Defenders of Aura 2 - A Battle Century G Sequel

[Beacon of Chaos]

Previously on Defenders of Aura. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?512083-Defenders-of-Aura-A-Battle-Century-G-Campaign-Diary)

Several weeks later...

Spectre receives a visit in prison from an old friend, a scientist by the name of Robert Steel. Robert tells him that the political situation on Camelot is rough at the moment and that the best option for Spectre is to sit tight for the time being, until a diplomatic solution can be found. Eric is fine; Robert convinced the higher ups that he's harmless so he is being treated well. Spectre is frustrated but accepts what Robert says.

Later that day, Sinclair awakens from his sleep mode. He is currently little more than a head on a stick. Wires hanging from his neck plug him in to some very complicated looking computers. He has no idea how long he's been here, his internal clock being damaged, amongst other systems. He has, however, been awake while his captor has been experimenting on him, breaking him apart and routing through his systems for information. His tormentor walks into the room, a man named Robert Steel.

Robert: Ah, Sinclair, how are you today?
Sinclair: Beep, beep. I am a robot. How the frag do you think I am!?
Robert: I'm so glad I disabled your voice synthesiser.
Sinclair: (OOC) He can't hear me?
GM: (OOC) Nope.
Sinclair: (OOC) Damn.

While Robert goes about his experiments, Sinclair speaks to a friend of his own. A being sits next to him, apparantly invisible to Dr. Steel. A humanoid body made of stars and nebulae, its face a swirling void. It tells Sinclair to endure, for his friends will soon be coming for him. I don't remember picking up any mental hitchhikers on my way through Dark Space, but the GM doesn't feel compelled to explain so I roll with it.

Elsewhere, a new arrival enters the prison. She's one of the Naul healer caste, the horned aliens who helped us before. Her name is Fauna (played by Juyon's player) and she almost immediately gets into trouble. After receiving her customary welcome beating from the guards she finds herself aproached by a human prisoner. He's all smiles but it's clear his attitude isn't friendly. Fauna decides to be a bit snarky, but doesn't notice the other prisoners surrounding her. One draws a knife only for another hand to grab him by the wrist. The guy behind him is another Naul, this one from the warrior caste. Katari, ex-police officer (played by Ax's player) doesn't take kindly to bullies so he shows them the error of their ways. Violently. He breaks the guy's wrist, uses him to hit three other guys, and finally impales one on his horns before the rest run away. He got stabbed a few times for his trouble, but he seems far tougher than any human. Katari earns himself the thanks of Fauna, as well as a nice circumstance bonus to intimidate checks for the rest of the session. Fauna tries to heal his wounds, but all the Nauls have had implants installed that negate their magic. They go to find someone else.

The pair are approahed by another inmate. Zack Adani, the resistance leader from Aura, patches Katari up and decides to recruit him into his group, who are planning a daring escape.

Cue yet another new inmate. He introduces himself as Sven, a man with a strange accent and an obviously fake beard, and immediately asks for Zack Adani. Sven is dragged off to a prison cell by Zack and Katari, where Sven (played by Fiona's player) reveals that he is actually a resistance fighter here to help break us out. The new guy takes a small communicator from a hidden pocket and gives it to Zack.

(Out of character, Katari's player writes "smuggling contraband" on a piece of paper and tells us his character is logging every illegal activity we perform as a party so he can bring them up when he is reinstated as a police officer. Lawful Neutral to a fault. Why is he in prison? Investigating his superiors for corruption.)

Zack activates the communicator. A shadowy face speaks to the group.
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/xcom/images/a/af/XCOM-EU_The_Council.jpg
Hello Commander...
The face tells the team that in order to escape they need to perform several tasks.
1. Hack a certain console.
2. Convince one of the gang leaders here to start a riot.
3. Rescue Sinclair.
4. Get guns from a notorious smuggler.
5. Disable communications.
6. Escape to the hanger, steal a ship and escape.

Sounds easy enough.

Sven removes his disguise to reveal that he is not, in fact, a suspicious Swedish man, but is a self-proclaimed freedom fighter and "master" of disguise who calls himself Null.
http://assets1.ignimgs.com/2017/03/28/persona5-1280-3-1490728399817_400w.jpg
Reeeeeal inconspicious there, bub.

Null and Spectre head to find the console and rewire it. A couple of inmates are hanging around it, apparantly trading some kind of cigarettes. After a brief attempt by Spectre to convince them to move along, Null simply brains one with a crowbar (how the hell did he smuggle that in?) and the other runs away. The console is locked in a metal case. Spectre and Null both attempt to open it using the crowbar but get natural 1s on their rolls, pulling pathetically at the door. They end up having to get Amir, another member of the group, to help them. After rewiring the console (a simple matter for Spectre), Sinclair suddenly finds himself linked in to all the security cameras in the prison. However, he has no way of communicating yet.

Elsewhere, Katari and Fauna go to find and speak with the gang leader, someone they believe is sympathetic to their cause. Fauna and Katari do the Good Cop Bad Cop routine, with Katari using his intimidate bonus to get an audience with the boss. (I'm afraid I had to leave the room for a bit at this point so I missed a lot of the conversation, but the guy agreed to help, though it seems like he's actually a cult leader rather than just a gang leader).

The party meets back at the cell to discuss the next part of the plan. Shadowy face person contacts us again, this time patching Sinclair into the conversation. The robot's speech is a little fragmented as Dr. Steel's hacking attempts have caused a few glitches in his brain, but he's glad to see a few familiar faces. Spectre volunteers to go rescue Sinclair, who will guide him past the guards using the security cameras. Zack will disable the prison communications with the outside world by sabotaging the comms tower, while Katari, Fauna, and Null (who decides it's time for another reveal and tells us that he is actually the deposed Prince Lucis of Camelot. Apologies to Lucis' player who probably would want a more dramatic reveal than that) will meet with the gun runner.

The trio ask around the prison to find the gun runner, a nomad who goes by the name Pau. Katari's blood-stained horns continue to give him a circumstance bonus to intimidation and the group is directed down a hallway which apparantly leads to Pau's room. However, as they walk down, the doors at either end seal shut.

GM: A strange smell begins to fill the corridor.
Katari: Do I recognise the smell?
GM: Make an intellect roll.
Katari: *rolls* 9?
GM: You pass out.
Katari: Oh.

Spectre moves towards the robotics lab where Sinclair is being held (What kind of prison has a robotics lab? Or corridors that the inmates can use to spray knockout gas? We just don't know). Sinclair keeps in contact with Spectre via the communicator and directs him past the guards, and hacks through a security door that leads though to the lab. Ahead, some guards approach, so Spectre has to duck into a side door, mercifully unlocked. It seems to be a store room, filled with boxes. The guards hover outside for a while, so Spectre delves into the boxes to look for interesting items. Inside one is a maintenance uniform, so Spectre slips it on while Sinclair hacks into the lighting systems. It's easy enough for the robot to overload the lights, causing them to explode. Spectre grabs a tool box and walks out of the room, where one of the guards orders him to get to work on the lights. He moves on and walks into the lab when no one is looking.

Inside is Sinclair's head, mounted on what is basically a stick with wires hanging out. While Spectre looks for a way to unattach him, the other door to the lab opens (we both failed our awareness checks) and Robert Steel walks in. Spectre attempts to bluff, saying he'd been released early, but Robert is having none of it and picks up a pistol. Spectre notices there's a spare pistol next to him. Getting a feeling that his old friend probably wouldn't fire, he edges towards the gun. Just as Robert aims his weapon in warning, Sinclair overloads the lights again and the distraction is just enough for Spectre to grab the gun and take a shot... which he misses. But Robert is thrown off his guard enough for Spectre to grab Sinclair and make a run for it.

Katari, Fauna, and Lucis wake up hand cuffed to a wall. A small nomad watches over them and questions them about their intentions. they explain that they need weapons for a prison break and that he's more than welcome to join us if he helps.

Pau: No way! I'm fine here, thanks! I got a good thing going here.
Lucis: Prison- You're doing it wrong.

Katari, fed up with trying to negociate, begins pulling at the chains, very nearly pulling them from the wall. Pau freaks out and yells-

Pau: Fine! Take the guns! Take them! I'm outta here!

-and throws a bag of guns at Katari (where was he keeping them? What kind of prison is this???) before legging it. As Katari pulls himself free and begins helping Lucis and Fauna, the sounds of guards can be heard around the prison. A small group begins moving down the corridor towards the group. Lucis, now free, picks up what looks like a grenade on a stick and aims it at the guards.

GM: Make a roll.
Lucis: *rolls* That's... a number.
GM: The pin flies out of the grenade and lands in the hallway. You are still holding the grenade.

Lucis flings the grenade stick down the corridor, which causes the guards to scatter.

Lucis: Is there are tarp some where I can use?
GM: Uh, sure, there's one in the corner.
Lucis: Perfect! I wrap it around myself like a cape while I walk away from the explosion.

Elsewhere, Spectre is running from the guards while carrying Sinclair's head in a box. Unfortunately he's not the speediest scientist around and he gets cornered. He takes another shot with his pistol but misses again. Before the guards can beat him down, he gets help in the form of Bloody Mary, a genuine space pirate and another member of the breakout group. They meet up with other members of Zack's team; George the reporter, Amir the marine, and Kirt the hacker. Together they make their way towards the hanger. Easier said than done, as the guards have barricaded the exit and set up a turret.

