At the start of the game we are in the 21st Century. We had been in a torpor for some time, awakened, and spent the last twenty years in St. Louis working for the prince there, or keeping to ourselves when possible. However, the workd is kind of f’d. It seems that the Masquerade was broken. An antediluvian of probably the 4th generation has exposed vampires to the world. Now the humans openly hunt us and they have the help of the church’s “True Believers”. We gather and are told that we need to get out of dodge right now. Well, the bad guys (or good guys, kinda) show up and try to stop us. Our task is to get from the building we are in, out through the lobby, down the street and into some waiting vehicles, all the while surrounded by people with guns and assailed by a pair of religious zealots whose auras are keeping us from getting too close.
This scenario is a little attempt to remember the way the old system played, because it’s not remarkably like the modern Exalted-style mechanics. For instance, you generally need one success to achieve some things, but the difficulty target shifts, and those pesky 1’s subtract. So I know I personally spent 2/3 of my evening with even rolls of NOTHING because the ones kept neutralizing the positive numbers. It’s remarkably that we didn’t have a botch-fest, given our current dice pools, collectively.
The exit is blocked by a row of gunmen and the two zealots. Graves (and his assistant, Noggy) cross the lobby and go through a door that isn’t blocked by the enemy. Christopher waits in the hall, out of harm’s way. Father Patterson has a test of “true faith” and so far the priests are his equal, because every time he’d roll something insane like 8 successes to-hit, the target would roll 8 successes to dodge. No blood is really drawn until Moira claws up one guard a little, and Hanifa carves up pretty much ALL the guards a lot, and does damage to the priests. It requires willpower rolls to get in close to the priests, and their inherent “fortitude” power keeps them from being harmed much. (I was hitting, and doing nothing!)
Once the doorway is cleared enough, Graves and Noggy are already outside in the car, waiting on us. He wants the driver to pull up the block a bit but the driver says no, he’s waiting for everyone, at which point Noggy and the driver get into it. Moira calls a flock of ALL the birds to cover us from fire on one side, but the true deterrent is Father P. in disguise as one of the men who’d come in after us. He delays the gunmen as we run past and flee.
We get to our location and we are given a few options, the least of which being included being put into a deep sleep and stored away, which we opted for purely because THAT’S THE GAME, and it’s how we get on to the next stage. There were other options but I sense that all roads lead to Rome.
We awaken. We are in sealed tubes which will open after a moment. Some of us make our various rolls for flaws. We are in a large room that appears to be storage, and we are in sealed metallic coffins. Each has scientific instruments and displays hooked to them. The rest of the room is stored crates and equipment and a couple robotic loaders.
Father P. tries to get someone to let us out by using the intercom button on the panel near the door. When the people at the other end can’t figure out what’s going on, they come our way. (Incidentally, beyond the door we can smell “human blood and pizza”, so we know they’re not far.) Of the group, Moira is the only one who doesn’t hide. They come in and ask her how she got there. She flirts and keeps them busy, and directs one to the “back door” where she supposedly came in, while the sneaky ones, Graves and Father P. get behind the others who are outside. With everyone singled up, we pounce. Hanifa grabs the one who went for the back door and handily wins. Moira grabs and drinks the one she’s been flirting with. Father P. grabs and drinks one. Graves grabs and drinks one. The only one that isn’t taken is a female, who Father P. uses his mezermise to put to sleep.
After subduing her captive, Moira grabs the woman and hauls her back to the warehouse, out of public sight, takes her ID, and uses a discipline to change her face to look like the woman’s. Everyone is cleaned up off the street outside except for ONE unconscious guy, and unfortunately we’ve got a truck coming down the road and people coming out of the building across the street. So Moira (disguised) runs out and sits at the table with no time to change into their gear so she’s in casual clothes and she tries to BS the guys who come out of the building. She manages to divide up the group of six soldiers, with two going to check one back door of the warehouse and another two going to check the other back door, and the other two hanging out. Shortly they notice that the unconscious guy is actually dead, and Moira feigns surprise.
So now we’ve got one group of soldiers on the south side with Hanifa out there lurking around, one group of soldiers on the north side unattended, one group with Moira, and Father P. is obfuscated and standing outside near their commander. He gives the commander a mesmerized order to recall his men and leave. They haul the dead guy to their car and their men go back to the car, but the commander goes back into the nearby building he came out of. Moira tries to distract him, but fails. Ultimately, Father P. convinces one of the guys that “it would be fun” to shoot at one of the cars in the parking lot. This causes a distraction which allows us to get away in two separate cars. However, a drone follows the lead car (With Moira, Father P., and Christopher driving). We go to the end of the road and wind up turning around to check out a nearby helipad. When we pass the other guys going the opposite direction we try to leap from our vehicle and sneak over to the other one, hoping that the drone will track our driverless vehicle.
