The Glitterbois Play Rifts 12: A Villain is Born

Breakfast puppies.

This podcast contains adult language and content and is meant for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised. I am a cat and you are listening to the Glitter Boys.

It's a helicopter shot high above the trees of the Michigan wilderness. Just pine as far as the eye can see. Then we break into open country. Tufts of grass, fallen trees and a heavy duty Road Hammer transport hauling ass across this open area heading east towards New Laszlo. It's kicking up dust. Following is a Mountaineer. And following that are two coalition Sky Cycles and a massive death sent transport missile. Are firing from multiple batteries on the skycycles slamming into the ground around the transport. And your radios, the conventional ones, are overwhelmed with coalition demands to surrender. Who is in the Mountaineer? Who is on the Road Hammer?

I'm driving The Mountaineer.

Okay.

Mr. Cat is on top of the Mountaineer.

Leif Bronson is driving the Road Hammer.

As discussed last time, Donna and Morthak are in the back of the Road Hammer.

Okay.

And I don't quite recall where I might have said I was last session, but I'm going to be on top of the Road Hammer.

That's all right.

Awesome.

I think you said you were in Shotgun, but doesn't mean you can't climb up.

Yeah, but where does the 1000 pound cyborg go?

Wherever he wants to.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, everyone roll initiative.

That's me. Bronson I don't like. Oh, okay. All right, cool. Mr. Cat has a 27.

Good Lord.

Wow.

I rolled a 19. I have a plus eight.

Criminy.

Yeah, okay.

Bronson has a eight, I rolled a two and he has a plus six.

You have those cat like reflexes.

I'm assuming no one has higher than Mr. Cat currently.

No.

No.

So Henry has 13.

Okay. Donna's got 12, Riley has three.

It should surprise no one that Mr. Cat will go first.

Okay. On top of this thing, seeing these things come, there's not really anything that I can do. Does the Mountaineer have like a weapon system?

No. Did not have the time normal equipment to install the cupola. I wanted to.

I mean it's hardly bear proof.

I mean it's definitely bear proof. Unless it's a mega damage inflicting bear no weapons.

Damn.

I wanted to drop a cupola behind the driver passenger seat.

I just.

We didn't have a weapon for it and there wasn't time.

Oh, I have a laser rifle and there's milk missiles coming. I'm gonna use the rarely used shooting down a missile rule from the Rift's core rulebook. Sorry, Kyle.

There's a specific section for that.

Yes there is.

Dates back to when Robotech was introduced. Because if you think about Robotech, that's a whole trope. Shooting down the swarm of missiles coming at you with your F14 Tomcat knockoff Veritech.

The character has three options to minimize the damage. A massive missile volley. This is only. That's a good question, Kyle. You said missiles are in the air. How many?

Yeah, a cinematic number of missiles. Okay.

Somewhere real. Macross plus like.

Exactly. No, no. Max Sterling flying through space.

Because you asked. There are now two that are angling towards the Mountaineer.

Well, I. Okay, so in order to shoot a missile there are restrictions. One, the character must have an attack. I. I have an attack. The character could only shoot at one missile at a time. And character can also use his own missiles anyway. Great. Okay, what am I. What am I rolling against is the question. So I'll tell you what. I'm just gonna roll a strike with my gun and you just tell me if that's going to hit a missile.

Well, I mean I believe there are since they're a modifier for shooting at something moving fast. In the modifier. Yeah. Shooting at a moving target. Minus one to strike someone running. Minus one for each additional 50 mile per hour of speed the target is traveling.

Oh Jesus.

Let's see.

Maybe they're slow missiles.

Yeah, look, they didn't go to a very good school. Don't blame them for their educational problems.

It's systemic. I know.

Well, budget cuts, the coalition states. Let's see. How fast would this be?

Some.

I mean, I don't know. How fast is a Hellfire rocket travel?

A Hellfire? A Hellfire rocket or a Hellfire missile.

If you look on page 363 there's a list of all the missiles. And their speeds.

And their speeds. Of course there is.

Yeah. I don't think I'm gonna hit one of these. Although it's coming straight for us. Which means I'm not shooting it. I'm basically shooting it head on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's only go on Mach 1.3.

Okay. I will also just note that these are just the game mechanical terms for the speeds. The Palladium staff has very little concept of speed. Things just aren't always as they should be.

And cat like reflexes.

That's true. Well, I'm gonna. These were fired by the sky cycle, so they're primarily gonna be short range missiles. So we're gonna say they're going 350 miles per hour.

Okay.

And so that's a minus seven.

Oh, okay. I mean, I'm not gonna waste an aimed shot on this to give myself just a plus two. So I'm gonna get a plus one. Nope. That's a total of six.

Yeah. Mr. Cat Blasts at the missiles coming in. Laser beams lancing around them, missiles twisting in the air, these huge contrails. Now, you might ask yourself, are we going to use all those other rules for missiles about how they travel and the, you know, the speed, like, how long it will take them to close in? Absolutely not.

I thought you were about to say absolutely.

No, no. This. No.

Get your graphing calculators out, gentlemen.

I mean, I guess if you guys really want. You cannot use them because I'm not doing it.

Okay.

Okay. So the. Actually I rolled pretty well for the. For the other sky. For the first sky cycle. So it's clear closing in. And I think because Mr. Cat fired those two missiles are now gonna hit home because that seems like a good thing to do on this turn. These are light high explosive missiles.

I'm sorry, Kyle, did they roll? A successful strike?

Probably. Well, you know what? That's fair. Let's see how good this pilot is.

Hey, now, how.

How fast is the. Is the Mountaineer going, Jacob?

Well, Briley drives like a bat out of hell.

Well, the problem is the Mountaineer is following the Roadmaster, and the Roadmaster is much slower vehicle and not driven by a psychopath.

It's driven by a dog.

Dog.

So right now, Bronson has his pedal on the floor. His foot is on the floor. The road hammer is going about 100 miles an hour.

Damn.

That's its maximum speed. I'm reading it right out of the book.

Yeah.

And so Riley is not going as fast as he could go, but you know, slewing back and forth on the road. Serpentine as much as you can on a road.

Okay, so you know what? Let's say it's a minus three. I think it's still gonna hit.

It's fair.

I mean, because what, it's like, you gotta roll over an 8.

Yep, pretty much.

He rolled an 8. Well, he rolled an 11, but with a minus 3. Rolled an 8.

I can't remember if it's over an 8 or an 8 or higher. Let's just do. Yeah, Kyle's call. Yep.

Oh, that's a good question. Yeah, I haven't looked at it a while. I. I always kind of assumed it was an 8 or higher, but I

suppose I would assume it's an eight or Higher.

Because no missile any roll above A four. Oh, yes. Oh, well, I saw that right in front of me. Sorry.

Volley missiles slam into the Mountaineer. Now how much MDC does the mountaineer actually have?

Main body has 210.

Okay, that's good. That's very good.

As long as they don't hit the tires. The reinforced pilots compartment were we're good.

So two missiles slam into the Mountaineer. There's massive explosion, you take a total of 100 points of damage.

I thought they wanted their stuff.

They do 2D 4 times 10 at least.

Mr. Cat looked cool on top of

the Mountaineer when that all happened.

Even if you missed that big old ass.

And this Sky Cycle blast past the Mountaineer on its attack run. Sweeping low past it on its way like it's sweeping, sweeping past the road hammer. Henry. Yes, Alex. I should say it is Henry's turn.

Oh, I've got ideas. All right. It's probably safe to say that Gorshkov would not have the ability to hack a coalition missile. Huh? Gorshkov, think you could hack one of those missiles?

Could Gorshkov hack? I think, I think the kind of missiles that they're using currently are probably wire guided or laser guided. I don't think they are smart in that way. And I say that mainly because I think these like the sky cycle is designed for like you know, sweeping in, shooting things. It's not like an air superiority fighter. So I doubt it would have its own. I doubt the missiles would be that sophisticated, but.

Got it.

I haven't looked at the entry in a minute, but. Get him to hack other things.

Got that in mind. Follow up question. Considering I can run 7,920ft per minute, can I run as fast as we are currently going on foot?

What's your speed?

Current is 132. Check. Percent 660.

Yeah. Your speed of 132 means. Yep, 90 miles. At approximately 90 miles an hour.

Okay.

And then final question. How close? You know, distance, height, et cetera. Am I from one of those cycles? Sky Cycles.

A dramatically appropriate distance.

I can't quite tell if that's in favor of what I might be thinking of doing or not.

That means go ahead and try.

Yeah, I'm gonna try and jump off the roof of that vehicle and grab one of those Sky Cycles.

You have rocket boots, right? I do, yeah. For sure.

