Badass Dragons of the Wasteland - Round Four Results!

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-“Get him off me! Get him off! I think he crapped himself.”

-“You all right, kid?”

-“Yeah, I’m fine, I just don’t wanna get somebody else’s poop all over me.”

-“What was he doing in here?”

-“I thought he might be after the spare weapon stash, but we handed all that stuff out already, so I was just gonna hide until he left. But then he started talking to Marion.”

-“To the crawler?”

-“No, not the crawler, dummy. That part of Marion, the part that talks.”

-“What did he ask?”

-“Kinda weirdly normal stuff. Like what her specs are, that kind of thing.”

-“Did she tell him?”

-“Sure she did. She’s not, like locked down or anything. She’ll talk to anybody.”

-“Anything else?”

-“Yeah, he asked if she’s a modular Gen V or integral to the crawler.”

-“He asked that?”

-“Yeah. What’s it mean?”

-“It means we’re damned lucky he’s dead. The last thing we need anyone to find out is that the single greatest power source ever created by humankind is completely hand-portable, self-installing, speaks eighty-three languages, will run indefinitely on a diet of unrefined human shit, and is disguised as a co-pilot’s lavatory on the largest and slowest land vehicle on the planet. And we’re strolling alongside it at one mile per hour on our way through the most dangerous city west of the Mississippi, whistling in the dark and hoping nobody notices.”

-“Oh. Hey, dad?”

-“Yeah, kid?”

-“Even though he’s dead, shouldn’t we check to make sure he didn’t, like, tell anyone about it? Y’know… before you took his head off?”

(Sigh.) “Yeah, we should. But how are we gonna…? Wait. Hold on. I got an idea.”

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Stretch’s head spits out a few sparks. Blazer jerks his hand away from the borrowed screwdriver with a cry. A few sentence fragments surface through horrible static and feedback:

…middle of something, this better…

…was right… dular Gen V on boa…

…ellent news…

…ust enough time to ID…

…eally have to announce …and fast," as you…

…let Bubba get… tactical error…

…ow they know y… as hard to pry it…

…killed them all yet?

…her mama and…

…superannuated fool…

Shut… a chance to grab thi… predictably screw up…

…should be given control…

…you messed everything… have to stain the floor of my main audience chamber with a whole mess of blood and guts… outta your cut… Jesus Christ! Goddammit, get those motherfu… shit, the roof!!

Then, after ten seconds or so of indecipherable cries and rumbling booms, the head falls silent once more.

3

Is the spreadsheet meant to be up to date (prior to the mission)? 'Cos my FP is 8 lower than it should be…

4

It’s supposed to be up to date as of the start of the mission, yes. Were you supposed to get more than the 10FP added by the two Dusty Jeep .50 cals? We had you at 57FP before that.

5

Things go differently this round… since all the missions were so hectic and chaotic, a clear narrative of the events only emerges as the returning Drivers relate their harrowing tales of what befell them in the Citadel, the mean streets of Los Angeles, and in the frenzied battle around the Ark. A few things become immediately clear: though De’Ath and Palomeque in particular absorbed a great deal of damage while protecting the Ark, the Toecutter’s attack appears to have been largely a feint, designed to distract the guards long enough to insert an infiltrating agent inside Marion. This is no critique of the guards; at least two of them spotted the infiltrator, who was summarily executed before physical mischief could take place, but signs point to a fair likelihood that Fleetwood now knows exactly how valuable the Mule Train’s cargo is. He has no use for an interplanetary rocket which is why the Train was largely unmolested until they destroyed Stretch’s junkyard. But now Fleetwood desperately wants to take something else from them: Marion.

But Fleetwood has more immediate problems. The Mechanics of Mission 2A and the Scouts of Mission 3 successfully solved Stretch’s riddles, and managed to convey the weak point of the Citadel to Cougar and her team. Knife and Junior trained their firepower on the bas-relief of Samson, and the sculpture exploded in a shower of concrete dust and rebar. How the team managed to escape before the ceiling itself collapsed… well, they’ll have to tell us that while they’re getting patched up. I’m eager to hear the tale, as I am eager to hear of the crosstown exploits of the Mission Three Scouts, the hacking-under-fire adventures of the Mechanics, and the routing of Toecutter’s vanguard by our stalwart Mule Train guards.

