The Descent

The explorers have dealt with the whipstars. While Mal props up Ben against a wall and José and Dan take a look at the foundation of the control tower, Carlos sprints up to the command center of the tower. At 20 meters he finds an ancient graffiti:

Polka you Pussy!
Come and get me!

As he is unable to read, he passes the inscription with a shrug and enters the top of the tower, a large circular room, with rows upon rows of rotting computer consoles and cracked screens. Fine dust is everywhere. While the rest of the group finishes off the remaining whipstars in the courtyard, Carlos searches the control tower. Most of the relics crumble to dust when touched, but some valuable HiTek might remain inside the dusty consoles. Close to the northern windows, which have long turned opaque, a mummified corpse sits wrapped in a blackened uniform, cradling a scoped rifle, now rusted. His nametag reads "Cpt. Pepper". Carlos also turns up a few booklets filled with handwritten notes which do not crumble at first touch. Bored, he prepares a surprise for his friends.
Finally, the others move up the staircase. As they walk up the last steps, the desiccated corpse of Captain Pepper flies at them - a practical joke by Carlos, with some added spice, as the stairs have no railing. No one is truly shocked, and no one is really amused. Mal even pulls a gun on Carlos, but the others just shrug. Carlos is such a cad!

The command tower yields no spectacular loot, although Ben - having recovered the use of his leg - thoughtfully pages through the old notebooks. Mal climbs through a hole in the ceiling and takes a good look at the desolate airfield lying under the cold stars of the western desert. The Pla'Thun must have heard the gunfire, but Mal does not see a single person approaching the tower. Maybe Dan is right, and this place is taboo for the ferales.

Leaving the top of the tower, the group decides to take a look at the large trapdoor in the ground floor. The wings of the door are rusty and big enough to allow a small car into the the entrance. Broad concrete stairs lead into the murky depths. The chemsniffer shows some toxins, but nothing too poisonous. The adventurers ready their flashlights, check their weapons and gasmasks and descend into the underground of Wellspring Airfield.

The ramp leads them into a corridor broad enough for a large car and three meters high. The ceiling is covered with cables, wires, pipes and conduits. Puddles of oily water stain the concrete floor, and everywhere, molds und funghi are growing. The air smells musty and dank. Detritus covers parts of the floor: rotten barrels, lumps of concrete fallen from walls and ceiling, an old forklift. Colourful stripes cover the wall in front of the travellers, showing the way to the different parts of this large underground facility: "Command 1", "Defense Grid", "Living Quarters", "Testing Range", "Fuel Depot 1" and many others. Ben's eyes light up, and the others also quietly shelve their plan to return to their camp after "one quick peek". This thing must be full of priceless artifacts and the wonderful devices of the Long Ago.

As one, the group decides to have a look at the part called "Command 1" and follows the colored band. It is quite along walk. The ceiling is sagging in places, moldy water drops from the pipes, and the flashlights are the only illumination in the inky darkness. The explores stumble across small electrical cars, and even bicycles, which the old inhabitants used to get around the huge place. After some time they reach "Command 1".

This is a large room, 50 by 50 meters, with two extra entrances on the western and eastern walls and a high ceiling. It is built like an amphitheatre, with two large steps and a groundfloor facing the northern wall. This wall is covered with large screens, the centre one being as big as a tennis court. "A screen big enough to watch the whole world," Ben thinks as he and the other enter this cavernous hall. The steps are covered with working stations, office tables and computer screens. At some places, coffee cups, note pads and clipboards remain. In the Long Ago, more than a hundred people would have been able to work here.

The members of the group mill around, looking into drawers, poking the ancient juice brains, looking for some scavv to pick up. The equipment seems to be in better shape than the stations in the control tower, apart from the equipment on the lowest floor, which is covered with brownish water. Strange, ovoid shapes float there, as large as fists.
Then, suddenly, something heavy and squirming falls on Carlos' shoulder. It is a centipede, black as night and a bit longer than his arm. Dozens of sharp little legs try to dig into his body, and sharp mandibles start to cut into his armor. All over the hall, centipedes start to drop from the ceiling, from their hiding places among the wires, tubes and valves, a black, lethal rain of chitin and clicking pincers. Some of the travelers get away, but some are hit by the attack. Ben and especially Carlos are covered by the centipedes. For a few seconds, confusion reigns, as the men try to rip and shoot the creatures off their backs. Long bursts of automatic gunfire fill the hall. Dan and José, who wandered away from the others, frantically try to regroup at the entrance of Command 1, with a host of the creatures scuttling after them. Ben and Carlos try to get rid of the insects crawling on their arms and legs, but the creatures are wriggly and strong. They burrow through leather and kevlar, the mandibles sinking deep into the flesh, grieveously injuring both men. For a moment, Carlos, weakened by his many injuries, seems to topple.
Only after Dan and José return to the others from the northern end of the large hall, the group regains control of the combat. Now single shots ring out, as Mal and the others pick off the centipedes, sometimes even shooting the critters right off Carlos' back. Even through the haze of pain and blood loss, Carlos is quite sure that these shots are somehow a comeback for his little harmless prank earlier in the day, and he thanks the gods that he wears kevlar.
Just as the group finishes the last creatures, another swarm seems to head into the hall from the corridor, their chittering filling the air. Dan curses and throws a frag grenade into the entrance. A second later, the first of the new arrivals appear in the beams of the group's flashlights, only to be cut down by accurate single shots. Then a powerful explosion fills the corridor, shrapnel whines past the heroes, then, an ominous creaking, a loud rumbling - and the entryway, weakened by decades of rot, collapses. A dust cloud billows into Command 1, the rubble rolls to a standstill and, finally, the hall goes silent. The group is cut off from the original entry to Wellspring's underground, in the growing dark, hounded by thousand-legged creeps.

