Wednesday 6 November 2019

GURPS Kung Fu Cowboys Session 6: The Man With The Golden Chains

Big Po - Hungry Hungry Sumotori
Michelangelo - Friendly Capoeirista
Roberto King - Murderous Dagger Fighter
Dan da Ying -  Helpful Eagle-Stylist
Whistlin' Willy - Gold-Crazed "Alcoholic-Style" Miner with Dynamite

Twinhorn Gold Mine, Slave Mining Pit
Po grabbed the knife thug who was leading the mooks against the freed slaves, and got stabbed in return.  The machete henchman tried to disarm Roberto, but he slipped forward into close combat, parrying on the way, and responded with a thrust to the neck.  Mike continued to stare down the knife guy on his terrace, Evaluating for a second time, while Dan failed to land either part of a Rapid Strike on his own thug.  Po broke out his Ooichou Nage secret technique again, throwing the thug to the ground before body slamming and stunning him.

One of the stick mooks smacked Po, but the others were taken out by the slaves.  Dan got stabbed twice more and fell back to Evaluate, while Mike stepped forwards, parried both thrusts from the thug on his level, slipped into close combat, and landed a kick.  Po pinned the thug he'd taken down, and he passed out while trying to break free.  Mike retreated when his thug tried to stab him again, and used Luck to avert a crit.

Roberto and the machete henchman continued their duel, steadily moving further onto the trestle bridge, but neither were able to land a hit on the other.  The henchman wielded his machetes with surprising grace, and was effectively using Fencing Retreats, while Roberto made sure to constantly stay in close combat to make the machetes' superior reach a liability.  Po All-Out Double grabbed the last stick mook and then bear hugged him hard enough to instantly knock him out.  Dan landed an Exotic Hand Strike on his thug, and parried the riposte.

The machete henchman tried an extremely Deceptive Arm Lock, but Roberto managed to parry it with a Feverish Defense, then replied with a pair of thrusts which the henchmen also parried with a Feverish Defense .  Mike stepped further back, and again, he and his knife thug stared each other down, Evaluating and Waiting, respectively.  Po ran towards the mine cart tunnel to help Roberto, while Dan fell for a feint badly, and a blade to the neck sent him to the floor.

Again, Mike stepped forward, parried his foe's attacks, and landed a sweeping kick, but the thug kept his feet.  Po charged out onto the trestle bridge, and the machete henchman sidestepped an attack from Roberto, careful to keep both combatants in his field of view.  Dan passed out from his wounds, and the thug he'd been fighting climbed up to the top terrace to flank Mike, who took a series of All-Out Defenses as he jumped down to the bottom of the pit and retreated towards the trestle bridge.

The macheteman tried to spartan kick Roberto off the bridge, but he missed, got Slammed by Po, kept his footing, and parried two blows from Roberto, only to lose consciousness and fall off the bridge into the darkness.  Mike continued his fighting retreat, parrying all incoming attacks (though he did have to use Luck to reroll a crit), while Po and Roberto flanked around the two thugs chasing him.  Realizing that they were now vastly outnumbered, the thugs tried to flee to the minecart tunnel, but one was laid low by the pickaxes of the freed slaves, and Roberto chased the other down.

A Short Break
Mike and Po took a sinchu root each, and then Po (against the rest of the group's advice and Apha's warnings not to overdose) fed Dan two roots dissolved in his canteen lemonade.  Dan regained consciousness, but felt completely exhausted; he gained 10HP, then lost 10FP due to the overdose.  As he was already at 0FP, however, he immediately lost the 10HP he had gained and was back where he started.

The rest of the slaves were freed, and Roberto asked if anyone had seen an Irish girl.  One of them had, and pointed at a red-haired girl in the crowd that he had missed, but it wasn't his daughter.  Another child remembered that there had been another redheaded girl, who they might have been training and brainwashing, so Roberto ordered everybody to pick up weapons and follow them to attack the rest of the Ginto Boys gang.  The children looked to the other adults, who shook their heads no.

While the rest of the party headed through the passage most of the reinforcements had come from, Mike took the minecart tunnel, in hopes of ambushing the gangsters.  The passage lead to the training room, now empty, and Mike climbed up to rejoin with the others as they debated where to go next: the open door seemed to head the same direction they had came, or the passage that looked to continue up.  They tried listening for people down either way, but couldn't hear anything.  They figured that the door lead to the boss' balcony, and took the passage up.

They made their way through the windy passage and shortly came to the chamber where they had seen gangsters resting, again vacated.  From the passage to the north, they heard indistinct yelling, too distorted by echoes to be understood.  While the others discussed what to do, Roberto snuck ahead through the tunnel and found the entrance of the mine, where the boss, his entire torso covered in gold chains, shouted at his few remaining soldiers, demanding to know how the intruders had gotten past them, and when "Lucia" and her guys would be back, but none of the grunts knew anything.  Off to one side were the children that they had been training, glassy-eyed and inattentive.

Big Po's Crusade for Justice
Roberto returned to the party unseen, and they headed off to confront the remaining Ginto Boys, with Po in the lead.  He walked into the entrance chamber, threw his robe to the side, and announced that the bandits had been terrorizing the town of "Iguana Gulch" for too long, and that this would be their final day of evil!  The boss shouted back that if they were here for the gold, he'd have to kill them; Po said they were here for justice and to free the slaves.  The boss relented, and declared that the slaves were free to go, if they wished, gesturing to the glassy-eyed children in the corner.