I feel like it's the coolest call.

Yeah, I mean, I hope I have

to roll a D20.

I think body block tackle is the appropriate body block sky cycle.

Fuck, yeah. All right, well then that is what I am doing

off the top of my head. I think that's two actions. That is correct.

How much do you weigh? A lot.

Also, I did just check the sky cycle. I did overshoot the damage. Their mini missiles do 1D 6 times 10, so it's probably not going to be quite as much. Yeah, it's going to be, let's see, 70 instead of 100. Sorry, I was looking on that chart.

Every little bit helps. The GM is benevolent this time.

The GM giveth, the GM taketh away.

So I've rolled 16 plus that four 20.

You rolled a 20?

I rolled 16 and then I got

a bonus of plus four 30, 20.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's going really fast. So it had been. I think I would have applied the same penalty, but I think you would still hit with that. Now let me ask Alex Player, have you seen a picture of a sky cycle? Do you know what these look like?

Honestly, no. I'm imagining speeder or whatever. A swoop size.

Pretty. Yeah, they're kind of. They're a bit bulkier if you cross

the speeder with like a bumper car.

Interesting. I appreciate the visuals.

Here we go.

Granted, my plan is to rip and tear, but it is helpful to know. Oh, so there's an actual pilot.

There's an actual pilot, exactly. Yes.

We need to get you a chainsaw.

Oh, yes, we do. But for now, is the next question what I'd like to do next?

Yes, okay.

I'd like to. I feel like since I've got a grapple, throwing him from the skycycle is a better approach than, say, crushing his head and removing him from the sky cycle. So, yeah, let's try and throw him off the skycycle. I climb my way up the side and attempt to, you know, toss that fucker.

Okay, so you just did a tackle of a skycycle. So Henry's running down the back of the transport. Rocket moves, fire. He slams into the side of the skycycle. The sheer mass alone causes it to veer dangerously off course. Like it skims the ground, shows up this huge plume of dust and stones, gets back up and the pus, like looking around disoriented. Then like this cybernetic face is just like. Appears at his side.

Hey, guy.

So you need to roll first off. You need to roll damage.

Okay.

A successful body block does 1D4 plus PS damage. And I'm gonna say you're the same sort of entity as a sky cycle, basically, so you can just inflict mega damage on it.

All right, so that's 1D4 plus 20. It does say SDC.

In this case, it would be MDC killer.

Yeah, it's definitely mega damage.

That's gonna be a three for 23.

The four is so arbitrary.

I try to grab his scruff and pull him off, and I just pull it through his body.

Well, the damage you did was to the vehicle, not to the pilot. Yeah, yeah. You slammed into the vehicle. Its main body does have more than 23, so it's still functional. Like, there are huge dents in the side, however. Okay. So I will say that those. I think slamming into that took two actions. So you will have to wait till your next round to try to grab him and throw him off, though. I think there's a chance of him just being knocked off by the impact, so.

So perfectly reasonable.

Yeah, because there's a chance. With the typical body block ram, there's a 50% chance of knocking an opponent down. So I'll let you roll, Alex. Roll percentiles if you roll less than 50. If you roll 50 or less, the pilot falls off 35.

All right.

Yeah. So the moment the big cybernetic face is, like, in his face, he, like, ah. And, like, lets go of the handlebars and, like, tumbles off the side.

And we need a will hum scream

Coalition pilot just skipping down the prairie. Like somebody just, you know, threw a box out of the back of a truck. And you know that he is in armor, so he's well defended. Defended against blast, but the sheer kinetic impact and the angle at which he hit the ground.

Yeah, you be breaking some.

Yeah, yeah. If he's alive, he's not having a great day.

Prince Donna is observing this through the back of the. What's the vehicle called? Road Hog. What? Roadmaster.

Road. Road Hammer. Road Roadmaster, Right.

Road Hammer Transport, I believe.

Hammer.

See, I keep wanting to go not Road Hammer, because Road. The Road Hammers are one of my favorite bands.

So, yeah, it. It is essentially a MDC semi.

Okay.

I assume it's. It's sort of like. Like a transport vehicle. So it's got like, an open back to it.

It's a big rig. It has, you know, front cab and passenger compartment, and then a huge trailer behind it.

Oh, there we go.

Untransformed Optimus, essentially.

Yeah. Don't ever say that to Riley.

You don't want to see what's going to happen.

Techno Wizard Transformer will be in your future.

So Donna opens up the back of the big rig, and Morthak and her Are looking out over the terrain and up in the air, seeing the missiles flying and hitting the vehicle behind us. I'm gonna look at Mor Thak. I'm gonna kiss him on the forehead. Morthak, do you remember when you told me that your biggest fantasy was to turn into a dragon and kill a lot of people?

Yeah.

Do you remember what I told you that.

Don't do that.

Pretend I didn't say that. Kill the bad guys. And please stay safe.

Okay. Morthak, who is currently in the guise of a young boy, you know, wearing shorts and a T shirt, leaps out of the back of the of the road hammer and is leaping through the air far longer than any child would be able to leap. Like he's flying now over the Mountaineer. And once he clears the Mountaineer, his body twist. There's this burst of magic body extends unnaturally into this serpentine draconic form. He is scintillating red scales. And let me get my. Let me make sure I describe him correctly because I have a entry for Morthak on my obsidian dock here.

Coming soon to the Goblins notebook as well. I promise. I promise, folks, I will update it soon. Untransformed Optimus. That's good.

Thank you. I also just imagine when he did that and transform into a dragon. It's like a Gradius type thing where there's just this big dragon blasting sky

cycles out of the.

Oh, yeah, like a side scroller.

Yeah, yeah. So yes, Morthak has scintillating red scales. This long spiny crest down his back and pale horns. And he roars and it echoes across the battlefield. He flies straight up towards the Death Head transport, which if they noticed him, they gave no sign because the massive transport continues on its path.

A single tear rolls down his cheek. Godspeed, my little angel.

Now, Cranston, that technically does not count as an action. It was just a conversation. So you can still do stuff.

Is there like a hold action type maneuver?

You know, there's a lot of rules and rifts in the Palladium system, but at the end of the day, it's pretty much a GM Fiat system still. So, yes, there can definitely be a hold action.

I think Donna kind of needs to hold until the action gets a little more close quarters, if you know what I mean.

Gotcha. Yeah.

Though I did mention that I wanted Donna to have a.44 caliber magnum revolver. I don't have the stats for that.

But you bought like a basic one if I remember correctly. Non mdc.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

That would be worthless right now. Yeah.

So Donna's just gonna have to kind of wait until things a little more intimate for the moment.

Don't worry, I have planned for that.

Oh, good. I was worried for a moment.

It is Bronson's turn. All he's doing is Mr. Cat hears that. Mr. Cat hears that over his radio. I'm just gonna keep driving. You do that. Or I got this brick. I could just put it on the gas pedal and I could get out on top and fight like you.

Keep driving.

I've got the brick.

Just.

Okay, let me know if you want me to use the brick, Bronson. Over and out, Cochise.

You know what? Donna starts making her way to the front of the semi truck.

All right. Sky cycle number two is sweeping in. It is also firing missiles at the mountaineer. That's a 10. Bear with me. I'm flipping back and forth between various pages of the book.

How many heroism and fate do the Mountaineer have?

That would be none.

Damn.

Firing volleys of 2, 3, 4, or 5. So let's see. It fires a volley of four missiles. I think it's probably too easy if they all hit based on one roll, so. Oh, okay. Well, one is definitely gonna miss. One streaks over the Mountaineer, slams into the tree line. The others. Two ones.

Yeah. Darn.

The other's four, though, so. 60 points of damage to the Mountaineer. Three missiles slam into the back. Riley can feel something wrong in the undercarriage. Something's pulling a little. There's smoke pouring from various portions. A little bit of The Mountaineer is on fire. It is the Death's Head transport's turn. No, wait. What was your initiative, Jacob?

3.

It is the Death Heads transport's turn. Its engines fire and it flies straight above your small convoy. And so if you're wondering what does a coalition Death Heads transport looks like. Looks like a giant flying skull with a bus attached to the back. Yeah.

300ft of you.

Yeah. As it passes over, you see shapes falling out of the back of it. They are skelebots. They slam into the ground all around some. And we will row randomly. Determine seven, slam into the top of the road. Hammer three, land on the Mountaineer. They hit with these big clunk, clunk, clunk. Now, skelebots are not typically deployed effectively this way, so, you know, they do land in a pile and they have to pick themselves up so they're not acting in this immediate ring. Now it is Riley's turn. There's a Skillabut on the hood of your truck.

