Cinder Bin - Session 2

Cast

Ryan, our GM / Storyteller / Referee, what-have-you

Julian, playing Deadeye Duncan

Myself, playing Eli Tabasco

Willie, playing Gorman Sterling

Olegard's Expedition

Deadeye Duncan, Icon Sharpshooter

Eli Tabasco, Paranormal Investigator Mystic

Gorman Sterling, Outlaw Operative
Sunday and Rue, scavenger sisters

Kess, a young mechanic

Session Two

We trundle on down the hill. Everything looks great. There’s some damage where the… what’s it called? Wing? Flipper? Where the flipper hit a rock or somethin’, but the main body of the aircraft is fully intact. It’s a beautiful dark metal, the sort of thing that could hold up the world if you built a pillar out of it and made it big enough.

Eli’s horse skitters as he banks down the slope, and he takes a light tumble. Everyone else gets to the plane without incident and starts searchin’ for a way inside.

Deadeye—I wanna go in! I wanna go in right now!

Gorman—There’s a smarter way to go about this.

Sunday—I don’t know about a trap, but there was a wicked power surge from some older tech we had a while back. I’m into caution. Let’s wander around the outside and see if we can’t find something that says Emergency in Standard, yeah?

We search, and we find something close-enough. A hatch! After mucking around with it some, Sunday discovers a six-inch long tube mechanism that telescopes out to a solid 24 inches. We start using it to ratchet open the back gate, and we’re successful! The hatch opens up!

A pair of giant goddamn arachnids, pissed off about being woken up and hellbent on some murder-therapy, come pouring out of the open hatch. Shit!

The bigger spider hops out and gores Duncan for 9. Sunday does some damage back with her sword, and Deadeye gets a hit for 6, but these things are angry tanks with legs. And they spit acid. Deadeye drops to 2 incredibly quickly, and he’s standing on familiar ground once more. The dice gods smile – the spider rolls a 1, and misses Deadeye! Deadeye responds by hitting it for 7, killing it! And then it explodes! Fuck!

Deadeye goes down, nearly dead. Gorman goes with him. Eli runs over to Gorman and tries to stabilize him. This whole time, Eli’s been trying to life rocks with his mind and hurl them at the spiders. Impressively, he’s actually lifted a few rocks. Unimpressively, they’ve had no impact whatsoever.

Gorman’s down but not quite out. He pulls out a pistol and fires, singing a spider. Deadeye, barely conscious, speaks up:

Deadeye—You have a gun??

Gorman—Yeah! I’ve had a gun this whole time!!

Sunday steps in and wails on the little spider good, and it dies. Woof. What a fight.

Eli uses his knack to get Deadeye up and moving again. The knack’s also telling him there’s neutron flux radiation coming from nearby, and once Duncan and Gorman are tended to, he pays that last fact some attention. It’s coming from something that’s tucked beneath a flipper on the inside of the plane. Eli ventures inside the fuselage to check it out, and discovers that it’s coming from behind a panel. We decide to loot everything else first before tampering with it.

Three corpses inside the plane. Skeletonized, long-dead, but still wearing stuff. Lockers. Locked. We drag the corpses outside. There’s another layer of the plane above us; Deadeye is the first to explore it. Two more bodies. Inside the lockers, Rue finds laser rifles. Hot damn!

Deadeye searches the bodies of the pilots. Both have a pistol with a power pack, survival knives, and one has a medallion.

Gorman hits a panel, and the lights come on. It freaks out Eli and Sunday. A figure about a foot and a half tall appears in front of him, made out of light. A voice speaks up:

Voice—Would you like a tutorial on the features of this S3XC Aircraft?

Gorman—Unlock all doors.

Voice—Negative.
Gorman—Ok. I’d like a tutorial.

Voice—Please observe.

Gorman—[While observing the tutorial] Holy smokes, this plane can fly in atmosphere and in space?

Eli joins Gorman and an old piece of tech – an heirloom, really – that he carries on his person suddenly whirs and chirps and beeps, and this voice becomes a hologram, and this hologram has a name: Haley. She calls Eli ‘skipper’ and starts telling him facts at a breakneck pace.

This ship is called Lucky 13. It’s a shrike. Drop aircraft. Had a pilot, copilot, engineer, minus the engineer, and three marines aboard when it went down. Problem with the orange. The nanoswarm is everywhere on this planet. Very odd.