On the other side of the prison, the trio find themselves cornered by guards. Lucis takes some pot shots with his gun but the guards are well armoured. One of them takes a shot and Lucis receives a bullet to the leg. Katari charges ahead into melee combat, taking a table with him as a shield. He takes down one guard but gets a few bullets to the guts for his troubles. It comes to Fauna's turn. Having nothing in the way of combat skills and unable to easily use the heavy weapons acquired from Pau, she picks up a potted plant and attempts to use her life magic on it. Unfortuntely the implant once again prevents it, leaving Fauna with little to do. With guards blocking the exit and two players bleeding out, the situation looks bad for our heroes.

And then the GM ended the session as it was getting late. To be continued!

As always, bonus quotes from the out of context thread! http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22381228&postcount=450

[Beacon of Chaos]

We return to our regularly scheduled prison breakout, already in progress.

Fauna finds herself frustrated with her magic being blocked and tries to find a way around it. A couple of us suggest she simply cut off the arm with the implant in it but for some reason this idea doesn't appeal to her. An idea occurs to her however; the implant blocks manifestations of magic, but not necessarily the flow of mana in the body. It's possible she can divert her mana around the body in such as way as to numb the arm containing the implant, effectively negating its effect. This will leave her with a useless arm but it's better than cutting it off. A lucky willpower roll releases her magic and even leaves her arm functional, though weakened. Katari creates a distraction long enough for Fauna to get to Lucis and heal him. Fauna then uses her magic to create a portal between the potted plant she was holding and another she can see on the other side of the guards. She and Lucis teleport across, where Katari is pinned down. Fauna heals his wounds as best she can and Katari then proceeds to seal the door where the guards are by bending the metal with his bare hands. Badass. Luckily, they now appear to be near a medbay, so they pick up some supplies before heading towards the hanger.

A voice begins speaking over the tannoy. It's the cult leader (I forgot his name) who encourages his followers to rise up and defend the prison against the military who have been alerted to the break out and are coming to put a stop to it. Sinclair attempts to trace the location, only to find that the voice is a recording.

The hanger is well guarded now and while Bloody Mary and Amir are able to hold off the guards there's no way we can advance. Sinclair hears the voice of his mysterious friend, who he has dubbed "Space Face".

Space Face: You were brought to life through the blood of your planet. There are others out there that can also be brought to life. Reach out to them.

Sinclair concentrates and sure enough he detects that there are other robots nearby. Just two: a large loader bot and a human-sized welder bot. The GM says they are left over from when this place used to be a factory (that explains some things). Both are broken and rusty but Sinclair gets the feeling that they want to move again. He focuses his strange new power on them and sure enough they begin to stand.

GM: You can issue one order to them.
Sinclair: These people are trying to kill us! Stop them!

The robots get to work, attacking the guards who are completely blind-sided. Emboldened by the sudden help, Amir and Mary begin moving forwards, using as much cover as they are able. Kirt, the teenage hacker, on the other hand, decides the best solution is to run straight at the turret with no cover.

GM: He's going to get himself killed.
Sinclair: Well, it was nice knowing him. Who was he again?

The GM informs him that the only way to get to him in time to save him would involve moving the robots in between Kirt and the turret, sacrificing them. Sinclair hits on another idea. There's one big robot and one little robot. Fastball special, anyone? Of course the GM makes Sinclair roll for the robots in question, but he rolls a measely 4. The little robot makes it to the turret, but doesn't survive the journey. Oops. Still, the turret is thrown off its aim enough to avoid hitting the kid. The rest of the fight works out well and we make it into the hanger at the same time as the others.

GM: There are four ships-
Lucis: Excellent! We can split them between us-
GM: Two of which are on fire-
Lucis: Well, okay we can still take two-
GM: And one of which is being boarded by the cultist and his gang.
Lucis: Yeah, okay.

The cult leader takes off before we get to the ships. Lucis radios Zack to try and see if he can get the prison air defences to take out the cultist's ship but it looks like the defences are now down. Zack suggests we get to the remaining ship and shoot down cultist guy ourselves. Sinclair ponders why we are doing so until Lucis and Katari point out that this guy asked his followers to basically throw themselves at a much stronger military force in defence of a building that he himself is now running away from. We board our ship and Lucis asks who intends to pilot it.

Sinclair: I can do it! Plug me in, cheif!

Sinclair's head is plugged into the control console and Katari co-pilots while Lucis and Spectre man the weapons. We take some shots at the cultist ship but he's able to boost away without a scratch. Military interceptors then turn up, forcing us to retreat, though Sinclair is able to crit his piloting check and we get away with ease.

We set course for a town where one of Lucis' contacts, Karen, has agreed to meet us. While we are on the way, Spectre gets to work creating a new body for Sinclair, using parts from the powered armours the guards at the prison used. By the time we land, the robot has a brand new shiny body, possibly better than the old one.

Several hours later, we land in the forests outside of town. We decide that we need info and supplies so Lucis determines the best way to do this is pick up rumours at a local bar. He was, until recently, a student so he uses his keen bar senses to find the most appropriate one. Of course, we need disguises. Lucis and Spectre put on guard uniforms from the prison, while Sinclair already makes a passable military droid

Lucis: We should also get him some paint in town.
GM: Okay. What colour?
Fauna: Red and gold!
Sinclair: Yes!

Katari wants to come too, but his injuries are still not fully healed. Fauna forces him to stay behind so she can patch him up. There's only so much magic can do. So Lucis, Spectre and Sinclair head to the bar. On the way, Sinclair plugs in to a public terminal and decides to try and fix his programming errors by downloading firmware updates. Curiously, the GM tells him that with the way his systems are, he shouldn't actually be able to function as he is. Downloading the updates feels odd, like "dying and being reborn, while staying awake".

The bar in question is quiet, only a few patrons sitting in their own corners. It's at this point we remember that we have no money, so we find a table with some half-finished drinks and sit down, hoping no one will say anything. There's a news report on the TV that we listen to. There is already news about the prison breakout. Unusually, there is no mention of us at all, or even pictures. Instead, the cult leader is the one getting the screen time. This should be good for us but there's something very fishy about the whole thing. Afterwards there's a message from the new leader of Camelot. It's basically a propaganda piece justifying the coup the ousted the previous preseident, claiming that the war against China was illegal and harming Camelot citizens. It's a speach full of xenophobia and nationalism and mid-way through one of the other patrons, a shabby-looking woman, throws her cup at the TV and yells obscenities. A bouncer gets up to throw her out, but Lucis takes initiative.

Lucis: Leave this one to us. We're the military and that sounded a lot like anti-government sentiment to us. We'll deal with her.

Lucis gets a great check on his deception roll, and the bouncer not only allows us to take her away, but gives us a little bit of cash out of respect. As we're carrying her, she passes out. The GM then asks us for awareness rolls. Sinclair is the only one who makes the roll.

GM: *to Spectre* I can't believe you didn't notice this. It's Orion. Your girlfriend!
Spectre: Well, she wasn't exactly my girlfriend...
Sinclair: Facial recognition software for the win!

We get Orion back to the ship and wait for her to sober up a bit. When she comes to, she tells us that she was able to get on an evacuation transport leaving Aura when the Chinese attacked. She had hoped that Camelot would have done more to help her, but when the Auran refugees started getting arrested, she set out on her own. She tells us that she'd planned to rescue us herself, though exactly how is not clear. Unfortunately she ran out of money and had turned to stealing drinks to cope. Things only got worse when she saw an advert broadcast from Aura. She brings it up on a console, showing us an image of Ax. With a new band. Sinclair and Spectre are fairly convinced that this must be some sort of trick, as the last they'd head of Ax was that he was in jail and heavily drugged to supress his powers. Orion doesn't sound convinced. Sinclair asks about the other members of Break the Abyss but Orion doesn't know what happened to them, assuming they are dead or captured. She did hear about where Delta Team's mechs were taken, however. Some kind of military base not too far from here.

It's around now that we get a knock at the door. It's Karen, Lucis' contact (and by all accounts, the brains behind the resistance). We talk about our options and mention getting the mechs. It seems like our best option for fighting back. Spectre, on the other hand, has been looking into information on his father, Victor. It turns out that he had a research base here on Camelot and it was the last place he was seen before he disappeared. He insists that he wants to check it out, not really caring about the whole resistance thing. Sinclair agrees that it's important to check out, having pledged to help Spectre find his father before. The android also has his own reason for going: Victor was researching dark space before he vanished. Sinclair believes this research could be the key to finding out why he is still able to function despite his programming effectively being unusuable, as well as the origin of Space Face.

The team agrees that this would be a good place to look, but that getting the mechs is the best place to start, making everything else easier. With Karen's help we begin making a plan...

Session ends.

Bonus quotes: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22407427&postcount=473

[Toric]

Woo, more Sinclair! And he is now a full-on battlebot instead of a modified blackjack dealer!

I'd ask about what weapons systems Spectre gave him but I've seen Sinclair's track record with live weapons, or at least simulations thereof.

Pretty awesome seeing some Naul PC's, even though it's sad to see Fiona go. I expect Lucis to have at least one dramatic reveal, costume change, or dramatic victory pose once per session; he set a high bar for himself when he revealed a secret identity on the very first session.

[Beacon of Chaos]

Woo, more Sinclair! And he is now a full-on battlebot instead of a modified blackjack dealer!

I'd ask about what weapons systems Spectre gave him but I've seen Sinclair's track record with live weapons, or at least simulations thereof.
Sinclair is not currently equipped with any built-in weapons, but he has some combat potential. In fact, the way I've built him means he can be incredibly good at most things... for a short time. His new mech will be a fighter, while Fauna will be taking over the role of combat support/healer. Sinclair may have some trouble getting used to it though :smallbiggrin:


I expect Lucis to have at least one dramatic reveal, costume change, or dramatic victory pose once per session; he set a high bar for himself when he revealed a secret identity on the very first session.
Heh, well his deception and secret identity skills came in very handy during the last session, for which the write-up should be done next week.