Riley doesn't do anything Immediately about the skelebut and just loudly swears, I just fucking repainted this thing. Reaches into his bandolier, rips out a vial, bites the cap off and throws it out the window.

Oh, Jesus.

He's tossing out the vile bottled storm.

Oh, my gosh.

A swirling vial of liquid lightning that when shattered, releases a violent localized thunderstorm with ridiculously high amount of lightning strikes per square kilometer. That is all the information I have on it, sir. You gave me this.

Yes, those beautiful words.

Okay, well, I did not expect that.

I have been planning this since our last session.

Damn it. Riley hurls this small vial out of the window of the Mountaineer. The vial spirals through the air and it looks like there's this. This arc of electricity and dirt darkness inside. It bounces off the ground and then slams into a rock and cracks. And there's this. This immediate explosion of darkness that turns visibility basically to nothing in a second. And that sweeps up past you all into this massive cloud that begins to form above you. And lightning does in fact, begin to rain from the sky. Dear God. How much lamb damage does lightning do in the Prince. Oh, no. Okay, so I. Okay, so you did this just as the transport was passing above you? You know what, Jacob? Roll a. It's. Yeah, it is a ridiculous amount of lightning. Just. Just. How many D10s do you got?

We can get you more.

An additional five should you need them.

I got eight.

Okay, roll eight. D10.

Oh, I actually got nine.

Perfect. I mean, I've got more.

This is kind of a good bad type situation. Oh, yeah.

So do you want totals or numbers?

Actually, just the total in this case the sum.

10, 15, 21, whatever the hell that is. That's an 8. 29, whatever the hell that is. 36, 44, 45, 50. Around 50. Weirdly enough.

You know, I thought, how would they. Are they gonna be able to kill the death set transport? I don't know. What would they do? Okay, so I'm gonna say the Death's Head transport is obviously the largest. It's. It's massive and it's overshadowing all, so it's gonna take the brunt of it. The question is, how many are going to hit the Death's Head Transport as opposed to hitting your vehicles?

Yeah. I would also like to remind you that there's a reason airliners steer around thunderstorms at all costs.

Yeah, yeah,

makes sense.

And I'm saying the Death's Head Transport is pretty close.

I'm just saying that, you know, we might Have a Boeing Max situation here in a minute.

Yeah, so yeah, the Death said transport is, you know, directly above you guys. I mean, it's still like 200ft above you, right? It's not like low to the ground. Okay. Of the 50 lightning bolts that strike the area in and around you.

Jesus.

Let's see.

I actually feel kind of bad for the other guy on the sky cycle.

Yeah. Oh yeah, I forgot about him.

I mean, I'm on one too, around the same area and Mr. Cat is on the roof of a car.

Oh, okay. So Henry gets hit by one lightning

bolt as his tradition.

The Mountaineer gets hit by one lightning bolt. The Road Hammer gets hit by six, and the other sky cycle gets hit by four.

You in particular.

Bye.

There are skelebots on top of the the semi.

Which means that the Death's Head transport will get hit by 38.

Jesus.

So here's how we'll do this. Alex, roll 46 and that's the amount of damage you will take. Go Jacob. Roll 46 and that's the amount of damage the Mountaineer will take. Cranston, if you would like to roll 24D6.

You got it.

Or I can roll that with the dietz Wheeler.

I got him.

Oh, yikes.

Not what I like seeing, but we'll. We'll take the 12.

We'll take the 12.

You got him. Henry rolled 11 total.

Okay. So that's the amount of damage you take in the sky circle takes.

Okay. Okay. A question for Jacob's role. For how much the mountain nearest taking. Can that hit Mr. Cat instead? Sure, because just. It will help. This idea I've got for me. Like I. I have the knife and I raise it up and then lightning strikes the knife and it goes down through me. And then I take damage and the armor, but it just looks cool.

I mean, you can attempt to block it with the knife. Yeah, because it's magic.

I mean, there can be only.

Oh, that's right.

I can parry energy strikes.

I forgot about how cool this weapon is. There can be only one Mr. Cat.

Okay, well, I don't know what his attack rule is. I've rolled a 4, but my parry is plus 11.

Oh my God. Yeah. So you will parry it. You're still gonna take half damage.

Oh, okay.

Cuz it's lightning.

Great. I just. The lightning's pulsing down into me.

All right, the other sky cycle is going to take 60 damage now. Cranset. I know I. I told you to roll a lot of things. Would you like me to roll it 88. 88. Oh, I think the road hammer has 300mdc in the main bot.

Yeah, it has a few hundred

now, the 3846. So the Death Head Transporter is going to take 152 D6s of lightning damage. It could. Well, maybe not. I need to check it. Yeah, it will. It's taking a massive amount of damage.

And a piloting role. And a piloting role.

Yeah, that's fair.

Not that I want it to live. I'm just saying like it could.

Oh, they have a ridiculous. Yeah, it takes 500. It takes 552 points of damage.

I really want to. Independence Day this motherfucker Riley sticking his

head out the window screaming do not fuck with the Techno Wizard.

So these massive, seemingly endless array of lightning strikes slam into the Death's Head transport. There's electricity arcing over it. The forward twin rail gun turret is completely annihilated. The side mounted laser turrets are damaged. There's huge chunks of it falling to ground. There's smoke pouring out. But it is still flying. But yes, there I will make the pilot roll because that seems like something that would. Oh, seems like getting struck by that much lightning would probably majorly screw with the control systems. Tell you what, Jacob, roll the die of fate. Roll a D6.

How does A1 sound?

Well, it's not great for them.

The die of fate has spoken.

All the lights on the Death's head transport go out and it begins to tilt and like sway off course. Like it was clearly keeping pace with you guys. Now it is still. It is heading somewhere to the west, slowly descending. It's not out of control or anything. That was Riley's turn. There's still a black cloud the sky above Cranston you'd been holding your turn. Is there anything you'd like to do at the end of this segment here?

Let me think about that.

You got a pocket nuke you want to throw out or

just for the

people that can't see. NPC is about to. I don't know what is about to happen.

Mr. Cat, Mr. Cat is about to have kittens.

I was thinking that if I knew where the clump of robits landed on the roof that maybe I would just take my psy sword and turn. Just kind of jam it up there willy nilly.

Oh sure you can attack. They just kind of. They were essentially being sprinkled out of the back of the DES had transport. So the. The seven that landed on the Road hammer essentially are just spread down its Length.

I thought you were on top. Are you inside?

I'm inside.

Oh, okay.

But you can also very easily climb on top. I mean, you're an athletic.

Remember that climb score is over 100.

Yeah, I'll just climb on top and. Yeah, as soon as I can. I'm just gonna start mowing down these robot skeletons before they can kind of form themselves up.

Sure. You climb on top. Your hair is blowing in the wind majestically, this chiseled jaw, the lightning flashing everywhere, reflecting off your perfect skin.

I'm well oiled.

It does feel a little drafty for Donna. Not going to lie, it's a bit cool. She could put on a cardigan, she'd be more comfortable. But ahead of you, there are these crumpled forms of these skelebots, which, if you don't know what skelebots are, they are essentially Terminator robots that look like skeletons. They are picking them in the process of picking themselves up, lifting their rifles. They're obviously up to no good. You can attack one, the nearest one.

Yeah, absolutely.

Go ahead and roll an attack.

I assume you're using your psy sword.

Yes. So that's an 18 to hit.

Turns out that wet.

Okay, so base damage, 1D6. Add 1D6. Just 2D6. Oh, no fencing. Add 1D6. Mm.

Mm.

You have a number of things that are gonna boost that.

1D6 +8mdc. Jesus. Okay, 10, 11, 12 +8 is 20mdc.

20mdc. Okay. What does your psysword look like when Donna manifests it?

I kind of imagine like a zealot from Starcraft, and it's sort of like this radiant purple, blue, sort of thick broadsword type look. It's got radiating little tendrils of energy that kind of come off and dissipate on the edges.

Does it look like a sword that you're holding? Like an extension of your arm?

I think it kind of looks like a sword that I'm holding. Kind of both because it sort of just envelops more my whole.

Yeah, nice. Hell yeah.

Yeah. So Dark Falcon leaps into. Into combat, slams his sword into the chest of the skelebot. Sparks fly out, smoke bursts. That is the end of the first round, Mr. Cat NPC. What you like to do with this.

Lightning channeling through my knife. I see it and I look up and I see the death's head. And I look down at my belt and look back up and there's this moment of where I hear. Remembering, sitting on someone's lap, watching this movie so many times on vhs. That the VHS wore out. And that would be Empire Strikes Back. I'm gonna activate my jetpack. Oh, and I'm gonna fly up to the bottom of that Death's head where the skelebots were coming out.

