Welcome to the Waco Wasteland! (Homebrewish PA Campaign)

The File Retrieval Job

Spoiler:

“All right, all right, all right, all right—y’all looking for some work?”

Two months ago, or thereabouts anyway, a fella claiming to be from the so-called Republic of Texas showed up at the gates of Brazos Landing with an armored truck and two heavily armed meatheads as escorts. He gave a gift to the community—twenty gallons of refined gasoline, gratis—just for letting him inside, and he’s since set himself up in one of the nicer apartments. He spends most of his time evangelizing the new republic—referring to people as citizens of Texas and speaking vaguely of a new dawn of civilization, that kinda crap. People put up with him because his money’s good (well, he’s got a lotta gas is what I mean) and he’s had a steady stream of work for the Landing’s Taker crews. Y’all in particular haven’t worked for him yet, but from what you hear, the jobs have all been pretty similar—the recovery of old government documents or the odd piece of hardware, usually a computer hard-drive or similar data storage device. So it makes sense that the current job had some competition, and to edge your way into work, you had to…

(A.) undercut the going rate
- Automatic success
- Networking roll (DC8) to avoid Negative Rep Spot “Scabs”
- 12 gallon payout
(B.) intimidate the competition
- Intimidation check (DC12)
- Beating the DC by 5 or more avoids Neg Rep Spot “Bullies”
- 18 gallon payout (can’t seem to get good help anymore)
(C.) convince him you’re the best
- Diplomacy check (DC15)
- 15 gallon payout

NOTE: Failure on B or C defaults to A, except the payout goes down 9 gallons.

(OOC: For Hannah, options B and C work out to the same roll chances, 9+skills for Great Success, and with B we're almost guaranteed success at the cost of reputation with a bigger payout. So...)

(Also I'm making up a bit about the settlement. If it's inappropriate or too fan-service-y, feel free to change it or tell me to change it.)

Hannah sipped her "margarita" as she eyed the other patrons in Parker's Comisery (spelled that way on the sign, and the misspelling was too apt for anyone to suggest that Parker change it). Back in the day it would have bowled her over just from the smell, but now? Well you took what comforts you could get. And Parker didn't have the finest ingredients, but his shit would get you drunk.

The other crews all had someone in the bar. It was the best place in the Landing to hear rumors and plan jobs and get into trouble. And the rumors everyone was hearing tonight were that the Republican's new job was dangerous this time. Lots of zombos and rumors of a particularly nasty group of raiders that liked making balaclavas out of other people's skin. Hannah should know; she started those rumors.

She had thought about going to the Republican herself and hard-selling him on GROSZ*, but they were the last major outfit to come to him for a job, and unfortunately, The Saints and Slimjims had both done good work for him, or so she had heard. She figured it might be easier to create a little artificial scarcity rather than sell him on a crew he hadn't worked with or, worst of all, just being cheaper than anyone else. And so far it seemed like her intimidation tactic was working.

At least it was working with everyone except Ezekiel, the Saint sitting across from her. She returned her gaze to him. Phasing back into the conversation. Zeke was a talker.

"...and my boys can figure out the best way to approach it. I mean I haven't heard of this raider bunch before, but a little scouting ought to take care of that."

"And the zombie crowd?" She took another sip and smiled just slightly at him. "I heard there's a lot there. Like A LOT."

He shrugged and straightened the corners of the collar on his white dress shirt. "I'm sure we can handle it."

Hannah pursed her lips. This was her second margarita, and after 40 minutes of trying to scare him, Zeke was not backing down. It was time to switch gears. She leaned across the table.

"Listen Zeke--"

"It's Ezeki--"

"I know, Zeke. Look this is exactly the kind of work me and my crew are cut out for. We specialize in handling zombies and tough extractions. And it's better for everyone if we keep prices with this guy high." She leaned back and played with her a strand of her hair, cocking her head. "I'd just hate for you and your crew to take on a job that could get you guys hurt, you know?"

"You mean by the zombies?"

Hannah shrugged as she downed the last swallow of her margarita. "Yeah the zombies. Or you know. Whatever."


*Retroactively suggesting the slight tweak to our name Get Rid of Slimy Zombies, GROSZ

Ezekiel stared blankly at Hannah for a beat, and then another. The wheels were turning, if slowly, and his eyes widened slightly: "Wait. Wait, you don't mean, like, whatever whatever...do you? Like whatever...?" Zeke then descended into a vague series of gestures at the wall, at himself, and at Hannah, who merely rolled her eyes and said through an obviously fake smile, "Yeah, Zeke, like whatever."

