It’s time for another GM interjection regarding Kaserne on the Borderlands.

Sharp-eyed readers may have noted that the past couple of real-world years of gameplay have focused on the campaign’s expedition team, of which Miko was a part – but when the focus shifted back to the Ponikla team, Miko was also present. This is intentional.

In the lead-up to the Battle of Radom arc, most of my players created secondary PCs (or adopted recently-introduced NPCs, promoting them to PC status). This was to ensure everyone had someone to play in most scenes and to provide bench depth when primary PCs were down with injuries. By the time the expedition team headed south from Ponikla to validate the Broadstreet Dossier’s contents and Pettimore’s time-displaced memories, Miko’s player was the only one without a second character.

In the short term, this wasn’t an issue because we were focused exclusively on the expedition team. Whatever was happening back in Ponikla was irrelevant. However, as I started bringing the campaign closer to Czestochowa and a (partial) resolution of those questions, I knew I was going to have to address the second PC issue sooner or later, or I would have a player without a character to run when the focus returned to Ponikla.

(Among other issues, I’d inadvertently created a Miko power creep problem. To allow my players to develop their PCs as they see fit, my rule for this campaign is that XP accrues to the player, not the PC. Everyone else was spending XP on two PCs, but Miko was getting all the XP from that player. It’s not insurmountable, but it is noticeable.)

This post brings my hypothetical readers up to speed on an agreement that our table reached before we shifted back to Ponikla. For narrative purposes, the Miko with the expedition is separate from the Miko in Ponikla. As far as the other expedition members are concerned, Miko has always been with them. As far as the other Ponikla residents are concerned, Miko never left. The players, of course, are wholly cognizant of this artificiality – but the characters have no clue (and I have very good players).

I do, in fact, have a pretty good idea of what’s actually going on, but that will have to play out.

It’s a long night on Horse Eater Hill. Around 0200, Red finally admits he’s done all he can for Magda. Her survival is now up to her constitution – and the microscopic geometric shapes in her bloodstream. He arranges a rotation for monitoring her condition and collapses on a clear patch of ground.

No one really rests. Miko has managed to get a campfire going, but it’s just enough to turn the fog from grey-opaque to silvery-opaque. It muffles sound, but that just means the noises that are audible are that much more jarring. Leks keeps shifting behind his gun, using the pain of his knee to stay awake through the night.

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Red drops his axe and allows himself a moment to sag in exhaustion before he starts triaging. Magda’s injury is clearly the worst – a deep, ragged wound that’s pulsing blood from a nick in her brachial artery. The physician gently takes the empty P7 from her good hand and starts tourniqueting.

Leks organizes some help and manages to get Minka back on her feet. She’s hobbling on a crushed foot, but it’s not life-threatening. She checks Alexei as he stirs and moans. The East German has a few broken ribs, but he, too, appears likely to live.

Minka looks around. Red seems to have the Magda situation in hand. Her eyes fix on Miko as he saunters up, wiping blood off his recently-acquired szabla. “Miko. Help me over there.” She points.

Miko looks at Minka. Looks where she’s pointing. Looks back at her. “Are you sure you want to get close to that?”

Minka grabs his collar and pulls him in. “He’s. Still. My. Horse,” she snarls.

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Session music: Horse Soldier, Horse Soldier – Corb Lund.

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The team slowly advances along the winding road that leads up the hill toward the village. The fog grows thicker, shrouding the details of their surroundings, but what they can see is desolate. As the group once saw in the forest south of Ponikla, and as the expedition team later encountered in a deserted section of Radomsko, the village’s outskirts are in a state of decay far more advanced than the date would suggest. The asphalt of the road is cracked and buckled, and Leks’ bearers frequently have to detour around craters and potholes that would wreck the handcart. The few vehicles alongside the road sit on their steel rims, the rubber of their tires cracked and dry-rotted. Buildings, too, slump under their own weight, their load-bearing members bent or splintered.

There are bodies everywhere, too – those of the human victims of the nerve agent attack, as well as those of the scavengers who came to feed upon them. Many are already picked clean or rotted down to the bone.

Leks calls a halt. The hill’s crest is finally visible a few hundred meters ahead. A tight cluster of buildings marks the village’s center. He confers with Red and puts out flankers. Miko and Arkadi move off the road to the north; Minka and Alexei take the south. Red and Magda stay formed up on Leks’ handcart, while Zenobia and Jablonski form the rear guard.

