It’s another scorching-hot day in Ponikla. There’s not a cloud in the sky, the air is paper-dry, and a stiff northwest wind is more like standing in front of an oven than any sort of source of cooling. The team is getting ready for chores that hopefully won’t involve field work (good luck with that in the middle of the wheat harvest) or standing in the forge all day.
Minka is working with the horses before it gets too hot when she hears the rhythmic squeak and rattle of a bicycle coming into town from the northeast road. It’s Blanka Laska, one of the teenagers from the north farms. She’s out of breath and looks to be suffering from incipient heatstroke. Minka drops what she’s doing and runs to meet the girl, with Red and Arkadi arriving just behind her.
Bianka is semi-functional but manages to stammer out her message as the PCs half-carry her into Red’s lab/clinic. Her family and farmhands were preparing for the day’s work when something exploded in the treeline next to the wheat field they were planning to harvest. There are multiple critical injuries.
Red and Arkadi share a grim look. “UXO.” There’s no need for either of them to say more.
There’s a quick assessment of time and distance. Most of the team’s transport has to cross the rail bridge about ten kilometers east of Ponikla, which will cost them valuable time (and fuel, though no one is thinking in those terms right now). They could take the horses and motorcycles across the smaller, less-robust bridge at Mysiakowiec… but they also have the BTR-70K, whose amphibious capability is still intact. Its main gun remains disabled and it’s still mechanically sketchy (they’ve only restored 2 points of Reliability so far), but it’ll allow them ford the Pilica and it’s built for off-road driving.
With that decision made, Red and Minka begin prepping everything they’ll need for trauma surgery. Arkadi and Leks strip the BTR of everything non-essential, just in case it sinks in the river and they have to drop back to Plan B (though the radios stay aboard for the moment, with stripped screws [and a failed Tech roll] preventing their swift removal). Pettimore and Miko also gear up to help with security in case the explosion was the precursor to some other hostile action or otherwise attracted unwanted attention.
The team loads up, with the roof hatches open and Blanka in the commander’s seat to help navigate. Arkadi fires up the twin V-8s and the big machine grumbles its way down the path the shore, shouldering brambles and saplings out of its way. Everyone holds their breath and mentally rehearses their bailout procedures as Arkadi deploys the trim vane, switches on the one working bilge pump, and eases into the dark water. The hull holds, though, and the BTR surges forward as the rear pumpjet schlorps into action.
The team arrives at the farm in question in about an hour. They’re met by a collection of worried inhabitants, headed by Julianna Kaluza, the farm’s elderly matriarch. While leading Red and Minka into the main farmhouse, she explains that the blast occurred when the farmers were dropping their equipment and water in the shade of a grove next to the field. There was no indication of any sort of attack and nothing else has happened since.
Red and Minka begin patient assessments and triage. Alfred Kazula, Julianna’s husband, escaped major penetrating trauma, but he has blast injuries and appears to be dealing with multiple broken ribs. Klara Laska, Blanka’s older sister, and Olaf Kwiatkowski, a middle-aged farmhand and refugee from Wloclawek, both have critical abdominal injuries from shrapnel and aren’t likely to live out the day without intervention.
As Red and Minka scrub up, Leks partners up with one of the other elderly farmers. The two of them climb onto the roof of the farm’s machine shed to keep watch. Leks quickly learns that the old dude was a partisan in the 1940s, and the two men begin bonding over stories of killing Nazis and Russians.
Pettimore, Arkadi, and Miko grab a couple of the farmhands who can show them where the explosion occurred. They head down to investigate, cutting around an already-cleared field and through a couple of orchards. When they’re about fifty meters away from the blast scene, Miko takes point, ve-e-e-e-e-ry cautiously advancing while looking for tripwires, mine triggers, or anything else that could indicate the potential for a second explosion.
The smell of smoke and high explosives is heavy in the air. The blast appears to have been large – an artillery shell or air-dropped bomb – and subterranean. The ground is ruptured and heaved up, and several trees have been overturned or shattered at their roots.
Arkadi and Pettimore come to the realization at about the same time. It’s been three hours since the explosion, and that northwest wind has been pretty constant. They shouldn’t be smelling three-hour-old smoke, much less explosive residue.
That’s when they catch sight of the blackened trail leading into the field, and, beyond it, the flickering orange light and white haze of a grass fire.
Miko [Agility B, Mobility C, Runner specialization] takes off at a dead sprint, heading back to the farm buildings to rally all available able-bodied people. There are a few minutes of confused activity as the PCs drop packs and weapons and the farmers grab shovels, rakes, and any other tools that might come in handy. Red [best Command in the group and Logistician specialty] assembles everyone on the north side of the burning field, intending to fight the fire with the wind at the team’s back.