Ezekiel's face twisted in a combination of fear, confusion, and disgust: "Okay. Okay, fine, whatever. Maybe we don't need that kind of trouble. Jesus, Hannah--oh, I mean, sorry Lord...but damn, Hannah. I... I gotta go."

Roll result*
4+8=12

Scene result
+ 18 gallon pay-off
+ Negative reputation spot: "Bullies"

*I won't always tell you these, since there are some times when the situation calls for you not knowing if the roll succeeded yet or not, e.g., if a rope you've tied is secured sufficiently or something like that, but this time it was gonna be obvious anyway since you got the rep spot.


"Well, lady, I have to say, I don't know ya and I'd prefer to work with people I do know, but I can't seem to git anybody on this here job, so you'll have to do. You don't fuck this up, there'll be more work, 'cuz there's always more work. You impress me, there'll be more money, 'cuz, lady, the Republic has got money. We've got gas, we've got guns, we've got walls, we've got power, and we've got a plan. So y'all git on my good side, and you might start to earn you a place in the best thing goin', capice? Anyway, the job is this: git on over to the Social Security Administration building--it's down Lake Air over by the old Events Center. Y'all git inside there and git to the server room in the back. There'll be a big ol' black box that should be marked "Database Backup" or "Redundancy Unit" or some shit like that--yank the hard-drive and bring it back to me. Easy as lyin'. Y'all got any questions?"

"All you need is the hard drive? Nothing else?"

My other questions are about our knowledge of the area and our group, not for The Republican. Are we confident that one of us will know which part the hard drive is? Because I doubt Hannah knows the difference between that and anything else in the guts of a computer.

And what do we know about the route? On today's map it looks like going to Herring Ave. and taking the bridge across between Cameron Park and the zoo will be the quickest way, but we could also take the longer Lake Shore way, crossing the river over MLK first and then Lake Shore and following the lake shoreline till we get to Hillcrest and Lake Air. What difficulties could we expect along either route? And are all those bridges still intact?

"I mean, if y'all find a bottle of Pappy or Patron or somethin' and bring it back, I'll be happier'n a pig in shit , but I don't really see that hap'ning. I dunno, lady. If'n any a' them reg'lar computers aren't fucked, you can try them, and I'd even pay you something for USB drives. And if you find a big pile of paper labeled "Medicare Records," I'll take those, but aside from that don't bring me paper. Too much shit to sort out."

As for what it looks like, a brief glance at your character sheets doesn't reveal any useful skills, which means it's something of crap shoot. Maybe it'll be clearly labeled, maybe not. Maybe you'll get lucky on a blind roll v. the DC (probably be an INT or Experience* check). Maybe not. Of course, you could always hire a consultant--either an extra crew member who might have relevant skills, or else make a Networking check to see if you know somebody who might know. In the latter case, you'd have to find some way of transmitting live video, and you'd probably have to tip them at least to keep them on your good side.  

As for the route, that's dicey because it all depends on hearsay, so I've rolled networking checks for all of you. The reliability of your information depends on the rolls, but this time the rolls are hidden. Y'all can see that the nearby bridge across the Brazos is still standing, but Reggie tells you that he overheard somebody at the bar the other night say that the bridge over the Bosque got blown to hell by raiders. Juan insists that he's heard bad things about the Waco PD Dept (the urban route runs right past it)--he can fill you in on the details. The urban route runs right past the Reserve Training Center, but you (Hannah) heard somewhere that the Army abandoned the place when everybody bugged out for Galveston and nobody's taken their place, making it a potential spot to do some scavenging. The Lake Shore Route, on the other hand, is in general more rural, which at least in the early stages (the farmlands) probably means better visibility and fewer rotters throughout. As for other difficulties, you know the intersection of Gholson & Lake Shore to your east is often hairy, so your gut recommends cutting through the woods to the south using the powerline clearing before cutting back up to Gholson and heading south. Alternatively, you might try the rural route SW on JJ Flewellen that runs past the Waco Missions outpost. In any case, if you plan to cross using the Herring Ave bridge, you'll come close by another known community--Trendwood. If you have anything to sell or need to restock, or even look up new work to see if you can double your money on your schlep across town, you might check in there. Without really planning things this way, it looks like your choices have serendipitously shaped up roughly to be: more risk, more potential reward, or less risk, less potential reward. Nice.

