As my gaming group moves toward resuming play in Kaserne on the Borderlands, it’s probably time to refresh my three loyal readers on who the player charcters are. I have eight players, all but one of whom is running two characters. As a result of events that occurred shortly before the hiatus, the PCs have split into two teams. One team is staying in Ponikla, the village in which the campaign began, to continue with local stabilization and infrastructure recovery efforts. The other team is headed to Krakow by way of Czestochowa, seeking answers to a few different mysteries that have reared their ugly heads over the course of the campaign.
I think I’m going to do this as a series of eight posts, each one focusing on a single player’s PCs. We’ll start with Player M, who runs Red and Cowboy. Red is an original PC; Cowboy is a liberated POW NPC who was adopted and fleshed out.
William “Red” Grayson, M.D.
Lieutenant, U.S. Navy Medical Corps
Ponikla Team
“Red” was doing his residency when the war began. Drafted and direct-commissioned as a Navy trauma surgeon, he was attached to an infantry battalion in 2nd Marine Division. With the collapse of anything resembling international law and treaty enforcement, he’s picked up a rifle to defend his patients… and himself… and, really, anyone else who needs it.
Over the course of the campaign, Red has emerged as one of the party’s leaders (though not necessarily its tactical commander). He’s also been at the forefront of scientific inquiry into the various weird phenomena that the PCs have encountered. When the team split, he chose to stay in Ponikla to help drive regional recovery, as he’s the only known physician within at least a 50km radius. He’s established a decent pocket clinic in the one house in Ponikla with a geothermal climate control system.
Appearance: Tired, definitly has seen better days, with greying auburn hair and a scar across one cheek from flying shrapnel.
Buddy: Ellis
Moral Code: Never turn your back on family. Friends are just family that you choose.
Big Dream: Find a place to settle down, be a doctor, raise a family.
Strength C: Close Combat D, Stamina D (Load Carrier)
Agility C: Mobility D, Ranged Combat C
Intelligence B: Recon C, Survival D (Herbalist [homebrew]), Tech D
Empathy A: Command C (Logistician), Persuasion C (Trader), Medical Aid B (Combat Medic, Field Surgeon)
Coolness Under Fire A
Permanent Rads 8
Armament: M4A1, Glock 18C, axe, entrenching tool
Other Key Equipment: all the medical supplies
Kira “Cowboy” Lopez
Private First Class, U.S. Army – MOS 13F (Forward Observer), attached to 4th Ranger Battalion
Expedition Team
Kira was raised on a cattle ranch in the Texas panhandle by an impatient, frequently drunk, father and her Hispanic mother. Until her mother died in a car accident in the late ’89. Her father became unbearable and she blamed him for the accident. Their relationship got worse as she got older, and spent as much time away from the ranch as she could get away with. She left Texas for California as soon as she graduated from high school in ’93. She was sick of rural life, sick of her father, and everyone else knowing your business, and wanting to live pretty much anywhere else.
In Los Angeles, she apprenticed to an electrician, thinking it would be a good way to make a living doing gigs for rich people (or something like that) and it was alright for awhile. She worked hard, often being willing to work from before dawn until it was too dark to work safely. On the weekends she partied hard, hanging out with the metalheads and goths, going to concerts and night clubs. On Sundays, once she kicked out anyone she might have come home with the night before, and if she wasn’t too badly hung over, she’d go to church, thinking her mother would be even more disappointed in her if she didn’t.
When the war broke out, she had the misfortune of having an early draft number. Cowboy won out as her nickname in bootcamp because she was absolutely willing to throw fists over “Cowgirl” innuendos, and somebody else already got to be “Texas.” She ended up in artillery when her math skills and understanding of trajectories and coordinates indicated she’d be good at it.
Now that the war is effectively over, Madga’s speech has her reconsidering her desire to live anywhere other than some rural shithole, realizing that now…everywhere is a shithole, and it’s going to be mighty hard to find food in an urban shithole. For once, a small, close-knit community might be okay. Besides, if she ends up back in the States, they’d probably send her somewhere else to fight…and she knows she doesn’t want to get involvd in a civil war back home.While she used to think she’d prefer someplace like Valhalla for an afterlife, Kira always remembers to light a candle for her mother and her ancestors on Dias de Muerte, and has included people from her unit who’ve died over the course of the war.
Appearance: 5’3″ & dusky skinned, she has surpisingly light hair, and hazel eyes. She has a number of tattooes, a mix of pagan, hispanic culture, and heavy metal. She’s outwardly cheerful & reliable, and has an excellent singing voice, even if her music preference is heavy metal.
Moral Code: She isn’t a Ranger, but never leave someone behind.
Big Dream: Motivated by Madga & Red, maybe help make at least a small part of the world a better place.
Strength B: Heavy Weapons B (Redleg), Close Combat D, Stamina D
Agility B: Driving D, Mobility D, Ranged Combat C
Intelligence B: Recon C (Scout), Tech B (Chemist, Electrician)
Empathy C
Coolness Under Fire A
Permanent Rads 9
Armament: PKM, Sa vz.26, pearl-handled switchblade
Although Kaserne on the Borderlands is on vacation right now, I still have campaign thoughts. One of them is that the default in 4e is to separate non-threatening-but-edible animal encounters (hunting results) and dangerous animal encounters (card draw results), and I mislike that. I’ve been wanting something a bit more in-depth for both random encounters and Pettimore’s hunting expeditions. Here’s a first stab at it, informed by Wikipedia’s inventory of Polish wildlife:
Yeah, that’s a percentile table. Don’t judge me. Right-click it and select “open image in new tab” to embiggenate.
As mentioned in my previous post on my campaign’s homebrew specialties, I’ve also added a few more drugs to the team medics’ pharmaceutical inventories. Here’s how we’re handling them:
Antacid
Provides +1 STAMINA to resist food poisoning.
Anti-Diarrheal
Once you’re ill, one dose provides +1 to one infection (STAMINA) roll made for any disease that has diarrhea as a symptom. Dying ass-first sucks.
Anti-Psychotics
Provides +2 to your EMPATHY roll to recover from long-term mental trauma after your counselor makes a successful MEDICAL AID roll.
Antiseptic
A liquid compound suitable for cleaning medical equipment. Used during a surgical procedure, one unit ensures the patient doesn’t have to make a STAMINA roll to avoid infection.
Hydration Salts
When taken in conjunction with one ration of clean water, a character suffering from dehydration immediately heals one point of dehydration damage. Further doses have no additional effect.
Morphine
Used for sedation and pain relief. One does allows an attending physician to roll an extra d8 (treat as an ammo die) for stabilizing critical injuries or otherwise conducting surgery. A second dose allows an additional d6 on the roll, but one or more 1s on an extra die mean the patient is addicted (if he survives the procedure).
