Beyoh, Fridge & Gramps players did not make the game.

Hi everybody! Wouldzee the owl here. Remember how last time I wrote I said I really wished someone had a camera to take a picture of me blowing up that tanker car because I’d never do anything that cool again in my whole life? Well, I still haven’t done anything that cool, because blowing up a tanker full of gas has got to be in like the top ten list of cool things you can do, but I did do something that I would totally like a picture of because it was so awesome and I totally must have looked like some sort of superhero, ninja badass when I did it… Oh right, start at the beginning…

So we rescued all these people and they’re all tired and hungry and kind of beat up, because those lizardmen had cattle prods and were zapping them and stuff, and none of us wanted to get caught by those robots in Prairie Dog Town who were like driving around looking for us (or so we thought), so we stayed in the woods and it was night and I’m nocturnal and we were really sneaky, even John, so they didn’t find us. Anyhoo, we were resting one morning and suddenly this thing comes burrowing up out of the ground and it’s got tentacles with poison quills and like three legs and a beak or something and it wants to eat us, but we’re all like “no way,  go find a three-headed gazelle or something” and it still attacks us, so we start tearing it apart, except for Sally, who can’t seem to hit the broad side of a cthonian with her sledgehammer. She finally gets frustrated and starts yelling at it about how bad ladybugs taste and she’s totally right, there was this one time when I accidently swallowed one of those Asian beetles, you know, the ones that look like ladybugs and I almost puked, which in retrospect is not that big of a deal for owls since we cough up pellets all the time and anyhoo, she tells it to go off and hunt elsewhere and it totally left us alone after that.

We’d been planning on taking the refugees to Liberty, but John, who is pretty smart for an ordinary guy, reminds us that there is that bunker only a few miles away, and it is totally full of food, so we decide to head there in the hopes that less people will starve to death or something. While we were walking that Cue-ball guy or whatever he is called, tried to get us to tell us where those motorcycles were and we were totally not helpful and he threatened that Rebar or whatever his name was, was getting antsy, but we were like “whatever” and hung up on him. I’m not sure why John leaves the radio on, I think he just likes to screw with those guys… Anyhoo, eventually, we crossed the trail that the big truck made when it went to Liberty and we noticed that there was some recent traffic on it, like only a few hours ago. So we think, “Uh oh, those robots really aren’t looking for us, they are totally going to Liberty, we’d better get moving to help them out”. So we drop the refugees off at that bunker place, give them some food and stuff and warn them about the raccoons, who might bite even though they are kind of cute, then we take the motorcycles and ride away.

So we drove back into the woods on that trail leading to Liberty and then we heard something crashing towards us, so we hid the motorcycles and I flew up into a tree to see what was coming and I saw one of those trucks the robots were using to haul prisoners driving towards us. I jumped on the top of the truck and cut open the tarp to peek inside and I saw Cashton and a bunch of other folks from Liberty and this robot and a bunch of those lizardmen and all the people from Liberty were like holding their heads and moaning and looked just awful and stuff. So I thought to myself, “Wouldzee, you’ve totally got to do something about this,” and then I made some really cool “special ops” gestures to Sally and John and they looked confused, but they often look confused when I talk to them too, so I figured they’d “got it” and then I swung down and grabbed that robot!

So then I’ve got this robot like totally tied up in my tentacles and I’m thinking to myself, “Wouldzee, this robot is w-a-a-a-y stronger than you and he’s going to break out any second. I wonder if you could throw him under the wheels of the truck?” And then I hear a voice inside my head, and it sounds like the guy that remodeled my nest, and it’s like, “That sounds like it might work.” And so I totally threw the robot under the truck and it was all c-r-u-n-c-h and the truck bounced around and I swung inside and pulled my Mauser and told those lizardguys to freeze or I’d blow their fricking brains out and they totally froze and I was thinking “Wouldzee, you rock, I wish someone had taken a picture of you doing all that stuff because you probably looked like an action hero or something!” And then that robot got up and shot me in the back with his gun, which was a total dick move because I wasn’t even looking at him and it really hurt too!

