Aberrant: Trans-Dimensional Explorations - Kemna's Journal (and other cool stuff)

[BlueNinja]

Page one

17 Nov 1988 - Soviet forces march through Poland, invade over the border into Germany.

22 Nov 1988 - Formal declaration of war betweeen USSR/China against US/Germany/Britain/France.

14 Dec 1988 - Evacuation of US forces from S Korea.

18 Dec 1988 - Russia completes takeover of Berlin.

25 Jan 1989 - US troops land in France.

31 Jan 1989 - Iranian troops march into Iraq.

4 Feb 1989 - Firebombing of Tokyo.

3 Mar 1989 - Russian troops reach French border; complete hold on Germany.

6 Mar 1989 - First US counterattack against Russian troops.

17 Apr 1989 - Chinese saboteurs sink USS Kitty Hawk.

9 Aug 1989 - US forces liberate Berlin.

10 Aug 1989 - Iranian forces topple Hussein; control Iraq.

2 Dec 1989 - US forces reach Polish border; complete liberation of Germany.

24 Dec 1989 - Russian terrorist bombs Capitol Park; injures VP Quayle.

4 Apr 1990 - Iranian forces invade Jordan, Syria.

27 Apr 1990 - US forces reach Russian border; complete liberation of Poland.

29 Apr 1990 - Firebombing of Warsaw.

7 May 1990 - Japanese gov't surrenders to China.

8 May 1990 - US forces take over four Japanese islands.

7 June 1990 - South Africa uses mustard gas on rioting blacks; first use of chemical weapons.

19 June 1990 - Russia gases entire city of Helsinki.

31 July 1990 - Iranian forces complete takeover of Jordan, threaten Israel.

5 Aug 1990 - Israel launches nukes against Iranian army.

6 Aug 1990 - First exchange of nukes between Russia/US, China/India. DC, NYC, San Diego nuked.

7 Aug 1990 - LA nuked. San Fran nuked. Sacramento nuked. Vegas nuked. (the last one is crossed out)

12 Aug 1990 - Ops side nuked. Fresno nuked. Assumed control of what's left of the base.

15 Aug 1990 - Complete loss of contact with other government forces.

29 Aug 1990 - Down to last 50 gallons of water.

1 Sept 1990 - Abandoning base due to lack of water.

[BlueNinja]

Page two

12 Aug 1990 - It's happened. I'm now in charge of the base. Seven hours ago, we saw the mushroom cloud to the north, where Fresno surely used to be. The Cap went out to Ops side, to see if we could get the trainee pilots up in the air; we only had a dozen F-14s left, and I doubt there was much you could do against an ICBM anyway, but he wanted to try. Forty minutes later, and Ops side was gone. I was already over here at the hospital for a goddamn eye appointment, so I went straight down to the shelter and assumed control from the lieutenant who was directing people. Good thing the base was half abandoned in the first place; we have 512 down here and it's designed for only 450. Three dozen corpsmen, three commissioned doctors plus an old civilian guy, and two radiomen who were at medical appointments, all the rest are dependants. ****ing civilians who won't, can't, follow simple orders to get this place set up.

13 Aug 1990 - Richardson, the nigger, found an emergency radio set down here in the supplies. He knows how to work it and White doesn't, so he's going upstairs to see what he can pick out. One of the corpsmen gave him some kind of iodine pill so he won't get too sick from the radiation. (in a different pen style) Richardson came back. He got a brief signal from someone at Edwards AFB, but they switched frequencies when he wouldn't give the Air Force password. ****ing Air Force. Didn't they see the goddamn mushroom clouds? They're close enough they probably saw LA. Are they ****ing stupid enough to think that the Ruskies or the Chinks landed people with short-range radios just to **** with them?

14 Aug 1990 - Richardson went up again. Got a bit of chatter from some Coast Guard boats that were out at sea; they're still looking for safe ports to land at. He says he's having problems with the radio though; despite being a nigger, he's hardworking. White's just sat in the corner and cried. Fits right in with the civilians.

