Trials of the Desert Republic - IC

[TwoBitWriter]

Joseph:

In a room at the back of the house you see the Rancher, his wife, and their three children tied up in a corner. They look up in fear and terror, but exclaim in relief when they see that you are a Ranger.

"Thank God you came... Their leader said they were going to kill me and my boys then take my wife and daughter away..." The rancher cries out, tears streaming down his face.

[Lochar]

Joseph

Joseph curses the Banditos under his breath, but is glad to see them alive. "No one has been hurt then? Good. Hold on just a moment and I'll get you free."

Joseph moves to the family, working at the knot of the rancher first. "We've gotten most of them killed, and the few that have survived have given up and are tied down." He finishes untying the rancher and moves onto the children. "Sir, if you would untie your wife?"

[estradling]

Sergeant Jones

Brigham followed Joseph into the house and over heard the Ranchers comment.

As the Rancher gets freed he said, "You and your family are safe." Unspoken was a 'for now' "My men took some hits, and we've got some interrogating to do so we can try to stop this once and for all. I hope you don't mind us imposing on your hospitality for awhile." It wasn't really a question

[Ipphli]

Bryan

Bryan ties up the bandito, and then the Jefe once he's patched up. He pulls out a rag and cleans off his hatchet, then checks the couple wounds he received. He looks over at the house and calls out. "Prisoners secured sir."

[estradling]

Sergeant Jones


"Alright... Keep a guard on them at all time. But rotate it so that everyone that needs to get patched up has a chance to. Once thats done we need to search for anything useful and then dispose of the bodies in a way that willn't bring scavengers down on the family"

[Gamgee]

Gregory

Gregory was staring intently at the bandits, he was itching for the orders to interrogate them. Seeing as he disobeyed once today he wasn't willing to take the risk of beating them. Finally in disgust he looked away from them.

"Can someone patch me up? They managed to bang me up quite a bit, I wish I could have returned the favor in kind..."

He glances at Jefe as he says the last few words in a slow drawl. Finally he turns his attention back to getting aid for his wounds.

[Baerdog7]

Griff Henderson

Aye, Sarge.

Griff holsters his firearm and draws his machete, testing the edge. He strolls over and squats in front of the Jefe and other Bandito.

Let's get right down to business, shall we? Who sent you and what in Hell were you trying to do in my territory?

[pingcode20]

PFC Kurt Scarborough
Kurt takes his eye away from his scope, and gathers up the four spent shell casings that had been ejected during the fight, stuffing them into a pocket, and keeps a lookout for any banditos coming to help.

<Copy that. Say, maybe one of you would like to remind these smegheads of the joys of sniper cover, in case one of them decides to do something stupid.>

[TwoBitWriter]

Spanish Speakers:

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The Jefe is silent for a moment, then responds in Spanish. "I will only speak if you can promise me no executions..."

Joseph and Brigham:

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The Rancher unties his wife and helps you with the rest of the family. He is near tears and thanks you greatly as his family all rush and hug him. "There were two groups... the first only took my cattle, they are long gone. This was the second group, coming to take everything else... if you hadn't shown up. I think we are going to move to town, my livelihood is gone here. Maybe I can get a job there... What I want to know is what happened to the Militiamen that are supposed to patrol these parts. They normally check with us at least once a day."