Either way, we're talking a pretty long ass day. It's an 8 mile walk either way you cut it, and that's without detours. So we're looking at, I'd estimate, at least a couple of hours to get out there, a couple of hours to get back, plus however long it takes you to do the actual job. That's not counting complications or hold-ups along the way. While I don't think it's likely, I'd say it's not outside the realm of possibility that y'all'll sleep in the bush tonight.

A note about the rules: to keep things varied, there will usually be at least a couple of randomish encounters during every trip. For this first outing, I'm planning three "legs" each way to see how they work out. These "legs" will not always be combat-oriented.

*Experience is a homebrew rule that I haven't added to the first post yet, and I might end up scrapping it since it might overlap too mch with the 3.5e/PF1 WIS rules--BUT the idea is to have a way of testing your experience in the brutal new world. The basic check is LVL-3=Experience (so at level three, it'd just be straightforward roll w/o modifiers). You might've been a badass SWAT-team guy back before the Shit Popped Off, but that might translate to a level 3 with really nice weapons because the tactics and expectations of fighting meth dealers doesn't transfer to fighting zombies (okay, maybe crack dealers would be a better example). Or better still: your fighting skills might more or less transfer, but your postapocalyptic survival know-how (i.e., when you'd be making experience checks) doesn't start developing until D-Day +1. That make sense?

Homebrew xp is always the way to go imo, I almost always did it that way. it allows for better non-combat xp awards and also encourages the party members to think in a manner other than just kill everything and level

FYI, Google maps actually puts the walk at right at 3 hours for both my routes, which are pretty straightforward, and I'm assuming that Goggle maps did not factor in creepers, scavenging or raiders, so I would definitely bet on staying out there for a night unless things go remarkably quick. (Sorry for using Google maps, but my rationale is that our characters have experience estimating travel time on foot than we do, or at least than I do).

Y'all ask any more questions you have but after that, I'm open to discussion amongst ourselves about how best to make sure we actually get the hard drive. My first inclination is to make a networking check and see if they could draw a picture of it or tell what to look for rather than set up a video feed. We are getting paid well for this, so a tip wouldn't be a problem. My other thought is that the computer box is supposed to be labelled, so if we find it we just take everything that looks hard-drivey inside and bring it back, then sell the bits he doesn't need if there's any demand for electronic bits. We may look a bit ignorant to him, but it would be thorough.

I'm also open to suggestions on the route we take. My preference would be for the Lake Shore route and the southern jog around trouble that our "gut" has kindly provided, but I can be convinced of something else.

Using Google maps is absolutely A-Okay! At the very least you can assume you've snagged a paper map from a gas station or something. And I was assuming something like 1.5-2 mph (3-4 mph for fast walking, less for walking in a group/sneaking from building to building/avoiding zombies etc). So yeah, 3-4 hours at least I think, less any time you have to straight up stop. Oh, last thing--the southern jog I mentioned is for the other route--sorry if it was unclear. The Lake Shore route goes W (very slightly NW) then curves around SW and eventually goes straight S. Your chief problem there will be the bridge Reggie says he heard is out. The other way takes hikes over E to Gholson and then swing SSW down to Herring--your cut suggested cutting through the woods immediately to the south of the community and taking the telephone line clearing that runs NW/SE through the woods down to JJ Flewellen Rd. And then either cutting back up to Gholson to the big road or possibly use JJ Flewellen to cut off Gholson completely and cut down to Herring that way.

Does that make sense? I'm happy to bust out the map if it's not clear.

I'm inclined to agree with fing.

"Look it's not like we can't figure out how to get across a river, but I'm telling you going through the city is bad news."
"Now I'm not suggesting that Waco cops are fucking delta force or anything but they had a shit ton of guns, also, a bunch of them weren't exactly the epitome of ethics, trust me on this, so holing up in the place with the big guns and fuck everyone else would absolutely have been an option for some of them...they did...and now they're gone, for God's sake lets not even touch the why of that, I say Lake shore is our best option."

The File Retrieval Job (First Leg)
NOTE: Typically, before we start jobs, I'd like to encourage each of you to write a vignette with your dependents to give us some insight into your characters' private lives--how they blow off steam, how they have fun, how they try to feel normal again after willingly going back into The Shit for a pittance from The Man. These vignettes will also refill your Sanity/Humanity meter--but since you haven't lost any of that yet, and since I'd like to try to get some momentum behind us before we roleplay regular life, this time we're just gonna dive in to the first leg.  

