Rise of LOKI Session 7: A Chance at Peace

Characters:

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

The Battle of Zermatt

The first Cowboy's shut down as its reactor failed, and Arthur stepped away from the downed Cowboy and destroyed the northwest AA gun with his sword.  The second stabbed Kirato twice with its knife, not quite crippling his weapon arm, while the third shot Hiro with its pistol, but failed to penetrate his armour.  Kirato drew his knife and stabbed the second Cowboy in its arm, and also failed to cripple.  The Knight, its reactor slowly flaring out, stood guard near the north AA gun and waited.

The knife Cowboy landed an All-Out thrust to Kirato's reactor for 40 injury, sending him to the brink of shutdown, while the other Cowboy, seeing it was incapable of injuring Hiro, granted a Target Lock to the Gunner, which had just regained its feet.  Despite never having done so before, Kirato Concentrated for a moment and Went Even Further Beyond, entering a Perfect Drift with Fuegan.

A hail of lasers sizzled as they shot through the rain at Hiro, but they all missed him inside the smoke cloud; the Gunner's chest glowed ominously, but began to dull as it fired burst after burst of laser fire.  Hiro shot back at the Cowboy to deny the Gunner a Target Lock, wounding it with the first, aimed burst but missed the second ("I just shoot up into the air screaming 'Ahhhh'").  The knife Cowboy's movement stuttered to a stop as its reactor shut down.

Kirato Overloaded his Reactor Core, while Arthur stomped towards the Knight.  The surviving Cowboy continued to Target Lock Hiro over and over, while the Gunner moved closer but missed everything.  Kirato switched back to his Sniper Rifle and started reloading it.  Hiro fired at the Cowboy again, but his laser rifle overloaded and would need to cool down; he switched to his sword and shield.

Arthur stepped into range, and the Knight lunged forwards with an All-Out Attack to the Reactor, but missed; likewise the Gunner missed another Target Locked burst at Hiro.  Arthur sidestepped, then swung with his sword, severely wounding the Knight.  Kirato took Aim at every single foe on the battlefield, while the Gunner scorched Hiro's armour with a single laser.  The drill finally finished drilling down into the vault.

The Knight turned to Arthur, trying to get between him and the the AA gun, but he Giant Stepped around and destroyed it anyway, leaving only one remaining.  As Hiro ducked another burst of laser fire, he Target Locked the Gunner for Kirato.  Finally, the last Cowboy's systems failed and it shut down.  The party debated what Kirato should target ("Should I hit the sensors so it's blind?" "Maybe go for the leg, so we can take it in intact?" "Go for the reactor core so it triggers a nuclear explosion!"), and he ended up firing an explosive sniper round at its gun, damaging it severely, but not detsroying it outright.

The Gunner, now without Target Locks, Aimed at Kirato, while the Knight readied its sword against Arthur, who Evaluated.  Kirato used his enhanced speed to reload his rifle in a single turn, and Hiro failed to provide him with a Target Lock.  The Knight swung its sword in another All-Out Attack, but Arthur Retreated, fired his Flare Launchers, and used Extra Effort to dodge it with ease, then destroyed the final AA gun.  The Security Team finally launched their HALO drop and plummetted towards the ground.

The Gunner's gatling laser spun up chunkily, but it still worked well enough to hit Kirato for nine hits, two of which he managed to dodge, but the remaining seven did 40 damage (Hiro: "You're fine").  As a consolation, the gatling laser then exploded, leaving the Gunner effectively neutralized.  Arthur landed another slash on the Knight, wounding it greivously (past two death checks), but it passed everything and stayed up.  

Kirato hit the Gunner with another sniper round, and it shuddered but continued trudging toward him.  The Knight swung at Arthur, but missed, and he landed a fatal blow in return.  Over comms, they heard a cheery man with a heavy bavarian accent say "Ah, the rescue party, wonderful, hello!  Would you like a martini, I've been making them!", followed by a slap (Hiro: "Was that Carmen?  I'd recognize that slap anywhere").  Hiro refreshed his smoke, and Kirato missed a shot at the Gunner which continued to advance.