Anyhoo, Sally and John got on their motorcycles and came roaring up to help out, and Sally pasted that robot with her sledgehammer and John BBQ-forked it good too and I was all like “that’s what you get for shooting me in the back, you SOB,” and then I noticed those lizard-guys had lit up their cattle prods and so I got all hopped up on goofball, grabbed one of them and was clawing at his eyes when I got pushed out of the truck by a telekinetic force and then I realized that I was in the open and it was day and I’d probably get mobbed by crows and I kind of freaked out. Sally pulled out her whip and wrapped it around that robot’s throat and started dragging him along behind her motorcycle and then dropped him under the truck, but she totally messed up and he didn’t get run over, but I didn’t say anything because her heart was in the right place, and John raced up to the truck and was giving those lizardmen the stink-eye and a couple of them totally melted, which was pretty gross.

Anyhoo, we finally killed them all, but they had it coming for being slavers and all, and Sally and I were pretty seriously messed up, but John only had a couple of quills out of place. We screwed around with the truck and finally got it to stop and got the prisoners out and John found this weird box that was giving everybody inside the truck a migraine and we all talked about migraines for a little while and somebody said you get them less frequently when you get older and somebody else said that was BS, but we all decided they sucked and then we talked to Cashton and found out that Liberty had been raided and most of the people were taken prisoner and were probably already in Prairie Dog Town and I was all like, “I told you so,” and felt pretty self-satisfied that my prediction had come true, but all the gloating was spoiled because the people of Liberty were all taken hostage and even though they were way too complacent, they still shouldn’t be forced to work for some robot overlord building a railroad or something.

So we decided that we should decide on something and we figured our best bet was to send Cashton and the other folks back to the bunker to rest and then go to Liberty to see if anyone was still alive and while we were doing that, one of the groundhogs and that sensitive artist guy showed up and gave us the low-down about Liberty being totally overrun and how only a couple of people got away and how the Dandelion lady was totally captured by those robots and I am sure that Beyoh is going to freak out when he hears about it. So now we’re in a pickle, because we have to figure out how to rescue our friends, and also a bunch of other people we don’t know, from Prairie Dog Town and some of the people we already rescued can fight, but they don’t have any weapons and Sally thinks she can get some power armor at the Forge, but those Knights of Genetic Purity totally control it so we’ll have to figure out how to take them down I guess.

Fridge and Gramps players missed the game.

Hi everybody. Wouldzee the owl here and I want to talk to you about explosions. Explosions are really, really cool, well I guess they really are kind of hot, but I mean they are a lot of fun to watch and especially fun if you are the one that caused them and I totally caused two major explosions all in the same day and you really need to hear about how I did it!

So, we were riding in the back of that truck and I noticed that Gramps was gone and Sally said he’d said something about taking a nap back in the barracks and we totally left without him while he was sleeping and I was kind of sad, because even though he is grumpy, he is our friend and all. I hope a raccoon doesn’t crawl through the tunnel where all those zombies were and bite him because Gramps will totally mash the poor little guy and don’t you think raccoons are kind of cute, with their little bandit masks and stripy tails and stuff? Oh, and John had found a walkie-talkie in the saddlebags of the warthog leader’s bike and he got it working and we talked to this guy named Cue Ball, who really wanted the motorcycles those pig guys were riding back, but we weren’t really inclined to help them out because they are dicks.

Anyhoo, the truck eventually turned onto some railroad tracks and we were like totally minding our own business when suddenly it starts rocking around like it is being hit so we look out the back and see these three guys, riding on sword beetles, are totally trying to pop the tires. Sally convinced them to stop and we got to talking and I totally figured that one of my friends was going to pull out a pistol and shoot one, but we just talked instead and it was kind of nice. These guys are some kind of “save the earth” hippie group and wanted to blow up the truck because it was polluting with its exhaust fumes and I totally said something like, “Won’t blowing this up and having the tires burn and stuff be worse than just letting it drive around for like ten years?” And they we’re all trying to come up with some justification for their actions, but I think they really just wanted to see it blow up and were just too “save mother earth” to say so. We told them that they couldn’t blow up the truck until we found out where it was going to, and I figured “this is where things will go to hell” and even released the safety on my Mauser, but they totally knew where it was going – a place called Prairie Dog Town which is a stupid name since it is built on an island and there aren’t any prairie dogs living there which is probably good because they’d probably drown digging their little tunnels below the water table – so we told them we’d help them blow the truck up.

