MAY EVENT LOG

[monstertruckers]

code

Out of the thorn brush, the land still looks twisted and broken. And it turns a lot more jagged as rocks burst up and out of the ground like teeth… And keep reaching upwards, in defiance of all the gravity that should be pulling them down. The further up the rock spires reach, the more they splinter until the stones are free floating. The same happens to the threadbare trees, their branches and leaves breaking off and hovering in empty air. The nature of this place becomes clear: reach too high, and eventually gravity gives up.

01: BATTLE GROUND

The ground grows rougher, pockmarked with craters and rents, like the landscape is scarred. A little further up the road is the source of those wounds. Curious Drifters will find a tangle of rock and metal reaching high up to the sky. It’s a snarl of wrecked vehicles, rock spires… And bodies.

Robotic hunters are half melted into the bones of a giant monster, and the lights have long since gone out of their lens eyes. Many of them still clutch weapons; swords, guns, and bullets by the bag-full. The hunters and weapons remain locked with the corpse of a horn crowned monster with arm length teeth, and it’s clear this tangle is the only thing that keeps the hunters or their weapons from floating off. Drifters can potentially loot the weapons… They just have to be careful about not floating off while they salvage equipment. The footing here is uneven, and the ground looks ready to break with a wrong step.

These hunters also carry prayer screen beads, but the data on them is horribly scrambled. Any attempts to tamper with them cause them to repeat a single message: “I STILL LIVE” before shorting out and shutting down.

02: HEALTH INVERSION

A building grows out of the valley; a hospital that has been turned upside down, and its foundations reach for the sky like weird tree branches. The hallways inside are all sorts of twisted up, and the building can’t seem to decide if Drifters should walk on the ceiling or the floors.

Twisted as the building is, ruins gutted by time and overgrown with vegetation… There is salvage available. Medical supplies, healing potions, healing herbs, all of it is bountiful in the hospital. The hospital is also rife with Husks, but all of them are inert… Or have already been broken apart long ago.

Then there’s the matter of the hospital screens flickering on in the wake of the Drifters. Warning lights try to flicker on, as old electronics try to scan the Drifters. The machines give up flickers of data, declaring Drifters to be “infected.” The old restraining systems of the hospital are still active, as manacles and straps alike shoot out, trying to restrain Drifters. The bonds keep them inert until they can be sedated and enclosed in what look like holding pens for violent patients. Best hope there’s someone around to help break a Drifter out.

03: SHARED THOUGHTS

The valley is overgrown with strange plants that glow with eerie light. Sometimes in camp stray glowing tumbleweeds roll through… And any contact has interesting side effects. Drifters will find they’re more aware and capable of picking up on unsaid things. These powers can the month. Each glow confers different abilities:

Blue Glow: Makes Drifters more empathetic in a psychic sense. They can register the emotions of those nearby, and may start to feel those same emotions.
Green Glow: Makes Drifters capable of projecting their emotions to other people.
Purple Glow: Gives Drifters telepathy, to hear and send thoughts to others.
Orange Glow: Grants Drifters limited psychometry. (Object reading.) Using it in the hospital or the battleground will yield unique visions and messages. Please comment to the mod/NPC thread below if your character wishes to do so!

Drifters can stack these effects, but this can overload their minds and force transformations. Those with Swarm traits will find it easier to handle psionic abilities. Additionally, ALL DRIFTERS who experience psionics will find themselves susceptible to Events 4 and 5.

04: MONSTER SHIFT, HIVE-MIND

Worryingly, extra contact with the glowing plants can not only stack mind abilities, but also force Swarm traits. The more a Drifter is overwhelmed by psionics, the more likely this is. Drifters will have access to all Swarm traits for this event, and the following:
+Psi Hunger. A need to eat psychic energy in the form of dreams, psi-infused objects (like sage brush) or even psychic minds.
+Psi Senses: luckily, Drifters can glimpse heavy psychic energy in the brush through enhanced senses, and pick out strange brain monsters. These are good eating for Swarm monsters… And there’s an unnervingly high number of them.
+Group Mind: compelled to link thoughts with other Drifters, to share emotions, memories, and achieve cohesion.
+An increasing reliance on telepathy/empathy/etc in place of speech.
+Increasing collectivist mindset. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; this becomes more evident during high stress situations.
+Compelled to spend more time in the wilds, absorbing power from plants and hunting prey in wilderness. May also be compelled to share this prey with others.
+Gravity Affinity: If possessing wings or the ability to wall climb, may freely hunt/traverse corrupted gravity areas.

