowly starts climbing out of the bucket, muttering under his voice at the Doc for leaving him hanging. He slowly slides down the shaft arm of the BOBCAT, and lands on the cab none too gracefully. As he finally gets to the ground, he decides to search the pig remains for anything that might be valuable to the group on their quest, whether currency, trinkets, or weaponry.

GIMME LOOTANS

He then tries to figure out a way to siphon the remaining fuel from the BOBCAT, since there is no point in leaving it there if they are headed away from this place.

Stonum rifles through the belongings of the deceased porkers, finding:

5 badly tattered sets of road leathers
3 rusty chains
2 bent tire irons

and the following Ancient Junk:

1 brand-new license plate from the state of "New Texaco" (motto: "We put the bomp.")
1 plastic packet labelled "Radiation Suit Repair Kit", including dozens of small rubber patches but no adhesive.
1 immaculately polished adjustable crescent wrench, neatly broken in half lengthwise.

Lacking a hose or any kind of pump, it's difficult to see how Stonum can get the fuel of out of the Bobcat. Maybe if he poured something else in to displace the gas. Also, some kind of bucket might be helpful. Or a mop. In a pinch.

Squeeze slowly reconstitutes himself into his customary form. "Mmmmm... so gooooooood. Can't remember the last time doing it knocked me out cold, mmmmhmmmm."

Search the premises for cigarettes.
Eat the license plate.
Take a chain and bent iron to reinforce the cowboy boot later on.

Stonum, in his drunken stupor, forgot the whole reason the gang broke into the Bobcat building in the first place was to get a Bobcat. Skittles reminds him of this, from a distance, just in case Stonum is an angry drunk.

Open radiation suit patches
Rub them against Squeeze to get them super sticky
Apply to various parts of my body

"Yay, stickers!"


"So guys, are we ready to roll out?"

Andy has already decided to try his hand at piloting around one of the tiny vehicles and climbs aboard.


Mechanics: Turn this mother on and avoid crashing!
13 - 1 = 12

Seeing that his compatriots have already rifled through the pigs equipment, Stonum satisfies himself with grabbing the adjustable wrench. Though it may be in bad shape, it could come in handy if the wagon were to give him trouble as it has many a time in the past. He yells out to Squeeze:

"Hey Jelly-o, found some nice leather and chains for your next party!"

And with that, he gets into his autowagon and turns it on, ready to head out.

Skittles hops aboard a second bike and starts the engine.

Mechanics (if necessary): 18+2=20

Cigarettes are "available", but they are, unfortunately, ensconced (like nearly everything else in the manager's office) inside the orange jelly. Though Squeeze shakes a pseudopod in anger at the offending blob, he knows he will have revenge of a sort when the jelly can no longer sustain his... one, two, three... 17 pack a day habit. Truly, watching your enemies sink into a miserable black hole of addiction is the best revenge. Also, living well. But mostly the first thing.

The license plate tastes of flop sweat and cow hair. Squeeze experiences a brief and unpleasant impulse to secede from the group and go his own way just to show these weak-kneed nancy boys how goddamn tough he is, but it passes. A vague desire to not be Messed With remains.

Most of the group gets behind the wheel of some vehicle or another, encountering no particular issue. The porkers' bikes should have enough fuel to carry them a little further, anyway. Skittles waits for the rest to saddle up, whiling away the time by festooning his body with black rubber squares. If they need to break into a checkerboard factory, his camouflage will be perfect.

It's 24 miles to Enver, they've got a quarter of a tank of gas, it's 3 PM, and he's wearing night vision goggles. Hit it.

Doc shuts off the bike, kicking down the stand. "Well, gentlem-creatures, shall we begin our journey?" Doc pauses, remembering that they now numbered one more than they did in the beginning. He walks in the direction of Slim.

"Hello, um, bear. We're traveling to Enver." He offers his hand for a shake.

"Sorry about the windows. And the, uh, crashing. You know. Not really used to driving one of those things." He trails off, muttering something about how he's normally a better pilot. "Anyway, you're welcome to join us if you like. Least we could do, after we upset your living situation. With the, uh, destroying. And the noise. Also we intended to steal your wagon, sorry 'bout that. Didn't realize that this place was occupied. Also you have an amorphous translucent visitor devouring your home. Thought you should probably know about that."

"So, uh, right then." He returns to the motorcycle.

"Friends, I too am ready to head out. To Enver, I suppose, but I propose that we stop at any and all pleasure houses along the way, should we be fortunate enough to find them." Squeeze takes a set of leathers, manipulates the license plate inside his body into a prominent location just inside his chest, and slithers onto a bike.

If Squeeze is otherwise unusually quiet, it is because he has things to think about. Deep thoughts. For example, he has this hazy memory of being kneaded and manipulated by the dwarf. What could this mean. He needs to think about this slowly and in great detail.

Well, he will have time to ponder this. The feeling of being on the open road, wind blowing through his cilia. Something to look forward to.

The bugbear stands expressionless in the blood-splattered ruin of his home, perhaps in some kind of shock. Perhaps best to leave him alone. If he felt like coming along he could catch up by following the trail of destruction.

Guess we'll find out if Sousuke's still paying attention, he can write himself in again if he wants I suppose. If we don't hear from him in a few more days I'll slot someone else in.

The voyage north through the rest of Paaka is relatively uneventful, despite Squeeze pouting when the rest of the group refuses to make a detour to the old police station for "extra handcuffs, just in case". Only after making the circuitous turn off Sparker Road (named, presumably, for all the old power lines strewn across it) onto the 470 do complications arise. The highway into Enver is blocked off completely by a heaped-up pile of old wagons. Long-limbed, gangly figures crawl out of the tangled mass of rusty wreckage, brandishing an assortment of bows and spears; their finer features are hard to identify in the encroaching dusk. A dull green road sign is erected over the heap, identifying the 470 as a "TROLL ROAD" (the "R" is sloppily tacked on with orange spray-paint).

"Eh, you there!" shouts one of the boney figures, his voice tinged with a strange accent. "Would you like to get past here? Well, you can't! We won't let you!"

There is a long silence as Stonum exchanges some puzzled glances with the rest of his convoy. At length, a second voice pipes up from the roadblock.

"You mad?"

The roadblock residents break out into a chorus of giggles. Stonum recognized those giggles. Only one sort of creature giggled in that particularly blood-boiling way, nipping at an ancestral grudge even through the thick armor of his continued severe inebriation.

Elves!

Slim finally manages to pick his jaw up off the floor and snaps out of his shocked stupor. Surrounded by shattered glass, splinters of wood, some machinery, and a sick sludging sound, he blinks a few times and steps outside.

Passive Insight/Perception = 15, so I SHOULD know the direction to Enver? Along with these tire treads...


...is the only thing you can hear as Slim bursts into a full fun, following the trail left behind by the group of misfits that helped destroy his home. It takes him a while, but (presumably) he catches up with the group, stops screaming, and catches his breath.

If such a thing is needed...
Athletics: 14+4 = 18

This won't do. Who do these elves think they are anyway? And do they not have the memory of how there ancestors where once beaten down en masse by the Ancestral Iregard Tire Iron of Legend?

"Aye, we can take these turkeys if that's what you lot want, you'll get no protest from me!"

