[Ellis’ player had to miss a couple of sessions, so our “why the PC is not here” hand-wave was that he was off doing intel things. Before the next session, I did a quick Discord resolution of what he learned. The following is a lightly-edited transcript of that, posted with the player’s permission. My narration is in italics; his is in normal text.]
In the interrogation chat that we had with Miko, one of the suggested paths forward was to infilitrate Radomsko and, considering its proximity as well as the mystery surrounding Shotkin, I think there’s a lot of value in teasing on that thread a little. I’m curious if the brainfog is being reinforced there by design or if it’s a side-effect of everyone having to work so hard just to stay alive… especially since there’s apparently a man from Quranic myth bouncing around that seems connected to Shotkin (at least, that’s the impression I got since the people who hit the person we interrogated knew both names)
Sound good. Does going in solo in civilian attire still seem like the approach you want to take?
Probably – wouldn’t mind working a cover like I did previously – trader, occasionally links up with Miko to “resupply” and pass intel. Was thinking of including some of the printed material in my trader stuff to gauge reaction/interest but I’d want to get consensus on that before doing it since printed material isn’t exactly as ubiquitous as the BeforeTimes™
So with Ellis rejoining the PCs in today’s session, he’s only been in Radomsko for three days (September 28-30). What level of risk, or what sort of revelation, would make him break off an infiltration that quickly?
Or, to ask it another way, what would either exceed his risk tolerance or be so critical he’d have to risk burning his cover to get word back to the rest of the team?
It’d have to be something that felt urgent… something incredibly threatening and imminent (though preferably not), something so fantastic that it can’t wait, something important but time critical “This will only be good for the next x days” or something. Basically anything that’s really big or really time sensitive. That’s the answer to the first question.
Something that might exceed his risk appetite… A familiar face that isn’t friendly that could compromise him (and feeling like he couldn’t adequately disguise himself), undue suspicion (like immediately coming under scrutiny even if he did everything correct and hadn’t even started working angles, prescient dreams of impending doom might do it at this point as well.
Okay. Pick any three hexes on the Radomsko city map that the team hasn’t explored yet. I’ll give you details on those to represent general recon, as well as your big reason to come back. Does that work?
10, 11, 15
We’ll say Ellis came in from the south, through Hex 12, which is largely agricultural. He didn’t see anything of particular note there, so he started his investigations 11, which is the south side of the old city center. It was predominantly commercial (shops and businesses), interspersed with older middle-class homes. This is probably where the majority of the city’s remaining population lives – call it ~700 residents. They’ve adapted to the loss of utilities, though there’s nothing at all in the way of replacements.
It is immediately obvious that this community is, at best, insular. Residents are clustered together in neighborhoods that they’ve fixed up to be habitable, with backyard gardens and chicken/rabbit pens and the occasional goat or cow. Those enclaves are separated by buffers of at least a block which appear to be untenanted and used only as sources for salvaged building materials.
There’s surprisingly little interest in your “trader” wares. A few children want to see what you have, but their caretakers call them away pretty quickly.
(spoil sports…)
Hex 15 is the city’s old historic core. It’s surprisingly intact – and, just as surprisingly, only has a handful of residents. Many of the buildings here predate modern utilities, so you’d expect it to have been resettled. However, the former shops, townhouses, and offices of minor government agencies do not appear to be in use. Checking some of those offices shows a fairly consistent story: burn barrels in courtyards or back alleys, mass destruction of records.
There’s a fair amount of good gleanings still available in the back rooms of many of the shops, too. You’d expect an area like this to have been heavily Miko’d.
There is no sign that anyone is conducting commerce in any of these shops.
Then there’s Hex 10, the former government center, both for Radomsko’s city government and that of the surrounding county. This is where things get tense. You have to evade a couple of patrols, each 3-4 marauders – when you have a chance to compare notes with Pettimore, these will be wearing the same identifying markings that he noted earlier, with the left sleeve cut off of each of their uniform jackets. They’re equipped with pretty standard Warsaw Pact small arms.
You’re able to track them back to their HQ in a bank building. They’ve fortified it and the two adjoining buildings – vehicle barriers, a couple of sandbagged fighting positions on the roof, sandbag-and-plywood covered walkways between the buildings at ground level. Your best estimate on numbers is about a dozen.
