April '94 Medicine Hat College, Alberta, Canada, a few weeks after "the incident"
This late in the winter, even hardy Canadians grow tired of traipsing across to the icy quad on a Friday night to hit the drinking district of Medicine Hat. While some might hit a dorm room stash of Alberta "Premium" Whiskey or a few loose cans of Molson that rolled under the bed, for many it's a night of food deliveries and jamming out to the beloved stylings of Bryan Adams and Celine Dion.
In room 117, three students were jamming out to Ace of Base.
Bob Krebs: A college student in his third Sophomore year, Bob's a Liberal Arts major at Medicine Hat College with a minor in Art History Appreciation (he's failed the same class so many times, they gave him a minor in it). He enjoys listening to lumberjack grunge music, wearing lots of red flannel, looking for "the mara-who-juana" and hanging with his friends. Bob had started dating Jewel, but a relationship built upon the terror of watching random people getting devoured by an invisible entity was never meant to last. They recently broke up, but Jewel's cool enough to hang with the crew, eh...
Alan Jonas:
A Junior at Medicine Hat College, studying Geography. He was an academic drop-out at the Royal Military College of Canada, known for academic guffaws and short, violent outbursts. Nowadays, he's relaxed a bit and can be found chilling with his friend, Bob and his recently ex-girlfriend, Jewel. .
 |
| From that one time he joined a Robin Hood themed game of Killer on campus. |
Jewel: Ex-girlfriend of Old Man Ralph, and recent ex-girlfriend of Alan. This Junior Canadian English major still enjoys the company of her new friends, even occasionally offering her dorm room for activities, even if her roommate Elaine doesn't appreciate it.
 |
| If she could only sing or play guitar... |
As hungry as the trio was, Bob and Alan's room was akin to a toxic waste site down in the States. Somewhere there had to be a flyer for Chinese or pizza. If only these Canadian dorm phones could store frequently used numbers, or at least remember the last place you called....
Finally, Bob pulled out a menu for a Puck 'n Pizza, home of Medicine Hat's own famous Calgary Deep dish. Calling in, they order a pepperoni and Alan's favorite, back bacon and maple syrup.
A few minutes later and a knock on the door produce a odd-looking Russian delivery guy with two pizza boxes. A quick search for couch change for a tip (and Jewel covering one of the pizzas), they brought out unused textbooks as plates and chowed down.
The pizza was warm and filling, the finer songs of Ace of Base emotionally opening, but something weird was underneath Alan's pie.
Attached to the crust and syrup was a 5 1/4" floppy disk.
With the computer lab closed since 5pm Friday night, the crew was confused by their find.
"Hey," Jewel meekly emitted, "Elaine has a computer with one of those drives for the computer disk. She's out studying or some nonsense. I'm sure she won't mind if we use it to see what's on it."
."Cool..." Bob said, "let's go up to your room. Jewel, grab the pizzas..."
"And I'll grab Axis and Allies," cried Alan.
Upstairs, they powered up Elaine's computer and inserted the disk, not expecting much. But even with Canada's finest syrup drenching the disk, the drive whirred to life and the screen lit up.
OUTSIDE COM PORT DETECTED....
CONNECTING....
CONNECTION ESTABLISHED 2400 BAUD....
LOADING...
Bob was impressed, "She's got one of them twenty four hundred baum moderns that connect to those bulletin boards."
The green screen generated a graphic of the great nation of Canada, with "Welcome to Royal Canadian Air Defense Command."
The computer made weird screeching sounds, then the computer tower lit up like a Christmas tree as text generated under the map.
FILE TRANSFER INITIATED
... flashed every three seconds. Wanting to see what was happening, the trio waited.
... and waited...
... and after two games of Axis & Allies, heard of a knock on the door.
It was the same Russian delivery guy, except know his Pizza Delivery Track Suit smelled of sweat, and he had a worried look on his face.
"Da Pi-zzah... you not get right order, I need to take back what you get and get you fresh order from car."
Jewel was the first to question the situation. "Why didn't you bring the new pizzas up with you.... and how did you know we'd be here? This isn't the room you delivered to???"
The Russian took a step inside and produced a pistol. "I vill take pi-zzah.... the da disks."
He then formed a look of horror as the took a first glance at Elaine's computer working overtime on some operation.
"You fools, you inserted the disk to access Canadian Arctic NORAD. We are all doomed," he exclaimed.
Just then the dorm room door opened up, and Jewel's roommate Elaine barged in, surveyed the scene, and burst into a rage.
"What did you do to my computer? Why are you eating pizza with these freaks on textbooks? Who is the creepy Russian dude."
The Russian quickly stowed his gun in his back waistband, gazed into her eyes and said, "I like strong American woman here now, I am Vladi, and these folks grabbed me from computer programming project to fix your computer before you come back, but they are very cheap and we negotiate long time before you arrive. For date with you, American fox, my treat, I fix computer quickly and for free."
Elaine pondered the option, but a series of small red lights shone on her body, proceeded by a series of gunshots cracking through the window. Vladi whipped his pistol back out and unload an entire clip into the nearly decapitated body of Elaine, the momentum somehow sending her body across the room, and tangling up some white clad commandos swinging from the roof.
As he reloaded his pistol, another volley of small arms fire from a distant helicopter, ricocheted through the room, hitting the Russian multiple times.
The three surviving college students low-crawled through the room and crawled out the door. Sensing movement at the stairwells at the ends of the hall, Bob pulled a fire alarm and screamed. The ensuing throngs of half-drunk college students obscured the view of the heavily armed men.
They escaped down the central staircase and were met by Canadian Special Forces
"OH....MA....GAWD...!!!" Jewel exclaimed in her best California exchange student voices. "The Flames and Canucks are in overtime and SOMEONE has the nerve to pull a fire alarm! The nerve, like you know?"
The commandos bought it and let them go.
As the mingled into the crowd of students in the parking lot, Alan looked at his friends, "We're still going to get in trouble. Elaine's dead, Jewel's room is a mess, and that disk thing is still in the computer."
"No it's not," Bob corrected Alan, "I snagged it when we dashed out the door, I got it right here."
Bob reached into his back pocket and pulled out the disk, folded harshly into thirds.
*cue music*
GM Notes: When our online 5e doesn't go off, I have limited time to plan and play a scenario. With this very nebulous "Nevoz" setting in the Canadian prairie, while monster of the week could work with as rare we get to play it, it's also a venue for me to work in some cool concepts stolen from other source.
Calgary Deep Dish is inspired by episode #233 of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff. In fact, I'm quite certain that the idea of rogue Chicago Deep Dish pizza shops profiting off the success of the best shop in town... in Canada, helped me formulate the foundation of the game.
I have gotten more requests for "Cthulhu" when we're presented with possible cancellation of the 5e game, so anticipate future episodes... someday.
Next: #3 - Fourteen Beers at Chili's
Let's assume they'll be making their way through proper overseas distribution channels in due time. 
