Session 3

The party wakes in the Keystone boarding house, the town quiet in the wake of the Coyote standoff — resolved with almost no bloodshed, save for the mayor's own accidental death. Keystone rewards them: new weapons and armor. Birdie puts together a slingshot rig for launching her firebombs. Cheesesteak goes looking for parts to build an EMP, but all he can scrounge is wire, batteries, and nails — so he improvises an electric bola instead, dubbed the "E-bola."

Before they go, the doctor reminds them where their best chance lies: advanced genetic medical equipment, somewhere in the ruins of Rapid City.

The party leaves Keystone heading east out of the Black Hills. The Coyotes let them pass without incident — the peace they brokered still holding. Turning north, the road takes them toward Rapid City.

That's where they find the standoff: three Khans on motorcycles squared off against a small Dakota Confederation band. Mounted on a pole off the lead rider's bike: their banner — a fully chrome tire, ringed with cut-out metal flames, a yin-yang symbol welded into the center.

Silas glasses the scene from a distance. Voices are raised, but nothing's broken out yet. Through the scope, Silas spots something odd on one of the DC members: a man in power armor with a tall spike-and-crossbeam rig on his back. Its purpose isn't clear until an eagle's cry splits the air — and the moment it does, the man's head snaps toward the party's position, the bird's call having marked exactly where they were hiding. The eagle lands on the perch — a live falconry rig, not decoration. On his chest plate: an eagle skull wreathed in feathers, the same emblem the party found hidden in the mayor's office back in Keystone. Slung across his back, alongside the falconry perch, is a fireaxe, worn like a tomahawk rather than a tool.

The man in power armor waves the party over and starts asking questions. Word that they're from Keystone catches the attention of the DC's leader, mounted on a bison, who takes a closer interest — gently probing for whether Keystone's still in chaos, clearly hoping it might be. Mention of the Coyote peace deal puts him on edge instead. The party talks him down with an almost absurd excuse — they're headed to Rapid City to find a ring. It's such a strange, harmless-sounding errand he mostly just decides they're a little crazy, and lets it go.

The Khans offer the same deal they're offering everyone: submit to a search for contraband, and you're free to pass — firmly framed as falling under the "divinely mandated protection of the Khan." Petra and Johan take a closer look at the bikes during the search: heavily armored, modified into mobile machine-gun turrets built right into the frames. The party has nothing to hide, agrees — and the DC party looks down on them a little for it. But their compliance takes the heat out of the standoff. Shamed or resigned, the DC band submits to the same search shortly after, paying a steep toll in medical supplies and ammunition to avoid a fight. Everyone parts ways without a shot fired. The Khans hand over a token — a date and a seal, good for a week's free travel on their roads.

Alone again, the party presses toward Rapid City — until Geiger counters start climbing. What the Khans said turns out to be true: Rapid City is heavily irradiated, dangerous for anyone unprepared. Rather than push forward blind, they change course for the football stadium Rosa mentioned.

They spot the stadium and its attached radio tower from a distance and observe: a super mutant in black-and-white body paint, styled like a referee, orating to a crowd in mismatched, disheveled football gear. In one hand, a football helmet trailing burning incense; in the other, what looks like an oversized football — until they realize it's a mininuke, painted to match. The crowd picks up a chant — "Bi-ga-me," repeated over and over. While the party's still deciding how to approach, a second group of super mutants comes down the road near their position, mutant hounds at heel. Their attempt to stay hidden fails, and the hounds find them.

The referee leading that group doesn't attack. He walks up and simply says: "Bi-ga-me." The party answers in kind — chanting it back, throwing in the "hut hut hut" they'd heard from the others — and it works. They're welcomed into the procession and led into the stadium, where other teams have already gathered to watch.

What they watch is brutal: teams of seven fight for possession of the painted mininuke amid real violence. When a player scores, they kneel, and the referee arms the bomb — the whole stadium goes silent, giving the scorer space and reverence as they hold the live football until it detonates, then the crowd roars in something like religious ecstasy. The losing team doesn't walk away either — pulled aside afterward and executed.

Then it's the party's turn, matched against a team of super mutants, with one goal: keep everyone alive. Zendaya sprints for the real mininuke at the opening snap while Cheesesteak assembles a convincing fake. Guns come out — a gamble, since every game the crowd's seen has been pure melee — but it lands as spectacle, not sacrilege; the crowd loves the novelty. The party kneecaps super mutants, dodges and stumbles downfield, and swaps the real football for the fake one mid-play.

The fight gets messy. Zendaya throws the E-bola into an opposing mutant, tangling and shocking him out of the play. Petra clocks that one mutant is already favoring an injured leg and puts a shot into the good one, dropping him. Birdie's firebomb throw goes wide, catching Zendaya's armor and nearly clipping Petra, though it does finish off a mutant already downed. Bishop lines up a close-range shotgun blast, rolls a natural 20, and the shot punches clean through one mutant into a second standing behind him.

Finally, Johan carries the fake football into the end zone. The referee comes to detonate it — and nothing happens. The stadium goes dead silent. The party starts chanting "Super Bowl, Super Bowl, Super Bowl." It works better than they could have hoped — the super mutants read it as a sign, treating them as divinely favored, chosen and protected. The referee, digging through half-remembered football lore, recalls that a Super Bowl comes with a ring, and hands over the nearest thing that fits: a small gold wedding band. It's the ring they came for.

One player's character was narratively slated to die in this game, sacrificing himself for the win. The party saw it coming and found a way around it instead — subverting the sacrifice outright and walking away with everyone alive.

Word of the impossible touchdown spreads fast. The super mutants start treating the party as something like semi-religious figures, given free rein to wander the stadium grounds. They use that access to explore the attached radio tower — not just a mast but something closer to a skyscraper, its lower floors still holding the bones of old offices. At the top, Zendaya — radio's always been a hobby of hers — gets hands-on with the old control system and finds a lever that swings the tower's satellite dish. Sweeping it around, she catches a signal the moment the dish points toward The Star. Cheesesteak digs into it and finds a heavily encrypted military transmission — not American. The preamble marks it as Chinese in origin.

Realizing they're still not equipped to push into irradiated Rapid City, the party turns back for Keystone and brings the ring to Rosa. She takes it with tears in her eyes, thanking them sincerely. Something in her settles — she seems, for the first time, at peace, as though she's been symbolically reunited with her husband and is ready for whatever comes next.

Once again, Rosa asks for the one thing she couldn't finish herself: to have her genetic profile deleted from the vault's records, the tunnel to it long caved in on her end. This time, Johan agrees to see it done. He splits off from the group, heading back toward the vault alone to finish what Rosa started.

On the road back to Keystone, the remaining party spots one of the strange watchers again — the same kind of figure seen from the abandoned house days before. This time they get a real look at it: a gaunt, hunched humanoid with a skull-like face, hollow eyes, and feathered or ragged wing-like appendages down its back and arms.