House Hunting [Kip Weston, Solo]

The Toxic Swamplands on O'ahu are a disgusting place, but there's no doubting the anonymity of its residents. While crawling with feral creatures of every variety, humans, ghouls, and mutants, its unforgiving terrain has left it empty of civilization, and, more importantly, scavengers.

At least, so they say.

You approach from the West, far from any obvious Enclave routes. To your right is a desolate building, half sunken in the poisonous mud of the swamp, noticeably picked clean of anything useful, even from this distance. Ahead of you lies the bulk of the marsh, a flat expanse of green tinged water and sluggish mud banks. A forest of bony trees strut out of the ground, their parasite ridden trunks barely clinging to life. Even from here, you can see the telltale lazy bubbles and dirty mists of distant Radiation Springs, centuries old toxic waste dumps, still boiling the mud around them into a noxious radioactive miasma.

Directly in front of you is a trail of hard earth, snaking itself farther into the depths of the Swampland, far beyond your sight. A cornucopia of wealth, and danger, lies within the marsh's virulent embrace.

Kip pauses a moment to look at the building. He lets out a grumble under his breath to express his disappointment at its bare and useless state. Looking ahead down the trail before him, "Nothing to do but keep going," he mutters to himself. Keep going, heh. A concept that was all too familiar to Kip. That's precisely what he had done for the past 120 years without any purpose. But this time was different. This time, he had a purpose.

Kip had traveled to these disgusting, toxic swamps for a reason. He was searching for a building that could be used as a base of operations for the army he wanted to build. After all these years of meaninglessness, Kip had finally found a cause worth dedicating his life to: War. He started having flashbacks to the Invasion War he had fought in; the bullets, the death, the excitement. Kip's heart started racing just at the thought of what was to come. He cracked a smile before refocusing his thoughts on the task at hand.

If he could find a suitable structure somewhere in these swamps, it would prove extremely advantageous. These toxic, radiated lands would keep away anyone without proper protection which meant that there was a relatively low risk to being discovered. Looking down the winding path ahead, Kip drew his knife from his holster concluding it would be better to make as little noise as possible here. And with that, Kip began his trek.

The path twists in front of you, stretching, seemingly endlessly, deeper into the swamp. The ruins of the Old World slowly begin to crop up on all sides, buildings, cars, sometimes even entire neighborhoods resting within the mud, only the very peak of their roofs visible. As the hours wear on in the enormous marsh, your trek quickly turns into a monotony of desolate ruins and the ever present weave of the trail.

After what seems like an eternity, your eyes finally fall upon a mostly intact structure. It appears to be a small two story townhouse, precariously strutting out of the mud. Even from here, you can see its sorry shape, half of the domicile has already sloughed itself into the toxic embrace of the swamp, with the rest seemingly eager to follow. However, from your distant view, it seems untouched by looters.

However, getting to the structure will be no easy task. A Radiation Spring lies directly between your position and the building, its acidic vapors already assaulting your nose from a distance. To avoid it would require a significant backtrack. Alternatively, the trail still continues on, offering the potential for safer prospects ahead.

Trudging through the dense jungle for hours, Kip is relieved to see an intact structure. However, upon noticing the structural integrity of the townhouse, Kip realizes that this would not be a suitable base of operations. Despite this, Kip is not looking forward to forging through the swamp for what could be another few hours. He decides to attempt to cross the Radiation Spring in order to loot the house.

You trudge through the waste deep water towards the house, the sickly green tint of the muddy liquid almost gaining a luminescent quality. Before long, the ever-familiar warmth of radiation washes over you, growing to an uncomfortable intensity as you make your way slowly through the thick miasma.

Radiation is, in itself, not a significant issue for a Ghoul, but it does tend to attract mutants faster than a moth to flame. Luckily, you manage to pass through the area without issue. Before long, you've made it across the spring, a little contaminated, but otherwise unscathed.

The house lies about a hundred yards in front of you.

