Whiskey Company
Website: www.dsouza.uk
Aeric:
Basco:
Benno: QEUUR2 - expires 30/05/2023
Gethin:
Mirbana:
The Thermopylae is en route to the centaur class planet Bijan’s world after receiving a distress signal from the UNS Yalta
Whisky squad takes the time to get their mechs repaired and reconstructed.
Gethin receives a data packet
There is some info on the Eccumen
Gethin gets the squad together and briefs them before getting them suited up and into their crash couches for arrival. Hooked into the ship’s camera feeds they can see the planet and amongst its debris field there are flashes of ship to ship weapons fire. The Thermopylae accelerates towards the weapons fire to assist the Yalta and the squad gets their final orders from the XO.
The dropships ‘Special Delivery’ and ‘Milkcart’ are loaded up
As they drop towards the planet they get their first look at the colony, a number of large domes made of translucent hexagonal panels, connected by tunnels made of the same material.
Suddenly there is a violent explosion just off the side of the Special Delivery. The pilot takes evasive manoeuvres and enters a steep dive as the squad spots the flares of missile launches coming from near the colony and flak explodes around them.
The squad is initially shaken up, Gethin looks for other places to land whilst Aeric and Mirbana distract the pilots with instructions. As the ship goes into a spin, Aeric’s rude tone gets him cut off from the comm as he receives a very calm “this is my mission till you’re on the ground” from the pilot.
A missile slips through the Milkcart’s point defences and takes out its right engine.
The squad starts opening fire on incoming missiles
Benno climbs out of his mech and, activating mag boots, walks along the wing to the flaming engine and starts working to shut it down.
Basco launches himself out of the dropship with his EVA boosters to try and draw Aun fire away from the ships. He is hit by several flak rounds and starts to spin out of control towards the ground. Mirbana uses her flash anchor to temporarily lock him in place and Aeric lunges out to grab him as they go past. He snags Basco under the mech-arm which despite its small size, almost rips Aeric out of the dropship. Basco is swung back aboard adrenaline surging, only some from natural causes.
The drophips make their approach to the landing pad and 10m from the surface the mechs are dropped, Slamming into the ice and sending up plumes of crystals and shards of methane.
There is no cover here, ahead they can see a a large metal platform between them and the colony dome
On the platform are a number of ships, cargo containers and ground vehicles.
Immediately they come under fire from the Aun on the landing pad as hard light rounds hit the ice around them.
The squad storms the landing pad, eliminating several Aun mechs and AAA pieces
We see no sign of further Aun forces, so the Milkcart and Special Delivery come over to the landing pad and a dozen marines drop out in their grey issue suits to secure. A Sergeant directs them, seeing the spittle on his visor but none of the words thanks to the lack of commlink and/or atmosphere. We see nothing in the local area in the way of additional adversaries. The landing pad has a dozen ships on/near, which Gethin looks over, and we all see one large cargo vessel (capable of interplanetary travel) and a number of smaller transports only for orbital work (lifters, mining vessels etc.). Gethin tells marines to secure the vessels. Ahead of us at the far end of the pad, the dome rises up (largest one of the colony) - although we see a number of entrances including one big enough to fit a Lancaster mech through. As we head towards that entrance, one trots over (Sgt Sanek(sp?)) and he asks over comms “Sir, we’ve swept the pad, no sign of any Aun, but found a few of their dropships, sealed up tight, can’t tell if there’s anyone inside, my men can cut their way inside if you want, make sure there are no surprises?”. 2 dropships, slightly larger than the ones we came in on - with hardpoints for Mechs on the wings and size 1s inside, like ours. They seem to be powered down and sealed up. Gethin mentally consults his ‘field manual’ and decides simply to destroy them.
Benno knows a wee demolition charge in the exhaust pipe so checks with Gethin explosive disassembly is ok…..hops into his mech, pulls out his rocket launcher and trots over. The marines around the dropship take a healthy distance, Gethin asks us to give Benno cover and prepare for any sudden removal of Aun troops from the ships, Benno kneels, takes aim at an engine of the first and blows it up. It ain’t taking off soon. Gethin asks to look inside so Benno makes a chopping motion at his mech, it trots over and carves up a new door. The decompression and blast of air rushes out: noone inside. Just ammo packs, batteries and mounts for more mechs and seats for infantry, similar to Union dropships.
Basco notes the conventional cockpit, accessible via the dropship troop bay, and Benno burns through the other two dropships and gets a grudging approval from Gethin. He now turns back to the big door leading to the domes and beckons us over. Half the marines set up a defensive position on the pad, checking out the other ships, and Aeric sends out messages into the ether seeing if anyone is out there. Whilst we tinker with the door leading to the dome, Aeric gets a response from a young, nervous-sounding man, who realises we’re union and there to save him. Aeric asks for coordinates but they don’t reveal it over the air, so Aeric asks for the situation inside the dome: Aun “the soldiers, i guess? Yeah, they came a few days ago.” mechs inside the domes, on the streets, several of them: white. NOT GREY. Boo. Aeric reassures them the issue will be solved. Aeric tactfully asks “do you have other visitors who arrived before the Aun, probably holding out but still foreigners…”. The kid says “a few foreigners? Why don’t you, are you outside?”. Aeric proposes a ‘meet’, but the kid is on their own. We’re asked to hold a short while, and the line goes dead.
There’s a door with an access panel next to it. Basco looks at Benno and decides whether to hack or hack the thing. Basco wires himself in, diagnosing the possible access codes, does a wee hack and opens the thing up. The door rolls up and, as surmised, it is not pressurised inside, so opens up into a storage area. We see shipping crates like the ones outside, vehicles plus a battlefield: a number of destroyed mechs (one white, the rest not) and many corpses. Aeric trots over as the remaining on hold seems like an enduring thing. Beyond this dome there are a number of pressurised (oxygenated!) living spaces within - one still big enough for Benno. Aeric takes sentinel position against this door, complimented for his excellent tactical awareness.
Basco trots over to the fallen white mech, noting the cockpit has a squishy dead Aun in: clearly took a burst of auto gunfire to the torso of the mech; pondering whether there’s a way to connect to the mangled mech, realising there isn’t a universal method and not the time to wire it all up, Basco turns to the other fallen mechs trying to plug into their black boxes and see what info is on them. It’s a GMS Everest, 3-4 of those destroyed - the rest are smaller, more basic security mechs (3-4). The first yields some info: video feed of the battle, seeing a mech pointing a weapon at the doorway, around him the sound of other mechs moving, dragging crates into position etc. and a voice coming over the comm to the pilot broadcasting “Alright men and ladies, hold, there’s only a few of them, we’ve got a defensive position, I know you’ve all been training for this, just let em have it”. Over the mech mic we hear the sound of something outside the front door which rolls up and see several large white Mechs, pilot pulls trigger and we hear a blaze of gunfire from this side at the white mechs, and everything moves in a blur, a screech of metal, screaming, turning he sees a white mech has covered the distance and eviscerated the person next to him. The figure ducks under this fella’s fire and the last bit of the video is a sword rising up thru the mech and the feed cuts. Basco rewinds and ‘enhances’/’zooms’ for ‘information’ (and/or snuff fetish). In the freezeframe where the door opens, Basco catches at least 10 mechs, several of which are toting energy weapons/flamethrowers, several bladed, and Basco shares these with chat.
Gethin orders the marines to sweep this area as we progress to the next doorway. He also asks Benno (then Basco) to hasck the doorway (not hack the doorway). Aeric gets a message from his lost kid suggesting the first building on the left as the rendezvous point, when Aeric asks for recitation of the three pillars. The kid does badly and Aeric takes note. We see lots of brutalist concrete buildings and note the day/night cycle is artificial given the paltry starlight that falls through the dome. These buildings have emergency shutters in case of rapid decompression; and signs of a remaining battle, the remnants of security forces dead on the ground. Gethin notices most of the fire was outward - and that our own weapons could in theory breach the dome. Aeric asks if we should extract the remaining kid, and Gethin sends the Caliban (Basco) and Marines. Basco heads into the building (Customs), sees a reception counter at the ground floor, which has been torn apart as if something was being searched for - the computers clearly access, ransacked, dismantled. No one evident on the ground floor. Trooping up the stairs Basco sees the kid, points his shotgun arms at him and asks “you remembered the other two pillars yet?”. The kid looks to one side, smiles, then looks back and recites all 3 flawlessly (perhaps recalled from a database somewhere in the ether). Basco beckons him over.
He trots out with the kid and suggests he hops into a mech, but Aeric hops out first to look him over, with an axe for some reason, and looks the kid over to see what shape he’s in. Tall, little scrawny, stretched a little from the low Gs, wearing an environmental suit but helmet down and absolutely positively knackered and running on fumes. Aeric asks for info on people, numbers, movements etc. and the kid says he’s seen no one but soldiers searching for the last 2 days.
Looking at a map, Jorge points to an adjacent smaller dome, this is the mining/industrial area where the citizens were told to flee in emergency- to the mines.
Aeric asks about foreigners. Jorge doesn’t recollect anyone in particular. They’re definitely looking for something (someones?), have ransacked the data to look at recent imports…Aeric asks Gethin whether to hold onto the kid or send him to the crashpad to the other marine company. The kid asks to tag along rather than go into the Customs house again, and we suggest having him hang around the marines, before Gethin decides to send him back to Customs house. One marine is assigned to babysit him and Aeric assigns a commlink to the kid.
Gethin proposes visiting the mines to see the civilians, and makes a battle plan for moving through occupied enemy territory. Aeric moves ahead to scout a long distance ahead, knowing Benno is wide enough to occupy the road but not tall enough to be seen over buildings. Basco also offers some sort of forward analysis (but not as forward as Aeric) and we move out. As we move we see little sign of damage and not much in the way of movement (noone in the street, doors hanging open, but the signs of ransacking). As Aeric moves up ahead, invisible, he rounds a corner and comes across a patrol: 2 mechs and 5 infantry, in white, and not yet having noticed him. They are heading past our location back towards where we came from: if the team hold position they’ll be missed as they head back towards entry (and the kid/marine). Gethin realises there’s a risk the marine and kid will get smooshed by this, but this is a routine patrol and the kid lasted 2 days…Gethin decides setting up an ambush rather than deal with the 2 mechs and 5 infantry later. Aeric is asked to look for a likely ambush location en route back to us, we see the infantry hustling and the mechs moving as fast as they think the footmen can run.
Aeric starts the fight, from a rooftop whilst invisible, stalking his prey, and he runs and leaps off the building top, rendering himself visible, then landing on the kingpin mech with a hope to slash and burn it. The hilt of his blade appears and he plunges it into the mech. Caught entirely by surprise, the blade cuts through the cockpit and the mech slumps. The infantry scatter and the mech at the rear brings up his weapon and opens fire on Aeric. Benno spots the mech rounding the corner, locking on to give Gethin a target. Gethin redirects all power away from mech limbs and focusses this power through his laser rifle, aiming at one of the marks from Benno, and as two infantry walk between his crosshairs they get absolutely lit up. Basco screams in taking the marines with him, blowing out walls (by charging through it) to clear the way to kill the remaining infantry, ensuring they can’t take cover. Basco blasts through, catches a couple of troopers by surprise, shooting them and adding cover for his marines behind. Mirbana tries to hack the weapon trained on Aeric, despite this not being her forté, and it shows; she knows Basco has been able to breach Aun tech before so uses one of those protocols: but once in not a clue how to shut the weapon down, tinkers a bit and instead of shutting it down, the gun goes into overdrive! It dumps all its ammo out, slagging off the barrel but absolutely catching Aeric in the hail of fire. The now disarmed mech is easy prey for the marines and their anti-armour rifles and down it goes.
We hustle on to the mines, trundling at a faster pace now given the ungodly noise. We hear mechs moving in the distance somewhere in the city but encounter no further patrols. Beyond us lies a tunnel - arched, same material as the dome, and as we pass through it, on the far side is an airy avenue: trees and a fake river/water feature running down a street. Very idyllic. Either side are cafés and shops. Some have been tampered with. Aeric is doubtful the civilians are still in the mines - surely after 2 days the Aun have checked this place from stern to stem. We press on, sketchy tho the next airlock will be…
As we press down this avenue, about halfway down Aeric up ahead hears some noise to our right-hand side and as we turn, a mech smashes out the front window of a café and levels a flamethrower and bathes us in flame. We see other mechs moving out to catch us, a little trap set by them. 4 squat mechs armed with flamethrowers belching out and behind the two the other side of the river is a larger mech - quadrapedal with three-toed legs, sitting low to the ground and on its back is a block elevated out - cylindrical and whilst it looks weaponless, although the cylinder has several spikes (aerials?) with some electricity crackling between the spines. Looks like some sort of hacker job.
Combat!
Gethin asks Mirbana to protect him and since it protects Benno too, drops her hardlight shield, covering everyone except Aeric. Facing this grey fog of war and an invisible Aeric, the enemy have to take some educated guesswork, takes a pop off on Aeric, flaming the spot Aeric is in and burns him up - he blinks out hoping to reach safety and instead appears a couple of squares over. The enemy mech who lit up Aeric also continues the burn and puts up a wall of fire between the mech and us. Benno shifts round leaving Gethin inside the hardlight shield but edges out, steps next to an enemy mech and takes heat, realising the mech is entirely unshielded. Benno uses his plasma torch to torch it then his unraveller to unravel it. Alas he only takes a little damage instead of lethal damage, but Benno then fires a cable winch, then walks back a few squares to reel Aeric in. He then applies some sealant spray to put out the burn.
The enemies move (but how would we know?) and Basco does some engineering stuff to stop burning. Aeric moves and hides behind Mirbana between her and Benno and drops invisible. Gethin wanders over the Mule, and tells Mirbana to drop her hardlight shield. The wee mechs all have flame walls up and the big mech behind has a crackling shield up around it and the mech nearest it. Mirbana drops said shield, moves between Benno and the flamey wee mech, and drops a turret for good measure. An enemy mech sends a nice big wave of fire down towards Basco and an invisible Aeric, missing both. His shield dropped but he throws it straight back up. Benno locks on to one for Gethin to open up on, but alas Lieutenant G misses. Benno locks on to another mech in the hopes someone else gets to hit one. Mirbana's Noah NHP doesn’t cause the attack to miss and Mirbana gets burned, but Gethin and Benno are ok. He puts another flame wall up. Aeric sidles up, still hidden, but gets warmed walking into the unshielded reactor, raises his sword, pierces, feints with the fold knife but then has a crack with his charged blade and armour piercing does the job - destroying the mech. He blinks over to the crackly tech attacky mech. It downloads a virus onto Aeric, Basco and Mirbana which frigs with heat dissipation. Basco trots up to the tech attacky mech, firing his shotgun arms. Basco blasts it up, pushing it back and impairing it. Basco also tech attacks the littler mech nearby, ejecting its power cores and jamming it. Bit techy mechy attacks Mirbana again, but misses, slowing her (to the level she was already at with Noah workin’). Sadly it gets Gethin. Gethin hops off Benno and aims a heavy mount weapon at the big mech who virused him. It lands nicely and the turret chips in too, but Gethin then realises it triggers a secondary attack on all adjacent characters including his blue-on-blue: Aeric is pinged and blinks out away from him. One of the small mechs moves around and aims at Gethin, then boosts over to him.
Gethin calls Basco for some solid leadership support, but Basco is still recovering from being blasted by….Gethin. So he shores back up and reloads instead. Thankfully his loading of shotgun causes the shell casings to fire into these mech’s face and cause a bit of damage. Overcharging to get a decent crack at this boy, and Basco combines to cause a fatal load to the fiddly mech which renders this battle seemingly easier……especially as Gethin and Mirbana cease to be virus-infected-imprisoned, splendid. One of the smaller mechs arcs a mortar shell into the Benno-Mirbana crowd, hitting Gethin, then firebombs Mirbana but misses Gethin. Basco hands to Benno, who - spotting Mirbana flambéeing in front of him, gets sprayed down in foam to put out her mucho burn (but slowing her down). Gethin gets stabilised by Benno as well, and Gethin then gets clobbered again and keels over but Mirbana keeps him up with the Flash Anchor. She then shoots at the mech near Gethin and marks it, and keeps Noah ticking over, before sidling up to Gethin and sandwich between him and Benno.
Meanwhile on the other side of the wee stream, the mech opposite flames at Basco and also whales on Aeric, then Aeric fights back. Aeric - despite first having a hard time carving into its armour - finds enough weakspots to level it. Gethin goes to work, locking on to mechs nearby, then another mortar flies into our crowd, hitting the mechs, before Aeric begins blinkin’ around and pounding on them, eviscerating another and keeping his body count piled high. The mech does attempt an attack causing Mirbana’s NHP to heat up to the point of destruction, RIP NHP. Meanwhile Gethin seeks to brutalise the remaining mech, which he achieves, blowing its head off. Benno sprints over to Basco foaming him down.
Combat Ends - although they probably called for help at some point!
Aeric scouts around to see if there’s an obvious repair location but in this corridor, nowhere to run to (or hide). We can head through the next airlock but who knows what lays beyond…and we have little time to repair after all. Nevertheless we punch the door and there’s nothing in it, so we shuffle in. The wee mechs shuffle under Benno (apart from Gethin who hops on). The other airlock door opens - smaller dome and more full of stuff: clearly connector ports for ships to bring in ore, conveyor belts and so on. Some areas have processor furnaces, and there’s a small factory (printers etc.). All these items are powered down and there is no evident activity. Gethin asks us what to do, despite being Lieutenant, spots Mirbana and Aeric smoking, and Benno hops out to start wandering around looking for why the area is all turned off (Gethin asking Basco to ‘watch over’ Benno). Benno waggles some switches and it’s clear the power’s not on. Aeric walks more perimeter, Gethin pops his feet up on the dash and reads the field manual.
20-25mins into Gethin’s tea break and our repair job, an airlock starts cycling up……Gethin asks Basco to hack it (who suggests welding it shut), and Gethin yells at him to get a move on. It turns out the airlock has 10 mechs and 20 infantry in eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek.
Basco jams the lift, the mechs look annoyed and start bashing the lift in a bid to punch through the airlock door, spraying the room randomly. Benno starts disconnecting his mech from the printer, Aeric shuffles into a hiding place, and we start to hear an alarm go off within the lift. Gethin decides that them firing out is way less efficient than us forming up and opening fire into the (comparatively) teeny tiny lift. 2 against 1 is Gethin’s preferred odds.
Benno hops atop his mech and pulls out a rocket launcher. Mirbana shuffles next to him and Gethin fires in: in response aun hardlight flies at the door, blasting the door out and through the smoke we identify 10 mechs (confirmed) and another 5 beyond that. Sensors detect 40 infantry and they open fire into us. Considering we may be outmatched, Benno fires his rocket launcher and Basco fires a mech-sized grenade into the fray. Turns out 2.5:1 were Gethin’s odds…and I’m not sure how he counts infantry to mech ratios.
We briefly consider fleeing into the maze of equipment and with Aeric’s prompting Gethin calls for it. We turn and head into said miney maze instead of facing down more firepower than we first thought…
As the hole bursts open Basco slides his spike charge into the room (as above) which also knocks them back a little, buying us all a little time by causing a bit of a pile-up in their space. Benno fires over a winch to Basco and ping him back towards Benno’s mech, quickly becoming a hull for a number of barnacles to stick to (a Gethin, and 5 infantry). Sadly Basco misses the grab but the winch wraps his legs, so he comes flying at the Lancaster and slams in at pretty top speed, ooft. Another barnacle joins the Benno mecho. Aeric flits around trying to draw fire and give us all time to get slightly further away. Mirbana flings all her Turret Drones in a bid to hold down some covering fire, but Mirbana draws a chunk of fire herself. Gethin works some magic and we head off down the maze of machinery.
Aeric goes full guerilla warfare in these warrens, and Mirbana reads the room to look for optimal locations - and spots the signs that lead minewards, so we head that way specifically. Gethin grasps for an inspiring speech and struggles to come up with something, mostly variations on a theme of how we’ll get them another time, and we’ll get the Ecumen and the info and basically show people who is boss. Benno points at some machinery and housing around us and ask whether it’s bring-downable, blocking the path, so Benno runs along the front edge, scoring it with a flame, then throws a winch over the top, gives infantry a number of rocket launchers to fire at the housing, and Basco then follows it up by noticing some girders bolstering the buildings halfway up, so Basco uses his freight to add weight and ensure the buildings fall the right way. Alas, both Benno and Basco do not succeed prolifically at this: the Callaban does indeed punch well through the central supports, and the plan to control the demolition goes (literally) out of the window as the entire structure implodes and drops, catching Benno and Basco in the descent, although Gethin bounces clear with the marines. The damage clips Benno nastily. The mechs decide to keep their comrades free of the debris blast zone and we rush towards the mines…phew. Basco stumbles out of the wreckage and shakes off some plasterwork and metal, extends a hand to Benno who hops up, and they speed along to catch up with Aeric and Mirbana. Benno swiftly catches up with Mirbana, being much faster, and the party moves at Mirbana-boosted-speed into the mines.
We’ve turned off our pursuers (like Lintilla), and Aeric zips ahead to direct our team forwards. At Aeric-speed it doesn’t take long to arrive; he emerges from the building-maze to find an open area dominated by a central horizontal metal floor which looks like an old-fashioned (for this lot) missile silo door. Several cranes hang over it and it’s in the closed position. Aeric spots a couple of access hatches to either side (although only big enough for the standard mechs, not biggies) so Aeric drops a pin for us to navigate towards. Aeric and Basco shuffle into it to have a look around, looking for overrides and the like, generally tinkering around, and the silo opens making room for the bigger mechs to join the party. We begin our descent…Benno asks ‘how far down does this go?’ as we assess the first 50m drop, Benno asks people to dismount to ensure he drops safely, but unfortunately Gethin’s eyerolling and the silo door opening drops Benno like a stone, but the lower grav and smarter mechwork causes a softer landing than first hoped for, phew: Aeric and Basco look up and see Benno plummet past them into the hole, and the infantry cheer and yee-ha this rapid descent followed by well-timed thruster burst. Benno and Basco close up the silo door.
We reach the base of the mineshaft, and follow the kid we left back at customs’s directions. Aeric suggests putting out some exploratory broadcasts in a bid to try and call to them (and avoid any tripwires and/or other crude methods of trapping). We press on! Gethin gees his mighty steed as Benno continues to remonstrate about the physics of the descent. As we press on we round and spot some mechs (of the kind previously eviscerated at the warzone inside the dome) and they level weapons at us and demand we stop where we are. Gethin projects his union ID codes and tells them “We’re here to………WE ARE UNION FORCES. Pleased to meet you.” so inspiring
They lower their weapons but continue to look nervously at us, and the front hatch of one of the mechs opens and a woman in a pilot suit shouts over ‘Thank god, we’ve been waiting for you for ages. You’re from the Yalta right? What took you so long?’. Aeric sidles over to some other commander and asks if there are any non-natives amongst the group, given the kid’s mention that a few newbies had arrived recently. We look around and see nearly 1,000 people here, hungry, tired, cold, miserable, the usual refugee look. She continues “so…since it’s taken you several days to get down here it’s not going well up there?”. Gethin mentions the Thermopylae has hooked up with the Yalta to try and turn the tide. Commander-lady Maria Vives noted the telescope which found the Yalta in-system but no comms since then. A scientist runs up talking about something regarding information from sensors, who Maria rebukes sharply due to having too much on her hands already, then turns back to Gethin - clearly understanding she’s getting nothing from him, she tells him to crack on with finding his informants then, and Gethin says he’ll be putting “it all in [his] report”. She grimly tells him to do that. Gethin suggests the scientist have a word with “that one fiddling with the mech” (Benno).
Aeric tells his handler to be subtle and to describe the likely assets, as well as assessing the stock for the refugees in this place. Benno gives his mech repair tools to his mech to continue repairing itself, and then Benno and Aeric move to the handler who confirms 3 groups arriving in the last 2 months or so, and takes them to the largest of these parties. The power supply is fine but the printer is running out of material (and spitting out gruel, lucky them). Benno spots a mech could be wired in to boost some power, but material remains in supply and demand for 1k+ refugees is hefty. His mech trots over and avoids crushing refugees to death, amping up the printer. Aeric and Benno confirm Aun are still on the surface and the handler says that the last few days have not been the most fun down here. He nods towards a group of 24 people huddled together, and confirms that group got in most recently, 3-4 weeks ago.
Aeric goes up and talks to a ringleader who confirms they were doing shuttle runs and the like, their ship stuck on the launchpad above. We note they are variously dressed, no clear uniform as such. He can barely recite the pillars, as if back at school, and Aeric hands a leaflet for his Solidarity discussion group (Benno takes interest in this too), and heads back to the handler to confirm it wasn’t that group.
So the next ‘fishiest’ group get a look over, grimy and such, then a far smaller group of ca. 7, all of whom have environment suits but are wearing ponchos over them. The ponchos look like the ones the farmers of Borea wore when we were on campaign there. Aeric heads and hunkers down - asking where they came from, “taking a quick census”. They are out of Cornucopia, and Aeric asks if they’ve had interactions with Aun before (“never encountered one in person, but had a few shooting at me a few days ago”). These interactions leave Aeric feeling like this group ain’t them neither, so up he gets and the Sarge moves on to the next group.
This group also came out of Cornucopia, and the response is cagey as ever, and this person confirms they have never had interactions with the Aun. Conversation over. He gets given a leaflet and immediately tosses it on his stove. The sarge is running out of ‘outsiders down here’ to point out. He suggests they might be elsewhere rather than in this area…Benno asks if there’s a roster they can work of, and kicks around with Aeric, and they decide to head back to Gethin who they are sure has done a lot of work in the meantime.
Gethin gives Benno an earful about the mech not being repaired and instead being used to feed the refugees - “that’s not the mission” - Benno points out that the good of the Union is the mission. Gethin demurs.
Aeric gets tired of Gethin’s impatience about not finding the Ecumen and wanders back to his mech to prepare his tannoy announcement, and finds the scientist/sensor array lady leaning against the mech - asking him if she was the one she was going to talk to - Benno? Mule? Aeric points towards Benno, confirms she’s never met an Aun, so Aeric pumps up the tannoy and asks Ecumen to come forward, but everyone blinks at him, then at each other, shrugging. Aeric sighs into his mic then starts reciting the pillars, which winds Basco up - who points out to Gethin these are lofty promises unattainable by us. Gethin asks Aeric to knock it off, with a “worth a shot”. It still begs the question, if the ecumen aren’t here, where are they?
