The Saga Begins - The First Random Space Barbarian Adventure

[markkrawec]

Episode 1: When In Doubt, Kidnap

Back at the beginning of February my group volunteered to subject itself to a playtest of the Space Barbarians kit. There were three characters for this session. All the players (mazirian & Danny Hammer, late of Highlanders of Mars, plus Pulgasari) started with no prepared character concept & in Pulgasari's case no previous experience with the rules.

Character creation happened at the table & took up about half an hour. There were a few things I left off the quick reference sheet that quickly became obvious when someone else tried to use it, but the first real surprise of the evening (for me, anyway) was that all three players immediately loaded up their characters with weaknesses. I was worried for a bit that I would have to goose the power level of the opposition just to keep up, but they spent a good number of those extra character points on advantages.(1)

mazirian happened to pick up one of Danny Hammer's kids' Lego minifigs & it instantly inspired him to create Crockett, a survivalist mountain man who retreated to the deep woods to find solitude after his face was literally stolen right off his skull & replaced with a robot one. Gatch (played by Danny Hammer) is the electronics & thievery expert of the group. He's a compulsive gambler with terrible taste in gaming companions as evinced by the IOU for three cows he carries with him. It's not clear how he plans to collect since he also suffers a fear of animals. Dexter Kardust (Pulgasari) is a pilot & mechanic with a gambling habit, a weakness for women & a price on his head. The PCs fell almost naturally into some of the traditional action team roles, so much so that when they were finished it was generally agreed that Crockett was B.A. Baracus, Gatch was Murdock & Dexter was Face. "Great. We're the A-Team with no Hannibal."

The randomly rolled premise of the adventure is that someone's rival is about to make a big score & the PCs either want to prevent it or get there first. It's agreed that the main antagonist - Serafim do Vale, the local King of Thieves - is the bastard who stole Crockett's face. Do Vale keeps such a low profile that Crockett hasn't been able to find him & exact vengeance. This will be the first time since the theft that do Vale has broken cover long enough for there to be a chance of getting him.

The team have heard through the grapevine that do Vale is after something priceless in the Sacred City, an ancient ruin high in the mountains six hours outside of the metropolis in which our heroes live. Crockett is familiar with the place. It's a holy site for an ascetic sect called the Nivinites who live in a mud-brick village around the city. Hippies & new agers from around the world & even other systems make pilgrimages to the site to bask in its esoteric vibrations. The Nivinites permit no one to enter the city, though, since they use the outermost of its buildings as a necropolis for their dead.

It's also a scene of great interest to archaeologists. Crockett knows of one in particular from the local university who was always hanging around investigating the site, frustrated by his inability to go in & examine it up close. The team decide it's a fine idea to find this professor - one Gabor Horvath - kidnap him, & use him as a guide to the city. When they arrive at the professor's office, however, there's no one there but agitated students trying to hand in papers. The door is locked & no one is answering the phone. Gatch uses his low-level clairvoyance ability to listen to the room (which I guess makes it clairaudience, but never mind). The only sound is papers rustling in a breeze. Attempts at picking the lock are fruitless so Gatch & Dexter head outside to scale the wall & climb in through a window. Gatch slides back down like the building was greased, but the dice are on fire for Dexter tonight. He skitters up like a squirrel & lets the rest of the team inside.

The professor left in a hurry, without so much as shutting his computer down or taking his messenger bag with him. A quick search turns up bank records hidden in his desk showing a large recent deposit. There's also a diorama of the city that has been recently disturbed, as if someone removed its Plexiglas cover to point out features. Gatch uses his Perfect Memory advantage to memorize the street plan. With nothing else of interest at the office the team heads to the professor's home, his address helpfully at the top of the bank records.

The house is a small one storey job on a lot surrounded by a cinder block wall with iron gates, like all the other houses in this upper middle-class neighborhood. From his "possibles bag", a sort of backwoodsman's utility belt, Crockett produces some explosives and tries to blow the lock on the pedestrian gate. He rolls a failure, but I figure that means he overestimates the amount necessary. Bam! He blows a smoking hole in gate & wall beside it, setting off car alarms up & down the block. The boys have to work fast before the cops show up. They toss the house but find no sign of Horvath here either. It looks like do Vale got to him first with a fat retainer, then snapped him up straight out of the office when it came time for the job to go down. There's no sense hanging around so the boys pile into Dexter's car & head into the mountains.

When they arrive at the Nivinite village it's nearly nightfall. Rounding the corner on the approach to the village, the team sees that there's debris scattered about & one of the buildings is on fire. As soon as they see headlights a number of men take cover behind barricades & level rifles in their direction! The team are in no mood for a gun battle so they fade back a quarter mile or so, pull the car back into the woods & camouflage it. Crockett uses his night vision advantage to guide them through the woods (as fast as possible since Gatch's fear of animals disadvantage means the night noise of the forest is making him increasingly edgy).

The Sacred City & the surrounding village are on a promontory overlooking a 200 meter drop into the valley below. The City is at the very edge of the cliff, which means the village is spread out in an arc before it. The team sneaks up to one end of the arc & scans the village to see what's going on. Homes are shut tight & few people are on the streets. In the center of town is some kind of church or town hall that seems to be serving as a hospital for injured townsfolk. A broad plaza separates the village from the City walls & on some of the rooftops of the houses overlooking the plaza more villagers with rifles are standing guard. Looks like do Vale's crew wouldn't take no for an answer when the villagers tried to deny entry to the City. They shot & blasted their way through & now the townsfolk are waiting to try & gun them down when they emerge.