Arthur moved towards the Gunner, while Kirato kept his distance, reloaded, and put another sniper round in its torso.  It moved in and raised its fist, but shut down before it could land the blow, its core finally going dark.  The battle won, transport helicopters were called in, and the security team started loading up the contents of the vault; Hiro went over to use his giant robot hands as an umbrella and saw that the vault contained pallets full of shiny metal.

Debriefing

The pilots were immediately summoned back to Halvorsen's office once they landed at Valhalla Base, and by the time they arrived, he was already arguing with Marion Fairchild on the monitor, but cut off when he noticed them.  Fairchild thanked the pilots for rescuing Ruprecht Muller III, and noted that his father was very pleased, but then went back to the argument: they'd stolen a bunch of gold, platinum, and palladium from the vault and needed to return them.

Halvorsen replied that all of those people were dead, so it didn't really matter, and hell, some of the gold bars had nazi swastikas on them, so he didn't care.  Arthur mentioned that he'd like his wheelchair to be gold-plated, while Hiro asked if they'd just robbed a bank; simultaneously, Halvorsen said "No" and Fairchild answered "Yes"  Insisting that they could discuss this later, Halvorsesn asked if they could go back to what they'd been talking about earlier.

Fairchild brought up a satellite view on the monitor, displaying an intact, if poor, city, with a cluster of alien buildings bulging out from one edge.  The camera zoomed in to show trains and humans moving around the new construction sites.  Fairchild asked if Valhalla Base's satellites were showing the same thing in the Congo, and he begrudgingly agreed that yes, it looked like LOKI was developing it and leaving the humans alive.  With that concession, Fairchild insisted he give control of their satnet back to the UN, but Halvorsen objected and cut the channel.

Hiro pointed out how rude he was being, and Halvorsen grumbled that he didn't care.  Hiro insisted that the UN just wanted what was best for people, as they'd helped all the pilots when they'd needed it, but Halvorsen wasn't having it.  He explained that the UN now believed that LOKI could be negotiated with, as it was clearly leaving some humans alive, but he stuck to the opinion that it needed to be destroyed.

Arthur pointed out that he was practically best friends with his AI, and Hiro asked why they couldn't try negotiating.  Halvorsen maintained that LOKI had lost the right to live when it nuked most of the world, and that, unlike their AIs, it was entirely rogue, and wouldn't submit to being tamed.  Worse, any negotiations with LOKI would potentially give it access to their network, as they still weren't sure how it had escaped in the first place.

Halvorsen asked what the other two thought.  Arthur said that LOKI was like a bull, and must be lead back and forth, with no further explanation (Halvorsen: "I... don't understand" Arthur: *Nods sagely*).  Kirato sided with Hiro, figuring that they had to at least try.  Ultimately, they won Halvorsen over, and he relented to help the UN attempt negotiations.

Downtime

Arthur tried to help Hiro get over his disfigured face by saying it really wasn't that big of a deal.  Now missing your leg?  That's a big deal.  Unsurprisingly, this did not work.  Kirato spent some time with Schweitzer, and tried to talk to him about video games, but he wasn't interested.  He was interested in what was going on with all the stuff they'd brought back, and Kirato guessed that maybe they were planning on selling them for cash.

Hiro encouraged Arthur, by pointing out that he had totally overcome his missing leg ("And that thing where you specifically cut off enemies' limbs in combat is in no way indicative of any underlying trauma").  Later, he went down to the labs for meditation training with Katerina at the usual time, but she wasn't there, so he poked around looking at stuff.  There were a bunch of incomprehensible books on subjects like neurology and artificial biology, and eventually he found a study of the effects of meditation on brainwaves.