The scientists finally collars Benno, who confirms she urgently needs to reach her sensor array. Her and Benno talk across purposes (‘he’s the one who can help her’ ‘why me?’ ‘yes, why?’), before Aeric asks “why?”. She points at a tablet full of numbers like that’s totally understandable, she says it’s a ‘warning’ that arrived just before the Aun. Apparently her computer and NHP can decode the warning about what’s ‘out there’, but that necessitates going to the sensor array. Array is just above, and it sounds like escort duty is a bonus. The signal outside suggests it’s something much bigger than a ship(!!!). Minghan (scientist, now introduced) gets an explanation from Aeric that our job is to get the Ecumen and if the sensor array can also scout out where they are. The discussion clarifies any signal will be encrypted so it’s Basco’s job to crack that, but there’s a plan forming here. Aeric waves Gethin and Mirbana over, explains the plan and Gethin is effusive in his praise for Aeric. Propose is break, fix mechs, then head up.
Mechs are fixed and Gethin commands Mirbana to allow her seat to be used for a scientist. Mirbana pouts and there’s a protracted discussion if instead we all leave our mechs behind and use some stealth our mechs won’t provide. Aeric flits to the service elevator, pops his mech head up to have a quick look around, sees nothing but audio sensors picks up the sound of rubble being moved and several mechs/infantry moving around in the vicinity. They’re still patrolling and generally making nuisance. Whilst above ground a call is patched in from one of the sarges on the droppad - Sgt. Stannac reports in, and confirms a few scouts have come their way but nothing more serious.
Domes are 4 attached to a central dome - 3 o’clock is industrial, 12 o’clock agricultural/o2, 6 o’clock a mix of store/ship-based repair. Aeric heads back and reports and we decide to only take the smallest mechs along, the rest going on foot (a 30min stealth journey). Benno with his rocket launcher, Mirbana and the scientist trot along together. Aeric leads the way acting as unseen as possible. As we get close to the command centre, a group of 10 Aun infantry guarding the corner nearest the command centre obstruct the way.
An ambush is sprung on this group, “jam and stomp”: which is uncoordinated, a tad messy, and generally disarrayed, but I understand the scientist is able to reach the array. We trot in - apart from Basco, who’s slightly bigger than a human-size doorframe, so he tucks in a wee bit. Aeric remains outside taking a hidden defensive position, Gethin praising this tactical nous. The scientist Minghan scoots to her office, which is full of screens and the like and she’s feverishly powering up, to no avail, so Benno trots in and takes a look around and proposes splicing the power wire and tying it into Basco’s reactor. He agrees in principle, Benno makes it happen and Minghan is away lost in her work spinning up programmes, operating a bunch of systems on screen, running something through a decryption algorithm to reconstruct the tablet of data into a more meaningful format for us.
Meanwhile, we use the same sensor array to see whether or not we can seek out the Ecumen, as well as general Aun positions above ground. Basco also scouts around for signals from the Yalta too. There seem to be no messaging between the Yalta and Thermopylae, but they are sharing targeting info which suggests they’re still out fighting the good fight. We also note that ‘the stadium’ in the central dome might be a suitable place to scout for additional people.
Mirbana looks over the data and some very odd stuff (from her pilot POV) appears on the array, looking like an asteroid cluster but moving at 0.99c!! Weirdness. Mirbana reports this strange thing moving very very very fast, and Gethin recognises this to be a ‘kill cloud’ - a bunch of debris tugged up to the speed of light aimed at a target for some years. This place may not even be the target - it’s just in a line and will punch through here and keep on goin’. 4hrs to impact! As Aeric said, we’re astronomically unlucky to be in the line of fire.
So an evac plan is on after all…Gethin reckons there’s enough cargo space for the refugees, who are likely to be thinned out a little en route. Aeric remembers to mention that some Boreans were downstairs to which Basco volunteers a ‘so?’. Basco also proposes to Gethin that warning the refugees and the landing pad marines all need to be briefed for evacuation. Mine first, round up mechs and refugees, head to the stadium, head to droppad, head out. Lots of hope…Gethin is still swithering between reasoning with the Aun above ground (“they’re just as dead as we would be”) and fighting them (“or we just blast them”).
We make our way back to the mine, not encountering any Aun en route and return to the main cavern. Gethin marches into the commander’s office and relays the new news: evac good, killcloud bad. The commander asks ‘are there Aun above?’ (yes) ‘can you kill them?’ (no) ‘can we distract them?’ (possibly). The tunnels below don’t lead anywhere useful. Gethin finally has the full cooperation of commander and security team, who offer their services what with their knowledge of the area. “What’s your plan?”. Everyone turns to Gethin as Aeric says “we need to visit the stadium” and Gethin says “and get to this landing pad”, pointing at a map.
The refugees get prepared to move with the plan to keep them in the dark so as not to incite panic. Commander proposes a 45min lead time to prepare a distraction and then we pull the refugees the other way, before leaving us to move to the stadium as her team moves refugees out. Aeric is sent to the top of the mine as well to get Sgt Stannac to prep the Special Delivery, Milk Cart and Passenger Ships ready to move people. There’s a wee argument about how to move the refugees out (which mechs might be used for combat and which for humanitarian mission). Benno points out the refugees are known knowns, we may just be going to a stadium for nothing. Nevertheless job is a job, so Aeric heads to get briefed on location (meeting ground/sports hall/single gathering location), a large central open area surrounded by raked seats, and the exits large enough to get a bus or big truck through, but not Benno!
As we prepare, set up etc. we hear the distant thump of an explosion so some Aun head off back towards the main passage, leaving a small group of infantry behind. Aeric sees all this from his crane vantage point: the distraction is afoot. Gethin gives it another 5mins to give a bit more distance and we then prepare to head out. Knowing it’ll take a couple of hours to move the refugees towards the landing pad, the commander confirms she’ll do her best to handle that as we mech up and head towards the stadium.
Of course, as Aeric warned us, at the entrance to the tunnel is this Aun infantry left behind so they get the same cut-down treatment those near the sensor array got. We (our party, mechs and 5 marines) move back towards the main dome, get an update from Sgt Stannac confirming the cargo ship is mostly empty and getting in the process of checklisting powerup and ready for flight. More Aun s couts reported but no attacks as yet.
Gethin kindly gives Aeric 10 mins of scouting time as a courtesy, with about 180mins and dwindling. Aeric scouts around and spots 3 mechs and infantry guarding a doorway to the stadium, then skirts round the building and attempts to shin up a wall to get a view from above, and looking down into the stadium Aeric sees a large number of people (ca. 700? Certainly around 1k, high hundreds) sitting on the grass in the middle of the stadium. Several Aun are also in the stadium but largely clustered around the entry/exits (each side of the stadium). Perhaps 3-4 mechs at each one. Aeric feeds this back to the team.
Gethin continues to grapple with the choice between reasoning with them and fighting them…and Basco points out that scuttling their ships leaves them in a world where there aren’t enough jumpships left off for everyone, so I guess it’s fight time! Commander Maria confirms they have found 3 large mining haulers which could bundle these prisoners in, so infantry are driving these to the stadium now, which will help move them quicker. Meanwhile Aeric looks around to decide what the best group to strike first is: but no, no commanders etc. or anyone to face off first. Several have close-range melee weapons (swords) and the others with assault rifle equivalents. The sword-wielding ones look like less sophisticated versions of the ones we fought on Borea (the fast version).
Benno offers to drop Basco right at point-blank range, and the more mechs in a line the more hope of killing several at a blow (optimistic). Gethin looks put out by not having his regular donkey to ride, but grudgingly accepts this plan.
Aeric is still clinging to side of the stadium, plans to scuttle around to be above the archway we are attacking. When it kicks off he will drop down and be amongst them.
End of session - aim is to rush over, bundle refugees into vans and defend their retreat.
There was a discussion of word vomiting. :#
3 objectives. 10 rounds - end of 10th round transports are captured/destroyed and anyone left is overrun. To extract, need to be in red box on left hand side (the extraction zone i guess).
3 transport vehicles in front, moving speed 6, must end turn with middle hex in grey area to load up on assets. They stop movement if adjacent to enemy unit. Transports are light cover, missed shots blocked by that cover hit the transport (but enemies won’t fire on the transports directly).
1 mech, 2 sections of about 10 aun infantry with some hardlight guns.
Combaaaaaaaaaaaat
1/10
Gethin fires through a fountain blocking his view in the hopes a mech and section of infantry are the other side. Alas the fountain looks too powerful for the firepower so instead asks Mule to pull his finger out and do something useful.
Benno therefore charges, flying over things, points at Basco and a drone unhooks, climbs on Basco and clamps onto him. “What’s this?” says Basco, just as a buzz and hum of electricity starts, then sparks fly around, before Basco is wreathed in dispersed power all across his mech. Wisps of steam rise as the water vapour left on Basco’s mech bubbles off him. Benno then prepares to fling Basco into the fray by bucking like a mule, but as he’s flying the momentum doesn’t travel so well and Benno slides off the mech, falls to the ground in front of Benno and is on his back…smooth. Gethin shakes his head at this complete incompetence.
1st section take fire at Basco and Benno, connecting on both. Basco yells some expletives from the core, cracks on his core, then stands up looking ready to kick ass and chew bubblegum. He boosts over and plonks himself between the enemy mech and 2nd section then opens up his muzzled flare shotgun sending out a cone of hellfire, centred on the enemy mech. It connects and blasts the mech back into a wall, then shot 2 aims at 2nd section, connecting with much thanks to Basco’s scorn for soft cover. 3 of the section have been blown away in that hail of shrapnel, leaving a pink mist behind for Basco’s hot hot body to sizzle away.
2nd section now take fire at Basco in response, but they are disheartened both with their efforts and Basco’s armour. Aeric drops off the roof, face to face with the aun mech with a sword, and begins his close combat attacks. He begins slashing and hacking, leaving this thing looking pretty ropey, boom bang wallop, hit hit hit, but not dead, and Aeric takes massive exception to this, preparing to overcharge and demand some more blows. He rains yet more pillars of pain down on him, and finally finishes the mech off. So he flings his fold knife at the section near Basco, connecting with the posse, and the blade comes back to Aeric like a boomerang. Aeric then flits over to the sandbags for some soft cover.
Mirbana shuffles over, drops a drone and prepares to enter the fray…slowly. Gethin fires up his solid core crazy-ass weapon, and opens fire on 1st Section. Alas somehow after all the foreplay he misses and punches a hole in the sandbags only. Gethin wanders up a bit and has another crack, more success this time. The company are down to a couple. The transport tanks now move.
2/10
Reinforcements arrive for the Aun, two mechs appearing either side of the stadium, one wielding a sword, the other a light machine gun; 1st Section (2 remaining members) miss Aeric, and then a rocket launcher gets fired at Basco, who gets blasted apart, recovers himself, then moves over to the mech and begins tech attacking the heck out of him before shooting as he moves past. The combination proves lethal in one go, nicely done Basco. Gethin watches this with immense satisfaction and pride, and praises Basco highly.
The other mech with sword swoops over to Mirbana, then frazzles Benno and Mirbana again. Benno drags it out of the way of the convoy, locks on to it and invites Aeric to shoot the hell out of it. Aeric once again whips out the fold knife and begins to hackenslash (turret contributing) then blinks onto Benno looking down on the mech. Gethin glowers as yet another company member uses his mule.
2nd Section frantically seek a target to fire upon so break cover and charge Basco, fires on him and the drone, then stand there looking a bit wary. Mirbana slides over and slashes the mech, puts a mark on him, before waking Noah back up from his slumber. Aeric takes a go at the mech but goes miss miss hit before blinking the other side of it, and barraging some more. Aeric grumbles again that he didn’t fell this mech, hating ending a turn without having ended the breath of an Aun.
Gethin considers blowing up Mirbana’s turret, hungry for some blue-on-blue action, before considering firing a weapon through Mule (the object of some envy). He does indeed fire through this crowd, hoping to end the mech and 1st Section but somehow spare Mule…..but he hits Mule :( The damage ripples - killing the mech, 1st company, but taking out Benno’s limb, which gets sealed up nice and promptly.
3/10
Two mechs appear near Gethin, who looks to his left and exclaims “what?!”, before 2nd Section shift up and fire on Mirbana. She tells Noah to block the shot and fire back, and he complies and kills 4 of the Section; they hastily repent and fire on Basco instead. Gethin, spotting the two mechs, picks himself to deal with these miscreants, and fires his solidcore at the visible enemy Mech. He then ramps up another shot, ending that mech in no time, but taking quite some heat in the meantime. He turns to face the other mech, gets a shot off, but the mech charges Gethin down, wields his sword and slashes at Gethin. It connects and Gethin mutters “this is all Benno’s fault”.
Basco, consumed with bloodlust rather than his own wellbeing, runs up along the sandbags and opens up on the remains of the 2nd Section. Pistols akimbo, barrels blazing, he fires and picks off some more infantry, before the second rounds kill them off. Transpo 1 and 2 hit the dropzone, opens up a ramp and a number of local security forces run out and into the building, shouting at people to flee. We hear weapons and screaming before a flood of people bundle into it. There is absolute chaos, with some people getting trampled, but the vast majority are getting on board.
Basco tags Aeric in, willing him to fly over to Gethin, and he makes it most the way there before flinging his foldknife, blinks into his face, hits and then charge blades this fella, but sadly doesn’t kill him. Gethin thanks Aeric for the assistance nonetheless. Mirbana drops another turret for Gethin to groan about, pats Noah on the head, then sends Benno on. Benno wanders over, invites Aeric to finish off the mech, which he so does. Despite Benno’s help - of course - Gethin praises Aeric most highly.
4/10
3rd Section appear to the south and another 2 mechs appears from the north, and 3rd Section fire on Gethin, missing. Mirbana heads up to the mechs, attacks both and pats Noah on the head again. Benno then gets hit and Aeric gets laid some suppressive fire; Mirbana starts coordinating the evac vehicles before getting shanked. Undeterred she insists on moving the convoy vehicles around. Gethin now gets up and fires a solidcore at 3rd Section, but sadly misses.
Aeric now blinks over to the mechs near Mirbana, and prepares to whale on it, absolutely eviscerating the thing with his variable sword, just a total killing machine, then heads to the remaining mech, hits it, both turrets pop off on it. Benno tromps over, inviting Aeric to attack some more after locking on; Aeric can’t stop himself, just hitting away again and again, before taking cover by Mirbana. Basco now rushes 3rd Company, opens fire and picks a few fleshbags off. He gets the urge to keep firing, warms up a little and lets loose again, picking off the remainder, as he sidles up and finishes one off with the butt of his gun like some kind of vicious hopped-up sadist.
5/10
4th Section appears near Gethin at the north of the map, whilst a mech appears at the sandbags on the south-east. The mech next to Mirbana misses an attack and stands there looking a little…cramped. Basco - always looking out for Basco - moves over to the mech and fires a flare at it and slams it back into the sandbags. Benno gets peppered with shot by 4th Section, then Aeric seeks to finish the mech off next to him, and does so with a single blow. A hopeful fling of his fold knife at 4th section fails, then machine-gun-mech, pinned down by Basco, has no option but to shoot at Basco, which he so does. This blinkers Basco to only things near him, before suppressing fire is laid on him too.
Gethin absolutely lays into 4th section with his solidcore…Benno asking politely not to hit any of his team. He so blasts them up, then hands over to Benno, who hops out of his mech to ride atop, stabilising, then charging up and locks onto 4th section.
Mirbana heads over, using Benno’s helpful lockons, and finishes off 4th Section with the help of one turret drone. The crowd of refugees finishes off, the transpo are fully loaded and we hear the ‘go go go’ of the forces piloting.
6/10
Another mech springs up near Gethin and Aeric near the north, and another from the Southwest, threatening the transport escape. The mech moves to Gethin and totally misses on his attack, then Benno jumps off the mech, heads to transpo 1 and looks for Ecumen. He looks in on a jam-packed wall of people with no room to move. He hops in and closes the door behind him. Meanwhile, Benno’s mech shuffles over to Gethin, gives a lockon to Gethin, and he fires on the enemy mech, causing quite some damage. The other new enemy mech rushes up, blocking the transport, and fires on Benno’s mech.
Gethin gives some hand-wavy commands to Mirbana about attacking the enemy. Mirbana complies, moving up and blasting it, before keeping Noah up. The mech by Basco has no choice but to keep pounding away at him, but does keep succeeding at least, now blinding Basco. Basco uses the shotgun reload to punch out the remaining life from his enemy mech and starts to head back to the extraction point. Aeric flies over as quickly as possible, listening to Gethin’s command to ‘take the fight to the enemy’, but he instead flits over to the central pillar and hides on it.
Gethin now fires on the mech next to him, but misses, alas. The transports move except one being Tianmen-square-obstructed by the mech in front of it.
7/10
A mech appears and charges Basco hoping to rumble him but Basco sees him coming and fires his shotgun, missing but also flitting back a couple of steps. The new mech shuffles up again though, wanting to be close to Basco and hits him.
Gethin instructs Mirbana to help him, which she does, belatedly, on the 4th of 4 attacks. The mech dies. Phew. She turns to Gethin and says “you are welcome”. A mech then steps away from the transports to put a bead on Gethin, the attack unfortunately still landing and blinding Gethin with a number of flare bullets. The mech moves back up to block the transports and lays suppressing fire on Basco. Benno scoots over to his mech, realising it’s in the hot-near-explody-zone so hops into the cockpit.
A Mech appears from the north, fires on Mirbana and she is hit but unblinded, and now hit with suppressing fire. Basco fires off a shot but the mech manages to reflect it back on Basco, but in wrath he still slams the mech back into the sandbag wall, hard, impairing it. The force of his own attack is not quite so slammy, fortunately. He then scoots around the transports to seek to blaze on the mech stopping their retreat and fires on that too.
Aeric sizes up either of the mechs that Basco bashed on, and capitalising on his hidden and invisible natures, boosts over and flits up to the mech holding up the transports and knives galore flash in the air. Unprepared for this, the mech takes quite some damage, Aeric ends it, then Aeric moves over to Basco.
The Transports can now move unimpeded!
8/10
Mech suppressing Mirbana now switches to openly attacking her, which succeeds as Noah once again denies any effort to protect his mech and owner. Suppressing fire now moves to Gethin.
Gethin gets a ping from Sgt. Stannac noting access to the ship, the pilots beginning crosschecks. The head of the refugee column has been in contact too and notes the cargo needs to be dumped to even make room for refugees, and marines and some locals are holding the airlock against an Aun pushback. “Don’t take too long” is the missive. Gethin confirms evacuation of further refugees and an eta of 20-30mins. So 20mins, says Gethin. Ok………..
Gethin reloads his weapons, and thanks to hard cover from the suppressing fire lumbers into Mule’s harness. But still gets hit. Poor boss! But he’s in and on Benno’s mech which is splendid for him as he’s been very jealous of this recently. Gethin then fires on the mech and whilst appearing to hit, half the blast deflects back towards him. Benno then trots like the mule he is over to the rescue zone.
Aeric, never one to shy away from a fight, wants to kill off the remaining mech before leaving, so he sidles up, slashes nicely. Suuuuuuper dead. Aeric pops his mech hands in his mech pockets and wanders towards the dropzone, whistling away.
Gethin gets Sgt Stannac confirming 2 Aun Squads testing their defences near the airlock, preparing to regroup. “Righto, well, we’re on the way, still about 20mins out”, confirms Gethin. Mirbana shuffles over a little further, Basco sizes up what’s going on, the transports move over, Basco continues to squint over at Mirbana, then puppets her mech to shift her into the rescue zone too. Nice of Basco!
9/10
The surviving mech moves to Aeric and fires, missing, but impairs him with suppressing fire. Aeric blinks into invisibility and seeks to move, the suppressor losing sight of him, and he skitters away.
Combat ends!
The transports have rolled away heading towards the road leading to the airlock and landing pad. The rest of the team follow along behind. Gethin looks impatient, tapping his feet and asks his two ‘hack-it-fix-it’ people (Benno and Basco) if there’s anything they can do to make them faster. Benno says “um, now, whilst they’re moving?”. Then remembers that removing the software on the fuel injectors may speed us up from 20 to 15mins, but seems unproductive. Benno looks over to Basco who asks what on earth Benno is talking about. Basco looks again and recognises them to be electric vehicles, so squints back at Benno. Basco says that opening airlocks will be the thing that slows us down.
10 minutes into the journey along this road we each look over our slightly roughed up mechs, but trundle onwards. We also receive notification our marine corps on the drop pad are under fire.
Ahead of us, those at the front of the column spot a bright flash of light then a loud BOOM and the entire column are flung to the floor by what feels like a hurricane, and our mechs decompression alarms begin to shriek in our cockpits. We are pinned, feeling like we can’t stand up, and the smallest mechs begin getting dragged along the floor and the transports start to get sucked towards the landing pad. As Gethin has fallen off Benno, the winch is deployed to snap onto Gethin, and Mirbana’s flash anchor snags Aeric before he bounces further down the tarmac, then Aeric uses the moment of respite to find an alley to reduce the drag.
Basco has to look after himself, so uses his jets to repel the pulling and then clings onto the vehicles to reciprocally steady themselves and the transport with a bit of extra weight. It’s not enough to stop the drag, but Basco isn’t bouncing around and a nice hard upcoming turn will stop things. Above the scream of depressurised wind, Basco hears the scream of the people in the transport feeling things slip away from them.
We spot on the biofeedback that some of our marine troops are taking casualties: one likely dead, 2 critical. Sgt Stannac is still healthy, so Gethin buzzes and ask what’s the good word. 20secs later, there’s the sound of heavy breathing, and Stannac quickly responds “yessir, landing pad airlock breached by stray Aun energy round. Lost a man and 30 civilians. A number of injured and we can’t move till the pressure equalises, so the casualties can’t be tended. What’s your situation?” Gethin confirms ‘we’re caught in a bit of a wind’, ‘about 10mins out’ (assuming normal movement). During this conversation Benno is slowly winding Gethin back to the Mule-harness.
Gethin asks for some bright ideas…one suggestion from Benno is to shoot up the doorway big enough for the cargo ship to get in. Otherwise 10-15mins will take to equalise. Basco then says more or less the same thing as Benno and Gethin says it’s a fantastic idea, so Gethin points his solidcore gun and punches another hole in the dome. It holds for just a second, then BOOM again and the entire panel and several of its neighbours are forcibly exploded into space. Prepared this time for the feeling, we feel the force pulling upwards but don’t get pulled away.
Benno confirms to Gethin we have to get to that dropship, and Aeric does his best to help gunless, which for once earns a bit of a tut from Gethin. Looking around we see the refugee column from the mine, and people are huddled wherever they can shelter from the wind: in houses, etc., and we see marines and security personnel dragging others to cover. Outside of those being sheltered we do not see any bodies near the airlock - they’re clear of everywhere since they’ve been sucked out into space, alas.
Benno leaves Gethin flopping around firing his gun at the sky, and Aeric tries to ferry some stragglers into groups. We feel the flow of pressure dropping significantly, and things calm down…but the mech suits point out this also renders the atmosphere unbreathable. Aeric spots the leader from the mine and a couple of other planet mechs from the distraction mission in our company. Then he takes vantage on a nice high spot..away from the hole in the ceiling Gethin shot.
Gethin orders: “straight ahead! Drive drive go!”. Then “what about the civilians?” on the radio, Gethin remembering there are a lot to deal with. We note the dropships (Milk Cart and Special Delivery) are still intact but pilotless as they prepare the main refugee ship, so Aeric remembers the pilot for the ship the pilots are priming for takeoff can take command once prepared.
Benno finally hops a lift with Mirbana (so long as his rocket launcher tags along) as he prepares to set his mech to self-destruct (he hasn’t discussed this bit with anyone). We start the hard march of 2,000 people into a ship, so that’s like loading up 6/7 airplanes. As we move the refugees towards the ship we see the Aun has regrouped and begin to march on the launchpad.
Prepare for combaaaaaat
As civilians move out from the wing and onto the shiiiiiiiip
“Holdout”: 6 rounds of onslaught, starting with 4 points. At the end of 6th round, tally up: -1 pt for every enemy in the red zone at that point. If score is 0 or lower, we lose.
1/6
We see a first wave of 7 mechs, advancing on our dropzone. Benno applies a stabiliser to Basco then moves between the shipping containers, locking on to one to derive its statistics and vitals (HP: 18, Armor: 1, E-defence 7, Evasion 9, speed 3, Hull 2, Agility 0, systems -1, engineering 1).
The first shell arcs into our dropzone, and we get blasted. Gethin and Mirbana are blasted back, and Gethin is knocked prone, so he hops back to his feet, spots the mech Benno scrutinised, and fires again…missing but mostly cooking himself.
A mech charges in and up to Aeric, missing the attack and leaving himself open to Aeric’s vengeance. Gethin calls to Aeric to dispatch this villain. Aeric lands a full blow, follows it up with the knife and eviscerates this mech in a whirlwind of blades.
Another mech moves towards our position so Basco moves back out to counter its advance, punches a shell into it, rocks it back and returns to cover. A further mech moves forwards, building speed, and launches himself through the shipping crate, flattening it, then turns on Basco. Mirbana heads to the mech and fights back, marking it, then a mech moves up and hits Benno’s mech strenuously, shredding it.
Another grenade loops into the Gethin-Mirbana-Benno nexus, and both Benno and Mirbana’s mechs are destroyed by this grenade. Eeeeeek! Mirbana once again misses her dream of sharing a mech with Benno.
2/6
Mirbana flings herself out of her busted up mech, moves over towards the Security detail demanding another mech to blow up, and the commander instructs a security to dismount in anticipation of Mirbana’s re-entry. Meanwhile Benno also works his pile of molten metal, before Basco is jumped by another mech, who also destroys further cover.
Aeric, being the person best suited to deal with artillery at close combat, blinks over to one, and begins cutting away. One strike does the job and it is sawn in half. He then moves halfway over to the next artillery, sizing up trouble, but sadly for once Aeric isn’t invisible. Having seen his friend carved into pieces, he directs the cannon straight at Aeric but the shell whizzes over his head. He panics and turns to flee…slowly.
Aeric calls over to Gethin, who notes his field manual, notes he needs to shoot stuff, but also needs to stabilise. So he swithers a little, and decides now is the time for being bold, so just overcharges and continues to blaze away, targeting the one near Basco: just as he breaks through the cover and raises his weapon, he takes a laser to the face from Gethin and drops dead. Gethin continues his laser-focussed war cries and melts another mech, albeit at the price of quite some heating.
A mech sidles up to Gethin whilst this blasting away was ongoing and tries to sneak a shot in which lands. He takes a glancing blow which stuns Gethin, whilst Basco tries to technologically invade the shotgun mech, which works, ejecting his power cores, impairing the mech. Basco then moves behind Mirbana’s fallen mech, then shoots away too. Glorious strike lands cleanly, with no reflecting damage, and punts the mech back a little, slamming it into Benno’s fallen Mule-mech.
Some Military Police mechs arrive to back us up. They looked jazzed but deeply untrained. At least they may be fodder whilst the adrenaline pushes them on.
