Deadliest Catch: Human Slaves Edition

In the final session of Rifts, for what might be a very long time because we've complicated things for the GM now, our best laid plans involved using a warlock to create a distraction. He unleashed a water elemental that would turn the town of Moreno into a lake. A lot of people, including the vampires' human slaves that we wanted to save. Gorbash managed to save a handful, and took them to safety, but not without a body count because he had to do it very quickly, in a kind of trawler manner.

But we got the people we were sent there to save, so that's good? Mission accomplished? There were a number of vampires in storage somewhere else and they appear to not be there any more, but that's not going to be a problem, right? No, let's head back home to Blackstone Juggernauts HQ and get ready for our next adventure, I'm sure it'll be fine.

We're going to Chicken Pizza!

So, ahem, I think I may have been slightly distracted here, because my notes literally say "we do a robbery?" (someone died, and we feel bad about it ... I think) and then mentions something about a pig truck and aligning with a good goddess whose name I can't remember. The interesting thing to note here is that Hecate was willing to let go of Booker, provided he do her a favour (it was finding someone and/or killing them?) and in turn he got to swear fealty to this new goddess that we had just helped.

Maria was happy to receive swords from Gorbash. He treats his professional girlfriend quite well, it seems! The second session I didn't make memory notes for, so ... someone who is not me might have a functioning memory in order to recall what we were actually doing.

Questions find answers

We went into an Aztec pyramid, where killed vampires and were very nearly killed in the process. At least Booker and Jayson were, had they not been pals with a dragon that turned their SDC armour into MDC armour. It was a tough fight, but we killed the vampires, removed some pillars and escaped with the target we were there to rescue. Yay us!

Does she need all her limbs?

Now armed with another PC in the party - yay! - we seemed to spend a heck of a long time trying to come up with a plan to maybe blow some stuff up and get an imprisoned god (?) from the ruins, and then that was decided against or something. It all got very jumbled up by the end of it that I lost track completely, and let's just say we're going to spend next session battling it out. Possibly in a Leeeeeeroy Jenkins style, because the Juicer might get bored with all the planning.

The horde was in storage at the time

We have another player joining us for Rifts, taking over the role of the (now former) Juicer NPC Maria "Speedy" Gonzales. This session was mostly to get a feel for how the party have been running the character.

So, in order to impress our new player we all rolled exceedingly poorly, but somehow still managed to take down the group of vampires we managed to antagonise last week.

On the plus side, we're now definitely in Mexico, but the tequila hasn't yet started flowing.

We found vampires using mech suits, though, so that was kind of ... a thing.

Can we put this moat on our expenses?

We continue our journey toward Mexico, the land where there are absolutely no vampires whatsoever. Except we found a bunch on the way, like a whole storage warehouse full of coffins. There were talks of constructing a moat and filling it with water, and ... yeah.

There were fewer coffins by the end of it. And then the vampires found us.

Exorcising the brain fart from hell

Lockdown adventures in post-apocalyptic USA somewhere *motions vaguely to the west* continues. We're heading toward Mexico, as it happens, where the tequila flows freely - we presume. There are no vampires in Mexico, honest guv'na.

Except the ones we keep on finding.

(The sessions 22^nd and 29^th were cancelled. People still get ill in lockdown, even if it's thankfully not Covid-19 ill.)

Arriba!

Can we blame Canada if there's a devildemon incursion?

Sooooo the current situation is that we're now working from home and are doing our two weekly games (currently Rifts and Godbound) over Discord. The current situation, and self-isolating for a couple of weeks due to cold symptoms, are not particularly conducive to good mental health - even for hardcore introverts like me - so I've had real problems concentrating recently. And my concentration isn't the greatest at the best of times. I'm trying to work on it, but it's difficult. We're staying home and we're staying safe, that's the main thing.

That being said, this post is a combination of three sessions, so ... yeah. One of the sessions was mainly battling with a dragon, so we didn't say a lot anyway because we were busy with dice rolls. But ... yeah. Yeah.

I need more than a Venn diagram

Gorbash went to speak to Ixchal, and managed to encounter an adult evil dragon calling himself Roka. He was clearly looking for something, such as the feathered serpent which Booker let slide to someone he shouldn't have. Apparently they're rare and super magical or something like that.

"Show me yours, I'll show you mine", Roka [insert lineage blurb here] said to Gorbash, who complied. Ixchal was less willing. Especially when the other dragon the first one rode into town with also turned out to be Splugorth-aligned. We really hate those guys.

Someone's also trying to get to Booker's head to get the information about the feathered serpent, so he's currently renting a place in downtown Stormspire, as if someone does something there, there will be hell to pay.

Warlord Doom is a stupid name

So, how do you follow up the massive feat that is hitting the Emperor of Coalition States with the Orb of Solomon? By finding out that the Cyber-knights are aware of a Situation developing up in Calgary in Canada. They're digging a massive hole in the ground and there are a lot of demons-or-devils involved and did I mention it's like a 3-mile wide hole in the ground? They're gearing up for battle, and a massive supernatural creature war taking place on Earth is not ideal.

I think we may have gone into Psyscape and had a chat with people there as well, I'm not sure. (I haven't actually written any notes at all in the margin here. Hrm.)

Time for some thrilling heroics

Booker (or technically Barnabus Dayson - have I mentioned he had a make-over and a name change?), pretending to be Sergeant Anderson, got picked up by Coalition States troups and brought into Lone Star. Meanwhile, Jayson and Gorbash hid a bit away from there, waiting for The Signal.

While he didn't manage to get an audience with the Emperor, undercover Booker did manage to get close enough to lob the Orb of Solomon at him. It grew in size and out popped the naked lady. She was quickly shot to pieces and as things were kicking off, Booker got out of there.

