>>13330806
Yay! More mech-boarding awesomeness. You have convinced me to play this game through your awesome story.

I await the conclusion.

You know, i've just been keeping a window open with that thread pulled up for the last few days now. Come home from work, refresh, read new post. Go run errands, cook dinner, cleaning, etc, then come back refresh, read another new post (if lucky) and go to bed.

tl;dr post faster because i am pic related.

>>13330924
Same here. Except I've been alt-tabbing back and forth between this story and World of Tanks.

At this point I was actually biting my nails. I, the DM. I was worried about them despite their senior status as very good tabletop gamers (Not seniors in age, mind you, we are all in our 20s).

Mechanically, here is the problem that my players faced:

No one had created a rogue or rogue-like class. This meant none of them had stealth and disable device on the same character sheet.

Krickler has the ability to disable mechanical devices, but he had a grand dexterity modifier of +1 and no sneaking abilities. To remind you, the reason his AC is 25; he is wearing full platemail over metal skin (it stacks) and he naturally increased his AC by building a malleable force-shield into his body which functions like a steel shield.

The only person in the party with a dexterity modifier high enough to potentially be able to even think of trying to sneak up on the sensors... was Mack. But he had no stealth skill, so he was rolling with his +4 dexterity modifier and a d20.

Here are the stats for the proximity sensors that I whipped up before the game, TORN STRAIGHT FROM THE PAGES OF MY DM NOTES:

Trap: proximity sensor ten feet in. DC 15 to spot (perception check). Failure: they do not see it. Try again? No.
DC 17 check to sneak up to it without setting it off.
DC 15 to disarm.
Failure results: If less than five, it is not disarmed, but not tripped. More than five, it is tripped.

While the sneak check would be done on his own, to be able to disable the proximity sensor, we arranged for him to get assistance in the form of verbal tutelage from Krickler. This did not mean that Mack would suddenly have disable device as a skill. Instead, he would just get a +2 bonus to his roll to turn off the proximity sensor, the bonus coming from Krickler who would walk him through disarming the alarm system, plus his own intelligence bonus (which I believe was a +1 or +2, I cannot recall).

So, a pair of moderately rolls were necessary to succeed at this.

Let's see how they do.

>Let's see how they do.

Tune in next week folks, to another exciting episode of DragonMech! When Mack attempts to disarm an alarm and the OP will post a grand total of maybe 5 minutes of ingame story!

The three men stood together outside the bulkhead which linked the hall they stood in with the next one over that had the alarm system.

"I've got an idea." Krickler said, he was staring hard at the system from the safety they found on this side of the hall. "The alarm looks simple enough. All the sensors are slaved to a master sensor. Disable that one, and the rest will turn off. We're fekked if I sneak up on it so one of you two will have to do it."

Mack and Grimlock look at one another. One of them is wearing scale mail which is a pain to take off as much as it is to put back on. The other is wearing a leather pilot suit.

It was obvious who was going.

"I guess I pulled the short straw." Mack shrugs.

Krickler follows the pilot about as far as the bulkhead, then stands his ground.

Mack presses himself as flat as he can against one edge of the wall. He twitches with a start as a valve in the ceiling opens to blast the room with excess steam. He resists the temptation to wipe the beads of water off his face.

It takes a whole ten minutes, but as he gently tiptoes up to the sensors, he stops when he sees the faintest bright green dot on the wall next to his head. He crouches down and while going under the invisible beam that crosses diagonally from one side of the hallway to the other, he carefully steps over another beam that runs five inches off the width of the floor.

He now finds himself ten feet in the metal entryway. On either side and ahead of him are the sensors.

"Eeny, meeny, miny..."

Thread is also archived: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/13330806/

Continue valiant DM of DMs.

>>13331288
Shut up, this is awesome.

"Moe."

Mack picks the one that his holstered double barrel pistol happened to be pointing at. The gun always was a reliable firearm.

He carefully turned to his right and looked closely at the sensor. It's piercing green eye oblivious to his presence.

