The Glitterbois Play Rifts #003: Welcome to New Lazlo

Breakfast puppies.

This podcast contains adult language and content and is meant for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

Oh, it's me, your friend Bronson. If I can see you, I would lick your face. You listen to the Glitter Boys. I love you.

I don't really have a clever lead in. We're playing RIFTS again today, folks.

Yeah. Well, everyone, welcome to the third session of our RIFTS campaign. I am Game Bastard Kyle. I mostly run games on the Bastard Quest podcast, but I've been so graciously invited over here to the Glitter Boys podcast. Run this game and hope you enjoy this session. We've had some great feedback for the first two.

Now we've had some amazing feedback. Thanks everybody. It's. It's fantastic. We love that you were enjoying this because we're having a lot of fun playing. Anyway, I'll go ahead and kick it off since I'm talking. I'm NPC, regular host of the Glitter Boys. I am playing Mr. Cat, who is an eight foot tall anthropomorphic battle cat who used to be a house cat.

And I'm just Jacob playing Riley o', Shea, your friendly neighborhood techno wizard who is already missing indoor plumbing.

I'm still Alex. And I am playing Henry the combat cyborg who's not fully figured out how this all works.

And I'm Sean playing Troy the tank, who has recently decided Two Legs was too many downgraded that having a lot of fun.

All right then, without further ado this episode, we open with this panoramic shot of a wilderness thick with pine rolling hills. And we see this huge all terrain vehicle come screaming over a hill. Engine roaring, it slams onto the ground on the other side, bouncing and jostling suspension, bracing for everything you can. And inside, everything is rattling around the in the pilot compartment as Riley drives like a madman to to supposedly the location of a doctor's house. There's one of the farmers from boxing in there giving directions. Now, just over this hill, you're gonna turn left in the back. Troy is being held down by Henry. Blood is mostly stopped spewing out of Troy's severed left leg since he provided first aid to himself.

Hey, those townspeople helped me too. I'm sure one of them was a doctor in training.

I'm pretty sure you shoved your finger up the.

Yep. Yeah. The NPC is Mr. Cat in the driver's compartment or in the rear cargo compartment with the combat boys or on top.

It all depends upon how well Riley is driving.

Riley has driven vehicles this large before, but never that could go this fast.

Okay.

The closest thing he's ever driven to this was an M1 Abrams. And those just don't go anywhere near as fast as a mountaineer can.

Well, depending upon if it's a smooth ride, he might be up in the front, but if it's a very rough and annoying and tumbling and chaotic ride, he's doing what every cat that you try to take cross country on a road trip does. And it's going, but it's more like, hey, hey, hey.

I will say that Riley is approaching his driving with an attitude of, let's see if it can take this hill.

I am holding one for dear life.

Jacob, do you. Do you. Does Riley have any driving skills? Yes. Oh, oh, oh. What do you. What do you have?

Pilot automobile. Pilot motorcycle and SnowMobile. Pilot tanks, APCs, tracked and construction.

Oh, okay. So of those, I think a mountaineer is really actually most close to an automobile. I mean, obviously it is much larger than a conventional car, but it is, you know, it is definitely not an APC or a tank and it's really just, you know, a big truck. Yeah.

Yep. A three wheeler, but, yeah.

Well, I didn't know it was a three wheeler.

Yep.

That's terrifying.

Indeed. Indeed it is. I would say give us a pilot automobile roll.

Oh, thank God. I rolled a 31 out of 39. The three came up and I went.

Ooh, this could be very bad. So Riley is driving fast, but he is following directions given to him. He doesn't slam into the rocks or trees. No damage is done to the. To the vehicle or people inside. Though, to NPC's point, it is not the most comfortable ride for, say, a battle cat, especially since the entire time there's just loud sobbing because Bronson is back. Oh, my gosh. I'm so sorry, Troy. It was my fault. I should have burned that vehicle the moment it came into town. I have read about Molotov cocktails, except I cannot read.

Okay, then I have found like a box or a cave or a corner, something that a cat would like to hide inside. And I have like sealed myself in there and I'm like, we have to.

Get him a crate that opens from the inside.

Of course. Ye. So after not too many minutes, you roll down a hill into what's clearly a small farmstead. There's a log cabin nestled a bit, some trees and a couple of goats grazing around. You roll to a stop, you see an old man coming out of the cabin. Because obviously your approach was, shall we say, discreet. Subtle. Not discreet in Any way. And this is the man you see. And you guys can see the picture in the discord chat.

Gotcha, Gotcha.

And provided this NPC gets a name and has more than 10 minutes on screen, he will also appear in the Goblins notebook site if anybody has followed that. So you'll get to see the picture. Listeners at home.

I didn't know that Rifts had old prospectors.

Oh, God, no, Kyle, please.

Yes, yes, I know it's coming. Well, come on down here, fellas.

Troy will open up the back of the vehicle and chuck the stump, the remainder of his leg out the back.

Oh, God.

So there's this shot of like the back of the mountaineer. And we see the old doctor walking around. This leg just falls out and falls on the ground right in front of the camera. This man shaking his head. Oh, I should have known. Bunch of adventures rolling around. Come on out here, fellas. Let's see what Doc Bly's got to fix up today.

I feel like an easy approach to that would be Henry carrying Troy out.

Appreciate that. Yeah, yeah.

So soon as the ramp is available, descend, carrying Troy in my arms gently.

It's the only part of this trip that has been gentle. Clearly he was not a medic driver.

So inside the pilot compartment, the farmer that guided you here says to Jacob, oh, don't worry. Old doc blah is the best veterinarian in voxin that tracks.

Riley proceeds to light up one of the Spanish cigarettes he found inside the way about near.

I had just kind of pictured one was already hanging there.

No, no. Driving like this, he can't have it. Ash and ash and spark.

It could just be unlit and waiting.

Until I hook up with other techno wizards and they force me to start wearing goggles. You know I won't be doing that.

Dogblood leads you guys around the back of his cabin. The first thing you see is there's a large fire pit with this metal framework built around it. And there's pots and kettles all bubbling away. There's also a finely polished copper steel nearby under a smaller, very purposefully built fire. And he directs Mr. Cat and Riley to bring some saw horses over in an old door. And you guys get Troy laid out on that. He goes and gets his tools, which mostly look like carpentry tools, though there are a few pieces of technology in there that are clearly from some sort of advanced medical facility. And he's gonna roll. Oh, my dice. I need dice.

So what's the rule? Plus 100 XP bonus when the GM forgets to bring his dice.

All right, so he's going to make his field surgery roll here. Oh, so, right. So he has a 70. Field surgery and he rolled a 70.

Oh, he was trying very hard to fail that.

Like, I mean, if this is the Price is Right, that's.

Yeah, we must have caught him before he started drinking for the day.

He was debating sticking a finger in an artery, too.

Got to be submitted.

That artery is so screwed.

He's cutting away bits of flesh and. And stitching things and clamping it is very definitely not a comfortable process. And after a while, he comes up to where Troy can save, says, well, son, and I've got some good news and some bad news and some options for you.

Yeah, give me the bad news first. Don't. Don't bother with the good news.

I could try to reattach the leg.

What's your other option? I mean.

Well, I could seal it up. That's the safest bet. And I got a peg leg I've been working on.

You know, I don't know how many resources we've got going here, so maybe let's just. Just do the peg thing. You seal it up.

Well, my services are very reasonable, but it don't matter none if I do the peg.

I don't have to, like, get a peg leg for the other side, too, or anything, Right?

No, I could do that. I don't recommend it. That other leg seems fine.

What's the drawback of trying the damage to put the. The stumpy back on?

Well, if everything doesn't go right, it could necrotize and get gangrene in there and rot off, and then you'd have to get it chopped off later.

I'd rather not go through that again. So let's just, you know, let's just. Maybe I'll.

I don't trust just Troy. Somebody could chop off your peg leg, too.

Just.

Then I'm not gonna feel it.

I have been needing a scratching post.

You know, whatever's easiest for you, man. Whatever's easiest for you.

Query.

Yes. Yes.

John Cat, Are you equipped to make his leg? And I point to Troy like his. And I point to Henry.

I wiggle my foot.

Well, not out here, fellas. If I had my old job, maybe, but not these days. Now, maybe you could find somebody up at New Quebec or in China that could. Or maybe even a new Laszlo. There's lots of technical folk moving to those parts these days, but no old dark Bly. That's past my prime.

I think that's a no.

I Seen somebody who took a pretty nasty stab to the leg and the infection was rough. Let's just do the peg, and maybe later I could get a. If you decide you don't need one of your legs, we'll do a swap.

You get weekdays, I get weekends.

All right, well, all right. Let's not take any chances.

So this next part's gonna hurt. Let's prop him up and get some medicine in him.

Question before we do this. Did that skeleton thing's leg survive the creature?

Are you talking about the creature that took Troy's leg?

Yeah.

Yes, its leg is there.

I mean.

Wasn'T that creature rotting, though? Unlike tarmac, it was.

No, no, peg's fine.

What's cooler, a peg leg or a necroleg?

Strictly out of character. The peg leg is incredible. And then I can swap it out later. I can get cyber legs. I can just slide onto the peg. It'll be great in character.

I mean, the main question I have is, does his peg leg include a incorporated assault rifle a la grindhouse?

No, he said he's been working on a peg, so it's got to be more than just a slab of wood. Or he's a doctor. That's.

I mean, given the type of gentleman he is, that could just mean in the evenings while he's free.

He's been whittling. That is exactly what it means. Yes, precisely. He has been whittling a pseudo anatomically correct wooden leg.

Gentlemen, this is hand carved mahogany. That's gotta be mdc. I walked. Peg leg.

All right, let's get some whiskey in him. So you guys prop Troy up and feed him alcohol mixed with painkillers for real safety.

I find a loose piece of leather or someplace and wrap it around a stick and hand it to him.

Okay, just.

Just bite down. Trust me.

All right. Yeah, yeah.

I've seen this before.

Would you like for me to curl up in your lap? It always helped Mike when he was feeling down.

You know, that's a great idea, Mr.

Cat on it, literally.

Meanwhile, in the background, Bronson's like, aww.

Mike was just about to ask.

Yeah, Bronson has been weeping the entire time. But the final surgery does not take very long. It's more a matter of stretching skin and stitching than anything really invasive. He does give Troy something to knock him unconscious so that he can rest.

Troy will, of course, take whatever he's given. It's just that did not go the way he had.

It was so.

Had so many cool ideas, and it's just so. Yeah, he'll drink the alcohol and the drugs readily in the hopes of passing out, which given his pe, probably takes a ton.

Yeah, he does have. So apparently he is something of a brewer and he has a number of homemade pharmaceuticals with frightening high toxicity levels.

Okay.

I love this man more and more. He's like one of my relatives. Jesus.

So while Troy is resting, he walks up to Riley, who's. You're not sure if he picked the most human one of you.

Well, he certainly didn't take the one that seemed to be the most outgoing, I'll tell you that much.

Well, yeah, your friend's gonna be fine. He's gonna need some rest, but I think he'll make it. Now, I would say this is gonna put you out to round. Well, I'll cut you deal on account of you guys are giant scary. Let's say 400 credits if you have money. If not. Well, we'll work something out.