The team really don't like the idea of trying to sneak through a whole village of antsy, armed religious fanatics. Some searching turns up a vertiginous goat track running along the cliff just out of sight. One harrowing creep later they've reached the edge of the plaza. Now all they have to do is get across the open space to the great main gate of the City, which is the only visible entrance.

This obviously calls for a distraction. Crockett hasn't blown anything up for hours, so he hatches a plan to sneak a little ways into the village, find a likely looking building & set it on fire. While everyone rushes to save it, the trio can rush the City. Crockett's Observation rating is highest (2), so he sneaks through the narrow streets until he comes to a woodworking shop. It's an easy job to jimmy the front doors & sneak in. The woodworker lives above the shop but Crockett avoids attracting notice. In a few minutes he's slipped a small incendiary into one of the bags of collected sawdust lying in a corner of the shop & tries to make a similarly quiet exit. Just his rotten luck though; as he steps out into the street a window across the way opens up & he finds himself exchanging stares of terror with one of the villagers. The villager starts to raise the alarm, but just then the incendiary goes off. The woodworker is trapped on the upper floor & leans out a window, yelling for help. Crockett takes off running down a dark alley as a crowd gathers to try & rescue the woodworker. Finally, desperate, he leaps to safety from the window just the building explodes in flame behind him.

"Well, you've had your Michael Bay moment," says Danny Hammer.

The fire at the shop occupies what was left of the village's attention. The boys dash across to the City and in through the gate. The City walls & all the buildings inside them are constructed with huge blocks of stone assembled without mortar, all fit so precisely you couldn't slip a sheet of paper between them. Gatch's eidetic memory tells them that single broadish street leads to a central plaza. Off this main street runs a rabbit warren of smaller streets, the widest of them maybe a little more than a tall human's arm span across.

The boys follow the main street a ways, then stop. There in the plaza sits a truck, its headlights illuminating the area in front of it. It’s some sort of decommissioned military rig with a canvas-covered rear space, big enough for maybe ten people or fewer plus a substantial amount of gear. Crockett remembers that do Vale runs with a crew of six or seven mid-rank villains so that makes sense. From here it looks like there’s one person, a bearded young guy Crockett doesn’t recognize, in the driver’s seat. The rest of the crew must be deeper in the city hunting for whatever do Vale came in search of. That suspicion is confirmed when the team sneak near enough to hear the driver conversing remotely with someone somewhere else.

Depriving them of use of the truck is the first logical step in sticking it to Crockett’s nemesis. The only question is how to deal with the driver? Plans are discussed until Crockett’s somewhat limited patience runs out. He decides he’s going to try to draw the driver out by popping up & mooning him. As expected, the driver starts & says “What the hell?” at the sight of the mountain man’s pasty butt heaving into view. As not expected, he jumps out of the cab, draws a pistol & tries to eclipse that moon with a few bullets. Luckily for Crockett the driver misses. Gatch & Dexter spring from the darkness & bring the man down. Dexter makes a knife attack & gets a heroic result, dealing the unlucky villain a specific wound to the chest. He has the bad luck to be an Enemy instead of a Foe & consequently dies on the spot.

The team search the truck cab for anything useful. Mounted on an arm fixed to the dashboard is a tablet whose screen currently shows a map of the city with two blinking red dots. Each dot must represent part of do Vale’s team since Just above the map are two live feeds from what appear to be person-mounted cameras. Each shows that there’s at least one other person with the one wearing the camera & each group has a lifter sled - a sort of anti-grav hand truck thing - with them. They’re obviously planning on hauling away something very heavy. Curiouser still, one of the feeds shows not just do Vale himself but the missing archaeologist Gabor Horvath, walking around apparently of his own free will. Looks like he was bought off, not snatched.

It also becomes clear that at least one of the people on the other end of these feeds has heard the commotion. “Rodrigue? Rodrigue! What’s going on?” The voice is coming from the tablet. There doesn’t seem to be a camera on it, so the team decide to try to maximize the confusion by keeping mum. The person on the other end, presumably do Vale, makes a few more attempts to get them to talk as the team ponder their next move.

They decide to use the tablet as a tracker to hunt down one of the groups. Unfortunately there’s nothing to indicate how many people are in each group or which one do Vale’s in so they have to pick a group at random. Still silent, they set off through the side streets toward their target. Gatch’s perfect memory of the city’s layout makes for easy going. What stops the team in their tracks is rounding a corner & finding skeletons lying in the street. The Nivinites lay their dead to rest in the buildings, so whoever these unfortunates were they weren’t villagers. The trio stop to examine them. Upon closer inspection they can see that each of the skeletons is covered from head to foot with miniscule striations running the length of the bones. Gatch succeeds on a Lore check; after a little brain wracking he remembers stories of people killed by runaway nanite clouds, stripped clean of meat & tendon & fat in an agonizing half minute or so.

Proceeding any farther into the City suddenly doesn’t sound like a very good idea. The team decide they’ll return to the plaza & lie in wait for the rest of do Vale’s crew - assuming whatever killed the people in the street doesn’t eat them alive too. However, just as they’re about to round the last corner Crockett & Dexter’s danger sense starts pinging something fierce. Something bad is waiting for them in there. But what?

(1) Since we're playing at home I incorporated Legends of Steel's advantages into the game. Those aren't on the handouts on the ZeFRS site because they're Jeff Mejia’s IP.

(2) Observation is used both to find a concealed opponent & to conceal yourself, I guess by using your knowledge of spotting hidden stuff to avoid being spotted. We ended up making a whole boatload of Observation checks this session since it involved a lot of sneaking around by everyone involved.

