2022 Shitbox Rally - Out of This World! (Results Out!)

Madrias · 16 August 2022 03:08

Shitbox Rally

Stage 14: Taruli to Kavitz

Stage Start: 10 Moon, 31/7/3251, Taruli Campsite

Weather at Stage Start: Warm (29C), a light rain and light breeze keeps the place pleasant.
Weather at mid-stage: Warmer (32C), the rain turns into drizzle and mist, and the wind remains gentle.
Weather at Stage End (First Car): Warmer (32C), the rain turns into drizzle and mist, gentle wind.
Weather at 5 Sun: Hot (34C), the drizzle gives way to humidity, the wind picks up.
Weather at Stage End (Last Car): Hot (33C), still humid with clouds in the sky, and a good breeze.
Weather at 10 Sun: Warm (28C), overcast creating a beautiful sunset with the clouds appearing to be on fire, a gentle breeze.
Weather at 2 Moon: Cool (25C), a gentle rain that lasts until just before sunrise, light wind.

Stage End (First Car): 2-and-34 Sun, 32/7/3251, Kavitz Campsite

Stage End (Last Car): 5-and-45 Sun, 32/7/3251, Kavitz Campsite

Chaos once again kicks the whole camp awake at 10 Moon and into their cars. Dyre were in the camp! Engines cough to life as people scatter down the cobblestone road in the rain, hoping to make it to Kavitz and be safe.

Luckily, the roads are relatively straight, letting teams wind out their machines with the intent of escaping Taruli at top speed. Equally luckily, it seems as if none of the Dyre are really interested in paying attention to the noise, because even the teams who were looking for them couldn’t see them.

Likewise, luck was on everyone’s side because no one missed the turn heading on the Southern Fork to Kavitz. Engines howled down long, straight roads leading into the forest, where rain-slicked cobblestone curves waited to create chaos in the last few miles of the trip.

The Kavitz campsite isn’t quite as nice as the one in Taruli, but considering there are guards posted around to keep an eye on the forest and the caves, we shouldn’t see any more Dyre here. We’re given permission to use the old guardhouse as a rest area if we need to.

Notes: Randomization is active. Breakdowns are active. Time is in Earth Time.

Additional note: Removing Aetheriian ET from the stage position.

@Madrias

Team Shift Happens

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 05:14:07
Average MPH: 67.8
Randomizer: 11
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4617.6

The first outside of RK Series Racing to know about the Dyre, Malavera takes the wheel and sends the Bricksley flying down the road. Unfortunately, he pushed his luck a bit, as the rear end breaks loose during one of the many fast curves, and while he was able to keep from spinning out, he did slam the driver’s side of the bed into a tree at 50 miles per hour, tearing the bumper free of the driver’s side mount, obliterating the driver’s side tail-light housing, and smashing the rear corner of the bed in, breaking several jugs of kerosene in the process. Had the exhaust not been relocated already, there would have been a rather nasty fuel fire as a result. However, the battered truck makes it into the camp, despite looking like it lost a fight with a dump truck.

(Note: This was necessary for the lore of the Highwayman, and also necessary because Malavera really shouldn’t have been behind the wheel for this stage, but the best driver for this stage would have been Kivenaal, who definitely shouldn’t drive until he’s had a proper night of sleep.)

@Caligari

Team Wayfarers

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 04:33:33
Average MPH: 77.9
Randomizer: 13
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4617.6

“Giant werewolves again!? Hell no!” Jack welds the gas pedal into the firewall, and Chernobog thunders down the wet, slick road, getting grip whenever and wherever it can.

@Executive

Team Gearknobs

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 04:05:36
Average MPH: 86.7
Randomizer: 10
Refueling Stops: 0
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4617.6

It turns out that the Dyre didn’t like the smell of a half-dozen random air-fresheners hidden around in your car, as they left it alone last night. On the other hand, it also turns out that AWD is great for driving fast on less-than-ideal roads.

@BannedbyAndroid

Team Fallen Angels of the Past

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 04:50:36
Average MPH: 73.3
Randomizer: 10
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4617.6

The little blue bullet rockets down the road, windshield wipers simultaneously clearing the windshield and leaving some nasty streaks on it. With reduced visibility comes reduced speed.

@TheYugo45GV

Team Oil Crisis

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 04:17:06
Average MPH: 82.8
Randomizer: 11
Refueling Stops: 2
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4617.6

Despite a somewhat slow start thanks to half their cargo being tipped over, the Olive-Drab Oil Tanker hurtles down the road at a great rate of speed. When they get to Kavitz, the main concern is getting the smell of random Dyre out of the wagon.

@Knugcab

Team Hillbilly Rollers

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 03:49:33
Average MPH: 92.8
Randomizer: 10
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4617.6

Janne went behind Andreas’ back this time and had Rukari paint some protective runes on the engine block during the rewiring of the van. The end result is that, when they needed it most, the engine held together even when Andreas buried the pedal in the floorboard, the beer-can bearings letting the camshaft rattle – just a little – while they rocketed down the road, arguing about who left the doors unlocked so that the Dyre could get into the back of their van.

@Fayeding_Spray

Team Witchlight

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 04:57:44
Average MPH: 71.5
Randomizer: 11
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4617.6

Elist was determined that they were not going to become wolf-chow tonight, and neither were their teammates. Finne was glad to make a speedy getaway, Kira was glad no one was hurt. Ambay, on the other hand, was deeply disappointed that this was twice now that he didn’t get to take a Dyre’s head as a trophy.

@MrdjaNikolen

Team Mravolinski-Chitco

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 08:14:42
Average MPH: 43.0
Randomizer: 7
Refueling Stops: 0
Breakdown: 1 (Powertrain)
Total Distance Traveled: 4617.6

After putting all of their Dyre-scattered cargo back into the truck, Mrdja put his foot on the floor. The 1.9 liter inline 4 screamed a mournful tune as the truck hurtled into the forest before a huge cloud of white smoke blew out of the exhaust. Yes, that is a blown head-gasket. Yes, you did bring a spare. However, driving at reduced pace to minimize engine damage slows you way down, and fixing that in camp was not fun.

@SurrealCereal

Team Machinas Con Passiones

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 05:22:44
Average MPH: 66.0
Randomizer: 10
Refueling Stops: 4
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4617.6

Giacomo keeps freaking out about werewolves, which is understandable when one considers that for whatever reason, they clawed his seat in the van and no one else’s. Chad isn’t too happy that one of them ripped the access panel off of the roof like it was the top of a can of chili, letting it rain inside the van.

@AndiD

Team Quick Rally 47

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 03:47:52
Average MPH: 93.5
Randomizer: 10
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4617.6

The onboard AI advised caution on the slippery roads, and reminded them that the last time they ran from the Dyre, they ran into one. This time, there is no radiator-busting collision.

@BG004130

Team Mrezhari

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 03:44:23
Average MPH: 94.9
Randomizer: 13
Refueling Stops: 0
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4617.6

Despite being dented and battered from taking a tumble in a previous stage, the Dunav escapes into the forest and gets the four mysterious team members to Kavitz safely.

@NoahC

Team Jockey

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 03:36:33
Average MPH: 98.4
Randomizer: 12
Refueling Stops: 2
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4617.6

It’s hard not to consider that the Yinzer might be just perfectly sized to be a snack box for a hungry Dyre. The team noticed another set of scratches on the car, this time around the door handle, and realized the hand that left those scratches was way bigger than Kaylie’s hand.

@elizipeazie

Team RK Series Racing

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 03:45:52
Average MPH: 94.3
Randomizer: 13
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4617.6

“Dyre in the camp!” With the alert put out, Robert is steamed up and hustled over to the rails. After negotiating an immediate departure, clearing the way with the first signalman, and getting the vehicle rolling, it’s a long journey at about 100 miles per hour. On the plus side, it’s obvious that there aren’t any Dyre anywhere near the tracks.

@Tzuyu_main

Team Black Rabbit

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 04:08:08
Average MPH: 85.8
Randomizer: 13
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4617.6

After a rude awakening by something sniffing around inside the car, followed by realizing a crafty curious Dyre had stolen a bit of meat from their supplies in the car, made worse by a quick agreement to depart camp before a proper breakfast could be had, the Dauer’s engine was started and they hurtled off into the next stage, a six cylinder war-cry threatening all of the Dyre that if they dared mess with the car again, there would be hell to pay.

@SheikhMansour

Team Spy Kids

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 05:13:14
Average MPH: 68.0
Randomizer: 9
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 1 (Powertrain)
Total Distance Traveled: 4617.6

The AST Elbrus was handicapped today with an engine that wouldn’t even crank, let alone would actually start. Upon closer inspection, a battery cable had come loose, and after taking a little time to put it back on, and reprogramming the ECU again, the engine roared to life. They also stopped at the side of the road to offer some assistance to a team who managed to crash their truck.

Stage Finishing Order:

03:36:33 – 2-and-34 Sun – Team Jockey
03:44:23 – 2-and-41 Sun – Team Mrezhari
03:45:52 – 2-and-43 Sun – Team RK Series Racing
03:47:52 – 2-and-44 Sun – Team Quick Rally 47
03:49:33 – 2-and-46 Sun – Team Hillbilly Rollers
04:05:36 – 2-and-60 Sun – Team Gearknobs
04:08:08 – 2-and-63 Sun – Team Black Rabbit
04:17:06 – 2-and-71 Sun – Team Oil Crisis
04:33:33 – 3-and-06 Sun – Team Wayfarers
04:50:36 – 3-and-21 Sun – Team Fallen Angels of the Past
04:57:44 – 3-and-28 Sun – Team Witchlight
05:13:14 – 3-and-41 Sun – Team Spy Kids
05:14:07 – 3-and-42 Sun – Team Shift Happens
05:22:44 – 3-and-50 Sun – Team Machinas Con Passiones
08:14:42 – 5-and-45 Sun – Team Mravolinski-Chitco

Team Shift Happens

Previous Chapters:

Stage 11 Details
“Beginning the Day” - Stage 11 Start (Collab with Elizipeazie)
Automatic Pilot / A Minor Hold-Up / A Bad Day Begins - Stage 11 Drive and Camp
“A Little Ride-Along with Team RK Series Racing” - Collab, Written by Elizipeazie
The Party / A New Steed / Some Minor Repairs - Collab with Elizipeazie
Helping Out A Friend / The High-Tech Solution - Collab with Elizipeazie
End of the Day - Stage 11 Camp Final
Kayden Murders a Clutch - Stage 12 Drive and Camp
Redemption, Realizations, and Repairs - Stage 13 Drive and Camp
Curious Dyre - Stage 13 Camp Final

Taruli Campsite, 9-and-20 Moon

Malavera groaned as Connor finished explaining that they had Dyre in the camp last night, and that he advised it may be wise to leave the camp early. “I’ll get it taken care of, Connor. Thank you,” Malavera said, looking over the truck and seeing the mess that had been made of their supplies. Rukari had bought plenty of salted meat to make several camp meals with, but that bag was now in shreds, the meat completely gone at this point. A dent in the lid of their toolbox showed that one of the Dyre had used it as a way to get up onto the roof, or to access the roof rack, which was more obvious after seeing four open, now-empty cans of drinking water, all with their white paint covered in claw marks.

He knew he had to wake the camp, but how to do it? He really hated the idea of going tent-to-tent, warning everyone individually. Then he saw the CB handle in the Bricksley, and the loudspeaker on the roof, and an idea came to mind immediately. He opened the door, studied the radio stack for a moment, then made some settings adjustments, enabling the Public Address system’s loudspeaker, setting volume to about halfway, and keying the microphone.

“Malavera of Shift Happens to all participating teams, we need to leave this campsite early. Please, get yourselves up, pack your supplies, and prepare to travel,” he said, figuring it was better to leave out why they were leaving until later, or on request, so as to avoid a panic.

Taruli Campsite, 10 Moon

Malavera watched as everyone headed for their cars. Many people had asked why they had to pack, and after being informed that the reason involved Dyre, seemed to suddenly have no issues getting ready to leave. He watched as Kayden and Jayde hauled Kivenaal out to the truck, still looking tired, and sighed. “Looks like I’m driving, then,” Malavera said.

“Yeah, we asked around, no one had anything safe for him to eat that would have given him a wake-up call. Most teams had chocolate, but Kivenaal can’t have that, and our mysterious friends in the helmets only have enough energy drinks left for the four of them for two more days. So, Kivenaal isn’t driving. Jayde’s already admitted he’s not comfortable at the whole driving thing, I’ve been banished from driving after what I did to the clutch, Kaylie doesn’t feel like she’d go fast in this, and Rukari drove the last stage. That leaves you,” Kayden explained.

“Right. Who’s my mid-seat, then?”

“Either me or Rukari,” Kayden admitted.

“I’d rather have you there. You’re smaller,” Malavera replied.

A shrieking steam whistle announced the Dione’s arrival for a quick jump-start, and Malavera took care of the duty this time, hooking the cables up, cranking over the big V8, removing the cables, and making sure to close the Dione’s reverse-hinged hood properly, if a little heavily for Valentin’s taste. Then again, when he slammed the Bricksley’s hood, it became obvious he was trying to manage his strength.

As the Dione rushed over to the rails, Malavera put the truck in 2-High, first gear, and put the newly-installed clutch to work with a halfway-up-the-gauge clutch dump, spitting gravel everywhere as the truck roared up to speed.

On the Road

With wet cobblestones under the tires and the windshield wipers working overtime to keep the window clear, Malavera had his hands full driving the truck. The engine roared and the wheels shrieked, the truck fighting hard for grip between every gear change.

Things were going well, and they were making great time, until they reached the main fork in the road. North would take them toward Avenara, while South brought them toward Tapari. Malavera turned toward the South road, though was a little heavy-handed as they hit a wet patch. The tires, already tortured by 4600 miles of aggressive driving, with tread wearing thin, broke loose and caused the rear of the Bricksley to hydroplane. Malavera tried his best to save the truck, wrenching at the wheel and trying to steer through the skid, only for there to be a deafening crash as the rear of the bed met a tree, which sent the truck spinning hard off of the road. The engine had stalled, and the truck came to rest on all four wheels in a ditch.

“Kaylie of Shift Happens to all nearby racers within range, please be careful when approaching the southern fork in the road. There’s a nasty puddle there, and we’ve just crashed maybe 30 yards beyond it,” Kaylie said over the four different radios, just in case anyone was in range.

“Sorry,” Malavera said. “I tried to save it.”

“Come on, big guy. Let’s make sure nothing’s broken, then get it back on the road,” Kaylie replied, climbing out of the truck and landing in a mud puddle with a heavy splash. Malavera stepped out as well, avoiding the mud until Team Oil Crisis drifted around that corner and sprayed him with mud from their tires as he was checking over the damage he’d done to the bed.

“Fucking shit!” Malavera yelled, now covered in mud as he looked at the huge dent, the broken tail light housing, the rear bumper hanging by the passenger side mounts, the jammed tailgate, and the smashed fuel jugs pouring kerosene into the mangled bed, where it promptly drooled right back out between the tailgate seams.

“Malavera, relax. Accidents happen,” Kaylie said, watching as the Wayfarers breezed by in Chernobog, the big engine roaring. Likewise, Team Fallen Angels and Team Witchlight thundered past without even looking at the stalled Bricksley in the ditch.

On the other hand, Team Spy Kids saw an opportunity when they arrived to help someone out. After an explanation on why they needed a jump-start, Malavera hooked the two vehicles together and cranked over the 427ci V8, removed the cables, and gratefully accepted a tow out of the ditch. After his crash, he chose to follow the Spy Kids’ AST Elbrus instead of pushing the Bricksley hard, especially as he could tell the truck was not happy about being crashed like that.

“By the Moons, this thing’s gotten worse to drive,” Malavera grumbled. “Now it’s pulling to the left.”

“We’ll check it out in camp. Don’t worry about it, Mal, accidents happen,” Kaylie replied.

“Yeah, and it was an accident that killed someone in the Yamada, too. I don’t think I could live with myself if-”

“Mal, relax,” Kivenaal said, lightly rubbing one of Malavera’s shoulders. “Shit happens. You did the right thing. Remember the old pilot’s code?”

“Yeah. ‘Aviate, navigate, communicate.’ What about it?”

“The whole time we were crashing, you were trying to drive the truck. You never gave up on it, and that is why we’re still alive. You drove the truck until it stopped moving. As good as the other teams may be, a lot of people let go of the wheel after the first crash, accepting that it’s out of their hands now. You gripped that wheel hard and fought until the truck came to a stop,” Kivenaal replied.

“But I-”

“Kept us greasy side down and shiny side up,” Kivenaal interrupted, cutting Malavera off. “And before you try to argue that it was your fault, no, it wasn’t. We need new tires on the truck. Or to repair our old ones.”

“How do you-”

“-Always know what you’re going to say?” Kivenaal interrupted again, grinning. “You know why.”

Malavera shook his right head and sighed, the inside of his ears flushed pink for a brief moment. As Kavitz appeared ahead of them, he focused instead on finding a parking spot for their giant truck.

Kavitz Campsite, 3-and-42 Sun

The battered, damaged Bricksley rolled into the camp and parked right next to the old Guardhouse. “We’re going to have to take the guards up on using it for sleeping, our tents need to be washed off,” Kaylie said.

“I’ll wash a couple tents, just in case,” Kivenaal said. “Let’s face it, some of us might need to stay outside and keep watch, or might need the tents for-” Kivenaal stopped speaking as Kaylie grabbed his chin with her left hand and shut his mouth for him.

“Yeah, I get it, but no one else needs to hear whichever crude way you were going to describe Jayde and I sharing a tent.”

Kivenaal shook his head free, then said, “I was going to say ‘horizontal refreshment,’ not be crude at your expense. Plus, let’s be honest, Kayden snores like a chainsaw, so I might need to sleep in one of these."

Kaylie sighed and shook her head. “Hey, Rukari, feel like helping me change a couple of tires?” Kaylie asked.

“Tires, fine. No more brakes, though,” Rukari replied.

As Kaylie looked over the tires, she sighed. “How the hell have we burned through this much tread in less than 5,000 miles?” she grumbled. Then she remembered all of the various antics the team had been up to, from drivers going way-too-fast and making the tires scream, to Kivenaal drifting the truck and doing donuts in the camp, to Jayde learning how to drive, all of the various stages they’d gone through. “We really should have brought an extra set.”

“Do we not have a spare tire in the bed, and one under the truck?” Rukari asked.

“Fuck! Forgot these old American trucks hid their spares down below,” Kaylie said, suddenly seeming a lot more enthusiastic about a bit of routine maintenance. “Might need your strength to break the bolts loose, but we’ll manage.”

MrdjaNikolen · 19 August 2022 14:52

Team Mravolinski-Chitco

Bro, we straight up havent had good time

Title sums this stage from our perspective rather well.
Oh also worth a mention that Malavera would be included in this part; that part of conversation is approved by @Madrias.

Why we need to go?

Stage begun with activities of few members of other teams

He knew he had to wake the camp, but how to do it? He really hated the idea of going tent-to-tent, warning everyone individually. Then he saw the CB handle in the Bricksley, and the loudspeaker on the roof, and an idea came to mind immediately. He opened the door, studied the radio stack for a moment, then made some settings adjustments, enabling the Public Address system’s loudspeaker, setting volume to about halfway, and keying the microphone.

“Malavera of Shift Happens to all participating teams, we need to leave this campsite early. Please, get yourselves up, pack your supplies, and prepare to travel,” he said, figuring it was better to leave out why they were leaving until later, or on request, so as to avoid a panic.

“What the fuck is happening?”
“Malavera has spoken. We need to leave.”
“I dont see a problem. Is he drunk?”
“Im sure he would demonstrate his inner singer if that was case. Would also hear an apology from his teammate.”
“Makes sense, who will go and ask?”
“Me. You go and prepare stuff for going…if we actually need to go.”

Aydar promptly approached two-headed friend.
“Hello there, Malavera. We heard that we are supposed to leave. Can we know the reason?”

-What happened here?
-Good question. Chaos seems to be an answer.
-Hmm…i see some paw marks…
-Isnt me. I doubt its Aydar either.
-You sure?
-No. I do trust him…same goes for other potential culprits, our buddies from Shift Happens.
You never know tho.
-I see Aydar approaching two-headed member of that team.
Gonna ask around; kill two birds with one stone.
-Cool. Just so you know, name of TwoHead is Malavera.
-Im aware. Bye.

Chicota had ran towards duo.

As mentioned, Malavera has two heads, which turned to be very useful thing.
One of those was oriented towards Aydar, but other noticed Chicota obviously running toward them.
Therefore he decided to not answer immidiately, as he wanted to see what he wanted.

“Whats matter? If your tongue dried out, other head is just as relevant in answering.”

But there was no need as “matter” had reached them.
Chicota: Now, Aydar, have you happened to visit rear end of our truck during night?
-No, why?
-We had an intruder apparently. I found big paw mark on bedding, some claw marks and all of meat is gone.

With that, expected happened: eyes were turned on Malavera.
Malavera: Oh…you are suspecting us?

-Hmmm…yea. Rally is kinda barren with big non-human creatures. Any of you fit that description.

Malavera: Are you sure we would leave scratch marks? We do tend to be civilised.
Besides, im perfectly aware that we too could suspect Klimentol and Aydar for nightly visit to our truck…for about same reason.

This surprized Aydar, especially when introduced with piece of something that Malavera just so happened to carry
He sniffed, it smelled like meat…

Malavera: Im pretty sure, tho, that both of you would tend to open this bag in more civilised fashion too.
We used to have some stored meat…these pieces of bag are all whats left

-That smells like it was good meat.

Malavera: As much as it would be tempting to blame each other on this little raid, fact is neither of teams had done it.
Conversation was interesting tho and it neatly connects to reason why we need to leave.

-While we are on it, why?

Malavera: Some Dyre had visited us. This wasnt limited to our two teams either.
I got information from Connor in RK Series Racing, who observed those three culprits.

-Seems they were just hungry. Apart from those we actively fought against, they dont appear to be constantly hostile.

Malavera: They are curious beings.
However, as hosts of this event, we cant allow anything bad to happen to anyone if we can prevent it.
We cant wait for their curiosity to become hurtful to someone

Chicota: Not to mention, not everyone can defend themselves against them.

Malavera: Exactly. Therefore we are starting today a bit early. See you in Kavitz camp.

-Deal.

Cant exactly comment on quick preparations done before we hit the road, since that was just putting all the stuff back in car.
Update on source of mess was interesting, but immideately understood.

Why you need to go?

Anyway…uhhh…Mrdja is behind the wheel and it was nice drive.
Hot summer day blessed with light rain, straight roads, coolant going to overheat…

Wait…overheating coolant?

Well, after doing its job for 27 years kinda well, head gasket decided to quit being useful. Fair bit of coolant now gets in hot parts of engine, making noticeable that white smoke from exhaust.
After little skid caused by especially wet patch, engine stalled and Klimentol bumped his head, becoming awake.

He wasnt happy at seeing high coolant temperature which was now brought to attention of driver.
Combined with sweet smell causing sour feelings, it was advised that getting to camp shall be made slowly.

No surprize, this meant that we finished dead last by some margin.
Seeing that half of team is technically adept at repairing stuff, noone was worried…until pieces of head gasket were finally removed from their deathbed.

-This…is serious. Kinda scary too, seeing as we shall now patch that thing up.

VerBanka: We dont need to, i saw another such part in spares we have.

-Really?
-Really. (Had gone away) Here it is.
-Oh why thank you. Very useful thing. Pi?

Pi: You asked for me?

-Dont blow this up. We have both knowledge and spare. You are unlikely to have either…well, atleast for some time.

Team knew all-too-well how true those words happen to be. As being one that is going to use this car for very long period of time, Pi must be perfectly sure that everything kinda works ok.
As for person herself, its likely already decided to switch to something else as daily transport as soon as possible, otherwise risking being (and im quite literal here) stuck far away with no efficient means of calling backup…although Kontir may turn out to be best bet still.

Pi: Will have that in mind…hopefully it will be last big issue during rally.
-Maybe. Although this little event does prove to be good preparation for whats to come.

Good thing is that all three workers were able to share workload on engine.
Bad thing is they were tired afterwards.
Pi and VerBanka decided its perfect time to visit town in order to get something more to eat and drink.
Mrdja decided to stay at car too

Elizipeazie · 19 August 2022 23:51

RK Series Racing; Stage 14 Drive

OOC: once again in collab with @Madrias, as if it wasn’t common knowledge by that point lol

Sleep was cut short for the team, as Connor managed to spot a small group of Dyre milling about camp.
He immediately knew that he had to alert the others at camp and, in the process of turning around to head for his first logical choice, the Dyre almost immediately took note and booked it into the surrounding scenery. Still, Connor deemed it necessary to at the very least tell the others about what happened.
Connor approaches Constantin’s “tent”, discovering that Constantin was already somewhat awake.