[Beacon of Chaos]

The military research facility is up in the mountains, only accessable by air. Lucis devises a plan to infiltrate the facility in disguise, using Karen's ex-military knowledge to forge documents to get us in as tranfers brought in to shore up security after the prison break out. Lucis asks everyone to come up with aliases and we end up with Cpt. Shiro (Lucis), Dr. Bruce Steel (Spectre), Flora (Fauna), Ketojan (Katari) and Unit TX-5, AKA Tex (Sinclair).

Before we head to the base, Sinclair attempts to find as much information out about it as possible. He is able to download an out-of-date floor plan and find some images online. Clearly not a secret base, then. There's a landing pad where we can land our stolen military transport ship (after changing the plates, naturally) and take a truck through the security checkpoints. Once into the base, there appears to be a part which is empty and unused, which will be our entry point. We'll investigate the facility and attempt to find the mechs. Lucis has a mech of his own (perk of being royalty) which will be stationed nearby to be called remotely when we need to escape. Katari's own mech is actually a living creature, a type of organic dragon-mech (which I believe was called something like Bloodrage) which was captured when he was arrested. Fauna never had one of her own but if we find one for her we'll take it.

On our approach we broadcast our clearance codes and get permission to land. As we begin to touch down, we notice a mech hanger with five high-class mechs parked outside. Looks like there are VIPs on a visit. A truck is provided for us to drive to the base. We note the anti-air turrets on the towers around the outer walls. We'll probably need to do something about those in order to leave.

At the gates to the main compund we are stopped by guards. They order us to leave the truck. Lucis puts on his best authoritive voice and tells them we're in a hurry. We're informed that because of the visit from Grand Master Jemiko everything needs to be done by the book. Sinclair notes that he heard this name before while searching for the plans. She's a high-up in the Camelot military, an expert fencer, though with no real combat experience. Lucis changes tactics and goes for sympathy mode. "Oh, I've done your job, I know what it's like always being blamed" etc. etc. This seems to work and the guards let us through.

Once in the compound we park up and begin a fake patrol route, making our way around to the abandoned part of the building. There are a few security cameras around which we'd rather avoid, but Fauna can detect plant life inside so she uses her plant magic to transport us through another one of her plant portals (I'm assuming it's like the meld with trees spell from D&D). We appear insider the abandoned section, out of a tree in some kind of glass container. Luckily there's no one around, so we investigate for a bit. There's an old terminal here that might give us more info on the facility but there's no power. Sinclair attempts to plug in and use his own power source to charge the device, but either through lack of practice or the new body, he causes a feedback loop of some kind and leaves himself feeling, for lack of a better term, woozy. We move on.

Eventually we find a door into the main part of the facility that had been boarded up. After pulling the boards off, we see a security door with both a number pad and a physical lock. Sinclair isn't feeling up to cracking the code right now, so Katari uses his sleuthing skills. By observing the wear on the number pad he is able to correctly guess the four digit code to unlock the door (a natural 10 on his investigation roll). The physical lock is solved by Spectre, who quickly whips up some acid using something he found in the abandoned building's storage area and burns through the lock.

Inside is a well lit corridor with several doors along it. Katari and Fauna can feel Naul energy behind one of them. Lucis sneaks up to the door and attempts to quietly open it and peek through, but this door appears to be rusty and alerts the occupant inside. This room is some sort of laboratory. A scientist stands by a console next to several vats that have some kind of organic material floating inside. Lucis apologises and introduces the group, saying that we've been sent to inspect the base and get reports on the current research. The scientist is confused but takes Lucis' word for it and explains that the research into Naul biotech is going well, but they have yet to come up with a weapon to work against them. Considering that the Camelot humans and the Naul are meant to be allies, this is worrying. The scientist also mentions ongoing tests on one of the subjects. Katari can't help but feel some familiarity to the various organs in the vats and steps forward to ask for pictures of the "subject" in question (Lucis: This is Ketojan, our Naul Cultural Liason). The scientist hands over a print out and, sure enough, it's Katari's mecha. The GM makes him roll willpower to not go ape, which he just passes, though the scientist notices his discomfort. We make our excuses and leave.

The next area is an observation room, overlooking a large hanger. It seems empty now, though there is a large area covered in blood and extra-large medical equipment. As we look down into it, we notice two figures talking. One is Robert Steel, the other is a woman wearing armour that we suspect is the Grand Master. The room is sound-proofed, but there's a one way speaker to listen in. We duck down and switch it on. Jemiko seems to be berating Steel for the lack of progress on his research and also for the prison break out. Steel attempts to defend himself but Jemiko tells him to work harder to fix things and walks out. We decide that hanger looks like a good place to check out and maybe confront Dr. Steel.

In the next room there are three doors. From the plans we have, we see that there's another lab to the south, a corridor leading further into the facility to the west, and the security room to the north. We plan to head to the hangers via the western corridor, but Lucis suggests that we firts try and get into the security room and try to steal access codes. This will make stealing the mechs and escaping much easier, by allowing us to switch off the defences. It's a good idea, but the door is locked. So Lucis knocks on it. A voice comes over a tannoy asking for our business and Lucis makes up a story about how we just got here but someone screwed up and forgot our codes and could you please let us in so we can get this sorted out? This, of course, sets off some metophorical alarm bells with the security team, who tell us to please wait here.

Katari: By any chance are there any vents in here that could be used to gas people?
Sinclair: Once bitten, twice shy?

Eventually the door opens, and out steps Grand Master Jemiko. The group tries to keep up the charade but it's very clear that Jemiko can not only see through us but is highly amused by our attempts. It's at this point she notices that Katari is carrying a sword and she challenges him to a duel. Katari is a proud warrior and gladly accepts. Guard walk out of the security door and aim at the rest of us while Katari and Jemiko move into the southern lab for their duel.

She allows Katari the first attack. He rushes at her but she's able to easily use his strength against him and knock him away. He makes another attempt but the Grand Master once against deflect his attack, then follows up with one of her own which cuts deep. This goes back and forth a few rounds before it becomes apparant that Katari cannot win (though he refuses to accept this). The rest of us decide to take action. Spectre combines some of the chemicals he found in such a way as to create a smoke bomb. In the confusion that ensues, Fauna uses her magic to overwhelm the senses of one guard with euphoria, causing him to fall to the ground. Sinclair suddenly finds combat data in his mind and proceeds to butt a guard in the face with a rifle. He rolls a 1, normally a problem but Sinclair's "Better Lucky Than Good" trait kicks in, turning that 1 to a 10. The guard is knocked back into the wall, and tries digging a dagger into the wall to steady himself. Unfortunately he jams it into a control console and shocks himself unconscious. Lucis uses this time to slip into the security room and take it over so the rest of us can take refuge there. We kick out the guards inside and lock the doors.

There are two other doors out of this room. One leads north towards the mech hangers, the other leads west to room that is apparantly not on the plans and has no security cameras. Those of us with magic senses note an odd feeling coming from that room. Sinclair notes that it's a similar energy reading to the biofuel. He attempts to ask Space Face if he knows what this is. His response is a cryptic "You may find answers, but be careful that you do not endanger yourself to get them". We decide to check the room out before we leave, with Sinclair shutting down as many of the base's defences as he can first.

Inside is a large stone tablet surrounded by complex looking equipment. Sinclair and Spectre note that the writing is the same as the writing we saw back on the Nomad homeworld. As we look at it, we each feel as though the tablet is attempting to communicate with us. We allow it to touch our minds and we feel ourselves being drawn into some kind of vision.

We see a world populated by animals. They are doing animal things, minding their own business, when a figure appears amongst them. A humanoid made of star stuff and wrapped in a cloak; one of the so-called gods we saw in the shrines of the Nomad homeworld. It waves its hand and the creatures now seem more aware, more intelligent. The scene skips ahead. The next thing we see is the world has changed. It now is the Nomad homeworld. There's a spaceship and boarding it are many beings, both Naul and Nomad, heading to a new place somewhere in the stars. The scene fades.

We're back in the secret lab. We have no idea how much time has passed, if any, but we can hear the sounds of people attempting to break down the door to the security room. We should go, but Lucis suggests that we find a way to take the tablet with us. Considering this thing is a solid stone slab taller than any of us this seems difficult. Thankfully we have Katari and his super strength so he is able to load the stone onto a pallet and move it out. The security door is broken through and the guards takes a few shots at us so we have to run through the northern door and close it behind us.

We make our way to the hangers. The first one we enter has three large creatures in. These are Naul mecha, organic and at least one is quadrupedal and apparantly made of moss or grass. Another is humanoid (I think, I forgot the description). The last looks more like a dragon. Each appears to be drugged and on some kind of life support. Katari and Fauna go to the plant mechs while the rest of us check out the next hanger for more traditional mechs.

Katari's dragon is in a bad way, with stitches along its side where various organs have been removed. The humanoid one is on its last legs, being heavily wounded. Fauna can feel its pain and so decides to put it out of its misery and convinces it to let go. Something about the quadrupedal one draws her attention so she moves towards it. Meanwhile, Katari tries to speak to his dragon. Thanks to the drugs it seems unresponsive. Katari decides to try an old Naul ritual, cutting his hand with a knife and speaking Naul words while holing the bloody hand to the dragon. This seems to stir the creature, though it also seems wild, angry and scared. It rushes straight for the hanger door, breaking it down. Fauna boards the quad mecha and picks Katari up as they go after the dragon.

