WoAF - Game Session 15

And so we find our heroes hightailing it down Route 89 back the way they came.  Eastward they rumbled the Armored Ground Vehicle.  Good Captain Samwise considered their options.  If they head back all the way to Page, Arizona, they'd likely find the Paladins of the Golden Lion giving them an unfriendly welcome.  While Fred wanted desperately to head south back to Tuscon, there were really no good routes available for that, and in addition, the other members of the party decided that they wanted to complete the mission after all.

"This needs to stop," said Fred emphatically.  "Look, Captain, you almost just got shanked back there because we could not hear what you were saying because the audio equipment of the AGV is all busted.  We have all this information to deliver back to Federation Command.  We should go south, deliver the goods, re-equip, and then head back to Utah and do the mission."

"Well," started Samwise, "we're halfway -"

"No! We're halfway to nowhere!" interrupted Fred.

There was a fierce debate.  Guns suggested going back to Tuscon to get Rocket Jets to go to Tuscon.  There didn't seem a practical avenue to accomplish that. 

"The question is," said Sam, "has the team given up on the Mission?"

In the end, the answer was no.  And so when they came to Johnson Canyon Road, they cut a sharp left turn, and headed north.

They passed derelict burned out farmlands, and into a canyon valley that snaked along a windy little river. About 15 miles in the road turned westward.  They drove through the forested hills, and at one point they passed what looked like a small cluster of houses high up on the ridge of a cliff.  There showed no signs of life, so they continued westward into a region of ever thickening forest.  In the air there were orange sized dandelion puffs floating by the hundreds, then thousands. They passed a herd of deer that stared out at them from within the covert of a shadowy wood, several of which had eight legs and six eyes, and bizarrely shaped horns. Samwise noticed that all of the fauna in the region appeared to have been mutated.  Wherever the puffs landed, they began sprouting leaves and vines within a few minutes.  The number of these puffs increased steadily the further west they went.  It was not entirely comforting.  They secured the ventilation system and kept moving westward.

The road entered directly into a long wall of dark and gigantic forest.  The trees grew to the size of Sequoias, the tallest towering nearly 300 feet into the glowering sky.  The forest appeared to have grow up around a regular forest, whose thousands of oaks and pines formed a skeletal under-forest, dead, leafless and decomposing.  Amid the dead branches of the under-forest a murder of crows was seen flocking, cawing, and staring at the passing AGV with a strange intensity.  The giant trees seemed to crowd in on the road, and roots of those trees had begun to break through the road in certain spots.  From the high branches enormous vines draped down, crossing ominously above the road.  Guns thought they seemed to be moving sinuously, but it might just have been the shadowy light playing tricks with his eyes.  On the other hand, he also thought the vines could be sentient.  He wanted to shoot them.  The good Captain gave the order.

As the machine gun fire hit the enormous vines they shattered, and flocks of crows scattered cawing madly in all directions.  They continued forward cautiously. The vines grew thicker, and the trees closer.  It grew darker beneath the enormous cathedral of trees, until not a hint of sunlight could be detected.  It was nearly pitch black, and they travelled very slowly so as to not lose the road.  Guns swiveled the turret randomly picking targets in the foliage, but not firing at anything. 

Eventually, they came to a dark burbling stream crossing the road.  The water was about 3 feet deep and deep mud covered the banks.  Up the stream, about 50 feet or so, on the edge overlooking from a little cliff that hung over the stream bed, they saw the corner of an old dilapidated wooden house.  Guns aimed the machine gun at the house.  The porch was obscured by trees and deep shadows.

"For all we know, this house could be full of Tech," said Pita.  But no one wanted to find out.  And so they rumbled slowly past, wondering if 'old granny' had put out warm ginger cookies for them.  Yep.  No one wanted to find out.  They crossed the stream and kept going.

After a long slow drive, the forest began to thin out, and after some time the trees lessened in size and eventually they came to a river, the crossing of which allowed them to leave the forest behind.  Good riddance, they said.

The road snaked westward through the hills.  They spotted another cluster of lifeless buildings up on a hill, and passed by.  After a time they came to the town of Glendale.  

Captain Samwise stopped the vehicle, and they surveyed the town from a concealed position.  Glendale had activity.  Military activity.  Jeeps, tanks, troops, and there were occupied houses, and people on the streets.  It looked busy-busy down there.

"At this point in time, I do not really want to tangle with the U.S. Army.  I don't think we can assume a friendly response," said Samwise.  He was inclined to go off road.

Pita recommended they find a place to hide and do any necessary repairs on the AGV before heading off road. They plotted a course on the maps that Fred had been able to recover from Mech Base 12.  They headed up a backroad up towards a nearby lake that looked unoccupied.  The area around the lake was desolate.  They parked and Linda suggested that she could transmit to Federation Command using the Ultra-Low Frequency transmission.  It would take a minimum of four hours to transmit and receive any reply, which coincided roughly with the amount of time it might take to effect repairs.  

It was early evening, and would get dark in about an hour.  Guns thought that it might be better to do what they need to do during the day, rather than at night.  Linda, for her part, liked the spot because the terrain would help to transmit as the area around the lake was flat.  They decided to transmit for two hours, provide a time to recommend Federation Command to transmit their reply, and effect some repairs.  Fred and Sam suited up and stepped outside to work on the AGV.  

Guns wanted a half hour to stretch his legs and scout around a bit.  He donned the heavy armored suit, and took his trusty Springfield rifle, Ilene, and headed out for a half hour perimeter search.  He climbed up on a hill to the north, found a concealing spot, and with his binoculars took a look around.  He was able to see the military forces in the town from his position, and noted that there were no military forces north of the town.  All activity seemed clustered around the south side of Glendale.

Meanwhile, Pita took the time to take a look at the AGV's electronics to see if he could repair anything else.  Linda transmitted to Federation Command.  Samwise climbed up into the Perch to keep a lookout.

By the time the ULF transmission was complete, it was dark, but the moon was shining brightly, and there were no clouds.  High above, the sky was pierced by the never ending multi-colored coruscating bands of radiation in the upper atmosphere, making their characteristic high pitched twirping-hissing sounds.  Then they heard the sound of Thunder in the distance.  

Samwise decided to travel northward without lights, to try to avoid observation by the military.  As they drove the sounds of thunder grew fast and furious and the trees lit up with reflected flashes of light.  But no storm approached.  Guns swiveled the turret around in all directions, and to the south he saw what it was.  Over the horizon, beyond the mountains, perhaps 20 miles southward, massive explosions were lighting up the sky and creating a thunderous display.  It looked like a full scale war to the south west.

"Bombs bursting in mid-air, gave fruit to the night", intoned Guns somberly.

"Fruit to the night?", asked Samwise.

"I always wondered what kind of fruit that was," replied Guns thoughtfully, scratching his chin.

The team moved slowly forward, Pita guiding the AGV along a back road towards Golden Haven Ranch.  There was activity there, but not of a military nature.  They slowly passed by, trying not to draw attention.  They got back on 89 and headed north.  Sam was surprised it was that easy, but no one came out of the ranch house, and so they took their good luck and ran with it.

"If we stay on 89, we can almost make it all the way to the Salt Lake," said Sam, to Fred's intense annoyance.  They poured over the map carefully.  He recalled that originally Alt-X had recommended coming in from the west onto the Salt Lake Flats, so he looked for a route up 89 that would get them to the west side.  It was midnight.  The roads were desolate.  It would be about 100 miles before they intersected with Route 70.  Samwise estimated they would arrive there by the morning, if all went well.  Fred was no end of annoyed by these plans.

Behind them the explosions continued beyond the mountains.  

"Well, at least nothing is going on up here," said Samwise to the crew.

"Wanna see me tempt fate?  Thank goodness," replied Fred with a snicker, and popped a couple of pills and went to bed.  

They passed several empty and desolate towns, such as Gravel Pass, and Hatch, as the road snaked its way through hills.  They came to the intersection of Route 89 and Route 12.  It was about 3 in the morning.  

Guns was the first to spot the circle of crosses on the side of the road.  On it were chained skeletons.  A storm began to come in from the north west.  The wind picked up.  Scanning around with his binoculars by the flashes of lightning, Sam saw that every house nearby was covered in massive vines, through the doors and windows, and through holes in the rooves.  As the storm was approaching rapidly with wild flairs of lightning, the Captain decided to hunker down and bolt the AVG's pilons into the ground.  He directed Pita to a spot about 1500 feet to the west of the road on a flat area.  They talked about waking Fred up to handle the Retro-Tech required to drive the pilons into the ground, but he had drugged himself into a virtual coma and was snoring away in a deep slumber.  

Sam gave Fred a little kick, to which Fred flailed his arms, fell off the couch and smacked his face on the floor.  This woke him up.  The Captain directed him to use the manual override to drill down the pilons, and Fred shook himself, and prepared.  It would require going outside and manually running each pilon using the gear mechanisms.  He and Sam suited up, and went outside.  The winds had picked up to 70 to 80 mph, and a driving rain began to fall.  Enormous strikes of lightning began peppering the nearby hills.  They scrambled around the AGV, and a couple of times nearly got blown away by huge gusts of winds, but their tethers held and they managed to complete the job and scramble back inside.  

The storm flooded the area with a three foot deluge, and they found themselves bolted down in the middle of fast moving river.  By morning, however, the storm began to abate.  They remained hunkered down for a few hours to let the waters recede while Linda worked the ULF receptors, and at about noon she picked up a signal from Federation Command.  Her rig, full of vacuum tubes and sparking wires, managed to receive the message.

"GOOD JOB.  STOP. AQCUIRE ALLIES.  STOP. PROCEED TO BLACK WIND. STOP."

"Your dad would want us to bring you home safe and sound," stated Fred.

"I think my dad would want us to complete the Mission, actually," replied Linda.

There was another fierce debate about what they should do next.  At this point Fred had gained the support of Guns, who also began to think that they simply were no longer equipped to handle the kind of terrors they were inevitably going to face.  Linda, on the other hand, was determined to complete the mission, and Sam felt the same way.  Pita agreed to do whatever the Captain decided, though personally, he felt Fred and Guns were probably right.  They went back and forth on the question for quite a while, covering all possible pros and cons.

Eventually, the good Captain decided to forge ahead.  Fred popped a pill and went straight back to sleep.

They withdrew the pilons from the ground, and made their way to the road.  Passing the circle of skeletons they got very bad feeling.  Pita took a glance over, he couldn't help himself.  He noticed that every skeleton in the circle had its head turned towards him, and was staring at him with their dead and empty eye sockets.  A wave of hopelessness came over him like a tsunami.  It suddenly seemed to him that death is inevitable.  There was really just no point in fighting it.  There never had been.  As this feeling washed over him, he maintained just enough wit to activate his Mentarian Mind Shield.  Unfortunately, while he was able to see the attack in time to prevent it, his poor luck came into play once again, and the Mind Shield fizzled into nothingness before the inky darkness of the Rays of Un-Life that overwhelmed him.  And so, having lost control of his mind, he took his foot off the gas, put it on the break instead, ground the AGV to a sudden lurching halt, and threw the gear into park.  Without further ado he slumped over in his chair, and limply slid to the floor of the AGV waiting for the end to come and put them all out of their misery, forever.  Such is the spiritual wickedness that has engulfed the world after mankind's fateful decision to wage the Ultra-War. 

