[HOE] Re: A posse wet behind the ears takes on the butcher of Baton Rouge

[Matt Crawford <matt@severian.chi.il.us>]

This is part 2 of 2 -- to fit in the list's 32kB limit.

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MARSHALS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT    --    THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD
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Believe me, your Marshal will KNOW if you have read forbidden texts
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I judged that Delacroix, after escaping narrowly from a second assault on
his former haunts, would not be found in a hospital again.  And he'd stay
away from town as long as he had the gators from the sunken Delta Queen
to work with.  If they could think of it, that would be their means of
finding the Docter again -- trace where the bodies were going.  I even
had the townies give a hint as to one way it could be done: to be warned
of undead swimming in, clever Mr. Tinsdale dangled fishing hooks on lines
across each gateway, with bobbers on the tops.

The posse didn't pick up on that right away, but did think of going
down to see Mama Tibutu again.  Fair enough.  On the way down, I
prompted them to complete that last delivery to one "Travis Austin",
crippled former Texas Ranger, now of the River watch.  When they
arrived on the scene -- a hillock/bluff by the side of the river-- a
small gang of bandits were holding a knife to Travis, demanding his
weapon & ammo cache (which he didn't really have).  But I kept the
identities confused, with the bandit leader pretending to be Travis,
and enjoyed the posse throwing away action card after action card
waiting for something to be resolved.

As an extra twist, Graveyard Greg's Destinee had recently attached
herself to this gang, not really knowing or caring about their
lawlessness, but to have someone around the next time her personal demon
manifested.  But Buffy, one of the twin sykers in the posse, had also
been with the Star Swans and Destinee defected on the spot.  She dived
for cover, threw up a "Predator" field, snuck over to her former comrade
and blew the bandits' cover with a whisper.  Buffy passed the word
telepathically to her twin, Muffy, driving the pickup.  The templar was
still in the back wth sword at the ready so she gunned it and charged the
truck into the baddies.  At the top of the hill, a bust driving roll
meant that Muffy (remember that death wish?) missed the brake -- she
managed to stop with 51% of the truck's weight over the sheer edge of the
bluff, tipping slowly into Ole Muddy ...

Well, they managed to save the situation, and the real Austin Travis
proved his identity by possession of a key to the lockbox they delivered
(but he didn't let them see inside), and paid them for their cumulative
labors with a 55-gallon drum of fuel-grade alcohol.  On they went to Mama
Tibutu, Destinee tagging along.

Three went through the ghost storm, and didn't fair badly.  Mama charged
quite a few shotgun shells for her advice, but gave them a little
clue-poem from the beyond about their fisherwoman having already sent the
bait down and their fish was snapping it up right now.  That really
didn't give them the idea I was thinking of, but they went diving with
one of the town's rigs to look at the Queen's wreck.

The martial artist went down alone and started hacking heads off the
corpses he found scattered around.  Where did they get this obsession
with hacking heads off?  And this player is the Deadlands Marshal?!  Memo
to self: make a lesson for them.  Whups, here comes half the lesson now!
He's been at this hacking most of an hour and along come a pair of
Shraks.  My damage dice are *hot* (I roll them in the open) and this
Shrak-bait is minus an arm.  Fiercer than I expected!  I let one of them
be occupied eating the arm, but the other makes a killing attack to the
guts.  The first PC death of the campaign -- unplanned, but certainly
earned by the player.

The rest of the posse pulls up what's left and goes back to town to
bury it.  Destinee's "visitor" comes calling.  She's wounded and
stunned and it vanishes.  The posse asks Tinsdale to whip up a diving
bell so they can inspect the wreck in safety.  This will take him
days, and I'm tallying up how long it takes the Doc to settle in to
new digs and how many autopsies can do in the interval.  Mroo hah hah.
Meanwhile I make the hints broader and broader.  Eventually I have the
kids in town make a game of following the bobbers around when a fish
strikes on one of the early-warning hooks at the town gates.  The
penny still doesn't drop.  (And this despite one of the players having
made a joke about tracking through water!)

