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Fealty Lost Posted Sep 29, 2020, 12:45 pm |
Santos "JD" Smith sat back at his desk, shoved the yellowed and cracked rice papers in front of him away, covered with numbers and hand-drawn maps and names; representing everything Slaughterhouse. "I can't say it'll be 'better,' just that it won't be here, any longer," he said to the woman sitting across from him. Michelle "MacV" McCollom nodded, her tanned face, still attractive after all her years in the wastes, with deep wrinkles around her eyes and mouth from laughing for decades. She leaned forward. "I think it comes down to, can we maintain the same numbers there vs here? I don't doubt there are plenty of bad guys, but will we bring in the same revenue?" He looked at her looking at him. "I can't say, for sure. We don't hear much from anyone down there, anymore. Not like the old days, when travelers came through with news from the South. Now everyone hangs out in Somerset, taking on the pogues too stupid to go where the real goods are. It's like smacking down old ladies and puppies over there." He smiled thinly. "Well, as to that, I've heard rumors that it's still possible to harvests a Buzzer or two or three from the wilds outside GW. We could use another 3-4 of those, that's for sure. We need to set up a whole second squad to cut down turn-around. Get in, get back out...hand the baddies 'what for.'" She said, giving the desk a small thump with her fist. "Sitting around 3-4 hours waiting for repairs and the adrenaline come-down tears you up. You want to sleep, not fight. If we kept 'em hot and ready and all we had to do was bail and mount into new vehicles, we'd still keep our combat edge. We could go right back out and clean up the remains of whoever we beat on the first round...maybe follow them back to their hideout and wipe them off the map. "And, I mean, seriously? We score 23 bounties off one of the meanest slaver gangs out there...$861 apiece! ...and all they brought was a Discord and a couple Buccys' with them? Down south they'd have come with Buzzers and maybe even an FE!" she finished. He listened to her, knowing they'd had this conversation before. But in this backwards-assed reality in which they lived, for some reason, the real bad guys hung out around the sparsely-populated areas and hunted in the middle of nowhere instead of around the two largest centers of population that remained in their world of Evan. He didn't understand why you would want to fight hardened wasteland crazies when you could take on soft, city-born plenty-of-food-and-water fat-ass minimum-wage town militias? It made no sense. But it was the crazy universe in which they existed; was the only way they knew. So, you adapted, you improvised and you overcame or you ended up parched, bleached bones in the middle of nowhere, being ground up into the 'roads.' "Well, then it's decided." he sighed. "We move." "Hell yes!" Michelle exclaimed, standing and pounding both fists onto the desktop. "This old broad wants a real challenge before she checks out. Let's do this!" "JD" could help but match her smile. "MOUNT UP!" he screamed. A cheer tore through the old warehouse. It was what the crew had been waiting for. Elms had become...boring. |
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*jimmylogan* Posted Sep 29, 2020, 12:50 pm |
The MADHAT crew there, just five people who sit around twiddling their thumbs most days, hear about the commotion...
"Take this," one of them says, handing over a pouch with two shotgun shells - one red and one blue. "I had that with me when I was recruited and I've lost four crew members but I barely have a scratch. Maybe they will bring you good fortune as well!" |
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Fealty Lost Posted Sep 29, 2020, 1:06 pm |
Santos, rounding up a couple of the rookies from Joe's, stopped and looked at the seated members of MADHAT.
He knew the stories of how, when they were "Shattered-n-Bloody," the MADHAT crew had helped them survive. They were a crew to be revered. He extended his hand and took the treasures-rare pre-fall ammo; surely wards against all sorts of hell. He was not sure how to respond. "if you and yours ever need us." he said. Clapped the roughneck ganger on the shoulder. "Slaughterhouse will come." He backed away, holding the ancient shotgun shells in his hand, closing the pouch to keep them safe. Nodded once to the MADHATters and slipped out the door. The Slaughtered crew could use all the luck they could get. Santos remembered all the stories from the old crew's short-lived existence in the South...before.... He shook his head. "Not going to jinx my new luck," he thought, kicking one of the rooks in the ass and yelling "GET MOVING ALREADY! TIME'S WASTING!" |
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darthspanky Posted Sep 29, 2020, 2:05 pm |
leader of GFY "platinum" says "it helps alot to use mortars down south, you ever need a stock of them let us know, we have a few in elms we can sell and one in bl, if ya really want the good stuff we do have a ambulance with 2 mounted on it already in badlands, we would sell for the right price, making all that money in elms killing our slaver allies be good to spend it on high end weapons and vehicle, let us know, as they head out to butcher the merchants civvies and militia. | ||
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Effy Posted Sep 29, 2020, 4:32 pm |
'That's BIG news!' says Gertrude while drawing a big smile.
'We will pay them a visit as soon as they get here. This will be a great improvement of the truckstop!' 'We will have nice fireworks to watch from the gates everyday we are bored for a time on. And they will help in keeping piracy gangs on check'. 'They won't probably need anything from us, but they can count of our cooperation on whatever they may need'. |
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Fealty Lost Posted Sep 30, 2020, 11:58 am |
The 18-vehicle convoy rolled out through the Elmsfield Gates and turned down the long road towards GateWay Truck Stop. Santos "JD" Smith, the SlaughterHouse's top-ganger, had briefed his crew of 49 before leaving.
They'd take it easy. No rush. Hammerstein was in the area. No need to instigate a fight. While they'd handed the wasteland raiders their asses on numerous occasions, last thing he wanted was to have to nurse vehicles 500 miles across Evan. They needed to remain as low-key as possible. There'd be plenty of fighting once they reached GW. So it was a 25 MPH crawl through the hard-packed wastes on roads frequented by hunters in metal steeds. Keep the dust down. Don't give them something to come after. They'd rigged a captured Butane box van with water sprinklers to drive just ahead of them, wetting the hard-packed scrabble to even further negate a tell-tale cloud of dust. It worked. They made it through over 400 miles of wasteland without even a curious peek from a wandering scout. Unnoticed. Intact. They'd timed it so their travel would be mostly at night. They ran marker lights only. The only headlights were on the box van. They kept their spacing to under a car length, focusing on the moving lights ahead of them, trusting the driver of the box van to keep them on the hard surface and out of the sucking sands. It had worked. As they crested one of the larger dunes on the rolling sands surrounding the GW area, they saw the lights of the Truck Stop off in the distance. They'd be within 15 miles at daybreak. Then they'd open the tuned engines on their war-machines up and make that last dash for the safety of the walls. They knew their old haunt was still there; with its stashed inventory of supplies. They would supplement what was there with the cash they'd earned smacking down bad guys around Elms. They had millions on hand. It had come in the box van full of fuel that brought up the rear of their caravan. There would be good hunting, here. Santos knew his crew would excel, having honed their skills in Elms; their teamwork and communication were aces. It was time to grow. As the dawn approached, he found himself relaxing just a bit. He couldn't wait to let the v8 on his Landy open up and scream. Their entrance to GW would be epic. He wondered if the militia would have a moment of "Oh hell no!" when his crew came charging around the huge pit on the Southern side of GW headed straight for their Gates? ...before they realized it was SlaughterHouse? He smiled. It was almost time. ::no encounters rolling nearly 4000 CR across Evan to GW. One autotruce leaving and nothing rolling in. SlaughterHouse is offically a GW crew, now. Time to bring megas back to GW, in the style of Shattered-n-Bloody.:: |
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*jimmylogan* Posted Sep 30, 2020, 12:53 pm |
<<<Very cool! the travel and the write up!!! Love this stuff!!!>>> |