Slosh, Slosh (28 September 2000)

We’re back! We’ve restarted what’ll hopefully be regular play. This is the first session since life interfered with gaming last August.


In the morning, the team assembles to hear the take from the debriefing of the ambush survivor. Miko gets stuck delivering it, as Ellis is nowhere to be found [player had to miss the session, so Ellis is… off doing spook shit].

Afterward, there’s an extended discussion on what to do about Shotkin’s band of marauders down in Radomsko. Current intelligence suggests a force strength of about 70 and one AFV – reported as a tank, though that may not be accurate. The city’s current total population is estimated at about 4,000, with a quarter of that number residing in the ruins of the city proper and the remainder in outlying farming collectives. 70 men controlling 4,000 seems a significant disparity of force, but the team – and Father Miroslav, who’s included in many of the discussions because his brain still works – conclude that this may be part of the broader effects and regression they’re seeing.

“Keep ’em quiet, keep ’em dumb, keep ’em docile and in the dark,” Pettimore observes.

Father Miroslav gives him a thoughtful look, then notes that the issue of basic nutrition is also in play. This area of Poland is regressing toward pre-industrial agriculture, in which at least nine in ten people are directly involved in food production. When all your energy is going toward subsistence farming, there’s not a lot left for rebellion.

Something else about the debriefing results is worrying Erick (the former chaplain’s assistant) and Octavia (the most widely-read of the PCs on the expedition). They step aside to compare notes and realize that the “al-Khidr” whom Alekseev overhead mentioned shares a name with a figure from Islamic legend – variously described as a prophet, a sorcerer, or an angel.

Everyone, but especially Pettimore, finds this last element particularly problematic.


After some more debate, the team decides they’ll at least reconnoiter Radomsko. They time their departure to arrive at the city’s outskirts around midafternoon so they can observe from a distance in daylight before making their next move. They swing wide to approach from the northeast, entering the city at Hex 13:

A totally-not-stolen-from-Google Maps base map of Radomsko for exploration, with a 1km hex-flower overlay. My ruling (conveniently ignoring Urban Operations for the moment) was that one hex of movement takes one hour and exploring one hex to locate major landmarks also takes a minimum of one hour.

[I will pause here to note that the in-game Radomsko bears very little resemblance to the real-world Radomsko beyond the basic street layout.]

As the team moves past one of the outlying farming collectives, they note that harvest is well under way here, too. There’s no sign of complex machinery and only a few beasts of burden – the majority of the work is being done solely with human labor.


Hex 13

The fields give way to a strip of housing, and then to a large campus. It’s quickly apparent that this was Radomsko’s hospital. Was – someone attempted to smash the place flat. To Betsy’s trained eye, that someone had an excess of demolitions and enthusiasm but not too much skill. She does identify three buildings that are safe to enter, though: an apartment block, the facility’s motor pool and maintenance shop, and an admin and records building.

The apartment block appears to have been housing for lower-status hospital workers. It’s abandoned – not in any kind of rush so much as a gradual leakage of residents. Random household detritus is scattered around the rooms but there’s not much worth salvaging.

Miko, who’s spent a lot of time squatting and hiding in places just like this, asks himself, “where would I set up?” This leads him to the mechanical penthouse on the roof, where he hits paydirt [double 12s on a Survival check to scrounge]. My loot generator burbles to itself and coughs up:

  • a solar charger for consumer batteries
  • a folding camp chair
  • a complete set of Romanian summer-weight fatigues in woodland camouflage [sized to fit Erick]
  • an emcrypted manpack tactical radio
  • an early-generation home computer with 3.5″ and 5.25″ floppy drives [286 with EGA monitor]
Somewhere, Ellis is strangely stimulated and doesn’t know why.

From the other evidence in the space, it looks like someone was running a radio listening or relay position out of here for an extended period of time. The PC and radio were being run off a backup battery wired to the solar charger, but it’s cracked and leaking now. There’s no sign of recent habitation.

The PC is too heavy to carry comfortably, so the team leaves it in place and moves on to the motor pool. Most of the ambulance bays are empty but two UAZ-452s are present. Both are inoperable, though.

Cat pokes around the maintenance supervisor’s office and finds a welder’s mask and gloves, a rather nice oil lamp, and a cassette tape recorder with a handful of blank cassettes. Meanwhile, Betsy wanders around back to find a row of trailers. Most are basic open-topped cargo trailers but one mounts a complex apparatus. She recognizes it as a field decontamination rig, capable of spraying high-pressure water or steam to wash radiological or chemical contamination off of equipment. At three tons, though, it’s a bit heavy for the team to relocate at the moment.

Pettimore sticks his head into the dispatcher’s office. He’s not surprised to see a blank space on the wall where a large map should have hung, nor to find the decomposing shreds of paper in a binder that should have contained more fold-out maps.

The admin and records building is the team’s last stop here. The demolition work was particularly aggressive, but it seems to have mainly damaged the offices’ interiors while leaving the structure intact. A tattered sign on the wall indicates that records are in the basement.

Somehow, seven PCs only have one flashlight between them. Miko takes point with Betsy right behind him. The stairs descent and double back at a landing halfway between the ground floor and the basement. Miko has just stepped off the landing when Betsy’s hand flashes out, grabs his web gear, and yanks him back. She points out the tripwire he was about to encounter.

The tripwire is connected to a pair of improvised directional mines, positioned to sweep up the stairs and catch anyone on the landing. It’s trivial for Betsy to render them safe. Miko shines his light down to check for any more hazards and realizes the basement is flooded with rancid, knee-deep water…

… which is rippling in response to recent motion.

The team moves down cautiously, weapons readied. There’s no sound but the slosh, slosh and drip, drip of the water – until Miko hears a distant door close.

