Captured and Facing the End

The twisted piece of wire bit into Soskaya's wrists, drawing a little bit of blood as the two women were pulled roughly by the rope attached to their improvised handcuffs. Soske had staggered, eventually falling to a knee in the dust before quickly managing to right herself and regain her footing. The cruel voice sputtered into a disconcerting ly happy, high-pitched laugh . She looked around, trying to see any sign of dog meat. He was nowhere to be seen. Her mind started ticking over. They had to find an advantage. Something. Anything. That cold feeling in her stomach intensified as they were dragged into the stinking structure. She looked at her fellow captive, desperate to see some spark, some hope in her eyes, but there was nothing but fe ar. Fear and pleading. The laugh rang out again, bouncing off the small echoey space around them. There was no question. They were in serious trouble Hello everybody, how are y'all? Hello and welcome back to A Wasteland Story. In the last episode of the show, Suskade and Dog Meat were waylaid by a bunch of buzzing bloody mozzies in the forest as they searched for the trail of the missing Brotherhood of Steel members. There they ran into some settlers from before who'd apparently been trying to help, although it could be debated who saved who in the end. They did, however, now have a direction to follow and, follow it they will, of course, if Dogmate can recover from his nearly fatal blood bug sting, and nothing mysterious attacks them along the way. We'll see about that. And speaking of monstrous, this is probably something I should mention more often, and I do assume that if you're listening to this and you've been following along, you know what you're in for. But it is worth stating here, and perhaps in this episode specifically, that Fallout, while funny and exciting, is also pretty nasty. It can be adult at times, and as such, so is Suskade's story. There's description of violence, drugs, swearing, death, dismemberment, and although I generally don't get too graphic, there are also some insinu ations at particularly nasty adult themes. But they aren't reveled in for the sake of it, but rather used to support the quote-unquote realistic nature of this the Fallout World. So that's a warning, and with that, let's get on with the show. Okay, back for a quick session. We left off after defeating the blood bugs. Soskaid and the settlers made camp in the forest. She was able to unstun them . So they may well be able to lead her out of the forest. I think they've been living around here for a little while, so they know the area reasonably well. And perhaps they saw something. So let's find out if they saw what happened to the mysterious death of the Brotherhood leader Marcus, or whoe ver. Dogmeat and Sosca id continued along the dust-covered road, keeping the edge of the forest on their right-hand side. She was glad to see him doing better, but they had to stop every 20 or 30 minutes so that he could rest. He would then inevitably force himself to his pause with a wobble and a brave little whine, seemingly intent on showing her that he could keep going. Brave little bastard, she thought to herself. She would have loved to have given him more time to recover, but she knew that the longer they waited, the less likely the chance of finding the remaining Brotherhood of Steel members. Without them, she had absolutely no idea how she was supposed to infiltrate the facility where Wright was apparently keeping the FEV . Good boy, she said. Hopefully we can get you some proper rest soon . So, do they know ? I'm gonna go ahead and say that it's um I think it's likely. I think they probably kept an eye on Saskade as she went into the facility or rather into the uh base outpost and back out again so I think it's probably likely that they know something. So that gives us a 65% chance. Do they know anything about what happened? Yes they do. The settlers in the forest had been pretty shaken up after the battle with the blood bugs, but once they'd calmed down and regained their strength She was able to find out what had been going on since they'd last met. She'd learned that shortly after her and Dogmeat's departure, the group had had a long discussion about what they should do next. Apparently there, was a debate among themst as to whether they should head to the town that Susque had told them about. A few of them wary to trust her. But in the end, they had agreed that they would pack up their things and prepare to head out to find it. A few though had decided to follow Sus kade in the meantime and see if she was actually doing what she said she was going to do and could be trusted. It was then that they had witnessed what had become of the Brotherhood members. So what is it that they know I think let's just look at the meaning . So that is waste and path . Hmm. So they maybe saw which direction they took them. Did they take them into the forest ? Actually . Okay, well this says no anyway. And it's an extreme no. So I think it went in the opposite direction. I think maybe that's what waste means. Maybe they took them to like they they saw something , someone going off towards some kind of waste site. So that might be a ruin. They said