This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance.
Emmett, Joshua are now cattle ranchers, seeking a quiet change in career for various reasons. They’re driving buggalo from Emerald City to the Porcelain Citadel. Specifically between Potsherd Crater to the Last Serai, a wretched hive of scum and villany.
They probably won’t be cautious.
Story
The crew leave Potsherd Crater on the promise that the autogolem will be waiting for them in the Last Serai. Sure enough, a few days out they see the pink bus drive past them, with the only acknowledgement a cheery wink from a rear window.
The weather starts off cold, and then gets drier and drier. This doesn’t seem so bad, but driving the buggalo ahead of the wagon raises clouds of dust higher and higher as the moisture stops. This starts to choke Emmett, giving him a raspy cough1
Finally the weather breaks, and it starts to rain. How refreshing!
Oh, now it’s raining harder.
Much harder.
The rain cancels the heat here and makes life unpleasant although not dangerously so. On the bright side, in the evening they approach a campsite. It’s not much of one but the awnings keep the rain off and the fire is already started. The traders are friendly, and drunk.
Mila Yaga is their boss from the Orangelands. He’s very interested in the party (isn’t everyone?) is celebrating a great profit they made at the Serai. Horrible place, though. They all caution the party to watch their step there.
The next day, the rain finally stops. Ahead, a vomish-human stumbles East along the road. It slurs that it is looking for Mila, to kill him. When obstructed by a buggalo, it violently pushes it away, but seeks no aggression beyond this. Joshua tries to use Hold Person, but the vome still moves! Slowly and with a lot of screaming, but the Hold is weak. Maybe this isn’t a Person?
Joshua and Emmett leave the scene before becoming a target of the vome. Hopefully they’ve also slowed it from Mila for a bit.
Finally they arrive at the Last Serai. It is a-hustle and a-bustle. After Emmett has a bit of a skulk about, he finds some people talking about an abandoned building that has a relatively safe place to camp in, and the two bed down.
Tools
To add more science to my otherwise fantasy-leaning backgrounds, I broke out Augmented Reality for adding some cyberpunk sci-fi.
Then I discoved Questing Beast recommended it as part of his CY_BORG review, so now I don’t look clever!
Anyway it’s roll tables for a grimy future dystopian city. I’ve been mixing up rolling and picking my favourites, so it doesn’t matter it doesn’t match the theme exactly.
And 3 HP loss, misfortune roll ↩︎