Stop Motion Society

It’s good to be out of Defensores Capitalismi—or Defective Corruption, as I called it—without the weight of a thousand shadows clinging to my back. Good to be in the fangs, back at home with motherly solitude for the few days it’ll take to travel to Crumbleton. Good to know the threats of scavengers and questions of my new mission are my only companions.

The note is crumpled, even more so than when I’d originally received it wedged within the crumpled napkin beneath my drink at an old dive bar in D.C. that claims to face eviction every month, yet every time I need a drink, they’re still there. Selling whatever watered down swill survived The Bomb and the subsequent fallout. It burns like the desert sand going down, feels even worse coming up.

Investigation role: 3 + 1 +2  = 6 fail

Midnight must think I know more than I do, because the situation report is as lacking as the flavor of the jerky sustaining me through this walk. I’d like to convince myself its beef, but none thought to take cattle into a shelter so the odds I’m eating someone’s once-beloved family pet are high.

Stop motion films premiering – Crumbleton means ballistic shit to me.

Pop’s old stories of the ancient films are like the remaining silt of drained puddles in my mind. If I step in them, I’m slipping through the memories of the Good Days, visiting Pop and Ma on the lake, catching fish with the worms I dug out of the garden, complaining when Ma scrubbed my face with sunscreen. Bet their place is little more than a barren plot of land now, their remaining shadows like headstones.

Crumbleton appears on the horizon after my second day of walking. The fences, lined with barbed wire and speckled with detonators scavenged from the abandoned military forts, rise twenty feet in the air, though the shacks beyond, all constructed from the junkyard’s innards, are hardly a story high. There’s one building, like a single peak above the foothills, constructed around the crane that once hauled junk to the compressor.

The guards at the main gate greet me. I pay the toll. Moneys no good, even more so than when Pop used to rage about moving off the gold standard. Rations go quick, especially with Crumbleton’s newest repopulation efforts. It’s information they want.

Investigation: 4 + 6 + 2 = 12 (clue: 5: Hierophant – reversed: spiritual wisdom, religious beliefs, conformity, tradition)

My time in Defective Corruption (D.C.) tailing shadows and remnants brought me close to the brain of those holding to the American Dream-Betsy Ross’s flag so riddled with ballista holes it might be ideal for the United Swiss of America. They’re growing, aided by a wisdom not founded in the mundane world. The guards seem to take this as satisfactory and permit me entrance. Good, the unnatural calm of the Fangs has my fingers twitching for a shot.

The first ring of shanties in Crumbleton are mainly forges and merchants who can pay the rent for the prime real estate. Inside those, Crumbleton bustles in preparation for its biannual celebration, the first of the new repopulation era.

Investigation roll: 3 + 1 + 2 = 6 fail

I hear the wails of babies and frustrations of new families attempting to reconcile the horrors of our new world with the love of children, orders for the stage construction, and merchants calling out their prices. These are normal sounds, or as normal as sounds can be in the aftermath of a fall out.

There’s one merchant in town I know could push me toward a clue on these stop motion films. Pan, a once great film makers who now uses his knowledge of infrared film developing chemicals for other means, is as keen on gossip as a starved hound on table scraps.

Investigation roll: 5 + 6 + 2 = 13 success (clue: temperance – upright: balance, moderation, patience, purpose)

Pan says there’s no stop motion films at this celebration, he might think I’m crazy even bringing them up. No other film makers in the area either, nothing he can tie to the crumpled napkin. I push for more, verging on irritating my old friend, but my desperation is rising.

Investigation roll with spunk: 5 + 1 + 1 = 7 (clue: Empress  - upright: femineity, beauty, nature, nurturing, abundance)

That night, seated on a wobbly stool at a dive bar, I watch the other patrons drink their weight in swill and pair up until, by midnight, its only me and the owner. She says its been like this for the past two years, announcement of the repopulation program has everyone dropping trousers when they can. She says it with a hungry glint in her eye, an unnatural purr to her tone.

I retire to what they called a pod hotel prior to the fallout. Mine is two oil barrels welded together, stacked in a honeycomb pattern, lined with a thin blanket, and covered on each side with a tattered curtain.

Desperation has me in its maw. I haven’t prayed since the fallout. If there is a god, it’s leering down at us, telling us we deserved the chaos we brought upon ourselves, sending a nuclear flood to wash away our sins.

Metaphysical move: 3 + 5 – 1 = 7 partial success – 1 fear (the creature has something up its sleeve)

Danger roll: 4 + 4 + 1 = 9 partial success

It comes to me then, like the first note of my favorite song, recognizable even through the static of the radio. It demands for me to sing along as it roots in my bones and weaves through my blood. It matches my heart beat, ribboning around my pulse with silken fingers, caressing and strumming.

Claws come next, a reminder of the fallout and the radiation that killed those for hundreds of miles. I squirm from my canister, unable to deal with the thrum of supernatural’s demand any longer, and sprawl into the red dirt of the wastelands.

Something is here, something unnatural and horrid, but something that wants my attention.

Clue: The hermit – upright: soul-searching, introspection, being alone, inner guidance

The answer is something I already know, a piece of information stored within the recesses of my mind?

I wrap myself in the melody and push onward into the silence of Crumbleton. Secrets are best laid in the moonlight, and sleep is already lost on me. I stumble, probably appearing to many as drunk.

Investigation roll: 5 + 6 + 2 = 13 success (clue: death – reversed: resistance to change)

I stumble upon a poker game in the moonlight. Four men scarred and weathered huddling around an upside-down trashcan lid set upon cinder blocks. They used carved pieces of wood for chips as they grumble about the repopulation efforts, the extra effort to feed and protect the pregnant women and children, how they may soon leave Crumbleton once the celebration is over, uncaring of the children they’ll leave behind.

I see then, the stop motion film. A shadow phasing in and out of existence as it approaches the men, there one moment to slit a throat and gone the next. Blood sprays across the upturned tables and discarded chips as the men scurry away.

It’s me and the shadow, the creature appearing from the shadows.

Conjecture move: 5 current clues, difficulty 5…need 10+ on the die to figure out the case

6 + 1 = 7 (you correctly solve the case but an unexpected complication arises in the case or resolving it comes with significant risk)

The creature attempting to find balance in the world filled with death, and I, an agent destined to remain alone, am not a part of its plans.

Danger roll: 2 + 4 + 1 = 7 partial success

I leave Crumbleton to the beast searching for the reincarnation of a society long lost to greed, and I run.