SESSION 40: THE HOBO LIFE
General Summary
Previous Session: SESSION 39: STORYTIME VILLAGE
Next Session: SESSION 41: TRAIN TO MEMPHIS
Players: Current Adventuring Party, Arminius, Lex Garridan, Linda *August 24, 2317*
(Adventure Day 122)
Sheriff Reznick and his deputies poured into the Livestock Arena in a cold sweat. They were worried that Queen Hugsalot and the Storytime Village gang would detonate the Jax Volcano and destroy the entire region. Little did they know that Arminius, Lex and Linda had disarmed the nuclear device in the volcano and gone on to eliminate the entire gang.
The police looked around the old auction house and saw the broken remains of two dozen animatronic animals. Teddy bears, a sock monkey, a rocking horse and big fuzzy tiger were all lying dead. The party were collecting themselves, Arminius treating Lex’s injuries.
Sheriff Reznick had just arrested the Executive of the region for them the day before. These travelers were exceptionally good at causing trouble. Reznick didn’t know whether to thank them or strangle them. Arminius, always silver-tongued, convinced the sheriff that if he really wanted them gone, he’d pay for their train ticket to Memphis. It had worked on Sheriff Lambert in NOLA, and Reznick went for it as well. Their ride through Dixie would be on the taxpayer's dime.
It was still hours until the train came through, so they explored more of Jax. It was about time for Chef Mullins’ puppet show at the Galloway’s Children Center. They were uncomfortable that the odd and suspicious chef was spending so much time with children. It was worth checking out. And also, Linda loved children and helping with a puppet show was a genuine good that they could enjoy.
As Mullins prepared his puppets and his little castelet, he continued to say creepy things about his relationship with children. There was no admission of any wrongdoing, but it all felt off. But still, they continued with a show for the kids. The performance was a success, with almost fifty children applauding them.
When they were cleaning up, Chef Mullins sidled up very close to Lex, and in a completely new tone of voice, he whispered, “Don’t worry. Nobody’s hurting any children. It’s a narrative. It brings out do-gooders. You have friends. And they want to see you in Memphis, at Renewal Tower. The thing you need, for your condition, they have it there.”
Lex was getting very tired of deceptions. She vaguely threatened Mullins, who was surprised by her anger. He plead ignorance, saying that he was just local observer from The Enclave, delivering a message for the Secretary of Defense. Arminius and Linda noticed that the exchange was getting heated and moved in to help. They let Mullins go, but before he left, Lex pickpocketed a note from him.
The note turned out to be a telegram. It gave a loose description of Lex and explain that she needed an injection. The group were “scrambling” to Renewal Tower in Memphis to get her the injection she needed. The message emphasized that Mullins was to establish trust and was not cleared to use violence.
Lex was relieved to learn that there was a treatment for deadly Genetic Disarray Syndrome but was disturbed by the implications. She thought about living in Vault 40 which hosted a renowned medical school, and how many injections they routinely received. Among the countless vitamins, remedies and vaccines, there must have been GDS treatments. Lex wondered how many people in the vault even knew they were getting treatments. She didn’t even know about GDS. And the Enclave’s association was worrisome.
Worse yet, she could only conclude that she had been paired with Mister Man in order to receive secret GDS injections. During their journeys, Mister Man had injected Lex many times, mostly with Stimpaks. But given that the vault leaders had absolutely insisted that Lex take Mister Man if she was leaving the vault, it was clear that at least one of those injections must have been a GDS treatment. After being separated with Mister Man when they were betrayed by Caesar Altus in Flagstaff, Lex had been without his care. That’s why she had started to become sick, and why the nightmares had started.
They already had a train ticket, thanks to Sheriff Reznick and so they went to the station to board. A third Conductor McNeil sibling greeted them, and she explained to them the emergency procedures. By this time, they could recite it by memory: foreigners to the east side of the train, Dixie folk to the west.