Stonum immediately begins packing his blunderbuss in anticipation of the coming conflict, lest his companions choose to try and parley with these most vile of all creatures. Even the scream of the bugbear is barely enough to get him to turn his head, deafening as it may be.

"Hop on furball, things are about to get rough. You'll cry us a river over your shit-shack once we've taken care of these pests!"

Prepare to terminate elves with EXTREME prejudice.

"Let's keep a level head about this," Skittles says reassuringly to Stonum, placing a calming hand on the dwarf's furry arm. The cockroach turns and addresses the elves.

"My elven breathren: I believe we can reach a compromise. What is it we can give you to earn safe passage? The secret of fire? The location of our buried treasure? Sexual favors from our ambidextrous blob friend? I could teach you ancient roach meditation techniques, guaranteed to make your carapace feel 20 years younger."

A terrible bellow grows in volume behind them as they ponder the matter of the obstinate elves.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH. Whew."

The elves chatter amongst themselves, discussing Skittles' various generous (and occasionally unwholesome) offers.

"Your willingness to parley is admirable. But such things are of no value to us. We require —"

(several elves on either side of the speaker slap their hands on the barricade in an ersatz drum roll)

"Sixteen hot apple pies. Restrain your pet dwarf, or the number of pies we require shall be tenfold. Tenfold!"

"Also make them get us some pasta sauce!" shouts an elf somewhere in the back. The negotiator nods. "Yes. You will bring us all the sauce, or on your heads be it."

The elves duck back into cover as Stonum points his blunderbuss unsteadily in their general direction. The giggling resumes immediately.

"This is ridiculous and a waste of time."

Doc leisurely turns the motorcycle off the road and begins driving in a 20 meter or so radius around the blockade.

"And everyone knows elves are the worst trolls anyway. You know what are the best trolls? Trolls. You idiots."

"what, you mean we're LETTING THEM LIVE!?!"

Stonum, though not too pleased with the turn of events, is not insane enough to take on a group of elves on their own turf alone. "In due time", he thinks to himself as he follows the rest of the crew.

"you sissy girly boys are lucky my friends are bleeding-heart pacifists, or you would have felt the cold of my iron upside your little braided heads!"

That's it, let them off with a warning.

Squeeze has a mental list of Things I Want To Ravish, but elves were rather low on that. Too flighty. One moment strokey lickey, next moment DO YOU LIKE RAT CAKE? I LIKE RAT CAKE. A RAT CAKE IS A CAKE MADE OF RATS. IN A CAKE.

Still, as scattered as elves could be, there's always the possibility of a freak elf that can concentrate on something for more than 45 seconds at a time. Squeeze follows behind the good doctor, but looks out for danger.

Perception: 13+4=17

"Lord Rockington! They're gone... off-road!"

"Off... the road? Impossible. If you went blind suddenly, just admit it. There's no shame in sudden inexplicable blindness. Remember Dink? He was blind for about six years until we got him that inflatable cowboy hat he kept asking for. We treated him with dignity and respect except for all those times we intentionally let him walk off the overpass."

"Regardless, Most Rocking One. They appear to be driving on the dirt rather than the sfalt."

"The fools. On their heads be it! A safe journey could have been theirs, for only the price of some pie! Oh, and that sauce Jubby wanted. Ooh, and maybe a nice potted plant for the booth, a poinsettia? What do you think? Possibly a fern or—"

The bickering voices of the elves fade into the the distance as the group gives the barricade a wide berth, turning back onto the highway only once out of range of the elvish bows. Caught unaware once again, Slim breaks into another sprint to catch up with Stonum's wagon and heave himself into the back.

(While it is true that trolls, particularly those from Urf-2272-Omega, are better at trolling than the high elves of Gaia-6-Lambda-Sigma-Delta, trolls are rare in Meriga. They are encountered almost exclusively in the southeast, though there are some reports that the aquatic trolls of Battin Ru have migrated as far west as Zandigo and as far north as Washing.)

Altogether their fuel carries them about 25 klicks, not quite into the heart of Enver itself, but well past the infamous 470 (whose terrifying reputation had, it seemed, been somewhat overstated). I say 25, but Squeeze travels another 2 before realizing he'd left everyone behind and turning around. His mind had been occupied by other matters.

With 4 empty fuel tanks, they find themselves stranded on a small suburban street. Little detail is visible in the quickly-encroaching gloom (Stonum's headlights have been busted for a while, and the porkers, possessing excellent night vision, had replaced theirs with an assortment of grisly trophies).

To the left, a crete wall about 2 1/2 meters high extends as far as the eye can see to both the north and south. Forward and back is the seemingly endless length of the road (the signage charmingly called it "Service Road" though it was doing them no service whatsoever). To the right, Service Road intersects with another suburban street named Fair Ax. It's lined with dozens of small two-story Ancient homes, all painted in varieties of beige. Some of the houses were practically smothered by trees; the decorative saplings planted in Ancient days were a bit unruly now. A few of the houses have lights in the windows.

A little further ahead there's another intersection on the right, leading to a street called Elm.

"Perhaps we should consider finding shelter for the night," Skittles says to his traveling companions. "For now, one of those houses should do, and once we've rested, we can see what can be scavenged."

Move towards the most defensible house that also does not have lights in the windows.

Check for any signs of traps or occupancy. Perception (15+9=24)

"Wait, friends. I think I remember something about th-oh, hello there friendly bear. We're glad you could join us. Anyway, I definitely remember reading something about this area. It was something about..."

Do I know anything about anything? Maybe!
Conspiracy: 10 + 3 = 13.
Stupid brain! Think better!

"You will never know the sweet, sweet nectar of a midnight tryst if you think that way, friend Skittles. Observe, you must think of a palace as a forbidden lover, and think of the lover as a forbidden palace. Either way, your entry must be smooth, silent, and moist."


Move towards the least defensible house that also has lights in the windows.
Think translucent! Peek into a window.
Stealth check: 12+8=20

Though this looked nothing like the towering metropolis they'd heard about, this area was still presumably Enver territory. That is, it fell under the jurisdiction of Enver, the last dinosaur, after whom the city was purportedly named. A fearsome monster, a hundred times the size of a man, black-winged and terrible. Those who displeased him were flung into space. Or eaten whole. The legends were a bit inconsistent on that. Doc remembered the campfire songs of his youth with a shudder.

Enver, the last dinosaur
Showed me a world I never saw before

You could interpret that either way, really. Doc decides to hang back for a bit to see if either of his friends are devoured by a scaly nightmare.

Squeeze slithers up to a lit window. Inside is a fairly well-preserved (all things considered) Ancient kitchen, with one rather obvious inhabitant: a large, bipedal cockroach (not unlike Skittles, save for being not quite as tall and a bit stockier overall and not translucent and, Squeeze must be honest with himself, somewhat more handsome). Squeeze watches quietly as the big bug pulls a rusty can of butter beans ("Institutional Size") out of a cupboard and pries it open with a large knife that Squeeze might have found threatening if he had skin or any significant internal organs to speak of. The roach wanders out of sight, and Squeeze hears a conversation elsewhere in the house.

"Wait!"

"You better find someplace to hide and keep prayin' nobody ever finds you."

"Try these on."

