[GURPS 4e, IC] The Dying of the Light — Infection

[Inglenook]

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It's fine! Hopefully the time jumps and downtimes are done for now. I swear, it was almost as bad as Lost for a bit.

[Inglenook]

ESE, MAXWELL & STEVE

After explaining the plan to the newcomers, Morten steps inside the elevator (which Steve has been holding open with his foot). "Who's coming with me?" he asks. Ese, Maxwell, Steve, Anna, Lurch and Brenda immediately join him. After a moment's consideration, Yolanda steps in as well. "Safety in numbers," she shrugs.

Rebecca stands outside the elevator, still clutching her knife. Her face is pale and drawn. "I can't go back up there. I can't." There are tears in the corners of her eyes, but she almost seems more angry than frightened. "I'm not even supposed to be here! If I'd stayed in med school like I wanted, I wouldn't be stuck on this ****ing ship making ****ing martinis!"

There's a beat as no one is quite sure what to make of her outburst, but Lurch finally speaks up. "Uh, you should stay down here then. Go back down the tunnel, through that door and find Lukas Haas's office. Lock yourself in. We can come back for you later? And uh, take these." He tosses her his earmuffs.

Rebecca's eyes flicker over each of you briefly, and then she's gone, racing away from you down the maintenance tunnel. The doors close. Ese swipes his key card and the elevator begins its ascent.

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Rebecca has left the party.

Deck 10 is not as quiet as it was twenty minutes ago. As the group exits the elevators, you can hear the screaming and commotion coming from the nearby stairwell. It sounds as if the mass of infected people has gotten distracted on the other decks along the way, but eventually some of them will find their way up.

There are other noises on the deck too—the sound of thumping against doors and muffled shouts, although you can't place their direction.

"The bridge is down the corridor to the right. The door is steel," Morten whispers. "Stig's room is 1532 if we want to break in and try to find his key card."

The group is standing in front of the starboard-side main elevator, near the bow. Directly in front of you is the port-side elevator. Down both hallways to your left and right, the corridor continues for a while before turning a corner and disappearing.

---

1
TAL

Leaving behind the bloodshed on Deck 07, you and Jamie creep silently up the stairs to Deck 10.

To your right is the secondary elevator. Ahead of you is Adventure Ocean, the ship's child day care/play area; colorful fish adorn the walls outside it. The map near the elevator doors reveals that through the Adventure Ocean area is a small outside deck with stairs going from Decks 09–11.

The bridge is located at the other end of the ship, past a bunch of cabins.

[Stegyre]

Tal and Jamie hurry around the elevator bay to head toward the bridge at the bow.

[Inglenook]

TAL

As you walk down the corridor, you hear beating on the walls and doors and the occasional frustrated scream. It sounds like maybe some of the sick people were in their rooms when they went mad, and now they don't realize how to get out.

You turn the corner and freeze. Ahead of you, stepping out of the elevator, is a fairly large group of people, some of them clearly wielding weapons. None of them, however, appear to have the rage-filled, bruised faces of the ill … at least that you can see.

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ESE, MAXWELL & STEVE

Maxwell, you suddenly spot something down the hall to your left. Anna follows your gaze and gasps slightly.

Two people have rounded the corner: a man in a leather jacket and, following behind him, a red-haired girl.

[xen0phile]

As they exit the elevator, Ese is thinking about the actual process of breaking into the room, and realizes he doesn't have any particularly useful tools for opening doors (aside from just attempting to kick it down). Responding to Morten's suggestion of breaking into Stig's room, he offers, quietly but annoyed, ¡C*****! Anyone have good tools? A drill, crowbar, saw, small knife?

He is about to briefly explain his history with this stuff but is interrupted by Anna's gasp.

[dekova]

Steve eyes the stairwell, hearing the screaming echoing up from below.

It may be nice to have a working steel door in a couple minutes, we should probably...

With Anna's gasp, Steve raises his wrench and looks around.

[Stegyre]

Using his arm to keep Jamie back, in case they need to run, Tal says a cautious, "Hello? We're looking for the captain or some crew members."

[dekova]

Using his arm to keep Jamie back, in case they need to run, Tal says a cautious, "Hello? We're looking for the captain or some crew members."

Steve relaxes just a bit and, with exaggerated motions, signals the man to "be quiet" and then to "come here".

