Thursday 31 May 2018

GURPS Blood Drive Session 9: The Jackpot

Benedict Con - Humourless Repairman
Geordi Hawking - Callous Rifleman
Kaktis - Super-Strong Cactus Mutant

The Reactor
Having just killed a bunch of zombies and given Geordi a NanoBoost to recover, the party decided to check the halls the zombies had came from, to make sure they didn't get ambushed again.  They found metal shrapnel, "burnt" walls, which Geordi determined were actually exposed to extreme cold, as well as a couple of improvised traps designed to cripple legs with a hammer attached to a lever, but thankfully no zombies.

Before continuing on through a set of metal double doors with narrow glass windows, they decided to scavenge the area, and found only useless, broken pumps and hoses.  In the room past the doubles doors were some two-story pressurized gas tanks labelled He3, connected to hoses and nozzles as well as smaller, movable gas cylinders.  There was also a table with some tools, and some thermoses with fittings and regulators installed.  Geordi couldn't make heads or tails of what was going on here, so the party continued across the room to another set of metal double doors, and looked through the windows.

Beyond was a cavernous, open room with flickering lights and a bunch of zombies milling around; Benedict noticed that one of them was wearing a ceramic combat vest and helmet with visor.  A large, metal, warped ring-shaped device built in to the far wall was humming and attached to 4 of the smaller pressurized gas cylinders.  Rather than charging in, the party decided to have Kaktis hold the doors shut while Ben and Geordi shoot through the windows.

They gunned down a few each, but soon enough the zombies had reached the doors, and one grabbed Geordi through the window.  Ben took out another zombie with a headshot, but the rest of the horde piled up on the far side, overwhelmed Kaktis, and forced the doors open, pinning Geordi behind them.  Kaktis cut down the zombie grappling Geordi with his claws (though the severed hand kept its hold), while Ben backed up and headshot one zombie a second with his lever-action rifle.

The zombie with the ceramic armour and helmet walked through the open door and started towards Ben, who downed it with a bullet through the visor and into its eye, while Kaktis got grappled by a whole pile of zombies, and started cutting his way free while avoiding being dragged to the ground.  Another tripped and crawled after Ben, trying to grab his leg, but the gunman retreated before headshotting another, and Geordi loaded a shell and hit one in the torso with a point-blank shotgun blast which did almost no damage.  Kaktis finished off the last of the zombies, and the party reloaded.

Ben took a look at the ceramic vest, and found it too heavy for himself, so he gave it to Kaktis, though he kept the helmet, making sure to keep the (starred) visor up to keep his vision unobstructed.  Kaktis decided to keep his leather armour on under the ceramic vest, to keep some groin and back protection.  After a bit of investigation, Geordi figured out that the machine was a compact nuclear fusion reactor.  He went up the stairs to a control room, and deciphered an array of screens to confirm that it was running and had about 30 years of fuel left.

Geordi asked the others if he should overload the reactor core, but they told him not to.  After a bit of scrounging in the reactor/control room turned up nothing, they headed back out to the entrance to take a look behind the defunct TASE-42 robot.  Geordi went in first, and came out into a red emergency-lit wide room with a 30' circular gap in the middle of the floor, which overlooked a six-story, cone-topped, cylindrical object with rocket boosters at the bottom.

The Silo
Part of a guide rail had been torn off, and looking down to the bottom of the shaft, he noticed a pallet jack holding a crate labelled "DANGER - HIGH EXPLOSIVES".  There was an open and lit elevator on the far side of the room, and a ladder down on their side.  Geordi called back that it was clear, and Kaktis was sent down the ladder one floor to do recon, where he saw another of the heavily-armoured robots on patrol.  Fortunately, it didn't notice him, and he climbed back up.

Despite knowing that the TASE-42 model was vulnerable to logical paradoxes, the party were worried that if they failed, the robot (s?) would slaughter them, so they went to check out the flooded hallway instead.  As the floor warped and dipped, they soon found themselves waist-deep in stagnant, swampy water, and a foul stench filled the air.  Their flashlights cut through the darkness to reveal a sign; left was Bunkroom A, right, Mess Hall/Infirmary.