"Pita," yelled Guns, popping his head upside-down from the turret, "what's going on down there?  Why'd we stop? You ok?"

"It's just not worth it," moaned Pita from the floor, drool running down his cheek to the floor.

"You know when I'm feeling down, and I feel like the whole world's against me" said Guns encouragingly, "I take out good old Ilene and and shoot things until I feel better. What do you want me to shoot, man?  Name it!"

"You might as well just shoot me," said Pita in the most despairing voice any of them had ever heard.

"Captain, request permission to blow the shit out of those skeletons," said Guns, his voice trailing off as he eyed the crosses with furrowed brows, a sense of dread and doom overwhelming him. He imagined that they would all be on those horrible crosses soon.

Fred was dreaming.  It was a nightmare.  He was running through the fields, but he had no legs.  He looked down and saw his body was a poisonous snake writhing in the mud.  Skeletons on crosses were reaching out for him, and lifting him up, nailed him onto one of the crosses, their empty eyes staring at him with a terrifying gloom.  All around him in every direction was pitch black horror.  The horror of a universe dying.  He could not move.  He lay on the couch, drooling.

Samwise leapt over to Pita and tried to rouse him with a violent shake.  That however, only solicited a dismal groan from the poor miserable hero.  Sam jumped into the pilot's seat, grabbed the steering wheel, flipped the gear shift into 3rd, and slammed his foot on the gas.  This caused the AGV to lurch forward suddenly and descend into a muddy ditch, unfortunately.

Meanwhile, Linda had managed to spring into action, having activated her Mind Shield in time.  She ran over to Pita and used her Mentarian Power of Influence Emotions to try to rouse Pita from his despair.  With all of the mental energies she could put into it, it would last only two minutes at the most. With her best and most encouraging words, however, she was unable to rouse him. Sam was trying to get the AGV out of the ditch.  He revved the engine three times, turned the steering wheel wildly, and commanded the vehicle to move forward - to no avail.  It just slid around in the mud uselessly.

Guns, who was also being infected by waves of despair, decided to focus all of his attention on taking apart Ilene, cleaning each part carefully, and reassemble her with great and unerring care.  This actually worked wonders to keep him from becoming immobilized.  However, he wouldn't do anything at all but that.

"Pita, come back to me!" yelled Linda, throwing her arms around him, and putting everything she had into it.  When Pita heard her voice, he realized how beautiful she truly was, and this brought him back to his senses.  He grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her.  The sense of being alive filled him, cleared his mind, and he immediately grabbed the wheel from Sam, pushing him out of the way, and floored the gas.  Pita, unlike Samwise, was an expert Pilot. At first the wheels slipped and slid sideways, drifting the massive vehicle leftwards about 10 feet.  But Pita also had The Gnack.  

"Common, baby," he cooed has he gave the dashboard a whack with his fist. The AVG engine roared, and slid to the right about 15 feet.  He stacked his skill of Insane Persistence on top over everything else, and tried one more time.  This time the AGV gained traction on the rock base beneath the mud, and suddenly the vehicle lurched out of the ditch.  

This all took about 45 seconds. Across the floodwater flats towards Route 89 they roared, and without a hitch Pita got the AGV back onto the road, flooded as it might have been.  They roared northward. The further away from the Skeleton circle they got, the more Fred's dream went from nightmare into bizarre drug induced fantasy.  Crushing the bones of the skeletons onto a mirror he happened to be sitting in front of, he proceeded to snort the white boney powder like a mad man.  All kinds of bizarre images were flashing through his incoherent.

Pita drove furiously, sweat pouring off his brow.  But before they could get entirely out of the range of the Skeletal Horror... the wondrous Influence Emotions wore off... it had been two minutes, and now he realized that it was all a dark ruse.  There was no way to escape the skeletons, and they were all doomed no matter what.  Even if they made it up the road, death would soon find them, encircle them, drown them, kill them, ransack their souls, and feed them to the Maw of Horror.  Despair covered him completely.  And so, he slid quietly back to the floor and laid down, drooling to himself incoherently.  The AGV came rolling to a halt. 

Meanwhile, Fred failed to snort enough of the skeletons, there being hundreds of them in his nightmare.  He began to see boney fingers protruding from his snake body.  The sky was bright pink and green, with dark holes in it leading beyond into a sky of infinite blackness.  There were no stars up there anymore.  He vomited. 

Sam leapt into the pilot seat and attempted to take control of the AGV.  Once again, a deficit of skill and luck lead the AGV to drift sideways, but this time Sam managed to gain control of the situation and kept the AGV on the road.  The vehicle churned through three feet of flood water.  They could mark the road only by the signs that stuck up out of the water at various tilts.

The all pervasive doom had Pita, Fred and even Guns in its horrendous grip one way or another.  Linda went around to each of them in turn to find out how they were doing, and try to provide comfort.  When she got to Fred her voice invaded his dream, and so he somehow managed to mumble "my bag... my bag".

She looked around and found a small bag on his belt, and intuiting that this was significant, she opened it.  Inside she found a number of bottles, carefully labelled.  Drugs of various kinds.  Lots of drugs.

She took the bag to Sam who was struggling to keep the rig on the road, and he listened as she listed the names.  Sam selected Sertraline IV, a powerful anti-depressant.  Linda gave one to Fred, who swallowed it in his sleep, and one to Pita.  Guns declined and stuck with assembling Ilene.  The effect of the drug was somewhat negligible, but it did help to some degree to keep Pita and Fred from the worst of the Despair. Their drooling lessened a bit, and Linda took this as a hopeful sign.

Eventually, however, Sam drove them far enough away, and by the time they arrived at the southern edge of Panguich, the influence of the skeletons had abated.  Although the sense of misery, loss and absolutely pointlessness still clung to them, they had mostly shaken off the worst of the effects.  After a few fits and starts, Fred, who woke up by then, took a few steps, fell, smacked his face on the floor, and then slowly, groggily stood up again.  He seemed more or less back to his usual self.  Pita, not to be second bested, also stood up, wiped the drool from his chin, smiled faintly, and took the wheel of the AGV.  He did not feel well at all.  But he could still drive.  However, Sam, seeing the look in Pita's eyes, said he could continue to drive for a while, and sent him back to recover.  He promptly turned and went to the back of the vehicle and laid down next to where Linda was sitting.  She put her arm around his shoulder and they sat quietly as the AGV rumbled along.

The weather was gloomy, clouds churning darkly in the sky, the cold winds howling.  The road turned west, and there ahead they caught a glimpse of the township of Panguich.  Biological assault was evident everywhere.  Tall spindly orange colored vines with unnaturally phosphorescent blue flowers clustered everywhere.  There in the mud to the right was a creature slithering towards a rocky mound protruding from the swirling waters.  The creature had the upper body of a pig with the lower body of a giant fat worm.  Near it a 40 pound toad sitting on a moldy purple tree stump belched a spray of green acid at the pig.  It squealed and slithered away.  Further ahead, on the road a man in a torn trench coat was staggering down the road.  He was missing the top part of his right thigh.  His face looked partially torn away.  He swayed his arms as he staggered towards the AGV.

Good Captain Samwise wished very much to skirt the town.  He didn't want to go towards the staggering man, and looked around for another way to go, but the road seemed the only path forward, as on both sides of them was a huge mud waddle which he thought the AGV would simply get stuck in.  The shambling man made bizarre gestures, and flailed his arms as he approached he uttered strange gurgling noises.  He appeared to be trying to intercept the AGV.  He did not look well at all.

"That's a zombie, isn't it?", asked Fred craning his head to get a view of it through the wind shield.  "I say we blow him up".

Sam ignored this and rolled the AGV past the creature.  The zombie tried to grab on to the side of the vehicle, possibly, or something.  It was hard to say because they lost sight of it as they rolled past, but they heard some banging sounds, and in their rear view mirror they could see the creature slashing around in the water, groaning horribly and making loud and bizarre guttural noises.

"Friendly," commented Sam.  "You know, I don't like the look of this town," he added thoughtfully.  "The welcoming committee hasn't impressed me as much as I had hoped."

"We could try to befriend them," said Pita, his head laying on Linda's lap.

"Well, that has worked like never before," replied Linda stroking his hair.

And so Captain Samwise rounded the bend and they took a first look out at the ruins of Panguich pensively.  It looked like a bio-war horror show.  What to do?  What to do?

And so we left things there for the night.

Fun times for the Heroes of Federation Command.

WoAF - Game Session 14

In brief, our heroes decided at the last not to engage with the Lizard men after all.  Nope.  The team, lead by Guns who argued vociferously against joining forces with the Crusaders of the Golden Lion, and was backed by both Pita and Fred, for slightly different reasons, turned dead-set against the idea after all.  Captain Samwise conceded to their demands and reluctantly gave the bad news to Geoffrey.

"Go then," said Geoffrey from his horse, "but do not return.  You are not a man of your word.  You are no longer welcome here."

So, instead, they shoved off as persons non-grata under Geoffrey's disdainful gaze.  After all, as he had pointed out to Samwise, the Captain had already given his word.  But Samwise swallowed his pride and sacrificed his word of honor in order to abide by the wishes of his crew.  Whether or not this was an example of poor leadership would be something to be debated quietly among the crew members as they rolled off westward on Route 89.  Guns sang a particularly loud little ditty to get Samwise's mind off his troubles, and down the dusty desert road they went.

And so they came to the Bridge over the Colorado River at Glen Canyon Dam.  But once crossed they found a palpable gloom of dread descended upon them all.  It was as if they rode their Armored Ground Vehicle through a curtain of gloom.  And on the other side of the bridge they beheld a long line of crosses dangling with skeletons crossing the road for as far north and south as the eye could see like a great and starkly evil border line.  It didn't bode well. It didn't bode well at all.

After what seemed like a very long, rough and dusty ride they came to Big Water which they skirted past, despite seeing a large number of soldiers amassing on the far side of town.  Nope.  "Keep moving", the crew urged.  And so they moved on.

And finally they came to the town of Kanab.  And there was no moving on from there.  Crossing Route 89 was a gate with two machine gun toting guards, and on the side of the road a large gravel lot in which was a very stout looking white building bustling with soldiers.  Next to the building were three jeeps, one under repairs by a mechanic, and two XR7-5 Tanks mounted with Turbo Cannons, one idling at a distance of about 300 yards.  Troops could be seen throughout the building and on the grounds.  Beyond the crossing gate could be seen the town of Kanab, also bristling with troops and activity.  There was a lot going on in Kanab.