Okay.

And I'm gonna chuck a bunch of plasma grenades in there.

Yes.

It's a reverse Sarlacc.

I think this will call for a piloting test.

Okay, let's see if I'm any good at this. It's the question I have here with points.

I look jetpack. My backpack's got jets. I am Mr. Cat.

That's the theme song that plays 15 under 50. Mr. Cat's jetpack fires. He flies into the air like some sort of feline missile seeking after the Death's head transport, it is listing to, well, I guess port tilted, smoke pouring out of it. He could see this massive, like in between the engines there's this door open, this bay door. And you can see as he flies up, he can see inside. There's. Well, at this point, it's packed full of Skelebots, but they have been knocked about and are trying to collect themselves. Electricity still jolting, coursing through the transport after, you know, after it got hit by 38 lightning bolts. So your goal was to fly up and essentially throw stuff. Throw grenades in the back. Yep. Okay, so I'm going to say it's going to take you the action just to fly up there.

Okay.

To get in position. So you're flying behind this Death's head transport. You can feel the burn of the engines. And it is. Well, that pilot's dead, so it is Henry's turn.

And real quick, if I may, I bounty hunt these skelebuts to finance my vet.

Okay, thank you.

I'm done.

I just need a missile launcher on my jetpack now.

It's true, I will say that the skelebots, upon Revelation, those were the guys that I saw in Marvel comic books in the 90s when I was young. It's like, oh, rift looks cool. It's got a bunch of Terminators.

Yeah.

Anyways, little anecdote there.

That was one of their ads.

Yeah.

And you had a. You still, I'm sure, have one of those on a placemat. So the other sky cycle was destroyed

if I recall correctly.

Yes, it was damaged. It was not destroyed.

All right, so they are still in pursuit of us then?

Yes. The sky cycle that you leapt on flew down the left side of the convoy and the other one flew down the right. And you could see it kind of peeling off to. To make another. To make a circle for another pass.

Got it.

What I would like to do is talk to Gorshkov. Gorshkov, can you help me fly this thing? As I try to finagle, I imagine the controls.

Duh. I will fly.

All right.

Seat yourself securely.

I'll do my best. Can you flip fly me into that other guy?

Engaging.

Hell yeah. So yes, I would love for Gorshkov to help me ram my sky cycle into the other sky cycle with a cool flourish. Jump off. At the last second.

He's down. Gorshkov rolled a 34 on his piloting check. The sky cycles engines flare. It streaks across the sky which is now dark. Lightning still coming down. You're approaching very fast and you see the pilot look back like what the hell's going on now? Are you going to do you want him to ram the other sky cycle? Are you going to jump off? What is your, your plan here?

You know, originally I was thinking ram and jump off. But the sheer velocity accounting for there is probably not the best idea. So I think instead I would like to just do a full flyby and what's the arm bar move in wrestling?

Clothesline.

Clothesline. Yes, clothesline.

His head off the pilot. Okay.

Sorry.

Yeah, their head off. That's true. The coalition is an equal opportunity oppressor. Okay, so I think that's just a straight up attack. Really?

Okay,

we'll call it a punch. Mega damage. Mega punch. Power punch. Power punch. Yeah, that's definitely a power punch for sure.

Taste my fist in the sky or will you. Re roll that? Yeah.

Gotcha. Gotcha.

I, I, I haven't even found my bonus yet. But it's only an 11 and I'd like for this to come connect. Yeah, that'll do it. 19 plus whatever my bonus might be.

Okay, so this, the other sky cycle pilot did see this coming. He is going to try to dodge cuz he doesn't want to die fair. He rolled a natural 20.

Damn. I was so close to letting out a too bad. All right, that's cool, that's cool.

Yeah, because the moment you come sweeping in, he just twisted twists the sky cycle controls. Head swoops down straight towards the ground to dodge. I say that will take, that will take him out of action for this next round because he is just evading. He's just getting the hell out of there.

Nice. Good maneuver.

Sign up for Cyborg and lightning storm. Mr. Cat feels something massive move beside him and Mor Thak is there. There's this Giant draconic guy.

Hey, Mr. Cat mor thak minion number

one, are we gonna go in there and kill all those robot things?

Yes, we are. After you. Okay.

Morthak grabs you and hurls himself into the back of the death's head transport. Like, his body just twists. He just body slams, like these skelebots out of the way. This is clearly like some rear compartment to compared, because, of course, the death's head transport is absolutely massive. There's skelebots everywhere. They were crowding each other trying to get out. There's a large kind of essentially more like a door that you would more often see on a ship. Right? Like a bulkhead door. It's twisted open. There's a man in fatigues, and he shouts, skelebots combat. But now it is Donna's turn.

I was just reading this ultimate Rifts guide, and it says that I can create two psi weapons.

What level are you?

I guess so five.

Yep.

Includes paired weapon training at level two.

Huh. Yeah. Cyber knights are pretty bitching.

Sorry, I need to.

I need a napkin.

Yeah. So as I plunge the first blade into the skelebut, Donna looks to her second hand and another fucking psysword comes out. Since you didn't specify that this skelebot is dead, I'm gonna assume that it needs another little double double sword strike.

It is dead. These are basically minions.

All right, let me go to the next one.

Yeah, there you go.

There we go. So one cool thing about paired weapons is when you attack. So you can make a single attack against one and do double damage, basically think. Or you can split your attacks so you can, like, move between two of them and attack them both at the same time.

Time.

But those are separate attack rules.

Are there two skelebots within range?

Yeah, sure. I mean, the top of the road hammer is not that big, right?

Okay, cool then. Yeah, for my first attack, we've got. Oh, God, that better hit 24. No, sorry.

23.

I want to be ridiculous here. And 23, they'll just roll some damage.

There you go.

22 damage to one. And then the other one is more than that. 18.

And another.

24 damage. Nope. 26 damage to the other.

Yeah. What's it look like when you hack these two down? Go duds.

Yeah, she just kind of casually walks up, puts her fist against one as I summon my psyblade, and it just kind of goes through it like butter. She moves her hand to the side and it falls to pieces. And then one more step forward and she takes the other Psysword. And she comes down at an angle and just slices it gingerly in half. It doesn't technically strain her muscles, but she's definitely flexing them as hard as she can for cinematic appeal.

Donna. What a character. Yeah. These skeletons fall to pieces, Internal systems popping and bursting. It is Bronson's turn, and he left his radio on. So he's broadcasting and everybody can hear him. Turn on the weather radio. I need some guns, weather person. But it's just some forecast broadcast out of Muskegon. Clear skies tonight. That's. Oh, God.

There's definitely thunderstorms.

What if Bronson gets really into talk radio?

I would listen.

See, Sky Cycle 2 is dodging this turn. It's the death transport. It is listing. But the skelebots inside. There are 21 skelebots inside this rear compartment that hadn't yet fallen out. And they are going to be shooting at Mortal and Mr. Cat. Krassen. If you'd be so kind as to record any damage that Morthak takes.

Sure.

Now, because there's so many, this is essentially fighting a horde. I'm not gonna roll 21 different attacks.

Thank you.

It's essentially too many attacks to dodge, even with Mr. Cat or Morthex reflexes.

Could I maybe like, just dodge for half damage kind of a saving?

Absolutely. That sounds good to me.

Yeah.

Let's see how many shoot at Mr. Cat. I mean, most of them are going to shoot at more Thack. Because, I mean, it's a dragon. It's a giant dragon. But eight are raising their rifles and firing at Mr. Cat. Take 57. Mega damage.

Totally dodging. That's a 19. Plus my massive dodge bonus on a dodge roll. So I can take half.

Yes. Cut it in half. Obviously you have mega damage armor, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So 28. So just 29.

29. Yeah. That's fine. Yeah. They are firing their variable laser rifles hammering into you. It's like this shower of light. He is going to get hit with a lot more, though. He has. I mean, he's a mech damage creature, so he regenerates.

Dragons are dope.

They are noted. He takes 95 damage.

And does Morthak have the ability to dodge or parry? Is there some mechanic I should be using here?

I'm gonna say he's a massive dragon in this small compartment that he slammed into. He just cannot physically dodge them in this confined space.

Okay.

If he were in the open flying. Absolutely. But essentially, Mr. Cat and and Mor Thak are crowded in this relatively small compartment at the rear of the Death set transport in a gunfight at point blank range. And the only reason Mr. Cat is dodging is because he's a cat and

not a giant dragon. I got it.

Not a giant dragon. More than. Oh my gosh, that hurts a lot. And he starts breathing fire. And it is Riley's turn.

Riley, staring at the skelebot on his freaking hood, is going to slam on the brakes.