"Look, you crazy mother..."

"Put these on."

"Hey! Stay away from me."

"I'm tellin' you, you dumb son of a bitch—"

The first voice is interrupted by a sound like raw beef falling onto concrete from a few stories up, a sound Squeeze is oddly familiar with (he was an easily bored child). Either the cockroach or his friend had a short temper.

Meanwhile, Skittles peers into one of the darkened homes, hoping to avoid just the sort of violent confrontation Squeeze was eavesdropping on. Judging from what he could see from the windows, this one looked reasonably safe. Hell, it looked pristine. The windows were all intact, and the paint looked like it might have been applied sometime in living memory. For all that the house was well-maintained there was no sign of any occupants. Hell, Skittles didn't even see any dust.

"IT'S SIX O'CLOCK!" announces a fish-shaped clock on a second-floor bedroom wall, wriggling in a grotesque imitation of life. It then demands to be taken to the river and dropped in the water.

"I don't know about the rest of you lot, but I'm tired, and this house looks nice and cozy. Do what you like, but I'm going to find some dinner, then I'm going to get a good night's sleep, and tomorrow we can meet the neighbors. Give me a holler if you go off and get yourselves in trouble."

Try to open the front door.

18+?=? for lockpicking (not sure which category this is, but I think it's safe to say I picked it if it was locked.
9+0=0 (not so stealthy)
9+4=13 (check for food/bad guys)

Skittles opens the door and following his deep-rooted instincts, heads straight for the kitchen to check the cupboards.

Squeeze frowns. He was rather hoping for a less angry, more buxom and/or studly prospect - though that cockroach had a certain chitinous charm. Still, with something potentially more unpleasant than a waiting lover within, Squeeze decides not to force his way into the house. He was, after all, a lover, not a rapist. And like any true gentleman, Squeeze decides that perhaps this cockroach and whoever else is in there would be a little more pliable later on if he left some of his more potent pheromones behind.

He makes his way over to the nearest door and paints, in transparent goo, a big letter S on the door, then finishes by pasting the goo all over the doorknob. A nice, hormone-laden calling card for later, should the party linger in this neighborhood for more than a day. With that, Squeeze makes his way back to his companions. As he does so, he looks out for potential sources of fuel for the vehicles.

EDIT

looool, fine

As is inevitable in this cruel world, one day Squeeze would die, and Skittles knew exactly what would go on his tombstone.

http://i781.photobucket.com/albums/y...etombstone.jpg

EDIT: Damn it, you edited your post. Put it back :(
EDIT II: YAY

Against his better judgment, the doctor follows Skittles into what appears to be an almost-assuredly inhabited dwelling.

Skittles miraculously picks the lock with... a match, I guess. The door wasn't even locked but it's a useful skill to have. Regardless, he's not prepared for the door to pop open so easily, and tumbles forward onto the carpet with a dull thud.

Keeping an eye on the tacky (if well-maintained) furnishings, he makes his way to the kitchen cupboards. Doc is just behind him, seeming awfully nervous. Maybe he had a problem with talking fish. It was sort of weird when you thought about it. Alas, the cupboards are crammed full of cans of evaporated milk and not much else. Still no sign of any residents (excepting a tiny mouse startled when Skittles opens the cupboard doors).

The fish upstairs pipes up again, demanding that they not worry and recommending they should be happy instead.

Squeeze searches the various wagons around the neighborhood, but finds no fuel. He does find an unopened foil bag of Froditos ("The chip that bites back!"), however.

Stonum remains slumped over the steering wheel of his wagon, the aftereffects of his indulgence beginning to catch up with him. Slim slips into yet another catatonic trance, staring slackjawed at the sky. The sky is just so big.

A little disappointed at not finding fuel, Squeeze picks up the bag of Froditos, and then slips into the house that Skittles and the good doctor had wandered into. A cursory inspection of the kitchen yields cans of evaporated milk. Does a cat live here? Squeeze is tempted to take a can, but decides against it. It's odd that the door was unlocked, assuming that Skittles had not simply picked the door, but the owner may just come back...

Suddenly, an interesting thought. Skittles needs to get laid.... yesssss, he really needs to get laid. Mmmhmmm. And conveniently, there just so happens to be a handsome cockroach living in this town. With that thought in mind, Squeeze tracks down Skittles in the house.

"Friend Skittles.. I have found a lovely cockroach in one of the houses. Perhaps I would have seduced him or her or it. But you are my friend, and I will gladly stay out of your way if you want ..ah, someone for your bedroll tonight. Are you interested?"

Skittles ponders the question for a moment, and realizes he can't remember the last time he had a good roll in the dung with a supple female. "Do you have some kind of plan, Squeeze? Given the noises coming from that house, I don't think I can just walk up and ring the doorbell. Maybe she'd like some milk?"

The grog's hold on Stonum is starting to lighten a bit, and so he finally finds the energy to unstick his head from the steering wheel of the wagon. Not remembering much of what went down, Stonum is somewhat surprised that he is now in a completely different locale than what he last remembers, and quite amazed at the fact that his wagon isn't parked in a pole or some such other hard object. Drinking and driving had already had an unhappy ending for him in the past. More than once. He thinks he remembers something about elves, but he brushes the idea off, as he doesn't see any trophies from the battle lying around his wagon. It must have been a bad dream.

As he ponders fondly all the other vehicles he had driven and wrecked in the past, Stonum comes to the realization that it is now nighttime. He also notices that his companions seem to have wandered off. With his tire iron in hand, he somehow finds the energy to get out of the wagon and go look for them. After a small swig of the juice, of course.

Move towards and enter the house where Skittles and Squeeze are, take a few (5) cans of evaporated milk for later, and stand ready to crush some skulls.

"Give it a few hours, my friend. Then walk up to the door, and say that you're 'S'. It's all taken care of for you."

Slimey wink. Give directions to the house.
Does Squeeze notice the fish clock? If so, take a closer look at it. Prod it in the eye with the Saturday Night Cleaver.

Left exposed to the moonlight, Slim begins to melt slowly (as is the nature of bugbears). The smell of melting bugbear is often thought to attract yetis.

Though Squeeze knows precious little about the finer points of identifying gender, he does his best to arrange a midnight rendezvous for his high-strung friend. Then he sludges his way upstairs to take a closer look at the talkative fish clock, which is currently informing everyone in earshot that it left a good job in the city but people on the river are happy to give.

Alas, Squeeze's cleaver-based tampering damages the fish's beautiful singing voice.

Woooooooooorkiiiiiiiiiin foooooor theeeee maaaaaaaaaaaaaaan eeeeeveeeeery—

The story of "Proud Mary" (presumably an Ancient moral fable of some kind) grinds to a halt as Squeeze jams his cleaver into the gears. Now he may never know if she kept rollin' or not.

The broken fish tumbles off the wall, revealing a recessed metal panel hidden behind.

An abrupt smashing sound punctuates Skittles' continued examination of the milk cans. Peering around a corner, he sees a pile of fragmented wood where the front door had been. Stonum had entered the building in his usual way, and the dwarf quickly began hoarding the milk cans for himself.

As Squeeze peers at the odd panel, the fish issues a last, plaintive cry of sadness for its lost home, its tiny internal motors seizing up completely.

