I often play in more than one tabletop RPG campaign at the same time these days. In addition to the Blades in the Dark game that ended last month, I’ve been playing a game of Mutant; Year Zero with my college friends on Roll20. That game came to its conclusion today. As usual, we’ve been collecting fun quotes from the game as we go on, so we’ve got something interesting to remember it by. This post contains a collection of the best from our adventures as our pack of mutants explored outward from the Ark where we’d spent our entire lives up to that point, venturing forth into a post-apocalyptic Seattle where bullets are the only currency, trying to find remnants of the past and figure out where our people came from.
Our cast of characters is as follows:
Grue Marley, played by myself, was a gang boss who ran the Marley Gang and was part of the council of bosses that ran the Ark. His gang was smaller than the others, but had the most guns by a pretty solid margin, and also a swanky jazz lounge as a headquarters. His goal was to build a new civilization that would rival the ruins of the old age, a dream that was threatened many times by his belief that anyone new he met was probably trustworthy and would naturally see what a great guy he was for coming up with that idea, as well as his often-lethal impatience with anyone who betrayed that trust.
Quiznos, played by Kevin, was a slave working for the Marley Gang. Grue trusted Quiznos way more than Quiznos liked Grue, and treated the slave like a disgruntled right-hand man. Though that resulted in some disagreements over the course of the game in the end it turned out that trust was never misplaced. Quiznos was also essentially unkillable and could fly thanks to his insect wings mutation.
Epiu, played by Josh, was an enforcer working for Boss Royle, one of the other gang leaders on the Ark. He was often sent along on expeditions by Royle to keep an eye on Marley, and kill him if it looked like Marley was doing something Royle didn’t want him to. Epiu himself was incredibly handy with an ax, and often destroyed enemies of the party single-handedly.
Flooc, played by Spencer, was a freelance stalker not working for anyone on the Ark. Marley recruited him to guide various expeditions through the wasteland, and Flooc accepted because he really hated life on the Ark and wanted to get away from it as much as possible.
Gruf, played by Ben, was a gearhead who worked a lot with armor and weapons, building new equipment for the party. He was also the group’s only medic for most of the game, which resulted in a number of tense situations because his first reaction to a major fight was usually to be somewhere else. He also wasn’t able to attend game sessions as often as the four people above, and left the game entirely near the end of the campaign.
Mawn, played by Peter, was a four-armed dog handler who did pretty much everything through his hound Doll. He left the game when Peter decided that he didn’t really like the Mutant system, which was fairly early on in the course of things.
Usko, played by Nick, was another stalker who really wanted to become a world-renowned chef, but was unfortunately only able to attend a couple of sessions before he had to drop out of the campaign because we kept playing on Sundays and he wasn’t able to keep that time free.
Here’s some things that they said to each other while roaming around the Zone. As usual, using character names even when it doesn’t make the most sense for the context of the quote.
Marley: “Mawn! Still fucking dogs?”
Mawn: “I flip him off four times at once.”
Mawn: “What do I know about Boss Izaak? Aside from that Marley hates him because he’s a bigger, better, more handsome and more attractive boss than him.”
Mawn: “I’m playing an Agility class with…two points in Sneak.”
Epiu: “And all points in dog.”
Gruf: “Have you ever seen those videos of hawks swooping down and carrying deer away?”
Marley: “I don’t know what videos are, Gruf.”
Gruf: “No, Adam. Have you seen those videos.”
Marley: “I don’t know what videos are, Ben.”
Mawn: “Let’s get out of here before Flooc stops glowing.”
Flooc: “Yeah, I don’t know how long that lasts.”
Marley: “If your glowing lasts longer than four hours, consult your healers.”
Mawn: “Assembl-O-Tron 5000 ACTIVATE!”
Usko: “I’ll form the head.”
Mawn: “I’ll form all of the arms.”
Marley: “Usko goes to torch some crops, to make it all symmetric.”
GM: “You don’t have crops.”
Usko: “It’s just a bug grinder.”
Marley: “How many zone ghouls are there?”
Usko: “One less? I don’t know.”
Mawn: “One of the four-arm powers is that if I spend a mutation point I don’t even have to make the Move roll.”
GM: “Sounds…handy.”
