I had the players come up with a reason on why they knew the other characters. They reasoned out that they were all part of a travelling caravan at the moment out of Lazlo (which I began with being the base setting). Dead Wolf came from his tribe on a vision quest to learn better morality from Reaper. Reaper has befriended Valerie, mostly because she can fix his stuff, and Val is out to help people in the Wilderness. They recruited the mysterious Julian to help fill their magical void. The players knew they would encounter Mikel this adventure.
The caravan was travelling westward from Lazlo, looking to make a circuit of the various surviving settlements, loop back to Relic, than back into Lazlo. The caravan was run by a Mr. Whyte, distinguished for having a large, bushy mustache, no courage to speak of, and knowing how to stay alive. His caravan had two running vehicles, and ten more being pulled by a variety of d-bee animals (one of which stank so bad Dead Wolf found himself steering clear of it). The caravan had been sticking to the remnants of the 400 series highways which used to criss cross the old Ontario province, but as they found, it wasn't reliable. A deep river crossed it, and the bridge that had once spanned this now swollen river was long gone.
There was an APC at the edge of the bridge, shot up, an axle destroyed and a wheel sideways. Scavenger animals fled from the wreck as they approached. Dead Wolf could smell that there were people inside, long dead. He pulled out one of the bodys and brought it back to Reaper to present to him, like a dog! (howls of laughter ensued).
They found two bodies inside. The driver, in coveralls with a few pieces of tech tools on him, and a well dressed man clutching a strange, featureless black box. Featureless except for a silver pentacle on the surface. While no one felt any magic coming from it, Julian passed a Magic Lore roll and determined this device was a statis box. It would keep things inside fresh and safe until opened, but once opened, the box was useless (I figured it's a minor TW device, or perhaps a custom spell for me to make). I told Alter that Julian would be able to reason it open if he took a while to puzzle over it. Valerie stripped the APC for parts (I told her she had "parts" for repairing things, but most of it was dead scrap unless she could bring out equipment to properly salvage it).
Mr. Whyte suggested they make camp back up the highway, away from the APC. They did, and while guard duty was posted, I focused the action on a later part in the night where they were all gathered around a fire. Julian figured out how to open up the box, and found a data disc inside (I described it like a UMD disc). The players looked over their sheets and realized they didn't have anything to really read the disc (no computers). Tolstoy was going to suggest reading the disk with Valerie's language translator, but it didn't go anywhere (lost in the chatter).
Out of the night came a man in Bushman armour, beaten leathers and an L-20 Pulse Rifle over his shoulder. He had the E-Clip in hand, out of the rifle, as if to make it clear to them he meant no harm. They found out his name was Dom (like Dominic), and he professed to be a scout that lived in the area (human Wilderness Scout). Dead Wolf was reading his surface thoughts with Telepathy, but Dom didn't seem to be up to mischief. He told them that bandits had shot up the APC, but not taken anything. So far he'd been avoiding the bandits, and they him, but this recent turn from banditry to reaving had worried him. He also told them he knew a way around, but that the bandits were watching the alternate route and would assault the caravan if they took it. The group did a quick pow-wow and decided they wanted Dom to lead them to the bandits, and to try and take care of them.
Reavus consulted with Mr. Whyte, who approved this plan. He would wait for them for 2 days before turning around and heading back to Lazlo. Dom described the alternate route as along an old maglev line, with a bridge that wheeled vechiles could cross (with effort and some gear). At the far side of the river is a large concrete structure which the bandits have taken up residence in. He did know of a single ford across the river, but was unsure if it was currently safe to use - the river was high because of recent rains (and has been higher in general because of the higher water levels post-apocalypse). The group decided trying to cross the maglev bridge was suicide, and decided to brave the ford.
When they got to the ford, Dead Wolf noted that Dom had camped there recently, but narrowly passing a Tracking roll, couldn't see any recent tracks (I figured no one had used the ford in a week, and with the rain penalty, Dead Wolf would have failed the roll). Dead Wolf dove in to the ford after Reavus tied a rope around him, and passed his Swimming roll to ford the river (dog paddling of course!). With the rope up, I allowed the rest of the party to cross without a roll.
At this point I switched focus. Mikel hatched from his shell to the sounds of people screaming and running. He looked around to find his egg, on a counter in a rusted out kitchen, with large tongs around it, and a boiling pot nearby. Outraged, he realized he had been intended for dinner! He followed the screams to a door, tore it off, and found a poorly armed Bandit. The Bandit failed his Horror Factor roll, and was panicked! Mikel grabbed him, dragging him back to the pot, then crawling in to demonstrate to the foolish human that this feeble boiling water was nothing to him. The bandit, panicked, tried to use his plasma torch to hurt Mikel, who snorted and laughed off the damage (it was 1 MDC, and Mikel took 1/2 damage from it, so I described it as painful, but not harmful yet). Roaring, covered in boling water and extending his frills, the bandit decided to flee again. Mikel ran out to try and reason with these fools, only to encounter an armoured bandit with a plasma rifle!
The bandit leader, Chet, failed his Horror factor roll. Mikel attacked his weapon. I asked for a called shot, figuring that while the dragon hatchling didn't properly have "disarm", it's a big gun in human hands. Why not? He passed, and while not destroyed, the gun flew out of his hands. With Mikel trying to negotiate with him, Chet had to try twice to dive and pick up his gun. Infuriated, Mikel breathed his paralysis gas on Chet, who lacking environmental armour, rolled to save and failed. 5 minutes of paralysis. Mikel strips him, and puts on his clothing. I asked Robin to make a D20 roll (indexing Mikel's IQ), and with a poor roll, I ruled the brand-new Hatchling got a few details wrong when he tried to shapeshift into Chet. The armour wasn't on right, and he couldn't stop his eyes from twitching.
Mikel, disguised (poorly) to look like Chet, tried to talk the bandits into not trying to foolishly attack the dragon, but they were so caught between being hungry for dragon parts (and the profit it would reap in the Black Markets of Relic and Lazlo) and eating the dragon meat, they wouldn't listen to their boss (who, with eyes twitching like they were, must have been stunned or beguiled by the dragon). Finally, in a humourous situation where the bandits tried to feed one of their own to the dragon, Mikel gave up on trying to reason with them and set to leave, figuring he would crash through the wall. He found out, after crashing into the wall, that the super-crete was MDC, and while cracking it, it didn't crumble before him like a wall should! Pride being the only injury the dragon suffered, he left via.. a door.
Back to the group. Dead Wolf did an astral surveillance of the area. The question came up whether he could use his psi-stalker abilities or not while astrally projecting. I, on the spot, decided "no", as I saw those abilities being tied to his body. He saw that there were about 20 bandits, all lightly armoured and with heavy weaons (MDC pistol and rifles). Two would guard each approach. A plan was bandied about on how to take the fortress, and I called the session.
A few notes about format.