Multivitamins
A month’s supply for one character gives +1 STAMINA to resist disease or infection during that month.
Stimulant, Mild
Once per day, one dose restores one point of Stress.
[We’re also using this rule for coffee, which makes it a desirable trade good for more than – ahem – flavor reasons.]
Stimulant, Strong
Injected pharmaceutical. One dose provides a +2 to MEDICAL AID when getting a downed character back on their feet from incapacitating damage. Also usable for other story-appropriate effects.
With an advance team from Ponikla on site, the train wreck is secured. The expedition team breaks camp. With Betsy keeping an eye on the bridge and ground-guiding each driver in turn, they cross the Pilica without incident. They’re in unknown territory now – they have a map, but the map is not the terrain.
The team advances cautiously west. Intelligence gathered from the prisoners taken at Radom indicates that the shattered remains of the Soviet 124th Motor Rifle Division have moved into Piotrków Trybunalski, so they have little interest in getting too close to that city. Their intent is to pick up the main highway at Kamiensk, roll south to the Warta River, find a safe place to cross it, and make their way to the area of Czestochowa.
As the lead vehicle breaks out of the treeline into the late-morning sun, Betsy spots two people on the far side of the large clearing, a few hundred meters away. They also sight the vehicles and go to ground, but not before Betsy is able to glass them with her binoculars. They’re in civilian attire, and armed, but that’s all she can make out at this distance.
This is a band of 2 hunters. They are Experienced NPCs with civilian firearms. They are moving by foot.
Leader motivations: very sociable (heart 10), stubborn (club queen)
The team decides to try to make contact. Erick and Miko dismount (with Hernandez and Cat, respectively, taking over their crew positions). The initial communication is shaky, but Erick gradually draws out the elder of the pair. He introduces himself as Dawid Pasternack. Dawid is a weathered Pole in his 60s, carrying a hunting shotgun, and from his speech patterns, he’s probably as close as central Poland gets to an Appalachian redneck. This is a guy for whom the apocalypse was a step sideways, not down. He refers to Erick and Miko as “Minnesota” and “Warsaw” throughout the conversation – though he’s not too sure what Minnesota is, and asks if it’s anywhere near New York City.
Dawid advises them that the area in which they’re traveling is infested with Soviet deserters. He’s aware that a more organized force has occupied Piotrków Trybunalski, though he doesn’t know enough about military matters to identify specific units. He also informs them that several small groups of American survivors came through the area about a month ago, apparently fleeing some big battle up north.
Dawid has news of the team’s planned route, too. The town of Kamiensk was occupied by a large group of deserters, but they fled the town when the more organized Soviet force moved into the area. In their absence, Kamiensk is trying to put itself back together. The community’s de facto leader is Father Miroslav Kasprzak, a Catholic priest.
Erick sends Miko back to ILM to retrieve a bottle of good prewar liquor as thanks for the information. Dawid is suitably impressed by the team’s generosity and bids them a warm farewell as they resume their journey.
With the information Dawid provided, the team definitely wants to check out conditions in Kamiensk. Knowing that the area is full of potential marauders, though, they proceed a bit more cautiously, ready for a gunfight. They’ve made another twelve klicks or so when everyone on board Comms is subjected to a sudden inarticulate shout from Bell as he slams on the brakes. There’s an almost-unnoticed thump from under the vehicle. “Aw, man,” Bell sighs. “I think I hit something.”
Ellis keys up the radio to halt the rest of the column while several people dismount to investigate. A young feral pig apparently picked the wrong moment to bolt from cover. There’s not much left. At least the BTR-70K is undamaged. [Behind the screen, Bell failed his Driving roll for this hex of movement, and I rolled a “roadkill” result on the mishap table. The team did get one ration of wild food out of the deal.]
With the possibility of the piglet’s mother being in the area and angry, there’s not much reason to linger. Everyone remounts. The convoy is about to begin rolling when Betsy, who’s been watching the team’s flanks, returns her gaze to the road and spots something about forty meters ahead of the UAZ. There’s an odd depression stretched across the dirt track, almost like the ground has subsided over a small buried pipe – and a few meters off the trail, nestled into a dead bush, she sees a squat tripod topped with a stubby tube.
“Ready to roll?” Erick asks at this moment.
“No. Oh, hell, no. Hold up.”
The characters' line of movement crosses the trigger of an off-route anti-tank mine. Time has taken its toll on the mine's concealment.
Noticing the mine is an Average: Observation or Combat Engineer task for a character on foot or horseback, Difficult for a character riding in a vehicle, or Formidable for a character viewing the scenery through an AFV's vision blocks. A walking character will not set off the mine. A bicycle, motorcycle, or horse has a 50% chance of triggering it. The first vehicle to cross the trigger automatically detonates it.
Hernandez takes over the UAZ’s M2HB while Betsy moves up to investigate. Her suspicion is confirmed – it’s an off-route antitank mine with a pressure tube trigger. By the accumulation of rust and bird droppings, it’s been there at least a year, probably longer. Miko and Pettimore check the surrounding area and find a squad’s worth of fighting positions, also abandoned for quite a while.
There’s a brief debate on what to do about it. Betsy thinks she could defuse it and has a decent chance of recovering it safely, but there’s no telling how reliable it is at this point. It would be easy for the team to drive around it, but that would leave a problem for the next people to use this route. Ultimately, the team takes Betsy up on her offer to just detonate it in place. She cranks the launch tube around 90 degrees, then walks up, giggles to herself, and drops a full ammo can on the pressure tube. There’s a satisfying kaboom as the mine vents its fury on a stand of trees.
23 Sep 2000 - Day Shift (1200-1800)Weather: light rain, 73ºF
Terrain: open (speed modifier x1, Driving +1)
Order of March: UAZ-469 (Erick driver, Betsy gunner/lookout), Industrial Light and Mayhem (Ortiz driver, Miko gunner), Comms (Bell driver, Cowboy gunner)
The rest of the drive to Kamiensk passes without incident. The team finds a deserted commercial building about two kilometers short of the town where they can leave the vehicles in a tabor. Leaving Pettimore, Hernandez, Bell, Ortiz, and Comrade on guard, the rest of the group heads into town on foot. They’ve adopted a cover story as traveling traders – Ellis and Erick are the actual “merchants,” the rest of the group are caravan guards.
Before the war, Kamiensk had about 2,500 inhabitants now. It’s down to 190, and they’re struggling. As the team approaches, they can see that the community is barely managing to commit agriculture, and the half-dozen dairy cattle appear unhealthy (Octavia suspects parasitic infestation).
They’re only a few hundred meters outside the populated part of Kamiensk when the church bell starts ringing an alarm. The people in the fields drop their tools and run for shelter. There’s an awkward pause of a couple of minutes before the church’s door opens and a tall, white-haired man steps out. He’s carrying an AKM; a clerical collar is visible beneath the neckline of Soviet-issue flak jacket.
