Barnstormer Quest

[samdamandias]

Gaya. 1910. New Allegheny, somewhere in the Western Confederation.

If you've been following Aircraft Design Company, Castles of Steel, If Mahan Could See Us Now, Fill your Hand You Son of a Bitch, Jine the Cavalry, or Rocket Design Quest, you already know about Gaya, the world @open_sketchbook created, and that the rest of us have taken and run with.
For those of you just joining us the Federated Commonwealth of New Allegheny is the America-analogue, with some important differences, such as the borders with Taxoco and Manassas. New Allegheny itself is composed of forty-one commonwealths(1), arranged into three confederations. Each confederation elects their own president. If you wonder how anything gets done on a Federal level, it usually doesn't.

But that sort of question doesn't really concern you.

You are that new breed of pilot unique to New Allegheny, one part scout, one part postal worker, and three parts entertainer. You are a BARNSTORMER.

You wake up on a pile of hay, head pounding, sore everywhere, and a little cold.

Not unexpected from sleeping in a hayloft after a night of drinking. You slide down the ladder, and make your way over to the water barrel, scattered hay crunching underfoot. You splash some cool water on your face, take a drink, and pause a moment to assess your reflection and assure yourself that you are presentable.

You are
[ ] (Write in name)
-[ ] A Man
-[ ] A Woman
-[ ] A Pilot (2)

Having done that, it's time to grab your kit bag and some breakfast. Your kit bag contains one of your most valued possessions. What is it?

[ ] A signed textbook

You are a university student, doing graduate work. Upsides, you can count the number of people better than you at tinkering with aircraft on one hand (3), and you either designed and built your own bird, or modified it. Downsides, your thesis advisor wants regular updates, and you're still paying tuition.​

[ ] A gift from your spouse.

You fly because the pay is good. Beats working in a mine any day. Upsides, you have a very level head on your shoulders, and are experienced in the world. Downsides, you've got a family to help support. A pretty big one, too, including your three-year old child. Maybe you can help get your younger siblings through high school, so that they don't have to work in the mine either.​

[ ] A lovingly worn instrument

You grew up on a farm. You thought you were going to be a farmer until the day at the Commonwealth Fair when you say the airship. Upside, you have the potential to grow into an amazing pilot, a la Luke Skywalker. Downside, most of that right now is potential.

1 If you want to get technical, thirty-seven commonwealths, three states, one dominion, the capital district, and outlying islands.
2 [The west] don't really get the whole non-binary thing. Picking this isn't hard mode, but will be more complex.
3 This includes Rose and Antoinette "First flight" Sears, Asuka "Literally A Wizard" Matsura, and Count "I single-handedly invented civil aviation" Zeppelin. It's a pretty short list.​

 

[samdamandias]

Once we finish character creation, you will be Cas Vidal, farmboy from some small town. But let's zip through this so we can get to BARNSTORMING and some gay drama. Well, probably on the drama, but there definitely be Barnstorming. There will be one more post of chargen after this, just so that there isn't a bundle of votes, but I promise that one will have dialogue with other people!

What else do you have with you on your adventures? Choose two from LIST A and two from LIST B, formatted as a plan

Spoiler: "Items"

LIST A

• A loyal and adorable canine companion who loves to fly. (1)
• A long hunting rifle.
• A high-quality toolkit.
• A cutting edge plane, complete save for an engine.
• A pair of fine binoculars.

LIST B

• A packet of seeds from the family farm.
• A bottle of your family's finest moonshine, and the recipe.
• A promise to return home safe to your mother.
• A mysterious item, sealed, to return to a rightful owner.
• The deed to land in a far-away place.
• Cryptic words of advice from a trusted mentor.
• An old journal from an ancestor before they settled down.
• A catalogue of aircraft parts, with the address of the factory printed on the back.

What plane do you fly?
[ ] Hennessy S-5 Coral Snake, a two-seater trainer
[ ] Wills Model B, first designed as a light mail-runner
[ ] Roos 1908, an underpowered plane with very good handling
[ ] Write-in. I reserve the right to veto this
-[ ] For all planes, write in a name and paint scheme

And lastly, who else is joining you for breakfast? You can vote for more than one.
[ ] Nobody but the family who let you stay the night
[ ] Fat Steve, who is either the luckiest or unluckiest pilot alive.
[ ] The Flying Sisters Dostoevsky, who do wing-walking, juggling, and other feats of derring-do.
[ ]Theo, who can rebuild an engine in the time most people take to finish reading the paper.
[ ] Maxine, who is your equal, if not better, at flying.

1 I don't know if @Open_sketch patched it out, but this is my quest and I find it hilarious, so yes, you could train your doggo to be a pilot. Or a gunner. I draw the line at mechanic, though.

