Previously, on the Aslan Route... Having sold Irontooth’s expected location and recognition codes to GeDeCo for them to pass on to their pirate hunters, the crew of the Macavity make their way to Inurin to rescue Linda Cash, ship’s doctor of the Cash Cow and wife of Captain Cash. However, since Cash is a hothead, they have no faith in him sticking to the agreed plan and expect him to head straight for Inurin himself...
Inurin, 1107 Week 08
The crew's take on Captain Cash is that regardless of their agreement with him, he is not the type to sit out the rescue attempt on his wife, and is likely to go off half-cocked. Therefore, in the hope of beating him to the punch before he messes things up, the crew of the Macavity move at best speed from Byrni, through the Ergo system, and on to Inurin.
Scanning the system on arrival, they find no sign of Irontooth’s Meatgrinder, but the Cash Cow has landed in the boonies in the territory claimed by the gang holding Dr Cash for Irontooth. Contacting the other ship, they learn that the engineer (Brian Cash, the Captain’s brother) is keeping the ship ready for a fast getaway while the Captain and steward have gone after the hostage; they arrived a few days earlier and Captain Cash used the time to figure out an exact location, or so he hopes. Brian shares this location with Our Heroes, and leaving Rex to keep an eye on the Macavity, the rest tool up, pile into the air/raft, and head out.
Arriving at the remote hilltop farm where the Doctor is (they hope) held captive, they park the air/raft in a convenient copse and sneak up on the farmhouse. While they are still making plans by text message, a hulking thug carrying a slung SMG ambles out of the farmhouse and sits down on the steps to smoke a cigarette in the cool evening air. Dr Matauranga remains concealed while Vila aims a stun gun at the thug; Mazun sneaks up on him around the farmhouse and kicks him in the head, hard; down he goes, and Dr Matauranga makes sure he will stay down for some time using his selection of pharmaceuticals. Vila thoughtfully appropriates his SMG.
Frustrated by his inability to take down the thug’s medical records, Matauranga removes his shoes and trousers, and slits his shirt open up the back, so that at first glance he seems to be wearing hospital garb. When he wakes up, he will no doubt hope that the photographs never enter the public domain.
The crew make their way into the house, and discover it is lived in but devoid of other life, unless you count cockroaches. In one corner, a stone staircase leads down, so they follow it.
Below the house is some sort of complex cistern network, apparently full of rainwater for farm use, although in Vila’s opinion the layout is excessively complex and probably intended for something else originally. The large supporting pillars have been hollowed out and repurposed as underground chambers.
They spend some time sneaking around, finding a pair of gangsters playing cards, one asleep, and four eating a meal and drinking in various rooms. The hostage, if present, must be in the one room they haven’t been able to access. Dr Matauranga removes the snoring gangster from the equation by sneaking up on him and administering a sedative, then takes his SMG and uses it as an impromptu dipstick to see how deep the water is. Even fully extending his arm, he can’t touch bottom.
They then agree a plan; Mazun and Vila will distract the gangsters at table by shooting them with automatic weapons, while Dr Matauranga leaps agilely across the canals to the presumed location of the hostage and frees her. Off he goes to get into position.
Just as Matauranga is steeling himself for the jump, a patrol of gangsters comes into view, walking past the dining room in front of Mazun’s and Vila’s guns.
Mazun has taken the law level of “all firearms prohibited except shotguns” literally, and is carrying a fully automatic close assault weapon loaded with 12 gauge all brass; he opens up, massacring everything he can see, namely the patrol and those diners he can get at through the western opening of the chamber. Vila notices Mazun has missed one and plinks away with his borrowed 9mm SMG, grazing them. The boss gangster, who has been expecting some kind of trouble, takes cover in a corner of the room; the other surviving diner decides she is not being paid enough for this and runs out of the chamber’s north exit, towards the stairs.
The card players react to the sudden appalling noise by grabbing their guns and charging towards it; unfortunately, this requires jumping across a canal, and they both fail to make the leap in the darkness, falling into the water with a splash no-one can hear over the gunfire.
Meanwhile, Dr Matauranga is approaching the east entrance to the hostage room, where he finds Captain Cash and his steward (and son), Tomasz, crouched by the door with their hands over their ears. Not wanting them to mistake his intentions, the good Doctor slaps a patch of fast-acting relaxing chemicals onto the Captain’s neck, calming him down to the point where he can just about walk on his own but sees no reason to shoot anyone.
Vila shoots the surviving patrol member, then goes on overwatch while Mazun runs north, then east, then jumps south over a canal. At this point he sees Vila lining up on something around the corner ahead of him, and steps around, using his backup weapon (a 12.5mm auto pistol) to kill the runaway diner.
While that’s going on, the gang boss decides if he can’t have the hostage, nobody else can either, and bursts into the easternmost chamber from its western entrance at about the same time that the Cash family and Dr Matauranga enter from the east. The gang boss squeezes off a couple of rounds, grazing the hostage, then decides honour is satisfied and legs it through the north entrance to the dining room. Dr Matauranga administers first aid to the wounded Dr Cash and oversees the family reunion – Captain Cash being remarkably unconcerned thanks to the earlier medication, which causes some friction, although as the first person into the room he will later claim that the Macavity’s crew are merely assisting him.
Mazun shoots the fleeing gang boss, rendering him unconscious; Dr Matauranga patches him up, gives him a stern lecture about shooting hostages, then injects him with a hideously addictive drug without telling him what it is. His future looks bleak.
As the Macavity's crew have control of the battlefield, they search the various spaces, finding much that would be of interest to rival gangs, confirmation that this gang was dealing with Irontooth, and a data crystal he left with them for some unknown reason.
When cleaned up and installed in a firewalled VM aboard ship, this turns out to be a treasure map of sorts. It appears that in the runup to the (nuclear) civil war on Ergo, a number of the planet’s wealthiest families took themselves and their most treasured possessions to an underground bunker in a secluded spot. Sadly, it appears this was not as bombproof as they hoped; they are likely dead after many decades, but their treasure is believed to remain, protected by the natives’ inability to get at it and spacefarers not knowing where it is… until now…
To be continued...
GM Notes
Lack of motivation meant that five hours before kickoff I still had nothing ready. I have a couple of ideas for Ergo, but since they were on a timer - they had to get to Inurin before Irontooth figured out the Cash Cow is no longer responding to orders - I thought they'd go there first. So, we already have a mission objective; rescue Doctor Cash from the gangsters on Inurin who are holding her for Irontooth. Next, a location; I drew a spread of cards using a combination of The Scheme Pyramid and Modern Traps and Obstacles, mused on what sort of gang HQ-cum-prison that might be and selected a map from my collection of Loke Battlemats. In case they blindsided me and went exploring on Ergo instead, I made both sufficiently vague that by changing the MacGuffin they would work on either world. Thanks to the power of reskinning and trappings, I've been using the same handful of stock NPCs and monsters throughout, and I see no reason to change now, so no time spent on those.
I scattered some PEFs (Possible Enemy Forces) on the map, one of THW's best ideas; these are a fast, simple alternative to messing about with fog of war. I drew up a very simple encounter table for what the PEFs might be, allocated each card to a place on the map, and was good to go. Total elapsed prep time: 35 minutes.
Apart from Rex, this group doesn't like getting into fights, but I discovered in this session that they're happy to sneak around setting up ambushes. Then the light bulb came on; rather than basing my approach on First Person Shooters (like Half-Life), this group would enjoy First Person Sneakers (like Splinter Cell) more. Incoming paradigm shift...
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