Everyone:
You gather the Bandito's supplies, which include 18 crossbows, 19 machetes, 7 knives, a Mossberg 12-guage shotgun, 80 crossbow bolts, 8 12-guage shotgun shells, and 19 Leather Jackets. Captain Duncan will appreciate the extra equipment for the militia, which always seems to be short-supplied. Payday is approaching, and Duncan always makes sure to give bonuses to scavenged supplies such as these. The day is certainly looking up! You help the Rancher and his family repair the tire on the cart, the two donkeys hitched to it you decide to leave with the Rancher as he and his family try to find a new life in Kingman. You never see the cattle, though you can see the massive cattle trail heading West. But you are too tired to follow it for now. All attempts to hail down the Militia Patrol (henceforth referred to as Golf Company) fail, and you start to get anxious. You could go look for them, but you are tired, some wounded, and you fear for the family's safety as they travel back to Kingman, especially if this area is currently lacking Militia observation.
You mount your horses and head back, escorting the family. Today's victory seems bittersweet. You killed 17 Banditos today, 17 men. No matter how many you fight, they always seem to have more. You have never seen a female fighting alongside the bandits, it has always been men. You look at the lone Bandito and the Jefe, silently marching beside you, their hands tied.
This is the first time a Bandito Jefe has been capture alive, so maybe you will be able to garner more information from him back at the Ranger Station.
You arrive in Kingman, and direct the (former) Rancher to the local employment and labor allotment center where he might find work.
Captain Duncan is still sitting at his desk, cleaning his shotgun, when you arrive. He stands and salutes each of you.
"Welcome back, boys. I'm glad to see that you are well. Sergeant Jones, please report."

[estradling]

Sergeant Jones

"Yes Sir," The young sergeant returns the salute. "We found no evidence of Golf Company. We did find plenty of evidence of the Banditos sacking and raiding in the area Golf Company was protecting. This makes it clear that they a MIA." Brigham pauses for a bit before adding, "I think we should assume that they are dead sir." It wasn't something Brigham really wanted to have to say. But the alternative to them being dead was worse, that they turned traitor.

"We did stop the second part of a Bandito raid, saving a family but not their lifestock. In the course of engagement we did capture a Jefe. And he has express a willingness to talk in exchange for their lives. Although we have some wounded we took no losses in that exchange."

[pingcode20]

PFC Kurt Scarborough
Kurt stands at attention while his sergeant gives an account of the battle, before stepping forwards, placing the four spent .50 casings on the desk.

"Total expenditure was ammunition worth 35 food-credits, and we recovered equipment and ammunition from the Banditos worth 335 food-credits, give or take a little." he reported, playing the part of result adjutant.

He then stepped back, waiting for the sergeant's response.

*Will be edited in when I have access to my books again. I assumed that crossbow and bow ammunition was not used up in firing, but I may be wrong.

EDIT: Done.

[TwoBitWriter]

Captain Duncan nods. "The scavenge will do a lot of good, we may end up having to draft a new militia company, that equipment will ease the burden of doing so. I want you to take the prisoners over to the Jail. Sergeant O'Leary should be on duty."

He reaches into his desk and pulls out six slips of paper. He takes a charcoal pencil and scrawls on each one. He hands them off to you. "You know the drill, take these to the Paymaster, Corporal Simmons. He will give you your pay. I threw in a bonus for keeping that family in one piece and bringing back all the scavenge that you did. Then rest easy for the rest of the day. Sergeant Jones, I want you and your squad back in my office at 0600 tomorrow for the morning briefing." He salutes, and you take your leave.

You turn your prisoners over to Militiamen on-duty at the Kingman jail, then head over to meet with Simmons, a rat-faced man wearing glasses that was made out of at least three different frames. He is a good-natured fellow, but was never a very good soldier. However, he was terrific with numbers and was quite happy with his place in the Militia, safe in town. He greets you enthusiastically, then reviews your payslips. He files the slips away and leaves for the safe in the back room. he returns with six small sacks lightly jingling with tin Caps.

"Lets see... 100 caps weekly basepay, plus a 50 cap bonus...Should all be there. Have a good day, boys...

You are happy that you received a whole half-weeks pay as a bonus, and you don't need to worry about spending it on ammunition and food, the local Militia Armory takes care of those needs.

(10 Caps equals 1 TU. Caps are only valid within DR borders.)