—rythiiiiiiiiing's beeetterrrrrrrrrrr doooooown wheeeere iiiiiiit's weeeeeeeeetteeeerrrr—

That was unexpected. Poking the fish was an act of idle curiosity, but it seems as though there was more to it than-

zxzft-LL CHECK. SHANGH-zzzzsffsmtt *BONG*

Squeeze staggers slightly. Blasted phantom letters and sounds in his head. They were showing up a little more often than before, but as usual, nobody else seems to have noticed. Not for the first time, Squeeze tells himself he needs to get his head checked.. someday, and then put that thought out of his mind. Much like how many Ancients treated their teeth doctors.

But this metal panel behind the fish.. this was intriguing. Certainly worth checking out. Squeeze splits a pseudopod into multiple probing feelers and begins investigating.

Mechanics: 10+7=17

Simple enough. The fish had served as a guardian for an ancient strongbox; the combination lock gives way easily under Squeeze's delicate feelers (he has a great expertise in tweaking small knobs). Inside is:

A bunch of green papers wrapped in rubber bands;

Some shrink-wrapped blocks of white powder;

and a list of about 30 names, each followed by a string of numbers. Ancients had such strange names. You never saw a single Jame, for examples. Only James. Did they always travel in pairs? Squeeze once saw an old newspaper clipping involving a "James James III"; the logistics haunted him for weeks. Worse was "Robert Robertson", which implied reproductive habits that — well, there were plenty of theories as to why the Ancients had died out.

Outside, the unbearable (ha!) moonlight continues to liquify Slim. He'll be nothing but a puddle in a nice suit in a minute or two. The howl of the yeti echoes in the darkness.

Skittles manages to get a few hours of shuteye, even with Stonum's drunken rummaging. He awakens several hours later feeling refreshed and ready for his rendevous with the voluptuous (if Squeeze was to be believed) cockroach next door. Ever mindful of making a good first impression, Skittles procures a brick of the white powder and several cans of milk. The post apocalypse is no time to beat around the bush; he'd skip straight to the erotic milk bath and body-powdering on the first date.

"Wish me luck," he calls to Squeeze, then heads over his date's house and knocks on the door.

Upon seeing the open safe, Stonum immediately grabs the papers, and heads off to attend to his bowel movements, but not before grabbing himself a brick of the white powder for later analysis.

He can understand why someone would want to stash poo wipes in a safe, what with the rarety of good, sturdy, and clean ones in these parts, but the powder on the other hand he could not explain. Surely it had some properties that could come in handy.

Hmm. That powder could be sugar. It could be something else. Many something elses, mostly for nefarious purposes. As Squeeze was pondering this, his companions dart in and snatch some of the powder for themselves. Was it that good? Tempting as it was to try it, Squeeze settles for taking one packet of powder for future analysis.

Squeeze decides that he wants to get some shuteye, but not before at least making another attempt to see if there was anything else in the neighborhood that could help them with their vehicular troubles. An aerial view might be the quickest way of going about it.

Go outside and get on hoverboard
Slowly ascend into the night sky and try to survey the area for anything he hasn't noticed before.
Slow descent.

The doctor was impressed by Squeeze's deft lock-pickery. The blob-thing, had the hands (er) of a surgeon. He recognized the green slips from ancient writings, but none of them appeared to be of the .99 denomination that appeared to be used ubiquitously. The white powder, on the other hand, he was wholly unfamiliar with and he attempted to take a package of it for analysis. With SCIENCE! :rr: Perhaps it was some kind of old world medication that could aid them in their journey? He would attempt to find out during their downtime.

The upstairs region still had several rooms that hadn't yet been explored, and Doc was in the mood for some explorin'. Moving past his compatriots he peered around the nearest corner at whatever awaited beyond.

Things are calming down for the night, even though the eeriness of the place makes it not completely restful. Stonum finally finishes his bowel evacuation, and sets his attention to the white powder, and testing its properties.

he opens the bag gently so as to not lose any on the ground. As the faint smell isn't too unpleasant, he decides to dip a finger in and give it a taste. The taste is hardly describable, but the slight burning sensation at the end isn't too displeasing, so he takes a big handful and stuffs it in his mouth.

Stonum waits a short while, and suddenly feels invigorated and ready to run. A lot. He also feels like shouting while he runs, and so he decides that the powder is indeed a very good thing, so he pours the rest of it into the remaining EVERCLEAR before running into the house, screaming at the top of his lungs, to gather whatever powder remains so he can have some for later.

Pocketing one of the bricks of powder, Doc explores the rest of the eerily tidy abode.

Bedroom! Excessively large bed with silk sheets, check. Mirror on the ceiling, check. Mirrors just everywhere, really, some of them covered in dozens of little scratches. Closet full of largely identical monogrammed bathrobes. Whoever "TJ" was, he knew what he liked. And what he liked generally came in size XXXXL. Drawers full of shapeless rubbery doodads. A really big poster of a shirtless fireman. An inflatable chocolate cake.

Bathroom. Bathroom. Bathroom. The second floor was mostly bathrooms, actually. Why would anyone need seven bathrooms? They're all more or less identical (save for the lingering dwarf funk in bathroom #3), save the subtle variations in the contents of the little cabinets atop each of the sinks. They were all full of little bottles with names like Aquadrex and Flembradone. A lot of Flembradone, actually.

Stonum binges on some of the mysterious powder, rapidly whirling into a powder-fuelled rampage. He is quite unlikely to be of any use to anyone anytime soon. Quite soon he is hunched over the defunct fish, calling it a "slack-jawed faggot" and promising that his doctored EVERCLEAR will make it into a "sexual Tyrannosaurus". The application of said concoction to the fish does not, in fact, generate any dinosaurs. But Stonum is content to blame the fish for this failure. Potential Tyrannosaurs wait elsewhere. Possibly at the bottom of the bottle. RESEARCH CONTINUES.

Squeeze surveys the area from the full elevation of the hoverboard, which is to say: about 5 meters up. His lofty position gets him a lovely view of the bugbear being messily devoured by yetis. Some predators track their prey by movement, but the suburban yeti is only able to detect prey which have remained completely stationary for an extraordinarily long time. Alas, the sun is now completely absent, and the hoverboard's totally rad rim lights do little to illuminate the greater surroundings. The attempt at reconnaissance is largely a failure.

Skittles knocks on the door of his intended paramour, only to be greeted by a large gorilla, its fur matted with what is, judging by the color and texture, fresh cockroach blood.

He could still make this work.

Boom! Totally subtle player rotation!

Skittles makes a mental note never to trust Squeeze again, then quickly assesses the situation.

"Good evening sir/ma'am. I'm going door to door to raise money for orphans of the Great Swine Rebellion. For a small donation, you can have some delicious and nutritious milk, or some of this mystery powder. Plus you'll sleep better knowing a poor little roach is saved from going to the great motel in the sky. Please, won't you give generously?"

Squeeze squints at the yetis. Looks like the cat managed to get himself into a public yeti orgy. Seems as though he's the only one not getting some lately. This needs to be rectified soon.

For now, though - more pressing matters. His survey of the neighborhood yielded nothing of note. It occurs to him that no one's attacked them yet, so perhaps he could do some trading for fuel. Squeeze decides to re-enter the house. Inside, he sees Stonum in a deliciously delirious state, but he isn't quite in the mood for drugged-up dwarf.