Two more Aun swordwielding mechs and a fancy-looking mech with some purple trim on its white armour plates appear. It is clearly directing the other mechs, gesturing to those advancing and so on. It brandishes a shotgun in one hand and a pistol in the other.
One of the swordwielding mechs goes up to Aeric and in a panic swipes air rather than Aeric. Gethin trots over to Basco and lines up a fire on the artillerymech near him, fires two shots and absolutely flames it out. The smoke alarms start going off in Gethin’s cab as he’s pretty warmmmmmm. Enemy mech then tech attacks and locks on to Basco, before firing on Basco and Gethin, who are peppered with bullets. Aeric halts his charge on the artillerymech now dead and instead faces down the swordwielding mech appeared next to him, knifing away, and ⅔ of the blows slip through the parrying attack. Purpletrim commander sizes up Aeric’s backplate and levels his shotgun at him, missing, then commands his troops forward. Basco does some tech attacky stuff, to little avail, then misses with a shotgun blast too. Another swordmech moves up to one of the MPs and connects. Mirbana hops into the cab, presses some buttons and starts firing machine gun bullets everywhere, destroying one mech and settling on another, with a rifle shot in between reflecting back on Mirbana. The remaining enemy mech shoots and misses against Aeric too. Benno hops out of the cab, jams a USB in and a bunch of rocket launcher firepower nearly hits our dropship, Gethin shakes his head forlornly. The MPs now take a chance to attack the enemies before 2 more sword mechs appear and one shotgun mech
The mech on its last legs attacks MP2, cutting him through, RIP. Benno fires his rocket launcher and has more luck this time, obliterating the mech who just killed the MP, before clambering over his dead mech to look over at the purple trimmed Aun. A mech finally lands a blow on Aeric as a carbon-fibre sword cuts into him, but Aeric partially parries it then gets a chance to riposte. He does so very nicely, destroying it, before his head spins around to spot a new target and he springs over to a new mech. During that spring a burst of static on wideband rings out, we see a shimmer of a shield and he reloads his shotgun. Aeric now starts on the next mech, then lands some shots on the other. Purpletrim gets on top of a shipping crate and Basco sees an opportunity to strike, but sadly misses. He then drops MP1 with a single shotgun blow, then sees a chance to pistolero Mirbana who is hit, the slugs punching into the mech and exploding on impact. Gethin flushes his heat then fires on purpletrim, with no luck, then shotguns Mech has another fire on Basco and Gethin, with variable success. Basco goes for purpletrim and gets a miss then a hit, to limited success, then misses with another shot. Mirbana has no luck at all with the machine guns but connects with the rifle. The other mechs advance and MPs 3 and 4 start shooting at incoming mechs. Mirbana survives another attack.
More mechs pile in eek! Benno then hops off his Mech (telling Gethin he’s actually leaving his mech), then moves towards purpletrim in an attempt to jockey it. Sadly he fails to jockey him and feels now very exposed and squishy. Mirbana panics and begins firing machine gun rounds at purpletrim, both of which hit (although the rifle in between was paltry), then shotgun mech flies through some terrain and comes right up to MP3. Aeric then comes up to defend Benno’s honour also, causing more structural damage to purpletrim. Aeric then does a wee bit more piercing of armour, then shotgun mech straddles over and attacks Basco. Basco then moves to that one and fires on it, then slams the mech into the mech behind, then Basco shoves it up so Gethin has a nice good line to fire his hardlight laser. He then ties to jam the swordwielding mech in front of Gethin, and hits with another shotgun blast. It then reacts by hitting Gethin, but not quite enough to cause some structural damage, so Gethin heats up the solidcore gun. Alas it takes a while and was apparently set to ‘cold’ for the first 2 shots before it warms up and hits the third. That one is obliterated. He works back up the line with another weapon, hitting solidly with each. Remembering his field manual which says “if your enemy is jammed, strike away as much as is humanly possible before they can react”, he heats up some more and prepares to fire again. He does indeed kill it off, before his reactor sets off some stressy alarms.
Purpletrim now shakes off Aeric’s stunning blow. MP4 tries to kill the one stabbing him to death (obvs), missing with both shots. Alas, the adrenaline appears to be wearing off. Another mech charges up to Basco and the edge of the dropzone, hitting Basco for good measure. Finally MP3 aims at shotgun mech, in the hopes of dropping another, alas not piercing the armour. The final enemy mech charges up to squishy Benno and meched-up Aeric. Aeric shakes off the attack and as purpletrim moves, lands 2 blows on him. Benno also fires his pistol at purpletrim, but it goes wild. Purpletrim now climbs Mirbana’s mech corpse, surveys the crowd and avenges his dead subordinates by firing on Gethin but misses.
2 more mechs appear, leaving 7 hostiles in the picture, and we need to keep 4 of them out of our dropzone. Aeric spies glory and aims for purpletrim, seeking the killing blow. Alas he has a mare, missing most shots but lands a good blow, and overcharges; despite being impaired the opportunity is too great, but misses. Purpletrim then boosts something towards the dropzone and, fearing an opportunity attack, doesn’t move and fires on Gethin. Gethin cops the blow and is absolutely mech-destroyed, oof. Benno then hops onto Purpletrim and starts tearing wires out and generally being a mischief. Benno then calls Gethin, in his burned up mech, who unsuccessfully fires ordnance, before Basco gets fired upon. Basco then fires on a mech and knocks it out of the dropzone temporarily. He does the same to the other mech then tries to invade and puppeteer the mech to push it further away, but to no avail. Basco overcharges and then fires a shotgun blow on purpletrim and blows his guts out, flying off the back of Scheherezade, before spinning round and elbow shotgun-butting the nearest enemy mech. A mech boosts into the dropzone and hits Mirbana, ripping off her manipulators, then MP4 lands a small blow on the same mech. Enemy mech moves towards Basco, Basco sends a warning shot which misses, so steps up and hits him again. The mech therefore boosts in and attacks Basco in response. Mirbana steps back and ices another fool, then overcharges and clean the clock of the other one.
Combat ends
The dropzone is protected, the fortress defended, and the refugees flock onto the ship. The Aun’s attacks become increasingly panicked as Whisk(e)y squad repels the attack after attack. Over the crash of weapons we get the commcall - “time to board”! Running up the ramp we get on board, only Aeric in his original mech. Hardlight pings off the hull and the vertical thrusters push us up before tilting to the sky we rocket off. The stranded Aun left behind, and our own bay packed with civilians we get out of the way of the killcloud - one hour later it’s pulverised by the Vanguard coming its way. Presumably smearing some Aun too.
We identify the Ecumen cell whilst on the dropship and are all too willing to share info with us, so we make a rendezvous with the Thermopylae, and we and the Ecumen are quickly transferred to the ship before it makes a near light jump after the killcloud, leaving the cargoship alongside the heavily damaged Yalta to make its own way slowly back into system.
We have to print the heck out of new mechs, as the only one with nary a scratch on it is Aeric’s. We all get a wee promotion too which is lovely. The Ecumen give all the info willingly, no torture needed, whilst the Thermopylae races back into system. Aeric very much wishes to view the interrogation, which is far too soft for his liking, prior to the intelligence officer renditioning them. We receive info!
They’re then whisked away by the Ship’s intel officer for a thorough debriefing.
Meanwhile, the Thermopylae has charged into the system at near light, firing off warnings to passing ships and getting back to Omninet asap. Although our warning means that Battlegroup Comet and is able to decouple from the blink gate, the gate itself was destroyed by the killcloud, and the Cornucopia system is now abandoned 50ly from reinforcements. Then, hundreds of Aun vessels are spotted on the edge of the system. Just as the union was prepared to do battle, the fleet blinked out and back, before properly engaging. The war has been raging 6 months whilst we get out of Light speed, getting ready to join the fray.
It’s been 2 months for us on ship since the events that ended the last mission (6mo on the outside); after being involved in some earlier pivotal moments in the start of the war, 2 months instead now for us of boredom punctuated by helpless stress: what can passengers do during ship-to-ship combat but hope we aren’t punted out into deep space to suffocate? Downtime activities during a lot of near-light-speed, some ship to ship combat etc.
Benno has been tinkering with his Lancaster, doing lots of on-the-fly test-engineering seeing how easy it’ll be to work the exterior whilst his AI works the inside. Gethin is reading his reactor manual then hears a noise as Benno or his AI cause a crash and cacophony, so Gethin puts his nose back in the book. Benno exchanges some words noting the lots of reading Gethin does - at which point Gethin drags out the field manual. Benno proffers his copy of the manual, rakes Gethin across the coals about not supporting/recovering the refugees, etc. and Gethin uses his considerable relative age and experience to weasel out of his responsibility for nearly leaving the refugees high and dry.
Gethin also splits hairs between prisoners of war and occupied peoples, and Benno asks why Gethin is still commanding a field squad if his home planet in doing ok now. Gethin seems happier with this bunch than returning to an older planet. Gethin then looks surprised that Benno isn’t voluntarily here (and Benno makes the point noone came for his planet). Gethin suggests Benno quits and finds another job, which is more passive-aggressivism given his obvious disdain for Benno as a Union soldier. He finishes with “you should believe in what you do”...pep talk. Gethin says he’d put a word in…although Benno would need to train for some software skillin.
Basco has spent the best part of the start detoxing, sleeping it off etc. before hopping into some simulations on his Lancaster and Tortuga, honing his techniques, trying to fire 3 shotguns at once with 2 limbs, dealing with some pretty impressive recoil and the failure of his targeting system last mission. He does this for a few weeks, scans the metrics and assesses his help, and somewhat disappointed, he turns to Mirbana who has been watching the simulations whilst eating popcorn and cheering him on. Following a gruelling training session, Basco leaves the cockpit, sweating and heads to the terminal to check his stats, curses loudly and exchanges discussion with Mirbana. He feels like he’s slowing down (perhaps just cold turkey?), so Mirbana uses her contacts to hook him up with a one-time session to boost his morale and triple-shotgun firing skills. Mirbana really enjoys this morale-boosting session as it looks pretty kick ass when viewing the sim.
Gethin, recalibrating his reactor, and heads to the quiet bar for his pre-bedtime beer. He’s handed a pamphlet by Benno who suggests Gethin sees what Aeric is up to, so after filing paperwork, heads to one of Aeric’s little discussions circles, mostly to keep tabs on him. Aeric’s discussion group is intellectual but dogmatically pro-union (noting his party represents 15% of the committee so not a small coalition partner), a pure echo chamber, into which Gethin sits and struggles being a bit more pragmatic than this methods-based dogmatism - especially in their gossipy discussion of perceived recidivists on the ship they’re on. Gethin certainly isn’t overtly worried about Aeric: “a little zeal is a good thing in an act of war”, then heads out to have his bedtime beer. Gethin decides over that beer that maybe coming to another meeting later on, leaving with further literature to read between the visits.
Aeric takes some pointers from Basco’s ‘salt of the earth’ fight tactics e.g. the shotgun recoil damage-dealing and engages Basco with some mech sparring. Mirbana watches this too with great enjoyment! Basco teaches Aeric a bit more ranged fighting, general tactical manoeuvres, and they throw down. Aeric enjoys this rough and tumble and gets to try out his new mech.
Mirbana solicits Benno’s help printing a new nice big mech, a Drake, with a pretty crazy gun, which is nice. Benno even hops in the expanded compartment to show how the gun works, very entertaining! Lucky Mirbana. She also suggests to Benno he doesn’t quit his job to become a boring software developer.
Apparently the war is not going great: it being 50yrs to get reinforcements due to the blink gate going down, that’s a bummer too, so morale is down. The mood on the ship is a mix of upset (50 years to get home?! So…most of the family won’t be seen again, that sucks), and also helplessness/acceptance that there’s no real way to change that. Just gotta get on with the job.
Whiskey squad get called in for a briefing 2 months in into the briefing room Aeric is so familiar with from his round-tables. Our briefer arrives, and up comes a holographic display of the Cornucopia system - a single star system with a number of planets, but the only major one is Cornucopia. Our briefer continues and she zooms into a map of Cornucopia showing a number of continents. “I know you guys (and girls) have been chomping at the bit these last couple of months and hopefully it’s time to get some action again. The Aun fleet currently controls much of Cornucopian orbit, although defences around and in Boundary Industrial City (eastern continent) are preventing them from completely controlling orbit. 2 months ago, the capital Cornucopia City was struck by orbital bombardment; the delta banks are deformed leading to flooding. The majority of the surviving population moved north to Garden Port, where there is a large space port, perhaps hoping to get off-world but is now a slum/refugee camp surrounded by Aun forces who allow refugees in but not out again.”
A smaller column, 10,000 headed North east upriver hoping to get to Boundary Industrial city, but have become stuck at the pass in the mountain range, there is a small force of Cornucopia at Basilisk forward operating base in the pass holding up the Aun advance, next to a mining facility. There’s not enough troops to protect the column, and command have selected Whiskey company as the spare to assist.
Tomorrow: near hardlight crash in Cornucopia, will skim the atmosphere and drop Whiskey plus marines. Col Valery Kovalev (sp?) is the report at CRG and he (sadly) will be leading the route. Journey will take several weeks. Questions! Temperature and oxygen totally fine. Temperate -> Taiga territory and climate levels. The issue is the route choice isn’t set or sorted and with 10k people rations as well as safety pose problems for the group.
We get 24hrs to prepare - but before we leave, we also are told “I can’t afford to have some wet behind the ears CRG junior officer fresh out of academy overruling you, so because of that congratulations are in order: Lt Gethin becomes Cpt Gethin - acting major - and all other members become Acting Lts!”. Although eager, the CRG troops don’t have much in the way of combat experience so those with more knowledge will be needed to lead them.
Major Gethin gets a salute from Captain Benedicta von Mellenkrot (sp?!) - not worked together but shared ships for a year or so. The major remains injured so Benedicta is pleased to work with Gethin. Obviously we’ve done a drop, right? Ah. When the navy mean it it’s ‘being fired at high speed at the surface’, which we have NOT done since training. The speed and terror of it all is the best way to avoid air defences. Gethin reassures that we’ve trained for it. The mechs get loaded into the Gravedigger, charming name, and we disband getting ready for the drop/crash.
Aeric lets everyone know that he’s not going to be as quick as he used to be and that he’ll be more grapply and rammy, just so there are no surprises once we hit the surface. Everyone realises he’s humblebragging and he’s still very fast indeed. Benno finishes attaching things - he thinks the unraveller has morphed into something else, which confused and upset the mechanics. We get the hanger prepped, and the Borean engineer Yutina(sp) is prepping the dropshields (streamlined heatshields to protect the mech as it’s fired at the ground). A vertical rocket means we don’t just rely on gravity - ballistics being what they are - but there are also retro thrusters and a nice hard deploying air break and parachutes for the other end. 5% fatality rate on these kinds of drops. Eek!! Heavily fortified ones could be 80% fatality rate and are really only for speed being of the essence. Double eek. The marines have drop pods designed to take 5 each and there’s a heated back and forth argument about this pod with the marines and some engineer bloke who’s wandered up. Apparently the argument is about wasting ammo when hurtling at the ground, whilst the sergeant points out those defences may save the lives of those in them.
Gethin calls Basco over and asks him to check the fella’s code out to make sure his reprogramming won’t destroy the point defence system on the pod. Basco asks Gethin if he’s just looking to be told he’s right. The troops snap to attention as Lt. Basco steps up, plugs in and reviews the code. The defences fire thousands of 2mm rounds to stop missiles fired at the pod. Basco reviews, looks for 2nd opinion, calls Benno over, and confirms the code uses the spare ammo up, and since noone can shoot the rounds on the ground, might as well use it all. Benno makes the point: what if we’re in the way?! Basco suggests some ‘friend or foe’ ID might help optimise and reduce collateral damage. Benno suggests a sensor mesh to optimise, and Basco turns to the coder and says “good work, Private”. The original yeller looks thundery but doesn’t yell at Basco, now it’s been quality checked by a Lieutenant.
Basco now turns to his mech and decides which 3 shotguns to rock on his mech. We then head to our crash couches for the rapid deceleration into Cornucopian orbit, alarms blare and we sprint to our mechs with their lovely shields on and we’re lowered into “launch tubes”. Yeah right, as good as they sound. We then hear the ‘thunk’ and the Gs hit us super hard as we’re launched towards Cornucopia. We speed up, then go weightless and plummet.
Aeric begins singing a Union anthem over the comms and then gets a rock music blast in response. The rockets above then fire to speed us up whilst our suits ensure we don’t black out as the Gs pick up, and as we go through the atmosphere we gain Omninet. Although encrypted we have access to the CRG codes so can track useful information as we head towards the continent below, starting to make out the mountain ranges below, and Basco links in to see if he can discern further and we get INCOMING and a blaring alarm as our sensor systems hear something locking onto the pod(s). Countermeasures and defence systems kick in and we spot anti-aircraft measures but mostly rangefinding for artillery: which we discern air aiming for the firebase we’re dropping towards. It’s definitely under attack and we’ll be coming in hot. We get options:
A force of Aun mechs are moving towards a fortified line held by infantry and mechs staffing the wall. A large building with a flat roof and some turrets pointed skyward is available in the fortress and some hard cover too. We hurtle to the surface to varying degrees of accuracy of landing spot…
(mission objective: defeat the enemy and seek to prevent Aun from breaching the barbed wire, lest the CRG are scattered in fear)
0 The downward thrust rocket stops and we freefall, leaving us up to pulling the chute (barring being unconscious, then the automated systems kick in to ensure we don’t turn to jam). Benno pulls first, air brake kicking in and slowing him down, breaking away and the chutes then do their thing. The pod’s side panels fall away, wrecked by heat of course, and Benno starts drifting groundward. A few seconds later Acting Major Gethin does the same. Thanks to a late landing Mirbana almost splatters her new comrades in arms, and Aeric lands solidly in the fray, feet from a pair of stunned quadroped Aun mechs wielding lances.
1 Aeric whips out his chain axe and as he charges an Aun mech, he raises his hand and a hardlight buckler is pointed at Aeric, blocking his way. He still attacks, of course, but his sense is it doesn’t do as much damage as he’d hoped. So he goes in to grapple following that! Meanwhile one of the Aun mechs goes for Basco, kapow, trying to hit with a lance and hits once. Mirbana trots over the barbed wire, spins up the gun and locks on to one of the drone-controlling Aun. Mirbana is then hit with flechettes and gets another shield pointed up in her direction; Benno drifts down groundwards. Drone controlly Aun steps up, fires a swarm of drones up into the air and then flies at Aeric. They start popping and burning Aeric as well as covering their allies. Basco notes that these people aren’t profoundly dodgers, mostly they stick shields in their opponents’ faces, so does some tech attacking on them. Another mech looks up and fires on Benno’s floating form - so Mirbana stops this attack and forces him to attack her instead. He charges her with the lance too. Mirbana soaks this up. Gethin meanwhile fires whilst also floating serenely to the ground, dealing pretty impressive levels of damage for someone drifting around. He dispatches the first mech, destruction begins. The mech being grappled by Aeric has no option but to fight, lance flailing around, and the fellow next to Aeric and this grappler launches a barrage of drones at Aeric, adding to the soup of fiery drones around them. Aeric is pushed back by the barrage.
2 Mirbana is called by Gethin to get to learn her new mega gun, which hits but the shield does keep the lethal bullets away, before she misses with another weapon. In response he scoots over to fight Gethin instead, inside the perimeter. Benno then spots this mech running over, hands over control to his AI and starts flitting around the outside of the mech and also runs a check on the mech’s statistics. Aun then burn the heck out of Mirbana, before failing a third tech attack, and Aeric now commences his attacks, clearing out of the dronecloud, then the mech next to Basco seeks to stabby-lance him. Basco responds by making lots of lockons for future shots and Aeric then lands some blows. A mech once again opens up on Mirbana who is now stunned, immobilised and impaired! Gethin takes a nice load up and barrages with the many guns on the mech next to Basco. Gethin absolutely scorches this mech off the battlefield, scrubbing it from existence. The mech next to Aeric once again trys the ol’1-2 with the lance, hitting once.
End of R2: Benno is landing next to Mirbana, who is burning, stunned, impaired and immobilised
Gethin commands Basco to save his life, and Basco launches a wee barrage but fearing to hit Gethin misses his first before landing a second blow. This mech then tramples away, stomping on Gethin, before firing on both; Gethin takes a direct hit, is immobilised and his batteries explode. Benno then points at Mirbana’s mech, wreathed in plasma fire, and directs his AI to snuff it out, and locks on to an opposing mech to drill it for details (Blue Armour 1, 20 HP, Hull -1, A 0, S 4, E1, Sp 5, Ev8, ED13). The same mech recharges his swarm which surround him again, and fires on Benno and Aeric’s mech. Mirbana shakes off her stun and sees the mech hissing thanks to the AI deburning her. Aeric then gets in a grapplebattle with an enemy mech. Aeric fights instead with some splendid weaponry then the last enemy mech fires on Mirbana and Benno’s mech.
Round 4
As a reaction, Gethin rams a fuel rod through the enemy mech, lighting it up and its burning carcass drops to the ground. Aeric then uses his chain axe and chops into the mech he is next to, but as the mech won’t drop he is utterly enraged and starts slowly overheating as he continues to whale on it. Totally worth it as he drops the mech straight afterwards, then he sidles up to one of the remaining mechs. A new swarm gets dropped on Aerics head before he and Mirbana are targeted. Aeric gets hit but improbably Mirbana is missed. Thankfully that gives Mirbana a chance to fire her heavy guns and absolutely swiss cheeses a dronecloudswarm fella. The remaining mech goes for Aeric and Mirbana again, burns both then tech attacks on Aeric too. Benno hops into his cockpit as he is wreathed in flame, argon gas smothering his flames, before he clears Aeric’s burn and in the midst of firing a harpoon at Aeric asks if it’s ok. As long as he’s not held back, says Aeric. Gethin and Basco get to have a go now, although they’re on the other side of the perimeter so Gethin walks :O up onto the platform, and lines a shot up on the remaining mech, which hits neatly. Basco wanders up menacingly and the remaining mech flees at top pace but alas not as fast as Aeric, who eventually stalks him down and eviscerates the mech but hopes to seize the pilot for creepy interrogation like stuff?
Combat Ends
As the last of the Aun mechs drop a cheer goes up from the CRG manning the remaining defences, a freshfaced lieutenant runs to Gethin, standing awkwardly to attention and snaps off a salute. Exchanging pleasantries, Gethin asks for Col. Valery, and the Lieutenant [Seminov] confirms he died last night…and that Gethin is his successor. OK, so Gethin asks for the ranks to be assembled, perhaps on a parade ground, but there’s only a muddy field. Headcount: as of now…200. The line is being held by them but we appear to be clear of combat. Gethin says therefore he should go and ensure the line is held whilst awaiting further orders. Seminov decides to go and do that head count then. Gethin calls us together into a planning meeting and Aeric suggests we do a sitrep of the area and check inventories for the likely march ahead. Seminov comes back and Aeric relays this need to get a runner to collate this info (ammo, duration hold out, food, supplies etc.).
Knowing this was once a mining complex, we view the hastily dug trenches and the reinforcement of former mining areas to act as defences. The one nearest to where we landed, we spot a couple of large weapons mounted atop, which look like point defence railguns on spaceships. They are pointing at a 45deg angle with a radar dish behind. Further back from the line we see tents, then further still (500m from the front) we spot the start of a huuuuuuuuuge collection of vehicles (commercial), non-military tents and emergency shelters - the refugee camp of civvies. Soldiers line the wall, some at rest, and we spot several mechs amongst them (Everests and Shermans). They rigged up ammo printers and a line to feed them straight up to the guns, not bad. Ammo isn’t the issue, the 2 week supply of food is. The Aun make periodic attempts to get behind the line whilst rear artillery do take pot shots. Fear is if the radar gets taken out of the guns go down, they’d be in a heck of a lot of trouble. Gethin orders Basco and Benno to review the convoy, all vehicles, assess for hardware and software. Basco points out 10,000 people means a lot of vehicles. Benno shrugs, hops into the Lancaster and wanders over to the first vehicle whilst Basco continues to grumble. Gethin has already turned away, ordering Aeric to review the military command, and Mirbana to review the civvies aid and food, ensure all is well with the refugees, noting sunset is 4hrs away - and the goal is to leave tomorrow AM! Aeric intensely questions Lt Seminov to establish the best way to assemble a convoy with formations adept to fighting off attack and protecting civilians.
Seminov is the highest ranking surviving officer but the 15 surviving mechs are their own units, and are well trained enough in their machines. 10 AVs ranging from troop convoy to tanks are present as well. The 200 units remaining are the uninjured ones - the casualties in medical tents just now. 10k civilians is therefore nearly 50 people to each troop. A shield is therefore out of the question, better would be troops on intercept to head off, concentrated at the front (even if there are middle and rear units to protect). The severe lack of anti-air capability will leave the convoy horribly…unless Benno can mount the railguns on top of some armoured vehicles? Aeric pings Benno and Basco to ask this question. Benno suggests the printer could knock up a flatbed that would hold a railgun. Benno suggests finding a few people with relevant licences or skilled mechanics could pull together and print the stuff we need. Benno of course is a jerryrigger extraordinaire so with these people, licences, printer, and stuff, reckons he can piece together stuff to carry all the heavy weaponry.
Basco spots the military section and goes scouting for mechanics, and drops out of his Caliban to speak to them directly. They snap to attention and salute, and Basco explains the need for heavy lifters to take the printers with them, and they confirm that there’s nothing in the pool to carry one, and the mechanic calls up the generic database to dig around for relevant licences. Printing some big hauler trucks with flat beds may work? Bearing in mind the road is…more a track. Cross country. Alternatively an Armoured Personnel Carrier on tracks? Basco says the latter, and some personnel to stitch together. Round up the engineers! Basco points over to Benno, and a mechanic jogs over that way. Basco asks if the rest of the pool has any problems, but quantity is the only issue, and that the people can’t be carried, most will have to walk.
Benno now has a chat with the lady mechanic about preparing to move the printer, keep one of the 2mm guns back to give us some cover as we move on, and Benno is presented the licence options to move a printer. The mechanic also discusses adding legs to a truck, but it’d need to learn to walk on them fairly quickly. Benno waves over his mech and suggests Basco could partition some of the code to enable the new printed machine to mooch. The guidance gets plugged into Benno’s mech and suggests the AI cracks on playing with building a mech who decides after some iteration a hexapedal model might do the job.
Mirbana talks to the civilian leads about food supplies (2 weeks); speed (at a limp), and travel options (plains: 4 weeks, exposed, no resupply; cut through mountains: 2.5 weeks with no problems arising although via river - adding more time and needing boats for everyone (adding another 1.5 weeks!)! Boundary River was a major supply route to BIC - materials, goods and food). Third option - longest route: 5 weeks, along down to coastal town then on to Boundary Industrial City (the centre of which being a large Arkology, built across the river, holding printers and industrial equipment). We check omninet to work out if coastal town is still functional since it’s been attacked, and Mirbana assesses her humanitarian backhistory to work out if the subsistence death march across the plains was superior to the ‘take the coastal town route’ in the hopes of a resupply point. Mirbana reports the options back to Gethin (withholding the ‘I’d be more confident nothing goes wrong on the plainswalk if it wasn’t Gethin at the helm’ for herself).