“Good morning. We have unwanted visitors within the camp area. I advise leaving early to ensure safety.” Connor stated with zero consideration for what Constantin thought of it. Still, the wording was potent, in that Constantin immediately looked to be wide-awake.
“Who is in camp?” Constantin said as he fumbled his way out of his sleeping bag.
“I am not certain. In the darkness i only could make out shapes of creatures similar to those we encountered earlier. I shall inform team Shift Happens now.” Connor replies before he turns around to head for the Bricksley.

As he approached, he saw Malavera digging about the Bricksley’s bed investigating something.
“Good morning. I am here to report that we may have unwanted visitors in camp.” Connor explained, sternly, while keeping the details vague unless requested.

Malavera looked over with his right head at Connor, who had, in his opinion, been a little too cheery about delivering bad news. “Plenty of evidence of that in the truck,” Malavera said, holding up the shredded bag and motioning to the water cans on the roof. “Whatever it was, it was big, strong, and hungry, because it tore through this heavy burlap like it was tissue paper, broke the leather straps securing our water cans down, and left a big dent in the lid of our toolbox. Then left us a real mess to clean up.” Malavera hopped over the side of the truck bed, landing a little heavily on the ground in front of Connor to talk with him from a slightly-less towering position. “So, what do you know about the visitors?”

“Not a lot. I saw quadripedal creatures trundling about the campsite, similar to those we encountered a few days earlier. I turned around to alert Constantin and they immediately ran away into the surrounding vegetation.” Connor explained.
“You are the second person i am telling this, Constantin Schrant being the first.”, he added, unsure on if that information is even useful to Malavera.

“Oh, great. Those creatures. Thank you for informing me as quickly as you have,” Malavera said. “I’ll put out the word to the camp that we need to start packing up. I’m not going to mention that we had Dyre in our campsite over the speaker, but if any team asks, I’ll tell them. The last thing I want to do is create a panic and have people getting hurt by trying to leave in a hurry.”

Connor simply waits a little for any instruction from Malavera, before nodding and turning around to head back to the Dione.

While Connor was away, Constantin was up and faced with the task of getting the other two out of their dreamworlds.
Knowing that Valentin will need some time to get going proper, he ventured over to the tent which somehow was roomy enough for Valentin to sleep in, even if he did so diagonally for extra legroom.
Constantin cautiously made his way in and gave Valentin some initially timid slaps in an attempt to wake him up.
“Come on, Val, we need to go.” he said, progressively increasing the force as he kept trying.
It took much longer than what Constantin was comfortable with until Val finally was somewhat awake.
“We’re packing up early. Get out of bed, we need to go!”, Constantin repeated before retreating out of Valentin’s tent to wake up Tim.
“Please no Wolfes again…”, Valentin grumbled as he shuffled around to exit the tent himself.
Constantin then went for the Dione’s driver window, somewhat aggressively knocking against it.
Getting Tim awake was apparently much easier, as he was looking at Constantin almost immediately with a confused face.
“Get ready and free up the driver seat. We have visitors in camp and we need to go.”, Constantin repeated, prompting Tim to immediately follow orders as instructed, not only freeing up the driver’s seat, but the car as a whole since Valentin needed the space to maneuver himself into the car.
Constantin was hard at work tearing down both tents as soon as they were vacated, with Valentin hobbling over to the car in a mild sleep-deprived slumber.
On his way in, he bumps pretty much every single control lever on the fireman side as he attempts to get in quickly. The fact that his ankle doesn’t hurt nearly as much in doing so is chalked up to some sense of adrenaline muting the pain.
Still, once seated, Connor followed suit and immediately went about raising steam while Tim helped Constantin pack up tents and other equipment.
Their “pre-flight” checks are done with surprising accuracy and professionalism, despite Valentin’s mental capabilities having been dragged down by the rude awakening earlier.
Nevertheless, steam was raised and soon after, the team seated.

“Is Shift happens aw… oh wait, they are.”, Valentin says, looking ahead across camp and spotting most of them milling around their truck.
“Why? We need to go!” Tim inquires, not wanting to face whatever visitor is lurking.
“Their, nay… our dead battery in their car won’t get the V8 going. They’re gonna need that jump start.” Valentin calls out in an unusual stroke of bravery as he carefully rolls across camp to stop directly ahead of the Bricksley, sideways.

Valentin then pulls the hood release latch, followed by a small blip of the whistle to notify them that Robert is ready for electrical donation.

Kaylie and Jayde were busy collapsing tents and bundling them up while Kayden prepared the radio console for his sister, Kivenaal gathered up their loose camp supplies, and Malavera dealt with answering questions from other teams. Not long after the truck was packed and the team was assigning people to seats for the purposes of making Malavera’s life easier behind the wheel, Valentin arrived with a swift shriek of the whistle to get their attention.

“I’ll get it,” Malavera said, jumping out of the driver’s seat, yanking the hood release on the way, then grabbing the jumper cables out of the truck bed. He shoved the hood up on the Bricksley, fumbled with the Dione’s reverse-hinged hood for a moment, clipped the jumper clamps onto the Bricksley’s battery, then to the battery in Robert. He quickly stood on the running board with the parking brake engaged, the truck in neutral, and planted his right foot into the clutch pedal as he cranked the V8 over before disconnecting the cables from each car, then putting the cables away.

Malavera put one of his large hands on the Dione’s hood and closed it firmly, then rushed back over to the Bricksley, grabbing the hood with both hands and bringing it down with significantly more force and an audible slam. He climbed back into the truck, honked the horn in thanks, slammed the driver’s door, nearly ripped the seatbelt when it locked up on him, and finally managed to get buckled in and ready to move.

The occupants of the Dione just watched the jump-start unfold as Malavera went about connecting the cables and starting the Bricksley.
As he firmly closed the hood of the Anhultz, Valentin flinched a little, which turned into an audible sigh as soo as he saw what he did with the Bricksley’s hood.
Another small blip of the whistle announced their departure, with them eagerly heading towards where they would transition onto the longitude mainline.

Once there, the car was roughly aligned with the rails before Constantin got out to start cranking.
Only having done a couple turns, he was stopped by Valentin:
“We need to get clearance from the signalman. Can you please notify them that we are already here and departing early?”, Valentin asked, followed by Constantin confirming the request with a quick “Sure” as he walks off towards the nearest signal box.
“Who’s doing the cranking then? Me?” Tim inquired, watching Constantin disappear into the distance.
“If you want to get out of here quickly, then yes… i’m stuck in here because crutches and Connor needs to tend to the boiler.”, Valentin replied, not really wanting to force him directly.
Tim just sighs and then gets out to put in some of his first work ever in helping the railroad operations beyond having supplied the base vehicle.
“Which way to i turn?”, Tim asks looking at the crank handle.
“Counter-clockwise, as if loosening a bolt.”, Val replied and immediately could see Tim making progress in cranking.
While the work proved tedious and repetitive, it wasn’t as physically taxing as both Valentin and Tim expected, courtesy of the 3 to 1 crank reduction.
At some point, Constantin returned with one end of Robert just about in the air.
“Should be good soon with that signal there.” Constantin begins, pointing at a semaphore signal a few hundred feet down the siding. “They apparently are very keen on giving us right of way with that ‘class 1’ train thing…”, he continues with finger quotes, while having little idea on what that actually meant.
Constantin got around to the back to start cranking there while Tim finished up front.
Not soon after, both ends were up and the drive belt moved over to enable power to the rails.
The two remaining team members got back into the car and they went towards their next campsite, passing the already-“clear” signal that Constantin pointed towards earlier.

“Well at least we’re out of camp now… Don’t want to know who or what those visitors wanted…” Valentin muttered as he gave Robert it’s all.
“Yeah… you don’t.” Constantin said before Connor could blurt out his discovery.

With that, the car went silent for most of the trip as a sense of uneasiness crept deeper and deeper into the ambiance within.

to be continued

Madrias · 27 August 2022 03:06

Team Shift Happens

and

Team RK Series Racing; Stage 14 Camp

(Thank you to @Elizipeazie for another collab!)

Kavitz Campsite, 3-and-60 Sun

Kayden looked over at his sister and Rukari as they changed out the two rear tires, working together with only mild arguing going on regarding who was at fault for the sockets all being mixed up again. “Hey, I’m going to go check on Valentin, make sure everything is going well for him,” Kayden said.

“No problem,” Kaylie said. “If you need any of us, just ask for our help,” she added.

Kayden nodded, then said, “If he didn’t scare Valentin so much, I’d take Jayde with me, but, one, I have to follow the expectations of doctor-and-patient privacy, and two, Jayde’s expertise and mine don’t overlap at all.”

Kaylie laughed. “You and him share a lot in common. Both of you are good listeners, and both of you have an interest in what makes people tick. Take him with you if you want.”

Kayden looked over at Jayde, who was currently sitting on one of the many logs laying around and meditating, then said, “I’ll grab him if I need his help.” He then wandered over to the Dione, seeing Valentin still sitting in the driver’s seat.

After a moment of seeing Valentin was pretty much not responding, Kayden politely knocked on the window. “You okay, Val? Came to check on you, see if the nanites were helping. Also, given the look on your face, you need someone to talk to, someone who can and will listen. Someone you can trust. I understand if you’d rather not talk with me, I get that. I know Kaylie and Jayde are also good listeners, though Kaylie’s hands are covered in grease again and, well, I know Jayde can be a bit intimidating.”

The trip has been spent in an almost depressing silence, though at least without any delays.
Since then, nobody dared to talk to Valentin in fear of making whatever state he was in worse, instead simply going about the usual business of setting up camp and getting lunch going.
Time creeps along at a snails pace, sunken deep into some seemingly meaningless thoughts until Kayden approached the car, knocking onto the window, thus visibly startling Valentin as he scrambles a bit to get the window rolled down.

“Huh?”, he mutters, confused and not really having understood most of what Kayden said, though Kayden’s assumption regarding Valentin’s mental state was very much correct and still is.

“I came over here originally,” Kayden said, looking at Valentin, “to check on your ankle and whether you were making any progress. However, I think that might need to take a back-seat to whatever has been bothering you this much. If you need someone to talk to, I’m here for you. If you’d rather be part of a group, well… I could get Kaylie and Jayde to listen with me. Honestly, Kivenaal’s the better one for this sort of thing, but… He’s trying to calm down Malavera after Mal crashed the truck.”

He looked over the seats in the Dione, then said, “I don’t suppose you’d prefer to sit out on one of these log benches? I mean, I can try to fit in there, but that’d just make us both uncomfortable.”

Instead of replying by speech, Valentin just sighs and folds the seatback flat, starting the intricate egress procedure. A moment later, the rear right passenger door opens, albeit only a little at first.
Still, it causes both Constantin and Tim to turn around from behind the car.

“All good?”, Tim asks, watching a feeble arm push the door open further and getting no immediate response once again.
Eventually, Valentin makes his way out of the car without aid from Constantin, who outright wasn’t fast enough to get up and help Valentin.
Once out, Valentin reaches in for the Crutches, after which he rises to full height, looking at Kayden with a face that can be described as a demoralized mess, ready to wander over to wherever Kayden deems it secluded and safe.

Kayden nodded as Valentin joined him, glad that Valentin was at least willing to seek some help in that moment. “Heard from the guards that there’s a pond between our campground and the town of Kavitz. It’s about halfway between each. Should be a good, quiet spot, out of the way, but safe enough as well. We’re within the outer wall,” Kayden said.

As the two of them walked over to the pond, Kayden took a moment to evaluate his impressions of Valentin. He could tell he was stressed, that was obvious. Demoralized or depressed was the next dominant emotion, considering his withdrawal from the rest of his team and general silence. Scared was also a possibility, though he felt it wasn’t because of him, but the events going on around him.

There, by the pond, they found a few proper benches made out of sturdy oak, not the crude logs sitting around the camp. Likewise, it was somewhat obvious by the leaf clutter on the path that it didn’t see a lot of foot traffic, thereby it was at least out of the way, with a small hill in between them and the camp to keep prying eyes at bay.

“Well, at least I know this much, whatever is on your mind is serious, because when someone pulls back from teammates and allies, it’s usually not a good thing. Let’s pick a bench and I’ll listen for a while. Sometimes we just need someone willing to listen.”

Valentin simply follows along quietly, periodically checking the immediate surroundings in hopes of not being swarmed by unsuspecting citizens again.
Once they arrive, Valentin takes a seat and tries to make himself at least somewhat comfortable on the wooden bench, oblivious to the fact that they were being watched from afar by a pair of women halfway across the pond.

At this point, Valentin starts to think hard about how to start, stalling his mind in the attempt of finding suitable words.
“I didn’t expect this…”, he eventually blurts out, insecure about his wording.
“I did not expect this at all…”
The general area returns to silence for a while, barring ambient noise from the surrounding bits of nature.
“Things just keep going from bad to worse and then some…”, he mentions eventually, anxiously fiddling about with both hands in an attempt to bleed off some of the stress.

Kayden nodded. “I don’t really think that any of us really expected this,” Kayden admitted. “It would be nice to make it to the end without any more fighting,” he added. “I may be a soldier, but I hate fighting. No choice for me, though. Born into it.”

As he looked over to Valentin, Kayden thought about the situation a bit more, then fumbled in one of his pockets until he pulled out a meal bar, then pulled his canteen off of the sling around his shoulder. “I know you’re a late riser, so you probably haven’t eaten yet. It’s not much, but… It should keep you going long enough to make it to lunch. I’ll ask Rukari to put a spare plate out for you. I think he’s planning some sort of beef and noodle dish,” Kayden said, handing the vacuum-packaged bar and the canteen to Valentin. “And before you mention you don’t want to inconvenience anyone, Rukari always makes too much and we’re getting low on containers to store food in for lunch on the road.”

Valentin looks at the offered food and drink for a moment before nodding a little and grabbing both. The canteen is temporarily set down between the two as he inspects the packaging of the bar. It turns out that he actually is somewhat familiar with it due to it being a cycling-oriented energy bar meant for mid-ride energy top-ups, though he wasn’t all that fond of them due to how difficult they are to chew.
Still, some food beats none at all, and not wanting to be impolite on top of already taking up Kayden’s time, he goes about unwrapping it, followed by a somewhat cautious bite taken out of it.

It’s taste wasn’t great, not even good, but the vague hints of berry flavor were enough to cover the taste of condensed energy and minerals and such.
Each bite is followed by what seems like unnecessary amounts of chewing and a generous swig of water out of the provided canteen.
With a little less than half the bar remaining, he “re-wraps” it again to avoid it staining anything and places both it and the canteen back into the bench between them.
Just about when the canteen makes contact with the bench, the two women, apparently closer to being teenage girls than women, approach Kayden and Valentin, furiously giggling and chuckling as they get closer.

“Hiiiiiii! I’m Mia! I’m Tia! We’re like your biggest fans. CHOO CHOO!”, the two chant in unison, excitedly hopping about the place while intently staring down Valentin.
In turn, Valentin looks at them with a face that is about as devoid of emotion as Connor’s face usually is, unsure about how to handle two children and their interests.

Kayden sighed. This was exactly the worst of the peaceful scenarios that he could have imagined happening, with about the only thing more disruptive being a Dyre deciding Valentin needed a hug. He reached into his pocket and pulled Nova out, then said, “Kayden to the Shift Happens crew, I could use Rukari’s help here. We have trouble.”

Rukari’s voice came back loud and clear. “Ne kasi, I will be there in… Half minute.”

Someone else’s voice, similar to Rukari’s voice, added in, “I’ll help,” just before Rukari let go of the button.

Kayden sighed. “Don’t come barreling in here armed to the teeth, it’s a pair of teenagers who probably don’t know any better.”

“Shall I wear my ass-kicking boots, or are we not expecting a fight?” the other voice asked.

“Kivenaal, they’re teenage girls bothering Valentin. I doubt there’s a need for an “ass-kicking” in the first place.”

Kayden looked over to the two girls, then said, “Right. I’ve just called in Valentin’s security team. They’ll be here in a couple of minutes to remove you from the area.”

Sure enough, on the same road that Kayden and Valentin had walked to get here, Kivenaal and Rukari arrived, announced mostly by Kivenaal’s cowboy boots on the cobblestone road. Calmly, they walked toward the two women, where Rukari spoke up with, “The two of you need to leave.”

The two girls, realizing Valentin did actually have security, decided to walk away, looking lightly disappointed that they weren’t getting what they wanted today.

Kivenaal and Rukari, on the other hand, turned to face Valentin, both giving him light smiles. “We have your back, Valentin,” Kivenaal said.

Rukari did a much milder version of a Valraadi salute to Valentin before adding, “If you need help, just ask. I will patrol the pond, keep people away.”

“Just make sure that if you overhear anything, keep it to yourself, Rukari,” Kayden said.

“To my grave,” Rukari replied, before practically disappearing into the shadows of the tree line.

Kivenaal, on the other hand, looked to Valentin, then said, “Well, unless the two of you need me for anything, I’ve got a two headed wolf back in camp who still needs a lot of calming down.” After a few seconds, Kivenaal gave a light shrug, then took off at a full run in his cowboy boots, stopping only momentarily to grab his hat when it escaped from his head.

As Kayden called for reinforcements, Valentin’s deadpan face changed to confusion as he did not know what exactly was to come.
Failing to come up with a meaningful response, he simply waited for the situation to unfold in minimal hopes of it not going south like almost everything has up to this point.
His eyes just go back and forth between the girls and Kayden, as he wasn’t aware of the self-contracted “security team” he now apparently had.
As Kivenaal and Rukari approached, made blatantly obvious by Kivenaal’s cowboy boots, he looked at them, somewhat dumbfounded as if to say “you are my security now?”.
Needless to say, their work was effective in that the group found themselves alone again. Even Rukari went “missing” as quickly as he appeared, now securing the perimeter as if Valentin was the President.

“Uhm… no?”, Valentin replied, watching him take off and back towards where he came from.
“Prime example of misery, right here…”, Valentin adds after a moment of contemplation, eventually deciding to ‘open the floodgates’.
“You start as a random chuck trying to get a fun vacation in and you end up being a holy figure because some asshat mislabeled the schedule…”

Kayden nodded as Valentin mentioned that he’d started as just someone random, and thanks to someone mislabeling the schedule, became one of the most famous people in Crugandr. “I can’t speak from experience on that, but, I’ll tell you to bring that up with Kivenaal later. You and him have a lot in common on that. And the way you said it, well, you nailed it for him. Not because of a mislabeling of schedule, either, there’s nothing he could do to change that. But, the good thing about speed records, intentional or otherwise, is someone always comes along to beat it. And, well, there’s truth in the statement that no one ever remembers who was second,” Kayden mentioned.

“People don’t remember who is currently second. But they will remember someone if they are the first to break a milestone.”, Valentin countered. After all, Robert is the first, and to date only, land vehicle to travel at speeds greater than 200kph.
“They also will remember how it came to be, with the hackjob conversion of our… well, my car and all that. Underdog stories are popular. It’s just a whole different can of worms if the people don’t pull out one of three height-related jokes for once and you suddenly feel like PewDiePie.” he added, leaning forwards and resting his chin on both hands, elbows in turn placed on either thigh.

Kayden nodded, though had a lightly puzzled look on his face as Valentin mentioned PewDiePie. “This… Might sound a bit stupid, but… Who or what is PewDiePie?” Kayden asked, sounding lightly embarrassed.

“He’s just about the most popular Swede on earth with more than 100 million YouTube subscribers… And i am now the most popular Swede on whatever this place is…”, Valentin replied.
The thought of not everyone targeting him as the celebrity does help a little, though the commotion created at the party and earlier stages up until now is still lingering strong. Especially with how instantly recognizable Valentin is due to his height and appearance.
He falls pack into the bench, forgetting about it’s wooden nature, which was promptly avenged by back pain, followed by a mild groan and him stretching to ease it.

Kayden gave a nod of understanding, though stayed quiet until Valentin forcibly remembered that the bench was made from wood and not designed for people their size. “If I did that, I’d go right over the back of the damn thing,” Kayden said.

“No, you’d break the back of the bench first and then fall off of it,” Nova quipped. “And sorry, I know, I shouldn’t eavesdrop, but when someone spouts false information like Kayden did, I can’t help myself. At least, I can’t help myself when it’s at Kayden’s expense.”

Kayden groaned and shook his head. “Some days, she gives me a headache,” he said.

Valentin was not 100% sure what to think of Nova in this moment.
Her snarky comments did seem to strike Val’s rather limited range of humor rather well, the secluded nature of the pond was broken once again.

“I’d also get headaches if Bixby were to insult me at least twice a day…”, Valentin replied.
“Still… i did not sign up for the shotgun relationship of a survival camp, a train ride in a seat the size of Lufthansa’s Economy Class and an iteration of late-game Celebrity Sim 2022…”

“To be fair, I don’t really think any of us signed up for that,” Kayden replied. “Granted, in my opinion, you’re one of the toughest teams out there. Not from a physical standpoint, but, there’s a certain determination behind you that pushes forward, no matter what has happened so far. Let’s face it, how many other teams would have thrown in the towel when the distributor failed and left you without a running engine? How many other teams have learned everything there is to know about a foreign country’s railroad network just to escape from the terrible roads? Yes, it brought chaos because someone called it in as a record run instead of accepting you were doing a shakedown, but on the other hand, this whole time, you’ve avoided the worst of the roads.”

Kayden sighed, then said, “Honestly, I wish we’d had the same guts and grim determination to make the same kind of decision. Not that I’d want a steam engine in that brick of a truck, mind, but to get off of the roads and onto something smooth for once would be real nice. Kaylie mentioned her ride and, well, as she put it, “It’s amazingly smooth, if a little hot and loud at times, but better than getting one’s spine realigned by a road crater.” And believe me, we know road craters.”

“Truth be told, i don’t want to ruin the fun for Tim and Constantin. As it goes, i haven’t really gotten much out of this run for myself, which sounds egocentric and maybe is. And with that ship having sailed, i don’t want to be killing it for the others.” Valentin spoke, his mood not exactly happy, but not full on demoralized either.

“I think i may be repeating myself a this point, but necessity is the mother of invention. I already am crammed into a Little Tikes car if i’m going by feel. Every single pothole risks obliterating my neck on the headliner above and i’d rather survive the trip. And nobody’s stopping you from putting some steel plate wheels on there and dish them to standard gauge.” Valentin explained, somewhat curling up to visualize how little space there is for his massive 7’3" frame, complete with holding an imaginary steering wheel.

“As per that distributor, i just went for the next best thing. The one we had was FUBAR’d, nobody had suitable spares and steam is tried and true, albeit finnicky tech.”, he added, unfurling himself into a low-slung, half-lying position on the bench.

Kayden nodded. "We… Actually somewhat understand the “altitude problem,” Kayden said. “We drove a Sinistra Traville across the United States once, with the seat rails flipped around and the driver’s seat basically smashed into the rear bench just so I could fit in there and drive. The drive was fun, but we vowed to get a bigger car if we ever did it again.”

“As for fitting steel wheels onto our truck, sure, we could technically do that. But we don’t have anyone with railroading knowledge in our team. I probably understand the most, unless Malavera studied it at all, but what I know probably doesn’t apply around here,” Kayden admitted. “And it’s not like we can just throw a set of wheels on it and couple ourselves to a locomotive. We don’t have one of those.”

Valentin pondered for a while and eventually had an idea, which, if successful, would once again prove his worth in the art of Improvise, Adapt, Overcome.

“Well you don’t, but i do.”, Valentin replied. “Do you have a towing bar rated for your car’s weight? If so, Robert could act as the locomotive.”

“We should. I stored it in the small space under our toolbox to keep it from getting lost… Shit. I think I told Rukari we had tow chains when we had a tow bar instead,” Kayden said.

“In which case, we could meet up at some steamworks, have some minor alterations done to both cars and run as a consist along the rails.” Valentin suggested, his spirits steadily rising above ‘piss-poor’.

“That could be a good idea, I think. It’s… Well, it’s a big favor to ask, and I shouldn’t be making decisions like that for the whole team, but something like that would be nice, even if getting it set up is a pain in the tail. Let’s face it, those roads are brutal even to us. I keep hitting my head on that damnable radio console, and it’s way, way worse when Kivenaal’s driving on dirt. I can’t figure out how the hell Jayde sits in the back seat without complaining,” Kayden admitted.

“Anyway, the original reason I came over to talk with you was to see how your ankle was doing, but I could see in that moment that you needed a friend first, and a physician second.”

“Won’t force you, though the offer is there…”, Val commented, before taking a look down at his left foot. It had definitely improved since the Nanites started their work within, though he didn’t dare try it yet for fear of reverting some of that process.

