Evergreen Mills

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The door opens on the interior of the remains of an ancient office building. Most of the walls and parts of the floor are missing, allowing for a fine view of the rubble covering the ground two stories down, but there's just enough exterior wall remaining to provide some cover. Ellen has taken the liberty of hanging a portable chalkboard on that wall; it's got a painstakingly hand-drawn map on it. "This is where we're headed," she says. "We're a little ways north of the canyon; from this floor or what little there is of the next floor up, we have line of sight as far as this bend, here. Note the catwalks on either side of the canyon walls. They're there because the canyon has a railroad track from before the War running down the middle and the raiders who occupy the place have planted land mines on either side. The raiders patrol the catwalks on a regular schedule."

"About here, just before the canyon takes its turn and we lose line of sight, there's a tripwire connected to even more explosives. It's not a very sophisticated mechanism and it could be disarmed without too much trouble if it weren't in plain sight of every raider who could hold a gun. There's another tripwire after it, but since the canyon takes a turn at that point, anyone trying to disarm that one won't have covering fire unless they brought a buddy along."

"Over here is where the minefield stops. The railroad track splits at this point and the canyon widens out. Tracks go off to the left; that area's got a couple of tin-roofed open-air equipment shacks and a lot of old railroad cargo cars. Plenty of cover for the raiders, not to mention most of the railroad cars have some means of climbing up on top for a vantage point. The canyon wall on this side is too steep for them to scale, and there don't seem to be any openings or outcroppings, so there's that, at least."

"To the right the catwalk terminates in a tin-walled guardhouse. That tends to have one or two people in it or in front of it, probably because it overlooks the slave pens, here. I counted five or six slaves when I got in but wasn't able to make contact with any of them. There's a supply shack at ground level past the slave pens and then about five or ten yards of space before the canyon wall."

"This round object here, on your left as you pass the slave pens and supply shack, is the Behemoth's pen. The walls are a good twenty-five feet high and electrified. There's a generator just next to it that looks like the raiders could switch it off pretty easily if they needed to let the thing loose. The mutant itself is eighteen feet tall and doesn't seem to be armed, but there are motorcycles and substantial chunks of metal lying around the area that it would be perfectly capable of picking up and wielding or throwing. I've fought a few of these things before. They've got hides as thick as armor and pain tends to just make them mad. Slowing them down pretty much requires doing enough damage to physically cripple one or both legs, and even then they've got enough rage to them to keep trying to come after you just for spite. The neck in particular is ridiculously thick and tough. Wonder Woman had a hard time snapping the spine of the one we fought in the Capitol building's rotunda."

"To the right of the pen is the main factory, which has wire fencing and sandbags out front. It's built with its back up against the canyon wall. Given that this is the same rock formation that Vault 112 and Vault 87 were built into, and that Lamplight Caverns aren't too far away, I'd be really surprised if there weren't significant underground areas of the place. There are two other outlying buildings past that, further down the canyon. They're smaller and don't look like there's more than one floor to them. I wish I could give you more information than that but I wasn't able to get past the Behemoth pen without it roaring because it could smell me."

"As for the raiders themselves, there's a pretty fair number of them. I don't have an exact count. Most of them are armed with 5.56 millimeter assault rifles and twelve-gauge shotguns. A few of them are carrying disintegrator rifles of alien design- they're all but guaranteed to take apart a man-sized target on the first or second hit. The disintegrators are silver and shiny and fire blobs of energy, so they're pretty easy to recognize. I'm trying to get the slaves out of here and get those disintegrator rifles out of these people's hands before they become a threat to the rest of the Wasteland... anyway, I think that's probably about it. Any questions?"

Comments

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo shakes his head, then looks over his shoulder at the rest of the group to throw in his two cents. "Most of the raiders we saw here are pretty undisciplined. They do shit like smoke or pick their nose on patrol, go places where their buddies can't cover them, that sort of shit - no standardized training from what we could tell. Don't expect them to mount a coordinated defense once the shooting starts, but don't expect them to turn tail and run, either. Expect them to be intoxicated - stimulants, synthetic opiates, shit like that. One shot might not put them down."