Marley: “I could put the battery into the record player and the Ark would get a Culture boost…”
Usko: “I like the sound of that.”
Mawn: “Don’t let us get in the way of your date.”
Flooc: “It’s not a date!”
Nadja (Chronicler NPC): “Great–so it’s a date!”
GM: “Let’s follow the body gang first.”
Mawn: “I don’t know how I feel about being ‘the body gang.'”
GM: “So, the flesh party heads out…”
Marley: “I was wondering how you found Izaak’s body.”
Flooc: “You mean Silas’?”
Marley: “Oh yeah. Wishful thinking.”
GM: “He seems to be telling the truth.”
Marley: “This piece of shit. Let’s beat him.”
Mawn: “I. Uh. Um. Wait.”
GM: “They’re discussing a grub theft.”
Mawn: “Ah, the worst kind of theft. Grub theft.”
Marley: “That reminds me, I should go racketeering today.”
GM: “He gives you a cool look.”
Epiu: “I give him a cooler look with my sunglasses.”
GM: “Damn, you’ve got him.”
GM: “The guards are real pissed that you have the audacity to shake down Izaak’s smokestack.”
Marley: “I let them know that I’m real pissed too.”
Mawn: “‘Yeah, I can’t BELIEVE I’m doing this!'”
Mawn: “What’s the attribute to pet the dogs?”
GM: “Hit points.”
GM: “There’s a car.”
Flooc: “I don’t know what a car is.”
Marley: “It’s a type of cake, I think.”
Flooc: “Is it chocolate?”
Marley: “No.”
Flooc: “Good, because I hate chocolate.”
Marley: “What the fuck, Flooc. I never would have come here if I knew that about you.”
Melvill: “I need to go speak to Tesla before we do anything else.”
Marley: “All right. Don’t let me detain you.”
Epiu: “Maybe not the best joke to make, since one of their own was recently detained. By us.”
Gruf: “We need to talk about things that will bring us closer to them. Not our greatest fears, including them.”
Gruf: “I’m pretty sure Archimedes wants to shoot you right now.”
Marley: “Eh. His gun barrel in the artwork is like ten degrees off center. I’ll be fine.”
Gruf: “Yeah, but I’m standing next to you.”
Marley: “So if any of this goes bad, we blame it all on Flooc.”
Marley: “I’m not sure what you just said, but it sounded like you said you had a reptilian addiction?”
Epiu: “What’s your name?”
NPC: “Uh…”
Epiu: “Never mind, your name is Nervous Guy.”
Marley: “Holy shit, Epiu just went straight Oldboy on them.”
Flooc: “My fault? If I was there it just would have been more shooting! It would have been worse!”
Epiu: “Actually, that would have been really nice.”
Flooc: “Puppeteer is pretty much the evil mutation, if there is one.”
Marley: “Yeah, that’s the one I wanted.”
Flooc: “The evil mutation if there is one?”
Quiznos: “We’re not supposed to go in the tunnels.”
Mawn: “So what are we doing out here? Let’s go in the tunnels!”
Flooc: “He’s sick of that joke.”
Mawn: “He doesn’t get that joke.”
Flooc: “That’s why he’s sick of it!”
Epiu: “Can the chroniclers disable a grenade? I don’t like the idea of it sitting on the Ark.”
GM: “They’re gonna study it.”
Mawn: “By pulling the pin and seeing what happens.”
Marley: “This is how we lose all our chroniclers.”
Mawn: “We’re going to intimidate the blood out of their bodies.”
Flooc: “With pain!”
Marley: “I’m gonna shoot the guy who hit Quiznos. Because Quiznos is my man.”
Mawn: “Literally.”
GM: “What do you do?”
Mawn: “Probably browse some dank memes.”
GM: “The internet is gone, the memes are dead.”
Mawn: “NOOOOOOO WHO COULD HAVE DONE THIS”
Flooc: “I’m just gonna brute force through this.”
GM: “Did you say ‘Groot force?'”
Mawn: “It’s Groot force now.”
Quiznos: “I don’t have Intimidate, but when they see a flying devourer…”
Epiu: “…With a chainsaw…”
Marley: “Yeah, Gruf, you missed us fighting a giant bear monster called a devourer with a mouth like a snake, that can unhinge itself. Quiznos kept its skin as a cloak.”
