Aeon Campaign S2E9 – Trust and Betrayal

Setup

We’d led Singleton on a chase, trying to pull him away from populated areas. We successfully did this, and wound up with two to four supers, Singleton, and ten special forces types scattered through an empty park.

Midas is made of solid gold. Onyx is made of, yeah. Tornado we’ve seen before, and Katana is probably pretty accurately named.

We spend some time setting up the arena, because we had the opportunity to prep it first. So Zephyr makes the first move, leaping the wall and then trying, as we worked out, to take down the 10 special forces guys. He crits on his jump roll, and can make 31 yards (!) of broad jump, and attacks two troopers as he flies by. This is the Thundercats, Ho! opening, and he follows that with attacks on two more. We note that this means since he’s a speedster with a staff, he’s Cheetara. Meow. He takes out two of four, which is a good start.

Rosencrantz hops the wall, puts a knife into one guy, and a bullet in the head of another. Tough crowd. 

The Commander and Yukio work their way stealthily but quickly around the north wall, and Yukio, who’s faster, takes up position on the west wall, ready to bit some serious specops butt.

Suddenly, the ground around The Rat Queen turns into quicksand. Zephyr gets attacked by a lightning strike out of a clear sky. Miss.

Arc Light flies up and hits Katana with a stun grenade, or tries to. Katana instantly teleports next to Arc Light! Drat. That’s a tough one . . . some variant of Warp or Blink. Teleportation makes him a good opponent for Eamon. But . . . Midas did get stunned during the explosion, so that’s a big win.

Singleton takes a Wait. The Rat Queen is in an area bind, and stays that way. “Help me! Help me! I can only rat paddle!”

One of the specops is trying to shoot at Zephyr, but Z-man was planning on this, and has let one guy to shoot the other. “My bad, bro!” and another discount merc goes down as he walks fire into his friend. Oops. 

That’s five down of ten, so far. Eamon’s turn, he advances from cover to cover, using stealth.

Katana, Mr/Mrs. Blinky-McBlinkypants, crits Arc Light in the back with some sort of phasing sword, and it goes right through his suit like it’s not there. He also blinks nearly 30yds to appear behind Zephyr, and attempt to stab him as well. That one is detected, and a megadodge later, he makes it by 6 and gets out of the way. Katana then teleports away again.

Zephyr zigs and zags, and attacks one more, cracking him across the face with his staff, after feinting and succeeding by 10. We joke that he opened his helmet saying ‘what did someone say’ and he gets whumped and taken down. Our lethal octogenarian takes out one more

The Commander zips in, knocks one guy sprawling, and rolls a 3 on Stealth, disappearing into cover again (he made a roll at -10 by 14 . . .). Yukio runs up and starts savaging another non-super, taking him out, and then proceeds to gnaw on a second, but that one survives.

Onyx hits Yukio with a quicksand-bind, which doesn’t prevent him from nixing the guard he was working on, and then Rosencrantz gets hit with a bombard attack from a lightning bolt, as does Arc Light, the Commander, and Yukio. Area effects don’t care if you’re hiding. Yukio’s unconscious. The Commander takes 6 points through DR after failing to dodge (he doesn’t retreat so he doesn’t give himself away). 

Arc Light absorbs the attack and recharges his battery, a total Iron Man/Thor moment. He dumps all that power into a stunning blast targeting the three heroes on the center of the monument. Onyx raises a wall of stone in defense, and so triple damage blast meets wall of stone. He rolls 30-freakin-d6, and hits for 108 points of damage. The electrical charge busts through the wall she threw up, hits her, and goes through her defenses. She’s still up, but she did get tagged, and their comms are messed up due to the surge effect.

Midas recovers from stun. The Rat Queen decides to pay Midas a visit. She throws stuff at Midas, he catches it, it turns to gold, then turns to gold dust. Midas says “Oh, my. You are so large . . . I cannot wait to get my hands on you.”

“Have you seen the balls on rats? I have been hit on my much creepier people than you,” replies The Rat Queen.

Eamon is now in range, and “down” for the people on the platform becomes the northwest pillar. So gravity pulls them sideways, they re-enact Smooth Criminal, and they manage to reorient themselves mid-air. 

Katana appears behind Eamon, whose gravity sense tingles (he crits on his Per roll) and he gets to dodge the attack with a feverish dodge. Zephyr has been running at Speed 96, so technically has a 9-10 yard step, so he rushes in and does a sacrificial parry with an electrical shock-staff. The sword goes right through the metal staff. Alas. Eamon gets slashed three or four times. Eamon spends karma like a fiend, turning the wounds into flesh wounds, and Katana teleports out again.

So all the normals are down (Yukio’s last got bound in the quicksand, so is out of the fight), but so is Yukio, the Dog of War.

Zephyr runs up to the three on the platform, and since their down is different than Zephyr’s, technically his blows count as overhead attacks. He Feints, makes that by 12, and imparts, one way or another, something like -12 to Tornado’s defenses. He hits, does 19 damage, but is still up. Zephyr repeats that pattern, but crits on the strike, does 21 damage, and also we have two electro-zaps, which technically would power him up, but Tornado goes KO.

Rosencrantz throws a microgrenade at Midas, hits dead on, and at least distracts them.

The Commander runs up, and attacks Onyx and Singleton each once. The attack on Onyx fails, but Singleton gets hit with a (pulled) 4d crushing attack and 5d6 double knockback. He’s conscious but screaming, effectively stunned.