Do we get credit for the rest of my leg that we turned in? Kind of a trade in kind of deal?

We have the money.

Little flesh for cash situation.

That was a good calf. All right.

Riley climbs back up in the Mountaineer and rummages through the safe and comes out with 500 and hands it to the guy.

Oh, wow. Thank you very much. Shit. I just afraid you guys are going to run off and leave old dog blah, blah, high and dry.

I knew that was coming.

Well, there's a. That extra hundred is one for your kindness. And I see that still over there.

I see.

How much for like a pint of your best moonshine?

Well, I can let one go for about 10 credits. I got a jug.

How much for the jug?

Ten credits.

Oh, excellent.

There's only one size?

I don't know. I'm fairly new to this end of the town.

Ah, well, you tell him you got some old Doc Blaze wake up juice. I'm kidding. People call it moonshine.

Does the jug have X X X on the side?

If it doesn't, it will after Riley gets his hands on it, yeah.

He sells you a ceramic jug of moonshine.

That's all our driver needs to improve his driving skills.

The moonshine a little less eyesight? Yeah.

You think it's for me? You know, I'm not the one who just got the leg amputated. And I hate listening to people whine.

That would hurt my feelings if I was conscious.

Where on the Mountaineer are we storing this? And how much does it weigh?

Well, that depends on the size of the jug, you know. Is it a gallon jug?

I Was envisioning a gallon jug, but I think that's just too many cartoons.

Yeah, it's a gallon jug for sure.

Yeah, it's a gallon jug. And it'll be back there in the area where there's, like, places to store things.

Cargo.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is the first time since the violence began that you guys have a moment to take a breath and take stock of what has happened and go through the Mountaineer, which, of course, I did provide you with a full list of all the crap that's in there in between sessions. Hopefully you guys have had some time.

To peruse a veritable cornucopia of crap and weapons.

Yes. Things I never thought you were going to get your hands on for at least a session.

The only thing that was in the loop list that Mr. Cat is interested in would be the dagger.

Yes.

Yeah. Everything else, fascinating. Whatever. Dagger.

You and I, sir, have to work out the ownership of the Wilkes 320 laser pistol.

That's yours. You can have that.

Thank you.

Does anybody care if I take the dagger? Got it. Okay.

I believe it's an MDC weapon. It would be nice for old scrappy Cat to have something that does mdc.

So I missed the loadout of the truck. I'm assuming there's nothing in regards to that truck that would be helpful for healing a shredded leg, right? Not shredded nearly as bad as some of us, but, you know, repairing a little MDC damage.

Yeah, you did take some damage to you.

I ain't limping, but it ain't pretty.

Do they have. Do those ones have like workshops in them or anything like that? I can't remember how. Mostly checked out that rig is mostly checking.

Before I ask Doc Bly the same question.

No, I don't believe there's anything that you guys would be. There's obviously not like a medical kit or anything of that nature that is clearly displayed or.

Well, and you don't have flesh legs.

That's looking for specialized equipment, so I figured it's a long shot, but, you.

Know, doesn't hurt to ask.

Hey, doc, I don't suppose you could do anything about my leg?

Well, what's wrong with your leg?

Oh, you know, just got scratched up by some dude named Tarmac. Got a couple of, you know, look. Seem like little exposed wires.

Oh, well, no, I'm a doctor, not a mechanic.

Oh, we could be peg leg buddies.

I got 42 damage to go on that one, buddy.

Might as well cut it off now while you're.

Doc, would you happen to have any tools?

Well, sure.

Would you mind if I borrowed them and took a look at my friend's leg?

Make yourself at ease.

All right. Henry sits down and, you know, kicks up a leg.

So someone who is totally unfamiliar with bionics, totally unfamiliar of post apocalypse technology, and working with a toolkit that could best be described as a scrap together spare parts bin from Appalachia and a moonshiners patch kit is going to at least take a look at your leg and figure out if he's got a hope in hell of doing anything.

All right. Now, Jacob, I assume you have a skill in mind.

I was going to suggest. I mean, the best I could do is a mechanical or electrical engineering. So unless vehicle armor helps for some ungodly reason.

I mean, there's an argument to be made that his leg is more akin to vehicle armor than anything else you're familiar with. Because if I recall correctly, you took some MDC damage, but you didn't.

Oh, 18 out of 60.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, given that you're looking at essentially MDC equipment for the first time, I think, I mean, you can roll any of those. Just let me know how you kind of want to slant your study of it, really.

I'm going to go. Since I'm. He's still able to move around, it doesn't look like the electrical systems too damaged. Might be a little bit, but that seems to still be functioning. I'm going to leverage mechanical engineering because that involves material science and that sort of thing. So seems to more naturally fall into place. Now I need to make it absolutely clear I have no cybernetics, bionics, or medical skills in any way, shape or form.

Sure, sure, Absolutely, yeah. Roll your mechanical engineer.

So my mechanical engineer is a 62. I'll take an 09.

Can't complain about that.

So with a nine, I would say you can immediately tell this is definitely far more sophisticated than anything you've encountered in your normal life. And the leg is still largely intact. You don't believe any of the. Any of the assault penetrated into the no doubt sophisticated systems that must be under it. But in terms of repairing it, you quickly realize you have nowhere near the training or close to the tools or raw materials to affect any sort of repair.

I kind of figure that I'm going to take longer than necessary to figure that out. Just because you've hit Riley's nerd vibe and he's like trying to figure it out, you know, while he's looking at it. Just how does this work? How on earth did they accomplish this. Is this actually metal or is it some weird metal ceramic? What's going on here?

Now, you did suggest that the armor is probably not going to be really viable for us, but could they just take some of the armor pieces and strap it over the exposed areas of your leg?

Step, rattle, step, rattle, step, rattle.

Whoa. You know, strap it on, like a shin guard kind of thing. That's all I was.

You're talking like a true MacGyver, buddy.

Technically, I'm talking to nobody.

That's true.

I just had to stop and figure out if MacGyver was on at this era.

MacGyver.

Yeah, MacGyver was actually off the air by the time the game started.

Yeah.

No reruns on USA.

Oh, I mean, absolutely.

Oh, yeah. The late 90s. Yeah. MacGyver was all over USA, where characters are welcome. So the. The black armor that you guys piled into the back of the. The Mountaineer, which is still attached to the desiccated, almost mummified corpse that was wearing it to Mr. Cat's senses, reeks horribly and appears to be essentially. What's the word?

Is it like grafted to him? Is it part of him? Or is it.

Yeah, yeah. So there are clearly, like. Yeah, it's essentially driven into his body, fused in some way with the bones.

Oh, okay. Gross. Yeah, scratch that idea.

You still have more armor in your leg than some full suits of body armor. All right, I am not.

I'm not sparking any gears over this issue. Just figured I'd check.

Yeah. All the more reason to get to new Laszlo NPC.

I'll go ahead and say that, Mr. Katz, since supernatural being automatically. Or rather since magic energy automatically pings, the. The iron armor is clearly not mundane. It is of supernatural power.

I have a game question that my character would probably know, but I don't think I know. Would dimensional do DBs and the things DBs bring from other dimensions inherently ping as magical or dimensional? Or is it like, yeah, he's got a pencil from the Land of the Living Dead. It's just a pencil, you know?

Yeah. No, it. You can bring all sorts of mundane items from other dimensions.

Okay, I'm going to do something that's probably going to bite me. I'm going to use my object read ability on the armor.

On the armor. Okay. Yeah.

That's a horrible idea. I love it.

So give us the long and short of that for the audience to object read.

Give me a second.

It's use its history, its last owner.

While we're waiting, Henry starts pulling some bacon out of his secret compartment and giving it to Bronson.

Thank you, Henry.

It's all good, little dude. Everything's gonna be okay.

I knew I could count on you for bacon. When are we gonna find Mike?

Hopefully soon.

Okay. Object read enables the sensitive to receive impressions and images from an object regarding its use, history and last owner. Done by holding the object, concentrating on a specific line of thought, opening up to random impressions. Just as a psychic must open himself to sense evil or magic, he must open himself to the object. If successful, he will receive impressions and or images, revealing bits of information.

Okay.

Basically there are two or optionally three avenues of inquiry. One is getting impressions such as the alignment of its last owner, general emotional state of mind, general purpose, whether or not the last owner is living or dead, whether the item has been used with by magic or supernatural forces, etc. They can indicate enchantment, if it contains supernatural entities, if it's possessed and so on. And then images, you can see images of isolated events which have happened in the past. This will provide brief snippets of images and events that will offer glances of the previous owner and others close to him. All different kind of details of that. There's a whole list of things here.

Okay.

Then there is an optional third one which I am not going to do where I can see the present state of the owner.

You could just do that with your eyes.

Success.

I'm not going to pay an additional 4 ISP and I think that one.

Don't you just roll to see if you get both.

If I use the power, it costs six isp and I have to roll a thingy for impressions, I have a 56% chance of doing it. I do not get that. I rolled a 59 and on images I have a 48% get a 17. So I got that one.

All right, so you're going to get isolated events which have happened in the past. Okay, so NPC, what does it look like when Mr. Cat begins to use his psychic power?

I think he gets in really close and does that sniffing thing that all cats do. Kind of rubs his face up against it. In doing so is kind of like communing with it, trying to draw out some kind of. Some kind of power through that level of cat like familiarity.

Gotcha. Okay, so you're. So you're reading the object which is the. The black iron armor. And this is going to always. It's going to give you fragmented images of the previous owner for any events for which the armor was there. So you first thing you see is you have this perception of. It almost feels like you're laying on your back and there's this great heat rising around you, purple flames. And it looks like you're staring down a long tunnel, but then you realize, no, you're staring up from the bottom of a pit. And at the top of the pit, about 30ft up, presumably standing on the surface, are dark figures. Two of them are wearing hulking armor similar to what is now in the back of the Mountaineer. And these two figures have between them a very slight mad. Dark hair, dark skin, definitely Hispanic. He's screaming Spanish, though presumably Mr. Cat does not speak Spanish, just American.

If you can phonetically repeat them, I can. Might be able to understand.

I do speak Spanish, actually, really smart.

So I might be able to. We'll get to that.

But the man is screaming Spanish. Then he is hurled down into this pit and slams into the flames. The scream intensifies and the next image you have is of being this man and being a part of him greatly changed after his endless torment within the cauldron in which you, the armor, were born. You're this symbiote creature, this gestalt of mortal soul and supernaturally empowered armor. You have these images of battles. They mean nothing to you. Sometimes this man is killing vampires, other times chasing innocents through dark, green, hot jungle. And then you have an image of a very different environment. It is a forest, not unlike the one you, Mr. Cat, have been through in the past few days. And you feel yourself striding, not with pleasure, because the creature that is the armor and the dead soul, they do not take pleasure in anything. Yeah, but there is some sort of satisfaction striding across a victorious battlefield. And you see around you bodies, indiscernible. And up ahead, you see a man in black leather clothing, long hair. Mr. Cat recognizes the man as Marlmak, the peddler that came to Boxen. He's standing over a body, and he retrieves from the body the sparkling dagger that he had tried to stab Mr. Cat with, puts it on his own belt, looks in the direction of, well, from Mr. Cat's perception, his. And motions. And the two of them walk towards a mountaineer in the distance. In the distance, a mountaineer that again, there's another figure standing near it that you recognize as Tarmac the Crucifier. And that is the last image that Mr. Cat gleans.

