Lights of Hoover 2: Death in Cocktail and RV

Cybelle stood on a ridge outside of the ring of lit villages that surround Hoover.  She wanted to find other brainers, so she looked into the psychic maelstrom and there was a flickering light in RV that had the spectrum of a brainer.  She also saw a someone's life flicker and go out and then get drawn towards Hoover, like something in a toilet bowl that has been flushed.

Worried, having read a sitch and seen that RV might try to kill her with kindness and keep her around as long as they could, she went in.  

"Ma said you'd be coming.  She's waiting for you in her place."

Meanwhile, over at Cocktail, Doc and Harlan are talking with some locals, getting the feel for the place.  Harlan had just told Fuse that the man who shot him, Last, is still in town.

"Are there any places of learning?"

Blank stares.

"Wait, there was Library, a town on the rim a few years back."

"That sounds great!  Where is it?"

"Oh, they got into a tussle with Hoover and once the engineers turned off their lights, the jackals came out and burned the town to the ground."

"Oh."

Last came out of the kitchen with his share of the the bacon and offers Doc and Harlan a piece each.  They accept.  And there's Fuse in the doorway.  He's holding on for dear life with one hand and trying to point his uzi at Last.  Doc  

Doc steps in front of the gun and Fuse hesitates.  "Don't do this.  Just...just have some bacon."

"Bacon can't solve this.  Some religions from the old world wouldn't even eat bacon because they said it was filthy."

Anthony rolls and well.  Fuse waits too long, loses his strength and can barely hold on to the gun or the door.  Harlan and Doc take him back to Croaker.

Bacon being the Meat of Peace is becoming a table joke.

Other things to write about:

Cybelle and Ma's death and hitch-hiking.
Doc buries a body, Harlan watches on, amused.
Cybelle and Pio meet Mineral and the Gang.
Doc and Harlan talk to the ghost in the well.
The Gang's All Together and the shooting begins.

Cybelle and Ma's death and hitch-hiking.

I can't help but stick someone into someone else's brain when there is a failed peer into the psychic maelstrom roll.

Cybelle is cagey.  She knows these people want to hold her in town and keep her as their own personal, wise woman, brainer.  Ma is a nice old lady and she has cold water, straight outta the fridge.  Ma asks Cybelle to help her when she dies, which will be soon.  She wants Cybelle to help anchor her mind and spirit to RV, so she doesn't drift towards Hoover like everyone else.

She fails the roll and there's Ma, hitch-hiking in her noggin.  Cybelle's pissed, starts ransacking the little double-wide for some kind of a diary or written work detailing how to get Ma out of her head.  Nada, just a little two shot pistol under her pillow and when she picks it up, she has a vivid flashback from when Ma had to shoot a guy in the head all those years back.

The sheriff of RV, Pio, asks Cybelle if she could help them out with a meeting with a biker gang coming to talk about bartering for some water rights.  She says that she will help but glares at the old man who calls her New Ma.

Doc buries a body, Harlan watches on, amused.

Doc hears someone call for help and when he looks around the building, there's just a body being dragged away by coyotes.  He shoos them away and buries the body, much to Harlan and Shig's amusement.

This leads to some fun discussion about religion and what's right and what is wrong.

Cybelle and Pio meet Mineral and the Gang.

Cybelle walked out of RV in the noon-day sun and set off for anywhere-but-here.  I asked her to roll under fire and she failed. Tough choice:  "Well, you could make it to Cocktail but you will be hurt, dehydrated and in all around sorry shape but make no mistake, you'll make it there.  Or you could turn out and head back to RV and help them with their meeting with the biker gang."

Pissed off, Cybelle turned around and walked back into RV.

Pio was sitting under an umbrella near the gate when Mineral and Fuse's gang thumped up on their piece-meal bikes.  Fuse, the main man, was supposed to be there but we all know that he's in Croaker, with a bullet in his chest.

Cybelle failed a Read a Person roll, so they knew about her.  I forget which question I asked of her.  After they talked a bit, they took a break in their deliberations. 

The gang wanted water rights when they were out on the rim, outside of Hoover, a place to refresh and water-up.  Pio wanted a gang to run security detail for when their water tanker took their clean water to sell elsewhere.

Cybelle dipped into the psychic maelstrom.  She could feel Mineral's murderous intent, feel that he was hanging out by a thin fucking thread and that he planned to go back to Cocktail and kill Fuse.  She made some solid suggestions to Pio concerning the deliberations, first-of-all recommending that they NOT open up on Mineral with the town's AK-47 in order to drive them off, as Pio suggested.