All in one vehicle finally, we blow back through town trying to figure out where to go to next. Christopher helps gather information from the interwebs. First off, the term “earth” doesn’t seem to reference a place anymore so much as “dirt” or “ground”. We seem to be on another planet (whose name I don’t have written down or remember) in deep space. We can’t tell if Vampires are gone, are in hiding, are in charge and have their own planets, or what.
I then spend about 90 minutes going into and out of consciousness (ME, not my character) and so I don’t know how we ended up face-to-face with the bad guys because I was a zombie. But at the end of the night, one takes off his helmet and curses at us asking if we’re “The f’n vampires who screwed up his warehouse”.
In all, not a bad re-introduction to this whacky system, and a nice mystery of what-the-hell has become of the world.
Last game we were confronted by one of the many soldiery-types at the helipad. He seemed to identify us as vampires. It’s worth noting that auspex does not give up any information about the people in the full body uniforms with the helmets; they seem to block some important senses. We’ll find out later that he is a vampire and possibly the only other vamp on the planet.
There’s a long, long game of cat-and-mouse. No, not game so much as a long discussion, wherein he doesn’t want to tell us anything but wants to know everything, and we want to know everything and tell him nothing. Eventually he figures out that we were from the coffins in storage, and we are told in vaguest possible terms that the corporation he works for is Toreador owned and therefore there is a prince of some sort who rules this planet, so as we are in his domain we must abide by his rules.
By now Farman and another (Can’t remember if it was Graves or Said) have wandered off because the guy we were talking to wasn’t very forthcoming. They proceed to feed to get their strength back up.
We are offered a possible “position” with the company doing… we don’t know. He’s not very good at telling us things. We could be “useful”, but he doesn’t say at what. He does offer us housing, which we avail ourselves of after a few days of sewer dwelling.
There’s an unnecessary and protracted fight that breaks out when Moira and Father Patterson (both with the “Can’t be Bloodbound” merit) try to exchange blood. Father Patterson fails his frenzy roll. There would be serious problems but for two things: Christopher’s ability to repel vampires, and when Farman responds to the noise he uses tentacles to help restrain the Father. It takes a while to get things calmed down. For now.
We set about doing our own thing, mostly individually. Farman looks for hooligans to corrupt (there aren’t many on this planet) and organizes a fight club. Graves sets up shop at the local Mortuary. Said does.. I dunno… Helps Jack and Sawyer try to get off the island. Moira trawls the bars for easy feeding, and when that fails, partakes of delicious yet bitter local vermin. Christopher researches things on the Universe Wide Web(?). Father P sets up a propaganda site to co-opt the local Mormons; so far he just gathers hate.
We are given two domiciles. Graves, Said, and Farman are never at theirs. Christopher, Moira, and Father P are at theirs when one evening—a silence breaks out and an Assamite assassin shows up and tries to kill us. He’s nearly successful. He comes down the stairs enveloped in silence and we can’t communicate what’s going on to one another. It attacks Father P and misses. Moira interposes to defend the other two, as is her way, and actually does a point of Aggro to him. While that is not the last time she’ll hit him, it’s IS the last time she’ll do damage. (If I could roll damage this fight would have been much less harrowing.)
The assassin continues to kick Moira’s @$$, gutting her for many points of agro using his poisoned dagger. She goes ahead and frenzy’s in order to ignore penalties, expecting she’ll probably be dead or too weak to be a danger when this is over. She’s fortunate to be incapacitated. Christopher’s protective shield keeps him and Father P safe. Graves shows up because his ghost sidekick told him something was happening. Said and Farman manage to pass through Christopher’s barrier and go after the guy. Farman blocks the other exit with a tentacle, and Said does some great damage rolls that the assamite often soaks completely. They chip away at him slowly. Said frenzies, and Christopher and Moira move away (She’s up due to Christopher’s healing). The rest are able to be invisible if necessary. The assassin is downed and Said comes for us, but Father P puts him to sleep long enough for us to go rest.
