The [not-so] Final Battle

Act 7 Finale

First off, let me apologize that this post did not go live last week, that was an error on my part. But today I bring you the conclusion of Act 7 of the Manhattan Knights. This Act went over long, it took two full game sessions, meaning that what you’ve read in these 5 posts is actually culled from about 9 hours of game play.

The quick version is that the Manhattan knights went to find the White Tail tribe, a band of Edeinos that are friendly to humanity and against the invasion of Earth. While meeting the tribe they learned that the first Delphi Team had gone native (literally) and that there was a growing darkness in the old Taconic Valley, near Mount Pleasant. Since the Tribes army was still marching back from the events on Long Island, the Knights decided to the investigate the old village of Sleepy Hollow… and everything went to hell.

We Need Information:

Having just dispatched a bunch of undead elves and earlier found the bodies of Russian Soldiers, our heroes find themselves confused by what is going on. They have fought stitched together undead dinosaurs, undead humans, edeinos, and now elves from Aysle. Nothing is making sense.

As such they retreat from the massive junk pyramid/ tent in the center of town and return the barricaded, brick house back at the beginning of the street. Within, three survivors have been huddling, at least that is what Kimiko’s psionic senses detected. They drive back and park the truck, partially on the lawn of the house and they get out.

Shadowy shapes are still moving behind the other houses but nothing is currently moving on the streets. The trio move to the porch, Carlisle knocking on the door while the women watch the streets for any undead.

Survivors

Carlisle can hear breathing and the creaking of boards as people pace beyond the door, but it still takes a while to get anyone to respond.

Voice thru Door: “Go away! You’ll only bring them back to my house.”

Carlisle: “Just tell us what’s happening!” (perhaps a little gruffer than needed).

Kimiko sighs and swaps places with the monster hunter, while he might have physically been returned to his youth, he is still the grumpy old man on the inside. Kimiko speaks through the door, in a soothing and persuasive voice.

The Story of Sleepy Hollow

Door: “I don’t know what’s happening. First the jungle came, every day more and more of New York disappeared. Our phones went dead and then finally after a month of storms and animals… dinosaurs for Christ’s sake!… [sob]…

“Well the jungle came and swallowed most of the village but for some reason our street remained. We banded together and fought off the animals and we all stocked up on supplies. Then 40… maybe 50 days ago the sinkhole opened in the sought end of town.

“Things crawled out of it, we fought them off. Pale little mole men or something. But then worse things came out. Mechanical snakes that would strangle people and then rip off the lower jaw of the dead and climb down their throats. These mechanical snakes started… piloting people like they was robots or something. Then Russian soldiers came out of the hole battling something dark… something huge.

“After that we basically had to turn our homes into fortresses and wait it out. Dinosaurs fighting the elves and pasty creatures, Russians fighting the tongue zombies, then everyone fighting each other. The thing from the pit uses people and mechanics as parts!”

Talking them Out

Kimiko coaxes the story out of the man behind the door, and finally she starts to work to get him to open the door. They have truck and they will gladly take as many people as they can out of Sleepy Hollow and back to White Tail.

It takes a longer while to explain that there are decent and good edeinos in the world and that leaving is even possible. But finally, the door opens, revealing a thin pale man with several months of beard growth and rumbled clothes. Behind him is a teenager who could be his son and further in the house is a woman who has gone full cavewoman.

The survivors are weary and the thoughts of leaving the town have them slightly motivated, but their eyes are dull and already defeated. Kimiko asks them if they are aware of any other survivors, and the man just shakes his head. The Harvesters have been attacking the houses a lot lately, taking his neighbors and dragging them down the street to the pile of trash. HE is not aware of anyone else still living.

Kimiko scans the area, reaching out with her mind to find living bodies, but she only touches on the minds of the undead at the far reaches of her range. There is nothing living in either house beside this one, nor in the houses across the street.

Get Out:

They decide not to worry about who may or may not be in the other houses. Nothing is in the near vicinity and they have three dazed survivors in front of them to worry about. They quickly bundle the three into the truck and then hammer the gas and head north.

They drive past the remains of the Dullahan and then the Russian bikers and then drive up the exit ramp of the highway. The laws of the road no longer apply, and besides the highway fades away in a few meters to a muddy trail through the jungle. They drive far faster than they should but they are retreading the path they took mere hours earlier. Even this jungle doesn’t grow or change that fast.

The first fifteen minutes of the trip are in silence, but the last ten are spent with Kimiko and Carlisle convincing themselves that they were cowards for not trying to take out the creature in the tent. They reach the first checkpoint, where a chameleon edeinos steps out of hiding. Slamming on the brakes, Kimiko tells the survivors to get out, that the scout will lead them into the valley ahead and that they will be taken care of.

Kimiko: “We have to go back.”

