2022/07/20

Last time in the Iron Kingdoms: The assault on Squall Island began.

The party was reconvened to attend a meeting with High Captain Waernuk, to make sure that he was still supporting the assault on Squall Island, as well as to make sure that he was going to follow the plan to take Hurley alive to return to his friend the Ordic king Braid Cathor II in the hopes of quelling Ordic retaliation. The meeting took place in one of Waernuk's holdings on the Wake Isles on the east of Five Fingers. Waernuk received the party in his office and throne room, where he greeted them as Atrixia's ace in the hole team. The meeting went well enough, and Waernuk said that he would be providing transport and support for the party via the crew of one of his pirate ships, crewed by the Knucklebone Boys a Trollkin pirate crew known for their initiation ritual of embedding iron spurs into their knuckles and letting the flesh grow back. The Knucklebone Boys would provide support and make sure that Hurley wouldn't be able to flee again, though the party needed to disable the defensive cannons that had been set up on the island to do so. When reminded that Hurley was to be taken alive, Waernuk seemed displeased at this outcome, though didn't fight the party on the matter.

With everything settled on that front, the party began their preparations for attacking the island. Shakes made a flash grenade for the attack. While the rest either prepared their weapons or found some rest before the action. When the hour came, the party boarded the Knucklebone Boys' ship and set off towards squall island. Once they were close enough, the party was transferred to a smaller ship while the main ship occupied the guns to give the party some room to land at a cove on the island. From which they would set off to disable the cannons.

Gazza served as the party's scout on the island, scouting a couple hundred feet ahead of the party, looking for Hurley's forces or the gun emplacements. After a short bit of walking, he found the first set of cannons, which were mounted on a hill with small stone walls to protect the crews from enemy fire. The party decided that just charging the emplacement was the best option and did just that. On their approach one of the cannons did notice them and tried to fire at them to hinder their attack, though the shot went over the party's heads and did nothing to stop them. The cannon crew proved to be insignificant against the party and was quickly mopped up by their forces, allowing for them to set off again for the second of the three gun positions. Once Gazza found the next one, they went ahead with a similar plan as the first location, and while the defenders noticed the party faster than the first crew did, they panicked in trying to load the cannons to fire at the party and overfilled the cannon with powder causing it to explode, taking out most of the defenders before the party even reached them. The party decided to take credit for the explosion and rested for a short while, expresseing their various opinions to having enemy artillery firing at them. While Gazza sang a song from home while getting ready for the final attack.

The last position had one fewer cannon than the other emplacements, though to compensate for that was given some old mariner class warjacks to supplement its defenses. This position was also in a difficult location for the party to get close to without them noticing and thus a more protracted battle began over the final defensive position. The enemy warjacks proved to be a strong match for the party bombarding the party's rearguard with their mounted guns while engaging the warjacks and Abe with their weaponized anchors. Eventually, with much pain and determination the party won the day and disabled the final position, shooting up the flare they had been given to signal their victory. With the first leg of the mission done, the party took some minutes to recuperate before continuing the mission.

At this point, the only thing for the party to do was to get to Hurley's safehouse, kick in the door and then drag him out kicking and screaming. The complicated matter was that while the party knew that the safehouse was near the lighthouse on the western tip of Squall Island, they didn't have much more than that. So the party took some time to search around and try and find an entrance to the safehouse. Eventually they found a hidden freight elevator that seemed to have been used to get the warjacks into position, and with a little more study Shakes was confident that he could operate the mechanism. Unfortunately for Shakes and the rest of the party, he had overlooked a trap that Hurley had installed in the elevator and as the elevator descended there was a click of a mechanikal system activating and then the sound of the hammers of firearms before the elevator was filled with lead and smoke from hidden guns that pelted the party. Injured but undeterred by the trap, the party steeled themselves to enter Hurley's safehouse and to end this once and for all.