After Action Report: Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt Part IV - The Storm Comes

Last we left our heroes:

• Sir Axton Kain, Space Knight of House Kain, who has no heart.
• Viscontessa Shay Sabine, Space Knight of House Sabine, who sees the future on the petals of dreaming nymph
• Baron Mallus Grimshaw, Ace Pilot of House Grimshaw, who disapproves.
• Sir Tyro Pavonis, Ace Pilot of House Sabine, who sees without sight (but was unable to make the session).
• Walker Lee, Scavenger and War Hero of the Orochi Rebellion, and caretaker of one Jethro Page
• The Dread Pirate Xerxes, Captain of the Calico and its killer crew, and Asrathi Witchcat, but otherwise not a bad bloke.

They had captured the smuggler station "Port Mongo" after executing its previous owner, Mongo Corpulain, for the crimes of murder, human trafficking and Orochi poaching, and then carefully captured the rest to minimize casualties.  Then, they discovered that an Orochi Swarm descended once more on the damaged, inoperable station.

Outlining the Scale of the Disaster

The session begins with the grim Malachi Harrow, fighter ace and all-around great guy (in his estimation) standing in the hangar of Port Orochi, quietly contemplating the fighters patroling the belt, with its green-clad botanical asteroids, and the tumult behind him.  His black-eyed gaze settles upon his wingman, Mallus Grimshaw and then he notices "Nixi," the one candy-haired "pleasure clone" who had escaped her confinement and now excitedly works with the head mechanic, Callister Lee, to repair one of the Alliance Corvettes that was damaged in the capture of the base.

"The Hierophant is still on its way, and its in the heart of the Belt.  The Morass between the botanical asteroids are interfering with communication. It should be here in about an hour."

"That's a problem" Mallus growled in a suspicious voice.  "The Orochi will be here in an hour. I'll tell the others."

Harrow once again eyed the supple body of the girl in coveralls and then glanced at Mallus "Do you mind if..."

"If you wish to socialize with peasants, don't let me stop you." The Baron growled, and then turned to join the rest of the command crew.

The silken-haired Squadron Commander of Harlequin Squadron, Talia Sabine, stood at the center of attention as everyone peppered her with status updates while she cradled her wounded arm in a sling.

• The Orochi would be here in an hour.
• The Hierophant would be here in an hour, and they had no way to warn the carrier of the impending attack.
• The base was in total disrepair but Walker Lee thought he might be able to jury rig some repairs, if he was given the proper resources.
• There were a considerable number of prisoners (The smuggler Wyatt Van Carlo, the pirate Scipio Vash, Legionnaire 451, some poor kid, and a bunch of nameless Belter mooks) who needed guarding.

After a discussion, the group decided:

• To put all possible personnel (all regulars except one who would guard, all pilots and any prisoners who they deemed trustworthy and were willing to help, which amounted to 5 prisoners) to the repair of the base under Walker Lee's command.
• The focus on the repair of the sensors, the force screen, and the long-range weapons; they would not fix the comms, the tactical mainframe, the short-range weapons, or the internal security.
• Mallus and Malachi would board their valkyries and rush to the Heirophant as quickly as they could, based an navigational assumptions, and see if they could manually warn them.

The Final Hour

 A squad of 5 regulars arrive, escorting a tall, bearded belter in a space suit carrying a harpoon and a small child, and an Imperial medical officer, who has his hands up.  Upon the arrival of the Imperial medical officer, he marches directly up to Talia and says:
"I am Lieutenant Commander Venter Weir, Medical Officer of the Resolute, Service Number IMP-6174-1089. As a prisoner of war, I expect be given all the rights of the Sovereign Accord”
"Finally!" exclaims the gleefully vengeful Axton Kain, who happily takes him into custody, but not before Xerxes manages to hiss and spit at the Imperial.  Axton escorts him towards his lancer, leaving the man to his devices.
Upon seeing the roughness of the doctor's treatment, the man with the child bellows "Hey! Don't treat him like that! He done saved Emma's life."
This creates a flurry of questions: the man's name is Ford Francesca, and he is a homesteader of the Veridian Field and a botanical asteroid farmer.  He had come to the station "to drop off his supply of Obtusa mats, and to see about mabye picking up a wife" as he heard they had shipments of "wives" here.  During the attack, some debris had wounded his child (who was, of course, there to meet her "new mommy") and the doctor had worked hard to save her life.

