This one is slightly out of sequence from yesterday’s post. Oopsie-doo. It’ll also be somewhat asynchronous because of the way we narrated and resolved many of these actions.

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The Opoczno party returns to Ponikla on the afternoon of the 20th. Red oversees Janek’s transfer into the clinic. A quick blood test confirms that Janek has the mysterious geometric shapes, so the doctor notifies Magda that he’ll need kitchen support for the accelerated care regimen the newcomer will need.

Arkadi gets a briefing from Leks on events in Opoczno. He has some thoughts, but he asks for time to process all the news. In the meantime, he has an update of his own: the village’s small bulldozer is in dire need of heavy service, but the flood wall is complete! [One project clock is closed out, finally. That reminds me – I need to do a comprehensive inventory of pending projects and plot threads.]

Arkadi spends the rest of the day on equipment and vehicle preparations. Early the next morning, he, Leks, Zenobia, and Miko crank up the Hilux and head back to Opoczno to escort Fedorov and her delegation westward. It’s an all-day effort, complicated by the season’s first heavy snowfall and some engine trouble on the return leg.

Minka travels with the group as far as Opoczno, where she jumps off to put in the promised machine shop work with Albert Niemczyk. Red relieves her on the 22nd, having turned over care of the rapidly-healing Janek to a newly-sober Ludwig, and begins fitting Albert’s new prosthesis.

Two days of heavy snow force the village to reprioritize its harvest efforts. Magda and Maciej the Brewer confer. The apples and pears are in the greatest danger, as there’s a risk of branches breaking under the combined weight of mature fruit and heavy, wet snow.

With the micro hydro generator complete, Zenobia enlists Arkadi’s help. The two begin work on the village’s second local power source, a small wind turbine.

---

Leks reads in the village’s inner circle on his invitation from the Bracia Wilkow. He’s not too proud to ask for help – especially in light of Filip’s instruction to “bring nothing that wasn’t made by living hands.”

---

Minka withdraws to her workshop. Pawel, one of the railyard teenagers who’s been hinting at an interest in apprenticeship, tags along at her heels to fetch and carry. For two days, Minka doesn’t leave the shop. She catnaps next to the forge. Sleep is fleeting for anyone within earshot of her hammer. Pawel brings her food, water, clean clothes; rallies a couple of the other teenagers to help him tend the horses in between.

---

Magda puts on a pot of tea, cracks open her hoard of baker’s chocolate, and convenes her council. Idle children (or those with the misfortune to appear idle) are dispatched on various errands. Cedar chests are opened, their contents brought forth for consideration. Wool stashes are aired out. The hostel’s common room fills with the chatter of knitting needles and gossip.

---

Alexei checks in with Minka. Pays his respects to Magda and the grannies. Visits Janek during one of the newcomer’s spells of lucidity. Makes a list. Packs his saddlebags, fuels Thing Two, mutters dire lyrics regarding the continuing heavy snow, and disappears in the direction of Opoczno.

Two days later, he returns. Arkadi takes possession of the motorcycle. Taps the tank, hears the echo of nothing but fumes. Notes a fresh set of scratches on the front fork and something that looks suspiciously like a bloodstain on the spokes. Recognizes the look in Alexei’s eyes and decides not to ask at this moment.

---

Leks awakens to a soft scuttling sound and the click of his bedroom door closing. His hand slips under his pillow, closes on the hilt of his dagger. His eyes slit open. There’s no sense of presence – but the first light of dawn glows on steel that wasn’t in his room when he went to bed.

For that matter, he’s fairly certain the carved wood pegs weren’t on the wall last night.

The top set holds a bear spear in the Polish rohatyna style, asymmetrical with only one hooked crosspiece. Somehow, the head and crosspiece suggest a wolf’s muzzle, jaw agape and fangs bared.

Beneath that hangs a fighting hatchet. It’s proportioned similarly to Arkadi’s tomahawk. The head is wider, though, to accommodate an engraving of an Estonian heraldic lion, its outstretched claws reaching to the cutting edge. The poll is an octagonal hammerhead.

Leks goes in search of Minka. Finds her asleep on a horse blanket next to her forge. While he’s debating whether to wake her, Pawel slinks in, goes to a small table under the east window. Picks up an empty glass and a plate with a few crumbs on it, considers them carefully. Exchanges two candle stubs for fresh votives. Shivers. Backs out of the workshop.

