The Handbasket Ride - Episode 8
A solo Electric State RPG actual play report
Content Warning: Strong Language
Thursday, October 17th, 1996. 12:48am
Scene Chaos Factor: 6
Expected Scene: Exploring Barstow by night
Testing the Expected Scene: 3 - Altered Scene
It was dark when I awoke in a bit of a panic, and didn't recognise the room I was in. It took me a second to come back to full consciousness, and realise I was still in the spare bedroom of the Barstow house I was hiding in.
Once I'd figured out where I was, I relaxed a little, then glanced at my watch.
Nearly 1am.
Fuck! I'd overslept. I'd only planned to get a couple of hours, then head out just after sunset, but it looks like I'd gotten about eight or nine hours sleep. I felt better for it, but man, more than half the night was gone, which was going to cut short my reconnaissance.
Having a shift of rest does allow Eamon to regain his missing Health point.
Looking outside, it seemed like the power was out in this part of part of the city. There were no street lights on, and all the houses on the street were all dark. It was eerily quiet out there.
Wits check: Does Eamon hear anything unusual outside? Five dice - 1, 1, 2, 6, 6 - Two successes.
That's probably why I caught the faint noise early on. There was a bit of a grinding sound, and the scrape of metal on concrete. I grabbed my Beretta and my binoculars, and moved through the house so I could look through a gap in the curtains at the front of the house.
I checked the moon phase for that date. It was in the Waxing Crescent phase, only a few days along from a new moon. By nearly 1am, the moon had already set.
I could only vaguely see outside. There wasn't any moonlight at the time, and with the streetlights out, there was only starlight to see by. When everything else is completely dark, that can be quite a lot sometimes, but I still wanted more.
That scraping sound came again, and that's when I caught sight of it. About fifty yards up the hill, there was a vaguely humanoid shaped figure, It was fairly short, no taller than five feet tall. In its right hand, it was carrying a length of metal piping, about an inch in diameter and it was wearing what looked like hooded robes, but it was hard to really tell. It looked a bit like a Jawa in the first Star Wars movie.
It paused for a moment, and its head scanned back and forth. As its face turned towards me, I realised that this was some sort of home made drone, vaguely made up to look like one of the vagrants that I'd seen yesterday afternoon.
I carefully pulled the front curtains apart another inch or so, so that I had more of a gap to look through. I wasn't too worried about being seen, as it was darker inside the house than out, so there wasn't much chance of giving my position away. All the same, I took a step backwards, so I wasn't standing in the window directly.
Using my binoculars, I zoomed in and had a closer look at this thing. It started moving again, walking with a slight limp. It's left foot didn't quite come up far enough when it took a step, so the front edge of its foot scraped on the sidewalk. The robes made it hard to see any real details, but it did look as though it was something someone had cobbled together, rather than being some sort of manufactured model.
The drone is being piloted by Nym Shani. After being tipped off by Eamon's avatar in the neuroscape, he's been paranoid all afternoon. When he heard the sound of Eamon's pickup in an otherwise silent town, he knew that there was someone out there. So, he's using a drone to try and find him.
Wits check: Is Shani able to locate the pickup using the tracks in the dust?
Three dice + three gear dice - 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3 - No successes.
That's Shani's second 'scape failure around Eamon, meaning his Bliss has gone up by two in the past twelve hours. We don't know what his Hope score was at when Eamon encountered him in the 'scape, so we need to figure out if he's now stuck in the Electric State:
Does Shani's Bliss score now exceed his Hope? 50/50 - 16 - Yes.
Does he have the Neuroresistant talent? Unlikely - 65 - No
So, Shani is now lost in the Electric State, unable to get out of the neuroscape by himself. It's possible he was lost in there before Eamon arrived in Barstow.
However, Eamon does not know this yet...
The drone scanned around, as though it was looking for something. It being in this street on the same night I arrived can't be a coincidence.
Wits check: Does Eamon realise what's going on? Five dice - 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 - One success.
Oh fuck me! How could I have been so stupid? I was driving through town, with the streets filled with dust and sand. I would have been leaving tyre tracks everywhere I went, so whoever was piloting the drone had probably found one, and was following it.
Luckily for me, the house I'd picked to hide the truck in was on the leeward side of a ridge, so there was hardly any dust on the road on this side. So the drone had come over the hill and found that my tracks had disappeared. As far is it was concerned, I'd somehow vanished into thin air.
The drone walked down the hill a bit, its head scanning back and forth as it hunted for the tyre tracks again.
I was going to have to be careful when looking for Shani. It's possible that there might be more than one person piloting drones in town, all looking for me. I thought about following the drone to see if it leads me back to its pilot, but there's no guarantee that it was even being piloted by someone in Barstow. They could literally be anywhere. So, it's best if I leave them alone.
I decided to get my stuff together, and get on with finding Shani. I might even start hunting the hunter - following the drone tracks through the city to see if does lead me back to the pilot, at least in the short term.
It was about then that I remembered my close encounter with the Coyote team yesterday. Their cable ties were pretty good at keeping me restrained, and I could probably use some in case I find Shani and need to restrain him.
Does the survivalist have any cable ties in the house? Likely - 21 - Yes.
I had a quick look at the flashlight from Scarus's kitbag. The more of his stuff I saw, the more I realised that he was probably in the Marines; there had even been a Marine logistics base in Barstow, before the civil war. The flashlight was one of those old school military ones that clipped onto your combat webbing, and came with a red filter, so that it could be used without destroying your night vision. I swear, if I ever meet Mr Scarus, I might have to buy him a drink for being so prepared.
After making sure the red filter was on - to really cut down the amount of light - I quickly searched through the garage and found a few zip ties in a drawer of a workbench.
I went back into the spare room and tossed them - along with the flashlight, the combat knife, and a can of food - into my daypack. After making sure my Beretta was tucked into the waistband of my jeans, I unlocked the back door of the house and snuck out into the back yard. I hated leaving the place unlocked, but I didn't have any keys and didn't have the time to search the house looking for a spare set. Given the house was unlocked when I got here, there probably isn't any anyway.
I snuck down the side of the house, and peered around looking for the drone. It had gone down the hill and disappeared somewhere. Probably gone around the corner looking for my truck.
With no sign of it, I slunk out of the yard and headed up the hill, back towards where I thought I'd encountered the headcase in the neuroscape. It was my best lead so far, so I might as well start there.
End of Scene Bookkeeping
Things mostly went Eamon's way in this scene, so the Chaos Factor drops to five.
No new characters to add to lists.
End of Episode Notes
Not a whole lot of explanation required for this one. Being an altered scene, rather than an interrupt scene, I decided that the alteration was two pronged: Eamon had overslept, and someone had come looking for him, rather than him going out looking for someone else.
Was kind of hoping Andrew Scarus (owner of the house) was gonna be added to the character list, just so we had a chance of him getting to buy the old Marine a drink. Keep up the great work!