Thursday, October 16, 2014

Wordslingin'

In last night’s session, “Operation: Deliver the shipping crates to Port Arthur” was temporarily put on hold in favor of the more pressing mission, “Operation: Take out Mark Kim before he does the same to us.” Well, eventually. We’ll get to it sooner or later.

[The session begins with the PCs meeting up with Lukas after last week’s side-session. Ennik informs us that the Brotherhood bounty on our head has been placed by Mark Kim. But not to worry! He has a plan!]
Fennec: “So you’re saying our best shot at Mark Kim is to drive into a militarized zone crewed by ex-military recruits, bypass their security, and take him out there? As opposed to… anywhere else?”
Ennik: “Yeah.”

[If we take out Mark Kim at his private security training camp, we’ll be up against 20 or so recruits and 6-10 NCOs.]
Lukas: “We’ve faced worse odds.”
Lyta: “Not willingly.”

[Lukas and Ennik have a private conversation. Among the topics of conversation: the Abacus List.]
Lukas: “We keep stumbling across people on the list.”
Ennik: “Or they keep stumbling across you.”

[Among the people on the Abacus List is Tobin Phelps, the pilot we faced near the Humanist Alliance.]
Ennik: “He’s on the Abacus List.”
Zac: “You can cross him off now!”

[More about Phelps.]
Lukas: “Phelps is in the Doc’s custody. Or what’s left of him is.”

[Other topics of conversation involve somewhat older issues.]
Lukas: “Lyta pretty much filled me in on everything that happened in the mine.”
Ennik: “Yeah. About that…”
Zac: “Shoot him in the face!”

[Discussing what happened in the CEF mine.]
Ennik: “I understand where Lyta’s coming from. I’m not sure she understands where I’m coming from. I’m not sure she realizes I can begrudge you stuff.”
Julie: *nods*

[Also on the list of things to discuss: Ti Corovan.]
Ennik: “I keep having an issue with… verb tense.”

[More about Ti and his not-being-dead status.]
Ennik: “I assume you know.”
Lukas: “I don’t know. I’ve heard.”
Ennik: “Lyta hasn’t.”
Lukas: “I know.”
Ennik: “That must be awkward.”
Lukas: “I live an awkward life.”

[Ennik prepares to head off on his own again.]
Ennik: “Anything you want me to carry to Khayr ad-Din? Message? Head in a box?”

[With Ennik gone, Fennec pulls Lukas aside to express some concerns with how things went down during the side-session.]
Fennec: “Grizz dusted three of the rovers.”
Lukas: “…Okay.”
Georges the GM: “In the back of Lukas’ head: good riddance.”

[More of the same.]
Fennec: “Shots were fired. Grizz’s was the first.”

[Times when you can’t just metagame a conversation.]
Zac: “I tell Lukas what happened last session.”
Georges the GM: “He wasn’t here – you have to actually tell him.”

[Fennec gives the run-down on the encounter with the rovers.]
Lukas: “Were they threatening?”
Ariel: “Yes.”
Fennec: “…Not just yet.”

[ Lukas gives Fennec a brief introduction to working with Torgath.]
Lukas: “You should be afraid of Grizz.”
Fennec: “Are you afraid of Grizz?”
Lukas: “No, but we go way back.”

[More on working with Torgath.]
Lukas: “Grizz can be unpredictable. Actually, that’s not true – he’s completely predictable. He’s sometimes hard to restrain.”

[Fennec sums up her reaction to last session.]
Fennec: “It didn’t feel right.”
Lukas: “I respect that.”
Ariel: “But you’re wrong!”

[Fennec also lets Lukas know about the loot we found last session, i.e. a strongbox of CEF reports from early in the war.]
Fennec: “You can check it out, depending on how good your Siberian is.”

[Lukas’ philosophy in a nutshell.]
Lukas: “For us, it’s never personal. It’s all business.”
Fennec: “You can say that with a straight face?”
Julie: “He just did.”

[Fennec bows out of the conversation in the most typical Fennec way possible.]
Fennec: “Well, I’ve got something that needs fixin’… probably.”

[Lukas gets Lyta’s view on events.]
Lukas: “What do you think about it?”
Lyta: “Was he always this bad?”
Lukas: “I think going into the Humanist Alliance may have unbalanced him.”

[Lukas has the inevitable talk with Torgath.]
Lukas: “So, about those rovers…”
Torgath: “Yeah, they were threatening us, so I stopped them from threatening us. We found treasure!”

[Lukas tries to restrain Torgath.]
Lukas: “We have to live here.”
Torgath: *looks around* “Here?”
Lukas: “In the Badlands.”

[Lukas reminds Torgath that we don’t want to develop a reputation as people who shoot when they should talk.]
Torgath: “I only killed three of them. I could have killed all twelve.”
Georges the GM: “None of them would have talked…”

[Lukas tries appealing to Torgath’s sense of literature.]
Torgath: “They’re antiheroes.”
Lukas: “We’re antiheroes.”
Torgath: “We’re better antiheroes.”
Lukas; “Yes, because we’re still alive.”

[More of the conversation.]
Lukas: “Anything else you want to tell me?”
Torgath: “Ennik spilled the beans.”
Lukas: “About everything?”
Torgath: “Enough.”

[Lukas is unhappy about Ennik’s revelations.]
Lukas: “Next time he does that, you dart him.”

[Lukas realizes he’s made a mistake.]
Torgath: “He gave us the Abacus List.”
Lukas: “You didn’t tell me immediately?! I just did a deal for that!”

[Now that all the private conversations are out of the way…]
Lukas: “Okay, conference.”
Zac: “Where’s the conference being held? Where are the escape routes?”