All I have right now are the numbers. You Drivers must provide us with your legend, this time.

Mission 1

Rideword (Solomon), Mule
32 HP (started with 43)

Mike “Nervous” Snelvuur (Kingannoy), Escort
30 HP (started with 46)

Channing Hunter (gwwar), Escort
38 HP (started with 51)

Maj. Joseph Talleyrand-LaRoche (peregrinus_bis), Scout
13 HP (started with 31 HP, some damage absorbed by escorts)

Jack “Knife” Boyer (drman321), Escort
23 HP (started with 53 - unlucky rolls)

Jack Burton Jr. aka “Junior” (funruly), Mule
13 HP (started with 55 - TQ didn’t help much in close quarters, apparently)

Mission 2A

Bill the BUM (webiii1976), Mechanic
20 HP (started with 31)

Clankenstein (davide405), Mechanic
25 HP (started with 31)

Micky McKinley a.k.a “Sponge” (blckjckdavey), Mechanic
19 HP (started with 28)

Mission 2B

Sir Gonville De’Ath (daneel), Escort
30 HP (started with 51)

Bertie Gomez (Palomeque)
34 HP (started with 65, acted as quite a bullet sink)

Mission 3

Desmond Baltar (Steampunk Banana), Scout, Hollywood
24 HP (started with 31, zombies! high speed probably helped outrun them)

Bubba Zanetti (bizmail_public), Scout, Hollywood
23 HP (started with 29, zombies! relatively lucky)

Momo (patrace), Escort, Hollywood
38 HP (started with 47, zombies! FP and SP helped)

‘Honey’ Mallone (kyntha), Scout, The Valley
15 HP (started with 34, alone in the valley you got attacked by Raiders! You mostly had to outrun and outmaneuver them.)

Mission 2B Convoy Support:

Dorcas McGee (awjt), Escort
10 HP (started with 18 HP)

Fink (monsterzerozero), Escort
8 HP (started with 16 HP)

Sven Larsson, aka “The Swedish Chef” (Tetrix), Scout
15 HP (started with 20 HP)

Wizard (thewizardofwas), Escort
13 HP (started with 21 HP)

“Gentleman” Jim Brassers (sarcadian), Escort
25 HP (started with 33 HP)

Long Haul Raul (Garg), Mule
8 HP (started with 12 HP)

Rip Torn Van Winkle (jlw), Scout
18 HP (started with 24 HP)

Jacky Blacque (Mister44), Mechanic
19 HP (started with 23 HP)

bean (beanbreath), Mechanic
20 HP (started with 24 HP)

Morton (William_Holz), Mechanic
6 HP (started with 10 HP)

Dog ‘Mad Dog’ Jackson (xdjio), Mechanic
9 HP (started with 12 HP)

Reminder: 20LP went to all active participants; “Support” Drivers receive 5LP. Certain nifty bits o’ loot to be awarded on the morrow.

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Yah. In the repairs thread I asked for the missile launcher I found in Round 3 to be installed.

7

That would indeed make a difference. @JonasEggeater, we must adjust De’Ath’s FP and re-evaluate the tale of what befell him!

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  ______________________________________________
|      _                                _       | |\
|    /   \    JUNIOR'S JOURNAL        /   \     | ||
|   (  O  )      THE CITADEL         (  O  )    |,""---:___
|    \ _ /                            \ _ /     ||==  | .-.|
|                                               ||==  | '-'-----.
|_______________________________________________||    |~  |   -(|
   |_____________________________/<  _...==...____|   |   | ___ |
         \\ .-.  .-. //       \|  \//.-.  .-.\\ --------"-"/.-.\_]
          ( o )( o )                ( o )( o )"""""""""""==( o )
           '-'  '-'                  '-'  '-'               '-'

Well, we all knew the Main Audience Chamber was going to be a trap. Still, I wondered whether there might not be a way to exit gracefully.