they'd lost sight of Dogmeat and Saskade af ter a while of following them and ended up back in the forest. They hadn't seen the attack, but they did notice a small group pushing some apparent prisoners roughly along the road that ran alongside the NCR outpost. So I've just flicked to a page here which is a uh drive-in cinema and it's got a big scary picture of a death claw on it. Now I hope it wasn't a death claw because I can't handle a death claw. So I think they were dragged to some I think they were dragged to the drive-in theatre, which is just outside of town, maybe in a clearing in the forest or adjacent to the forest, something like that. Um never been to a drive in cinema but I feel like they're often a little bit out of town. So that's where they went. One of the settlers had then hurried along the forest edge to try and find out more. The group had been moving slowly and talking loudly. Uh they said something about a drive-in, if that means anything to you? One of the settlers had told her. This hadn't meant anything to Suscaid, but it was at least a direction . She had asked if the group had had any discerning features or evidence as to what faction they might belong to. Maybe NCR? She had thought hopefully for a minute and then called No. On second thought she hoped the NCR weren't the kind to be slitting throats and dragging off people in the dark, but she never knew. There were nasty people in whatever group or ideology, she reminded herself. But first we're gonna sleep and eat some food. I'm not being super meticulous about like tracking the time and the um amount of food and stuff but I do think for the survival nature of it. I do want to make sure that she's scavenging food and getting enough to at least eat and drink every day . So the expected scene now is that the group lead Saskade so after resting through the forest and point out the cinema . Okay, so that's expected. Let's see if that's what happens. Suskide had been relieved when, just after a few hours, dogmeat seemed to be breathing normally again in his sleep, and appeared to be getting better rather than worse. So, probably not poisoned, she thought at the time , and that assumption seemed to be holding up. She herself had crashed out almost immediately after eating, and couldn't believe how well she had slept before being dragged out of her reverie by one of the settlers gently rousing her at dawn . The settler had told her that they needed to be on their way so as not to miss the group moving on, and had pointed out once more the direction they'd seen the Brotherhood members being taken, this time in daylight. Suskade had nodded groggily, but perked up when she saw Dogmeat lying next to the fire, face on his paws, watching her intently. He started licking his nose excitedly when she sat . She reached out her arms, and he had bounded up into her lap, lapping at her face, So Suskear and Dogmeat, they get to the edge of the forest, the sun's just coming up at this point, they made an early start, and she can see not too far away, just down a little hill a bit, a clearing and this sort of towering shadow of this broken um big outdoor screen something like that. Having walked for the best part of half a day, Saskaiid slowed as she and Dogmeat rounded a little bend in the road. There was a pre-war sign not far ahead. A breeze had picked up, and the once glitzy-shaped piece of metal hung at an awkward angle on its ancient post . The sign seemed to have been made in the shape of something that looked like an oversized terminal screen with the remains of painted light bulbs adorning its edges. The exaggerated and slightly manic fonts still legible. Fall Creek drive-in sensation! As much fun as you can have in the backseat of a chrysalis, rare speech bubble protruding from the winking, grinning face of a perfect toothed and jauntily fedored gentleman. She shielded her eyes from the glaring sun, beginning its long descent through the sky in front of her, and saw the outline of a building matching the size of the sign's shape not too far in the distance. The midday heat and dust in the air giving it a wavering quality. That has to be it, she thought. Let's go, boy. Nice and slow, she said, and they slip back into the edge of the tree line to get him closer. So Soska id um sort of makes away her long, and she sort of sets up outside of the fence on a little hill and just spends half an hour sort of scoping the place out. And so we're gonna do a perception check to see if she sees anything . Oh very much so. So that's a tag skill. She actually has four successes on that. Closer to the drive in, Suskaid and Dogmeat slipped out of the tree line and made their way, low and qu otted . For a few moments it was quiet. Only the sound of the picking up wind throwing dust particles at the rusted cars and the tortured creaking of various sheets of tin being disturbed from their slumber. And then she heard it. A high pitched laugh from the vicinity of the large screen. It sent a shiver down her spine . So we'll call that an exceptional yes, so she sees what does she see ? She sees bargain and free . Okay, so I think although we thought maybe it was some kind of monster 'cause it didn't look human, I think that it was