After some initial hostility, the group decides that Ford is no threat. When asked if he can help with repairs, he readily agrees, but he asks again about a "wife," and then notices Nixi, who is in the midst of being "talked at" by Malachi Harrow.  He approaches, looks her over and declares her "Awfully young looking," and not really his type.  He asks to see her teeth, and after blinking, the clone shows him her teeth, and then he asks if she's good with children and can cook.  She says she doesn't know, but she likes fixing things.  He nods, satisfied and asks if she'd like to join him on his homestead as his wife and be an Asteroid Farmer.  She shrinks back, confused and uncertain from the attention of both Ford Francesca and Malachi Harrow, who bristles that his monologue about his fighter ace victories were interrupted by the bumpkin.
 While the rest of the group watches in tense silence, Callister quietly coaches Nixi, asking if she thinks she'd like that, or if she'd rather do something else.  She thinks for a moment and says "I think I'd rather stay and fix ships."
To her surprise and everyone's relief, Ford just sighs and says "Well, fair enough" and shakes her hand "It was nice to meet you." And then he returns to help with repairs.

The point of this scene was, first, to highlight what Callister stands for. It's to draw a parallel between how he coaches Nixi, and how he likely coached Kerin Kethim, the Ranathim mechanic who likely had similar circumstances when he first found her.  But more importantly, the "pleasure clones" (Eros-model Bioroids from Biotech) are meant to represent the underbelly of the Orochi Belt.  One of the moral questions I want to pose to the PCs is "how will you govern?" Will they rule over them like lords, will they govern like representatives? Will they impose their outsider morals or will they try to understand how the belt works.
The "clone-trade" represents a necessity in the Belt, in that there are many workers, but not a lot of companionship.  In some places, like Rust City, this results in brothels, but the miners and farmers still seek wives, a common problem with frontier-life.  But then the moral question arises as to whether the clones are a moral option for this.  The initial assumption that the clones are "slaves" is probably over simplistic: they're not legally property here.  But at the same time, there's doubtless some coercion going on, and even if there isn't, are the clones, with little life experience, really in a position to consent to the life they have? Even if they are, is it moral to construct "artificial women" for the purposes of being the wife of a miner?  And if it isn't, what conclusion do we draw from the fact that the Senator, their ally, is clearly married to one?
So far the conclusion seems to be "This is a space opera game, we rescue the beautiful clones!" but you can see with Ford that they're willing to make some compromises here.  Mongo, who used and abused and then murdered his clone definitely gets the axe.  Ford, who's brusque with them, but would probably be brusque with anyone, treats them like people and asks.  How will they feel about the edge cases in Rust City and elsewhere? This is a question we'll return to several times.

Dreams and Greed

As Nixi heads off to help with repairs, Shay keeps an eye on her, until it becomes obvious that nobody is going to harass the clone, and then she goes off to indulge herself in some dreaming nymph, a psychic enhancing drug from Persephone.  While on her trip, she has visions of unbroken knight pieces near a fire, and an unbroken Queen and Jack near some stones and a far distant place, a junk yard, that she cannot see, nor find, for everyone there is blind; that's where "the rest of them" are. Whatever that means.
Meanwhile, Xerxes glances around to make sure nobody is looking and then sneaks off to the Orochi processing center, certain that more treasure can be found there.  He communes with the dead briefly, watching visions of what they did just before they died to the Orochi attack, and then sees that a great treasure is locked away in a crate-within-a-crate, secreted there by a belter who hoped to keep it for himself. He finds therein a great, marintine gem the size of his fist, in a deep, most black, green.  He pockets it.

 I've been making a point of revisiting disadvantages before the session, to remind people, and I've found that it helps immensely in getting people to think about their disadvantages.  Seeing a spare moment of downtime, these two players elected to skip helping out to indulge in their vices.  Well played!