Internet cookie to anyone who gets a reference for the other possible pilots. If someone gets all four, I will do something special. Dunno what yet.​

 

[samdamandias]

Spoiler: "Plan Challenger"

-[ ] A loyal and adorable canine companion who loves to fly.
-[ ] A long hunting rifle.
-[ ]A bottle of your family's finest moonshine, and the recipe.
-[ ]An old journal from an ancestor before they settled down.
-[ ] Wills Model B, first designed as a light mail-runner
--[ ] "Columbia Challenger," orange wings, white and orange dazzle fuselage.
-[ ] Fat Steve, who is either the luckiest or unluckiest pilot alive.
-[ ]Theo, who can rebuild an engine in the time most people take to finish reading the paper.

Theo and Fat Steve are already at the kitchen table, along with two of your hosts, Mr. Serrano and his youngest daughter, a girl of maybe five or six. Mr. Serrano is flickering between the stove and a tub of soaking beans. Fat Steve is working on what looks to be his second plate, telling one of his stories.

"So then I said, 'God, if you're listening, I'd really like to not hit the ground'. Now keep in mind, at this point I was spinning around about as fast as my engine, so I couldn't see what was over the next hill. And wouldn't you know it, it's a church! Caspian Orthoprax of all things, but I didn't really notice at the time.

"Now, the reason why I didn't really notice, as I said, I was spinning around a lot, and suddenly I see this great big expanse of stained glass and painted wood in the bell tower and the next thing I know, I ain't spinnin', most of my wings are gone, and I'm teetering on the edge of the roof. And then I tip over and my darn plane does a flip, landing' back on the wheels for all of half a second afore they snap off.

"Then the preacher and the choir and I swear the entire town pours out of that little church and are just staring at me. And I look the preacher dead in the eye and say 'Very sorry, am I late for mass?' So that's the story of why my flying goggles have red glass in 'em instead of clear like most pilots."

You're not sure if Fat Steve is lying or not. The day you met him, he managed to set down his plane while it was on fire, something everyone, Fat Steve included, assured you meant certain death for a pilot.

Theo, on the other hand is alternating between nibbling on a hastily-assembled bacon sandwich, scribbling in one of his notebooks, and doing something to one of those fancy new electric toasters with a tiny set of screwdrivers. He has managed to acquire a fine layer of soot, grease and oil, despite your being almost certain that an electric toaster doesn't use any sort of lubrication. Theo glances over to you as you enter.

"Ah! Cas. Good morning. Fat Steve and I were discussing whether a plane could fly upside down for some ways. The math checks out, so it should be physically possible if you can keep the wings at the right angle. My own Thesis Statement can't do it because of the design of the top wing, and Fat Steve refuses to do more than eighty degrees of bank in Patchwork, though not without reason."

[ ] "Well, full rolls and that half-loop already have me upside down for a bit..." (-Calm, +Daring)
[ ] "Could we try it with one of your little gliders first?" (-Hard, +Keen, + Daring)
[ ] "If it's only a few seconds I should be fine, long as I have altitude." ( -Keen, +Calm, +Daring)
So, a note on Stats.
Hard is the stat you use to (physically)hurt people and break things
Keen is awareness and book-smarts
Calm is how in control of yourself you are, and how good you are at dealing with other people
Daring is, for lack of a better way to describe it, the "hold my beer" stat.

Now, the last bit of character creation. Pick three of the following moves. Approval voting is in effect for these, I'll take the top three.
[ ] It's Working!: When you modify a plane yourself, roll +Daring. On a 16+, you can install 1þ of free upgrades along with what you paid for. On a miss, things break.
[ ] Machine Empathy: When you Maintain an engine in midair, remove 2 Wear.
[ ] Here Goes Nothing: When you try to imitate a comrade's Mastery Move, roll +Daring. On a hit, you pull it off. On a 16+, keep the Move.
[ ] That's a Good Trick: When you Push the Limit, roll an extra dice as though somebody was helping you. A Fault will always result in a mechanical failure.
[ ] Bullseye: Once per session, automatically score a 16+ to Open Fire or Bombs Away.
[ ] Barnstormer: When you put on a show for people on the ground and make it fancy and dangerous, take +1 Ongoing to Press the Issue with them.
[ ] Breeze in your Hair: When you fly without fighting, remove 3 Stress.
[ ] A Bad Feeling About This: Negate the penalty to Engage for ambushes.

You may notice that some of these reference combat. There won't be any air battles to start, and depending on your choices, there may never be. Then again, in a few months a certain race is coming up, along with its aftermath…

 

[samdamandias]

"Could we try it with one of your little gliders first? I'm sure the numbers are right, but what if we're missin' something that we don't know we're missing?"