John scienced up some kind of a booby trap with this old motion detector thingy he found and a bunch of explosive fruit that the hippies had with them and then we all jumped on the back of a sword beetle and rode away to watch the fireworks. While we were riding, this flying drone things comes at us and the beetles burrow into the ground straight away and John and Beyoh went with them, but me and Sally got dumped on the surface and this thing totally opens up with a Gatling gun and shoots Sally and me, but we shoot it back and damage the heck out of it and then, as it is flying away, I shoot it one more time and it totally crashes into the truck and sets off the explosive fruit and the whole thing goes ka-boom!!!  I was totally pumped up and didn’t even mind that, that was the last bullet in my rifle because it was totally worth it and the hippies were really impressed and probably thought I did it on purpose, though I am pretty sure it was pure luck and I’d have only a 1-in-20 chance of ever doing something like that again. Oh, and John tried to take credit for it because of his booby trap, but I don’t think anybody bought it.

Anyhoo, the hippies rode off and told us that if we were ever near their town, Yew, we could totally crash with them because they think we are cool. I was really happy that we didn’t kill them because they were fun dudes, even though the guy with three legs really couldn’t pull off his dreadlocks and probably should have just washed his hair because he kind of looked like an idiot. After they left, we decided to go and scout out Prairie Dog Town since the hippies were pretty sure that the guys working there were bad news. It is totally run by robots, with lizardman enforcers and they are like enslaving people and stuff and they will probably come to Liberty and enslave those guys too, they said.

So we waited until dark and then walked along the railroad tracks a ways to where we could see Prairie Dog Town and it’s all on an island in the middle of a river and it looks like there was an ancient city down there once upon a time, but they are not using all of it and it has a wall around it and is full of robots and lizardmen and stuff so we can’t just charge in there shooting without getting killed.

Anyhoo, we’d just about decided to pull up stakes and head back to Liberty when we hear a train rumbling down the tracks and it’s pulling some boxcars and a couple of tanker cars and it stops at the top of the bluff overlooking Prairie Dog Town, on account of the rails leading down to the town are at a pretty steep grade. So these lizardmen hop out and open up the boxcars and start hauling these people out and the people are all in chains and stuff and don’t look happy and we figure they are going to be used as slave labor in Prairie Dog Town and we see some trucks driving up from the town, so that kind of confirms it. I’m thinking to myself, “Wouldzee, we should probably do something about this because these guys shouldn’t be making people into slaves.” So it’s not too hard to convince the rest of the group to fight the lizardmen, but we got all smart and Sally started doing this suggestive dance and all the lizardmen were like totally staring at her and John was staring too, but the rest of us snuck up and got ready to attack.

I saw their leader and I totally crept up on him and stole his keys and started unlocking people, but then it sort of seemed like Sally and Beyoh and John were getting their asses handed to them while I was screwing around, so I gave the keys to the prisoners and got hopped up on goofball and jumped on the leader guy and was clawing at his eyes and stuff and he tried to scare me with images of getting mobbed by crows, but it only worked for a little while because it was totally night and crows don’t fly at night and I’m kind of a shredding machine when I am hopped up on that stuff and I made short work of him while the rest of the gang started beating down the other lizard guys and the prisoners were busy setting themselves free and stuff. It was pretty awesome and we should have had time for a few high-fives, but John “glass half empty” Smith says those trucks are getting close and they’ve got those tough security robot guys driving them.

So I’m thinking to myself, “Wouldzee, we’re in deep doo-doo if those guys have guns, so you’ve got to think of something and now.” So I looked at the train again, and I saw those tanker cars and then I thought about my matches and then I looked over at John and I knew he’d tell me “no”, so I decided not to say anything and flew up to the top of the tanker and I opened it up and it was gasoline and I was totally like “Yes! It’s not milk or something that won’t blow up.” And then hollered at John to get the prisoners moving and he looked a little freaked out, but he and Sally and Beyoh totally got the prisoners moving and when I figured they’d gotten far enough away I lit a match.

Kablooey! It totally exploded big time and I’m pretty sure it ruined their train and it killed a bunch of those robot guys dead and it probably would have killed me too, but I got even more hopped up on goofball and flew really fast so like only my tentacles got scorched a little, but I’ve had worse sun burns on them, and it was totally awesome and there was no way John could claim credit for it and it’ll probably be the coolest thing I’ll ever do in my entire life and I wish we’d found a camera so someone could have taken a picture because I’d totally like a picture of me doing that.

