Sunday July 1 2018 – The weather is warm and rain free
around Crab Creek for a change. Paladin and Shifter go to the Roadside Diner to
meet up with Sheriff Douglas. Douglas is just
getting his coffee topped off by Valerie. She makes herself scarce when the
heroes arrive but that does not keep Shifter from offering to help her. Paladin
reels him in and even the sheriff mentions that she (Valeria) does not need
help putting the coffee pot back on the burner.
Shifter gets Grimwalker and Prime into their car preventing Douglas from seeing the giant rat and the walking
dead-man. The group then follows the sheriff down the main road, a treacherous
dirt path, to the turn off that leads to Tamara’s house. Her road is more like
a hazardous path than an actual road but their 4-wheel drive off-road trucks
are up for the challenge but even with them the drive takes a good while.
When they get to her home, a small camp trailer parked
beside the burned down site of her parents place, she welcomes them with a
shotgun. She warns them she isn’t loaded with rock salt this time and they had
best be leaving.
Sheriff Douglas tells her to put the rifle away, she has to
answer questions about the missing girl (Emily). Tamara claims that Emily gave
her the Mercedes and that is why it is parked at the Gas Chamber (Avery’s gas
station and garage).
Paladin pipes in that Tamara is obvious hiding something.
Grimwalker gets out of their car (off-screen slightly freaking Sheriff Douglas
out a bit) and using his DoomGaze to persuade Tamara to tell them what she is
hiding (it is a fear inducing Presence Attack). In terror she drops her gun and
backs away. Her reaction triggers something in her pond to come to the surface,
PeeWee the giant crab and five of her off children. PeeWee is 26 feet long, her
children are 13 feet long.
The crabs come in to protect Tamara while the heroes start
getting into position to receive their advance. Tamara gets her head back into
the game long enough to tell the crabs to stop but Grimwalker presses defending
the group. It is the first of two times that Tamara tried to stop the carnage,
and the first of two times that Grimwalker prevented her from succeeding.
Key elements to remember from the battle, in no particular
order, were:
Tamara has super strength, the power to hurl chocking
spores, and can command plants to entangle her opponents.
Shifter first tried to stop the attack by impersonating
Tamara but the crabs did not believe his ruse (good idea though). Later in the
fight it was he who knocked Tamara out.
Prime fashioned Molotov cocktails using empty bottles and
gas from Tamara’s truck. She used them on Tamara doing some damage to the girl
but was fatal to the clothes she was wearing (which was not much to start with
if the truth be known). Prime also took advantage of the combat to search
Tamara’s trailer looking for evidence that Emily had been there recently. She
found no such proof.
Paladin knocked out one of the ‘baby’ crabs and tried to do
damage control for most of the combat.
Grimwalker got on top of PeeWee and was chopping into her
head with a killing attack. He eventually knocked her out.
With Tamara and PeeWee unconscious the ‘baby’ crabs ran away
officially ending the battle.
The main casualties of the battle were Sheriff Douglas’
police jeep, the Brooklyn Brigade’s rented jeep, and Tamara’s trailer. These
were all total loses.
Tamara, PeeWee, and one of the immature crabs were
unconscious. Four other immature crabs escaped into the pond and are on the
loose.
Prime got the remaining fuel from the rental jeep and
jury-rigged a fuel system for Tamara’s pickup so the group would not have to
walk back to town.
Grimwalker used his soul-sense to see if there was anyone
else in the area and got a ‘hit’ on a soul under the ruins of Tamara’s parent’s
house.
Prime took the battery from the wreckage of the rental jeep
and wired it into the keypad for the metal door under the ruined house. She
bypassed the lock and ran power directly to the motors that open the blast
door. Concerned that the door looks like it has not been opened for a decade
and a half she wonders at what ‘human’ life could have survived that long
imprisoned under the ruined house so she refused to throw the switch. Shifter,
however, having no such compunctions or common sense presses the button.
Next time: The Space Beyond!