Arkheologorodok Session 16: North Korean Bio-Punk

 

When we last left the Archaeology Dorks, they had just emerged from the underground frontier into the polyclinic's domed cavern only too see the building consumed by flams, a large group of shuffling figures silhouetted by the inferno. 

Out of sight from the arsonists, the party decides to observe and listen in before doing anything hasty. They're quickly able to ascertain that nine figures, all but the smoking woman in black robes in undead, and of those three are intelligent and willing participants. Quite a few of the shuffling husks look to be commuters killed in the subway bombings of a few weeks ago, along with a few skeletons, and a teenage girl with slits down her forearms and feral hatred in her eyes is the second in command. She reports to the smoking woman that two of them managed to slide through some cracks before they set fire to the whole place and begs to be allowed to start a hunt. The smoking woman calmly, sweetly speaks to her as a mother would to a daughter, saying that all the evidence of the transaction was destroyed, and the two who escaped will "get what's coming to them in time, like everyone else." 

A small cigarette butt like this one could burn a huge factory!
1973

The undead horde begins to make its way towards the tunnel entrance the players are hiding in. Seeing little recourse Cheech lobs a grenade into the crowd, with the others following suit. From here begins a grueling combat encounter that I honestly wanted to, and could have really easily avoided by just having the undead arsonists just use a different exit. Live and learn, which is a privilege the necromancer and her undead hoard didn't get as they were shredded by grenades, holy blades, and Judith's fangs and claws. 

Judith proves a little too zealous in the prosecution of her duties, as the necromancer is shredded to a state beyond the ability to identify or resurrect. All they're able to find on her are a set of car keys.

I've noticed that combat has managed to produce both some of my favorite moments in this game, but also has produced all my least favorite moments as well. The lesson I've learned on reflection is to avoid mass battles and to focus on making one enemy that's an actual interesting fight by using status effects and using the Resident Evil method of giving the enemy new powers the closer it gets to death, especially if some aspect of it is not jiving well with play.

Where there are lice there is typhus and death
1926

Standing among the bloody gobbets and bone of their foe, and the acrid smoke of burning medical waste slowly filling the massive domed chamber that once housed the polyclinic, the party realize that they not only might have reached a dead end, but that they've almost certainly been exposed to a lot of really horrible shit released by that fire, and though most of them are in hazmat suits, they'd almost certainly spread whatever designer diseases the late Dr. Orlova was working on to the rest of the city. It was then that they heard a voice and saw the figure of a cherubic Korean boy emerging from the flames, his nude body immune to the heat and the biohazards. 

Introducing himself as Jeon In-ho, he was able to positively identify his creator, Dr. Orlova, as the creator of the strain of syphilis and that those who attacked the clinic were the buyers, covering their tracks by eliminating the evidence. He regrettably could not inform them of the identity of the ingrates, as he did not handle accounts, but he did possess a wellspring of medical knowledge, and having helped create the mundane aspects of the disease, he could assist in its cure in exchange for helping him contact the North Korean consulate to inform them of what just happened.  Not least because of all the pathogens now escaping the burning facility via the acrid smoke now filling the chamber. 

Let us increate the production of preventative and popular medicine

Cover of Murzilka, Children's Magazine
1931

The party realized that while the human apemen involved were safe in their hazmat suits, they were no doubt covered in contagions that they did not want to spread across the Underground. Thus they elected to find the most direct route to the surface, which was thankfully nearby in the form of the sinkhole they created in a bar-room's basement sometime ago. After reaching the hole and scaring off the repair crews on the scaffolding, the party entered the abandoned Bar Endorphin and called the North Korean Consulate, which quickly pulled strings in the city government to have the street shut down while the Consulate mobilized a specialized bio-containment unit to the area. 

The D.P.R.K.'s Consul General to Arkheologorodok,
Ri Mun-chŏl

It's not long before hermetically sealed trucks show up and the entire building is covered in a positive pressure tarpaulin while men in hazmat suits began spraying everything down. The party was then led into one of the trucks where they met the Consul General Ri Mun-chŏl, smoking a cigarettes on the opposite side of a wall of armored glass. He thanks the party for recovering a critical asset to the Republic, which is why he had some specialists set up geass'd non-disclosure agreements for them to sign rather than just gassing them. There is much hemming and hawing and the encounter goes on way too fucking long, but they end up signing it and getting a ride to the underground entrance nearest to the Parlor.

Experiment by Giovanni Vepkhadze
1978

Returning to the stricken bordello, the party overhears a loud argument between some men. Upon investigation, they see Aarno, the bear worshipping Finn from the Excavators barring the path of the Sufis they had met earlier, who had returned with a doctor and a whirling dervish in toe. Apparently Aarno was escorting a couple of other Excavators to aid the Sisters, and was skeptical of this Central Asian fellows. After the intersession of Cheech, Aarno backs down and they all enter the bordello, where they see the Excavator's technomancer, Liu Yuhan, very clearly stealing data from the Sister's mainframe. Liu equivocates, but the party doesn't really care much and he beats a hasty retreated once he lays eyes on the Bektashi-Wahabist Union's aid delegation. 

Just as this united front begins to work to cure the Sister, a commotion in the gymnasium that leads to the bordello interrupts them. Emerging, they see that Oleg has brought some of his Mayami Import heavies to kill the sisters after all. Semenov very quickly realizes that he's operating under some kind of command spell, and experimentally casts Waking Dream to finagle his synapses to lift the command spell and a firefight is narrowly avoided.

This patient is hopeless. He has been diagnosed with complete absence of dollars
Satire of American Healthcare by Yuliy Ganf

1962

We ended the session there due to me being exhausted, with the ritual forming the beginning of the next session.