Everyone OOC:

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Go ahead and say what you will be doing the rest of the day. Its late afternoon/early evening, and there is plenty of time to do a few things. If you wish to purchase something, you may do that. If you don't have the Apocalypse book, I will be happy to provide a few TU prices for you, or you can ask someone in this game who does have the book.
There are a lot of possibilities with how to spend the evening. You can simply return to your barracks and rest, visit the local bar or saloon, the Militia Armory, etc. A lot of off-duty Militiamen spend time at the horse-races downtown, gambling their money there instead of playing cards at one of the bars and saloons. There is likely a store or location for anything you want to do. If you have a specific question, I will be happy to answer it for you.

[Gamgee]

Gregory
Gregory quickly salutes the Sargent in a more formal than necessary move, but he usually did this after a days end it gave him some kind of closure to the days work.

"I will be leaving now Sir, if there is an emergency I will find you."

With that Gregory leaves, he didn't really wait for a return salute. Finally now that was he was free for another night the first thing he needed to go was go to the church and seek aid from the priest there. He doesn't like how he acted today, very rash and bold stepping over the Sargent, not to mention he wanted to beat up that bandit pretty bad. A small chat and some meditation would do the trick to clear his mind.

After that he plans on going to a local bar and having some fun, perhaps a game of cards or two before calling it a night and just relaxing.

[Ipphli]

Bryan

Bryan leaves once they are dismissed. He takes his coins and goes straight to the bank. He deposits some and arranges to have half of it sent to his sister. Stuffing the rest into his pouch, he heads for his favorite tavern, The Sidewinder.

Once there, Bryan sits down at a table in the far corner and orders a beer. He drinks is slowly, glaring at anyone he doesn't know who tries to join him.

[pingcode20]

Kurt Scarborough
Kurt followed Gregory, and waited until he's out of the way of a place where stopping him would make a scene, then tapped him on the shoulder, pulling him around if he had to.

"Gregory, what the hell did you think you were doing back there?" he demanded, with a frown of disapproval on his face.

"Somebody could have been killed because of what you did! If that Jefe had gotten lucky, we would have had a closed casket funeral on our hands."

[Lochar]

Joseph

Joseph drops his stuff off at the barracks and then checks up on the former Rancher and his family, making sure they're doing alright.

Afterwards, he heads to the saloon for a single drink, before chatting quietly with others.

[Gamgee]

Gregory

Gregory did stop, but he did not turn around. Although he could tell by voice alone it was Kurt. He kind of figured it would be the Sargent who would tell him off, he didn't have much time either way.

"So what did you propose I do? Let him kill some innocent people while fearless leader thought it through and took it up with the comity? You sometimes just have to do things, because it doesn't matter how good a plan is if it is never put into action. It is likely he would have given the order to simply kill the innocents and by then it would have been to late."

Gregory gave a shake of his shoulder to get Kurt's hand off of it, finally he resumed walking down the back alley short cut to the church. As he was walking down the alley he added one last comment in.

"You have to live life by following your emotions, because if you don't then your in for trouble. I have some stuff to take care of, farewell Kurt."

[estradling]

Sergeant Jones

Brigham takes the teams spent brass to the armory. Seeing the virtual flood of shell, the techs eyes widen. As he hands over the paperwork authorizing the reload he said, "We're being briefed at 0600 tomorrow well need them by then or shortly after."

The tech cough a bit at that, "Will see what we can do... Say Brig I don't suppose you'd lend us a hand, you know for old times sake." Brigham had spent most of his first years as a tech for the Militia and he knew most of them and they him. How he made the transition from lowly tech to leader of a group of rangers was still a bit of a head scratcher. Just the right place at the right time, or wrong place wrong time depending on who you asked.

"Sorry George. I'm under orders to take it easy. Besides I hear that Kaylee's got a nearly complete ratchet set. I want to get it before someone else did."

The tech snorts, "Another tool? You've already got one of the best sets in personal hands." George's eyes narrow, "Maybe its not Kaylee's tools you've got such an interest it." He smiles slyly.

Brigham almost blushed, "Yeah... I've got the choice of spending the night with you filling shells or with her dealing for the ratchet. Not a hard choice."