[BlueNinja]

Page Three

15 Aug 1990 - Richardson went up again. He says the radio isn't working, something about radiation damaging the components. He also started developing a nasty cough, so I ordered him to stay put down here. Two of the corpsmen were arguing about the iodine they'd been giving him, some technical doctor talk I didn't understand. Too busy shouting at the civilians. One of the women accidentally smothered her kid during the night, so I had to shout down a mob wanting her to be punished old west style. Never mind that the dumb shits are too blind to notice that we don't have any rope down here, no one can tie a noose, and we'd have nothing to put it on. And what about the broad's other two kids? I know some of the ****s want me to turn out the lot of them, send them up the stairs to die outside.

18 Aug 1990 - Richardson died. The old civilian doc said he had bleeding in the lungs from the radiation, same way some of the Japs in Hiroshima died after the bomb. Two of the corpsmen took iodine pills and went up to the x-ray room to get some lead shields, and dragged his body up there. No morgue, so they just left him in an exam room and locked the door. Hell of a ****ing burial.

22 Aug 1990 - We're running out of water. Fourteen other people have died, mostly from conditions made worse by the crowding - a bad case of the flu, asthma attack with no medication, and all of the last five people who made it down here died of radiation problems. That's what the docs say, anyway. I made White the quartermaster - nothing better to do with the worthless shitbag - and he said we're down to about 5,000 gallons of water. Barely ten gallons a person. I instituted rationing so we can last down here longer. Some of the civilians wanted

[BlueNinja]

Page four

to move out of the shelter, see if the radiation had gone down enough to come out and try to contact the government. They weren't too happy when I said I wasn't about to let them back in if they left. Dumb ****s don't seem to realize that there is no goddamn government anymore.

26 Aug 1990 - 57 people left today. The old civilian doc went with the dozen families who wanted out of here, said he'd watch over them as much as he could. Salty dog's got his work cut out for him. I had White take some geiger counter readings from the top of the stairs, and it's still bad. Not lethal, but not safe enough to move out. Might not have a choice soon.

29 Aug 1990 - Down to 50 gallons of water. I've cut rations in half twice, and we're using the bare minimum for cooking and drinking, and that still means only a few cups per person for a single day. Patricks said he thought he saw one of the buses out front when they went up for the lead shields, so White went up and checked it. Keys still in it and everything, but it wouldn't start. Tomorrow, I'm going up there to see if I can fix it. Maybe we can get out of here. The Presidio in Monterey shouldn't have gotten hit, so we'll try there first. Otherwise, it means circling around the whole bay area to head further north.

1 Sep 1990 - Fixed the bus, and had White and Patricks drive back two more from the vehicle pool with me. We're leaving, we have full tanks and extra gas and heading for Monterey. If you find this, this place is no ****ing shelter, just an empty tomb with nothing to eat or drink.

Commander Kemna, XO NASL

[BlueNinja]

Season 1 DVD Extras:

Episode 3 notes

Hero Worship

The party emerges in the frame of a barn in an orchard in the hills near Visalia. If they can avoid the farmers who own the orchard (move out in <2 minutes), they can follow the dirt roads to the nearest town, Three Rivers, near the Sequoias. The town is obviously way behind technologically, and the signs are all in something approaching Greek (+1 diff to read). The party can spy on the inhabitants to improve their clothing to blend in, etc.

The first time any of the party uses any of their powers within sight (or if they pass within 100m of the palace near the center of the city), then the townpeople will start crying out about how new children of the gods have arrived, and start trying to place the PCs within the pantheon. The god-king here is Axis, child of Zeus, who controls the weather and throws lightning bolts, as well as super-strength and looks. He’ll welcome in the party with open arms at first, and then try to force the splits in the party (flattering Theo, harping on Ash and Brandt, etc) until he thinks he has them weakened/divided enough to attack them.

If the party goes the other direction (down into the valley) they can find the neighboring city near Madera, with Clio, daughter of Athena, who has super-intelligence, super strength and speed. She’ll also welcome the party with open arms, aiming to separate them from anything more advanced so that she can reverse engineer it.

Both novas will try to convince the party to aid them in conquering the other, with the clear intention of ensuring that as many of the PCs as possible end up dead in the process. The party will not be able to set up a truly secure base if they are outted as novas, but if they are willing to split up to guard the device they can still bring it through. The Meklar fleet is orbiting the same planet, but with different ship configurations, showing the first real hint of differences between the universes.