Fucking knew it.

Everyone in this picture is dead. That's just.

That's very true.

I saw him take the dagger from a body. Yes, like he was stealing it. Or was it like he was pulling it out after he had plunged it into that body?

He was stealing it. He was taking it off a belt. It had not been used as far as you could tell.

In my mind, am I able to summon forth any kind of a zoom and enhance on that body, like pull back a flash of that memory?

Do you have any skills that would be most relevant to that sort of thing?

I don't have any skills. I think that. I don't think there are any mental skills except for in one of the rifters. But I do have an IQ of 26, if that helps.

Yeah, let's just roll your IQ times five.

Oh, okay. Well, I have a 130% chance of that, but let's see if I still crit fail. So normally you will only fail at a 99 or 100 because there's highest you can do is a 98. I rolled a 98.

So Mr. Cat has been in Mike's lap or Troy's lap or Henry's lap or Riley's lap as they played Riffs. And judging from the way the body is dressed and something about its armor seems to make Mr. Cap think that that dead body is a cyber knight. But overall, you get the impression that this armor, it is not simply a suit of armor. It is a.

There's a dead guy in the armor. Like not just wearing the armor, but in the armor.

Yeah. It facilitated some sort of unholy union of dead guy and corruption and pure evil.

Well, I will share this information at least with Riley and if Henry is listening. Henry, I got impressions of the former owner. And apparently the former owner is not that skeleton. The former owner is still in the armor. It wasn't pleasant. There was fire, burning, suffering, and Spanish.

So it was like in Mexico or perhaps.

I understand there's something about vampires or something down there. Mike was very into those things. I don't know why they're scary, but I can say that. Confirming his final words, similar to his final words. I think his final words were. Oh, God. He does in fact know tarmac, as in the the man who's Knife festival.

Ah, yes.

Oh, it's a very nice knife.

You don't find vampires scary?

No, they're terrifying. That's why I said they were scary.

Oh, I misheard you. My apologies.

I Carumba Mr. Cat. Real good discovery.

Of course, Mr. Cat only does the best work. Everything is always top tier with Mr. Cat.

Yes, yes, yes, I know.

So you guys have two core options. You could Rest and let Troy sleep at Doc Bly's house, which he is happy to let you camp there. Or you can put Troy in the Mountaineer and Experience Dinsmore can lead you to New Laszlo.

Oh, that's right, she's still here.

I was wondering what Experience was doing during if she knew Doc Pillai.

Yeah, she did not ride in the Mountaineer because you guys took off. But she shows up a little bit later.

We just forgot. Forgot about you. Sorry we're in a hurry.

It was an emergency. Yeah.

When she shows up, Riley silently offers her a cigarette.

Oh, no, thank you. I do not partake.

Offers her a swig out of the gallon of moonshine.

Oh, I'll drink moonshine. Yeah. So she takes a swig and you know, makes a face and hands it back.

It's mostly for my friend who lost the leg, you know, it's several days drive, I suspect and we best keep him quiet.

Oh, oh no, for driving we can get there fast. I always thought we'd be walking. Oh, it's about 50 miles, oh, half.

An hour the way you drive.

I have a giant vehicle. I think the top speed is Abrams tank maintainer. And there is no commanding officer present.

Let's have a quick chat about rifts and speeds. Vehicle speeds make no fucking sen. Instant rifts. None whatsoever.

Accurate.

The giant tripod ATV has a speed of 120. That's insane.

Yeah, that's the. If you put it at the speed, it's probably going to be falling apart in the next five melee rounds. But yeah, sure, why not?

Yeah, I mean, I would say that it has a top speed of that in the same way that just about any car does. But yeah, don't drive them at that speed.

Yeah, you.

Well, I mean, you shouldn't.

You can once, at least once I.

Would like to also. I had mentioned this when we were having our discord chat, but I do want to use the object read on the knife at some point. So I can wait on that if you want some time to come up with some. Some ideas.

I got plenty of stuff on the knife. But the question is, are you guys going to camp out around Doc Wise house? Are you just going to go straight to New Laszlo?

I would remind you that there is tuna waiting for you in New Laszlo.

So, I mean, yes, Mr. Cat is very, very excited about Tuna New Lazlo. Of all the things that have happened in his life over the last two days, suddenly someone's like, Tuna is like. Yes. However, he's also not a bad person. And Troy's in a bad state. And he's smart enough to know that picking him up and moving him and carrying him along the way. Riley drives is a bad idea. So my vote is that we at least stay.

I love that. We're like, we have two options. We either stay here or we convince Riley to drive like a sane person. And we're like, we better stay.

Also, I think Riley's been dreading the moonshine he's had.

One sip. He got it for medicinal purposes. For you.

One sip of the homemade moonshine. Riley is not good to drink.

That's like 100 proof plus.

Oh no. Easily probably closer to 170 proof plus.

You don't want the peg leg to reject.

You saw that guy in the Discord. Does he drink 100 proof? No.

It'S too weak. Okay, so you guys are going to stay at Doc Bly's house for the night.

That's my vote.

Ditto.

I mean, Riley's not going to protest once it's very clear that the majority of the party is wanting to stay.

Now you can take more sips.

No, now I can crawl over the prick 77 on the dashboard.

Ah.

Oh yes.

I mean, pork no less does.

So, yeah, so this fight happened pretty early in the morning, if you recall last session. But by the time everything is kind of taken care of in terms of Troy's medical condition, it's early afternoon. So, Alex, we'll start with you. What does Henry do for the rest of the day and evening before you leave for New Laszlo?

Two things. So first up, Henry does a little bit of scrounging through the driver compartment, rather the cargo compartment, I should say. Collects a little bit, not too much. I see there's some dried meat. Take a little bit to pad out the, you know, dwindling bacon supply. Toss that in my secret compartment and I eyeball that leg. Or that leg.

I assumed Bronson was going to keep my leg. I mean, you know, he deserves it.

The tarp.

I see there's a big tarp.

There is a big tarp.

Henry saw Tombstone not that long ago for the first time on vhs and pretty stoked on the idea of having some sort of just, you know. I forget what the term is called where you the not a duster, but.

There are actually green cloaks as equipment on our list.

Yeah, we got a box of 10 of them.

You don't have to make one out of tarps.

Is it one that'll fit me? Two of them, one for each.

That's a fair Point. You're a large fella.

Yeah, I see. Tarp big. And like that works for me.

The cloaks that are in the cedar crate, I was also eyeing them, and Henry and I are both pretty big.

How.

How large are they?

So the cloaks are fairly large. Mr. Cat could wear one very comfortably, and it would even drape over most of Henry.

I'm into it.

So you take these out. These are dark green leather cloaks. There are clearly sigils stitched into them of some arcane for some arcane purpose. And they do smell supernatural to Mr. Cat.

Oh, when you mentioned the cedar box, I'm like, those are not normal cloaks.

Well, it looked like these were set up to be traded, so I have a feeling they're probably not evil cloaks. If he was going to be trading these with the people of this town and they knew him.

That makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't get any unease like you do with the armor. And there are 10 of these cloaks.

Well, now, there's also.

I was going to say the tarp is big, meaning you could put it over a roof.

Figured that was the stretcher. Maybe I'd have to cut it into a medium tarp, but, yeah, a cloak is better.

Yeah, now you have a dark green cloak. Also, I don't guess I've ever asked what color is your armor? Or should I say your physical body? Right.

I guess I always imagined it very much like a dark and maybe dappled gray.

Okay, cool. That works. So what does the rest of Henry's day look like?

Henry's day looks like making sure Bronson is okay. Because he's kind of taken to, like, you know, making sure little dude's holding up okay, he's not hungry or not stressing too bad, and then kind of trying to, like, investigate for any new things he can figure out how to trigger to continue his understanding of his new body.

Gotcha. So, for that, roll your computer operation, which, you know it is the. The relevant stat halved.

So which, if I recall correctly, was a 10, and I roll a 100 or a 20.

If it's a skill check, it's percentile.

So you want to get a. What was your.

Yeah, it was 20 half.

So 10. Yeah, I got 33. Do you want to spend a heroism.

Ah, this early in this. You know what?

You've got a bunch.

Yeah, I got three. Let's go down to two and try again.

33.

Wasn'T in the comments.

You don't know what that word means or that phrase, but you hear it a lot over the next few hours. I wonder if it's your attempt to control systems are repeatedly denied.

Yeah, the AI is not pleased with you.

Oh, major bummer, dude.

Finally, the last thing you hear before it does something and locks you out for a minute is Asta Na vis it.

One of those guys named modok.

I believe that was a comic book that Mike was really into.

Yeah, I think that was like one of Iron Man's dudes.

Guy with the giant head. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A machine only made for killing.

70S were a wild type.

Yes, yes, they were.

So, Jacob, we know what Henry's doing, and that's mostly being frustrated while tossing bits of dried meat to Bronson, who's having a great day after that.

Yeah, the first thing on my agenda is given this prick 77 on the dashboard of the Mountaineer a hard look, because I know what a prick 77 is. While the US military wasn't using them when I was in, almost like half our allies were. So.

Sure. Yeah, yeah. So roll your electrical engineering. Excellent.

Not radio based.

You can have a 20% bonus because you are familiar with this.

That is a 26 out of. Let's see, my electrical engineer is 52 plus 20%. So 72. 26 out of 72.

So Riley spends a good chunk of time inside the mountaineer studying this PRC 77 portable transceiver. And it is definitely exactly what he thought it was. It is an old US military designed VHF FM combat Net radio transceiver. There's a steady buzz coming from the receiver, but as far as he can tell, it is not wired into the Mountaineer's power supply. There's no electrical battery that he can find. It's simply functioning. And the closest thing to that is there's a crystalline block on the back of it, like, you know, lashed to the system with some golden wiring and lots of gemstones dotting it, which he has no idea what that's doing.

Sounds like our tech wizard finally got some tech wizardy stuff.

But it's working. And he, you know, spends a lot of time going through the channels, listening. He definitely hears people talking at one point. You know, he picks up some Russian communications. He hears Japanese at one point, bits of German, very little English, actually, but a couple of people talking in English at some point, though it's hard for him to tell exactly what they were discussing.

Interesting. Okay, I'm giving it a once over. Trying to make my heads or tails of what it's. Well, not a once over. I'm going to spend a fair amount of time studying it, trying to figure out what the hell they did to this poor device. Even though it weirdly sort of in the back of his head makes some amount of sense for some reason he can't put his finger on.

Yeah, it seems fully functional to him and in remarkably good condition as well. Yeah. Though he could definitely tell there are parts that have been refurbished or replaced with what he specs are handmade components.

