Chapter 1: Sortie, Runners!

(OOC: Dang! Posted too slow. :-/ Sorry Senpaiki.)

No no I'll go with that, I'll say that happens! Maybe Kai can revise a bit?

(OOC: Um...I'm not sure if what Skydut just did is stupid... or utterly awesome. The mental image was simply too much...one giant robot kneeling holding a massive painted bow on it's back while behind it a pink one pulls back on the bowstring, it really is like a siege engine lol. Keep up the creativity!)

I'll let you do that Skydut, however, you must spend effort for intellect (remember you have edge in intellect so it only costs 2) to line up Gion perfectly and coordinate with Ara. She'll reroll and if she hits she'll do extra damage. You have to remember that there are no 'free' bonuses, there's always a risk or a cost or both.

Reroll bow attack:

(OOC: I guess I'm confused. Not trying to argue, I just though rolling a 20 and getting a Major Effect? The + to the rolls was the effect I was going for.)

(P.S.OOC: Nevermind, I saw that my Major Effect was to get to Soniku in time. I apologize.)

Hei stomps off towards S2. You'll get there next turn, I should have specified that the slugs are a short distance away from each other and take a turn to get to from the location of one of the slugs.

The Runners: Darani struggles to push the dead slug off of her, although she is slowly scooting out from under it. ***"Can someone help get this stupid thing off me?"*** Miu, Herdin, Rozlt, and Zast work together to cut off the middle slug S2's tentacles, and work their way closer to it as bits of tentacles fall to the ground, while the other runners head towards S3 or watch out for those attacking slug S2.

Slowly circling like a hunter stalks it's prey, Ace and it's illusion suddenly leap forward at exactly the same moment. While the illusion does no damage, it does serve to distract the slug, and Ace's verred firmly lodges itself in a soft part of the slug's shell. The other Defensers didn't get your message, as your hand signals weren't noticed, and Defensers have no communication systems.

Gion and Soniku: Spax, remember to pay your intellect effort. Gion and Soniku create a makeshift ballista with their defensers, and as they know each other well, it doesn't take long to set up. Soniku pulls back as far as the bow will go, and with an incredible metallic twang the arrow is off. It strikes the sluggie hard in the shell (OOC: Sempai, your effort helped.)

The battle seems to be going well. The slug on the left is dead, and the runners grow closer to landing a hit on the one in the middle. Elsewhere, runners handle-

Wait.

As Soför is running towards the slug in the middle, it's eyes turn to him amidst the chaos of it's lost battle. They turn from their usual orange to bloodred, and at the same moment the slug seems to explode, leaving behind a hazy cloud. Zast, Herdin, and Miu are blown backwards.
As Soniku's and Gion's attack hit their mark, Osiris wrenches his sword out of the beast. Red bubbling fluid sprays out in multiple directions, quite unlike brown sluggie blood, and a second later Ace is thrown through the air and onto the ground.

As the red cloud clears, the two slugs come back into view. Their yellow skins bleed and blister, and underneath pulsating red matter is revealed as the slug's skins melt away. The slug's shells appear to be being eaten from the inside, and soon hundreds of roughly human sized multi armed monstrosities seemingly sculpted only of flesh emerge from holes in the shells. They crawl down the "slug's" backs, and like spiders start clambering onto the Defensers that have fallen to the ground.


(something like this)

Soför, you were away from the slugs and are unharmed. Darani is still behind you under the dead slug.
Before you, you can see the multi armed flesh-creatures swarm up the hulls of the defensers, and all too quickly they reach the cortex. They start prying armor off and pounding the hatches inwards with the energy of hungry wolves.

Ara and Spax, you two are safe as you were not directly engaging the slugs. You can see Ace and it's clone fly backwards. The multi-armed beasts swarm off the "slug" towards the illusion, but once it disappears they start clambering onto the real Ace.

Osiris, you hear thuds starting at Ace's feet, and they seem to be moving up towards the waist at an ungodly speed. Your illusion bought you time, use it wisely.

