This
was a fun session, even if my players came dangerously close to having over
half their members killed during some…tense…negotiations. There was a good mix of combat vs.
roleplaying, in particular a lot of very important in-group politics which had
been brewing in the background were finally brought to light. There may not be full resolution on these
issues, but everyone has a relatively good idea of where the other members of
the group are coming from, and have figured out a way to work together. I actually did not expect the group to take
the “third option” I had afforded them, it caught me a bit by surprise and I
had to roll with the punches at the end of the session to fill in the gaps on
the one real option I had considered (but failed to do any prep work to address
if they chose it). Oh, and the combat
this session went MUCH better; it’s not going to change my mind about finding
an alternative system, but it certainly was not as frustrating this
session. Max’s player was gone again so
I had to do a bit of stand-in roleplaying, but such is life when you have an
adult group of gamers with real lives to attend to.
Session 5: I’ll
Take What’s Behind Door Number Three!
Mercy for the Merciless
As the
party stared across the strewn rubble separating them from the convoy of Mitchell’s
goons, a quiet settled onto the broken ruins of old Wilmington. An armored SUV, two ATV’s, and a motorcycle
comprised the convoy which had pulled up a hundred meters west of the player’s
current position on an old road. Though
the numbers were hard to make out, it was obvious that the thugs had come
prepared for a fight. No one answered
when the sallow, bald leader of the Mitchell’s crew told them to drop their
weapons and get their hands up. The
quiet was finally broken when Max suddenly dropped the handle of the loot box
he had helped to carry up from Roland’s storeroom and dove for cover behind a
burnt out car in the middle of the road.
Eve and Clover quickly followed suit, and Carlin worked his way into a
covered position to overwatch the party behind the car as Ivan and Vincent
started to work their way into flanking positions on the north and south side
of the road. The goons spread out; the
party could see five but heard more noise coming from the area around the SUV.
Shots
started to ring out and it became apparent that the thugs were focusing their
attention on the group behind the car and had not yet realized that Vincent,
Ivan, and Carlin had been nearby waiting for their friends. This change when Ivan, looking to protect his
exposed comrades, stormed his massive cybernetic frame into the ruined shell of
a two story brick building on the north side of the roads. The bandits heard him moving, and one of them
called out Ivan’s location and told his compatriots to “load up the HE”, they
had come prepared to fight the cyborg. Vincent
chose to maintain his cover and stealthily crept into a burnt out house on the
south side of the road next door to another house he had seen two of the thugs
run to. Max, igniting his pyrokinesis,
began to lob flaming orbs of psychic energy at the bandits north of the road as
Eve tried to lay down sufficient cover fire for Clover to dash from the car to
the house that Vincent had crept into.
Carlin, hoping to provide his isolated comrades some cover, threw a
technowizard device containing a force field down next to the car. A blue, shimmering dome fell over the vehicle
as the little machine clicked and whirred.
When
Ivan finally made his way across the rubble inside the building on the north
side of the road to a window where he could get a clear view of the last place
he had seen the thugs move to, a troubling sight greeted him: the barrel of a
mini-missile launcher leveled directly at him across the alley separating his
position from the bandits. The explosion
staggered him back and blew out the wall around him, further exposing him to rifle
fire from the thug’s partner. Ivan was
able to regain his footing, and while the return fire from his plasma rifle didn’t
kill the man it took the grenadier off his feet for the remainder of the round. Eve, hoping to keep the grenadier from
targeting their position, quickly yelled at Max to ignite a row of thick bushes
which had sprung from the broken concrete between their cover and the building
the grenadier had engaged Ivan from.
Carlin, lacking exposed targets, maintained his watch in the hopes that
one of the goons would reveal himself.
Meanwhile, Clover had made it across the road and joined Vincent just as
the cyberknight peeked around a corner to try and find a clear path into the
adjacent building. The rifle blast from
the thug missed him by inches, the grim mercenary had been smart enough to make
sure their flank was covered against any surprises the characters might try and
drop on them.
