Cinder Bin, sessions 5-8

This is a big, disjointed recap of our last four sessions of Starfinder. Sessions 5 and 6 were effectively one big combat sequence, session 7 was a lot of talking and theorizing and scouting, and session 8 is where it all blew up again. I've been tempted to try to clean this up a little and make it legible for a general audience, but honestly, that would mean writing a novel. Hopefully these scrappy notes make for something at least half-way entertaining to read.

The Gang’s All Here

Deadeye Duncan, one man battering ram
Eli, wizened weirdo

Rue, magical girl genius

Gorman, super secret special ops survivor

And Scaddy’s our DM

Session 5

The Calm Before the Grease Fire

We prepare for the Simplification’s attack on our little village. We yell real loud, bang on tents, and try to rouse the townfolk. Pandemonium and panic.

Kess stays back to organize some sort of resistance. The rest of us are on running at 2A with our guns out, pushing South. Kess puts the drone super-low over town so it makes a lot of noise and gets everyone’s attention. Good luck organizing a militia, hungover buddy.

And so we run. There’s a band of sixteen Simps that’s headed straight for us. We dig in our heels and start shooting. Naturally, Gorman’s rifle makes the loudest bang. Duncan kills one with a headshot. Eli casts grease once they’re close enough and hopes for the best.

One of the Simps throws a ball of red light at Gorman. It misses. Weird. No time to figure out what’s happening, though – They catch up with us faster than we’d like. A band of five charge in, get caught in some of Eli’s magical grease, and then Rue lights the grease on fire with her laser pistol.

Gorman drops an incendiary grenade on another mob and rolls a 6 for his damage. It still works out to about 30 points of fire damage, and a bunch more Simplification mooks light on fire! Fire everywhere!

Sunday revs her chainsword and eviscerates a red for 39. “It’s called technology, bitches!”

This goes on for a while.  After four turns of combat, Eli’s three grease spells deep, and there’s a dozen Simplification mooks who are fighting us while they’re on fire, but their morale is fierce. One of them just runs through a grease pit and dies. Rue rolls a bunch of 6s on those d6 burning rolls, and Gorman continues the tradition by rolling well, but it’s pretty hairy. Eli gets hit with a hammer and goes down.

When he comes to, all but a few of the Simps are dead. He’s not feeling well, but at least he’s on the winning team. Still, there’s another mess of Simps about a hundred yards north of us, and twenty more beyond that. This is gonna get worse before it gets better.

Session 6

Asserting Dominance

While the group debates what to do next, Duncan climbs up onto the ridge and he fires his street sweeper into the air.

Duncan—“THIS IS MY BOOMSTICK!” Intimidate 25!

The Simplification reforms its ranks, and the reds take cover behind the yellows. Duncan walks towards them slowly, firing his street sweeper as he taunts them with his kill count.

One of the red-cloaks sends up a flare, and it explodes in a flash of purple smoke.

Rue—That’s not an horrible omen…

Eventually, though, he gets too close, and the Simplification charges him. He books it toward the town.

Four red-cloaks break out of Group 3 and book it after Duncan.

A trike with an autocannon attachment speeds by and shouts, “Get down you idiot!” Duncan thinks to hell with that and jumps onto the back of a speeding battle-trike, and asserts his dominance by pushing aside the gunner and taking control of the guns with a nat 20 Athletics check. “Hey, I’m Duncan. I just killed 40 Hammer Bros, I’m about to kill 20 more.” The vehicle charges toward the Simplification and the vehicle opens up on full auto.

Tru is the driver. Mace is the gunner. Rue jumps up and down really excitedly when they drive back into town.

We crest the center-line of the ridge and watch as Sunday chases down some of the fleeing yellows.  Somehow, it catches up to us that we’ve won the day. The Simplification are retreating!

Duncan and Kess share a moment.

Kess—Wow, that was incredible! I’ve never seen a gun like that! That’s like the guns on the drop-ship!

Duncan—That’s the worst defense I’ve ever seen! You don’t have a shovel in your hands! I don’t see any trenches! Here, I’ll show you how it’s done. I had time to kill sixty Simplification, and you couldn’t even grab a shovel?!

We rendezvous back in town, then take some time to loot the bodies.

+8 crystals from the reds.

+2 slate tablets, one cracked.

+1 masterwork hammer. Two handed, d10 damage.

One of the reds was wearing a bright scarlet; a different make. The yellows and reds could’ve been local, but he definitely wasn’t. He was wearing good leather shoes. There were also some cool flares that pop purple smoke – or black, yellow, or red. They each had about 3-5 days of rations on their person.

Duncan strolls into the bar to be greeted as a hero.

Duncan—Sixty Simplification attacked. I killed forty of ‘em, and the autocannon took care of the rest. Deadeye Duncan. Savior of the town.

There’s a tense moment that follows. Haley lets Eli know that we’re all being scanned, and that dragons are about to burn us all down. Target acquisition! Duncan rolls two Perception tests, and flubs 'em both.

Tru is talking to folks at the bar.

"Look, we talked last night about the Simplification being a problem, and sure enough, they show up. Cost us a lot. I know a lot of you guys are scared and want to move on to the next town, but these guys are comin’ for us now. We gotta do somethin’ about it. We gotta find where these guys are, and we gotta kill ‘em."

We interrogate two Simplification yellows we've taken as prisoners. They're not terribly forthcoming...

When we ask 'em why - 

"Because you’re holding us all back! You make yourselves slaves to the old world. You don’t even know what it is? We have to become more. Put down this stuff. Destroy it. You can feel the light of the Great Above! What humans are supposed to be!"

When we ask 'em why now -

We were trying to convert you! To show you the error of your ways. And three days ago, a great fire shook the earth! We knew then it was war. Real war. It was you or us.

More bits and snippets of the conversation:

Duncan strips off his technology, and asks, “Do I feel any holy light?”

The Simp says, "You haven’t accepted the Great Above?"

Duncan touches his toes and sticks his ass in the air. "How does this work? I’m waiting for it?"

Simp: "Take the crystal and realize that you have sinned!"

"Ok, now what?"

Simp: "You’re not repentant! (lunges, bites for 2 damage)

Duncan grabs his sword and hits him hard in the arm. Then shoots him in the leg. The session ends shortly thereafter.

Session 7

Flat Canyon Blues

We’re not really sure what to do next. But, with Kess on our team piloting a drone, and with a bunch of crystals being overclocked by Rue to triangulate our enemies’ position, we’re getting an inkling. Eli talks to Tru and asks him to keep an eye out for high explosives. We think they could be useful very soon.