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Back at the eastern approach to the hilltop village, the combined group of the PCs and the Rawa Mazowiecka militia circles up about four kilometers away. Their first move is to send in a trio of motorcycle scouts. Through their binoculars, they can see the point, about 700 to 800 meters away, at which the three riders start losing cohesion, then all sense of direction.

The group waits for the riders to regain their sense of direction and return. Then Arkadi and Alexei move in on foot. The probe confirms Arkadi’s theory of the previous day: whatever is interfering with vehicles and other machinery isn’t having a noticeable effect on the ability of personnel on foot to move and navigate.

Red, Leks, and Arkadi confer with Captain Majewski. The PCs will mount the initial assault on the village, augmented by three of Majewski’s troops. Sergeant Jablonski and two of his cousins volunteer for the detail.

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Magda stares at the map. She knows what it means – though she’d lost the signal for a moment – but she now has no idea where she is on it. None of what she’s seeing lines up with any landmarks in her field of view. “I… I don’t know,” she whispers.

Behind the OT-64’s wheel, Alexei shakes his head, fighting off a wave of fatigue. A stray ray of sunlight pierces the incoming rain clouds. It’s lower in the sky than it should be. He frowns and looks at the APC’s fuel gauge. The needle is well below a half-tank. He doesn’t remember driving that much. No one in the vehicle can remember eating lunch, nor the last time they hydrated.

Red squeezes his forehead against his pounding headache. “I really don’t want to do this, but I’m going to have to bluescreen all of these people.” The blank expressions around him remind him that he’s the only one present who knows what a Windows 95 is. He sighs, sets his carbine inside the Hilux’s cab, unbuckles his pistol belt, and gestures for Magda to do the same and join him.

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“We’re getting pretty far afield, and this is getting weirder. I want more firepower,” Red declares. He cranks up the Hilux’s radio and calls back to Ponika. The signal is attenuated and static-laden, but he’s eventually able to reach Alexei. The East German teenager whistles up Arkadi and Miko and heads north in the team’s OT-64. It’s about a three-hour trip. By the time the reinforcements link up, there’s maybe an hour remaining before sunset.

The team decides to make the best possible use of their remaining light. They shuffle vehicle assignments and push on, following the tracks, which are still more-or-less straight to the north-northwest. As the sun dips below the western horizon, Magda calls a halt. She pulls the precious set of night-vision goggles out of her pack and heads for high ground. After a few minutes of careful scanning, she trots back down the hill. “I’m not going to be able to track in this. I can’t see any campfires. There’s some sky-glow to the west, but that looks more like a larger community. And there’s fog coming in from the north.”

“The north?” Minka asks sharply. At Magda’s nod, she frowns. “The river is to the south.”

Red scratches his beard. “Supernatural fuckery aside, fog is usually caused by cold air. Or,” he looks at Minka, “it could be supernatural fuckery.”

“Or supernatural fuckery could be causing cold air,” Zenobia snarks.

“Farmhouse?” ventures Magda.

“Farmhouse,” Minka hisses emphatically.

“Farmhouse,” Red concurs.

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“‘Horse eaters,'” Minka quotes in a cold, flat voice. Her knuckles whiten on the haft of her hammer. Her eyes are unfocused. She takes a step toward the northwest. Another.

Leks moves in front of her. Stares her down. “We don’t do these things alone.”

Minka breathes deep and refocuses on Leks. “Fine. But I’m going to do this thing. I will crush every last one of them if they ate my fucking horse! I don’t even care what it is! I will kill them!”

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The morning after Leks’ journey to the Bracia Wilkow, the Estonian steps out of his lodging to see Stanislaw walking up the south road to Ponikla. The teenager is clearly exhausted. Under the lingering effects of whatever Filip shared with him, Leks can clearly see – and smell – what Stanislaw has been up to. Leks grins to himself and falls into step alongside Stanislaw. “Welcome back! Long night?”

“Um.” Stanislaw flushes. “Uh, yes. Yeah.”

“You look tired.” Leks nudges his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get some breakfast in you.” He steers the younger man toward the hostel-turned-town-hall.

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It’s been a few weeks since the team has had much of a chance to just sit down and talk. Constant rain has made the harvest harder, and the week-long diversion to organize the allied salvage operation at the wrecked train didn’t help matters. The crowd filters into the hostel’s common room, where Magda and her staff of pre-teens and elders have laid out the usual communal meal for sixty to eighty people.

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