Zombie Run Session 3

We pick up with our band of survivors immediately after the raider battle on the snow covered mountain roads through the Rocky Mountains.  They’ve captured two of the raiders and are questioning them with Sonny Payne leading the investigation.

[Sonny had an Action Card called Stool Pigeon that let him get all the information that an extra has.]

While this was going on the other leaders of the group were arranging for inventory of the gear and damage assessment to be performed.   The unknown help from higher on the mountain remains a mystery.  As Bubba is talking with two others of the group there’s a sudden susseration of snow falling and a loud meaty thud as 1000 pounds of undead brown bear lands on the road way next to him falling from above.  The bear stands leaving chunks of itself on the roadway and swipes at Bubba as Bubba turns and runs away screaming like a girl.   It rips three furrows through his ass cheeks as he flees but the damage is minimal.

Sonny, Roj and Melissa open up on the beast at close range, choosing to stand their ground even as the putrefied creature of darkness roars the sound broken by the holes in its throat and charges after Roj after he puts two loads of buckshot into it from his sawed off 12 gauge.

[My son Ryan was running the bear and chose to go after the players rather than the closer NPC's... ]

Roj narrowly avoids taking a huge smash from the bear’s foul claws and stumbles back reloading his shotgun.  Bubba after doing a baseball slide under the bus rolls around and opens fire with his hunting rifle nailing the beast in the skull the hard thick bone causing the bullet to ricochet.

Bubba continues to nail the beast again and again as it keeps it’s attention focused on Roj who jukes and jives narrowly avoiding damage again and again.

[Just some notes about this combat.  I had to burn no less than 4 Bennies, Zombear's 2 for being a wild card and 2 of my GP bennies just to keep the thing alive for the first two rounds alone.  The thing had a toughness of FOURTEEN and the player's kept acing their damage rolls forcing me to soak wounds like a mother.  This costs me later during another fight burning so many here.  I was a little concerned with the bear's high toughness value going into this fight but the opening shotgun blast, both barrels each doing 14 or more damage had me leaving it alone.   The bear did manage to hit a few times with his claws d12+4 damage but the players were able to soak out of them each time.  I was kind of hoping its infected ridden claws might nail someone for 2 wounds and kick off the paranoia as they wait to see if the damaged person turns but alas it wasn't to be.  But the session does end on a high note, see further down...]

Finally Bubba puts the a round through the beasts eye socket blowing the creatures brains to mush and it falls motionless.  Bubba and Roj compared the rents in their clothing, roj’s on the front from where he faced the beast, Bubba’s on his ass as he ran away.  The sikh is walking around a little puff chested now.

Continuing their talks with the prisoners they find out that two cities, Flagstaff and Phoenix have power supplied by a nuclear reactor.  From their talking with the guy who’s trying to save his life by supplying everything he knows, futilely as it turns out, they decide Phoenix is the place they want to go.   Flagstaff sounds a little lawless and the whole they confiscate your goods when you enter leaves a bad taste in their mouth.  Not to mention that’s where the raiders are from so showing up in their vehicles with their goods might not be the best impression to make.

They load up the working vehicles, one of the humvees and the bus are toast, no way to get them working again without a full garage and spare parts supply.  They decide to tow the busted hummer with the working one to keep everyone inside a vehicle as they descend the cold mountains.  With the truck breaking a path, loaded down with supplies they leave the site of the battle.  Though not before stripping both the captured raiders and then tossing them down the cliff side alive to fall flailing to their probably immediate deaths.

[When the thin veneer of civilization breaks revealing the ME ME ME beast we're born with underneath you can expect to see such scenes played out over and over.  Make sure you have friends near by when it happens.]

They make their way down out of the mountains without further issue and the warmth is welcome for awhile.  Spotting lights as they slowly maneuver the highways over the arid lands of Arizona they pull up and send Sonny ahead to scout.   Luckily for Sonny the people with the lights, coleman lanterns, are a little toasted from a cache of liquor they’d found.