Lyric and Gorman concoct a plan to let the prisoners escape, then track them back to the Simplification’s hideout in the south.

“I’ll say he’s been workin’ too hard. I’ll offer to take over for him, and then, of course, they got away from me. I’ll have to kill one just to make it a show, y’know? Whatever, we’ll just lie. That’s fine. I’m overthinking it really.”

Gorman goes in, bluffs Mase, and takes over guard duty. He’s ponderin’ this a bit, and realizes these folk have a lot less food and water than Gorman’d expect. “Were y’all just planning to take the water from us, so that you didn’t need to carry any out?”

Simp: “You don’t know the power of the Great Above.”

Gorman: “It doesn’t look like it’s gonna rain today.”

Gorman: “What’s the story with that wish crystal? How’s water gonna come out of that rock?”

The Simp tires of explaining himself to an unbeliever.

Half an hour later…

Duncan gets a check-up from the Doctor.

Duncan—“I need like, seventeen hit points healed.”

The Doc—“The best thing for you is rest, but I can try to heal you up quicker… Try to avoid getting hit in your broken rib.”

Duncan—“Nope.”

Deadeye and Eli go out scavengin’ for a few hours, and find a pair of bottlecaps.

Gorman’s out in the wilderness tracking the scouts. If they’re following the track of the army, they didn’t take a direct route at all. Sense Motive [[15]] gives Gorman the impression that they’re pretty lost. Hmm.

Gorman dreams that he’s home. He knows everyone around him, and he’s with his team, and life is good. He’s at peace.

Tru brings back 3 blocks of D8 from the nearest dig site, +2 weeks of fungus and water for our party and NPCs who come with us.

We head south, armed and ready to take down the Simps. We find a patrol about an hour north of a big encampment.

Duncan—“Scuse me gents, if we could just pass by…”

Them: “Stop in the name of the Simplification!”

FIGHT

Afterwards, Duncan does the most Duncan thing yet and eats their leader's heart.

Duncan—"I have claimed your leader’s courage! Bow before me!"

Rue—[addressing the cowering survivors] Do you have any fruit?

+2 sledgehammers

+2 red vials, +1 black vial

Session 8

Black Means Boom

We arrive at the Simplification’s rally point.

Spying on them from a rocky vantage point, we see that there are 60 people in the SE quadrant, 30 in the NE, and west of camp is empty. No idea who's in the command tent. This is definitely an important place, and we want to blow it up.

Rue's plan: Get the village to come with us and fake being an army. We dress as Simplification, sneak in, and act as insurgents.

Gorman—Do they even have bullets? I thought they were more of a rock people.

Rue’s other plan: We get the Simps up and running towards us... and then, during the confusion, our insurgents sneak in and blow it up.

Gorman—And let the Townsfolk die to the Simplification?

Rue’s third plan is to cause a distraction and—

Gorman—We don't need a commotion unless we're trying to loot from them as well. I don't really want any of their weird crystals.

Our group decides we’ll wait until night. Rue wants to use Kess's drone to plant the C4 on the crystal and then blow it up. That'd work, provided they don't see the drone. But Gorman realizes it’ll be a lot easier if he just sneaks in and does it.

Yeah, damn, there's a 30' crystal pillar right there in the middle of camp, floating above the ground. The D8 should take care of it?

We’ve got 2 hours tops to pull this off. We wait for an opportunity to present itself. Near sunset, an ear splitting screech splits the air south of the rally point. Kess says, “Cave lions!”  

Enormous cats that live in the high peaks. With wings.

We seize the opportunity. Gorman moves in.

Gorman—[talking to himself] They speak another language don't they? Worship the Great Above? Ah, I already forgot. I super don't care about what they believe in.

Stealth to move thru the heath undetected [[23]]

Athletics to get in the camp [[15]]

Sneak to move thru the camp undetected [[32]]

Rue hears the sound of wings. Like a flying animal.

Stealth [[31]] as Gorman sneaks up into the central plaza and looks for a seam in the crystal. He find it, backs off, and sets off a flare. Deadeye sees it, but hesitates for a moment before pressing the detonator. Gorman’s anxiety spikes.

An earth shattering kaboom. The crystal snaps straight up the middle, then falls to the south. It’s pandemonium in the camp.

Gorman flees as fast as he can; a patrol spots him and gives him chase. Athletics to jump a burm [[16]] lets Gorman get ahead of them, and they throw things at him in response, missing terribly.

The dark blue is rallying the reds and getting ‘em to round up the yellows. Eli, Rue, Deadeye, Sunday, and Kess all hoof it north, back to the horses.

Gorman is hoofing it south, toward the direction of the cave lions.

We spot two cave lions eating our horses. There are still four left, but two are toast. Eli casts ghost sound to mimic another cave lion, and then we try hopping on our horses while the lions are distracted. It works. Everyone rides north except Eli, who hangs back and waits for Gorman. He spots Gorman before the lions do, waves him down, and together we ride north.

We reconnoiter at the pikes. Well, north of the pikes. It’s a bit of a mess, but long story short, we regroup out in the desert and plot our next course of action. There’s a strong debate. First, we debate going back to the village or going to attack the Simplification. Then we debate between going north or south once we get to the canyon. Gorman and Duncan break off from the group with the intent of blowing up the next Simplification rally point, and Eli, Sunday, Kess, and Rue ride north to the nearest dig site. It’s a contentious debate. Eli doesn’t think Duncan’s coming back from this one; he gives him his lighter as a good luck charm, then hopes for the best.

Duncan and Gorman push east.

Near the site of the second crystal, they encounter a single red Simp. He sees them. It's an open plain, so there's no where to go except into the fray. 

Critical hit with a sniper rifle: [[44]] damage, but it’s not a kill. Gorman looks at his gun in disbelief. The mortally wounded Simp cold clocks Duncan and manages to get a few hard jabs in at Gorman before he bleeds out.

Duncan—I want his magic fist punching powers. I'm gonna eat his heart.

Gorman—Hold up. Let's take his robes first. Then you can eat his heart.

They reach the site of the crystal. It's the same as the first one, but they also notice there's a wagon filled with dirt. And in it sits a fruit tree.

Gorman—Ready the second satchel charge.

Duncan—I was already doin’ it.

Gorman—That tree has got to go.

Gorman sneaks in wearing the red's cloak.

Yellow Simp—What news of the patrol?

Gorman—WHAT news of the patrol? Did YOU lose track of it?? Bluff [[17]]

Yellow Simp—Sense Motive [[16]] Uh...

Gorman pushes on brusquely. He finds another batch of Simps near the crystal and addresses them.

Gorman—Give me some time to inspect the crystal. Privately. Bluff [[25]]

It works.

