You Awaken In a Strange Place is a zero prep, completely improvised roleplaying game, for inventing a setting, characters, and playing all in a single session. This session was a robot apocalypse story set in Alcatraz.
In the distant, futuristic year of 2023, the robot apocalypse is upon us. Powerful humanoid machines have come from the future to exterminate humanity. The survivors that remain have holed up in well-protected bunkers and fortresses - one such place being Alcatraz. This is the story of three heroes:
- CTX-353 (Aaron), a terrifying looking robot with devil horns, that scientists have reprogrammed to have a sweet and kind personality.
- Salvador Dali (Paul), resurrected by humanity to fight the logic of the robots with his powers of surrealist un-logic, he was somehow elected the prison warden of Alcatraz and leader of the survivors living here.
- Ryle Keese (Kye), a mech pilot from the distant future who was arrested and sent to Alcatraz because no one believed him when he told people that a robot apocalypse was about to occur.
Our three heroes squint against a harsh light as they come to consciousness. To their confusion, they find themselves in a queue at Tescos, behind an arguing couple. It doesn’t take them long to realise that they are in The Situation Room - a VR simulation experience used to torture prisoners by exposing them to a never-ending awkward situation. Luckily, CTX is able to interface with the simulation program and end it.
The three wake up in reality, remembering that they were trapped in there for discovering that a fellow survivor named Mustache Bill was secretly a shapeshifting robot spy that had infiltrated Alcatraz. Scrubbing through security tapes to get a better look at their attacker, the three noticed the robot imposter muttering something about ‘searching for the humans secret weapon.’
Knowing that the shapeshifter will most likely have taken on a new form now, CTX heads to the science wing in search of a scientist that will augment them with x-ray vision. They meet Dr Amanda Shobinov (Shuptinuf? Shovinof? It changed a few times throughout the game I think) who seems very nervous around them. Dr Shobinov tells them that she needs a special set of eye lenses to give them x-ray vision - and sends them to the children’s playroom to find the creepiest furby.
Meanwhile, Dali and Ryle Keese head to Dali’s office to look over the community’s plans for any mention of a secret weapon. In the surrealist spirit of Salvador Dali, his office is a upside-down throne room with a burning giraffe called Millicent in the corner. Dali communes with Millicent, who whispers an ominous message: “There are two robots in your midst, one a friend, one an enemy. Both are looking for dolls.”
Ryle Keese - who, despite being a time traveller, seems to be the straight man, the most normal guy of our heroic trio - resigns himself to climbing a barbed wire ladder up to Dali’s desk on the ceiling, and starts looking through the drawers. The only thing that catches his eye is the blueprints to the building, that show there is an underground level that they did not know about.
Thinking that both CTX and the shapeshifter might be found in the playroom looking for their dolls that Millicent mentioned, Dali and Ryle regroup with CTX in the playroom. CTX is running back and forth throughout the jungle gym following the voice of the furby, but they never seem to catch it, almost as if it can teleport as long as it isn’t observed. CTX asks Becca - the only child that hasn’t run away screaming at the sight of them, and actually seems to like them - how anyone can capture the furby. Becca doesn’t really know, but she’s heard rumour of another kid who could summon the furby with an occult ritual.
The trio return to Dali’s office, to get Millicent to perform the ritual for them. The furby is summoned in a flash of light, and CTX takes it back to the science wing for Dr Shobinov. However, the science wing is empty. Dr Shobinov is nowhere to be found.
Millicent tells Dali that the current location of the shapeshifter is a ‘meeting of many minds’, so the trio head to the meeting hall to find the scavenger team, lead by Team Captain Samantha Barclay, going over new plans for the war on the robots. Dali begins interrogating everyone with mad questions.
CTX takes Barclay into a back room to tell her that a shapeshifter has infiltrated the compound looking for a secret weapon, that there is a secret underground level beneath the compound, and that the scientists have gone missing. Hearing this, Barclay reckons that there have been signs that the scientists have been sneaking down into the underground level to work on something in secret, and they need to take a team to check it out.
Finding a secret door behind a bookcase in the science wing, CTX leads Barclay, a few of Barclays soldiers, Ryle Keese, Dali, and Dali’s own personal horse guard - a bunch of surrealist soldiers in horse costumes with dolphin laser guns - down the stairs into a massive robotics lab. Hiding behind a corner, they hear Dr Shobinov arguing with another scientist about why this secret weapon they’ve been working on needs to be kept a secret - because she doesn’t trust that she’s reprogrammed CTX properly. She’s afraid of CTX turning on everybody. Hearing this, CTX comes out of hiding to question Dr Shobinov about why she doesn’t trust him. The group of scientists aim their guns at him. Barclay and her soldiers come out behind CTX and aim their guns at the scientists. Ryle Keese comes out to back CTX up as well and notices what the secret weapon is that the scientists have been working on - a giant mech, like an early prototype for the kind that he would have piloted in the future.
CTX offers himself up to Dr Shobinov, stating that if he can’t be trusted then he should be deactivated. Becca, who has snuck down here after him, begs him not to do this, begs the scientists to trust him.
Dali makes an entrance with his horse guard and declares that everyone will be arrested!
In the chaos of the standoff between the scientists, the soldiers, and the horse guard, Ryle Keese makes a run for the mech, thinking that he can use its weaponry to get everyone to stand down and work together, but Barclay pursues him, shouting that he must be the shapeshifter if he wants that mech. Ryle jumps into the head of the mech, and slams a button to close the loading bay doors, but Barclay manages to scramble in just as the doors are closing.
Protesting Dali’s attempts to arrest everyone, saying that it won’t solve anything, CTX knocks Dali out. CTX shoves the furby into Dr Shobinovs hands and demands x-ray vision, now. Dr Shobinov rips off the furby’s face and slaps it onto CTXs face - with the eyes, the beak, and a little bit of the fur underneath the beak, it looks a bit like those funny glasses with the nose and the moustache. CTX immediately clocks with his x-ray vision that Barclay is the shapeshifter.
Barclay drops the act now that it’s just her and Ryle Keese pointing guns at each other in the head of the mech. She monologues about how in the original timeline, the humans never invented the mech and the robots win. Then the humans travelled back in time to get a do-over, invented the mech, and the humans won. In this timeline, it is the robots who have travelled back in time to get a do-over, and she intends to either destroy the mech at its invention, or preferably steal the mech for the robots to use.
Ryle Keese says he can’t allow that to happen, and activates the mechs 60 second self-destruct countdown.
Outside, CTX starts pounding on the loading bay doors, but it’s too heavily armoured. The horse guard use a giant squid bomb to blast a hole in the door - which succeeds, but also kills all the horse guard.
Hearing his people dying, Dali wakes back up.
The blast from the bomb knocks Ryle and Barclay into the controls, losing their guns and activating the mechs rocket thruster and missile systems. CTX rushes in to try and switch off the self-destruct countdown, but instead gets clotheslined by Barclay. As the two are slugging it out, Ryle Keese manages to find the button to open a set of hangar doors, and flies the mech out into the night sky. Dali manages to run and jump onto the butt of the mech as it begins its ascent.
CTX manages to pin Barclays arms and legs, and drags her out of the mech through the hole in its head. The two robots fall a thousand feet, exploding into pieces on impact with the ground.
Dali climbs up the mech, joining Ryle Keese in the head, just as Ryle closes up the hole to preserve the oxygen as the mech leaves earths atmosphere. The mech drifts for a while, until gravity pulls it down to earth again, and Ryle Keese is able to land it.
Credits roll as Becca kneels down next to CTXs broken body.
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