“I was expecting the village priest, not the village paladin,” Erick mutters.
Father Miroslav is suspicious at first, but he warms to the team once Erick name-drops Dawid and deploys some Church Latin. The community doesn’t have anything noteworthy to offer to traveling traders, and their capacity for hospitality is limited at best, but they’re welcome to spend the night under a roof.
The team settles into a warehouse on the east side of town, near the highway. It’s long since been stripped bare, but it’s good concealment for the vehicles and the service catwalks offer elevated observation and firing positions for defenders.
Ellis “directs” the setup, but his real motive for not doing a lot of hands-on work is to make some observations of the townsfolk. Demographics here are pretty typical – a general lack of military-aged men. The locals are warily assessing the team, too. There’s a general skittishness born from serious recent trauma. Ellis sees attitudes shifting a bit toward cautiously curious as Cat, Betsy, and Ortiz make themselves (and their personal autonomy and armament) visible.
Erick sets up a “hearts and minds” clinic. Octavia tags in with him – although she’s not too eager to draw attention to herself, being still somewhat skittish from her experiences in the last village she inhabited. Comrade, sensing his human’s mood, flops down nearby to keep an eye on the proceedings, and Cat also wanders over to provide security.
The medical team doesn’t have any urgent lifesaving work, but there’s a steady trickle of patients throughout the afternoon. Minor malnutrition and dietary deficiencies are nigh-universal. A number of the villagers are sporting half-healed blunt trauma injuries consistent with severe beatings; several have broken bones that have been inexpertly set, a couple of which are likely to result in permanent impairment without surgery that the expedition isn’t equipped to provide.
It’s also evident that Kamiensk is about to experience a baby boom. A majority of the women of childbrearing age are pregnant, between two and six months along. They’re also avoiding care from Erick, gravitating toward Octavia’s side of the makeshift clinic. Octavia and Cat exchange some dark looks as the pattern becomes evident.
Miko is gathering materials to feed the team’s fuel still when he gets the crawly “I’m being watched” sensation that’s becoming all too familiar to him. He looks around to see a small mob of pre-teen kids staring intently at him. After some whispering and nudging, the group pushes a spokes-urchin forward.
“What did you do to get them to let you carry that?” the child asks, pointing at Miko’s AK-74.
Miko shrugs. “Killed a Russian,” he says matter-of-factly.
There’s a faint screeching noise as several small paradigms undergo sudden, radical adjustment.
“Where are you from?”
“Um. Warsaw.”
“We heard Warsaw was all burned up.”
“It mostly is.”
There’s some more whispering and an awkward silence before the kids scurry off.
23 Sep 2000 - Evening Shift (1800-0000)Weather: cloudy, scattered showers, 65ºF
Actions: Pettimore and Comrade on watch; Hernandez brewing fuel; Bell and Ortiz gathering materials for fuel
Father Miroslav shows up as the team is starting dinner prep. He seems quietly relieved that these eleven outsiders and one giant murderdog won’t be consuming the community’s paltry food stores. He invites them to join him in the church after they’ve eaten – he can offer tea, which is the one luxury he has in abundance.
Once they’ve eaten, the PCs take him up on that offer. Night is falling and the village is mostly dark as they make their way to the church. Outside, the building shows the scars of conflict, with several windows boarded over and a few bullet holes in the wood.
Inside, it’s a different story. The wood is polished, the floor is swept, and the place is clean and in good repair. The glow of candlelight fills the sanctuary. At one side of the altar, the glow of an oil lamp flickers through the cracks in a door. That door opens and Father Miroslav emerges bearing a tray which contains a dozen mismatched teacups. He sets it down, goes back into his study, and returns with a large kettle and a small jar of honey.
Once pleasantries have been exchanged, the team asks about the village’s status. Father Miroslav confirms what they’ve pieced together so far and fills in some of the blanks. The deserters came to town about six months ago. In the process of taking over, they killed most of the local militia (which also reduced the community’s workforce and farming capacity by a measurable amount). The band originally numbered close to 50, but attrition and infighting reduced that somewhat. They fled about three weeks ago, after a couple of close encounters with patrols from the Soviets in Piotrków Trybunalski put the fear of capture and a field trial into them. There was some more infighting around that decision, which is how the village acquired the handful of weapons it currently possesses. He believes the marauders have split up into three bands, each with about a dozen men.
Octavia diplomatically approaches the subject of the pregnancies. The priest’s expression darkens and he confirms their suspicions. When the deserters took over, they took a number of “war brides.” He takes some pains to point out that he did not sanctify those “marriages.”
Father Miroslav also has some intel on the nearby city of Radomsko. Formerly home to some 44,000 people, it’s now down to about 4,000 – a quarter of those in the city, the rest scattered around its environs in farming collectives. It’s under the rule of a larger band of deserters (from which Kamiensk’s former occupiers were a splinter group). Radomsko’s current rulers number about 70 troops under the leadership of a man named Shotkin. The priest says they have something that looks like a tank, but which he’s told isn’t actually a tank – he’s not a military man.
Where is Radomsko? It’s about 16 kilometers south-southwest of Kamiensk. “I can show you if you have a map,” Father Miroslav offers.
record scratch
The team looks at one another in astonishment before pulling at that thread a little. Yep – thanks to Father Miroslav, Kamiensk is largely free of what the players and their characters have dubbed “the brain-fog.” He’s preserved his small church library and has been running elementary education sessions for the younger children, and his weekly church services and other outreach seem to be keeping it at bay for the adults. He’s seen the effects in smaller surrounding communities, as well as in Radomsko – to the point of seeing the light almost come back into someone’s eyes before some outside force flips a switch and makes them forget again.
If the team was leaning toward helping out Kamiensk before, they’re thoroughly committed now. In the long term, there may be a relocation effort – but for now, they need to find a way to help this place preserve itself and get through the winter before they move on. The obvious question, though – why haven’t they asked the 124th MRD for assistance in dealing with the deserters? Easy enough – they’re afraid that there’ll be a price for Soviet assistance, and the least-bad case is that the soldiers will take “payment” from the village’s food reserves.
The local harvest is struggling but Kamiensk will probably avoid starvation if nothing else goes wrong – and if no one else shows up looking for a share of those reserves. Beyond those basics, their greatest needs are defense and medical aid. There are only six firearms in the village, all of those seized in haste as the marauders cleared out, and precious few people know how to use them. Those marauders are likely to come back sooner or later, and as things currently stand, they’ll be able to walk right in and pick up where they left off.
On the medical aid front – well, the team does have a large supply of certain pharmaceuticals, including chewable children’s vitamins. Leaving a cut of those, with instructions to prioritize the pregnant women, will help with the worst of the dietary deficiencies until they can diversify their agriculture a bit more. There’s some other advice Octavia can leave – especially now that they’ve confirmed that the written word isn’t forbidden here.