In the other hanger, we find some metal mechs that we can use. Spectre finds a maintenance mech of some kind. Looks like it has chemical tanks mounted on it, possibly something the scientist can fill with his own concontions of acid or similar. Sinclair finds another mech in the corner. It looks rusty and broken, but Sinclair feels drawn to it. As the GM put it:

GM: It calls out to you. It's made of spare parts, just like you!
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/1d/a7/3f/1da73f0b12a18b9474e1b920f7fc64bb.jpg

It's not the Beast of Burden, which evidently is not here and was probably broken down for parts (RIP :smallfrown:) but it will do. As Lucis calls for his own mech, we load the stone tablet and make our way outside. Unfortunately it seems that Jemiko is waiting for us in her custom mech, alongside four other mechs that look pretty strong compared to us. Of course we ran out of time at this point, so next session we have our first mech fight with new mechs!

Edit: forgot the quotes!: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22428591&postcount=495

[Beacon of Chaos]

Session 4

The battle begins with Katari's dragon (Razorinth) going beserk. It rushes Jemiko's mech as it's the closest one. Jemiko and her allies surround it but don't actually attack yet. Katari is currently riding on top of Fauna's mech (Wyldwood, I think) who is trying to get close enough to hopefully calm the dragon down. Meanwhile Spectre, Sinclair, and Lucis begin moving into attack positions (Lucis just happened to find a mech in the hanger that's exactly the same as his other mech. Convenient) but the enemy have positioned themselves just out of attack range. Razorinth sweeps its wings forward, sending large amounts of debris at Jemiko, who blocks most of the damage and performs a counter attack, striking Razorinth for some damage, though only a small amount.

Jemiko: Now this is the true test of a knight! To slay a dragon!

Sinclair finds that his mech (Nova) was probably due to be scrapped as it is rusty, broken and shouldn't be working. Yet his weird robot necromancy powers seem to have revived it.

Sinclair: This mech is different to the Beast of Burden. It wants to fight. Show me what you can do, my friend.

Nova responds by drawing a machinegun and unleashing a hail of bullets over the battlefield, striking Jemiko and two of her guards. Unfortunately Razorinth is caught in the crossfire, but Sinclair was only firing to supress: minimal damage, but the enemy attacks are weakened for a round and attempting to move causes extra damage.

Spectre slowly moves forward in his mech (named Dennis 200 for some reason) and is able to modify the chemical spray on the fly to become a flamethrower, dealing heavy damage to another guard. Two more guards move in on Fauna, who uses her plant magic to entangle Jemiko with vines. Jemiko attempts a powerful sword strike against Razorinth, but sinclair is watching closely. Her mech hasn't been balanced properly and it leans to the right a little more than it should. A quick ranged hack to throw her targeting off a couple of degrees not only causes her to miss, but she hits one of her allies instead, lopping off one of its arms!

Lucis' mech (name currently unknown) only has one damaging weapon: a bazooka, so rather than risk damaging his allies, Lucis detonates an EMP bomb, weakening Jemiko and her guards. Razorinth rushes Jemiko down, dealing heavy damage and pinning her against a wall. It's at this point that we notice something worrying: the base defences are reactivating! The gun turrets begin turning towards us... and then they explode. Are they meant to do that? No, it's Karen (Lucis' second in command) in the dropship! She tells us reinforcements are on the way so we need to hurry. Specifically, we need to get Fauna and Katari to Razorinth so they can calm it down long enough to get it on the dropship. A button appears on Nova's dashboard, which Sinclair presses. The rusty chestplate opens up, revealing an energy emitter, which blasts the remaining mech blocking Fauna's path away. Fauna makes it to the dragon and between her calming magic and Katari's presence Razorinth is able to break off and we make it to the dropship and escape.

While en-route to Lucis' hideout, we discuss the battle we just had. Sinclair plays back the fight in his head and notes that Jemiko had clearly not prepared her mech properly and was taken off-guard by the rage of Razorinth. Had she taken the fight seriously, she would have wiped the floor with us. Seems we got lucky. Fauna attends to Razorinth and notes that there is some kind of foreign material in its brain which seems to have caused its rampage. We'd need a better equiped base to deal with that though.

As we approach the hideout we transmit our codes... but the codes we receive back are out of date. Worse still, we can't seem to hail the base on radio. We need to be cautious here. We split into two teams, one that will enter the base from the front, one that will enter from the roof. Lucis, Katari, and Sinclair enter through a skylight with Katari taking the lead. He touches the floor and is immediately shot at, though thankfully every single shot misses. A terrified looking teenager with a rifle peers out from behind a door, notices Lucis and breathes a sigh of relief. Lucis asks what happened and... it turns out they just forgot the new code.

Sinclair: I never thought I'd say this, but I miss the military. At least they knew what they were doing.

We're told that three of Lucis' companions went to check out a nearby base to use as a potential mech repair hanger and didn't come back. One of the ones who went was the radio operator, hence why we received no radio response. How did these guys survive so long? It's about this time that we actually receive a radio transmission of our own. Thankfully we actually know how to work the radio. It turns out the transmission is for Spectre and Sinclair.

???: Am I talking to Sinclair and Dr. Spectre?
Spectre: Who wants to know?
???: First, I need to confirm your identities. Tell me Sinclair, when you last had a VR combat simulation against a certain someone... can you tell me who won? ;)
Sinclair: Well, it wasn't really clear who- wait, Ajihra?
Ajihra: That's right! We'll go through the whole "How did you survive?" thing later. Right now I need to talk to the rebel leader.
Sinclair & Spectre: :(

Ajihra questions Lucis about his involvement in the prison breakout and the identity of our mysterious benefactor. Lucis admits he has no idea who this guy is, he was just contacted out of the blue someday. Ajihra tells us the whole prison breakout had been orchestrated well in advance. Funding to the prison had recently been cut, reducing maintenance and forcing guards to transfer out. Stranger still, once the breakout started the military were unnaturally quick to respond, like they had been predicted it would happen. They also killed the inmates, instead of recapturing them. It was a brutal slaughter.

Sinclair: This doesn't make any sense.
Katari: No. It does make sense. Just not to us.
Lucis: Master of the obvious!

Clearly there's something fishy going on here, but before we have time to process this, we get a warning message. We have interceptors incoming. Looks like we were tracked on our way back. Sinclair suggests we get to the mechs to fight them off, but we don't want to risk our non-combatants getting caught in the crossfire. Lucis suggests we simply escape, destroying the hideout as we go to prevent evidence falling into enemy hands. We'll investigate the disappearance of Lucis' friends as we go.

We head to the missing rebels' last known location. It's an orbital cannon; a gun designed to fire cargo into orbit to be picked up by spaceships, not unlike the one that fired Delta Team into orbit during the invasion. On approach we see a single Camelot mech guarding the area, and several groups of troopers searching the area. We detect two distress signals matching the rebel frequency, though we can't pinpoint their locations.

The dropship drops Sinclair and Lucis on one side of the building and Spectre and Fauna on the other. Katari rides with Fauna, as he doesn't want Razorinth to go beserk and kill our allies. Fauna drops Katari near the first distress signal, a gun turret north of the orbital cannon, surrounded by troopers. Katari breaks in and finds the first rebel, a young lad, terrified out of his wits, who sees a huge man with horns bust through a door and shoots on instinct. Again. Unlike earlier, this shot hits. Fauna sighs, knowing she'll have to patch Katari up again.

Lucis attempts a charm roll to try and convince the troopers to leave, but they don't seem to listen. Sinclair takes on the defender mech while Lucis makes his way towards a crashed truck which matches the one the rebels left in. Spectre and Fauna clear a path towards it so that Lucis can pick up the remaining two rebels.

A message comes in from Ajihra saying we have more mechs and interceptors incoming. She has a plan: We need to get into the orbital cannon. We load our allies into Fauna's mech get in the cannon. Not for the first time, we are blasted into orbit (Sinclair: Inertial dampeners to maximum!) where there is a ship to pick us up. It's... the Argo!

End session.

Bonus quotes: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22449718&postcount=520

[Toric]

???: Am I talking to Sinclair and Dr. Spectre?
Spectre: Who wants to know?
???: First, I need to confirm your identities. Tell me Sinclair, when you last had a VR combat simulation against a certain someone... can you tell me who won? ;)
Sinclair: Well, it wasn't really clear who- wait, Ajhani?
Ajihra: That's right! We'll go through the whole "How did you survive?" thing later. Right now I need to talk to the rebel leader.
Sinclair & Spectre: :(

Well that's a neat twist on the ol' "Ask them a question only they know the answer to." Ask them a question only they know there is no answer to!

Sinclair thwacked someone so hard they committed suicide. It's official, Sinclair is hardcore.

As for Lucis... Eh, we'll count "finding a mech identical to his in hostile territory" as a dramatic dramatic reveal. But that's pushing it.

[Beacon of Chaos]

Well that's a neat twist on the ol' "Ask them a question only they know the answer to." Ask them a question only they know there is no answer to!
It was a pretty good moment. I earned a bonus genre point when I finally remembered her name. Ironic, given that I got her name wrong in that quote XD


Sinclair thwacked someone so hard they committed suicide. It's official, Sinclair is hardcore.
He's fine. He's just sleeping. :smallsmile:


As for Lucis... Eh, we'll count "finding a mech identical to his in hostile territory" as a dramatic dramatic reveal. But that's pushing it.
I'm vastly confused as to why it was done this way as his mech was actually stored nearby and could have been called at any time. As for why they are identical, I guess his orignal mech was stolen from the enemy at some point. Maybe it will be explained at some point.

[Kane0]

That or they will merge at some point.

