The Glitterbois Play Rifts 17: Bargains

Breakfast puppies?

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This is Dark Falcon. You're listening to the Glare Boys.

You are all in the old fortress at Saginaw. It is raining. Thunder rumbles outside. You are inside an ancient control room. There's shattered monitors, dusty consoles everywhere. There's a giant hole in the roof through which rain comes in. You're all standing in a circle illuminated by the glowing light of—

A candle.

Dark Falcon's psi sword. And between all of you is a Coalition drone, skull-headed. Donna is poised to strike. Donna, aka Dark Falcon, is poised to strike to destroy it when you hear a voice say, greetings, uh, Captain John Villain of the Coalition.

I don't suppose you would be open to making a deal?

What would you like to do?

Well, Donna hesitates and Kind of looks up and, uh, kind of makes eyes with the boys to see if anyone has any, uh, objections to her destroying this thing.

Let's hear the man out.

Uh, Donna just goes, we're listening.

Okay, I will note that Henry and Gorshkov are still under the effects of marijuana.exe.

Henry goes, better be a good one. Kind of kicks it lightly.

The drone sputters. There's this burst of static you hear.

Well, I think you enemies of the Coalition mean to disrupt what you've no doubt discovered is our operation around Hartsby. And I was wondering if I could entice you with a richer prize. Are you open to bribery or a negotiation of something you might consider more worthwhile?

Riley looks around at the rest of the group. Because trying to get a read if he's the only one open to bribery.

You are fortunate in this. I remember distinctly saying that Mr. Cat got bored and left before this happened. Therefore, I can't be here as the group's moral compass.

I don't know what it says about the group that a cat is their moral compass.

It's rough.

It's rough to hear. I mean, Dark Falcon tends to be on the moral side as well, but you Very true.

Henry eventually does speak up. I've delivered so many pies, my man, and I've had so many people try to bribe me with this and that. I don't know about no bribes, buddy.

Well, I don't know what you're getting at, but perhaps a quid pro quo? You delay your planned relief of Hartsby, and I provide you with ciphers necessary to send messages to, uh, a rival of mine you might be interested in acquiring. A general, a Coalition general. Capturing them, perhaps assassinating them. That might be quite the feather in your cap amongst your consortium in New Laszlo.

And in return?

All I ask is that you delay your attempted relief of Hartsby for 72 hours, and I shall allow to be delivered unto you General Lonnie Cashbrook, whom I believe you recently encountered at Port Sanilac.

Now, I don't think this name has come up in the campaign.

We don't think so either. I didn't think so.

You guys were actually very close to this NPC when you went to Port Sanilac with the Rangers of the Big Trees, but you never encountered them because you guys wisely, cowardly ran away.

Yeah, Donna wasn't there for that, so she just kind of does a shrug at you, at you guys.

But for the Rifts nerds in the audience, uh, Lonnie Cashbrook is in, I believe, Lone Star is where that character is featured.

Riley looks over at Donna and just goes, shakes his head a little bit.

Donna goes, death to the Coalition! Scythe sword.

Hell yeah. Well, I meant, I actually thought I was gonna suggest driving a harder bargain, but yeah, yeah, generally, yeah.

I am both sad and glad that I am not here. I have such out-of-game knowledge on this character.

I was gonna see if Gorshkov could mute him, or I was gonna see if there was video feed and Flip them off. Like, hey, can you see this?

Ah, thank God artillery is not something that really exists in Rams.

Oh Jesus!

Interesting. You should mention that, Jacob. So Donna smashes the coalition drone with her scythe sword. It slices it in half. There's this burst of smoke, you know, a bit of flames. Circuits are ruined, and Gorshkov just to Henry. And this super hot—

Henry.

Duh.

Yes.

Should we tell them it is still transmitting very high frequency beam?

Oh yeah, we should definitely tell them that. And then I'd just be silent.

Or do we hit tok.exe again?

Oh, now I'm speaking out loud. We should definitely do that, and then we'll tell them that that thing's still putting out a high frequency information beam.

Shit, shit, shit. Riley's on it, ripping it apart. You know, total circuit board disassembly, just ripping wires, disconnecting batteries, looking for stupid on-circuit board power, you know, just ripping that sucker apart.

So you're tearing it apart, trying to ruin it. And I think probably the only person with the technology capable of is Henry. So right now, like, If we're— if this were a show and we had a camera, it would be inside Henry's HUD, right? While there's like these digital waves of bong smoke drifting across his vision, he's blissed out. His HUD is going flashing, but like in one corner, there's just this red light blinking and there's this distance tracker that's slowly spiraling down. And I mean, it's the tracker for a detected incoming ballistic projectile, but Whether or not either Henry or Garskov are cogent enough to pick up on what it is, well, I don't know. Alex, what are you going to roll?

That's a great question.

I'm open to ideas.

My suggestion would be a good old fallback read sensory equipment.

Okay.

What sort of disadvantage am I working with?

Ooh, a solid one. Yeah. Solid disadvantage. We'll say -20%.

Okay, that answers my next question. And then, uh, does Gorshkov get a roll as well? Is it just me?

I think it's just you. I'm just gonna say Gorshkov just fails his. Gorshkov has never been high before. Henry has.

69, dude.

Sick.

Is that a pass or fail? I don't know what your actual score is.

That's probably a failure.

I assume it's a failure.

Yeah, it's 40%. Not even factoring in the disadvantage.

Yeah. So Henry does eventually notice this, right? But he stares at this depleting distance indicator for a solid minute before he realizes what he's looking at.

What does ICBM mean?

So the sensors, your cybernetic sensors, long range, are tracking an incoming missile. That was no doubt following the signal put out by this drone. By the time you figure it out, you have perhaps a minute before it hits.

First of all, I see butt, man. That would be what I thought. And—

Not bowel movement?

I gotta tie it into weed. Come on.

Oh, sorry.

Intestinal cramping, bowel movement?

Or I see a bowel movement, you know.

I always look, so that's nothing new to me. Uh, so Henry takes a quick look around him, seeing only, uh, 2 out of the current compatriots. Guys, we gotta go now. Group hug.

Uh, seeing that, yeah, just grab you.

Yeah, I, I embrace the 2 of you. Consensual willing.

Done again. Aww.

I rocket boost us out of there while screaming, Mr. Cat, run!

Okay. That's pretty awesome. So I'm going to say, I think that's a dodge. Let me roll their attack here.

That is a 4.

We're having dice problems.

They're just too glittery. I'll be burning a heroism.

Okay.

Now we're talking. And the number there is, if I recall correctly, would be my bonus, 24.

Wow. 24 is good. You needed to beat a 16. So Henry grabs Riley Dark Falcon, fires his rocket boots straight up towards the opening in the ceiling. Rain's coming down on him. Riley and Donna really have no idea what's going on, but Gorshkov is going, incoming missile.

It's fun!

You get— you rocket out just as you see this massive cruise missile slam into the roof of the old fortress. If Riley had had enough time, he would have identified it as a BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile, but he doesn't.

Damn it.

So let me roll the damage here. You're like, but we made it, right? You guys are only gonna take half of the 230 damage. Jesus.

Mother of pearl.

As you are slapped out of the sky.

Okay. Um, yeah, it was nice knowing you folks.

Okay. In the sense that Henry was bear hugging, any shot Henry can take some of the brunt of that?

Absolutely.

Tight.

Yeah, you can, if you want to shield them, roll your Roll with Impact to see how much.

15.

Okay. So are you going to try to shield both Donna and Riley or just one of them?

I mean, I really want to shield both. I feel like Riley's going to be the more squishy of us. I'm the player, so I'm going to do that. Prioritize Riley. Get that big old badass armor. And you're cut.

