Session 24 recap - Dog Boys and a near TPK

This session started with the group desperately trying to get the hovercraft back up and running after the beating it took last time, to no avail.  In the middle of this, the Knights of Genetic Purity started shelling the party from Spanky Butt with the howitzer that they just got air-lifted in.  As the knights started dialing in the aim, aided by an iron man flying high above, the party got pretty panicked but just managed to push the hovercraft into the Badder caves before they were sealed in by a howitzer shell.

With only one functioning fan, Bozko in his iron man suit and Jonathan in his mech suit lifted the other side of the hovercraft and pushed it like a floating wheelbarrow.  The party trundled in this manner all the way down the tunnels to the halls of Glargorion that link the military complex with the sub-basement levels of the Ooh-Oh Monks.  Hoping that a jeep that they had previously found was still where they had left it near the entrance to the Ooh-Oh Monks sub-basements (where Jonathan the mutant mouse had come from, and where a whole kingdom of Mice in Mech Suits awaits), the party set off down the long tunnel.  They found the jeep where they hoped it would be and managed to position the hovercraft on the troop-transport flatbed that the jeep was towing, after stripping off the walls and canvas roof from the flatbed.  Noticing that the blast door leading to the mouse kingdom had been forced open, Jonathan took his leave from the party to investigate while the rest of the group set off in the jeep up a twisting tunnel that they hoped led to the surface.  They passed the wrecked jeep that Dataan had hi-jacked from the Warangutans in an earlier session, and were ambushed by a group of Dog Boys (see my review of the Lone Star Rifts Worldbook) that were hiding in the wrecked jeep.

This led to probably the single most epic combat I have ever ran.  I don't want to fill pages with all the ins and outs, but I want to at least hit on a few highlights - the Dog Boys were wielding a strange alien gun that the party had never seen before.

This gun apparently had five settings - one shot a goo-ball that expanded into a sheet of alien tissue, which then contracted as an electrical pulse ran through it and wrapped around whatever it hit.  Several party members ended up wrapped in a netting of alien tissue, which proved strong enough to contain the incredible strength of an iron man suit as Bozko found out first hand.

A second setting shot a cone of flame out, and this flamethrower option proved quite useful against a new member of the party, Rok, when he attempted to use his light manipulation mutation to turn invisible.  The flamethrowers also very nearly killed Bark even though he had 160 temporary hitpoints from his vampiric field mutation - he is susceptible to flame damage, and when he got nailed by two Dog Boys with flamethrowers he went from 168 HP to 5 HP in one round!

A third setting shot a glass dart containing an alien worm which attempts to burrow into the wound left by the dart.  The dart itself does minimal damage, but the worm is truly terrifying as Kunta Kinte found out first hand.  Low on HP and looking down at an alien worm disappearing into his chest, he made the fateful decision to ignore it and shoot the double M-2 machine guns that he was manning on the back of the jeep.  While he died a terrible death as the worm swam through his insides, splitting into two worms every time it consumed 10 HP, each of which also split into more worms as they feasted, he did manage to kill a dog boy with that last attack which may have been the difference between the entire party ending up captured and in one of Julius Corple's experiments.

The other two settings were a barbed homing dart that aided subsequent shots and an energy blast, your garden variety high-damage plasma beam.  The combat came down to one dog boy vs. Beyonce as everyone else was either dead (two character deaths this session!) or trapped in a net (Rok and Bozko) or reduced to 1 HP and fleeing in the form of a dandelion seed tuft (Bark).  Beyonce had 96 HP left as the dog boy burst through the back door of the hovercraft.  She had been manning the hovercraft's guns but had been rolling terribly all session.  As the dog boy entered the hovercraft, flamethrower a flaming, Beyonce finally rolled some good rolls as she pulled out her laser pistols and unloaded.  Still, she did not kill the canine assassin and it in turn shot two bursts of flame at her - of course I rolled a hit and a critical hit, and everyone clustered around as I tossed the damage die.

The critical hit did 62 damage (I rolled 31 damage on 8d6, and all natural 20's are double damage in my game).  If I rolled a 34 or higher on the next damage roll, she would die and the party would have been in serous trouble.  I let the dice fly and everyone gasped at the number of 6's that popped up - but I also got a lot of 1's and 2's to balance them out.  30 more damage, and Beyonce was left with 4 HP.  She killed the dog boy with her next attack, and what was left of the party collected their breath, collected the alien weaponry and got the hell out of there!