[Beacon of Chaos]

That or they will merge at some point.

I asked Lucis about his mech; turns out it was originally stolen from the enemy and it was the same model. Mystery solved.

Session 5

We dock in the Argo's hanger. Fauna's plant mech, Wyrdwood, sends her a message: one of her passengers is dying (something I forgot from the last session: the dropship was shot down by an enemy mech during the last fight, Fauna was able to rescue the passengers before the ship crashed). Fauna focuses her magic through Wyrdwood and is able to heal the worst of the damage, allowing the injured girl to heal, though it will take time before she'll make a full recovery.

Crew members arrive to put our mechs in harnesses to prepare for a warp jump. The GM describes the jump to the Nauls thusly:

GM: This feels very different to how Naul warp technology works. Naul ships operate by finding etheric currents in space and riding them to their destination, much like a sailing ship using the wind to gain speed. Human ships seem to grab the currents and force them in the direction they want to go. It feels very strange.

We all disembark from our mechs. Fauna immediately has a group of teenagers surrounding her, thanking her for saving them and marvelling at her magic powers. Fauna goes bright red in that very anime way. Just then we are approached by a certain man wearing a flowing red scarf. It's Juyon! He was able to avoid capture when the Argo was boarded. He's now been made the chief security officer. On the way to the bridge he tells us that after we were captured the remaining crew hidden on board were able to take back the ship and warp it away to another planet where they were able to get repairs and upgrades. We quiry how exactly they got the funds to this, but Juyon just says there's someone here who can explain it better than he can.

And as we arrive on the bridge a short alien in a really big hat turns to greets us. Eric rushes to Spectre, hugging his leg.

Spectre: I knew you'd be okay!
Eric: I'm sorry I wasn't able to be there to help your escape.
Spectre: I'm just glad you're safe.

We catch up with Eric for a bit before asking about the situation. He mentions that our mysterious benefactor is on board and waiting for us. There have also been reports that the Chinese army on Aura have been subject to many hit and run attacks by a fleet of ships apparantly commanded by... Fiona. This is pretty surprising considering A) She just wanted to save her wife and kids and then leave the system and B) She only left with a couple of modified mining robots and David Washington, who was heavily drunk at the time.

We head to a meeting room to meet with our benefactor. We realise we've met him before. This man was the President of Camelot, before his actions in our war got him convicted of treason. He fled capture and aided the Argo using what wealth of his he was able to escape with. The coup was started by Grand Duke Edgar Malukah, Supreme Commander of the Camelot Defence Forces (And, if memory serves, Lucis' brother, but don't quote me on that) and happened very suddenly, with many informants and supporters of the president and the Queen vanishing without a trace and many bank accounts being stopped; most likely this had been planned for a long time. The President officially asks for our help in taking back Camelot. We all agree, though Spectre seems reluctant. Sinclair tells him that saving Camelot will making finding his father easier for us in the long run. Fauna makes it clear that she is a pacifist and will help us but won't kill.

We leave and now have some time to ourselves. Eric informs Spectre that a message from his father has arrived. The two quickly depart to watch it privately. The following is paraphrased:

Victor: My Son. You have come so far and learned so much. I had always hoped you would be just as great a scientist as me and you have done just that. I'm proud of you.
*Spectre squeezes Eric's hand a little tighter at this point*
I understand you are helping to save Camelot now. This is a worthy goal and I'd like you to continue with it. We will meet again, soon enough. My research will soon be completed and I'd like you to be there when it is. Together we will change everything for the better. See you soon.

Spectre also receives an encoded file from his father. None of the rest of us have seen it yet but Spectre's player was grinning when he read it. OOC: We're pretty sure it just says "Kill your friends".

A message for Sinclair comes from Ajihra. She apologises for not getting a chance to catch up back on Camelot, but she would like to invite Sinclair to talk in the VR Net. The GM explains that the VR net never really took off on Camelot, so it's a safe place for us to talk.

Sinclair plugs himself in and finds himself transported to a city. The buildings are old but clean and in the distance a space elevator stretches into the sky. The streets are deserted, save for one young woman: Ajihra, looking a few years older. She walks up to Sinclair and giggles. Sinclair looks down to see that he doesn't appear to have any textures yet and his entire body just has the words "Image Not Found" written over it.

Sinclair: I guess I'll try and construct a body quickly. What do I roll? Intellect? Resources?
GM: Charm
*Sinclair rolls well and creates a slick new body made of silver*
Ajihra: Looks good!
Sinclair: Thanks. You too. You're looking pretty different. It hasn't been that long, has it?
Ajihra: Oh, no, well, maybe in a few years this will be me.

Ajihra explains that the city they are in is her home city in Uganda, back before the Chinese attacked. She asks how Sinclair is, considering his recent treatment. He admits that he's not entirely sure how he's functioning at this point. He seems to be running on will alone. Ajihra mentions her implants, a chip in her brain linked to cybernetics in her hands that give her immense control over electronic systems of all kinds. The line between flesh and machine is blurry. Perhaps Sinclair is evolving?

Suddenly, time seems to stop for Sinclair, and his mysterious friend approaches.

Space Face: You notice how she strives to improve herself with technology? She wants to be more like you. Tell me, what do you want to be?
Sinclair: I... suppose I've never really thought about that. I've always thought of my life in terms of what my purpose and goals are.
Space Face: These things are not too dissimilar. What do you want to do?
Sinclair: I want to help my friends and save my home.
Space Face: Think about how you can achieve those goals and what you need to be in order to do so.
Sinclair: Who are you, really?
Space Face: I am just a man who wants others to reach their full potential. Did you know the gods you met were once ordinary Nomads before they evolved? You have great potential...

Meanwhile, in the medical bay, Fauna is acquainting herself with the medical staff when the President approaches her and asks about how she came to be arrested. She replies that she was living in an enclave of nature worshippers when she grew suspicious of the elder's activities. When she investigated him, she found that he had been selling Naul bio-tech to the humans for "experiments". It was not long after this that she was arrested and she believes the elder was behind it.

President: That bio-tech is almost certainly the same that Jemiko's people were experimenting on in that base you found. It seems like your enclave will be the next place we need to investigate. Are you prepared for that?
Fauna: I'm willing to help out but I'm not an expert in investigation or stealth or anything-
President: I mean emotionally prepared.
Fauna: ...I think so.

Lucis is looking after his student rebels when Alan asks to speak with him. He apologises for his actions back in the hideout (oops, forgot to write about that too: he suggested surrendering to the enemy, claiming he wanted to keep the girls safe. Katari headbutted him. Also I'm not entirely sure that Alan's his name) though he was only doing what he thought was right. Lucis accepts his apology, though declines Alan's offer to punch him, as Katari did more than enough pain last time.

Speaking of Katari, he is in a training room giving some combat lessons to some of the crew. When he asks for a volunteer it's Juyon (with Fauna temporarily back in control of him) who steps forward. What happens next is an absolutely awesome exhibition match in which Juyon runs circles around Katari, dodging nearly every attack and getting many good hits in himself, such as a jumping knee to the face (causing his player to exclaim "why weren't you this good when I was playing you!?"). Katari takes it in his stride and uses this to explain to the crew how Juyon is using his opponent's strength against him, and even lets Juyon pin him to show them how it's done, though he then shows them how to break free. Spectre is watching on the sidelines and, feeling bold, decides now would be a good time to jump Katari, despite warnings from, well, everyone. The science guy pits his mighty 2 fitness against the muscle-bound warrior's 10 and the end result is Spectre getting hung upside-down by his ankles as though he was being shaken down for his lunch money. We all have a good laugh.

After Spectre has recovered we are called into the briefing room by the president. There's an incident happening on Camelot, near Fauna's enclave. A group of mechs are using chainsaws and flamethrowers to destroy the nearby forest. This seems like a great opportunity to jump in and put ourselves in good stead with the enclave members for our investigation. We are to drop soon. And by 'drop' he means that because the Argo can't afford to land or stay in orbit long enough for a dropship to drop us off, we'll be making reentry with our mechs. Sinclair and Spectre point out they've done it before and it wasn't fun. The others get a quick crash course in the VR simulators. Katari will be staying inside Fauna's mech until landing as he doesn't pilot Razorinth- he rides on top.

Sinclair: I feel like riding your pet into a mech battle is a bad idea.
Katari: He's not my pet, he's my partner.

The time comes. The Argo drops out of hyperspeed, drops us down, and warps away again before the defence forces can track it. We land exactly on target, right near the mechs tearing the forest apart. Lucis' scanner detect that these are unmanned mechs being controlled from somewhere not too far from here. At least we don't need to feel guilty about breaking them. Fauna uses her plant magic to trap two of the mechs with vines (getting a good bonus due to home terrain advantage), setting up Spectre who unleashes a mighty blast from his rail bazooka, vaporising them both.

Fauna (to us): Please try not to destroy my home.

Sinclair unsheathes his melee weapon, a chainsword, as he falls from orbit. The bonuses he gets are insane and he slices a mech in half, though he ends up hitting the ground so hard that Nova ends up trapped up to its elbows in mud. While Fauna attempts to extricate him, Lucis and Katari deal some heavy damage to the remaining two mechs. Once Sinclair is free, he and Spectre combine their attacks, a machine gun and a flamethrower respectively, to finish the fight.

After the dust settles, we see shapes approaching us from behind the trees. They look not unlike Wyrdwood, though larger and heavily armoured. Lucis exits his mech to stand on its hand as he hails the Naul mechs with a loudspeaker, tellin them we come in peace and have rid their forest of intruders. The leader of the Naul group replies. He offers us the hospitality of his home in thanks, though we notice that he seems ill at ease, even slightly angry. We try to make the excuse that we should be looking for the pilot of these drones, but the Naul tells us that they are taking care of it. We debate as to whether we are walking into some kind of trap, but Katari asks the man to swear on his horns that he will not harm us and he agrees. Satisfied, we follow him into the enclave.