As far as defensive measures, Ellis and Betsy have some thoughts. The community has ample building supplies free for stripping from the abandoned buildings. Moving everyone into a defensible core, hardening it, and making the rest of the town difficult terrain will be a force multiplier. If the marauders have split up into small groups, a few days of hunting them down and defeating them in detail will yield a good haul of weapons on which Pettimore can start training people.
With that, the team bids Father Miroslav good night and heads back to their bivouac to relieve the watchstanders, continue brewing fuel, and get some rest.
Overall, this session was the first real workout for the core rules’ hexcrawl mechanics. I used my own encounter generator rather than the 4e card draws, but still got plenty of emergent story from the randomization. Generator results are embedded in the narrative above.
As we’re in sandbox mode, resolution of the local marauder problem was entirely in the players’ hands. They’re interested in ensuring local security, so the next session or two will focus on that project.
The situation in Kamiensk and Radomsko – indeed, the entire regional infestation of ex-9th TD marauders – is drawn from the first edition boxed set’s Escape from Kalisz material. I have plenty of notes in case the PCs decide to tangle with Shotkin’s force down in Radomsko – or if he decides to mess with them first…
I’ve thrown together a few custom specialties over the last few months. Some fill gaps in the 4e character model that my group has identified. Others are just there to add flavor (but should still be worth the 10xp investment). The following are currently in play on PCs or allied NPCs.
Herbal Medicine (Medical Aid)
When you attempt to forage, you may choose to gather medicinal plants rather than edible ones. If you succeed, roll 1d12 on the following table and gain one dose per success of the indicated medicine:
Pain reliever
Pain reliever
Pain reliever
Anesthetic, local
Antibiotics
Antacid
Anti-diarrheal
Multivitamins
Sedative
Stimulant, mild
Stimulant, mild
Stimulant, strong
[Some of these meds are also homebrewed. I’ll eventually post them too.]
Jerry-Rig (Tech)
Gives a +1 bonus to SURVIVAL when scrounging for parts and a +1 bonus to TECH when repairing or improvising construction of simple machines.
[We’re currently monitoring this one to see if it’s too powerful.]
Meteorologist (Survival)
Roll SURVIVAL when you spend a stretch or more making weather observations. If you succeed, the Referee should tell you the upcoming weather trend for a number of days equal to the successes you rolled.
Storyteller (Persuasion)
Once per shift, roll Persuasion when you spend a stretch (5-10 minutes) telling a moving or inspirational story. For each success, choose one audience member who may remove 1 stress.
[We’re also monitoring this one to see if it’s calibrated appropriately.]
As noted in the last campaign update post, the PCs found a derelict train with some still-salvageable cargo on board:
After some dice-rolling to determine what from this survived the literal train wreck and its subsequent chlorine release, and then after splitting this among the parties involved in the salvage work (Ponikla, the White Eagles, Von Bahr’s Irregulars, and the emerging Opoczno merchant cartel), here’s the PCs’ share of the haul:
Consumables
1900 rations of canned vegetables 1000 rations of Portuguese Gatorade 3 tons beer = 6,000 bottles (500 mL each) 1.2 tons liquor = 1600 bottles (750 mL each)
3 tons shampoo, conditioner, and hair care products (1kg = 3 person-months) 1.2 tons moisturizing soap and hand lotion 6,000 personal medical kits (or equivalent wound care and surgical supplies) 600 kg antidepressants (pill; 1 kg = 1 person-year) 200 kg antihistamine (pill; 1 kg = 1 person-year) 300 kg potassium iodide (pill; 1 kg = 6 person-months) 600 kg chewable children’s vitamins (pill; 1 kg = 1 person-year) 100 kg anti-fungal (cream; 1 kg = 10 doses) 500 kg disposable syringes (1 kg = 500) 200 kg Lidocaine (injected; 1 kg = 100 doses) 200 kg gram-positive antibiotics (pill; 1 kg = 20 doses) 300 kg epinephrine (injected; 1 kg = 100 doses) 300 kg IV saline solution (1 kg = 1 liter)
anesthetic gas regulator 3x bedside medical monitors (blood pressure, heart rate, pulse oximetry, respiratory rate) medical spectrophotometer tabletop centrifuge CT scanner
I don’t think this is campaign-breaking, given how many things the PCs are trying to do that this won’t help with, but it is certainly an interesting, eclectic, and utterly massive haul.
The expedition team says their (hopefully not final) goodbyes and rolls out of Ponikla under a steady rain. The first leg of their journey is through known territory, areas that are, if not entirely friendly, at least not hostile. The plan is to make for the Pilica upriver of Tomaszów Mazowiecki (whose marauders are hopefully constrained in range by the loss of their hovercraft’s fuel supply) and assess two rail bridges as potential crossing points. They know there’s an intact road bridge at Przedbórz, but they also know a marauder band down there has a ZSU-23-4, so that’s definitely a secondary option.
Travel map at the end of the session; no spoilers. “Fog” indicates hexes that the team hasn’t explored yet (keeping in mind the XP award for such activities).
They roll through Opoczno without incident, pick up the highway, and follow it to about ten klicks outside Sulejów. Going farther west would be tempting fate; among other things, Ellis’ interrogations of prisoners from the Battle of Radom reviewed that the heavily-mauled 124th Motor Rifle Division has moved into Piotrków and is running patrols as far as Sulejów. Thus, the team turns south and heads offroad. They’re aiming for the northern of two rail bridges that they believe should be there, based on their knowledge of the railroad network in the area.
It’s not until they hit a familiar stretch of highway across the river from Przedbórz that Cat’s error in navigation becomes apparent. They’re farther south than they intended to be. With dusk falling, it’s not a great idea to backtrack north along the Pilica’s east bank.
Betsy, seated in the bungee sling behind the UAZ’s M2HB, is the first to spot a streamer of smoke rising above the trees about half a kilometer away. The team quickly repositions for a better look and determines that it’s a large-ish occupied farmstead: a big farmhouse, a smaller bunkhouse, two grain bins, two barns, a machine shed, and a scattering of smaller outbuildings. The stone wall around the central compound has been reinforced and there’s a fighting position on the roof of the larger barn. To Betsy’s eye, it looks professionally-done, within the limits of local tools and materials.
The place is occupied by at least a dozen people, most of whom are going about their late-afternoon chores with one eye on the convoy. A couple have taken up weapons and are watching more intently. Erick and Cat dismount, grab the handheld radio from ILM, and walk in to negotiate.
