The Pill and the Patsy – Part 3
What a wild and wonderful weekend! The third installment of the campaign based around my Dungeons and Disasters story took a turn for the weird. I fumbled an opportunity to provide my party a long term base, which would allow me to rotate the story around it. I had nothing prepared outside of what I had planned for that city. I feel terrible, because I had been so excited for all the things I could’ve done with that scenario. However, I rotated to a very minor character whom I had never provided any information for, and somehow it worked out wonderfully, full the chills, thrills, and exceptional aspect of horror and combat that Ravenloft offers to D&D campaigns. I am still in love with the story that I am telling, but I need to take some time to actually get out in front of the narrative for a change. It’s been so much fun to actually have a chance to put my hands to work on a D&D campaign. My players keep me on my toes, and my mind has to work at top speed to keep up with the demands of such deep and rich story telling. They haven’t quit or rebelled as of yet, so I believe that the campaign is going fantastically just on that alone. The group I have is… easily underwhelmed.
The last installment of The Pill and the Patsy saw Patsy and her memories each walking down dark alleyways. We learned the true identity of the mysterious ‘Monty’, Patsy’s reliance on IB22 or ‘sal’, and I feel fairly confident we have set the stage of intrigue and skullduggery which rules the city of New Amsterdam rather well. I’m going to work on advancing more of the story today. Mainly, what is the mysterious object that only The Duchess could steal? What was so important that Monty couldn’t do an official request to obtain the information, as his official cover is that of a highly placed Imperial Government official? These questions excite me just as much as they do the people reading them. I am still a horrible writer, and don’t build overarching skeletal structures for my stories. I simply use the last sentence of the previous entry as a springboard, and dive headfirst into the depths of my imagination, pulling anything and everything I can grab with me when I surface for air. It’s not a good long term strategy, but for now it’s what I have to work with as I balance the work aspects of my life and the writing aspects of my life. I know that as I grow, I will need to develop the discipline to craft things out in advance, especially as I am looking at writing serial stories and trilogies. However, for now I am oddly free to simply plumb the depths of my mind, searching for hidden treasures at my leisure. Odd, how I have more freedom here at the start then I will once I am established. I bet there’s a message in that realization. I’ll have to see if I can dig that up, too.
Without further depth digging,
The Pill and the Patsy – Part 3
Rain began to fall as Patsy made her way from alleyway to alleyway, always heading towards the City Center of New Amsterdam. Always heading towards Monty. Footfalls in puddles created a rhythmic splashing as she walked, giving her a chance to think as she let her feet go through the motions they knew so well. Stop at this corner for so many seconds, wait till the cameras were pointing in a direction where she could weave between them and not be seen. Wait till the Civ MP’s had their backs to her, etc. The list went on and on. Patsy kept her head high through all of it, never ducking or skulking behind a hood. Using her brain and her guts to keep her safe, as she always did. She might not have been given a choice when it came to this life of crime on Monty’s behalf, but she would live her life as she wanted to, or she wouldn’t live it at all. Plus, it helped keep up the mystique that had bought her time to run or a few extra seconds to think on way more than one occasion. Sometimes it was nice to have a personal choice mesh so well with the needs of the streets.
Her attention snapped back to the alley in front of her with the speed of a lightning bolt. Something was wrong. She had walked this alley a hundred times on her way to Monty and his detestable meetings, she knew the habits of everyone who lived and worked on either side, how they deposited their trash, when the trash was picked up, how many homeless men and women made it their home, and where the cameras should be pointing and when they should be pointing in that direction and for how long. Everything. Study was how she kept safe. Planning was how she kept out of the IG’s cold iron shackles. She ducked behind the nearest recycle dumpster, watching the alley, trying to find what her brain had cottoned on to so quickly. There. The traffic cameras were all pointing wrong. They were deliberately leaving a dead zone, instead of the usual overlap which required careful timing to maneuver. Ambush! It was the only explanation, and since they didn’t want it to be recorded, it could only mean that it wasn’t the Civ MP’s doing the snatching. That left one option. The Wickermen. Wickers were the spooks used by IG to do all their dirty work. IG talked and talked about accountability, but they were the ones with the most to hide. After the fall of world governments in WW4, it had been the IG which seized control. They intended to keep it as well, using underhanded blackmail and shady assassination where diplomacy or military occupation wasn’t enough. The Wickers were the best of the best, the result of generations of breeding and IG genetic and technological manipulation. No one crossed paths with the Wickers and came out unscathed. Most of them never came out at all.
If Patsy didn’t act, and do so quickly and correctly, she was about to die or be captured. She honestly didn’t know which would be worse. She couldn’t even see her assailants, but that could be easily remedied. She toned her reactor down to it’s lowest levels, so it was quite invisible to any outside detection. She used the barest whisper of power to set a wide, thin net of electric and magnetic energy, completely invisible to the background radiation of every day living in New Amsterdam. Silently, she snatched the tube which held her only hope, and released them to ride the waves she had sent out. They dispersed quickly, soon becoming invisible as each nano spread out to give her a completely accurate topography of her surroundings. If she was going to survive the next few minutes, she would need all the information she could muster. She breathed slowly, making sure all her implants were masking her presence as much as they could manage. Her skin became impermeable, allowing it and her clothing to drop in temperature to match her surroundings without sacrificing precious body heat. Slowly, her neural implants played an overlay of her surroundings across her eyes, spreading outward as the nanos painted a clearer picture of what she was up against. After a few tense minutes, she got the full count of them. Six andros, shit! Andros were the most dangerous of the Wickers. Androgynous humans who had undergone so much cybernetic and genetic enhancement that they hardly qualified for the word any longer. They couldn’t control nanos, thank all the stars above, but they would be hell to shake off. Even one would have been a serious challenge. Six would almost certainly be a death sentence. Someone wanted The Duchess, dead or alive, and they were unwilling to take any risks in ensuring that it was done properly. Think Patsy, think!
Wickerfully,
Justin
