Tuesday, June 28, 2016

End of Wonder: The Bomb & Escape

While this session was plagued with poor connection problems, it eventually all worked out. I'm going to have to set up a Skype account for next time; that should make things run more smoothly. Also, a point of note, Tyler (playing Kiri) drew a black chip; he held onto it, but it should make things interesting in the future...

But on to our intrepid adventurers! With their end of the bargain upheld - that is, finding the parts for the scientists, helping the queen of the red apes, and taking out the gang outside the city - the officers return to the mayor's office. As it turns out, the mayor may well have found the source of the signal; however, neither the scientists or the mayor himself have any idea what it actually is. After some discussion, the mayor agreed to let them "blow everything up," as long as it didn't do too much damage to anything else. The mayor sends an engineer to escort everyone to the source of the problem - a strange device in the depths of the power plant.

The group arrived at the device without incident, apart from a slight hangup trying to get medium power armor into a small access shaft. However, someone else got there first; a group of greys, symbiontoids, and insectoids are there - as are two red ape males! They all had a strange Y-shaped logo on their uniforms. Julian and Kiri both attempted to interrogate the group, but were met only with a few phrases:

"It's time has come."
"We must end the signal."
"The time of change is upon us, brothers!"

The conclusion was that this was some sort of cult, intent on... well, probably blowing something up. The device certainly looked like a bomb. Any attempts to intrude on the red ape men were met with firm but gentle pressure; "No, brother, let them work."

After some discussion, a few of the members began offering more information - they were part of an ancient organization, and the time had finally come to begin arming the device. The device wasn't a bomb, but some sort of transformative device. The group opinion was, "Sure, it transforms live things into dead things!" Amazingly, none of the murder hobos players ended up shooting anyone, though it was a close thing. The red apes completed their work, and allowed Kiri to have the book they were using. She noted the inside cover had a that the book was property of the Littlefinger. They bowed, and said, "We will see you on the other side of the Change. Go; the device cannot be stopped now."

As they prepared to leave, who should step out of the shadows but Du Gilkot! He applauds slowly, then casually guts one of the red ape men with his plasma sword. Stepping over the corpse, and allowing the other members of the group to flee, he began his villain monologue. Essentially, the device was full of power, and he intended to harness it, to power a city of his own, as well as a massive amount of weapons. His men fanned out: two in big power armor, and five each of symbiontoids and grays.

Unsurprised, Kiri fired a sonic-grenade-tipped arrow into the group, and exploded his roll; the two fellows in the power armor went down. Gilkot... didn't. He staggered back, shaken, but was otherwise unharmed. While everyone poured power onto Gilkot, Gadget unleashed his flamethrower and cooked half the enemies. And then the other half. Flamethrowers are just that good, especially against unenclosed armor. Gilkot managed to shrug off everyone's attack, and even got a good hit in on Julian, power armor and all; but before anyone else could turn their attacks on him, the device began to whine. Gilkot turned tail and ran, but Julian was having none of it. He dove towards him, slamming him onto the ground; after a bit of effort, he, er, twisted his head off. It wasn't pretty, especially since Gilkot's suit was still active. Sort of an... alien smoothie.

I should mention that in this battle, there were a total of 6 jokers drawn from the deck. Every time a joker is drawn, the deck gets shuffled, which means I somehow managed to shuffle the jokers to the top five times (yes, *both* were drawn one round). Sigh.

However, the walls around the device began to glow, and a white spiderweb-like circuitry whips out and begins wrapping itself around anything and everything it can. The group quickly fled up the tunnel; Gus turned and fired a boomer jetround, but it was neatly speared through by the circuits. The group decided now would be a good time to run for their lives.

Outside of the power core, the entire city was being pulled apart by the circuit-webs; the only buildings left standing are the queen's hive and the mayor's office. Even outside the city, tendrils were pulling down the jungle and wasteland.

Everyone ran for the mayor's office, as it was in a straight line towards the exit point. Julian, with his flight ability, jumped over the wreckage to rescue the red queen. He found her sobbing in her court, and quickly scooped her up. He managed to fly a little ways before the reaching circuits grabbed him.