The woman who comes out to meet them is fiftyish, tall, with callused hands and incredible grip and forearm strength [a potter, though this never became relevant during play]. She introduces herself as Greta Nowakowski. Though she doesn’t say as much, it’s evident that she’s the local matriarch. Erick applies the team’s cover as itinerant mercenaries, turns on the charm, and is able to talk Greta into letting the team stay overnight.
One of the armed men slings his Kalashnikov, opens the gate, and ground-guides the convoy’s vehicles into parking positions between the machine shed and the large barn. The more tactically-inclined team members note that the locations shield them from view from most locations outside the perimeter wall – and put them in a crossfire from the most-defensible buildings.
The compound is occupied by a total of 16 people, the remains of three extended families who’ve fallen in on the most-viable of their farms and expanded it for productivity and defensibility. It’s evident to most of the team that the two younger men are Polish deserters, which probably explains the defenses. Greta notes that they’ve had a couple of encounters with the marauders from across the river, but they haven’t come over in force and the farm’s defenses were sufficient to convince them to go the hell away.
The team pitches in on farm work, including taking ILM out and using its cargo-handling crane as additional assistance for setting some fenceposts. After a few hours of labor in the dwindling light, they’ve earned their keep. Dinner is the farm’s usual communal meal, augmented by the PCs’ own rations. As usual, Magda’s plum preserves and cherry jam are welcome morale boosts.
Miko is on watch while most of the team finishes their meals, so he’s the first to spot torches approaching from the south. It’s a party of three men and a women, carrying an AK, two shotguns, and a bow. Their leader not-quite-demands to speak to Greta.
Greta quickly fills in the PCs. This appears to be a delegation from a larger community – about 500 people, including both the core village and the outlying farms – that sits south of the highway. The speaker is Mirion Zawisza, the miller and a member of the governing council. The Nowakowski+ farmstead does business with the community in general and Mirion in particular but isn’t entirely comfortable with them – there’s a nonspecific but definite unease when the subject comes up.
Four people aren’t that much of a threat, but Pettimore takes up position in a hayloft, and a couple of the other team members swiftly gear up as a QRF. The rest accompany Greta as she goes out to speak to Mirion.
Mirion is quite wroth. A month or two ago, a woman came to the village, a foreigner who still spoke pretty good Polish. She claimed to be a healer, so they let her stay with them. She did some good, but she spent a lot of time collecting papers and broken tools that no one could see any use for. She was up at odd hours, asking strange questions. And she’d arrived with a huge black dog and an uncanny cow, neither of which acted quite right either. Then one of the kids took ill, and her response was to say that she wanted to put things in the children’s blood. She must have gotten wind of the village’s imminent response, and now the hunt is on.
“She’s a witch,” Mirion states with fervent certainty. “Will you help us deal with her?”
Greta assures Mirion that her people haven’t seen any witches, nor uncanny familiars. The travelers staying with her are vagabond mercenaries who’ll be moving on in the morning (she says with a sharp look at Erick, who nods in confirmation). But they’ll keep an eye out. With that, Mirion and his accomplices resume their hunt, moving off to the southeast.
The team confers. Erick inserted himself into the conversation, and from the details he elicited in Mirion’s description, he’s fairly certain that what he heard was someone’s description of a scientist or a physician as filtered through a particularly bad case of regressive brain-fog. There’s some disagreement as to whether this actually is the team’s problem to deal with… they can’t save everyone and this is not on-mission…
Octavia Blumsztajn is having a very bad night. From her hilltop vantage point in the fallen ruin of an old water tower, she can see the literal torches and metaphorical pitchforks of the mob that’s searching for her. She has no idea where Mrs. O’Leary, her saddle-trainedPolish Red cow, has gone, but the villagers clearly haven’t captured the creature. Comrade, the immense Black Russian Terrier who’s been following her around Poland for a while, is still with her and is profoundly unhappy with being prey, but he’s also smart enough to avoid picking a fight he can’t win.
Whatever refuge Octavia thought she’d found in the village is clearly no longer an option. The general regression she’s been observing has turned into full-blown crazy. She’d like to go back for her lab, but what hasn’t been smashed is likely to be set on fire soon. At least she has her lab notebooks and a couple other portable instruments she managed to grab on the way out, and a few days’ food and water. Grunting as her knees protest, she rises to a crouch, shoulders her pack, and heads northwest…
Betsy, Erick, Cat, Miko, and Cowboy head out to see if they can do some good in the middle of this “witch hunt,” leaving Ellis, Pettimore, and the NPCs to watch the vehicles. [Ellis and Pettimore’s players were absent; we didn’t arbitrarily split the party to sideline them.] They haven’t gotten far when the sound of shotgun blasts tells them that at least one of the search parties has encountered something.
Moving up quickly, they spot a mob of about a dozen people, Mirion recognizable among them. Two of them are obviously injured, one down with a huge chunk torn out of his calf and another with a mauled hand and forearm. They have a prisoner, though: a fiftyish woman is on her knees, arms bound behind her back and a bruise rising on her face.
The team moves in, weapons not quite readied. Mirion recognizes them and greets them warmly – in his mind, they’re clearly here to assist in whatever he has planned for the witch. “Her hellhound is still out there,” he warns them, indicating his injured party members.
Erick goes to the discarded pack that the woman was carrying, begins rummaging through it. The locals eye him but don’t interfere. He pulls out a stack of spiral-bound notebooks and begins reading the first one. It’s in English, a personal journal of an American Doctors Without Borders scientist who deployed to Poland when the war in Europe began. He frowns, flips pages, reads snippets aloud. The locals don’t react but their prisoner’s eyes flick to him and she nods incrementally.
The team really doesn’t want to massacre a bunch of civilians, but a peaceful removal of the “witch” is looking increasingly unlikely. Erick’s recitation in a strange language is beginning to draw suspicious glances and the team’s readiness to throw down is becoming evident.
Cat breaks the incipient standoff. “Hey, guys, look at this,” she says as she unfolds her painstakingly-hand-drawn copy of the team’s map.
All but one of the locals lock up or go down in convulsions. The only one to not bluescreen is the one with the maimed hand. “Another witch!” he screams, going for a weapon.
Three things happen more or less simultaneously. Octavia rolls over and bites his leg, Cat body-checks him into the mud, and an immense shaggy black canid bolts from the nearby underbrush and begins mauling the guy’s good arm. No one intervenes until they’ve cut Octavia’s bonds, helped her to her feet, and recovered her gear.
[New PC acquired, hooray! Octavia is the second character of Zenobia’s player.]
Back at the farm, Greta is displeased and resigned. She figured something like this would happen. She doesn’t begrudge the rescue, especially once she’s heard Octavia’s story, but she strongly encourages the PCs to move on immediately. If it becomes an issue, she’ll tell Mirion and his people that the witch’s rescuers held her and her people at gunpoint.
The team mounts up and heads north, putting about ten kilometers between themselves and the farmstead. They make camp near one of the rail bridges they’d intended to investigate anyway and settle in to get some delayed rest.
