Two days out of Skarydzew, the traveling food provided by the villagers is gone. The Diamonds have one day’s worth of rations left. The prospect of starvation rears its emaciated head.
On the outskirts of the next village of note (Liskow?), a large wooden sign is posted overlooking the road. It reads:
Głodni ludzie, kontynuujcie. Nie możemy wyżywić swoich.
PR translates for the others. “It says, ‘Hungry men, keep going. We can’t feed our own’.” The Diamonds decide that there is no use trying to negotiate. They pass through, eyed wearily by the townspeople. The local militia appears switched on and fairly well equipped with military grade small arms.
A few kilometers later, the Diamonds are flagged down by an American, one of sixteen it turns out. They are a gaunt bunch, closer to starving than hungry. They explain that they were turned away by the town the Diamonds just passed through. They ask- practically beg- the party for food. Walker explains that her squad is down to its last meal. The stragglers then suggest teaming up to essentially mount a raid on the nearby parsimonious settlement.
“Those assholes got plenty of food. They just don’t want to share it. You and us combine forces, that’ll change their minds.” Their leader, a brevet lieutenant, suggests.
“We’re not marauders, Lieutenant,” Walker declares, flatly. “We’re headed north, not south, and I suggest you do the same.”
The Lt. frowns, pauses but doesn't argue. “Why north?”
“We heard a rumor that US forces are pulling out of Europe end of August. Need to get to Germany before then, or else miss the boat,” Honeybear adds from the gun tub, hoping to help diffuse the situation.
“You got a radio?” Sarge asks the stragglers.
“Battery’s dead. Gotta spare?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
The two groups of Americans part on decent terms. The Diamonds offer to scout the road ahead (i.e north) a few kilometers and report back, mostly to assuage their own guilt from refusing to hand over the last of their food to foot-bound countrymen already gone a couple of days without.
The next settlement on the road is the polar opposite of the previous one. It’s smaller, and the villagers are almost too friendly. Their tiny militia is poorly equipped- a couple of shotguns and a pistol or two is all they have with which to defend themselves, but their larders are apparently full. They offer to trade food for better weapons. They even invite the Diamonds to stay- an arrangement involving an exchange of room and board for security.
The Diamonds want to keep moving, but a trade agreement is reached: the party will give five AKMs with 14 full magazines of for four (D6) days’ worth of rations, enough methanol to top off Pole Position’s fuel tank, and twelve shotgun (2D12) shells. The Diamonds tell the villagers about the 16 American soldiers they met on the road, just a few kilometers to the south, suggesting that this other group may be willing to provide additional protection for a spell, if the villagers agree to feed them. The villagers seem open to that proposition, so the party offers to backtrack, act as middlemen. Everyone involved is satisfied with the outcome. Before the Diamonds leave the next morning, the villagers warn them about what they will encounter if they continue to travel on the main roads north.
August 8 (Shift 1)
Taking a calculated risk, the forewarned Diamond party approaches the town of Malanów. The vegetation in the area is unusually sparse and drab for this time of year- it’s as if winter has descended early, but only on this particular section of Poland. The surrounding fields are fallow, inhabited only by scattered tufts of stunted yellow grasses, interspersed here and there with a few heartier weeds and nettles. The first stands of trees the party pass by are bare, then blackened. A couple of kilometers on, windrows of deadfall lay where patches of forest once stood, the ranks of trees lying with their tops pointing roughly south.
The first vehicle the Diamonds see appears badly weatherworn but otherwise intact, simply abandoned. Further on, they pass the burned out husks of military trucks, rusty rims ensconced in the pavement. What appeared from a distance to be whitewashed stones dotting the roadsides turn out to be human skulls, bleached by many suns. Further still, some vehicles lay on their sides, a few smashed like empty soda cans. The impression one gets is that a child giant, in a tantrum, has strewn his toy box full of army vehicles around the sandbox and then completely forgotten about them.
All this time, everyone is riding buttoned down inside
Pole Position. Grease detours around the obliterated Polish town, avoiding the impact crater itself and the worst of the surrounding radioactive hotspot.
NOTES:
These episodes were strung together after a couple of days of writer’s block. I’d draw one random encounter that didn’t seem to fit the situation as it left off after the last. I did this several times. Each subsequent draw seemed to make things more muddled, not clearer. It took me a couple of days of thinking/imagining to put together a logical, coherent story from the disparate random encounters. It all came together this morning. I made a few rolls and voila, here are the results.
The part about the parsimonious town was generated by drawing cards on the Settlement Problem & Attitude table in the Solo rules. The results were Refugees (Problem) and Hostile (Attitude). I cribbed the idea for the billboard outside of the town from a favorite photo from the USA’s Great Depression.
The second element was from the Random Encounter card, Watcha Got? I’d already played out a couple of “desperate stragglers” scenarios earlier in the campaign so I tried to handle this one a bit differently. The third element was from the Buying and Selling Random Encounter Card. This village was willing to trade food for guns and ammo. I decided that the Diamonds would try to cut their own deal with the villagers, then attempt to broker an arrangement between the civilians and the hungry stragglers the party had recently met. Stringing the last two encounters together required some Opposed Persuasion rolls. Fortunately, they all went the PCs’ way.
Lastly, Ground Zero. First, I had to find a spot that either side would expend a tac-nuke on, and it had to make sense based on where v1 canon has units positioned in the summer-fall of 2000. The only place that came close to fitting those criteria is Malanów. Jed McClure's Poland hexmap index (https://static.squarespace.com/stati...xmap_index.pdf) has proven invaluable during the course of this campaign. I can just type in the name of a settlement near the party's line of march into the search box and if it's described in canon, there it is. Once I had a target worked out, I decided that it made no sense that friendly villagers wouldn’t warn the party about a tactical nuclear strike crater less than 10km from their hamlet, directly on the party's line of travel. So, I made the party aware of the danger zone well before they arrived on scene. However, I wanted to try my hand at describing what the landscape around such a spot would look like, so I had the party skirt the area, as opposed to avoiding it entirely. Since the rules state that rads are halved for those inside a vehicle and the party is deliberately avoiding the areas of strong and extreme radioactivity, I’m ruling that no Rad Attack took place during the shift it takes to detour the area.
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