((You will take 1d100 - 20 Points of Radiation))

The member 'Neutral Karma' has done the following action : Dices roll

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'1d100' : 76

Kip makes his way toward the house feeling slightly invigorated from the radiation. He takes a deep breath and makes his way to the front door of the house. He takes a minute to try and look through the front windows before entering, but the windows are covered in a thick sludge and those that aren't are covered up by curtains hung on the inside. Kip decides to enter through the front door. Placing his left hand on the doorknob and gripping his knife tighter in his right, he pauses to consider what could be on the other side.

Eventually, Kip realizes that it's unlikely anything resides here other than possibly another ghoul, which he assures himself he could easily handle. Taking one more deep breath, he turns the knob and opens the door slowly. Despite trying not to make noise as he entered, the door creaked as it opened, and taking his first steps, the wood floor also creaked. Kip took pause to listen for any sign of a creature in the house.

[I'm going to make a PER check to see if there's anything alive in the house.]

The member 'Kip Weston' has done the following action : Dices roll

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'1d100' : 24

The home looks typical, though, given the unfamiliar location, you're unsure what "typical" looks like here. You are standing in a fairly stereotypical Pre-War living room, albeit one that had clearly been in a radioactive swamp for 250 years. A couch, coffee table, and TV are all arranged neatly near the center, and a rotting shelf filled with a few soiled books rests haphazardly against one corner.

The room itself is disorienting to say the least, the entire floor is slanted to the left, just another testament to the structures slow trek into the depths of the mud below.

Down a short hallway lies a staircase, to your left is a door, presumably to the rest of the floor.

Kip takes a moment to soak in the house, though the longer he looks around, the less he feels like there will be anything worth looting in this house. Nonetheless, he presses on. As he walks toward the center, he turns his attention to the TV. It's covered in several layers of dust and even has some sort of weird vine growing up the side of it. Kip feels compelled to turn its dial even though he has no expectation that it will turn on. And sure enough it doesn't.

He walks toward the shelf and quickly browses the books on it. They're soaked all the way through and beyond readable, and the ones that he can read don't pique Kip's interest in the slightest. Growing more and more disinterested, he fixes his gaze toward the closed door. Again, he readies his knife and turns the knob, peering slowly into the room.

You're standing in a small kitchen, or what remains of one, anyway. The room has been half devoured by the swamp, the ever present tilt of its slow death nauseatingly stilted towards the mudbanks below.

Several cabinets hang desperately from one of the remaining walls, their doors firmly shut. Most, it seems, will be easily opened, however, one sits in the corner, a thick chain and padlock keeping it secure. About five feet to your left lies a fridge, its door firmly pinned against the ground by the pure weight of the thing.

Kip relaxes his whole body since there seems to be no sign of an enemy. He feels a slight disappointment as well. Looking along the cabinets, he looks curiously at one cabinet, chained and locked with a padlock. He cracks a smile. "Maybe coming in this house wasn't a total waste," he says to himself.

Kip makes his way over to the cabinet trying his best to stay clear of the murky, dark sludge that has covered and submerged most of the floor. Trudging through, he crouches down near the cabinet. Looking at the security it has, he observes that the chain is dirty and slightly rusted. He gathers that this cabinet has been chained up a good while, though the moisture from the swamp has clearly aged it prematurely. Kip gets mildly excited wondering what could be inside the cabinet that someone felt the need to chain it up.

He reaches for his bolt cutters in one of his front pockets and attempts to cut the chain so he can access the loot inside the cabinet.

The chain rattles as you clamp down on it, resisting for a short moment before the corroded links give away entirely, falling to the soiled tile floor with a heavy clatter that reverberates throughout the house.

The inside appears to be a medicine cabinet, albeit an oddly placed one. Inside are a few stimpacks. Upon further examination, you discern that one is watered down, and the other is heavily irradiated. Alongside the stims are two doses of Jet. You find this detail odd, yet can't seem to put your finger on why.