After making the necessary preparations,* the Crew heads out early on Monday morning. Shortly after crossing the Lake Shore bridge over the Brazos, successful Perception checks by Juan and Reggie alert you to a trio of exposed booby traps: it looks like heavy rain has washed away the sodden topping of two punji traps near a dirt path that heads off to the south. There's a third down the path about a hundred feet that the rain has also revealed. A successful Experience check reminds Hannah that the last time the area saw a significant amount of rainfall was almost a month ago. Do you...

1. Investigate the path?
2. Ignore the path and continue your journey?

*In an effort to streamline the play-by-forum format, I've decided that a number of things can happen a-temporally (or whatever the appropriate word would be). That is, most of the time, I'm gonna let y'all fill in important preparation stuff that you've already done--within reason. To give a mundane example, if you enter a dark room, you can tell me that you remembered to bring a flashlight. Once you've declared something, it's canon for the job--you can't tell me you've brought your shotgun when you're confronted with a bunch of zombies in a tight space AND your sniper rifle when you've got a single human enemy later in the same job AND your assault rifle when there are bunch of human enemies at mid-range. If this gets too ridiculous, we'll junk it. Anyway, feel free to write stuff out of order too, especially if its a stretch that you remembered to bring it--in that case, good story writing will convince me to let it slide.  Also, each of you add 10 Rations to your sheets and burn one per leg (so I guess only add nine, given this leg).

"We have a job and the Job is not to investigate the Barbarian preppers...mark it on the map and let's move on"

I do assume (probably not Juan...Reggie?) that we keep some sort of log on either a map or in a book of what we see, and changes since we move so much through the area.

Keeping an updated map sounds eminently plausible.

Preparation

As Hannah selected a stick and looked down the shaft to judge its straightness, it struck that her pre-cataclysm self would have been horrified to even try working with wood. She might have broken a nail! She smiled as she got out her knife and made the first cut. Necessity had forced her to learn, she hadn't broken a nail making crossbow shafts for a good 2 years now. (Craft crossbow bolts check to fill her quiver that holds 24. +3 modifier)

Before they leave Hannah also figures it would be good to try and get an idea of what they're looking for actually looks like. She tries to make quiet inquiries around to see if someone can draw her a picture of a hard drive, or at least describe what it looks like. (Networking check)

First Leg
Hannah bit her lip and thought for a moment before nodding in agreement with Juan. "I do want to come back here, but it's best not lengthen our trip too much on the way there. We can come back this way if we have time after we get the stuff."

As we're walking, Hannah tries to strike up conversation with Reggie and Juan.

"Hey Juan, I feel like I should know this already, but you used to be in a band or something right? I remember you played guitar. Do you ever still play?"

"Reggie, out of curiosity, what do you think of the Republican? I mean the whole Texas Republic thing has to be kinda weird for you, right?"

The File Retrieval Job (Second Leg)
Reggie marks the spot on his gas station map of Waco and the Crew moves on past the neglected punji traps. Whenever the conversation lags, you find yourself almost overwhelmed by the bizarre calm of your scenic route--the abandoned farms that flank the roads provide a great deal of visibility and you see no rotters on the horizon. Welling up from deep within you is the mad desire... to relax, to let your guard down, to believe that past five years have been nothing more than a nasty dream brought on by too much late-night cheese sticks and ice cream. You realize that the desire to relax has never really left you; like hunger during periods of intense pain, it has only been beaten down and kept in check by more pressing demands. In the absence of present danger, you find yourself unexpectedly without resource against your own subconscious ((Will Checks to prevent minor Sanity loss: everyone succeeds)). You each redouble your attempts at conversation and, with effort, smother the screaming voice inside your head. As you approach the Parkview Christian Academy ((Perception checks: no obvious signs of life)), you...

1. Ditch the road for a while to try to stay out of its line of sight.
2. Stay on the road and walk on by.
3. Investigate the building. (if you select this option, we'll treat it as, in effect, an extra optional leg: i.e., at the cost of a ration, you can investigate the building, but this isn't actually the "main story" of this leg--we'll resolve it nonlinearly).

You continue walking and run into the occasional stray walker, but you are able to dispatch them quickly and quietly without the excessive use of resources ((excepting peculiar circumstances, most of the time y'all are experienced enough to be able to handle a single zombie in the open field at daytime without having to make checks)). As you approach the bridge over the Brazos, you are greeted with the ruins of Military Checkpoint TX571-A, better known as Hawaiian Falls Waco and environs. The remains of a trash-filled civilian tent city litters the Hawaiian Falls parking lot. The military tents were set up within the fenced tennis court area, and the fortifications they built facing the bridge have not yet been torn down by time or raiders. You see no movement coming from either the civilian or the military camps. Y'all decide to...