“I gotta say, i haven’t dared to try yet. The latent pain is mostly gone, but i have no clue how it does under load… those crutches are just too practical to take chances.”, Valentin admitted.

“To be honest, I can’t blame you. A good, well fitting set of crutches instead of the crap they have on Earth that runs out of adjustment range a few inches too short. Better to trust in them than to risk a set-back, and I understand that. If the crutches are working for you and there’s little to no pain, I’d say to keep using them until you feel comfortable taking that chance,” Kayden said.

“Well… i didn’t try because i don’t know how exactly the nanite-boosted healing process pans out… they might just as well be dulling the pain while they work to not annoy their biological neighbor cells with construction noise or something. What do i know? I’ve had them for all of four three days.” Valentin rambled, grabbing the crutches from the end of the bench and moving them between his legs.

Kayden chuckled. “I can only speak from my own experiences on that, and my experiences would be different than yours. However, I’ve found that they only dull the pain, they never completely wipe it out. Well… Not in normal mode, anyway. Combat mode is different, and really not something I’d ever recommend. Some of the stupidest injuries I’ve gotten were in that mode because, well, you don’t feel pain. At all. I suppose it’s great if you’re getting shot at, but not so great when it’s the second time you’ve taken a spill from the cat-walk and landed on the same damn table, you can see it’s worse than the last time, but because you don’t feel the pain, you try to walk to a safer location with a broken leg. Normal mode… You certainly feel it,” Kayden replied.

“Sound like a nightmare, though that doesn’t really help, to be honest. Right now i don’t feel it hurting or anything. But then again, it’s unladen…”, Valentin pondered, carefully articulating the joint in question to see how mobile it is. His face very much read ‘uncertainty’, as he had very little clue on how safe it would be to load.

“Given the time that has passed, I’d guess that if they’re not completely done, they’re close. My advice, let it rest until tomorrow morning, see how it feels then. If there’s any hints of pain, even slightly, use the crutches and let it finish healing,” Kayden said. “I wish I could give you a better timeframe, but as the first human to have them, well… You’re setting the baseline.”

“Crutches it is. At least they are useable for once…”, Valentin replied without much in the way of a second thought. After all, Kayden did know how the nanites work. With that solved, Valentin went for the last third of the energy bar, both because he was in a rather deep caloric deficit and in hopes of it somehow helping healing speed. What followed was another generous swig of the canteen to flush the condensed mass down proper.

“Well… normally i’d hop onto my bike and scrub some kilometers, but that obviously isn’t a thing here… Lack of bike and ankle and all…”, Valentin noted, though didn’t seem too upset with how Kayden made for an effective safety valve to mentally recover a bit.

“Gotta genuinely thank you here…”, he added after a moment of silence.

“Friends are there for you when things are good. A good friend is there for you when you need them the most,” Kayden replied, smiling. “When I came over to check on your ankle, especially because you were still in the car, I was worried you might have had a major physical setback. When it became obvious that you needed to get a few things off of your chest, well… At that point anyone could do it if they knew how to listen. Just so few people know how to do that these days. I had plenty of free time, and even if I was busy, well, I’d make time to help a friend in need.”

When it was obvious that Valentin wished to stay for a while and enjoy the relative peace of the little pond, and ride out his slightly-improved spirits, Kayden wandered back over to the camp, informing Constantin on the way that, “Valentin and I have been talking for a little while. He should be in at least a little better spirit when he returns here, at least for the time being.”

Kayden returned to the Bricksley, where Kaylie had gotten out a big hammer and was currently trying to bash the driver’s rear fender up and out of the way of the tire. “So, what’s going on?”

“Well,” Kaylie said, stopping the hammer time for a moment, “We’ve ripped one of the bed mounts off of the frame, and that big ass dent we got is threatening our tire with sharpened bits of sheet metal if we hit a bump, so I’m trying to bash this fender back so when Kivenaal eventually takes the wheel and decides to drive at Mach 5 through the dirt, we don’t have a rear tire blowout send us into a nasty spin.”

Kayden nodded. “Sensible.”

“How’d it go with Val? Heard you had a spot of trouble out there,” Kaylie replied.

“Two teenage girls thinking that Valentin was in the mood to “play,” if you get my drift. Rukari and Kivenaal make for a good security team in a pinch. Even when they’re not being intimidating, they’re still quite intense. Rukari’s keeping Valentin under guard by sticking to the tree line while Valentin gets some time to himself out there. How’s Malavera doing?”

“Still upset with himself, but doing better. Kivenaal’s gotten through to him,” Kaylie replied. When it was obvious that Kayden had nothing more to say, Kaylie picked up the hammer and returned to beating on the fender.

Madrias · 27 August 2022 03:07

Kayden went back to the others, leaving Valentin (and Rukari) at the pond for the time being. He simply watched the bits of nature do their things, the minimal rainfall not bothering him at all at this point.

Back at the Dione, Kayden spoke to Constantin about how he and Val have been in talks.
“Well thank you. I’d say that we all knew that something was off with Val, but i am no psychiatrist, nor do i know him all that well.”, Constantin replied, respectfully nodding as Kayden went around and back to the Bricksley.

A good while later, Valentin decides that he can return to the others, picking up his crutches and soon heading over to the others at the Dione, as it’s not quite lunchtime yet.
Both Tim and Constantin as well as Connor could tell that Valentin was visibly more refreshed, albeit wet from the rain.
“Back from the land of the dead?”, Tim remarked, half jokingly.
“I guess… venting steam is not easy if you don’t know anyone all that well and your usual methods don’t apply…”, Valentin countered.
That topic was left at that and quickly diverted to more light-hearted talks and the previously established method of pass-time that is card games and similar stuff.

Once Valentin had returned to the others, Rukari also returned to camp a few minutes later, walking over to the Bricksley and getting some supplies ready for making the mid-day meal.

Soon, the smell of cooking beef and pasta wafted across the camp as Rukari’s cast-iron soup pot bubbled with a full load of water and noodles, and his cast-iron frying pan seared small pieces of good beef to add to the pasta later. Sitting across from Rukari was Kivenaal, busy making up a batch of beef gravy with mild spices, as well as a second pot with rice and mixed vegetables for a good solid side dish, and an optional pot set off to the side with a lid on it, mostly intended for him.

Not long after, Rukari drained the pasta water from one pot to another with a strainer, adding the cubes of beef to it and mixing them throughout the pot of piping-hot noodles.

Kayden wandered over and mentioned to Val, Constantin, and Tim, “If you’re hungry, we have lunch ready. Beef cubes and noodles in gravy, with rice and vegetables on the side, or, if you ask Kivenaal, he’ll turn that beef cubes and noodles into a rudimentary Beef Stroganoff instead. But I don’t know how much of that he’s making, to be honest. He considers it a bit of a delicacy.”

“Lucky for us that you say this, actually. The gas cooker we have got wet in the rain and won’t fire…”, Tim remarked, looking at the other two in search for their reactions.
“Cannot go wrong with Beef and Pasta, right?”, Constantin added, with Valentin simply smiling, almost grinning at the thought of another generous helping of proven pasta.

Kayden chuckled. “True. Pasta is a universal and versatile dish, and it’s fairly hard to go wrong with adding beef to it,” Kayden said.

He led the crew over to the campfire, where Kaylie started passing around deep-dished plates that, in a pinch, could double as bowls. Sure enough, she had an extra three prepared, as well as forks for the additional people at the “table” today.

“Dig in, take what you want,” Rukari said, handing Valentin the scoop to get noodles and beef out of the pot. “Gravy is in that pot there, Kivenaal’s got the sauce if you’d rather make Beef Stroganoff,” he added, motioning to each pot as he mentioned it. “There’s some rice with vegetables over here, provided Kayden’s willing to leave the rest of us some,” Rukari added, giving a light quip to Kayden who had taken two rather large scoops out of the pot and put them on his plate.

“Sorry. Just a bit hungry today,” Kayden admitted.

Not long after the three took their respective seats, a stack of plates made a lap around the campfire, leaving a plate at each person present, followed up by a bundle of forks to go along with the plates.
Valentin did not wait long and started with a rather cautiously sized portion of the ordinary Pasta and Gravy combo, as getting a second helping later on was a possibility. Still, it garnered some curious looks from the other two as they both were aware of how little Val ate since the party happened ‘for him’.

With him fed, the scoop went around the fire similarly to how the plates did earlier, Constantin being next in line, who went substantially more generous than Valentin, though probably still rather small by the standards of the Shift Happens members.

Tim, being the third, ended up marginally larger than Valentin in portion size, though he was the only one to choose Beef Stroganoff over the Gravy.
None of the three went for the side-dish, however, as a single plate wasn’t sufficient for both dishes at once.

While both Schrants waited patiently until everyone had their respective plates filled, Tim dug right in, which in turn had both Valentin and Constantin look at Tim in a somewhat serious look.
“Phwat?”, he ‘spoke’, his mouth still full of pasta.
“Basic table… well… campfire manners are a foreign concept to you, it seems.”. Constantin commented in annoyance, followed by Valentin nodding in approval.
This didn’t really phase Tim for all that long, though, because the pasta was just that good that he couldn’t stop himself anymore.

Kaylie just shook her head lightly as Tim immediately stuffed his face while the others were busy adding scoops of food to their plate. She looked over as there was a bit of a clatter and crash, courtesy of Malavera struggling with the pasta scoop and managing to slam his plate into the top of the cast iron pot. “Take it easy, Mal. Don’t have to be in a rush, there’s plenty here for all of us,” Kaylie said.

“Dropped the scoop into the pot,” Malavera grumbled, though sat down with his plate of noodles and beef, choosing to not add any gravy, but instead getting a good scoop from Kivenaal to make Beef Stroganoff out of his meal.

Kaylie chuckled, then added a scoop to her plate, a bit of gravy, and then added the side dish despite the plates being just small enough to guarantee she was mixing the two meals.

Rukari and Jayde just went for beef, noodles, and gravy, though Jayde had easily the largest amount on his plate until Kivenaal loaded his plate with Beef Stroganoff.

Despite that, there was clearly enough left in both the side-dish pot and the noodle pot for several people to have seconds.

Once everyone had gotten their plate filled, the meal began properly, other than Kayden cursing a bit as the rice was still seriously hot in the side dish, managing to torch his tongue.

At first, little talking was coming from the three guests at the table, each more or less to themselves genuinely enjoying the provided meal.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Valentin had something to say to Constantin and Tim specifically.

“Right… haven’t told you two yet. We’ve been toying about with the idea of expanding Robert into an actual train, adding their Bricksley to the consist. I’m just asking if you are okay with that.”, Valentin inquired, pointing at the truck in question with the fork.
The other two looked at each other in confusion, trying to piece together why the idea came about to begin with.
“If help is needed, it shall be provided.”, Constantin answers eventually.
“I don’t see why not…”, Tim adds, though still puzzled about how exactly this is supposed to work in practice.

After that, Valentin nodded, turned to face Kayden briefly before topping up his near-empty plate with another serving.

Kayden nodded, then mentioned to the others, “I mentioned that to Kaylie, who agreed that it sounded like a good idea, but we need the rest of you to weigh in on it.”

Kivenaal shrugged. “I don’t mind driving, but, some of these roads are a little brutal sometimes. Could be nice to run the rails for a stage.”

“I am so, so sick of smacking both of my heads on the radio console, or nearly losing my lunch because someone jumped the truck on a dirt road,” Malavera added. “My vote is in, 100%, if we can get on the rails for a stage or two, that’s perfect.”

Rukari looked puzzled at first, then asked, “How would we do this?”

“There’s a tow-bar under the toolbox. Sorry, I think I said we had tow chains, so… My bad on that bit of chaos,” Kayden answered.

“Ah. We link front bumper of our truck to rear bumper of their car? Just need wheels, then,” Rukari said. “It is a good plan.”

“I think Valentin and I can relate to not really fitting in our respective seats all that well,” Jayde said. “Bumps hurt. Smacking my head into the ceiling isn’t fun, neither is hitting my face on the box in the middle of the truck. And while I can drive, well… I still don’t prefer doing so. I’ll agree on being towed.”

Kaylie looked over at the truck, then admitted, “It’d save me a hell of a lot of maintenance. These guys do a great job of tearing up the truck. Spent the better part of an hour beating a fender out of the way.”

“Sorry, Kaylie,” Malavera said.

“Accidents happen, Mal. Bald tires and puddles on a tree lined road, it’s a bad mix. You kept the damage to a minimum,” Kaylie replied.

“Val not fitting? The rear bench is even worse with anyone ahead of you!”, Constantin protested, being only three inches shorter than Valentin and substantially bulkier to boot.
“You don’t have to shuffle across three seats to get in and out of the car.”, Valentin countered.
“He wins.” Tim declared while pointing at Valentin, thus breaking up the small dispute between the two.

“Well some modifications need to be done on either vehicle. Yours only really needs appropriate steel wheels. If Robert needs a second tow hook fitted depends on how long that tow bar of yours is. Getting a spare drive belt is a goo idea regardless, though. Somehow it held up until now…”, Valentin explained shortly after inbetween forkfuls of pasta.
“I have location info on pretty much every Steamworks along the longitude ever since they gave me the track map for it.”, he added.

Kayden nodded. “We’ll dig the bar out after we’re done, see if it’s long enough. As you said, appropriate wheels are pretty much the only thing we need. Swapping them on might be a pain, but we have Malavera to help with that,” Kayden said.

“Hey! Just because I can lift the front of that truck doesn’t mean I want to do that twice a day,” Malavera responded.

“If we rail up, who’s saying we have to come off the tracks any time soon?” Kaylie replied. “Sure, we’d like to run the last stage under our own power, but… Let’s be honest, these roads are getting meaner as we go along.”

“So, what are you thinking?” Kivenaal asked. “Because, I’ll be perfectly honest, I want to drive the next stage. It’s mostly dirt, so I’ll have a bit of fun. Hell, there’s a bit of road running right on the other side of the fence next to the tracks, so, with some luck, we might be able to run alongside the Dione for a few brief seconds.”

“You are a damn twin-tailed menace sometimes,” Malavera said, though had a smirk on one of his faces. “100 miles per hour on dirt? You have to be joking.”

“I’ve done it before, I’ll do it again!” Kivenaal replied, chuckling.

“Just try not to jump the truck, we don’t need any more dents in the roof,” Kaylie quipped.

“Right, all four wheels on the ground when possible. Got it,” Kivenaal said.

“In that case, i’ll see about getting a re-route to whatever available steamworks going. I’ll keep you posted on where that will be at the start of tomorrow’s leg. The radio should still have enough range there, assuming you don’t gun out out of camp as soon as your engine is running. Also, if you are that keen on that ‘own power’ thing, you can push us as well, especially in case the belt goes tits up.”, Valentin explained, unaware of what is to come soon.

“Val just doesn’t have the balls to keep up on the roads.”, Tim joked, which was promptly met with a smack to the shoulder by Valentin, made easy by his immense wingspan.
“No i don’t and you know that… 160k’s on rails is far easier to deal with than a very overladen wagon on shit tires doing the same speed on shit roads with a shit seat-fit to boot.”, he countered afterwards, silencing Tim.

After that, they returned to the pasta, with Tim going for a serving of rice, Constantin joining Tim and Valentin effectively mimicking a bottomless barrel with how much pasta he seemed to make disappear.

“Right, like manual operation of multiple units,” Malavera said, as Valentin mentioned they could technically push Valentin with the Dione. “You have a steam engine, we have internal combustion. Can’t exactly link them together, so we’d coordinate over the radio. A bit like a steam excursion train, where the steam engine does 90% of the work, the diesel just sits idle and provides dynamic brakes and train power, and gives a mighty good shove if the steam engine has some issues.”

Kayden looked to Malavera, then back to Valentin and said, “I hope like hell you understood some of that, because I sure didn’t.”

Rukari noticed Valentin was going quite heavy on the pasta and smiled. “I am glad, Valentin, that you are enjoying it. I learned to cook in the military, so, sadly, my recipes are a little limited.”

“Sure did. We’ll need to figure out a way of standardizing commands to minimize ambiguity, but it should do. Also, it’s pretty hard to fuck up pasta beyond edibility.” Valentin said.

At some point, the lunch meal was finished, with Valentin being the last one to pack up his dishes and cutlery by quite some margin.

“Well, see you tomorrow morning then.” Valentin spoke once the ‘table’ was cleared up.
After that, the three went back towards the Dione to fill the remaining afternoon and evening somehow.

As Valentin, Constantin, and Tim returned to the Dione, the remainder of the pasta was put into containers to eat later. After that, Rukari washed up all of their dishes, putting them neatly into the toolbox for safe-keeping.

With lunch finished, the team returned to the truck to continue attempting some basic repairs, with Kivenaal taking up the BFH to try straightening out the damaged bed side. Kaylie packed away a lot of her tools from around the truck, then helped wash a few tents as well, just so they wouldn’t all reek of kerosene later.

Knugcab · 27 August 2022 18:58

TEAM HILLBILLY ROLLERS

Earlier parts

PART 0.1 - A prologue to the prologue
PART 0.2 - Another piece of the prologue puzzle
PART 0.3 - Viva la IP 4Z!
PART 0.4 - Robotman
PART 0.5 - Interference problems
PART 0.6 - Can I play Tetris?
PART 0.7 - Tangerine and familiar
PART 1.0 - Now things got serious!
PART 1.1 - Hello, Thibault and friends!
PART 1.2 - Poor kitty
PART 1.3 - Curse you, Team Oil Crisis!
PART 1.4 - Interlude
PART 2.0 - Bird bird bird, bird is the word!
PART 2.1 - D. Head
PART 2.2 - Good night!
PART 3.0 - Freeway Rockstar
PART 3.1 - DISCO TJO DISCO HEJ
PART 3.2 - Van-Werewolf 1-0
PART 4.0 - Calm after the storm
PART 5.0 - Mirror mirror on the…oh, crap!
PART 5.1 - Hello, little puppies!
PART 6.0 - Speed
PART 6.1 - GIMME OXYGEN! (feat. Madrias)
PART 6.2 - Steamin’ hot! (feat. Elizipeazie)
PART 7.0 - The Kayak
PART 7.1 - Marie the valkyrie?
PART 7.2 - Vegetables
PART 7.3 - Time to tie things up.
PART 8.0 - The hangover
PART 8.1 - The new team member
PART 9.0 - From pink to brown
PART 9.1 - Co-op with Madrias and Elizipeazie
PART 9.2 - Where is Sonic?
PART 10.0 - First at last!
PART 10.1 - Co-op with Variationofvariables
PART 11.0 - Why is this van so damn fast?
PART 11.1 - Co-op with Madrias
PART 11.2 - Demons and dragons bullshit
PART 11.3 - Oops, thank you, Kaylie!
PART 12.0 - Snap, crackle and pop!
PART 12.1 - The fire breathing jalopy
PART 12.2 - Written by Madrias
PART 12.3 - Bumpin’ the bumper
PART 13.0 - A jawdroppin’ ride
PART 13.1 - The monsters under the bed were real, after all!

PART 14.0 - Interlude II

Our three friends woke up in the tent after the night when the Yamada turned into a beast. Except that…Andreas had memories that was a bit…fuzzy.

“Great. Now we must start the morning with fixing the van and its electrical gremlins. We’re going to be late”, Janne said.

“Oh, nevermind…I fixed it…barely”, Andreas answered.

“Fixed?”, Janne asked a bit confused.

“Yes. Sonic had been chewing on the wires. I did some quick repairs there. Now it probably works like it should, at least until we arrive at next camp”, Andreas said.

Janne sighed. “Marie, how about taking care of your pets a little bit better in the future?”

The drive, however, went very well. Fact is, our friends were the first ones to arrive at camp. So while Janne fixed the wiring permanently, Andreas made a new bumper out of the scrapwood, and Marie…well, she was getting a bit used to be without her beer now. Since Janne was not really trusting the beer can bearings, he was sneaking into the van with Rukari, that painted some runes on the engine block without Andreas taking notice. For once, things seemed to be calm. Until….

TO BE CONTINUED…

(Out of inspiration but trying to catch up).

AndiD · 28 August 2022 03:26

Studies in Quantum Xenoanthropology, Ep. 5:
Cyberxenoanthropological musings

~~... or me trying to get back into things after having missed almost everything since the start. And yes, I like words with zero Google search results.~~

Previous post (yes, #119)

Arthur and Ford exchanged a relieved expression after the last competitor had arrived at the newest campsite. Since the transformation of the Yamada, they had instructed the Mara Kanyon’s onboard support AI to scan for unusual biosignatures in the vicinity, just to be on the safe side. On a previous stage they had received intermittent signals from the area where the pink IP Freeway was parked, but these ultimately seemed to be have been false readings.

“Looks like that episode is finally over. If we had known this before, we should have brought a cyberxenoanthropologist to study the awakened biomechanical lifeform”, Arthur muttered.

“How could one have studied it - given the Yamada’s aggressive behaviour?” Ford wondered.

“Very carefully”, was Arthur’s deadpan reply. “At least the Yamada only had base heavy metals and biological materials for its self-transformation. Things get usually pretty ugly pretty quickly if an evolved biomechanical lifeform - or an AI - gets its hands on nanomaterials to manipulate, for instance.”

“At least we got some data, though not much. We should have installed active quantum sensors back at the starbase.”

“Too risky, since we have a few users of what they call ‘magic’ around. Among xenoanthropologists there is a saying ‘Even advanced forms of magic are essentially just manipulations of matter or energy on the subquantum level’. And active quantum sensors might generate sufficient interference to be ‘detected’ by others… and we don’t want that, right?”

“Right, and we probably can be happy that we were not detected by those who stepped in and ‘cleared things up’.”

“What makes you think we weren’t?”, Arthur wondered. “It’d been in their best interest to not reveal us, even if they did.”

Ford seemed to be taken aback for a moment; he had obviously not considered that. Then he continued: “I wonder whether we recorded enough to trace the genesis of the emergence of the Yamada’s awakened consciousness. I’d be really keen to learn more about that. I remember someone from Team Blazers making a peculiar remark: ‘Every machine was made with an aspiration’.” With an aside glance at the Kanyon, he added: “… except this one maybe.”

“Your point?” Arthur wondered while silently agreeing with Ford’s latter remark.

Ford was at a loss of words for a moment.

“I’ll make a note in the report for the analysts to keep you in the loop.” Arthur did not seem to be particularly keen to engage in a cyberxenophilosophical debate with Ford.

“And good that noone else was affected, including us.”

Arthur shrugged. “There are isolation protocols in place for a reason for our support Ais. Not even sure it was an AI-thing, coming to think of it. Anyway…”

Shortly after Arthur had submitted their final report of the day to the Kanyon’s AI, he noticed the unmistakable sound of mechanical keys through the Kanyon’s open passenger window. This was the sign that the AI had important information for them while they were not looking.

He peeked inside and saw a worrying notice displayed in green letters on the screen that the AI could use to display ids message.

Arthur exchanged a concerned glance with Ford who had joined him looking through the open passenger side window. After double-checking that everyone else in the camp was busy with other matters, Arthur grabbed their not-tablet device and opened the most recent file in a special folder - the folder where the supporting AI would drop their analyses. Arthur opened the spreadsheet file while Ford curiously looked over his shoulder…

Madrias · 30 August 2022 16:24

(Apologies for the late update: I legitimately forgot to do it last night until just after 3 AM when I went to bed. Sorry, everyone.)

Shitbox Rally

Stage 15: Kavitz to Allvenitz

Stage Start: 1 Sun, 33/7/3251, Kavitz Campsite

Weather at Stage Start: Hot (33C), with high humidity, moderate cloud cover, and high winds.
Weather at mid-stage: Hot (35C), still quite humid, light cloud cover, and winds remain about the same.
Weather at Stage End (First Car): Hot (35C), humid, cloudy, and windy (about the same as before)
Weather at Stage End (Last Car): Warm (29C), lightly humid, clouds obscure the stars and twin moons on occasion until the wind pushes them away, a cool, welcomed breeze.

Stage End (First Car): 6-and-07 Sun, 33/7/3251, Allvenitz Campsite

Stage End (Last Car): 2-and-20 Moon, 33/7/3251, Allvenitz Campsite

With dirt for as far as the eye can see, everyone leaves Kavitz behind in a great big cloud of dust. Unfortunately, this road is not well maintained at all, and the result ends up being a very slow stage for everyone. Thankfully, the trees thin out as the road goes onward, opening up into the plains that give Allvenitz its name. As the town of Allvenitz appears on the horizon, the road gets a little nicer, but it’s still far from desirable. Allvenitz, however, makes up for their terrible roads by having a proper “adventurers’ motel” just outside the main gate.

Notes: Randomization is active. Breakdowns are active. Time is in Earth Time.