Squeeze takes 2 bottles each of Flembadrone and Aquadrex, and some rubbery doodads. He isn't quite sure what the bottles were for - rubbery doodads, on the other hand, always had some use for creatively-minded folks. He also takes a can of milk. With his haul, Squeeze heads for another nearby lit house, avoiding the house that must undoubtedly now be a cockroach love nest, and knocks on the door.

"Hello, friend. I would like to trade for fuel or perhaps a means of transportation. I am willing to provide goods or services, mmmmmmm."

The hulking ape looks around wildly out the open door flinging spittle with every jerk of his head.


"What you want antenna boy!? You gonna touch ma beans? Last fella like you I saw touched ma beans and now he dead!"

The blood-drenched gorilla reacts with active hostility toward Skittles' overture toward orphan-saving. Things could be going better. He's had worse first dates, but not while sober.

Squeeze looks around the neighborhood until finding another house with lights on indoors. A massively swollen pectoral muscle answers the door, twitching unpleasantly behind a thin veneer of leathery skin. It may be attached to a larger creature of some sort, but speculation of that sort would be irresponsible.

"NO FUEL", bellows a voice from somewhere behind the impressively chiseled half-a-chest. "JUST FIFTEEN TONS OF PROTEIN POWDER. WANNA GET RIPPED, BRO?"

A 300 kg barbell hurtles out of an upstairs window, spattering Squeeze with broken glass as it forms an alarming crater in the sidewalk.

Squeeze quickly reallocates his cytoplasm into his chest to try appear as buff as possible. This is a mild success at best. Regardless, he attempts to speak their language.

"FRIEND BRO. HAVE I GOT A DEAL FOR YOU AND YOUR FRIEND UPSTAIRS.

YOU CAN SIGN UP FOR MY WORKOUT PLAN. YOU CAN TRAIN YOUR BACK MUSCLES AND LEG MUSCLES. AND UH, YOUR NECK MUSCLES TOO.

IT IS THE ANCIENT D90X WORK OUT. "D" IS FOR "DRAG-THE-WAGONS-TO-THE CITY", X IS FOR THE XXXXXTREME BURN YOUR GUNS WILL GET, MMMMHMMMM.

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS TO DRAG SEVERAL THOUSAND POUNDS OF ANCIENT WAGONS AND BIKES TO ENVER. MY FRIENDS AND I WILL SIT ON THEM FOR EXTRA RESISTANCE. SIMPLE, BUT EFFECTIVE. YOU CAN BRING YOUR PROTEIN POWDER - I WILL PROVIDE THE MILK. WHAT DO YOU SAY, FRIEND BRO?"

Interaction: 7+1=8

Well, that went about as well as I expected.

"YEAH, PUSHING THOSE WAGONS SOUNDS LIKE A GREAT IDEA! LET'S GO GUYS, GIMME SOME OF THAT POWDER TOO IF YOU THINK IT'LL HELP, I'M STARTING TO LIKE POWDER!"

Here comes Stonum, reeking of fish sauce and EVERCLEAR. He's still pretty amped up from the first powder he found tonight, and he's itching to get back on the road.

"C'MON MONKEY-MAN, LET'S GET THIS THING GOING!"

Yeah, problem is, that wagon's got a parking break on. It isn't going anywhere, though don't tell Stonum that, he's GETTING RIPPED!!!!

"I assure you, good sir, that I have no interest in seeing or touching your beans. In fact, this powder I'm selling today can offer great protection to your beans. It creates a mystical barrier that turns your beans invisible; great if you're worried about thieves making off with your hard-earned legumes. Hey, is there a lady of the house? I'm sure she'd be very interested in hearing about my magic powder."

Hearing the high-volume exchange, the doctor returns to see what his companions are up to. He is unimpressed.

"I feel compelled to point out that we have an important task to do, and it's neither devouring strange apparent stimulants nor seeking amorous relationships with probably-murdered giant insects."

"MILK?"

A low rumble rattles the little suburban house, and the yellowed flesh of the singularly swollen pectoral flushes red.

"MILK?"

"SHIT'S FULL OF, LIKE, HORMONES AND ENZYMES AND FAIRY SHIT LIKE THAT. YOU'RE TRYING TO SISSIFY ME! YOU ARE JEALOUS OF MY INCREDIBLY SWOLE BOD. HURRRRRRRGH."

Massive arms blast out of the second floor, destroying several windows and huge chunks of the exterior wall. The grotesque limbs are festooned with bulging veins the size of garden hoses and an array of badly stretched tribal tattoos. Judging by the clenched fist, Bro House isn't interested in a handshake.

"HOLD STILL, BRO. I'M GOING TO GIVE YOU SOME... DEFINITION."

Amidst this manly melodrama, several other cockroach-folk have quietly scurried out of various homes along the lane, pointing at Hershfeld and muttering darkly about "the monster". They seem upset, when they're able to focus on the ape instead of being distracted by the static-blasting televisions each of them is clutching tightly to their body.

Stonum gets a +2 to his initiative thanks to being coked to the gills

:savepoint: Doc 18, Hershfeld 14, Stonum 11, Brohaus 11, Squeeze 10, Skittles 9, Klickies 24

Brohaus: AC 17 Fort 18 Ref 16 Will 15
Klickies: AC 16 Fort 15 Ref 14 Will 14

[Map]

"Dammit house boy I dun told you about wastin milk and makin a ruckus up in heah! And ya'll hooligans best turn them fancy picture boxes down!"

Grabbing his hat as he hauls ass out the door Hershfeld makes his way to the middle of street and yells at the top of his lungs.

"YALL SIMMA DOWN NOW!"

Suddenly he stops talking and blood spontaneously shoots out of every facial orifice followed swiftly by face planting onto the concrete.

Move to Q-12 and activate ultrashriek with overcharge. Assuming I'm reading that right and it hits at least 4 of the roaches and the house. If not I'll adjust position. Edit: never mind then.

I take 27 psychic damage and am down.

Edit:Apparently my attack went off before passing out so prepare yourselves.

Alright 33 psychic damage to 3 of the klickies and also Stonum ,Squeeze and Dr Andesite.

While Andy admired the constitution of roaches and their resistance to being killed by, well, most things, he didn't admire them enough to stop looking for new ways of doing it.

Play with chemistry!
Throw flask of bubbling, glowing goo at L17.
Hit: 8 + 4 + 1 + 2 = 15 vs. 16

Come oooooooooooon jesus christ.

Move to T15.

Stonum, in his blinding rage, is barely startled by the house suddenly turning on him and his companion. His race has been at the origin of much crazier architecture than this simple layman's tricks. Before it even has a chance to reach out for him, he blasts it with his blunderbuss, screaming:

"YOU'LL WISH YOU HAD BEEN BROUGHT INTO THIS WORLD AS SOME KIND OF REPOSITORY FOR MOTOR VEHICLES AND REFUSE WHEN I'M DONE WITH YOU!"

9+2+1+5 = 17 vs. AC17

Hit!

Damage: 6+5 = 11

And with that, he starts off in the other direction, his chemically-enhanced experience preventing any kind of logic to his successive actions.