"Alright. I'm here. What now?" He said without moving.

"Describe it to me." Krickler answers.

"It's a fekking sensor. What do you want me to tell you?"

There was a noisy hiss of pressurized water. Krickler's way of sighing irritably. "Is there a thing which looks like you could twist to open it up."

Now that he mentioned it, yeah. Yeah there was.

"Well, if I'm right, then as soon as you start twisting it, the sensor should open up somehow without tripping itself."

"What? What if it does?"

"Then we better hurry the fekk up out of here before guards come running, don't you think?"

"Dotrak's brass balls." Mack swore. He carefully twisted the ribbed metal washer at the base of the sensor.

He got lucky. A panel popped open on the floor a few inches from it. The panel was five inches by three. Cables ran through it. They were all the same colour. Black rubber."

"Oh damn."

"What?"

"All the cables are the same colour."

"Cut one open. Carefully. Tell me what the next layer under the black rubber is for each one."

Mack was careful and he managed to shave off the black rubber coating each of the three cables, revealing white, red, and green.

"Now, guess."

"WHAT?!"

"This is an Iron Tooth city mech. They don't fekking wire their walkers the same way the Legion or the Stenians do, now do they? If I was over there I might be able to make a better guess, but I don't know how the Iron Tooth do tech like this."

"Then why the fekk did you make me shave 'em?!"

Krickler shrugs somewhere behind him, "Because." Mack swears he can hear the smile in his voice.

Mack shut his eyes and sighed, "Thanks, Krickler. Thanks."

"Hey, it could be worse. You could be defusing a bomb."

"Don't even start."

Mack cut the green one.

The proximity sensors around him made a blipping noise as they were shut off. He felt a bead of water, or was that sweat? Go down his temple. "Done."

"Good work. Now let's get the fekk out of here."

OH JESUS CHRIST, for a second there I felt like >I< was defusing a bomb!!

I dunno what it is, but this is some tense fucking shit, OP! You've got me too hooked to sleep!

That said, I need to get up and go grocery shopping tomorra, so I NEED TO GET TO BED, POST FASTER, OP!!!

Their boots clicked against the metal grilling that lined the floor of the small hall. Now having bypassed the alarm system, they looked for their next destination.

Not difficult. You always want to go up in a mech. They were here to gum up the works inside the machine, and gum up the machine they would.

The best way to do that was to disable the engine - but they had nothing against damaging minor systems along the way. If they caused some chaos inside the machine they might be able to spread the internal guard force thin, which meant it would be easier for them to move around.

Mack reached out to grab hold of the first ladder they found to climb up and away from the bottom of the city-mech's foot when -

I point at my players, "Balance checks!"

Three twenty sided dice hit the table to save against a 28.

They all succeed - Grimlock just barely.

Mack grabbed onto the ladder just in time. The metal around them yawned noisily. Krickler, heavy from his modifications and, of course, a stout, stable dwarf, stumbled a little but found his footing.

Grimlock tumbled backwards and grabbed onto a bulkhead.

The world around them felt wrong. Their bodies were telling them that they were going up a hill when nothing had moved.

"We're moving." Krickler states the obvious. He reaches back to grab Grimlock, pulling him off the bulkhead and putting the cleric between him and the mech jockey. Grimlock is holding onto his stomach for a moment - despite all the time he spent with Mack and Krickler, fighting on, in, or around walkers of many types, the jarring movement of the city mech's foot swinging forwards and up made him queasy.

"Don't act like you got a case of the shins now." He teased, already climbing the ladder.

The ladder seemed to go on forever. Its braces came together and disappeared high up above them. Soon, the bottom disappeared in the darkness below.

It was necessary, however. As an emergency shaft, this would be a seldom used location. It was either that, or use an elevator to go up to the knees by going up the front of the shins - right through the hangar bays and infantry barracks.

No, they weren't going to do that.

Krickler was, of course, the first to go up, with Mack taking the rear. The cleric took the center of their little vertical formation.

