So, who wants to hear the story about the Traveller player character who took an anti-tank missile to the chest?
This is the same group as in my
previous story, but it was earlier by several years. The PC we will call "murder machine" was your typical murderhobo who, during the course of play, had sold his soul to Naval Intelligence, and in return his brain was scooped out of his body and placed into the highest tech cyborg body possible. He then acquired a suit of powered armor which further enhanced his abilities. Basically, he wanted to be a
Warhammer 40K Space Marine, and he got pretty damn close to that.
In this adventure, the PCs found themselves up against a squad of trained commandos and their transport, a VTOL gunship which also carries troops, rather like a higher-tech version of the
Hind Mi-24.
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| This is the picture I used. Looks mean, doesn't it? |
The player characters were hiding and under cover. The commandos fast-roped out of the gunship and set up lines of fire in hasty fighting positions. The gunship then flew off to blow up a compound (where the PCs had just been, and who had triggered the alarm which brought the gunship there in the first place) to erase evidence and leave no survivors.
Once the gunship flew away, the players executed a fairly well-orchestrated ambush against the soldiers who had pretty impressive armor and weapons. It was a tough fight, but the players won, mainly by being smart. Then the gunship returned because its troops were dying.
I, an intellectual, figured that the PCs know that they can't shoot this thing down, because it's armored like an A-10 Warthog (and they KNOW THIS because I've TOLD THEM) and they have no anti-aircraft or anti-armor weapons, just small arms and one
SAW equivalent. The smart thing is to run away, seek cover, try to find another way to defeat it, and they've been smart so far.
That's when Murder Machine decided to go full-on "STAND AND DELIVER!" by walking out from cover and shooting the gunship with the SAW.
He rolled. He hit. He rolled damage. I consulted the craft's armor, because vehicle-scale is different from personal-scale.
I say, "You've chipped its paint."
Then, because I love drama, I give them a little cutscene. "Cut to the cockpit. The pilot says "We're taking fire!" and the gunner says "Nah, it's just small arms, nothing to worry about," and pulls up a video feed of the PC." (Who is in Battledress, which is what powered battle armor is called in Traveller.)
The gunner goes "Holy shit! He's wearing Battledress!"
The Pilot says "Kill it."
If you've played StarCraft 1, where there's a cinematic involving a Terran saying "Kill it!" and launching a missile at a damaged Protoss thingie, and when it explodes he goes "Yeah! YEAH! Feel that hot love right up your tailpipe!".... you've got the right idea, because the gunship is Not Fucking Around and launches what is basically a Hellfire at Murder Machine.
To our great surprise, Murder Machine DID NOT DIE. The anti-tank missile hit, and ablated his battledress armor to basically nothing in the chest area, but his augmented cyborg body is still functioning. Badly damaged, mind you, but still functioning.
I said "The blast knocks you flat on your back. Your helmet is blaring all sorts of alarms as it suffers critical failure. But you're still alive, thanks to [all this stuff], although barely. In the gesture of universal defiance you shakily raise one hand skyward, then extend your middle finger." There is much laughter.
I, an intellectual, figured that this has sent the proper message to Murder Machine who will decide discretion is the better part of valor. Murder Machine, a Marine, decides "I aiten't ded yet", so he STANDS UP AND TAKES ANOTHER SHOT AT THE GUNSHIP.
Between his wounds and the full-auto penalty, he misses.
I decide that this stupidity must be punished. The gunship, now well and truly freaked the fuck out that someone survived an anti-tank missile, decides FUCK THIS and pulls a Kylo Ren on him. They launch another missile and follow up with the chin turret gun, which I think is a full-auto rotary-barrel grenade launcher.
They hit. The damage, when converted from vehicle scale to personal scale, is obscene. To use a D&D-ism, this would be well over 100 hit points worth of damage.
I don't precisely remember what I said , but it was along the lines of "You explode into a fine red mist." Then I crack my knuckles, and in my cruelest Game Master voice I croon, "I've killed one PC. Who wants to be next?"
The other PCs wisely choose to learn from his example and unass the area immediately.
Post-Script: Murder Machine wasn't really dead, because a dead PC just means the player rolls up a new one. A crippled PC, on the other hand, is amusing and a learning experience.
Later on, the surviving PCs found that an emergency locator beacon was transmitting. Upon investigation they discover Murder Machine's head inside the battledress helmet, which ejected to safety and put his head into cryosleep. The thinking here is "Save the brain, and the body can be cloned later." Of course, that depends upon access to cloning technology, which the PCs don't have and is damned expensive, so they have to improvise.
By "improvise", I mean that when they get back to the ship they assemble a basic life support system for his brain (remember, everything else on him was cybernetic) and mount it and his head to a maintenance robot, which is basically a Roomba with manipulator arms. Think one of the
skutters from
Red Dwarf, crossed with
790 from
Lexx.
What followed was a nearly year-long side quest where the PCs slowly upgraded can't-call-him-Murder-Machine-anymore's body into a less impressive, but at least bipedal humanoid cyborg, frame.
To the player's credit, he learned his lesson and was much less foolish after that. Also to his credit, he had a sense of humor about being the ship's Roomba for a while. He's a Marine in real life, so he can laugh at himself.
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