Whereas I have my little old badass armor.

Those washboard abs can bounce a couple missiles, right?

No matter what happens, no hard feelings. Unless I die, then hard feelings.

Super hard feelings.

Very hard. So remember, one, one attack, like an attack that destroys your armor, like the way I run it, like the attack that destroys your armor doesn't like roll over. So once your armor's gone, you've got to get hit a second time.

Oh, okay.

That's, that's very fair.

Then it might behoove me to protect both of them?

Uh, it's up to you.

I'm gonna be real. I would—

Donna can take it.

Okay. Yeah.

All right, Riley.

Okay, 115, and Henry takes the full 230 as he's shielding Riley.

I just threw up in my mouth.

Now, Mr. Cat, the entire fortress is devastated, so you're going to need to roll your dodge as well.

Oh, okay.

This is an area of effect.

Just to step back a little bit, I would have gone down to reconnect with the others, probably Bronson. Okay, so we're all being tossed around like rocks in a box.

Yeah, he fired a cruise missile at the fortress. Now I will say you're farther from the blast radius, so you're not going to take anywhere close to what Henry took or even Donna. Not because you're my favorite NPC.

I appreciate that.

But Bronson is. I want Bronson to live.

So I just stopped playing.

If Bronson died.

That's a 19 on the roll, plus 11. So 30.

Wow.

That's like my best bonus.

Yeah, that's fair. You, you take 57, and this is all main torso damage, by the way. You're talking to Bronson or Truth, some of the other Torchbearers, when there's this massive explosion. You're knocked off your feet, flung across the room, dodging debris and shrapnel nimbly in this slow-motion Cat-like.

Question. So harking back to a couple episodes ago when we were talking about the truly amazing quality of the battle cat's hearing, would it have been possible for me to have heard a little bit and in my dodge perhaps covered someone more squishy? Been like just a little bit like, oh shit, and then like grab Truth or someone and help them handle the blow a little bit better.

Sure.

Yeah. Bronson is in armor, so he's okay. And his dodge is really good, I think. Mortheq's fine. Daisy would have been in Samus suit. So yeah, Truth would probably be the only one that's actually vulnerable. Dustin's a slurf.

Is he?

Yeah, he just kind of falls over. I'm a slurmph, I'm okay. It's like shrapnel and splinters, like a huge piece of rebar going through his torso. But Mr. Cat tumbles by accident, by purpose, we don't know, into Truth and shields her from the blast. Many of the, uh, the red shirts that were introduced last session are completely killed.

Well, shouldn't have worn that shirt. I've never taken this kind of damage before. I'm not even sure how to go about applying this. Is this something we should figure out in-game, or should we do this like off the air? Because I have a lot of questions.

I mean, part of this is educational for anybody who wants to learn how to play Rift, so it's really not that difficult to pull off. Um, you have your cyber armor. Were you wearing full armor or just your cyber armor?

I had, uh, yeah, I had Crusader armor.

Okay, so the Crusader armor has how much main body MDC?

Main body, 95.

Okay, so that would have just been obliterated.

Okay, so that's at 0.

Correct, and that's it.

Oh.

Yeah, then you're good.

Oh, okay. So in other attacks, aren't you allowed to like, I take some of it on my right arm and some of it on my left arm? Is that like a specific, like a direct, like someone shooting at me? So like I block it with that piece. Is that how that works?

That's pretty much how we've been playing it. Yeah. I don't think that's an actual rule in the game, but that's how we, we've been doing it that way.

Okay.

So zero main body, but all my other armor is okay.

Yeah. Yeah. So the way I run MDC armor is if you If you take enough damage to like your main, your main torso is kind of the stand-in for the armor itself. I don't generally like if your main torso goes down, you better be specifically blocking with any of your arms or legs or you're going to get killed. So that's for like area of effect damage. I'm not going to make you like deplete 7 or 8 pieces of armor because that's just annoying. And it makes area of effect weapons like super, super good. So yeah, it's your main torso is wrecked and that is zero armor. So if you do get shot and you don't physically block it or dodge, like you're— then you're getting hit to your hit points with the mega damage weapon, which is deadly.

Okay. Thank you very much. That's actually very simple.

Because if we don't do something like that, then, then characters like Riley just are evaporated by like one MDC. Or 1 mega damage.

So I was prepared for that inevitability. And sad.

I'm sure glad I just got that sound effects pack of explosives.

So as they're hugged by Henry, Riley, Donna, Henry go flying over the ruins of the old fortress, land out in the woods, skip a couple times before coming to a rest amidst trees. Henry's arbor is smoking. There's huge Bits of chunks of shrapnel in it, burn damage. Donna is also taking some significant damage. Riley's fine.

Riley quick turns to Henry and goes, Henry, Henry, turn off weed.exe.

Ah, we—

I have this mental picture of during the slow-mo as Henry is flying through the air holding them and Don is taking some of the blast and Riley's being shielded, but this very slow-mo move flying through the air, we zoom in on Riley who just pulls out a cigarette, lights it in midair, just goes flying back.

Damn it, because that was literally what I was going to do as soon as he confirmed he had turned it off, man.

That, or light it off of some sparking damage I've got.

So out of the front entrance to the fortress come the remnants, the survivors of the attack, the torchbearers. You know, Morthak is coming out, Mr. Cat's carrying Truth, Bronson is, you know, pulling people out of the rubble. There's some secondary explosion somewhere deeper within the fortress as something else cooks off. You're not sure what it is. A wall explodes as Daisy Boon flies out in a Samus suit. What would you guys like to do?

I'm going to confirm that Riley has turned off weed.exe because I need the murder machine at this point.

I was just going to say there's huge chunks missing from Henry's armor. Bits of it are twisted around at odd angles. Some is just slagged. This is definitely the most damage you guys have seen the cyborg take since you arrived on Riftsir.

And that's where I'm curious. So my main body has 180 MDC and it's 280 with the armor. But since I'm a Borg, I assume that's essentially the same pool, same thing. Yeah.

Uh, say that again now.

Basically, once I go to 0 MDC on my torso, that means I'm dead slash near death?

No, you'd be vulnerable. You don't have hit points. So any damage basically like Kills you.

Got it.

I mean, my legs are relatively undamaged, so Henry— first off, Henry, how you holding up, Gorskov?

Uh, for actually right now you're just getting error messages from where Gorskov's messages would normally display across your HUD.

Oh, that sucks. All right. So Henry, Make sure he's not stepping or putting a hand on you as he— either one of you— as he slowly lifts himself up, you know, hunching over like some sort of zombie gargoyle. Like, hi guys, uh, what happened?

So this is actually an important question for cyborg, for combat cyborgs. Do you know if you acquired cyborg armor? Because you have main body MDC, and then you also, if you have armor, you would have armor MDC that would have come as part of it. And they are 2 separate layers of damage protection.

Interesting. I picked up the M1B2 medium infantry armor.

Oh, oh, really? That means you have an additional 220 MDC on your main body. that is a separate layer outside that protects your inside of 180 MDC. Combat cyborgs are buff. Yeah, they are.

Yeah.

Like you, you should have a shitload of MDC. When Kyle was like, you take 200-something, I was like, yeah, you can suck that.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah. That—

I understood that wrong. I thought it just went from 180 to 280. So maybe, uh, still, you know, Coughing up some oil, but I'm not totally on my last rope.

No, you would, you would be stripping off that infantry armor though, which is now complete slag. But your actual cyborg body underneath is perfectly fine. I also, like NPC, thought you had much less armor than I expected because I did not think that missile would actually hurt you that badly. Well, I knew it would hurt your armor, but I did not think it would. Hurt you.