[markkrawec]

Episode 2: Shoot, Shoot Again & Shoot Some More

Among the many things I neglected to explain at the beginning of the first session was the way health works in ZeFRS. Damage Endurance is a talent like any other & has to be bought with character points at chargen. One of the two players who had played the system before remembered that; the other & the one who had never played, of course, didn’t. I apologized & said everybody could add five Damage if they liked, but a couple of them were happy to tack on another weakness to balance out. Now that all the characters were ready for a fight to break out, we started.

It occurs to our heroes that the tablet they stole from the truck & have been using to track do Vale’s progress might as easily be used to track them. They slip back to where they found those skeletons in the street & leave the tablet in one of the buildings, hoping to draw do Vale’s crew. With any luck whatever killed the City dwellers will turn on the crew. Then the team double back to the plaza where the truck is.

Crockett & Dexter are still getting Danger Sense pings so the team use extra caution in moving to take up positions for an ambush when do Vale’s crew return. Crockett & Dexter get on rooftops, half-covered by the low parapet that runs around the edge, while Gatch settles in a second story window. The three peer around the moonlit plaza, watching for the crew, until Crockett spots someone on the rooftop opposite. His night vision & binoculars let him see it’s a woman in paramilitary outfit with a sniper rifle - his knowledge of do Vale’s crew tells him it’s probably either Carla “Sarge” McCann or Judith Graceffo, both of whom are ex-military hard cases. Their ambush has been ambushed, dammit! Crocket figures he had better warn Gatch & Dexter, but unfortunately the boys don’t have communications devices on them. It takes a few minutes for him to catch Dexter’s eye. He straightens a little and gesticulates toward the person he has seen.

That’s when the person on the rooftop beside his opens up with an assault rifle. Bullets ricochet around him but none manages to strike home. Crockett squints into the blast as he sprints for the hatch down from the roof, trying to make out who the hell’s shooting at him, but all he can see is muzzle flash. Time enough for that later; Crockett leaps down to the room below.

He happens to be stationed in a two-story building, some of whose windows face the windows of the building his attacker is shooting from. In true action movie style it seems perfectly logical for him to take a running start, jump the seven feet or so that separates the buildings & fly in through the other window. He puts his plan in action, but as he’s soaring between buildings he hears a high-pitched buzz & feels a sharp pain in his leg. The sniper across the plaza has shot him! Worse still the sound the shot made tells him that she’s equipped with a tracer rifle, one that fires small self-guided rounds that can lock onto the target’s alpha waves & chase them around corners.

Dexter eyeballs the distance from his rooftop to the sniper’s; it’s just close enough so he lays down some covering fire with his pistol. She for some reason doesn’t immediately return fire, so that’s all for the good. Gatch creeps back from his perch at the window and uses his Perfect Memory advantage to recall a mental map of the plaza. He too has spotted the sniper & starts making his way through back alleys toward one of the windows on the first floor.

Crockett lands, wincing, & runs toward the roof opening with blunderbuss at the ready. The moment he reaches it he sees that his assailant has had the same idea; he & “Sarge” McCann are leveling their weapons at one another through the opening. Crockett wins initiative & fires first. He scores a grazing hit on McCann. Her flak vest soaks up the damage but Crockett’s weapon causes knockback anyway. McCann flies a meter & lands flat on her back. While she’s catching her breath & scrambling to her feet Crockett thunders down the stairs to the ground floor.

Topside, there’s a crack from the rooftop where Crockett spotted the sniper. Bang, buzz, one of the brain-seeking bullets deals Dexter a flesh wound! The sniper must have re-targeted the rifle. Dexter’s a pilot, not a weapons expert, but he can tell that whatever he’s been shot with is no ordinary gun. Time to fall back. He does the tactical crouch-jog back to the roof hatch and drops down to the building below.

McCann knows that Crockett is probably lying in wait at the bottom of the stairs, so she tries to open negotiations. “I see you’ve got Dexter Kardust with you, Crockett.” “Yeah? So what?” “Guy’s worth a lot of money to the right people. Dead, alive, doesn’t matter.” (Among Dexter’s many weaknesses is Price On Your Head, which means that at least once during every adventure somebody’s going to try to collect the bounty - or, as in this case, try to enroll other people to help do so.) Long pause. “... How much money?” “Enough to buy your face back.”

Across the plaza Gatch has entered the sniper’s building. He creeps to the roof hatch and uses a climbing check to soundlessly hoist himself up onto the roof. The sniper - Graceffo, the other ex-military member of the crew - is unaware of his presence. She’s scanning the plaza & conversing with McCann over some kind of radio earwig. (Danny Hammer: “Oh, great. They’ve got radios.” mazirian: “You know, that might have been a good thing to bring…”) Gatch slips his pistol from its holster and takes a shot at her but misses. Graceffo sees that he’s already too close for a rifle shot so she whips out her combat knife & dives into melee with him. Gatch grapples Graceffo & pins her, but she’s a skilled wrestler & escapes. The pair are locked in a death struggle. Much stabbing ensues.

Crockett’s venality is no match for his mistrust of McCann. He knows full well she’ll fill him with lead given the chance so he croodles over to a window on a different alleyway, talking all the way to cover the sound of his footsteps. He slips out the window & covers the stairs with his gun. Sure enough there’s a burst of fire in the direction of the spot where he had been. McCann creeps down one step at a time to see if she’s hit anything. As soon as he’s got a clear view of half of her Crockett shoots, but misses. He’s not about to wait around for her to return fire; he clambers out the window & heads in the direction of Dexter’s building.

Our heroes meet in the alley where Crockett hurriedly explains the situation. They decide to duck into the adjacent building & try to lay a trap. Dexter is thinking along shooting lines so he hauls himself onto this building’s roof & gets ready to snipe down into the alley. He’s also eager to get clear of Crockett’s plan, which is to stuff his hat with an explosive pack, set it in the window & shoot it when McCann comes to check it out.

