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Road Hogs: Chronicles of Redemption
Chapter 8: The Radioactive Rustlers
Adventure 8: The Haunted Highway
Seven milestones lay behind them, but five good deeds were still required to banish the warlock's curse entirely. The Road Hogs pushed through a rugged pass into a stark, dry desert landscape dotted with old mining rigs. The generator tables spit out a hazardous scenario:
| Element | Result | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Town Type | Industrial or polluted | Scrap City, a desolate junkyard settlement choked by toxic smog. |
| Noteworthy Feature | Extreme weather | A scorching heatwave makes the desert asphalt radiate like an oven. |
| The Scenario | Stop a heist or robbery | Intercepting high-tech thieves striking an environmental transport. |
| The Location | Toxic Waste Dump | A hazardous chemical landfill protected by high chain-link fences. |
| The Objective | The Wrong Crowd | The thieves are running an underground weaponization lab using stolen waste. |
| The Complication | Mutated Wilderness | Glowing, irradiated scorpions have swarmed the facility perimeter. |
The shimmering heat waves rising off the road made the neon signs of Scrap City look like a hallucination. The Hogs rolled past hills of crushed scrap metal and pulled up next to a disabled, heavy-duty armored tanker truck. A frantic engineer in a hazmat suit ran over, waving his arms.
Engineer: Help! Please help! A high-tech scavenger gang called the Rust-Rats just hijacked our shipment of stable plasma-coolant. They dragged the containers inside the toxic waste dump down the road. They are trying to combine it with raw waste to build an experimental chemical bomb to blackmail the entire county!
Perry: A chemical bomb? That is going to ruin the local real estate values, friend. What is stopping you from going in there with your company security?
Engineer: The leak! The chemical spill has attracted a colony of giant, mutated scorpions from the deep desert! Their tails are glowing with green radioactive energy, and they have surrounded the main refinery building. Security won't go anywhere near it!
Buster: Giant glowing scorpions and a bomb-making gang. Sounds like we need to clear a path and do some structural dismantling.
Mac: The scorpions are highly sensitive to seismic vibrations. If we try to ride our choppers through the main gates, they will swarm the tires instantly. Buster, we need to manually disable the electronic security fence from the side substation to fry their nesting ground with a localized shock wave.
🎲 Challenge: Rerouting the power cables to trigger a non-lethal sonic blast
GM Designations: Agile Challenge | Difficulty: 5
Player Dice Pool: Mac handles the high-voltage panel. He rolls 3 dice (Matches Agile Trait). Driven by his Impulsive quirk, he bypasses the safety breaker and cuts the live wire directly with his wire-strippers, bumping the difficulty to 6!
Dice Result: [3, 6, 5]
Outcome: Success! The 6 hits the maximum difficulty. The substation hums violently and lets loose a high-frequency pop that sends the scorpions scurrying away, and Mac recovers 1 Resolve Token!
Mac: *ZAP!* Whoa, that almost took the bristles right off my knuckles! But the frequency worked—the bugs are heading back to the deep sand!
The path to the main refinery door was open, but the sound of heavy pneumatic tools echoed from inside. The Rust-Rats were actively welding the stolen plasma-coolant tanks into a crude missile framework.
Perry: The chemical cocktail is almost mixed. Let us go crash their science project before they find a match.
Breaching the Fallout Zone
The Road Hogs kicked open the rusted steel doors of the refinery. Inside, four scavengers in spiked leather armor and rebreather masks spun around, dropping their torches as the hog-faced bikers stepped into the green-tinted smog.
Scavenger Boss: You are too late, road trash! The unstable compounds are already locked in! Fire up the defense turrets and recycle these porkers!
Buster: I have got your recycling right here, pal!
⚔️ Combat Challenge: Overpower the Rust-Rats and deactivate the bomb mechanism
GM Designations: Brawny/Crafty Battle | Effort Tokens Required: 6
Round 1: Buster uses a literal steel beam to smash the automated defense turrets!
