Manhattan Knights Act 4 Final
Welcome to the continuing story of Three Storm Knights in the game of Torg Eternity, the backgrounds of the heroes can be found HERE, and the very first post in the Series and be found HERE. More information about the game can be found HERE.
Act 4 Scene 4
Having just dispatched Rogan, one of the 4 sub-leaders of Tusk’s camp, and been warned to vacate the grasslands by another of the hand, Greymane; the party heads into the swamp lands to the south east and don’t stop until they hit the East River.
Catching their breaths and seeing to their wounds, they are surprised yet again by the Living Lands. Despite the close call of the battle all of them feel invigorated by the experience and most of their wounds are already closed and forming scars. Unanimously they all agree that they won’t be scared away from the camp, and they take heart that these sub-leaders appear to be squabbling. Obviously Tusk isn’t home to rein in his captains.
Far Recon:
The East River is a churning brown mass, boats are rotting and sinking into the morass, and as none of the Storm Knights are American, they don’t know if the river always looked like this or if this is the Living Lands.
The party follows the river mostly north and just before sunset they emerge from the swamps and look upon Tusk’s camp. It is a massive affair, largely made up of easy to disassemble hide tents, but also boasting several cut sod wigwams. It has rudimentary walls and fences and a massive corral area. Even at a 1000 meters away they can see that the number of camp fires and tents are near a thousand. And there are signs that large sections of the camp have been dismantled. Fully half the camp is missing.
With the reality storms raging in Long Island and the intel they learned from Blunt’s men, that Baruk Kaah has demanded that his warlords stop their fighting and supply men to his war, the group is fairly certain where Tusk has gone.
The party moves along the eastern side of the camp to get a better look at it while there is still some sunlight. The corral is filled with triceratops, a dozen in total, and the north side of the camp is dominated by a trio of huge over sized tents. Before the fences there is a maze of trenches and earth works that blocks a straight path into the camp from all directions save the north.
Getting closer:
At a 1000 meters they just can’t tell what figure is human and what is edeinos. All of the lakten, the flying lizards, appear to be gone and as such Carlisle deems that they can afford to sneak much closer to the camp as none of the cavemen have scopes or binocs.
The camp is a wash with activity, mostly crafts people making arrows and spears, and weaving shields. The storm knights notice that the earthworks don’t exist on the north side of the camp but they move in from the east and get within 400 meters of the camp before they begin to worry about whether the edeinos might have other, superior senses.
Surveying the crowds, they see a fair number of humans being used for labor, the north end of the camp is actually a flooded rice field, hence the lack of earthworks and trenches. But its hard to tell who are cavemen and who might still be core-earth humans, as all are wearing shredded modern clothes. By pure luck they spot a man wearing a Delphi patch on a ragged jacket. They are fairly certain that they have found at least one of the missing Storm Knights.
They keep watching this one person and as the sun finally drops lower the man and nearly a hundred others are called out of the fields and brought before the trio of large tents on the north end of the camp. The men and women are separated.
The Plan:
Crawl in through the rice fields, hope that none of the edeinos guards have night vision, kill any sentries they encounter, slit open the back of the tent and get the storm nights out. And I’ll be buggered… but the first half of the plan went off without a hitch! The party snuck into the back of the camp and entered the first slave tent and found half of the lost storm knights!
BUT… before they could go in and start the craziest part of this act… Carlisle still had a wound on him from earlier in the day. He decided that we would try out the health scanner they found in the Dome. The small device took a sample of his blood, scanned his vitals and then dispensed a drug allowing Carlisle to heal himself.
GLORIOUS!
[At this point in the game Carlisle’s player rolled a heal check and due to exploding dice and a few cards played he miraculously rolled over 60! on his roll. In TORG this is a momentous occasion and if a player has a Glory Card in their hand it is doubly so. Carlisle had a glory card and played it! This was the first card played in any of our games and it was very exciting].
