The Handbasket Ride - Episode 18
A solo Electric State RPG actual play report
Content Warning: Strong Language
Thursday, October 17th, 1996. 9:02pm
Scene Chaos Factor: 4
Expected Scene: Camping somewhere in the desert near Edwards AFB
Testing the Expected Scene: 10 - Expected Scene
I drove for about another hour after deciding to get off the highway. The country out here is flat and covered in saltbush and tufts of short grass. For the most part, it's empty, although I did drive past a bunch of wrecked assault ships from the way. They'd all taken a beating in combat, with most of them showing hull breaches or what looked like damage from an internal ammo explosion that blew parts of the sides out.
What was left of the hulls had been picked clean since the war, and the wreckage was covered in graffiti. I was tempted to go take a look, simply because I'd never been inside one, but I decided against it in the end. I was trying to get to the coast, and another side detour like that would only waste valuable time.
And that's before I started wondering about survivalists or other desert nomads holing up inside them. Who knows who's living inside them now. It might be no one, but I didn't want to take the risk. If I ever come back from this, it might be worth a look.
Around sundown, I suddenly started feeling tired. I'd been up since just after midnight, and it had been a long, long day. I also started to think that I might not want to be doing a whole lot of driving after dark. With the countryside so flat, the pickup's headlights would be easy to spot from miles away, and I might end up with unexpected visitors.
It's possible that the dust the truck has been kicking up might have attracted the same attention, so who knows.
Not long after that, I spotted a couple of old rusted car wrecks partially buried in sand drifts about a hundred yards off the trail I was following. It seemed that parking the truck alongside and making camp in the middle might give me a little more shelter from the wind, and help make the campsite a little less obvious from a distance.
Is there any wildlife lurking in the wrecks? Likely - 97 - Exceptional No
The wrecks turned out to be a couple of old sedans that looked liked they'd been here since the sixties, or early seventies. They'd been stripped and torched, and there was nothing worth salvaging from them. The might have been pretty cool cars back in the day. One of them had the big fins alongside the trunk that the cool cars in those days had.
I scouted around the site before it got too dark, looking for signs of wildlife. But there was nothing around. Not even tracks. That weirded me out a little; I figured that something would have sheltered here, but there was nothing. Not even spider webs or other insects. The site was completely devoid of any form of animal life. Good in one respect, but it still made me wonder why the hell that was.
Wits Check: Can Eamon find enough firewood and other raw materials to make a decent campsite for the night? Five dice - 1, 1, 2, 2, 4 - No successes.
I spent about half an hour wandering around the area, looking for enough dry wood to make a campfire for the night. I didn't want a big one with lots of light that would attract attention, but I had hoped that I'd be able to get something that would keep me warmer during the night.
But the only kind of burnable vegetation out here were the scrubby little saltbush plants. They were only a couple of feet tall, and there wasn't a whole lot to them. They were also fairly dry and brittle. I hacked a few of them down with the Ka-Bar knife and dragged them back to the campsite. It took a bit of work to break them up into a small pile of twigs and to strip the leaves from them. Unless they were really dry, I didn't want to burn the leaves, as they'd create too much smoke.
I grabbed one of the cans of stew from the back of the pickup, then got a weak little fire going. In the end, I just piled sticks around the can and lit them up. They were very dry and burned away quickly, doing a really crap job of heating the food.
After fighting with it for a while, I got the shits and gave up on it. I kicked the fire out and just ate the stew cold. It was edible, but not really what I would have preferred. A decent steak, or even a good burger would have been way better.
I have to admit though: the desert at night is pretty damn beautiful, in a desolate kind of way. There's no light pollution, so the sheer number of stars you can see when the sky is clear is amazing. I didn't realise there was that many.
Does Eamon see or hear any vehicles at night? 50/50 - 18 - Yes
Are they close? 50/50 - 61 - No
Are they off to the North? 50/50 - 43 - No
About twenty minutes later, I heard the sound of vehicle engines off to the south. It sounded like there was a couple of them, and they were probably car engines, rather than motorbikes.
I climbed up on top of one of the wrecks and took a look through my binoculars. A couple of miles southeast, there were a couple of sets of headlights, moving pretty quickly from east to west. They were quite low to the ground, so it's possible they were sand rails, or something like that.
Is there gunfire? 50/50 - 72 - No.
I didn't see or hear any gunfire though, so whoever they were, they were probably together and just moving about the desert at night. In some respects, it makes sense as it's cooler at night, and that makes for more comfortable travel, but it also makes you a bit easier to spot by others. Given the speed these things were moving at, whoever was driving them was obviously fairly used to driving in this sort of countryside.
Either that, or they were had a death wish.
Wits check: Does Eamon hear any other movement while he's looking at the vehicles? Five dice - 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 - One Success.
Is there more than one person? Unlikely - 47 - No.
Just then, clink of someone kicking a glass bottle in the dark, and then a quietly muffled "fuck!" about fifty yards off to the west. I jumped down off the wreck and grabbed my pistol from my bag, which I probably should have had on me. I quickly scooted across the campsite until I had my back against one of the wrecks, my pistol ready. I was breathing pretty hard, because I hadn't even realised they were there until they were nearly on top of me. I hope to God they don't have a sniper rifle pointed my way.
Has the person noticed Eamon being there? Likely - 13 - Yes
Are they hostile? 50/50 - 75 - No
Do they call out? 50/50 - 25 - Yes
"Albey!" came a voice from the darkness. "Albey! Is that you?"
Is the person female? 50/50 - 26 - Yes
Age using the NPC Age Table - 1d6/1d10 - 42.
It was a middle aged woman, by the sounds of her. God only knows what she's doing out in the desert by herself in the middle of the night. She's also overly trusting, calling out in the dark like that.
For all I know, this could be a trap to draw this Albey guy out. I had no idea whether there was more than one person out there, or whether they were armed or not. But I'd only heard one person. If there was more than one, they were all good at sneaking around in the dark.
I decided to take a gamble, to see if I could draw her in closer. I started coughing as loud, as I could, then barked out a strangled "Yes!" as though I was wounded.
Empathy vs Wits check: Does Eamon's performance trick the woman into coming to help?
Her Wits Score? 1d6: 2
Eamon - Five Dice + two dice for Con Artist - 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 6 - One success.
Woman - Two dice - 2, 4 - No successes.
"Albey?" came the voice from the darkness. "Are you OK?"
"No!" I coughed out. "Been hit!" and groaned loudly, as though I was in pain.
There was a rustle of underbrush and the sound of footsteps running towards the wrecks. Not my best performance ever, but it had been enough to trick her.
A figure came around the corner at a run. "Albey! What happened to you?" She came to a screeching halt when she realised that I was pointing a pistol directly at her chest.
I climbed to my feet. "Nothing happened to me," I said. "Now, please, drop your bag and put your hands in the air where I can see them."
End of Scene Bookkeeping
Nothing goes quite right for Eamon in this scene, so the Chaos Factor rises to five.
Added Survivalists to the Character List.
Added Summer Byron to the Character List.
End of Scene Notes
It’s been a very long day for Eamon, and his chance of getting any rest yet just got kiboshed. Again, I wanted to set the scene that there are people driving around in the desert out here, to ramp up the tension a bit. Whether they are friendly or hostile towards Eamon remains to be seen.
At the end of the scene, Summer stumbles into the campsite in the dark. And Eamon is quickly running out of fucks to give.
The age table that I referred to in the GM text is something I created for myself, just so I could quickly decide how old a new NPC was.
Hmmmm wonder who this random trusting woman is? Highly unusual...