Sun sets, the printer goes full swing, and the troops direct us to the former Colonel’s command tent, and we ask Gethin the plan. Gethin confirms they’re all pretty awful. Basco asks whether BIC will meet us halfway and give us support? Gethin mutters and doesn’t know. After a lot of discussion the decision is “stealthy 2 weeks in the mountains to the river town, hope it hasn’t been bombed to shit, that we have boats for 10,000 people, can resupply, don’t get slowed down, lots of hope…”.
We have time to print 2 6-legged trailers, one for printer, one for railgun, joy of joys. Benno bolts the radar equipment to his Lancaster too. Basco has a look over the radar and looks to optimise the railgun based on his Aun intel. Gethin asks Benno for repairs, who points him to the Lancaster, who uses its new tablet as a means to communicate as Gethin puts in his order.
During the night we are subjected to more bombardment, before we awake to the Union anthem played on a futuristic instrument operated with all 4 limbs that sounds of whalesong. Very soothing. Gethin seeks to rig the fusion reactor and other items to blow as soon as overrun by enemy units, and we prepare to move into the the hills. Benno sets the printer to print a self-igniting charge and as soon as the power drawer is open it sets a runaway fusion although Gethin’s “Print an Aun Detector” option is also up there. In the end I think the decision is some sort of feed to know when to let it blow.
Our Vanguard force sets off followed by chivvying the 10k civilian column to begin their trail of tears, along a track without any sort of paving. Benno’s walkers have been made and Basco hands over the walking code, and we set off (shakily at first). Around noon we hear the sound of artillery, and rearguard report the base is being hit; the barrage lasts a short period of time and silence descends, as we trudge eastward along the ‘road’. It’s unclear if the position was taken but rearguard are away and we are successfully on the move.
Basco has sent his drone up for a personal A/V feed, but the base is too far off for Basco to assess one way or the other, keeping an eye but importantly nothing stalking us. Until 4hrs later when Gethin receives a panicked message from Rearguard noting they were attacked by fast moving mechs who have caught up, casualties incurred. Gethin checks if they can deal with it themselves (no) and if they need help (yes). Gethin sighs, then calls Whiskey company to ride to their aid. Or waddle.
Aeric arrives first, seeing smoke rising from a burnt-out vehicle, infantry and mech crouched behind it firing at something in the distance. It’s undulating hills with some scrubby stuff that looks like purple gorse (Joopleberry). Aeric sets up a feed and tells them to hold firm, “whiskey is on its way”. Tough to lock on to these quick things, apparently, and Aeric spots them: just bigger than a human, Callaban size, appearing to hover/fly a foot off the ground, moving exceptionally fast, whipping in, firing and pulling back. The weapons appear to be low power, and Aeric wants to either deal with it or be sure we’re not being pulled away as a diversion tactic as the column keeps moving. Aeric also notes these dang things quicker than he! Gethin asks Benno for a lock-on, which he can get a systems lock when they move into range. Gethin fails to land shots before Benno hits, then we hear a big sonic boom and see 3 big lancers moving at us as well as a couple of zoomy blue mechs hiding behind the shrubbery.
Aeric races up, tries to land a hit with his chainaxe but despite surprising agility misses the strike, then one zippy lancer drops his shoulders and presents a missile rack, going for Mirbana, Benno and Gethin, fires above our heads then disintegrates, raining glitchy stuff on us invading our systems, and our reactors spike. Aeric calls on Gethin, who presses a long series of buttons before absolutely melting a mech. Noice. Another mech moves into range, jams Gethin and pistolas Mirbana before Benno smartguns the one Aeric went for, killing it - noice.
A red lancer cuts through Gethin and Benno before turning to strike him, then second strike on Gethin. Pow pow. Mirbana spins up her gun and drops a nice big metal shield on Benno, then a lancer shoots up to Basco for some melee nastiness. Basco dodges it, absolutely blasts the heck out of a mech around it then steps to the one near Gethin, using some e-attack on it after the more usual ballistic approach.
Round 2….
We get lit up again by a nearby mech before Aeric swings into action, this time connecting successfully, before trying to ram it on its arse, which he does. He then stands over the mech and delivers a coup de grace, before turning to rush another mech. Benno’s sensors then pick up a new aggressor who punches some armour piercing rounds into Mirbana, stunning her. Benno spots a white Aun mech with gold trim, decloaking quickly enough to snipe Mirbana and then blink out. Benno then lines up a target, looks to Mirbana to hit it (stunned), then Gethin (jammed), rolls his eyes, unjams Gethin then asks him to shoot it after all. Gethin uses overwatch to hit, then Benno locks on again. Sensing trouble around it, this mech now seeks to reply by charging through Gethin and Benno before Basco swings round and re-balances Mirbana from being stunned. Mirbana shakes that off and absolutely lets daylight into a mech, although in the process she pops the back off her reactor, oops. Gethin now turns to a remaining mech seeking to end it so he uses his small laser rifle at the lancer, finishing that one off, then the Aun sniper looks for a new target, picking Basco’s rig and ripping through it with another burst. Mirbana covers her reactor back up then misses a pot shot on a zippy mech. The mech then cooks Mirbana and pistols on Basco. Benno - having braced - is unable to move so instead takes a shot at enemy which lands sweetly - and then hops out of his mech. The Aun sniper blessedly does not shoot anyone. Gethin walks :O towards the enemy and lines up a shot on Aun sniper fellow but sadly misses, so has another crack with some heat loading him up but sadly fails again. Sheesh. Gethin then calls on Aeric with his nippiness so he scoots up and uses his long reach nanocarbon fibre sword, landing a blow and doing the job, Gethin looks proud. Basco now gets to move over the tough terrain.
The sniper tries to line up on Gethin who screams “Brace Brace!” before getting slit open by this Aun monstrosity. Basco then calls over to Aeric who swoops up to him, but is held with the threat of the sniper reloading if he does move. Dilemma. So Aeric hesitates, feints, boosts over and tries for a single shot. Aeric spots him despite invisibility and lands the blow, woo! Aeric then seizes the moment, literally, by grappling him. He also lands a smaller strike at this time, and a piece of structure sloughs away, impairing the sniper. Benno locks on to the Aun sniper and downloads his info then throws to Basco but before then the Aun lets a shot off on Aeric then blinks out - moving away and getting out of sensor range. Aeric thinks about going after him but is warned off it.
The units holding fast behind the burned out car: held fast. What compliance.
Aeric radios central and vanguard for reports: nothing unexpected. Good progress from Vanguard, making headway well, no sign of enemy. Rearguard has lost a tank, a few dead, several injured. Aeric checks with Gethin, who’s absentmindedly looking at his armour, and Aeric bolsters the rearguard with some central troops. The rest of the day’s travel goes relatively uneventfully. We make some repairs to mechs (well, will do next week?!).
4 days down the path, no further encounters, the hills are getting steeper, taller and alive with the sound of a whalesong anthem instrument. We wind through, and are making expected (not particularly fast) time - unlikely to run out of food before too long, thankfully, but who knows what happens next. We are in the command tent with Whiskey company plus some Quartermasters and other useful personnel.
No settlements on this route, nor large explosions behind us suggesting the base may have been taken, and Aeric checks in with scouts who report maybe seeing things in the distance tailing but no concrete sightings. The anti-aircraft gun fired once, a couple of days in - some sort of UAV trying to flypast, and was engaged and destroyed a few miles away. Nothing overhead since. No comms from the settlement ahead of any kind (omninet or otherwise), no news, noone seems to be there actively reporting…
The 10k populace continue to march with us, some deaths, no mutinies (nowhere to go).
Benno takes a look at and repairs Mirbana’s mech, the through and through mushroomed rather significantly. He retrofits the printer, fixes the mech and continues tuning up the vehicles of the convoy. Benno is also scoping out hovercraft options for the vehicles and mechs etc. (fans, skirts etc.) for when we hit the river. Some tinkering and test prints and general planning is used and tested (hovercrafts working on land too).
Gethin has been doing his usual not-much-besides-leading, “heroically”, reading his manuals, instructing people, and delegating the administration of the column to Mirbana what with her admin/humanitarian skills. He has retreated rather and isn’t exactly open-cockpit-policy to the general populace.
Aeric has found no Aun spies. To his chagrin. Following the attack and things have calmed down, he’s roamed around with Gethin’s permission, left the column and scouted actively looking a the ground forces tracking. Likewise Aeric spots people in the background but does go further to investigate - definite signs that a force of mechs is shadowing the column, moving parallel. Amongst the hills it’s hard to spot - sometimes close and surprising they haven’t been seen, trace shows trampled vegetation and some campsites where the pilots have stopped overnight. They seem to be making better time, too. The groups are 5-6 with some occasional single mechs. Aeric relays this information to us and sizes up a potential ambush using Whiskey Company.
Basco has been “problemsolving”, handling issues of dissent, upset/frightened people, encouraging requisitioning of items people are struggling to give up. Some complaints follow about ‘brutality’ and ‘theft’ which Mirbana files in the bin, and Basco spots items being squirreled away which need to be requisitioned for the greater good. Mirbana tries to charm the crowd, handling the admin, keeping the lid on the most simmering tension and louder voices, but there are ominous rumblings and people aren’t happy with the situation, and some who think they would have made better decisions. Mirbana tips off the most seditious to Aeric, explains to the folks that Gethin’s military prowess is in the vanguard making plans, not glad-handing civilians.
We skip to the next morning, camp broken, we mech up and the vanguard head out; an hour after starting Gethin gets a comm from the forward scouts who report that they have spotted a number of destroyed vehicles up ahead. Trucks! Whiskey are sent to front and Aeric is proposed by Gethin to scout up ahead in case of a possible ambush. Aeric scouts ahead and looking over the hill sees 4 burnt out trucks - recently burned out (some smouldering), so a possible ambush is on the cards, narrowing the path down into a valley. Basco launches his drone to assist with scouting, and sees nothing obvious on the slopes, no thermal imaging hits etc. etc. Aeric approaches closer, bodies now visible: armed people. Aeric also sees some small arms damage to the vehicles but they were clearly burned after the fact. Benno notices that the hole that he patched on Mirbana’s mech was very similar to the holes on the vehicles, and assesses the directionality of the attack. Reports give news of survivors fleeing to the North away from the direction of fire. Gethin gets a report from Aeric and shunts the workings out of where the trucks and people came from. We cannot infer, especially a colony planet. These are generic Cornucopians. We discuss options - are the fleeing people to the north a honeypot? Do we send a small scouting crew? Do we press on? Aeric kindly volunteers to scout, but then thinks a) over the hill they may be slaughtered, b) we may get jumped. Gethin remembers we only have enough food to get to the river so any delaying will result in even shorter rations but in the end we’re given a hard clock - no more than half a day off route before having to turn around.
Aeric find a camp - scattered fire, signs of hanging out here for some time, and waits for the party to catch up so we can all head down to take a look. The camp is a total mess, some lean-to shelters and tarp to cover, some signs of a scuffle and amidst the camp the ground is stained with enough blood to suggest fatalities. But no body! The campfire suggests it wasn’t scattered on purpose, just burned down. There are tracks heading further along the slope - these look similar rather than like enemy mechs etc. we continue along the trail, it’s getting craggier, ravines etc. and our mech sensors pick up shouting from down a crevasse…Mirbana suggests Benno unwinds the winch; Benno suggests attaching one of us to the winch to go and assess the damage! Benno asks Gethin if he’s going and Gethin suggests us all going(???). They call for help, Aeric asks his pillar question, he can’t ask. He goes get a headcount (just 1, broken leg, Dave, he ran from the camp and fell into the crevasse, “buggers left me”). Basco shins down far enough to see the surface (some rockslides etc. fallen in) and Basco finds Dave stuck at the bottom along the slope with a rock pinning him down, 137 hours style. They swop some idle chat, and Basco applies some first aid before attempting to remove the rock. Basco attempts to tourniquet high up the leg above the crush point, digs out autoinjector kit, picks over the vials and loads up a syringe and administers, then discovers the rock is alas too hard to move on his own. Benno tells him to wrap the winch around it! And Basco does. The Rock rolls away, and Dave doesn’t scream thanks to the drugs.
Basco removes Dave to a slightly wider location for lifting out, and Benno winches both back out. Mirbana points at the wound and shouts “plasma torch” and Benno wields it ready to deliver a cauterising blow. Alas Benno just succeeds in guaranteeing the leg is no longer. Better get printing a new prosthetic…
Gethin asks him where he’s from…a farm 30mi south of here apparently, there were 32 originally - from here it’s unclear where the remainder went, but we note that having only been split from the convoy 4hrs we’ve got some more time to continue pressing to the survivors. Basco’s drone is pressed into service for some more scouting, and Basco also asks what their intention was post-camp: “get on the road and head east again”. The farm? Weird looking troops rolled in and set fire to things. The troops looked to be scorched earthing rather than killing the farmhands but “these ones in the hills thought differently”. When asked about stores and silos “there are more to the south scattered across the plains, certainly nothing within 50 miles”. He’s been to the city in the east before, lotsa boats, canoes, canal boats etc. so maybe he’ll fall in with us. Dave asks if we can find the rest of the group, and we assess that perhaps as much as half a day has passed since Dave got ravined. Aeric picks up the trail and follows at a hustle. Again another not-quite-ravine but steep sides, and meanwhile the drone overhead is giving a view of the terrain, and the drone reveals what looks like a party in the ravine, hiding from something and as the drone is directed round for another pass, something strikes it from above and we get a view of the camera spinning before the signal drops. Basco shares the bad and good news, Dave is chilling in Benno’s spare compartment, and we decide to head in and flush out the enemy, heroically rescuing Dave’s mates.
Map
(Rubble is a 3hi difficult terrain, needing hull/agility checks to scale)
Looking above a huge eyeless 6-winged creature with a heavily armoured beak is plummeting out of the sky directly at the group, long armoured legs with grasping claws, and dives on Gethin - failing to grapple it squawks and instead rakes Gethin with his claws, ouchie…
Combaaaaaaat
Aeric gets the call from Gethin and gets stabby, lashing out at the bird, connect but fails to grapple it, so then launches some flechettes which connect too. Another bird then dives in and goes for Gethin too. This time he is neatly grappled and it drags Gethin away to higher ground. Mirbana spins up a cannon but misses, a few rounds peppering the bird, before Basco also has an equally unsuccessful attempt and appears to be swept away by another bird! Benno mines the birds for data. Basco shotgun pistolwhips the bird grappling him and he falls to the floor. Gethin then fends for himself, although he feared falling further. He does at least land a shot on his bird foe.
The bird carrying Gethin keeps on flying, we wave bye-bye to him. Gethin thinks to takes the law into his own hands, but he does remain still in the talons of the bird so calls to Mirbaba. Mirbana attacks the bird nearest her which she hits, before spinning up her other massive cannon. Then another bird goes for Aeric, and Aeric strikes back before Benno pops out of his mech, locks on to a bird, gives Aeric another swing of his sword, then another bird swings in and leans into Aeric to grab him and the grapple is hotly contested - Gethin gets the bird in a headlock so it doesn’t get to fly away with him. Aeric shuffles away from his bird and shins up the rocky outcrop Gethin is being swept away from and goes for the bird clinging to Gethin. Alas! He misses. The last bird to move flits over and hits Benno. Gethin warms up the gun, locks on to a bird, and delivers a blow fit to cook the goose whole, then locks on to another bird after. Basco steps to the bird who hit Benno then aims a couple of blows at it, connecting with both, knocking it back and stalks it like prey, Elmer Fudd on a hunt.
Combat continues!
Big Bird comes over and shreds the heck out of Mirbana, and Aeric uses his many limbs and weapons to set to the bird who swooped Gethin away. It does fly away, this time without Gethin. Gethin shakes off his wounds from being carried by little bird and terminates it with extreme prejudice. He then cooks the other little bird too. Big bird then has another go at Mirbana, destroying her assault rifle. As it pulls away she peppers it with some unspun shot - it recoils and we see blood, but as it shifts one of its wounds seems to seal/clot incredibly quickly. Mirbana then spins up her super cannon and drops a shield to tide her by. Benno now shifts round and torches the Big Bird before Basco wanders into the shield and lobs a grenade over Mirbana into Big Bird’s face. The grenade pops a bunch of spikes, sticking to Big Bird, and Basco waits with finger on the button ready to pop said grenades. They pop, after Basco helps bolster Mirbana.
Big Bird steps back to Mirbana and attacks again. Basco then steps to the bird, pings off Mirbana and pushes the bird back, cursing out loud at his lack of anti-biological weapons, nestles in between Mirbana and Benno, and keeps a lock on Big Bird. He then uses that to blast the hell out of Big Bird, managing to take off 2 of its 6 wings. It then ripostes on Basco. Mirbana misses with her superheavy rifle, then Benno moves and locks on to Big Bird, giving Basco another shot on said Bird which connects again and shunts it back. Gethin then absolutely rips through it and finishes it off.
Combat Ends
Aeric nips over to the cowering civilians - 20 of them, indeed Dave’s mates and family. They were fleeing the Aun and heading to the safest town. He reassures them whilst Gethin asks for help getting off the hill he’s stuck on. The civvies should be able to cling like limpets to Benno, the rest scattered across the rest of our mechs. Aeric jogs on scouting ahead, and we make it back to the column with 21 extra civvies. We look for some more info on the river city - one thing is that it imports a lot of food (including from their farms) - and they reconfirm having heard nothing from them from a week ago and omninet was down. A week ago? Asks Basco: the node may just be jammed rather than taken down.
As the column moves Benno continues investigating editing vehicles into hovercrafts. Gethin is hopeful we’ll find more farmers (and fewer birds). Gethin expresses some concern that by the time we reach river city there’ll be no food left and the civvies will starve, but Aeric is cool with this since the pillars mean everyone will be provided for and in any case if we thin out the aun spies in the ranks, more mouths to feed.
Aeric pulls together a team to forage and on day 1 comes across a herd of large, dog sized mammalian herbivores to hunt. They prove stupid and easy to hunt. Returning the same day, worryingly as the column comes to a halt, one of the hunting teams has not returned or reported in. Aeric heads out to find them and their data suggests no movement for the last 3hrs…worrying! Gethin canvasses opinion about what not moving for 3hrs is (unusual? usual?) and whether we go for them. We follow the trail and it’s sunset when we reach their last known location and as we approach our thermal imaging equipment picks up burning - smoke rising, likely the light vehicles used for transport.
Aeric approaches warily from the high ground, looking down and then descends on the area to no attacks. The hunting party, comprising Cornucopian regulars and some civvies with hunting experience - the vehicle looks hit with a large-cal round and the troops gunned down with a mix of hand-held weaponry plus mech-sized firearms. All bodies are accounted for, so one option is now Aeric and Basco to follow tracks to the ambushers…but with sunset landing it’s a no-go. Some trails were 4legged and the ambush took place where at least some of the infantry came down from ambush position to pick over the bodies, before departing. The trail leads east, and is enough to follow for now. We follow the backtrail for some hours (it’s night now) and given we’re moving fast than convoy Gethin ok’s this. We find the location and trail them. Mirbana fancies going in hot, rather than set up our own ambush. Well, there’s some back and forth in this regard but we decide to keep chasing the trail down. (Another option was Basco and Aeric ‘stumbling’ across them and running back to us, leading them into a firefight).
So, we trail! Plan is to find (quietly), set up and kill with extreme prejudice.
Basco lays on some hacking power to lead them astray, somewhere sensible to them but in an enclosed space to cut off a retreat. A few hours later, we notice the trail has shifted somewhat in the direction Basco dropped his e-bait. Before Aeric flits off, Gethin prepares an inspiring speech, a ‘make or break’ ‘depending on us’ ‘you can do it’ stuff, v. stirring. Aeric nods then tries to move fast in order to set up a most effective ambush, point out locations and prepare to fire. We see him sneak away rapidly and gets his lay of the land. Benno spots some ambush machinery - traps, rockfalls etc. and is keeping an eye out for further, to miss these traps and reduce the risk of alert, which he does with aplomb. Mirbana uses her assault skills to visualise success - prepare the perfect attack with Aeric’s assistance.
Having lured the ambushing party with Basco’s false beacon towards a box canyon, we set up in varying positions to land an ambush. 3 mechs approach from the South, several of which are carrying infantry. They dismount and head into the canyon - as we watch them head in, sensors pick up a 4th mech cloaked.
Infantry: camouflaged but similar to seen previously, similar gear,
Visible Mechs: one slim 2-legged, sensor package (array etc.), rifle. Other 2 are both carrying long-rifles with other equipment strapped to their backs.
Invisible mech: is invisible.
Stat blocks:
Radar Mech: A, Sp, E, ED, H, A, Sy, E, HP
Sniper Person: A0, Sp4, E13, ED9, H-2, A2, Sy3, E1, HP12
Mirbana saunters in to partially block their retreat, and in doing so the invisible mech spins around, spotting her and the rest receive orders. They begin scanning the ridgeline for more trouble as well. A sniper prepares a shot on Mirbana, which rips through her and she braces against it. Benno seals the canyon and locks on to the invisible sensor mech. The infantry and mechs wander over Basco’s spike mine but it lamentably fails to affect them.
Scouty robot mech moves forwards and we see it point to each of us in turn - so um, they know where we’re all hiding. Are we ambushing them or they us?!
Aeric gets a dart in his shoulder that shreds and renders him unable to turn invisible…then the enemy all do turn invisible. Hmmmmmmmmm. Aeric stabs and rassles a nearby enemy, but fails to grapple it, before another mech turns and espies Gethin, sending a shot towards him. It lands, Gethin being the lazy shambling sort, and the enemy shifts over then Basco sends up a nice big cone of flame out in the general direction of the invisible enemy, smashing them back into one another, murdering one but missing another. We hear movement and some clanking - but don’t see it - then a flashbang fires out of the invisible cover. Basco doesn’t get dazed by this but a shotgun blast following up connects. He then drops a smoke grenade. Gethin tries to fire on the invisible smoke cloud crowd before the infantry get to their weapons - firing on Aeric, missing, then sending an anti-tank attack on Benno and misses too.
Basco steps to the mech in the centre of the smoke cloud and fires a flare shotgun at it and the edge of the artillery. He misses the mech, clips the artillery, and knocks the mech back on the gun recoil, sending it slamming into Aeric, and dying. “Nice!” says Aeric, as the mech body slams into him and blows up, killing the guy inside. Basco then steps aside, seeing Gethin line up a long blast that Basco wouldn’t want to be in the path of. Aeric lurches in axing the enemy some questions. Deeply unsatisfied with the question axed of the mech, Aeric overcharges to get some more damage in, wields the nanocarbon blade and connects very handily. Aeric hands over to Gethin who aims at the Infantry with his very big gun. Sadly he has little luck with it. The infantry then turn their sights to Aeric, but miss with both attacks, then turn on Mirbana but miss too. Meatbags. Mirbana unfolds some tiny cover and pops a shield.
The sniper reloads, then moves - Aeric spots this movement, and cracks him with a sword which clanks a bit of the mech off. Benno locks on to the infantry and fires a smartgun at the sniper, which alas misses due to invisibility.
The mech deepest in the canyon locks on to Aeric then misses with the locked on shot, before trotting away from Gethin. Aeric wants another crack at the invisible sniper who shuffled away, steps to it but misses. Desperate to kill he strikes again to no avail. Ugh! Then the sniper, tired of a lifetime of shooting from range, just decides to blast Aeric in the face. Aeric reacts with a damaging attack causing his invisibility to drop and tries to wrassle him again, and despite getting a look at him he can’t grasp him, grabbing air instead. Aeric gets a good look at him tho - pure white with gold trim, and the Aun symbol emblazoned on the chest of the mech. As a mech - it’s mostly gun. Like, all gun and some limbs for bracing, and a tiny cockpit with the pilot in. He scuttles away up the side of the canyon. Gethin fires a massive solid core shot over at the Aun, but misses - he ducks out of the way neatly. We then see the sergeant commanding the infantry stand from the ‘hit the dirt’ the infantry supposed, and after standing salutes the Aun mech and bows, then turns and points to the Callaban - at which the infantry stand and launch fire in a kamikaze-style reckless attack. The bullets mostly ping off Basco’s armour. The sniper then turns invisible and attempts to flee the battlefield; Basco then flare shotguns the kamikaze infantry. Mirbana fires in anger as she really wanted to kill the sniper, instead finishing off the infantry with a barrage of heavy cannon fire.
The remaining mech, with the sniper having fled, seeks to impede our attempts to catch sniper-commander and whips out a shotgun and shoots at Aeric (missing) along with a flash grenade - which goes towards Basco but sails well oer his head.
Combat ends
As the remaining mech is terminated with extreme prejudice, but the sniper commander is dust in the wind - impossible to track, using the grappling hook to bounce from outcrop to outcrop, no go.
We head back to the column which takes about half a day, after plundering any useful tech from the Aun we could, and the defenders reported no incidents; a scout drone spotted signs of movement to the north several miles away, not moving to intercept either the column or Whiskey. It’s project time at the column; Benno continues to make hovercraft legs and skirts, Gethin tries to get more information about the party to the north, but Aeric still sends out the foraging parties - “you gotta eat”, getting them to report to him, keeping an eye out for Aun commander. The scavenging parties are no longer raided, which adds to the fairly meagre supply, but no attacks nor sign of Aun (bar a few small trails). We’re half a week out from “Boat Town”, and have food to get us that far at least. Basco suggests planning for our arrival - what to expect when 10,000 people and Whiskey company rock up to Boat Town, and Gethin says good idea - delegated. Delegated with acting deputy commander of Whiskey! Basco keeps quiet so Gethin hands it on to Mirbana. Sadly there’s no way to discern this with noone fleeing west, no way to send a drone or Aeric (our food gatherer) so Mirbana asks some half-hearted questions and feeds back the verbal equivalent of a shrug to Gethin.
We see some cargo ships in dry dock; around the industrial centre there is a residential/service centre, and a lot of housing between us and the port. We see some movement inside the town! Vehicles driving around - trucks, civilians, wheeled and legged but not yet hovercrafty. The river span is not super wide (enough for the cargo ships in dry dock), and Aeric scans the horizon for more info narrating what he sees (burnt out vehicles dragged to the side off-road), small-scale skirmishes? Gethin suggests finding a central command point for the town, and ask them if they have enough food for their population “and maybe a little more”. Aeric trots down to Boat Town and gets all very Union, take me to your leader stuff. He’s seen and people rush off to get ‘the mayor’ and a car pulls up and a woman in middle age hops out in a smart suit. Mirbana, seeing this on comms, is very pleased indeed at a strong female lady running this town. Aeric - a little bedraggled from foraging and scouting, snaps off a salute, and the mayor nods back. She is Mayor Alexandra, and Aeric replies. She asks where we have come from (Firebase Basilisk), but Aeric walks back a bit more (Thermopylae, rescue operation) and she asks how many of us we are (and notably says ‘your union ships’ which implies she’s not strong for the Union).
