Session 5

You come to in the hospital, recovering from the fight that ended last session. Two new faces have joined the group in the meantime: Yojimbo and Ushi. As you take stock, several of you notice something new and unsettling starting to stir — strange little effects nobody can quite explain yet.

Before heading out, you ask Yojimbo for her read on how to reach Wonderland Cave. She recommends the highway north through Khan territory — the long way around, maybe, but it avoids the overgrown, heavily irradiated edge of the Black Hills.

Following her advice, you cut northwest out of Rapid City and into the city's old oil refinery and processing district, long since overgrown and decaying. From a distance, you hear voices before you see anyone — two Khans, tucked up in the refinery ruins just off the road, wrestling with a stalled motorcycle. One keeps cranking it over; the other fusses with a wrench. Whatever perception checks you throw at the problem, nothing more useful comes back.

Cheesesteak rolls a natural 20 sneaking up almost directly above the pair on the refinery scaffolding — and then blows the follow-up perception check, learning nothing for his trouble.

Mean Ushi keeps mooing, the party asks her twice to be quiet, failing both times, before eventually remembering that Yojimbo seems to have a strong bond with Ushi, they ask Yojimbo to quiet Ushi, the robot cow happily complies.

Rather than keep skulking, you announce yourselves and offer to help fix the bike. Bishop talks up Cheesesteak as a skilled mechanic — a lie that lands clean. Cheesesteak tries to stroll down casually to back it up, but fumbles the sneak check on the way down, and it becomes obvious he'd been perched above them the entire time. The Khans go wary, but let him try anyway.

He rolls a natural 1. Not only does the bike stay broken, he manages to damage it further and knock it clean over. One of the Khans takes a swing at him for it; Cheesesteak dodges clear on an agility check.

All the while, a buzzing sound has been building steadily in the distance. Before the tension with the Khans can boil over, it announces itself: a giant mutated locust drops onto the refinery equipment above the group.

Petra — bug collector at heart — sizes it up and recognizes it as an ordinary American locust underneath the mutation, save for one detail: swollen jaws, dripping black goo. The party lands a hit without killing it, and it answers by spitting acid at Zendaya, wounding her. More locusts follow close behind.

Zendaya and Birdie, who both have a fear of bugs, freeze in place for a turn.

The Khans fight alongside you, but there's no coordination to it — everyone's just swinging at whatever's closest. As the locusts start dropping, giant mutated rats start pouring out of the underbrush too, and the fight spreads across two fronts at once. You hold the line, though a few bites and another mouthful of acid get through. Petra finds a weak point on the locusts' thoraxes and starts landing bonus damage on them for the rest of the fight. Ushi gets put on rat duty, crushing them underfoot; Yojimbo, apparently above fighting vermin, sticks strictly to locusts. Cheesesteak climbs higher on the refinery structure to get a clean shot at the original locust.

The surge of adrenaline combined with the radiation the party has absorbed triggers their mutations, but instead of anything deforming, new powers are unlocked:

• Petra - Telekinesis: She can know push and pull objects with her mind. Small things like coins or bullets obey with grace, larger things, she can control with no more precision than a cat knocking things off a shelf. She can now be an impromptu railgun in combat.

• Bishop - Telepathy: He can now probe the electrical impulses of living minds. At most getting a vague sense of emotion, but can try to probe deeper to glean more, but some may notice this violation. In combat he can attempt to command a target for an action.

• Zendaya - Warp Matter: She can now bend and warp matter like putty with her hands, bending spacetime to force matter to move around them. But not all matter reacts well to being so manipulated. In combat she can claw through even the strongest armor.

• Silas - Bend Light: He can bend photons to his will...to some degree. No elaborate illusions but maybe small tricks. But he can also focus light into a beam, a laser at will.

• Birdie - Gravity Well: She can now create localized areas of higher gravity. This can lock many things in place. But most of Earth life and human infrastructure is balanced around the usual 1g (9.81 m/s2), so she should use caution. In combat she can lock down target in place, preventing them from moving for a few turns.

• Cheesesteak - Time Bubble: He can now throw a baseball sized bubble of time distortion. Due to thermodynamics, slowing time in a localized area means its internal energy goes up and vice versa for speeding up time. This can lead to massive heating or cooling effects.

A voice booms out over the chaos — loud, commanding, almost like it's coming through a loudspeaker — ordering the swarm to attack and kill. Waves of rats and locusts keep coming until, finally, their master steps out: The Pest Lord, with a pet giant mutated ultra-mantis at his side.

Realizing he's the real threat, you turn your fire on him. Bishop tries to right the fallen motorcycle to get its mounted turret working — and fails badly. He also tries out his new telepathic command ability on the Pest Lord himself, attempting to turn him against his own men. That fails too.

Silas lines up a shot on the mantis, but a giant mutated spider webs him in place mid-aim — he can still fire, just not move. Birdie disintegrates the spider with a natural 20 from her Poldermolen, a moment so clean it cracks something loose in her lifelong fear of bugs. She tries talking a nearby rat into switching sides. It doesn't work.

Silas bends light into a focused beam and kills a locust outright. The mantis, meanwhile, scrambles up onto the platform where Cheesesteak's perched — Cheesesteak answers by dropping it into a time bubble and flinging it into the steel support beams. The platform buckles rather than collapses, but it's enough: the mantis tumbles off, crushing a rat on the way down, while the Pest Lord dives clear untouched.

On its way down, the grounded mantis grabs the fallen motorcycle and hurls it at Silas. He's already slipped free of the webbing by then and dodges clear — but the Khan who'd been perched on the bike isn't so lucky, pinned beneath it as it lands, both legs broken.

Somewhere off in the distance, someone else is taking shots at the mantis — Silas catches it with a perception check, noting the rounds are coming from a silenced sniper rifle, though the shooter stays hidden. Zendaya closes it out, driving her EMP sword through the Pest Lord's power armor for massive damage and dropping him for good.

With their leader dead, the surviving rats break and flee. The locusts are already gone. Only the wounded mantis is left, and the party finishes it off with focused fire, ending the fight.

With the fight over, you spend one of your four stimpacks on the pinned, bleeding Khan to keep him from going into shock. Birdie handles the stimpack herself, but fails a perception check in the process — she never notices him slip a note under a nearby chunk of rubble.

That's when your mystery sniper finally shows herself — Bailey, stepping out in camo and a ghillie suit. She strips it off to reveal a uniform underneath, marked with a golden insignia: a yin-yang, and a tire on fire. It's enough to visibly rattle the surviving Khan, who snaps straight to attention.

Chipper and warm, Bailey thanks you for the help, checks on the standing Khan, then crouches beside the one pinned under the bike to talk to him gently.

As Bailey talks to him, none of your perception checks are sharp enough to catch what happens next — she draws a knife and drives it up under his jaw, killing him on the spot.

Asked why, she says he was a traitor. Zendaya's lie detector confirms it — true. Pressed further, she adds that he'd been supporting an insurrection. She searches him thoroughly, saddlebags and all, until she finds what she was actually looking for: the hidden note, marked with a Dakota Confederation symbol. You can see the seal. You don't get to see what's written inside.

She pockets it and, without another word on the matter, snaps right back to her cheerful self — thanking you again and offering to personally escort you north to Blackhawk, the nearest Khan settlement, where she says she has business of her own.

Before that, she asks if any of you are carrying drugs or alcohol. After a beat of hesitation, you admit you are. She tells you to keep it out of sight and never sell or hand it to any Khan citizens — it's illegal here — but says she's fine with you keeping it for personal use, given everything you just did for her people.

Session Five ends here, with Bailey's offer to escort the party to Blackhawk still on the table.