The machine heals Carlisle and the pill gives him a massive boast of energy. Somehow, he has tapped right into the purest form of reality and for a second core earth floods back for miles around. All of the cavemen, who at one time where normal Manhattanites, suddenly remember who they might have been and what life was like only 100 days before the invasion.
The other storm knights in the tents and across ALL of Manhattan and even miles further away can feel the surge of energy unleashed. Excited and overcome with energy the party jumps forward with their plan without second guessing themselves. They crawl through rice paddies and into the back of the camp, they silence the few sentries who bar their path and the slice their way into the back of the slave tent.
First Tent:
Only ten men live in the tent but they seem to be waiting for the storm knights to enter. They are led by two soldiers, two storm knights of the Delphi council, Mal (Tex) and Erik (Longshot), lower their guard as Sasha enters the tent first.
The tension eases out of the room as the knights make introductions.
Sasha: I thought there would be a lot more of you.
Mal: they took two of us to Long Island, the doctors… the techies, and left us grunts to labor. So is this a half assed rescue? Three of you?
Kimiko: This is whole ass; our team is only three. When they let you guys run in here with your large teams you all got shot up and enslaved. We thought there were like 8 of you?
Mal explains that only 5 of them survived between the two teams. Blunt took all of the dead, and 1 live dwarf from Aylse [another Cosm that will be coming up later in this year]. About a 4 days ago Tusk moved a few thousand troops from the camp and took Doctors Conners and Sinclair with him into Long Island.
Carlisle: Well two is better than none, we can save the doctors later. We’re getting out of here in 1 minute.
Mal and Erik blank, and then nod acceptance, more than willing to make a break for it. Eight other pairs of eyes stare back at them.
Sasha: Shit. Ok ALL of us are getting out of here in 1… maybe 3 minutes.
Problem with the plan:
Going in and freeing the two guys they were sent for is great and all but leaving behind enslaved humans just doesn’t sit well with the three knights (five if they include the new marines). While most of the men are becoming primitives, adapting to the new cosm, some of them are still regular New Yorkers. Also, with the glory card just played most of them are currently back to themselves.
Sasha: “ok, I’m the smallest (Kimiko is technically but she is in powered armor) and I’m the sneakiest. I’ll crawl over to the next tent and get those men up and ready to go and then I’ll get the women in their camp. I’ll contact you mentally when I have the groups ready and we’ll make a break for the rice fields and then double around into the swamps. No tracking and no smell if they have those lizard dogs.”
Sasha slides out the slit in the tent and heads over to the other slave pen. She wriggles in and is met by 30 pairs of eyes. These men are pretty quick to convince to run on command, but want to make sure their women and children are also taken care of. Sasha sighs, this is getting out of hand.
The third, and final, tent is the largest and is separated from the men’s tent by twenty meters of open space and has a single guard tent in the middle. But Sasha pushes on, before she leaves the tent, she uses her mind contact psionic power to inform the others that she needs a couple more minutes. She suggests that either Kimiko or Carlisle move over to the second tent so that they can time the flight into the rice fields.
The Women’s tent and even more problems.
The women are far less trusting then the men. It takes a full three minutes to convince them that not only do they have a plan but that they have two different safe places that the people will be protected from Tusk and his soldiers. The Domes or the HQ back in Brooklyn.
Finally, the women are ready to make the move, but there is a final problem. The children. The Edeinos are smart enough that they have taken the children and keep them in the heart of the camp.
Sasha curses profusely for a few minutes. But she is still invigorated from the glory card played earlier and refuses to give into despair. She adds Mal and Erik into her mental communication and tells the other storm knights to get all of the slaves moved into the central tent. She then convinces the women to move over to the men’s tent.
Her plan is so simple it only requires her to totally ignore her normal instincts and to simply hope and trust.
The Children.
Their tent is more than 200 meters away. But by luck most of that distance is barren as the tents from that area have moved into long island. There are merely two small tents and 2 large barracks tents that she needs to move past.
Human’s move through the camp, from the front flap of her current position she can see several cavemen cooking food by a fire and telling stories. Since humans coexisted with the edeinos, what were the chances that a random human would cause a stir?