They get their diving bell.  I take pity and give Tinsdale the wit to
include a viewport, which wasn't in their specs.  They get to see
bloats going into the wreck and coming out with corpses.  (These are
the galley slaves that they never found out about in the quick-strike
bombing mission.)  Eventually they get the gumption to dive in and
hook some bobbers to some of the bodies.  Finally they get a line (so
to speak) on Delacroix new haunts!

The Deadlands Marshal decides to play a Cyborg next, one who has been
impressed by Templars before and is in now the habit of traveling
incognito from town to town in a voluminous red robe.  He just happens
to be lurking in N.B.R. and gets wind of the brave attack being
planned.  The last installment is from his viewpoint.  Delacroix's
hidout is the top and only dry floor of an office building, filled
with cubicles, a few offices on one side, and a large conference room
which is his O/R.  He's had the sprinkler system put in working order
because of the Sykers' frequent use of Arson against him.  There are
plenty of windows for him to make another diving escape from, although
none are in the makeshift O/R.  19 undead gators and galley slaves are
hiding above the drop ceiling and a dozen more are in the O/R, along
with the two remaining original bloats and good ol' Henry Johnson.
(The posse did in Janice Rawls in their second assault.)  The cubicles
intrigue the posse -- several are heaped with whole corpses, headless
corpses, or just heads.  I make it clear that the loose heads are still
*looking at them*.