Yeah. Like there's no printing on that resistor there at all. It's just a gray resistor that looks like it was hand molded.

Yeah. But overall, you know, surprisingly functional.

Well, I mean, that's going to be a big part of his time just spending like trying to make heads or tails of the modifications and what the hell the crystal does and all of that. And you know, that's going to be a big part of his day. This is kind of his crash course in techno wizardry to be. To a certain extent.

Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah. You know, eventually he does figure out that the crystalline thing has some power supply effect, though he's not at all convinced that should work, but it is. Sean. Yeah. Troy has a. Has a very nice long nap.

Yes. If Troy gets anywhere near wakefulness, he doesn't show it. He intentionally tries to go back to sleep, sleep this off at some point. Probably staggers just far enough to not pee in his own bedding, but yeah, absolutely. Takes all of the moonshine that they will give him and tries to sleep this off while it recovers.

You regained two hit points from zero.

I think I was at zero last session.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

So under professional medical treatment from a doctor, clinic or hospital, you recover two hit points per day for the first two days and four each following day.

I could be mistaken, but I believe as a crazy, don't I regenerate. Ooh, probably enhanced healing. Heals two times faster than normal. Virtually impervious to pain. No amount of physical pain will injure the crazy until he's down to 10 hit points. Yeah, well, I met that. But so instead of two, it sounds like I would get four back.

Yeah, sounds like. Yeah. Cool.

Cool. That's something. Oh, hold on a second. It's even better. He also has crazies, have a bioregeneration, which means if I slip into a meditative trance, all of my energy is focused on healing. And I will get 2d6 hit points and 3d6 SDC. Stop bleeding close wounds in 2d4 minutes. Why did I not read that Before. So could an alcohol induced daytime nap be counted as a meditative trance here?

Yes.

Okay, cool.

You're crazy. So I assume that's just how that theirs is.

So I will give myself. I'm rolling the 2D6 for a few more hit points. At seven more hit points. So, yeah, and there's some STC too, but I'll roll it up.

Cool. Yeah, for a crazy. Alcohol is, you know, meditative.

But yeah, other than that, he will not engage if Bronson gets close. He might try and get Bronson to come lay down with him. The comfort of a dog at his side. Even if that dog happens to be a giant, strange, monstrous Chihuahua thing.

Giant's relative, but yeah, yeah, Bronson is more than happy to cuddle.

Perfect.

All right, NPC. How does Mr. Cat spend the rest of his day and evening? We know, obviously he at some point uses his psychic powers on the armor.

I'm going to find a cubby hole somewhere and crawl into it and then curl up with the knife and kind of rub against it and then use my power.

Okay. And so that provides the last owner of the object is what you look at.

Yeah.

Okay. Awesome.

Yeah. So the impressions can include aspects of the aspects of the last owner, various things. But it can also include purpose of the object, details on its enchantment kind of thing, if there is one. And that's the main one I'm interested in. So. All right, 6 ISP. Here we go. 56. Okay. 21 for impressions.

Okay.

And I. I don't get. Well, you know what? I'm gonna spend a hair with them and re roll that. Much better. 31. So I got both impressions and images.

Okay. So he found a quiet place in a shed on Doc Bly's property. There's just stacks of empty jugs and barrels that smell of alcohol. But he's alone. And it's quiet. Much quieter than Mr. Cat is used to because he is a city cat. And so in this kind of rural wilderness, the sounds of a forest are both foreign, but also oddly comforting. He focuses on the dagger. He puts his hands on it. The blade is this blue gray that even seems to glitter in the faint bit of moonlight coming through the slats in the wood. Indecipherable runes seem to glow on the weapon from tip to hilt. He gets impressions of its most recent wielder. Other than himself, of course. Driven, ambitious, purposeful is what he picks up on from Marrow. As to this item's purpose, he gets the impression that this item's purpose is at least in its opinion, because it is possessed of a supernatural entity, its purpose is to protect and serve and defend.

Not bad.

So in terms of images, he does see the same image, the same scene he saw before, but from Marlomark's point of view of taking the dagger from the Cyber Knight. And in this, this time, he can see that the Cyber Knight's blood is on the blade, the huge black blade that was wielded most recently to sever Troy's leg. And he even hears Borrowmark say, and once more, the dagger of Rostam is in my possession. Thank you, Magnus. And he kind of kicks the body a bit, puts it on his belt.

When he said, thank you, Magnus, did it feel like he was directing it towards the body?

Oh, yeah. It was sarcastic.

Got it.

It was. Is derogatory. Okay. The next image, the most significant next image is you see yourself, the dagger being stabbed towards you, which you recall Marowmark attempting as such. And then great pain as Marlmark's arm is broken and the dagger falls from his grasp. And the last emotion you feel, not from Marlmark, from. From the dagger when Marowak drops it, is relief. And looking forward to literally anyone else picking it up.

We'll see how this plays out.

And you open your eyes and you'd been sitting like cross legged on the floor, I assume, or something of that nature. And sitting across from you, cross legged is a man. He's very dark skinned, long dark hair flowing down his back. He's in armor of a kind you've definitely never seen. It doesn't feel at all modern, archaic and old. And he's looking at you with a very calm expression on his face. His hands are on his knees. Hello. I must confess that I'm surprised at who has me at this point.

Why would that be?

Because you are a cat.

Am I not a perfect model of.

Katniss in my life? I do not recall cats with thumbs.

And we are worse for it.

I'm lost.

I am Mr. Cat.

I see. What purpose do you have, Mr. Cat?

I genuinely do not know. I believe that my presence here is a joke to someone. And thus, I guess my purpose is to see where that joke lands. My preference would be landing in a way that keeps those guys alive.

Your boon companions.

Yes. Minions. Companions. Same. Same thing. Yes. Right.

Are your intentions true? Pure?

That's a deep question. Can you define purity?

There is no word for such a thing in the cat language.

You're familiar with Purina, but yeah, I.

Do not think that that is a concept. I Have ever had to ponder before in my life.

Do you intend to protect the innocent again?

I'm a cat. I will protect those who are good to me. That is all I know.

There's a great Mr. Cat I can smell.

Smells like alcohol.

It would do well for you to choose a side. And then Mr. Cat is alone. Dagger in his grasp.

I hold the dagger and I think of Marl, Whatever his name was. I don't care. Well, Mr. Rostom, I've killed two of them already. I think a side has been chosen.

So I will put it this way. At this point, you have a choice.

Ooh.

Let me look at one thing real quick.

Mr. Cat's gonna multiclass into Paladin or some shit.

Oh, my God.

Battle Cat.

Cyber knight. Yes. I did think of cyber knight part.

Yeah, I mean, that could be an option in the future. But for now, you can, if you wish, maintain your unprincipled alignment. Or at this moment, you can change to either principled or scrupulous.

Okay, I'm not opposed to that. Actually not opposed to that at all. I really. I, as a player, almost always play principled or scrupulous characters. I need some assistance in balancing that out with a God complex.

Well, yeah, there are gods of good.

Yeah, you just, now that you put.

It that way, could run with that. Like you're the only one who knows what the right choices are to make.

I love you, Sean. I'll go with scrupulous. I'm not opposed to principled. I think their God complex would kind of mitigate that somewhat.

And I forget principled is the most.

Good. Indeed.

And again, it's not like you're not expected to be Mr. Paladin, but it is like you are genuinely good and helpful and wonderful person.

Yeah, principled is probably a bit of a step too far for Mr. Cat.

Yeah, I could do.

I could do scrupulous just for the audience. These are the abilities that the dagger of Rostam, if you have a good alignment, conveys. This 46 MD damage can be used to parry energy blast at minus 6. If you keep it for 6 months, you are linked to it and you can sense its presence within a four mile radius. It gives you plus one to all saving throws. And it has healing abilities which I won't go fully into. And you can turn undead. So sort of, actually, yeah, Mr. Cat. The Paladin.

Exactly.

That's exactly where we all saw Mr. Cat going in this campaign.

Full disclosure, I did not.

But, you know, I. I sure as hell did.

It.

Man, I was honestly thinking of going in some direction of like conqueror or bureaucrat. I don't know.

And you go totally Templar on us.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. This is pretty cool. Yeah.

Although I see it being far more of the Teutonic order than the Templar Order.

But I mean, if you wanted to multi class into something like Cyber Knight or say, a paladin from some Palladium fantasy book, that's always up for discussion.

Okay, can he go cosmonite?

I'm gonna say Cyber Christ.

Cyber Christ.

Cyber christ.

Backstory of Mr. Cat was. Mr. Cat originally belonged to his. His mother. And his mother was a God fearing woman who read the Bible to Mr. Cat religiously.

I am very fond of the preacher OCC in the New West.

You indeed are. I'm just sliding that across the table towards you.

Okay.

Also, now, Rostam can communicate to his wielder in limited fashion via telepathy. If you want to do more of a one on one like what you just did, that requires you to use the. The read object.

Okay, quick aside. How did I end up becoming alignment unprincipled? I don't even recall if that was something I chose.

I think everyone.

I think we just defaulted to it.

Gotcha.

You can totally pick a different alignment if you don't remember picking that one. Well, I mean, I'm sorry, I'm overstepping my balance here. I would assume Kyle was.

Whatever's on your sheet. You're stuck with it.

You son of a. Henry's gonna turn into a bit of a dick.

Oh, no. By all means, yeah. Feel free to put your alignment to whatever you want it to be.

I smoke illegal drugs, so it's gonna have to be scrupulous, but not principled.

I figure it's a. I mean, more than sufficient.

Henry seems like a good guy. Yeah. I look to hurt nobody. Well, that was an interesting turn of events. I did not see that coming.

Yeah, no, I didn't either. I really thought that weapon would have been recovered much later in the campaign. But.

No campaign survives contact with the murder hobos.

I will once again attest that I did not kill him.

Agreed.

I was doing my best to not kill him. Like intentionally. Not using my claw.

Was that what ultimately killed Morrow?

Bronson killed Maro.

Got it right.

I couldn't quite remember my favorite character.

The only one who is principled is probably Bronson. And he did the murder.

An angry Chihuahua accidentally killed someone. Who is surprised here?

And imagine if Bronson had acquired the knife.

Oh, Jesus.

I am terrified yeah, total paladin dog boy Paladin.

And not necessarily execution or outcome.

Yeah, yeah. You know, very dark ages paladin.

So I have to retcon slightly now that I actually read more about my character. Crazy's got a lot of stuff, and my insanity plays into things as well. So by late afternoon, he's absolutely fine. He is up using the massive sword to peel potatoes and is convinced that he's going to put together some mashed potatoes. And he's actually fully healed in six hours.

Holy.

Because a crazy who goes into a full meditation after 6 hours heals. All SDC and 46 hit points, plus my other stuff. So he's literally. I mean, he's missing half a leg, but he seems unbothered by it because I rolled back on the happy side.

Wow.

So I'm making potatoes. Of course we can stay the night. Of course we could stay the night. Let's have dinner, guys.

Well, I'll be happy for the help.

He's definitely getting some vegetables.

Doc Bly straps the, you know, this wooden fashioned lower leg to your stump. Straps it in pretty tight. Go on, walk around. See how that feels.