Gruf: “That’s terrifying and I want to go home now.”
Franton (sinister NPC): “I think you’re confused.”
Marley: “No, I’m Boss Marley.”
Flooc: “‘Confused’ is his middle name.”
Marley: “‘Confused’ is something I have other people to do for me.”
Marley: “I’m gonna throw spores out until I mutate into the ability to fly.”
GM: “There is nothing else noteworthy in the room.”
Mawn: “Can I write something on the window?”
GM: “Do you have some paper and a writing utensil?”
Mawn: “I’ll use my knife, or sharpen a can.”
GM: “Okay. Go ahead.”
Mawn: “I carve something into the glass. The room is now noteworthy.”
GM: “There’s coats in the closet.”
Mawn: “I check the pockets.”
GM: “It’s gonna take you a while.”
Mawn: “Guys, go on to the next room.”
Flooc: “Isn’t there that saying, ‘many hands…?'”
Mawn: “Yeah. I got this.”
Quiznos: “Your enemy just saved you. Do you lose an experience point or something?”
Marley: “Oh, I’ve been misinterpreting the range rules this whole time. Which is probably bad, as the guy with all the guns in the party.”
Quiznos: “It’s your fault your guys don’t know how to shoot!”
Quiznos: “What if we invite this guy out with us tomorrow, and then…do something about him?”
Marley: “Oh, sorry everyone, he didn’t make it. Devourer came out of nowhere with a chainsaw.”
Marley: “Yeah, Quiznos is like 40% responsible for anything I achieve.”
Quiznos: “Don’t you mean three fifths?”
GM: “They squeal, I think. I don’t know what sounds they would make. They make animal sounds.”
Gruf: “If that car is there now, it’ll probably be there tomorrow.”
Marley: “The point of cars is that they move, man!”
Marley: “I’m gonna take cover behind the cart and get ready with my rifle.”
Gruf: “I take off my clothes.”
Marley: “…What?”
Marley: “So there’s some reptilian dick swinging around right there.”
Quiznos: “He’s just holding your gun up to help you aim better.”
Gruf: “They call me tripod for a reason.”
Tesla: “But we cannot do it alone! We will need allies!”
Mawn: “I sneak quietly out the back.”
Flooc: “Does anyone know how to hold a baby?”
Mawn: “No, but I have so many hands I probably can’t fuck it up.”
Flooc: “Then you can take two of them.”
Mawn: “And Doll will carry the third in his mouth!”
GM: “When Adam’s here, he’s always raking in money. Then when he’s not here, his slave is like “Do I keep my weapon, or do I sell it so I can drink water today?”
Quiznos: “There was a swarm of snakes or something guarding it.”
Marley: “What? What kind of snakes?”
Epiu: “Guarder snakes, I guess.”
Marley: “Can we give things cooler names? The Trash Hawk is now the Roc.”
GM: “Dwayne Johnson?”
Epiu: “Dwayne ‘The Trash Hawk’ Johnson.”
Ohm: “Well…do you have any humans?”
Quiznos: “No.”
Marley: “We told them no.”
Quiznos: “No!”
Marley: “Though actually, we saw them drop off some bab-”
Quiznos: “NO!”
Quiznos: “They didn’t ask us to come with them. They were just, like, implying it, and then we left.”
Marley: “Were those babies sleeper agents? Shit, this cult infiltrated us before we could infiltrate them! They used my plan against me!”
Epiu: “Bears are also big targets. With ape and dog mutants they’ll probably be doing hit-and-run, quick raiding type of fighting.”
Flooc: “So…gorilla warfare?”
Flooc: “I split the rest of the bullets among the party.”
Quiznos: “WOO! MONEY!”
Epiu: “Quiznos was given money! He’s free!”
Flooc (to suspicious NPC): “We’re looking for our friends. Who are a war party of apes.”
Quiznos: “Why do you keep calling them a war party? Why are you doing this.”
Epiu: “I’m all about syringes of mysterious colored liquid.”
GM: “It’s eight sectors to the Wheel, you’ve got a full tank of gas, half a clip of ammo, it’s early morning, and somewhere out there Epiu’s wearing sunglasses. Hit it.”
Quiznos. “There’s no such thing as carnies.”
Mawn: “Why did everything go so south?”
