Thursday 4 September 2014

Iron Kingdoms: Only Fools Rush Out - Episode 2


The group gathered up in the Charter house to recover and get a bit of crafting done, a new player had joined the battle, a very very oily dwarf mechanic... which i also have forgotten the name of.

After some investigation in the town (do not remember this part), they have gotten several clues, linked to the package, and to personal quests, like the Gunmage's sister who was a spy for the Khadorans, and Blaze's brother being kidnapped by bandits.

So the group had a few leads, and the one they choosed to follow was hint of a rider, riding towards Fort Ryker, so they rented some horses (except the dwarf who rode on the back of his steamjack).

The trip was mostly uneventful as they had avoided the areas that the bandits regularly attacked and it was mostly military who patrolled this road, so they reached the fort. but instead of entering it, they traveled to a nearby village, where the dwarf outdrank a few mercenaries and learned that the fort was held by some mercenary group that recruited just about anyone, while the gunmage seduced a farmer's wife after learning that the daughter was too young for him.

After figuring out that  they should try to pose as mercenaries, they made their way to the fort and convinced the guards to let them in, but they were warned that when they got inside, they were not allowed to leave (at this point it should be mentioned that the dwarf stayed at the farm to outdrink mercs).

Inside, the group saw that a khadoran army was assembling, most likely to attack corvis... shit, they needed to do something but they could not leave. So far they had a good cover, so by using it for what its worth, they could gather proof and try to find an escape.

After a bit of exploring, they headded into the main fort, found a sideroom and discussed their tactics, they were interupted by a patrol, but managed to come up with a plausible explanation and the patrol went on his way.

Not being granted access to the floors above, they attempted to make their way down into the basement, maybe there was some sort of exit there.

A guard was keeping watch, and behind him was some sort of magical barrier, the PCs said that they had an appointment and was let through. The guard waved a item of sorts and the barrian faded, the PCs passed through and the barrier automaticly recovered.

Downstairs, a battle was sure to start, so they prepared everything they got and peeked around a corner. There they saw a Bloated Thrall with a cannon, along with a thamarite of sorts. Why was this cryxian thamarite working with the khadorans? They did not get the answer to that before Blaze managed to make his presence known.

So a fight started, there was 4 mecha-thralls, 1 bloated thrall, and 1 thamarite, at first the PCs did so much burst damage that I was worried that the PCs would finish the fight in the second round. But when the thamarite cast a powerful AOE spell and the bloated thrall fired his AOE cannon, most of the PCs were down to almost 0 vitality.

To make sure that the enemy did not get to use their AOE, they ran into melee with the enemies, even the ranged PCs, but the weak Mecha-thralls intercepted them, making it hard to reach the bloat and the thamarite, further causing a lot of trouble.

During the fight, Blaze got his rapier eroded by acid from within the bloat and got smashed to the ground, the others got him back up again but he kept going down each round. by the end, there was only 3 players left, the thamarite and the bloat. The thamarite used his aoe, knocked all the players down, and destroyed the bloat by friendlyfire. Then he walked around and taking out the PCs with his staff.

Instead of doing a TPK, The group was imprisoned and robbed of all their gear, including the Package.

The group never learned what happened to the package so I can spoil it here, the thamarite was also a mechanic and he had been building a helljack in secret, this cortex was different than regular ones, it made the Helljack more sophisticated, while not being able to communicate, it would be able to analyse tactics and make its own plans. It was impossible to be bonded with a warcaster however, so while it could give itself orders, it would not benefit from the abilities of 'jack marshals or warcasters.

Next up; the PCs try to escape:

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