Onyx grabs Singleton, and uses a rock-assisted jump to leap to the other side, starting what looks like (maybe) a retreat.

Arc Light hits Onyx/Singleton with a tangler, but is power-parried by a slab of earth. 

Midas launches himself at The Rat Queen (bad touch bad touch!), and turns the Rat Queen to gold! But he does get trapped in The Rat Queen’s grip, at least momentarily.

Eamon steps into a Wait, waiting for Katana to show up, whereupon he will gravity slam the entire area, excluding folks he knows are there that are good guys, pulling a Dodge This. Katana appears directly behind Eamon, triggering his Wait . . . but Katana warps out, blinking back into reality above Eamon – falling down on him cutting multiple times. Eamon retreats, but gets tagged anyway, taking 11 HP, for a major wound. Eamon, naturally, crits on his ‘avoid major wound’ roll. 

But Katana does not blink away, giving Zephyr a target. A few unsuccessful feints (Katana is very skilled) later, and another run-around attack later, and nothing lands. 

Rosencrantz throws all of his grenades at Midas. He’s out.

The Commander tries recon-by-fire at Katana, using his conventional rifle, and hits three times, but Katana parries the bullets into my friends. Eamon deflects or otherwise avoids the damage, and Zephyr dodges. So bullets are not good. My area effect explosives might be the better plan, and if I can get close I can try an area effect kinetic blast.

Onyx patches up Singleton using an advanced medpack of some sort.

Arc Light attacks Onyx, who’s damaged. Singleton changes position and gets up.

Eamon stunts his AoE to cover 11yds straight up as well, and tries to bring the hammer down on Katana again.

Katana triggers a cascating wait, takes a hack at The Commander (who dodges out of the way), and continues on to Singleton. Eamon takes his turn, and still goes for the stunt. Eamon blows 5 fatigue points for a 16-, and makes up for all that critting by rolling a 17, forcing him to blow his last Karma point to change that to a success. His roll for the physics roll is, naturally, a Crit as well. He steps to keep her in range, and brings the hammer down on all of them, and Katana doesn’t get a defense.

Katana gets hit with a 32-point crushing damage, and her helmet goes flying off. Her armor glows with the hit, and strikes back hard with some sort of enchantment or power at Eamon, taking 20 HP direct to injury. He makes his HT roll exactly, but he’s seriously injured, and struggling to maintain consciousness.

Katana has bright red hair, and an asiatic look to her features. Her eyes narrow in anger. and Eamon, focused as he is on staying upright, is nonplussed. She calls her helmet back to herself, puts it on, and disappears.

Zephyr runs around the back side of Singleton, does an elbow strike to Singleton’s head, while facing away to draw Katana’s attention, with intent to hundred-hand-punch her in the face a lot. His elbow strike does 5 damage, enough to trigger a KO roll, which he fails.

The Commander steps and Waits, assuming katana will appear close to Eamon or himself, with the intent to hit her with a kinetic burst if she does.

Onyx looks down at Singleton in disgust, and says “that’s it. I’m done. I’m simply not getting paid enough for this.”

Arc Light asks how much she’s getting paid. 1.5 million. Arc Light offers $2M, if she’ll attack Katana. She won’t attack her sister. Oh, we didn’t know that. They want to leave the field. We’re inclined to agree.

Onyx speaks accented Okinawan, which the Commander can understand. She discontinues the quicksand effects, and we allow it – Arc Light offers to hire them both. They start speaking in “twin,” and accept the deal.

We’re making the world a better place one payoff at a time.

The Commander goes over to Physician my dog. Because I’ve known Yukio longer than Eamon, sorry. I roll Physician on both Yukio and Eamon, restoring 4 HP to Yukio and 5 HP to Eamon, which helps.

Katana comes over to Eamon and asks in Okinawan if she can help him; The Commander translates, Eamon agrees, and she mutters something that can only be an enchantment, crits, and restores him to full HP.

She requests to help Yukio as well, Owari agrees, Yukio looks at me like “didn’t we just try and kill her?” but rolls over and lets her both heal him (yet another crit) and rub his belly.

The Commander will regenerate, but he wants to be treated by the incredibly attractive red-headed warrior woman too. She tells Owari that he leads with his left shoulder a bit. He is happy to be trained by him.

The Rat Queen is slowly regenerating back to normal, and Midas is regenerating, but still KO’d.

OK, so Singleton gets arrested a lot, and the Kestrel drones got a ton of video, and we decide that as little as Singleton did in the fight, we’re going to charge him with conspiracy to get punched in his own face. We figure Eamon can make it stick.

But ultimately we find out that Onyx and Katana are positively livid at being used by Singleton, so although we did buy them off for a couple million bucks, they were not thrilled and are potentially allies, even. 

Singleton winds up in Rikers, and Blue Skies actually spends resources to ensure he stays there and accelerates the trial.

So, final tally:

Singleton: jail.

Midal: jail.

Tornado: jail.

Onyx and Katana: employed, maybe on our side, and The Commander is going to spend points to buy Katana as an “ally.” Heh. Long cruise, eh sailor?

SpecOps guys: 2 dead by Rosencrantz, 8 KO’d but alive.

We end there. 

After hours, so to speak, Zephyr manages to spend the right number of character points and with Katana’s help, separates himself from the magical dagger.

The Commander spends some points to raise his Broadsword skill (specialization of Katana), and gets a boost because of his ridiculously good teachers. Auric Rosencrantz, the WW2 vet, named The Reaper, has DX+12 in four different wild card skills. This guy is the ultimate teacher and fighter.