Captain's GLoG - Session 8
Our micro-campaign group continues to run roughshod through Desert Moon of Karth by Joel Hines. We're using a homebrewed scifi GLoGhack. You can find our previous session here. As ever, steer clear if you want to stay perfectly spoiler free on the source material.
The Eve of the Heist
We rejoined the crew as they prepare to infiltrate the manor of Governor Stieg Tanaka, leader of the settlement of Larstown and the Manian Expeditionary Force on Karth. Their goal was to steal the orbital access badge that the Governor kept mounted under a taxidermized fish in her office.
The crew consisted of:
- Captain Belee Vanda - ex-politician, now smuggler and bounty hunter.
- Hora Tilly - vagabond and explorer.
- Lambro Das - hired gun and escaped convict.
- Associate June - rebellious and expert bureaucrat.
June worked in the secretariat of the MEF, but had recently come to realize that no one had ever read a single one of his reports. The crew met him at Desperado one night and recruited him to their cause.
The crew had already scouted out the compound to the best of their ability. They just had to check off a few more legwork items before they were ready:
- Hora had a series of weird dreams - the night sky of Karth but over a vibrantly green and pink world. When she awoke, she found that she had manifested some kind of psionic ability. The crew theorized this might be from direct contact with the wigoy.
- Captain Vanda and Hora met with Howard, the marine technician who had leased them the power armor for three days in exchange for 7k credits on return. They successfully persuaded him they could pay 10k credits in a week's time by showing him the torpedoes strapped to the roof of their ship. He took the power armor.
- June used his position inside of the office complex to falsify a hiring record, getting Lambro a job as a security contractor in the manor.
- During Lambro's training shift, June smuggled a weapon - a beefed up tazer connected to an auxiliary battery - into the compound. The crew noted how shorthanded the security operation seemed within the manor proper.
- Dr. Fayed fabricated a duplicate of the access badge for the crew - a strange object of woven white polymer the size of a baseball.
All According to Plan
The crew's actual plan was as follows. Hora would pose as Dr. Fayed's assistant for a regularly scheduled physical. They would arrive during Lambro's security shift to minimize the risk of being stopped. June would provide a distraction and Hora would swap the duplicate badge for the original. Belee would setup on nearby rooftop on overwatch with the anti-material rifle they had looted from the Valley Rangers.
The first phase of the plan worked perfectly. Dr. Fayed and Hora entered, passed Lambro and headed through an internal courtyard up to the second floor. They passed beds of hydroponic plants and a big aquarium that housed a tiger shark. On the second floor, they passed two guards to enter into Governor Tanaka's private office - a luxuriously appointed room with clean carpets, a mahogany desk, and a horrible giant fish with seemingly human teeth. Underneath that fish was the badge.
There they found the Governor, a 30-something woman in a formal colonial uniform, meeting with an unknown man in a gray robe. June confirmed over a shared bodycam setup that this was Reverend Oboku, the man who had caused the Condor to be wrecked in the first place and who had 20kcr of bounty on his head. The crew decided not to try to jump him yet.
Tanaka dismissed Oboku and they began the physical. The Reverend ducked out through the office's back door. The Governor grilled Hora on who she was ("a nurse in training getting practical research experience") and Hora asked her about wigoy consumption (she was actually nearly 120 and had been using it since she had become an adult, giving her skin a distinctive blue tinge).
Meanwhile, June lifted a classified report from one of the desks of his colleagues on the first floor of the manor - a decrypted communique from the Silver Spire reporting on activity at the "hatchery." He loaded it onto a tablet and brought it up to show Governor Tanaka. Lambro followed behind but waited on the stairs.
June entered as Dr. Fayed put the Governor in a blood pressure armband. He said their was an urgent report, but Tanaka ordered him to place it on her desk. Hora nudged Dr. Fayed to make a distraction. Automatically, the android doctor inflated the armband to a painful degree. June followed his lead and panickily threw the tablet. During the commotion Hora made the swap. The orbital access badge was theirs!
Off Script
Before anyone could react, Lambro rushed into the room yelling "cortical bomb!" This was a threat that he had been briefed on during his training shift. He dove and tackled Governor Tanaka, hoping to carry her through the door in the back of the office and into a seemingly secret chamber the crew had scouted during their legwork.
He successfully grabbed the Governor but not before she instinctively chopped him in the neck with what proved to be polycarb-fortified arm bones. Lambro coughed and sputtered as they rolled through the door.
Beyond was a chamber filled with power and telecom cables. Some snaked up to the roof, but many disappeared into a tunnel that was bored into the wall which seemed to drop several stories. A ladder emerged from the tunnel.
June took the opportunity to just walk out. He walked quickly towards the edge of town where the Condor was parked.
Tanaka called for the guards, who stormed in and quickly secured Lambro. Putting two and two together, she also ordered Dr. Fayed and Hora detained - too many new actors doing too many unlikely things too close together. She ordered them marched over to the barracks and planned to interrogate them properly in 20 minutes.