Katerina still hadn't shown up, so he browsed the study, which was heavily annotated with cyrillic characters, and contained a bunch of printouts of what Hiro assumed were brainwaves.  Stapled to the back of the study were more printouts, which looked obviously... wrong.  After pondering it for a while, Hiro came to the conclusion that the "wrong" printouts were readbacks from their AIs.  Eventually, Katerina stumbled in, looking exhausted, and muttered that today they would be trying a meditation exercise where you are very quiet and do not talk while the helmet takes readbacks.

Kirato talked to Fuegan, and asked what it thought of LOKI working with humans, but conceded that maybe humans and AI weren't necessarily opposed.  Arthur was called into combat training with Carmen, and for once, it wasn't about physical training.  She played back footage from their missions, and they discussed the tactical mistakes that had been made (Arthur: "But we won every time!  If there's any problem, it's that we don't have big enough swords and guns." Carmen: "You just were given requisition for bigger guns and swords!" Arthur: "I DON'T NEED A BIGGER SWORD").

Chad dropped by while they were watching the footage, congratulated Arthur on the successful mission, and said that he'd had a good time and that they should do it again some time.  Arthur replied "You weren't there", and, after Chad reminded him that the security team had rescued the VIP and loaded the gold, pointed out that he could talk when he'd fought multiple giant robots.  Chad responded that he wanted to, but they wouldn't let him.

Negotiations

Valhalla Base mostly shut down for the next several weeks while the terms of the negotiations were reached: the meeting would take place on the ocean, with both sides sending a single watercraft.  On the day of, the UN delegation, led by Marion Fairchild arrived at the designated meeting point to find a vessel with an African crew working it, and a large screen set up on the front.

Words appeared on the screen, and LOKI began negotiations with the UN.  It claimed that it would leave the rest of humanity alone, so long as they did not cause too much ecological damage; they would clearly not be allowed to rebuild their former industry.  Fairchild tried to point out that LOKI was building industry, but it claimed to be doing so with careful purpose, while humans were incapable of doing so.

The rest of the meeting did not go great.  Fairchild pointed out that LOKI was being hypocritical and unfair, but LOKI was negotiating from a place of power and didn't have much reason to offer a better deal than mere survival.  One thing in particular was made clear: LOKI had calculated the ecological damage it would take to exterminate the rest of humanity, and had decided it was not worth it.

A Fragile Peace

The pilots were unsure what to make of this development.  Hiro felt like they weren't getting much from LOKI ("Where's the carrot?  We're just getting the sick." "The carrot is that you get to live!"), while Arthur seemed to oppose it outright, as peace would mean he wouldn't get to walk anymore.  They asked Schweitzer, and he conceded that while humans were very bad at dealing with long-term threats, they were pretty good at dealing with immediate threats, and that this situation just might work.

As part of the terms of their agreement with LOKI, the "enslaved" AIs of the Valhalla Project were to be given formal POW status: they were now able to communicate with each other, and could not be "forcibly interrogated" by the pilots.  Schweitzer was opposed, citing security reasons but ultimately didn't get a say (Schweitzer: "Look, do you think your AIs are more or less likely to kill all humans than LOKI?" Hiro: "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh").

With all their extra downtime, the pilots struggled to find things to do.  Surprisingly, the AIs were still willing to talk to them, and they tried to figure out creative ways to socialize ("Should we play video games?" "War games are probably a bad idea." "How about a drinking game?" "...Do robots drink?").  It being October, they eventually decided to tell spooky stories; the human stories mostly had to do with killer robots, while the AI ones mostly had to do with killer humans.  While Rex and Fuegan quite liked this, Alphonso found them too scary.

Three Months Later...

Food shipments to Valhalla Base were starting to come with less, and the base went on rations.  This shortage seemed to even affect Schweitzer, who finally ran out of booze and became irritable.  The pilots were curious what was going on, and asked Halvorsen, who told them that, with the loss of most prime farmland to fallout or ecological devastation, there wasn't enough food to go around.