05: WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

On several nights the wind picks up, and sage brush is uprooted and sent tumbling into camp. The plants trade their prior glow to something more baleful and crimson. With the wind whipping through the camp, it’s almost impossible to avoid unless a Drifter is already secure in the Convoy.

The effects aren’t immediately obvious, until the Convoy sleeps for the night… And that sleep is different. Namely the sleep is connected, showing both memories and dreams from other Drifters.

Memories from their pasts can blend together to form a strange dreamscape, that connected Drifters can travel through. But those dreams can easily turn into nightmares. Those who were exposed to the fear toxin in February will trend towards nightmares and may have their old fears make a reappearance.
If those nightmares are vivid and unsettling enough, they can force a transformation. (This may be either current monster traits, or a Swarm monster!) And then…

06: BRAIN ATTACK

It happens just before dawn, during the blue hour… Or perhaps it might be more apt to call it the red hour, with how the sky is stained crimson. It’s just bright enough to distinguish something moving in the hills. Drifters can pick out a rustling in the brush; something that isn’t wind. There’s something moving, crawling on claw tipped legs… And looking less like sage brush and more like a brain.

The Intellect Devourers numbers in the hundreds. Their claws scour the ground as they race towards the Convoy and smash into the shield. Numbers start to overwhelm the generator, along with the chaos the brain brush has sown with their psychic echoes.

The psychic echoes increase as they swarm the campsite, trying to drive Drifters into a frenzy with nightmares, fears, and strange visions. The brains are also ready to use those long sharp claws to tear anyone disoriented enough into ribbons, and start feasting on them.

06-A: BRAIN BRAWL

Hallucinations: The Intellect Devourers try to whip up more terrifying visions. Anything to disorient the entire Convoy, or drive the Drifters into a madness that leaves them transformed and too wild to easily counterattack. These hallucinations may be past trauma, or something a Drifter fears happening; the ultimate goal is to leave Drifters panicking, changed, and vulnerable.

Rally: Still, there’s one thing the Devourers didn’t anticipate: and that is how sharing a mental link has given the Drifters an anchor with each other. With all the psychic echoes spreading through the camp, any and all mental links from before can easily flare back up. Drifters who have shared dreams or some form of mental connection may still transform, but their mental link can keep their minds stable and coherent instead of growing feral.

Scars: Whether through brute force battles or mental link resistance, eventually the Convoy is able to shrug off the attack… But there is still some damage done. The shield generator has shorted out, and the Convoy itself has taken a few gashes and gouges. Not to mention any transformed Drifters will still need to be talked down. Luckily the mental links are still in place to help with that, and there’s a truck full of medical supplies to help with patching up any hurts.

MICRO ENCOUNTERS:

PLEASE NOTE! These are small bits of set dressing for players to include in threads if they wish, rather than full fledged prompts or events. You may handwave your exploration of these areas, or thread them out.

Disorientation: When wandering through the brush, Drifters may experience a swarm of disorientation: their thoughts suddenly scramble, they forget where they were going or what they were doing. They may also come to with a set of gashes along their legs, and a sense that they may have seen something in the sage brush move… Or maybe it was just the wind.

Float: Occasionally, parts of the road just give up their hold on the ground and go drifting skywards. Hopefully those chunks of road don’t take Drifters and their vehicles with them. Tough vehicles can likely survive the drop, while Fast vehicles can speed away before they float too far upwards. Drifters caught outside their vehicles will have to hope they have fast reflexes… Or are either good fliers or good jumpers for the leap back down.

Raining Down: On occasion, gravity will flicker and warp oddly… And that means that other odd things can fall where they used to float; rocks, plants, not to mention the odd bit of hardware and buildings. Watch for falling objects of various shapes and sizes!


NAVIGATION

Comments

[soldiernoclass]

[ He doesn't expect Danse to advocate for himself, not now. Because he's seen it before on someone else, that sinking, all-encompassing despair. He's seen where it ends, no matter how hard he tried, himself, to reach out and drag that someone back from the precipice. 

But when he does, it isn't an unwelcome surprise. Zack shoots him a look, again, first surprised, and then smiling. Earnest, certain. It feels like relief, like redemption for so many failures. He nods, a quick, decisive, approving gesture, and turns back to Maxson, expression hardening again but still void of the hateful cruelty in its would-be counterpart. ]

If turning the rest of the world into our enemy is how we survive, then maybe we don't deserve to. 

[ He doesn't waver, still calmly unafraid, and the voice he uses to command Maxson, now, is the same one he's used to lead countless troops into battle. Clear and firm but still painfully so that of an optimist. ]

Move aside and let us go. 

