And so, riiiight off the bat, you dudes choose to split the party. Nothing can possibly go wrong now, amirite? ^^
Ok, new rules are up on the original post! You'll find some new material on your character sheets down below, so you may want to
refer back to my original post to learn what it all means.
Turn 2
Sculla's reflective goggles gleamed in the light of the sun.
"Anyone in there is probably whale chum by now! Might as well take a look around, yeah?"
She gunned the throttle and the vehicle lurched forward, halting just outside where the gate once hung.
She twisted and yanked at the sterring wheel in the right way, and it detached, doubling as both steering wheel and ignition key. She hung it from the back of her belt as she picked one of her javelins up and clambered out the cab.
"Who's up for a poke around then, eh?"
She waved to Jean, then pointed towards the crashed vehicle, cupping a hand around her mouth like a megaphone.
"You check that out! We'll skim the town!"
You slam the accelerator, and the engine roars, pushing the tires to grind and kick up a flurry of dirt. The vehicle lurches forward like a drunken ox, tearing down the low slope towards the town. You pass the signpost on your way, barely noticing the word "Bouldertown" through the bullet holes and egg spatter.
It doesn't take you long to cross the intervening distance, though it is a fairly bumpy ride. You pull left to follow the curve of the paneled wall, noticing for the first time all the holes and chunks apparently ripped out of the top at several places. The gate is even more of a wreck. One half is simply lying on the dusty ground, while the other hangs loose and occasionally creaks when the wind kicks up enough.
{_} Unwilling to leave your vehicle for just any shmuck who might get too curious, you reach behind the wheel well, hold tight, and
wrench the entire steering wheel out of the block. You all but throw the door open and step out, slinging the makeshift ignition key over your back, and at the same time picking up one of your prized explosive spears from the vehicle's floor.
A little clumsily due to the spear, you cover your mouth with both hands, and shout to Jean,
"You check that out! We'll skim the town!"Action: He followed Sculla
You grit your teeth and hang on for dear life, grunting every time Sculla drives over a pothole or turns too quickly. You're quick to step off the truck as soon as it properly stops, readying your hand-made torsion blade and buckler the second your boots hit the ground. You want to be ready for anything.
The view inside Bouldertown from here looks none too good. There are a great number of tire tracks running through the opening, leading down the main path off to the side and out of sight. A glint of light on something shiny on the ground catches your eye—and then, a small black shape swoops down from the wall, casting a winged shadow not too far from your feet. You glance up. It's a crow. The kleptomaniac bird snatches one of the shiny objects—a bullet casing, you realize—and flies back into town, cawing in triumph.
Sculla's sudden exclamation makes you cringe. You really hope the only ones to hear that were scavenging crows.
Xander follows them, Wakizashi readied.
You wait for a good few moments before following the others out of the truck, using the time to scan the horizon, such as it is. Bouldertown's walls and gate lie to the immediate right and stretch ahead for a good... eighty meters, you guess, curving only slightly left and right. Mostly open ground lies ahead and to the left, like a ramp sloping up and down. You can see for quite a long ways there, long enough that this probably marks Bouldertown's primary avenue of approach.
Not taking any chances, your left hand pulls your wakizashi to a ready stance. Other than the muted footfalls of you and your fellows on the ground, and one
very loud shout from your driver, everything is still mostly quiet.
Instead of shouting back at Sculla, he simply gestured a polite "ok" sign before checking on the crashed vehicle.
Check the crashed and overturned vehicle.
From here, you can't make out much of the smoking wreck down the slope, other than that it's turned on its side and seems to have at least half of... all
eight of its tires? After exiting your vehicle, you head down, carefully picking your way through the avalanche of rusty metal and old paneling. One wrong slip, and you and good ol' infection would meet again.
It takes you a good minute or so to get within range of the wreckage. You take the opportunity to inspect what you can see of the undercarriage. The first thing you notice is that the two back wheels are
much too large for what looks to be some kind of off-road buggy; they're likely from a tractor, or the accompanying trailer. The front end is a bizarre mishmash of
three wheel axels hooked to what seems to be a set of
tracks, which makes this vehicle a half-track, of all things. But it's way too small to carry the kind of loads those are normally meant to haul.
