Take Me Home, Country Roads

Tuesday. October 16, 1973. The Satellite Dish, south of Wyman, West Virginia. 12:30 PM.

Michael

Obviously it's not a 1-to-1 physical correspondence, but vibes-wise I was thinking the radio tower from Mandy for this hidden valley with a mysterious satellite dish

(I also figure when you're ready, Jeff, you can roll your second Clairvoyance attempt here, and we'll weave it into Jo's chat with Pat.)

Jeff

It'll be 20 minutes after Mitch starts the process, if that messes up the timing

But ok

>> FAILURE by 1

Dang!

Michael

Well, we'll do the conversation for a little bit and see how long it goes.

Jeff

30 min!

I'll go ahead and roll just to clarify whether Mitch does it or gives up.

>> FAILURE by 1

Okay, Mitch gives up

All these bad History-B vibes

Michael

"Hey gorgeous," the ghost image of Pat Price says. "We gotta stop meeting like this, people are gonna talk." He winks.

(It would seem to make sense in the Tuesday morning briefing, btw, the big news about Point 1 getting closed and probably Morris getting shot would have come across the wire. Whether there's a full report about the other maybe URIEL-secret details of the mission—the Astral recon, the kulullû on Joe's back, whatever happens with Kalfu in this coming scene—I'll leave to Bill and Mel.)

Leonard

"People always talk," Jo replies. "What brings you to...uh, wherever we are?"

Michael

Pat's wavering image scratches at the corner of his eye. "Well, I mean. Obviously, I'm dead, Jo." A pause. "Wait a minute," Pat furrows his brow and takes a closer look at Jocasta—her hair, her clothing, her sidearm, and then briefly at the satellite dish and clay structure. "What year is this?"

Leonard

“Uh, well, when I woke up this morning it was October of 1973,” Jocasta says in a whisper, trying to remember if she dropped acid today and forgot about it. “But I’m crouching next to a radar station that looks like it was built when the pyramids were still under construction, so I wouldn’t bet the farm on my opinion.”

Michael

Pat chuckles. "Oh jeez. This is embarrassing." Pat takes another quick look at the burned-out satellite installation and thinks for a moment. "Yeah, chickie. I'm dead. But I'm also from your future, so... I dunno how much more I should really say." Pat doesn't look much older or different to Jocasta's eyes than the afternoon a few weeks ago when she found him unexpectedly sitting on her front stoop. This ghost image is wearing typical casual Pat-wear: a polo and slacks. Jo's Empathy seems a little scrambled here: she's trying to reach out using it to make sure this isn't some kind of Annunaki trick, or a hallucination like her hearing Tony's voice on her road trip, but given there's no body here, there's no body language to read. Pat's manner does seem a little scrambled; there's remnants of his cockiness and his outgoing brashness, but underneath that, his tone of "voice" seems reticent, edgy, a little confused, like the creeping edges of senility are intruding on his formerly steel-trap mind.

Leonard

"I've seen my future already, pal, and it's nothing I care to hear more about. Bad enough I have to live it," Jocasta says. "So I ask again: why are you here? It can't be easy to manifest after dying, so you must have something important to say." A thought occurs somewhere in her hazy brain. "Hey, can you...see other dead, er, spirits? Can you communicate with them?"

Michael

"This seems to be... one of the places I can focus myself enough to manifest to sensitives. Pretty much anywhere without electromagnetic fields is good. Or anywhere I remote viewed back while I was... while I was, uh, doing that stuff. I scanned the NSA facility here—back in '73, in fact!—and I guess I left a little something of myself imprinted on the place. The Quiet Zone lets me roam a little further than I might."

"There was a big-ass EM flare here though, a little while ago. That's why I focused myself here, to see what was up. And then I felt the... pull of something—someone, I guess—dowsing for emotional juice, and there you are. You get sensitive to these kind of things on the other side. Mediums. Hah." Pat hollowly laughs, then looks blank and wistful for a moment at Jo. He pointedly doesn't answer Jo's question about talking to other dead people.

Leonard

Jocasta is still worried about being watched and listened to (shocking, I know, that she would be paranoid), so she's going to try something different. If Pat Price is here, but not really here — if he's a ghost, or a waveform, or whatever fucking thing he is — she shouldn't really need to talk to him out loud. So she addresses him silently, with only a concentrated thought: Listen, Pat, my man. You and I, I think we're a lot more similar than I used to think. I don't want to waste your time with why. But we've also both seen our future, and you can't really look at things the same way after that. So let me tell you something. What you do after I tell you, well, that's up to you. I'm beyond caring about that. I don't really have a stake in outcomes anymore. But hear me out, and then do what you want. If you can talk to the spirits, especially if you can talk to the spirits of the native people here...tell them we can give them a voice. Tell them we can make them live again, even if it's just in stories and songs. Tell them...just tell them they can help us set things right. Not just them, but the harried slaves, the poor white trash, the forgotten dead from every corner of this land. No more Great White Father. Just their legends, their wishes, the names of their loved ones, coursing through the world again. Tell them to talk to me, or to anyone in our little club; it doesn't matter who. All that matters is that they talk to us. Maybe you don't want to do it. I get that. There is nothing so cynical you can say to me that is worse that what I tell myself every morning and every evening. But...you also know, the way I do, what it's like to know about terrible suffering and pain and misery, and to know you weren't able to stop it. Maybe even you helped make it happen. And doing this...it matters, pal. It means something. It's better than buying up a bunch of real estate in San Jose, you know what I mean? Because, if you're dead, you know how little the money means in the end. Just...pass it on, Pat. Not for me. Not for you. We're lost. For...for someone who might come back, in some small way. For them.

Michael

Can you give me a Leadership roll? I'm going to give you the +2 bonus you get for Telesend when "telling someone what to do" plus another +2 for that amazing RP. So it'll be Leadership-18. Corruption is available for that skill if you want to give it a little extra oomph.

Leonard

>> SUCCESS by 2

Ooooof

I don’t wanna spend the Corruption to make that a crit but I will bump it by 5 to get a better MOS if I can

Michael

Pat looks plaintively at Jo, almost helplessly, quite unlike his usual cocksure, flirtatious manner, like he's trying earnestly to understand this request, but it's not quite connecting with him. All right, kiddo, he says using his thoughts rather than his ghostly mouth, I'll do what I can but... like I said, it isn't always my choice where I end up showing up. And I don't know if I'll even be able to find, much less talk with them. I may be dead, I may be a psychic, but there's still a lot of shit about all this... metaphysically that I don't understand. It's not that this Future Ghost Pat doesn't instinctively understand how to do any of this, Jocasta realizes; he was able to find her through sensing her use of Psychometry, after all... it's that he's afraid. Afraid of not being in control, afraid of not being able to understand the narrow and circumscribed afterlife he's been consigned to, afraid that if he rocks the boat, even this miserable half-existence might end. It's the same emotional impulse he showed Jo in that gutter in Studio City back in '61: a sensitivity and melancholy behind the cop bluster. The inability to do anything about the inevitability of sudden death, whether it comes at the hands of the La Cienega Strangler or... whoever did Pat in. It's the first time in this conversation that Jo realizes consciously that Pat can't rest because Pat was—no, that's not right, not 'was'... 'is going to be', Jocasta instinctively corrects the verb tense in her head—murdered.

Jo's Naturalist skills sense an ambient drop in the air pressure, a change on the wind, going from westerly to now out of the north. There's a storm coming.

Leonard

She 'talks' to Pat one more time, this time adding as much empathy and kindness as she can muster for the man with whom she's had such a difficult relationship. All you can do is try, Pat, and all I can do is ask you to try. You may not believe it, but I know what this job did to you. It did the same to me. But there is peace. It may be a bitter kind of peace, a peace where someone else gets a voice because you choose silence. But it's still peace, if you want it. We'll meet again. I think you know that. With that, she braces her cheap Army coat around her shoulders and walks back to the others.

Michael

(Given it'll take a little time for Jo to make her way back up the valley to Mitch, Marshall and Hilary, and Hilary and Marshall will be speaking and Mitch is going to spend most of that time trying to scry into the building at the satellite dish, I need to kind of bring everything back to Jo's journey back. So first things first, Jo needs to make an Observation-18 roll.

Leonard

>> SUCCESS by 9

Brant

After speaking with Hilary, Marshall will radio the team assigned to this zone and ask if there is a record of a broadcast or antenna station at these coordinates — i.e., is this a site that got "converted" to History B or did this hut and satellite dish just "appear" out of nothing?

Michael

That intel from Point 5 command will come back in about 10 minutes, so this can be happening while Mitch is trying to remote view and Jo is making her slow way down the valleyside.

"Ah, that's an affirmative. At the same time the plans were put in for the Green Bank Observatory and the Sugar Grove facility under its Naval Radio Observatory cover, a third, much smaller facility, was put onto black budgets even darker than the NSA. Installation GOLDPAN was a Project SANDMAN facility from 1958 to 1964, under civilian cover of being a Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line relay station from the Arctic. But it was really here to keep an eye on the radio frequencies for unexplained manifestations of History B globally. The Project blew it up in '64; after SANDMAN got its first satellites orbiting, the facility was considered superfluous."