[ ...Seems like it's the wrong tone to use with this guy, though. That vein in his forehead looks like it's really going to burst, now, and Zack would almost find that funny, if he were the only source of the boiling-over outrage behind it. He reaches for that knife, and Zack reacts lightning-quick, catching his wrist in a stony grip before Maxson can so much as slice at him. He leans into the motion at the same time, darting forward and headbutting Maxson square in the center of his face. It's a staggering blow, but one Zack reels back from seemingly unaffected, before he shoves the other man with enough force to send him sprawling. 

It's only a fraction of what he could do - but he meant what he said. Nobody else is dying. ]

Come on. We're getting out of here. 

[androidvictoriam]

[ Danse doesn't recall, in this dreamworld, how his life really came to be spared. He doesn't remember Nora talking Maxson down, ever the lawyer, or the logic she'd used--doesn't remember her talking him down, either, but she'd been more measured about it than any of this. She'd meant every word she said, to be sure, but not with the same blood-stirring investment he can almost feel rather than merely hear in this stranger's voice.

When awake, conscious of how this had all really happened, he does remember being astonished that Nora would dare to stand up to the Elder for him at all, knowing in the abstract that he could kill her for it--but knowing too that the Brotherhood has channels for that sort of thing, that the risk of execution for her would still come with at least some pomp and circumstance and paperwork first. Nothing like this visceral hand-to-hand combat, the sort of thing the Brotherhood has spilled a great deal of metaphorical ink on associating with Maxson in near-mythical terms, stories that Danse has repeated to new recruits while telling himself that as long as there's truth in it somewhere, it doesn't make him a liar.

But he knows better. He's served the Brotherhood too long not to know better--how could he not, when he remembers all of it firsthand? Arthur was never so self-made a man as the troops needed him to be. He's still barely a man at all yet, even if he looks older than the one thrashing him with the kind of superhuman strength and reflex that everyone from the squires to the proctors wants to pretend Arthur was born with. Danse stares with shock and some still-loyal horror at Arthur's sprawled form on the ground, but there's a deep, guilty twist of satisfaction underneath it all as well. Vindication, in a way he can unpack later on.

He turns to Zack, aghast, but when he looks back to Arthur, the man picking himself up off the ground is a red-faced ten-year-old again, his voice a tremulous whine. ]

It's not fair! I only shot Sarah a little bit, it was an accident--

[ It's an odd and barely-precedented way for Danse's dreams to shift things around, but no less real a memory for it. He gazes a moment longer as the boy sniffles, and turns away. ]

Yeah. I think you've made your point.

[ He won't cower passively in the bunker this time while the Elder returns to the Prydwen in triumph. He pushes past and beckons Zack on into the scorched and bone-littered wasteland, intent on finding somewhere to be that isn't the listening post. Anywhere. ]

[soldiernoclass]

[ It's Zack's turn to look taken aback, when the guy on the ground gets up as a kid, as a fragment of some other past event he has no context for, no knowing of. His recoil is no less visceral for it, though, and not just because of the stark, sudden shift. Those words might not mean much to him, but they mean enough.

(There's no shooting someone a little bit, and even if he hadn't so recently been through the ringer of getting shot a whole lot, he'd probably still be appropriately horrified.)

When Danse takes the initiative again, he's quick to follow, skirting past what remains of Elder Maxson with a quiet See you later, kid. It's just a dream, though. He doesn't have to worry about that guy picking himself back up and finding someone else to take his anger out on, because guys like that always manage to, somehow.

The only person he's worried about, here, is the big guy leading them out into the freaky dream-desert. ]

Hey, [ Jogging a little to catch up, Zack reaches for his shoulder. ] are you gonna be all right?

[androidvictoriam]

[ If Danse keeps moving, his dreaming mind generating what he remembers of the Commonwealth landscape and filling in the rest with gray Capital rubble and Maxson's fire-and-brimstone imagery, maybe he doesn't have to process this. Maybe his hands will stop shaking, as the rest of the numbness begins to wear off and pins and needles rush in to take its place. This is where the hard part begins, because dying, at least, would have been easy. He wouldn't have had to do anything but kneel and wait for the end.

He doesn't know the stranger who's saved him--doesn't even recognize him as Brotherhood now that he really has time to look, when he's until now assumed Zack to be a knight. It's a good thing, because there's nothing left for him among those ranks, but it leaves him at even more of a loss and with even less of a frame of reference. What he understands least of all is why this man so badly wants him to live, but there's no question that Zack very much does.

