by HL TRUSLOVE
The place is just as vast on the outside but not complicated, so you stick to the building’s wall as you walk around the perimeter. After a few minutes of walking you spot a smaller structure – only two levels, and though in just as much disrepair, far safer looking than the main plant.
The wooden door leading into this second place seems to have mostly rotted away and doesn’t put up a fight as you swing it open. The room is full of worn desks and what appear to be some sort of old computers, big blocks of things compared to what you used back at the vault. You stand in front of one and attempt to switch it on – unsurprisingly nothing happens. It would be a miracle if this sort of technology had survived this amount of time.
Scanning the room once again, only a couple more things catch your eye – in the back of the room there seems to be some heavier machinery that may have once been important to the running of the plant, and, even more interestingly, what seems to be a recent footprint pressed into the dust of the moth-eaten carpet.
Inspect machinery – Turn to 3.5.
* * *
Try to follow human activity – Turn to 3.6.
* * *
Go back and try to scale the scaffolding – Turn to 3.7.
3.4
You squat down near the door where the floor is worn through to bare soil and bring out your kit. In a matter of moments you’ve taken a sample and are testing it for anything strange, or anything that might be able to give you more information about this place. You have a little machine you keep with you that can analyse soil deposits and feed data back to you – it’s incredibly precious and was parted with much reluctance from the science centre back home.
You take a moment to observe the plant a bit further. There seem to be plenty of doors in the place with an offer to spirit you away to do more exploration. You can see on the ground floor what seems to be a little room full of desks and cupboards – perhaps some sort of place to do administration?
The machine pings loudly and knocks you out of your observations, the strange mechanical noise echoing out through the chamber as the machine spits out a small pile of printed results. You read them, then clench your brow and read them again. They’re telling you that there are signs of radioactivity here.
Perhaps that’s to be expected. They had to produce power some way around here, and nuclear was a favoured method of the old world.
Search for the source of the radiation – Turn to 3.8.
* * *
Inspect the offices – Turn to 3.6.
* * *
Inspect heavy machinery – Turn to 3.5.
3.5
The heavy machinery is well worn by the passage of time. Any tiny lights that once may have lit the front panels up have long since burst or burned out and the dials have been firmly rusted in place. Nevertheless, you grip the sides and give it a strong pull. You hear the groan of metal and a creak as it begins to come loose, and you readjust your grip and pull it again. It comes away in your hands and you take a look at the inside of the machinery.
Your face falls as you study it. The machine is mostly empty, just a hollowed-out shell now. Any circuitry has been picked away – clearly, people have been here before, but it’s impossible to tell how long ago just by looking at this scavenging.
Inspect further – Turn to 3.9, Needs Engineering.
* * *
Explore offices – Turn to 3.6.
* * *
Go outside and scale the scaffolding – Turn to 3.7.
3.6
The office is full of sturdy filing cabinets and old desks, each with a heavy layer of dust on them, and lined with old machines that you remember seeing once in a history book but you can’t quite recall the use of. Next to one of the workstations is a poster that’s almost crumbled away, but in the faint light filtering in you can see it holds a picture of a kitten on a tree and a motivational message. It makes you wonder about the people who used to work here in this strange old world.
If they had any idea they would play some sort of role in the war.
If they cared.
You head deeper into the room and something catches your eye. Tucked away in the shadows is a door – a heavy one. It seems to be in much better condition than anything you’ve seen so far in this place, almost as if it was put in recently. What is most interesting, however, is that there’s a huge padlock on the handle, with something scribbled desperately next to it in the language of the old world.
Read the writing – Turn to 3.10, Needs Old World Language.
* * *
Smash the door down – Turn to 3.11, Needs Hand-to-Hand Combat.
* * *
Go through the filing cabinets for documents – Turn to 3.12.
* * *
Look upstairs – Turn to 3.13.
3.7
The air has warmed up by the time you make it back to the front of the building, not that that’s saying much – it’s still incredibly cold. You take a moment to look over the scaffolding to find where it appears to be the sturdiest and begin to climb. The railings are incredibly chilly to touch and you regret not wearing gloves. Still, you’re glad to have the firm grip a bare palm allows and you scale the place.