((I'm going to have you take an Intelligence Check. A 50 or greater will be a success, due to your age and life experience. As per your Bonuses, you'll receive a +10 to this roll.))

The member 'Neutral Karma' has done the following action : Dices roll

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'1d100' : 40

((Oof! You meet it exactly.))

You ponder this for a few minutes until it hits you...Jet was first produced some time after the Great War, and only made it to the islands some time after that.

Kip peers at the inside of the cabinet. He will surely find use for the stimpaks at some point later on. As for the Jet, Kip has been exposed to the existence of many wasteland drugs before and has never found them palatable. He's seen the effects on many scum throughout his travels. They become addicted, dependent, weak. Kip has no desire to use the Jet he discovers, but deems that he could sell it to some junkie for some caps later on. With that, he gathers the chems to place in his ratty backpack, and exits the kitchen.

Kip walks back out into the main room of the house. He notices that even just since he entered the kitchen, the house has become more submerged into the swamp muck. The entirety of the living room floor has now become covered in a thin layer of sludge and water. Kip realizes that he needs to search the rest of the house quickly before the house becomes completely lost to the swamp. He makes his way into the hallway, footsteps splashing as he walks. He glaces at the pictures lining the wall of the hallway as he passes them. Most of them contain some variation of the same three people and Kip deduces that this is the family that must have lived here. What happened to them, he cares not to think about.

Kip reaches the foot of the stairs and looks up. He makes his way up the stairs and upon reaching the top, takes a quick look around.

[I'm making another PER roll to see what I notice upstairs.]

The member 'Kip Weston' has done the following action : Dices roll

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'1d100' : 100

In a moment of almost unnatural clarity, you perceive almost everything about the upstairs. By examining the slight draft from the upstairs, you can discern there's two bedrooms, one broken in half, much like the kitchen. From the infinitesimal dust motes lazily drifting downwards, you can tell the presence of a furnished master bedroom to the right.

Another look at the hallway reveals a small box, nearly hidden entirely from sight, containing 40 Caps.

Most troubling, however, is the barely audible creaks of the floorboards above. There are people above you, and they're quickly making their way to the stairwell.

Kip's heart starts racing as he hears the sound of hurried footsteps above him. Feeling excited and tense, he holsters his knife and draws his gun instead. He quickly looks around for an entrance to the attic and finds one inside the bedroom with a missing wall. Kip takes aim at the attic staircase and waits for the bodies to enter his sights.

Before long, a pair of figures settles in your sights. They're human, at least physically. Their frames appeared unnaturally contorted, emaciated tissue hanging loosely off a brittle skeleton. Their skin sags in places, pocked with various sores, and large, oozing, gashes, seeping with a foul smelling mixture of puss and blood. Their gaunt faces are drawn into a savage growl, their remaining teeth blackened and sharpened to incredibly meticulous points. Their eyes, however, are their most distinguishing feature. Sunken and bloodshot, they shine with a wild, desperate, ferocity. Were you not one yourself, you would've mistaken these not-quite-human creatures for ghouls.

One of them holds a crude, dull looking knife, the other a piece of broken glass, a piece of rotting cloth loosely protecting his hand.

((It seems that your .308 is still out of commission. It's an honest mistake, so I'll allow you to draw your knife again next turn with no penalty.))

Disgusted by the sight of these two beings, Kip pulls his trigger. *click* Kip has forgotten that his rifle has been long broken and unusable. Upon hearing the click of the gun, the two creatures catch a glimpse of Kip standing there. They immediately begin rushing toward him, "OOOOOWAAAAAA!!",  ooze dripping and trailing behind them.

Kip quickly drops his gun to the floor and pulls out his knife as the creatures approach his corner of the room. Even through his disgust at the creatures' appearance, he cracks a smile in the corner of his mouth. "Finally," he thinks to himself, his heart rate accelerating with each passing millisecond.

Kip lunges to meet the creatures, knife first.

[Rolling for attack. +15 to melee.]

The member 'Kip Weston' has done the following action : Dices roll

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'1d100' : 14