#201 – Set the Scene #1 (After the Bomb)

Breakfast puppies.

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Hey, everybody. This is GM John from the Real Play Games podcast, and you're listening to one of my favorite podcasts, the Glitter Boys.

Our camera opens on a shot of a wide, almost flat valley between four large but low hills somewhere in what was once rural East Coast America. It's an hour or so before sunset. The air is refreshingly clear. Stars are just starting to appear. The moon is already visible in its waxing gibbous state. We see a few miles of bombed out land. The husks of old buildings, both residential and commercial. Wrecks of helicopters and ground combat vehicles. Long tracts of exploded highway cutting through scattered swaths of shelled homesteads. You know, Eastern America. We're about to catch up with a group that is on a mission. The Academic Underground has sent this team on a job to dig through a site in the Blue Hills, discovered thanks to some intel fed to the Academic Underground from the cattle vis a vis some friends in the rodent cartel.

Many Bothans died for this information.

Well, so there were coordinates to a sealed vault in the ruins. A scouting team found it, figured they couldn't break in after numerous attempts of explosive entry, none of which worked. Found some functional electrical panels. Could not find anybody in their communities who was good enough to break in and figured that the contents within were probably valuable enough that they needed to outsource. Word got around and eventually that word came to you. Jacob Sirf, tell us a little about yourself.

Surf was found as an orphan by a local chapter of the Academic Underground and was taken in. Got kind of grabbed up by the electrical engineering department of the local chapter because he wasn't dumb, but he wasn't exactly bright either. And the thought of having this gigantic elk to carry around spools of wire and move heavy equipment and stuff seemed useful. He basically grew up as an apprentice electrician and with a interest in antiquarianism and does odd jobs for the Academic Underground, you know, going out to communities that they are trying to build good relationships with and do their version of rural electrification and stuff. So, yeah, that's his gig.

It's early spring. Oh, fuck. What does your head look like as we see you sitting in the back of this large converted. What was once an F something 50 that now has like a fortified flatbed in the back. Well, with all of those electrical spools that you just described.

Apparently I'm riding in the back because it's early spring. My horns are starting to Come in. I'm irritable constantly with a knife, scratching felt off of them. It's, you know, I'm in my early 20s, so I'm only about a four point stag at this point in my life. And yeah, they're a good 6 to 8 inches out from my head at this point.

Okay. Sitting back there with you in this flatbed converted F50 of a truck is a fellow with a gun and multiple arms. What does the camera see?

The camera zooms in on little Skip. He's about 30ft, 30 inches tall, not 30ft, kind of big for his size, but it's kind of hidden up in this mass of eight tentacles and this big bulbous head that sits out of what basically is a poncho. And he's, he's kind of quiet. People have figured out he's pretty young. He's only about 16. Has a pack that he carries or drags as he crawls along the floor. Not quickly either. So he moves around, has a couple little harnesses on the outside of the poncho. So the things he needs to quickly do, always chipper, always helpful. Like, oh, he'll do the cooking, he'll do the cleaning, he'll clean up with a camp and police everything. He'll dig the latrine. Super helpful, super optimistic. Feels a little inadequate around the big elk because the elk could just like miss and sit on him. And like he's kind of worried about that. But he's tough, he's tough. He can do it, he can do it. It's fine. My PA always said that you got to be helpful and everyone will think you're helpful if you're doing helpful things. And that's kind of what you see. It's basically an octopus out of the water. And he's really weird looking, but he's handy. He's quite handy. So, you know, he's a little guy. His name's Skip.

Skip. How did you get sucked into working with the academic underground?

Well, it's a funny story. Pa always said that if he died that I'd have to leave the cabin eventually because I couldn't be there on my own. So I went wandering down out of the hills of Arkansas and ended up in the mid, out in the open area of the valley, Ohio valley there and kind of got, just sucked up in this whole little adventure finding one of the small towns and hamlets and they said they were going to find some stuff. And he's like, well, I don't really like towns. I'm not used to big towns. And big towns to him is about 100 people in the same area.

So you somehow going from town to town, came all the way from Arkansas to essentially outside of Philly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He just kind of wandered his way. You know, Pa always said, you know, rolling stone gathers no moss. So he's just been kind of oozing his way along the forest and plains floors as he's been moving along, picking up stuff, doing helpful things for people, you know. Okay, okay.

Yeah, yeah. The camera turns, pans, goes through the window in the back of this pickup truck, over the shoulder of a fellow sitting shotgun fella holding a baseball bat, lovingly knowing that any moment now they're going to get to use it.

Yeah. When you see Miles, he is virtually indistinguishable from what you would imagine, like the archetypal human being would be, probably circa 2025 or so. Except he is absolutely muscularly shredded, this guy. It's very clear. One would assume if you looked at him in the current day, that he is on steroids. He has very flat dark hair that's perfectly quaffed, Absolutely perfectly quaffed at a side part. And he has a large yellowish white kind of poncho slash jacket combination with a hood on it over top of a pink T shirt that stops right about halfway down his stomach. And in black lettering reads Daddy right across it.

We got a femboy chimpanzee.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Pretty.

He also has a pair of black hot pants underneath of a pair of brown khaki pants that are cut off at the knees. And he's wearing sandals.

Is he wearing socks and sandals?

Oh, no, no, no socks. The pigs are out completely. He has the dogs walking right now.

Is he. Is he by chance played by John Cena?

Facially, he looks very much like John Cena because he is, rather than being a human, actually a chimpanzee, which we all know.

John Cena is a chimpanzee.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he is a pretty boy, not very intelligent whatsoever. And he was actually kidnapped from an ape family, or rather chimpanzee family, as a child and raised within the empire of humanity on a plantation as a human child until he was liberated when the plantation was overthrown by a bunch of people trying to get the slaves freed. They didn't really know what to do with the kids, so he just kind of drifted with the most responsible people out of the people that ended up storming the plantation and ended up in a cat house in Philly because he's so pretty. After that he drifted a little southward and ended up in Cardania.

So how did you end up working with the academic underground on a field trip? Girlfriend. Okay, sure.

Ex girlfriend.

Okay. And that leads to another question specifically for you. As somebody who has worked, quote unquote, worked with or for the empire of humanity in the past in a. In an unpaid internship, let's just say. What are your thoughts on them?

Well, I'll describe it without his words because he has no animus towards them whatsoever because he is not necessarily smart enough to realize the conditions that he was living under at the time. I mean, he's been on his own for a couple of years now, but he's really powerfully dumb. He even was very much an embarrassment to the people that stole him and tried to pass him off as their own because he cannot add. And he is barely literate, barely able to speak American. And yeah, overall, just not a very bright fellow whatsoever. But he's genial. He loves being around people and speaking to them.

Do any of you have radio skill? Why yes, you do. Excellent. You are also currently the radio operator of this mission. Not only are you the specialist, you are the crucial communicator. You connected with a radio, have regular communications with an operator working with the academic underground from a remote location who is more or less guiding you in this mission. Not 100% like mission command or anything, but they're keeping you updated with whatever things and they are relaying information that you give to them of your findings. You all have code names. Best part is I bet the HIMBO is not going to remember it despite them being very simple. Your codenames are Sierra or Surf, Delta, Skip, Foxtrot, Smiles. Tango is your radio contact. Now Tango, you know to be a Boston raised cat, goes by the name of Marvin. And then finally your driver. They may have had a code name, but they have never responded to it. They only respond to and they only ever say Bear. Bear is your driver. Bear is a very large bear. Bear is only slightly shorter than Sierra and that's only because of the handlers. This is a large forward rebuilt pre flash vehicle and Bear is crammed into it holding that, that, that steering wheel real close to his chest, hunched over it. His head is like pushed forward into the window. His eyes are almost pressed against it. Let's step backwards a bit. Your group came to check out this vault door, how it was pitched to you and when you arrived eventually at the scene, through much adventuring and much traveling and much having to deal with some of the Locals with the plains of cattle and a strange group of insects that had set up in a building nearby and considered this their hunting ground, finally managed to find this vault door and the building that it was underneath. Second level basement. Now the basement itself was mostly collapsed, but the rest of the building was fairly intact. Looked to be some kind of a science research lab out here in the middle of nowhere. But it wasn't your main goal. It looked mostly picked over. The treasure was just sliding down the rubble of the collapsed two floors of basement to find what looked like could have been a bank vault of some kind. But a lot more high tech. We're going to get to our first roll. Pitch me an electronic skill of some kind. Serf to break into this vault that still strangely has power.

