The Glitterbois Play Rifts #007: All the Da I Need

Breakfast Puppies.

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Well, it's Doc Bly and you're listening to Glitter Boys. I'm going to go into boxing and sell them some moonshi. Yeah, I got something in my. In my teeth. It is dark in the depths of the broken grid. Mr. Cat, Riley and Henry crowded together with Bronson, Torben. Everything is illuminated in the bluish glow of the lantern that Riley holds. And of course, in front of you, merely a dozen paces away, are a crowd. At least a half dozen, perhaps more. It's hard to tell in the dim lighting of hideous rat mutants covered in cybernetic modifications. They are glaring at you with beady red eyes, hoisting weapons, crude mix of jagged edge cutting tools, and you are sorry to see some more advanced, most certainly mega damage laser weapons. But hoisted in the air is one dromedary Bosephus. Hoisted by the ratmen who are accosting him and glaring at all of you. You have betrayed Root Jaller, Dromedary. This is the, you know, the largest, very modified hirsute ratman. You. You are trespassers. And he's leveling a gnarled finger, this long curling claw on the end of it at. At all of you.

I'm flexing the claws. It would have to be fingers and toes.

It would have to be rat man.

Rats. You have come before a queen of the underground. At once. Andromeda is.

Drop him or die.

Oh, goodness gracious. Well, this is unforeseen.

It's a rat. It's the most disgusting thing that has ever existed in my world.

I mean, other than dromedary.

Dromedary is okay, I'm joking. I'm joking. Bronson has a deep hate of him, but he's kind of grown on me. But.

Well, I mean, up until the bacon incident.

But I just need an excuse and they've given me one.

They've given you one?

Yeah.

Yeah. Bronson is crouched down, every muscle's tight, pointed straight at the rat men crap. And there's just this low growl from deep in his chest.

If I may, Henry would like to whisper to himself because, again, talking out loud. Gorshkov, think we can take these guys?

Duh.

That's all the die need, quick, out of character comment. Was that yeah duh or duh?

I don't think. I doubt Gorshkov. I did too, but I was like, I wasn't sure.

I do not know this crude American slang.

Yeah, he would have A very academic understanding of English.

How far away are they and how many?

They're about a dozen paces from you. You can see six of them, one of which is hoisting dromedary up. Is like, hey, we could talk about this, fellas. Yeah, no need to get violent. And he's just swinging back and forth upside down. The big cloak you guys gave him is hanging around. He's, like, pawing it, trying to keep his face uncovered.

I am crouched and ready to leap if they don't drop him.

So Torben, the member of the Archonauts that is with you is also tense, and he's looking around and he kind of whispers. There are many of these creatures that serve Jala. She can be bargained with. But if you wish to engage, we might be able to break out of these tunnels before they can rally. So you demanded that they drop him. Do you have any intimidation that is.

Based on mental affinity, of which, minus just a 14, I think you have to have a 16 or higher to actually get a trust and intimidate score.

Yeah, but I mean, if you pull the numbers back, a 14 is essentially a 30% chance, which I would give you a significant bonus on that because you're a giant cat and these are rats and there's a lot of deep genetic memory. So I would say if you want to try to intimidate this guy, we'll just say it's 50% chance.

Okay? Yeah. Oh. And heroism has refreshed.

Okay. Yeah.

Yes. Make sure. All right. All right. Oh. Eight.

All right. So this ratman snarls. He hurls Bose Drobedary Bocephus down onto the floor of the tunnel, rolls through the dust. You may take him into your own custody and present him before Jaller yourselves.

I'm so growling, but I am gonna step forward and grab Dromedary now by the back of his neck and hold. Just hold him up.

That is what you get for running away.

Hey, man, I never agreed to do any fighting. I believe I was quite clear on the fact that I am a coward.

We'll work on that.

He's dusting himself off. So the Ratman has pronounced that you will be accompanying them. T'. Challa.

Riley is eyeing up Bronson to a lesser extent and Mr. Cat to a far greater extent. Because, like, Riley knows he can't stop Mr. Cat. Mr. Cat decides he wants rat meat tonight. So.

So the fundamental question for you guys as players is, are you going to accompany these cyber rat men to Ruska Jala and her court in the depths of the broken grid and whatever that might lead to. Or are you going to fight them and escape? Or attempt to escape?

Henry would, at this current time, die for Mr. Cat or Riley or Troy. But since Mr. Cat's the kind of taking point on this one. I'm a lover, not a friend.

I don't think you want to follow the violent Cat as your leader.

I mean, there's a.

There's a difference between. Especially with your reactions to the rats up to this point. Yeah, there's a difference between choosing to be the follower and choosing not to get in the way of.

Right.

Like, if you're really intent on beating the out of these guys, I'll be there to the bitter end. But if we, you know, I don't know. Russ Gut's a pretty cool name. Might want to see what this guy looks like because Henry's all about appearances.

Also don't want you guys to think that that's your only two options. Obviously, this is an rpg, so if you can come up with. With some third.

I was trying to. I was trying to think if there's any sort of flashbang we could do because, you know, rats in the dark with cyber eyes, you know, their red eyes. Exempt or made even better by little. Just fucking blind them and run away.

I don't. I don't have any grenades.

Yeah, I'm not gonna use my cybernetics as, like a Star Trek.

Like, oh, I have been going through my spell list trying to figure out something to do for that exact thing. And unless we were under open skies.

Blind them. Just hear a loud noise from 20ft up.

I am experiencing analysis. Not analysis, paralysis. I'm experiencing the conundrum of disease, which, based on the fact that I have a God complex and these guys just told me what to do. Right? And they're also dirty, stinking, horrible rats. And I don't want to be down here anymore.

You're just over the whole thing.

In fact, I've just talked myself out of it.

I have another idea. You leave, we leave, and we never interact with each other again. Or perhaps I could rip your head off and eat it, because rats are delicious.

All the rats hiss and snarl and bristle. Take a few steps back. You must pay tribute to Jaller. You have not been given permission to trespass.

I need no such permission.

Is there one. There was one rat that was kind of like the pack leader some. So to speak, Right?

It seems like. Yeah.

I look at him and go. And just, you know, take a drag on the cigarette and blow it out and go. Have y' all seen somebody named Mike around here?

Mike. Mike, Mike, Mike. Mike. All the rats are just saying, Mike, Mike, Mike. And they're looking at each other. And the leader raises his hands. We know. No, Mike.

Leave us or die. You have five seconds.

The rats look at each other, and then they shuffle backwards away from you, watching you as they creep backwards down the tunnel, moving out of the way of the side corridor that you would need to go down if you left the same way that you came in.

Let's get the out of here.

Yeah, yeah, let's roll.

Let's.

And once you guys move into that corridor, who's in the rear?

Since I wouldn't want Bronson to be in the rear.

Right.

I'd argue Henry is in the rear.

I like this plan biggest and back.

I like having the shield behind us.

Yeah, I concur with this plan.

Well, Alex, once Henry gets in that side corridor, you know, off this main conduit, you hear the rats just break into frantic scurrying as they run away from where you are. You can hear them screeching in rat scarlet. Speak of which, you definitely are ignorant. Unless you have a very different set of foreign languages than I suspect.

I doubt that came with the language pack.

Are they speaking Spanish?

Unless they're speaking English, Spanish or Arabic.

Yep. We got nothing.

No, no. Turns out, no, it would be. At this point, I guess it would. It would be a. An English language in the same way that English is a Germanic language, but it would have diverged sufficiently that it would be virtually incomprehensible to any of you.

My only hope is that if they, you know, maybe mixed in some techno can shorthand into there, since they're cybernetic rats, maybe I pick up a. Like her. Damn.

I don't know.

Stab him.

And Torben says we should hurry. They will be back. Jaller guards her domain very jealously. They will almost certainly attempt to attack us before we get out.

I'm imagining that Drahm is the smallest and probably the slowest, Short, stubby legs. I just grab them, hold them like a football, and we run.

I will do the same with fucking Bronson. And Torben could probably.

Bronson.

Bronson's a dog boy. He can run.

He can run on his own.

Bronson.

Yeah.

The least physically capable member of the party, not counting dromedary, would be me.

I have too much respect to pick you up without asking.

Yeah, so I'm not going to ask either. I'm just going to Be shit. Fuck. This gut was old in boot camp. And just keep going. I mean, my speed isn't bad. I'm a 12 and my. It's just. Let's not ruck hike for a couple miles here, please. Me and my physical endurance of 9 are not up for it.

All right, so I'm just out of curiosity. I may not be fully aware that I have a finger cam in my right hand finger. But I do like the idea of asking Gorshkov, like, can you keep an eye behind me? That kind of awesome, man. Let me know if anybody's coming up.

Yeah. So your arm with the finger camera on it. Yeah. Jerks up over your head. You can feel like your finger like rotating. And then you get this feed patched in to your heads up display of the area behind you. And it takes you a moment. There's this dizzying vertigo sense that you thought you might be incapable of feeling, but that overwhelms you for a moment before you get used to looking in two directions simultaneously.

Whoa.

Backwards and forwards. All right.

I am modulating your cognitive load.

You know I love it when you do that, buddy.

So you guys are hustling through the dark tunnels, the ruins beneath the ruins of Old Detroit. And as you move, you can hear it from side corridors, screeching and howling. Very much the goblins and Moria type situation where you see flickering shadows. You splash through puddles and clamber up just hills of detritus. In this chaos of tunnels and corridors.

I'd like to find a moment like if we're climbing up something or maybe there's a dramatic underground vista, some stairs that we run up with a balcony overlooking an area, I don't know, some area that seems suitably dramatic, that I'm going to turn around and I'm a goddamn snow leopard. I'm going to roar in a way that hopefully will just echo out behind.