Gatch & Graceffo continue to fight, but the ex-soldier is a master of close quarters fighting. In short order she has stabbed & slashed Gatch nearly to death (reducing him to 0 Damage). Things are looking desperate. Gatch maneuvers the brawl to the the edge of the roof & throws himself over. Luck is with him for once as he just barely makes the acrobatics roll to avoid being killed by the fall..

As the boys expected McCann has followed Crockett through the alley to the house. Rather than approaching his trapped hat, however, she shoots it. The hat is blown to smithereens, the stone around the window slightly chipped. McCann approaches to make sure Crockett’s dead, upon which Dexter shoots at her from above. He misses. She returns fire with her assault rifle. Crockett leans out a window & fires at McCann but misses. Realizing she’s caught in a cross fire she runs to dive back through the window in the original building. Crockett dashes across the alley & through the front door. He & McCann are suddenly facing off in the gloom. Shots ring out. Crockett misses again while McCann hits, this time for two points of damage. It’s looking bad for Crockett until there’s a sound at the window. Dexter has jumped down & is about to take a shot through the window! McCann gets the initiative again but her blast at Dexter misses. Crockett finally scores a decent hit with his blunderbuss, shattering McCann’s arm & knocking her to the ground again. Dexter squeezes off one last shot; finally a hit, square in the gut. McCann expires.

The boys loot the med packs from Sarge’s body & Dexter uses one shot to heal his wounds. He also plunders her armored vest, which fits well enough with minor adjustment. Crockett salvages McCann’s earwig & has Just the Thing to combine it with his in-built voice synthesizer (a side effect of having a robot face) to mimic the Sarge’s voice. He contacts Graceffo & tells her, as McCann, that whoever these other jerks are they’re all dead. She needs some patching up though; Graceffo had better get over there & help. Graceffo radios back that some lunatic just attacked her & she’s going to keep watching the plaza. Crockett sprays some bullets with McCann’s rifle, then calls back in her voice. “Got the bastard. It’s all clear.”

The sniper falls for it. She comes down to the plaza, heading for the building where McCann was stationed. The team catch her in a three-way crossfire & she’s quickly gunned down.

After looting the armor & medical packs from Graceffo, the question becomes what to do now? Do Vale announces that they’re on the way back & what the hell was all that shooting? Crockett hems & haws & finally declares that some of the locals came in & opened fire on them. Do Vale explodes in a rage at Horvath the archaeologist. “I paid you good money for expert advice, you bastard! You said they wouldn’t follow us in here, stupid son of a pregnant dog! You trying to get us killed so you can have this all to yourself? Eh?!” There’s a few minutes of the sound of Horvath getting the holy spirit beaten out of him, then do Vale demands a sit rep.

“Villagers’re dead,” says Crockett-McCann. “They got Rodrigue and Graceffo, but I nailed the last of ‘em. I’m messed up. Ain’t nothin’ but sprayskin & bandages holding me together. Hurry back & help patch me up.”

“You’re one tough old bird, McCann,” says do Vale. “All right. We’re on the way.”

Another plan for a trap is quickly devised. The trio set the Sarge’s body in the passenger seat of the truck & lay Graceffo & Rodrigue under a tarp beside it. Along with the bodies is the last of Crockett’s explosives & two clips’ worth of loose bullets for extra shrapnel. One of the earwigs is reconfigured to serve as a remote detonator. The idea is for Dexter to crouch down in the driver’s seat. When do Vale’s crew approach the tarp, they’ll set the bomb off. Dexter can leap out & shoot any survivors of the explosion. Crockett & Gatch retire to opposite buildings to snipe from the windows.

A little more than fifteen minutes later one man walks into the plaza, assault rifle at the ready. Crockett recognizes him as Matt “The Professor” Hatmaker, former combatives instructor & the most educated member of do Vale’s crew. What the hell is he doing here alone? (The answer is do Vale has Danger Sense himself & it was pinging like a mother.)

Slowly, gun sweeping the plaza, Hatmaker approaches the truck. Crockett holds off setting off the bomb, not wanting to waste it on one guy. Hatmaker peers in the window at the Sarge & recoils, stunned silent for a moment. It’s long enough. Before Hatmaker can recover himself enough to call in to do Vale, Gatch fires. The dice finally smile on Gatch & the shot deals a grave head wound. Hatmaker whirls to return fire, upon which Dexter straightens in his seat & delivers a fatal shot from behind. Hatmaker drops.

Along about now do Vale & his band finally make their appearance. Three of his crew remain: Ken “Iron Man” Yamaki, Ethan Vargo & Pearl “Chopper” Vunak. Crockett knows Vunak is the most dangerously crazy of the lot - she’s notorious for having once gnawed an eye right out of a guy’s head. Each is brandishing a weapon in the direction of the truck & Vargo is pushing a lift sled that carries an opalescent jewel that’s easily the size of a stacked pair of a small travel trunk. It also carries the brutally beaten Gabor Horvath, lashed to the front as a human shield against whatever they might encounter.

Threats are shouted back & forth between the two groups for a few moments. No one’s quite sure how to proceed at this point, with the heavily armed band separated from their vehicle by a space exposed to the fire of the more lightly equipped trio. It looks like a stalemate.

At least until the first of the quad lifters flies by overhead. Do Vale looks up, the expression on his face showing he’s just as astonished as our heroes to see the vehicles. The mystery deepens when everyone realizes that they don’t have civilian or military markings, but are covered with what look like religious symbols.

At least two aircraft full of emissaries from a cult are about to land.