Weird. Okay.

So for folks listening at home, we're going to do a skill check. While ADM skills are fairly open ended, oftentimes it's not a single skill for a single task. You can usually find and make an excuse for various skills to work in any situation. Sometimes basic electronics could work. Sometimes electrical engineer could do the same thing, but with a bonus. It all depends upon the pitch that you make.

To me he's going to using electrical engineering, going to look over the safe. Since it's a powered safe, that means its mechanism is somehow driven by electrical. I have a sneaking suspicion it's a magnetically actuated vault. So I'm going to try to pop open a maintenance panel and force it to reverse its polarity, causing it to flip its pistons back.

Okay. I like that. Electrical engineering. We're just gonna roll it as is. So that's a D100 or you know, D percentile. You wanna roll under your skill.

I rolled a 14. I am very much under my skill.

Okay. I would hope so. Yeah.

Wow.

You get to work at this as soon as your group arrived there this morning. Set up camp the night before. Really only had like one dangerous thing out in the wild. And it wasn't even the insects. The insects were easy enough to deal with. You just sort of avoided them. They seemed to be hungry and they didn't really seem to be hungry for anything that you had to offer. Strange. But the only danger was a camp that you saw a couple miles deeper into the valley that looked to be an empire of humanity. Forward operating base. They had some helicopters, looked like they were out here doing something. But nothing that they were doing seemed to be heading south into the valley to your location. So it was easy enough to avoid them. That was most of the morning. Late morning, you arrive here, start working on the vault. During that time, the rest of you are either keeping watch or I don't know what is it that y' all are up to.

So Skip, trying to be helpful, would be wandering around kind of a larger area, kind of, we'll call it a forward observer, a scout, and looking for tracks or traps or anything, because that empire humanity, folks, those are the one things my paw said I got to be careful about because I'm not human and I don't want to live in the Empire. Skip is bright, but doesn't have a lot of context. Just as Pa always said that they weren't good folk. And so I'd be looking around to see if maybe there were signs that they had been here or something had been here. Even though we were told that it kind of isolated, you know, Pa always said, you know, two birds in the hand is better than one in the bush. So he would, you know, kind of look around, look around and try to make sure that they weren't setting themselves up for an ambush. So.

And I know Miles would be staring directly where he been been. He had been instructed to stare by somebody who told him to watch a direction. He would not really deviate from it. He might sit down, but otherwise would just sit there. If somebody speaks to him, he'll acknowledge them, but otherwise he's just going to stare straight arrow ahead where he's been told to do so. And he does have advanced vision. He gets that free as a primate.

So gotcha. So you're basically laser focused in whatever direction somebody last pointed.

That's right.

Got it. Bear is in the car. He hasn't moved. He's just waiting. You're not sure if he can leave the car. He hasn't complained. Bears literally said like maybe three words to you, and one of them is bear.

Bear, right.

Do you have detect ambush, Buckley, or something along those lines?

I do have tracking. I don't have detect ambush. And of course I have danger sense and I have trapping. So real quick.

Danger sense, that's the ability or skill,

that's the psychic ability. Basically anything within 30 to 90ft is actually imminently going to try to hurt me. Gives me some willed, you know, some got notice.

Here's what we're going to do. I want you to set something like a flag or something aside to make a note that your danger sense is going to kick in in just a moment. Okay? You're going to know when it's going to kick in. I just need you to remind me of that.

Okay.

It'll be obvious. Just remind me.

Yep.

Skip, I'll have you go ahead and roll tracking just to see if perhaps it could affect the situation. Okay, I will do that. And again, this is D100 skill. What's your tracking skill percentage at?

35.

And what'd you roll?

I got a 58.

58. Okay, well, that's a failure. Y But again, this isn't necessarily a, you know, a win lose situation. We're just trying to see if it's going to affect the situation somehow. So we'll get to that in a moment.

Absolutely.

The job is fairly quick though. You're here for maybe an hour and half of that hour is kind of finding the best way down the rubble and ensuring you have a way back up. So a good 30 minutes or so, that surface down there, just pulling away at wires, trying to connect things, following leads, getting up, looking at panels, ripping open other parts of the walls to see if the leads continue in the direction that he thinks they're going to. And you finally crack that vault. There is a KA chunk and then a whirr and then this weird sound of metal first like grinding and then popping open and then a hiss of air as the seal is broken and then it completely powers down. So you have about 2 inches of space to grab and open this vault the rest of the way. Because that last little bit of power, emergency power that was holding this vault closed, sees that its job is done and gives up the ghost. Unfortunately, it also controls the hydraulics.

Machine. No work.

So I'm gonna jam the haft of my bridiche polearm into that 2 inch space, try to lever it open.

Okay. Okay. Okay. What's your first off? What's your physical strength? Your PS score, one of the eight attributes, folks, just in case you didn't

know, my PS is a 38.

Okay. Wow.

Wow.

All right. What is that haft made of?

Wood?

Okay, what is your IQ?

16.

All right, all right, here's what I'll have you do. This is going to be kind of an off the cuff roll. We're going to make. Your strength. You got it covered?

Yeah.

Your strength has this covered. Your IQ is 16. So this has only ever appeared in a couple of very obscure references in some of the Palladium books. But it's also made very heavily focused on in Value of the Pharaohs. And we're going to kind of fall back to this method and that is the stat check. There's multiple ways that Palladium has done stat Checks. But I think this is the most effective. You take your stat, multiply it by five.

Which stat?

IQ. IQ, yeah.

Okay, so that would be a 70.

Okay.

No, I have, no, my IQ is fine, 65. So I have a IQ of 16 and I'm terrible at math.

80. Yep, 80. So you have an 80% chance of success at this test.

That looks like a 60 to me, sir.

Okay. This check is very simply to have you pick up on the moment when you think that your polearmor is about to snap and stop applying your ridiculous amount of pressure.

For the record, I don't have either of the two strength upgrades, so I didn't just grab it and rip it open, which I could have.

But you don't think that your stick is going to be able to have enough leverage to open this vault. However you think you might be able to with the assistance of some buddies.

I come walking up, I'm going to need a hand. Hey, wait a minute. I think for a moment, can I. Is it open enough where you can see into the vault at all?

It's open. It's like open like 2 inches.

So it's open enough where you can actually see into the vault?

2 inches on the side.

Right.

So you can kind of see in. Did any of you buy flashlights?

Oh, why yes I did.

I have a hand crank flashlight.

So do I. I come out going like, I'm gonna need a hand. And suddenly I turn and I look at Skip. Hey.

Yeah.

I remember reading in some biology textbooks that like octopus were real squishy and could like pull themselves into really tight spots.

Well, kind, kind maybe.

Do you think you can fit through a two inch crack?

Well, Pa always said that it's easier to fly through the needle of an eye than it is to stack feathers on top of angels. So I could try.

Come on down and look at this crack. I want to see if you think you can squeeze your way in there.

Okay.

Okay. You go up, you look at the crack. You were quite certain there's no way that you can fit through at your current size level.