Move to Q15

Stonum stays on the ground in the spot where the yeti's doom wail befell him, twitching every now and then from the trail left in his system by his powdered-juice extravaganza.

The gorilla hurtles into the street, shrieking at the top of his lungs before abruptly collapsing in a pool of blood. The bean-thief's friends and the rest of the bugs look a little baffled before toppling over themselves. Even the beefy bro crammed into the house seems a little discomfited by this turn of events. Shrugging as best he can, Brohaus hauls himself off the foundation and begins laboriously hauling himself toward Skittles. Dude hadn't really done anything, but his blood was up. Had to crush somebody or he'd never be able to relax and enjoy Girls Gone Wild: The Moon. Squeeze's flexible protoplasm slips helplessly under Brohaus' shuffling bulk as the monster rumbles overtop him. Luckily Brohaus had an unoccupied basement.

Hershfeld, Squeeze, Doc, Stonum KOed. Killed 3 Klickies. Not sure if worthwhile tradeoff.

:savepoint: Skittles 9, Klickies 24, Doc 18 (KO), Hershfeld 14 (KO), Stonum 11 (KO), Brohaus 11, Squeeze 10 (KO)

[Map]

Let's just pretend I went to S19 instead, given my enormous timing oversight.

Realizing that he is the only survivor of his traveling companions, Skittles jars himself out of his momentary shock and dashes across the street. He hopes he can find a kindred spirit amongst the cockroachfolk, and opens with the ancestral greeting.

"Hail Blattarians! May your antenae always point to deliciousness. My brethren, you have lived with this bully, and you must know some way to quiet his rage. Will you help me?"

Move to K21 (or as close as I can)
Attempt to negotiate with the 3 nearest Klickies (3+2=FAIL)

With his attempt at parlay a failure, Skittles hunkers down behind his shield and hopes for the best.

Assuming I don't have another action, since I've moved and negotiated.

The other roaches immediately distrust Skittles, with his agrarian accent and his clear penchant for mingling with mammals. But these are soft, suburban cockroaches with little combat experience, and Skittles easily ducks when they wave their TV sets in the general vicinity of his head. Doc is not quite as agile, but his stony hide is more than adequate to shrug off a clumsily brandished Magnavox or two.

10 0 physical damage to Doc.

:savepoint: Doc 18, Hershfeld 14 (KO), Stonum 11 (KO), Brohaus 11, Squeeze 10 (KO), Skittles 9, Klickies 24

[Map]

Though his petrous exterior suggested a stoic patience, hidden within the good doctor was a roiling indignance. Roiling with the magmatic fury of the liquid core of the very Earth itself!

"STOP THAT."

Such was the fury of his exclamation that the 3 roaches all simultaneously crapped themselves and then toppled to the ground (not necessarily in that order), their simplistic insect brains unable to comprehend the true nature of Doc's attack.


Seismic Stomp!
16 + 4 + 1 = 21 vs. Fort (15)

Damage: 6 + 4 + 1 = 11 and knocked prone.

Shift down 1, 'cause a shift means that I don't get ruined by opportunity attacks right?

The three roaches faint dead away at the sight of Doc's indignant fury; they topple backward, curling protectively around their precious televisions.

The swollen monstrosity in the house drags its bulk ever closer, groping blindly at the spot where Doc had been stomping only moments before. Roofs collide, sending shingles raining down on the terrified klickies below.

Squeeze flops out the backdoor, looking awfully banged up after his trip through the house's interior.

:savepoint: Skittles 9, Klickies 24, Doc 18, Hershfeld 14 (KO), Stonum 11 (KO), Brohaus 11, Squeeze 10 (KO)

[Map]

http://www.saxypunch.com/missile3/brohaus04.png

Kindly ignore any missing trees & etc Roll20 is being glitchy this week. Still working on a reliable solution for coordinates.

"I'm sorry to have to do this," Skittles says to the surrounding Klickies, "but you leave me now choice. Perhaps some magic will impress you."

"Now you see me..."

Ectoplasmic Plunge on Klicky directly south of Skittles - (16+4+1=21 vs. 14)

"Now you don't."

Damage =(10+4+2) = 16
Shift to square east of attacked Klicky

"MAGIC!"

Completely unprepared for the terrifying power of MAGIC!, the klicky's heart seizes up. The two remaining residents of a rapidly depopulating neighborhood converge on Skittles again, bludgeoning him with limited success.

5 damage to Skittles

:savepoint: Doc 18, Hershfeld 14 (KO), Stonum 11 (KO), Brohaus 11, Squeeze 10 (KO), Skittles 9, Klickies 24

[Map]

http://www.saxypunch.com/missile3/brohaus05.png

Using his deductive reasoning :forscience: Doc decides that discretion is the better part of valour. "Good job over there, bug friend! You keep at it!"


Move around the house that isn't trying to kill us to the south, and up around the east side. I guess to Y18 or whatever it would be.

The Brohaus continues groping blindly in Skittles' direction, muttering darkly about "bitches" and issuing vile curses at whomever stole the keg, which wasn't cheap, dude.

Exposed to toxic concentrations of the Brohaus' cheap body spray, poor Squeeze Majello breathes his last.

Skittles 9, Klickies 24, Doc 18, Hershfeld 14 (KO), Stonum 11 (KO), Brohaus 11

[Map]

http://www.saxypunch.com/missile3/brohaus06.png

In honor of his fallen comrade, Skittles turns to the nearest living Klicky and gives him/her the most soul-piercing look he can manage. Skittles whispers, "I've heard sex is a killer. Wanna die happy?" and touches the surprised roach in the most erogenous of zones.

Ectoplasmic Plunge on Klicky in K23 - (16+4+1=21 vs. 14)
Damage =(9+4+2) = 15
Shift to square I23

"Hey Brohouse! I'll bet those aren't even real muscles, dude. I've seen better muscle tone on my grandmother!"

After the roaches do whatever (probably embarrass themselves) Doc continues his travel toward his dying comrade. And the talking blood-fountain.

Trade in standard action for move action and move toward Stonum as far as possible.

The last of the Klickies makes an almost perfunctory effort to destroy Skittles, the bludgeoning attempt reduced to little more than a nudge. Meanwhile, Skittles' taunting draws the house's attention away from the unending roach genocide.

"FAKE? FAKE? I HAVE MORE SWOLE IN MY PINKY THAN YOU HAVE IN YOUR ENTIRE—"

Brohaus' muscly arms flail around haplessly as Doc zips past him.

"ACTUALLY YOU BROS ARE LOOKING PRETTY CUT. NO HOMO. WHAT'S YOUR ROUTINE?"

:savepoint: Skittles 9, Klicky 24, Doc 18, Hershfeld 14 (KO), Stonum 11 (KO), Brohaus 11

Arrrgh somebody do something interesting

[Map]

http://www.saxypunch.com/missile3/brohaus07.png

Skittles reflected on his father's dying words ("Never leave a genocide unfinished") and got up close and personal with the last cockroach.

(7+4+1=12 vs 14) FAIL

"What was that, Klicky? Hey Brohaus, this roach here in front of me says he could take you down blindfolded with one arm tied behind his back. Are you going to take that kind of smack talk, bro?"

