Operation: Boom Town

The GM: Claus

The Characters:

Game System: GURPS: Dungeon Fantasy

Game Type: One-Shot

Related Games:

Follows

• Cyber Punk for the Holidays 2001
• Cyber Punk for the Holidays 2002
• Cyber Punk for the Holidays 2003
• Independence Day: ID4
• Epiphany
• Ouroboros
• Twenty Minutes in the Future
• The Church of the Machine 
• The Superior Job
• The Sapphire Interlude
• Echoes of the Future 
• Two Graves
• Operation: Lift Hill 
• R3N41554NZ FARE 

Alternate Site:

• Cyberpunk for the Holiday Wiki

Date to Play: December 15th, 2018

History: As best as can be figured, the world ended some 300 years ago.  Talk about people being at the wrong place at the wrong time... or more like starting a nuclear war at on exactly the wrong day. (See Here) Whatever it was, the world was fucked.  Not only did like 90% of the population die, but rumor is that some places completely just disappeared off the face of the earth.  Then the horrors came through the rifts; dragons and giants, demons and vampires.  A dark age of biblical proportions. 

In the more recent past, folks of Duluth have gotten a small foothold on things.  There are still horrors out there and they're surrounded by monoliths and artifacts of a different age.  But they're starting to actually make a good community there.  Rumor has it that some places further south have managed to rebuild entire cities; great for them!  They figure if they lift themselves too high, some catastrophe will come around and knock them down again... let it knock down those other guys.

The Story So Far... You joined Larson's Brigade for your own reason; adventure, fame, money... whatever.  End of the day, Larson pays you, and you do what he says.  Last night, the Brigade arrived in Duluth, the western anchor of his circuit and everyone found places to stay and settled in for some R & R.  Just as the local storyteller was about to tell the story about the Sapphire Dragon, said to dwell in the neighboring lake, Larson walked in and pointed at you, "You lot... Looks like I've got a job to you - get your gear and meet me outside!"

The story as told by Longshanks:

It is Duluth, mid fall. It is cold and raining.  We're members of Larson's Brigade.  Getting the call from Larson is usual, we meet with him and the King of Duluth named Shepherd. Shepherd says his son is missing, and he was last with a girl up at a cabin to the northwest of town. He was last seen 2 days ago, and it is a three hour walk to get to the cabin.

Along the way, we find an empty tent by a lake, and a little further beyond, we find the cabin.  It is still closed up for the season of coming winter.  We check the pond beyond the cabin, it is empty of corpses below the surface and we don't see anything in it.  Beyond the pond and the cabin is a cliff.  On the way to the cliff to get a good all around view we see 7 large humanoid flying mutant insects, armed with what looks like bang sticks and usual melee weapons like ours, they have 4 arms.  They hear us, or me, clanking in my armor and send one of their number to investigate.  It flies up. We all attack it.  Arrows, axes, swords, all bounce off of it.  It misses Sunbeam, and we all attack again. Nothing gets through the chinks in its armor.  Lance attacks finally getting through with just a tiny bit of damage.  Eventually too Sunbeam flurries again and hits with 2 out of 3 attacks and a few more get through.  Eventually the old man, Greybeard, crits it and it drops everything and does a little bit of damage too.  These things are all but immune to our attacks.  Luckily its been missing us too. Then Sunbeam and Lance hit it again and it dies.  It damaged Sunbeam a little.  We cut the bag off its waist, sort through it, and find some soldiers belongings.  The rest of the bugs fly off. Which at the time, confuses us.

Inside the bag, there is some old tech, what looks like a black mirror.  I think The George played with it, but am not sure. Someone rolled "Old Tech" and got a hit, and it turned on.  It displays a map and says there is a depot for the Canadian Army to the northwest and there is a hive to the northeast.  There is a trail of the kids going to the northeast, but its a strange trail. We discuss a little but decide to follow the trail if we can. It shortly dies after it looks like the kids were being dragged by something that doesn't leave foot prints.  We assume it was the flying bugs.  So we sleep a bit, and leave Hobo Cant on the door telling people of the danger of the bugs to the NE and which way we went.  We head NW. 

The next day, we get to the depot early in the day.  We settle in to watch it for an hour.  The George spots a camera on the outside of a burried Quonset hut, which must be the depot.  There is no other building for a mile or more in every direction. We'd in deep old growth woods, but there is a clear out field (of fire) around this hut. The camera pans back and forth, giving us about 30 seconds to cross the field, before it pans back and spots us.  There is a visible man door, and a horse cart size door.

MTC