Basically, we were done with the Raider’s block after last session. But the Raider’s block was not done with us!

While Diamondback shot up the dogs over time with a woefully small calibre weapon and Alexa inspected a small part of the smoke-filled interior with the service bot, Kendal refused to let anyone climb down and wander the streets to help Diamondback (and take a quick look into the house).

He was right to hold them back, because right about that time the foes who had succumbed to the sleep gas stirred and woke up, and they had to shoot them and the dog dead. This took long enough to make it clear that any curious cat that would have climbed down early would have ended up as dog food.

All the shooting and the huge pillar of smoke from our gasoline fire also alerted some Raider-mobile, a rickety old van of questionable quality decked out with razorblades and other metal implements.

It was loaded full with people and had a couple clinging to the outside, all bearing and waving weapons.

Crazy car-sharing

Under the first volley from the roof, three of them tumbled off the vehicle, and two shots aimed at the driver were turned away by the reinforced windshield. Then they parked right in front of the house and spewed out 11 crazy raiders. One of them: A super-raider, a Raider Lord, with cybernetic legs supporting a bulging mountain of muscles decorated with heavy metal implements. He eschewed guns in favour of a mighty sword that he waved menacingly at the people on top of the roof.

Snake Tooth downed a couple of them with a grenade of sleeping gas. Celeste killed one with a sniper shot. But then the fun was up, as the Raider Lord rose up into the air, propelled by his powerful pneumatic legs, and jumped right up onto the roof in a single bound.

CRASH!

With a crunch, he landed on the rickety roof … and his mighty bulk broke right through it, collapsing half of the building. Celeste, Beijing, and Kendal fell with him into the yawning interior, most fell and took damage, only nimble Celeste managed to ride out the fall on streams of rubble.

Alexa, Snake Tooth and Ariana pilfered the car-thugs with bullets until Snake Tooth was out of ammo and he and Ariana both shot up to an inch of their lives…. then they lay down to wait out the storm.

Epic Battle

Inside the building, the Raider Lord and the others dug themselves out of the debris and noticed each other. They were on the ground floor, cut off from the Raiders outside, and a cloud of dust provided some cover for the superraider against shots through the broken roof and the upper floors. After one round of orienteering, Kendal, Beijing and Celeste fired on big boy. The shots went wide, except for Kendal’s choice of a Dragonbreath shot, a small but very useful present from Father Christmas himself. That singed the big bad, but not very much, and it also drew his attention. He stalked right across the pile of stones to melee Kendal in revenge.

Celeste took one or two chips out of his frame while he fought a legendary battle against Kendal and Beijing: One bloody Raider sword the size of an I-Beam against two well-polished long-blades working in unison, with the sniper flanking the melee-beast.

Cutting chunk for chunk out of him while dodging his whirling blade, the duo slowly whittled him down while the firefight raged outside. Off and on Celeste also got a shot in. Then, right as the bleeding giant lifted his huge sword to cut Beijing in twain she interrupted him with a wicked slice that took the head between his huge raised bicepses right off the neck. Downed! An epic win! The Raider Lord fell with an earth-shattering crash.

Mopping up

“Follow me!” commanded Kendal and stormed out to get to the other raiders at their car. Wrong side! A failed wisdom check ensured that the group emerged from the wrong side of the house had to go around.

Luckily, by the time they got there the raiders were also depleted from the various shots fired from the embattled roof. Kendal, Beijing, and Celeste killed those standing, then Beijing also killed those who had fallen to the sleeping gas.

Meanwhile, Diamondback also had her last dog down and came back to the group.

We looted and loaded up with gold, silver, cyber parts and weapons. Too much to carry. And the van was also not the ideal transport, a bit because it was in very bad repair, but mostly because it was an obvious raiders car. Kendal, as a nomad, was loathe to leave behind a set of even semi-good wheels. But he was also no fan of driving towards the Radiant Family HQ with a Raidermobile.

Compromise: They drove the Raidermobile only a bit into the Radiant Family block, then he and Ariana, both wounded, limped to the Brothers to announce the weird ride.

The Radiants didn’t like the idea, and they had compelling arguments: They feared that a Raider vehicle in front of their house would give them a bad rap, as if they were selling guns to Raiders, which they would never. Secondly, police might take an interest.

Kendal conceded these well argued points and the team did it differently: They drove with their own car to the Raidermobile and loaded everything from ugly to shiny.

Then there was a lot of number crunching involved to juggle the loads and get rid of heavy items in favour of less heavy items. Honestly I am not much into that aspect of Old School playing, even though I must assert that it is a necessary part to enable resource management and avoid classic overload syndrome. Hard decisions have to be made! Even if I, personally, can’t do that without concise lists and a calculator. Luckily, Diamondback’s player was much better at number-crunching, so I could leave that to him.

Bottom line: We left the Raider’s van behind, sold cyber to the Radiant Family and invested some of it into weapons and ammo, until we had an amount that fit pretty much exactly in the car. Then Kendal as the resident driver took the wheel and got everyone through the mean streets back to the safe zone. The value of good carsin the hands of Nomads!

And voilá, we made it home, and we had some level-ups thanks to all the loot and the pay from the Brothers. (About time! We have gone with low payouts for too long.)

Celeste and Beijing both went up to level 3 and will now receive a full share of future loot each. Snake Tooth managed to keep ahead by levelling up to L4.

Huzzah!

A job well done.

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Wasters: Snips Saga | Wasters game

Photo by Mahmoud Sulaiman on Unsplash