The Reverend Fell is dead. His daughters deal with the aftermath. The Four Generals get a new ally but Eustace Delmont has plans in mind to stop another potential catastrophe.
Previously, on The Four Generals
The Generals have survived the shoot-out at the Church of High Water though they took some injuries. Ida is free and furious at all the bullshit and Clo has helped to protect Olive. Also, LT is trying to still a soon-to-be-dead man's motorcycle.
Content Warning: Language, Smoking, Violence [lots], Gambling, and a tinge of cosmic horror. I will also ignore history, technology, and common sense here or there but no slight is ever intended about the real history, people, or events referenced.
More info, attribution for the tools and materials used— including the splash art — can be found in the About & Credits, below.
The Four Generals Episode 1, Act 4: Enter Eustace Delmont, Stage Right
Setting the Scene: Episode 1 | Act 4 | Scene 1.
Chaos Factor: 5 (+2)
Expected Scene: Ida confronts her dying father to find out why he almost had her killed (even accidentally).
Scene Test: 8 [that's two evens, by the way]
Actual Scene: As Expected.
We know Fell is dead but in proper action series form, I will instead have him alive long enough for one last confrontation from Ida.
- Is he glad that Ida survived? (this is dickish, but I'm going to put it at 50/50) >> 30 = Yes.
- What does he want to say to her surviving? (Character Conversations) >> 05 Amusing 58 Irritation + 66 Loving 27 Defiant = Dad joke + loving fuss, Jesus.
- Will Olive be ok? (Very Likely, because it's not *that* kind of story) >> 98 = Critical No. She'll be very torn up about this, so Ida will have to take care of her.
- Will he willingly give up the keys to his bike (Nearly Certain) >> 35 = Yes.
Quick scene now with most/all of the rolls out of the way.
Exit The Reverend Fell, Stage Left*
* because "The Reverend Fell Down" just seemed too rude.
"You are an asshole, pendejo!," Ida says, leaning over her father. The gunshot continues to bleed but he is clearly not going to make it. When The Colonel leaned over to try and patch him, Fell had pushed Col away and say leave it be.
Now he's talking to his daughters for the last time. Ida is still angry and Olive still scared, but the younger sister is sobbing loudly.
"Hey, Ollie, you listen to...cough...your sister, ok? She's the second best woman I know...after your...ugh...mom."
"Dad, shut the fuck up," Ida interrupts, "we are about to get you to a hospital."
"No. I'm a shitty person. I've...hurt people. Especially you."
Ida is quiet at this. Sarge and The Colonel are nearby while LT does his best to comfort the distraught Olive Fell. Clo is also next to Olive, but has his hand on Ida's shoulder. She had already demanded he hand over his pack of smokes but he stuttered about her being pregnant and Sarge took the pack from him and crushed it. All three Generals turned very fussy and she relented to face her grief alone.
But damn she would rather be smoking than talking right now.
When she doesn't say anything, he reaches into his leather jacket pocket for something and then reaches out with his hand to touch his daughter's very similar jacket.
Right before he touches it, though, he stops. "Hey, Idie, is your jacket felt?"
"No, what the...?"
Then he presses his hand against it, "It is now!" He cackles, bloodily, and presses something into her hand before going limp.
"Daddy...?," she asks, before looking down and realizing he just gave her the keys to his motorcycle. Before she realizes he is dead.
She shocks herself by not caring as much as she should. He's right. He's hurt people. He enabled terrible people to do terrible things. Just as soon as she was free, he had his thugs capture her and was turning them against her. What about Ollie? Ida was always strong enough to ignore getting caught up in his bullshit but Ollie was more a daddy's girl. How long before she was right there, hurting people for their father's attention?
It's best he's dead, but still...
She lets out a long breath and then turns around and hugs her sister.
"Clo?," she asks, after a full minute of crying in her sister's arms while her sister returned the favor. Outside, the smell of smoke increases. The explosion seems to have set some of the buildings in "Camp Fell" on fire. It won't get to the church, probably, but the smoke will be visible for a distance if the morning is just as clear.
"Yeah?"
"You really think you could protect my baby sister from an explosion and gunfire?"
"I mean, I know it was stupid, but I just couldn't let anything..."
He is muffled by her grabbing him and kissing him passionately.
"It's a good damned thing I'm going to have your baby, because now you have to make an honest woman out of me."
"I mean, that was..."