Flooc: “No, we went west.”
Mawn: “No, like, in life. Do you remember fighting robots last month? I don’t.”
Mawn: “A bat with spikes: obviously a weapon meant for air-to-air combat.”
Mawn: “Wait, would blowing the whole place up piss off Boss Chao?”
Marley: “Yeah?”
Mawn: “I’m in.”
GM: “The great wheel comes crashing down to earth.”
Mawn: “I hope the food survived.”
Epiu: “I hope Gruf survived.”
Mawn: “…I hope the food survived.”
Epiu: “Remember back in the first session when we saw that falling star?”
Mawn: “Yes, I often keep track of my personal history in terms of sessions.”
Gruf: “I’m rolling for a modification to the car.”
Marley: “Oh, I’d like a minibar, a microwave, and a ram.”
Gruf: “Don’t confuse the car for the jazz lounge. That’s where we’ve got those options.”
Quiznos: “The jazz lounge has a ram?”
Quiznos: “Let’s hope they have a medic.”
Marley: “We have Gruf, but as usual he’s in a different place far away from the injury.”
Quiznos: “They pat you on the back and it pops your shoulder back in.”
Flooc: “And thus chiropracty was reborn.”
Marley: “So how’s the weather on this boat? How do you get the tarp to not leak?”
Flooc: “Uh…it’s a tarp.”
Various, discussing a missile loadout:
“You make finger guns at your load.”
“Would you say he’s rolling in the deep load?”
“I have Extreme Legs, could my load move on its own?”
GM: “You go all the way to the base of the missile shaft, looking for a way to get rid of its load.”
Gruf: “Maybe if we move Gruf back up and down a few more times, that’ll do it.”
GM: “This door opens into another cylindrical room, this one smaller than the silo.”
Flooc: “And another, smaller missile!”
Flooc: “Listen. This will be the first, and probably the last, pregnant woman you’ll have to beat up and kill.”
Ohm: “Oh God, is he dead?”
Marley: “No, no, he hit him with the blunt side of the ax, he’s fine.”
Flooc: “His head’s over there…”
Marley: “They can probably handle a couple of cultists coming down behind them.”
Quiznos: “Quote that shit and come back to it later.”
Marley: “See? They’re not all telepathic. This guy has pyrokinesis.”
Quiznos: “Okay, so don’t take the pills.”
Flooc: “‘What?’ I say, with a mouth full of pills.”
Quiznos: “They say they bought him from slavers.”
Marley: “Wait, slavers are a thing?”
GM: “He says, to his slave.”
Marley: “I should get more credit for destroying that missile.”
Epiu: “I spread rumors that Marley hid in a barn the whole time while other people did the work.”
Marley: “Hey, I sent one of my guys down there!”
Quiznos: “You sent two of your guys down there, motherfucker!”
Epiu: “Who’s good at sneaking? Because last I checked, our sneaky guy is on my shoulders bleeding out.”
Flooc: “Have you ever tried outrunning a bitterbeast?”
Epiu: “I don’t have to outrun a bitterbeast, Flooc. I just have to outrun you.”
Marley: “Three bullets would get us…twenty-one.”
Quiznos: “Twenty-four.”
GM: “The Ark hasn’t invented mathematics yet.”
Quiznos: “We really gotta finish that school!”
Marley: “How big is the trunk on this car?”
GM: “It’s not big enough to hold a boat.”
Marley: “I really wish I could Intimidate right now. But only Enforcers have that.”
GM: “He said, surrounded by eighteen Enforcers who all work for him.”
After using all 10 mutation points that he’d been saving up from the very start of the campaign to deliver 10 unblockable, unresistable damage, and getting a mutation backfire roll that makes him suffer the same effects as his target:
Marley: “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME”
Quiznos: “He’s not actually dead? Dammit, I thought it was the Quiznos Gang now.”
Marley: “We should get the car somewhere safe. We could leave it at the Belltower…”
Quiznos: “We could tie it to a tree.”
Marley: “So it doesn’t wander off. Yeah.”
Quiznos: “Is this session called ‘Karma?’ Talk your way out of this one, Marley.”
Marley gets exiled for killing other bosses too many times
Boss Royle, to Epiu: “And if Marley comes back with an army to try and get back into the Ark, well, we’re not as helpless as we used to be. The Ark has defenses now.”