The children just stood unmoving, and the boss said that it looked like they would rather stay.  Po had had enough, and declared that he would use the power of Sumo to drive out the evil spirits they were using to control the children's minds, and the two sides rushed each other.  Willie drew a stick of dynamite and lit it, then slowly walked forwards.  Mike ran to free the children, but when he drew close, they attacked him, albeit ineffectually.

The stick mooks split up, four up the center with two on either flank, and charged into melee, one being dropped by Roberto as soon as he arrived.  Po and the boss headed towards each other, Evaluating, while the lone knife thug leapt at Roberto, who narrowly avoided the two blades.  Mike took out both mooks on his flank, and Willie threw his dynamite behind two of the mooks, but one of them deflected it with a rattan stick and sent it across the cave where it detonated; the cavern shook and dust fell from the ceiling, but nobody was harmed.

The boss arrived next to Po, feinted him with one machete, landed a Deceptive Attack with the other, then landed a Pressure Points kick, but couldn't penetrate Po's flab.  Po responded with a heavily Deceptive Committed Attack, but the boss easily parried, while Roberto took out two mooks in the middle, allowing him to face the other two without exposing his side.  The thug changed targets to Po, who had exposed his side, and landed a knife blow, but the sumo was unphased.

Mike was hit twice by stick mooks, but both rolled 0 damage; he replied with a pair of Rapid Strike kicks that knocked them both out.  Willie got another stick of dynamite ready, while the Boss feinted Po for -14 to defenses, and then slammed the other machete into Po's skull with a Mighty Blow for 28 points of injury, which was still not enough to knock him out (between Fit and High Pain Threshold he's at 19 for knockdown), but just barely enough to drop him below 0.  The boss followed up with a kick to the neck for a comparatively minor 5 points of injury.

Roberto took out two mooks with a pair of strikes, while Po made a triple Rapid Strike in a frantic attempt to grab the boss, but he retreated and evaded his attacks.  The thug behind Po landed another two blows to his back, but then Willie threw his dynamite directly at the thug, and he comically looked up in horror before exploding.  Seeing the battle was going in their favour, some of the freed slaves brought down the last two mooks with their pickaxes.

All of his allies gone, the boss called out for the children to "Get them!", and they turned as one to face the party.  Roberto menacingly warned the others that he wasn't going to let someone live just because they were a child, and the freed slaves all ran over to restrain (and protect) the brainwashed child soldiers.  The boss feinted Po and knocked him past a death check with another blow to the skull ("Why won't you die?!?"), but the sumo slipped into close combat, not even bothering to roll defenses, and resisted a Pressure Points punch as well.

Roberto ran over to help with the boss, while Po's triple Rapid Strike to grab him were all parried, though he had to retreat backwards over a 1m drop.  Willy critically Fast-Drew a lit stick of dynamite, shrugged, and threw it behind the boss, who failed to parry it and took a single point of damage, but kept his feet from the knockback.  The boss switched targets to Roberto for the moment, but the knife-fighter proved more resistant to feints, and his two attacks were both parried; he was then put on the defensive and retreated away from Roberto's knives to put his back to a wall.

Mike ran over to surround the boss, followed by Willie, successfully blocking the boss into a corner.  The boss attempted to remove Mike's legs with a machete, but he Luckily parried.  Roberto flipped his knives to Reversed Grip and stepped into close combat with a flurry of three thrusts, all of which were parried, looking to overwhelm the boss' defenses.  Po took advantage of this and went for an All-Out Attack, successfully grabbing the boss and then throwing him to the ground with a Takedown.

Willie and Mike piled into close combat to kick at the boss; Mike got his left hand, but the boss' many chains reduced the damage enough that it didn't cripple it.  The boss landed a knee strike on Po, then slashed him twice across the torso with Mighty Blows, but Po passed the death check.  Roberto stabbed their prone, grappled foe three times, and he only managed to parry one of the attacks.  Po crit-failed a consciousness check, but used his last FP to Shake it Off and successfully Pinned the boss.

Roberto failed his Bloodlust and murdered the defenseless gang leader, despite Po's attempts to shield him.  Po told the children that they were free now, but they just reverted back to staring off into nowhere.  Roberto checked the brainwashed children, but none were his daughter; perhaps the boss might have known where she was, but as Roberto put it, "Sometimes you have to murder a few guys to make an omelette".

Notes:
I offered Willy to Dan's player, so that he had something to do after Dan's FP was obliterated.  He got Brawling-14, Throwing-14, and Fast-Draw (Dynamite)-14.

Dynamite counts as a weapon for the purpose of Vow: Use No Weapons, to Michelangelo's chagrin.

An exchange during the boss fight:
Mike: "This guy's just better than us, and we don't get any armour or equipment..."
Me: "You get teamwork and the power of friendship!"

Po has now pinned 2/2 bosses "solo".
Mike: "We used teamwork to take out the boss!"
Po: "Nah, I did all the actual work, you guys just kicked him."
Mike and Roberto: "That's teamwork!"

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