Iron Kingdoms Role-play - Session Four

For those of you who haven't been keeping up you can find earlier sessions and background material in here.

This weeks attendees would be Captain Sebastian LaCroix (Toms character), His Lieutenant Rafaldo Scorgiani (Steve's character), the Mechanik Bragg Halvard (Harry's character) Martin's Priestess and 'Spiritual Advisor' character Danika Jansen and my Ogrun 'Bosh' Skullsplitter whose general bodyguard duties have now been modified to 'protect Sebastian' rather than the more general 'protect every-one', lol. Our GM for this one (and the previous ones) is Andrew Rose...

The stats of the player characters can be found here should you be interested and the rest of the 'Brotherhood of the Rail' mercenary companies NPC's backgrounds can be found here.

Mission Four - 'An  Inconvenient Delay'
The group is about to arrive in Armandor...

Introduction.
The journey from Merin to Armandor is uneventful and after the usual tedious train related activities are completed, Danika spends some time with their Precursor Knight passengers, Rafaldo accompanies Bragg to acquire some upgrades for his Laborjack and Sebastian recruits Bosh to assist him with the delivery of their recently acquired goods.

Editors Note - Goods acquired somewhat dubiously in Mission three the details of which can be found here.

The Salvage Yard.

After some basic enquiries Bragg discovered the location of several salvage yards that may fulfil his needs for a little ranged capability for his Laborjack. Though he's extremely knowledgeable in the areas of Mechanikal engineering his overall negotiational skills weren't quite as well developed so he asked Rafaldo to accompany him to assist. Bosh normally fulfilled this role but Rafaldo was also a considerably skilled negotiator though he relied on actual skill rather than the implied threat of brutal violence...both methods had their situational merits though...

After some searching through the piles of crap...sorry...bargains that were available at the salvage yard Bragg discovered a serviceable Light Gun that would supplement his 'jacks improvised close combat weaponry nicely. After a combination of Bragg pointing out the numerous faults with the item (most were made up on the spot but a few were actual faults) Bragg haggled the price down to half that of a new item and Rafaldo got the price down even further making the item a considerable bargain.

Editors Note - Harry acquired the 'Salvage' Ability recently which gets him half priced 'jack items. Steve's character Rafaldo then used the rules for negotiation to knock the price down even further. I'm not sure the extra negotiation discount was really in the spirit of the Salvage rule...but the GM let him get away with it...It wouldn't have happened if I'd been GMing, lol.

Meanwhile...

An Exchange of Goods.

The streets of Armandor were either muddy or poorly maintained in the extreme so Sebastian requisitioned one of the rail companies carriages for the journey and after changing the cargo manifest for the second time directed Bosh to load the now owner-less crate onto the carriage. Sebastian had acquired directions to a meeting place in one of the less desirable parts of town and after a relatively short journey they arrived at their destination. Bosh dismounted first in order to make sure the area was safe and discovered a note on the door instructing them to wait where they were. Bosh passed the note onto Sebastian before equipping both his Warcleaver and his shield just in case.

After a short period of waiting a group of three cloaked and hooded figures rounded the corner and Sebastian was forced to brave the muddy streets in order to deal with the newcomers. After a chat which made little sense to Bosh but seemed to indicate that the deal had nothing to do with the Transcontinental Rail Company, there was a lot more to Sebastian and this job than was immediately obvious and that his Captain really didn't like getting dirty. The apparent leader of the three recent arrivals seemed to be expecting the delivery to be free of charge whereas Sebastian was raising issues of accumulated expenses and inconveniences caused with making cargo appear and disappear from appropriate manifests...getting muddy had also soured his mood considerably. After some monetary compensation was exchanged Bosh handed over the crate and assisted the loading onto a small horse-drawn cart that the newcomers had bought with them. They then parted ways and returned to the train.

One of Our Noble's is Missing...
The next few days passed uneventfully and before long the next part of the journey along a newly created train-line to Tarna was about to get under-way. The train's timetable was normally fairly fixed so it was somewhat surprising that their departure seemed to be delayed. The train's staff were obviously disturbed in some way and several of their senior staff members were running back and forth in a state of agitation.

It turned out that an important passenger was late for train and his acquaintances were confident that he wouldn't be late unless some disaster had befallen him as his business in Tarna was quite important. The rail company staff also stated that they had been informed of his importance and instructed to give him special attention so it was evident that a decision needed to be made. After weighing the pros and cons Sebastian decided to gather the usual suspects from his staff as well as a couple of the companies Pistoleers and go and find out what the hell was going on after making a mental note to give explicit instructions to the staff of the Transcontinental Rail Company to not wait half an hour before giving him relevant information in the future. As the town was basically built on a heap of mud there were few routes that a gentlemen of means would choose to take and as it was certain that he would be travelling by carriage a good idea of his route could be determined. The team decided to recreate that journey in order to see if the missing noble could be found...So Sebastian requisitioned another carriage...

Three quarters of the way along the route an overturned carriage was spied in the distance surrounded by a number of bodies dressed in the traditional outfits of a household staff and guards. Unsurprisingly the next action was to send Bosh out first to investigate...

Editors Note - Bosh is getting a lot of crappy jobs in these missions...He's thinking of asking for a bigger cut of the profits...

After ascertaining that there was no imminent threat he noted that one of the staff was still alive and called over the rest of the team. While Danika attempted to stabilise the survivor, Bosh flipped the carriage back onto it's wheels noting while he did that whatever flipped it over in the first place must have hit it with quite a lot of force...or have been as strong as he was.