A simplification mook fails to notice Gorman place the explosives. Perception [[3]]

Gorman runs through the tent city. Acrobatics [[25]]

Gorman whips out a black flare - Duncan sees it explode.

Duncan—"Black means boom." Engineering [[21]].

The first charge blows up the pylon. There's a crashing sound, followed by a crack-snap and the pillar breaks into three pieces, then falls to the west. Absolute chaos ensues.

Gorman swings around to drop another charge at the tree. He tries to look like he belongs here, but ... Bluff [[7]]. He's not particularly convincing. One of the yellows notices him. Gorman has a choice between the tree or the gate... and he chooses the tree. He slaps the charge on the trunk, and the yellow shouts, "Heathen!"

Watching from a distance, Duncan shoots him for 26. Zzap. His head explodes like a melon.

Duncan—"So, I've been made."

A gang of yellow Simps surrounds him and Duncan shouts, "We're under attack! Take cover!" Bluff [[19]] It's true. Both parties are under attack right now.

Sense Motive [[19, 19, 20]]. Hmm. Shit. Three people jump out of the crowd and attack Gorman, but no one lands a hit. Duncan tries to grab everyone's attention off of him - he is an icon, after all.

Duncan—"Surrender! We have you surrounded!" Intimidate [[24]]. It works!

Then again, for those in the back: "STOP! I HAVE YOU SURROUNDED!"

Meanwhile, one of the yellows hits Gorman for 27. He's not dead, but good lord.

Duncan—"You may be wondering how one man can surround you. But where you see one man, I see four!" [presses the detonator]

It's chaos. Gorman escapes, but a red runs Duncan down. Duncan stands his ground and fires his rifle, burning action points like they're fireworks. He hits often but rolls low on damage, even counting a critical hit. The energy gathers around him, and black fire rushes out across the ground at Duncan. He jumps out of the way just in the nick of time; he takes 12 damage and loses all his Stamina. The red goes black, and charges after Duncan. He misses a clutch attack, and Duncan kills him with a perfectly time riposte shot.

Duncan—"Who brings a hammer to a laser fight?"

DM: I really thought you were dead there.
Duncan: I did too!

Duncan continues on north. Gorman swings south, then switches north.

So ends session 8.

Cinder Bin, session 4

...these are the materials we're working with... 

THE PLAYERS

I am Eli                                                                                                 

Julian is Deadeye Duncan                                                            

Willie’s out this session, but he’s Gorman normally         

Reuben joins us and takes over playing Rue                       

Scaddy is the DM                                                                            

session 4

Scene one, the campfire. We’re up a family of NPCs from town (a man, a woman, and a child). Everyone else has headed east-ish, but we’re sure that the next town’s the best way to go. Nothing happens overnight. It’s pretty peaceful. Probably the most dangerous things out here are feeders, or big lizards (it’s the wrong season for that really) or other people.

We ride off towards the next town over. Neither Eli nor Deadeye have any memory of the place. It’s only been there about six months or so. Most of the folks here used to be at a different dig site, half a day west of here, give-or-take.

In town, there are a pair of drinking establishments, a couple of scavengers, and a collection of hovels, rocks, tarps, plastics, and walls. Doctor’s office, too.

There are two horses piled high with trade goods. There’s a woman sitting in front of the horses with several large boxes and a plank of plastic. Her name is Amya, and she’s a traveler and a trader.

She’s got a few pieces of tech for trade; there are a bunch of things on the horses, also. Deadeye Duncan makes a beautiful introduction for us:

Deadeye—Y’know, lass, fifty’s the new forty. Which means I’m forty six and three, honey.

We haggle with her for a time, and after a couple castings of detect tech and detect radiation, we settle on a solar charger for our power packs, and trade away our street sweeper for it.

WE TRADED AWAY                                                          AND WE RECIEVED

Corona laser rifle                                             Crab Venom x10 w/Pre-Burn Medical Injector

Azmuth laser rifle                                            Solar Charger

Second Skin x2                                                Changes of clothes for Duncan and Eli,

     and a few small knick knacks

Deadeye—If you can’t help me find a type two power pack, maybe you can help me find out what you’re doing later tonight.

This line gets him tazed. Duncan rolls around in the dirt like a turtle for a bit, but we still manage to close out negotiations amiably and proceed to hit the town.

Duncan declares that every rest stop needs a bar fight. We stroll into the bar and we meet Jinx, and he tells us that a couple of Simplification street preacher folks were in here a few days ago, but he hasn’t realized that the other town got taken out by Simplification folks. He’s taken aback. Duncan tells him all about our fight with the simplification; Jinx says the Simplification hit a couple other towns, too, recently, but it was nothing so exaggerated as what happened to the other town.

Kess is passed out in the corner after fifteen minutes of hard drinking. Rue and Sunday go exploring the town; Sunday goes to see the doctor and inquires about his services and expertise.

Duncan tells Jinx all about the fusion bomb that went off, which, of course, Eli denies. Eli’s really wondering about how he’s going to strike back at the Simplification with this crew. Duncan’s dying for a fight, and neither Sunday nor Rue are really sure what we should do next, despite their know-how and their skill sets. Gorman’s an amnesiac. And Duncan, while a legendary fighter, is more intent on drinking and fighting than he is on grandiose tales of revenge. What to do, what to do…

Rue gives Sunday’s armor a buff, too, while they’re all hangin’ out that evening. Just a neat little thing she does. Y’know. Magic. Or tech. Or both. Anime stuff.

Digby and Xaiden are two dudes in the bar that Deadeye challenges to a game of cards. Amazingly, Deadeye wins. We drink for free. We start to talk about the Simplification and, well, Eli gives a pretty dang inspiring speech. It gets the townsfolk roused to action. Of course, we’re not quite sure yet what that action should be, but it’s definitely military, and it’s gotta happen soon.

There’s a real sentiment – the Simplification needs to be defeated! There’s a vehicle out there, in the town. We can probably use that. Lyric is a knife fighter, and he’s already killed a red-cloak. Nice to know. The mechanic and his brother would both be good in a fight. We’ve got horses, too. And laser rifles. We brainstorm a scenario where we leave a bunch of caltrops in the grass, and then bait the Simps into following us and cutting up their feet while we pick ‘em off with laser rifles.

Eli consults Haley about battlegrounds, and it turns out there are a few decently shaped flat plains nearby. Covered in grass, no less. Interesting…

The next morning. Kess is super hung over. Deadeye makes sure to encourage him with lots of loud noises. To escape Deadeye, he heads to the edge of town with his plane, and does a little scouting maneuver…

And discovers we’ve all got about ten minutes before fifty Simplification soldiers crest the hill and sack the town. Fuck.

