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Rifts: Terror on the Dark Frontier: Sessions 19 through 22

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PCs

  • Anthony "Loco" Diaz (SAMAS pilot) - A street rat captured and raised by the Coalition, now in his late 20s, and a fugitive SAMAS pilot from CS El Dorado, wanted for stealing his SAMAS suit, Stella, along with some other things.  He fled north towards Castle Refuge, and joined with Shan, Layla, Faith, and Midnight.
  • Layla Lacoi (DB Mystic) - A tall dimensional mystic being with a bit of a catfish face.  Her gentle demeanor belies how powerful she is.
  • Midnight (Psi-stalker variant) - A dark and mysterious stranger, riding a strange horse.  He seems to have influence over lightning, and is a man who lives off the land.  
  • Faith Macavoy (covert Psi-ghost) - A non-descript vagabond woman, who seems to be quite capable and full of supplies.  
  • Shan Medsans (Cyber-doc, I think) - A hardcore cyberdoc apparently from a long line of traveling healers, renowned enough to know Erin Tarn personally.  Her clinic is in an upgraded Mountaineer ATV, traveling around to help those in need.  She has helped Tony, both healing him and repairing his SAMAS.  He has, in return taken to staying with her, and guarding her.  Her nephew is its dedicated driver, although Shan can also drive.
  • Jordan Moore (Crazy and an actor) - He can't handle being bored, and likes to shoot things. 

NPCs 

  • Paruuku Quahadi is the woman whose uncle is the tribal administrator for the Comanche, whom we rescued from the worm wraiths.
  • Ardyn Uller is the man who was with her when we  rescued them from the worm wraiths. 
  • Old Owl is  Paruuku's uncle and a member of  the Comanche council.
  • Scott Bernard is a soldier and pilot with a mission to kick the alien Invid off of his Earth.
  • Lancer is a military intelligence expert.
  • Annie LaBelle is a teenager who has been fighting with the local resistance since before she was a teen. 
  • Lunk is a very large man and a Protoculture and conventional maintenance engineer.
  • Marlene Rush, a.k.a. Ariel is a human-form Invid who has devoted herself to helping the human resistance. 
  • Samwise Kent is a six-foot-something Golden Retriever dog boy operating out of Fort Comanche.  

 Vehicles

  • Tanky McTank Face: A giant all terrain vehicle with a medical bay, crew quarters, and an engineering bay designed to hold a SAMAS inside.
  • Stella: An early model Coalition manufactured SAMAS with a modification to install vibroclaws.
  •  unnamed: Lancer's Cyclone, which Tony rode back through the rift back to his home Earth.

Session 19

Our Tomorrow Legion squad comes through the rift, and the rift energy here seems to be pink.  The effects are dramatic:  The two Altara warrior women nearest us were just dead, and the Splugorth barge that came through as well, along with the non-biological parts of the its Splugorth occupant.

Tony's SAMAS, Stella, was further damaged going through the warp.  He barely managed to get her down on the ground without more damage, but she's now out of the fight.  Lancer, in the blue jet, transforms it into a robot, then lets out a flurry of mini-missiles, which take out the nearby Invid.  He then flew off to draw away any nearby Invid.

Scott lead us to a river, driving on his transforming motorcycle for a few hours, until we got to a river, where we stopped to wash Tanky's tires, and then guided us through terrain past Invid patrols.  While we were cleaning the tires off, Tony noticed that Scott's armor has seen a lot of wear and tear, and more importantly, that it looks like the same model of armor that Tony had scavenged back in our world. Scott noticed Tony's armor, who was wearing his fancy armor since Stella was wrecked.

Scott didn't seem at all fazed by Layla or Midnight, despite them not looking exactly human.

Once the tires were washed, we continued onwards. In the distance, Midnight saw a strange dome structure.  About a half-hour from clearing the zone, Tony spotted a patrol just as Tanky got stuck.  We sat tight, and they just passed us by.

At the edge of the danger zone, with Scott in the lead, we got attacked by two shock troppers and three armored scouts.  It looked like Scott was caught in an explosion of flak, with the explosive impacts causing an enormous debris cloud where he had been at.  We shot down two of the scouts, and then saw Scott jumping out of the explosion in battloid form, popping off the shock troopers with well-placed mini-missiles.  Tony comes to the conclusion that these mini-missiles guidance systems are far better than those of the Coalition.