You sniff the air, quickly noting two very important things: One, the smell of leaking gasoline, meaning the fuel tank may have been punctured in the vehicle's tumbling fall. And two, the rank, oppressive odor of death.
A loud
pawing noise comes from the other side of the vehicle. You freeze in place. Occasionally you also hear something being dragged along the ground, only to stop quickly after with a wet flopping sound onto either metal or dirt.
Cyrus follows Jean
You are just as careful as your leader in following behind, staying a respectful distance while focusing more on the surrounding area. Drahknil walks up behind you, apparently keen to do the same. Not much "leaps out" at you about the junk heap at the moment, besides a clearly Jinam-made plastic pill case in a ripped plastic bag dangling from a rebar beam; you can just make out the country's symbol, a figure of a man considering a featureless golden wall. You've seen it plenty of times on their cybernetic parts by now. Supposedly, it's meant to represent one that is ready to carve their name into the edifice of ultimate glory.
You return your focus to the avalanche of junk, wondering something. If the vehicle really did fall from the top of the slope, it must have tumbled end over end before stopping, so something might have fallen out. But in this mess, it might be difficult to find anything.
Drahknil decides to head out with the others and gets out of the truck. He then equips the nail gun and proceeds to go with Cyrus and Jean.
"If there were survivors, then they probably won't be too keen on being friendly. Or if there's bandits, they have placed a clever trap. Either way we should proceed with caution.
You step out of the passenger seat, then close the door behind you, nail gun ready in your hands. Your "fearless leader" apparently wants to go check out the vehicle, so you head with. It's a long, boring minute heading down the slope behind Jean towards the wreckage.
And what an odd-looking wreck it is. You aren't really an expert on vehicles, but you're pretty sure a car isn't supposed to have two big
tractor tires for the back end. Whoever worked on this thing would have needed one
mother of a suspension setup to make it work. Definitely not a one-man job. And certainly something that would require heavy tools to do. You tap the handle of your nail gun. Maybe the owner kept something useful inside?
Jean seems oddly reluctant to get too close to it for some reason, though...
Time/Environment: It is a bright and early afternoon, and only partly cloudy. Sculla, Dell, and Xander notice the cawing of crows from inside Bouldertown's walls.
Character Status:Location: Standing just outside Bouldertown's ruined front gate.
Health: OK | Aim: 65 | Defense: 0
Skills: Explosives (Grants the ability to recognize explosive compounds and devices, salvage explosive materials, and create explosives.)
Vehicles (Can salvage vehicular parts and materials, and repair and build vehicles. May also give you ideas on how to enhance vehicles, like, say, with nitrous oxide hooked to the fuel injector.)
Throwing (Expert at creating and using throwable weapons, ranging from harpoons to knives to rocks. Can combo well with Explosives to create throwable explosives and grenades.)
Weapons/Equipment: 2x Blasthole spear (1 in hand, 1 back in her truck). Steel hunting knife (strapped to chest). 2x Kerosene hand lighter (in pockets). Steering wheel of Sculla's truck (on back).
Location: Standing just outside Bouldertown's ruined front gate.
Health: OK | Aim: 65 | Defense: 0
Skills: Armorcrafting (Good at creating armor and shields out of basic materials, from metal to kevlar.)
Melee Weapon Crafting, Lv. 1 (Can salvage parts from and craft basic melee weapons, such as blades and axes.)
Melee Weapon Crafting, Lv. 2 (Can use Core Engines to make powered melee weapons, such as energy blades. Can also salvage and modify these in the field.)
Weapons/Equipment: Torsion blade (right hand). Salvaged buckler (left hand). Set of studded Helgak leather armor.
Location: Standing just outside Bouldertown's ruined front gate.
Health: OK | Aim: 65 | Defense: 0
Skills: Jury-rigging (Expert in modifying weapons and devices to overclock their output, or using parts from other machinery to fix or enhance others.)
Machine repair (Good at working with large and complex equipment or pieces of salvage, from car engines to conveyor belts to hydraulic presses.)
