[Desolation] Chapter 1: Digging In

WlfSamurai

WlfSamurai

Maelstrom Engineer
Okay, to start our first chapter off, let's highlight stats. We're supposed to take turns, but we'll do this the way you guys did Hx.


So, find the character on you sheet that you know the best (has the highest Hx) and ask them to highlight a stat for you.


Please bold all character names you use so it's easier.


Highlighted Stats for Chapter 1:

  • Red Bean: Weird / Sharp
  • Ryoma: Hot / Cool
  • Fauci: Sharp / Weird
  • Koch: Hard / Sharp
  • Graves: Sharp / Cool
  • Buzz: Sharp / Cool
  • Hooper: Hard / Weird
 
Hooper, you need to highlight one of Fauci's stats. While Red Bean is weird (in ways you may never know), Fauci got to name my stat.
 
Ahhh sorry. I'm very tired and things sometimes I don't read all the way through.


Fauci: all those car parts don't make sense. You have to be Sharp!
 
Graves, Ryoma and Hooper are all tied for top place with a whopping +1 each.


Graves signs any paycheck I might get, so I'm hoping to find out what stat of mine he finds interesting.
 
Koch is a Hard woman, and I can respect that.


Damned if I know why that Hooper keeps hangin' around, but it's less trouble than trying to kill her. I wonder what she's so fixated on?
 
As I said in the OOC, while we wait for the last few HIghlights, I'm going to start asking the questions that will build our world. Remember, this is a conversation and world-building/details will be very collaborative.


As some of you know already, the Apocalypse was about 50 years ago.


From the text:


"Nobody remembers how or why. Maybe nobody ever knew. The oldest living survivors have childhood memories of it: cities burning, society in chaos then collapse, families set to panicked flight, the weird nights when the smoldering sky made midnight into a blood-colored half-day.


"Now the world is not what it was. Look around you: evidently, certainly, not what it was. But also close your eyes, open your brain: something is wrong. At the limits of perception, something howling, everpresent, full of hate and terror. From this, the world’s psychic maelstrom, we none of us have shelter."


So, let's talk about our Apocalypse World. Let's talk about our Desolation.


General Questions:

  1. Is there anything different about the sky?
  2. Has the landscape changed at all?
  3. Do people actually barter/trade or is there some form of currency?


Graves:

  1. Tell me about your holding.
    • How did you come about it?
    • Are there any defenses?



Everyone else:

  1. Do you live in Grave's holding or somewhere else?
 
Out there in the wilderness, most of the trade is barter, to my knowin'. All I know is, that ain't welcome in my hold. We got the old license-plate makin' machine in the prison going a ways back, and I figured using them to make some kinda coinage'd be a good idea. So whatever they do out there, you come in here and you get paid in what you can spend here. You want to trade outside? Buy something nice and go nuts, partner.


Got this place way back, when I used to a caravan guard. Some raiders hit us, took out the chief, wounded a few. Before everyone else could start runnin' around like headless chickens I led us into this old prison. Was empty at the time - guess I should've been more suspicious of that - and thanks to them big, high walls and natural chokepoints, we fended off the raiders. Been here ever since.


Got some 'luggers with heavy weapons patrollin' the walls, but man I could do with one of them fancy fixed-emplacement things...
 
My face led me here. I could have climbed the walls. I always can find ways in and out. But face said walk in. The guards wanted face to come off so we took theirs. Then Graves stepped out and told us to stop. I didn't want to but mask said to make a deal.


I do jobs now. I don't have to walk the wastes under the amber sky. I don't sleep in old buildings with desks and paper. I don't have to wander the tall buildings for food.


Graves gives me food for jobs. I sleep in one of the soft small rooms with white walls. Sometimes people try to get me or face. Their bodies will sit around my room for days until graves sends for me.


If he has tried to kill me, he doesn't show it but my face says he has. I don't care.


I don't care about much anymore.


They give me little metal pieces. They fall out of their hands and make a stop at mine before continuing to the ground. I don't pay for food. I take it.


If it needs doing. My face will tell me. If I want something, my face knows.