That’s where we broke for the evening. “You know, you could have mentioned ahead of time ‘by the way, this one’s an expert in hand-to-hand combat, this one’s an expert sniper...’” In Crockett’s defense nobody had asked & I had given him only the most cursory description of do Vale’s crew as “a bunch of toughs”. For some reason I thought to mention how “Chopper” Vunak got her nickname but skipped right over the more mundane details about the group. I suppose that was one tidbit that would have stuck firmly in Crockett’s mind.

[markkrawec]

Episode 3: The Enemy of My Enemy Doesn’t Like Me Either

As is by now traditional we start the session by me admitting I overlooked part of the rules during the previous sessions. I haven’t been applying weapon modifiers to damage done by NPCs & forgot to mention to the players that the modifier even exists. Fortunately since no one has been using it, it’s pretty much a wash. We agree to ignore weapon modifiers for the rest of this adventure & press on.

The last session ended with a standoff & no one moves for the first few minutes this time. Do Vale & his crew didn’t actually witness Hatmaker being shot so they don’t have a good idea where the shot came from. The sight of the aircraft full of cultists circling above puts on enough extra pressure that they throw caution to the wind & start moving toward the truck. The aircraft seem to find the plaza too small to land in since they veer off toward the open stretch between the City & the Nivinite village, which is plenty big enough for them. Gatch overhears some plinking from the villagers as the cult craft draw near. Fine, he thinks, let them deal with each other.

Do Vale’s crew slowly creep up to the back of the truck past the booby-trapped corpses under the tarp. Just as do Vale goes by Crockett sets off the bomb. The explosion does only minor damage but it does stun everyone. Unfortunately it also topples the lifter & spills the gem onto the ground. (Also the sled onto Horvath, causing yet more injuries.) The team get a surprise round of fire & put it to good use. Crockett shoots from the rooftop, Gatch from his window, & Dexter throws himself prone behind a truck wheel & starts shooting at legs.

Crockett recognizes one of the surviving crew members as Ken “Iron Man” Yamaki, famous for having taken on 20 men one right after the other in a bar brawl & beaten them all. (1) The eponym is a little more demoralizing than I had intended (“Iron Man?” “Do all these guys have nicknames?” “Why the hell do we even do this job …”) but the team soldiers on.

“d**ned if I’m fighting that guy!” says Crockett & concentrates fire on him. His first shot … is an 07! Heroic success. Yamaki is laid low with a specific wound to the gut. The thumper’s concentrated gravity distortion round folds him in two - though not at the waist. Twitching & drooling blood Yamaki hits the pavement.

“I’ll be up here on the roof, heaving my lunch,” says Crockett.

The shot from the roof draws the survivors’ attention. They concentrate fire on Crockett’s position. Despite partial cover lucky shots from do Vale & Vunak reduce him to 0 Damage. He burns a luck point to shift the second shot from a green hit to a miss, leaving him with one Damage, then falls back to where he can’t be seen. This isn’t good. He’s all out of medipack loads. (2) Dexter has one, but he’s down there behind the truck. What to do? The building has no furnishings so he can’t do an action movie charge out the door using a dining room table for a shield. In the end all he can do is pray & run, which he does. Luckily the spray of gunfire he draws goes wide. Crockett flings himself behind the lifter where Dexter soon joins him. Crockett administers himself another dose from the medipack. Whew! Back up to three Damage.

Horvath is getting on their nerves with all that begging for mercy & wailing about his broken bones, so Crockett & Dexter cut him loose & drag him to cover. Now maybe at least he’ll shut the hell up.

Long minutes pass. No one moves, each party unwilling to expose themselves to attack by the other. Dexter & Crockett debate how to get to the gem. It’s enormous - too big for easy handling - so this may take some doing. In the end they decide to use the lifter as mobile cover. Little by little they scoot it sideways until it’s clear of the gem, then begin inching it forward. The idea is to maneuver the lifter between the gem & do Vale so they’ll at least be covered as they try to roll it or drag it or whatever.

Do Vale, Vunak & Vargo realize what’s up. They didn’t come all this way & lose half their crew to let a pilot with a price on his head & a robot-faced backwoodsman get away with their loot! The three open fire & riddle the lifter with bullets, gravely damaging the power system. It starts to overload in obvious preparation for exploding. The adventurers & the archaeologist have to dash behind the truck & only just make it before the lifter blows up. Now there’s no cover & the blast has knocked the gem right up against a building. Dexter takes the wheel while Crockett & Horvath scramble into the back. The plan now is to get the truck to the gem, load it & charge down the street. Hopefully they’ll be able to pick up Gatch on the way.

Gatch guns down Ethan “No Nickname” Vargo with some remarkable shooting through a window. The forces are at a stalemate again. No one can come out in the open to claim the gem without being shot to pieces by the others. Gatch sees what’s up with the truck & decides to get to a building beside the main street - the one where he fought Graceffo - from which he can jump into the truck as it goes by. He starts making his way from rooftop to rooftop, but slacks his pace halfway there when he sees what’s coming up in their direction.

While still in his sniper’s nest he had been hearing voices drawing nearer. Now that he’s moving across the buildings he sees that maybe 20 white-robed cultists are marching up the street, hands folded, eyes on the ground, singing a chant. (It takes nearly a minute for me to stop trying to say “litigious” & describe it as “liturgical” instead.) Behind them come five black-robed cultists who surround a guy who must be the leader. His name, though he never gets the chance to introduce himself, is Himachal. He’s wearing gold robes trimmed in purple (3) & he’s got the most amazing, perfect hair the team have ever seen.

Oh, & on a chain he’s walking what looks like this planet’s equivalent of a lion. It’s a bug-eyed beast half again as big as a man, with rippling muscles, fangs, claws & spiralling backward facing horns like an ibex’.

