Abducted!

[Maldiem]

Abducted!

The Setting:
Everyone on the teams wake up, after having blacked out when the building was Taken. Depending on the building, light may be filtering in through windows, though at a low angle, as it appears to be either sunrise or sunset. No electrical devices in any of the buildings are working at the moment, and in the next few minutes all the buildings become quite cold. Upon exiting the building (if possible, see below), the people note that they are on the coastline of an unknown landmass, with three peaks in sight a large distance opposite of the sun (which is over the ocean; I'm going to call it East).

The plants of this planet are slightly darker green than normal, and the predominant plant is a tall, spindly tree, with needle-like leaves. Other plants include short bushes with no discernible leaves at all, and a large amount of yellowish, dry, grass-like plants.

Each building sits in a clearing of clearly artificial origin, as the plants in a large circle about 50 meters in radius around each have been burned and blackened to the ground. At the edge of this clearing, each team finds a foot-high circle of a featureless, plastic-textured substance, all the way around the clearing. Small fires still smolder at the edge of the clearings.

Every person on the team notices that they have a new tattoo like marking on their skin, and everyone in the team has the same marking. (see team descriptions for a detailed explanation).

The buildings have all been clearly ripped out of the ground by their foundations, as the concrete blocks that the buildings sit on are the ground floor of the building now, and this results in the journey to the ground being a somewhat precarious scramble down 10 feet of jagged concrete, piping, and severed electrical lines. Water from the pipes drains out into the clearing, resulting in a black, cold slush around the base of every building.

Wherever the Teams have been taken is getting fairly cold as the sun, ever so slightly more orange than it should be, goes down, and one small, silver moon is already in sky, while a larger, bluish moon cracks above the horizon. Small flecks of snow begin to drift from the sky, and clouds gather on the horizon over the ocean.

Plants: I'm naming these now for simplicity's sake. If someone comes up with a better one, I'll adopt it.

Grees: Large, spindly trees that predominate in this area. They grow needle-like leaves and have thick bark, and stand on average between 10 and 20 meters tall. In the highest reaches of the Grees, there are brown, tough round things, that may well be seeds. The upper canopy of the Grees feature chirping noises, and the unmistakable rustling of some kind of animal life.

Flubs: These are the round bushes that grow where the Grees do not, typically on steep slopes or in the underbrush. They are thorny, and do not have any leaves at the current time, though there is leaf detritus around their base.

Trass: This yellowish, harsh grass covers every surface in the immediate vicinity, and it stinging to the skin. It does not appear to be growing currently.


Additionally, there are a number of other, rarer plants, these have been included for imagery's sake.


Jageroxorz: The Shmoffice: Black Circles
The office sits on a slope, at about a 35 degree angle, wedged up against a stand of burned and blackened Grees. The situation looks a bit precarious, and nothing but the charred Grees stop the building from sliding farther down the hill.

Toward the ocean (East), the slope continues down into a marshy area, about 5 miles from the Office, rises a bit again, and then slopes down to the ocean. On the rise between the marsh and the ocean, you can make out another burned clearing, with what appears to be a small structure in the middle. To the West, the slope continues upward, dotted by the occasional Gree, for a very large distance. A peak sits on the horizon, distant to the East. To the North, a dense growth of Grees obscured observation immediately past the clearing. South, you can make out a number of plumes of smoke (similar to the one above your own clearing), though a small hill is in the way.

Everyone in the Office finds a large, black circle, about 2 inches in diameter tattooed on their forhead, and the plasticy circle around the clearing is also black.

Silvercoin: The USS Cheesetanic: Blue Squares

The “crew” of the USS Blank wake up to find themselves on what used to be the ceiling, and wedged up against the stern wall. The shrieking of tortured metal occasionally resounds through the ship, though anything that was going to fall down has already done so. Thomas and Fernando were both in the reactor room at the time of the Abduction, and Thomas wakes to find Fernando on the roof of the room, bleeding profusely from a head wound, and unconscious. The fighter pilots and command crew note that the ship is, in fact, upside down, and appears to have its back end wedged under a very large rock outcrop, submerged in a small, waterfall-fed pond that is quickly being polluted by a rapidly-growing oil slick. The front end of the carrier hangs in the air very far above the ground, and the only way to get out of the carrier onto the ground is by dropping about ten feet from the closest hatch to the ground. What aircraft that were on the deck are now on the ground, upside down, and in various states of damage.

The USS Blank Team finds itself with a blue square tattooed on their foreheads, and the circle around the clearing is also blue.

The clearing is at the base of a small cliff, on a slope heading down toward the ocean, directly to the east. The waterfall appears to be aquifer-fed, because there is no stream at the top of the cliff. The cliff is on the western end of the Circle, and a gentle slope about 5 miles leads down into a thick marsh, followed by a small ridge, and then dropping back into the ocean again. On the ridge (10-15 miles away), you can see what appears to be a large structure of some sort. To the North and South, parallel hills run toward the ocean, and visibility is restricted to about five miles by the peaks.

Another Poet: Gaming Group in a History Museum: Red Diamonds

Everyone in the museum awakes to see the dwindling light coming through the fourth floor windows, and the sound of the ocean in the distance. The clearing around the history museum actually includes a small inlet of water from the ocean, and the vegetation in the area is predominantly Flubs and Trass. At the edge of the clearing stand a group of tall, lanky, dark green bird-like creatures, eying the building in a flabbergasted manner.

The group finds a tattoo on their foreheads, a red diamond, that corresponds to the red circle around the museum.

To the East, the ocean immediately abuts the clearing, though to the south and east, the ridge continues farther South and East into a small peninsula. To the West, across a marsh, a long slope leads up to three peaks in the very far distance, with parallel hills running along its length. At the base of a cliff to the west, you can see what appears to be a very dark rectangle wedged up against the cliff face, along with another clearing. To the North, you can see out another clearing and small structure in the center. To the South, a small rise obscures your view of the rest of the peninsula.

EleventhHour: WIP: Yellow Stars

The night shift at WIP awakes initially to find nothing significantly different, as the windowless main floor does not immediately betray anything amiss. The lights have gone off, the phones are dead, and the computers are all kaput. The WIP building sits in a clearing at the top of a small cliff outcropping, with the only passage to the rest of the coast via a precarious, narrow trail that drops about 30 meters in about 30 meters. No vegetation remains on the top of the outcrop, as it has all been burned, though it used to consist of a fairly large number of Grees.

The WIP staff has a yellow star tattooed on their heads, and the circle that rims the cliff top is also yellow.

East and South, ocean stretches off limitlessly. To the west, a slope leading to three peaks in the far distance is crossbarred by a series of parallel hills. Across a marshy area, another clearing is visible, with a moderate-sized building in the center. To the north, a small ridge obscures view after about 10 miles.

Falconer: The Good, The Bad, The Abducted: Pink Hearts

The gang awakes to find stinky, greenish water pooling in a corner of the warehouse, and the floor at a slight angle. Upon exiting, they find the warehouse at the very edge of a thick marsh, with the water in question oozing into the building through a window that is partially submerged in the thick morass. The building settles a bit, but it looks like it won't sink much more, at least for awhile, with the pool of water covering about one quarter of the first floor. To the East, Grees on small dry patches obscure view. To the North and South, parallel ridges block observation beyond about ten miles. To the north, a gentle slope up to three peaks in the far distance is punctuated by a small column of steam. Both North and East, you notice a number of plumes of smoke, similar to that rising from your own clearing.

The gang, somewhat to their chagrin, find a pink heart tattooed on their foreheads, and a pink circle around the clearing.

Moody the Wise: Free Medical Clinic: Green Trapezoid

The occupants of the clinic awake to some alarm; a large quadrupedal animal is circling outside the front entrance to the clinic, and a spiderweb of strained glass testifies to its previous attempts to get in. Noreen and Seamus, both in the lobby at the time (with its wall that consists of a single plate-glass window), get a good look at the beast. It has rough, greenish skin, and seems to be covered in a variety of stringy plants of some kind. It has a stubby body, and what looks like a hardened, armor-like covering over most of its torso. Its armored face is accentuated by a large mouth full of extremely sharp, serrated teeth. It stands about three feet tall at the shoulder, and looks hungry.

The occupants of the clinic also find a green trapezoid tattooed on their foreheads, and can make out a green circle past the creature.


GO

Problems everyone currently faces: Aside from a couple of bottles of water or soda, none of the buildings have a reliable source of drinkable water, and all the sinks have stopped working, as water pressure exited the building through the severed pipes, draining into the ash at the bottom of each building.

It is getting very cold. Ambient temperature is about 1 or 2 degrees Celsius, which is in the mid-thirties Fahrenheit.

Most teams also have a problem in their description.

Timescale is currently set to EXTREMELY SLOW: right now I'm working at an individual level with each player-- a day has passed when I say it has. This setting will likely increase to 1 week per day in a couple of RL days.

Also: Please put your team description and supplies in a spoiler at the top of your first post. I will ask you to keep this "status" post fairly up-to-date, as it makes it easy for me to keep track of things.

Team Status

http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m165/Maldiem/Status.jpg


Map (Will be updated as features are discovered)

http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m165/Maldiem/Basic.png
Light green indicates marsh, Brown indicates peaks. Blue is the ocean.

Each team and symbol is shown at their location on the map.

[jageroxorz]

Building: Regional warehouse/office for a paper supply company.

Gabe: Regional Manager

Profession: Middle Manager. Inept at leading anybody. Excels in sales
(negotiation) and is charismatic. As long as you don't work under him.

Knowledge: Comedy, also disguises, has a variety of alter-egos which are all also racially insensitive.

Weakness: Often inept, and unable to lead anyone in any endeavor.

Hans: Sales/Beet Farmer

Profession: Salesman. However, he also is a beet farmer on his off time, and has extensive knowledge of farming and farming practices as if he were Amish.

Knowledge: Purple Belt in Goju-Ryu karate. Former Sheriff deputy. Also excellent at Table Tennis. Also trained in the use of a wide variety of weapons, which he always keeps on his person/in his desk.

Weakness: No charisma, and nobody can stand him

Terryl: Warehouse Foreman

Profession: Good at sorting/cataloging/maintaining stores and storehouses. Excels at rationing.

Knowledge: Enjoys feeding squirrels and other animals: excels at any non-human interaction.

Weakness: Cannot work with Gabe, at all. Will just stand and stare withering at Gabe if forced to do anything with him.

Kev: Accountant

Profession: Excels at accounting, and maintaining/storing money.

Knowledge: Can play a wide variety of musical instruments, also an excellent liar and excels at games of skill and gambling, especially poker. Additionally, excellent at a wide variety of sports.

Weakness: Is often unable to communicate efficiently, and many others think he is an idiot.

Sam: Receptionist

Profession: Receptionist. Excels at meeting new people, is very open and everyone likes her when they meet her. Great diplomat.

Knowledge: Art, is a budding artist and excels at any artistic endeavor.

Weakness: In love with Tim.

Tim: Assistant Regional Manager

Profession: An everyman, is liked by everyone. The real leader of the group, people follow him as they act like Gabe is in charge. Gets things done.

Knowledge: Pranks. Excels at trap and trap-making, along with tricking others to do his bidding.

Weakness: Lacks ambition, content at just "getting along". In love with Sam.


EVERYONE IS COLD!

Gabe makes jokes towards Terryl about how he's now "black" and "down with the brotherhood," what with the black circle and all.

Hans suggests that everyone huddles together in the conference room for warmth, and as such disrobes since he claims it "helps keep body the body heat in". Nobody joins him. He is huddled in a ball, in his underwear, in the conference room.

Terryl begins to take stock of all the supplies about the office and Warehouse, and tries to stay as far away from Gabe as possible.

Kev eats a candy bar, one of hundreds he has hidden in boxes underneath his desk.

Sam and Tim attempt to use the pallets and boxes in the warehouse to make shelter outside of the dangerously leaning office. They also use boxes of paper to make an impressive (for a for made of the supplies available), 1 room hut bit enough to fit at least 6 people. The walls are boxes of paper, taped together. The roof is made of wooden planks torn from the wooden pallets, again taped with shipping tape to waterproof. Tim moves some blankets and pillows he found in the building. The floor is wooden planks made from pallets, taped.

Gabe heads north, exploring, acting like Lewis and Clark. Both of them. And their Native American guide.

Terryl heads east, again, looking for anything.

Kev, thinking of food, starts to just gather as many plants as possible from the surrounding area for later perusal. He also gathers scattered wood and starts a fire for warmth. Hans, now fully clothed, joins in, while remarking that th shelter Tim built looks like it was "built by children." He vows to make one three times as big and better later.

[EleventhHour]

Name : Jennifer Alvins
Profession : Nurse (In training)
Hobbies : Gardening
Traits : While fairly emotional and nervous herself, a few months working on the phones has got her to the point where she can talk, or just listen, until the other person has calmed down. - Skill 1 Point
Misc Skills. : Looking adorable in her outfits. ( )

Name : John Reddings
Profession : Manager
Hobbies : Drinking ( )
Traits : He's been working with Customer Service and the like for going on six years, and has little trouble keeping things organized despite his good-natured humour. Dislikes paperwork. - Skill 1 Point
Misc Skills. : Getting people to get him coffee. He has it down to almost a perfect science.

Name : Greg Staniez
Profession : Ex-Military
Hobbies : Antique weapon collecting
Other Hobbies : Part-time Blacksmithing - Skill 1 Point
Traits : Getting fairly portly as he passes middle-age, and with a thick grey walrus-like moustache, he isn't quite as intimidating as he likely was in his prime, but still has the ham-like arms of a physically fit man. - Skill 1 Point
Misc Skills. : Being unusually interested in other people's politics.

Name : Rupert Cornwall
Profession : Security Guard
Hobbies : Playing baseball
Traits : Is fit, not in the burly soldier-like way, but instead with the quiet confidence of a private guard, knowing that he doesn't have to be the biggest guy, he just has to have the 'bigger gun', and backup.
Misc Skills. : Has a lazy eye that he can still see out of. Somewhat disconcerting.

Name : Kayla Winters
Profession : Call Center Agent / Waitress
Hobbies : Gaming and paintballing
Traits : A traditional 'tomboy', often wearing bandana's, tight sweaters, and camo-Converse.
Misc Skills. : Speaks both English and German. - Skill 1 Point

Name : Dan Martin - Extra Team Member 5 Points
Profession : Call Center Agent / Park Ranger (For the summer)
Hobbies : Camping
Traits : Dan spends most of his summers out-of-doors, hiking, biking and sleeping under the stars, while supervising park trails, and generally having a good time in the woods.
Misc Skills. : Survival training is fairly basic stuff to him, despite never having taken a 'legal course' in it, he does fairly well through self-learned habits. - Skill 1 Point



It's cold out, and inside, now. On the upside, it's not icy!


The team find themselves amoungst a jumble of dividers in a state of general disrepair, coverings torn off and a few of the metal frames bent where they had crashed into one another, not one to take anything sitting, or lying in this case, down, Greg is the first to clamber from the chalky mess, and stumble about under the half-lit emergency lights, some which hang at odd angles and the rest flicker, thier cases cracked.

Soon enough, through the noise he had made, and with his help, the rest are out of the pile, and are just discovering the discomfort of thier now-chilled building.

Rupert awakes, with his security barrier splintered by the oversized monitor that had crashed it's corner through the fibreglass, and he's the first occupant of the building with a sight to the strange outside world, the comforting sight of dreary concrete, and the railroad tracks abandoned in trade for a sweeping view off the top of the plateau, ruined by the odd yellow-esqe ring that was along the ledge of the cliff.

He couldn't remember the call center emptying the night before, and by the time he had gotten to the back of the building and shared the news, between Greg and liberal use of office papers and John's lighter, they had a small fire burning cheerily through the carpet and the legs of any nearby wooden chairs, which all now lay at least partially amputated.

The immediate cold dispelled, they set to the next base thing to do. Trash the cafeteria for food, the vending machines the first to suffer the attention of steel-legged chairs, and with thier newly aqquired food, they set off back to the fire, where a framework of a firepit was under construction with John watching and smoking, 'supervising', as Dan and Kayla set about breaking more of the dividers and computers, so to use the cases and make a deeper pit for the growing paper fire.

"Maybe we should save some for later.", Muttered Dan, "We have no idea where we are, and as long we as keep close to the pit it should be warm enough for now." There was discontent mutters, as the fire was a cheery warmth, "Hey, now. Stow it, it's not like you have to deal with a customer."
John's comment was met by weak smiles.

A few minute's extra work between Rupert and Dan had a enclosure made out of the remaining dividers that retained the 90* angles, effectively walling out the rest of the call center from the 8 x 8' box, though it lacked a roof, leaving the creaking roof tiles as thier upward view, aside from a twisted gap that was serving as a door while more and more of the junk food and water bottles were dragged in.

OOC @ Maldiem:

I'm guessing you've read The Game :smalltongue:

And can I get the Team Name changed to Stream? >.>

[Falconer]

The Good, the Bad, the Abducted



The Building
A large warehouse used for storing computer parts. Filled with rows of storage racks, the occasional forklift, and piles upon piles of boxes. At the north end is the packaging area, with some conveyor belts and such. Off to the east end are a couple small offices for the management.

Resources:
Food and Beverages-Numerous small snacks that one might find in a warehouse and adjoining offices. May last, eaten sparingly.

Money-Lots and lots of it.

Jewelry-Quite a bit, of numerous kinds and values.

Firearms-Between them, the gang has a hunting rifle, a revolver, three pistols, and a shotgun. Ammunition should last a while, provided they don't go off firing like madmen.

Raw Materials-Lots of metal, as well as countless wooden pallets.

Why?



It's the earliest hours of the morning, and they're hiding out at a time they're sure no one else is there. They met there after pulling off a multitude of heists to divide the loot before heading their separate ways.



Who?



Dr. Andrew Black, a diabolical, desperate doctor with a gambling problem and a mountain of debt.
Profession: Physician
Knowledge/Hobby 1: Classic Literature (Shakespeare, Classic Greek and Roman authors, etc.)
Knowledge/Hobby 2: Psychology
Knowledge/Hobby 3: Botany
Skill 1: Piano
Skill 2: Planning
Trait: Cunning

Sarah Black, a down-on-her-luck actress and daughter of the good doctor.
Profession: Actress
Knowledge/Hobby: Animal Training
Knowledge/Hobby: Hiking (i.e. Wilderness Survival)
Skill 1: Bilingual (English and French)
Skill 2: Good with People
Trait: Sarcastic

Keith Baptiste, a vicious vagabond who loves nothing more than a good scrape.
Profession: Career Criminal
Knowledge/Hobby: Marksmanship
Skill 1: Excellent pool player
Skill 2: Fist Fighting
Skill 3: Harmonica
Trait: Ruthless

Jack Red Elk, self-professed artiste with a gift for guile. Twin brother of John Red Elk.
Profession: Stage Magician
Knowledge/Hobby 1: Occultism
Knowledge/Hobby 2: Hypnosis
Skill 1: Showmanship
Skill 2: Trap-making
Skill 3: Philosophy
Trait: Sneaky

John Red Elk, a roguish gambling man and grifter always looking for a good haul. Twin brother of Jack Red Elk
Profession: "Professional" Gambler
Knowledge/Hobby: Grifting
Skill 1: Card Sharking
Skill 2: Persuasive
Trait: Lucky

Samuel Caine, a menacing man of few words who wishes for wealth, and will take it.
Profession: Grave-digger
Knowledge/Hobby: Car Mechanics
Skill 1: Fishing
Skill 2: Hunting
Trait: Gruff






Excessively Brief Physical Descriptions of the Group



Dr. Andrew Black-A scrawny, bespectacled man of average height with well-kept black hair and a goatee. Wearing a trench-coat.