Yeah, you guys run out onto this, this kind of platform in this larger, you know, quote unquote open area, open for an underground environment. And there's an overhang with a steel ladder that you climbed up previously. And you know that once you go down here, you'll cross through another series of tunnels, but there's multiple corridors that intersect the top of this. Where you are, there's just broken piles of concrete, massive vaulting concrete chambers. So this obviously echoes.

It's almost like a Lion King moment, except instead of holding forth, I've got him under my arm.

Yeah, yeah. So unless you have something other than your base material, which, yeah, with 14. We're calling that 30%. Unless there's another skill you have that you would want to rely on.

Well, I must say, I wasn't intentionally intending for it to just be anything but narrative effect, but I'll roll under. Yeah, I don't. I don't have any kind of cool powers, so we'll go under that 30. That is a 69. I'm not going to spin a heroism. I roar.

But Mr. Cat turns with dromedary under his arms like, hey, hey, hey, let's. Why? Why we stopped running. And Mr. Cat rises up to his full height and roars. And it echoes through these four doors. And for a moment, like, the quiet pervades. The screeching, scurrying rat noise dies down. And then you hear this bellowing call this. And you hear this stomping at a high speed. And coming out of one of the intersecting tunnels is this. Oh, no.

I'm glad I saw the file name first.

Yeah.

Oh, boy.

A massive, hulking, cyber rat pseudo Borg basically comes stomping at high speed out of a side passage. It is probably almost 7ft tall, hundreds of pounds of twitching hydraulics and hatred. Has this massive pincer clawed one hand that is, like, glowing red hot, and it sees Mr. Cat and just shrieks at him. And behind it are just. This is this scurrying cloud of more cyber rat men.

I'm gonna roar back again. And then we run the fuck away.

I also like the mental image there. You're up here, I'm down here, and everybody else is in between. You just shriek. All of us, but into the background.

So this is the part where we need to determine what everyone's speed is.12.

My speed is 30. I think the mutant animals. I think dog. Well, okay. It's been a while. I think dog boys and Catmen might have an increased speed multiplier for their movement. Just if they're running.

That sounds right.

Yeah. I don't have it written down, so I might be misremembering this.

Which tab am I going to find speed on?

Your speed is on the play tab. It's one of your eight stats. The main ones.

Oh, the bottom. Yeah. All right.

Your speed should be, like, crazy high.

It's 132.

Oh, yeah, that's.

You could grab Riley and just run.

Yeah, I could just jump ahead of you. Power boots. Holy moly.

Okay, let's see, dog boy.

You and I are basically more or less the same height, give or take a foot, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Okay. I weigh a lot, but nowhere near as much as you do. Right? Yeah. I am also really strong. But you are robotic strong.

I think we'd get a lot more fan art on deviantart of your character than mine.

I also think I would not want to see any of that fan art. Thank you very much.

Why, Mr. Cat, you're so well hung.

And it's spiky. Why is it so spiky?

Yep.

I feel like I have done a magnificent job of not making next to any furry jokes since the beginning of this campaign.

Yeah.

And you had to do it now on this topic. Thanks.

I'm not saying anything in the dog boy entry now. It might be specific breeds, maybe.

Okay.

No, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's what I'm thinking of. It's greyhounds. So there are specific breeds that have a higher running multiple or something. But, yeah, no. Okay. They are like, very specifically running dogs, which I know.

I've seen a picture. But does Bronson have essentially human legs that look doggish and maybe a dog paw, or does he have actual, like, bending?

He has opposable thumbs. He has more human hands than would be then. Than in that image. You know, it's not precisely accurate.

It's like a little Mario before he gets a mushroom.

But his back legs are the classic.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right. Yeah.

All right. So let's go ahead and roll Initiative.

Wonderful.

Okay. My initiative. I got a 25. No, no, sorry, 22. Misread that. How?

I wonder how much we all weigh collectively. Because my max carry weight is 600.

We could all pile on your back and then land on top of the thing.

Just get the out of there. But we are rolling initiative then. Yeah, yeah.

So, NPC, what is your physical prowess? 20.

Oh, no, there's a tie.

That's accurate.

20 physical prowess and 30 speed.

What did everybody else get furnished? If Jacob, would you get 14? Alex?

10.

Gotcha. Momentarily. Forgot how numbers work. Hold on.

I like my note. Mr. Cat would rather die than obey a rat.

Seriously, I know how dumb what we're doing is. The whole time, I'm just like, they're just all gonna swarm and murder us. But I have a God complex and I'm a cat. These guys.

You're doing my favorite thing that I often find myself at odds with, which is role playing.

Yeah, yeah.

Henry, you got. Henry got a 10.

No bonus.

Bronson goes on a seven matters dromedary. Basically goes whenever Mr. Cat goes, so.

Oh, okay.

Not that he's useful.

His action for this round. Screaming yes.

That's essentially first up is Mr. Cat. You won the initiative.

As much as I want to leap over and rip this thing's face apart with my claws, I'm going to scamper away, find a spot further away to the back that I can get to as far as I can in an action and deposit my package. So it is not. So Draum is not going to be squished or shot or stabbed or cut by anything that we did.

Right, so you guys are standing just to set the scene a bit more on this large ledge in this vast room underground. There's a metal ladder going down and you need to go down to go through another corridor to get out. You can see the passage you need to get to. And these rats are pouring in from into the top level where you are. So it's, it's about a 20 foot drop.

Oh, I'm just going to drop. Jump down there.

Yeah. So you leap down, your speed is what, 30?

My speed is 30.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, no problem. You leap down. The only light in the chamber right now is Riley's blue lantern, which casts a very bright light and seemed to grow in intensity the larger room you're in. And of course, Mr. Cat's eyes easily adapt to this. You can hear the rats shrieking as you run in. And then so going just after you on a slightly lower initiative, because they have a lower physical prowess, four of these rats surge forward. Let's see who they go after here. 1, 2, 3, 4. One of them with these cybernetic legs leaps forward, shrieking through the air. It's got this long bionic tail whipping behind it and it is aiming straight for Riley.

Figures, yeah.

It is going to try to attack you. Would you like to attempt to dodge?

Yes, yes I would.

Okay. Its strike is a. An 8.

Well, I rolled a 12 and I'm looking at my bonus, but I think I managed to dodge.

Well, I mean, you rolled a 12, so that beats the 8.

So you are really slow.

Yeah, yeah. Lets you have some negatives that we should talk about. Riley scrambles out of the way. It slams to the ground where you had been hissing and spitting this tail lashing about. And you can see sparks coming off the tail.

Tails are fun.

Another one surges forward and slams into Bronson and. And he and Bronson are trading blows back and forth. A final one closes in on Henry, but instead of attacking him, it scrambles up him. And you see, it's opens its wide rat mouth and its tongue spills out and it's. Half of its tongue is metal, and there is a data spike on the end of it and it's slapping all over Henry's head searching for an interface port.

So, Alex, that is gnarly.

Okay, so it is attacking you on a five.

All right.

Can he carry that?

Yeah, yeah. It's, you know, hand to hand so he can parry it.

If I remember correctly, parry does cost.

Perry is free. Parry is free. Dodge does not. Dodge costs in action. Parry does not.

Thank you. That's what I was. And I have seven for both, so why not? Because in my mind, dodging isn't the thing that I want to grab him and fucking throw him off me. Or crush his skull, rip his tongue. You get the idea. So I'm going to roll 20 on Perry. Looks like we're using our first heroism since I rolled a one. Just making sure. Yep.

Well, what's your bonuses to parry?

It is seven, so that would be.

A total of eight.

One is not an automatic failure.

Oh, that's right.

I don't believe it is, anyway.

No, it's really not. Yeah, there's no crit fails in palladium.

Is it metagaming to ask if that passes before I burn a year?

You get to know the target before you make roll. I think he said five.

Oh, you.

Yeah.

Okay. Well, then we'll stick with it.

Unless he has heroism that he's spending.

No, I'm gonna bank on a little rat guy.

He doesn't have heroism. However, I have this large pool of villainy dice. No, no, no.

That's a fine idea, Jacob.

God damn it.

I'll have some mechanics ready for you.

I'm sorry. You know the types of games I play.

I.

It's just.

It's an assumption of mine.

So the other one. Another one is. So there's four rats that, you know, surge out in this initial attack wave. And the other. The fourth one is also attacking Henry, though it is apparently leveling a crude scrap bit beam weapon at him. And that is going to hit on an. On a 12. It's pretty close. Pretty close to point blank. So you could attempt to dodge, but.

It'S a negative 10 penalty on that shit.

And I'm assuming you can't parry a beam weapon. So I just. I either try for my luck or.

I just eat it. You just. Yep.

I guess I should ask, is it SDC or mdc?

Yes, mdc. So it would probably. You would probably not. The fortune is against you for dodging, and you would spend an attack in action.

And Henry wouldn't want to dodge it and leave the people. Honestly, for context, I am picturing all of this in the staircase of mines of Moria type thing. I know we're in an industrial setting.

It's not what it's like, but that's.

The kind of like, limited access. So anyways, Henry's gonna eat it.

It's the Moria of Detroit. All right, so you get to choose where it goes.

Oh, sweet.

Oh, yeah. Where do you want to take the hit?

So I have been. I've got some damage on my torso and on my arm, so.

Oh, wait, I wonder if you could attempt to parry it with the other guy.

I mean, I kind of was hoping I could grab the dude by his tongue and smack the dude.

All right.

I would if. If there had actually. So me describing him crawling up Henry was just color. Like he didn't. He's not mechanically grappling or anything of that nature, but if he was, then, then that would be acceptable.

Yeah.

Right on. I'll eat that with my left forearm.

Okay, this vivid purple beam slams into your left form and does 16 damage, searing through the armor, sparking out.

Damn. All right, 16 MDC to my left forearm.

And this massive cyber rat ogre roars. But fortunately, it's Riley's turn. Riley and Torbett are standing next to each other on the ledge of this platform overlooking the drop. Ratman are swarming towards you. One just lanced Henry with some sort of purple laser beam. What would you like to do, chief?