Sometimes people talk to me. They come not to die at the entrance of my cell but to ask questions. Most don't bother anymore. They ask, take of your face! Or they ask, what are you.


I know I can't take off my face as easy I as take of theirs but I say that and they leave. I like talking to people. My face sometimes gets grouchy but I tell it to stop.


It sounds weird when I talk to myself or to face. The walls here don't echo right. The soft padding makes it quiet.


My face is too loud when it is quiet. It knows but doesn't care sometimes. My face is not nice then. It goes away and apologizes when it is dark and all alone. Then it comes back.


I never want it to leave anyways. It hurts without it.


Outside the walls. There are others. I think could see them walking at night. Then lugs shoot them. They run. Looters. They live in a place out there. It has lots of food. AMSCLU. They have a little town. I killed lots of people there for that food.


I left and then the people that didn't die got people with guns. The people with guns got mad and made AMSCLU theirs. Now it has lots of people with guns.


I have to talk to my face about killing them again. They try to get me here. I think Graves knows. Maybe Koch to. Not the pretty Bean. I like her color but she has weird people. Ryoma is pretty too. Her skin is nice and colorful. No weird people but she is talkier than I am. I don't like that.


I still like her though. And Graves. Even though my face doesn't say I should and my face says ill be hurt bad again if I say I like people. I can like things. Things aren't people. Things don't beg and scream and cry and burn like I used to.


Maybe I am a thing too.


My face and I are happy in our room. We are thing together. I don't want to talk about times before my face. Anything good is after I found my face. I lost it at the Pens. I lost it when I wasn't a person.


My face and I are happy we found each other again.
 
If the sky were ever another color, how would Ryoma know? She was born under that brilliant amber-crimson sky, under that dusky sun, and has never known any world but this one. Old Man Kaname raised her, and he might remember; he had been one of the Old Bones, those who remembered the Great Before, the golden-age. Far important than speculation of celestial hues is the dharma.


Likewise of the earth. Ryoma has only perceived the grey-red ruins, the desert, the rust and the fields of scrapped 'cars.' Supposedly they once moved on their own, but personally she has never seen such a thing. Whether it has always been so is an irrelevant question. The Now is the solitary concern of the dharma, and these dreams, this nostalgia for a world but a handful of living souls can even vaguely recall, is but another distraction.


The metal pieces Graves hands out are little pieces of attachment, but necessary ones to survive in his toy fortress. She arrived here (days? weeks? months? she has repudiated time) ago to preach the dharma, to disseminate it to as many as she can to keep the light of wisdom alive in the world. Such is the burden of those on the path of enlightenment. She has taken up residence in one of the cells and taught anyone who would gather in front of her dirty, ratty mat when she lays it out in the morning.
 
Awesome. So people live in the cells. Love that.


Are any of the cells used to hold prisoners (captured raiders, etc)?


Do we have a name for the stamped coins?
 
We just call the coins 'stamps' mostly. It's a bit unwieldy, though. Need someone who knows their numbers better'n me to get some proper dee-nomi-nations sorted.


Got a couple of empty old armories in here, nice secure ones that make good offices or holding cells, depending on what you need 'em for. I keep a couple for VIP Housing, heh.
 
The world sent dead its just sick. The skies are never clear, always with that persistent golden haze that robs the light farm our eyes and casts a tinge of illness over everything. She knows that there were once days where they rain from the sky didn't taste like motor oil, when a breeze didn't smell of cinders and rot, when water from a stream did not taste like metal. When the sound of a dream didn't buzz like a welders torch, when screams from last year would fade and be replaced by laughter of children.


Red Bean knows all of this, she just knows.


She lives in a cell. Most of the bars have been removed and forged into something else, somewhere. When she is lucky, she can string up small scraps of cloth as curtains before she needs to trade them for food or shoes.


She heard that Fauci made the metal crushing thing work again. They now have stamps to trade but she still prefers to know what she has and not hold onto small circles of metal. She has students, most sleep in the same block as her. Some are older, some are young. They ask questions about the time before, the Golden Age, of what it was like and if they will ever get back there. She tells them what she knows.