4. Check out the bridge to see if it's still standing.
5. Investigate either or both of the camps to scavenge supplies.
6. Ignore this whole mess and swing down further south to find another bridge (+1 Leg).

Preparation and Stat Change Summary
Hannah was unable to raise anybody who knows what she's looking for; but she was able to make her full compliment of crossbow bolts. We'll figure out the resources you had to expend to make those when the job is over (I figure you either had to buy the tips and the feathers, or you had to expend resources of your own scavenging for/hunting the raw materials to make them--it'll be cheaper than outright buying them, but everything costs something).

+ 24 Crossbow bolts
- Cost of Bolts
- 1 more ration each

Out of story note* So Juan plays the guitar a lot still, like if we were on a trading mission or an escort mission as opposed to a scavenging one he'd probably have it with him. I may not have made that part of his character clear. But so as not to have Hannah asking insipidly dumb question I thought I'd mention this.

Juan would vote for staying on the road in the first instance.
In the second:
"I know I've been the focused on the mission but I kind of think we should check out the tents, we'll still be able to see the road and be able to it quickly. He Reggie you want to post up somewhere and keep your eyes peeled while the two of us look around?"

*Thanks, sorry I think we talked about that in person, but I forgot.

First instance: "I say we get out of sight off the road. I don't see a reason to take any chances that something is in there that might see us if we stay out in the open."

Second instance: Hannah nods, "Makes sense to me. Maybe someone left some moisturizer around. But yeah Reggie, Juan is right, if you could watch our back that would be awesome."

((Flipped some coins for Reggie's decisions to move the story along.))

Reggie grimaces and sucks his teeth before shaking his head: "Sorry, Juan, but we skirt wide left, we avoid whatever or whoever's in that there building. I'm with Hannah on this one." The trudge through the muddy field leaves you dirtier, but you avoid any major encounters. When you get to the tent city, Reggie agrees to clamber up on a bus to keep a lookout while Juan and Hannah scavenge the encampment ((since y'all have some time, I gave you each three scavenge checks that resulted in 3 total successes)). Hannah finds a camping-sized portable gas grill with about half a tank of gas in it and an extra gas mask. Juan finds a lead lined dial safe--it's very heavy, but locked up tight. You come across the odd crippled zombie and dispatch them with ease, but there are surprisingly few signs of violence... and yet the camp was clearly abandoned in a hurry.

The military portion of the camp is a very different story. As soon as you step past the abandoned barricade at the entrance to the camp, you find bullet holes riddling the... inside of the fortifications? In other words, the shots clearly came from within the camp. As you press forward, you find the desiccated bodies of soldiers laid out in rows upon rows... each one with a bullet in the head and a sheet over the body. There are also other rows of bodies, none of which have been covered. Unlike the first group, many of these bodies show signs of having been dragged to their current location from within the camp. The corpses are old; but from what you can tell, they show no signs of contact with the rotters: no ragged tearing of the clothes, no missing limbs, just bullet holes in center mass. The second group died in old-fashioned combat with human beings--human beings from inside the camp. Juan leans over to Hannah, whispering: "I've I heard about shit like this. Civil war shit. Like, the order came down from on high to put a bullet in the head of every infected soldier... but not everybody liked the idea, right? So somebody says, 'Here's our orders and we gotta do it,' and somebody else says, 'nah, man, let's just wait and see what happens,' and the other guy says, 'no, we gotta follow orders,' 'no, fuck you, we're not doing that' and on and on until the shooting started. Shit's fucked, man" ((Juan passed an Experience check)).

At about that time, you hear a noise like a door slamming open and, almost at the same time, you hear a high-pitched whistle--Reggie's warning signal for contacts. You sprint out of the military encampment and see a mob of rotters (10) pouring out of a storage shed about 90 feet away.* Somebody must've locked them in long ago and whatever he jerry-rigged to keep them in finally gave way. For the moment, they're just stumbling around, adjusting to the new environment. It doesn't yet seem like they've seen you, but that will change very soon. What do you do?

*In case anyone's curious about the mechanics, I rolled a d4 to see if there was a combat encounter here and y'all rolled a 1 (=combat). So I rolled a d10 to see how many zombies and a d20 x 5ft to see how far away they were. You got unlucky on the first (=10), but lucked out on the second (=18). This won't be the only way I determine these things--and some times I'll throw in other variables, like rolling to see whether it's humans or zombies you have to face--but a lot of the time I'm gonna try relying on randomization to make DMing easy and keep the momentum going. I also flipped a coin (or something--I can't remember since I resolved that earlier today and I have Dad-Brain) to determine whether or not skirting off the road would result in a new encounter.