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|		   Game Notes from HOE on 01/28/01
|			  Doctor Delacroix
|			      Part III
|		   "We Really Mean It This Time!!"
|				  
|
|The dispirited River Watch began to prepare once more for an assault on the
|vile operating rooms of the dreaded Dr. Delacroix.  With hopes at an all time
|low after the death of their beloved friend Kaibosh "Gurdy" Lee at the mouths
|of the devil-spawned Shraks, they were only going through the motions.  They
|stocked up as best they could; isopropyl filled surgical gloves for use
|against the bloats, bang stick and shells for use against further possible
|Shrak attacks, and as much intestinal fortitude as they could muster.  Muffy's
|lack of sleep from her constant night terrors had her in a suicidal mood.
|This mood seemed to bleed into her companions as they prepared once again for
|a hopeless mission against their dreaded nemesis.
|
|Luckily for the depressed heroes, a new light was about to find them.  A ray
|of hope in their desperate, gloomy lives.  On the eve of their fated mission,
|a new member joined their party.  A person with consummate military training,
|rugged good looks and a desire to succeed when all other hope was lost!  Since
|the River Watch was desperately in need of cannon fodder against the foul
|surgeon and his minions, they were all to happy to allow this new shining
|light of freedom to join their party.  Max Power had arrived!
|
|On a gloomy morning, the party set out.  Three Doomsayers (for that is what
|Max was disguised as), twin sykers and a Templar.  Grim determination was
|written in their features.  The vile doctor had escaped justice twice already.
|Would this mission succeed, or was the group to make it their life-long
|career.  There was no coming back empty handed this time.  They would win, or
|they would die trying!
|
|Dr. Delacroix had spent the last week and a half preparing for the attack he
|knew was coming.  His army of animated dead grew with each passing day.  He
|put some of them to work restoring his new lair to combat readiness.  Workers
|from Zombie Local 134 worked for less than union scale to repair the plumbing
|and electrical infrastructure of the building.  The effectiveness of the
|psyker arson ability would be greatly limited in any subsequent attacks.
|
|The target building was approached stealthily.  Sterling and Max were put on
|point and entered the dilapidated building in full combat mode.  Saubin, his
|trusty sidekick Archie, Muffy and Buffy waited on the fire escape while Dwain
|took one of the boats to another location in case a quick getaway was once
|again needed.  Okay, so maybe they would return empty handed if they had to.
|They are heroes, not necessarily stupid.
|
|Max quickly initiated a two by two clean and sweep advancement maneuver (delta
|pattern).  Two move forward, covered by two others while the two more watch
|for ambush from the rear.  This should have worked perfectly in the tight
|cubicle farm that the heroes found themselves in.  However, this rapidly fell
|apart as the squad broke ranks to look in several different cubicles at once.
|It did not take long for Delacroix's zombies to outwit the heroes (zombies,
|mind you) and drop upon them from the suspended ceiling when they were the
|most separated.  A disorganized melee ensued.  This "every man/woman for
|him/herself" kind of combat left the group scattered throughout the floor.  To
|everyone's great relief, they were victorious.
|
|Their confidence up from the brief battle (in which it was discovered that the
|sprinkler system had been restored) the party again failed to regroup.  While
|poking around here and there, Sterling decided to look above the suspended
|ceiling for more enemies.  He found them in spades!  Zombies dropped from the
|ceiling in the two large corridors and once again the group was hard pressed
|to hold them off.  Saubin's sidekick fled the battle so that he could take the
|5 minutes or so it seems to take this poor one-armed man to reload a gun.  An
|indignant Saubin was able to defeat his closest opponents and proceeded to
|dispatch the wounded enemies who dared to attack his beloved buddy.
|
|The zombies kept coming, cut one down and two more would take its place.  It
|was clear that the answer to the problem was to cut off the zombie head.  Dr
|Delacroix had to be found and had to be found fast!  Throwing caution to the
|winds, Max blasted a path through the zombies in the hall to the only door
|that had not been opened.  If the doctor were in that room, there was a chance
|to end this once and for all, if it was just full of more zombies, any hope of
|nabbing Delacroix would vanish.
|
|Max slammed his 400+ pound bulk into the door.  It gave way under this
|punishment and his gamble paid off.  There was Delacroix in all of his
|repulsiveness surrounded by yet another horde of zombies and bloats.  A quick
|guts check allowed Max to squeeze off a dead-on shot to Delacroix's head.
|But, what's this!? Max's Lee-Enfield Sunburst Laser shot bounced harmlessly
|off of the physician's mirror!?  Damn the luck!  As the zombies charged Max,
|he was able to squeeze of another superb shot.  This time, there was no fluke
|mirror reflection.  The laser burst took off a large chunk of Delacroix's
|head. But did not seem to slow him down much.  It was at this point that the
|zombies reached him and he was once again fighting for his life.
|
|Max held the door as best he could.  If the zombies could get past him, he
|would be surrounded and his new friends in the hall would be in danger.  He
|knew though, that it would only be a matter of time before he fell to the
|overwhelming numbers.
|
|"Need some help?" Sterling asked as he moved into the door shoulder to
|shoulder with Max.  His sword was a death-dealing blur as he began to cut the
|enemy down like wheat.  Now there was a chance.  The two of them could hold
|this door for quite a while.  Possibly indefinitely if Max could drop his gun
|and pop his spurs.  Max could not do this however as he needed to keep his
|Lee-Enfield Starburst close at hand in case another chance to shoot Delacroix