I. Yeah. I start running and leaping and otherwise trying to put this thing to the test.

So, I mean, I think given a crazy, you know, preternatural agility. Yeah.

I. Yeah.

I mean, unless you're doing something where it would clearly be an impediment, like. Like relying, like, you know, jumping from a high place. Like it's gonna shatter.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The kind of thing where it would shatter on impact.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But other than that, I mean, you're. You'll be, you know, at relatively fully functional.

Okay. And then I. If you. I think I have some extra speed. If you decide you want to reduce that or something, just let me know and we can take care of that on the side. So.

But yeah, I mean, I don't. You know, all your abilities are crazy, psionic, cybernetically enhanced nonsense. I mean, shenanigans. Yeah. I feel like part of your leg is wood. Is like the least affecting part of you.

Part of your brain is metal. Part of your leg is wood.

Yeah. You know, I think it'll be fine. Again, unless there's clearly a case where it's going to be an impediment or a negative. And then will handle that on a case by case basis.

And he is using that giant sword in the most shameful way. Absolutely. Shoving the blade in the ground and using it as a crutch. Like it does not care I'm picturing.

A moment then where Mr. Cat now has communed with this knife and acquired some of its abilities and at least the basic understanding of some of its like, healing things. He's like, I guess I should use this on Troy. So I stalk over to where Troi is and I find Troi just feeling potatoes with a sword. And you see Mr. Cat approach and he's basically walking up to you with this look and a knife held like he's gonna use it on you. And then I stop, I hold up some potatoes.

I could use some help here.

Mr. Cat, do you not need the knife? I see that you are fine. Yes, I will take some potatoes.

I don't expect you to eat them, but I could use a hand peeling a few of them.

I looked down at the knife.

I love that we're on the verge of using this artifact grade weapon to peel potatoes.

I look back up and think, potatoes would be a good deed. Yes, I will peel some potatoes.

So there's a voice in your head. Feeding your friends is never shameful.

Mr. Bly is going to have stories after we leave, that's for sure.

Well, I'm pretty sure these fellows were using room weapon to peel some damn potatoes.

And I'm just going to use my claws.

Oh, there you go. So you guys spend an evening with Doc Bly and experienced Dinsmore, have a fire going into the long into the night and plenty of moonshine. The next day you wake up, pack whatever you unpacked and unless you have something else you want to ask of Docbly or the village of Boxing, we will move to New Laszlo.

I'm down for head Nat.

Yeah, just during the evening, Riley spends a lot of time just a little bit off from everybody else. Drawing the Wilks pistol he picked up and like sighting down it and like pointing it over and over and over again but never firing it.

Do you have laser pistol proficiency? Okay, okay. I assumed he nodded his head for the wreck.

Yeah, sorry.

He's thinking, yes, of the future.

Perfect. Yeah. I do not. That's why I was like, you should definitely have it.

But yeah, well one, I am the squishiest member of the party.

Experience shows that you're wrong.

I am might be the squishiest, but I am not necessarily the most impetuous.

The next day, with experience giving directions to Riley. You guys drive the Mountaineer cross country, following old roads when they're available, but when they're not, simply driving through the woods.

There's a lot of whooping as we're going through the woods.

Eventually the villages become less spread out and pretty soon you're driving on a fairly well maintained dirt road through farmland. And you slow to a stop as you come to a crossroads. And in the distance you can see a clear city skyline. Not a great. It's not a great city like New York, but it is clearly a sizable settlement. And there are two menhir on either side of the road. By that I mean giant stones inscribed with runes. And they are kind of angled so that they form a crude archway. There's sigils worked amidst the rough cracks and edges. And experience tells you that this is the boundary of New Lazlo itself. All who pass through will be known to the warding order. There are other ways into the city. But she tells you avoiding the direct way is seen as inherently suspicious.

Well, this is her home, right? We're her guests.

Yeah.

Is that. We just go in?

Yep.

Yep.

I mean, we got nothing to hide other than a giant cat, a cyborg, and did we bring the dead body with us?

Yes, it's in the trunk.

Yeah.

Okay. We do have some things to hide.

Riley slows down because, well, cops might be around and just waves as he drives by.

So there are two guys in clearly like this. You're not sure if it's ceremonial, but it's armor, but it doesn't seem medieval to you. It's clearly some sort of uniform, not one that you're familiar with. And it's vaguely like blue and green. And experience waves. The two guys don't really look at you that much, but simply wave you through. And when you pass under them in here, like it feels like you step through a sheet of cold water, but otherwise you are unaffected. You drive into town, New Laszlo, which is a mix of stone, wood and concrete buildings, some of which rising not quite what you would think of as a skyscraper, but multiple stories. And experience gives you directions to a definite residential part of town up on a hill. And you stop outside of a three story home, brightly red painted cedar siding, pale rose towels on top, and a front porch that rings the whole house. So she is grinning as you approach. And there's no driveway, but the street is wide and she tells you just to park wherever you can. And she invites you inside her house.

I'm going to try to leave enough space so people can get around us on the road without problems. So if I have to pop a wheel or two on the grass, I'm doing so.

Sure, you definitely have to. There are not a lot of vehicles on the street and you haven't seen a lot of There were definitely vehicles in the in the city, but it is not populated with cars in the way that you would be used to from a modern American city. Most people were walking around, but you did see streetlights and the kind of infrastructure you would expect in a modern city, although some of it gave Riley a weird feeling similar to that which the radio does. So Experience Grin says come on you guys, and hops out of the Mountaineer, expecting you to follow, which I'm assuming that you do.

The moment it stops, I am out.

Likewise, I'm just She has a Her house is fairly large, but doesn't seem terribly uncommon for what you've seen so far in New Laszlo. In fact, it would seem like this town has a fairly high standard of living, all things considered. Her house. The main floor is covered in intricate rugs. There's very comfortable, if a little worn furniture. The kitchen is well stocked. There's a portion of the wall that is covered in childish scribbles and marks of height. So at some point there were, you know, children living here that said the house is empty and quiet, but not like brooding or ominous. And as you go in, Experience starts to snap her fingers and lanterns, all different varieties and styles, start to activate. She walks into the kitchen, claps her hands and the oven begins to heat. She starts taking things out of a refrigerator. You boys hungry? Peculiarly starting to prepare a meal. Riley looking it over. Except for the microwave, which looks factory assembled, it is plugged into an outlet. All her other appliances are not connected to electricity, Electricity or gas as far as you can tell.

Quick question. How tall are her ceilings?

Her ceilings are about 8ft tall.

All right, so I'm crouching. You're at least ducking my head.

I will. As we enter and she moves off, sniff at the air for a moment, look at Bronson and be like, smells like her. Smell anybody else? That could be a lie. I could just be making that up. Yeah. Does she live alone?

It does smell like her. There are the kind of like old scents of other people that lived here for a while, but there's one other scent that feels fairly fresh and it's similar to experiences, but not exactly. And Bronson says, oh, I don't know. I think it's hers.

It's all right, little guy.

Smells like her hair. She's so pretty.

She does have nice smelling hair.

As we're going in and the lights are coming on and the machines are spinning up like every one of those. I'm like jerkin. Looking at it. Jerking. Looking at it. Jerking. Look at it. And I'm like distracted by everything and considering hunting down the source of these weird lights. And then she says food. And that's. That's all I needed to hear.

Yeah. She's taking fish out of an ice covered freezer. And Henry, you notice that there are a few pieces of furniture that do appear to be really overbuilt and capable of sporting great weight.

I'm very interested in that. And also, if there appears to be anything resembling a TV in the supposed living room.

There's not a tv, but there is a radio. A large. What you would think of as kind of old fashioned radio. Like what your grandparents might have sat around to listen to war updates.

A dreadnought style radio. Excellent.

Yeah.

I will wander through the house clapping just to see if anything else turns on. And arguably looking for a restroom. Riley's really concerned about indoor plumbing, so I wanted. I got his back here.

It has that. So because it's Troy, we assume he wanders through the whole house over the next.

Absolutely. If he is not stopped, he will just kind of. Yeah, of course. Why not?

Smash cut.

If anything is under a tarp, I do not lift the tarp. That's the only rule.

Good call. There is a cellar with root vegetables and jars of clearly preserved foods and obviously old furniture that they've stored in an old baby bed. The second floor is. There's a sitting room and an office, a bedroom that seems to you like a guest bedroom. Right. It's kind of got like generic stuff in it. There's no personality to it. The third floor clearly has a master bedroom and some storage. And on the third floor there is a room which is fairly large, which is closed with a padlock on the outside. And the door is definitely built of stern stuff. And there is an attic with all the boxes and cobwebs and dust that you would expect.

Okay. I don't try to get past the padlock door. And again, he's just kind of assuming he has free run to check the place out. But he's not opening boxes. He's not trying to invade or privacy. It's just that he's like, yeah, of course I'm gonna check this place out. It's a cool house, but it doesn't sound like there's anything like there's not a huge pile of weapons or anything that would make me think this is anything more than just a house. Pretty decent sized house.

Yeah. Yeah, it is. No, no. A secret Armory or laboratory.

Okay.

You know, it feels like a place that's been lived in. Right.

Gotcha.

Meanwhile, Riley's crawling all over the appliances other than the microwave, trying to figure out, well, how the hell they're powered. And, you know, checking for other weird crystal and golden wire and shit.

Yeah. Crystalline capacitors and, you know, jeweled tubes that make no sense. People making wire out of gold leaf. It's bizarre.

It's hurtful, but also feels right for some reason that I don't quite understand.

Yeah. And you're. You're fairly certain this is a gas oven, but there's no gas? No, not from anywhere. It's just spontaneously combusting. So dinner is two fish dishes, one of which is just mostly raw for Mr. Cat. And a couple of sides and some bread. And you guys are sitting around this large table. There's a chair, huge, heavy oak chair for Henry. And experience pours you all a glass of wine and welcomes you to your home and says. So where are you fellas from, really?

Cincinnati. I thought we told her. Cincinnati. Mike's basement. Don't talk about Mike with Bronson around. All right. You set him off again. Yeah.

Cincinnati. Not heard of it in the state of Ohio. Ohio. I know.

Ohio's not our Ohio. And our Ohio stoves don't power themselves with Wuju or whatever's going on over there. I don't know how we got here, but if you have an Ohio, it's not our Ohio because our Ohio is boring as shit. My apologies to anybody who lives in Ohio currently.

Yeah, Man, I haven't even seen a blockbuster since we got here.

Absolutely.

Moment of silence for blockbuster.

Moment of silence.

Experience, like, dip some bread. And this fish theory that she made. She said I would most describe Ohio these days as dangerous.

Okay. That line.

Federation of Magic and. And that comes with its own problems. But there might be some people in town that could help. Tomorrow I'd like to take you fellas around, if you'd be up for that.

So I got the impression from Captain Charm on the first day that you were responsible for us being here. But you don't know where we came. You don't. I guess I'm not putting the pieces together there. Am I the only one that's confused? Maybe it's the wine.