Everyone, reroll initiative and then act. You're not fighting slugs anymore.

The metallic twang from Soniku's bow overhead still reverberates in the air as one of those... things explodes outward and red demons of some sort pour outward like a plague from its decomposing body.

But Spax hasn't the time to effectively try and understand what is happening before Ara pushes her Defenser past his. Gion rises to a crouched position and drops the bow to the ground, it clatters against the ground and like a gun at a race Gion is in a full sprint as well. Heading toward he hasn't any idea, just evil. Yes, that's it, the Maelstrom produced these evil abominations and its his job to stop them.

Spax maneuvers Gion toward Zast and tries to lift his Defenser free of danger. "If we can get those things away from his cockpit then Zast can use his cypher to attach to us and get away from danger!" Spax passes a glance to a monitor trained on Soniku, "Hang in there Ara." He whispers under his breath.

Initiative:
Sofor
Osiris
Spax
Runners and flesh creatures
Ara

Soför, speedy as ever, starts stomping on the creatures. However, they are more dexterous than you imagined, and soon your monitors show a red swarm ascending Hei's legs. If you attack these things physically in a defenser or do a speed check, and fail a difficulty 2 roll, the crawlers start swarming you. Give me an attack or speed defense against the crawlers.

Osiris: Ace rolls on the ground, and the crawlers fly off it's legs and burst upon hitting the ground. You're safe from the crawlers for now, however, the giant creature expelling the crawlers seems to notice you and launches fleshy tentacles at you. They seem to be trying to grab you. (speed defense)

Spax reaches Zast's defenser. (OOC: unless I say so, you don't need to roll to get somewhere. You may have to take a turn or too to get there, but unless it's treacherous or something no roll.) You pull his struggling unit off the ground, but the crawlers hold on viciously. One of them manages to rip off the hatch, and another two reach inside hungrily and pull out a struggling man. He slices off one of the crawler's arms, but the other squeezes, and you hear bones crack as he screams in pain.

The sick creatures: The crawlers continue to try to rip the runners out of their Defensers, and their metal screams and groans. You know it'll only be seconds until the armor cracks. The two giant creatures that used to be slugs continue to birth more crawlers out of their back, and the new births run/crawl to the standing Defensers. One flesh-slug attacks Osiris.

The Runners: ***"Dammit, what going on? I can feel your fear...I'm coming."*** Darani pounds off towards the downed Defensers. Herdin tries desperately to scrape the crawlers off his hull with his hands, but spider like, they just jump to his hands. Tipping, his Zorahi falls face forward into a mud like substance. Miu's Braze seems to be having trouble moving, although Soniku desperately cuts the crawlers off her hull. Zast screams as a crawler breaks his arm. Rozlt has managed to shake the crawlers off, and runs at the flesh beast S2 with two daggers.

Ara brings her sword to bear quickly and drags it across Braze's hull, slicing the crawlers in half. With no crawlers present, you see the hatch iris open, and Miu staggers out bleeding, hand on her head. She shakily points her palm at Soniku and you see a cable fly and attach to your left shoulder. Moments later, she flys, and you hear another thud on your shoulder as she lands.

(ooc editing: After reading Spax's action, I need to fix this...)

I open my hatch, and looking up to Soniku's roof shoulder see her swaying dangerously. "Miu, you can't stay up there, you look like you're going to fall. Come in here!" I offer her a hand and taking it Miu slides in, and awkwardly sits next to me. Closing the hatch, I look at the carnage, and then at Miu helplessly. "What do I do? I'm afraid, for once...Well... I can't sit here chatting, I guess." I run my fingers along the dents in Soniku's hull. "Just a little more, girl. We can do this!" Soniku crouches for a moment, and with a whining of hydraulics leaps up like a sprinter and niavely bounds as fast as she can go towards slug S2 to help out Rozlt. As Soniku runs, the sunlight runs along the length of her blade like running water.