In the morning, Miko and Betsy set out to check out the bridge. From a distance, the damage is apparent. While it’s structurally intact, it looks like a relatively small explosive charge damaged the rails. The effect of this is obvious: a derailed and mostly burned-out westbound train strewn along the tracks and riverbank, with the locomotive and several cars in the river.
Betsy walks out to look at the damage – she’s not a certified structural engineer but she can improvise. It’ll take a couple of days’ work but she thinks she can make the deck safe for vehicle passage.
Meanwhile, Miko checks out the railcars. Most are smashed or burned beyond repair, but a few are very interesting to his acquisitive little scavenger’s heart:
Random generators and emergent story, man. I told myself there was a 5% chance of a derailment here, rolled that, then hit my encounter generator for a derelict train.
They call in the rest of the team to take a look. The reason these cars haven’t already been looted becomes swiftly apparent: one of the tank cars contained chlorine. Anything metal is suffering from some degree of corrosion, and fear of residual contamination would have kept locals away long after the actual hazard dissipated. But, as far as Betsy and Octavia can tell, what remains is safe to loot now.
Erick and Bell fire up the long-range radio in Comms and call back to Ponikla. As far as Red is concerned, this is an all-hands looting job. He begins reaching out to the White Eagles, Von Bahr’s people, and the Opoczno merchant community, organizing labor in exchange for shares of the salvage.
Looting can wait, though. Betsy starts organizing everyone who isn’t on guard – she has an engineering problem to solve. The expedition settles in to brew fuel. Two days’ hard work (and a couple of minor injuries from pushed rolls) later, the bridge is ready to reopen for traffic. The team beds down amid continuing rain, prepared to break camp and move out on the morning of September 23.
This session suffered from exceptionally poor GM preparation, especially in the area of hexbashing mechanics. Still, the main point here was to connect Octavia with the rest of the team in a more-or-less organic fashion, and we pulled that off.
Octavia Blumsztajn
Doctors Without Borders
A Chicago native of Polish/Jewish descent, Octavia Blumsztajn had never been to her ancestral homeland until the war began. She was a doctor, specializing in research and pathology rather than medical practice. When government funding for her position evaporated in the prewar years, she joined Doctors Without Borders. As the European conflict heated up, the need for relief workers skyrocketed, and her language skills made her a natural fit for the organization’s Polish mission.
Since things came apart, she’s been wandering the countryside, avoiding the ruins of major cities, and trying to do as much good as possible while remaining upright and sane. She was fairly settled near a village until recently, when after a child died horribly from lockjaw, she managed to cook up a batch of tetanus antiserum. Which would have been great, but when she explained what she’d done, the brain fog kicked in – her neighbors had tolerated her weirdness (what’s all this paper she keeps hoarding?) for the benefit of having a healer around. But wanting to to inject their kids with stuff whose explanations caused seizures was a fast path to accusations of witchcraft…
Moral Code: The world has fallen to shit, but you can rebuild it–better, faster . . . eh, you get the idea.
Big Dream: Restore the world to some semblance of civilization.
Build: All the science, with a medical focus on public health. She’s also something of an amateur anthropologist. Octavia has a couple of homebrew specializations that I’ll blog later.
Tools: Science and medicine. Octavia started journaling early in the war and kept it up to maintain her sanity. With the brain fog creeping in, it’s been a literal lifesaver. She’s picked up a Steyr Model 72 hunting rifle in .30-06 and a Manurhin MR73 revolver but isn’t really proficient with them – she’s definitely not a fighter.
Alt: Octavia’s player also runs Zenobia.
Comrade
very good boy
Octavia is not entirely sure who owned Comrade before he turned up hungry, matted, and very much looking for a human. Given the breed’s history, he was most likely a Soviet Army or KGB military working dog. He definitely has protection training and takes commands in Russian.
The week-plus after the Battle of Radom is a time of consolidation and preparation for Ponikla’s denizens. The immediate security environment isn’t 100% – there’s still the issue of the marauders in Tomaszow Mazowiecki, the harvest isn’t looking great thanks to ongoing steady rain, and the area north of the Pilica is a major unknown – but it’s better than it has been for some time. This gives Ponikla’s defenders time to consider other matters.
Ellis and Pettimore are getting antsy. The Broadstreet Dossier suggested that if Pettimore really is displaced in time, several pivotal events are about to unfold down south. The first step to verifying this seems to be an expedition to where Pettimore’s memories and Broadstreet’s writing both indicate the Black Madonna is hidden: a defunct copper mine west of Czestochowa.
The solution, of course, is to split the party… err, to send a well-equipped expedition, posing as military stragglers/mercenaries. Ellis spends a couple of days organizing this, feeling out who’s interested in hitting the road for a while and who’s putting down roots in Ponikla. In the end, there aren’t many surprises.
A fair amount of logistics work is necessary, though. Red, Ellis, and Léonard put their heads together. The expedition will need a scout vehicle, a support vehicle, some combat power, and enough seats for the ten folks who’ll be heading out.
For recon, the team’s trusty-yet-nameless UAZ-469 gets a light makeover, finally completing the up-armoring job that Minka started when she bolted a gun shield on for Leks. This reduces its cargo capacity, but that’s not its job any more.
The main combat power for the expedition will come from Comms, the BTR-70K (command post variant). With a dedicated logistics vehicle in the offing, the tech team strips out most of its short-lived mobile base functionality, returning it to its original seating configuration with an electronics bay that’s mostly unpopulated… but there’s hope for future salvage.
Finally, the team will need a vehicle for a still, tools, supplies, and other cargo. They have a deuce and a half and a Star 266, but neither of those trucks is in the greatest of shape. Red puts out some feelers to the team’s allies and comes up with a few possibilities. The best option is a MAN KAT1 8×8, roughly the West German equivalent of a HEMTT. It appears to have been stolen by U.S. Marines and used for some time before being abandoned in an empty barn north of the Pilica, where scouts from Von Bahr’s Irregulars found it last month, dry on fuel but with an inexplicable recent oil change. The former USMC crew’s names were neatly hand-painted on the doors, along with custom art and the nickname “Industrial Light and Mayhem.”
ILM also receives some armor work and a mount for the team’s spare M249 SAW (some suppressive fire is better than none). A medium still is semi-permanently mounted in the bed, along with two drums of reserve fuel, a couple of rolling toolchests, a field kitchen, and the skeleton of a mobile medical clinic. There’s also space to tie down Thing One, one of the team’s two BMW K75S touring motorcycles.