As they made their way back to their private car, they met a woman in the dining car. She was a handsome, athletic woman with dark hair and light grey eyes. A wide-brimmed hat shadowed her face, and she wore tailored leather tactical gear. An expensive rifle was locked across her back in a well-kept traveler's sling.
Lex was struck by this woman and approached her. She was friendly, saying her name was Dominica and that she was taking the train to Memphis. Once she got there, she was planning to take the bridge across the Mississippi into the lands of Caesar's Legion. Lex began to flirt, and Dominica was receptive.
Things heated up quickly, and Dominica brought Lex back to her private room. It was a visceral affair, two wasteland women engaging in some gratifying exercise. And it was only afterward, when they were tired and sweaty, that Dominica started to talk about her mission.
She was a citizen of The Capitol and a zealous admirer of Mirabelle Aditi, their fascistic Great Leader. Before the Great War, the American States had been dissolved and restricted into the thirteen commonwealths. Each of these commonwealths had a governor, who wielded a scepter, a symbol of his authority. Great Leader had called on her people to deliver all of the scepters to her, as The Capitol were rightful heirs to America. Dominica spoke with cult-like reverence about her brutal dictator and gleefully spoke about how the Scepter of Texas had been spotted in a Legion legate’s office. She would travel alone, retrieve the scepter, and show Great Leader just how much she was loved.
Lex remembered how the Scepter of the Plains had started her whole adventure. Her aunt, Alexa Garridan, had stolen the scepter from Paladin Hector at Camp Jefferson. The Midwest Brotherhood of Steel wanted the scepter back, and so Lex was sent, her familial relations being used to get it back from Alexa. The plan had worked. Lex had gotten the scepter to Paladin Hector, and then she and Hector had gone to St. Louis. There the paladin had handed it over to the Capitol ambassador, a sign of goodwill. But that was months ago. Now Aunt Alexa had been kidnapped by Jefferson the deathclaw and St. Louis had been burned to ash.
Lex was not interested in hearing Dominica gush about Great Leader. She got dressed and left, indicating as politely as she could that their interaction had run its course. She returned to Arminius and Linda in their private room, and soon they arrived at their first stop.
As they pulled into Yazoo City, they heard gunshots. Once it was clear that no one was shooting at the train, they rushed out to investigate. They a deputy holding a prisoner in handcuffs at the train platform. And in the streets, there was a sheriff and a group with deputy stars on their chests. There was also a posse who had come and there had been a shootout. Everyone was lying on the ground except for the one deputy and prisoner on the platform. The shootout had been intense.
The party scrambled to help. They used their healing supplies and medical knowledge to treat everyone they could, giving no preference to either the deputies or the posse. The situation was grim, as they were all badly injured. In the end, they saved three of the seven dying people and counted them-selves lucky to have gotten that many.
When there was a moment to talk, they discovered a complex situation. Prem, a sheriff’s deputy in Yazoo City, had caught a pair of brothers stealing. These teenage boys had a reputation for troublemaking, so Prem had decided to remove them and make some money doing it by selling them as slaves in Caesar’s Legion. The locals had found out about the situation and been enraged. The sheriff arrested Prem, and he was scheduled for a trial in Memphis. But the Memphis courts were notoriously lenient, especially to officers of the law. The two boys condemned to slavery had been petty criminals, but they were just children and had ties to the community. So, when the train had come to take Prem to Memphis and he was out in the open, a posse had come to kill him. The sheriff and his deputies had fought back, and there had been a bloodbath.
Arminius was furious. He knew very well what slavery in Caesar’s Legion meant. And for this corrupt official to have caused two groups of decent people so much loss made his blood boil. He confronted Prem, who was remorseless. Prem dismissed the two boys as Raiders in the making and didn’t see what was wrong with making some money off of getting rid of them. Arminius considered attacking Prem, but Deputy Moss, the man holding the pris-oner insisted that there be a trial. It was a tense stand-off, but the party eventually let Moss take Prem aboard the train peacefully.
