February 24, 2005

We headed out of Oracle pretty early in the morning. I couldn't get over how different everything looked. We knew a lot had been going on in the world, but where were all the people?

Outside of Mammoth, we came across this car that had crashed. When we checked it out a little closer we found that there were bullet holes in the back of it. The driver had been shot and there were fresh whip marks on his back. Whip marks! The other guy in the car, also dead, looked like he'd been tortured too. I can (and can't) believe how fast certain segments of society descended into the Dark Ages.

We set the traffic cones, telling the rest of the caravan to wait here, then continued on, keeping an eye out for trouble. The main road opened up into fields on both sides of the road. There were a lot of people out working the crops, kept in line, apparently, by overseers with guns.

At this point I didn't care what our mission was (and I don't think the others did either). These people were being forced to work as slaves at gunpoint - and while I have strength in my body, that is not acceptable.

We left the vehicles to try to move closer without being detected - me, Jazz, Michael, Malcolm and Justine. We spotted four guys in a duck blind. I figured that I could sleep them and keep them from sounding the alarm. Unfortunately the magic didn't work and it did alarm them. I was still trying to get the hang of magic, damn it! But that didn't excuse my failure in my eyes! Not surprisingly, they opened fire on us. I was shot before I could fire back, but Michael and Malcolm were able to take care of them. In the aftermath Jazz healed me with that golden touch of hers, and I asked (and received) additional healing from Crom.

The bodies all had insignia for an 'Arizona Free Militia 7'. Great, I thought "Not only are they asshole slavers - they're probably well-armed asshole slavers."

Any hope for stealth was pretty much gone (okay, completely gone), what with all the gunfire. Michael and Malcolm deployed a couple of claymores, and then we all took cover in the duck blinds at the sides of the road.

It wasn't too long before another couple truckloads of the assholes showed up. If you can believe it, they were lead by a car that looked like something straight out of Escape From New York. It even had chandeliers mounted on the hood. Jazz and I mouthed a silent "I'm so sorry about your penis," then all hell broke loose. The car hit the claymores and we opened fire as the idiots poured out of the trucks. The resulting gun battle left the air thick with smoke and the ground littered with bodies. Luckily, we had zero dead to their twelve. My only real regret was that I couldn't determine my personal body count out of the chaos.

We were regrouping, trying to figure out where to go next when we started noticing the buzz of an R/C plane. My new motto being, "Shoot first, answers aren't that important," I opened fire with my Glock. It turned out to be a good decision, because the whole thing exploded on impact. Apparently some creative son-of-a-bitch had strapped some light explosives to it, hoping to crash it into us.

We assumed that the R/C controller wouldn't have a huge range, and whether or not that's true, we did find a teenage boy hidden in the tall grass. He tried to pull that old name-rank-serial number bullshit. I threatened him with a little bodily injury if he didn't give us some information and fast. He said something about standards of treatment for prisoners. "Do we look like the fucking United Nations? And since when is slavery on the approved list of activities?" Anyway, once I actually put my gun to his foot and shot off one of his toes, he reconsidered his attitude. He said his name was Jim Boy Bronson. General Thomas, the head of the militia, had been killed in the little shoot-out we just had. (He must have been Mister 'Duke of New York'.) A Lieutenant Simmons, apparently regular army, was currently in charge, at least as far as he knew. With a little more persuasion (like threatening to shoot off the next toe) he spilled his guts about the layout of their forces. No, I didn't kill him after that. I let the others take care of him.

We went to their headquarters, avoiding the trip wires and such that little Jim Boy so kindly warned us about. They were waiting, concealed around buildings and behind cars and trucks. The others stuck with more conventional firearms - while I went ahead and tried to mold the magic again. This time I tried for an illusion of a fireball - aiming at a group of them clustered together. It was beautiful! They screamed, batting at illusionary flames, and yelled about napalm attacks. That worked so well the first time, I did it again to another group! In all, I had seven new notches to add to my belt by the time they finished dying. The others managed to shoot a respectable six between them. To give them credit, the militia group did shoot at us and put up a fight. We were just better.

We continued our advance on their HQ, not yet positive that we had taken care of everyone, when another man in military uniform came outside. He had a teenage girl wearing a Girl Scout uniform held in front of him. The acrid smoke from the gun battle still drifted over the lifeless bodies in the street. It all looked like something out of a movie, except that the bad guys wouldn't be going to the commissary after work this time. Apparently 2nd Lieutenant David Bradford (as his name turned out to be) looked around and made a reality check. He dropped his gun and let the girl go.

The citizenry of Mammoth, having dispatched the guards in the field using their farming implements (I'm sure because of our good example), surrounded the man. I'm guessing the militia had treated the people pretty badly, based on how quickly the crowd tore him to pieces. (I'm not sure what happened to Jim Boy. Maybe they let him live.)

Once the Free Militia people had been all taken care of, we did our usual looting of the bodies. These people had really liked guns. A lot. Initially there had been some dispute within the party. Michael believed we should take all of the weapons off of the people we killed - his argument being that after all, we had killed them. I felt that we were pretty well armed already, and that these people would probably need all the help they could get to fend of other bandits. I felt like we would be just as bad as that last crew if we just took everything. We're supposed to be the good guys. We were 'discussing' it when Allison spoke up. While they appreciated our help, they would also appreciate us not leaving them unarmed. We managed to settle it, on the side of leaving the guns in Mammoth, shortly thereafter.

It wasn't really a surprise that Allison Davis, the Girl Scout, ended up spokesperson for Mammoth. I can only image what she had been through that gave her the respect of the remaining adults of Mammoth. As repayment for our freeing them, they offered that we could all sleep here tonight (caravan included) and refill our water supply. They also gave us seed stock to take along, and let us restock our ammo from the militia armory.

There was a meeting later that evening, after our group had caught up and everyone was settled. Twelve members of the populace elected to stay here while five of the townspeople (all Changed) opted to continue on the journey with us. Unfortunately, none of their Changed were like me. I had never realized before this how much it meant to me to be able to see another face that looked like my own.

For our own organization, we elected a Canton Reeve that evening. Michael and I had both put our names in, along with Alfonse the Rabid, who had been Seneschal in Hawk's Hollow. He was the highest-ranking kingdom official to side with us on the decision to go to Chaco Canyon. A vote was taken and Alfonse was chosen. The people put forth that Michael and I were much more valuable as scouts, but my personal feeling was that people generally feared me. That being taken care of, some basic organizational decisions were made, and it was decided that all showing mage ability would be exempt from camp chores so as to better concentrate on learning magic, and that the SCA ban on public religious observance was hereby lifted.

It was late in the evening before I was able to go off by myself. I flipped a bullet in the air - one of the bullets Jazz had taken out of me earlier today. "Crom - those bastards couldn't kill me yet!" The bullet burst into golden flames and was utterly consumed. Sacrifice accepted.

Continued...