The Inquisition of the Imperial

Axton immediately frogmarched the Imperial officer into an interrogation room and handcuffed him to a table, leaving the one, lone regular to watch the prisoners.

I'm sure that'll be fine.

The interrogation begins: "Why were you in the Veridian field?"
"I'm here to help people."
"Right, that's a likely story."
"Have you seen how they live? How little medical service they have access to?  Have you actually seen it? Are you here to help them, Aristocrat, or just rule them?"

"I'm here to help.  I'm not here to rule them, I mean, we're not here to rule them.  We're here to liberate them from your tyranny."

"Uh huh.  So, have you seen how they live? Or did you just bust in here guns blazing and seek to control the first place you found?"

"You're losing control of this interview." One of the players commented.
"I think he lost it awhile ago." Another added.

"Look, this isn't about us. It's about you.  Odd, isn't it, that you're here without your ship."
The Imperial sat back with a smile on his face.  "Yes, that is odd.  Good that you finally noticed."
"Well, where is your ship?"
Doctor Weir hesitated.  Then leaned forward.  "I think maybe we can help one another.  You'd like to have access to an Imperial dreadnought, wouldn't you?  Well, I need something in return."
Axton's eyes narrowed "What would that be?"
"I need you to rescue my crewmates.  If you promise to treat them with the same respect that you treat me, then I'll agree to reveal the location of my ship."
"I give you my word as a member of House Kain."
"Do you believe in ghost ships, Mr. Kain?"
Axton pauses and then hits his comms system "Someone get Xerxes in here.

The Messenger

Mallus and Malachi fly, without incident, through the asteroid belt in search of the Hierophant and eventually track it down.  They comm the carrier directly and inform it of the situation.  The comms person asks them to hold, and then returns with the High Admiral who clarifies the situation, and then asks them to guide them through while they prepare a Raptor squadron to support them in fighting the Orochi.

Adventures in Heroic Engineering

Walker focuses on his repairs, and after a critical success and some-on-the-spot updates, they also bring up tactical and comms (making Mallus' flight less important).  They also clipped some of the cables on the harpoons to create long range missiles, using the advanced sensors (which pick up no imperial ships, but finds the incoming Orochi, including a handful which will be ten minutes early).  Then, once everything is done, the pilots rush off to finish their task.

This was actually a mini-game I cobbled together about resource management: how do you prioritize what to rebuild given time, resources and man-power.  They had the option of distributing Regulars (soldiers) and pulling in pilots and they either had to scavenge parts (which took time) or strip other systems of parts.  Incidentally, all of this managed to conform to the GURPS Spaceships repair rules, if we assume the base is SM +12, which isn't the craziest thing in the world.
I had intended it for the group, but handed the actual list of times and required resources to Walker's player, the idea being that he could explain it, as his character had the information and so his player did, but he did what most engineers do, which is explain some stuff, decide it's too complicated to explain to everyone, simplify it a bit, and then say he'll handle it, and he did.  As a result, only he got to play with it.
The real cost was that there were no regulars watching the prisoners but the one, and Axton was distracted, and they didn't activate internal security, because why would you?