raiders. Suskade shifted from her haunches back into a low crouch, and with small, quick steps made her way along the continuous row of cars, peeking through the gaps as she passed, trying to find a position where she could get a better look in without exposing herself. They followed the line along and made its wide arc for another 50 meters or so. Her quads and back were aching, but she kept moving, slowly but steadily, getting closer to the source of the laughter and the growing volume and mutter of voices. Human at least, she thought, but felt no actual reassurance from this fact. And so I think she sees the two Brotherhood of Steel members there , and they're trying to bargain their way out. Saskaiid slowed and let the situation reveal its elf to her between the gaps in the cars and chain link fence. She settled behind the last one in the queue at the entrance to the drive-in . Through the gaps, she could see them pretty clearly now. Three raiders stood in a loose semicircle before Hawthorne and Ramirez . The Brotherhood members were on their knees in a clearing of cars in front of the huge building Soskered now understood to have been some sort of communal screen. Probably no more than five. It needs to be more than three because they were able to capture two Brotherhood of Steel members, although I think they did catch them by surprise. Are they more than five? I think it's unlikely w there are more than five. Okay, so then I'm gonna say that there's six. Two more raiders were standing loosely facing towards the entrance where Suskade and Dogmeat were hidden, and one more she noticed, with an involuntary wrinkle of her nose, appeared to be squatting near by with no apparent shame. Oy, dig it , said one of the two at the entrance, turning around to the squatter. There was a pop and a puff of dust under the white shining derriere of the raider, and he scrambled to the side near,ly falling in his own business. Jesus fuckin' Christ! he exclaimed in surprise as he scrambled to his feet and pulled up his less than unsoiled pants. You'll fucking pay for that, Skinner, spat the squatter as he pulled his own pistol from his pocket and made a meaningful stride towards the gate. There was giggling from the pair there and the high laughter from the one with the prisoner. Six raiders is pretty bloody difficult for Suskade and Dogmeat alone. I think she would need to either break them out or allow them to escape somehow. I think she's maybe gonna try and this is tough. Sit the fuck down, Grobo came a quiet but authoritative voice from the largest of the raiders. The raider hood spoke half turned to eyeball the un til recently striding Grobbo, who'd now stopped dead in his tracks, swaying slightly. The man was bigger than anyone Soskade had ever seen, outside of the supermutants. Ripped hams of arms threatened to pop out of the horrific spiked armor covering him from his absent neck to his knees. And I think the dodgy one, Ramirez is He is I think he's giving away the location of the settlement that they came across earlier, which is none other than Kesha, I think it's called, which I've decided in my head is a mostly Ghoul settle settlement, and so he is willing to give up that location and give them away. Um and he figures he'll get his freedom, the ghouls will get killed, the raiders get what they want, that's fine. Now, raiders aren't that honorable, so it doesn't mean they're not gonna just kill them anyway. So he hasn't actually told them where it is, but he's told them he knows about it and that there is some really valuable things there. Either something really valuable in particular or just you know it's a merchant trading sort of place or it will be once this merchant sets up there and so it's worth to raid. Mabey just to get some slaves? Whatever. I guess ghoul slaves are good because you don't have to worry about radiation. From the distance she was at, Soskead could see that Hawthorne had some sort of gag on her mouth and looked terrified. Ramirez had his gag down around his neck and apparently continued his interrupted conversation with the leader. Was he smiling? So that's what he's doing. I think scribe Sarah Hawthorne, she is really against this. She's she's young and she's you know untested really but she is not that she's a good person. So she's really against this and I think maybe even she's at risk of some abuse as well being raiders. Saskade could only make out snatches, but when she caught a glimpse of Ramirez's face between the shifting standing figures, she could indeed see that he was wearing a nervous sm ile. The leader seemed to be pondering his words. Ramirez jerked his head in a direction up the road and held up his bound hands in front of him. And I can take you there. She thought she heard him say . Okay . So here's what happens . There's six of them there . Three decide. He says he'll tell them where it is. He'll show them , he'll go with them, and he'll even help take out the ghouls for them. So three or four of them are gonna break off. Is it three ? No, it's four. So four of them are gonna break off . And um I think they've they've made like a a small hideout inside the big broken screen of this um thing. It's not a long -term base or anything. They're just