Marley, in the distance: “DEFENSES THAT I BUILT, YOU BITCH”
Marley: “Honestly if I’m not overthrowing other bosses, what’s the point?”
GM: “Do you tell him that you’re currently banished from the Ark?”
Marley: “…Not in those words, exactly.”
Epiu: “If we want to infiltrate the robots, someone could try submitting to a medical evaluation.”
Marley: “I’m willing to let you try that.”
Epiu: “What a fantastic boss. I can’t believe we got rid of you.”
Quiznos: “Did you find a way to destroy the turrets, or turn them off?”
Flooc: “Oh, was that what I was supposed to be doing?”
Marley: “I hide behind the dead robot, so I can move its arms around and pretend it’s alive when they come to investigate.”
GM: “Session 17: Weekend at BRNY’s.”
Marley: “There’s so much goddamn cool schizo-tech apocalypse bullshit we could be doing if Gruf were here.”
Flooc: “I just want my double-barreled rifle back.”
GM: “There’s a ladder that goes down through the hatch. You can see light at the bottom.”
Epiu: “So…do we just start dropping missiles down?”
Quiznos: “Fire in the hole! Literally!”
Gruf: “Ferdinand, ready your weapon at those strange creatures.”
GM: “Ferdinand waves at Marley. ‘Hey boss!'”
Gruf: “OH GOD”
Marley: “Do you accept Canadian bullets?”
Gruf: “By the time we get there, I’ll have a flamethrower. It’ll be a stick on fire that we can throw, but it’ll work.”
Marley: “If we want to save room in the car, Katinka could probably ride on the outside…”
Quiznos: “No! Don’t be a dick to robots!”
Marley: “Oh shit, I accidentally held down the button in Roll20 while drinking water and it went way down to -5.”
Gruf: “Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!”
GM: “You recognize these holes as the trail of a deathworm.”
Epiu: “Deathworm? These fucking things.”
Flooc, the diplomat: “We came to take shelter from the lightning. Zappy zappy boom boom.”
GM: “The others come and stand in your path, holding their weapons.”
Flooc: “We’re in a car, so I hope they like being flat!”
Epiu: “Do I see any more of them coming?”
GM: “Not yet…”
Epiu, to his two broken comrades: “Guys, I think we made a mistake.”
GM: “The last one goes down. You’re alone on the bridge. The car horn is still going off.”
Flooc: “Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”
GM: “Thanks, Spencer.”
Flooc: “I’m roleplaying!”
Flooc: “Damn, if I push this sneak roll, it could kill the car.”
Epiu: “Well, that would be pretty good camouflage among these wrecks.”
Flooc: “I’d still like to avoid that.”
The Gang Kills the Car
Marley: “Wait, what. What happened to my car.”
GM: “This is what happens when you don’t show up for the session.”
Flooc and Quiznos pull their boat up alongside a shipwreck full of feral zone dogs
Flooc: “Avast, ye scurvy dogs!”
Quiznos: “I search for clues.”
GM: “I don’t know if I should make a Scooby Doo joke or a Blue’s Clues joke about all the dogs you just killed.”
Flooc: “I find one bullet after searching the entire sector? Just lying there on the ground? I just found a needle in a one-square-mile haystack.”
Marley: “Let me check to see if I have enough bullets to equip all my guys to attack the Castle.”
Epiu: “Wait what?”
Quiznos: “No no no no, we want to attack the Bridgers, not the Castle.”
Marley: “Right, sorry, misspoke.”
Quiznos: “Don’t mind the blood stains, it was just some dogs.”
Marley: “Were you staging dog fights on my boat?”
Quiznos: “Oh yeah, something you should know, there’s pockets of vacuum along that coast where there’s no air and you start suffocating.”
Marley: “What?”
Quiznos: “So yeah, and also…”
Marley: “WHAT?”
Marley: “Could we attach a zeppelin to the Ark and become sky people?”
GM: “I wouldn’t stop you from trying.”
Quiznos: “You’d just make sure it fails.”
Marley: “Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe. They never put self-destruct mechanisms in these things to blow them up in the face of scavengers who knock them down and try to salvage them.”
NPC: “That is…oddly specific.”
