You are Wile E. Coyote, and you're pretty sure that you're in hell.
Oh sure, you've spent most of your existence in inhospitable deserts, relentlessly pursuing a quarry that never quite seemed to be in your grasp. You've become intimately familiar with the many different ways in which one can injure themselves out in the middle of nowhere. Blazing sunlight, brewing thunderstorms, dangerous wildlife. You're pretty sure that you've grown an immunity to cactus needles given how many times you've fallen in patches of them.
Nothing could have prepared you for the sheer devastation that now encompassed the United States Rust Belt.
Based on the preliminary reports, you were pretty sure that things couldn't be quite that bad. There might be a lot of trash, so what? Junkyards have lots of trash, and you've spent hours in those just tinkering things together!
When your group first came across the incomprehensible magnitude of garbage, even your wildest misconceptions of the area could not have prepared you for the endless piles of refuse, sprawled out far beyond the horizon. The ground beneath you was arid and cracked, silt piling up in many places as a hot wind carried the taste of copper and oil. The sky was marred with distant weather systems, massive red clouds like demonic thunderheads that you were none too keen on encountering. The air quality was comparable to Delhi on a bad day; you could take off your hazmat suit and still breathe, if you had to, but it was definitely not on the list of things you were particularly excited to try.
The experience was…humbling, to say the least. Even Technor, who was usually prepared to cut the silence with a pithy quip worthy of a supervillain, seemed at a loss for words as the sheer scale of what happened here dawned on him. This went far beyond villainy, even far beyond evil. You shuddered to imagine the sheer incompetence that could have allowed something like this to happen! Even the most hackneyed after-school specials that talked about how evil landfills could be had nothing on this. It seemed like someone had taken the set of Mad Max and covered it in literal mountains of waste. It seemed like nothing more than a grotesque parody, and yet here you were.
You've never been one for the mystic side of things, even after learning that it wasn't all malarkey, but it's hard to deny that something just feels wrong about this place. It's as if the land itself is rejecting the presence of anything living within it. Leaving your car to explore on foot for a while gave everyone in your group a profound sense of unease, one that came from the lack of any ambient noise. The only things you were able to hear were the whistling of the wind through the junk, the footsteps of your companions, and the low hum of Technor's hoverchair.
Occult Check: Is something happening here?
DC 80 needed: 42+0+0=42
Failure!
You have no idea. It could be there's something supernatural about this brown hell, or maybe you just drove too close to Bueno Nacho when you were passing through Middleton.
"This sucks." Lizzy says bluntly, displaying a skillful laconicism.
"I, TECHNOR, the Mechanical Man, agree! This does suck!"
"Buck up compatriots!" Hego declares. "I know it may seem bad, but, uh…"
"But it could always get worse." Lizzy finishes. You decide you like this girl. She is a realist.
"My sensors indicate the cloud cover in the distance contains large quantities of rust particles!" Technor declares after looking around for a moment. "I would not wish for even my mighty filters to be clogged by their large particulates! Compared to them, your feeble lungs would not hold up well!"
"We may wish to find some shelter." you agree. In contrast to your surroundings, you're feeling fairly good about your team. Technor and Lizzy both appear competent, and it's not as though you have any legs to stand on in regards to eccentricity. Hego does not seem to be the sharpest bulb in the deck, but he has a degree of enthusiasm that seems to pair well with punching things.
Stewardship Check: find a shelter with something worth looking into:
DC 60
6+22+18=46
Failure!
"Look!" Hego proclaims, pointing to the horizon. "Civilization!"
Then again, perhaps that enthusiasm could come in handy. Hego is pointing to what appears to be a long-abandoned 'Super-D-Duper D-Lux Truck Stop!'
"That's terrible." Lizzy comments dryly.
"I know, but it's the closest thing we've got. Our car, as excellent as Mr. Lee has built it, won't be able to survive running inside that particulate, so-"
"I meant the name."
Oh. Well, you can't even disagree.
You leave the piles of trash behind and pull the jet car into the garage just as whirling, gale-force winds whip clouds of rust through the sky. Hego manages to shut the door quite effectively, even against the force of the howling wind, and you slowly come to the realization that you might have to spend the night.
You're currently standing in what may have once been a small food court before it was struck by a cataclysm. The decayed and rusted remnants of metal tables sit atop a terribly gauche black-and-white checkered floor, waiting in front of an array of restaurants whose names are covered in thick layers of dust and sand.
Stewardship Check: Is there anything worth salvaging?
DC 70 needed: 94+22+18=134
Success!
Whatever bounties this truck stop may have once held, they are long gone. Whether looted by scavengers or whittled away to nothing by a constant onslaught of rust storms and acid rain, most of the things you could conceivably salvage in here are completely ruined. There are the remains of several devices that could have been electronic at one point before they were ruined, and the husk of a shop that may have once hawked snacks for the road. A look out the window reveals that the dust storm is ongoing and has no signs of stopping anytime soon, so… it looks like you are stuck here for the night.
