The Spear of Akrulta: Plotting and Scheming

Meribson: As far as blasphemy, yeah, it was, but on the light side. And, for all Hawke knows, the First Emperor/First Sith/Progenitor/Deliverer/Creator actually does make things 'more interesting' from time to time. Perhaps he's testing your mettle as a Sith, seeing if you're up to great plans he has in store for you? You can play Hawke how you like, which includes being a devout worshipper of the Progenitor (as your Obligation), while still occasionally questioning his plans. If for some reason you decide Hawke wants to discard his faith, we can figure that out (since it's related to your Obligation).

As far as Drama and having a pilot, I'll take the wheel for today to make sure the game keeps moving forward.

Dice for Drama's move. Keeping straight, which will make future checks more difficult. Merciless GM, remember? Besides, with Lexi's Piloting skill (2Y 3G + 1G from Enhance: Agility) and Tajanna's Boost, if I'm actually the player, that's the move I'd make, given that the tail would have to deal with the same traffic.

Silver Speeder: Assist Maneuver (+Boost) + Plot Course Action (-Setback)

Converting Lexi's Triumph into 3 Advantage to negate any potential bad news from the Threat. Final Result: 6 Success, 1 Advantage.

Keeping straight, Lexi patiently waits for traffic to turn off, passing through the intersection before squeezing the ECUL between the truck and a speeder to the right. It's then that she truly goes into action, as she pushes the throttle forward in an effort to leave the Silver Speeder behind.

Clearly your tail is caught off guard; still, they react in time to give chase, although they are having a considerably more difficult time maneuvering through traffic as they accelerate to keep up. It's not enough, however, and by the time your pursuers have gotten up to speed, they're already falling behind.

There's moderately dense traffic ahead, wheeled vehicles, speeders of all kinds, plodding along at speed limit pace. Weaving in and out, threading your way through vehicular obstacles, things are looking good. Up ahead, you see a large, industrial hover vehicle, moving along with traffic, a symbolic business logo proudly emblazoned on the rear in purple glow light.

Then you see it, a second or two before impact: a rocket of some type, streaming in, coming down at an almost entirely vertical angle suggesting it was launched from high above street level, on the right side. It connects in the front, a direct hit to the pilot's cab, a booming explosion rocking the vehicle. Immediately, the vehicle lists to the right, then severely careens in the same direction as it spins out and crashes into a building, coming to a dead stop. A couple of speeders crash into it from the rear, with collateral collisions piling up behind them. Traffic moving ahead in front of you quickly slams on the brakes, scattering across your side of the street in a chaotic mess.

Cab on fire, the length of the industrial vehicle and the pile-up ahead is blocking your path completely, as a wall of wreckage and stopped vehicles has entirely congested the three lanes on your side of the street.

Your only option to evade your pursuers is to aggressively veer left, and go against oncoming traffic.

Lexi won the Competitive check, increasing separation between you and the Silver Speeder. It was Short Range, it's now Medium (the goal in a Chase, for the pursued, is to get the distance between you and the pursuer beyond Extreme, leaving them hopelessly behind).

Converting the Silver Speeder's Triumph into 3 Advantage, that brings their total to 5 Advantage, which is a fairly large chunk of Advantage, which I've interpreted as the collision above, further complicating your attempt to escape your pursuers.

So, the 3 lanes of traffic that you guys were moving along with/through, has essentially come to a dead stop, and can no longer be traveled. The bottom line is that, if you want to continue to evade your pursuers and try to get away, Lexi is going to have to navigate the ECUL past the wreckage ahead, which will require her to first enter and navigate through the three lanes of oncoming traffic to the left, circumventing the wreckage. After that, on the next turn, assuming success, she can move the ECUL back on to the right side of the street, moving with the traffic going in the same direction.

The alternative is to slam on the brakes and stop with the rest of traffic. To avoid collision, the check for that would: 1 Red, 2 Black.

The ECUL is still at Speed 1. If it stays that way, the difficulty of moving into and through/against oncoming traffic will be: 1 Red, 6 Black.

If Lexi decides to up the speed to 2 (ECUL/typical speeder max), then the difficulty of moving into and through/against oncoming traffic will be: 1 Red, 1 Purple, 6 Black.

If your character adds dice to Lexi's pool, go ahead and roll them yourself. Also, the only Vehicle Action that would be a secret check is 'Scan the Enemy'; all other vehicle actions you can roll the dice yourself, using the RaW.

Close one, nice driving! As a reminder, you can always flip a Destiny token to upgrade your dice pool, before you roll.

I'm going to interpret Lexi's 3 Advantage as making the traffic check more difficult for the Silver Speeder. Upgrading the difficulty of its check as it tries to navigate the chaos left in Lexi's wake. No extra dice for the Pilot here as the passenger is busy trying to shoot at you.

Results: The Triumph and Despair cancel each other out, but it's still bad for the Silver Speeder, especially given the situation.

Lexi's instincts kick in, prompted by her experience and training. Not one to shy away from dangerous driving, she steers the ECUL left into the oncoming traffic lanes, entering into a gambit of high risk vs reward. Speeders and wheeled vehicles ahead of you begin to slam on the brakes, skidding this way and that as Lexi reflexively darts in between a few vehicles. Finding an opening, she veers hard to the right, out of oncoming traffic and back into the proper lane. Surely the Progenitor was smiling down on her.

The adrenaline spike of avoiding a few head on collisions is just barely beginning to subside when you look in the rear view and notice that the Silver Speeder's passenger is leaning out of his window, bringing a blaster rifle to bear on the ECUL. You're not sure how long he's been trying to sight you, but his timing is horrendous.

Following Lexi's path through oncoming traffic doesn't go nearly as well for the Silver Speeder's pilot. He manages to narrowly avoid one oncoming vehicle, but then, just as he's attempting to find an opening to get back into the right lanes, one of the speeders that swerved to dodge Lexi's driving ends up slamming headlong into your pursuer. The passenger side gunner gets off a single errant blaster shot in your general direction before the impact of the collision catapults him through the air, slamming him head first into an oncoming truck as the Silver Speeder comes to an immediate and catastrophic halt. Glass and debris scatter all around as another speeder slams into the wreckage.

Although it's a little bit of a stretch with only 2 Threat, I decided we might as well wreck the Silver Speeder due to the fact that these guys don't have much of a chance anymore to catch you at that distance with Lexi at the helm.

Chase is over with the collision.

Leaving the carnage and wreckage behind, Lexi follows the navicomputer's directions toward your meeting at the Dead Drop with Nash. Traveling along main thoroughfares, you breathe a little easier for a while thanks to the efforts of your ECUL's filtration system scrubbing the noxious Bonadan air, and the appreciable down time of of an uneventful ride.

That's it for Chapter 2. Our story continues in Chapter 3, The Dead Drop. It will be up today, in a few minutes.