Aeric explains we’re evacuating Cornucopia city, and she says that’s a long way to come…and Aeric hits her with the 10k population en route, at which point she blanches. She asks what our plans are - evacuate? Head down river? Mayor says “we’re quite happy as we are”, but are happy to do their best to accommodate our movement downriver. Aeric reminds her this isn’t a favour, she’s Union whether she likes it or not and should help us out. But really she wants to get us out of her hair, albeit whilst helping Cornucopians out. With the column a day away, the mayor will organise supplies and help set up encampment just out of town. She notes her population is ‘on edge’, having seen Aun in the area, and some small clashes with her security team a couple of weeks ago, but no problems since. No current ships but the port has printing facilities. She turns and heads back to the car, directing some orders to underlings via comms along the way - and police to lead Aeric to the encampment site. The police seem to be pretty wary, but trucks head out of town and set up camp, tents, supplies, strategic base for us, but don’t make chitchat and really don’t fancy Aeric wandering around.
Aeric is looking about and notices the mayor has an odd accent, but isn’t quite placed. Basco listens to some playback of the mayor and whilst he can’t place the planet, he thinks the mayor is from an outer world long way from here - Dodona, Borea, Calvary, Dawn Throne etc.
Hovercraft printing continues, the camp continues to be watched by the police, Aeric calls to announce a Union inspection of dock facilities. We are issued a military vehicle to get us to the dock so we de-mech and are driven into town - we see no civvies but buildings with lights on (dusk falling). Apparently there’s been a curfew for a few days as Mayor Alexandra is concerned about saboteurs. None have been caught…yet. Up close now we see some of the burned out skirmish sites; Aeric asks about those fleeing - early on some left but most of the town are still here. “How come there are so few boats?” “there’s been a bit of an incident at the port”...hm, understated. At the port there are more police, and they are all armed. The way into the port is blocked (there were police checkpoints on the way too).
We all get out, and are approached where it was explained there was a large fire a week ago that took out boats and port facility, Gethin asks to have a look anyway as some of our members are “quite ingenious with repairs”. As we enter the port it does really look like several buildings have been razed. The cranes look damaged too, and Gethin studies this person to see if they aren’t letting on less than they know - but in fact they’re just not around all that much and are new to the info. Basco suggests we trot in and Aeric suggests looking at the last 2 - which need repairs as they’re old rather than fire damaged. They’ll take 2k passengers each so we are well short of the number required. The big printer was also damaged (chin scratching emoji), but the smaller printer can maybe only sort repairs on the ship, the big printer that prints vessels is offline. Gethin thinks how fishy this ‘fire’ thing is and maybe looking for Aun spies/saboteurs is a good idea. We think about how to repair the big boats, and if they could tow etc. kayaks, longboats, flatbed barges….and what can print them with the big printer out. Benno checks the big printer out - might take a week? Mirbana suggests posting sentries around the dock to ensure there’s no re-sabotage, and Gethin decides rather than rushing marines in we should check with Alexandra before rushing them down here.
From here we (except Benno, who has rested up at camp) head to dinner - we are called another car, and are driven to Mayor’s House at City Hall. A number of heavily armed camo-clad roughneck police (like Carabinieri not Police) are outside the Hall, and we are led inside. Gethin spots some printed defences with some anti-tank artillery behind it. Gethin is actually sizing up to work out if we can take them in a fair fight.
Alexandra and Gethin discuss stationing marines outside printer plant, he says 50, she thinks 5…and Gethin insists. Alexandra points out the Union isn’t as beloved on this planet as people think, recalling the Union’s role in the first civil war (and absence in the second). After a bit of back and forth it’s agreed to shuttle ‘some men’ in the morning.
Aeric goes fishing around at camp for some small scale weaponry, handaxes etc., ahead of sneaking into town. Benno agrees a bit of stealth is wise and Aeric and Benno head off, unseen at first but Benno is spotted whilst heading down a street. A shout rings out, and they scurry away and get to the port which is more heavily patrolled. Benno looks at the fire patterns and establishes someone has poured fuel around and burned stuff. Classic arson. Aeric meanwhile wonders if it’s just a printer error that overflowed and caught fire…but it looks pretty sabotagey. Benno casts his mind back to us rigging Firebase Basilisk to blow and wonders if this is the same ‘rigging to stop occupiers using our resources’. Aeric wonders what the thrust of Benno’s thinking is and Benno says “what if this lot are the occupiers?”. Aeric gets super arch eyebrows. Aeric suggests breaking into a house to speak to some curfewers and see if we can get a story straight. Benno waits in an alleyway whilst Aeric sneaks to a back door of a single dwelling and knocks. A fairly frisky 80 years old middle aged fellow opens the door, and Aeric announces himself as ‘security forces, sorry to disturb you but I’m here to ask you some questions’. Aeric pops his foot in the door to wedge it and this alarms the fellow who unchains the door and opens it cautiously. Aeric asks to enter, and the fellow surprised at the politeness opens the door, backs up quietly and says ‘yes’. To business: “Have you heard about the new arrivals?”, he replies “new arrivals?”. Aeric explains the column of refugees, and it’s obviously not news to him, since he hasn’t broken curfew. He also asks where Aeric’s strange accent is from. When Aeric says he’s union the man scowls and spits on his own floor. Aeric says “look, Union’s changing, the NSC, we’re bringing change and the mistakes of the past won’t be repeated again”, hands over a leaflet and begins missionising. Back on track, the old-timer notes we ended in martial war 2 weeks ago, is unsurprised the dock burned, the mayor is 2 years in post and has mostly done right by the city, but the increasing local police goons is problematic. He notes “the war hasn’t actually reached us”. Aeric has pumped him for enough information so the ol’ fella goes back to bed, with his pamphlet to read.
Back at dinner, Mirbana is pumping the Mayor for info on her rise of power, elected by the nobles on the back of a political profile largely around objecting to the 5 years of war-footing since the fall of Borea. In retrospect perhaps this is a silly line to take, haha, but not like very self-flagellating on this clearly mistaken opposition. We’re also introduced to the Head of Police, and he is wearing his trad police uniform. The camo clad goons outside are his too. With them at dinner are a couple of others - a permanent secretary to the Mayor and a Deputy/Vice Mayor.
We’re still listening to her accent and trying to place where she’s from, and how this all ties in to her being mayor here, do the timescales line up etc. Meanwhile the rest sound like locals. She’s obviously been here long enough for her accent to drift. During a lull in conversation, Basco says “Miss Alexandra, you don’t sound like you’re from around here”. To which she says “yes, you’re right, I’m not. In fact, I thought your accent sounded local yourself, Borea?”. “In a sense” says Basco. She’s originally from Dodona, travelled a decade (a year here being 1.5x cradle standard) ago. “Shame about Dodona” (she left before the fall), “yes, it is, although this is my home now. I’m sure the same will be prevented here”.
Basco also asks “so what’s up with the Omninet?”. “Er, now, that we’re a little worried about - sabotage? It went down a few weeks back. The node here seems to work but we can’t seem to get a connection and are unsure why. I’ve had people working on it but to no avail and don’t want to risk anyone’s life sending them to the next node over”. Gethin asks where the next node is, and sizes up Basco either fixing theirs or going to the next node to scope issues out. Basco suggests we can have a look, send diagnostics down the line etc.? But this suggestion is dismissed, i.e. her techs have had a look.
So Gethin thanks her for dinner, we get a car home, Gethin expects vehicles plural the next morning, then back at camp asks marines to get 50 ready for tomorrow. Gethin suggests getting mechs ready, weapons spinning just to be mildly intimidating.
Aeric debriefs Gethin - they really are locals, but it’s still sabotage at the dock.
Gethin reiterates all the marines are going and they won’t take “no” for an answer.
Plan for the next few days?
Aeric puts together a command structure for refugee commodore of the printy fleet, with some admirals. Aeric gets a hovercraft and goes downstream with a refugee admiral checking they’re confident they can navigate, it’s navigable, deep, safe, wide etc., but magnetic anomalies about on sensors. It’s clear that Aeric is driving over a laaaaaarge chunk of metal at one point - but impossible to see with the silt etc. but it’s not clearly there to scuttle something running over it.
Assessing our downstream portion it’s pretty clear we won’t have supplies to get us all the way downriver to BIC but may be able to augment with stuff gathered from here and/or via fishing. Aeric asks the mayor, again, whether any townies wanna tag along and she brushes it off like ‘they don’t seem like they’re in any danger’ - and we still haven’t accessed and civvies, who are still unusually curfewed, dawn and dusk. Very few out and about. Hmmmmm! Basco is listening - eavesdropping? - looking for CB transmits from civvies in town who are trying to contact, or listening into space for dropships and/or warnings of an Aun attack. Basco realises as per before omninet is down, the town itself seems to have short range chatter: mech to mech, security forces, local population. For longer distance things normally there’d be satellite linked comms: Basco doesn’t have good access to anything like that here, presumably as a lot of it’s been shot down. Basco doesn’t get much but sticks around for the local goss. Aeric is collecting trees to juice into maple syrupy goodness, yum. Benno tries to work out what he’s actually going to do with the trees, whilst also starting to make repairs to the printer. He realises there is no way some of this damage resulted from the fire: it’s increasingly clear the printer was sabotaged along with arsonry. Benno sends these via email to Basco highlighting the issues and Basco confirms it looks sabotagey indeed, arcwelder to exhaust line blahblah. Benno also explains the explosions look totally wrong from the flame pattern, blahblah. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5rRZdiu1UE
Amidst the instant messaging now Basco asks whether this is external agent or internal saboteur, and how there are Aun everywhere now (Benno realises he’s forgotten all of Aeric’s malarkey).
Benno stays close to port, Aeric with him guarding the printer (and Benno, who Aeric doesn’t know can’t recite the 3 pillars). Gethin orders the rest of the Company to be based there, seeing Aeric’s smart thinking.
5 days since our arrival, Benno has made great progress in making the printers operational, and it’s heading towards evening of day 5 when our mech sensor systems pick up the sound of explosions out towards the refugee camp. Oh no!! Panic calls from the CRG lieutenant left in charge of camp, and his small force confirming assailment is ongoing. Smoke plumes from the camp in our eyeline.
Gethin charges the marines to defend the printer and yells “clip me in Benno!”. In our 10min run through town, we churn up a lot of tarmac and lampposts on our way back to camp post-haste.
As we are heading to camp (another 5mins away), Benno is listening to chatter and sends Basco to decrypt, and as we see something punch through a tank, turning it into a fireball, and see troops firing out to the west along a hill-line but can’t see what they’re shooting at; Benno gets the decrypt back and sends a message suggesting we duck at artillery fire, and Gethin corrects that to ‘brace’. A moment later, all around us, the world seems to light up, blasts from either side and ahead, yiiiiikes. Dust plumes as the buildings disintegrate, Benno and Basco knocked to the ground by rubble (and thus Gethin with him). The road ahead of us is pretty blocked now thanks to fallen buildings…and clambering over the rubble comes a rather old-looking military mech, with a very large energy weapon bolted to its shoulders - it’s a mining laser which has been opportunistically connected up. It’s clearly dangerous and unstable - the reactor isn’t built to sustain this! - and it levels its laser at us. Just as this happens another one hurries out from one of the nearby intact buildings and our sensors also pick up some coming from the alleyways too. We’re somewhat boxed in by a hexagon of mechs. Thankfully, being warned by Benno-Basco, we get to act first!
Combaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaattttttttttt
Benno stands up, locks on to one of the mining-laser monstrosities and one nearby enemy, mostly to assess their statistics for the benefit of his gang, before a lazormech whirs into life and blasts a shot at Mirbana and punches a few HP out of her. Aeric spots another old backmodified mech wielding a chainsaw hand and a large-cal handpistol akin to “Bad News”. Aeric then just charges down lazormech on rubble pile and goes for it with his many weapons. Chainaxe slashes in, shreds it good and bashes it up, ramming into it, knocking it prone. He then attacks again on this prone fella, slice and dice, landing a super-solid blow which, thanks to the earlier axe blow shredding him, lops off a decent chunk of this mech - a heatsink?! - but does not end the breath within. That’ll make that weapon nice and hot tho.
A mech charges up to Basco, who salivates when it’s in his sights, but it’s so nippy it doesn’t allow him time to react, so an axe crashes down on Basco, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMpGdG27K9o
Landing a crunch on Basco’s frame. The fired shot at range misses however, phew.
Gethin stands up, dusts himself off, tuts at being flung from Benno, and finishes off the shredded mech Aeric had been pummeling.
Basco lights up the mech nearest him with some shotgun action, knocking it back and bouncing away, dealing a great old pile of damage but not quite killing it. Aeric gets ambushed by a mech running up on him, and Mirbana sees this and disapproves, so fires her cannon before moving it at hyperspeed ready for more fun in a moment.
Another mech slips up and goes for Benno, so Mirbana levels her cannon next to Gethin’s ear and warns the mech off. It ignores her, takes a cannon round to the face, then shoots at Benno (missing) and lunges for a melee attack too which does land.
Mirbana turns her huge cannon on the mech attacking Benno, and launches a good ol blast at it. It hits but doessn’t floor the thing. A different mech then tries to pick Gethin off of Benno’s frame, having seen his crazy weaponry dispatch a comrade. It misses.
Benno now shoots a stabilising dart at Gethin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFW-yxe13lo#t=25s
then locks on to mechs around him.
Basco is then attacked but poorly! Phew. He then gets some many shotgun decksweeping goodness going on, firing on all and sundry, to pretty overwhelming success. The mech then engaged with Aeric goes to town, axeing him a question he can answer, then Bad Newsing over Aeric’s head to no ill effects. Phew!! Gethin braces and then skirmishes, Aeric attacks lazormech, shredding it, then turns invisible, before a mech blows up Mirbana’s smaller gun but she withstands the blast.
Aeric becomes prematurely visible so tries to disengage from the mech next to him, who swings axe-chainsaw at him. It misses, so Aeric gets to run over and go for the laser-mech, hits with the first blow, but misses the next couple so curses and goes for an overcharge attack. After all the heat, exposing his reactor, he does get to hit the lazormech. Bonus. Lazormech goes for Aeric - he’s right in front of the mech, after all - and stuns Aeric. Gethin fires his laser at the mech directly in front of him and Benno, which is looking the ropiest, and the laser melts it to slag, so Gethin turns his focus onto the mech engaging Mirbana. The mech near but not engaging Mirbana moves and Basco spots that, training a shotgun blast on it, but it chases Mirbana and lands a blow, finally immobilising her. She who likes to stand still with big gun.
Gethin calls on Benno to get his targeting systems nice and warm, and the mech runs in from the top at Mirbana has a crack at her too, landing another hit on her before a secondary attack on Gethin atop Benno. Mirbana uses her mega cannon on one of the three touching her up, blowing it away, and Basco stabilises but uses his fancy reloading recoil cartridge ejection skills to bash the mech next to him, killing it. Niiiiiiiice.
Lazormech is looking at Aeric, stunned, exposed, vulnerable, and eyes him shrewdly before laying out an attack which absolutely smashes Aeric up. Aeric’s weaponry falls off his mech, alas, but just one mount. Basco calls on Mirbana who slams her cannon into the mech next to her, but the slamming causes her to become exposed. That gives the mech all the more reason to crackback and Mirbana takes an almighty lump.
Mirbana calls for Benno to work some magic, and he has a rare shooting gallery attempt, much to her pride. This hits, causing structural damage, to Mirbana’s great pride, before Benno throws a lockon back on it for others’ amusement. Benno throws back to Mirbana who is consumed with bloodlust and lands a corker of a heavygun on the mech next to her, sending it to mech heaven. Gethin now stabilises atop Benno, then overcharges to get a shot in on the last remaining mech, near Aeric. He lands his shot then calls to Basco to charge in and finish this sucker off. Basco does indeed roll in and provide a 1-2 shot, and Aeric snorts and comes around.
Lazormech sounds a serious klaxon which sounds like a self-destruct mechanism which begins counting down…he then ejects and Basco sees a glorious clay pigeon shotgun opportunity to pick him out of the air, absolutely red-misting the pilot ejecting. A light sanguine rain falls on Aeric and Basco’s mechs. Aeric and Basco flee the self-detonating mech, destroying most of the play-park nearby.
Combat ends…and session!
Aeric asks for a sitrep - coming under fire from hills to the West. Aeric says “for the union!” plays the whalesong anthem then asks Gethin whether we should outflank the firing from the hills to the west (20mins) or charge into camp (5mins). Gethin says we should plough on and Benno asks for one of the lazormechs to be strapped to him to take a look and see what can be salvaged. Aeric presses on, whilst Mirbana helps Benno to strap the mech to Benno, and off we go. Benno looks over the mech whilst Gethin interjects “helpfully”. No obvious insignia on the dead pilot, and Benno roots around looking for “stuff” (field manuals? Paraphernalia? Aun passport?). Basco hops on too and plugs into the mech for data dumps, and the mech seems very empty, not used for a long time, and looking back far enough the logs say these mechs once belonged to the police force here in the city. The lasers may well be city issued mining ones too eh. Basco says these people aren’t obviously Aun.
Aeric running ahead - whilst struggling to see what’s up ahead - but there’s return shelling (kicking up dust) up into the hills whilst the camp continues to be assailed by what appears to be hardlight fire from Aun mechs. Refugees are fleeing towards the town - the security forces unable to contain these people so they have stood aside. Aeric assesses a way up that might provide better cover etc. and heads up, diving out the way and avoiding hardlight fire, shoots a look in the direction of the fire, kills one and then doesn’t make out anything in the arising dust cloud - so nothing nearby, but no useable info beyond that. On exiting the cloud of dust there’s noone around. It definitely looks like there was more than one mech mind. Aeric asks Basco if the drone is picking up anything, in the hills beyond the hills. Aeric’s line of sight isn’t gooooood, it looks like hills. Gethin calls for a regroup, Mirbana calls the marines to check the printer is all ok, and whilst Aeric suggests rounding up the refugees that seems like a lot of cats to herd.
Benno suggests taking the mayor the ‘present’ of the mech and ask some questions of her.
Gethin calls the supply satellite left for us by the Thermopylae down as we’re all looking a bit ropeyyyyyyyyyyy. Aeric goes to chew out the Cornucopian soldiers for not posting sentries on the hills overlooking the camp, total rookie error, and sends a team up there in short order. 15mins later the satellite becomes visible coming in to Gethin’s little dropzone, a parachute pops and it slows down before drifting home. We have some swift repairs and find no assailing in that time - perhaps Aeric’s hill sentries have done the job. The civilians are now being rounded up and moved back to camp by the security forces. Gethin likes the idea of a coup so rounds up 50 soldiers to come along too, and we assess losses: 20/200 infantry, 3-4/15 mechs and some armoured vehicles.
After a couple of hours of repairs, Gethin starts plan “coup the town” rolling. Ideally the plan is to:
We’re doubtful raising a union flag will help with that but Aeric has a spare supply so heck, guess we’re flying one.
As we march past security forces with our column, some form into formation to try and stop us, and others radio for backup. Gethin prepares another classic loudhailer speech asking them to stand down, so the union can liberate the town. Alas this doesn’t have the required effect, they staff their barricades and tell us to stand down instead. Hmm, deadlock. Aeric then steps up, wielding weapons and telling them we can do this the easy way or the hard way, perhaps by calling down thermonuclear weapons from space. Some small-cal warning shots rattle into Aeric’s chest. Aeric tiptoes back a bit and the 50 troops take cover, knowing the next shots are not going to be warning ones. Benno seeks to reason with these troops, projecting a view of the Aun attackers on the hillside, and urge them to come together to help defend the town against this threat. They don’t buy this either as Benno is hit by an anti-mech sized laser. Mirbana takes massive offence to this and shoots at the person who fired on Benno, ripping through the infantryman, but the effect is a full on firefight, which takes out some of our soldiers. Them and the town guard are now at full on guns blazing repartée. Basco looks at this sorry array, and desperately seeks to assert any control at all. As light and heavy fire get exchanged in both directions, he activates his dust spewers to provide cover and shoulder-charges into the barricade to punch a hole. This forces a retreat, lest they eat shotgun cartridges.
Gethin marches his troops and commands a straight line to Mayor’s House (City Hall), keeping his soldiers calm. He fails. And is increasingly of the opinion he has insufficient troops. Aeric meanwhile tries to flip invisible to make his own route to city hall and - if needs be - conduct a solo assassination of the Mayor. He slips away from the initial combat and makes it across town to City Hall where he sees a loooooooooooooooooooad of mechs and other military units all gathered ready to receive the coup warmly. The mayor has been evacuated (or in process) and a sensor array then picks Aeric up and he finds himself pinned down under heavy fire. Benno decides it’s time to bring a building down on some of the mechs in the barricade, as he’s had enough of this and is properly riled. The demolition is, as with all Benno demolitions, superbly skilful, the destruction is perfectly dropped on a pinhead with no civilian casualties. The dropped building allows enough confusion and separation of battle lines allowing us to make a break for city hall. We reach Aeric under fire, so Mirbana returns fire allowing Aeric to get unpinned. Basco hacks the comms, looking for an overview of what’s going on around town, and that goes about as well as everything else has gone apart from the Basco shoulderbarge and the excellent demolition skills of Benno…comms traffic is flying everywhere, it’s tough to work out what is occurring, and he picks up news of the mayor being withdrawn and, ominously, ‘it’s time to give our friends a call’.
Gethin suggests we fall back, as this coup has been…not a glowing success. Looking around we also spot a number of troops heading towards port, oh dear. Forces are also being built up against the police station [the very one the mechs came from ehhhhhhh] and a warehouse north of the city. We decide that warehouse shoring up is sketchy as all hell so we head that way and see what’s occurring. We can’t see inside; armored vehicles are around it and the warehouse belongs to Boundary Industrial Mining Corp. Gethin asks whether this mayor and gang are ‘just’ union secessionists instead of Aun spies, but Aeric takes this as a means for us to kill them all. The mechs look like the same type (same design), painted black overwriting the police colours but not the same weird gear like lasers stuck on em. Gethin sends a message asking them to stand down and they instead just entrench their positions. Basco asks what’s going on and Mirbana reiterates they’re defending this for a reason so we should kill them all and find out. Aeric agrees. Charge!
Basco picks up a message saying ‘inform the war priest the grey demons are here. The plan is ruined. Set the det charges’ and then a message to the front troops ‘slow them down’. Fire opens up on us as the forces try to inhibit us. Basco curses loudly and sends us a copy of the message.
Combaaaaaaaaaaaaat
Aim: storm the warehouse and try to cut the charges and ensure we preserve what evidence there is. There’s a large door at the front currently defended which will enable all mechs to enter.
It’ll take a turn standing next to the charge to successfully disarm it (somehow).
5 rounds to achieve goal!
1/5
Benno advances and locks on to a couple of mechs to assess their dangerousness. Gethin is shot up and his batteries go a bit smokier. Mirbana moves to Benno and fires on one of the grunts, killing it. Gethin fires and kills a grunt but misses with the second shot before the enemy attempts to fire on Benno, gets warned off by Mirbana, so fires (and misses) at Gethin. Basco stomps up to grenade launcher fella, knocks it back, then uses the butt end of his gun to knock back the grunt next to him to slam him into the car, and the combined shotgun plus butting is enough to kill that grunt too. Now Basco is closer to this grenade launching mech, he can see backpacks on each shoulder with compressed air blast coming out of each (but nothing launched yet), and then he levels the grenade launcher and fires it, point-blank, at Basco. Thankfully point-blanking with a ranged weapon is harder than it looks and the enemy misses.
That leaves Aeric with one more wee grunt before the grenade launching mech is on hit lonesome. He boosts over and up onto the container the grunt is hiding behind, dropping down next to the grunt and sadly all that flitting up and over causes a miss. Alas for Aeric!
2/5
Aeric’s engaged grunt fights back using a combined assault rifle and knife attack, landing the rifle shot. Aeric doesn’t take kindly to his and runs the grunt through, before moving towards the currently closed factory doors. Walking over to the door, however, triggers a mine explosion and Aeric seeks to dive out of the way which he does with alacrity but still suffers quite some carnage. Grenade launcher mech’s compressed air blasts pop again, and he swivels and opens fire on Basco but misses again. Aeric gives Basco some moral support and he strafes, then gives both barrels to the enemy. He hits and knocks it back prodigiously, right into Mirbana’s crosshairs no less, then fires again himself and hits neatly, shaving off some more health from this remaining obstacle. The nice line of fire really helps Mirbana, who has a rough shot but connects just enough with the bullets finishing it off. She then stalks over in that direction, with an invisible mine appearing in front of her and exploding with a high-voltage EMP effect but she shields the worst of it with her mech hardening. Phew.
Benno now moves round the cover in the other direction, triggering a mine which stuns him, knocking him prone and flinging Gethin free. Gethin unstuns Benno and hops back on.
3/5
Aeric sizes up the locked hangar door and gets his chainaxe on it, chopping thru the door and revealing a long corridor flanked by 2 mechs at the doorway and another mech at the rear near a large fan. Aeric then tries to phase out and become intangible, then realises the corridor actually branches (and spots 4 more mech, eek). LOTS of open spaces and places to cause trouble for us…and no clearer where the bomb is…
The enemy fire on Basco and hit before Basco shoves Mirbana into the fray closer, who rambles over another mine, then moves along himself, boosting in and firing on those flanking the corridor entrance, then riflebutts the other, killing the first, knocking back the second. As Aeric remains blinked out, another enemy fires on Basco hitting again. Gethin falls off Benno - after Benno fires an overshield to support his mechmates. Another mech fires an invisible mine at Basco which sadly has visible damage. Mirbana scouts some mines, moves up, tries to defuse it, blows it up, but the scrambling fizzle doesn’t hurt her. Gethin blows up a grunt but doesn’t climb back on Benno…
Round 4/5
Aeric spots an improvised bomb to the south and radios it in. Mirbana walks towards the bomb, fails to shoot the mech in front of her, and stands there looking a bit thick. This one ripostes, blowing up Mirbana’s mech by cutting her off at the knees. She locks up in the doorway. Meanwhile Benno cuts a new hole in the wall near the bomb we have discovered to create a new entrance to said bomb. Gethin defuses it, kills the grunt near Mirbana’s wrecked mech, then calls over and asks Mirbana if she needs help. Aeric finds another bomb, oh dear. Basco peeks in another room - phew, no bomb, trots on. Grunts fire on Aeric, missing, but the next hits and punches him backwards.
