The Tunnelers Campaign Session 2

Tuesday, may 20^th, 2025: we have reconvened to play more tunnelers. I prepped between sessions by rolling up some more encounters and writing a list of front desk attendants for the motel. Having worked at a small town motel, I found much in my memory to draw upon.


Thank you to Coyote, who plays Ash, for this beautiful artwork.

Continuing in the ingame date of June 3, 2003, around 7 pm, Jel and Ash set off from 0505 across a grassy field to get to their motel. Along the way they see a family of raccoons raiding the dumpsters behind Bradley’s Pizza. The soil is gravelly, breaking up the dry tall grass into a maze of patches. A turkey vulture follows the two of them, watching: it reports to the teen thoughtform-workers who lurk here sometimes. Distant mediocre guitar-playing wafts from the town.

Arriving in 0504 at 8 they see the motel: a rundown dirt cheap place with a crumbling facade that is supposed to make its office look like a log cabin. Ash and Jel check in at the office, where a balding man named Bernie is reading hunting magazines behind the desk, while a television spits out some news about the ongoing invasion of Iraq by US forces. Ash takes several similar magazines from the table in the waiting area. They are given keys for room 18 and go back into the parking lot, where they see a group of other tunnelers talking. After dropping off her stuff in the room, Ash goes out to greet the other Tunnelers, while Jel listens from the room window.

Ash starts a conversation with Jill “GunsandGnosis,” who she has a decent rapport with on the forums. Jill reveals that she’s been here for a week, and plans to swing by the edges of Dundarave Castle tomorrow to see if there is an obvious weakness in its fence line that would be easy to tunnel under. She is fairly sure that the Dundarave Tape was filmed in there, due to the stonework visible. She also expounds on her opinions on some other tunnelers involved: protogeometric, who payed for the rooms but isnt here, must be really loaded with cash. LindaTheShovelMama can get you online somehow, if you need to access the internet. DRILLIONAIRE has a worm in a lead case that can eat anything – this catches both Ash and Jel’s attention.

The Nondescript Man is listening in. Jill thinks he is just some other guest and tells Ash this before the two part ways for the evening.

That night, at 1 am, a herd of 23 elk cross the parking lot. Looking out the window, Ash and Jel see both the elk and a silhouetted humanoid shape dangling from the sign for the Woodchipper Diner. Its eyes glint before it leaps away into the night. It is a werebat, but Ash decides she believes it is a Yeti.

In the morning of Wednesday, June 4, 2003, Jel wakes up early to talk to Jill about the castle scouting plans. Jel is worried that if Jill is caught it will bring unwanted attention and hardship to the whole project. Rescuing Jill from the morning shift motel desk attendant’s monologue about her 7 year old daughter, Jel makes her case, but Jill has made up her mind and has blessed a river rock as a protective charm against the owner of the castle. Jel makes the last minute decision to go with her, and when local low level drug dealer Dennis Toole arrives to give Jill a ride, Jel and Ash hastily join, climbing in the back of his beat up pickup. The whole group is driven through 0503, 0403, 0302, taking in the local sights like the bradleys sign and the graffiti covered bridge, conversing about yetis all the way. “Aren’t they from, like, Nepal?” asks a baffled Dennis Toole, who has no idea what all of this is about. “We got sasquatches round these parts, I think. Not that I’d mind a yeti movin’ in. I’d party with a yeti.” The tunnelers are dropped off in 0202 near the apple orchards outside Dundarave Castle, where they prepare their apprroach. Dennis says he can be back “around 3 or 4” to pick them back up.

My biggest prep need for the next session is to work out the wrinkles in access to economic power not usually in games I run — Jel’s player requested a camcorder, and I think it is a fair trade to give them this in exchange for perhaps a dent in credit card limit.