The next stop was a town called Greenwood, which had an elaborate saloon. The party stopped for some good soup and came across a woman named Justine. She was a cowgirl who had been cheated by a rich rancher named Rosalina. Justine had planed a robbery with her boyfriend Kamal, to break into Rosalina’s house and steal was owed. But Kamal had backed out at the last minute. She promised that her plan was good and that the party would all get a good cut on the heist if they joined. And after all it was a just cause.
The party found Kamal in the back alley, afraid to face Justine, but not wanting to go far from her. He said that he worried she might try the robbery on her own and get herself killed. They asked about this Rosalina, and he described a corrupt business-woman who routinely cheated her labourers. So, the party decided to join the heist and convinced Kamal to come back in.
Rosalina’s house was crawling with mercenaries. The party made a plan to stealthily approach the building through the front door, slip down the hall-way and make off with Rosalina’s valuables.
It did not go that way.
There was noise made in the infiltration, and the mercenaries opened fire. These mercs were armed with automatic machine pistols and represented serious danger. So, the group went into full assault mode. Lex took close range head shots with her shotgun, spraying bits of skull all over Rosalina’s nice house. Arminius shot at them with his Incendiary Laser Gun, burning them alive and filling the mansion with screams that drew more attention. And Linda made efficient use of her Pain Train strategy, knocking people to the ground and then crushing their faces with a baseball bat. Rosalina herself reached for a grenade and was gunned down before she could use it.
By the time Justine and Kamal entered the house, Rosalina and her goons were already dead. The cowgirl and her boyfriend were shocked and frightened by the total slaughter. They had meant to rob Rosalina, and acknowledged that it might require violence, but this had been a massacre.
Arminius, Lex and Linda picked through the loot and gave Justine her cut. They politely mentioned that it was best that she never tell anyone what happened here, but given their surroundings, it came out sounding like a threat. The two groups left the house separately, sneaking out into the forest.
The party cleaned themselves off and went back to the train. They walked quickly to their private room and closed the door. It was still two stops to Memphis on a day that just kept getting more interesting…
Next Session: SESSION 41: TRAIN TO MEMPHIS
Next Session: SESSION 41: TRAIN TO MEMPHIS
Players: Current Adventuring Party, Arminius, Lex Garridan, Linda *August 24, 2317*
(Adventure Day 122)
Sheriff Reznick and his deputies poured into the Livestock Arena in a cold sweat. They were worried that Queen Hugsalot and the Storytime Village gang would detonate the Jax Volcano and destroy the entire region. Little did they know that Arminius, Lex and Linda had disarmed the nuclear device in the volcano and gone on to eliminate the entire gang.
The police looked around the old auction house and saw the broken remains of two dozen animatronic animals. Teddy bears, a sock monkey, a rocking horse and big fuzzy tiger were all lying dead. The party were collecting themselves, Arminius treating Lex’s injuries.
Sheriff Reznick had just arrested the Executive of the region for them the day before. These travelers were exceptionally good at causing trouble. Reznick didn’t know whether to thank them or strangle them. Arminius, always silver-tongued, convinced the sheriff that if he really wanted them gone, he’d pay for their train ticket to Memphis. It had worked on Sheriff Lambert in NOLA, and Reznick went for it as well. Their ride through Dixie would be on the taxpayer's dime.
It was still hours until the train came through, so they explored more of Jax. It was about time for Chef Mullins’ puppet show at the Galloway’s Children Center. They were uncomfortable that the odd and suspicious chef was spending so much time with children. It was worth checking out. And also, Linda loved children and helping with a puppet show was a genuine good that they could enjoy.
As Mullins prepared his puppets and his little castelet, he continued to say creepy things about his relationship with children. There was no admission of any wrongdoing, but it all felt off. But still, they continued with a show for the kids. The performance was a success, with almost fifty children applauding them.
When they were cleaning up, Chef Mullins sidled up very close to Lex, and in a completely new tone of voice, he whispered, “Don’t worry. Nobody’s hurting any children. It’s a narrative. It brings out do-gooders. You have friends. And they want to see you in Memphis, at Renewal Tower. The thing you need, for your condition, they have it there.”