"Get out of here then... But if you get the ratchet you've got to bring it by and let us all see it."

"Sure"

[pingcode20]

Kurt Scarborough
Kurt pulled him around forcibly, and slapped across the back of the head.

"Follow your damn emotions? Thanks to your emotions, you damn well risked the lives of everyone else for no goddamn reason!" yelled Kurt.

"You bloody idiot. I had a bead on the bastard. One second's patience, and the goddamn Jefe would have been a corpse on the ground. But then you decided to go and start shooting. The goddamn lot of them hit the ground, and started shooting back."

Kurt's scowl was all the furious for Gregory's arrogance.

"Fine. Follow your emotions. But mark my words - the moment your emotions get someone killed, I'm going to shoot you myself."

Kurt stormed off, furious at the sheer gall of Gregory. Command structures were there for a reason, and jokers like him got good men killed.

Spoiler

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The big difference, of course, is that Kurt's Barrett causes 2d12 damage, which means that on average he will do 13 damage and force a check against Massive Damage for anyone of Constitution 12 or below.

The Desert Eagle doesn't have such perks to it - with a good roll it would cause Massive Damage, but it's noticeably less dangerous than a .50 cal rifle.

[Baerdog7]

Griff Henderson

Griff accompanies the Sargent to the Armory, seeking to bolster his reserve of arrows.

Hey George, before you get involved with our brass do you think you could have one of your boys scrounge me up some arrows? He hefts his sack of caps. If you could find me eight, that would be perfect.

[Gamgee]

Gregory stops, for one moment he is laughing at Kurt, what a simple minded being. He never even considered the possibility of why I opened fire, finally this time Gregory turned around as Kurt was leaving.

"So you would have killed him? Then we would gain no information from him about where all of these bandits are coming from!!! We would be even worse off than now, you would have had to shoot me as well if you took out Jefe. If we killed him, more bandits would come and more and more before we found them, how many would have to die fighting them? How many have to die on both sides... before we can have some form of peace... thanks to my split second decision we have a source of information and we can put a stop to these bandits when we find their base! Or should we have just kept stumbling through the dark hoping to one day fall into their base? If you ever tried to shoot me, I would feel sorry for you... God doesn't love murderers Kurt... now I have to go and confess my sins to the local priest and I can hope God finds it in his heart to understand what I am doing. I hope you learn to follow your emotions Kurt... or your going to have a rough life..."

Gregory takes a few slow steps back as he looks at Kurt walking away, finally he turns and leaves to head to the Church. He just wants to forget this whole conversation and everything that happened.

[pingcode20]

Kurt Scarborough
"No, God loves the ones who save lives. It doesn't take a Jefe to find out where their home camp was, and the Jefe was why we had to kill so many. If I damn well have to blow your brains out to keep you from murdering good people, I will." replies Kurt.

"As I recall, you started shooting like an idiot at the Jefe when you were asked to sit still. You're lucky you're not in a bodybag, because we damn well had to kill almost all of them to get them to surrender thanks to your 'emotions'."

Kurt spat on the ground as he left. Gregory just didn't get it. This wasn't some stupid game. Lives were at stake, and shooting just because your emotions told you to would just get people killed. So we got the Jefe - thanks to the guy on the Jefe's left getting his brains splattered all over the other two.

Quick thinking? Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, more like it.

[Gamgee]

Gregory

This guy, he just didn't get it. Everything has a cause and an effect and if you can see past the small lives lost then you can't see truly how many die. While it doesn't take a Jefe to know where the camp is, it does to know its basic tactical defenses and numbers. Gregory was thinking of the lives saved in another battle that would be far bigger than a small skirmish, thanks to the information about their defenses that the Jefe will no doubt provide. He doubted an ordinary bandit would know more about the defenses than a leader.

"You just don't understand..."