Anyhoo, I couldn’t sleep after taking two hits of that jet stuff and that was ok because I’m nocturnal and we walked all night to put some distance between us and Prairie Dog Town and I got to talk to a lot of the people who’d been captured while we walked. They were all from some village whose name I can’t remember – taking all that goofball didn’t help. They were like all for going in guns blazing to rescue their friends and stuff, but Sally convinced them that they would probably all get killed and that we should go back to Liberty and figure out what to do next so we are totally going to do that.

Two players joined the game:
– Rick the Stick aka “Gramps” is a mutated walking stick
– Click-Chuck (or something like that) aka “Sally” is a mutated ladybug – “No, I’m really a guy!”

Fridge’s player could not make it.

Dear Fridge,

Wouldzee the owl here.  When we woke up in the morning to that big bomb going off and blowing up the Knight’s truck and stuff and you didn’t move, I thought maybe you were just a heavy sleeper, but I poked you with a stick and you didn’t move and then John poked you with his BBQ fork and you still didn’t move and he couldn’t science you back alive either so we figured you had died again. It took us awhile, but we found a nice refrigerator to put you in and I totally hope you are comfortable all crammed in there like that and John said he didn’t like the sound your head made when Beyoh jumped on the door to force it shut, but we really did the best we could under the circumstances. Oh, I took your motorcycle too.

So we followed that big truck for a while and eventually it ran out of gas and while we were standing there we spotted these two bugs on the top of a hill and one of them looked really old and skinny and the other one was this pretty ladybug pushing a wheelbarrow with a big recliner in it and they looked all scared and then we saw these two robots carrying some gas cans walking along behind them and the bugs asked us to save them from the robots. I really didn’t want to get into a fight, so I tried talking Canadian to them, but I’m not as good at it as you, eh? So the robots filled up the truck with gas and then drove off in it and Gramps (that was the skinny bug) and Sally (the pretty ladybug) climbed on the back of the truck and it drove off and we followed on our motorcycles.

Anyhoo, we drove a ways and up a hill to a little place with a tipped over tower and some ransacked buildings and it was all surrounded by a chainlink fence. The robots got out and started filling the truck up with gas from a pump there and then one of them wandered around back and was trying to get Gramps out of the truck (Sally had jumped out earlier), but Gramps wasn’t having any of it and said something about “getting off his damn lawn”. The robot looked like he was going to shoot Gramps and I yelled “Can’t we all just get along?” or something like that and the robot stopped and then Gramps just pasted him with his crutch. Then all hell broke loose and we flailed around shooting and clawing and Beyoh was swinging around his yield sign, but I don’t think he actually hit anyone and Gramps kept collapsing and then getting back up and finally the robots stopped moving and I really wished I could speak Canadian better so maybe we’d stop bashing every robot we see, but I bet even if I was fluent it really wouldn’t help because the rest of the party always seems to be spoiling for a fight.

So we found a security card on one of the robots and Sally (who keeps telling us she’s a guy) tried to use it to open up one of the doors to a building that didn’t look so ransacked, but couldn’t figure it out so John finally got it open and found a hatch that led underground. The hatch was stuck, but Sally had some lubricant and we totally teased her about it, and after we used it we got it open and climbed down and it was like a barracks. We found some food and a laser gun and some medicine and Gramps wanted to take a nap, but Beyoh spied a secret door and so we opened it and it was totally full of dead guys. I really wish you had been there Fridge, because maybe you could have talked to them or something, but they were all like “arrr… brains…” and looking at John really hungry-like, but they didn’t pay much attention to me. Anyhoo, I thought to myself, “What would Fridge do?” So I totally blasted them with my Mauser and gramps was swinging his crutch around and every time we took one out it exploded in green goo and Gramps got totally slimed and was kind of glowing like some of the old bomb craters do by the time we killed them all dead again. Oh, and the tunnel led outside, but we didn’t screw around down there much longer. We figured there might be racoons or something and nobody wanted to risk getting bit.