We let the corporate vamp know what’s going on. He sends us to the sewers to hide. When we get back to our (now repaired) residences, Father P and Moira try another blood session, this time, with Moira failing, but she’s less of an issue to deal with. After a while they try again and get enough blood points to move up a generation.
I feel like I’m missing something major, but I’ll be damned if I know what. Graves knows the assassin’s name and has his ghost bound in his closet. That’s not a metaphor.
We began the week hiding in the sewers while waiting for clean-up from the company and our “friend”, Major Titansides. Sayid and Father Patterson each wake up with nightmares, but Fr. P. claims his is a vision and that religious zealots are on their way to dispatch us. So we move out of the sewer and look for another place to hang out. There’s some wandering around town looking for the couple of empty houses we remember and then we settle in. About then, some folks show up and try to kill us. They’re blessed individuals with guns that fire bullets that are pretty harmful. They end up engaging Farman in the streets because their leader, a woman, points him out as if he’s not obscured at all. Farman actually ends up going down several times but keeps bringing himself back to consciousness by burning blood to recover. Father P has one by the side window of the house and distracts him a while. Sayid fights one inside the house while Graves slips out the back and Christopher plays deer-in-the-headlights (Robert was busy, so Christopher did some standing around unless called upon to heal). Moira leaps from an upper floor window and goes after their leader.
In addition to their blessed or otherwise harmful bullet rounds that are shredding some of us, their leader can call down a beam of heavenly light from above that burns individuals. Farman calls up a murky aura of madness that envelopes everyone and impedes everyone without obetenbration, or who is not standing in the soft glow of their blessed boss. Moira hits the leader and does no damage, but her second attack is far more successful, rending her to bits. NOTE: Do not drink the blood of zealots, it burns like battery acid.
Farman is picking off the guys out front with tentacles and his own claws/fists. Sayid is raging inside the house, causing allies to move away. And Father P. is convincing them one at a time that they need to go take out their allies, who are actually enemies.
Ultimately we take them all out and keep one for questioning.
Major T says that he needs our help and asks us to rendezvous. You see, in the sky there is some sort of space-ship fighting, their lasers are fast as lightning. It turns out that another company, (“The Compendium” I think they were called; Ventrue run. As compared to the company we are working with who are Toreador run.) We do assist him, by helping to assail an enemy ship that is on the ground. Farman tries another big area effect impediment/darkness thingie, and into this runs Sayid, full-bore, loaded up with celerity rounds. He uses all of them to dodge nasty laser shots and then retreat to safety. Fortunately, we like that he wasted their extra rounds. Major T goes one-on-one with one of their guys. Farman comes into the middle of this and grabs and drinks the guy. Major T. puts a bullet through the guy’s head. The others have fled into the ship. The ship turret turns and Moira warms everyone of a ship’s turret. Fortunately they botch spectacularly and melt a hillside instead of Farman/Father P/Major T. The ship turret is disabled and the ship can’t take off so they close up their boarding ramp.
Father P engages them in negotiation using the helmet radio of the fallen soldier. He gets them to finally respond and ultimately to agree to talk with a couple of representatives: Father P & Moira. Inside we talk to their leader. They make us an offer that feels less than spectacular since it’s pretty much what we were already offered by the Toreadors. We take it outside, present it to the group, and ultimately we end up siding with the horse we rode in on. These others are at a huge disadvantage and making promises that they can only deliver if we deliver. The Toreadors can already deliver on their promises.
We were awarded another 5xp and have been granted the ability to take a ghoul. Of course ghouls are an outrageous 15pts of xp. So far, Moira plans to take one and Father P is considering one. Graves and many others are more interested in bulking up their disciplines. We have the ability to get mentorship too, I should mention.
We need to interview. I can’t speak to how exactly Jeff weighted these interviews with the vampires. It seems that how well you rolled had less to do with it than what you offered the company. Farman, for instance, was more scary than helpful, and got a higher paid gig. Christopher tanked his interview though he has computer skills to offer. Moira – well, let’s just say that her interviewer has never had a better time in an interview (I rolled all of my tens for the next year), but she didn’t offer as many useful skills and wound up with the same ranking and pay as Christopher. Sayid was somewhere in the middle. Father Patterson seemed to do well.
Some of us took ghouls.
