The Pirates Campaign/Session 3

*Previously…*

* We took over a Brass Cities boarding ship pretty successfully, after successfully disabling another one. But we no longer had engines.
* Why were they after us? We pinged as random travelers, but then we destroyed one of their ships… and we might take intel back to the Margravate about Brass Cities military capabilities being reduced because of the events at the Pin Jump.
* Also, Cromwell is a skeleton now.

The Brass Cities mothership has caught up with us. They’re not going to repair the ship, just scrap it, as indicated by the harpoons dragging in the ship, and they’ll capture us.

* Cromwell stealthily climbs up one of the grappling hooks, avoids close attention of overseer robots, seen by one of drones – kind of like a large, dog-sized mechanical lobster. Attempts to disassemble drone, drone collapses. Act of attacking drone attracts attention of higher order automata.
* Melon Tusk interrupts attack to ask Cromwell skeleton if the deal is still on. Skeleton gurgles angrily. Tusk tables the conversation, but will seek fiduciary compensation at a later date: this is a hazard pay situation.
* CLARC tells Aetherfish about motherships. They serve three functions: 1) maintenance for cargo vessels, 2) mobile base for explorations, 3) troop transfer. This mothership is mostly a platform for planetary warfare, some exploration capability. Nothing in ship would take us deep into celestial space.
* Melon Tusk makes power grab. Invites others to meet them at the ‘maw’.
* Thefaren makes perception check to see if other ships are around. Motherships absorbs and disassembles things in a one way channel. This mothership only has capacity to process one ship at a time and must have something like aircraft hangers on the sides. Likely accessible through maintenance ducts below our current location.
* Cromwell jumps and lands on wall of maw. Bones grip to and ‘experience’ materials while sliding down. Several of the walls are large crushing tools. Makes it to bottom and finds mountains of scrap materials. Rising heat from below. Likely a furnace beneath.
* Party flees ship on the back of ACE. CLARC collects bombs and leaves.

Thefaren falls off of ACE, keeps Agnar in position. Thefaren lands on Cromwell’s bones, which are rubbery.

Party arrives at bottom of maw.

* Drones are now perched on hooks scanning for us. They have a top half like an owl, and a bottom half like a spider.
* ACE fails will save, desires to go after drones. Melon Tusk tries to calm down ACE (NAT 1). ACE is enraged. Melon Tusk jumps off ACE and makes it down to bottom with 69. Agnar rides with ACE to glory.
* ACE launches straight at drones. Rides up the chains, shearing drones off in the process. Agnar frees self from ACE.
* Ways out of ship 1) through furnace, 2) back the way we came, 3) point further along scrap channel should lead to exit. Alternatively, we can wait for system to activate and make our way into guts of ship.
* ACE notices ventilation shafts while flying up side of ship that connect to hangars. Making way up ‘molar’ mechanism of maw would lead us to same ventilation shafts. Agnar and ACE fly through ventilation shaft to hangars, totaling a ship on impact (shears through a wing).
* Anti-organic cyborgs activated by ship to attack party.
* Hangar is gassed. Agnar and ACE avoid effects of gas.
* Aetherfish and Cromwell fly up side of ‘molar’. Figure leaps from gantry towards Aetherfish. Thefaren fires at cyborg, throwing it off course so that it doesn’t hit Aetherfish. Aetherfish fires at cyborg, exposes organs inside.
* Cromwell sneaks off to do demolition things. Crawls inside molar mechanism and sets bombs, descended upon by owl/spider drones. Cromwell drawn into vulture robot, gets stuck. Then he flips around it, octopus style, for cover.
* A subroutine asks CLARC if it’d like to activate ‘mortar mode.’ It does. CLARC fires three rockets at one of the cyborgs, opening up its guts.
* Cromwell stabs skull of vulture robot from inside, destroying internal mechanism. Aetherfish frees Cromwell. Cromwell reassembles self. (“Pull yourself together, Bones!”)
* CLARC fired upon by cyborgs. CLARC is deactivated for now.
* ACE maintains rage, shot at with automatic gun turrets.
* Agnar attacks turret with hammers. Turret jams and is disabled.
* Thefaren attempts to fix CLARC. Activates all of CLARC’s systems. Flies up the wall and activates mortar mode. **CLARC explodes**. Sorry, CLARC. Little bomb robots inside sympathetically activate also.
* Melon Tusk spots machine gun and map data module fall from CLARC as it explodes. Prax scoops it up, but doesn’t have time to get the nice gun.
* Tusk & Thefaren get knocked down, Prax sets off a horn & fireworks show to distract the robots and give them time to get back up; drones shoot at him instead, but he’s real lucky & they don’t hit him too hard
* Party makes it to hanger. ACE is still enraged. Melon Tusk tries to calm down ACE, fails to do so. Melon Tusk makes perception check on hangar (Nat 20). Spots self propelled high powered weapon (ICBM-like). We can steal fighter ship, troop transfer, or high powered missile. ICBM will go very fast, but we won’t be able to stop it unless Thefaren can modify the engines (maybe Agnar’s gravity runes can help)
* ACE tries to drag ICBM rocket towards party (Nat 1), sends rocket flying into space.
* ACE caught in path of rocket, drags in another rocket. Thefaren cobbles together ship. Ship avoid exploding. Thefaren pilots ship out of hangar expertly.
* Thefaren guides ship towards a nearby planet. Ship fired on by Brass Cities mothership. One Nat 20 hit. ACE takes a boatload of damage holding the ship together (57 points of damage). ACE takes fatal damage. Cromwell attempts to occupy ACE. ACE is too angry for Cromwell to dominate. Becomes a hybrid creature. ACE controls muscles, Cromwell controls bones.
* Thefaren attempts to evade ships sent to pursue party. ACEwell gets Nat 20 to hold ship together, avoids losing ship engines. ACEwell contorts in horrific ways that cause sanity damage. Thefaren shakes pursuing ships, escapes but party is lost. Agnar knows a bit on how to disassemble CLARC’s cartographic module. Thefaren vaguely figures out CLARC’s coordinate scheme, uses knowledge to navigate to Margraviate (Nat 20), a bit too enthusiastically (damaging the module in the process).
* Margravate likely to interpret ship as an incoming attack. Aetherfish climbs on top of missile-ship and puts on fireworks display. Margravate recognizes Aetherfish, Aetherfish claims captaincy of the *Nettlesome Needlefish*. Margravate sends barge to rescue party. Arrive at Tarim.