They’ve got a fire engine that they’ve converted into a gun truck. Improvised armor, a gun ring cut and welded in the cab roof, a twin-mount light machine gun up top.
You gather this over the course of a couple of hours, from a good hide on the third floor of a building across the street and halfway down the block. You’ve taken your time, covered your tracks, made sure you’re well back in the room, not in direct sunlight, lots of visual clutter between you and them.
You’re watching them working on the truck when another group rolls up in a UAZ. It’s six dudes, all armed, but no gang markings besides the usual marauder chic. Three of them are obvious security – they’re armored up, the first you’ve seen of this group wearing armor or helmets. AK-74s and secondary weapons. The fourth is similarly geared but also has a bugle slung from his kit, and he’s sitting in the back of the UAZ next to what looks like a handful of signal or semaphore flags.
The fifth is a Rasputin-looking dude, if you blew Rasputin up to Dwayne Johnson size. Wild eyes, wild beard. He leaves his AK in the truck, next to what (thanks to working with Pettimore for a while) you recognize as a bow case and a quiver with a leather cover cinched down over it. He’s sticking close to the sixth guy, and his head is on a swivel – the security detail is watching their sectors but he’s watching everywhere. Including up.
The last guy looks vaguely like Jean Reno. Shaved head, well-trimmed beard, sharp features, intense expression. He’s dressed and armed like the others but body language says everyone is deferring to him.
The dude in charge walks up to the bank in the middle of his security bubble. The gang members there evidently recognize him; their body language is almost animalistic, a dog pack deferring to the alpha wolf who’s come in and taken over. The gang boss comes out and there’s a conversation – looks like the dude in charge is giving orders. There’s some discussion but no pushback.
While all of this is going on, Mega-Rasputin is wandering around. His head is up and you’d swear he’s scenting the air. He’s frowning, suspicious – and he keeps looking in your direction like he just knows something’s wrong but can’t place it.
Hmm… no one ever looks up. Smart guy… and a helluva smeller on him too.
If there’s anything handy to potentially mask my scent, then I’ll get comfortable with that and push it a little longer… otherwise, I’ll back out. I thought we had a camera among us – if so, I’d like to have been able to take it with (or is it that camcorder? I can’t remember… it’s been forever). If I can mask my scent and I do stick around for another few, I’ll try to catch some images to take back with us. Does el Heffe match any descriptions we may have gotten for Shotkin? I can’t remember if anyone’s given us anything other than a name and spooky vibes
Yeah, there’s a video camera in party inventory. It’s usually on board the UAZ (as that’s the expedition’s recon vehicle).
This guy definitely matches the description of Shotkin that you received from the marauders you ran off (in your GRU disguise).
There are some old cleaning chemicals in a janitorial closet that you can use to mask your scent. You do so, and the big guy keeps casting around but doesn’t fixate on you. After another few minutes, Shotkin and his party pile into their UAZ and take off. The gang occupying the bank splits up; they send out four two-man teams on foot, moving off in different directions with purpose.
Whatever I can catch on camera vs just observing with eyeballs I’ll shoot. I want to be able to show the team whatever I find. Do the ones that are heading off to fight… in a direction where I would expect our folks? (player has a fantastically hard time visualizing objects in space over distance)
The five still at the bank appear to be tooling up for a fight. They’re checking their gun truck, loading supplies onto it, checking their gear.
They also run off their “housekeeping” staff – two older women who’ve clearly been cleaning and cooking, and four in their late teens or early twenties who are not dressed for the day’s early autumn chill.
(An aside for general HUMINT observations: in the two days leading up to this, you were able to speak to eight or nine people or small groups at length. Universally, they were very terse, clearly uncomfortable with you and hoping you’d go away. They claim to be satisfied with the current state of affairs and safe in Radomsko now that Shotkin and his men are here to protect them. About half of them refer to the marauders in archaic terms – “the masters” or even “the lords.” There’s no hint of rebellion, but a distinct air that these folks are beaten down. They’re generally looking malnourished, though there’s no [to your non-medical eye] sign of disease… yet.)
At least they didn’t say voivod I guess…
With one of them, after having this reaction from them a few times, I’d softly float the idea along the lines “Well, this kind of stability sounds enviable… might put down roots here”
“You’d need to talk to the Masters about that. They protect us from the Outside.” You can almost hear the capitalization. “No offense,” the old guy adds belatedly and insincerely.