The guards commanded the AGV to stop, and so Captain Samwise went out to parley with them.  That grew a bit tense when the guards demanded to know what outfit the AGV was with, and so the Base Commander was summoned.  He emerged from the Base HQ with five men, also toting machine guns.  He was a burly warrior with a distinctly grizzled no nonsense approach, and he demanded to know where the good Captain and his troop came from.  When Samwise explained, the Base Captain dismissed Federation Command as some sort of fiction, and gave Samwise a choice:  they either join forces with the main army and head to the town of Saint George where "the major war is being waged", or relinquish possession of the AGV and spend the rest of their time in the brig under military arrest.  

Unfortunately, with all the electronics of the AGV having been blown out, and being unable to hear the conversation outside, though they could see the Captain arguing with the Base Commander through the window, the crew was forced to watch with baited breath.  They couldn't make a move without risking Captain Samwise being riddled with machine gun bullets.  So they sat tensely with looks of consternation on their faces.

At this point someone asked if Linda might be able to think of something to do.  She leaned out the door and called out loudly "Common guys, we're all on the same team here, right?" and emitted a little known Mentarian Power known as "Influence Emotions" with and extra portion of Chi ... just enough to tip the scale. It would only last a minute or so.

"Why who's that?" asked the Base Commander, leaning to the side a bit to see if he could catch sight of the source of that lovely sounding young voice.  The effect took hold, he was influenced positively, against his better judgement, and took a liking to Samwise and his crew after all.  And so he waved the party off, agreeing with the young lady that they're all on the same side... all of which was quite true of course.  And so Captain Samwise, realizing that there was absolutely no time to waste, hopped into the AGV as Pita floored the gas and drove away as fast as the lumbering machine could bear them back down the road from whence they came.  

And so there was laughter and sighs of relief as they fled eastward.

And that's where we left it for the night.  Fun times.

WoAF - Game Session 13

Tactical Combat

Having met with Geoffrey, his Paladins and the Cleric of the Crystal Light, the team from Tuscon decided to aid the Crusaders in ridding the land of the Lizardmen.  At least those that had invaded their territory as far north as Page, Arizona.  Having derived a tactical plan they boarded the Armored Ground Vehicle and went to war.

The battle was short, lasting only a few minutes.  There was a lot of gun fire, and the Lizardmen who had occupied the roof of a derelict Walmart managed to get in a few good licks, chased Geoffrey back down Haul Road by tossing a handful grenades down on his position, but in the end were overpowered and outclassed by the AGV's machine gun, and the Paladin's sheer verve of force.  

Having wiped out the first Squad of ten Lizardmen our heroes reconvened on the west side of the Walmart and surveyed the intervening desert. 1400 feet away was the ravine in which they'd previously encountered the Black Manticore.  They couldn't see the cave from where they stood, but they knew it was there, hidden in the folds of the canyon.  They spotted four other Lizardmen Squads, searching diligently among the rocks for their lost relic, the Chain of Thanatos, though that was a hopeless quest for them.  Geoffrey had already found it the earlier and with a great deal of effort managed to secure it in a vault beneath the township.  The party also learned that there is a Church of The Crystal Light that protected the town from the predations of evil, though the Manticore was so powerful it almost overcame them just the same.  The Lizardmen, however, will be thwarted by the barrier with ease, and hence they will not dare to enter the town.  Nevertheless, the Lord of the Paladins understood all too well that they presented a serious ongoing threat so long as they remain in the vicinity, especially given that their Lord is the Black Manticore himself.

Having killed the first Squad, the heroes conversed amongst themselves seeking a plan of attack that would be victorious over the remaining Squads.  Geoffrey formulated an audacious plan and presented it to them.  It was decided upon, though doubtless further debate will ensue before they launch at their foes.

And that is where we left it that evening.  And it was a lot to play, though not a lot to write about.

WoAF - Game Session 12

Pita was dreaming.  He was back in Seattle.  The year was 2027.  The city had already been rebuilt, several times, as it had come under severe attack before.  But this was an Inter-War period.  The suburbs had been consumed by the city, and every neighborhood was replete with at least one major military installation, a host of garrisons, and a small but efficient downtown district of gleaming steel towers, shops, parks with moto-causeways connecting the various Zones of Control.  These were the good old days... before the end.   Pita was passing a glowing animated ad on the wall of a local Nutrients & Body Care shop.  It was Elon Musk in a space suit, smiling, waving, and beneath his image the bold steel-blue letters spelled out "Proximatics Industrial, Inc".

Pita woke up in the dark cool shade of the AGV.  Light was coming in through the diamond-glass of "the Perch" where the 50 cal. machine gun was manned by Simon "Guns" Gunnison.  He rubbed his eyes, and was feeling a little nostalgic from the dream.  He remembered that particular day well.  He had a date with a pretty nice girl named Sally-Mae and was on his way to pick her up.  He never made the date.  His memory-dream left off moments before The Western Bombardment of 2027.  

It was just sunrise. Outside he heard the sound of crows cawing. He climbed up to peer out the from the turret.  There, about a football field distance from the old abandoned Mech Base 12 was a small forest of twenty-five very tall pine trees, a very dark green-black color, amid which an enormous murder of crows was cawing.  There must have been tens of thousands of them. The entire flock extended across the sky in a long thin line from the south to the north, and around the cluster of trees a broad wide cluster of crows was swirling, diving, circling and cawing.  They'd land on the branches, and instantly the pine needles would seem to arch themselves over in a cluster like fingers of a hand and grab them, surrounding them, and within moments there was a loud caw, crunching sounds and a minute later all that remained was a small bleached crow skeleton, which would fall in tatters to the ground with its feathers fluttering to winds. The crows seem to be irresistibly attracted to clusters of small dark berries that were on the branches of the trees. And at that point, Pita realized two things. One, the trees were swaying. The branches looked a bit like long arms swaying and reaching out towards the crows, almost as if they were gathering them into their folds. The other thing he realized was that the trees had definitely not been there the last time the party encamped at Mech Base 12.  Definitely not. And that was only three days ago.

Captain Samwise, observing all of this, manually swung the metal door of the AGV closed and battened down the hatch.  Hearing the screeching sound of the door closing a sub-division of crows wheeled through the air and landed on the AGV.  Pita scrambled up topside to observe them through the diamond-glass of the Perch where Gun's was still sleeping, his arm slung over the 50 cal. machine gun.  The birds, he observed, despite mad pecking at the surface of the AGV, did no appreciable damage other than to leave the occasional scuff mark. He got the distinct impression as he watched one hop along the top of the AGV to the turret and peck first at the glass, then at the rim around the glass, cocking its head and watching Pita's reactions, that these crows were intelligently inspecting the AGV with great care, searching diligently for weak points.  "Interesting", he murmured to himself.  At that point Linda came up the ladder to try to see what was going on.  Pita explained what he was seeing.  She seemed to want to climb up, so he climbed down to give her room.  However, once he was down, she appeared to lose interest in the turret after all.  He took her by the arm to the front of the AGV as he explained further about how the birds were moving, and what the sky looked like, and how its' amazing color couldn't compare to the color of her eyes.

Meanwhile Fred was investigating the coffee machine.  All of its electronics were burned out, but he managed to use his Retro-Tech skills to fix it well enough for it to brew a pot of acceptably robust coffee.  The enervating aroma filled the cabin, and it was good.

Samwise took a look around the area with his optical goggles in manual adjustment mode, which still worked well enough for this purpose. Like most equipment in the AGV, there was a hardware based underlying system, despite their having lost all of their electronics components in the EMP blast at the end of their last battle.  He spotted a series of shadowy figures dodging between the rocks on the far side of Highway 89. Lots of them. Eventually, as the sun rose higher, he identified them as Lizardmen. A large number of Lizardmen were moving fast in a long column northward like army ants. The team hunkered down in the AGV and stayed as still and quiet as they could. 

After about a two hours both the shadowy Lizardmen and the crows had passed to the north.  The team began to debate their next course of action. Captain Samwise was of the opinion that most team members felt that the AGV was no longer functional, and therefore they should call it a day, and head back to Kitt Peak.  

"Linda, send one more message on ULF telling them we are returning to base," said Captain Samwise.

"... in shame," she added.

"Well, ... in shame ... yes," admitted good Captain Samwise.

"Captain," inquired Guns from the Perch, "when they write down 'success' or 'failure' for this mission, is that for just you, or all of us?"

"Well, it's all of us, but you probably have a black mark on your record anyway, so it doesn't really matter.  And so far I haven't heard any objections to my rulings, so I'm continuing."

"Wait, we can object?", asked Guns enthusiastically.  "Well I object!"

"But I thought you were advocating we give up on this mission because the AGV is kind of wrecked and ..."

"Oh, no, sir.  I haven't given up on this mission.  I'm advocating we complete it.  I just think should stop visiting every tourist trap and taking a damn picture of the place, if you know what I mean," stated Guns emphatically. 

Only Fred completely disagreed. He very much wanted to head back to Kitt Peak and be done with the mission.  Pita seemed ambivalent and deferred to the Captain, while Linda raised her hand to vote for moving forward and completing, despite the damage they'd taken to the AGV.  "Common guys, we can do this," she said with conviction.  And so, it was decided to head back north to the town of Page, and from there on to the Salt Flats of Utah, which was their ultimate destination.  Their mission was to investigate a possible survival group at a secret scientific facility known only as Black Wind V, from which Alt-X reported observing distant, partially triangulated, garbled, and possibly random radio transmissions.  At that point Federation Command had not ventured further north than Tuscon, Arizona, and they thought that part of the country was likely completely desolate.  That proved to be quite wrong, as our heroes found out along the way.

At any rate, the AGV, repaired to some degree and certainly driving more smoothly, took off and turned north on Highway 89 once again.  They made it the same 500' as the last time, and there on the porch of the Navajo Trading Post was the old Indian smoking his pipe.  They stopped the AGV and Samwise got out to have a chat with him.  Guns, Pita and Linda joined him and the old post master offered them stew.  Once again, it was the best stew any of them had had in what felt like ages.  And though the Indian was not a talkative man, he conveyed what information was most important in a few words.  When asked if he had seen the Lizardmen and the crows, the old man replied "The army of the Shadow moves north.  War is brewing." And when they mentioned their battle with the Black Manticore outside of Page, the old man nodded and said, "It is strange. The Shadow Beast does not move beyond his territory lightly. Why did he battle with you?"  Samwise explained about the iron chain, known as "The Chain of Thanatos".  To this the old chief nodded again, "Yes, he wanted that badly enough."  They shared a rare shot of "fire water" that the old Indian had in store, and continued on their way.  Samwise, Pita and Linda all had a shot.  It was strong.  But afterwards they all felt stronger.  The Indian gave the Captain a small wooden totem as a gift.  "It will see you on your way, and bring you good luck.  The Kachina spoke to me.  The Kachina likes you.  She watches over you.  Beware of the shadow, and avoid the Great Canyon.  There is a war to the west."

"Are there fighters for the Light, like those we met in Page?"

"All who can fight, fight," replied the old Indian chief.