At the mayor's office, the team entered just in time to see a shadowy figure stab the mayor before the circuits overwhelmed them, too.

Julian came to in a room - a bedroom, from the looks of it. On the floor was a young woman, obviously pregnant, and in labor. Oddly... she resembles the red queen, only in human form. Medical personel ushered Julian outside, where he was found by an officer and directed to a meeting room.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group wake up to see a Gibson, also human, wearing a captain's uniform; on the floor, dead, is the human version of Du Gilkot. Again, medics take over; a tall android beckons the group out, and into the same meeting room as Julian.

He waited for everyone to enter, then introduced himself:

"I am this ship's AI. I have saved them; long ago... so long ago, the ship was in danger. It was lost; Officer Gilcot organized a mutiny, and killed the captain. Simultaneously, the captain's child gave birth to a stillborn child, alone and unable to summon help. I burned the ship, transformed it into the world you saw, full of life, and danger, and safety. By transforming the ship, I could move everyone where they needed to be; I could reset time. It took... hundreds of years of recycling personalities, careful manipulation on a molecular level. In the end, the device was ready, but the ship was not. And then you arrived - you moved matter from here to there, changed thoughts and influenced minds, exactly where I needed it. I succeeded; Du Gilkot is dead. The Captain is safe. His daughter's child lives. I am fulfilled."

He answered a few more questions - the Shifting Horizon was relocated to this ship's landing bay, and Julian's armor is in the engineering bay of the Shifting Horizon (at this, Julian gave the AI a huge hug). Any weapons from the planet were placed in the rooms of each officer, including Julian's illegal disintegration rifle.

Finally, the android stood at full attention, saluting the crew... then drew his firearm and shot himself in the chest, remaining at full military salute until his body incinerated.

After a brief meeting with the captain, and meeting his daughter's new baby, our intrepid heroes returned to their ship.

That's not the end of the story, however. The giant worldship was one of five ships: Green Thumb, Indicator, Middle Son, Ring... and Littlefinger. Littlefinger was lost during a jump; Middle Son was damaged, but the other ships traveled to the Pentacus system and settled there. It seems that Littlefinger was here the entire time.

Saturday, June 4, 2016

Murder, Mayhem, and... MmmExplosions?

Welcome once again to another episode of "Screw it, let's just kill everything," with our host GM. As our adventure begins, Julian rejoins the group, which now consists of Julian, Nae, Kiri, Gadget, and Gus. The party finally together again, the first thing they decided to do was split up. Typical.

First, Kiri and Nae decided to venture off into the jungle to collect Symbiontoid parts, They made a quick detour to ask the Red Queen for a couple apes, and she was more than happy to oblige. A good notice roll found the skins right off; into the bag, and away they went. The circulatory plants were also easy to locate. They found a large group of adult splanch nodes guarding 15 babies, and made short work of them with a well-placed sonic grenade. Those things are really useful! One last creature managed to shrug it off, but a couple arrows from Kiri brought it down. Splanch nodes in the bag, the last thing to grab was a pair of digestive slugs. Unlike the others, the slugs proved to be rather nasty creatures; one went down fast, but the other managed to slither close enough to get a good bite on Kiri - bad news! Splashing acid over her armor and into her eye, the slug managed to drop Kiri in a matter of seconds! And worst of all - no chips! Kiri was saved by her friend, who sacrificed a chip to give another chip to Kiri. This roll did much better, resulting in a temporary blindness. Quick intervention of the red apes got the slug off of Kiri, who was healed quickly by Nae, blindness and all. The slugs taken care of, the duo returned to the scientists, who were overjoyed by the delivery.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group - hereafter known as the "murder hobos" - followed a clue from the mayor about a bar outside the city. After witnessing a rather horrific fight between four grays, they interviewed the bartender, who directed them to the gang's hideout - about a block from the black market. This being the crew of the Shifting Horizon, of course, their first course of action was to attempt to blow up the black market, assuming that was the hideout. Of course, it wasn't; spy-holes caught them laying their explosive cord, and proceeded to warm them off via a pair of heavy machine guns. When that didn't work, battle was joined; a hidden flamethrower shot out of the building, hitting Gadget and Julian. After a brief skirmish with the bouncer, rounding the corner, Gus waited until his buddies were away from the building, and threw a demolition pack at the building. Oh yeah. Because the first thing we always want to do is blow up EVERYTHING. Sigh. Oh, sorry, I forgot to mention - there was also some 50 feet of det-cord laying around. Yeah.