kind of they've been scouting out the Brotherhood of Steel and the NCR because they're on a mission to find out more information about the surrounding areas because they want to expand their little network of operations or whatever. So four of them are gonna go off with Ramirez leading them towards Kesha and they're gonna leave S uh Hawthorne there with two of them. So she's in danger of abuse, definitely. But two of them I think suscade between her sniper rifle and um well not her hunting rifle and dog meat can probably take two of them and I think that's exactly what we're gonna do now. The huge raider seemed to think for a minute and then leaned forward and grabbed Ramira Ramirez fell forward on his elbows, clustering at the gash on his cheek. The other raiders laughed and one stepped forward to get a boot into the side of the prostrate Ramirez's head before stepping back into line. The leader was picking his nails with his bloodied knife and said something quietly, nodding towards the prisoners . Two of them forcefully picked Ramirez off the ground and shoved him forward toward the gate, weapons raised. The Brotherhood of Steel members staggered into a stride and said, This will be worth your while, before spitting out some of the blood that was running into his mouth from the fresh cut. The leader and the raider closest to him followed the three out onto the road walking casually. One of the remaining men stayed in his guarding position, and the one with the high laugh began circling Hawthorne and muttering something with a grin . Suskey had pushed down the sick feeling that had suddenly appeared in her stomach. Hawthorne was definitely not safe, but Soskaid knew that she had to wait until the others had gotten far enough away before she made her move. Bastards. She muttered to herself and la y low behind the car, listening to the footsteps crunch along the road in the direction that she had been travelling. So Soskaid waits for the four of them to leave. It's the beginning of the day, they say they're not gonna waste any time. And Suskade watches so this is another two hours. So we're now sort of mid-morning . Um mid-morning, she's gonna watch them go and she needs to wait until they're far enough away that she can get in to a fight with these remaining two without them hearing . Soskayade's back complained at her from the position she was crouched in, but she didn't dare move. The car she was behind was angled in such a way that the walking raiders couldn't see her where she was, but the blind spot was small. She'd worried that if she shifted too much, one of them looking back along the track might see her boot. She looked down at Dogmeat's wet nose that was poking out from under the car. Good boy. She whispered before holding her breath and listening intently. She hadn't been able to hear what was going on in the yard, but she wasn't yet confident to look. A few more minutes. She whispered in equal part to herself as to her She waited. So I think she's gonna wait a couple of hours. Did the raiders take Hawthorne inside or is she being kept outside? The weather's fine outside, some of this thing. I'd say, did they keep her outside? I think it's unlikely. I think they probably want to get her out of sight. So do they keep her outside? Extreme, yes. Okay . Once the group had gotten far enough away, Soskaid peered out from behind the car and watched the shrinking figures until they disappeared around the corner of the long dusty road. Time to make her move, she thought, and peered over the hood of the car to see what was happening in the yard. It had been quiet for a while. So not only do they keep her outside? But they basically, they're sort of almost showing off. They're being really brazen, like, hey, we've got so much control here, we can just, you know, sit around outside with this brotherhood of steel scri be, and they're not smart. They're sitting out basking in the overcast clouds. So I think what we're gonna do that means it's unlikely we'll be able to break her out because they're out in the open. So this means we're gonna we're gonna start shooting, I think. One of the raiders was sitting in a rusty deck chair near the entrance to the drive in. He had apparently stood resolutely on guard at attention until exactly the moment his boss was out of The other raider, the one with the nasty laugh, had been busying himself with something inside the giant screen, coming in and out of the door with ropes, wire and some nasty looking tools. Hawthorne was lying on her side in the dirt, apparently exhausted. Thankfully no one had touched her yet, but Saskai dididn't think that state of affairs would remain so for long . Soskaid assessed the situation. There was one inside and one lounging on the deck chair. Should be easy enough to take out the lounger, and then the high laugher as he inevitably came running out of She checked the slide of her hunting rifle and carefully mounted it on the hood ornament of the car. She put the head of the reclining raider in her sights and took a deep breath. Wait, she thought suddenly. Don't assume things are as they seem. Her father's voice in her head again. She didn't actually know there weren't more raiders inside the screen. There's no such