LT, Sarge, and The Colonel do their best to give the young adults a moment of privacy.
In the end, Ida heads off back to the Opal on the bike with Olive with her.
The Generals and Clo stay behind to clear up evidence. The fire and the mixture of guns will make it look like gang violence spilled over, which it is, but they would rather not have to answer a lot of questions. Time spent talking to the cops is time spent not helping Major.
Clo has 3 Crime + 3 Stealth and The Colonel knows crime scenes. I'll roll 7 dice vs critical.
- >> Critical + 2 Basic = they for sure cover their tracks for now.
Satisfied that authorities won't immediately know they are there, and Clo working on a cover story that will say that Ida and Olive had come to stay at the Opal for a few days, they head out and follow after the sisters.
Setting the Scene: Episode 1 | Act 4 | Scene 2.
The only thing I want to know is why the panic room won't work since having Maddy disappear would potentially make the rest of this less interesting.
- (Because I think it will give the most fun result, we'll use the Meaning Table: Traps) 96 Wall 96 Wall [ooo] + 46 Enemies 53 Frightening.
Something is up with the wall and somehow they know the enemies involved would not slow down from the trap.
Enter Eustace Delmont, Stage Right
It is around two in the morning when they return to The Opal and they find Major and Myrrh smoking in the lounge and talking to some new guy. The new guy is tall and fat and bushy-haired with glasses. He doesn't look much older than Major or Myrrh, but both seem to be acting like small children around him.
Despite the serious look on his face, or because of it, the two women start laughing like he is the funniest man alive and he seems a bit flustered by it.
The guy glances up at Sarge and the others and says something to Major who turns around and waves them over.
"Why the fuck aren't you in the Panic Room, little lady?," Sarge asks. Suddenly very tired.
Major tilts her head back and blows smoke up away from the table. Like she is trying to not annoy the man who, for his part, seems unphased by the really full ashtray.
"Because," and from her voice she is either drunk or high and probably both, "it turns out that Myrrh's dad hired shit contractors who didn't build the walls right, so once the place was pressurized and then depressurized, the large water tanks up above it are now pushing into the walls and causing little baby cracks to form because when a mommy wall and a daddy water tank love each other very much..."
"Myy dad ish no good at proteshion...," Myrrh heavily slurs her words because she is drunker, and/or higher, than Major, "...thash why he had a bish like Clo..."
"Hey!," Clo says, having walked up during this. Ida is upstairs getting sleep with her sister and the two have a lot of figuring out to figure out when they wake up. The three of them. Ida and Clo no longer have to run. Assuming he can grow a big enough pair of balls to talk to his mom sooner than later.
He reaches over and takes the cigarette from his sister's hand and starts smoking it. Making a face at the Ramseys tobacco, "That's mean, Myrrh. Also you quit, remember?"
"Pssshhh...," but a few seconds later she is starting to nod off.
"Also," the strange man says, "Baskerville and The Hound would probably not be slowed down by a few tons of water. They have a knack for getting into places. They are...siblings? A couple? I...don't know. Twins, maybe. That might explain why they fight together so well. Had to tussle with them once up in Birmingham and it was a hell of a time. Made some enemies that day, let me tell you. Not just them. The Yeoman were there. Yeo...men? Is it plural when it's a family? I...don't know. Delmonts sure but Yeomans sounds weird. Before my flight over, lots of turbulence, Oklahoma is getting hammered by a summer storm but you wouldn't know from here, I got a call. Well, Hitomi got a call and then she called me and told me I was an idiot and I told her that we had already agreed upon that. Anyhow, Agent Blum got word that they are on the move. That was the phone call, I mean. Have a cell phone now. Useful, but it's annoying that Amy can call me away but I guess there are some perks to having a girlfriend run an electronics store. You'd think she be more a nerd but at least she doesn't judge me too much for the Cyanorangers. They are remaking it for American audience. UGH, am I right? Anyhow..."
"Who is..."
"Oh!," Major says, "This is Eustace. Mr. Delmont to you. HA! Eu!" She kicks the man under the table and he kind of winces but seems a bit used to her antics.
Sarge has no idea if that answers his question but he also has no idea about which "who" he even wanted clarity on. He wants sleep.
The Colonel seems to be doing a better job at following along.
"Oh shit, Eustace Delmont. Jani talks about you."