Riley spins behind Henry for cover while slamming open his revolver and quickly loading up both of his shrieking revolution rounds. Oh, or screaming shard rounds. That's right.

Okay. Oh, man. Okay, that could be. Yeah, that's. That's. That's an idea.

21 IQ. I might suck at physical, but I'm a bright spot spark in the dark.

So I. I would specify this might not have been in the description. So when these hit, everyone within 25ft has to make a say versus horror factor. 15. It's everyone within 25ft of where it hits, not where it's fired from.

I was intentionally not asking for that clarification because Riley hadn't thought about that aspect of it until now.

It's so much easier to press the button when you don't know what the button's gonna do.

Right?

And it was like, if I had, like ever thought about it before this moment, I would have asked that follow up question. But Riley didn't. So Riley's just slammed him in the revolver and his next action. Well we know what he's probably gonna do.

Yeah. So I mean I would say yeah. So you could take a shot and you know, depending on what you're aiming at. So. So essentially there's three groups of enemies.

Yep.

There's the four cyber rat men that are in close combat with all of you guys up on the ledge. There's the giant, the cyber rat stomping forward. And then there's five more swarming in behind the big guy.

The question I have is I assumed with the revolver and my understanding. I don't know how revolvers are quite work in Rifts but in a lot of the other systems it takes an action to load them.

I don't know, I guess this is a call up to Kyle. We could look it up but that would slow things down.

I am happy to let you spend multiple actions on one round. Cool.

Quick, slam it open, load it up and fire around Henry at the big guy.

Cool. Yeah. So. Well so my thinking there is that obviously there's a huge some advantages to letting to the player being able to do that but there's also significant distance. Yeah. Because later on if you get smacked at, you might not have a dodge or you know.

Right.

Available. Yeah. You can load and fire. Spending two actions and you're firing at the big guy.

Firing at the big guy. Because A it's the big guy and B, there's a bunch behind him. We probably can handle four, I hope.

Okay.

Yeah. So if you fired him, he's more than 25ft away so it wouldn't affect anyone in your immediate vicinity.

That's just a side bonus. Riley isn't doing his measurements at the moment. Well I'll take that 19 quite handily.

Okay. Yeah. I mean he's not gonna spend a dodge. It hits him. This blood curdling scream echoes off the walls of this underground chamber. The rats following the large cyborg stop clap their hands over their ears. They're shrieking and they all have to make horror factor saves target of 15. Yeah. So let's go. These five guys and one of them made it.

But did the big guy make it?

No, that's. That's the question. Right. Right. So I'm gonna say their lost action is that they're stunned for a moment and of course they wouldn't be able to defend against any attacks on them. But the big guy, he did not. He failed. So he staggers wrong. He's trying, you know, roaring himself to try to overcompensate he, he's like looking around. Where's the source of this? Very disoriented. So he's going to lose his action this round.

Hell yeah.

Jacob, is that your turn?

That's my turn. Best effect from an SDC bullet that I've ever managed.

Torben the Archonaut mystic leaps over the ledge, grabs the sides of the metal ladder and slides down to the bottom and runs straight towards where Mr. Cat is. Then it is the Ripper's turn. It loses the round. So now it is Henry's turn. All right, Henry. A blood curdling scream that was very disorienting just stopped. The rats farther away were staggered by it, but the ones immediately around you trying to claw at you and do things to your interface ports are still very active.

So I'm going to start with a classic robotic kick. Gonna kick one of these rats right out from in front of me. Specifically, I would like. And if this is targeting and it cost me something. Rather not. Anyways, I'm doing a robotic kick on the rat who had his tongue out, trying to. Oh, wait, no. I'm gonna fucking kick the rat with the beam weapon.

All right.

Does that fucking hurt?

And just so you know, your kick, your standard kick does 1d6 plus 20mdc now.

Oh, I did not notice that bonus damage.

Yeah. Oh, we all got a boost. But you got the biggest boost of them all, scarecrow.

Oh, holy moly. I'm gonna kick him so hard his body's gonna become a pink mist. Head will fall and land upon his burnt feet. All right, that's a D20, I'm assuming plus four. That's not nine is what I have after my bonus is that nine will hit. Nine will hit. Yeah.

All right, let's parry.

Henry stomps towards it. It shrieks and is going to attempt to dodge fair. It rolled a nine on its dodge, which I don't recall.

Defenders win ties.

Defenders win ties. Yeah. It shrieks, leaps backwards, stumbling over itself. Henry just barely clips it. You mostly got hair. It is out of the way, skittering, streaking for his life. Okay, you notice it has no MDC armor on.

Uh oh.

Oh, yes. I feel like I can soak a couple more hits from this beam weapon because I feel like that big guy's gonna be a problem.

And that's your turn. All right, so Bronson is 10, tangling with a cyber rat. And he. You probably killed Mike. And these vibro claws come out of the gloves that Bronson's wearing. And he's just repeatedly stabbing this thing in the chest, there's just this wet sound, like the cyber, like gyrating, like. Like somebody's beating a pinata with a bat. And blood is spring over bronze. Completely gores this thing, grabs it, picks it up Hulk Hogan style and hurls it at the big one. Mike, where'd Mr. Cat go? So the one facing Bronson is dead. So Bronson is looking to Mr. Cat for guidance. What do you want, Bron? What do you tell Bronson to do? He's up on the ledge covered in cyber rat blood.

Oh, he's looking at me to say something.

Yeah, you're his role model.

Riley and Torben, protect them.

Okay, Mr. Cat. And he lunges towards Riley's side. The other cyber ratmen, most of them are stunned. One was not. And it's. It's Stag staggering, almost stumbling forward. It's this really heavily augmented. There's like parts of its body that are bloated and clearly held together with staples and literal screws. And it's. And it's trying, you know, stumbling forward. It was going to attack Riley, but now Bronson has interposed himself. Get back, creepy rat man. And he's attacking Bronson. And Bronson is taking hit as this rat man scratches all over him. Bronson has SDC armor on.

Yes. Plastic Man.

Plastic Man. Okay, the chest piece. Yes.

Yeah, Yep. He has Riley's. Troy's chest piece.

That's right. This rat is scrambling at him, scratching all over the chest piece, leaving claw marks in the Plastic man armor. And we're back to the top. Just Cat.

Okay, so I want to make sure I'm picturing this correctly. I leapt down and I dropped. Not Plurbin. I dropped Drom. Dromedary Bocephus down on the lower level.

Who immediately ran towards the exit.

Yeah, Tontorbin is down here now and he's running away. But if I remember correctly, Henry was also right up at the edge of that ledge.

Yep. Henry and Riley are up at the edge of the ledge. Riley's crouch Munsten is by their side. Now there are three rats. Four rats fighting around that.

I'm going to do a leaping attack. My. So there's an off maligned movie that I don't think was as bad as everybody says it was, which was from the late 90s island of Dr. Morel.

Oh, the remake.

The.

The.

The one with Marlon Brando and the. The weird little person. Anyway, specifically in that movie was also Bruise the Bachelor, playing genetic bread with a cat person. And there's a Scene towards the end where she does this, like, straight up fucking leap across the room. And with like, screaming leap, I'm gonna do that straight back up, and I'm gonna land on top of the one that had the really long tail and the whippy cord that was trying to get at Henry. I want to land.

Oh, oh, yeah. The one that's trying to. The one with the tongue port interface that was trying to get to Henry. Or the one with the tail that's going after Jacob.

Oh, well, that. The. The one that was going after Henry. The one with the. The long tongue. Because I want to grab that tongue and then strangle him with it.

It's been the whole time. I too, was like.

Roll your attack.

Okay. 13 plus 8, 21.

All right, well, he is going to attempt a dodge, which theoretically is possible, however unlikely. I rolled a 20.

Ooh.

His Dodge is five.

Well, a nat 20 always wins on defense. Unless it's a nat 20 on the attack. So. Yeah.

He was already running. Yeah, he was running before Mr. Cat landed because he saw this giant white ball of hate storing up over the ledge and just. And turns and just, you know, leaps out of the way. Mr. Cat lands.

I love that description.

Giant white ball of hate. Yeah, yeah.

Also, just a quick aside. I need you. I desperately need you to look up and listen to the roar of a.

Snow leopard now and find some way to master it vocally. Oh. So that I can tell you that.

NPC can do it.

Okay, I'll give it a shot.

So Mr. Cat just landed amidst all these cyber rat men assailing his compatriot, three of which remain. Bronson killed one. It is now their turn. Or at least the initial group that closed in. The one with the tongue spike that leapt away.

Wasn't it the beam guy that leapt away? Or was that when Mr. Cat left?

Yeah, the one. Yeah, the one, like skitters around and is heading back towards try to go to Henry. So, npc, I'll give you the option, since you. You clearly, you know, leapt over interposing yourself. The cyber rat man with the tongue data spike is angling for Henry. So if you wish you could spend an action to get in the way. If you wish to ward it off, I'll do that.

That will totally be the eight foot tall barrier between me between him and the eight foot tall board.

All right, so then it will attack you, and that is going to hit on a 12.

What is he attacking me with?

In this case, just his claws.

Okay.

Which are SDC weapons.

Oh, he.

He he, he, he, he, he. Well, you do not have any data.

Ports on your body, so that comes to. I don't think I. We're not high enough level that I have any kind of like. Cool. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Here's what I'm gonna do. He's gonna attack me. I'm gonna choose to do a thing that we haven't done in this game yet, and that is my defensive option is a simultaneous attack.

O. Okay.

So I can't defend against his attack and he can't defend against mine. That's an I'm gonna spin heroism. Re roll that. Why did I use that?

Die.

What am I. Okay, I still. My first roll was a NAT one, which I actually shouldn't have. Spin the hair wasn't because what it hit. Anyway. I forgot about that. What? Can I take that back, Kyle?

Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, because it keep forgetting we just had this conversation that there's no auto fail. Anyway. No auto fails with a NAT one, I get a total of 10 to hit him.

Damn.

Yes. Turns out that will hit a cyber rat man.

Okay, so can it take. Can this thing possibly take 4d6 plus 22mdc damage? Do I need to roll it?

No, there's no scenario in which it can take that.

Okay.

Hell yeah.

Nice. This upgrade is pretty cool.

Yeah. Feeling pretty buff.

I mean, there's no scenario in which it can take an MDC damage.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I just cleave it with my dagger and my awesome strength.

Yeah. It leaps through the air, claws outstretched, and Mr. Cat simply turns swiftly and slices it cleanly in half with the dagger of Ralston.

Mid air.

Like it's leaping and it's momentum. Yeah, the momentum of its leap carries its upper and lower halves smoothly past Mr. Cat.

I'm picturing like I hold the knife up, it leaps through the knife just carves its torso open, but it keeps flying over the side, falling down into the level below as there's this bow light. A slow mo spread of its innards falling alongside and beneath it.

Amazing.

Yeah, that was pretty cool.

Well, that one is dead. The one circling towards Riley with the spiky neural shock tail. Jacob, it's attacking. You controlled the Natural 20.

I'm gonna dodge and pray.

So just so you know, the only defense against the Nat20 is a Nat20 defense.

Yeah, it's the only option I got.

We just keep hitting these gnats. Yeah.

So what does a shocktail do to someone who is an SDC creature? With no SDC armor.

Well, so this metal tail tipped with taser like nodes, it's unusually elongated for a rat tail, like whips around and slams into you and you feel just electric shock rip through your body. You need to make a save.

Next round, I'm gonna rip that tail off.

This is versus being stunned, essentially. Which is not a standard save, I don't think, but which you can just. It's. It's a save, but you get to add your dodge. Or like any physical, not prowess endurance, PE bonus you may have. I mean, I assumed you didn't, but.

I mean, it's one of my higher physical stats. I actually have a third. No. Nope. Yeah, I have a nine in that.

There you go.

That would be a one.

You have heroism.

Okay, I'm gonna roll with it. I'm just gonna go with it.

Okay, so you are stunned. So you lose one action and you can't take any actions. This, like, cool. It's not around but like, you know, cycle or whatever. Yeah. You guys know what I'm trying to say?

I was out of actions anyways, so.

Oh, well, there you go. So in that case, you just can't move.

Yeah, I'm just sitting there doing the turkey jerk.

As a fun side note, Jacob, you were talking about your low physical endurance of nine. My natural roll of physical endurance skills have boosted this, mind you. But my natural roll character Creation was a 5, and I chose to keep it so.

Riley is twitching and shaking, falls backwards. Meanwhile, the cyber rat man that narrowly dodged Henry's kick raises his weapon again, aiming at the cyborg. And that is a 18 to strike.

Can I ask one very important question before you resolve that?

Yes, you may.

You say falls backwards, and you described us as being right next to the edge that the ladder was on.

That is a very important point. You fall over the ledge 20ft. Ow. Anybody know falling damage off the top.

Of their head coming?

Also, did the taser tail do any damage to me beyond shocking the shit out of me?

No, it just takes. It just robbed you that.

So I don't know the damage off the top of my head, but traditionally in any RPG, we've just done 1d6 per 10ft falling.

That's 2d6 damage.

That's what I was thinking of doing. So that is eight SDC damage.

Oh.

You land amidst a pile of broken co concrete and garbage.

You weren't stunned you could roll with fall half that?

Yes, but I am currently. But at the same time, I'm also not immediately in the line of Fire.

That's true. So Henry is, however, Alex, the Cyber Ratman with the purple beam weapon just fired at you again. I assume you don't want to try to dodge.

We're going to eat that damage with our right hand.

You try. Essentially, he's trying to parry it, but you just get shot in the hand. Yeah.

You grab the muzzle.

So that is 11 points of damage.

All right.

It's cracking and melting the armor on your hand. That is all of the cyber rats for this phase. Next up is Riley, who is down and out.

Yep.

But not Torben, who runs over, grabs Riley and fireman carries him towards the passageway where Drom just disappeared.

Which one is the fireman carry?

That's the over the shoulder. Over the shoulder. The classic where you drape feet over here.

Okay. Okay. Yeah.

And he is hauling Riley towards the exit. Now it is the Ripper chassis turn. And it roars. But then superimposed over that. Probably only. Well, yeah, Mr. Cat, of course, and Henry. The only ones there. You hear this feminine voice. Overclock core activated.

Oh, Lord.

And a surge of blue white energy ripples up the body of this Cyber Ratman enforcer and it charges forward, perhaps even faster than before. And is it going to close on Bronson, Mr. Cat, or hidden?

Better fucking not.

It is heading towards Mr. Cat.

Okay.

It comes in swinging with its heavy vibro clip claws. And that is a 15 to hit.

Oh, I'm going to try to parry that. Okay. I want to try and parry that.

Dagger, dagger, dagger, dagger.

Plus ten. All right, I'm going to spit a. No. Oh, that's a 14. Okay.

I was like.

Is that a four? Bullshit.

Your dice is just going.

No, no, no. Yeah, Sean's not here to juice my dice. Yep. No. Yeah, that's a 24 to Parry.

What are you parrying with the dagger? Yeah, you get the dagger up and this. These massive vibro claws slam into it. And what's your physical strength?

36.

36. Yeah. You are holding it at bay. It's roaring in your face. Spittle just flaking out at you. It is quite strong as well. And it is now Henry's turn. Your massive foe just closed in on Mr. Cat. There is still the one with the bean weapon scurrying around and the one with the taser tail that just took out Riley. What would you like to do, Alice?

Which one is closest to Riley or. Well, Riley fell. Riley's essentially out of. He's out comet range right now.

It's just me, you, and Bronson. All right.

Which one's closest to Bronson? Because I feel like you can handle yourself for now, not that you're try. All right. Well, honestly.

So the. The one actually on Bronson right now has not acted this round. It was the gibbering kind of corpulent when with clear injuries and Bronson I believe dodged previous attack.

Okay, now this is something. So I have a pneumatic punching jackhammer arm and I'm seeing here that my bonuses are plus one on initiative. Which does that mean just by having it, I get a plus one to initiative at all times or only when I'm using it, and then adds one additional attack per melee round. Is that just a freebie or does that count towards my total pool? Because I do see that I have a bonus attack listed.

That would be from boxing. Yeah, the way the sheet calculates boxing. So boxing is a skill that gives you a bonus attack and the sheet calculates it that way. So this would be in addition to that.

Yeah, I think the way I feel confident there's no actual in rules clarification on how that's supposed to.

To work.

What I would say is if you're using it, you. You essentially get it. Essentially gives you a free action to use it. Right.

Okay.

That's the way it makes sense to me is you know, you can't use that. It gives you an extra action, but you've got to use that on the pneumatic drill. Right. Like you can't use it on anything else.

Okay, follow up question then. Do I just say I'm gonna punch with my pneumatic punching jackhammer arm or does that have to fall under one of my like full strength punch, but I'm using a pneumatic.

I got an idea on that.

Yeah, it could be.

What do you think about this? That it's an extra essentially once per round you can activate it for free when you hit. So like if you hit someone, you could then activate it kind of like the big O and animated. Exactly the way I was thinking.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I mean. Yeah, that's fine.

All right, so then I don't like the look of this big guy. I know Mr. Cat can hold his own, but we're really in a crunch here. So I'm going to be aiming a robotic power punch 2AP towards this guy and utilizing my pneumatic punching jackhammer arm at the same time, which if it works out, it's gonna be a lot of MDC. That is an 8. What's my bonus on that?

So I don't see where I've been looking at it. So your jackhammer arm gives you an extra action.

This is the pneumatic punching jackhammer arm under the bionic weapons and tools. Because that threw me off earlier too when I was looking for it. It's not.

Oh, I see.

Yeah.

I've never noticed that. That's really cool. Plus one initiative, plus two to disarm. Yeah, I mean it adds one additional attack per melee round. Yeah, I think the way NPC's interpretation is pretty good.

So if you're punching, it's going to be a plus four to strike.

Would a. I guess a 12 would likely hit. It would just be a matter of if he can dodge it. I'm going to. What time is it? It probably 7:30. Yeah, let's burn a heroism and see if I can do it better.

Because I can pick between the two.

Right.

Or do it. Yeah.

All right, let's.

That's fine.

Well, I'm going with the original cuz I just rolled a two.

So 12 hit on a 12. It is going to attempt to parry. Yeah, no, that's not. We won't talk about that.

All right, let's start rolling damage. So that's gonna be for the base 2d4 plus 20 plus 1d6 plus 2 for every 2 points over PS20. So that is a 3 and then a. That's cocked. Oh no. So 25, 26, 27 MDC coming his way. Exactly.

Just so when your attack comes in, it raises its. I want to say left arm. Yeah, left arm with this massive shield on it. And your punch slams into it. Jackhammers repeatedly into the shield, cracks it, splits it down the middle. It's still functional, but this thing took a massive amount of damage and. Is that your turn?

That.

I've got one action left. So yeah, that'll be my turn.

Okay. Bronson, he lunges towards the one that. The taser tail. Oh man, that is like. I don't know what Bronson. We gotta do Bronson's stats. I gotta stat Bronson up. And by me, I mean I hope one of you does it. Oh, that guy definitely did not dodge. Bronson decapitates the one with the taser tail and then slices down its back with his vibro crawls. Rips its spine out with the tail on it. It's waving it around.

Wait, what breed is Bronson again?

That we decided Chihuahua.

Okay, this tracks especially given he's fighting rats.

I'm just saying they kill rats, man. They kill the hell out of slim.

Only thing they're useful for.