He taps the chalkboard, right where the catwalk is. "I'll set up a base of fire on the catwalks here," he says, tracing his finger towards the building, "and work my way toward the back of this fuckin' factory once we start rollin' these assholes up. From there I'll see if I can find a back door to breach and work my way forward. It's possible we got a VIP inside the building, so watch your fires."

He looks to Thor.

"Or. Y'know. Watch where you're swingin' that," he says, nodding to Mjolnir.

[mjolnir_retriever]

Thor shoots him a look full of the lofty amusement (and faint skepticism) of an expert being given tips by an undergrad.

(It's not arrogance if you're a demigod prince, right? Uh.

Thor's faults are consistent, anyway.)

Then he turns his attention back to Ellen -- his friend, the one to whom he offered his assistance, and the leader of this battle on her world.

"Paladin 101," he says; formality for a formal situation. "You're the one who knows this company. Where would you have us?"

He assumes he's going to take on the Behemoth; frankly, he finds the prospect fun. But Ellen is young, and has the right of command here, and Thor has put himself under her direction for the duration of this battle (at least unless improvisation seems warranted.) He'll let her say so.

[masterofgunfu]

The big guy reminds Andrea of the Beast Lord a little too much for her comfort but she does her best to ignore it.

Standing at an easy parade rest, she asks, "Are we going in as one party or splitting up?"

[1nv1nc1ble]

Invincible spends a moment looking at the sky as Ellen starts pointing out parts of the map. It looks like clear skies, perfect for flying. He looks around the room, nodding to those he knows in greeting. "Those slave pens look like they're pretty close to the Behemoth," he observes. "Would it be worth letting them let it loose, so we could herd it away from hostages?"

Like Thor, he's figuring on aiming at the monster. It's kind of what he does, even if he is a teenager in a brightly colored costume.

On the Right

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Voodoo and Michael will be facing something of a challenge. There is, strictly speaking, no actual ladder nor any sort of stairway at this end of the catwalk. The rockface is climbable, if you don't mind taking chances and being extra careful. Might've been used by raiders in a hurry, in the past.

Unlike the guard who makes his way to the end of the catwalk and peers out over what looks like the empty Wasteland, drum-fed combat shotgun in hand. He's practically out for a stroll.

Re: On the Right

[luvs_yogurt]

Michael, hanging back a few steps, catches the guard and presses close against the rock wall - wishing he'd brought a pair of gloves but no less prepared for the climb. The question is, do they take the chance of taking down the man on the catwalk and give away their position before they make the climb.

Of course, the obvious move is to stagger it and have one of them climb up before the other takes the shot.

He swats the other man's shoulder with the back of his hand and points up the incline before swapping over to the sniper rifle to line it up.

Re: On the Right

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo's already moving, climbing hand-over-hand outside the raider's field of vision, careful not to silhouette himself too much on the skyline. Soon he's at the top, palming the tang of the tomahawk in his back sheath as he silently watches the raider, visualizing the sprint, the tackle, the kill.

If, you know. Michael misses.

Re: On the Right

[luvs_yogurt]

Michael Westen doesn't miss unless he fully intends to.

It's an easy straight shot, the crack of the .308 completely missed over the resounding boom of their comrades stationed elsewhere.

Well, all the better to sneak in by.

As the body tumbles off the edge of the precarious catwalk, he reshoulders the rifle and quietly makes his way up the rock wall.

On the Left

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Like the catwalk to the right, the one on the left-hand side of the canyon has no immediately visible access from ground level. Those who are familiar with the cityscapes of the world before the War, however, might well recognize the rickety-looking ladderish thing just out of reach; someone installed what looks almost like a fire escape pull-up drop-down ladder for easy scrambling up and down, assuming the metal could be trusted. And assuming nobody was opening fire, of course.