Right.

Had you remained at your original, this would be no problem.

I'm guessing my beak is too big.

Yep.

To get through that. I'm like looking at it and. No, I, I don't reckon I can. I can get in there. No, I'm a bit bigger than that. I, I, I'm, I'm. You look pretty. The pretty boy over there, he probably could help you. That's my guess.

We got something we can do here. I walk Back out. Because, you know, I, despite being a hulking mass of meat myself, tend to go with initially the most elegant non destructive method first. So like, oh, look, we have an octopus. Something known that's known for sticking itself inside Coke bottles that are smaller than it.

Yeah, but he's like, yeah, significantly larger than a Coke bottle.

But it's a 2 inch crack that runs from, you know, pretty fit.

I could get most of my body in there and then my beak would go, nope, nope, I'm stuck.

I vaguely consider asking the chimpanzee if he's packing lube and then discount it and walk over to the truck and knock on the window.

Bear, Bear,

I need you to help me open something.

His head just sort of turns to the left and looks at you.

Driver, I need you to drive open a door.

Dah. And then there's just like creaking and cranking and groaning as the door just sort of pops open. The bear, just one leg at a time, extracts him himself from the driver's compartment, not driver's seat at this point. It's a compartment of the F750 and steps follows you in.

I watched the F150 lift up as all the weight goes off the spring.

You're actually afraid that when it like pops up and pops down that like the axle might break. But no, no, it seems to be heavily modified on the left side of the vehicle.

I was going to say they replaced the leaf and shocks on the left

side, but only on the left. On the left side. It's up 6 inches on the left side right now.

But, you know, and he just lumbers slowly in that direction.

All right, come on, you two, we may need a hand here.

Okay, after you, Foxtrot.

And Miles, by the way, is just laying down on the ground now with both of his elbows on it and hands on the sides of his face, kind of kicking his leg back a little bit.

Perfect pinup pose. That's Foxtrot. That's your.

Oh, oh, oh.

That's you, that's you. Come on.

Yeah, me, me, me.

Yeah, you. Yeah, yeah, go help them open things.

And he does a little model strut right over to there.

Come on, Skip.

I'm not, I'm not all that. I'll help, I'll try.

I mean, worst case scenario, we get it open another couple inches and we

can shove you through moral support.

I'm not sure I like this idea, but okay.

It's the job, Skip.

It's the job. Okay, I can do it.

With the combined strength of surf. I already forgot his name. Miles. With the combined strength of surf, Miles and bear, you're able to open that door. One of you sets the feet on the edge and is pulling. Another one sets feet on the door and is pushing, and then the other one's standing in between, going left and right, just sort of prying apart. The three of you working together are able to crank it another good foot or so. Definitely large enough for at least the octopus to get in.

And at that point, you know, Skip will feel okay. Yeah. And he'll get in his pack, he'll pull out his crank flashlight and get it cranking up. And he'll have his pistol in his other hand and his shotgun in another hand. And, you know, he'll be ready to, you know, he'll kind of look in with the flashlight and see what he sees.

You go in, start shining that light around. And I need you to tell me why this was a completely disappointing mission.

Because it's a empty bank vault filled with receipts from the last bank run before the flash. So there's basically a stack of faded receipt paper just. That's all that's in there. And empty bands of bucks. Just blank bands. And there's nothing else in this entire vault. And one broken computer. And a skeleton of the last bank employee who locked himself in the vault, thinking that that would save him, but forgetting that he had no way of opening the vault from the inside. And that's all that we. That's all that Skip sees in the entire thing.

Not just a skeleton. That's like a mummified corpse.

Yeah, it's desiccated. It's a desiccated skeleton with sunken skin. And the guy is wearing. Actually, the guy looks a lot like Miles. He has like a Bermuda shirt on and shorts and sandals.

Miles does go in and look over the clothes that it's wearing, but it just shakes his head.

But he doesn't have the physique that Miles has. You know, he's. He's a much scrawnier guy.

On the plus side, there is consolation. The guy had stuff in his pockets.

Yeah.

What was it?

Car keys to a Toyota Prius and house keys. A wallet with some idiots. Bunch of really weird pictures of women in scantily dressed clothing with phone numbers that. Like a stack of these business card things, little plastic cards, A whole pocket full of change. Pocket knife, a. A. Actually a really nice Swiss army knife in his wallet. Of course, there's some sort of plastic sealed thing that's fairly desiccated at this Point. It's all rubbery and it's very small, about 2 inches by 2 inches. A flask. An empty flask. A nice empty flask. And that's really all that the guy had in his pockets. I mean, he thought I would say.

He also has a cell phone.

A cell phone.

Oh, but it's dead.

Oh, yeah, it's very dead. Very dead. Yeah. Yep.

Its battery was leaking a long time ago.

Yep. That's it. That's all you found in the vault.

Oh, man.

And it is that memory of disappointment that is sitting with all of you as we flash back. All of you in this truck leaving about an hour before sunset, heading back to your camp. You haven't quite figured out what you're going to tell the back home. You got the radio connection. They have asked you for information on it. You haven't quite put together the right story yet. Working on it. And that's when all of the faces that we're looking at in the cameras, we realized that they're not all content. They're actually quite fearful and tense because not a split second ago they almost ran over another person. A human startled them. The bear quickly turned and had to run the the truck off the side of the road and managed just barely to hold on and not flip it over. And then you realize that that person that you almost hit was much larger than a person should be. Very shiny, very white, very heavy, very armored. And that's when the first artillery shell hits the road in front of you.

Oh, that's not good.

A scouting group from the empire of humanity consisting of at least one power armored soldier. Oh, crap. Now I am going to roll a pilot test for Bear.

Cause Bear.

Okay, that's a 10. That's much better than what it could have been. A 10. Yes. He grabs on and again this steering wheel is press against his chest. And when the steering wheel turns, you kind of see his whole body shifts a bit as if he's rolling with it. And you kind of feel not just the turning of the vehicle, but his shifting of his positioning in the car. Also changing the weight ratio distribution of

vehicle itself makes for very quick like left turns, like he shifts all his weight down.

You hear bullets. You feel some clink, clink, clink, and some punctures as they start to hit the vehicle. You see flashes of light in the fading line. You turn back. Anybody who is looking in the back sees that there is a fellow in this gleaming white powered armor that is now just running after the vehicle. We're heading in a Direction Bear decides that he is not going to head directly towards the camp because he's not an idiot and he's going to take a completely different route and try and lose these guys. Only one of you has a gun, right?

I have a shotgun and a pistol.

I have a pistol or I have a revolver, technically.

Okay. Are you going to try and take any shots at the guy following you?

Yes, I will.

Yes, I am.

Absolutely. I will take a shot with a shotgun because I use slugs, not birdshot.

Okay. I will have both of you if you want, you can take a shot. We're not gonna go through combat rounds on this. Not yet.

I rolled a 19.

A 19 will hit whatever it is that you're aiming at.

I was expecting it to be like a nine.

I rolled a 16.

Okay. Okay. Well, do either of you have strike bonuses to these from your 19 will penetrate any armor?

I have a weapon proficiency shotgun, so I believe default that's +3 if you had the proficiency. So it'd be a. It's a modified 22 sans any variables from shooting from the back of a moving truck.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. Do you, Jacob, have any?

Yes, I do. I get the standard weapon proficiency bonus for revolver, which I did not write down because I'm an idiot.

I think it's also the plus three.

I think so too.

It's either a plus three or it might even be a plus four. I think that's right.

I think it's a plus four. Yeah.

If it is a plus four, then you definitely. You both hit this figure that is

running at you and I can't remember. And after the bomb, this is where rift system palladium systems occasionally differ. Do you get. Do you add PP?

No.