So, not only was the building actually damaged, but the machine guns were destroyed, as was the flame thrower. Not content with blasting one side of the building, they then went around the other side and wrapped a bunch of explosives, including a vehicle mine and another demolition pack, around the door. Then sent the door through the building. Then looted said building, ending up with armloads of explosives, guns, melee weapons, and other such useful items. No power armor, though they did find a very fortuitous shield generator, worth half a million bucks. Ugh. Why do I roll so well for loot, but terribly in battles?

About this time, Kiri and Nae joined the rest of the group; Kiri packed up some of the new loot and headed back to the hotel, but the rest decided to attack the gang, which was now on high alert. With Gadget on overwatch, Gus the giant robot carrying the shield generator, Julian ready to lay out some serious pain, and Nae standing by to heal anyone, they launched their assault. The enemy consisted of a big boss in battle armor, two bodyguards, four wildcards, and eight mooks with negligible armor.

In the first round, one well-placed EMP grenade took out the shield; it did its job, though, keeping the other electronics safe. Two more EMPs were fumbled - yes, that's right, two ones - landing inside the enemy building. Luckily for the baddies, there wasn't anything near enough to be damaged...

After trading some ineffectual bullets back and forth, Julian rushed the building and managed to land a sonic grenade inside, taking out a couple mooks, while Gus managed to fire two heat-seeking rounds into the enemy building, wounding one of the wildcards inside. Nae, right behind Gus, managed to taser two of the wildcards who were trying to rush out, then one of the bodyguards; the other bodyguard got within striking distance of Julian... then didn't. Ones all the way. Ugh!

Mooks streamed out of the building, surrounding Nae, who had been laying them out with her taser; they swung, and missed, one after another, before Gadget nuked the lot of 'em with a portable missile. Boom, gone. Nae finished off the last one with a plasma round through the chest - pacifist, pah! Meanwhile, Julian was having no luck with his brand new disintegration rifle; it landed hits, but just couldn't get through armor.

Now the big boss was getting mad. He stepped out, keeping the building between himself and Julian, and let loose with a rapid-fire shotgun attack, firing slugs. Of course, Nae not only managed to soak all the damage, but managed to do it twice, one round after the other. Her luck ran out when a fumbled sonic grenade from Gus landed in front of her; she was knocked out. Finally catching a break, the boss stepped out and landed a portable EMP rocket in Gus's chest, knocking him out as well. The two wildcards left climbed out of the building to go after Julian; however, a lucky shot from Overwatch managed to nuke the power armor, slowing the boss down considerably. The boss dragged himself to the doorway, and flanked by his last remaining wildcards opened fire, nearly bringing Julian down; Gadget, having climbed down to join the fight at closer range, fixed the shield generator just in time, as Julian dragged himself inside. Between Gadget's flamethrower and Julian's grenades, they killed the two wildcards, and knocked out the leader. Whew!

Julian, desperate for his own power armor, ran over to open his prize... not realizing that a suicide mine was strapped inside. Now, a slight pause, here, to point out how my rolls happened. Sure, sometimes a slug nearly killed Kiri, or a mook nearly gutted Nae... but when it mattered? Nothing. BS rolls. This mine was a 6d6 mine; max damage 36, average damage somewhere around 21. And what did I roll, to hit the already-twice-wounded Julian? Four 2s and two 1s. Yeah. Enough to destroy the suit, but not a wound on Julian. Story of my life.

That said, the group did find a clue linking the gang to Du Gilkot, the mayor's adviser... as well as a second suit of power armor. Oh, and the randomly-rolled suit? Yeah. Awesome rolls. A heavy suit with flight and auto-targeting.

If I missed anything, let me know - but this was, as everyone agreed, certainly a battle to remember!