Saturday, February 16, 2013

Rifts 2112: Let's Just Cool Down A Minute

Game Date: 2/16/2013
Campaign: Rifts 2112, Session 5
System: Savage Worlds
DM: Rusty   

Characters:
Emma Snow (Star): Medic
Jim Bagg (Cliff): Military Reserves
Sgt. Malcolm Reynolds (Ted): Active Military
Terri Bolton (Matt): Mechanic

Previous Sessions:
Session 1 Session 2 Session 3 Session 4

The Story So Far...
A few days ago, the world was suddenly bombarded by multiple natural disasters and a variety of alien invaders.  The evil Splynn have reshaped the Earth to mine precious minerals, while enslaving humans for labor.  Their rivals, the equally evil Xiticix, recruited our party of FEMA responders to investigate a Splynn operation in the newly-returned Atlantis.  Rather than return to the Xiticix, we went our own way instead.  In Nashville we allied with a clan of Dwarven marksmen from another dimension, and now we plan to check out the damage in our hometown of Atlanta.

Todays Session:
"I'm sorry, Dave, but life is meaningless."
The session began with us taking our Xiticix spacecraft to Atlanta.  Doug, the ship's interactive holographic interface, was feeling a bit depressed about how his life had turned out.  But he did his job and we reached our destination.  In Atlanta, we met with the local authorities and were given our choice of quests.  They wanted more scouting done in Atlantis, there was a nuclear reactor about to go critical in Atlanta, there were more apes to fight on the Georgia border, and of course we eventually want to check out those demons in St. Louis...  yeah, we've got a big to-do list.

Eager to show off her repair skills, Terri voted for the nuclear plant, and nobody objected.  Doug took us to the plant, where we saw hundreds of zombies walking around the grounds.  Doug set us down on a roof, where we climbed down a ladder and entered one of the buildings.  We had to fight four zombies on our way in, but we made it okay.  Emma showed off her magical powers for the first time, which surprised us but we had bigger fish to fry.

We explored the building until we found the data we needed.  We learned that a reactor core was overheating, because all the water was gone.  We found some survivors, but they had absorbed so much radiation that they didn't believe they'd live much longer.  They explained the source of the problem - one of the outer walls had been torn down by a giant monster, so it was going to be a much bigger fix than simply filling the core back up with water.

We decided we would try to smother the core rod with a few tons of concrete, allowing it to melt down into the Earth.  We asked Doug to fly around and find us some cement trucks and carry them back.  In the meantime, we killed off some zombies around the open side of the building.  By the time Doug returned, we had a mostly clear shot to drive the cement trucks to the core.  Or we did, until the Zombie Lord showed up.  He tossed out a wall of zombies between us and the cement trucks.  We (mostly Mal) attacked him until he vanished, then continued with our plan.  And then, a giant Balor-like creature appeared.

At this point, Emma and Jim were back on the ship while Terri and Mal carried out the plan.  Mal soloed the monster while Terri worked on getting the concrete poured over the core rod.  Even with their protective suits on, we had to make vigor rolls every round due to the increased radiation in the area.  Mal heroically hacked at the monster until Terri finished with the concrete.  On her way back to the ship, Terri took a shot at the creature (her one contribution to the actual battle), which brought the monster down.  As Doug's hatch opened, Emma fired off a magic bolt, finishing the creature off for good.

"Private Joke."
It was a major victory. (*salute* "Major Victory.")  Having dealt the monster its corporal punishment (*salute* "Corporal Punishment") we boarded the ship and took off.  Doug and Emma both used their skills to disperse any radiation they could, but Terri and Mal are still a bit weak.  Hopefully we'll have time to rest and heal completely before we do anything else too dangerous.  At least that's the general idea.  (*salute* "General Idea.")

Afterthoughts/Reminders:
I had some great die rolls this week, which is highly unusual for me.  On one turn my d6 exploded four consecutive times.  Today might be the only time in my RPG career that I bring down a Balor with a modern rifle.  There is no game next week, due to something called "Sportsfest".  (What is this "sports" word, anyway?)  Unless something comes up, the next game will be on March 2.

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Rifts 2112: From Atlantis to Atlanta

Game Date: 2/9/2013
Campaign: Rifts 2112, Session 4
System: Savage Worlds
DM: Rusty   

Characters:
Emma Snow (Star): Medic
Jim Bagg (Cliff): Military Reserves
Sgt. Malcolm Reynolds (Ted): Active Military
Terri Bolton (Matt): Mechanic

Previous Sessions:
Session 1 Session 2 Session 3

The Story So Far...
One night in late 2012, the world was suddenly plagued by a plethora of natural disasters.  Our FEMA team was dispatched to help where we could.  We soon discovered that the world was being invaded by several species of evil aliens.  These creatures have abducted a large number of humans.  We have also befriended yet another species of aliens, insectoids who have been rescuing the stragglers not captured by their enemies.  These friendly bug-people showed us what may have caused of the devastation:  Apparently the evil invaders have been shifting landmasses to create a new continent for themselves.