Sarah Black-A young woman of average height, with black hair and eyes.

Keith Baptiste-A large, burly, red-haired man in his mid-30's. Has the appearance of a stereotypical biker, with a leather jacket, shades, and a bandanna.

John Red Elk-A young man in his late 20's. Dark skin and hair, and carries himself with a sort of swagger.

Jack Red Elk-A young man in his late 20's. Dark skin and hair, and walks with a performer's ease.

Samuel Caine-A short, tired-looking, prematurely grey man with what seems to be an eternal five-o'clock shadow. Speaks with a slight, utterly unidentifiable accent.




Sarah Black sat up and rubbed her eyes, her ears ringing.

"What in the name of..." she looked around to see her father lying unconscious just a few feet away. She shook him awake. Dr. Andrew Black blinked a few times before rousing himself.

"What happened?"
"I don't know. Some kind of explosion?"

Dr. Black sniffed the air. "No. I don't see any damage to the building, and I certainly don't smell smoke. Perhaps-"

"WHAT THE F^@% JUST HAPPENED?

The two Blacks looked behind them, startled. Keith Baptiste was looking about wildly.

"What the HELL just happened?"

"Good to see you're okay, Baptiste." Sarah said dryly.
"Answer me, damnit!"
"Do we look like we know?"
"Shut up, b%tch."
"You're an idiot, you know that?"
"Why you-" Keith reached for his gun. The Blacks reached for theirs.

"Wow. Really? A big earthquake hits, and you idiots pull pieces on each other?"
"I'm disappointed. Children should learn to settle problems without violence."
Jack and John Red Elk's voices rang from the second story. The twins climbed down a ladder to join the rest of the group. The Blacks and Baptiste put their guns away, though Sarah and Keith are still glaring at each other.

"So, how's everybody doing?
"Have you noticed the lovely hearts on our foreheads?"
Everyone immediately feels their forehead. Keith immediately unties the bandanna around his neck and puts it around his head, covering his mark.

"So...what do we do now?"
"Right now?" Doctor Black answered, "Right now, I suppose we accomplish what we came here for: divide the money, and go our separate ways. Earthquake, or no earthquake."

A door opens, and Samuel Caine sticks his head in.

"I don't think money is going to be an issue, where we are."
"What do mean?"
"Take a look outside."

Queue about ten minutes of various levels of arguing, panicking, threatening one another, and other such unproductive activities. Finally the group notices the cold (they're not always the most observant bunch) and they herd back inside. The Blacks are still somewhat skeptical that they are in fact on another planet, despite the overwhelming evidence. Caine rolls his eyes at their disbelief, which eventually triggers more arguing and fighting for another five minutes or so. Finally the group calms down enough to think of a plan: the twins and Doctor Black will stay in the warehouse to guard the money and set up defenses ("What do you mean 'defenses'?" "I mean defenses, d*****s!"). Samual Caine, Keith Baptiste, and Sarah Black will form a scouting party to get a feel for their immediate surroundings.

The "Warehouse Guard"

Dr. Black and the Red Elks decide to use the countless wooden pallets available to them to set up barricades against the windows and doors. The twins want to do something about the horrid water, but Dr. Black advises them against it. It may contain all manner of disease, and it would be best to just stay away from it.

The set about making barricades, with Dr. Black mostly "supervising", and Jack and John doing most of the work. They manage most of the ground level doors and windows, though the windows up by the second-floor walkway go unprotected.



Using Jack Red Elk's "Trapmaking" skill here, so the barricades are built in such a way they can be easily moved but are still good as, well, barricades. The actual quality of said barricades is minimal, and any determined intruder can still enter. Still, the peace of mind helps.



The "Bandit Patrol"

The three wade through the swampy water towards what they believe to be a pink line. Sarah Black points out that there may well be a connection between the heart markings on their foreheads and the pink line. After inspecting it for about ten minutes and finding it to in fact be a circle, the three wade out to the North, curious about the smoke, before Caine points out that the dark may not be a good time to be outside. Keith points out that they have guns, and he isn't afraid of any "#%@&ing dark". They turn back nonetheless.

[Another_Poet]

History Museum


Char Sheets & Building Description (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6538450#post6538450)

Family Supplies
Leatherman multitool (Jerry)
"Paper Cleaver" (paper slicer handle used as a cleaver) (Ray)
Wooden club (Fr Younk)
Cell Phones (all)
2 backpacks' worth of bottled water (4F)
5 lbs pasta salad (4F)
5 lbs potato salad 4F)
14 sandwiches (4F)
8 doughnuts (4F)
30 lbs of semi-frozen meat, rolled in salt & spices by Jerry
A warm shawl for everyone
Hats & mittens for everyone
1 fur coat (Andi)
2 jackets (the kids have them)
4 quilts (4F)
20 guns of assorted time periods, none loaded with actual ammunition (4F)
A knife or bayonet for everyone
1 couch (4F)
8 cushions (4F)

Wolf's Supplies
Nothing but his knife, his lockpicks, some change and the cardboard he was sleeping on.


Ray is the first to wake up. His stirring wakes the other adults first, and only after a few minutes do the kids wake up. Ray's immediately feels panic because he worries that his coworkers will see that he spent the night in the museum. However, upon looking out the window, his heart nearly stops.

As the family and friends gather to gawk breathlessly at the view, they know they are truly in trouble. Not because of what they see outside, but because Ray doesn't have a snappy joke for the situation.

Almost sensing this, Ray comes up with something suitably ironic to say, but the joke falls flat. Tricia seems excited to the point of bursting while Silas might well be blinking back tears. Andi needs to put her arm around her husband, while Jerry and Fr Younk exchange very concerned looks.

It's Andi who takes charge. She silently locks the doors to the conference room before announcing that, "No one is leaving this room until we have a plan. Chair up everyone." She quickly removes character sheets and gaming books from the table, making sure there are no distractions. They settle down for a Family Team Meeting.

After nearly twenty minutes of intense discussion of the diamonds on their foreheads, Andi manages to bring the group to more important topics. She intentionally treats it like a challenge in a RPing game, and the group's seasoned strategery kicks in automatically. They begin talking about practical concerns like wild animals, looters, zombies, alien overlords and even unsafe air or other conditions outside. Nothing is too radical to discuss, given their bizarre surroundings.

Ultimately, though they all know exploration is the only way to find anything out, they agree to a short list of priorities and decide to settle those matters before anything else. Their list:

-Check the main levels for signs of intrusion
-Get warm clothing, given the cold environment
-Get food and beverages from the cafe
-Weapon up

Although they talk about looking for other people, the view from the window is so bleak that none of them seriously expect to find anyone in the area.

TEAM 1
Ray and Fr Younk set out for an initial supplies run. Using Jerry's leatherman they unbolt the slicing arm and handle of the office paper slicer (http://img.diytrade.com/cdimg/812685/7171977/0/1224643965/A4_paper_cutter.jpg). They also unscrew the leg of a heavy wooden chair to make a club. Thus armed, the two men take Ray's keys and head down the emergency stairs (since the elevators don't work). Ray notes that since no one has activated the generator, it's unlikely anyone else is here. They use Ray's cell phone as a light in areas without windows.

They check the large glass wall on the 2nd floor and see no breaches or cracks. They also check the doors and find they are as locked as they were last night. This is when they spot the birds outside. They move quickly to get out of line of sight and hope that the birds did not see them.


I assume from your description the birds are ostrich-size or bigger, is that correct?

From there they use the stairs again to go into the basement levels. Ray knows this area well. He heads to the textile archives to check for warm clothes and blankets. He knows the best things are the Native American furs, but those are rare and nigh irreplaceable. Much more commonly, people donate the late 19th and early 20th century garments of their grandparents and great-grandparents. These are much less valuable, though just as fragile. The two men salvage several jackets, one fur coat, and no less than six wool shawls as well as some fine 19th century quilts. They then head back up via the stairs, and only when passing the main floor does Ray realise they should have checked the gift shop. It doesn't sell coats, but some nice mittens and winter hats are on the shelves. They take it all.

It's then that they see their friends in the Cafe. Ray is upset they didn't wait upstairs, but keeps his anger in check.

TEAM 2
Half an hour after Ray and Fr Younk left, Andi calmly told Jerry to open up his knife and lead the way down. Jerry seems surprised but doesn't object. Tricia asks if she can come too and is informed that yes, they're all going. They have to stick together. Silas stays quiet.

The group goes to the Cafe. They already know that the water is gone from the bathrooms, and beeline for the rack of bottled water and soda. Since none of them have keys, they only have access to what was out by the front counter. There's surely much more stored in back, but there's no way to get to it.

They prioritise water, filling two backpacks with it. They then take all of the pre-made sandwiches and pasta salad from the display counter. It'll go bad if they don't eat it soon, so working together they try to take it all. They can't get it all at once, so they make a second trip. It's then that they run into Ray and Fr Younk.

TEAM 1 + TEAM 2
They argue over whether to break down the door to the kitchens. On the one hand, they need to access that food eventually. On the other, the noise may draw attention and even if they access the coolers they have no way to preserve the food. They talk about things that might keep longer - bread, uncooked dried goods, canned goods, etc. Jerry suggests that he can smoke and salt the meat if he can get wood, but none of them want him to go outside.

They compromise by deciding to have Jerry remove the kitchen door's hinges with his Leatherman, then try to cure the meat with salt and spices. Getting the door off takes much longer than expected, and they waste much of the day this way. It's during this idle time that their minds wander and they start to get scared. Andi has to leave the room to cry.

They do eventually access the coolers, opening the door only very briefly and grabbing just one armload of meats. They get some huge shakers of cayenne pepper, black pepper and a big box of salt and move it upstairs where Jerry sets to work.

Everyone except Jerry decides to go look outside. The agreement is that no one will leave the building, they'll just look from a door. Lucky for them, the lower level/basement has a huge cargo loading dock, so this door will open to ground level without having the climb down the concrete foundation. They open it up, stare for a while, chat for a while, and close it up again. They eat deli food for dinner and then talk some more on the 4th Floor.

Toward the evening, they make a final decision not to activate the generator for now unless they absolutely need to. This is a tense discussion because leaving it off may resign much of their food to spoiling, pending the outcome of Jerry's salting/spicing process. Jerry hopes that the meat, now cut into strips and hung in windows, will dry like jerky. If so he can preserve most other meat as well. They pledge to all eat fruits and vegetables as soon as the deli food runs out, thus eating their food in order of expiration date. They'll save dried goods and canned goods for last.

Their last act of the day is a product of much brainstorming. There's a significant collection of firearms in the archives, everything from blackpowder muskets to a howitzer. There are inert shells for many of the weapons, but Ray doesn't know of any live ammunition in the whole building. The group considers many possibilities, but it's unlikely they will find fireworks or any other sources of propellants in the building either. Jerry is willing to try to make gunpowder if they can find the ingredients, but saltpeter may be hard to get.

What they decide is to go to the archives and get a large selection of guns that are still in good shape. Even unloaded, they might act as a deterrent to outsiders - no one has to know they aren't loaded. Ray remembers that there is an old card-catalogue of the archives from before everything was digitised. He promises to go through it tomorrow to check for any source of active ammunition in the museum collection.

Jerry and Ray go and get guns, giving two or three to each individual, while Father Younk hauls couches one by one - all by himself! - to the bottom of the stairs. He then gets the kids to help him haul them upstairs. They only take one whole couch and just pillage cushions off the others, making their 4F headquarters much more comfy.

They barricade the conference room doors. Then they tell stories in the dark until they are sleepy enough to fall into an anxiety-plagued sleep.

THE WOLF
Samuel Wolf woke up outside and sat still, appreciating the beautiful new environment for quite some time before unceremoniously relieving himself of both a Number 1 and a Number 2 on the side of the building. He wipes with some carboard from his last night's bed, then digs in his pockets and eats what's left of his meager food supplies. Intrigued, he then takes a leisurely stroll around the entire museum, twice. He doesn't leave the charred area, though he does walk up to the edge of it.

The homeless man spotted the birds and kept his distance, but walked at a normal pace in clear view of them, eyeing them down if needed.


Using the "Good With Animals" skill to try to get along with these birds - I won't attack them, they won't attack me.... right??

As luck would have it, he was not far from the loading dock when the family inside opened it up. He was out of view of it, though, so they didn't see him or have any clue he was there. But he at least had confirmation that there were other people around. He remembered all the stories some of the other bums told about the CIA and aliens and wondered whose side these museum people were on. In fact, he wondered a lot of things. That is what The Wolf does.

He spent much of the day meditating or walking around. As nightfall came, he couldn't resist playing his harmonica to keep himself company. But it occurred to him that he might be attracting unwanted attention. It was both colder and darker than the city nights he was used to.

He picked the lock on the loading dock door. Normally it would set off an alarum but not without power. He let himself in, then picked the lock of a storage room. He locked both doors behind himself and cozied up in a pile of cardboard boxes and that is where he spent the night.

[Maldiem]

The Schmoffice

Tim and Sam's construction goes fairly well, though the ash mud eventually stains the bottom bits of everything used in the construction, and soggy cardboard makes for dubious walls indeed. Still, should the office slide away, its better than nothing.

Speaking of which, as the hours tick by, the Grees holding the building in place begin to crack and warp, and it becomes clear that unless something is done quickly, exactly that will happen.

Gabe eventually climbs the top of the ridge North of the building after about an hour and a half, just in time to see the sun slip beneath the horizon. Before it gets too dark, though, he spots a clear, blue lake (added to the map) to the North and East of the ridge.

As the sun sets, the animal noises, normally in the higher reaches of the Gree canopy, begin to get a bit lower, and Gabe finds himself pelted by a barrage of ~3 inch circumference brown fruits as he approaches the base of one particularly noisy tree.

Teryl, heading east, runs into the beginning of the marsh as the sun sets. Its a very wet area, with a few patches of dryish land poking out of the morass, usually anchored by a Gree. While wading through the water (as is necessary in the terrain), he can occasionally feel something or things slimy and moving brush past his legs. He eventually steps in a hole in the bottom of the muck he didn't know was there (the water is opaque), and his leg sinks a foot or so into the swamp. Withdrawing it, he notices that its covered in six-inch leeches, or at least something leech-like, which have bored into his flesh. They prove difficult, but not impossible to remove, though they're quite slippery, and swim/squirm back into the wound if not thrown a fairly large distance away.

He eventually makes it to one of the dry areas, and clears his leg of the creatures, but is now standing on a very small island in a leech-infested swamp at night on an unfamiliar planet. The creatures seem to have excreted some kind of anticoagulant, as the numerous large wounds in his leg take a very long time to stop bleeding. To top it all off, he's wet, the temperature is now slightly below freezing, and a wind is coming in from the East.

((Terryl now has the Hypothermic and Blood Loss effects))

The Team Formerly Known As WIP (And Will Now Be Known As Stream?)

The call center's demolition proceeds apace, though several seconds after starting the fire, all the smoke detectors, powered by their own batteries, go off, and trickles of water leak out of the fortunately depressurized roof sprinklers. The noise is very annoying, and no one in the call center at the time knows exactly how to get to them to shut them off, as that was the purview of the maintenance staff. There are a couple ladders available that will reach, though it might be a dangerous task given how cluttered the floor is.


OOC: I don't know what book you're talking about, and I can't find a description of it that makes sense as a reference, though a quick net search turned up a Jack London book by the same name (though for the life of me I can't find a synopsis). Given London's writing style and subject matter, I'm guessing he wrote a similar survival story called The Game?


TGTBTA

As the group takes stock of their surroundings, the sun finishes setting, and the temperature begins to drop even more. The team notices a group of tall, lanky, green colored birds, between 6 and seven feet tall (though very thin), combing through the murk of the marsh, occasionally pulling out their heads to breathe or gulp something indeterminate down.

The immediate surroundings of the Warehouse are extremely marshy, and the swamp appears to be briny, and completely undrinkable. To the East and South, the marsh extends as far as they can see, and to the North and West, the land is dryer and peppered with the plant life noted in the original description.

When the party ventured into the water, something bit Keith's leg, ripped an inch-thick half-moon slice of flesh out of his calf, and darted off before he could react. It hurts like crazy, and burns for a minute, but it seems to be clotting normally.

((Keith now has the ? Wound Effect))

The Museum

((Yeah, my bad. The birds range between 6 and 7 feet tall, though they look like they weigh maybe 100-150 pounds.))

The pillaging of the museum proceeds without incident. However, in the middle of the night, the Team is awoken by a commotion from the room where the meat was left in the windows-- loud screeching and snarling, like what would be heard from a serious altercation between two moderate-sized dogs. Upon investigation, the Team finds about ten 3-foot long brown, spiny creatures fighting over the meat, which they've taken from the windowsill and begun to devour on the floor. The creatures have four appendages, with the rear legs ending in four digits in parallel, and the front legs ending in four digits that are mutually opposing, forming a claw-like "hand". They use these limbs interchangeably, fighting like rabid breakdancers, though none of them end up seriously injured during the fight. They have a coat of long, wicked-looking spines on their back, about four inches long, which fade to a wet-looking black color on the end. They haven't noticed the Team yet, but they are seriously trashing the room ((What room was the meat in, again))?

As Samuel walks around the edge of the charred clearing, he notices the birds watching him the entire way. The birds do seem to have a flight distance; when he tries to approach much more than ten feet or so, they walk backwards nonchalantly, cocking their heads from side to side, as if in confusion. Sam gets a good look at the birds; they're typically six to seven feet tall, they have long, black legs, typically about half of their height, and their legs end in very wide, four-toed feet, which are arranged in an X shape, and have broad, almost flipper-like toes. They don't seem flight-adapted, and what he originally thought were feathers are actually more like a very fine fur. What he'd originally thought were wings actually seem more like flippers, as they aren't half large enough to generate any kind of meaningful downward force. The body is topped by a long neck, which is topped by a thin, tapered head, including two large, round eyes, and a slightly upward-curved beak.

The creatures ((I'm going to call them Big Stupid Birds, BSBs, until someone comes up with a better name)) eventually seem to get bored with staring at Samuel, and surround the base of a large Gree. They pace around it in a large circle, before one of them paces back several feet, and then charges the Gree and kicks the base extremely hard, actually shaking the upper reaches a bit. This is followed by a great deal of snarling from the canopy, and a barrage of the brown "fruits" of the Gree. The BSB squawks, kicks the base again, and then runs off into the distance at a blazing clip.

The snarling in the tree continues, and the Samuel sees about ten or fifteen of the brown creatures described in the museum work through the canopy, in the direction the BSB ran. The other BSBs begin gulping down the fruits, and even go so far as to climb up the Gree, their long toes wrapping around the trunk, and devour the rest of them.

While Samuel is playing his harmonica, he can hear a very distant, high-pitched sound to the South, like the sound an alarm or smoke detector would make.