Nope. Okay, cool. So, yeah, I got either 19 or 21 of the two.

Both of those rolls will beat an 18 AR, which as we know from our discussion on the after the bomb in our previous episode, that these armors are heinous.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, I'll have both of you roll your damage. Okay,

I got 12. I hit for 12 points of damage.

12, 17, 20, 26, 28 damage total.

Okay. It's a pistol and a shotgun.

Shotgun.

An Angus.48 Magnum revolver

combined to 20 gauge. So it is 3D6.

So how much was that, Jacob?

That was 28.

28. So 12. So. Okay, got it. Here's how this goes. You are doing the skid move and trying your best to both hold on. In the trunk or in the trunk? In the bed of this trunk as bear. Just Doing this fast and the Furious kind of trying to Tokyo drift its way around the corner in this F250. Fortunately, bear is smart enough to know the weight displacement ratio of the vehicle with him as it. He's actually really fucking good at driving. And does it in such a way that it's almost like an ice skating skid through gravel. Okay. That's the moment that it just momentarily catches up with you. It leaps up, lands not fully in the back, but enough to grab onto the back of it. And as it gets close, you raise your magnum and just fire off one like right into its face. And it flinches. And it's reaching over to grab when a shotgun blast just knocks it off. And it just goes rolling, tumbling.

Keep going, Bear.

You hear what's that I'm clapping in the front seat.

You hear a start to get closer from up ahead.

Oh, no.

As the air around you, the pressure starts to change just a little bit. That sound is coming from a distance. Any of you who have heard helicopters know this sound. One thing leads to another, leads to another, leads to another. There's bullets flying. This thing gets closer and closer. You at one point manage to lead it over a bridge and just shoot it. And it falls off the bridge, you're like, yeah. When the second one appears in front of you and you bear just like, instead of trying to swerve, just puts the pedal down and slams into hits it. It tries to brace itself. It is just. It's strong, but it is not 80 miles an hour, F250 strong. And it gets knocked back. You all get knocked around. I'm gonna have each of you. There's a thing you can do in palladium called roll with impact.

Yeah.

Because I'm assuming nobody was wearing their seatbelts.

I don't think there's seat belts in the back anyway.

Yeah.

No seatbelt.

If I was gonn foxtrot slash miles that what seatbelts were, he might have put them on, but if no one told him so.

Roll. So this is a roll with impact. You want to get a 12 or higher?

Yeah, I got a four.

Okay. Okay.

I have a plus five on this roll.

Balance.

That is a seven. Plus five. 12.

Exactly. Perfect.

I rolled a 15.

This is going to hurt.

Gotcha. Anybody who did not succeed at that roll takes 22 damage. Anybody who did succeed at it takes 11. Now, as you are thrown from the

vehicle, what was the target again?

12. 12.

12.

Okay. Thank God.

I'm assuming that my armor doesn't take this because this Is actually happening to me.

This is happening to you?

Yeah, yeah. 22.

Unless your armor is an airbag.

No, no, I don't think it is. It's a silk poncho kind of thing. So that's not an airbag.

It's not an airbag.

It's not an airbag.

Skip is an airbag.

Oh oh. The sound of an octopus hitting the

ground at high speed.

What does it sound like? An octopus gets thrown from a truck at 80 miles an hour.

The truck and the armor go off and it's just the three of you left. No sign of where Bear and the armor went. There is a crunch and a bang and a roll and then a boom and then they are gone beyond a hill and then there's a larger boom and a big of smoke goes up. Meanwhile, you look to your right and there is the shelled out ruin of an old strong building. Okay, I say building. It looks to be an old raggedy shipping crate of some kind that has been shoved inside an old raggedy shipping crate of some kind that then in turn has been shoved inside the ruin of like a old helicopter. But it is buried a bit. It is off the path and you don't see anybody tracing you.

So Skip will quickly point it out, say, okay, let's, let's. Hopefully bear is fine, but let's go take cover over here. Because papa always said hiding in the bush is better than waving your ass out in the middle of nowhere.

As he's going on with his folks ism, I grab him by the poncho and start running towards with him in one hand, grabbing the chimp by the scruff of his neck in the other and just hoofing it. Literally.

Okay. In the distance you hear some gunfire and you also hear the of the helicopter. It gets closer and then it goes away. You hear static come through suddenly on your radio followed by Sierra, over. Come in.

I ignore them for the moment as I toss the two in the shipping container and dive in after them. And then I grab the radio and go, Sierra over.

Sierra, what's going on? We've got sounds of things happening out there. I've got some things happening on the radar here.

We ran into a little bit of a complication. Transport is nixed at the moment. Don't know about the driver. Everybody else is. A glance around seems to be okay,

wait, wait, I'm sorry. What about the driver?

Last I saw going over the side of a bridge.

Oh God, no, not Bear. He's on loan.

It's unbearable.

Poor Bear.

The Cartel is going to kill us if we don't return him.

Well, he might be okay. I'm like yelling from the back as I start to, I will, you know, I start to try to apply some, some, some camouflage to this container so that people don't see us. Because I'm thinking we're going to be hunkering down here.

Got it. As this conversation's happening and this, you know, stressful back and forth yelling on the radio, you're out trying to camouflage things and you notice in the ground where the base of this inner crate would be is another sealed door. And it looks high tech, like, like somebody installed in a shipping crate some crazy ass futuristic hand scanner panel wires going all around it. In fact there's tiny little blinking lights at different corners of it. Like, I don't know, maybe your PA once watched this show called like Battlestar Galactica or something like that. But this could. This looks like some fucking alien shit, huh?

Maybe we were given the wrong directions. And I go back in like, hey, hey Sierra, could you come and take a look at this real quick?

Are you sure that's a priority?

Yeah, yeah I am.

Really?

I mean come quick.

Just I truck over there and I'm like, oh, okay, obviously the priority.

Sarah, oh Sarah, come in, can't read you, over.

And I immediately just get to work with monomaniacal focus on trying to figure out how to override the lock.

Okay.

It's a handprint scanner obviously. Thankfully I also have locksmith, so there's some advantage there. And I'm going to go to town seeing if I can override this.

Okay. I'm going to turn this into a three step skill challenge. We're going to start with whatever skill you want lead into a second skill that you nominate up yourself and a third skill, whatever. Knowing the skills that you have. I know at least one of those skills is going to be electrical engineering and another one of those skills is going to be locksmith. Now either you, if you have another skill that is applicable can bring it or if somebody else in the group is like, oh shit, I just happen to have security systems overrides as a skill or something, you can bring it into play.

Is there a haircut portion of that lock

barbering apply? I mean if you have locksmithing, that trumps my lock picking or my picking locks really.

So we will provide necessarily. Are you good at it?

We're all equally good or bad at our skills. Well actually you have one more point of intelligence you may have bonus.

I'll tell you what? Let's just start with electrical engineering or locksmith. Your pick.

I'm going to start with electrical engineering.

Okay, Roll it. The percentile under your skill, that's a failure. Okay, what'd you get?

I rolled a 72 over 67.

Not the worst. So it's not going to end the situation. It's just going to make your second skill check a little more difficult. So we're going to go for locksmith. And because you failed at this one, but you didn't fail by much, you're just going to have a 5% penalty on that. All right,

5% penalty. So I got to get under a 22. That's not happening.

Okay.

Jacob's bad luck is I rolled a 95.

95. Okay. No, this is gonna be good.

When the GM says no, this is gonna be good. It's gonna be good for someone, not necessarily the players. We'll see how this goes.

Improper credentials supplied. Please present for visual scan.

I shove Miles in front of the scanner. He's the most human looking out of all of us. I quickly grab Miles and kind of shuffle him in front.

