Dystopic: Learning About Each Other

A nice place to build character and have some idle conversation.
(Courtesy of Ben Husmanm)

Following a phone call from a mysterious stranger to the book shop, Miami started planning a visit back to the family home that he hasn't seen since he returned.  Well, since his host is actually dead and he is merely a Fallen Angel inhabiting his host's body, he technically has never seen this place which holds so many memories.  If they were going to go through that place in search of some entity, they would need a way to get rid of the current occupants.

He came up with the idea of posing as workers hired by the local government as part of a company that deals with pest control and containment.  They would state that small highly poisonous mutant spiders from beyond the wall have escaped a nearby research facility and that one of the neighbors said they saw one crawl onto the property.  The family needs to leave the house for a couple hours while they search for the spiders and neutralize them.

Miami planned to rent a van (though they ended up buying a cheap one) and then buying Hazmat and business decals to place along it to make it look legitimate.  Tokyo made up some forms (though Tokyo's player wasn't there) and Nomad 6 created a neat steel container holding dry ice that was meant to be a fake containment unit. 

They did a little research into the current occupants and found that they were a nuclear family (husband, wife, two kids) who won the Ultimate Lottery and were allowed to move east over the wall and into relative safety from zombies, mutants, and radiation.  Their particular lottery winning was sponsored by the same bank who foreclosed on the property after Miami's death despite the fact that Miami's host had made his final payment years ago.  The fact that one of the board members of that bank is the father of one of his wife's rapist / killers isn't lost on him.

The lottery winners involved a 35-year-old miner, his thirteen-year-old wife, four-year-old child, and one-year-old baby.  Don't worry.  Once they arrived at the property and looked around they found evidence that the miner was receiving love letters from his wife enquiring after his family.  It turns out that the lottery specifies only a husband / wife + 2 children combination (looks better of the news) so naturally one of the parents often stays behind if they have multiple children.  The winner (in this case, the husband) therefore brought over three of his children under false pretenses by pretending the eldest child was his second wife.

Anywho, the group went off to a Walmart in one of the posher suburbs to pick up some biohazard suits (the joys of future America) and noted a few things that were different to the players' experience.  All of the Walmart employees have subsidised plastic surgery and certain augmentations.  Some of the servers in the food court had augmented feet which are like perfect feet that also have extendable roller blades so they can roll about.  They are also perfectly symmetrical and attractive.  To make matters worse, some of the check out girls actually have augmented breasts - think Jiggle Physics from that notorious videogame.  All the staff also seem insincerely happy to see everyone with a tone that doesn't adjust from chirpy.

Once they had everything, they went to the poor man's home and outed him and his family to look for the spiders.  Being from west of the wall, the family were quite understanding of the need to evacuate and weren't cynical at all.  An official looking truck arriving to deal with such matters?  Why, surely no one would think to pretend to be official ... it might reduce those organisations' chances of success in future.

The group searched through the location once the family had gone and did note a disturbance in the attic.  Using Patterns, Miami discerned that the gateway had opened two days ago and was due to open again at approximately 4AM.  They called the family and told them to stay out all night.  They even wired them some cash to stay at a hotel and grab a meal.  Nice chaps, those low Torment Fallen.

They then settled down for the night.

Dallas stayed in the car, mostly, as a look out, though occasionally Miami, London and Nomad 6 would include him in conversations.  It was assumed that Leningrad, Tokyo and Oxford were all busy fixing up the home security in preparation of any reprisals as their players weren't here.

Mostly it was Miami who spoke after becoming nostalgic and quite a bit sad from being in his home.  He spoke of his vampiric connections and of how he met them.  He spoke of Lucrecia's over-sized and likely unnatural alligator (Nomad 6 dismissed it as a mutant) and how his own natural parents had been eaten by alligators when he was a small boy.  He spoke of being adopted by his wife's family and raised with her before falling for his wife and marrying her.  He spoke of how tough the woman he now calls 'mother' actually is and how Lucrecia, a vampire no less, knows better than to mess with her.  He spoke of his life as a cat burglar and Nomad 6 was impressed, not having realised that he was *that* kind of a bookhound.

Nomad 6 added little, though he told a story of how someone he knew had been hired to catch an alligator.  It was huge!  (Though the measurements Nomad 6 gave were of a reasonably small alligator)  Since the catcher couldn't be bothered taking it out of the area that night, he ushered it into his own cabin and slept on the top bunk before moving it out during the day.  That was the kind of place Nomad 6 grew up.

London added even less.  He was a cop whose father and grandfather were both cops.  His mother wasn't pleased when he became a cop.

Dallas, when he was included, asked questions about life, strange customs, and bizarre assumptions people had about money, necessity, and spending.  He simply couldn't comprehend how some of the First World Problems in Miami could be considered an issue.  Who cared about fashion when you had food in your belly?  Nomad 6 explained it a bit as status symbols proving your own importance but Dallas was still left feeling confused.  Miami also tried explaining a bit about what women are like but defaulted to the average Miami woman who, in this age and made up world, was generally more than a bit harebrained and superficial.

And there we left it.

We may get a bit more character building and chit-chat next session toward the start as a bit of a brake pad before we leap into the portal into another world ... quite probably the Hisil.