Hilary listens in if permitted. "Could be a retrocreation, echoing what once stood here in History A. The juxtaposition of Sumerian architecture with that... bizarre radio dish is a classic instance of eimic mirroring. Given this was a facility to detect History B globally, it could have been tainted by a rogue transmission. Maybe it wasn't a budgetary concern... maybe it had to be destroyed."

Brant

"And likely that rogue transmission is what's keeping this site active," Marshall nods, still staring off into the distance, watching Jocasta. "I wonder if blowing it up would even work, then. If they blew it up once already, you know? Because clearly," he gestures with one hand out toward the hut, "the first time didn't take."

Michael

Hilary remains silent but Marshall can tell his mind is going a mile a minute. His brow is furrowed in concentration. "There is quite a bit of data to interpret here, Marshall, and I would be loath to venture further into the terra incognita of pure supposition. But this mission does seem to contrive to keep placing pure supposition in our quiver as the only usable ammunition."

"I'm thinking of what Jocasta saw at Lake Champlain. Two tribes, neighbors, one tribe less infected with the "cities-and-chiefs" meme than the other. If the Kings were never here in pre-Ontoclysm history, if we suppose that the Americas are only being invaded now in what we hypothesize is, well, 'Parallel-History B'... how do we explain the Haudenosaunee building armies and longhouses and constitutions? There must have been a linguistic time bomb in the peoples who came over the Bering land bridge. When did they come over? A little over 10,000 years ago. Right around the time they would have been building the menhirs at Göbekli Tepe."

Brant

"What you're describing, I think, is a ... let's say sophisticated precursor civilization to the Sumerians. One which existed and continues to exist in both History A and History B because it ... 'pre-dates' both. It's pre-history. History — History A/B, that is — only 'begins' in 3500 BC because that is when They arrived. Maybe because They're like the C Suite, an emergent property that 'grows' out of the concept of the written word, which the Sumerians invented. Or maybe They're aliens or interdimensional monsters who 'crashed' on this planet 5000 years ago, outside a little village the local monkeys called Ur. But because They are a product of certain systems of thought, or communication, They are subject to changes within those systems. The Ontoclysm changed the system. Somehow. And because it did, it changed everything going back to that original point of divergence: when They arrived. Because when They arrived, They created history. The concept of history, that is — written accounts by people in one age, read by people in a future age. But They couldn't change pre-history. Because there was no writing. Or no writing They could use."

"Does make you wonder from which direction those peoples came over the Bering straight, you know?"

Michael

"Writing does seem to be the 'big gun' in Their arsenal, as it were, doesn't it? That suggests that there's a very good reason why Their glyphs manifest as visual characters and cannot be issued as simply verbal commands. And even past that, what you just observed about history... very interesting, very astute. The oral tradition holds its own magic, don't you think? Because in the passing of words, tales, myths, from one mouth to one ear and then from that next mouth to the next ear... well, the stories change, don't they? Ever-so-subtly, like a game of, er, Chinese whispers." Hilary chuckles ironically at the baldly racist name for what Americans call the game of Telephone in this specific linguistic context. "But once a narrative is written down, it retains authority. Permanence. Authority and permanence, just as how those fellows in Ur started jotting down accounts of who owed whom for what. In writing lies the root cell of social hierarchy."

Hilary blinks, and thinks back to what Marshall said. "Hang about. What is, er, the 'sea sweet'?"

Brant

Marshall waves off the sea sweet question with one hand. “A metaphor. Don’t worry about it.”

Michael

As Jocasta prepares to leave the general area of the "satellite dish" and the scorched outbuilding, she can definitely sense a presence—a physical presence, not a ghost or phenomenon like Pat—inside the outbuilding. Behind the scorched door when she arrived on the valley floor, Jocasta saw nothing. But now, having been hunted before, Jo knows what a hidden predator feels like... and there is definitely one inside that squat clay building. Jo currently stands about 60 feet away from the building, headed to the northwest back over the couple hundred yards across Beaverdam Run and uphill terrain to Marshall, Mitch, and Hilary.

Leonard

She hisses into the walkie: "Something inside. Something bad. Going in now. Storm's coming, be ready to move if you don't hear from me in ten." She'll unshoulder her carbine and creep quietly towards the outbuilding.

Brant

Marshall clicks over to the site team back at base. "Potential hostiles in the AO. Mobilize team for dispatch to our coordinates." Then: "Mitch, get down there. Make sure she doesn't kill herself."

Michael

(This is probably a good time for us to shift into tactical mode. Let me review everyone's character sheets and come up with an order of operations.)

(Did we bring Dave here, btw?)

Brant

(Nah)

Michael

Turn Sequence, for the record:

1. Ugallu

2. Antagonists

3. Y

4. Jocasta

5. Mitch

6. Hilary

7. Marshall

Okay, so for Round 1 that's a Ready Maneuver to get your rifle in hand, and then on Round 2 and subsequent you're going to begin Moving, Stealthily, towards the building. You're in a Crouch plus you're going quietly, so your Move is going to be cut in half, which means you can go 2 yards per second. The front door of the outbuilding is 20 yards away, so getting there will take 10 more seconds, for a total of 11 seconds to get to the door. I will roll Stealth-13 secretly for you.

Marshall clicks over to the site team back at base. "Potential hostiles in the AO. Mobilize team for dispatch to our coordinates." Then: "Mitch, get down there. Make sure she doesn't kill herself."

If Mitch leaves right away, he'll be about halfway to the valley floor (covering 50 yards in 10 seconds) by the time Jocasta reaches the front door of the clay building. It would take another 50 yards/10 seconds for him to cross the creek and get to the valley floor, and then another 80 yards/14 to 16 seconds to get to the outbuilding (depending on whether he sprints or not). I'll leave it to Jeff to decide how Mitch is going to act in the next 10 seconds.)

After a few moments, the radio back to Point 5 HQ crackles to life. "Roger, field team. Strike team inbound via heli, should be at your location in fifteen minutes, over." SANDMAN has bleeding-edge helicopter gunships at their disposal, basically skunkworks models out of the Cheyenne-Apache lineage, so any heli will be carrying a full commando squad complement, plus the gunship itself will be equipped with anti-tank weaponry: minigun, air-to-air, and air-to-ground missiles.

Jeff

Mitch moves cautiously toward the structure until he reaches it or sees/hears anything change.

What's the weather?

Michael

So there definitely has been a change in the prevailing winds the past minute or so; the westerly wind has changed to a cold biting north wind. It is October, and we are at altitude.

So with Jocasta at the door now, Jo can see Mitch making his way down the valley slope. I'm not sure if Jo wants to wait here until he's able to join her, Leonard, but essentially it's your move at the moment. As I mentioned in the live session (I think) the door is rough-hewn wood and scorched itself but essentially intact. It's mounted on a pivot stone, which is pure Sumerian architecture, so it pushes both ways.

Leonard

Jocasta is going to go on ahead, but will signal at Mitch (when he gets close enough) that she's going to go in first and take a look and that he should stick close and have her back. With that, she'll carefully step through the door, doing the usual tactical stuff of going in gun first, scanning the room, staying near the door, etc.

Michael

Okay, so it makes sense to me to wait until Mitch gets to about 20 yards or so from the building, Jo can signal to Mitch with ASL, and then do what she has planned. (If Mitch wants to do anything prior to her opening the door, Jeff, let me know.)

A cold, needly, half-sleet, half-rain begins a lackluster, half-hearted fall as Mitch makes his way to the valley floor.

Jeff

Mitch positions himself to cover Jo with his rifle ikoter, the range of which I don't have on my sheet but I'm sure it's effective 20 yards out.

Brant

Michael

23 yards, huh. Well then 20 is perfect.

Brant

23 yards or 21.031 meters, the sort of precision we expect from GURPS

Michael

Jocasta opens the door to the clay outbuilding. The interior of the building is one large open chamber, with some crumbling clay walls seeming to indicate or suggest where the constituent rooms of the GOLDPAN radio facility might have used to stand. Bits and pieces of History A technology stick out of the walls in unexpected fashions: an electronics relay wedged into a Sumerian clay bas-relief here, a full computer panel standing on a low clay pedestal there. The back wall features a narrow window, almost like an arrow slit, facing the far side of the valley. The three walls facing Jo as she opens the door have each been inscribed with the same Anunnaki glyph; the glyphs looks to have been "cleaned" into the ash-scorched walls. Jo of course immediately tries to avoid looking at the glyph but must make a Will-23 roll now on first exposure. Seated uncomfortably on a dusty, scorched office chair, its long human-like fingers tapping away at the keyboard on the pedestaled computer panel, is a lion-headed humanoid. Its clothes are an odd motley of Cold War scientist-technocrat and Sumerian priestly finery: its plain white shirt (complete with pocket protector and slide rule) is bedecked with a breastplate of jewels—carnelian and lapis lazuli—its long priestly tunic oddly modern in its styling, its clawed toes bursting through a pair of black shoes. The ugallu's copper knife is strapped to its wrist with a rough leather strap; the strap also appears to have a watch face attached to it. The ugallu turns to see Jocasta entering the room. An expression of annoyance crosses its face and it indeed sighs as it stands up from its chair. Jocasta's action is up next (after the aforementioned Will check).

