Arkheologorodok Session 6: Santa Muerte Robs a Convenience Store on Ramon Mercader Day

 

August 20th marks the biggest festival in Arkheologrodok, Ramon Mercader Day. The streets are alive with celebration as the people don novelty sombreros and eat what passes for street tacos in Central Asia. The main attraction is the parade down Ramon Mercader Prospekt, but the partying goes well into the night. 

Aleksandr's day doesn't get to start with festivities however. Lured into the hotel bar, he's greeted by two heavily tattooed brodyaga of the Bratva, telling him he has a meeting with the Vor to get to. Weighing his options, Aleksandr decides that running now would guarantee the Bratva marking him for death, and so resignedly allows them to usher him into a waiting g-wagon and shuttle him to the Banya.

Aleksandr enters a steam sauna to meet the Vor, a hideously obese man with jaundiced skin covered in obscene gulag tattoos with almost reptilian eyes peering out above a nose half flattened by violence and a too large, grinning mouth.  Next to him is a rakish looking mobster he introduces as Orntihologist, who is seated next to a man who looks like Riff-Raff if he had a Babylonian style beard.  

Combine these two images and you have Vavilon

The issue is this, Ornithologist runs the prostitution in this town, from high end escorts he oversees to the streetwalkers run by pimps who kick up to him, and it just so happens that Aleksandr finds himself in a double bind. The girl who talks to the dead he's been running around with is one of Ornithologists big earners, and the mad woman that they both killed last week was one of Vavilon's girls. 

Aleksandr's intrusion has caused both direct loss of profit (the mad poisoner nurse they killed) and has caused disorder among the Bratva (one of Ornithologist's girls is responsible for Vavilon's loss of profit). Demonstrating proper contrition, the Vor decides to tax him $3,000 that the Vor will distribute as he sees fit, and that he now kicks up to the Ornithologist. Vavilon is getting absolutely fucked in this deal, yet his smile never leaves, he doesn't just seem content, he seems genuinely happy, like he got exactly what he wanted. 

In order to build-you need to know
In order to know-you need to study

Semenov has spent the week at the State Central Library to try and find a solution to Spartak's new "condition." Using his own knowledge of ancient Slavonic lore and the resources at the Central State Library, Semenov is able to construct a ritual to lift the Serpent Folk curse on Spartak. He reluctantly makes arrangements with Spartak's new Neo-Nazbol friends to procure the necessary items and provide a space for the ritual. 

Semenov also attempts a linguistic analysis of the teenage grimoire they recovered from the abandoned school, but the writer's idiosyncrasies prove to be just beyond his reach, and its mysteries are withheld for the moment.  

Political Knowledge Breaks Chains

Semenov also takes this time to view the mysterious video tape they recovered from a hidden cache behind a brick wall. Popping the tape into a VCR in the University's multimedia room (Semenov doesn't own a TV) the strange tape begins to play. The screen offers a panoply of odd, grainy images, a crowd of shouting girls in school uniforms, diamonds tumbling through a sky, the barest outline of a submarine under water, an eye with an extremely dilated pupil, and finally a stone well in a forest. As soon as the tape cuts out, his phone begins to ring. On the other end of the line, a Liverpudlian voice simply says "Oi, seven days ya daft cunt." 

Somewhat troubled, Semenov attempts to trace the number, only to find it to belong to a shut down Margaret Thatcher Museum in Blackpool.

Elektronika VM-12, a fine Soviet Era VHS player

Semenov goes to the Neo-Nazbol HQ where the ritual materials are gathered, which include shards of statues of Lenin and Stalin, 1D4 HP of blood, and a portrait of Dr. Andrei Snezhnevksy). Spartak, having taken copious amounts of valium in preparation, sits in a chair at the center of the ritual circle while Semenov chants the sacred words with a recording of the Internationale being sung at the 1978 National Congress of the Soviet Union played in the background. 

Dr Andrei Snezhnevsky

Utilizing these powerful symbols to manipulate the local Noospheric conditions around Spartak, Semenov puts his experimental casting to the test to break the serpent spirit's curse, and as Ramon Mercader struck the traitor Trotsky with his ice ax on the 20 for him to die on the 21st, so too shall the curse expire in a day. [The player failed his Save vs Magic roll for his casting of a ritual he was not familiar with, but luckily only rolled a 9 on the What Has Your Hubris Wrought table.]  

Thank you, doctor

Moving now to the Manoilov Center, Dr. Galdikas is being debriefed by Pierre on the results of his material analysis of the lambent blue water they recovered from the Silo. Pierre excitedly regales the doctor of its healing properties, one of the center's lobotomites regrowing previously severed connections. This of course caused a bit of ruckus, but Pierre was able to re-lobotomize the subject with minimal fuss.  Further tests on non-lobotomized homeless people showed psychedelic properties, with the subjects having "oceanic" experiences.  