And so they departed, heading north in their AGV.  The old chief waved his hat, and went back to his porch to smoke his pipe.  Samwise hung the totem pole on the front window of the AGV, and off they went.  

It was a long, bumpy, hot and bone rattling journey.  Eventually, they came to Cameron, Arizona. There they found signs of a short, harsh battle, and small number of people who had managed to be clinging to on to life in that place were found dead, some half eaten, and there were tracks of Lizardmen everywhere.  They continued north on 89 to Bitter Springs, and all around that place there were the tracks of Lizardmen.  Guns got out of the AGV to take a snoop around, and determined that the Lizardmen had gone west along 89A over the Marble Canyon Bridge.  They estimated that there must have been over a thousand Lizardmen all told. A small brigade of about 50 appeared to have broken off from the main body and continued to 89 North, towards Page.

Just south of Page they came to a highway bridge spanning a 40' gully.  It was getting dark so they decided to head 10 miles off-road and camp out for the night.  It was uneventful, except on Linda's watch she noticed large silent flashes of light over the mountains to the west.  She didn't mention it as whatever it was posed on threat to them, but took a note on this in her journal.

In the morning they returned to the bridge, Guns got out to check the bridge out, and using Ilene's (his rifle) scope he located exactly what he had suspected he might find... thin trip wire linked to metal plates on the bridge, wired to a large amount of explosives spanning the underside of the structure.  Going over the bridge would have seriously ruined their day.  They decided to leave the explosives alone, and crossed the bridge safely by avoiding the metal plates.

Once on the other side they continued to the intersection of 89 and 98.  They went carefully over everything they knew to date, and added their conjectures in a long running conversation as they rolled along the desert road. They understood that the Lizardmen heading north are members of the Black Manticore's army.  That the Shadow Beast, as the Indian called him, had ventured beyond the range of its own territory in order to re-acquire the Chain of Thanatos.  And that there is a war going on to the west, which the Lizardmen are heading towards.  They also discussed the armaments of the Lizardmen, and Guns reminded them that six of them nearly took the party out when they encountered them south of Phoenix.   

Finally the arrived just south of Page, and stopped about 100 yards short of the intersection at 89 and 98 so Guns could take a good look. Through Ilene's scope he spotted a Lizardman crouching behind a rock.  Guns decided, to everyone's surprise, tried negotiating with it, but after three attempts and no progress, he gave up on diplomacy, climbed back into the AGV and asked Captain Samwise if he should blow the critter away with the machine gun.  A few moments later they were rifling the bloody corpse for loot and equipment. They got a sub-machine gun, three grenades, and a bag of ammunition.  

Guns commented, "Any you guys ever think we ought to team up with this folks?  They always got the good equipment and stuff, ya know?"

Taking a look a look around, he found tracks. Another Lizardman had been hiding behind the rock and escaped down a low lying gully path to the north and west.  Annoyed, but determined, they scanned the area carefully.  Using their binoculars and scope they spotted Lizardmen moving among the rocks about a mile to the north west of their location. Samwise suggested they were searching for the chain.  They were too far to be a threat, but too close for comfort.  Samwise scanned for the Knights but they didn't see any sign of them.  They figured it wouldn't take too long for the Lizardman runner to get over there and alert them, so they took off, heading east on 98.

They decided to drive into the town and visit the Knights, who called themselves the Golden Crusaders of Christ Lion.  Once they got to town, they rumbled up in their AGV to the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints and parked the AGV.  Out came Geoffrey, the leader of the Crusaders, and two other Knights. Geoffrey welcomed them and Captain Samwise provided him with information about the Lizardmen.  They looked concerned and asked how many Lizardmen they'd seen.  

"About a thousand went west, and a detachment of around 50 is scouring the rocks over by were we fought the Shadow Beast," explained Samwise. "They must be looking for the Iron Chain," he added.

"They won't find it there," replied Geoffrey.  "We have it."

As it turned out, the blunt Priest of the Crystal Light had sensed the presence of some powerful evil out there in the desert, and so he and Geoffrey made a diligent search under the auspices of The Radiant Lion at noon the previous day, located the Iron Chain, and managed to secure it.  They brought it back and locked it away in a vault, despite its best efforts to escape.  Geoffrey didn't go into details, but the Chain took more than one life on its way into captivity.  Clearly the Lizardmen were none the wiser. 

They talked about the war in the west, and Geoffrey filled in some of the details for them.  The Shadow Beast has its lair in Las Vegas.  The war is being fought presently around a town named Saint George, roughly one hundred miles due west. He told them that the Crusaders have Paladins engaged in the war, and their allies are the "Mech Warriors" of Phoenix. As a good will offering Guns gave them the Lizardman grenades he's taken.  

The Crusaders planned to attack the Lizardmen. They have three Paladins in Golden Lion Platemail, and a squad of regular Knights on horseback, and a priest. He asked the good Captain if he cared to join the Holy Order of the Golden Lion. Samwise said that his team didn't wish to abandon their own mission.  

"You can do both," said Geoffrey without hesitation.

They decided to help the Crusaders assault the Lizardmen, and while the Crusaders got themselves prepared, our heroes drove over the airport to see what they could scavenge in the way of components and weapons.  They got lucky and found quite a bit of useful material with which they conducted further repairs on the AGV, including the power train, an old navigational computer, and an assortment of additional weaponry, including a small amount of jet fuel for some badass home made Movtov cocktails, flares, and a small plane propeller they cribbed from a wrecked cub plain on the runway. Guns even found an old iron chain in a hanger which he intends to use to mess with the Lizardmen's heads.

And so they got busy gearing up for the battle with the Lizardmen.  And that's where we left things this session.

WoAF - Game Session 11

It was just about dawn when the great battle ended with a massive blast of electro-magnetic energy. Our heroes took account of the damage to the AGV and it was massive.  The EMP took out all of the electronics, as expected, but the AGV has a mechanical override mode that allows them to burn readily available fuel and perform most of its essential functions.  The computers were all down, their circuits fried beyond any hope of repair.  But it moved, though only at 10mph.  On the other hand the turret could be crank turned and the machine gun worked.  It's a rough ride, but moving around in a tank has its advantages, even if it's slow.  They set about making whatever repairs were necessary.  Their android, Lexi, was equally fried beyond all hope of repair.

As he was surveying the damage to the hull Samwise spotted four horsemen on the horizon heading their way.  They were coming from the direction of the town of Page to the North.  Southward the storm could still be seen curling and churning out over the desert, flashing lightning and whipping up dust devils.

The horsemen arrived and announced themselves as the Golden Crusaders of Christ Lion, and they were out to slay the Beast of Shadows.  They carried golden swords and shields with religious insignia.  Sam, Pita, and Linda followed them into the desert to witness the battle, and help if they could.  Down into a dark canyon they rode, and almost immediately the battle was engaged.  The Shadow Beast was difficult to see, and leapt wildly over their heads and between the rocks.  The Golden Crusaders were overpowered by the creature, and were badly mauled before it escaped into the mouth of a cave set in the canyon wall.  One of the Crusaders was mortally stung by the scorpion's tail.  Another mauled from above with massive claws.  Another bitten and mauled.  The last, their leader, evaded being seriously wounded, his skill being that much greater than the others. The horses had all been viciously slain.  The golden swords, extremely heavy as Pita found out, appeared to damage the creature, but Pita and Linda's guns had no effect on it whatsoever.  After the battle, the heroes helped the Crusaders back to the AGV, carrying one on a makeshift litter.

They had a brief talk, and then the leader walked back to Page to fetch a priest from the village to help with his wounded.  The priest was elderly, but robust, and quite blunt about his views, to the point of being rude, but a good healer, and came with more horses. The Crusaders made their way back to Page.  While the heroes of Kitt Peak completed their repairs.  Enough so that the AGV could move.

They drove to Page, found the Church of Christ Latter Day Saints, and met with the Leader of the Crusaders once more.  They did not prevail upon him to provide much insight, though they did find out that the Priesthood were Christian Naturalists, and that there might be gasoline at the old derelict airport on the east side of town.  The Leader offered them horses, of which they apparently had enough to spare, but the heroes declined the offer, preferring the security of their roving fortress instead, cranky and rattling as it was.

Not wishing to waste any time at all, they went to the airport, found a old fuel tank and siphoned what little gas was there at the bottom.  It was a lucky find and enough to get them on their way.  As soon as they got the gasoline they decided to immediately head back down south to the Mech Base, about 80 miles, and salvage whatever components they could from the Mechs.  The trip was long, noisy, dusty, bumpy and hot, but eventually they found themselves at the base.  They dismantled both Mechs and used the components to re-establish their communications.  Linda sent a status report to Federation Command via ULF.  Hopefully they would receive it.

Some in the party wanted to return to Kitt Peak and abandon the mission as without the AGV's full capacity it would be a very hard slog up to Salt Lake.  But the Captain, not deterred, decided to press forward regardless. 

They left off at that point, and we called it a night.

Thoughts on the World of Lies

Some personal reflections on my mood lately, as it relates to the Covid-19 Pandemic, and other matters. This is likely to be a long post, so feel free to ignore it, or pop down to the bottom where I will try to summarize.

On the state of the World

One effect I've noticed of the Pandemic-Shutdown for me is that I have much less that I want to say to people, generally. I think it is the result of finding out that the entire world is actually very frail. And it scares me.  Much more than I expected it to. Growing up, I realized there were existential threats to both the earth as a biosphere and the civilization(s) that inhabit it, but I generally deemed those threats to be rationally improbable. However, I nevertheless felt that any existential threats should be taken with utmost seriousness by our leaders, regardless of the probability, as the consequences of a bad die roll would prove to be ultimately catastrophic.  It is only the sensible thing to do, of course.

In my late teens I noticed that there really seemed to be no orderly approach to such issues, and that the world appeared to be run by corrupt and stupid people (like, for example my dad, who was a very smart man but also a moral-imbecile who wrecked our family by lying incessantly - which as you will see colors my world view considerably).  They appear to only have a planning horizon of at most five years, and even those plans are flawed beyond comprehension.  I was 19 or so. I began to be deeply concerned. 

At a certain point soon thereafter I decided I couldn't support the decision making of our Leaders, and so I hit the road in an effort to avoid culpability for what I looked ahead and saw would be an amazing downward spiral towards cataclysm at the end of a once prosperous, and even virtuous civilization.  I didn't want to participate in the Great Downward Spiral.  So I left.  I traveled around the country for the next decade without money, shoes, or anything to call my own beyond the cloths on my back.  I was one with the Tao.

I often wondered, how is that the world can be run by a cadre of lying-morons? And why do The People allow it? When I saw clips of the movie Idiocracy recently, it rang a solemn bell. Can humanity as a whole really be this stupid? Unfortunately, despite the fact that some people are amazingly smart, it appears that en mass, humanity is alarmingly dumb. It is probably a law of nature. 