You slam on the brakes. The skelebot had not collected itself. It goes flying. And you notice that the Rod of Asher Kadan has rolled across the cockpit of the Mountaineer, is now touching you. You hear a voice, wield me.

I'm going to reach down and pick up and go.

Yeah.

You were next part of this plan, buddy. Slamming on the brakes while grabbing the odd. I am going to cast.

Well, here's what I'm. Oh, here's what I got for you.

Knock yourself out. Let's see if your plan spared mine.

The Rod of Asher Kadan is basically. You guys. There's no way. I don't. I don't think you figured this out, but it was created by an Assyrian goddess of wind and air. Yep. Essentially like a storm deity. Now, now, obviously I'm sure you picked up on the fact that most of all the spells are weather related. So I'm gonna say in this instance where you use this rare magic item, bottled storm, you could use the Rod of Asher Kadan. It's still going on. The storm is still going on. You can use it to target lightning bolts. Oh, well then now you're gonna have to expend ppe.

I'm fine with that.

And roll. I just haven't yet decided what you should roll.

Do you have any ideas, honestly, of my skills?

I.

The only thing that would come remotely close would be techno wizard reconstruction. If you want to do it at some point, some sort of major penalty or possibly Leyline piloting. But everything else is just.

You have like technical navigation or.

I mean, navigation I could do, but.

Yeah, I suppose that would work. Well, actually, what I was thinking about while you were looking was saving throw versus magic. Oh, yeah. To not injure yourself.

Oh.

Oh, yeah. Would this be spell?

Yes. Okay, cool. Yeah. Which you should be pretty decent at.

Depends on whether it's Faye magic or not.

Oh, no, no, no. This is now. So. So here's the. Here's the deal. There's still lightning going everywhere. You can direct it with the rod. It's, let's say two PPE per lightning bolt. Each lightning bolt potential potentially increases the amount of damage you would take. If you fail to save.

How many skelebots are on top of the. The road Hammer?

Oh, the skelebots. Oh, I thought, oh, yeah, you can target the skelebots.

I mean, I just saw Mr. Cat and the dragon crawl in the back of a death head transport. Crashing. It doesn't seem to be the smart move at this point.

You can also see Dark Falcon fighting the skelebots on the back of the road Hammer.

I'm good enough to miss Dark Falcon.

So Donna has taken out three. There are four more on the back of the road Hammer.

Well, that sounds like. Oh, I don't know. Let's call it three lightning bolts a piece for 12.

Okay. I will tell you that one lightning bolt would be sufficient.

Well, okay. Two lightning bolts a piece.

It's a lot. It's a lightning bolt. Skullbots are tough, but I mean, come on.

All right, all right. I was being proportional in my response.

I don't know. Israeli go in for overkill.

I was being proportional in my response.

Oh, you do you.

We're gonna go two apiece. Okay, and what's that gonna be for? Save.

So two apiece. So you're doing six lightning bolts. Yep. Will say minus six to your save.

Eight. There were four right,

three or four left.

Oh, yes. I'm sorry, there's four. Eight. Yes, correct. Three have been eliminated.

And I'm known for rolling real well. How's the negative three side?

You are.

I'm going to blur burn one of

those with some dice.

Are you allowed to burn more than one in a row?

Yeah, please use a different die.

Yeah, it's your. They're your points.

Well, I think we're gonna have to settle for the negative two.

Wow.

You don't have a bonus. Save versus magic.

My save versus magic is a flat zero.

Whoa. Yeah.

Okay.

Is there any way I can use one of my heroisms?

I'm gonna take the hit. It's just damage.

It's just damage.

So you expend eight ppe, right? Or.

Yeah.

No, you did how many. How many bolts of light? It's 2 PP per multiplier.

Right.

So 16.

16.

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. So 16. And you take 16 damage.

Is that to SDC or hit points?

It is to STC and then hit points if you run out.

Got it, got it, got it.

I'm still fine.

Well, it's just the. The. The tr. Physical trauma of manipulating that much magic through this artifact. The blood is like streaming out of Riley's nose.

Yeah.

Tear ducts, Ears.

Yeah, yeah.

Other Orifices we won't discuss.

You just saw someone really attractive.

Dark Falcon has cut down these skelebots and is ready to go for more when eight bolts of lightning slam into the top of the road hammer and blast the other skelebots into pieces. You're temporarily blinded, but clear your vision. The skelebots are off the road hammer.

Donna looks at her side swords amazed for a second.

And that is when Riley hears the clunk, clunk of skelebots on top of the Mountaineer trying to hammer through the top. They are shooting it with their guns. I mean, they can't miss, so they're Stormtroopers. The mountaineer takes 12 MDC damage. There are two skelebots on top of it, four firing into the roof. And everybody's gone. This round, correct? Yeah, Top of the round, Mr. Cat. Inside the rear compartment of the death head transport, which is still listing, internal lights are flickering, Skelebots are firing at you. You're dodging like. Well, like a cat.

Would you like to do NPC mechanical question? Mor Thak Initiative order. It's after me, right?

Yeah.

He and Henry basically go at the same time.

I'm gonna yell at Mor Thak, burn, cut and run.

Gotcha, Mr. Cat.

And then I'm gonna wait until he retreat, pulls out. My plan is holding my action until he begins to extract. Okay, that's when I'm gonna throw the grenades. Kind of a fuck you on the way out.

Okay, so we'll go ahead and do his turn immediately. He is breathing fire. Skelebots are melting.

I just don't want to damage him with my grenades, you know.

Yeah. And then he like hurls himself. And you feel the, the death's head transport shudder as he leaps off of it, just from his physicality. And you're in there. Everything is on fire. Now. The officer that had been at the door is screaming, his face is melting.

What?

Would you like to leave?

So as we're pulling out before it's too late, I'd like to grab in my hands two grenades in each hand, click them and chuck them in.

Okay, you hurl four plasma grenades into the belly of the beast.

24D6 plasma.

Okay, roll 24D6. And I'm gonna say. So obviously a death set transport is armored, the intent being to stop the energy from getting inside. So I'm gonna say explosions inside do significantly more damage. Let's see, how much more damage

can I do? 8D 6 times 3.

That's very specific.

Well, it's 8 times 3 is 24. And it would be a whole lot easier than rolling. 24D 6.

Oh, yes, that's fine. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

105.

Okay.

Plasma damage.

105.

And the radius of each of those is how to pull it up here. Because those are the fun ones. 66 MD six times four. Yeah. 24. 66 is MD to a 12 foot area.

So I was gonna say, I think explosions Inside would do 10 times as much damage as normal.

Chunky salsa.

Yeah. So that. Well, that's a lot. Combined with the massive lightning strikes, Mr. Cat hurls himself away from the death's head transport Jetpack firing. He's not going fast enough for Mor liking. So more that grabs him says, hold on, Mr. Cat, and just dives straight towards the ground. Which is good because there is a massive plasma explosion right behind Mr. Cat. The explosion blasts away, the storm cloud dissipating it. Bright sunlight shines down at this blue ball of plasma expanding across the sky. And it's Henry's turn.

Okay, so Henry, atop the sky cycle that Gorshkov, for all intents and purposes, is probably driving, wants to follow and finish off that other sky cyclist.

Complying, Gorshkov dives the skycycle after the other or the last remaining coalition pilot.

The vehicles have stopped moving, right? Or are they still trucking forward?

I don't think anybody's still hauling ass.

Okay, okay.

The only one who stopped is me because I braked hard just to get the guy off my hood.

Okay, so then I honestly, I think I'm going to. Between my remaining actions and whatnot, I'm just going to try the same thing as just jam on the gas and try and just clip this guy with my beefy robot arm.

All right.

Coming out of the back of your neck.

There's still got a couple left.

What's the total?

I was an 8, I believe, for a punch. And then what was the bonus?

Just something to remember is that you don't need to roll super high in this to hit someone unless they actively defend. So if it's not that bad of a roll, you might not need to spin the heroism.

I mean, I feel like I could do better than an eight.

Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah,

like a ten. Cool. And for this was a basic punch bonus to strike is four. So. Yeah, 14.

Okay. He's gonna try to dodge. He rolled a 17.

Scrappy bugger. Got Luke Skywalker on the other end of me.

He does not want to die again. He. He just pours speed into his sky cycle, sweeps away down into the trees. He's dodging now in amongst the trees. Clearly this guy is just running.

No survivors.

And it is Donna's turn. The Road Hammer is hauling away from the Mountaineer, which is stopped. There are still skelebots on the Mountaineer? None where Donna is on the Road Hammer, though.

Yeah. I was about to ask, like, how far away is the Mountaineer? Like, if I wanted to cinematically leap from the. From the back of the semi truck onto the Mountaineer, what would that take?

