Catherine Hallow, bearer of the Corona Mantle, is dying. The Mantle is consuming her, and she will die unless something is done. The crew have wind that the corp that implanted the Mantle into her, Octopotenta BioTech, have recently been hit by a pirate organisation known as The Group who have executed a hit-and-run kidnapping of an important actor from one of the corporations armoured convoys.
Seeing an opportunity to gain leverage over Octopotenta, the ENLIL adherents have planned out a re-kidnapping of this actor (currently unknown). They will make moonfall above The Group‘s underground base beneath the super-hot surface of Tabernacle 2.5 using a leech - an above-atmosphere-dropped mining rig designed to make holes in big rocks very quickly under any conditions.
Once inside they’ll locate the hostages, identify the Octopotenata V.I.P. and get out. Quick mission, in and out before you can say, “colossal fuckup”.
Mission Report
Moonfall
Above the planet, the final adjustments and fuelling of the leech mining rig are complete. The array is launched from the hangar bay of The Belerophon, and begins to fall heavily down towards the surface of the moon.
Within, the crew are already suited up, holding on inside the engineering bay of the leech’s ring habitat. As the huge retro thrusters fire, all of them grit their teeth. The noise is an unbearable cacophony, a bone-shaking scream as the drill hits the melted rock.
In a few short minutes the drill has hit a cavity, which can only be the underground compound of The Group, and the adherents get moving. Lonnie and Yumai begin some initial exploratory electronic warfare, and identify some useful access codes along with the internal maps for the facility and the location of the hostages1. Dropping down the shaft, holding the drill assembly’s main umbilical cable, the crew land on the top of the drill head and within the outer tunnels of the stronghold, klaxons blaring and awash in red alarm light.
Tunnel Bore
Within the tunnels, a defence is scrambling. They will have to fight their way through this location to an elevator leading further down into the depths of the stronghold. This small network of huge tunnels has a series of large blast doors in it that can be opened and closed2.
Functionally, in the game this can be done as a protocol if a mech is adjacent to a door, they can always open or close the door they are adjacent to for free. They can also choose to override other doors in the area, making a systems skill check for each additional one they attempt to open or close. If they fail any of these skill checks no doors at all (including the one they are adjacent to now) will open or close.3
Arrayed against the crew are some of the rank-and-file, led by The Group operatives known as Clade piloting the Barricade mech Immortal Love, and Dust, piloting the Ronin Tread Softly.
The battle starts in earnest, with the ENLIL crew moving quickly down the tunnels, opening the first doors and firing down-range into varied Group Assault mechs before closing the door behind them.
Mi-Tenz rushes forward, to rush down the forces ahead. She runs right into the Immortal Love, and the door slams behind her as one of the support Scout mechs shuts it remotely. Cut off and alone she takes a vicious hammering of cannon fire before her allies can come to her rescue.
Eventually, the crew fends off the onrushing defenders, and scrapes through to the elevator. Unfortunately not before taking severe damage in the process.
It Started Off So Well
Down in the heart of the facility, moving swiftly through the long corridors as the alarm continues to blare, the crew press on. There’s no time to patch up, so still severely damaged they eventually break out into the deepest part of the compound. Lonnie has been hacking into the local net, sending confused messages throughout the defenders comms network, and buying the crew a bit of additional time.
Down in the heart of the facility, a huge cavern blossoms out. To either side of the main entrance, two huge water outlets pour gigantic waterfalls down into what looks like a river network flowing around huge stacks of rock. Bridges span between the islands, and large concrete columns reach up from some of these to the natural-seeming ceiling far above.
Functionally, the bridges in this room can be manipulated in a similar way to the doors in the last combat, provided a mech is adjacent to a pillar.4
At the far end a small concrete structure squats amongst wet rock and moss. This is, from the maps, the hostage detention facility. Get in, get out. The crew get to work.
As they begin to make their way across the room, the defenders finally catch up to them. This is The Group‘s main command squad headed by Victoria Death in her sleek black & gold mech, Company Card.
As Gorn holds their escape from onrushing forces with continuous gouts from his massive flamethrower, Mi-Tenz & Lonnie rush forward under fire from operatives Indigo in the Ace Present Company Excluded and Happy in the Hornet Devil in the Details.
Meanwhile, alone in the centre of the battle, Bill is putting shots downrange into anything he can see. A shimmering partial scan registers out on the edge of the battle, as Gold-Tongue piloting the Specter Worse Than Mine appears. It blinks in next to Bill and rips him to shreds, already damaged by the blade of Dust in the prior battle, his mech the Yangtze is consumed in a massive detonation as his reactor overloads and critically melts down.
Victoria Death
His friends barely have time to register the blank static over the comms from his channel, as Lonnie and Mi-Tenz make a desperate rush for the exit having secured the hostage. After cracking open the concrete building with a huge metal fist they found Revel Hour, who they now understand is a Revel Hour of many, glaring back at them. This Revel is now stowed (cramped) in what is functionally the footwell of Mi-Tenz‘s mech.
As they reach the exit, and probable safety, Gorn is continuing to hold the line. A brutal long-range shot from operative Lion in the sniper Anonymous Source hits Mi-Tenz’s Feline Pain square in the back, destroying it. She is able to eject, and is close enough to Gorn’s Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Gorned5.
Gorn, carrying Mi-Tenz and the captured Revel Hour rushes to escape, with Lonnie’s mech Gob Knobbler6 right behind. Just as he makes it up to the final island, taking cover in the rushing water of the river below, Victoria Death’s Company Card looms up above him. Before he can move, Victoria fires a barrage of plasma fire down into him, he is left trapped in the smoking ruin of his trusty Goblin. As his mech powers down, the casket containing his Osiris NHP cracks, and for a brief moment all of the interior screens of his mech display a single massive red eye before going entirely black.
The crew has escaped, and secured the hostage they were after. It came at a heavy price, however, with both Bill and Lonnie dead or missing in combat.
Mission Setup
Plot Beats/Questions/Goals
- Can the Lancers successfully infiltrate The Group stronghold?
- Can the Lancers retrieve the Hostage?
Tabernacle 2.5
Tabernacle 2.5 has only short windows where it is safe to approach to the planet, due to extreme temperatures at the planet’s surface while the under direct star-light. It cools quickly when eclipsed by Tabernacle II.
The Group Stronghold
The Group Stronghold is an abandoned IPS-N military training facility on the surface of Tabernacle 2.5.
This being an old training facility gives me a bit of lee-way to play around with different “mechanics” in combat.
Footnotes
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I didn’t really feel like “you don’t know where to go” was interesting narratively, so I just gave them this out of pocket. ↩
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I think I watched the HxH episode where Ikalgo traps Bloster in a network of blast doors. HxH rules. ↩
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This turned out to be an absolutely great mechanic, it was really fun for this to not be a quick action, but was instead dependent more on positioning carefully (as protocols must be done first in the turn), and making risky choices to gain advantages. Action economy is so pressed in this game, quick actions for mission objectives feel a little clammy sometimes (especially if it’s something you’ll want/need to do a lot), so a protocol tied to being in specific places seems much better. ↩
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This ended up not working as well, although it could have if I hadn’t drawn the map kind of badly. I put two of the bridges on enemy ingress zones, which made them basically obvious (and pretty much required) choices to be manipulated whenever they could be by both sides. This made the mechanic kind of flat in this case. ↩
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Don’t ask me, that one’s not my name. ↩
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Look seriously, I don’t name the PC mechs. It’s not MY FAULT. ↩