[Previous]
[Next]
Chapter 7 fork: Bear Battler
Phyr repeats, “As I was saying, ‘Fuck those guys’,” and starts firing his blaster over the parapet. He gets two shots in his surprise round: one direct hit for 125 damage, and many more hit by the explosions for 50 damage.
Turn order is determined by score, with no roll: first Pannych, then Alice, then the noobs, then Phyr, then Vector.
Pannych takes her full turn to assess the situation, making a decent Observation roll: she reasons that the noobs will have to move across the drawbridge and through the gatehouse in single file, but then will have the run of the courtyard, as the noobs can certainly overtake any of them on foot. The noobs won’t be able to ascend any of the stairs, but they may be able to destroy the parapet, so their best bet is probably to fall back along the parapet to the fort proper and hole up in the confines below, where it’s too narrow for the gigantic bears to follow. She casts Pause to communicate this plan to the group.
Alice sighs in exasperation, draws her bow, and looses a magical arrow into the crowd. It hits a noob for 9 damage.
The noob chief leads the charge, thundering across the drawbridge. It groans and bounces in protest, but holds. The other noob warriors ready to charge across behind her, while three of the five menders heal their compatriots; the other two each lob a fireball up at the parapet. The adventurers attempt to dive out of the way: Pannych and Alice make their Nimbleness rolls, and escape to safety, popping right back up on their feet; but Phyr and Vector have low scores and can’t get far enough. Vector takes 20 splash damage and goes skidding across the stone, while Phyr takes only 9 from the blast but also another 20 when he is thrown to the ground below, dropping his blaster.
Phyr and Vector both spend a turn getting to their feet.
Pannych sees that Phyr is down in the courtyard, with the noob chief about to take the gatehouse area. She throws a smoke bomb down to the entrance of the courtyard, and it bursts in a cloud of grey smoke, obscuring the view through from either side. She then turns and runs for the guard tower on her side.
Alice sends another arrow down into the crowd, hits a different noob for 9 damage, and runs after Pannych.
The noob chief charges into the courtyard, heedless of the smoke, and looks around; spotting Phyr, she rears up with a roar and wheels in his direction, thundering back down on all fours and ready to charge again. Another noob crosses the drawbridge, and two menders continue healing their troopers, while the other three hurl fireballs up at the fortress walls. Pannych and Alice are outrunning the explosions, if narrowly; but Vector has to pass a Nimbleness check to roll out of the way again, fails, and takes another 20 damage as he skids along the parapet once more.
Phyr turns and sprints for the guard tower, heading directly away from the noob chief and passing a Nimbleness check to scoop up his blaster as he goes.
Vector gets to his feet again and casts Heal on himself for 16 HP.
Pannych and Alice keep running toward the guard tower, rounding the tower and heading along the parapet above the armory. Alice looses the occasional magical arrow as she goes.
The noobs continue to file over the drawbridge and through the gatehouse, even after the next round of fireballs destroys it - they just charge right over the rubble. Some of the menders keep healing as they wait their turn to cross, and in a few rounds the whole troop is back at full health.
The noob chief catches up to Phyr just before he reaches the tower, and swipes at him with her claws, doing 17 damage and sending him flying. But he passes a Fortune roll and is thrown directly through the tower’s doorway, still open from the earlier battle with the goblins. She batters at the tower with her claws and body, tearing it apart in a few rounds, but not before Phyr has rushed up the stairs and started running along the parapet toward the back of the fortress, taking pot shots at the noobs pouring into the courtyard along the way.
Vector, out of fireball range at the parapet’s very corner, snipes at the amassed noobs until Phyr gets up the stairs. He only does 15 damage with each hit, and then he heals himself and Phyr as they run together toward the rear of the fort.
Pannych and Alice reach the rear of the fort first, then make a mad dash down the stairs to the troops’ quarters. As Phyr and Vector catch up, the noobs are tearing apart the heavy iron doors - the two of them get down the stairs just in time, to the waiting ladies. The chief is right behind them, snarling and snapping at the head of the staircase before starting to dismantle it as her troops press behind her.
Phyr shoots his blaster as the chief tears the masonry apart. After a few more shots, the weapon is fully discharged, so he retreats to the quarters below and recharges it as the furious noobs continue tearing at the stone. The adventurers move down the hall, ready to fall back to the storeroom below at the inevitable charge.
“I, uh, may have miscalculated,” Phyr admits, drawing his second blaster.
“YA THINK,” Alice shouts at him.
“Dude, if we die here, I am kicking your ass,” Pannych says.
Vector loads a fresh battery into his rifle, switches it to burst fire, and tops up Pannych and Alice with his Heal spell. There’s a rumble of stone and a mighty roar, and down they come.
The chief leads, evidently healed by the menders. The noobs rush in, just able to run two abreast in the much wider hallway - but this means they have no possibility of dodging the various projectiles heading their way. The adventurers open fire, managing to kill the chief and the other noob warrior in the lead. The others just clamber over the corpses, and the adventurers kill two more before they head down the stairs.
The storeroom is more open, so they once again make for the stairwell to take up position while the noobs tear the stonework apart. Because of the open space and the piles of goods in the way, they won’t be able to concentrate their fire so easily - but the various obstacles give Phyr an idea.
“Vector, shoot some of those barrels,” he says. Vector complies, and sure enough, the smell of strong liquor soon fills the air. “Good, now shoot a bunch more, all over. But not by us!” Vector catches on, nods, and does so. “OK, so shoot all the noobs you can when they bust through - but on my signal, fall back to the dungeon.” The others nod.
With another rumble and roar, the noobs rush in. The adventurers focus fire on the entrance as the noobs flood into the wide storeroom. When he judges the moment is right, Phyr shouts, “NOW!” and the rest of the team flees downstairs. He holsters his blasters, then raises his hands, and shouts, “FLAME!”
He pumps an even thousand mana into the spell, and the moldering goods and spilled liquor erupt in an apocalyptic conflagration. He grins at the chaos, starts to laugh, and then the rest of the liquor barrels all burst in a cascading explosion, and he’s thrown down the staircase, taking 85 damage from the explosion and another 15 as he tumbles down the stone stairs.
The others drag him to safety, and Alice casts Great Heal on him at double strength, fully healing him. A few seconds later, there’s a deafening rumble as the whole fortress collapses above them.
The adventurers sit in darkness for a few moments, then Alice says, “Now what, genius?”
“That’s mad genius, to you,” Phyr shoots back. “And now, class, we learn that enough plasma melts rock.”
“Great, so instead of being buried alive, we’ll just be killed by lava,” she says.
“You know, he has a Chill spell,” Pannych says.
“That’s… actually, that could work.”
Phyr works over the next hour to free them, alternately firing his blasters, recharging them, chilling the molten stone before it gets out of hand, and also chilling his blasters when they start beeping with overheat warnings. The going is slow but steady, and they eventually emerge from the destroyed fortress to find no survivors among the noobs. They each get 20 XP for the battle. Phyr says, “Sweet, level two! Wait, how do I level?”
“Happens in your sleep,” Pannych says.
“Well, let’s not waste any time, then,” Phyr says happily.
The four then head back to Noob Town.
[Next]
No comments:
Post a Comment