Cinder Bin - Session 2 ½ and 3

Cast

The Storyteller [aka, everyone who isn’t Deadeye, Gorman, or Eli] :: Ryan

Deadeye Duncan :: Julian

Gorman Sterling :: Willie

Eli Tabasco :: Me

notes from session 2 ½

Fleeing the fallout on foot, across the desert, we take a moment or two to consider our circumstances.

Kess—I know a shortcut, but here’s the catch. It takes us near a nest of feeders.

Eli—I think it’s worth half-a-day to find out if we can make it past those feeders.

Eli speaks with Rue later on, once everyone’s made camp and settled in for the night. Eli knows that there was a cult in town, destroyed a few years back. That cult was called the Church of the Sorrow. And Rue and Sunday have left hints that they used to be a part of the Church, but maybe not willingly. Not wanting to pick at scabs, but curious nonetheless, Eli asked Rue a few questions. Sunday got defensive on Rue’s behalf, but

Rue—They’re all dead. What does it hurt?

And Duncan wanted to know what we were babbling about

Eli—This has nothing to do with fightin’ or drinkin’, Duncan

Deadeye—What’s life without fightin’ or drinkin’, though?
Eli—It’s a little quieter. Sometimes.

Eli explained how his knack worked, and lamented that he’d never met another living soul with a knack.

Eli—Your power comes from something outside of you, y’know?

Rue—Different for me. The world’s all blocks. Sometimes I can put ‘em together.

Eli—(looking at Duncan) I can make his blood grow back.

Rue concentrates, and some bits of dirt and stone start to re-arrange themselves on the ground.

Later, Rue and Kess set about making some of Kess’s stuff feel more intact. Kess instructs her that it’s more intact, but not correctly more intact. They start over and try to get closer the next time.

We set watches, but nothing really happens.

The next morning, before anyone else wakes up, Sunday and Eli have a conversation. She speaks coldly about the Church.

Sunday—Let’s go with cult. That’s accurate.

Eli notices she has a brand on her forearm with a loop and twist motif.

Sunday—We ran away. The church in town was a branch. One little one. But as an organization, it was devoted to the death of the world before. Interested in tech, but—

Eli—To gather new, or to destroy like the Simps?
Sunday—To gather. To know everything that happened at the instant of the Burn. To do that, it collected people. Like us. Like Rue. So, you said Rue’s the first you’ve met with a knack? Everyone we knew growing up had a knack. Mechanics made up more than half.

Eli asks her about her armor. Asks if she made it, or knows how to make it. “We didn’t make this, exactly. We took it off the crew of the hummingbird. But… we also can change it in ways you can’t. The Sorrow could, I guess?”

Sunday has a blade with a wood-handled sheathe. She’s never reached for her pistol in our presence.  She also selected the sword from the dropship equipment as the only thing she was really interested in picking up.

“The sword is made out of ship-metal. Took Rue almost 3 years to shape it. Every night, just a tiny fraction came off, and bit by bit.”

“I knew how to open the ship because I’d found one before. Hummingbird.”

“They were devoted to learning everything, and they couldn’t even protect themselves. They were not good people, but they didn’t deserve to go out like that either.”

“I guess the Simplification had one thing right. Living off the bones of a dead society is no way to live.”

session 3

We need to hop the canyon. There’s really only one spot we can cross, and there are a few little switchbacks and a winding path that we need to take in order to be able to make it. About an hour in, we notice that there’s a guy, wearing yellow, standing on the cliff above us. He’s wearing a pendant that has a crystal on it.

Do we run? Hide? Kill him fast? Gorman tells us to go on ahead, and when we make a bit too much noise, the Simplification guy produces a device. Gorman takes a las-pistol shot at him and nearly kills him, but doesn’t. The device goes up and turns into a loud bang and a cloud of smoke.

Deadeye takes a shot. Not dead. Eli uses his telekinesis at finishes him off with a rock. Nice shot, Eli. We truck on, leaving the body behind. This is a bad spot.

Eli produces Haley and asks her a couple of questions – any feeders nearby? Who’s following us? She explains she doesn’t have those sorts of sensors any longer, and Eli puts her away.

Ahead, we see the feeder nest. Behind us, we hear footsteps. We concoct a plan to try and slam our enemies into each other by making a stand near some fallen stones. We wait in ambush until we hear a masculine voice shout out, “Tech worshippers!”

This fight went worse for them than it did for us.

Gorman fires a sniper rifle shot and hits one for 26! Duncan tries to finish him off, but misses. The simplification dudes all rush in. One of them gets cleft in twain by Sunday. Another one uncorks a flask, and out pops a weird creepy ghost. It looks like one of those black-clad Simplification priests! Spooky!

A wreath of red fire pours out of one of the red-clad dudes’ chests, dealing us all some freaky damage. We respond by killing him with guns. The ghostly dude does a trick that knocks Sunday and Eli flat on their asses, then he proceeds to maul poor Sunday.

The feeders show up, then. They swarm the remaining Simplification, and we all escape, even Sunday. The ghostly dude gets mobbed and, before going down, turns into a yellow-clad normie. How strange.

Deadeye—A cave!

Eli—Shut up!

The feeders aggro and chase us a bit, but ultimately, we get away. We leave the battlefield behind us.

Later, we camp. Rue took a crystal from one of the dead Simplification dudes. Eli examines it and casts identify.

When worn, the crystal lets us see more purple. Very good quality crystal, commonly found nowhere ‘round here. Connected to something south of us. It has some sort of mystical bond to something… south-ish. We decide to keep it.

We head to bed. On watch, Gorman notices a cylinder on a SmartParachute™ floating down from the sky. Inside, a small sheet of paper with some writing on it, and an object folded in thirds. Gorman reads the note. He says to himself, “Oh, great. Now I need to think of more plans.”

The object is a pair of glasses. “Oh, glasses! I’ve done one of these before.” Thermal vision. Neato.

Duncan fails a Perception test on his watch, right before dawn. Later, on our way to town, we spy a column of smoke. Kess spies it with his drone, and then freaks out, and starts running.

Every building in town’s been knocked over, burned. Lines of bodies on the road covered in sheets. People trying to dig out buildings. There are fifteen foot tall posts in the middle of town. Mel, Olegard, Doc Peska, and Tyro the mechanic have all been crucified. Their corpses are still nailed up on those posts.

This was Simplification. Fifty came to town, maybe more. A passerby says they came into town yesterday and just started killing. They killed everyone who fought, then grabbed these guys – called ‘em out by name – and killed ‘em in front of everyone.

