Stalkers RPG Main Action and Team Status [SEASON 5]

[Neo Emolga]

Well now, don't go forgetting about little old me. Scratch that. I'm not that old

I'll search the (16) Riverwinds Shopping Center

Rather than immediately rush to get to the shopping center to see what might be lying around, you wait until the sun has fully set and then head out, feeling a bit cozier going at night when the daylight is gone. You also think it might be easier to work with the shadows to not have anyone around town suspecting you’re up to no good. Besides, right now, even the money doesn’t matter all that much. It’s more about the thrills.

When you first arrive, you see all the lights have gone off and all the store owners have left and gone home. Perfect. You first start by searching around the exterior of the strip mall, seeing that this isn’t the most popular place for Aurorawatch to patrol during the night, which works perfectly for you as you were hoping they wouldn’t be lingering around anyway and asking questions. Quite truthfully, you’d rather deal with decapitating a ghoul than trying to talk your way out of dealing with Aurorawatch’s ilk.

The parking lot is mostly empty save for a few trash cans that are half-filled with junk and a few vehicles that look like they’ve been here for an eternity and likely don’t even run anymore. Curious thing is, you to decide to see if there’s maybe something inside one of these. It wouldn’t be the first time that you’ve realized there were decent pickings right here in the refuge area while all the other scavengers felt the only good bits worth hunting for were in the Reach.

The first passenger car you break into doesn’t have much, and you can tell the owner was a real slob as there’s wrappers, food crumbs, dirty napkins, and other junk laying all over the place as if they didn’t seem to mind driving this hunk of junk while sitting in their own personal landfill they created all by themselves. The home repair van seems a bit more promising, as while it’s dirty due to the nature of the work, you find a dusty transaction case with money inside, likely used to collect from clients after work was performed. You find quite a bit in there and it looks like it was never taken back to the company base after the work was performed and the transaction was completed. You figure that’s likely because OMEN happened before it could be done, but hey, no sense letting this just sit around! You gather it up and figure the Emissaries might like some of this.

$360 Sochas$ were added to the Team Inventory.

After checking around the buildings, you then check each of the individual stores, starting with The Tool Rack that Nykan the Pachirisu owns. You don’t know much at all about the electric squirrel or why he even owns a hardware store, but you shrug the thought of it off and decide to see what’s the story with this place.

Sneaking your way in through the roof almost seems too easy, and if you really wanted to, stealing a good chunk of the merchandise would be a breeze, but then you’d have no use for it. So rather than ruin the squirrel’s week, you just take a look around, though it does feel satisfying to know you could have pulled off a nefarious burglary if you really wanted to.

Sure, there’s plenty of tools, equipment, supplies, home repair stuff, and all that business, but you can’t help but get the feeling maybe there’s a more creative way of using these. Not you, of course, you’ve got all the claws you’ll ever need to slash a ghoul’s eyes out, but the Emissaries might be interested in some of these if they wanted some extra heads bashed in. So you take note of what’s around for sale just in case they want to help this silly squirrel’s hardware business.

The Tool Rack
Run by Nykan the Pachirisu

TOOLS

• $[|AW| Workshop Mallet] 40 Sochas$ (Adds 1d4 damage to successful attack rolls)
• $[|AW| Steel Crobar] 150 Sochas$ (Adds 1d6 damage to successful attack rolls)
• $[|AW| Steel Sledgehammer] 215 Sochas$ (Adds 1d8 damage to successful attack rolls)
  
• $[|AW| Woodcutter Axe] 30 Sochas$ (Adds 2 damage to successful attack rolls)
• $[|AW| Brush Machete] 110 Sochas$ (Adds 3 damage to successful attack rolls)
• $[|AW| Gas-powered Chainsaw] 180 Sochas$ (Adds 4 damage to successful attack rolls)

PROTECTIVE GEAR

• $[|DA| Protective Workcloth] 80 Sochas$ (Reduces incoming Health damage by 1 point each time Health damage is taken)
• $[|DA| Heavy Duty Workgear] 240 Sochas$ (Reduces incoming Health damage by 2 points each time Health damage is taken)

MISC TOOLS

• $[Sunfire Flares] 150 Sochas$ (If held in your Pack, the next time your character tries to flee from a battle (along with any other characters in your party trying to Flee), one of these will be used and the Flee attempt will be successful.)
• $[Revealing Glass] 100 Sochas$ (Can be used to see if there are any hidden traps in an unsearched area (as a Yes or No answer))

The rest seems to be just repair and building materials. You imagine these Emissaries likely aren’t interested in building houses when they have the steel mill to themselves, so you decide to head out and search the next store in this plaza.

The next store seems to be the Happy Holiday Gift Store, part of a commercial chain of stores known for selling overpriced knick-knacks, snowglobes, expensive greeting cards, and other silly stuff. Normally, you wouldn’t be caught dead going into a store like this, but you figure you why not look around to see if there’s anything interesting. Thankfully, it’s far easier to do this at night when there’s no one else around to see you there, and you don’t have employees asking you if they can help you find something.

You sneak in through the hatch in the roof and it almost seems too easy again. As you look around inside, you keep rolling your eyes at the fluffy décor, cheerful and colorful presentation of everything, and all the happy and jubilant merchandise you see on the shelves and display racks. Really, Namrai, there’s the end of the world happening across the street and you really think the first thing on everyone’s mind is going to be “ooh, chocolate truffles, grandma is going to really need those after running away from the ghouls!”

Happy Holiday Gift Store
Run by Namrai the Steenee

JEWELRY AND TRINKETS

• $[|JW|Angelic Heart Ring] 100 Sochas$ (Dying to the Stalkers or the followers of the Abyss does not raise the Doom Tracker)
• $[|JW| Onyx Necklace] 200 Sochas$ (Cuts the chances of running into random enemy encounters down by half (50%))
• $[|JW| Friends Forever Dual Heart Necklaces: <XXX>] 350 Sochas$ (When equipping this, select a civilian from the list (will replace the “XXX”). As long as you wear this, that civilian will never be killed by the Stalkers.)

