Following the gunfight with the ZOMO and the subsequent fruitful negotiations with the local farmers, the PCs spend a few days on maintenance and some other projects.
Red gets Pettimore back to Ponikla and settled in for healing, but once he’s sure the sniper isn’t going to bleed out, he’s focused on getting his new lab. He spends a few days with the farmers, running a pop-up clinic and packing up the lab for transport. Minka and Magda assist him.
Zenobia has some work to do on weapons damaged in the fight. She also turns her hand to fuel brewing and finally gets around to fixing up the UAZ-469 and finishing her work on the OT-64. Both vehicles are back to 5/5 Reliability (though the OT-64’s amphibious capability and left armor remain compromised).
Miko is jealous of Pettimore’s lookout post atop the hostel and begins constructing his own sniper’s hide in the trees north of Ponikla.
Ellis and Leks pack up a few days of food and head east, trying to locate the refugees they saw in Mysiakowiec and determine what those folks are up to….
I decided to treat the lab as another base facility. Once it’s set up, it’ll give a +1 bonus to Tech rolls made for agronomy- or ecology-type analysis. Finding and adding further equipment can extend that bonus to other rolls.
I also floated a new downtime activity to the group:
A hex is something like 60-70 square kilometers, so the initial mapping and exploration we’ve been doing doesn’t reveal everything in it. Scouting an explored hex takes one shift (plus travel time) and requires a Recon roll (modified by terrain, weather, and plot factors; Scout specialty provides a +1 bonus). If successful, the scouting attempt reveals one item of interest per success. Items of interest may be:
- landmarks
- exploitable resources
- hazards
- active threats
- intel/clues
- salvage items
- plot
On double 1s, something unpleasant (but not lethal) befalls the scout(s).