Quote from Fernando on Dec 8^th, 2016, 4:24pm:

Spirits, Wesens, Haibane and other mutants are people. Jeanette's friend Hikaru is a mutant. Penny is a mutant. Jeanette's position is so clear that I don't understand why the part I'm quoting was even written.
 
Jeanette Isabelle

Back at the tractor trailer with Fernando, Hondo and Moro...
 
After opening the engine compartment, Moro looks for anything that stands out, sniffs for anything that does not smell right and then places her hands on the engine and receives information on the entire drive train. If a part has been overheating or if the pressure on something has been too high or too low, she now knows it.
 
Though the engine and drive train has many miles on it, it is well maintained. What computer may have been there when it was new was removed long ago, so a system status is not obtainable. The only thing she was able to get was the fuel not able to ignite in the chambers properly and the fuel system choking something.
 
“Yeah, knock yourself out.” Fernando replies as he walks to the bikers. “Which one of you leads here?” He then asks.
 
“I would.” The roughest meanest looking of the riders says.
 
“Thank you.” Fernando says as he digs into his pockets and pulls out a couple loose $100 coins from his pockets and shakes his hand, putting the coins into his hand, “Beers are on me through that. Girls you get on your own.”
 
“Why?” The biker asks.
 
“Well, for one thing, a storm is coming.” Fernando says as he twists the crystal on his cane.
 
“It has not rained ‘round here in years.” The bike says.
 
Fernando taps the ground with the cane lightly as is to lean against it, the sound of distant thunder echoes across the field. All the bikers look around as the skies begin to grow dark.
 
“Yup... My back has not lied to me about coming storms. And it’s a big one.” Fernando says, “I think you better run and get those beers if you want to stay dry.”
 
“Alright, Let’s Roll Out!” the leader says. With that the roar of the 20 or so motorcycles starting up echo with the distance thunder, and the bikers get into formation and ride to the north to the nearest town.
 
“You paid’em to leave?” Hondo asks as the last of the bikers catches up with the rest of the group.
 
“I paid them for guarding the place. Who know what would have happened if one of the mooks or giant mutant chickens gotten to the trailer.” Fernando answers.
 
“And the fancy light show?” Hondo asks as they start to walk to their SUV.
 
“I do not want an audience watching while we work. Let get busy. Only a couple hours of day light left.” Fernando says.
 
“I’ll go get my tools.” Hondo says.
 
“Thank you.” Fernando says as he walks to the tractor trailer. The engine was cranking over but not starting.
 
“That’s strange. It should work. The engine is fine from what I can tell. It has to be bad fuel or something else.” Moro says.
 
“It’s bad fuel gumming up the works and the filters. I’ve seen it before, and I’m sure Hondo’s seen it before as well.” Fernando says.
 
Hondo kneels down by the truck’s steps and pulls out the step panel, revealing the tank underneath the shrouding, “Yup.” He reaches in and twists a lever until something goes “popPPSTFFFFFFFFFFffffffffffff......” He smells the liquid that spilled onto his hand, “Yeah. It’s all water in there.” He goes further down the length and pulls out more shrouding, finding another fuel tank, “Jefe, go check the filter at the fuel pump.” He reaches into and twists another lever, “popPPSTFFFFFFFFFFffffffffffff......”
 
“Will do.” Fernando says as he goes to the open engine bay after taking an adjustable crescent wrench. He looks inside, finding the fuel pump, he follows the plumbing to the fuel filter. Putting the adjustable wrench onto the pipe holding nut, he adjusts it until it is clamped and pulls on it to loosen it. Fluid begins to drip from the loosened nut and pipe, which Fernando samples on his fingers. Like Hondo’s finding, it was nothing but fuel scented water from what he could tell.
 
“popPPSTFFFFFFFFFFffffffffffff......” Came from other side of the truck, followed by Hondo asking out loud. “What you found, Jefe?”
 
“Water in the lines.” Fernando answers.
 
“Yeah, that’s what I’m getting too.” Hondo says, throwing in, “Bypass the filter and it should last until we get her to town and get a new filter for her.” It is followed with another “popPPSTFFFFFFFFFFffffffffffff......”
 