And so here we are.  That a single pandemic can cause all world governments (or I should say most of the people currently running them) to devastate their own economies, and thoroughly destroy the lives of the vast majority of their citizens on a single pretext, should be cause for alarm among the smartest and wisest among us. I think we are alarmed. This is probably the most important point in this post, btw.  How can we live with any sense of security when the impossible suddenly becomes a Fact?  If I told you one year ago that the governments of the whole world were going to shut down the entire global economy, casting countless millions into sudden poverty, I'm pretty sure you would have told me that I'm insane, and we would have had a chuckle and left it at that.  And yet... here we are. But what can we do about it?  That's the rub. There seem to be no obvious solutions to this dilemma.  It has effected my mood.  I feel alarmed.

Our Leaders are charging ahead talking about "The Science" while ignoring the science whenever it becomes inconvenient for them, and frothing at the mouth about how The Other Side is "lying through its teeth" and going to destroy the world, and the world is being systematically destroyed in the process. I do not care to watch tens of millions of my fellow citizens cast down into poverty in one fell swoop through no fault of their own. I don't like it. Observing this has effected my mood. I feel upset. 

My own life? Not so destroyed at the moment. I still have my job (though how long remains completely up in the air as the hospital has been financially ravaged thus far). Just the same, I have been scanning the job market since March and frankly, it's very slim pickings out there because most companies are not hiring, but have shed workers along the way, as we all know. Way too much uncertainty, both in regards to the virus, but also in regards to the economic conditions, which are anything but stable. For the meantime, though, life goes on more or less normally. I wear a mask to the super market. I don't go out much at all, but I do visit with my girlfriend who has been a beacon of sanity for me in this crazy time. And I also practice my Wudan Kung Fu, which has a leveling effect as well.  In my free time I hunker down to work on my Elthos RPG Project. So my life has remained reasonably stable, personally. But still, this has not managed to improve my mood very much. I guess seeing so many people suffering around me, I can't help but empathize.  So, yes, I'm in a pretty bad mood, I'd say.  And it feels unusual to me.  Like I've caught some kind of emotional flu.  I'm not happy about it.  I feel like I am on the verge of letting down those who count on me to be reliable, stalwart and determined.  I don't want to let them down.

I wear a mask, btw, despite the fact that I suspect it does very little to protect anyone, which is what Fauci apparently stated in an interview last February. He's the expert so I guess he would know. Except he changed his mind later and now everyone has to wear masks or you're "Killing someone's grandma", or something. I don't know. I get the feeling that Fauci doesn't really know either. Which leads me to believe that no one knows. Or some people are, or have been lying along the way, for various reasons. It has effected my mood, and I feel angry about this.

Which brings me to another aspect of this entire episode that has very much effected my mood. They, the proverbial "They", keep lying to us. Over and over again. Lying and lying and lying. And they keep repeating the same lies over and over again as if this will somehow make the lies true. Or they will convince enough people (hint: voters) they are true so that they will forget all the evidence to the contrary they have seen along the way, and "do the right thing". *Ahem*.  

The lies are incessant. They lie about the virus, the politics, the impossible-to-prove motives of people they don't personally know, the shut downs and its effects, the employment rate and its causes and trajectory, the death rates in various states and countries (why did Google Covid-19 Stats gray out China's number counts?), the economy... just lying and lying and lying about pretty much everything. (Has there been anything they haven't lied about?  Curious.) 

And so, there's been a tsunami of lies by weasels pretending that they are "authoritative" and in control of the situation, when really nothing could be further from the truth. Oh yes, they have their reasons, and their reasons are all very important, I'm sure. Maybe they don't want people to panic.  Or maybe they want people to get rid of "The Orange Man", or "The Witch of the West", or whatever.  They all have their very important reasons.  Except they're lying. And in almost every case, they know it, but they do it anyway, because "reasons".  Look, folks, the lies are not justified. They never are.  Lying to the public by public officials should be a criminal offense on the level of Treason, if you ask me.  Can we agree on that?  No?  I didn't expect so. Ok, anyway. I digress.  I will do that often.

Reality keeps proving over and over again that they are lying, and have been lying, the entire time, to everyone, on all sides. They're all doing it. It's incessant. They can't stop. They started a long time ago on this path. It's just that now, its become a Pandemic of Lies. This is not sustainable. 

As for the nature of the lies, I notice that lately they've begun to lie actively quite a bit, but historically it's been mostly lies by omission. I guess in earlier eras they didn't dare lie actively, but now... well, all hell is breaking lose, so I guess they think there is no point in restraining themselves anymore.  And so they have begun simply lying outright.  However, for lies of omission, the trickier modality, this is how it works - they frame a situation in a way that in court you might call "asking a leading question", which designed to draw one toward a preconceived conclusion, without stating them as such. They draw a line pointing in a direction, and they expect your brain to fill in the blanks for them. Because that's just Propaganda 101.  It is much more effective to get people to "think up the answer for themselves", than to simply state it.  Much more effective! And so they do it because it works. On stupid people. Which is good enough for their purposes.  So they do it.  A LOT.  

Anyway, all of this has effected my mood. I never liked being lied to to begin with. But this? During an actual global Pandemic? You have got to be kidding me. But no, there they are, lying up a colossal shit-storm. As usual. In The Great 19 Pandemic nothing has changed except the volume and velocity of lies has increased. We're now in what I think could safely be termed "Super-Lie" mode.  And so the newly phrased adage "Never let a good crisis go to waste" is not going to waste.  And here we are.

All that lying... it's just made me want to shut it all down, turn them all off, and shuck it all down the toilet with a big Flagoosh. I don't believe a goddam word any of them say at this point. If they say "the sun is shining", I'm going to suspect the sun burned out while I wasn't looking somehow and go outside to check. Nope. Still shining. Ok.  But the point is, I do not trust them. Not at all. Not even for the most basic and obvious things.  I suspect I'm not alone in this.

How has this all effected me? Well, my Trust Level was hovering near zero to begin with, and had steadily been decreasing since 1981. Now, though? I think I'm in negative territory. I actively distrust whatever any politician says. Period. Before I used to be like "hmmm... um... well... ok, maybe... I guess...". But now I'm more like "Ok just shut the hell up you lying little turdflinger".  It's not the best attitude in the world to carry around.  But there you have it.  That's where I'm at.

This has had an impact on many of my relationships, as you might guess. Many people who I used to feel I could tolerate as they regurgitated other people's lies, and kind of debate with them about it and, you know, get along with folks... well, I find I can no longer tolerate them very easily at all. I just want to walk away, and leave them to stew in their own crazed juices. I've had quite enough. I'm no longer interested in discussing it. They want to believe the turdflingers and go on lunatic rants over something they know extremely little about? Ok. Be my guest. Just don't expect me to be a Believer with you. I am not. I do not believe Fauci. I do not believe Trump. I do not believe Pelosi, or Schumer, or McConnell or the Governors that did the Great Global Shutdown. I do not believe the "Reporters" on CNN, or ABC, or NPR, or FOX. They're all lying all the time. 24/7/365. It just comes down to a question of "Do you want lies from the Left? Or lies from the Right?" I don't want any lies, thank you. I'm opting out. Thanks.

So I've pretty much stopped talking with most of my old buddies. I see them, as we attend certain social events together, but I find I have nothing to say. They go on and on, joking around as ever, railing about their current political hate-addiction, spewing out all the lies they have received from their favorite "news" sources as if they're absolutely 100% sure it's all so very true, and screeching about how "the other side are lying their asses off!!"... sigh ... not my cup of tea.  Seriously. I'm godawful tired of it.

And I find myself completely disinterested. It's become ... intolerable to me. So I just walk away without saying anything to any of them. No, "Hey gotta go", no "sorry" or "see ya later". Just walking away. Period. And it's bad. It's not the way to be a social person. I've gotten a bad reputation among my old buddies. I'm not interested in explaining it to them. They are wound up tight in the The Great Web of Lies... and I just can't save them from that. I'm not Bilbo. They won't listen to me. And I'm too tired, honestly, to get into a shouting match about whose lies are bigger or worse or more destructive than theirs. I just don't have the strength for it. I'm out. It's sad. They're not bad people. They just believe lies that I simply can't bring myself to believe. And they can't stop spewing them out at each other. Yep. I'm out. I suppose that makes me a bad person. Probably does.  But I'm just not Bilbo. I can't rescue them. I can't even imagine how to try to rescue them.  I got no Sting. And they don't want to be rescued either.  They're Believers, after all.  And they want to do the rescuing, because they Believe.

Which leads me to another self-realization. Bear with me if you will. I'm not a very convincing person.  I don't do things in a way that leads to success, even though I would argue that most of my view points are perfectly correct, and that over the years I've been unusually insightful about how this stupid world works.  But I can't convince anyone of anything.  I'm like Cassandra over here, and have been since the 1980's.  I try, but no one listens.  But why?  It's not fate.  I've not been cursed by the Gods, I don't think.  It's just ... I have no confidence in the future at all. I have not had confidence in the future since 1981. I have felt all along that it is all coming to ruin.  Because, specifically, the people in charge are making the catastrophe happen.  And so this lack of faith in the future of this Civilization has made me entirely unsuited to take action that would have any long term effectiveness.  I have planned, like our best leaders it seems, only as far ahead as a few years, and only as an expedient while I wait for the world to burn itself down.  And for this reason, I have no worldly success.  I expect the world to be destroyed by the people in charge, and I see no way to prevent it.  I feel I'm insightful for recognizing this and not wasting my time or investing my emotions in building important things that would be doomed to be destroyed by Them later on.  In fact, i never built anything that went anywhere.  No book was published.  No artwork put in a gallery.  No wife, no kids, no home.  Nothing built for the long term.  Except for Elthos.  It is the only thing I built in my life, and I built it to last for a long long time... though frankly, I have no confidence in that either.  And so, even if my thoughts about the world are perfectly correct, I do not present them in any way that will lead to the successful propagation of those ideas.  I just don't.  I post them to Blogger instead. Where they will naturally languish with about 50 views, and zero comments.  Because that's how I'm presenting things.  Because I don't see the point in putting in greater effort.  Because I'm convinced that the world is on the verge of collapse, and ... I just don't see the point of trying very hard to do anything other than focus on my more immediate interests.  Will I publish a book explaining how the world has gone wrong and what we could do about it?  Nope.  I won't.  Because I feel, I guess, that hopeless about the future of this world.

You notice I keep phrasing this as "this world"?  The reason is because I believe there will be a great cataclysm that will destroy "this world"... and after that will be "the next world".  One that will give humanity a chance to start over.  And having learned all of terrible lessons about why allowing stupid evil people to run amok is a very bad idea, humanity will advance.  There will be a better world after this one.  That is something I do Believe.

On the other hand there are a few people who I feel I can converse with. But it's really very few. They are the people, like me, who look around and have realized that we really have scarcely any idea of what is really going on. We look, we hear, but no truth comes. And we know it. So with this people I can have a conversation at least. I don't feel like I want to put a 30" steel wall between me and them to shut out the lying. But, at the same time, our conversations usually end with a "and so we kind of have no idea what to do because we really can't get a bead on what's really happening, or more importantly, why... oh well." We have a little laugh about it, and then we've run out of things to talk about. After that, it gets a bit awkward. But ok.  I at least have a few people I know who I can relate to.  That's good.  I'm really glad about that.  