thing as overprepared. She slid the barrel of her rifle carefully back off the car and opened her backpack. I think we're gonna do our trick of planting one of our frag grenades, one of our frag mines. So that's the first thing we're gonna do. Sasuke , she assesses the layout of the place. Maybe there's some cars, or there's definitely some cars lying around, so there might be a bit of cover. She's going to try to sneak closer to the cinema , place a frag mine or two , and then retreat back to a spot in line with that frag line so that when she takes the shot and someone inevitably comes running after her, there's a chance that they're going to run over that mine. Sosuke had looked at the frag mines laid out in the dirt in front of her. Probably she could only reliably get one down without pushing her luck too much of remaining undetected. She put the others back in her bag and picked up the remaining one, remembering to check for signs of failure, like she'd been shown back in Newark. Leaving her hunting rifle behind the car, she drew her pistol in the other hand and motioned for Dogmeat to stay where he was. She peered over the hood again and saw that the lounging raider had stood up and was dragging his chair out of the creeping shadow of the im mense screen before setting it down again and reclining once more with a sigh. Just then there was a loud metallic crash, and Soske jumped as she saw the raider inside the screen, shove open the makeshift door dramatically, and stri.de out Damn it, she thought. But at least she'd have them both in sight now as she tried to lay her trap. So the first thing she's gonna do is can she succeed a sneak test ? Um Can she succeed a sneak test? How difficult is this going to be? Maybe I'm not making things difficult enough. It's daylight . There's not a lot of round, so I think it's going to be difficulty two . We're going to buy an action point . And we're going to do sneak agility , which is 11. The High Laugher walked over to Hawthorne with an exaggerated stroll. The prisoner struggled back to her knees looking terrified, trying ineffectually to spit some dust out of her still gagged mouth. Well well, my little bird, he said, with a happy and friendly voice that didn't match the sleaze dripping off his lopsided grin. I've got everything prepared for our little date in the presidential suite . Ha ha he high laughed to himself again and began circling his prisoner. The reclining raider sat up on the edge of the chair and chuckled, apparently keen to watch the show. Soskeid saw her moment and moved out from behind the car in a low shuffle, pistol in one hand, mine in the other. She had to move quickly while they were distracted and get the mine into position just outside the entrance in line with where she assumed they would come. Hil afer seemed completely oblivious to any As if in slow motion, she saw his head begin to turn toward her. We do not get it Fuck, thought Suskade, and she scrambled a meter to her left and pressed her back to the last car in the queue to the entrance. As she slid to the ground, she looked in panic over to Hawthorne and their eyes caught just for a second before she disappeared from sight. I'm gonna use a luck . Can we get luck points back for resting? That's important to know, because we did rest now. But it does seem strong if you get them all back every time you rest . So luck points, we're getting lucky at the start. You start a quest with another luck. Once you've spent a point, it can't be used again to get refreshes when you reach a milestone or when you start a new quest. Okay, so we probably haven't done a milestone yet. So we're not going to refresh them. We are gonna use one because I really don't want to get spotted now. Let's use one. Please come on . Nineteen again. Bagger. Her heart sank as she heard a fateful What the fuck come from the guard nearest her. She heard the circling footsteps stop and the unmistakable sound of weapons being drawn. Go check it out, Grobbo came the disturbing high-pitched voice. So we lost the luck point, and she does get spotted. I don't think that they um saw a person and started shooting, but I think they see some movement, and they one says to the other, you know, go check that out. So Toskiad is now hiding behind one of the cars as someone comes to um check her out. Is she able to remain hidden? Soske had heard the crunch of footsteps make their way in her direction. Fuck, fuck, fuck, she thought and considered her options. It sounded like only one was coming. She heard You don't have any more friends out there, do you, little bird? The voice said. It's not like you brotherhood boys to be sneaking around though, is it? It continued . If she could take out the one coming quietly enough and out of sight it might give her the upper hand for the other one. She hurriedly but carefully put the mine back into her pack and drew her knife with her left hand. Yes, she definitely is. That's a crit . She is able to remain hidden as he's approaching her. And she's gonna have to make a sneak , ideally a sneak attack, maybe even with her knife . Because if she can do it quietly, she's behind a car or a truck or something. So if she can do it quietly, then maybe she won't get spotted