“Alright.” Fernando replies, looking at plumbing. The steel pipe and its attachment nut do not reach the fuel pump without pulling and stretching it out of shape. Fernando needs to be careful in this that he does not crack the pipe while reshaping it. He then decides for some help he does not want to use, “Moro I may need your help here.”
 
Moro walks with Wilma to Fernando’s side and then asks, “How can we help?”
 
“The filter is crapped out. So to get it going, I’m going to bypass the filter and reshape this metal fuel pipe to go to the fuel pump directly. That will get the truck going until we get to town and get a new filter there. But there is a possibility of cracking the pipe in doing this. So after I reshape the pipe and connect it to the fuel pump, I need the ‘Midas Touch’ to make sure that the pipe is not cracked and if it is, seal those cracks to handle high pressure.”
 
“We can do that.” Moro replies.
 
“Good. Give me a minute to do this bypass.” Fernando says.
 
“By all means, do so.” Moro says.
 
Fernando does his best in moving the pipe around, reshaping it to extend past the fuel filter and directly to the fuel pump. At the same some Hondo closes up all the drainage levers he had open and begins putting back the shroud covering on the tanks. Hondo finishes before Fernando does.
 
“There.” Fernando says, not knowing Hondo was behind him.
 
“Let me see.” Hondo says, almost making Fernando jump out of his skin if it were not for his self control.
 
“What do you think?” Fernando asks.
 
Hondo grabs on the pipe and tries to pull and push on it, finding it secure in place, “Looks good.”
 
“Alright Moro, your turn.” As Fernando steps away from the engine bay, he then turns to Hondo, “You done?”
 
Moro holds the pipe in her hand, checking for any current problem or an area that could present a problem later. If there is an area that is weak and could burst, the pipe is reformed so that all areas that should be equal in strength are equal in strength.
 
“Four tanks, four filters, yeah.” Hondo answers.
 
“Good.” Fernando replies before calling out, “Wilma, I assume that large trailer behind the truck is where the people live and stay, what is in the other trailer?”
 
“That’s the materials processing factory and garage.” Wilma answers.
 
“Garage?” Fernando asks.
 
“It’s where the camper is stored when we roll in the truck. We got a couple motorcycles there too, recycled from some abandoned slavers vehicles.” Wilma answers.
 
“I see.” Fernando says.
 
“Thinkin’ of a plan?” Hondo asks.
 
“Once we get this thing out the hole and going, we do not have to drive Karl’s SUV and save fuel on that.” Fernando says, then he realizes, “Where’s everybody?”
 
“We’re done, Fernando.” Moro says.
 
“Who?” Wilma and Hondo ask.
 
“Your people, Miss. You said there were 25 of them.” Fernando says, throwing in, “Thanks Moro.”
 
“They are in the trailer.” Wilma says.
 
“I’ll take your word for it.” Fernando says before turning to Hondo, “Let’s get this puppy out the hole. Get Karl’s Truck out the way and I’ll do the rest.”
 
“Alright Jefe.” Hondo replies before he begins to walk to Karl’s SUV.
 
Fernando reaches over and closes the engine bay on the truck. He then puts one of the hood hold down straps on its hook.

Quote from Jeanette on Dec 8^th, 2016, 10:39pm:

 
Railroads in the USA has been around since the 1840s, so that would be about 200 years. As stated in email, I believe, long ago, due to the standardization of the railroad gauges, the USA Railroad connects with Canada and Alaska to the North and to Mexico and South American down to the Magellan Straits to the South with Freight and Passenger on separate lines but they can be merged as needed. How far it goes in this present day RPG depends on what is destroyed and what has been rebuilt.
 
 
The question of somebody needing to die on a mission is a test of leadership. If in a situation, where hundreds of people will be hurt and even killed unless one is sent to prevent the action from occurring at the cost of their life a leader must decide the worst and tell somebody to take such actions for the rest of the group. This fourth town is that dangerous - the chance of somebody not coming back is high. The question is, would Jeanette consider that and send somebody to get this cure knowing that they might not make it back or would she say that it is a too high of a price to pay to send somebody at all? Hondo and I discussed it and we are still discussing it.
 