Crazy!

Sasha: “Are you crazy? We have Aysle and Tharkold both making an appearance in that town and we have no idea what is in the tent. Those mechanical snakes he was talking about are called Ghuls and they really do use bodies as hosts.”

The arguments start as the survivors get out of the truck and make friends with the edeinos. IT finally gets to the point where they list off all of the impossible fights they have won already and how badass they are. With that, Kimiko swings the truck around and they race back to Sleepy Hollow.

Rolling to their Doom:

The knights drive down the main street, going slow and with Kimiko and Sasha both extending their psionic senses as far as possible. All of the dead that they left in the street an hour ago are all gone. Removed, or harvested, for more parts no doubt.

They pass the point where they battled the magic starved elves and get to the point where all the totem poles and impaled/ crucified bodies are grouped around the sinkhole. They can sense the minds of a bunch of undead and other creatures, but those are tasked with watching the hole and they ignore the army truck as it rolls slowly down the main street.

Surprisingly, they also sense some minds in the houses near the tent, though they are of dumb and limited intelligence. Even if rendered to cavemen they are still living humans to be saved. With this new information it helps steel their resolve to battle the master of the tent.

They come to a stop within range of the tent, a mere 50 meters ahead of them. Kimiko can sense some near zombie level minds, constantly thinking about finding non-rusted metal parts. These are the simplest of the undead.

What’s in the Tent?

They turn the truck around so that it is facing back north and then back toward the tent and park. They want to the Truck to be close enough to run to but not close enough to get destroyed in the fighting, also they want it already facing for the retreat.

Getting out of the truck and walking closer to the tent Kimiko is overwhelmed with the sheer intelligence and evil of the mind within. Sasha has a near genius intellect, despite being a street kid from Russia and not much life experience, and this creature dwarfs even her raw IQ.

Kimiko stops the group: “Perhaps it would be better if we make the creature come out to us instead of us going into the lair.” She turns to her catgirl, the new follower who so far has lived much longer than the previous one. The catgirl has a small expanding hoverboard and a slingshot as her only gear. Kimiko takes the wingboard and devises her plan.

She will fly the board toward the tent and either tear it open, light it on fire, or knock it down so that the creature comes roaring out, then Carlisle and Sasha will open fire.

There have been worse plans that have worked…

Carlisle loads his rifle and kneels down and sights through his scope. He can just see within the flap, but only gets a partial view. There are generators running and electric lights hang within the structure. There are shadows of several shapes moving within, one of which must be huge.

Armed with this knowledge, Kimiko jumps on the wingboard and flies to the tent, but instead of knocking it down [near impossible as the heap is actually made of metal and structural parts] or burning it [again more metal and thus won’t ignite] she flies right into the open flap.

Within she is confronted with the sight of several of the harvester undead slamming the bodies of the dead elves down on large tables and in the back of the tent is a 15-foot-tall monstrous creature that is flesh and steel cobbled together. All of its metal bits are rusting and failing, and it is drastically trying to replace all of these corrupted bits of itself.

Kimiko taunts the creature, flips it off, and then turns and runs. Surprisingly the creature does follow.

Never Challenge a Tharkoldu without a Damn Good Plan

Kimiko yells her insults, and the demon turns to her, despite wearing a hood and robes trying to cover the corruption of its body the creature roars and part of its face becomes visible in the shadows of the hood. A wave of fear and dread overcome Kimiko, and her flight from the tent is less about drawing the monster out and more about her fleeing in panic.

She flies out at max speed and the demon follows, tattered wings on its back allowing it to jump and glide but no longer fly it covers the ground far faster than she. Sasha screams on sight of the creature, for it is a technodemon, a Tharkoldu, and not something she ever wished to see let alone face in battle.

Panic begins to spread. Hearing Sasha scream the demon lands and sees that he has more than one enemy. He points a hand up toward Kimiko and hooked-chains burst out of pools of darkness in the air and whip around the samurai. Her armor and flesh are raked with the hooks and she is left a blood mess. The demon levels a hand at Sasha and shouts a word, and Living Lands denies him his foreign spell power.

All Hell is Unleashed!

Sasha is shocked to see the spell fail and without thinking she creates a telekinetic fist and smashes the Demon’s knee; it topples to the ground. Kimiko whirls her electric-katana and slices through the chains stuck in her flesh. Freed, she rides the wingboard back to the truck and falls to the ground. She can fight better on her feet. Her catgirl fire sling stones at the fallen demon.

Carlisle remains calm in the face of the creature; he was made to hunt the darkness and he was forged in the fires of Orrosh falling on Calcutta. He loads a holy road into the bolt of his rifle and fires into the belly of the demon. A massive hole appears as putrescent flesh explodes with a spray of pus and blood. As the creature slowly gets back to its feet, it ignores the sludge draining from its belly.