Gatch has to make a General Endurance check at this point to overcome his fear of animals weakness. He succeeds & can continue on his way to his destination building. If he had failed, the sight of the bizarre & obviously dangerous creature would have scared him so badly he would have turned back the way he came.

Dexter gets the truck backed into position right next to the gem. Horvath tells them that it took two people to get it on the lifter. The injuries he sustained in the explosion that upended the lifter mean he can’t help move it; Crockett is going to have to try to budge it alone. He jumps down & makes a Strength resolution check - & gets a heroic result! With one greed-fueled heave Crockett throws the gem into the back of the truck like a sack of laundry. “Go!” he shouts through canvas barrier that divides cab from cargo space. Dexter punches it.

In unison, the white-robed cultists look up, eyes wide & fixed on the truck. With arms outstretched they rush it, flinging themselves bodily onto the hood, against the doors, one or two even under the wheels. A struggle begins, Dexter making Driving checks against the cultists’ General Fighting checks. Each time he wins he gets a round of clear movement. Each time they win they impede the truck’s progress by knocking it off course, slowing it by sheer weight of numbers, offering themselves up as debris & so on.

Himachal unleashes the lion then gets shot square through the back by Gatch, who by now has taken up his new position. Himachal was waving some sort of parchment in front of him as if he were reading from it or following a map drawn on it, but drops it when he gets shot. His attendants hustle him toward a nearby building. Gatch manages to put another bullet through Himachal’s arm with the sniper rifle before they reach cover.

The lion attacks the truck. First it claws its way through three cultists, then it maims the engine with paws the size of a man’s head. “nuts!” cries Dexter & starts trying to plug it with his pistol. Success eludes him, bullets slamming into the hood of the truck, adjacent cultists & the pavement around the lion. Crockett squeezes off a burst in the lion’s direction but that doesn’t help either. (4)

Gatch shoots the lion, which turns around & charges the building on whose roof he’s crouched. His fear of animals kicks into high gear & he fades back, hoping against hope that the thing can’t just leap right up & get him.

The truck is moving again but cultists are still clinging to the sides, trying to claw their way in. Crockett uses up the last energy cell for his blunderbuss & has to turn to the assault rifle. He lets off bursts on every side of the truck. Cultists are clipped & fall away, but there are still enough hanging on to be an impediment.

The lion enters Gatch’s building, whereupon there’s a cacophony of screams, roars & gunfire. What the hell? Gatch suddenly realizes that do Vale & Vunak have snuck out a back window & come around to this very building, planning to ambush the truck as it drove by. Instead they’re having to deal with an enraged space lion. From the sounds of it they aren’t doing well.

One of the cultists has snatched up the fallen parchment & now brandishes it at Crockett as if he were trying to subdue a hopping vampire with a sutra. Crockett responds by spinning his rifle around & cracking the cultist square in the forehead with the butt. The cultist tumbles off the truck & Crockett snatches the document out of the air.

“What is this thing?” He shows it to Horvath, assuming the archaeologist will be able to make some sense of it. I ask for an Observation check & he gets an acceptable (yellow) success. It’s enough for Crockett to spot the millisecond flash of raw, distilled greed that flashes in Horvath’s eyes.

“I have no idea.” Horvath shakes his head. “I’ll have to examine it in more detail later.”

“Sure,” Crockett says. He doesn’t buy it but he’s not letting on. “No problem.”

The truck is within meters of the street. The battle below Gatch continues. The remaining cultists are still assailing the truck! Gatch is ready to leap!

We break for the night.

(1) He took the One Foe At A Time advantage.

(2) There’s no fast magical healing in the original ZeFRS because of its sword & sorcery focus, but I felt “Escape From Butcher Bay” style medipacks were appropriate for a Ridthingy-verse inspired setting.

(3) Inspired by the extravagant outfit sported by kuk sool won founder In Hyuk Suh: kswgarland.com/wp-content/gallery/action/kuksanimsword-pic.jpg

(4) The lion was frustrating as hell to fight because of its enormous Movement score. I may make a tweak to how initiative works because as written a combatant with a very high Movement - for example the lion’s 10 - will not only nearly always go first in combat, it’ll then take hits less than one third of the time. The PCs were lucky this time in that all the Cult forces went on the same initiative count, based on the humans’ more manageable Movement of 4.

Also in retrospect I should have judged it as relatively stationary since it was focused on destroying the truck & not paying much attention to dodging attacks. That would have considerably reduced the team’s penalty to hit.

[markkrawec]

Episode 4: Not Quite What Anyone Was Expecting

The battle for control of the truck continues. Two more cultists fall by the wayside as Dexter pulls a couple of masterful driving maneuvers. They’ve got a clear shot to the main street leading out of the Sacred City. Dexter puts the pedal down.

On the roof of a building ahead, Gatch readies himself to make the jump onto the truck as it passes beneath him. The canvas that covers the sides of the cargo area has been destroyed by gun & thumper fire but the top remains intact. At least until Gatch lands on it.

Horvath starts yelling in terror that one of the cultists is climbing over the tailgate & into the truck! Crockett doesn’t hesitate. He grabs Horvath - whom he has concluded must be planning some sort of double cross since he so obviously lied about being able to read that weird document - & flings him bodily toward the oncoming cultist, trying to spill them both out the back. Horvath & the cultist tussle & Horvath pulls off a total success on a General Fighting check. He finds a way to use the cultist as a counterweight to keep himself inside the truck while at the same time shoving the robed assailant toward Crockett! The cultist doesn’t much care who he fights so he makes ready to attack the woodsman with the escrima stick he’s packing.

Gatch picks his moment & leaps - getting a heroic success on his athletics check! He drops through the canvas roof & lands on his feet, sniper rifle at the ready. This plainly calls for an 80s action quip.