The one
surprise the man was not counting on was Clover, and as she whipped around the
corner and flung her hands forward the man dropped his rifle from unresponsive
hands and fell to the ground in a contorted position. Clover had psychically turned his own nervous
system against him, paralyzing his muscles and rendering him powerless. Vincent used this chance to close the distance
between himself and the paralyzed man, disarming him in case he succeeded in
breaking free of Clover’s power. At this
point Eve, Carlin, and Vincent all saw, much to their dismay, yet another goon
affixing a light machine gun to the turret of the armored SUV and preparing to
fire. Carlin, finally seizing the
opportunity to engage an opponent, attempted unsuccessfully to snipe the gunner
out from behind his weapon. Ivan tried
to rejoin the group upon word of the automatic weapons gunner, but was stopped
short when a shadow fell over him. The
bald man, revealed to be a psi-stalker, had used the chaos of the firefight to
mask his flanking maneuver to the north side of the building Ivan had taken
position in. Jumping from the wall above
him, the psi-stalker destroyed Ivan’s plasma rifle with a single swipe of his
vibro-blade as he descended.
Unable
to assist his comrades, and too occupied to let them know he was now engaged
with the psi-stalker at close range, Ivan lashed out with his metallic
fists. Unfortunately, the near prescient
psychic abilities of the stalker allowed him to dance nimbly around Ivan’s
cybernetic strikes with acrobatic grace.
Continual lashes from the hunter’s vibro blade left deep gouges in Ivan’s
armor, barely missing joints and vital components by inches. Back at the car, things had gone from bad to
worse. Distracted by the appearance of
the machine gunner, the group failed to see the grenadier with the missile
launcher had skirted the flaming bushes and had now taken aim at them. The explosion destroyed Carlin’s force field,
and if Clover had not employed a secondary psychic shield to protect them the
outcome might have been exceptionally grim.
Vincent, seeing that Carlin and Eve had targeted the gunner, slipped
into the house beside him and found another thug taking aim at his
comrades. A single slash from his
psi-sword ended the man’s threat. Max
tried to keep the grenadier from gaining another shot by mentally willing the
flames to jump from the bushes beside them onto the actual ruined house the
grenadier had taken cover in. Eve,
breaking her aim off of the gunner, snapped a lucky shot off that managed to
finish the mortally wounded grenadier as he fled backwards from the flames.
Vincent
climbed back out from the house and sprinted towards the gunner’s SUV; though
he was cut short as a burst from the light machinegun cut the motorcycle
Vincent had taken cover behind in half.
Vincent’s last second dodge had surely saved him from potentially fatal
damage. Carlin, unwilling to chance too
many shots at the gunner since his friends behind the car were almost directly
in his line of sight, tried to gain a better position to engage the man while
Clover lashed out again with her psychic powers to paralyze the gunner before
he could bring his weapon to bear.
Luckily, his resistance to psychic attack was minimal and he collapsed
down limply into the turret. Ivan,
realizing that even HE would require assistance to overcome the stalker, threw
himself bodily through the wall between himself and the position Eve and Max
had taken behind the car. Suddenly
exposed to multiple opponents, and realizing how poorly things had fared for
his crew, the psi-stalker cursed and took off at a sprint through the ruins in
an attempt to escape the party. The last
remaining merc quickly followed suit, though well placed shots from Eve, Max,
and Carlin made his hopes for escape short lived. Ivan took off immediately in pursuit alone,
his anger at the stalker’s attack overcoming his common sense. Vincent disarmed the gunner in the turret
and, after seeing the stalker vanish over a rubble pile with Ivan in hot
pursuit, followed the cyborg in an attempt to protect his comrade.
The
group back at the car took a breath, but before they could rest too easy they
suddenly remembered that the grenadier’s missile launcher had been in the
building at the epicenter of Max’s psychic inferno. Max extinguished the flames; and none too
soon! Another round and the remaining
missiles might have detonated and destroyed everything within a block. Carlin teleported into the driver’s seat of
his car and pulled the vehicle around to help give chase to the stalker while
Max and Clover took stock of the situation and collected the defeated goon’s
weapons. Eve knew she could not keep up
with Ivan and Vincent in their pursuit and instead had used this lull in the
fighting to silently stalk over and slit the throats of the two paralyzed
bandits. Her growing affection for Ivan
had clouded her judgment and thrown her into a dark rage when she saw him in
danger, and she had chosen to ensure those responsible would never threaten
another person again. Ivan had finally
crested the large rubble pile the stalker had vanished over, but was startled
to find that the man had vanished. A
quick scan using his enhanced vision helped Ivan pinpoint the psychic’s
location, just as he popped out and threw a bolo which tangled itself around
Ivan’s legs. The metallic titan crashed
loudly into the wreckage beneath him.
