Session 1
WIP, apologies for the rough draft
Scene 1 - Torias Inn
The town of Karelia, on the borders of the Outer Wastes, is on edge. Moreso than most other frontier towns. The people’s hard faces bearing even harder expressions and an air of fear can be felt by anyone that enters the gates. Wagons being filled with their meager possessions are parked outside every home and place of work.
Having come back from a recent hunt and looking for a place to spend the night, Chloe decided to enter town. Even though she’s seen worse, this sorry state of affairs makes it a bit hard to breathe. To any onlookers, she’d be just a little girl no older than 12. If you look closely, the bandages on her arms and the knife on her belt would tell you a very different story. Her belt held her knee-long tunic down snug to her waist. She gripped her waist-long cloak around her tighter to keep the cold and the town’s desperate air out.
In the middle of town, she finally saw an inn. It was empty. Probably because all its previous patrons are all packing up outside. Chloe found a window-side seat and made herself comfortable.
As if on cue, a large, mountain of a man came out of the kitchen with an apron covering the front of his shirt and denim pants. The clothes were straining and stretching over the ripples of black muscle underneath. “Must be the innkeeper”, Chloe thought. Behind his polite and handsome “customer service” smile her gave her as he took her order, Chloe could see there is a hint of worry and anxiety behind his eyes.
Another person walked through the swinging doors of the inn, a large, broad-shouldered man, his muscle-bound frame wrapped in a red jacket and denim cargo pants. His jawline was accented by sideburns and his long hair held in a knot behind his head. He took a seat at a table in the middle of the main tavern floor. A disappointed look replaced the proud smirk he had on his face when he entered.
“Looks like those bastards aren’t showing up.” He grumbles loudly.
“Oh, I’m sure they won’t.” the large inkeeper says as he places a large mug of cold, frothy beer in front of the man. “The entire town might be going soon, including this here inn.” The innkeeper shakes his head slightly as he walks back to the kitchen. The man in the red jacket shrugs his shoulders and takes a sip of the golden liquid.
Chloe looks out the window and sees a small wagon park outside, a large dirty cloth covering the vehicle’s cargo. It didn’t have horses pulling it, but was instead pulled by a woman with a hooded cloak over her head. She let the wagon-bars down, the wheels turning slightly as it rested on its two front support feet. It’s driver made her way to the doors of the inn.
She lowered her hood to reveal a handsome face, her deep, inquisitive eyes framed by a pair of round glasses. Under her cloak was a simple, utilitarian-looking dress with many pockets fastened with buttons and a lether belt strung with more pouches and small bags around her waist. She took one of the corner tables, the one beside the stairs the opposite way across from the door at the far side of the room.
Another soul finds his way past the dying inn’s doors. His broad shoulders hanging low, each step felt heavy and so does the air around him. His thick grey and black turnover-coat hung over his frame like a ghost from his past, the rest of his thick clothing looked equally as haunted. A hatchet or pick of some sort with a cord-wrapped handle and a curious-looking head was strapped across his back.
Chloe watched as this forlorn man took another corner seat, just past the main door opposite the stairs. “Definitely a ‘paranoid seat’ kinda guy…” she thought to herself.
Not five minutes after Chloe’s plate of roasted tricattle beef ribs were set on her table did the tavern doors swing violently to reveal a man who looks like he has urgent matters to settle. The official-looking overcoat on his shoulders, the huge shard-rifle strapped to his back and the golden six-pointed star on his chest would tell anyone he’s the town sheriff. His eyes were wide and wild, sweat and a few drops of blood are running down his face.
“TORIAL!!!” he shouts
The inkeeper rushes out from the kitchen and sees the sheriff.
The innkeeper, named Torial, it seems, doesn’t seem to like the presence of the sheriff.
“We need more men at the gates, defense system’s down and we still have a lot of folk to evacuate!” the sheriff said, shouting
“You know I’m not that man anymore, I’m retired.” Torial tried to calmly say.
Tomas replies with a silent but stern look. Torial sighs deeply, though his hands clench into fists as he begins to follow the sheriff out the double-doors in a stiff jog.
Chloe looked on at the scene with a distant interest, but was more interested in the reactions the other patrons of the inn had.
“Guess this round’s free, eh?” The large man in the red leather jacket shouted before unleashing a room-engulfing belly laugh, which he downed with a swig of his beer. The others just stared at him with various startled glances, which then turn into annoyed eyerolls.
having nothing better to do, the four player characters decide to help out
They enter the town and begin planning what to do
1 Wagon Macey
Scene 2 Town
THe four unlikely misfits find themselves in the streets of this dying town, and now they have to figure out how to best deal with an entire nest of moth-folk and grab the fuel rods back from them in time before there’s no more town to go back to.
“So, what exactly are we dealing with? Six, seven moth-creeps?” Minco says, yawning and stretching his huge arms out as they left the inn.
“If the colony is advanced enough to have archers and have the need to look for more intense sources of radiation than just a regular flame, they have to number around eight-to-ten times that amount.” Macey says in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. She was oblivious to how deflated her newfound comrades felt at the thought of having to face down an entire hive of sixty to seventy moth people.