Got it. So my armor's bust and now I'm just back to my base MDC for my whole body.

Yep.

Yes.

Which is still more than most other characters get.

This is true.

All right.

That's easy to read then.

Oh, so this—

I think I know why you got the 280. You have the option to increase your main body MDC up to 280. But that's actually separate from the armor. Yeah, got it. That's why I was—

I think I noted on each of those, like, main body 180, 280 with armor, question mark.

Yeah, I think that's what— yep, yep, there we go.

So the question is, is Gorshkov offline or not, given that straight note?

He is offline for now. He'll come— he's not gone, he's just, uh, took a significant amount of, uh, damage while under the influence of drugs.

Riley lights a cigarette and starts hustling back towards the building.

All right, looks like Riley's okay. How are you, Donna?

Yeah, as Riley leaves, he feels like a hand on his shoulder leave as he exits, but Donna is just kind of, kind of speechless. Um, and she's just like, I'm, I'm so glad you're both okay.

Me too. I can't hear my little German friend. Pause for laughter. But I'm sure he'll be back. Oh, shit my ass.

He would be so offended.

That was so brave, Henry.

Well, canonically, I have a death wish.

That's true.

I just didn't want to see anybody get hurt, and I was too high when it counted.

Donna just gives you a big embrace.

Embraced back.

Mr. Cat is flying back and forth to the wreckage looking for other people. If he can find some people, he's gonna bring them out. If he finds bodies, he's gonna try and pull them out. And if he can't pull them out, he's gonna pull out his knife and cut them out. I think that Pat would— I think the Cyber Knight and the knife would appreciate being used to free people. So.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Rostam would be all in on, uh, the short sword. Rostam would be all in on freeing people.

Oh my God.

That's right. It has healing abilities. So if I find somebody who's like close to death and needs some healing, I'm going to You know, hold the knife up and channel some Rostam into him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, there were a lot of people kind of on the edge of the blast where Mr. Cat and Bronson were. So yeah, there would definitely be people that needed healing. Mr. Cat works his way through the wounded, deploying the healing from Rostam. And Alex, I'm going to say that you get an extra heroism.

Like permanently or just to this?

Permanently.

Oh, that brings me up to 4.

So I'm gonna get inside so I can see where the Mountaineer hopefully still is, but might used to be.

I mean, the Mountaineer wouldn't have been parked anywhere near you guys. When you got the missile hit, you were kind of on an upper level of the fortress in an old control room.

Got it.

And Mr. Cat and Bronson, all the others were down in basically an old vehicle bay.

Yeah.

Which is part of it is on fire, but the Mountaineer is MDC.

I am jumping in the Mountaineer, starting it up and pulling it out as fast as possible.

Yeah. Now there is some damage to the Mountaineer. There's definitely shrapnel and scarring. We'll say it has taken 19 MDC damage.

Oh, Jesus Christ. The back of it, I never didn't, didn't manage to get the back of it repaired. So I'm glad it was only 19 because it's not in great shape anymore, but I'm pulling it out and Just racing up to alongside people who are staggering out and slowing down enough so people can start clambering in the back and stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah, as Donna and Henry are embracing, Donna suddenly gets very alert and goes, we need to get out of the city now!

Oh shit, you're right!

And Donna starts running to find as many survivors as she can.

Henry follows as his Herculean strength would help with pulling people out of the rubble.

Okay, if you guys recall correctly, when you had arrived at the old fortress, the Torchbearers had essentially some additional members, about a dozen, basically not mercenaries, that's the wrong word. Freedom Fighters. A few of them died, but for the most part, they were in MDC armor as well. So most of them survived with injuries, and they're kind of assembling what gear is left. And Truth is directing them, but even Truth doesn't know. She looks like she's in shock at this point and is just kind of operating on autopilot. So is Donna going to take charge?

Yeah, she can. If she finds Truth, she's going to kind of grab her and be like, the Coalition knows we're here. We have to get everyone out right now.

Yeah. Truth, you know, she blinks and you can see the words are working their way through her brain. She's very sluggish, but she starts to nod.

Right.

Into the broken grid?

Anywhere but here. Start getting survivors. We have to get out. Go find Riley.

So if I recall correctly, you guys had discussed the last session. Remember the broken grid that you'd went into under Detroit extends all throughout parts of Michigan, and you had talked about going down into the grid to circumvent the PsiStalker siege of Hartsby.

That is correct.

And there's an entrance in Saginaw, the ruins of the city, but you guys certainly don't have to go there. You could flee into the woods, jump in the Mountaineer, drive away. Up to you.

At this point in the Mountaineer, I'm mostly just collecting people, so I'm pretty easy to find. Um, in fact, I go so far as to do the incredibly dumb thing that I know full well is stupid and turn on the full KC light rack. Just so it's easier to find.

I think at this point, uh, anything goes. Yeah, is, is that entrance to the underground, is it obvious? Like, do we know where it's at?

Yeah, you know where it is.

And is it, uh, is it open? Has, uh, rubble, uh, like caved in and made it difficult to, to access?

No, no, it's, it's accessible. That's why you guys were discussing it. at the last session, I believe, to use.

So Donna's just gonna start kind of running around and hurting anyone she can and trying to yell for them, into the tunnels we have to go!

Is anybody not going to do that? Be the real question.

What about the Mountaineer?

I'm gonna defer to Kyle, but I vaguely remembered we ruled out the Mountaineer being able to fit.

At least in parts.

You could probably take it down into the kind of the, the immediate entrance in Saginaw, which is more of a hole in the ground than anything else. But in terms of using navigating it through the actual grid, yeah, that'd be pretty much impossible. Now, whether it's safer left in the ruins of Saginaw in one of the mouths into the open grid Or out in the woods under a tarp is, uh, yeah, it's a quandary.

I'm gonna go with just some rough-and-ready camouflage it up and such.

Okay.

But yeah, first I'm gonna run it as close to one of the mouths as possible, just so people don't walk— don't have to walk far, and so any injured can be helped out and into the mouth, and then I'll just haul off into the woods and Quick throw some brush over it and head back.

Gotcha. Do you have the camouflage skill?

No.

Then we will assume you do the best that you can.

You're picking up what I'm laying down.

I'm gonna actually take the armor. Yep, I'm not gonna leave it.

What armor?

The Samus armor.

Oh, you take it from the Mountaineer?

Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get in it and Hoof it. I mean, it essentially makes me Henry for a short period of time, so.

Could probably at least take a missile once.

Yeah.

And I mean, I'm gonna do some very simple things like anybody who's relatively healthy. I'm gonna get in a fire— fireman bucket line sort of thing, and like some of the spare food and some of the water goes out in it because God knows how long we're gonna be stuck in the mouth of this tunnel. Uh, you know, just, just some basics.

Donna looks to Henry. Henry, we need to know if there's any more missiles incoming. Can you check for that?

I don't know without Gorshkov, but let me try. And I start using the Force visually.

Okay.

Uh, have we— I know you have, you have basic radar fire call correctly in your robot body.

Would this be a skill or something I picked up?

Technology.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Radar sensor, right forearm. I don't know if that counts.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm thinking about. So sensory equipment skill or—

Read sensory equipment is something I got.

There you go.

So with that extra heroism I got, does that retroactively count? I burned through 2, leaving me with 1. Now that I have 4, I have 2?

Yeah, yeah, you get it immediately.

Sweet. I'm gonna use one because I rolled 96. 96, dude. It's cocked, but it wouldn't matter. Uh, no, didn't make it. 51 for 40.