---

Leks is fairly certain he catches the phrase “… and that wolf girl,” as he enters the hostel. The flashing needles don’t break rhythm, but the conversation screeches to an ominous halt as a half-dozen grey heads rotate toward him in unison.

“Sit down, young man,” one commands, “and try on these socks.”

“And while you have your boots off, let’s see if these pants fit now,” another orders.

Someone mutters something that sounds an awful lot like, “don’t be shy, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before.”

---

The door swings open to admit Alexei. His jacket has a fresh slash down the left bicep and a not-so-fresh bandage peeking through the new damage, and he smells like a fire in a sauerkraut factory.

The German drops his saddlebags on the nearest table with a ringing thud. He begins hauling out things. A net bag of wool yarn, which he ceremoniously offers to the grannies. A pair of hand-stitched leather boots, heavily scuffed but freshly re-soled. A pair of steel vambraces and a left gauntlet, tarnished and dented, with bright scratches showing where gold inlay used to be. A bottle of Hibiki 21-year whiskey. Two cassette tapes.

He uncorks the bottle with his teeth, pours into the nearest glass, slams the shot, ockets the tapes, and staggers toward the door. Pauses, leaning on the jamb. Turns his head toward Leks. “Be fuckin’ metal,” he rasps.

Slow GM is slow, but I’ve been handling some things on the group’s Discord server. This post is a lightly-edited transcript of a scene with Leks’ player.

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21 October 2000 | 1931 hours
Droga Krajowa (National Road) 12
4km west of Opoczno

GM: The Hilux has been running with its usual infallibility all day, so the sudden silence is all the more alarming. Zenobia curses, shifts into neutral, and coasts to a stop at the edge of the eastbound lane. The hiss of snow under the tires fades into nothing.

“Tools,” Zenobia orders as she steps out. Leks releases the tiedown straps and hands down the battered metal case. He’s about to resume his position behind the pintle-mounted AGS-17 but Miko, who’s still young enough to be fully impervious to the cold, bounds into the bed and grabs the grenade launcher’s spade grips. Leks shrugs and gestures to Arkadi to cover the north, then moves off to the southwest.

Thirty meters is enough for the falling snow to muffle Zenobia’s steady stream of invective. Leks finds a fallen tree at the lip of a small gully and settles his MG3 on it. The waning crescent moon is enough to show a general lack of tracks in the sparsely-wooded fallow field beyond his position. To the east, Opoczno’s skyglow is barely perceptible.

A hiss of movement in the snow draws Leks’ attention just before —

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This one is slightly out of order, technically occurring before the guest post which spoilers Janek’s survival. Slow GM is slow.

This post condenses a long but slow-running thread on the group’s Discord server that occurred after the last session. Which was in March. Adulting sucks.

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Red goes to work on Janek while Minka begins tending to Miko [downed with damage, but no crit – for once] and the bystanders with minor injuries. Zenobia and Leks obtain heavier weapons from the attackers, as do the surviving Russians. They and Leks are eyeing each other uneasily when the actual Opoczno militia shows up in force.

Thankfully, both actual militiamen survived the attack. Franek stays with the party to prevent lethal misunderstandings while Mieszko peels off to intercept the incoming response at the door. Thanks to their intervention and the known credibility of some of the team (particularly Red and Leks), there’s a minimum of unnecessary friction. Alexei, with Ludwig in tow, arrives at about the same time, and they’re kept cooling their heels outside the perimeter until Ludwig rather loudly announces his medical credentials. He taps in for Minka, freeing her up to assist Red.

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Janek doesn’t awaken so much bob to the surface of unconsciousness. The ceiling is unfamiliar, as are the walls and the bed. On the plus side, there’s a ceiling, walls, and a bed.

“Welcome back.” The voice is speaking Polish, but with an accent that it takes Janek a moment to place. The name is more elusive until the associated face appears.

“Doctor Red.”

“Ah. Good.” Red looks at something outside Janek’s field of vision. There’s a scrape of wood on wood as he pulls up a chair. A clink of earthenware. A cool, smooth curve pressed into Janek’s hand. “Water?”