You’re about halfway up when you feel your foot slip. You let out a loud yelp as panic floods your body and you almost fall. You take a moment to breathe in and steady yourself – panic won’t help, it will just make your reactions worse. Squeezing your eyes shut you take in lungfuls of cold, harsh air, before bringing your foot back up and placing it down carefully. You take your time, and the rest of the climb is easy.
The view is incredible. You’re quite high up and by now the mist has lifted almost completely, allowing you a good view of the surrounding area. Not that there’s particularly much to see apart from great empty plains. You do, however, take note of what appears to be some sort of settlement in the distance to the west. It’s difficult to make out its exact purpose from here, but perhaps it will help you find your group again.
Add Resolve to your character sheet.
Add Scavenger Village (Chapter 9, L.9) to map.
* * *
Head back – Turn to 3.18.
* * *
Inspect office building – Turn to 3.6.
3.8
You search your pack desperately, digging around in the depths before you find what you were looking for – a Geiger counter. It was something you hoped you weren’t going to have to use while you were out here, but perhaps that was naïve optimism on your part. This whole land is no doubt full of radiation. You turn it on and it clicks to life, lighting up with a beep.
The little device acts as your guide as you follow its ticking, letting your feet take you to where it says the radiation is the strongest. It leads you deeper into the building, through that first cavernous room and down a dark corridor. Soon you’re in another chamber, smaller and far more densely packed than the last. This place is absolutely crowded with machinery, perhaps once the epicentre of this whole place.
Inspect machinery – Turn to 3.9.
* * *
Go back and search the offices – Turn to 3.6.
3.9
Whatever these machines were before the war, they’ll never function now. The longer you inspect the panel, the more obvious it becomes that they’ve been completely gutted. Someone with some sort of expertise has been here and ripped out whatever useful circuitry that may have once sat here. You wish you knew who ransacked this place. One of the tribes out in the wasteland, or people from the new world before you? You’ll never know now.
Leave – Turn to 3.18.
* * *
Search the offices – Turn to 3.6.
3.10
You’ve spent hours studying this language, and you’ll be damned if you’re not going to put it to good use. You bend down in order to see the writing better, using your sleeve to wipe away some of the dust which has settled there. Written in the local script, in large, red letters, is the word ‘demon’.
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You don’t know what it could mean. It might be a warning to outsiders, perhaps a way to scare off people who might want to encroach on territory. Or it could be a sign of something far more sinister.
Heed the warning and leave – Turn to 3.18.
* * *
Look through papers on the desks – Turn to 3.12.
* * *
Head upstairs – Turn to 3.13.
3.11
You take a few steps back before running shoulder first into the door. It groans under the impact and budges slightly. You rub the pain out of your arm before you step back and run again, throwing your whole force into it. Clearly the lock is not as strong as you anticipated it to be because it breaks on your second go, skittering loudly to the floor as the door bursts open.
The dust that explodes outwards makes you cough wildly and blinds you for a second. Rubbing your eyes vigorously helps and you manage to blink away any residue with tears. You take in the scene before you with a cough.
There’s a moth-eaten sleeping mat rolled out in the small room you’re met with. It’s difficult to tell if it’s been recently used; there’s a layer of dust that may have settled naturally or been from where you broke the door down. There’s a little kerosene lamp that’s sitting unlit on a table, but a small can of fuel for it sits to the side. In the corner of the room there’s a backpack holding what appears to be a first aid kit, and a stack of worn metal cans which have not yet rusted.
Inspect the medical equipment – Turn to 3.14, Needs Medicine.
* * *
Inspect the cans – Turn to 3.15, Needs Survival.
* * *
Inspect the lamp – Turn to 3.16.
* * *
Leave the site and exit the building – Turn to 3.18.
3.12
The paper almost crumbles in your hands. The years of being left to sit in the sunlight that’s trickled in through the now grime-covered windows have not been kind to them. They’ve been yellowed to the point of illegibility. You squint and try to make out some of the words on them, but from what little you can gather it seems to be discussions about number outputs. Nothing that you can use right now, nothing that you’re able to decipher.
Decide to take the papers for a later date – Turn to 3.17.
* * *
Check upstairs in the building – Turn to 3.13.
* * *
Leave the papers and leave the plant – Turn to 3.18.
