Getting caught up after far too long away from this. The following is a lightly-edited – and long – transcript of a scene played out on our Discord server after the last session.
Recap of previous play not blogged:
After lunch, Octavia and Erick check out the local school. It’s small but functional. Cowboy, Miko, Betsy, and Cat retrun to the team’s encampment to start working on Lazarus. While there, they receive a visit from Sergeant Francisco Lopez (no relation to Cowboy), who runs the maintenance/support section for Bravo Troop. He expresses very strong interest in taking Lazarus off the team’s hands for the right price. Bravo Troop has two light tanks, seven other light combat vehicles, and a collection of HMMWVs/equivalents, but no recovery vehicle. So any time anything breaks down, another combat vehicle has to be the one to tow it home.
Shortly after that, Betsy overheard one of the radios in Comms receiving a transmission. Bell had left it on while he went into town for downtime. The conversation was in Russian – one party clearly in a firefight, the other party not. With no one present who spoke Russian, Erick and Betsy grabbed the team’s tape recorder and got most of it for later analysis. Cat did recognize the candence and repetition of one part of the transmission as a call for artillery support – indicating someone out there speaks Russian and has access to artillery. Comms’ direction-finding gear pointed south-southwest as the source of the transmission. Cowboy’s supposition, based on that, was that the Soviet 129th Motor Rifle Division is getting into it with the Army of Silesia.
Picking up the in-character thread:
The team (Betsy, Cat, Cowboy, Erick, Ellis, Pettimore, and NPC Hernandez) heads down to Bravo Troop’s encampment for their dinner engagement with Captain Warren. Along the way, the group passes the town’s medical clinic – closed for the evening, but with the glow of an electric light visible through the windows. Hearing no generator, Betsy infers battery power.
Bravo Troop’s encampment is in a former lumber yard. There’s a sign on the gate making it obvious who the new tenants are:
B Troop
1st Squadron
116th Armored Cavalry Regiment
Idaho National Guard
Two gate guards are on duty – uniformed, armed, geared up, alert. One of them escorts the team to the building that used to be the lumberyard office, now the HQ building and CO’s residence. The front half is still in use as a cramped office. First Sergeant John Wheeler (previously encountered) is at one of the desks. He stands, closes the notebook he’s writing, in, greets the PCs, and escorts them into the back.
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