Well, let me. Let me explain as best I can. Tarbek wanted warriors. The way he put it. Greatest warriors, killers. And he had a ritual that he thought would do it, and he needed somebody to facilitate. He could not do it himself for a number of reasons he thought I could. So I did botch the casting a little bit, But I certainly am not the sort of practitioner. My abilities are mostly esoteric, and I did not purposely summon anyone. I was hoping it would kind of all explode and kill him. I think something else intervened.

Cool.

Cool.

That makes sense. That totally makes sense. We are definitely not warriors. Well, okay, I take that back, Mr. Cat.

I am a trained killer.

Mr. Cat has brought dead things.

Things.

Fearsome hunter.

You are so sweet. Would you like some milk?

I will actually know. I do believe that will mess with the intestines of cats. Unless this form is more.

I've never met a lactose and I'm.

Learning things about cats right now.

Ever stopped them?

Mike was hesitant. There was a situation. We don't talk about that. I would prefer some of this liquid that y' all are drinking.

It's way better than a box wine.

She pours Mr. Cat a glass of wine.

I sip at it. Fruit juice. I kick it back.

Oh, God. We're gonna get the cat drunk for the first time in his life.

Oh, probably. I have a really low.

How tall is your character?

Zero tolerance.

What?

How tall is your character?

Eight feet.

An eight foot tall, muscular cat, drunk for the first time in his life. An obligate predator. Oh, my God. I hope there are no stray dogs in the neighborhood.

You know, aren't you glad he raised his alignment up a little bit?

There you go.

There's intent and then there's accident.

So experience explains that. Tomorrow she'll take you to meet, essentially, wizards, Particularly one jovial red, who she hopes can provide some insight as to your current predicament. But she does feel responsible for you and so will do everything she can within her power to get you back to Cincinnati, wherever that is.

Would any of these wizards we're meeting tomorrow, be it techno wizard prey.

Chance. Oh, well, my friend Zane. Yes, we'll go by his bakery.

Riley doesn't know what to make of that and just kind of nods, confused.

Are techno wizards known for their baking skills?

Yeah. She pushes like, the. The bread basket across the table. He made this.

I'll examine the bread basket. Is it like keeping the bread consistently warm?

She picks up a piece of bread, waves at your face and says, no, he made this.

Oh, and it's delicious. It is delish. Get you some of that bread?

Yeah.

You said he was a baker. Sorry.

Is there. She tells you. Oh, God.

I was just gonna say, if we're gonna be out on the town tomorrow, is there anything in that truck? We need to offload. Like, sell, get rid of part. Part with.

I still wouldn't mind getting my talismans identified and your legs old. Yeah, yeah.

Actually, experience. You done us a good turn. You want your pick of the cases of vegetables we got in the back?

Oh, I'll go through.

I did notice you were running low on yams downstairs, so I would hit up those yams.

Oh, thank you. That's very kind of you. Troy, if you could be a deer, go get one of those crates and break it in.

Out the door immediately.

Thump step, thump step.

It's a great rhythm.

As everyone else is talking more and more about the things in town and the wizards and whatnot, I wish to kind of start getting Bronson drunk with me.

Oh, yeah, Bronson will definitely. He does not need much encouragement.

Okay.

This has the Troy seal of approval. I'll just.

I wanted to just ask to hear what Bronson sounded like drunk in the first place. This is way cooler.

Bronze is like. No one would ever let me drink wine. This is so delicious.

We are gonna have to get a drunk dog boy and a drunk battle Cat out of a tree later.

You do realize this.

You don't even know.

You need to get that finger camera thing figured out, because we're going to need video. All right.

Also, I think that now that I'm big, I could go and smell anything I want, and no one will be able to pull me on a leash and say, no, Bronson, get away from that lady's butthole. But I feel like there might also be proprieties that I'm overlooking.

I think you should fight against the establishment, Bronson.

Yes. Who is establishment? I will fight him.

I want Bronson as my Google assistant as my gps.

Oh, my God.

I need battle cat to get a battle vest now with an ACAB patch.

This machine kills fascists or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So. So Brussels. I have to go outside now to poop.

Good job, buddy. You remembered.

But then he, like, perks up. Could I use the big people bathroom? And runs, like, on all fours to the bathroom, slams the door, and you hear he's drinking from the toilet.

Absolutely, Absolutely.

He's definitely drinking.

I'm pretty sure I flushed when I was done. Hopefully.

You know, I'm gonna follow him.

So. Amazing.

Why? Because you're gonna sit there staring up at him while he does it.

Oh, oh, oh, yeah.

Probably. Yeah. No, he slams the door, I don't get there quick enough. So I'm just gonna wait outside and.

Yeah, I was gonna say pat the door. Pat the door. Let me in.

So Bronson is in there a while, but eventually he does put it together, how to make everything work. And he does flush and come out. That was amazing. I do like fire hydrants, though.

I wish to have a turn.

Okay. The water gets very, very hot.

Did you use the bidet or something?

No. There's a sink, Troy. There are two turny thingies, and one makes it cold and one makes it hot.

I go in there and look, and I am baffled.

There's no litter anywhere.

It's all empty.

Yeah.

Whereas I do not understand.

You push this button and the poop goes down.

All right. Anyway.

All right.

I feel like the techno wizard could have given better instructions, but I think Bronson nailed it there.

Yeah. So does anybody do anything else that evening at Experience's house?

She's done a solid. Of course. I'm in high energy mode right now. I wash the dishes. I help clean up. I move her move her couch around. I unpack the vegetables that we brought in.

You move the couch around with me.

Sitting on it smoking.

I don't want to disturb you. Yeah. It also turns out crazies are crazy. I just picked it because it sounded fun. I also basically don't need to sleep. I only need, like, four hours of sleep to be perfect, and I can go three days without sleeping without a problem. Perfect for bipolar.

Henry asks Experience, you know, basically wondering how safe this neighborhood is with the intention of if it's not stand and sit and watch outside the front.

Oh, new Laszlo is one of the safest places in North America.

Okay. Okay, cool. So cool, cool, cool. So I can't. Nothing for me to do. Got it, got it, got it, got it.

Not once.

Bronson and Mr. Camp, you could, if. If you'd like to walk the perimeter that, you know.

Yeah, yeah, I can do that. Perk up a little bit. Go do that for the evening.

Night. Oh, but also, Happy Trigger Emporium is probably still open, if that's of interest to you, Mr. Borg.

Ooh, I could be into some guns.

Okay.

Looking around. Anybody want to join me?

Let me just finish moving this couch. I'll go with you.

I'm just sitting there smoking on it as you're dragging it across the room.

Mr. Cat and Bronson are nowhere to be seen.

Oh, no, it's fine.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure they'll be fine.

Okay, so who's going to Happy Trigger Emporium?

Sounds like me and the Borg, the crazy and the Borg are going out shopping alone with some money. I Did not think to bring any money.

I have maybe nine credits on me.

I was gonna say, do you need a ride over there?

Like 75,000 creds in the van or something like that.

Do you need a ride over there?

Sure.

Okay.

I get directions and drive at a sedate pace. Over.

I'm so proud of you.

We're on roads. There could be cops.

So Riley's driving. Henry and Troy, Mr. Cat and Bronson are presumably wandering the streets. The three of you drive the Mountaineer, following experience's directions. She stays back at her home, and you come to a. Definitely more. Very much a commercial part of town. There's lots of people out on the street. Vendors and food carts, lots of shops. And Happy Trigger Emporium is fairly easy to spot. The exterior's metalwork and stained glass, a huge sign billboard, Happy Trigger Emporium. New Laszlo's Library of Weapons. You find parking at an open garage. You walk in. The interior is a wide open floor of tall metal shelves upon which are, as it's explained to you, gun books. Hundreds of guns, thousands encased in a block of some transparent solid that they call display gel, for which, you're told only the owner has the key.

So we could see the weapons, but they're in these blocks of gel. Okay.

Yeah.

Super normal.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, this would look cool. Visual gags.

Perfect Visual gag. Oh, yeah. The way you just pantomimed, that was on point, man.

You were introduced to the proprietor who's introduced to you as Alexander of Macedon. He is three feet tall, apparently a robot. He has huge, voluminous blue eyes. A brass shell. Greetings. Welcome to Happy Trigger Emporium. I am Alexander of Macedon, after your service. And he bows. There are very few other people in the shop. Welcome. How can I help you, good warriors?

And did you come in with us, Riley?

Yeah.

Okay. Just making sure. Yeah, I returned the bow. Not waiting for them to kind of. You know, we're kind of new here. We seem to misplace all of our warrior weapons. You sell these things?

I sell them, yes, sir. I'm very happy to make your acquaintance.

Right on, man. Righteous place you got here.

Thank you very much. What sort of weapon are you in the mood for? Something plasmic? Laser? Projectile? Explosive missile? Y. I don't want to get too technical.

I'm trying very hard to let one of you speak first. You can see Troy is trying to let you speak.

I don't suppose you got any language packs, do you?

Language packs? Do you intend to fight with harsh Language.

I kid, words are the greatest weapon.

Oh, yes, that and a super laser pistol. Language facts. Hmm. What are you needing there, cyborg?

I'm assuming it's some sort of Eastern Slavic type language. Not totally certain since I, you know, don't speak it.

What? Yeah, what?

Quickly stepping outside of this, Henry's, you know, basic idea is to try and find something to help him translate. You know, get a language pack.

Oh, I can understand.

Is that.

Is that operating system.

When his operating system is talking, my assumption is that we don't hear it. He's just hearing it inside of my.

That would be hilarious if he accidentally turned on the speaker and couldn't figure out how to turn it off.

Zero stuff.

Engaging stealth mode.

No, to clarify, I as a gm knew exactly what you meant. But like, he has no idea that like, you can't talk to your internal computer, right?

I'm not given context.

Okay, you mean the stoner is having trouble communicating?

Are you. Who are you trying to communicate with, like a friend?

Technically, myself, buddy. I gotta figure out how to work these cool limbs and I show them how my finger opens and closes.

Like, look at this guy.

I don't. I don't really get this.

So how do you not get that?

Your guess is as good as mine, bro.

And he, he like steps to the side and puts his hand up and like waggles a finger at the crazy as if to say, you know, lean down.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I thought you were going to be the one. Completely out of his fucking mind. What was this guy?

That's a long story. It's a long story. He's been talking to himself for the past day or so and seems very confused and keeps saying yet. And I don't know what he's talking about either, but. Laser rifles. I think we need laser rifles. Would that make you happy? We just buy some laser rifles.

I'll tell you what, you buy some laser rifles, I'll get some tools. We'll poke around your friend's brain, see what's going on in there. They don't call me Alexander of Macedon brain scrambler for nothing.

Perfect. Perfect. He said he's gonna throw in some brain surgery on you if we pick up a couple guns. Just poke around.

I can. I can hang. Yeah.

So essentially, he has everything in the Rifts unlimited in terms of guns.

Would prices be approximate to the ones found in here or markup? Mark down, mark sideways.

Pretty close. We're going to call it approximate. Yeah.

I'm going to ask if he's got a Technowizard equipment.

Oh, no, buddy, sorry. Everything here is mechanical machine made of good old physics.