The touch to his shoulder wears quickly away at the stoicism he's trying so hard to maintain, cuts off the I'm fine that any actual subordinate would have gotten, and makes his breath hitch in his throat as he inhales. He might have been able to hold it together without that, but as it is-- ]

I don't know.

[ It's a start. He takes in Zack's uniform, still recognizing absolutely nothing about it now that he can see it isn't a Brotherhood flightsuit, and finally looks up to meet those uncannily blue eyes. ]

Why did you do that for me?

[soldiernoclass]

[ Why is not something Zack has considered, as natural as standing up for him in the moment had seemed. And it only barely gives him pause, now, as his mind supplies the most likely answer, with just the slightest hesitation. ]

Because we're friends. Right?

[ It's what he'd do for a friend, anyway. So that must be right, even though Zack couldn't tell him his name, if asked to supply it. Let alone anything else about him. Not that any of that crosses his mind. What does, instead, is more easy justification.

Dropping his arm, Zack shakes his head. ]

Besides, the kind of stuff he was saying? Nobody deserves that.

[androidvictoriam]

I...suppose so.

[ The confidence with which Zack answers him does make it sound like a more sensible answer than it otherwise might. Danse has always been a rather impressionable man, when he's vulnerable. And some element of the waking world might be filtering back in, too, because the motive behind the real defense hadn't been so different. He'd called Nora a friend too, even if some of that had been based on misconceptions about her actual level of devotion to Brotherhood ideals.

This has worked out for the best for him, whether dreaming or awake, but it makes him tense up now as if being jerked by an invisible leash, a that's not right, an it can't be that simple. It's too broad and permissive, too sweeping a condemnation of what he still can't help but halfway believe. ]

What about the synths who willingly impersonate kidnap victims, to foment chaos? What about the ones who decimate villages on Institute orders? They don't deserve that kind of censure?

[soldiernoclass]

[ Maybe if he'd stopped at willingly impersonate kidnap victims, Zack could've been persuaded to at least partially agree. But decimating villages on orders is something he's done, himself. Something he's watched happen, without making a move to stop it (without being able to).

And there's a lot to be said for who's giving the orders and how much in the dark they've kept the ones taking them, isn't there? Zack thinks so, at least. Which is why he shakes his head, taking a half-step back as his shoulders sag. ]

No. Not even them.

[ Despite his outward reluctance, his voice doesn't waver. He doesn't doubt what he's saying, even if he doesn't particularly relish saying it. ]

If blindly following orders is what turns them into monsters, then aren't we the same, if we do it, too? Of all the things I wish I'd known sooner... Maybe things could've been different.

[androidvictoriam]

[ It isn't right, that his answer--visceral and internal, or aloud to be defended--should change based on where the orders come from. Danse knows this. Something in him has always known it, and it's a rawer surface wound than usual right now, when he can still almost taste the smoke of that burning Enclave base from only a couple nights past. He's justified so much for the Brotherhood, and only for the Brotherhood, and then turned around to full-throatedly condemn the same damn things under any other banner. 

Small wonder he'd once overheard someone at the Castle snickering over the name he'd given his rifle. They've taken to calling him "Self-Righteous Authority" behind his back even when he knows they know he can hear them. He's brushed them off before in a lion-with-the-opinions-of-the-sheep sort of way, but even in his dreams, now, it comes back to haunt him. 

Maybe they are the same. ]

And what the hell do we do if we are?

[ He doesn't give Zack the chance to respond, not yet. Not for lack of meaning to, or wanting to--he's just a light sleeper at the best of times, and a noise outside the truck snaps the binding thread of the dream as it wakes him with a start.

He doesn't sleep for the rest of that night, either. It doesn't have anything to do with the bristly and uncomfortable new tail now crammed into the back of his coveralls. That's just insult on top of injury. He deals with it in something of a haze, snipping a hole into the back of his clothes and carrying distractedly on with his life and trying with limited success to shore up the wall of his moral philosophy with the bricks that keep falling out of it, until breakfast a few mornings later, when he suddenly finds himself looking up across the buffet line at a pair of alarmingly familiar blue eyes. ]

--I know you. I didn't realize you were--

[ Actually here, maybe, or actually real, though he doesn't know why he wouldn't have. ]

[soldiernoclass]

Real? Yeah, I get that a lot.

[ Zack recovers from his own shock pretty quick (though he still wishes his hands were free so he could pinch himself just to be on the safe side), with an easy laugh. ]

...Well, not really. But I don't usually have crazy dreams about total strangers, either.