User:Bill/Rifts Week by Week/Series Three Notes/September 2013 to Present

Session One - 11 September 2013

So series three more or less collapsed when everyone seemed to get busy all at once. I attempted to restart with series four in October, but failed to get much traction. We meandered through around three different Rifts series, including one centered on the Great Lakes area, one set in England, and one tripping around the American Southwest. A volunteer GM was spelling me for a few weeks, when due to other commitments and car trouble he had to bow out for several weeks.

Then, Mike showed up out of the blue. With Mike, John, and Rachel all back at the table, it seemed only natural to fall back to this story line. John and Rachel even had their original characters from the series; John has been playing Yavin consistently since we left it even! This session, we were joined by another woman named Rachel. She elected to play Akula, a mutant-lion dinosaur hunter. Mike didn't have Conan's sheet with him and elected to play another of my NPCs, Kaetha Sharin. I don't even recall why I had printed Kaetha, but she was always intended to be a part of this series.

We quickly rehashed where we left off. The group had been tracking the movements of The Eater; a demonic entity which had slipped the control of one of the settlement's shifters. We established that they had managed to successfully vanquish the monster before it could destroy the wards and circles keeping the vampiric forces at bay. We picked up with them meeting Rikard to discuss what to do next.

Yavin suggests that they approach the ant-people for assistance. Rikard approves and the party moves out. Akula borrows a hoverbike from the motor pool, Yavin uses his magical tattoos, while Zoisime and Kaethe make the trip using jetpacks. Flying over the no-man's land and the jungle, they are unmolested. Upon arrival at the inverted pyramid, the player characters discover that a small force of ant-people are battling a hideous chimera of angel-demon and serpent. Seizing the moment, Akula directs his hoverbike onto a collision course with the monster and leaps clear. It explodes on impact, slaying the beast and several of the ant-people as well.

While the rest of the party busies itself with cleaning up the wreckage, Yavin penetrates the pyramid and communes with the queen. He discovers that he can bypass the language barrier by allowing the queen to access his mind directly. This is going to have repercussions. The queen immediately ascertained that Pycel had designs on enslaving her people. Even so, she agreed to help fight off the vampires if the colonists would supply the ant-people with technological weapons. While entering and exiting the ant-people's pyramid, Yavin observes larger, more menacing looking ant-men than he's seen before wielding weapons that appear to be sheathed in some form of plasma.

The party returns to the settlement. Kaethe abandons her fellows to report to her associated leadership NPC while the rest of the party mounts a levitated piece of stone that Zoisime uses to transport Akula and his trophies; Yavin pushes the slab to propel it along a little faster. On the way, the mutant-lion notices a clearing filled with coffins and that the shadows surrounding the field are behaving strangely. Rather than risk being attacked by a shadow-creature, they proceed back to the settlement's walls.

Session Two - 18 September 2013

This session featured Mike, John, Rachel B, Rachel S, and Bruce. Bruce continues to play Snow Man, a juicer he has been using for the past eight months or so. Mike attempted to bring Conan back into the story, but has misplaced one of the pages to his character's sheet. Upon discovering this, he elected to use Vin Foose, a cyberknight that he has used before.

We picked up with Akula relating his exploits to the crowd of rough and readies that populate the Cantina, the Settlement's only official drinking establishment. The rest of the group was reporting to Rikard and attempting to work out the next step in their efforts to save the settlement from destruction at the hands of the vampires and their minions.

Upon learning that the ant-people would be willing to exchange aid for weapons, Rikard immediately pointed out that Pycel would never allow the settlement's armory to be traded. However, he knew of another cache of arms that they could make their bargain with. He laid out a plan that the group would break into this cache after dark, while the majority of fighters would be on the wall repelling the assault, and indicated that any guards that the player characters encountered would need to be dealt with permanently.

This should have met with some resistance from Yavin or Zoisime, both good aligned characters that would not normally be willing parties to murder. It did not though. Yavin signed on without reservation, while Zoisime followed his lead with minimal objection. I have promised John an appropriate insanity check for later on, and possibly an alignment shift.

After discussing the plan and agreeing to meet Rikard at the motor pool after dark, the group split up. Zoisime returned to her apartment to sort her stones and prepare herself. There, Steve Jones, her love interest, found her and begged her to marry him. She agreed even after he pointed out that her family would never accept their union. She told him to find a priest, and he left to do so.

Conan likewise returned to his quarters to prepare and found himself ambushed by his love interest, Tomomi. She once more begged him to return with her to the Federation of Magic, to set aside his blood feud and come home to the people that love him. He refused. Tomomi warned him that soon her brothers would come and dispatch both of them as deserters.

Snow Man went to find Akula, and succeeded in entering the Cantina just as three surly dwarfs, who had accused the lion-man of being a wasteful fool, were exiting. The juicer overheard their muttering plot to punish the dinosaur hunter for his insolence. After being informed that they had a job, the pair left the bar to seek out the company of prostitutes. On the way to the brothel, they ran into Kaethe; ostensibly the NPC to whom they are both loyal. She attempts to find out what Rikard's plans are and insists that the two mercenaries stay close to Yavin and the other members of the group. Snow Man is elusive regarding Rikard's plans for unknown reason. The interlude with the prostitutes requires a save versus psionics that both characters fail. Consequences of this may take some time to come out.

Yavin spends the time before sunset attempting to meditate. He has strange visions of being part of a greater being, one of a collective mind.

At nightfall, the party regroups as planned outside of the motor-pool. They then follow Rikard to a mostly unoccupied tenement building and proceed to the central stairwell. Here they discover that, unlike most of the other structures in the settlement, the stairs also go down. The group descends approximately 40ft to a basement level of the building that should not exist. Yavin, using his magic tattoos is able to discern an invisible doorway that leads into a concealed armory. Racks of laser-weaponry fill the space.