Archer Thompkins, ghoul of Father Patterson, is a pilot who seems not all that well in the head. Go figure. He often shows up to pilot the ship in the nude. He’s Howling Mad Murdock. I pity us foos. Dan Moxley is a tall, beefy ex athlete turned mechanic. He’s only had access to knowledge of ground craft before now, but since he joined he’ll be learning aircraft repair and the like. I think Sayid and Farman grabbed people too, but theirs were later in the game.
There was a brief sideline while Farman decided to summon a tentacle from the abyss to make it his minion. Great idea, but the hypersleep we fall into when we try to warp would cause it to die of starvation before arrive at our destination.
We are given 3 possible missions. Naturally they are too hard, too soft, just right easy, medium, and harder. We opted for easy, first time out. It was indeed easy. We delivered some stuff. For the hell of it, many of us tried to make “stay awake” rolls. Some succeeded, many of us failed continually.
So we moved up to the next mission. There is a ship that has gone missing. We are to recover it, deliver its cargo, and have the ship stored locally to be hauled away later.
We find the craft and it seems fine from the outside. We board and already there appear to be issues. One iris door is stuck midway and on the other side of it there are bodies. There was a nasty firefight. It’s not long before we manage to engage a robot (a repurposed assault bot which had been struck and took umbrage at it). The ensuing fight sees most of us uselessly bounce off of its defensive shield. Sayid, on the other hand, manages to do some serious damage to it, eventually taking it apart.
I’m sure I’m missing more. This game was heavy on the roleplaying, though.
Yup, A full-blown Michele sighting! Amusingly, Mark convinced her to be there, then bailed out. That Mark: anything for a laugh! It worked out anyway, because between Cassandra and Moira, it was ladies night!
Having completed the two other jobs for the company, we take on a third job. The new recruit amongst us is someone we've known, but not for a very long time. Cassandra was the sister of Melisandre (Toreador) but was made a vampire of the Ventrue persuasion. She was just discovered in a warehouse somewhere, a misrouted part of our vamp shipment who has been forwarded to us.
Sent to a region of space to recover... I don't know... whatever we can find(?)... we are given some leeway by the company in our contract which says that we can take side jobs. Well, it turns out we've got 3 side jobs that interlinked. There's a derelict craft in space that, depending on who you ask, is A) An ancient craft from the olden days, just now cycling back into the region, 2) An alien craft possibly filled with alien tech, III) A lost mining craft. The ship itself is crafted from a meteor, so it's a big floating hunk of rock.
At a space station, we were solicited by three different groups interested in the ship, and after Farman marked-up their contracts and revised them, we agreed to all three contracts. We think they've been engineered now in such a way that there will be one winner and the others will pay our expenses.
Also while at the station, in the bar, the "Bullet Team" show up. They're a famous group of daredevils who were actors and now have a tv show where they actually go out and do all sorts of stunts. Nice to see reality tv has survived. Cassandra and Moira go scope them out and find that they are a 3 appearance man, a 3 appearance woman, and a 5 appearance man. Some guys try to hit on C&M, but they've seen a "5" and now nothing else will do. After striking up a conversation with him, Moira offers the two of them (both 4's) as a package and makes an epic seduction roll (I now pause to brag about my 13 success seduction roll). We assume these are vampires and this is confirmed by our folks with Auspex.
They retire to his quarters where they take turns searching the place while the other keeps him busy. Only thing found worthwhile is a credit card, which Cassandra pockets for later. Moira decides, being unbondable, that she will try some vamp blood. She takes one blood and fails to be subtle, but before this escalates into something horrible, she agrees not to do that again. Fortunately, no blood madness set in. Cassandra is one of those few vamps who can drink, so she and the vamp (Finley, I think his name was), have lots of alcohol, and then she decides it's her turn. She bites him, also fails to be subtle, and fails to control herself, so she takes a whole 3 points. Moira uses the "song of serenity" discipline to allow her a chance to recover, which she does. Moira then convinces Finely that this is just something that happens when Cassandra drinks. At that point we call it a night.
I should point out that the whole evening, Farman is hiding in the shadows somewhere, watching, listening, who knows what else.
The duo proceed to go out and run up a bill of high-end clothing purchases and then pay it off with Finley's credit card, which is harder than you would expect, because now you need biometrics (fingerprint or some such) in addition to the card. Cassandra has to try and jedi mind-trick them into letting us go with the clothes. It takes several trials and errors, but we get away with the goods, the only casualty being one of the credit machines, which was smashed by forceful application of Cassandra's thumb.
It's another day before we can take off, and then we are in a race to get to the meteor. We do well, but still end up arriving after everyone else in the universe. There are already three crafts docked.