[Moody the Wise]

Building and Team

Building: Free Medical Clinic

The Freedom Community Health Center is a small medical clinic formerly operating in the town of Newton, MA (Newton is real, but I have no idea if any such clinic exists there). It is well-stocked with first aid supplies, and should have a moderate supply of things like vaccinations, eyeglasses, and a variety of common medical supplies. It is not equipped for serious surgery, although there is a makeshift ER where they can perform what basically amounts to field medicine. They recently purchased a small x-ray machine. The building has 10 exam rooms, a larger waiting room, a supply room, and a makeshift ER room.

Team:

Dr. Neil Brockett: Dr. Brockett is the founder and head of the clinic. After spending years in successful private practice, he became frustrated with the economics of medicine. With a large private endowment he opened the clinic, and has run it at a loss ever since, happily using his own modest resources to support it when he needs to. He is 53 years old, but in good shape and good health.
Profession: Doctor, Health Clinic Coordinator
Knowledge/Hobby: Sailing

Noreen Brockett: Noreen is Neil Brockett's wife. She is 49 years old, and was until recently a judge in the Middlesex County District Court. After several years of a high-powered legal career, she settled onto the bench. Her role model is Sandra Day O'Connor, and she had hoped one day to take her seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. She is generally supportive of Neil's calling, and lends her hands and legal experience to the clinic from time to time - this was one of those nights.
Profession: Lawyer (retired), District Court Judge
Knowledge/Hobby: Cooking

Grace Brockett: Grace is Neil and Noreen's daughter. She is 16 years old. She has not had a real job yet, but volunteers doing light manual work at the clinic sometimes with her parents. She is very intelligent and had been doing well in school before the Abduction. Her strongest subjects in school were in math and the sciences. An amateur astronomy enthusiast, she had always dreamed of going to the stars.
Profession: None (child)
Knowledge/Hobby: Astronomy

Seamus O'Neill: Seamus was a Town of Newton police officer. He is 24 years old, fresh out of the academy. He was in the clinic because he had just dropped off a patient who had been picked up for solicitation. It wasn't standard procedure, but he was still starry-eyed, and wanted to help the young woman by getting her tested at the medical clinic. Had his gun at time of Abduction, but has limited ammunition.
Profession: Police Officer
Knowledge/Hobby: Trained in a variety of martial arts back in high school

Tania Veneziano: Tania is the woman Seamus had picked up for solicitation. She is 20 years old. Her father died when she was 10, and her mother was a crack addict. She lived with her grandmother until the age of 18, when the grandmother died, and has been working the streets ever since.
Profession: The world's oldest
Knowledge/Hobby: When she was younger, she wanted to be a dancer. Moderately talented in a variety of dance forms.

Christian Woelfel: Christian was a patient at the clinic. He used to be employed in the construction industry until he lost his job a year ago. His finances have been dwindling ever since, and he has finally let go of his pride and gone to the free clinic. In pretty good health (at 37), but was being examined for a persistent stomach discomfort. Dr. Brockett isn't exactly sure what's wrong with him.
Profession: Carpenter (Out of work)
Knowledge/Hobby: Landscaping

Amie Fauntleroy: Amie was one of the volunteers at the clinic. She is 27 years old, and when she is not volunteering at the clinic, she is a middle school French teacher. She has been married to her high school sweetheart for nine years, but he was never interested in volunteering with her, and was not in the clinic when it was taken.
Profession: French teacher
Knowledge/Hobby: Languages. Also (relatively) fluent in Italian, Spanish, and German, with limited knowledge of various other European languages.

Sharron Conlan: Sharron was also a volunteer at the clinic. She was a student at UMass Boston in the Nursing program, and donated her time at the clinic. She is 19 years old.
Profession: Student (nurse-in-training)
Knowledge/Hobby: Singing

Maricela Rodriguez: Maricela was another patient at the clinic. She is 61 years old. She has had a hard life of manual labor, but it has made her into a strong woman, and she could probably pass for being in her 40s if it weren't for her tanned, leathery skin. She grew up on a farm in Mexico. When her son immigrated (illegally) to the U.S., she followed at his request once he had established himself economically. She lives with him, but goes to the free clinic so as not to be too much of a burden on him (he's not fabulously rich, he's getting by). She is a regular there, although this time it was only for an eye exam.
Profession: Farmer (retired)
Knowledge/Hobby: Seamstress

Roxanne Lorenzana: Roxanne was being treated for flu-like symptoms when the clinic was Abducted. She is 25 years old, and was at the time an out-of-work waitress. Roxanne is also a regular at the clinic, and she and Maricela have become friends over the years.
Profession: Waitress (out-of-work)
Knowledge/Hobby: Acting

Supplies

Seamus's 9mm handgun, 47 shots left
Blankets (20)
Beds/Exam tables (10)
X-ray machine
Water distiller (assembled from beakers and tubing in supply room)
Fire wood
Wooden barricades for front lobby
Painkillers (large supply)
First aid equipment (bandages, gauze, ointments)
Epipens (moderate supply)
Surgical equipment (scalpels, clamps, etc.)
Flu vaccines
Fire Axe
Fire Extinguisher
Several large buckets
Quadruped hide
Quadruped meat (200 lbs. meat, 200 lbs viscera and skeleton)
Distilled water (50 gallons, in 10 5 gallon jugs)


After recovering from the initial shock of the situation, Seamus slowly draws his gun and aims it at the quadruped. He doesn't have to tell Noreen to stay quiet and keep her movements slow and deliberate; her 49 years of life have given her instincts enough to know that. Seamus motions for Noreen to head into the back hallway, and she silently understands. Seamus paces towards the animal, studying it like he would an armed suspect. He grabs a sturdy metal chair and holds it out in one hand like a lion tamer while his other hand remains firmly on the gun. He approaches the door, growling at the quadruped, trying to get it to make the first move. When the animal opens its mouth to bare its teeth at him, he fires one quick shot into its mouth, trusting his instinct that its brain, a major artery, or something relatively important must be back there. He then quickly holsters his gun, grabs the chair with both hands, and prepares to fend off the animal's death throes.

Meanwhile, Noreen creeps into the back hallway, where she encounters the others. Everyone is awake, and looking to Neil for guidance; Neil naturally accepts the role. After making sure everyone was alright, they all hear the gunshot from the lobby, and Neil quickly moves down the hallway towards it. Upon reaching the lobby, assuming the struggle is still going on, Neil and Christian instinctively grab chairs of their own and try to follow Seamus's lead.

[Maldiem]

Free Medical Clinic

Seamus's shot is deflected slightly by the glass window (which now has a single gaping hole and a large shattered area held up mostly by the window tinting), and goes through the very front of the creature's mouth, and then re-enters its head, bounces off the skull, and exits at the top.

The animal, instead of attacking, is frightened by this turn of events, and runs away from the clinic, leaving a heavy trail of blueish blood on the way. Just outside the circle, the creature collapses, and remains motionless.

Upon inspection, the clinic is located on a spit of dry land about two or three miles wide between the marsh on the West side and the ocean on the East. North of the clinic, the marsh meets the ocean at a briny estuary. To the south, you can make out another clearing, with a large, four-story building in the center.

[Moody the Wise]

The creature felled, the team relaxes and begins talking again. Seamus leaves the clinic to go recover the fallen quadruped and drag it back into the building with the help of Christian. They place it on a table in the makeshift ER. Neil grabs a notebook and a pen and informs the group that, unless anybody objects, he would like to be the one to cut the beast up, so that he can make notes about its physiology as it is being cut for meat. Nobody objects.

Most of the team watches in fascination as Dr. Brockett begins his examination of the corpse. Slowly, the each snap out of it and begin to offer their talents. Grace, used to watching her father work, proudly announces that she's pretty sure she can recreate her science class experiment and make a distilling apparatus to purify some water for drinking. Amie offers to help her round up the supplies and work on constructing it, and the two set off to search the supply rooms. Seamus offers to scout the perimeter, since he is the one with the gun. Christian grabs the fire axe out of the case, hefts it a few times, snorts a little in contempt, then mumbles that he supposes it will have to do. He then sets off behind Seamus to find some trees to cut down so that he can make them a better front wall. Maricela and Roxanne volunteer to go make the beds and find better bedding for them, looting the supply room for some blankets. Sharon and Tania volunteer to start looking for firewood, particularly the smaller pieces of tinder and kindling that will allow their fire to start. Noreen is the last to leave her husband's side, but eventually goes off in search of a bucket to collect water in.

First post edited for status

[jageroxorz]

Gabe, started at the sudden onset of night, gathers up some of the fruit and heads back in the general direction of where he thinks the office is.

Terryl curls up in a ball for warmth.

Everyone else at the office, just noticing the dangerously sliding office building, and thinking of the weird physics this new place must have, decide to put together at least a token effort to save the office building. Tim uses the forklift to cart boxes filled with dirt from the back of the building to the front, creating a buffer of dirt to stop the building from sliding.

[Maldiem]

Free Medical Clinic

As Neil dissects the quadruped, he notices a couple of things:

1) The creature's blood is blue, and has a distinct smell. Neil notes that this would be the case if the creature had an oxygen carrying enzyme that uses copper to bind oxygen, rather than iron; he concludes that this creature is almost certainly not related to anything native to Earth.

2) It has a one-way respiratory tract, with an outflow orifice in front of its face and an inflow orifice at the top of its head; the creature's cause of death was drowning in its own blood as it clogged the respiratory tract.

3) This was very fortunate, as the creature has a very thick skeleton and the bullet did nothing but pierce soft tissue. The skull is intact, and has only a minor scratch. In general, the creature has a dense, armored skeleton on any surface that is pointed upward.

4) The creature has organs that are obviously a heart, stomach, and intestines, but he can't really tell what the other organs (of which there are many) are for. They are probably analogues to the liver, pancreas, etc., but without extensive research he has no way to know for sure.

5) The creature has about 200 pounds of usable meat, along with about 200 pounds more of skeleton and viscera. He has no idea if its edible.

The distillation apparatus is assembled mostly without incident, though the nearest water is the ocean, about half a mile away. Seamus notices several of the creatures described in the Museum post staring at him from the canopy of the Grees, and when Christian tries to cut one down, he is immediately pelted with the brown, fruit like objects, as the tree-dwellers grow increasingly agitated and make more noise.

By now the sun has fully set, and its several hours into the night.

The Schmoffice

As the field dries out and the boxes are added in front of the building, it seems to settle into the dirt a few inches. It doesn't look like its going anywhere.

While Gabe gathers the fruit, the creatures continue throwing them. One or two of the creatures actually yank the spines on their backs out, stick the bottom ends into the fruit, and then throw those at him. When they hit him, (once in the shoulder, once in the thigh), those limbs lose feeling for a short time. The creatures are growing even more angry, and more of the projectiles have spines embedded as the barrage continues.

Terryl, apparently resigned to his fate, curls up in a ball to try and wait out the night. As he's sinking into a deep (and probably final) sleep, he suddenly notices that it gets a great deal colder, which jolts him back to consciousness. He finds himself awake, nude, without any possessions whatsoever on the roof of the Office. There is a small hatch, which leads down into the interior of the building.

It is now the early morning, with the orangeish sun peaking over the Western horizon, between the peaks.

[Moody the Wise]

Christian gathers up the fruit-like objects and brings a shirtful of them back to the clinic for inspection. He then goes back out to the tree, and Seamus fires one shot at the top of the tree, hoping to scare the tree-dwellers away long enough for Christian to chop one tree down, and maybe even hit and kill one of the little critters for examination (and possibly food).

As nightfall begins to set in, everyone is rallied to make a group effort with the water. While Seamus guards the clinic with the gun, Christian (axe in hand) leads the other 8 team members on a quick run to the ocean (about a twelve minute roundtrip) to fill up the other 9 5 gallon jugs (Noreen had already brought one back).

A schedule is set up to keep watch through the night, and to run the distiller, since distilling all the ocean water is a slow process. They decide to keep the fire burning all night for the first night since they have to distill all this water anyway, although later nights might see more conservation attempts.

[EleventhHour]

Stream


Name : Jennifer Alvins
Profession : Nurse (In training)
Hobbies : Gardening
Traits : While fairly emotional and nervous herself, a few months working on the phones has got her to the point where she can talk, or just listen, until the other person has calmed down. - Skill 1 Point
Misc Skills. : Looking adorable in her outfits. ( )

Name : John Reddings
Profession : Manager
Hobbies : Drinking ( )
Traits : He's been working with Customer Service and the like for going on six years, and has little trouble keeping things organized despite his good-natured humour. Dislikes paperwork. - Skill 1 Point
Misc Skills. : Getting people to get him coffee. He has it down to almost a perfect science.

Name : Greg Staniez
Profession : Ex-Military
Hobbies : Antique weapon collecting
Other Hobbies : Part-time Blacksmithing - Skill 1 Point
Traits : Getting fairly portly as he passes middle-age, and with a thick grey walrus-like moustache, he isn't quite as intimidating as he likely was in his prime, but still has the ham-like arms of a physically fit man. - Skill 1 Point
Misc Skills. : Being unusually interested in other people's politics.

Name : Rupert Cornwall
Profession : Security Guard
Hobbies : Playing baseball
Traits : Is fit, not in the burly soldier-like way, but instead with the quiet confidence of a private guard, knowing that he doesn't have to be the biggest guy, he just has to have the 'bigger gun', and backup.
Misc Skills. : Has a lazy eye that he can still see out of. Somewhat disconcerting.

Name : Kayla Winters
Profession : Call Center Agent / Waitress
Hobbies : Gaming and paintballing
Traits : A traditional 'tomboy', often wearing bandana's, tight sweaters, and camo-Converse.
Misc Skills. : Speaks both English and German. - Skill 1 Point

Name : Dan Martin - Extra Team Member 5 Points
Profession : Call Center Agent / Park Ranger (For the summer)
Hobbies : Camping
Traits : Dan spends most of his summers out-of-doors, hiking, biking and sleeping under the stars, while supervising park trails, and generally having a good time in the woods.
Misc Skills. : Survival training is fairly basic stuff to him, despite never having taken a 'legal course' in it, he does fairly well through self-learned habits. - Skill 1 Point



Status

Fairly warm, but also fairly annoyed.


After a short bit of diliberation, and a few quick orders from John, the fact that being on an alien planet should likely cancel out the managerial status forgotten, a mess of broken chairs and dividers are cleared out of the way, some of it piled to lend support to the matinence ladder that Kayla and Rupert dug out from a once-locked supply closet, the door now buckled and the lock failing it. Jennifer was sent up the ladder with John and Dan holding tight to the metal legs, or at least would have, if she wasn't wearing a skirt. Kayla ended up attempting to climb the ladder and deactivate the closest ones for now, at least.

Hopefully with the nearest blaring alarm deadened, they could get on with the growing dusk, as seen through the some-what ragged roof, and get some sleep.


The start of it was mostly commentary on how crappy earth was getting, and some details on the alien planet part experinced though a VR system, and how thier group of friends ended up getting back together, the jobs that the others were supposed to get taken up by robots (As the first few had thiers taken without a chance to begin with, and the robots being one of the problems in the beginning.) And once thier (plot) group of skilled friends got all together, 'the government' sent them to the alien planet they were experincing through VR before, in giant 'plastic' eggs, that disentigrated after a few weeks, leaving them to restart humanity, and hopefully not pollute/let robots take over.

So, a tad different, but it just seemed the same to me, since the teams were trying to cram in as many different skilled people as possible. And the name of the book might not have been The Game. It's just what I remember it as in the back of my old library.)

[Another_Poet]

History Museum, Day 2


Char Sheets & Building Description (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6538450#post6538450)

Family Supplies
Leatherman multitool (Jerry)
"Paper Cleaver" (paper slicer handle used as a cleaver) (Ray)
Wooden club (Fr Younk)
Cell Phones (all)
2 backpacks' worth of bottled water (4F)
5 lbs pasta salad (4F)
5 lbs potato salad 4F)
14 sandwiches (4F)
8 doughnuts (4F)
0? lbs of semi-frozen meat, rolled in salt & spices by Jerry
A warm shawl for everyone
Hats & mittens for everyone
1 fur coat (Andi)
2 jackets (the kids have them)
4 quilts (4F)
20 guns of assorted time periods, none loaded with actual ammunition (4F)
A knife or bayonet for everyone
1 couch (4F)
8 cushions (4F)

Wolf's Supplies
Nothing but his knife, his lockpicks, some change and the cardboard he was sleeping on.


The meat was left to dry in another 4F meeting room. Jerry was the first to wake up to the noise and the first to reach the room. He observes the fighting Wigglers (as I'm now calling them) for almost two minutes before he senses other people walking up behind him. Realising the kids are here, he closes the door to the room before they can see much and says softly, "The meat is done for. Get me some chairs." They barricade the door to the room, though it might be futile against something that can climb 4 extra-tall stories of smooth stone facing to access the window.

* * * * * *

In the morning, the team re-evaluates their strategy. Obviously, although there is plenty more meat in the freezers of the Cafe, they just wasted a fair amount. True fear of starvation (and thirst) gri[ps tyheir conversation. Tersely, they go and listen at the door of the sealed Wiggler room. If they hear nothing Jerry will look through the crack at the bottom, and only if it seems clear will he open the door and check for remains of any of the meat.


Before I finish my Day 2 writeup, can you tell me if

1) Any of the wigglers are still there? and
2) Any of the meat is still there, and in what condition?

[Maldiem]

Free Medical Clinic

As Christian bends over to begin collecting the fruit, the Wigglers continue throwing them, some of which include spines pulled from their backs. Christian receives one direct hit to his lower back that hurts like crazy as the spines puncture his flesh, and then quickly goes numb.
Seamus's shot does indeed scare the critters away, and they clamber away through the canopy, hooting all the way. The Gree is undefended, but Christian is more concerned by the blood oozing from his back than his prospects as a lumberjack.

The run to the water takes about 10 minutes, as its a half mile through unfamiliar terrain and a wooded area．　　Ｔｈｅ　trip back, on the other hand, takes a lot longer, as they're lugging large jugs full of water. It doesn't seem to matter much, as nothing bothers them on the way.

Stream

Kayla manages (despite a lot of teetering on the ladder's part) to remove the batteries from one of the smoke detectors, but they're placed at fairly regular intervals throughout the building, and there isn't really anything to deaden the sound. The noise is still intolerable, and definitely not something one could sleep through; smoke detectors are designed to be so loud that you have to leave the building, purely to preserve your hearing.

Museum

When the Team begins to barricade the door, the noises seem to alert the Wigglers, who begin trying to batter down the door. They don't seem to be terribly strong, terribly organized, or terribly intelligent, as they fail and give up after about 10 minutes, after which the Team can hear more fighting from the other side of the door.

In the morning, Jerry checks under the door and can detect no sign of the Wigglers. When he opens the door to check on the meat, he discovers that the Wigglers seem to prefer sleeping on places other than the floor, as they are perched on top of the bookcases, tables, and chairs, and one is even hanging from the ceiling. The room has been completely wrecked, with upholstery ripped from chairs, books torn to pieces, any exhibits in the room broken apart and spread around, and blackish feces (which the Wigglers have apparently rolled in, based on the pattern) spread all across the floor. There is still meat in the room, though none of it is untouched-- its all worried and fought over, covered in Wiggler saliva, or actually being used as a sort of blanket by one of the creatures. After a couple seconds of observation, one of the Wigglers wakes with a start, looks directly at Jerry, and lets out a screech with enough mouth diameter behind it to give Jerry a detailed look at its dentition; row upon row of pointed teeth in the center, with flatter molars toward the back.