Round 5/5
Aeric gets popped again, moves away and gets battered, losing a structure and gets impaired - but not enough to avoid defusing the bomb phew. Then he boosts over but gets swung at in process, connecting. He blinks away, thankfully not right next to a bomb. Basco, meanwhile, is indeed next to another bomb. Benno plows through another wall to bound over to Aeric, as Gethin curses him out for his recklessness. The mech Benno breezes past does indeed land a solid blow in the meantime. Gethin protests having nothing to shoot (despite a grunt being in front of him, so presumably nothing fun to shoot, rather than 3 potential targets). Then he fires, killing one, overcharging to fire on another, killing. The one Gethin couldn’t kill as he ran out of options fires back, missing. Mirbana hunkers down and braces for the inevitable explosion; a mineblower runs over to Aeric, Benno and Gethin and punts another mine out.
Round 6/5
Basco attempts to defuse the bomb he is standing next to. Thankfully, with one second on the ticker, he pulls the wire, bleep, phew. He moves over, triggers an EMP but isn’t blinded. Gethin shouts ‘big gun on closer one! Little gun on plebby one!’ then fires away pow pow pow, killing one. Benno then trundles over towards Basco. One of the minefolk punts a mine over knocking Gethin off his wee hoss. Benno also gets mined but not pushed. Aeric moves up next to Mirbana whilst watching the minefolk lay down a bunch of mines around the gaff. Mirbana ejects having seen mechs and mines, landing in the rubble of the wall Benno cut through.
No bombs go off! Yayyyyyy
The mechs continue to fire on poor Basco. Mirbana, lying in a pile of rubble created by Benno, calls for him. He trots over a mine and trundles over, inviting her in to the spare compartment. The mineblokes drop mines and Mirbana hops in to Benno’s spare seat. JOY!
Gethin calls Basco through the minefield reminding him of the need to ‘take one for the union’ but thankfully Aeric assists in flagging the most recent minedrops. Basco weaves deftly through the minefield then kills a remaining mech.
Minemech walks back a little to get a line on Aeric and fires on him. He arcs the mine over, landing it behind Aeric, and it blows on him. He then punts more mines out of the invisible mine printer. Aeric moves over, not setting off any mines, “phew!”, and back to where he started tries to kill a remaining minebloke. He hits, shreds the mech, then slashes him up before trying to knock him over. He does indeed knock him down and then gets a shot in whilst the minebloke is down. He does, and kills him. Pow. Benno moves up to Aeric, hands Mirbana a rocket launcher, and she pops one off on the minemech, hitting. Basco then joins the fun - a shotgun blast then a knockback into a car, finishing him off.
Combat ends
Gethin seethes looking at the atomic boxes nearest him, annoyed at how far away his horse is. He checks the boxes out: ammo, weapons, explosives, etc. He still doesn’t see the mayor: the car out front is the one that she was whisked away in.
Aeric cuts the remaining mechwarrior out of his mech, and he’s reeling - not in a fit state to be interrogated. Basco says ain’t no time for that, whips out some stim injection and wakes this guy up quicksmart. He picks him up, pins him against the car and says “Look here son, you’ve got one way out of this. Tell us what we need to know and the UNC (looks over at Aeric, who revs chainaxe menacingly) won’t cut you up”.
“What’s going on downstairs? How many?”
“It’s a tunnel, it goes north out of the city”
“How far?”
“I dunno, maybe 10 clicks”
“Where to?”
“I dunno, it’s just a route out”
Aeric: “are there any f***ing minelaying pricks down there?”
“It’s too small, they’d barely fit in. Two men across”.
“Who the hell is the warpriest?”
“uh……Aun? Never met her.”
“He been here?”
“No, I don’t think, I don’t think she has”
“And the mayor?”
“In the, uh, in the, uh, tunnel”.
“Anyone else?”
“Guards, chief of police…”
Basco turns to the others
Aeric: “How long ago did she head down?”
“Around when you kicked in the door”.
Aeric: “So we go after her”.
“Can’t get the mechs down there”
Aeric: “Just your Caliban against normal people, that’ll cut through them”. (a real mark of respect from Aeric).
“What’s your name, son?”
“Oscar”
Aeric: “Why did you betray the Union, Oscar, and throw in with the Aun?”
Oscar: “you’re no better than the Aun, we hate you guys, coming here thinking you own the planet”. Surprisingly Basco and Benno nod at this, and Mirbana asks if we’re the bad guys.
Basco makes clear the Aun are shittier than the UNC, as they destroyed Bijan’s world amongst other things, then. He drops Oscar back down. And doesn’t kill him. Lucky.
We get onto the cargo lift and descend. It is indeed the promised tunnel. Basco leads the way, armored to high heaven, and we fall into line and commence jogging. Basco trots on a little since Gethin is winded, and before long some small arms ping off the Caliban. What bullets pass the Caliban whizz around our ears so we hit the dirt. Muzzle flashes blink ahead but don’t help with ranging. Basco is pretty close - 5-10m away - but closes the gap to viewing distance and sees a 7ish firearms flashes, a group crouching/standing, and some rounds connect. He does, however, get to take aim and return fire. There is now a pile of dead and dying people in front of him, and lots of screaming. Basco radios that he’s “dealt with the contact, probably”. Aeric gives a “Nice”. Basco asks if he should continue whilst we raid corpses. One dead is the chief of police, one injured is the mayor. Basco radios in he’s got the asset, Gethin praises him and says ‘render aid, we’ll come as soon as we can’. Whalesong anthem kicks in, so Aeric lets the Mayor know the Union is on its way to her aid, and the eerie whalesong bagpipes creeps the hell out of the remaining living in this pile of gore and wailsong.
Aeric pats Basco on the mech-thigh, reaching down to do so, atta boy, and Aeric checks the Mayor over, who is indeed in need of medical attention, so Mirbana hands Benno a patch who slaps it on. The mayor peps up a little, and Mirbana then pulls her pistol to put down one of the remaining fellas whilst Aeric gives a Miranda warning to the mayor. Gethin suggests Mirbana isn’t threatened by them, and perhaps she should not use the weapon in the act of a war crime.
End of session
We count our charges - Oscar in Mirbana’s melted mech; the mayor; several other wounded charges who fired on poor Basco. Aeric kneels down next to the mayor and asks if the refugees are at risk of another Aun attack. She is short of breath but says “no, I think, for now they should be fine”. “How long is that?” “I don’t know…but you’ve killed their only contact in the city”. Ooh, that makes it the chief of police as that’s the only meaningful person Basco iced.
The mayor looks compliant, slightly but not utterly resigned. Aeric asks “why’d you do it?” she says “Didn’t have a choice…chief of police, it was all his doing”. Aeric adds “you’re the mayor” and she says “but they had all the guns”. Aeric asks for location and numbers - small group, not sure where, they move around; mostly relying on force in the city. Aeric asks if the city blew up its own printer…”yes” (not her). Aeric asks if any boats are stashed away…the answer is no, they were scuttled. Aeric asks if there is any reason she shouldn’t be executed for her crimes? “I didn’t have a choice, this isn’t my doing”. Gethin confirms she’ll have her day in court on the Thermopylae. We strap dead and living to Basco’s mech to bring them back to surface. Aeric looks for weapons and comms - mayor no to both. She gets cuffed. Aeric also gets her a radio to communicate and stand down her remaining troops, and as we move back to the surface Aeric is marching her forwards and berates her for not trying to loop us in to the fact she was being coerced. Basco asks the question ‘so who’s the high priestess?’ and the mayor says ‘I’m not sure where you heard that term…uh…I assume you mean the warpriest. Yes, she led a middle-ranking Aun set of forces in this area’. Gethin asks if she has a big rifle and mayor says she’s never met her.
Mirbana’s mech is stripped down and anything incriminating removed, we get Oscar out of it, and Aeric gets Gethin’s confirmation to set up refugee encampment in town now. Gethin also asks for a food inventory since we’ll be taking some with us. The deal is to split the remaining food fairly between 50k - the town’s 40 and our 10k. Aeric also asks Benno if the printer is nearly online, and he confirms so - as long as no further sabotage (shoots glance at mayor). Aeric also asks how many forces are mutinous/collaborators (the mayor isn’t sure who are just following orders and how many are “misguided”). She shrugs at the idea that she’d count the militia, but we’ve seen several hundred. Gethin asks Basco to rig up a radio message to the whole town to remove the curfew and invite them to head south with us. Basco patches Gethin in who confirms to the town curfew gone, come to the river in a week and hop on some patched up dredged boats. An Aun attack in the next week is likely too, for sure. Aeric climbs a high set of flats, King Kong style, and erects a Union flag at the top of the building.
Benno prints a new mech for Mirbana; some minor guerilla work is put down from militia who didn’t capitulate to the Mayor. We move refugees from edge-of-town into town, and after a few hours some of the marines report that a couple of people have arrived at the port gates and are asking to see ‘whoever’s in charge’. They are members of the city’s ruling council, and are very glad to see us as they’ve been in hiding the last few weeks. Apparently some other members were assassinated, so they laid low. They say the mayor is a traitor, and other council members may be complicit. Apparently not many will head south - most have fled, and those remaining chose not to and aren’t under curfew anyway. Since the mayor will no longer impede reinforcements, the printer will work again for supplies, and most of the work was being carried out internally anyway. Aeric calls Gethin over and briefs him. Gethin’s happy with all this. Aeric asks for their names, just out of courtesy (Bowdin and Paulina(sp?), and they confirm altho it’s a bad time for an election they’ll gather up the members and see how it goes. Aeric notes the anti-Union rhetoric in town and asks for the pillars - gets a ‘stupid question’ note, and recites them flawlessly, then shrugs saying “we learned this in School but yes, you’d expect a certain amount of distrust, and not just here in Vros”. Aeric says to remind the town the Union liberated them, and they can keep the flag. But not our marines/militia.
After all that the local population are very helpful to the refugees, housing them in their houses, feeding them (since some have fled there’s plenty of food, including stockpiles), so life isn’t too bad for Cornucopians. They even feed the union staff…perhaps un-spat-in food. A few days to get the Drake and dredgers printed and able to lift scuttled ships, and then we dig up the first - spot the scuttle locations in the fore hull and following an assessment of the incredible level of waterlogging - Basco asks if we’ll really be done in a week and Benno says perhaps with some engineers with hairdryers we’ll manage but otherwise a little longer perhaps. Benno considers mashing them into printers to become hovercrafts too.
Continuing the assessment of town, it seems many residents have been drilled over the last few years so can act in public defence - they just lack weaponry, but still want to defend their homes rather than flee. Fair dos, public. Higher up there’s talk about ships running and trade resuming, which seems quite the belying of the fact the Aun are still causing havoc but hey, who doesn’t want to get back on track. Basco looks for facilities in the local area e.g. mining/ other infrastructure with additional printers. Aeric goes to the local jail and eyeballs the mayor a bit more, asks more about the Aun traffic dropping and more on her - she continues to just pin it all on the dead chief of police. She’s doing at least a good job of carrying on this line of argument and appearing contrite…but Aeric doesn't buy it.
We’re a week in to our schedule. As Benno hasn’t told anyone we’re overdue the refugees pitch up a week in, and Benno - significantly sleep deprived, and covered in grease, and Gethin says “you look tired”, to which Benno says “gotta meet the deadline!” “Ah,” says Gethin, “the deadline is today”. “Nah!” says Benno, “I have 2 more days”...perhaps his body clock has been forgiving. Anyway, the refugees are asked to hold on then we start considering how to launch all these ships and avoid being assaulted. Gethin’s back on the radio thanks to Basco asking the cruise passengers to hold off boarding for now. They seems disconsolate but know Union never runs to time.
2 days later - the boats are ready! We have enough ships for our refugees at last, and we think now about the barges, defending them etc. and decide on hovercraft rapid response. We begin loading refugees and preparing to leave and as we sail out of this godforsaken town, the omninet picks up, as if we are leaving a jamming signal area, hmmmmmmmmm. Basco is annoyed he can’t radio Vros to let them know they’re jammed. We also have a brig containing 4 prisoners including the mayor. And a quarters with a sleeping Benno. Basco preps a secure line using the omninet for Gethin to contact out to Boundary Industrial City and gets through to a Colonel Vitaly (who outranks Gethin) asking for a sitrep. He updates Vitaly. Vitaly is happy to be getting added man(andwoman)power coming. Gethin asks how the situation is there despite the shelling. He gets the lowdown and shares it with us. As we approach, omninet info rolls in, the situation gets more concerning, and we see constant weapon reports firing out from the city throwing several tonnes of ordnance into orbit - defensive and peppering the sky with some offense as well.
We put Benno’s NHP on the hovercraft piloting overnight, and we are awoken from our slumber from a loud ‘crack’ then the sound of an explosion. 10 seconds later the NHP screams in Gethin’s ear that it’s time to wake up and there is an emergency! We rush up on deck and we see the boat has slowed down significantly and is slewing to one side, lights going up on it, and a second missile punctures the hull of the same boat. A full stop order is issued across the fleet and Gethin commands the NHP to head towards the source of the weaponfire. We suit up and a third shot strikes the ship in the rear, puncturing the engine (kaboom) and the rear end of the ship starts to burn, and is taking on water at an alarming rate.
Basco demands the gun turret fire on the western bank, ahead of us going to deal with it more firmly. He gets the fire off but forgets to calibrate for recoil, causing the craft to twist furiously! Oops. Benno gets an earful about this, no doubt. Benno then pulls our boat over to help bolster the one keeling - by ramming it, which buys seconds since it’s bigger than ours and we’ll start sinking soon! Aeric leaps into his suit, fires a grappling hook and seeks to find some sort of tree or item to wrap around and pull over to the bank. Mirbana gets into her mech, splashes into the water planning to wade across to the bank, but doesn’t come back up for air. Hmm! Nor does she surface in good time at the other side of the bank. Turns out the current was much harder and as she hits the bottom her mech-feet are taken out from under her and she washes downstream…fast. Gethin then gives a nice stirring speech, far better than usual - perhaps as he’s not as amplified as he was on Vros. The other barges accelerate alongside the stricken vessel, seeking to rescue people before scuttling.
Aeric, who gained the bank, sneaks along it looking for trouble and notes, a reasonable distance inland, an Aun position. It’s setting up for more trouble beyond the fire they’ve already launched. Aeric laser points the target for the gun so Basco can aim the boat-gun more efficiently. Basco hops into the water to fill a breach…and also gets swept away by the current. Benno hops out and walks on the outside of the hull, using his mag-clamps, to fix the ship - with Gethin’s assistance. Benno tromps along the edge of the boat, into the water, and hand-holds a plate against a hullbreach whilst Gethin uses his laser to weld the plate in place. This cobble job does perfectly. Mirbana also sneaks up onto the river bank after regaining control - trying to make it look like she was trying to outflank the position all along. Aeric gets some covering fire (with Basco’s help) and the barges shore up the stricken ship, as the full flotilla drift downstream from the danger area. No further fire appears to emerge as the ships drift away.
Aeric and Mirbana position themselves, the suppressing fire is turned off, and they descend on the Aun - we find several destroyed mechs and the remaining Aun are utterly surprised. And eviscerated. However, this position does not reveal a piece of weaponry which could breach a hull…which makes us think like our warpriest has once again flitted in and out, firing their hardlight nightmare and blinking away. Aeric leaves a nasty message for this priest and we return to the flotilla to continue downriver.
The next day we see the long, thin spindle of the City’s space elevator against the sky, then the city rising up - and over the next couple of days it looms closer. From what we can see of it, it’s an arcology, architecturally brutalist, original but has since been appended and converted into a municipal fortress which have been dug into former parks and plaza; large barricades and concrete defensive barriers to protect and augment the original brutalist form. We spot artillery fire coming from the east, and some missiles which land amidst the arcology if not picked out by anti-missile artillery. We dock at harbour, finding it garrisoned by a large number of Cornucopian troops (regular and conscripts) and the refugees are evacuated hastily. We are led deep into the city - the streets are emptied and the population has been sent underground into old metro tunnels, bunkers, basements etc. Under the city those unable to fight have been given safe berth - the refugees directed the same place, getting filtered so the fight-worthy, healthy adults getting pressganged. The noise underground is of printers and fabricators going hell-for-leather. The pre-war population was 8,000,000, the significant majority now held underground in pretty sweaty unpleasant conditions.
We’re given access to fabricators to boost and repair our mechs. Several days of ranking up and getting to know the city leads…
End of session
We are a few months at Boundary Industrial City, well acquainted with the leaders and movers and shakers. BIC is the largest city on Cornucopia, but not its capital, home to primary chassis fabrication depot of the Cornucopian Revolutionary Guard, churning out arms and armour for union forces in the city. The city is the Ascendancy’s primary target on the planet and is being constantly targeted by orbital bombardment held at bay by ground-to-air defences. The city is now a fortification - barracks, barricades etc. with the civilians underground (shelter, bunker, basement) or evacuated. Since Whiskey arrived the Aun have covered the eastern side and are moving block-by-block in bloody city conflict. We’re barracked in the city, where the forces are led by “Artelo Basra???” - 50k regulars plus conscripts, 1k mechs (Saladins, Shermans, Barbarossas). Union force arrived - Battlegroup Comet - Dog Company - 200 pilots, near full strength. Whiskey is attached to Dog company………Dog Whiskey? Whiskey Hounds? Whiskey Dogs? “The Drunken Poodle”
Benno is no longer a quadropedal box with legs, instead he’s got leggy stuff with a weird floating black sphere hovering above this weird walking doggo thingy. The mule harness is off it, and it seems very…autonomous..albeit not very good at walking on 2 legs at the moment. It seems to be learning? Thing is kinda creepy, not gonna lie. It is also…unique. Gethin asks about the ‘omnigun’ ‘singularity’ ‘sphere’ on the back and Benno says he’ll learn how to use it all…soon. When it’s needed.
Basco has returned to his Tortuga, giving up his close quartered Caliban but he’s plundered some of the bits, enlarged the thruster module and brought back the ol’ daisycutter. His recon drone now seems to be well loaded with ammo and turrets, which seems less reconny and more murdery.
Gethin’s mech looks externally similar but he’s swapped out the laser for some missile systems, kaboom. Mirbana has a fancy paint job to go with her giant gun, and Aeric’s mech looks the same, he’s just been practising some leg sweeps, but all other changes have been psychological, including an NHP he’s programmed to be rather zealous and tip Aeric from ‘slightly violent’ to ‘acts of berserker rage’ - including turning on his company when out of targets to eviscerate!!
So, we’re down in the barracks after deployment on front lines a couple of days back, and we’re on rotation R&R before heading back out in a few days. It’s pretty cramped, with stuff just jammed in wherever we can, and we’re well underground, below one of the fabrication plants, so it’s uncomfortably hot. Nodding off, well after midnight, Gethin is roused by a huge squeal in his commlink to find a message from Major Venkat asking team to report to a nearby War Room. Gethin politely wakes everyone up…well, Aeric’s still awake, Basco rolls over, Mirbana remains asleep, and Benno’s up in his mech, so gets pinged the location for the meeting and his NHP replies “I’ll make sure he gets there”. Gethin tries again to wake Basco, who grumpily points out we’re on R&R, gets in his jumpsuit and refuses to zip up. Aeric and Gethin are well-dressed, Benno’s in his greasy overalls, and Mirbana in a printed bathrobe.
In our underground hangar - a former yard for the metro system - there’s a number of mechs not just for Whiskey but other companies. Some people are working on a few but it’s pretty quiet. We head to the war room, meeting Major Venkatt in the corner of a war room - walls covered in screens, people sat round the outside monitoring sensor feeds and comms transmissions. Around Major Venkat there’s a bustle of runners and logistics people but we’re beckoned around a table to hunch around. We’ve lost contact with a CRG position in sector 4, 3km behind front line, 20mins ago. That’s an unusual place to lose a company - a possible enemy sighting just before comms was lost.
Gethin asks if there’s any intel on the potential threat, and we see an AR map - this team were guarding a critical anti-air battery in the sector and reported a “possible” enemy sighting but no details were handed off. We have to investigate, assist survivors, control the anti-air battery if needed and scout the way for any necessary counter-attack. A larger force will take more time to prepare, we’re the advance wave. Gethin suggests it’s the lady warpriest, whom Aeric can’t wait to get her hands on her.
We head to the hangar and suit up - one of the metro lines operating takes us on a lift to the surface near Sector 4. We surface via a heavy-duty lift into a dark area - no lights, well under blackout, and we find ourselves alone. We head to the anti-aircraft battery, and look for bodies of course just in case they were pulled away from there. As we approach the position we pass by several heavily guarded checkpoints, the last of which prior to our target we see a nervous looking bunch of young CRG troops pointing weaponry down the street and scanning. That’s a little odd. Sergeant snaps off a salute and is asked for a sitrep by Aeric. They heard 2-3 bursts of gunfire now 40mins ago and nothing since. Noone is contactable up ahead on Comms, whatever happened happened fast. At least one mech calibre gun report was heard, not just light weaponfire. Gethin plays a clip of the warpriest weapon noise and asks if it was the same and the answer is “nope”, poss 30mm autogun, a burst but nothing weird and Auny.
We round the corner, Aeric’s invisible again, and we head towards the anti-aircraft battery. The area’s been pretty shelled to high heaven, lots of wrecked buildings, and ahead we see several blocks away the barrels of the anti-airguns above the ruins. As Aeric rounds the corner first he comes to the site of the battle which took place round here. Bodies too. Aeric scans for vital signs and/or Aunish mechs/person remains. Aeric sees the ruins of 5 mechs, 2 APCs, and several warm (dead) soldiers. All CRG - no enemy. Basco asks if Aeric can establish direction of fire and/or backtrail - but Aeric sees no bulletholes in any vehicles/mechs! The closest mech has a diagonal slash running across stem to stern. Gethin asks if safe to approach, and sends Benno on (who’s in Horsey, whilst Gethin is on Horsey…). The mechs fell in various directions, which makes it look like they hadn’t fixed a location the enemy was coming from. Basco patches a report back to the Major. Major replies if we can establish what hit them, and perhaps where they’ve gone. “Yeah, we’re on that” – Basco not suffering fools.
We press on towards the battery (whilst also keeping them peeled for whatever assaulted them). About a block away, Aeric scanning ahead, and spots just over towards the mouth of a side-road, a blip which looks kind of misty, hanging in the air, which is unusual even for after midnight in an arcology being bombarded from space. Aeric goes to investigate - and spots a second misty wisp in the air. It doesn’t seem to be moving or showing up particularly well on night vision either. Aeric chucked a rock and the mist drifted out of the way of the rock. Weiiiiird. Aeric’s sword also passes harmlessly through the fog, which seems to be swirling, and dense. Sensors are picking up an electromagnetic field here, Basco knowing something in there - like a constant swirl of communications and messages. Benno uses singularity gun and some interesting noises emerge from the swirl, Aeric saying “I think you hit it, Benno!”. Gethin amps it up and fires some missiles into it, and as we look around further we spot a third bit of fog, Basco gets some hacking in to see what can be seen, whilst Mirbana and Aeric try to fortify our position and ensure defences. Basco’s increasingly sure that this is a nanite swarm which seems happy floating where they are for now. As Basco turns back to talk to the party, a swarm emerges right in front of Mirbana. Eep. She goes to take a step back, after deciding swatting the cloud is a bad move, and Basco’s sensors pick up a blast of noise, and the swarm moves into a whip form, snakes around Mirbana’s arm and drags her mech into the cloud. Aeric swords the whip, allowing Mirbana to pull back and free as the whip-cloud disintegrates. Basco does some hacking malarkey and the cloud dissipates entirely, the nanites lose their cohesion and fall to the ground as grey dust. Basco sends the code for electric counter-measures, as we establish the dust doesn’t look like it’ll reanimate, so things that do tech attacks may actually do something to these things! Splendid.
We spot a flash of another cloud down the road. Sensors are picking up a flash of energy moving away from us passing down this line of clouds. We think it’s whatever is controlling the cloud as a whole and the company think that it’s time to launch with some prejudice at it. The laser passes through but Benno’s omnigun definitely hits something - which highlights a size 1 humanoid mech, very indistinct, not quite solid, and a whip lashes out of the cloud and another pulse of energy leads to it flashing away again. We then get a radio blast warning us that the aircraft battery needs to be deployed right now as there’s an incoming threat and that battery needs to be put into service right now. Gethin returns info on the mech in question, and we prepare to head to put the battery into service against this airborne threat.
Combaaaaat
6 rounds - must retain control of the 4 control zones on the map - we need only one hex from a mech in each zone occupied; +1 bonus point if all 4 occupied at the end of each round. If they occupy one and we don’t, they get a point (no points if multi occupancy).
We make out a number of cloud-shrouds and some lurker mechs from the north. The clouds drift in and some of the lurkers appear to blink out of sight (and perhaps into the shroudcloud). Along with the whippy mechs we also spot some ones from Aun forces - multi-weaponry mechs Aeric ambushed in the canyon.
Round 1
Gethin calls on Berserker Aeric to charge in and put them to shame. Aeric shrouds his own way and moves well up to engage, Mirbana trots up and sets up her gun, Benno moves along and provides help to his allies, and Gethin actually climbs off horsey :O and stands there looking imposing, waiting for an enemy to come into range who isn’t hiding, at least. Basco trots up, locks and puppeteers the mech out of the nearby cloud, nicely done. The mech behin the one Basco dragged up clips Mirbana and takes her drunk poodle artwork off it, after a shot from Aeric was forced wild.
Round 2
Basco pushes Mirbana forward, who terminates the unhidden puppeteered mech with utter prejudice. An enemy mech teleports in and goes for some shroud empowerment shenanigans, and the cloud grows some more. Mirbana is forced to persuade Aeric to do some killy shenanigans. He flits up and lays into one mech, and after a couple of successful hits takes one out. A whippy teleporty mech teleports and goes for Aeric, but misses. Basco now chooses a new target, Mirbana having killed his puppet. Another cloud gets a little more empowered, before Gethin goes into another heat spiral firing away, but the mech ducks the attack, and Gethin retreats back to Benno’s side. Benno lays a shot into the empowered cloud mech nearest him, connects and pumps it for information. Aeric then gets whipped and lured into a cloud, just like poor Mirbana did. He finds himself grappled by a sneaky mech in the cloud.
Round 3
Gethin clips one mech with his fuel rod gun but misses with the followup shot, then Gethin is charged down by a cloudy-mech who gets damaged and grappled. A grinning mechanical face looms out of the swarm at Gethin, who shrieks and calls for action, so Mirbana walks up to a different mech and fails to kill it despite overcharging, boo. It flits into the cloud and switches up its weaponry. BOO! Benno eyeballs the mech right next to him now, assessing its wares and ensuring it never is hidden. The omnigun goes off…and it dies. Splendid. He then turns to target the one near Aeric just for good measure. As neither Gethin nor Benno moved out of the cloud, another mech teleports in and goes to town on Gethin again. Aeric moves up but lands no viable blow, and retreats a few steps. Those few steps are not enough and Aeric is rather ganged up on, getting stunned and beaten about. Finally Basco goes for a cloud - the one enveloping Benno and Gethin. The area disperses, so Basco has another attack on the mech left naked by the melting cloud. It hits, warms it up, and then another mech blasts on Aeric again. Oof.