Two craft come out and warn us off, telling us it's already claimed. Not to be strong-armed, Paul's first officer character proceeds to order them out of the way. A fight breaks out! Our first spaceship combat, during which we take lots of armor damage, with the engineers trying to repair it as fast as possible. We blow up one ship and the other decides its time to flee. After that we are greeted by the military who tell us it's okay to proceed and that they are there to keep the peace. How true that is, we do not know.
From exiting the ship to getting through the airlock, it's a solid 30 minutes. Once inside we check out the schematics (available on a computer nearby), and explore the ship. The away team are all vampires.
We nearly get into a fight with a crew in the hallways as a group who call out for us to identify themselves are answered by Sayid ordering them to drop their weapons and leave. Fortunately there's no firefight. But the next encounter is less easily solved: We encounter a creature that is kind of a strange, deformed humanoid with dark black eyes and big teeth. Sayid actually greets it without attacking (though knives are out) and it still attacks. It shrugs off Farman's tentacles. Dominate attempts by Cassandra just seem to attract its attention. Moira tries to "animal speech" it in case it's some sort of feral/bestial thing and that fails. We have to make fear checks each turn. First to fail is Cassandra, who runs for the elevator. Moira will fail next, but not until she's been bitten down to "crippled" status. Farman get's mauled pretty good and keeps burning blood to come back to consciousness. Eventually, unconscious and down to 1 blood, Farman is too dangerous to himself to be healed, so Christopher runs the long way down the corridor and comes in behind the fray and drags him to safety. [I go to the restroom and come back with the creature defeated.] I believe Sayid went all crinos on the beast. We are fortunate he does not turn on us.
We take Farman back to quarters in our ship and have to carefully set up to feed him. Sayid holds onto him, Moira sets up with the Song of Serenity just in case, and Christopher throws some blood down his throat and we are fortunate that he makes his recovery from raging in a reasonable period of time (like the third round or so).
Graves adds another techie ghoul to the mix, so by now all PCs have a ghoul except for Christopher and Cassandra.
So we’re at the asteroid/space ship. We’ve repaired our injuries from last game and we head back in to explore the ship. Graves does not come along but instead sends his techie ghoul, who remains obscured as much as humanly (ghoulie) possible. We find some stuff stored in one room; three boxes with vibro-dagger weapons. Most either take one or grab one for their ghoul.
In one area we come across a 4-man team of soldier types with gauss rifles, grenades, and a rothschrek thrower flame thrower. The fire sends Farman off and away from the fight for the duration. However, as his parting act, he burns a willpower so that he can bring up his field of dark nougaty badness to give the bad guys a penalty. Father P attempts a run-by grenading and does some damage to them. Sayid engages and stabs the living crap out of one of them with his new dagger weapon. Moira gets in one very good lucky shot that pulps the head of another. One threw a grenade down the hall to where a group of us were out of sight, so they had some sort of detection equipment that knew we were around the corner. We dodged avoiding most damage. Father P. does the “sleep!” trick on one. Ultimately, they’re stabbed to death, courtesy of Sayid.
There’s another one of those insane alien/supernatural/freakish things like the one that attacked us last game. This one is more easily handled for a couple reasons: 1) There are more of us, 2) It doesn’t once try to induce fear, like it did to split the group last time. It gets trashed by the usual suspects.
We run into our old buddies the Bullet Team. We interrupt their shooting and upset the director but they take a few minutes to talk with us. Their show seems to be a mix of reality show and total fiction, but not in a Kardashian kind of way. These guys don’t seem to pretend that the made up stuff is real.
Along the way we find a few interesting but ultimately not helpful parts of the ship, such as a power room that is not the Source of the power (thus we don’t know what is actually powering the ship yet), and lots of terminals that can retrieve data but not control anything. We did find one room that allows us (techie-ghoul) to control the doors and elevators in much of the ship.
Also, one of the elevators seems to be degrading from age and collapses regularly.
I had to leave early. I missed the ending. And I don’t know when the next game is. If it’s on schedule, that’s 4/19. And I don’t know how much XP we got.