Leonard

>> CRITICAL SUCCESS

Michael

That's a crit and will leave Jo immune to the glyphs in the clay building for the remainder of this scene. Jo doesn't need to angle her vision to avoid catching glimpses of the glyph. You can make a Hidden Lore (History B)-16 roll to identify the glyph too. And of course you have your action up.

Leonard

>> CRITICAL SUCCESS

Brant

(Jocasta’s in like BBC Sherlock analytic mode now).

Michael

(Jesus.) So this glyph seems on the surface to be similar to NAM.HILI, Fascinate, which causes a witness to move towards and stare at the glyph (I believe Jo saw one at the St. Francis, placed in the elevator shaft?) but this glyph uses different and additional strokes. In Jo's immune mind, the psychic effect seems to push not merely pure fascination with the glyph but also to lead the witness into a more complex obsessiveness, a kind of hyperfocus, a one-way trip into a mental labyrinth of the viewer's own devising. It clearly gets its hooks into Jo's Paranoia, but in the end the psychic impulse of the glyph is far too one-dimensional and facile to lock in a true connoisseur of paranoia like Jocasta Menos.

The ugallu is moving towards Jocasta, slowly and deliberately. It does not draw its copper knife but its right hand is reaching toward its left wriststrap.

Leonard

Jocasta barks back to Mitch: "Ugallu in here. Glyphs on the wall. Be careful, but get ready to burn it." [How far is the thing from her?]

Jeff

Mitch cautiously moves up to close the gap. I'm pretty sure until/unless he has eyes on the irruptor he won't be able to access his "emergencies only" pyro 7, and lighting up the structure with Pyro 1 would take I dunno how long but more than three seconds.

(I mean, once it's his turn in the one-second interval)

Michael

At the end of its turn's Maneuver—standing up—the ugallu is approximately 6 yards away, which means next combat round it will be within melee range of Jocasta.

Mitch cautiously moves up to close the gap. I'm pretty sure until/unless he has eyes on the irruptor he won't be able to access his "emergencies only" pyro 7, and lighting up the structure with Pyro 1 would take I dunno how long but more than three seconds.

Moving this round to get line of sight would be your whole round's action. Looking at only the ugallu through the open door, Mitch should be able to avoid catching sight of those glyphs.

Leonard

At the end of its turn's Maneuver—standing up—the ugallu is approximately 6 yards away, which means next combat round it will be within melee range of Jocasta.

Oof, she doesn't want this thing within a hundred miles of melee range, it'll destroy her. All right, game plan is to back away from it, unloading in three-round bursts (the max with the carbine) until she's far enough away to toss a grenade without her or Mitch getting caught in the blast area.

Michael

(Okay, cool, that'll be a Move and Attack. Are you using the Ruger Mini-14? If so your Move and Attack will be penalized by -5 for the rifle's Bulk but obviously the damage on this rifle is substantial (5d pi). So it's a Guns (Rifle)-10 roll to hit it, with three possible rapid fire rounds if you succeed by a large enough MoS. And of course the ugallu gets to try and Dodge.)

Leonard

>> SUCCESS by 0

Michael

Let me see if it Dodges and if not, we'll get to rolling damage.

Two of the rounds go wide, embedding themselves in the clay walls and the computer banks the ugallu was seated at when Jo opened the door. The third round comes closer to hitting the beast, but the ugallu Dodges and flattens itself behind the doorway as Jo brings the gun to bear and fires. Mitch Moves up to a spot about 6 yards behind Jocasta in this combat round, trying to first establish and maintain a visual lock on the irruptor, but given his Dodge, he's out of sight again.

Jeff, given the ugallu has decided discretion is the better part of valor, next round you can use Detect (History B) to try and get a lock on him: using Detect takes one second. Analysis isn't necessary for this lock-on, just a success on activation and skill roll, but analysis would be great to convey to you nonetheless. But Mitch's Move action for this round is done. Hilary, up on top of the ridge, is watching this through binoculars; from this angle, neither he nor Marshall can see the irruptor, but shots have now been fired. If there's anything Marshall wants to do, let me know; otherwise, I'll move to Round 2.

Brant

(No action, Marshall’s just watching for now.)

Michael

Round 2 of combat

In the next round, the ugallu, now hidden behind the doorway, remains there, out of direct view of Jocasta. The ugallu lets loose a powerful, bone-chilling roar which echoes through the rain-soaked valley. The roar, which Jocasta and Mitch can both sense contains infrasonic content, seems to have no immediately noticeable physical or psychological effect on either of them. Which brings us back in the order to Jocasta. The ugallu is still inside the building, pinned down, out of Jo's immediate field of vision. The first flash of lightning can be seen in the northern sky.

Jeff

Mitch's psi is on the fritz but he'll make the attempt (again)

>> ACTIVATE … SUCCESS by 1

>> DETECT … SUCCESS by 5

>> ANALYZE … SUCCESS by 1

Michael

(Cool, I'll convey all the info to you on Mitch's action, after Jocasta goes.)

Jeff

I don't think Mitch has used his Detect in tactical combat up to this point; does he need to spend one second on each of the use and analysis rolls? The activation roll at least is a 0 second action.

Michael

Nah, the Detect description says it requires "one second of concentration" and that sounds right to me.

Jo is up.

Leonard

If we're clear enough of the blast radius, she'll toss a grenade. If not, she'll spend this round moving further away without another round of shots, since she'd be moving and firing with the additional burden of the thing being behind cover and out of sight, making it pretty unlikely to score a hit.

Michael

This seems like the most likely SANDMAN-issue pineapple, what do you think? Never done a grenade throw in GURPS before. Let me get myself up to speed and will get you the pertinent info ASAP.

Okay, it's going to take 3 seconds, plus the fuse which is 4-5 seconds. Start this round with the Ready Maneuver to put the grenade in Jo's hand:

Perhaps it's the fear of imminent combat that's cleared Mitch's mind from the repeated failures of using his Detect and Clairvoyance up at the top of the valley. Whatever the case, he's got a handle on the History B activity here and with his Sense MoS of 5, he can sense everything perfectly within 15 yards. That includes the ugallu and the glyphs inside the clay building, as well as the History B radiation coming off the building and the satellite dish themselves, as artifacts from the Other Side. It's a lot of data to process, but luckily Mitch also is able to instinctively analyze the present big sources of energy.

This ugallu, like most of its kind, is a strategist, meant to control the field of battle. The energy Mitch gets off of it is that it's the brains here, even if its History B energy still seems to possess some lingering aspects of History A as well, like the retrocreation didn't quite "take."

Mitch isn't sure who inscribed the glyphs on the interior walls of the clay building but it feels to him like they "came over" with the building itself; they're on the same wavelength as the building and the dish. (Mitch doesn't know yet that these SHAB ("Inspect") glyphs looked like they were scratched into the ash, which would seem to hint that the building was scorched before it was retrocreated, but I put that fact here for later debriefing.)

Two more bits of info about the flow of History B energies here. 1) The dish is a booster; it is taking History B energy from elsewhere and also pointing it west-by-northwest, towards Point 5, but also towards Ohio and the unresolved pair of subduction zones there. 2) Mitch gets the vaguest sense there are more irruptors here, possibly two or three, stationary, behind the clay outbuilding from where Jocasta and Mitch are standing.

After this, Hilary and Marshall are up, then we'll begin Round 3.

Jeff

"There are more around back!" Mitch shouts in Danbe.

Leonard

Jocasta mutters whatever the Danbe equivalent of "fuck" is as she pulls the pin on the pineapple.

Brant

(To the extent it’s helpful, Marshall’s only action on his one-second turn will be to radio HQ to say: “Hostiles confirmed. AO hot. Expedite backup.”)

Michael

Jocasta mutters whatever the Danbe equivalent of "fuck" is as she pulls the pin on the pineapple.

Round 3 of combat Jocasta is getting ready to pull the pin when the ugallu emerges from the outbuilding. The ugallu is Moving this round. It won't be able to close into melee range with Jocasta, but its coming out of the clay outbuilding means Jo no longer has a convenient enclosed space to toss the grenade into. When the ugallu finishes its move, it is in the open, with no cover, about 2 yards in front of the door, 4 yards away from Jocasta, and 12 yards away from Mitch. In the midst of its dash towards Jo, it roars again. I need Jo to give me a Will-23 roll, and if she succeeds, it's her action. Again, Jo has not yet pulled the pin.

Leonard

>> CRITICAL SUCCESS

Michael

Second verse, the same as the first. In its haste, the ugallu could not effectively direct the roar to pierce Jocasta's impeccable will. Now it is Jocasta's action. She has a pinned grenade in one hand and an ugallu basically 6 feet away.

Leonard

Six feet is risky. She'd almost certainly take some damage from the blast at this range. She also can't use the rifle right now either, not with any accuracy. She could stand her ground and just feed the fucking thing the pineapple when he's close enough, but even in her current state of high risk tolerance, she'll save suicide for when it might have a little more impact. So, a swift calculation: can she Fast-Draw her pistol and get off a shot in this action, or not? If so, that's her move. If not, she's just going to brace, sink down into her dan-t'ien, and ready a Power Blow for when the ugallu is close enough. Either way, she's holding onto the grenade, but not pulling out the pin...yet.