Dice Pool: 3 dice (Brawny). Difficulty: 5.
Dice Result: [5, 5, 1] — Exceptional Success!
Outcome: 2 successes remove 2 Effort Tokens. Buster swats the robotic turrets straight out of the ceiling! (Remaining Effort: 4).
Round 1: Perry uses psychological warfare to freeze the bomb tech!
Dice Pool: 3 dice (Crafty). Difficulty: 5.
Dice Result: [2, 3, 5] — Success!
Outcome: 1 success removes 1 Effort Token. (Remaining Effort: 3).
Round 1: Mac slices the auxiliary fuel lines to starve the missile's engine!
Dice Pool: 3 dice (Agile). Difficulty: 5.
Dice Result: [1, 4, 3] — Failure.
Action: Mac uses his Ace Driver instincts to slide under the missile carriage, spending 1 Karma Token to lower the difficulty to 4. The 4 now counts as a success!
Outcome: 1 success removes 1 Effort Token. (Remaining Effort: 2).
Buster grabbed a loose structural I-beam that had fallen from the ceiling, swung it like a baseball bat, and completely flattened two automated laser turrets that were dropping from the rafters. No machine is tougher than a genuine chopper rider! Buster roared, spitting out a speck of grit.
The scavenger boss scrambled toward the main detonation terminal. Perry slammed his boot onto a nearby chemical valve, venting a harmless cloud of pressurized white steam directly across the console.
Perry: Hey, boss! You see that pressure gauge redlining? If you enter that password now, the back-pressure is going to drop this whole roof onto your fancy mask. Step away from the keyboard!
The boss froze, terrified by the pure authority in Perry's voice, hesitating just long enough for Mac to slide under the steel platform and yank the primary ignition cables straight out of the missile's base, rendering the chemical payload completely inert.
⚔️ Combat Challenge: Wrapping up the Refinery Fight (2 Effort Remaining)
Round 2: Buster pins the remaining scavengers!
Dice Pool: 3 dice (Brawny). Difficulty: 5.
Dice Result: [6, 5, 2] — Exceptional Success!
Outcome: 2 successes remove the final Effort Tokens. The syndicate is entirely subdued!
Buster corralled the remaining thieves into an empty steel cargo container, slamming the heavy bar lock down with a resounding boom. Mac verified the safety valves on the stable plasma-coolant, ensuring the hazard was completely neutralized.
Scavenger Boss: You absolute lunatics! We were going to rule Scrap City!
Eight Down, Four to Go
By the time the Scrap City environmental clean-up crew arrived to secure the facility, the stolen cargo was fully accounted for, and the Rust-Rats were safely locked away.
Engineer: You three are saviors! You stopped an absolute ecological disaster today. The city council is going to clear all highway toll fees for your club across the entire territory!
Perry: We like the sound of free tolls, Doc. Just invest in some better locks for these gates.
As they walked out to their bikes, a sharp sensation of crackling magic zipped across their cheekbones. Mac looked into his rearview mirror and gasped. The thick, bristly pig skin on their cheeks had melted away, leaving smooth, normal human skin behind. Only their noses remained as pig snouts, and their ears were still long and floppy.
Mac: Look at that! Eight good deeds down! Our actual faces are showing through the cracks, boys!
Perry: Eight down, four to go. We are officially in the home stretch. A few more regular human acts, and we can finally drop these bandanas for good.
Buster: Then let us get back on the asphalt. There is another town on the map, and the road does not wait for anyone.
The three choppers thundered to life, their exhaust cutting through the chemical haze of Scrap City as the Road Hogs sped off into the desert sunset, hunting for their ninth victory...
The asphalt calling! Road Hogs mixes action-filled narratives with the fast, streamlined mechanics of the Tricube Tales system.
Grab your leather vest and build your own crew of wandering heroes in this stellar universe designed by Richard Woolcock.
👉 You can find it here: DriveThruRPG - Road Hogs