people met
- none

people met their demise
- lots and lots of black, chittering critters
- Ben and Carlos are covered with deep bites and cuts. While Carlos is still able to move and fight, Ben reels from his wound and staggers along - even after being patched up.

Going West

Having spent two weeks in Mercy, our heroes began their venture to the West. After a short stop at the caves were the Pla'Thun raiders met their fate they set out under Ben's directions. But it seems that endless dunes and the closeness of the Great White affects the group - Ben and Mal lose their way, and they waste two days finding a route to their destination. Progress is slow, and there are many interruptions when the travelers anxiously check their geiger counters. But four days after they started their engines in Mercy, the adventurers gaze upon the shallow depression and within it, Wellspring Airfield.



Before them lies a vast graveyard of mothballed airplanes, some of them in orderly rows, most of them in messy jumbles of glass and metal. Huge bombers sit there, scores of ancient fighter craft, helicopters and even stranger engines of war. Four broad runways cut through the silent chaos, short rows of squat concrete hangars limit the large field which would be big enough to house a small city. In the failing light, the group makes out three buildings that stand out .

At the southern border of the gaveyard is a large control tower, rising 60 meters into the evening sky, its windows blinded by the abrading dust of the Great White.

About two clicks to the North of it a large pylon looms. It is a colossal construction, at least 80 meters high, and festooned with antennas, satellite dishes and other strange gadgets.

But in the north-eastern part of the graveyard the travelers see something that makes some of the curse: Someone tooks parts of the ancient warplanes to create an enclosure, a fortress 100 meters across. The wings of USAF bombers are used to create high walls, and within this settlement, scores of fires are burning. Our heroes are not alone.




The group makes camp away from the depression and, hidden under camouflage nets and gripping their binoculars, they spend the next morning observing the inhabitants of the fortress from the eastern lip of the depression. The people living there seem to be ferales, carrying spears and crossbows. They send out hunting parties and tend meagre fields close to the walls of the settlement. Two things stand out: Most of the inhabitants seem to be female, and once their hunting parties enter the thick of the graveyard, they are instantly lost from view - even Dan is not able to track them. They are very probably the surviving Pla'Thun.

Everybody agrees that a meeting with these people should be avoided. Taking their cars on a wide detour and settling in a new campsite, the explorers enter the site from the South. They are kitted up for a long and dangerous visit: Everyone is carrying weapons, gasmasks, flashlights, but also some food and water. Every few steps, Mal and Ben check their geiger counters. It is evening when they finally reach the border of the airfield.

First, they come upon a row of concrete hangars, monstrous things 50 meter long and 10 meters high, built to withstand the terrible weapons of the Long Ago. The hangars are empty, anything of use has been removed. Close to the hangars, at an old refueling point, the chemsniffer beeps a warning: High concentrations of poisonous gases are present. The group hurries on, towards the control tower.

The inhabitant of Wellspring have erected long metal poles in a rough circle around the tower and festooned them with skulls of humans and other animals, rusty warning signs and broken electronics. As the wind moves through the poles, strange boxes begin to chatter and rattle, mimicking the sound of a geiger counter. As the group crosses the circle, Carlos, bored and irritated from a whole day of waiting and skulking around, fingers a red cardboard tube hanging from one of the poles. Suddenly, the top of the tube pops off, and a bright red flame appears. Shocked, Carlos throws the old emergency flare on the ground, just before a red starshell can rise into the night sky. The shell races across the ground for a few seconds before it goes out, throwing its ghastly red light over the area. Did the Pla'Thun notice?