Okay, you don't pick up any incoming missiles. You do detect at the very edge of your radar range, a high-altitude contact that flickers in and out of detection. You typically associate that with something very fast, very high altitude.

Uh, let's see here. Do I have anything that's obviously about—

It's definitely not moving like a missile. You would kind of Guess it's some sort of— it could be another drone or some other kind of air vehicle.

So Henry cranks his, you know, volume to max and yells out, time to move, people! We gotta go!

So you all get down into the Broken Grid, deep enough from the entrance that you're not immediately fearful of being splashed by a Coalition cruise missile. And deep enough that the Mountaineer can't go— or no, you left the Mountaineer camouflaged. Never mind. You set up a makeshift infirmary and camp with lights pulled from the wreckage of the fortress, though much of the old fortress is still there. It's stood for a very long time. And Truth asks Donna what the plan is now. What are your friends going to do, Dark Falcon? You've always been my guiding light.

Truth, I don't know what else we can do. I think we just have to go on with the plan. I think we need to explore this grid and just hope to God that it gets us somewhere where we can be effective.

Well, we know it used to go to Hartsby. I'm confident your, your friends could find a way through. They've proven very resourceful.

They're good boys. But yeah, I think, I think we're going to, uh, just care for who we can. I think we're gonna take the boys, and I think we're gonna see if we can, uh, get under those psi stalkers.

Can you—

do you think you and the torchbearers can guard the entrance?

Absolutely.

And she looks over at Morthak. She turns back to you. Definitely.

Mr. Cat?

Yeah?

Can you get Mr.— can you get Morthak some grenades?

Yes, Donna, I can do that.

Suddenly, at Mr. Cat's elbows, a small boy with a sack Hi.

Suddenly that sack is full of grenades.

I heard, I heard Donna say I could have more grenades.

Look down.

Hooray!

Good boy.

Bronson! Bronson! I got grenades!

What?

Nobody gave me grenades!

Donna takes a knee, puts a hand on, on Morthek. Now Morthek. Do you know what those— tell me what those grenades are for.

Not eating.

Technically correct. Those, those grenades are for saving lives and defending these people. Do you understand that? Do you understand the responsibility that that has?

Yes.

Okay. When you come to a time where you think it's time to use these grenades, I want you to think, what, what would I do?

Stab them with a sword.

Yeah, but if I didn't have a sword and I only had grenades?

Right. You would stab them with a grenade.

You'll figure it out. If you get into trouble, ask, ask Truth Dinsmore what to do. Okay?

Okay, I will. I, I'm very excited about using these grenades. I hope we get attacked.

Before he can finish, Donna just gives him a giant hug and—

Oh!

A little tear comes down her eye. She goes, Mortheck, I want you to know that I love you.

I love you too, Jada. Okay, bye. And he runs away with his sack of grenades.

There he goes. My little man.

My little grenade boy.

My big grenade man. So he runs off. And so Bronson is there with you guys. His armor is scraped and scarred. He's got his What, what weapons? You guys give him like stabby claws or something? Like Wolverine claws?

Yeah, yeah, basically.

He's got those. I'm ready to go, let's go! He's got a string of sausages around his neck.

All right, man, if those sausages last even a minute, I will be impressed.

I feel like we should eat before we go.

Spoken like a true bear there, friend.

Okay, so are you guys gonna take any other preparations or talk to any of the other NPCs before you go?

It would be wise to have a meal before we go. I don't know if we should all just chow down on those sausages, but if we have any food, it would be a good idea to eat now before we go into the dark, dank grossness of sewers and whatever underground areas we are about to Well, we did pull the—

a lot of the dried meats and vegetables that we had in the back of the Mountaineer into the mouth of the cave here.

I've got a bag full of those cat food pancakes.

I was about to say, there may be a lot of pancakes.

Henry slaps his thigh, his thigh compartment opens up, and pancakes just tumble out.

I think, uh, Donna would like to talk to Truth, uh, before we head out.

Yeah. So you all break out the dry goods, prepare a meal. It's this moment of respite after the missile strike. Some sense of normalcy starts to return, and Donna and Truth are in a corner Eating. Henry, you know, Henry's across the way calibrating his armor. Gorshkov has woken up. Mr. Cat and Bronson are doing animal things. Riley's working on some piece of equipment. So what does Donna want to talk to Truth about?

Truth, do you remember, uh, when I told you about my boy? I told you about Mikey.

Truth nods. Yeah, I do.

When that, when that missile came in, all I could see was his face. And I gotta, I gotta tell you, Truth, I'm, I'm afraid. And I haven't, I haven't been afraid in a long time. And I don't know if we can do this.

Truth gives Dark Falcon space to talk about it. She says, do you mean This, as in get through the broken grid, or this, as in continue on with— and she kind of gestures towards Dark Falcon's cybernetic armor— the life of a Cyberknight?

I don't know.

It's all hard, you know? In the moment, I don't— sometimes I don't think about it, and then other times everything comes flashing back and it's the reality of the situation hits and how normalized this has become and how normal it really isn't. And I just really care about these, these boys. We're gonna, we're gonna go in there and we're gonna do our best to get out Hercules and stomp the Coalition, but I don't know. I feel like you're the only one I can talk to about this stuff.

Well, thanks.

I appreciate that. You're gonna do great. You're a Cyber Knight.

That's right. I am a Cyber Knight. And she pulls off, like, the scrapped and shitty destroyed armor and lets it clink to the ground. Her rippling chest is now even more prominently visible.

Fabio-like features. A wind blows down through the tunnel. Her hair flutters, long blonde flowing locks.

But I don't know if we're gonna come back. I don't know what else to say, but this might be goodbye. And gives Truth an embrace.

So I, you know, I would say, Cranston, I think probably Truth is probably in love with Dark Falcon because Dark Falcon is super hot and like this awesome heroic warrior. And I don't think Truth really understands. I don't know how much has— and I don't recall that we've discussed this. I think Truth has some understanding of who Dark Falcon used to be, but I don't know that really she— I don't think she gets it, right? I think it would be hard for her to get it.

Yeah, I think it'd be hard for anyone to understand it. Like, I can't imagine trying to be like, I'm from another world. Donna takes Truth's chin in her thumb and forefinger and gently tilts her head back and gives her one—

not like that, Henry—

and gives her a gentle but firm kiss on the lips and holds that for just a moment. Before releasing.

Truth embraces her back and you release and you're staring in each other's eyes. Then across the room you hear somebody go, ooh, they kissed. And it's Mortheq.

Just looks at Mortheq and goes, yeah, we did, didn't we? Kind of gives—

gives Truth a wink.

The hottest wink ever.

Yeah.

Bronson gives you a thumbs up.

Great.

So Truth, uh, like kind of puts her head on your shoulder and says, you'll come back, and pats your chest.

Uh, well, uh, I should, uh, I should see to the boys, make sure they're not, they're not afraid.

Yeah, Truth steps back. She says, I, I'll have to check on my soldiers.

Well, until next time, Truth. May the wind be ever in your favor.

She kind of steps back and walks.

I have no idea what that means, but she just kind of, she's just like nods thinking, I guess that's from a Cyberknight, so it must mean something profound.

In the background, you then hear Henry say, you're not German?

Riley glances up as you're walking by me, because from what I'm doing, and like, I just hold up the pack of cigarettes over my shoulder with the lighter and the 2 fingers next to it, you know, the universal, want one?

Donna takes one, no eye contact, lights it up.

I'm not looking at you in the face either. It's just like, keep—

You hear some coughing.

It's been a while for Donna.

Sometime in the late '70s, perhaps. So, any final preparations before you venture into the Broken Grid? I— you, you have a rough map of, of where you think you should be going.