The others loot some neat stuff. Carbon skin armor. Graphite. Ooo. Deadeye equips it. Haley says we’ve got company approaching fast from the Southeast. Uh oh.

Sunday takes a cool sword

2 Corona Laser Rifles

1 Apellion Laser Rifle, which Duncan takes

5 Corona Pistols, which we split amongst the group

2 Graphite Carbon Skins, one being put on quickly by Deadeye

Long Rifle w/Optical Scope [Shirren Elite, Sniper Weapon] that Gorman grabs

Sonic Weapon [Street Sweeper Thunderstrike]

Jacob and his crew show up and demand our total surrender. Gorman fires a shot at one of ‘em, wingin’ ‘em, and Jacob directs his crew to take cover. Then he renegotiates. He offers us a third. We counter-offer with a hundred percent.

Gorman—Deadeye and I are freaks of nature. I give you a twenty five percent chance of beating us, tops. Subtract that from a third, and you’ve got like eight percent…

Haley tells us fifty more people are approaching fast, from the north. Cloaks and hammers. Simplification. We need to buy some time. Gorman, informed of this, switches tactics and tries to offer Jacob the whole plane, and the team starts crowding inside of it.

Jacob—You rigged it to blow or something.

Deadeye—I don’t think I know how to do that!

Kess pops open the windowglass, once we’re all in. A crowd of Simplification descends from the Cliffside, and they start having words with Jacob. Mean words. It’s all happening so fast; the Simplification thinks Jacob’s crew is all outside. They don’t know we’re in here, and Jacob hasn’t spilled the beans yet.

Deadeye takes a sniper shot and rolls 15 against the Simplification dude who looks like the leader. Miss.

Gorman snipes at the man in black. 12. Another miss. The Simplification guys charge at Jacob’s people.

Kess whisper-shouts that the glass is open, and reminds us to all slip out the front. Gorman is great at this sort of thing – he rolls a 31. Duncan and Eli each roll 3s, and the plan is scuttled before it begins.

Duncan won’t stop talking. He’s upset that we’re leaving this whole thing behind us, and doesn’t want to see it all blown up. Eli’s finally had enough and snaps.

Eli—Duncan, shut the hell up!

Sunday—Why?! WHY!? Just run!

Out on the desert floor, while the Simplification and Jacob’s crew are firefighting and Olegard’s expedition is running for their lives, Eli gives Haley the go-ahead to make that neutron flux fusion core explode. She does. And then she reports:

Haley—We have a weapons pattern searching for us. Attempting to jam.

Eli—Haley, don’t attempt to jam. Go quiet. Quiet as you can. Don’t broadcast a thing. This whole place is gonna burn!

The world shakes. The fusion reactor goes critical after it’s smacked by dragon’s fire. It’s bad. It’s big, bright, and white hot fire reaches up high into the sky. It’s the strongest explosion anyone’s ever felt. Nothing is left. There must be a crater in the ground a hundred feet deep.

Rue—Oh boy. Oh boy. That was a thing.

Deadeye—It’s a good thing I decided we should leave.

Rue—Yeah. Good thing.

Kess stops running first, he’s panting and exhausted.

Deadeye—That’s fifty-seven to one.

Sunday—I mean, wouldn’t it be one to fifty seven? Win-loss ratio?

Gorman—It’s a loss-win ratio. Easier for him to keep track.

Fifty-odd Simplification dudes are dead, and all of Jacob’s crew is toast. Along with our horses, and the shrike, and the biggest load of credits any of us have ever seen. Despite the loss and the narrow escape, an enormous smile appears on Deadeye’s face.

Deadeye—Guess who just became the third best fighter in town?

GROUP LOOT

2 corona laser rifles [group loot]

Apellion laser rifle [Duncan]

Sniper rifle [Gorman]

Street Sweeper [group loot]

5 corona pistols [Duncan has two, Eli grabbed one]

2 usable carbon-graphite skins [Duncan, Eli]

2 survival knives

Haley [Eli]

Type 3 power packs [boom, these exploded with the shrike]

Chainsword [Sunday]

SIMPLIFICATION COLORS

Yellow – Low ranking, maybe an initiate or a novice?

Red –Higher ranking than yellow. Carries an enormous sledgehammer.

Black –Higher ranking than red. Unarmed?