“What took ya so long?”

“Company dropped by. Now help me handle this guy!”

Gatch, Crockett, it’s all the same to the cultist. He & Gatch go mano a mano while Crockett tries to flank. One round goes by with no hits. Then the cultist gets lucky & brings his stick down on Gatch’s head so hard his ears bleed. Gatch is at 0 damage resistance (again) & collapses on the floor. Crockett grips the exhausted assault rifle like a jo staff & strikes at the cultist’s neck. He gets a heroic success, instant despatch for a mere enemy. His vicious blow crushes the cultist’s throat & he expires. While Gatch uses his last medpack dose to recover two points of damage resistance, Crockett wrestles Horvath to the ground & ties his wrists again. He’s not taking any chances with the terribly injured but still treacherous archaeologist.

Dexter has troubles of his own. There’s a cultist working on each of the cab’s doors. The one on the driver side isn’t having any luck because Dexter can keep a grip on his side, but the one on the passenger side has managed to open that door & is trying to climb in! Dexter fumbles out his pistol & takes a shot at the one on the driver side. It’s a heroic success for him too; the bullet catches the cultist right between the eyes & he tumbles away.

In just under a minute they’ve traveled the length of the main street. The truck roars out the city gate into the plaza between the Nivinite village & the Sacred City. There’s no sign of the villagers who had been standing guard over the area. Dead ahead are the two cargo lifters that had circled overhead. These must be the vehicles the cult took to get to the city. Their engines are idling & their jump doors - one on each side of the fuselage - are still open. The truck isn’t in very good condition after the mauling the cultists & space lion have given it, so flying the hell out of here is sounding like a real good idea at this point. Time to steal an aircraft!

The only problem - well, aside from subduing the pilot - is the gem. It’s huge, heavy, & rounded, so it’s going to be a pain to carry any distance. Crockett yells for Dexter to maneuver the truck as close to the quad lifter as he can manage. Dexter makes a driving check & discovers the dice are on fire for our anti-heroes this evening. It’s a heroic success. Dexter plays the brake & accelerator like Bach working the organ pedals & the truck spins to a stop with the tailgate just over two meters from the open cargo lifter door. On top of that the passenger-side cultist loses his grip on the truck & goes flying into the prop wash from the lifter fan, which slams him to the ground & knocks him unconscious. There’s one last cultist clinging to the bed of the truck, but he yet again fails his attempt to climb inside. That’s it, he’s spent; he slumps to the pavement, only semi-conscious himself.

Gatch & Crockett work together to manhandle the gem out of the truck. Meanwhile Dexter slips out the passenger side door, jogs along the lifter & hops aboard. He’s immediately confronted by the astonished pilot staring back at him from the thingypit.

“Who are you? I’ve never seen you before. Where’s the Master?”

“I’m, uh … with the group. Came in the other lifter.” Dexter gestures vaguely toward the city. “The Master sent me on ahead.”

The pilot’s not buying it. He slams the thingypit door shut & locks it. Dexter whips out his knife & starts attacking the latch but doesn’t make any headway. Gatch & Crockett clamber aboard & drop the gem on the deck. Crockett’s ready to bug out right now but Gatch reminds him that they may need Horvath to decipher the mystery document. Crockett grumbles but acknowledges the wisdom of that, so he makes another successful Strength check to scoop up Horvath & sling him into the lifter like a sack of laundry.

Luckily for the team Gatch is trained in lock picking. He opens the thingypit door to reveal the pilot gunning the engines for takeoff. If Dexter were he the obvious thing to do would be to put the ship in a spin & throw everyone out the jump doors, which is a thing they very much want not to happen. Dexter squeezes off a round & gets yet another heroic success, shooting the pilot dead on the spot. He leaps into the co-pilot’s seat & seizes the controls.

“Oh, Jesus …” See, along about now Gatch has spotted a pair of menacing green eyes headed their way down the City street.
“Lion. Lion! Take off, dammit, gogogogo!”

Gatch slams the far jump door shut & starts looking around the cargo bay for a head to hide in, but no luck. Dexter slaps the throttle to full power & hauls back on the yoke. The cargo lifter soars into the air just fast & high enough for the lion to miss when it leaps at it, claws extended.

Crockett has some questions about the gem & figures now is a good time to shake some answers out of Horvath. He half-dangles the archaeologist from the open door & grills him. Horvath declares that the gem is the Eye of the Dragon, an ancient & much sought-after treasure that’s said to grant immense power to the owner. The scroll that the cult leader was brandishing is connected to it in some way, a testament that the person who carries it is the rightful owner of the Eye. What exactly the Eye does, however, he can’t say. Nobody can; the language in the document is too vague & elliptical.

“That’s not much help,” says Crockett & lets Horvath fall. Gatch points out that they still need help deciphering the mystery scroll, but it’s too late for that. They’re flying low enough that Horvath could survive the drop - low enough that Dexter spots a couple of Nivinite guards who were taken out earlier by cultists throwing themselves out of the lifter & falling on them - but there’s the small matter of the angry lion.

“Who’s still alive back there anyway?” Crockett wonders.

“The cult leader guy. His five bodyguards. I think do Vale & Vunak got eaten by the lion.”

“Chopper Vunak ain’t dead until you’ve seen the body.”

The team debates what to do at this point. Flying away will be fast, but then what? There’s nowhere to land this thing inconspicuously back in the city & it’s for d**n sure not hard to spot what with all the religious symbology painted on the hull. Then there’s the other cargo lifter, which is bound to be on their trail as soon as the cult leader comes out of his hiding place. They decide to set down in the road near where they left Dexter’s car, transfer the gem to the car & drive back to town.