The cyber rat, the one that had been giggling and gibbering with this distended body, says, finally, yeah, sweet release. And rips out part of its torso. But you can see like it pulled off the flesh that was covering this metal cap and this rancid, sickly green glow comes out and then it explodes.

I thought that was what you were hinting at earlier.

I've never been so happy to be knocked off a 20 foot ledge.

So everyone in the radius is going to have to make a save versus explosion. You use your dodge. Any dodge bonuses, it does not count as a dodge. Which is why I call it a save.

All right. I can feel confident in that.

I am gonna spin a heroism. I have one left. Son of a. Last one. Okay. Much, much, much, much better. There was a two and then a three, and now it's a total of. Of now it's 19, which puts me at a total of 30.

Wow.

That is definitely. Okay, you definitely. Yeah, you make your save. So this green blast of fire. I'm sorry, Alex, what did you get?

21 total.

Okay, so you all make the save. So you only take half damage. So everybody takes 15. NBC to.

I have never been so happy to be knocked off a 20 foot ledge to just your.

Your large to your torso, basically.

And torso is main body.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it was a save for half.

Yeah.

Okay.

That guy is dead.

Kind of did us a favor.

Oh. So. Oh, sh. So the rat with the beam weapon evaporates.

Does his weapon evaporate?

You don't know right now.

That's fair.

The other four rats, they were far enough back because they hadn't acted yet because they had been stunned the previous round. They come surging forward, screeching. Actually, they need to make morale checks because a lot just happened. A lot of their friends are dead. Let's roll. For all these guys.

And they already got rattled literally the same round by the shriek Shrieker.

Yeah.

Every single one of these rats turns shrieking and runs back into the tunnels. At this point, only the main Ripper chassis rat is left, but he has a lot left in him. And it is top of the round. Mr. Cat's turn. Round three. Well, well, I guess I should ask who has actions left?

I've got one.

I lost track of them.

I believe you've used three then.

I have three left or.

Well, no, actually, I think you've usually used four. And I would have jumped down. You jump back, which would have been a movement, but you defended Henry. Then Counter attacked.

Yeah.

So yeah, you used four.

Okay, then I have two left. It is your turn looking this thing up. Just. Does this creature appear to have any kind of weaknesses such as Achilles tendons or a hamstring or some kind of disjoint?

Some, like some tube that's obviously crucial sticking from one part of his body to the next?

So I would say, say there's two ways you can attempt to assess any weak points. Do you have any relevant cybernetic related skills? I, I suspect not.

I don't, but I love killing rats.

So you could either roll your perception or spend an action to step back and assess. And you don't have to roll anything, but of course you're spending an action. Now. You could still, you could still take two. Like it's not gonna cost you the whole round to assess, but it's essentially you want to trust Dice or just.

You know, I'm gonna step back and take an action to assess.

So you step back. He's very heavily armored. The only weak point you can see is like his, his muzzle appears very fleshy, so maybe a cold shot. And there's tendons and veins sticking out in his neck just beneath the gorget of his armor. That could potentially be a called shot. It'd be a tough called shot, but there's definitely meaty substances below there.

Okay, that's what I'm doing this round. Okay.

So called shot. And this is definitely a very narrow target, so leave the.

Oh, so just to clarify, that's all I was thinking about doing because that leaves me one action left.

Oh, you don't want to attack this turn.

No, no, no. That leaves me one action left and I'm assuming I'm going to need to potentially dodge this guy.

That's fair enough.

Yeah. And also that means I also don't have enough to make a called shot.

Oh, fair point. So Mr. Cat moves back, assessing his opponent. Meanwhile, Torben is carrying Riley out of the exit tunnel, or a tunnel that leads towards the exit. The Ripper chassis shrieks loudly and then it's gonna assess. It is going after Mr. Cat again and that is gonna be a hit on a six. So I assume you'll attempt to parry.

I can't fail that parry. But.

As you do, like these whip like tendrils on its back as you parry, slash forward and there's arcs of electricity coming off those, you need to make a dodge save again. This does not cost you in action, cuz I'm calling them saving throws.

Gotcha. That's a nat 20. So 31 total.

All right. Yeah. You dodge back as electricity, like, snaps through the air around you. Henry was not in close combat with the cyber rat ogre. Right.

I mean, I punched him hella hard.

Okay, last turn. So I gotta imagine the same save.

Got it. What.

What am I dodge against? What number was it said? 14? 8 plus 7 is 15.

Very close.

Also get out of range and NPC, do you have a question?

Or with a roll like that, could I chain that into an acrobatic backflip?

Sure.

Just put some space between me and him.

Absolutely. And it is Henry's turn.

All right, Henry has one action left, but a whole lot of MDC damage you can absorb still. So we're gonna go for broke and go for another similar approach we're gonna do, because I can, correct me if I'm wrong based on what you told me earlier, and do a full strength punch, one action, but then still engage the hammer for the extra damage.

I think you already did the hammer this round.

Okay, so that's where I was unsure. The round means until everybody runs out actions and we start over.

Got it.

All right, then we're doing a kick. We're trying to kick this guy hard as hell where he's got a lot of parts where the sun don't shine, but either way, we're gonna kick this fucker. Oh, that will do. That is 13. Took me a second.

17.

He's going to attempt to parry, okay? No, not quite.

Full damage can.

He got a 15? Oh, no, he got a 14.

That's going to be 30 MDC damage coming from my big old foot.

So his bionic shield on his forearm shatters and your foot smart smashes through his defenses, cracks him in the. In the body. What was the total damage?

30 mpc. Like that Duke Nukem button dedicated to kick, kick, kick.

I'm here for it.

All right.

With all the rats dead and the two of you facing this giant rat man. Bronson charges forward.

Go for the eyes, Bronson.

Bronson is going for the eyes. This will take all the remainder of his actions. Do you guys want to roll for Bronson or you want me to? You know what, Jacob? Roll for him. Yeah, you're unconscious.

Sixteen plus whatever bonuses Bronson has.

I mean, I'm still gonna say Bronson's probably got at least like a plus four. Let's see. He's gonna attempt to parry. No, that's not gonna do it. That is like a 17. So Bronson's vibro cl claws, I believe or what?

2D6 md.

2D6. Plus Bronson's damage, which would be.

I mean, he's a dog boy, so he's probably at least in like the. At least in the late teens, early 20s.

Got some sinew.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this was a called shot, though, to the. To the critical sections, though.

Right eyeball. I mean, I just yelled go for the eyes because I was trying to quote Minsk from Baldur's Gate, but. But yeah, yeah, yeah. If he went there, then that. I believe that was where that was one of the soft spots.

So that's.

Or.

Jacob, do you want to roll the damage?

What was the damage again?

2D6.

4 damage total.

Bronson slashes into the thing's face, shredding through its maul, and you can hear it hitting metal. So apparently his seemingly rat like exterior is simply flesh over steel. Or at least on his face in any case. And I believe Mr. Cat is the only person with actions left.

Bring us home.

I mean, I can't really make a called shot, but that's fair. You know, instead of. Okay, here's what I. This is apparently my modus operandi at this point. Point. I'm gonna get behind it and get on its back.

Okay, and that's what you're. We're gonna do with your action this turn.

Yeah. Okay.

Just make a general attack because it will attempt to dodge, but if you're successful, instead of doing damage, you will.

Be up on its back with a normal attack, not using any weapon deficiencies or anything. That would go to my strike, which. That would make it a 22.

Oh, I dodged on a 21. So it almost moves, but Mr. Cat pivots at the last second and latches onto its back, claws sinking in. New round. It is Mr. Cat's turn. Everyone has all their actions back. Riley snaps awake from his momentary unconsciousness. He's at the edge of a tunnel. Npc.

All right, well, let's see if. With the neck, those little sinews, if I can just like, jam this knife somewhere into, like, a seam around its neck. So let's spend the extra action to make this a called shot. Yeah, that is. That is a 27 to hit, total. I rolled an 18 on that.

27 to hit. Yeah, I mean, you're on its back. It can't die dodge. It's, you know, thrashing trying to get you off, but that's obviously not really going to happen until it's turned, so.

Okay. 37. Mdc. This knife is dope.

That is a lot of dice.

Yeah, well, I've got to do math now.

The curse of Rifts.

Yeah. It's roaring, howling. There's not blood, but hydraulic fluid spraying out all over Mr. Cat's white fur. And it is Riley's turn.

Riley spends the round gathering his senses, orienting himself to the familiar sound of Mr. Cat screaming in combat. Pats down his pockets and pulls out a vial and waits to see what comes over the edge.

All right, so essentially you're kind of holding an action.

Yeah, collecting myself. Basically, it's a collect yourself, draw a weapon, and then waiting to see who comes over, whether it's friends or not.

So this cyborg goes real still and it winds its length legs and these ports pop out along its spine and jets ignite and it rockets towards the the ceiling, angling to impact. Mr. Cat into the ceiling. O rocket jets towards the roof. Okay, so I'm going to say this. You know, this is essentially an attack. You can't parry. I could attempt to dodge it. Yeah, but I rolled a natural 20.

May your dice roll really well.

You know, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna give it a shot. We'll see.

Gonna try.

Okay. Nope.

Okay, so.

That'S a lot of dice.

Two of them are ones, though, so. So 30 damage to your torso. You smash into the ceiling, you feel cracks in the plastic, man. It immediately drops back towards the surface or towards the.

That hurt. I could take. I took it, though.

But now you could leap off if you wish. Or do you wish to stay held onto him?

He's falling back down to the ground.

Yeah, he falls back down on the ground, slams at the ground like he is just jump. He. He like, has a jump jet. He doesn't have. Like, he can't fly.

So. Yeah, yeah, I'm here. I'm. If anything, I do that thing that cats do where the claws sink in even further.

Yeah, yeah.

I have now. I am now gripped on. Yeah.