Carlisle chambers and fires a second round but this one hits a metal plat and wings off into the sky. Behind the demon, a number of undead thralls step out of the tent and as the demon limps/runs forward they shamble after.

Kimiko draws out her dome-tech bioblaster and sprays the demon with energy blasts. They seem to have little affect on the lumbering beast. Sasha attempts to punch out the demon’s other knee and completely stop its movement, but in the terror of the moment her concentration slips.

It only gets worse:

As the demon limps forward it raises its left hand and flesh of that palm warps and a gun barrel slides out. A blast of energy tears a hole through Carlisle’s armored coat and deep into his side. The smell of burnt flesh causes tears to cloud his vision.

The hooked chains are still snaking around on their own and they burst out of the shadows and strike down Sasha and Kimiko. Sasha manages to duck one of them but the second one tears off the sleeve of her leather jacket and tears up her arm. Kimiko is less lucky and goes down in a spray of blood. One of the chains fish-hooked her mouth and tore her entire left cheek from her face.

Drowning in her own blood, Kimiko manages to roll over and cough up most of the blood and a few knocked out teeth, she crawls to the truck, desperate from something. But one of the chains is still wrapped around her ankle.

Her catgirl [just a note, to break the tension and also to explain why I keep saying catgirl… the reason is that Kimiko’s player named the character after a copy-righted cartoon character and I just didn’t want to use the name and get in trouble, because it pretty much is the SAME character as the cartoon] manages to attack and break the chain, and Kimiko finishes her move.

Sasha uses her telekinesis and hurls the chains from her body and falls back to the truck, following Kimiko’s blood trail. Carlisle staggers back and shoots from the hip, bouncing a round off another metal part of the demon.

Not looking good…

Kimiko uses the wheel of the truck to lever herself into a sitting position against the truck, she shots the demon again, but her aim is shaky from shock and blood loss. Her catgirl continues to plink away at chins with her slingshot… she’s trying.

The demon roars again and then with a burst of strength it ignores the pain in its blown-out knee and charges 24 meters directly into them. The burst of speed leaves its undead thralls far behind but its zooming right into the middle of our poor heroes. Sasha loses her mind for a minute and screams out that she’s Russian and a protected citizen, in Russian and this seems to confuse the Demon just enough that it veers off of attacking her and moves toward Kimiko and Carlisle.

Kimiko, who might have been a spoiled J-pop star for most of her life, is also of the old blood of Samurai. She surges to her feet, throwing the worthless blaster into the back of the truck she decides to die on her feet with a sword in her hands. She leaps into the charging demon and her sword rips through its fetid flesh with ease. The demon rolls to the side and then reality warps around it and the wound closes. Kimiko curses and staggers back to the jeep and leans heavily against it.

Catgirl plinks it in the eye with a shot and Carlisle blows a hole through the Demon’s throat when it roars. It staggers back and once again; reality alters and the last holy bullet misses. Carlisle curses. Fighting against a creature who is as deft as they are at manipulating the fundamentals of reality is going to be more than difficult.

FLEE!

The chains lash out to grapple everyone and Sasha grabs ahold of reality with her own power and the chains, blink out of existence. The undead are closing the gap behind their master and soon the Knights will be facing more than 20 foes. Kimiko slides into the driver seat and hammers the horn. Carlisle and Sasha both fall back to the truck and the knights hit the gas.

The Undead and the demon limp after but the army truck is far faster than a one-legged demon, and Sleepy Hollow still has a single paved road. Zero to sixty might be slow in troop truck but not that slow. The Manhattan knights leave the demon in their wake and truck roars down the road, only coming to a stop when it reaches the top of the exit ramp.

There, Kimiko switches with Sasha and passes out in the back seat. The grievous wound to her face will mar her face until they can get back to the Dome and have new flesh cloned to replace the old.

They limp back to the White Tail tribe and try to figure out how to deal with their first major failure.

The End of Act 7

Holy hell… I tried to be brief and it still took 5 parts to tell this story. The fight with the demon was really a nasty one-sided affair, and I hate to say that it was actually hampered and de-buffed for the fight. Its magic was subject to malfunction and I allowed oddball social interactions to have greater affect on it (such as the limp keeping it out of melee range for two turns).

My players did not take this fight well at all… after they flipped out and said I was being unfair I had to remind them that they had a small unit of dino riding knights that were originally going to handle this town… but that the players decided they would go alone into Sleepy Hollow and handle things themselves. Also, that they had actually left the city, driven all the way back to the White Tail Tribe, and then turned around and drove back for this fight…

I’m sure you can guess how next week is going to go. Here’s a hint the players decided that using every advantage was what they should have done from the start…

IN Act 8 we will Return to Sleepy Hollow.