straight away . Sosuke had put the side of her face to the ground and peered through the narrow slit under the car into the boots coming her way. There was a metal rod dragging lazily on the ground beside them. A long weapon, she thought. If she could stay low and get in close with her knife, she might just have a chance. She thought for a second and swapped it with the pistol in her right. The boots veered off toward the right side of the car, a small mercy considering if she had to go right , she would have surely been seen by the other raider. She slowly began to make her way around to the left. Sneak attacks 29 . I love sneak at tacks. So if the enemy is unaware of you before you attack, the difficulty of the attack is reduced by one, and your attack gains vicious . Excellent. So she's hiding there behind this card, she's sort of stealing herself. She has her knife in one hand . Let's write- let's roll up or write up the stat points of these raiders. So I think we have normal two normal raiders . Both with so both with a pipe gun and I think one of them has the ripper. These are nasty guys. Suskaya's breathing started coming in a little ragged as she crouched on her haunches, listening intently to the footsteps behind her. She needed to keep some spring in her legs in case he came around so, that she could get her knife up and into his neck. She heard the footsteps getting closer to her behind the car. A bead of sweat crawled lazily through the dust on the back of her neck. So this means they're gonna have a eight hit points , defense one. So that means we don't even need to roll to hit him. I think okay, so he's coming up to the car and she does that classic trick where she sneaks back around the other side of the car, and maybe dog meat is sort of there makes a little growl or something, which puts the guy off his guard because he thinks ah it's just a dog. And he sort of walks around the car and she gets up behind him and she gets in with her knife. A small growl came from behind the car further back where she'd left dog meat and the footsteps stopped. She peeked over her shoulder, around the edge of the car, her breathing starting to pick up. She saw the filthy raider crouched in the dust examining the marks she had left there from moving around. Now she had to go now. It's a hit. We're doing three damage . It's gonna be vicious. I definitely want to spend some action points for extra damage. I think I can get one extra damage per action point spent . So with the assistance, dogmate actually can gets to roll a d20 and add that to my success . Hmm . On a melee or thrown weapon only, you can spend action points to add one dice per action point sent up to a maximum of three. I'm gonna spend them all, baby. I really want to take this guy out. I'm gonna spend three points. As she turned she saw dogmeat emerge from the car in front of the raider. Perfect timing The raider remained crouched and slid his tire iron further down in his hand, ready to strike. Come here, mutt, he muttered to himself as dogmeat half-trotted, half-stalked towards him. And which means we're gonna roll six dice plus bloody dog meat . So he afflicts his own melee damage if the attack is success ful. So here's what's gonna happen. Dog meat is rolling two. So we have a total of seven dice. All vicious. This guy is totally dead. Gets his tire iron, he doesn't want to waste a bullet. And he's ready to hit dog meat. Just as he does that, Sasuke jumps up behind him and stabs him in the neck. And as she does that, dog meat jumps up and grabs him well. One step, two, three in quick succession, keeping low. The raider turned his head slightly, but he was too late. Sosuke drove her knife up into his neck with her right hand on the opposite side of his turn. She felt it go in and hit resistance at its point as it met his cheekbone. There was a flash of fear and surprise in the man's eyes. Dogmead backed off, thankfully remaining reasonably quiet. Suskade twisted the blade as the man gurgled . Good teamwork. He's got eight hit points for God vicious. We could kill him. Bam! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. So he immediately goes down . Did the other guy notice ? I'm gonna say it's 50-5 0 Yes, unfortunately he did notice. The raider got in one horribly wet breath And managed to get out aloud. Before starting to convulse slightly in the dust, there was the zinging sound of a bullet ricocheting off the car behind her. Fuck, she thought. Close, but not quite. She quickly wiped her eyes. Dust and a few tears had begun to form a paste. She took an overdue breath and switched the weapons again in her hands, checking one last time the slide on her pistol. Not out of trouble yet. So he did notice. He then this is bad. So we were able to take this one guy out, but the other guy noticed and I think he suspects it's someone coming to rescue Sarah. Hawthorne, and so he holds his gun to her head. Suskade motioned for Dogmeat to stay and backed up again behind the car, breathing heavily. No more shots came. The high pitched laugh rang out, seemingly unperturbed. Haha So you do have a little friend, little bird. Why don't you come out here and join the party, little friend ? Soska had peered over the bonnet, ready