The Volunteers (AKA The Dirty Half-Dozen, The Six Wanderers)

Bob Perce (Herodian)
Colt Riffle (Gigermann)
Dr. J. Turk (CommJunkee)
Lance Bennett (Ronnke)
Lenny Leonardo (Melissa)
Romeo Sylvester (Rigil Kent)

The One Where They Met The Raiders

After the Volunteers finished with their question-asking of Aradesh, they inquired about where they might find a “bar” of some sort, and were directed to the nearby trading-post. It wasn’t much to look at, but it did have (a) booze to be drunk, and (b) games to be gambled upon. Lenny immediately seated himself at the roulette wheel there and started gambling, just before realizing he hadn’t anything to gamble with—Lance obliged him with a handful of bottlecaps from their stash, and afterward gave out a share to the others as well. Sly bought a bottle of the local fare—“rotgut,” they called it (it was unclear if the moniker referred to its origin or the result of drinking it)—and immediately began carousing with the few other patrons present, gathering what information about the world in-general they were willing to part with; Bob, Turk and Lance joined him, listening and interjecting from time to time. Colt had had enough of confined spaces packed with people after his life in the Vault, and took a bottle of rotgut outside to drink it under the stars, enjoying the night air. Some hours later, they all left to bed down for the night, richer in knowledge (and in Lenny’s case, a bit richer in coin-of-the-realm).

24 Dec 2161, Christmas Eve
In the morning, the Volunteers took the ransom and gathered up their gear for the thirty-mile trek to the raiders’ camp, prepared to camp overnight near their destination, opting to suffer the slow pace of their pack-brahmin over the slower pace of their own overburdened backs. They added to the brahmin’s load as much extra water as they dared, from the town’s well. They made good time for the first half of the journey, which took them through a wide valley of hard-packed scrub desert, following a trail that Colt suggested was an old state highway. Lance decided to entertain the group with song, but nearly blew out his vocal cords in the process, leaving him hoarse for hours. Their progress slowed for the latter half of the trip as they reached the other side of the valley, hiking upward into the mountains again. As Colt led the group from a distance ahead, he signaled them to stop after hearing a loud “thud” around a bend ahead, and scouting forward a bit, found what appeared to be the unidentifiably-splattered remains of a huge creature beside the scattered shards of a potted daisy; Lenny being the most widely-read naturalist of the group suggested the remains resembled a whale, but the group dismissed that conclusion as highly implausible.

Late in the afternoon, Colt spotted a cross-like construction of sticks, skulls and other bits in an arrangement that resembled a “body”—clearly a territorial warning marker, presumably belonging to the raiders. They pitched their camp well off the trail and forsook a campfire, to prevent detection. Though all were exhausted from the day’s hike, Lenny and Lance took it particularly badly, with blistered feet and whatnot; Turk helped ease their medical suffering as he could. The Volunteers made their usual two-man watch arrangement, passing around Colt’s and Sly’s night-vision goggles, and took their rest for the night, which passed without incident.

25 Dec 2161, Christmas Day
Just before sunup, the Volunteers woke and struck camp, while Colt went to scout the raiders’ camp, taking Bob—the second sneakiest among them, and having binoculars—along with him for backup. The two scouts found a well-trodden path leading into a canyon that ended in a cave entrance, which was guarded by a few lightly-armed, moderately-attentive men. Colt found a good hide-spot with a view of the cave entrance from a few hundred yards away and continued to observe, while Bob returned to inform the others. They discussed their plan, and decided to approach the raiders openly and honestly, and see how they react; Colt would hold onto the ransom-money for safety, and bring it forward when called for. They would leave the brahmin and any gear they didn’t immediately need behind in an out-of-the-way location, but ready to run if things went ill.

The Volunteers descended the path into the canyon and approached the cave. The guards halted them some yards away and demanded to know their business; Sly flashed them a winning smile and told the truth, that they were here to ransom Tandi. At the mention of that name, one of the guards went into the cave and fetched their boss, Carl. Again, Sly asked about Tandi and offered the ransom to take her away. Carl, to their surprise, without any detectable guile, informed the Volunteers that his people hadn’t asked for a monetary ransom for Tandi’s life, but had been trying to negotiate with Aradesh for access to Vault 15, and would not allow Tandi to leave until he acquiesced, as they had many sick among them that needed the vault’s medical facilities. Turk asked permission to see the sick, as he was a doctor, while Sly politely demanded to see Tandi, as proof of life; Carl relented, and led them into the cave, leaving them their weapons after Sly’s assurances that they weren’t here to pick a fight. They were shown to a cave-chamber where a dozen infirmed lay helpless, and Turk diagnosed them with long-term radiation exposure, confirmed by a slightly-higher radiation level detected in the cave. They were then taken to another chamber where Tandi was staying, and found her in good health and unmolested; she confirmed Carl’s assertion that she had actually come to them of her free will, having run away from her father (for reasons typical of teenagers; nothing unusual).

Just after entering the cave, Bob had asked to visit the head, and was pointed back outside, as there was a natural crevasse there they used for latrine purposes; he had left to see to it while the others were getting the “tour.” Colt, from his overwatch position, saw Bob exit the cave and go off to one side, appearing to answer the call of nature and taking his sweet time about it; some time later, Colt observed one of the guards do the same. Then, to Colt’s surprise, he saw Bob start to leave the latrine area, creep back behind the guard, and boot him headlong into the crevasse, before strutting back to the cave as if nothing had happened—Colt had no clue as to why, but supposed the guard must’ve insulted him?

Meanwhile, after having spoken to Carl and Tandi and gotten what they believed to be the “real story,” the Volunteers felt the need to help the raiders’ get into Vault 15, but at the same time, complete their mission for Aradesh, though he had deceived them; it was supposed that he just desired to maintain control of the vault out of stubborn pride, or perhaps there was something still in there he didn’t want to be discovered. The best the team could come up with was to take Tandi back to Shady Sands and her father—willingly, with Carl’s permission—where she would get the Overseer’s keycard from her father, with the help of the vault-dwellers; as aid to the sick, and compensation for Aradesh’s negotiations in bad faith, they would gift the 5000 bottlecaps to the raiders. Sly put the idea to Tandi and easily won her over, and she in turn helped to convince Carl to play along.

Notes

• Anyone who has played the first Fallout is undoubtedly scratching their heads at this point; the story has taken an abrupt departure from the original, as was the GM’s intent all along
• Lance’s player decided to sing, and rolled the skill at default; result=18 😛
• The whale/daisy encounter should be immediately obvious to anyone familiar with Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and is the first “weirdness” encounter resulting from Turk’s Weirdness Magnet Trait
• In actuality, the group had agreed to attempt to deceive the raiders and try to buy Tandi from them, but as Sly started talking, the player kinda forgot, so we just ran with it
• The raider boss, Carl, is actually Garl Death-Hand, leader of the Khans in Fallout 1; when it came time to identify him in the game, the GM couldn’t bring himself to refer to him as such or bother about the Mongol-themed gang—too silly, especially given his “revamped” role. The base was also changed from the original out-in-the-open camp to this canyon/cave. Coincidentally, the camp/cave is situated between two known real-world nuclear waste sites (somewhat distant, but still…)
• The players know the reason for Bob’s unusual behavior, but as the writer here, I’ve decided to let the story reveal itself as the characters find out about it