Looking down at the body of an enforcer who betrayed the party.
Marley: “Well, shit…now who’s gonna carry the other end of the pipe of space-metal we stole?”
Epiu: “Oh, fuck you.”
Marley multi-classes into Gearhead
Marley: “I wish I could make bullets with the Jury Rig skill.”
Quiznos: “I’m gonna go ahead and change that out to ‘I wish I could break the game.'”
Flooc: “I don’t even know how to start this conversation.”
Quiznos: “Just pretend she’s not a girl, Flooc, you can do this.”
Marley: “I take cover, aim, and shoot him with my bow.”
GM: “Ah yes, bracing your bow atop your cover.”
Marley: “Yup. Holding it sideways, gangsta-style.”
Flooc: “About that gun I borrowed a minute ago, I, uh, it’s gone, I don’t know what happened to it.”
Mechie: “You know, that’s all right, I can whip up a new one in no time.”
Flooc: “Well, uh, all right. Have…a nice day.”
Flooc: “I have friends, Marley. They’re the gang that you don’t have to pay for.”
Marley: “Guess who’s back! Eminem starts playing behind me as I finally reenter the Ark.”
Quiznos: “They do think you’re shady.”
Marley: “I, uh, start working on the Autocracy Ark Project, with Marley in charge.”
Quiznos: “I think at this point you’d be the last one on the list to be chosen as the guy in charge.”
Marley: “Chosen?”
GM: “I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding about how autocracies work.”
Quiznos: “Last time we ran into the Bridgers we were in the car, so they probably wouldn’t recognize us in the boat.”
Marley: “Well, I did paint a giant ‘FUCK YOU BRIDGERS’ on the side of the boat.”
GM: “They see you and point up at you with spears.”
Flooc: “I lean out of the hot air balloon and yell ‘GET FUUUUUUUUUCKED”
GM, reading from the defense rules in the book: “You can block the deathworm’s attack, counter-attack it, inflict fatigue damage, knock it down, knock away or pull a weapon from it…”
Marley: “Pull a weapon from it! Take the worm’s gun!”
Epiu: “I deal seven damage.”
GM: “You…unmake the deathworm.”
Marley: “Why did the rest of us even spend the bullets?”
Marley: “Or we could ignore all this political drama and build steam cars.”
Quiznos: “If we build steam cars, I’m not coming back.”
Quiznos: “Hey boss, I had a blast from the past that I wanted to inform you of.”
Marley: “Oh, don’t worry about it. We’ll get the medic to take a look at that.”
Quiznos: “Uh, no, not like that.”
Marley: “Ah. I thought you said a blast from the ass.”
Marley: “Hey Chao, I wanted to show you this cool shit I invented.”
Rolls no hits, mostly 1s.
Marley: “Hey Chao, I can’t get this thing working, help me out.”
Quiznos: “He doesn’t realize that we’re only working on the School and Militia projects to enforce our ideas of Free Enterprise.”
Marley: “Remember children, if someone tries to collectivize you, fucking stab ’em.”
Quiznos: “By the way, if we run into a car from those bandits, what’s your opinion on using one of the explosive charges?”
Marley: “Well, if they’re not bothering us…”
Quiznos: “Blow them away, right?”
Marley: “Can I roll Sense Emotion to see if they’re preparing for a murder spree to kill us and take our stuff?”
Quiznos: “What, you mean like we are?”
Marley: “This probably voids the experience bonus I get for protecting Quiznos this session.”
GM: “What, just because you’re risking murdering him with the explosion?”
Quiznos: “Oh, sure, that’s the reason you’d hesitate to blow me up.”
Marley: “I know more than you think…Gaffa!”
Gaffa: “You can’t know that! That’s…that’s out of character!”
Marley: “Hahaha! I know many out of character things.”
Marley: “Can we set up a watch on the coast in case the Helldrivers come that way?”
GM: “You can tell the watchtower to keep an eye in that direction.”
Marley: “Could they see that far?”
GM: “No.”
Quiznos: “You could try it, but it won’t work.”
GM: “You see silky white webbing covering some of the tunnel entrances.”
Marley: “Spiders? No.”
GM: You’ve heard about Zone Spiders…”
Marley: “Nope.”