And you hear Mr. Cat.

No.

And it is Alex's turn. The cyber rat ogre, as Jacob appropriately called him, slammed back on the ground. Mr. Cat hanging on, but looking a bit worse for wear.

Okay, just for funsies, if you had left off, my idea was to describe me doing a robotic leap kick with him midair and just fucking. But I ain't doing that with you still on the back.

No, dude, I can still do. I can also skill attack, leap off.

But I'll do my stuff. It just won't be as cool.

It's okay. Okay. I don't want to steal Your moment.

No, no, no, no, no. I like what you're doing here. You took one very much for the team. All right. It ain't super creative, but boy howdy, now that this guy's back, and especially after he did that shit to Mr. Cat, going for another robotic power punch with the two. And I'm going to go ahead and use that pneumatic arm again. So I attack. Love these dice, but I have to actually. 18.

He's gonna. He lands. Henry comes in with the attack. He will attempt to parry. No, that is a 16 to parry 2.

D4 and D6. 32 damage.

Does that include the additional from the punch?

Yeah, the D6 is from the pneumatic.

I think it also gives you another two. Oh, thank you.

I said 32, so 34.

That weirdly specific damage that it does. Yeah.

Henry comes in with this pneumatic jackhammer attack, just slamming into the thing's torso. There's a crunch, crunch, crack. And then a. As Henry's arm goes through the rat out its back, shrieking, impaled on Henry's arm. And it was, like, rattling in its death rows. Mr. Cat on the back. And then it, like, goes still. Like, unnaturally still. Like, his body locks up and you hear. Oh, hold on. I didn't think of the word.

I know what's coming.

Safety countermeasures activated.

Oh, no.

Everybody run. It's like a predator. And Bronson hightails it. Bronson just leaps off the ledge and scrambles. Run, Riley.

If there's nothing else, then we're running.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if combat's over, we can just get addled then.

Yeah. Okay.

Run.

Yep.

Yeah, yeah.

So you guys run, you know, leap down over the ledge. Run, Riley. I assume Riley is also.

Oh, yeah, Riley is running.

Can I, as a cool move, kick.

The rat off the ledge the other.

Way, back towards the other rats. No difference in the damage. It just like you.

Yeah, yeah. You guys are running down the corridor, and in the far distance, there's this burst of white light and everything rattles. You hear possibly a cave in. You don't know. But about a half hour later, you all emerge covered in smoke and dirt in the middle of the thorn crown. Mercifully, the sun is still up. It's afternoon in the ruins of Old Detroit Windsor. You're all catching your breath. Dromedary is there, surrounded by the green of the thorn crown, the ruined cathedrals everywhere.

Yeah, let's get the fuck out of here.

Yeah, let's get back to the goddamn Mountaineer.

I hope that porn was worth it.

Indeed it was, dear friends.

Perfect opportunity for a Troy quip.

So you guys spend the next few hours hiking out of Old Detroit. You get to the top of the hill from where you reconnoitered the city the previous day. Obviously the. The landscape of Old Detroit Windsor's not changed. It is still a storm racked ruin. But on the other side, hidden in the greenery, you can see the outline of your Mountaineer, which has become something like a home away from home for you guys the past few days after you've been exiled from your previous home of Ohio. What would you like to do? It is late afternoon at this point, close to twilight.

Riley lights a cigarette, of course, turns to Bronson, looks at him for a second and goes, it's okay about the bacon.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

It's all good. Don't worry about it.

He gives you a big hug.

Ah.

Which Riley winces, groans a little bit because he got tasered and thrown off 20 foot cliff.

Also, Bronson is covered in rat gore. Well, yeah. Oh, Riley, you smell terrible. You smell just like those rats.

Yeah, yeah, but yeah, okay, mister, maybe you and Mr. Cat can groom each other or something.

Oh, no, he doesn't let me do that. But he runs off and you can hear him yelling at Mr. Cat about, did you see those, those rats I killed? You know, talking. He seems very proud.

Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna bolster his morale, you know, give him the good boys and. Yeah, it was pretty cool, all that stuff. We just kind of walk off. You hear the little banter in between.

Riley just starts kind of limping along. He's not severely injured, but he's pretty freaking beat up and he's not a tough guy to begin with. Back to the Mountaineer.

Is there perhaps water nearby? Like a stream or a pond or a lake or something?

We're still in Detroit.

Yeah, you're not Detroit.

I wouldn't trust any water nearby.

You are not too far from the river.

Okay. All right. Because unless anybody else has something to do, I've got an idea for a scene that happens.

I'm here for it.

And that scene is Mr. Cat has pretty much stripped down and is standing at the, on a bank of the river, looking down into the river and he is covered in gore. He has chunks of wall and rat and whatever it was that exploded all over him. And there was the fight from earlier and then there was another fight. He is covered in just that. He is too dignified to Lick off. But that's water. It's the only way to clean. But it's water.

It all comes down to whether your nature, your innate nature as domestic house cat or your. Your physical nature as a snow leopard takes over.

Well, yeah. Yeah, well, there's that. But I'm thinking the moment that I'm picturing happening here as he's debating it, and you see, he's like, nope. And he starts to walk away when Bronson does, like a cannonball.

Oh, I was just about to say cannon. And there's this massive splash of water, this wave. Bronson leaps over Mr. Cat to jump into the river.

And then Mr. Cat's face is almost like as grumpy as Grumpy Cats as he just. And he leaps into the water.

So you guys have successfully weathered the dangers of Old Detroit. Wins it. The broken grid dromedary Torben are sitting near the Mountaineer, catching their breath. Bronson and Mr. Cat a bit of ways swimming. You can hear Bronson, of course. What is Henry doing? Gorshkov is tabulating injuries, damaged components.

Yeah, I think Henry having this be one of the first experiences where they took a lot more damage than usual is just kind of sitting down, leaning against a tree, relaxing, listening to Gorshkov listen off all the various, you know, combat damage and things that we happened. Taking a. Taking a beat, taking a breath, recollecting himself.

Yes, Henry, we will need to find a qualified mechanist to repair this significant battle damage. It is unfortunate we could not make contact with the creator of the previous cybernetic organisms. They were quite sophisticated.

Yeah, Gorski, you're telling me, bud. Kind of picking gore and stuff out of my damaged left forearm with my damaged right hand.

Riley looks over at Henry. Hey, do me a favor and ask your buddy if you have a maintenance manual in there.

Hey, Gorski, we got a maintenance manual somewhere in that beautiful brain of yours.

I have prepared it for PDF download for comrade.

Oh, all right.

Oh, sure. Hold on a sec. I just flip open the palm top and jack into the back of his.

Head without even asking.

As I was about to offer my finger jack.

Oh, yeah. It starts downloading automatically onto your pad the moment you jack in. You don't even have to push anything. Gorshkov just dumps it.

Henry, let me just say that perhaps you're getting this weird sensation that seems to echo some strange dreams you've had during the few periods you've actually been sleeping.

Okay?

Oh, right, right, right.

Yeah.

Seems a little familiar, huh? An eyebrows raised behind the face mask. I think I still have eyebrows.

Yeah, you have eyebrows. So you guys can't. I assume you're gonna camp for the evening? Oh, yeah.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but. And granted, it was far enough away, but the last time we camped in this exact spot before we headed out, that is when Henry observed while doing night watch, the dark behemoth. But that was still pretty far away.

But it was pretty far away.

Do we want to camp or do we want to get out of Dodge? I guess we should ask.

We should ask the driver.

Oh, you know, I'm kind of inclined, given that we just stirred up a rat's nest.

Oh, yeah.

To perhaps mosey a bit down the road first and then camp. You know, just get to get a mile or so down the road.

Dromedary walks over, hands on his. Yeah. Jal is gonna be pissed at you guys. Yeah. She might even be more mad at you than she will is at me.

I take it you've met Jala before.

Oh, yeah. She's great.

Why. Why did. Why were they so pissed at you then? Like, I get why they were pissed at us, but why you?

Oh, well, you know, one thing leads to another. Sometimes people steal things.

Huh.

Who could say you?

But.

Oh, all right.

Well, that's true. But, you know, the main thing, guys, we learned the power of friendship.

I mean, we did. You ran away.

Most times I felt like friendship was running away while you guys defended my escape.

So are we leaving or what?

Yeah, let's get a bit down the road.

Oh, yeah, we should totally go. She's gonna be very mad.

And I have a sneaking suspicion she has more than one of those big guys.

Yeah.

So you guys load up in the Mountaineer. Given your. Your previous drive, I mean, it's late in the day, so if you were going to try to get back to New Laszlo, you'd have to drive basically all night.

Yeah, no, I'm talking, like, three miles away in camp. You know, just enough where it's not easy to track us at. Rats being subterranean, probably don't want to scurry around in the dark at night in Detroit any more than we do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They definitely don't.

Yeah, well, if the nighttime is as dangerous as we were told it was, I doubt that they want to be out there either. Right. Does feel like we have, like, a danger zone buffer between us and them. At least at night.

At least at night.

Yep.

And who knows when another rift will appear somewhere and pop out another big.

Baddie so you guys head back the way you came the previous day. Get a couple miles away, find a good spot overlooking the river to camp, and upriver a couple miles away, you can see a figure. A distant, solitary figure. Looks like a man. The big cowboy hat, huge backpack, walking down the riverbank. Doesn't appear to be carrying any overt weapons, but you can see him stop and look in your direction, kind of looking at you guys. And then he stops and he turns and heads inland, perhaps moving away from you. You're not sure.

And I'm sorry, we were camped at this point or we were still moving.

Well, you guys had stopped. Okay. Yeah. And set up camp, or starting to set up camp when you spotted this figure in the distance to the north.

It's up to you guys. I'm. I'm asleep. Yep.

Riley needs to crash. He's taken one of the worst beatings he has in ages.

Looks like you're a face man there, Henry.

