[h2][b]1.1 - Valley Of The Shadow of Death [/b][/h2] [i]“ This is the Morgue Daily, live from the Lifelines. On today’s podcast, we’ll be featuring a very special Taker today on our podcast. It’s the one that all you Lost have been chomping at the teeth for. Gnat, the esteemed leader of the Moths herself! And as we always say here on the Morgue, remember, the Loss is your gaiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnzzzztttttttttt” [/i] Your eyes flutter open at the tail-end of the broadcast. The radio begins to warble like an off-tune opera singer and then descends into a beehive of static. A flabby fist pounds it to no avail as the driver begins conjuring up a storm of swearing. “ Stupid friggin’ wireless.” The driver grumbles, a hint of a fiery East coast accent that threatens to slip out from the veneer of civility he puts up. “ I swear this damn storm messin the signals up there. Cali’s getting wetter and wetter by the months” Ah, that jolts your memory. You’d spent a sizeable portion of your Bounty hitchhiking yourself and your close ones from the North. Trying for the Mid-West was damn near imposssible thanks to the Rockies. The only choice was to head for the Golden State and hire a trafficker to bring them to the Crest. Travelling alone wasn’t a risk you were willing to take, even with your experience. Luckily, it seemed like you picked the right smuggler. There was a sense of personality in the humid interior of the bus as it trucked alongside the pot-holed asphalt of California 1. Little scratches or grooves made with nails or spare pennies into the metal to spell out crude jokes or names. Damp paper adverts stuck to the floor of the bus. Duct tape and super glue had been used to patch up decaying bus seats and some of the cracked windows were plated with thick floorboards ripped straight out of a house.There was a sense of security to be had in its seeming insecurity. The tour bus had been repurposed into an armoured truck, welded parts of other vehicles and corrugated steel bolted onto the sides. Shifting your head, you take a peek through one of the slits in the boarded up window. You can barely make it out but the blue is unmistakable. That roar of the waves crashing and gulls squawking combined with the sea salt permeating the air reminds you of the times when you stared eagerly in front of your Grandma’s oven. It suddenly occurs to your window that you’ve never seen the ocean before. In person. You’ve had a taste of it in public swimming pools and suspicious water parks but there’s a border to them. A limit that returns you to the hard Crash of modern life where you surrender for lesser. Out there, past what remains of Monterey Bay’s sunny beaches is a veritable expanse of blue that peaks past the horizon, sunlight pooling into little divots where the waves roll and crash into the beach, dissipating their energy into white froth. It’s hard to imagine that before the Crash, these beaches used to be filled with people who would laze on there just to get a tan. Now, such behaviour is bound to either get you labelled as Bait or a privileged member of the Loss. “ Alright, we’re ‘ere.”The driver shifts stick and the bus slows to a lurching crawl. “E’rybody come up and fess up the fee. Otherwise, you’re welcome to disagree with Buckshot with that’s what you want.” A man near the bus door - Buckshot, presumably - stands up straight from where’s he’s leaning. He’s cut like a football linebacker and wears a baggy poncho that hangs on his frame like a window curtain. Dark gimlets of green peek out above a sleek NBC filtration mask that covers up his entire mouth. He pumps his shotgun (Ithaca 37, your memory helpfully provides) in a show of intimidation and waves the barrel as if asking everyone to get a move on. By the time you make it to the front and pass up the Bounty, the driver seeks to make conversation with you. “ Hold up……” His features scrunch up in concentration, yellowed nicotine-stained teeth grinding together. You can almost hear the rusted gears in his brain turning. “ Haven’t I seen you around somewhere? You’re that Taker….ehhhh……Capuchin? Brero? Jarhead? Weren’t you with me on the Travajo Job?” [indent] [] - Choose a reply. [X] - “ Come on, bud. Don’t you remember reading one of my op editorials on the Lifelines about the Mid-West StopLoss sites last March? It was a hit all over UbiqNet!” [i]Begin as Beatnik, the Gonzo Taker Journalist[/i] [X] - “ Nah, nah. You must be confusing me for some other thief - I mean, teeth! Tooth fairy! Yeah, that’s my name. Tooth Fairy. I...sell teeth for a living! ” [i]Begin as Mousetrap, Scavenger Extraordinaire[/i] [X] - “ I paid your price already. I didn’t recall personal questions as part of our arrangement.” [u]Begin as EpiPen, The Immune Lone Wolf[/u] [/indent] “ Hey, relajante. I was only pryin’. You know how it goes ‘round these parts.” He cocks his head in curiosity, looking at your equipment with a hint of jealousy. [indent] [] - What piece of item on you did he comment about? [X] - “Dios mios, what I would do to finish the last season of Indomitable if I had those glasses of yours. ” [i](Start with Ubiq AR Specs.)[/i] [X] - “ Gosh, an actual Gerberman! You a mechanic of some kind çause I’m kind of looking for a guy to repair my toaster….” [i](Start with Multitool) [/i] [X] - “ Did you come here to bird watch? If so, you should have gone to Parajo Plains to see the blue jays instead of here.” [i](Start with Binoculars) [/i] [/indent] [hr] Start by choosing an action for each prompt and post them in the OOC. For example, if I provided the following prompts: [] - Choose an action [X] - Kick [X] - Punch [] - Choose something to say [X] - "Holy shit" [X] - "Holy fuck" You would post in the OOC..... [X] - Kick [X] - "Holy fuck" Whichever action gets the most votes by players automatically wins. Tiebreakers are determined by the QM (me) with a roll of the die.