The good news is that we're all still alive and we're incrementally closer to completing our job. The bad news is we're still in the diamond minds, and Ennik is wounded. Oh, goody.
[Josh gives Georges the GM bad ideas to mess with his players.]
Josh: "A cool GM would have the Baddies' diamonds run out while we're down here."
[Having missed the last two sessions, Josh is not 100% up-to-date on our current plan. Unfortunately for him.]
Josh: "Now, I have one minor question: how do we operate the lift?"
Brock: "Our exit plan is to jump into the MacAllens and swim to freedom."
Julie: "Don't drown."
[Jimmy has escaped the mines once before. But it was a near thing.]
Georges the GM: "Your memory is that you woke up on the other side drowned, so some extra air would be nice."
Brock: "So make me a submarine."
[Jimmy has tasked Ennik with making a bathysphere, so that we can breathe underwater.]
Ennik: "This bathysphere is gonna be perplexing."
Jimmy Croyden: "I'm glad I have you to build one."
[More on making the bathysphere.]
Josh: "So what material do we have on hand?"
Ariel: "Diamonds?"
[On the other hand, is a bathysphere really necessary?]
Josh: "How did Jimmy do it last time?"
Julie: "He drowned."
Brock: "I swam. I'm an excellent swimmer. It says so on my sheet."
Julie: "Does it?"
Brock: "No."
[The bathysphere development is coming along slowly.]
Lyta: (to Jimmy) "Do we have a plan?"
Jimmy Croyden: "I'm not in charge of the mechanics."
Lyta: (to Ennik) "Do we have a plan?"
Ennik: "Wear fuckin' mine carts on our heads?"
[Major Baakov raises yet another complication in our plan.]
Major Baakov: "Do you have a way of explaining our disappearance after we've escaped?"
Jimmy Croyden: "I've heard the Subs eat people."
[More stuff that Josh doesn't know because he missed some sessions.]
Josh: "Who's Jacobi?"
Julie: "The legless waterbearer."
Josh: "Oh, we have one of those in this game? Excellent."
[Ennik decides to choose now, when we're down in the mine and separated from Lukas, to confront Lyta on the current job as well as on past jobs. Right in front of Jimmy Croyden the information broker.]
Lyta: "Shut up. I don't wanna have to knock Jimmy out. I like him, he's a nice guy, and also he crumples like tissue paper."
Jimmy Croyden: "There is no evidence of that."
[The confrontation continues.]
Ennik: "So why are you doing this?"
Torgath: "Because Lukas told us to?"
Georges the GM: "Ah, and the real reason comes out."
[The confrontation comes to a head.]
Lyta: "What are you driving at?"
Ennik/Josh: "...Hold on, I lost my train of thought."
[Ennik never really answers the question.]
Lyta: "Why did you decide, in the middle of this hellhole, to bring this up now?"
Jimmy Croyden: "An excellent question!"
[Lyta very much wants Ennik to shut up. Other people, not so much.]
Jimmy Croyden: "Please feel free to keep talking! More information is coming out every second."
[Ennik continues to press for who our employer is and why we've taken the job.]
Jimmy Croyden: "He's very nosy, this boy."
Lyta: "Says the information broker."
[More of the same.]
Jimmy Croyden: "Keep asking! She keeps telling you who it's not. Eventually we can whittle it down by process of elimination!"
[And yet more.]
Ennik: "So, you gonna tell me who you're working for?"
Lyta: "You really want to know?"
Ennik: "Yeah."
Lyta: "Tom Chambers."
Ennik: "...You're lying."
Lyta: "Yeah."
[Information has been spoken in front of Jimmy the Information Broker. Lyta tries to do damage control, unsuccessfully.]
Lyta: "I don't suppose I could tell you never to repeat what you hear here?"
Jimmy Croyden: "Oh, I think what's been heard can never be unheard."
Lyta: "Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say."
[Ennik offers Jimmy an alternate deal: take Baakov and leave now, without Katchelli.]
Ennik: "We'll pay you double."
Jimmy Croyden: "Show me the money. I don't think you have 500,000 dinar."
[Jimmy is willing to entertain Ennik's offer, in exchange for some of the Baddies' diamond stockpile.]
Ennik: "You'll get your diamonds."
Jimmy Croyden: "How many diamonds?"
Ennik: "A fistful."
Jimmy Croyden: "My fist?"
[Jimmy really wants the diamonds.]
Jimmy Croyden: "Change of plans: you don't go unless there are diamonds."
Ariel: "That's so Jimmy."
[The problem with taking the diamonds is that the Baddies would notice and want them back, and we still have our main objective to carry out.]
Major Baakov: "So it'll be the five of us vs. the thousand of them."
Lyta: "Wow, Jimmy, you are right up there with Quinn on stupid plans! You must be channeling him or something!"
[How much would the Baddies miss just a few diamonds?]
Jimmy Croyden: "Assuming they're not counting every diamond..."
Major Baakov: "You would assume so, and you would be wrong."
[Jimmy's not greedy. Much.]
Brock: "Jimmy approximates how much he wants."
Ariel: "All of it."
[Baakov's not sure about Jimmy renegotiating in the middle of the mission.]
Major Baakov: "If you had a deal already..."
Jimmy Croyden: "Your deal has become much more complicated."
Major Baakov: "Your contracting party, did he not contract you to get me out?"
Jimmy Croyden: "Well, you were sort of an add-on."
[If we steal all the diamonds from the Baddies, they'll need to start mining again.]
