Saturday 2 December 2017

GURPS Waterworld Session 3: Sharkticus

Ai - Experienced Tech
Axe - Mutant Hulk
Cap'n Chang - Lucky Nomad
"Lieutenant" Vaolt - Mutant Trooper

Day 14:
After another night at sea, the party awoke to find that there was a storm ahead, and Ai's Weather Sense figured that they'd end up going through the worst of it.  Throughout the day's travel, Cap'n Chang had a general sense of foreboding thanks to Danger Sense, but nothing specific.  They found an island with skulls on stakes left as a warning, but slept there anyway and were uninterrupted.

Day 15:
Despite the storm, the Golden Hare made good time, though everybody was completely drenched almost immediately.  In the afternoon, something big attacked the boat from under the water several times while the Cap'n switched to blood drive to outrun whatever it was.  Eventually, it was revealed to be a group of giant sharks, as one jumped out of the water to bite Axe and was quickly slain.

The blood drive was activated before any serious damage could be done, and the party sped away for several hours before arriving at a rocky island where Ai and Chang repaired the dents the sharks had made.  Afterwards, Ai examined the mystery revolver that Vaolt had picked up in the Philippine village and determined that the gun itself was pretty much normal, though it had never been fired, and that the bullet was some kind of shrunk-down ultra-tech projectile that would activate on high-speed impact.

Ai spent an hour or so rejiggering 4 of Vaolt's rifle bullets to work for the revolver, then, just before nightfall, an old, rotted harpoon landed on the ship's deck, though nobody was around to throw it.  Wrapped around the head was a message on a piece of leather, in a script nobody could read, but which Ai figured to mean "go away".  The party ignored it and went to sleep.

On Chang's watch, an explosion sounded just off the coast, and he woke the others.  Ai panicked and started packing her things and then moved to the boat to be ready to leave, Axe went back to sleep and told the others only to wake him if one of them had exploded, and Vaolt stood watch for a while with his rifle before giving up.

Day 16:
The Golden Hare was tailed by a large group of sharks, but were never attacked.  Around nightfall, they found an inhabited island, with native hunter-gatherers.  The party tried to make contact, but the natives didn't speak Mandarin, and the dialogue quickly collapsed when Axe readied his axe.  In a show of Serendipity, however, it turned out that one of Cap'n Chang's old friends, Chung O'Flannigan, had been shipwrecked on the island for three years.

Chung relayed that the natives ate fish, which was unheard of elsewhere in the world due to the rampant sea monsters, but apparently some sort of "shark god" protected the waters here.  The party ate a good dinner, stocked up on fresh fish, and grabbed a junked microwave that had washed up on shore.  When asked whether he wanted to leave, Chung replied that he definitely did, even if they were going to Japan.

Day 17:
As the Golden Hare set sail in the morning, a large blockade of sharks attempted to block her way, which required the Cap'n to switch to blood drive power to get around them.  Thanks to Chung's knowledge, they found an island with many wild boars, which they used to refill their blood drive after determining their blood was flammable.  During his hunt, Axe found a bunker with a keypad and some writing in a language none of them recognised, meaning it wasn't Korean, Japanese, or Mandarin.

There were no other structures on the island, and an attempt to hack open the door using the panel didn't work as Ai wasn't trained in electronic security systems.  Cap'n Chang tried knocking, but nobody responded, and an impromptu battering ram made out of a felled tree had no effect.  The party marked it on their map, to return to it later with some high explosives.

Day 18:
Partway through the day, the party found a raft with some fancy rugs on it, and Chang sidled up alongside it to take one, but was interrupted by a mutant with sharkskin, webbed feet, gills, and fins, who was named Sharkticus.  He berated the party for polluting his water with their blood drive, and for killing one of his "demigod" sharks before swimming away.  Chang decided that now he really wanted that rug and grabbed one using his quarterstaff, resulting in Sharkticus boarding the Golden Hare.

He stabbed Chung with a trident, and one shark jumped up to bite Axe while another slammed into Vaolt and knocked him down.  Vaolt readied the revolver (with one of the normal bullets), and Chang fired a blast at Sharkticus with both barrels of his sawed-off shotgun, landing a crit and 13 pellets.  Axe finished him off with two mighty blows, and Ai cowered.

One of the sharks ate Sharkticus' body, one jumped onto the blood drive and started eating it, one continued to slam into Vaolt, and the other tried to bite Axe but got an axe to the face instead.  Chang got on the boat's LMG and fired a round into one shark's vitals, killing it instantly, while Vaolt missed with his revolver and fired a round right into the hull.  Axe chopped at the shark that was slamming into Vaolt, and Ai ran to turn on the blood drive to get them out of there.

Chang shot another bullet at the shark eating the blood drive, but didn't kill it, and it damaged it beyond repair, blowing itself up in the process as Ai started the drive.  Axe finished off the slam-shark with his axe, and the others retreated into the ocean.  Ai got to work stabilizing Chung's mortal wound, while Chang stole the rest of the rugs, and then started working on repairing the blood drive with parts from the microwave.  They tried to find another island to rest, but had to spend another night at sea.

Day 19:
Ai and Chang finished the repairs on the blood drive and then, after refuelling with one of the shark corpses, headed to an island to rest for the night, where they found a shack containing only some old clothes (which Ai stole).  At night, the strange old man from the buoy emerged from the water, and told the party that now the area was surely doomed once more, as the sharks, now leaderless, wouldn't be able to defend the local waters.

Chang responded that if Sharkticus had wanted to live, he shouldn't have been so aggressive towards his boat.  Regardless, the old man gave them Sharkticus' last worldly possessions: the (fine) trident that had almost killed Chung, and a mystery syringe which Ai couldn't identify.  He then waded back into the ocean, almost comically due to his rags and poor coordination.

Notes:
The arks have been renamed from New Hong Kong and New Shanghai to Arkeopolis and Samerica by the GM because he kept forgetting which was which.  I will be sticking with the old names in the summary to avoid confusion.

Sharkticus was a callback to a Shadowrun character the GM made but never played, who had something like 26 dice in Animal Handling (Sharks), and owned 20+ sharks and several hundred piranhas.  He also had cybergills, cyberflippers, and magical powers that made him better at controlling sharks.

Chung is apparently pretty much the same as Chang but worse, and with some slightly different knowledge skills.

We are doing quite well on food, and with the extra couple days' worth of fish, we should have more than enough to finish our trip without needing to get more.

MVP was a 4-way tie, and Cap'n Chang won it by winning the skill-testing trivia question.

3XP
MVP was Cap'n Chang (the winner of a 4-way tie) for gunning down Sharkticus

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