I’ve noted before that Pettimore is a recycled character from the first iteration of this campaign. At the end of the last session, this was made clear to the character.
Earlier…
As Ellis prepares to strike out on his own, Pettimore pulls him aside. From his ruck, he produces a thick brown paper envelope, held shut with string that’s tied in an elaborate knot and sealed with some sort of black gummy substance. “Before I got to the village, I was operating down in Krakow,” Pettimore says. “I was working with this spook named Broadstreet. Before we got separated, he gave me this, asked me to give it to the next trustworthy American intelligence officer I met. I figure that’s you.”
Broadstreet was the character that Ellis’ player ran in that same campaign. I’d set up this packet as part of Pettimore’s starting equipment and Ellis’ player had no idea it existed until now. I kind of wish we’d been on video so I could’ve seen his face as present-PC received a briefing packet from past-PC.
Ellis takes the packet and carefully opens it. Inside is a thick stack of typewritten papers. The cover sheet gives him what he’ll need – eventually. It’s a cipher he can decrypt, given sufficient time. For now, all he can determine is the date: 20 October 2000.
“So either this is a prediction of something that’s supposed to happen, or your guy sent me a letter from the future,” Ellis comments.
Pettimore doesn’t get this, and is rather insistent that today is 14 July 2001. Ellis points out that while he’s not an astronomer, several members of the team are sufficiently savvy in the ways of fieldcraft that it should be fairly trivial to determine the year from the moon phase. A quick side consultation with Leks reveals that, yes, the moon phase is correct for 14 July 2000.
“Why don’t you tell me what you’ve been doing since it was July 2000 for you,” Ellis not-quite-orders.
Pettimore infodumps as best he can, given the memory haze that shrouds large potions of his last year. The collapse of the final NATO offensive into central Poland. His breakout along with Broadstreet and a few others. Their delve into the ruins of Czestochowa and their recovery of a madman and a priceless artifact. Their passage to Krakow, finding something resembling sanctuary there, and a series of uncanny incidents that led to Broadstreet holing up in his room with a typewriter for three days to produce whatever was in that encrypted document. That’s where things got a little blurry for Pettimore until he found himself in Ponikla.
Something about the date’s still bugging Pettimore, though.
14 July.
14 July 2000.
14 July 2000 was the night that he, Broadstreet, and the rest of Broadstreet’s operators left the U.S. 5th Infantry Division’s lines to follow up on intel regarding an American physician [the former PC of Magda’s player] who was being held as a Soviet prisoner. They planned a quick raid, only one night out and back.
They never made it back to the 5th Infantry Division’s lines. And 96 hours later, there were no 5th Infantry Division lines for them to return to.