Heroes of the Waste: Mission Overviews
(Heli Matharom)
Extreme Grave-Robbing
Mutagenic bio-weapons turned an old-world city into a vast ruin with hundreds of thousands of zombies. Due to natural barriers, an army-erected superwall, and the dead-head residents, the city has been left to rust and rot without much scavenger activity. Heli's Team is hired by a Prospector looking to find the mythical Card Castle within and the plastic treasures hidden within: a certain Triangle Trader eccentric will pay a fortune for a the Platinum Lotus card that pre-war records say was shipped there.
The team elects to set off a series of explosive charges on one side of the city to attract as many Deadheads as possible and leg it to the Castle. Within lies a Bloater - an old Deadhead covered in boils and swollen with putrescence that will erupt if ruptured in melee. Unfortunately, the team's ranged weapons would destroy the treasures in the Card Castle. So Heli is forced to bait the Bloater into the basement game rooms by herself, then cause it to self-destruct with a thrown ax once she tricks it into the disgusting bathroom down there.
The team finds out the card was in a pack opened by a floor skeleton behind the counter and is discolored and bent. They carry off the register and some knick knacks as consolation prizes and they abandon the city.
[Gain: spare parts, a Mark of Favor (Prospector)]
This Land is My Land
A pre-war bunker has opened up. The bunker babies inside use old-world munitions to take over a nearby water source, which is immediately contested by a local Glamourzon tribe. Both groups want to avoid casualties, but not enough to negotiate; each reaches out to a passing mercenary group looking to resupply and promises wealth and favor if they will sabotage the defenses of the other and allow a totally uncontested massacre.
Heli's Team first enters the bunker under false pretenses to accept the job. Explosives are secretly installed in multiple locations, including in central ventillation and in an armory. Heli accepts the job to sneak into the Glamourzon camp and hide a targeting beacon that would let the tech faction bunker-bomb their enemies.
She and her ward Lilly enter into the camp and win favor essentially by being beautiful and giving a good show in an honor duel (that Heli technically loses.) Lilly rigs the beacon to show ghost signals that resolve into true coordinates on an encoded remote charge signal. Heli pretends to accept the job of taking down the bunker's perimeter defense systems, but rendevous with her Team in the desert.
The Team sends a short-range radio transmission to both groups and Heli threatens to blow up absolutely everybody unless they go to the negotiating table and come to an agreement within three days. An agreement is reached and Heli tells them where all the traps are located, and flees the area. The bunker high command hates Heli thereafter, but the rank and file are just glad not to have been forced to go to war. The Glamourzons admire Heli's moxy but are honor-bound to capture her if they ever meet again. Having pissed off all involved parties, she gains nothing, but the two groups become allies that grow into one (honestly pretty evil) faction over the years.
Good job, hero. At least you stopped one war. And all it took was being a terrorist.
[Gain: Great Big Lies[...]]
Ghost Army
One of the robot contingents of unsapient combatants threatens a small settlement in the South. They're desperate to pick up and flee with whatever they can carry, but they don't have the strength to stall out a whole army of old world murder machines. At first, they're terrified when Heli's Team arrives, mistaking Oh-too for one of the forward scouts of the robot army. Heli forces things to return to a low boil, and the settlement mayor begs for help.
But Heli's group doesn't have the strength to hold off a whole army either. Or to pierce through the advanced defenses of the central factory and its AI Core.
Oh-too is the one who comes up with the gambit. If they create the signs of a wounded robot army leading away from the settlement, they can trick the AI into directing forces on a snipe hunt. It's something only a liberated footsoldier like Oh-too could have come up with. Heli and her group pull out all the stops to make it happen, using not only all their own spare parts and know-how, but the supplies of the settlement, and the piece de resistance: the body of a Mechanized Autonomous Walker (MAW - H058) that they have to take down by themselves.
The group rigs an EMP using a mini-nuke the settlement had hoarded, which is only enough to break the trackers and live feed being sent back to MAW-H058's Controller AI back at the factory. After a frantic attack on the robot titan, Heli's Squad overcomes their foe, and sets the scene to leave evidence of a rival robot army hiding in the far West.
They allow Oh-too to be briefly spotted by the vanguard of the robot army and lead them to the trail of broken parts. The army takes the bait and marches into the deep desert, and the AI Core's new directives leave the settlement out of the firing like.
[Lose spare parts. Gain a Mark of Favor (Mayoral) and an Omnivorous Generator.]
A Boring Dispute About Trade Tariffs
The leader of a wealthy trading settlement contacts Heli's Team with the hope that she can recover his son - kidnapped by persons unknown. The demand for his life? Reducing trade tariffs. The kidnappers end up being trivial to find, and a gang of raiders, smugglers, and extortionists. Heli has no problem taking them out, but a frontal assault won't work with the kind of defenses they've got.
Noticing that it's exclusively a group of men, Heli decides to trojan horse the joint. She leaves her flamethrower and a cluster of firebombs with Oh-too, who is directed to enter by access tunnels with the rest of the group. While Heli plays honeypot up above and distracts as many people as possible, the Team comes in from underground and split up once more. Lilly and Shylock extract the kidnapper and initiate a prison break. Oh-too blazes into the party before things go too far for Heli... and delivers her weapons.