The Orochi Storm

Axton steps out of his interview, having uncuffed the Doctor Weir, to go find Xerxes, and finds a belter walking away from the brig, one of the belters he had cleared for work.  The man does a quick, casual salute at Axton and carries on.
"Hey, aren't you in the wrong part of the base?" Axton demands.  Suddenly, the Belter runs.  Axton charges and bodily tackles him and restrains him.
At that moment, a team of three orochi, including the wounded one that Axton liberated, and a great, white Orochi with a rider on its back, arrive.  They approach slowly with the rider slowly waving until the white orochi comes right up against the base.  She dismounts and approaches Axton.
"Did you rescue Runt?" she asks imperatively, and looks around, "You're not smugglers at all.  Regime change?"
After a quick discussion, it comes out that she's Nadia "Viper" Morgan's mother, Medea Morgan, an Orochi Rider.  She uses her Animal Empathy to commune with the beasts and participated in their raids on the base.  After Axton's kindness, she's willing to do what it takes to push the beasts away, but "Red Alpha," the new swarm leader, is difficult to control, but she'll do her best.
Then Axton rushes back to the brig to check, and indeed, his one Regular is down, blood all over the floor. He gasps out "They took her, they took the Corporal" and then collapses.  6 prisoners, including Scipio Vash, have escaped. He orders the Doctor Weir to save the Regular, and then, spotting someone leaving, gives chase.
The orochi swarm, led by the great, red orochi, arrive.  Medea goes to commune with it, but is rebuked savagely as she is thrown from her mount by Red Alpha's attack on Big White. She comms back (as she floats through space) that if they can kill Red Alpha, the rest of the swarm should scatter.
The swarm rushes the base, but the repaired force screen holds them back. The bases defenses open fire, driving the Red Alpha back.  Mallus and Malachi burst through the asteroid field with a raptor squadron about a minute behind them.  Walker comms Mallus and explains the need to focus fire on the big red orochi, who complies. He and Malachi both open fire on the orochi.  Mallus powers his Valkyrie's "lightning cannon" which dumps all of its power, and some of Mallus', directly into a single blast of lightning that certainly gets the Orochi's attention. Malachi fires a reckless all out assault at Red Alpha, who disables his ship with an flip of its electromagnetic tail.
The fighters launch through the barrage of plasma fire rained down upon it by the orochi: one fighter catches fire and explodes, but not before the pilot ejects.  Shay deftly dodges through the fire and races towards Red Alpha and opens fire on its eye, inflicting some damage, but failing to cripple it.  The Orochi roars. The Calico blasts through the plasma fire, its heavily armored front barely singed by the attacks, and then opened fire with its forward mounted cannons to hit Red Alpha about as hard as Mallus had, but still fail to cripple the great beast.
Meanwhile, Axton burst into the hallway.  A single fugitive opens fire on his with a blaster pistol, which Axton ignores as he blasts through him and through some random construction equipment to come to the other side and find... nothing.  He's completely lost track of his target.

Ah, critical failures at the worst possible time.  Plus he spent all of his impulse buys...

As Walker begins to coordinate with the fighter squadrons and aiming the primary cannons, three fugitives storm into the room, blasting with their pistols.  Walker dives to cover, but not before popping one in the face, painting the inside of his vacc helmet red with blood.  One rushes around cover to smash Walker's faceplate with the butt of his pistol, while the other goes to seize control of the comms system to radio for help.  Walker tackles the first one in such a way that it slams him into the second guy, which knocks out the second guy.  Then the two struggle on the ground, and Walker manages to pop open the other's visor and knock him unconscious with a headbutt.
Then he gasps back to the comm system and begins to coordinate all forces onto Red Alpha while the heavy cannons lay down a pattern of fire to disrupt the swarm.
Mallus opens fire on the rest of the orochi to draw them away from Malachi and the Raptor Squadron, and then races away with a swarm of orochi boiling after him.  This gives the Raptors their shot, and the first, second and third torpedo strike home, and the great beast erupts in nuclear fire.  The rest of the swarm, stripped of their leader, scatter back into the belt.

The Aftermath

Exhausted, frustrated and triumphant, Harlequin squadron returns to the Hierophant.  The fighters land, and Kerin Kethim, Ranathim mechanic, rushes to the side of Shay's fighter to quickly inspect it. After carefully caressing it and looking it over, Kerin murmurs in her broken Galactic Common:
"She is okay.  She is tired. She must rest.  Ah, your talisman, it broke!"
"It served me well." Shay smiled at her.
"I make you another." Kerin promises.
Mallus' wife, Dani Grimshaw-Shinjurai rushes him as he leaves his fighter to give him a fiercely emotional hug while the cameras swirl around them.  Mallus can almost hear the soundtrack they'll eventually put over the emotional moment.  He plays his role as stoic soldier and husband.
As Senator Sawyer Septum and his wife, Rayna Septum, come to the hangar bay to greet the returning heroes (When Ford sees her, he comments that she's more his sort of woman and asks if anyone minds if he invites Rayna to be his wife.  They tell him the Senator might have something to say about that). Rayna spots Nixi and she freezes: they could be sister-daughters.  Then she sees the clones being offloaded from Walker's nomad.
"What's all this?" she demands.  Her wonder turns to anger as she the situation is explained to her and she learns that she, too, must be a clone, and that, perhaps, Sawyer was less than honest about how he "saved her" from pirates, though the Senator maintains that he did, in fact, rescue her from pirates.  Wyatt Van Carlo seems to recognize the senator, however, and the Senator does question if it is wise to disrupt the flow of clones to their intended destinations, as waiting parties will wonder what happened to them.
The crew re-unite in the grand briefing room. They discuss the situation, which is as follows:

• The Mother's Touch, the Eleganian Medical Cruiser, fell out of Hyperspace in the inner system of the Orochi belt and is surely in Imperial hands now.
• The remaining Kainian Lancers fell out near the Skollian Ice Fields, between where the characters are now and the inner system.  They are likely in the hands of pirates.
• There was a hyperspatial signature from the remainder of the fleet "somewhere out system."
• The Empire doesn't seem to be aware of their presence yet.
• The base is secured, but still heavily damaged (Walker's repairs were just a jury rigging).

 After much debate, the following positions are clarified:

• High Admiral Lowelin Cole feels they should torch the base, stow the clones in the storage bay, and focus on moving in on the Empire as quickly as possible.  He advocated for going to the Ice Field to recover the Kainian Lancers.
• Sawyer Septum argues for releasing the prisoners, returning the base to them, and resuming its operations as though nothing happened. They should use the smuggler as a cover to insert themselves into Rust City and see what they can do to connect with the resistance while raising as few suspicions about their presence as possible.
• Talia argues for repairing and restoring the base "as it states in the prophecy" and getting to know the belters here, who have great need of their presence.  The clones should be liberated and decide their own fate, and the labyrinth explored.

The heroes naturally decide to side with Talia: they decide to stay at the base, to explore the labyrinth, to liberate the clones (and give them the base "for the Queen must make the fortress her domain and the bloody-haired princess must break her chains").   They also want to see if they can find some way to rescue the Imperial Dreadnought from the Derelict Planet.
And thus ends the first arc of the Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt.

Retrospective

What I wanted to do with the Tall Tales was get a good mix between space action and personal action, and I think this proves that it works.  There's been no scenario that the heroes wanted to engage in that my rules don't cover.  They're not as quick as I would like... but you can also resolve most chase/action scenes in a few turns, so while mulling over the rules isn't as blisteringly fast as I would like, the resolution of the fights go pretty fast.  Similarly, I'm finding it pretty doable to go between Action and Chase scenes, which seems the intent of GURPS Action.  All in all, I'm pleased with the rules thus far.

I will say that I'm not convinced of the Conditional Injury rules we're using.  With the orochi I just used HP, and the fights go so fast anyway that I feel like one-minute-long fight scenes with normal HP might be just fine as is. Yes, it's harder to get those excruciatingly long fights of two cap ships slugging it out, but I'm not convinced those are a good idea anyway.  Do we need 10-20 turns to resolve a fight? Or is just a few enough?

We missed one of our fighter aces, which diminished my ability to test things as well as I would like, but broadly, both space-combat characters and non-space combat characters have proven equally useful.  I think this is because the "Fighter Ace-ness" is not extremely expensive, which means it's pretty easy to be "good enough" on 25-50 points.

Naturally, the players would choose to go at the least prepared direction, so I'll need some more time to prepare, but we'll see. This is also the direction with the last space combat and the most noodling around with occult stuff, but that might have a side benefit.  The next session will likely be a "downtime session" where people get to know one another again and simply be free to explore a bit.  Axton intends to chase down Scipio and recover the missing Corporal Saga Auric, and the rest are already busily spending their points and expressed enthusiasm for continuing.  Whether we keep going depends on my time and how useful I find it as a "playtest," but for now signs point to "Go."

I found this an interesting session as the group seemed very engaged, and while I think I made some mistakes (I lost track of stuff in the space combat fight again. Not rules, but tracking all the players and NPCs.  It might be worth having one of those turn counter systems again, as this is a problem I've had since day one as a GM), but they seemed to really enjoy it.  The game has really found its stride and the players have really gotten to know their characters.  It's been fun to run it, and I think they've had fun playing it.