@Madrias

Team Shift Happens

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 16:20:57
Average MPH: 21.7
Randomizer: 7 (Calculated^: 6.39)
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 2/4* (Chassis/Team Caused)
Total Distance Traveled: 4972.8

Roll was 2, but helped in a dynamic event.
^ Needed to come close to another vehicle’s speed.

Kivenaal took the wheel and drove the truck hard, racing up next to the tracks at about the 200 mile mark. Distracted by a loud clank and a great screeching wail from the nearby train, no one heard the quiet snap of the water pump shearing the pin. As they passed the broken down Longitude locomotive, seen with a broken connecting rod on the line, the temperature of the Bricksley’s engine was beginning to rival the coal fire in the firebox. A little further down the road, the engine let loose with an almighty rushing roar of steam as the upper radiator hose split. The engine was shut down, the hood was raised, and as some of the steam cleared, Kaylie was able to see that they’d really done it this time. Not just had they split a hose (which she was sure they had replacements for), but they’d obliterated both headgaskets, as the truck was hissing and spitting steam out between the heads and the block.

The engine was still bubbling, hissing, and spitting when the Dione arrived and offered them a tow into camp. Then, upon realizing how damn late it was and how much repair work they’d need to do, Val rolled the convoy into the local steamworks with the plan to adapt the blower fan from the Bricksley into the Dione, and fit the Bricksley with rail wheels to haul them on the line to the next camp for them to make repairs.

@Caligari

Team Wayfarers

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 09:23:52
Average MPH: 37.7
Randomizer: 11
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4972.8

It’s another stage with the foot to the floor and askin’ for more. Chernobog chews up the slightly-muddy dirt in the forest, and seems to take a bath in the loose, dry dirt out on the plains.

@Executive

Team Gearknobs

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 14:56:31
Average MPH: 23.7
Randomizer: 7
Refueling Stops: 0
Breakdown: 3 (Tires)
Total Distance Traveled: 4972.8

Changing tires is never fun. Doing so in wet, semi-solid dirt that keeps trying to eat your jack stands is even less fun. Getting to do that twice was awful.

@BannedbyAndroid

Team Fallen Angels of the Past

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 16:39:32
Average MPH: 21.3
Randomizer: 7
Refueling Stops: 0
Breakdown: 2
Total Distance Traveled: 4972.8

Buried up to the axle in the mud, the two girls have to spend a fair bit of time scavenging scrap wood out of the forest to act as traction aids.

@TheYugo45GV

Team Oil Crisis

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 12:40:16
Average MPH: 28.0
Randomizer: 8
Refueling Stops: 2
Breakdown: 3/4* (Tires / Team Caused)
Total Distance Traveled: 4972.8

Roll was 3, but helped in a dynamic event.

Mitzal met his match today. Having picked the wrong train to rob, he faced the full wrath of the Order of the Magistrate when they pulled up alongside, guns at the ready.

The Magistrate, however, stayed close, the team within picking off members of the bandits one by one. Orlen got a good clean shot on Mitzal, slamming a bullet into his shoulder and knocking the startled bandit off of the train.

Unfortunately for the team, Mitzal’s bandits were pretty decent shots, as three of the Magistrate’s tires had been hit by gunfire.

@Knugcab

Team Hillbilly Rollers

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 08:06:35
Average MPH: 43.8
Randomizer: 12
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4972.8

The AWD system turns out to be a great thing here, as the battle-scarred pink brick wanders down the dirt forest road at “high” speed.

@Fayeding_Spray

Team Witchlight

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 14:07:52
Average MPH: 25.1
Randomizer: 8
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 1 (Powertrain)
Total Distance Traveled: 4972.8

While trying to get out of a bit of a muddy hole some other team created, Elist managed to overheat the engine. After letting it cool down, they were able to continue onward.

@MrdjaNikolen

Team Mravolinski-Chitco

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 12:01:04
Average MPH: 29.5
Randomizer: 9
Refueling Stops: 0
Breakdown: 3 (Tires)
Total Distance Traveled: 4972.8

When the front right tire blew, the truck made a massive trench with the front bumper. Thankfully, it was easily replaced, and the huge truck with the tiny engine lumbered onward, not realizing that a certain 70’s land-yacht would end up stuck in the hole a little while later.

@SurrealCereal

Team Machinas Con Passiones

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 12:44:51
Average MPH: 27.8
Randomizer: 9
Refueling Stops: 4
Breakdown: 1 (Powertrain)
Total Distance Traveled: 4972.8

It was going quite well until the engine just outright quit running. Chad figured it had to be something big and checked the fuel pump, the ignition coil, the battery, but all were found to be fine. The problem? The wire between the coil and the distributor came unplugged. After plugging it back in, the engine coughed back to life, and three fuel stops later, the dustbuster arrived in camp.

@AndiD

Team Quick Rally 47

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 08:17:57
Average MPH: 42.8
Randomizer: 10
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4972.8

The Mara has very little issue with this mud, but the AI still advises caution as those trees are a little close for comfort at times. This, of course, is met with irritation after someone else plays a little game of “Bumper Tag” with the Mara, prompting the driver to put their foot down and leave the offenders behind.

@BG004130

Team Mrezhari

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 08:33:18
Average MPH: 41.5
Randomizer: 12
Refueling Stops: 0
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4972.8

Upon encountering a slow-moving Mara Kanyon, the driver of the Dunav thought it’d be fun to deliberately drive into the rear bumper of it. After the fifth little bump, the driver of the Mara got the hint and left the four helmeted fiends behind with no one readily available to bump anymore.

@NoahC

Team Jockey

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 12:22:47
Average MPH: 28.6
Randomizer: 9
Refueling Stops: 2
Breakdown: 3 (Tires)
Total Distance Traveled: 4972.8

Not quite the tire failure one would expect, actually, as while the tire was flat, it was flat in the camp. Turns out that during yesterday’s panicked flight from the Dyre, you ran over some road debris on the way, and the slow leak let all the air out overnight. Thankfully, you had a tire patch kit, so after airing the tire back up with a bicycle pump, you were back on the road.

@elizipeazie

Team RK Series Racing

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 16:20:13
Average MPH: 21.7
Randomizer: 7
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 2/4* (Chassis / Team Caused)
Total Distance Traveled: 4972.8

Roll was 2, but helped in a dynamic event.

On the way to camp, they encountered three things that slowed them down. The first was a train stopped on the tracks, having suffered a breakdown. Then they encountered the second thing to slow them down, in the form of one badly overheated Bricksley sitting on the side of the dirt road, still hissing steam and reeking of hot oil, The hood was up, and Kaylie looked like she was about to have a mental breakdown. The decision was made to tow the Bricksley using their tow bar, which was working well for quite some time until a quiet thump and an irritating rattle was heard from around the boiler area. At first, it was a mild annoyance until Connor pointed out that the boiler was losing pressure, and an electronic burning smell filled the back seat of the cabin, thanks to the draft-fan motor burning out. At greatly reduced speed, the Dione wheezed into the camp, dragging one very damaged truck behind it. They ended up in the Allvenitz Steamworks to patch up the Dione’s blown-out draft fan and fit the Bricksley with rail wheels to get them to the next campsite.

@Tzuyu_main

Team Black Rabbit

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 12:11:40
Average MPH: 29.1
Randomizer: 11
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4972.8

“Fucking dirt and mud!” Melanie swore as she piloted the Dauer expertly through the trees.

@SheikhMansour

Team Spy Kids

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 07:32:08
Average MPH: 47.1
Randomizer: 12
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 4972.8

A combination of the right vehicle for the right job made things nice and easy today.

Stage Finishing Order:

07:32:08 – 6-and-07 Sun – Team Spy Kids
08:06:35 – 6-and-37 Sun – Team Hillbilly Rollers
08:17:57 – 6-and-48 Sun – Team Quick Rally 47
08:33:18 – 6-and-62 Sun – Team Mrezhari
09:23:52 – 7-and-37 Sun – Team Wayfarers
12:01:04 – 9-and-09 Sun – Team Mravolinski-Chitco
12:11:40 – 9-and-18 Sun – Team Black Rabbit
12:22:47 – 9-and-28 Sun – Team Jockey
12:40:16 – 9-and-44 Sun – Team Oil Crisis
12:44:51 – 9-and-48 Sun – Team Machinas Con Passiones
14:07:52 – 10-and-43 Sun – Team Witchlight
14:56:31 – 1-and-07 Moon – Team Gearknobs
16:20:13 – 2-and-02 Moon – Team RK Series Racing
16:20:57 – 2-and-02 Moon – Team Shift Happens
16:39:32 – 2-and-20 Moon – Team Fallen Angels of the Past

Knugcab · 31 August 2022 21:35

TEAM HILLBILLY ROLLERS

Earlier parts

PART 0.1 - A prologue to the prologue
PART 0.2 - Another piece of the prologue puzzle
PART 0.3 - Viva la IP 4Z!
PART 0.4 - Robotman
PART 0.5 - Interference problems
PART 0.6 - Can I play Tetris?
PART 0.7 - Tangerine and familiar
PART 1.0 - Now things got serious!
PART 1.1 - Hello, Thibault and friends!
PART 1.2 - Poor kitty
PART 1.3 - Curse you, Team Oil Crisis!
PART 1.4 - Interlude
PART 2.0 - Bird bird bird, bird is the word!
PART 2.1 - D. Head
PART 2.2 - Good night!
PART 3.0 - Freeway Rockstar
PART 3.1 - DISCO TJO DISCO HEJ
PART 3.2 - Van-Werewolf 1-0
PART 4.0 - Calm after the storm
PART 5.0 - Mirror mirror on the…oh, crap!
PART 5.1 - Hello, little puppies!
PART 6.0 - Speed
PART 6.1 - GIMME OXYGEN! (feat. Madrias)
PART 6.2 - Steamin’ hot! (feat. Elizipeazie)
PART 7.0 - The Kayak
PART 7.1 - Marie the valkyrie?
PART 7.2 - Vegetables
PART 7.3 - Time to tie things up.
PART 8.0 - The hangover
PART 8.1 - The new team member
PART 9.0 - From pink to brown
PART 9.1 - Co-op with Madrias and Elizipeazie
PART 9.2 - Where is Sonic?
PART 10.0 - First at last!
PART 10.1 - Co-op with Variationofvariables
PART 11.0 - Why is this van so damn fast?
PART 11.1 - Co-op with Madrias
PART 11.2 - Demons and dragons bullshit
PART 11.3 - Oops, thank you, Kaylie!
PART 12.0 - Snap, crackle and pop!
PART 12.1 - The fire breathing jalopy
PART 12.2 - Written by Madrias
PART 12.3 - Bumpin’ the bumper
PART 13.0 - A jawdroppin’ ride
PART 13.1 - The monsters under the bed were real, after all!
PART 14.0 - Interlude II

PART 15.0 - Marie died once

(Remember, I am trying to catch up. This story starts the morning after the dyre attack, and ends in the previous camp).

When our friends got out of the tent, they saw a rather nasty surprise. The sliding door on the wan being wide open, a mess in the back, claw marks in the already less than perfect pink paint….

“HEY! Who the fuck was in the van tonight?”, Andreas asked angrily.

Well, since it wasn’t me, it was either you or someone else, Janne answered cynically.

They stared at the mess. At least, even if being scattered everywhere, all the tools and spare parts seemed to still be there, intact. What was touched, however, was some canned sausages, now being just empty cans with bite marks in them.

“It seems like this was not done by humans”, Janne said.

“No. Probably fucking dyre! I hate them! I HATE THEM EVEN MORE THAN ANYTHING MARIE HAS EVER DONE AND THAT SPEAKS FUCKING VOLUMES!”, Andreas was shouting angrily.

Our friends managed to get all the stuff, spare for the canned sausages, back together again, and left for the next stint.

“OK, WHO OF YOU GUYS DIDN’T LOCK THE SLIDING DOOR?”, all three was shouting at each other at the same time.

“NOT ME!” everyone shouted back.

“I guess we aren’t coming anywhere with this discussion", Janne sighed.

“By the way, did you notice that the Yamada wasn’t at the last camp?”, Andreas asked.

“Hmm, now when you are saying it…?”, Janne answered.

“Appears like they were in a relatively nasty accident”, Andreas continued, with no memories at all of what he had seen the night before this one. “All of them died.”

“Oh…”, Janne answered. “Well, tragic, but a race like this is always done on your own risk, so they probably counted with it”.

“Yeah, and I remember when I died, it was not that bad”, Marie said.

“What the fuck do you mean?”, Andreas answered, very confused.

“Well, when we were going to Classic motor meet in Haparanda in 2013”, she continued. "Last thing I remember is that I died, and then I woke up again in a wheelbarrow in Janne’s potato field…” she said, trying to remember all the details.

“YOU DIDN’T DIE, YOU FUCKING WENT INTO IKEA, STOLE TWO BLANKETS AND DUCT TAPED THEM OVER THE WINDOWS OF A POLICE CAR, THEN YOU WERE DANCING AROUND NAKED IN…oh fuck…I can’t take this anymore, I give up…”, Andreas sighed. “Marie, sometimes I don’t know if you are a genius or downright stupid”, he continued.

The pink brick rolled into camp for a rather uneventful evening…

TO BE CONTINUED…

MrdjaNikolen · 1 September 2022 04:30

Team Mravolinski-Chitco

WHERE DID YOU LEARNED…

…to fly?

Some of you may not get the reference and others will, you gain nothing either way.
But it will be related to our case, although in not exactly same manner.

Camp

Unlike yesterday, this time there werent any out-of-ordinary events

Actually only thing worth of note was from earlier afternoon/night.
For some reason, VerBanka tried some drink.
She assumed, wrongly, that it was alcohol-free, which meant needing little help to get her back to car.
Considering i do have experience with some friends getting drunk, i was tad bit worried for what it may be - lets just say that if you overload yourself, there may be some puking involved afterwards.
Happily not this time, since she fell asleep very much immideately after getting to some bed.

Morning came and, apart from still being kinda tipsy, VerBanka was fine. Wasnt amused by that whole thing, though.
Half of team was busy trying to figure out who is going to drive now. Pi had offered herself as driver, but they wanted to compensate for time lost bcos of blown head gasket.

Drive

All three members listed as drivers in our team are expert fighters, although it should be noted that their definition for incapacitating their opponent overlaps fair bit with killing said opponent.
It could be said that launch out of camp was of murderous nature as well and was hard to determine which part begged for mercy the most

Is it gearbox?
Perhaps clutch?
That being said, tires are sus as well…

No matter the answer, we made good progress…

There was one section where we really hustled, going at great speeds. This did meant little bit of air time every now and then.
Rather interestingly, front right tire was always the one to get back in contact with road and there were no issues…up until end of 3rd short flight.

Tire gave up on its life, resulting in us plowing the surface.
Result of decent speed and heavy vehicle had indeed been very noticeable
.
.
.
.
-Maybe i should have driven afterall…
-Shut up.
(Quietness continued)

Few chosen had decided to exit the car, including Ms. Tipsy, who proceeded to trip and land face down in mud puddle.
This was funny to almost everyone except for her, resulting in her trying to throw some of mud at us with mixed results.

Aydar was tasked with towing the car to apparently more solid ground, which was still not great place to place jackstand supporting big and heavy vehicle.

-That seems like big-ish ditch of sorts
-Perhaps
-Considering we caused it, i guess least we can do is patch it up.
-Perhaps, we did went slightly off the road as consequence of jump
-I still can imagine someone getting issues with that, seeing that it is close to right edge of road
-Our group is composed of drivers that are prepared for reacting at great speed
Locals are using offroad vehicles by looks of things, too
-What?
-We mostly come from worlds where we are driving at much higher speeds than seen here, so are used to react quickly
Locals are both very used to this stuff and have adequate vehicles to tackle rough roads
Back on Earth, its very likely that road organized for motor carriages/cars in like 1902 or 1912 would be solid off-road course today.
So far, we saw no reason to doubt this world would be any different

(Someone did had issues
It was Team Witchlight, having no prior driving experience of any kind and using not exactly ideal offroad vehicle)

Wheel was promptly replaced during bantering and soon we were back on road.
Pi insisted on driving citing “I need to learn more about driving it.” as reason to do so.
She didnt exactly prove to be stellar by any means and car was getting kinda abused regardless.
Method and reason of abuse was different tho.

Reaction on motel upon finishing the stage was as expected:
-Seems they cared about us.
-Yes.

Settling down

Everyone with exception of Chicota was preparing to spend night in motel, Chicota deciding to guard the car instead.
Knowing him, that may or may not include drinking fair bit of alcohol in meantime

As for rest, dogs had went to town in order to restock our supplies
Others had prepared motel accomodation for themselves and those dogs, then decided to prepare themselves for good nights rest.

Knugcab · 5 September 2022 18:34

TEAM HILLBILLY ROLLERS

Earlier parts

PART 0.1 - A prologue to the prologue
PART 0.2 - Another piece of the prologue puzzle
PART 0.3 - Viva la IP 4Z!
PART 0.4 - Robotman
PART 0.5 - Interference problems
PART 0.6 - Can I play Tetris?
PART 0.7 - Tangerine and familiar
PART 1.0 - Now things got serious!
PART 1.1 - Hello, Thibault and friends!
PART 1.2 - Poor kitty
PART 1.3 - Curse you, Team Oil Crisis!
PART 1.4 - Interlude
PART 2.0 - Bird bird bird, bird is the word!
PART 2.1 - D. Head
PART 2.2 - Good night!
PART 3.0 - Freeway Rockstar
PART 3.1 - DISCO TJO DISCO HEJ
PART 3.2 - Van-Werewolf 1-0
PART 4.0 - Calm after the storm
PART 5.0 - Mirror mirror on the…oh, crap!
PART 5.1 - Hello, little puppies!
PART 6.0 - Speed
PART 6.1 - GIMME OXYGEN! (feat. Madrias)
PART 6.2 - Steamin’ hot! (feat. Elizipeazie)
PART 7.0 - The Kayak
PART 7.1 - Marie the valkyrie?
PART 7.2 - Vegetables
PART 7.3 - Time to tie things up.
PART 8.0 - The hangover
PART 8.1 - The new team member
PART 9.0 - From pink to brown
PART 9.1 - Co-op with Madrias and Elizipeazie
PART 9.2 - Where is Sonic?
PART 10.0 - First at last!
PART 10.1 - Co-op with Variationofvariables
PART 11.0 - Why is this van so damn fast?
PART 11.1 - Co-op with Madrias
PART 11.2 - Demons and dragons bullshit
PART 11.3 - Oops, thank you, Kaylie!
PART 12.0 - Snap, crackle and pop!
PART 12.1 - The fire breathing jalopy
PART 12.2 - Written by Madrias
PART 12.3 - Bumpin’ the bumper
PART 13.0 - A jawdroppin’ ride
PART 13.1 - The monsters under the bed were real, after all!
PART 14.0 - Interlude II
PART 15.0 - Marie died once

PART 16.0 - The horrible sound

(OK, now we are in the correct timeline, finally)

After a rather uneventful stint and evening, our friends woke up, packed their stuff into the pink brick, and took off for yet another stint. It turned out that the AWD system of the Freeway Star once again was proving to be superior on the somewhat harsh roads. Andreas was passing car after car, with the dixie horn blaring. In fact, they passed every team, except for team Spy kids, and not even Sonic had caused any trouble for a while now. That was…until…

“I want a beer!”, Marie said.

“Is beer the only thing you can think of?”, Andreas replied. “Damn, there is not many days left of this, then you can drink all the beer you want to. Try to enjoy this instead.”

“What is there to enjoy if I can’t have any beer?”, she replied.

“Well…lots of…stuff…I guess”, Andreas sighed. Couldn’t she for once think for herselves, he thought, until he realized that it never ended well when she did that.

Our friends came into camp, finishing in second place. Marie was still in a rather cranky mood.

“You know, now I am tired of being stuck in the middle of nowhere without any beer, from now on, it is your trouble how you should handle this! I am going home!”, she yelled, rather upset.

“Oh, so how are you supposed to get home, miss Einstein?”, Andreas answered

“Well, I can use Janne’s goddamned teleporter device! It got us here so it will get me home too!”, she said.

“Marie, please don’t! I have programmed it to do one single thing, and I can’t give you any guarantees about what it will do if you handle it wrong!”, Janne said.

“Just try to stop me!”, she replied while trying to put on the teleporter equipment. “How hard can it be?”

“Appearantly very hard, since you have the goddamned hard hat on the wrong way!”, Janne replied angrily.

“It can’t be that hard!”, she said, randomly tapping the buttons on the VCR remote before she suddenly disappeared.

“Great, now she has disappeared and I don’t even know to which dimens…”, Janne said just before they heard some noises.

“MFFFF HLLLLPPP MMMMMMBBBBBB!!! I MMMMMMMMMMMMM STMMMMCKKKK!”

For some reason, Marie was stuck upside down, halfway through the ground, a couple of meters away, and Janne and Andreas pulled her up from the ground.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS KIND OF CRAP YOU HAVE BUILT!”, she shouted to Janne, with her face covered in mud, when they had pulled her up from the ground.

“DO YOU UNDERSTAND NOW WHY YOU SHOULD NOT PLAY WITH IT?”, Janne was screaming back to her. “NOW GIVE ME THAT REMOTE!”, he said, while taking notice that the Bricksley was entering camp, towed by the Dione.

“IT IS MY REMOTE AND I DO WHATEVER I WANT WITH IT”, she said, while randomly tapping some other buttons.

“Bah, nothing happened anyway”, she said.

“I am not so sure about that”, Janne sighed, taking notice that the crew in the Bricksley seemed to be very bothered by something. “GET IN THE VAN NOW BEFORE SOMEONE TAKES NOTICE OF THIS!”, he said, pulling the sliding door open quickly, throwing Marie into it and closing it as fast as he could.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Madrias · 11 September 2022 20:28

Shift Happens

and

RK Series Racing

; Stage 15 Drive

(Yep, short header again means only one thing: Collab time. Thank you to @Elizipeazie for working with me on this!)

Kavitz Campsite, 10-and-40 Moon.

Kivenaal was the first of Team Shift Happens to be awake, pretty much as usual. He’d had to fight to stay quiet until the burning orange glow appeared down in the distance of the horizon, having an uneasy feeling about something today, but not quite able to pin it down. He’d checked over the truck twice already, but was now going over the “pre-flight” checks once more.

“We have oil. Coolant is topped up. Battery is a bit weak, but to be expected. Tires all have air in them. I don’t smell anything dangerous out there, except maybe the Hillbilly Rollers’ cooking,” Kivenaal muttered to himself.

1 Sun

Kivenaal was behind the wheel today, with Kayden riding mid-seat, and Malavera in the passenger side seat, while Rukari, Jayde, and Kaylie took the rear bench. When Valentin arrived for the jump-start, Kivenaal popped the hood on the Bricksley, grabbed the jumper cables, and quickly got the truck started. He put the cables away, closed the Dione’s hood with a quiet clunk using two hands to distribute the weight evenly to either side of the latch, and closed the Bricksley’s hood with an almost-equally quiet thud of the heavy steel coffin lid closing over the engine.

On the Road

Kivenaal drove the truck like the Devil was chasing his twin tails, engine screaming for mercy as he slid the truck around corners, kicking up dirt twice, sometimes three times as high as the roof of the truck. The rough dirt road was hammering the hell out of the truck’s suspension early on, but it began to smooth out just a bit within the first 50 miles, though the trade-off was more turns and a generally slower pace.

That, of course, hardly slowed him down, throwing the battered Bricksley around corners like it was a mid-engined sports car, not a heavy pickup with a boat anchor up front.

Around the 200 mile mark, the road straightened out a good bit more, and the team found themselves roaring along, parallel to the track, a fence being all that separated them from where the trains ran. The road was less than favorable at speed, between being mostly dirt with ballast stones scattered randomly around.

Kivenaal was the first among the Shift Happens crew to realize there was a train moving slow up ahead, moments before a loud clank shattered the air and a great screech was heard as the train came to a stop.

“Damn!” Kivenaal said. “There’s something to be said about the power in one of those engines when it can snap that bit of cast steel like a twig.”

Little did he know that events had been set in motion in that instant that would lead to chaos for his own team.

On the Road - Again

A great hissing bang erupted from under the hood of the Bricksley along with a huge cloud of smoke. Kivenaal had been smelling hot oil for a while now, but the gauge hadn’t changed, still reading just a little above normal. But, clearly something was wrong as he now guided the seriously-overheated truck over to the side of the road and shut it down.

Kaylie called it out over the radio, “Shift Happens to all teams in range, we have had a major engine failure. Looks like we blew all of our coolant again.”