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So, I'm taking a liberty with Steve here. GM didn't say Steve sees the pair, but since Tal spoke, I think it's a safe bet. I'll "rewind" if that's not the case.

Also, I think the gestures for be quiet and come here are pretty universal, but here's a gesture roll for Steve just in case you're wanting him to make one. (Skill is 10)
(3d6)[15]

[Inglenook]

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That's fine; anyone in the group can call him over. And yeah, "come here!" should be simple enough that it's not necessary for the roll.

[Stegyre]

Tal and Jamie approach the group, quietly. Once they are near enough to speak without raising their voices, Tal asks, "Is one of you the captain? We've just come from Deck 7. The crewmen trying to ready the lifeboats have been killed, as far as I could see."

Briefly, he fills the new group in on the family of four, the Carvers, holed up in the Arcade on Deck 10, and how he and Jamie have been using the secondary stairway to get up and down: "The infected don't seem to be using it."

"Can any of you tell us what's going on?"

[dekova]

As the pair approaches, Steve looks around anxiously and says quietly. "Captain, I say we go for Stig's room. It'll be quieter to break in to and it might be nice to have the bridge door working when the infected reach this floor."

Tal: "Can any of you tell us what's going on?"

Uncomfortable with giving the captain further direction, Steve will pull Tal close and quietly fill him in on the infected heading up the stairwell, the plan to try the secondary radio and the infected crewmember in the bridge.

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Hopefully, the captain has made a decision and Steve is filling Tal in as they're moving ninja-like towards either the bridge or Stig's room.

Can I get a description of the main stairwell? I'm envisioning a metal, utility stairwell with stairs about three feet wide, having metal doors on each level that open inward (doors open into stairwell). Kind of like this. How close am I?

[Inglenook]

TAL

The grey-haired man with the gun blanches visibly as you tell him about the fate of the crewmen on Deck 07. At last he says in a shaky voice, "Yes, I'm the captain."

---

1
The group crosses to the port side of the ship, and heads up the corridor to Stig's room, 1532. Morten pauses and looks around at everyone. "Should I shoot the lock, do you think?"

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@dekova: the main staircases are actually more like this or this—wide and open with no doors, although there are fire doors that block the stairwell off in the event a fire is detected. The secondary staircase is the same, but only half as wide and split in two.

[dekova]

"Let me see if we can get it open a little quieter."

Steve backs away from the door a step and motions for the others to give him a little room. Taking a deep breath to steel himself, he lunges forward with a kick.

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So... I'm no firefighter and I don't know a thing about breaching doors. Steve, however, has this handy skill called "forced entry" at skill 12.
I'm guessing if there's ever a time to make a forced entry roll, it's here.
(3d6)[8]

[Inglenook]

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Kick: (1d6-1)[1] cr

Steve's kick connects with a thump, causing the door to rattle and groan slightly.

[dekova]

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Does Steve have any sense for how long this may take? Is it usually a "3-4 kick" thing or a "5-6 minute" thing?

And... I just realized you said that doors close off the stairwells in the event of a fire! Tell me more about that and what Steve knows about how to get around once the fire alarm has been activated. Is there a fireman's key for the elevators in the bridge?

Professional Skill: Firefighter 11 if that makes a difference.

[Inglenook]

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The cabin doors are about one-and-a-half inches thick, so just kicking at it is going to take a goodly while.

And this calls for an IQ roll!
(3d6)[15]

Remembering your basic crewman's training, you recall that there are fire doors at the end of each corridor on the ship, as well as roll-down fire doors that can seal the stairs off on any given deck.

The doors shut automatically if smoke is detected in that corridor/stair entrance area, and an alert is sent to the bridge. The doors can be "reset" by the bridge once the danger has passed.

All fire doors can be opened manually by pulling down on the handle, to keep from trapping passengers inside. The corridor doors are pushed or pulled open (although they're quite heavy) and the stair fire doors have to be grabbed at the bottom and pushed back up into the ceiling. Once opened, the doors quickly shut themselves again to prevent the fire from escaping.

[xen0phile]

Ese curses to himself. This will take too long. We need tools. I'm going back down. I know where to get axe or crowbar. Lurch, I have my radio. Call me if things... turn bad.

[dekova]

Steve looks at the door and shakes his head grimly.

