Swarm Logic

The crew headed on to Cloury Loch, where they did a little shopping - as it turned out, the parts for disintegrator pistols or rifles were, well, expensive. $7,500 and $10,000, respectively. Expensive!

Continuing their quest, the crew headed to the police station, and talked with one Captain Marvin Gansworth about Jarrod Scarbow. The fellow was serving 10 consecutive two year sentences, for piracy. The crew manage to talk their way into visiting Jarrod by posing as his lawyers. Of course.

Jarrod himself was a white trash pirate, sporting a handlebar mustache, a mullet, an eyepatch, and a pirate hat. He started out on the defensive, suggesting that they were sent by his ex-wife to strong-arm him. The crew quietly discussed how to get him out of prison - clone him? Poison him? Taunt him until he gets mad enough they "have to" kill him in self defense? They went with the least violent idea first - trying to get the Captain to transfer the prisoner to them. "Ah, yes, we would like to transfer the prisoner to our... to us."

The captain isn't... entirely unwilling, but says that they have to promise him that they won't kill or torture the prisoner, which as I'm sure you've discovered at this point means that they were at a stalemate. They left in peace, discussing another way to get the jetpack they were searching for - picking up some freight from a warehouse on Ellipsis.

Ellipsis has already been razed by the deader swarms, and while there is no life left, there are plenty of deaders... Landing outside the city, they traipsed in to the dome-covered area. they managed to avoid the deaders for the most part - until they hit five near the warehouse they were heading towards. After killing four, they managed to bring down the last one only barely - not enough to shock its system, it seems, and after a moment, the corpse started "smoking" - or rather, the nanites inhabiting it began leaking out. The crew quickly grabbed the equipment, managing to lift the half ton of parts with a pallet jack. After some quick shoving and tinkering, they managed to break the gears in it, allowing it to be shoved faster than a snail's pace.

The nanite swarm, meanwhile, was proving to be troublesome - as a cloud of microscopic points, it was almost immune to laser fire, plasma fire, even Rodney's hammers! Realizing the only way was to flee, they shoved the equipment ahead of them, heading back the way they came - until they found an EMP grenade that they landed on the nanite swarm. They managed to get away clean, without taking damage, but left a few good holes in the deaders that started to come after them.

Reggie received an update on his search for "RK" - Daft Marvin uncovered the last name "Krockenhouse", and said that RK had been in the area recently.