I've got my knife, I've got the armor, I'm good to go.

Yeah, I've pulled together my kit, so I'm ready to rock. I seem to be fondling the bullet that's on the chain around my neck a lot more than usual. So, but other than that, yeah, I'm just smoking and looking seriously pissed off.

Probably don't read into that. Yeah, Donna's good to go. She's got her, her psi swords, and I think I still have my just regular Cyber Knight armor. Yeah.

Oh yeah, yeah, your personal, the cyber armor. Yeah, yeah, that was, that's like a last ditch, oh shit, protection level.

Well, that's about all I got left, so I don't see anyone having new armor for me around here. So, uh, yeah, I think Donna's, uh, as good as she's gonna be.

Okay, so you're setting off, the 4 of you, Bronson, and of course Stromedary Bocephus. I still say this is a terrible idea. I'm sure I can't tempt you guys into, uh, going back and maybe open up a nice auto dealership with me. I know some investors.

I'm just staring at him impassively with the armor on, looming.

Okay, here we go, terrifying cat man. Uh, this way. And Dromedary leads you— small green alien man leads you into the Broken Grid. The Broken Grid, not terribly unlike it was when you were beneath Detroit, is this warren of concrete corridors, dark tunnels, old unused underground chambers, some of which are empty, some of which are filled with detritus from centuries past, pieces of equipment perhaps stored here by some civic agency or military. Long since rotted and crumbled away into uselessness. But some parts of the grid are still illuminated. Some appear almost new. For example, you pass areas where there's bright green painting and arrows directing you to triage or lower assemblies. And then you pass other areas where there's just walls full of corrosion or mold or even more alien things.

There was a map that we were referring to. Is there any chance that we are able to snag any sort of map on our way down?

I would say Gorskov would have almost certainly been recording that.

Excellent.

Let's see that map, Gorski.

Gorskov activates a 3-dimensional display that projects out from Henry's cyborg body, and you have this incredibly labyrinthine network of passages. And Dromedar— Yeah, this one's— yeah, we're the old mainline conduits, which we're gonna take. Uh, we're gonna have to take some, uh, yeah, some, some, some paths around. I, uh, I know of a couple ways through this place. Uh, what's your appetite for danger?

Pretty low currently.

Well, uh, so—

What kind of danger are we talking?

Uh, I don't know, but they call it the Still House.

The Still House or the Steel House?

Still.

S-T-I-L-L.

Who is the—

The house.

Who is the—

House people. Would any of them be like rat people?

Yeah, yeah, yes. Yeah, that's what I thought. The majority.

Yeah.

But don't be racist.

Like they make alcohol there or something?

Or worse.

Uh, no.

Nah.

Yeah, they just hold still until somebody comes and kills them.

Yeah. Yeah, that's it. That's right.

Have you been there?

No.

Oh. Yeah. So that's the fastest way to get through this current impasse and get you to Hardspeed, which is where you want to go, right? So I figured that's probably a good idea.

I suppose at this point we have 2 options. Well, 2 that we discussed. We can either go right into Hartsby and see if we can save Hercules, or we can do Plan B, which is what I was kind of hoping we would, would be to see if we can, uh, go down that spur and see if we can do something about those psi stalkers.

Oh, we could do that, but either way we got to go through the stillhouse.

Yeah.

Although Mr. Cat was not present for this conversation, as the player was. Remember, we are on a— we have a schedule.

Yeah.

72 hours from when that conversation happened is when we can expect that they're probably planning to do something. So we want to be there before that.

Yeah.

Probably preferably well before that.

Yeah.

It's also less than a day to do any of this, if I remember correctly.

Dromedary breaks it down. He can get you to Hartsby within a day going through the most direct route, or he can get you to that spur you want to take going through the most direct route. You want to go the safest route, he says 48 hours or so. Depends on if things are flooded or not.

I have a railgun and many missiles. I am not ultimately that concerned. However, you do not. Therefore, safe might be the wiser approach.

I vote Stillhouse. What about you, Henry and Riley?

Chances are they're gonna try to move up their schedule, so I am kind of in favor of the direct route, even though we're not anywhere near as ready as we were before the missile strike.

I've delivered enough pies in my time and had enough complications to know We should get right to it.

I still don't know what that means, but still, still house then?

Still house.

Okay.

Well, okay, let's go. It's a terrible idea. I like you guys.

Donna gives Mr. Cat a glance.

I stare impassively back with this farmer. This death head face just turns and looks at you. You can almost hear, almost just barely hear the But then it turns and walks on. Great.

Drobadary leads you through the tunnels of the Broken Grid, past signs of battle damage, you know, bullet scoring, places where there's clearly been laser burns. You wade through flooded tunnels filled with just, just disgusting sump water. And after about 9 hours in, you come to this long maintenance corridor painted with these medical yellow stripes peeling. There's a light down the middle of this corridor blinking intermittently, and Dromedary kind of kneels down. Kind of, kind of see him looking down this long corridor, and he, uh, he turns back. He whispers, uh, This is, uh, the threshold. We should probably, uh, be very quiet from here on out and try not to talk to anything or talk to each other or think thoughts.

I almost expected to hear behind that, that's all right, I don't have to talk, I'm a slurm.

Oh, did you guys bring Dustin with you?

I don't think we did, but it would have been surprising.

I mean, it's not too late to say that we did.

We could have. I don't really know. We didn't Plan that out.

Well, we had talked about bringing him with us to the Spur initially.

Sure. I mean, I'm not opposed to him being there. Do we have a reason for him to be with us?

He has a lot of grenades inside of him.

Sold.

Yeah, and he's a slurmph.

He's a slurmph if you forgot.

And—

I'm a slurmph.

Riley wouldn't say this aloud. He's a slarmpf. We can threaten to threaten someone to have him eat them.

All right. Well, we all have headwear radios.

Yes.

Okay.

Which now Gorshkov is patched into as well. So we can even hear Gorshkov.

All right. Everyone roll a save versus psionics.

Son of a bitch. So is that just a d20 plus our base versus psionics?

Mm-hmm.

I made it. The sheet should also show your target number on it. So you just need to roll higher than that target.

I rolled a nat 20, so I think I'm good.

I'm going to eat the fact that I didn't make it. 13 out of 15.

Yeah, I passed.

Okay, so only Henry failed?

Sounds like it.

So you have a— you start to suffer mild sensory lag. It's just a kind of generalized discomfort. You suffer -1 to initiative and -1 to dodge for the foreseeable future, basically until you're out of the steel house. So you pass through this main entrance tunnel. Through an antechamber, through a different tunnel with intersecting corridors. There's about ankle-deep water in this, and it's slowly sloshing. And as you pass one of the tunnels, you turn and look, and you see a dozen cyber ratmen, probably 30 meters down, standing in ankle-deep water, staring straight at you, unmoving.

Are they all basically in a row?

No, they're kind of in a hunched pack.

Hey, a girl can hope, right? Or dream.

But they're staring at you, unmoving.

We just keep going.

Okay.

That's what I'm— I just keep going. I don't know about the rest of you.

Yeah.

Admiring Mr. Cat's restraint. Yeah, Henry just follows.

Uh, given Mr. Cat was the one who just kept going, yes, I am doing the exact same thing.

They don't move at all. Maybe some of their eyes follow you, but they don't move even a single muscle as you pass by.

One thing that I'm kind of playing at here is I'm wearing this armor that also blocks my sense of smell, which means I am less bothered by the smell of the rats. Therefore, I don't actually care that much.

That rules.

Other than the fact that they're cyber rat men in a Horrible tunnel in a still house. Is there anything peculiar about the way that they're acting? Like, when you say they don't move a muscle, is it as if they cannot move a muscle?