Even the metal looks like it’s been rusted or corroded somehow. There’s nothing here that couldn’t have been built in the dark ages.

Gorman checks on something… The doctor’s hut has been leveled. No scanner. Dang.

Deadeye—Step one, recover moonshine. Step two, recover bike. [Sees moonshine jug, all shattered] Noooo!

Olegard’s place has been burnt. Totally looted. Backroom is smashed up, tech's corroded. All gone.

Rue brings a kid, maybe nine, covered in mud, crying, to stand before Eli and Kess.

He says, “It was Jethro. It was your brother, Kess. He was pointing people out. Calling us out, just yelling at all of us, saying we were evil.”

Rue pats him on the head and he slinks away.

There’s another settlement north-east from here, and the sea’s east after that. We don’t really know what’s south of us, but the Simplification comes from that region, so… North, far far north, is the frozen forest, and after that, the ice. To the west, there’s the mountains. The Storm Spires. Where do we go from here?

Sunday muses, "Most of those Simplification folks aren't fighters, they're farmers who figured that the way of the Great Above is something better than scraping cattle shit off the ground. If we can kill those reds, they'll scatter, and maybe we've got a shot."

We go north and gather some of the horses that ran off, then head off to the town to the north-east. Some folks just followed us and grabbed horses as well. Sunday drops back and starts talking to a small family. They’re planning to head to a smaller town, along with us. City means a bigger target in their thinking.

Three townsfolk join the party.

Evening. We cluster together and make camp. Sunday’s training in earnest. Rue and Kess work on the radio and, that night, they get it to work. Maybe, just maybe, we've got a shot at getting some revenge.

Cinder Bin - Session 2

Cast

Ryan, our GM / Storyteller / Referee, what-have-you

Julian, playing Deadeye Duncan

Myself, playing Eli Tabasco

Willie, playing Gorman Sterling

Olegard's Expedition

Deadeye Duncan, Icon Sharpshooter

Eli Tabasco, Paranormal Investigator Mystic

Gorman Sterling, Outlaw Operative
Sunday and Rue, scavenger sisters

Kess, a young mechanic

Session Two

We trundle on down the hill. Everything looks great. There’s some damage where the… what’s it called? Wing? Flipper? Where the flipper hit a rock or somethin’, but the main body of the aircraft is fully intact. It’s a beautiful dark metal, the sort of thing that could hold up the world if you built a pillar out of it and made it big enough.

Eli’s horse skitters as he banks down the slope, and he takes a light tumble. Everyone else gets to the plane without incident and starts searchin’ for a way inside.

Deadeye—I wanna go in! I wanna go in right now!

Gorman—There’s a smarter way to go about this.

Sunday—I don’t know about a trap, but there was a wicked power surge from some older tech we had a while back. I’m into caution. Let’s wander around the outside and see if we can’t find something that says Emergency in Standard, yeah?

We search, and we find something close-enough. A hatch! After mucking around with it some, Sunday discovers a six-inch long tube mechanism that telescopes out to a solid 24 inches. We start using it to ratchet open the back gate, and we’re successful! The hatch opens up!

A pair of giant goddamn arachnids, pissed off about being woken up and hellbent on some murder-therapy, come pouring out of the open hatch. Shit!

The bigger spider hops out and gores Duncan for 9. Sunday does some damage back with her sword, and Deadeye gets a hit for 6, but these things are angry tanks with legs. And they spit acid. Deadeye drops to 2 incredibly quickly, and he’s standing on familiar ground once more. The dice gods smile – the spider rolls a 1, and misses Deadeye! Deadeye responds by hitting it for 7, killing it! And then it explodes! Fuck!

Deadeye goes down, nearly dead. Gorman goes with him. Eli runs over to Gorman and tries to stabilize him. This whole time, Eli’s been trying to life rocks with his mind and hurl them at the spiders. Impressively, he’s actually lifted a few rocks. Unimpressively, they’ve had no impact whatsoever.

Gorman’s down but not quite out. He pulls out a pistol and fires, singing a spider. Deadeye, barely conscious, speaks up:

Deadeye—You have a gun??

Gorman—Yeah! I’ve had a gun this whole time!!

Sunday steps in and wails on the little spider good, and it dies. Woof. What a fight.

Eli uses his knack to get Deadeye up and moving again. The knack’s also telling him there’s neutron flux radiation coming from nearby, and once Duncan and Gorman are tended to, he pays that last fact some attention. It’s coming from something that’s tucked beneath a flipper on the inside of the plane. Eli ventures inside the fuselage to check it out, and discovers that it’s coming from behind a panel. We decide to loot everything else first before tampering with it.

Three corpses inside the plane. Skeletonized, long-dead, but still wearing stuff. Lockers. Locked. We drag the corpses outside. There’s another layer of the plane above us; Deadeye is the first to explore it. Two more bodies. Inside the lockers, Rue finds laser rifles. Hot damn!

Deadeye searches the bodies of the pilots. Both have a pistol with a power pack, survival knives, and one has a medallion.

Gorman hits a panel, and the lights come on. It freaks out Eli and Sunday. A figure about a foot and a half tall appears in front of him, made out of light. A voice speaks up:

Voice—Would you like a tutorial on the features of this S3XC Aircraft?

Gorman—Unlock all doors.

Voice—Negative.
Gorman—Ok. I’d like a tutorial.

Voice—Please observe.

Gorman—[While observing the tutorial] Holy smokes, this plane can fly in atmosphere and in space?

Eli joins Gorman and an old piece of tech – an heirloom, really – that he carries on his person suddenly whirs and chirps and beeps, and this voice becomes a hologram, and this hologram has a name: Haley. She calls Eli ‘skipper’ and starts telling him facts at a breakneck pace.

This ship is called Lucky 13. It’s a shrike. Drop aircraft. Had a pilot, copilot, engineer, minus the engineer, and three marines aboard when it went down. Problem with the orange. The nanoswarm is everywhere on this planet. Very odd.

The others loot some neat stuff. Carbon skin armor. Graphite. Ooo. Deadeye equips it. Haley says we’ve got company approaching fast from the Southeast. Uh oh.

Sunday takes a cool sword

2 Corona Laser Rifles

1 Apellion Laser Rifle, which Duncan takes

5 Corona Pistols, which we split amongst the group

2 Graphite Carbon Skins, one being put on quickly by Deadeye

Long Rifle w/Optical Scope [Shirren Elite, Sniper Weapon] that Gorman grabs

Sonic Weapon [Street Sweeper Thunderstrike]

Jacob and his crew show up and demand our total surrender. Gorman fires a shot at one of ‘em, wingin’ ‘em, and Jacob directs his crew to take cover. Then he renegotiates. He offers us a third. We counter-offer with a hundred percent.