Michael

Yes, Fast-Draw seems like the best option to actually try and harm this thing at close range this round. A successful Fast-Draw-13 roll means you draw your pistol instantly with no Ready action and can fire it this round. You won't be able to Aim, of course, but you will be able to use the Zasteva's rapid fire to get off three shots in one trigger pull. Ugallu will get its Dodge roll of course.

Leonard

All right, here goes.

>> SUCCESS by 0

Michael

Hell yeah. Guns (Pistol)-14 next.

Leonard

>> SUCCESS by 1

Michael

Okay, again, that's one round possibly connecting, let me roll Dodge for the ugallu.

That Dodge was a failure. Which means Jo gets to roll damage for the Zasteva which is 2d piercing.

Leonard

>> 2d6 … 8

Michael

All right. I've assessed damage reduction, and the one round of the burst that hit its target does manage to wound the ugallu. It doesn't look especially bothered by the bullet wound, it's not on the verge of collapsing or anything, but it is bleeding. Mitch is up next.

Jeff

Can Mitch see it?

Pyro flare check

>> SUCCESS by 6

My recollection is that it isn't immune to ikoters and I'm holding one, so I'll Aim at it

Michael

Can Mitch see it?

Oh yeah, it's out in the open, clear as day, and Jocasta isn't in Mitch's way at all from this angle.

And yes, you can definitely spend this round Aiming.

Okay, as per the last couple of rounds, I am guessing there is little if anything Hilary and Marshall can do from their vantage point. So unless there is any protest, I shall move to Round 4.

Round 4 of combat

The ugallu lunges for Jocasta. While its feet sport talons like a bird of prey, its hands are human, and its leonine face is contorted in what looks like distress or pain as it reaches out its hand to try and lay its oddly-jointed but human fingers on Jocasta. The fingers are not clenched into a fist, it seems the ugallu simply wants to... touch her. I did roll a hit, so Jocasta will need to decide how she is defending and make an Active Defense roll, Leonard.

Leonard

Hmmm. Parrying might be tricky since she has a weapon in each hand and neither is really meant for melee, and she doesn't want to risk this thing getting its hands on her, so I think she'll try a Dodge, despite the slightly lower probability.

Rob

(feed it the pineapple)

Leonard

[That's the plan if this dodge doesn't work]

>> FAILURE by 3

Welp

Michael

The ugallu's finger brushes across Jocasta's chest, and she feels a powerful jolt of electricity enter her from the irruptor, sizzling through her clothes and causing her body to seize up and her heart to miss a couple of beats. Roll against HT-11, please, and then give me an IQ-15 roll for accidental Psychometry with the skin-to-skin contact with the ugallu.

Leonard

[Quick question before I roll: Would the Body Control application of resisting damage ("you may use the higher of this skill and basic HT to resist any Affliction, magic spell, or psionic attack that is normally resisted by HT") work here?]

Michael

YES

Forgot you had that.

Leonard

>> SUCCESS by 0

If she gets the boost from Fit, that's an exact success. If not, it's a failure by 1.

The Accidental Psychometrist

>> SUCCESS by 3

Michael

If she gets the boost from Fit, that's an exact success. If not, it's a failure by 1.

Yeah, you should get the Fit bonus here, so wow, Jocasta just narrowly avoided having a heart attack aided by the ugallu's mastery of electrokinesis. So instead of the ugallu's emotional impressions coming at you while Jo is unconscious, they'll come in a big split-second flash now while Jocasta staggers back and considers her next move. The ugallu's current rage, directed at Jocasta, is at having been interrupted and abandoned: it has an exceedingly important role to play here, and no one—irruptor or human—is helping him. The precise calibrations, the minute changes it needs to monitor in order to increase the irruptions along the ley line from Ohio to Missouri... all for naught as soon as these cattle entered the valley. But faintly in the ugallu's History-addled memories, Jocasta can sense the ugallu had another parallel existence and set of memories, that involved sitting here in this distant installation, working for SANDMAN with three other technicians. He'd been forced to spend the past week or so sending out a series of radio transmissions meant to aid in a continent-wide test of some theories put together at Granite Peak at many levels of clearance higher than the chief technician ever had access to. And then there was this moment yesterday when the feedback came back through the dish, a returned transmission when none was expected, and no matter what they did—redirecting the dish, cutting the power—the transmission persisted. It vibrated through the receivers, the whirling computer memory banks, the video terminals. The walls of station GOLDPAN burst into flame, electrical surges blasting through the radio and computer banks... and the Technician suddenly found himself here, the transmission having worked and put him and his three girtablullû companions here, safe in a bubble of the True History amidst the False.

One last reactive roll and then it's (maybe) Jo's turn: Fright Check, Rule of 13.

Leonard

>> SUCCESS by 5

Michael

Jo's cool.

And it is her action. She is in melee combat with the ugallu and touching it might not be a smart idea.

Leonard

Okay. I'm a little unclear on if she can do this, both because of the lovable GURPS combat rules and because I'm a little fuzzy on the tactical map here. What she would like to do is just pull the pin on the grenade and drop it — not throw it or deploy it in any way, just drop it at her/the ugallu's feet -- and run, either back into the outbuilding or as far in the other direction as possible. So my questions are: (a) can she do that in one action? and (b) can she either get far enough away that she's unlikely to take damage from the blast — about 15 feet — or into the building where she has cover? If so, she'll do that. If not, she'll just shoot the thing point blank in the face.

Michael

You're going to have multiple seconds to get away because the grenade fuse is 4-5 seconds, so yes, Jo can pull the pin this round and drop it (dropping an object is a free action), and next round move at full speed away.

(Shades of the Viet Cong saboteur blowing up the Huey in Apocalypse Now. I will try not to think of how she ended up of course)

Leonard

(She was fine, I'm sure she was just fine)

All right, so that's what she's gonna do. Yank the ring on the pineapple, drop it, and sprint away, towards Mitch.

Michael

Done and done, no rolls necessary. The Move action will happen next round. Mitch is up.

Leonard

Oh, if this is a free action, she'll also yell to Mitch "Scorpions, three of them, around the back!"

Jeff

Mitch shoots the Technician with his language gun

Beam Weapons-12 modified to I dunno what, 18 minus penalties with the +6 from Acc

Michael

Mitch's ikoter rifle blast strikes the ugallu right between the eyes, leonine eyes that go unfocused and dilated under the assault of the linguistic blast. The ugallu weaves unsteadily on its feet, mumbling words in Sumerian that Jo can hear as she flees the grenade blast zone. "A ĝal. Sub."

Hilary and Marshall observe the current tactical situation: a pulled M67 at an ikoter-dazed ugallu's feet. Almost shocked that this tiny field team seems to have handled a major irruptor so easily, Hilary risks a wry smile at Marshall. "Well. That's a bit of a turn-up for the books, eh?" As Hilary finishes saying this, three girtablullû hiding behind the outbuilding unfold their black-green wings and take to the skies above the outbuilding, dressed in tattered paramilitary gear and clutching Uzis, getting ready to dive and rain down submachine gun fire on Mitch and Jocasta.

Round 5 of combat The ugallu is Dazed, with a powerful explosive at his feet (grenade fuse second: 1 of 4. The grenade will explode at the beginning of Round 9.) The three girtablullû have reached the zenith of their Flight Move, about 30 feet above the ground and 10 feet above the roof of the outbuilding. They are clearly going to shoot at Jocasta and Mitch next round. Jocasta is back up, and her original intention was to Move away from the blast zone as fast as possible, back towards Mitch and the side of the valley Hil and Marsh are watching from. Is that still Jo's planned Maneuver?

Leonard

Yeah, not a lot of other good options. Certainly don't want to stay near the ugallu with that grenade about to go off, no cover...she needs to get in a good position to return fire, and hopefully her being a moving target wearing a ballistic will handle the worst possible outcome. Crossed fingers, but Jocasta keeps running.

Michael

Mitch is up.

Jeff

"They can fly now?!"

Brant

Marshall barks into the walkie-talkie: “Withdraw!”

Michael

"They can fly now?!"

Yes!

(Always could, you just fought one in a basement where its wings couldn't do its thing)

Jeff

We're all dab hands with the ikoter, how long is it likely to be insensate?

Michael

Multiple minutes, as long as it is not "struck, slapped, or shaken"

Jeff

(Always could, you just fought one in a basement where its wings couldn't do its thing)

No, I think this represents a dangerous escalation on History-B's part. Probably it's already infected the wiki.

On a 15+ Mitch tries to make a firestorm in the sky which is not going to be very effective I think it's safe to say:

>>> 3d6 … 9

Shooting one with the language gun is tempting but instead Mitch zig-zags back uphill, as he was trained to do under fire

Michael

Before round 5 ends, Hilary is going to grab a second ikoter rifle from Jocasta's undoubtedly overpacked/overprepared rucksack and try to scramble down the hill a ways in the next few rounds and take long-distance shots at one of the girtablullû. (If Marshall wants to do anything before Round 5 ends, let me know, Brant.)