But the upshot is I don't feel like talking with most of my buddies.  I just can't find anything to say.  Sorry.  Can't take it.  I just leave without a word.  I don't hate them, and if they talk to me I'm cordial.  But I just don't feel like I want to converse with most of them at all.  Not even to say "See ya later".  It's sad.  Really, I see this as a personal problem. I'm not handling the crisis well if that's my reaction.  I can blame this and that about everything that's going on... but really, I don't have any excuse.  I'm just letting myself deteriorate and become morose about how things are going.  I could, instead, maintain a positive attitude and laugh all of the shit off myself. I'm seriously thinking about that.  Wukong laughed all of the Evils into oblivion. I need to learn how to do that, too.  I think so.  My old buddies aren't bad people.  They're caught up in The Web of Lies.  I shouldn't treat them as if they're bad people.  I just don't know what to say.  I'm going to work on it, though. Somehow.

On The Elthos Project

As for my Elthos RPG Mythos Machine project. I mentioned this once or twice along the way, but one of its original goals was to give me something to occupy my mind on while the world falls apart. Yep. True. I have been working on this since 1994, and that was one of the original goals. True.

I had a premonition about the world falling apart since 1981. It's taken longer than I expected, and may never happen, actually, but the slow perpetual grind downward appears to have been steady, with a brief and illusionary blip upward in the 1990s. Really it's all been a downward spiral since 1913, I think. Anyway, so here we are. Did we get Arthur C. Clark's future? Nope. Not at all. We got this mess. Roddenberry at least foresaw that it would take one more Great Global War before humanity could mature and reach for the stars. Well, we ain't there, yet. Getting closer by the minute, it looks like, but not yet. Wait for it.

Anyway, about Elthos-as-distraction. The plan.  With the flaw.  The problem with the plan is that all along I had slowly accumulated an expectation, however distant, of financial success with the thing. I imagined that there actually would be a market for just such a piece of RPG World Builder Software, and I felt early on that I could not only build it, but bring it to market and make it into a financial success.  

Somehow I lost sight of Lao Tzu. I forgot from my days on the road to let go of the fruits of my labor, and just let it be whatever it is, and not try to hard to make something last in this world. I erroneously began to accept the idea that success should be measured in dollar signs. 

By this standard the Elthos Project has a success rate of, well, near zero. Its generated roughly $78 in total since 1994. I've probably put in, if you count the time I've put into it as paid at my normal yearly rate of pay, and in particular the Mythos Machine programming, roughly $840,000. So, by the measure of dollars, it's been a roaring and unmitigated disaster. Total Fail.

I should have, and may still, had the presence of mind to let go of that Dollar-Success criteria. But it's been a slow growing expectation like a weed. Damnit. But the truth is, I am constitutionally unwilling to do those things that are required in this civilization to make the thing a financial success. 

I recently read Ryan Holiday's Trust me, I'm lying about the modern advertising industry, and came to the conclusion that, yep, I'm not suited to make anything financially successful in this world. Nope. Not my MO. I strongly suspect I may have come here from another time long long ago where people by and large were honest, and valued truth, decency and integrity, and wherein the Ryan Holidays of this world would find themselves ostracized, lonely and poor.  I come from a world where villainy and deceit are not the norm, but are instead shunned by the civilized folk.  In fact, it is what we mean by "Civilized".  But that world is long gone. No one here remembers it, and only a tiny few believe that such a world is even possible.  Pretty sure.  But I do.  And that's one of my problems.  That's what I'm a Believer of.  And yes, frankly, it is a problem.  Because of all the things that I might have built, Elthos was the one thing I chose.  And thus far making it into a financial success has completely eluded me.  It is, after all, a Total Fail at this point.  Financially speaking.  And for good reason. I just can't get myself behind the sneaky lying underhanded marketing tactics of the Ryan Holidays. And so, I can't get the "Reach" needed to get Elthos off the launch pad. She's got what it takes, but ain't got no fuel. But enough of that.  I've written enough about that in a previous post. The upshot is, to make Elthos successful financially requires a set of skills and resources that I do not possess. 

On the other hand, Elthos RPG Mythos Machine as a pure work of Art. A masterpiece, actually.  And on that basis, it's been a monumental success for me. It is a software tool that allows GMs to create their own worlds, and populate them with whatever they want, and players can log in and create characters in those worlds and as they play they can record their adventures for all time. GMs can even sell their Worlds to one another on the system. It is a first of it's kind work. I wrote the specs and registered them in the US Copyright Office in 1994. So yes, it's a first of its kind. And yeah, I'm proud of that. 

But still, others, far more nimble in the ways of the world than I, have of course shot out into the actual market with their own implementations of the concept and done amazing things, and produced some great and well known successes. But I still maintain that in fact, Elthos is still the best of them all. It's code base has the greatest diversity of features, and the earlier version even includes a fantastic built in VTT where the GMs could paint their own maps, and the mapping system handles movement and combat according to the Elthos RPG tactical rules. All without the GM needing to create any macros, or anything like that.  It is, actually, a fantastic feat of software development... the most unknown amazing RPG software no one has ever heard of in the history of the world. I stand by that statement.

Anyway, I don't think I can carry Elthos into the market.  At least not on my own. I'm still going to try, but I realize, there's a lot about business that I either don't understand or don't want to understand (the seedy under belly of it all does not appeal to me). I would need the help of some very clever and resourceful people to take this to market in a way that will be successful. It's not just an RPG rules system... it's a full blown web application constructed as a SaaS, and with an internal marketplace for World Publishers. Not quite perfected, but damn close. At any rate, I'd most certainly need help. I have a handful of leads, and there's still some promise there, but I think my role needs to remain that of Visionary Artiste.  So I'll be reaching out to a few people soon to see if I can drum up support on the marketing and business fronts. We'll see. And even if that falls through, Elthos as an Art form will live on, and it will always be it's own amazing thing ... even if no one happens to notice it. 

Not everyone sees the most amazing sunrises in the world. Most people, actually, miss them. And yet, there they were... and I was one of those people who saw it. Except in this case I was the person who brought it to fruition. I think I can be happy with that.  I just need to remember Lao Tzu.  

Sorry for this great long ramble. I tend to ramble. But then, I didn't write it so much to communicate this to you, but to help me to think through these things and organize my thoughts. I often find writing thing down as if I'm explaining something to someone else helps me to clarify what I'm feeling. So if no one else, this helped me. Sorry about this, but I am going to post it anyway. There's a few thoughts amid the rambles that others might be able to relate to, and perhaps benefit by, so here you go.

Summary

I've fallen into a bad mood lately because there's too much lying going on out there and I'm sick of it. I have been treating my buddies pretty poorly, though it's not my intention, I just find I have nothing to say when they are reguritating the panarama of lies.  But I need to work on that.  I feel bad about it.

I'm going to focus on Elthos as a work of art, but I think that I'm just not suited to carry the thing to financial success, at least on my own. I'd need help with that part, and will be seeking it as I go forward.  

I want to remember always, though, the words of Lao Tzu.  

“The supreme good is like water, which nourishes all things without trying to. It is content with the low places that people disdain. Thus it is like the Tao. In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present. When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.”

― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

WoAF - Game Session 10

The heroic band sat in the Armored Ground Vehicle (AGV) overlooking the township of Page, Arizona at the intersection of routes 98 and 89.  They had little interest in the town itself, and only mild curiosity about the single light that shone from some window on the far side of the town.  They were far more interested in the condition of Glen Canyon Dam Bridge, but from where they were on the southern edge of town, they couldn't see it.  It was 3 am, and everyone was tired after a long and rough ride.  A dry hot wind was blowing hard off the desert. The sky was speckled with coldly glinting stars, and only a few slivers of coruscating radiation bands were visible towards the western horizon.  It was unusual to see such a clear night, and Guns was enjoying the view.

A debate began as to which way they should go from there. Guns recommended that they leave the town alone, avoid whatever the light was, and take an off road route to the bridge, which they hoped would prove sturdy enough to allow them to cross over the Colorado River gorge safely. 

From his position in The Perch, the diamond-glass domed turret containing the 50 caliber machine gun, Gun's spotted a storm rising in the south east. He gave a casual mention, and they decided to make headway before it swept over the area.  At first it just a appeared to Guns as a dark cloud against the stars that flashed a single thin bolt of redish lightning from on high.  But as he watched it began swirling darkly and growing in size and began to spread rapidly out over the desert.  He couldn't see it entirely because it was dark, with only a sliver of moon in the west, but the cloud began flashing often enough for him to get a sense of its movement.  The clouds were roiling in on themselves with surprising speed, and beneath them a dark circular wall cloud emerged.  In fact, it soon began casting lightning with such intensity that Guns became alarmed.  After a minute or so the flashes were blazing out at more than one per second.  Most of the lightning was inside the cloud, but quite a few bolts were landing on outcroppings of rock in the desert, blasting some to pieces, and catching tall cactus on fire.

"Hey Cap'n," called down Guns, "you know how I can make lightning happen by lookin in places?  Well, it's happening again.  There's a storm coming our way, and it looks like it's gonna be a bad one.  It's coming in from the south east and I reckon it will hit us in about in ten minutes", he said. 

They started looking for a place to hold up and considered the singular light in the distance, but knowing nothing about the town, and considering the amount of time it would take the storm to reach them, they decided to find a terrain feature they could hide in. Linda scanned the map for a safe place to hunker down and found a spot in a small ravine to the north that would serve to shelter the vehicle. 

Guns watched the storm writhing through sky like a great serpent, roiling wildly, blazing with purplish blue lightning. He even recorded the storm on his Visi-Screen, and closed his eyes for 15 seconds, and then reviewed the video.  He wanted to determine whether or not his looking at the storm happen to be causing the lightning, something he thought might be true.  But no, when he reviewed the recording it looked just as bad, eyes open or closed.  Not good, he concluded.

While they watched the incredible lightning display through the AGV windows, Linda brought the storm up on the Visi-Screen.  It looked by radar relatively small, but as they watched they could see it growing rapidly.  Even by the green screen view, the storm looked like it was actually a living creature, writhing and transforming with ever growing tentacles flowing out in several directions.

"Lexi," asked Pita, "based on the telemetry data, can you determine how long this storm will last before it abates?"  LexiB performed the necessary calculations and after a few moments he started to answer, but then went dark.  The blue lights in his eyes lights flickered and shut off.  He was inert. The same thing had happened in the storm they encountered on the far side of Flagstaff. 

It was at this moment that Captain Samwise remembered a dream he had while he slept on their way up from Bitter Springs to Page that he'd completely forgotten until just then.  It was a vision of a Kachina, the same one he'd seen outside of Mech Base 12, standing gigantically on a hill with a lightning storm behind him. Now he sensed the strange being had tried to warn him of the storm. He stared at it through the window of the AGV.  This wasn't a normal storm at all, he thought.

