Worse Than the Disease IC

[Volthawk]

Richard keeps aiming, wanting to ensure that he actually hits this time.

[GnomesofZurich2]

With some more targets in sight, Tariq is going to pull out his last frag grenade.

[Shoot Da Moon]

TURN 3

The raider boss keeps waiting in the doorway.

Tariq sees the raiders on the ground floor slowly approach the stairs up.

[u-b]

Sean Pires

Hearing no movement from the raider boss, Sean stands up* next to the doorway and looks around for options.

Spoiler

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*Provided there is a wall there and not a window.

Looking for:
1. Possibility to get the dead raider's SMG and/or other gear without exposing any own body parts to opportunity fire.
2. Possibility to drag the whole raider's body to facilitate the above.
3. Any windows on Sean's side of the doorway and guesstimates of presence of line of sight from them to the boss room's doorway.
4. Difficulty of climbing from the balcony down to ground level, time required for it, and possible consequences of falling.

[Shoot Da Moon]

Spoiler

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Looking for:
1. Possibility to get the dead raider's SMG and/or other gear without exposing any own body parts to opportunity fire.
2. Possibility to drag the whole raider's body to facilitate the above.
3. Any windows on Sean's side of the doorway and guesstimates of presence of line of sight from them to the boss room's doorway.
4. Difficulty of climbing from the balcony down to ground level, time required for it, and possible consequences of falling.

Spoiler

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1) The dead raiders are too far from you, closer to the raider boss than you.
2) The dead bodies would require a grappling hook to drag them closer without you moving. Unlikely.
3) Moving to the right (Sean's left?) would get Sean out of sight of the doorway, and out of danger for a bit...
4) Climbing down could take too long, perhaps a minute, -2 penalty, about 3-5 yards fall on a failure.

[Volthawk]

Richard keeps aiming - with the state he's in and this gun, weight of fire isn't the way to go.

[GnomesofZurich2]

Tariq pulls the pin on his grenade.

[Shoot Da Moon]

TURN 4

The raider boss is tired of waiting. He moves right towards where Sean is hiding, still keeping cover between them.

(OOC: Move 7.)

The ground floor raiders, Tariq can see, are ascending the stairs two by two. They are relatively clustered, and about four steps up. In two more such moves, they'll reach the top...

[u-b]

Sean Pires

Hearing the raider boss approaching, Sean gets his right half out of the cover and into the doorway, intending to shoot the raiger boss and get out of the doorway whatever the outcome.

[Shoot Da Moon]

The bad guy saw it coming, he quickly ducks away as Sean fires his shots. As Sean gets back into cover, he hears the ragged breathing and gruesome confidence of the unharmed man.

[GnomesofZurich2]

Seeing his targets moving away, Tariq continues his approach to the building.

(OOC: Move 6, 3 seconds left in the grenade's fuse)

[Volthawk]

Richard's fire is once again too inaccurate to be of any use.

[Shoot Da Moon]

TURN 5

The raider boss may have noticed the missed shot from Richard, but he stays focused on Sean anyway.
He blazes away with his heavy revolver - firing 3 shots at the exiled scout despite the cover...

Tariq sees the bad guys go up the stairs some more - they are now somewhere half way to the upper floor...

[u-b]

Sean Pires

Sean does his best to attack the boss raider without being shot dead afterwards.

[Shoot Da Moon]

The bad guy's chief manages to juke around enough to avoid two of Sean's bullets...but the third hits him in the chest.

It is a brutal wound. For a moment, the boss simply stand there like a deer in a car's headlights.

Then he shakes it off, grunting in pain all the while.

[GnomesofZurich2]

Tariq continues to move, trying to get to an angle from where he can throw the grenade into the stairwell.

(OOC: 2 seconds left on the grenade's fuse)

[Volthawk]

Richard moves closer to the building - trying to land shots from where he was obviously wasn't working.

[Shoot Da Moon]

TURN 6

The heavily wounded SOB seems desperate to take someone down with him - Sean will do. He raises his heavy revolver...and then passes out.

Down stairs, the raiders have reached the last step of the down stairs. They are at the precipice of the upper floor now. Sean can see the tops of their heads now - their faces on some of them, the ones didn't have a mask to wear.

[u-b]

Sean Pires

Sean crouches to brace the rifle on the windowsill and aims at the first guy's head. He announces that much.

"Lisnen now, guys! I'll shoot your heads off with slightest provocation, but your boss now is dead and we have the mission accomplished. Want to join him or maybe you have other plans?"

Spoiler

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Not sure how Sean sees them as he's out of the doorway. A window maybe?

[GnomesofZurich2]

Tariq hurls the grenade as high up the stairway as he can, shouts "Fire in the hole!", and then starts moving to get out of line of sight of those on the stairs.

[Shoot Da Moon]

The raiders seem unimpressed by Sean's threats...but the grenade Tariq throws at them reminds them that fear is sometimes a rational response.