 
If the Texas Spirits know, then these "men in white coats who worships technology" would also have this knowledge. Wessens are basically artificially created mutants for specific jobs (labor, entertainment, sex, etc.). First generation Wessens are those who have been kidnapped and then sent through the process of being turned into a wesson. Other generation Wessens are results of wessens and in some cases human/wessens mating; with the exception of Sex Puppies, who are sterile (or have been made sterile after being converted by getting their tubes tied per say) though there are some Sex Puppies that have gotten pregnant in the past.
 
Since this is a deliberate manipulation of genetics to create a direct mutation (ie: Laborer, Fighter, Sex Puppy, etc), then there is a cure by reversing the process. Several animals are used in creating the wessens to get the best of that animals' qualities: Vulpine, Bovine, Canine/Lupus, Feline, Equine, Aries, Osain, and so on. Even strange experimental wessens were created - Mollusk Wessen with Octopi DNA. The issue is... well in the kidnapping and creation of the first generation Wessen (which is still going on and a good way to make somebody disappear), the process and treatment of the person is so harsh, they forget who they are. In reversing the process, chances are high that they do not regain their pre-wessen memories. Restoring them to humans, they will have their wessen memories intact. As such, they might act out on revenge against those people who gave them a hard time when they were wessens. It also does not improve their intelligence, as they will remain at the same educational level as a human as they were when they were wessens. Thus if you change an air head Sex Puppy into a Human, she will remain as an airhead. But at least as a human, they can go to school and get a higher education. The problem that may exist is the loss of "super powers" they had as wessens that they will lose as humans, some of them might not want to deal with that.

Real or RPG Based railroad, the fact remains that in the past it connected from well into the Arctic circle to the north to the tip of the South American Continent near the Antarctic circle to the south. How much of this was destroyed and how much of this was rebuilt or restored in the RPG remains to be seen. As Is, in what is left of the USA it is very fragmented with few working parts connecting towns. A large fragment piece would go about 300 miles and connect 15 or so towns. And 30 miles away another 100 mile fragment piece connecting 12 towns can exist but both pieces are not connected because the rail between them is broken and no one has went out to fix it. This is one obstacle the Spirits need to find and solve to recreate a nation wide railroad. As simple as that may sound, they still need to deal with the politics of each settlement the trains go through.
 
Fixing track that is underwater requires underwater construction of a tunnel and replacement of the track that is there with new track because these tracks would be rusted. If anything, it is time consuming to do underwater construction but it is doable. The foundation of towers of the Brooklyn Bridge was built in this in this way - underwater inside a chamber during its construction.
 
In the very least Fernando does not want any child in a dangerous mission like raiding the Lab Town. They maybe in their own missions which Fernando may be a part of like rescuing the Baroness, but for anything outside of their mission, he does not want them involved. Not even the girls Ruth and Joanna, who are in their 20s and handy with a firearm, will not be involved. Not even Hikaru, even if she is an 100+ year old adult in a child's body.
 
The state of science today (in the RL World) is that mutations are understood and can be reversed. The problem is that seeing the body has been turned into something else, the immune system would attack the body and kill it (as in the case of Lupus which is a "mild but devastating" case of this condition). If one can change the immune system at the same time the mutant body is recreated and matches the new body, then there will be no rejection of the body by the immune system. These "men in white coats that worship technology" would know that and would know how to cure that since their technology has not stopped advancing though the Happening and through the Chaos though it may have slowed down through out the years. That and what alien technology they may own to supplement their equipment only adds to their knowledge.
 
The body is full of vestigial pieces and mutations act on augmenting those pieces. Humans do have wings, dewclaws and tails but they are so small and useless in normal people. We even have gills and scales, but they are not in the final part of our body. Knowing what mutation causes what effect on the body is simple to understand. Reversing it to create a normal person requires that one knows where that mutation is occurring within the genes and fixing it or replacing it with an ancestor gene. These "Men in white coats who worship technology" (MiWCWWT) would know this and have the technology to create a mutation and reverse it.
 