Theo frowns. "Give me half an hour and I'll have something rigged up to be towed behind one of our planes."

[ ] Put the towing shackle on the Columbia Challenger, she's the fastest
[ ] Put the towing shackle on Patchwork, she's the sturdiest
[ ] Put the towing shackle on the Thesis Statement so Theo can watch the glider

Theo and Fat Steve make vague noises of assent. "Yeah, that makes sense."

A glance at your pocketwatch means that breakfast is hurried, since you're meeting the postmaster in about an hour to take a bundle of mail and small parcels to Cedar Bluffs before the 11:30 to Burlington rolls through. (You did have to spend a rather embarrassingly long time working out which Cedar Bluffs, given that there's two in Niobrara, one in Hawkeye, one in Mackinac, another two in Bonner, one in Tenesei, and another on the Anteater of all places)

It takes some time to wheel all of your planes out to the grass. The Patchwork near as you can tell, at one point started life as an S-2 Copperhead, but has been patched and replaced and added to so much you're not sure if there's more than a square foot of the original fabric covering left. That W-9 certainly isn't stock on any of the S-series.

The Thesis Statement is the strangest plane you ever did see, because it's not really a monoplane, or a multiplane, or even a sesquiplane. A long, thin wing at the back, just ahead of the tailplane, and above the cockpit another long, thing win that spins of all things. She's the slowest out of all your planes, but Theo can pull an effective glideslope that's near-vertical and land her on a dime, and she can crab extremely well.

And lastly, your own Columbia Challenger resplendent in her orange and white paint, your dog sitting in the cockpit, holding her flying goggles in her mouth. By far the most normal-looking of the planes, with an engine and fuel tank up front, under the tiny wing, and then your cockpit and the cargo space between that and the tail, with the rear wing starting just a bit behind your shoulders.

By longstanding agreement, you and Theo pull Fat Steve's prop through a few rotations before it catches and the engine is running. Theo pulls your prop through, and then hops in his own cockpit. A loud electric whine fills the air before his engine coughs and begins to turn over.

You pull your goggles down and begin rolling down the field, watching the ribbon at the corner of your windscreen flutter high and high until suddenly you are free from the ground.

The flight to Cedar Bluffs goes well. You didn't even get lost once, nothing has happened to Fat Steve's plane, and both of you are flying slowly enough that Theo can keep up without redlining his engine.

Now comes the really hard part: Where should you land?

[ ] We have time. Give the people a bit of a show before we land outside of town.
[ ] I bet we can set down just outside the station. Won't that look impressive?
[ ] We should follow the tracks, meet the train, and then race them to the station.

I will take suggestions for the name of your dog. I am preemptively vetoing Lassie and Air Bud.

 

[samdamandias]

Cassius "Cas" Vidal, Farmer
Hard -4, Keen +3, Calm +1, Daring +3

Stress: 5
Unspent XP: 0
Vices: None*

Special Moves:
Barnstormer: When you put on a show for people on the ground and make it fancy and dangerous, take +1 Ongoing to Press the Issue with them.
Breeze in your Hair: When you fly without fighting, remove 3 Stress.
It's Working!: When you modify a plane yourself, roll +Daring. On a 16+, you can install 1þ of free upgrades along with what you paid for. On a miss, things break.
Falling Leaf: You can descend up to three altitude without gaining speed

*Farmers don't start with any vices, sweet innocent cinnamon rolls that they are

Wills Model B
Wingspan: 6m
V_Min: 40kph at 3MP of load, 30kph at 2MP, 10kph at 1MP
V_Max: 150kph at 3MP of load, 160 at 2MP, 170 at 1MP
DNE: 240kph
Thrust: +30kph
Fuel efficiency: 9 fuel/MP
Stability +0, Handling +2 at 3MP of load
Ideal Control Range: 40kph-120kph

The Wills Model B can take up to 2MP of fuel and 2MP of cargo, but more than three MP of load at take off will make your landing gear, you, and your mechanic very unhappy, in roughly that order.

Thesis Statement has a V_Min of 20kph, sort of, a V_max of 120kph, and a DNE uncomfortably close to that. The "sort of" comes from Thesis Statement gracefully descending to pick up speed instead of entering an uncontrollable stall. This is what lets Theo do near-vertical landings.

Patchwork has a V_min of 90 kph at full load, V_max of 150kph, and a DNE of 540kph. Yes, you read that right, five hundred and forty kilometers per hour Patchwork has managed to survive the last half-dozen incidents that should have killed Fat Steve, and so is ludicrously sturdy, even if she handles like a drunken cow on ice skates.