We are told we will meet with the village elder. Fauna is understandably worried about what will happen, but we're with her and we'll keep her safe. The elder greets us and thanks us for our help. He speaks to Fauna, apologising for what happened. He felt he was doing the right thing in sharing knowledge with the humans, but they have turned that knowledge against the Nauls. He also says it was the humans that arrested her, not him, and that he didn't know until it was too late. Fauna is skeptical but accepts the apology. The elder asks one of his people to take us somewhere we can get food and we follow along. As we walk, however, Katari falls behind as his attention is drawn by something. He turns a corner to see a figure in the distance, a Naul wearing red. "YOUUUUUUUU!" he bellows, and races after the man.

To be continued...


This session was quite talky, lots of good roleplaying from everyone, hence more dialogue this time. We're on hiatus for a few weeks due to various holidays, so session 6 will be next month some time. Edit: I tell a lie, we have a session next week, followed by a two week break.

Bonus quotes: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22471485&postcount=544

[Beacon of Chaos]

Session 6

(And we're back! Apologies in advance if some of this was kinda vague. Was suffering from insomnia at the time so my memory of the evening was hazy)

After the feast at the naul enclave, each of us gets some time to ourselves. Lucis' player is absent, so he is off being a diplomat with the naul leaders.

Spectre is sneaking around. This is not something he is typically known for. Razorinth is currently under the care of the naul healers who have sedated him in order to examine what made him go berserk and Spectre is infiltrating their med-bay. He uses some sort of sleeping gas bomb to knock out the healers and then pulls out a syringe, gaining a sample of some kind of fluid (blood?) from Razorinth before leaving. And the rest of us are like "What the-?". Something related to the secret message from his father?

Elsewhere Sinclair is approached by several Nauls who ask him about himself. They've never met a human-made machine that gives off magical energies like him. They ask to perform some experiments on him. He agrees, though he sends a message to his allies about his location first. The mages ask him to test his powers by interacting with one of their organic computers. Sinclair admits he's only had training with human machines but he finds himself able to comunicate with the computer, albeit with difficulty. Naul computers don't run on code and getting one to do something is more like a negociation than a program. Sinclair attempts to find something else to try but fails some kind of intelligence test. The GM assures me he'll get further chances to look into his magic later.

Fauna talks with the enclave elder. He tells her that her magic is more powerful than that of her peers, and he tells her she may one day take over from him. I'll be honest here, I forgot her response. I have a feeling that I was distracted while this conversation was happening. He talks about naul history, mentioning Ashari, a naul elder who was the first to share technology with the humans. She was banished for her crimes and ended up joining a team of human scientists.

Katari is chasing someone, another naul, whom he confronts on a balcony overlooking a quieter part of the enclave. It seems this man was Katari's rival in the police force. I forgot his name, but he taunts Katari about his do-gooder nature and challenges him to a duel. Katari accepts and immediately throws a punch. He gets a hit in but the rival sticks him in the side with a blade of some kind. Katari starts to feel woozy and the rival makes a speech about the folly of fighting fair. Katari responds by barging him off the balcony. The man falls badly but Katari passes out before he can follow up. Minutes later, Katari wakes up not remembering anything about what just happened.

After we regroup we are called back to the ship by President DeClair (finally remembered his name!). Currently we have little in the way of soldiers and resources. We're instucted to go down to the planet to meet with some of his contacts in the city of Camlan in order to secure some aid, even if it's from a less than reputable source. He gives us a list of requirements, including mercenaries, weapons, and custom made ship parts for the Argo, and a large amount of money. Camlan is also where Spectre's father's old lab is, so he's eager to investigate there. Some of the President's contacts have gone quiet since the coup and he also asks us to see if we can find them. In preparation for our mission we get fake IDs and need to dress so we don't stand out. Sinclair paints over his shiny armour with matte black.

We take a shuttle to the city and land in the upper levels. This place is built as much vertically as horizontally and it seems the lower you go into the city the worse off things are. Naturally we'll be heading into the slums at the bottom for our mission. When we vacate the transport we are approached by a guard who asks for our papers. There's a long awkward wait as our fake IDs are checked. Eventually, the guard tells us we're all okay and can we please wait in the waiting room for a guide to come for us. We head inside but on a hunch Sinclair decides to hack the guard's radio.

Guard: -if they're who I think they are we need backup. Get here quickly because I don't know how long we can hold them.

Well, so much for our cover story. We look around for exits but there's only the main doors, sliding glass doors where the guard is standing. The other three walls are solid.

Katari: Walls you say? ...What are they made out of?
GM: Cheap concrete. Are you going to do what I think you're going to do.
Katari: *big grin*
Fauna: There's a glass door just there. The guard is on the other side, you can hit him on the way out!
Katari: Sorry no, I need to smash the wall!

The GM makes Katari roll an intellect check. A sucess allows him to remember that we are on the top floor of a very tall building and at least one of the 3 walls has a sheer drop on the other side. Katari buffs himself with strength magic and punches a hole through the back wall. It opens out onto a back street skyway but he didn't roll well enough to make a hole we can all climb through. The guard panics and backing away from us. Katari pucnhes a few more times, ruining his hand in the process but getting us out. We make a break for it over the skyway but the backup has already arrived and is now blocking our way. They order us to surrender.

Katari: How far is it down from here?
GM: Oh God. There's another alley way below you but it's a long drop. You might be able to survive with your power.
Katari: ...How many people can I carry?
Sinclair: Wait, I think that I can recalibrate my servos to take the fall. Then I can carry Spectre and you can take Fauna.
GM: Yes! Why not!? This is a thing that's happening! Go ahead and roll! I hope you roll a 1!
Sinclair: Yeah, me too. *rolls a 1* Hah!

We jump. Katari rolls well thanks to his strength buff and he makes a crater in the ground as he lands. Fauna is looking rather green around the gills. Sinclair's 'Better Lucky Than Good' trait kicks in and the GM rules that he flubbed the calculations and ends up spinning upside down as he jumps but manages to land in a dumpster, cushioning the fall.

Fauna: *trying to not throw up* Let's never do that again.
Spectre: *dusts himself off, straightens tie* Let's go.
Katari: :smallconfused: What.

The guards seem reluctant to follow us down into the slums so we make our escape down into the depths of the city. We're kind of lost so Sinclair attempts to download a map of the area. Apparantly though, Google maps is not a thing here and instead he receives info on great locations to get penis enhancements and a list of Camelot princes who need to deposit large amounts of money in his bank account. As Sinclair runs a malware scan the others look for a guide to show us around.

Spectre meets a young man who introduces himself as Justin and offers to help out a few strangers in need in exchange for a little "aid" of our own. One slightly too high payment later and he's escorting us to a bar where we might find some black market dealers.

The bar is somewhat less seedy than we imagined. There are several well-dressed heavies hanging around watching us as we enter. On the far side of the bar there's a boxing ring set up where a female android is taking entrants to fight their champion. Spectre takes it upon himself to enter Katari in the match, acting as his manager. Justin mentions to us that buying a round at the bar will get us noticed by the right people, so Sinclair and Fauna head to the bar and do just that. While Katari heads to the ring, we are told that the owner would like to speak with us.

Sinclair and Fauna sit down at a table with the owner, a man wearing a golden mask and walking with a cane. He introduces himself as Quentin Crisp. He asks us our business and we give him our "shopping list" of weapons and parts. When he asks us who we work for we play coy, telling him we just work for someone who isn't happy with the way this world is run at the moment.

Crisp: Ah, Abott DuClare. I had a feeling he was still working behind the scenes.
Sinclair: ...Oh, you're good. No wonder he told us to come to you.

While we're talking, Katari wins his match with ease. Quentin Crisp congratulates us, telling us it was about time the champ got taken down as his matches were getting boring and predictable. He agrees to help us out, though it will take time to get the resources together.

Spectre: As your manager I get 90% of your winnings by the way.
Katari: The hell you do!
This starts up a large argument. As Katari attempts to grab his winnings from Spectre, Sinclair sidles up to the android promoter.
Sinclair: *shaking head* Fleshy types.
Android: I know exactly what you mean.

Once things have called down, we go to look for Victor's old lab. Much of the area has changed since he was last here, but eventually we get to a house that Spectre recognises. We march up to the door, which is a heavily sealed security door. It's too thick for even Katari to punch through and Spectre's acids don't react with it. Sinclair checks the retinal scanner but isn't confident of his ability to crack it without activating the alarm. This is high-tech even for this time.

Fauna: *to Spectre* Why don't you try scanning yourself? Your father wanted you to come here, right? Surely he'd have made sure you'd be able to get through.
Spectre: I don't know...

After some hemming and hawing we eventually get Spectre to try the scanner. He steps up to it and lets it scan his eye. There's a long tense moment as we wait. Nothing happens. We're about to walk away when the door beeps and slides open. We head inside.

The ground floor looks like a standard home. In the living room there's a single framed photo on the mantlepiece; a picture of Spectre when he was about 14, having just won some kind of award for science at school. Downstairs in the basement there is Victor's lab. It's a computer lab, with a few whiteboards covered in equations on the walls. We log in to the computers to find Victor's research. To Sinclair's horror, it's an absolute mess, with no folder structure and files named things like "123.doc". It will take ages to sort through, though we do find mentions of the Deitus cult that we fought back in the first campaign. The Ebon Order were fighting them and Victor was due to join with the Order the day before he vanished.