"Don't worry, I know CPR!"


Attempt some sort of medical tomfoolery to stop Stonum from migrating to the great distillery in the sky.

13 - 1 (lolol) = 12.

Well, I tried.

Brohaus takes a swipe at the last remaining Klicky, and Skittles uses the diversion to slip past and skitter up the side of the anthropomorphic dwelling and onto his roof. He tears off a loose roof tile and douses it in some of the lantern oil from his pack. As carefully as one can from the top of a moving house, Skittles strikes a match, sets the tile ablaze, and tosses it down the chimney. Before he can make his escape, an explosion propels the cockroach 30 feet in the air. He lands with a thump, and turns to see that Brohaus (and the poor Klicky) are now engulfed in flames.

"You're FIREd!" Skittles yells, to the amusement of no one.

The Brohaus pauses his ceaseless posturing for a moment upon being ignited, his repertoire of poorly-conceived homophobic insults shocked into silence. At length, a trickle of tears begins to pour out of the second floor windows. When he speaks, his voice quavers, a mixture of exultation and regret.

"Little dudes, I have been getting huge since the days of your grandfathers. I have benched tanks and deadlifted jets. I once won a tug of war with a herd of migrating Triceratops. I am far more swole than your puny minds can conceive of, but only today, only now, do I really... feel... the burn.".

The klicky deals with immolation far less stoically, and runs shrieking into the night.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Illithid fleets on fire on the edge of the crystal spheres. I watched silver dragons glitter in the dark near the Carceri Gate. All those moments will be all fucked up, what the fuck, you douche."

Before long, the Brohaus is totally engulfed in flame, and his angry soliloquy is inaudible over the roaring of the fire as it consumes him. Only one last indignant inquiry makes it to Skittles' ears before Brohaus departs the world entirely.

"Do you... even... lift?"

The screaming ape and the dwarf struggle to their feet after awhile, staring in awe as the massive meat-cube broils away. The fire rages through the night, and only as a storm rolls in during the early dawn hours do the embers cool down enough to safely approach. Nearly everything in the building has been reduced to ash, and what little remains intact is already being cannibalized by dozens of klickies (too timid to fight, but willing to endure a great deal of discomfort to find new toys for their nests). The intense heat has literally boiled the remains of Squeeze, sending clouds of Squeeze vapor into the atmosphere. People for miles around will be inhaling bits of Squeeze Majello for months. Skittles isn't sure whether to be sad or disgusted. Maybe a little of both.

It's about then that the skeleton claps Doc on the shoulder. It looks friendly, as ambulatory skeletons go (that is to say, completely expressionless).

Dr. Andesite shrieks in alarm.

The dwarf somehow manages to get back on his feet, though it is not without considerable effort. A rather intrusive WUB WUB pulsates in his head, giving him an idea for an eventual hip new musical act. His head feels like it could explode at any given moment. As he turns to see the smoldering remains of Brohaus, he suddenly has a moment of sadness for the mutated horror that it was.

A sadness that is only compounded by the realization that his precious stock of magical fun-times powder has probably vanished with whatever it was that animated this one of a kind monument to physical fitness everywhere.

After taking a swing of his EVERCLEAR to clear (hurrhurr) his head, Stonum pours a shot on the stoop of what was once Brohaus, before turning to witness the undead creature approaching the doctor.

"Oy, you better not be an elven skeleton, or you'll find this life will not end much better than your last."

"Easy friend" commented the living bones, lifting the cigarette to his lips in what was no doubt an empty gesture, given the fact that beneath that suit he wore, he didn't seem to actually have lungs. Or skin. Or bones. Or, you know, stuff.
"Hell of a fight" he continued, somehow flaring the cherry of his cigarette to life despite the lack of an obvious respiratory system, "I hear that guy lifted. He, uh... he used to mention it a lot, actually. It was a thing."

Removing his skeletal digits from the shrieking doctor's shoulder he reached down and brushed off the thigh of his suit pants, freeing ash from them and letting them drop down around the tank treads he called feet. "So, new jack, what's your name?" He offered to the still screaming doctor, sliding his cigarette into his mouth and extending the hand that had until recently held the cancer stick. "Name's Murray. Murray Rasputin. Dead Private Eye and Paranormal Investigator."

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0...ra_3_large.jpg

While pumping the still wailing doctor's hand enthusiastically he replied to Stonum with an easy "Don't remember what I was there, Fella. Been a sentient bag of bones as long as I can remember. I mean, do you remember a time before you were short and ugly?"

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Murray. I'm Skittles, and my friends and I appear to have gotten off on the wrong foot with folks around here. Seeing as how we're new in the neighborhood, can you recommend us a good place to get a drink, kick back for awhile?"

As he is introducing himself to the skeleton, Skittles notices Hershfeld sprawled on the ground a few feet away, only now he appears to Skittles as a beautiful young female cockroach. Perhaps his chances of getting some action haven't gone up in smoke after all. Skittles shyly waves in Hershfeld's direction.

The Doctor blinked slowly, reorienting himself to his surroundings and taking in the scene that lay before him. Medical school had been a particularly stressful time in his life, and every so often certain triggers resulted in him entering a state of catatonic horror. Being greeted by one of the skeletons on which he learned anatomy (mind you, those ones were less tank and more biped) was something of a shock.

Continuing his survey of the immediate area, the keen-eyed rock noticed that the creature who had seemed to self-destruct in the previous melee was one of his own kind! So preoccupied had he been earlier attempting to shake the dwarf awake resuscitate the dwarf that he hadn't even noticed.

His momentary lapse of his faculties a thing of the past, he rushed to greet his stony brethren.

"'Lo, friend!" He held out his closed fist expectantly, in the way of their people.

With no hesitation, the skeleton balled up his fist and brofisted the hell out of the doctor. Fireworks exploded, angels cried, eagles flew f-14's in formation. Somewhere a band played the stars and stripes.

"You can put your feet up pretty much anywhere around here, pally, but as for a good drink, I have no idea. Tastebuds and such, you know?" He smirked, again, as much as one can without lips.

"So why are you all out here, proving who's the best lifter?"

Sensing that his self-imagined position as cool guy of the group is being threatened, Stonum reaches into his pack for his trusty pipe. He sticks it in his mouth, glances quickly at the skeleton to make sure he is looking, and turns to the good doctor to answer a question that he didn't ask.

"It is quite elementary, my dear Andesite. If we are to make it to Enver most precipitously, we will need to find out where Brohaus stashed the fuel he used to fill his furnace and keep his lifting abilities at their most fantabulously astounding max levels."

Stonum draws a long breath from his unlit pipe, turning as if looking around to blow out his non-smoke, hoping no one will notice his lack of forethought and general relevance as a living being.

As much as the dwarf appeared to be a bumbling idiot and surely had no real appreciation of energy metabolism, he did manage to suggest a somewhat reasonable course of action.

"Perhaps our late friend Squishy had the right idea in attempting to investigate the basement of the moving house. Bug-face, your people are good at finding junk. Why don't you go plumb the depths and see what you can come up with?"

Seizing on any opportunity to impress his potential mate, Skittles makes his way to the nearest (now hopefully) unoccupied house. His preoccuption with the possibility of sex distracts him from looking where he's walking, and the cockroach trips over the corpse of one of his dead kinsmen. "I'm ok, nothing to worry about," he sputters as he picks himself up in a most undignified manner.

