[HoE] This week's adventures

[Michael <martin_etc@yahoo.com>]

Alright, first a catch-up on the last session (split
into 2 parts, due to posse split up temporarily, and
then they're back). Due to coordination problems, it
took a while to actually get to play this game. 

It was divided into two mini-adventures; 2 players per
group. First was "think": there were ways around every
possible combat in it, and they found 'em all. Second
was "fight", very little roleplaying, a fair bit of
rollplaying, and of course, shootin' and fightin' and
a kill count [see below]. The second part was held
today, so here's the adventure:

The posse starts off in Turlock CA. Jimbo and Andrew
(players chose the 'think' path) are finished drinking
for the night (Bubba and Lo are still drinking) and
head up to their room. They have a visitor: Daidoji
Arichi, the head of Kang's Secret Service, who wants
them to investigate a death of one of Fujima's
advisors in Portland [plot note: one of Alvarez's
people, under her orders, killed the victim]. They
should, he says, gather intelligence first, and
Manchu's Turtle Isle is just the place. Andrew and
Jimbo depart for Lynchburg to board Turtle Isle. In
Lynchburg, Andrew buys (with Jimbo's money) some rope
and arranges to get on board Turtle Isle. 

They go onboard and, first things first, find the bar.
House special goes unnamed (they passed the spirit
test to avoid addiction) - Spook Juice.  Each order 3
shots: Andrew passes all 3 vigor tests, Jimbo passes
the first, fails the second, and still drinks the
third: he is reduced to *one* wind at the end of this.

In the haze of the green, Andrew sees a woman outlined
in green (I'm not sure if Templars would get the spook
juice 'green' benefit, but I needed them to find this
person). She informs them, upon discussion, that she
had been in Portland before [where they're going]. She
tells them of Alvarez's "servants"' dangerousness.
Cammy is wearing a yellow robe with capital Gamma-Psee
(greek) letters on it.

They're later around and they run into Lt. Bernard St.
Alfred, a former US Navy Lieutenant. He talks of the
importance of improving SEATAC and getting it
operational as a possible air-base against future
possible attacks by the Combine.

Andrew, at this point, decides that Cammy's room is
worth exploring; she wasn't telling everything. He
picks his way into her room on bard and she isn't
there. He rummages around and finds what looks like a
blind terrorist's attempt at a pipe bomb (see the
relics section of Junkman). This isn't going to work
for him, but I'm helping him with Occult Engineering a
bit by letting him fool around with this. I want him
to be a junker someday (I have Arcane Backgrounds
planned for *everyone* except Bubba. Ideas anyone?
Plans are Jimbo-Bless'ed [keep posse under control if
need be], Lo - enlightened [if I ever get the book,
probably in HexArcana], Andrew-Junker).

They get some sleep; the boat arrives in Portland the
next day at noon. They awake at 10 and head to the bar
for breakfast and a drink before dabarking. Upon
drinking a shot of spook juice, Andrew notices that
the new bartender, a raven-haired woman in a brown
robe, has a green outline herself. Upon following her
off the boat and to a general-store, he is able to
distract her while Jimbo filches a baggie of a
white-powder substance from her backpack. [really
"sleep" made from flour, but both players thaught I
allowed them to come into posession of an illegal
drug]. Next stop: "Damien's Electronics", to get a
look at Cammy's pipebomb (she doesn't yet know that
they have it - she may return later). The junker in
charge rummages around the store a bit, but can't fix
it. He's able to identify it as created with "The
Sitgreaves method of thaumaturgical diffusion" - fancy
term to confuse the players. 

Next stop is Fujima's converted steakhouse. They are
greeted and fed, then two 'dragons' take them up to
Alvarez's office, one of them spilling the beans that
Fujima was expecting a delivery ("oooh! You're here
with Iwo's delivery!" "ummm... yeah! That's it").
Alvarez tries the "stuff" ("you didn't poison Fujima's
shipment, did you?") and passes out. The two are taken
by a dragon to Fujima to find out what happened: 5
samurai are in the room as well as Fujima. One dragon
inspects the bag and, upon arguing over it (Andrew
tried to retake the bag forcefully), it rips. I allow
the guys to roll vigor (I don't want them captured:
unless they botched, I'd allow them to only lose a bit
of wind rather than passing out - they each took 5
wind).

Well, they think the window looks like the best way
out: Jimbo kicks it to see if it opens: not right
away. Andrew kicks it, and it doesn't crack either.
Jimbo shoots it (shotgun, point-blank range) and it
cracks. He then decides to open it quickly by
jump-kicking it, forgetting for the moment that I told
them that they were on the 5th floor of the steakhouse
(neither questioned that statement either time). Well,
the window budges and Jimbo falls to a 4th-story
balcony. Andrew uses the rope to climb down, anchoring
it to a desk. At this point, they each take the
fireescape down to the bottom, climb into a car, and
floor it, heading north to SEATAC. They get there and
find Victor talking with Bernard.


Fight Adventure:
Fairly simple: Bubba and Lo wake up and, after shaking
off their hangover, are asked by Arichi to find Andrew
and Jimbo: Alvarez, some samurai, and Fujima have been
drugged and a window broken! 

As they leave, some young punks carrying street
weapons (2 hockey sticks, a golf club, and a chain)
attack them, screaming "Wrecking Crew Forever". Yeah.
As they continue, and are on the road, a truck with a
driver and 2 men in the bed (of the truck, the 2
players present and I laughed our rears off about this
- more on this laugh later) with automatics. Lo, after
being shot at, jumps into the bed (of the truck, you
know, the same bed of the truck with the two men in
it. After this laugh, combat continued)... : two shots
from Bubba's shotgun in quick succession (2 action
cards on the same number) took out the driver, causing
the rig to shake. One guy fell over, Lo punched the
other one, who fell over. He jumps (on a Red Joker)
back onto Bubba's hoverbike as Bubba hits the gas tank
with a med-range blast of his shotgun. Toast!

At this point, they were somewhat drained of
fatechips; I gave each a 2-white bounty and continued
from there. They arrive in Portland to have two
Dragons recognize them as "Arichi's Men". After a
quick combat, they run and go north: and run into some
spotted owls (6). They found these harder to take down
than the rest! Apparantly, the lack of being able to
use Lo's Jaded Monkey tricks hurt. Shurikens did the
job, as did Bubba's backup pistol, but a botched
throwing roll embedded one in a tree trunk (in the
first adventure, one of his starting ten embedded
itself in a block of cement). 

On their way north still, a road is blocked by a tree:
four earthers are waiting in ambush. The posse
entirely runs out of fate chips and Lo takes a light
wound to the guts. I allow him 'natural' healing at
the end of the session anyway, and he succeeds, since
I really don't want to have to find colored paper
clips anytime soon (I should, esp. if I plan on having
them do stuff for Taylor v. the Combine). 
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