Badass Dragons of the Wasteland - Round Four Mission Topic (finally!)

[daneel]

Also, it might help Bubba and Des to have someone else along for the ride.

[bizmail_public]

nope: we’re done.

I’ll post a summary shortly. Short answer: Desmond Baltar is the God of Hollywood.

[daneel]

Back at the convoy, De’Ath hears faint snatches of what sounds like…Celine Dion(?) drifting over from the Citadel, miles hence.

He suppresses an involuntary shudder.

What the hell is Junior doing with that E.A.R.A.C.H.E. of his?

Those poor people.

[anon73629133]

GodMode (GM) said:

During his warmup lap, Knife took note of the bas-relief sculpture at the south end of the room.  It appeared to depict a muscular, hirsute man being shorn of his luxurious locks by a beautiful woman while he slept.  It seemed an odd objet d'art for a tire factory until Knife recognized **DELILAH** robbing Samson of his legendary strength by cutting his hair.  The sculpture had seen better days and appeared to show a few cracks, but the wall seemed otherwise quite thick and solid, and Knife couldn't think of what might lie beyond it.

@drman321

Oh oh oh symbolism! The only thing I love more than symbolism is a little breaking and entering. If someone can draw Fleetwood’s attention away just enough I can let some FP rip on that statue and wall and see what is behind. Remember, for all he knows I am a scout.

.
.

Junior keys the Mic: Delilah? Makes me think of that good old song,
by one damn good Taffy.

.

- YouTube

I saw the light on the night that I passed by her window
I saw the flickering shadows of love on her blind
She was my woman

As she deceived me I watched and went out of my mind

My, my, my, Delilah
Why, why, why, Delilah

I could see that girl was no good for me
But I was lost like a slave that no man could free

At break of day when that man drove away, I was waiting
I cross the street to her house and she opened the door
She stood there laughing

I felt the KNIFE in my hand and she laughed no more

My, my, my Delilah
Why, why, why Delilah

So before they come to break down the door
Forgive me Delilah I just couldn’t take any more
Forgive me Delilah I just couldn’t take any more*

{as the song closes, a faint sob comes across the E.A.R.A.C.H.E}

[gwwar]

@Donald_Petersen

Channing ascended the ramps to the gallery and took note of possible egresses up there. These windows were not bulletproof, unlike the downstairs ones, and in fact several were already broken out. Channing saw a couple of places where, with the proper application of SPeed, ManeuVerability, and pure badassery, a driver could haul ass down the gallery, catch air off one of the improvised berms, blast through the windowframe, and then plummet down to… what? She couldn’t quite make out what lay beneath those windows outside, but she seemed to remember a lot of twisted metal and burning stacks of tires outside the building. Might be tough.

Tough. Good thing the Hilux was one tough beast. It could take some abuse. Channing knew. It had already been driven into a few trees while she had run down raiders, been absent-mindedly parked in the middle of the lake, and could tough out a bit of fire (though Channing wasn’t sure if it had gotten rid of those insects), but that Japanese ENgineering always persevered, and the Hilux would always start up without fail.

Those flimsy windowframes? That would be like driving through wallpaper. In fact, this reminded her of one spectacular dinner gone horribly wrong. Before she got to order off the desert menu, Channing ended up running away from The Stig’s scary larger American cousin, and had unfortunately shred his up his BBQ shack while making her escape. Her Hilux was, of course, unscathed.

Blinking away thoughts about intimidating white Simpson helmets, Channing eyed the berm, revving up the engine, ready to drop the clutch for maximum acceleration. Sure, Channing wasn’t quite sure what was outside of the window, but she never did think too far ahead with this much adrenaline pumping in her veins.

Skeet shooting was all fun and good, but if things went south…

–that jump was totally doable.

Bring it on.

[drman321]

@funruly

GodMode (GM) said:

During his warmup lap, Knife took note of the bas-relief sculpture at the south end of the room.  It appeared to depict a muscular, hirsute man being shorn of his luxurious locks by a beautiful woman while he slept.  It seemed an odd objet d'art for a tire factory until Knife recognized **DELILAH** robbing Samson of his legendary strength by cutting his hair.  The sculpture had seen better days and appeared to show a few cracks, but the wall seemed otherwise quite thick and solid, and Knife couldn't think of what might lie beyond it.

<===<img src=“//cdck-file-uploads-global.s3.dualstack.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/boingboing/original/2X/9/9283a78877829128d48d7b04b157c4e0d335b77a.png” width=“375” height=“500”> ===>
.
.

Junior keys the Mic: Delilah? Makes me think of that good old song, by one damn good Taffy.