Fortunately the fleeing roaches had left their front door wide open, so Skittles is able to enter with no problems. He checks his surroundings for any clues as to a source of food or fuel, thinking to himself that a map would be lovely.

Check for stuff: 6+9=15

Sighing to himself in disappointment, Andy muttered, "that's fine, I'll check it out myself" and trudged toward the foundation from which the Brohaus uprooted itself to see if there's anything of interest below ground level.

While Doc searches the subterranean basement Brohaus tore himself away from, Skittles examines another random neighborhood for supplies. The returns on their investigations are... interesting.

While the basement is largely a dusty ruin of old newspapers and... well, just more dust, generally (Brohaus had a bit of a psoriasis problem), there is the intriguing matter of the massive glass canisters full of yellowish goop, and the massive rusty needles jutting out of their tops. Most of the canisters have shattered, but between the remainder there's probably still enough to fill a wading pool. There's a smashed-up crate leaking the same stuff over in a corner: the old shipping label names a "Massive Potential Industries" but declines to identify the product with any specificity beyond "OGH". There's also a crowbar and a claw hammer lying around, both in pretty decent shape beyond a little rust and being goop-drenched.

Skittles' search for a map meets no success, but his trawl of 2336 S Fairfax Dr is not without its own rewards. With the violence over the remaining klickies are somewhat more genial with their distant cousin, and he exits the house with a few of their odd treasures: a RobCo "Robot Repair Kit", a sleeveless pink t-shirt advertising the "Finest Mustaches Inc 1976 Company Picnic And Going Out Of Business Sale-A-Bration of Despair", an extremely small-caliber rifle bearing the marque "Rude Raider", and an empty, flattened and ritually cleansed spray canister of pesticide ("Kills Roaches Deadest!").

One never knows when a robot repair kit could come in handy, so Skittles pockets that. He stares with awe and reverance at the pink wife beater, and slowly puts it on, aware that he is not worthy to convey its incredible message of whisker wonderment to the world.

He runs outside exuberantly. "Guys! Guys! Check out this bitchin' shirt I found!" Ignoring his companions' nonplussed reaction, Skittles changed the subject. "You know, it seems like we've found about all there is to find in this neighborhood. Maybe it's time to move on. That weird building off in the distance that kind of looks like a fist could be a good place to show a lady a great time; how's about we check it out?" He sends a wink in Hershfeld's direction.

"Fist? I always thought it sort of looked more like a duck. You know, if you sort of turn your head sideways and squint. Otherwise maybe a rabbit. Point is, not a fist."

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...alis/DIsig.jpg

"Perhaps it is a fighting dojo then? I've heard stories of duck warriors using a mighty stance called the Flying V, which disorients opponents before crushing their hopes and dreams. It would be kickass if we could learn that!"

The doctor turns and gestures toward the northwest.

"Now that looks like a fist."

http://images.pictureshunt.com/pics/...cape-12103.jpg

Intrigued as he is by all manner of pharmaceuticals, he takes a thermos full of the OGH in anticipation of future clinical trials and returns to where the other members of the adventurers' club are standing in the middle of the road, with slack jaws and glassy stares.

As his companions are debating the very important question of anatomically correct buildings and landscapes, Stonum decides to investigate the strange goo lying in the basement of the house. After the great goo fire and barbecue of New Iregard Keep (basically a fort built with cardboard boxes he soaked in oil because he liked the smell), he learned that flammable liquids are usually best dealt with in isolation, and so he drags one of the barrels out of the house into an open area.

He proceeds to dump some of the liquid on the ground, taking great care to distance the barrel from the spill, and sets about lighting it on fire with his (previously misplaced) pipe lighter.

Exposed to the OGH Stonum deliberately spills from the canister, much of the grass in the overgrown yard begins growing at an alarmingly accelerated rate, shortly leaving the stout Stonum literally in over his head. Several varieties of beetle and caterpillar squirm unpleasantly over his feet, having bloated to the size of small cats. Regardless, Stonum ignites the puddle of goop and muscles his way out of the tall grass, marveling as the huge vermin die a fiery death, never understanding the reason behind why they got so totally huge.

Dense yellow clouds billow out of the greasy grass fire, and a bird flying overhead squawks and plummets to the ground with a splat as its mass rapidly becomes untenable for conventional flight.

There is a muffled explosion as the fire inevitably reaches the barrel despite Stonum's attempts to separate it, and the smoke thickens into an impermeable oily haze. The yellow column rises into the clouds.

The klickies pour back out of their homes, excitedly clicking away with their salvaged Polaroids. This was a day that was going to finally put Fairfax Drive on the map!

A dragonfly roughly the size of Stonum's truck smashes messily in the ground near his feet.

"Well then. That's good to know."

With a sound not unlike that of the shifting of tectonic plates, the doctor clears his throat. "We should probably continue on our way before anything particularly dangerous grows a thousand times larger - thank you for that, Stonum - and decides that we would make a good meal. I mean, for your sake. I'm a rock. Nothing is going to try to eat me."

"There could be some money in that stuff for the male enhancement market."

For lack of any other compelling destination, the five set out for the building building on the horizon that sort of looks like a fist maybe a little but probably not. After a sleepless night, being caught out in the rain, and a near-death encounter with several plummeting oversized sky mantas they are largely in a foul mood.

Eschewing the highway as much as possible to minimize the risk of another elf encounter, they travel about 2.5 kilos before emerging into an area that looks much more legitimately urban than the wild trees and manly houses of Fairfax Drive. Large buildings on their left block the line of sight to the (arguably) fistlike landmark, and they pause at an intersection to get their bearings again.

On the northwest side of the intersection is a small cluster of Ancient storefronts, all sharing a single ungainly beige building: AT&TDS, The AMC Store, So Many Birds, Scrape Master, Bundespost Telekom, Treadmill Warehouse, Super International Liquor World, Jumble Juice, and the entirely too obvious Safe Way. In the northeast corner of that lot a few of the metal Bobcats are clustered around a big patch of bare dirt, perhaps some kind of excavation.

On the southwest side of the intersection stands a single massive building, its sides redolent with thousands of panes of black-tinted glass. The long shadow of the Friendly Eye, Face, and Dental Implant Centre looms darkly over the travelers.

On the southeast side of the intersection is a friendly-looking structure with a gabled roof, painted in garish (if now faded) shades of lime green and rose. "Hacienda", offers the plastic sign near the sidewalk, sporting a cartoon dog in an oversized hat to leer at passersby. "Me gustaría tener un hacienda!", the speech bubble adds.

The structure on the northeast side simply calls itself "Cocomo", which is obvious nonsense, but the metal boxes standing in little rows are a dead giveaway to Cocomo's nature. This... was a gas station. And the truck was... 3 kilometers behind them. But there are literally dozens of abandoned identical-looking little cars sitting around the intersection! Resplendent in shades of grey, and white, and darker grey, and cream, and taupe... More or less abandoned, anyway. What's the odd skeleton between friends.

A small blue sign demands BUS STOP, but it is clear that the bus, whatever it might be, went merrily on its way rather than remain here.