[The rules for this “fight” were kind of fun, so I’ll write them up in a separate post.]
The team enjoys some initial success in knocking down the flames, and the burning area is shrinking. Then the fire flares back up, re-igniting in the areas they’ve extinguished – and, in some cases, moved into. Minka takes some minor burns. Pettimore is less fortunate, being set alight and severely burned on both arms [burn crit].
Arkadi takes a moment to study the scene and realizes that the fire is spreading against the wind – and, more often than not, toward the people who are trying to fight it.
Pettimore pushes himself up from the ground where’s extinguished himself and begins praying.
Minka casts something [a ration] into the dirt at her feet and begins praying, too.
[When I planned this scene, I had a general trigger condition set for PCs to notice certain things about the situation. Imagine my surprise and entertainment when, on the same turn, both Pettimore’s player and Minka’s player independently PM’d me:
Pettimore: Pettimore will begin to pray silently that the others survive this, and these people's harvest survives.
Minka: "Please do not burn my friends, my friends food! I will give you a small portion of harvest, thick sweet spirits and fruits... Stop hurting my friends you impressive, fiery bastard!"]
Pettimore and Minka look into the flames and see. On the south side of the fire, three vaguely-humanoid figures are dancing and capering in the flames. They appear to be made of fire themselves, with skeletal wings that are fanning an invisible wind against the direction of the actual wind.
Pettimore staggers into a run toward where he dropped his pack.. and his rifle.
Minka drops her shovel, unslings her hammer, and begins circling the fire, trying to get to its south edge.
The fire continues blazing back in the team’s faces. Miko screams and charges into it, laying about wildly with his shovel and somehow avoiding serious injury; the farmer partnered with him has no interest in following. Arkadi takes a minor burn but is able to extinguish himself with his partner’s aid.
There’s a soft, unnoticed click as Pettimore drops to a knee, flicks off his rifle’s safety, and takes aim.
Miko continues darting in and out of the fire. Red tries to rally the rest of the team on the western flank, collecting the farmers that were aiding Miko and Pettimore. The team’s fighting a holding action but they’re making no headway.
Minka screams something and swings her sledgehammer through the flames. She feels a feathery, gossamer resistance as it slashes through the pelvis (or at least the location where the pelvis should be) of one of the burning figures. The ground around it hisses like red-hot steel being quenched and the fire there goes out.
Everyone stares.
Pettimore presses the trigger.
Visible only to Minka and Pettimore, another of the burning figures flies apart and the flames where it was dancing hiss out like snuffed candles.
Arkadi has no idea why Pettimore is shooting the fire, but he trusts Pettimore implicitly and knows there’s gotta be a reason for this. He doesn’t know Minka as well, but she’s competent and seems rational, so there’s gotta be something…
Arkadi drops his rake, draws his tomahawk, and sees.
His swing cuts the legs out from under the third figure. It has time to see him in return and begin drawing itself up for a return strike before Minka crushes its head.
As the flames in front of Arkadi and Minka die, the rest of the team moves in. It’s only a few minutes’ work to knock down what remains.
First, a digression on a couple of signature weapons:
Since Pettimore’s inception in this campaign’s previous iteration, he’s carried a Dragunov SVD named Thoughts and Prayers. Shortly before entering the catacombs of Czestochowa, Pettimore met a Polish Catholic priest, Father Wojiech (yes, that Father Wojiech). In the course of exchanging information and receiving counsel, he asked the good father to bless his rifle. We’ve never specified exactly what the blessing did in game terms, but, well… here we are.
For his part, Arkadi carries a hand-forged tomahawk from a limited run commissioned by 10th Special Forces Group shortly before the war. They were originally exclusive to 10th Group, but a few spares, as well as examples formerly owned by fallen SF troops, were given to members of allied intelligence and direct action units operating alongside the unit. Arkadi is the only KGB defector to earn one. As far as we know, it has no particular special blessing on it, but it definitely had an effect in this session, and it now emanates a faint haze of smoke.
This was quite a fun session to run. Even without the paranormal aspect, I’m quite happy with how the “combat” against the fire worked. As noted above, I’ll share the mechanics behind that in a separate post.
Technically, there was some cleanup work at the end of this session, as well as discussions of what to do next, but this seemed like a good place to wrap up the narrative. The next couple of campaign posts will include this session’s post-fight details and their outcomes.