Session 20

We get to a base hidden under a thick forest canopy.  It's clear from the state of things that this position has been set up for a few years and seen significant use.  We meet Lunk, a very large human who is working on a vehicle, Annie, a feisty young twenty-something, and Marlene, apparently Scott's better half.

Layla and Midnight are clearly not feeling well here, and Marlene has a discussion with them and Faith about how they don't belong here, and they'll probably die in a few days.   Then Marlene and Scott discuss with all of us what we'll need to get out.  The plan they settle on is to infiltrate the nearby Evolution Pit Hive and blow up the Protoculture reactor with Scott's last remaining reflex warhead.  Tony knows he doesn't understand the technical details, but he gets the tactical gist of it.

Lunk gives Tony a motorcycle similar to Scott's, but with disks over the front wheel instead of the mini-missile launchers of Scott's motorcycle.  He tells him that these Cyclones are quite maneuverable, but that he should try to keep it in motorcycle mode, because the Invid can track Protoculture when it is used.

 With that, Scott's crew packs the last of their gear, and they head out to a more secure hideaway.

They wander through some ravines, and get to a cave complex.  As they enter, Tony gets his first good look at Lancer, the pilot of the blue transforming Alpha fighter they had seen earlier.  He's lowering some sort of large shoulder mounted gun when he recognizes Scott and the rest of his crew coming in with us.  Scott introduces him to our Tomorrow Legion squad.  

Scott, Marlene, and Lancer plan for a few hours, explaining their concerns to us, quite friendly since Shan has shared our coffee with them.  Marlene mentions that Marlow, Shan's cousin, is a robot.

Then their crew gets together and reminisces about old times, and we give them some space. 

The next morning, we head out and travel to an entrance to the Evolution Pit Marlene and Scott had previously found.   We prowl through the pit, in as much as it's possible for something as large as Tanky to prowl.  Marlene skulks ahead to confront her relatives, while we get closer to the hive's Protoculture reactor.

Marlene meets her siblings, who insult her, then attack her.  Layla starts trying to channel energy to open a rift, and Scott fires the Reflex warhead at the Protoculture reactor.  Layla channels the released energy to get us back home.

Sessions 21

We step through the rift, to meet Jordan and Kent, who are looking for us at the site at which we had rifted away.  We have a few seconds to look at each other before we're attacked by Coalition dog boys and psi-stalkers, a Spider Skull Walker, which puts some holes in Tanky, and some Coalition Hunter drones.  

We engage in an immediate response

Sessions 22

Comanche cavalry in their own SAMAS flights and mechs that Ardyn calls Gun Dogs.  A SAMAS squad fires off a flurry of mini-missiles at the Spider Skull Walker, knocking it back, and causing its crew to initiate its self-destruct code.

We find out from the cavalry that Paruuku and Ardyn's wedding ceremony is imminent.  

Shan spends the first two days repairing Tanky.  Tony spends the first two days repairing Stella.

On the evening of the second day, Shan and Marlow have a talk about how he's strange, and might or might not be a robot.  Shan reassures him, and they enjoy the wedding celebration.

 Layla creates a spectacular star-fall entrance for the bride.

Tony raises a toast to the bride, has a dance with her, and then has several dances with other ladies until he finds someone who wants to get in trouble with him.

The next morning, Paruuku and Ardyn pull up in a big boss with a beefier than stock gun on the turret. 

We head north to Fort Comanche.  At one point, we have to wait for half a day as a gigantic herd of buffalo cross the planes.  We pull up to Fort Comanche.  It's a community where there is a central fort, but for a few hours before we're traveling through its nomadic "suburbs", with areas dedicated to specific tribes and war bands, and other areas are set aside for outsiders (referred to in Comanche as taibo) to do business.

As we approach the walls of the Fort proper, we come to a very large construction site with "Northern Gun" branding around it.  We see a very large fenced off hole in the ground, as well as a sign that indicates construction has been halted.

Paruuku takes us to the house of her uncle, Old Owl,who is on the Comanche Council.  He lets us know that Erin Tarn is also around, although not on the immediate premises.

 

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