|presented itself.  "We got him cornered!  Hold the far door!"  he bellowed as
|he and Sterling continued cutting down the wave after wave of undead as they
|through themselves against them.  While all of this was going on, Dwain, Muffy
|and Buffy had their hands full.  Saubin continue picking of the wounded, but
|the bulk of the battle fell to the other three.  Dwain spent several precious
|seconds trying to take down one opponent.  He seemed to revel in the death by
|slow torture of his zombie foe.  A leg wound, an arm wound, another leg wound,
|a groin shot.  Come on already Dwain! Finish him!
|
|While Dwain played with his enemy, Buffy finished securing Max and Sterling's
|back by taking out the last few zombies in that hallway.  She rushed to relay
|the message to hold the other door and support her sister.  Nobody wanted
|Delacroix to escape again!
|
|Muffy also had her hands full.  With Saubin and his side-kick killing wounded
|and reloading, Dwain gleefully picking apart one zombie, Sterling and Max
|holding the south door and Buffy batting clean-up, she was engaged with
|several zombies who had her surrounded.  Whack, whack, and whack!  Muffy's
|fate was sealed.  Her luck was gone.  She could not even contact her sister
|telepathically for help.  She had one hope and she took it.  A quick mental
|ability later, and she WAS Dr. Delacroix.  Now, if only her trigger-happy
|friends did not cut her down on first sight, she might stand a chance.  Yeah,
|right!  The zombies that were attacking her backed off in confusion.  "Hold
|this door!"  she commanded.  They shuffled to obey.
|
|[Actually, they peeked in the O/R door first, but, but couldn't see
|the real Delacroix inside because he was hiding under the tables from
|the Cyborg's plasma gun.  So they commenced to holding the door.  And
|because they made luckier strength rolls the the ones on the inside
|trying to let the Doc out, the continued to hold it. -- Marshal]
|
|Luckily for Muffy, Buffy was the first one on the scene.  Even in her
|Dr. Delacroix disguise, Buffy knew her own sister.  A series of complicated
|and indecipherable signals passed between the two of them.  Signals only a
|twin would understand.  Buffy was able to keep Dwain from slaying the
|disguised Muffy on the spot.  Thank goodness!
|
|Dwain watched the zombies holding the door.  He did not want to get close
|enough to help them for fear that they may attack him, yet he was also
|afraid that they would not be able to hold the door against Delacroix
|indefinitely.  If the doctor poured out of that door with a bodyguard of
|zombies and bloats, it was very unlikely he could be stopped before he
|reached a window and freedom.  What could Dwain do to make sure he did not
|escape again?  In a flash, he decided.  He would plant his doomstone by
|the door.  If that door opened, he would detonate the bomb and blow
|whatever came through it to smithereens!  It would be a shame if it was
|his own teammates, but it was a risk he was willing to take.  He placed
|the bomb as close to the zombies as he dared.  "Run" he screamed as he
|hightailed it for the fire escape.  Muffy and Buffy joined in.  Saubin and
|his buddy were just coming back to the main group when the three of them
|went running past.  Not being stupid in their own right, they turned and
|fled with them.
|
|Max and Sterling continued to hold the south door.  It was clear that
|Delacroix was once more trying to escape and had ordered his minions to
|get the north door open.  Max was gratified to see that his new teammates
|were doing their job.  The door did not budge.  Both Max and Sterling were
|sucking up damage, but the zombies were thinning out.  Time was running
|short.  If the north door opened, and eventually it would have to,
|Delacroix would slip free again.  This could not be!
|
|[The 'borg's AV4 was not complete immunity from hand-to-hand weapons.
|Almost, but they did get a wound through now and then.  -- M.]
|
|At last the zombies had been thinned out enough for Max to make a desperate
|attempt to break through them.  With Sterling blocking, max tried for a run
|up the middle.  This was stymied by a tenacious zombie who quickly died for
|his master.  A push was made again.  Success!  Max was through and he sped
|down the length of the room towards his primary foe.  Another quick shot on
|which Max pinned all of his lucks and hopes.  Ping!  Once more of the
|doctor's damn mirror!  Another shot!  Petwing!  Off the mirror again!
|
|By this time, the doctor had diverted some of his minions from trying to get
|the door open to take Max out.  Frustrated, Max holstered his rifle and popped
|his spurs.  He would take this guy anyway he could.  If he could just get past
|the zombies and get close enough to Delacroix to get his hands on him.  Once
|more Sterling appeared at his side.  "I got these little guys", he said, "You
|go mess up the big guy".
|
|With Sterling and his huge sword blocking for him again, Max was able to
|grapple with the Doctor.  Again and again his spurs pierced the doctor spongy
|head.  The zombie attacks halted, but they did not drop.  What would it take
|to put this guy down for good?  "The toe tag!" shouted Sterling.  "Remove the
|toe tag!"
|
|In a flash, Max's spurs flashed across the tag and cut it from the doctor's
|body.  That did the trick!  The doctor crumbled to dust and the zombies
|collapsed.  At last, the River watch was victorious!  Max picked up the
|scorched doctor's mirror and examined it.  He could not figure out how this
|thing had blocked so many shots from his rifle. It almost seemed to move with
|a mind of its own, yet it appears to be nothing more than a scorched relic
|from another time.  Max took it anyway.  Perhaps it would come in useful some
|day.
|
|Bloody but elated, the party returned to Nouveau Baton Rouge to share their
|good news with the good people of the town.  A little rest, a couple stitches
|or two, some nice steak dinners and the group could continue down the river,
|once more looking to right the wrongs and protect the innocent.
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