“None taken” – best CIA, sell you the world, grin I can manage
(Masters plural… do I get the feeling they see the collective of Shotkin and Co as “The Masters”? I’m suddenly wondering about other variables/heirarchies that maybe aren’t immediately apparent. If that seems to be the case, as in he and his crew are “the Masters”, then so much the better)
They seem to be referring to all of the marauders collectively as “the Masters.”
The two-man teams who departed the bank all dispersed in different directions. One of those went vaguely north, in the direction you know the team was planning to operate. The guys remaining at the bank haven’t left yet. Your sense is that they just sent out messengers.
Safe to say they’re waiting for responses?
That’s a reasonable inference, yeah.
Turn off the recorder and wait – no sense draining the batteries. Wish I had a parabolic mic
You’re there about another fifteen minutes. The guys at the bank have finished their preparations and are waiting casually but not sloppily. Again, there’s an alert-predatory vibe to their demeanors. You hear the putter of the UAZ’s engine again, and catch a brief glimpse of it as it crosses a street a couple of blocks away. Shotkin and his detail are still in it – but the big Rasputin-looking dude isn’t.
Is the UAZ headed towards them or I just catch a glimpse of it down the road? If it’s headed back, I’ll capture that. If it isn’t, let it go and keep waiting…. but also, try to set something up where I’m hiding that someone might make noise to give away their approach (like a bucket in front of a door that would make noise, chimes in a door frame, something – ANYTHING so that Rasputin on steroids doesn’t get the drop on me)
It’s not heading back toward the bank.
Okay that’s good. Once I feel like I’ve gotten whatever there is to this bit of excitement, I’ll bail and try to reconnect with the others – being mindful that there’s a buncha armed dudes possibly headed their way
Okay. If you’re in Foundry right now, please give me a Recon check for stealth, taking a +1 for urban terrain.
[1 success, one 1 on a pushed roll]
Awright. Take your one Stress for that. Narratively, we’ll say you had a few prearranged RV points with the team, and will be able to tag in with them early in the session.
Is there anything that distinguishes heirarchy among their org other than Shotkin is the obvious shot caller? Also – I’m very interested in how they move. Most of the mauraders we’ve met before have been fairly undisciplined (even for the prior service types with the exception of some of those folks during the Radom business). You said something earlier about how they seemed to move kinda pack-like. Is that just when they’re around Shotkin or does that kinda bear out in the other groups I see?
the bank gang has a clear leader. No rank tabs or any other visual identifiers, but there’s a dude the others defer to, and he has a lieutenant. Everyone knows who the boss is.
They’re definitely beholden to Shotkin. His dominance is obvious in body language. They’re cowed by him. They’re intimidated by the big guy. At a guess, the big guy is Shotkin’s hatchetman.
These guys are disciplined in the sense of shared purpose, identity, and… territory. Turf. They aren’t saluting or marching, but the sense you get will align with Pettimore’s observation. They’re a gang, this is their turf, and the people who live in that turf are their kine. The more you watch their body language, the greater a sense you get of almost-feral pack dynamics. Their body language with both one another and the women is exaggerated. When Shotkin is around, it’s even more pronounced, and there’s an eerie unity to their movements. Not marionettes, but, again, like a pack of dogs when one lifts its head at a noise and all the others turn to look a moment later.
And when the big dog is around, the wagging of tails is more pronounced. Yeah, creepy… did big scary Rasputin also fit that vibe when he was with them or was he more like a pack of one?
Definitely the latter. He acknowledged the existence of the others but he reacted to Shotkin like.. .call it first-among-equals where only he and Shotkin were equal.
Oh. One other thing you would be close enough to notice, but which the team hasn’t seen yet. All of the marauders are carrying a melee weapon you haven’t seen before. It’s s short whip of braided leather with a trapezoidal chunk of metal at the tip:
F’ing cossacks…
So, in another life, I was a Russian history minor (specifically focused on the Russian revolution and the fall of the tsar and the events that led up to the formation of the Soviet Union) and I actually know what that is 🙂
Beat horses… or, dissidents.
Oh, and more interesting (I finally just broke down and looked it up) – defense against wolves