And there's like that green, green scanning triangle that we're all used to of the little lights that come out and go up and down Miles's face. Miles, what's your physical beauty?

Miles has an 18 physical beauty.

Okay, so you have a 90% chance of succeeding at this.

I rolled a 17.

17.

Okay, pretty boy. He's paid for the thing.

Identification clarified. Proper military haircut identified. Welcome, Captain. And the door opens up.

I just give the biggest grin, too.

The door goes, opens up. It slides left and right as if it's like a subway door. Just zoo. And then it goes. You drop straight down and there's like a cramped compartment beneath you full of boxes that are just kind of old and decaying. Like some cardboard boxes and a couple of crates. They don't look to have been smashed open, but they do look to have been smashed from an impact of some kind. Otherwise, it's dark. Sarah, there's coming in two, coming fast.

You deal with the radio. I start kind of like octopiing over, carefully opening up things and taking a look at what the hell is in here.

Meanwhile, I'm going to use radio basic, trying to clean up the signal despite the interference.

Okay.

Miles is actually just going to like, wander off and head back towards where they came into this.

Don't go too far. Oh, shit.

We'll start with the radio.

Roll 23. That actually is pretty good. My radio Is, you know, like 67. Okay, cool.

We'll get to that in a second. All right, so you just like drop in there?

Yeah, I just gotta kind of do my octopus thing down and you do

your octopus thing drop. Yep, yep. Got it in my brain. I know exactly how this looks. It's awesome. Octopi are great. Or octopuses. I think it's octopuses. I think that's the actual plural.

I think it can be both. Anyway, it doesn't matter.

Anyway, you drop down and within a few moments there is a. The door seals behind you.

Oh, shit.

Unauthorized access detected unescorted by military personnel will be expelled in 20, 19, 18.

Help. I squid. Cover the entire container with 20ft of black inky gas and try to hide in a corner.

Okay. Meanwhile, radio is kicking back in. Yep, two bogeys coming in fast. Sierra, please come in. Please verify Sierra.

Yeah, I. I can hear you now. We're. We're in a little bit of a tight spot.

Oh, yeah, just got tighter. You got two bogeys flying in.

Oh, crap.

Intercept vector looks like aircraft on foot.

Repeat, we are on foot and

Skip's call sign is Delta.

Delta is attempting to secure a location for us. And where the hell did the chimp go?

Where did the chimp go?

Yeah, he just started wandering back towards where he'd been tossed in originally in the first place because he didn't reach really under one.

He.

He's barely aware that he's called Foxtrot. So if anybody ever refers to a man, there's a good chance he'll ignore them the first time.

Hey, pretty boy, get back here.

Oh, he'll do. So he complies instantly. He's. He was just looking for something to do. And he'll run back and he's got a 19 speed, so he can do so really quickly.

I mean, I just figured you'd respond to pretty boy.

You grab him and, you know, bring him over. And that's when you catch out of the corner of your eye that there is now a status panel that is appeared on the door. That panel was not there a moment ago. And that panel has a countdown to purifying insides going down and down.

I quit.

Decontamination protocol.

Grabbing the champ. I put him back in front of the scanner again.

Just smiles at the scanner.

Welcome back, captain. The door opens up, there's.

And it's just black. This black cloud just kind of comes out. It doesn't have any real smell to it. It's just this black inky cloud floats out of the Compartment.

I'm thinking this has all happened so quickly that it happens almost exactly at the moment you spray. Yeah. So it's just like. It's not just like a cloud, it's like a fountain.

It's black stuff flying up.

Yeah.

Don't put Skip in a box.

He doesn't like it. And. Heavy footsteps are out sounding outside.

Ah, shit. Unless somebody wants to go before surf.

No, well, I'd be trying to crawl out of the box. That's about it. I don't want to be in here anymore.

This is a little meta. I know, but I'm going to using.

Shit.

John, what's the name of your character again?

Miles.

Miles.

I'm going to use Miles in front of me to just push him into the box that Skip is trying to come out and shove myself in afterwards, just to hopefully the door will close and I can figure out a way afterwards because going toe to toe with a revolver against battle suit doesn't sound like a good plan.

Okay, yeah, you push him down and like drop down on top of him because it is a straight drop down. And you find yourself in a shipping crate just like the one that you were just in. Almost like the one that you were in was stacked on top of it. And it's full of boxes, crates that have some of which are. I'll tell you what, there's like a dozen crates in here. And you know, we're thinking shipping crate. Like these are the kind that you see. Full size shipping crate can be dropped onto the back of a train cart kind of thing. There's about a dozen crates in here, varying sizes, half of which are metal, the other half are wood or some kind of a composite. All the non metal ones are just smashed apart. And it doesn't look like somebody came through and smashed looks like they were smashed apart when this thing got thrown around somehow. Of the metal crates, three of which are still strapped in, the other three, their straps just broke and then they just bounced, bounce, bounce and just, you know, got dents all over, haphazardly strewn all around. As you drop in and the lights go out, tiny little lights begin appearing at the corners, providing a dim illumination. And you look up and the door that you came in is gone. Up above you hear a thump, thump, thump. As if something moving around and nothing but static on the radio.

Well, at least they'll have a hard

time getting in here.

I hope so.

The lights begin to keep lighting up around the edges of the crate, the floor. And then once they reach to a point that Is more or less geometrically crisscrossed with the position of Miles. The lights then begin to appear closer and closer to his feet, Coming in at a crisscross pattern until they have intersected where he is standing, then begin to glow. And then more solid lights begin to glow, leading away from him to the wall in front.

That whole thing is going to terrify

Miles, by the way.

Miles, I think it wants you to go to the wall, like follow it. It's like lights on the dance floor, Miles. Just follow the lights. Just go to the light, Miles.

Okay, as soon as you say lights on the dance floor, that immediately prompts him to make a dance track.

This is great. Why did you bring this guy?

Oh, he doesn't dance well either. He got, ironically a 69, but he only has a 40.

So he's basically there twerking

and not twerking.

Well, twerking calms his nerves.

Throws it back the whole way to the door.

Yep, he twerks us back up.

He backs it up.

He backs that truck up to the door.

Okay, so you.

And scene.

Yeah, he. So the lights go up to the wall and then they open to the left. They move to the left and right around the floor. And then at about like two and a half feet to either direction, they begin to work their way up, up, up, up, up, up, up. And then like a door shaped aperture appears and opens up in the wall. Oh, please. On the other side you see a completely identical room minus the crates. And on the far wall, lights begin to appear seemingly at random. Almost like that pattern from the matrix that so many people have as their screensaver. Afterwards, lights start to kind of flow downward and. But it's not an infinite flow. They flow down and they start to meet and some of them start to form shapes that begin to flow out as the lights are forming.

Sierra, do you have any idea what this is? Pa never told me about this.

I got nothing. Actually, I might have something. I might have something. Okay, I'm going to roll my Aquarian skill. Antiquarian skill.

Oh, okay, sure, roll it and tell me what you get.

Antiquarian's a useful one. Not used in many other palladium systems. Knowledge of historical and ancient artifacts, including the ability to accurately appraise relics and antiques, including basic understanding of precious stones and metals, and in this case, and early pre crash technologies and artifacts.

Yeah, okay, so yeah, this is. That's great. Love it.

Miles just points at the lights and says, fireflies.

Well, just. Just hold on, Miles. We might. Might. You might get to chase the fireflies. Just hold on. Let's.

Let's rolling under a 42 here. An 18. I'm liking that.

This is clearly some kind of pre. What was the word?

Flash.

Flash. Pre Flash. Technology. Clearly of military from the way that it is talking. But you don't really know anything about sentient military shipping crates.

Nope, nope, I don't.

There wasn't an entire class in that apprenticeship of yours about sentient pre. Flash.

Yeah.

Shipping crates.