Eventually they came across a small platform that linked one section of the emergency ladder with another. There was some armor plating here which remained incomplete.

"How ... how far have we gone up, you think?" Grimlock asks, sitting with his back against the wall. He is looking out on the bobbing landscape that is passing by through an exposed section in the armor.

Krickler stuck his head out that same opening. He whistled as he saw how far up they were. "Ohh, I'd say about fifty feet." He turned his head to look upwards, "Knee's not far now."

He pulled back in just as Grimlock holstered a flask of water back on his belt. He had to fiddle with the ropes hanging from his body to do that though.

Krickler snorts, "You carry too many damn ropes. What's your deal anyway?"

Grimlock only knew one insulting hand gesture, but it was a gesture that referred to Tiamat's cunt. He was pretty certain Krickler wouldn't get it so he didn't bother.

Their moment of rest over, they continued to climb upwards.

Their first opportunity to wound this iron god came then.

A small circular hatch in the floor spins around like a top before popping open on well oiled hinges. Krickler sticks his head out to see what awaits them here.

This room has a high ceiling, about twenty feet. No ladder leads up to the roof.

It is the contents of the room that make him grin.

"Ho ho ho." Krickler says over the noise, "Look at what we've stumbled into."

He carefully pulls himself out of the opening in the floor and helps his compatriots up and out. "Watch out. Don't get caught."

Cogs of all shapes and sizes fill this room. They protrude from the walls, the floor around them, and one of the largest actually grinds away in the ceiling above.

They are not all active. Some are immobile, others are not. Some will suddenly stop, others will buzz too life. There is no obvious pattern.

"A gear room?" Peter asks me.

I nod, "Literally, a gearbox. Mechcraft or gearforest check to determine what exactly it does."

There are some rolls.

Mack grins, "This is the main transmission box which distributes kinetic energy to all the moving parts in the leg. We could really cause some trouble in here." And of course, Mack is prepared for that. He swings his pack around from his back and opens it, all kinds of bombs sit inside it. Krickler reaches forward to grab one when Mack smacks him off.

"Ah ah. You know better. We can't just blow up all the gears, we gotta find the right ones."

I ask for some more mech-craft checks. Grimlock is allowed to make his untrained here.

"Hey, that one looks really important." He's staring up at the largest one that sticks halfway out of the ceiling above. It's almost ten feet across, the spacing between its teeth look to be about eight inches. The ticking it makes reverberates above the noise of all the others.

Krickler and Mack look up. Mack gives the cleric a magnet bomb which he sets to go off two minutes after it is attached to a surface. "If you think you can hit it from here, do it."

But Krickler objects, "Hey. I can throw harder. Lemme try." He grabs the bomb and some rope, crudely ties the two together, then tosses it upwards before the other two can react.

It sails up high...

...And tilts its magnetic bottom towards the floor. It does not stick to the gear or even the ceiling. Instead it bounces off the roof and hits the steel plating that the three stand on.

"Oh fekk." Mack says as the bomb starts ticking, he takes a step back.

"Vorel's ghost!" Gasps Grimlock. He steps away from the bomb.

Krickler rolls his eyes, "Hold on." He kneels down to pull it off. "We've got two minutes right? We can try again."

I look at Peter and Mark, "Reflex saves, gentlemen."

This one will be quick.

City mechs are an interesting place to run encounters, 'dungeons' or even entire campaigns in. Due to their vertical and highly mechanical nature, they offer a much different set of challenges than your normal run of the mill castle or dungeon. One of the distinctive features of a city mech is its 'gear forest'.

What is a gear forest?

Imagine an engine, if you will. Not necessarily steam - pop open your car hood. Look at it.

Now, take that and scale it up by a few dozen times until it can fill a few city blocks.

The resulting product is more or less what a gear forest is. You are literally walking inside an engine or through moving parts. Something as mundane as a pilot light to warm a boiler can potentially kill you by belching an immense flame.