Re: On the Left

[masterofgunfu]

Andrea spots the pull down ladder right away and judges the distance, an easy jump.

"I think I can leap and reach that ladder over there," she says pointing to be sure Ellen and Annabelle know what she's talking about. "You guys mind covering? Wait, how quiet should we be right now?"

Re: On the Left

[aeons_crackshot]

"I can cover you easy enough," Annabelle replies. "Might be able to to get over there without making too much noise, but there's no way to be sure."

Re: On the Left

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It's going to get very noisy very quickly," Ellen says, her voice muffled and staticky through her armor. "With any luck Thor and Invincible will be making most of it."

As far as covering Andrea goes, she's got her Gauss rifle out and ready to go.

Down the Middle

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Fun fact: the national railroad gauge of the United States has jack-all to do with the width of Roman chariot tracks, despite what urban legend might say. It's purely an artifact of the industrial process that built American railroads being heavily based on equipment procured from England, where nobody really saw the need to be particularly innovative about the width of wheels on a vehicle that happened to be fueled by burning rather than food. Either way, it still comes down to a bog-standard four feet, eight point five inches between the rails, with a couple of inches of ancient railroad tie on either side. Everything beyond that is faintly bulgy earth right up until it goes under the legs of the high-up catwalks and hits the cannon wall.

Nobody is patrolling down here. That's what the guys up top are for.

For now, anyway.

Re: Down the Middle

[ikissdhimbck]

Kate takes the front, following the tracks nimbly while K brings up the rear. The landscape ain't nothing to look at, and that's saying something for a lady who's used to big open stretches of nothing, pocked with nothing, leading the way to nothing...

She keeps a weather eye on those catwalks, feeling every ounce of steel strapped to her body.

"Fine day, ain't it?"

Her voice is cheerful.

Re: Down the Middle

[k_in_black]

Eyeing the railroad tracks, K starts with, "Kate, I ever tell you about the time I took the Boreal Express out to Centauri Prime?"

No, he's not making the slightest effort to be quiet. The point, if somebody needs to be reminded, is to shoot anybody who's got some shooting coming to them, and to get on about that as soon as humanly (or otherwise) possible. So it hardly makes any sense to be all quiet down there, now does it?

As K was saying--pretty damn loud, his voice echoing--"Now that was a ride, let me tell you. They had two comets strapped to an old Arthusian freighter slapped together with a couple of old structural integrity field systems somebody'd turned up somewhere, all going hell for leather out past the Regula system. I thought J was going to lose his lunch before we even got started, and that man had had Delthusian lobster bisque. That was not going to be pretty..."

If somebody doesn't start shooting, K looks like he's ready to keep this up all day.

Re: Down the Middle

[ikissdhimbck]

Smirk.



Kate's not a particularly noisy creature. Oh, when she gets her hackles up she can talk a blue streak, voice spitting fire and brimstone that promises to take the poor fool she's directing her ire toward straight to hell itself. But, generally speaking, her voice is soft and sweet, cultured, gentle.

"Y'don't say?"

She catches the echo off the nearest stanchion.

"Tarnation, K! What happened then?"

In From Above

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Even in the best of times, Evergreen Mills was never a pretty place Seen from above now, it has no chance of winning the Miss Commercial Traffic title at all.

And it smells. Between the slaves, the raiders' own hygiene standards, and the odor of filth and rot coming from the high-walled electrified enclosure in the middle, it couldn't even take Miss Congeniality without making the judges' eyes water.

The metaphor has been a bit overextended, but that seems unlikely to happen to our heroes...