I needed a plan.

  1. Ideation. We needed to be “real entertaining.” Hat-tip to Jane.
  1. Initiation. Mighty thanks for those flapjacks, Dorcas.
  1. Implementation:
  • One part digestion (thanks, pancakes)
  • One part Beer-Bong (you know Junior has one of these on-hand)

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  1. Inspiration:

Some of you may remember, long ago, other games of sport that awarded gold and silver to the winners, not cold death to the losers. I remember watching some ice skaters back then, they were in some far off place called Srirachi, in Russia. And those skaters used to try to pull off more difficult moves to impress the judges.

I needed the Triple Lutz of Tractor Pulling. . … …

I needed to Ghost-Ride the Whip.

  1. Inebriation

Let’s Do This!

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  1. The Aftermath: Irritation.

Well, I won the tractor pull, straight up, against two of Fleetwood’s best contenders. After the axle broke on the second mule he put up against me (a volvo COE, haha!), Fleetwood stopped throwing challenges at me and put me on DJ duty. I didn’t need to have done the fancy ghost ride move, because, though I didn’t know at the time, Fleetwood wasn’t interested in the high art of tractor pulling. He only wanted to weaken the force at the Ark so his man Toecutter could get in. The flapjack fueled effluence would have been enough to give me the TQ to win.

And my Gen I system, sock gaskets and all, was enough to handle that pancake fuel.

My body, however, was not ready. I felt the flames of 'roids hit me half way through the first pull, and by the time Samson and Delilah had fallen I was fading in and out of consciousness due to the blood loss. I was the last one out of the Citadel, because I promised to play this for someone, but I passed out coming through the breach and hit the side, collapsing a good bit of roof on my head, knocking me out.

Muchas Gracias to Word ( @Solomon) for dragging me out.

Anyone got any Preparation H?

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Please tell me there were photos of your dancing.

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Bubba (@bizmail_​public), Momo (@patrace) and I rolled northward into Hollywood headed towards the coordinates that Jane (@penguinchris) had sent us. With our higher speed Momo and I got there first and were suddenly embroiled in raiders that came pouring out the gate at Warner Brothers. I quickly lost track of Momo as she went off in pursuit of some raiders while four of them forced me into the lot itself.

Needless to say, it’s seen hard times. First, the downfall of traditional acting as more moviegoers requested AI versions of old, dead actors in new movies, then the downfall of civilization, and then the reemergence of old, dead actors in the forms of zombies walking across the lots. Luckily for me, I suppose, the raiders had chased most of them out years ago and kept a good watch at the high walls to ensure most of them could sleep at night. The big old studios would be a great permanent base for certain, provided you had enough people to keep things clear. Unfortunately, attrition has worn away at the Hollywood Hustlers and they have been forced to erect their own walls inside the studio to keep the zombies out. But, of course, I couldn’t have known that.

Keeping the Hustlers at bay as best I could I immediately appreciated Clank’s (@davide405) exhaustion that resulted in installing my most recent .50 cal facing backward. This allowed me to take out one directly and cause a second to swerve into what appeared to be a red steam train engine. This still left two who were trickier and a little more wary, as they started to coordinate when realizing I wasn’t just some lost tourist hoping to take home a part of Jack Warner. One moved into a nearby parallel alley only to come at me from the left side when two roads converged. I slammed on the brakes and he went past me smashing a hole into the raider-built wall on the other side. My quick braking caused the other raider to slam into my bumper and the airbag in his Neon immediately erupted, pinning him to his seat, allowing me to finish him off with a few slugs from my .45 that I keep in the side door.

Zombies, as you undoubtedly know, have mostly decomposed bodies. Soft tissues, like organs, are typically the first to go. This means they don’t have lungs, they don’t need to breathe. They also don’t need to eat. Or sleep. Or pee. No brains in their heads (except when they’re eating) means they don’t really get bored. They are perfectly content to hang out on the side of an old movie lot waiting patiently for a car driven by a raider to come smashing through it leaving a hole for them to get inside.