After some back and forth, the group decides to create a noxious gas that will temporarily paralyze and weaken the moth-folk while they grab the fuel rods
after speaking to the Sheriff, which was a mess, they get part of the ingredients necessary for the operation
-1 wealth Minco 8 Supply worth of gas-ingredients
- Chloe and Aurum go and buy some gear
-1 wealth Chloe
Single shot handgun, 2d6 dmg, 30ft (6squares), Small
- Minco goes to a chapel and prays silently.
+1 Advantage token Minco
-2 wealth Chloe 3x 6-pack bullets
-4 Wealth Aurum 4x Anti-venom
- Macey is busy using her mobile chemistry lab to make some poison gas
Macey +4x Cyanogen Gas Can
- back at the inn, the characters spar a little in the downstairs training area, more of a tutorial to how the combat system works in d20.
Scene 3 Cave
Blood red was the dawn that woke up to green the hilly riverside farmlands that make up Karelia, shining crimson light on the cracked solar panels that line the rooves of the shanties the people there called homes. Farm workers rose a few minutes before the raptor roosters began singing to the Sun, and started their daily labor of coaxing the grey soil back to life. If one were passing by, like the unlikely group that found themselves sharing a wagon on their way to a certain cave that day, one would see carts of tricattle dung and crimson, crimson gore, with some bone sticking out of them, being pushed out of the barns and siloes and violently plowed into the soil.
Silent sunrise, with nothing but the sound of the radroaches and roosters can be heard above the clanking, jittering sounds of the makeshift windmills dotting the landscape.
Spending all of her time in places like caves or the undergrowths of glass forests, Chloe has never seen these rural sights. She watched with interest as a farm worker threatened a three-headed tricattle with an electric prod as the cart passed by them. They were moving at a leisurely pace, the cart being pulled by Minco. The girl sees that he’s barely straining himself at all.
“I guess everyone on the cart weighs next to nothing compared to that gorilla.” Chloe thought to herself with a chuckle.
She then confirms her observation by seeing Macey was barely taller than her, and even Aurum being surprisingly thin and pale for a grown man.
Before the sun was completely above them in the grey sky, they find themselves at the mouth of the cave. The broken branches and disturbed earth around it makes it evident that the cave is inhabited. Damp air and the smell of stagnant water wafted from the darkness within. Turning their flashlights on, they enter.
It was clear from the first few twists and turns within the labyrinthine and claustrophobic confines of the cavern that they weren’t the first people to try and explore this place. Minco shone his flashlight on the remains of what looks like a militia officer from the tattered uniform and the rifle it meekly held in its dried up, chewed up, hands. Their chest was torn open and some of its limbs were bent in impossible angles. Minco winced as he grit his teeth, looking away trying not to think about what happened to this poor soul.
“Here, you take this, Macey. It’s clearly not safe around here.” Chloe says as she used her vibrodagger to cut away the stiff’s fingers, freeing the scrap-quality flintlock rifle. The innocent smile and carefree way she spoke would’ve given anyone mental whiplash seeing the grisly graverobbing she did just now. It certainly left Minco in a cold sweat, the mountain of a man not used to the constant life-or-death struggles of the Frontier.
Macey, being the frontierswoman scientist she was, just smiled and quietly thanked Chloe, not minding at all what must’ve been dried-up bits of blood and gore on the weapon. What concerned her more was the material state of the rifle itself. There was a bit of play where segments of the barrel feel loose. She judged it would still work, but one misfire would make the whole thing fall apart.
While Minco was pretending not to be disturbed by this exchange and Macey was appraising her new weapon, Aurum shined his flashlight into the darkness beyond them. He half-expected there to be a pair of glowing red eyes to reflect the light back at him, his hands instinctively reaching for his survival axe. All that greeted him was more dark, stalactite-bound cave corridors, the rocky and damp walls distorting the light from his electric torch into something muted and alien.
It looked like a pair of hunched, extremely malnourished children. It's just that Chloe was sure that children aren't supposed to have a large face covered by a gaping maw filled with rings and rings of sharp teeth like. The two creatures hissed at the group, pulling their hands back as if preparing to strike with their claws.
First combat initiative 1. Minco 2. Chloe 3. Aurum 4. Lamprey Goblin 5. Macey 6. Lamprey Goblin
Second combat 1. Mothfolk 2. Minco 3. Chloe 4. Aurum 5. Macey
-1 Spare parts Chloe -1 Single shot rifle, scrap quality, Macey +1 Single shot rifle, standard quality, Macey
-1 Wealth Aurum
Third Combat 1. Minco 2. Chloe 3. Macey 4. Giant Rat 5. Giant Rat 6. Aurum
+3 Supply Aurum +4 Small Power Cells Minco
Fourth Combat 1. Chloe 2. Macey 3. Mothfolk 4. Aurum 5. Mothfolk 6. Minco
-2 Dex temporary Minco
+1 Single Shot Rifle (scrap q) Macey +3x Supply Chloe
return to Karelia, session ends