This was contributed by Jeff:
After Darren left, the group went on to explore an additional deck or two. The two most relevant finds were dozens (hundreds) of cryogenic sleep chambers – all powered off – with many containing dead alien bodies. Another was a set of 4 coffin-like containers (cryogenic berths of some sort), which were fully powered and active. One contained a subject, which was awakened when it was opened. Turns out it is (or claims to be) Fenrod the Celt, a powerful Gangrel that the players/group once knew back in medieval England – he was a chief/prince among the Danish Gangrel. In fact, Moira had communicated with him from time to time in her role as an ambassador to that clan. Unfortunately, Moira was not there at that time but can have some conversations before or at the next game. He did not reveal much, other than utter disbelief, confusion, and anger at his present circumstances. Mark’s character was key in interpreting many of the tech devices encountered during the game, and will continue to be important when/if your group continues with activating systems on the ship
There's a little bit of backing up as we decide where we're picking the game up from. We are not yet returning the old ship to the company, we're working on that. We need a pilot to do that. There's a discussion about where to put everyone on our ship and who to take with us. Between herd, ghouls, and vampires, we've got a lot of bodies.
We need a few things. One is to retrieve fuel for the new ship (Trilithium). Another is to hire a pilot. A third is to install a transponder so that we might disguise ourselves as a credible operation. Oh... and someone has installed a device that short-circuits our power system.
There are ships around and since the signal blocking was killed we're hearing all kinds of automated distress calls. When we go for trilithium we have one fight... an ALIENesque spider creature that spits acid comes after us. He does some damage to our suits and causes some acid burns on several characters before being grabbed by Farman's tentacles and killed by Sayid. We get the trilithium.
There's still that issue with the device that cuts the power to our system. Did I mention the Ace? Well, left behind in our ship's cockpit was an ace of spades. Father P gets an image of the owner from it by touching it and using a charm.
Following breadcrumbs of memory, we end up meeting the owner of the card: Ace Ventura. Actually, I can't remember his name. But he's a local operator who wants us to join some sort of resistance against the empire. There's some discussion about using him and his resources and connections to rebels and having them weaken the Imperium for us. Eventually we wind up agreeing to go where the guy wants us to go, but we also decide we want this guy under our control, so Christopher gives him a drop of blood. Turns out he's unbondable though, so we aren't sure we can trust him.
This session was shorter than usual and consisted of mostly planning, book keeping, and roleplaying. Father P took the lead on the talking, Sayid continues as bookkeeper. Christopher did a lot of computer work and had to heal a number of people. Moira didn't do much, but her ghouls were busy (getting dissolved by acid and doing engineering). Farman was Farman.
I'm missing lots of details. The longer I take to recap the less I remember. But I don't think I'm missing any major events. Our future is in flux; we've got lots of options.
One thing to add...not only is Ace unbondable, he can teleport and do some TK. We had a quick discussion about whether he needs to be killed since he's potentially dangerous and can't be controlled. Oh, did I add that he had a gun that marked him as an Imperium special agent? I talked him into lowering his psi shield and asked him about it. He said he had been a member for about 6 months and bailed when he didn't agree with their policies. Christopher read his mind and determined that he told the truth (although I think Farman still is leaning towards him being a double agent). So, we definitely need to figure out what to do with him - somewhat trust him or kill him were the two options. I'd add a 3rd...just because you can't be ghouled doesn't mean you can't be turned into a kindred. Of course, he'd be an unbondable one. Does anyone know if that would mess with his psi powers?
The gent’s name was Ace Turner. Two of his former associates, that he made a few brief references to, were (former) Fleet Admiral Comack, and Logan Hex. He did stress that he believed Hex was still part of the Imperial Navy, and that the Navy had the ability to track your high-tech ship (which Ace stole from the Navy), and that Hex was a very dangerous person who would eventually find the ship (and your characters) unless you took action and followed his advice. Last he heard about Comack was that he ended up part of the Imperial family but fell out of favor and fell off the radar a few years earlier. Ace Turner is wily, a survivor, with some interesting skills and abilities (as you have been discovering).
Brief background (reminder) on that high tech ship you have: A couple items of ancient tech were discovered when Ace, Hex, and Comack were all serving together (in one capacity or another) for/with/around the Imperial Scout service about 12 years earlier. Long story short, these items of tech could be major game-changers for one empire over another. Hex and Comack wanted these for the Navy, Turner saw other (more profit-driven, or ideological-driven – take your pick) options for the tech. Another long story short, Turner ended up with the tech, managed to place it into a proto-type ship that belonged to Hex (or more accurately, to a clandestine branch of Imperial Navy intelligence), absconded with it, and has been on the run ever since. About 5-6 years ago Turner discovered the planet, realized an Amber Zone planet far from anywhere would be a good place to hide the ship and thus brush off Hex and his pursuers, had his team install the ship into that ancient temple complex, placed a tracking and control mechanism on the ship, and then left to live his life in (hopeful) obscurity. Your group found the ship, happened to go to the planet where Turner was living (that atmosphere-less planet with base where you spent some time last adventure), and then he contacted you.