They drove about a thousand yards due north and parked next to the canyon wall. The AGV vibrated with a loud grinding sound as the vehicle drilled its heavy tungsten steel pylons into the ground to secure it.  Once done, Captain Samwise flipped the switch and they went into Low-Power mode.  Now they waited. The storm came roaring in.  A vast bolt of lightning struck within a hundred feet of their position, and all their lights and computer screens flickered.  LexiB remained inert.

Linda switched her view to the town and studied it in more detail on her Visi-Screen. She pinpointed the source of the light in the town as being the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints, and mentioned it to the Captain. He took note of this fact, but took no action.  

"I never understood why back in the day they named Churches after ladders", commented Guns, trying to add a little levity, but the crew was a bit too nervous to respond in kind. The Church, at any rate, seemed too far to make a run for it under the circumstances. Looking at the radar image, Samwise noticed the storm was unaffected by the presence of the Church.  In fact, Samwise noted that the storm seemed to be flashing lightning around the Church more than anywhere else.  A number of buildings near it were hit by lightning and caught fire.  The dry hot wind fanned the fires and soon the buildings were engulfed in fiercely burning flames.

The wind kicked up a sand storm from under the cloud.  It was coming on as a wall of broiling brown, lit by hundreds of flashes of lightning.  Linda reported that it would hit the town in approximately 7 minutes.

All of a sudden there was a loud bang towards the rear of the AGV.  Fred, who was laying on his couch looking at the ceiling thinking, and was closest to the "bang", was jolted upright.  Everyone turned to look. He sat up and looked down across the aisle between him and the opposite couch. The sound had come from the steel door on the cabinet vault in which they had secured the iron chain, the talon'd hand, and the data crystal in its Hermetic-Box. That was the steel door that they had welded shut.  Below the door on the carpet he noticed something out of place. There was a piece of burned paper, somewhat crumpled, and stained laying on the floor.  He hadn't seen it there before.  He mentioned it vaguely to the Captain, but didn't feel very much like going down and seeing what it was. Guns, who had bobbed his head down to take a look, clambered from the turret, picked the piece of paper up, took a brief look at the words typed on it, and walked over to the Captain to hand it to him.  Without further ado, he climbed back up into the Perch to keep an eye on the storm.

Samwise, deeply puzzled as to where this slip of paper came from, read it out loud...

The Second Coming 

By W.B. Yeats 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre 

The falcon cannot hear the falconer; 

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 

The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst 

Are full of passionate intensity. 

Surely some revelation is at hand; 

Surely the Second Coming is at hand. 

The Second Coming! 

Hardly are those words out 

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi 

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert 

A shape with lion body and the head of a man, 

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, 

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it 

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. 

The darkness drops again; but now I know 

That twenty centuries of stony sleep 

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, 

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, 

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

As he finished the last line a tremendous clap of thunder engulfed them, loud enough to cause the AGV to vibrate, and then there was silence.  Even the winds seemed to die for a few moments.

Out in the desert Guns thought he caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye.  It only lasted a moment.  Perhaps it was a shadow against a canyon wall, illuminated by several flashes of lightning.  It seemed to him to resemble the outlines of the black winged lion-like thing they'd seen on the top of the volcano two days earlier.  He rubbed his eyes. He was sure he'd seen something out there.  "Captain, there's something out there in the desert, sir. And I think it looked like that thing we saw on top of the volcano back yonder", he reported.  Samwise ordered Linda to see if she could locate it, but her best effort with the Visi-Screen only revealed something too fleeting to pin down.  An almost-shape, perhaps just an oddly transfixed shadow. She couldn't get a better read on it than that. Pita was watching out the window and he thought he saw it, too. But nothing showed up on their screens. And yet, still, the hair on the back of everyone's necks was standing up on end.

At this point the sand storm came barreling down on the AGV with a mighty and sustained roar. Despite the slim chance that a large enough lightning bolt could potentially cause a feedback loop with the AGV's outer power system, Captain Samwise decided to put up the Plasma Shell as additional protection. A shimmering silvery sphere surrounded the vehicle at a distance of about 20 feet on all sides. As the sand storm swept over them. millions of high speed grains of silicon burst into flaming iridescence as they hit the plasma, causing it to glow with sparkling bright orange flashes along the south east side.

No one said anything.

Suddenly there was another bang from the rear of the AGV, and this time the steel door was slightly yet visibly dented from the inside. The Captain stood up.  He walked down the aisle in order to inspect the cabinet for himself.  Indeed there was a dent, and a hairline fracture on the weld. As he looked another loud "bang!" caused him to step back. And now there were two dents.

He quickly went to work and unhinged a steel door from another cabinet, got his arc-torch, and began welding the second door over the first. There was another loud bang from inside which caused him to pull away, and now there where three dents in the door, and the the weld had a distinct crack in it.

"Captain, why not create some sort of electrical impulse thing that might take this thing out?", asked Guns. "You know ... can't you make one of those, watchya call em ... EMP things?"

"Well", replied Samwise, "that might cause..."

"Yes sir,", interjected Guns,"that's definitely for sure.  But then again, look at what that thing is doing in there, and the storm out there.  Hell, even if the AGV loses power and everything, we can just carry on like everyone else out here in the wilds... eat'in folks and walking down the roads barefoot, and you know... stuff like that.  We can make it, sir." 

Meanwhile, sitting in the Perch with his hands on the machine gun controls, Guns watched as a large dark shadow moved slowly across the surface the brightly sparking plasma. And then there was a redish glow which grew and transformed into a massive lion-like head fiercely protruded into the Plasma Shell from the outside, glowing crimson, eyes blazing with scarlet sparks, its enormous jaws gaping wide into inky blackness.  After a moment it receded, snarling in silent iridescent rage.  Guns blinked several times.

"Um, Captain," said Guns as calmly as he could, "I think we got a problem out there".

"What did you see?" asked the good Captain, trying to keep his voice steady.  

"Oh nothing, nothing.  Never you mind, sir.  Wasn't anything after all.  Why don't you just keep carrying on with that welding you're doing down there", replied Guns, realizing that trying to explain what he'd just seen at that moment would probably be counter productive. Everyone was already busy enough dealing with the menace inside the AGV.

"I think we might want to uproot and move on, actually, sir," put in Pita.  

"Why? Did you see something out there?" inquired Samwise as he put down his face plate and went back to welding.

"Well, I did see something that I didn't exactly like, sir.  And it's just that we're kind of like sitting ducks out here.  We might want to make a move before ... "

It seemed as though time stood still and hung there for a few moments, or was it minutes, as the sound of Pita's voice echoed through the cabin.  

The door of the cabinet banged with a loud crack.  The original weld was broken. But the Captain was undeterred and resumed his work just the same. He decided to stay put and handle things there. He deemed it safer to stay grounded.

Guns began shooting the machine gun through the Plasma Shell.  Rattatatatatata!  Rattatatatatata! Rattatatatatata!

"What are you shooting at?!" demanded the Captain.

"I can't hear you over the machine gun fire, sir!" shouted Guns in reply.  He chewed through 3000 rounds.  He was pretty sure he hadn't hit anything.

Meanwhile, Fred was still laying on the couch, contemplating the poem.  He seemed to have all the time in the world, and yet he felt a pang of foreboding dread as he ruminated over its dark and sobering words, and put his hands down his pants. 

Another tremendous bang sent the good Captain sprawling backwards.  This time the steel door was broken and set ajar by about a half inch.  The original weld was completely broken. Fred and Sam stared down through the half inch gap into the blackness of the cabinet-vault... they could see reflections of the blue static electric charges writhing up and down the iron chain, and caught a glimpse of it coiling and uncoiling like a serpent.

The Captain cast around for something heavy to lay over the door.  He thought if he put something of sufficient weight against it he could weld the door shut again.  However, he quickly realized that with the door broken there was no way he could get a flat surface layer upon which he could weld a solid seal.  He took his hammer out, and with a mighty blow, he bashed the door back into place.  The sound reverberated throughout the cabin, echoing off into the distance.  Fred was deeply impressed by this.  Samwise bought them time.  How much was unclear.

Fred leapt down and told the Captain to step aside. His skill with this arc welding was better than the Captain's.  However, after several minutes even he couldn't get the weld to seal properly.  Meanwhile the storm raged against the AGV, making it shudder with the thunderous concussions from the lightning whenever it struck close by.  And every time the AGV shook it seemed as though time stood still for a few moments, or more.  Or was it that time was passing normally, but everything on the outside of the AGV seemed to stand still? 

Guns, who was watching from up in the perch, was convinced of it.  Even the glowing torrents of sand being whipped by the wind into the plasma shell seemed to either slow down incredibly, or even stop completely, and then suddenly snap back to normal speed as soon as the flashes of lightning-glow faded.  It was the strangest thing he'd ever seen.  But he said not a word about it.  Just stared, wide-eyed and awestruck.  And every once in a while he catch a glimpse of a shadow darker than the darkness out there.  And once he saw another shadow towering out there at the edge of the storm, some gigantic form distantly silhouetted against the lightning illumination of the clouds. He shivered, wiped the sweat from his forehead, but kept his finger squarely on the trigger.

"It's shot," said Fred disapprovingly, "and unfortunately there's nothing I can do about it."

Another bash from the inside of the cabinet caused a spray of sparks to blow out from the cabinet door, and inside the iron chain was writhing wildly.  Fred shoved the arc-torch into the opening in the hopes that he could deter the chain long enough for them to come up with another plan. The Captain pulled out his beam pistol and aimed it at the crack.

Meanwhile Pita, as though working on a completely different timeline, had been trying to fix the inert Android.  The panels on the back of LexiB's head were open, and Pita was tinkering as quickly as he could, tapping across the circuitry to diagnose the problem.  However he wasn't having any luck with it at all.  Something very strange had happened to their Android.  Something very strange indeed.

While this all was happening Linda had stood up, looked at the crack in the vault door, seen the electric fiery chain, and quietly walked over to the AGV's airlock.  She stood there with her hand on the exit panel, ready to open the door, flee out into the storm and crawl down into any convenient hole she could find in the ravine.

"Now, now, Linda, don't do that," admonished Captain Samwise. "There's no need to go running out into the lightning storm, now is there?"

"Sir," she replied with a certain level of panic in her voice, "with all due respect, that thing in the cabinet is going to kill us all, if you can't contain it.  And frankly, I think our chances outside are appreciably better than inside."

"Don't worry, Linda. This is all happening in our heads. Nothing is going on. Just go over the Pita and he will back you up. But whatever you do, don't open that door," ordered the good Captain, but Linda evinced no sign of being inclined to obey that order.

"No sir. That chain has broken through a steel vault door.  I don't think you can stop it with a torch, sir.  I don't think you can stop it with a Lewiston Beam Pistol, either, sir."

"Linda, there's still a storm going on out there with lightning arcing everywhere.  It's dangerous outside. Go towards the front and back up Pita."

