The Narcoleptic Dire Goat Caper
The Dead Setters turned the tables on the hit squad from Charterhall Bank, ambushing their would-be ambushers. The Setters had Rook the Cutter, fresh out of Ironhook (and whose player had to skip about a month due to an online class), and Deemo the Leech, fresh out of her player having a baby. Ironically, the other guys couldn’t make it so we had the inverse of our usual suspects. Charterhall Bank’s squad included Mr. Green and Mr. Veldt, both essentially former blades-turned-respectable (played by the Stabbington brothers from Tangled), leading six combat hulls in two goat-drawn carriages.
The crew had exceptional intel, and placed their ambush along an industrial boulevard in Coalridge. They paid a coin to their new Cabbie associates so they’d have a proper roadblock, but the engagement roll went south. Green and Veldt spotted the trap and one of their hulls disembarked while the carriages were still rolling. The machine slammed into the Cabbies’ roadblock, clearing a path and then stood its ground, electroplasmic emitter charging up to cover its masters’ escape.
Rook clambered out of the toppled Cabbie carriage and traded railjack hammer for electroplasmic lightning with the combat hull. Rook was still standing at the end of it. Meanwhile, the bank carriages thundered past on the cobbles… flashback!
Cut to Rook leading his pit fighters as they toil in the street, uprooting cobblestones and digging down into the packed earth. They make a trench and cover it up with tarps, dirt, and broken stone. There’s no way those heavy carriages, laden with hulls, will make it across.
And they don’t. A goat breaks its leg, loosing one of those horrible human screams. Another goes narcoleptic, tumbling to the ground. The lead carriage’s wheels break as it hits the mother of all potholes. The second carriage, pulling four heavy hulls, can’t stop in time. The goats see the gap and leap, but the carriage slams down into the trench.
Deemo releases two of her gadgets – the first is a clockwork gyro-drone, a little flying device that can drop a payload and return to its mistress. It’s carrying the second gadget – Quality VI chokedust. Not that weak-ass drown powder, we’re talking the old-school quickstart rules chokedust here. It’s been Deemo’s specialty since v4 of the rules and she missed it, so she made more during downtime and was wildly successful at it.
Green and Veldt have to escape. They’re not a hit squad of elite badasses anymore; they’re scared and can’t breathe and all their hulls just can’t seem to kill one guy with a hammer. Thanks, Battleborn and Not to Be Trifled With.
They try carjacking the last upright carriage the Cabbies brought. Deemo uses binding oil on the wheels. A crit! Green and Veldt get just enough momentum before the axles lock that they’re thrown to the street and lose their guns.
They try just legging it. Rook finishes off the last hull and uses Savage (as the two men are terrified) to Command them to stop – or else. Partial success.
“Which one stops?” I say.
“Veldt!” Deemo’s player suggests. “Green shot my drone, he’s gotta die.” And so we learned a bit about Deemo’s priorities. Rook agrees. Veldt stops short, shouting “Don’t shoot! I have a family! This was just a job, you know?!”
Green, on the other hand, meets the Dead Setters’ pit fighters coming the other way.
“Do you want him dead, or captured, or maimed, or what?” Then I look at the cohort’s flaws. Wild. Unreliable. That settles that.
Deemo helps them kick Green to death in the street.
#heestcomplete