She hopped out and heaved the hood up, scowling as she saw through the heavy vapors in the engine bay that the engine was spitting and sputtering from between the block and both heads. “Cooked the head-gaskets, and we blew the upper radiator hose. Looks like we might have gotten hot enough to warp the valve covers, too.”

As dawn broke on the 15th overly long day of the Shitbox Rally 2022, the team was for once in reasonably good spirits, as they did their usual morning routine of getting themselves freshened up, getting Robert freshened up and getting the Bricksley of Shift Happens freshened up.

Not long after, they found themselves on the rails, where running initially was going as smoothly as ever for the first 200 miles or so, until they unexpectedly went past a signal displaying “caution”.

“Huh… well that’s not to schedule…”, Valentin mumbled as he let off the throttle and applied a bit of brakes, causing Robert to gradually bleed off speed.
It took the full three miles to come to a full stop, just before the following signal, which in turn showed “danger”, as expected.

With them now sat there, Valentin was puzzled about why they were stationary now, given that there wasn’t any planned stoppage here.
Still, Constantin was sent ahead to the next signalbox to notify the employee within as per procedure.
Eventually, he returns, taking seat in his spot on the rear-right.

“Any news?”, Valentin asked in hopes of gathering some intel about why they were sat there.
“Apparently the train ahead of us has shat itself somehow… seems like we are gonna be sat here for a while.”, Constantin explained, mentally preparing for extended boredom.
“Well we have three miles of track top maneuver in without impacting any adjacent sections. If we can find some crude crossing on that stretch, we can switch to road mode and bypass them.”, Valentin suggested, which was met with initial enthusiasm by the others.

The plan went ahead and they found themselves crawling along at 10 to 15MPH in reverse to see if they can find a place to switch. Sadly, no such place could be located, forcing them to roll back up to the signal, still at “danger”.

“Connor, can you hand me the ‘operational procedures for railroading’?”, Val requested, followed promptly by Connor pulling out the hard-cover book from under his seat, handing it to Valentin.
He starts flipping pages in that book, seemingly looking for something.
“Found it!”, he exclaims eventually.

" The signaller can authorise a driver to pass a signal at danger when…
…The signal is defective or disconnected
…The signal cannot be cleared because signalling or level crossing equipment has failed
…The signal is to be passed at danger for shunting purposes
…The signal cannot be cleared because a train or movement which has reversed is then required to start from beyond that signal
…A train has been accepted using restricted acceptance because the line is clear only up to the home signal of the next signal box and the section signal cannot be cleared
…In an emergency, and then only when authorised by the signal box supervisor or Operations Control, so that a train carrying passengers can enter an occupied section to use a station platform
…An engineering train is to move towards a possession, or leave a line under possession at an intermediate point…
source: Signal passed at danger - Wikipedia

AHA!", Valentin exclaims, closing the book with a hefty thud. “Constantin, can you scout ahead of us for a possible area where we could get off the rails?”
Constantin doesn’t think twice about another walk along the railbed, getting out to scout the area ahead.

Soon after, he returns, poking his head in through Connor’s window: “Well there isn’t much… some crude footpath crossing or something is there, but the rails stick out quite a bit further than what we’ve been using the past, i think.”
A bit of pondering followed on Valentin’s end, before he motioned for Connor to exit as well to make way for him to use the wayside communications line for direct contact with the signalman himself.
Thanks to his now fully mobile and painless ankle, getting out was a breeze in comparison to the past few days. He picks up the telephone line, waiting for a dial tone which did not sound on his end. Eventually, a voice on the other end has him befuddled as it makes sure that someone is actually there.

“Hello?”, the signalman called from the other end.
“Huh? Yeah… Uhm… We’re still stood at this signal and have already been in contact with you about it… We can vacate the block section entirely to make way for the next train, but the only feasible place is in the adjacent sections either way. As such, i’m requesting to pass the signal at danger to move up and vacate the line entirely.”, Valentin spoke into the phone, which by his metric was very archaic in nature, but worked well enough given it’s design purpose.
“Stand by…”, the voice called as it went away to cross-check with his copy of the procedures to make sure all was safe and correct.
“Passing signal at danger is approved. Limit to 10 MPH. Be prepared to stop due to a stationary train in the section. Report back once line is vacated.”, the signalman ordered.
“Passing signal approved, limit to 10 MPH, stationary train on line ahead. Advise when line is vacated.”, Valentin confirmed back into the phone before hanging up and fumbling his way back in, which proved more difficult than getting out by a fair margin.

The other two followed suit and Robert was once again pushed into motion to transition away from rails.
The process itself went as smoothly as ever, until it was time to actually move away from the line, the three-inch edge that was the track proving difficult to clear.
Taking a less on out of Jeremy Clarkson’s book, speed and power seemed to solve the issue, though it made for a rather bouncy affair when hopping over the track with two of the four road wheels.

Now on roads, they bee-lined it to the signalbox, where Constantin was sent in to report that Robert was now clear of the line.
With that done, they went past the stricken train, already being harshly reminded at how crappy the roads in Crugandr actually were.
Without much of a chance to look for a re-entry point, the went from being stuck behind a dead train to being “stuck” next to a dead Bricksley.

They announced themselves with a hearty blow of the steam whistle, coming to a stop in a way that positioned the nearside front window right next to Kaylie digging about the engine bay.

“I think your V8 doesn’t run on steam, right?”, Valentin asked in an attempt to be funny. “Need help?”

Despite her initial bad mood at the billowing clouds of steam pouring out of every gap in the Bricksley’s V8, Valentin’s whistle toot followed by a joking quip of, “I think your V8 doesn’t run on steam,” happened to be just enough to take the rough edge off of Kaylie’s mood. When he offered help, Kaylie quipped back, “How do you feel about a field-conversion? Or… We could use a tow. Kivenaal here tried to melt the engine down.”

“In my defense, the temperature gauge is still reading 220 degrees,” Kivenaal replied. “I think we lost our water pump.”

“No need to convert anything by the looks of it!”, Valentin countered, glancing at the copious amounts of coolant steam that was still bellowing out of every single crevice in the engine bay.
“Hopes are that my boy here has enough grunt and traction to get that massive truck going.”, he added, rolling the window down and slapping the driver door from the outside as if the car were a horse.

He then rolled a bit past the Bricksley, lining up ahead of it with a good 15 feet of empty space between the two.

“I cannot see jackshit for all the reasons imaginable. Gonna need some help lining things up once the tow bar is out. If you have one, that is.” Valentin spoke, half-shouting from within the Dione.
“Just get a buzzcut like Constantin and you have one less problem.”, Tim remarked, chuckling at how Valentin simply dealt with his Rapunzel-style hairdo.
“Fuck off… at least i have hair of some length…”, Valentin half-heartedly countered.

Malavera climbed out of the truck, then said, “I’ll help with alignment.”

Kivenaal also got out and looked through the mess in the truck bed before finding something tucked up against the toolbox. With a mild bit of fiddling around, he managed to extend it, passing it over to Kaylie.

“Kivenaal, I need you at the wheel,” Malavera said, before removing the cover on the Bricksley’s front bumper and hooking one end of the tow bar up to it. “Valentin, pull forward, please, so I have some space to help align the truck.” Even before Val could move the Dione, Malavera reached under the front of the Bricksley and grabbed hold of the frame of the truck just behind the bumper, then with a snarled grunt of effort, lifted with his legs and hoisted the whole front end of the truck up off of the ground. With a not-insignificant effort, Malavera moved the truck three inches to the left to aid the alignment process, set the truck back down, then grabbed the tow bar and looked toward the Dione, clearly planning on dragging the truck if he had to.

Kaylie, on the other hand, had moved down to Valentin’s side, standing by the driver’s mirror to help direct him closer to the truck to make the connection easier. “Sorry, Val, but knowing Malavera, if he had to, he’d haul this whole truck into camp by himself once he got it rolling,” Kaylie said. “And, let’s be honest, while I don’t doubt that he could pull the truck, given the repairs we’ll have to do in the camp, I need every one of the crew as alert as we can get.”

While Malavera went for the unnecessarily intense task of physically lifting the fat end of the Bricksley to move it over by three inches, Valentin went about making sure everything up front was good until Kaylie popped up next to the driver window to help with positioning.

“Let’s just get backed up and hook that bar up, shall we?”, Valentin said, trying to stay on the topic of serious business.

He then solely relied on Kaylie for directional control since the wing mirrors weren’t exactly helpful, given the less-than-ideal seating position of Valentin within the Dione.

Kaylie nodded, then gave directions to Valentin, the same directions she would have used for anyone needing help backing up a large truck with trailer, with Malavera occasionally letting Kaylie know how close they were in his own way.

“And… Stop,” Kaylie said. Once the Dione had come to a complete stop, Malavera then locked the other end of the tow-bar into the hook on the Dione, gave Kaylie a thumbs-up, and climbed back into the cab.

“We’re locked in. Now, here’s the thing: I know that tow-bar is rated to 9,000 pounds. We’re a little bit over that, but… I know we can get rid of some of that weight in a beneficial way. You refuel with water and kerosene on these trips, yes? And I’m assuming that hasn’t happened yet, so… If we take some of the cans from the roof and fill up your main water tank, sure, it’s not that much weight out of the truck, but every bit counts. While we’re at it, might as well drain what’s left of our fuel and fill up the Dione with what we’ve been using,” Kaylie said. “In all fairness, we were under the rated weight before adding a new teammate to the truck. Barely under it, admittedly.”

“If we are caring that much about rated weights, Robert would be overladen by a factor of more than two.
Hopes are that Robert here has enough grunt to get your truck going…”, Valentin spoke, somewhat cautiously, unsure about how well the weakened everything would hold up.
“So, once you are back there, hazards on if they still work, my brake lights should tell you what i’m doing. One dot of the whistle and i’m taking up slack, a dash and i am setting off.”, he continued, now effectively in charge of two vehicles.

After that, he simply waited for everyone to return to their seats and signal readiness.

Kaylie scuffed a boot into the gravel, then said, “Well, Robert should have just enough grip to get us moving. If not, we can get out and push to get everything rolling.”

Everyone piled back into the truck, where Kaylie relayed Valentin’s instructions to Kivenaal, who hit the hazard light switch, put a heavy foot on the brake pedal, released the parking brake, and put both the transmission and the range-box into neutral, just to reduce as much rolling resistance as he could.

“Traction is one thing, power is another.”, Valentin countered, not really expecting an answer in return.

Once everyone was in their seats and the Bricksley’s hazards illuminating quite a bit more of his offside mirror than he expected, he went for the ignition-barrel turned whistle switch which sent a short blip of a shrieky whistle across the general location.
After that, he gave Robert a bit of throttle, taking up the inch-and-a-half of slack, followed by a second, longer operation of the whistle to indicate the intent of getting it moving.

That task proved to be more difficult than Valentin initially thought, as the loose layer of gravel cause both rear wheels to break traction, sending small pebbles and dust out the back and towards the Bricksley. It took a few attempts before the static friction could be overcome and the two cars were in motion.

The towing process itself went smoothly for the most part until, just a few miles from camp, an ominous, plastic-y pop came from the back end.
Initially, it was thought to be some stray object that they ran over, until a loss of steam pressure and thus power became apparent.

“Uhm… we’re losing power…”, Valentin moaned, already slowing down to pull over.
“Loss of steaming. Possibly some electrical issue or the draft fan itself.”, Connor added.

The Dione rolls to a gentle stop at the side of the road, where Connor went about the process of shitting off Robert and purging what pressure was left in the boiler to allow somewhat safe investigation of the problem at hand.
Constantin took the time to head back to the Bricksley to relay the info, approaching the front passenger window in doing so.

“Something went bust on our end… once the thing is safe, we’ll take a look.”, Constantin spoke.
“When is ‘safe’?”, Kivenaal countered.
“What do i know? An hour, maybe?”, Constantin replied, having absolutely no idea how long it would take for the boiler interior to cool off from 400°C to ambient.

After that, he went back up front as Connor and Tim found their way out of the vehicle, followed by Valentin shortly after, the process of which streamlined substantially by having two fully functional legs again.
A good 45 minutes of twiddling thumbs and theorizing about the fault followed before Connor deemed the boiler to be cold enough to not be a threat, all while Valentin was perpetually and aggressively fighting his hairdo because of the strong winds.
As such, Valentin crawled beneath, being the most qualified (and also thinnest) crew member of RK Series racing, spotting the issue almost immediately.

“Draft fan went bust… who would’ve expected that an AC blower fan doesn’t like temperatures way beyond boiling?”, Valentin remarked ironically while maneuvering his way back out from underneath the ass end of Robert.
“As far as i am aware, the thing still works with convection drafting and all that, but we’re gonna be having fun stopping every few miles to build up some pressure.”, Valentin admitted, annoyed at how the surprisingly reliable botch-job failed him when most-needed.
“At least we ain’t far from camp now…”, Tim said in an attempt to keep the mood up.

The team piled back into the Dione one by one, Valentin going first, followed by Tim and Connor. Constantin was the last to enter, before another egregiously long period of nothing came and went as the boiler took it’s sweet time to raise pressure.
In order to save on steam, Valentin omitted the use of the whistle, instead using the electrical horn for signalling to the Bricksley behind.

Once in motion, the two vehicles managed to cover just a little more than a mile before pressure was dropping and another stop was needed. This repeated itself for quite some time until they finally arrived at the campsite where, somewhat conveniently, more pressure needed raising.
Constantin used the spare time to once again head out back to the Bricksley:

“We are heading right through to the steamworks in hopes Val can get that fan replaced, fixed or whatever. The idea of putting your fat truck on rails still is there, so you might as well join, if that’s okay with you.”, Constantin explained.
Kaylie nodded, then said from the far corner of the truck, “If that’s the case, considering how late it already is, if you’ll get us into the next camp, we’ll do our repairs there tomorrow. We’ll get everyone to help in some way on fixing your fan problem.”
“Steamworks it is.”, Constantin said, nodding while he went back for the Dione.

Elizipeazie · 11 September 2022 20:28

Not soon after, the two cars set off for the local steamworks, arriving after another few annoying cycles of going a mile at jogging pace before stopping again.
There, Robert was shut down again, knowing that at least a few people would be present to help move Robert in, thus speeding up the process of getting to the draft fan.

The team once again emerged from the car, in hopes of finding someone local who could help.

Knowing that the Dione’s fan had failed, once they arrived at the steamworks, Kaylie grabbed the technical manual from the glovebox and looked around for a willing helper. Kayden looked like he was about asleep on his feet, she knew Malavera would have trouble with the smaller tools needed to avoid breaking anything, Jayde may be more alert but had no idea how any of this worked, and Kivenaal, well… Kivenaal had fallen asleep once already a few minutes after arriving at the steamworks, face-planting the Bricksley’s steering wheel and honking the feeble horn surprisingly loudly in the enclosed space. Thankfully, the noise had woken him up, and he’d apologized to everyone around him, but Kaylie knew he was pretty much totaled. That left Rukari, who had done a fair bit of maintenance already.

“Rukari, mind helping me get our blower fan out?” Kaylie asked.

“I will work with you,” Rukari replied, grabbing the tool kit from under the seat.

A good result, however, of Kivenaal head-butting the horn switch was when the steamworks foreman wandered over. At first, the fairly tall man, at 6 feet and 2 inches, seemed momentarily confused at the pair of vehicles in his work area. Then he noticed the rail axles and the boiler. “This would be Robert, yes? That makes you Valentin, then. It’s good to meet you,” the man said, actually managing to point to Valentin in that moment. “I am Neville Jardin, foreman of the Allvenitz Steamworks. I’d shake your hand, but,” he held up his grease covered hands, “I’ve been helping out on the broken locomotive that came in.”

Neville looked at the flurry of activity that was going on in the Bricksley, then said, “By the looks of things, the bunch of you need tools, work-space, and given the state of half of them over there,” he said, motioning to the members of Shift Happens who looked about ready to drop at any moment, “you might need a bit of additional manpower. Only one who looks halfway awake in the blue lorry is the two-headed werewolf.”

The blaring horn of the Bricksley also sent a good scare through most of the Dione’s crew.
As the foreman approached the two cars, Valentin seemed remarkably alert despite having been awake for more than 16 hours already.

“Yeah. Valentin Schrant. Our draft fan went bust and needs replacing or fixing. The boiler we have has been sourced from a derelict lorry at Itzgarde Steamworks. Maybe we can make something work…”, Valentin explained, already looking around for whoever may be able to offer help in some way, even though he had no idea on how to make use of that manpower.

“For accessibility reasons it probably is best to get Robert over to a bay where we can get underneath without crawling.”, he continued. “Then we can get the remains of the old fan out of there.”

“An older steam lorry, you say? We might have one in rough shape out back, but, I’m not too sure if it still has the parts you’ll need. As for a work bay, we use these over here for working underneath steam-propelled road vehicles,” Neville replied, motioning to a couple of work bays that had an access pit.

“Come on, you little…” Kaylie grumbled, helping Rukari with the dash disassembly. There was a sudden, loud crash as Kivenaal, who had at least tried to help by removing the tow bar, practically collapsed, dropping the bar in the process and ending up on the floor.

Kayden sighed, looked over to Jayde and Malavera, then said, “Can the two of you get him into the back seat before he breaks something we need?”

Once they’d done that, Kayden climbed in next to him, then asked Nova, “Is he okay?”

“All of the information I can read from him says, yes, he is fine. But I can tell his body is in a bit of distress through sleep deprivation. We should try to get him somewhat comfortable and just let him rest for now,” Nova replied.

When Kayden got out of the truck, Jayde and Malavera looked at him for a moment before Malavera decided to ask, “Any news?”

“Kivenaal fell asleep on his feet,” Kayden replied. “He should be fine in the back of the Bricksley, I doubt that Kaylie or Rukari will make enough noise to wake him.”

Kaylie yawned and shook her head with a grimace. They almost had the fan out, but the clip on the connector was fighting them. Rukari, however, managed to squeeze the clip and pull the plug on the fan, freeing up the unit for removal. “I’ll bring this over to Val. Think you can put this back together?” Kaylie asked.

“Neyi. I’m not… Don’t know how,” Rukari said with a light shake of his head.

“That’s okay. I’ll be back in a moment,” Kaylie replied.

“We’ll get Robert over there then, i guess…”, Valentin mumbled, apparently loud enough for the surrounding staff to hear, as three workers went about and positioned themselves for pushing the car over to the bay.
“Connor. Mind getting in and steering for the three colleagues here? I’ll see if that lorry ‘out back’ has something of use…”, Valentin asked, which returned an approving nod from Connor, followed by him entering the Dione just before it was set into motion.

Before Valentin could go out the back to investigate the lorry, however, Kaylie already was approaching him, holding the Bricksley’s blower fan in her hand.

“Sorry to interrupt your thought process here, but… We brought you a fan. It’s probably not going to fit right away, but… Well, it’s at least a similar kind of part,” Kaylie said. “I’ve got to go help Rukari put the dashboard back together, though, because otherwise we’re going to have a mess to deal with in the morning.”

Kayden gave a huge yawn and shook his head, trying to keep himself awake, but he could tell that he was almost about to drop. He had no idea how Kaylie was still on her feet and moving, no clue where Jayde and Rukari found the energy to keep going, and he wasn’t even willing to contemplate how Malavera still looked like he could go another day without rest.

Rukari looked over the technical manual Kaylie had brought along, but to him, the various different names of all the parts blended together into a confusing mess. Sure, he could read the language, but he was struggling with the unfamiliar measurement system, the confusing terminology, and the concept of “Just follow it backwards.” He was used to everything measured out in millimeters and centimeters, not fractions of an inch. He had no idea what a ‘panel clip’ was or how to put them back in now that he’d gotten them out. He’d asked Malavera for help, but Malavera just ended up looking equally confused.

“I don’t do interior stuff, I help move engines and transmissions around, and I drive trucks,” Malavera said.

Rukari looked over to Jayde, then waved him over to ask, “Can you just wave your hand and put this all back together?”

“Maybe, if I were less tired. But right now, no,” Jayde replied. “Seriously, just wait for Kaylie.”

“Uhm… thank you, i guess…”, Valentin muttered, surprised at how Shift Happens managed to rip their dashboard apart in a few minutes to salvage the hopefully-still-functional fan out of.

With a new fan in hand he went over to the bay where Robert was now parked.
In the access pit, Val had a look around, half crouching while one of the workers got to town getting the frame of the old fan out of it’s mountings, even managing to correctly unplug it.
The damaged fan was chucked out of the pit, sliding across the floor and out from underneath Robert for a good ten feet.

“Now to get that mated to there…”, Valentin mumbled, his mind turning a lot of gears in an effort to devise a solution that could get it in place and secure enough to last for the remainder of the event.

Kaylie picked up the damaged fan, looking at it and realizing that, no matter what, an adapter would need to be made. Val had already gone down into the pit with the Bricksley’s fan, so she’d have to either get him to hand it back over, or find out how big it was in some other way.

“Valentin, we might be able to make an adapter for that, but we’d need to be able to see both fans to do it,” Kaylie said, leaning down toward the maintenance pit to speak with him. “Hold on, I have an idea,” she added, before standing back up, looking around at the machines and tools nearby. She knew Malavera worked with tools at least as primitive as these on a regular basis.

She looked toward the Bricksley, an idea quickly forming in her head. “Hey, Malavera! We might have a project for you!” Kaylie called out.

Malavera wandered over, studying the equipment in the workshop on the way. As he walked up to Kaylie, he admitted, “I’d love to have a workshop like this back home. Tools like this… They’ll last forever.”

Kaylie smirked. “Yeah, and somehow I don’t think Val is exactly comfortable with tools from the 1920’s,” she said, looking up at Malavera, “whereas you sit there with older tools than this and make muzzle-loading firearms for fun.”

“Well… Fair enough,” Malavera said. He leaned down closer to where Val was, then added, “How about a trade in projects, then? I’ll make an adapter, but someone has to get the information to a crew around here for a set of rail wheels.” He stood up, though could still clearly be heard as he spoke, “Otherwise our little plan goes nowhere, and we’re going to be in for one very, very long night. Let’s just say I’m not looking forward to trying to make a steam-powered Bricksley myself if we can’t fix what blew up over there,” Malavera said, looking a bit embarrassed at first that Kaylie had called him out for one of his hobbies.

“Likely we wouldn’t be able to, anyway,” Kaylie replied. “Only way I could imagine us making a steam engine work for that would be to make a crude hitch coupling to the rear bumper, have the boiler and engine essentially on a trailer, and push us along like an old articulated bus.”

Malavera grimaced. “Don’t let Kayden hear that idea.”

“Why not?” Kaylie asked.

“He’ll give it some sort of stupid name. We both know that.”

Kaylie smirked, then turned to her brother leaning against the truck bed. “Hey, Kayden!” she called out.

Malavera groaned and shook his heads. “Now is when I wish I had enough hands to cover all of my ears,” he muttered under his breath.

“Yeah?” Kayden replied back.

“What would you call a powered trailer unit?” Kaylie inquired.

Kayden stood there for nearly a minute, clearly thinking of something, but it was slowed by him being tired. Malavera almost looked relieved at how long it was taking, thinking the name might not be so bad. Then Kayden opened his mouth and spouted out, “We could call it a Bumper Humper.”

Malavera sighed and said, “Sorry, Val, that you had to hear that one. Ironically, it’s one of the better ones he’s had.”

“1920s isn’t the big issue…”, Val countered. “Basic health and safety rules are.”

After that, he simply waited for things to unfold, the process of which being juust long enough for his brain to start thinking: “Sleep. Now. NOOOW!”
Still, Valentin tried to persist and at the very least get the rail wheels underway, made a bit easier by the distraction that followed the ‘Bumper Humper’ name idea.

“Uh, yeah… rail wheels…”, Valentin started while the loss of mental capacity due to lack of sleep is getting ever more apparent.
“Connor? … I need you to generate some drawings for a solid steel wheel that clears the brakes of their truck and fits to standard gauge.” Valentin spoke, pausing afterwards to ‘buffer’ the next sentence.
“Okay.” Connor stated before walking off and over to the Bricksley to see what he was now working with.
“… And … i’d need local manpower to actually fabricate them … Though … measure twice, cut once.”, Valentin muttered as the three workers went off to help Connor as best they could.

The maintenance pit below the Dione was soon almost devoid of people, with only Valentin remaining down there. At this point, he is forced to give in to the demands for sleep, as he slides down the wall of the pit, now very much sleeping, seated in the far corner of it.

Over by the Bricksley, it was equally clear that some of the team were starting to have serious issues with staying awake. Kivenaal had already crashed out hard a while ago, but now Kayden was showing signs of difficulty after helping Rukari with the dashboard reassembly. Rukari was alert, but starting to have issues where he kept falling back to his native language, making it impossible to understand him unless he slowed way down to speak in a language others could understand. Jayde was exhausted, but still semi-functional when Connor came over to get some measurements of the Bricksley so he could make some technical drawings.