[We have some choices about what to do next. One option involves taking out Mark Kim at his training camp.]
Fennec: “Are we better at sneaking or at bluffing?”
Torgath: (pointing to Lukas) “He’s better at bluffing.”

[We investigate the training camp. Sorta.]
Ariel: “Well do a google map search for ‘secret training camp.’”

[Of course, taking out Mark Kim would either involve returning after delivering our cargo to Port Arthur – and potentially missing the camp – or leaving the cargo somewhere. We discuss the former option.]
Georges the GM: “How directly do you want to go to Port Arthur?”
Zac: “Serpentine. Just because we want it to take twice as long.”

[We discuss the latter option.]
Georges the GM: “You could stop at a crossroads, dig a giant hole, and cache the cargo.”
Julie: “That’s a six-shipping-crate-sized giant hole. That’s a pretty big hole.”

[Discussing our primary mission of getting the crates to Port Arthur.]
Fennec: “We’re not even getting paid for this.”
Lyta: “We’re paid in getting out of jail.”

[Of course, there are sometimes other considerations to our choices.]
Brock: “I’m sort of metagaming this – I sense plans have been made for us at the training camp. If we bypass it, we will not have any of the NPC chit-chat Georges has laboriously scripted.”

[More of the same…]
Brock: “If I could have a gentleman’s agreement with the GM not to have the crates stolen, we will engage with his plot.”

[Yet more considerations in taking out Kim.]
Lyta: “If Kim is hypnotrained and augmented, capturing him will be… tricky.”
Lukas: “But this will be one of those rare circumstances where we know what we’re getting into.”
Fennec: “How tough are these people?”
Lyta and Lukas, in perfect unison: “Tough.”

[More on the augmented super-soldiers we’ve faced so far.]
Fennec: “How many rounds to the center of mass do we need?”
Lukas: “All of them.”

[And yet more.]
Lukas: “If we’d known how tough the fight with Virgil would be, would we have continued to fight or run away?”
Fennec: “Even the question is telling.”

[Given how tough Kim might be, our normal equipment might not be sufficient.]
Fennec: “I don’t want to rely on a dart.”
Lukas: “Mega-dart.”

[More of the same.]
Fennec: “So how are we gonna tie him up?”
Lukas: “Zip-ties.”
Fennec: “Zip-ties?”
Lukas: “Adamantine zip-ties?”

[When you need special equipment, there’s only one person to turn to.]
Lukas: “So we’ll mega-dart him, then mega-zip-tie him…”
Fennec: “Why is it every time you say ‘mega-this’ or ‘mega-that,’ I get a chill down my spine?”
Luaks: “Because you’re the mega-mechanic.”

[Discussing Mark Kim.]
Brock: “Is he on the Abacus List?”
Georges the GM: “Yes.”
Brock: “What tier of the list?”
Georges the GM: “The ‘active and not dead’ tier.”

[The plan is to have Torgath surveil the training camp while the rest of us store the crates in Lance Point and get supplies for the mission.]
Georges the GM: “Give me the run-down of what you want to get from Lance Point.”
Ariel: “Presents for Todd?”

[Fennec attempts to get some net-style expanding ammo to make haywire rounds to short out a possibly webbled Kim.]
Zac: *botches haggle roll*
Merchant: “Well, no one sells these rounds individually. They come by the crate. Here’s a crate of twenty rounds. That’ll be 2,000 dinar.”

[Regarding Fennec’s botched haggle roll.]
Zac: “How badly did I get taken, with the benefit of hindsight?”
Georges the GM: “Well, you should probably have bargained on the price.”

[Fennec buys the crate of rounds.]
Zac: “It’s okay. It’s from the operational costs.”
Georges the GM: “Sure, if you get the receipt stamped by accounting.”

[Fennec prepares our equipment.]
Zac: “Let me have a building montage!”

[Torgath is surveilling the camp.]
Zac: “You can’t just sneak up real close and disguise yourself as a shrub or something?”

[Lukas and Fennec prepare their cover story.]
Lukas: “You know what? People ask you where you’re from, you say, ‘None of your business.’”
Ariel: “’None of your goddamn business.’”

[The fees for the camp are 5,000 dinar apiece.]
Georges the GM: “No refunds. If you wash out and you suck, that’s your problem.”

[Lukas and Fennec prepare to enter the camp.]
Georges the GM: “If you’re actually interested in following the program, I have stats on specializations you can take.”

[Lukas and Fennec join the camp and are paired up with Bob and Doug for their first training exercise, given to them by instructor Kara.]
Kara: *drops bag on the ground* “This is a bag that’s been dropped off in your security zone. Deal with it.”
Ariel: “I bet Doug is freaking out.”

[The bag contains an explosive.]
Bob: “I’ll happily be on cordon duty.”

[Fennec has realized the explosive has a remote detonator.]
Zac: “Is there any way to jam it?”
Georges the GM: “With the proper equipment, sure.”
Zac: “What about slightly improper equipment?”

[Kara returns to see how the exercise is going.]
Kara: “How’s it coming along?”
Lukas: “So far Bob and Doug have been fucking useless.”

[More of the same.]
Kara: “How would you proceed?”
Lukas: “I’d knock out Doug, then I’d knock out Bob, pile them on top of this explosive device…”
Bob: “Hey!”

[Kara offers some perspective.]
Kara: “Has it occurred to anyone that this might be a diversion?”
Lukas: “Nope, because that’s outside the parameters of our task.”
Kara: “I haven’t set any parameters for this task.”


That’s it for this time! Join us again in a month for the thrilling conclusion and the return to the main plot!




Heavy Gear Roleplaying Game

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