So, we are still trying to figure out what to do with Ace Turner. Is he food? Is he an ally? Is he commodity to be sold to the Imperium? But generally we’re leaning toward ally, since we don’t have any love for the Imperium. We’ve gotten our transponder outfitted to the ship and we’re planning on leaving the next day. Some characters are on duty, many vamps have just awakened for the evening, when we are scanned by another ship. Those on hand are incompetent when it comes to figuring out where the scan came from.
We decide to get out of there now, but as we are lifting off and preparing for jump, a broadcast is made to us by the Imperium telling Ace Turner to surrender. We try to warp out of there but before we can engage we are boarded by teleporters: Four men with top of the line armor and fusion rifles that could punch holes in the ship or its important parts.
Sayid engages one in the hallway and wrestles with him for his gun.
Apparently powered armor gives a pretty good strength boost. Father P puts
one to sleep via mind powers. One confronts Christopher and threatens to
shoot him unless we surrender. That draws Moira’s ire, however, when the
assault started she was going out for the evening so she is not armored and
takes a fusion blast that she survives but still does lots of damage. She
pretends that she’s there to protect “her son” and wraps her arms around
Christopher so he can heal her and also so she can disguise that she’s growing
claws. About then Farman wraps up their assailant in tentacles!
Meanwhile, the fourth guy has made it to engineering and Moira’s ghoul (also not
armored since he was working on the engines) is the one there to defend against
him, which proves pretty useless: With things sounding bad over the com, he just
fires at the jump drives.
By now we’re in warp, so there could be some real problems. Fortunately the shooter leaves the room and the engineer can look over the engines and determine the problem, which he spots immediately. Now the pilots and he can make rolls and they make nine successes, the exact number needed in order to keep things from getting worse.
With one invader asleep (and covered by Farman’s ghoul), the second one cut up by Sayid, and the third one wrapped in tentacles, the fourth one is the only real problem and the one who has done the most damage. He exits the engineering bay and comes face-to-face with Father P and Sayid. During the struggle, Sayid performs a quadruple botch, sending his vibro-dagger flying.
Let me pause to mention that the GM at this point gives Paul a Devil’s bargain: Sayid has 3 more celerity rounds and he can drop those entirely and his epic botch will just neutralize those rounds, or he can let chaos happen and keep his attacks. He opts for chaos. (As well he should have.)
So the dagger flies down the hall into engineering where Moira’s ghoul (Dan) is given a dodge roll and gets a double botch (he only had 3 dice dodge to begin with). For some reason this means the dagger will hit the machinery. After a brief pause, Jeff decides a bargain is in order there to: I can either take the damage, thus sparing the machine, but it would be Sayid vibrodagger damage (and thus HUGE), or I can let it go through and damage the engine, sparing himself. Tough call. He could die outright from a hit. If he lets it go through who knows what would happen to the ship, but at least he’d be alive to try and fix it. Still, can’t let the ship a’splode, so he takes the hit and ends up at incapacitated, his fortitude just barely keeping him from worse.
This is where things go to worse. The one guy who is still up hurls a grenade. No one nearby is able to determine how bad it will be until Moira’s ghoul #2 (Kirin) grabs the grenade and determines it will make a HUGE hole that might take out the bridge, so she runs with it and gets into the airlock. She is just seconds from taking it out the airlock (and possibly herself with it depending on how the physics of the game go) when it goes off. At the same time, the self-destruct command has been given to all of the captured guys and so FOUR EXPLOSIONS rock the ship.
We lose some herd, lots of employees, and a number of walls, though the hull is not breached. We are faced with a question of where to wind down the warp and settle in out of the sight of the Imperium. We hit a backwater for some refueling, then decide that we're going to seize an Imperial ship since ours is probably impossible to get repaired. This turns out to be easier than expected.
Farman creates a massive black cloud (in the black of space) and we use it to stealth up to the ship, then envelope it. After that, as crew fail at their fear resistance rolls, we slip in and take them over in a virtually bloodless takeover. The only killing is when Dan blows one of them away (payback).