Yeah.

Were you sick that day? Geez. All those skills and no knowledge about sentient pre. Flash shipping crates. You call yourself an apprentice?

Yeah. Shame on you. You should turn that degree back in.

Degree? Look, man, I'm only a journeyman.

I bought [email protected] guaranteed legit. Okay. Yeah. Lights are beginning to form. And they're starting to form what look like windows. Small circular viewports. Windows. It's hard to tell from here. Images are floating into them. And some of you have seen computer screens and I guess it looks kind of like that, but weird. Still static on the radio. Oh boy.

Do we still hear the stomping around a little bit? Okay. Yeah.

It's a little quieter now. Eerie. Okay.

I would probably get behind Miles and encourage him to enter the other container because he seems to be our pass key that we have to basically tote around with us wherever we go.

When in doubt, rub the chimp on it.

Yes.

Yeah. And honestly, he's about as useful as a pass key right now because once you direct him, he starts heading to where you want him. But otherwise he does not comprehend what's going on right now. He thinks you're just hiding and maybe playing a fun game.

You push him in and follow him in, and the lights begin to like appear all over. And you walk up to the images that are appearing on the wall at the far end and you start to see they are forming into rectangular screens. And it looks as if they are molding and taking shape and becoming a little bit three dimensional as they start to extrude from the end of the shipping crate. As you stand and try and make sense of some of the words. Who. Who here can read?

I can read English.

Okay.

I can read American.

Those of you who can read English specifically are starting to see words that appear to make sense. But again, it's almost as if what you're looking at is still in the process of forming. So letters are starting to appear on the screen, but they're not appearing in an order that you would recognize as words. Things are moving together, taking shape. It's like watching the T1000 in Terminator

or the intro scene to Sneakers or

the intro sequence to Sneakers. Yes, the one. One panel, very specifically, seems to be taking more shape than the other. And it is coming up at just about head height to Miles. Hello. It pops up, takes shape, begins to extrude just a little bit, and words finally start to form into coherent sentence structure. And as you are reading the words, they are being read to you aloud by that same voice. Primary governance module missing. Locating. Locating. And that just continues. Locating. Locating.

Sierra Dino.

Primary governance module cannot be found. Backups Governance module active. And the floor begins to rise beneath you. Behind where all of you are standing, seats begin to rise up out of the ground.

Sierra.

The room expands and shrinks in different directions.

What's going on?

I recommend sitting down.

Okay.

I gently pull Miles into one of the chairs.

Oh, you don't have to pull him. He immediately runs to one of them and sits down on him as fast as possible.

As you do, it almost feels like the whole room that you are in is positioning itself so that Miles is at the center. And the console that was appearing has just sort of maneuvered to rise up in front of the captain. Great.

I'm gonna try to fit myself into one of the seats. It's gonna be a little bit uncomfortable. I'm 6 foot 4 and 350 pounds, so slightly larger than they probably intended.

The words continue Primary directive. And all of this is happening in all caps. Primary directive.

Refuel.

Triangulating position. Triangulating. No response from positional coordination. Retriangulating. No response from positional coordination. And this just continues for some kind of. Another panel begins to open up in front of. In front of the octopus. Another panel opens up. Mechanical systems status. Colon uncertain. Repairs required. Arrow points to the right. Lights open up. And then another panel opens on the right side. Conveniently, a simple stroll from the octopus man.

Sure, I'll get up. PA always said you should help out. So. I get up and follow the lights and go to the area that looks like it needs repairs. And I have general repair and maintenance. I'm sure that would apply to this pre flash high tech vehicle. What could go wrong?

So you go into the next room. And again, it's like it's taking shape around you. It's like you're walking into a shipping crate that is becoming something else. Unbecoming. A shipping crate becoming something else. And what you see as crates are beginning to materialize and take shape into broken machinery.

Okay.

And you imagine this is happening in the other room as well. But those are probably not. Not crates so much as. Onboard systems suffered a catastrophic failure. What skills do you have?

General repair and maintenance.

General repair and maintenance.

Otherwise, I'm a. I'm. I'm very much your outdoorsy type. I've like, pick locks and general repair and maintenance carpentry. Yeah, Like, I don't have any electronic skills. I don't have any mechanical skills.

No, I got this. I got it. I got it. Hold on. Okay. Okay, there. Another panel begins to open. And this time a voice is happening around you, but it's a little restrained, as if it's not quite max headroom level of malfunction, but more assessing user competence. Assessing level skill. Assessing. And this time it says assessing skills assessed. Appropriate challenge optimized for user. And all of this machinery changes in front of you. And where. Instead where you were starting to see broken machinery take place, it's changing into different shapes that all are switching down to different colors. And you have a whole bunch of red spheres.

Okay.

A whole bunch of blue cylinders and a whole bunch of yellow pyramids, and then a whole bunch of green cubes. And then all around the walls, open up a bunch of circles.

Oh, my God.

Triangles. Squares.

I'm not dumb. I'm just simple. I have a 15 IQ. So I'm, like, looking at this, going, I mean, Paul always said, some people that talk stupid to me, I ain't stupid. I can put shapes in holes. Fine, I'll do this, and I'll start picking up the squares and putting them into squares and circles into circles.

So you start to do that, and then at first it starts to work, and then they start to be ejected. And then you start to pick up after a few more tries that these need to be done frequently at the same time.

Okay? Okay.

And they are all conveniently placed within an arm's reach of you. Okay, so we're gonna turn this into. How am I gonna do this? This isn't really a palladium system. This is just me pulling shit out of my ass. I got it. We're gonna turn this into a series of attack rolls. Okay, perfect. I'm gonna need you to make eight. Eight attacks. Okay. And we're gonna do this round by round. Okay. So how many attacks per melee do you have?

I have five.

Okay. In round one, you could make five attacks.

Okay.

All right, let's just go ahead and roll five D20. And you're gonna be rolling your strike bonus. What is your IQ?

15.

Okay, rolling. Add your strike bonus. To this.

Okay.

Okay.

I have a plus one to strike,

and your target is going to be an 18.

Oh, my goodness. Okay. All right, let's see. Let's see what we can do. This is. I got really close to succeeding. Almost on one.

Almost on one.

But I didn't succeed.

None of them succeeded. It's turning out to be much more complicated than you thought it was.

Yeah, it is.

As you're having to move all of these things at the same time, and you're just not doing it fast enough, Right. They're starting. You push one in, and it flies back out and almost hits you in the face. And you have to dodge it. Right. That's when you start to hear the banging and the slamming coming from back the way you guys came, as if something is trying to break in.

Oh, no.

Anyway, back in the front seat. Retriangulating. Signal lost. Retriangulating dot. Triangulation success. Contacting nearest fuel depot. 17 kilometers. No handshake. Contacting Fallback Fuel Depot. 38 kilometers. No handshake. Contacting fallback fuel depot, 91 kilometers. No handshake. And this just continues. Another panel has opened up right in front of Cerf, and you're starting to see status gauges appear, one of which is fuel, and it is low. Oh, boy.

I going to use my. What is read sensory equipment.

Oh, good. That's a great, great skill.

Trying to figure out, like, what we're in. Anything I can about it, like, is the speedometer and just.

Yeah, Miles.

You know, that sort of thing.

Miles was probably dancing to the repeated computer warnings that it was giving and then got disappointed when it stopped.

Oh,

an odd three.

Oh, three. You are making sense. More and more sense of what's happening here. And it almost feels as if you were reading things where you're expecting something to see it's appearing as if it is reading you. Reading it.

Ugly.

So you make out that its fuel level is pretty low. You start to make out that its age is pretty high. This thing has been here for quite some time. Estimated time of operation. Counts up, counts up, counts up. You start to add the number of hours and days together, and you realize that this thing, whatever it is, ended up here around the time of the flash. Yeah, great. And then another panel is opening up that is tracking hostile targets. Two identified. Six incoming. Two rapidly incoming.