I think at this point, it is too far away to do that because the Mountaineer slammed to a halt and the Road Hammer didn't. But it's not yet far enough away that you couldn't leap dramatically off and run over there.

Yeah, I was thinking that. So, yeah, I'll. I'll jump off as far as I can and then just start booking it to the Mountaineer.

Okay. Say that will take your turn. You can see the skelebot that fell off the hood of the Mountaineers getting up. And it's Bronson's turn. He's still driving. SkyCycle 2 is evading. And the Death's Head transport is dead. Jacob, it is Riley's turn. You can see Dark Falcon left off the Road Hammer and is charging towards you. Also, a Skelebot Terminator head pops up over the front of your hood. Well, shit.

You're charging towards me. So slamming on the gas, which was my plan, is contraindicating that.

You can.

You've already slammed on the gas. Oh, no, sorry. Slammed on the gas misunderstood.

Yeah, yeah, slamming on. No, slamming on the gas is contraindicated.

Obviously, you got to do what's in Riley's head, but I say go for it.

Yeah, you know what?

It.

I'm in an all terrain vehicle. The only reason I was minding the damn road was because I was following the. The Road Hammer. I'm slamming on the gas and taking this sucker cross country, clipping the skelebot as I pull off the road.

All right. I mean, clearly your intent here is to, I assume, knock the skelebots off the roof.

Yes.

Okay.

If there's any trees coming up, you know, like light copes of trees or something, I'm aimed right towards it.

I mean, it's Michigan.

Yes.

So. Yes.

Well, I'm going. That's why I specified light, because there's trees in Michigan that would stop, especially given it's allowed to grow without, you know, harvesting.

Yeah. The apocalypse.

So. So, you know, light copes. Branches might knock them off. You know, Riley's tendency to drive like a madman no matter what the terrain is. You know, and if they've damaged.

And if they.

Or that death's head transport have damaged the grill and smoker.

Yeah. Well, we'll have to roll randomly to this is over to see. All right. Roll your driving.

Roll my driving. That works for me. A not 4 out of 44 Raleigh

goes Dukes of Hazard. Driving like a madman off road. The skelebots are not designed to stand on top of a moving vehicle and maintain their balance. So they tumble off. Essentially. They're going to lose their action. They fall. Well, they fall off a vehicle into the. Into the dirt and are picking themselves up. And then given that the greatest threat has been dealt with, we're going to say Dark Falcon simply closes in. And Cranston, if you want to describe how you dispatch the last three skelebots.

Yeah, I think they're all clumped up. And I basically take both fists and I jam it into the chest of one and I sort of do a reversed scissors motion and basically just scatter all of them to the wind.

They tumble into pieces. The sun is shining bright. There's a light wind storm cloud dissipating into seeming smoke. There's the distant wind of a sky cycle high tailing it. Now, Alex, is Henry going to let the last sky cycle escape?

No. Correct. But I'd like to do something that's very cool sounding but risks failure and letting him go. But sounds so cool. What I'd like to attempt to do is get close enough to him because I assume I'm in pursuit.

Yeah, yeah.

And then do some form of hulk clap as I jump off the cycle, which in turn shatters and does some sort of flechette type attack in close range upon the person and their bike. Does that make sense?

Okay. I love it.

All right, cool.

Sure. The gears turning on Kyle's face was priceless.

So let's see.

Please don't cut any of the pastas.

Honestly, I think that's the name of the episode. So.

You are accelerating and gonna essentially slam into the leaping off and try to do area of effect attack or something of that nature. Right.

Destroy my own bike with the velocity to where the debris will shoot into.

I see.

Yeah.

So just a straight up ram.

Sure.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, that's fine. I think the key there is, well, roll with punch because Gorshkov can slam into the other sky cycle and destroy both vehicles. It's landing and not getting hurt.

That or is part of it.

I accept. Yes.

Getting, Getting Less hurt.

Yeah, I might have to take a minute to catch up with everybody. Yeah, rolled a six. I'm gonna go ahead and burn my last heroism. Seems appropriate. That's tech 16 plus 4. 20.

20. Oh, yeah, 20 for sure. Let's. So you'll take half damage. It would be 110 damage from slamming the other sky cycle at, you know, 350 miles per hour into the others. Into a similar sky cycle, they explode. You fly off at high speed, slamming to the ground, rolling, get up. The three point hero pose and you take, well, I guess 60 damage. No, it'd be like 55 added to the list.

I'm thinking you dug a great furrow through the earth.

Oh, yeah.

Massive furrow.

Hey, buddy, put it on my tab as I drag through the dirt.

And you know what? I'm gonna say there's a small chance that that pilot could attempt the same. Okay. He rolled a natural 20.

Oh, I think we have a long term mega villain in the making here.

Yeah, this guy's. Sometimes they come back.

Henry sees this guy at the last second, like, do this, like, stand up, put his foot on the seat and leap off like this somersault to the side. But he does get killed with a shock. Caught by the shockwave and punched off and he goes spiraling into the trees. Oh, man, this guy just really, really wants to live.

Why did.

Why does this D20 never roll like this for me?

I mean, honestly, I admire this dude.

Yeah.

Sheer tenacity. Like, still, fuck him, he's a fascist.

But yeah, God damn, roll your perception. You're in the trees. There's lots of underbrush. Do you see where this guy lands? Or do you even notice him not die?

It's a saving throw. D20. Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you much.

You have no bonus. Yeah.

No.

2, you get up and remember, you guys traveled quite some distance because you were moving at such high speed. You know, of course, that direction, the Road Hammer, the Mountaineer. Where that guy landed, you have no idea. You're in the middle of forest. There's chunks of burning sky cycle everywhere. Smoke is starting to fill the underbrush. And Gorshkov says he must have died. No one, no human could have survived that.

Oh, dude, no. I totally ganked him. He's dead. Like Henry just straight up assumes that was successful.

Yes, we should return. The others are likely in trouble.

Power legs activate. Henry just starts fucking hoofing it.

Go Go Gadget.

Henry makes it back. You all. Eventually you convince Bronson that he should stop.

And then it's like an hour as you slowly beep, beep. Just reverses the whole.

I'd like to think back to the mountaineer.

At one point, he did put the brick down.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

So I go tearing off in the woods while he goes hammering down the road. The only one in the cab of the Roadmaster is Bronson. So imagine Riley trying to get Bronson to give him enough information to navigate to the Roadmaster.

Oh, yeah, I'm in the trees.

Oh, I'll just pass the tree. It had an owl in it. So go to the owl tree and you will turn. There is a stream. I see a rock. One, two, three, four. What comes after four, Riley?

It smells like bread.

I should. It'd probably be easier if I just stopped. Oh, that's a big chunk of. Of that bad guy stuff.

Good job, Bronson.

Good job. Oh, there's a. One of them's alive. I got to go. No.

Loot the bodies.

And by that I mean search for any bits of remaining wreckage.

I would like to point out that technically, skelebots carry their weapons rather than have them mounted to them 100%.

We chop their arms off with their blasters and we take those in. Alexander can do something with these.

Yes, that is true. Skelebots do carry their guns. They carry CV213 robot variable laser rifles. And I believe there were 10 skelebots deployed on you guys that you dispatched. Though I'm gonna say the four that were struck by lightning. Yeah. Their weapons may be non functional.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, bit fused for no particular reason. Riley's gonna gather up a couple of the less lightning struck ones. You know, torso and head. For scientific reasons, sure.

Riley saw Terminator.

Riley, of course, saw Terminator.

Throw the heads away. Do not bring them home.

No. You can chop off the arms and legs if you want, but I get the torso and heads.

What was this, 97?

The Terminator 2 is a thing not

take the heads back.

I am very intentionally taking the heads back.

Also, as far as the situation goes, I did have a realization that Jumanji came out in 1995.

Oh, hell yeah.

So that means we can say what year is it? And it would be appropriate.

Yeah.

Okay.

Also, Jumanji'd should be a verb to the new Isekai.

You just got jumanji.

You know, when I was thinking about this scenario, I thought, man, there's a lot of stuff they could potentially COVID Death transport is completely atomized. The sky cycles are wrecked. Some of the skeletons are destroyed. So there's there's six skelebots and one dead sky cycle pilot that you could recover.

Oh, how is his cycle?

How's his armor?

Yeah, his armor's pretty good. I mean it was the concussive impact of, you know, hitting the ground at 350 miles an hour really did it for him.

That's one of those problems with armor. If you give people enough joint mobility to move in them, it means that you can break necks easy, you know. So Riley's going to yoink that armor set real damn quick.

They are probably a bit soggy.