In the ensuing fighting retreat, a lot of raiders get mangled or killed and the base goes up in flames. The group disperses into the night, and the Team gathers up to deliver the trader's son back to his home town.
[Gain: Hand-cranked dynamo, useful books, a modest amount of gold.]
Power Politics
A settlement wants to break the local power monopoly and kickstart an old world industrial fusion reactor. Heli's Team is hired to solve the problem however they can.
Heli immediately resorts to electricity piracy. The group hunts down the hidden subterrnean cables closest to the new reactor and rig it so the monopolists unwillingly jumpstart the reactor of their new competitors. The actual mechanical detail is trivial for someone of Heli's skillset, and a maintenance crew happens upon their actions by pure happenstance and immediately opens fire. Heli has to complete the job and keep Lilly out of the lines of fire while stalling the enemies long enough for Shylock and Oh-too to clean house.
A peaceful solution didn't turn up today. Heli is stricken with depression and guilt for a time after this mission, and takes meager payment for the services rendered. At least with a rival the older power company can't gouge the locals anymore... right?
[Gain: Motorized Wagon (installed with Omnivorous Generator, monowheel, winch) (NO armor or suspension)]
Frontier Justice
Heli's Team runs into lean times. She starts going without full meals so that Lilly doesn't learn what starving feels like. Shylock insists that this won't do any good and forces one last big feast on the group (even topping up Oh-too with the hand crank.) It's going to come down to one big score or an inadvisable raid on a food caravan that will leave them rightfully labeled as bandits forever more.
So instead, they go for a bounty. The leader of a gang of Hill Cannibals has a huge price on his head, and Heli is hungry enough (in multiple senses) to make the suicidal play for it. There's no chance to make this quiet. It's going to be a direct assault. Even Shylock is going for it, which means Lilly is being left in a cave with the wagon and everything the group has left in the world. She's told that if no one comes back in two days, she needs to start a new life in the nearest walled settlement - and in advance, Heli's sorry.
It's a slaughter. The three combat-ready members of the team cut a bloody, flaming swath through the cannibal clan, leaving the group devastated and making recovery impossible. It takes a hell of a doing, and they don't come out unscathed, but Heli drags a battered Hillbilly Hank out of the wreckage and delivers him to town for a big payday.
[Gain: Loads'a'money]
Sects Maniacs
See "HFWT: Saint Heli's Fire" for the full story.
[Gain: The Man, The Myth, The Legend]
Death Race
See "HFWT: Death Race" for the full story.
[Gain: Mark of Favor (The best damn cook in the country), Radio]
Fuel for the Fire
Heli tries to unburden herself by taking a trip north and learning about the barbarian tribes first-hand. Their problems seem oddly familiar and before she knows it, she's wrapped up in another easily avoidable issue. A settlement requires its power systems to survive the winter because their location was chosen so badly. They don't want to move, which means they face annihilation when their fuel supplies are stolen by raiders.
Heli takes it upon herself to travel to another settlement and get them to lend enough rationed fuel to survive the winter. She's far outside her wheelhouse, not having a political mind, but fuel synthesis is impossible without specialized equipment that Heli can't haul and the settlements don't possess. The only option left is to play at being a trader.
In the end, and after a lot of hot-headedness, the Team is able to obtain an agreement and the first delivery of fuel. The isolated settlement is saved... assuming the ignored raiders don't make a return.
[Gain: Gift of Tongues]
Muten Raus!
Heli hates the city. And yet, here she is, on her way between the crossroads where she likes to make her business. A group of citysquatters stop her progress and bargain for her to clear mutants out of the sewer system so they can take over the ruins above-ground without fear of what lies beneath. Heli tells them to go fuck themselves, but they start talking about gassing the entire tunnel system and she realizes she is forced to act.
Using Shylock as a face so they are allowed entry into the mutants' home, Heli negotiates for them to resettle themselves to avoid a genocide. She explains just how easy it would be to cause a chemical disaster in the tunnel systems that would kill everyone. The mutants, having heard of Heli's reputation and trusting her word, reluctantly agree that they are too vulnerable to remain.
Heli guards their evacuation and meets up with Oh-too and Lilly above ground again. There is a tense moment where Heli has to turn her flamethrower on the human-normal settlers and threaten to enact her own massacre unless the mutants are allowed to peacefully escape the city. The stand-off buys enough time that no blood gets spilled and no flesh gets melted.
The fundamental injustice of the situation embitters Heli against cityfolk even more. The mutants give Heli new synthesis formulae for an assortment of drugs to thank her for standing up for them. The settlers give her a wider reputation as a mutie-lover.
[Gain: Drugs, Implacable]
Raiders of the Temple of the Last Crusade
Heli decides to drag her team into the mutant jungle on the strength of the many rumors there. It takes all of her firepower, the strength of her friends, and a boatload of cunning, but a path is literally blazed. And a bunker with an old world flying wonder is discovered. All it takes is confronting a new world dragon and his deadly treasures...
[Gain: You already know wtf is going on]