And that they did. I scrambled back to the Cobra, safe within my cage, careful to keep my fingers from their gaping mouths (protip for Jane: zombies have not brushed their teeth and their last meal was probably some kind of decaying meat-style product, wear a bandanna so you don’t have to smell what’s left of their digestive tracts). However, these are Hollywood zombies and are mainly attracted to shiny things. Like my chrome bumper. And my side mirrors. Ripping at them they caused at least 3 HP right there. Luckily the right mirror still dangled from a tenuous wire and I was able to save it, as replacements are so hard to find these days. But in the end I heard from the mechanics that Bubba had sent them the codeword already and like Michigan J. Frog, we were no longer needed at the WB.

Down the 101 revealed the next hint. Of course it was a zombie wasteland/snackbar called the Hollywood Forever Funeral Home down on Santa Monica. I called back quickly to avoid the zombies that were massing and when I hard it had been well received I tore down the road to Franklin and Vermont, about ten minutes away. There I found an empty shell of a House of Pies but the sign was the important thing.

The other important thing I’d seen was adjacent to Hollywood Forever: A block-long series of small auto repair stores. Whether this was Stretch’s supply for his junkyard or a forgotten relic, they’d appeared to be in good shape as I drove past. Parking a few blocks away this time I went back in on foot to discover they were in amazing shape for the situation. A transmission center revealed three transmissions still in boxes, I hope they’ll fit something. The machine shop still appeared to be in fully working order. But holy-of-holies, I came across what appear to be several vehicle manuals. I don’t know how much use they’ll be but I hope they are appreciated. I took the risk of zombies to bring the Shelby around to winch the transmissions into the trunk and being heavily loaded in the back end caught the eye of a pair of raiders for my troubles.

They caused me some difficulties and my loaded back end prevented me from outright fleeing, but I picked up four more license plates for my troubles that afternoon and heard that Bubba had called back with the final clue. Loaded with booty, feeling lucky about only being 7 HP down and running low on ammo I headed back to the Ark.

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I must not have seen that post. That’s been recalculated. Now you have 35 HP, post-Round 4. (Those Raiders don’t have very high AR.)

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I’m sure it was my fault. I had been trying to be efficient by going back and editing an old post (I think in BSD things got confused because people posted multiple shopping lists when they changed their minds) - I was thinking you’d check the entire thread when the deadline was exceeded; if you were doing it as you went along you probably saw an older version.

Where are those plugins?

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I hit the statue and after that things got all jumbled together. I think Junior was firing on the statue too.

As soon as it blew the whole building started to shudder. I tore around the bend on the track deliberately aiming for every pillar and support I could find. I have no idea if that hastened the collapse of the building or if I was just chipping off pieces of concrete. Either way the place was coming down.

I briefly saw Channing (I think) trying to rally all of us to follow her out. I wasn’t having it though. I took this trip looking for my opportunity to punish Fleetwood for his sins and by the Craftsman I was going to take it.

I could hear the E.A.R.A.C.H.E. belting out a battle hymn:

I couldn’t see Fleetwood and crew but pushed on through the rubble and dust toward the song. Last I had seen Fleetwood he, Cougar and Junior had been parked between the DJs together. I wasn’t going to let Fleetwood go without feeling the Craftsman’s justice.

I have no idea who if anyone was following me, I may have been running solo but I think someone was picking those bastards off of me, you’ll have to ask the other drivers, but I do know that Fleetwood’s guard was taking pot shots at me the whole time. Jay Leno’s car was holding up but it wasn’t built for this kind of abuse.

By the time I found Junior and Cougar, Junior was in bad shape but still charging on determined to be the last man out, I’m not sure if he was still conscious but he was still shooting. Cougar and Rideword were pushing him toward the door but he was digging his heels in if anything. I could see Fleetwood’s taillights receding into the dust and debris, the rest of his crew trying to cover his escape. Cougar saw me looking that way, gave me a dirty look and shook her head before going back to pushing Junior out the door.

Fleetwood and crew were heading for the kitchen. I felt the divine power of the craftsman flow through me and charged directly at him, talisman held in front of me screaming all manner of crazed religious ramblings.