Lex was getting very tired of deceptions. She vaguely threatened Mullins, who was surprised by her anger. He plead ignorance, saying that he was just local observer from The Enclave, delivering a message for the Secretary of Defense. Arminius and Linda noticed that the exchange was getting heated and moved in to help. They let Mullins go, but before he left, Lex pickpocketed a note from him.
The note turned out to be a telegram. It gave a loose description of Lex and explain that she needed an injection. The group were “scrambling” to Renewal Tower in Memphis to get her the injection she needed. The message emphasized that Mullins was to establish trust and was not cleared to use violence.
Lex was relieved to learn that there was a treatment for deadly Genetic Disarray Syndrome but was disturbed by the implications. She thought about living in Vault 40 which hosted a renowned medical school, and how many injections they routinely received. Among the countless vitamins, remedies and vaccines, there must have been GDS treatments. Lex wondered how many people in the vault even knew they were getting treatments. She didn’t even know about GDS. And the Enclave’s association was worrisome.
Worse yet, she could only conclude that she had been paired with Mister Man in order to receive secret GDS injections. During their journeys, Mister Man had injected Lex many times, mostly with Stimpaks. But given that the vault leaders had absolutely insisted that Lex take Mister Man if she was leaving the vault, it was clear that at least one of those injections must have been a GDS treatment. After being separated with Mister Man when they were betrayed by Caesar Altus in Flagstaff, Lex had been without his care. That’s why she had started to become sick, and why the nightmares had started.
They already had a train ticket, thanks to Sheriff Reznick and so they went to the station to board. A third Conductor McNeil sibling greeted them, and she explained to them the emergency procedures. By this time, they could recite it by memory: foreigners to the east side of the train, Dixie folk to the west.
As they made their way back to their private car, they met a woman in the dining car. She was a handsome, athletic woman with dark hair and light grey eyes. A wide-brimmed hat shadowed her face, and she wore tailored leather tactical gear. An expensive rifle was locked across her back in a well-kept traveler's sling.
Lex was struck by this woman and approached her. She was friendly, saying her name was Dominica and that she was taking the train to Memphis. Once she got there, she was planning to take the bridge across the Mississippi into the lands of Caesar's Legion. Lex began to flirt, and Dominica was receptive.
Things heated up quickly, and Dominica brought Lex back to her private room. It was a visceral affair, two wasteland women engaging in some gratifying exercise. And it was only afterward, when they were tired and sweaty, that Dominica started to talk about her mission.
She was a citizen of The Capitol and a zealous admirer of Mirabelle Aditi, their fascistic Great Leader. Before the Great War, the American States had been dissolved and restricted into the thirteen commonwealths. Each of these commonwealths had a governor, who wielded a scepter, a symbol of his authority. Great Leader had called on her people to deliver all of the scepters to her, as The Capitol were rightful heirs to America. Dominica spoke with cult-like reverence about her brutal dictator and gleefully spoke about how the Scepter of Texas had been spotted in a Legion legate’s office. She would travel alone, retrieve the scepter, and show Great Leader just how much she was loved.
Lex remembered how the Scepter of the Plains had started her whole adventure. Her aunt, Alexa Garridan, had stolen the scepter from Paladin Hector at Camp Jefferson. The Midwest Brotherhood of Steel wanted the scepter back, and so Lex was sent, her familial relations being used to get it back from Alexa. The plan had worked. Lex had gotten the scepter to Paladin Hector, and then she and Hector had gone to St. Louis. There the paladin had handed it over to the Capitol ambassador, a sign of goodwill. But that was months ago. Now Aunt Alexa had been kidnapped by Jefferson the deathclaw and St. Louis had been burned to ash.
Lex was not interested in hearing Dominica gush about Great Leader. She got dressed and left, indicating as politely as she could that their interaction had run its course. She returned to Arminius and Linda in their private room, and soon they arrived at their first stop.
