Today’s post is a continuation report on Tūrelil jē Sekhmet. It won’t be entirely chronological in order to make the summary more coherent. See part 1 and part 2 for more information. No amount of “reading ahead” would provide any real spoilers for this part or really anything in the future.

Plan for Getting onto Temjara

Leo gave Kaglen the idea of getting some sort of job that would give him legitimate reason to pass the blockade on Temjara. Kaglen is a member of the “glorified merchant’s guild” known as the Sub Rosa Alliance (SRA), so he has connections (he spent quite a few points on Contact Group and Rank). Naturally, his local contact, Shoko Sun, was able to find something. She simply needed a bit of time to prepare the proper paperwork. Since it is totally legitimate, nothing could possibly go wrong.

The Cult Stalkers

Kayta stayed at the temple while in Maon, and she had a member of the Dark Vigil occasionally frightening any potential threats. Kaglen stayed in his ship and had no such luxury. While out in the city, Harvard noticed a strange cult doing strange cultish things. One member in particular spotted them and started raving in Lithian (which neither Harvard nor Kaglen understood) and began slowly advancing towards them. Harvard escorted his master safely away from the area, and Kaglen decided to take a roundabout way to his ship. Unfortunately for him, the cult arrived blocking the path to the ship. Kaglen contacted Kayta who pulled some strings to get Kaglen admitted to spend the night in an outer section of the temple.

Kaglen was also able to acquire a Lithian language module so that Harvard could understand and interpret the strange language.

More Arcade

With the Storming of Shaddai tournament over, the party decided to visit the final arcade. They were interested in the tournament results and noticed that one of the high ranking teams was named “the Vipers.” Harvard was convinced that was an important detail, but he couldn’t tell why right away.

It was still early, so the simulators weren’t all powered on. This was fine since Leo agreed to meet them at the arcade but was running late. Kaglen took to the simulator and ran an obstacle course (on “professional” level of course). He took the high score. Leo arrived, and Kayta went next overtook Kaglen’s score. Leo realized that if he were to compete, he would have to make some reckless stunts. He did well but crashed at the end.

After the obstacle course, they did some combat simulations. Kayta and Leo had a rematch where Kayta soundly maintained her record. The arcade attendant was highly impressed with the piloting skill he witnessed and decided to give Kaglen a special challenge suited for a Nomad pilot.

It was a battle against a Tigershark. The Tigershark pilot was quite skilled and didn’t fly his ship like a fighter, so Kaglen discovered the weakness of Soar Like a Leaf with locked turrets. The fight got heated, and Kayta decided to join in a Wildcat. The Tigershark released its two Grapplers which Kayta promptly defeated. Kaglen managed to do a little damage to the Tigershark but was ultimately defeated by the elite Tigershark rolling well and winning enough contests to avoid getting shot too much. Kaglen’s player also got to learn about dodging rapid fire (he had previously played mostly low tech games).

Imperial Encounter

After the arcade, the party parted ways with Leo. They noticed that something was amiss. There was an unusually high presence of Imperial troops, so Kaglen decided to try speaking to a pair. The Imperials weren’t too keen on chatting, but Kaglen managed to fast-talk one of them into revealing something about a VIP. They threatened to arrest him if he didn’t “move along” and provided no further detail.

Abduction

After that, the party split. Kayta went to the temple to prepare for departure, and Kaglen went to look for Shoko Sun. He even brought presents. When he arrived at her usual place, Shoko Sun was nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was a device with an SRA insignia. He left a note and placed the device in a pocket or something and thought nothing of it. The device had other plans. After a while, the device vibrated and made noise.

Kaglen went to a relatively secluded area and activated it. It was a prerecoreded hologram message of a krokuta dressed like a gladiator telling him (in Lithian) “if he wanted to see his ‘mate’ again, he would need to bring the memory crystal and the ‘frog’ to a specified location” and to “bring no one else.” Harvard had a bit of difficulty interpreting the message, but eventually that “mate” referred to Shoko Sun (the captor didn’t seem to understand Kaglen’s relationship to her) and the “frog” referred to Kayta.

Kaglen contacted Kayta and went to visit the bot mechanic named Rodrik who upgraded Harvard. Kaglen informed Rodrik what happened to Shoko Sun, and Rodrik was disturbed. He considered “Mrs. Sun” a friend. He was not, however, a member of the SRA as Kaglen hoped. The device again buzzed and sounded. This time, another prerecorded message appeared, and it contained a greater sense of urgency. The captor’s patience was was wearing thin. Kayta and Kaglen decided to go to the location and appear to give into the captor’s demands. Things would turn out all right … or not. Kaglen contacted Leo and asked him to go to the location 15 minutes after Kaglen’s expected arrival in case something went wrong.

Showdown

Ragtime, as the krokuta gladiator was called, wasn’t particularly honest. He demanded that Kayta bring the memory crystal and put on hand cuffs in exchange for releasing Shoko. Kayta put on the cuffs, and Ragtime’s minions “released” Shoko. As Shoko staggered towards “freedom,” Kayta spotted a collar on Shoko’s neck. Ragtime was planning on keeping his “prizes.” One of the minions began to pull out a remote trigger for the collar and cuffs, but Kaglen blasted the trigger out of the minion’s hand. Combat began.

As a Warrior, Ragtime was dangerous if allowed to get close enough to hit. His Krokuta Blade-Disc could have been a dangerous thrown weapon, but it was not particularly effective against Kaglens force screen.

Kaglen decided to shoot Kayta free of her cuffs. Unfortunately, that triggered the neurolash effect which delt 7 fatigue damage. Fortunately, she only failed her HT roll by 1 and only suffered terrible pain. Kaglen took another shot to remove the device fully off Kayta leaving her much relieved.

Kayta managed to avoid getting killed by Ragtime making good use of her staff, retreats and maintaining distance. Kaglen managed to hit Ragtime once which caused most of his armor to ablate. The mooks were particularly dangerous for Kaglen since they used explosive plasma weapons that did not require precise aim and had high base damage at the expense of low armor divisor (or none in the case of non direct hits). They ate through Kaglen’s force screen. Kaglen’s critical dodge failure made things much more exciting. Harvard interposed himself in front of his master after Kaglen’s force screen was taken down.

Kaglen was on the ground, Kayta was outmatched and the heroes had a hostage to protect. Things were looking bad when, suddenly, a siren sounded. The mooks got spooked and attempted to flee. The tables were turned on Ragtime, and he was forced to flee to avoid trouble with the law. The real hero of the fight was Crank who played a recording of police sirens.

Thoughts

This nearly concludes the stay on Samsara. I ripped the opening of the adventure from the Uncanny Curse of Sekhmet but have largely diverged since. None of the Samsara events are related to that adventure, and while Temjara contains something called the “Contemplation Chamber of Sekhmet,” the other aspects of “Egypt” will be only superficially related to the adventure.

Kaglen’s connection to the SRA gave the party an option to bypass the Imperial blockade without combat, so I decided to have some full combat simulations rather than simply making skill checks. The players wanted space combat, so I found a way to give it to them.

Ragtime wasn’t particularly bright. In more favorable terrain, he would be much more dangerous, but he picked a poor location for making use of his abilities. The next time the party meets him, the situation will be much more challenging.