[tshiggins]

The next day, the group rose early and started the long road-trip down State Highway 141 to Montezuma County, in the southwest corner of Colorado. Along the way, they looked up information about the area and learned it had a population of about 25,000 people and nearly that many cattle, and that most of the people not involved in cattle (or the tourism trade, driven by the presence of nearby Mesa Verde) grew hay and/or silage corn for the feedlots.

Upon arrival in the county seat of Cortez, Doc Bascher made some calls to local veterinarian contacts, while Diego spoke to Montezuma County Animal Control. Doc Bascher learned that, while the county had no large hog operations (mostly cattle and a few thousand chicken and sheep, plus a few horses), a few scattered farmers kept some pigs for personal use. Bascher also learned the name of the farmer closest to Dolores who kept a pig-pen – one Luis Hernandez.

With that information, the crew headed northeast, out of town, and took Highway 145 to Dolores. They arrived at the Hernandez Farm, northeast of town along Highway 184, about 30 minutes later. They took the farm’s access road through the waist-high cornfields, and pulled up in front of a battered old wood-frame house that had seen better days. When no one came out to greet them, Diego went to knock on the door while the others prepped their gear.

Receiving no answer to his knock, the deputy (very much out of his jurisdiction…) walked around to the back. Glancing around for the back door, he noticed that the top-rail of a wooden fence had been broken, on a pen about 20 yards away. He walked through the weedy lot, and got close enough to see the bloody, slaughtered bodies of a boar-hog and a middle-aged, strong-looking Hispanic man, lying intermingled in the middle of the pen.

The rest of the group came running, at Diego’s shout, and began to look around. A quick check of the pen revealed that about a half-dozen young piglets had been mauled to death, and the sow was nowhere to be found. The group quickly found tracks of what appeared to be a large boar and a smaller sow headed into the corn-fields to the north.

Diego called the Montezuma Sheriffs Office, and three deputies soon arrived. They called the county coroner and, after a quick discussion, decided to allow the Utah SAR team track the killer boar, while they used the county and farm-access roads to try to get ahead of it.

With that, the group spread out into a “beater-line,” weapons at the ready, and worked their way across the large cornfield. The three patrol vehicles got ahead of them, and waited on the county road on the other side, about 100 yards apart, Montezuma County deputies with shotguns at the ready.

Diego’s cell phone rang before the group was about halfway across the field. The last deputy reported movement in the field near him, and said he’d called the other two to help. The group saw the strobed vehicles start to move down the road, as the deputy on the phone with Diego screamed for help. The group broke into a run as they heard the blast of a shotgun.

They staggered to a halt at the county road a couple of minutes later, to see one deputy with his guts spilling out, a second desperately trying to shove them back in, and a third deputy, pale and shaking, staring out into the cornfield on the other side. The third deputy kept saying something seemed to be wrong with the face of the boar, and that all three of the pigs had attacked at once and then dashed into the other field as soon as the wounded deputy went down, rather than stop to maul him, further.

The SAR team had the deputies stay back with their wounded colleague, and they spread out again, not quite so far apart, and moved into the field. Several quickly spotted a blood-trail (the deputy had apparently winged at least one pig) from the smaller of the two sows, and followed it to the middle of the field. There, the bleeding sow turned at bay and Beatrice ordered Grunt to “harass." At that instant, the other two pigs attacked from flanking positions, using the corn as cover – the mutated Master Oink, from the right and the larger sow from the left.

Master Oink, which now resembled a cross between a boar hog and a rhinoceros, closed quickly and smashed Arthur in the leg, nearly breaking it. Arthur managed to keep his footing and shot his crossbow at Master Oink. On the other side, the sow closed to within six feet of a panicky Sunmi, who missed with a wild pistol shot, as Diego swung his .30-06 around to cover her. The deputy got a bead on the sow, and dropped her at Sunmi’s feet, just as a shot from Henrietta’s pistol hit the young Asian woman in the back.

Over on the other side, various shotgun blasts and arrow-shots hit the charging tusker, as Arthur (with Randy’s help) desperately tried to avoid getting gutted like the deputy. The frustrated Master Oink suddenly switched targets to the unwounded Randy, but several well-aimed blasts from Doc Bascher put her former pet on the ground.

A moment later, Diego’s scoped deer-rifle neatly zeroed the last sow.

Doc Bascher ran to help the stunned and shocked Sunmi, patching her up well enough to make the trip back to Grand Junction as Diego trotted back over to talk to the shaken Montezuma County deputies. He reported that all three pigs were dead, and asked that they not mention his presence, as he was supposed to be on a 60-day administrative leave. They readily agreed (Crit on Savoir Faire – Police!) and the "Blue Wall" went up to shield the Utah deputy.

With that, the group fetched their vehicles, loaded Sunmi and Arthur into them, and sped back to Grand Junction where JoCat’s healing potions waited.

With that, we hit “fast-forward” to say nearly four weeks had passed, and the next scheduled opening of the portal, on July 26, 2014, lay only three days away. That gave the group enough time to have learned the “Meditation” skill, which meant they no longer had to sleep in the back room of Café Nepenthe, every night.

At that point, JoBeth McShane declared her obligation to them at an end, and demanded that they make the choice – either walk away, or agree to become her apprentices in exchange for learning the basics of magic. Jeb chose to leave, but the PCs who remained all agreed to become apprentices – with the caveats that they would not kill or hurt anyone, or engage in felonious behavior likely to get them put in jail. Diego added that he would not, under any circumstances, break the law or in any way violate his responsibilities as a law officer.

With some hesitation (she'd grown a bit unnerved by the fact that her quiet life had been interrupted by people who kept bringing her monster-bits and gunshot victims...), McShane agreed to everyone’s conditions, and the apprenticeships began. She also gave them a first assignment: McShane said she'd used a lot of spell components, this past few days, and they needed to carry some items through the portal, so as to "facet" them and restore her stock. Not thrilled, the group agreed, nonetheless.

The next day, Diego received a call from Grand County Sheriffs Office, followed by similar calls to the other members of the SAR team. Apparently, Don Reyes, aka Señor AKA, had escaped from an ambulance transporting him from the hospital in Moab to a federal prison in Salt Lake City.

Grand County Sheriff Allen Brown told Diego the federal agent sitting in the back of the ambulance reported that his memory of the escape was extremely fuzzy, while the ambulance driver said that Reyes had used the agent’s weapon to force him to pull to the side of the road.

At that point, Brown said the suspect zip-tied the hands of the driver and the EMT to the hubcaps and dashed over to a waiting pickup truck that had pulled to a stop a ways back from the ambulance.

The sheriff said that, although he hadn’t gotten a really good look, the ambulance driver had given a description of the accomplice that closely matched Jeb Stuart. The truck description seemed to match the one owned by the survivalist, too.

###

I didn't write down any funny quotes, this time, although G&AInc remembered a few:

BERNETTA (OOC): Well, at least we're fighting something Randy can't wrestle now...

[time passes]

G&A (OOC): So, am I close enough to do a Step and Grapple on the Chupacabra?
GM: Yes...
BERNETTA (OOC): You realize that thing is covered in spikes, right?
G&A (OOC): That just gives me something to hang on to!

~~~

RANDY: [upon learning that unstable, somewhat dangerous former ally Francis "Jeb" Stuart has been witnessed henching Don Reyes] Guys!? What's that thing we always said about Jeb? Y'know, about how he'd be really f#*&!#@ scary if he wasn't on our side?