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[Knightofargh]

The story so far...

   Our intrepid band of "heroes" has become marooned in a small nearly coastal town in the former state of Georgia near the impact site of the 1 km meteor which created the Atlanta tidal basin.  You were traveling from the New York metroplex to a NWSEC owned site in the Everglades to determine why several remote probes are no longer reporting to the 'Net via a swarm site in Tallahassee.  NWSEC agreed to pay 5000 T per head, reasonable expenses and to provide ground transit for your time.  Due to a combination of heavily damaged sections of interstate and having to skirt the Capitol Sacrifice Zone this was planned and provisioned as a two week trip.  NWSEC has loaned you a Guardian APC for the duration.

   Picking your way around the destroyed metropolitan confines of Atlanta, you were forced to divert out I-85 and later to cut cross country along GA RT 8 to get back onto I-85.  A section of the roadbed washed out severely damaging the rear trans-axle of your vehicle.  You were able to get it into limp mode and make it closer to "civilization".  As you approached the frontier town of Farthington, your intrepid vehicle failed in a cloud of steam as with a grind of burning metal the transmission seized.  A brisk 15 km walk brought you to Farthington, a zero horse town which seems to breed bird sized mosquitos.  The only notable landmarks are a one story building with a faded yellow awning, the hand lettered sign in front reads "Millie's Roadhouse" and purports to offer food and drink.  Lounging against the shattered stump of a roadsign by the half demolished remains of a 20th century fuel station are several seedy locals wearing black silk scarves around their necks.  You learn quickly that these thugs pass for the law in Farthington, a group known as the Roughnecks.

   While poking around town looking for a mechanic to fix your vehicle you noticed a Grigori observing your party and discreetly (for a Grigori) following you.  Upon confronting him, he introduced himself as Markus and offered you a meeting with his employer.  You met with Brandenburgh over a meal at Millie's and he offered you a decent payout for a simple task.  All you have to do is escort his employees into a bank vault to recover an item of interest.  The item is located in a walled city a couple of hours by air away called Madik.  The city dropped out of communication about three days ago for unknown reasons after a large number of localized distree calls went out.  Brandenburgh indicated that the Everyn Sovereignty, a PMC arcology nearby is mobilizing to "liberate" that town.  He is requesting that you recover his valuables before the Everyn Militia arrive and start looting in the name of saving the city. You negotiated an appropriate price and for Brandenburgh to finance the repairs to your Guardian.

   Brandenburgh asked for you to gather your supplies and to meet him at the local transit hub at his Kestrel LLS.  Upon boarding the cargo module of the Kestrel you met Stan, Brandenburgh's driver and mechanic.  Brandenburgh proceeded to take off and combat drop you about 5 km from Madik.  Stan's Prowler APC was slightly damaged by a bull charger which you succeeded in killing.  Upon cresting a ridge, Stan kills the off road lights on the Prowler and switches on a U-Frame system with low light enhancements.  You notice the city of Madik looks mostly dark and abandoned.  There are some isolated fires in various parts of the city.  You uneventfully arrive at the bank and proceed inside.  Markus circumvents the bank's security systems by shorting the electronic security with an acid bath and fooling the final retinal scan with a set of eyes he had brought with him in stasis gel.  You were greeted by an abbatoir of sorts as an automated turret appeared to have malfunctioned and killed the security guard stationed in the vault.  Markus proceeded to retrieve the package you had come to Madik for and handcuffs it to his arm.  Shortly afterward a garbled radio transmission from Stan comes over a handset on Markus's utility harness indicating that you need to get upstairs immediately.  In the background you can hear heavy autofire from the Prowler's mounted support gun.

