c02s05e05 - Lets play hardball day 241 Khorvaire Ether Below Horizon The BeaR shot out of the sunken Athasian sun in a flare of red plasma - the warmec ship glowing white hot, the ship mechs barely able to keep mending in pace with the hull shell turning to slag. hellrock drifted in the reddened twilight with the tides of wind in what Rogar assessed as southeasternly... Once telemetry systems kicked in they got a lock between Thrane and Darguun, south of the hellstone bridging between the two continents. the massive islands were grinding together, causing the points of contact between the three firmaments to crumble under the imossible pressure, sending thousands of tons worth of disgorged mantle to drift through the Ether. Rogar took the helm and maintained control while gliding throguh the slowly tumbling avalanche between worlds. Mec debris and shattered demon carapaces scattered the freefloating stones, keeping everyone on edge... unti a cloud of microtec deckshivs blew across the BeaR's front end, pulling the small battleflak to the iron shell literally as magnets. Once on deck fify some odd buzzrazor warmec started carving ont he ship hull, threatening to tear the ship apart by its weld lines. then an asteroid loomed into view from amid the debris; 5 warmec turrets stranded on a chunk of what was once a fortress defense point; now crumbled and drifting apart. A broken mechavrock limped amid the turrets that were on full-stream discharge into some unseen foe. The team clears the next cluster of hellstone and the turrets' target came into view. It was a 140 Darkmantle formed of Black Tar. Reference: <a href="https://pathfinderwiki.com/mediawiki/images/d/d5/D" rel="nofollow">https://pathfinderwiki.com/mediawiki/images/d/d5/D</a>... each of its 8 tentacles tipped with a force energy cannon; atop the squid like head bristled 4 necrotec ballturrets and a black sashimono with a white emblem... the draegoth insignia circled by 8 tentacles with a 3 eyed iris in the middle of the insignia Eduards's perfect memory recognizes these elements The Draegoth templar insignia is obvious. The ring of tentacles matches with Kira's house symbol used to identify her community, DarkReef The 3 iris eye matches the divination tech in the Silver Flame Temple's research study at Cragwar back in the day with abbot Bobby. To boot... the thing was made of Black Tar Then it perched onto the warmec asteroid and spewed necrotic death from the hidden folds of its core, melting the entire surface to slag. Unloading on the thing-- the BeaR's weapons would burn holes into the black tar, revealing a reinforced armored endoskeleton...the tar would grow back swiftly from any damage.. it was like surgery, having to focus weapon fire just to hold back the tar from folding badck into any damage wraught. once it coul be peeled open Rogar and THX could plant targteed strikes against the tentacles and then the Head of the Shadowmek Darkmantle. Feank drained his spell pool keeping up with damage to the ship until the Draegoth ship rolled over and fled into the asteroid tumble. Rogar gave chase and was led right into the crossfire of Draegoth vs Kazarak forces... a slew of warmec crawling turrets plus a few mechavrock against a pair of the Shadomek Darkmantles holing each other at bay until the team stumbled into the thick of it.. the 2 darkmantles retargeted on the team immediately while the warmec turrets took advantage of the distraction to whittle down one of the shadowmek to cause it to break off and team with the wounded ship. The pair of enemy vessels dived down to flee the combat arena while the third droped onto The BeaR engaging at point blank against the full bristle of the new flagship of Bartertown. After an eqxquisite deathblossom maneuver, the functioning 2 darkmantles broke rank to flee further into the asteroid field while the bear opened her belly to swallow the derelct whole. Inside the BeaR, turret fire continued to argue between ships while automated drones swarmed up the immobilized vessel like ants-- the hole inthe helm emitting cycles of fireballs, lightning bolts and necrotic bursts of darkness oblieterating the drones as fast as they could climb the tar-framed chassis.. the black tar sucked the bipedal automatons down to the knee, leaving them stranded along armored buttresses rendered ineffective while Frank jump jetted himself into another tear in the darkmantle's frame, finding himself in a cbarracks lounge.. it took some trundling around to finally find flesh to cleave-- a draegoth templar and a pair of