Well, I surmise, I surmise that Riley's probably like investigating the, the concept of the body inside the armor and how does that move?

I mean, yes, that's going to be part of it because I mean, he's going to get the armor off and then he's going to be like. So exactly what range of motion do you have with your neck now?

Insanity are wonderful things.

Yeah.

Riley's playing with the neck and like trying to see if it can turn like an owl.

Donna's pretending she doesn't notice.

I am complimenting the dragon on his fine performance. Everything going over the strategies that we discussed and you know, want to understand his feelings on what it felt like to set fire to so many bad guys.

He's already turned back into a little boy. He's eating a candy bar and he's like, it's pretty cool.

I am also going to grab one of the spare cans of spray paint I had from redoing the paint job on the Mountaineer, hunt down the biggest piece of the death head armored transport transport I can find, and spray paint to, yeah, pre across it in giant, you know, giant letters and then underline it.

Okay, Bronson, you should peel on that too.

By all means. Just not on the paint. It hasn't dried yet.

Okay, Mr. Cat, you don't have to tell me twice. I already did pee on it, but I'll do it again.

Good boy, Bronson.

Good boy.

And I guess the cat version of that would be to find the nearest intact remaining bit of helmet or something and crap in it. Throw up in it, actually.

There you go.

Yeah, it's much more dignified to picture. Mixter cat hawking up a cat curveball in a helmet that's squatting over a

throw with his tail race.

I mean, I've had this happen in both ways, but yes, throw up on it somewhere.

Looking back to make sure his aim's right. No, no, just hairball it.

Yeah, hairball it.

Let's see. So J, I'm going to say you could recover, you know, a significant amount of skelebot. Obviously they've all been dismembered.

I'm sad we could not get a skeleton.

That's unfortunate. That just means that, you know, I'll have to collect up all the loose limbs too and toss them back. By the way, I'm checking the status of the barbecue smoker roll the die fate.

Oh fuck me.

How's the two sound?

It's not the best. Oh, it's given one of the missiles,

given it was an SDC structure, I did not have high hopes.

Yeah, apparently one of the missiles impacted right at that point and it's just gone. It's probably miles back in pieces.

But we could scavenge some remaining pieces from the death's head and make a new one and make a new one out of death's head components and it would be the scariest fucking smoker that has ever exist.

Love it, love it.

Way cooler than the demon smoker.

Yes, we, we got, we got ripped off on the demon smoker, but we're going to have a. We're going to get a death's head motif smoker.

So I will say there are three functional skelebot power systems intact.

Riley is most definitely not laughing maniacally.

Those are nuclear.

Uh huh.

Yeah.

Spy one.

Head and chest. Head and chest.

And obviously you can get lots of limbs and stuff.

Yeah, yeah, I'm going to gather up the limbs too. But you know, there you go.

And there would be enough debris from the death's head to build a tr. Another smoker. The real question is how long are you guys lingering in this area?

Not long.

Not long. As fast as it takes to do what we mentioned and get the out. I bet I'm definitely long enough to do the gather up the skelebot parts and spray paint the giant biggest piece of the death head transport.

I can if it gives a bit of timeline. Mr. Cat, as soon as all the enemies are down, is immediately starting looting. That's like his thing now. So he is going to like find everything that he can and possibly add it to our collection while we, while we are waiting to regroup and get Henry back in the group and everything.

Right? Yeah, I think you guys could do it all in 15 minutes.

I think Donna sees Morthak and runs over to him and just scoops him up in the biggest hug.

So Riley doesn't want to mention this, but Jacob feels obligated to mention this. Donna, when Riley gets out of the cab in the Mountaineer. His face and chest are covered with blood.

What kind of blood? Riley's blood?

Looks like it, yeah.

How you doing, Riley?

Don't worry about it. He lights a cigarette and grabs a can of spray paint and walks over to a giant piece of a death's head Transit.

Yeah, that's.

That's O'Reilly got better fucking days.

Yeah, Donna's definitely quick to turn her focus to mor Thak.

How you doing?

Oh, Jacob, roll a D20.

Oh, now I roll an 18. Now I finally roll a decent D20. Roll.

Okay, you discover or. Well, you have a. What's the word? Realization. Understanding of additional spells that are stored in the rod of Asher Kadan. That would be frequency jamming, sheltering force, and wind rush.

Can I use my paramedic ability to just kind of once over Riley and just see if there's anything that needs like immediate attention or if it's just Riley being covered in Gore?

Absolutely.

49. And I've got a 52.

So can I do a little bit of narration for this, Kyle?

Yeah.

Okay, so it's very clear that Riley was bleeding from his nose, his ears and his tear ducts. All of the capillaries in his eyes have burst. So he's got, you know, that wonderful sclera full of blood look going on, and he's probably. Oh, wait, he just turned around. No, he's bled from other places as well.

Does that mean you're gonna be okay? I don't know what that means.

I hemorrhaged from pretty much every orifice of my body. It does not look good. In the modern world, this would be a very critical situation. In a fantasy world, given he didn't seem to have a major concussive accident of some sort. Who knows?

This is before Don Herzfeld.

My anus is bleeding.

Yes.

Yay, Cranston. I would say Donna gives Riley a check and obviously figures out yes, he's been bleeding from all his orifices, but there's no discernible reason to Donna why. And she's been on Rift's earth for a while.

Oh, and my hair seems to be standing a little bit on end for some reason beyond the fact that I walk around with a faux hawk. It's a little fuzzy now.

She's like grabbing Morthak and squeezing him and lifting him up and kind of just watching Riley walk away. Notices the blood escaping his anus. Riley.

Yeah?

What happened? Are you.

Magic's hard. Okay.

Okay.

Sometimes you gotta pay a price.

Drink some water.

Oh,

given he's probably bleeding in his sinuses at the moment. That sounds disgusting. Oh, God. I mean, for the record, Riley had one SDC point before he went into hit points on that one.

Wow.

In one shot.

But do you still have all your hit points?

I still got my hit points. I ain't feeling great, but I'll survive. No problem.

Okay, so is it safe to assume that Donna ascertains that it was real bad, but he's gonna be okay?

Yeah, yeah.

STC recovers pretty quickly.

Yeah, it's basically. I just got internal and external full body bruising via electric shock.

Regular stuff?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, just checking.

Morthak is hugging Donna and telling her all about how he and Mr. Cat fought all the bad guys. He's going through the store. Then I breathe fire. And then we jumped out. Mr. Cat did something. Maybe his magic, I don't know. But it blew up anyway. Can I get a gun?

We'll talk about it more, Thack.

Okay. Stairs. They're really cool.

You did really good.

Riley flips the sidearm from the sky cycle pilot's armor that he just finished stripping through the air towards Morthak.

Donna gives you a look of pure hatred.

Every kid's got to start soon, sometime or another. You're a good parent.

The joke is that mor breath damage is so much better than it could do.

But It's a but.

They're cool one's a gun.

Collect yourselves. You scavenge the ruined battlefield and you get back on the road heading towards New Lazlo.

Before we leave, I don't quite know off the top my range for amplified hearing sound filtration system, or even my built in radio receiver and transmitter head. Jack, could I, between Henry and Gorshkov, try to detect any survivors? Sure. Okay.

What sort. Do you have any communication skills? Well, radio, I guess I should ask.

I do have radio.

Radio transmissions.

I have radio basic and read sensory equipment. I don't think that's related. I do have radio basic.

Yeah. Level three.

Yeah. Sensory. Yeah, I mean, that's picking up sensory data from the stuff built into your skull. Probably basic radio monitoring equipment in a Borg.

Okay. Less concern about survivors because they'll probably succumb to their wounds, but more about maybe radio transmissions of identifying nature. Like, oh, we failed to capture those guys.

Yeah. I would say you could scan for radio transmissions at the area.

Okay.

And then if you detect any, you could trust to listen in.

Right On.

The coalition military would most likely be encrypted.

That's fair.

But you know, just Picking up the transmission itself could would be useful.

True.

38 to my 40.

All right.

Yeah. You generally hear nothing, though once you do pick up a very brief you. You see a very brief radio transmission to the west of your location back towards the battlefield as you're driving away. Sure, it's. It's intermittent and eventually it stops altogether. But it was encrypted, so you weren't able to determine what it was saying.

Don't worry about it, Gorshkov. That ain't a sign of things to come.

It's this foreshadowing. How do you say.

How does the four have a shadow?

You're a strange man.

You are very stupid.

It is okay. For those of us for whom English is not the first language, this is sometimes hard to. To use. I think that is where we will end for this evening. Done enough ecological damage.

We didn't just survive, we thrived.