Brock: "What's the worst that can happen? They have to mine for diamonds in the mine that they've been sentenced to."
Ariel: "They are convicted criminals."
Georges the GM: "It's morally ambiguous."
[Baakov agrees to Jimmy's terms, i.e. that he will get as much from the diamond stockpile as he thinks is appropriate, and he and Jimmy can split them 50/50. He then places a single small stone down on the table.]
Major Baakov: "I believe all parties have agreed I have fulfilled my part of the bargain."
Jimmy Croyden: "I feel unmotivated. Unfulfilled."
[Jimmy wants the diamonds, but he wants to live more.]
Georges the GM: "Let's remember that at the very top of the wish list is getting out of here alive."
[To begin the main part of our plan, we go to Pribas territory and are stopped at the entrance by three guards. Jimmy asks them to take us to Melroy, the leader of the Pribas.]
Guard: "What you got to barter?"
Jimmy Croyden: "Good cheer? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink."
[We barter some drugs to the guards and they take us into Pribas territory proper, which involves walking past their mining operations.]
Georges the GM: "To the side is the classic medieval Christian image of hell."
[Further down is a gladiatorial area, with 50-60 onlookers. A lot of them with the scars of old wounds and broken bones.]
Georges the GM: "Nietzsche rules here. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."
[We are taken to see Melroy, who's presiding over the fights. He's a busy man, what with the whole 'ruling the Pribas' thing.]
Melroy: "Give me your offering."
Brock: "Do I think he means drugs or information?"
[Phase 1 of the plan involves informing Melroy that the Subs are planning on joining up with the Libs to attack Priba territory. Of course, Melroy has no reason to trust us, and lifts Jimmy up by the lapel.]
Georges the GM: "You feign fear."
Brock: "I don't have to feign it."
[Jimmy also mentions that the Subs have access to surface weapons, and presents him with one of the ceramic knives we brought into the prison with us.]
Melroy: "They could do some damage with this..."
Brock: "Improvisation!"
[To gain Melroy's trust, Jimmy asks to join the Pribas.]
Melroy: "There may be a trial. If you win, you may become Pribas."
Josh: "I know what the next line is gonna be."
Jimmy Croyden: "Can I propose a champion?"
[In fact, all of us must fight. First up: Jimmy. He's paired with a gladiator who just had his arm broken in four places in a fight not ten minutes ago.]
Gladiator: "If you last more than 30 seconds, I'll tell you my name. Otherwise, it's not worth my breath."
[Jimmy tries to negotiate with the gladiator to not be killed.]
Gladiator: "Stop nattering like a child."
Georges the GM: "They all speak in deep, growly voices."
Julie: "Just because."
[Jimmy is not doing well in his negotiations. Or his combat.]
Brock: "I don't want to make him angry... er."
[Jimmy finally reaches a breakthrough.]
Jimmy Croyden: "I'll give you the same amount of drugs I gave your boss."
Gladiator: "...Go for my weak arm."
Julie: "I told you that."
[Of course, to make the match believable, they have to put on a show first.]
Jimmy Croyden: "Are you ready for the head-butt?"
Brock: *botches roll*
Jimmy Croyden: *staggers to the floor*
Gladiator: *tries very hard to fall down believably*
[Jimmy slips the drugs into the gladiator's cast after his botched head-butt.]
Brock: "I look up at the dias."
Georges the GM: "Melroy does not look amused."
[Jimmy is the victor of the fight and returns to the dias.]
Georges the GM: "I don't remember this being part of your plan."
Brock: "This wasn't part of my plan!"
[Next up: Ennik.]
Josh: "Can I roll tactics?"
Georges the GM: "What's your plan?"
Josh: "Let's see... I'm big, I haven't had a smoke in a while..."
[Ennik and the woman he's paired up with, Rita, trade blows for a while ineffectually.]
Jimmy Croyden: "If I had known it was this easy to not get killed..."
[Ennik gets two light wounds over the course of his fight, which will make swimming to freedom a lot harder.]
Josh: "Like I said before, I got in by GM fiat, and I'll get out by GM fiat."
Julie: "Well, at least we know why Ennik's not on the team anymore..."
[Ennik eventually wins his fight. Next up: Baakov. No one's quite sure how good a fighter he is.]
Brock: "There's a certain slackness to having genetically-engineered super-soldiers fight for you."
[Baakov wins his fight handily. Next up: Torgath, against a large but slow-moving opponent.]
Ariel: "How big is his neck?"
[On the first round of combat, Torgath picks up a handful of dirt. Sadly, his opponent sees him do it, so Torgath must spend a few rounds biding his time and dodging attacks.]
Ariel: "This probably would have gone faster if he hadn't noticed me pick up the dirt."
[Torgath accidentally kills his blinded opponent with a throat strike. Last up: Lyta, against Melroy the Boss. Lyta eventually gets in a few good hits, getting Melroy on the ground and significantly wounded.]
Melroy: "I concede victory. I hope you will be as feisty in the bedchamber."
Ariel: "Are we pimping her out again?"
Brock: "It depends on how much she wants to get Katchelli out."
[Georges the GM had originally planned on us getting out of the prison this session.]
Georges the GM: "We're halfway through chapter 2 of 4 for tonight."
And that's it for this week. We've got an early session next week, in which we hope and pray that we will leave the hellhole that is the CEF diamond mines and never return to Port Arthur again. Stay tuned for the exciting developments!
Heavy Gear Roleplaying Game
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