Round 6 of combat As Jo and Mitch take evasive action and move away from the imminent explosion, two of the girtablullû land on the roof of the outbuilding and will be taking Move and Attack actions this turn, firing off wild bursts with their Uzis at Jo and Mitch. The third girtablullû flies at full speed overhead; Jocasta can tell with Tactics that this third girtablullû is going to try to cut off Jo and Mitch's escape route out of the valley while at the same time getting them squeezed between the scorpions on the roof and itself. But this third girtablullû is still in the air and will need to move a bit more and then land before getting the two of you between a rock and a hard place. The girtablullû who fires at Jo misses wildly, but the one firing at Mitch is a bit more accurate. Jeff, your Defense options here are:

1. to use your normal Active Defense Dodge-8 and thus leave yourself a full action for your turn

2. to do an All-Out Defense, add 2 to your Dodge to bring it to Dodge-10, and leave yourself a half-Move for your action this turn

3. to do a Dodge and Drop at Dodge-11, but that will leave you prone, needing to get up to Standing this turn if you want to keep running next turn.

Jeff

I feel zig-zagging means All Out Defense

>> SUCCESS by 0

Michael

Very nicely dodged.

So Jo is up next with her action.

Brant

Marshall will say into the walkie-talkie: “Get to the tree line, we have backup 10 minutes out by helicopter.”

Michael

(Yeah, there's much more opportunities for cover by the creek bed.)

Leonard

Jocasta had initially thought that the (van? I can't remember) we came in would be ideal cover, but it's still too far away. So her plan is just to keep sprinting away from these creeps until she can reach reasonable cover by the creek and the tree line, and, once she's there, to hunker down behind reasonable cover and start taking aim at them. Their being airborne won't help, but the tree cover will hurt them as well in terms of getting a bead on us.

Jeff

Mitch continues to zig-zag towards cover (I've been saying "uphill" but if what I mean is "in the direction of the tree line" then that's what I mean)

Brant

Marshall will, on his turn, click over to HQ frequency for this site: "Three Scorpios, one Leo here. Taking fire. ETA on that chopper, base."

Jeff

To be fair it's been seconds. One way or another we'll drop out of tactical combat time before they arrive

Brant

(Oh, sure, I'm just adding flavor. I know 10 minutes is the equivalent of like, 600 turns.)

Bill

I have in my head this perfect image of Alan Arkin in *the In-Laws” running “serpentine” at Peter Falk’s insistence, but alas, have no time to find or make the animated gif needed here.

Michael

Round 7 of combat

The two girtablullû on top of the building are going to take a round to Aim at Jo and Mitch. Now that they're up there and have good line of sight and aren't being actively attacked, there's no reason for them to waste another 10 pops off their Uzis. Of course the question next round becomes what will their Danger Sense might them when that grenade down on the ground is about to go off. The flying girtablullû, however, has finished its swoop and lands about 4 yards in front of Jocasta, pointing its own Uzi at Jo. It only Moved this round so it could block Jo's way; had it tried to Move and Attack, it might have ended up crash landing. Of course Jo can try to run around it towards the tree line but the upshot is, it's real close right now. Jo is, of course, up next.

Leonard

All Jocasta's fancy martial arts tricks aren't particularly effective against human/insect hybrids and she doesn't have time to try anything clever, so she'll just fire the M-70 point-blank.

>> SUCCESS by 1

That's a success with an MoS of 1, prior to any of the scorpion's defenses and reactions, of course.

Michael

Okay, the girtablullû in front of Jocasta did not successfully Dodge the shot from the pistol, so Jo can roll damage, which is again 2d6 piercing.

Leonard

>> 2d6 … 8

Michael

So with this center mass shot, the girtablullû's chitinous shell does deflect and slow the penetration of the single round that hits it, but it does take some damage. Mitch is up whenever he's ready.

Jeff

Mitch is still serpentining up the hillside but if it's a shot he could theoretically make he'll pop off a shot at the uzi-bug demon

>> SUCCESS by 0

Michael

Mitch's snap shot with the rifle ikoter hits the girtablullû square, and it, like the ugallu, cannot muster the willpower to resist being dazed by the ikoter. Its weapon arm drops to its side, leaving Jo free to dash away from the creature next round and make for the tree line. Hilary has scrambled some of the way down the hill. He was getting ready to aim and eventually shoot the ikoter at the third girtablullû, but as he sees Mitch's shot having done the job, he waves Jo and Mitch over to the other side of the creek bed. Marshall, give me a Leadership-20 roll please, and then we'll go to Round 8.

Brant

>> SUCCESS by 12

Jeff

I did not think that would work

Michael

"Sir, do you wish to authorize an F-111 strike from TAC to sterilize the area? ETA would be approximately seven minutes if target zone can be evac'd of friendlies."

Brant

“Strike authorized. Count me down from seven minutes on the minute. Over.” Then, switching to the Jocasta/Mitch channel: “F-111 inbound. With payload. Get clear — you have seven minutes.”

Michael

Round 8 of combat Marshall and Hilary are facing the building and the dish while Mitch and Jo make their mad dash for the treeline. In the split-second before the grenade on the ground goes off, one of the girtablullû on the roof of the outbuilding breaks off its Aim and dives to the roof, flattening itself for the blast; the other just lets fly with a fusillade of rounds from his Uzi, at Jocasta. Jocasta is now just about at the creek bed. It's honestly a perfect spot for the aforementioned Dodge and Drop option for Active Defense, allowing Jo the benefit of a Dodge-12 roll and cover once she's dived into the creek.

Leonard

>> FAILURE by 2

Oof

Michael

All right, let me roll some damage here.

A single shot from the long, distant Uzi burst smacks Jocasta in the shoulder, doing 11 hit points of damage, taking her down to 3 HP. Another shot hits the riverbank, ricocheting loudly in Jo's ears as she slumps to the riverbed, wounded. Jocasta is in shock: DX and IQ minus 4 this turn only. She is reeling from her wounds. Half Move and Dodge until you get back to 4 HP. Jocasta has suffered a major wound. HT-11 to avoid knockdown, stunning, and possible unconsciousness.

Brant

(Remind me of the initiative order? Jo needs to make these rolls and then who's next?)

Michael

Jo makes these rolls, she can then act (given the possible limitations above), then Mitch, then Hil, then Marshall.

Hand grenade goes off at the beginning of next round.

Brant

(Does the HT roll Jo needs to make include a Fit bonus?)

Michael

Yep, that I have included in the HT-11 roll.

Leonard

>> SUCCESS by 0

Michael

On a success, you suffer no penalty beyond ordinary shock.

Brant

(Once again, Fit fucking pays for itself!!)

Jeff

Mitch gets as close to Jo as he can and hits the deck.

Michael

Round 9 of combat

ARE YOU READY TO ROLL SOME GRENADE DAMAGE

The grenade that has been ticking away for the past 5 seconds finally explodes, catching the ugallu directly in its blast, and causing some damage to the two girtablullû on the roof. Leonard should of course do the honors here. This is a multi-part process with a lot of moving parts.

EXPLOSION

1. Roll 9d6 crushing damage for the impact of the grenade explosion on the ugallu. He's at ground zero, he takes the full damage.

2. Roll 9d6 cr divided by 15 for distance for girtablullû number 1 who did not duck and cover

3. Roll 9d6 cr divided by 18 for distance for girtablullû number 2 who did duck and cover

FRAGMENTATION

1. Roll 2d6 cutting damage for the shrapnel from the fragmentation of the grenade on the ugallu. (Since this is cutting damage, it will be multiplied by 1.5 after the ugallu's DR 1 is assessed.) This hit is automatic, but also: "For every three points by which the attack roll succeeds, one additional fragment strikes the target." So you should still roll a Grenade-15 roll to see if any further fragments hit the ugallu.

2. Since the girtablullû are further away and one is prone and under cover, Jo will roll to-hit rolls for both of them for fragmentation damage. Grenade-14 for girtablullû number 1 who did not duck and cover.

3. Grenade-9 for girtablullû number 2 who did duck and cover.

Leonard

Hell yeah

>> 9d6 … 41

>> 9d6/15 … 2.06

>> 9d/6/18 … 1.67

>> 2d6 × 1.5 … 15

>> SUCCESS by 8

>> SUCCESS by 7

>> SUCCESS by 2

So that's, I think, no extra on the lion, hits on both the scorpions with an MoS of 7 and 2 respectively. And I rolled an extra time accidentally.

I may have done the frag damage wrong on the lion, too.

Michael

Okay. So. The ugallu was at 20/27 HP after the single pistol shot earlier in the combat. It takes 40 crushing damage and then 10 cutting damage (8 minus 1 DR is 7 times 1.5 is 10). This will bring it to a nice neat -30/27 HP. Which means:

• The ugallu is at least reeling and in shock, as mentioned above for Jo

• The ugallu must make two rolls against Knockdown and Stunning at HT-12

• The ugallu must make its 0 HP roll at HT-13 (Hard to Kill +2, -1 for being at -1xHP) to remain conscious

• The ugallu must make an immediate HT-14 roll to avoid death.

The ugallu somehow manages to remain standing upright through the furious blast of heat and fragmentation shrapnel. It doesn't drop right away, but a single shard of the fragmentation grenade manages to penetrate through its clothing, its thick animal hide, muscle, and ribcage to penetrate its Anunnaki genetically-engineered heart, killing it instantly. (Talk about getting your bacon saved at the last minute).

The two girtablullû manage to resist the wave of heat and fire that assaults them from the grenade explosion, but will they be able to resist the wave of frag shards headed their way afterwards?