Anyhoo, I totally forgot to say that before we climbed down I had heard a bunch of motorcycles driving around, but they didn’t sound close, but when we climbed back up to the surface, the little compound was crawling with those warthog guys and two of them noticed us because John thinks he is sneaky, but he really isn’t, and we busted their piggy heads real quick and nobody else noticed it. So we got all smart and stuff and Sally disguised her voice like a warthog and we tricked three more into getting their heads busted. Finally, the rest of them noticed us and we had this huge fight and John was giving people dirty looks and Beyoh was hitting them with his sign and gramps was swearing and bashing guys with his crutch and Sally and I were generally being ineffective until she went totally ape-shit on this guy and screamed at him and called him lots of names that I don’t think I should write down and he ran away crying. Oh, and their leader got all hopped up on goofball and was a real pain in the ass to take out, but we did it and I discovered that I didn’t feel too bad about it, because those guys are dicks and were hitting a ladybug and my mom always told me you shouldn’t hit a lady when I was a fledgling, so they totally had it coming to them.

I better get going, because that big truck started up again and it is making that annoying beeping sound backing up and we’re all going to ride in it to wherever it is going so we can tell the people in Liberty what is going on if we can ever figure it out. I wanted to write in case you came back alive again and wonder why we’re gone and why you are back in a refrigerator and you don’t think you just dreamt everything, like meeting us and stuff, although on second thought it might have been kinder to just let you think that…

Your friend,

Wouldzee the owl

We are joined by “Fridge” a revenant

Memorable passages of the night:

Wouldzee’s player: “I rolled 17 for stealth.”
GM: “They rolled 17 for perception.”
John’s player: “So you’re a spotted owl.”

GM: “Roll to see if you can figure out how to drive the motorcycle.”
Fridge’s player: “Twenty! Wait a minute, this is my old motorcycle!”

Hi! I’m Wouldzee the owl and I have an important message about the value of patience. Normally I’m a pretty patient guy, except for that time that I was trying to sneak away with one of those warthog biker’s motorcycles and two of them totally saw me and they told me it wasn’t mine and I said that possession was nine-tenths of the law and then they were going to beat me with chains and so I pulled out my Mauser and told them if they took one freaking step closer I was going to blow their freaking heads right off and they totally hopped back on their bikes and drove off and I told them “yeah, you better run” and… Oh, I guess I should start at the beginning…

So Cashton told us we could sleep in the manger, because there was no room at the inn (or maybe they didn’t have an inn), and I was asking John when he thought the three wise guys would show up and suddenly this dead guy just sits up and I totally freak out, but Cashton says it is ok because, well he really didn’t have a good reason, but he introduces us to him and his name is Fridge. So Fridge tells us that he was living when the bomb dropped, but he’s kind of not living now and he had hidden in a refrigerator when the bomb dropped because he’d seen that really bad Indiana Jones movie, that they really shouldn’t have made because it was so terrible and had aliens and stuff and the guy who played his son was kind of a douchebag and anyhoo, he thought it was a good idea, but he died, only he woke up a few years ago and started wandering around and eventually found his way to Liberty. Then we went to bed.

The next morning, we were talking with one of the groundhogs and he told us that there was a string of metal poles and he thought they might lead out of the valley, along an old road or something, and maybe we should follow them. Oh, and the nice Dandelion lady told us that she’d felt some tremors in the ground a while back, but she was totally stoned and didn’t think anything of it, but probably should have mentioned it before, but we forgave her because she is pretty cool and gave us some healing potions and other stuff that she cooked up. Anyhoo, the townsfolk asked us if we’d go and have a look-see and said they could give us some guns they took from people whose brains they’d scrambled in the past and I was totally willing to do it for free, but John started to give me a dirty look and I remembered how those warthogs got all blistered and gnarly-looking when John gave them a dirty look so I shut my beak and took a nice deer rifle from their collection.

Anyhoo, we was passing around ammunition and potions and grenades and stuff, when we heard this rumbling sound and all of a sudden this great, huge truck comes down the hill and it’s like crashing over trees and stuff and we really don’t know what to do and I suggest that Beyoh go out and stand in front of it because he told me he can’t get knocked over, only he doesn’t seem so keen on the idea so we just kind of wait. This big truck drives up to the pipeline and these four guys get out and then they drive a little digger truck out of the back and start digging near where the pipe burst. So we try to talk to them, only they don’t speak our language and Fridge thinks they are speaking Canadian and he kind of BSes his way up close to them, because they seem ready to totally shoot the rest of us, even John, who is by all accounts perfectly ordinary, and then Fridge halls off and smacks one of them with his sledgehammer.

