[Raellus]

It rains for a few hours during the morning, so anyone not on guard duty tries to stay indoors. The rain lets up around noon, but overcast remains. It’s going to be a grey day.

PR continues his ad hoc physical therapy program supervised by Deacon. In addition to making continued progress with his fingers, hands, and arms, PR has regained some feeling and movement in his feet. His spirits have risen tremendously- he’s convinced that he will soon be able to walk again. He even insists that the team medic prop him up in bed (i.e. into a reclining seated position). Deacon is trying to temper his own optimism about his patient’s prognosis, but the medic’s hopes have risen as well. He now no longer fears that PR will experience significant, long-term paralysis.

At about ten hundred hours, a group of seven rain-soaked civilians arrives from the west. They hail from the neighboring settlement of Wygoda Plugawska, just under 2km west of Skarydzew, but have been squatting in the larger town of Doruchow (4.3km further west) for the past week, since the last marauder raid on their hamlet. The marauders took most of their home settlement’s food; what little the bandits left behind has since been consumed, leaving nothing until the upcoming harvest season. The people of Doruchow fed some of the refugees for a while, but that town is running low on food now too, so they were asked to leave this morning. The refugees have come to Skarysdzew to ask for charity, but are willing to work for it, and repay the food debt after the next harvest. With its new guests (i.e. the Diamonds) already providing more mouths to feed, Skarydzew is approaching a similar situation- provisions are running out faster than anticipated. Everybody’s about to go hungry, it seems.

When the refugees learn that Skarydzew’s American guests killed most of the marauders just two days prior, they grow animated, ask if a teenage boy was with them. The refugees explain that the boy was kidnapped from their village during the last raid- why, they can’t be sure. They beg the Diamonds to go find him and bring him back, even claiming that they heard that the bandits also had some American prisoners too. The Diamonds believe the part about the Americans is bullshit, laid on to give them an incentive to look for the civilian boy, but they agree to help anyway.

The Diamonds start by interrogating the captured marauder- something they didn’t see much use in doing, earlier. The process is complicated by the need for two translators- Bartosz translates Russian to Polish, and PR translates Polish to English (and vice-versa). The prisoner is in no mood to talk, but Walker is able to get him to admit that his group did indeed kidnap a boy for use as a camp “servant”; he also gives the Diamonds a rough idea of where his camp is located in the woods to the south.

“When we get there, make sure to identify your targets. We don’t want to hit the kid we’re trying to rescue, so no sprayin’ and prayin’, got it?” Sarge admonishes the rescue team, just before they set off.

The rescue team consists of Walker, Sarge, Deacon, Bird, Honeybear, Sandy, Grease, and one of the village militiamen with experience hunting in the woods. Any trail the marauders may have left has been washed away by the morning showers, so the team has rely on the prisoner’s directions and dead reckoning to locate the marauder campsite.

After about an hour of slow, cautious movement through the woods, the hunter, on point with Bird, indicates that he’s hearing voices from up ahead. Sarge gets the team on line and they begin a tactical advance towards the suspected campsite. 30m from the camp, Bird catches his toe on an exposed root, loses his balance, and falls forward; somehow, his "new" M4 carbine discharges a round when he hits the ground. The marauders are alerted. They drop prone, facing the danger, and open fire.

Deacon is already prone, making him a smaller target. Nevertheless, an incoming round grazes the medic's right cheek. Somehow, he manages to keep his cool and return fire. Just a few paces away, Walker staggers as a round pancakes against her PAGST vest. She falls forward, going prone, takes aim at her attacker, and squeezes of a few rounds. Both Diamonds score hits, although neither is aware of this at the time.

The rest of Diamonds go prone and start engaging targets. Sandy, Grease, and Sarge all miss theirs, but Bird and Honeybear eliminate two of the four marauders.

The opposing groups exchange fire for about 10 more seconds. The marauders are the first to cease fire, it turns out, because they are all dead. Two Diamonds (Deacon and Walker) are slightly wounded during the exchange.

The kidnapped teenager is found, curled up behind a tree, feet chained together. He’s filthy and badly shaken, but otherwise unhurt (at least, physically). The Diamonds seize the dead marauder’s weaponry (four AKMs w/ 3.5 mags, three RGD-5 hand grenades, and a few assorted knives/bayonets) and search the filthy bandit camp. Grease is a master scrounger- apart from some very dingy camping equipment, he turns up an Oriental carpet, a fire extinguisher [fully charged], and a Nintendo Gameboy hand-held video game console! (Batteries not included, unfortunately).

The party returns in triumph to Skarydzew with the rescued teenager and a carpet-full of loot. To show their gratitude, the refugees from Wygoda Plugawska share another rumor they’ve heard. A merchant passing through Doruchow told them that Krakow has declared itself a free city and is hiring soldiers of any nationality to join its nascent defense force. The Soviets are also supposedly hiring mercs to help them retake the city. Some of the merchant caravan guards were discussing signing on with one side or the other (probably whoever pays better) when they return to the area.


NOTES:
I finally remembered to roll for Weather changes! Twice a day seems more reasonable to me than four times a day (i.e. at the beginning of all four daily shifts).

This is encounter was built by rolling D6+2 on the Stationary Encounter Table. I rolled 7 on 2D6 to determine the number of refugees. I had to ponder for a while to figure out how to make this encounter fit into the narrative, but I’m satisfied with what I came up with. Since the party agreed to help, the refugees shared two rumors (I rolled twice on the rumor table). I tweaked the rumors a bit. One (R6) was the throw-away about the marauders having some American prisoners, the other (R2) was about the Krakow and the Soviets competing to hire mercs.

The rescue op started with a successful roll for Interrogation [pushed]- the prisoner confirmed the refugees’ story about the kidnapped boy. I wanted to use Bird’s Hunter specialty to try to track the marauders all the way back to their camp, but the morning rains washed away all spoor, so I scratched that. The opposed Group Recon roll to attempt to “Ambush” the camp failed 30m from the camp, so the engagement began at close range, and the marauders drew the first two initiative cards.

I didn’t use as many ammo dice in this firefight. The marauders were running low already, and the good guys were trying to reduce the chance of a stray round catching the kid they were trying to rescue. Deacon and Walker survived head and torso hits, respectively. Body armor is a real life-saver!

I used the Oracle to determine the condition of the kid and drew Seven of Diamonds (mildly helpful)- I ruled that this meant that the kid was unhurt and relatively healthy (at least, physically).

Since the marauder camp is relatively small, I ruled that the party could roll for Scrounging even though they spend less than a shift searching it. Grease rolled three successes (I even forget to add +1 for Help from another PC). I Googled “random gameboy game generator” and, low and behold, there’re a couple. I used the first one that popped up and the result was Streetfighter II (1993). Luckily, the Diamonds scrounged a couple of AA batteries a few days earlier. Let the games begin!

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