They discover another set of Flagstaff raiders holed up in two of the motel rooms.  They maneuver into position and Bubba tosses in a flashbang that Melissa’s been carrying since New York into the room holding the bulk of the raiders and succeeds in shaking them all leaving them dizzy and disoriented.  Bubba and Sonny proceed to lay waste to these raiders as they stumble about.

The other pair, Melissa and Roj don’t have it as easy running into the raider’s leaders.  Both Roj and Melissa catch a lot of buckshot of their own as the raider leader blasts away at the pair.

As the two watchers on the roof wake up from the gunfire and rush over and drop down behind Sonny and Bubba they unload full auto on our two heroes and somehow manage to miss completely. Bubba and Sonny both look at each other and then they and the two gunmen share a glance of incredulous disbelief that they’re untouched.   Bubba swivels at the hip and sprays his autofire across both, killing one and rattling the other and Sonny rushes forward to help the other two heroes as the shot gun blasts are a bit worrying especially when Melissa staggers backwards through the door, blood streaming from pellet holes over her torso and Roj is in there screaming “Holy Cow this hurts!”.

He arrives in time to finish off the leader and Bubba takes out the last guy on the stairs.  Inside the rooms they find three more woman captured but unlike the earlier ones they managed to kill these raiders without collateral damage and they’re all still alive.

They recover quite a bit of gear, they’ve amassed quite a collection of weapons by now and continue on to Phoenix.

They go through the interrogation process and are then allowed to join the city and are allowed to keep all their gear, a bit surprising.  They integrate themselves into the city, electing to join the guards on the walls as their daily duties.

A few weeks later they’re brought to a meeting and are given a mission to escort an engineer from the Palo Verde power plant to the plant to shut it down.  Even though the plant is fully automated they really don’t want it going Chernobyl and have decided to shut it down gracefully.

The next morning they head out and are ambushed by two snipers on the road.  They kill one and drive off the other but not before Joesph is wounded.

They continue on to the power plant to find undead all over the compound.  They whip and attract the undead and then lead them off down the road for several minutes and then return.  As they’re leaving they spot several flagstaff vehicles parked next to the control room.

They roll out and Roj moves up to the building to disable their vehicles.  Someone meanders out of the control room, drops his doughnut as he sees the group and runs back in and slams the door.  The group has a few seconds to get into position when all three doors to the control room open up and raiders show up.  Two are immediately blasted back into the room and the third seeing the way the wind’s blowing ducks back inside and closes the door.

The group moves up to the two open doors and proceeds to destroy the raiders inside in spite of their cover and grenade throwing.  The raiders are slaughtered to a man and the group isn’t even scratched.

Joseph moves forward as the room is cleared and starts the shutdown procedures noting that one of the coolant towers is showing an alarm.  They’re going to have to open the coolant flow using bypass procedures.  Using the security cams they spot four undead technicians wandering in the cooling tower.  There are only four protective suits and Sonny is elected to stand guard outside as Melissa, Bubba, Roj escort Joseph inside to open the coolant.

They open the doors and move deeper inside and encounter the undead.  Three shots ring out and three undead go down but the last latches on to Bubba and rips through his suit and deep into his shoulder, its infection laden bite going deep into his flesh.

Outside the sniper that fled the ambush shows up and misses Sonny who turns and rips a three round burst through the snipers chest killing him instantly.

As they rush Bubba out of the coolant tower while Joseph starts the coolant procedures the blood running out of the deep bite marks is on everyone’s mind.

[Aftermath - You never saw such a bunch of acing, exploding dice rolling in your life on the part of the players.  My poor NPC's never stood a chance in any of it.  Even when I did manage to wound them they soaked the damage away or healed it all right up in the after battle procedures.  They've essentially at this point got an unlimited supply of guns and ammo with everything they've recovered from their attackers.  There's perhaps one more session's worth of adventures left in this module.  It might be eked out to two but I'm going to make it one.  I'm interested in starting the Roaring 20's Supernatural Detective Noir Black Comedy campaign and I think the players have a good enough grasp of the basics of Savage Worlds that they can now make a semi-informed decision as to their characters when they build them. ]