The stalker might have used this opportunity to close with Ivan or affect
his escape if Vincent had not appeared.
The stalker drew his vibro-blade and summoned Vincent forward, and the
two squared off grimly as Ivan pulled the bolo wires off his legs.
Vincent,
following his strict code, offered the psi-stalker a single chance to surrender
and survive unharmed. Surprisingly, the
psychic mercenary saw the hopelessness of his situation and threw his sword at
Vincent’s feet. The remainder of the
group, arriving in Carlin’s car, surrounded the psi-stalker. A tense moment of silence was broken by the
stalker asking, bluntly, what he needed to do to walk away alive. Clover was insistent that he drop his psychic
defenses and allow her to scan his mind, but the stalker refused to do so. He would no sooner drop his mental defense
against a psychic than take off his body armor for a man pointing a gun at his
chest. Clover might have tried to kill
him then and there if Vincent had not stepped forward to protect the man. He had given his word to allow their foe to
walk away unharmed, but they needed information first. If the stalker would not provide it, Vincent
could not guarantee that his comrades would honor Vincent’s word despite his
protestations. The stalker acquiesced,
telling them as much as he knew about the Mitchell’s operations. He confirmed that they had assassinated
Roland, and were attempting to gain control of the criminal market in
Wilmington. Mitchell suspected that the
group were agents of the black market who had come to investigate Roland’s
death, and so had sent the stalker and his men out into the wastes to track the
party and regain anything they might have recovered from Roland’s home (he had
guessed rightly that the party had found the secret storeroom that Harper had
been searching for).
Though
the stalker continued to refuse to allow Clover to psychically scan him and
confirm that he was telling the truth, Vincent decided that the man had kept up
his end of the bargain. Despite a few
warnings and protestations from the group he allowed the man to make a hasty
retreat towards the wood line in the distance, warning him that if he returned
to Wilmington or that if they ever saw him again they would finish the day’s
business. Eve struggled not to put a
round through the fleeing man's back as he fled, but overcame her desire for
vengeance. The group took stock of their
situation, regrouped, and began to salvage what they could of the armor and
weapons back at the firefight. Vincent,
horrified at the revelation that Eve had killed the two thugs as they lay
paralyzed, left alone for Wilmington without a word to any of his party member’s. Only Carlin saw him mount his robotic steed
and ride off, and quickly followed in his car in an attempt to find out what
had troubled his friend so deeply. The
rest of the party, realizing that they needed make their way after the pair,
threw the salvaged gear into the SUV and took it and the two ATV’s back to
town.
We Need to Talk
Back at
Calaghan’s Vincent pulled Carlin aside and insisted that he would have nothing
more to do with the Eve, Max, and Ivan.
They lacked restraint and morality; and while Vincent would not attack
the three for their actions, he certainly did not have to sit by and accept
them. He insisted that they part ways
with them and their new “friend” Clover, and told them all as much when they
arrived back at the garage. It was a
tense and emotionally charged exchanged, Carlin tried to reason Vincent out of
his insistence. It wasn’t until Eve
explained that she had killed the men in rage over Ivan’s close brush with
death as she had begun to have deep feelings for him (a fact which Vincent did
not feel justified what HE considered murder), and Clover’s revelation that she
had been sent to Wilmington by a veteran member of Vincent’s order, that the
defiant cyberknight agreed not to break away from his recent comrades. He made it abundantly clear that he would not
tolerate any more incidents like those out in the ruins, and that if he saw
them again he would take action to prevent them or punish those responsible. Though he was far from content, Vincent realized
he still needed help in accomplishing his goal.
A big problem remained though: the Mitchells.