You've never seen any living thing that still.

Ah, it's all coming together.

Kind of wish Riley had some claymores.

Riley wishes Riley had some claymores.

I just pass you a grenade.

And then the bad idea fairy showed up.

Uh, so you, you keep moving. Dromedary has not said a word, which is quite unusual for Dromedary. It's quite talkative. Since you entered, he, he urges you forward. You enter another room and there are Psi Stalkers, 3 of them, in rough leathers wearing the animal totems. They've got these long knives. One of them has clearly a Coalition Laser rifle, and they're in this large domed room with this open tunnel directly at the apex, just darkness. They're all pointed up in defensive posture, again unmoving. As you get close, you can clearly see their eyes flicker in your direction.

Clearly he doesn't need those rifles. So yes, as we pass them by, yoink.

A little tooltip in the upper right side. Psy stalkers will remember that.

Yeah, they don't say anything. They don't move. You yoink their Coalition laser rifle. It's just a standard Coalition rifle, similar to many of the ones you stole from.

I hand it to Dromedary.

He grins, gives you a big thumbs up, and then puts a finger to his lips as if to say, shh. And he leads you on.

Did you say the PSY stalkers were looking up at something?

Yeah. Yeah.

Donna glances upwardly.

Roll your perception.

Is that a d20 or is that a regular d100 skill?

That is a d20.

16 plus... So that would be a 17.

Okay.

The room with the psystalkers is domed, and kind of at the apex of the dome is an opening that leads up. It's some kind of concrete tunnel. The remnants of what maybe was some kind of elevator or lift are there, but it's obviously— the main superstructure has been missing for many years. The Psi-Stalkers are all arranged beneath this dome, looking up, up the shaft. It's dark, utterly lightless. Donna thinks maybe she sees these flurry of movement. You're not sure what. Bats? You don't know. Birds? Maybe dangling cables? But they pull away. Whatever it is pulls away into the darkness and disappears.

Well, Donna keeps that to herself and continues moving.

So you move away from that into this larger chamber. You don't know what it was originally intended for, but the floors are layered in heavy carpets of very different colors. Clearly these carpets were taken from other places, would not originally have been here. There's a number of plinths full of these glass cylindrical glass containers, a number of them. And all these containers are filled with specimens. A number are these grotesque creatures. They look like huge bulbous bugs, many eyes and these horrid rings. They are frozen, their eyes following you. And you guys have not recovered Sourcebook 1, right?

Correct.

Does its name begin with a letter from A through F?

Yes.

Then it might be in Rifts Bestiary 1 because that's what the Rifts Bestiary covers.

Oh, I bet it does.

It's possible. I don't know if it has everything and they did add a lot of new stuff, but if that is a concern.

Yeah, I'll check real quick because I have Bestiary. I don't know. I think they reprinted most of this stuff. They did. It is in Riz's Bestiary. So I think it's reasonable that at least some of you would have flipped through the Bestiary that you recovered. So you recognize in this room there are at least a handful of black fairies. And they're floating in this kind of syrupy yellow liquid. There are also these small goblinoid creatures. And I know you don't have that book, but you could tell they're, they're very stereotypical goblins. Cyber rat men. There's a man in Coalition armor. And the two— the, the glass cylinder he's in is not closed at the top. It is open and his head is sticking out of it. And he's up, he's probably like, he's on this— it's on this plinth. So his— he's much above you, but you could tell from the angle, like the top of his head has been cut off and he looks clearly dead. One of them has a Darkhound paw in it. The final one has this child-sized figure covered in a white shroud. Some of the specimens, their eyes are watching you. As you move through.

This isn't creepy at all.

Sounds like free armor.

Goddamn it, The Ring didn't come to America until 2002.

Jacob, I'm assuming Riley knows Morse code.

Yes, Riley most definitely knows Morse code.

Okay.

So one of the black fairies, they're these horrible looking creatures with many eyes. Is blinking at you as you walk past in a very specific pattern.

I stop and try to make it out.

Okay. It is blinking bargain, bargain, bargain, bargain.

I'm going to try to blink back offer.

Let's see.

So I think— so you can have a conversation with this fairy. It's the Black Fairy. We are gonna have to roll to see how long it takes.

Fair enough.

I believe we are wasting our time here.

Well, we can keep going if you want. Enemy of my enemy, though.

We're saving some time by taking the dangerous route.

Sorry, that, that was me doing a little bit of metagaming. I apologize. Are you letting us know that you're communicating with this thing?

Well, I'm— I assumed that you were sitting— you looked back, saw me standing, apparently staring at a pot.

I'm bored.

Let's move. I'm having a conversation here.

With yourself?

The fairy.

That is a manifestation of evil.

It is.

Allow me to put it out of its misery.

Enemy of my enemy, Mr. Cat? Enemy of my enemy?

It's still an enemy.

Oh God, Paladin noticed a crack.

Mr. Cat, why don't we just give it a second before we—

Allow me to consult with the other Cyber Knight in the room. I hold my knife.

Hmm, so your knife— This is the Black Fairy. Is the least evil thing.

Something approaches.

Oh, goddammit.

Something is coming.

I start blinking faster. Um, I rolled really well on my radio basic skill, which gives me my Morse code. So, um, I rolled like a 27. My skill is 67, so Okay.

So the fairy, long story short, you know, it's, it, it offers the offer. It comes back with anything, anything, anything.

So the fairy is willing to do anything we ask if we free it, but I would recommend putting the offer there just because it is a fairy and they are a tricksy deal-breaking Bunch. If we want to let it free.

Is this like a Wishmaster situation?

Yeah, I'd take it like that.

No matter what you do, it's going to get fucked.

Yeah. So you guys are discussing, then this voice kind of echoes through your minds. You don't hear a physical sentence.

It says, the Black Fairies are most untrustworthy bargainers.

Is this a psionic?

Yes.

I don't hear it.

Okay.

Power armor blocks psionic transmission.

Whoa.

Just read that.

I barely meet the minimum requirements for it, but yes, a nice little side effect.

That, yeah, you would not hear that.

I suppose we don't really have a way to know that, but Donna just kind of like makes wide eyes at everyone.

Is that something Henry can still hear?

I think Borgs can still be psionically affected.

Yeah. Yeah, you still have an organic meat brain in there.

True enough.

I got damage or penalty.

Okay, folks, I think we have some quick decisions to be making here.

Well, do we even know about this fairy bargain? Because it's like you're just kind of making eyes at them. I can't read your Morse code eyes.

Look, it wants to be freed. It's willing to, willing to do anything we ask. It will no doubt try to stab us in the back.

Do you know how to free it?

Yeah, break the glass.

Oh.

Well, I would appreciate if you did not free the fairy. They're quite pernicious and it was difficult to cage them.

What does pernicious mean?

I'm just gonna approach the fairy's cage.

Mr. Cat?

I'm getting very bored here.

Mr. Cat, please, please, please, please wait. Please wait. Please wait. Please, please wait.

Somebody want to talk to the voice in the head?

Donna will be like, well, do you have another bargain?

A bargain? For intruders? Interlopers? I suppose we could bargain.

Well, that's what the fairies want to give us.

Oh, they simply want to be free. They do not care for the taste of vivisection.

We would like to not be vivisected, please.

Are you talking to the fairy? Am I missing something here?

Uh, telepathic speech?

I can't do that.

Uh, can you hear it? Because we're all hearing it.

I didn't know you could do it either.

Well, technically, yes, I can, but I don't like to.

Mr. Cat, can you just imagine 7 Ratmen jumping over a fence and just count every 7 that jump over.

Has the faerie's magic affected your mind?