I am totally like, “What are you doing?” but Fridge is kind of our friend now, so we have to support him, even when he is acting rash, and so I start blasting away with my rifle and John and Beyoh start blazing away too and these guys, who are totally robots, are shooting at us and trying to hit people with shovels and that digger thing and they keep putting those zip tie things on Fridge, only he’s kind of rubbery and keeps slipping out of them and I think he was making a pass at one of them too and it makes me feel a little awkward. None of us are really being effective and I am wondering if I really have a deer rifle or a BB gun considering how much damage I am doing and then the old farmer, who asked us to come down when the pipe first exploded, walks over and starts doing his juju, probably because we are making such a hash of it, and he like kills himself doing his mental blast stuff and it was like totally uncalled for because if we’d all exercised a little patience I think we could have avoided this conflict in the first place.

Anyhoo, after the dust settled and the gun smoke blew away, the little digger drove back into the cargo bay and then that truck started up and drove away. The townsfolk thought we should follow it and since we had nothing better to do and we don’t have great judgment and I think they only asked us to do it so we wouldn’t ruin the old farmer’s funeral, we ran after it and jumped on board, only Beyoh can’t run fast so he got left behind and then we needed to figure out how to slow the truck down so he could get on board and we eventually did, only John got several electrical shocks in the process and his hair was standing on end like the quills in his butt usually do when he is fighting.

So we travelled in the truck all day and eventually it got to be night and we could see this little village all lit up a ways away and we figured that was where the truck was going. Anyhoo, the village was under attack by those warthog guys and they was driving around on their choppers shouting and blasting at people with guns and Fridge said it was like a Mad Max movie, whatever that was, and the truck didn’t slow down, so we all hopped out before we drove right into the middle of a gun fight to see what the deal was.

Anyhoo, we were hunkered down watching and I’m just starting to think about taking a potshot at one of the bikers when suddenly I notice the flag flying over this little village and it is – I kid you not – the Knights of Genetic Purity! Now if you haven’t heard tell of these guys they are totally bad news. I mean they typically don’t mess around with average, ordinary guys like John Smith, but if you can shoot death rays out of your eyes or have poisonous quills on your butt or something they will totally screw with you. So I’m thinking to myself, “Wouldzee, these guys are totally bad news and those warthogs are SOBs and Fridge smells terrible, so maybe you should just let them wipe each other out and then go in there and collect any cool stuff they may have and later you can ask John to ask Fridge about hanging the pine-scented air-freshener you took out of the truck around his neck so he doesn’t smell as bad. So we watched for a while and it looked like the knights were getting the better of the bikers, because the warthogs were running low on ammo. The knights were also screwing around trying to stop that big truck that was trying to drive through their little town.

So we figured that the big truck was eventually going to push its way through the town and we’d better be on the other side when it got there, so we decided we should swipe a couple of the warthog’s motorcycles, especially since the guys who were driving them had gotten all killed and stuff and probably would be needing them, unless they came back from the dead like Fridge, but I didn’t think that likely since I didn’t see any refrigerators lying around. So we snuck on down and I was totally sneaky, but John was all like, “Hey look at me and my prickly butt!” and two bikers came over beat him with chains and killed him. Then I grabbed a bike, but I couldn’t get it started and so I pushed it away and the same two guys came to beat me down, but I freaked out on them and they drove off like I said earlier and then John, who was just faking being dead, got himself a chopper and started it up and drove off while Beyoh went all ectoplasmic and freaky to draw the knights’ fire. Then we found Fridge and it turned out that the motorcycle I grabbed used to belong to him, like 500 years ago or something, so he totally knew how to drive it and I was wishing that the warthogs who told me it was theirs would turn up so I could tell them, “In your face!” but by that time they were fleeing.

Anyhoo, we pushed the choppers through the woods and around to the other side of the village and Fridge tried to teach us how to play euchre while we waited, but I got totally confused and Beyoh was all like, “What did they make these cards out of?” every five minutes and so we watched the knights screwing around trying to capture the big truck for a while and then went to sleep. The next morning we work up when this aircraft goes roaring over us and we look down at the village and the knights are still screwing around with this truck and I am thinking, “Don’t you have anything better to do? It’s not like it is that cool of a truck and it will probably be smelly since there was a dead guy riding in it and I swiped the pine-scented air-freshener from it.” And then BOOM, this aircraft like totally bombs the truck the knights were using to stop that big truck hauling the digger and it drives right on out of the little village and starts heading our way.