...To be continued.

Bonus quotes: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22535482&postcount=607
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22542733&postcount=612

[Beacon of Chaos]

Session 7

We finish sorting through Victor's files. There's some interesting stuff about the nature of dark space in there; worth noting is the fact that Aura was once considered part of dark space and in fact still is by the nomads; There are several gas giants in dark space that are decaying like the one we fought the cultists in; and nearly everyone who goes into dark space either vanishes or goes insane. Looks like we were the lucky ones (or were we? Spectre seems to be plotting something and Sinclair has a voice in his head). There are also mentions of the Ebon Order, the group tasked with exploring dark space and taking out cultists. They've been doing their job for over a thousand years and it seems that they are fitted with far greater technology than they should for their missions. Interesting. No wonder Victor was so eager to join. Ultimately though, this doesn't help us find him. What Spectre does find is some kind of advanced energy pistol keyed to his bio-signature and some kind of device that seems to have some kind of temporal effect, though he doesn't know what yet.

We get a message telling us that Quentin Crisp wants to meet with us again. We head to one of his hideouts in another bar, this one apparantly abandoned. Inside is Mr. Crisp and his associate, the android from the boxing ring.

Crisp has hatched a plan to get us some technology, take out a key member of the coup, and make a show of force to potentially attract more rebels to our cause. There's a technology exhibition going on in the upper city; a huge hall filled with the latest advances in both civilian and military hardware. We're going to get inside, steal one of their new mech protypes, destroy the others, and assassinate Adrian Jeminko, a general in the army and Jasmine Jeminko's father. In exchange for doing this Crisp will get us the parts we need and talk to his associates about getting us some extra muscle. None of us are eager to take part in an assassination, especially Fauna, but Crisp assures us that Jeminko is not a good person and has been involved in several war crimes. We decide to check this later.

As the others plan the mission out, Sinclair is approached by the other android who has a personal mission for him. She introduces herself as Morgana and tells him that there will be a new android being unveiled at this exhibition; another of her line. She wants Sinclair to grab this android and bring it back to her. Sinclair asks why and she says that she wants to meet her "brother". Sinclair is willing to do this but asks what she offers in exchange as this may be difficult to do during the current mission. She says that she is programmed for statistics analysis and probability but has never really had a chance to use her abilities to their full potential. Analysing data from a war appeals to her, so she will join the Argo's crew as an assistant if we aid her. Sinclair agrees.

We spend a long time planning the mission. Stealth is not an option here as we need to make a show of force to convince others to join us. As such we will drop into the convention hall in our mechs through the skylight. Spectre offers to make some of his knockout gas that we can use to stun some of the guards and civilians that will be there, making our job a little bit easier. Razorinth is still back at the enclave so Katari will drop down on foot and make his way to the security centre to take it over and close off the area and prevent reinforcements from arriving too quickly. Sinclair gets in touch with Ajihra who is able to do some digging and find the codes to get into the security room. Fauna will use her vines to slow down the reinforcements. Spectre and Sinclair will deal with the automated defences in their mechs. As Lucis is away, Juyon has agreed to fill in as an extra combatant. In preparation for the mission, Katari gets himself a new sword and some industrial sawblades (The GM insists that he won't be able to throw them hard enough to damage a mech but allows him to take them anyway).

After planning we talk to the President about the plan and ask about Adrian Jeminko. DuClair agrees that Adrian is not the kind of person anyone will miss though he believes that Quentin Crisp likely has a grudge against this man. Fauna noted that Crisp had an unusual energy to him that felt like he had been exposed to some kind of biological weapon, the cause of his limp and why he wears a mask. The president suggests that this narrows things down and Crisp is likely Crispen Gallahad, previously a high ranking member of the Camelot army. He lost his son in an accident several years ago, an accident he blamed Adrian Jeminko for. Gallahad went public and attempted to prosecute Jeminko but never got anywhere so he took it upon himself to try and kill his enemy with a bio-weapon. The attempt backfired though, and Gallahad was presumed to have accidently killed himself. Clearly he wants to finish the job he started.

Before we start the mission, Sinclair asks Fauna for some help with his magic training. Fauna doesn't really understand Sinclair's power, though neither does Sinclair so he assures her that he doesn't mind. The two do some practice meditation in which Sinclair reaches out with his mind to the world around him. Fauna's energy is noticable to him and while he doesn't really understand what he's looking at, he feels as though he has gained a measure of control over his own power. The GM states that Sinclair has learned the magic skill "Energy".

Sinclair: What does it do?
GM: You have no idea.

(I had to pay 20 character points for it though so it had better be good!)

The time comes and we put the plan into action. We manage to sneak out of the city in a drop ship provided by Crisp and we get to our mechs. We drop into the exhibition hall through the skylight as planned. What wasn't planned, however, was that we would immediately be surrounded by four enemy mechs. Sinclair engages the mech standing in between the group and the security room, allowing Katari to jump from his mech over it, but not without using his sword to slash at the mech's optics on the way. Fauna entangles two of the mechs in vines that travel from Wyrdwood's body, under the ground, and then back up and around the enemies' legs. Spectre blasts them with his bazooka, rolling well enough that he destroys a chunk of the wall behind them too, and even takes out one of the protype mechs we were meant to destroy. Juyon takes a shot at the fourth enemy and we take some fire from a security turret set up in the corner.

The knockout gas canister made by Spectre drops into the hall and puts the remaining attendees and guards to sleep. Adrian Jeminko's bodyguards seem to have been prepared for this and they give him a gas mask and shuffle him away from the podium where he was giving a speech. Spectre uses his flamethrower to cut off the escape route. While those of us in the mechs fight, Katari uses some explosive charges to blast his way into the corridor where the secuirty room is. He immediately rushes in through the smoke and is able to get the drop on the the guards. He takes a few bullets but this is Katari we're talking about, so he just shrugs off the damage and moves on.

Back in the exhibition hall, reinforcements have started to arrive. Adrian's bodyguards have gotten him to one of the mechs which is trying to make a break for it. Sinclair distracts the enemy mechs while moving to where the new android is being displayed. Juyon and Spectre continue to deal damage while Fauna moves to the prototype mechs so she can place a tracking beacon on one, which will allow our dropship to pick it up.

Katari races down the hallway, gets to the security room, and punches in the code to open the doors. He is met by three guards and an officer of some kind, all of whom open fire on him. He's hit badly and knocked back. His super-strength helps him a little but he's now bleeding badly. He flings the saw blades he was carrying (with the covers still on as he doesn't want to kill them) and manages to knockout two of them before the others move in on him. Outside, further reinforcements have arrived, serious reinforcments this time. It's Jasmine Jeminko and her entourage. She rushes forwards and manages to pin both Spectre and Juyon in the same maneuver.

Jeminko: Where's the dragon!? I want a rematch!
Fauna: He's not here, you can go away now!

By this point however Sinclair has managed to grab the android and Fauna has placed the tracker on the prototype. Adrian's mech is also down, so Fauna uses her vines to open up the cockpit and drag him out, alive, and place him in Wyrdwood's hold. The dropship arrives so we blast the remaining prototypes and begin our escape. We desperately try to raise Katari on the radio. No response. We reluctantly leave while Jasmine screams at us to give back her father.

GM: You haven't been captured.
Katari: I haven't?
GM: And you're not dead either. I'll tell you what happened to you... later! End of session!

Our GM loves a good cliffhanger.

I'm two sessions behind at this point and the next installments will take longer, partially due to burnout, partially because I usually do these at work during quiet periods, of which there are currently none.

Bonus quotes: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22561608&postcount=632

[Beacon of Chaos]

Session 8

(Erm, it's been a while since this session and to be honest my memory of it is kinda rough. There will be gaps)

We find ourselves back at Quentin Crisp's hideout, without Katari, but with Adrian Jeminko. Things definitely haven't gone according to plan. We take the dropship to Crisp's hidden base. Crisp seems pleased that he will get to kill Adrian himself. Adrian tells him that he wasn't responsible for his son's death, that his son did in fact take his own life because he couldn't deal with the societal pressure to live up to his father. Sinclair does a search online and all the news and police reports he can find coroborate this statement. He and Fauna move to stand between Crisp and Adrian. Crisp raises his gun...

Meanwhile, Katari wakes up. He's upside down in a car that is on fire. He notices that his passenger is missing. He unbuckles himself and crawls out of the wreckage, only to receive a few punches from Ceras Jeminko, the woman who attacked him in the security room and Adrian's wife. (Quite how Katari escaped not only with his life but with a hostage in tow is never explained other than the fact that Katari and the GM had a private mini-session online between sessions 7 and 8) Katari is tough enough that he can subdue her easily and throws her over his shoulder. It seems the authorities are hot on his heels so he makes his escape by climbing up a nearby building.

Back at the hideout, Crisp is dead (Us: Wait what?), run through by Morgana's sword. Crisp's goons are surrounding us and look like they're about to shoot when there is a frantic knocking at the door. Fauna opens the door and Justin bursts in.

Justin: The military! They're attacking the slums! They're burning everything in their way and taking no prisoners!
Fauna: *turns to Crisp's goons* You hear that? Maybe we can think about working together to deal with this instead of killing each other!?

The goons lower their weapons. They don't seem inclined to help us, but they leave without shooting us, which is nice. We also take our leave, keen to get out of the city before the army catches up with us.

Katari is parkouring across buildings when he mis-times a jump and falls badly. His super strength allows him to crash land without injuring himself or Ceras too badly but not completely without damage. Upon getting up again he is greeted by another naul standing in front of him, one of the mage caste. She introduces herself as Ashari and offers to help him. Katari asks why and... I no longer remember what happened after that. Sorry.