Well, speaking of ecological damage, something that I never really go into in Rift is that all of these vehicles have nuclear power sources. So what happens when you destroy one?

As much as a Battletech player, as much as it hurts me. Stack polling isn't really a thing. So they don't detonate mini atomic explosions?

Well, it doesn't have to be explosions, but what about the ground around them for years to come? Have you just irradiated the land?

Well, it depends. Do they ever stipulate whether it's fission or fusion?

They don't.

Right.

Because if it's fusion.

No, it's gotta be fusion.

Yeah. For that small and that portable, it's gotta be fusion.

Yeah. I mean, unless they're using it with transuranic elements somehow, which is. Would function on a scale that size. Potentially.

So note Skillbots. The first Rift game that I remember running in my 20s was I had a group of players and I had them all make SDC characters and then.

Nice.

There was a. The villain was a single Skelebot. Killed half the party before they took it down. Oh. And it was like, you know, survive the monster kind of scenario. One Skelebot can fuck up an entire town. There's a Rifter in which there's a few variant Skelebots, including one Skelebot that does nothing but eat enemies and generate more Skelebots. It's wild.

Wow.

Scary.

Yeah. If you didn't have mega damage weapons, Skelebots would be unstoppable terrors. And obviously I use them more as minions.

Oh yeah.

So everybody gets 450 XP.

We.

All right, that's it.

I know you doubt

yeah, yeah, I know. I know how palladium XP works. You know, that felt really. That got to do something I've been wanting to do forever, which was recreate the throwing the grenade up in the ED at.

Right. No, we were clearly on the same page because I was full on intending to do Independence Day with that sky cycle.

Yep.

Yeah. I mean, how else are you going to take it out? It has 1300 MDC, right?

Yeah.

The lightning did such an insane amount of damage and it was, you know, still had 800.

What a wonderful ass pull.

I'd like to vote that as the MVP of move of the session. Like hold that lightning bottle you dropped. Like, God damn.

Yeah. Jesus Christ.

Turn the tide. And then some.

I mean, it was cool.

Let's.

Let's be real. That could have gone a lot of different ways because like y' all could have also ended up targets. So.

It didn't, but it didn't.

Yeah. It was kind of like Riley going knowing enough about rifts to know that like a death head transport is bad news. Like even without the Skelebots, it's carrying and it was like it.

Yeah. Let's try something.

Honestly, the fact that it never fired on us, we got lucky. Yeah.

Which is why it was.

The very first thing I did was toss that because it was like we needed to even the playing field as fast as possible. And yes, it was putting all of you in danger, but it was like

we were already in danger.

You were more in danger without me doing that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So in Riley's mind, it made sense. He did the best he could to take care of the kids.

Oh, yeah. Riley's carrying around some crazy stuff that nobody else knows about. I just want everyone to be aware.

I'm excited to find out about it over time. I don't want to know.

Yeah, no, no, no. I. Kyle and I had an early conversation about this and even he's forgotten

about some of it.

Apparently I have.

Say what now?

I have discord links. So if I need to prove it.

Yeah, I'm slowly marking things off the list.

Yeah, I. I will say it was absolutely priceless to see your face when I. When you realized what I was throwing and you were like,

Hey, you know what? Better to use it than at the end of the campaign. Still have it in your backpack?

Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I expected that to go a lot differently.

Yeah.

Yeah, me too.

Yeah. I was truly expecting to burn some fate and like wake up in a coalition prison or something.

Well, if all the Skelebots and the Robots had gotten out. That could have happened. Yeah, because there was so it. There were two UAR enforcer robots inside. I'll bet that hadn't dropped out yet.

Oh, my God.

Because they were going to drop the skelebots first and slow you down and then drop the robots to try to recapture all the equipment, which is why they didn't just shoot all the missiles at you.

Which, if I recall correctly, we managed to make away with. No, not enough structural damage. We didn't lose any equipment we stole, right?

No.

Or Death's Head. Samus. Just say it.

Yeah.

And they're done tracking us now.

Well, yeah. Soon these will be someone else's problem, is what I'm saying.

Yes.

Deliver them quickly. Goodbye. The Coalition is so known for just giving up.

That's a relief.

Yeah. Well, folks, this has been a lot of fun. I'm thrilled that we got back together. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Absolutely. These are becoming further between. But life. We're old. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you have not figured out who we are at this point. We're the go to boys. I'm npc.

I'm just Jacob.

I'm Alex.

I'm Cranston.

And I'm Kyle.

And Kyle, tell us about the. The podcast that you do.

Yes, I run. Or well, run. I run games. On the Bastard Quest podcast. We play lots of RPGs, not riffs yet. We have played Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but we play anything that's not D and D, basically. And we have a giant stack of games and people just keep kickstarting new stuff. Blades.

What?

The new blades, dark like the. That takes place in the 60s is. Is coming out. Yes.

I'm actually kind of jazzed about that.

It looks so fun.

They even did the Wendy's rpg.

We did. We did play the Wendy's rpg. Yeah, it's terrible. But anyway, we have a lot of fun.

Yeah, we have a lot of fun here. And folks, thanks for listening. Just so you know, if you haven't caught up by this point, we have basically two release versions of our episodes. Now we get the main feed version, but then on our Patreon feeds I put an alternate version, which is really the same damn thing with the same length and the same content. I just add a lot of music and sound effects to it and on

the Patreon feed you'll get a real clear answer on. What's that in Riley's pocket? Is it a storm or is he just happy to see you?

Well, maybe Jacob might be speaking a bit too soon. We'll see.

If you can't put a thunderstorm in that track.

Oh. Oh, God, no. No. That's going to sound amazing. Yeah.

Yeah.

That's my point.

We'll dispute you a little bit. Npc, they are not the same thing. The ones with the sound effects are so great.

Thank you. I have a lot of fun with them.

Yeah.

And I like to put them now on the patron feed as kind of a thank you for those who help

us pay the bills, which are many.

They're many.

Yeah.

Unfortunately.

Yeah. Yeah.

Being a nerd with expensive hobbies is taxing, but it's worth it. It's worth it. Anyway, folks, drop by our Discord say hello and go check out the Bastard Quest podcast. Drop their Discord and say hello and let's all just have like a big old pow wow. It'd be great.

There you go. We'll do a convention someday.

Ooh, Wagoncon is coming up here in May.

It is.

It is.

Yep. May here in the Dalles. Well, in Oregon. An hour away in the Dalles. It is our official convention, so folks, come check us out there. Kyle will probably not be there, but several of us will. You never do.

Cool.

Well, everybody at home, we will catch you next time. Starships Magic, mystic martial arts romance. All of these can be found in a cloak of blades by Isaac Sherry. You might have heard my name before. I've done a lot of voiceover work for Breakfast Puppies and I've recently released my first novel. It's available on Amazon as an ebook and paperback and you can get it for free if you have a Kindle unlimited subscription. I do hope you'll support my work as you're supporting Breakfast Puppies and it's been a pleasure talking with you today. Have a good one.

One.

You've been listening to the Glitter Boys, a Palladium Books fan podcast. Glitter Boys Rifts, the Megaverse and all other such topics are the property of Kevin Sambita and Palladium Palladium Books. Please buy all their stuff and help keep them in print and making more games. You can order [email protected] and their entire catalog is available digitally at Drivethru RPG as well. Our opening music is 8 bit bass and lead by Furbyguy from freesound.org this closing music is Caravana by Philip Gross, available at freemusicarchive.org all sound effects effects used are self made or acquired via Creative Commons zero license. If you like what you have heard, find us on Twitter and Facebook as theglitterboys That's B O I S. And check us out [email protected] glitterboys and also join us on the Breakfast Puppies network [email protected] Discord. And if you want to help us out, please spread the word and help us build a community. Thanks for again for listening. We'll catch you next time.

So there's one final shot. We see the camera moving through trees. We see a wreck sky cycle, smoke drifting out of it. And we see a coalition pilot pulling himself out of the wreckage. His armor is cracked, he's bleeding. He pulls his helmet off. And this guy, just rugged good looks, jawline. If you saw him on a fascist poster you would completely think he was made up. But he pulls the radio out of his helmet and he starts calling it in. Skull Leader, this is Talon two six. Mother is down. My cycle is down. Pilot alive, mobile. And he stumbles through the trees. Position is MW Delta 6. He looks around. Four five, I think bandit seven clicks north. Will mark with orange flare when I'm free of the trees. Confirm. And you can hear there's some chatter like we hear through the radio, but we can't tell what they're saying. Confirm. Skull Eater, this is Talon two six. Captain John Villain. I need pickup. And he moves through the trees. We lose sight of him. The camera sweeps up and in the distance we see an orange flare fire into the sky.