Oh, I feel you. Do you happen to have a personal computer laptop thing for sale at all?

Well, sure. Yeah. Yeah, I can get you that.

Excellent.

Thanks.

For the record, we have a laptop. A computer on the.

Oh, I know.

Okay. I just remembered it's password protected with dead dudes.

I'm gonna get around to that. Riley has quite the to do list in his own head.

These things are expensive. How much. How much money do we have to work with Riley?

Nine grand each.

Total?

No total.

Ninety.

Ninety grand.

Well, then I'm buying a laser rifle for sure. Z, it doesn't have to. I will grab the first laser rifle that I see or gesture to the first laser rifle. I kind of know how to shoot rifles and lasers. Sound cool. So, laser rifle. There are several, and they vary in prices, but Troy would not know. He's just. This one looks good. I'm gonna test that.

There you go. The old standby. The Wilkes laser rifle.

Perfect. I'll take two of those.

All right. Fantastic. One for each hand. I like the way you think.

Hey, you know, I'm already down a leg. I can't afford to have unused limbs.

So two of these bad boys will set you back a cool 36k.

How about we go down to 1 at 17? Oh, I can't spend all the money.

Can't spend all the money. I get you. I get you.

That's a lot. Feels like a lot. You got a cheaper one than this? Sold. Standby.

Well, you know, good for. I've got this. I've got some. Northern gun. I got this. NGL5. Northern gun, laser rifle. It's six. I can let it go for 16.

That's it. That's a good deal. No clue if it's a good deal.

60 or 60 grand.

16.

Okay. I heard 60. And I'm like, 16. Yeah.

Sweet, sweet. You've got a laser pistol. You've got.

Henry doesn't feel like he needs to be worried about having weapons currently so far.

Let's focus on this first, I guess. Cool.

Be able to punch my way through my problems so far.

But also, I couldn't help but notice, my crazy friend, that you appear to be without any sort of armored carapace protecting your fragile internal organs.

He squints for a little bit. Like, was he. Is he taking a dig at me because I lost a leg recently? That's a great idea. Yeah. You got something that would stop a laser weapon?

I do have a variety of Mega damage.

I definitely have that massive crazy sword with me. So, you know. Yeah, perfect. How much for that?

How much are you looking to spend? Because we could go from something great like crusader full environmental body armor for a very reasonable 55,000 down to.

I just want something that could take maybe a shot or two. Just the cheapest lightweight. I'm probably not even going to wear the chest piece. I kind of like this bare chest thing I've been doing recently.

Okay, that's unadvisable, but Plastic man, it is.

Perfect. How much is that?

It's an inexpensive lightweight MDC polycarbonate for 18,000.

Jesus. That's. It's called Plastic Man. It's not a reassuring name for 18 GS.

You know, this economy. Right?

He's as. As he's going through and having his angst over how much it costs shelling out credits until we get to 18 grand. Just because I don't want to deal with you with a missing another limb.

Hey, hey, hey. You know, I've lost weight, so 18 and 16, that's gonna bring me to 34 if I do both of these. And you said you'll throw in old checkup on my buddy here.

Yeah. Come on downstairs, Borg. We're gonna stick a slack in your brain.

Oh. Oh, okay.

How much for that computer?

Oh, it's a. Let's go downstairs.

It's a weapons grade computer.

Excellent. That was what I was hoping. He'd invite me downstairs. So watch this, because I'm all about this.

So downstairs is. There's lots of stacks of armor, but there's also clearly a work area with various disassembled weapons and bits of machinery. Right in the center, there's a big, heavy reinforced seat with all these screens and diagnostic equipment around it. And. He gestures. Remember, he's three feet tall. Sit down there, big fella.

Okay.

We'll have a look. See?

Riley adjusts his jumpsuit for the huge erection he has looking at his computer setup.

Wow.

So in terms of getting a portable computer, you can, like, if you wanted something like a palm organizer, that's like 100 credits. If you want like a portable standard field unit, that is 2,500.

We're spending the 2500 because I have goals.

Gotcha.

Henry doesn't hesitate to bust out the eight talismans that he grabbed from tarmac and jangle them around like, I've also got these for barter. I don't know what they do, but.

Me neither. Set in the chair. Oh, clunk. Yeah. And he goes and he stands on a square panel, and there's a lever beside. He pulls the lever, and it starts to lift him up where he's. Until he's level with your head. All right, let's see what we got. And there's the sound of pneumatic drills. He's taking bolts out of Henry's head.

I am watching carefully, mentally making notes.

At all of this. Yeah. He starts sticking in probes. And at one point, he grabs up and pulls this huge cable down and plugs it right into the top of Henry's head. All right, let's see what we got. He turns to a console, starts tapping on a keyboard. Oh, inside a cyborg's brain. Second time today. I wish I could drink, but I'm a robot, you know? Okay.

I suspect I could write a program for intoxication.

Oh, really? Yeah. There's a console over there. Get to work.

This'll take a while, but I will be back, and I will. If I. My attempts are successful on him. I'll definitely pass it to you.

I have free weekends. All right, Mr. Henry, let's see what we got in here. And so there's this huge diagnostic. Starts scrolling down Alexander's monitors. Oh, my God. You have seen a lot of action. Also, this is all in Russian.

Oh, you're in a commie Borg body.

I'm a Russian robocop.

So, you said your name was Henry, right?

That's the case.

Well, your armor seems to think your name is Valya.

Valya.

And let's see. Yeah, it is an onboard simulated sentient intelligence, and its name is Gorshkov. And it is really annoyed that you don't have your full weapons package. And it has got a mouth on him. Wow. I'll tell you what. I'll dump a standard language translator just for Russia. That's all you really need, right?

I think so.

Okay. And then it's gonna run you about. Tell you what. I'll do it for two grand.

How about two talismans?

Those are worthless. I don't know. I don't have any idea what they are.

I look to Troy, who I believe is holding all the credits.

No, I am holding all the credits.

I look to Riley with what I thought was a pleading look, but, you know, since my face mask is on.

And, you know, two grand, and you throw in the login credentials for his back door. Ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching.

Okay, so he. It takes about an hour, but eventually he downloads a Russian translator to your system. And all these. All parts of your heads up display. Start to become discernible. Whoa.

Suka Blatt.

And eventually, you hear a voice. You're not Velia.

Yeah, buddy. And this ain't 1999.

97.

This ain't 1997. So we're gonna have to meet each other in the middle. How's it going, buddy?

It is not 1997. Why would it be 1997? This is not calculable. Translation error. Translation error. Translation error.

Whoa.

Calm down, pal.

Translation error.

Translation error. Yourself into a timeout, pal.

I will. Translation error. Plasma. Translation error.

I look to Alexander of Macedon. What? Seems to be kind of. He seems to be kind of angry. Buddy, can you help me?

Well, he's Russian. What do you want me to do.

Henry? Having seen enough movies in the 90s where Russia was, of course, the main villain, it's like, well, gosh, I guess I gotta figure out how to broach peace with myself.

I guess so. Sort of existential.

Yeah.

Should probably do some weed or something.

Dude, you.

Do you have that?

So we are going to cut over to see what Bronson and Mr. Cat are doing before they're inevitably arrested.

Bronson.

Mr. Cat.

Bronson.

Mr. Cat.

Buddy.

There are squirrels in these trees.

I have been tasked with doing good deeds.

Like, good. Okay.

Are you a good boy?

Mike said so. Said so. Troy said so.

I miss Mike.

Me, too.

I miss Mike.

Oh, God. So hard.

The two are getting sloppy drunk.

He could scratch my chin like no one else.

Mike knew where the treats were hidden.

He even knew to touch my belly in a way that I wouldn't bite him. I miss my. But, but.

But it's Mike. Dead?

I don't think so.

Oh. Oh, good, Mr. Cat. You're so wise and knowledgeable.

If Mike is alive, we will find him. We will find Mike.

We will find Mike, and we will rescue him.

But first. First, we must do good.

Yes.

Henry. Henry is good to us.

Henry is the best. Henry scratches my ears.

Do you remember the way Henry used to smell?

Very bad.

Yes, but you remember it well.

Of course.

Do you remember that pouch of plastic something that I tried to eat, but then you took away from me that we got out of his pocket that one time?

Mm. Yes. The weird grass.

Hendri really likes that weird grass.

Ooh.

And I heard earlier that there's a chance this. I'm here.

Ooh. In this place.

You should come with me.

We will find the weird grass.

With our powers combined.

Yes.

We can rule. We can find this grass.

For Henry Bronson jumps up and just starts running. Yes.

Onward, Minion. And I'm chasing after him.

Good. You're not sure where he's going. Hopefully he has some idea. Runs down a street, like, people jumping out of his way. Like, he's barking like two dogs leap into a yard to get out of his path. He's like, get out of the way, German shepherd, dumbass.

One of two things is going to happen. They're either going to find Ditchweed or we're going to find them the next morning, stoned out of their mind in a wild patch of catnip.

So he runs, like a couple of blocks. You're in. It's still residential, but it is much more apartment buildings and townhouses than, like a neighborhood of, you know, individual homes. Let's see. So, Mr. Cat. Let's see. You are a house cat. So Mr. Cat and Bronson don't know this, but the audience is definitely getting the vibe of this is a college neighborhood, right? Like, there's a lot of young people and open air, bars, cafes. It's getting into the evening. All the, you know, the TK lamps are lit in the distance. We see clearly, you know, administrative buildings. And Bronson runs straight to, like, the front of this cafe. And, like, it's got a big glass front facade, like, laying against it, like, in here. Mr. Cat, I can see them. They have it. And you run up and it's clearly some sort of depository. There's people, like, smoking. There's an open. There's tables out front where people are smoking weed. And he runs and slams through the door with the bell ringing. I need some weed for Henry. Now. Unless you act to restrain him, Bronson is clearly just going to unintentionally commit a robbery. Because he's been truly human level intelligence for about 72 hours, he does not understand financial transactions. He runs on. I found it, Mr. Cat. It's all in here. It's perfect. We'll take it all to Henry. He'll be so happy, he'll scratch my ears.

You have found it, Bronson. Good boy. Good boy. Lead me to him.

Yeah. So at that point, some young kid, figure probably early 26, is sat out the front door. Can I help you guys?

Weed.

Do you have it?

Yes, sir, we do.

I want some.

Okay. You could come inside and place an order.

How do I do that?

Okay. Are you already high?

No.

All right. Okay. Just come inside. Wait in line. Yeah. So you go in. There's people waiting to get to a counter. A couple of humans and some DBs. No, anthropomorphic animals. Some guy that's clearly like some sort of humanoid gecko. He keeps licking his eyeballs and looking at you, but eventually you get to the front and it's the same kid. It's like, okay, man, do you know what you want or how much?

Or I have a friend. I'm buying for a friend. You see just the friend.

It's not for me, man. We're not in the coalition. It's legal, it's fine.

I believe you. But this is for a friend and he likes to get high. I do not know what he smokes.

Okay, okay, okay. I'll tell you what. Let me just.

You would know it by smell.

I would know it by smell.