The plan is to head southwest to cross the Pilica upriver of Tomaszow Mazowiecki, then pick up surviving highways toward Czestochowa. Once across the river, the team will be in uncharted territory – while they have a map, they have little reliable intel on who might be out there, and the map is not the terrain…
With a number of new PCs introduced since we began play in January, it’s probably time for a series of posts to get our hypothetical reader up to speed on who’s who. This post will cover the PCs and NPCs who’ll be going on the road trip, heading south toward Krakow and the mysteries that await there.
Where available, I’m using player-provided character bios and descriptions.
Ellis
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency
Alan Crenshaw spent the years leading up to the war building networks of assets and informants, cultivating relationships through a myriad of different methods serving the interests of the United States. Operating under the cryptonym of ELLIS, he found success in subtly undermining Soviet interests in the region. That is, until the Cold War turned hot.
Moral Code: Deception has kept you alive – it is your armor and your weapon of choice. Never tell the whole truth.
Big Dream: Uncover the conspiracy that actually led to the world being in the awful state that it is today.
Build: Intelligence and investigation initially, bending a bit toward leadership as the campaign has evolved. Ellis isn’t primarily a shooter, but he’s a force multiplier for the shooters if given time to shape the battlespace.
Tools: Disguises, binoculars, and careful rationing of truth. For when things get kinetic, Ellis carries an H&K G3, a Beretta Model 85, and a set of brass knuckles that imprint the name “Manfred” on their victims.
Alt: Ellis’ player also runs Arkadi Sokolov.
John Lee Pettimore
Staff Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps
MOS 8541 (Scout Sniper)
Pettimore hails from the mountains of eastern Kentucky. Born in coal-mining country, he saw the Corps as an escape from his home county’s endless cycle of poverty and outside exploitation. For a man who grew up hunting to put food on the table, scout/sniper school was a natural progression.
At some point during the war, Pettimore found himself in the orbit of an intelligence operative who called himself Broadstreet. Broadstreet’s small team bounced around the northwestern Poland area of operations, handling a variety of specialized tasks. When the U.S. Army’s 5th Infantry Division moved out for the summer 2000 offensive, Broadstreet’s unit was attached to it.
As the 5th ID died at Kalisz, Broadstreet, Pettimore, and their associates were behind enemy lines, extracting a U.S. State Department physician from Soviet custody. With no friendly forces to rejoin, the team fled south into a darkening world. His subsequent experiences, recounted in a conversation with Ellis and supported by the Broadstreet Dossier, are not entirely synchronized with the surrounding world’s understanding of linear time…
[Pettimore is a PC from the first iteration of this campaign, carried forward with some unexplained weirdness attached to his presence here-and-now.]
Moral Code: Never leave a man behind. Everybody goes home. God gave you the strength to ensure that.
Big Dream: Home.
Build: Sneaking, seeing, and sniping, as implied by the job title.
Tools: Faith which has so far withstood some unusual challenges, a rigid moral code, and Thoughts and Prayers, a Dragunov which is becoming more than its designer intended.
Alt: Pettimore’s player also runs Alexei Brandt.
Erick Myers
Corporal, U.S. Army
MOS 71M (Chaplain Assistant)
Born and raised in rural Minnesota, Erick, though caucasian, was essentially raised bilingual (Ojibwe) as all the signage in Bemidji was in both languages. Never quite big enough to make it big in hockey, he still played throughout high school, and even into college. He attended Bemidji State University, graduating with a degree in social work in 3 ½ years.
The early days leading up to the conflict perhaps to be known in future history books as WWIII saw him working within the Ojibwe tribal system. He objected to the involvement, and registered as a conscientious objector. As the war escalated, he was drafted and sent into the Army despite his status, and only though persistence managed to work towards the MOS of chaplain’s assistant instead of being thrown into the light infantryman meat grinder.
He was sent overseas, attached to a rotation of units, serving under veteran chaplains of many different denominations. Raised Catholic, he still served with a Methodist, Jewish, and Anglican chaplains, and began to develop an appreciation for each. His own view on religion expanded, and he found himself creating his own hodgepodge system of belief from the best of what he encountered.
Then, as the war raged on, he encountered combat. As chaplain’s assistant, he was required to carry and use arms to protect the chaplain he served. Despite his athleticism and skills, he watched two such superior officers bleed out from wounds that his meager first aid skills were no match for. Instead of shaking his beliefs, this only intensified them. By 1999, he no longer assigned to any particular chaplain, but was merged into whatever mix of units could be cobbled together. Wherever he went, he became the impromptu chaplain for his company, squad, or fire team. His degree in social work made him a skilled and sympathetic shoulder to lean on, and he was a source of morale boost to whomever would listen. Finally, he was part of a ragtag battalion that was enveloped and overrun, and he was taken prisoner. Thinking that his war was over, he resigned to keeping his fellow POW’s spirits up, daring to pray for a release…
And so it seems that his prayers have been answered…
Moral Code: Protect his buddy and any in their flock (“Faith with Firepower”, the chaplain assistant motto).
Big Dream: Expand his religious experiences, taking in whatever he can from whatever he encounters.
Build: Something of a utility infielder, but concentrated in the Agility and Empathy skills. He’ll likely develop more toward a medic concentration over the next campaign arc.
Tools: Erick hasn’t gotten much screen time yet; he’s one of the rescued POWs who started off as an NPC and was adopted as a backup PC. He’s carrying an AK-74, a Walther PPK, and some extra medical supplies, but as the expedition’s primary medic, I expect he’ll be loading up on more medical stuff.
Alt: Erick’s player also runs Leksik “Leks” Müürikivi.
Build: Pretty much what you’d expect for a scout and forward observer.
Tools: Ideally, a good radio and a friendly battery of 155mm. Currently, an M4A1, a Colt Python, and a satchel of grenades.
Alt: Cat’s player also runs Minka.
Kira “Cowboy” Lopez
Private First Class, U.S. Army
MOS 13M (Multiple Launch Rocket System Crewmember)
Kira was raised on a cattle ranch in the Texas panhandle by an impatient, frequently drunk, father and her Hispanic mother. Until her mother died in a car accident in the late ’89. Her father became unbearable and she blamed him for the accident. Their relationship got worse as she got older, and spent as much time away from the ranch as she could get away with. She left Texas for California as soon as she graduated from high school in ’93. She was sick of rural life, sick of her father, and everyone else knowing your business, and wanting to live pretty much anywhere else.
In Los Angeles, she apprenticed to an electrician, thinking it would be a good way to make a living doing gigs for rich people (or something like that) and it was alright for awhile. She worked hard, often being willing to work from before dawn until it was too dark to work safely. On the weekends she partied hard, hanging out with the metalheads and goths, going to concerts and night clubs. On Sundays, once she kicked out anyone she might have come home with the night before, and if she wasn’t too badly hung over, she’d go to church, thinking her mother would be even more disappointed in her if she didn’t.