The
party all agreed that a frontal assault on the Mitchell’s compound was suicide,
and that the numbers the corrupt family brought to bear would certainly mean
that in due time they would be cut down.
The recent dust up in the ruins would only exacerbate the issue and make
confrontation inevitable if something was not done. Eve, Max, and Ivan privately consulted and
agreed that, as Ivan and Max were contracted by the black market, they would
attempt to act on the market’s behalf and negotiate a settlement over the
control of Wilmington. It was a gamble,
but their hope was that they could bluff their way into a cease fire and buy
themselves time to figure out their next move.
While Vincent kept watch over his mysterious box, the rest of the group
made their way across town to the Mitchell’s compound. It was essentially a fortified city block,
with the Mitchell’s entire weapons manufacturing and storefront operations, a
bar, whorehouse, and accommodations for his workers and thugs all centrally
located. A metal gate dimly lit by fluorescent
lights closed the compound off from the rest of Wilmington.
Announcing
their intention to parlay to the gate guard, the party was ushered inside the
front courtyard and quickly surrounded by over a dozen heavily armed men. They frisked the players for weapons, easily
finding the two which Clover and Eve had attempted to secret away on their
persons, before rigidly escorting the party into a large storage warehouse. Surrounded by half a dozen mercenaries on
second story catwalks, the group found Mitchell staring at them darkly from within
a fortified office inside the warehouse which the local crime lord had built as
a safehouse in case of an attack on his compound. The group would never be able to force their
in before the mercenaries on the catwalk, and outside, cut them down. The inherent danger of their plan began to
dawn on the players, and a nervous sense of foreboding crept in. Mitchell, cagey enough to suspect that there
was a reason that the players had seemingly walked into his hands, told the
group to explain themselves and to make it fast. He was not in a mood to play games.
Ivan
took lead and tried to convince Mitchell that none of this had been personal,
and that it had been a mistake to get his sons arrested after their assault at
Jaco’s. Mitchell scoffed, and asserted
that it was hard NOT to take it personally when your children are thrown in
jail because some asshole decided to shove his nose where it didn’t
belong. He demanded to know if the group
were here on behalf of the black market, and Ivan (much to Carlin’s shock) revealed
that he and Max WERE members of the shadowy criminal organization. Ivan quickly clarified that they were
low-level contractors, but promised that if Mitchell called off his men that he
and Max would vouch for Mitchell to their employers. Unfortunately, the ambitious mobster had no
interest in negotiating with someone lacking authority within the black market. He gave the group one option; and one option
only. He knew they had found Roland’s
leverage on Harper, they had 48 hours to give it to him and leave Wilmington or
they would all die. Furthermore, they
would leave all the vehicles and equipment they had salvaged from the firefight
in the garage at Calaghan’s and make sure people saw them leaving town with
their tail between their legs. Mitchell
had a reputation to uphold, and the player’s had seriously undermined it
through their actions. Without waiting
for a response he shut off his bunker’s comms and walked away as the guards
ushered the group back out the front gate at gunpoint.
The Better Part of Valor
Back
with Vincent the party, dejected at the failure of their negotiations, talked
about options. The general consensus was
that the situation had spiraled beyond their control, and they needed to put an
end to this whole affair in a hurry.
Carlin forwarded the notion that they just get out entirely, leave
Wilmington that night, and never look back.
It was a plan the group favored, though the question of what to do with
their information on Harper still plagued them.
Vincent struck upon an idea, one which the rest of the party supported
fully. They would give the incriminating
evidence to Jericho, the Justice Ranger who ran the local detachment enforcing
the law outside of Wilmington. Eve,
knowing that the party was almost certainly being watched by Mitchell’s agents,
offered to disguise Vincent so he could reach Jericho unnoticed. She passed her roll, and the ugliest hooker
to ever grace the floor of Calaghan’s stepped out onto the street with the
precious data tucked inside his bra.
Within moments Vincent had arrived at Jericho’s, and hastily explained
the reason for his disguise and the need for he and his companions to make an
impromptu escape from Wilmington.
Jericho offered his thanks, and ensured that he would use the
information to put Harper on the right path towards cleaning up
Wilmington. He pulled a map off the wall
of his office detailing several safe houses which the Rangers used between
Wilmington and Hope and wished Vincent luck.
