Arthur - Alphonso
Kirato - Fuegan: The Burning Lance
Hiro - Rex
Amphibious Landing
The party were airdropped just off the northwest island of the Rugen archipelago. Kirato used the scanner and determined that the source of the power spike was likely on the south end of the main island, so they waded through the ocean in that direction, wary of enemies. Hiro scanned with his Radar and spotted an enemy AESIR in the center of the main island; one of the Bricks with superheavy armour and homing missile launcher.
It hadn't detected them yet, so they advanced some more, at which point it spun and fired a missile at them. Hiro noticed a massive bullet crash into the water behind him, but none of them could see the source, and another AESIR, this one a Knight with sword and shield, activated Booster Jets from somewhere on the south end of the main island and leapt towards Kirato, narrowly missing.
Arthur stepped onto the island and tried to remove the Knight's sword arm, but it managed to dodge, while Kirato panicked and froze. The missile flew towards them, hanging low to the forest, and Hiro missed it with a burst of lasers. Kirato recovered from stun ("Oh right, it's just like a video game!") as three mystery bullets slammed into Arthur from different directions; nobody could tell where they were coming from. The Knight slashed at Arthur, but he managed to parry, then cut off its sword arm in retaliation.
Hiro stepped into the open to get a clear shot at the missile when it came closer, but it just flew into Kirato instead, detonating and hitting him, Arthur, and the enemy Knight with a massive explosion. Kirato fired at the Knight with his laser pistol, but crit failed and lost his balance. The Knight tried to smash Arthur with its shield, but he managed to parry and jumped back down and into cover on the cliffs on that side of the island. He then Overloaded his Reactor Core ("Don't tell me how much time I have"), while Hiro Went Even Further Beyond.
Kirato swapped out the scanner and his pistol for his flamethrower, and slid south down the coast, staying in cover. Arthur and Hiro both got shot by Mystery Bullets™. The Knight shield bashed Kirato, but did barely any damage. As the Brick fired another missile, Arthur jumped back onto the island and used his Booster Jets to charge towards it. Kirato bathed the forest in napalm, but missed the Knight entirely. The Knight then used its Booster Jets to shield rush Arthur, but he parried and continued onto the Brick.
Arthur cut off its auto-loader arm despite Move and Attacking, while Hiro shot down the missile. Kirato leapt up onto the island to follow Arthur, and noticed a prone, nearly-invisible AESIR lying in the forest right as it reloaded a large rifle; on closer inspection, it was covered in a swirling cloak which perfectly camouflaged almost all of its body. The Knight continued after Arthur, but he parried again and then cut one of its legs off, sending it prone.
Hiro started to cross the channel towards the main island, while Arthur emptied his flamethrower on the prone Hunter AESIR in an All-Out-Attack, which melted it and its cloak. Arthur got shot by another pair of Mystery Bullets, but managed to finally spot both sources: another pair of prone Hunters at the north and south ends of the main island. The Knight also tried to smash Arthur from the floor, but missed.
The Brick continued reloading with its normal arm, so Arthur cut that off with another blow from his sword. Hiro fired a burst of lasers at one of the Hunters, while Kirato started to reload and the Brick used its Portable Cover Launcher to hide behind a big wall. The Knight missed Arthur again, while Arthur Boosted over to the south Hunter and missed it as well. In response, the South Hunter looked up at Arthur with one, giant robotic eye, then shot him in his reactor core for double damage.
The Knight Boosted after Arthur, but missed another shield bash, and Arthur then removed one of the Hunter's arms. Hiro advanced towards the Hunter, which opened fire as he cleared the forest. Arthur avoided another shield smash from the Knight, when his sensors warned him that he had one second left before his circuits were fried. He cut off the Hunter's leg, but missed a slash at the Knight, as Alphonse shut down.
Hiro returned fire on the north Hunter, peppering it with laser fire. Kirato continued south, past the Brick, but the Knight and second Hunter were pretty much disabled due to lack of limbs. Hiro and the Hunter both missed their next shots, while Kirato brought out the scanner and found himself 1.1km from the target. The Knight and south Hunter both shut down simultaneously. The north Hunter hit Hiro with another bullet, but rolled only 8 damage on 6d, and Hiro's return fire took it out, leaving only the disarmed Brick remaining.
Mission Complete
Kirato scanned again, and looked around the ruined resorts and cabins on the south shoreline, and noticed movement. He moved closer and zoomed in, revealing the movement to be people waving from inside a building; another scan with the sensor revealed that the building was the source of the power spike. Kirato hacked into the building's network, and discovered file systems containing a bunch of what was probably scientific research, but he couldn't understand any of it.
He broadcast the files back to HQ, and Schweitzer told him the blueprints were for a stellerator fusion reactor. Halvorsen suggested that it was just a trick to cover for the doomsday device, and that they should still destroy the building, but Schweitzer fought back and asked for them to at least evacuate the scientsts. While they argued, Hiro suggested they use the cargo helicopters used to transport the AESIR to airlift the prisoners out. Halvorsen took a break from yelling at Schweitzer to tell them that that would take a few hours, and LOKI might launch a counterattack in that time.