GM: “…which have mutated and grown to absurd sizes…”
Marley: “Nope. Flooc, we’re sending you in with fire bombs. I don’t want this place to exist.”
GM: “Spider three changes course and peels off towards Epiu.”
Quiznos: “Hehehe. What an idiot.”
Marley, to a slave from the Thorn, another Ark of mutants: “Well, at our Ark, people are paid for their efforts, and everyone is free to…”
Flooc: “Marley, no.”
Marley: “I explain the Wealth of Nations to them.”
Flooc: “Stop.”
Chairman of the Thorn: “Are all of your people…men?”
Flooc: “Shit, guys, maybe that’s why we can’t repopulate.”
Marley: “There’s also the cannibals down south.”
Flooc: “Haven’t we only heard rumors about them?”
Marley: “One of them tried to pull you out of the hot air balloon like two weeks ago, Flooc.”
Flooc: “Oh, that was them? That was traumatic, I sort of blocked it out.”
Epiu: “Yeah, I don’t trust this Chairman guy. He definitely performed a coup or something to get in power. He’s reminding me more of Marley every second.”
Marley: “Oh yeah, you’ll love the Ark. We got kickass bombs, we got a jazz lounge, we got a place where we throw off people I don’t like…”
Marley: “Well, the Chairman is up in the penthouse. If we deal directly with people down here, how much power does he really have to stop us?”
Quiznos: “Uh, all of it.”
Epiu: “ALL OF IT. It’s an autocracy!”
Marley: “You said west-northwest?”
NPC: “Yeah.”
Marley: “Like, sector H3, right here on this map?”
NPC: “Yeah, that’s the place!”
Marley: “Sorry, no idea about it.”
Marley: “That’s one bullet for each of us, and one for Ferdinand.”
Epiu: “That still leaves one bullet.”
Marley: “I fire that one into the air. It’s only fair.”
Quiznos: “We get back to the Ark. Is it full communism yet?”
GM: “Oh, yeah. They found a ton of pictures of Che Guevara. You’re not sure how.”
GM: “This is the first time you’ve seen the Trash Hawk, right Quiznos?”
Quiznos: “Yup. And this is the first time it’s seen ME.”
GM: “Yeah, when a gang member fires a gun out in the zone, it comes out of the boss’s pocket.”
Quiznos: “Shit, I gotta start using guns.”
Marley: “Fuck youuuuuuuuuu”
GM: “Now that the Ark has officially finished the Free Enterprise project, Marley should probably release Quiznos from any formal bonds.”
Marley: “Hey Quiznos, remind me, are you still a slave?”
Quiznos: “Hahahaha, no.”
Marley: “We can probably just build bikes out of wood and shit, right?”
GM: “Probably not shit, but you could find a substitute.”
Marley: “You know the fuck what I meant.”
Epiu: “Does Katinka now understand Free Enterprise? Because if so, we’re fucked.”
Quiznos: “Why are you paying it? It’s a robot, not a person!”
Marley: “Jeez, Quiznos, that’s a weird thing for a former slave to say…”
Quiznos: “It’s not! Epiu’s bitterbeast is more alive than Katinka is!”
Marley: “Katinka’s a hell of a lot smarter than the bitterbeast!”
Epiu: “Is Katinka just standing here listening to all of this?”
GM: Starts playing Westworld intro music
Marley: “We could try negotiating, then retreat if they get hostile.”
Epiu: “What do you mean, retreat?”
Quiznos: “He means he’ll retreat while we charge.”
Marley: “That FUCKER. I told him where the Ark was!”
Epiu: “You were the only one who trusted the Chairman.”
Marley: “He seemed like a good dude at the time!”
Epiu: “He…no. He never seemed anything like a good dude.”
Quiznos: “Yeah, let’s see if we can take this slave alive. I have so much respect for this guy.”
Marley: “You killed a truck with an ax, Epiu. That’s pretty good.”
Epiu: “Yeah, I swung my ax so hard I turned into a plant.”
Flooc: “Hey, I’m a plant-man too!”
GM: “I guess now you can be…buds!”
All: Groans
Quiznos: “We just figured out that we should let the People get a say in their own lives. You expect us to extend that to robots already?”
Epiu: “To be fair, I would argue that Katinka is more useful than anyone on the Ark.”