Janek is suddenly, maddeningly thirsty. And hungry. Red seems to anticipate this. “Food is next, if you satisfy me you can handle it.” His diagnostic battery is thorough but swift. When he’s done, he stands and opens the door. “Jacob? Would you see if Magda can make something for our guest?” A muffled reply and withdrawing footsteps indicate an affirmative.

“How bad? How long was I…?” Janek isn’t certain how to finish, or even what questions to ask.

“A few days. Less than it would take in normal circumstances.” Red hesitates. “You may have some short-term memory loss, it seems minor. There are some other factors, which we’ll discuss later. But you’re doing remarkably well for someone who underwent emergency head surgery.”

Janek’s head throbs at that. A memory surfaces: a blank face over a threadbare uniform, a swollen-looking Kalashnikov rising —

Red nods sympathetically. “I assure you, this isn’t how we normally welcome new arrivals to Ponikla.”

At least the room is in a place with a name. But — “Surgery?” Janek’s skin prickles and bile churns in an empty stomach. Surgery usually involves…

Again, Red is ahead of the game. “Your name wasn’t always Janek, was it?”

Janek pauses, weighing Red’s tone. Mild. Accepting. Maybe even understanding. “It’s still not. But it’s a safer name than Joanna.”

Red nods. “We’re in Ponikla now. If you’d rather be Joanna, no one will bother you here.”

“Thank you… but Janek is good for now. At least until more places are safe than just one village.”

Picking up where we left off, with the Ponikla PCs in Opoczno…

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It’s midafternoon when the team wraps up their negotiations with Opoczno’s mayor and town council. They still have a few other pieces of business to transact, and at least one more item has arisen during their visit.

Alexei’s PC is out for this session, so the East German teenager slides offscreen with Ludwig. The radiologist allegedly knows the location of a cache of vinyl records.

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Minka and Zenobia have heard there’s a machinist in town who’s selling higher-end tools in addition to his fabrication services. It’s not hard to get directions, and within twenty minutes, the team is standing in front of a former laundromat. A 10kw portable generator is emplaced on cinder blocks around the back of the building, plumbed to run off a 200-liter drum of methanol. Zenobia nods approvingly at the heavy-duty muffler that’s been fabricated for what would otherwise be a cacophonous small engine.

The interior of the place has been stripped down to the studs, except for one restroom and a tiny office cubicle with attached service counter. The front half of the space is full of display shelves and pegboard. It’s mostly hand tools and spare parts, with one shelving unit containing basic power tools. Little is factory new, but everything is clean, freshly sharpened or tightened, and otherwise in good condition.

The building’s back half is, as advertised, a machine shop. It’s a little better equipped than what Minka’s been able to piece together, though it lacks her smithy and a couple of other items. In the middle of the floor, an immense heavily-tattooed, red-bearded man sits in the center of an oil-spotted bedsheet, surrounded by the stripped parts of a drill press. He’s painstakingly cleaning and examining each small part. At Minka’s greeting, he holds up a finger, finishes the operation in his hands, and returns the part to its place on the sheet before hoisting himself up. As he stands, it becomes apparent that he’s missing one leg below the knee. He carefully removes his bifocal safety glasses and tucks them into a shirt pocket before extending a hand in greeting.

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Everyone is finally healed – physically, at least – after the Battle of Horse Eater Hill. Some of the team members have gotten out of town for various errands, but everyone has been going in separate directions for most of the past week. Red and Alexei confer with Wilhelm, Léonard, the Jaroses, Magda, and a few other key village leaders and come away with a solid list of needs and wants. They collect Minka, Miko, Zenobia, and Leks and pile into the Hilux technical and the deuce-and-a-half for a shopping run to Opoczno.

Since early September, when the Battle of Radom cut the Soviet line of communication between Lódz and Lublin, Opoczno has been hard at work to position itself as a regional trade center. There’s still a fair amount of concern about threats from marauders to the west, and a lot of the city’s limited military efforts have been designed to guard against the former Soviet airborne troops occupying Tomaszów Mazowiecki. Those guys have been oddly quiet since a reported large explosion and fire in August, though. The less organized marauders to the southwest, mostly splinters of the 9th Tank Division, have also been going dark over the past couple of months.

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