Casting Shadows

How could this week’s seed not be about the slap bassiest RPG in history? In celebration of reaching 45 seeds, let’s dig a hole in the dirt with our creepers, put our cat clothes on, pile our hair up real high, and summon the Quakes to help plant this radioactive pill~

Planting the Seed

All your Bass are belong to us

So – the characters are tired. They need a break; a little RnR to drive the fatigue away and remind them why regular folk do battle with glow-in-the-dark swamp men, outwit the fiendish mutant queen of a giant ant colony, elude enemy woman-catchers, and protect the last good set of strings on their hollow-body guitars.

With the gas gauge on E they coast into a little spot on the dust-bowl side of Atomic Boulevard and roll under the arched sign that reads:

Fat Frank’s Fuel and Beans –

Last Chance for Gas for 400 miles.

The Details

It is a ramshackle, but somehow welcoming establishment of plywood and plastic, done up in rust red stain, with gas pumps out front, huge parking lot to the side and rear, and a sprawling ranch-house style diner filled with tables, cigarette smoke, and the smell of fried…everything.  Sounds of a jukebox fill in the silent spaces between chattering diners, rattling dishes and overactive silverware, with the counterpoint of the short-order cook bellowing: Pick-Up!

Home Sweet Home, really.

The prices look good, and the offer to barter is a nice touch. Some rockabillies are walking the side of the Boulevard with garbage bags and trash spears, talking about how in just a few more minutes they will be able to tuck into today’s special (Meatball Meteor Melts), so that offer might even be legit.

Inside Fat Frank’s (Last Chance for Gas…!) an authoritative sign over the counter reads, No special orders, No Free Lunch, No Gore-May Food, No Politics, No Religion, and No F****N’ Crooners!   The Jukebox is rolling out hit after rockin’ hit, and each of the diners seems content to eat their food slowly, discuss light topics, and listen to the tunes. This must be rockabilly heaven. Perhaps the big, rock-candy mountain is just out back?

What’s going on

In a sentence: A giant, incredibly intelligent, radioactive, mind-controlling, trap-door spider has made its lair under this diner; every one stops, no one leaves, some get ‘et.

Introduce the characters to the people inside, establish a high level of cool, great food, impressive gas, and plant seed after seed of awesome retropocalyptic action to come. Worm in the subtext that if this were D&D and we were all totally devoid of ideas for how to start an adventure, this would be our cliché tavern. Give them enough time to want to want this place to be their base from now on, then inform them the bathroom is calling.

The gross or highly sensitive among the readership will have already guessed where the spider keeps its trap door, and it ain’t up in Cell Block Number 9. In reality it is in Stall 3 – the only clean one.

All is not lost, though. The spider likes to let its food age for flavor for a while, so the first disappearance or two does not mean that characters have died, just been mislaid. The rest… sooner or later, even the most obtuse rocker will note that a pal has not returned from the can.

Adventure calls, and it better wear hip-waders ’cause the shit is about to hit the fan!

I think you can take this from here…

Enjoy!