drow in blacktar exoskeletons.. which frank raged on and cleaved in a few seconds. powerstomping through the interior of the ship Frank found his way to a control system full of magitec engineers of drow and athasian birth that went went full panic at Frank's arrival. Frank always keeps a prisoner during invasions like this... but this particular athasian wasn't very helpful .. after flipping dials and turning toggles about Frank mistakenly arms the self-destruct circuit which began counting down. The survivng tech says the bridge is where you can turn it off, so while Frank tromped his way up through the ship cleaving and butchering anythign that didn't immediately yield to his progress, Eduardo and Rogar head their way toward the exposed ship bridge.. the warforged psion simpy teleports into position and begins assessing his foes... More athasian and drow engineer types all lined up to use the ship escape capsules.. many hav already jettisoned from the ship in black tar boujcy balls, careening through the the interior of The BeaR . the jettison super-charging their velocity as they careened off the interior shell spaceknocking drone workers about like bowling pins By the time Rogar gets on deck, Frank arrives with the Core Engineering goon .. the remaining bridge tchdisagrees with frank's hostage; the core is under the engineering core ofthe ship where frank got his new backpack engineer from. meanwhile the timer continues to count down.. they've got 3 minutes til detonation... the tech's are proud to describe it as a new born star incinerating all wtihin a mile. it takes 2 minutes for the BeaR to move a mile, so the team jettisons the wreckage so their new flagship can get enough distance while the team unts down ththe necrobomb fusion core that's connected to the main belly cannon behneath central engineering. Assuming they aren't being fucked with more by the engineers. but yes, they find the core where it was described with 90 seconds to spare... another 60 seconds to dig the core out of the ships' frame and the team assess their resources for getting out alive. It woudl take another 3 rounds to get the necrobomb core exposed to try to ritual the containment field open... fuck it. Frank grabs the bomb, THX counts down to 3 rounds til boom and pops a planeshift straight into the throneroom of Kazarak, who was busy leaning on the arm of his chair, picking at something under a claw's hangnail. Surprised... the demonlord rose from his perch and started striding towards the two priests as they hung in the middle of of the vast chamber-- millions of docents lining the walls, ceiling and floor of the colossal realm. Frank started trash talking. Just tauntin the shit out of the demon and how the heroes have thwarted everything the demon has tried to advance against Thrane and khorvaire in general. Kazarak completely falls for it with ridiculous dice rolls while the bomb quietly ticks down behind frank's back. another round of vebal jousting and in the middle of Kazarak laying down some of the most viscous put downs ever heard by mortals whenEduardo popped the second planeshift, leaving the bomb behind in kazarak's face. As soon as the two return to khorvaire prime, frank's sendstone network lit up with reports of allt he docents cesing function. the BeaR went dark. Cragwood powered down scores of warmec frames slumped over silenced. The docent soul strings were cut kazarak's soul prison crumbled. His seat of power evaporated Frank's wife could be free the ritual of ressurection only took an hour, and yes-- kazarak's hold had been broken and .. I can't remeber her name at all, but she was alive. ... but... Eduardo was again pulling the dead back to life, and the Inevitables had n't forgotten. a huge Fatecrawler slipped through the nether into the altar room, spittin out reams of paper for eduardo's sins against fate when Frank kicks his wife off the altar stone and cleaves his new halberd into the thin'gs fax machine face. spitting out reams of frank-warrants, the radiant automaton began stalking Frank while Eduardo shielded the rez-sick chick. Frank scrapped it fast and severed the inevitable's strings holdign the rift open. Frank and his gal have a mr and mrs smith re-discovery of each other now that both were world-class spec op adventuring hero ty pes. She's happy to switch over th The Fury and do married stuff the rest of the week while rogar drags the downed shadowcraft vessel bck to bartertown for analysis. <end of session> day 242 the team is now level 20 Loot acquired ------------- 1 wife