.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypJlDd9QsiE

> I saw the light on the night that I passed by her window
> I saw the flickering shadows of love on her blind
> She was my woman

> As she deceived me I watched and went out of my mind

> My, my, my, Delilah
> Why, why, why, Delilah

> I could see that girl was no good for me
> But I was lost like a slave that no man could free

> At break of day when that man drove away, I was waiting
> I cross the street to her house and she opened the door
> She stood there laughing

> I felt the KNIFE in my hand and she laughed no more

> My, my, my Delilah
> Why, why, why Delilah

> So before they come to break down the door
> Forgive me Delilah I just couldn’t take any more
> Forgive me Delilah I just couldn’t take any more*

{as the song closes, a faint sob comes across the E.A.R.A.C.H.E}

*Knife heard Junior start in on Delilah over the E.A.R.A.C.H.E. and knew that was his cue. With the sound system cranked up to 11 the very dirt and dust on the autocross track was pulsing and jumping off of the ground. It was almost too loud to think. It wasn’t too loud to shoot though. Knife came around the bend and prepared to line up his shot, certain that nobody would notice a little kaboom over Junior’s racket… *

[kyntha]

(ooc: That’s a relief )

[bizmail_public]

Scouting Report

Desmond Baltar @SteampunkBanana has already posted the four Hollywood sights we scouts tracked down. Desmond was faster than I was at decoding the clues, so he rushed ahead of me. That gave me more time to examine these interesting places.

The first site was the Warner Brothers Back Lot. Warner is interesting for at least two reasons. First, if we get to Mars, we could meet one of their stars.

They also stockpiled a lot of good hardware before it all went south.

From the Warner Back Lot we went to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where Johnny Ramone, Cecil B. DeMille, Jayne Mansfield, Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, and hundreds more of Hollywood’s greatest stars were buried, and presumably became the zombie fodder for Mission 1. However, the current Cemetery is only half of the original. The other half became Paramount Studios, which has quite the knack for animating the undead.

The third entry may seems like another coffee shop but is in fact holy site . The founder of IHOP established “House of Pies” long ago, and its widely-reputed spiritual healing properties attract pilgrims from as far as Paris.

The final picture was in Koreatown. Apparently, before Stretch got to put his name on everything, he worked at Olympic Auto Body Shop.

I did find one important place Desmond didn’t get to see. An amazincollection of cars is ripe for the picking at the Petersen Automotive Museum on the Miracle Mile.

–Bubba Zanetti

[penguinchris]

Hi everyone, here’s a summary of the work those on missions 2A and 3 did to help out those in the Citadel on mission 1.

The first mysterious transmission out of Stretch’s head was this:

001100110011010000101110001100010011010100110001001110000011011100111001001100100000110100001010001011010011000100110001001110000010111000110011001100110011100100110011001100010011010000111000

Which the mechanics decoded to mean this:

34.1518792
-118.3393148

Which the scouts figured out applied to this photo (from Stretch’s head):

At that location, the scouts found the words “WB Gate 4”, obscured from the photo. I connected a keyboard up to Stretch’s head and typed that in (took me a few tries before figuring out to enter “WBGATE4”), and a new transmission began!

01011001011011110111010100100000011101110110000101101110011101000010000001110100011011110010000001100110011010010110111001100100001000000110000100100000011101110110010101100001011010110110111001100101011100110111001100100000011010010110111000100000011101000110100001100101001000000100001101101001011101000110000101100100011001010110110000101100001000000110100001110101011010000011111100100000010011010111100100100000011000100111001001100001011010010110111000100000011010010111001100100000011000010010000001100010011010010111010000100000011100110110001101110010011000010110110101100010011011000110010101100100001011000010000001100010011101010111010000100000011101000110100001100101011100100110010100100000011011010110100101100111011010000111010000100000011000100110010100100000011100110110111101101101011001010111010001101000011010010110111001100111001000000111010101110011011001010110011001110101011011000010000001101000011001010111001001100101001110100000110100001010001100110011010000101110001100000011100100110000001101110011010100110100001100100000110100001010001011010011000100110001001110000010111000110011001100010011100100111001001100100011011100111000

Mechanics decoded this as:

You want to find a weakness in the Citadel, huh? My brain is a bit scrambled, but there might be something useful here:
34.0907542
-118.3199278

Stretch had clearly been listening to the questions the mechanics had asked it earlier.

That location seemed to correlate with this location from Stretch’s photos:

And the sign for “Hollywood Forever Cemetery” seemed to be the clue. This one was quite frustrating, but eventually “WOODFOREVER” worked. Strange code.