Chaos Ensues
As Hora, Fayed, and Lambro emerged from the manor's first floor flanked by two guards, Vanda lined up a shot with the rifle. Bang! The lead guard was decapitated and the second one stumbled back with a mortal chest wound.
Immediately all hell broke loose.
Hora took Dr. Fayed by the hand and ducked back through the manor to a carport that connected to the courtyard. There they found a parked dune buggy and hastily grabbed the keys off a wall rack. In the meantime, Belee exchanged fire with another guard in a rooftop veranda while Lambro turned and rushed the Governor. They exchanged blows, but neither managed to land a convincing hit. In the distance, an alarm started to sound from the marine barracks.
June realized that he needed a key to actually get into the Condor, so hid in an alley by the gates to keep watch and make sure the crew wouldn't be cut off.
Hora pulled the buggy around to the main entrance and Lambro dove in. The roof guard ducked down into second floor hall to avoid Belee's fire. Governor Tanaka commandeered his pulse rifle and fire a few bursts at the buggy. Most shots glanced off its chassis but a few hit Dr. Fayed in the passenger seat, seriously but not mortally wounding the android.
From the rooftop, Belee spotted Reverend Oboku moving through a window on the second floor and took a shot at him. It connected, but somehow he was able to catch the bullet in his exposed palm. The force still sent him staggering, but he seemed not to be scratched as an aura collapsed around him. June noted this through the bodycam link as a mystery to investigate further.
Hora pulled the buggy up under the rooftop Belee was camped out on and the captain tossed her rifle to Lambro before clambering down to squeeze into the cab with Hora and the wounded doctor. Hora backed up and tried to ram through a nearby chainlink fence, but it just fouled and entangled the dune buggy.
By this time, small groups of guards were pouring out of the barracks to the south of the compound and pushing into the compound. June could hear some coming towards Larstown's main gate as well. He grabbed a nearby prospector's cart, abandoned once gunshots broke out, and wheeled it to block the gate in case anyone tried to close it.
The Getaway
Lambro hopped out of the back of the buggy and, anti-material rifle in tow, managed to intimidate the guards into halting their advance. Hora backed up the buggy. Thinking quickly, Vanda pulled out one of the Dawn Guard pistols and lined it up with the chain link fence. True to form, it scanned the area and then quickly and efficiently chopped a square hole into the fence with precision laser fire before ejecting a fizzling cartridge.
The crew piled into the buggy and began a breakneck race across town. Vanda took the wheel and piloted the car through a narrow alley, scraping the left side and showering the crew with chipped masonry and auto glass, but avoiding the oncoming marines.
By the gate, the former desk worker June shoved the stolen cart out into the open to shelter the dune buggy from an approaching company of MEF guards - right on time as it was immediately peppered with pulse lasers. Belee took a final chicane and swerved to a stop by the cargo ramp of the Condor in a shower of sand.
As Lambro provided a last bit of covering fire with a stolen pulse carbine, Belee threw June the keys to the Condor so he could lower the ramp. Expertly operating the system they were able not only to board before the MEF caught up, but load the dune buggy as well. Without delay, they fired up their sole engine and sped off into the desert.
GM Notes
This was a killer session. I love when the PCs plan a heist and then give me a break between sessions to prep materials. I basically had a floorplan, a roster of guard patrols, and some acting notes on Tanaka and Oboku. I figured the rest would come together in action.
Hora's burgeoning powers are a Δ template. For those not familiar, these are a GLoG advancement scheme where you gain class features by performing prerequisites outside of the usual XP structure. I'm on the record as being quite critical of them, but I'm interested to try them out here as a mystery that is semi-exposed to the player instead of chores that waste session time on minutiae. Hora's player knows that it is a Δ and that their are more, but doesn't know the unlock condition for the next one. If they want to pursue this route, they'll have to investigate in character.
June was played by a new player to our group. They did a great job jumping right into the thick of things but also sharing spotlight when their character was a little removed from the action in the final chase. They chose to be an ex-bureaucrat before the details of the session unfolded, but it was a great way to get them into the scene in a way that made them essential to the plan without it feeling totally forced.
While it was overall a successful session, I had a couple key learning moments here - things that I want do better on in the future.
First, I need to get better at working with a map. I am so unused to working with a VTT or any kind of concrete representation of a scene that once one is play I find myself looking at it and just assuming it is legible to the players. I need to remember to still reiterate the scenes - the contents of the rooms and their vibe - not just trust spatial relations and positioning to carry the day.
Second, I had tweaked automatic fire to be a little bit less deadly between our seasons. It only came up this session (and fortunately at a moment that was beneficial to the PCs), but I should have relayed that in advance of the session or in changelog over Discord. Announcing it mid-session felt a little "Calvin Ball" to me. I'm sure that wasn't a big issue, but details matter.