As such, when it came time to take one of the front wheels off, it was Jayde who was in the best shape to do it. Figuring out the jack wasn’t too difficult, and he got it into place, and removing the lug nuts, likewise, didn’t take real long. The problem came in when they went to measure up the rear axle, and Jayde very-nearly put the truck down on the brake rotor before putting the tire on. Thankfully, both Connor and Rukari had stopped him before any further damage could be done to the truck.

Malavera took his time making various measurements of the Dione’s blower fan exhaust housing, writing each down on a sheet of paper kindly provided by one of the workers. When he mentioned he needed the other fan, someone retrieved it from where it had been left in the maintenance pit and handed it to Malavera, who, again, took the same measurements and wrote them down. He then crawled down into the pit himself, a very tight squeeze and a very low crouch for him, in order to see just how little space he had to work with. Now that he had all the measurements he needed, he could start making the adapter as soon as he could find some suitable material.

With the dashboard reassembled and the tires back on the truck, that left Rukari, Jayde, and Kayden with not much else to do. Kayden, as a result, sat down in the passenger seat of the truck, which turned into a sideways slump that left him sleeping while spooning the gear sticks. Jayde and Rukari decided to take a look out back at the steam truck just in case things didn’t go smoothly, as anything could happen at that point.

“You know how to drive one of these?” Jayde asked.

“Neyi. Marinkosa, ne grundkosa,” Rukari replied.

Jayde nodded. “So you can handle a ship, but not a truck, then. But you could fire the boiler on this, yes?”

“Yi. Igniri nekasi,” Rukari answered.

“Firing won’t be a problem,” Jayde said, translating out loud. “Think this old beast will run?”

“Kasivah ahsi linesei, neahd vedi. Nevosa, neahd dobu,” Rukari responded.

Jayde chuckled. “Definitely old but strong. You’re right, though. Not fast, but it’ll do a walking pace just fine.”

Rukari climbed up into the cab and took a look around, not seeing anything obviously missing. He jumped down, looked underneath and nodded. “Weh sehaal kasi, neahd aihi kasi, vii sehuul kasivah.”

“It’ll take some work, but with that work, we’ll have a work beast,” Jayde said. “Hopefully, we won’t need it, but… Let’s be prepared just in case.”

The two of them wandered back in, and Jayde asked Neville, “When was the last time the old steam truck out there ran?”

“Couple months ago. If I remember it correctly, the problem she really has is that the engine’s slide valves are a bit worn out. She’s not efficient when she’s blowing steam all over the country while hauling coal. But she runs. You’d just need to stop quite often for water and fuel to make up for the valve leaks,” Neville replied. “Knowing you’ve got a Valraadi with you, well… I’d bet if we let him fire it and had another one to drive it, she’d be the fastest steam truck in the land.”

Not much happened regarding the members of RK Series Racing, as Valentin was already asleep, Tim was about to fall asleep sat in the rear bench and Connor was busy drawing up some crude documentation on how to make those rail wheels.
Constantin, likewise, had nothing much to do, but was starting to wonder where Valentin had been milling about.

In search for him, he somewhat aimlessly toured the building, checking on the lorry out back as well, eventually finding him below the Dione in the corner. Seeing as how getting a limp twig into an undersized car was nigh-impossible, especially alone, he just left him there for the time being, somewhat calmed by the knowledge of his now known location.

Connor, meanwhile went hard at work drawing up the manufacturing instructions, filling the massive sheet of paper with measurements, angles, material specifications and instructions on finish as well as a wireframe drawing of the object in question.
A second sheet was filled with a slightly altered variant of the first, containing the same things with the changes needed to accommodate the rear axle instead of the front.

Both sheets were than handed to the workers, who eagerly took them into custody and went to the Bricksley to proof-check clearances using the somewhat known stock rims as a reference point.

After that, Connor returned to somewhere near the Dione, idling, while the workers went ahead in making the Bricksley’s rail conversion a reality.

Malavera was in his element, carefully cutting, folding, and welding together the necessary adapter to convert the slightly-larger Bricksley blower fan to fit the Dione’s boiler. Every so often, he grabbed the various parts and checked them for fit, then made adjustments as needed, eventually ending up with an adapter that was, to be perfectly honest, over-built for the task. On one end, it mimicked the blower output for the Dione’s fan, at the other end, it mimicked the start of the Bricksley’s air duct, with proper mounting points to bolt right in using the mounting screws on the front of the Bricksley’s fan housing, turning the adapter and fan into one single unit. He went below the Dione to check the fit, then headed back up top to swap the fan plug over from the old fan to the new one.

By the Bricksley, it was clear now just how tired the team was getting, with Kivenaal and Kayden already crashed out in the truck, Jayde looking like he was about to fall asleep at any moment, and then an almighty crash as Kaylie lost her balance, fell into an almost-empty maintenance pit, and landed hard on her left arm.

“I’m okay,” she called out, getting up slowly, looking at the almost-empty cans of grease she’d smashed flat by landing on them. “Covered in grease, but okay.”

Jayde walked over to help as Kaylie walked out of the maintenance pit. “Yeah, we’re going to have to set up some camp here, I think. There’s no way we’re going to make it into camp like this,” Jayde said.

Neville looked over at them, then said, “We have a shower system here, just behind those doors. Fixing locomotives is messy work, and no one wants to have to clean bearing grease out of carriage seats in the morning. Use it to get cleaned up, if you need to. As for sleeping arrangements, you’re welcome to set up tents outside, just don’t block the entrances. I’ll go pass that on to the others, because it looks like a couple of them have also fallen asleep.”

As Kaylie and Jayde went to use the showers, Neville walked over to let Constantin and Connor know they could set up camp outside if needed, then walked over to relay that to Rukari. After that, he realized Malavera was relatively close to the Dione and gave him the same news as well.

“Well thank you, though we probably cannot make use of it. My tent relies on the car for structural integrity and Valentin obviously is already asleep… Hope you are okay with us staying here for the night, car and everything.”, Constantin replied quietly while he dug about for his sleeping bag in the car, trying to not wake up Tim.

The sleeping bag was then hauled into the pit, where it was rolled out to provide some added comfort and insulation for Valentin. Once down there, he realized that the air was getting a bit stale, though, ending in him chucking the bag back out. After that, he went over to Valentin again, crouching down to align himself for an across-the-shoulder pick-up. He was very careful about not pinching any of his hair as well as not flinging him about the area.
On the way out of the maintenance bay, he realized that he had no plan on where to put Valentin, now that he was out of the trench.
He somewhat cluelessly looks around for a reasonably secluded corner for Valentin to sleep in.

Malavera looked over as he saw Constantin carrying Valentin with no real good place to put him in sight. Quickly looking around the area, he found a spot not-too-far from the Dione, a space between two somewhat dusty toolboxes. He’d noticed most of the other toolboxes were either clean, somewhat greasy or oily, or covered with coal dust, not just the usual dusty dirty look. He waved Neville over, then asked, “What’s with those toolboxes?”

“Those? A bunch of tools we rarely ever have to use. Weird measurements, fractions of an inch. Archaic crap we keep around just in case someone brings in one of those awful imported Nehmenweld steam wagons again,” Neville replied.

Malavera looked over to Constantin, then motioned to him to place Val in the nearly 10-foot space between the two toolboxes. “Neville says they contain tools no one uses. Sounds like they might be American standard, not Metric. But I don’t think anyone will bother him while he rests there.”

Constantin took a look over to the toolboxes, which indeed where basically pristine save for the thick layer of dust draped over them. With a graceful shove of his foot, his sleeping bag rolled over to the space indicated by Malavera.

“Mind rolling it out over there? Cannot exactly do that without putting the pasta back into the pot first.”, Constantin requested.

Malavera gave a quick nod with his right head, then carefully unrolled the sleeping bag for Constantin, taking the time to make sure no loose bolts, nuts, washers, or other debris was under it so Valentin could get some decent sleep. After he had done that, he used the nearby toolbox to help stand back up again, then admitted to Constantin, “Sorry, but I may have slightly over-stressed the buckle. I hate those plastic clips, I struggle with them all the time. Squeeze too hard, they break. Don’t squeeze hard enough, you can’t undo them.”

Constantin followed Malavera over to the toolbox area and waited for him to unfurl the sleeping bag.
Once the area was cleared and the bag was placed, Constantin crouched down and carefully placed Valentin on top. He also took the chance to check up on the buckle to discover that it wasn’t exactly pristine, but functional.

Valentin in turn took note of the new orientation he was now in, flipping around to the other side almost immediately while also curling up somewhat to retain a bit of heat.
While the steamworks isn’t the coldest building in town, the mass of open windows and gateways made for a sizeable draft through the building.

Constantin returned to Malavera by righting himself again.
“Well that buckle doesn’t look broken. And even if, replacing it isn’t a problem.”, Constantin replied.
“Tell me if i can be of help somehow. Seems like we are the only two still fully alert here, other than Neville and the current shift of locals…”

Malavera nodded. “I’ve still got to install that blower fan. The adapter is done, but it needs to go into the car now. Rukari’s busy with the tents, but, well, I know him when he gets tired, you won’t understand a single word he’s saying. Ideally, we’d get Kayden out of the front of the truck, but there’s no way you’re moving him, and even if we could do that, we can’t shove him into a tent without waking him up anyway,” Malavera said, before picking up the fan and some tools to install it.

“But, if you want to help, I’m fairly sure while I can install this into the car, I’m not going to be able to get those plugs connected. Also, while Rukari is setting up some tents, I’m sure he’d appreciate some help. Might as well set one of ours up for yourself while you’re at it,” Malavera added, before dropping back into the maintenance pit to install the fan.

Getting it lined up was easy, and getting the bolts in took no time at all, but he fumbled around with the plugs for just a few seconds before saying, “I’ve gotten it in there, but it still needs to be plugged in. If I try, I’m just going to end up breaking something.” He climbed back out of the maintenance pit with a grimace, then added, “I don’t know how the locals do that, climbing in and out of those. There’s almost no space in there.”

“The locals aren’t near-enough 8 feet tall and also have one head each…”, Constantin mumbled while he got underneath the Dione to plug the draft fan in, which took all of seven seconds to do.
“As per tents, i can manage. There’s still space in the car and cramped everything isn’t news to me. Also, better test if the fan actually works, right?” He said while on his way out from underneath.

He then went to Connor, the designated fireman, inquiring about a dry-cycle test of the draft fan.
“Okay. Be aware that the noise might alert the people already asleep.”, Connor protested.
“Other option is doing it tomorrow, risking hefty delays if shit is still busted…”, Constantin insisted, forcing Connor to climb aboard the Fireman’s seat. He flicked the ignition into the AUX position, followed by a smooth 0-100-0 operation of the draft fan.
What was immediately obvious is that the Bricksley fan was substantially louder than the Anhultz one due to the bigger vehicle it was meant for. Still, neither Valentin nor Tim were awoken by the noise made, with the latter groaning a bit and flopping over lengthwise onto the bench.

Soon, the fan returned to being dead-silent and stationary as Connor turned the ignition back off.
“Seems to work.”, Constantin confirmed. “Thank you for helping on that plate thingy… If you don’t need me for anything else, i’ll join the others in the Dreamworks. Every minute counts, i guess.”

Constantin then turned around to head up front, turning the fireman’s seat into a makeshift bed with consideration made to make room for Tim behind.

“Sleep is important. Even I’m planning on getting some more rest, and I could probably go another day without too much of an ill effect on me,” Malavera admitted. “That said, we should probably plan on getting up a bit early, just so we have time to iron out any problems with putting the truck on the rails. After all, we’ve never done this before, and while I trust that the wheels will be done correctly, I’d rather have extra time to make sure it’s done and will work than to be spending several hours troubleshooting when we should be on the way.”

He looked to Connor, then asked, “Could you wake me up somewhere around 4 hours before sunrise?”

“Me too. Sounds like a solid idea.” Constantin added, aware that the entire team would need to get up early, even if none of them were aware of that yet.
“Noted. I shall wake you up four hours before sunrise.”, Connor calmly replied.

After that, Constantin simply nodded to both Malavera and Connor before actually heading into his makeshift bed proper for the night.

Malavera nodded, then headed over to the Bricksley where Rukari had finished setting up the tents, gladly picking one, making sure that Connor knew which one he was in, then crawling inside.

Kaylie and Jayde wandered out of the showers, glad that everyone else was pretty much asleep by that point, as Jayde had used his magic to dry them both off and dry out their clothes. They chuckled as they walked past the truck to see Kayden and Kivenaal sleeping on the bench seats inside, then went through the usual ordeal of picking a tent that, in this case, didn’t already have someone sleeping in it.

Neville smiled. He knew his crew would work hard over the rest of the night to get everything done. For him, it was worth it just to have met Valentin today, but knowing that Valentin and his crew had chosen his steamworks for an interesting project, well… That was above and beyond perfect. He looked at the huge blue vehicle, then back over at his crew as they machined a set of wheels to fit it, and chuckled to himself. “A steam wagon on rails. I might have to try that some day,” he said to himself.

AndiD · 12 September 2022 08:49

Studies in Quantum Xenoanthropology, Ep. 6: We got a problem.

As Ford handed over the wheel to Arthur after a few hours of concentrated (and mostly silent) driving, Arthur rather started to roll more along than attacking the stage with gusto, despite the stage being quite well suited to the 4x4 Kanyon, and Ford having enjoyed his time behind the wheel, as usual.

“So you are trying to lose places the traditional way, despite not knowing exactly how much time we need to lose or whether we need to do that at all?”, Ford wondered.

“We might not have official timing, and only estimations by our AI - but I trust them…” Typing noises made Arthur and Ford take a quick glance at the centre view screen.

“… and it’s the only information we have”, Arthur concluded. The green letters vanished immediately.

“So, we might be up there with the leading pack, we won a few stages early on, so…?”, began Ford, but Arthur interrupted.

“Ford, you are forgetting the Prime Tenet of Quantumxenoanthropology: No interference…”

“… No records.” Ford joined Arthur in saying the last part, finishing it simultaneously. “And if we happen to win, or be on the podium, then there will be a record, albeit a small one…”

Arthur shot a warning glance at Ford.

“So why don’t we just disappear? We can just relocate to our quantum reality and noone would be the wiser…”

In the distance, a faint but consistent engine noise became audible.

“First, we’d cause quite a stir if we are suddenly absent from the next camp without having signed out with the organisers”, Arthur started. “That’s called a pertubatio in absentia. And second, we might miss out on a substantial chunk of data - everyone’s behaviour during and after the victory ceremony… the ‘party’ as it will be called, no doubt. So we have to be there, just not be a part of it, as usual.”

“And rarely can you gain more elucidating behavioural insights than in a rapid shift of environmental circumstances”, cited Ford from a standard xenoanthropology textbook. “The victory party probably will indeed count for that”, he mumbled.

The engine noise in the distance became louder. Ford’s expertise over the last days had grown so that he could readily identify the engine as an inline-6.

“See? And we can’t just ask the organisers to score us badly because they would ask all sorts of questions”, Arthur continued.

“Can’t we just… adjust… their records?” As on cue, the Kanyon was slightly shaken by a blue-ish car which wanted to get past the dawdling Mara just at the right time to emphasise certain words in Ford’s question.

“I rather not dare use quantum manipulation on their stuff. First, that would be interference…” - another hit by the blue estate car that now filled their rear view mirrors - “… And second, I don’t even bloody know where they keep the records!” Arthur began to be slightly agitated. The road was too narrow to let the blue nuisance pass so he hoped that its drivers would just get bored at some point.

“How about faking a defect?”

Arthur shook his head, aided by the third less than gentle nudge from behind. “Someone might stop to help us, and then nothing is wrong after all. And, as you can see, there is not even space here to safely STOP!” A fourth shudder rocked the Kanyon. “So, we are going to simply lose time, and we have to do it the traditional way.” More typing noises emanated from the centre console.

Arthur barely had time to read the newly appeared green letters as a fifth hit from behind made him yank the wheel to keep the Kanyon straight on the narrow road. “SCREW IT”, he shouted and put the pedal to the metal (in the absence of interior luxuries such as carpeted floors) in order to escape the
Dunav 3300 behind them.

The Kanyon’s superior traction indeed managed to leave their pursuers in the dust after a short while, and Ford silently wondered when the normally unflappable Arthur would sufficiently calm down to heed his own words, uttered only a very short time ago…

Madrias · 12 September 2022 13:54

I love that they’re being flustered in this serious moment by someone playing bumper-cars on the road.

Madrias · 13 September 2022 03:58

Shitbox Rally

Stage 16: Allvenitz to Temmingarda

Stage Start: 1 Sun, 34/7/3251, Allvenitz Campsite

Weather at Stage Start: Warm (27C), Mildly Humid, a light breeze.
Weather at mid-stage: Hot (32C), still humid and breezy. Clouds are visible in between the gaps in the trees.
Weather at Stage End (First Car): Cooling Down (30C), humidity is slowly fading, lightly breezy.
Weather at Stage End (Last Car): Warm (28C), low humidity, the wind has gone.

Stage End (First Car): 5-and-36 Sun, 34/7/3251, Temmingarda Campsite

Stage End (Last Car): 2-and-03 Moon, 35/7/3251, Temmingarda Campsite

Compared to the last stage, the road from Allvenitz leading to Temmingarda isn’t anywhere nearly as bad. It’s still mostly made of dirt, but what makes this a slow route is all of the tight, twisty turns on what amounts to an overgrown game trail through the forest. Rukari’s hand drawn maps all have it marked out about 50 miles into this particular stage that we have all crossed the equator of Aetherii, into their southern hemisphere. The sunlight barely makes it through the tree canopy at times, forcing everyone to drive with headlights, and sometimes offroad lights, turned on. Thankfully, after a long drive through the forest, everyone arrives at Temmingarda safe and sound, setting up camp in various tents just outside the city walls.

Notes: Randomization is active. Breakdowns are active. Time is in Earth Time.

@Madrias

Team Shift Happens

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 11:44:45
Average MPH: 30.2
Randomizer: 9.365 – Calculated to match RK’s time.
Refueling Stops: 0 – We are no longer burning fuel.
Breakdown: 4 (Team Caused - Towed)
Total Distance Traveled: 5328.0

Valentin took the wheel of the Bricksley, choosing Kayden and Malavera to share the front bench with him after sliding it forward a bit for his own comfort, avoiding smacking his head on the annoying radio console in the cab. Kivenaal sat behind Valentin, looking a little tired but otherwise alert, with Rukari in the mid-bench and Jayde in Kaylie’s seat, because Kaylie was sitting in his lap.

Kivenaal didn’t really care that the Bricksley was being pushed along, he was just glad that this time, they were coasting along smoothly and quietly, just the mild clicking and clacking of the rail joiners under the wheels making noise. Jayde got his revenge on Rukari for the constant elbow in his ribs with a surprisingly sharp elbow to Rukari’s chest, getting a wince out of the future Emperor. Malavera watched the world as it went by, while Kayden unfortunately spent far too much time trying to help Valentin out on looking for signals, only to realize Val’s eyesight was at least as good as his own, much to Malavera’s amusement. Kaylie, on the other hand, was sitting there, mentally counting through all of her known supplies onboard and trying to remember if they might have a solution to the truck’s severe overheating problem.

They rattled their way down the rails, past a station, and into the shunting yard, where the two vehicles were parked up safely in a siding, waiting for the next day.

@Caligari

Team Wayfarers

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 13:21:42
Average MPH: 26.5
Randomizer: 8
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 4 (Team Caused)
Total Distance Traveled: 5328.0

Big truck, small narrow trail. Jack takes it easy and the truck wiggles and wobbles around, though manages to not hit any low tree limbs.

@Executive

Team Gearknobs

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 06:36:05
Average MPH: 53.8
Randomizer: 13
Refueling Stops: 0
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 5328.0

The right car for the job. AWD, low center of gravity, just enough power to have fun without finding a tree sideways at a million miles per hour. The smell of pine trees is very strong in the car, but that’s just because someone ripped open a fresh pack of air fresheners and stuffed them into the climate control vents.

@BannedbyAndroid

Team Fallen Angels of the Past

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 14:43:28
Average MPH: 24.1
Randomizer: 7
Refueling Stops: 0
Breakdown: 1 (Powertrain)
Total Distance Traveled: 5328.0

Things were going well until a fallen branch “kindly” removed the lower radiator hose in the middle of the forest. Between having to dig through the fresh, hot mud to find the hose clamp, rummage around in the tools for an appropriate screwdriver to tighten it back up, and use a couple of leftover water bottles to carry river water back to the car several times, a lot of time was lost.

@TheYugo45GV

Team Oil Crisis

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 09:18:49
Average MPH: 38.1
Randomizer: 10
Refueling Stops: 2
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 5328.0

After the chaos in the previous stage, everyone agreed to take things easy today, especially considering the size of their vehicle and the lack-of-size of the road they were on.

@Knugcab

Team Hillbilly Rollers

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 11:01:11
Average MPH: 32.2
Randomizer: 7
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 2 (Chassis)
Total Distance Traveled: 5328.0

It turns out that running over a werewolf all that time ago is still having an effect on the van. While there aren’t any more Dyre bone shards left to blame for the bad luck, both front shock absorbers have failed, leaving the van horrifically bouncy. Some clever backyard engineering in camp turned up one spare shock absorber, and one “redneck rebuilt” one that had been taken apart and packed with a clean pair of Marie’s underwear and a good handful of axle grease. Surprisingly, it seems to hold up well enough that they’ll be able to make the next stage without any trouble.

@Fayeding_Spray

Team Witchlight

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 10:06:47
Average MPH: 35.1
Randomizer: 12
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 5328.0

Elist takes their car through this twisting mess of a game trail “fast” considering the size of the old American battleship.

@MrdjaNikolen

Team Mravolinski-Chitco

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 16:20:37
Average MPH: 21.7
Randomizer: 7
Refueling Stops: 0
Breakdown: 2 (Chassis)
Total Distance Traveled: 5328.0

You had to see this one coming. Turns out, having a wide and very tall extension on a vehicle isn’t exactly great on a tight, twisting, winding forest road. The resulting crash with two trees that ripped the camper extension off also spilled ALL of the team’s cargo onto the road, which took a lot of time to pick back up and find places to store it, considering the camper extension was pretty much a total loss. A significant amount of time was also spent breaking the shell down enough to both fit on the truck AND not hit any more trees on the way to camp. On the plus side, the vehicle feels so much less top-heavy now!

(Sorry, but you rolled that 7 honestly, and I’d mentioned that having something that bulky could pose a problem. So, when you got a 7, I knew immediately what I was doing to your poor truck.)

@SurrealCereal

Team Machinas Con Passiones

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 10:44:20
Average MPH: 33.0
Randomizer: 10
Refueling Stops: 4
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 5328.0

At this point, it’s almost routine that stupid things have to happen at the various fuel stops. Today, it was Chad playing the trumpet with his butt, sending foul notes in Giacomo’s direction… Right up until he tried a little too hard and played a brown note for himself.

@AndiD

Team Quick Rally 47

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 10:28:34
Average MPH: 33.9
Randomizer: 7
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 1
Total Distance Traveled: 5328.0

Following the AI’s guidance, the significant amount of duct tape holding some connectors together was loosened. As expected, the oil pressure sensor came unplugged mid-stage, leading to an engine shutdown in the middle of the forest. While the sensor was being plugged back in, several creatures were observed in their natural habitat. In a way, it was almost oddly relaxing.

@BG004130

Team Mrezhari

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 09:06:28
Average MPH: 39.0
Randomizer: 11
Refueling Stops: 0
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 5328.0

After their usual morning ritual, Team Mrezhari hurtled into the forest and proceeded to play a game called “How much dirt can we get into the trees today” with the Dunav’s tires.

@NoahC

Team Jockey

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 09:54:42
Average MPH: 35.8
Randomizer: 9
Refueling Stops: 2
Breakdown: 1 (Powertrain)
Total Distance Traveled: 5328.0

“What’s that mysterious ticking noise?”

@elizipeazie

Team RK Series Racing

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 11:44:32
Average MPH: 30.2
Randomizer: 9
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 4 (Team Caused - Towing)
Total Distance Traveled: 5328.0

Between some difficulty getting the Bricksley on the rails and a bit of annoying play in the cut-off linkage leading to a lack of full power, combined with some mild misunderstandings regarding seating arrangements in the Bricksley, getting two vehicles going in a consist was definitely harder than Val had thought it would have been. Constantin worked the Dione’s controls and blared the whistle for the one grade crossing they had to deal with while Valentin kept an eye out for signals and mashed his foot on the Bricksley’s incredibly heavy brake pedal.

