The Journeyman from Ryu-Kyu

[Brian]

It's not Nob Hill, but it was someone with money.  A two-story house, door boarded up.  No visible holes in the walls or anything else like that.

It takes you a minute or two to get the boards out of the way, and someone's long-since broken off the lock.  Once you're inside, the air of an abandoned lodging is unmistakable.  Wedging the door shut with some of the broken boards that had sealed the home in the first place, you've gotten secured lodgings.  You even find a room with all of the windows intact.

[RangerShade]

Death pulls out a flashlight from his backpack and checks for a fireplace and/or the kitchen.

[Brian]

This house must have belonged to someone well off, and it does have a fireplace.  You don't have a whole lot in the way of firewood, though, unless you're willing to pull of cabinet doors and such.  Additionally, when you inspect it, it looks like it's a gas fireplace, and burning live wood in those often results in lowering the real-estate value of a home.

[RangerShade]

Death checks for the kitchen and any bathrooms or closets. Specifically looking for containers, canned or preserved food, household chemicals, blankets, and anything else useful or valuable.

[Brian]

Judging by the fact that the lock was already broken, you deduce that the place has already been looted.  Whoever got here first was pretty thorough, too.  All you find is a dirty towel, a roll of toilet paper, and a small carboard box of empty soda cans.

[RangerShade]

Death sweatdrops but takes the towels and toilet paper.  Death sets the aluminum cans up along all the entrances, including by the windows so that if someone tries to break in, they'll kick the cans and make a noise. Then Death investigates to see if there's a basement or attic in here, or maybe even a hidden place the owners or looters might have missed.

[Brian]

You've set up a simple, yet effective alarm system.  Searching the house yeilds a basement which is A: Cold, and B: contains a box of DuraLogs.  With a gas fireplace ... maybe the owner's forgot.

Also in the basement is an old mop handle, and a bucket.  Some random litter (candy wrappers, discarded papers for cigarettes) and a discarded copy of Playboy suggest that someone used this place as a hide-out at some point.  That might explain the DuraLogs.

[RangerShade]

Death removes the metal handle from the cracked bucket and brings it and the mop handle up from the basement, then goes back down to scoop up the cigarette paper scraps and shove them in his jacket's inner pocket, then taking up the playboy and the duralogs.

[Brian]

You're set.  You've got all sorts of abandoned goods in this place.  And, of course, that polar-bear skin that Ezmereth left you.

[RangerShade]

Death stacks his scrounged material to the side in the living room and covers himself with the polar bear skin. Making sure the flashlight is in his hand (turned off), Death drifts off to a light sleep.

[Brian]

You have no idea how deeply you sleep, but again, you dream.  This time, you hope your dream has no meaning, as it was nonsensical, and fades as you wake.  It involved an endless buffet, you remember that much.

Either way, you wake after sunrise.  Your defenses are undisturbed, and the polar-bear skin was warm enough you didn't need to use any of those instant-firewood gadgets.  You're not certain of the time, but you feel pleasantly rested, if still a bit hungry.

[RangerShade]

Death yawns and stretches before getting up.

Death goes to his backpack and puts his watch on, having finally remembered it. After checking the time, Death takes out his swiss army knife and carves one end of the mop handle to a crude dull point.

Then leaving his backpack in the corner of the room concealed under a frame  of duralogs with the bearskin draped over it, Death goes out foraging with his digging stick

[Brian]

You whittle the mop quickly into ... well, not spear quality, but definately dirt-shoving quality relatively quickly.  A good shovel would be ideal, but....  The wood shavings join your collection of cigarette paper bits and other scraps.  It occurs to you breifly, as you set up the polar-bear skin to hide your goods that it's likely worth much more than the things you're hiding with it.

Though, as you drape it, you notice a pair of leather ties that you think would turn the bearskins into a cape, if you were to secure it about your shoulders.  On the other hand, that's probably not a fashion statement you want to make in San Francisco.

[RangerShade]

Death blinks, then decides to take a quick look outside before making any decisions about using the skin as a cloak, replacing the skin with the dirty towel instead.  If its snowed in outside, then wearing white might actually be more beneficial then his normal dark clothes.

If it is nice and white outsaide, Death will put the cape on and take his digging stick outside to forage around. Might want to check for anybuildings that look promising too.

[Brian]

Six centimers of snow.

In California.  And with the 'warmer' costal breezes to warm the area, too.  Should be fun seeing how meteorologists spin this one.

Most of the buildings look similar, save one with a car out front.  That one's probably got people in it, though.  You do find a hilltop that allows you a fair view of your surroundings, after a bit.  Your trucker friend seems to have dropped you off on the southern-most fringe of suburbia, abandoned houses radiating around you for a good block or two further ... further north than that, however, nearly every single home has been bulldozed.

They weren't kidding when they said they were taking the city apart and building it back into a nature conservatory.  It's going to take a lot of work to clear out the rubble, but you can see earthquake damage from here.  The city itself, north of you, looks dessicated, like someone drained the life from it.  A few of the skyscrapers look like stand-ins for some high-quality special-effects disaster movie.  It's bleak, and the snow makes it look dead, instead of pure.  A few of the buildings bear obvious cracks visible from here, and more are just piles of rubble ... though you can distantly make out what looks like armies of trucks hauling the rubble away.  Though, you do wonder where they're taking it.