The next transmission was:

01001000011011010110110100101100001000000101011101001111010011110100010001000110010011110101001001000101010101100100010101010010001000000110010001101111011001010111001101101110001001110111010000100000011100110110010101100101011011010010000001110100011011110010000001101000011000010111011001100101001000000110000101101110011110010111010001101000011010010110111001100111001000000111010001101111001000000110010001101111001000000111011101101001011101000110100000100000011101000110100001100101001000000100001101101001011101000110000101100100011001010110110000101110001000000100110101100001011110010110001001100101001000000111010001101000011010010111001100100000011101110110100101101100011011000010000001101000011001010110110001110000001011100010111000101110001000000110100101110100001001110111001100100000011011010110000101101011011010010110111001100111001000000110110101100101001000000110100001110101011011100110011101110010011110010010111000100000010001000110111100100000011100100110111101100010011011110111010001110011001000000110011101100101011101000010000001101000011101010110111001100111011100100111100100111111000011010000101000110011001101000010111000110001001100000011010100110100001100000011100100001101000010100010110100110001001100010011100000101110001100100011100100110001001101110011100000110010

Which the mechanics figured out meant:

Hmm, WOODFOREVER doesn't seem to have anything to do with the Citadel. Maybe this will help... it's making me hungry. Do robots get hungry?
34.105409
-118.291782

That matched up with this photo from Stretch’s head:

and “HOUSEOFPIES” was the correct code to start the final transmission:

0100100100100000011101000110100001101001011011100110101100100000010010010010011101110110011001010010000001100001011000110110001101100101011100110111001101100101011001000010000001110100011010000110010100100000011000110110111101110010011100100110010101100011011101000010000001101101011001010110110101101111011100100111100100100000011000110110111101110010011001010010110000100000011000100111010101110100001000000100100100100000011101000110100001101001011011100110101100100000011010010111010000100000011001110110111101110100001000000111001101101000011011110111001001110100011001010110010000100000011011110111010101110100001000000110000101101110011001000010000001101101011010010111100001100101011001000010000001110101011100000010000001110111011010010111010001101000001000000110000101101110011011110111010001101000011001010111001000100000011100110110010101100011011101000110100101101111011011100010111000100000010101110110010101101100011011000010110000100000011101000110100001101001011100110010000001101001011100110010000001100001011011000110110000100000010010010010011101110110011001010010000001100111011011110111010000101100001000000111001101101111001000000110011101101111011011110110010000100000011011000111010101100011011010110010000100100000000011010000101000110011001101000010111000110000001101100011001100110110001110010011001000001101000010100010110100110001001100010011100000101110001100100011100000111000001101100011001000110010

Which the mechanics figured out meant:

I think I've accessed the correct memory core, but I think it got shorted out and mixed up with another section. Well, this is all I've got, so good luck! 
34.063692
-118.288622

Which clearly correlates with Stretch’s final photo:

And at that location, the scouts found the words “Samson & Delilah Hair Salon”. Hmm, what are Stretch’s crosswired memory cores trying to tell us?

[drman321]

((ooc: now I am really anxious to see what happens when I shoot that statue…))

[Donald_Petersen]

Well? Well?! What’s happening out there?

Cougar? Junior… Jack Knife… Channing, come back. Anyone on Mission One… do you copy?

The Mechanics say the clue has something to do with Samson’s hair. Don’t know what the hell that means, but they swear that’s the clue. You guys gotta get outta there.

Somebody’s made a move on the Mule Train. They knew we’d be sending you to the Citadel, they knew the Ark would be shorthanded. Fleetwood’s on to you!

Blast your way out if you have to, but get back here!!

Hell, while you’re at it, leave as few as possible capable of following you!

Do you copy? Come on, somebody on Mission One, tell us what’s going on out there! I can’t raise Cougar!

Somebody come back! Do you copy?!

[daneel]

Calm down, dear. Don’t get your knickers in a twist.

[Solomon]

Well now it’s a good thing we brought tow hooks~ I reckon we could bring that fresco down and find out what’s back there and save our bullets for Fleetwood’s posse. This RPG will be much better put to use disabling those machine gun nests…

[anon73629133]

They said my friends were just an unruly mob

And I should give a haircut and get a real job

[daneel]

And the sign said “Long-haired freaky people need not apply”
So I tucked my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why
He said “You look like a fine upstanding young man, I think you’ll do”
So I took off my hat, I said “Imagine that. Huh! Me workin’ for you!”

[drman321]

…Knife had every gun he had been able to mount on Jay Leno’s car trained on the statue, the world’s longest rendition of Delilah was nearing its end. He exhaled, pulled the trigger, and hoped for the best…

[daneel]

De’Ath takes a breather from the madness to glance at his wristwatch.

Where the hell is everybody?

[Solomon]

[SteampunkBanana]

Bubba (@bizmail_public), Honey (@kyntha) and I are checking out a few things to make sure that we’ve tied up all the loose ends from Stretch.

[anon73629133]

Uh, sorry Sir Gonville.

We’re having a blast.

I’ll bring you back a commemorative T, though.