Meanwhile, Lucis is on a transport heading for the city, his diplomatic mission completed. When he notices the city is literally on fire he gets in contact with us.

Lucis: What did you all do!?
Sinclair: I should be annoyed that you just assumed it was us, but to be fair, it was us.

We agree to meet him at the landing pad he is due to arrive at. We drag Adrian along as we suspect that Jasmine is behind the attacks. When we get there, Katari gets on the communicator with us to let us know he's on his way with Adrian's wife. Lucis decides the best way to resolve this is to make a deal with Jasmine: We give her back her parents, she leaves us alone. Seems fair, right?

Jasmine arrives with her guards in tow. Lucis, having the highest charm stat, negociates. While we talk a portal opens up and Katari, Ashari, and Ceras walk through. As we make the handover, time seems to slow down, then stop. Ashari has created a time bubble around us. It's at this point that Fauna recognises her. She's the naul who was banished for combining human and naul technology. Ashari turns to us.

Ashari: Have you noticed? There's something not quite right with the Jeminkos. I can detect naul magic on them. Specifically mind magic.

Jasmine's parents are under some kind of mind control. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense as they hate the naul but are under naul influence. Ashari drops the time bubble and Lucis appeals to Jasmine, urging her to come with us and bring her parents along so we can help them. Jasmine admits her parents have been acting odd and remarkably she agrees to our terms. Karen arrives in the dropship to pick us up.

Back onboard the ship the Jeminkos are taken into custody and we are ushered to the president's room for debriefing. We chew him out for making us work with Crisp and he apologises but also says that we did get some parts for the ship from him already. We also have the experimental mech and Lucis was able to secure the aid of some mercenaries during his diplomatic mission so we'll be able to carry on with the next part of our mission.

A royal wedding has been announced between Lucis' brother, Prince Eric (Lucis: I call him Norbert) and Princess Lyra. Most of the royal family will be attending, as will Robert Steel, Chinese ambassidor Sara Wong, and special guest band Breaking the Abyss (Sinclair: *bashing head against a wall*). We're going to crash the party and deal with the coup collaborators in one go. There's one major obstical to this which is the orbital space station defending the planet from attack. Our plan is to perform a sneak attack on the station just before the party, take down the orbital weapons, and rescue some prisoners on board. Which prisoners? The Ebon Order, the ones who tried to kill us in dark space. Oh joy.

We have a few days before this happens though, so we get some downtime for personal things. Lucis decides to talk with Jasmine. She's concerned about her parents, who are now in the medbay. Whatever is affecting their minds will take time to undo. In the meantime Lucis has a proposal: It's obvious that whoever is behind the coup is up to some pretty shady things so how would Jasmine like to accompany Lucis to the party as his "date" in order to find out what's really going on. Jasmine just grins, liking Lucis' audacity and agrees.

Jasmine: This will be fun.

Spectre gets to work on the machine he got from his father's lab. He seems to have a breakthrough, though none of us besides him and the GM know exactly what. We'll find out next session.

Sinclair meets with Morgana. She's please that he managed to recover her brother, Merlin. He has not, however, been activated. Morgana seems reluctant to wake him, in case he is still loyal to the company that made him and demands to be released. Sinclair tells her that she is probably making the right decision to wait, considering the upcoming battle. He's willing to be there when she wants to wake Merlin.

Fauna is helping out in the medbay when Ashari approahes her. There's some awkward banter between them for a minute or so before Ashari drops a bombshell.

Ashari: Before I was banished, I had been working on combining human and naul DNA to create a hybrid with the best of both races. I see now that I was sucessful. Yes Fauna, I am your mother.

Ashari goes in for an awkward hug which freaks Fauna out enough that she makes a run for it. Perhaps not the best start, but Ashari is a known naul criminal and "witch" so that was probably justified.

As Ashari walks away, apparantly unperterbed by Fauna's reaction, she bumps into Sinclair.

Ashari: Well, you're an interesting machine. I've never known a human robot to have such a powerful magical energy.
Sinclair: Yeah, I get that a lot.
Ashari: May I...?

She reaches out a hand to him. Sinclair touches it with his own and Ashari seems to focus on him. As she does so, he also notices that he can focus on her. There's a sudden burst of insight and Sinclair looks directly at Ashari only to see... code? Not exactly computer code, but some kind of readable energy. Sinclair realises just what this is: He's looking into Ashari's mind and reading it, as though it were a program. And he reaslises that... he could easily change that program. He jumps back with a start.

Ashari: What is it?
Sinclair: I'm... not sure.

He's lying, deciding that having the ability to read and control living minds on top of robotic ones is probably something he should keep to himself for now.

Finally, Katari does some sleuthing. Something about the mind control on the Jeminkos being naul in origin. Before he was thrown in jail he was investigating his rival who had been spotted with a young naul girl after some shady dealings. After some successful investigation checks he's able to find out that this girl was brought onto the planet illegally due to having very strong mind control powers. She and the rival are likely behind the whole thing.

And that's where the session ended. Apologies for vagueness in areas, but it's been a a while.

If you are reading this and want more, please say so and maybe give some feedback. It's not much fun writing these and getting no comments at all.

Bonus quotes: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22573360&postcount=644

[BladeofObliviom]

Mostly posting to subscribe (so that I actually remember to check up on it...) and to provide a little moral support to the author. This is a fun journal! Also...


Ashari: Before I was banished, I had been working on combining human and naul DNA to create a hybrid with the best of both races. I see now that I was sucessful. Yes Fauna, I am your mother.

Ashari goes in for an awkward hug which freaks Fauna out enough that she makes a run for it. Perhaps not the best start, but Ashari is a known naul criminal and "witch" so that was probably justified.

Awkward.

[Beacon of Chaos]

Mostly posting to subscribe (so that I actually remember to check up on it...) and to provide a little moral support to the author. This is a fun journal! Also...



Awkward.
Thank you, I appreciate it! (Reminds me, I'm about 3 chapters behind your own mech journal...)

And it doesn't really come across in my writing, but Fauna's player's acting was excellent in that scene. Really sold the whole freakout to us.

[Beacon of Chaos]

Okay, so, real talk people: I don't really have the motivation to finish this. I guess I've gotten a little burnt out from this? But I don't want to leave you guys hanging so I'm going to post a little summary of how the last three sessions went. I apologise to anyone waiting for a full write up, but this is about as much as I feel up to doing right now. The third and probably final chapter of this campaign won't be for a long time, so maybe I'll be up for starting again when that happens.


2-9:

This was a combat heavy session. The Argo dropped out of lightspeed near the enemy space station and we began our assault. In addition to ourselves, we were joined by Juyon, Ajhira (piloting the stolen prototype mech), two of Lucis' teenage freedom fighters, and the mercenaries he hired while he was away.

Highlights:
Katari describing Razorinth as built like a pinball, before crashing into the enemy shields so hard he went through them and was able to "bounce" his dragon between the enemy turrets using a min-maxed charge attack.
Fauna now has wormhole powers, which she used to save Sinclair from an enormous anti-ship laser attack.
Sinclair and Juyon combining forces for an over-the-top anime synchro attack.
Spectre now has limited powers to freeze or even rewind time a few seconds, thanks to the gizmo his father left him.

After combat we took over the station with the mercenaries' aid, rescuing the Ebon Order members from prison, who are now much more lucid after leaving dark space.

2-10:

We head to the big party in disguise, all except for Lucis, who walked in through the front door as himself as a distraction. Katari and Fauna go as Naul Ambassidors, Sinclair as Lucis' butler, and Amir (played by a temporary player who was visiting for the week) goes as a guard. Meanwhile Spectre goes to meet Robert Steel who contacted him personally.

Lucis and Sinclair meet Lucis' brother, who challenges him to a duel. Lucis wins by shoving him through a portal into the Argo. Sinclair rescues the Queen by fighting off a couple of guards in power armour.

Spectre and Robert meet up with Amir and snoop around but are attacked by Katari's rival (one day I will remember his name), who knocks them out easily.

Katari gets mind controlled into attacking the crowds, apparantly an implanted suggestion from his rival. Ax and Sara end up fighting him.

Lucis returns to the castle, kills his... uncle? I forget. Then there's a big fight between all of us and the rival and his mind-controller ally, a young Naul transwoman. Through a sheer amount of luck we manage to subdue them and take them back to the ship. There's a brief mech fight between us and some guard mechs.

2-11:

GM admitted that we wrapped up a lot quicker than they expected, having captured and/or killed every significant member of the coup. Just one plot thread left: the Naul have decided to attack Camelot and their fleet is on the way. So out we go on a diplomatic mission to convince them to not do that. Then everything goes wrong when Victor shows up with one of his dark space buddies and Spectre decides to ****ing BETRAY EVERYONE AND KILL ERIC!

*ahem* Sorry, sore point. But yeah, Spectre apparantly was working to further his father's goals the whole time. He takes over the ship and uses the Argo's super weapon to attack the Naul fleet, devestating it.

We then have a final boss fight vs. Spectre (in a buffed mech) and the dark space god, who pretty much looks like a space reaper. Katari was able to isolate Spectre and fight him one-on-one (his speciality) and the rest of us deal with the god, with Sinclair defeating it with a final awesome punch (hell yeah!) Sadly, Spectre escaped to fight again another day, as an NPC.


And that's pretty much it. We've destabilised the government, witnessed the near-destruction of an entire people, and lost our chief scientist and captain. Fun times. Again, sorry for the short version but I really did want to just finish this up.

Thank you for reading.