Eventually finding his way to lab and shown the way by monkeys who showed him the way out - or at least the way to the rats.

The Signal was signalled, as it were, and Gorbash turned himself and Jayson invisible and flew in. Who'd have thought his Dance skill finally came into good use, dodging through the air? The duo reunited with Booker and a magic portal was opened to a bit further away, everyone got out just in time for the Coalition States to set off 16 missiles on where we had just been!

And then we flew a bit further away, but as we hadn't teleported away we managed to get away alive. And it does seem like the Orb of Solomon was successfully delivered to the Emperor. Question is how he's going to use it.

The Emperor ... selectively inhibits serotonin re-uptake?

We parted ways for a bit in order for Gorbash to go back to Blackstone Juggernauts and give John a heads up about the trade agreement Booker had negotiated with the murdery alien dudes. They had hardly finished talking when the guy showed up. That was surprisingly quick!

Booker and Jayson went to see a battle, and then went back to wait for Gorbash at a hotel in Roswell, where the group had decided to hang out.

We later went back to one of the battlegrounds to salvage whatever could be salvaged, and set Booker up as a one of them, by changing an ID of someone who was the closest match we could find. Unfortunately, it was done by Gorbash and all humans look pretty much the same to him ... He did finally get to use his Singing skill, though!

The plan being that Booker, disguised as lone survivor Nathan Anderson, would go into Coalition States and gain access to the Emperor by being the sole survivour of a terrible battle. Because surely the Emperor would want to pat him on the back for that?

Just like the French

It has been a while since we did this (don't believe the posting date, it's a month later) and my notes are a bit scant, so it's anyone's guess what we did at this point.

Something about an adult dragon being a dick, teleporting 5m up into the air, almost forgetting Booker, Jayson on the ground, and "Shemarrians here?!"

For the second session, we went to Roswell and looked at Naruni weapons and the Coalition States came to blows with the Shemarrians and Splugorth.

This is the way to Amarillo

First session after our holiday break, and during our break stuff happened over the internet. Booker went to Dweomer to find out stuff about a weapon, Gorbash and Jayson went to Psyscape to ... also find out stuff. Stuff was found out.

Booker also managed to marry his girlfriend Joan the Cyber-knight, and when we all finally met up at Blackstone Juggernauts HQ again, Booker had plastic surgery to change his face to be less recognisable and also he's now using the name Barnabas Dayeson. I might not be spelling that correctly.

Is Archie short for Arch Enemy?

In the aftermath of taking down big-ass flying battlestation we came across an android calling itself A-51, proclaiming to work for some guy called Archie, who seems shifty - but then apparently he has a whole book about him or something. A-51 said something in a foreign language, Gorbash translated by the cunning use of magic, and she bolted.

Found out later she was still following us, and may or may not have liked to hear Gorbash speaking Splugorth? We don't know. And she basically exploded in our faces.

We went back home, getting armours fixed, having the remnants of the robot examined, talking to Ixchal, trying to get Jayson a pay rise without telling him (because being all noble and "I couldn't possibly, won't someone think of the starving children in Tolkeen" or something), and oh, apparently now Splugorth wants Booker's head. Again. But for a more serious 40 million credits this time.

My Jetpack skill is called Gorbash

Once inside the bridge (or one of the bridges, at any rate) of the flying fortress thing - not to be confused with the Boeing B-17 bomber, which is considerably smaller - we had to set the charges ... or rather, we had to work on opening the doors, setting the fuse (or whatever), chucking the bombs and getting the hell out of there.

We had seven tries before they'd blow up in our face. We got the door open on the sixth.

After that we just had to try and find our way to the outside, somehow, and then literally jump ship. Thankfully we're friends with a dragon, so some thrilling aerobatics later and we were safely on the ground, having severely incapacitated a big-ass flying fortress. With the cunning use of a vengeful dragon and some dragon friends and an air elemental. We have the best of friends, clearly!

From Splugorth with love

We got inside the flying fortress, somehow, and tried working the computer terminals to figure out where in this massive construction we were supposed to be headed in order to place the bombs ... and then we struggled a little to actually open the doors to where we were going.

We did decide that we were basically season four of Babylon 5, the plan being to have a big finale of the series, trying to cram everything in ... and then we find out last minute we got renewed after all and so then have to make up season five. Well, that's provided we actually survive this thing, because let's face it, the odds are not in our favour here.

This looks like a job for fusion blocks!

Sooo ... Gorbash went and had a chat with one of his dragon friends, and now we're apparently supposed to go on some kind of suicide mission because attacking a flying fortress - the Death Star, basically - is somehow a reasonable thing to do???

Captured by a wine storm

It's been a long time, but we're now back in Rifts for a while. We took care of some rescues and went back to Magestar ... by way of a ley line storm. The water turned into wine, and as a plot twist, the wine had healing properties. Surprise! Our armours were getting fixed, Booker reunited with his Cyber-knight girlfriend Joan, and after seeking the advice of a wizard, had Bally/Barry/the symbiote removed from him by Gorbash. The Chosen One is now a bit more squishy than before, especially as we gave away the protective medal to those White Rose people as a token of good faith.

Sneezing fire majestically

In this instalment, we fought a big-ass golem, and encountered a High Magus called Armand. There were fusion blocks involved, and we got out alive. That's about all I can remember, bearing in mind this happened over a month ago now and only a couple of days after my dad suddenly passed away, so I may not have been in the best frame of mind to remember these kind of things. :( It's also why there are few quotes, but I think that's also partly down to us mainly fighting through a dungeon, which generally means there's more dice-rolling than quipping.

If you've wondered why the blog's been quiet for a while, it's because we had no sessions for a month, due to people being unavailable for a variety of reasons. We're back now, though, so here's the last bit of Rifts for [insert time period here].