Now I’ve got to decide if I am riding behind the guy with poisonous quills on his butt or the dude who smells like rotting flesh…

For the 2 people who follow Filbanto Stew, I’ve been catching up the blog on our recent games. We’ve actually played three sessions of Numenera, but I usually run the game synopsis past our GM each week since I forget all the NPC names.

Numenera is on hold for a while since our GM is out of town, so we decided to give Gamma World a go. The DM is running the D&D5 fan-made rules. Only three players made the game. We rolled randomly for everything and wound up with the following party:

Beyoh the mutated tree
Zarkon the alien, I mean John Smith the ordinary, average guy
Wouldzee the mutated owl

Hi, I’m Wouldzee the Owl and I have an important message for you. As you know, most of Gamma World is an irradiated wasteland, so nothing gets my tentacles in a knot more than seeing one of the few green patches left get flooded with crude oil… Huh? What am I ranting about? Oh that’s right, I haven’t filled you in on events leading up to the latest ecological nightmare I’m up against.

So I was out flying one day. I’m not really sure where I was headed. I think I have some kind of  memory loss… Anyhoo, I was out flying and I see this nice looking tree, all covered with these pretty, colored lights and an old, rusty Yield sign caught in its branches and there’s this guy taking a nap below it and I think to myself, “Wouldzee, you should take a rest before some murder of mutant crows decide to mob you.” So I set myself down in the tree, only to have it yell at me not to poop on it. Now, we all know that owls cough up pellets instead of pooping, so once the tree, whose name is Beyoh, learned that, we became great friends. I asked Beyoh,  “If you fell over in the woods and nobody else was around would you make any noise?” He told me that he didn’t fall over – it was one of his special abilities – so I guess I’ll never figure that one out… Now the guy who was sleeping below the tree woke up and told us his name was John Smith and that he was ordinary and that his eyes were ordinary and that the quills growing out of his butt were totally ordinary too and we all decided to travel together, along this old highway, because we had nothing better to do and it led somewhere and Beyoh and John probably suffer from some sort of memory loss too.

Anyhoo, we was travelling along when we heard some motorcycles roaring along ahead of us. You don’t hear that kind of thing much, so I flew up in the air to take a look-see at where they was going. They turned off the highway onto some other road heading into a hillier area and we all decided to follow them because we really had nothing better to do and I guess none of us have really good judgment and we really don’t know when to avoid sticking our beaks into other people’s business. We travelled along for quite a while, and we were careful to walk on the shoulder facing traffic because I was pretty sure this was a major road we found ourselves on and we didn’t want to get run over and Beyoh made sure to hold up his Yield sign so people driving cars would see it and hopefully yield before running us over. We were totally lucky an didn’t see any cars.

Anyhoo, we came to what looked like an ancient village, though I’m being generous when I say that because it was really just a house and an old gas station. We didn’t see any signs of the motorcycles or anything, so I flew in to take a look around. So I see this little girl with pretty butterfly wings and there’s this dead guy and she’s all crying and stuff and I felt really bad for her so I rushed back to get John, because he seems pretty sharp for an average guy with a prickly butt and I figured he might be able to science up the dead guy or something. So we all sneak back to the village, which really wasn’t a village, and John totally gives us away and the little girl sees us and asks us to help heal her father. It’s about this time that I notice her dad has probably been dead for a week because he is crawling with those big blue flies that are so annoying and even though they seem to fly really slow it is hard to swat them and when I tell John, the little girl starts laughing and then morphs into this warthog guy who totally shoots me.

So I’m lying on the ground and I think I am bleeding out and I hear the voice of the guy who remodeled my nest saying, “Come into the light Wouldzee…” and then suddenly I am awake. It’s like I had a second wind or something. Anyhoo, I’m lying there watching Beyoh pounding on that warthog guy who shot me with his Yield sign and I’m wondering if maybe the guy had peed on him when he was a sapling or something because he is totally beating him to a bloody pulp. John is giving another warthog the stink-eye and it’s cringing and screaming and not really acting like I figured someone would act if an ordinary guy gave them a dirty look and then I totally lose it and pull my Broomhandle Mauser and holler at the warthogs to freeze and they totally freeze until Beyoh starts swinging his sign around again. I caught a couple of them using my hula-hoop and tentacles, but I feel kind of bad about it because Beyoh totally turned them into spam when they wouldn’t answer our questions, and it totally reinforced my feeling that he’d been peed on when he was a sapling. Oh, and one of them got away so we knew they’d come back for revenge or something.