With that Sasha walked out of the tent and moved boldly toward the kid’s tent. She kept her eyes toward the ground, a simple sub-servient slave. Sheer bravado pays off and not a single voice yells out in challenge as she swift comes around the edge of the tent and nearly walks into an edeinos.
Panic and Action without thought
A very old edeinos sits on a stool in front of the tent flap. His eyes are nearly blind but his fingers are deftly stitching beads onto a pouch and his ancient skin is covered in tattoos and paint daubs. Sasha bows low, showing difference to the old shaman and the edeinos nods and pulls the flap open, in passable English he manages, “Checking on the K—” before Sasha quickly thrusts a knife under his chin and kills him instantly.
She props him against the tent and hopes that any one noticing him will merely think he is asleep. Far too many children stare at her as she enters the camp. She alerts her companions that the link is going to go dark, she then uses her mind connection to link herself to all of the children and the party again.
With the mind link she gets all of the kids up and moving in unison. There is nothing for it they are going to simply have to flee into the fields and hope that they just don’t get noticed. The gods of luck hold out… as nearly 100 slaves and their children flee into the rice fields the few edeinos sentries paying attention utterly fail to notice them!
Stunning Victory turns to Paranoid Slog
The party takes the freed slaves through the rice fields and then around to the east and into the swamps. They push for several hours trying to get a fair distance away from the camp before they finally hunker down in a dismal pit and hope that the lack of tracks will be enough to save them.
The plan is to follow the swamp along the East River until they get close to Murry Hill district and then they will cut west-ward across the island and back to the Domes. They get to know Tex and Longshot as they tromp very slowly through the swamp. What should only take the better part of a day takes a full two, but no edeinos catch up to them.
During the first day, Carlisle uses his extra rifle scope to check out the grasslands from the edge of the swamp. He can see triceratops being ridden by edeinos searching the grasses but they fall behind as the day goes by.
Getting to know the other Team:
Mal was the military leader of Beta Team, ie the first rescue team, his group fell afoul of Blunt, whom he describes as a lizard man with a massive bony head and twisted stunty legs that can barely support him. The warlord was obsessed with creating zombie-like troops. He liked to play with the dead. They share stories of the various things that have attacked them in the living lands. Mal reveals that Doc Sinclair was the only survivor of Alpha team and that he quickly won the marine’s respect, though to be honest he was used to having Doc Conners bossing him around all the time.
On the second day the massive group finally leaves the swamps and head across the grasslands toward the massive Dome. As they leave the swamps and trees Carlisle notices the lone cloaked Edeinos waving at him again. This time he appears to be cheering them on and not sending a warning.
Safe! In the Dome, time to unwind.
The party arrives back into the Dome and the servitors are pleased to have so many people to take care of and of course there is so much empty space and someone needs to work the agri-domes. The ex-slaves have a little trouble adapting at first but soon the nature of the domes and the way the language and tech worms into your mind starts to have an effect on them. The high social axiom of the Domes can work wonders.
The group manages to call into the base in Brooklyn and while making their report a few clues click into their minds. The notebook about the artifact had been written by Doc Sinclair, he was the last person to have the artifact and to do the bulk of the research with it, and by the time Beta Team got to him he had already gotten rid of the artifact. Meaning it was hidden somewhere between Chelsea and the middle of Central Park.
Mal: Before Sinclair was taken to Long Island he told me that a Lion held a great secret.
CLUES
The trio mull over this new clue and come to two conclusions there are two lions within sight of the dome. Far off to the north of Manhattan a new range of mountains separate the island from the New York state, and the main peak is shaped like a massive cat. The other Lion is the statue that still sits in central park, even though central park and all of the streets east and west of it has become a massive grassland. The lion statue is merely a few thousand-meters walk from the Dome while the Mountain is at least two days away.
The trio decide that they will give the statue a quick check in the morning and then they can take any of the humans who don’t want to stay in the Domes to the Brooklyn HQ. Afterall the hardpoint in Brooklyn seems to grow in power the more people who live near it.
End of ACT 4.