When you go to unpack the bedrolls you realize that all you have to eat are Doofenshmirtz Evil 'D'-rations. These things aren't absolutely terrible, but if you had to make a comparison they were scarcely more enjoyable than eating a boiled potato. They keep for ages, but if you had the opportunity you'd much prefer an addition to the meal. The only other possibility might be…
Yes! Nestled in a corner over near the restrooms is a functioning vending machine! And by 'functioning' you mean 'flickering in a disquieting strobe-light pattern'! A quick perusal of the machine reveals tonight's dinner- some sort of freeze-dried yogurt in a foil pouch, several packets of 'panda jerky', and some kind of energy drink that's inside a brightly colored can emblazoned with shades of red and blue that should have never been combined.
"I, TECHNOR, the Mechanical Man, have never been more glad that I am mechanical!"
---
"I'm not sure which is worse, the endless brown waste outside or the horrible primary colors in here." Lizzy complains.
"It is rather garish." you agree.
"Yes! Secondary colors form a far superior artistic schema!" Technor declares.
"Who makes a product called panda jerky?" Lizzy asks after a moment.
"Vile fiends, that's who! This entire waste reeks of social irresponsibility. The noble panda should not be jerked!"
You notice Technor fiddling with something. "Coyote! I feel the need to inform you that my Geiger counter is registering that energy drink you are consuming at over seven hundred millisieverts!"
"Wait. You were made to be a therapist. Why do you have a Gieger counter?"
"I'm sure it's fine." you say, waving off the concern with your new third arm.
Hego stares.
"Uuuhhhh…"
Your conversation is suddenly cut off as the door slams open, nearly torn off of its hinges by the gale! A massive cloud of rust and sand begins to infiltrate the truck stop, making everyone cough and reach for their gas masks.
Martial Check: Withstand the storm!
DC 90 needed: 76+25+28+5=134
Success!
Hego immediately leaps into action! With a crackle of ionized air and a blue glow, he slams the front door closed and holds it fast! It's definitely helping, but rust particles are still seeping in through the cracks!
You, Lizzy, and Technor scramble to help, grabbing pieces of debris to reinforce the door, and scraps of cloth and paper on the ground to jam into the cracks. Even you are forced to cough at the level of dust in the air, but fortunately the crosswind abates enough for you to form a makeshift seal and calm down for the night. You can hear rain; or at least, some sort of liquid, pattering on the roof. Thunder booms in the distance.
---
The night you are forced to spend inside the truck stop is not pleasant. The bedrolls you packed are uncomfortable at the best of times, and the thought of sleeping inside some long-abandoned probably toxic place is enough to set everyone's teeth on edge. Still, you manage to get a few hours of sleep, and by the time everyone is waking up the rust storm outside has abated, and you're finally able to get a move on. You come across a few puddles on the rust-scoured ground from the previous night's storm; testing it finds abnormal heavy metal compounds, such as lead and chromium, as well as a pH comparable to lemon juice.
That's not good.
Your approach to the closest city is slightly confusing at first- what you initially believed to be skyscrapers are soon revealed to be massive monoliths of compressed garbage, stretching nearly to the height of the surrounding buildings. The genuine skyscrapers themselves have long shed their former facades, revealing twisted girders of rusted metal worn away by the constant acid rain and rust storms, an occasional pane of glass hanging on here and there.
The streets of the city are scarcely better. While much of the trash has been cleared away- presumably compressed into the monoliths that are wedged in between the skyscrapers themselves- the roads and sidewalks are still covered with debris, dust, and most curiously of all, dozens of rusted, destroyed robots.
Learning Check: Examine the robots
DC 90 needed: 68+21+20=109
Success!
Even though you're not a robotics expert, you can tell that these things are very cheaply made, probably being mass produced from the lowest bidder. The twisted metal carcasses of the things look like they were cheaply die-cast in square molds, something that is visible even under the thick layer of rust. Exposure to the elements has corroded the electronics and hydraulics to the point that they're outright nonexistent- there is no hope in salvaging these things for anything other than scrap metal. Most of the models you can see are small; they come up to about your knees. A few though are much larger, built from the same pattern but sized larger than an entire house. One and all they are dark, rusted and destroyed.
Over the next hour or two, your team scouts out the rest of the city, looking for potentially interesting areas that are free enough of debris to access easily, and stable enough that you don't have to worry about them coming down on top of your heads.
There is some ludicrously large building with an equally ludicrous name that looks to be at least a mile long. It looks relatively intact, and there isn't even that much trash piled up outside. You presume that this was a mall at some point, so you would probably expect to find consumer goods, or what's left of them.
One of the office buildings looks far less damaged than its fellows, to the point that most of the windows are still intact and the foundations look extremely stable. You might be able to find some records in here, or at least whatever office supplies have been left behind before… whatever happened, happened.
Alternatively, there's a library downtown that also looks to be mostly undamaged. That would probably be your best bet for information overall, but you'd be foregoing a good deal of potential salvage.
Finally, there seems to be a point at which the scrap mountains converge- a center of sorts in which you don't see any further trash. There might be something nestled in there, but it's equally likely there's nothing at all- for all you know one of the monoliths could have simply tumbled over.
Unfortunately you'll only have time to hit one location- there's a storm brewing on the horizon if the dark clouds are any indication, and you really don't want to be caught out.
---
Where do you want to go?
[ ] The BnL Wall-To-Wall Hyper-Mega-Mall
[ ] The library
[ ] The office building
[ ] The center of the scrap mountains
Which inator do you want to use?
[ ] The Probabilitor-Inator
[ ] The Groundhog-Day-Inator
There will be an eight hour moratorium on voting.