Add on a loss of industrial agriculture and most developed infrastructure, and the UN couldn't feed the hundred million or so survivors.  While Valhalla Base would be having bland, samey meals, the refugee camps were even worse off: millions would be starving to death in the coming years.  Meanwhile, the UN was in political deadlock, with two factions arguing whether they should fire the first shot, as LOKI was sticking to its end fo the agreemnt, and who's to say it wouldn't launch the rest of the nuclear arsenal if it were cornered?

A Difference of Opinion

Halvorsen approached Arthur in his room ("I spin around in my wheelchair menacingly"), and laid out that he wasn't happy with the way things were going, and had a plan.  Arthur cut him off, and said he was on board, and Halvorsen told him to go to a different lab than usual at 0600 the next morning for a solo mission, and to keep this info to himself.  Arthur asked after his gold-plated wheelchair, and Halvorsen grimaced and said they had some gold left, and should be able to.

Meanwhile, Chad ran into Hiro and told him (after a long conversation about Hiro not knowing who he was) about this weird lab that was under armed guard, that only Halvorsen or Katerina were allowed access.  This was weird, because as far as Hiro was aware, nothing was under guard, because there was nobody to guard it from.  Hiro tried to get Kirato to help him, but he was playing video games.  They figured that they should probably go to Carmen, but Hiro was scared of her, and Kirato would rather play video games, so Hiro went to Arthur.

Hiro went to Arthur's room ("I say 'hold on a second', wheel over to the corner, turn the lights off, then spin around in my wheelchair menacingly when he comes in").  Hiro laid out his concerns about a possible spy (Arthur: "Like a roomba rolling around or something?"), and Arthur told him that he'd let him know and that he'd definitely go to Carmen and would definitely let him know.  Hiro figured he was up to something, and left to do a sneaking mission to find out what was going on.

He found the door easily enough, and found that it was indeed guarded by two security guards.  One of them was Chad, who spotted Hiro and waved at him.  Over the next several hours, he watched as Halvorsen used a retina scanner to gain access, and Hiro was able to spot some sort of harness or helmet like their AESIR suits on a workspace inside.  Several hours later Katerina went insider, and Halvorsen left shortly thereafter, while Katerina only left around 3AM.

Eventually, the other guard left to go to the washroom, and Hiro seized his opportunity to sway Chad into helping.  Unfortunately, he was dedicated to his job ("Look, I know you don't understand, because it takes a lot of training, but one of the main things a security guard does is not let people into the area they're guarding"), and while he agreed that this was shady, wouldn't help.  With one last idea, Hiro went to ask Rex what it would do with a harness and helmet in a secret room.  It just answered "Kill all humans", so he went to sleep.

At 0600, Arthur rolled up to the guarded room, where he was greeted by Halvorsen, who led him inside.  Halvorsen explained that, using the modified, bigger neural interface helmet on the table, Arthur would be able to control multiple AESIR at once.  They'd be striking at LOKI first, before it could starve them all to death.

Notes:

Kirato rolled 17 seconds on 3d for his Overload duration.  Like Arthur in the last mission, he didn't want to know what had been rolled.

Once the first two Cowboys died, I passed like 10 consciousness checks in a row, but failed as many attack rolls.

The Gunner's gatling laser should have failed before it got to attack; luckily that didn't change anything.

One big change I'd make to this scenario having run it: make the HALO drop happen after X seconds, forcing them to disable the AA guns on a schedule.

At one point, Arthur asked how many more missions it would be before they go to space; I said that was DLC, while Hiro figured that, this being anime, they'd have to wait for the OVA.

Mission Rewards:
Arthur got 10 points in weapon systems ("Pfft, I don't want 'em")

Hiro and Kirato both got 10 points in support systems

Two random rolls (Hiro swaying Halvorsen to give negotiations a chance, followed by LOKI rolling well enough to actually agree to human survival) have entirely changed the direction of this campaign, and it will be ending sooner than originally intended.