Round 4
Basco shouts at Mirbana to dispatch an enemy and…she doesn’t. At all. She shambles up and wanders up to one of the batteries, turning back to shrug at Basco. More nanite clouds appear, and Gethin gets attacked by the cloud he’s in. Mirbana calls over to Benno now to defend his CO, so he steps back, getting hit in doing so, grappling him and dragging him. He skitters away though, then fires his crazy gun at the mech near Gethin. Aeric, still stunned, gets another hit landed on him, and mechs swarm all over him, oweeeee. The mech near Mirbana swaps to sniperscope and hits Basco. Basco tech attacks a villainous mech by Aeric, jamming it (but damaging Aeric in the process) then seeks to invade another, then Gethin clear his shaky stunned head.
Round 5
The mech continue whaling on Gethin, landing more hits, leading to the eventual destruction of Gethin’s mech. Oh dear. Aeric tries to tech attack with Benno’s help, before Mirbana finishes off the mech with the sniper rifle near her. The mech near her decides she’s a threat and has a fire on her, lopping off her smaller gun. Bah. Mirbana then proposes Basco and Benno unite to rescue their officer, so Basco attempts to clear the nanite cloud there. Basco sheds that cloud, then invades the mech near Mirbana and drags it out of the battery, sneaky Basco. The war isn’t over tho and Aeric is hit again, owee, then shrouds itself in more nanite cloud. Benno sees a moment to lock onto the mech by Gethin, and lands a chunky blow on it, destroying it. Benno then walks over to Gethin, pops the hatch, fires the omnigun at the mech shrouded in cloud by Aeric.
Round 6
The mech nearest Mirbana blinks over to the cloud near Benno and hits. It doesn’t pull him though! Oh no it can’t. Benno then tech attacks the nanite cloud swarming Aeric, before overcharging to attack again following partial success. This does the job, the cloud dissipating. Aeric sees everything! Alas the mech immediately reforms a cloud around it, shrouding Aeric again. Aeric is nonplussed. Benno throws a lock-on to a visible mech before Basco shuffles up, clears the cloud again then puppeteers the mech, dragging it out and allowing Aeric to make an opportunity attack. Aeric salivates, and lands a shot on it and moves into a battery. Aeric then gets a follow up turn, steps up and terminates a mech with extreme prejudice. He then skulks back to the battery. Mirbana, with no enemy nearby to smoke, flushes her reactor’s heat.
Post-combat
As their numbers dwindle and our Basco-Benno team take down the shrouds, we drive them back from the gun batteries and take control, ensuring we can target the incoming air attack: Gethin receives a command-com asking for the state of the battery, and are warned that some Aun fighters are coming in hot, the battery needs to be operating double-quick. Onboard sensors shriek at some incoming low-to-ground fighters, but as we have control of the battery it doesn’t take much for us to reactivate the radar, power up and interfacing with our HUDs, we designate targets, lock on and blow away the Aun nearest the battery, as they didn’t see it coming at all. Another veers away, collide with a second, and both drop to the ground on fire, trailing smoke, and crash with a ‘boom’ somewhere deeper in the city. Let’s hope they died trying.
Amidst the noise and cacophany, and brief distraction of the 2 collapsing Aun, we turn and find the nanites have dissipated and the remaining Aun mech has vanished.
Mirbana begrudgingly allows Gethin to occupy the spare seat in her mech, having removed the chocolate and the pillow cross-stitched with Benno’s name on. Gethin gets a call from Major Venkat who confirms reinforcements are on their way. We are asked to hold whilst reinforcements come then we have to investigate the secondary crash-site to see if the two flaming Aun mechs survived. Gethin is investigating the need to repair his mech, which is really frigging dinged up, so Basco and Gethin help out along with a drop-pod, which boosts everyone a little bit with shinier structure. Gethin, having cleared the compartment, allows Mirbana to prepare it for Benno’s eventual occupancy. She also repairs her smaller assault cannon.
Whilst we wait for reinforcements, Basco scoops up some fallen nanites into a jar - they have deactivated, coating the ground like a layer of shiny dust. Aeric looks round at the mechs, which are clearly staffed by Aun pilots, and Aeric is trying to work out how they snuck behind our lines (unclear quality of sensors in the city). Basco potters around on Aeric’s suggestion looking to see if anything turned up at city-CCTV level to see if there’s anything to learn on the infiltration. It was recalled in briefing, this battery formed the weakpoint whereby if it fell the city would be harder to defend. All the CCTV shows is it was hard to put up a fight.
About an hour later reinforcements arrive - 3x CRG mechs plus infantry round the corner, asking us not to shoot them, and re-staff the battery. We race up to where the two ships crashlanded, one of which punched through a building before skidding to a halt, following the trail of wanton destruction, and we halt. Aeric goes on ahead about 50m from it, and spots a transport unit skidded round, facing us and we see it has a roofmounted weapon too. He sees the rear of the ship is embedded in a building, and we move to flank the transport (so we’re not walking straight at a minigun). Aeric moves towards the transpo looking for a door to get into it; as he gets closer he spots some scattered bodies and one mech slumped by the transport, then a blast of static hits Aeric’s screen before his HUD starts designating enemy targets - and as he turns around to track these lockons and it’s clearly designating allies as enemies!! Aeric can’t seem to override this and the NHP is effectively threatening to take a swing at anything approaching Aeric, as his sword lashes out at anyone coming near, like Basco. Aeric unplugs his NHP - regaining control of his mech. He’s a little gunshy about plugging it back in, though.
Meanwhile Benno notices his NHPs start fighting for control, causing him to spin around furiously. One of them also tells Benno the stars are the wrong colour, in a worried voice. Benno hops out to take a look at the stars - they look fine to him, so he asks “what stars?” and the NHP says “the stars, all of them!”. Benno asks why the NHP isn’t in control and it says ‘something is wrong’, so unplugs Sisyphus, and Pegasus stops and looks harrowingly up at the stars. Benno tries plugging the NHP into a different port, apply some soothing balm to the NHP’s troubled mind, and indicates at the slumped, legless mech. It says “there is nothing there”. Benno seeks clarity, and the mech says there’s nothing there in space, time, etc. and to avoid. Benno calls the bluff and gets Pegasus to chuck a rock at the mech, and the rock bounced off. “It hit the mech, but there is nothing there”. Benno points out that’s a logical fallacy. The mech repeats itself.
As this weird conversation takes place, Aeric moves towards the transport, and as he gets closer a voice comes over comm on an open channel saying in a intonation: “For lo, the gifts of Metat are bountiful and freely given”, and then the mech pulls a trigger on a rifle it was carrying and begins spraying rounds in Aeric’s general direction, laying suppressing fire. Aeric’s response is to lunch at this gun, hoping to cleave it out of the mech’s hand. Aeric does this and spots the pilot in the mech, very dead. Gethin suggests digging some data out, and also asks who Metat is…none of us know, not even the NHP who we assume has an encyclopaedia coded in. Sispyhus (that’s the other one, this one is Mule) meanwhile is very comfy in the USB stick and doesn’t fancy getting back into Pegasus.
Aeric takes a look around further and spots a couple more bodies; as he rounds the back of the transport a space has been cleared and there are no other mech-wrecks in the vicinity. Aeric confirms no more mechs, dead pilot etc. so we can all approach. We get a message off to the major, who acknowledges. Benno is in the cockpit of the transport whilst Basco steadfastly refuses to connect to anything in case of viruses etc.; whilst stripping down items they spot no casket but Benno’s NHP identifies the ‘source of the absence’ - a spherical shell the size of a basketball under the pilot’s seat. Basco picks it up - it’s a 3kg weight, more than a ball, less than a lump o’ lead. Basco suggests getting it to a lab, then a voice comes over the comm to Basco saying “isn’t experimenting on the enemy prohibited even by you?”. Basco notes the voice in his head and says ‘it thinks we’re gonna cut it up’. Basco is struggling with the spelling of its name - but not its perfect pronunciation so it kindly spells it out for him: Kuraga Pathas. So close, Basco. He saw Coragopathus and Benno just saw cargo. Or nothing. Or something. Benno suggests strapping it to his back, and Basco points out it needs contained so it doesn’t speak inside his head again. Aeric meanwhile asks this thing why it’s trying to take control of our mechs and NHPs…”I don’t know what NHP is but your computer systems were easy to access, I was defending myself”. It turns out “we’re the reason its chosen is dead” - obviously an Aun and this is its NHP?? “An Ofanim” (Aun Mech) - a word we also needed spelt, Gethin asked politely for that one. The NHP in Aeric’s mech asks who he’s talking to, and Aeric explains the basketball, an Aun version of it, etc. and the NHP says “there’s nothing there, are you sure you’ve not gone made, do I need to take control?”.
Aeric asks if Kuraga Pathas is the first one of these the Aun have worked with, and it notes that they’re not the first, there are many, nor are they the first. KP clearly thinks itself a cut above an NHP, as it says the NHPs aren’t souls in the way KP is. Aeric has enough of this and starts reading KP his rights, taking him into military custody. KP says “despite your heretical occupation of Cradle, at least humanity isn’t lacking”. We note it’s 11,000 years since ships left earth and it’s a bloody long way back if they seem to have a bee in their basketballbonnet about this ‘occupancy’. Aeric asks if he gives the orders on the ship: “I’m a soul, I’m bound to my chosen. I provide a companionship…” some military guidance, apparently he knew the chosen since she was 10, what a shame she died and on such a dirty planet. Apparently KP was first born 2,105 years ago.
As if this isn’t confusing enough we are also bombarded by a flash of light and kaleidoscope of colours which is even more confusing, then Aeric pumps KP for information on mortality or reason to protect the basketball shell. Aeric appears to be making chit-chat whilst waiting for Major Venkat to send these forces out, so Gethin updates the Major on progress - capturing an NHP and noting up to 4 Aun mechs could be at large in the area. Aeric makes abundantly clear we need this thing to be sequestered if we’re gonna be wandering around looking for these mechs. The major demurs, saying we need to hold on to it and at least work out which way they went; Gethin decides since the conversation is so effusive, maybe we should just ask politely where they went at which point it makes clear we’re ‘demons’ who should not be helped. Since KPs chosen is dead it volunteered to hold us off, and this chit chat did the job didn’t it.
It reels off a prepared script/sermon:
“Fifteen beams across and the same again as high: a black stone, dark as a square of starless night. Its shadow stretched across ANTHEM and the valley beyond, eclipsing the sun.
“For ten days it hung above the city: the clouds of our summer sky parted before it. Our aeros would not approach: their systems, their very souls, would cry out in agony.
“The streets beneath METAT AUN thronged with penitents, overwhelming the manquellers that tried to hold them back. Our orbitals went dark, streaked across the vault in decaying loops.
“For ten days it hovered, unmoving, its planar faces absorbing light. The restless crowds beneath spoke of ghosts, visions.
“We’re gonna have to take him with us, aren’t we?” mutters Aeric. Aeric suggests Basco carries it, who laughs and points out what he’s been doing to our NHPs. Basco goes looking around to see if there’s material around to construct a faraday cage…and hopes that helps! Apparently since Basco doesn’t know exactly what a faraday cage looks like, so asks the second brain in Benno’s mech - a cage constructed of bits with a metal basketball in the middle…but what does the NHP see? Benno asks Mule, and it says “you put the void in a cage, doesn’t look any less voidlike or less scary, but I don’t feel it in my head any more”. Bonus!! Aeric asks KP how he feels, and KP says “what do you mean? Ah, you’ve shielded your computers from me, wise”. Basco proposes we get a move on to find those Aun mechs. Aeric remains a bit weirded out that the voice is in our heads…and no Aun or Aun tech has been previously telepathic. Aeric asks KP whilst we walk and talk how KP perceives the world, apparently through Ofanim is the usual method but KP can ‘feel Aeric’s brain’. Apparently all it needs to do is ‘bend the firmament’.
We track towards the second crash site, after Basco slings the cage-ball into the footwell of his mech. This site looks like the ship was able to maintain control for most of its descent so whilst it hit the ground it hasn’t taken buildings with it (this is the ship that was clipped, not full blast). Some dead bodies but otherwise the craft is abandoned, so a majority of Aun survivors have split. Gethin looks for sign of mech transit in the area but it’s hard to tell given the city is wrecked.
End of session
We remain in BIC, it’s nighttime and we’re next to the burning wreck of this second crash site. We hear artillery bombardment ‘away’, nothing near. We had realised that the surviving Aun from both dropships have left the area. Gethin and Aeric discuss next steps (agreed priority: track down the Aun mechs who are behind our lines), and after a bit more poking around and reviewing maps of the area, assets of value nearby (between two lines of defence, some access points into underground - one to barracks, one to tunnel system leading to refinery/printer manufactory). There is roughly the same distance an anti-orbital battery also. The only item of note in the immediate surrounding area, of no strategic value is the Embassy of the Ecumenical Aun. Gethin marks these on a plan he wires over to Basco. Gethin prompts Major V that the defensive lines and access points nearby require shoring up with additional troops in case of Aun ingress to key points; meanwhile Basco releases a drone and we head to the embassy, being the nearest location.
We head in the embassy direction and about halfway there, Basco spots via the drone some weapons fire coming from the embassy. Gethin updates Major V again that enemy are likely there. Response reads “The embassy should be evacuated and empty, but please investigate”. Gethin asks Basco and Aeric for better recon, so Aeric goes invisible and scoots in the direction. As the drone heads in, counts a number of mechs firing at the building, windows, doors; weapons fire stops and nothing obvious happens for a moment. As Aeric rushes ahead, he cuts down a street and sees the plain concrete embassy buliding with a tattered sign and flag and he also sees the mechs, one of whom Aeric recognises a familiar mech (the sniper from the hillsides en route). The front door of the embassy is off its hinges, windows broken and building smoking, the walls peppered with shot. A small (7ft tall size ½) mech drags a struggling pale, lanky woman out of the embassy into a larger mech and stuffs her into a secondary compartment, sealing it off.
The rest of us come rushing up, which the Aun mechs very much notice, and one of them turns to the sniper - several have pointed weapons in our direction - does that weird bow thing and 3 of them head in our direction, one turning invisible, the rest heading away. The 3 we saw before turning invisible, the bow-handclasp fella, is carrying an assault rifle, bipedal mech, looks like fairly standard line of Aun mechs but a little fancier with a red sash, v fancy. One we saw on Borea - size ½ with a sunburst halo - the last time we saw one of these was when we jumped the smuggler camp, it was supporting the mech with the sword we were fighting. There’s one of them too.
As we approach a comm line opens in our direction from them, and the face of an Aun lady in a pilot hardsuit hail us; she says “you’re developing quite the reputation, you know. I’ve been looking forward to finally meeting this squad with the spirit bottle, is it?” We exchange some witty repartee including Gethin’s formal request to surrender, and Mirbana offering to whup her ass. Aeric asks who the girl was - “she was kidnapped”. I assume they mean she was kidnapped by the Ecumen rather than, she was kidnapped by them (which she was).
Combat begins…
Mirbana spins up her cannon and advances menacingly. The goldy priestmech holds up her staff, and a beam of light connects to her fellow mech, she moves into cover then her free hand fires out a small cluster of objects over the walls heading towards her fellow other mech. As it lands on the mech it disperses and small drones float around this mech, and form a sort of forcefield (probably hardlight) net around it. Benno boosts over behind Mirbana and fires a shot at one of the mechs from afar, connecting well. A mech advances on us, confirming they aren’t “kidnappers” but “rescuers”, then fires at Mirbana. This lops off Mirbana’s assault cannon to her chagrin. Gethin has a few shots on the enemy before another mech (the one surrounded by mini droney things) moves up on us and darts behind cover. Benno takes the opportunity to lock on this mech, before Aeric takes a move as he blinks out of visibility, and infiltrates along a piece of cover to try and outflank them. The priestmech gets another go, she’s a boss, races up and tech attacks Benno, who finds his mech warming up and unable to fight back without warming further, so warpriest goes after Gethin next, then Basco lands a crack on a mech (and drops a gun drone for added trouble). One mech races up to Benno and Gethin but fails to upset them, so draws a sword and has a go at Gethin, landing some kinetic damage Gethin seems to laugh off. The final turn from the mech stabilises and reloads its grenade launcher for another go shortly…
Basco unselfishly delegates to Mirbana who fires on the one next to Benno, missing but causing a chip of damage. Mirbana throws now to Aeric to see if he can sneak up on a mech. He does so, well, he actually talks too, very cocky (mostly telling us not to come close as the berserker rage descends on him!), but still sidles up and begins laying into it. He lands a succession of blows and a ram, knocking the mech prone. Aeric then takes one shot whilst it’s on the ground too, implausibly missing, so he has one more skirmish which damages it enough for structural damage to be taken, nice. Good work Aeric. The priestmech takes revenge on Aeric with a tech attack, giving the heat-if-you-attack treatment, which really doesn’t suit Aeric at allllllllllllllllllllllllllll. It moves away and Aeric simply can’t resist the opportunity strike, then Basco moves on another mech and lands some critical shots. Mirbana now gets a comm message from the mech who says snarkily something about coming at me because I’m bigger than it (the ol “pick on your own size”). It marks Mirbana (basically - resistance to my shots, I can’t resist theirs, etc.) then fires a shotgun on her which goes wild, so Mirbana laughs hysterically into the open comms channel. Benno now shuffles the other side to Gethin and uses his AI to cause mischief, then Gethin begins firing - then Assasino has another go, what a nuisance. It leaps over all 3 of us before doing a spinning kick on Gethin which knocks him off Benno and back, before attacking its mark (Mirbana). Another mech has a shot on Aeric (missing), then turns on Basco to knife him.
Aeric lays in again following a command from Gethin, disregarding the heat from this attack, and brings the enemy’s shields down, then finishes it off - the glowing line of light between it and the mech near Basco lifts. Doing so incurs a major crop of heat - Aeric gets the ol ‘reactor meltdown’ warning - even though it feels like quite some time away. Knowing mech destruction is imminent Aeric has some more trouble, shuffles close to something he’s like the mech to go kaboom near, and his NHP is in full rock on berserker mode. The assassin mech leaps again and tries to knock Benno down via landing and shockwaving, but Benno is unproneable by little people, so he goes for Gethin (who is prone) with its sword. It connects, and Gethin has a hull check to avoid destruction (phew). Basco now goes at the assault mech with both barrels, missing but then pivoting to a tech attack Basco puppeteers them out of cover and lays into it with his decksweeper shotgun. Aeric also has an attempt on it too, which is a bonus (even as Aeric’s mech becomes hotter than the sun itself). The assault mech now runs for cover. Mirbana shuffles so it’s back in sight easily (although gets hit and loses a structure from her marker in the process) - knocking a structure off. Assassin mech now goes for Gethin (who is stunned), then Benno also knocks a structure off the assassin too, these things are getting bits and pieces chopped off em, but they ain’t down yet. Benno manages a hull save against the assassin before Gethin shakes off his stun, looks around blearily and Benno throws a lock-on onto the assault mech.
Basco gets knocked prone as the assault mech leaps over to him; Gethin wants to shoot before explosion despite being flat on the ground but checking all the dials, realises the amount of heat means stabilising is better. Despite that realisation he just stands up and overcharges to get a shot off. Maniac! He does, however, connect with the assault mech. The assault mech creates a nice line of missile striking -> from drone, to Benno, to Gethin. The drone fails and is blown up, but Benno and Gethin save. Alas it’s still enough to destroy Gethin’s mech, so he sits in a slowly melting hulk, and the assault mech now turns on Benno with rifles, connecting. Mirbana climbs onto the rubble the assault mech is using for cover and eviscerates it. The assassin mech has a go at Basco since he’s in front of the mech and laid prone. Basco takes it like a champ, but when it comes to the hull save he’s kicked away too, slamming Basco into a wall. It rocks back up to Mirbana for another dose of trouble. Benno targets and locks on to the remaining assassin mech and then fires himself, damaging it. Basco is then called by Gethin to get up and kill the remaining mech! The leadership galvanisation and the lockon combine to do so, finishing off the last mech.
Combat ends….but Aeric’s mech is absolutely burning up. The AI is oblivious, continuing to hack at the corpse on the ground, Aeric primes to eject from the flaming mech and decides that this is how the NHP wants to go, so doesn’t take the coffin with him, just leaves it high and dry hacking and hacking the corpse of the halo mech till the mech explodes. The Mourning Cloak detonates fabulously as we see Aeric’s ejector arc away, and we add another scorch mark to the Arkology here.
Aeric ejects over to Gethin, apologises for his mech blowing up, then sees Gethin’s blown up mech.
Session ends
The embassy is ablaze, and a thin dawn appears over the top of the nearby buildings. Benno scans for signs of life in the burning building. His weird eye of Sauron Horus thingy gazes piercingly into the building, cutting through the fire and smoke, and his HUD picks up 5 people inside the building. 2 on the ground floor, 3 on the floor above. The building looks increasingly unstable. Benno relays this to Gethin, who guesses we should rescue them, and Benno sends Mule into the burning building. Mule looks at the building and realises it can’t fit in, so Aeric, Gethin, Basco and Benno head in to rescue the 5 targets, with Mirbana seeking to brace the building in event of collapse.
Basco can’t wait for Gethin’s order so flies off, barges in through a window and bursts up the stairs, shouting over comms for a location from Benno but kicking in doors in the meantime. He juices up a bit more in the meantime too and gets a bit enraged in the process. Side effects eh. He spots the 3 people but hasn’t yet gotten to them. Benno starts talking to inanimate objects in the building, asking for them to point out the inhabitants. As he pushes in bits of wall crumble but the objects point the way, finding a person trapped under a ceiling beam. Benno comms back asking for help lifting the beam and Gethin loves a bit of this - but since he struggles to shift the beam he asks for someone else to give it a lift instead. Benno really heaves it, so Gethin pulls the unconscious fellow out (taking the time to mention he’d rescued him, despite unconsciousness). Mirbana spots more crumbliness so uses her Fortress protocol to unreel panels to counter-brace falling walls and ceilings, radioing the men inside to get a jiggle on. Aeric goes to where Benno pointed him and comes facing a metal door, clearly a panic room, and Aeric laments not having his mech to blink the other side. He briefly considers threatening the door, but remembers Benno is the Dr. Doolittle of Doors. He looks at the lock, decides against picking and instead goes for “hello?” and on a response explains it’s time to come out, but is first asked who he is - “the Union”, and is asked to prove it. He does so by sharing some recent news about the NLC. This works and Aeric and this person flee to safety
Gethin and Benno have rescued their unconscious charge, so we cut back to the Basco Trio, Benno shoots up and asks Mirbana to prepare to punch a hole in a wall and make a shield-flume for people to skim out. Basco sees 2 crouched over an injured party, and across the blaze they ask for help! Basco crashes through a wall, lands on Benno, drops and rolls, and the 4 people - Benno + 3 - hurtle towards Benno. All but one can walk themselves out, so shielding themselves from the fire, they head out through the main entrance.
Mirbana applies a patch to the injured person as Aeric shins up a tall building looking for the Aun who escaped - they’ve made it into a relatively intact area of building and are heading towards front line. Aeric reports this to Gethin who in turn reports to Mission Command, debriefs what we got up to and that the Aun have kidnapped someone. The major seems unimpressed that the Ecumen hadn’t evacuated, and will warn the front line. We have to retreat to an underground entrance for repairs, are commended, then the line cuts.
The unconscious person comes to, and Mirbana asks who the lady was. “One of ours, you’re going to get her back right?” Christiana, a defector from the Aun side who had now been recovered - but they’re choosing to suggest she was ‘kidnapped’. Aeric points out we’re 2 mechs down so we need a really good reason to go after her, and all we’re getting is cagey pablum. Aeric points out it’s really now or never to tell us, and emphasises the point thoroughly. The force of conviction and desire for information takes him aback, so he responds “you really need to get her, trust me, it’s for everyone’s benefit, it took us years to get her out. She’s…let’s just say she’s important for some vital research for the war effort”. Aeric asks for more - we’re explained about these heretical devices which seem to breach the law of physics - they believe she has a strong connection to the alternate dimension they call the Firmament. Basco asks why they were on the surface without guards, and they suggested they thought they’d outwitted the search party.
Gethin gets on the horn to command, asks for the Ecumen to be picked up from the lift, explains the high value asset, and we begin shuffling along at human-walking-speed. The Major agrees that this is extremely important, but says we are clearly not match fit vs 7 mechs, directing us to continue back to base for repairs and will organise drone sweeps to identify where they’ve gotten to. As we head off the voice of KP at Basco’s feet says to Basco “you’re with Aun? Are they your prisoners? Did you catch up with my squad? What’s going on?” “Some of them” says Basco, “we gave them a good ol’ Cornucopia welcome”. KP recognises they’re not team but are Aun. One has a weak firmament connection - but KP can feel it. It’s clearly confused at the presence of Aun.
Basco explains this to Gethin, who in turn suggests to Aeric one of them withheld some relevant information, so Aeric returns to the conversation with the person from earlier, and drops in a query or two: “so which of you is connected to the Firmament?”. A momentary pause as the poker face drops and you get ‘well, none of us’. Aeric says ‘well, we know one of you is’. We get some hows and whys, but Aeric’s poker face is better. The Ecuman sizes up Aeric to see if this is a bluff, and goes with ‘what if one of us was?’, and aeric says it’d help the situation. The answer back is ‘it wouldn’t unless you have Firmament based technology with you’. Aeric points out this makes them and Christiana even more relevant for Union support. He says “I wasn’t born with it - I was trained, but all that gives is the very weak affinity to be able to sense the Firmament and maybe access some of its technology. I’m afraid I’m no use for research into these devices’. Aeric asks if he’s also a defector but he’s born there, and were hoping Christiana would provide a breakthrough. Mirbana gives them some chocolate bars.
Basco asks whether this lot would be very interested to get ahold of KP, but Aeric points out we want to be sure it’s to Union advantage. We come up to the entrance into the underground system, a heavily reinforced bunker with large metal doors. These open as we approach. Behind the doors is a metallic lift platform, which we hop on and move down into the subsurface of the Arkology. We exit out and find space to park our mechs up. A few Cornucopian mechs are here (Everests/Shermans) in a state of some disrepair. People are scrambling over them making repair works. Aeric strides over to the nearest printer, and a tech says “we were told you were coming, stick ‘em over there and we’ll take a look”. Basco slides out of his mech, pulls KP out of the mech and dumps it into an ammo tin, slinging it under his arm.