The blast tears up their clothes and skin like a wet tissue in a blender. The flying metal renders them all bloodied heaps splayed out and sliding on the stairs.

(OOC: Combat time is over, I believe. All the bad guys are out of the action.)

[u-b]

Sean Pires

Seeing the raiders' heads disappearing after the blast, Sean turns to other issues. He comes to the railing of the balcony and taps the magazine of his rifle while looking at Richard. "Can you throw me one?" Having presumably replaced the magazine holding one round with the magazine holding twenty, Sean takes a stealthy tour of the lodge, starting with the upper floor. The main purpose of this is to look for any possible remaining raiders or some such. Finding no one animate, sean returns to the boss' room and looks for a radio there, presumably somewhere in the open.

Spoiler: If there is a radio

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Sean does not touch any knobs, instead identifying the microphone and the corresponding button. He pushes the button and says into the microphone. "Everybody dies. Over." Then he releases the button and listens for any response.

Spoiler

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Is Richard's ammo on our google sheet up to date? Because Sean's is.

[Shoot Da Moon]

Sean finds no more living conscious enemies - he suspects they'll die of blood loss soon if they haven't passed away yet. A lot of the lower guards' equipment was damaged or destroyed by grenades going off, although the upper floors are intact.

The room that the boss came from was packed with stuff - everything that a pack of murdering robbing jerks would need to co-ordinate their violence.

There is a radio in there. Sean fiddles with it a bit, causing the voice on the other end to panic, "Shivers, CODE BLACK! CODE BLACK!! Everyone, pull out, they got the boss!"
Guess that means the ski resort is gonna safe enough, soon enough.

The boss' "command post" room also contains a map of the area, some scribbled scouting reports, supplies of various kinds (mostly ammo), and finally a sheaf of papers containing orders for the raiders from their superiors.

“Report back to Officer Bruckner at Point T (see map) if issues relating to Priority Orders come up.”
The map on the wall has a "T" marked in red on it - 20 miles away north from the ski resort.

The next paper is...
“Priority Orders;
* Shelters 30 and 51 must be contained
* rob and suppress all non-aligned regional civilizations
* protect home base and keep its location secret
* eliminate regional opposition
* secure civilians for forced labor
* find and destroy cloning facilities and all clones/mutants
* eliminate HVTs (see list below)
* protect Shelter 44 and hide all evidence of its existence”

The last paper in the "IMPROTANT" pile is...
“List of High Value Targets;
* opposing gangs (The Troubleshooters, The Vermont Rangers, The Black Parade, The Arrowstorm, The Snow Bunnies)
* rogue Shelter inhabitants (33, 55, and 66 declared rogue)
* army of mutant clones named “The Sinful Nature”
* recent Shelter 44 exiles”

That last point has a series of photos attached to it - he is shocked to find they depict him and his comrades! And the photos are not just snaps taken in the wilderness by a scout, but they seem copied from his official Shelter 44 file!

[u-b]

Sean Pires

"Okay, everyone with the radio should be retreating now, but I still want to be on a safe side. How about we plant a mine on the eastern road near its connection to the parking lot? We have a lot to do here, so might as well occupy the lodge overnight. Then we start to gather the things, starting with my backpack and the mutants that are farthest away. I want to chat with some people of each faction, so we might want to provide first aid to our choice of survivors, provided they are properly bound. The guys attacking the lodge should be probably saved to the fullest extent possible."

[Volthawk]

"Yeah, that makes sense. We should definitely check if any of those mutants survived it - it's worth checking out anyone opposed to these guys, and hopefully being out of an immediate battle might make them a little better at recognising who their enemies actually are."

Richard's focus isn't so much on Sean's plan once he sees the information in the boss' room, and starts reading through it. There was a lot of useful information here, and some that wasn't as immediately valuable but was interesting - so those mutants were clones, huh? He didn't know that was something the old world did, let alone that someone could be doing it in the new one - but the Shelter-related information is what drew the most of his attention. The information seemed to confirm the theory that these people originated from a Shelter, Shelters 33, 55 and 66 were presumably the designations for what the locals called Bread Basket, Red Brick and Gunmetal, 30 and 51 were being contained - what was going on there, then? Some kind of disease or...something to do with this advanced technology, the cloning and nanomachines and such, that they were seeing more and more? - and 44...how did 44 relate to all this? If this army had access to 44's records, and standing orders to protect it, 44 must have some relevance to them, but how did that line up with the four of them getting exiled and then put on the HVT list? If 44's leadership was involved in this, they would have just killed Richard and the others rather than sending them out into the world and then trying to have the army kill them. So was 44 ignorant of the...protection...the army was giving them, and the fact that they had access to 44's records? Perhaps Shelters had some way of accessing each other's records...

"Hey Sean, before we got exiled, you came out here on scouting trips, right? What did you do out here? Did the scouts ever meet people?"