• Girtablullû 1 is hit by three fragments. Go ahead and roll 2d6 three times for that one, Leonard, and I'll handle hit location and DR for each shard.

• Girtablullû 2 is hit by one fragment. Roll 2d6 once and again, I'll see where it hits and how its DR interacts with it.

Leonard

>> 2d6 … 8

>> 2d6 … 9

>> 2d6 … 10

>> 2d6 … 9

Michael

The first girtablullû, not undercover or having flattened himself against the roof of the outbuilding, takes a shower of fragmentation to the right side of its face, its right arm, and its right leg. It takes 40 HP of damage, from its max of 17/17 HP, which brings it down to -23/17 HP, and which means it needs to make the same exact rolls against knockback, stun, unconsciousness, and death that the ugallu did above. It has Hard to Kill 3, though, so its rolls against unconsciousness and death will be one better. One moment.

The impact of the fragments and explosion sends the first girtablullû flying backwards, out of sight, onto the clay surface of the outbuilding's roof. He is at least reeling, in shock, stunned, and knocked back. The second girtablullû takes a fragment in its right leg. It's still conscious, but reeling and in shock.

So basically none of the remaining enemies can act this turn. Which means it's Jo's action, wounded, reeling, but no longer in Shock, so she can act normally, if at half-Move/Dodge.

Leonard

This is a bit of a longshot, but did she see the first scorpion land on top of the outbuilding, and if so, is it close enough for her to throw another grenade? Best case, it kills the thing off and maybe does some structural damage. If not, she'll just limp as far as possible towards the tree line, hoping to get to the vehicle and some first aid.

Michael

Looks like you can throw the grenade a maximum of 40 yards give or take, definitely "Hail Mary" territory. Considering the distance from the edge of the creek bed, that'd be right on the edge of the distance.

Leonard

Yeah, she'll just move further towards cover/aid.

Jeff

Mitch follows

Michael

Slipping out of combat mode

Okay, in the next 5-10 seconds, there isn't a peep from the smoldering front of the outbuilding, and Hilary does all he can to help Jocasta up the hillside towards the top of the valley. It would take a minute to administer First Aid to Jo, but as Marshall has called in a no-fooling F-111 air strike, time is of the essence for the team to get out of the immediate target area. Mitch's Detect (History B) during this time tells him all three girtablullû are still alive, but one is still dazed by an ikoter blast, one is near-mortally wounded, and the third is wounded and hiding. After another 10 seconds or so, Jo, Mitch, and Hilary are back with Marshall. Still no movement from the valley; Mitch can faintly sense that the wounded girtablullû is still on the roof of the outbuilding. (Seems like a good place to break given this weekend is likely not going to feature me doing much in the way of GURPS math, but feel free to talk/RP this weekend.)

Brant

Unless Mitch is gonna perform psychic healing on Jo, Marshall would of course administer First Aid. In our current position are we far enough away from a potential F-111 bombing? Or should we skedaddle? If the latter, Marshall could perform First Aid or Mitch could Cure Jo in the vehicle as they drive.

Michael

Yeah, my feeling is getting back to the trail, into the vehicle and getting as far away from the blast zone is a priority.

Brant

Then that’s what we’ll do, helping Jocasta as we go!

Jeff

I don't think Mitch can walk or run while laying on hands but he can do it in a moving car sure

Michael

Well Hilary I would wager is not much of a driver, so I guess that puts Marshall at the wheel. Hilary shotgun, Mitch and Jo back seat.

Brant

So from Marshall's perspective we're still not entirely out of the woods (pun intended). In addition to getting Jocasta up and running, he wants a debrief from her about what she learned. He also wants to radio HQ to update them on their location and arrange to have backup meet them in that town (Weimer? Cameron? I can't remember which was which). After the F-111 drop happens, we'll need a team to go back to the site to inspect it for pragmaclasts, subduction vibes, bodies, etc., and to generally clean it up. We'll also need a memetics team ASAP to address what will surely be some questions from the locals about why, e.g., a fighter jet just flew over head followed by a huge explosion. Marshall can assist with that. He'd like, in a perfect world, for Jocasta, Mitch, and Hilary to lead the "field team" back to the site for cleanup and inspection purposes.

Leonard

[I assume in game-time we're still speeding away from the site with Jocasta just trying to stay conscious, but in metagaming terms, it shouldn't be too hard a sell to explain away the explosion -- this is coal country, after all, and they routinely blast the tops off of mountains around these parts. Jocasta's got A Theory for when we do debrief, as well.]

Michael

(I will try to get to giving y'all some narrative connective tissue between retreat, bombing, and bombing aftermath today after work, just have had a busy morning with having taken Friday off.)

As Marshall gets behind the wheel, he takes a quick look at the USGS map that brought the four of them here. Quickest route out of this wilderness area (I'm gonna say we took a Jeep or some other kind of 4x4 vehicle out here, maybe a Wagoneer?) is northwest along an old logging trail to Public Road 10, aka Middle Mountain Road. You won't be able to get above 20 mph on the trail, and it's about a mile to the paved road, so figure you'll be on Public Road 10 by approximately T-minus 3 minutes to bombing. Top speed once there should be about 30 mph, so figure you'll be able to get roughly 2½ to 3 miles away from the bombing area by the time it happens. So let's say Marshall does drive. Marshall's psychosomatic Lame Disadvantage will matter if he is the driver, of course. You can roll to overcome the injury; it's considered "Unreliable" and you can overcome it by rolling a 12 or higher on 3d6. If you roll 11 or less on this roll, you'll have -3 to any Driving checks. Marshall's default Driving skill is DX minus 5 for dexterity-based checks, so that's Driving-5 (Driving-2 if Lame), and for IQ-based drive stuff (split-second decisions on which way to go, map-reading, etc.), it's IQ minus 5 or Driving-11. Again, this skill check would only come into play in a crisis situation. We could hand the wheel over to Hilary, but he's not going to be much better than Marshall. Mitch's DX is the best of the three unwounded team members, his Driving would be 6, but of course I realize he'll likely want to be in the back seat with Jo to try and use Cure. At the same time, if Mitch drives, Marshall can be in back with Jo and try to deliver First Aid-17 to Jo over the first minute of backwoods driving. Of course, a steady, non-bumpy ride would be necessary for Marshall to deliver First Aid effectively; if Mitch failed a Drive check, I'd likely penalize Marshall's roll. First Aid in the form of tourniquets and bandaging at TL 7+1 heals 1d6 damage. Mitch's Cure heals 2 HP for every 1 Fatigue Point he uses. Y'all tell me what the driving configuration is, we can make some rolls, and we can see how much Jo gets healed and while the healing is all happening/we're waiting for it to happen and the bombing to commence, do some RP.

Jeff

I think that we shouldn't overthink this, Mitch gets in the back with Jo, Hil rides shotgun and Marshall drives. A situation where he's rolling against an effective Driving-2 is also going to be pretty bad for Mitch with an effective Driving-6, and Mitch's priority is getting started ASAP on the laying of hands

Michael

Well, I think we can do Cure right now, then. Does that take 10 minutes, or am I misremembering?

Jeff

Ten minutes yeah

Michael

So that means the bombs will be dropped before the healing occurs. If Marshall keeps his driving under the recommended speed limits on both the dirt and single-lane paved roads, the Jeep should be able to make it roughly 2½ miles from the bombing site in the 7 minutes it's taken the F-111 to scramble out here.

As Marshall drives north on Public Road 10, the hesitant rain begins to clear up, the skies opening up to the north and west, sunlight peeking out from behind the clouds. Then, the rumbling explosion from the valley is heard first, then, a few seconds afterwards, the whipcrack of a sonic boom overhead, headed to the northwest. The radio in the Jeep statics to life: "Fiver base to field team, sortie completed, mission accomplished." A few minutes later, as Marshall steers the big Jeep all-terrain vehicle slowly around a hairpin bend on Public Road 10, Mitch's energies have been focused enough to let him attempt to heal Jocasta's gunshot wound. (Jo is down 11 HP, as a reminder.)

Jeff

First 10 minutes of meditative prep, then the activation roll

>> SUCCESS by 0

Whew

Just under the wire

Then the skill roll, Cure-14. If Mitch spends 6 FP that should patch her up.

>> SUCCESS by 1

Whew again

Unless I'm forgetting something, that should be successful

Did I get the ratio backwards? Argh I should look this stuff up before I cavalierly start typing /roll into the bot

Michael

Okay, Mitch is down to 4 out of 10 FP, and Jocasta is healed completely. This isn't the first time Mitch has healed someone in Jo's presence; after all, a few days ago Mitch brought Marshall back from the brink of death at Huntsville. But that day she was awfully distracted and of course, now she's feeling what it's like to have a magic man cure her serious wounds. It's a feeling of being enmeshed with Mitch's own aura, and I think given Mitch needs to lay on hands to use the healing, it makes sense to me that maybe, just maybe, Jocasta's involuntary Psychometry might trigger here. (I guess Jeff should have a think about the emotional bouquet of this scene and what Jocasta might witness if she successfully uses Psychometry on Mitch in the moment of the healing energies being transferred, focused, and used on her. And Leonard can make a Psychometry-15 check at his convenience. I don't have a definite answer for what Jo might see in Mitch's history but depending on the success roll we can see how far back it might go.