It's no use taking chances. The explorers move into the building encircling the stem of the control tower to get into a defensible position. Their original target, the tower itself, stands in the middle of a courtyard covered with fine, white sand. As Carlos steps into this courtyard, shapes explode from the sandy floor. With blinding speed, pale tentacles shoot from the sand and wrap themselves around arms and legs, and where they touch skin, the body goes numb. The group has stumbled across a nest of whipstars, bloated monstrosities of the western wastes.
The group answers the attack with a hail of gunfire and destroys the creatures, but not before one of the whipstars stings Ben in his left leg. Panicked, the traders jabs a syringe of aesculapin into his thigh. And the fine dust of the western desert seems to play havoc with the group's equipment: Two automatic weapons jam.

As the combat ends and the gunshots echo away, everyone knows that now the Pla'Thun must be aware of their visitors.

People met:
-none

People/ creatures met their demise:
- Five whipstars, shot to pieces

Jeff Huber: Bathtub Admirals

The military is a deserving topic for satire. Dumb commanders working within a dumb system telling dumb people to go off and die in frequently hilarious ways - what's not to like? Joseph Heller's Catch 22 and Kubrick's Doctor Strangelove are among my personal favorites, and when I stumbled across Jeff Huber's Bathtub Admirals, a novelized recollection of great political and military Navy fuck ups, I did not hesitate.

This is the story of one Jack Hogan, a career Navy type. It chronicles his rise and fall in an environment full of backstabbers, brown-nosers and out-and-out crazy types. ´Huber depicts the Navy circa 1990 to 2001. He takes on feminism in the armed forces as well as the "don't ask - don't tell" policy concerning gay soldiers, but the main topic of this tale is the paradoxical world of soldiers in a great army at peace, "sandbox generals and bathtub admirals" playing war. This is interlaced with Hogan's personal tragedies, making Huber's novel at times a quite depressing read.The Navy comes across as a great make-work project of the Cold War: Anything the aircraft carrier groups can do, a dude in missile command can do more thoroughly by turning a few keys. And yet the Navy steams on, doing basically useless exercises, while its admirals and captains scheme for promotion and political clout.

The politics inside the Navy are depicted as vicious. Admirals rise by backstabbing and bald-faced lying, grudges fester for decades, most members of the armed forces are depicted as harboring deep, incandescent hates for each other. The small mindedness and stupidity depicted is breath-taking: Reading this book reminded me why I did mandatory civil service instead of doing an army stint.

At times, Huber introduces terms like "Catch 69" (for the paradoxes of "don't ask - don't tell") or "fix felony" (for a illegal method to clear up some fuck up). Maybe these terms are common currency in the Navy (Google didn't find them), maybe Huber wanted to pull a Heller. I don't see these terms gaining traction any time soon, but they do a good job at encapsulating the behavior as well as the mental contortions necessary to get along in the military. The novel is populated with figures that, I suspect, are easily recognizable by readers that work in the Navy, while laymen like me just recognize them as the usual busybodies, career monsters and broken men existent in any large bureaucracy. The higher up such a figure is in the hierarchy, the more likely it is to be depicted as a caricature of a human being.

As for the situational comedy: Military fuck ups involve the easily wounded pride of old men, callow douchebags you would not trust with a McDonald's checkout counter and huge, expensive and incredibly dangerous hardware. Usually, the results are massive explosions in all the wrong places, warplanes being piloted by monkeys, ships being capsized by men without trousers etc. This, of course, is a recipe for comedy gold. Bathtub Admirals delivers on this count, but this is not its strongest point. It is much better in describing the politicking behind the screens, the narrow-minded commanders and their futile exchanges, intrigues and attempts at one-upmanship, sometimes peppered with surreal elements, like the moment where an officer pulls a readiness report literally out of his ass, not without putting on rubber gloves beforehand.

This is a good read. It paints an interesting and disturbing picture of the US Navy. It quite is amusing, and unexpectedly dark in some places. At times, I got the feeling that Huber tried very hard to create a Yossarian for the 21st century and that he fell short, but overall, Bathtub Admirals can be recommended for its surreal humor and its topic.

A Stay in Mercy

I shall not retell this chronicle from the beginning. But be assured that it was written in blood and spent shells and told to the noise of screams and gunfire. It is a tale of treason, vengeance and sudden reversals. It is a tale about the search for riches, glory and the promise of redemption. It is a tale about five very different men making their way in a desolate world.

The last session offered some respite after lots and lots of bloodshed, with the group resting in the trading community called Mercy, a small island of civilization which provides shelter to about a 1000 souls. When we left our intrepid adventurers last time, they were ready to start their expedition to the very fringes of the Great White - the deadly white zone to the west of Mercy. Ben Spencer seems to know what he is doing, and up to now, the loot has been good - so no challenges to his authority up to now. The group greedily stocked up on survival gear (gas masks, flashlights, foodstuffs and the like) and dust-proofed their vehicles. They also repaired an old Geiger counter to the marvel and astonishment of Mercy's resident juice technician. Finally, the travelers beefed up Mercy's defenses with a fake mortar and received a chemsniffer for their work.