"That's not going to work, sorry guys."

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We should just set off the fire detector and seal the stairway, but Steve can't do it. People would hear the alarm, leave their cabins, and get swarmed by the infected.

Man... playing the boyscout is rough.

[Stegyre]

After watching the crewman give the door a few so-far-ineffectual kicks, Tal turns to the captain (assuming that he would be the person in charge): "Can we use the intercom system from here? And is it possible to turn it on and off in different areas of the ship? The sick people seem to respond to the sound of others. I thought we might be able to use the intercom to lure them -- or most of them -- into an area where we can secure them.

"We'll all be a lot better off if we have them in one place and we have the run of the ship than the other way around.

"It's just a thought I had. Can we do it, and is there someplace that would make a good trap?"

[Inglenook]

ESE

Lurch nods.

Breaking away from the others, you take the main elevator back down to the sub-level beneath the medical facility, heading through the maintenance tunnel and the metal door into the din of the engine room. You pass by Lukas's office, and through the window you can see Rebecca sitting at his desk inside, frantically trying to call someone on the phone.

You step over to the damage control locker and open it up. Inside are a number of tools for emergency management and ship repair. Ese took out all the wrenches to give to the others for self-defense, but there's still quite a bit left:

- large fire hose with numerous nozzles
- 2 fire axes
- 2 flash suits
- 2 OBA rebreathers
- 2 hard hats
- 2 fire extinguishers
- 2 battle lanterns
- bilge pump
- casualty control manual
- repair manual
- crow bar
- small, portable welding kit
- small wooden mallet
- fiberglass patches
- cable
- flashlight
- rubber gaskets
- hand saw
- toolbox
- canvas bag
- first aid kit
- bolt cutters
- compressed air
- toilet plunger

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EVERYONE ELSE

Morten shakes his head at Tal's question. "We can use the intercom from the bridge or any of the major ship stations, but we'd have to get into them first. The individual areas can make local intercom announcements, but … that would mean that someone would have to stay behind to draw those people there.

"Although, if we can get into the bridge, maybe we could cut some of the wiring so that only some areas would broadcast if we used the intercom from the bridge. Uh, 'Lurch', you and Ese have electrical experience, yes?"

"Yep."

"Okay, we might need your help in a bit. I don't know where we could try to trap those people, though. The brig in the security office was the most secure place on the ship. Everywhere else has doors that would eventually break under the weight of so many people."

"Plus there's nowhere big enough to put them all," Anna adds, frowning. There were sixty-three of them in the medical, and dozens more confined to their cabins. The Sound of Music Lounge is the biggest enclosed space on the ship, but there's no way you could keep them all in with so many doors."

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@dekova: There's no actual alarm aside from the one on the bridge, just the closed door and a flashing light to warn people not to go inside. It's assumed that crew will arrive within a minute to evacuate the area and put out the fire. Plus if sirens went off every time some bozo lit a cigarette when they weren't supposed to, no one would get any sleep.

[Stegyre]

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Please see my post in the OOC thread, seeking clarification about the SoM Lounge -- not to be confused with the S&M Lounge, where something completely different happens.

"The Sound of Music Lounge? What if we chained the doors closed? We could do most of them before we tried to lure them in. The riskiest parts would be luring them in and chaining the final door once we had most of them inside -- assuming that we have locks and chains."

Tal feels discouraged. Maybe it wasn't such a great plan, after all, but . . .

"Look, we can't just lock ourselves up somewhere and hope someone else takes care of things for us. We're going to need food, water, control of the ship! We have innocent, terrified people all over this ship with very little between themselves and what you tell me are over five-dozen homicidal maniacs." -- He remembers the Chef, with his long knife, and the Carvers, hiding on Deck 10 -- "THEY . . . WILL . . . DIE . . . if we don't do something, and soon!

"If nothing else, maybe we can at least go to one of the intercom stations and broadcasting messages to distract and mislead. Some of the infected seem rational enough to actually follow the messages -- at least, enough of them were on Deck 7 to overwhelm the crew. They will probably lead the more mindless ones. We can broadcast a message sufficiently crazy that anyone not infected and hiding would never respond to, but the crazies might. Get me access to where you broadcast from before, and I can see what I can stir up."

