Stalkers RPG Main Action and Team Status [SEASON 5]

[Neo Emolga]

I'll take the west side of the mall, then, unless I am needed elsewhere.

You join up with Mistee, heading south to see what your nearest neighbors may be offering in terms of wares and supplies. You have a firm feeling that you’re going to most likely need some of these as you take on whatever darkness has fallen upon this shaken city.

As you walk upon the dusty, asphalt road, a solemn and hot breath of wind courses around you, blowing sand and dust as it weaves its way around your yellow fur and kicks your ears and thunderbolt tail around a bit. Despite this area of the city having most of city’s surviving population, something about the whole area around you seems so lonely. And it feels that way even more as you look up and see the ravaged skyline of the Southern Reach looming before you as a dark cloud hangs overhead.

Along the road, a few pieces of trash and refuse slide and roll along as you make your way to the western side of the mall. It seems as though in another time, another place, this was a more welcoming place to be, but now, it stands as a monument to survival. You hope maybe one day, hopefully soon, brighter days will return and it won’t have to be looked upon with such desperation.

All of a sudden, to your surprise, your foot makes contact with a metallic object, half-buried in the dust and sand. Curiously, you look at it and use your paw to grasp it firmly and wrestle it out of the ground. Upon emerging from its dusty confines, you blow away the dust and debris with a puff of air from your mouth, and upon closer inspection, it seems to be a switchblade knife, still in somewhat good condition. You unsheathe the blade and it comes out easily, still looking quite sharp. You feel this would definitely make for a good self-defense weapon if you were to ever get into trouble.

[|AW| Steel Switchbalde (Adds 1d4 damage to successful attack rolls) was added to Lita’s Pack.

You continue on and then enter the mall itself, seeing that many Pokémon have used both every foot of available retail space and then some, setting up stalls, booths, and peddling tents all along the walls in between stores and often in the middle of the main connecting floors that see much more foot traffic.

Many of these small stores seem to be offering both locally grown and acquired goods while others are offering services. As you pass by a tired-looking Torchic and a dusty Herdier that lets out a long, hard sigh, you pass by a row of tents and booths cooking up meals and preparing soup for whoever has coins and is hungry for a fresh meal. The scents immediately catch your nose and it’s a spicy scent you’ve never smelled before, but it strikes your curiosity and you can’t help but wonder how some of these meals might taste. Unfortunately, you don’t have a single Socha on hand at the moment, but even so, you’re simply here to see what’s available.

Moving on, you pass by a small retail space called the Exacta City Newsstand, which appears to have been here for a while and looks like it never closed despite the nightmare that had befallen the city. Dole, an energetic Vaporeon, is still making a good living selling books, newspapers, and magazines. At a time like this, you figure it wouldn’t be uncommon for Pokémon here to want to get informed about what’s going on or just to pick up the latest bestseller book and get lost in a new story for a while to escape what’s transpired here.

What attracts you the most about the store are the magazines. They seem to be quick reads, full of print images and articles, but they give the latest on a whole variety of subjects and seem to be good for picking up a few good tips and tricks that might come in handy in the field.

Exacta City Newsstand
Run by Dole the Vaporeon

MAGAZINES

• $[“ROGUE” Magazine] 100 Sochas$ (Gives the user the Security Perk for the Cycle it’s used, one use only)
• $[“Handymon” Magazine] 100 Sochas$ (Gives the user the Repair Perk for the Cycle it’s used, one use only)
• $[“Chansey’s Diagnosis” Magazine] 150 Sochas$ (Gives the user the Medicine Perk for the Cycle it’s used, one use only)
• $[“Influence!” Magazine] 100 Sochas$ (Gives the user the Diplomacy Perk for the Cycle it’s used, one use only)
• $[“Codecracker” Magazine] 100 Sochas$ (Gives the user the Technical Perk for the Cycle it’s used, one use only)
• $[Runic Ancient Writings] 100 Sochas$ (Gives the user the Seinaru Perk for the Cycle it’s used, one use only)

Exacta City Newsstand has been noted in the Exacta City Marketplaces.

You continue searching throughout the mall and pass a few more peddler stands. As you get toward the tail end, it seems like a sizable portion of the mall has been used for utilities and necessities. Other parts are used for storage and have many cardboard boxes and a few wooden crates scattered about. As you approach this area, which seems a bit darker and far less populated, you can’t help but wander the seemingly dark and almost forgotten about hallways that were used by maintenance workers some time back.

Upon closer inspection, you get the feeling like this area was abandoned for a while, but only recently, some individual came by from the disturbances you see in the dust, which seem to cling to your own yellow fur as well. You follow these signs down into a room at the end of a short hallway, and then when you enter, there seems to be a small office filled with folders, records, and ledgers surrounding a wooden desk that hasn’t seen much use in the recent years. You look around and see most of them look like client information, contract records, and accounting. To the untrained eye, it looks like nothing much, but your senses tell you otherwise and lead you the edge of a metallic shelf that was recently used to hide something.

When you pinpoint the source, you find a strange, folded piece of unusual paper, and when you unfold it, it appears to be something you’d never find in an administrative office like this. It looks like a myriad of stars… galaxies… superclusters with coordinates beyond anything you could imagine. Tracing your paw upon it, you feel and realize… this isn’t your usual kind of space image and it’s not an ordinary piece of paper. It’s a map upon a sheet that seems to have almost magical like properties, but how it functions and what it means exactly is beyond what you can comprehend.

You decide to take it with you, having a distinct feeling this is a part of something much bigger than you were expecting.

[Mysterious Celestial Starmap: <Seinaru>] was added to the Team Inventory.

Besides it, you find another unusual piece of paper…



=Magus Journal Page= was noted in the Team Records.

You’re not able to read it and it appears to be in some kind of mystical runic language, but it definitely looks and feels like something out of this world. You think it may be connected to this unusual starmap that you found, but right now, you don’t know for sure.

After making one last check around these dark and dusty halls, you feel a bit tired and are ready to head back to the mill. It’s been an interesting day, but it isn’t over yet.

Lita the Pikachu (S: Electric)

Health: 16/16 | Sanity: 20/20 | Purity: 24/24
Battle Stance: Tactical
Perk: Security | Abilities:
EQUIPMENT:
Attack Weapon: <Empty>
Defense Armor: <Empty>
Jewelry: <Empty>
Utopian Aspect: <Empty>
MERCENARIES:
#1: <Empty>
#2: <Empty>
PACK:

• [|AW| Steel Switchblade] (Adds 1d4 damage to successful attack rolls)