The Flooded Armoury
Geordi decided to go to the Infirmary, but apparently the Mess Hall was first.  The lack of lights annoyed him, and he asked to overload the reactor again ("It'll get really bright for a second or so!").  They heard clattering and growling sounds from the kitchen and moved to investigate, but their sloshing about in the water gave away their presence.

A trio of killigators, partially coated in expired canned beans, came from the kitchens, two from a swinging door and one flanking over the counter (Kaktis: "These advanced killigator tactics!").  Ben took out the flanking one with a snap headshot that knocked it out, and Kaktis used his bone spurs to savage another, but Geordi's shotgun seemed unable to penetrate their hide.

One of the gators clamped onto Kaktis' torso and held on, but it was unable to penetrate his new ceramic armour; it dragged him prone and started to deathroll him, taking some Spines in the process.  Ben downed the other gator with another headshot after a miss, and Kaktis cut his gator down with a flurry of lucky slashes with his bone claws while prone, underwater, in the dark.  He then beheaded the unconscious gator and the party backtracked to recover on dry land, where Ben lamented that he had used a bunch of bullets, but had found no sick loot.

After resting, they tried to scavenge the kitchens, but Kaktis crit-failed and they were ambushed by two more killigators.  Ben and Kaktis both found themselves inside a killigator's maw, and when Ben's pulled him underwater, fouling his rifle, it looked grim.  Geordi looked for a way to retreat, but found the doors out blocked by the gators, so he fired at the one biting Kaktis' instead, slightly wounding it.

He kept up the attack but missed his next burst and put a shell into Kaktis' arm, though thankfully it did little damage to his unliviing flesh.  Kaktis was able to cut his gator down and jumped up onto the metal island in the middle of the kitchen to help Ben before the gator could drown him.  Ben struggled vainly to break free from the gator's bite, and a well-placed burst from Geordi failed to penetrate its hide, but finally, Kaktis jumped at it and killed it with a bloody flourish.  Again, they retreated back to dry land to rest.

Ben thanked his riot armour chest piece for saving his life and tested his equipment: his flashlight still worked, but his rifle would need to be disassembled and dried; fortunately he had time to rest and do the work.  The party checked their packs to see if they had any energy drinks left, but were fresh out (Kaktis: "All I have is a 2x4 and some cinderblocks, and they're in the car").  After 40 minutes, they headed back to the kitchens to get to the infirmary.

Two of the bodies were missing, but nobody could see more gators, and they made it to the infirmary unmolested, where they found 120 9mm rounds 2 NanoBoost syringes (changed with Geordi's Serendipity) and an arm bracer with a bunch of syringes connected to transparent tubes filled with red fluid.  Continuing on, they came to a T-intersection, with a submerged staircase straight ahead, a long hallway ending in a door to the right, and another underwater staircase beside a sign labelled "ARMOURY" halfway along the hallway.

Unfortunately, they were distracted while investigating the armoury stairs, and Kaktis was ambushed by a pair of killigators that leapt out of the dark water and latched onto his left arm.  Ben stunned and then killed one with a pair of shots to the vitals, but the other dragged Kaktis underwater, where he chopped it badly enough to knock it unconscious (on top of him) with a series of All-Out Attacks.  The party debated about how to swim into the armoury, as their flashlights wouldn't work underwater, and as they did, a recon gator emerged from the door at the end of the hallway, but retreated inside before Ben could shoot it.

They gave chase, and opened the door, revealing the gator lying in the open on a crude, bone-lined nest in an unlit room with large pumps bolted to the walls.  Just as Kaktis started to charge, however, he got Clever Girl'd by a pair of gators hiding underwater, one of which was larger, and had an enlarged skull.  The smaller ambush gator just bit onto Kaktis' armoured torso, while the big 'un slammed him to little effect and then missed a tail whip.