The Colonel starts to explain that someone called Jani Blum was the only FBI agent that he had not minded working with and Sarge is thinking about leaving — the room if not the whole damned city — when Eustace waves his hand to bring the conversation back around to a more present-to-time topic and asks Clo about what happened with Ida. Something Major and the now sleeping Myrrh had been telling him about.
Clo starts telling the story and apologizes that Eustace came all the way out here to get him because he guesses now he and Ida can stay as long as his mom doesn't kill them both.
"GOOD!," Eustace says, "Because there's something happening in Las Az that I could really use Maddy's help with!"
"Hell no!," LT and Sarge say at the same time. The Colonel is just looking at Eustace with an appreciative curiosity.
Dammit, Sarge thinks, as he then looks at Major all smiles and excited.
It's already too late.
Doug's Commentary
It's probably too much to bring someone like Eustace in on a story like this, but now that I want to try the "three or so monster-of-the-week" episodes, an outing with him gives me a chance to play with the discarded information from the [REDACTED] original Episode 1. I'm thinking, someone on Public Access TV has been showing off relics and/or spouting the The Truth™ and is on the cusp to showing something on air that will cause havoc.
So next time I'll kick off with building up Eustace and Myrrh as Outgunned characters though after a single outing, Eustace will do his best to fade into the background. I might keep him around as something like an information broker, but probably not.
I'm also going to tweak my Mythic lists slightly so that each of these micro-adventures will have a slightly trimmed down Character/Threads list to better reflect their flow. Then these characters and new threads and such will feed into the chaos of the final episodes which will be more like a proper Outgunned campaign.
It's hard for me to do the kind of gaming where people just die and people just kill them without dwelling on it. This is probably a good thing for my own sense of morality, but it's terrible for action games where a bit of senseless violence drives a plot forward.
While you could build a multiple-episode arc about Olive and Ida dealing with it, I'm pretty much going to consider it solved. Clo and Ida, but not Olive, will be active characters at moment.
We will also likely finally meet Frankie next time and find out what kind of person the "elder Mirza" is.
OH, and Baskerville and The Hound are going to be the Alabama Weird version of a pair of assassin bodyguards from The GLOW: Abra and Yori. Because why not?They have a history of fighting with Eustace but this version might just be very nearly competent. We'll see.
About The Four Generals
BigBetty.com has placed a bet on Maddy Dwyer's life. People stand to make millions if she is dead within the next two weeks. Maddy's dad, Thomas "Cap" Dwyer has asked three old friends to travel to Las Azaleas and protect his daughter. The group went as The Four Generals in high school but have long since gone their separate ways. Now, the three friends — and Maddy, calling herself Major — have reformed The Four Generals. Their task: to keep Maddy alive. Also, some cults and crazy mega-church leaders are involved.
Credits
The Four Generals is played using Outgunned. Mythic, Gamemaster's Apprentice: Base 2e, and Gamemaster's Apprentice: Weird Horror are used as game oracles. Other tools have been added in.
Art is modified from stock photos and images by myself from various sources, given below. GIMP + G'MIC are used to create the effects. Unsplash is the most common source of stock art.
References to source materials use the following codes [BOLD = Main Sources for campaign]:
- {BRTM} Book of Random Tables: Modern
- {BRTN} Book of Random Tables: 1980s - 1990s
- {GMAB} Gamemaster's Apprentice: Base 2e Deck
- {GMAWH} Gamemaster's Apprentice: Weird Horror Deck
- {MM} "Maidenstead Mysteries" [Tricube Tales] Image Oracle
- {MY} Mythic, 2nd Edition
- {OG} Outgunned
- {OGAD} Outgunned Assistant Director
- {RR} Random Realities
- {TBM} Table Fables, Modern
- {UNE} Universal NPC Emulator
When page or card numbers are given, they will be in the {curly brackets}. {RR1,6} = Random Realities for die roll 1,6.
Part of the Alabama Weird world, though not geographically located in Alabama.
This post is in the standard Doug Alone post style. See Anatomy of a Post for more details.
ART CREDIT AND EXPLANATION
Fell is from artwork already posted and credited previously.
Eustace Delmont is a picture of me from around 20 years ago. The "Dew Drinking Gnome" is also a picture of me, in a mask, from around 30 years ago.
I came up with a blog that sort of aped Weekly World News rather than trying to perfect match the style of the newspaper. Eustace would be a big fan of the Weekly World News, though.