Rifts: Dowsing for New Hope

The party gets back to town just in time to clean up and get to the funeral. The service is well performed and most of the men-folk congratulate young Fredrick Bancroft, the dead preacher's son, on a good sermon and say that his daddy would be proud. Most of the women-folk can't stop crying. The list of the dead includes: Robert Thicket Jr. (Sheriff), Bill Anders (Doc) and his two oldest sons Dean and Elie, Jon Bancroft (the Preacher), Hugh Hudson Jr. and his brother Hunter Hudson, and the last two were also brothers; Coal and Curt Jackson; there was also seven Arapaho Scouts, but the only one the townsfolk knew was called Running Wolf. The wooden caskets are buried in the cemetary behind the old church with wooden crosses marking the graves.

While the townsfolk bury the dead; Javorin pulls the party to the side at the same time that the party is pulling Javorin to the side. Earl does most of the talking while explaining the situation with the young Hairy Jacks, what they eat and how much, where they are and what they are, and asks if the town could look after them. Javorin gets noticable flabbergasted and doesn't say a word. He just stands there thinking. Earl keeps talking about the underground Rift and how the party has a plan to fill in the well with dirt and bury the rift good and tight. Fortunately, one of the men-folk knew how to dowse for a new well. It took him 2 days to find a new spot and that is where Roger started excavating. Roger went down about 60 feet and stopped, he had hit something metal and MDC. The rest of the party told him to start digging around it and then to clear enough dirt to get the box up to ground level. After Roger had done that, the party marveled at what they had uncovered. It was a metal box, 20 feet by 16 feet and about 10 feet tall. The box was shiny and reflected the daylight pretty darn good. Roger recognized it as some sort of storage box, but he hadn't seen one of these in a long time. Somebody found a small electronic keypad hidden behind some sort of hidden panel.

The group started thinking about what the passcode could be. They noticed that it could take a six digit passcode. The pondered awhile, then someone had the bright idea about the tombstones, the ones that had been there before the town had been there. They remembered that the first stone had the symbol XXX on it and the last one had XXXV, they went back and realized that the middle one had XXXIII scrawled atop it. Thunderheart realized that these were some sort of pre-rifts form of numbers. He determined that XXX = 30, XXXIII = 33, and XXXV = 35. Three numbers, put in numerical form was a six digit number, 303335. They tried it on the keypad. The door opened and Ralph walked in.

Ralph walked in. He noticed a lot of cargo and crates inside. The party also saw the cargo and the eerie red illumination coming from somewhere inside. He was near the back when he spotted movement. Something walked forward slowly and two mechanical voices repeated the word "Tresspasser."

It was two old-style skelebots with glowing red eyes. They party preceded to pack into the crate while Ralph and the skelebots battled it out via energy weapons. The skelebots were having a difficult time hitting the Juicer, but then again, Ralph was having a hard time hitting them. Eventually, the skelebots were defeated with their main bodies destroyed. The party now gets to inventory the tremendous find they have uncovered. The first crate they looked into had seven seperate missile crates in it.

This is where we left off, the rest of the loot will be forthcoming after next session is reported.

New Hope Happy's

By the time the party returned to New Hope, it was already approaching dusk and with the funeral tomorrow; they decided to get some rest at the inn. Nothing happened during the night and all of them slept contently except for Ralph who didn't sleep. Earl slept at his home.



When morning came, the group gathered for breakfast downstairs in the dining room of the inn. They had a wonderful meal of eggs, sausage, bacon and texas toast. It was delicious. While eating, they noticed Scott Weatherby talking with his mother, Mary Weatherby, who had prepared the wonderful breakfast. Thunderheart, with his enhanced bionic hearing, overheard Scott saying to his mother something about the boars being back. Scott, noticing that they were listening to his conversation with his mother approached the party and asked them if they were experienced hunters. The group simultaneously looked down at the guns they were carrying. The group responded with sarcasm. "Noooo, we don't hunt, not with this gun or with these knives or with this armor that we're wearing; No, we don't hunt." Scott recognized the tone, but was confused if they were accepting his proposal or not; so he asked again. " Is that a yes?"


At this time, Earl walked in and Scott started explaining the situation. Earl suggested that they get rid of these "boars" since they harrass the livestock and might be taking them. Earl realized that it was still day time and told everyone that they usually attacked during the night. Be that as it may, the group decided to finish breakfast right quick and since they were all already in their gear, started towards the other side of the forest isthmus and the field that contained the cattle and the three boars nipping at their ankles. When they arrived, they saw that all the cattle had been rounded up into a corner of the pasture with three small boars keeeping them there. While Earl tried eyeing up a shot at one of the boars, one of the others started moving forward. Right as Earl was squeezing the trigger on his energy rifle, the boars all turned and it looked like they were talking to each other. One of the party, I do believe it to be Dirk, recognized the language as Faerie speak. The boars were wondering what the party was doing there and what they were up to. They decided to take off anyways, just to be on the safe side so the boars, running pretty fast, made it to the forest before the party could react. The party, being ever vigilent in their quest for figuring stuff out set off to investigate where the boars had gone. They soon discovered that there was a clearing in the forest where the sounds of the beasts could be made out, but they couldn't see anything. Then, all of a sudden, one of the party spotted a boar and then it vanished as soon as it had appeared. The party ventured into the forest and discovered the clearing, full of grass and void of any fallen leaves from the trees surrounding the clearing. Within the clearing, the party discovered a large boulder. Ralph, being Ralph, decided to charge and attack the boulder with his make-shift sword. He charged and chipped the boulder something awful. When this happened, Thunderheart saw the boulder move, just a little, and asked Ralph to hit again. This time it moved again. Thunderheart informed everyone else that the boulder was moveable and Ralph pushed it out of the way, but the boulder kept rolling towards town until they moved to stop it just in front of the well. The rest of the party looked down and discovered a hole in the ground. Ralph jumped in and found to his surprise that the hole was quite shallow and that there was a tunnel leading further underground. Ralph started following the way right quick and Dirk decided to follow him. The rest of the party stayed above ground.

Below, Ralph started crawling since there was only a crawlspace and it was pitch black, but that didn't stop Ralph and it didn't stop him from falling down into the opening in front of him. Dirk, hearing such noise, cast a globe of daylight to illuminate his way, he saw that Ralph must have fallen from the opening down into the den of the beasts. The lair was small, but it was large enough. Dirk noticed a door on the other side and right after he said something, Ralph was off investigating the door. After Ralph had gone into the other room, Dirk had made the discovery when his globe winked out that there was some sort of light coming from behind the tapestry hanging on the wall. Dirk peeked behind the tapestry and saw a passage way leading up. Ralph walks back in and says there is a room with a dock in it on the other side of the door. Dirk goes and investigates and finds that this room is in fact the town well. At that precise moment, Earl decides to come down for a peek, he feels safe with Thunderheart and Roger watching the back door sorta speak, besides, they had already gotten the boulder back from the town center.

With the three of them down in the lair, and Dirk being able to speak their language, and Ralph being Ralph, and Earl being able to feel what they are thinking. They approximated the whereabouts of the boars, which when they found them, Dirk told them that they were not boars, but Hairy Jacks and that he had never seen them before on Earth. He also told them that they were fairie folk and magical. Well, with Earl's excellent ways of negotiating, they agreed to stay below ground for now if they were fed. Earl, as the Jacks waited, went and got a cattle and brought back down to them. They were starving, so they just started ripping at the carcass and the three of them, after two hours of feasting and half a cow left said that this here cow would last them one week. Earl and the others agreed to bring them one cow every week and went to inform the townsfolk of the situation.

That is where we left off.