Rikard instructs Zoisime to create a stone vessel to carry the weapons while he and Yavin gather them, Snow Man, Vin Foose, and Akula are to locate any guards in the building and end them. Akula uses his formidable tracking skills to discern that there are two guards walking patrol routes. One is inside the building and the other outside. They meet at the central stair well after an unknown amount of time.

Vin Foose is left to wait for the outside guard to reenter the building while Akula and Snow Man go in search of the inside guard. Traveling up several floors, they are ambushed by her. A lithe woman garbed in piecemeal armor over a rubber body-suit and full face visored helmet shoots Akula with a powerful energy pistol. She gets initiative on the lion-man and deploys a fancy trident that extends from a metal rod, using it to sweep Akula off his feet and narrowly missing her attempt to stab him with the tines. Snow Man moves in and engages her with his vibroblade. Akula switches from his vibro knife to his trusty shotgun and manages to miss with the first blast, barely hitting his target with the second and only missing Snow Man thanks to his uncanny automatic dodge.

Alerted by the shotgun blast, Yavin and Vin Foose rush to the scene. And there we leave it until next time.

Session Three - 25 September 2013

This week, both Rachels were out. Rachel B will probably not be back for a while as she is attending classes in a city two-hours away. Rachel S is having difficulties with the heat in her apartment, hopefully those will be resolved soon. Bruce, John, and Mike continued with their characters from the previous week. Kyle also joined us, playing a Basilisk Bodyfixer known as Doctor. We were briefly joined by another young man who had to leave before the session really got moving.

The combat against the mysterious woman went very smoothly and maintained a sufficient degree of engagement with all four of the players present. Only after killing her was Yavin, a former slave of Atlantis, able to recognize her unmasked features as those of an Altaran Warrior Woman. He immediately jumped to the conclusion that whoever owns the cache of weapons that the group is stealing must be in league with the Splugorth.

The group proceeded upstairs to the roof in an effort to spot the other guard from high ground. Snow Man had hoped to employ his sniper rifle to end that problem quickly. While they looked for another Altaran, Snow Man came under fire from an unknown source using plasma weaponry. The juicer took cover. Yavin, being able to fly and lucky enough to spot the source of the attack leaped into the air with the aid of his flying tattoo. Pursuing the unknown attacker, he quickly gathered that it was winged in form as it too leaped from the rooftop that it had been occupying. A short exchange of fire led to the second guard fleeing between buildings and evading Yavin's pursuit.

We left off with the player characters stowing their stolen arms in the back of an APC, preparing to run a demonic gauntlet to the ant-people's pyramid at first light.

Session Four - 2 October 2013

This week featured Bruce, John, Mike, and Rachel S. As the group prepared to depart, Malik approached the group's APC, standing in the middle of the street. He accused the group of taking something that belonged to him and demanded its return. Zoisime, who has been the object of Malik's affections in the past, attempted to convince him that they were not in fact guilty of anything. Malik is joined by a strange purple skinned, bald, man and a woman that appears to be a mirror image of the Altaran the group had encountered the night before.

Malik loses patience after Zoisime continues to deny the group's criminal activities and he signals his cohorts into action. The Altaran acrobatically flips onto the APC and the purple man begins a metamorphosis into the dragon-like creature that escaped from Yavin. Rather than deal with a fight in the middle of the street, Snow Man orders Zoisime back into the APC and flees the scene. Malik dodges deftly aside and the Altaran is shaken loose. At high speed, the group exits the settlement's protective walls. This may have repercussions later.

With the juicer's enhanced reflexes, the APC is able to maintain a good speed along the ruined highway. Snow Man deftly dodges past trees and obstacles with only the slightest effort. The group expects to arrive at Mayapan in under half an hour. Without warning the vehicle plunges into a field of magical darkness. Snow Man's speed is checked, while he relies on the awesome power of the vehicle to push over most trees in his path. The rest of the group is able to use supernatural powers to penetrate the darkness. They behold spirits, shadow creatures, and demons.

Several of the creatures attack the vehicle almost immediately. Zoisime fails her horror factor check and is reduced to a cowering mess in the corner of the vehicle as one of the monsters affixes itself to the front of the vehicle and spews a viscous secretion from its two mouths. One of the characters correctly identifies the monsters as Penta Demons as they tear into the APC's hull; warning lights and klaxons fill the cockpit. One of the monsters penetrates the airlock and combat ensues. Lasting two rounds, there are no casualties on the heroes' side; Vin Foose's right arm is cocooned in resin. Several jokes are made on how the resin can be removed with megadamage attacks.

The vehicle exits the field of darkness and the Penta Demons flee from the light. The group proceeds on to Mayapan and the ant-people's pyramid. They are greeted by two of the larger warrior specimens and Zoisime has to engage in a little dance, literally, to convince them that the rest of the group needed to follow Yavin into the pyramid. The queen again communes with Yavin and more or less thanks him for the weapons. She also indicates that her people will attack at noon of the following day and that he is to take one of the warriors with him.

Wanting to coordinate the Sharin forces with those of the ant-people, the party discusses strategy for getting back into the settlement without going through the area of darkness or dealing with Malik, and how to get the huge ant-warrior in without arousing too much suspicion. Yavin considers flying back to the settlement to arrange things, but the warrior clamps its taloned hand onto his arm and makes it obvious that it will not be left behind. Ultimately, they decided to find an alternate route back to the settlement. Not an awful plan, but it led to a series of failed navigation rolls. On the positive side, this opens up the opportunity for me to introduce another thread.