Anyhoo, we searched around the place and set off a bomb, but we found some neat stuff to make up for all the shrapnel I had to pick out of my feathers. The warthogs’ motorcycles were in a garage, but they were out of gas. They were cooking up some kind of drugs and John figured out how to finish them off so now we can all get hopped up on goofball or maybe die depending on how we react to the stuff. There were also some boats and stuff, oh and this guy who’d died on the gas station toilet like a hundred years ago or something. We also found this map. It’s one of those ancient maps with all the pretty colors that are impossible to refold correctly. We figured out we were in Oil City, which is a really dumb name since it’s not even as big as a village as I said before. There was also a town named Liberty to the south of Oil City and someone had written (I’m pretty sure in Pig Latin) that there was lots of food and few weapons and some other stuff I probably forgot. We decide that we should go and warn the people in Liberty that a gang of warthog bikers was going to attack and plunder their settlement, so we set off because like I said before, we really don’t know when to avoid sticking our beaks into other people’s business.

Anyhoo, it took about a day to travel to Liberty. We met these two guys as we came into town named Portland and Bangor and John thought they might be a couple of the main citizens. We told them about their impending doom, but they really didn’t seem to get it and they told us we could go into town and trade with this guy named Cashton and we figured that he might give a rat’s ass that his village was going to be overrun by warthog bikers, and it would be bad for business, and I’ve also been working on this decorative macramé owl that I thought I could sell, so we went to see him.

Anyhoo, we went to the mercantile and we met this Dandelion gal, who I think has the hots for Beyoh, and Cashton who really didn’t seem to care that a horde of vicious pig-man bikers were gathering to destroy his village, but he had one of the town elders come over to talk to us. So this old guy comes in and he tells us not to worry because half of the village has mind powers and can totally put the whammy on any warthog bikers. So we eventually let it drop because they seemed pretty sure of themselves and my new friends seem pretty sneaky, except John wasn’t really that sneaky before, but we can probably escape in the confusion during the upcoming battle.

Anyhoo, while we were talking, this farmer comes into the store and says that some black stuff is erupting from the ground across the river from his farm and so we all decide to head down there and take a look and I’m thinking, “this is probably some eldritch horror that burrowed its way to the surface after a thousand years of imprisonment”, but John does some science and figures it is oil and it is shooting out all over and getting into the river and I am secretly thinking, “How are you going to mind control your way out of this you complacent SOBs?” Then I totally remember that I had found a box of matches, but John tells me that is NOT a good idea and Beyoh is kind of freaking out too so I put them away, only I found myself taking them out again, just to make sure, but John yells at me again, so I say that I will fly to the other side of the river to check out what is going on, only John makes me leave my matches with him.

When I fly over there I am totally careful, because I didn’t see any dishwashing detergent in Cashton’s store and it is impossible to get oil out of your feathers, though it comes off your tentacles pretty easy… Anyhoo, I can’t see a lot even though I have really good eyes and can even see in the dark, but this oil is just jetting everywhere and like into the river and flowing into the farmer’s field and washing up in the town and I think about my matches again, but since John won’t let me use them, we just sit there and wait.

After a while these two nice woodchucks or groundhogs bring us some dinner. (Please don’t think poorly of me, but I cannot tell them apart. I have trouble distinguishing between cougar, puma and mountain lions too.)  I asked them how much wood they could chuck, but they just gave me dirty looks, and Beyoh seemed a little uncomfortable about the whole topic so I let it drop and went back to work on my macramé. Eventually the jet of oil stops and the townsfolk put some kids to work digging around the hole it shot out of and they uncover a big pipe full of Texas Tea buried in the ground and it looks like it just kind of rusted through and burst so like it is totally bad luck for all these villagers, who are kind of annoying, but really didn’t deserve all this and are probably all going to starve to death or something if we can’t find a way to clean this mess up. On the bright side, I finished my macramé owl and decided to work on a toilet paper cozy next.