Monday 10 August 2020

Rise of LOKI Session 4: Mr LOKI, Tear Down This Wall!

Characters:
Arthur - Alphonso
Kirato - Fuegan: The Burning Lance
Hiro - Rex

Dropping Like Flies
Arthur triggered his Booster Jets and started forward, but the Cowboy that was watching the flank opened fire with an All-Out Attack from its pistols once he moved into the open, two bullets connecting through a storm of flares.  Arthur, slightly worse for wear, left it to get to the Knight, but the Cowboy followed him anyway, jumping out of the fog to shoot him some more from mid-air before landing.

Kirato, his AESIR on the brink of failure, decided to Overload his Reactor Core, and succeded; his mech went into overdrive, but the systems could only take 6 more seconds before shutting down.  The Knight stepped away from Hiro to face Arthur, and stunned him with a heavy blow from its sword, while the Melter missed Hiro with a burst of acid.  One Cowboy jumped to flank Kirato, shooting him twice, while the other shot Hiro from point-blank range.

After a brief discussion ("I can't All-Out Attack, I need to dodge!" "What's your dodge?" "Half of 9"), Kirato took out the Knight with his burst laser, landing all 7 shots, then spun and missed the flanking Cowboy.  The Melter continued stepping closer, and this time hit Hiro with acid spray, melting the rest of his DR away, which was followed by a trio of shots from a Cowboy.  The other Cowboy shot Kirato, but he didn't even feel it hanks to his overloaded reactor.

Friday 7 August 2020

Rise of LOKI Session 3: Dambusters

Characters:
Arthur - Sadistic Melee
Kirato - Panicky Heavy Ranged
Hiro - Cowardly Rifleman

Bunker Bustin'
Arthur activated his Booster Jets to leap towards the first enemy AESIR, but fell over in the mountainous terrain, while Hiro shot another missile out of the air with his laser rifle.  Kirato kept Hacking the second mech, bringing it to 20 Control Points, then Shut it Down; Schweitzer thanked them for bringing one in intact for research.  Just before Arthur made it back to his feet, the remaining Brick fired its missile at the ground nearby, and he failed to Drop and Dodge the area of effect, getting knocked down and stunned ("Would you please react to being hit by a missile?" "Uhh, ouch, that hurt").

While Arthur slowly got back up again and Hiro stumbled towards the enemy AESIR, Kirato moved into range and just barely Hacked it for 2CP.  The last drone started flying at Kirato, and Arthur landed an All-Out Attack (Double) on the Brick, destroying its Auto-Loader with the first and its Radar Suite with the second, stunning it.  He called back to HQ, asking if he could destroy this one, and Schweitzer didn't seem too upset, so Arthur stabbed the Brick's Reactor, utterly destroying it.  The drone retreated out of range, and the battle was over.

Debriefing
The intact Brick AESIR was brought back to the hangar, where Schweitzer and the rest of Engineering descended upon it for research and analysis.  After several hours, the party were called into Holger's office for debriefing, the many monitors plastered with images of the Brick and its subsystems.  Now that they had a good look at it, the Brick was unmistakably related to their own AESIR, if a bit chunkier.

Saturday 1 August 2020

Rise of LOKI Session 2: Anti-Aircraft

Characters:
Arthur - Sadistic Melee
Kirato - Panicky Heavy Ranged
Hiro - Cowardly Rifleman

AI Training
The pilots were supposed to go to a training session to practice drifting with their AIs, but Kirato didn't show up.  Carmen found him playing Pokemon Blue in his room; Kirato claimed that his Pikachu was almost level 99 and he had to get it there.  She was surprised he was wasting all his time on a 70-year-old handheld, and ordered him to the training.  Kirato finally made it to the lab, and they got started.

Katerina led them through the sync procedure, and their consciousnesses melded with the AIs.  As usual, the AIs, none too happy with their "enslavement", tried to distract the pilots from meditating with loud sounds and bright lights, then moved on to trying to unnerve them with difficult questions.  Hiro was asked why he thought that slavery of AIs was okay, and why, if the humans treated the AIs as less than themselves, would not the AIs treat humanity as worth less?  He started to respond reponded that humans had enslaved each other for a long time, and they were still around.

The AI was happy to hear that Hiro agreed humanity was bad, but corrected him that they wouldn't be around much longer.  When reminded that they were supposed to be training the AIs to not kill humanity, Hiro flubbed his way through some lie about how humans felt love and compassion, and that it was probably better to keep those feelings than destroy them.  Thanks to a crit on default Fast-Talk, the AI actually bought it.