No, but we need to buy time and we need you on standby, please.

What?

Why?

Why are we standing here?

Okay, I'm just gonna repeat everything it says out loud, okay?

Or Gorshkov can auto-relay.

Thank you, Gorshkov, please.

So the Coalition scout, Coalition soldier whose head had been Taken off. The body twitches. The head snaps forward towards Mr. Cat. The mouth opens.

I can talk in this way if you would prefer.

I'm going to reach over, grab the head, and rip it out of its thing with my 30 robotic physical strength. That creeps me the fuck out, and I don't ever want to see it again.

You've got it in your hand. It's like, aha, yes, bring me closer.

We can confer more closely.

I just fling it across the room.

The black fairies all twitch and then they start— begin speaking as one voice.

We see you.

That's fucked up.

About avoiding this vivisection.

No, the fairies will be vivisected.

And one of them just starts screaming and convulsing. And then like it— like something stops and it goes perfectly still.

You are not fairies. Your spite cannot be harvested.

Oh, so we're free to go?

No. You offered to bargain. You have trespassed.

Well, what would you like to bargain?

Each must pay a toll. Now or later. I am open to suggestions. I am an Ex-Barian.

Anybody got a clue what an Ex-Barian is? That's a new one on me.

No, none of you know what that means.

Are you saying you were a Barian and now you are no longer one?

No, that is a name, one of many that has been given to me by your kind.

What name do you prefer?

There have been many.

I, I do like... The Paralytician.

Well, it's good to meet you, the Paralytician.

Yes. I collect things for study, and you are all too interesting to keep.

Do you mean that in that we are so interesting you want to keep us, or we're too interesting to keep?

Oh, too interesting.

Okay.

And dangerous, flame-touched one. You are not alone in your own shadow.

Oh, son of a bitch.

Your bodies are local, but your souls, your minds, are not.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that would be true.

The dog remembers being small.

You haven't met another one like us, have you?

I have not met your son, Donna. I would be most interested in meeting him.

Yeah, me too.

Are you guys actually interested in bargaining with the entity?

Potentially.

I was thinking we could offer it the body or soul of one of our enemies. Like, hey, how does a John villain sound once we get his ass?

Can I commune with Rostam directly? Well, then I'm going to ask him what he thinks and what he knows, if anything, of this entity.

That's a hard question. So let me look at the item, but I think at minimum, Rostam would tell you— let's see. Yeah, he can communicate with you telepathically. I think it can tell that it doesn't specifically have any sensing abilities that it passes to you, but I think it could tell at all that this is an entity of incredible evil. It calls it a greater demon. Now, whether that is accurate in terms of, you know, how it might be, you know, is it an evil, super evil alien, or is it an actual, you know, quote unquote demon? That, yeah, that's up in the air. But that's how it describes it. And it is utterly opposed to anything except find it and kill it. This might not be the most tactically salient advice.

What is this thing called again? The parallelogram?

It said one of its names was the Paralleletician. It specifically said that is what a name other people have given to it.

Though it is what it replied when Donna asked, what would you like to be called?

Yeah, yeah, that's one of the names it gave. I just want to know if as players you're interested in giving it a an actual deal or if you're buying time to engage in shenanigans. I'm fine with either.

I'm trying to slowly place grenades under the table.

I think Donna is actually interested.

So Kat's placing grenades under the table. Donna's talking about it. And Riley still can't get over the fact that it likes harvesting spite. So he's not feeling as safe as he was before it mentioned it. Oh no, I'm mildly concerned. It just hasn't looked close enough.

So throughout all of this, I would like to observe these containment units. Are they mechanical in nature? Does it look like an off switch or a cable that can be unplugged or something?

They look like— while the geometry is unusual, just these big cylinders, it just looks like glass full of liquid. There doesn't appear to be any mechanical aspect, machine aspect to it.

Back to tanks.

Yeah, they're just on kind of concrete plinths that are clearly not originally in this room. They're just sitting on the floor or they're just placed on the floor. They're not, they weren't poured here is what I'm getting to.

Are they techno wizardry?

Not at all.

Nope.

As a player, I'm 50/50 on it because bargaining with the evil is always fun. But Mr. Cat is not down. No, he's not at all.

Okay.

He would want to try and outsmart it because he thinks very highly of his intelligence and he should. He's very intelligent, but I don't know how intelligent that thing is. I'm like, oh, do I have any skills?

Can I challenge it in a game of Go or something? Don't have any.

Have you ever played Uno?

Well, that's—

that'll just end in a fight anyway, so why don't we just cut to the chase? Donna's definitely interested, but I think at the same time she's potentially trying to buy time for someone else to do something smarter.

See, I just go— I just do this little hand gesture as I notice Mr. Cat laying grenades around. Just keep going, keep him talking, keep him talking.

What are you offering?

Safe passage.

What do you want?

Memories, mostly.

I'll take that deal. Do we get to pick the memories?

No.

No!

Damn it.

Mr. O'Shea.

Goddamn it.

We do not wish to bargain. Let's go, folks.

All right then. I look over at Donna to see if Donna wants to keep this conversation going.

I mean, if you have nothing else to add, I guess we can just kind of mosey on out of here, huh?

Come on. And I'm just— I just leave.

Yeah, there's no response.

I'm following the murder cat.

Yeah, just start kind of hesitantly walking out.

Not gonna lie though, if that sucker had let me pick the memories, oh, Riley would have been like, and this date and this date and this date.

And then Donna looks over at the, the black fairies and kind of goes, sorry.

Uh, you think one of them might be crying, but it's Morse code saying, I'm crying.

Yeah. So you leave that room. Dramadary is sweating. His eyes are wide. He is hustling out. All of these chambers of this paralytician or whatever it is had been very well-maintained, clean, well-lit. And you enter this Huge room. This looks almost like an underground dock, though you're quite certain that would not have been part of the broken grid originally. But there's multiple different entrances, lots of water, and descending from the ceiling is an entity that you instinctively know is the one that was communicating with you psychically. I will show you guys an image of it. Oh, the neuron beast of the broken grid.

You posted yours right as I was sharing another picture.

Oh, nice. Oh, it should be that one. That's scarier, actually.

Same color scheme.

Yeah.

Oh, neuron beast.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that fight will have to take place next session because it's going to be a tough one. Well, uh, they're very, very dangerous. I thought you guys would bargain.

It's probably never had cat food pancakes before though.

This is true.

Talk about a bargain.

But hey, you guys have some time between now and next session to strategize, figure out what weapons you have that will be most effective against a neuron beast, which is not in the Rifts Bestiary.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I hope it likes missiles.

These terribly dangerous psionic And magical greater demons from an alien dimension with nasty abilities. There's so many terrible, horrific monsters in Palladium games.

Yeah.

Sorry, folks.

Oh boy.

We're taking too long.

Well, here's a quick preview of next week.

Ah! I'm a cat.

Well, sorry we had to involuntarily end the campaign next session, but y'all have been great. Really appreciate your support.

It's not over yet.

Yeah, I said next session.

Yeah, it's not necessarily over then either.

Oh, thanks, Riley.

Jacob has a plan.

Didn't say it was a good one.

Jacob has like a, a satchel full of random magic items that he keeps like popping out, like these weird bullets and that hurricane in a jar thing. So I'm confident that Riley might just be like, By the way, here's, you know, my anti-neuron beast spell.

You know, I hadn't even questioned any of that until now.

Yeah. So there were, there were a good assortment of magic items that you guys got early on. And the only person that's ever interacted with them is Jacob.

Well, it's my bag. What do you want? Literally.

Yeah.

I'm the only real magic user per se.