So would I. And Bronson's like pushing you out of the way. I know exactly what Henry would want. Let me smell everything you have.

What he said the.

I'm suspecting that Henry prefers a Sativa, probably with minimal cross, probably high in the orange Turpin range. And I'm thinking like something that's a derivative of Madnesska Thunderfuck. But that's just a wild guess on my part.

See, as a non weed smoker, this is the most techno wizard thing you've said the whole game. I did not understand any of that easily.

Yeah, complete, completely opaque.

Truly. Henry just wants whatever is going to help him settle in and watch reruns of Matlock.

I mean, Henry's a younger adult from Cincinnati in 1997. He's getting eighths at whatever the mix he can get. And it's probably half shake.

Yeah, he ain't a connoisseur.

Now, does Mr. Cat have any money?

I have 12 credits.

All right, man, look, I tell you what. You give me 12 credits and I'll give you enough weed for 12 credits.

Remembering how he smelled. I think that will do.

So he gives you a small baggie of weed with some rolling papers and like a receipt. Put some staples on, like the card for the shop.

I look at the receipt, like, what am I supposed to do with this?

It's okay, man. Your friend will know. It's fine.

Okay, you got a baggie.

I was sure you were going to get like a half blunt pre roll.

Yeah, I mean 10 creds will get you a gallon of moonshine. Or apparently, yeah.

Vices are cheap in the dirty future.

I'm going to stand there for a few seconds longer past awkward. Sure, just stereo kipped out and then Bronson and I just bolt.

You guys run at top speed out of there like you're seeing things, but also you know, weed is completely legal in New Laszlo, so it's not. There's not any of the, you know, the. The crime fee attached to it. We're going to cut back to the Emporium. And I assume you guys are. Yeah. Pay for all the upgrades and your guns and armor.

If we have money left. There was one other thing that occurred to me.

We have 78,000 credits left.

Well, I spent 34 or something. Ridiculous. Maybe my math was wrong because it was 16 and. Oh, 18 and 14. I can't remember, but it's.

Yeah.

Oh, I got the 16,000 I didn't get.

Yeah, the armor was 14, I think you said. Is that right or not?

The armor was 18.

Yeah, that's what it was.

Okay, I will collect that. We still have 60 grand left.

It's not a listed item, but can we get, like, vibro knuckles? I'm thinking Bronson could use something that has mdc.

See, I was thinking armor, but that's a great idea.

Armor's overrated. He can have my chest piece.

I wouldn't say no to armor myself.

Yeah, MC was running around naked with a Stark.

Yeah, I mean, you guys can probably get a seat of plastic man for Mr. Cat.

Plastic man is 16 grand.

18.

18 grand.

Okay, that's on page 268, by the way.

We get any kind of bulk discount for just spending so much cash. Come on, man.

Plus that program.

Absolutely not, sir.

Oh, I got the program in there.

Yeah. I'm just saying. And these talismans, they clack around in my hand.

By the way, I'm tracking how much money we have left. You all are putting this shit on your character sheets. And I picked up that plastic band for you, by the way.

Thank you.

I think it's got, like, what, 35 MDC? It's straight garbage. Way more than no compared to our regular health.

It's great, considering that I have no mdc. Yeah.

So you said you wanted to get some kind of knuckles for Bronson. What about, like. So if you look on page 259, there are vibro weapons, and there's like, dog pack spikes and Dog pack spikes blades and.

How much are dog pack spikes?

At least going from the Lone Star prices, anywhere from 50 to 200 credits.

Yeah. Now they are SCC. Is the. Is the downside.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No. Yeah.

So what about. Oh, here we go. No. Triple bladed cat's claw handguard. That is an MD weapon. And it's 11,000. Jesus. I just feel like if we give him a knife or Something he's going to be confused.

You can get him the. The short blade handguard for nine.

Yeah. Nine grand 2d 4md.

Yeah, let's do. If you guys are. If you guys down with that. I. I'm pretty confident that our resident cyborg is on. On team get Bronson stuff.

So we'll get that for Bronson.

Cool.

And I'm looking also. I'd like to get an SDC shotgun, but I'm having trouble finding that in the book. Assuming those aren't stupid prices as well.

I think that actually might be listed.

I feel like I saw it earlier.

In the skill section under the weapon profile. Unusually, I think.

Well, I'll poke around, but assuming it's not too expensive, I would pick that up too. So I can have a gun for that secondhand. It's important.

It definitely would be very reasonable.

Okay, perfect. And you've got the pistol. Did you want armor as well for Riley?

Nah.

Okay, what's that leave us with?

Okay, so I found what you were talking about under the weapon proficiency for shotgun. However, there are no prices there.

I'm looking at the first book. The shotgun looks to be 900.

Screw it. We'll probably hand you the shotgun.

Yeah.

Cool.

There you go.

Yeah. 900 for anywhere from 900 to 300. But the 900 wood is 4D6 damage for buckshot or 5D6 for solid slug.

We may not want to abuse MDC on everything we're dealing with. It's not good for hunting, for example.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, well.

And is somebody like borrow mock. He was just a guy like, you know, shooting him would have been very effective.

Yes, would have been. It's not what he did.

I was hoping to talk to him.

Would have messed up his outfit, but.

Okay, that's true.

And we didn't mess up his outfit.

I think we just murdered him with face shots.

Oh no. Bronson just beat him to death.

Oh yeah, you're right. I forgot. Knocked him down and just wailed.

Okay, you guys returned to experience Dinsmore's house. There's the spare bedroom, second floor she told you about. There's the cellar. There's the yard. There's plenty of places for you guys to sleep. And as you bed down for the night, most of you, your last thought is what the fuck is going on? Is this really real quick note.

Riley may stay up slightly later than everybody else because he has a safe to reprogram, a laptop to hack into, and every tutorial on the new field computer. He got to go through so.

So Riley is just drowning himself in work. Got it? Yep.

As. As is fitting for an engineer with as low an MA as Riley has. He's nerding out. He's got to learn new computer languages. God damn it.

There you go. Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Henry spending the night getting to know Gorshkov.

Henry's hanging out with Gorshkov is going to be made even more exciting when Bronson and Mr. Cat show up and drop a packet at his feet.

12 credit bag.

This becomes an important question. Do you have your original lungs somewhere?

This is something that Henry has been internalizing really hard and trying to wonder.

Like, we're going to find out in a minute.

Yeah, of course you have lungs. Stupid American.

That must be Gorshkov.

I guess all you hear is, don't you be dissing on Lady America Gorshkov.

Look, just roll it and let's get going.

You're bipolar, and I've already kind of figured that out. As a character. I'm starting to wonder if he has multiple personality disorders.

Yeah, no, that would be reasonable. Yeah.

The bag includes a receipt and a business card.

Nice.

That's being saved.

We'll end there for the evening. Nobody lost a limb. So I consider this a success.

Yes.

Mr. Cat is now all a pseudo paladin. Didn't see that coming.

Well, yeah, so when I realized you guys have this dagger and Mr. Cat got it, I was like, oh, no. One of them. That's not good.

I'm not bad.

Oh, no, you're unprincipled. Yeah, you're unprincipled.

I was unprincipled?

Yeah, you were unprincipled.

Okay.

Yeah, Now I'm scrupulous.

Yeah.

I didn't pick. I think my character's probably scrupulous. He's a generally good guy.

Well, that was fun.

So we'll say everybody gets 250 XP for this session.

We need to pick more fights. I need more xp.

Yes. This was a lot of exposition and character exploration.

Like, what were we going to do? Pick a fight with Alexander of Macedon in his gun shop?

No.

That would have been bad.

I'm less worried about Alexander of Macedon, and I'm actually more worried about his gun shop.

Nice.

Yeah, I like. I'm seeing, like, aliens pop turrets and shit.

Yep, that's very reasonable.

Well, any closing thoughts, folks?

That was a blast. Again. I want Bronson as the voice for everything in my life.

We're going to need you to do, like, a Siri voice. That's just Bronson that we could just plug in the device.

Hey, maybe you could get somebody to. To program his. Vaughn. His voice to put into your. Your os.

Yeah.

Replace Gorshkov.

You know, still Gorshkov's personality, but in Bronson's voice.

I can't.

American. You American. I will burn you.

I can't do it right this second, but I'm working towards being able to do that.

Oh, my.

That would be delightful.

Like, I. I have a background plan of, you know, program to make you just, at a mental click of the button, get high as a kite. Like there's a plan.

I do love that. I would watch an entire movie of Bronson and Mr. Krat drunk and going out on the town, painting the town.

Red, as it were.

No, no.

Someone's getting beat to death tonight.

The party goes to sleep, they wake up, and the cat and the dog are gone. And so is the Mountaineer.

A cat driving for the first time while drunk. Oh, my God. Like, you thought Riley's driving was bad.

It's not bad. Yeah. Mr. Cat and Bronson on the town would have the same decorum as a Police Academy movie.

Pretty much, yeah. That would be my hope.

All right, folks, well, we hope you enjoyed it. We are having a lot of fun. Or at least I am.

I am having a blast.

Same. Yeah.

Good stuff.

Yeah, it's. I had a moment earlier, actually, when we pulled into New Laszlo. It was like this moment of brief emotional elation in that I've been playing rifts for, like, 30 years and never once have I taken a party to or myself visited New Laszlo. So in my brain I'm like, somewhere new. It was pretty awesome.

Yeah. Really? Well, nice. Yeah. You know, prepping for the campaign, I was looking. There's not a lot of actual information on New Laszlo in the books. There's hints here and there, but as far as I can tell, it is not really described in detail anywhere.

It's a blank canvas for you then, boss.

Yeah.

Not that that would have stopped me.

From making up, but as it shouldn't now. Yeah.

Yeah.

All right, folks, well, we're gonna go ahead and close this out. Thanks for listening. Thanks for all of the kind words that you have sent our way. We really appreciate it. We've been having a lot of fun. And we're glad you're having a lot of fun listening.

Absolutely.

Catch you next time out.

Starships, magic, mystic martial arts, romance. All of these can be found in a cloak of blades by Isaac Sher. You might have heard my name before. I've done a lot of voiceover work for Breakfast Puppies and I've recently released my first novel. It's available on Amazon as an ebook and paperback and you can get it for free if you have a Kindle unlimited subscription. I do hope you'll support my work as you're supporting Breakfast Puppies, and it's been a pleasure talking with you today.

Have a good one.

You've been listening to the Glitter Boys, a Palladium Books fan podcast. Glitter Boys, Rifts, the Megaverse, and all other such topics are the property of Kevin Sambita and Palladium Books. Please buy all their stuff and help keep them in print and making more games. You can order [email protected] and their entire catalog is available digitally at drivethrurpglobal as well. Our opening music is 8 bit bass and lead by furbyguy from freesound.org this closing music is Caravana by Philip Gross, available at freemusicarchive.org all sound effects used are self made or acquired via Creative Commons zero License. If you like what you have heard, find us on Twitter and Facebook as TheGlitterBoys. That's B O I S and check us out [email protected] glitterboys and also join us on the Breakfast Puppies network [email protected] Discord and if you want to help us out, please spread the word and help us build a community. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you next time.