Sessions 3 and 4.
A group of wanderers came to the Ark. They said they came from over the mountains to the east. Their leader is a bald, bright-eyed woman called Veronica. They seem to want to settle down, and have made a camp of their own near the Ark. They have no mutations.
Diego the stalker learnt from No Lai what the journal page he'd found said. There was something about a 'keycard' (pronounced 'kickard')... the key to getting into Eden, if not to finding, or so Sofia the chronicler is convinced. Diego, Sofia, and Miguel the enforcer set out to find a trader they'd heard about to the north. They passed a glassified field that was home to exiled mutants from the Ark. They gave the camp a wide berth.
They travelled on and came to an old radio mast. It was home to a trash hawk that swooped down and savaged Diego almost to death before he could get a good aim with his hunting rifle. Miguel's axe, though, that finished the hawk off. Diego picked up a guitar, at least, so there was some compensation for his troubles.
Th trader was at an ancient mall, served by a score of docile Zone Ghouls. He had a kickard but it seemed not to be the right one.
The group went southwest to investigate the big low buildings on the clifftops that they'd seen from the Ark. On the way they found an old cinema, before stumbling into a pocket of vacuum that nearly killed Sofia before Miguel was able to drag her out. They found an old cable-car station soon afterwards, which had long since ceased to work. But the maintenance paths the old gearheads had used shoed them the way up the mountain. The big buildings turned out to be an airport! A scavenger's paradise. Diego was in heaven.
The place is spacious and sheltered. Perhaps a future base of operations? But not without some defensive work, because there's something that lives up there: a swarm of giant Rot ants. Seeing these in the distance, the explorers beat a hasty retreat and headed home, only to find the place in a state of dismay at the bloody murder of one fo the Chroniclers.
The culprit was found quickly, a scrawny mutant covered in blood and babbling about how "the voices" had made him do it. The mob sent him for a long walk off a short plank on the roof.
The same fate followed a week or two later for another murderer, again hearing voices in her head. This one had stabbed her husband while he slept. The chroniclers Breeze and Sofia managed to get some answers out of her but nothing too useful, before the mob once again carried out a rooftop execution.
The Ark completed the watch platform to improve its defences. Breeze started on a museum, while Sofia made no progress with her sundial, to the amusement of the annoying stalker Yassan. By way of revenge, Sofia noted a gas mask he had that should have been handed in to the Dawn Vault, and promptly confiscated it.
The next big news was the pregnancy of the slave Sira. This was the first pregnancy amongst the mutants of the Ark since... well, forever, actually. No Smoking took Sira into 'protective custody'. Sofia and Breeze the chroniclers talked to her there, and got her to say who the father was: a non-mutant living near a reservoir to the north-east whom she'd met and visited while 'running errands' in the Zone. She asked for help to run away. Sofia said she should be ashamed for not thinking of the good of the Ark first.
It was arranged that she should meet the Elder on the 7th floor of the Ark - neutral ground between Marlotte and No Smoking's gangs - but Ines used her Puppeteer power to make Elon the ex-Security guy shoot No Smoking, and all hell broke loose. Breeze and Ines fled with Sira, stealing a truck from NO Smoking's underground garage. They got some way into the Zone before a surprisingly good rifle shot on the part of Sofia, shooting at their tyres from the newly completed watch platform on the Ark, meant they had to abandon the truck and go on foot. Veronica's wanderers looked interested and nearly joined the chase, but were warned off.
Breeze, Ines, Danny the dog and Sira fled into the night, sleeping in an old tinned soup factory. Miraculously, without a stalker to aid them, they met no danger or excessive Rot out there in the Zone after dark.
Sofia and Miguel, who'd pursued the fugitives as far as the crashed truck but decided not to press on in the darkness, got a good night's sleep and then followed in the morning - since they already knew from Sira where the father of the child was to be found. To make sure they travelled faster than the fugitives, the group recruited Yassan, much to Sofia's annoyance, in exchange for a share of any loot and the return of his confiscated gas mask. One of No Smoking's mechanics, the reptilian mutant Hi-Ace, drove the van.
They got there first by a long way, and took the amnesiac man into custody, back to the Ark, along with Sira and the others. Excitingly enough, the man from the reservoir turned out to have... a keycard! Sofia took possession of that without a second thought.
Comments