The survivor managed to inform Danika that a group of Bandits had attacked the carriage and kidnapped both the noble and his wife though had given no explanation for the attack before he passed out from his wounds. He was placed in the now upturned carriage, the Pistoleers were left to secure the are and the rest attempted to find some kind of trail. Fortunately Bosh's experiences as a Bounty Hunter had benefited him with some basic tracking skills and he was able to work out the direction the bandits had departed in. The trail led out of town into a swampy area which was unfortunately too boggy for the carriages to traverse. After some swearing about the distinct possibility of getting dirty the Captain gave the order to follow the trail.

As the ground become muddier Bosh was able to glean more information about the group they were tracking. He ascertained that there were about twelve bandits of which at least two were of at least Trollkin size though probably not Ogrun and they were dragging two bodies along with them. The depth of the tracks indicated that none of the bandits was particularly heavily armoured...

Editors Note - Tracking uses the Perception stat which isn't particularly high for Ogruns so I generally use a Feat point to boost tracking rolls (giving me an extra die) as other wise the chances of success are pretty low. In this case I rolled two sixes and a five which on top of my characters base stats's effectively means he could follow any trail he damn well pleased...this time at least...

After a couple of hours of tracking the trail began to become less muddy, small trees and bushes began to appear though none made for particularly adequate cover. Ahead was a wooden barrier to some kind of rocky canyon with a single guard post at the top of a scree covered slope along the one side. The entrance had been deliberately narrowed presumably to channel enemies into an easy to handle area but there was no gate to speak of. It was apparent that the guard would easily spot any-one approaching the entrance though it was possible that a stealthy person might be able to ascend the slope undetected and deal with the guard. After eliminating the nine foot tall Ogrun, the lightly armoured but still pretty damn big Trollkin, the woman in shiny, clanky armour we were left with Rafaldo and Sebastian...to every-one's surprise Sebastian volunteered for the task...

Editors Note - None of the characters really know that Sebastian was a resistance fighter though Bosh now does know that he has connections to that world thanks to accompanying him to the earlier meeting. Given his usual attitude to work and getting dirty it's understandable that the rest of the PC's would be surprised when he allocated something involving actual work to himself...

The rest of the team got as close as they could ready for a charge towards the enemy encampment while their Captain gradually moved up behind the tower guard before skilfully despatching him with a single dagger thrust to the neck from a retractable blade concealed at his wrist. From his vantage point he could see a selection of rough tents, a few bandits milling about and most importantly the two kidnap victims bound and gagged under an overhanging ledge. He then signalled the rest of the mercenaries to begin their charge while he positioned himself to give covering fire.

The charging group made it halfway into the compound before being spotted by a tediously observant bandit who was rewarded for his observation skills with a fatal hail of bullets from Sebastian with a nearby companion also sharing his fate. Several more bandits emerged from the nearby tents in response to the commotion and random gunfire began to fly in multiple directions. Unfortunately for Sebastian he was the only really viable target and several shots were aimed in his direction with one lucky shot punching through the cover of the guard post and into Sebastian. The fact that this ruined his shirt was apparently even more of an irritant than the hole in him.

By this time Bragg, Danika and Rafaldo had reached the inside of the compound with Bosh a moment behind. Bragg engaged a newly emerged trollkin, Danika crushed the skull of an enemy while Rafaldo used a spell to attack a recently awakened opponent in one of the tents though unexpectedly failed to kill him. With the closest opponents already in melee Bosh switched targets to a group of three newly awakened enemies.

Sebastian finished off the wounded bandit on the ground and then put several shots into the trollkin engaging Bragg though he steadfastly refused to die and his fellow trollkin rushed in to assist. Bragg managed to get a blow or two in himself before taking a brutal axe strike from the second trollkin bandit with only his superior metabolism and inherent troll toughness saving him from death. Bosh despatched his three opponents with his usual brutal efficiency and after taking careful aim Rafaldo made sure that his opponent didn't survive a second attack. Two more bandits had their careers as kidnappers brought to an abrupt end and a third had the dubious honour of being the last of the human bandits to die as he made the mistake of shooting Bosh and was then sliced neatly in half for his efforts. The remaining trollkin were overwhelmed by a combination of Sebastian's pinpoint shooting, Danika's mace and Rafaldo's cutlass.

After a bit of first aid for both the brotherhood members and the kidnap victims the compound was quickly searched for valuables. There were a few gold coins, a selection of weapons that had some trade in value and very little else. The sight of an armoured priestess looting corpses of everything of sell-able value (up to and including their shoes) would probably have been worthy of notice but the rest of her comrades had long ago got used to her creative methods of raising money for the church...not that they'd ever seen her actually give any of the money to the church that is.

Editors Note - Danika is either the worst Priestess of Morrow in the Iron Kingdoms or is secretly a Thamarite. More than likely the former...though anything is possible I suppose...

As was expected Bosh ended up with the job of carrying both the loot and the kidnap victims back to the carriage and despite them being offered transport back to their home instead decided to go with their original plan of taking the train journey as intended. The noble gave them a reward from the travel money he had available and also offered to buy Captain LaCroix a replacement shirt...apparently they shared a similar set of priorities...

Eight hours late the train finally left on it's journey to Tarna...

Back to Reality.
Apparently this was meant to be a two-part mission but rather than report back to base as our GM intended we just got on with it. Not sure what else could have occurred to make this one last two sessions but that's what was apparently meant to happen...

We all got two XP for the mission which is the one for turning up and another for teamwork which means that a variety of new upgrades will need to be selected by the players before the next session. I've been told I can have the 'Load Bearing' Ability as I always end up having to carry everything...

The next two missions will be ran by me so our GM Andrew can have a bit of a break and also actually get to play in a session. He'll be fleshing out a Brotherhood NPC to use so we don't have to explain why a random stranger is suddenly accompanying us on a job, lol.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.