As they pulled into Yazoo City, they heard gunshots. Once it was clear that no one was shooting at the train, they rushed out to investigate. They a deputy holding a prisoner in handcuffs at the train platform. And in the streets, there was a sheriff and a group with deputy stars on their chests. There was also a posse who had come and there had been a shootout. Everyone was lying on the ground except for the one deputy and prisoner on the platform. The shootout had been intense.
The party scrambled to help. They used their healing supplies and medical knowledge to treat everyone they could, giving no preference to either the deputies or the posse. The situation was grim, as they were all badly injured. In the end, they saved three of the seven dying people and counted them-selves lucky to have gotten that many.
When there was a moment to talk, they discovered a complex situation. Prem, a sheriff’s deputy in Yazoo City, had caught a pair of brothers stealing. These teenage boys had a reputation for troublemaking, so Prem had decided to remove them and make some money doing it by selling them as slaves in Caesar’s Legion. The locals had found out about the situation and been enraged. The sheriff arrested Prem, and he was scheduled for a trial in Memphis. But the Memphis courts were notoriously lenient, especially to officers of the law. The two boys condemned to slavery had been petty criminals, but they were just children and had ties to the community. So, when the train had come to take Prem to Memphis and he was out in the open, a posse had come to kill him. The sheriff and his deputies had fought back, and there had been a bloodbath.
Arminius was furious. He knew very well what slavery in Caesar’s Legion meant. And for this corrupt official to have caused two groups of decent people so much loss made his blood boil. He confronted Prem, who was remorseless. Prem dismissed the two boys as Raiders in the making and didn’t see what was wrong with making some money off of getting rid of them. Arminius considered attacking Prem, but Deputy Moss, the man holding the pris-oner insisted that there be a trial. It was a tense stand-off, but the party eventually let Moss take Prem aboard the train peacefully.
The next stop was a town called Greenwood, which had an elaborate saloon. The party stopped for some good soup and came across a woman named Justine. She was a cowgirl who had been cheated by a rich rancher named Rosalina. Justine had planed a robbery with her boyfriend Kamal, to break into Rosalina’s house and steal was owed. But Kamal had backed out at the last minute. She promised that her plan was good and that the party would all get a good cut on the heist if they joined. And after all it was a just cause.
The party found Kamal in the back alley, afraid to face Justine, but not wanting to go far from her. He said that he worried she might try the robbery on her own and get herself killed. They asked about this Rosalina, and he described a corrupt business-woman who routinely cheated her labourers. So, the party decided to join the heist and convinced Kamal to come back in.
Rosalina’s house was crawling with mercenaries. The party made a plan to stealthily approach the building through the front door, slip down the hall-way and make off with Rosalina’s valuables.
It did not go that way.
There was noise made in the infiltration, and the mercenaries opened fire. These mercs were armed with automatic machine pistols and represented serious danger. So, the group went into full assault mode. Lex took close range head shots with her shotgun, spraying bits of skull all over Rosalina’s nice house. Arminius shot at them with his Incendiary Laser Gun, burning them alive and filling the mansion with screams that drew more attention. And Linda made efficient use of her Pain Train strategy, knocking people to the ground and then crushing their faces with a baseball bat. Rosalina herself reached for a grenade and was gunned down before she could use it.
By the time Justine and Kamal entered the house, Rosalina and her goons were already dead. The cowgirl and her boyfriend were shocked and frightened by the total slaughter. They had meant to rob Rosalina, and acknowledged that it might require violence, but this had been a massacre.
Arminius, Lex and Linda picked through the loot and gave Justine her cut. They politely mentioned that it was best that she never tell anyone what happened here, but given their surroundings, it came out sounding like a threat. The two groups left the house separately, sneaking out into the forest.
The party cleaned themselves off and went back to the train. They walked quickly to their private room and closed the door. It was still two stops to Memphis on a day that just kept getting more interesting…
Next Session: SESSION 41: TRAIN TO MEMPHIS
Report Date
10 Jun 2022
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