[Inglenook]

"I agree, we do need to do something," Morten says. "We could try to lure them into the Lounge, but there are over a dozen doors there. I don't know how we could secure all of them, especially if they they throw all their weight against them like they did in the med center—they'll just tear the doors off their hinges.

"As for earlier, I used the phone in the head engineer's office to make the shipwide announcement," Morten says, "and it has a local intercom that broadcasts through all the rooms and maintenance areas down there."

His eyes suddenly light up. "We could try to trap them down there into the engine room—all the hatches are steel, they can't use the elevators without a card, and there are no stairs! But first we need to get into the bridge."

"Uh, guys?" Jamie says from behind you. Everyone turns, and you all notice that the screaming and footsteps coming from the main stairwell down the corridor has grown somewhat louder. It sounds as if the sick people are starting to get closer to Deck 10.

[dekova]

"Quick! Anyone have a lighter and a cigarette? I'll see if I can get the fire door to drop. It may hold them off for awhile."

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The above statement assumes that I understood you correctly in that:

1. There is a fire door that will drop on this deck of the main stairway.
2. Steve knows that a shipwide fire alarm isn't going to get set off.

Oh... and Lurch had access to fire axes and he gave me a wrench? That guy takes people waaaay too literally. I guess i shouldn't complain, he could have given me the toilet plunger.

[Inglenook]

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That's correct, although the fire system reacts more to smoke than heat—a ciggy'd work better than a lighter.

[Asherion]

Maxwell looks at the unfolding idiocy around him (without expressing that to his companions) and sighs.

"I have a lighter, and cigarettes. Are you sure we wouldn't be better off just getting the hell off of this boat?" he says.

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I've only been skimming, as it's been freakishly busy around here. If there are better weapons than the ice pick presented, Maxwell will definitely ask for one. If there are handguns in the hands of untrained, he will also attempt to reason one into his control. And if they decide to try the lighter plan, he will allow his lighter to be used as long as it is promptly returned, or he is personally using it.

Maxwell removes said items from his pocket and lights up a smoke, pausing a moment to look at the captain (as if perhaps he'd take offense) then assumes that it really doesn't matter anymore and lights one up. "I haven't been able to properly smoke a cigarette since all this happened, much as I've tried... zombies... Jesus."

[dekova]

Maxwell: "Are you sure we wouldn't be better off just getting the hell off of this boat?"

"Sir, there are other passengers." Steve replies, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.

"May I please have those?" He gestures to the lighter and cigarette.

[xen0phile]

Ese grabs the canvas bag, and tosses his wrench plus the crow bar and first aid kit into the bag. He slings the bag over his neck, carrying it like a courier bag. He grabs one of the fire axes, wielding it.

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I'll wait a bit before posting more--remember my character has a radio and access to an intercom (since he is now down in engineering)--in case you want him to try something with the intercom.

[Asherion]

Maxwell shrugs again and hands over the lighter and some cigarettes. "Let's hope this works, yeah?"

[Inglenook]

MAXWELL, STEVE & TAL

"Gimme that, blondie," Brenda sighs, handing her blood-covered broken bottle to Anna and yanking the wrench from her hand. "I'll worry about the intercom once we're safe on the bridge." She begins beating on the doorknob/lock mechanism as hard as she can with the wrench, pausing between strikes to speak.

"Those. Things. Are. Coming. And. I. Don't. Want. To. Be. In. The. Hall. When. They. Get. Here."

From around the corner (close to the bridge), you all suddenly hear the sound of a door opening and closing. Brenda freezes mid-strike, eyes wide.

[dekova]

Steve nods a quick thank you to Maxwell as he grabs the items with his left hand.

"Infected don't open doors, see who that is." Steve whispers.

With that, he turns and sprints down the hallway towards the main staircase.

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So the plan (if you can call it that) is to light the cigarette and blow smoke at the detector.
If that fails, Steve will rip off his shirt, wrap it over the wrench and light it on fire (the shirt, not the wrench ). THAT should set off the detector. (pen light and other gear are in pants pockets)

If, while Steve is busy doing this stuff, a single infected comes up the staircase, he'll try to kick it back down (all out attack & hopefully big bonus for having the high ground).
If, while Steve is busy doing this stuff, more than one infected comes up the staircase, Steve will insure he's got their attention and then sprint up the staircase to draw them away.