Is Torben or Drum around and awake at this point?

Torben is there. Drum is immediately asleep under the Mountaineer.

All right.

Like.

Visual bit kind of looking like Torben. You know anybody around these parts with cowboy hats that stand out as.

I. I don't know. Can you. Can you get a good look at him?

Gorshkov. Go, go, Gadget Gorshkov.

Amplification engaged. So you zoom in, and at first you think you're looking at some sort of skeleton man, but then you realize, no, it is a machine man. Perhaps a Borg like yourself, except much thinner. He's not as bulky as you are, but he's definitely a metal cyborg. Wearing, you know, like, jeans and coat, a cowboy hat, a huge backpack, like a massive rucksack just loaded with stuff. He kind of looks in your direction, and you can see his eyes oscillating. You're assuming he's studying you in the same way you're studying him.

Kind of give him a. Give him a wave. Like, hey, buddy.

He gives you a tip of the cap.

All right?

Do you approach or anything of that nature?

I first try to give him one of these. Like, hey, come on, man. Like, we're. We're cool. And if he doesn't come, then. Yeah, oops, sorry. I will approach him slowly and not.

Slowly, but like gentlemen, in the Minbari way, with gun ports open to show that you have nothing to hide.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. He does not approach, but he doesn't move. He doesn't run away or anything. As you get closer, and as you get closer, it's Very clear that he's either a Borg or a robot.

Okay. Hey, friend. What brings you to these parts?

Ah, well, nice to meet you. I travel these parts quite frequently. I've not seen you or he looks past you at the Mountaineer or your Patriots ever before here.

You could say we're new. New around here, it's been. Well, it's been like a week. Two weeks.

No, it's been like a two, if not three weeks. Three or four weeks.

Yeah, because we spent a lot of time early on.

Yeah, there were two weeks wrapped up with just the interrogation. Yeah. So it's three or four.

Yeah, we're. You could say we're new to these parts for sure.

Ah. I'm Hardwick. Kindle. Full conversion. Borg. Ex soldier of fortune, late peddler. Lots of isolated settlements, Michigan and other environs. And some folks are pay good money what you could haul out to them. I assume from your armament you are not engaged in such a mercantile endeavor.

I mean, we mercantile anything that comes our way, brother. But, you know, yeah, you could say we're more focused on figuring some things out versus, you know, sales and trades.

Yeah, I see. And your name? Fran.

Oh, you call me. Well, right now you can call me the Rat Smasher. But my name is Henry.

Oh. Oh, very well, Henry. I assume you've been in the broken grid.

You have.

Smashing rats.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep. You?

Guilty.

Ah, very well, very well.

Where are you headed?

I'm bound for New Laszlo.

Well, wouldn't you know, we happen to be heading back that way ourselves. We. We've got some wounds to lick, as it were.

Ah, I understand. It's a difficult life, these parts, certainly.

So. And maybe I am assuming you've got some wares to trade. Maybe there's something of, you know, mutually beneficial relationship for however long it takes for us to get there. You're welcome to join us, pal. Fellow, fellow. Full con.

Oh, indeed. Well, you seem an amiable sort, Mr. Henry.

I try.

But I'm not exactly a trustworthy or trusting fella. And I will say this. Should we meet a new Laszlo and your bona fides can be vouched for by some folks there, then the next time we meet, I should take you up on such a bargain. But for now, I believe I will continue to walk on through the night. I do find the woods calming beneath a lot of stars.

Fully appreciated, my friend. Hardwick, should you need to, if you get there before us, hit up experience. She's been our first go to lady since we've gotten into Town, as it were. Yeah, but try to avoid any giant spiders. I hear those are a big deal in between here and there.

Ah, well, yes, I would not prove too good a meal for such specimens, but I should avoid them nonetheless.

Cut from the same cloth. I see. And I extend a battered right hand to do a fist bump.

He looks at it, and you see his hand was extended to shake. But he then, like, he. His. He makes a fist and, like, pumps the top. Yes.

Excellent. All right, well, safe travels, Hardwick. Pleasure to meet you.

Yes. And use well, Henry. Give my. Give my blessings to your compatriots.

Can and will do. And I.

And he just turns and starts walking.

West with his massive bindle.

Massive.

Yeah.

Huge backpack. And. Oh, I. I can provide you gentlemen with a picture of Mr. Kendall.

All right.

Hell yeah.

I will try to get these up on the Goblin site as soon as possible.

So just real quick. I heard that, right? He's a full conversion, like me, right?

Yes, he's a full conversion.

That's what he's claiming. He looks a lot like a skelebot.

Yeah.

Henry ain't one to judge. Awesome.

So the night passes uneventfully. You awaken to a rising sun and a warm campfire. That drum maintained intermittently through the night. What is your plans? What are your plans? I should ask.

Do we just want to head back to New Laszlo, or do we want to poke around Detroit more?

I like that You're. You're holding. You're holding your hands like you've got a cigarette lit. Of course, for the visual effect of the podcast.

Well, it helps me get into care.

I mean, I don't think we have anything else to do.

I figure we've got enough, again, wounds to lick that we probably want to go back and get ourselves fixed up.

So I've been thinking, guys, you know those numbers we found on the CD on the book?

Yeah.

Part of it looks like a date. 4:28, 101 pa.

He had me at 4:20. And then you lost him immediately afterwards. Sorry, you were saying?

I'm a bit concerned about that.

Torben looks up from the fire. He's eating some of the vegetables from the back of the Mountaineer, chomping on a carrot, says, that's today.

Yeah, that's why I'm concerned.

Where were these? These are written on a cd.

They were on the book, I think.

Okay. Yeah.

The riffs. Was it darkened versions or visions?

Dark Conversions.

Dark Conversions, yeah.

Or the inside back page. Essentially the inside back cover of Dark Conversions, which would normally just Be white space.

Well, as far the rest of them, I got no good idea what they are. But it worries me.

Perhaps there's a machine somewhere and we have to enter them into it every hour. Whoa.

I'd get lost if I was what I had to do.

I look over at our buddy the Archonaut and go, this make heads or tails to you beyond the data at the end.

So he looks at it. Well, these are standard grid coordinates used by Coalition military. I believe they based it on ancient military traditions. Lots of people use them to navigate, given the sparsity of roads. Say what you want about the Coalition and. Well, I say lots about the Coalition, but they make very good maps.

I don't think I've heard you say anything about the Coalition before this moment.

Oh, they are fascists, genocidal madmen ready to wipe out everyone. That's not like them. And the world would be a better place if the gods simply consumed Chi Town in atomic fire.

So this Chi Town needs to be consumed by a God, you say?

Well, there's plenty of ignorant innocent people there, so I don't actually wish that upon them. But Emperor Prosec can go hang.

Without a map. Without a map they're using to reference this off of. I got good. No good goddamn idea where it would be.

I can very easily take us there. All you have to do is ask.

Are you still connected in here?

No, I'm not.

Oh. Oh. Is that the only loudspeaker?

That was on the loudspeaker.

He controls that and it was on there.

Oh, Karshkov. Sorry, buddy, I should have thought to ask. You got an idea where this is? Like how far away it is?

It is not very far. It is approximately grid zone designate 16T100 clear. 100 kilometers square. IDG and easting. Northing 415760, 5028. Easting 41576 M. 48.2 kilometers east from the west edge of the GN block. This would put us approximately 15 kilometers northeast of the primary hub of New Lasmo. 14.45 latitude, north 8405 west longitude, give or take one meter.

You know, sometimes you remind me of my old ti. I would recommend we head that way.

All right.

I mean, yeah, we'll have to basically kind of bypass New Laszlo to get there, but better check out the scene just in case.

I mean, Henry's beat up, but not that beat up.

Yeah, I mean, I'm just concerned that, like. Riley seems to pause a moment to consider his words. Mike, Might be showing up there.

What somebody say?

Mike, I got it on good authority Riley just did and I'm into it.

What we waiting for?

Well, let's get going.

Everybody get in the bus. And Bronson grabs Dromedary and just throws him into the driver's department. Come on, everybody. Riley, if you are hurt, I will help you up.

I'm good, thanks.

And Bronson just bounds into the driver's.

Compartment when we leave. On the way, I'm going to hang out on the roof in the lawn chair that Troy is bolted up there with a dagger on my lap because it needs to get some sunlight.

Ooh, smart. Yes, indeed. Sure it's the dagger.

It's the dagger. The cat doesn't need to sunbathe. No, not at all. It's all the dagger.

I gotta dry this fur. Well, no, that was last night.

You all load up into the mountaineer. Drom guiding you back, though Riley's pretty sure he remembers the route. Drive through the wilderness of southern Michigan, looping the long way around, as Drom called it, the Howling Fields. Due west of Old Detroit, you pass by the place where you camped with the Archonauts. They are nowhere to be seen, though Torben does look around a little more interestedly when you pass by that area. But you see no fiery flying women. And you get into the hinterlands of New Laszlo, the surrounding villages and farmsteads, and soon enough you are driving down a gravel road in a village called Ekbel, which is surrounded by plum, pear, apple and peach orchards. There's a village, main street, which is an actual tiled boulevard that runs the length of the town. And Torben is explaining runs perfectly, aligns with a ley line, not a major one, but it connects to a few others coinciding with this. In the distance you can see. In the distance, you can see a Leyline walker flying through the air, presumably down the ley line. He passes overhead, but you guys take the road north, and soon enough, after passing through a plum orchard, you approach a quiet barn, which is, according to Gorshkov, at the exact coordinates, or close enough, that were written in the back of dark conversions. There is a large red barn, though the color is faded. Roof is partially collapsed. Quiet still. There's no animal noises. There's no livestock. It looks abandoned, though. In the distance, there is beyond the barn, in the distance is a farmhouse that looks like might be inhabited. The barn is closed up, weeds overgrown in the barnyard around it, what looks like maybe the remains of an old herb garden. And the coordinates specifically are about 100ft to the east of the barn in the middle of a field which you quickly surmise is completely empty. And according to Torben, not connected to the nearby Leyline.