Skittish as she is about being settled down and trusting anyone, Cybelle was kinda good at this shit.

After Mineral left, she took off on the town's only dirt-bike, a little glorified moped.  She was going to warn Fuse that his second-in-command planned to kill him.

Doc and Harlan talk to the ghost in the well.

Doc still wants to know what the hell it was he heard when he found the body.  He just stands on the edge of the desert and listens, opening himself to the psychic maelstrom.

(Before that, he did find out the name of the fella who died and sent word to his kin, who manage a rim-town called Junkyard.)

Doc hears a voice.  Harlan is ready to call him crazy when he opens himself up too and he also hears it.

They track the voice to a dried well just over a ridge.  Its Paz, the kid they buried, or a voice claiming to by Paz.  He says he can feel a pull, something pulling him in a direction but he can hold on here in the well for a while.

This leads to a long discussion about heaven and hell and redemption.  Good stuff.  Doc says a bunch of shit to put Paz at ease, shit he doesn't really believe.  Paz let's go and heads off to...wherever.

Yeah, the direction of the pull is towards Hoover.

The Gang's All Together and the shooting begins.

Mineral and the boys ride into cocktail, back from RV and just a little bit later, Cybelle putters up on her little bike she borrowed from Pio.  Cybelle just wants a drink.  She takes off her helmet and her goggles and goes in with Harlan.  They are banging back a few when it hits her.

"Shit! I have to save Fuse.  Harlan, where's Fuse?"

"He's in Croaker.  Why?"

"Mineral's going to kill him!  Shit!  That was the whole reason I came.  Such a shitty day, I forgot."

Harlan and Cybelle take off for Croaker.  Harlan has his double-barrelled shotgun and Cybelle takes out some of her hidden knives.

Whenever the crew of the Croaker splits up, they hand each other air-horns and sound them off if something is wrong.

Doc decides that Bar, the owner of Cocktail's lone building, a mix of tavern and brothel, is someone he'd like to know better.  She agrees.  They make some small-talk.  He talks about how his parents were both doctors and got him into the biz and she talks about strangling the former owner of the joint with a jumper cable and killing his muscle with a gun.  Ya know...getting-to-know-ya chit chat.

They are just about to get it on when Doc hears the air-horn.  He manages to get his clothes half on and get down the stairs even while bar is cussing him out for leaving her in a lurch.

Harlan and Cybelle find Mineral sitting next to Fuse's sleeping body.  He has a pistol out and is gearing up to use it.  When the back door of the Croaker swings open (both rolled Go Aggro - Cybelle failed, Harlan got in the 7-9 range), he fires at the opening, hitting Cybelle in the shoulder and knocking Harlan aside.  He locks himself in.  They hear the pistol go off.

Harlan is good and pissed now.  He rolls to take something by force and succeeds.  Yeah, he get's shot but he drives Mineral away in fear and awe.  Fuse is dead, shot again in the chest.

As Doc is tending to Cybelle's wound, Harlan fires up Croaker, lights it up and takes off after Harlan who is running down the road towards his bike.  He doesn't make it.  Harlan wants to just nudge him and have him alive but he fails and kills him.

The next in command for the gang is Esmerelda, who is Fuse's lady-friend.  She thanks the Croaker's crew for giving her a few extra days with Fuse and for taking care of Mineral for her.

The game ends with Doc tending to Cybelle and Harlan's wounds while they drink at the bar.  Doc wonders how he will make it up to Bar.

Thoughts

Sarah is playing Cybelle and she really rocked tonight.  Her character is seeking out other Brainers, which is neat.  I like Cybelle.  I'm a fan.  She hasn't taken any of the super-cool Brainer powers yet.  I can't wait.

I really like how the Croaker's crew is a whole lot like the Firefly crew. 

The sessions we play are short but punchy.  Now, after two sessions of 2+ hours each, I need to sit down and make my fronts.  Should be fun.

There were a few bits that made me wonder if I might've made a mistake, here and there.  When Cybelle failed her Read a Person roll, I kind of let her use open yer mind to the psychic maelstrom as a replacement for it but her knowing about Mineral's murderous intent was a fun toy to have on the table.

Also, when Harlan failed and accidentally killed Fuse, there was no real consequence for that.  But maybe there could be one later.  Could be...

Anyway, a fun start.

Thoughts and questions welcome.