Kaktis landed his highest-damage melee attack yet (33 cutting damage before DR), which knocked out the smaller gator, only to be bitten fiercely in the groin by the other, while the third slithered up to join the melee.  Ben shot the big 'un in the vitals some, but it stayed up, and a volley from Geordi had no effect.  Kaktis missed one slash, and was forced underwater, but somehow clawed it while being drowned and killed it (doing exactly enough damage to bring it to -5xHP).  The third gator turned and fled, and, though it was shot by Ben in the vitals, swam down a hole in the floor which probably led into a swamp.

After doing some First Aid on Kaktis' arm, Geordi examined the pumps and started repairing them, which took about an hour.  It took another hour for most of the water to be drained, which revealed the floor to be covered in all kinds of fish bones, shells, and killigator muck.  Once the water was only ankle-deep, they headed down the stairs to the armoury's locked door, which they were able to open with the black keycard.

Inside was a cornucopia of weapons and armour: several each of semi-automatic pistols, SMGs, rifles, a shotgun, 5 suits of riot armour, 1 suit of combat armour, a box of grenades, and a futuristic looking laser weapon, which Geordi determined to be a laser "shotgun" which used multiple powerful projectors and an ultra-tech prism to defract the laser while still resulting in decent strength beams.  Unfortunately, everything (except the grenades, which were in an airtight box) had been underwater for decades, and would require serious effort to get functional.

They travelled back to the abandoned sleeping bags and backpacks in the zombie wing to grab something to haul the equipment in.  Kaktis, ever the Klutz, fell into the electrified "moat" and got paralyzed and badly burned as the other two took a couple seconds to decide on a course of action, and Ben also got shocked when he pulled him out.  They gave Kaktis another NanoBoost while Geordi did First Aid.  Eventually, they got everything bagged up and decided to skip the robots and head back out.

The Elevator Shaft
Everybody had forgotten that they had to climb back out, and their heavy new armour would make it substantially more difficult (except for Kaktis, who, thanks to KYOS, has Basic Lift 100lbs).  Kaktis climbed up the elevator cable without issue, and then hauled up the sleeping bags full of weapons.  Ben also made the climb with no issue, but realized once he was at the top that Geordi would need help and climbed back down.

He made a harness for Geordi, but then slipped on some grease while climbing back up and tumbled down the shaft, and slammed into the ground.  Geordi healed Ben's bruises, and they both started up again, only for Ben to fall and receive First Aid a second time.  After the third try, they made it up, loaded up their car, and continued down the road to Orlando.

Orlando
They pulled into town and stopped at the Crazy Parrot Saloon, attracted by the many heavily armoured cars outside.  Kaktis went in to ask about the safe zone, and the bartender told him that the safe zone's gates would be open in one week, for the last time.

Notes:
XP was 5, MVP was Kaktis for being Killigator bait.

My new houserule for flashlights is that they give -3 for the first second when you acquire a new target, but no lighting penalty after that.

Mistakenly allowed a resistance at -2 to Takedown after an All-Out Attack when it should be outright failure, though I did give the zombies a +4.

The party has assigned the following roles:
Geordi: Out of Combat Leader
Kaktis: Face
Benedict: Knot Tyer

I was quite surprised that they walked away from the robots, because they actually thought for a while and came up with a few paradoxes on their own.  I also had two ready to give for penalized IQ rolls.

How I ruled the Killigators' deathrolling:
-Requires target to be prone (usually after a Takedown)
-Quick Contest of ST against victim
-On a victory, reduces victim's air supply by MoV seconds; once out of air, inflict MoV/2 fatigue damage

There was some debate over whether shooting the face with a shotgun should have a chance of hitting the eyes.  It probably should; maybe 1-in-6 or something.

The combat this session wasn't great for Geordi; he could only damage normal killigators on a 6, and could not hurt the big one without an eye shot.

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