Session 3: "Eat at Al's"
Johann Sebastian Shark pushes a crate full of piano parts through the snowy streets, eventually reaching the Pack Ratt Club. He goes in through the cargo entrance, where some hired workers help him with the crate and alert their boss.
Johann meets a man named
LaBratt, a well-groomed rodent mutant wearing a snazzy tuxedo. On his arm is his girlfriend
Spacey, a mutant cat who wears a cocktail dress and apparently likes to giggle a lot. Accompanying them is their bodyguard
Mr. White, a large broad-shouldered rabbit mutant who seems to communicate only in an intense stare.
As the workers wheel away the crate to assemble the piano, LaBratt welcomes Johann to the club. He prepares to give Johann the guided tour of this club, a surprisingly-clean upscale lounge and casino in Mutant Town.
Several blocks away, Jennika and Raphael return to Alopex's shelter with Crank, Sally Pride, and the little girl newly-named Lita in tow.
Stan follows them as well, but it turns out he wasn't as stealthy as he thought; Raphael abruptly throws a shuriken in Stan's direction to startle him into revealing his location. Raph interrogates Stan to determine his intentions, and Stan apologizes for sneaking up on him.
Once in the shelter, Jennika takes Raphael off to another room to get patched up and porcupine quills removed from his face. Lita is introduced to the shelter's residents and regulars, though she's timid enough around them she mostly hides under a table and watches them.
Crank offloads the medical supplies requested for the shelter into Alopex's care, but she seems to be waiting on something or someone. As Alopex continues to talk to Crank and Sally, it's slowly revealed that she was waiting on a friend of hers named Mona to deliver some food.
Crank and Stan realize Alopex is talking about Mona Lisa, who apparently hasn't made it to the shelter since they last saw her. It becomes clear that Mona, left without an escort, was abducted by the Mutanimals. Furious, Sally immediately heads toward the door, ready to give Old Hob a piece of her mind. Concerned about Mona, Crank and Stan accompany her.
The grand tour of the Pack Ratt Club concluded, LaBratt, Spacey, and Mr. White lead Johann to a balcony overlooking a section of Mutant Town ... such as it is.
Mutant Town is a ghetto in every sense of the word, LaBratt tells Johann, an unsightly stretch of city blocks left to decay. Factions like the Mutanimals, the Sparrow-Hawks, and the Gun Bunnies have spent the first couple of months of Mutant Town's existence fighting for territory, which they now zealously control, but now it's the middle of winter, and everyone's starving.
LaBratt tells Johann he wants to give Mutant Town a beacon of hope, a place mutants can all be proud of. He wants to expand this vision to the rest of the district, but he realizes not everyone will welcome his vision.
He directs Johann's attention to the Gun Bunnies' turf, a park in Avenue A surrounded by apartment buildings that the Gun Bunnies patrol... exclusivey for rabbit mutants. And then there's one of the Mutanimals' hideouts, a shipping warehouse at the base of an apartment complex. LaBratt sees the other factions as squandering what they could be doing with their turf. Divisiveness and tribalism rather than enriching people's lives with entertainment. Johann is on board with wanting to build a better Mutant Town through entertaining at the club, which is excellent news for LaBratt.
Their conversation is cut short when Johann spots some activity through the window of the Mutanimals' warehouse. Namely, the lizard woman Johann met earlier looks like she's being threatened inside. Ever the gentleman, Johann makes his apologies that he has to leave so abruptly, and he hurries in the direction of the Mutanimals' warehouse.
Sally, Stan, and Crank approach and enter the Mutanimals' warehouse from a different direction, finding Mona Lisa tied up. Diamond is arguing with Old Hob about the status of her job, as Sally had shouted earlier that she was fired from the Mutanimals.
The arrival of Sally, Crank, and Stan interrupts the procedings. Sally demands that the Mutanimals release Mona, but Hob isn't interested. While they argue, Stan engages his stealth skills to make his way over to Mona Lisa, hoping to free her.
The sudden arrival of Johann makes the situation even more tense, as Johann recognizes Old Hob as the cat mutant who had set off the mutagen bomb six months ago.
Annoyed by all these disruptions and drama, Old Hob asserts that anybody who wants to prove themselves here and now as Mutanimals should throw out or otherwise dispose of anyone who doesn't. Diamond, Puggle, and Bandit prepare to square off against Sally and Johann, with Crank and his loyalties stuck in the middle.
Ending Notes:- Johann's player was able to make it to this session, so I kicked it off by catching up with what Johann Sebastian Shark was up to, and why he needed a crate full of piano parts in the first place.
- LaBratt and the other members of the Pack Ratt Club might be familiar to readers of the Palladium TMNT RPG books. Also, the Sparrow-Hawks and Gun Bunnies are likewise also adapted from the Palladium corner of the TMNT multiverse. The ways in which they're similar and different will be seen over time.
- It took a bit of effort to get Johann back in the same room with Crank and Stan, but ultimately it was a fun bit of world-building leading to a tense converging of paths.
Next in the Main Story: "The Hard Way"