When the war broke out, she had the misfortune of having an early draft number. Cowboy won out as her nickname in boot camp because she was absolutely willing to throw fists over “Cowgirl” innuendos, and somebody else already got to be “Texas.” She ended up in artillery when her math skills and understanding of trajectories and coordinates indicated she’d be good at it.
Now that the war is effectively over, Madga’s speech has her reconsidering her desire to live anywhere other than some rural shithole, realizing that now…everywhere is a shithole, and it’s going to be mighty hard to find food in an urban shithole. For once, a small, close-knit community might be okay. Besides, if she ends up back in the States, they’d probably send her somewhere else to fight…and she knows she doesn’t want to get involved in a civil war back home.
While she used to think she’d prefer someplace like Valhalla for an afterlife, Kira always remembers to light a candle for her mother and her ancestors on Dias de Muerte, and has included people from her unit who’ve died over the course of the war.
Moral Code: She isn’t a Ranger, but she very much believes in never leave someone behind.
Big Dream: Motivated by Madga & Red, maybe help make at least a small part of the world a better place.
Build: The nature of 4th Edition’s skills means a competent artillerist is also pretty good with squad-level support weapons, and Cowboy is the expedition team’s primary machine-gunner. She’s also a decent technician generalist.
Tools: In the absence of a replacement MLRS, she’s making do on a smaller scale with a PKM. If she weren’t leaving Ponikla on the expedition, she’d probably be taking charge of the village’s newly-acquired mortar.
Alt: Cowboy’s player also runs Dr. William “Red” Greyson.
Elizabeth “Betsy” Reed
Private First Class, U.S. Army
MOS 12C (Bridge Crewmember)
Like Cat, Betsy is a newly-adoped NPC whose history is still shaping up. She’s one of the 5th Infantry Division POWs rescued in transit to the Radom camp. We know she was an M60 AVLB crewer in the 7th Engineer Battalion. She’s something of an adrenaline junkie and her prewar career saw her wheedling her way into as many sapper and combat arms courses as she could manage.
Build: Heavy on technical capabilities, a decent driver, and decent with support weapons.
Tools: As much demo and as large of a hammer as possible. She’s currently toting an HK23, a Browning Hi-Power, and an assortment of grenades and mines.
Alt: Betsy’s player also runs Magda Szymanska.
Mikolaj Krol
Miko is a Polish teenager from Warsaw who spent most of the war just trying to survive and stay out of the way of the armies. History gets a bit hazy during early 2000, but he’s believed to have met Zenobia Slusarski in Warsaw and followed her when made her escape to her hometown of Ponikla.
Miko is mildly-unhinged, adapting to his post-apocalyptic surroundings in ways that the rest of the team finds somewhat concerning. Of all Ponikla’s inhabitants, he may be the one who’s embraced the apparent nanite infection’s benefits the most. His fighting style displays a complete lack of disregard for self-preservation.
Moral Code: The world fell apart around you, you need to keep what little bit of it you can call yours.
Big Dream: Comfort is a dream long dead, as is safety. But I’ve been safer here longer than anywhere else. Can I make it better?
Build: Initially focused on scavenging and stealth, but he’s been developing toward excessive force and skirmish combat.
Tools: A complete disregard for personal safety and a machete. Until recently, Miko also relied on a satchel of grenades, but Cat took those away from him after some injudicious application of white phosphorus. He carries a PM-84 SMG that he may have fired in one battle.
Luis Hernandez grew up in New Hampshire in the shadow of Mount Washington. Being able to see the peak with the reputed worst weather in the country spurred what would become a lifelong interest in meteorology. After completing his undergraduate studies at CU Boulder, he spent a couple of years working for the National Weather Service, but desk-bound work was eating his soul. When a co-worker mentioned that the Air Force had its own meteorologists, Luis skipped lunch to visit the local recruiter’s office. A line on a list of job options leaped out at him: “Special Operations Weather Technician.” It sounded pretty badass…
After the war’s first year, aviation and airborne operations were vanishing, and with them, opportunities for Hernandez to do his real job. He wound up bouncing around a variety of units, using the usual AFSOC cross-training to fill in for specialists in other roles. He was attached to Task Force Cobalt to run communications and was the other survivor of that unit that the team rescued from marauders.
Build: Fieldcraft and technical capabilities foremost, but he can hold his own in a gunfight.
Tools: Science, an M4A1, and an M11.
Henry Bell (NPC)
Specialist/4, U.S. Army
MOS 98G (Signals Intercept Linguist)
Before the war, Henry Bell was a saxophonist in the U.S. Army Band, in it for the G.I. Bill benefits. No one was more surprised than he when he was deployed to perform his original MOS as a signals intelligence voice intercept linguist. He spent most of the war in a SIGINT truck behind the lines, trying to pluck Soviet transmissions out of the air.
Bell was the first of the 5th Infantry Division POWs that the team encountered and liberated. He’s since found himself in the role of Ellis’ aide-de-camp and an occasional backup driver for the team at large.
Build: Social and investigation. He’s not much of a combatant. Bell can speak Russian at native proficiency, is fluent in Korean and Polish, and is working on his pidgin German.
Tools: Good ears and a better voice. He carries an AKM but tries to avoid situations that would require him to use it.
We’re 25 sessions into the campaign, and with the Battle of Radom being a major milestone, it was time for a meta check-in session.
We’ve introduced a number of secondary PCs – currently, six of my eight players have a secondary character. The original intent was to provide backup options for play when the primary PC is down with injuries, or in case of primary PC death (which we’ve managed to avoid… so far). The cast also has grown with the addition of a number of military/ex-military NPCs who provide useful support or combat capabilities and are usable as “rental” backup characters. All of this worked well for the Radom story arc, as a number of characters wound up injured or in the wrong place. In the long term, though, we can see it causing some complexity issues.
We also have a number of story hooks outside the Ponikla area. Because this campaign may or may not exist in the same continuity as its previous iteration, there’s some player interest in investigating the alleged paranormal goings-on around Krakow. Not all of the PCs have this interest, though. A number have put down roots in Ponikla and are invested in the community’s well-being and ongoing recovery/rebuilding operations in the region.
With the buildup of a plot framework, we’re getting away from the campaign’s original design intent of West Marches-style play. We’re seeing a couple of factors driving this. Because there is plot rather than episodic dungeon-crawls, there’s a tendency to push for inclusive scheduling when everyone can make it. Also, I have not done a great job of seeding the map with dungeon-esque points of interest.
As this post’s title telegraphs, our solution for several of these concerns and interests is to split the party. Six PCs and a small number of NPCs will be heading out into the wilds for an extended expedition (which may well lead into adaptations of the rest of the classic Poland modules: The Free City of Krakow, Pirates of the Vistula, and The Ruins of Warsaw). The rest of the cast will remain in Ponikla. We’ll split our sessions between the expedition team and the Ponikla team as player interest dictates.