Gorman—Deadeye and I are freaks of nature. I give you a twenty five percent chance of beating us, tops. Subtract that from a third, and you’ve got like eight percent…

Haley tells us fifty more people are approaching fast, from the north. Cloaks and hammers. Simplification. We need to buy some time. Gorman, informed of this, switches tactics and tries to offer Jacob the whole plane, and the team starts crowding inside of it.

Jacob—You rigged it to blow or something.

Deadeye—I don’t think I know how to do that!

Kess pops open the windowglass, once we’re all in. A crowd of Simplification descends from the Cliffside, and they start having words with Jacob. Mean words. It’s all happening so fast; the Simplification thinks Jacob’s crew is all outside. They don’t know we’re in here, and Jacob hasn’t spilled the beans yet.

Deadeye takes a sniper shot and rolls 15 against the Simplification dude who looks like the leader. Miss.

Gorman snipes at the man in black. 12. Another miss. The Simplification guys charge at Jacob’s people.

Kess whisper-shouts that the glass is open, and reminds us to all slip out the front. Gorman is great at this sort of thing – he rolls a 31. Duncan and Eli each roll 3s, and the plan is scuttled before it begins.

Duncan won’t stop talking. He’s upset that we’re leaving this whole thing behind us, and doesn’t want to see it all blown up. Eli’s finally had enough and snaps.

Eli—Duncan, shut the hell up!

Sunday—Why?! WHY!? Just run!

Out on the desert floor, while the Simplification and Jacob’s crew are firefighting and Olegard’s expedition is running for their lives, Eli gives Haley the go-ahead to make that neutron flux fusion core explode. She does. And then she reports:

Haley—We have a weapons pattern searching for us. Attempting to jam.

Eli—Haley, don’t attempt to jam. Go quiet. Quiet as you can. Don’t broadcast a thing. This whole place is gonna burn!

The world shakes. The fusion reactor goes critical after it’s smacked by dragon’s fire. It’s bad. It’s big, bright, and white hot fire reaches up high into the sky. It’s the strongest explosion anyone’s ever felt. Nothing is left. There must be a crater in the ground a hundred feet deep.

Rue—Oh boy. Oh boy. That was a thing.

Deadeye—It’s a good thing I decided we should leave.

Rue—Yeah. Good thing.

Kess stops running first, he’s panting and exhausted.

Deadeye—That’s fifty-seven to one.

Sunday—I mean, wouldn’t it be one to fifty seven? Win-loss ratio?

Gorman—It’s a loss-win ratio. Easier for him to keep track.

Fifty-odd Simplification dudes are dead, and all of Jacob’s crew is toast. Along with our horses, and the shrike, and the biggest load of credits any of us have ever seen. Despite the loss and the narrow escape, an enormous smile appears on Deadeye’s face.

Deadeye—Guess who just became the third best fighter in town?

GROUP LOOT

2 corona laser rifles [group loot]

Apellion laser rifle [Duncan]

Sniper rifle [Gorman]

Street Sweeper [group loot]

5 corona pistols [Duncan has two, Eli grabbed one]

2 usable carbon-graphite skins [Duncan, Eli]

2 survival knives

Haley [Eli]

Type 3 power packs [boom, these exploded with the shrike]

Chainsword [Sunday]

SIMPLIFICATION COLORS

Yellow – Low ranking, maybe an initiate or a novice?

Red –Higher ranking than yellow. Carries an enormous sledgehammer.

Black –Higher ranking than red. Unarmed?

Cinder Bin - Session 1

Yesterday, a few of us hopped on Roll20 and played some Starfinder. We had a nice time. I took some notes, and since everyone’s all quarantined and sheltering in place right now, I really don’t have an excuse not to share them, do I? Nah, I don’t. So, without further adieu, session one of our Starfinder game.

Cast

Ryan, our GM / Storyteller / Referee, what-have-you

Julian, playing Deadeye Duncan

Myself, playing Eli Tabasco

Willie, playing Gorman Sterling

Dramatis Personae

Deadeye Duncan, an aging scrap-collector who considers himself a deadly warrior (Icon Sharpshooter)

Eli Tabasco, a scrap-collector and a shaman (Paranormal Investigator Mystic)

Gorman Sterling, an operative from another place entirely (Outlaw Operative)

Setting

A red expanse of stony desert. It’s a couple hundred years after the Burn. Our world is called Cinder Bin, but not by anyone in it. We’re scavengers from an anarchic, low-tech society, riding around on great big desert lizards we call horses, stealing scraps from a burnt-out society that we barely understand. It’s not Paizo and it’s not standard Starfinder, in other words, but it’s pretty neat. A weird Wild West inspired more by Gene Wolfe than Louis L’Amour.

A photo I took a few years ago at Dead Horse Point in Utah

SESSION ONE

While out scavenging in the desert one day, Deadeye and Eli found a robot arm. They’re looking forward to trading it in for some scrap and meal tickets. They estimate that the arm is worth a month or two of meat, easy, and they’re riding back to town to trade it in.

They spy a strangeness in the sky. Something moving impossibly fast, getting blasted by fire from the clouds. Bolt after bolt punching down. And something fiery, silently screeching off toward the horizon. Deadeye and Eli decide to investigate.

The crash site looks like somebody threw a snowmobile off a roof, dropped a bunch of clocks on it, then struck it with lightning a few times.

Deadeye spots a body. There’s smoke off to the southwest; this body isn’t the source. Deadeye maneuvers over to the body and grabs a knife off of the body’s leg sheathe. Everything else around here is nothing.

Further afield, a second impossible sight: A person encased in amber, smoking wildly. The amber shrinks, evaporating rapidly. Deadeye and Eli banter for a bit before Deadeye touches it and realizes it’s freezing cold.

Deadeye—What’re you, some kinda space baby?
Gorman—I don’t think I’m a baby.

Deadeye —Ok. What about the first half? A space?

Gorman—[Squeezes arms and legs.] I’m definitely real.

Deadeye —Real space?

Gorman—[Pulls out his credstick and palms it.] I am Gorman.

Deadeye —What’s a Gordon?

Gorman—You’re close, it’s actually Gorman.

Deadeye —Sorry, it’s the accent.

Eli—Where in the world did you come from?

Gorman—Um, ok? Ok.

Deadeye —I haven’t heard of OK.

Gorman—Um, no. So I’m on the planet. No, I’m trying to think, remember, where, but word no happen. We’ll make sure that my brain can think-make. I’ll take a look around here and we’ll see if there’s anything recoverable around here. I am not sure how I came to this point exactly.