[Moody the Wise]

Seamus asks Christian if he is okay, and Christian stoically declares that he'll be fine. He hands Seamus the axe and asks him to chop the tree down before the little devils get back, and that he needs to "walk it off." While Seamus cuts the tree down and brings it and the fruit inside, Christian slowly shambles back into the clinic, careful not to let Seamus see that he's not doing so hot. Once inside, he calls for Dr. Brockett, who treats his wounds and does his best attempt at a medical diagnosis with what he's got.

While Grace takes her shift at night, she does her best to draw a map of the visible night sky with some paper and pens she found in the reception desk.

[Maldiem]

Free Medical Clinic

As Christian shambles back to the clinic, the sound of Seamus going to work on the Gree gives him a bit of satisfaction, but this is quickly overshadowed by the look on Dr. Brockett's face when he examines the wound. Neil notices that the spine, presumably pulled from the back of a Wiggler, is barbed along its entire length, such that removing it will cause a great deal of tissue damage. Because its embedded in the trunk of his back, he can't just push it through, and needs to resort to simply digging it out, 1800's-style. The clinic has a stash of local and general anesthesia (Christian only needs local for this, or he could hope the area remains numb), but it is quite limited.

Neil asks Christian how long the spine is, and Christian remembers seeing a few jammed into the fruits, and motions about four inches with his hands. Neil's face goes white, and he explains that the spine could have punctured a kidney. He won't know for sure until he's actually in there digging around, but it could be pretty serious.

Seamus does manage to cut down the Gree, and as he's doing so he chops through layer after layer of bark. It looks like the Gree grows by gradually hardening its leaves against the existing trunk, such that the trunk consists of nothing but layers of leaves. There does seem to be some kind of fluid transport going on (a greenish sap leaks out), but Seamus is by no means a botanist. As he fells the tree and begins chopping it up to bring inside, a wave of all manner of crawling, slithering creatures, between half an inch and two inches long rushes out of the tree. Given a closer look, it looks like the entire inside of the Gree is encysted with hibernating creatures of this type.

Higher up in the branches, Seamus finds several level platforms, made of layered leaves, covered in blackish Wiggler feces, small bones, larger bones, half-eaten fruit, and shiny rocks. He also notices that there seem to be two general types of fruit from the Gree; a smaller, harder fruit that's darker brown in color, and a much larger, lighter-colored fruit, which seem to be the fruit eaten most often by the Wigglers, if the nests are any indication. Looking at the attack site, he also notes that the smaller type seem the ones most often thrown.

[jageroxorz]

Terryl goes into his locker in the warehouse and gets a change of clothes, puts them on, and goes outside. He sees Gabe staggering back with an armful of fruits.

Everyone helps Gabe sit close to the fire, and Gabe recounts his tale. The group each smell the fruit, and guess if it's edible?

Tim and Sam take Hans with them to the west, carefully, to look for some fresh water. They have all the water coolers, but they know that supply won't last forever. Hans is wearing some sort of ninja costume he had secreted underneath his desk, and a wide variety of weapons, most Asian in origin, including a samurai sword strapped to his back.

[Moody the Wise]

Christian says that he's already numb and even if the numbness wears off, he's worked in the construction industry for over a decade, and this sort of pain shouldn't traumatize him. He asks Neil to do whatever he needs to do to fix him, but to leave the anaesthetics for later.

EDIT: Christian tells Neil that he will not let him waste all of the clinic's antibiotics on him. He'll accept bed rest, and regular check-ups, but he doesn't want to be too big a burden. Neil seems to accept this, but decides that the need is dire enough that he should at least slip a few antibiotics into his water later.

In the morning, the team sits down for a long talk. They establish that they are, with a fairly high degree of certainty, nowhere on Earth. Amie and Seamus take 8 pounds of the meat and a 5 gallon jug of the water and venture off to investigate the building to the south, taking the gun with them [Another Poet, that means you].

EDIT: When the group reaches the Museum, Amie calls out looking for any signs of human life, while Seamus carefully keeps his gun trained on the door.

While Seamus and Amie are out, the rest of the team continues working. Grace goes up on the roof and sets up a sundial and a calendar, and marks off the first day as yesterday. The team's watches are still running, but there's no guarantee about their continued operation, or that whatever place they are now has a 24-hour day. [Does it, Maldiem?] Maricela and Roxanne set to work trying to build some traps. They scavenge some wood paneling off of the desks and construct a deep rectangular-shaped trap with a door that can be closed by pulling a long makeshift rope created from some extra bedsheets tied together. They place some of the gree fruit in there, place the trap outside the clinic, and wait by the end of the rope until something goes in there. [This is not only a possible way of catching food, but a good way of determining what eats the fruit, and how likely it is to be toxic.]

Neil works on a better way to harvest the gree fruit and trees. He experiments with throwing various things at the grees, from a distance, seeing if the Wigglers can be enticed to throw fruit down without getting too close, or scared away from a distance. Noreen and Sharron work on smoking the meat, constructing a smoke box out of similar materials as the trap. [The meat was basically refrigerated last night, given the temperatures, and so should still be fine.] Tania stays by Christian's bed, ready to call for Neil if any trouble should come up, and making sure he gets plenty of water.

[Another_Poet]

edit: I will edit this post as needed once I see Moody's final post (above).

HISTORY MUSEUM, DAY 2 CONTINUED

Char Sheets & Building Description (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6538450#post6538450)

Family Supplies
Leatherman multitool (Jerry)
"Paper Cleaver" (paper slicer handle used as a cleaver) (Ray)
Wooden club (Fr Younk)
Cell Phones (all) (low battery)
1.25 backpacks' worth of bottled water (4F)
5 lbs pasta salad (4F)
5 lbs potato salad 4F)
4 sandwiches (4F)
8 doughnuts (4F)
0? lbs of semi-frozen meat, rolled in salt & spices by Jerry
A warm shawl for everyone
Hats & mittens for everyone
1 fur coat (Andi)
2 jackets (the kids have them)
4 quilts (4F)
20 guns of assorted time periods, none loaded with actual ammunition (4F)
A knife or bayonet for everyone
1 couch (4F)
8 cushions (4F)
NEW - 8 swords & 4 spear heads
NEW - ?? lbs of freshly smoked meat
NEW - waste management "truck" (cart with chamber pots & garbage can)
NEW - 1 trash can full of water
**Silas' pot stash (forgot to add it before)


Wolf's Supplies
Nothing but his knife, his lockpicks, some change and the cardboard he was sleeping on.


Jerry exits the room and closes the door in a hurry. Solemnly he looks at the others and says, "We are giving up that room. That room is done."


As stated it was just a meeting room, no exhibits. :)

This enrages Andi for some reason. She actually looks like she is going to attack Jerry as he slides a desk across the door and strengthens the barricade. Ray keeps a cooler tone but takes her side. This goes on for a while, with Andi shrieking that they have to take back their space. It ends with Fr. Younk speaking up.

"Andi. Ray. Who's the enemy here?"

They exchange a long look and Andi crumples into Ray's arms, crying. Ray takes her out of the room and Jerry gets the barricade in place.

The eat two-day-old sandwiches and oily pasta salad. The salads are no longer good. Silas nearly makes the mistake of throwing them into a trash can but Jerry stops him in time.

"We need a waste management plan. With these... wigglers about."

THE POOP-BEARER
They sit down to another group meeting and talk about that. They'll need a place to do their business, and a place to put their garbage. Unfortunately they've been using the dry toilets, so the only 4F bathrooms already stink terribly. A simple wastebasket "chamber pot" will work fine, but no one will want to use the actual bathrooms. They decide on an office suite to act as the new bathrooms. Ironically, it used to be the office of the Director of the Historical Society. The director's office is the ladies' room and the assistant to the director's office is the men's room.

Tricia hand-selects three waste baskets to serve as chamber pots. She chooses a few that seem to be leak-proof, though there is only one way to put them to the test. Once she has confirmed it, Andi brings a little cart (that was once used for moving computers and the like. She places it near the "bathrooms." She tells everyone that each evening, they will load the three chamber pots onto the cart along with the garbage basket and then wheel it... to... somewhere.

Andi and Tricia spend the morning trying to solve this problem. Obviously they need to get it outside, but not without going down four to six flights of stairs. They realise they could rig a pully to lower the cart down, but that would risk spilling their waste all over. A conundrum.

Their solution is crude, but workable. Each evening someone will take the cart across the 4F to the far side, way past Marketing. There is an emergency staircase there that goes down just two flights to a fire door. The fire door used to open to the ground on the side of the building that was built into a hill, but now it's three extra-tall floors above the ground. They'll open that door and empty the waste out, close the door, and call it good. The cart will be stowed at the top of the stairs overnight in case the residual scent of waste attracts anything, but most of the waste will be outside on the ground.

They decide that the job of poop-bearer will rotate nightly, with everyone taking a turn.

WATER
The men also get to work after breakfast. As promised, Ray hauls out the old card catalogue. He moves it to the stairwell where it can get at least a little natural light. (He's sure not gonna lug it upstairs out of the basement!). He tries to find a source of ammunition in the museum's impressive collections.

Silas has an idea, which he discusses haltingly with Jerry. The idea is this: all of the sewer and drain pipes emptied out. But the other pipes - the ones that bring water to the sinks and bathrooms - should still have water in them. Jerry partially agrees; he points out that anything coming from a water main would have drained out, but any hot water pipes coming from a water heater would still have (now cold) water in them, since there is a valve at the bottom.

Silas figures this is good enough. With Jerry's permission he sets out looking for containers in which to store water. He finds few. The Museum has sinks or water fountains instead of "water coolers" so there are no big water jugs about. Pottery in the collections is mostly too fragile to use. His choices are garbage cans or piles of coffee mugs. He supposes he'll start with garbage cans.

Father Younk steps in at this point, while Jerry goes to check on Ray. Younk helps Silas locate tools in the building maintenance shop and then locate the water heaters and the pipes that run from them. The heaters themselves are full of now-cold water, and Younk theorises that the Heating/Venting/Air Conditioning (HVAC) units probably contain water too. There are steam pipes in the sub-basement that should all be full, after all. The two of them spend all day prying at pipes and machinery with wrenches and even cutting some with hacksaws. They keep hoping to find a way to drain the pipes into gabrage cans but neither is mechanically inclined and both are worried about leakage. They do accidentally drain one pipe, barely managing to get one garbage can over to it in time and not having any more on hand once the first one fills up. All they've really accomplished is to confirm that there is water.

Dismayed, Younk turns to Silas. "You still have that stash, Cy?"

"What?"

The priest shakes his head. "The pot. You have it?"

Total terror. "Uhhhhhh.... yeah....."

"I thought you must smoke up. This seems like a good time for a hit, huh?"

The dumbfounded boy rolls one up, and then proceeds to smoke it with the priest that is a year older than his dad. Damn, he always thought he'd been so secretive. They open the loading dock and sit on the edge with their feet dangling down, and get stoned.

They talk about the birds outside, referring to them as Chocobos (which makes them both giggle).

* * * * * * * * * *

WEAPONS
Ray spends all morning researching with no good news. Frustrated, he goes and gets some swords. Mostly sabres from the Civil War era. He also finds some spearheads, though there are no shafts to go with them. He figures they can make them.

He goes upstairs for lunch intending to surprise everyone with swords, but finds no one at the 4F conference room. He eats doughnuts and sandwiches alone, leaves the swords for the others, and goes back to work.


If it's alright, I'd like to choose this randomly. I figure there's a 1% chance that there is live ammo stored in the archives somewhere. On a 100, Ray succeeds.

[roll0]

Additionally, there may be a chance that there are other projectile weapons on hand. Harpoon guns or workable bows both seem likely. On a 70-100 there is such a thing; otherwise no luck.

[roll1]


By the end of the day all he has found are some old bows, but they no longer hold their draw weight and they start to crack if he even tries to string them. Defeat.

* * * * * * * *

FOOD
After getting Silas started Jerry goes about the museum collecting wood. Not just any wood - he doesn't want stuff with varnish or finish on it. This limits his options. But with enough time and effort he gets a nice stack of wood, some from unseen parts of furniture and some from the exhibits. He takes this to the kitchen.

There he builds a fire on top of one of the stoves. (He lets the remaining gas out first, of course.) He has no illusions that the vent hoods over the stove will work well - but they will at least let the smoke trickle out, which might be perfect.

He starts the fire and then gets armfuls of meat from the coolers. He slices the meat thin, puts it on catering skewers, and adds pepper and garlic and the like. Soon he has built a little smoke house and is smoking the meat.


Using the Hunter skill to know how to smoke meat.

This time he takes no risks. The cafe kitchen is on the 1st floor, while the wigglers are on the 4th. There are no open windows and, in fact, no windows into the kitchen at all. He patrols the front of the cafe with his knife and unarmed gun and prepares to chase off anything that looks in the (closed) windows there. There are multiple sets of closed doors between the cafe and the staircase to the 4F, so he hopes all will go well.

He spends the day smoking meat, as much of it as he can.

How much can he smoke in one day on an industrial sized stove?

* * * * * * *

THE WOLF

Sam wakes up and spends the morning meditating. He's just thinking about leaving when he hears footsteps. Damn.

Soon he smells a familiar smell, however. Pot. Mmmmm-hmmmmm.

Trusting in his award-winning people skills, The Wolf opens the door, walks up behind Silas and Fr Younk, and cheerfully says, "'Sup fellas."

The two stoners nearly jump out of their skin. They spin around, leap to their feat, and even fumble for their knives. Screaming the whole time of course.

But Sam has a friendly face. "Whoa, whoa there fellas, I'm in the same situation as you are. Just looking for a little company."

They ask him where he came from and he says he woke up outside the building yesterday. They ask how he got in and he lies smoothly, "Well, someone left this here loading dock unlocked. Don't worry, I locked it up after myself."

Stoned, they believe him. Hesitantly they sit down with the bum. They share their gonja with him while he regales them with fabulous stories.

When they take him back upstairs later, the others are suspicious. When Ray hears they found him by the loading dock, he asks what they were doing down there. The priest smiles and Silas looks around fearfully. But The Wolf steps in.

"Oh sir, don't be hard on them, sir. They heard me knocking and a hollering outside. It was the only door I could reach. They just about saved my life. Please, don't be angry at them sir, it was me who was stuck outside and making a racket."

Silas seems relieved that The Wolf covered for them, while Fr Younk raises a single eyebrow at the lie. He makes a mental note to have a talk with the hobo one-on-one. But not now.

* * * * * *
SAFETY
Using the tools Silas found they nail and screw pieces of a broken desk into a better barricade for the Wiggler Room. Now wooden slats completely block even the crack under the door. There should be no way for the creatures to get through.

Jerry eyes the ceiling warily, but figures the Wigglers have no ceiling access and no reason to believe they can remove the ceiling panels. Hopefully they will stay on their bookshelves, or leave through the window they used to come in. Either way, ceiling infiltration is a problem for another day and one he doesn't mention to his exhausted companions.

Silas' phone is out of batter and Younk's and Rays are low. The others have kept theirs mostly off to conserve power. But they all know that the cell phones are their only lights for the basement levels, and that could prove a serious problem. With more than a little fear, they go to sleep.

Sam sleeps in a cubicle down the hall from the conference room. He says he likes to be alone. Andi is glad he is in a different room, and she falls asleep beside her daughter clutching a knife in one hand.

[Maldiem]

The Schmoffice

As Terryl climbs down the ladder, one of the scabs that had finally formed around his leg wounds opens up, which causes him to roll up that leg to avoid staining the only change of clothes he may ever have. When he gets to the fire, he actually gets a bit woozy and pale (a feat, considering his complexion), and seems to be in pretty poor shape. The fire warms him up, and that goes a good way to making him feel better, but he's still shaking from cold and very weak.

Gabe's numbness gradually fades as he walks back to the camp, so much so that full feeling is restored about 45 minutes later. "Full feeling", in this case, means "horrible, screaming, agonizing pain", because he's got four-inch long barbed, feces-covered spines embedded in his shoulder and thigh, and he's both walking on the thigh and carrying a load of fruit with his arms.

When the group is guessing if the fruit is edible, Kev volunteers to eat it (he hasn't snacked in hours, and if it gets much worse he promises to eat Gabe). Hans stops him, and points out that he knows how to induce vomiting, and that he's trained himself to taste a variety of poisons; he should be the one to try it. Hans takes a small bite, considers it for a moment, and then swallows it whole, remarking that "chewing releases the toxins, if there are any". He seems basically fine, though he compares the taste to "caramelized beets".

As the group sits around the fire they eventually notice that the pile of fruit, slightly off of the main gathering, is slowly shrinking, and they hear the occasional odd cracking sound, followed by slurping. Hans eventually lifts a torch to investigate, and discovers a Big Stupid Bird (see previous posts for description), cracking the smaller Gree fruits with its feet, and then slurping the juice inside.

((I hope the group was looking for water in the morning. If that's the case, I'll wait until after the BSB encounter is resolved before resolving that.))

((Gabe gains the Wiggler Poison and Limb Wounds effects. Everyone on the Team loses the Cold effect.))

Free Medical Clinic

Neil goes to work on Christian, carefully cutting around the barbs to ensure that the entire spine is removed from his back. It gets pretty dodgy when he gets to the viscera proper; the spine seems to have hit the kidney, though only barely. Neil doesn't want to cut around the spine in the kidney, as that will almost certainly cause a major hemorrhage, and so is forced to simply grab it with forceps and yank it the rest of the way out.

The spine only went a centimeter or so into the kidney, but it still bleeds like crazy. Neil does his best to stop the bleeding, and manages to get it stopped before Christian loses too much blood. By the time he's closing the incision, though, the Wiggler poison has started to wear off, and its incredibly painful. The end result is a very messy, stitched-up hole in his back, heavily bandaged. If this were a normal surgery, Neil would make sure Christian gets a course of broad-spectrum antibiotics for several weeks, plenty of rest, and observation for several days, but given the situation, there's a decision to be made.

The group heading South finds most of the terrain a simple Gree forest, interspersed with Flub and Trass meadows. Provided they quickly back away from any Gree infested with Wigglers, they remain unmolested for the journey, though they have occasionally BSB sightings, usually simply running by like Olympic sprinter/LSD-loaded Chimpanzee hybrids.

The Museum

((Sorry, I had planned to do a full response now, but I really need to sleep. I'll get it up when I get home from work tomorrow.))

[jageroxorz]

Gabe has limb wounds and poison effect, Terryl has leg wounds.

Terryl, not without a small bit of pleasure, yanks out the barbs from Gabe's shoulder and applies some bandages from a first aid kit on Gabe's wounds after treating his own leg wounds.

Hans withdraws a couple of shruikens and, screaming like a banshee, throws them at the BSB.

He is flanked by Tim, standing about 3 body lengths behind him, armed with a piece of broken pipe from the building, and Kev, who is openly licking his lips at the thought of roast duck, holding nothing and looking idiotic.

[Maldiem]

The Museum

When Jerry begins smoking the meat, the smoke detectors in the kitchen go off, but its the work of a few minutes to disable them on the kitchen's normal-height ceiling. He's able to smoke all the meat remaining in the cafe (about fifty pounds. The end result looks preserved and edible, though not necessarily entirely appetizing.