The valley is going to act as a shield from any long-distance blowback from the bombing shockwave so that plus the distance should insulate you all from anything from the bombing.

If someone wants to roll the damage for a pair of M117 750-pound bombs, I could easily deduce it from the other bombs in GURPS High-Tech

Brant

I wanna do it.

Tell me what to roll. I rolled a successful Leadership for the tac strike so I wanna roll a billion d6.

Michael

Let me do some

Actually, this will be important because I'll have to see how much of the dish and the outbuilding and the stuff inside it will be left afterwards. Sadly, the bomb damage isn't a massive amount of dice, I was wrong, you roll 6d6 and then apply a multiplier. The 250 lb bomb in GURPS High-Tech is 6d×20 and the 500 lb bomb is 6d×28 so logically the 750 lb bomb should be 6d×36. So you can roll 6d6 twice and multiply it each time by 36 for the explosive damage. Of course I guess if you really wanted to, you could roll 216d6 twice instead. I'll roll a pair of skill rolls for the bombadier's accuracy to see if there's any large amount of drift off the target area. The fragmentation damage is another 8d×2, so you can roll 8d6 twice and multiply it each time by 2. Or 16d6 twice if you want.

Brant

>> 6d6 × 36 … 648

>> 6d6 × 36 … 936

>> 8d6 × 2 … 28

>> 8d6 × 2 … 28

Michael

Wild.

This is honestly kind of endearing Any building “disabled” by going to 0 HP or less and failing a HT roll has one or more large breaches and loses electrical power, if any. At -1×HP or less, it must make HT rolls to avoid collapse – just as a character would roll to avoid death. It collapses automatically at -5×HP.

What I'll probably do is say that standard operating procedure is for a high-altitude photography plane to follow up the bombing to survey the damage and those photos will get faxed to Point 5 in the next couple of hours so you can see what the area looks like post-bombing.

Brant

Word. And in the meantime we can have Jocasta debrief.

Leonard

>> 3d6 … 7

[That's for Psychometry]

Michael

Oh yeah, that's gonna allow Jo to see anything from Mitch's life right there. But yeah, I wonder what memory/experience is nearest to the top of Mitch's emotional consciousness right now.

And again, it's not going to be a vision at this level of success, just a series of emotional impressions.

Jeff

Well, right now Mitch is (a) worried about Jocasta and whether this dimly-understood psychic power will fail him; (b) irritated with Jocasta for going and getting herself shot at; (c) self-upbraiding for the selfishness of emotion number two while trying to get into the right headspace for emotion number one; (d) kind of detachedly amused that now that he has this psychic healing power he got to help Jiyu of all people, now he's used it on Roger and Marshall and Jocasta and is it only a matter of time until he has to deal with Archie and Charley at HP<0?

Michael

Yeah, I dig this bouquet of feelings, and I think it makes sense for Jo to get momentary flashes of Mitch healing Jiyu, Roger, and Marshall as Jocasta's wound miraculously stitches up and the 9 mm Parabellum round just sort of pops out of her shoulder.

Brant

“How’s she looking back there, Mitch?”

Jeff

"She's fine."

Leonard

"Thanks, Mitch," Jocasta says as she starts coming down from the shock and the rush of adrenaline. "I thought I was done for that time. "You know caprese salads? I could never remember what they were called. I could make them fine, I like them a lot, but for some reason I always blanked on the name. My ex-husband used to tease me all the time, it was practically a running joke that I could never remember. 'Hey honey, how about one of those oil and basil and tomato and cheese salads, haw haw.' You know, that kind of shit. And right when that bullet hit me, I thought, well, this is it. I'm gonna bleed out on the ground of a hollow in West Virginia, shot by a scorpion with an Uzi and shredded overalls. What was my life even for? And right then, my brain surrendered what I could never remember. Caprese fucking salad. "So what's the situation? Are we clear?"

Brant

"Yes. You just missed it. We need to get back to base to report this in and start running cleaning up. A night for Modafinil, most likely." He pauses to concentrate while taking an abrupt turn. Then: "So, what did you learn?"

Leonard

"For one thing, this facility, whatever it is, or was...it got stuck in the in-between of History A and B, because of whatever scheme the CWG was cooking up. It was one of ours to start with, and they were fooling around with the energy and it got it stuck between worlds, and it...retro-created? Re-manifested? Transformed? I dunno what to call it, but our guys here became their guys, and that ugallu was pumping History B energies through the dish to some of the other subduction zones in the current mass irruptions." She'll go on to describe it as best she can given what she saw. "For another, there were some deeply weird glyphs in there." She'll try to describe them, again, based on what she saw [I'm not sure she can actually draw them from memory or, if she can, if they would have an actual glyph effect, which she doesn't want to cause, at least not here under uncontrolled conditions, so she'll probably just talk about them instead of trying to recreate them in any way.] "What was weird about them is that they were like NAM.HILI, but not exactly NAM.HILI -- a stylistic variant, maybe, or a functional one, but regardless, what they were trying to do was not just fascinate you, but get you obsessed. Make you so focused on the object of the fascination that it becomes this all-consuming topic, this thing you can't think of anything but, this factor that you tie everything you know into. "Kind of like the way all these people are getting with UFOs, you know what I mean?"

"Oh, and I saw Pat Price's ghost. It has a lot of validity of manifestation here because of the radio silence, I guess? It was a little murky, but he said he'd scoped the location before when it was an NSA site, and came back because he was drawn here by a big EMP pulse that happened here recently -- almost certainly the work of our friends in the CWG as well. He found me, and I asked him to try to talk to the spirits of the local tribes if he could. I doubt it'll work; he didn't seem really clear on what his, uh, metaphysical condition was, and honestly I couldn't make sense of it either. At any rate, the poor guy was murdered. Or, uh, will be murdered," she says, frowning vaguely. "This doesn't sound helpful now that I'm saying it out loud. Anyway, that's about the size of it all."

Oh, she'll also mention the mindstate of the ugallu — its frustration that it wasn't getting any help. "I dunno how much of that was the B-nature of the thing, or how much was residual feelings from when it was an A-natured human, but it does seem like maybe...whatever is going on, whatever breaches between the histories that opened up because of the CWG's trifling, it maybe was just an opportunistic moment for the Red Kings, without a lot of support or forethought. They saw a literal opening and they jumped to fill it. Again, don't credit too much what I'm saying based on a few seconds of sensation, but this all feels less...planned than what we've seen from the enemy in the past. On the CWG's part, very elaborate and detailed; on the enemy's part, much more spontaneous."

Jeff

Mitch clucks his tongue sadly. "If it turns out that History-B really is a parallel world you can go to and put things in and take them out later, that it has enough reality that the Red Kings are actually making strategic choices instead of just giving vibes that kind of imply they're making strategic choices if you squint... I dunno, I'm gonna be disappointed.

"But wait, Pat's gonna be murdered? Do you know when?"

Leonard

"Shit, me too," Jocasta responds. "Like I said, don't pin the fate of the mission on the vibes I got. Psychometry is a pretty imprecise tool. Maybe I was just picking up on the emotions of the human tech who got stuck in all this. I really don't know. I just didn't want to leave anything out. The whole thing just had a real 'who's minding the store' feel, you know?" She pauses, poking lightly at where the wound had been, and looking back at her palms. "Oh, yeah, Pat! I don't really know when, or by who. But it's not happened yet. It's some time in the future. He knew he was dead, but he didn't know what year it was. So maybe he didn't know either."

Brant

“Well. Good work, both of you. That could’ve gone down differently. But it didn’t. So nice work.”

Jeff

Mitch intends when he gets a chance to do some kind of divination that will generate a date, maybe with chits numbered 1-31 in a coffee cup, in hopes of evaluating the risk to Price.

"Should we circle back and check the site again to be sure?"

Brant

“Yes. I’m going to send you and Jocasta back — Jocasta as team lead — with Hilary and some MilOps support once we report in. Once we know the site’s ontologically sanitized, we can send in a team to clean up any debris.”

Michael

All right, so if you all report back to the Point 5 HQ near to the original subduction zone immediately after escaping the irruptors and the bombing, the first thing the SANDMAN team on the ground can report to you is that Point 5 did close and vanish, simultaneous with the bombing run on the GOLDPAN site. In addition, Points 7 (central Ohio), 8 (western Ohio), and 9 (Cairo, Ill.) have weakened somewhat; again, the monitoring of all three of those sites indicate that the zones shrank and weakened at the very same time as the bombing raid. There's still something keeping all three of those subduction zones open (and let's not forget Point 3 in northeastern Georgia, still open but barely), but a major source of History B energy has been cut off to Points 7, 8 and 9. The post-bombing reconnaissance photos get faxed into Point 5 HQ at around 4 pm on Tuesday. The photography indicates that the clay outbuilding was either completely destroyed or turned to rubble by the bombing; it looks like the two men on the F-111 crew hit their target perfectly. The satellite dish is revealed to have been turned into a gnarled wreck by the photos. Structurally it's still standing, but it has been broken and penetrated in spots, and generally looks from the air like a moth-eaten ruin: full of odd holes here and there, its edges twisting off into spirals of scorched metal. As Marshall, Jo, Hil, and Mitch look more closely at these shots, it's clear that the dish did not revert to its History A counterpart microwave dish; instead, the dish's surface remains a fine mesh of suggestively glyphic patterns, although the bombing has ruined the finely-wrought surface, rendering it inoperative. It's Hilary who says, "That object," pointing to the close-up shots of the glyphic dish, "is a reality shard, clearly. It had enough ontological presence to survive reversion of the area to History A." He pauses, thoughtfully, sipping from his Styrofoam cup of tea. "What on Earth are we to do with it? It certainly can't be left there for anyone to chance across." There are no evident signs of human or irruptor remains in the ruins. There are a few suggestive piles of ash and rubble but forensic SANDMAN analysts at both Point 5 HQ and the SANDMAN contingent at the recon planes' home base at TAC command at Langley AFB in Hampton, Virginia concur that there's no conclusive visual confirmation of kills. However, given the valley's reversion to History A, it is likely that irruptor remains would have disappeared upon reversion.