Gorman’s wearing a hardness. A plate on it has sprung open, its energy all used up.

Sunset. The swallows come out, buzzing around on their stubbly fleshy wings. North, they see some folks headed out, apparently toward the site. They ignore ‘em and head to town.

Town’s a euphemism. It’s really more of a camp. This one’s only been here the last two or three weeks, after the earthquakes opened up the zone.

What is there to do in town? The Lens is a bar that serves food and drinks, but mostly drinks. Olegard runs a dice and cards place with drinks, too.  There’s chewy plant stuff at Olegard’s, but it’s not really food. Mel is the obese old scrapper who gives us coins for scrap. There’s another fellow, Tyro, who’s a mechanic with a bike. A powered bike. Moves super fast. One of a handful of power vehicles we’ve ever seen. The doctor’s called Peska, and he’s been in town for roughly a week.

They take Gorman to go see Peska and get him checked out. One edge of the doctor’s tent is propped up against a partial wall of rock. Then there’s a surface tarp and two ‘rooms.’ They knock on the tent flap and get a, “Just a minute!” in reply. Ties are untied and an old prospector named Jinx comes on out with his arm in a sling. “Evening guys, took a bit of a spill. Nothin’ to worry about.”

Inside, there’s a filing cabinet and a waist high cot. Peska says to Gorman, “Just lay on your back, lie still. Don’t worry, I’m a highly trained professional.”

He pulls an electric scanning device from an old metal filing cabinet. Pre-Burn. Neat stuff. He runs it over Gorman.

Peska—You don’t actually look hurt. Did you by chance run into something earlier, though?
Gorman—Yes. Yes, I did. High speed.

Peska—Unusual. You’ve never broken any bones.

Gorman—Not really that unusual. It’s just being careful.

Peska—Good lung capacity. Heart rate’s in the 40s. Is that normal for you?
Gorman—I mean, I am in an elevated state right now.

Peska—Huh. Good to know. Hmm.

That scanning device looks almost new. Unsalvaged.

“Doc! Doc!”

Peska runs out abruptly. There’s been a bar fight and a couple bleeding young drunks are yelling at each other in the street. Tyro’s broken it up and called for the doc.

Eli makes his way to the bloodiest young man, talks him into walking off and sitting down, and uses his healing touch to fix up his head wound. Quiet-like. No need to call attention to it. They sit together and the young man’s scalp starts knitting back together faster than Tyro’s bike.

Back in the doctor’s tent, Gorman and Deadeye banter.

Gorman—What’s your story?
Deadeye—Top ranked fighter ‘round here. Reckon I’m at least tenth. Tenth overall. Other than that? Just scavenging. Making ends meet. Y’know.

Gorman—Wow, people could just disappear out here, couldn’t they?

Peska is setting the other bloody fellow’s arm, which is clearly broken. Tyro escorts the other guys back to their respective crash-pads and thanks doc for his troubles.

Peska—Gorman, it looks like you had a sudden stop recently. A bit of internal discombobulating. Get a good meal in you, and you’ll be just fine.

Eli—But doc, what about his memory?
Peska—What now? Nobody said anything about amnesia. [Eli had, in fact, said something about his memory, but the doctor has forgotten] Fine, just a moment. [Peska examines Gorman’s eyes with a pen light and asks him questions] What’s the first thing you can remember today?

Gorman—When these dudes woke me up and I had a gun pointed at me.

Peska—Oh, well. I’m glad that worked out for the best… And you were just there in your sleeping roll, and these fellows walked up to you and pulled a gun? Can you count to 20 for me?

Gorman—One, two, ten, and the rest to twenty.

Deadeye—[Excitedly] See? He’s dumb!

Peska—No, no, he was just making a joke. Come on now. (Pulls out stylus) Can you draw a clock for me?

Gorman—Yeah, I can do that. (Square box with numbers)

Peska—Good. Are you familiar with another sort of clock?
Gorman—Hm, I suppose there’s the kinds that, uh, at the other settlements, not the nice ones but like, the round ones? All right. (1-11, 13-23) The numbers don’t go out the way they’re supposed to.

Eli—He can count above ten but I don’t think he understands how a clock works.

Peska—Hm. Well, you have amnesia. Relax, stay away from anything frightening for the next couple days.

Deadeye and Eli go to exchange our robot arm at Mel’s. The robo-arm is a bit of a prize, a once-a-year find. Mel greets them warmly and starts inspecting the robot arm with real swiftness.

“Wiring’s good. Not broken. Minor corrosion around the joint, potentially usable though. Good steel (she pinches it)… Yes, yes, ok. Well, it would be a once-in-a-year find, but…”

Another arm setting by the wall, virtually identical, but painted red.

“People have been bringing in a lot of very, very good stuff lately. Jacob’s crew brought that in, plus a chunk of torso. Very good find. So, here’s what I can offer you.”

5 red, 2 blue, and 1 green chip. 2 weeks of meat, 1 month and a half of fungus, and the red ones alone could get us into a fine dice game.

Gorman remembers something.

Out in the sea is where safety is. The Simplification needs to be stopped. Not just finding their goon squads with hammers, but going to the top. But that’s not something that I think I can do quite yet. And it’s not something I can do alone. I think it needs to be an idealogical break, not a genocide. Though genocide would make it quite easier.

A booming voice comes from the direction from the bar. A man raving. “Give up the bones of the past, give up and move on and create a future! A future that doesn’t involve these filthy machines!” This is a street preacher’s rant. A man in a box wearing a beat up yellow robe is preaching the simplification message.

“We have clung to the past, to the dead, to the bones for too too long. Make our lives simple again, reject all of this obscene junk, and we can become as we were meant to be, simply men living in the world that the great above has given us!”

Gorman and Deadeye heckle him, and Deadeye goes as far as to walk up to him and give him a shove. The priest pulls out an assault hammer; Deadeye quickly unsheathes his longsword.

Priest—This is your last chance. The power of the great above will pound you into the earth!

Deadeye—I may have lost 55 consecutive fights in a row, but I figure I got your number pegged right now.

Gorman is scratching his back with his hand on his pistol, waiting for blood to start spilling. Eli goes into Olegard’s to buy drinks. He’s seen Deadeye do this before.

Combat!

The priest attacks Duncan with a hammer and deals 5 damage.

Duncan retaliates and hits the priest with his longsword for 5.

“We will pound you into the earth!” The priest hits Duncan for another 5.

Deadeye—“There’s only one of you. I don’t think you understand grammar.”