It’s about this time that Pettimore notices the faint sheen of damp footprints on the stairs, leading down to the water. They’re barely visible, fading even as he takes notice of them, but they’re exceptionally large. They have four toes, splayed wider than a human’s, and they’re spread as if to support significant weight.

Comrade begins whining and pressing back against Octavia, urging her out of the basement.

There’s a click as Pettimore swaps the magazine in Thoughts and Prayers with the one he keeps wrapped in grip tape to indicate its special ammo. “Everybody out. Now.”

The team withdraws two-by-two, with Pettimore and Cowboy bringing up the rear. Betsy pauses to re-arm the mines. Once everyone is out, they pile a couple of tons of furniture against the doors to the stairwell.

There’s no consensus on what that might have been – speculation starts with an alligator or crocodile and goes from there – but no one is really interested in sticking around after that near-encounter.


Hex 8

With about two hours of daylight remaining, the team moves carefully off to the northwest. A small residential neighborhood quickly gives way to light industrial structures, and then a three-meter chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. On the other side is a large swath of tall grass and asphalt. The airport’s hangars are weathered, with a few falling in, but there’s no sign of heavy fighting here. The main runway is blocked by the broken-winged carcass of a large transport aircraft bearing West German markings.

Miko is about to lead the team through a gap in the fence when he catches sight of a group of armed men leaving the airport’s small terminal building. The PCs ease back into cover and watch, The other group is clad in mixed Soviet fatigues and civilian attire. Four are carrying AKs, a fifth has a light machinegun, and the last is carrying a shotgun but has an RPG launcher slung across his back. They’re obviously patrolling, casually but watching their surroundings. Unwilling to risk detection, the team stays in hiding and lets the patrol pass them by, heading southeast – toward the hospital complex from which the PCs just came.

The team gives it another ten minutes for safety, then advances cautiously toward the terminal building, working their way from hangar to derelict fuel truck to maintenance shed to parking lot. The terminal is dilapidated, weathered, obviously abandoned. Scattered pockparks tell of skirmishes sometime in the past, but there are no craters or other signs of heavy combat.

Inside, it’s more of the same. Not much of value remains. Cowboy points out an empty window frame at the Luftwaffe transport. “Do we want to check that out?”

Pettimore squints at it. “You remember those cartoons where the coyote was always tryin’ t’catch the roadrunner?” He points out the window. “That’s a box on a stick.”

“Yeah, point taken. Control tower instead?”

“Control tower.”

Cowboy, Pettimore, Betsy, and Miko ascend the creaky spiral stair, all eight stories in height, that wraps around the control tower’s central support pillar. The thin metal outer skin groans ominously but the structure is still sound. At the top of the stairs, they’re confronted with a locked steel door [and their only trained locksmith, Zenobia, stayed in Ponikla when the party split]. Miko hefts his looting tool of choice:

… and strains his shoulder to no avail.

Betsy holds out a hand. “Gimme.” She sets the end of the crowbar, braces a heel, and shoves. There’s a shriek and pop as the forces on the locking mechanism exceed its design tolerances, and the door swings open.

The red-gold-purples of a rare unclouded sunset flood through the doorway. The control room is quiet, cool, almost serene. The quartet steps in and stands for a moment, drinking in the sight.

“Almost like L.A.,” Cowboy muses.

As they look around, the PCs realize this space is intact in a way nothing else in Radomsko has been so far. The radios are silent, the radar displays are dark, but there’s no sign of damage. The place appears to have been shut down in good order.

Miko beelines for the small kitchenette set into one wall. There’s no coffee but someone left behind a small stash of seasonings, presumably used when cooking on the ancient hot plate.

Pettimore looks around, rubs his chin, and nods at a locked filing cabinet. Betsy raises an eyebrow and the crowbar. There’s another pop and tinkle, then a scrape of metal on metal as Pettimore pulls a drawer open. He reaches in…

… and comes out with a handful of aviation sectional charts for southern Poland.

“Holy shit,” someone murmurs reverently.

[At this point, I deleted the fog-of-war walls on the world map and opened all of it up to player visibility.]

Pettimore turns, looking for a desk space on which to examine his prize. On the supervisor’s desk, neatly centered on the leather blotter, are a hand-carved wooden stand holding an elegant fountain pen and a thick three-ring binder. Pettimore has enough Polish to read the binder’s label: it’s the facility’s logbook.

The team gathers around. The log tells the small airport’s story: sparse but regular passenger and cargo service until 1996, then dwindling operations. Two military aviation detachments – one an attack helicopter task force, the other a tactical transport unit – arriving, setting up, and departing in turn. Fighting outside the city, ending in the destruction of the factory complex to the west. Very few flights after that.

The last entry is dated October 12, 1997:

Observed nuclear explosion to the south in the vicinity of Czestochowa. Minor EMP effects, no permanent damage notes. Power is out and no generator fuel remains for backup power. We have received no further instructions from Warsaw. On my authority, I am implementing the airfield contingency plan and ceasing operations.

“October twelfth of ninety-seven,” Pettimore says softly. “That was when our side nuked the steel plant at Czestochowa.” He closes the binder and tucks it into his pack along with the maps. He steps over to the window and says a short, silent prayer of thanks for the crew who stood their post and protected this information.

Miko takes a look out the opposite window with his binoculars. In the fading daylight, he can see the patrol the team almost encountered earlier. They’re working their way through the hospital campus, and they seem to have linked up with another patrol of similar size.

The team can’t be sure that the other side has found signs of their passage, but they’re not willing to risk their initial plan of staying in the area overnight. They exit the airport, heading back north to Kamiensk.