3.13
The stairs creak worryingly under your weight as you ascend them. You hope that the combination of age and weathering won’t mean they aren’t strong enough to hold you. You reach out to steady yourself with the bannister but a layer of wood crumbles off in your hand and you see something skittering inside, so you wipe it on your clothes with a shudder and continue your walk upwards.
You couldn’t see on the floor below, but the ceiling to this place has been completely worn away. Only the shell of the wood is left, old support beams long lost to the annals of time. The sunlight filters in from a grey sky to give light to the room.
There are more desks mostly pressed to the edges of the room. Chairs with fewer legs than they’re meant to have are dotted around as well, and drawers from small cabinets lay abandoned. This place has been raided, though what it could have held beforehand that would make it worth ransacking is a mystery to you.
The most interesting thing in the room is the hole in the ground. You gingerly cross the floor, spacing your footsteps out far so it doesn’t give out underneath you, and peer into it. You can see into the floor beneath – a little living space, apparently what the locked door from below was protecting. You could probably climb in and out again; there’s a little table in the room below that could give you the leverage to clamber out again. You drop down into the room and inspect it.
There’s a moth-eaten sleeping mat rolled out in the small room you’re met with. It’s difficult to tell if it’s been recently used; there’s a layer of dust that may have settled naturally or from where you dropped down and stirred up the air. There’s a little kerosene lamp that’s sitting unlit on the table you saw, but a small can of fuel for it sits to the side. In the corner of the room there’s a backpack holding what appears to be a first aid kit, and a stack of worn metal cans which have not yet rusted.
Inspect the medical equipment – Turn to 3.14, Needs Medicine.
* * *
Inspect the cans – Turn to 3.15, Needs Survival.
* * *
Inspect the lamp – Turn to 3.16.
* * *
Leave the site alone and exit the building – Turn to 3.18.
3.14
You turn the first aid kit over in your hands. It’s a faded green box with a white ‘+’ on it. It creaks with resistance as you open it, and its inventory is pretty sparse.
There are a couple of rolls of bandages there, along with some safety pins – but most interestingly there’s a little glass vial. You pick it up and wipe your thumb over the label to make it more legible.
Morphine.
Your eyebrows raise. Morphine is rare in the vault, let alone out here in the old world. There’s an unused syringe sitting in the box next to it. The bottle isn’t huge – perhaps enough for one dose, if applied correctly. This is too rare of a find to pass, and you put the whole of the first aid kit into your pack.
Add Morphine (O.1) to your inventory.
* * *
Leave the power plant – Turn to 3.18.
* * *
Inspect the lamp – Turn to 3.16.
3.15
The cans are ring pull, and the lettering on them is faded but you’re able to make it out. They seem to be meat products. You recall your training before you came out here, what they told you about scavenging in the old world – things that are canned can last a long, long time. They will probably be helpful in the future if you’re ever hungry and need rations.
You tuck the food into your pack. Waste not, want not.
Add Good Quality Rations (O.2) to your inventory.
* * *
Leave the power plant – Turn to 3.18.
* * *
Inspect the lamp – Turn to 3.16.
3.16
The lamp appears to be in working order, or at least shows no outward signs of being broken. Even the glass which would surround the little flame hasn’t got a crack in it. You imagine this could be incredibly useful if your torch should ever fail you.
You attach the lamp to your pack and take the little kerosene can. The liquid sloshes around inside – it doesn’t sound like there’s much in there, but it could probably keep the flame going for a little while.
Add Lamp and Kerosene (O.3) to your inventory.
* * *
Leave the power plant – Turn to 3.18.
3.17
Just because you can’t read them now, doesn’t mean they’re completely useless. There may be someone in the camp when you meet back up with your group who can read into them, give you some more insight into this place. Maybe it can even be used to help rebuild this place one day, assimilate it into the old world, and provide power once again.
You tuck the paper carefully into your pack, set on solving this.
Add Power Plant Files (O.5) to your inventory.
* * *
Leave the power plant – Turn to 3.18.
3.18
By the time you leave the power plant, the sun is high in the sky and the landscape is illuminated with a pale light. It makes the whole building seem less eerie. You tighten your pack onto your back and head away from the abandoned place, happy with your findings, and out into this world with a renewed sense of purpose.