And let's not forget that sometimes a city mech does not have enough engineers or staff to patrol all its nooks and crannies. Abandoned or unchecked areas of the engine can sometimes be occupied by creatures who find a home in the warm oil rivers or near the freezing coolant storage units.

That said, let's move on.

Pictured: One section of the gear forest inside Nedderpik, the second Stenian city-mech.

Rolls are made.

Grimlock takes a step away from the bomb and stops when his back touches a still gear. He is too concerned over the bomb to realize that it could begin turning at any moment.

Naturally, it does.

The cleric's surprise is such that by moving away from one that had just come to life, he accidentally moves towards another which was already moving.

One of the teeth catch his arm. It bites at the scale mail covering the limb. He yells.

Mack pulls the cleric away in time, having just avoided getting his leg caught in a pair of sprockets himself.

With a grunt, Krickler manages to pull the bomb free from the floor. He hands it to Grimlock, "Sorry." He offers, pulling his lips into a smile that turn into a snarl instead.

"If you're so sorry, why don't you give it to me?" Grimlock pulls on the bomb.

Krickler was holding it with his mechanical arm.

"Oops. It's stuck." Krickler's face is deadpan again.

"Damnit Krickler." Mack guffaws and helps Grimlock pull the sticky bomb out of the steamborg's hand. It comes lose and Krickler balances himself before he falls backwards to get his head chewed up by a pair of cogs bigger than he is.

Grimlock reties the rope around the bomb and throws it upwards. It sticks to the ceiling inches from the massive gear they identified earlier.

With a gentle tug, the rope comes free while the explosive doesn't.

They quickly identify three other secondary, but equally important sprockets and rig explosives next to them.

In the process of doing that, Krickler get's his arm stuck between the teeth of a set of gears. The axles they're attached to whine noisily, steam bursts from some pipes under the floor.

Krickler isn't hurt, but it is a little annoying to have one's arm pinned between the metal teeth. "When you two get a moment." He says patiently.

Mack tip toes his way over. Grimlock's progress is a bit slower.

They spend ten seconds pulling him back out.

"Can we get out of here now?" Grimlock asks. In his mind he is imagining the ticking of the explosives. It is making him nervous.

So they make their way out. There a door on the far end of the room, opposite from the hatch they crawled up through to get in the place to begin with.

This door is large and heavy. There are mechanical braces set into its frame, suggesting what they already know. This is an important place. A tough door is needed to keep it protected.

Krickler reaches forward to grab the handle. It doesn't resist him as he turns it.

And turns it. And turns it some more.

"Well? What are you waiting for, boiler brain?" Mack asks impatiently.

"It won't open! The fekk?"

Something inside the door rattles and it is opened from the other side.

There's a man there, a wrench in hand.

He was rubbing his eyes, but he has stopped now. He's staring at Krickler, who is staring back.

Silence hangs.

He drops his wrench and runs.

Krickler is faster, oddly enough. His hand reaches forward and grabs him by the collar of his worksuit.

Either the crewman is too strong or his suit is in bad shape, but the top tears off. He is left with a white sleeveless shirt and his pants. He doesn't stop.

Mark grins, "Trip check!"

Me, "What? How?"

"Out of the way, metal head!" Grimlock shouts as he unsheathes his special weapon and loosens the bundle of rope attached to the handle of the hooked blade.

He also shoves the steamborg out of the way.

He steps through the open door and the bulkhead it is set in, then swings his weapon hard, letting it go at just the right moment. It flies through the air and catches the fleeing crewman by the ankles.

Then it spins around his legs. He falls to the grating with a metallic crack.

Like a fisherman with a catch, Grimlock reels him in. He spares no moment of rest to hogtie him up.

Mack and Krickler step through the door. One of them shuts it and locks it. "One minute thirty seconds, Mack says."

"F-for what?" Stammers the man at their feet.

The steamborg nods, "Nice job, cleric." The pilot claps a little, smiling.

"Oh, we just left a few gifts in there." Mack explains to the tied up man. "I wouldn't recommend letting anyone in there."