Re: In From Above

[1nv1nc1ble]

Invincible surveys the view from the lip of the canyon, taking in the landscape. For some reason, the phrase "wretched den of scum and villainy" comes to mind, though the comparison is hardly accurate. He fixes his gaze on the enclosure. "I think if we keep to this side of the pen, Mr. Odinsson," he says to Thor, pointing to the side opposite the slave pens, "then we can keep it from throwing cars towards the hostages. Of course, if we hit it hard enough, maybe we can keep it from throwing cars at all." The idea that the cars in Ellen's world are nuclear-powered is a little disturbing; gasoline explosions he's dealt with, but Invincible's never been hit by an actual fission detonation (as far as he knows). He's not really sure what that'd do to him.

Re: In From Above

[mjolnir_retriever]

Man, everyone from Earth seems to love this Mr. title.

"Yes," he agrees, studying the terrain. "Though if it does, there are two of us. One can perhaps intercept a car if need be."

It's not something to count on, in a pitched fight, but it's a pitched fight with two against only one enemy. Correctly or not, Thor is looking at this as kind of a cakewalk, made difficult only by the presence of small squishy bystanders.

"If the pen breaks, we make for the high rocks," he suggests, pointing with Mjölnir. "Away from the slaves. Perhaps there."

Below the Factory

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

When the 'storm' doors are finally breached, they open onto a slanted passage. In times past, a conveyor belt allowed factory workers to move boxes and other heavy objects into storage below without having to navigate stairs or wait for an elevator to arrive. These days, the belt is gone, but crudely improvised hand and footholds indicate it's been converted into shallow stairs. The room beyond is large and pillared, lit here and there by battery-powered lamps.

Anyone with ears and a reasonable amount of discretion should be able to tell that the entrance is being guarded by people very, very carefully biding their time and taking aim.

Re: Below the Factory

[aeons_crackshot]

Sensible of them, shame it's not going to help much. One guard is crouched behind some overturned furniture and rubble, only a very small portion of his head showing. For most people, hitting a target under those conditions would be tricky.

Annabelle is not most people. *BZAP* One down, three to go.

Re: Below the Factory

[masterofgunfu]

Andrea isn't as lucky with her target, she's completely covered. Although when Nash lifts her eyes from her scope, she spots a boot toe. Taking careful aim and visualizing her actions, she fires and then aims for the scream, which obligingly becomes a head bent forward in pain. *blam*

Two down.

A Good While Later

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The thing about a situation like the one in which our heroes find themselves is that it's not really possible, feasible, or wise to just say "hooray, it's over" and turn around and leave. For one thing, there's the slaves to see to, medically speaking- not to mention the fact that several of them, upon seeing Ellen, got very twitchy and insisted on falling back among the others to a point where they wouldn't be noticed. For another, there's the weapons of the dead. Ellen's reasonably sure that leaving this many armed raiders lying around with their guns and grenades and everything else is just asking for trouble from whoever comes along next. And there's the matter of prayers for the dead. Ellen's not about to bother anybody else with that- that's her job- but it does stick in the mind as something that needs doing.

As a consequence, she's set people to various tasks. Looking after the slaves' hurts, looking after Harith's own injuries, gathering up anything potentially dangerous that can be found, standing guard in the event of external trouble- carrion calls scavengers, after all, both animal and human- and patching Somah up enough to get her back on her feet. There's supplies to assemble, too, since without homes to send them to, the best place Ellen can think of to bring the newly-freed slaves is the Temple of the Union, on the site of the old Lincoln Memorial, and that's a long trip even after getting to the Citadel.

The long and the short of it is that there's still work to be done before they can leave, and Ellen's in the process of getting the last few supply packages together before they can go anywhere if anyone needs her.

Re: A Good While Later

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle has been on weapon collection detail. There were a lot of grenades, missiles, ammunition and other means for turning people into various sized chunks to pick up.

"I think this is the last load of things that go boom, Ellen."

Re: A Good While Later

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Thank you," says Ellen. "Harith's already accounted for his inventory, so this... I don't know whose this is but we'll find a use for it."

It's kind of disturbing how much there is. Hopefully Quartermaster Durga will have homes for it all.