(I'm going to say that my action for this turn was helping Miu in and starting to run towards the slug, I just described it more!)

In all his training Spax had never heard or seen anything like this. The red monstrosties looked as if they were a plague.

Seeing Zast attacked Spax opens his hull. He suddenly feels a wave of worry course through him and answers instinctively, "It's okay Gion, I know what I'm doing. Just get those blast pylons fired up and ready to go." Almost immediately the two tall backwards facing rocket boosters mounted on Gion's gigantic shoulders begin to hum to life, the small blast doors on the front of the pylons clicking open and a red glow forms from inside each of the rockets.

Kicking at a release toggle, the hatch in Spax's Defenser's chest slides open with a coarse chuff.

Once the hatch is open, the muffled sound from inside the defensers cabin fall away and the unobstructed environment bursts noisily into Spax's ears. The sounds of grating metal, unholy screams from the monsters, and the constant whine from the Maelstrom are almost enough to make Spax's head swim for a moment. However his Guardian training pushes him forward with dedicated resolve. Spax focus his attention to Zast below him, and points his palm at the spider demon holding Zast's broken arm and fires. "ZAST! HOLD ON!!!"

(OOC: My intention is to fire my cable into the red spider thing and while still being strapped in Gion recoil the whistler and pull the baddie and in turn Zast towards myself. Then fire off the blast pylons and get us the hell out of there. Then hopefully my actions will spur the others into a retreat while Spax drops Zast off to return to Gurrai while he returns to the battle to help whomever he can.)

This is getting seriously epic, and I want this to happen! I'm loving this description, I was planning to write like this but was worried I'd geek everyone out. No longer (loving the blast pylon activation!) However, there are some issues.
First, to fire the pylons you have to manually activate them, hitting the BIG RED BUTTON. Gion won't follow voice commands yet.
Second, the whistlers only attach and pull you too magnetic objects like the metal of Defensers, they can't pull flesh beings to you.
Third, unless it's simple like walking across a room, you must provide rolls for actions, and your action was pretty complex.
And last, consider how long a round is, about 6-10 seconds. For example, if you jump on Zast's defenser and then kill the crawler holding him that'd be one round, and then getting back to Gion with him another, as I can't imagine all that happening in 6-10 secs.

And just a warning: You don't want to hit that big red button, unless it's a horrible emergency. It's pretty vicious and has been known for concussions and occasional deaths. (like airbags).

Can you reword it a bit, and split it into two actions? (unless you can do it in one)

(I changed my action just fyi)

(OCC: I looked it up, minor illusion, which costs one intellect point, is free for Osiris with his intellect edge. Adjusting intellect pool accordingly)

You're right about the edge, but you can't attack and create an illusion in the same action. You can defend, and then do an action every turn. For the sake of moving the game along I'll say you attack, although you can change it if you wish. I let you create an illusion last time because all you did was create it and examine the slug. Also, remember your illusion Ace can't move very much, (about 100 feet, ten times the limit for PC sized illusions), although if you had conjured it before attacking it could have moved and distracted the slug a bit.

In all his training Spax had never heard or seen anything like this. The red monstrosties looked as if they were a plague.

Seeing Zast attacked, Spax begins to open his hull. He suddenly feels a wave of worry course through him and answers instinctively, "It's okay Gion, I know what I'm doing."

Kicking at a release toggle, the hatch in Spax's Defenser's chest slides open with a coarse chuff. Spax unbuckles the straps keeping him attached to The runners seat inside Gion's chest and leans forward.

Once the hatch is open, the muffled sound from inside the defensers cabin fall away and the unobstructed environment bursts noisily into Spax's ears. The sounds of grating metal, unholy screams from the monsters, and the constant whine from the Maelstrom are almost enough to make Spax's head swim for a moment. However his Guardian training pushes him forward with dedicated resolve. Spax focus his attention to Zast below him, and points his whistler at his squad mates Defenser below. "ZAST! HOLD ON!!!"