She talks about the prophets and that they saw it coming but no one would listen. She wonders if people are listening now or if what she sees will go unheard until they lose everything.


Yeah, a storm is threatening


My very life today


If I don't get some shelter


Lord, I'm gonna fade away


War, children, yeah, it's just a shot away


It's just a shot away


War, children, yeah, it's just a shot away


It's just a shot away, hey, yeah


Oh, see the fire is sweepin'


At our streets today


Burnin' like a red coal carpet


A mad bull lost its way


War, children, yeah, it's just a shot away


It's just a shot away


War, children, yeah, it's just a shot away


It's just a shot away, hey, yeah
 
Once I settled in to my cell and was comfortable - as comfortable as one can get when you are on the verge of starving and wondering who might steal your crap - I decided to start asking around about a few things.


Does anyone know how far away from the sea are we? Is it an ocean or just a bay that leads out to sea?


Where do we get our water? Do we have a well, or do we just rely on rainwater?


Is there a local river, or just small streams?


Do we have local farms that we protect, or do we have to barter for foods with outsiders?


As far as the 'stamps' go, I have seen people break them into halves and quarters for little things they need. Like, for a meal, or for someone to sew a new sole onto your shoes you don't have to spend a whole stamp just to get something. Of course you can't put them back together again unless you take it to Fauci or someone who can melt the edges back, but there are people who will trade a bunch of quarters for stamps, and they will only take a quarter from you to do it.
 
Got raincatchers on the roof, and one of the villages I protect has a deep well. They pay their protection in fresh water, mostly.


Keep the rain water for the farms we do got inside the walls - just a few vegetable patches and a dozen raggedy cows. You know, a guy once told me cows is only meant to have two eyes - so I asked him, how are they meant to see night-ghasts coming with only two eyes?


Shut him up.
 
If you walk far into the tall grey buildings. The ones days away from the prison. If you get past the raiders and their homes, there is a beach. And water. All on the way it goes up and there is a bridge that goes off into the fog.


I haven't waked further than that. But I waked back down and followed it around. Face says it is a lake and it goes to rivers.


I don't like it, to get to it you have to kill lots of people and walk too long. The wastes around the prison are better.
 
Could never let myself sleep in one of those cells. Can anyone sleep feeling that exposed?


If I sleep much at all, it's on the van floor, in the shed-turned-garage Graves let me have.


Hardly fits the van, so if I'm not using it, I'll lend it out to a couple people, if they think they can barter out there. Be lucky if they come back with anything at all, except the select few who actually know what they're doing. I like to give 'em an equal shot, so long as they have it back before I plan on crashing.


Otherwise I'll park it somewhere in the courtyard. Never overnight, though. Crazy fuckers will climb the wall and fuck it up. Not having any of that.
 
Don't sleep in the cells.


I don't trust them and I don't particularly trust stamps. Not that the man behind them seems to have any real malicious intent, I've seen other groups run in a similar way with those tools being used more effectively than a gun and a threat to keep people in line. Plus people here aren't being gutted to do shit like read the future or appease a mysterious being. Things like that start going down, then I'll have a problem with this place.


Even still, I'm not sleeping in a tiny ass space meant to hold people. I took one of the guard rooms for myself. There were a lot of lockers in there at one point, most of them got ripped out and portioned out to people sleeping in the cells and stuff. Long wooden benches were between the rows, I took out most of those and cut 'em down to make a decent bed. I traded off the spare wood for padding. Maybe a few threats too. Made myself a sleeping spot better than I've had in my recollection. Some pipes were in here feeding water into a part of the room here. Those got taken out and used up in some project so I made that space into my little workshop to take care of my tools.


Worried someone'll break in and mess with shit. I've found some locks at the market, scavenged some from the prison. Not sure if they'll be enough.
 
Fuck me, Koch, you only had to ask for a bit of extra security. You help fix up a few things here and there, and that'll earn you it.
 
(Damnit I lol'd)


I don't have



like Fauci, but I've learned a bit out of improvisin'. So let me know what or who you want fixed, so long as it'll keep people from stickin' their noses where they might get shot off.
 
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