Basco wants to hit the bunk then grab a coffee, which is a loooooooooooong way back. Aeric wants KP to be handed to HQ, and Aeric strides over to the foreman, who looks stressed and is reviewing a tablet of data. Aeric asks for 2 new mechs and gets short shrift with a 2 month backlog the foreman is dealing with, so looks over to Gethin who says he’ll make some calls and sort it out. Gethin calls Major V and explains the situation, who asks Gethin to put the foreman on the horn. Overhearing the convo, the foreman explains he understands Major V’s rank, but higher up the chain is delivering his orders, so it’s gotta go on up. His overworked team of engineers will help repair the mechs, but no time on the printer, other things must take priority.
The major says he’ll attempt to get said clearance, but knowing bureaucracy it may take some time, and we’d better see what we can do.
Aeric feels soiled looking at grubby second hand mechs and asks the technicians if anything nice, blinky and evasive is around. The foreman looks up again from his tablet as if considering something and says “Look, maybe I can bump you up the queue buuuuut you gotta help me out. I got a bit of a problem further down the manufactory and my team are asking - if you can go down and sort these problems, maybe the artillery shell gets bumped back a few hours”. Aeric asks “what do you mean “sort the problem”?” - “one of the cooling systems has broken down and is slowing production/efficiency rate. I sent a team down yesterday, their biomonitors show they’re still alive, but they’re not responding”. For this price we can get roughly printed mechs.
Benno is still asking for access to repairs, and since no-one answered Mule had grabbed a few before permission, which is eventually granted, so Mule gives Aeric a thumbs up too.
We establish the missing team’s location, that mechs will not oblige, so we get pushed from tablet to HUD the plans and map of the manufactory, a massive structure which descends very deep into the ground. We rummage in the stock for pilot gear to load up on, and Gethin loads himself to the gills with grenades. We also drop the Ecumen off who look for the same coffee and shower Basco wanted.
As we gear up and head deeper into the manufactory, fewer people are around and it’s clear more items are automated and are only interacted with when stuff breaks. Eventually we reach the location where the cooling system and missing party were. It’s a cooling fluid system, and what looks like a very unofficial routing off (syphon) branching away is attached to it, heading further down the corridor.
That leads to a narrow crawlspace leading to electrics deeper in the facility. As we head this way we see computers screens on and a printer - the size of a truck! - attached to the computer. The cooling pipe and some branched electric cables have been hooked up to it. On the floor we see what we think are piles of stuff. It’s unclear if it’s junk, printed stuff, parts, just piles of crud. The printer is on and currently printing - but unclear what. Gethin looks around for printer operators and we don’t see any. Aeric gets closer to the printer to take a look at what’s being spat out. Gethin suggests we disconnect it if we can’t find the person printing them, but on approach it’s clear a lot of parts are weapons, mech components, they are clearly functional. It’s currently printing a mech-sized gun, a lovely shade of pale blue. Gethin orders to disconnect and as we look away for a second the printer finishes the gun, drops it on the floor and begins printing the next item - which looks much much smaller - tablet sized.
Basco looks at the console which says “printing item 4762: radio?!#”, and Basco looks back through history to see if there’s a huge pending list, or if it’s doing the catalogue from 1->4762, or a specified list etc. The list suggests that the previous item was a “query fragmentation warhead weapon”, the list really just seems to be a random collection of things made. Some are names, and some are just alphanumeric sequences instead of an item name. Basco presses the pause button and gets ‘access denied’. He also tries the emergency stop button, nope. Aeric brandishes the axe and raises an eyebrow, then Benno spots the power supply it’s hooked up to. Basco points out breaking the printer might cause the coolant to leak, which would shut the entire factory down. They also spot a printer gruel supply line, before spotting on the list there’s an ‘extradimensional grenade’ - which is near the printer exit.
Benno sides with Basco - this is printing for a reason, and we need to find who’s doing it and get some answers. Basco suggests he may be able to hack round the machine’s defences. Gethin asks about taking away the weaponry specifically, grenades hanging around etc. We scout around a little more and we find a makeshift kitchen with MREs, water bottles, clearly someone living around the gaff. Aeric scouts some nearby tunnels which branch off, but no recent signs of cooking/movement. Basco plugs in to the computer attached to the printer: control/access is not gained but he can see the printer was owned and installed by “Camilla” who set it up a couple of months ago. Initially it was printing out normal looking stuff, but then it gets weirder and weirder: licences downloaded off omninet, printing 1-2 items a day then the admin rights on the printer change and ownership of the system was transferred to “The accidental architect, v3.5”. At this point the printer went 24/7 printing a litany of modified items which look almost like thousands of sets of blueprints seemingly randomly combining them and spitting them out. Basco suggests it’s a weird virus or something, then…
Aeric suddenly hears a blast of automatic gunfire down a corridor, and call for the Company to assemble. Aeric turns invisible. In this room there appears in the centre of the room a cube about 1ft across, several people in the room dressed in engineers overalls and hard hats, 2 of them swinging pickaxes at the cube in the middle of the room. Closer to the door is a man who flings an empty assault rifle to the ground, and groans in frustration. As unusual as this is Gethin proposes to Aeric we advance and make contact. Aeric therefore draws weapon and returns to visibility.
As he blinks back in, the ringing of the [pale blue] cube being struck with the pickaxe is supplemented with a rising hum, which grows and grows but doesn’t reach a crescendo. Many ruined pickaxes/sledgehammers and ditched weapons are littering the floor, and in the corner of the room is a woman working on plastic explosive. The cube itself seems to have a fractal design pattern lacing it, and Aeric gets an overwhelming urge to destroy the cube as well - nothing else is more important!
End of session
Aeric starts whaling on the cube. Sparks fly from it, but it takes no damage, but that does not lessen Aeric’s urge to destroy the cube. Gethin sends Benno in and he also becomes seduced into destroying the cube, perhaps with a rocket launcher. That causes a couple of the pickaxers to scramble away, their urge for self-preservation outweighing their desire to destroy the cube. Gethin is angered by Benno’s idiocy and steps in, grabbing Benno’s arm and threatening him with a court-martial for insubordination. Basco recognises that if the cube is pale blue it was definitely printed by the printer under its weird Horus malfunction/infection/whatever. Basco wants to look over printer logs so Mirbana suggests making a daisy-chain to pull Benno out - Mirbana holding Gethin holding Benno, and we yank. The rocket launcher goes everywhere, and Mirbana pulls, Gethin stumbling back, Benno lands on his keister having braced the other way. After 30 seconds of being sat on by Mirbana, Gethin yelling at Benno, Mirbana yelling at Benno, he eventually snaps out but remembers the act of being ‘under’, so he explains the noise in his head from being in the room, gesturing with the now-safety-on, and said the cube made a noise to him.
Gethin calls Aeric out of the room for ‘super-explosives to strap to the cube’ and Gethin tackles him, Mirbana sits on him and in order to distract him, recites the pillars really poorly to wear off 30 seconds and get him out of his cube-destroying-frenzy. Basco saunters back to the printer to look for cubes, boxes, or peculiar things. From the 4,761 preceding items. Basco gets searching for boxes. Boxes of boxes. Gethin looks in and sees the woman has daisychained a bunch of C4(00) (explosive) to all go off at once, and Gethin points to this and asks Benno how long we have before that all kicks off. Meanwhile Aeric plugs his ears with his slyph suit, makes some rope and ties one end to himself, giving the other bit to Mirbana. Aeric manages to shake off the allure of the cube, then grapples with her in an attempt to drag her to safety. Aeric succeeds - so Mirbana sits on her next - but when going to disable the C4(00) another rifle wielder threatens Aeric and tells him to stop, so Gethin tries to snipe out the rifle from this guy’s hand, trickshot circus fairground style, which he does with aplomb.
Meanwhile, Basco identifies the cube as “Hyperfractal memetic” but is then spotted as an ‘intruder’ in the printer system, so an alarm starts blaring out as a self-defence system initialises, and lights in piles on the floor start to shiver slightly ….. Uh oh. Basco bugs out with an item in hand and says ‘we might have some problems back at the printer’. Basco tries to peel the item he has in hand (with no luck), there’s no instruction manual for this material…which seems the same as the cube.
The 2 pickaxers continue beating up the cube, whilst Aeric passes all the C4(00) to Benno, and goes back in to now remove the fella looking for a new gun. The woman Mirbana sits on doesn’t appear to be calming down, continuing to struggle well after 30 seconds. Mirbana asks how long they’ve been trying to destroy the cube - 4 days! - which suggests it’s very not breakable. Basco now bundles the fella Aeric removes and duct-tapes him up to stop him struggling, and Aeric goes back in to get one of the two pickaxers but with additional help, so Aeric prints some more rope, tying himself to one end, Mirbana to the other, and another is dragged out and tied up with more duct-tape (holding the woman and gunman too).
Gethin’s latest idea was to paint over the cube, but Aeric suggests just putting it in a bag - a printed cube-bag. Benno thinks about printing the whitewash sealant spray liquid and asks Basco if he’ll go back to find a spray bottle, but Basco curses all Horus items and tells him he’s not going back in there. Gethin looks in his wilderness kit, and find a tarp. Meanwhile Camilla concedes that she probably shouldn’t have printed the cube…but now needs to destroy it. Benno prints a poncho of sealant goop and hands it back to Gethin to cover the cube in goop in order to silence and render it less visible.
Basco also admits he may have tripped the security alarm around the printer, whilst Aeric suggests we look for advice on how to disable hyperfractal memetics. Anything in Gethin’s field guide? No joy. Aeric suggests therefore going to check the printer and Benno slings the chained C4(00) over his shoulder to bring it over, and Gethin reminds him over radio that the infrastructure needs to survive. As Benno walks in, not really paying attention, a whlstling noise rings out and Benno feels an impact on his left shoulder. Aeric sees Benno’s left shoulder pad explode(!) as a brief flash hits it, and Aeric tracks back to the weapon that fired, atop some sort of mechanical dog-thing, looking like it wants to prime another shot at Benno, so Aeric barrels at it to try and head it off. He almost gets there as there is then another flash of light - and whilst there’s no force to the impact, the front panel of Aeric’s stealth hardsuit detonates and he is flung backwards across the room, landing on Benno. Benno mutters ‘that’s it, I’m blowing it up’, and unslings his rocket launcher. He magclamps and uses his tertiary arm to shoot from the hip/floor. Aeric backs off slightly! The rocket goes off and the dog-robot gets blown back, and as it falls back and looks like it’s shortly to expire it manages to grab an apple-sized sphere and throws it at Benno; Aeric attempts to fling the worn-down nub of his axe (from all the cube-bashing) at the sphere to redirect it back to automaton-dog. As the sphere gets closer, Aeric gets a swing and recognises the sphere as one of the items that showed on the console - an “extradimensional grenade”. The axe connects and flies back towards the automaton but halfway across the room it blinks out of mid-air. The robodog slumps to the floor, unmoving. Aeric and Benno are left with the printer. Benno stands, grabs his sidearm and begins emptying the clip into the dog(?). Aeric reminds Benno - loudly - that the C4(00) will be needed to end the printer, so Benno flings the C4(00) at Aeric. Aeric straps the bomb to the printer, and assesses whether the retreat gets cut off given the crawlspace exit. Aeric asks if Gethin has ‘the cube ready’....
…so Gethin takes the poncho of goop in, and pours it all over the cube. Gethin turns his visor back on and stares at the cube…which is no longer visible under said goop. Eyes fine, ears turned on next…the humming is audible!! Gethin panics and tries to cut the hum, and does. He reports to Basco who asks if it’s vibrating, and after a tentative poke Gethin confirms it doesn’t. Basco asks about a power switch, and Gethin points out post-goop is a bad time to check these things. Basco asks Camilla if she moved the cube in there, and Camilla confirms it was to have a room big enough to swing a cat, or pick-axe. Benno joins the printer-shooting and the thing unloads itself - handle and all - into the printer, and says the C400 may not be needed anyway. Basco whistles with impressedness at the crazy gun, then points at Benno’s shoulder pad and yells “what happened to that?” “this stuff could win us the war!” “extradimensional grenades?!?” Aeric points out Basco was afraid of Horus a second ago, but Basco says ‘on our side though…’. Benno suggests grabbing a copy of the virus just to bring the prospect home with us, hmm, maybe not the best idea…
Meanwhile Gethin sprays the cube area with coolant in the hopes to reduce the ignition sources etc. and the area frosts up. The sealant spray hardens instantly, the tarp freezes, the temp plummets, and our suits pick up low O2 levels. We leave the cube behind, with a warning sticker on the front door (“cover ears before entering room”). We print some lubricant to squeeze the duct taped peeps through the crawlspace, stop the flow of coolant, completing our primary mission (although repair work is needed), so we head back up to ops floor. It takes several hours, but about 30mins or more later, the 3 engineering team appear to finally snap out of their urges, and only Camilla continues to struggle. Calling us idiots, resenting Benno for destroying her printer, etc. but we return to the ops floor and meet the foreman. As we pass through the main hangar a team of mechanics are finishing off some repairs to the undestroyed mechs.
Camilla admits she was using a printer to create new weaponry by iteratively creating weaponry in a machine learning loop. Given software issues she decided to get some omninet message board help and one day a file appeared in a comms device, with a note saying “I think this is what you’re looking for”, which she plugged in and clearly made an error in the medium term. It took over the printer, mostly useless stuff, some promising stuff, then the cube, which was when the shit hit the fan.
Basco asks if the message was retained?
Gethin goes to see the foreman, who asks what happens, and Gethin gives a “detailed, sanitised account”, then we’re given a chance for a quick shower and some eats, whilst the remaining mechs get printed. Gethin relays another message to Major V, who congratulates Gethin for getting past the irritating bureaucracy, and we need to be back in the field as soon as operational. A quick nap along with the shower then we’re back on the hunt for Aun scum. We are warned however that the engineers don’t have time to do some of the final fancy alterations, which means e.g. Gethin’s heatsink stuff isn’t totally sorted…Aeric’s sword seeks to be attached but then blinks out and appears 10m away. Aeric says “yeah, it does that”.
Aeric refreshes himself of our targets - a second crashed plane of Aun, who have re-kidnapped a defector lady, and are heading back to enemy lines from behind our ally lines. No reports - but bear in mind one can turn invisible…
Basco gets his shower and coffee (shower-coffee), Mirbana has 2 breakfasts then kips off those in her mech seat. Gethin proposes an all out assault on the remaning Aun, but Aeric asks what to do with KP - again proposing to hand it over to Major V and HQ, but Basco says to keep hold of it, it is our prisoner. As we know the area the Aun have headed into (the Arkology - approx a small neighbourhood of roughly 900sqm(? plus vert height obvs), where they are likely hiding till dark), we set out in the midafternoon light to go Aun-hunting.
On the surface, smoke still rises from the two crash sites, and we receive AR directions towards the perimeter area the Aun are said to be holed up. Lots of walkways etc. above ground and options for access are extremely limited for mechs - this is pedestrian space. Some roads enter the district but for the most part Mirbana etc would have to keep to the roads, mobility elsewhere wouldn’t be possible. The drone scan of the area can show point of entry, and draw a straight line from us to that entry point, and Aeric proposes multiple gambits - enter the same way or outflank to the side they’re likely to try and exit. “Obviously, they’ll have lookouts”. We decide to cover their escape and take the easy roads in and conduct a street-to-street. Aeric asks if Basco will release his drone, but Basco says the res is terrible, so Aeric goes invisible and starts looking road by road. Basco can’t plug into comms networks but uses Benno’s ability to ask the street itself, and Basco spots 4 mechs crouched under an overhang near the centre of the area, reports back and rebuffs the praise from Gethin. Gethin suggests ambushing, but Mirbana is hardly stealthy - then Aeric remembers we saw 7 escape, so this isn’t all of them. Aeric likes dropping the building above these 4 on top of them! Plan b is plotting the stealthiest route, with Mirbana hanging back a little since she’s a monster mech. HUD displays Aeric’s route, and off we go. Aeric once again goes invisible and treads ahead. At the point of ‘knowing they’ll hear us’, we break cover and charge.
Whalesong bagpipes break out and the Union anthem calls out, and halfway down the road a crack sounds from a supersonic rifle, and a chunk of road next to Aeric’s foot is blown out the tarmac, as something picks an invisible Aeric out unerringly well. The shot came from high up from a building in front of him, and it’s the sniper we’ve struggled with previously! Being exposed and knowing another shot is being lined up…
Gethin lays down a core blast of laser fire which blows chunks off the top edge of the building whence the sniper fire came, giving the rest of us some time to move. Basco moves towards the garage where the mechs are hiding, and deploys some chaff in the area above them which his mech can generate upwards to give some visual and technical cover from the highup sniper. Sadly Basco misjudged where the chaff was to land and it explodes behind him, so he’s charging down the street in full view, as a bullet ricochets off a vehicle near him. Mirbana throws caution to the wind and uses her big ol’ mech to assault frontally, heavily. As the sniper lines up another shot on Basco, Mirbana’s drake comes charging down the street, shield up, minigun spinning, and the sniper shot chips the shield, missing her but definitely taking the attention of the sniper. Benno spins up the Eye of Horus(Sauron) to look for the exact 20 on the sniper. Sadly Basco’s chaff is totally screwing this up. Aeric blinks up a ways - aiming to get ‘up’ the building - then Gethin provides a strongly motivational speech, then Basco has another crack at chipping in, after chaffgate, but fails again, before Benno also has a bit of a ‘mare too, turning on his AI which predicts his route down the street but selects rather poorly, before Mirbana plows to a halt, lines up a hail-mary crack on the sniper as the rest rush past and pings a shot at the sniper in a hit and hope. The sniper fire stops and the party get to the bottom of the tower.
Aeric continues parkour-porting to get to the sniper; the building is not smooth and allows connections (walkways etc.) between buildings. Basco points out “we can’t stay here forever” and is looking to frig with the sniper, sensor-wise, but the sniper has also taken cover and isn’t in line of sensor/visual sight. Aeric continues to scale the building - Gethin suggesting that detonation and levelling of the building is a bright idea. Aeric gets to near the sniper with a plan to blink behind her and mess her right up. Basco reverse engineers the lift (sitting on top whilst waiting for someone to enter the lift) and Benno clambers up with his doggo leggos. Mirbana also negotiates a way up by punching footholds into the building and scaling it directly. As we all arrive, Aeric moves to engage….
Combaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat
Aeric’s eyes go read and he blinks in to hit boss lady, and lands a blow, chopping off her targeting pod, and stuns her. She shakes it off, points the ‘anti-material rifle’ at Aeric and opens fire. Gethin orders Benno to ‘kill the enemy’, and looks down to see the thing morph into a human-size pistol. He kicks his NHP into life, and some random attacks spray at the sniper. She goes invisible and blinks over to another building whilst one of her colleagues hits Basco with a shot. Gethin now gets super hoooooooooooooot, highlights the sniper and……her invisibility system prevents her being hit, so Gethin overcharges (more hotttt) and shoots again, this time at a nearby shatterhead, which clips a little damage. The sniper then blinks over to another building then Basco drops a turret drone and then shotguns a nearby shatter head, giving it a great deal of damage and knockback. Basco gets hit again, then Mirbana trots over (gets shot en route) and spins up, then the sniper has a shot at Basco AGAIIIN.
Mirbana terminates one of the colleagues of the sniper with extreme prejudice, then the one near Aeric misses cleanly. Benno now moves up a little, sees the sniper sight him, but then cracks the barrel and reloads, so Benno trots up and pops off the remaining damage on a nearby enemy. The reloaded sniper targets Gethin, atop Basco, who braces before impact, which is lucky as she does hit. Basco pulls the turret drone over, then does some hacking troubles on the boss lady, puppets her around a bunch then gives her both barrels, the turret gives one last pop and that is the one that explodes her. Aeric then punts the remaining one off the building and that’s combat.
Combat Ends
Basco propels himself downwards gliding; Aeric uses his sword to jam into the building and ski down, Benno hops in the lift and heads down, and Mirbana tries to re-use her footholds from previously. We reach the ground floor again and head towards the garage where the 4 mechs were last seen, the garage is empty but gunfire is heard nearby. Gethin shouts ‘charge!’ and Aeric blinks out and approaches. As we rush in the direction of the conflict we encounter several destroyed Cornucopian and Aun mechs, none of them looking like the Lancaster mech the ‘defector’ was stowed in. We press in and the fighting intensifies and we receive an alert over battlenet that ‘the enemy have breached the front line, assistance is needed’, so Gethin demands we assist. We race to the frontline, and the fighting sounds fiercest on the far side of an abandoned railyard, and as we reach the edge we spot ahead of us the fleeing shape of 3 Aun mechs, 2x standard and 1x large quadropedal mech (the one we believe is holding the ‘defector’). Aeric offers to cut her out of the compartment, Gethin assents and away we go. As we chase after the enemy they spot us and speed up commensurately. Ahead of them we see several new Aun mechs coming towards us having broken the frontline to assist.
The mechs approaching have lasers and battery backpacks. Blue mech 0 is a quadroped - a technical mechnical. Green mech 1 we think contains the hostage and the 2 flanking it left with it. A size 1 person will slow it if adjacent. A size 2 worth of mech adjacent to green 1 will immobilise it. Shooting at it may injure the person inside. Objective is to stop it getting off the far end of the map.
Combattttttttttttttttt
Mirbana charges up but gets pot shotted, immobilised (by a spike in the leg) and jammed, so she gets a spinny gun that can’t fire this turn boooooo. The mech tries to escape some more, then Benno instructs the AI to move closer to Mirbana, asks if she’d prefer to shoot or move, then clears her Jam to ensure shooting can happen :D then locks on to one of the two escort mechs, hitting the other one with a shot too. One of the mechs tries to crack back but misses, then an eye pops open on it. Aeric flies up to the mech with the hostage and slices through it, then knocks it prone. Then his mech does the weird blinky thing and he appears on top of a freight carriage. Lasermech hits Aeric, then Basco flies over and terminates one of the flanking mechs. Gethin terminates the other flanking mech, and then to help out Mirbana who now has nothing to shoot, unimmobilizes her too. Gethin has one little arcing shot on a lasermech which clips it. Enemy Blue techmech frigs with Aeric and Mirbana. Lasermech shoots at Aeric.
Benno now locks on to some enemies and moves forward. Autoguns chip away at the lasermechs. Lasermech continues to fire on Basco, which crackles and burns him horribly. Mirbana walks up and using the lockon from Benno, terminates a lasermech. Spitey techmech now targets Aeric and Gethin, teching them both. Basco deals with his own problems before Aeric, who is immobilized and imprisoned, takes a turn stabilising then blinks over to the prisoner mech, but then random blink moves him away a little. Greenmech now stands up and trots away from us all, then Gethin uses his crazy ass laser on techmech, then lasermech misses an attack on us.
Aeric now trots up and starts swinging blades, then blinks away from the prisoning mech, then techmech starts making trouble again, giving Mirbana and Aeric a blast, destroying Mirbana’s manipulators. Basco propels Mirbana forward, so Mirbana slows her cannon down, trots over to the prison mech, holds it still, then shoots at the techmech, hitting. Mirbana calls Benno forward…..a little. Then a lasermech hits Aeric before Gethin decides the best way to deal with the imprison virus is to absolutely blast heat and laser obliterate the techmech. Yeouch.
Mirbana now takes another hit and burn before Aeric steps to a laser mech and cuts it up, slashy slashy, then blinks over the other side of it and has one last hit, missing before the random-blink-away. The other lasermech fires on Gethin, causing quite the burn again. Aeric calls on Benno to shoot lasermech, which he does, before Basco flies over and hammers the other lasermech, hitting and stunning it. As Mirbana holds the leg of the struggling support mech with one arm, she guns down the remaining lasermech with the assault cannon, and we’re left with a writhing mech. We disable the immobilised mech, chopping off its legs, then the pilot ejects, then we carve our way inside to find the unconscious woman.
Combat ends…
Mirbana gets the defector into the spare compartment and uses the Benno pillow to rest her up.
Benno: Structure 4/4, HP 15/15, Stress 4/4, Repair 4/4
Mirbana’s Dunyazad: Structure 4/4, Heat 0/9, HP 15/15, Stress 4/4, Repair 3/6. Manipulators deid.
Aeric: Structure 4/4, Stress 4/4, Repair 2, HP (fixed) – persistent effect from repaired mech, eot Aeric will blink 3 squares in a random direction (not to an occupied space).
Basco: S 4/4 S 4/4 , HP 15/15 Repair 7/7, O/C 0/3
Gethin: Structure 4/4? HP ?/13 Stress ?/4 Repair 0 Leadership 3 ZF4 Charges 0 – nb persistent effect repaired mech has 2 tweaks: eot take 1d3 heat; when firing weapons, generates 1d3 heat.
Lock On Stats
Armor, Speed, Evasion, E-Defense, Mech Skills, and current HP
A, Sp, E, ED, H, A, Sy, E, HP
Duckers? A2, Sp4, E9, ED8, H2, A1, Sy0, E2, HP13
Armoured Broad shouldered peeps: A1, Sp5, E11, ED11, H3, A2, Sy2, E2, HP20
Halo: A, Sp, E, ED, H, A, Sy, E, HP
Fancier standard, red sash: A1, Sp4, E10, ED9, H2, A2, Sy2, E2, HP>5
½ sword stuffs: A1, Sp6, E15, ED8, H1, A3, Sy1, E0, HP15
Cloud Stuff: A1, Sp3, E12, ED6, H3, A3, Sy0, E-1, HP14
Old looking mechs: A1, Sp4, E10, ED9, H2, A2, Sy2, E2, HP1
Mine-laying launcher backpack: A2, Sp4, E8, ED10, H1, A0, Sy3, E0, HP14
Birds - Small: A1, Sp7, E12, ED10, H4, A3, Sy-2, E-2, HP16
Birds - Large: A1, Sp7, E12, ED10, H4, A3, Sy-2, E-2, HP16
Blue Zippy: A0, Sp8, E18, ED7, H-2, A4, Sy3, E0, HP8
Red Lancer: A0, Sp8, E11, ED8, H2, A3, Sy0, E0, HP15
Sniper Person: A0, Sp4, E13, ED9, H-2, A2, Sy3, E1, HP12
Mining Lazors: A2, Sp4, E9, ED8, H2, A1, Sy0, E2, HP13
Others: A1, Sp5, E9, ED6, H4, A4, Sy-2, E-1, HP16
Gethins Order’s (So Greg Remembers)
Gethin’s notes
Mirbana is currently my favourite squadmate having excelled herself in the first round of combat
Aeric is now Gethin’s new favourite (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upzrUBltoDQ)
Basco needs diversity training, bit cheeky
Recommend that Gethin himself needs remedial training on squad leading as lieutenant (plus target practice due to multiple instances of friendly fire) :P Insubordination!