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Fleetwood’s people were pelting me with everything they had. I was firing back and whipping wrenches at them. I wasn’t going to get a clean shot at Fleetwood, they were covering him to thoroughly. I only had one shot and I decided to take it even if it meant the end of Jay Leno’s car. I floored it and aimed directly for those taillights.

I rammed him hard right into a wall. There was a big burst of steam as the radiator blew out of that big Caddy. He pushed me back with so much torque that there was nothing I could do. Blown radiator or not that Caddy had a lot of umph.

Satisfied he had me beat he pulled forward and back, turning to leave. For just a second his windshield was facing my driver’s side door. He sneered at me. I threw a Craftsman wrench right into the driver’s side of the windshield. It stuck like that about a foot from his face halfway through the glass.

I screamed “THE CRAFTSMAN WILL JUDGE YOU FLEETWOOD.” He drove away. I don’t even know if he heard me.

Rideword found me a few minutes later and nudged Jay Leno’s car on out into the sunlight. There were dozens of beat and smoking cars in the rubble. I don’t think any were ours. I’m not sure if we dealt Fleetwood a blow today or just pissed him off…

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No, really, not your fault. It’s just a lot of info to sift through, and I’ve been playing catch-up.

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Wait.

Fleetwood has Volvo trucks and didn’t demand you do this trick?

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He only has the one. Possibly had.

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“Still in Hollywood”

I have already posted my scouting report

I will post most stories later, but for now Johnette tells my story better than I could.

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Guard duty eh? Firstly it was pretty tense after everyone left, but eventually that turned to tedium as nothing happened (and continued to happen). The evening drew on, and we listened to the awful sounds emanating from Junior’s E.A.R.A.C.H.E.

I was just tucking into a slice of pepperoni when the Raiders came out of the direction of the Memorial Coliseum - I guess they’ve taken up resident in their old haunts, I thought they were mostly to be found further north these days.

As the the raiders themselves, they were tricky little bleeders, constantly circling the convoy and making little feints in before scarpering, but their choice of vehicles did leave them open to the old Escort-Mule 1-2, so Bertie and I made short shrift of them.

Might be that this was when that little sod sneaked in for his little pow-wow with Marion. In all this excitement I kind of lost track of how many raiders I bagged - was it six or only five?

Anyway, it was all terribly exciting.

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Aha.

Now it comes to light how ol’ Toecutter’s been occupying himself since moving to the States:

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Reverend Clank passed Stretch’s head to Bill for his turn at hacking… Bill depressed a hidden catch behind the decapitated droids ear and gingerly inserted a Phillips screwdriver into it’s nose… After a short twist of his wrist, Bill and Clank heard a high pitched hiss, and all of a sudden 1000’s of nanites sprinted down the screwdrivers shaft and burrowed into Bill’s hand!

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“Ack! Did you see that brother?”

Bill asked Clank, but Clank did not answer, he was distracted, his gaze on the horizon…

Bill felt a itchy burning sensation crawling up his arm, he started to scratch himself unconsciously as he turned to see what Clank was looking at…

A red dust cloud was rising in the distance, as a convoy of fast movers quickly approached, rooster tailing dirt up into the air behind them. Toe-cutter’s men were quickly approaching, their engines roaring at full throttle.

Bill felt nauseous and dizzy, he turned and stumbled and then a flash of white light hit him like a lighting bolt in his minds eye! The nanites were chewing on the dendrites in his brain!

Raw data ripped across Bill’s neurons:

Being a mechanic and not a programmer (how the hell would Bill know about computer languages after Chelsea?), the pure information stream caused a short circuit in Bill’s head, his nose started to bleed and the old man fell over.

The nanites raced out of Bill’s nose and ran into his ear’s! Bill’s vision was assaulted with another flash of white light as they attempted to translate Stretch’s machine code into something his brain could process:

Bill sat up and in a monotone robotic voice, he spat out two sets of coordinates… The old mans eyes rolled back into his head, he slumped and he dreamed…
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