Gregory didn't even turn around when he said it but kept on walking. Kurt seems way more bloodthirsty than himself, what with he vowing to kill people before knowing anything. He seems just a big as hypocrite as Gregory himself, sworn to defend lives but doing nothing but killing. A frown appeared on his his face, beer would definitely help tonight. One final thought came to Gregory, he realized Kurt didn't quite understand the burdens placed on defenders and soldiers... it is those who fight that have to stain their name with the blood of others they do so because others can not, but if no one did it at all then their way of life would be eliminated. This isn't a good era to have philosophers in, it is an era for survivors.

[pingcode20]

Kurt Scarborough
Kurt spun around on one foot.

"Why did you choose to become a ranger?" he asked, simply and calmly.

[Gamgee]

Gregory

"I became a ranger to do what a priest couldn't Kurt..."

With that Gregory was gone around the alley corner and back into the main open street.

[pingcode20]

Kurt Scarborough
"Then you shouldn't be a Ranger, Gregory. You shouldn't have been a ranger..." replies Kurt, shaking his head as his squadmate disappeared around the corner.

[TwoBitWriter]

You have reloaded your weapons, spent a few caps, and have generally relaxed for the evening.

Unfortunately, morning comes far too soon.

You all appear outside Captain Duncan's office at 0600 sharp. The Captain steps out, his uniform disheveled and dark circles under his eyes. You doubt that he slept at all that night.

"I 'spoke' with that Bandito Jefe all night. He claims that they encountered no Militia resistance. In fact, he states that he himself found it odd that he didn't see any of us out there. He told me that he remembered telling his Lieutenants that he didn't need to bring as many men."

He pauses, walks over to his desk and opens a drawer. He pulls out a bottle of DR Tequila and pours himself a small glass, taking a thoughtful sip. He turns back to you. "For the time being, regardless of what happened to Golf, that whole sector is unpatrolled and undefended. Before you know it, there will be more bandits,radbeasts, and tribals moving in on DR territory. I can't let that happen."

"But thats all of my own concerns, and not why I dragged you in this early. I want you to find out what happened to Golf company. Yesterday, I ordered Golf CO, Lieutenant Braddock, to patrol the hills north of town. Standard patrol, nothing expected beyond the typical wasteland dangers. I want you to follow their trail. I need you to find out what happened to them, if they are dead, captured, or... deserted."

Duncan says the last words in disgust. Desertion was still a relatively common thing in the Militia ranks. Most try to return home, but some join one of the bandit groups that threaten Kingman.

"You shouldn't have to worry much about the Banditos going north, that territory mainly is contested between the Flaming Skulls gang and the Hualapal Tribe. The Skulls are a problem, but the DR are on friendly terms with the Hualapal, so you can find help there if your search takes you that far."

"You will likely need a few more supplies before starting your mission. Pick up whatever food, ammunition, and other supplies you need. You will likely be hard pressed to be resupplied once you leave Kingman. If you don't find Golf after one weeks' time, return to Kingman. I don't want to lose my best men to the wasteland. Not even for an entire militia company..."

[estradling]

Sergeant Jones

Brigham nods so they would need two weeks of food, plus basic camping supplies. Plus re-arming supplies. They would also want maps of the area. These were just a few of the things that popped into his head. He was sure there would be more once the group go together and planned this all out.

"We will need a list of all the people in Golf Company. In case we run across bodies we will know who we are no longer looking for. Also in the case we find deserters what are our orders?" All the other cases where clear cut, they would help out in whatever way they could, but a deserter wouldn't want help and would most likely attack.

[TwoBitWriter]

Captain Duncan frowns... "You will have to visit Corporal Simmons, he keeps the recruitment rosters. And about the deserters..." He sighs. "The only thing you can do is arrest them with the assurance of a fair trial upon return to Kingman. If they resist... well... defend yourselves with as much force as you deem necessary."

[Lochar]

Joseph

Joseph tilts his head, thinking for a moment. "How many in the company, sir?"