Towards nightfall, the Team notices that the Wigglers are vacating the meeting room. They're carrying what remains of the meat, and playing with bits of furniture as they caper out the window and basically roll down the side of the building. They scamper across the clearing, and climb a nearby Gree.

Ray doesn't find any useful projectile weapons, but he thinks he might be able to reverse-engineer them a little bit, if he had the correct materials.

The Schmoffice

The BSB (I'm not calling them Chocobos. Final Fantasy just ain't happening) squawks and ducks the first shuriken, backs up a few paces and eyes Hans with the other side of its head. When he throws the second Shuriken, it lurches to side, avoiding the projectile, and then bolts from the clearing.

Terryl rips large chunks out of Gabe's shoulder when he pulls the spine out, and this results in another agonized scream and sobbing fit from Gabe; he shies away from Terryl as he moves toward the one in his thigh. What follows is a tired, slow paced grapple between two people who are barely in condition to walk, much less fight in all seriousness. The event ends when Terryl passes out from exertion.

In the morning, as the group is setting out to look for water, Tim points out that Gabe saw a lake the night previously, and that that might have drinkable water.

[jageroxorz]

Tim makes improvised shields from wood from the office building, binding them together with tape, for him and Hans. They head north, Hans having picked up his shruikens, and head north to the lake. They take some of the empty water cooler containers with them to hold the water.

How much of "chunks" is his shoulder? Like, not that much, or like, he's gonna die if the spine is taken from his leg?

[Maldiem]

The hike to the lake takes about an hour and a half, and the Orange sun is fully above the Western horizon. The lake is surrounded on all sides by overhanging Grees, and the water is clear and blue; the Team can see straight to the bottom, which is littered by small rocks.

As the group approaches the lake, they spot a large creature that looks like it stepped directly out of the ice age exhibit at a natural history museum; a creature that's a dead ringer for a woolly mammoth. The mammoth walks up to a Gree near the lake, and begins wrapping its trunk around the Gree. As it does so, Wigglers in the tree begin their barrage, and the mammoth quickly breaks off its assault, turns around, and starts the same process on a Gree on the other end of the clearing. By the time the Wigglers have clambered over to that Gree, the mammoth has snapped the trunk in half, and has begun munching happily on the fallen boughs. The Wigglers, apparently admitting defeat, fan out into the other Grees in the area, as if maintaining a defensive formation.

[Another_Poet]

The Museum, Day 2 Wrap-Up

Depending on which direction Amie and Seamus approach from, they may smell the Museum team before they see them. The smell is the probably-familiar scent of marijuana.

By following their noses they find their way to a large cargo loading dock door. The door is halfway up and three white males sit on the concrete loading dock, their feet swinging freely beneath them. One is a teenager, one a casually dressed adult in his early 40's and one a very tan, very messy looking individual with wild hair. They seem to be in great spirits from their doobies.

When they see the newcomers, they jump to their feet. Or try to. The cleaner adult steps in front of the teenager and calls out while the dirty adult disappears from view into the building.

"Ho! Who goes there!" yells the clean adult.

After introductions and explanations are made (the man introduces himself as Father Terrance Younk, and introduces the others as Silas and Wolf), Seamus and Amie are invited in. It seems that the museum crowd is happy to know that there are other survivors. They also eye the meat the two carry with an appraising glance. They ask if they have seen anyone else, if they have shelter of some kind and how they are doing on provisions.

Seamus and Amie are invited to stay for the night. The Museum team discusses a possible expedition to meet the others at the medical facility, but no definite plans are made.

Once the wigglers leave, Jerry removes the barricade and closes the window they used to enter. But no one uses the disgusting room for anything further. On a hunch, Jerry re-barricades it. "Just in case they laid eggs.... or whatever," he explains.

[Moody the Wise]

Upon their friendly reception by the Museum team, Amie relaxes quite a bit, and Seamus remains only slightly guarded. Although he knows he no longer holds any authority as an instrument of the law, and perhaps more so because of that, he is clearly uncomfortable with the marijuana situation, but keeps it to himself.

Amie tells Younk that they had fully intended half of the meat to be brought as a gift in the event that the occupants of the building were friendly. She also politely declines the offer to stay the night, insisting that her friends will worry if she and Seamus are not back by nightfall, as they had planned to be. She says that they would be happy to guide one or more of the Museum team members back to the clinic and entertain them for the night, but that she and Seamus have to turn around and start back before too long. [The journey looks like it should take 2-2.5 hours each way, leaving plenty of time to make the roundtrip in daylight hours, but not a whole lot of time to dawdle.] In the time that she and Seamus are there, they share all they can with the Museum group - the state of their supplies (food, water, and medical), their knowledge of the Quadruped and how to kill one, and the dangerous behaviors of the Wigglers.

[Maldiem]

Day 2, Night (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOdLF0P4yeY&feature=PlayList&p=11B5CF17A3AF2D48&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=38)

((Background music for the dream))

As the second day on the new planet draws to a close (about 24 hours after it began), and everyone goes to sleep, every person on every team has the same dream:

Incomprehensible voices, which conjure the image of the offspring of an unnatural union between a pipe organ and an accordion wheeze in the background, to the sound of applause. The dream then shows images of Seamus using his gun to kill the quadruped, and scare off the Wigglers, and then images or Ray, Gabe and Christian helpless as they endure the Wiggler barrage. It then shows two people dressed in US navy uniforms, firing pistols at three quadrupeds, which seem to have lost their fear of gunfire (and don't seem particularly bothered by the bullets ricocheting off their thick skeletons). Just as the quads are about to pounce, the dream shows a third person, grey haired and wearing a much more ornate uniform, sighting a high-powered rifle at the quads.

The dream shows a cutaway of the rifle's clip, showing five bullets remaining. The rifleman fires all five shots in quick succession, which impact the quadrupeds and pierce their sheath of bone. The quadrupeds are down, but the dream leaves the viewer with the unimpeachable certainty (as is often found in dreams) that no more ammunition for this type of firearm remains on the planet.

The voices raise to a crescendo, and all but one drop off. The dream takes a bird's eye view of the Gree forest where this took place, and then zooms out, farther and farther. The Dreamers can see the immediate area of the encounter, near the base of a cliff and a large, upside-down aircraft carrier, and then farther out, showing an aerial view of the coast, then the continent the coast is on, and then the whole planet. The planet shrinks to a dot, then disappears entirely as the orange star swings into view, and then also begins to shrink. The viewpoint rotates, giving the dreamer a view of a massive, crowded star scape, before flying through the stars at a breakneck pace. The viewpoint fixates on a small, yellow dot, which rapidly grows larger and larger, until it shifts slightly toward a small blue speck. The dreamers recognize the Earth, and it begins to zoom in on the planet. As it does so, the dreamers catch a glimpse of a large, purplish, lighted object on the dark side of the moon that is clearly artificial, and blots out about 1/20th of the face.

The view keeps zooming in on a desert area of Nevada, eventually settling on high-security military base. It flies through the large, bunker-like double doors, and then through a series of white, featureless hallways. It takes a number of lurching, fast-paced turns, and dodges around people in high-tech, armored biohazard gear, which seem to notice the viewer. They react with a variety of both fear and aggression, and some of them even pull and fire their weapons at the viewer. It doesn't seem to do anything other than damage the wall behind it, and the viewpoint zooms on. Eventually it enters a large hangar area, with a small, delta-winged purplish craft in the center. The viewer gives this only momentary attention, as it focuses on the two guards at the entrance of the room, holding wicked-looking, long, purplish rifle-like objects. These guards fire at the viewer, and it actually dodges them this time. As it does so, it draws the dreamer's attention to the weapons, and then reaches out a blue, ethereal appendage to pluck them from the guards' arms. It then repeats its journey in reverse, much faster, holding the weapons.

As it approaches the planet with the Teams on it, it instead heads straight toward the center of the marsh. It drops one of the weapons in the murk, landing with a wet "plop", and sinking until just the tip sticks out. It then moves North several miles, and repeats the procedure with the second weapon.

The voices then resume, and the applause increases, as the view zooms back out, highlighting the location of the weapons. The dream ends, with each dreamer absolutely certain that what they saw actually occurred at some point.

Problems the teams face:
Some teams still have no reliable source of food or water.
It is still cold, though everyone who has posted beyond the first day has either lit a fire or found some coats.
Everyone is getting pretty stanky-- no showers or oral hygiene for two, going on three days, coupled with a good deal of physical labor.

The Schmoffice:
Gabe still has the second Wiggler spine in his thigh, and its possible removing it could tear an artery. His shoulder is missing a good inch-thick cone of muscle, and the scab has started to itch like crazy. Terryl is still very weak, and this is made worse by not eating very much. A note: Hans doesn't seem hurt by eating the fruit, and has commented that it was a "filling, if exotic treat".

Free Medical Center:
Neil thinks Christian's wound is healing fairly well, though its too early to tell if its infected. He isn't running a fever, though, which is a good sign.

The Museum:
No serious problems, though a really awful smell has started wafting out of the Wiggler room.

Still in Extremely Slow time.

Locations that the Dreamers think the object dropped the weapons marked on the map below:


http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m165/Maldiem/Basic-1.png

[Moody the Wise]

Day 2, Night time

Reserved for responses to interaction with Museum team

Day 3, 0630 Hours

As the dream leaves the clinic team, they awake suddenly and stare at each other, somehow feeling as though the dream was too real not to be shared between them. Upon conversing, they confirm that suspicion. Knowing now that Quadrupeds hunt in packs, and thus are probably not even the biggest predators here, they decide they cannot afford to rely on their own small gun and its limited ammunition, and accordingly neither can they afford not to search out this dream-gun.

Seamus volunteers to lead the expedition to find the dream-gun. Neil wants to go as well, but is reminded that he should stay behind in case Christian needs him. It is decided that Noreen will go in his place, as Neil's practice has rubbed off on her well enough over the years that she should be qualified enough to handle the dream-gun team's first aid needs should anything happen. To round out the expeditionary party, Grace volunteers to go, to the surprise of several clinic team members, notably Dr. Brockett, but nobody tells her she can't, and Seamus and Noreen are glad to have the extra hands around.

The team pools their memories to draw the most accurate map they can of their area. Before setting out, the team decides it needs to prepare for trekking through a marsh. Maricela fashions for each of them a makeshift pair of snow("marsh")shoes out of pieces of the waiting room chairs lashed together with Quadruped sinews. They're not perfect, but combined with some careful stepping, they should keep the expeditionary force from sinking too far into the marsh. Maricela also uses a thick needle from the clinic and fabric from a spare set of sheets to crudely sew the threesome's pant legs tight over their boots. It might not keep something with big teeth out, but it should at least deter undetermined attackers, and keep leeches and the like out. Maricela supervises Roxanne in making a makeshift backpack out of two of the 5 gallon water jugs so that Seamus and Noreen can carry them on their backs, and a back sling for the meat for Grace to carry. Grace explains that she should be able to navigate the team pretty well by the position of the sun. The team sets out with Seamus's gun, 12 pounds of the smoked meat, two of the 5 gallon water jugs, the map, and their MacGyvered marsh gear.

[Maldiem]

Free Medical Clinic

((A response to a post above that I missed. I'm waiting on other responses to resolve the search))

Maricela and Roxanne assemble the trap, though it appears quite ramshackle. After awhile, three BSBs wander by, look directly at the girls, and then one sticks its head into the box and begins shoveling the fruit out with its beak. As they watch, the BSBs peel the skin off of the larger fruits, eat them and the flesh, and then stomp on a large, brown seed at the center. They slurp up the mashed seed, and then move onto the smaller fruits, which they merely stomp and slurp. When they've finished, the BSBs give the women an appraising look, squawk, and wander off back into the Gree forest.

Neil finds it is actually quite easy to get Wigglers to throw the fruit, though when provoked they tend to move through the canopy to the closest Gree possible to the person provoking them, and throw from there. He also discovers that they use their spines as a last resort, and always begin a barrage with unspined fruit. Those few times he lingers too long in one place for them to throw spined fruit, he also notices that the majority of the fruit don't hit spine-side down; it is simply the volume thrown that becomes a problem. The last thing he notices is that Wiggler commotion attracts BSBs. As the Wigglers chase Neil through the forest, the BSBs climb the now Wiggler-less trees and devour the fruit in the boughs, as well as most of what has been thrown.

[Another_Poet]

HISTORY MUSEUM, DAY 3

Char Sheets & Building Description (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6538450#post6538450)

Family Supplies (now includes Wolf's supplies)
Leatherman multitool (Jerry)
"Paper Cleaver" (paper slicer handle used as a cleaver) (Ray)
Wooden club (Fr Younk)
Cell Phones (all) (low battery)
0.75 backpacks' worth of bottled water (4F)
4 sandwiches (4F)
NEW: 50 lbs preserves, smoked meat
NEW: 6 pounds fresh Quadraped meat from the Medical Center group
A warm shawl for everyone
Hats & mittens for everyone
1 fur coat (Andi)
2 jackets (the kids have them)
4 quilts (4F)
20 guns of assorted time periods, none loaded with actual ammunition (4F)
A knife or bayonet for everyone
1 couch (4F)
8 cushions (4F)
8 swords
4 spears
1 waste management "truck" (cart with chamber pots & garbage can)
1 trash can full of water
Silas' pot stash
Wolf's lockpicks


@ Moody:

The Museum team accepts the food gratefully. They seem almost relieved that you are not staying the night - perhaps because of their dwindling water supplies, a chief concern they keep mentioning.

They also seem very guarded about some things. They all carry one or more guns, many of them antiques, but if Seamus asks to see the beautiful weapons they refuse. Funny, since he has a gun of his own - what's the big deal?

They do however try to be neighbourly, and will offer warm clothing and/or swords for Seamus and Amie to take back to the Medical Center.

They state that they are not done converting the museum into a homestead yet (Ray uses that term, "homestead") so they won't come back to the Medical Center today, but promise to try to send an expedition in the next 1-2 days. They get the directions and draw out a map to make sure they understand everything.

They ask if Amie or Seamus know of any sources of drinkable water in the area.

Last night there was some arguing. Ray knows that Younk and Silas are acting strange, but doesn't connect the dots. Andi suspects drugs but blames Wolf, so doesn't say anything in front of the group. She is too scared. Jerry is moody and keeps to himself. Wolf still sleeps separate from everyone else.

In the morning, Tricia starts off the conversation. "I stink," she complains. Other murmus in agreement, and Silas teases her.

Jerry butts in. "That's a natural smell. Nothing wrong with smelling like a human."

After some objections, he goes on to explain his little pet theory. He says that people are meant to smell their family. We don't have keen noses like dogs but we can smell the natural odors of other people. He says it's comforting to smell "your clan" and that modern people who bathe all the time effectively walk around half-blind. Whenever he smells the musty scent of the others, he feels comforted that he is not alone. He says this calmly and just lets it hang out there.

The others may not all be convinced, but the words are comforting in their own right, and it gives them an excuse to not feel bad about their smell.

They all dig into the quadraped meat for breakfast. Ray doesn't eat much before he says, "I have to go for a walk."

Jerry sits bolt upright. "Where to?"

"Just... outside. I won't go far. I just need air."

"Ray, you can't go alone. I'm coming with you."

"I need to go alone, Jer."

"Not out here buddy."

"Just get off my back, okay? I'm an adult."

A short awkward pause follows. Then:

"You going to the marsh?"

Everyone perks up at this.

"Daddy, I had a dream last night..." says Tricia.

It comes out that everyone had the same dream. The group almost doesn't seem surprised. But they are worried - it looked like there were more structures out there, and what if others were after the strange guns too?

This is what they decide. As best they can recollect, there's a gun to the NW and one to the SW. Both are in the direction of the strange battleship ("Aircraft carrier!" corrects Ray), and that's bad, because those people are heavily armed. But only one of them is close to the Medical Center, and they know that Seamus is armed with a gun. So if they go SW they run less risk of being shot than if they head NW.

The initial plan is that everyone will go except Wolf (Wolf isn't in the room yet, and no one really wants to be around him anyway). But Andi puts a stop to that.

"Tricia and I will stay here," she says. This leads to lengthy protest from Tricia, who invokes everything from fainress to sexism in trying to get permission to come along.

Andi's is clearly trying not to cry as she waits for the tirade to end and males her pronouncement. "If that dream means anything, there are armed soldiers out there. Armed soldiers as desperate as we are. You will be raped, Tricia. Raped. I will not have my daughter raped. I will strangle you before I let you leave this room."

She obviously isn't kidding, and eventually Jerry breaks the silence. "We'll take the Wolf with us too." It's understood that he means, "so that he won't do any raping, either."

"I go where I want," says Wolf, appearing from the hallway door. "Where am I invited?" He seems in good spirits.

THE MEN

The men plan their expedition. They make sure they have winter clothing, some smoked meat hidden on their persons, a water bottle hidden on heir persons, and one larger bundle of meat (7 lbs) they can use to bargain or bribe anyone else they encounter. They frankly have no plan on how to deal with a quadraped, if they meet one, since they have no decent ranged weapons. They do at least fit their spearheads with wooden shafts, something Jerry manages easily. He shows the others the basics of javelin-throwing. He takes 2 spears himself and gives one each to Ray and, with some trepidation, Wolf (since the bum seems to be the best shot among them). Everyone has a sqword and a knife as well.

Ray, Jerry, Fr. Younk, Silas and Wolf set off (walking in that order), just one water bottle each, at the equivalent of 9 a.m. They head toward the southwest, hoping the weird rifle is real and that they will be the only ones to seek it.

* * * * * * * *

THE WOMEN
Tricia is inconsolable. Andi tells her she doesn't have to cheer up but she does have to work. The two manage some important improvements to their "homestead."

Large, solid hardwood doors and tables are turned into barricades. They place barriers at the bottom of the emergency staircase and at every landing on the way up. These barriers make it a pain in the ass to go up or down the stairs, but they will slow intruders, provide chokepoints to fight them from, and provide cover to the Museum group against bullets and the like, hopefully.

They seal all 4th Floor entrances with heavy furniture, even the not-working elevator doors. They only leave the door at the top of the emergency stairs unsealed. They place filing cabinets and the like in front of all windows, so it is possible to see out without being seen from below.

They use superglue to seal the water-filled garbage can. Tricia's idea is that they can keep it sealed so it takes longer to stagnate, and they can perce the sides of the can with a knife each day to drain a little water out (before resealing the hole with glue, of course).

They also decide it will be nice to have w ater boiling station for when the garbage can water gets funky. They clear everything flammable out of a cubicle across from the Director's office. They cut the carpeting away with a knife, and remove the overhead ceiling panels. They chose a cube that is near one of the overhead air ducts in the hopes the smoke will be carried away by it.

They find a small metal waste paper basket and put it in the room to serve as the fire ring, set several pots and pans from the kitchen in the room, and then heap as much scrap wood (from chairs, etc.) as possible into the hallways outside the room.

They now have a defensible 4th floor, a boiler for dirty water, and a sense that they are acomplishing something despite staying at home while the men go explore.

[Maldiem, would they stull have time for further chores today?]