to duck down again if she saw a weapon aimed at her She saw the smiling face of the raider looking right at her, pistol held to the head of his prisoner. With his other hand he gave a little wave. Smile disappearing behind a pink tongue licking his cracked lips. Just the right flavour of party guest. Are we gonna risk Sarah Hawthorne's life by trying to take a shot at him? Are we gonna try and negotiate him ? So Soskate is gonna try and convince him. She says okay, okay, okay. She puts her gun down on the ground next to her. She takes off a hunting rifle and also puts that down on the ground next to her and she puts her hands up. She says, look , I have to show you something. Let the Brotherhood of Steel member go and you can have me as a prisoner instead. I think this horny raider is not racing to kill either of the two because there's two women here and he's there alone. I think he thinks maybe he can have some fun. Stay there, boy. Don't let him see you, and come in if I whistle. Suske had whispered to her companion. Stay. She felt sick as she took a few steps away from her discarded weapons, walking slowly towards the room She needed the raider off his guard, she thought as she looked closely at his face. He licked his lips again, brimming with confidence. Hopefully she could use that to their advantage. That's right, nice and slow, he said, his voice low and hungry now. She didn't have to try very hard to look scared and vulnerable, and she knew this was the only advantage she had left. She placed another heavy foot in the dirt, dog meat retreating to the other side of the car, his shoulder blades protruding from his fur as he stalked low and slow. Okay, does he come and try and restrain Saskade ? Yes he does. Okay so he walks up to Suskade and at this stage she basically submits. I think she lets him he sort of ties her hands behind her back and he says, Right, let's let's take this party inside, shall we? And so he ties up Saskade and grabs her by the the back of the hands, like her hands are behind her back tied, and he sort of grabs the rope between or the bit of wire between her hands and Hawthorns and drags them both in towards the inside of the uh of the cinema where he thinks he's gonna have some fun. How are we gonna get out of this way ? The twisted piece of wire bit into Soskaid's wrists, drawing a little blood as the two women were pulled ro ughly by the rope attaching both of their improvised handcuffs. Suskade staggered, eventually falling to her knees in the dust before quickly rid ing herself and regaining her footing. Her mind started ticking over. They had to find an advantage. Something. Anything. The cold feeling in her stomach intensified as they were dragged into the stinking structure. She looked at her fellow captive, desperate to see some spark, some hope in her eyes, but there was nothing but fear. The laugh rang out again, bouncing off the small echoe space around them. There was no question . They were in serious trouble. Thank you for joining me again on another episode of A Wasteland Story. I'm having so much fun as always putting this series together, and this episode actually marks about the halfway point for the first season. I started this show as a completely solitary endeavour. Just a way for me to start solo role-playing in a world that I'm really familiar with and love. I only decided to make it into a podcast because audio happens to be the medium I'm most comfortable with, and mostly my handwriting sucks. And I thought that if there were just a small handful of people out there who enjoyed it, it might be just enough to push me to keep doing it regularly. What I couldn't have anticipated in my strange little fallout solo RPG experiment was that it would be regularly downloaded by thousands of people. Almost every day I hear from someone about how much they like the work I'm doing and want to share with me their own stories of solo role-playing. I am so humbled by this experience and really treasure all of these messages of support, encouragement, or just interaction. So thank you all and keep it up. If you would like to get in touch with me, you can email me over at a wastelandstorypodcast at gmail.com or find me under PJ Sack on the Reddit Threads or on Blue Sky . Thank you as always to Fallout Cascadia for letting me use some of their w onderful music. If you like the video games, you should totally go and check out what's happening on the Fallout project over there. All the musical credits and links are in the show notes, as is the link to the solo roleplayers podcast, if you want to hear actual plays of other games I'm playing and interviews with some of the content creators that help me get into this hobby. Including the amazing Tana Pigeon who brought the world mythic, the tool which has been absolutely key in allowing me to play Fallout in this way. I'm off to start on the next script and find out how the hell Soskeid, Dogmeat, and Hawthorne are going to get out of this sleazy raiders' grip. So until next time, remember when coming across a strange figure or creature in the wasteland, don't forget to raise your hands in a motion of peace and speak loudly and slowly, expressing your desire for jolly cooperation. Until next time.