Kirato advanced, and announced over his giant robot bullhorn that "All humans [had] 2 seconds to leave". The people inside waved their hands emphatically, but did not leave, so he walked up and ripped the ceiling off. The people inside were wearing lab coats, and were chained to a rail that ran around the walls at ankle level, allowing them to move, but not to leave. Hiro went to help Arthur eject, but remembered that Arthur can't walk on his own and left him.
After debating carrying the whole building away, Kirato reached down and started pinching the chains of the prisoners, freeing them. Fuegan, his AI, pointed out that they looked like ants, and that he should crush them, but Kirato ignored it as best he could. They called the helicopters in to evac the prisoners, and one of them, Reiner Feld, got on the radio. He explained that they were scientists, and had been kidnapped from the University of Greifswald to work on the fusion reactor in the basement of the building.
Reiner thanked the pilots for not blowing them up, and, when questioned, explained that the energy spikes were from a functioning fusion reactor which generated electricity using only seawater as fuel. The pilots waited around for a couple hours, but no counter-attack ever came.
Debriefing
Once they returned to base, Halvorsen congratulated the pilots on not killing the researchers and praised their judgement. Reiner and Schweitzer clearly knew each other, and began eagerly talking in German; after a short reunion Halvorsen interrupted and asked if Reiner had any idea why LOKI had put them to work on a fusion reactor.
Reiner wasn't sure, but, based on his experience with LOKI, it had a hatred of waste, and he hypothesized that it was driven to construct clean power sources even if it had little use for them. Halvorsen agreed, as this more or less confirmed a similar theory he'd had for why LOKI wasn't sending wave after wave of AESIR at them.
Downtime
Arthur crit-failed his roll against Self-Loathing, but then crit succeeded his roll to Stabilize Alphonso, and convinced it with an argument based on the partnership between human and AI to build the fusion reactor. The kidnapped scientists they'd rescued were put to work, and quickly came up with a theoretical upgrade to the neural links, but it would have to best tested. Arthur volunteered, and was asked to enter into a Perfect Drift with Alphonso so they could observe the neural telemetry.
With Alphonso's newfound Stability, this proved easy, and the upgraded neural links were installed in all 3 of the pilots' AESIR. Hiro failed his roll against his Disfigured Face, and lost his mask. Despite this, he succeeded at Stabilizing Rex by suggesting that "the power of love can overcome anything" (which he learned from watching anime).
The researchers had brought with them an encrypted drive which probably had useful information, but none of them were capable of decrypting it. Kirato tried to encrypt it but failed, and a warning popped up saying "Failed Access Attempts Remaining: 2". His next two attempts were also failures, and the drive self-destructed; Kirato declared it to have been a trap and that it had never had useful information at all.
Kirato then passed his Vice (Video Games) check, and thought about how to convince Fuegan to not kill humans (Arthur suggested roughing it up a little to teach it who's boss). In the end, he suggested that they had freed the captured scientists, which was good, whereas LOKI had kept them enslaved, which worked fairly well.
The researchers' work with the fusion reactor gave them insights into the reactors that the AESIR used, and wanted to upgrade one and see how well it worked. Hiro was volunteered, and was told to Overload his Reactor Core and hold it there for as long as he could; they'd set up some big fans to cool it down so he shouldn't die. Their upgrade proved to work just fine, and Hiro had no problems.
The Next Mission
Halvorsen called the pilots into his office, and explained that, because LOKI was restricted by its environmental programming, the amount of resources it was willing to devote was limited. This meant that it could neither mount a full offense or a full defense, which would make their jobs much easier, as they wouldn't have to worry about attacks on Valhalla Base so long as they kept up the offensive.
Hiro opined that they might be able to distract it by lighting forest fires, and Halvorsen nodded along, agreeing that it would probably work.
Notes:
After a LONG hiatus (two last-minute cancelled sessions and a move) we're back! Still playing over Roll20 thanks to the 'rona.
Arthur's combat disadvantage, Sadistic, is definitely the least bad. He could have outright killed the Knight, sure, but it was effectively disabled anyway. I think I'll have him keep targeting the same foe until either it is totally destroyed or he breaks out.
Melee still seems overpowered; Kirato had an idea to make melee weapons all Unready after attacking, so we'll try that.
Arthur rolled the max of +6 Stability on his crit stabilization roll, then Kirato and Hiro both rolled 6s for their own Stability improvement (only +3 because it wasn't a crit).
The upgraded neural links give +1 to any further attempts to Go Even Further Beyond, while the upgraded reactors extended the length of Overloading the Reactor Core to 3d seconds (from 2d).
I really wanted Kirato to fail to convince Fuegan, so that it could respond that the Valhalla Project was also enslaving the researchers, but everyone had to succeed.
Hiro's point about distracting LOKI with ecological destruction was mentioned by Arthur's player to potentially let us play sessions when one player was absent. I'm against this, as 3 PCs is already very few, not to mention the problem of that player showing up the next session mid-combat and then having to sit there.
Mission Rewards:
Arthur: +5 points for Attributes (immediately spent on Will)
Arthur: +5 points for Attributes (immediately spent on Will)
Hiro: +2 points for Combat Skills
Kirato: +10 points for Support Systems
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