They paid for services and goods with lots of old and damaged guns and busted armor. When shopping for ammunition, they soon found out that Mercy has quite limited resources in this regard and that they are scraping the bottom of the barrel - no one will sell them any ammo now.

When talking to Ericson one got the impression that he has been out in the wastes for far too long and that his sanity suffered for it. But he knows lots about the surrounding area and its dangers, and the travelers got a few pointers from him.

Generally everyone seems to think their voyage to the West is madness, but it is a free country, and you are allowed to cut your own throat any way you like...although it seems that earlier travelers brought trouble with them when they returned from the western desert.

While their stay was mostly peaceable, Carlos el Loco, always the impeccable gentleman, got into trouble (again) - in a brothel and, a few days later, in front of a gunshop. Hilarity ensued, but there were no fatalities. Also, someone tried to sell off damaged gas filters as "brand new" and "originally sealed" to a fellow trader - despicable behavior! When found out, this individual fingered poor Ericson, who then was visited by an enraged trader and his retinue.

After a forthnight of rest, the group is healed, geared up and ready to go!

People met:
- Father Ataxerxes, leader of Mercy. A kindly catholic priest. Would like to get his chemsniffer back.
- Ke Mai, owner of an electronics shop. Fascinated by Ben's and Mal's skill with the old soldering iron.
- Red, merchant of death. The owner of "Red's Gunshop" might be bandy-legged, skinny and balding, but mano-a-mano there is no better in all of Mercy, as Carlos found out.
- Ericson, scavvy. The only inhabitant in Mercy with some knowledge about the Great White. Borderline-crazy, but not crazy enough to guide the group into a white zone.
- Bosworth Ting. Ho'teller of the "Four Curves and a Bang". A very accommodating and understanding individual.
- Morgan Morgan. A trader who now thinks that Ben Spencer may either be a mediocre fraud but an accomplished liar or else a dupe dumb enough to buy damaged goods. He travels the Corridor between Pike City and Point Transit.

People met their demise:
- none, but some scrapes, bruises and indignities suffered

A German description of this charming little settlement is available at rapidshare in pdf. format: get Mercy.pdf

Chuck Palahniuk: Pygmy

So, how about Pygmy? I was delighted when I found Chuck Palahniuk's new novel on the stands, and the backcover read something like "the most daring, best, most inventive since he wrote Fight Club". I would have been sold if the blurb had promised "the best book since his last book".

So, this is the part where I talk about the book, huh? Well then: It was amusing enough, not quite easy to read as Pygmy, the protagonist and narrator, uses a very special kind of English throughout the book. You see, Pygmy is an infiltrator from a communist dictatorship, inserted into a typical Midwestern American family, and while he is able to punch through walls and build a bomb from a toaster and orange peels, his language is a mixture of totalitarian propaganda slogans and automated translations from Chinese to English. Strangely, while I normally have no problems to follow other works with "inventive" language (Like Clockwork Orange and Trainspotting), I was not able to get into Pygmy's strange propaganda speak. Decadent reader understanding for glorious literary device of kind novelist and immortal artist Chuck Palahniuk lacks!

Pygmy and his fellow sleepers are in America to pull off something big and terrible, but until then, Pygmy has to deal with American consumerism, evangelical religion, oversexed teenagers and other outgrowths of Western decadence.

The book is very funny and features most of Palahniuk's trademark devices: elements of everyday life reduced to their original (and often disgusting) meaning, frank and burlesque sexuality, shameless hyperbole, the "I am Jack's diseased liver" coping mechanisms of the protagonist. In the details, Palahniuk is as inventive as ever, but apart from that, he moves on paths well-trodden in his earlier novels - a male protagonist bewildered by the decadent society surrounding him, lusting for an enigmatic female figure, the destruction of said decadent society and all the other good Jack-and-Tyler-Durden stuff. The plot seems to be full of holes, but I didn't mind too much - one of strengths of the book lies in its episodic structure, helped along by Pygmy's flashbacks to his education as a top spy.

It is not his strongest book since Fight Club, but it is a typical Palahniuk, which was good enough for me. I only worry that novels like Pygmy will become his staple, and I like works like Rant or Haunted better. If you dig Palahniuk, you will like this book, but it is not his best since Fight Club.

This is Point Transit

In this blog, I shall post about books, games, movies and other fripperies. I shall use it as a vehicle to keep my gaming group up to date and thus as a means to create a binding reality for their characters. The poor kittens.



I hope you enjoy.