Miles. Miles.

Yeah.

Repeat after me. Engage hostiles.

And another panel appears showing an image of the crate that you guys first went into, where you found the door. Hostiles identified. And you see in there, are there's a fellow in armor who just has his fist up and is about to punch down. But he's not punching down at the door. He's punching down at the very large bear that is trying to get in the door. Yeah.

Miles repeats it. He almost. He almost says after me, hostiles engage. But he figures out what he's trying to say and just.

It says the last part, hostiles engaged. And then both of them are filled with electroshock.

Bear's gonna hate us if he survives.

The armor, like, stands up. Yeah, the armor, like, like, pulls back and like, twitches and twitches a bit. And then goes into straight 100% standing up, legs straight, arms down mode and just falls over. The bear is just twitching on the ground.

Miles covers his eyes.

Oh, no.

Bear.

Well, I'm not seeing this. I'm in the room getting really frustrated at trying to play.

Yeah, perfection. Let's do this again. You have another five chances.

I'm playing the worst version of perfection that you can imagine. You know, for those. For childs of the 80s, you know, the evil game that is. I got a. I got one success.

One success. Okay, you need seven more.

I'm gonna hate this thing anyway.

Contacting fallback fuel depot. 480 km. Handshake confirmed. Warning. Limit extended. Warning. Chances unlikely. Course set. Question mark.

Miles. Say yes, say yes.

Yes, say yes.

Course confirmed. Organic payload confirmed. Anti decompression protocols for destination. Your ears. All pop. Hidden machinery begins to power up.

Oh.

Anti decompression protocols active. Warning. Anti decompression systems failing. Oh. Please make sure organic payload is properly secured for extreme gravitational reduction.

Miles.

Course set. Execute. Question mark.

Miles, Skip. Strap in quick.

Oh, shit. I come running back in, all right, And I throw myself in the chair and strap myself down.

You run back in.

Miles starts tying himself to the chair with the strap that he normally carries his baseball bat with.

No, there's.

I get up and help Miles with his seatbelt. Then I get. Sit back down and put mine on.

I desperately try to buckle in, hoping to God, the straps. Six foot four, 350 pounds.

Elk.

What about bear?

What can we do?

Execute. Question mark.

Maybe he can let Bear in. Oh, God.

How do we phrase that for this thing?

I don't know.

How do we phrase it for Miles?

That's the real question.

Miles looks at you two and says, like last time. Yes.

Say yes, Say course confirmed. Now engaging additional directives. Command of Captain Preston Horvath active. Thank you, Captain, for your imperative. Hey.

What?

Hello. Secondary directive appears. Locate primary governance Module locating. Locating. As the ship begins to form around you and you realize that you are in the cockpit a plane of some kind.

Great.

We're in some kind.

We're in the cockpit of a pre. What amounts to a Pre Flash B32 Hustler.

It launches.

Skip has no idea what massive success

it is like moments. One moment it is rumbling and the next you are being pressed back in your seats as these engines fire without warm up. Just.

Oh God, oh God.

Miles just screams.

So the next series of events will be scored anachronistically by the song We're Here for a Good time by the 1970s band trooper. Oh God. The ship launches. There are two helicopters in the air that are extremely surprised. And the ground opens up beneath them and this blackbird looking thing just jets out of the earth. An eruption of ground and actual old shipping crates all around it. They open fire, but it's too late. It's just moving so fast. There are shots fired from the ground. It looks like there's still one guy with armor down there who has a shoulder mounted rocket of some kind that fires after it goes wild. And y' all are being pressed back into your seats and it is getting tighter and tighter and tighter. And none of you are wearing suits of any kind, prepared for this.

Yeah,

that's assuming that high G suits exist anymore, right? Which they probably don't.

Your beautiful and brilliant captain is still just screaming, but his lips are just flapping back. And actually with the lips flapping that way and the screaming for a moment, he kind of does have that chimpanzee look about him. It's remarkable. Then the two incoming jet fighters catch up and try to follow and lock on. That's when another panel appears, this time in front of the octopus. It says, hostile pursuit detected. And again, this is all being spoken to you as well by the same voice as the words appear. But let me rephrase that. Not as the words appear. As you read the words, they are spoken to you.

Okay, interesting.

Pursuit detected. Generating defensive measures 1%, 5%, 15%. And you feel a shifting in the heavily shaking and vibrating vehicle. Until finally defensive measures generated. Activating. Then another panel lights up again where there was no panel here before. And it shows. And it pops up right next to the fuel count. And this time it shows missile count. And you watch that number, which starts at a dozen, rapidly decrease as you feel the vehicle just go in a staccato beat of something happening. And then there are two explosions. And the missile count stops at four. And then that panel vanishes. Defensive measures no longer necessary.

I feel. What's going on.

And the pressure gets heavier and heavier as the ship is moving faster and faster. And you're watching the fuel gauge plummet further than it was before. You're watching the speed rise and finally escape velocity achieved. And then there is a rumble as your ship bursts out of the atmosphere. You have a viewport that opens up in front of you, finally allowing you to see the fading light as the darkness of space beyond takes up your vision. Oh. And then there, moments later, is a clanking, clacking and a clattering. It sounds as if hail, like you're in a hailstorm, but it's just debris is just slamming against this thing as it begins to note damage taken and whole integrity decreasing. The door that was to your right, Mr. Octopus, vanishes. Emergency protocols activating. Oh, boy. Shields raising. Shields disabled.

Oh, shit.

Ah.

What?

You're the smart one.

Yeah.

The pressure does not relent. You are held in your seats. You can't do anything.

Well, I'm a cephalopod too. Like, I'm like oozing out of my chair, like trying to hold onto the seat belt.

Anybody who manages to turn their head looks over and sees that you have basically become one with the chair.

And then don't, don't squirt, don't skirt. Skip.

The clattering gets louder and louder and you watch the hull integrity count get lower and lower and the fuel reaches zero. And then it all stops. The pressure gone, the sounds. An occasional tink, tink, tink, tink. This forward motion is maintained and you are getting deeper into what looks like a debris field. And then the ship rumbles and you feel another pressure, as if now you're being pushed forward. And then it comes to a complete stop in the middle of this debris field. Fuel gauge flashing zero. Hull integrity flashing at 17%. Shields disabled. Location confirmed. Destination arrived. Thank you for flying. And then it powers down.

And then Space Odyssey begins to play.

Then it begins to get cold.

It's gonna real cold real fast.

And up in front the window, the viewport is still active. As all of the other panels begin to fade and recess out the window. You see two very scary looking robots covered in all manner of spiky things and look like guns maybe. Power on and spring to life. They emerge from the debris field and approach sinister red lights pulsing along them.

PA never told me a story about this.

Just gonna wave at them.

And then they come up and attach fuel cables and begin to refuel the ship.

Oh, Jesus fucking Christ.

Another panel appears again. Primary Governance module. Locating. Locating. Located. And then the camera pulls back and we see all of you kind of floating a little bit in your seats. It's just strapped in. And the camera pulls back and back into the previous room. And we see the crates that were ruined, but are now just chunks of machinery that need repairs. And then the camera pulls up, up into the first crate which was part of the ship. And in that crate you have the unconscious bear floating in the air. And floating next to it.

Oh no.

Is a suit of light assault power armor trim white, dotted with dirt and small damage, scarring from the recent fight. The emblem of the empire of humanity. On its left breast, underneath a rank patch showing an armored fist and the letters mpb. And underneath it stenciled in the name is N. Wampo. And that's where we end.

Oh God. Floating in space, waiting. Will we refuel more quickly? Or will Bear wake up?