[Maldiem]

The Search

Free Medical Clinic

The improvised marsh gear works out fairly well for the team, though there are several scary moments when one member of the party or another would sink a few inches into the murk than usual and have to pull a leech or two off. The team picks up on the fact that the leeches seem to live in holes in the bottom of the marsh, about a foot to two feet wide, though avoiding them is often easier said then done. There are also a number of encounters where some kind of creature in the water will take a nip at the feet or legs of the party, but the party finds that lashing out at the creatures drives them off quickly.

The party also notices that BSBs are following them, digging through the murk with their beaks in the wake, every once in awhile emerging to gulp down something slimy. As they approach where they believe the gun was dropped, the BSBs skedaddle, squawking awkwardly and scattering in all directions. About a minute later, Seamus finds himself nose-to-barrel with an M16, and a heavily camouflaged soldier behind it.

Assuming Seamus doesn't do anything incredibly stupid (for instance, reach for his gun), the man makes some gestures with his off hand, and two more soldiers, these in normal uniforms, emerge from behind a thick bank of underbrush holding similar weapons. The two others are a man and a woman, both young-looking, wearing US navy uniforms; the party recognizes these people from the dream, and both of them sport bluish stains on their uniforms. The man in the Ghillie suit says, "Put your hands on your head and lie on the ground. Do it now."

Assuming the party does so, the two other soldiers pat everyone down, and remove Seamus's pistol, taser and mace. They nod to the man in the camouflage, who lowers his weapon (so it isn't pointing directly at anyone any more) and continues, "I am Commander Raymond Rivera, Executive Officer of the USS Harry S. Truman. Who are you, and what are you doing here?

Gaming Group, History Museum

The men don't have any sort of protection against the thick mud, and it isn't long before Ray steps into one of the leech holes, and pulls his leg out with the calf covered in the bloodsucking critters. As everyone in the group works to pull them off, the Wolf notices that the BSBs following the party seem to have no trouble picking a safe path to the leeches, once they're thrown from Ray's leg.

Later on, the party is startled by yelling, and then automatic gunfire to their South, in the direction they think the rifle is in. Those in the party with firearms experience think it is within a mile or so, though the dense tree cover in the swamp prevents them from seeing the source. The gunfire lasts intermittently (in bursts, once every minute or so) for about ten minutes, getting closer each time.

((That seems like plenty of chores to fill a day, lol))

[Maldiem]

Day 3, Free Medical Clinic

((This was conducted by PM this evening between Moody and myself. If you'd like to do the same, my AIM is in my profile, and I'm typically active between 5 pm and midnight, GMT -5.))

Seamus, noticing that he is clearly outgunned and outmanned, complies with the soldier's instructions, and motions for Noreen and Grace to do the same; they don't need to be told twice.

Seamus speaks for the group, "My name is Seamus O'Neill. I am - er, was, I guess - a police officer in the town of Newton, Massachusetts. This is Noreen Brockett, formerly a judge in the Middlesex County District Court of Massachusetts, and her daughter Grace."

At this point, Noreen indicates to Seamus that she would like to speak: "As for why we are here, we have no more idea than you do. My husband operated a free medical clinic in Newton, which two nights ago was inexplicably transported to this planet. Also with us, back at the clinic, are my husband and several of the volunteers and patients. We number 10 in total."

Rivera looks skeptical for a moment (as far as Seamus can tell; he's got green face paint and a pair of goggles that completely hide his eyes) then shrugs a bit, and speaks into a hand-held radio.

"Captain Martinez, we've located some civilians; they're in a similar situation. Orders?"

A moment or two passes, and then sound bursts from the radio, metallic clanking almost drowning out the voice, "Civillians? Ain't that a thing. You still think you can find this dream-gun of yours, Commander?"

Rivera looks a little bit miffed, and responds, "When I get a feeling like this, it isn't just a daydream, captain. That happened. Its out here, and its got something to do with where we are. Maybe the aliens--"

The radio interrupts him, the background noise cutting him off, "You still on about your little green men, XO? Stow that bull***t. Figure out where the civillians are camped out and get a read on possible relocation sites."

"Rich, this is no time for skepticism. Remember the briefing we got before we boarded? Something is going on--"

"D***it, commander, these are orders. Locate the civillians, ensure their safety, and report back to me when you're done, or you're going to pull **** patrol until your meemaw forgets what you look like."

While this conversation goes on, Seamus, Noreen, and Grace wait patiently, absorbing every word and exchanging occasional meaningful glances.

Rivera turns the radio off, and stuffs it back into the pocket it came from, and lowers his gun, clicking the safety on, "You mentioned some kind of clinic? We need to find as many other people that ended up here as possible." He motions to the other two, "This is Major Elizabeth Taylor, and captain Alexander Kuznetsov, USAF."

Noreen speaks up for the three first: "We would be more than happy to take you back to our home. We have also found several survivors in a museum to the South of us."

To the others' surprise, Grace finds the confidence to say, "Do you have any food? We have some smoked meat with us, and plenty more back at the clinic. We also have some distilled water. We can share ours, if you need some."

Elizabeth disappears behind the brush, and re-emerges dragging an inflatable raft with a small outboard motor. While she does so, Alex says, "we've got plenty of food on the Truman, and we're only going to be out here for a couple more hours." The three soldiers get into the boat, and motion the group to follow. It looks like it could seat about eight.

Seamus, while getting into the boat, says, "Alright, then. We will take you back, but first, you mentioned a dream-gun? We were out here in the marsh looking for just this thing. I take it from your conversation that you haven't found it. Can you tell us anything about your search thus far? We thought for sure it would be around here."

Rivera perks up at that, "You had that dream, too?" He thinks for a moment, then continues, ""Its got to be out there somewhere. We need it; nothing we have that doesn't explode is going to bother those huge... armadillo-things... But I've got orders, and the captain is the captain. Rich said to find the clinic and secure the area, but he can't stop me from looking on the way back. We'll check in on the clinic, then take a look at the museum you mentioned. Care to point us in the right direction?"

Grace guides the boat back toward the clinic, and the speedy little craft covers the 2-hour walk in about 20 minutes. During the ride, Noreen brings up that the term relocation came up during Rivera's conversation, and asks what their situation is. Elizabeth and Alex look at Rivera, who shakes his head, and they both shut up about their situation; they are otherwise quite happy to talk, though; the clinic party finds out they've killed three quadrupeds, and discovered a way to keep them away from the Truman. Alex offers to show the group when they get to the clinic.

Noreen decides it's wise not to press the issue with the dudes with guns, but tells them: "We are more than happy to share what we have with you, including our home, if necessary, I just hope that you can be open with us in time."

When they reach the edge of the marsh, Elizabeth deflates the boat and stuffs into into a bag, while Alex removes the motor and puts it in his pack. A half hour hike later, and the party has returned to the clinic.

Just as the clinic comes into view, the group hears the faint sound of gunfire in the distance, to the Southwest.

Rivera stops, and gets on the radio again, "Captain, we're hearing gunfire. Status?"

"It ain't us, Ray. Everyone's accounted for"

"Has Wright got that UAV in the air yet?"

"He's working on it. He's doing both his work and Sanchez's. We'll let you know when he does."

Rivera shrugs and stows the radio again, then motions for the party to continue. When the party arrives at the clinic, Rivera asks for a quick tour, and then takes a look at how the team has managed to fortify it, inquiring about the bullet hole.

Seamus explains that the bullet hole was the result of shooting the Quadruped the first night. When he is invariably told how lucky he was to have made a kill shot with that wimpy gun, he says he's well aware.

Rivera takes a look, and seems to happy that the group has taken at least some steps. While Rivera takes the tour, Alex mentions how they've managed to repel the quads recently-- caltrops, made from jagged metal objects. He offers to show Neil, provided they're willing to part with some metal chair legs. Elizabeth also looks at Christain's wound, and mentions they could probably spare some antibiotics from the Truman, after she checks with Dr. Serena, the Truman's doctor.

Neil is happy to sacrifice the chairs if it will help keep the quads away, especially after learning that the search for the dreamgun has so far yielded no fruit. Alex goes through the process, carefully cutting the metal with the sharp, military-issue knife he carries. The caltrops are small enough not to be easily noticeable to the quads (they have bad vision below their heads, Alex mentions), but large enough to pierce the bottoms of their feet. He then pushes them into the mud around the clinic, carefully noting down their location on a piece of paper from the clinic

After about 30 minutes, Rivera phones home again, and mentions the museum. The captain orders him to check this out as well, and he sighs, then starts to head South with Alex and Elizabeth. Seamus, Noreen and Grace offer to come with them, to introduce them to the museum team. The three from the clinic bring a distiller, while Sharron makes another. Rivera doesn't seem to mind, provided they keep up, which shouldn't be too hard, as they advance much more cautiously than hiking.

About ten minutes into the walk, the radio starts up by itself, "Ray, we're having an issue with the A4Ws."

Rivera's face looks white, despite its face paint, and replies, "what kind of problem?"

The reply is laced with static, "Wright doesn't know," the static gets almost completely incomprehensible, "Interference is getting bad. Expect radio silence until the problem is resolved. Continue locating the civilians until directed otherwise." The transmission ends with total static.

Rivera exchanges a glance with Alex and Elizabeth, and they continue on, obviously concerned. Once again, Noreen gently prods, inquiring into the nature of their difficulties. Elizabeth speaks up, "A4Ws are the nuclear reactors on the Truman." Elizabeth gets a dirty look from Alex and Rivera. Noreen notices the looks, and thanks Elizabeth for the information.

About ten minutes into the hike, a huge, black, billowing plume of smoke starts to rise from the West. Rivera stops again, and tries to radio. Nothing but static. Noreen shoots Elizabeth a caring, motherly look, while Seamus looks to Rivera's face for cues as to his reaction, and waits for one of them to speak.

Rivera considers for a moment, then turns to the group, "We're heading back to the Truman. It would probably be dangerous to go with us, though you can if you want."

Seamus looks at Noreen and Grace, then calmly says: "It wouldn't do at all for us to abandon our new friends, would it?"

Rivera looks at the group, then says, "Alright. We're turning west," while holding out a compass and pointing toward the plume.

The party makes their way back to the marsh, and Elizabeth re-inflates the raft with a can of pressurized air when they arrive at the bog. The trip to the other side of the marsh takes about 20 minutes, where they repeat the raft-stowing and continue on foot.

While they're on the way, Rivera starts explaining, "Two days ago, the Truman got snatched out of San Diego harbor and showed up, upside down and wedged under a boulder, under a waterfall on this godforsaken rock. We're fully stocked, but most of the crew was ashore. When we came to, our oil tanks were leaking into a small pond. The one nuclear engineer that was aboard had a head injury. He hasn't regained consciousness, and Dr. Serena isn't optimistic. One flight officer has been trying to run two A4W nuclear reactors with no training, upside down, with no water intake for cooling. We can't just shut them down. That's complicated, from what Wright's been able to get from Sanchez's manuals and old textbooks, and it takes an expert to turn them back on if we do-- the Captain doesn't want to risk it. I don't know what that is," he says, motioning to the plume, "but I don't like it."

As the party approaches the plume, a ridge of cliffs comes into view, with the source obviously at the base of the cliffs. The party crests a small ridge, and the air actually heats up ten or twenty degrees. A cold wind snaps at their back, rushing toward a huge fire, which is covering the surface of a small pond. The Truman hangs at a 45 degree angle in the pond, though the aft sections have become red-hot, and its started to actually bend, so the front end is getting closer and closer to the ground while steam and smoke form a billowing mushroom column above the pond. On the ground below it, a large number of aircraft sit, upside down, in various states of disarray. Four people in hazard suits, carrying another figure, are running toward the party

Rivera merely stops, aghast, muttering "mother f***er"

The hazard suit group runs up to the party, and then one of them holds up a Geiger counter (clicking faster than seems pleasant, to the untrained ear), and nods his head to one of the others. He takes off his suit's mask, as do the rest.

The crew consists of a middle-aged man, that the group reconizes as the rifleman from the dream, a hispanic man with a gaping head wound, a youngish man with a buzz-cut, a woman with close-cropped hair, in a lab coat under the hazard suit, and another, younger, brown-haired woman in a navy uniform.

The grey-haired man looks at the guy with the buzz cut, "What the **** happened, Major?"

Buzz cut shakes his head, "Heat from the reactors must have ignited to oil. Too much waste heat, and I can barely work the reactor hanging from the ceiling." He considers for a moment, "the reactors are still running. They'll probably go critical soon."

The captain goes red in the face, and his fists ball up. Everyone is silent for a couple of minutes. Finally, the captain asks, "What kind of radiation are we looking at, then?"

Wright (the buzz cut guy) motions to a technical manual (marked "classified" fairly prominently), and says, "The ship's hull should contain most of it, though I don't think the manual accounts for the fire." he says, as the red-hot section of the ship snaps, slamming the front 3/4ths of the ship down in the clearing with a deafening crash.

The group stares in stunned awe for about twenty minutes, someone cursing every once in awhile. Rivera is the first to snap out of it, scouting the area and ensuring the group's safety. As he does so, the crew keeps an ear on the Geiger counter, and introduces themselves to the Clinic party.

Noreen pipes up, "It looks like you might be looking for a new home soon, friends. You all are welcome to stay with us, but our accommodations might be a little cramped. The Museum people seem nice enough, and they must have plenty of space - maybe we could all move in together?"

Everyone looks to the Captain, he shakes his head, and seems to crumble a bit. "Might as well. That much fuel could burn for days, not to mention the reactors."

As he says this, a pool of oil that had formed around the bow-ward section of the ship catches fire, igniting the front portion of the ship as well. Wright suddenly looks pale, "Captain, the magazines are just behind the engines. That fire is about 10 meters from the ordnance. We should run. Now."

The captain seems a bit more in his element now, and starts barking out orders; Wright grabs the Geiger counter, Alex picks up Sanchez, and the group grabs what little gear they have. The group gets behind the ridge just in time, and a massive explosion and concussive wave of force briefly turns the world white and deafens everyone.

They come to on the ground, with a loud ringing in their ears, amidst a large pile of pancaked Grees. Smaller ammunition cooks off behind them while superheated metal rains into the new clearing. The group gathers their wits and runs from the small fires that nucleate around the larger bits of ejecta.

The journey back to the clinic takes about two hours, because of the slightly overloaded inflatable raft. It is otherwise uneventful, as the planet's native life seems to be in hiding after the explosion. Smaller fires are igniting near the carrier, and a haze of ash has begun to clog the air. As if to top it all off, threatening clouds have moved in in the past hour or so.

It begins to drizzle as they arrive, and there's a matter of debate over where the Crew should stay. They eventually settle on the Museum, as they seem to have more space, and the crew sets out with the three from the clinic toward the museum a second time, leaving Sanchez in the clinic. Seamus suggests that the crew leave a radio at the clinic, to remain in contact with them and the crew agrees-- Alex leaves his radio at the clinic, and then they continue to the museum.

((I'm going to skip ahead a little bit here and assume the three from the clinic and the crew stay at the Museum that night, excepting Dr. Serena and Sanchez, who stay at the clinic)).

In the morning, the three from the clinic wake up naked in the clinic lobby, and find the clothing, hazard suits and medical supplies Doctor Serena was carrying in the patient room. The Museum crowd wakes up to find the empty clothes and possessions of the clinic three and the crew of the Truman, though the people themselves are nowhere to be found.

[Another_Poet]

HISTORY MUSEUM, DAY 3 Cont'd

Char Sheets & Building Description (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6538450#post6538450)

Family Supplies (now includes Wolf's supplies)
Leatherman multitool (Jerry)
"Paper Cleaver" (paper slicer handle used as a cleaver) (Ray)
Wooden club (Fr Younk)
Cell Phones (all) (low battery)
0.75 backpacks' worth of bottled water (4F)
4 sandwiches (4F)
NEW: 50 lbs preserves, smoked meat
NEW: 6 pounds fresh Quadraped meat from the Medical Center group
A warm shawl for everyone
Hats & mittens for everyone
1 fur coat (Andi)
2 jackets (the kids have them)
4 quilts (4F)
20 guns of assorted time periods, none loaded with actual ammunition (4F)
A knife or bayonet for everyone
1 couch (4F)
8 cushions (4F)
8 swords
4 spears
1 waste management "truck" (cart with chamber pots & garbage can)
1 trash can full of water
Silas' pot stash
Wolf's lockpicks


@ Moody & Maldiem:

Don't be so quick to assume they spend the night at the Museum, unless they are willing to use force. See below.

ON THE TRAIL
The men struggle along, learning how to remove (and eventually, how to avoid) the leeches. When they hear gunfire they all freeze.

Jerry looks at Ray.

Ray makes the decision. "Okay, everybody hunker down by a tree. Put some mud on your face. They obviously found the weapon before us, so we're going to hide here until they're gone and then go home." The word "home" rings falsely.

"Don't get the water in your mouths," warns Jerry as he applies mud to his face. "We don't know if it's safe to drink."

The group spreads out over a few hundred feet, each one camouflaged with grass and mud behind a tree. They're all in visual range of one another, but at first they don't notice Wolf creeping away. By the time Younk sees that the man is leaving, it's unlikely he can catch him. He tries calling out to him in a stage whisper but to no avail. The others ask what is going on and see that the bum has abandoned them - with one of their four spears. Ray tells everyone to keep quiet and let him go. They do.

The Wolf:

Wolf isn't staying around to get shot. He moves to the SE, that is, the only direction that is far away from gunshots, dream rifles, his own team, and museums. But he only goes about a quarter mile, just enough to be totally out of sight from the other men in the swamp. Then he checks a tree to make sure it is Wiggler-free, dons some camouflage of his own and climbs up. He actually likes the hide-and-wait policy, he's just not going to do it with a bunch of fools with unloaded guns. He expects the others to all get shot while he himself waits it out.

((Using the Stealth skill.))

The Other Men:
They stay hidden as long as it takes. They're surprised the gunfire gets closer, but they hold their ground. They do not believe they can make a speedy, stealthy retreat through the swamp.

If they are approached they stay totally quiet and hope not to be noticed.

If they are noticed, and it's by military folks, they'll answer questions politely. Ray says they are from a medical clinic that is far to the northwest (lie and lie) and no one corrects him. He explains that they were there visiting his sick mother when they were somehow brought to this place (another lie). If asked to show the military the clinic, he says his group is out doing scouting for resources and want to finish their route, but gives excellent false directions for the military to follow. If forced to come with the military, he will ask if he alone can come as a guide and leave the others to finish their circuit. He (and anyone else forced to come along with the military) will start to lead them to the northwest, following a false route with no particular destination in mind other than "far from the museum."

If they're noticed and it's by the criminal gang or anyone else looking suspicious, they will hold their guns and try to act intimidating. Ray says they wouldn't be out here in this swamp if they had any provisions anywhere else, and suggests both groups just go their separate ways. If they refuse, or if they call Ray's bluff, he will use the same protocol as dealing with the military (give false answers and, if needed, go along to guide them away from the Museum.)

WHEN THE SMOKE HITS THE FAN
Anyone who has been forced to come along with another group (military or otherwise) will, obviously, follow that group's reaction to the sight of smoke to the west.

If Ray's group has not been found by the time they notice the smoke, and assuming the gunfire has stopped, they will beeline for the Museum. Jerry will use his Hunting skill to try to cover their tracks as best as possible.

If the Wolf has not been found, he is long since gone. After just a half hour or so of inactivity he will head back on a relatively straight path toward the museum, using his Stealthy skill to avoid leaving tracks if possible. He is likely to be the first one to reach the Museum.