Clean Water for our Reservoirs 

With research done, Dr Galdikas decides to take up his employer on his oblique advice and gather his compatriots to meet Vernisa Saburova at the back of a halal butcher in Abattoir Town for a job. It's a markedly more ethnically diverse part of town, with more mosques and Buddhist temples than churches. Despite being one of the more polluted parts of Arkheologorodok, it's also one of parts of town that better weathered the dissolution thanks to owners of the Steppak Meats Abattoir, the mysterious Saburov family.

Sarkomand Halal Meats

Entering the butcher shop after hours, they're sent to a back room where a smartly dreased gaunt and pale blonde woman with piercing green eyes eats a bloody steak. Wiping her mouth, she introduces herself as the Chief Logistics Officer of Steppak Meats, Vernisa Saburova. Returning to her meal, she says that Dr Galdikas's boss at City Sanitarium No. 1, the hospital administrator and her cousin, as well as an Uncle who remains unnamed, told her that present company were both capable and of flexible morals, qualities she's a big fan of. The job is simple, take the keys to this Lada and go smash up and rob three Vos'moy convenience stores. They can keep whatever they steal and once they've done the job they can dump the car and then call her on a landline (she heavily stresses this) so she can arrange for their payment of $5,000.

Normally she'd outsource this to the Gopniks, but they've stopped robbing Vos'moys as a policy all of a sudden. 

The Getaway Car

Agreeing to job, the party grab balaclavas and, with a mind towards a false flag, dress Spartak up to look like one of the Gay Nazis before they all pile into the Lada and make their way east into the Silent Homes. Unfortunately, the only space in the car Spartak could actually fit was the driver's, and so the monkey man has to act as the wheel man as well. 

Upon arriving to the first Vos'moy, the crew find it to be fairly busy. Deciding that both his demeanor and the gifts of La Santa Muerte make him the most suited for handling this store, Aleksandr elects to go it along. He steps past the sliding doors with his gun raised and calls upon the Santa Muerte to allow him to cast command on the people present. He fails the charm roll, so he rolls on the the Fickle Whims of the Divine table, getting a...20. 

Aleksandr is suddenly suffused with the power of La Santa Muerte, his eyes rolling back, his feet lifting from the ground as he levitates in the now freezing air, a death's head superimposing itself over his own. For the next 5 rounds, he must cast a spell each round. The spell automatically succeeding, but dealing a point of damage to flesh each time. Using his Unseen Servant, Aleksandr brings a storm of ruination upon the store as the people run out screaming. Once the storm is over, the divine leaves Aleksandr as he collapses on the floor, with only 2 points of flesh left. 

Semenov elects to cast Erase Data on the stores cameras as they drag Aleksandr back into the car before speeding onto the next Vos'moy, the sounds of Sirens already approaching 

Our militia calmly, firmly, and bravely safeguard the wealth of our people
1980

A couple of driving rolls later and the police haven't spotted the Lada yet, but those sirens sound close. Deciding that time was of the essence, and seeing that they were going to dump the car later anyway, Spartak rams the Lada through the storefront of the next Vos'moy near the New Downtown. With the smash up done, Spartak backs out, crushes his drive roll, and manages to put a lot of time between themselves the the militsiya 

Long Live the World Socialist Revolution

Now that Spartak has secured some time ahead of the militia, the party decides to take a less kinetic approach as Galdikas draws the short straw. Opting for guile, Aleksandr goes in first to browse and keep an eye on the single shopper, while the doctor takes a duffle bag with him and walks into the Vos'moy shortly after. He places the bag on the counter and tells the clerk that there's a bomb inside. This honestly would have worked had I not rolled a 1 (hostile) on the reaction roll for the guy shopping in the back. When the team in the car sees things going south, they jump into action. Aleksandr crushes his wrestling roll and knocks the guy down with a precision judo chop. Thinking that this would be a good idea for some reason, Dr Semenov enters the store so he can pretend to be taken hostage by Dr. Galdikas. With the sirens closing in, the team piles in and Spartak slams the gas just a the flashing blue lights appear. 

With the job completed and the militsiya on their tail, Spartak hatches an idea that will make him the apeman equivalent of D.B. Cooper. First he drops the rest of the party off in an alley before speeding away, driving out into the marshlands where he intentionally crashes into a tree, smearing blood on the seat and firing several bullets into the car before tossing the gun and taking off all his clothes.

“Shame! Got drunk, swore, broke a little tree, and now he's ashamed to look people in the face."

With a mysterious scene with no answer set for the militsiya, a nude Spartak crosses the marsh and makes his way to the old hostel on the far shore. Knocking on the door, he's greeted by his old roommate Abram and a cloud of marijuana smoke. Happy to see him and nonplussed by him being naked and covered in mud (Abram has done too many shrooms before too, so he gets it) invites him in and they talk, smoke, and drop acid late into the night.

The rest of Spartak's night