Technomancy Lv. 1 (Use of small Core Engine(s) embedded in gear or equipment -- such as gloves on the hands -- to manipulate or disrupt electronics on the fly, create your own light source, or possibly arc lightning at will. Advanced forms may allow you to manipulate gravity or other natural forces as well.)
Weapons/Equipment: Technomancer's gauntlet (left hand), (Lightning) & (Light). Scrap wakizashi (right hand).
Location: Standing on the junk slope a little ways up from Jean and Drahknil.
Health: OK | Aim: 65 | Defense: 0
Skills: Biotechnologist (You have garnered a basic understanding of how to use Core Energy and base materials to heal wounds, literally grow items like bullets made of bone, and salvage usable materials and compounds from people -- dead or otherwise.)
Chemical expertise (Can recognize and salvage chemical compounds, and use them in items ranging from stim packs to tranquilizer darts.)
Cybernetics (You have a solid grasp of the common field of cyborg units and enhancements, and are able to identify and salvage relevant parts, and even potentially use them yourself.)
Weapons/Equipment: Cybernetic arm, left. Crowbar (left hand). Medical IV drip rig (2x Stimpack). Belt-worn case of 3x Neo-saline vial.
Location: Standing near a crashed and overturned half-track vehicle down the junk slope, not far from Bouldertown.
Health: OK | Aim: 65 | Defense: 0
Skills: Mechanical Expertise (Good at working with large and complex equipment or pieces of salvage, from car engines to conveyor belts to hydraulic presses. Also trains. ^^)
Vehicle Expertise (Can salvage vehicular parts and materials, and repair and build vehicles. May also give you ideas on how to enhance vehicles, like, say, with nitrous oxide hooked to the fuel injector.)
Automatic Assembly (You have grasped the ins and outs of getting robots and machines to automate many processes that would otherwise have to be done by hand. You can salvage useful parts from robotic arms, computer chipsets and more, and use them to build your own automated machinery.)
Weapons/Equipment: Shrike 32 9mm pistol (Ammo: 12/12 [HP]). Leather ammo belt w/ 4x Shrike 32 9mm pistol magazines [2x HP, 2x FMJ]. Rail spike caster.
Location: Standing a ways between Jean and Cyrus, watching the crashed and overturned half-track.
Health: OK | Aim: 65 | Defense: 0
Skills: Melee Weapon Expertise Lv. 1 (Can make and use melee weapons with some efficiency.)
Tool Expertise Lv. 1 (Can use most tools found on Shell 2, as well as make his own on the fly.)
Artist (Can make most anything into art to sell for some pocket change.)
Weapons/Equipment: Shoulder- and belt-strapped Helgak leather toolbelt w/ pipe wrench, handheld oxyacetylene welding torch, pneumatic nailgun, duct tape, and crowbar. Lead pipe (right hand).
Vehicles:An old, cobbled-together Junkers' truck with a sheet metal bed. Currently idle near the entrance to Bouldertown. The entire steering wheel has been ripped out of the steering block by Sculla.
A busted old piece of junk that still runs and can carry a decent load. Currently idle near the junk-strewn slope where the crashed and smoking vehicle sits.
Locations:Bouldertown: A recently-built Junkers' haven located amidst one of the deeper junk heaps on Shell 2. It hasn't gotten much attention so far due to being mostly off the beaten path from the other towns, which is as good a reason as any for many Junkers to move here and work with the plentiful scrapyards in relative peace and quiet.
Bannon's Luck: The colloquial name for the particular heaping hills of scrap and trash in which Bouldertown is located. It is so named for a famed old Junker named Bannon White, who continually insisted on traveling to this region to look for valuable salvage, despite it being one of the lower-grade, less accessible dumps, and everyone knew it. He came back one day hauling a
Core Engine fit to power a small airship, and -- according to wagging tongues -- fought off hordes of bandits, scavengers and jealous Junkers who coveted the piece, all while working day and night to fit it into a frame so he could fly off-Shell into parts unknown. The legend of Bannon White is a popular tale, one that inspires many resourceful Junkers from Shell 2 to continue searching for their fortune, no matter how daunting it seems.
Author
Topic: Septerra - Rise of the Junkers (On hiatus) (Read 15280 times)