Once
back at Calaghan’s, the party made their final preparations in the relative
seclusion of the garage. Packed,
stocked, and reloaded they were ready to leave.
There was still one issue, however, that was bothering Vincent. What was going to happen to Jaco once they
left? Surely Mitchell would target the
poor D-Bee, either out of spite or to make a point about colluding with
strangers. Vincent felt they owed the
creature since they had gotten him into this mess, Max liked the idea of having
someone around who could repair weapons and armor, and Carlin was opposed to
wasting time and resources on a “fifth wheel” when the journey to Hope from
Wilmington was long and dangerous by any route.
Ultimately, Max and Vincent chose to offer Jaco the chance to join their
escape. The convoy departed Calaghan’s,
arrived at Jaco’s shop, and presented Jaco with his choices. He quickly accepted, and spent a few moments
hastily throwing his most important tools and savings into a backpack before
climbing into the SUV which Max was driving.
As the convoy pulled up to the front gate a single guard stepped out in
front of them and told them they would have to wait until morning to
leave. The sight of Ivan leveling his
new toy, the gunner’s light machinegun from their engagement in the ruins, convinced
the underpaid deputy that impeding their progress was not the wisest choice. As the party accelerated out into the
darkened wastes, a trail of headlights appeared behind them. The Mitchell’s agents had informed them of
the group’s attempt to escape, and they had no intention of just letting the
party roll away…
GM NOTES
(SPOILERS)
1.
I really did not expect the group to simply walk
away from Wilmington. They all had valid
reasons to do so, even Vincent with his rigid code of honor, so it WAS a viable
option. I’m actually quite pleased that
they chose to try a nonviolent approach, despite the amount of time I had spent
planning out possible ways a final confrontation with the Mitchell’s would play
out. I actually thought they would use
the information on Harper to get the sheriff onboard for a final confrontation
or assault on the Mitchell’s compound. I
guess they showed me something about outside-the-box play.
2.
There was a lot of in-group tension building between
Vincent/Vincent’s player and the rest of the party. I’ve said before how this is an unfortunate
trend in most games where the cleric/paladin/do-gooder is concerned. The voice of morality is easily criticized,
and it can make a player feel marginalized and punished just for roleplaying
their character appropriately. None of
the other players were INTENTIONALLY targeting him, but in playing THEIR
characters true to form such reactions were inevitable. It’s usually my job to play the intermediary
and keep this sort of shit to a minimum, but the group did an admirable job
working some of this tension out. It’s
hard to RP some things, but they did a good job in a very short amount of time,
and it helped keep the group from fracturing at a time of crisis.
3.
I have never come closer to killing so many of
my players at once as I did during this session. Walking into their enemy’s sanctum,
announcing their affiliation with the organization that enemy is opposed to,
and then trying to bargain despite admitting that they had no real authority
was a sore test of my restraint. I can
honestly say that if not for the fact that the party had something Mitchell
wanted, the information on Harper, I would have killed them all on
principle. Even now I feel that I was
actually too lenient, and wonder if the group still sincerely believes that there
will be repercussion for poorly thought out plans.
4.
I actually planned for the psi-stalker to be
VINCENT’S opponent in the opening combat engagement, not Ivan’s. I know that Vincent’s player had been feeling
a bit bummed about how the rest of the group was treating him, and had planned
to try and reinvigorate him with a little specialized combat encounter suited
to his combat build. I thought I had
done a good job setting it up but, after I intentionally said that the
psi-stalker was likely headed north, and Vincent chose to advance down the
south side of the road, it was out of my hands to some degree. It made for a good reminder that even walking
tanks like Ivan can encounter things capable of harming them, but was not
exactly what I wanted.
5.
Clover held out for a loooooong time about why
she was affiliating herself with the group.
This partly stemmed from a miscommunication on my part about why she had
been sent to find them. Once I clarified
exactly who had sent her, and why, it made her forthcoming to Vincent at a
critical juncture of the group’s internal integrity. I need to make sure people have a firm grasp
of the way I am trying to get them involved in the group in a believable
way. This almost backfired on me.