HOLIDAY GIFT AISLE

• $[Holiday Greeting Card] 50 Sochas$ (To use, select a civilian on the list. You will get a return card that reveals their personality.)
• $[Golden Memories Chocolate Box] 100 Sochas$ (A mysterious box of chocolates that takes you back to earlier times. Select a Pokémon form you were before to become that Pokémon again. Just don’t mind the mysterious “you’ll remember, they won’t…” whisper…)
• $[Neo Emolga Keychain] 500 Sochas$ (At a first glance, it appears to be nothing more than a keychain toy depicting Neo Emolga with his familiar crescent moon necklace and a button on his back that makes him say “cheers and good times!” But some attest that this is not just a toy and that it radiates a mysterious but comforting glow in dark places. But what does it mean?)

And moving on.

Third store is the Soul Food Diner, and though you’ve seen this place before, the name always seemed unsettling, as if it kind of implies eating souls. Still, you almost laugh when you discover Seul totally forgot to lock the front door. Well, it’s a diner, after all, it’s not like he’s got piles of gold bullion to steal here. Inside, it’s a typical no-frills diner with a few tables and chairs, tacky décor, and a beverage menu that tries to be cute with colorful pictures, but overdoes it to the point where if you rolled your eyes any more, you might need optical surgery.

Soul Food Diner
Run by Seul the Brioonne

MENU

• $[Caffeine Delight] 150 Sochas$ (A special brew of caffeinated beverage that gives the one that ingests it enough energy to search two places the next turn.)
• $[Heartwarming Cocoa] 150 Sochas$ (The cocoa that can save your life! If you have this in your Pack and you take lethal Health damage, this will keep you alive at 1 Health remaining (similar to the move Endure)
• $[Sweet Herbal Tea] 150 Sochas$ (A calming and revitalizing tea that helps preserve your mental state! If you take lethal Sanity damage, this will keep you alive at 1 Sanity remaining.
• $[The Monk’s Special] 150 Sochas$ (A sweet and blissful fruity beverage that just makes you feel good. If you have this in your Pack and you take lethal Purity damage, this will keep you alive at 1 Purity remaining.

You’re more into alcohol, so off you go.

Lastly, there’s the Sweet Dreams Café, which you’ve heard weird rumors about, but never actually stepped inside. Well, you figure now’s actually a pretty good time to do that as no one’s watching and you’d be a liar to admit you weren’t curious at a few points to see what exactly Falei has going on here. Better you do this while she and anyone else for that matter aren’t around. That way they’ll never know and never bring it up with you later.

Surprisingly, Falei actually locked the front door and the hatch in the roof, which you discover looks like it’s been locked for eons and was never used for anything anyway. But the back door, however, doesn’t exactly have the finest lock in the land. You’re able to disengage it with nothing but a coat hanger and that’s all she wrote.

You walk inside and take a look around, wondering just what the heck Falei was thinking with this strange lavender and violet color for the walls and this odd perfume-like smell wafting around. It’s not terrible, but you think this may be the only café in existence that does this kind of thing. Truthfully, it feels more like a spa than a café.

And the menu is just bizarre. The rumors were right, it’s more like you walked into some magical alchemist shop than a café. It almost seems like the kind of place you’d go with a bunch of reckless friends and dare each other to try things, though you imagine that would require getting pretty drunk and usually Pokémon only do that at night after this place has closed.

Sweet Dreams Café
Run by Falei the Misdreavus

MENU

• $[Sleepy Time Dream Tea] 250 Sochas$ (Instructions seem simple. “Drink before going to bed at night.” But it ends there and nothing is mentioned afterwards…)
• $[Magic Pie] 300 Sochas (Some say this pie will make you so happy that you’ll want to sing. Others say it’s so sugary that it makes them sick. There were claims one Pokémon flew to the stars riding on a comet and created their own world after eating it while another became frozen in time and now lives in an alternate dimension. There are a lot of stories surrounding Falei’s Magic Pie, but separating the fact from the fiction seems to be something no one ever thought to document and validate…)
• $[Fairy Bread] 500 Sochas$ (A delectable dessert from a faraway land’s recipe with strange rumors and an alluring aroma and aura. Some eat it and claim it’s a scam and doesn’t do anything at all while others claim it’s magical, can change destinies, grant powers unheard of, and can do things thought only possible in imagination. Some say the secret is to eat it away from prying eyes. Others say there’s no proof of the nonsense actually doing anything….)

The prices on these almost seems appalling, but you really wonder what the deal is with this place. And it actually really makes you question just who the heck is Falei and where does this stuff come from? Part of you is almost tempted to try, while the other part of you is skeptical. Well, you figure the place is closed for now anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

In the dining area, you find what looks like a blue cloth pouch that must have belonged to one of the café’s patrons. You almost wonder if they ate or drank something that whisked them away to a faraway dream land, but who knows. You open it up and suddenly an otherworldly ethereal glow comes out of it. When you find the source of it, you see what looks like a white cylinder made of a whiteish-silvery metal with glowing runic carvings.

You have a distinct feeling the Emissaries would be interested in this considering all the other stuff they’ve been collecting.

[Holy Conduit] was added to the Team Inventory.

After that, you feel you’ve pretty much covered everything and decide to head back. You can’t help but feel curious about what the Emissaries might do with this new information you’d found for them.

Scarlet the Weavile (M: Dark/Ice)

Health: 20/20 | Sanity: 20/20 | Purity: 20/20
Battle Stance: Heroic