Previously, on the Aslan Route... The crew of the Macavity has rescued the ship's doctor of the Macavity from local gangers allied with the pirate Hroal Irontooth. During the raid, they found what can only be described as a treasure map leading them to a spot on Ergo...
Inurin, 1107 Week 08
Mazun takes Captain Cash aside and sounds him out on his attitude to sentient robots and AI. Cash’s attitude is that he is a trader, and their money is as good as anyone else’s, beyond that he has no strong feelings. Mazun explains the group’s contract with the Android Liberation Front, which will be difficult to keep going with Troisei aboard, due to her… specific views on the aslan code of honour and local laws. Therefore, he hands over that contract, location details and recognition codes, to Cash, who will make stops at Tech-World and the hidden ALF base in the Exe system.
Ergo, 1107 Week 10
Outside the starport enclave, Ergo is a dump, with a total population in the thousands scattered across a radioactive wasteland (a legacy of the nuclear exchange in the 800s intended to settle who got the revenue from GeDeCo’s new starport; as it turns out, that would be “nobody”). Here and there are cannibal tribes who can’t quite manage to build steam engines and the odd pirate base.
Mazun knows Ergosian, as you never know when you might need to make a deal with the odd cannibal tribe, and so does Dr Matauranga, who finds it convenient to keep notes in a language which is not widely known.
They know where the bunker is, so they park the ship nearby and approach in the air/raft.
The bunker entrance was once protected by some kind of structure on a low hill, but it’s hard to tell what; a nearby ground burst flattened it, and at some time in the intervening centuries, a small river has appeared, flooding much of the approach.
The crew's portable sensors are showing possible enemy forces submerged in the river and standing in the woods. Dr Matauranga assures the rest that while radiation levels are unhealthily high, they should be fine if they limit their exposure to a few hours, and anyway he has a new anti-radiation treatment he wants to try out. Parking the air/raft to the south-east of the entrance, they approach on foot, with Vila flanking left to get line of sight on whatever is lurking in the woods.
This proves to be some kind of cargo drone, which Vila’s electronics determines is pinging something nearby on a low-power radio band. His guess is that it is dormant and not especially vigilant, so he sneaks up one side of the hill. Rex moves to join him, while the others wait to see what happens.
Vila decides the tiling conceals blast doors and a lift shaft he should be able to get open, so starts moving in to do that. Unfortunately, this results in three war mechs emerging from the river and making for him at a fast clip; these are over four metres tall and brandishing ancient gatling lasers.
Vila is still carrying the SMG he liberated on Inurin, and falls back to join up with Rex, firing a short burst at the lead drone as he goes; the bullets bounce off in a dispiriting fashion. Rex, however, lives for this stuff, and has an overloaded laser SMG in each hand; the hail of bolts drops the lead mech handily.
The entity they have dubbed “the Chicken”, a tactician extracted from the swamp hive mind on Sink, offers to take charge of the Dr Matauranga Collective (this currently consists of the Chicken itself, the Third Most Valuable Thing, and three versions of Dr Matauranga, who usually vote together and thus gain control, all sharing his brain). When asked what it thinks they should do, it suggests watching how the mechs kill Rex and Vila, so that it can gather enough information to formulate a plan.
While the various Mataurangas are in conference, Mazun is thinking ahead and climbs back into the air/raft to start it. The physical shell of Dr Matauranga follows him, looking distracted, and gets in.
Vila makes a dash towards the air/raft, but Rex’s blood is up and he stands his ground. The surviving mechs open fire on the air/raft, perforating it in a variety of places both important and otherwise, which gives Rex a chance to burn down a second one. Vila reaches the air/raft as it lifts and scrambles aboard with an assist from Dr Matauranga.
Rex is still howling and firing, so Mazun slides the air/raft towards him. He can’t climb aboard with a laser SMG in each hand, and is not going to drop them for anyone; but he has thoughtfully put on a harness for just such an occasion, and Vila and the Doctor grab him by the straps and haul him aboard. With the air/raft listing to port and crabbing sideways, they make good their escape and return to the ship.
Moving the Macavity cautiously towards the bunker, they blast the cargo drone as it tries to drag the mech carcasses into the lift shaft (which is where Vila thought it was). The lone remaining mech seems to have gone back into the river. Whoever or whatever is inside the bunker decides there’s no point leaving the life shaft open so they can drop missiles into it, and closes the lid.
A thorough scan with the ship’s sensors reveals the general layout of the bunker; below the surface structure is Level 1, a square floor about 35 metres on a side; below that is Level 2, which is cruciform and about 100 metres across the arms; and at the bottom is Level 3, again about 35 metres on a side. The levels are spaced about 15 metres apart, connected by a central lift shaft. The northern section of the cross-shaped Level 2 has partially caved in, allowing access from a surface crevasse.
They consider options at length, feeling they need to move quickly before another group comes to see what they’re up to, so after a quick break in which Vila makes running repairs to the air/raft and Rex wonders aloud whether Vila could dismount one of the Macavity’s gatling lasers and fashion a harness for him to carry it, they descend.
Dr Matauranga asks nicely if the team could avoid doing too much damage to the base as it is exactly the sort of place he would want to retire to, to continue his experiments away from prying eyes. Once he has a sufficient number of suitably-trained catgirls, of course.
They make their way into the crevasse and pick theirr way 30 metres down and perhaps 100m horizontally through the rocks until they slide down the last few metres of dirt and rubble into the north section of Level 2. They can see a corridor leading off to the central section, they can hear noises up ahead on the right in some of the rooms, and Vila’s signal sensors can pick up a lot of short-range radio traffic; whatever entities are making the noise, they are in constant communication with each other and with something or someone on Level 3.
As they advance into the section, the two noise sources closest to the corridor emerge. Each is a swarm of cat-sized metal spiders some three to four metres in diameter, moving in concert towards you. They appear to have no ranged weapons, but some of the tools built into their limbs look disturbingly sharp and can probably do someone a mischief.
Vila decides that first, perhaps someone should stay with the ship in case the team needs to make a quick getaway, and second, discretion is the better part of not being exsanguinated, and turns to make his way back up the slope and out of the complex.
The rest watch as the metal bugs surge forwards.
To be continued...
GM Notes
Motivation decreases, sloth increases, so I went into this session thinking "Let's mash up Boppers, Pickle Rick from Rick and Morty, and Billionaires' Bunker and just see what happens." I spent a few minutes adding a couple of new monsters in Roll20 and deciding what maps to use, then we were off.
The Cash Cow and the Android Liberation Front will now fade into the background unless the party takes action to reactivate them. Intentional or not, that was a good way to write them out.
Vila is not actually cowardly, but he is cautious, and as his player can’t make the next session it’s convenient that he withdraws to the ship.
We discussed options for changing the game from SWADE to something else. More of that over the Christmas break, but the consensus was that we shouldn’t change anything mid-campaign and should wait for the start of a new one before doing anything so drastic, if we do it at all.