[Shoot Da Moon]

Sean has never heard of any other Shelter than his own. He knows there were other Shelters, and he is pretty sure some rumours on the outside think there were multiple Shelters still hidden. But the official line inside Shelter 44 is that they lost all contact with other Shelters in the early days of the plague. Since being exiled, Sean has heard that various large settlements in Vermont used to be Shelters, until they opened up decades ago.

Local ignorant folklore does whisper ominously about some secret underground cloning facilities that pump out horrors into the region.

He recognises the names, except for "The Troubleshooters", as regional militia groups. The Snow Bunnies are the white camo soldiers using this ski resort as a base, who Sean and his friends are helping out now. The Vermont Rangers patrol the roads to the north, wearing the uniforms of the old world military. The Black Parade are weirdos who have a castle as a base, who like dressing up as knights and wielding black powder guns and swords. The Arrowstorm are primitivists who lurk around the woods and camp sites, with spears, trained animals, slings, hatchets and bows.

Looting the place and the bodies earns him and his comrades a good haul.

The 3 dead mutants - one of them is missing when they get back to them - were carrying not much but 3 cheap 10G double shotguns, 5 shotgun shells, and 3 sets of improvised armour. Maybe they were keeping their other stuff somewhere else?

A lot of the first floor dead people were blasted by Tariq's grenades, or by Molotov cocktails. This ruined a lot of loot, but not all of it. Various melee weapons are unharmed, including a large knife, 2 spears, 3 clubs, 10 crossbow bolts and 2 crossbows. A careful search finds a pair of wire cutters, 6 rations, 4 bottles of opioid pills (21 pills in all), 8 bottles of water, 4 hand flares, 6 small batteries, and a 60 yard roll of duct tape. The dead bear lodge raiders also suffered from explosions...but the 4 upper floor guards all had their cheap Rolling Block rifles each, two still with bullets ready loaded, 4 loaded cheap revolvers, 4 sets of leather armour, and 8 rifle bullets.

The raider boss, still breathing but with a ragged hole in his solar plexus, has a bunch of neat stuff on him - a set of improvised steel plate armour, a cavalry sabre in a sheathe on his belt, a heavy 44M revolver loaded with 3 bullets, and 6 more pistol bullets in his pocket.

The room where the boss was hiding in contains more supplies. 30 bullets for a pistol or a SMG, 30 rations, 5 gallons of gasoline, 20 plastic bottles of water, 4 hand flares, a first aid kit, 2 medium batteries, 3 small batteries, 3 Molotov cocktails, a full cigarette lighter, 4 packs of nicotine cigarettes, 3 revolver speed loaders, 1 empty gun magazine, 2 pounds of Bullet components, 10 shotgun shells and 10 rifle bullets.

There are no survivors they can find, except for the raider boss and one of the upper floor guards. The rest are dragged outside. He can find a few sets of car keys, and he checks the cars as well. Both of them are pretty beat up. One car contains 2 gallons of gasoline, a hand flare, three bottles of water, and a big heavy blanket for keeping warm. The other car has been stripped clean of gear except for a road atlas - maybe it was meant to stay here, to be loaded up only when the raiders need to bug out?

By the time, Sean is done, he eats a meal and drinks some water as he sees the sun has fully set. It is now very dark - completely dark just 100 metres out from the ski resort. He figures it could around early night, latest afternoon?

(OOC: Both cars have 5 flaws.)

[GnomesofZurich2]

Tariq leafs through the information in the boss' office, it's a lot to take in. Responding to Sean's direction, he'll go plant a mine up the road. When he comes back and starts going through the loot, he points out, "Hey, this boss-guy is still breathing...if we patch him up, maybe we can get some more information from him?"

[u-b]

Sean Pires

"Well, not out here. We never went nearly that far, and the Protocol was strict about contacts, so whenever we saw any people, we mostly did our best not to engage with them. I wasn't even informed about other Shelters, to tell you the through, as prominent as they are."

Looking at the raider boss wound, Sean is somewhat pessimistic.

"Go ahead and bandage him. He probably will not survive without sugrery and to get it would be a test of his luck. Maybe we will be able to dump him somewhere Red Brick or Gunmetal, in exchange for infos. I doubt we have facilities, qualifications and time to do it ourselves, either the surgery or the interrogation. It's not like we'll let this one go freely after a friendly chat. For our private interrogations I would rather have the other one. He is alive as well and might be easier to find some consensus with. Please, just simple bandaging, I don't want them awake."

Spoiler

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Sean took half the bullets from Richard. We have some more in the loot, which I hope to put on the sheet some time this weekend.

Also, I have recorded 40 empty casings, please correct this estimate if necessary.

Ready to camp for the night, Sean taking two first shifts.

[GnomesofZurich2]

Tariq bandages up both the boss and the guard, and just to make they don't get away uses some duct tape to tie them up.

[Shoot Da Moon]

Tariq does a good job, and is quite sure the raiders will live...in captivity.

The bear lodge has a few rooms that have been used as sleeping quarters by the Snowbunnies. The exiles can use these rooms for an overnight stay.

(OOC: Any other business before we move on to the next day?)