Or will the.

Dude.

Hey, at least it's not rift space, right? This is true on a micro level. As soon as we hit, as soon as we get out of the atmosphere.

I. I gotta remember remind you, when it comes to mutants in orbit, there's killsats in both. The difference is whether or not they're doing MDC versus sdc.

Well, there's nowhere near as many killsats in the.

And the. The LUCA stations and the various stations aren't intentionally putting the micrometeorites around the atmosphere to contain the planet. So that's a much big, much, much improved difference. Yeah.

No, yeah, we just have to worry about automated mass drivers.

So that was a demonstration of the Palladium rule system. Something that I've kind of been wanting to do for a while. And I'm calling it the Glitter Boy. Set the scene first trial run at this.

No, that was good.

I wanted to try and do it without heavy focus on combat because I feel that so many games are like, combat, combat, combat, combat. It's like, how can we make other skills useful and interesting in an exciting, action packed way?

Absolutely.

So yeah, what are your thoughts of that?

I thought it was great. I loved it. I love that. One of the only skill checks that I made was dance. And I failed at it horribly.

I really, really love that you position that Miles ended up being the face for the ship. Well, as soon as y' all were okay when we were talking about I wanted three rolls and you're like, well, the only thing I can do is haircuts. And my brain was like, yes, yes, that needs to happen.

Well, I mean, if you look at the. If you look at the three characters, the only one that would be recognized by pre Flash systems would be, ironically, the human looking sexy chimp. You know, like it's, you know, you didn't see it, but it's like, I'm like, yeah, okay, that's really novel. Okay, we'll go with that.

I mean, come on, it's just a rule of life. Never underestimate the hot femboy.

Yeah. And pre Flash, you know, pre Flash military, they were known for sending chimps in space. True.

Oh, I was choking down so many chimps in space jokes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was when I was posting earlier. It's like, I'm so excited about replaying today and I think I'm going to really make Father Morpheus happy because I remember you saying, like, oh, Shadow Fade was something you really.

Shadow Fade is one of my favorite, like, Easter egg, like things in the game. And if you read after the bomb really quickly, you miss it. If you read it really quickly because the picture is like, oh, it's a crashed aircraft. And then there's some block of text about what this downed aircraft is. And when you started describing it, I was like, oh, well, this is just wish fulfillment. I want to, but I don't have the character who could fly it. We have to. We have to have the stupid chimp fly it. It's like the worst case of like, well, we're gonna have to puppet the stupid chimp. Who's the only one that will be able to figure this? Oh, no, this is gonna be hilarious.

Well, I also want to give a special shout out to some of our patrons. I'm not gonna name you, but I think you should be able to pick up who you are. There were at least three patrons that I played homage to in this session.

I know I was gonna. I nearly interrupted to ask if one of them was who I thought it was.

Yeah, at least three. How can I cleverly pay homage without calling out, like, poke at this person? So I hope you guys appreciated it. I had fun working those names into it. I didn't get everybody because some of this, half of this I wrote and the rest half was just kind of an ass pull, so.

Yeah, well, isn't that gme? The GME at best is half written, half asshole.

I mean, my own Campaigns are about 10 written.

It's a loose guidelines of a storyline, maybe.

Yeah. So do you think that was an effective demonstration of the way palladium works?

Yeah, I definitely feel so I mean, one of the nice things about palladium is just because you fail at a roll doesn't mean that you've been, you know, it's not the end of the world if you fail on a roll.

I don't know, for a minute there, I thought we were walking into a missile silo and it's like, oh, God. The chimp is the one that is recognized by this command. The end of the world.

It exemplifies the way palladium is run at the tables around the world. It's not rules as written. It's some seat of the pants type of roles and what makes it feel right.

Yeah.

And this is exactly how Kevin describes it. He's not tied to the rules. And that's something that's really hard for a lot of people. I know sometimes on the. The Glitter Boys channel, on the Discord server, people get really hung up on what the rule itself says. And that's great if that's fun for you. But for this, all the rules as written wouldn't apply necessarily to these situations. We have three characters where rules as written probably could have done very little with the way our skills were. But when it comes to, hey, let's do some combined rules here, let's kind of build those types of things that you come off the fly are great and it adds to the story and adds to the drama. And, you know, you get your really good role at the end of three not so great roles. And you're like. And then you're like, wait, Barbary. Yeah, Barber. Yeah, we can use that.

Yeah.

My hope is to show that the system can be used in a freeform way or that it's even meant to be used that way. Like the various opportunities that you have to flex the system. It's versatile and it's powerful. And even though the rules aren't specifically written for skills to be used in a certain way, if you look at the rules, there's actually very little guidelines on how skills are supposed to be used. They simply cover the scope of a skill. So why not apply it to something more freeform and esoteric? That's my take.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a lot of people look at, you know, especially if they've heard of Rifts, they're like, oh, there's a billion, billion rules to that. And you've got to, you know, if nobody can figure out all the rules or knows all the rules and it takes so long to come up with a character, it doesn't. It. It can be a very Streamlined process. It just depends on whose hands you happen to be in when you're playing it. Because it has that level of versatility. There's a lot of different ways that you can go with stuff. So you need somebody to help kind of re for you as a player.

Yeah, agreed.

And the after the Bomb setting from a complete role playing game aspect is an excellent entry point into Palladium in general. Right. It gives you everything you need and it's very concise and it's very focused, but it's still unleashing your imagination as soon as you walk out that door of character creation. Right, I got my character now. What?

Right, yeah.

And it broadly simplifies a lot of things that you'll find far more options around. Like the psionics in this game are different than you'll find in other palladium games, but they do the job just fine. And broadly. You're not having to normally unless you're in weird particular backgrounds juggling nearly the number of skills you are in most other palladium games.

Yeah.

But each skill selection is still important. It's still helpful. It still can apply to any given situation. So there's still no wasted skill per se.

Yeah. So, folks, listening, we want to try and do these from time to time. This is not an indication that we're starting a new campaign. Just want to make that clear. This is just a little clear, fun scene to play through with a special guest that we're delighted to have have

and has been thrilled to be here.

I love your character. I just, I. I want to make very clear that all the comments I've made about them have been appreciative.

I want to make it very clear. I'm going to steal your name for an npc.

My players don't know it miles longer. I love it. I love it, I love it. Well, there was like, okay, there was a point where the octopus was like, oh, I can fit in everything except my brain was like. He's about to say, I can fit it in. I can fit through that hole my whole body except my big dick. I was like, that's coming. That's coming. Oh, I'm surprised. All right.

He's 16.

I know.

He's very sheltered. He's scrupulous. He's a very sheltered 16 year old encephalopod.

The only two hard things are on you are your beak and your sperm dart.

That's right.

Wait, I have a sperm dog.

Oh, wait, no, no, no.

Yeah, you get to use it once

and then you Die Not John Cena. Patrick Warburton.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Like Kronk. Just Kronk from the Emperor's New Groove.

Totally.

But short.

All right, well, John, thanks for joining us. For folks who are unfamiliar once again, can you let us know where you're from?

Yeah, I am from the Realplay Games podcast. You can find [email protected] and we play a lot of Palladium games, including after the Bomb.

Done.

Gosh, some Dead Rain, some Beyond the Supernatural, a bunch of Heroes Unlimited stuff. We've done a bunch of stuff with that. And yeah, episodes every Friday, folks.

Yeah, check that out. Real Play Games. I hope you get the joke because I didn't.

I only did after you pointed it out.

Okay. So thanks again, John. This has been a blast.

My pleasure. Absolutely. Thank you so much.

And folks at home, we will catch you next time.

Have a good one.

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 you can order [email protected] and their entire catalog is available digitally at drivethrurpg 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, Sam.