Goddamn UFOs.

It's about seven o' clock in the evening. It's not dark yet, but it's. It's quickly going to get that way.

Do we want to wait it out?

I'm done. Yeah.

So far, nighttime does not seem to be the right time. So, yeah, we're probably all pretty exhausted.

Set up camp at the barn or nearby it.

Does the barn look abandoned?

Doesn't look necessarily abandoned. It just looked like a barn that has been sitting on a property that nobody's used it in a while. It's not completely falling down or anything of that nature. Cool.

So maybe they use it during the winter for cattle or something and move them to better pastures during the summer.

They're definitely not using it right now. It shows no sign of recent activity.

Cool.

I'm going to poke around the barn while everybody else starts setting up camp.

Okay.

I'm going to climb onto the roof.

The roof. Mr. Kent climbs up onto the roof, which is pretty easy. The roof is definitely in a bad state, in dire need of repair.

Okay.

There's water and wind damage. The barn is not locked up or anything. You go through a side door, straw, dirt floor. You can see old animal stalls. There's that kind of musky scent of layers of manure and feed from a property that was used for a long time. There's a tool room to one side filled with a bunch of old farm tools and rakes and hoes and hammers.

Are they all manual tools?

Yes. Yeah. Yes.

Here I was hoping for an abandoned Husqvarna chainsaw. And sadly, I mean, yeah, honestly, I was hoping for one of a couple powered tools, but. All right, well, seems to be abandoned.

I say we wait. Yeah.

So, yeah. So how deeply do you. Do you conduct a search of the barn and the environs?

Well, I'm going to go pretty thoroughly through it.

Henry will take care of the perimeter with his enhanced sight for the outside.

And just a small note, if at all possible, I'm going to pull the Mountaineer on the other side of the barn from the field.

Sure.

So, you know, I'm assuming the barn's at least slightly bigger than the Mountaineer and just put in the barn. So if something happens, the field, there's not a Mountaineer immediately in sight.

Right. Gotcha. So you search the interior of the barn and under A pile of straw. You find a trap which has a big, shiny new padlock on it.

I call out, henry, get the cat.

Yo. Mc Shouting up onto the roof.

I find a hole and just drop down.

Okay. Mr. Cat lands on the floor of the barn.

That lock's newer than anything else in this barn.

I have an idea.

Go up to the door, bend down. I'm gonna sniff at it. Anything smell amiss or interesting or fascinating?

The smell of the arcane is almost overwhelming when you bend down.

And this is a padlock. This is locked on the outside, so it's holding something in.

Well, I mean, you would also lock it on the outside to keep people from breaking.

Sure. Okay. Just in case, I'm going to get in real close and go. And then scratch at it a little bit lightly. Just another scratch on a morale and see if anything comes up from any noises come from below.

There is a deep guttural growl that screams inside. Mr. Ca. Brain as guard dog, but way nastier.

Hair stands up.

Important question. Could the rest of us hear the deep guttural growl or just Mr. Kell?

Oh, oh, yeah. Everybody could hear.

Okay, that's an important distinction in this case.

Bronson, you speak dog.

What is it?

What is it saying?

I will kill you.

Those were the first words you ever spoke, Bronson.

Oh, dogs say that a lot.

Suddenly, Riley is very curious about what is the common parlance of dogs. There may have to be a conversation later.

But before anyone can say anything else, Gorshkov suddenly comes over the speakers built into Henry and says, dimensional shear radiation is increasing at an at an exponential rate. Something is going to arrive in 7, 6, 5.

Run outside and look.

I climb. I immediately hit the ladder to the Hayloft.

I follow Mr. Cat, and I'm gonna nudge Bronson. Open your senses.

All right, Mr. Cat, you guys run out. And at the exact spot where the coordinates indicated, there's this flare of. Not the blue light of a rift, but this kind of rancid yellow energy that coalesces to this ball and then expands into a flat circle. And a figure steps through that circle, like stepping through a sheet of water into this world. It is a tall woman, and night had fallen by this point, and as she emerges, the shadows seem to deepen. She is wearing heavy black armor, similar to that worn by Tarmac, the Crucifier, and the Iron Zombie spikes. Glowing red tattoos and sigils on the armor. She carries two wicked weapons, and her face is pale, her hair black. Her eyes are green. She looks at all of you and says, hmm, dead men. And then she attacks. But we will break there for the evening. And this is the image.

Oh, I was hoping for tarmacia.

I was really hoping you'd be like. When you said it was a woman, I was like, is it Mike's mom?

Could be.

Maybe.

Maybe she went bad.

As she starts to charge forward quietly to himself, Riley goes, I think I'm in love.

Yeah, I mean, you could probably ask her out.

Well, this answers nothing.

Yeah, no, like, absolutely had forgotten about the coordinates. Phenomenal that we followed up on it.

Yeah.

Oh, don't worry. I didn't know exactly.

That's what I'm saying. Like, thank you.

Yeah, I was really hoping you guys would not forget. But, you know, I've been preparing.

I've been preparing for the last session for three things. This one thing happened.

Yeah. So my excuse is I'm a cat.

I mean, it's a pretty good excuse as excuses.

Yeah, it's pretty easy not having to worry about a lot of things. Yeah, that's someone else's problem.

I just like that I wrote down published 2002, as if that was going to be a relative, you know, a real big detail later on.

Oh, it's a big detail now. Where the hell did Mike get that?

Oh, very true. We come from 97.

97, yeah.

Yeah. I'm very fascinated to see what it's been, what Mike's life was like going forward.

Maybe those questions will be answered. Or maybe this Dark guard will kill all of you. I hope not. That would be very anticlimactic. But, yeah, that would.

Especially since we're bruised and beaten.

Yeah. I personally want to meet Emperor Prozac.

Yeah, I want to hang him.

They've been pretty cool.

Until you added that last part of that word. I was like, where is he going?

I don't want to hang him.

Well, right.

I heard I want to hang. And I'm like, out with him. And then you then the m. Like.

Oh, good, good, good, good.

No. So I'm picturing the way that Torben was describing. Started to describe the coalition in my brain. What was happening to Mr. Cat was kind of the opposite of what happened to Eric Cartman in South park when he was first explained what the Nazis were. And he was like, oh, these guys actually seem pretty cool for me. I'm like, yes, fascists.

You must destroy them.

In my head, you know, so. Oh, okay.

Yes. They sound similar to rats.

They want to tell me what to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The worst thing in Mr. Cat's brain. Tell me what to do or be a rat.

If you do both, you're fucked.

Oh, you think you're the master race, I see.

Yeah, it was tough. I rolled the dice several times on that one. Like, do I want to follow and see where this goes or does Mr. Cat say, Fuck this? Yep.

Well. And in case the audience is wondering, there's no storylines that they have to follow. They could have gone and met Jaller. Things would have happened. Or they could not. There's no wrong answer. Or there's no right answer either.

I have a feeling we'd have more MGC left in our armor if we had gone.

We probably. We probably could have hashed something out, had a side quest, like, I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine, but I don't care.

I still had fun.

I call it 50 50. The fact of the matter is, if Jala was not the most agreeable person and then we were surrounded in a throne room full of Jala and her rat army with Mr. Cat, we may have ended up with a lot less.

Yeah, it's very true. Yeah.

Well, folks, this has been a lot of fun sessions six or seven. Six or seven. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because you put out the full version of 5 and 6 was last time.

All right. Yeah. We managed to get a couple two really close here, so I haven't even released the last one yet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

How am I going to FX this one?

Rat noises, Electrical noises, Plasma bat.

I gotta figure out that power piston. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, that was great. Yeah, yeah, that was good. I'm very much enjoying the campaign.

So if folks want to listen to things that you. Other games that you run, Kyle, I'm assuming they've by. If you've made it this far into this. You've heard the spiel now at least six times, but let's give it a seven.

Yeah, sure. I'm the main GM on the Bastard Quest podcast. We play lots of games, very different games. We just finished. We just started, actually. We just finished the first session of spirit of 77, which is a powered by the Apocalypse game set in 1977, an alternate reality. It's very much based on old shows from the 70s and early 80s and exploitation films. That was a blast. We're going to play a couple more sessions of that and after that I think we're going to play Mothership.

That's a good one.

Yes.

Both give you an idea of what we do over there.

Both NPC and I are huge fans of Mothership. Both riffed on it a lot.

We did a couple of mothership sessions on bikers, dice and bars with an Abraham Lincoln impersonator.

Yep.

It was pretty cool.

Yeah. I've not run it or played it. I'm excited to. It's very cool.

I've run it a couple times outside of this group and I really, really enjoy it.

Nice.

And by the way, I'm npc.

I'm just Jacob and I'm still Alex.

Fortunately, Sean couldn't make it tonight. But that's life.

That's life gaming when you're an adult.

Yeah, seriously, that's exactly correct.

Also, it was really fucking hot today. Like, we took so many bathroom breaks because I drink these gigantic bottles of water. Usually I drink like one a day. I think I've had four today. Yeah. Yep. Yep. About that big.

This will be my fifth once I finish it.

And next week's the hot week. Yeah.

Yeah.

Cool. Well, we'll go ahead and let this one close out, folks. Drop by Discord if you haven't already and subscribe. Say hello. I'm glad to see that so many people are liking this and leave us a review on your podcast aggregator of choice. I think the biggest two sites would be like itunes and Spotify for reviews, but I know there's some other places.

Yeah, anywhere. We appreciate it.

Cool. Well, thanks for listening, folks. 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 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 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 [email protected] and their entire catalog is available digitally at Drivethru RPG as well. Our open 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 TheGlitterBoys. That's B O I s. And check us out online at breakfast 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 again for listening. We'll catch you next time.