The problem with them is that this one lab in the middle of nowhere is not the only one out there, but is the first of many.  The first town that no one goes might be another secret lab but who knows because no one has returned to report on what is there. It could be MiWCWWT, MiWCWWT working with aliens/spirits or alien/spirits working alone. In any of the three, they may be supporting the 4th town and the 4th town supporting them with an exchange of goods and services. The 4th town it self could be just MiWCWWT alone or MiWCWWT with aliens/spirits. That remains to be seen.  But it is highly dangerous to send anyone to the first town, though it is dangerous to be in the 4th town after dark.
 
But this is not enough; MiWCWWT wanted super strong people to move heavy equipment and thus created the first Wessens by mixing animal DNA into human DNA. These were the Laborer Wessens. From there they made it a business with politically influential people and the slavers, so other wessens were created - like the Fighters and the Sex Puppies. One group I'm forgetting is the Hunters, which in speaking with Hondo are used as body guards and as hunters for personal law enforcement. Tonya (I believe from our discussions) is a Hunter. But one disgusting thing is that, if a person of strong political influence is having trouble with a rebel rouser, then as a lesson that troublemaker or a member of their family would disappear and converted into a wessen for the one with the political power to own. If it is a young female, she would be turned into s sex puppy. The experience they would go through would destroy their memories of the past and they would be given new identities.
 
For those with farms and houses like Ruth and Maribelle, I'm thinking of a plan of which would bring back those places and the owners would still own them though they would be in Texas for a while. I'm just sorting out the details as to how to do this, as it will require a lot of man power and a lot of man hours to get done. You did not catch on to it, but Maribelle and Teri was hidden in a vault in the house's wine cellar. Though much of the wines in the cellar were taken by the slavers during the purge, there is the wine in the vault for "special edition" / "aged" wines of 20 or more years that remained untouched except for the 2 or 3 bottles Maribelle and Teri drank to stay alive. And I'm talking about 50 or so bottles of the stuff with many of them being 25 or more years of age. This would be nectar of the gods for Mavis.
 
Each of the farms do have equipment and things that were not destroyed or at least fixable, plus there are more personal items to take that was left behind. In Ruth and Joanna's case, they only took a fraction of the firearms, food storage and gold they could carry out. If you want them to take it all, it would take another day or two to go there and empty out the place out. Maribelle's place needs to be explored and then her things recovered, and her family has 10X of what Ruth family has. All that is not going to fit into Karl's little camper. But all that can be sold to the town to take care of the place for her in her absence. Again, I'm working on the details of this.

Though I did not include Canada, Mexico and beyond in the Charlton Railroad map, it's nevertheless limited in destinations even within the U.S. Even with the existence of the Charlton Railroad, it stands to reason there are other railroads as there is in the real world.
 
It stands to reason that the Charlton Railroad was also damaged in the earthquakes and tsunami. Except for the destinations that are now in the ocean, the Charlton Railroad has been repaired.
 
Quote from Fernando on Dec 9^th, 2016, 11:26am:

If this is in reference to other railroads, remember that the reason the Charlton Railroad exists is because Fernando complained about the Texas Spirits fixing anything outside of Texas that's not theirs.
 
Quote from Fernando on Dec 9^th, 2016, 11:26am:

I said "destinations that are currently underwater." The Charlton Railroad will not be going to any train station currently IN the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean. Maybe; only if all passengers and train operators have their scuba gear on.
 
 
Who then will be going on the raid in the fourth town?
 
Only Chihiro is able to find Baroness Louise. Actually I'm using a double meaning so to not reveal what is really happening though I included a number of clues in the story.
 
 
What about those who are born that way such as the snow queens?
 
 
If you have a different plan for Maribelle and others affected by the slavers, then so be it.
 
I did notice they were in the wine cellar; I thought it was said that all of the wine was taken.
 
Who said anything about transporting their stuff in any ground vehicle? Remember, the Texas Spirits will do what it takes to protect Jeanette. There's a cloaked space ship there with the party ready to either protect Jeanette or transport her out. Space ships also have a cargo bay. Would Maribelle say no to all of her treasures safely transported to her new home?
 
Jeanette Isabelle