Our heroes, the De Facto Explorers, have arrived at the KIA Academy, looking for information regarding the great Stone Horse of Destruction...
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Sneaky Pete: A mutated weasel scout. Pete's telepathy and night vision take a backseat when he whips out his electrical powers.
Sonny Helianthus: a sentient sunflower artifact examiner with trusted Restorationist ties. Knowledgeable, but not a good one with device repairs or upgrades.
Slitheran Wurmtail (aka Squiggles): a mutated earthworm scout, in impromptu power armor, looking for trouble, and finding it often. Previously "gave birth" to a litter of sentient earthworm babies, but recently has been subject to genetic testing and developed super-human strength, a more human body, and a thick coat of shaggy white hair.
Lathar Bracken: A pure-strain human from River Bend. He's got the muscle, the face, and a mount for most encounters. Lathar's trusty beast of burden, No Name, travels wherever he does. No Name has recently been fitted for a artillery device of the Ancients that chucks spears further than any human. Looking for trouble in all the right places. Former jousting champion of Fair-Town and has been awarded... a peacock he has named Chambray.
RHA-9: A lab assistant piece of "Living Metal" that seems to have befriended the group... for now! Currently getting repairs done by the Restorationists.
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The Explorers left the Toard Jakey done a road more traveled by. The scouts got their bearing, determining the road leads upriver, although far from the river itself.
The normal forest opened up on the left side into a clearing, with a few small trees, and a stone pavilion.
Working up the faint stone walkway from the road, both Squiggles and Pete detected two shimmering lines, one stretch across the second step, the second between the two columns at the top of the steps. The two scouts did their best stealthy attempt to get a closer look.
Pete was focused on the glistening strands, assuming it may be some form of a tripwire or definite trap. Squiggles noticed some form of movement near the distant tree line. There was definitely someone watching. Squiggles tapped Pete on the shoulder and the weasel and furry worm scurried off the old path to return to their friends.
Squiggles borrowed Sonny's spyglass, and Pete whipped out his binoculars for a better look. Amongst the trees 75 meters away was some sort of movement, most of the time they could each detect heads moving.
Pete swung behind them, and swore he could see movement on the woods behind as well.
As Pete tried to tap Squiggles on the shoulder to alert him of the movement behind, but the appearance of a three-foot long arrow embedded in the ditch they were hiding against.
Sonny was carefully paging through one of his Toard Jakey book when he heard the loud thud in the ground.
"What was that?" Sonny asked.
"A giant arrow, they're getting hostile." Pete replied.
"How many?"
"More than a dozen..."
"And the pavilion is the only cover?"
"It's booby-trapped."
"Then let's un-booby-trap it!" With that, Sonny peeled off in the cart towards the steps of the pavilion. Lathar hopped on No-Name and followed the cart., then dismounted and found some cover behind some stone ruins to his left. Squiggles and Pete scurried over to an embankment on the left side of the clearing to get a better vantage point. They could sense something moving deep within the tree line towards the road.
Lathar readied his rifle, "Let me know when I can start shooting."
"Hold on!" Sonny, who had not seen any of the movement in the trees (A Sense of 5 will do that), got off of the cart and moved towards the woods towards the left "Hey, this doesn't have to leave to violence. We can leave if you want, we're reasonable people here."
A group of odd-looking blue-skinned humans emerged from the woods to the left, most armed with bows, the others still spotted movement beyond them in the woods.
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| No, the ears are as long, or pointy, but in a world where you rely on AI, I'm happy these guys are dressed. |
Sonny tried to talk to them, but it seemed the group was initially friendly but could not communicate with them. When there seemed to be an impasse, Sonny looked over to Pete, "Pete can you use for telep..."
"Wait, let me try to communicate with him, Lathar spoke out." He rushed over, doffed his shirt, and began making outrageous gestures, including touching some of the females. This seemed to upset the blue-skinned folk, and the yelled in obvious protest. Lathar persisted, and a larger person in the back row moved forward. He was armed with a large backpack of technology connected to a hose he was holding. Lathar stepped towards the man with his hands outstretched, but the blue-skinned man fired anyway.
Lathar was caught up in a blinding blast of energy that poured out of the hose's nozzles. Everyone from both sides dove for cover.
For a moment, the Explorers thought their friend had been vaporized, but his steaming body on the ground emerged from the dissipating steam and smoke.
Lathar stands up, looking at both sides confused... he looked a bit different.
GM Notes: Showing the picture of the pavilion led us down a 15 minutes side discussion about the old Eric and the Gazebo story. I've already used a version of that joke in my Hackmaster campaign, so this time it was just a proper "ambush."
In a perfect moment in the game, Pete's player stopped moving, fearing everyone was in no-man's land between two warring factions. If I had only thought of that first, things could be much much worse. GM rule: the players will propose far worse scenarios for them than anything I could think of.
And thanks to the wonders of online gaming, we rolled a d10,034 to make some critical decisions in this session.
Next:
#51 - The Stone Pavilion, Part 2
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