Mission complete: $8k per

Sending back Meklar fleet images: + $4k per, + $1k single

Halting war with bloodshed: + $2k per

Halting war w/o bloodshed: + $5k per

Convincing novas of Meklar fleet threat: + $10 k

Escalating war: - $3k per

Commentary - Obviously, the episode turned out a little different than I had expected, since far more novas than I thought arrived openly! So the party managed to get everything together, mostly because the leaders were too scared to take on seven novas, where they wouldn't have been scared of four.

[BlueNinja]

Season 1 DVD Extras:

Episode 4 notes

Sunlight

The party emerges in some kind of cave complex deep underground. Expecting the dark, they should come armed with multiple flashlights/lanterns, the better to check out the deep underground complex they find themselves in. This is especially important, because the probe sensor reading show them to be a mere twenty feet above sea level, and there are no cave complexes of any size at that depth within the range of the gate.

Exploring the immediate area of the iron-oxide stalactite columns where the gate opened will soon lead the party to a number of things. Down one path are a large collection of small, phosphorescent crystals, that in all other ways except their glow resemble quartz. If brought back to the SGE, Michal can use them to improve the quantum batteries (as the crystals are Telluric energy storage crystals) to lower the time between gates. The PCs can also drain or attune the crystals if they try. Exploring a different path will lead to a set of stairs that, while worn, look as though they were made with machinery rather than erosion. The stairs lead to a dead-end of a rock wall. The wall is in fact a quantum barrier (highly sophisticated holo) that can be walked through at the right point; behind it is a storage area for Psylon technology; most of it is broken but the party can bring pieces back to Michal for examination and experimentation. A third path will lead to several sets of not-quite-human remains wearing uniforms of some kind of plastic clothing. Bringing back the remains from the cave-in site will give Angela some knowledge of non-human DNA patterns, as they appear to have split off from humanity at about the same time as the last ice age (~10k years)

Mission complete: $8k per

Crystals returned: + $6k per, +$1k single

Alien tech returned: + $6k per, +$1k single

DNA returned: + $2k per, +1k single

Commentary - This episode went almost exactly how I intended it to. I changed the reward just a little bit, rather than handing out the extra thousand to individual people. Paul's crappy medical roll means he didn't realize that the skeletons weren't human, but as it wasn't an important plot point, I let it go. I also changed the size of the crystals to make harvesting them a little more difficult - which Esteban then spoiled for me. Thanks, dude. ::tongue

[BlueNinja]

Season 1 DVD Extras

Episode 5 Notes:

You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me

The world is one where communism won the cold war, mostly because Trotsky succeeded Lenin instead of Stalin. The Soviets controlled half of Germany at the end of WW2, and invaded the northern Japanese islands before the US finally dropped one nuclear bomb on Tokyo. Since then, the US and other democratic powers lost all of the major interactions between Communism and the west (ie, Korea, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iraq) and the US itself finally erupted in a brief civil war in the early 1990s under President Quayle. The new government, backed by the USSR, became Communist.

Novas erupted at around the same time (since the Hammersmith Event had already changed Divis Mal and Michael Donighal before the important change), and the Teragen are considered a major terrorist threat to every nation on Earth. There is no Casablancan faction here, since Divis considers Communism to be the biggest threat to a nova’s right to self-destiny. The party emerges in the USSA (Union of Socialist States of America) and in Fresno. It shouldn’t take much for the party to research the historical reasons for the split, but coming up with a safe haven will be a bit more difficult – hotels require legitimate travelling papers in addition to money to check in (though a hefty bribe will speed things along), and the noticed use of nova powers will bring the FBI (ie, KGB) down on the party like a load of bricks.

Mission complete: $10k per

Leaving evidence behind: - $2k per

Nova combat hazard pay: + $.5k - $4k

You guys seemed to have lots of fun on this one. I included the alternate Zhenglai since he was about to join the group, and it seemed like the surprise was good for you. Since everyone kept their powers out of sight, I didn't get to sic any soviet novas on you. All in all, I thought it was a decent early episode.