[X] Board and capture the ship.
-[X] Make note of who's on deck and targets of opportunity.
--[X] Swing by using a rope from your ship to theirs and engage the Captain.
--[X] Dynamic entry!!!
--[X] Bonus points if you knock someone overboard in the path of your swing.
---[X] "Sorry, Mate. Nothing personal."
Write-in +1
I question the mechanics of rope-swinging between two spaceships.
Omake +8
This is what I was worried about, but I seem to be throwing out the dice in favor of just fucking writing. Meh, if I was going to curbstomp the dice anyways...
"Boarders away!" There's an almost ripple down the side of the
Dheonpheahas as the launchers fire.
Establishing a proper transfer corridor between two vessels is finicky enough at the best of times, and you want to take the
Wehmun Or intact. That's where the boarding capsules come in. Though they're little more than glorified tin cans, each of them is self-contained, small enough to launch at speed, and has grapnels to recover a near-miss into a boarding action.
Assuming you don't get shot down, that is. Bag it all. Why the frell is the
Wehmun so well armed?
The boarding capsule explodes, hurtling you and your teammate into the vacuum of space proper. Switching your gun to grapple mode, you take aim at one of the siderails of the
Wehmun and let it reel you in. You won't be landing on that deck, you've got too much momentum, so instead you aim for one of the balcony-slash-loading-bays several decks down around the side. You whip around the underside of the rocky outcrop and crash into the ragged gun crew using it as an emplacement, knocking one of the bug-eyed Sagittans nearly over the edge. Idiots should have seen you coming, they're here to repel boarders after all. You're not sorry. You kick their man-portable lightblaster off into unreachable space and brandish your sword at them while you recover your breath, before running off into the bowels of the island.
It seems most of the other boarders had
smoother luck than you did, although not necessarily better, and most of the critical areas of the isul are already safe from sabotage. You catch up with Queeg in the motive room by jumping on one combatant and shooting another from across the room, freeing most of your crew in the area to deal with corralling the magics so as to bring the isul to a stop.
"Chief Queeg. Status of the capture?"
"Captain," she says, turning her yellow-slitted eyes to you after sweeping the room. "We've been facing some unexpectedly stiff resistance, but except for the wheelhouse nothing we can't handle. The captain seems to be holed up in there and dead-set on not letting anyone in. They've got an entire kill corridor set up."
"I'll take a look. Which way?"
Queeg points with a massive upper claw. "The top of that hill in the back. They've got it pretty well pinned down, there's a lot of rock under it."
You nod to her and head topside. The situation is every bit as bad as she describes; it's worse, really, as whoever is in the wheelhouse is not content to sit in it like an impenetrable fortress but is raining down lightning and hydroblasts on the combatants indiscriminantly. Their backs are well-covered too, while the climbing routes have good cover they're outside of the
Wehmun's habitable envelope.
As you creep along the outside edge of the fighting, you spot the
Ijoth returning from combat. Its wooden skin is covered in black sootmarks but still intact. The wheelhouse notices too, and slings a few pitiful fireballs in its general direction, as if to say "rawr! Keep back!" Not that it was ever going to be in range. The
Ijoth can't return fire, either, for fear of slagging the entire hill and destroying any chance of capturing the
Wehmun Or... but maybe you can find another way to make use of it...
You scramble to switch your handgun to grapple mode again as you run to the side and throw yourself over. The grapple catches easily on the
Ijoth, negating your outward momentum with a jerk and dragging you back towards the wheelhouse's hill. You reel yourself in harshly to increase subjective altitude and stay out of their firing arc. Releasing the grapple when you're just above the height of the wheelhouse sends you causes you to arc into them from a direction they weren't expecting. The mage who breaks your fall tumbles over the side and onto the hill, and your sword comes up to point right at the captain.
"It's over, mate. Will you be ordering your crew to stand down, or does this get exciting?"
The captain, apparently, disagrees with your assessment. He kicks sideways inside your guard and launches himself at you, sending your sword slicing into another mage's robes as you tip backwards. It doesn't last long, the captain isn't a brawler and you are able to send him over you and then kick him over the side. You shouldercheck one mage into another, grab your sword, and that was apparently the break Queeg's crews needed because the mages are surrounded and no-one is attacking you.
You take the opportunity to look closer at the fancy chest the captain was guarding from you. It's got locks and filigree and everything. Nothing you can't bypass, of course, but it's a great deal more Important-looking than anything you expected to find on the
Wehmun. You're going to need the captain alive to figure out what this is about, aren't you. With a sigh, you shoot him with your grapple and drag him in.
"Is this really that important?" asks Rohape, as you and Queeg haul the fancy chest into an appropriated conference room. "I've got crews to be integrating."
"Yes," you say, "definitely. This thing"--you thump the fancy chest--"is the key to the
Wehmun's mysteries. To understand
them, we need to understand
this, which means we need to open it. Where's Lorend?"
"Here, coming, sorry." Lorend bustles through the doors. "Sorry, came as fast as I could, have you
any idea how finicky it--oh my." He freezes, staring at the fancy chest for a long moment before swallowing. "Thisss... may be somewhat outside my expertise."
"Nah, we got that already, you're good, we just needed you to be here for this," you say waving one hand. "All the important people, as it were. Queeg, if you would?"
Queeg nods, and brings both massive upper hands down on the lock. It holds for one blow, two, and then Queeg wraps a hand around it and twists and the latching mechanism tears away leaving the fancy chest to pop ever-so-slightly open. You and Rohape grab the lid and pull it open the rest of the way, and the four of you gather round, peering into the fancy chest to reveal...
[ ] a set of six cylindrical stones the size of you thigh, each intricately carved
[ ] an elaborate scroll written in the secret tongues of mages
[ ] a detailed dossier on a prominent Cetean politician -- one in favor of reducing the military budget
[ ]
Feel like a write-in? Aim for something evocative and ominous, but flexible.
"Well," says Queeg, settling back. "We'll have to go to Cetus and do something about this, of course."
"I
know, okay?" You had started pacing fifteen minutes ago, as discussion started to turn up broader implications. "Those elitist Cetean bastards left me to dry, but this? Stars! This would be everyone!"
"I know you hate them, okay, but how bad would it really be?" asks Rohape.
"How bad? How bad? Rohape, I know I am a shining beacon of self-interest, but these frellheads sicken even
me with their willingness to step on others! Why, I wouldn't be surprised if--"
"Okay, sorry to interrupt, but this has been bugging me for ten, fifteen minutes," says Lorend. He points inside the fancy chest. "What exactly is that?"
You look where he's pointing, and in the back of the fancy chest is a small catch. Pressing it causes the bottom panel to pop up along one side. You work your fingers into the seam and lift it out of the fancy chest, revealing a gemstone figure which you also lift out. Everyone stares at it for a long moment.
"Ah, frell," says Lorend finally. "They booby-trapped it."
Which ship-killing monstrosity does the figure depict?
[ ] Phoenix, the eight-winged flame
[ ] Knor, the wooden vine
[ ] Vrish, the wrath of air
[ ]
Write-ins allowed, but subject to intense scrutiny regarding my ability to write the beasty. I recommend including a sub-vote for one of the default options.
A/N: GARGLEBLARGLEBLARG. This greping
update. And it's late, too. Ah for Sunday's blissful confidence in my ability to handle this thing.
If I later add a tag to the effect of "action scenes are my nemesis", don't be too surprised.
I still haven't decided what elemental type Sonam's gun is. Leading candidates are water (nicknamed "the Spritzer"), air, and wood, in that order.
I expect the vote to be open for at least about thirty-two hours.