   You come upstairs as Stan drives into the lobby, slewing the load gate toward the group.  A number of degenerates, humans infected with something that forces them to be driven by id and rage, came charging at you across the shattered glass in the lobby.  After fighting your way to the Prowler, Stan is forced by enormous crowds of degenerates toward one of the main residential towers in Madik.  After convincing Stan to leave his precious Prowler behind, you fought your way up stairway #4 in the residential tower.  After several hours of running battles through the stairwell you reached the roof access.  Markus had previously arranged for Brandenburgh to do an emergency pick-up from the roof.  Markus made a plan with Brandenburgh and proceeded to haul the group across the rooftops through a swirling melee of degenerates, survivors and burning roof heat exchanger units.  You make it off the roof in the Kestrel as the residential tower starts to collapse.

Brandenburgh proceeded to drop you off in Farthington.  He pays you with no issue and arranges to have Stan repair your damaged vehicle.  You still don't know what was in the case, but you do have a storage card that you recovered from the tattered remains of a labcoated scientist's PDA in your fight up the stairwells.  The card is encrypted but may contain clues as to what happened in Madik to make a majority of the population go insane.

You received 5000 T each.

[Knightofargh]

Chapter 2: The South Also Rises...

You completed your trip through the expanded swamps of Florida and arrived in Talahassee.  Your trip from Farthington was relatively uneventful.  You discovered a Scarab heavy transport (unarmed overland modification with environmental seals) crashed into a light support off the crumbled remains of an Interstate highway.  There was evidence of a loss of control accident and the trailer from the Scarab had evidently been removed after the accident.  Upon accessing the Scarab's cabin you discovered the body of the driver, toxicology indicated a series of symptoms conducive with an endocrine response just prior to his death.  His P-Comm contained sophisticated encryption software.  Ankya rigged up his P-Comm in parallel with hers to brute force the encryption on the optical chip recovered near the muscle freak in Madik.

Two days later, approximately 200 km from Talahassee you narrowly escaped a roadside ambush while fording a washed out section of highway.  While camping overnight the decryption completed.  You were able to recover a partially corrupted email with an attached autopsy recording.  The recording appears to be the autopsy of a victim of the event in Madik, possibly patient zero.  The chemical which caused the victim's death is a Promethion genetech known as GAMP.  The project is listed as abandoned, possibly due to risk.  Upon researching the chemical in the NWSEC RFC system you found the names of the two lead researchers, Miranda Srinivasa and Jason Xavier (deceased).  The group determined that completion of their NWSEC assignment in a timely manner was necessary, followup on GAMP can wait.  Consensus is that the GAMP technology would be easy to weaponize in its current form.

Upon reaching Talahassee, you were directed to the NWESEC swarm ground station.  You met with NWSEC's local swarm technician and were briefed on the probe issue.  You were issued an airboat and given the coordinates of the probes along with a crate full of spares.  The first probe was a radiation probe monitoring a (presumably) inert RK series warhead.  This probe had lost it's connection to its solar panel, this was easily fixed.  The giant mutant mosquito swarm posed little problem for your mobile bug zapper.  The second probe was mounted on top of a collapsing mall.  Upon mounting to the roof, you were ambushed by sentient and ambulatory plants.  You prevailed over the vegetation and moved the probe to a safer location.

The third probe was a meteorite monitoring probe.  As you approached the probe's coordinates you discovered a smouldering forest fire.  The probe had, in fact, found a meteorite.  You recovered a Nickel-Iron meteor and set up a less melted probe.  In the morning you proceeded to the final probe site where you discovered the decayed remains of an NWSEC uniformed body near the wreckage of an airboat.  On your way to the site you discovered the crash site of a Kestrel LLS with evidence of claws from large fauna on it.  The EPRS beacon had failed to fire.  You recovered the EPRS.  At the probe site you were ambushed by swamp rays and prevailed through a combination of luck and superior firepower.  You repaired the probe and set out for Talahassee.

You were paid 5000T each for your efforts along with 2500 T for your share of the meteorite debris.

Please see the downtime thread I'll be posting shortly, might as well get exposition done in old school PbP style.