THE WOMEN FOLK
Since the military/clinic combo team are arriving late in the day, it is likely Andi and Tricia are done with their chores. Andi constantly looks out the windows hoping to see a sign of her men returning. If she can spot the military/clinic team before they arrive, she enacts the following plan.

1) She gives Tricia a backpack of food and water and hides Tricia in the ceiling above the 4th floor. This will allow Tricia to crawl carefully from room to room, even to the elevator shafts, without being seen. She'll have to be careful not to be heard, however. Andi tells her she must not come out no matter what she sees or hears. She makes her promise. Then she kisses her and closes the ceiling panel.

2) She takes a whiteboard easel and writes, "No One Welcome Today. Leave Now or Die. Plague Is Here." She places this in the main entrance hall of the museum, angled slightly toward the service stairs that lead to the basement and the loading dock.

3) She enters the hallway that leads to the emergency stairs, locking the hallway door and the emergency staircase door. She slides the heavy furniture in front of the door.

4) She crouches on a steam pipe above the door, with a makeshift spear in one hand (a knife firmly duct-taped to a broom handle) and a Civil War sabre in the other hand. Tears stream down her face as she lies in wait. If anyone breaks through that door, she will spear him in the chest and then fight with the sabre as best she can. She expects to die here, but hopes her daughter will avoid the same fate.

IF THE WOLF HAS ARRIVED:
It's possible The Wolf got back mid-day. He doesn't tell Andi much except that the others were looking to hide and spy on some other group. He doesn't offer much reason why he came back. If Andi spots the military/clinic crew Wolf doesn't offer to help, but Andi does get him to agree not to tip off the strangers. He will go take a nap hidden in a supply closet on a different floor while Andi makes her stand.

[Maldiem]

The Museum

((Encounters like this will go a great deal faster if you get some kind of instant messaging client. I have an AIM account, an MSN, and a Yahoo (though I despise Yahoo), and there is also version of AIM that doesn't require you to install anything (called "AIM Express"))).


As the party fans out and hides, they begin to hear shouting, splashing, and frantic panting. A large, portly man, with a walrus-like mustache runs by, while the party can make out six other figures running north through the swamp, dressed in muddy business attire. The fat man is carrying the gun from the dream, and he's fiddling with it frantically while running. He does not seem to notice the party, but one of the other people running north, a tallish, blond man, wearing waders, over his shirt and tie does, and waves his arms to the north while yelling, "He's got a gun. Run!" The office-dressed people continue their sprint northward.

This party is followed in short order by a forklift modified like it was pulled straight from an A Team re-run. Greewood pontoons are lashed to the sides with rope, and aluminum siding has been molded into a wedge and welded to the tines of the vehicle, forming a plow, which covers the crew compartment. An eyehole has been cut in the front, and conveyor belts have been converted into crude treads. Lastly, a wooden propeller (clearly nailed together from broken-down wooden pallets) has been fitted onto the central drive shaft, giving the forklift the ability to travel both through the shallow pools in the marsh by floating and using the motor, and plow through any Grees it encounters on land. Dents litter the plow, and spined fruit sticks to it in places.

A man of African descent, dressed in a flak jacket that's open in the center to reveal the wifebeater beneath it hangs out of the crew compartment by one arm, holding an uzi with the other hand, with a lit cigarette hanging from his mouth. Every once in awhile, he'll fire a couple of shots in the direction of the fleeing people, yelling, "I just want the gun, y'all. Drop it, and I'm sure we can be pals."

Another man seems to be driving the doom forklift, his face visible through the eyehole in the plow.

The forklift is about 200 meters to the South, and the fleeing people are about 50 meters to the North. The forklift seems to be gaining on the group very slowly, though the people are tiring quickly.

((I'm going to wait on resolving the museum encounter until we've gotten through the day, here))

[Another_Poet]

The main problem here is that I mostly check the forum from work, where I can't IM. And you usually update the game after work, when I'm seldom available. If you need to force some actions from my characters or make some assumptions to move things along, go for it.

As Wolf hears the ruckus pass through the are where Ray & Co. are, he takes the distraction as an opportunity to go the other way. He flees NE, confident that everyone else is simply going North. Looks like he'll be sleeping in a sotrage closet at the Museum tonight after all (in the sub basement, not the 4F where Andi is. He'll close the door and hide himself behind boxes of paper.)

Ray and Company are terrified, but they resign themselves to their fate. Ray looks over at his son, some 100 feet from him, who looks terrified. He makes a gesture for the kid to hunker down even more, then takes a deep breath and sticks his head under the water. Fully submersed and covered in grass and mud, he should be nearly impossible to spot.

Younk makes sure Silas follows suit before the priest sticks his own head under the water.

Jerry is the only one not looking at the others. His mind races as he tries to think of alternate strategies. Being a hunter he has done the best job of camouflaging himself, and he is the only one who doesn't go underwater. He Keeps a sharp eye out to make sure the Mad Max-esque forklift drives past them.

(Since I stated that all the people hid at the bases of grees, and the forklift must at least go around the trees, I assume no one is in danger of being run over while hidden.)

All they can do is hope that the men in the forklift are intent on their prey and go right past without noticing them. If that indeed happens, once the coast is clear they take off due E, going E a long ways before hooking North toward the museum.

[Maldiem]

The Museum

As the forklift goes by the group, Jerry notices the man on the side taking a good, hard look at the spot where Father Younk is submerged, but as he does so, the man with the purple gun slips and falls. The guy on forklift slaps the shoulder of the driver like a gun wielding, homicidal jockey, letting out a "yeeeee-haaaaw" while the driver steps on the gas.

The forklift moves a fair distance, and catches the overweight man while he's struggling to get up in the thick mud. Cigarette man jumps off of the forklift, and points the uzi at the gun holder, who realizes the game is up and puts his hands in the air. Cigarette kicks the gun away from the prone man, then delivers another hard kick to his ribs. As the prone man rolls up into a gasping ball in the fetal position, he throws the uzi to the forklift driver, a middle-aged man with a great deal of red facial hair and a number of scars on his face, who covers the group of people in work clothes with it.

Cigarette then picks up the purple weapon, and fiddles with it a bit. After awhile, he nods, shoulders the weapon, sights down the barrel, and points it at the prone man. A high-pitched, loud whine sounds for a second or so, ascending in pitch, and a large beam of white, searing light erupts from the end of the weapon pointed at Cigarette's face. When the smoke clears, Cigarette's head and upper torso-less body slumps to the ground, in line with a meter-diameter hole burned clear through the canopy.

The driver shouts, "****!", and continues covering the office-garbed people with the uzi. He grabs the purple weapon, and then backs toward the forklift, keeping the uzi trained on the group the entire way. He reaches the vehicle, starts it up, and rides off into the marsh as fast as the improvised vehicle will take him.

Assuming the party continues with its plan to beeline for the museum after the encounter, they arrive around 1-2 in the afternoon, soaked, covered in mud, and exhausted from the hiking, leeches, and adrenaline. Just as they arrive at the museum, a huge explosion knocks the party off balance and loose branches and fruit from the Grees. The column of smoke to the west, which had been burning for an hour or two, suddenly balloons larger, and it looks like smaller fires are igniting around some kind of material raining down from the explosion. A jagged piece of scorched metal lands in the Museum clearing, about a meter and a half in radius. The metal plate is scorched, but the paint is new, and surprisingly durable:

http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m165/Maldiem/TrumanSeal.jpg

((The men arrive at the Museum before the Clinic group and the Truman's crew. Could we redo the visitation with that stuff in mind?))

[Another_Poet]

((We can indeed.))

Wolf stays in hiding within the museum's lower levels. The men hear he got back, but don't look for him. They have a low opinion of him.

The discussion as they explain the situation to Andi is heated. They are sure the forklift people are not military, which makes it all the scarier.

They are in the middle of planning a trip to confer with the Clinic folks when they spot the approaching military/clinic team. The preparations are much the same: Put Tricia in the ceiling, tell her to crawl toward the elevator and wait for contact from them. She gets to the elevator and lowers herself into the dark elevator carriage, afraid and alone.

The hall to the stairs and the stairs themselves are barricaded. Ray, Silas, Younk, Jerry and Andi hold their unloaded guns and stand on the mezzanine overlooking the main hall. With the elevators out and the stairs blockaded, it would be hard for the visitors to find a way up. They use heavy benches as cover in case the military opens fire.

When the military/clinic group enters the main hall, Younk (chosen to speak on behalf of the group) says in a loud, clear voice:

"Stop there please. We offer you a deal."

Assuming no one shoots...

"We know you come from the military ship. We can see you are armed. We are also armed, and in a better position. Today we obtained good intelligence on one of the weapons. In addition, we have oil and a generator. We have weapons. We have one of the largest, best-stocked collections of resources ever assembled by civilians, an entire museum of knowledge and goods. We are willing to share them on just one condition."

Pauses for dramatic effect.

"Our party, the Red Diamonds, will sit as equals beside your party. You will not give us orders. We are no longer civilians. We fight for our lives, and we have our own commander and chain of command. You and us are two separate units who will meet in council to make decisions. We respect that you have more training in winning a battle, you respect that we own this museum and its resources. Each respects the others autonomy, each will share what it has. So you have three choices:

"One. Accept these terms, and join together to survive against those ruthless monsters who got The Weapon.

"Two. Turn around, leave, and do not trouble us again.

"Or three. Die here, at our hands, for nothing."

The priest waits for a response from below.

If they open fire...
There's really nothing the Red Diamonds can do except fall back. They'll immediately give up the mezzanine, enter the stairs, and prepare to hold the barricaded staircase entrance with melee weapons and thrown spears.

If they accept the terms...

They will be asked to spend their first night in the entrance hall. Food will be lowered if needed. Ray will recount exactly what they saw in the marsh, accurately and leaving nothing out. He refers to his son but not his daughter. If the Clinic folks mention Tricia, Ray will lower his head and report that she was killed in the marsh - run over by the forklift. Ray had his head under the water and didn't see that it was coming toward her. Even though it's a lie, hearing it makes Andi cry so it should seem pretty real.

Silas will make regular forays into the ceiling to deliver supplies to Tricia. Ray explains that this is because they had to clean a Wiggler infestation out of the ceiling. Silas is the smallest so he goes in to check around for signs of more Wigglers twice a day, just to make sure.

The family posts a watch in the staircase the first night to make sure the military don't try to break in.


If they leave...
The family posts a watch to make sure they don't come back in the night.

((By the way, love the choice of wreckage. :smallsmile: ))

[Maldiem]

The Museum

The military party, surprised by the museum group's reception, agrees to the cooperation condition; the captain and Rivera look to be in no condition to try and pull rank. Captain Martinez hasn't said much of anything since the Truman exploded, and Rivera has been giving the majority of the orders since then.

The party camps in the entrance hall, eating from their own rations. They set up bedrolls on the floor, and all but Rivera go to sleep.

As the day wears on, the clouds that had moved in in the afternoon begin to drop snow heavily, depositing about three inches in an hour or so.

A couple hours after the sun has set, the clinic party and the rest of the crew vanishes while Raymond looks out the window, leaving empty bedrolls and clothes.

After staring in surprise for a minute or so, Rivera gets on the radio, Serana? The crew seems to have... vanished from the Museum. Report from your position."

Silence follows for a minute or so, before Rivera repeats himself. Eventually, a male voice answers, "This is Seamus. We woke up naked in the lobby, and we can't find Dr. Serena and Sanchez, though we found their equipment and clothes. What happened over there?"


I was on first watch, and I turned my back for a second. Then everyone vanished." He's silent for a moment, then If you ended up back at the clinic, I think the crew is at the Truman. I need to go help them. I'll contact you on the radio when I have more details."

He then grabs the raft and motor, dons a wetsuit under a heavy jacket, takes some extra ammunition and grenades, puts on the nightvision goggles, and walks off into the snowy night.

Museum and Clinic

During the night, everyone has the same dream once again:

The viewpoint starts in space this time, looking at the planet the teams are on-- it is looking at an ocean, with a giant, swirling hurricane stewing directly over it. It then zooms into the eye of the storm, over a deep teal, cold-looking ocean, an island of calm surrounded by the raging eyewalls. It pans around the eye for awhile, then points due west, and plunges through the wall at a blinding pace. Rain, lightning, and hail pelt the viewpoint as a shockwave forms behind the viewer, before it reaches the coast line and slows down. The dream ends as the viewpoint catches a view of two wigglers, playing with the second purple rifle. The dreamers wake up to the sound of a loud crack. Could have been a sonic boom, could have just been thunder.

DAY 4

The sun rises, giving an orange tint to the foot and half of snow that fell during the night. Steam rises from the marsh, and the smoke to the West has gotten wider, though smaller in volume. Clouds are once again gathering in the East, this time much darker and shot through with lightning.

((I'm going to try and speed up the clock a bit soon. I need a couple of things nailed down before I do, however-- once both teams have met these, we can switch to one week per day, or something along that time metric.))

Things that need to be done:

Renewable Food Supply
Renewable Water Supply
Reliable method to combat the cold
Protection from quadrupeds (either traps or weapons)

Current Problems:

The cold has intensified, and an outdoor fire pit is something of an exercise in futility; a way to heat the shelter needs to be found, or very warm clothing.

[Another_Poet]

HISTORY MUSEUM

Char Sheets & Building Description (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6538450#post6538450)

Family Supplies (now includes Wolf's supplies)
Leatherman multitool (Jerry)
"Paper Cleaver" (paper slicer handle used as a cleaver) (Ray)
Wooden club (Fr Younk)
Cell Phones (2 dead, 4 low battery)
0.25 backpacks' worth of bottled water (4F)
50 lbs preserves, smoked meat
6 pounds fresh Quadraped meat from the Medical Center group
A warm shawl for everyone
Hats & mittens for everyone
1 fur coat (Andi)
2 jackets (the kids have them)
4 quilts (4F)
20 guns of assorted time periods, none loaded with actual ammunition (4F)
NEW: military guns with live ammunition (not sure how many)
A knife or bayonet for everyone
1 couch (4F)
8 cushions (4F)
8 swords
4 spears
NEW: 2 Tomahawks
1 waste management "truck" (cart with chamber pots & garbage can)
1 trash can full of water
NEW: 1 Warming Hut with cooking/water-boiling station
Silas' pot stash
Wolf's lockpicks


DAY 3 Wrap-Up

Amazed at the quick and friendly response of the military, Ray and Younk almost don't know what to do. Ray thinks they may have misjudged these men. Younk just figures it's desparation.

When Rivera sets off, Ray goes down after him. He asks if the man has first aid supplies (he will offer a first aid kit from one of the offices if not). He also makes sure he has rations. Then he lets him go.

Let me know what he accepts and I will adjust my gear.

I assume that the disappeared military members' guns & ammo are lying on the museum floor? As soon as Rivera leaves Ray takes them and divies them up. Is any of the ammo compatible with any of the guns in the museum collection (there are some Vietnam-era ones)? Or do I have to use the military's guns, which they might not like?

DAY 4

Ray and Andi are furious that Tricia climbed out of the elevator and lowered herself into the 4F conference room in the night. She says she is not going to spend her life hiding in a dark elevator. Silas finds this very funny - possibly he is high. Younk is definitely sober though and gives the boy "a look."

"Hey Tricia," Jerry says, interrupting the argument. "You do a lot of winter camping, right?"

She brightens. "Hell yeah!"

"Language!" warns her mother, but Tricia gives a perfect teenage shrug.

"Look Trish, I've heard about people sleeping in snow caves. Do they work? Have you everbuilt one?"

"Sure I have." ((Profession: Outdoors/Camping.))

Tricia explains the basics of how a snow mound shelter (http://www.gottagoitsnows.com/snowcamping/007.html) is made. She explains that snow/ice is actually a great insulator and that if you line the floor with enough grass and branches it will be cozy. Andi seems proud of her daughter, but tries to keep her angry face on.

The problem the team has with building the shelters is not lack of snow or materials, but location. They'll either need to haul the snow inside the building, or live outside the building where the wildlife can get them.

They decide that over the next few days they will have Tricia teach them how to build the shelters, but only as a backup plan. In the meanwhile they will build a warming hut.

They put it on the mezzanine. They sacrifice the final batteries of two cell phones to use the phones as flashlights, after a few failed attempts at making good torches. They enter the sub-basement and go to the work area where museum exhibits were once built. They pillage lumber, hardware and whatever hand-tools are present. They bring all this to the Mezzanine.

Ray also tries to remember if there is an old wood-burning stove or anything in the furniture collection. on a 98-100, shall we say? [roll0]

Ah! So close. He remembers they actually did have two of them but sent them off to a university that was testing a method of dating residual wood smoke. Damn,

There isn't, so he and Jerry work at removing a section of air duct from the ceiling of one of the exhibits. Andi modifies this ((Handyman Skill)) to serve as a fire box. Sitting on the stone floor of the mezzanine, and vented through the roof of the warming hut, it shouldn't catch anything on fire.... but Andi warns that over months and months of use it will dry out the wood around it and make it a fire hazard. Hopefully they'll have something better by then.

Thus, they create a Warming Hut on the mezzanine, with wooden walls and ceiling draped over with tarps and rugs from the textiles collection, and more rugs on he floor inside. The smoke comes out of the hut's roof and drifts up toward the high ceiling of the museum. It will leave a stain but the room is so huge it shouldn't cause any suffocation problems.

It is warmed by a wood fire, and since they now have live guns they even venture outside in their heavy winter gear to harvest some gree wood. Since they were tipped off to the Wiggler's violent behaviour by the Clinic team, they stay away from grees with Wigglers in them. They chop up the wood with a Native American tomohawk and leave it on the mezzanine to dry, using other (dryer) scrap wood from within the museum for their first night's fire.

Tricia even gets to come along on this outdoor excursion, claiming she has done plenty of hatchet work and she'll be useful. Andi and Silas stay behind, where they harvest buckets of snow and take it to the water boiling room. They boil the heck out of it. Courageously, Andi tries a sip while it is still warm. She and Silas wait anxiously to see if she gets ill or dies.

If everyone lives, they will move the water boiling equipment to the warming hut that night, and the warming hut will be their new sleepng area.

The Wolf has slept outside in all kinds of weather, so wrapped in a big warm coat in a storage closet is not the worst he's had. There's no wind at least. He decides not to come out yet.


Important question: Andi is a structural engineer. The Museum is from the Midwest US where they get a lot of snow. How does she feel about the Museum's chances of holding up against the amount of snow they are getting? Is she worried the roof will collapse?

Ray looks at the hurricane-like clouds to the east and frets. He explains that the tall glass window wall of the museum leaks like crazy during a normal thunderstorm. They come up with a plan: if the windows break in the hurricane, they will grab the makeshift wood stove and flee to the sub-basement where there are no windows. If they stay in the textile lab there's even a room with drains in the floor so any water that gets in can drain out. They attach two jerry-rigged handles to the wood stove so they can move it in a hurry if need be.


Okay, if the water doesn't kill them they have a water supply.

For food, they intend to hunt when needed.

For defence against the quadrapeds, they feel safe right now because the quads won't fit through the door to the emergency stairs and hence can't get up to the mezzanine. Plus a quad would have to break into the museum first.

