New Year, New (Social) Game with USR: Wastelands Game Session 2

Pa Ku is a new PC and is being played by our housemate, the Journeyman of Shadowmoss.  In short, he is a blood magic-based healer named Pa Ku, a highly ranked medicine man of sorts, and has been tasked by Jade's father to find her, keep her safe and direct her to a particular city where he has a contact that will be able to help her.

We had a chance to play after Young Lord Shadowmoss fell asleep last night.

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Pa Ku arrived on his mule at the Ruins of Parth just as Jade, in an attempt to stealthily attack the electronic eye (see last session), triggered the eye to sound its alarm - which reverberated throughout the ruins. Hiding the mule, Pa Ku grabbed his spear [his spear has a metal tip and functions as  +1 on his attack roll] and headed off towards the sound.


Although she eventually managed to silence the alarm, two men, each sporting the symbol of the Jiuquan (her tribe), approached. Fortunately, the respirator she had donned kept them from recognizing her.

Pa Ku - a medicine man and blood rites healer known among many in the Quanzhao Valley (where Jade's warlord father, Heitan, is ruler) - came upon the three and demanded to know why the two men were there. The story they fed him about being there to find Jade and bring her home to her suddenly-struck-deathly-ill father did not fly with him, since he had been personally tasked by Heitan to find Jade and escort her to a distant city where she would find safety.

Jade slipped away during the conversation [She successfully rolled her Stealth specialism challenge] to finish making her delivery for Amid The recipient of the bale of wire, Bala, a rat man with an eye patch seated atop a slithering throne of writhing metallic tentacles, gave her the proof of the delivery (a small, thin, hard but flexible rectangular card with a metallic stripe runnind from short edge to short edge on one side). Although she wanted to know more about Bala, she wanted the promised goods from Amid just a little bit more.

Meanwhile, Pa Ku used his intimidation specialism to force Guo and Moy (the two men) to spill their guts. Ever fearful of the mysterious blood rites practitioners, they handed over a written message promising a reward for the capture and return of Jade, to Cicero, Jade's jilted fiance, and prince of the Atonis. Enraged, he sent them running - "I don't care where you go. Get out of my sight."

After tracking Jade down again, he tried to talk with her, and using his Divination specialism to see if he could figure out who this person was, had the intuition that she was in fact the one he sought. For a reason I can't quite recall, Jade decided to take off running from Pa Ku. Her escape was cut short by a Ruin Bug - a gigantic pill bug of a thing that burrowed up out of the ground and sent both Pa Ku and Jade running to escape [they both handily beat the Ruin Bug in an opposed attribute challenge of Action die vs Action die].

Huffing and puffing and in no mood to face the dangers of the ruins alone, she let Pa Ku go with her to meet Amid, where she acquired a medpack, 3 foot steel pipe [a two handed weapon that functions as a +2 for her attack roll] and a strange device (which she later learned was a tazer that she can passively charge with her innate electrical powers). They agreed to travel together and the decision was solidified further when, on their way to retrieve Pa Ku's mule, they were ambushed by mutant hyena men (gnolls) whom they handily defeated together.

Their success was in no small part because Jade was able to channel her power through the steel pipe into an explosive shock of electrical power which fried two of the mutant creatures. Never the less, Jade did take some damage during the fight and had been injured in the previous mutant ambush as well.

Pa Ku needed to fulfill his obligation to universal balance for spilling blood by healing someone or something and this was a convenient opportunity. Upon successfully healing Jade, she absentmindedly thanked him with the Jiuquan traditional sign of gratefulness to the healer, to which Pa Ku responded appropriately and added "Jade." It was clear to her that he knew her secret.

They ended the session holed up in the mech armory with night falling and plans to head out into the waste at day break.