Yeah, I don't, uh, and so on the one hand, it's very cool that you guys don't know, but on the other hand, you should be way more worried about what Riley has in that bag than you are. You're way too comfortable with the situation.

Kyle, can you quit giving them the hint that I'm actually carrying around a Geneva Convention violation worth of stuff in the bag? The storm was a little off-putting to them as it was, and that was one of the minor ones.

Yeah, yeah, violations. Multiple Geneva Convention violations.

Actual Mr. Cat just showed his face in the—

Yeah, announced himself and everything.

Yeah.

Hi, little kitty cat.

Yeah.

Such a big boy.

So yeah, between now and next section, I'll be going through my satchel, O Canada, and going and figuring out what we can do here. I might be bouncing it off the rest of you.

Hey, you know, this kind of reminds me when I lived back in Atlanta and with this group of people, there was only one game around and it was this one GM and he was both the worst and the best GM. He was terrible, but, but he was terrible in ways that, that brought us all together. And whenever, whenever he was a killer DM. So whenever we would have a fight or something would be announced, Suddenly everybody had to take a smoke break, even the people who didn't smoke. And we would all step outside and be like, okay, we're gonna do this. And we would like plan out the fight and then like step back in and like, okay, cool, we got this. There you go.

There you go.

Oh boy.

Okay.

Um, yeah, great. I'm not looking forward to next session. Um, good game, everybody.

Good game.

Again, I apologize if I got everybody killed, but Bored cat.

I mean, neuron beasts are incredibly dangerous. They are not unkillable.

How interesting would it have been if we had spent the session going through a house of scary things and be like, yeah, I'll pass. No, I'm good. Yeah, I'll pass. You made it out of the house of scary things.

See you next week, folks.

Oh, hey, ghosts. I'm good.

Thanks.

But no thanks.

Well, my thought was like, it's the House of Stillness. Okay, well, let's keep moving. Don't stop. But oh yeah, that was my approach.

Not stopping was the correct, correct move, actually.

Thanks, Riley.

But if you do kill it, it would be an obscene amount of XP.

Mm.

I do like obscene.

And while 2 out of 4 of us will be calculating it, the other ones will be rolling up new characters.

Yeah, I could kill all of you. That is actually true.

Fucking Troy Mundo's not gonna know what he walked into next time.

Hey guys, what's going on? Oh, that's Rob.

We'll have a crazy—

Oh God.

We best make sure everybody can show up next session.

Yeah.

So anyway, the thing I was saying earlier, Kyle, was something that I just read tonight. It's at the bottom of page, uh, 366 in the psychic combat section that it cannot affect mind-controlling psychic— mind-affecting psionics cannot affect someone in a sealed environmental MDC vehicle like a tank, APC, giant robot, or heavy power armor of 250 MDC or more. I have exactly 250 MDC.

The question is, does that mean if you get scratched for 1 MDC, suddenly you aren't?

I don't know.

I think it's the— I think it's the class of armor. So That was—

that's my take.

I mean, I would say that if it did something specifically to take your helmet off, that, that would work or specifically break the environmental seal. I wouldn't say it would be just a point of MDC and now you're vulnerable. That's kind of generic.

My limitation on that is I'm playing it as if I can't use any of my abilities either.

That definitely does make sense.

Yeah.

I mean, and it's definitely in line with how like, I can't use most of my abilities if I'm in sealed environmental armor.

Yep.

So your abilities such as get super pissed at rats really quick?

Yeah. But I can also see the invisible. I can object read and have all of my sensory things, which actually give me some bonuses I can't use right now.

But I mean, being wrapped in the warm embrace of Samus Aran is very nice.

I mean, how hard could it be if it's made of neurons?

Well, I guess we're closing it there tonight.

Yeah, we're closing it there tonight. I am mildly terrified and I'm just Jacob.

I'm NPC.

Joining us as always are—

I'm Cranston.

And I'm Alex.

And our GM.

Hello, I'm Kyle. I'm the regular GM over at the Bastard Quest Podcast.

Bunch of bastards over there.

A bunch of bastards.

Yes.

Our games are ridiculous and we play a lot of different games. You should check it out. We played, we played a couple of Playdium games, so definitely not as many as you guys.

Did some Nightbane. That was good. That's fun.

Yeah, that was a, that was a blast. Chainsaw hands.

And as someone who just listened to a few episodes of The Bastard Quest, I also recommend that you get Cranston's seal of approval.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Well, that's a new sound effect I'm recording.

Ow!

I just got burned by Cranston's seal of approval.

Won't be the first, won't be the last.

For all our fans out there, if you would like to create some fan artwork of Cranston's burning seal of approval, we would all welcome that.

Injuring someone.

Would it be Cranston's or Dark Falcon's burning seal of approval?

Ooh, I'll let the listeners decide on that if they choose to utilize their talents.

Oh man, we do need to get some fan art. There's not enough Bronson fan art.

There is. We've gotten some, but there's not enough.

Yeah.

I thought you were going to say we need to get some fans. Man, I couldn't agree more.

You know, they're great. They're the best.

Well, folks, thanks for listening. We're going to go ahead and close this out. If you want to join us in conversation, we have a Discord server. If you also want to check out the Bastard Quest folks, they have, uh, you can just search for Bastard Quest. There's links in our show notes. They also have a Discord if you join their Patreon. We have a Ko-fi page as well if you want to kick us a few bucks to kind of help pay some of the bills here. We don't really do much extra for that. It's more of a vanity thing, but for this series of episodes, we do an alternate version that has like music and special effects added. And it's just for patrons over on Ko-fi. And if you want to kick us some Tips on Pinecast. You can also listen to the special episodes there.

And the special effects version is awesome.

So worth it.

It rules.

Yeah, I, the whole time that we are recording, I'm like, note, note, note. I have all of these points to add things. I really enjoyed the last one specifically. I really had a blast with some of the things that were added. Um, because actually several times I had to pause where I was and take an effect and then retroactively add it. Like Alex's pew, I went and I don't know if you can notice this, but if you listen to the sound effects episode, every time Henry shoots his laser, I added that sound effect to it. So he goes pew. It's, it's, it's very subtle. I had a lot of fun with that one.

My favorite was, uh, uh, Henry shooting the, uh, grappling, uh, hook straight up into the air.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Yeah.

And then all the kink, the kink, kink, kink.

Yeah.

That one got some good feedback too.

Yeah.

Anyway, thanks for listening, folks. And we're glad you're enjoying this game. We're enjoying playing it and we'll catch you next time. Starships, magic, mystic martial arts, romance. All of these can be found in A Cloak of Blades by Isaac Sher. You might've 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!

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 Books. Please buy all their stuff and help keep them in print and making more games. You can Order directly at palladiumbooks.com, and their entire catalog is available digitally at DriveThruRPG 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 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 The Glitter Boys. That's B-O-I-S. And check us out online at breakfastpuppies.com/glitterboys. And also join us on the Breakfast Puppies Network Discord at breakfastpuppies.com/discord. And if you want to help us out, please spread the word and help us build a community. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you next time.

Now or later, I am open to suggestions. I hold on. I gotta check my notes.

Out of game, I hope it's not bones.

I want your bones.

Goddamn it! I want your bones.

Give us your bones.

Give us one of your bones. It's a yeah. Jacob looked at me and I looked back and we're like, okay, you know. It's a callback to an actual play that we did with Kevin Sumbida, folks. Go back and listen to it and you'll understand all about the bones.

Made me laugh so hard.

Oh, I need to listen to that. I have not.

One of NPC's brilliancies.

Repeat customers.

Oh God, now I—

the thought of her here.

Definitely in the land of that kind of creepy for sure.