[Maldiem]

Day 3 Wrap-up

Rivera does indeed carry a first aid kit, though he thanks Ray for his concern. He mentions that they can use one of the radios left behind to contact the him and the Clinic if they need to, and says he'll check in when he locates the crew.

Day 4

The Museum

The military group left the majority of its equipment there, as Rivera was unwilling to lug it all back. What remains is 24 days of military rations, 5 military winter uniforms (including body armor), 2 tents, 2 butane stoves, 5 sleeping bags, 5 M16s, 20 clips of M16 ammunition, 5 desert eagles, 10 clips for those, a compass and 5 handheld radios. M16's are old guns, and as such there would be some in the Vietnam era collection.

The warming hut is constructed easily, though once again the smoke detectors prove an obstacle, though Andi has no problem disarming them. The hut drives away the chill, which is somewhat dulled by the insulation of the museum at any rate.

Most Grees have Wigglers in them, and those that don't are quickly "wigglered" by them when they perceive the Gree is threatened. The only reliable way to chop down Gree wood is to frighten or otherwise lure the Wigglers away; this can be achieved with gunfire quite easily.

The lumberjacks think it may not be the best idea to bring the Gree wood in, as it is infested with this planet's insect-equivalents, which were hibernating, but are now abandoning the wood en mass following the felling. They stop coming out after about two hours.

The water tastes fine, and Andi suffers no ill effects. She also thinks the museum roof is probably stable regarding this amount of snow, though she has no idea what will come of the hurricane; on Earth, hurricanes during the winter are unheard of, and she has no idea how much snow it could bring.

As the day wears on, the clouds keep getting closer and closer, and the wind begins to pick up around 3 pm.

The Clinic

The party at the museum wakes up in the Clinic lobby about 30 minutes after falling asleep, and the encounter with the radio occurs shortly after. They wake up naked, with everything they took to the museum gone.

Present Day, June 6th, 2013 (Earth Time), Unknown Location, Unknown Planet, Unknown Star (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RudpFzGLbo)

The crunch of combat boots into fresh slurry quickly dies against the rapidly intensifying curtain of falling snow while Rivera hurries back to the Truman. Light from the planet's two moons gives the entire world an eerie, surreal look, like a forest in the middle of a pro football stadium, each Gree with two opposing, spider like shadows, steamy breath of the Wigglers rising from the most lush. He pulls his goggles over his eyes and switches to Thermal, trying to spot any quadrupeds sneaking up on him. Approaching the marsh, he begins to unpack the inflatable raft.

March 22nd, 2003, Catacombs Beneath the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Near Al Hillah, Iraq, Earth, Sol

"Rivera, Garcia, Stack up," Lieutenant Anderson said, while motioning to the heavy, steel blast door set into the earthen walls of the tunnel. Rivera and another Marine press themselves against the wall beside the door, while another places C4 charges on its hinges. When everything is ready, he says, Do it. Bang and Clear.

The charges go off, slamming the door backward and out of its frame. Rivera and Garcia both clamber through the door, followed by the rest of their unit. A robed man steps out from behind a large, ornamental podium and points a rifle at Rivera. He hears a "pop", and drops to the floor, unable to breathe. Garcia fires a quick burst, and a fine red mist spurts from the man, who crumples to a heap on the floor next to the warped blast door.

Anderson comes over while the remaining marines clear the room, Looks like his little pea shooter bounced off your armor, marine. On your feet.

Groaning, Rivera stands up, a pancaked .22 round falling out of a hole in his uniform as he does so. He takes a minute to catch his breath, inspecting the room all the while.

The room, like the other catacombs his unit had cleared that day, wasn't on any of the maps of the Gardens that the US had access to, nor in any academic writings about the site. The entrance had been a blast door much like the one they'd just cleared, which led to a large number of obviously fresh-dug tunnels. The tunnels, in turn, led to a richly decorated underground temple, though it was obvious from the large number of dirt-filled "windows" and areas with dirt ceilings that this was not always the case. Pictures of ancient Sumerian life decorated the walls, faded to brown by countless centuries of wear, though a number of scenes from the Epic of Gilgamesh were clear enough that Rivera recognized them from high school. Broken pottery, human bones and ancient weapons were all in clear evidence, and it was also clear that the Iraqi army had been using the underground facility as a Uranium enrichment factory, with its own underground generators, labs and industrial centrifuges linked to the ancient temple. This room had been down a wide, steeply sloping stair case.

The room contained 7 horizontal benches, about 20 feet long, arranged in a circle around the ornamented podium that the robed man had hid behind. The man, like all the Iraqis they'd encountered on the off-the-map section of the Gardens, wore a robe, was completely hairless, and bore hieroglyphic tattoos on every exposed section of skin. Also like the others, he'd clamped down on a suicide tooth the instant he dropped, and a pool of foam from his mouth was staining the barrel of the antique .22 rifle that he'd used to shoot Rivera.

The walls of the room were covered in the typical pictures, though these included a theme that the rest of the temple had not-- purplish objects, some obviously aircraft, featured prominently in the scenes, and people with the halos of divinity were depicted interacting with them. Behind the podium, a purple sphere floated, seemingly without any support, and the faint hum of electricity emanated from it.

Garcia had finished clearing the room, and Anderson was notifying Command about their findings. One of the other marines was inspecting the sphere, and reached out a single gloved hand to touch it. The instant the glove touched the surface, the man let out a scream and was sucked, one layer of tissue at a time, into the sphere. While the muscles were disappearing, the rest of the marines pointed their weapons at the sphere apprehensively, and by the time Rivera had reached him to try and pull him away, the last of the bone marrow was disappearing into the object. Everyone backed away, though the ball remained in place, unperturbed as before.

Silence fell, interrupted only by the chatter of command in Anderson's ear
and a few muttered expletives. Anderson spoke up, ""Command wants us topside ASAP. They're calling in the spooks. Expect an intel debriefing on the surface; we're setting up a base here to study this stuff."

The Marsh, June 6th, 2013

Rivera was shocked from his reverie when he was forced to steer around a BSB, asleep in the marsh, that he'd missed on the thermal. The Birds didn't give off much heat, and so he switched back to night vision to steer correctly. It looked like the marsh was a good deal warmer than the air, since steam was rising off of it in waves.

Camp Alpha, March 22nd, 2003, Near Al Hillah, Iraq, Earth, Sol

"Of course you know, all of this is absolutely secret. Not one word about what you saw today to anyone; not your wife, not your kids, not your friends, and definitely not the press. As far as they're concerned, Camp Alpha is strictly here to protect Iraq's cultural history."

Rivera nods sullenly, his thoughts drifting to the unlucky Marine, What about the atomic facility? That was the whole point of the war, right? Can't we at least mention that?

The CIA agent shakes his head, We can't just say we found it. We'd have to say where we found it, and that would invite scrutiny from the press. You saw how dangerous that thing was.

Rivera nods. The agent continues, We're forming a unit to investigate the artifacts right now, and they need protective detail. Since you've already been exposed to the artifact, you're drafted. Welcome to the Clandestine Service, Corporal.

Western Side of the Marsh, June 6th, 2013

Rivera stashed the motor in its bag, pulled the raft's holder across his back, and continued trekking toward the Truman's landing site. A sickly orange glow lit the horizon, and smoke still billowed from the lake. He saw a large, horizontal thermal signature approaching, and buried himself in a snow drift in hopes that the quadruped hadn't noticed him.

CVN-75, Harry S. Truman, May 30th, 2013, San Diego Harbor, Earth, Sol

"Used to be a Marine, did ya, Commander?" the Captain's thick Texas drawl had already started to grate on Rivera, ""Well, you come highly recommended by the Pentagon. They say you're reliable in an emergency, and you might even have some experience with our predicament." Rivera lets a small, sardonic smile slip as the captain says this, though Martinez doesn't seem to notice.
"Speaking of which, those **** spooks that briefed me weren't all that helpful. Just told me the Truman was being transferred to the Pacific, we're to take up a position west of the Galapagos, and only open this folder," he throws a thick, tightly bound folder onto the desk, ""if we're given explicit orders from the Pentagon, or can't reach them for 24 hours. Frankly, Commander, that part scared the hairy bejeezus out of me. You got any insight on that?"

Now Rivera's smile was obvious, "You ever been to Easter Island, Captian?"

Wreckage of CVN-75, USS Harry S. Truman, June 6th, 2013

The fire in the bow section of the Truman had finally gone out, though only the front quarter was in any way intact Wreckage covered the clearing, and Rivera's Geiger counter was crackling in a very unsettling manner. Checking it carefully, Rivera decides that the levels are safe enough, though he certainly won't drink from the waterfall any time soon. He picks his way through the clearing, carefully avoiding the still-smoldering wreckage that covers it. He can't find the crew outdoors, so he decides to brave the bow section of the Truman. He finds a bulkhead door open, and climbs up the side of the ship about 15 feet to reach it. After about 30 minutes of searching the ship, he finds the rest of the crew in one of the bow-ward barracks, taking stock of their position while Serena attempts to re-bandage Sanchez's wound.

((Silvercoin, you can jump back in now, if you'd like.))

((Also, apologies for the Lost-esque exposition assault, but I'd worked in a plot connection with the crew and then a player took over; I figured it would be unfair if I didn't make what they knew known to the other players.))

[Moody the Wise]

Although the events of the past few days have been extraordinary, the clinic team acknowledges that certain basic needs must be met if they want any hope of solving these mysteries. They're not glamorous tasks, but they must be done.

Maricela and Roxanne refine their methods of hunting. They have the idea to remove the Wiggler spines from harvested fruit, and manage to fashion a crude blowgun from some hollowed-out office supplies [depending on the diameter of the spines, a pen might work just fine]. With practice, they get to the point where they can pretty reliably hit a BSB-sized target from a safe distance. They try this with the trap again today [day 4]. When they hit the BSB while it's eating the fruit inside the trap, it tries to run away, but is slowed by the partial paralysis and either collapses not far from the trap, or can be caught up to with the axe [I assumed a little bit there, correct me if I'm wrong]. When they carve up the meat for smoking, they cut around the area where the spine went in, just in case ingesting the toxins would be a bad idea. Neil refines his fruit/spine/wood harvesting methods by taking Sharron with him, whom Maricela and Roxanne train to use a blowgun. Sharron follows behind Neil to harvest the fruit before the BSBs get to it, and uses the blowgun to shoot any that get too close. [That should take care of a renewable food (and burnable wood) supply.]

With the snow setting in, the team begins to use the snow outside for their water distillation, since it is much closer and thus easier and safer to obtain than the ocean water. [That should even more take care of a renewable water supply.]

While the team's clothing, combined with some sheets and blankets from the clinic, keep them pretty warm, they decide that a better source of warmth might as well be found. Maricela teaches Tania how to tan animal hides and make heavy coats out of them [I have one quadruped hide, and should soon have some BSB skins].

[I have caltrops for protection against the quadrupeds, courtesy of the brief visit of the military team]

As much as Seamus, Grace, and Noreen wish to venture back out in search of the dream-gun - and as concerned as they are about Rivera and the Truman crew - they decide that they should see what the clouds to the East bring before they go running around outside. Any team members not specifically mentioned spend their time learning how to do the various tasks of camp life, and harvesting resources as previously described.

[Another_Poet]

HISTORY MUSEUM

Char Sheets & Building Description (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6538450#post6538450)

Family Supplies (now includes Wolf's supplies)
Leatherman multitool (Jerry)
"Paper Cleaver" (paper slicer handle used as a cleaver) (Ray)
Wooden club (Fr Younk)
Cell Phones (2 dead, 4 low battery)
0.25 backpacks' worth of bottled water (4F)
NEW: Water boiling station and nigh-unlimited snow
48 lbs preserved, smoked meat (mezzanine, packed to move)
A warm shawl for everyone
Hats & mittens for everyone
1 fur coat (Andi)
2 jackets (the kids have them)
4 quilts (4F)
NEW: 3 Vietnam-era M-16's with 20 clips of real ammo (Jerry, Ray, Silas)
20 guns of assorted time periods, none loaded with actual ammunition (4F)
NEW: 20 days of military rations, (mezzanine, packed to move)
NEW: 5 military winter uniforms (including body armor) everyone but Tricia)
NEW: 2 tents, (mezzanine)
NEW: 2 butane stoves (warming hut)
NEW: 5 sleeping bags (stashed in basement in case hut is destroyed)
NEW: 5 modern M16s with no ammo,
NEW: 5 desert eagles with no ammo
NEW: 5 old pistols with 2 clips apiece (Tricia, Andi, Jerry, Younk, 1 hidden)
NEW: a compass
NEW: 5 handheld radios (4 turned off, one kept on to listen for chatter in the warming hut)
NEW: 12 butter torches (8 on mezzanine, 4 stored in basement)
NEW: Gallon of ghee for cooking (warming hut on Mezzanine)
A knife or bayonet for everyone
1 couch (4F)
8 cushions (4F)
8 swords
4 spears
2 Tomahawks
1 waste management "truck" (cart with chamber pots & garbage can)
1 trash can full of water (in basement in case the hut is lost)
1 Warming Hut with cooking/water-boiling station (mezzanine)
Silas' pot stash (90% left)
Wolf's lockpicks


DAY 5

All ammo is transferred from the modern M-16's to Vietnam era M-16's. Jerry worries they might jam, but looks them over and does any basic maintenance. This way if the military shows up and wants their guns back, they can give up the guns without the ammo. They keep the antique guns around too.

The team does not shoot their guns to scare off the Wigglers. They must conserve precious ammo. Instead they will try a variety of noises to scare them off.

If that doesn't work they split up. One large team will go assault a Wiggler-free gree. As soon as the Wigglers reach that tree they back off our of projectile range. Meanwhile two of the men assault a gree 500 feet away with hatchets. When the Wigglers go back to defend it, they repeat this cycle.

If the Wigglers grow wise and stop falling for the fakeout, they will simply cut down the tree they were using as a decoy instead.

They gather as much wood as possible. They know it would be easier to scavenge more furniture from the Museum but they want to save that. Plus Ray reminds them much of it has historical value. "We should wait to burn it till Christmas," he jokes.

With the gree wood debugged and drying on the mezzanine, they also bring in trash cans full of snow so they will have a supply of water to boil without having to go outside.

They have a serious argument about Wolf (who is not present). Andi was surprised and conflicted by the military's easy acknowledgment of their right to self-determination. It reminds her that people can surprise you by being good. She wants to bring Wolf into the family. Ray is less convinced and reminds her that the man has shown no useful skills, hasn't lifted a finger and left him and Silas to die when they heard gunfire.

Fr. Younk has a suggestion. He sort of slyly eases his way between the husband and wife, and sets down a stack of roleplaying books and some dice. "Maybe we could invite him for a game..."

Ray agrees that he can tolerate the man for a game. No one knows if the Wolf will actually want to play, but Andi (armed with a pistol) and Fr Younk go ask him.

They have to hunt around for the man in the basement. He does finally come out. He has never tried RPing before and isn't really sure what it is but he is lonely in the caverns of the basement and agrees to come up.

While they are on this errand, Tricia takes butter from the Cafe kitchen and refines it all into Ghee (a simple boiling process, to clarify it - ghee is used for both cooking and as lamp oil in India). Ghee is less rich than butter but can keep almost forever at room temperature, if sealed. She seals most of it for later cooking use and smears some onto strips of cloth wound around chair legs, making a dozen torches they can use if needs be. Jerry helps her with the torch-making. At first Tricia is kind of cold to him, as she has been very distant since being ordered into the vents. But he gets her to chat. If the older man didn't know better, he'd say she was even flirting with him.

The group explains the basic concepts of D&D to the Wolf over a dinner of rations. They have a hard time communicating, as he talks almost in riddles or zen koans. he doesn't say anything directly. It's like he's spaced out. But he gets into character creation and it's clear he's having a good time. The others are a bit nervous but they try to relax around the man. There is some liberal guilt about not liking a homeless guy. Younk, having worked with the poor a lot, seems to get along with him fine however - he accepts his weird mannerisms at face value, and takes a gentle but authoritative tone when needed.

Stocked with food, water, fuel and warm clothing the group plays D&D into the evening. Andi explains what sorts of noises are normal settling and what are bad signs. She is worried about how the foundation of the building may (or may not) be seated on the ground of this place. She suggests they keep watches all night.

Eventually the topic comes up of where Wolf should sleep. Everyone seems relaxed by the bonding experience over the game. They're able to draw him out a bit without outright inviting him up but also without looking down on him. They basically want to know if they can trust him to sleep and live with them.

"I don't really like to sleep in a crowded place," he explains. "I a go back down the basement. But I come back up for meals and sh*t."

They talk some more and they explain that they'll need a fallback shelter, perhaps in the sturdy basement, in case the roof shows signs of collapse up here. The agreement in the end is that Wolf will basically oversee the basement nest, and live on his own as he sees fit, and he'll be welcome at the fire in the warming hut anytime. On this note, everyone seems happy with everyone.

"You all got any more of that weed?" asks Wolf to cement the deal.

There's an awkward silence. Then Fr Younk laughs and looks at Silas. "Might as well bring it out, bud."

Ray and Andi exchange a look that quickly gives way to a round of giggles. They haven't smoked up since just after college. And, as it turns out, Tricia has never smoked up.

The family and friends game the night away, high as kites, with plenty of food to eat. Some of them walk Wolf down with some supplies to his basement cubby, making sure everything is tightly sealed so Wigglers can't come for the butter torches. Then they assign the watch order for the night. Whoever's on watch listens to the sounds the building makes (if any) and keeps an eye out for lights or movement in the snow, or chatter on the radio.

It would've been better to do it sober, but stoned will have to work.

[Maldiem]

Day 5-6

As the Teams batter down for the night, the storm closes in. The ocean gets extremely rough, and a storm surge pushes it almost up to the door of the Museum, and it does actually flood part of the basement near the loading dock. The wind picks up to a howling roar, and this is quickly punctuated by driven sleet, traveling almost horizontally.

The sleet and the hail that follow it make it feel like the buildings are constantly being pelted with birdshot, and for a few minutes at the height of the winds, the hail is actually driven through the drywall on the east-facing side of the Clinic. Those in the rooms sustain some minor abrasions as the BB-sized ice pellets hit them, though they don't go through any more walls.

Luckily, the main body of the storm veers South before it hits the part of the coast the Teams are on, and aside from that violent hour, the rest of the night is characterized by only heavy winds and driving, cold rain.

In the morning, the clouds are distinctly to the South of the humans, and a clear day has already begun-- the sun is up, and the snow, already wet from the deluge the night before, is turning quickly to mud.

The Clinic

It looks like Wiggler toxin is far more potent against BSBs than it is against Humans, as the BSB hit with the spine drops immediately, and seems to have died close to instantly. The BSBs, though, quickly learn that people are dangerous, and the traps only work two or three times.

The snow boiling works quite well, though in the next week the snow will be no more.

((Clinic is good to go for a week. Go ahead and state your actions for the week, and I'll do my best to respond.))

The Museum

Making noise does nothing but attract Wigglers, though the fakeout the team tries works very well, and the critters don't seem smart enough to adapt to it.

The basement takes a foot of water in the lowest level. I'm assuming that's the loading dock?

((The Museum's food supply is limited, but it will hold a week, and all the other needs are met. Go ahead and state actions.))


((I'm working on another post or two tonight that are plot relevant. Give me time.))