 

[samdamandias]

You pass low over the town, looking for a good landing spot. You don't find any on the first leg, and as you pull into a steep climb, you kick the rudder over, hard. For one heartbeat, your plane is in the knife-edge position and falling, but you continue the turn, jiggle the fuel mixture, and pull back out into level flight.

It takes three more passes before you find a good landing spot. On the second pass, you start adding wiggles and a half-loop instead of the wingover, while you'd swear that Fat Steve pulls a hard turn fully within the wingspan of his plane, at speed. You're pretty sure that the only bits of Patchwork that aren't steel are the dash and skin, because if you tried a turn like that, important bits of the Columbia Challenger would decide they wanted to turn much faster or slower than the rest of it. A near miss was enough, thankyouverymuch. Theo begins demonstrating Thesis Statement's unique capabilities, crabbing her sideways with the engine pointing close to sixty degrees off axis. Well, at least more than forty-five, which is damn impressive.

You dive low over the town, buzzing the main drag, before pulling back on the stick, hard. The nose rises up, and up, and up, until the little plum bob you hung from the top wing is pointing over your head. For a moment, the wind stops, and you hang in the air.

And then you fall. Backwards.

You move the stick, and turn the mix to full rich. The semi-radial roars(1) to life as you wrestle your plane through a quarter-loop backwards and nose down, trying to get above your stall speed before you lose enough altitude you can't recover.

A thick rope drifts past your vision.

Oh. Right.

Theo's glider.

You bank hard in the dive, rolling into a series of progressively gentler S-curves before circling back and landing on the patch of grass you managed to find. Fat Steve is already down, and when you hop out of the Challenger, Skoll(2) at your heels, you're pretty sure that there are three furrows in the ground, rather than two, and one of them is rather further out to the sides.

And here comes Theo himself, pulling back and landing nearly vertically.

As the three of you get the mail to the train station, you tell Theo and Fat Steve about the glider, and how while you weren't able to keep a close eye on it, it didn't feel like it was bucking or trying to fall out of the sky. Well, except when you had pulled a tailslide while towing it, but you're pretty sure no plane could do that anyways, and there might never be an engine small and powerful enough to allow a plane to hang vertically for more than a few seconds.

The post is handed off, you get paid without issue, and as you you're counting the money you hear the whistle of the train pulling in.

Because things are not going to make it easy for you to pick up stress, I'm going to give you five (5) Stress right now.

You are in a strange town, where you don't know anybody. Fat Steve is already half-hidden behind a newspaper he bought on your way out of the station, and Theo has lit his pipe and is staring off into space. You've got half a day left before the sun sets.

Wat do? (Approval voting is allowed, but only one will win)
[ ] Drum up business. People always love a show, and passing the hat can mean the difference between a nice meal and asking for charity
[ ] Get drunk, you don't have anything better to do.
[ ] Follow Fat Steve. He seems to know what he's doing.
[ ] Follow Theo. Whatever happens, it'll at least be interesting.
[ ] Write-in

1 As much as it can roar, anyway. It's fairly quiet as far as engines go, mainly because it is tiny. Patchwork's W9 can often be heard from the other side of town, or over steam whistles.
2 Who'sagooddoggie?

did some playing around with the engine builder and the plane builder to get actual stats for Patchwork, which is why the update is so late tonight. Updates will be... sporadic going forward, because I have a second job. Good news, I have a second job.

 

[samdamandias]

You canvass the town, looking for business opportunities.

There's the option of putting on another show or two and passing the hat, and seeing if some thrill-seekers are willing to pay to ride second. It might only cost you a day of time, and you can make good money doing it if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, of course, you'll barely break even on the gas.

The postmaster or postmistriss is almost certainly going to have work for you, and it pays well enough to keep a (mostly dry) roof over your head, gas and oil for your planes, and your choice of molasses, brown sugar, or jam on your oatmeal for breakfast, and butter and salt to go with your beans or potatoes for dinner. Maybe even some garlic or onion if you're lucky.

As you pass by a restaurant on the main drag, a businesswoman in a well-tailored dress approaches you, and asks if you and your fellow pilots could get her to Mootbluff by seven tomorrow morning. She offers a very large sum, enough that if the three of you lived modestly, it would last for at least a month or two. However, to get to Mootbluff by that time, you'd need to take off well before sunrise, and spend over three and a half hours in the air.

[ ] Put on another show and pass the hat
[ ] Carry some letters. Maybe there will be better work in the next town.
[ ] Ferry the business woman to Mootbluff

IT LIVES! Ish. This is mostly some quick filler so we can figure out what your next job is. Two jobs still, and trying to unscramble my schedule still.