"I think I'd rather take my chances with the storm, sir," she stated as she stared at the gap into which Fred had shoved the blazing arc-torch.  The edges of the cabinet had begun to glow red, and the fire-resistant couch cushions had already begun to smolder.  Her voice trailed off into a distant echo.

"Pita, restrain Linda," ordered the good Captain. 

"Snap out of it!", Pita demanded, hoping that would work.  It did not.  He had his hands full at the moment.  LexiB was in a delicate state.  He couldn't just leave it.  And she seemed so far away.  As if she were miles from him.  He couldn't think about that.  He focused his attention on LexiB's circuits, though at the moment he really could not have explained why he felt this was so urgent.

Guns shouted down from the turret, "You know, Captain, why don't we all don our Armored Body Suits, just in case Linda is right and we need to vamoose out of here?"  It was agreed that this was a sensible plan.  Everyone agreed.  But the words and the actions seemed very distant from each other.

Fred was screaming, "Get a fire extinguisher! Screw it! Screw it!"  With this Samwise grabbed a fire extinguisher off the wall and began using it against the cushions.  Everything blurred as if in slow motion.

Pita, meanwhile, got lucky and flipped the right switch in LexiB's circuit board that turned him back on.  While his Main Intelligence Unit was still offline, the light in his eyes flickered to life, but he didn't speak.  He did look around, however, and blinked a couple of times.  This was a step in the right direction, thought Pita.

"You know, the chain must be reacting to the presence of the storm," called down Guns.  He was of the opinion that the two events were related.  They thought about how to cut off the link between the two.  Perhaps it was an electromagnetic frequency. 

"Linda," called Samwise, "can you find a way to disrupt the electromagnetic frequencies in the AGV?" 

She was far too panicked to do anything more than stand next to the airlock.  So Guns, resisting all temptation to stay glued to the machinegun trigger, climbed down from the perch, walked to her panel and began fumbling randomly with dials.  She was not impressed.  Fred then spoke up.

"Linda, your sister wouldn't walk out on her mission.  Don't you do this!"  She was seriously affected by this. 

"Outside may be our only chance of survival, you realize," she retorted.

"None of us has given up yet, I don't know why you are," snapped Captain Samwise.  "Get back to your station and help us solve this situation!" he commanded with a determination and resolve that none of them had heard from him before.

And with that Linda grimly returned to her station, pushed Guns aside and began working the dials.  She knew what to do.

Pita, with another lucky flip of a switch, got LexiB's MIU back online. It seemed to him mighty strange that the offline switch had been flipped to begin with. "Lexi, do you know what happened just now?" he asked.

"No, sir, I do not," replied the Android slowly.  

"Somehow your Main Intelligence Unit powerline had been switched off.  Is that something you could do?"  

"It is possible sir, but I would certainly not do that."

"Then the only alternative is that someone else in the AGV did it."

"That would seem like a logical conclusion," replied LexiB.

"Which implies that we have a saboteur onboard," stated Pita omenously.

They decided that under the circumstances they would have to skirt the issue.  

"LexiB," shouted Sam, "secure the cabinet door!"  With his robotic strength, which was far greater than any human, he was able to grip the door shut long enough for Fred to put a temporary weld in place.  It took a few minutes, but they managed to secure the door.  The chain was bashing and thrashing inside with such a force that it was apparent the weld would not hold for long, but it did buy them a bit more time.  

"What's that chain made of?" asked Guns.

"Iron," said Samwise.

"Well, why don't you use that education of yours and build some sort of magnet thing to hold it down", suggested the gunner.

The team discussed this idea back and forth for a minute.  They needed to generate a powerful enough magnetic field to hold the chain, but the problem would be that any field of that strength would likely also affect all of the circuitry in the AGV.  That could be disastrous.  The other problem would be how to wield the magnetic device so that the chain could be managed if it indeed could be restrained by it.  

Nevertheless, despite their reservations Samwise cobbled together a makeshift Faraday Cage out of bands of metal that had been left over from the welding.  The idea was to get the chain inside the cage, but how? He put the cage aside and went to work removing the Brachiation Motor from LexiB, and had Fred retrieve one of the Power Crystals from the AGV's spare Battery Housing.  He and Linda used them to constructed a High Intensity Magnetic Field Generator.  It was crude, but effective.  They attached it to a mount that could be moved by holding onto two handles on its sides.  With this they could, hopefully, immobilize the chain for long enough to get it outside the AGV.  The operation took time, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to say exactly how much.  When Guns looked at the two technicians working on the project, they seemed to elongate as if being stretched from one side of the cabin to the other, as if they were falling into a long and impossible whirlpool.  He closed his eyes, rubbed them with the backs of his hands.  Perhaps the stress was getting to him. 

They were aware of the fact that the Plasma Shell had been significantly draining their power supply, and at some point the unit would fail.  Linda noted that it had visibly dimmed in the past few minutes.  Lightning struck the canyon wall next to the AGV causing it to shake violently for a few moments.

The Captain decided he would be willing to sacrifice the AGV's circuitry on the expectation that it would still be able to function mechanically as a vehicle should the Magnetic Field take out the onboard computers. It was a risk they'd have to take. They downloaded all of their most important data into LexiB, who would step outside to protect his own circuits from the Magnetic Field, and the rest was downloaded to Fred's Portable Spike, which they put inside the makeshift Faraday cage.  They wanted to put the Data Crystal that they obtained from James Maloy into the cage as well, but getting the crystal out of the cabinet vault in order to do so seemed like a bridge too far.  There was a chance, however, that the container the Data Crystal was locked inside of might protect it sufficiently to keep it from being destroyed.  Fred hoped so.  That crystal would be worth an enormous amount of credits if he could get it intact to Alt-X.

Everyone put on their Armored Suits. They opened the AGV door and LexiB walked with stilted gait outside, followed by Linda who held on to his arm as they moved along the side of the vehicle away from the door.  The wind was ferocious, and the sand blasted away at the skin of their suits, polishing them as they walked. The Plasma Shell was faded but still shimmering a pale blue, its external power supply nearly depleted. 

And so they decided they were ready.

Sam flipped the switch on the Magnetic Field Generator.  

Every panel and component in the AGV began to spark, and small fires broke out as the magnetic field fried circuits in every direction.  Fred and Pita used a crowbar to violently unhinge the cabinet door and pried it open with a sudden heave.  Samwise shoved the Magnetic Coil into the cabinet. 

The iron chain wrapped suddenly onto the coil. It was almost immobilized by the powerful field, but not entirely.  It used whatever mysterious power it had to pull its "head" off of the trap, and began to coil itself slowly in the air trying to latch onto something. It found the Captain's leg.  Unfortunately, Samwise was not the strongest man in the world, and despite his best effort the MFG latched onto the cabinet door. He tried but could not pull it lose. They needed to get the device through the door of the AGV so they could get the chain outside.  The coil was designed so that the magnetic field stayed extremely close to the surface of the coil, so as long as they could keep it from getting too close to the walls and doors of the AGV they could manage to get the apparatus outside.

Bright blue electric arcs were flying in bizarre patterns off the chain and being diverted along invisible lines of force down into the magnet.  Seeing the Captain trapped against the hull, Guns, a man of considerable physical strength, leapt into action and grabbed the wildly sparking device, and with a heave detached it from the hull.  From there he used his brawn to maneuver it towards the AGV door.  The chain was not entirely immobilized, however, and was still writhing around, albeit slowly, and managed to wrap itself around Guns' left arm as he pulled and shoved against the magnetic field towards the airlock.  Sam wanted Guns to throw the device outside, but it was apparent that the powerful field would merely cause the device to latch onto the side of the AGV and they'd never be rid of the chain.  

The good Captain tried to help Guns maneuver the device, but his lack of physical strength was such that there was little he could do.  The chain seemed intent on wrapping itself around the hero's neck.  Because of this, Guns was unable to prevent the coil from connecting to the hull just inside the Exit, and so was trapped with the chain slowly making its way around his neck.

Seeing this, Pita, also a man of formidable strength, leapt into action and grabbed onto the chain. And while he did so he executed one of his Mentarian Powers, known as Psychometry, which allows the practioner to see the history of any thing they are touching. With his great strength he pulled the chain off of Guns.  He felt his strength was even greater than usual, and that somehow something was helping him to execute these maneuvers.  Something that was beyond his comprehension.  Something vast, and hidden.  One of the shadows that loomed over the desert that night.  With a yank, Pita detached the coil from the hull.

He now controlled the chain and walked steadily through the AGV doorway and outside into the storm wind.  As he did, he found his mind leaping back in time along the trajectory of the chain's long dark history.  He suddenly knew the thing's name.  In ancient times it was known as "The Chain of Thanatos".  It was far older than his mind could pierce, its origins buried in the sands of time, but he could see as far back as a thousand years.  The chain was being hoisted up in a special box, ornate and dazzling, overlooking a body of water from the walls of an ancient city.  Byzantium! Men were screaming, and there were fires were burning, while flaming arrows whizzed through the air.  The man holding the box was Prince Alexius. Below the wall there were dozens of Venetian warships mounted with Crusader flags. The chain slid out of the box, fell two hundred feet, and vanished and into the dark swirling waters below.  It began moving like a great iron serpent, and through the hulls of each ship it bored an enormous gaping hole, wrapped itself around the masts and shattered them, and slew anyone who came within range with a sudden snap of it's terrible "head".  Amid fire and smoke and blood curdling screams, the Crusader ships were destroyed and sank beneath the waves.  And then the vision faded.

A fantastic amount of lightning was striking the Plasma Shell. Pita lumbered heavily away from the AGV.  He came within five feet of the Plasma Shell before stopping.  The MFG was vibrating with the intensity of the forces it was generating.  The chain writhed as if in agony, red sparks flying off of it in every direction.

At that moment a bright red spot appeared on the surface of the Plasma Shell. It rapidly grew from a foot wide to five feet, then to ten feet, forming the blazing lion's head that appeared like some unholy apparition of evil rage. It seemed to be pushing its way entirely through the weakened shell and one paw began protruding through, bearing down on Pita.  He felt his skin starting to singe and the smell of burning hair filled his nostrils.

"Throw it into the Plasma Shell!" shouted Captain Samwise. 

And with that Pita hurled the Magnetic Field Generator at the lion's head, flipped it the bird, spun around on his heels and ran back towards the AGV doorway.  Time and space seemed to elongate the further he ran.  Seeing Linda next to the airlock holding on to LexiB, a look of shock and horror on her face, he leaped, grabbing her with both arms so that he could shield her with his back.  

From behind there was a sudden flair of brilliant white light from the explosion as the MFG hit the plasma shield. He and Linda were hurled through the door into the AGV, and at that exact moment, every electronic component in the vicinity was utterly fried in a cascade of sparks and fire.  And then everything went black. 

There everyone lay, singed and panting as the storm outside rapidly abated, and the lightning began to suddenly lessen and fade away.  Pita watched the reflections of the last bolts of scarlet lightning playing on the surface of Linda's beautiful blue eyes.

And that's where we left things that night.