Brant

“We’ll crate it up — Hilary, you’ll supervise that. Get it back here. I’m going to make arrangements to have it shipped to Livermore.”

(Can I make like a Patron roll or something similar to facilitate that? I don’t want to send it to Granite Peak or any place with potential OZY sympathizers still in operation.)

Jeff

Remind me how SANDMAN measures subduction zone size/strength, I know this was discussed but I'm drawing a blank

Brant

“I don’t think it’s a place. Still, I don’t. There’s something to this thing with frequencies. With vibrations. The satellite dish. They turned the broadcast against us. One could say they hijacked it. But what if that’s not what happened? Instead of hijacking the broadcast, the broadcast that ‘we’,” Marshall lifts a hand off the wheel to make air quotes, “were sending out merely allowed Them to calibrate Themselves to our ‘frequency’. If They exist in a state of quantum uncertainty — if Their default state is Schrödinger's Cat, maybe that’s what They need to manifest here. A particular type of broadcast.”

Leonard

"Good thing we were making those available to them, then," Jocasta replies. "Our friends in the CWG were so convinced the Red Kings would win, they practically made sure it would happen."

Michael

A great idea. Pulling the material support to have the dish disassembled and crated and gotten out of there using loyal-to-URIEL forces, plus having it sent to Livermore and not GP, does seem like an opportunity specifically for an Influence roll. (Patron would apply to having SANDMAN-qua-organization help you, and I don't think that quite applies here; you all are looking to leverage your recently-obtained power within SANDMAN and grease the wheels to essentially snatch the dish for yourselves.) I think what I'd like is for Rob to roll Archie's Administration-18 to aid Marshall in this attempt, since he's back at Huntsville and can marshal the ALLOCHTHON manpower it'll take to grab the dish, and then Marshall takes that bonus (or penalty if Archie muffs it) and rolls his choice of Diplomacy, Fast-Talk, or Intimidation. Those are all effectively at 22 with your Charisma, Voice, and other situational Reaction roll bonuses and this feels like a Fast-Talk-22 to me; maneuvering all the paperwork and routing forms to get this sent to Livermore not Granite Peak. A success on this roll vs. the Will of dubious on-the-ground Sandmen (an average of, like, 13 maybe) will get you the dish back at Livermore with no headaches.

Remind me how SANDMAN measures subduction zone size/strength, I know this was discussed but I'm drawing a blank

So my logic on this has been that Project electromagnetic detection equipment can give Sandmen an idea of the presence of irruptors, subtle subduction zones, and the like. These detectors are never going to be as nuanced and "vibey" as taishers' Detect ability, but they're a good high-level, low-resolution way of detecting the power levels of History B influence in the world of History A:

Jeff

Right, right, I knew that, I should have known that, thanks

Yeah Mitch's next thing when he gets a chance is trying to Serendipity/Oracle up a date of death/murder/profound-negative-personal-significance for Pat Price, as discussed

Michael

All right, so on the evening of Tuesday October 16, Mitch settles in at our bivouac near Point 5, tearing up a piece of motel stationery, and scribbles the numbers 1-31 on the pieces to go into a cup, grabbing an appropriate handful to try and divine the death date of one Patrick H. Price. Let me roll the "Sense" roll for this secret, lay the chits out on the table for you, and you can then roll an IQ roll to interpret them.

Into the coffee cup they go, and Mitch pulls out the following four chits in a single handful: Breaking this down, Mitch figures the "19" here to be akin to the spot on your personal checks where you fill in the final two digits of your current 20th century year. So that means Pat is dying sometime in the next 25 and change years. Fair enough. The 14 can't be a month, so call that the number date of his demise. The 5 and 7 being the only leftovers present some issues obviously. It could be he dies in , but that would mean this reading has no month, and to Mitch right now that feels frustratingly, maddeningly, and non-narratively-satisfyingly incomplete. Mitch looks closer at the 5 and 7 chits he filled out, and there's a really tiny, minute coffee-drop stain from the dregs of the cup on the chit with the "7." And hell, on second glance the stain is even shaped like another 7, a crooked little angled blob. So maybe that means there's two sevens at play here. Which means Pat is dying sometime in the '70s: either on July 14, 1975 or May 14, 1977. Pretty soon, all things considered.

Jeff

Mitch wastes no time filling Jo in particular in on this divination. "Not immediately actionable, not likely the direct short-term result of anything we've done in the last few days, but not far off."

Rob

>> SUCCESS by 4

Michael

Cool, that puts Marshall's Influence roll using Fast-Talk at Fast-Talk-23, Brant.

Brant

>> SUCCESS by 9

Michael

(Brant, you gotta think up a good "Operation" name for slicing up the satellite dish and airlifting it to Livermore. )

(Yes, you all are now the people naming the operations around here)

(name level, baby)

Mitch wastes no time filling Jo in particular in on this divination. "Not immediately actionable, not likely the direct short-term result of anything we've done in the last few days, but not far off."

Leonard

"Hmmm," Jocasta considers. "Are you...I mean, I hope you don't mind my asking, but what's your game here? Is it just curiosity, or information, or do you think we could, or should, try to...I don't know. Stop it? Save him? Warn him? "I ask because, well, I've kinda softened on the guy, but I know what business we're in. It's just that...he's the only person where I've been able to reach out past time, to contact someone who's outside of the when we're in now. And...ugh, this is going to sound either vague or crazy or both — at least to me, maybe not to you — that seems important. It seems like it means something, that it's something that I, or we, need to be able to do. For, for us. For URIEL. To be able to move past time, for whatever reason. It...makes sense for the lives we're living. And that's not a way I usually, uh, feel, but you do. And when it comes to stuff like that, one thing I've learned beyond doubt is to trust your instincts."

Jeff

"Last time I was at Shasta I had a mystic visitation from Bigfoot Pete, he claimed to be from like twenty years in the future reaching back to me. And I feel like there's a strong vibe we, URIEL, are going to have to do something to make the Ontoclysm have-happened the way it did. I don't know that I'm answering your question saying that, though.

"I was worried about Price dying because when Marshall shot himself I had a vision of a timeline where Mary-Lynn, and by implication plenty of other people we know, were killed by OZYMANDIAS-loyal operators as a direct result of our actions that day. We avoided that possible future, though. Hearing that Price was gonna be murdered, or thought he was going to be murdered...thought he was going to have been murdered, I guess, grammar is weird... Anyway, I was concerned about how our actions over the weekend might have those unexpected negative effects after all. I wanted to be sure they weren't, that there's not some spook planting a firebomb in the SCANATE office right this second."

Brant

We'll call this one Operation CLEANUP

Leonard

"Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was getting at. I know we have a lot going on now, but I want to try...hell, I don't even know what it is I want to try. Just see if I can reach him at a, a meaningful moment, for him and for us. I might ask you for help when it happens, if you're okay with it. "And, Mitch...I really do want to thank you for what you did for me. I thought my number was up, and I was scrambling up that hill thinking 'What a crazy, stupid way to die'. But I didn't. So, thanks. I know I've been...reeling lately, and this is the first time I felt like something was pulling me back from the end."

Jeff

"Hey, no problem. It's funny: I figure out how to..." Mitch pantomimes laying on hands. "And suddenly Roger and Marshall and now you all get shot. Good timing, I guess."

Brant

“One could almost say serendipitous.”

Michael

So taking into consideration that any actionable intel from Point 1 is yet to come narratively and that there may be some interesting tidbits there for the larger Mission 8 metaplot, there are still four minor subduction zones to investigate and close up if possible. Plus I'm not sure if Archie wants to fill the gang in on what happened to him on Tuesday (i.e., his two encounters, on the UFO and once he'd landed). So I'm wondering... after the Point 5 mission is complete, do we want to put Marshall, Jocasta, Mitch, and Hilary on a plane back to Huntsville on Tuesday night and assess where we want to go next?

Brant

I think this makes the most sense. A check-in with the boss is warranted at this point and now that we sort of a technique that works we can figure out the best way to deploy it.

Oh, and to confirm: we did ship the satellite dish to Livermore, right?

Michael

Yes, all those rolls were successful and the strings successfully pulled, although figure that's going to be a big project... I'll get some estimates on how long the disassembly, packaging, and shipment might take.