Ok, so we clearly got to fight. How clumped are they at the start of this engagement, also I'm clearly drawing my pistol, once it hits me in initiative, I'm going to use my aiming feat to increase my odds on any outliers who might be hard for Hannah to encompass in a spell attack.

Just a brief rundown if y'all decide to fight here. First off, unless y'all really want, I'm not going to draw a battlemap for this encounter--not least because I can't find a map of tent city on a parking lot and dundjinni doesn't seem to have a tent sprite (unless I've missed something). Also, it's not like cover will really matter (although a height advantage might), and the zombies are just going to shamble straight toward you.

Tactical Situation
Juan and Hannah are side by side on ground level, 90 feet away from the mob. Reggie is 10 feet up on top of a bus, approximately 30 feet from Juan and Hannah, and approximately 110 feet from the zeds. The zombies have 12 HP each and can move 30 feet per round, but can only move or attack each round. They are currently bunched together in group approximately three squares (15ft) across. At this point, I'll say an AoE spell could hit them all at once, but next round they'll be spaced out a little more. At this range, Juan will take -6 to attack rolls (his Glock has a range of 40), Hannah will take -2 (her crossbow has a range of 80), and Reggie will also take -2 (his hunting rifle has a range of 90). Only Hannah's weapon is silenced, and gunfire does run the risk of eventually attracting more zombies or even curious humans (and the type of human who runs toward gunfire in the Apocalypse is maybe not the kind you want to meet). Because of Reggie's heads-up warning, you have one sneak attack round, and (though I guess this makes sense) the zombies all rolled like shit for initiative (your group averaged 17; they averaged 8.3). Since we're doing group initiative rules, y'all can go in whatever order you want, and you can perform two rounds of actions (sneak attack + your successful initiative).

I'm also gonna start test-running a damage location randomizer: when you get hit, I'll roll a d10. On a 1, the damage is to your head, on a 2-4 it's your torso, 5-7 it's your arms, and 8-10 it's your legs. If it's legs or arms, I'll roll again to determine which one. If the hit is big enough, it might result in extra status effects (a malus to speed because you're limping, a malus to aimed attacks if your arm's busted, a malus to WIS/INT/Perception checks if you've been concussed--that sort of thing) as a way to simulate a gradual degradation of health, as opposed to the binary "I'm 100% effective at 1 HP! Oh, now I'm suddenly dead because a fly sneezed on me!" you get with regular 3.5e rules. We'll see if we like it.

Finally, FWIW, according to PF1, each zombie has a CR of 1/2, which means that ten have a collective difficulty of a level 5 encounter vs. a level 2 group (average player level minus one for a group of three or fewer). Since they're so far away, I doubt this will be *that* dangerous, but this does technically qualify as an "epic" level encounter lol.

What did we decide about inspiration abilities for a bard? I know they seem weird in a our world type setting but I feel like my surprise round might be good for some boosting?

Well, since I don't have any AoE spells (we're level 3 after all) and all my spells are close range, I'm going to move up 10 ft. and commence shooting at the nearest Zambos with my crossbow.

Inspiration mechanics are allowed--but I'mma need some roleplay so we can see how you're inspiring the Crew. Also, Golf--I wanna make sure I've got your sammich order down right:

1st move action (surprise round): advance 10 ft.
1st standard action (surprise round): fire crossbow
2nd move action (first round): reload crossbow
2nd standard action (first round): fire crossbow

Correct?

Correct-o. Also, I'm hoping that in close quarters with a zombers I can have my knife in my dominant hand and touch with disrupt undead with my off-hand. Is that accurate?

I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to use your off-hand as easily as your dominant hand for magick purposes. We'll say that dual-wielding would prevent it though, unless you drop a weapon before as a free action (requiring an attack-of-opportunity-provoking action to pick it back up). And if you for some reason still have your crossbow out, you can just hold it with one hand while you touch the baddies (i.e., you don't have to drop it; we'll assume that you can manage to hold it in one hand and then return it to two hands the next round without tripping over your own shoelaces).

Cool, that's all about what I assumed but just wanted to check. So yeah ranged attack until they get in range of my magicks will be my default strategy unless more experienced players have better suggestions.