Gorman—He means the royal we.

Deadeye—A queen’s taking a piss?

Deadeye pulls out the tactical knife he found earlier in the day and takes a swing.

Deadeye—I’m’a hit you with this fancy space knife I got from a clock man! (rolls 7)

Priest—Just give up the mechanics!
Deadeye—This knife is made of mechanics! (rolls 7)

Priest—You’re clearly powerless against us! (miss)

Eli orders drinks, then decides to check on the fight. Seeing Deadeye’s down a bit, he uses a telekinetic projectile to tap the priest with a stone in the back of the head. Deadeye uses the opening and stabs the priest through the chest with his longsword. It’s a bloody strike and it ends the fight, though Deadeye collapses to the ground before the priest does.

Gorman goes through the priest’s stuff. Necklace with a small clearish crystal. Stone tablet. 2 x 8, strange script. Yellow robe. Nasty compressed food thing. Waterskin.

Eli brings Duncan into the bar and we do some shots.

Gorman makes a show of helping the priest up, as there’s been a small crowd watching, then walks him over to the alley and kills him with a knife. Stealth 16. So, like, Gorman doesn’t notice anyone noticing. He heads back to Olegard’s tavern.

Gorman notices a large, broad-shouldered man playing cards, and a crowd of cronies surrounding him. The broad man is probably winning. He also notices a pair of identical twin siblings, female, whispering to one another, and a 14-year-old kid who looks like a tavernkeep. Everyone else looks like a scavenger.

Eli hands Gorman a glass of moonshine. Gorman looks at it quizzically.

Deadeye—You drink it. Do you drink things in space land?
Gorman—Jesus. Yes. [drinks, spits the liquor out in a cloud]

Deadeye—See, you swallow it, though.

There’s a great salt sea to the east, and a great plain of salt around it. Eli knows it, and he asks Gorman if that’s where he came from. Gorman can’t answer, but he shares some of what he’s remembered. He mentions that the sea means safety, but it becomes apparent that they’re talking about different places.

Eli—I’ve been to the sea.

Gorman—I don’t think you’ve been to THE sea.

Deadeye—See, I told you he’s not very smart.

They change the subject to the Simplification. Another preacher was roughed up by Jacob’s crew last week. Deadeye says, “They’re all a bunch of nerds, they usually get bullied away.” Gorman approves of Deadeye’s decision to pick a fight, and tells him he made a good decision today.

The 14-year old kid walks up to them with three plates of meat. Good chunks. “From my dad, he wants to talk to you after you eat.” Points to a blanket cordoning off a back room. Must be Olegard.

Eli—Here’s to a memorable day. [toasts]

One of the older ‘twins’ goes into the back and the kid, Kess, pokes his head out and summons them. They pile on back. Olegard is fifty or so, both legs end mid-thigh. Sits on a rail chair, behind a wooden desk. How rare. Most stuff is plastic. Piles of crockery on it, and a metal box in front of him. “Be sure we’re not disturbed.”

The woman’s sat against the wall on a plastic crate-thing. She appraises them, but doesn’t speak.

“Eli, Sunday (the woman), we have an opportunity here. You know about the quakes. You know people have been finding unusual things. My boy found something when he was out. Way out, further than usual, chasing that flying thing he’s always playing with. And he saw it. It’s worth… if we divide it among us, it’ll be worth more than any of us has ever seen.”

“You know in the world before… here, watch.”

 He moves the box, and a moving image appears, and a short video plays of an anvil dropping thru the sky, maybe 30 or 40 feet long, and then men wearing heavy armor and carrying guns that are six feet long swarm out. EANC.

Speaking about Kess, Olegard says, “He recognized it. It’s one of the ships. The metal alone, even if all the electronics are rotted, would be worth years. You might be able to buy Tyro’s bike. I tell you where it is, Kess takes it out there, you salvage what you can, both of you, together, and we can’t let Jacob know.”

Olegard produces a round cylindrical tube. A power pack. Very valuable. Olegard hands it to Sunday.

Mel has a flatbed truck. A plan starts coming together. They connive to get Blaine smashed. Blaine is Jacob’s second. Deadeye volunteers to challenge him to heavy drinkin’ and dice.

After a few bad rolls:

Blaine—You’re worse at this than you are at fighting. You’re terrible, Duncan.

Deadeye—You haven’t seen terrible yet!

Meanwhile, Gorman and Eli take shots (of water) with Jacob’s other boys (drinking double-strength moonshine) and ask them all about that red robot arm they found. Jacob eventually realizes his boys are shit-faced and comes over to do a little damage control.

Deadeye escalates with Blaine. He bets his combat knife against Blaine’s grenade, rolls high and wins by 1! Blaine has a look of absolute shock but abides by the rules of the game, and holy smokes, Deadeye’s got a grenade now. Blaine shoots another shot and retires. It’s been a good night. Finally caught a W and it came with an Incendiary II grenade.

Lizard Riders by Yun Ling

They all catch some Zs. Morning comes fast, and Eli, Deadeye, and Gorman meet Sunday outside Olegard’s where she’s waiting for us with horses. We mount up and head on out. As we’re edging town, Kess pulls up next to Duncan and hands him a red power pack. Duncan says Ooooo, and accepts the gift. Duncan’s longsword upgrades to a dueling buzz sword!

Sunday’s sister, Rue, meets them later, nods hello, and says little else. The party is Kess, Sunday, and Rue, with Eli, Deadeye, and Gorman, all riding horses. They swing really far south across the valley, and then need to make a vault across the chasm. If they didn’t know this was here, they never would’ve found it. The horses can actually hop it pretty easily, but the fall is a couple hundred feet, a brutal drop.

They push west.

Kess has a cross shaped object that he flicks into the air, and it starts spinning above him, doing larger and larger loops. He checks something on his wrist, then alters course a bit. The plane spins in until it lands on the ground, and Kess retrieves it.

Deadeye—What in tarnation is that flying doohicker?

Kess—They called em planes before the burn. The controls are tied to this thing on my wrist, but I find if I focus and think about it, I can make it go wherever I want.

Deadeye—That’s pretty neat.

Kess—I’ve had this thing on my wrist since I was a kid, but I built this thing out of scrap from the shop.

Eli—Very impressive.

They arrive. It’s beautiful. Half-buried in rock. Looks like there was a landslide that exposed it. But the ship itself is unbroken. Doesn’t look crashed, smashed, or burnt by dragons breath. This is the most wealth any of them have ever seen. Their brains don’t really count that high. Tons of ship-grade metal in this beast.

Deadeye—Holy cannoli.

Gorman—We’re gonna need a bigger truck.