"B-b-ut..." His eyes grow wide, "That's the main gear assembly for th--"

"We know." Krickler says, he reaches down and pulls a grate off the floor. There's five feet of space between the grating they stand on and the tangle of pipes below that.

Me, "What... What are you doing, Arthur?"

"I believe trapping someone in a place they have no hope of escape from is a willful evil act there, Arthur. Last I checked, you were neutral." Peter's tone is a warning one.

They argue back and forth for a moment.

I shake my head. We're better than this. I'm better than this. The alignment system in D&D had a reputation for causing more problems than it solved.

I look at Arthur, "I'll allow it."

Everyone, "What?"

"All I want is an explanation. The allignment system be damned. From what I've seen of Krickler's behaviour so far, this is not entirely out of character for him."

I think Arthur gave me a guarded look of respect at that moment. Not sure though. My memory is not that good.

"Dropping him down below the grates will do a few things." Arthur explains, "One, it'll make it harder for him to get back out which means he won't rush into the room we just left to disarm the bombs. Two, it'll make it harder for him to warn people about our presence. Three, he'll be safe from the explosion. What do you think is going to happen to that door I just shut behind us when those bombs go off."

I consider this and nod.

The game continues.

Krickler took the engineer and dropped him down into the space under the floor.

"The hell are you doing that for, Krickler?" Grimlock shouts.

"Insurance. Let's go." The steamborg stomps away. It isn't the walk of an angry dwarf, just a stride style made necessary by his augmentations. His left foot is heaviest, the flesh and bones replaced by a solid metal boot.

Mack looks down at the terrified man. He then turns his eyes to Krickler and thinks of something to say, to argue against the steamborg's decision.

He remembers the explosives. No, the man is better down there.

The mech jockey takes one last look at the worker. He has a silver star tatooed on the left side of his neck. It is a mark he has seen before but he can't quite place it. It belongs to one of the Iron Tooth clans though, that much he is certain of.

"Any day now, Mack." Krickler swings a door open at the far end of the hall. He is standing inside the frame and looking back.

"Coming."

He turns and starts walking forwards.

The rhythmic shifting of the mechanical world he now moves through reminds him of what they came here to do.

Then, the world suddenly moves ten feet upwards with a titanic jolt.

His face waffles against the floor grill.

As the world stops rising, so too, does it begin to fall.

Mack's ears are ringing. He didn't even realize it, but he heard the explosion. Its power was such that he did not hear it in the traditional sense. He felt it.

Now he heard nothing at all.

His vision was blurry. He blinked them as many times as necessary to clear them. When he lifted his head, he saw his friends scrambling to get back up. Grimlock was running to his side. There was a grease fire on his arm that he did not notice.

Mack couldn't move. He twisted his head a little.

A four hundred pound door was lying on him. Grimlock could not move it. Krickler had to come over and lift it off, though for him it was easy. The mech jockey rubbed his head and shut his eyes. God damn, that was some explosion.

Together, the three men fell forwards as one as the city-mech buckled. And when something that weighs several thousand tons buckles, it gives new meaning to the verb. He could not hear it, but he sure as hell felt it. Despite his seasoned status as a Mech Jockey, he felt his stomach lurch as the city mech tried to compensate for the sudden loss of stability. For twenty seconds, he felt like he was falling.

Then, the city-mech found its footing. Its speed had been reduced to compensate for the damaged gearbox in its kneecap, but it was still going forward.

They bought some time for Redstone.

"Damnit, would you both get off of me?" Krickler's grating voice was distant and muffled, like dozens of cotton balls were still stuck in Mack's ears.

>>13330866

You have no idea how thankful I am for this comment. My main goal for this entire... what is it, an exercise? Project? Whatever it is, I was really hoping to try and sell this little known setting to other fellow gamers.

Now, a general word:

Gentlemen and ladies.

I am going to sleep early tonight so that I may wake early tomorrow.

Take care, and don't stay up too late.