Roll 61Do realize that I've rebalanced some of the weapons, and especially the description style. Check your weapons for any secondary traits, such as the bolter's Suppressive Fire.
Also, new armor revamp: Armor's effectiveness is based on how many shots were fired. So the total damage lost is Defense * shots fired. Thus, 4 defense vs a minigun which does 200 per hit but uses 35 rounds would cancel out 140That would make out guns too weak. How about this:
Armor Effectiveness (How much damage is subtracted from full attack) = Ceil(Base Armor * (Random(Shots that hit) / D6))
Shots that hit: depends on accuracy roll.
Therefore, say you shoot 10 rounds at a ravager (2 kinetic defense) and do 22 damage.
(2) * (7 / 5) = 3 damage lost
Seems reasonable, no?
Amatin presumed that these two were highly trained mercenaries who provided manual labor services as well as armored protection.
This was quickly verified by the inscriptions on their arm plates:
You come in peace, but I come in war.
No matter. Mercenaries were easy to persuade, especially because these two lowly lifters obviously didn't know about Van Buren's higher plans.
Then again, neither did Amatin.
"Greetings," he began, faking a thick Cyrian accent. He continued:
[3]
"I am specialist Tarnenkov, one of the overseers of this site."The two mercenaries kept their guns fixed toward Amatin, but began to lower them to hip level.
[4]
"I am here to investigate reports of sabotage in the drill's cooling system. I must speak to Van Buren in order to maintain further confidentiality. Lower your weapons."The mercs lowered their rifles, and silently began to salute. Amatin quietly manipulated the dragon into submission, having it perch itself quietly as Amatin proceeded to do what he did next.
--------
Varron hovered into the space in the ceiling as
Zakroff jumped up onto his drone and rode it onto the platform.
Varron floated up through a ring of metal, finding himself in a very dark metal room. A control panel was set beside the entrance. The room itself was far too dark to make out anything over a few meters away, especially the walls. It was chilling. Suddenly, Varron heard a quiet sliding noise... something reminiscent of cloth sliding against metal. Freaking out, he turned rapidly, almost losing control in the air but stabilizing himself and finding nothing. Hesitantly, he motioned to Zakroff that everything was safe.
Milia got on the platform as well.
--------
Ravager States:
-Male: 50hp, 2 ballistic defense. Attack deals 12 damage per hit. Melee.
-Female: 40hp, 2 ballistic defense. Attack deals 10 damage per hit. Short ranged.
Kayle paused for a moment to let the gun cool. She watched and noted how the weapon functioned, hearing the dull hum of the coolant pumps draw a teal liquid around the four short barrels and through the center of the gun's gas chamber, on which the lights began to flicker and fade. Kayle didn't know if that was the intended mode of function for the indicator lights. But she was more concerned about both the plasma reservoir underneath the barrel beginning to swirl and the pair of male ravagers heading toward her to defend their smoldering companion.
[3] She warmed up the gun again and held the trigger, showering both in a hail of deadly fire, but missing a lot of shots regardless. Kayle scolded herself for missing, wasting precious energy. On Locyrmor, energy wasn't an issue thanks to underground coal mining operation. Global warming was an objective there. But around the galaxy there was an energy crisis since the Galactic Wars (not aptly named as the other four houses hadn't even managed to reach Polaris yet at the time, let alone the rest of the galaxy). Cyrians possessed the largest reserves of Helium-3 on the gas-giant Sigma then, but during the wars the planet fell to the Aroth, who had been running on fission for the past while. The other houses, mostly fusion-based as far as infrastructure went, experienced fuel shortages as a result and once their reserves ran out, they were forced to drain their oceans for deuterium and import Aroth-mined lithium to make tritium. Since then, fusion had been in decline and power shortages were unavoidable. These shortages remained today, which was why energy cells and recharger spheres costed as much as refrigerators even though the materials themselves costed a few dozen credits each.
She stepped forward to examine the smoldering remains. One of them still twitched, but she reflexively kicked it in the skull, finishing it off.
Damage done: 44-0 and 88-0
(Ravagers do not have thermal defense)[4]
Jaffar brought his gun up to his shoulder, continuing to shoot the little bugs and noticing his remarkable accuracy... the gun knew what he wanted to hit. He nailed one more ravager with four consecutive headshots, dealing
53 damage total. Once again, he was amazed at the weapon's capacity for tracking its targets. However, a small detail still nagged him: Could the gun read his thoughts? Or did it have... eyes?
[4] He quickly inspected the gun to verify that it did in fact have eyes.
"O_o"Aduin let the ravager live out its last minutes in pain, instead opting to move forward. He managed to sneak up of three of them. All three had a long, tail-like appendage oozing with slime resting on top of their abdomens. They slowly crawled around, seeking to defend their mates.
[4] Aduin blinded one, lunged at another, and threw a stone at the third, knocking it out. He violently thrust his dagger into his target's head, dealing
25 damage, but it jumped away, screeching, and immediately flinging its tail at Aduin. He felt the blow impact his chestplate and shatter the polymer layer that was supposed to protect him. He then felt a second blow, this one to the side of the head. He felt the chitinous spike stop just over his ear, before being pulled to the side as the ravager retrieved its tail.
As Aduin rubbed the hole in his helmet with a paper towel as he retreated behind a feeding klathidon. Suddenly, a metal boot stamped a large, circular patch in the soggy wet clay next to him. He looked up and saw
Caplus, gauss rifle in hand. Caplus slipped a magazine into the rifle, loaded it, and took out the blind ravager that had just somehow attacked Aduin. The slug gutted it instantly for
52 damage. He then finished off Aduin's target with a single blast from his charged small laser (
40 damage).
...
After the ravagers were dealt with--the last one being mauled by an angered klathidona, Admiral Scott began to shout and reunite the group:
"Now that we're finished squashing bugs, we should be heading on forward... toward the palms* over there. Let's go!"*The trees look like palms, but they aren't actually palms.
The party of six proceeded ahead into the overgrown marsh. There Kayle tripped over rogue tree roots wrapped around bushes, Jaffar almost lost his head to a blade tree while trying to discern it from an Earth palm, and Aduin got lost as the dense water mist began to thicken, snuffing out the infra-red rays. He felt a stinging sensation in his chest, and some of the slime from the headshot was seeping in between his neck and his suit. But he was more concerned about the flesh wound, which was remarkably painful for just a flesh wound. He was lucky his armor had helped at all.
Jaffar was walking over to a small ledge when Scott immediately shouted and stopped him.
"That pad over there... it's got the distinctive markings. Impaler maw. Don't touch.""Markings... oh right, the dots arranged in a star. How did you see that so quickly?""That was quick?" Scott replied. He made an effort to sound confused, but it came out as rather stilted. Jaffar forgot about it, and the group continued to move.
EDIT:
The group then came across a ledge over a large lake, with two waterfalls pouring in. The lake itself drained into a cave system, its huge entrance almost like a maw waiting for prey. Over the lake, the remains of a massive conifer--with a four meter trunk--remained, having fallen over, bridging the gap.