@Tzuyu_main

Team Black Rabbit

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 11:06:18
Average MPH: 31.9
Randomizer: 10
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 5328.0

Sure, it’s not the perfect car for this, but it’s held together so far, and there’s a certain joy in throwing the RWD Dauer around a twisty forest rally stage.

@SheikhMansour

Team Spy Kids

Distance Traveled: 355.2
Time (HH:MM:SS): 07:28:14
Average MPH: 47.5
Randomizer: 12
Refueling Stops: 1
Breakdown: 0
Total Distance Traveled: 5328.0

Normally, “Let’s take a shortcut” should be something to fear. This time, instead of being a disaster, it shaved a lot of time off of the run.

Stage Finishing Order:

06:36:05 – 5-and-36 Sun – Team Gearknobs
07:28:14 – 6-and-03 Sun – Team Spy Kids
09:06:28 – 7-and-12 Sun – Team Mrezhari
09:18:49 – 7-and-23 Sun – Team Oil Crisis
09:54:32 – 7-and-55 Sun – Team Jockey
10:06:47 – 7-and-66 Sun – Team Witchlight
10:28:34 – 8-and-05 Sun – Team Quick Rally 47
10:44:20 – 8-and-20 Sun – Team Machinas Con Passiones
11:01:11 – 8-and-35 Sun – Team Hillbilly Rollers
11:06:18 – 8-and-40 Sun – Team Black Rabbit
11:44:32 – 8-and-74 Sun – Team RK Series Racing
11:44:45 – 8-and-74 Sun – Team Shift Happens
13:21:42 – 10-and-01 Sun – Team Wayfarers
14:43:28 – 10-and-75 Sun – Team Fallen Angels of the Past
16:20:37 – 2-and-03 Moon – Team Mravolinski-Chitco

(Team post will be coming later.)

MrdjaNikolen · 13 September 2022 12:31

Team Mravolinski-Chitco

BANG…OH NO…PLAN >:)

Prepping to go

This was good nights rest and so everyone had high hopes for the stage, packing enthusiastically into vehicle

Breakfast was mostly some fruits for three of us and some raw meat for dogs; Chicota logically joined in with few bottles of beer.
There were some comments related to fact that, apart from replacing head gaskets, there wasnt any particularly tasking work to do: Pi seems to inherit rather sound vehicle which would be rather important for journey of her own.

Courtesy of big addon, it also has lot of semi-enclosed space. Ofc its hard to be sure but its not very likely Americans would really utilise space in this kind of fashion and its indicated vehicles cargo space is indeed plentiful.
In fashion that oh-so-much indicated my European heritage, i decided all 5380 liters of indicated cargo space need to be closed off, which might be solved for itself if our team went with something like minivan, SUV or station wagon.
But ye, cargo capacity number going brrrr had quite the influence on decision
This move meant we are one of few pickup trucks and one of double cabs on grid, being one of longest vehicles and likely tallest and widest addon included…so far said size havent caused a problem…

Enjoyment was also found at first when we fully packed into car and started moving, which lasted until sky started to get darker and darker and darker…

Big vehicle was wrung around with more speed than it was legally allowed to, considering its type and small engine

At one moment, speedo showed 110 kmph or about 69 mph. Nice
Next moment tho…

CRASH

Its fair to say, i had been in cars that hit something or were hit by something.
I very much recall us hitting stray dog on highway, dad slowed down from usual 120 kmph but hit happened, very much damaging front bumper of first gen Renault Laguna estate we had at that time.
We were able to drive/walk away tho which sadly couldnt have applied to poor animal being hit.
There was also some fella that misunderstood his parking brake and his towhook hit our Dacia, resulting in light damage to hood and broken taillight: if my memory serves me correctly that was 90s Chevrolet Blazer. I could imagine seeing such vehicle in less damaging circumstances.

But nothing could have prepared properly for violent jolt caused by addon hitting some tree branches above at that 110 kmph speed mentioned in last paragraph of Camp part directly above, shaving most of initial speed.
Rest of our kinetic energy was logically shed by brakes at more appropriate rate, in order to estimate this chaos that we are now in.

This is start of some pretty serious troubles, seeing that only stuff that was technically in bed had stayed in its place.
Some clothes belonging to myself and VerBanka are now spread out on road, meaning that most of our clothing now belongs in dirty section, not that i care that much anyway about it.
Beds that used to be in space above cab are also chilling out in dirt, stuff placed between cab and that camping area was also on display and also scattered around

Clothing would for most part be shoved in cab: actually everything that size-wise could fit into cab was fitted into cab, reminding me of good old days when our 5 member family would tackle family trip with our Corsa.
That 2002 car def had its virtues mostly used by our dad for its frugal usage of fuel and zippy nature but wasnt ideal for long trips either in passenger space or avaiable trunk space.
(Some of you may say that putting LPG tank in place originally meant for spare tire didnt help. You would be right.)

Chicota had did little bit of experiment and realized that, if he focuses exhaust gasses from jet engines, he can kinda weld stuff together.

“We could repair it!”
Klimentol: “That sounds great if not for one big question…should we do that?”
Chicota: “Why not?”
Klimentol: “Hmm there is few things. Yes, it was rather nice having lot of space to put stuff and thats going to be very much missed.
However
You can see that road doesnt seem to be any more friendly to such addons and besides, Pi may encounter similar situations later on.”
“This is second-to-last stage tho, not many chances for this to repeat.”
“True, but as said, this rally isnt going to be our only worry. Pi isnt going to find someone to just weld everything back up in case of problem.
So i suggest to just pick stuff up and put it in bed; get to camp and town and hopefully we would sufficiently fasten it up and finish this journey”

This felt rather logical and after Chicota used jet engines for their original purpose aka making himself fly, he saw…everything
This forest part was indeed way too big to justify potential welding.

We are gonna continue slowly, as we are gonna pack stuff very very loosely.
What used to be gate turned into sides of our contraption was kinda evened out and now served as kinda extension for bed sides, bcos ya know, you kinda need to store much more stuff in that bed.
Former roof of camper thing would once again cover everything, but now by virtue of simply sitting on it.

Observing the car as it is now, Mrdja had idea and decided to test how loud Chicota can be.
After test, Mrdja was satisfied with results and told him tad bit more about his plan
Some evil grins were had, knowing that absolutely noone else in camp would enjoy it all that much

I ofc have feeling that Team Mrezhari is already informed about this interesting tradition, but i dont find it likely they will comment on that.

And as such we continued to camp to realize this plan of ours

PLAN >:)

We reached the camp and just continued to roll slowly through it.
Chicota opened the window on his side, took head out and spoke very loudly

WE COLLECT OLD FRIDGES, CAR BATTERIES, LAWN MOWERS, BOILERS

CLEAN YOUR BACKYARDS, SHEDS, BASEMENTS AND GARAGES OF JUNK

BATHTUBS, JUNK IRON, BROKEN ELECTRIC STOVES, WASHING MACHINES

WE HAVE BEST PRICES IN BUSINESS
EVERYTHING THAT ANNOYS YOU, EVERYTHING THAT IMPEDES YOU
WE BUY

After getting to end of camp, we simply turned car again and repeated the process, as per plan.
With our great plan being realised, it was back to serious business, mostly related to fastening all of the junk we are now carrying.
With that, dogs and Chicota had went to town to get necessary supplies and Mrdja was left to deal with everyone from other teams as result of his great idea.

No matter who decides to ask, explanation would be about the same:

In Serbia, there are some ppl that live this way.
They are mostly of Romani ancestry, but there are no particular rules in that regard
They get some cheap van or very small truck that can be driven on car license (vehicle even fully loaded must be below 3500 kg), get some megaphone to make themselves heard and do same thing that our team just did.

Ofc we dont expect influx of more junk as we kinda already have enough of our own but they do genuinely buy old stuff in decrepit and not exactly usable condition atm

Are their prices really the best?
Not informed in that regard, but i feel better price may be obtained by hauling this crap to junkyard yourself or if possible actually fixing it.

Would their vehicles be eligible as inspiration for SR entry?
Long answer would be
Judge for yourself
Search any of this on Youtube
“Staro gvozdje/gvozde/gvožđe” (Old iron)
“Stari akumulatori” (old car batteries)
“Kupujemo staro gvozdje” (we buy old iron)
“Cistimo/Čistimo podrume, dvorista/dvorišta i supe/šupe” (We clean basements, backyards and sheds(of trash))"
And see whats driven

But short answer is very much YES

Are they annoying and obnoxius for most of ppl?
Honestly yes, but we are mostly ignoring them if their services arent explicitly needed to us

But as always, if someone is up for some RP related or unrelated to this, i wouldnt mind.

Elizipeazie · 13 September 2022 13:15

~~you may get the grumpy side of my team, shouting through cam at 2-moon when (almost) everyone is asleep~~

nvm my team isn’t even in camp

Elizipeazie · 18 September 2022 14:25

RK Series Racing; Stage 16 Drive

and

Team Shift Happens

(Collab with @Madrias, obviously)

It was still very much dark in the Allvenitz Steamworks, save for some dim electrical lighting dotted about the room. At precisely 4 hours before expected sunrise, Connor’s internal timer went off, kicking him out of his stand-by state, with everyone else partaking in the Shitbox Rally still asleep. The only other people awake were the local workers with the Bricksley’s soon-to-be rail wheels and Neville, who was supervising the whole thing as best he could.
Those wheels did already look mostly complete, but the four of them were stacked onto a lathe-like tool, where they were to be balanced for the expected speeds.

Connor did not wait long to execute the assigned task, choosing to get Constantin out of his sleep first.
He approaches the Dione, carefully opening the front passenger door, behind which Constantin was “sat” on a heavily reclined seat.
Connor gave Constantin some light taps to his right jaw area, which already was enough to get Constantin into a very vaguely alert state.
“Good morning. It is approximately four hours before sunrise.”, Connor calmly stated.
“Yeah cool thanks.” Constantin mumbled back, still in the process of waking up.
“I am going to get Malavera awake.” Connor replied, already heading off to the tent Malavera was in.
“You do that…”, Constantin replied, while he put the seatback up to it’s upright position.
Connor then went over to the tent as announced.

Malavera gave a quiet, half-growled groan as he slowly sat up. Sleep, for the last hour or so, had been impossible as a dropped tool in the distance had rang out quite sharply and startled him awake. He’d been laying there in hopes that he’d fall back asleep, but instead, had just heard the sounds of machining going on, the sound of a lathe removing metal to get the wheels closer to their finished form.

As Connor walked over, Malavera crawled out of the tent. “Good morning, Connor,” Malavera said, standing up to his full height and stretching a bit before reaching back into his tent and putting his shirt back on.

Connor looked at Malavera with a bit of confusion.
“Good morning. I see you are already awake.”, he said, mentally ticking off the task of getting him out of bed.

By this time, Constantin was also mentally functional and got out of the car, closing the door with a noticeable thud that didn’t seem to bother Tim at all.
He then came over to the other two, his face looking perfectly awake, but everything else as if he hadn’t slept for a week.

“Mornin. Looks like the wheels need some work still…”, Constantin spoke to the other two while trying to neaten himself up as best he could.
“Indeed they do. They currently are being balanced to make them as round as we can get them to be. They should be completed shortly.”, Neville spoke eagerly and with little consideration for the volume of his voice.

This didn’t seem to phase Valentin or Tim, though the members of Shift happens did not take this lack of awareness too kindly.

Rukari startled awake at the loud voice, then grumbled out, “Why don’t you step on my tail next time? It’d be just as unpleasant a wake-up call, but at least your foot will also be in pain.”

The loud voice seemed to also have an effect on the rest of the crew, with Kivenaal sitting up in the back of the truck with a glare before shoving the door open and climbing out, Kayden soon joining him with a rather large yawn, Kaylie grumbling as she crawled out of her tent, still looking sore from yesterday’s fall, and Jayde muttering under his breath, “It’s not worth it to cast silence, he didn’t know any better.”

As they made their way out of the car or tent one by one, Rukari made his annoyance very known, which made Neville realize what just happened

“Oh fuck… i am so sorry!”, he started, going from heightened voice to almost whispering halfway through trying to excuse himself from the bad he just did.
“Good job in pissing of an entire herd of furballs.” Constantin commented, aware that his choice of words probably was less than ideal, though in his defense he didn’t have any real info on what the members of Shift Happens actually were.
“At least that saves us the effort of getting them out of sleep. Well, most of them…”, he added, chuckling a bit while looking at Valentin tucked between some toolboxes and sleeping through all this mess as if he was at home, in bed, undisturbed by anything.

At the other end of the shop, the workers were stepping back from the workpieces, followed by some nasty coil whine as it spun up to whatever speed the lathe could muster, the four workmen watching the array of wheels for any oscillations and vibrations. A few moments later, the speed was dialed back down and they got back to work, turning the cylindrical wheels into conical ones.

Malavera smirked, then quipped back to Constantin, “I’d prefer the term ‘pack’ over ‘herd,’ though given our heavily feline-biased nature, maybe ‘pride’ is better.”

This, of course, earned him a light elbow in the ribs from Kaylie, followed by her looking through the building, seeing the balancing process going on for the wheels.

Kivenaal grabbed one of the water jugs off of the roof of the Bricksley, flipped the cap open, and took a long drink. When Kayden poked him in the side and made him spill water all over himself, Kivenaal bonked him on the head with the now-empty container.

“Really? It’s too early for this shit,” Jayde grumbled, watching as Kivenaal and Kayden had a momentary, surprisingly quiet scuffle that ended with Kayden managing to knock Kivenaal’s hat flying, only to get knocked over and kicked in the ass by a cowboy boot for his trouble.

“Settle down, children,” Kaylie quipped, looking over at the two of them.

Rukari looked over at Neville, then asked, “You say the wheels are still being worked on. When can we expect that they will be done?”

“I’d guess we’d be able to get breakfast done first,” Malavera said. “Granted, we’re almost out of easy supplies.”
“As far as i am aware, they are currently being balanced for roundness. Should be done in less than half an hour.”, Neville said, turning around to have a quick look at the workers near the lathe.
“Definitely less than half an hour. Seems like they are shaving off the excess into the conical shape that rail wheels have.”

“Well in terms of breakfast i am covered. Still have an MRE i can feast on. Though we will have to get at least Valentin out of “bed” soon, with how he takes longer than your locomotives to get going…”, Constantin commented.

“If he takes 2 hours to wake up then i would genuinely be amazed.”, Neville replied, unaware of the differing time scale on earth.

“Had a case of that once already.”, Constantin quipped back. “I’ll get breakfast for myself.”
Constantin then went back to the Dione to retrieve canned bread and some butter.

“You’ll ruin your fireboxes doing that,” Rukari mentioned to Neville. “Better to bring them up to temperature slowly when you can, otherwise you earn yourself a lot more work.”

“We’re in a steamworks,” Kivenaal said. “Maintenance is their business.”

“Hey, less talking, more making of food, please,” Kayden grumbled.

“Thank you for volunteering to cook the meal, then,” Rukari quipped back, making Kayden groan.

“Do we even have any food left in the truck?” Kaylie asked.

Malavera reached into the truck bed and grabbed what was left of the supplies they’d picked up the day before, then said, “We’ve got plenty of fruits that should be eaten soon.”

“Great. Breakfast without actual food in it,” Kayden grumbled. He then watched in shock as Kivenaal grabbed a fat orange out of the bag and bit into it like it was an apple. “Seriously? You’re supposed to peel those.” He watched in horror as Rukari did the same thing, then shook his head.

Jayde, on the other hand, just chuckled. “Good luck convincing either of them that they’re doing that wrong. That’s just how they eat citrus fruit,” Jayde said, picking out a green apple and pulling out one of his knives to cut slices out of it, eating each one off of the blade of his knife.

Malavera chuckled and opened the toolbox, pulling out his personal supplies and grabbing an MRE labeled in a language that was hard to read, even with the rings on, peeling it open and taking a bite out of the very dense brick inside it. This was followed by a lot of chewing and Malavera grabbing his canteen from inside the truck with a grimace. With his other head, he mentioned, “I do so very much hate these things. How in the name of the Moons above can one bite completely dry out your mouth? I swear, whoever invented these deliberately wanted to torture people.”

Kaylie and Kayden shared a glance before reaching for Malavera’s bag, only to stop when Malavera shook his head. “They might not be safe for the two of you, they’re made for my kind.”

“So what are we supposed to do for food?” Kayden grumbled.

Kivenaal looked over at Kayden, then replied, “You could go hunt. Or, you could do the sensible thing and head into town to buy food so we don’t have to rush to do that when we arrive at the next camp.”

Kaylie leaned over the bed rail, grabbed two decent looking apples, and handed one to Kayden. “Quit whining about eating fruit, you know you’re able to eat some of it,” Kaylie grumbled.

“Yeah, and it’s not right,” Kayden said, taking a bite out of the apple with a grimace.

Malavera shook his head again, taking a long swig of water before taking a smaller bite of the tough brick again.

“What exactly is that?” Kivenaal asked, looking at the block.

Malavera glanced at the label, then said, “Supposedly, beef, vitamins, minerals, wheat powder, and salt, cooked and formed into a block and then thorougly dehydrated, before being vacuum sealed. They’ll keep for about 5 years.”

“Five of yours, or five on Earth?” Kivenaal asked.

“Mine. About 35 years on Earth. Provided the seal stays intact and they’re stored properly, that is. Truth be told, I think they’re designed to be something you only eat because it’s better than starvation,” Malavera replied.

Breakfast was much less eventful for Constantin, who had a slice or two of buttered bread before deciding that it wasn’t exactly enough. Digging back into the box, he locates a small package of biscuits, which he happily pulls out before dumping the remaining contents and the box itself into his backpack.

“Good old Bunker Buster Biscuits. Love 'em.”, Constantin spoke while opening the plastic wrapping, followed by him happily munching on them, followed by a drink rivalling Malavera’s in volume. After all, they were known for being dry as the Sahara and somehow being a good substitute to charcoal bricks if paired with a suitable fire starter.

Other than that, breakfast was not exactly exciting, especially with half of RK Series Racing still asleep.
Eventually, a pair of workers came over, pushing a crude wooden cart of sorts with a stack of shiny flanged rail wheels on top of it.

“Got them done. Finally.”, one of the two proclaims proudly, though it is obvious that the two were exhausted.
“Yeah… that guy of yours specified really tight tolerances that turned out to be major ass-pain in some areas… Alas, here they are.”, the other spoke, before both headed off to collect the two other colleagues, soon heading out for their deserved time away from work.

With the wheels ready and “breakfast” finished, Malavera and Kivenaal slowly moved the truck into a maintenance bay to test-fit the new wheels and set the vehicle down on the rails for the first time.

While they were busy getting the truck lifted up to fit the new set of wheels, Rukari pushed the cart over to Kivenaal and Malavera, who had the front end up in the air on jack stands and had the front wheels off already, tossed into the truck bed.

There was a quiet scrape and clunk as Kivenaal lifted the first wheel up, gripping it around the rim with all four hands before placing it over the spindle, where Malavera then loosely spun on the lug nuts. They did the same for the other side, before gripping the wheels and torquing the lug nuts down appropriately. With that done, the truck was settled down onto the rails, and then the process was repeated for the rear of the vehicle.

It hadn’t taken that long, but sure enough, the truck now sat on the rails on shiny new rail wheels.

Of course, this gave everyone the first real view of the first problem they’d need to solve, as the Bricksley on the rails seemed to tower over the Dione.

The size disparity problem became obvious almost immediately to Constantin, who decided that now was the time to get Valentin out of bed. Before he could do so, however, a shunting engine that was within the steamworks had just finished the final inspection and was now ready to be sent back to work.
As such, it aggressively blared it’s whistle to announce the moving train to everyone within and around the building, after which the steam pressure within forced the cylinders into motion, propelling the engine out the door and onto the yard out front.
Amazingly, Valentin still slept through all of this commotion, not even moving an inch.

“Uhm… is he still alive? Like… how could anyone sleep through a goddamn steam train whistle going off?”, Constantin commented, which prompted Connor to check.
He walks up to Valentin, who has been sleeping on Constantin’s sleeping bag for basically the entire night, save for the first hour or so spent in the maintenance trench below the Dione.
Once there, he determines that Valentin is indeed alive and well, albeit still fast asleep or unconscious simply by closely looking at him. With basic vital signs known and normal (for a sleeping 7 footer, at least), he went a level further, eliminating unconsciousness via a pain reflex test.

Needless to say, Valentin was indeed not unconscious, as the classic pinch-test has him roll around and off of the sleeping bag, groaning.
“He was asleep.”, Connor confirmed, since Valentin did show a reaction to pain.
“Good job… now to wait until his brain actually gets going…”, Constantin replied, crossing his arms while looking at Connor and Valentin.

Kaylie startled as the whistle blared, glaring in the direction of the loud, offending, brightly-colored object that was the shunting locomotive as it departed the steamworks. Kayden, on the other hand, looked concerned about Valentin right up until the moment that Connor pinched him and got some movement out of him.

“How the fuck can he sleep through a train whistle?” Kaylie said, shaking her head.

Rukari shrugged. “Not entirely sure myself.”

At the far end of the steamworks, Malavera and Kivenaal were joined by Jayde, who helped put the last tire in the bed. “So, any problems putting this thing on the rails?” Jayde asked.

“Getting it lined up was a bitch, but it’s on there,” Malavera said.

“Shame the engine’s still broken,” Kivenaal added. “It’d be interesting to see how it’d handle the rails like this under its own power.”

Malavera looked down through the steamworks, then said, “We might have to come up with a backup plan in case Val doesn’t wake up on time. We don’t have enough time to make another set of rail wheels, and I can’t learn how to operate on the line in just a few hours, but… We have tires, there is an old steam truck out there, we could technically tow the Bricksley.”

Jayde mentioned, “Valentin’s waking up. Just very slowly.”

“Good, because while I’d like to drive a steam truck,” Kivenaal said, “I’d rather not have to figure it out while towing something else.”

“Well now we wait. He will get going… eventually…”, Constantin commented.
Thinking about it a little more, he took a quick look around, spotting a set of things that could speed up the process a bit. He went off to get them out of anyone’s view, returning with a sizeable bucket full of water.
Said bucket was blinked down near Valentin for now, spilling some of it’s contents onto the surrounding floor.
He then went over to Valentin, who conveniently was not on the sleeping bag anymore, dragging said bag clear from his vicinity.
“Mind if i borrow your phone for a second?”, Constantin asked, followed by Valentin actually handing his phone over without a second thought, not that he was awake enough to produce that second thought to begin with.

With the electronics secured and his sleeping bag safely stowed, the contents of the bucket made their way straight to Valentin, absolutely drenching his entire upper body in one go.
The once practically asleep Valentin turned into a perfectly awake, though very soggy and confused Valentin, frantically flailing around in a futile attempt to shield himself from the latter half of the bucket.
Once the waves stopped crashing down on him, he cleared his field of view from the mass of hair now stuck to his face, followed by him looking around, trying to make sense of what is going on.

“Seems like jumpstarting your brain works.”, Constantin chuckled, still holding the now-empty bucket.
“You blithering idiot! Just because you can get up on a whim doesn’t mean everyone can!”, Valentin blared after a short pause of processing, going from laying on his back to seated in the process.
“Well we don’t have half a day to wait for you to get going. We’ve got problems to solve… Like how the hell are you gonna tow the Bricksley over there?”, Constantin countered, pointing at the truck in question.
“I don’t know!, I just got the nuclear option of being woken up!”, Valentin snapped, still visibly angry at the rude awakening.
“Well that nuclear option would be the steam whistle going off about 20 minutes ago which you slept through in it’s entirety without even flinching…”, Constantin protested, not really wanting this to escalate into a fist-fight both because Valentin would lose by a landslide and because he himself hasn’t been awake for all that long either.

Kaylie groaned as Constantin dumped a bucket of water over Val, which had the expected result of being one hell of an alarm clock. “Jayde,” Kaylie called out across the steamworks, “Could you bring my good towel over here? Val’s going to need it.”

Jayde thought for a moment, trying to figure out what Kaylie meant by the “good” towel, up until he realized the real intent. He grabbed Kaylie’s bubble-gum pink towel and, making sure he was hidden from sight by a locomotive, quickly put a mild enchantment on it to wick up just a bit more water when it was used. It wouldn’t be much, but now they had a towel that would certainly help dry off Valentin. He wandered over, knowing better than to run considering the multiple hazards around, then handed Valentin the bright pink towel.

“It’s not much, but Kaylie said to bring the good towel. Should soak up most of the water without too much of a problem,” Jayde said in a calm, polite, and friendly voice, hoping to defuse the situation a little.

