Round 85: The Long Haul, Part 8

[midpointmods]

PLAYERS: Rocket and Groot, Taako, Yoda, Jiro Azuma VS. Sam Wilson, Misty Day, Jo Harvelle, Sara Lance
LOCATION: Bank Town, the Ranch
GOAL: Keep hands on the cargo of the stagecoach travelling from Bank Town to the Ranch
WARNINGS: Attempted murder
OTHER: OOC post for plotting and questions!

The stagecoach isn’t ready for transport when the two teams arrive at Bank Town just before sundown, and the bank manager who is in charge of the shipment will only speak to someone on the driver team, so the bandits are shit out of luck even if they try to get to it first. There appear to be some delays, in fact, and the bank manager has many apologies, but the stagecoach isn’t loaded up with its cargo until noon the next day - as Bank Town has no inn, the teams had best find somewhere out of the wind to spend the night, whether by borrowing an empty house in the sparsely populated town or bedding down against the ravine walls.

There are two routes marked as safe for stagecoach travel on each team’s map: one that swings north following the railroad tracks and passing close to Midpoint, and one that swings south along the floodplains. It’s up to the drivers which path to take, and up to the bandits to guess the right one. It’s a breezy day: tracks won’t last for long. (The bandits might do well to check at Booker’s General Store before they leave.)

The stagecoach won’t make good time, burdened as it is, and the horses can’t run all day, but that’s why there’s a note on each route for the drivers on where to change horses. That might be a good place to wait out the darkness-- unless someone is foolhardy enough to drive the new team of horses all night. The cargo is due at the Ranch by the end of the third day, so there’s plenty of time... but there’s the threat of bandits to worry about.

Comments

I

[vigilanteclub]

Sara just gives a curt nod in response to the question of whether or not she's ready to go. She's accustomed to tight timelines and harsh terrain, and she's already triple-checked her - relatively meagre - gear. It's not the loadout she'd like to have, but she can make do.

She's done with far less in the past.

"How closely do these 'game makers' stick to the letter of the law when they're deciding who wins these things?" she asks.

[shadowsran]

"More than you're probably assuming, hard as it can be to believe. I can't speak to the history of the place, but I think the idea is that they're looking for a creative, effective, dramatic way to get from A to B; not how good people are at finding loopholes."

Cheating isn't the goal, and it's best for everyone on either side of the fence to have clear, straightforward instructions. The logic more or less bears out to her.

"Whatever instructions they give, that's what they're looking at. Nothing less or more."

[vigilanteclub]

"Loopholes are creative and effective," Sara notes as she sets about readying her horse for departure with a careful efficiency that speaks both to familiarity with the procedure and with the procedure and with the potential hurdles of equine temperament. "And sometimes dramatic. It sounds like what they're looking for is a bloodbath."

Which makes sense. The more confrontations between teams, the more violence any of them show willing to inflict on each other in order to win these little games and earn a few more creature comforts, the harder it is to build any trust. It's an effective means of keeping their prisoners from banding together.

"Do you know anyone who's tried? To tie a match without triggering either side's losing condition, I mean."