Epiu: “You might have to pay Katinka for her help.”
Flooc: “What?”
Quiznos: “See, this is the problem, Flooc! Now Katinka’s gonna think we have to pay her, because of Free Enterprise.”
Epiu: “Can we not have this conversation in front of the slaves?”
Quiznos: “We just want to show them that men and women are equal here.”
Marley: “First off…not entirely true, Carmen works for me, I want to make that clear…”
Epiu: “Okay, fuck this, I’m getting the bitterbeast.”
Quiznos: “Epiu and I went bad cop / bad cop there”
Quiznos: “I agree with that. We can always feed them to the bitterbeast later…”
Marley: “Yeah–”
Quiznos: “…like when Marley isn’t around.”
GM: “I think Flooc is the only character at this table who hasn’t killed one of Ashe’s bosses.
Marley: “Ashe, we need you to pretend to defect to the Thorn, so we can kill the Chairman. Because we’ve gotten so good at killing your bosses.”
Epiu: “My character doesn’t understand cars.”
GM: “You gotta feed this thing, right? Maybe you should handle that.”
Epiu: “Where do you put the grub?”
GM: “Quiznos and Flooc lie in heaps on the floor. And now our heroes Epiu, Frog Legs, Insectoid Guy, and Ferdinand must save the day.”
Marley: “Katinka, please tend to Quiznos.”
Flooc: “Fuck Quiznos! I have broken toes!”
Quiznos: “I’m still broken…”
Flooc: “So are my toes!”
Marley: “Congratulations. Katinka managed to save two of your toes.”
Katinka: “I have them here in this baggie!”
Quiznos: “Can I throw him out the window now?”
Marley: “Oh yeah, absolutely. Go ahead.”
Chairman: “Wait, you promised–”
Marley: “The Chairman’s revolver. It even has his signature on the side. His name was ‘Smith & Wesson.'”
Quiznos: “We have four rulers at the Ark, all working together.”
NPC: “Really? They don’t run around killing each other for power?”
Epiu: “Only one of them does that.”
Flooc: “Can you repair my toes?”
Marley: “Sure. Bring me that saw. If you don’t have toes you don’t have to wait for them to heal. I’m not a doctor but I’m pretty sure that math checks out.”
Marley: “That’s enough to get us each a bullet.”
Flooc: “That brings me up to…four bullets.”
Marley: “Brings me to…thirty-two.”
Quiznos: Dies laughing
Marley: “Or maybe that noise wasn’t anything, but there are speakers playing creepy sounds to discourage people from entering.”
Flooc: “This went from suspicion to conspiracy theory real quick.”
Marley: “Can you hear me? Can you give us a more specific warning than ‘turn back?'”
Quiznos: “The screen changes and says ‘No I can’t hear you.'”
Marley: “I don’t know if she’ll need to die. She hasn’t done anything against us, right?”
Epiu: “Not yet.”
Flooc: “Everyone does, eventually.”
Doctor: “Titan, kill them all!”
Marley: “Hey, Titan! Wanna join the Marley Gang?”
Quiznos: “Full-auto, Flooc!”
Flooc: “I have one bullet.”
Epiu: “Full-auto!”
Marley: “It’s been an honor, Flooc.”
Epiu: “Godspeed, plant man.”
Marley, as Flooc blasts off into orbit: “One small step for mutant, one giant leap for mutantkind.”
Grand dreams:
Every character in Mutant; Year Zero has a grand driving dream that they’re working towards.
Marley’s grand dream was to build a civilization to rival that of the old age, and by the end of the game he had essentially achieved that goal. The People were now a nation, and the various other civilizations in the Zone that the party had discovered were being tied into a great confederacy due to the trade routes that Marley built and the politicking he’d done.
Quiznos’ dream was to escape from slavery and find a place that was better than the Ark. By the end of the campaign he hadn’t found anything out there that was absolutely better, so he used Marley’s resources to build his own utopia, in a new settlement.
Flooc’s big dream was just to get away from the Ark as much as possible. He ended the campaign alone in a rocket ship flying up to Mimir One, a space station where he met an enclave of the last surviving humans. His fate after that point is unknown.
I don’t remember the grand dreams of the other characters, unfortunately. I’ll probably edit them in here after their players remind me of them.
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