Kaylie, on the other hand, gave a grimace as she realized Val’s nice new suit was also soaked. “Not sure that’ll pull the water out of his suit, though,” Kaylie admitted. “It’s good at getting water out of fur, but… Not sure if it’ll pull water out of fabric.”

“Well thank you…” Valentin grumbled, still annoyed at the extreme measures taken to get him awake.
He dries off his face and most of his hair, the latter remaining somewhat moist through force of habit. The suit, however, remained soaked all the way to and including the skin beneath.
Still, something is better than nothing as he returns the towel to Kaylie, completely oblivious to the enchanted nature of it.

After that, Valentin just sat there, trying to actually get going and mentally prepare for what is to come.
That being figuring out the operational things of how Robert will move the Bricksley along the rails.

Kayden rummaged in one of his pockets and turned up three of the cycling bars, looked over at Val, and decided to hand him two of them. “It’s not really a good breakfast, but… We don’t have any decent supplies, either. I mean, I can run over to the truck and get the mixed bag of fruit if you want to pick through it, but otherwise, it’s just these. I’ll have to get my canteen from the truck anyway, so it’s not an inconvenience either way,” Kayden said.

Kaylie chuckled as Jayde tried his best to wring out as much water from the towel as he could, his canteen sitting at his hip pretty much in plain sight.

Over by the truck, Kivenaal and Malavera were still holding a discussion about the old steam truck when it was noticed that Rukari seemed to be missing.

“Where the hell do you think he is?” Kivenaal asked.

“Oh, this isn’t good. When’s the last time you saw him?” Malavera inquired.

“Breakfast, eating an orange. How about you?”

“Same. The good news is, he can’t have gone far,” Malavera said.

“So you think. He knows how to operate steam vehicles, Mal. We’re surrounded by things that run on steam.”

“Yeah, and we know he wouldn’t steal a train.”

“Shit. Ten credits says he’s fucking around with the steam truck,” Kivenaal said, getting up and heading toward that area of the steamworks. Malavera followed shortly after, and just outside the shop, they found Rukari with an oil can.

“What are you doing!?” Kivenaal asked.

“Preparing our backup plan. Just need to fill the tanks and light the boiler,” Rukari replied.

“Val’s awake, you fool,” Malavera said. “Once he figures out how to deal with the two vehicles, we’ll be okay.”

Kayden stormed over to the doors, then said, “You know, the three of you don’t have to shout. Kaylie and I can hear the three of you loud and clear over all of the background noise in the shop.”

“It’s certainly something…”, Val replied, pocketing one bar and opening the other. After taking a bite or two out of the opened one, he fumbles around to get up to standing, making the mess that is now his suit even more obvious. The front was all kinds of soggy and wet while almost everything else was in some state of dusty.

Regardless, he vaguely overheard the discussion going on about Rukari prepping the steam truck out back, promting him to head over to the Bricksley and take a look.
It indeed was substantially larger, as was already known. But with the Bricksley now being dead, another issue presented itself, it being that it couldn’t provide any motive power with a dead engine.

“Can we get Robert railed? Would be good to know the true size and clearance relations between the two. Ideally one behind or ahead of the other.” Valentin ordered, looking back at the Dione.

Constantin immediately went over to push it into position, though it became obvious that steering, pushing and aligning was a bit much to handle alone, the latter of which was covered by Valentin also heading over again to help rail it up.

“I’d appreciate some help here.” Constantin said from near the Dione, which pulled the last member out of Dreamland.
Tim moans, looking about the car’s interior a bit before greeting Constantin and Valentin.
“What happened to you?”, he inquired, unaware of the bucketload move earlier.
“Just… don’t ask…”, Valentin replied. “We need to get Robert railed, just a heads up.”
“Sure, i guess…”, Tim answered, getting out of the car to walk and stretch for a bit.

Kaylie and Jayde were the first ones to realize while the Dione was being moved, the Bricksley was right in the damn way of the easily-accessible set of rails. “Shit!” Kaylie said, taking off at a full sprint toward the truck, with Jayde unable to keep pace despite his longer stride. When Jayde finally caught up, the two of them pushed together, the Bricksley moving almost-effortlessly on the rails.

“We’ve got to go move the truck!” Kivenaal yelled, prompting Malavera to take off toward the doorway. The same doorway where Kayden was standing, aware of the need to move the truck and making a few steps in the right direction to help, only to get bowled into by 500 pounds of charging two-headed wolf-man who hadn’t anticipated Kayden taking so long to get moving. The two of them went to the floor hard, with Rukari quickly following them, tripping over Malavera’s leg, and doing a rather unelegant tumble across the shop floor.

Kivenaal walked in, looked at the three of them, and rolled his eyes. “Really? Are doorways that foreign of a concept to you three?” Kivenaal quipped, stepping around the pile-up that was Kayden and Malavera, then looking over at Rukari, who had stopped mere feet from landing in a maintenance pit covered in coal dust.

Kayden groaned and shoved Malavera off of him, getting up with a wince. “I feel like you hit me with the fucking truck, Mal,” Kayden groaned.

“I hit one of my heads on that fucking rock you call a skull,” Malavera replied with a grimace. He wiped a finger against his left lower lip and winced, seeing the red tint of blood. “That fucking hurt.”

“Oh, yeah, bit your lip when you hit me in the head?” Kayden asked, taking a look.

Malavera grimaced and gave a light nod.

“I guess we’re even, then,” Kayden said with a smirk. He ducked as Malavera took a half-hearted swing at him, chuckling as he dodged the friendly punch. “So, how did Rukari do?”

“Other than the fact that if we were playing Charades and he was attempting to mimic a scorpion quite well,” Kivenaal said, “he seems okay.”

By the time the four of them made it over to the truck, Jayde and Kaylie had already pushed it forward enough to fit the Dione behind it.

The issue of understaffing solved itself via Connor steering, Valentin directing and Constantin pushing the car about. As it made it’s way out of it’s current “parking spot”, the commotion in the doorway unfolded, garnering curious looks from all four members, all of which asking “Are you okay” in their usual variants.
Once it became obvious that both Kayden and Malavera were (mostly) fine, they returned to maneuvering the Dione about the place.

Getting closer to the bay where the Bricksley was railed up, they discovered that Jayde and Kaylie already made some space for the Dione to park up behind it.
What followed was the usual process of railing up, except that the boiler did not carry any pressure at this time.

Kayden, Malavera, Rukari, and Kivenaal joined Kaylie and Jayde at the truck, where Malavera opened up one of the doors and grabbed a clean shop towel to wipe the blood off of his lip and chin. There, they watched the process of the Dione converting from road to rail, with a bit of commentary here and there about it seeming a bit easier than railing up the Bricksley.

“Shit. Shouldn’t the truck be behind the Dione?” Kayden asked.

“Steam engines can push a train just as well as they can pull it,” Malavera replied. “The only difference here is that someone’s going to have to manually control both ends of the train, because we can’t hook the brakes together.”

“Yeah… that and the fact that i have no way in hell of seeing past the truck. Which means that we either are swapping ends and waste a ton of traction that we don’t have, someone with railroading experience tells me what’s going on… somehow… or i’m not the one actually in the driver Seat of Robert.”, Valentin added to Malavera’s explanation, mentally weighing each option against the others.

“The best logical option is to have you up front giving signals to someone behind to control the Dione. The issue is, we have a 6 seat truck and 6 people already, and only one person who could fit in the Dione,” Malavera replied.

Kaylie groaned. “Great. If that’s the case, I hope the weather stays mild.”

“Let me check something…”, Val remarked, after which he went into the Dione from the fireman’s side, pulling out a little cheat-sheet containing info on what each lever does. After reading through it, an idea comes to mind.
“Here’s the plan. The reverser lever on the fireman’s side can override the throttle setting enough to make it redundant. So whoever is in the driver seat instead of me just has to weld their foot to the floor and keep it there for as long as that person is sat there. We could modify the cable pull, but we’d lose reversing in that case. Connor can then control power from his end, allowing direct visual communication from the Bricksley back to the Dione. Back-to-front could be solved via light signals, horn or the whistle, if need be…”, Valentin explained rather confidently. The lack of any objection or protesting from Connor boosted that confidence further.

“So… Kaylie gets the driver seat, then?”, Tim inquired.
Kaylie looked over at Tim, then back to Valentin. “How hot is it, usually, in the driver’s seat? Because if it’s cooler than in the back, I might take that option,” Kaylie asked.

“Truth be told, i don’t know. To me, it’d perfectly bearable windows up, but i feel like i’ve won the gene-pool lottery in terms of heat resistance, especially since that chain out there and human hairdo don’t mix all that well. And i haven’t been in the back for extended periods of time to say much about that either… However, on my way in and out of the car during crutch-times, the temperature gradient surely was noticeable.”, Valentin answered, unsure if that was what Kaylie wanted to hear while running one hand through his voluminous hair to prove the point.

“The temperature should be anywhere between zero point four and two degrees Celsius colder in the front row. A steeper gradient is expected if any window is rolled down. Absolute temperatures range from two to six degrees above ambient, depending on vehicle state and ambient temperature.”, Connor added calmly.
Kaylie nodded. “Should be doable,” she said. “All I have to do is sit in there and pin the accelerator to the floor, then?”

Malavera chuckled, then said, “Kaylie’s just making sure she’s heard it correctly. It’s not every day someone tells you to get in the driver’s seat and floor it.”

“Get in, floor it and keep it floored until we either arrive or need to reverse, in which case Connor will tell you when to take that foot off.”, Valentin confirmed, grinning a little at the hilarity of perpetually welding one’s foot to the floor.
"With control over Robert sorted, Connor and I need some way of communicating. I guess we’ll just head off while you pack up your stuff. Can also get the two coupled if you want and have some spare time.
After that, the two went off to discuss and arrange a set of signals in both directions. Meanwhile, Constantin and Tim got to work packing up what little equipment was taken off of and out of the Dione yesterday.

Madrias · 18 September 2022 14:25

Kaylie stuck around near the truck in case she was needed, while Kayden, Jayde, Rukari, and Kivenaal gathered up and packed up the tents. Malavera, meanwhile, made sure the load was secured in the truck bed, periodically stopping to try cleaning the blood out of his snow-white fur.

With everything they needed now secured in the truck bed, the team prepared for their first proper rail adventure.

It took quite a while until a set of signals was established that covered the controls and instructions needed for Valentin to remotely operate the train from up front. By that point, Shift Happens was long done packing up supplies.

“Alright. I think Connor and i have got our communications figured out, which means that we are good to go. We are going to take seats, Connor will steam Robert and and we will take a leisurly trip to the other end of the Yard, where i shall arrange some things with the signalman. After that, we will proceed on the line as usual… well ‘usual’…”, Valentin announced to everyone present.
Following that, all members of the now-fusioned 10-person team took their places, with Malavera behind the now-useless wheel and Valentin on the other side flanking Kayden between the two. The second row had Kivenaal behind Malavera, Jayde staring at the radio array and Rukari filling up the last available seat. Back in the Dione, it was the usual affair, with Tim and Constantin in the rear left and rear right seats respectively and Constantin sat in the fireman’s seat. The only change had Kaylie in the driver seat previously vacated by Valentin.

With everyone seated and ready to go, the waiting began for Robert to raise steam, since Connor was about the last person to enter either car.

Kaylie looked over at Connor’s side of the dashboard, watching the various gauges climb slowly yet steadily as the boiler behind them whooshed like a blowtorch under a tea kettle, unable to hide a grin as she had, as instructed, pinned the gas pedal all the way down. She had the window rolled down a couple of inches to get some airflow into the car, her left arm resting on the door panel with her thumb hooked in the equally-unnecessary steering wheel rim, her right hand resting loosely on the wheel at the 5-o-clock position.

Up front, things were a little less calm as everyone waited for Robert to steam up. With all the windows down, they could hear the boiler far behind them warming up, the sounds of other locomotives nearby shuffling around, the rattles and clanks of steamworks toolboxes being picked through for tools to work on the other engines nearby.

Jayde stared at the radio panel, rendered useless through both insufficient power and courtesy of whatever horrible screeching squeal had blown their speakers out on the way through camp, and tried to imagine what the locals would think of this unusual mess.

Rukari gripped the front edge of the bench hard, a little nervous as he wasn’t sure how well things would go with being pushed, engineless, down the rails.

Kivenaal was in an almost-meditative state, not quite awake and not exactly sleeping as he sat there, waiting for the convoy to start.

Kayden looked out of the windshield, trying to play “spot the signal” already despite the vehicles still being inside.

Malavera held onto the steering wheel, his foot resting near the brake pedal, having already made sure the transfer case and transmission were out of gear and that the front wheel drive portion of the 4x4 unit was disconnected. A last quick check ensured that both differential locks were disengaged. His sharp eyes were also scanning the horizon, hoping to help Valentin out with signals as needed.

Not much was happening in the “engine” of the newly formed train as Connor simply went about the procedure of raising steam pressure. Up front, Valentin was not sure, so he decided to simply ‘ask’. His right arm thus went out of the window and upwards at the elbow, his palm facing the centerline of the car, showing his intent on transmitting a speed-related command. The reply was expected to be two short blips of the electrical horn, which took a while to be returned as pressure was not yet in operating ranges. Eventually, the reply came as Connor reached over into Kaylie’s half to tap the horn a couple of times.
The signal for intent turned into a 10kph forward movement signal as Valentin turned his palm to face the train’s front while extending just his index finger. Not long after, Connor once again reached over, this time for the ignition barrel to sound the steam while for two long notes, followed by him setting the train into motion.
As soon as they started rolling, Valentin went back to showing ‘expect signal’, followed shortly after by just his fist being up there, indicating a request to stop with service brakes. Lo and behold, the train came to a halt all of 15 feet out of the door, juuuust shy of a disc shunting signal.

“Right, now we all know that the stopping distances have increased,” Malavera said. “Next time, call out that you’re using the brakes and I’ll help out.”

Kayden stared at the disc-shaped signal and shook his head. “I didn’t even know that was a signal.”

“Yard signal,” both Malavera and Jayde said almost simultaneously.

The movement had been just enough to jolt Kivenaal out of his mental hibernation, where he took in that they’d moved, but not very far.

Behind them, in the Dione, Kaylie admitted, “It feels really weird to be holding down the gas pedal and to have the car going nowhere.”

“Noted. Most of the work will probably happen from the back though to avoid excessive loads as the bar runs into either end because of the slack in there.”, Valentin replied. At least it would be useful in case of an emergency stop or if more braking power was needed otherwise.

In the powered railcar that was Robert, Connor tried to explain why they took this solution:
“I understand. If you were to let off now, we would apply full power in reverse. I can offset the your throttle input with this lever here and thereby dictate actual power levels without you having to do anything. Just inform me if you have to take it off the gas for any reason.”

“Okay, that’s definitely noted. Don’t take my foot off of the gas pedal or things go badly,” Kaylie said.

Up front, Kayden nodded as Valentin informed everyone that he had to mention the change of plans to the people in charge of the railway, before Val hopped out of the truck to inform everyone in the Dione.

Kaylie understood that they’d parked up without refueling the night before, which meant extra time getting ready, as well as getting the schedule changed for their two-vehicle consist. She sat there patiently as Valentin walked over to a signalbox, trying to figure out what was going on up ahead of them.

Jayde took the opportunity, with Val out of the car, to give Rukari a rather hard elbow to the chest. “Quit digging your elbow into my ribs, Rukari,” Jayde grumbled out, ignoring Rukari’s wince.

Valentin was gone for the better part of ten minutes before returning to the train, first relaying the relevant info to Connor:
“Okay. Signalling staff has been informed about the second carriage and lower expected speeds. We should be able to keep up with longitude trains when accounting for them stopping, but we will need to make way if they do catch up. But now, refueling.”
“Understood.”, Connor replied.
Valentin then headed up front, climbing back into the cab, effectively repeating what he told Connor and the others before. Soon after, the train began to move backwards across the yard once more, before stopping almost immediately after.
Valentin then adjusted the mirror on his side before looking at the other one, realizing that he couldn’t see anything through the polished bumper trim “mirror”.
“I cannot see anything…”, Valentin mumbled while moving around, trying to get a good view of whatever trackside signage and signals may be there.

“One moment, we might be able to improve that,” Malavera said, hearing Valentin’s mumble of being unable to see. He peeled the tape off of the mirror housing, put the bumper cover under his seat for the moment, then dismounted the rear view mirror from the cab of the truck. After looking around for the tape, Malavera carefully attached the rear view mirror to the old mirror housing, then helped Valentin aim it until he could see the best that the mirror would let them.

Once the visibility had been improved slightly, which also included Kivenaal putting Rukari in a mild head-lock to give Val the opportunity to look out of the rear window if needed from under the radio console, the two vehicle consist started rolling backwards into an obvious refueling area, as they passed by a water tower, coal storage, and finally stopped near an area labeled with both “Light” and “Heavy” fuel oil.

The impromptu mirror modification ended up by no means idea, but still infinitely better than the previous version, now that he could see at least something through that one.
“Well thank you, i guess…”, Valentin said, before commanding the reversing to continue.

Once in the refueling bay, not much of note happened up front, as Valentin was not directly part of the established refueling process, courtesy of the difficulties in getting in and out of the car across the fireman’s seat or the rear bench.

In the back half, nothing unusual was happening either, with the refueling process happing like any other previous one, except for some added curiosity about how Robert was now pushing an oversized truck along.
Eventually, they are ready to roll again and make another trip across the yard to the starter signal entering the longitude mainline, where they were scheduled to wait until the next longitude train passed.

“Now we wait for the next train to blow our doors off, plus three miles.”, Valentin commented half-jokingly.

Eventually, that train made itself heard simply by virtue of the sheer noise the blastpipes made every time steam was sent out through the chimney. The train cane and went, barreling past the two teams, disappearing into the distance.

“There we go! Should get a clear way any minute now.”, Valentin said, watching the massive semaphore signal, which eventually raised it’s arm, allowing Robert to enter the line.
A command was sent backwards asking for the highest speed the previously established signal code could handle, that being 150kph, limited by the 4 bit binary nature of it.
Still, Connor gave Robert a run for it’s money in trying to get up to speed, though 150kph turned out to be quite a bit beyond what the new consist was capable of, instead levelling off a wee bit above 130kph. Even Valentin was suspicious about the perceived speed:
“This is it? This can’t be 150kph…”, he mumbled, now calling for progressively lower speeds until he could feel it decelerating.
“Huh… looks like our new top speed is somewhere around 130kph…”, he spoke again, half aloud. “Beats doing the same on shitty, unpaved roads…”

Malavera looked down at the speedometer and saw it holding around 70 to 75 MPH, then said, “Looks like the new wheels have our speedometer reading a bit low, then. Still, this is much better than another back-breaking ride on dirt roads.”

In back, Kaylie called out the tachometer numbers as Valentin asked for speed changes, with Connor then making adjustments until, eventually, they settled in at what Connor said was 130 kilometers per hour. “I see. So we’re doing about 80 miles per hour,” Kaylie responded, doing the mental math herself, using her fingers in a somewhat similar pattern to Valentin’s codes out the window to store numbers in binary.

Up front, things settled into a realm of peaceful semi-chaos, as with such smooth “road” conditions, the three in the rear bench decided to try to relax, with Jayde watching the countryside rush by, while Rukari dug out a handful of dice, split them into two equal handfuls, grabbed two red plastic cups, and started a little game with Kivenaal where the winner was whoever had the higher number. Malavera kept a keen set of eyes watching for signals, as did Kayden.

“Signal ahead is clear,” Malavera mentioned.

Moments later, Kayden grumbled out, “Yeah, now I see it.”

“Wait is i… oh yeah it is! That draft is getting really annoying!”, Valentin comments while trying hard to not be blinded by his wildly flapping hair.
“Well thank yoPFFFRT!! Pffft… anyone’s got some hair ties or something?”, he exclaimed again when one particularly nasty strand finaggled it’s way into his mouth as he spoke.
“I usually don’t have to deal with winds that strong…”

Rukari fished around in his pocket, then leaned forward and held out a handful of rubber bands for Val. Kayden looked over, then said, “Val, please take those and save all of us from the misery Rukari’s inflicted on all of us with those miserable pieces of stretchy rubber.”

Malavera chuckled and Kayden snapped, “Laugh it up, snowball. You’re not the one he’s snapped on the back of the ear. Three times.”

“That’s why I’m laughing,” Malavera admitted. “He does that to you because he knows you won’t get him back.”

Valentin took a quick, though confused look at the rubber bands, taking all of them and moving them to the dashboard for the time being. After that, they went into his hair, one by one, eventually turning the unwieldy mess into a somewhat contained, segmented ponytail, which was much more resistant to the draft coming in through the rolled-down window next to him.
“That should do, for now at least. Not exactly comfortable, nor pretty, i guess. But it works.”, Valentin commented as he went back to focusing on his duties as the train controller.

On the other end, things were settling down as well, with none of the three really saying anything, instead watching the landscape go by in case of the two humans in the second row and Connor handling the boiler controls and watching for hand signals from up front.

The remainder of the stage went surprisingly smoothly, eventually arriving a a small depot near Temmingarda.
“That’s about as close as we are gonna get. I’ll head back and have Robert de-steamed.” Valentin said, hopping out and doing as announced, followed shortly thereafter by the well-known snake-hissing that is the boiler pressure release valve.

After the engine was declared safe, the remaining members of RK Series Racing got to work collecting their supplies from the roof of the Dione, leaving everything non-essential behind to save on weight.
As they arrived in the railway depot near Temmingarda, and Connor let Kaylie know she could release the gas pedal, she lifted her foot with a slight squeak as the pedal returned to the top. She left the car after the others had, rejoining the “lead half” of Shift Happens and helping in grabbing up tents and cooking supplies.

Then it was just the long walk into camp, the ten of them all just wanting to get some rest after a long voyage.

2022 Shitbox Rally - Out of This World! (Results Out!)

Shitbox Rally

Stage 14: Taruli to Kavitz

Stage Start: 10 Moon, 31/7/3251, Taruli Campsite

Stage End (First Car): 2-and-34 Sun, 32/7/3251, Kavitz Campsite

Stage End (Last Car): 5-and-45 Sun, 32/7/3251, Kavitz Campsite

Team Shift Happens

Team Wayfarers

Team Gearknobs

Team Fallen Angels of the Past

Team Oil Crisis

Team Hillbilly Rollers

Team Witchlight

Team Mravolinski-Chitco

Team Machinas Con Passiones

Team Quick Rally 47

Team Mrezhari

Team Jockey

Team RK Series Racing

Team Black Rabbit

Team Spy Kids

Team Shift Happens

Taruli Campsite, 9-and-20 Moon

Taruli Campsite, 10 Moon

On the Road

Kavitz Campsite, 3-and-42 Sun

RK Series Racing; Stage 14 Drive

Team Shift Happens

Team RK Series Racing; Stage 14 Camp

Kavitz Campsite, 3-and-60 Sun

Studies in Quantum Xenoanthropology, Ep. 5: Cyberxenoanthropological musings

Shitbox Rally

Stage 15: Kavitz to Allvenitz

Stage Start: 1 Sun, 33/7/3251, Kavitz Campsite

Stage End (First Car): 6-and-07 Sun, 33/7/3251, Allvenitz Campsite

Stage End (Last Car): 2-and-20 Moon, 33/7/3251, Allvenitz Campsite

Team Shift Happens

Team Wayfarers

Team Gearknobs

Team Fallen Angels of the Past

Team Oil Crisis

Team Hillbilly Rollers

Team Witchlight

Team Mravolinski-Chitco

Team Machinas Con Passiones

Team Quick Rally 47

Team Mrezhari

Team Jockey

Team RK Series Racing

Team Black Rabbit

Team Spy Kids

Shift Happens

RK Series Racing

Kavitz Campsite, 10-and-40 Moon.

1 Sun

On the Road

On the Road - Again

Studies in Quantum Xenoanthropology, Ep. 6: We got a problem.

Shitbox Rally

Stage 16: Allvenitz to Temmingarda

Stage Start: 1 Sun, 34/7/3251, Allvenitz Campsite

Stage End (First Car): 5-and-36 Sun, 34/7/3251, Temmingarda Campsite

Stage End (Last Car): 2-and-03 Moon, 35/7/3251, Temmingarda Campsite

Team Shift Happens

Team Wayfarers

Team Gearknobs

Team Fallen Angels of the Past

Team Oil Crisis

Team Hillbilly Rollers

Team Witchlight

Team Mravolinski-Chitco

Team Machinas Con Passiones

Team Quick Rally 47

Team Mrezhari

Team Jockey

Team RK Series Racing

Team Black Rabbit

Team Spy Kids

Stage Finishing Order:

RK Series Racing; Stage 16 Drive

Studies in Quantum Xenoanthropology, Ep. 5:
Cyberxenoanthropological musings