Todays Session:
At the end of our last session, we all got healed, rested, restocked, and advanced.  Mal received some cybernetic implants, and our insectoid benefactor assigned us a mission. We were to take a spaceship to a new landmass that had appeared in the Caribbean.  It wasn't exactly clear what we were supposed to do once we got there, but we didn't sweat the details.

"Express elevator to Hell, going down!"
The ship was run by an AI interface.  The main screen showed a human head named Doug, who carried out our commands and answered our questions.  We gave him the order to take off, and our ship dropped straight down towards the Earth below.  Shortly before we reached the ocean, the ship leveled off and proceeded straight towards our destination.

Half an hour later, we arrived at the new landmass, which Doug informed us was the lost city of Atlantis.  There island was covered in jungles, and Doug detected several concentrations of life forms.  We sought out one of the smaller concentrations, and landed our craft in the woods.  As quietly as possible, we peeked out from the trees, and saw four armored gorillas ordering around a bunch of human slaves.  Most of the humans were wearing typical modern clothing, but a few of them were in togas.  The slaves were loading rocks and crystals into wagons.

Still smarting from our last battle, Mal was antsy to kick some gorilla butt.  He tiptoed up behind one gorilla and slit its throat.  While trying to drag the body back to the treeline, he failed a stealth check and alerted the rest of the gorillas.  It wasn't a difficult battle, though, and soon the other three apes were dead.  The human slaves scattered in all directions, but four of them (including one toga-wearer) came with us.  We knew more apes were approaching, so we gathered up a crystal and an ape's translator, and led our rescued humans back to our ship.

On the flight back towards the insectoid ship, we learned more about Doug, our craft, and those we had rescued.  Doug scanned our crystal and told us that it was basically a large diamond.  The aliens had come here to mine precious minerals, and were causing worldwide cataclysms to bring the crystals they needed closer to the surface.  The toga-clad slave identified himself as Cyrus, a "True Atlantean".  According to him, Atlantis had vanished thousands of years ago when it was teleported to another dimension, and the aliens transported it back for mining purposes.

Cyrus told us that the evil aliens we'd encountered so far were servants of a greater race called the Splynn.  We had yet to see a Splynn, but his description of them sounds like D&D beholders.  They are few in number, but very powerful.  Our insectoid rescuers were called the Xiticix.  The Xiticix and the Splynn were rival traders, and neither one was to be trusted.  So much for going back to the mothership. 

Doug told us that he used to be a live human being, until a building fell on him during the cataclysm.  The Xiticix put his mind in the ship because it needed a neural interface that could communicate with humans.  We explored our craft a bit, and found a couple of empty rooms and the engines.  We did not find any bathrooms, so we have to make sure we always go before we take off.  Otherwise we'll have to boldly go where no man has gone before.  ...Sorry.

Much more inconspicuous.
No longer wanting to go back to the Xiticix ship, we had Doug scan for a safe spot to land.  We wanted to find a city somewhere far enough from disasters that we could set up a relatively-safe base.  Not metagaming at all, we finally settled on Nashville, Tennessee.  We wanted to go to the Capitol Building, but didn't want the people there to shoot us upon seeing us climb out of a spaceship.  So we landed in Centennial Park instead. 

There were a lot of people in the park, but they didn't try to kill us.  Some jeeps took us to the Capitol, where we were debriefed by military and FEMA personnel.  We told them everything that had happened to us, and they filled us in on what we didn't know.  The city of McMinnville had committed mass suicide, thinking this was the rapture.  The explosion in Atlanta had been caused by one of several mis-launched Soviet nukes, but there were survivors.

We also learned that 17 different alien races had been seen in the Southeast alone,  including some demon-like creatures in St. Louis.  The humans here had allied with a race of four-foot tall Dwarves.  We spoke to the Dwarven leader, Mortigan of Clan McTartan.  He told us that a "blue hole" had opened in his world, and they had walked through it.  The Dwarves were handy with old-style firearms, so Mal introduced them to modern guns.  Hopefully their shooting skills will prove useful to us in the future.

We are planning to head for Atlanta next, to learn more of the situation there.