As Crockett & Gatch move the gem, Dexter checks the lifter’s radar screens. Sure enough the other lifter has taken off & is flying an ever-widening spiral around the Nivinite village, presumably looking for them. The thick forest on either side of the road is providing them some radar cover at the moment but it won’t be long before the other aircraft & its search lights are overhead. Dexter checks whether there’s a functioning autopilot system & finds there is. If there were just some way for him to take off, then get out & let the lifter fly off on a pre-programmed course …

Crockett spends a luck point to have Just the Thing in his possibles bag: a 50-foot coil of nano carbon tubule line, incredibly strong & elastic, a sort of super bungee cord. It’s better than nothing; Dexter will lift off, set a short delay, then bungee jump down from the aircraft. I call for Pilot & Acrobatics checks.

The dice have gone stone cold for Dexter. He fails both checks. One of the lifter’s fans clips a tree branch as the machine ascends. The fan blades are severely damaged & the lifter begins to wobble & swerve. There’s nothing for it but for Dexter to jump anyway - just as the lifter jolts sideways. Dexter is swung full force into a tree trunk before falling the rest of the way to the ground. One more damage point gone, leaving him just barely functional. He hobbles back to the car & the lifter begins a short, drunken looking journey over the forest to crash maybe a couple of kilometers away.

The car is just as they left it, hidden under brush with Dexter’s dogoids patiently waiting in the back seat. (Gatch immediately calls shotgun.) The team pile in & for some reason shuffle the dogoids into the rear cargo space & set the gem on the seat beside Crockett. Off they drive. In the mirror they see the lights of the surviving lifter as it arrives to circle the crash site. The wreck keeps the cultists too preoccupied to notice the car & anyway they’re mostly hidden by overhanging branches.

In all the mayhem the trio had forgotten it’s a six hour drive back to town, so there’s plenty of time to debate exactly what they’re going to do with the Eye of the Dragon. They don’t feel entirely safe advertising it for sale. After all, a dangerous cult mobilized two aircraft & an entire platoon of suicide commando monks to get it. Who knows how hard someone might try to steal it from them? It may be necessary to smuggle the gem off the planet to sell it. Then too there’s the question of pricing. Horvath could only say the gem was “beyond priceless”, which doesn’t help much. Even if they sell it to the highest bidder, how can they be sure they’re getting what it’s really worth?

While they’re discussing business arrangements Crockett has been poring over the mystery scroll. He still can’t make heads or tails out of the writing & the small circle at the bottom with its animated concentric rings is as inexplicable as ever. Out of curiosity he pokes at the circle & that’s when things get weird. Well, weirder. The scroll chirps quietly & an enlarged image of Crockett’s fingerprint appears in the circle. A plane of light with no discernible source scans him from head to foot & back again.

“Uh, guys …”

Shifting weight on the seat beside him draws Crockett’s attention to the gem. Where before it had been completely featureless it now looks like it’s made from pearlescent sand, numberless grains of it, that has started to flow like an hourglass.

“Guys!”

“What the …” Gatch catches sight of the sudden transformation in the rear view mirror. “Crockett! What the hell did you do?”

“I don’t know!”

The gem is separating into long cylinders & smaller ovoids. In short order up sits a humanoid figure, as featureless now as the original gem apart from two dark areas where a person’s eyes would be & a small line suggestive of a mouth. It turns to face Crockett.

“How may One be of service?” it says.

“Uh … you … can you get me a beer?”

One thinks about that for a second. “Regrettably, it appears no [beer] is available at this time. One would be happy to procure [beer] at the earliest opportunity.”

The flummoxed team grill One but it can’t tell them anything about itself other than that it was produced by Mirabel Domestic Constructs. One’s some sort of domestic servant. The mystery scroll? Sure, One knows what that is. It’s the bill of lading that was shipped with it. By pressing the circle in One’s presence Crockett accepted delivery & is now, as far as it’s concerned, One’s rightful owner. Construct & documentation are so old - older than any known planetary settlement in fact - that the meaning of the marketing-speak in the document was distorted into “whoever holds this gains the right to great power”.

Instead of the biggest jewel they’ve ever seen, the team have netted themselves what amounts to an indestructible robot butler. On the upside One’s unrecognizable as ever having been the Eye of the Dragon, which should keep any other fanatics or artifact hunters from attacking them. So there’s that.

The team, now a quartet instead of a trio, drive off into the dawn.

- - -

The players were cheered by the dramatic finish to the scenario, which went some way toward alleviating how disheartening the encounters with do Vale’s crew had been. After a couple of early false starts the game system ran smoothly for everybody. I had to ad lib explosive throwing at first, which is ridiculous in when you think about it. Seriously, have you ever been in a game with explosives where the PCs didn’t try to throw them? Rules for that should have been in the hack from the get go. Well, they’re in there now.

This scenario brought to you by:

• The random adventure generator results: mission - explore, place - pilgrimage site, hook - heard a rival is about to make a big score, antagonist - king of thieves, potential ally - scientist with vital information, complication - invasion by another nation or planet, obstacle - local culture extremely hostile to outsiders, twist - betrayal by supposed ally or friend (Crockett was quite right; Horvath would have stabbed them all in the back if he had ever got the chance), reward - sidekick
• Lego
• My compulsion these days to try to work Count Dante into every d**n thing
• Terry Jones’ “Surprising History of Egypt” (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL43598B722FDB902B) in which he mentions a mysterious scrap of papyrus that, when it was finally translated, turned out to be a receipt from a laundry service
• Black Belt Magazine
• Supreme Court of Canada decisions from the 1980s
• Machu Picchu & Çatalhöyük bashed together with Paint.NET
• The residential neighborhood near our hotel in Cape Town